Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands

by DAVID B. COE

  Several clerics helped them remove most of the broadcloth sheets, leaving just a thin layer over the wooden bed of the cart. The merchant then folded a number of sheets and placed them in such a way that they created a hollow in which Tavis was to lie. The boy began to nod, finally understanding how the deception was to work. From the sides and back, the pile of broadcloth would look perfectly normal. On the fourth side, the one hidden from view by the pile of buckram, there would be a narrow opening, through which Tavis would be able to breathe.

  “Convinced now?” the merchant asked, regarding him with a sly smile.

  Tavis had to laugh. “Yes.”

  “Good. Then climb on. I want to be moving before long.”

  The young lord turned to Meriel, who was already watching him.

  “Many thanks, Mother Prioress. Whether I’m king someday or not, I will repay this debt.”

  “You owe me no debt, Lord Tavis. If anyone deserves your thanks it’s Grinsa. And perhaps, Bian as well.”

  He glanced briefly at the Qirsi before nodding to Meriel. Then he climbed onto the cart and lay down on the broadcloth as the merchant had instructed. A moment later, the clerics began to pile the sheets on top of him again.

  It took some time, and even with the folded sheets bearing some of the burden, he soon felt the weight of the cloth bearing down on him. He began to grow hot, and lying in the darkness, he had to keep himself from succumbing to panic. He found it difficult to breathe, though he could tell that some fresh air was reaching him.

  It’s better than the dungeon, he told himself again and again. He could hear nothing, and when the cart suddenly lurched forward, it set his heart racing.

  “You could have warned me!” he shouted, knowing they couldn’t hear him.

  The cart bounced and rocked for what seemed a long time, until Tavis wondered if he’d be sick to his stomach. Just then, however, the cart stopped. An instant later, Tavis heard Grinsa calling his name.

  “Yes,” he shouted back. “Where are we?”

  “We’re a short distance from the east gate. I wanted to see if you were all right before we met up with Aindreas’s men.”

  “The east gate? That’s all?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Demons and fire,” he muttered. Maybe it wasn’t that much better than the dungeon after all.

  “Never mind. I’m fine. Just get on with it.”

  “Very well.”

  In a few seconds the cart started moving again, only to stop again several moments later, no doubt at the gate. Tavis lay perfectly still, breathing in silent shallow breaths and straining his ears to hear what the guards were saying to Grinsa and the merchant. For quite a while he didn’t hear anything. But then he heard several voices, Grinsa’s among them. They must have been standing right next to the pile of broadcloth. He began to shake so fiercely that he feared the whole pile had to be moving. Eventually though, the voices moved away. Still the cart did not move and Tavis lay there for what seemed an eternity, waiting and wondering what the guards were doing.

  At last the cart began to roll forward once more and Tavis closed his eyes, more grateful than he could have imagined for the jouncing, rocking motion of the wagon.

  After that he lost track of the time. He might even have fallen asleep. It was hard to tell in the unchanging darkness and warmth of his strange bed. At some point, though, he realized that the cart had stopped and that he heard voices again.

  “Tavis!” Grinsa was calling.

  The weight of the cloth seemed to be lessening.

  “I’m all right!” he called. “Why have we stopped?”

  Suddenly the entire pile was lifted off him. Grinsa and the merchant were standing on the cart, tilting up the broadcloth.

  “Don’t just lay there, boy!” Hewson said through gritted teeth. “Get out so we can put this blasted cloth down!”

  Tavis rolled out from under the pile. His muscles were sore again—they always seemed to be these days. He wondered if Aindreas had injured him more permanently than Grinsa had let on.

  Night had fallen and they were in Kentigern Wood. Aside from a small oil lamp one of the Qirsi had lit and placed on the ground, there was little light by which to see. Ilias hung low in the western sky, a thin sliver of red peeking through the trees and marking the start of the waxing. Panya would not be up tonight at all.

  “Where are we?” Tavis asked, as the two Qirsi let the cloth drop back down onto the cart.

  “We’ve come a league or so from Kentigern,” Grinsa said. “We should be safe here for the night.”

  “Do I have to get back under there tomorrow?” He wasn’t sure he wanted an answer, but he couldn’t keep from asking.

  Hewson shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  Grinsa must have seen Tavis’s expression, because he began to laugh. “I think that depends on whether you’re sitting in front of the cloth or lying beneath it.”

  Tavis gestured toward his clothes, which Meriel had given him. They were simple and stained, like those of a common laborer. “No one’s going to recognize me in these,” he said. “They’ll just think I’m an apprentice.”

  The merchant chuckled. “I doubt that. You have the look of a court boy. It doesn’t much matter what you’re wearing.”

  The boy looked at Grinsa, pleading with his eyes.

  “We can dirty his clothes and face a bit,” the Weaver said. “That might help.”

  Hewson shook his head. “It’s not likely to fool Kentigern’s men if we run into them. You’re just a gleaner, Grinsa. If we have to run, it’ll be me calling up the mists.”

  Once again, Tavis cast a look at Grinsa, who glared at him, keeping him silent. Hewson might have been a friend, but apparently he knew nothing of Grinsa’s other powers.

  “I don’t think we’re likely to meet Aindreas’s men out here,” Grinsa said, facing the merchant again. “If we were on the road to Curgh perhaps, but they have no reason to look for Tavis on the road to Tremain.”

  Hewson waved his hand, as if losing interest in the conversation. “Fine. Do what you will. Just don’t blame me when we end up with ropes around our necks.”

  He walked off, mumbling something about finding wood for a fire.

  “He doesn’t know?” Tavis asked.

  Grinsa started pulling sacks of food from a small chest beneath the cart seat. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “So how did you explain all this to him?”

  The Qirsi stopped for a moment, eyeing Tavis as if looking for some sign that he was being difficult. “I told him that others got you out of the prison,” he finally said, resuming his work, “and that I was called to the sanctuary to help you leave Kentigern and find refuge elsewhere.”

  “And he was satisfied with that?”

  “Hewson doesn’t ask many questions, nor do I ask many of him. A man so adept at deceiving gate soldiers isn’t likely to want to discuss such matters.”

  Tavis weighed this for a moment. “Well, thank you,” he said. “I’m glad to be away from Kentigern.”

  “As you should be. I expect the journey to Tremain will go smoothly. You’ll have to hide again to enter the city, but that won’t be for several days.” He climbed down off the cart, carrying all the food he had found. “For now, Lord Tavis, you’re a free man. Enjoy it while you can.”

  It was barely past time for dinner and still hours before the closing of the city gates, yet Kentigern Castle was already so quiet it might as well have been midnight. Soldiers spoke in hushed tones by the barbicans and guardhouses. Ioanna was still in bed, her ladies confined by propriety and custom to their chambers. The duke sat alone in his banquet hall, doing his best to empty the castle’s cellars of Sanbiri red. And his ministers, including Shurik, took their meals in their private chambers, dismissed for the day by Aindreas.

  The evenings had been this way since Brienne’s death. Silent as a cloister, and somber as a funeral procession. Once, the castle had been a lively place, filled nearly ev
ery night with music and the smells of a feast. The duke drank his share of wine then as well, though usually in company and almost always with a grand meal. There was a reason he had grown so fat.

  But those days were past. Shurik wondered if Kentigern would ever be like that again. Certainly he hoped it wouldn’t. In their current state the castle’s inhabitants would have a far more difficult time enduring the coming siege.

  Finishing his meal, the first minister called to his servants to remove the dirty plates and tell the stable workers to ready his mount. They bowed, murmuring, “Yes, First Minister,” until they were out in the corridor, then ran off to carry out his instructions. None of them asked him why he’d need a mount at this hour, or where he was going. They didn’t even ask him if he wished to inform the duke of his plans. It was all so easy he had to laugh.

  He walked down to the ward, where the stableboy brought him his horse, explaining that he had brushed the beast just that day. The boy fairly beamed when Shurik commented on how fine the animal looked. The guards at the inner and outer gates bowed to him, wishing him a pleasant ride and a good night. The soldiers at the road gate went even further, promising him that even if he returned after the ringing of the bells for gate closing, they would assuredly admit him to the city. He was Shurik jal Marcine, first minister to the duke of Kentigern. And they were Eandi fools. How could any of them have done different?

  Upon leaving the city, he rode straight toward the Tarbin, so that it would seem to the guards at the gate that he was riding to the encampment of Kentigern soldiers who kept watch on the river. Only when he was out of sight of the city walls did he veer off to the south, toward the edge of Harrier Fen, where the Tarbin grew shallower and easier to ford. With Panya in darkness for another night, and Ilias little more than a narrow blade of red on the eastern horizon, he didn’t fear being seen. He couldn’t see much himself, but he trusted his mount to follow the river and deliver him safely to the meeting place.

  As he rode, his mind returned once more to his conversation with Curgh’s first minister the night before. He had been certain from the start that Tavis was freed from the dungeon by one or more Qirsi. It struck him as so obvious, he was shocked that even Aindreas hadn’t seen it. Astonishingly, though, it seemed clear to him that there had been a Weaver involved. There could be no mistaking the terror he had seen in Fotir’s eyes when he raised the possibility. Shurik knew what it was to work with a Weaver, to know that simply by associating with such a Qirsi one risked execution. He couldn’t blame Fotir for paling at the mere mention of the word, or for maintaining his deception even after it had been exposed.

  But he needed to know if Fotir’s Weaver was also his Weaver.

  It wouldn’t have surprised him. The man who was paying him had shown, time and again, a willingness to pit one of his hirelings against another. Given his goals in this instance—civil war, the weakening of Eibithar’s major houses, and war between Eibithar and Aneira—it certainly would have made sense to do so again.

  Whether this was the case or not made little difference; either way Shurik would be expected to follow his orders. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but wonder if Tavis’s escape was yet another element of the Weaver’s plan, or an unforeseen reversal. Was it possible that he and Fotir were allies after all? Should he have been helping Aindreas recapture the boy or subverting the duke’s efforts?

  Something—a momentary flicker of light—caught his attention. He slowed his mount, scanning the far side of the river. An instant later he saw it again: a small flame, no larger than that of a candle, appeared briefly, and then was gone. Yaella.

  Shurik steered his mount down the shallow riverbank and into the frigid waters of the Tarbin.

  They’ll say I’m another Carthach, he thought, as the river soaked his breeches and splashed his face and hair. They’ll look at me and see another Qirsi traitor. It shouldn’t have bothered him. Why should he care what Aindreas and the others said of him? Besides, nothing could have been further from the truth. Carthach betrayed his people to save his own life and line his pockets with gold. Shurik might have been betraying an Eandi duke, and getting paid for it, but he was doing this for the glory of the Qirsi people. Indeed, he liked to think that what he wrought tonight might help undo, after all these centuries, the terrible wrong committed by Carthach by the banks of the Rassor.

  But still, the thought stayed with him as he emerged from the Tarbin on the Aneiran side and rode toward the place where Yaella and her duke waited. The traitor walks a lonely path. It was an old saying, dating back much farther than Carthach’s treason. But Shurik couldn’t help thinking that it carried more than a grain of truth.

  A few moments later he reined his mount to a halt just in front of them. They were barely visible in the darkness, two dark forms framed against the stars and the pale red light of Ilias. Like Shurik, both of them were on horseback, Yaella on the smaller beast looking tiny beside the Eandi noble.

  “Shurik jal Marcine,” Yaella said, the words barely reaching him over the murmur of the river, “first minister of Kentigern, may I present Lord Rouel, duke of Mertesse.”

  “I’m honored to meet you, my Lord Duke,” Shurik said, trying his best to sound like he meant it.

  “Everything is ready?” the man asked, sounding impatient.

  “Not yet, but it will be, provided I get my gold.”

  A pause, then, “Pay him.”

  A flame appeared, balanced like a juggler’s blade on a stone that rested in Yaella’s palm. With the other hand she held out a pouch that jingled invitingly.

  “You can count it if you like,” the duke said as Shurik took the pouch from Yaella, his fingers gently brushing hers.

  Shurik tucked the pouch into a pocket hidden within his riding cloak. “That won’t be necessary, my lord. I’m sure it’s all there.”

  The duke frowned in the firelight. He was a large man, broad in the shoulders and chest, though not as fat as Aindreas. He had yellow hair and cold blue eyes that peered out from beneath a jutting brow.

  “I was telling the duke as we rode here,” Yaella said, “that given recent events in Kentigern, we might be well served to wait for the moons before beginning the siege.”

  Their eyes met and Shurik thought he saw the hint of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

  “I’d have to agree,” he said. “It’s quite possible that the houses of Kentigern and Curgh will be at war by then, which should make taking the tor far easier.”

  “Is it true that the Curgh boy killed Aindreas’s daughter?” the duke asked.

  “Ah, so you’ve heard. Yes, I’m afraid it’s true.”

  “I’ve always said the Eibitharians are brutes. This merely proves it.”

  Shurik grinned. “Strange that Brienne’s death should affect you so, my lord.”

  The man glared at him. “My quarrel is with your king and your duke, not with innocent children.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  A horse whinnied on the Aneiran bank behind Rouel and Yaella. Shurik started in his saddle, causing his mount to rear. It was all he could do to control the creature.

  “Calm yourself, First Minister,” Rouel said, not bothering to hide his amusement. “It’s just my men. I don’t venture this far from my castle unprotected.”

  Shurik took a deep breath and patted his mount’s shoulder. He tried to smile, but knew that he failed. He suddenly felt vulnerable and he wished Yaella would let her flame die out.

  “So then it’s agreed?” Yaella asked. “We’ll wait a bit longer?”

  “Half a turn,” the duke said. “But that’s all. If the houses go to war before the Night of Two Moons, we’ll use that to our advantage. But I won’t wait past the third night of the waning. We need the moonlight to cross the river, and I don’t want too much of the night to pass before we begin.” He regarded Shurik briefly, a sour expression on his face. “You’ll send word if the houses go to war before then?”

  “If I
may, my lord,” Yaella said. “Perhaps we should just plan the attack for that night, the third of the waning. These meetings are dangerous for all of us. I’d rather not risk another.”

  “Is that acceptable?” the duke asked Shurik.

  He sensed a purpose behind Yaella’s suggestion, though he couldn’t guess what it was. Half a turn was more than enough time for him to make his preparations, but he didn’t know if the houses would be fighting so soon. “Yes, my lord,” he answered. “I believe it is.”

  The duke nodded. “Good.” He turned his mount and started back up the riverbank. “Come, Yaella,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Yes, my lord.” But she remained as she was for just an instant, her eyes fixed on Shurik’s.

  “I can’t be certain that Aindreas and Javan will be at war by then,” he whispered to her.

  She smiled, the look in her deep yellow eyes reminding him of nights they had spent together long ago. “I can,” she said, and extinguished her flame.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Glyndwr, Eibithar

  Gershon finished reading what was scrawled on the parchment and placed it on the duke’s table, watching as it curled up once more, like dried leaves in a fire.

  “I see what you mean,” he said, after a brief silence. “It’s almost as if Aindreas wants a war.”

  “I can’t say that I blame him,” the duke said. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. When he and Javan were merely threatening each other, I could afford to wait and watch. But now …” He shrugged. “I’m still reluctant to ride to Kentigern, but I don’t know that I can just stay here and let them destroy the kingdom.”

  “And you say the idea of going to Kentigern came from the first minister?” Gershon asked again, still not quite believing what his duke was saying.

  Kearney nodded, a small smile on his face, as if he didn’t quite believe it either. “It surprised me as well. But she spoke rather forcefully on the matter, and she even suggested that I discuss it with you.”