by DAVID B. COE
“It’s really not that hard,” she said, her pale eyes fixed on the flames, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She had pulled on his shirt, but her legs were still bare, one of them stretched out to the side and the other tucked beneath her. Her hair, falling loose to her shoulders, seemed to glimmer in the firelight. “It’s just a matter of using the healing magic at the same time you conjure the flame. As long as the two powers work together, you can’t feel a thing.” She turned her hand over slowly and the flames crept to the back of her hand, suddenly looking more like bright spiders than wraiths.
Grinsa, still naked beneath the light blanket, smiled. He had seen this done before—he had even tried it himself once or twice, although he could not tell her that—but never with such grace. Certainly never by anyone so beautiful.
“There was a man in my home village who used to do that,” he said, watching her hand. Watching her. “He used to call it the fire glove.”
Her smile broadened, though her eyes never strayed from her hand. “The fire glove,” she repeated. “I like that. We always just called it balancing the flame.” She turned her hand back so that the flames, which had turned purple and gold, like the seal of the king, could gather in a small circle in her palm. Cresenne stared at them for another moment before giving a small sigh. It almost appeared that her breath extinguished the fires, so suddenly did they vanish. Even with the candles, their disappearance seemed to plunge the room into darkness. It took Grinsa a few seconds to realize that Panya was up, her pale light seeping in through the thin white curtains.
“I wish I could teach that to you,” Cresenne said, tipping her head to the side, her eyes shining like stars.
He smiled again. “So do I.”
“Do you ever wish that you had access to other magics?”
Grinsa hesitated. He couldn’t tell her the extent of his power. He knew that. But where was the harm in revealing just a little of himself? This was only their second night together, but already Grinsa felt that he could love this woman. It had been so many years since he had felt this way about anyone, more than he cared to count. For a long time after Pheba died he wondered if he would ever love again, and he had actually vowed never to love a Qirsi woman.
He had been away from their home in eastern Eibithar when the pestilence struck, on an errand he had long since forgotten. Had he stayed with her he might have been able to use his power to drive the illness from her body. Just as the village’s Qirsi healers might have, had they gone to her when she summoned them. But like so many of his people—and Pheba’s people as well, he had to admit—the healers did not approve of their marriage. It was an affront to Qirsar, they said. It was a betrayal, as loathsome as Carthach’s had been. So they refused to go to her, leaving her to die when it would have been so easy to save her.
When he returned to their village a few days later, he found that their home had been burned to the ground, as were all homes that had been visited by the pestilence. Nothing of their life together was spared, save the golden ring he had given her on the day of their joining. And that he had to remove from her charred finger. Afterward, he vomited until his stomach was empty and all that came up was blood.
How was he ever to love again? How could he ever live among the Qirsi again? For some time he did neither. Even after he joined the Revel a year later, he avoided Trin and the other Qirsi, passing what little time he spent away from the gleaning tent and his room with Eandi singers and dancers. Gradually, however, his pain began to recede, and with it his hatred of his own people. He could never forget what the healers in his village had done, but neither could he deny who and what he was.
His willingness to love again was far slower to return. He had many affairs—it was easy, traveling with the Revel. There was no time to fall in love, which was just as well. Only recently had he begun to realize that his half-turn romances were not enough for him. And only when he met Cresenne did he understand that he was ready to love again.
It was not just that she was beautiful, though there could be no denying that she was. It was not just that she was a gleaner in the Revel, someone with whom he might have a future. What made him realize that he could love her was, ironically, the resentment she carried for Carthach. Such resentment had killed Pheba. That he could be drawn to her so powerfully in spite of this told him more clearly than anything else that he was healed. Pheba would always be a part of him. He had never stopped loving her, and he never would. But the pain of losing her had finally dimmed. At last, he was ready to give his heart to another.
Perhaps the way to begin was with a gesture of trust, even though she couldn’t possibly understand the magnitude of what he was doing.
“Actually, I do have access to other magic,” he said, abruptly making his decision.
He sat up, the blanket falling to his waist.
“What do you mean? I thought—”
“I’m a fine gleaner,” he said, “but I have little skill with my other power. That’s why I never speak of it.” He grinned. “Still, I can do a few things that might amuse you.”
Holding out his hand as she had done a few moments before, Grinsa summoned a small cloud of mist from the air. At first it was formless, like a lone white cloud on an otherwise clear day. But then it began to turn. Slowly at first, but building speed quickly until it looked, save for its size, like a whirlwind brought forth by Morna herself. It was an easy feat. Any Qirsi with the power of mists and winds could have done it. But it was all he dared reveal to her.
After allowing the tiny whirlwind to spin in his palm for several moments, he sent it up into the air, so that it hovered between them. It felt good to be using his power for something other than just gleanings, and he closed his eyes briefly, savoring the sensation of magic flowing through him. An Eandi friend of his had once asked him what it was like to wield such power, to tap into his magic.
“You might as well ask a soldier what it’s like to use a sword,” he had answered. “You might as well ask a musician what it’s like to play his instrument.”
His friend had not been satisfied by the reply, but Grinsa had been at a loss to explain it any better. In many respects the magic of his people was like the trades of the Eandi. They were taught to use it as children; just as the Eandi had their apprenticeships the Qirsi had theirs. And just as the trades of the Eandi soon become ingrained, so did the Qirsi magic, until the act of wielding the power was as natural and immediate as thought. The only real difference was that the magic he carried killed him just a little bit every time he used it. Few of the Eandi knew that. It was common knowledge that the Qirsi lived far shorter lives than did the Eandi, and that they tended to be weaker and more sickly. But few outside his own race knew that the use of magic further shortened their lives. Such knowledge might have caused those who depended upon Qirsi magic, as the duke of Curgh depended upon Fotir’s, to hesitate when the use of power was called for. Or it might have given a weapon to those who hated the Qirsi. For whatever reason, this was not a fact that his people had seen fit to share with the Eandi.
On the other hand, the cost exacted by the use of their magic gave great meaning to the sharing of power by two Qirsi. Even Cresenne’s fire glove and the tiny storm he was spinning for her now, though simple and small, were considered gifts of surpassing generosity, perhaps even a declaration of love.
“This is wonderful,” Cresenne said, gazing at the whirlwind, a child’s smile on her lips. She raised her hand tentatively toward the small cloud. “May I hold it?”
“Of course.”
Her eyes met his for an instant before returning to the little storm. She placed her hand just under it and he made it touch down on her palm.
“It’s cold!” she said, laughing. “It feels like snowflakes falling on my hand.”
He said nothing. It was enough just to watch her watching the whirlwind. After some time, she lowered her hand again, leaving the spinning cloud hovering once more. He let it hang there for a few
seconds more, before summoning a small wind that rushed through the cloud, leaving nothing but wisps of vapor that swirled in the air like smoke from a dying candle and then vanished.
“Thank you,” she said after a brief silence. “That was lovely.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I think you’re being too modest, though. You’re quite skillful with winds and mists.”
Even feeling as he did for her, even as he sat on her bed, wondering if he might already be in love with her, Grinsa heard an alarm bell in his mind, as if some distant sanctuary were engulfed in flames.
“Not really,” he said, keeping his voice light. “That’s about the extent of what I can do. It’s not as though I can summon a true whirlwind, one that could actually do any damage.”
“Are you sure? I’d have thought that creating and controlling a small wind like that would be even harder than conjuring a big one.”
She was right, of course. She was backing him into a corner, and he was helping her do it. Under any other circumstances, with almost anyone else in the Forelands, he would have felt as though he were under attack.
“I suppose you may be right,” he said, pushing those thoughts from his mind. “One day I’ll have to try conjuring some bigger winds. Perhaps you can help me.”
“Gladly, though I doubt you’ll need much help.”
He grinned, but said nothing, hoping that the conversation would end there.
“You’ve heard that the duke and his son are traveling to Kentigern?” she asked after a moment.
It was the one other matter he would have liked to avoid discussing. But what could he do?
“Yes, I’d heard.”
“It seems that Tavis has recovered from his Fating. The Lady Brienne will be a fine duchess and queen.”
He nodded. “No doubt.” But the mere mention of Tavis’s impending journey to Kentigern was enough to darken his mood. Much of the image he had summoned from the Qiran during the young lord’s gleaning remained a mystery to him, including the circumstances of Tavis’s imprisonment. The Tavis who appeared in the stone had been young, so clearly they hadn’t very long to wait before the events unfolded. But by the same token, Grinsa was certain that the duke’s son would never be placed in a Curgh prison, and he had assumed from this that he still had some time to prepare. The announcement from the duke that he and Tavis would be traveling to Kentigern changed everything. Notwithstanding this arranged marriage, relations between the two houses had never been good; Grinsa had little trouble believing that the dungeon he had seen in the stone could be found in Kentigern Castle.
“You have doubts about the marriage?” Cresenne asked, furrowing her brow.
“No, not at all.”
“Then what?”
Grinsa hesitated, trying to decide how much he could tell her.
“It’s the Fating, isn’t it?” she said, before he could answer. Her pale eyes widened. “Whatever you saw in Tavis’s Fating is going to happen in Kentigern.”
“I don’t know that for certain.” But there was an admission in his denial.
“You fear that it’s so.”
Grinsa took a long breath. “Yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
He shrugged. “What can I do? It’s his fate.” Honesty had its limits, even where Cresenne was concerned.
She nodded. “I suppose you’re right.” She looked down at her hands, as if suddenly uncomfortable. “Is it terrible, this thing that’s going to happen to him?”
“Cresenne—”
“I’m sorry,” she said, quickly shaking her head. “Forget I asked. You’ve probably already told me more than you intended.”
He smiled again and took her hand. “I’m afraid I have. But how could I help it?”
Her cheeks colored and she leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips. “You can’t,” she whispered. “You can’t help it at all.”
She sat back, staring at him, her face as luminous as Panya, and in a motion as graceful as the flames she had conjured a short time before, she pulled his shirt off over her head. She shook her head so that her white hair fell down about her shoulders, framing a smile that made Grinsa’s heart pound within his chest. Her skin was so white it seemed to glow. His eyes wandered to her breasts, small and round and perfect, and slowly, as though of their own will, his hands reached for them. She leaned forward to kiss him once more, more deeply this time.
She was right, he knew. He couldn’t help himself. And in that moment, he didn’t really care.
Lying in bed, waiting for sleep and watching Panya’s light move slowly across the walls of the room, the Qirsi couldn’t help but smile.
A few days before, Tavis’s Fating had seemed a dangerous complication, one that might serve as a warning to the young lord, one that would upset their plans. Not anymore. The boy had been seen in the city, wandering about, enjoying the Revel. Or at least trying to. All who saw him thought he looked glum; some said he seemed always to be on the verge of tears. But at least he was out of the castle.
Tavis’s Fating remained a mystery. With every day that passed, however, with every indication the young lord gave that he had recovered from the shock of that vision, the details of what he saw in the Qiran became less important. From what the Qirsi understood, no one knew what Tavis had seen except the gleaner and the boy himself. People in Curgh Castle and the city around it had heard only that the young lord had been deeply disturbed by his gleaning. And that, the Qirsi had also come to understand, might actually help deflect suspicion. Had his gleaning been of glory and long life, the fate that awaited Tavis in Kentigern might arouse memories of Filib of Thorald and his untimely death. As it was, this time next turn, people of Curgh would be talking of how Tavis had been marked for tragedy by the gods, and of how his Fating had already proven all too accurate. The substance of that Fating was no longer of any concern.
What mattered now was that the duke’s plans to take his son to Kentigern were still in place. There had been some talk of delaying the journey, possibly even canceling it. Not anymore, though. The gods, it seemed, were with them. Kentigern offered the assassins they had hired the perfect opportunity to carry out their plans. It was far away from where the Revel would be, which, after Thorald, was absolutely necessary. But more than that, Kentigern was Curgh’s rival, and Eibithar’s first line of defense along the Tarbin. This was almost too perfect.
The only problem that remained was the gleaner himself, and in the end the Qirsi was fairly confident that even Grinsa wouldn’t stand in their way. The man was bound by custom to tell no one what he had seen of Tavis’s Fating. The only question was how long he would keep silent if the young lord’s fate differed too greatly from what the stone had revealed.
In the end, the Qirsi decided, it wouldn’t matter. Grinsa was a Revel gleaner, nothing more. Even if he tried to raise questions about the boy’s fate, few would listen to him. Because in the days since Tavis’s attack on Xaver, the Qirsi had formed a plan, a brilliant plan. It bore little resemblance to the murder of Filib in Thorald, but it promised to be no less effective in upsetting the Order of Ascension. In fact, the Qirsi had good reason to hope that it might do far more than that. If the assassin followed the instructions he had been given, nothing Grinsa did or said could save the boy.
Most importantly, the Qirsi knew that this plan would raise no suspicions. A simple murder might. Certainly another act of thievery gone wrong would. But not this. This would be utterly convincing. Tavis, by his recent actions, had made it so.
Chapter Eight
Kentigern, Eibithar, Elined’s Moon waxing
Kentigern Castle stood atop Kentigern Tor, forty leagues southwest of Curgh. A lone horseman pushing his mount, or even a small company taking advantage of the moons to ride past sunset, might have made the journey in four or five days. But the duke of Curgh had never been one to travel with a modest complement of servants, and leaving as they did with the first day of the new turn, they h
ad no moonlight to speak of for the first several nights.
Before their departure from Curgh, Xaver’s father had urged Javan to take a large contingent of guards.
“It’s not just that I don’t trust Kentigern,” Hagan had said, “though I’ll admit that I don’t like you being under his roof without me there to keep an eye on things.”
“I need you here,” the duke told him. “I need to know that the duchess and my castle are safe.”
“I know that. But you’re going to be within sight of the Tarbin and a few thousand Aneiran soldiers. If I can’t go, you should take one hundred men with you, eighty at the least.”
Javan had laughed, laying a hand on Hagan’s shoulder. “I can’t show up at Kentigern with a force so large. Aindreas will think I’ve come for a siege rather than a betrothal. Besides, where would Aindreas put them all?”
Hagan tried to smile at the duke’s humor, but his face colored in a way Xaver recognized. He was truly concerned about their journey to Kentigern. Probably it didn’t help that Xaver was going as well. His arm had healed, but he had only begun to practice with a sword again a few days before they left.
“Sixty, then,” Hagan said to the duke, as if haggling with a merchant in the city marketplace.
“I’ll take forty, Hagan. Tavis and Xaver are quite skilled with their swords, as am I. And we’ll have Fotir with us as well. You’ve nothing to worry about.”
Stubborn as he was, Xaver’s father knew when to back down in a discussion with the duke. “Yes, my lord.”
Even with this relatively small number of guards, their company numbered close to seventy. As always, the duke and Tavis had a number of their servants with them, as well as several cooks and tasters from the Curgh kitchens, and a few of the castle’s stablehands. As a result, the company had taken more than half the waxing to ride as far as they had, and still, on this, their eleventh day, they would be lucky to reach Kentigern before the ringing of the prior’s bell.