The blow did nothing, however. It was as if the gleaner’s hand passed right through him.
“Why would they hurt you in this way?” Dusaan asked, looking past Grinsa to the archminister. To her credit, the woman held his gaze, but she said nothing, her face nearly as white as her hair. “If they had merely learned that you betrayed me, or that you were a threat to the movement, they would have simply killed you. But they didn’t, did they?”
Grinsa looked back at her.
At first Dusaan thought that Grinsa had said this aloud.
It took him several moments to understand that they were sharing these thoughts, the words reaching him as the whisper of a gentle wind. And he used this opportunity to try again for Grinsa’s power. With his thoughts directed elsewhere, the gleaner was ill prepared for the assault. Still he held tight to his powers, the deeper ones in particular. But fire …
Grinsa’s sleeve suddenly burst into flame, and he cried out, batting at the flames with his other hand-the instinctive reaction. It took him but an instant to reclaim control of his magic and extinguish the flame in that way. But that was all the time Dusaan needed. With Grinsa’s attention diverted, he struck at Keziah.
Had she possessed healing magic, or shaping, he could have killed her instantly. But she didn’t, and that made hurting her much more difficult. Instead, he stopped her breathing, using his own delusion power to convince her that she couldn’t draw breath. Her eyes widened, and she clutched at her throat.
Dusaan felt her struggling with her terror, fighting to overcome the belief that he could actually strangle her. A moment later, with a shuddering gasp, she inhaled.
Grinsa attacked again, but Dusaan brushed the assault away as if it were a fly.
“You call her Kezi. You’ve known each other for a long time.”
He nearly laughed at what he saw on the gleaner’s face. “Yes, you fool, I can hear your thoughts. I’m as much in her mind as you are.” Dusaan looked at her again. “Kezi.” He nodded. “It suits you. Were you lovers once? Is that it? Was that tale about you and the king merely another deception?”
But even as he asked the question, he knew that this couldn’t be. He’d felt the power of her love for her king, as well as her heartache at losing him. Such things could not easily be feigned. Nor was there any memory of passion between these two.
“No,” he said, before either of them had time to lie. “You weren’t lovers. But then what?” Then it came to him, and he smiled broadly. “Of course! You lied to me that first night,” he said to the woman. “You told me your father had been a Weaver, and that was why you weren’t surprised by my presence in your mind. But it wasn’t your father, was it? It was your brother.”
The Weaver eyed them both, grinning at the dismay he saw in their eyes. He would never have said that they looked alike, but searching now for the resemblance, he saw it. The similarities were subtle-the high cheekbones, the shape of their eyes, even the way their jaws clenched in anger or fear-but knowing to look for them, he realized that they were unmistakable.
“The archminister of Eibithar is sister to a Weaver. How splendid!”
The onslaught came so swiftly, with such fury, that Dusaan was unable to ward himself. Grinsa didn’t make the mistake of throwing a punch this time. He remained perfectly still as he seized Dusaan’s magic with his mind. Not shaping, for that was the most dangerous, and thus the one the Weaver guarded first. Healing again.
Dusaan felt the skin on his face opening, wide gashes from which blood poured like rain-fed streams from the Crying Hills. He fought to regain control of his power once more, only to find that he had it without having struggled at all. Grinsa had relinquished the healing magic and had taken hold of the Weaver’s shaping power, lashing out with what would have been the killing blow. Dusaan actually felt pressure building on the bone in his neck.
Never in his life had he known such terror. It almost seemed that Bian was at his shoulder, waiting to carry him to the Underrealm. Had he faltered even in the least, he would have died then. But drawing upon all his strength, managing in that moment of abject fear to keep his mind clear, the Weaver fought, mastering first his fright and then the gleaner. It was over in but a moment, though it seemed an eternity.
His magic was his again. The gleaner stood before him, his chest rising and falling, his face flushed, as if he had just come through some great bloody battle.
Dusaan healed the wounds on his face with a thought, though he could do nothing about the blood that stained his surcoat. “As I told you,” he said, his voice raw, “you’ll not kill me tonight.”
“Then I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
The Weaver grinned. “Brave words, but empty ones. You know that. You may be strong, Grinsa, and more cunning than I had credited. But you can’t defeat my army. You think that Abeni’s death will save you. You’re wrong. She was one chancellor among many. You killed four of my servants today. But I still command hundreds. How many are in your army, Grinsa? Ten? Twelve?” He shook his head. “I should have seen this attack coming. I understand that now. It was your only chance to defeat me. You’ve failed, and tomorrow I’ll destroy you.” He eyed the archminister, then made one last desperate attempt to turn his power against her, but Grinsa was ready. Dusaan grinned. “No matter,” he said, still looking at Keziah. “Come tomorrow, your life is forfeit. I’ll enjoy killing you almost as much as I will your brother. I wouldn’t sleep for the rest of the night, Keziah. It might not be safe.”
With that, he opened his eyes to the fire burning low before him. The world seemed to heave and spin, as if he were on some storm-tossed ship in the Scabbard, and he squeezed his eyes shut once more, fighting through a wave of nausea.
“Damn them,” he muttered, his teeth clenched.
Again he opened his eyes. The dizziness was subsiding. Neither his face nor his arm pained him anymore; he seemed to have healed fully, notwithstanding the dark bloodstains on his clothes.
He would enjoy killing them both.
It troubled him that Kearney lived still, but in past conversations with the archminister he had sensed her reluctance to carry out his orders. On some level he had expected this. Come the morrow, it wouldn’t matter.
“Weaver?”
He knew the voice immediately. Nitara. Better that she didn’t see him like this, bloodied and shaken.
“What is it?” he asked, not looking at her.
“We heard you cry out. We were … I wanted to make certain that you were all right.”
Dusaan had no idea that he had made any sound at all beyond Keziah’s mind. He turned just a bit, enough so that she would see his face. “I’m fine,” he told her. “Go to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a great day.”
Her eyes widened. “There’s blood on your face!”
The Weaver touched his cheek, felt the blood there, still sticky. He turned his back to her once more. “It’s nothing. I told you I was fine. Now leave me.”
“But you’re hur-”
Dusaan sensed her hesitation, then heard her withdraw. He lightly traced a finger over the places where Grinsa had cut him, feeling blood everywhere. He must look a mess. He ran a hand through his hair, knowing that he shouldn’t have yelled at Nitara. It was Grinsa who did this to him, who filled him with rage and clouded his mind.
He would have to clean himself and change his clothes. He would have to find some way to still his trembling hands. And then he would make himself sleep as well. What he said to Nitara was doubly true for himself. Tomorrow did promise to be a great day, the culmination of years of planning and a lifetime of dreams.
Tonight the gleaner had won, but his was a hollow victory. Dawn would bring the end of Eandi rule in the Forelands, and the ascension of a new Qirsi Supremacy.
* * *
“He wants his shapers and those with mists and winds on the flanks,” Jastanne said, her eyes flicking from Uestem to the three commanders sitting with him. “They’re our best defense against the Eandi archers. As long as we can guard ourselves from their arrows, we’ve nothing to fear.”
