The Dragon's Tapestry

Chapter One

Marwen hefted the waterjar filled with spring water and turned to go home. This one chore she detested less than others, for she could ramble and dawdle in the hills and be alone for a time.

Marwen had always known that the hills of Marmawell were enchanted. She wondered that none of the other villagers could see it. Softly grassed, like fur, they were alive to her, pulsing with a molten heart. She knew each rise and swell, each rounded pro­file. Some hills were no more than fleshy mounds, shoulders and hips or cleft like breasts; some had faces that spoke to her of spellbound princes doomed to see without blinking the passing of the eons; some were moldering giants covered by a thin layer of dust, with rocks protruding in a row like spines; and some, strange nurseries with boulders nestled like great eggs in the grasses.

In the warm soft light of the dawnmonth, the dew burnished the slopes of grass and gleamed on yellow beegems. Even the insects flew past her swift and straight, their flight purposeful in the dawnspring morning. Marwen faced the wind, which blew straight and hard and low along the ground. She spread her arms and knew she was the first obstacle the wind had met for many furlongs, and so it would know it was wind again.

She could scarcely remember now the long months of winter-dark. It seemed to her as if her life had begun only this day, for at last Council Grondil had kept her long promise to make Marwen her apprentice when she came of age in her sixteenth sun. Grondil was the Oldwife of Marmawell, one of those women in whose order was found the last vestiges of magic and power in all Ve. Their task as Oldwives was to weave the tapestry for each child at birth, their gift to interpret the tapestry for all who asked. In each town and village, the influence they wielded was great, for their hand was over wedding feast and mourner’s fast alike.

No one in Marmawell dared murmur when Grondil announced her intentions and her adept. From the time Marwen had been a young child, she had shown a predilection for magic: a pink flower stroked into purple before the eyes of the other children, a dream come true, pictures fashioned of hearthsmoke that van­ished but not before all had seen. None dared murmur, for Grondil loved her young charge, and there would be no swaying her. Many whispered among themselves that the girl was unseemly in the use of her talent, but, if the truth be known, they feared her precocity. A few grumbled that it would be bad luck, that she was not Grondil’s true daughter and that she had no tapestry to validate her calling, the people of Ve being of long and lawful tradition. They said she had no tapestry at all and thus no soul—what could the magic be in the hands of a soulless one?

But it was done and Marwen rejoiced. Her hand went down to the beautiful tapestry pouch at her side. At one’s apprentice­ship, one was considered old enough to carry the tapestry, and Grondil had put many hours of work into Marwen’s pouch. Marwen had been so long among the villagers without a tapestry that the villagers scarcely thought it worth quarreling about when she had begun to wear the pouch with nothing to put in it, though some had glowered and gossiped.

“Someday,” Grondil whispered when she had tied it to Marwen’s waist, “someday may it be filled.”

The waterjar became heavy on her shoulders, and at the top of the next rise, she stopped to rest and breathe in the scent of the village spice gardens far below.

From here the round thatched roofs of the village looked like burrs on the smooth sinews of the valley foothills, but Marwen preferred the way the village looked in winterdark. Then the thatched roofs, glowing with firelight and light pouring from the east windows, looked like bleeding moons.

From further up the hill near Stumble Brook, Marwen could see two girls her age walking and sharing the load of their water-jars. She had played with Dalett and Lirca when she was younger, but they had run away from her since they were old enough to understand the word soulless. She watched them approach.

They didn’t look at her. They circled around her and giggled and whispered. Marwen made her face still as stone and tried to swallow the dryness in her throat.

When they were past, she reached into her apron pocket and touched the Songbook, which contained all the spells and enchantments of Ve. While other children played, she had mas­tered the names of hill and stone more quickly than any other names, and the names of the grasses and the flowers, and the names of the waters: rain water and dew water, snow water and the water of Stumble Brook. Marwen whispered a brief spell. Lirca tripped on a rock and tumbled, spilling her water. Dalett cooed and comforted her friend, and shared her water with her. They didn’t look at Marwen. They didn’t suspect her. For them she didn’t exist. Marwen wanted to cry out, “I did it! It was me, my magic.” But she could not. She was voiceless, soulless. She was nothing, and her tricks meant nothing.

After they were out of sight, Marwen removed the book from her apron pocket, the leaves crackling with age. In the margins a poet, Grondil told her, had made hand drawings of dragons. She touched the drawings with her finger, traced them over and over. “Trouble up north,” she had heard some of the villagers whispering lately, “dragon trouble.” But others scoffed, for no dragons had flown in Ve for many generations. When Marwen was a little child, Grondil had often comforted her during Ve’s long winters of darkness by assuring her that dragons only lived on the isles of the sea, far away from the shores of Ve. As Mar­wen gazed at the dragon drawings, the beasts frozen in fierce stillness, she thought that the poet had not imagined but seen, and she believed.

Nuwind passed and windsong began to blow. Greedily she read and memorized a few spells and enchantments that went beyond her level of learning. From the Tenets of the Tapestry every child was taught, but only the Oldwife read the Songs of the One Mother. Grondil, she knew, would be worried. “Too soon,” she would say, “too much knowing and too little discretion.” But Marwen could not stop herself. The words filled her up and gave her shape, and the empty places felt less empty. After a time a delicious sleepiness spread to her limbs, and she lay back on the grass. She could almost feel the world spin beneath her like a vast and immortal beast, and she wondered if it was for her, also, that the beast lived. Here in the wash of windsong she could find her magic. From the time she was a child, she had known this power, this passion that Grondil had taught her was called magic. It was her friend, a guide for one who had no tapestry, a soul for one who had no soul.

In Grondil’s lap and before Grondil’s loom, in Grondil’s arms and in the arms of the magic, Marwen was god-given and talent­ed, the magic’s maiden, Grondil’s only love. In Grondil’s house or alone in the mountains, Marwen felt as big as a world, power­ful and important and beautiful. But the moment she went into the village, she shriveled, her back stooped and she became awk­ward and stupid. When the villagers looked at her, they cast a spell with their eyes, and she became as small and insignificant as a dust mote, light and almost invisible, as empty and dark as her tapestry pouch.

Marwen opened her tapestry pouch. It wasn’t completely empty. Carefully she took out a small stone she had found, almost perfectly round and blue as a summersun sky. She had shown it to Grondil who told her how it had been pushed and scrubbed and squeezed for a thousand years to be so round. If she had a tapestry, Marwen thought, it would have one blue thread the color of her stone. To wish for more would be greedy. She closed her eyes, rubbed its smoothness and tried to remember its exact shade of blue.

She felt a sudden pain as the stone was knocked from her hands. Marwen swallowed a cry and sucked hard on her knuckles.

“I might have knowed ye’d be idle, ya limpsy lollabed. Up! Up!” It was Cudgham Seedmaker, Grondil’s husband. Marwen scowled at him. He was a goatish man who wore his shoes on the wrong feet when they wore out to make them last longer and who had a fair reputation for never having said a true word in his life. He and Grondil had often argued over her because he defended the village children who tormented her. Once Marwen had overheard him laughing as some adults told of their children’s pranks against her. He had blamed it all on Grondil’s method of upbringing. Of late he had taken an interest in her upbringing and sometimes found her alone in the hills.

“But my rock ...” Marwen said.

She saw it and reached for it, but a green and rust-striped ip lizard darted its tongue at her, and she drew her hand away quickly. She slid back slowly, not breathing, watching it, a lethargic creature, sun-loving and sleepy, deadly. This was a young one, its rust stripes stark against the green grass. Its eyes were like Cudgham’s, Marwen thought, small and sly and black as mobbleberries.

“There be callers awaiting, girl. No time to waste. Ye must leave childish ways behind.” He looked long at her from the height of his beast. “Ye are a woman now, aye, and an Oldwife’s apprentice.”

Callers! Perhaps someone needing her magic ... She climbed onto the beast behind him with one last look for her beautiful blue stone, but the ip lizard had curled its body around it. Cudgham balanced the waterjar before him, and Marwen put her arms around his girth.

“I always says to Grondil, ‘Someday that girl will be a pester,’ and now I see that I be a prophet,” Cudgham said. “There now, hold close, girl.”

Marwen said nothing, only closed her eyes and her nose against his presence.

In flight Cudgham stretched out his arm toward the northern wilderness, rolling and barren.

“Now there’s a place where no man has placed his foot. I’d like to try my seeds in that soil, I would. Maybe I’ll send Maug to test that soil.” That Cudgham had chosen her cousin Maug as his apprentice was an insult to Marwen that still stung.

“He is not a seedmaker, he is a carver,” she had protested.

“What good is that?” Cudgham answered. “He never makes anything.”

Marwen had made that observation herself once in Maug’s presence, and for that he seemed to hate her all the more.

She tried not to think about it. She thought how Cudgham had never left Marmawell in all his life, and she knew he never would. The villagers were content with their spice gardens and the living they brought. Let Buffle Spicetrader travel to distant cities to peddle their goods, the villagers had no such desire. They had no love for the wilderness hills. But Marwen gazed toward the desert hills and dreamed of dragons and how she would slay them.

The podhens burst into a flurry of feathers and squawks when they landed before the cottage, and Marwen by habit picked up an egg here, a handful of down there as she walked through the yard to the door. Grondil’s hill goat nudged her at the doorway, and Marwen stopped to pull a burr from his beard.

“It’s that useless girl of yours,” she heard a nasal voice say. “Always off in the mountains, trifling away the hours with her tricks. Oh, yes, she can make the podhens lay black eggs, but I ask a simple spell of sharpening on my knives, and the dunder-lass fails with her magic. Such a simple thing, Grondil, one you have done for me for years. I’ll tell you what I think should have been in her tapestry—if you had made her one....”

Marwen listened in the shadow of the doorway until her hands trembled, and then she stepped forward.

The women looked up then in the dim light of the cottage. Grondil’s eyes were large like blue wounds. Three other women sat in the room, too, village wives with cold porridge faces and eyes like dry stones.

“What do you say to this, child?” Grondil asked, her voice scarcely more than a whisper, as was proper for an Oldwife.

Marwen was sick of the Tenets of the Tapestry by which the Oldwives must live, forever servants to their people, using their magic in all meekness, and she was angry with Grondil. They are in Grondil’s house, she thought, in my house, and here they cannot make me voiceless.

“Perhaps the spell missed the knife and sharpened her tongue instead,” Marwen said quietly but clearly.

The women began to cluck, but Grondil silenced them with a gesture, her eyes steadily on Marwen. Marwen looked away first, shame blocking her throat. She approached Sneda, the woman who had been speaking. She had a large butcher knife in her lap, and Marwen took it in her hands.

She hated them all passionately in that moment, Sneda and the others for their bullish bossy ways and Grondil for her quiet acceptance. Perhaps that was why, as Marwen ran her finger down the blade of the knife, she was able so quickly to attune her mind to its cold still spirit, its essence of steel and silver that bade it be a knife, an instrument of blood and death. She spoke in its language, the language of hill and stone and hidden met­als, of which she knew a little, and reminded it of its purpose and of its beauty in sharpness.

When she was done, her eyes focused on the three women, and she held out the knife in her two hands. “It is a good knife.”

Sneda took the knife. Gently she touched the blade, and her brows arched, for blood dripped into her palm.

“Witch!” Sneda spat. Quickly she became alarmed, for the blood began to flow freely, and the women gathered around her, clamoring until Grondil covered the wound with an herb dressing.

The women left, their bodies and mouths rigid, the knife held gingerly by the handle.

“The magic is my friend,” Marwen said softly to herself as she watched the three women through the east window. She smiled and spoke more loudly to Grondil. “With my magic I am this much bigger than Sneda and her old cronies.” She made a huge gesture with her arm above her head.

“Bigger, perhaps,” Grondil said, “but misshapen and ugly.”

Marwen’s mouth opened to speak and then slowly closed. Misshapen and ugly is better than invisible, she thought, but she couldn’t say it aloud. Grondil was gathering herself, probably reciting all sorts of old tenets on containing one’s anger, and she would expect Marwen, as her apprentice, to be doing the same.

For a long time after that, Grondil was silent, not because of any wish to punish her, Marwen knew, but because an Oldwife could not speak until she was in complete control of her emo­tions. They went about their duties, sweeping, cutting vegeta­bles, mending, but Marwen worked distractedly and Grondil with obsessive concentration.

Finally Marwen could bear the quiet no longer, and as they sorted a tray of Cudgham’s seeds, she said, “Why didn’t you tell her you’ve hated using your magic for sharpening her nasty knives all these years. I should have turned her into an ip.”

“I have loved you too much,” Grondil said, her voice serene and hushed. She threw a bad seed into the fire. “The gods sent you to me. I was grateful for their gift and promised them that you would be theirs, and so I was lenient with you, protected you, indulged you.” She looked at Marwen, but Marwen’s eyes did not relent.

“The women are right. You are willful, and you speak of the magic with carelessness, as though it belonged to you and not you to it.” She shook her head. “That is because you do not know the power you have.”

Marwen was surly. “They don’t respect you. They don’t respect the magic.”

“What need is there of respect?” asked Grondil, her palms to Marwen. “I trade my power for a living—is it to be held in more esteem than Sneda’s shoemaking? Is the Spellsmith greater than the Blacksmith if there is a need for magic and metals? Those skills may be worthy of more honor, for the gift is given but the skill is acquired.”

Marwen stared at her. Grondil had never sided with the oth­ers before. Since she was a child, Grondil had shielded her from the disdain of the villagers who called her a soulless one because she had no tapestry. And never before had Grondil told her of limitations or restricted her magic in any way.

She saw Grondil’s forehead crease, worry darkening her skin like wingshadow. Marwen said, “I will not trade my art for shoes and pots. I will be a great and powerful Oldwife, and do great deeds of magic, and everyone will fear me.”

Even in her own ears, the words sounded childish and hollow, but she narrowed her eyes and silently dared Grondil to laugh.

Grondil did not laugh. She folded her hands secretly like a wingwand folding her wings over her egg.

Marwen filled the embarrassing silence. “I shall do as Farrell in the Songs of the One Mother. I shall seek the Staffmaker, and he shall make me a staff, and I shall make wondrous magic. Per­haps I will find the wizard, and he will give me a soul.”

Grondil’s eyes filled briefly with light and then looked away. She sighed and seemed old to Marwen. “They say there is no wizard, Marwen, that the Songs are mere rhymes and fables.” She was quiet for a time, her hands still.

Marwen knew what the people said and believed, but the Songs were more real to her than the people, and she remained steadfast. Grondil held her doubt in her heart like a stillborn child, a sadness ever to mourn and wonder. But with every word people spoke about the wizard being gone from Ve, Marwen felt that when she found him, he would be more entirely hers.

Grondil knelt before her and with her finger drew in the hard-packed dirt floor the shape of an hourglass.

“When you were a child,” she said, “you thought, as I did when I was young, that as you grew in knowledge and magic, you would be able to do anything at all with your power. But see here—it is like the hourglass: the higher your powers, the narrower become your options to use it, for you come to know that every slight breath of magic moves the winds and the world. If you are gifted, Marwen, you will go through this narrow open­ing. You will be frightened in that time to use your power at all. And then one day, the Mother grant it, everything will open up before you, and you will be free because you will not want to use your magic for anything but good.”

Marwen heard her voice but not her words. She watched the thick-veined fine-boned hands that had woven many tapestries before Marwen’s awed eyes, the quick and clever fingers that had patiently taught, over and over, the knots of the loom, that had taught her to make sophisticated patterns by transferring threads from one shed to another.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why, Grondil, was there no tapestry for me?”

Grondil eyed the east window, rose from the floor and sat on her stool. With one motion of her foot, she erased the picture in the dust, then tucked her feet beneath her sheath. Nervously she fingered something in her apron pocket.

“Without a tapestry, the people of the village felt you could be exempted from being given to the Taker. Some felt it may be an insult to the Taker to leave a soulless one. I have explained this to you before. But...”

“But what?” Marwen asked. She had heard this “but” unspo­ken for years. Now for the first time Grondil had said it aloud. “But what?” she repeated.

Grondil could not answer her, for Sneda’s youngest was at the east window and there was need in her eyes.

“Grondil, Oldwife of Marmawell, let your hands be blessed,” the child said according to ritual. “Come with healing. My mother is hurt.”