WEAVING MAN
Prologue
The wind lifted whispering voices
from the Sea of Grass, the great plain that stretched across the hillocks and
shallow valleys of northern Mordania.
Tharan-Tul, Great Shaman of the nomadic Thrun, crouched with his back to a
roaring fire, watching the night sky revolve above Eirdon. His gnarled, large
knuckled hand gripped his wooden staff. The wind tugged at his long hair and
the folds of his heavy, embroidered robe. The fire flared behind him.
He had watched many nights now. As Shaman, he read the sigils and interpreted
the circles that were woven through all life on Eirdon.
Toward the east, two stars rose and began to climb. Then, finally, a third star
equally as bright as the pair crested the horizon and began to ascend the great
dome of the sky into the gathering of stars called The Weaver, glowing with
diamond brilliance against the deep velvet night.
It was the conjunction of three planets, as Tharan-Tul had expected.
He smiled knowingly, and nodded to himself.
“So,” he said to the soft voices whispering from the grass. “So… it has
begun... again.”
Banished
He had many names.
Aylam
Josirus, Lord Stettan, The Surelian Solution, who used his dead mother’s tribal
name - Menders - as his sole identity, stood alone outside the door of the
royal birthing chamber in the Great Palace of Mordania. With the exception of
two guards blending into the shadows cast by flickering gaslights, the only
other person in the corridor was a sharp-faced young woman. She was visibly
sulking.
Menders
ignored her. He had no interest in anyone else’s despair.
Menders
had been commanded to Court that morning when an official summons arrived for
him at the home of Commandant Komroff, headmaster of the Mordanian Military
Academy. He’d returned to the capital city, Erdahn, the previous night from an
in-depth and extremely dangerous covert mission in Surelia.
This
mission had taken him two years to complete and had resulted in the elimination
of a threat to Mordania that had become known as “The Surelian Problem”.
Menders’ success had required the sacrifice of the last years of his
teens and a romance that would have ripened to marriage. He had arrived at
Court expecting to be rewarded with the position of Court Assassin. At the age
of twenty, he was considered the greatest assassin who ever lived.
Instead, he had been made guardian of the Queen’s second child, which she was
laboring to bring forth at that moment. Not even the Heiress, but “the spare”,
whose impending birth had never been announced.
Worse still, Menders was to go with the newborn child and
the rest of her household to a remote royal estate in Old Mordania, more than
two days’ train travel from Erdhan.
The posting was for the first sixteen years of the child’s life. By the end of
that time Menders would be far too old to be an assassin, the necessary bodily flexibility and
lightning reflexes diminished by advancing years. His career was over. There
would only be years buried away in the country as the official guardian of a
little girl.
He was angry, confused, run through by the spear of betrayal. He should have
been celebrated as a hero. Instead he was being sent into exile.
Menders was of an unprecedented age for anyone to be appointed Head of Household
for a royal child. Such positions went to retiring military commanders or
Courtiers who had become obsolete, often men with families of their own. They
would hire nurses, governesses and tutors to raise the child, taking little
interest in the proceedings. Menders had yet to acquire wife or family, and
considering the remote location he was being sent to, his chances of doing so
would be nil.
He had been handed professional and social death.
Perhaps the child wouldn’t survive the birth, or would be a boy, who would be
snuffed out before he drew breath. Only Queens ruled in Mordania.
There was a sudden bustle behind the doors of the birthing chamber, followed by
the thin wail of a tiny baby. Menders closed his eyes and then swallowed. The
child hadn’t died and it would never have been allowed to cry if it had been a
boy. It was a girl and his fate was sealed.
The door of the chamber opened and a woman beckoned to the sharp-faced girl.
She scurried inside.
Moments later the Queen herself walked out, followed by the usual crowd of
sycophants who fawned on and scraped to her day and night. She was tousled and
reeking from her confinement, her red hair soaked with sweat. Although she had
delivered a child only minutes before, she was heading back to the Great Hall,
where she and her entourage would doubtless drink into the night. No bed rest
for her. Mordanian Queens were bred to be tough.
Menders
performed the formal obeisance of the Mordanian Court, slowly lowering himself
to one knee, his head inclined against the other, his arms outstretched at
shoulder level. According to Court protocol, this position was sustained until
the royal personage acknowledged the one who performed it. Menders managed a covert
glance toward the Queen in time to see her shoot a scathing glance at him from
beautiful aquamarine eyes. Her lip curled in distaste and she walked on without
acknowledging him or releasing him from his humble and uncomfortable posture.
Menders’
comprehension of his miserable situation became perfectly clear.
Should
Morghenna VIII take a dislike to anyone at Court for any reason, that person
disappeared. It was obvious from the way the drunken bitch looked at him that
she disliked him - for reasons unknown.
Menders
rose slowly as the Queen and her followers moved away down the hallway. He was
sickened by the odor of unwashed bodies. He’d heard the Queen was prone to fits
of melancholy and did not bathe regularly or groom herself. Menders’ nose wrinkled
in nauseated disgust. It wasn’t only the sweat of labor – this was the reek of
days, even weeks without washing.
The Queen’s Chamberlain burst from the birthing chamber, holding a bundled
blanket. He rushed over to Menders and shoved it into his arms.
“Lord Stettan, I present you with your ward, Princess Katrin Morghenna of
Mordania,” he said briskly, looking in the direction of the Queen and her
party, obviously desperate to follow them. “You are to leave immediately. The
Royal Train is waiting for you at the station. Further instructions will be
forwarded to you. You are supplied with a wet nurse, cook, guard and physician.
All the documentation you require will be provided before your departure.”
With
that, the man scurried in the wake of the Queen and her Court, leaving Menders
standing there holding a newborn baby.
He’d had no experience with infants. Children were part of
the scenery, little things that clung to the hands of women or who dashed about
and got underfoot in the street. He held the infant at half arms’ length from
his body, stiff and uncomfortable, as if holding it close might break it.
I could kill it, he thought. Babies die all the time for not much reason. They
die in their cribs, in their sleep. A pillow would do the trick, or a bit of
poisoned water in its food. Then he would be free of his sentence as this lump
of flesh’s guardian for a decade and a half. He’d killed so many and this was
hardly a person yet.
He looked down at the bundle, and saw that they hadn’t even bothered to dress
the child, that it was still slightly wet and naked except for the folds of
blanket. It seemed to be asleep, and he was surprised, after hearing that
newborns were red and crumple-faced, to see that it was a delicate pink, with a
damp fuzz of downy golden hair on its head.
Just then the baby wriggled. Menders instinctively drew it closer to his body,
cradling it in his arms. It made a tiny mewing noise, and opened its eyes.
They were a startling electric blue. They looked up into his as if this
minutes-old child saw him, knew him and accepted him entirely, for exactly what
he was.
Menders shifted her into the crook of his left arm and extended his right
forefinger in her direction, touching the back of her tiny hand.
She
grasped the tip of his finger with strength he would have never expected from
such a miniscule piece of humanity. Her fingers were delicate and perfect, tiny
dimples showed where each finger met her hand. There were pearly fingernails,
so minute that they were funny and touching at the same time.
Menders felt a torrent of warmth in his chest. A sudden lump rose in his throat
while tears stung his eyes. He smiled, then kissed the tiny hand as if
acknowledging the most elegant lady at Court.
If
this child is to be given to me, then she is my child, he thought.
In
all his years of service, Menders had never failed a mission. At that moment he
swore an oath to himself that he would never fail this Princess of Mordania.
“You are my little one,” he whispered to her, feeling drawn into the
depths of those blue eyes, stricken with love he had never felt before. He
would be with her forever, so long as his heart beat, this tiny, precious, pink
and golden girl who had been given to him with no more thought than if she had
been an outworn shoe or greatcoat. If her mother had no love for her, he had
love to give that would more than make up for it. He would protect her and care
for her all of his days.
He became aware of commotion all around and looked up to see that the luggage
of Katrin’s household was being dragged out the door and loaded onto sledges.
His own case and trunk, which he had been ordered to bring to the Palace, were
being loaded with everything else.
The sharp-faced girl caught his eye. She tried to take the baby but he shook
his head and cuddled Katrin close to his heart. He wrapped her securely against
the cold and followed the luggage out into the long midwinter twilight.
လ
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