Weavespinner

by James Galloway

  And when she'd thought that, the Goddess looked right into her eyes and gave her a loving smile. There was something in that smile, that look, almost like a look of invitation. Was the Goddess inviting her to cast off the worship of an uncaring god and accept her as her patron? She had to admit, being there in her presence, she was sorely tempted. Azur had never answered a prayer, had never seemed like a part of her life, and her worship of him was simply because he was the patron of her order. Because it was expected of her to be a subject of Azur. She even had his holy symbol, that of a human hand surrounded by an aura of flames, but she kept it in the bottom of her pack, where it rarely saw the light of day. But was it a real invitation? She'd never so much as seen any hint that Azur knew she was alive, but the thought of being rejected by the Goddess if she did try told her that Azur would definitely notice that. As long as she was a good little subject, he'd not care, but if she sought acceptance with another god, he'd probably be rather offended, and she would suffer his wrath.

  Still, it was a rather intriguing idea. The Goddess of the Sorcerers was never known to have any worshippers outside the members of the order of which she was patroness. Would she accept Kimmie, even though she wasn't a Sorcerer? It was an idea to ponder.

  But all those thoughts left her when she returned to her room, and found something waiting for her on a small table beside her bed. She noticed it immediately because Tarrin's scent was strong in the room, and it came from those objects. One was a black metal statuette, a sleek cat sitting on its haunches with its tail curled around its legs, an expression of truly feline indifference on its face. It was a lovely sculpture, very detailed and remarkably lifelike, with emeralds for eyes that seemed to glow in the light of the glowglobe hovering over the bed.

  The second object was what looked like a piece of rope laid carefully around the statue, but as she got closer, she realized that it was Tarrin's braid. He had cut it off and left it in her room, carefully weaving the cut end with the braid's tip to form an unbroken circle.

  Seeing that braid, knowing from experience what something like that meant, Kimmie immediately burst into tears and ran over to the table, kneeling before it and clutching the severed braid between trembling paws. She knew that he would never have left something like that, a piece of himself a magic-user could use against him, without a very good reason. And giving it to her, the mother of one of his children, told her his reason, even if she wasn't entirely sure how she knew what it meant.

  Weeping into the braid, she cradled it and the cat statue to her breast, knowing that it was Tarrin's way of telling her goodbye.

  And that he wasn't sure if he was coming back.

  And so, without fanfare, without farewells, and without even any notice, Tarrin and Jesmind disappeared from the Tower of Six Spires after Tarrin retrieved a small book of lunar charts and astronomical observances from Phandebrass, made a few other arrangements, picked up Jesmind, and then he had Jenna Teleport them silently out of the Tower. The only ones who knew they'd left were Triana and Jenna, and neither mentioned anything to anyone until well into the next day

  And a quiet, mourning Kimmie, who jealously guarded the precious gifts he had left to her, gifts that she did not reveal to any other living soul.

  Chapter 13

  It was cold.

  Cold wasn't a very descriptive term, however. Freezing would have been better, or arctic, or brutal, but they all described the biting, knife-like cold of the coastal plains of Ungardt.

  Tarrin and Jesmind loped to the east, leaving the city of Dusgaard behind during the dead of night, with only the light of the Skybands and the Red Moon to light their way, the colors casting stranges shadows on the crusted snow that was piled a span or more on the ground. The snow did little to slow them down, for Tarrin's height made a span of snow a pittance, and Jesmind followed in the trail he broke in the frozen snow. His feet, submerged in the snow most of the time, felt comparitavely warm compared to what he felt against his skin. Winters were cold in Ungardt, and coming out at night, the temperature was as far below the freezing point of water as it was above the freezing point in the midday desert. Biting cold sank its teeth into both of them, but it found that it could not gain purchase. Neither was properly dressed for the intense cold, but their Were-cat natures defended them from frostbite. Their regenerative abilities prevented their flesh from freezing by expending energy to keep them warm, and that would protect them for a short while. For Tarrin, it was a bit more. His strong connection to the Weave allowed its energy to flow through him just as if he were a strand, something that required no effort or energy on his part, and that energy produced heat. The same heat he had Transmuted his body to protect against now warded off the arctic chill, keeping him at a comfortable temperature.

  It would have to protect them, because they couldn't stop. Ungardt weren't paranoid, but if they knew Tarrin was there, they would slow them down. Not over challenging them, but over hospitality. Hospitality was serious business to the Ungardt, and if any of the clan caught him out on his own, they'd invite him into their lodges, and Tarrin would be foreced to accept. If he snubbed them, it could cause an incident between his family and the offended family...and in Ungardt, such spats often led to bloodshed. The Ungardt did not have the same strictures about fighting among themselves as the Selani had, and Ungardt fought with each other with greater enthusiasm than they did with outsiders. Ungardt considered a fight with another Ungardt as a fight worthy of their talents. Tarrin had to get them out of the populated areas before dawn, then the sun's return brought the temperate up to that which the Ungardt would find more acceptable to outside activity. The other reason was because he didn't want anyone to know where he was. If an Ungardt saw him, they'd spread the word, and it wouldn't take that long to get back to his enemies. He didn't want to give anyone any help in tracking him down. So Tarrin led Jesmind on a murderous pace, knowing that they had to get off the coastal plain and up into the foothills as quickly as they could.

  It took them quite a while to get off the coastal plain. Ungardt was the largest kingdom in the West, but it was also the least populated, and the vast majority of that population was hugged up against the sea. There were occasional villages scattered along the rolling hills off the coastal plain, but one could go for days travelling between them. The other concentration of Ungardt was to the far east of the kingdom, in the Frozen Mountains and the rugged foothills abutting them on the west edge, where Ungardt miners and craftsmen were concentrated to mine the vast deposits of iron and coal out of the glacier-covered mountains and rugged foothills, and craft it into tools, weapons, or large ingots of pure iron for sale to other kingdoms. There were huge complexes up in the mountains where the Ungardt used their precious blast furnaces to melt the iron down into stock and ingots, using the coal they mined from the foothills to fuel their furnaces. The technology of the blast furnace was relatively new, the Ungardt only having it for a about fifty years or so, and it was the cause of the infamous Iron War between Wikuna and Ungardt. The Wikuni had refused to sell the plans for a blast furnace to the Ungardt, trying to maintain a stranglehold on their trade in cast-iron goods, so one enterprising Ungardt noble emptied out his entire strongroom to buy a Wikuni agent and have the man steal the plans for the device. The crazy idea actually worked, and a year later the Ungardt noble had in his greedy little hands the plans for constructing a blast furnace. The Wikuni took great offense to this, and made the eternal mistake of blaming the king of Ungardt and the entire kingdom rather than just the offending noble. Malor Eram, king at that time, declared war on Ungardt. The Ungardt were actually happy over it, ready to put the arrogant Wikuni in their place, and began a two year war. The Ungardt were not fools. They knew that the clippers and frigates of the Wikuni gave them superiority at sea, so they took their longship up into the pack ice of the arctic reaches of the northern area of the kingdom and left them there, beyond the reach of the Wikuni, whose ships were not designed to deal with ice-laden seas
. Then they pulled back from the coastal plain and allowed the Wikuni to occupy Ungardt soil, because they wanted them where they could get their hands on them. But Jorg Skullsplitter, king of the clans at that time, didn't attack them immediately. He let them build up as much as they desired that first year, and then winter set in. The Wikuni learned quickly and to their eternal regret that no one invades Ungardt in the winter, and no one can defeat the Ungardt who fight in the winter. The Ungardt fully understood and expected, and were both used to and prepared for, the fury of the northern winter. The Wikuni knew what to expect in the Ungardt winter, but even they underestimated the depths of the cold of the winter, a cold so intense that the Wikuni, even in their fur, didn't want to venture more than two steps from their fires. Jorg let them freeze to death for a couple of months, then his warriors boiled out of the foothills like a wave crashing on the beach and easily overwhelmed the Wikuni defenders. They even captured their clippers and frigates, which were stripped of their gunpowder, cannons, and then set at the heads of the fjords to fire on Wikuni vessels from atop unreachable fjordheads as they passed. Malor Eram sent an even larger force in the spring, but they were shocked when the Ungardt, sailing Wikuni vessels, began ambushing them on the open seas and captureing or sinking their troop transports at an alarming rate. The Wikuni were forced to use convoys to protect their vulnerable transports, but that only minimized the destruction. The Ungardt would sweep down on those convoys, sink as many troop transports as they could, which weren't heavily armed to give more space to carrying soldiers, then they would run away. The Wikuni learned that the Ungardt were their equals on the seas when they had Wikuni vessels under them. These slashing tactics had a devastating effect, and the numbers of troops that landed on Ungardt soil were overrun by hordes of berzerk Ungardt warriors, unafraid of their muskets and cannons. They held the Wikuni off the whole spring and summer, then again pulled back into the foothills as winter approached, daring the Wikuni into trying to occupy their land in the teeth of winter again.

  After two years, Malor Eram realized that there was no way he could win a war against the Ungardt when they were on Ungardt soil and in Ungardt waters. They had land trade routes back into Draconia and Daltochan, which were landlocked nations that were immune to Wikuni threats to prevent them from trading with them. That, and the sudden drastic decrease in the amount of iron they received in export made them realize that the Ungardt were more important to them as a trading partner than they were as an enemy. The Ungardt were the door through which Dal and Ungardt iron flowed into Wikuna, and the war closed that door. Malor offered peace, which Jorg accepted with the condition that the stolen technology that had started the war was now official Ungardt property, and they'd do their own smelting and refining. That nearly set Malor back on the warpath, for the Wikuni made a fortune buying raw ore at cheap prices, smelting and refining it, then selling the refined iron at a hefty profit, but he could not refuse. And so, there was peace again, the Ungardt suddenly began making money smelting and refining both their ore and the Dal ore, and sold it to Wikuna at a much higher price. It was a war that the Wikuni had lost, the only one they had ever lost, and it bit deeply into the purses of the noble houses of Wikuna. So deeply that Malor Eram mysteriously died that winter, and was succeeded by Ethram Eram, who was Damon Eram's grandfather.

  The Iron War was probably what made Wikuna what it was today. They were almost paranoid over their technology falling into the hands of other nations, unwilling to share it with the rest of the world becaue of the financial gains that having it brought to them. But the problem was that technologies that would make them much more money by releasing them were also witheld, such as their ingenious water and sewage systems. They could make a fortune if they sent out their plumbers and pipe-making artisans out into the world and offered to build their water systems in the larger cities of the West, and the entire world for that matter, but they would not, jealously holding onto what they perceived as their technological edge.

  That would change, though. Keritanima showed that she was much more progressive than the kings who had held the throne before her. She would introduce Wikuni advances to the West, and everyone would benefit from it.

  They ran on through the night, along a road that led eastwards through a series of smaller and smaller villages, villages that showed the peculiarities of Ungardt architecture. They used slate-roofed houses whose roofs were steeply sloped, the crown of the roof often three stories off the ground for a one story house, and they were built like that to make the heavy snow that fell during the winter slide off the rooftops. If that much snow settled on top of a house, its weight would collapse the roof. So Ungardt roofs were high, sharp, and heavily reinforced, to bear the additional weight they were forced to accept during the winter months. Some buildings in the cities and some of the larger buldings in the villages had flat roofs that were made of stone, but there was also a door leading onto it so people could get easily onto the roof and sweep the snow off of it before it got too heavy for the roof to take. But those roofs were usually literally armored, heavily buttressed to withstand great amounts of heavy snow, so the chore of going up and sweeping them off wasn't something that had be done after every snowstorm. And in the summer, such buildings provided something of an extra private space where the owners of the building could go and enjoy the brief warmth of the summer sun. The flat roofs turned into temporary gardens and courtyards during the summer.

  By morning, they were at the edge of the foothills, passing through a village just beginning to stir in the darkness. Morning came very late that far north, so far north that the Skybands dominated the entire southern sky, so far north that the sun only came up for a few hours on Midwinter Day. The Ungardt would rise well before sunrise and stay up well past sunset, using the light of the Skybands and the moons to navigate the night. And that far north, the Skybands cast a great deal of light down on the land, more than enough for Tarrin to see as clearly as if it were day, and more than enough for a human to easily be able to move around. It was never truly dark on Sennadar unless the clouds blocked the night sky, and the larger the Skybands were in the sky, the more light they shed down upon the land. As far north as they were, they were a constant lantern in the night, turning darkness into a dim pre-dawn kind of light that by which anyone could easily see.

  They moved well past the village, and finally stopped in a stand of thick fir trees that helped break the biting wind. Jesmind swept snow off a log and flopped down, panting and breaking some frozen sweat out of the hair of her red eyebrows, but Tarrin showed no signs that he was winded from the long, heavy run. He simply wove a dome of warmth around their small clearing in the middle of the fir grove, then swept all the snow out of it before it melted and turned everything soggy. Jesmind gasped when all the snow suddenly picked up and flew out of the clearing, then she laughed as Tarrin seated himself cross-legged on the ground, wrapping his long tail around his legs to keep it out of the way. "Nice," she said, looking around, then shaking her head while her paws scrubbed through the unruly mane of her hair. "What do we do now?"

  "Rest," he answered in a distant tone, taking the metal bracers off his wrists and putting them in his lap, then summoning his black-bladed sword out of the elsewhere and setting it in his lap with them.. "Go find us something to eat. I have something to do."

  "What?"

  "Make you a weapon," he told her, then he closed his eyes and put his paws over the bracers.

  "No, what do you want to eat?"

  "It doesn't matter, and you won't find any problems finding something," he answered. "Caribou are migrating through this area right now."

  "Is that what I'm smelling?"

  He nodded.

  "Then it shouldn't be too hard to run one down," she agreed, standing up. "They're all over the place."

  "Just don't let youself be seen. Ungardt hunters are out doing the same thing right now."

  "You're insulting me, my mate," she teased. "Before I go out the
re, do you think you could make me something a little warmer?" she asked, picking at her thin shirt. "This doesn't do much about the wind."

  He opened his eyes and absently Conjured her a heavy fur-lined jacket of sorts with sleeves that ended at her elbows and a deep hood to hide her colorful hair, with white fur at the collar and cuffs and hanging down to her thighs. The fur on her arms and legs would keep them warm, and the pads on her feet were thick enough to defend her against the cold of the ground. The only parts of her she needed to protect against the cold were the parts with no fur.

  Jesmind pulled it on over her head, then waved her paw in front of her face. "This thing may be too hot," she complained.

  "You're hot from the run," he told her.

  "Don't you need something?"

  "Cold doesn't bother me, Jesmind," he told her distantly, eyes closed again. "The Weave is keeping me warm. Now go on. When I'm done, I'm going to be starving."