The Dragon's Tapestry

Chapter Three

Cullerwind was blowing when Marwen at last left searching the hills and landed Opalwing in the yard. There had been no trace of Grondil or the Taker when she reached the swell behind which they had disappeared, and though she drove the wingwand until her antennae quivered in fatigue, she did not find them.

Her knees buckled when she dismounted, and she leaned on the beast a moment before trusting her legs. A horror of enter­ing the house filled Marwen. At last she rebelled at her fear and pushed the door open so violently that she startled three podhens to the roof. She stalked into the house. It was dim and quiet.

Grondil lay on the hearth floor, still as the dust beneath her, her face gray and unblinking. Marwen almost didn’t recognize her without the lines of worry in her forehead. She looked as if she had gone quietly and obediently with the Taker. There was a shovel in her hand.

“Stop it,” Marwen said. Her voice echoed slightly in the house. She fell to her knees beside the body. “Wake up!” A thinwing crawled across the gray-blue lips.

She shook Grondil and shook her again.

“Nar rondillon, cu ondrega,” she whispered fiercely, the spell that summons magic. Again she invoked in quiet fury. But if the magic came, it came in a form she did not expect, for beside her then stood Cudgham Seedmaker.

“What have ye done, ye addle-brained bratty? Have ye killed the Oldwife, too? Oh, Mother, what’ve ye done?” and he clutched his head and danced about the room in his wrong-sided shoes.

Marwen stared at him for a moment and then back at Grondil who lay so deeply still that she seemed to be sinking into the hard-packed dirt floor. A huge hard pain like a fist filled Marwen’s stomach, and there was a cold silence in her head. She jerked her head toward Cudgham. “Stop it, fool! There was no love between the two of you—you married each other for con­venience, and I have known it for years.”

Cudgham stopped, his eyes narrowing.

“Convenience? What mean ye by convenience?”

“She married you that she might keep me, and you married her that you might have a warm house and prestige, deserving neither. Grondil spoke with me plain enough, you see, so don’t put on your mourning for my benefit.”

Cudgham took a step forward.

“Aye, ye’ve grown old and wise, haven’t ye?” he said in his growling voice. “Practically a woman, ye be, ’tis true. Why did you kill her? Did ye want to be Oldwife yerself and sort my seeds all alone?”

He was looking at her strangely, his eyes hot as embers. Her upper lip drew back convulsively.

“I shall never sort your seeds again, Cudgham. I am leaving.” She was afraid to be here without Grondil, afraid to be anywhere without a soul, but it would be worse here. She bent down to kiss Grondil’s cold cheek. Cudgham bent over to stoke the fire.

“I know where your tapestry be,” he said.

She had taken Grondil’s lore books and was halfway across the room before the words meant anything.

“What?”

He was silent, stoking the fire.

“What did you say?”

“I know where your tapestry be. She told me a long time ago where it be hidden, in case anything happened to her.”

Marwen dropped the books. A tongue of fire licked out toward her, then vanished, then licked out again. It burned behind Cudgham so that she could not see him clearly, only a dark hulk before the flames. “She told me I had no tapestry.”

Cudgham looked away and rubbed his belly thoughtfully.

“You knew, and you have never disturbed it?” Marwen said.

“She threatened me with ... her magic, if I told. Or touched. I’ll tell ye, if ye stay and cook for me, and sort my seeds. I be pop­ular. May happen I can convince the village to accept ye as Oldwife. After all,” he said coming close and touching her cheek with a thick smelly finger, “I am yer father. Promise me you will make me some magic, and I will show you where yer tapestry be.”

After a long moment Marwen nodded, slowly, once. There was no thought of truth or lies in her, only desperation to see her tapestry. He smiled like a child and pointed at Grondil’s body.

“It be there,” he said happily. “She must have been digging fer it.” He rubbed his leathery head nervously. “If ye move her, I shall dig.”

Marwen turned her eyes back to Grondil. She made herself look for a long moment. She could hear Cudgham breathing and the fire crackling and the wind sighing through the window. Outside, Opalwing twittered impatiently, and Tamal shouted over his roofing. Her hand fell to her side to where her tapestry pouch hung bright and new and empty.

“If this is another of your lies ...”

“I swear,” he said. “I swear by the Mother.”

She ground her teeth and dragged Grondil’s body aside by her clothing. Already the dead woman’s face had stiffened and the flesh had become cold, and she seemed to watch Cudgham with flat, dry, half-opened eyes. The dirt was hard as baked brick, and he was sweating profusely when he came to the tapestry.

The oilcloth around it was dirty but intact, and Cudgham held it out to Marwen unopened.

Her limbs would not work.

She sat, or fell, on the floor and held her head. She looked over at Grondil’s body, not knowing if she wanted to kiss the pale cold face in the joy of having her tapestry or if she wanted to shake her for keeping it hidden all these years.

“Unroll it for me,” she said.

From the back Marwen could see it was bright like a new­born’s tapestry, that the colors were fresh and brilliant. Cudgham’s eyes were wide and round, unblinking as he looked at it, and in his pupils were reflected the opulent designs, shining like varicolored flame.

“Let me see!” Marwen said. She held out her hands. “Is there anything of the magic in it?”

Cudgham’s eyes narrowed. He looked at her as if he had for­gotten she was there.

“No, nothing of the magic,” he said. His voice was not happy any longer but gruff and choked. His head shone with sweat.

“Give it to me,” she said, trying to stand up. “I don’t believe you.”

Cudgham’s eyes flickered from Marwen to the tapestry and back to Marwen. He rolled up the tapestry clumsily and held it tightly in two fists.

“Ye promised,” he said. “Ye said ye’d do for me—cook for me, clean and mend for me, and give me a little of your magic. Say ye promised.”

Marwen stared at him for a moment. What he was saying seemed garbled like a foreign language. She felt herself gag.

“I must seek the magic,” she said. “I know it is in my tapestry, give it to me!”

She lunged and felt Cudgham’s heavy fist striking her face. She felt no pain. Her vision blurred, but what he did next, she saw clearly enough. In two movements he strode to the fire and thrust the tapestry into it. The threads were oily and aflame before Marwen could scream. She ran toward the fire feeling as though she ran in a dream, straining every muscle only to move as a bug in honey. Cudgham grabbed her from behind and was holding her. “Ye would have broken your promise if I’d given it to ye, I knowed it. But ye can make yerself another. I will be witness, if ye stay with me.”

From the fire came a sound like hissing laughter as the flames devoured her tapestry.

Something snapped in her. With all her strength she freed one arm and raised it high.

“Dur! Moshe! Ip!”

She screamed the spell, a frightful sound in the house of Grondil who had never raised her voice.

Suddenly she was freed, and she turned.

Her eyes were blinded for a moment by the light of a new flame, and then she could see a thin column of green smoke ris­ing from the body of a creature that crawled on the floor. She looked to the fireplace where the last of her tapestry was being consumed and back to the creature that crawled between her feet: an ip lizard, green and rust-striped, deadly poisonous.

A heavy lead-bone weariness enveloped her. She was strangely unafraid. She stroked the ip’s dry rough back and touched its mouth. She picked it up by the tail, dropped it into her apron pocket and watched it roll itself into a leathery ball and go to sleep. It did not poison her as she thought it would.