Then he remembered that Elined’s waning had begun, and he guessed that the torches belonged to farmers out walking among their crops. According to the moon legends, if crop seedlings didn’t break through the goddess’s earth by Pitch Night, the last night of the turn, the harvest was doomed. Judging from the soft green they had seen in field after field as they rode the past few days, Grinsa guessed that the farmers had nothing to fear from omens this year. But it had become tradition in the farming villages of the Forelands for families to walk in the fields during the nights of the goddess’s waning.
When their mounts grew too weary to go on, Grinsa and Tavis finally stopped for the night. Lightning flickered in the distance and the low growl of thunder rode a warm wind. They ate a bit more, then slept amid the grasses, only to be awakened just before dawn by a loud thunderclap and a sudden hard downpour. The storm lasted only a short while, but with its passing the air grew colder, bringing a dawn too dreary and raw for so late in the planting. A stiff wind blew from the north, and a fine, chilling mist fell on the Moorlands. Tavis and the gleaner rode throughout the day, hunched in their riding cloaks, damp and miserable. They would have preferred to ride on into the night once more, but with no light from the moons, they had little choice but to make camp with the last grey light of day. They spoke little, ate quickly, and were soon huddled on their sleeping rolls.
Grinsa couldn’t be certain how long he had been sleeping when the dream began. His first thought was that he was on the plain near Eardley where he spoke with Keziah on those nights when he entered her dreams. Except that the sky here was black and starless, the only light a brilliant white sun to the east. Recognition crashed over him like a wave just as he felt the Weaver reaching for his magic. For a moment the two of them grappled for control of the gleaner’s power, the Weaver trying to use Grinsa’s own shaping power to shatter the gleaner’s bones, Grinsa fighting desperately to hold him off. He felt panic rising in his chest, consuming his mind, robbing him of his strength. This is how he prevails. The voice was his own, calm, even, the way he might have spoken to Cresenne or Keziah as he explained to them how they could keep the Weaver from harming them. He uses fear and surprise as weapons, turning your emotions against you. His power can’t reach you here. Only yours, which he seeks to wield as he would his own. He only has as much strength as you cede him. Refuse to fear, refuse to give up control, and you defeat him.
“You can’t hurt me,” Grinsa said aloud, feeling his initial confusion sluice away, and with it the dread that had touched his heart for one fleeting moment.
“Can’t I? I’m in your mind, gleaner. It’s but a small matter to take hold of your magic.” Brave words, but Grinsa heard frustration in the man’s voice.
They continued to struggle, though on that plain of Grinsa’s dream, both of them stood utterly still, the Weaver shrouded in shadow against the blinding light, his fists clenched. Again and again he tried to turn Grinsa’s magic against him; shaping, fire, healing, even delusion, as if he hoped to fool the gleaner into thinking him a friend. But Grinsa held him at bay, guarding his powers as a king might his gold. After several moments of this, he had an idea. Reaching for his fire magic, he tried to raise a flame that would counter the gleaming white light of the Weaver and allow him to see the man’s face. He had done this once before, when he saved Cresenne from the Weaver’s assault in Audun’s Castle, and had caught a glimpse of his enemy. Golden eyes, a square regal face.
If Grinsa could hold him here longer, he might manage to see the Weaver’s face again, and, more important, he might see enough of the plain to recognize it.
The Weaver sensed his danger instantly. Immediately, he stopped struggling for control of Grinsa’s other magics and fought with all his might to keep the fire from the gleaner’s hand.
“What is it you’re hiding, Weaver?” Grinsa asked, a grin springing to his lips. “The plains near Muelry perhaps? Or Ayvencalde Moor?”
Only a turn before, while Tavis was fighting the assassin on the Wethy Crown, Grinsa had been locked in a battle of his own against a Qirsi merchant sent by the Weaver to kill him. The man had died before Grinsa could learn from him all that he wished to know. But the merchant had said something about paying the conspiracy’s couriers on behalf of the Weaver, and of the Weaver’s fears that any direct payments might be traced back to him. Grinsa had surmised from this that the Weaver was in Braedon, where merchants and lords alike used different currency from that used in the other six realms. Imperial qinde, it was called. What other reason could the Weaver have for channeling his payments through the merchant?
But if the Weaver was shaken by hearing him guess at the plain’s location, he gave no outward sign of it.
Instead he laughed, harsh and cruel. “It’s too late for that, gleaner. You’re still trying to figure out who I am, and where you can find me. In the meantime, I’ve already won. As we speak, the armies of the Eandi are preparing to fight their foolish wars-some have already begun. Soon they’ll have rendered themselves helpless against my offensive. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“You haven’t won yet. If you had, you wouldn’t be bothering with me, and you wouldn’t still be hiding your face.”
“I didn’t come here because I fear you, or because I have to defeat you before I can win. I came to avenge a friend. That’s all.”
“The merchant.”
At that, for the first time, Grinsa sensed some hesitation on the Weaver’s part. “What do you know about him?”
“About Tihod? Quite a bit. He told me much before he died.”
“I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t have told you anything.”
“I never gave him the choice. I have mind-bending magic just as you do, remember?”
Again the Weaver tried to seize his magic, the onslaught coming so suddenly that Grinsa nearly failed to ward himself in time.
Immediately on the heels of the man’s assault, Grinsa tried to summon a flame, but the Weaver stopped him. After a moment their silent struggle ceased. They were like two armies facing one another across a battle plain, evenly matched, neither of them able to advance against the other. The gleaner knew that the wisest course would be to force himself awake, to end this encounter before the Weaver managed to harm him. Of the two of them, only he was truly in danger. The Weaver had entered his dreams; Grinsa couldn’t harm him. The most for which he could hope was an opportunity to learn the Weaver’s identity, and valuable though that information might have been, it was hardly worth risking his life. The time was fast approaching when the Weaver would reveal himself for all the Forelands to see. Yet, even knowing all this, Grinsa couldn’t bring himself to awake from this dream.
For his part, the Weaver seemed just as intent on prolonging their confrontation, though clearly he still felt he had reason to keep Grinsa from seeing his face or the plain on which they stood. If he had truly come merely to avenge Tihod, he was risking a good deal in the name of vengeance.
It almost seemed that their fascination with each other outweighed any sense of peril they might have felt. For his part, Grinsa had never met another Weaver. All his life, he had been unique, harboring a secret that he could share with but a handful of people. As a Qirsi living among the Eandi he had been a curiosity, eliciting awe and contempt in equal measure from those he met. Children coming to his gleaning tent had feared him as much as they did the judgment of the Qiran. This he shared with other Qirsi. But his powers had set him apart from even his own people. None of those whom he counted among his friends and loved ones had ever known what it was to live as he did. Not Keziah, his sister, who knew him as well as anyone; not Pheba, his wife, who might have understood eventually, had she lived long enough; not Tavis, who had journeyed the Forelands with him for much of the past year; not Cresenne, who loved him and who had felt the wrath of this other Weaver. No one truly knew him. Such was the life of a Weaver.