She needed to cough away pain, but the effort was unthinkable.
Stralg, Stralg! So the monster would outlive her? By one of holy Cienu's divine jests, the Witnesses of Mayn and the Heroes of Weru in Vigaelia had each received a new leader on the same day. She had been named in the dying words of her predecessor. How Weru revealed His choice was a secret of His mysteries, but the death toll suggested that mortal combat would be a reasonable guess.
About twenty sixdays later, Stralg had come calling at Bergashamm. It had been done on a whim, certainly, or else the seers would have felt his intention. Leading a host through the neighborhood, he had suddenly detoured and thrown a cordon around the Cloisters. He had entered alone—over a locked gate, ripping a door from its sockets, and marching into the innermost sanctum, the great hall, where none but Witnesses might come.
The vault was high and dim, for the Witnesses had no need of light and large windows would pass drafts to disturb the webs. From Bergashamm the seers went out into the world to Witness. When they returned, it was to the hall they brought the truths they had garnered, the threads they had spun, there to be woven into the great webs that were their records of the world and its ways. They sang as they worked among the high looms, weaving melody as they wove happenings, glorifying their goddess.
The Eldest was there when Stralg intruded. His coming had been seen by then, of course. The singing had faltered into cries of terror and the others had all fled. She stood alone, still and white-draped in the gloom, forcing herself not to shrink from the stench of evil.
He was still young then, powerful—wickedly handsome and arrogant to the point of insanity, daring to violate this house of peace. The scars on his limbs were visible to all. Her sight told her of worse hidden under his all-black pall, and traces of wound fever still lingered in his too-bright eyes, but his many jousts with death had given him no humility. He reeked of both cruelty and ruthlessness, but so much cruelty that the other hardly mattered. If he so chose, he could wield the fearsome blessing of his god to destroy everyone in the abbey single-handedly.
"You are in charge of this brothel?" He had a magnificent voice, she recalled, probably the most melodious male voice she had ever heard.
"I am the Eldest of the Witnesses, yes. You are the light of Weru on Vigaelia."
"I need your wisdom."
She could smell the bloodlust on him and fully expected to die. "The only wisdom I will give you, Fist, is that the best warriors never need to fight. Use your strength to keep peace, not make war. Holy Demern enjoins us that the weak should be protected, not oppressed."
"Demern? Weru is my god!" Stralg grabbed up a folded, completed web and ripped it in a fearsome demonstration of physical strength. "I came for wisdom, Eldest! Not platitudes. The Heroes of Weru are divided. They squabble over dogma, over personal ambition—even over political trivia, for when the merchants of a city covet the trade of another, they send their Werists to rend other Werists. I will unify the cult."
The Eldest remained silent, praying for courage to bear whatever might happen. There were very few men in Bergashamm, none of them fighters, and Stralg had sealed the abbey.
"All Werists will be loyal to me," he said. "I will appoint governors to rule the cities, and I will set my brothers as satraps over them. They will rule all Vigaelia in my name. Then we shall have peace, not war. You must approve. You will assist."
She spoke what she expected to be her epitaph. "Never. The world does not concern us. We renounce it, personally and collectively, to pursue knowledge for its own sake. We may neither meddle in events nor share our wisdom with others, and this has been our creed for more lifetimes than even we can number. Many a sister has perished in torment for refusing to advise a tyrant, knowing her death will be a sign to the people that their ruler is unworthy."
He met this defiance with a winsome, almost boyish smile. "And have not those same tyrants frequently discovered their enemies coming against them armed with perfect knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses?"
"Such has been recorded."
" 'Such has been recorded'! Is that the closest you can come to lying? You regularly testify for the Speakers."
"They are the only exception. Wisdom cannot flourish without peace and order. In criminal matters we provide evidence for those who judge in the name and by the laws of holy Demern."
"From now on, you and your seers will serve me instead."
"No." Fear swelled in her heart, for his mind was clotted blood and he planned worse than just her death.
Stralg smiled and departed.
Shortly thereafter he sent in some of his brutes and they took away five.
♦
The mangled bodies were returned the following morning, but of course every seer had seen what was being done in his camp during the night. He took away ten more. The Eldest knew by then that Stralg Hragson would wipe out the cult before he would yield.
Her only hope sprang from the blessing of her goddess, for she could feel the revulsion seething in the Werists who came each morning to return the corpses and drag away more victims. Twenty, then forty ... None of the bloodlord's men was as ruthless as he was, but the mutiny she prayed for failed to appear. Their rage was directed against her, for forcing them to perform such atrocities, and their loyalty to Stralg grew stronger, not weaker. On the fifth day they drove away eighty victims, but they also broke into the storerooms and took bales of priceless weavings, which they burned. Next morning, when most of the Witnesses remaining had collapsed in shock, the Eldest went out to him.
They met in a rainstorm in a field of mud stinking with blood and death, while his sullen host watched from the distance. The corpses of the eighty were being loaded into carts.
"So you value cloth more than life?" he mocked. "I must try burning buildings, too."
"We shall yield," she said, "partway."
His laughter was not pretense. "You will yield utterly, or die. Do you think I cannot double eighty, or burn your abbey around your ears?"
"Then you destroy us, for we shall lack the numbers to gather the knowledge you require."
He showed her his wolfish teeth. "If I cannot have it, no one shall. I will torch your storerooms today. Yield or die, old woman."
"Hear my terms. We shall answer your questions, but yours only. You do not want every warrior to be omnipotent."
His eyes narrowed as the evil mind behind them calculated. "That is true wisdom. But it takes many sixdays to send a message across the Face. So you will answer my hostleaders also. I promote only whom I trust. Them and myself."
"You and no more than four hostleaders." She felt his surge of triumph.
"And no one else!"
"No one else," she agreed. "And we keep our anonymity, our habits and veils. Our persons will not be harmed."
He shrugged his indifference, well pleased with what he had won. "Where is Hostleader Snirson and how many Werists does he have with him?"
"Snirson died of wounds a sixday ago. His host has scattered."
Stralg laughed again; he had known that.
"One other thing," the Eldest said. "We shall never volunteer information. We give true answers and nothing more."
He liked that less, for he was a clever man. The balance of his mind swung back toward death and horror. "Then you can aid my foes."
"I have said we shall not."
"By remaining silent you can aid them."
"To tell everything that may be relevant would take forever. Do you want sixty-sixty sisters babbling in your ears all day long? Ask if a man is a traitor and we shall tell you, but we shall not warn. Only holy Mayn knows all. Those are my terms. Accept them or slay us."
Stralg had hesitated, angrily weighing compromise against massacre. Then, impatient and flushed with victory, he had accepted her terms. He had never gotten around to imposing others, and while the concessions she had won were almost meaningless, she was probably the only person who had ever made that monster back up even a hairsbreadth.