The Dragon's Tapestry

Chapter Seven

Hunger and thirst and weariness did not dampen their astonishment at the sights and smells of Kebblewok.

“I didn’t know this many people existed in all Ve,” Marwen said. Maug scowled and started irritably at every sound.

Stalls of merchandise lined the road, bright booths filled with woven baskets and wind clocks, cloth dolls and heavy woven greatrugs. Painted pots of clay and bundles of straw were stacked against the perspiring stone walls of buildings; the bleats and clucks of farm animals in reed-fenced corrals drowned out the merchants calling their wares; and the smell of breads and sauces and roasting meat floated like spirits into their faces. The cooks eyed them morosely.

“There must be people here from all the provinces,” Marwen said, her voice full of awe. “There’s a man with dark hair from Verduma, and there’s a woman from Vaphrodia.”

A tall beautiful woman, with long silver hair like Marwen’s own, walked by them. Marwen was instantly aware of what she herself must look like—her gray spidersilk and her long silver hair covered in the brown-gray dust of the hills, only her flushed cheeks and dry gleaming eyes betraying life.

She could never have dreamed in all her days in Marmawell the prosperity she now witnessed. Finely spun and intricately dyed textiles were held out to those who passed by but snatched back when Marwen and Maug passed. Metalcraft tools, wire and basins were piled in polished order. Leather goods, glassware and food stalls lined the streets, and overhead, wingwands filled the air like clouds of color.

They walked along the market streets, mostly unnoticed and ignored, until they came to a stall that was no more than a little section of tiered shelves, and on the shelves were rows of neat shoes, boots, and slippers. On the greatrug was a bucket of clear water from which a slight black-haired man ladled himself a drink.

“That smells so good,” Marwen said.

The man looked up, glowering. His two front teeth were missing, and his beard was black and prickly except where it grew out of his many moles. Those hairs were white.

“That smell is leather and manure and hard-working people,” he said with a heavy accent. He looked at her poor dress and turned back to his work.

“No, I mean the water,” Marwen said, and she licked her sunburned lips. “It is singing to me, and I can smell it, also.”

The man turned back to her, slowly. His black eyes flickered, but his face was still. He glanced at Maug, who rolled his eyes and made as if to walk away.

“You want a drink? There’s plenty to drink.”

Marwen took the ladle from him with both hands and drank noisily. He gave her more, and she drank again and then offered some to Maug. He frowned and took the water calmly, but his throat quivered as he drank.

“Enough,” the man said. “You wait now, then have more later.” He looked at Marwen closely and at her feet. “You come far. You have a mother? Father? This man is your husband?”

“Me? Married to her?” Maug asked. He snorted.

Marwen shook her head. “No, no husband, and my mother is dead.” Marwen glared at Maug. “But here is my father.” She pulled the ip from her pocket and dangled the reptile by the tail, shaking it at Maug. Maug’s head jerked back and he stumbled.

“Ip! Pru brucht!” the man gasped. “What mean you by ‘Here is my father?’”

“Yes, ip,” she said with a grim smile. “Actually he is not my father. He is my stepfather.” Then her smile faded, leaving dust lines along her nose and mouth.

The Shoemaker came closer to look at the creature. The ip hissed violently at the man, and Marwen pocketed it.

“How is it you are not poisoned by this pet?” he asked.

But Marwen didn’t want to think or talk about the ip, know­ing that, though the people often disbelieved the magic, they still feared sorcery.

“You make beautiful shoes,” she said. “I have come over the hills without shoes.”

“You want to buy shoes?”

“No,” Marwen said, stepping back. Somewhere, someone was baking sugar tarts, and she lifted her head to smell them.

“You are hungry. You have money?” the man asked.

“No.”

“You have something for trade?” Marwen did not answer.

The man looked at Maug. “Big boy, you can work?” The man’s eyes fell on Maug’s waist where his tapestry pouch should have been, and then his molehairs bristled. He turned back to his work with a quick shake of his head.

Marwen looked at Maug. He swallowed. There were likely few in such a large city who cared if a strange boy and girl starved before their eyes. The smell of hot buttersoaks struck her. The saliva in her mouth went thin as water.

“Please,” she said, “I have a gift, in spells and charms.” She remembered her vow that she would not sell her magic for shoes as Grondil had done. She could feel her cheeks flushing.

The man turned back to face her. He nodded slowly, thoughtfully, never taking his eyes from hers. “I believe yes,” he said softly. “You smell my water, it sings to you. You have this ip for a pet. I think you have the gift, you are one of them. My name is Crob. Come, help, and I will give you food and shoes.”

Curtly and without looking at them again, the man had Mar­wen and Maug help him empty his shelves into bags lined with slots into which the shoes fit. He gave Marwen the water bucket to carry. To Maug he gave the heaviest bags and gestured to them to follow him. She was afraid, following this odd-looking man into the heart of a city she did not know, and she glanced back often at Maug, taking a dark reassurance in his presence.

At one point he walked beside her. “Here, you take this,” he said shrugging off one of the bags of shoes onto her shoulder. “It wasn’t my idea to do this.”

“You should be grateful,” she hissed, watching the back of Crob’s head. “He’s right—you can’t work without a tapestry.”

“Shall I tell him what is in your tapestry pouch?” Maug asked quietly.

Marwen looked at him sideways and said nothing. Her back soon ached with the weight of the shoes and the water, but she clenched her jaw and did not complain. She was too engrossed in the city sights to complain.

Wealthy women shrouded in robes made from the wings of wingwands strolled the marketplace with easy haughty steps, their laughter rising like a slap to the impoverished who called their wares. Many of the poorest seemed to know Crob by name. One old woman who huddled before a neatly folded pile of blankets did not call but raised her empty hands to Crob as he passed, as though she held up her poverty as a thing of weight and substance.

“Blankets, good sir? Have need of fine woven blankets?” Her voice was tremulous, her fingers shook and Marwen recoiled, thinking of the Taker.

“No, Grandmother,” Crob said, “not today. But say a prayer for old Crob,” and he passed her a silver bit.

Marwen thought she saw the coin hover slightly above her palm before her fingers closed over it.

“You must be doing well with your beautiful shoes, Crob, to hire help,” the old woman said.

“Politha, for one so blind, you see much,” Crob said gruffly, but Marwen felt the gentle teasing in his voice.

Marwen saw that though her teeth were yellowed and her eyes blind, her smile was beautiful and full of wisdom. “Aye, I see your goodness,” the old woman said. “How is the lad?”

“Not much longer, I think,” Crob said, and he nodded at Marwen as if they shared some secret.

Marwen sensed something magical in the old woman and leaned down to pass her a ladleful of the cool water. She was reminded too well of the Taker to find her tongue and speak, but she managed to smile. The woman drank and passed the ladle back to Marwen.

“The Mother bless you, child,” she said.

Crob, Marwen, and Maug walked on. The streets were full of beggars. For some, Crob had a kind word or a joke, for others a little money and for one small child, a pair of shoes.

Soon Marwen was not afraid of this peculiar man. The man­ner of his walk was steady and sure. His head was bent like a man of hard work and sober duty, but he trod the road lightly.

He led them through damp walled streets that were littered with eggshells, broken pots and soiled straw. When the market stalls dwindled away, the streets were quieter and more of the morningsun’s slanting rays warmed the cobblestone. Then the gray stone buildings ended. Mud brick cottages with thatched roofs like those she had known in Marmawell clustered on the rising slope of the city. Marwen felt the weight of the walls lifted from her and was surprised to feel the coolness of lostwind on her face. Now she could hear the crying and laughter of little children, the banging of spoons on pots, and she could smell wingwand manure and washday soap. Marwen and Maug fol­lowed Crob willingly into his cottage.

It was small and sparse, and cluttered with the tools of his trade: sheets of drying leather, scarred worktables, nails, molds and spools of thick thread. Scraps of leather, material and bent nails were piled up in a thrifty heap beside a dusty hourglass on the mantle. But the floor was well-swept and laid with small rugs for sitting.

Crob served them thick soup and a slab of seedbread. Mar­wen ate greedily. When she was almost done, she reluctantly saved a small piece of meat for Cudgham.

Through the east window, Marwen could see the sun, pale like a pink moon below a vast continent of cloud. It would rain today or tomorrow.

“So, I do not know your names,” the man said when they fin­ished eating.

“Marwen is my name and this is Maug. We are from Marmawell, a village to the south.” She glanced at Maug who shook his head, and she knew she should not speak of the dragon. He had always been secretive, never telling anything that he didn’t have to, but now he was sullen, his silence thick with deceit. He pulled his knife and the black bone from his pocket and began whittling.

“Ah, Marmawell, from which comes most precious herbs and spices: lapluv, greencup and teas fit for the king. The fame of this village reaches even to other provinces.”

Marwen was pleased and thought to tell him that she and her mother had cast spells on the very kitchen gardens that had pro­duced those spices.

“My mother grew a little shumple and browm,” she said instead, remembering the Tenets on modesty and humility. Per­haps, she thought, had she practiced them more in Marmawell, Maug would not be looking at her so with his hard gray mirror eyes.

Crob was silent for a time. Then he arose, drew from a bag a pair of shoes and, kneeling, placed them before Marwen. He did not look at her.

They were made of fine soft rupi leather, pale blue, the same blue as the round skystone she had found, so long ago it seemed, and the tiny buckles were made of some metal that gleamed like a bit of gray lake under a cloud-laden sky.

Marwen stared. The only shoes she had ever owned had been braided from strips of old greatrug, rough and long-wearing.

The man looked up and into her eyes.

“I do not buy magic. This is a gift. For magic, I give grati­tude and much honor.”

Marwen did not smile. For the first time, she was getting what she had always thought a fitting price for her art: gratitude and honor. Now, however, it felt burdensome. She wondered what this gentleman could want from her, and a silent secret place inside her wondered if she had anything to give.

“I do not know what to do,” she said.

“What says your tapestry?” Crob asked glancing at her tapestry pouch.

Marwen blushed fiercely and looked at Maug defiantly. He smiled and continued whittling the bone into shavings. Crob made an impatient gesture with his hand. His voice was urgent.

“You know what it is to thirst,” he said to her. “I know of a lad, about your age, who thirsts unto death. If you will help me save him, there could be greater rewards for you than these shoes.”

Marwen did not hear the words of reward. She saw only the man wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“What is it you want of me?” she asked.

“Have you skill with locks?”

Marwen shook her head. “How so, when only the very rich have them? But I know the language of rock and metal.”

He nodded.

Marwen looked at this lump of a man who sat cross-legged before her. His dark hair was Verduman, she thought. All the tales she had ever heard of Verduma had been told her by Cud-gham, and all the tales were full of blood and venom.

“Are you Verduman?” she asked.

Crob looked at her for a moment. “Half Verduman,” he said, searching her face. “I was born on the divide, the son of a Venutian woman and a Verduman soldier.”

She had always listened to Cudgham, only half-believing, but now she tried to recall the stories and the descriptions of the Verdumans. They were a dark people, she remembered, long-nosed and broad-shouldered, a people who loved to fight and quarrel but who were famous for their bravery. Perhaps it was because for generations the Vean King had made his home in the province of Verduma, and from their mountain people, the Clouddwellers, the king chose his army. She thought of her father and her own Verduman blood.

“My mother was driven away by her people for love of my father,” said the Shoemaker, “and so when I was very young, I went to live in Verduma at his house. There I lived in the moun­tains. But there, also, I had no people, and I was not allowed to train in their army when I was grown. I ran away, back to Venutia and to Kebblewok, and found that in the cities the varied peoples of Ve manage to live in peace. Here I was lost among the throngs, my accent one of many, my dark hair nothing more than an oddity if I kept my opinions to myself. My hands have much cleverness, and I have made a living, but now it is time to make a life.”

Marwen looked at him in silence. He seemed to be filled with a heavy longing.

He continued. “I tell you this so that you will understand my partiality.

“Several days ago a lad came to Kebblewok, a well-bred lad, it seemed, by his clothing and his mount. He came to the market and stood in high places and warned of a dragon that is destroy­ing many villages in this land.” Marwen made to speak, but Maug silenced her with a withering look and a shake of his head.

“For two cycles of winds, the people listened to him as they do a poet—with enjoyment but disbelief. He told them that the drag­on sought the wizard and that his quest was also to seek the wiz­ard and enlist his help in defeating the dragon.”

Marwen placed crossed fingers on her lips. She had never heard anyone speak of the wizard openly except Grondil in her own home. It was considered offensive nonsense. Few believed in the wizard anymore. But Marwen had learned of the wizard in the old Songs and the ancient prayers. Her hands and feet tin­gled.

“Did anyone know of the wizard?” she asked.

Crob looked at her strangely for a moment and then laughed, as if he finally understood the joke.

Marwen laughed, too, uncomfortably.

“Come,” he said. “Bathe feet and put on new shoes, and I show you ‘death-in-a-cage.’”

Marwen forgot her fatigue and the pain in her feet when she put on the soft slippers. Maug, too, was given some shoes for his blistered swollen feet, and he went with them back into the city. She watched her feet as she walked behind Crob Shoemaker.

The more she marveled at the beautiful shoes, the more she doubted her ability to earn them. Since she had turned Cudgham into an ip, she didn’t trust herself. Or perhaps it was that she did not trust the magic that seduced her and tormented her in turns, that seemed to abandon, afflict, or exalt her at will, and demand­ed submission to a law that was beyond her ability to live.

She looked down at Cudgham, asleep in her apron pocket. “Talent without mastery,” Grondil would have said sadly to see it.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Marwen said, nudging the ip gently with her finger. The ip rolled its bleary eyes, twitched its dusty tail and went back to sleep.

“What a stodgy old lizard,” she said, but a moment later she rubbed the lizard’s back thoughtfully. It was not dusty but dry and scaly, the rust stripes were fading with age. How long did an ip lizard live? However long it was, the man was aging as the lizard lived out its shorter lifespan. She thought about Cudgham’s destiny and task, that likely she had put in danger her stepfather’s ability to complete that task, and that she may be responsible for another person spending eternity in that bleak land of death where unfinished souls went. Grondil had told her of such a place. She thought of herself in that dark land.

Marwen remembered Grondil’s words to her: “You speak of the magic as though it belonged to you and not you to it.” How had she ever thought that the magic was hers to do with as she pleased, to revenge where she would, to reward where she deemed deserving?

They walked among the walled parts of the city. The stones were silent and stupid in even rows, “but not as stupid as I,” she said evenly, running her fingers along the mortar lines. She knew now how the magic could be taken away from her or perverted to do evil. Perhaps she could never have been made to feel so small, if in her magic, she had not thought herself so big.

She glanced at Maug, thinking of the villagers and wishing she could speak with them again, tell them of her new under­standing. She promised the back of Crob’s bristly head that no matter what magic he would have her do, she would try and stay her right size.

Crob led them to a street lined with taverns and arenas for animal fighting, back among the gray stone buildings and littered cobblestones. Finally he stopped at a place where four roads led to a square and pointed to the wall directly across from them.

She could see what looked at first like a gaping tooth-barred mouth in the wall, the two tiny windows far above it like eyes. It was a horizontal space hollowed out of the wall, about the size of a large man, with metal bars enclosing it. Behind the bars, like a piece of meat about to be chewed, lay a young man.

Marwen stared transfixed for a moment and walked toward him.

He was a little older than herself perhaps, tall and dark-skinned, with gaunt cheeks and wide shoulders that seemed little more than bone and skin. He was very sick, covered in spittle, bruised by stick and stone, and his lips were cracked, as though he had had nothing to drink for days. Sores oozed on pressure points over his body from lack of movement. There was an old stench.

Crob’s voice whispered beside her. “Here he will lay until he dies and then longer, until he is nothing but bones—a reminder to all of the finality of death and the reward of wizard seekers.” He looked around quickly. “Round the corner is a tavern at which the guards spend much of their time.” The boy woke from a half-sleep at the sound of the man’s voice.

“Crob!” he said in a voice that sounded as if it had once been full and deep and strong. “You’ve come to see me die. There won’t be much to see. I think I’ll spoil their fun and die in my sleep.”

“No lad, you shan’t die,” Crob answered quietly.

Crob looked around him, but no one seemed to be paying much attention in the busy square. From a window Marwen could hear the rhythmic shunts of a back-strap loom and, further away, two men quarreling.

“You place yourself in danger by coming too often,” the boy said, panting at the exertion of speaking. He smiled at Marwen. His teeth looked white against his dark skin. “You have a beauti­ful daughter.”

Marwen could feel the young man’s eyes on her in front and Maug’s eyes on her in back. Her skin quivered, tense in a desire to throw her head back and smile, and in an equal desire to lower her head and shrink away.

“No, lad, she is not daughter,” Crob said. “But I think the gods sent her to help you. This morning as I was at market sell­ing my wares, my water barrel sang to me, as though it gathered rain. Methinks it is crying to me to take you drink. So I resolve to take you drink at day’s end and guards be hanged. But instead the water finds me this girl who tells me she has magic. Her name is Marwen.”

“Marwen,” the boy said, “my name is Camlach.”

At that moment Marwen did not feel pity for Camlach. He did not invite pity, and she herself had been struck with sticks and stones, had been spat upon. In that moment she remem­bered it differently, dispassionately. This young man caged and half-dead made her see with new eyes all those who hurt others. She glanced at the people milling about in the square and felt for them the deepest pity she had ever known. She looked at Maug. He seemed shorter, thinner, weaker.

The lock that secured the bars of Camlach’s tomb was a pad­lock, the pins rusted, the hasps old and ill-fitting.

“Crob, you could rip this off with your bare hands,” she said.

He shook his head and held out blistered palms to her. “I have tried.” Suddenly he picked up a stick and pretended to poke at Camlach. “Aye, daughter,” he said in a loud voice, his accent thickening, “and if ye sass me more, I shall marry ye off to one like as this.”

A stocky man, helmeted and with a scabbard at his side, saun­tered over with his chest pushed out.

“What, man, what can ye have to say that takes so long? No more potter and play, move along.”

Crob pulled Marwen away. Maug was two steps ahead of them.

Most of the respected people of Ve sleep during wixwind and wywind, and so it was during these quiet winds that blow in gaps and gusts that Marwen and Crob walked again into the cobblestone streets and high gray walls to rescue Camlach. The morningmonth sun had risen just a little higher, reaching its soft rose-hued rays down to the cobblestone so that even the garbage seemed familiar and less odious. Maug had insisted on coming along. His constant presence made Marwen’s skin feel achy.

“This will be dangerous. You should stay behind,” she said trying to disguise the impatience in her voice.

“What, and let you out of my sight, to run off?” Maug sneered.

“Where would I go?”

“To the Oldest, without me.”

Marwen said nothing to try and convince him, nothing to start an argument. Anything to prevent Maug from telling Crob that she hadn’t a tapestry to validate her gift. For she would free that boy; in this there was no choosing.

She glanced down at Cudgham sleeping in her pocket. He had seen her tapestry. He had also said there was no magic in it, she reminded herself firmly.

The heavy walls of Kebblewok felt oppressive, and Marwen bent her head back to see the sky. Several wingwands soared above, and Marwen could see their shadows touch the towers and rooftops faintly. Even if the gods had not given her the magic, she had it still, and she felt it surging within her, filling her being, preparing her. She felt it like a strength, a powerful but invisible muscle that caused her head to lift, her spine to become erect. If she could not see her tapestry, she could live it.

The magic was in her tapestry, she knew it, and she vowed then, with hen bones and wingwand droppings underfoot, that when she had her tapestry remade, she would fit it. She wanted to run toward this lad, Camlach who died so nobly, whose quest was her own but who dared to say it before scores of people. True belief could never be secret.

This, she knew, was what the magic was for: not for shoes, not even for gratitude and honor but for this: to make right that which was wrong. But even as she thought this, she felt the magic tighten its arms around her, binding her, restricting her, owning her. Every knowledge bore a responsibility; it did not liberate her but exacted a price. She remembered the hourglass Grondil had sketched into the dirt floor, and her words: “The higher your powers, the narrower become your options to use them.”

Ahead of her, Crob was sweating. Maug clenched his jaw so that the sides of his face throbbed. Few were in the streets, only a blind beggar and a soldier or two dozing on their feet.

When they arrived at ‘death-in-a-cage,’ Camlach was awake. No guards were within view, but Marwen could hear drunken laughter not far off. The fever in the lad made his face swollen and dry, and his eyes gleam. There were new purple bruises on his arms and chest, old ones had become yellow and brown, and an ugly gash to his temple oozed blood. He tried to smile when they came close, but he did not stir.

“Since you came, I have been afraid to sleep for fear it would be my last. Is it now that you will release me?”

“Now,” Marwen said tenderly. She saw that he had hardly dared to hope.

“I’m not sure I can walk,” he said.

“Maug and I will help you, lad,” Crob said.

Maug had been standing apart, as if on lookout. He coughed softly and reluctantly came closer. “Hurry,” he said, the sweat glistening in the furrows of his forehead.

Marwen looked past him to a wingwand soaring. The magic in her became peaceful, and she felt a cool serenity still her heart. In that moment she was utterly sure of her power.

She placed three fingers gently on the padlock. The lock had forgotten the language of its birth as rock and raw metal, and knew now only the language of a tool that has listened to the whispering out of a thousand souls.

“I am old, I am old,” it told Marwen.

In the language of creation, Marwen told the lock how she could return it to its mother earth, and in the next moment, the padlock’s rusted pins gave way and fell into her palm. She dropped the lock into her apron pocket; the ip hissed and rewound itself into a smaller ball. Marwen quietly swung the bars aside while Crob leaned in with his arms outstretched, and Maug stood nervously beside him ready to help, albeit grudg­ingly.

It took all their strength to help him out, for though Camlach was wasted and thin from many days of fasting, still he was lanky, taller by a head than Maug and Crob, and built in the shoulders like a man already. He leaned on them heavily, but Marwen had no wits to help them. The very air sang to her of danger. She thought she could hear footsteps.

“Where can we hide?” she whispered to Crob.

Then Crob and Maug, too, heard the footsteps and increased their pace. “There is no place to hide,” Crob said with such a heavy accent that Marwen would not have been able to under­stand him had she not already known the answer.

“We shall have to leave him,” Maug said.

“If the guards come near, show them your pet,” Crob said to Marwen between clenched teeth. It was clear that the young man was becoming too heavy for them.

At that moment two voices rang out in rage, and Marwen knew that the empty maw meant to be Camlach’s tomb had been discovered. Soon, she knew, their cries would be echoed in every street, and they would be safe nowhere.

“Faster!” Crob said.

Camlach threw his head back and groaned. “No, leave me here. I think my ankle is broken.”

“Will we all die for one?” Maug snarled. His face was wet and gray.

“Not much farther, lad,” Crob whispered to Camlach. He looked at Marwen desperately.

From every direction Marwen could hear booted feet running and angry calls, but the feeling of peace had fallen over her again like a soft cloak, and she realized she knew where she was in the maze of streets. She knew where she was and who, around the next corner, she would find.

“This way,” she whispered to Crob, and then she ran ahead and around the corner. There, like a queen on a throne, sat the blind old blanket woman, Politha.

Marwen looked into the woman’s calm unseeing eyes as she approached, breathless. “Grandmother, let your hands be blessed. Please answer me this question. Who wove these fine blankets?” she asked, but she knew the answer already.

“I wove them, child,” she said.

Marwen bent on one knee and picked up the old woman’s hands. The wrinkled skin felt like spidersilk over bone.

“And what else do you weave, Politha? Do you weave the tapestry, or am I mistaken?”

The woman’s voice was still old when next she spoke, but there was a gravity in it. “You have strong magic, child. What need has driven you to seek the help of a crippled Oldwife?”

But Marwen had no need to answer, for Crob and Maug came round the corner with Camlach hunched half-conscious over their backs. Curses and cries of alarm from many guards rang from the rock walls. They were close.

“Politha,” Crob said, panting, “will all your prayers help us now?”

The old woman took only a moment to understand much. She stood up achingly and opened her palms out to him as Marwen had seen her do before when Crob passed.

“Good Crob,” she said, “this is the blanket you have bought with your generosity.”

Marwen saw then that the open palms were not a sign of helplessness but that they appeared to bear weight, as though the air were heavy above them and the fingers held substance.

The woman stretched her hands out like a dancer and flung something at them that settled on them like the warmth of the sun as it emerges from behind a thick cloud.

“Come under my magical coverlet,” she whispered.

Five guards rounded the corner the next moment, swords in their hands and rage in their mouths. But with scarcely more than a glance in Politha’s direction, the guards passed by and, in a few moments, were out of sight.