The Dragon's Tapestry

Chapter Eleven

They almost left without her at the next waking wind. But she followed, her face set, her hands curled and stuffed into her apron pocket on either side of Cudgham-ip. Crob had protested when Camlach said he would choose his own mount, but he had been consoled that the city soldiers would be busy with the fire damage. They said nothing when she followed them, stomping proudly behind, Maug in tow like a pale shadow.

The streets were sodden and muddy with ash. The market was closed. Only the bones remained: old tables black with pud­dles, frame casings for hanging wares blown over, broken shelves and the refuse of the day before. Their footsteps echoed uneven­ly. They stepped over discarded fruit peels, bits of torn oilcloth and shards of broken clayware. On either side of her were the dull silent stone walls and before her the bent backs of Crob and Camlach. Maug walked apart from them, but she did not look at him.

She could never have said what she felt at that moment. She thought of the Stumble, the brook that ran through the hills and into Marmawell, and how it looked when it was dry in drought, no more than a gash of mud and stone, and buried in the mud, the slimy eyeless creatures that slept, waiting for the water to return. Which was the brook: the wormy bed in which the water ran or the bright quick water that hastened after a spring rain, cool and clear and silvered with little fish? And who was she? A young Oldwife who could spin spells like threads, whose father was sought by dragons, or a sorceress, a girl with­out a tapestry, a girl who lied and deceived and brought black magic?

She bumped into Crob. They had stopped before a small, roped-off herd of wingwands bundled together morosely, limp and bedraggled as a bouquet of bruised flowers. They had been penned for a long time, and the stench made Marwen’s eyes water. A near-naked boy standing by with a prodder approached them, winking and grinning.

“They’re cheap today. Nobody buying today, see. Three gold discs is all—take yer pick.” Crob stepped closer, but the boy barred his way with his prodder. “No closer please. They bite.” He grinned, baring his brown teeth, and winked.

Crob growled, but Camlach shook his head, warning him silently not to make a scene. “That one, then,” Crob said point­ing to a handsome female with pale blue head, feet, and wings.

“Ah, Chalkhill Blue. Good choice, ol’ molehead,” the boy said. Crob growled again.

“I will have the young male with the hump,” Camlach said quickly. He had chosen a huge orange and scarlet beast, and when its wings rustled, they flickered like flame. It appeared to be a muscular animal, though its backfur, even from here, looked dirty and matted.

“Wi-Bisti,” the boy nodded.

“And one more,” Camlach said. Marwen met his eyes. His eyelids were blue from bruising and his lip seemed drawn down by a scar on his mouth. He was much better. But even in the cage where she’d first seen him there hadn’t been this much pain in his eyes. He didn’t smile at her, but neither did he look away. “Your price was one wingwand. You can share your mount with Maug if you will.”

Marwen nodded once and pointed into the herd. “I will have that one, the mottle-brown.”

The naked boy shook his head. “That one don’t have a name. Flew into the herd during the storm. Could be bad luck, but,” he winked and grinned, “too late now.” He led the three beasts they had chosen away from the rest of the herd and pocketed the money Camlach gave him. “The folks is as good as the peo­ple, now,” he said, and he sauntered back to the herd, wielding his prodder like a cane.

The beasts were hungry. Their antennae drooped. Crob shook his head and ran his hand over the blistered hocks and hinds of his animal. He was sweating. “This one—I am not sure she can carry very fat me.”

Camlach examined his animal in disgust, then looked up at the dirty lad. “I ought to teach you not to cheat your betters,” he said.

“Who is better, scarface?” the boy said laughing, and then he stopped. His prodder fell to his side. “Say, don’t that scarface look familiar?” In the next moment he was gone, running on bare silent feet.

“I don’t like that lad. We should be swift,” Crob said.

Marwen patted her wingwand. It was a docile creature, and, though its backfur had been fouled by the black greasy rain, it was by far the best of the three.

“Mothball is your name,” she said.

“Look, she has never been clipped,” Camlach said, reaching under Mothball’s wing, but as he did so, his hand brushed Marwen’s hand.

Marwen stood still. She did not look at Camlach. But the hand Camlach had touched trembled and from that one touch the blood rolled in her veins like some scalding magic.

Camlach, too, was still. “She may be a wild wingwand or one half-tamed that escaped,” he said. “She may be hard to control.”

Marwen said nothing.

“Were it not for your magic, Marwen, I would be dead,” he said, moving closer. “Come to me when you have your tapestry.”

“I will not come,” she said.

His face was quiet, but his eyes were filled with the look of one who had wakened to find his dreams are not real.

“Come,” he said again.

“If I have any pride I will not come,” she said, but the blood-magic made her shake her head and smile. “So expect me.”

“Guards!” hissed Crob.

Maug leaped onto Mothball.

“Ho! You! Halt!” A tangle of soldiers ran with heavy booted feet toward them. One of them was a guard that had watched over Camlach when he was entombed.

Marwen mounted the wingwand in front of Maug. Camlach was still watching her, smiling. “Watch, Prince,” she said. “Watch how I fly this wild wingwand.”

“Fly! Fly!” Crob called to Camlach, but the Prince was watching her. Mothball bucked once and then rose into the air, flying south and east.

Below her, Marwen could see the soldiers were almost upon Camlach, and his wingwand was slow in takeoff. Marwen whis­pered a spell into the wind, a spell for strength to his beast and Crob’s. Then they, too, were airborne.

The rain had turned the brown muscled hills green.

The solid gray sky closed the world in like a vast empty skull, with low-floating cloud like bits of white matter still clinging to the bone. In the east a vein of bloodred sunlight oozed through on the horizon, and the wind blew, moaning and uneasy, like the ghosts of bad dreams.

Before, Marwen had always felt healing and happiness in the hills, and she had milked their magic into her being. But these hills withheld their power, as though they would force her back. When Mothball landed to eat near a spring, Marwen stayed close to the beast, feeding her flowers—fon and bugboots, and gall-pollen where she could find it. Maug hovered nearby like a shad­ow, silent, dark, and distorted, until she sent him away to look for more treats for Mothball. He disappeared over a hill, and Marwen filled her lungs with air.

“Such a sorry thing you are, Mothball,” she said. “Eat, eat.” Her words seemed muffled and her voice small on the far-stretching slopes. There was not another man or beast for as far as the eye could see, and Marwen had never felt so alone.

As Mothball grazed and Cudgham-ip harvested insects, Mar­wen rested on the hillside beside the spring. She thought of Camlach and that, if only she could believe it, he loved her. Her own love for him was emerging from her heart as a brilliantly-hued newborn wingwand emerges from its shell. She thought of Grondil and ached for her council. She rolled onto her stomach and pressed her cheek against the earth. She stretched out her arms and grasped the earth with her hands, remembering the dragon like a great winged cloud, blacker than the storm clouds, moving across the sky and speaking her father’s name.

“Oh, Mother,” she whispered into the dust, “beautiful One Mother—the Oldwife Grondil told me that I was promised to you and to your children, the gods. But what am I that you should want me? Could it be that I am...?” She stopped, unable even to say the words. “I am small, Mother, and weak, and I am lost, knowing not the way I should go, nor what I should do, having no tapestry.”

For a long time, Marwen lay very still, listening. She heard the pulse of the earth’s heart far beneath her and remembered a time when she had wondered if it beat for her. Then her life had only one course. Now the future had become shrouded. It stretched before her, vast and pathless, every direction ending in fear and failure. Then she had dreamed of finding a wizard who did not exist; now she sought in reality a wizard who was afraid to free the dragon and who might, wonder of wonders, be her father. Then she had one passion—her magic; now there was also Camlach, he a prince and she, or so Camlach thought, a soulless one. Perhaps they were right, perhaps she had been without her tapestry so long that her soul had blown away on the wind, perhaps it was her soul that piped tunelessly in the folds of the hills. She listened, her eyes dry.

After a time she lifted her head. She had heard this lilting tuneless voice before. It was the clear water of the spring. Remembering the advice of the grandfather stone, she crawled to its edge and looked into its depths, and in a moment, bright and bold, beneath a quivering layer of water, appeared a three­ dimensional world of mountains and sky and grass and flowers. Marwen cried out in wonder and reached down her hand to touch the little weedsheep that grazed on the mountainside, but her hand entering the water disturbed the picture, and it van­ished in ripples.

“No, come back,” she laughed, and when Cudgham-ip came close to the water to drink, she shooed him away. She stayed very still until the water was as clear as a mirror, and the little world was again beneath the surface of the spring.

There was a shack on the mountain slope. Flowers grew wild around the shack, in the windows and on the roof, and Marwen could see each tiny flower in exquisite detail. In a moment her eye was drawn elsewhere, for a party of wingwands came flying with great speed over the lower end of the slope. Riding the beasts were fighting men, the King’s soldiers, Marwen thought, for their shields and cloaks bore the King’s insignia. Almost all carried at least one passenger—village men, women, and chil­dren. The soldiers dismounted in a field of yellow flowers at the base of the hill and helped their riders down. Marwen saw that the people the soldiers helped were hurt and wounded. Her delight turned to horror. They had been burned. Marwen could see a mother whose hands were white as wax, the fingers mere stubs, holding and stroking and speaking softly to her child as it wailed in pain. She watched as a soldier spread a cloak over the hairless head of a girl about her own age who had died.

The tiny soldiers in the watery picture herded the group of peasants into the middle of a circle that the wingwands had formed. The soldiers drew their arrows as over the top of the mountain flew an enormous creature of august beauty. Its shape was lizardlike, its scales silver-black, reflecting the summersun into a thousand, thousand rainbows. Beneath the creature’s diaphanous taloned wings, the mountain seemed shrunken and insignificant. “Perdoneg,” Marwen whispered, and her breath ruffled the surface of the water. From the dragon’s mouth came a curl of blue fire, and its eyes glowed and faded like burning embers as it looked on the huddled group below it.

Bravely the soldiers sent their arrows heavenward, but none pierced the dragon’s thick scales, and after circling the mountain once more with two wingstrokes, the creature descended upon them and killed them all with one blast of its flaming smoking breath.

Marwen pulled back and screamed. She could not remove her eyes from the scene.

The dragon looked at her. As though the spring were a win­dow into her world, Perdoneg looked at Marwen and saw her.

He began to fly toward her, as if he would come through the surface of the water.

“So it is you, Marwen,” he hissed, and his voice was like the wind in a field of grass. “Daughter of Nimroth, heir to the wiz­ard, come to me. You are mine.”

On he came until the vision of him filled the entire spring, and Marwen, in terror, splashed the water violently to dispel the image.

“‘Daughter of Nimroth, heir to the wizard, daughter of Nim­roth, heir to the wizard, daughter of Nimroth...’” The words rolled over and over in her head until she thought she must scream to stop them.

She sat beside the dim weed-filled water for a long time, her body still and quiet, her mind racing, reeling with fear and with something else. There were no more images in the water, save the grim face of a girl she no longer knew. She was afraid, for Perdoneg knew her name and sought her, and his magic was great. So long as she had no tapestry, she did in truth belong to him.

Fear welled up in her like a filling blister, but the girl in the water smiled. For she was Marwen, Daughter of Nimroth, heir to the wizard.

“It is seemly that one so evil should believe the words of this creature from hell.” It was Maug.

Marwen started, not understanding his words. He stood a few paces from her, his fists clenched, his eyes wild, but compared to the dragon, he was a child, a silly child having a tantrum.

“I have had a seeing....” she said, not really to him but to herself.

“I saw your ‘seeing,’ though by what power you brought it, I would not say,” he growled.

She looked at him sharply.

“Was it not real? Was that not the dragon you saw with your own eyes?”

“It was,” Maug said.

“Then it is true.” She looked to the northwest where she knew was the province of Verduma. “I am the heir. He will come for me. Perdoneg will seek me now, and one cannot run away from a dragon.”

She felt Maug’s anger like a storm cloud, felt him come close. She looked back at him. His face contorted and a crack of laugh­ter burst from his lungs as his hand cracked against her face.

Her cheek burned a moment and then felt cold, so cold she touched it to see if she were bleeding. Her skin was hot and dry.

“I have known you since we were children, Marwen. I know you. Better than Camlach knows you. You are nothing, no one.” He poked her hard with his finger. “You are clumsy and doltish. If I believed you were the wizard’s heir, then I would be even more the unbeliever.” He laughed on and on until he could only moan and hold his stomach. Finally he said, “If you were ... the wizard’s heir, what should you do? You have no staff and no skill to battle with dragons. How could you help your Prince Camlach? You are no one, a village Oldwife’s adopted child, a refugee.”

Marwen knelt before the spring. Slowly she raised in cupped hands the cool water to her face and splashed it on to her skin. It was the same cheek that Cudgham had struck. She washed her neck, arms, and legs, slowly, deliberately. Then she waited for the spring’s surface to become still, until her reflection was clear as a mirror. She teetered on the brink of belief, between two truths. Sometimes, or perhaps always, it was the knowledge of one’s tapestry, not the fact, that made it true. The tapestry was not the thief of agency, it did not rob her of making her own life: it was a guide, a map to a place that was already within her heart.

He sees the world from his own eyes, she thought, and he sees a world of ugliness. There is no spell to change that.

“I am not ugly,” she said, and in her voice was belief and utter calm.

Maug and Marwen stared at each other. Nuwind blew his brass-colored hair across his eyes, and he blinked.

“We will leave now for Loobhan, for the Oldest,” he said. The laughter was gone from his voice.

She put her cool hand on her cheek.

It would be easy to do as he asked, to run away from the dragon, perhaps, with the help of the Oldest, to reverse the spell on Cudgham-ip and obtain her own tapestry. Then she would be safe. Then she would have her way made plain, her way through life and her way to the lands of the dead. But how strange, to leave behind living to obtain a map for her life. Already sorrow and good sense had taught her that in her tapestry would be a white wingwand, moons for femininity, and perhaps ... a crown. And living would teach her more, as Politha had promised.

She peered into the depths of the spring. She could see only the blackness of deep water. But no, there was a shape around the blackness. It was the shape of a head, roundish like a child’s, but the skin was charred to a perfect blackness.

“The dragon will find me if I run away,” she said. “But he will not expect me to seek him. I am going to Verduma, to my father’s house.”

“To your Verduman Prince, no doubt, and to your death. Well, I will not go.”

She felt his hatred reaching out long white fingers toward her, but when they touched her, she felt something else less clean than hatred.

She said, “You must come. I must make haste, so I need Mothball.”

“I will not go.”

“Then I must leave you here in the hills, and Loobhan is many days’ journey yet.” She gathered Cudgham-ip into her apron pocket. As she straightened, Maug threw his arms around her to bind her. She struggled to breathe against the press of his arms.

“Leave me, and I will live to hate you,” he whispered into her ear. “I will drink of my loathing for you and eat of my revulsion every step of my way across these hills. And if I die, I will die cursing you.”

“Maug, I’ll come back,” she said struggling. “I’ll stand wit­ness for your tapestry.... I promise....”

“You will die. Nothing can stand against the Serpent.”

His fingers dug into her breast. She closed her eyes and saw the white fingers in the places of magic inside her, and she saw herself peeling them back and back....

There was a snapping sound, and Maug fell away with a yelp. He squirmed on the ground until she went to him and with a word healed his broken finger.

“Come with me,” she made herself say.

He did not answer, only looked at her with eyes she could not understand, white eyes.

Marwen hesitated and then took her tapestry pouch from around her waist. She put the wingwand ornament that Camlach had carved for her into her apron pocket along with Cudgham-ip and gathered some rocks to put in the tapestry pouch. She whispered a spell over them and watched as they glowed red-hot, then handed them to Maug.

“With this you can roast roots and leaves to make them edi­ble.” She turned to Mothball and removed the stockings from her antennae. “Come, let us fly.”

She dropped the old rusted lock near the spring as they rose into the air, and then Marwen set her face northward, toward Verduma. She felt the white fingers become longer, and then there were arms and wings, but they could not pull her back.