The False Martyr (20 page)

The old man stopped and
took a long, deep breath, sat still, movements stopped. “The
adulterer? Was Elden Risbourg de Nardees, the first King of
Liandria. And twelve years later, he would lead a rebellion that
would destroy the Empire Valatarian had created. He would destroy
our compounds, scatter our followers to the corners of the world,
end our ability to maintain
the pattern our
savior had created.
Through that one
action, de Nardees destroyed what remained of Valatarian’s pattern
and forced us to start all over again.”

The Master threw his arms
back, knocking over a tall glass vial. Its contents flowed across
the desk, dripping off the side and onto his robes. Teth caught the
scent of alcohol rising from the puddle. Paying no attention to the
spill, he leaned back and stared at the ceiling above. “I am old
and my part is almost done. The pattern I have woven is woefully
uncertain and may, even now, be unraveling. But it is the only path
left us if we wish to maintain the Order. And that is why you are
here. We created you, crafted you for a purpose. I know it has been
difficult, but the moment that the first king of Liandria ran from
that room, it became necessary to create you, and we have worked
for nearly two hundred years to do so.”

“
Dasen,” Teth whispered.
“He’s the one you really care about. This isn’t about me. It’s
about him. You created me to protect him. You wanted me to love
him, to keep him safe. But why tell me that now? What if I reject
what you’ve done? What if I turn on him? What if I react just like
Nardees?”

“
Everything I do is
because I believe it is what is required to complete the pattern
that will save the Order. I have judged the Tapestry as best I can
and decided that this is what is most likely to result in the
pattern that is needed.” The Weaver stopped, waited, made Teth hang
on his words. “And I know that you need him, that you cannot live
without him.”

Teth knew exactly what he
meant. She knew that she could not survive, could not maintain her
sanity without Dasen. She was tied too closely to him, was too
invested in him now.

“
But there is a catch,”
the Weaver whispered, forcing Teth’s full attention. “And that is
why you are here, why you have seen all this, why I have told you
these things. You had to see, had to believe, had to know that I do
not work in conjecture or prophecies. You had to know that my words
are truth as absolute as the rising of the sun.”

Teth thought back on her
life, on everything that had ever happened, and on everything she
had just heard. She shivered, felt herself retracting from the
thought that her life had been nothing more than a construct of
this man’s ambitions at the same time she knew the absolute truth
of it. She nodded numbly.

“
Know this,” the old man
leaned forward, empty sockets staring at her as if the eyes were
still there. His hand caught the piece of fabric at the end of the
table and brought it to the candle, allowing it to catch. “If you
complete your joining with Dasen, if you make him your husband in
fact, he will die. The pattern will be lost. Everything you care
about will be ripped away. The Order will fall. And you will live
to see it happen. You will suffer over and over and over, until
everything that holds our world together has been torn asunder
leaving you, alone in the Maelstrom.”

“
But . . . but . . . I . .
. we . . .”

“
There is no negotiation,”
the Weaver interrupted. He threw the flaming cloth into the air,
its embers spiraling in a cascade of sparks. “The pattern has been
set, and very soon the last Master will be dead, leaving no one to
pull the weft, to correct your mistakes, to chart a new course.”
And with that, the old man brought his hand slamming down onto the
table a few inches from the spider. “The Order, the world, rests
with you!” he yelled as the creature leapt to his hand and sank its
fangs into his papery flesh. At the same moment, the embers landed.
The desk erupted into blue flames that gladly took hold of the old
man’s robes, consuming the spider, and climbing up his sleeve and
out across his middle.

Teth jumped back, gasped,
but she could not manage words before the man rose from his chair,
threw back his flaming arms and screamed, “They are coming.
Run!”

At that same moment, an
explosion sounded outside. The tower shook. The flames rose around
the old man in a conflagration, and the spiders fell. Dozens of
great black shapes floated down from the rafters above.

Chapter 13

The
20
^th
Day of Summer

“
Dasen!” The sound pulled
Dasen slowly from the drug-laden sleep that held him. His hands
came up reflexively to fend off the hairless old man who would
surely be waiting to ply him with the sticky sweet drink that had
kept him dreaming on this bed since the monks had pulled him from
the river.

There was no one there to
fight. Dasen sat up and almost went back down. His body was weak
and distant, his thoughts were slow, his mouth dry and gummy. He
was bathed in sweat, clothes – pants and a shirt – soaked through.
His eyes were cloudy. He rubbed them to restore some vision and
stared around the tiny room that held him. There were stone walls,
a slit of a window, a door, a bed, and little room for anything
else.

I heard my
name
, the thought came to him from a great
distance, worming through the morass that was his mind.
It was Teth
. His
thoughts become clearer.
She might be in
trouble. I need to find her
.

He tried to stand. His
shoulder slammed into the wall at his side, and he slid down it
into a pile of unresponsive limbs.
How
long have I been lying there?
he wondered
as he shook his head. His legs felt like they were asleep. He tried
to move them, but they barely responded to his commands. His arms,
back, neck were little better. He must have been lying in that bed
for days. He should have been sore, worn out from the fury of the
battle, but he felt none of that exhaustion. In fact, the opposite
was true. He felt like he had not used his legs in
weeks.

Still, he had heard Teth
calling for him. She must be looking, must have escaped the monks
that were inexplicably holding them. “Teff,” he called, but his
voice was a croak, tongue numb. “Teff!” he tried again, but the
sound was weaker than the first. He could feel the dry rasp that
was his throat, the heavy mass that was his tongue. He found a
glass of water on the table, drained it and felt better, but he
thought better of calling attention to himself.

He needed to recover, to
get out, to find Teth before the monks knew he was awake, before
they returned. And to do that, he needed his legs to work. He
forced them to move, forced the blood back into them. He stretched
them out painfully before him, fighting pins and needles as they
came alive, then coaxed his knees to bend and his feet to slide
back. He used his arms to help. It was a painstaking process, legs
moving back and forth, slowly coming to life, resisting him like
recalcitrant children being forced into a bath. But he refused to
surrender, remembered all they had been through in the past weeks,
all that they had overcome. This was nothing in comparison to the
horrors they had faced, to the pain they had endured, to the
terrible things they had done.

It seemed to take a
painful eternity with any more clues from outside, no more calls
from Teth, no sound of struggle, no shuffling of feet, no one at
his door. But eventually, his legs remembered their purpose, and he
stood.

He was as wobbly as a new
born lamb, his head was foggy, and he already felt exhausted, but
he was standing. He tried to imagine what awaited him. He had no
idea how long it had been since he had heard Teth, but he knew she
wouldn’t have stopped searching. She could only have been stopped
by someone, silenced, dragged away, or run off. It meant that it
was up to him to save himself, up to him to find her.

He reached for the power
he had used in the battle. He had promised Teth that he would not
use it again, but it was a promise he would gladly break if it was
the only way to get her back. The power wasn’t there. His mind was
foggy, but he could not find anything. Struggling to remember how
he had done it in the battle, he tried again, but there was
nothing. He took a deep breath. He would have to do
without.

With another breath, he
reached for the handle of the door. An explosion sounded. The room
shook. The ground swayed, and he struggled to remain
standing.

“
Run!“ a voice rose out of
nowhere, the howl of an ancient ghost. Dasen intended to follow its
advice. He threw his weight into the door, felt the handle slide
down, and yanked it open. Teth was standing just outside, staring
at him in shock.

#

Spiders, dozens of black
shapes, fell from the rafters, legs spread wide to slow the
descent, as Teth wove her way to the door. Behind her, the Master
burned. His howls suffused her. The stench of his burning flesh
inundated her. Gagging, legs shaking, stomach turning, she found
herself back on the battlefield. Bodies were everywhere, black
shapes descended on her, smoke and the smell of death surrounded
her. She saw them all as if she were still there, still fighting,
still feeling all that fear and pain. Running, somehow, through it,
she dodged the falling spiders, kept her feet despite the shaking
of the ground, and slammed the door behind her to keep the black
shapes from following her down the stairs.

Dasen
, something whispered in her mind. Fighting through the
phantasms that threatened to overtake her, the fear, the sorrow,
the helplessness, she stopped at the first landing, shook her head,
and forced herself to breathe.
You’re not
there
, she told herself.
You are here. You have to be here. You have to
find Dasen. You have to get away.

The door to her side flew
open. Teth nearly leapt from her skin. She turned, crouched,
prepared to pounce, and saw Dasen.

“
Dasen!” she screamed and
threw herself at him. She wrapped her arms around her husband and
felt him collapse. Unbalanced, they tumbled into the room and
crashed onto a bed. Teth didn’t care. She found his lips, wrapped
her arms around him, and kissed him with all her might.

Explosions sounded
outside. The tower shook. Dust rained down. The first tendrils of
smoke crept through the window above. Teth pulled herself away,
tried to catch her breath. She wanted nothing more than to kiss him
again, to press herself against him, feel him close, and know that
he was there. Explosions be damned.

“
Teth,” Dasen gasped. “By
the Order, I can’t believe . . . .”

She could not help
herself. She kissed him again. The tower shook, smoke filled the
top of the room. She ignored it all, forgot everything else,
allowed it all to pass over her, and kissed him again and
again.

She pulled away more
slowly than she should have, catching his lip in hers, feeling him
against her where her legs were spread around him. She stared at
him for the briefest moment, just looked into his eyes, at his
sallow, sunken face then jumped to her feet. “We have to go,” she
yelled, holding a hand out to the man she had just
tackled.

Dasen held her hand, but
it took almost all her strength to lift him to his feet, as if he
were not even trying. She looked at him, question obvious. “I don’t
know how long I’ve been lying here,” he answered. “But they’ve kept
me drugged. This is the first time I’ve moved since they pulled us
from the river, and my legs are still waking up.”

“
Well, it’s not the first
time I’ve carried you.” She pulled his arm around her neck and
maneuvered them toward the door.

“
What’s
happening?”

“
I don’t know,” Teth
answered when she realized that it was not a question she could
possibly answer.

They started down the
stairs, Dasen hobbling, Teth supporting his weight to keep them
from falling. Smoke was filling the tower, streaming in the windows
and up the stairs from the door. The air was filled with a
cacophony of sounds, the yowls of creatures, clatter of weapons,
crackle of fire, stamping of feet, beating of wings. The creatures
were here. They had finally found them.

Emerged from the tower,
choking against the smoke that was everywhere, they found exactly
what Teth had expected for a week. Black shapes filled the smoke,
fell from the sky, ran through the garden. And the Weavers arrived
just in time to meet them. A column of them happened to be walking
down the path. They did not even turn to see their fates. The
creatures smashed them to the ground, slashed through them with
weapons, tore them apart with talons, feasted on their flesh. And
the men died without the slightest struggle, without a sound,
without so much as a scream or a groan.

Teth stood stunned, just
stood outside the tower and watched as the creatures, black shapes
in a dozen hideous forms that were impossible to differentiate
through the smoke, slaughtered the Weavers. Those who were not
claimed in that first wave just kept walking at the same pace they
always maintained. The creatures could not resist. They leapt from
man to man, growing more and more vicious, taking more and more
time, and growing more and more frustrated.
They want the suffering
, Teth
realized. The Weavers’ indifference was acid to them. They howled,
shook, snapped at one another in frustration as their malevolence
was met with silence, stillness, and indifference.