The Sorcerer's Plague bots-1

by DAVID B. COE

  She had also, quite unexpectedly, made a friend of her own. The woman's name was F'Solya, and she was the mother of twin boys just a few turns older than Bryntelle. Like the other Fal'Borna women Cresenne had met, F'Solya seemed sturdy, and not merely in appearance. Yes, she had the short stout legs and powerful upper body that the others had. The beauty of the Fal'Borna was nothing like the soft grace and willowy frailty of so many Foreland Qirsi. Rather, these people were as strong and wild as the rilda they hunted. They even looked a bit like the rilda, with their light brown skin and the pale manes of fine hair that cascaded over their shoulders and backs.

  But quite beyond her powerful build, beautiful round face, and widely spaced golden eyes, F'Solya struck Cresenne as… well, solid. There was nothing shy about her. Her questions were direct and honest. When she spoke to Cresenne, she looked her in the eye, and her earthy humor seemed always to lurk just below all that she said. In some ways, she reminded Cresenne of her mother, or rather, her mother as she might have been as a young woman. They met the first morning Cresenne started tanning, and by the end of that day she felt that she had known F'Solya for years.

  On Cresenne's second day, and in the days since, F'Solya had sought her out, and made a point of sitting beside her. On this morning, the woman was in high spirits, a broad smile exposing large, straight teeth.

  "Here early, eh?" she asked as she sat. "If I didn't know better I'd say that you actually like tanning."

  Cresenne grinned. "I do."

  "You'll tire of it after a time. Everyone does. I certainly did."

  "Why don't you do something else then? It seems there are plenty of other chores to be done. They told me I could grind grain into meal, or gather roots, or…"

  F'Solya was nodding. "Tired of those, too." She smiled, and started working on a hide. She might have claimed to dislike the labor, but the woman was a skilled tanner-Cresenne had learned much in five days, just from watching F'Solya work. "How's your little one today?" she asked after a time, as she went on with her work.

  "She's well, thank you. How are your boys?"

  "They're trouble, as boys always are. One of them would have been plenty, but two?" She shook her head. "The gods are testing me. No doubt about it."

  They fell into another silence, until at last F'Solya looked up from her work, a small frown on her face.

  "They're saying things about you. You and your man both."

  Cresenne felt her stomach knotting. She thought of F'Solya as her friend, but really they'd known each other for only a few days. It wouldn't take much to drive the woman away. "What things?" she said, her eyes fixed on the hide she was holding.

  "Things I don't understand. Things I'm not certain I believe." "And what if it turns out that they're true?"

  "Then I'll look forward to having you explain them to me, so I can understand."

  Cresenne looked up at that and smiled at the woman.

  F'Solya smiled back.

  "Tell me what you've heard."

  "Well," she began, "they say there was a Qirsi civil war, with both sides led by Weavers. And they say that one of the Weavers was Grinsa." "And what do they say of the other?"

  "That he's dead now, but that when he lived, you were his lover as well."

  A bitter smile touched Cresenne's face and left her just as suddenly, leaving her trembling and angry. His lover!

  "No," she said, "I wasn't his lover." She lifted a finger to her face and traced the pale, thin scars that ran along her jaw and cheek and brow. "You see these scars?"

  F'Solya nodded.

  "He gave these to me. I was part of his movement once. He claimed that he wanted to lead the Qirsi of the Forelands to a new, better life-I believed that he was speaking of something like what you have here. I wanted to believe that. I wanted to think that if Bryntelle grew up to be a Weaver that she could live without fearing the persecution that Weavers have endured for centuries in my land. But after a time I realized that all he wanted was power. He was an evil man, and when I turned my back on his movement, he entered my dreams and did this to me. Later, he attacked me again and… and did far worse." She shuddered, remembering it all. The wounds he inflicted upon her body and her mind, the terror of waiting for his next attack, or the next assault by one of his servants. There were times when she wondered how she had survived those long, terrifying turns. "If it wasn't for Grinsa, I'd be dead now," she said at last. "And all the Forelands would be ruled by a demon."

  "The two of you fought on the side of the Eandi?"

  In the Forelands, it had made perfect sense to do so. The nobles of her homeland-all of them Eandi-were flawed, to be sure, some of them deeply so. But all of those who joined the alliance against the Weaver were honorable and peace-loving. The same couldn't be said for their Qirsi enemy. Here, though, even this argument might not be enough to convince her friend that she had been right to oppose the Weaver's movement. Could a Southlands Qirsi ever justify siding with an Eandi against one of her own?

  "Yes," she said at last, "we fought to preserve the Eandi courts. Many Qirsi did."

  F'Solya looked troubled. "Most Qirsi here would find that hard to understand."

  "I know."

  The woman nodded vaguely, but for a long time she said nothing more. Cresenne half expected her to take her skins and tannin and sit elsewhere. She didn't.

  "Things here are easier," Cresenne said at length. Immediately she regretted the words. "That didn't come out right."

  "I think I know what you mean. We remain apart here-Qirsi and Eandi, I mean. We come together in trade and in warfare, and in little else."

  "Yes! Precisely. In the Forelands, it's different. We all live and work together."

  "Do you miss that?"

  Something in the way the woman asked the question made Cresenne hesitate. It seemed that they had reached the boundary of their friendship and that F'Solya was waiting to hear Cresenne's answer before deciding whether they would continue to build upon what they had already. Really, it should have been an easy question to answer. For days Cresenne had been relishing being part of a completely Qirsi community; after their terrible experiences in Aelea and Stelpana, she had convinced herself that she never wanted to spend another day among the Eandi. But there were Eandi in the Forelands who had shown her unexpected kindnesses, even after she revealed to them that she had once cast her lot with the renegades.

  She looked down at her hands, making her decision.

  "I know what it is you want me to say," Cresenne told her. "But I left lies and false friendships in the Forelands." She met the woman's gaze. "The truth is I do miss it a bit. Living among Qirsi, without any Eandi at all, is new to me, and it's wondrous. But I can't tell you that there are no Eandi who I miss from my life in the Forelands."

  F'Solya stared at her for several moments. "You're very brave," she said at last. "I know many Qirsi-many Fal'Borna even-who would have lied had they been in your position. Thank you for telling me the truth."

  Cresenne could hear in the woman's voice that she wasn't telling her everything. "But?"

  "You might think carefully about being so honest with others." "I've offended you."

  "No, you've honored me. But others may not feel the same way."

  Grinsa had warned her about this. He'd been trying to tell her since they set foot in the Southlands that life here would be complicated and difficult in ways she couldn't even anticipate. And of course he'd been right. No surprise there.

  "I say this to caution you," F'Solya said. "I didn't mean to anger you."

  "I'm not angry."

  "I didn't mean to sadden you, either."

  She didn't deny it.

  F'Solya put down her work. "You were honest with me, and I'm grateful. I'm only trying to be as honest with you. I believe I understand what you were telling me about the Eandi. It's very different from anything I've ever felt toward the dark-eyes, but I understand. But other Fal'Borna won't. Some will think it strange. Others will be offended, an
d still others will tell you that you're a traitor to our people."

  A traitor to our people. How many times had the Weaver called her that, and worse? Perhaps these two lands were more similar than she had imagined. Maybe these same problems could be found in any land shared by Eandi and Qirsi.

  "I suppose I should thank you in turn, not only for being so honest with me, but also for offering the warning."

  F'Solya smiled sadly. "I probably shouldn't have told you any of this."

  "No, it's all right. If we're to remain here, I should know what people are saying about me."

  "If I hear others saying it, I'll tell them they're wrong."

  Cresenne almost told her not to. The thought of so many people speaking of her past unnerved her, perhaps because she remained uneasy with so much of what she had done, and of what had been done to her. But she and Grinsa were new here, and no matter what she or Grinsa or F'Solya said to anyone, they would continue for some time to be a topic of conversation. Best to let the stories run their course. F'Solya was offering a kindness, and an apology of sorts. She could hardly refuse.

  "Thank you" was all she said.

  Before they could say more, Cresenne heard voices behind her and then the hoofbeats of what sounded like a herd of horses. A frown crossed F'Solya's features.

  "Now where are they off to?"

  Turning to look as well, Cresenne saw several dozen riders heading northward away from the sept. Two men rode ahead of them, and all of them bore weapons.

  "Who were they?" she asked.

  F'Solya was still staring after them. "Warriors. My I'Joled was with them. The two at the head of the column are called Q'Daer and L'Norr. They're both Weavers."

  She remembered Q'Daer from the first day they reached the sept, though she hadn't recognized him.

  "Maybe they're hunting?" she offered.

  A tight smile crossed her lips. "They're hunting all right, but not as you mean it. That was a war party."

  Cresenne stared after the men, her stomach tightening again. She'd had too much of war in the last year. "Does that mean there are Eandi warriors nearby?"

  "More likely the J'Balanar or maybe the Talm'Orast. Don't worry," she added, seeing the look on Cresenne's face. "That was a small partyE'Menua has hundreds of warriors in his sept. If we were in danger, he would have sent out a larger force."

  She nodded, knowing that she should have been grateful for the woman's reassurances. But looking to the north again, watching as the riders vanished in a haze of brown dust, she couldn't help but wonder what new peril was about to enter her life.

  Chapter 19

  They were cutting southwestward, because that was really their only choice. Torgan would have given a good deal of gold to get to

  Stelpana and the safety of Eandi land. But the Fal'Borna and the Y'Qatt had settlements all along the Silverwater, and he would have had to venture dangerously close to them in order to find a bridge across the wash. He also sensed that the Qirsi were watching the riverbank, knowing that the Eandi lands beyond its banks offered Torgan his best chance of escape. He knew enough of Qirsi magic and the power of Weavers to understand that their communication could be as instantaneous as thought. Torgan's only hope at this point lay to the west, and a small hope it was. He had the rivers to cross: the Thraedes and the K'Sand. And even if he managed to get across those, he'd still have to face the J'Balanar. There had been bad blood between the two Qirsi clans for centuries, but always, when faced with a common Eandi enemy, they had put aside their disputes and fought as allies. If the Fal'Borna were hunting him, and had alerted the other clans to what they believed him to have done, he was a dead man.

  Jasha was with him still, his cart rattling alongside Torgan's own. The two men said little to one another, which was just how Torgan wanted it. In fact, he would have preferred that the young merchant simply leave him, abandon him to his fate, no matter what it might be. But Jasha remained convinced that they had to find the Mettai woman who had sold those cursed baskets to Y'Farl in C'Bijor's Neck, and though Torgan had tried to convince him of the futility of this search, the lad refused to be dissuaded. That was the other reason they were still in Fal'Borna land. Jasha wouldn't let them leave, and perhaps in some small way his arguments were beginning to sway Torgan. It was foolishness, he knew. And yet, how could he allow her to do to another village what she had done to the Neck, what he had helped her do to S'Plaed's sept?

  Finding her wasn't worth his life, which was why they continued to head south and west, away from where they were most likely to find her. But given the chance to hand the woman over to the Fal'Borna he would have done so gladly, and not merely because it might well keep the Qirsi from killing him.

  When they happened upon a sept, the two merchants kept their distance, at least long enough to find someplace where Torgan could wait, out of view, while Jasha returned to the settlement to trade his wares and, more to the point, to search for the Mettai woman. So far they had been fortunate-they had spotted the septs before they themselves had been seen. Their luck couldn't hold forever.

  Torgan wondered at how quickly his life had been transformed. Only days ago, it seemed, he had been crossing the northern plains, smug in his certainty that no other merchant in the Southlands could be as comfortable as he. He could walk away from any sale; he didn't have to hurry from settlement to settlement as others did. He was known throughout the land for the quality of his goods. His was a life of ease. He would have laughed out loud had the irony not tasted so bitter. Ease? He could hardly sleep at night. Every sound in the darkness set his heart racing like a Naqbae stallion. A hundred times each day he thought he saw Fal'Borna riders in the shimmering heat, or heard war cries in the plaintive calls of a circling hawk. Yes, he was known and recognized. How many merchants of his size and race were missing their left eye? The Fal'Borna would know him-all the Qirsi would. It would make killing him that much easier. Never before had he known such fear, even in the days leading up to the loss of his eye, when he knew he was being hunted by the coinmonger's cutthroats.

  "I see smoke ahead."

  Torgan reined his horse to a halt, scanning the horizon. There, due south. He wouldn't have spotted the thin ribbons of smoke had he not been searching for them. The lad had keen eyes.

  Jasha halted as well, stood up in the seat atop his cart, and looked around, no doubt searching for somewhere Torgan could hide while he investigated the sept. After a moment he frowned.

  "There isn't much here," he said.

  "Then we'll skirt the sept and continue on our way."

  The young merchant's frown deepened. "What if she's there?"

  "She's not, Jasha! She's probably forty leagues from here!"

  Jasha continued to survey the plain, as if he might will a hollow or copse to form in that moment.

  "Look," Torgan said, "she's an old woman. She can't have come this far as quickly as we have. If you're determined to find her, you should head north again. I can't, obviously. I need to get out of Fal'Borna land. But you're right to want to stop her."

  Jasha regarded him coolly. "You've been trying to rid yourself of my company for days now, Torgan. What makes you think I'm going to leave you now if I haven't already?"

  "Why do you stay?" Torgan demanded, flinging his arms wide. "If you think this woman is responsible-"

  Comprehension struck him dumb, and for several moments he just stared at the young merchant. "You don't think it was her, do you?" he finally said, his voice low. "You probably don't even believe that she exists. You've thought it was me all along. You're not trying to find that woman; you're just unwilling to let me out of your sight."

  Jasha pressed his lips thin and said nothing.

  "What is it you really do when you go into these villages?" "Just what I tell you I do," the lad said. "I look for the woman."

  "On the off chance that I was telling the truth?" he asked, acid in his voice.

  "Put yourself in my place for a moment, Torgan. Would you
have believed the story you told me? Or would you have come to the same conclusion I did, the same one the Fal'Borna have come to?"

  Torgan glared at him a moment longer, then looked away and rubbed a hand over his face. Jasha was right. Of course he was telling the truth about the Mettai woman, but the tale sounded far-fetched even to him. Why should anyone else believe it?

  "She's real," he said weakly. "I don't care that you don't believe me. She's real, and she's the one who did this, not me."

  "In the time we've been together," Jasha said, choosing his words carefully, "I've seen nothing to suggest that you wanted to harm the Fal'Borna, or even that you have the ability to."

  "But you also haven't seen anything to convince you that the woman exists."

  The young merchant shrugged, conceding the point.

  "So you intend to keep following me?"

  "I'd think that you'd want me to," Jasha said, the hint of a smile on his youthful face. "If for no other reason than because I usually spot the septs well before you do."

  Torgan gave him a sour look. "Come along then. We're going around this one."

  He snapped his reins and Trili started forward. After only a few seconds, however, he realized that Jasha wasn't following. He turned to look at the merchant and saw that he was staring southward, his face ashen in the bright sunlight. He swiveled in his seat, following the direction of Jasha's gaze. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat.

  From this distance it appeared to be no more than a cloud of dust, a wisp of brown against the golden grasses and blue sky. It could have been kicked up by a sudden gust of wind, or a small herd of rilda. But even without Jasha's keen sight, even without asking the lad what he saw, Torgan knew that it was neither the breeze nor the wild beasts.