David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

But they weren't going to do that. There were far too many men-and women too, hurling loom weights and wielding turnspits-in the community for the three of them to take their simple needs by force, even if they'd killed the leader and his immediate guards. No, there were better ways to get food and something better than a drink of water from a sheepskin bottle.

The horseman leaned forward, holding out the skin. Ilna reached up, but instead of taking the water from him she spread the pattern she'd just knotted, saying, "I can weave a hanging that will make everybody who sees it feel better about themselves and their neighbors."

"Oh!" said Gallen, staring transfixed. The waterskin slipped slowly forward, forgotten in his amazement. "Oh, milady, that's wonderful…"

"What is?" Lord Ramelus demanded. "What are you doing there, Gallen? Seifert, what's Gallen doing?"

Ilna folded the pattern between her palms. It was a little thing, nothing of lasting effect, but Gallen groaned when it vanished.

"I can weave a hanging that will make your subjects happier, milord," Ilna said, stepping around the head of Gallen's mount so that she could meet Ramelus' eyes. The horse whickered; she touched its muzzle with her left fingertips. "For that we'll have food and drink while we're here, and another portion of food and drink to carry us on our way when I've finished the task to your satisfaction. Do you agree?"

"What is that?" Ramelus demanded. "The thing in your hands-show it to me!"

Ilna walked through the line of guards, stretching the pattern between her thumbs and forefingers again. Ramelus squinted, but he was apparently nearsighted. He leaned slightly forward in the saddle; he was too heavy and awkward to bend down the way a more supple rider might've done. "Hand it up!" he ordered in irritation.

Ilna frowned minusculely. "It only works if I keep the tension correct," she said. "The one I'll weave for you will be larger. It'll be able to hang in the open air and still have its proper effect."

Ramelus glared at her, then dismounted with a degree of care worthy of masons lowering a keystone into an arch. Wheezing slightly, he stepped around his horse and peered at the pattern in Ilna's spread hands.

For a moment, Ramelus' expression became hostile, even angry. It softened but almost instantly shifted to one of shielded cunning. Ilna folded her pattern and, by straightening, implied a greater separation between them than the distance itself involved.

The quickly knotted design lost its positive effect on a spectator who'd stared at it for a few minutes, but Ilna really could weave a larger panel that would act more subtly but for as long as it hung. Of course she could do that: she'd said she could, hadn't she?

"You're a wizard," Ramelus said, breathing hard and looking at her with an expression she couldn't read; couldn't read, and probably didn't want to read.

"No," Ilna said. "I'm a weaver. If your women will loan me a loom-"

All the garments she saw were homespun, with the possible exceptions of the Lord's own cloak and tunic.

"-I can do a thing like this-"

She held up the hank of cords that her fingers had already picked out again.

"-on a larger scale. For our keep while we stay here, a day or so should be enough; and for supplies to go off with, which we'll do as soon as I've finished the design to your satisfaction."

The horsemen had crowded together to hear their commander trying to describe what he'd seen in Ilna's pattern. In fact he hadn't seen anything, for all that he was waving his hands to suggest shapes and objects. All it'd been was a feeling of bliss and beauty, the sort of pleasure some people said they remembered from dreams.

Ilna wouldn't know of her own experience, of course. Mostly she didn't remember dreams at all, and when she did they were of a very different sort.

"Food and drink for you, that's your price?" Ramelus said. "That's what you said."

Ilna looked at him without affection. The landowner reminded her of her Uncle Katchin, the wealthiest man in Barca's Hamlet and easily the most disliked. Katchin had boasted of his own dignity and importance; but in his heart he'd known he was a joke to his neighbors, albeit a joke they told behind his back for fear of his malice.

"Food and drink for the three of us," Ilna said in a cold voice, seeing the cheat in the words. That was like Katchin also: the letter of the law, but by policy veering as far from justice as that law permitted him. "Space in a manger to sleep if you choose, though we can do without that. And food and drink for the three of us when we go off-tomorrow, I would hope, but whenever that is."

"Done!" Ramelus said. He clasped hands with her to seal the bargain. He looked around him at his guards. "You're all witnesses!"

In gripping the landowner's hand, Ilna let her fingertips caress the embroidered sleeve of his tunic. He's going to cheat us, she thought. For no reason other than to prove to his tenants that he can cheat a stranger and get away with it.

She backed away, dusting her palms together and smiling as she watched Ramelus struggle to mount his horse. Ramelus planned to cheat, and she planned to keep her word. And there was no doubt in Ilna's mind that she would have the better part of the bargain.

Either the dome of Ronn's vast Assembly Hall had become perfectly clear or it'd somehow been slid off to the sides since Cashel was here in the morning. The moon was overhead and looked bigger than he was used to seeing it. Nobody had a better chance to study the night sky than a shepherd. Maybe that had something to do with the dome, if the dome was still there.

"Citizens of Ronn!" said the female wizard. She seemed to've become leader of the Council of the Wise for all intents and purposes. The old man hunched in his chair, his limbs drawn up to his body like a dead spider. "We and our city face the greatest danger of all time!"

Mab, at this moment a slender, gray-haired woman, sniffed and said tartly, "Councillor Oursa is getting a little above herself if she believes she knows what the future will bring. And if she means, 'the greatest danger in the past thousand years,' that's true only because of our weakness, not the enemy's strength."

"The images of the Heroes no longer protect our walls," Oursa said. "We must protect ourselves!"

Cashel tried to imagine Oursa and the other Councillors waving swords as the Made Men charged across a field at them. The thought made him smile, which seemed to bother the people nearby in the big hall. For some reason everybody around him and Mab was looking at them instead of up at the stage.

The Councillor's voice sounded from the air like she was standing just arm's length away, the way all the speakers had in the morning levee. The light was the same way, kind of: everything in the room, the walls and floor and even the air itself, glowed. No part of it was brighter than a firefly's tail, but from everything together Cashel could see all over just the same as he would during daylight.

There was a whisper of sound, nothing that the room picked up so that everybody could hear, though. Suddenly a voice rang out, "How can we protect ourselves? We don't know how to fight!"

Cashel saw the Sons of the Heroes coming toward him and Mab through the crowd. Herron turned toward the stage and shouted a reply. His words vanished in the great room, smoothed away by the air-though as close as the boy was, Cashel figured he should've been able to hear normally. He wondered just what-or who-decided what was said that was worth other people listening to.

Mab slashed her right hand through the air in a gesture that suggested more than it showed. A dazzle of wizardlight the same sapphire color as her nails struck skyward, marking her to everyone in the chamber. In a ringing voice she cried, "Your homes still hold the weapons and armor of your grandfathers' grandfathers. Go back to your hearths. Get the swords and spears of your forefathers and face the Made Men!"