Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series

by Tove Foss Ford

  “That would be wrong,” Katrin said. “Menders has to know when things happen.”

  Kaymar closed his eyes.

  “Child, if we let him know I have fits, he won’t let me guard you anymore,” he said very quickly. Katrin gasped and felt sick.

  He was her favorite guard – and her cousin. He didn’t play with her like Haakel and Bertel, but she knew he would defend her with his life. And he always told her the truth. Even when it was something she didn’t like. He didn’t think anything of scolding or punishing her if she did wrong. Bumpy too. Kaymar was fair and he understood how children thought and felt. Even though he was very grown up, sometimes she felt as if he was also a child.

  But she should tell Menders. If Kaymar had a fit when he was guarding her, it would be dangerous. Today the threat was only a felschat that couldn’t have done much harm, but if Kaymar fainted some other time…

  “It’s too big for you, isn’t it?” Kaymar asked her, reaching out and touching her cheek. “Not fair of me to put it in your hands. Katrin, I haven’t had such a fit in years. I thought I had outgrown it altogether. Unless a bad man comes here with a felschat that spits at me, I don’t think I’ll be fainting again anytime soon.”

  Katrin laughed out loud. The horrible tingly feeling down her spine went away. Then she thought about Kaymar not being her guard.

  “Would you leave The Shadows if you couldn’t be my guard anymore?” she asked.

  “No, Menders would find plenty of things for me to do,” Kaymar answered. “But he wouldn’t want me to guard you, because he would think it too risky. Menders would make a mistake, thinking that he was doing the safest thing, but he would end up taking away the best protection you could ever have.”

  Katrin stood there, leaning against his shoulder. Kaymar put his arm around her waist and gave her a little squeeze. He said nothing, letting her think.

  Something in her mind said, “He is your protector.” It was as if someone had spoken to her.

  She blinked and then looked at him.

  “I won’t tell Menders,” she said. “I hope that isn’t a lie, but I want you for my guard, just like you have been.”

  Kaymar sighed a little and then looked at her.

  “You’re a bit young to understand this, but I’m going to tell you anyway,” he said firmly. “As you grow older, you are not going to want to tell Menders everything, and it won’t be necessary for him to know everything about you. I consider him as close as a brother to me. He knows more about me than my own brother does. That doesn’t mean that I tell him every little thing I do. If I thought that there was truly a risk to you because of my fits, I would tell him myself.”

  “And you want to be my guard,” Katrin added.

  Kaymar looked right at her. “Yes, Princess Katrin, I do,” he answered. “I consider it my duty and privilege.”

  “Then we’ll go on just like we have,” Katrin said.

  “It’s agreed,” Kaymar answered, looking very stern. “And while we’re talking, it’s time to discuss something else. It’s high time you stopped trying to run off on your own, Katrin. You’ve caused a great deal of trouble, yet you were about to run off again today. You know all the reasons why you shouldn’t do it.”

  Katrin felt her face contorting into a scowl.

  “I want to be like other children,” she said angrily.

  “I know. You aren’t like other children. This has been explained many times. I know you understand. Time to accept reality, Katrin.”

  She felt hot tears close and gulped.

  “I know it’s hard,” Kaymar continued.

  “I hate being the Princess,” she said angrily.

  “I think we all hate something about ourselves,” he answered. “We learn to work around it.”

  “Do you hate anything about yourself?” Katrin shot back mutinously. Kaymar laughed, a short, mirthless sound. Then he looked at her for a long time.

  “I think you can understand,” he said softly. “Yes, sweetheart, I do hate something about myself. I’m mad, Katrin. Do you know what that means?”

  Katrin didn’t know what to say. She had heard some of the Men saying Kaymar was mad.

  Kaymar often talked to himself but not like other people, who might wonder aloud or swear if they dropped something. He talked as if he was talking to someone who wasn’t there. He didn’t do it all the time but when he did, it was very strange. Sometimes he looked like he was afraid of something, or very angry. Once in a while he would laugh when there wasn’t anything to laugh at.

  And the scars. Could they be part of being mad?

  “I think so,” she ventured.

  “It’s an illness, but it doesn’t make my body sick. My mind is sick. Sometimes I’m sad for no reason, so sad that you can’t imagine it. Other times I feel afraid or angry. I have frightening dreams, sometimes when I’m awake. Sometimes I hear voices in my head,” Kaymar said quietly. “It can be terrible, but I’ve learned how to control it. I learned how not to listen to the voices and how to work my way out of the sadness and the anger. It’s hard. Sometimes I want to give up, but I have a lot of things to live for. So I have to accept it, know that I am not like other people, and work with that.”

  “Why are you mad?” Katrin asked.

  “Some very bad things happened to me when I was younger,” Kaymar answered. “A mind can break just like a body can, if enough happens to a person. Once a mind is broken, it’s never quite the same.”

  “Is that why you have scars all over you?” Katrin blurted.

  “It’s part of it, yes,” Kaymar replied. “We’re not going to talk about that, because it’s nothing you need to know. My life has been far from easy, Katrin, and I had to grow up far too young, just as you will have to do in some ways. If I could have changed it, I would have, but I had to learn to accept a lot of very unhappy things about life – and about myself.”

  Katrin thought of Kaymar’s scarred body and of him being mad. ‘My life has been far from easy.’ He seemed happy much of the time now. Whatever put those scars on him had to have hurt terribly, but he had a nice life now.

  “I won’t do it anymore, Kaymar,” she said suddenly, lifting her head and looking at him.

  “Thank you,” he answered. He gave her a little hug and then stood.

  “Would you spend more time with me like today?” Katrin asked, looking up at him. Kaymar blinked in surprise.

  “If you’d like. We had a good time before that felschat turned up,” he answered. “I don’t have to be hidden all the time. Think of something you’d like to do tomorrow and we’ll see to it,” he answered.

  Katrin took his hand as they walked out of the woodlot and toward the house.

  ***

  “Bear?”

  “Yes, Kip, I’m right here.” Ifor looked around his book at Kaymar, who was lounging on the sofa opposite.

  “Ran across a felschat when I was walking with Katrin today.”

  Ifor tapped his nose. “I can still smell, Kip.”

  “Come on, I’ve had a bath and burnt everything I wore,” Kaymar snorted. “That damned animal didn’t hit me directly, it wasn’t like I was reeking when I got back here.”

  “You’re a veritable rose now. Stop pouting and tell me what you want to say,” Ifor said good-naturedly, smiling at the beautiful young man across the room.

  “I had a fit. Fell down in a dead faint while I was trying to get her away from the thing,” Kaymar said abruptly. “The stink did it.”

  “Yes, you’ve told me about that trouble,” Ifor responded, putting the book down. “You haven’t had it in years, you said.”

  “That’s true and I haven’t thought of it for years. But it left Katrin completely unprotected today.”

  “How long were you in the fit?” Ifor asked.

  “Katrin said not more than a few minutes. But during that few minutes, she was alone.”

  Ifor cogitated in silence for a while.

  “I’m sure you’ve c
alculated the chances of something like this happening again,” he finally said. “There is no right answer here, Kip. Only the best one you can find.” With that, he got up and went off to bed.

  Kaymar couldn’t help laughing to himself. Ifor put it in a nutshell and left the stage. Infuriating, sensible and incredibly typical.

  His laughter faded as he remembered the last time he’d fallen unconscious over a stench.

  He had gutted a man – not in the course of an official assassination order, but during his years of continual madness, when he tracked down and removed men who preyed on children. The moment this particular pederast’s guts were cut open, a wave of reek had knocked Kaymar cold.

  He’d wakened from the faint lying in the alleyway right next to his dead victim. He’d been as thoroughly terrified by his vulnerability then as he was terrified by what had happened today. When he’d regained consciousness and realized that Katrin had been unprotected, during that moment of not being sure just where he was or where she was, he’d experienced fear that he’d never known.

  Even so, he was her best defense against the dangers that threatened her. He had the advantage of being years younger than Hake and Bertie. He had the advantage of being able to contend with Katrin’s occasional rebellions directly and without sweet-talking or cajoling her. He had her respect – she had his devotion.

  He’d found that best answer Ifor had told him to search for.

  As he got into bed and snuggled against his bonded’s broad back, Ifor’s heavy voice came out of the darkness.

  “Stay out of the woods with the littlies for a day or so, give me a chance to shoot any felschats I see. They’re damn pests, could do with a little thinning out. That’ll fend off any more fainting fits.”

  Kaymar smiled in the darkness and went to sleep.

  ***

  Kaymar was roaming the perimeter of The Shadows’ lawn, something he did frequently. He was not officially on duty, as both children were inside the house and weren’t expected to go outside for the rest of the day – but Kaymar was never off duty. He tended to prowl. It was one of the things about him that people found disturbing. Prowling gave him time to think.

  It was hard to believe he’d been at The Shadows for three years. One year had been dulled by the deep grief and madness that had overtaken him after the death of his bonded lover, Mikail. Kaymar could barely recall details of that year. The time stretched from early winter to early winter as a grey, dreary fog. As happened when his melancholia became severe, his vision had altered, the colors of the world fading to monochrome shades of grey. The only variation from this numb withdrawal had been violent episodes of anger that had led to Menders’ Men shunning him during that year.

  Then Menders had persuaded him to come to Winterfest dinner, appearing at his door and sincerely asking him to join the rest of the household. Kaymar couldn’t say no. He’d been made welcome at dinner, Menders’ Men obviously ready to forgive his lack of control. The wine flowed very freely, particularly as the night wore on, and the traditional songs had been sung, the customary jokes made. But Kaymar felt absolutely no joy in the occasion and excused himself fairly early, having been polite and cordial while drinking far too much. He wanted nothing more than the escape of sleep in the silence of his rooms.

  When he entered the hall that ran the length of the Men’s Wing he saw Ifor Trantz drunkenly trying open his door, swearing incoherently to himself as he scraped at the lock with his key. Kaymar walked silently toward his own apartment across the hallway from Ifor’s, loathe to startle the big man, who was known to react violently when surprised in a drunken state. Then he thought better of trying to pass Ifor undetected. Though Kaymar was far more skilled at fighting and was not handicapped by a damaged back as Ifor was, he was more than a foot shorter than the older man. He had no desire to be lashed out at by an inebriated giant.

  “Can I help you with that, Ifor?” Kaymar asked from a safe distance.

  The door came open and Ifor turned toward him simultaneously. Kaymar was frozen in his tracks by the loneliness and hunger in the other man’s eyes, then gaped as Ifor took two huge steps across the hall to him and started stammering out a bumbling proclamation of love. He finally put his hands on either side of Kaymar’s astonished face and kissed him with all the finesse of a bear trying to embroider a handkerchief.

  What Ifor lacked in subtlety, he more than made up for in passion. Within seconds, Kaymar found himself in the big man’s bed, being made love to with a will, without all the subtleties and sophistication that had earmarked his previous love life. He would have laughed if he hadn’t been caught up in the tide of Ifor’s passion – the first emotion, other than rage and sorrow, that he’d felt in over a year.

  The next morning he woke before Ifor, who was snuggled up against him, for once not snoring deafeningly. He had a gentle smile on his face. Kaymar felt himself smiling in response, the muscles of his face actually protesting a little. Had it been that long since he’d smiled?

  Not my type at all, he thought, surveying his huge bedfellow. Though he found women attractive and liked their company, Kaymar always made his strong emotional attachments with men. So far his lovers had been older, sophisticated men around his size.

  Ifor was more than twice the bulk of Kaymar, with enormous hands that spanned Kaymar’s waist with ease, something the big man had marveled at repeatedly the night before with such touching, drunken naïveté that Kaymar hadn’t been able to laugh over it. Ifor had all the sophistication of a grundar, though he was intellectually brilliant. Socially, he was shy, introverted, awkward and bumbling. Not at all Kaymar’s cup of tea.

  Ifor opened his eyes. For the first time Kaymar saw that they were nearly black and quite attractive, though most people never saw them because Ifor kept them cast down and let his hair hang over his face.

  “Did I hurt you?” Ifor mumbled, looking fixedly at the wall behind Kaymar.

  “Of course not,” Kaymar answered quietly. “Why would you think you did?”

  “I’m a clump,” Ifor muttered. “I don’t know the softer ways and I know you’re used to them.” He started to turn away, his face brick red with embarrassment.

  “Yes, it was a bit sailor-style but the softer ways are nothing you can’t learn,” Kaymar replied, putting a hand out to keep Ifor from rolling over. The big man was surprised and looked directly at him.

  “Learn?” he said roughly.

  Kaymar’s mind, quicksilver fast at any time, was flashing like summer lightning, dozens of thoughts crowding and tumbling over each other.

  So he’s not my cup of tea. This man loves me. While he was drunk he told me all of it. He’s been in love with me since the first time he saw me. He’s waited and had no hope for a long time because I was bonded to Mikail. Then he stayed silent for a year, let me mourn and never so much as approached me. He wouldn’t have last night if he hadn’t been blind drunk. Yes, he’s rough and unkempt, his clothes look like an unmade bed and he has all the sexual finesse of a goat in rut, but all I have to do is look in his eyes and know that he’ll love me for all time.

  Only an idiot would turn down love like that. Do I love him? Not yet, no, but I will, and I’ll love him better than anyone else ever could. It takes a while for my heart to hitch to someone, but when it does, it holds. He’s good and kind and he’ll never stray. And short of wanting him to take it more slowly and gently in bed, I wouldn’t change a damn thing about him, ever. Not from his scuffed shoes to that nest of impossible hair that he can’t control without a gallon of hair oil.

  “I mean if you’re offering, I’m accepting,” Kaymar said a little archly.

  Ifor stared at him.

  “But I’m such a big damn fool and you’re…”

  “No matter.”

  Ifor grinned, the first time Kaymar had seen him do so. It changed his face, lifting the heavy contours, smoothing away the perpetual scowl lines. I’ve been able to make someone that happy, Kaymar thought, grinning back.<
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  And suddenly, color had flooded back into his vision and his world.

  Now it was the following autumn and he’d learned to love Ifor. They were inseparable and worked well as a team. Menders sent them on missions together and had also given them a suite of rooms in the Family Wing so that they didn’t have to try to live as a couple in apartments separated by a hallway they shared with a bunch of men who weren’t nancy.

  Best of all, light and laughter had come back into Kaymar’s life. If it had taken a “big damn fool” to do that, good enough.

  On this early autumn evening, Kaymar’s prowling was a good way to kill time until Ifor returned from hunting, one of the few things they didn’t share. Kaymar was about as outdoorsy as a crystal vase and could do without hunting and fishing, which were the breath of life to Ifor.

  Kaymar put his hands in his pockets and shuffled a bit in the autumn leaves carpeting the ground in a mosaic of color, smelling a drift of cigar smoke from the house, delighting in the crisp chill that was setting in with the dropping of the sun.

  A man sprang up out of the bushes, brandishing a knife. He lunged at Kaymar, who instantly drew the dagger attached to his belt, hammering it into his attacker’s heart.

  He stared at the fallen body of the man at his feet, and then at the dagger in his hand. He hadn’t thought. He’d reacted automatically and with lightning speed. Now a man lay dead, and Kaymar had no idea who he had just killed.

  ***

  Menders, pulling on his good jacket in preparation for dinner, heard three shots in rapid succession outside, very near the house. He dashed from his room, glanced in to make eye contact with Eiren who was helping Katrin with her hair and indicated with a slight head motion that he was going to investigate. Eiren, knowing the signal meant that an intruder had been found, nodded ever so slightly and said, “I hope that was someone getting a deer, Cook said we need some more meat.”