The Dragon's Tapestry

“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.

Chapter Four

In the darkness of a soul's worst sor­rows are found great treasures of self-knowledge, if one has the courage to look for them.

—Tenets of the Tapestry