The Story Raider

by Lindsay A. Franklin

  At my last words, the strands came together and crystallized. For one glorious moment, I saw the forfynin figure I expected—pinkish hair and shimmering golden tail—but also waving strands like the sea rolling inside the crystal figure and the light, sparkling mist of Gryfelle’s song hovering about the outside.

  Then the story dropped onto the flat stone atop the barrow and shattered.

  “Oh!” I watched it splinter to pieces and had to fight my urge to climb atop the ancient stones and collect the bits to try to put them back together, so pretty the figure had been.

  But before I could try any such fool idea, the barrow rumbled. The ground shook beneath me, and I nearly lost my footing.

  “Tannie!” Father’s voice cried out, but I barely heard.

  I stumbled closer to the others and saw Karlith, Zel, and Mor getting Gryfelle back to the cart, away from the chaos. Then a royal-blue strand poked out from between the stones. I couldn’t help myself. I turned back toward the barrow and moved closer to get a better look.

  “Tanwen!”

  In another breath, the strand had emerged fully and the ground stilled. It was a solid ribbon, but within it swirled other strands, as if within the fabric of every single piece, a million more lived. The inner strands floated the way a drop of oil dances on water.

  As I stood, the blue strand rose up. Like it was looking at me. Its head cocked to the side, and it seemed to be studying me as I studied it, almost as if to say, Was it you, storyteller? Are you the one who woke me?

  “Here.” Dylun appeared beside me and put something in my hands. A box—wood with metal at the corners and a metal latch with a keyhole. “It’s for the strand.”

  I took the box and looked back at the strand. But this wasn’t my strand. I hadn’t made it and couldn’t command it to go where I wanted. And it seemed to be thinking things all on its own. I couldn’t force it into a box. Could I?

  “Um . . .” I unlatched the box, opened it, and held it out. “Would you like to go in here?”

  The blue strand paused, tilting its head to the other side.

  “Dylun . . . I’m talking to a strand.”

  “Try again.”

  “I feel like a crazy person.”

  “Yes. Try anyway.”

  I offered the box again. “It’s . . . er . . . nice in there. It’s lined in velvet.”

  The strand shrank back a little.

  “We need your help,” I said. “We need to put you back together with the other strands—to remake the cure. Please. My friend is dying.”

  The strand didn’t pause another moment. In a royal-blue flourish, it whirled into the box, curled up like a fluff-hopper at nap time, and stayed there.

  “Close the box,” Dylun said.

  “Look at those swirls! Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “Indeed, no. Now close the box before it flies away.”

  “I don’t think it’s going anywhere. But if it wanted to, I’m quite sure I couldn’t stop it.” I gazed a moment longer, then whispered, “Thank you,” and closed the box.

  Suddenly I felt like I could sleep for a week.

  Dylun patted my shoulder. “Good work, Tanwen. One down. Only three more to go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  TANWEN

  At least a hundred Bordinis waved from the beach as the Cethorelle pulled away from the dock.

  “If not for the pressing need to keep moving on this quest, I think I could’ve lived here,” I said to Wylie as he secured lines and I leaned over the rail to wave at the Meridionis.

  “It’s the maize cakes, isn’t it?”

  “Even better than porridge for breakfast.”

  “And now you get fish again.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Sailor Bo-Thordwyan,” Mor’s voice cut in. “You’re needed astern.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Wylie nodded to me and took his leave.

  I resisted the impulse to speak first—to fire off some kind of smart remark. I just waited for Mor to say whatever he wanted to say, if indeed he had sent Wylie astern so we could be alone.

  But now that we were alone, he just stood at the rail and looked back at the Meridioni shore with me.

  After a long minute, he said, “Tannie about what you saw . . .”

  “Forget it.” I don’t know why I said that, because I sure would never forget the first story I saw Mor weave.

  “No, I can’t forget it. I feel like I need to explain . . . that is, you should know what I was . . .” He didn’t seem able to complete his thoughts.

  “It’s fine. You were upset.”

  “Aye. I was upset. I’ve been upset. I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t feel like my insides were tied in knots.”

  “You’re worried about Gryfelle.”

  “I’m worried about all of us.”

  “Aye.” I looked at the water. “But that’s why we’re trying to find the pieces of the cure.” My thoughts jumped to the royal-blue strand coiled in the box belowdecks.

  “Yes, but about the way things are between you and me, I wanted to—”

  “No. Don’t.” I surprised even myself by saying, “Let’s not have any discussions of ‘you and me’ right now. It just distracts and destroys, and I’m sick to death of it.”

  “But Tannie—”

  “No, see, you’re calling me Tannie again, and what will happen is I’ll get all melty inside and remember when we first met and the way you helped me grow as a storyteller and how you helped me rediscover who I was supposed to be and where I belonged. I’ll think about the time you told me never to change and I considered for the first time that being a farm girl from Pembrone was maybe something I could accept about myself. Not only accept, but appreciate. And then I’ll think about the laughs we’ve shared and your smirky smile, and I just can’t. I can’t right now, and maybe I can’t ever. So let’s not. Let’s not talk about you and me.”

  I pushed away from the rail and moved past Mor, tears streaming from my eyes.

  “Tannie, wait.” He reached out and grabbed my arm.

  The moment he touched me, a spray of sparks burst from our connection. Instinctively, I grabbed his hand and pulled it from my arm, but when our hands touched, a strand of fire sailed out and into the ocean.

  We stepped back and stared at each other. His wide eyes told me he didn’t understand what had happened any better than I did.

  “Links.” I hadn’t noticed my father’s presence nearby until he spoke. “You’re starting to create links.”

  I faced him, too bewildered to blush. “What? What do you mean?”

  “It was something that happened in the old days before Gareth stole the throne and suppressed the weavers. Sometimes when weavers had certain . . . ah . . . strong feelings between them, they would create . . .” He trailed off and waved his hand, as if to shoo away all the wrong words to describe it. “Sparks.”

  The color drained from Mor’s face, but he didn’t speak.

  “I’ve never seen such a thing.” I shook my head, trying to clear the fluff from my mind. “How does it work? And why? Why do these links exist?”

  “I don’t know much about it,” Father said. “Except that two together are stronger than one alone.”

  Then he walked away without further explanation. Mor and I were left with a million questions, heavy awkwardness between us.

  And a few sparks still sizzling on the deck.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  NAITH

  “Try again, son.” Naith forced his voice to sound patient. After a solid two weeks of working on the boy.

  Bo-Bradwir frowned. “I just don’t understand. I ain’t never produced anything like a story strand. I’ve seen Tannie do it a thousand times, and I’m telling you, I don’t have that gift.”

  “Or the girl made you believe that about yourself. She made sure to hold you down, convinced you that you were nothing more than a farm lad beneath her notice.”

  The b
oy’s frown deepened. “Tannie’s not like that. She would never make me stop telling stories if I had the gift. It was always me trying to get her to stop.”

  Naith paused and ran through the Master’s instructions again. Don’t use her name. Strip her of identity and dignity and humanity whenever possible. Distance the boy from his feelings for her. Slowly stoke his jealousy over the sea captain’s gift. Convince him the storytelling brat who started it all had never been on his side.

  And above all, patience and persistence. It took time to unravel almost twelve years of friendship. Unravel, but not destroy, for they needed some bonds to remain so that they might be later leveraged.

  “My son, please listen. You have seen the power of the goddesses through me. They bestow secret knowledge upon me. How else could I have known what troubled your soul when you first came to me?”

  “Yes, that’s true.” Bo-Bradwir looked down at his calloused hands. “But I’m just a farmer.”

  “No, you are a soldier.”

  “Barely. I mean I only got that position because . . .” He didn’t finish his thought but looked away, as if ashamed.

  “Because you traded information about the rebels to Gareth.” Naith didn’t need the Master’s inside knowledge or information collected through spy strands to know that. He remembered well enough from his days on Gareth’s council that this was how the boy rose to the palace guard. But he would certainly play it off as more divine knowledge from the goddesses.

  “Aye. Those goddesses don’t leave nothing out, do they?” Bitterness tinged his words, and Naith knew he needed to address it.

  “Son, the goddesses do not judge you. They chose you. You are the one who will save Tir.”

  “I thought Tir was already saved. From Gareth. Wasn’t he the enemy?”

  “Gareth was a knave, to be sure. But everything is just as backward as it’s ever been. More so, even. The usurper’s daughter sits on the throne. The peasants have lost their faith. They have been pressed down, hemmed in, used and abused. The nobility and the priesthood abandoned their people and sought their own interests. Have you not spent half your life starving due to blight on your crops? How hard must your father work simply to feed his children and maintain his land? And still, the wealthy demand more.”

  “That’s true.” The wheels of the boy’s mind seemed to be turning. “But Braith is not like Gareth. I think she’s going about setting some of that right.”

  “Even with her bad blood? Was Gareth not her father? Was she not reared by a usurper and a deserter? Where is Frenhin Ma-Gareth, now that her husband is dead? Gone. Hiding. For she was no better than he. These are our new queen’s parents. This is the line from which she descends.”

  “But Braith is different.”

  “How do you know?”

  Bo-Bradwir’s face reddened. “Well, because Tannie and the others told me.”

  “Precisely. The girl who broke her engagement with you to adventure on the high seas with a pirate—a pirate who has the weaving gift.”

  “She’s more than just that. I’ve known her most her life, and she’s more than just some girl who broke a promise and jumped on a ship. You can’t sum her up like that, as if that’s all her life’s been. She’s more than that.” Defiance edged his words.

  Time to back off it.

  “My son, let me tell you what I know to be true. You have been chosen by the goddesses to restore order to Tir. You are gifted. You have power beyond your imagining, and the peasants will follow you. Through you, a golden age for the Tirian people will dawn. I will help you. Together we will nurture your gift. It will grow, and so will you.”

  Bo-Bradwir shook his head. “I’m confused.”

  “Of course you are, my dear boy. But in time, your destiny will feel surer, as it does for all of us as we grow into our calling.”

  How often had he and the Master repeated the opposite refrain to the puppet king, Gareth? How often had they said that those with strength and the will to lead made their own destinies? But Naith had decades of experience speaking whatever “truth” he needed to in the moment—whatever words his listener most desired or needed to hear.

  Naith held Bo-Bradwir’s hands out, palms facing up.

  “My boy, Tir is your destiny. Look at your hands.”

  Bo-Bradwir looked down.

  “Now make the strands. Show your power.”

  “I . . . can’t.”

  “Believe you can. Have faith that the goddesses are not wrong about you.”

  He drew a deep breath.

  “Believe!” Naith cried.

  With that, strands like tongues of fire coiled from Bo-Bradwir’s hands. Slow and deliberate, not like the wild, willful flickering of an actual fire. Naith felt the Master using him as proxy, the power flowing from Naith’s body to Bo-Bradwir’s. This must be draining the Master tremendously, but the moment was crucial.

  Bo-Bradwir stared at his hands. “How . . . ?”

  “They are not wrong, my son. You are powerful. And you are the future of Tir.”

  “Master?”

  Naith waited. He had seen the boy to the priestly chambers of the temple and told him he should rest and prepare to make the room his new home. Bo-Bradwir had been meeting Naith in the evenings when he was off duty from the guard, but now it was time for the boy to stay in the temple permanently. His superiors would miss him, but that would be of little import soon enough.

  “Master?”

  A misty smoke strand appeared in the air before Naith, and in it, the Master’s voice. “Naith.”

  The Master sounded tired.

  “I’ll not keep you. You must be exhausted.”

  “Yes, I am. This has been quite a test of my abilities.”

  “But it’s working, Master. The boy rests in his new chambers. I will have him here with me now at all times—no more long, lonely watches to sit with his thoughts and question the things I tell him.”

  “We have been fortunate to find such a malleable piece of clay to work with.”

  “Everything seems to be falling into place here in Urian.” He dared not ask how things progressed elsewhere. The Master did not appreciate uninvited queries.

  “Good,” the Master said. “The situation is rather more dynamic here.”

  “Oh?”

  “I have kept pace with our band of rebels. They were docked in Meridione for some time.”

  “Meridione? Part of the general’s ambassadorial journey for the queen?” Naith no longer held a seat on the council, but he caught bits and pieces of politics from his subordinate priests who traveled more freely throughout Urian.

  “Yes, I believed that to be the reason at first. But they have the dying girl with them.”

  “Yes, Bo-Bradwir mentioned.”

  “And I think they’re seeking a cure for her.”

  “A cure?”

  Naith paused. He had seen many weavers succumb to the curse in the months after Gareth’s ascension, before they came up with the idea of crowned stories. Dray’s idea, actually. Control the narrative, he said at the time. Use the weaver gifts to the king’s advantage by allowing weavers to tell stories that glorified the king and their Tirian heritage.

  Naith had been quick to insist stories of the goddesses be included, of course. Without a passing belief in the goddesses—or at least a fear of the priesthood—Naith’s power and that of the priesthood would be greatly lessened in Tirian culture. Naith had always fought for a balance of power with Sir Dray. The Master had agreed to crowned stories of the goddesses, and it was supposed these stories would give weavers enough of an outlet to prevent their deaths.

  The plan had only met with marginal success.

  But through all of that, Naith had never heard of a cure for the curse.

  “Yes. We have stumbled into something a bit broader than I anticipated.”

  “Broader?”

  “Naith, must you repeat my words back to me?”

  “My apologies, Master.”

/>   “In my studies and the development of my arts, I have run across suggestions of ancient weavers—whispers of the way strands were once used and the power contained therein. And I had some reason to believe I had in my possession . . . that is, I should have realized . . .”

  The Master paused for a long moment, and Naith scarcely breathed.

  “No matter now. The scrolls and manuscripts were in long-dead languages,” the Master continued. “The rebels must have a linguist. Or a scholar. Perhaps both. If I had realized the significance of those whispers I heard, we might have acted many years ago.”

  Naith didn’t respond. He had never before heard the Master admit fault or weakness.

  “I am very tired just now, Naith,” the Master said. “But it is time you know about these pieces of the puzzle.”

  “Of course, Master. I shall give you my full attention as long as you desire it.”

  “Good servant, you are. I believe the rebels have uncovered some history about an ancient cure. I have been too far away to listen closely or for long, and it drains me so. But I saw a strand.”

  “A single strand? Is that of import?”

  “This strand is, yes. It was made back in the days when the Creator wandered more freely along the earth.”

  Naith sat heavily. “Did you say the Creator?” The Master had been so decided, so exacting about outlawing even the mention of the Creator’s name. It was one of the first things Gareth did as king, and he was glad to do it, for Gareth was a faithful servant of the goddesses.

  But now the Master spoke the Creator’s name as though his existence were a fact?