The Woad to Wuin

by Peter David

  Slowly she nodded. “I was noticing the regeneration of the threads.”

  I envied her that: The weaver’s skill to see dangling in the air the threads of power that were part and parcel of nature. If I were to believe what Hecate said … and I had no reason to assume she was wrong … they would not always be there. Slowly, over time—decades, centuries, whatever—those threads would dissipate. The ability to manipulate the forces of nature, and all other weaver skills, would fade away, become obsolete. Those who practiced magiks would be reduced to offering up hopeful prayers to an assortment of uncaring gods, including one whom I very well might have dispatched to her final reward … whatever such a thing might be for a god.

  I thought of telling Sharee all this … and found, a bit to my surprise, that I couldn’t. Once upon a time I would have taken cruel joy in informing her that her trade was destined to be obsolete, and that her or her children or her children’s children would one day be unable to summon so much as a stray zephyr, much less a lightning bolt to hurl at someone who had irked them. But now … now I couldn’t find it within myself to do so. Perhaps I felt a bit sorry for her … or perhaps, more likely, there was just the smug notion of my knowing more about her destiny than she did herself.

  “So … you were saying?” I prompted as the sun fully cleared the horizon, great and glowing and ushering in a new day. “You were suspended over the Cavern of Keeyops, the rope you were clutching was burning through, and angry acolytes were on either side firing arrows at you …”

  “Right, right,” she said, and resumed her narrative.

  By the time she finally finished her adventures, it was at least an hour later and I was feeling somewhat parched. “And that,” she said dramatically, holding up the knife, “is how I came to possess the dagger of Vishina. Finding you, of course, was no difficulty. I simply followed the trail of carnage. Sooner or later I knew it would lead to you.”

  “Do you have anything to drink?” I said abruptly.

  She looked disconcerted at the question. “Being thirsty is the least of your problems at the moment, don’t you think?”

  “No, I’d actually rank it much higher. Well? Do you?”

  Sharee shook her head and sighed even as she pulled a water skin from beneath her cloak and extended it to me with her face carefully neutral. I took a quick drink from it, just to take the edge off my parched state, and then handed it back to her. “You look like you could use some yourself. That’s quite a story you told. You must be dry after it.”

  “I am,” she admitted, and knocked back a swig herself. Then she capped it and reattached it to her belt.

  “You told it very well.”

  “Really?” She seemed surprised at the compliment. “I’ve no bard skills …”

  “Do not sell yourself short.”

  “So …” She suddenly held the dagger in her hand and then flipped it from one to the other like an experienced knife fighter. “Are you prepared to die at the hands of the one blade that could kill you?”

  “Three things to say before that happens. First,” I said patiently, making no move to defend myself, “you’re mixing your metaphors. Blades don’t have hands.”

  She paused, considered that, and then said impatiently, “Fine. Die at my hands, then, with the one blade that—”

  “The second thing is … you went to a lot of trouble for nothing. I’m mortal again. You could probably kill me with a decent-sized rock.”

  “What?” She paled. “What? Are you jesting with me … ?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I told her apologetically. “I have no reason to lie. If you stab me with that dagger, it would dispatch me whether I was god or man, so if that’s your weapon of choice, it really doesn’t matter. But I thought you might appreciate the irony that your whole adventure was for nothing. I’d … rather not go into the details as to how I came to this pass, if that’s all right with you. For one thing, it’s not remotely as exciting as your escapades, and for another—”

  She wasn’t listening. Instead she was stamping about in a small circle, her frustration bursting from the seams. “That is so typical of you! The lack of consideration! I risk life and limb to obtain this weapon as a means of killing you, and you go and lose the ability to not be killed! I could have just waited and thumped an arrow into you at my leisure!”

  “If it’d been a flaming arrow, it would have dispatched me at any time, actually,” I offered. “Turns out I was always vulnerable to flame.”

  This new piece of information froze her in place. I thought she was going to have a bout of apoplexy. “You had a vulnerability? And you didn’t tell me? “

  “I didn’t know at the time. Sorry.” Then I frowned. “Why am I apologizing? It’s not as if you had my best interests at heart.”

  “Well, it’s just damned inconsiderate.” She raised” the knife, cold fury in her face. “Just one more reason to kill you, Apropos … as if everything you’ve done isn’t already excuse enough.”

  The entire outward display of my concern was a single raised eyebrow. “You’d kill me even though I’m not what I was?”

  “I’d kill you because of what you’ve always been, and for what you once were, and what you might yet become. That’s my three reasons,” she said tightly. She paused a step away from me, knife cocked, ready to slash down at me or to try and drive the blade into my heart. My sword remained in its scabbard on my back; my staff was in two pieces in my belt. I could have yanked out either one to try and beat back her attack. I did neither. I just stood there. “You,” she continued, “said you had three things to say. You’ve spoken two. Utter the third so they can be your last words.”

  “Actually,” I said calmly, “they’re your words … specifically, that names have power.”

  She stared at me. “So?”

  The fact that I’d been up all night, and on the run, was beginning to catch up with me. So, very tiredly, I told her, “So put down that damned knife, let’s return to the Golden City and see if there’s anyone left alive there—which I suspect there’s not—and if there’s any food to be had—which I suspect there is—and we can just put aside these foolish notions of you killing me, okay, Denyys?”

  She froze, and a dozen emotions played across her face as she heard the name uttered by a dying Visionary in what seemed a lifetime ago.

  ” ‘kay,” said Sharee, a.k.a. Denyys, and she lowered her knife. She shook her head and stared at me wonderingly. “I should have known,” she murmured. “I should have known.”

  “Known what?”

  She reached into her cloak once more. It was the most ubiquitous garment I had ever seen; I was beginning to think she had a small army hidden within. She produced a parchment and held it up. “It was right here. ‘And will come a man who knows your name, and he will go on to … ‘ Just as he said.”

  I recognized the handwriting instantly. “Oh, gods, no … is that … ?”

  She nodded, her eyes shining with excitement. “Yes. Produced by the Visionary who died in your inn. That’s where I knew him from. We were in a card game, and he lost a considerable amount to me, and did this casting in exchange for money. You can’t read it. It’s—”

  “Written in runic, yes, I know,” I moaned. “Is … is that why you—?”

  “Stole the gems from Beliquose, yes. Or at least the one. It’s why I did most of the things I did.”

  “Because it was on a piece of parchment?”

  “It was written,” she said stubbornly. “That means it had to be so. No one takes the time to write things down if they’re not true. So all these other things about the man who knows my name … those are all about you. Look, here,” and she pointed, “it says that you’ll …”

  I grabbed it from her hands and, before her horrified face, ripped the parchment to pieces. Then I threw them down, stomped upon them, and kicked the remaining shreds around. I did this for some time and then just stood there, huffing and puffing, and glowered at her. “All right?�
� I demanded.

  She held up her hands in a nonconfrontational manner. “Fine.”

  “Good. Now let’s get out of here. Me, you, and the horse you rode in on.”

  We mounted the horse, which seemed a sturdy enough beast and bore both our weights well enough. Sharee … I feel odd referring to her as “Denyys” … swung the horse around, and we set off at a brisk trot for the Golden City. Seated behind her, I kept my arms about her waist, which felt surprisingly better than I would have thought. “I cannot believe,” I told her, “that you tried to kill me just because it told you to in some parchment.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t in the parchment,” she said cheerfully. “I came up with that part myself.”

  “Ah. Very … resourceful of you.”

  There was absolute quiet for a time after that, and then I said very tentatively, “Sharee, there are … things that need to be said. Things about … what happened between us … earlier … a while ago …”

  “You don’t have to dance around it,” she replied, her voice firm and even. “I know to what you’re referring. But you’re under a misimpression.”

  “Am I?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at me and said, “There is no ‘us,’ Apropos … at least, not in the sense that you mean. I don’t think you’ve realized that yet. There is you … and there is me … and there are the forces which act upon us that have us do things to each other. That take control of our lives and bodies and smash us together like waves upon the Middle Finger. The only way I’ve managed to recover from … that event …”

  “You mean with the ring …”

  “Yes,” she snapped, obviously more angrily than she wanted. Then she pulled herself together and continued, “It wasn’t me … and it wasn’t you … neither of us had any say or influence or—”

  “I wanted to,” I blurted out.

  She stopped the horse, who snuffed a bit at her in annoyance, and she turned around to look me in the eyes questioningly, and with raw and naked hurt in her face. “You … wanted to … ? How … how could you—?”

  “Not that way,” I quickly amended. “Gods, not in that manner. But I … I had thought about taking you that way … because I knew you’d never willingly … but I never would have. But from time to time … it crossed my mind … and I just … I mean, I know technically you were the one who assaulted me, but it would never have happened if …”

  “Are you trying to apologize?”

  I went stone silent and looked away. I couldn’t get the words out.

  And without lowering her gaze at all when she spoke, she said, “It was my first time.”

  I blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “It. You. That time, and all those subsequent times … it was my first … well, obviously, not the times after that weren’t first, but …” Her chin quivered ever so slightly, and I think I truly realized for the first time just how young she was. Younger than I by a couple of years, at least. How young and how truly vulnerable. “I’m not a fool. I’m not … a romantic nitwit,” she said, and it was obviously great labor for her to keep herself together. “I know the way of the world, and the realities. I had no fatuous fantasies over what the first time would be like … but I …” She shook her head. “I never envisioned it like that. At least, though, you’ll be relieved to know that even if you did say you were sorry … it wouldn’t help.”

  “Oh.”

  We sat there for a long moment, and then I said very softly, “I am, though. Sorry, I mean. And I’m even sorrier … that it doesn’t help.”

  “Yes, well …” She turned around and snapped the reins, urging the horse forward again. “You can’t trust anything weavers and wizards say.”

  I frowned in confusion. “Meaning?”

  “I said it wouldn’t help. Well …” She shrugged. “I may have been less than honest about that.”

  I started to laugh.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said sharply. “It’s not a laughing moment.”

  I stopped, and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

  As deathly quiet as the Golden City had been upon my previous entry to it, this time it was a different sort of deathly quiet … namely the sort of quiet that fell upon an area when death had been there in abundance.

  Sharee’s horse had no desire to enter the place. I couldn’t entirely blame it. Animal’s senses are far more attuned to the way of things than ours, and even I could sense that death hung heavy about the place. If I’d had any brains, I wouldn’t have entered the city, but I was prompted by morbid curiosity to look upon the aftermath. And so Sharee and I left the animal tethered to some brush outside the wall and entered.

  We said nothing to each other for much of the walk through the paths toward the upper city. At first Sharee was looking around intently at all the damage that had been inflicted, but after a while she just forced herself to look resolutely straight ahead. Perhaps she was concerned that, if she dwelt too much upon the hardship and strife that had been brought to the former residents of the city, she might feel inclined to go against predictions, destiny or what-have-you, and lodge that hard-fought-for knife between my ribs.

  We approached the low wall, and I studied it for some sign of the shadows of me, perched upon it and waving their phantom blades. But there was nothing. Of course there was nothing; it was broad daylight. Nevertheless, I shuddered inwardly at the recollection as we passed through and kept going.

  Then I stopped, and Sharee halted beside me, looking at me questioningly. “Do you hear them?” I asked softly.

  She paused, pricking up her ears, and then she heard it as well.

  A distant buzzing.

  “Flies?” she said uncomprehendingly … but then she understood when she saw my grim nod. “Oh. Flies.”

  “Yes. They do seem to come from nowhere when the feast is available, don’t they,” I observed. “You may want to hang back; this isn’t likely to be pretty.”

  “I can endure whatever you can,” replied Sharee.

  I shrugged. “As you wish.” We resumed walking as I commented, “I suspect within a day or so, we wouldn’t be needing the buzzing of flies to alert us to the whereabouts of the fallen. The odor should be pungent enough to draw predators, and keep people away, for miles around.”

  We arrived at the great house, and I saw the first of the bodies lying upon the steps. It was Gavin, the young man who had been so determined to emulate me. He lay with his head angled downward, his arms splayed, a quizzical look upon his face and blood upon his chest. Sharee gasped when she saw him. “A boy. He’s just a boy,” she murmured.

  “He was,” was all I said, not bothering to tell her about his aspirations to be one who ravished and pillaged … just like his idol, me. We stepped gingerly around him and made our way into the house.

  There was blood everywhere. Blood upon the walls, on the floors. Insects were crawling all over, feasting, and I heard the distant fluttering of wings that told me airborne scavengers had become alerted to the waiting banquet. Out into the main courtyard, and that was where the majority of the damage had been done. The place was thick with flies, but the insects paid us no mind, attending to their own interests. Every so often one of them would buzz near us in curiosity, and I would slap the little bastards away from me. I glanced over at Sharee. She was slightly pale, but appeared to be holding up in the face of such unrestrained butchery.

  I had seen so many battlefields littered with the bodies of warriors, and overseen so many pyres as we had burned the remains lest the vermin come. Over in one area I thought I saw pieces of what might have been Slake. Who would have thought that That Guy would turn out to have been the lucky one, I thought. “We should …” I said slowly, “we should torch the place. Not leave them like this.”

  “Yes,” Sharee nodded, staring fixedly at the bodies all around. “Yes … we should.”

  I saw something then, over toward one corner of the arena of slaughter that had once been my army. It was a piece of pa
rchment, stuck in the midst of a pool of blood. And I realized that it had been the place that I’d seen Meander making his last stand. “What is it?” Sharee called after me as I walked quickly over to it, delicately picked up the parchment, and smoothed it out so that the words upon it were clear. “What is it?” she repeated.

  I felt my throat closing up, and a distant pounding in the back of my head. “It’s a note. It’s to me.”

  “A note? From whom?” she asked, coming closer and trying to peer over my shoulder to see it.

  I took a deep breath and read …

  My dear Apropos. I suspect you will survive to read this. I suspect you could survive if the sun itself were extinguished. In the event that I am correct, which I usually am, I wish to do you a service, one leader of men to another. I wish to tell you that I have lied to you almost consistently. I remember every moment of every day of my life that I have ever lived. And I remember killing your mother quite clearly. The last thing she cried out before I did so was “I forgive you.” I never knew whether she intended that for me or for you. In any case, I was concerned that, as a result of the events which I have borne witness to, you might somehow lose your capacity for hatred. That would be a tragic waste of material, for I believe your hatred will take you very, very far. It is your greatest weapon. Do not let it go. So hate me. Yours in elusiveness …

  King Meander

  She stared at it for a good long time, and then she said softly, “He’s quite mad, you know. There’s no reason to believe this to be any more true than anything else he’s said.”

  “I know,” I said very quietly, and then deliberately tore the note to pieces, just as I had done with the document that I’d snatched from Sharee’s hands. “He wishes to write my future for me.”

  “You’re not going to let him, ar—”