David Coe - The Sorcerer's Plague

What made all of this even more surprising was that she enjoyed the work. She'd spent her early days with her mother, roaming the kingdom of Wethyrn in the Forelands with the Crown Fair. Her mother had been a gleaner with the fair, following it from town to town, telling children of Determining and Fating ages what their futures would bring. Eventually, when she came into her power, Cresenne began to glean as well. Later, when the Weaver found her and drew her into his conspiracy, she continued to glean, though with a dark purpose. And after she turned against the Weaver's movement, she occupied herself day and night simply with staying alive, with keeping the Weaver from entering her dreams so that he might kill her as she slept, and fighting off the assassins he sent for her. But never before had she worked with her hands in this way. It was ironic, really. In the Forelands, where Qirsi magic was poorly understood and even feared, she had been almost solely a creature of magic. Only now, living in a land where Qirsi power was accepted to the point of being taken for granted, was she learning to make her way in the world without magic.

She had also, quite unexpectedly, made a friend of her own. The woman's name was F'Solya, and she was the mother of twin boys just a few turns older than Bryntelle. Like the other Fal'Borna women Cresenne had met, F'Solya seemed sturdy, and not merely in appearance. Yes, she had the short stout legs and powerful upper body that the others had. The beauty of the Fal'Borna was nothing like the soft grace and willowy frailty of so many Foreland Qirsi. Rather, these people were as strong and wild as the rilda they hunted. They even looked a bit like the rilda, with their light brown skin and the pale manes of fine hair that cascaded over their shoulders and backs.

But quite beyond her powerful build, beautiful round face, and widely spaced golden eyes, F'Solya struck Cresenne as… well, solid. There was nothing shy about her. Her questions were direct and honest. When she spoke to Cresenne, she looked her in the eye, and her earthy humor seemed always to lurk just below all that she said. In some ways, she reminded Cresenne of her mother, or rather, her mother as she might have been as a young woman. They met the first morning Cresenne started tanning, and by the end of that day she felt that she had known F'Solya for years.

On Cresenne's second day, and in the days since, F'Solya had sought her out, and made a point of sitting beside her. On this morning, the woman was in high spirits, a broad smile exposing large, straight teeth.

"Here early, eh?" she asked as she sat. "If I didn't know better I'd say that you actually like tanning."

Cresenne grinned. "I do."

"You'll tire of it after a time. Everyone does. I certainly did."

"Why don't you do something else then? It seems there are plenty of other chores to be done. They told me I could grind grain into meal, or gather roots, or…"

F'Solya was nodding. "Tired of those, too." She smiled, and started working on a hide. She might have claimed to dislike the labor, but the woman was a skilled tanner-Cresenne had learned much in five days, just from watching F'Solya work. "How's your little one today?" she asked after a time, as she went on with her work.

"She's well, thank you. How are your boys?"

"They're trouble, as boys always are. One of them would have been plenty, but two?" She shook her head. "The gods are testing me. No doubt about it."

They fell into another silence, until at last F'Solya looked up from her work, a small frown on her face.

"They're saying things about you. You and your man both."

Cresenne felt her stomach knotting. She thought of F'Solya as her friend, but really they'd known each other for only a few days. It wouldn't take much to drive the woman away. "What things?" she said, her eyes fixed on the hide she was holding.

"Things I don't understand. Things I'm not certain I believe." "And what if it turns out that they're true?"

"Then I'll look forward to having you explain them to me, so I can understand."

Cresenne looked up at that and smiled at the woman.

F'Solya smiled back.

"Tell me what you've heard."

"Well," she began, "they say there was a Qirsi civil war, with both sides led by Weavers. And they say that one of the Weavers was Grinsa." "And what do they say of the other?"

"That he's dead now, but that when he lived, you were his lover as well."

A bitter smile touched Cresenne's face and left her just as suddenly, leaving her trembling and angry. His lover!

"No," she said, "I wasn't his lover." She lifted a finger to her face and traced the pale, thin scars that ran along her jaw and cheek and brow. "You see these scars?"

F'Solya nodded.

"He gave these to me. I was part of his movement once. He claimed that he wanted to lead the Qirsi of the Forelands to a new, better life-I believed that he was speaking of something like what you have here. I wanted to believe that. I wanted to think that if Bryntelle grew up to be a Weaver that she could live without fearing the persecution that Weavers have endured for centuries in my land. But after a time I realized that all he wanted was power. He was an evil man, and when I turned my back on his movement, he entered my dreams and did this to me. Later, he attacked me again and… and did far worse." She shuddered, remembering it all. The wounds he inflicted upon her body and her mind, the terror of waiting for his next attack, or the next assault by one of his servants. There were times when she wondered how she had survived those long, terrifying turns. "If it wasn't for Grinsa, I'd be dead now," she said at last. "And all the Forelands would be ruled by a demon."

"The two of you fought on the side of the Eandi?"

In the Forelands, it had made perfect sense to do so. The nobles of her homeland-all of them Eandi-were flawed, to be sure, some of them deeply so. But all of those who joined the alliance against the Weaver were honorable and peace-loving. The same couldn't be said for their Qirsi enemy. Here, though, even this argument might not be enough to convince her friend that she had been right to oppose the Weaver's movement. Could a Southlands Qirsi ever justify siding with an Eandi against one of her own?

"Yes," she said at last, "we fought to preserve the Eandi courts. Many Qirsi did."

F'Solya looked troubled. "Most Qirsi here would find that hard to understand."

"I know."

The woman nodded vaguely, but for a long time she said nothing more. Cresenne half expected her to take her skins and tannin and sit elsewhere. She didn't.

"Things here are easier," Cresenne said at length. Immediately she regretted the words. "That didn't come out right."

"I think I know what you mean. We remain apart here-Qirsi and Eandi, I mean. We come together in trade and in warfare, and in little else."

"Yes! Precisely. In the Forelands, it's different. We all live and work together."

"Do you miss that?"

Something in the way the woman asked the question made Cresenne hesitate. It seemed that they had reached the boundary of their friendship and that F'Solya was waiting to hear Cresenne's answer before deciding whether they would continue to build upon what they had already. Really, it should have been an easy question to answer. For days Cresenne had been relishing being part of a completely Qirsi community ;after their terrible experiences in Aelea and Stelpana, she had convinced herself that she never wanted to spend another day among the Eandi. But there were Eandi in the Forelands who had shown her unexpected kindnesses, even after she revealed to them that she had once cast her lot with the renegades.

She looked down at her hands, making her decision.

"I know what it is you want me to say," Cresenne told her. "But I left lies and false friendships in the Forelands." She met the woman's gaze. "The truth is I do miss it a bit. Living among Qirsi, without any Eandi at all, is new to me, and it's wondrous. But I can't tell you that there are no Eandi who I miss from my life in the Forelands."