The Dragon's Tapestry

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.”

Chapter Two

The windows of Ve are like eyes: you may look in if you wish, but then you bear a responsibility.

—Tenets of the Tapestry 

Everyone who had looked in at Sneda’s window was there now, in or out of the house, their heads bobbing and weaving to see. Marwen could feel the eyes of the crowd on her back as she and Grondil passed through. They felt ungentle, but she had almost become used to that. It was the silence that was strange.

In the crowd was Maug who sneered and made jokes about Marwen whenever she passed so that all the boys laughed. It was he who dared Bero to throw an egg at her and he who had laughed Klawss to scorn when he was the only boy who danced with Marwen at the Sunrise Festival. It was Maug who made lewd remarks about her growing breasts. She felt small and stiff in her place beside Grondil, knowing his eyes were upon her.

Master Clayware was there, also, quiet and nearly hidden at the rear of the crowd, leaning upon a cane, his white hair covered by a dark hood, his spine curved. Since she was a child, he had always had a kind word for Marwen, and once he told her that her mother had been the most beautiful maid in the village. Beside him, whispering in the old man’s ear, was long-appren­ticed Gumbe Clayfire whose blond hair hung in oily strands around his ears and in his pale-lashed eyes. Gumbe was father to Maug, husband to Merva Leatherworker, Marwen’s aunt. Merva had never forgiven the Council for allowing Grondil to keep her sister Srill’s baby, the baby who was her family’s shame. Perhaps that was why Merva had worked so hard recently to become the head of the Council.

The villagers shuffled aside reluctantly for them. Sneda was lying on the dirt floor in a pool of blood that still pulsed weakly from the stump of her forearm where her hand had been. Beside her lay the knife that Marwen had sharpened only hours before, and next to that lay the white and lifeless hand that had been amputated.

Sneda’s oldest daughter, Leba, extended a dry chapped finger and pointed at Marwen. “There’s the weirdy witchett that hurt my mother, the very one.”

Marwen felt the unkind eyes of the people touch her like cold fingers.

“Hush,” Grondil said. She knelt, touched Sneda’s face and gently lifted the wounded arm. “Find me clean linen,” she said to Leba who stood biting her red raw hands until the cracks split and bled. The girl went searching.

Leba was a leader among the girls Marwen’s age, accepting into her circle of confidantes only those select few who had a measure of breeding or beauty or wealth. Leba had none of these, but she had wisdom in the matters of people and knew at a young age how to exercise her power. Marwen had never been included in Leba’s circle. One thing had saved Marwen’s skin growing up, and it was that Leba and Maug hated each other more than they hated anyone else.

“This one is too late for spells,” Grondil said. “But when magic fails, there is skill,” and while Marwen stood frozen in place by cold eyes, Grondil worked. Once Marwen bent to help Grondil, but Leba hissed, and the cold eyes, like fingers, pulled her up, squeezed and pushed at her. Grondil did not seem to notice, but Marwen sensed that it was Grondil who kept the fin­gers from becoming fists.

The smell of blood was strong. Marwen gazed at the knife, touched it with her mind and searched for any evil she might have left without knowing. She felt gall rise in her throat. There in the essence of the knife, woven among its point and blade, was the anger that Marwen had felt for Sneda when she sharp­ened the knife. Quickly Marwen looked up, searching for some distraction that would ease her nausea. Only the grains of sand in the hourglass moved, sifting to the bottom of the glass. She remembered the Tenets of the Tapestry, its counsel that the Oldwife be at peace with all men and women.