The Dragon's Tapestry

Marwen strapped on her pack, mounted, removed the stock­ings from Opalwing’s antennae, and in a moment they were air­borne. As a child Marwen had longed for the day she would be big enough to fly. She dreamed of the places she would go, of the freedom she would enjoy. But that first flight was brief, for there was no place to go, no hills as beloved as her own hills where she had named every cave and stream. From the air she could not savor every pretty stone or new flower or animal track. The feeling came back to her as she climbed toward the clouds.

Marwen circled back toward the village. She wondered what Grondil wanted to give her and resolved that she would not plead again to be allowed to stay. She would not cry.

Opalwing was descending when Marwen thought she saw someone walking westward into the hills. In another moment she was certain it was Grondil who walked so slowly. And in the next moment she banked Opalwing sharply in pursuit. For beside Grondil, hunched and nodding like an old village aunty, walked the Taker. 

Chapter Three

Sing, sad grasses in the hills 'neath the sky.

Sing, sad flowerlets the hollow springs by,

Sing your song of death for here the taker hath tread.

Sing for the living and not for the dead.

—“Death Songs” from Songs or the One Mother

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.