Glasswrights' Master (22 page)

Hal pointedly scanned the collection of women. One stood taller than he, with broad shoulders and a waist-length braid of shimmering blonde hair. Another was so small that she might have been a child, a dark-haired woman with skin to match who barely came to his belly. “Your family is a mixed one.”

“A close one, rather. Get on with you, then. We haven't much time, and we have a great deal to discuss about our poor, aged parents.” The door opened and four more women entered.

Rani lowered her voice so that Zama had to lean closer. “We have a message about one of your sisters. We come from the forest. From Kella.”

Zama's eyes darted toward the door and a half dozen more newcomers, and her face lost some of its professional good humor. “Kella has not joined us for more moons than I can recall.”

“Aye,” Rani agreed. “She spoke of you with fear.”

“What do you know of Kella?”

“She uses your family's knowledge. She takes actions that will affect all of you directly. She leaves you vulnerable to one outside the circle of your family.”

Under other circumstances, Hal might have wondered aloud. How did Rani do it? How did she make her paltry handful of facts sound like a valuable commodity? How did she manipulate the wise old woman so smoothly?

Zama made a decision. “Very well, then. You may stay. But he leaves.” She nodded toward Hal as if he had no ears of his own, no eyes to see the insult of his dismissal. “This is a business of women.”

Rani's response was steady, as if she were negotiating a good price for eggs. “This is a business beyond your usual terms. He stays, for he's the one who knows the true dimension of Kella's threat to you all.”

More studying, this time with the eyes of other women upon them. Hal resisted the urge to scrutinize them one by one. What good would it do? He must convince Zama, first and foremost. If he failed that, there would be no need to try the other sisters, no need for anything but retreat to the forest and his doomed men and their misplaced trust.

Misplaced trust. Fall to dust. Yield, he–

“I've seen her!” he said loudly, drowning out the whispers. “I've seen Kella meet with dangerous folk. I've seen her follow them into the night, through the woods. She's made plans, plans that endanger herself, her craft. Her Sisters.”

Zama scowled as if he'd told a tasteless joke. She flicked a quick hand gesture, and the woman standing closest to the door set a heavy wooden bar into place. There would be no more custom at the tavern that night. Hal and Rani had infiltrated the Sisters' meeting.

For a hidden society, the Sisters subscribed to none of the mystery and danger that Hal had learned to expect. There were no hoods, no cloaks, no morbid passwords. There were no incantations to bring the meeting to order, no promises of vengeance and wrath.

These women all seemed relaxed, easy, comfortable with each other and with their secret organization. Small groups chattered together, one pair discussing the cost of cork, a trio debating the relative merits of flaxseed oil or pressed almonds as a binder for poultices.

As they spoke, the women worked. In short order, they had pushed the tavern's clean tables back to the walls. They brought the benches into a rough circle, cooperating to lift the heavy wooden seats. While one young sister added a log to the fire, several of the older women disappeared into the kitchen. They returned carrying smooth wooden trays, laughing as they passed among the assembled group, handing out tumblers of some drink.

When the sisters came near Hal and Rani, they offered up the trays, as if guests were common in these meetings. Hal hesitated, but then he took the proffered beverage. Wary as he was, he could fathom no harm in the drink. After all, there was no way that the sisters could have predicted which cup he would choose, which would be Rani's.

He sniffed the stuff and was pleasantly surprised by the fragrance–apple blossoms, and a hint of honey, and something that smelled like fresh-cut grass.

When everyone held a cup, Zama stepped into the center of the circle of benches. “Sisters!” she called, and her voice cut through the chatter easily. Three or four of the women finished quick stories, and then all were silent. “Sisters!” the tavern mistress repeated. “We are gathered for our moon-meet. Let all who would join with us sit within our circle.”

There was a general shifting of place, and each woman settled on a bench. Hal found himself guided to a specific place, opposite from Rani. Zama raised her cup and said, “We have guests among us, and we welcome them with refreshing drink and open words. Hail, honored guests!”

“Hail, honored guests,” repeated the Sisters, and they toasted both Hal and Rani before draining their cups. Hal found himself flushing at so much female attention. One woman looked like the twin of the nurse who had nurtured him in his childhood. Another reminded him of his mother's favorite lady-in-waiting. That laughing redhead resembled one of the more annoying ladies that his councilors had tried to choose as wife for him.

Rani did not seem troubled by the distaff attention, though. She merely glanced at Hal across the circle. In for a raindrop, in for a storm, her expression seemed to say. She raised her glass and shrugged before she tossed back the draught.

Hal touched his tongue to the liquid. The flavor was more complex than the aroma. Was the drink based on pressed apples? Pears? He could not place the sweetness. Aware that the women were watching him, he fought down another blush and swallowed deeply. Well, there was no alcohol, but surely there was
something
in the stuff. He felt it tingle on its path to his belly.

Before he could dwell further on the libation, he forced his attention back to the meeting. At first, it was difficult to follow the conversation because he knew little of herbs and less of their application to treat various ailments. He quickly realized that each substance went by many names; it appeared that the women switched easily between formal appellations for plants and more casual ones. A cure for fever might be called melisias felidora by one woman but feverfew by the next.

Not that Hal actually cared about cures for fever. Or about a new harvest of greenwort. Or about a method for storing tinctures in glass that kept them as fresh as the day they were brewed.

His mind began to wander. He knew that his need was urgent, that he must speak with the Sisters, convince them to join with Rani and him, to work against the Fellowship. And yet, he found himself smothering a yawn, tightening his throat and popping his ears against an unseemly show of disinterest. He should pay attention. There was no telling what he might observe among the witches.

Among the witches. Run for the ditches. Dance among riches.

He almost smiled at the rhymes. For the first time in months, there was no darkness in the words, no grim prediction of his fate. Rather, the sounds became a child's playful song. He was carried by the easy rhythm; he followed the laughter without fear. Only with great reluctance did he force his attention back to the meeting.

Two women were engaged in a heated debate about the cost of flaxseed oil in the marketplace, insisting that all the Sisters should refuse to purchase it until the vendors saw reason. Hal cast a quick glance at Rani. She understood trade. She understood enforcing a market cost for goods. She had helped him price his silk. Price the silk. Drink some milk. Silk milk. Milk silk.

He smiled at the silly words. The Sisters' autumn drink must have tamed the voices. The herb witches could not be all bad, he wanted to tell Rani. They had stopped his madness, replaced his endless chants of doom with funny little poems. The witches made his head sing. Head sing. Heart ring. Joy bring. Sing ring. Ring bring. Bring sing.

When he glanced at Rani, she shook her head, and the lines of a frown cut beside her lips, between her eyes. She turned back to the sisters with a fierce look of concentration, and Hal followed suit, drawing himself up straight and forcing himself to pay attention to the woman who was talking.

“We're agreed, then,” she said. She had a kind face, wrinkles folded in the comfort of age. She reminded Hal of the kindly old woman who had assisted Cook, years before in the Morenian kitchen. That woman had always had a curl of apple peel for a naughty prince, a kind word for a boy who should have been out on the practice field with his sword and shield.

Apple peel. Courtly meal. Dance a reel. Peel meal. Peel reel.

This time, Hal did not look at Rani. He did not want her disapproval to squash the happy song inside his head. Instead, he let the words carry him to his feet; he staggered to the center of the herb witches' circle.

The conversation died as soon as he stood. He glanced around and saw that every woman in the room watched him. Rani, too, she stared at him with eyes that were dark with concern. Concern, and something else. He realized that she was trying to join him, trying to get her feet under her, but there was something odd about her legs, something strange about the way she placed her hands upon the bench. Her body refused to obey her, refused to come to his aid.

To his aid. (Blade, his mind said, but laughter pushed the dark word away.) In the glade. Hair abraid. Feast well-laid.

Zama stepped forward. “You would speak to us, good sir?”

“What–” His voice was strange in his ears, too high. “What have you done to me?” The words were too fast, too breathy.

“Nothing, good sir. You are not harmed.” Zama's voice was determined and bright, but
he heard the steel beneath her words. Not harmed. Quite charmed. His own mind would have reached for
“deadly armed”, would have threatened him with a dark rhyme. What had the herb witches done? What
had he drunk? And why had it not affected the Sisters?

“Give me back my thoughts!”

“I swear by Yor, we have not taken your thoughts,” Zama replied calmly. Rani cried out when the herb witch called upon the god of healing, and she started rubbing her arms with sudden vehemence, sucking in her breath and catching her lip between her teeth.

Zama looked up in surprise. Hal tried to move toward Rani, but he could not make his feet take the steps. The harder he tried, the faster his heart pounded, and his breath began to come in frantic pants.

“What have you done to us?”

“Nothing that we have not done to ourselves,” Zama said. “You saw us drink.”

“But you don't feel it!”

“Calm yourself, good sir.” Zama spoke like a woman accustomed to soothing frantic children. “Tell us why you came here. Tell us what brought you to the Sisters.”

Rani was clawing at her skin, her nails leaving streaks on her flesh. Blood welled up, fresh, red. Red. Bread. Fed. Fed bread. Bread head.

He wanted to shut the foolish voices out, drown them and replace them with the dark thoughts he knew and understood. Now, every word he thought was echoed, chimed. Each syllable broke into a prism, and the sounds threatened to drown him.

Rai. Gay. May. Bay. Day.

Nee. Lee. She. Bee. Free.

“Speak,” Zama said. (Speak. Creak. Beak. Leak.) She had come to stand before him. He
could not keep his eyes on her as she leaned close and felt his brow, as if she were diagnosing some
ailment. He managed to glimpse her hand (tanned, brand, land, sand), and he made out a new cup, a
cup filled with drink (think, sink, clink, brink.) “Speak,” she said again. “Tell us why you came
here. Give us your message, and I'll give you this cup. It will still the other that you drank. It
will return you to yourself.”

“You,” he managed to say, ignoring the resulting cascade of sounds. “You … drank.”

“Aye,” Zama agreed. “I did, and all my sisters. But we take the antidote before every meeting. There's no telling who might try to join us, who might insist on staying with the Sisters when we meet.” Meet. Feet. Fleet. Heat. Heat. Heat.

His mind stuck on the word; he could not move his thoughts forward. His heartbeat was loud in his ears now, and his lungs began to ache with the effort of drawing such rapid breaths.

Rani. Where was she? What had happened to her? He turned his head, ignoring the sound of the bones moving in his neck. Rani had slipped from her bench. Her head thumped against the pounded earth floor, rhythmic as the one word sparking in his mind, over and over again. Her hands still tore at her flesh, but they were weaker now, leaving only an occasional angry stripe.

He could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest, hear the rattle as she tried to fill her lungs. She must be smothering as he was. She must feel the panic filling her body, drowning her mind.…

“Help. Her,” he made himself say. “Dose. Her.”

“You must speak to us first,” Zama said easily.

“Help. First.”

“You'll lose your ability to see in a few moments.” Zama spoke as if she were counting out sausages in the marketplace. “Your vision will fade from the edges, narrow toward the center. If you wait until it disappears altogether, it will be too late. Even this cup won't help you then.”

He tried to move his head, testing the edges of his sight. There! Was that it? Was that a blur of darkness?

“Speak to us, man. You said you had news of Kella. Tell us what she's doing. Tell us how she puts her Sisters at risk.”

He had no choice. “Fellowship,” he forced out, and the three syllables cost him most of his remaining strength. “Jair. Kella. Gone. To. Jair.”

The last word proved too much for him. His knees buckled, and he crashed to the floor. Rushes pricked his face, and he tried to close his eyes, to protect them from the sharp plants. He could not manage the feat, though, could not force himself through the motion. He could see almost nothing now, only a tiny patch of fire before him, the edge of the hearth's well-trimmed blaze.

And then he felt a hand upon his neck. His head was raised from the ground. The edge of a cup pressed against his lip. Liquid trickled into his mouth, but he could not move his throat; he could not make himself swallow.