Renald shook his head fiercely. “Never!”
“And if I don’t?”
“We’ll take it anyway, hundreds of men will die, and the fortress of your forebears will be destroyed.”
“You could do that?” But already she knew the answer. She had seen what this man and his army had done to the fleets in Falcon Bay.
“Weaving the magic of these other shapers, I can lay waste to the entire city.”
How could Kearney possibly prevail against this man? How could any sovereign? In that moment, Elspeth understood that she was looking upon the future of the Forelands.
“Very well. I’ll do as you command. In return, I ask that you spare my life and those of my sons.”
“Mother! You can’t do this!”
She looked at the boy. “Be quiet, Renald. Only a fool would doom so many men to their deaths simply out of pride and obstinacy. It’s time you learned what it means to lead a great house.”
The irony hit her as soon as she spoke the words. If this Qirsi standing before them truly intended to rule the seven realms, all Eandi nobility would be overthrown. Her sons would never rule in any court. Not even in Prindyr or Lynde, much less in Galdasten or the City of Kings. If the Weaver was thinking the same thing, he had the good grace to keep it to himself.
“Well?” she asked, eyeing the Qirsi once more.
“I make no promises, my lady, except to say that so long as you cooperate with us, you’ll not be harmed.”
She couldn’t be certain whether he meant only her or the boys as well, and she had the sense that his ambiguity was intentional. Fear for her sons seized her, and for a moment she couldn’t even bring herself to draw breath.
“Lead the way, my lady,” the Weaver said, his square face as placid as a morning tide. With a slender hand, he indicated the road back to the castle.
Run! she wanted to yell to her children. Make your way to the sanctuary and don’t look back! But she had little hope that they could escape the Qirsi, and every expectation that the Weaver would punish them all for making the attempt. So she turned, defeated and helpless, and meekly led them back toward the castle gate. The duke wouldn’t have recognized her; her sons wouldn’t so much as glance at her.
She kept her eyes fixed on the ramparts as she walked up the road, half hoping that Galdasten’s archers would loose their arrows despite her presence at the head of the Weaver’s army. Instead, they lowered their bows and called for the gate guards to open the portcullises. Just as the Weaver had known they would.
For all her talk of Renald’s cowardice, his weakness and poor leadership, Elspeth couldn’t imagine him giving up his castle without a single weapon being drawn. What have I become?
Within moments, they stood in the center of the lower ward, surrounded by men who even now looked to her for leadership. The archers still carried their bows, and the swordsmen held their blades ready. Elspeth could see murder in their eyes. She could still save Galdasten, if she were willing to sacrifice herself and her boys.
Perhaps the Qirsi read these thoughts in her eyes, for abruptly he grabbed Renald the Younger by the arm, pulling the boy away from her and in the same motion drawing his sword. For one terrifying instant, Elspeth thought the Weaver would kill the boy right there, but he didn’t. He merely laid the edge of his sword against Renald’s neck and looked at her, his expression unchanged.
“Tell them to lay down their weapons.”
“No, Mother, don’t!” the boy said gamely. “He’s not-”
“Quiet!” the Qirsi said. He pressed harder with his blade, so that a thin line of blood appeared at the boy’s throat and trickled over the steel.
Elspeth had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out.
“Now, my lady. Do it, or he dies.”
“Surrender your weapons,” she called to the soldiers, her eyes never straying from the steel and the blood. When several of the men hesitated, looking at one another, she said, “Please. I’ve seen what these Qirsi can do with their magic. They destroyed the entire Braedony fleet, and Wethyrn’s as well. We cannot defeat them; if we try, they’ll kill us all.”
The men stared at her for what seemed an eternity, until finally one of them stepped forward and dropped his sword and dagger only a few paces from where she stood. Then he bowed to her and took a step back. Slowly, others did the same, all of them offering obeisance to her as they added their weapons to the growing mound of steel.
Adler and Rory stood on either side of her, clinging to her hands, but though the Weaver had released Renald, the boy still would not look at her, nor did he bother to wipe the blood from his neck. He stood perfectly still, staring straight ahead, like a soldier bravely awaiting execution.
Soon archers were filing out of the towers to place their bows and quivers with the other arms. As the surrender continued, the Weaver whispered something to two of the other Qirsi, one of them a waif-like woman with eyes as bright as his own, and the other a man with pale yellow eyes in a lean face. A moment later these two started off in different directions, the woman with a half smile on her face.
“You two,” the Weaver said, pointing to the captains Renald had left behind to protect the castle. “Come here.”
The soldiers approached him, as a low murmur swept through the courtyard. They stopped just before him, both of them pale and tight-lipped.
“Your duke left the two of you in command of the army?”
Neither man spoke.
“Answer me.”
The Weaver didn’t move at all, but it seemed that both men suddenly sagged, as if they had abruptly taken ill.
“Yes,” one of them said. “We’re in command.”
He’s using magic on them, she had time to think.
“Get on your knees.”
The men dropped to their knees, their heads bowed.
The Weaver still held his sword, and now he stepped forward, raising the weapon as to strike them.
“No!” Elspeth cried.
The Qirsi glanced at her. “They’re soldiers, my lady. They understand that I can’t allow them to live. So long as these captains live, your husband’s soldiers remain an army. Without them, they become nothing more than a collection of defeated men.”
He faced them again, and with swift, powerful strokes hewed off the head of one man and then the other. Their bodies toppled sideways to the earth, blood darkening the grass. The other men said nothing nor did they make any move to retrieve their weapons.
Rory, on the other hand, was sobbing, his face pressed against her dress. Elspeth stroked his head, fearing that she’d be ill.
“See what you’ve done?” Renald said, glowering at her. “You made those men surrender and now they’re dead!”
She should have said something. She should have had some answer for the hatred she saw in her son’s eyes. But she couldn’t think of anything adequate. And in the next moment matters grew far worse.
“What are they doing with Father Coulson?” Adler asked.
The duchess’s head snapped up in time to see the man the Weaver had sent away moments before leading the prelate down the broad stone stairway that linked the castle’s upper and lower wards. Even from this distance, she could see that Coulson was trembling, and that his legs seemed barely to support him.
“What are they going to do to him, Mother?” Adler asked again.
She glanced at Renald, whose face had gone white and whose eyes still held such contempt.
“I don’t know, child,” she said. A lie, for who in that ward didn’t know, save for the young ones? The cloisters had long been tied to the courts and were known to be hostile to the Qirsi and their adherence to the Old Faith. Was it so surprising that these renegade white-hairs should strike at the prelacy?
“They’re going to kill him,” Renald said bitterly.
“They are not!” Adler shot back. “Are they, Mother?”