The Dragon's Tapestry

Chapter Ten

Maug was hunkered on the floor before the dying fire, Politha was stroking his arm and whispering a spell of calming. Camlach pushed past Maug, ignoring him. He pulled off his wet overshirt and began coaxing the fire back to life.

“So. I was not wrong. I followed what I thought was the trail of the wizard to Kebblewok, and if Perdoneg himself came here, then the trail I followed is the right one.”

“Camlach, tell me what you know of the wizard,” Marwen said. She knelt beside him on the hearth.

The wind was blowing less violently now, more plaintively, and the rain was falling like a whispered song. Marwen waited for Camlach to speak, listening to the wind in the chimney. She did not repeat herself, she knew he had heard. She had waited all her life for this, it seemed; she surely could wait these moments more. She reminded herself that if nightmares could come true, so could dreams. When he did speak, there was a nobility in his voice that caused Marwen to see him as if for the first time.

“I went to the old people first. Many would not speak to me. But after some days, I learned from the elders of a man whose name is Nimroth”—Marwen watched his lips carefully as they formed the word—“or thus he called himself in the foothills of the Verduman mountains where he lived. Folk of the heights claim he was studious and spent much of his time alone in his books. They say he became expert in the history of the tapestry and its meaning. When he first came to dwell with the mountain people, he loved to sing and recite poetry, but as time went on, he hinted at finding dangerous things, and one day he disap­peared. I think this man is the wizard.”

Marwen thought nothing, said nothing. She could hear each drop of rain falling on the straw roof. She counted each drop of rain that fell through the chimney onto the fire, watched it sizzle and smoke. Finally she looked at Maug. His upper lip was drawn back, and his right eyelid drooped almost shut, and she was afraid of him.

If it were true ... but it could not be.

It could not be.

“But where is he?” Politha asked. “A wizard would know that you cannot run away from a dragon. Besides, he would have left an heir. It is, by legend, the most important task of the wizard.”

Camlach nodded. “Yes. No wizard would die without leaving his heir. But perhaps the wizard is not dead. Or if he is, the heir is unknown. This we know—that the heir does not dwell in the Verduman mountains. And this was my quest, to find the wizard or his heir. I have followed his trail to Kebblewok, speaking to old ones, believers, people to whom he revealed himself, but I can go no farther. I intend now to return to Verduma to seek the wizard’s house and find what help I can there. They say the dragon sleeps around a lonely house near the mountains and allows no one to enter. They even say it is a magical house that the dragon cannot destroy. Some have died trying to get into it. I believe it is the wizard’s house.”

“Then it is death to go there,” Politha said.

“To idly stand by while the dragon kills and destroys—that is a living death,” Camlach said staring into the fire. “No matter what my father says, I will go.”

“But not for a great while, Camlach,” Politha said. “Not until you are well again.”

Camlach looked at Marwen and smiled. “I look a lot better than she does right now.” His face sobered. “Are you all right?” Marwen nodded. She stood and walked to the window. She opened it and breathed deeply, desperately, the new-washed wind.

Camlach turned back to the old woman.

“No, I feel stronger every minute, thanks to you, Politha, and your healing spells. I have money.” He held up his jacket and, working open a small tear in the lining, showed a gold coin sewn inside, one of many. “If without dishonor I could ask one more favor of you, Crob, it would be to help me purchase a wingwand. I would begin my journey at waking winds.” Crob nod­ded and then knelt before Camlach.

“I have a favor to ask of you, also, my Prince,” Crob answered. The wind stopped utterly just as he spoke so that the words fell into the silence like the rain. Marwen turned to see Camlach’s back arch and his cheeks flame bright red. Politha held her apron to her face and bowed, and Maug slunk further back into the shadows. “How did you know, Crob?” Camlach asked.

“I’m sorry to reveal this your secret, Prince Camlach, but I think you can trust all here in my house. My father rose high in Verduman armies and served your father when king was a lad about your age. I was young then, but king, your father, was kind to me, and you are alike as two wingwand eggs. I hope the king is well.”

Camlach nodded. His eyes were deep-shadowed in the fire­light.

“As well as he can be,” he said, “with Perdoneg destroying the land.”

“And your brother?”

Camlach grinned wryly and absently rubbed his ankle.

“My brother is busy fighting the dragon at the head of my father’s army in the foothills near Rune-dar where the dragon often comes. When my father would not allow me to do battle, I insisted on seeking the wizard. My father is not a believer and thought it a fool’s chase, but he allowed it if I went in disguise. But now you know my secret, and you ask for a favor. What favor is it that I could grant you?”

Crob lowered his head. “I weary of exile from the only home­land I have known. I long once more to see snow mountains and drink with the brave men of Verduma. My hands would make leatherworks for kings, princes, queens. I would go with you, Prince Camlach, and be your servant, if you will have me.”

“To grant that favor would be to put me further in your debt, good Crob. I need a man of your wisdom and goodness at my side.” He smiled at Marwen uncertainly.

“Perhaps ...” he hesitated, as if thinking how he might phrase his question. “Perhaps Marwen, you, too, might consider join­ing me. When I am around you, I feel closer to my dream. It must be that I feel your belief.”

Marwen shut the windowboards carefully, slowly. She could no longer hear the wind and rain above the roaring in her ears. She stood for a moment, then turned and faced Camlach.

“Yes,” she said.

Maug threw some fuel onto the fire roughly and glowing ash sprayed into the room. “She cannot,” he said. His eyes were nar­rowed and his jaw clenched so tightly that the sinews in his neck protruded and the veins on his forehead swelled. Marwen sank back against the windowboards. The wind seeped in cold and wet on her back. Camlach was still. His eyes went back and forth between the two of them.

“But Maug, did you not hear what the dragon said?...” Mar­wen whispered.

“Silence!” he said. He looked at the fire. “She must go to the Oldest in Loobhan first.”

Maug had only to tell them that she had no tapestry, and that she was an exile from her village, to ruin everything—everything.

“I cannot,” she said.

Camlach turned his face toward her, away from the fire and into the shadows, ignoring Maug. Something in the way he held himself, as if keeping a great control over himself, something in the way he turned to her told her that he was truly a prince.

“What the dragon said was ‘Nimroth,’” he said carefully. “Is there meaning for you in that name, Marwen?”

Time was spinning her into a spidersilk cocoon. She knew that if she did not speak now, its threads would completely sur­round her, and she would not have another chance to tell it. She took a deep breath, felt the blood drain into her feet.

“I will tell you something,” she said. “The dragon is not in possession of his tapestry.”

No one spoke. She gripped the windowsill and raised her head high. She looked Maug in the eye.

“Master Clayware never spoke an untrue word, even you will not deny it, Maug. The dragon’s tapestry is in my father’s house, if his house still stands.”

Slowly Camlach stood up. Crob stood, too, and then Politha. Only Maug stayed close to the fire. He was playing with a hot coal, teasing it with the hearthspoon, blowing it bright red, let­ting it die, smiling grimly.

“That is a precious secret indeed,” said Camlach. “What is your father’s name, and where does he live?”

Marwen stared intently at the dying ember for a moment and then raised her head to look full into the Prince’s eyes.

“I am told he was from Verduma, and that his name was...” She swallowed. Her hands were shaking.

Camlach’s beaten face filled her vision.

“My father’s name was Nimroth,” she said.

As in the faceted eye of a wingwand she saw him, confusion and revelation breaking upon his face by turns, a hundred pol­ished planes of Camlach, peering down at her, seeing into her heart; and then only one face and one emotion: relief.

She was shaking her head and saying, “No, no, do not think it, it cannot be....” even before he grasped her arms and cried aloud.

“By the Mother!” He looked around the room at the others and back to her. He held her as if she would vanish under his grasp. “By the Mother! It explains the strength of your gift at so young an age, and the spell you cast so unwittingly over my heart, and why you were led here.... If this house in Verduma, the one of which I spoke, if this were your father’s house ... no wonder the dragon seems drawn to it. If it contains the dragon’s tapestry ... Is your father alive or dead?”

Looking into his face, she could believe it. Almost. “I don’t know. He never came for me,” she said.

“In any case, you are the wizard’s heir.”

She felt her face crumple into a frown. “A wizard’s heir would be so much greater than I.”

“It is a fearful thing to become one’s own god,” Camlach said. He bent his knees so that he might look into her eyes. “It does not lower your god but raises you. What god wants her child forever to eat the dust before her eyes?” Then he laughed exultantly and lifted her in his arms.

“Enough!”

All eyes turned to Maug. The heavy hearthspoon was in his hand, and his hand twitched. Camlach let her down gently, but his hand gripped her arm.

“She? The wizard’s heir? This skinny gray-faced girl who cheats her way into her Naming. You who call yourself a prince, look in her tapestry pouch. Look! It is empty. She is a soulless one, born with no tapestry. Could a soulless one be the wizard’s heir?”

Camlach laughed shortly, unbelievingly, and then, looking at Marwen’s face, became silent.

The silence in the room pressed in on Marwen’s ears, pressed down on her head so heavily that she felt she must collapse under the weight of it. Even the wind died suddenly, and the tiny whisper of the hourglass stopped. Crob and Politha had bent their heads down, but Crob glanced up at her with huge pity in his eyes.

“No, not soulless. I am not soulless. My tapestry was burned,” Marwen said, looking from face to face. Camlach’s hands had dropped away from her arm, and where he had touched, her arm felt cold. “My stepfather burned it—that was when I turned him into an ip....”

“Liar,” Maug said quietly. He took a stride toward her, rais­ing the soot-smeared hearthspoon, and then he stopped.

Between him and Marwen was the ip, its tail stiff in a fighting stance, its red tongue flickering. It hissed at Maug, and he stepped back, ashen-faced.

There was another long heavy silence.

“That is no ordinary ip,” Crob said finally, pointing.

“The girl is no ordinary Oldwife,” Politha said. “If you have a witness, I will remake your tapestry, child.”

Marwen almost cried out in pain at the disappointment in Politha’s voice. She had deceived this kind old woman.

“My stepfather is the only witness, and I—I cannot reverse the spell. I have tried every spell in the Songbook. That is why I sought the Oldest, thinking she could help me.”

Politha shook her head.

Marwen had not dared to look at Camlach. She could not bear to see his belief in her become suspicion.

“She has no tapestry to reweave. I have known her since we were children,” Maug said to Politha. He looked at the hearth-spoon in his hand and set it down. “But you can remake my tapestry for me, that was burned by the dragon.”

“And who will witness for you?” the old woman asked sharply.

“Marwen,” Maug answered. He ran his fingers through his greasy hair and smoothed it.

“A soulless one?” Windeven had softened away to windsigh, and though the rain had almost stopped, the eaves still gurgled and dripped. Maug stared at the old blind woman who did not blink or seem to breathe. “No soulless one can witness a tapestry,” she said firmly.

Maug ran his hand over his face. He looked blankly past Mar­wen. He had forgotten her. It was nothing to him that he had just made her a different person in the eyes of all these people—not a wizard’s heir, not even an Oldwife but something less than human, something that lived and breathed without a soul, some­thing small and ridiculous and evil.

“Then we will go to Loobhan, to the Oldest, as we had planned,” Maug said.

“No,” Marwen said. The magic was surging through her now like a windstorm, a half-stifled rage. It gathered at her fingertips like webstuff. “You have nothing to hold me with now, Maug. I will go to my father’s house ... with Camlach....”

But Crob and Politha turned away from her. She forced her­self to look at Camlach. The hollows in his cheeks were gray, and his bruised eyes were black in the shadows.

“One without a tapestry should not die,” he said. “And the name Nimroth is not unheard of in Verduma. Perhaps it is not much evidence.”

Marwen folded her fingers into her palms, held her arms close against her sides. She was afraid to speak.

“Marwen,” Politha said, “you have seen the dragon. Should you die before your tapestry is fulfilled, you will toil in his king­dom and do his bidding.” Her words were careful, her voice purposely kind, and Marwen thought she heard an edge of loathing in it.

“The dragon’s tapestry is mine,” she said at last, shrilly. “You won’t find it without me. I will hide it with spells. Even as I speak, I weave them.” She spoke more and more quickly. “It is a valuable thing to know that the dragon is without his tapestry, and for that knowledge there will be a cost: a wingwand, a beast strong enough to carry us across the wilderness to Loobhan.”

Maug shrank back into the shadows. The fire hissed and sput­tered fitfully. Politha and Crob bent to unroll their greatrugs for the sleeping winds were nigh, but their movements were slow and sad.

“Agreed,” Camlach said. His mouth sagged as if he remem­bered his bruises. Then, “Marwen—”

She didn’t look at him. She looked at the hourglass. “Don’t pity me,” she said.

That night Marwen dreamed of a white wingwand burning, its body blackening in dragonfire, its wings melting like silk in the flames, burning until there was nothing left but an eye spin­ning in the ashes, and it was looking for her.