The False Martyr (19 page)

Teth approached the man,
studying him in the sparse light that made it to the back of the
room. He rocked at a rhythm that Teth somehow knew matched the
pounding of the Weavers’ looms, the slap of their sandals, the flow
of their breaths during meditation. He was dressed in a robe like
the other Weavers such that only his boney, brown-spotted hands
showed from the sleeves. The skin on those hands was as thin as
gauze. The bones looked like twigs strung together for an urchin’s
doll. The hands looked like those of a man seven days in the grave,
but these moved. They rose from the handles of the chair and
motioned her forward. Then they shot out, drew back slowly, and
twitched.

Entranced by the movement
of those ancient hands, Teth walked slowly forward until she had an
angle to see the old man’s face where it was thrown back into the
shadows behind him. His face was clean shaven, but Teth had no idea
how anyone had managed the feat. The skin was, if anything, thinner
than that on his hands, and it was alternately tight over his sharp
cheeks and across his bald pate, to sagging from his chin and
around his eyes. The man had sharp, thin bones that seemed ready to
cut through his papery skin. Teth followed the lines of those bones
to the man’s ears and found them missing, replaced by lumps of scar
tissue that seemed even to cover the openings. Stopping at the
sight, she brought her eyes to the old man’s just as he brought his
head forward. There were no eyes to catch. Blank holes stared at
her.

Teth gasped. The man moved
his hands at random. His toothless mouth worked, tongue darting in
and out like a lizard. And he rocked, always he rocked without even
seeming to move his legs or feet.

“
Where’s Dasen?” Teth
managed to ask. “What have you done with him? Why are you holding
us here?” She wondered how he could even hear her for the scarred
ruin that were his ears.

“
Sit,” the old man said.
“All will be explained.” His hands moved, gestures as random as the
Weavers’ were orchestrated. Teth looked at the table before him as
she approached. It was covered with an assortment of seemingly
unrelated objects – marbles, stones, a lit candle, a molding piece
of fruit swarming with flies, vials of various sizes, papers, a
strip of fabric, and a letter knife. The items were arrayed
carefully on the desk, within the old man’s reach, but it was the
last that caught Teth’s attention and held it as she approached the
table and sat in the simple wooden chair. She stayed on the edge of
the seat, weight forward, hands ready. She watched the knife and
calculated the distance required to snatch it from the
table.

“
I am sorry,” the old man
said with real regret.

“
For what?” Teth asked,
voice catching. The old man’s regret was deeper than that required
for any wrong done to her since she had arrived. She braced herself
–
Dasen
, she
thought, heart suddenly hammered.

“
For everything,” he said.
“Everything that has happened to you has been my fault. It was
necessary, it was what the pattern required, but that does not mean
I did it gladly.”

Teth felt a lump form in
her throat. Her chest suddenly hurt. Somehow, she knew exactly what
the old man meant. “You . . . you mean. . . .”

“
Your parents,” the old
man confirmed. “It was no accident that killed them. It was me.” He
snatched a marble from the table and sent it flying to the rafters
above.

At the same moment, Teth’s
hand found the knife. Her teeth gnashed as her fingers gripped the
handle. Her body came forward, positioning her to plant the blade
in the old man’s throat.

A fall of black before her
eyes brought them to her hand just in time to see the spider light
upon it. She froze. The spider was as big as a saucer. It covered
her hand, thick, black legs spread over her fingers where they
gripped the knife. It faced her, fangs exposed, hanging just above
the tender skin between her thumb and index finger. Teth’s breath
caught.

“
You know this spider
then?”

Teth nodded but risked no
more movement than that. She watched the old man. He was sitting
forward now, rocking stopped, one hand cupped on the table a few
inches from the spider. His eyelids covered the blank sockets of
his eyes, but he seemed to stare through her.

“
A weaver’s warden.
Curious that name since it weaves no web. Have you ever thought
about that?”

Teth shook her head, body
frozen, muscles locked so tight that they ached. If that spider’s
fangs came down, she would not last the day. She had seen a man
bitten only once. The two hundred pound logger had been brought to
her aunt in time for her to apply all her craft. It had not been
enough.

“
This spider is a favorite
of Weavers. The rules that govern it are quite simple, and the
outcome of its actions are certain. You see, they are solitary
creatures, not the slightest aggressive unless disturbed. They like
to stay in high places, so it is easy to make them fall. Like me,
they are blind but see everything. They hunt by motion, attacking
only things that are close to them that move. And they are deadly,
the perfect tool for one who weaves the Tapestry. And here, it has
not only saved my life from your vengeance but, more importantly,
has established an invaluable truth.”

Sweat dripped from Teth’s
chin. Her body shook from the effort of holding so perfectly still.
Her eyes were locked on the spider’s, which were cloudy, worthless
for actual sight.

“
You see now that I have
denied you two knives. You know that neither that rock on the
stairs nor this spider were accidents. I knew exactly where you
would step, knew that the knife would be in your hand, that it
would end up in that crack, that it would break. I knew that you
would reach for this knife, knew exactly what words would make you
do so. I knew exactly where the spider was, what size of marble
would knock it from its perch, knew exactly where it would land.
These are not coincidences. They are carefully planned
manipulations of the Order. They are weavings that I have created
to control you, just as I created the wind that killed your
parents.” The old man had the audacity to smile at that. Teth felt
her anger rise, saw the spider twitch, and forced herself to be
calm, to stop the shaking in her frozen limbs.

“
Now, you understand my
power,” the old man continued. “You know what I am capable of
doing. You know that I will do anything and everything that is
required to maintain the pattern I have created. And you know the
power of that pattern. You see how it controls your life. I am
going to tell you some things now. They will not be easy to hear,
but you will know the truth of them because you have felt my power,
have seen my weavings at work. Now, would you like for us to talk
with that spider on your hand?”

“
Get it off me,” Teth
begged. “Just get it off.”

The old man lifted his
hand. A horsefly rose from the table. The spider leapt from Teth,
caught the fly, and trapped it in the exact spot where it had been
sitting beneath the old man’s hand.

Teth snatched her hand
back, leaving the knife resting on the table. She held the hand and
shivered involuntarily. “How could you know . . .?”

“
I know everything.” The
old man had returned to his rocking. His hands darted, twitched,
remained in constant motion. “I am the Master Weaver,
the
Weaver,
the
Master. I am one of
a long line descended from the first and greatest of all Weavers,
our savior, Xionious Valatarian. Since the time our savior learned
to weave the Order and used Its power to exile the Lawbreakers, my
line has worked to maintain the pattern he created. Mine is the
power to see the Order, to weave it like a tapestry. And because I
see it, I have no need for eyes. I have no need for ears. I see
everything; I hear everything; I know everything.”

“
Why are you telling me
this?” Teth whispered. “Why am I here?”

The old man laughed. He
slowly lifted a vial from the table, pulled the cork, and flung it
at her. Teth could not react before the liquid splashed across her.
She retracted, smelled something strange and musty that she could
not place.

“
For the same reason I did
that,” the Master said. “Because it is required to maintain the
pattern. You, my dear girl, are possibly the Tapestry’s most
important thread. My pattern is dependent upon you like no other.
Unfortunately, that means that you had to be bent, twisted,
stretched.”

He paused, seemed to
consider, then threw several rocks across the room. Only one made
it out the window. “The pattern requires that you be who you are,”
he said while the rocks were still in flight. “It requires that you
be able to do all the things you can do. And so we pulled the
threads to create you exactly as you are. We worked for
generations, tirelessly manipulating the Order to create the wind,
to weaken the foundation, to position your parents, to stoke the
fire, to bring together all the pieces that were required to make
you an orphan. We made Ipid rich. We made him move away.
We left you alone!
We
made the forest welcome you. We made it easy for you, showed you
none of its hardships until you were ready to face them.
We gave you a home!
We
gave you the bow. We made you hunt. We made you climb and run and
fight.
We made you
strong
! We made those forest masters find
you. We made the boys hate you. We made the villagers shun
you.
We made you hard!
We made Dasen join you. We flung you together. We created the
trials that would bind you.
We made you
feel!
And you, my dear, have never failed
to do your part.”

Teth listened in stunned
silence, too surprised even to be angry. She saw all the pieces
come together, all the seemingly random events that had pushed her
toward where she was right now. They were not random at all. It had
been this old man pulling her strings, crafting her the same way
her father had crafted metal. He had put her in the fire then
pounded her. Over and over, he had hit her, burnt her, struck her,
tempered her, until she was ready. “Why?” she whispered.

“
How first.” The Weaver
paused, threw his head back and blew a long stream of air from his
pursed lips. His hands came together in a great clap that shook
Teth. “My power is to see the Order, to see how all things connect
together, and understand how my actions and those of my followers
will ripple through all those connections to change everything that
will happen. Thus the movements you see. You think they are random,
but every one has a purpose. They create ripples. Those are
amplified by the men outside, by the Church, by a network that
spans every nation until they become waves. And those waves change
the Order. They make patterns, series of outcomes spanning time and
space. Some take seconds, such as that spider falling on your hand.
Others take years. Others generations.

“
Ah, but there is
freewill, you say. Any person at any point can undo our work by
simply making a choice I did not expect. But the truth is that our
freewill is almost never used. At any point over the past week, you
could have run away, you could have climbed this tower, could have
killed my followers. Even now, you could have let the spider bite
you, could have stabbed me or slashed my throat, but you didn’t.
You did exactly what my pattern dictated. The vast majority of the
time, the vast majority of the people do exactly what we expect,
and even when they don’t, their actions are almost always
inconsequential. Almost.

“
But those ‘almosts’ add
up. Over the course of hundreds of years, even small distortions
become significant to the pattern. Thus is was over two hundred
years ago that the Master of that time saw Valatarian’s great
pattern failing and made a desperate attempt to save it. He ensured
that a woman would trip on a rock, that she would land in the arms
of a man, that they would be perfectly matched, that they would be
at their sexual peak. He ensured that a week later that man would
be on top of that woman when her husband returned to get a new
shirt after a passing wagon splashed his with mud. He knew that
this husband had a great temper, that he held his wife like his
last coin. A hired guard, he carried a knife at all times and knew
how to use it. My predecessor expected this man to open the door,
see his wife panting with pleasure in the arms of another, and use
his knife to kill the adulterer. He was certain that this would be
the outcome of the threads having been so pulled.”

The old man paused, caught
a fly in his hand, held it for a second, then let it go. “But the
adulterer, a proud and powerful man, did something entirely counter
to everything the Order had made him to be, something that the
Master could not have possibly predicted. He ran. He jumped from
the woman in the middle of his climax, allowed her husband to stab
her instead, and ran naked into the street to escape. But far more
significant was that the adulterer, having survived, saw the entire
thing for what it was. He saw how the Order had been used against
him, knew that the Weavers were to blame, and thus dedicated
himself to seeing us destroyed. And so, that one weaving, which was
meant to sustain us, proved to be our downfall.”