Carol Berg - THE SOUL WEAVER

“So, you’re back,” I said, throwing my bundled blanket in the cart. “It’s jack and ale for breakfast.”

“Hmm.” He yanked at the buckles on the wither straps and girth. He didn’t look at me.

I kicked dirt over the glowing ashes of our fire, and then gathered up the rest of our belongings and tucked them under the seat, leaving the bag of dried meat and a flask of ale where Gerick could get them when he was ready. I didn’t know what to say to him. Fear, shame, and frustration had me ready to shake him until his teeth rattled. And so I decided that until I was in better control of my own feelings, I’d best avoid a confrontation. I climbed into the cart.

Radele hurried into camp from the direction of the stream, his hair dripping and face clean, wishing us a good morning as he swung himself into his saddle. For Gerick’s part, the Dar’Nethi might not have existed. My son jumped up beside me; I clucked to the pony, and we rolled out.

In the ensuing days, no matter how I tried to approach him, Gerick refused to speak of his actions on the night of the raid. Although concern for his well-being had quickly shouldered my personal disappointments aside, I could not avoid one simple fact. Gerick had run away, while men far less skilled at combat than he had died fighting to protect us all. He needed to acknowledge that truth someday. If he was to grow into a man of honor, he needed to think about it.

Radele’s polite deference remained unchanged. I could see that it rankled Gerick far worse than the scornful glances and resentful whispers from some of our traveling companions. One evening a few nights after the raid, when Radele had gone off to stand watch, I tried again. “We need to talk about it, Gerick. You’ve not spoken ten words these last three days. You’ve not looked me in the eye.”

His face flamed, and he threw his cup to the dirt. “It’s nobody’s business what I do or don’t do. Name me coward or devil, whatever you want. I don’t care. Just leave me alone!”

He strode into the darkness, leaving a huge angry hole in the night.

After a while, Paulo spoke up softly from across the fire. “He can’t fight, my lady. He just can’t. I think he’s afraid.”

But Paulo couldn’t, and Gerick wouldn’t, tell me what my son was afraid of.

Eighteen days after setting out from Prydina, we rolled up to the thick-towered city gates of Montevial, the capital city of Leire, the most powerful city in the world - in the mundane world, that is. Mundane… so those of us with no power of sorcery were called by the Dar’Nethi living in the world of Gondai and its royal city Avonar. The word raised my hackles. These “untalented” people were my friends, acquaintances, and kin. Intelligence, wisdom, and wit flourished here along with our many faults.

Yet the number of my people that knew the truth about the world - about the Lords of Zhev’Na who nourished and fed on our troubles or about the glories of Dar’Nethi magic that held steadfast against that wickedness in a half-ruined world far away - could be counted on one hand. After everything I had learned in the past six years, it felt odd and a bit shameful that my friends, acquaintances, and kin bustled about their concerns in such appalling ignorance.

We arrived in late afternoon, approaching the bridge over the wide, sluggish Dun River beneath a thin, gray, overcast sky that did little to alleviate the sultry heat. The red dragon banners hung limp from their standards, swelling occasionally with a vile-smelling breeze off the river. Just upriver the drain channels in the walls dumped the city’s sewage into the slow-moving water. Ragged hawkers, selling everything from diseased chickens to temple offering jars to remedies for gout and boils, swarmed out of the ramshackle city that had grown up outside the city walls.

The gates were always crowded at the end of the day, but I’d never seen the mess so bad as this. The roadway was mobbed for half a league west of the city, well beyond the stone bridge, the crowding made worse because as many travelers seemed to be leaving the city as entering it. Anxious travelers, shoving, pushing, and shouting at each other. Animals bawled and dragged at their traces.

Two men hurling curses at each other clogged the center of the stone span, knives drawn in some dispute over tangled wagon wheels. We dismounted and elbowed our own path through the bumping and pushing throng, leading the pony cart. Snippets of complaints and furtive, angry, or frightened whispers flew on every side: Won’t let me in; they’ve no record of my cousin… Allowing no one past the gates without references known to the magistrates… Our fruit will rot if we have to take it town to town; those inside the walls will starve… Good riddance to them… Afraid to piss wrong… Vanished, they said, not a hair left behind… Cripples arrested… Who carries proof they live in the city? We just live here…

The levy wagons, of course, disappeared quickly through the gates, but all other travelers were required to join a queue and wait to explain their business to a seated clerk. Those travelers who demonstrated noble connections, royal business, or a full purse moved quickly to the front of the queues. Those the clerk approved were given a pass to admit them to the city. The heavily armed swordsmen flanking the clerk wore the king’s red livery, and more soldiers stood just beyond the portcullis, armed with pikes or drawn swords.

Radele’s blue eyes roamed the crowding beggars, the filthy river, and the squat gate towers and city walls that had been gouged, pitted, and scorched in the years when war touched this close to the heart of Leire. “Vasrin’s hand,” he said, as he shoved away three ragged, giggling urchins who were pawing at my cloak and doing their clumsy best to rifle our pockets. He wiped his hand on his cloak. “What is this place?”

A scuffle broke out just in front of us. A guardsman dragged a portly man from his horse, shouting, “Here’s one! Only one leg, and look at the size of him!”

“Lost my leg in the war is all! Let me go!” The terrified man writhed on his belly as the pikemen surrounded him and a soldier bound his hands. “My daughter lives in the Street of Cloth Merchants… respectable… I’ve served the king… ” A guardsman’s boot smashed into his face, drowning the rest of the man’s protests in bubbling incoherence.

“We’ll find out how respectable you are,” said one of the soldiers dragging him through the gates. The man’s horse was led away.

A young couple was turned away when the clerk noted burn scars on the husband’s face and that he was missing one ear.

Radele took my elbow firmly, keeping his eyes moving and his hand on his sword hilt, as new guards were summoned and formed up around the clerk. He spoke under his breath. “Let us withdraw, my lady. If we must proceed, I’ll conjure a way in after dark. The danger - ”

“Only if we’re turned away,” I said. “Using your talents is too risky. And sneaking in would likely only cause us trouble further on.”

The pennons on the gate towers shifted in a lazy, humid gust, ripe with the stench of the riverside bogs. After a wait that stretched interminably, a guardsman motioned Radele and me to step forward, and I was soon babbling the story of my husband’s death in the war and my desire to find a sponsor for my son among our acquaintances in Montevial. Gerick remained standing by the pony cart at the edge of the crowd.

“And who might you be asking to sponsor the boy?” The clerk flared his nostrils and smoothed his sweat-stained yellow satin waistcoat, as he squinted across the trampled ground at Gerick.

My references to several prominent families by their personal names lifted his eyebrows. “Viscount Magior? Not likely. He’s dead these two years in Iskeran. And Sylvanus Lovatto - Baron Lovatto that would be, I suppose - is retired to the north country. Lord Faverre, now… Ricard Lord Faverre, you say… Tell me, woman, how would the likes of you find yourself on such friendly terms with the commandant of the city guard?”