Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series

by Tove Foss Ford

  “It’s fine, built up for the night,” Lucen whispered.

  Menders turned toward the windows and felt the latches. Secure. Then he went toward the changing table, felt over the piles of diapers, the bottles of oil and powder. All in place. Nearby were extra blankets, cups, shawls, all the accoutrements a baby needed.

  He turned back to the crib, helped by Lucen and Franz, and kissed Katrin’s forehead.

  “Everything is all right – sleep well, Little Princess,” he whispered.

  By now he was very sick and dizzy. They got him down into his bedroom.

  “Hold him up while I get these sheets changed,” Franz said to Lucen. Menders swayed in Lucen’s strong grasp, shivering violently.

  “How can you see to do that in the dark?” he asked blearily.

  “It isn’t dark, there’s a lantern. You can’t see because your eyes are gummed shut,” Franz said briskly. “There, a decent bed again. Now, we divest you of your nightshirt and put another one on and back we go for another round.”

  Menders was incredibly grateful for the bed. Funny, he often climbed all three flights of stairs twenty times a day or more, but now going up one flight had completely exhausted him. He only wanted to lie still.

  Franz leaned over him.

  “I am not going to fight you about going up there every night, but you must let us help you. And if you don’t lie still and do whatever you can to recover, we won’t take you up there. Do not ever pull the bandage off again. I’m going to clean your eyes now. A wet cloth will be touching your face.”

  Menders lay still, shivering with fatigue, until the painful process of cleaning and drops was over. He was relieved to see a blurry, dim glow from the lantern when his right eye was clean. He wasn’t blind – yet.

  “Now please, let us get a few hours’ rest. If you decide to go out and chop down trees or walk on the roof tonight, I swear to you that I will kill you.” Franz said fliply.

  Sleep came swiftly, like a great onrushing wave.

  (11)

  Carousel of Nightmares

  Menders lost the distinction between dream and reality. Dreadful images loomed; old memories, new terrors, suffocating black wells of fear, fits of screaming. Scenes swept by like blurry, half-remembered images from a faded watercolor book.

  Lucen’s strong hands holding him down when he came tearing out of a nightmare, screaming and fighting. Franz’s endless ministrations. Constant bed and nightshirt changes, burning drops in his eyes, medicines tipped down his throat. Then more sleep, more nightmares, more terror.

  Sometimes he couldn’t hear Franz and Lucen speaking at all. Other times their words were clear as a bell on a winter night.

  “What in the name of all the gods happened to him?” he heard Lucen say at one point when he’d come howling out of yet another dream of tutors, fighting with all his strength.

  “Enough to send most people mad,” Franz responded. “It’s that iron will of his that kept him from going completely off his head, but now that he isn’t in control of himself it’s all coming back to haunt him, poor little bastard. Gods, he can fight!”

  “He’s like soldiers who’ve gone battle mad. What about his eyes?” Lucen asked.

  “Right now I’m just trying to keep him alive and keep Ermina away from him. The last thing I need now is dealing with the histrionics of a self-centered bitch.”

  He wanted to let them know that he heard them, that he appreciated what they were doing, but couldn’t speak. Then his head grew hot again and the dreams, colored red and black, returned.

  Running in terror through the rooms of the house where he had been born, desperate for help. Running to his father as a last resort, knowing that his tutor, the one who had seemed kind at first, was behind him. Finally bursting into his father’s study, dashing across the pool of light cast by the lamp, hiding behind the chair where his father sat glaring at him. Words of apology from the tutor in the doorway – and then his father’s hand closing on his wrist, dragging him from his hiding place, handing him over to the tutor. His father closing the door, leaving him to his fate.

  He sat up, screaming, fighting, was calmed and restrained, slept again, dreamed again, screamed, wept and fought. The procession of days was lost to a grinding carousel of nightmares.

  Every night he fought his way to consciousness and checked on Katrin. Often he could barely walk. Lucen and Franz bore more of his weight than he did, but he saw to it that she was safe and warm in her crib, whispered to her that everything was all right, to sleep well.

  Then his moments of clarity grew scarce and the fever raged without breaking. The dreams ceased and he lay in a listless torpor, hardly able to swallow the medicines. If he took more than a couple of spoonfuls of water or broth at a time, he would vomit. He was aware that he was never left alone and sensed Franz with him almost all the time, as well as Lucen, though sometimes he could hear Cook or Zelia talking to him. Cook brought Katrin in to him often. He lived for the time she was there, when he could hold her. He didn’t hear Ermina and didn’t want her there because she worried him so.

  He became used to being hot, constantly hot, burning up. There was always a foul taste in his mouth that water couldn’t wash away. Often he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. The pain in his eyes and head raged on, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  Then a sudden sense of peace came upon him, and he felt himself drifting.

  “Gods! Franz! Franz!” Lucen’s voice came to him dimly. The blankets ripped back.

  “He’s burning up, water!” Franz’s voice was frantic. “Get the shirt off him, I’ll get ice.”

  Menders felt Lucen turning him on his belly, using his big hands to rip the nightshirt down the back. Franz’s footsteps in the hallway, then in the room. A splash.

  They sponged him, but he didn’t even feel the cold water. He heard Ermina calling out in the hall.

  “Shut the door, bolt it. She’s the last thing we need,” Franz snapped. “Menders! Can you hear me? Pack ice into a towel, wet it and hold it on his head.”

  He could hear them working over him but drifted higher, no longer feeling the pain in his eyes or the icy water they were splashing over his body.

  “I can’t tell if he’s breathing,” Lucen said frantically.

  They turned him onto his back with a thump and Franz bent over him.

  “Barely. Gods, if the infection has gone to his brain - Menders, you won’t thank me if I save you to be an idiot. Get hot water, we’ll put his feet into it, we’ve got to draw this heat down out of his head.”

  Lucen going out the door and speaking abruptly when Ermina started shouting at him in the hallway. Franz speaking in his ear.

  “Menders, you’re dying. Come on, damn you! Breathe!”

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  Dimly, he heard Lucen coming back, felt hot towels slapped over his feet. It was wasted effort. It didn’t matter.

  Franz slapped his face, hard. He didn’t feel it.

  “We’ve lost him,” Lucen said, standing upright.

  “Keep that hot water on his feet! I don’t give up that easily.” Franz dumped ice water directly on Menders’ head, then suddenly flung the contents of the basin over his body, drenching the bed.

  It didn’t matter.

  Franz spoke low in his ear.

  “I guess you won’t be seeing that Katrin is safe tonight,” he said, his tone fierce. “You’re going to die and leave her alone in the world.”

  The physical pain returned, stabbing Menders’ eyes like twin daggers. He began shivering from the fever and the ice water that was pooled all around him in the bed. He tried to sit up.

  “That brought you back,” Franz said, attempting to sound sarcastic, but failing. He supported Menders, feeling his head.

  “The fever’s broken. Lucen, put him in my bed for a while, until we can get this mess sorted out.”

  Lucen lifted Menders as easily as he would a child, taking him into Fran
z’s room. Suddenly, Ermina was there, clawing at Menders’ hand.

  “You look so terrible!” she gasped. “They haven’t let me near you in all this time!”

  “Please don’t talk so fast, it makes my head hurt,” Menders breathed.

  “Tell them to let me be with you!” she demanded, talking even faster. “I’ve been so afraid! What would happen to me if you died?”

  “Ermina, leave him alone,” Franz’s voice came from the doorway. “This is the last thing he needs right now.”

  “Why won’t you let me help?” she protested.

  “Because you aren’t a help! Lucen, see her out.” Franz waited as Lucen removed the protesting and then wailing Ermina. The doctor sat on the side of the bed.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Terrible… but alive,” Menders croaked. He felt his breath hitching in his chest and was humiliated to realize that he was crying. The tears were searing.

  “Thank you for everything,” Menders gasped, trying to bite back the sobs.

  “I’m a doctor. I take care of sick people,” Franz answered. “You’ve been through hells and you aren’t finished. You’re going to be in bed for a long while yet. The fevers aren’t over either but I’m hoping that this one might have burned out the worst of the infection.”

  “What about my eyes?”

  Franz sighed. “Not good. Very swollen, very infected. I’ll do everything I can.”

  Menders sighed in despair and tried to lie back, but Franz held onto him.

  “Listen to me,” Franz said. “Two years ago, if anyone had told me that I would ever admire a twenty year old boy who hadn’t even finished growing, I would have laughed out loud. Then I witnessed you being handed that baby and I saw you rise to the challenge of loving her, though it was obvious that becoming her guardian was the last thing you expected. I watched you come out here and rise to the challenge of running this estate. I watched you finding a way to get us all through the winter. You haven’t been afraid to take on every challenge that has come your way, Menders. Now, what you have to do is look at this illness as another challenge. That will give you a fighting chance.”

  Menders nodded. He was too weak to do any more.

  (12)

  Waiting Time

  Fevers came and went in the next few days but Menders found a sort of peace and managed to reflect on his situation with clarity.

  “Do you know what the worst of this sickness was?” he asked Franz one day.

  “The fever, I expect.”

  “No. The fear.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Not for me. I’m an assassin. We are trained to deal with fear, to master it. During every mission there is a possibility that you may be killed. Accepting this brings rationality of thought and clarity of purpose. But this was something else. This was a fear that… wasn’t anything I was expecting.”

  He felt Franz sit on the edge of the bed. Menders was lying on his back, hands folded across his chest, his eyes still bandaged.

  “You’ve had to experience what the world is like for us mere mortals then,” Franz joked. “You nearly died, so fear is understandable, as I said.”

  “No… you still don’t understand. It wasn’t fear of death. It was fear of becoming something useless.”

  “Blind.”

  “Yes. Unable to fulfill my obligation and commitment to Katrin.”

  “I watched you climb those stairs every night, even though we had to carry you more often than not. I was impressed, although in a lesser man I would have been concerned that it had become a mania.”

  “An assassin must have purpose. We need something to believe in. Otherwise, we are nothing more than killers for hire, no better than any nighthawk street thug.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it quite like that,” Franz said after a pause.

  Smiling, Menders answered, “Most people don’t. Did I ever tell you what I did on my last mission?”

  “No,” Franz replied. Something in his tone made Menders think Franz might not want to know. “You said once it was somewhere abroad.”

  “Surelia. I was there two years.”

  “Two years?” Franz marveled.

  “Yes, deep infiltration. I speak the language like a native. Not only that, but I adopted the mannerisms and habits of a Surelian. In short, I became one. As you know, there had been a fragile peace between our two nations for some years, until recently.”

  “Yes, ever since we gave them a right old shellacking at the Battle of Tastian Island,” Franz said proudly. “That put them in their place.”

  “That defeat stuck in the minds of some more militant members of the Surelian Royal Family and the Military Council. Some of them were bitter about losing control of Mordania after deposing Queen Clearheart, because of the uprising that returned Morghenna the Wise to the Throne. Do you know much about Clearheart?”

  “The general story,” Franz admitted.

  “She was a great Queen. When the Surelians invaded Erdahn, she sacrificed herself for her country. She gave her newborn daughter to a trusted courtier. He fled with the child and Clearheart allowed the Surelians to capture her, to give him time to get away. They tortured her to death in full view of the people – and raised a sentiment in the population that eventually led to the uprising that put her daughter, Morghenna the Wise on the Throne. I read up on her back in Erdhan, because it was my ancestor, the first Lord Stettan, who took the child and raised her in seclusion. Someday I hope to write a biography…”

  Menders’ voice had grown soft and dreamy. Doctor Franz could tell that his mind was distracted by the tragic story of Mordania’s most famous Queen. Even now, more than two hundred years later, the battle cry “Clearheart” was commonly used by Mordanian soldiers.

  “I die with a clear heart, for I protect the future of Mordania,” Franz quoted, echoing the doomed Queen’s final words.

  Menders started a bit and smiled sheepishly over his lapse.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “it came to our attention that a small but powerful group was plotting to infiltrate the Mordanian military, overthrow the Queen to destabilize the country, then invade and settle what they call “The Mordanian Question” in Surelia’s favor once and for all. They were very secretive. It took quite some time to winkle them out.”

  “Two years time?” Franz asked.

  “About that.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Menders smiled. “Oh, one night, there was a party with nearly two hundred people invited… then came shootings, stabbings, and an explosion that leveled most of the place.”

  Franz gasped. “By the Gods, you don’t so things by halves!”

  “No point. If you want to destroy a nest of snakes you must do it while they’re all in one spot, before they slither off in a thousand different directions.”

  Menders could hear Franz scratching at his moustache. “Didn’t the old King of Surelia die suddenly at about that time?”

  “Yes… wasting sickness. Very tragic.”

  “You again?”

  “Not directly, no. That was the work of a brilliant Mordanian assassin named Falk and his partner, Ifor Trantz. The new King was a surprising choice, with a benevolent viewpoint toward Mordania.”

  “He seems a decent sort of chap,” Franz noted. “The new Queen seems nice too.”

  “Yes. She likes horses, he likes guns and hunting. Their outdoor pursuits make them well suited. She has Fambrian heritage too, which helps break ‘The Old Family’s’ stranglehold on the Crown.”

  Franz had heard rumors of the network that had footholds in the Royal House of Surelia, influencing it to their own ends. They were secretive and shadowy people, always simply referred to as ‘The Old Family’.

  “We have finally settled the ‘Surelian Problem’ and gotten them on side with us,” Menders continued. “So that leaves the Artreyans as Mordania’s main threat… those popinjays.”

  Franz laughed at the idea of compari
ng the people of the new and powerful nation of Artreya to the raucous, colorful birds that infested hedgerows in the summertime and caused no end of mischief and damage.

  “So you helped save Mordania from an invasion and removed a serious long term threat at the same time. I was right before, you’re a hero!” Admiration rang in the doctor’s voice.

  “No, sir,” Menders replied. “I am a servant of my country. The assassin named Falk, who eliminated the old King of Surelia – he made the ultimate sacrifice, shot to death while on that mission. His partner, Trantz, was permanently and severely injured, unable to serve any longer. He was released from service with no pension and has been struggling to survive ever since. There are no accolades for those of us who work in the shadows, Doctor.”

  Franz had no reply.

  ***

  Doctor Franz nursed a contemplative pipe in the sanctity of his office, musing over his conversation with Menders. Then he opened his medical record book.

  Patient file, Menders

  The Shadows

  Patient continues to improve in general health, though much debilitated. Eyes still seriously infected and swollen, but the amount of involvement seems to be decreasing. At this point, it is impossible to assess what, if any, vision he will have at the outcome of his illness.

  Franz sat back, put his pipe on the desk and sighed. He sat still for some minutes before writing again.

  Menders poses many questions for me, both as his doctor and as his friend, for I believe that I have become his friend by this time. In our conversation today he confided his sense of service to Mordania to me, and though admirable, it is also a matter for concern. Menders is a young man who needs a strong vocation, and his extreme devotion to Katrin and The Shadows (and all the people who dwell there) gives him the sense of dedication that he requires. How he will cope if he loses his sight and is unable to be of service to the Princess and Mordania is questionable.