No True Way Read online

  “Not from you, my girl. Your place is right here!”

  “Mother! I’m not a child!”

  “Nor a warrior nor a Healer neither! What you are is a lass who hasn’t finished the work you promised. I’ll think about giving you a woman’s rights when you’ve learned how to get a job done!” She pointed to the loom. For a long moment they traded glares. Then Selaine sighed, replaced the medicine box, and began to mend the broken thread.

  The grouped warp threads hung from the card-woven band at the top in stripes of cream and beige and brown and all the shades of new green that dappled the surrounding hills. The thread to be woven in was in the same colors, but more randomly arranged. The muted colors would have bored the Tayledras or Shin’a’in, but the folk of Evenleigh loved their tumbled hills, and when winter came, the blanket would comfort the spirit with a memory of the season when the blanket had been made.

  “Don’t raiders usually burn a holding when they’re done?” asked Selaine. She beat the reunited thread up into place, moving with a coltish grace before the loom. “Tad said th’house was torn apart, not burned, an’ trails of sticky stuff left all ’round.”

  So, our enemy is not men, but monsters, thought Deira, easing into the wicker chair. After Westerbridge burned, her only thought had been to put as much distance as possible between herself and the Karsite border. She knew too much about reavers. She’d been willing to take her chances with the strange creatures folk sometimes sighted in these hills.

  “Headman says whatever ’twas is bound to strike again,” the girl went on with a kind of nervous glee. “Wants folk t’ refuge in th’ village ’til they can hunt ’em down. He’s sent to the Roadguard down at Donleigh to ask for a Herald, says uncanny beasts is more than we can manage on our own!”

  I know too much about Heralds, too. . . .

  Deira’s gaze fixed on the girl, already tall, like her father. She watched Selaine ease the shuttle between the sheds and let it go, saw the shuttle trail thread as it floated through the space to the other edge where she caught it, just as Deira had once seen a spear jerk free from the fist of a Karsite mercenary and fly to Herald Aldren’s waiting hand . . .

  * * *

  Deira woke, shuddering, from dreams in which she was working at a loom that had no end. When she tried to turn away, she found herself surrounded by veils of fabric that flapped and clung. There was something she was seeking, but she could not remember its name. She knew only frustration and an aching sense of loss.

  She opened her eyes to a dappling of morning light through the shutters and her daughter’s anxious gaze.

  “Are you all right?” Selaine helped Deira free herself from the tangle of sheet and blanket.

  “Bad dreams, and I’d bet I’m not the only one . . .”

  Only the young found danger exciting. This talk of monsters was like a blow that set an old wound throbbing with remembered pain. Deira told herself that nothing that might come out of the Pelagir wilderness was as fearful as the evil that hid in the hearts of men.

  Mint tea with a little lemon-balm, scalding hot, took the fur from her tongue, and movement some of the ache from her limbs, but the feeling of helpless dread remained. When the miller’s boy came knocking to tell them that the monsters had destroyed another farm, she was not surprised.

  In the next few days two more steadings were attacked, all in the same way. By now, taking refuge in the village seemed good advice to many, and most families were sheltering one or more refugees. Deira thought the palisade would be little protection from a creature that could pluck the roof from a cottage, and putting all the people together only made them easier to attack. She knew what it was like to be hunted through the streets. Walls that did not keep predators out could still keep in their prey.

  The weaver’s little house was set a short way down the road on the other side of the village from the afflicted farms. When Headman Bartom sent to offer them a place in his house, Deira refused, but she no longer objected when Selaine went to help with the refugees. The girl had a gift for calming hysterical children, and a calming touch when the Healer was treating wounds.

  * * *

  Deira dropped the shuttle and whirled as the clangor of the tocsin assaulted her ears. Through the open door of the cottage streamed the light of a golden afternoon. The creatures had never attacked during daylight before. A few steps brought her to the porch. The village was hidden by a stand of oak trees, but smoke was rising from beyond.

  Her heart clenched again. She had given Selaine permission to go to the village this morning. “Get out! Come home!” her spirit cried, but she knew her daughter would not come even if she could have heard.

  And would you want her to be the sort of person who would run when she was needed? a small voice spoke within. There were sure to be those who needed help now.

  We should have fled when the monsters first came! she answered. She had not wanted to leave all she had built here, but the essential tools were the knowledge in her head and the skill in her hands. She knew how to start from scratch. She had done it before.

  Without conscious decision, she found herself reaching for a bundle of absorbent wool roving and clean rags to bind wounds, a sharp needle and a spool of strong linen thread. She added packets of powdered willowbark and goldenseal. She put her sharpest knife into the basket, though it would do little good if something got within knife range. Then she tied a kerchief over her hair, grabbed her shawl, and set off down the road.

  The village had been built in a bend of the river. By the time Deira crossed the bridge, she could hear screaming and the sound of rending wood. She paused, blood running cold as something like a huge, jointed claw lifted above the angled roofs. Then she pushed past the swinging gate and went in.

  Evenleigh had never been more than a few streets surrounding the shrine and a small square. The homes on the east side of the village were untouched, but when she reached the square, she saw that the western side had become a tangle of beams and bits of building, daubed with some pale substance that glistened in the sun. Inside, something dark was moving. From time to time she glimpsed a jointed limb, and once, a stinger the size of a warrior’s spear.

  A small group of villagers still milled about before the barrier, shooting arrows that disappeared without effect or were caught by the sticky bands. Half of them were wearing cloth that she had woven. She saw Headman Bartom among the others, thinning hair awry, and beyond him a familiar knotwork shawl and a head of bright hair.

  “Selaine!” she shouted, hurrying forward. “Selaine!” In the next moment, her child was in her arms. Flesh of my flesh . . . Deira gripped with all the strength of her fear, confirming the tangible reality of strong young limbs, the scent of Selaine’s hair.

  Then a flicker of movement made her recoil; she dragged the girl back as a sticky rope arched over the barrier, caught one of the villagers, and dragged him away. For a moment she saw the beast entire— fanged head, segmented body, and two pincers that darted outward, rolled the victim neatly in sticky silk, and plucked it back over the barrier.

  A spider, she thought numbly as they all gave ground, or some obscene combination of spider and scorpion, with more legs than any creature that size had a right to own.

  “It’s building a nest . . .” she whispered.

  “And stocking it—” her daughter replied in a shaking voice. “Tommet is the third man it’s captured that way.”

  It’s a mother, thought Deira. I might even be sympathetic, if the creature were not threatening my child.

  Some smoke still rose, but apparently the spider-stuff stifled flame. They stared, listening to the sounds of cracking wood. The screams were more muffled now. Even the villagers were growing still in the face of this invulnerable enemy.

  As silence fell, they heard clearly the sweet, silvery shimmer of harness bells.

  * * *

  �
�Herald Garaval at your service—I am sorry I took so long.”

  It was not him. This Herald’s voice was a pleasant tenor, and his shape was wrong, shoulders too broad, and the hair too dark a brown. And too young—he looked barely past his internship year. He swung down from his Companion’s back and gave her shining neck a pat.

  “I came as soon as I got word, and Nienna goes like the wind, but not swiftly enough, I see.” Garaval cast a dubious glance toward the growing rubble pile. “The message was not very informative. What, exactly, do we have here?”

  Deira began to edge backward, still gripping Selaine, as the men started trying to explain.

  “Mother, let go! I want to know!”

  “It’s under control,” Deira said tightly. “The Herald has come. They don’t need us here.”

  The girl continued to protest as her mother dragged her back down the road. Once there, the older woman began to methodically sort through chests and bags. This little house had seemed such a refuge. It felt like a trap to her now.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Packing.” Deira forced herself to meet Selaine’s troubled gaze. “You must do the same. One basket, a shoulder bag. No more than you can carry.”

  “But why? The Herald’s come. He’ll kill the spider-thing.”

  “Or she will kill him, and her eggs will hatch. Either way, Evenleigh is done.”

  Selaine flushed red, then paled. “I don’t believe you! Being dragged from place to place was the first life I knew. Then we came here, and they let us stay, and we had a home! When our friends are in trouble is no time to abandon them!” Shaking her head, she darted toward the door.

  The fringes of her knotted shawl slipped through Deira’s fingers. She made a despairing grab as Selaine lifted the latch. Her fingers hooked into the web, but suddenly there was no resistance. Selaine had halted in the doorway, and she was laughing.

  Deira let go of the shawl. A crowd of people had gathered in the meadow between the cottage and the road. Others were coming up the path—Kel the miller and Anellie who ran the inn and a dozen more. In the lead was Headman Bartom, with the Herald at his side.

  * * *

  “The Hawkbrothers might have a name for it, but it’s no creature the Heralds have ever seen.”

  Deira sniffed as she recognized the frustration in Herald Garaval’s tone, and she reached into one of the net bags for a shuttle. She had not been able to keep the villagers from taking over her cottage for their meeting, but she could make her refusal to have anything to do with this clear. With half an eye still on the others, she worked the thread between the warps, set the heddle rod against the frame and let the front warp swing back, looped the shuttle around, and worked it back once more.

  “But ye’ve got magic to fight it, d’ye not?” asked the headman. His wisps of white hair quivered like the topknot of a demented bird.

  Garaval shook his head. “Valdemar has not had a Herald-Mage since Vanyel Ashkevron’s time. My Gifts are Mindspeech and Foresight, but even if I were a Firestarter, it would not help since you say the Creature’s web-stuff does not burn.”

  The hearthfire leaped as if in ironic commentary, glowing on the Herald’s whites and gleaming on Selaine’s bright hair. Deira frowned. When the girl looked at Garaval, there was entirely too much admiration in her hazel eyes. He was young, good-looking enough to catch a girl’s eye even without the glamour of a Herald’s uniform. Falling in love with a Herald was only too easy, if one forgot that they only cared for their own kind.

  “We could build a new village . . .” said the headman. “Downstream . . .”

  “And who would grind yer grain? The flow’s not strong enough to turn the mill wheel there,” growled Kel.

  “When the creature’s eggs hatch, there will be no safety anywhere in these hills—” the Herald replied.

  “Send to the Hawkbrothers—” said Anellie.

  “And what do we do ’til they arrive?” exclaimed Farmer Dorn. “If we don’t get the fields planted soon, we might as well let the creature eat us now, for we’ll starve when winter comes!”

  “D’ye say we should give up, then? Leave our homes and our fields and run away?” They had already loaded the elderly and smaller children into wagons and sent them down the road to Donleigh.

  That’s what I had to do, Deira exchanged shuttle for weaving sword and beat up the thread into the weft, evening, tightening, until it was smooth. Sometimes that’s the only way to survive.

  “Fetch help from the Hawkbrothers, then!” Headman Martom gestured northward. “Isn’t dealing with the beasties that escape from the Pelagirs their job?”

  “That might take weeks!” interrupted the miller. “Ye can’t just ride off and leave us to deal with this monster alone!”

  “Couldn’t your Companion carry a message?” asked Anellie.

  Silence fell as the Herald’s gaze went inward. After a moment he sighed and focused once more. “Nienna says she can do that, but it will take time . . .”

  “’Til then, how’ll we live?” asked Dorn.

  “If the Creature is making a nest in the village, perhaps it will no longer hunt the hills,” said Deira. “You might be safer back at your farms—” And out of my house, she thought.

  That sparked a new round of debate. Homes might be in ruins, but the fields were waiting. The farmers were grateful for any encouragement to return to them.

  They have their work, she thought, touching the polished upright of the loom, and I have mine. Though mine is more portable. But now that the human involvement she had hoped to escape had come to her, it no longer seemed so urgent to leave.

  “And I’d best be getting back down th’ hill to see what my daughters’ve done to the soup I set going over th’ fire,” said Anellie.

  The knowledge that she was not somehow expected to feed all these people eased another of Deira’s worries. She contributed some old potatoes to the pot and bid them farewell with a semblance of courtesy.

  “I am sorry we had to invade your home,” the Herald said quietly as the others began to leave. “We could have had this discussion in the meadow, but the folk are on the edge of hysteria, and we needed privacy. Also, I think their leaders needed to see a whole roof and your work at the loom. It reaffirms their belief that there’s order in the world.”

  Deira stared at the loom without seeing it. “A pity they’re wrong,” she said grimly.

  “You came here from somewhere else, didn’t you?” he asked, with an inward look, as if he were trying to place the accent she had tried so hard to lose.

  “And it looks as if I will be going somewhere else soon,” she snapped, turning away as she pulled the heddle rod forward and let it click into the slot at the bracket’s end. She suppressed a bitter smile as she heard him sigh, and then his polite farewell.

  “Why don’t you like the Herald?” asked Selaine when Garaval had gone. “He’s come all this way t’ help us—”

  “Oh, yes,” Deira said bitterly. “And he’ll be on his way just as quickly once it’s clear there’s nothing he can do. Easy enough for a Herald to escape, wearing those pretty white clothes that he doesn’t dare get dirty!” For a moment, memory showed her a white uniform stained with blood, but bitterness forced her on. “Galloping away on his pretty white not-a-horse and leaving us to deal . . . !” She caught her breath on a sob. For a time, her struggle to control her breathing was the only sound in the room.

  “The Companion’s going, but Herald Garaval’s staying here. . . .” Selaine said softly. “An’ you yourself wove him into the web.” She pointed, and Deira saw that the shuttle she had snatched up earlier must have been from the wrong bag. A broad band of Herald white now ran through the fabric on the loom.

  * * *

  Deira dreamed that she stood on the graceful stone arch that gave the town of Westerbridge, where she had grown
up, its name. The Herald was beside her, commenting on the beauty of the evening as the setting sun turned the clouds to flame. Basking in the sense of safety she felt when he was near, she scarcely noted his words. The sky dimmed, and he wrapped his cloak around her as the clouds released the first spatterings of rain.

  Then, suddenly, the wind was roaring. Furious gusts lashed the river to a froth. They dashed for shelter, but now it was the new Herald, Garaval, who ran at her side.

  “The storm is coming!” he cried, “The town will be washed away!”

  And then the flood crashed over them, and she woke, gasping, to lie in a tangle of bedclothes, listening to the pattering of rain.

  The rain did not last long, but when Deira stepped out of her doorway, she saw clouds like sodden rovings of gray wool stretched across the sky. As she moved about making breakfast, Selaine eyed her uneasily. Deira wanted to reassure the girl, but something was stirring just below awareness. Something related to her dream.

  “Fill up the big pot,” she said finally. “They’ll be cold and damp down there. We’ll take them some tea.”

  Selaine’s eyes widened, but she did not argue. There was this to be said for disaster, thought her mother—a situation sufficiently dire stilled even adolescent rebellion. Deira did not try to explain—could not have explained how somehow during the night she had gone from wanting to flee the village to looking for a way to save it.

  * * *

  Anellie had boiled up some porridge for the refugees’ breakfast, but the tea was welcomed all the same. As it was passed, Deira seated herself by the Herald.

  “You said your Gift was Foresight,” she said as Garaval looked up in surprise. “Does it work for weather?”

  “Good question,” he answered. “If it’s going to storm, we’ll need to fix up some shelter here.” He closed his eyes, and her sense of his presence suddenly dimmed. After a few moments, he looked back at her, shivering.

  “You were right. A storm is coming, a big one! But you get heavy rains every year—why did I see a flood sweeping through the town?”