Pathways Read online

  “May I?” she gently turned the fabric to look at the underside, where the images appeared in reverse. “This is tablet-weaving, yes? I’ve used it to cord an edge, but I have never tried such a complex design.”

  The other woman’s thin features lit in a shy smile. “Is bein’ for protection.”

  Deira nodded. She had heard that some of the hill-folk patterns were actually spells.

  “This path go round to guard—th’eye watch out for danger.” Shireie indicated the lines that wound in an angular spiral around the central figure, a diamond shape like the God’s-Eye amulets children made with crossed sticks and ends of yarn.

  “It reminds me of the Main Road.” Deira laughed, remembering her frustration with the route that spiraled around the Old City between the first and second walls. There was no direct road to the Palace, a hindrance to any enemy, but an annoyance to those with business there. “I work on large pieces—” She nodded at the loom, which held the first half of a rug in the subtle shades of the hills around Evenleigh. Decision crystalized as she looked back at Shireie. “One of the Court ladies made my rugs the fashion here. Now I have more orders than I can fill. Would you consider helping with the work and living here with me?”

  Shireie sent a startled look at her husband as Deira gestured around the room. “You will have to roll up your beds every morning, but we can set up a second loom.” She paused. “It would be better for the boy. . . .”

  It was only as she spoke that she realized how far Affi’s presence had gone to fill the gap in her life left by Selaine’s departure for the Healers’ Collegium, and how much she had dreaded seeing him go.

  “You not be knowin’ us—” Jilander replied, suspicion warring with pride.

  “Knowing your child, I know you,” she answered.

  • • •

  “Mother! Who are these people?”

  Selaine stood in the doorway, her pale green Healer Trainee’s uniform glowing like spring leaves, the sunlight making an aureole of her golden hair. Jilander leaped to his feet, the chisel with which he was shaping a base for an inkle loom poised in his hand, and Shireie turned pale. Only Affi, playing with the sweet-smelling curls of wood, greeted the newcomer with his usual sunny smile.

  Deira fought down annoyance. “May I introduce Jilander Thornsson and Shireie and Affi. They hail from the Cebu hills. This is my daughter, Selaine.”

  Selaine looked back at her mother. “I heard there was rioting at the Exile’s Gate. I know you go to the Wool Market there. I was afraid for you.”

  “There was a fire at one of the taverns. People are looking under their beds for Karsite spies,” Deira replied, “but we have been quite safe.”

  “We?” echoed Selaine. “You mean these people are living here?”

  “Since you are not, it can hardly matter to you,” Deira snapped in return. “Now sit down, remember your manners, and I will make a pot of tea. If it will sweeten your temper, I might even find a honey cake to go with it.”

  Blushing, Selaine pulled out the bench and sat down, and Jilander began to work on the wood once more.

  “Now, tell me the news from the Collegium.” She winced as her daughter’s smiling lips thinned.

  “I don’t know how much the City hears about the wars . . .”

  Too much and too little, thought Deira. The last two summers had brought incursions by the Tedrel mercenary horde hired by the Sunpriests of Karse, breaking through the border in a different place each year. The goal of Karse had always been to weaken its northern neighbor, but it was said that the Tedrels wanted a homeland.

  “Rumors,” she answered. “Some of our neighbors have lost kin.”

  Selaine sighed. “The wounded who survive the first few days in the field hospital are sent here. We Trainees help as we can.” She grimaced. “It turns out my Fetching Gift is precise enough to draw bits of bone and wood and metal out of wounds. Two Trainees have resigned already—I suppose it’s just as well they find out they cannot face it now, before wasting more of the instructors’ time—but all of us have bad dreams.” Stress had worn the last childish softness away from her features. Deira could see the face she would wear as a grown woman now.

  “I wish you didn’t have to—” she began, but Selaine shook her head.

  “You’ve always been afraid I would be Chosen as a Herald! I’ve never felt called to ride out to bring justice to the world. But when I see pain, I want to fix it. And I’m good at it, Mama, can’t you understand?”

  Deira nodded slowly. If other women’s children were dying, she could not grudge the help her own child could give. “Well, my love, even the Karsites cannot keep Midsummer from coming,” she said bracingly. “We’ll all feel more cheerful after the festival.”

  “If there is a festival,” her daughter replied. “I doubt the King’s Council realizes how much of their business the students get to know. Some at Court are saying Karsite agents are behind the troubles in the City—” her gaze moved to Jilander and then away, “—infiltrating Haven disguised as refugees.”

  “When you were born,” Deira said in a cold voice, “we were refugees. I lost my family when the Karsites burned Westerbridge. Don’t you remember what it was like to have no home? And even at Evenleigh, there were monsters,” she added, remembering the Spider that had attacked the town.

  Her daughter straightened. “When the wounded are fevered, they talk . . . there are worse things in human form than the creatures that escape from the Pelagiris hills.”

  “’Tis truth, Mistress,” Jilander said suddenly. “Nobody pay attention to man muckin’ out stalls. I hear men talkin’—not refugees—men with money. They get Haven lowlife to start trouble, maybe at Festival.”

  “At Court they are saying the Festival should be canceled because of the danger,” Selaine said somberly. “Some even say that to praise the sun will strengthen the enemy.”

  “That makes no sense!” Her mother exclaimed. “Karse may have hired the Tedrels, but if those bastards worship anything, it’s not Vkandis but their dream of a homeland.”

  “Be that as it may, the Council is talking about imposing a curfew and martial law.”

  “With what?” Deira shook her head. “Half the constables are off at the war. No—if fear prevents us from celebrating life, we have already given in to the enemy.”

  “That is what the King said,” her daughter replied, “when he visited the Healer’s Hall.”

  Shireie’s eyes rounded. “You see t’King?”

  Deira suppressed a smile. To someone from the borders, King Sendar must seem as remote as the gods. Even she had taken awhile to get used to the possessive pride with which their rulers were regarded by folk in the capital.

  “He is a good man. He cares . . .” Selaine said. “Selenay does too. She comes to help us when she can.” She looked back at her mother with a sigh. “Maybe it’s a good thing you have somebody with you. I was worried about you, living alone.”

  “If you are worried, come to see me more often—” Deira replied, lips twitching.

  “I will,” said her daughter, but she did not smile.

  • • •

  From then on, Selaine seemed to turn up every few days, usually with a few of her friends in tow. Deira had wavered between amusement and resentment at the idea that her child was trying to protect her, but gradually she came to understand that the students found her big room, where each day the pattern grew on the loom and Affi chattered as he played on the floor, an affirmation that hope and order still existed in the world.

  One evening a week before the Festival, two students from the Healers, a fledgling Bard and a gray-clad Herald Trainee, sat at her table. The sun had just set, and a golden afterglow shafted through the high windows and the open door. Deira had set the visitors to work carding fleece while she put together a platter of flatbread and smoked meat and chee
ses with some early vegetables from the countryside.

  “If only we had a Herald-Mage!” exclaimed Donni, a fourteen-year old with hair the russet of his bardic tunic. “We’re studying the ballads of Vanyel Ashkevron now. If he were here he’d flatten those Tedrels with a spell!”

  “Magic fights magic . . .” Lisandra said slowly. She was eighteen, a Herald-Trainee who was often told she looked like Princess Selenay. “Our Gifts and Talents are only good against mortal enemies. Herald Vanyel was given his powers to stand against supernatural foes.”

  “What the Tedrels have is lots of very natural spears, arrows, and swords,” said Garvin gloomily. “Every time I go into the Hall of Healing, I am reminded exactly how much harm they can do.” Tall and lanky, he had a kind face and clever hands. He had been one of their more frequent visitors, and Deira was beginning to wonder if he was interested in Selaine.

  Little Caren, clad like him in green, sighed agreement. “If we can’t blast them, I wish we could at least ward our own fighters with a protective spell.”

  “We got no Mages, in t’hills.” Shireie spoke up suddenly. “But my old Mata teach me yarn magic. Can’t guard sheep an’ goats, but Tedrel scum leave our house alone.”

  “Is that the pattern you wove into Affi’s scarf?” Deira asked.

  “Can we see?” asked Caren eagerly, but Affi was already running to the corner where his bedding was stowed and pulling out the scarf. Caren passed it to Lisandra, whose Gift was Psychometry.

  The Herald Trainee closed her eyes, moving her palm back and forth a few inches above the cloth.

  “I feel you, Affi,” she murmured, smiling, “like a little star—”

  “His name mean ‘star’ in old speech of the hills,” Jilander said, his voice soft with wonder.

  Lisandra nodded and began to trace the design with her thumb. “And I feel you, Shireie. A mother’s love is a powerful protection . . .”

  Shireie bent her head, but on her cheeks Deira saw the glint of tears. Her own eyes were prickling as she remembered how often she had feared for her own child. And will again, she thought grimly, when Selaine leaves the Healers’ Hall and goes out into the world. Perhaps she should ask the hill woman to make a scarf for her—for all of them—for in the past weeks Selaine’s friends had become like family.

  “But there’s more—” Lisandra went on. “The pattern moves, keeps moving, winds back and forth, pauses in little points of light—what am I feeling here? It’s like a fence, a running fence with lights to guard and guide. . . .” She opened her eyes. Her thumb was on one of the crossed-diamonds.

  “Like a God’s-Eye!” exclaimed Donni.

  “So that’s why you asked to hang one over our door . . .” Deira nodded as the other woman’s face lit in one of her rare shy smiles.

  “Pretty—” Garvin sighed. “Wish we could wrap it around Haven!” There was a murmur of agreement as the scarf was passed from hand to hand.

  “Well, why not?” Selaine asked suddenly. “I don’t mean a woven ribbon—that would take years—but we could wind yarn back and forth along the streets and hang God’s-Eyes on those statues they keep putting up at crossroads!”

  They all stared at her.

  “You need t’ spell—” Shireie said. She murmured something in the old dialect. As Jilander tried to translate, Donni closed his eyes, lips moving.

  “Around, around, it’s wound—” The others fell silent as his Talent kicked in and his voice took on the ring of incantation. “On every road and way. Eye of Light shine bright, go safe by night and day!”

  “Still, that would take an awful lot of yarn—” Caren said as the boy fell silent. One by one the stares moved from Donni to Deira, whose thoughts had become a tangle of exasperation, disbelief, and an odd thread of excitement.

  “Even if we spin up all the wool I have, it wouldn’t be enough,” she protested, “and how would you get it around the town? Would the Constables even give permission?”

  “The race—” Garvin said in the silence that followed. “The sun-torch race through the City is already part of the Festival. I’m entered to run this year. Once it starts, no one will be surprised to see people dashing around the town.”

  “We’ll collect yarn from all over—we can tell people it’s for decorations!” Selaine said.

  “I know how to get more!” Donni exclaimed. “There’s an old song about a priestess who wanted land for a temple. The king said she could have as much as her cloak would cover, so she unraveled it and laid the threads end-to-end.”

  “And I know where!” Lisandra laughed suddenly. “There’s a room in the Palace where they’ve been stowing ancient hangings for generations. I bet Selenay could get us in.”

  Deira looked up, met her daughter’s challenging gaze. They have the energy, but they need me to focus it. She is waiting to see if I will do the right thing. Whether it was the right thing was another question, but she could not deny the appeal in those hazel eyes.

  • • •

  During the next two weeks, there was scarcely a moment when Deira did not hear the hum of a spinning wheel. Fortunately, for their purposes yarn spun with a single twist was good enough, and the strands did not have to be plied. Deira heard that humming in her dreams. She would wake wondering if the spirits had spun more while she was sleeping, as they did in the tales from her old home. Sometimes there was indeed more thread in the morning than she remembered having spun the day before, though she suspected the work had been done by Shireie. Perhaps the compulsive labor was a way to fight her fears.

  As it is for me, thought Deira, looking at the bags that were beginning to fill with balls of yarn. Affi had gotten quite good at winding them. In a life of dislocations, she had learned that doing something, even if the purpose was unclear, felt better than to simply wait for an outcome one could neither stop nor see.

  They had spun up the wool Deira had bought at the Exile’s Gate and undone the rug that had been on the loom. Now the cloth from the Palace storeroom was coming in, the faint reek of mold mingling with the scent of the herbs with which it had been packed away. It was a measure of the preoccupation with the war that no one in authority seemed to have noticed, much less objected to these nocturnal forays. The enthusiasm with which everyone had responded to Selaine’s plan had amazed her mother, but perhaps Deira should not have been surprised. You fight to defend the things you love, and where you love, you belong.

  The table was covered by a map of Haven on which they had marked the neighborhoods where each runner would lay the yarn, and the route he or she would follow to create the pattern. Or try to—the major roads were laid out according to a plan, but the lanes and alleys between them were as unpredictable as ripples on the Terilee.

  Deira picked another length of yarn from the basket of odds and ends and began to work it carefully around the crossed sticks of the God’s-Eye she was making now. The students had decided she should place the final ornament on the Palace Gate, as if she had been the organizer of this plot instead of, perhaps, its enabler. This strand was red for courage, next to the blue of honor. Each color carried a prayer, a blessing came with each twist of the yarn. The rich brown earth of Valdemar was already there, and the green of forest and field. In the center gleamed the golden threads representing the monarchy, and at intervals, a length of pure white for the Heralds whose labors united the land.

  “I bind this thread to the pattern with my blessing,” she said softly, reaching for a piece of white cord.

  • • •

  Midsummer Eve . . . It was a night when the strength of the Sun was at its height—and the moment when balance required that it decline. The Lord of Light was honored in Valdemar, but it was hard not to see in this moment an opportunity to bind the ability of the Karsite Sunpriests to support the Tedrel enemy.

  Beyond the open door, dark rooftops bordered a golden sky. Crows called
to each other as they flew home, and from somewhere near the river came the deep beat of a drum. With the approach of night, the temperature was easing to a comfortable warmth with a hint of cool breeze. It should have been a peaceful scene, but Haven vibrated with tension. The country folk held that at such times wild powers were abroad. What pattern would this night’s weaving leave on the loom?

  “Around . . . around . . . it’s wound. . . .” The words of the spell echoed in her brain. During the day, what seemed like most of the students in the Collegium had come by to collect their bags of yarn. Deira picked up the God’s-Eye, said farewell to Shireie and Affi, and started down the stairs. She was wearing her own best clothing, a long vest of forest green velvet embroidered and trimmed in the Westerbridge style over a full-sleeved, lightweight linen gown with flowers woven into the fabric around the hem.

  She stiffened as a distant roar echoed across the town. The official runners would be heading up the Southern Trade Road now, and all over the city, students from the Collegium would begin laying a winding trail of yarn through their assigned neighborhoods, connecting at the crossroads until all of Haven was joined. Her task was to go to the Palace Gate and complete the spell.

  Her neighbors were lining up along the avenue. Deira hurried past them, shivering as she passed through the gloomy tunnel beneath the massive outer wall, and turned left along the Main Road that spiraled around the Old Town. A continuous line of shops and dwellings for the more prosperous classes fronted the curve of the road that ran along the wall. A trail of yarn already lay there. She followed it down an alley to the Pig Fountain, one of the more notable monuments on the next round of the Main Road. The rotund gentleman whose statue smiled smugly from the top had made his money selling sausage, but the student who was yarn-binding this neighborhood had hung the God’s-Eye around the neck of his pig. A second line of yarn was already knotted to it.