by DAVID B. COE
"Am I?" Grinsa said, sounding unconcerned. "Perhaps we should ask the n'qlae what happened."
E'Menua smiled. "Yes, let's." He turned to his wife. "Did the Mettai speak truthfully?" he asked.
She regarded her husband for just a moment before lowering her gaze.
"Yes, A'Laq. He answered questions truthfully."
"All of them?" Grinsa demanded.
Her eyes flicked toward him, then returned to E'Menua. "As long as my magic held him, he couldn't tell a lie."
Grinsa opened his mouth, as if to question her further. Before he could, however, she turned and hurried away, back toward the z'kal she shared with E'Menua.
"You see?" the a'laq said, looking pleased with himself. "It's just as I told you. These men want to destroy us. They used you and Q'Daer to win our trust, but they're enemies of the Fal'Borna, just like those Mettai who march against us with the Eandi army."
"I felt your magic on my mind," Besh said. "I felt the n'qlae's and I felt yours as well. You made me say those things at the end. I'd been telling the truth until then."
"I'd expect you to say as much," E'Menua told him coldly. "You'll say anything now to save your life." He beckoned to the guards with a wave of his hand.
Immediately the two men strode forward, eager, it seemed, to exact revenge for the evils to which Besh had been forced to confess.
"Take their knives," E'Menua said, indicating Besh and Sirj. "I don't want them using their magic against us anymore. We'll keep them here for now. They're to remain in their z'kal." He looked at Grinsa. "And they're not to speak with anyone."
"Try to stop me from speaking to them," Grinsa said.
E'Menua glowered at him, but appeared to think better of challenging the man. "Fine," the a'laq said after a brief, uneasy silence. "No one else, though." He waved disdainfully at Grinsa and Cresenne. "Just these two."
"Yes, A'Laq," one of the warriors said, scowling at Grinsa.
E'Menua turned to Q'Daer. "You'll come with me."
He started away, not even bothering to look at Grinsa again. Q'Daer hesitated, staring first at Besh and Sirj, and then at the Forelander. After a moment he turned and fell in step behind the a'laq.
"In the z'kal," the first guard said, indicating the shelter with a wave of his spear.
"They're going to talk to us out here," Grinsa said, his voice seeming to grow more taut by the moment.
The Fal'Borna shook his head. "The a'laq just said-"
"I don't care what he said! We'll see to it that they don't escape. But you're not going to make the four of us crowd into that shelter."
"The a'laq-"
Before the man could finish what he was going to say, he suddenly gave a strangled cry and let go of his spear so quickly one might have thought the weapon's shaft had grown too hot to touch. The spear hit the ground and immediately shattered. Actually, Besh realized, shattered wasn't the right word. The wood exploded, fracturing into thousands of tiny splinters.
The guard stared down at it, wide-eyed, mouth agape.
Grinsa nodded with grim satisfaction. "I'll do that to every spear in the sept if I have to. Now get away from us so we can talk."
The Fal'Borna looked up at the Forelander, saying nothing, fear and rage mingling on his square face and making him look young. After a few moments he and the other guard turned and strode toward the nearest of their comrades.
"You're just giving E'Menua more reason to be angry," Cresenne said, her voice so low that Besh wasn't certain he had heard her correctly.
Grinsa scowled at her.
She didn't flinch from that look. Besh doubted that he could have been so brave. "You know it's true," she went on. "He's been looking for reasons to condemn these two and make you an outcast in the sept. And you just keep giving them to him."
The Forelander exhaled sharply and looked away, his expression softening into something more akin to a grimace. "You're right," he said. He looked at Besh and Sirj. "Forgive me. I haven't handled any of this very well."
Sirj shook his head. "I'm not sure it's your fault."
"I think most of it is," Grinsa said. "I was so certain that we could use the n'qlae to keep E'Menua from doing any harm. I was wrong. And what Cresenne said is true: I've been provoking the a'laq at every turn. I can't seem to stop myself."
"So is there anything we can do?" Besh asked.
"There has to be," Grinsa said. "I'm not going to let these people execute you. I'll fight off every one of them if I have to."
"You've been trying that," Cresenne told him, softening the words with a smile. "Maybe we should try something different."
Besh wondered if the Forelander would grow angry again. But the man smiled and took her hand.
"Point taken," he said. "You have something in mind?"
The woman shrugged. "You could try talking to Q'Daer."
"Yes!" Besh said quickly, drawing the gazes of all three of them. "When they were using their magic on me, and E'Menua was making me say those things, I had the distinct impression that he was doing it for Q'Daer."
"Of course," Grinsa agreed. "He was with us on the plain. We've been claiming all along that you saved his life as well as mine. If E'Menua can convince him that this isn't true, he can convince every Fal'Borna in the sept."
"Will he listen to you?" Cresenne asked.
"I don't know. I get along with him only slightly better than I do with E'Menua. But I'll try."
Cresenne nodded, then faced Besh again. "Did the n'qlae do what she promised she would?"
Besh frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Did she let you tell the truth? Are you sure it was E'Menua and not she who made you say those things at the end?"
He nodded. "I'm sure. She had a light touch. She compelled me to speak, but that was all. The magic that forced me to lie came from someone else."
"All right, then," she said, gazing off in the direction the n'qlae had gone when she left them.
"You're going to speak with her?" Grinsa asked.
"I'm going to try. She probably won't listen to me. The last time we spoke she basically accused me of trying to steal her husband."
Grinsa raised an eyebrow. "You never told me that."
"It wasn't worth telling." She looked at the two Mettai. "It was my idea to use mind-bending magic, which makes me as responsible as Grinsa for what happened here. I'll find some way to undo the damage we've done."
"This isn't good."
Besh looked at Sirj, who had spoken, and then turned in the direction the younger man was looking. The two guards Grinsa had sent away were returning with four more warriors.
"They can't hurt you while I'm here," Grinsa said.
"No," Cresenne said. "But they can once we're gone. Don't provoke them."
Besh heard Grinsa exhale through his teeth.
"Again, she's right," the Forelander said, looking at Besh. "You should go into the shelter. We'll do what we can."
Just a few hours before, Besh had marveled at the comfort of the z'kal and had been more than happy to call the structure his home for a few days. Now that it had become a prison rather than a shelter, he was loath to step foot in it. He knew, though, that they had no choice.
"We don't blame you for any of this," he said quickly. "It was the a'laq's doing. We know that. But we'll be grateful for any help you can give us."
Grinsa nodded. "We won't rest until you're free."
"Come on," Sirj said, pulling aside the flap of rilda skin that covered the entrance to the shelter and motioning Besh inside.
Besh glanced back at the approaching warriors one more time and then slipped into the shelter. Sirj followed him. It was dark within, and it felt far smaller than it had when he awoke that morning.
"They're in the z'kal," Besh heard Grinsa say. "And I understand that you've been ordered to guard them. But if I hear that any of you has put so much as a toe inside that shelter, if I hear that you've threatened or abused those men in any way, I'll kill every one of you. You understand me?"
Besh didn't hear any reply from the Fal'Borna, nor did he hear Grinsa or Cresenne say anything more. After some time he assumed that the two of them had moved off, she to find the n'qlae, he to find Q'Daer. He looked at Sirj again, feeling that he should offer some word of reassurance. But nothing came to him. He lay down on his pallet and closed his eyes.
Cresenne looked for D'Pera in the same place they had found her earlier, but the woman wasn't there. She knew better than to go to the shelter D'Pera and E'Menua shared. Even if the n'qlae was there, Cresenne couldn't approach her for fear of letting the a'laq know what she was doing. She walked to the tanning circle, but didn't find D'Pera there, either. She was about to give up her search when she spotted a lone figure walking near the horse paddock.
She set out in that direction, but before she had gone far, one of the young Fal'Borna girls who cared for Bryntelle intercepted her, telling her that Bryntelle was crying and appeared to be hungry.
Cursing her foolishness and feeling somewhat ashamed for having forgotten her child, Cresenne followed the girl. As the young Fal'Borna had surmised, Bryntelle was ravenous and nursed greedily for far longer than she usually did. By the time Cresenne had finished feeding her and had changed her swaddling, she felt certain that whomever it was who had been out near the paddock would be gone. To her surprise, though, that lone figure was still there. It almost seemed that he or she hadn't moved at all.
Cresenne hurried toward the figure. A bank of low dark clouds had rolled in over the plain, and a cold wind now flattened the grass that surrounded the sept. Before she had gone far, Cresenne could see that it was in fact the n'qlae she'd seen. The woman stood with her back to the sept, her wrap pulled tight around her shoulders, her long white hair dancing fitfully in the gale.
Cresenne knew that the n'qlae wouldn't hear her approach over the wind, which hissed in the grass and whistled in the wood of the paddock. So when she was a short distance from the woman, she cleared her throat.
D'Pera turned quickly, saw who had come, and turned her back again, though not before giving Cresenne a sour look.
"I don't wish to be disturbed right now," she said, the words barely reaching Cresenne.
"No," Cresenne said. "I don't imagine you do."
D'Pera faced her again, a hard expression on her handsome face. "Meaning what?"
"I think you know exactly what I mean, N'Qlae."
The woman glared at her for several seconds. "I think you should go," she said at last, "before you get yourself in more trouble than you can handle."
Cresenne made herself hold the woman's gaze. She was trembling. She knew that she had already crossed a line with the woman, and that if D'Pera were to kill her where she stood, E'Menua and every other Fal'Borna in the sept would think her justified in doing so.
But back in the Forelands Cresenne had been victimized time and again by the renegade Weaver and his servants. She had been raped, stabbed, and poisoned, and yet she had survived. She'd vowed that she would never allow herself to be treated that way again, and she refused to allow this woman to intimidate her.
Cresenne also sensed that D'Pera had been disturbed by what E'Menua had done to Besh. She intended to make the woman admit as much; she just hoped that she could do this without getting herself killed in the process.
"You think you're brave," D'Pera said icily. "You stand there, brazen, showing me no respect at all, and you think that I won't hurt you because your man is a Weaver. You and he are exactly alike. You show contempt for all Fal'Borna. You do your best to humiliate my husband. I should kill you. You deserve no less."
"You're wrong about us," Cresenne said, struggling to keep her voice steady. "All we've ever wanted is to be free, to come and go as we please. The a'laq has made us feel like prisoners since the day we arrived here." She could hear that her voice was rising, but now that she had started down this path, she couldn't stop herself. "He's done his best to drive a wedge between Grinsa and me. And the one time you and I spoke, you practically called me a whore! So before you accuse us of showing contempt for the Fal'Borna, you might want to consider how we've been treated!"
She stopped, breathing hard. Just a short while before, she had warned Grinsa about provoking the a'laq. Now she'd done much the same thing with his wife. What was it about these two that brought out the worst in them?
Cresenne drew breath, intending to apologize for her outburst. But before she could form the words, she felt a sudden sharp pressure on her throat. She couldn't speak; she couldn't exhale. It seemed that someone had wrapped a powerful hand around her neck, though the n'qlae hadn't moved. Cresenne began to panic. She even reached up with a hand, as if she might pry those invisible fingers away from her neck. Then she let the hand drop to her side. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. She still couldn't breathe, but she didn't think that the woman had it in mind to do anything more than scare her. D'Pera was a Weaver. If she'd truly wanted Cresenne dead, she could have snapped her neck with a thought.
After a few more harrowing seconds, the pressure on her throat vanished. Cresenne took a long shuddering breath and opened her eyes again, swaying slightly as her vision swam. When she could focus again, she saw that the n'qlae was regarding her with obvious curiosity.
"You may have some courage after all," the woman said.
"Thank you, N'Qlae."
"What did you think would happen here today?" D'Pera asked. "Did you think I'd…?" She pressed her lips in a thin line, looking away briefly before facing Cresenne once more. "What did you think I'd say?"
Cresenne shrugged. "I don't know. I believe that you did just what Grinsa and I hoped you would. You allowed Besh to tell us the truth. But I also think that something else happened back there, something that you weren't expecting. Something that troubled you."
D'Pera looked away. "You're wrong." She kept her voice low. Cresenne heard no anger in her denial.
"Besh felt a second presence in his mind. Someone forced him to say those things about making Grinsa and Q'Daer sick, and about the protective spell not being real."
"Of course he'd say that," the n'qlae said, still not looking at her. The words were just what Cresenne would have expected, but D'Pera's voice sounded flat, passionless. "He'd probably say anything to save his life and that of the other man."
"I was struck by what you said before, when Grinsa asked you if Besh had responded truthfully to every question. You said that as long as your magic controlled him he couldn't tell a lie."
"Yes. That's right."
"But as soon as the a'laq began to use his magic on Besh, you weren't controlling him anymore, were you?"
"The a'laq did no such thing."
Cresenne said nothing. She couldn't challenge this statement without calling the n'qlae a liar, and thus putting her own life at risk, but she refused to accept the woman's denials. So she merely stood there, staring at the n'qlae, waiting for her to say more.
For a long time D'Pera kept silent as well. She began to fidget, clearly uncomfortable under Cresenne's gaze. Finally she looked away again.
"What is it you want from me?" she asked.
"I want you to tell me what really happened."
"Why? You can't save them, you know. The Mettai have made themselves enemies of the Fal'Borna."
"Not these Mettai. These men have done nothing wrong. They saved my husband's life, and Q'Daer's, too. They created a spell that will save us all. You know this is true, regardless of what E'Menua made Besh say."
"You don't understand the Southlands. You haven't been here long enough. You haven't grown up in the shadow of the Blood Wars."
"I understand it better than you think. The Forelands had its share of trouble before Grinsa and I left. And if the Eandi king who decided my fate had thought as you do, I'd be dead."
D'Pera shook her head and stared off toward the western horizon, where a smudge of rain had appeared just below the dark clouds.
"You can't save them," she said quietly. "N
o one can. E'Menua has made up his mind, and that's the end of it."
"You can save them, N'Qlae. You may be the only one who has that power now. The a'laq is your husband and you love him. I understand that, as well. But he used you, and you let him. And unless you do something to stop him, two innocent men are going to die."
The n'qlae looked at her, her expression bleak. Cresenne hoped that D'Pera would say more, at least to admit that E'Menua had used his magic on Besh. But the woman remained silent. For her part, Cresenne had said all that she could. If she went on, she risked angering D'Pera further, and she knew that she'd already made her point. Either the n'qlae would heed her words or she wouldn't. So after staring back at the woman for a moment or two, she turned and started toward the sept.
Thoughts swarmed through Q'Daer's mind like flies in the middle of the Growing. He should have been pleased. The Mettai had admitted that he was an enemy of the Fal'Borna, proving that Q'Daer had been right to doubt him, and that Grinsa had been a fool to place his trust in the dark-eye sorcerers. The rift between the Forelander and E'Menua had never been greater, which meant that Q'Daer's status as the a'laq's most trusted Weaver, aside from D'Pera of course, was secure. In every way, the day had been a good one for him.
Yet he felt sick to his stomach. He hadn't realized it until the moment when E'Menua began questioning the old Mettai man, but he wanted to believe that the dark-eye sorcerers had saved his life. He wanted to go to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that their spell would protect every Fal'Borna on the plain from the curse of the Mettai witch, which remained a threat to them even though the woman herself was dead. Most of all, he wanted to believe that the a'laq had allowed the Mettai man to speak the truth. He wanted to he certain that the leader of his sept hadn't used his magic to make the man lie. And he wasn't sure of this. Not at all.
"Something is troubling you," the a'laq said, as they made their way past the z'kals of his people toward E'Menua's shelter. The a'laq offered this quietly, as a statement rather than as a question. But Q'Daer felt as though he had demanded the truth. Ile felt as though E'Menua was holding a knife to his throat.
