The Dragon's Tapestry

Marwen stood. She wiped the spittle from her face, but it mixed with the ash and streaked her skin with two black stripes. She looked over to the hills and garnered strength. Perhaps her tapestry had a spirit of its own, perhaps if they killed her, she would find it while she wandered in the dead hills.

“I—” She stopped. She looked into the faces of the crowd, her throat closed tight and finally her eyes fell on the kindly old face of Master Clayware. People were not like stones, she thought numbly, becoming smoother with the squeezing and scrubbing of years. Master Clayware’s face was as wrinkled and folded as dried fruit. She looked into his eyes and spoke. “I do have a tapestry,” she whispered. There was a shifting in the crowd but the faces did not soften. The silence swelled up like a bubble, and Leba broke it with a hissed, “Liar!”

“But it’s true. It’s true!” Marwen cried. “And there is some­thing wonderful in it—wonderful enough to frighten Cudgham. So he burned it. Grondil made it for me after all, but she hid it so that you wouldn’t...” Her words were tumbling over one another like rolling pebbles, and she forced herself to stop and breathe. “I’m sorry. The Tenets of the Tapestry says that no one has an enemy without a cause. I should have tried to under­stand, I should have served....”

There was shuffling and coughing throughout the crowd, and a woman began to make a fuss over her child. Someone pushed Marwen back down into the dirt.

Merva lifted a hand to the people.

“Silence!” Her head, neck and back were as straight and stiff as a drying pole. “Your ‘shoulds’ are eloquent Marwen, but they will not recover the past. Your sentence is banishment to the northern wilderness without beast or bag. The Taker shall decide if you live, as she should have done at your birth. So be it.”

Marwen listened. She felt lighter, as if relieved of a burden. Her tapestry was gone, but fate was mindful of her and would force her steps for a little while at least.

Maug and two of his friends, Bero and Japthas, stepped for­ward. Merva smiled at them and then at Marwen, benignly.

“These young men have volunteered to see to the task. Take her.”

Maug approached her with a rope.

“Do not bind me,” Marwen said, her fingers clutching at the dust. “I will go willingly.”

Maug looked at Merva who nodded her head slightly. While Maug stood there, Master Clayware stepped forward to speak. The crowd murmured, but Merva could not silence Marmawell’s most respected citizen.

“Do not bind her,” he commanded in a quavering voice. Maug hesitated, then dropped the rope, and after a silence Mas­ter Clayware continued speaking. “The sentence has been passed, but I would ask you to consider: Buffle Spicetrader has brought news of a dragon in Ve, heading west from Verduma. Without Marwen, without an Oldwife, we are defenseless.”

Some of the younger people smirked, and someone laughed aloud. But most people glanced anxiously at the sky, and the children ran to their mothers.

“Dragons?” Merva said in a condescending tone. “I do not believe in dragons anymore than I believe there is a wizard, Mas­ter Clayware.”

The old man nodded patiently. “Believe what you will. In the old days, we listened in faith to the Songs, and we were happy. Grondil’s grandmother told me herself before she died that she had seen the wizard and believed. This child, though—will you not for Grondil’s sake be more lenient? As a child she obeyed the laws perfectly, excelled in letters, and spoke of the wizard with passionate innocence. You thought she held herself above you, you thought she rejoiced in her superiority, and so you despised her and ostracized her. Do you not take any responsi­bility for the misuse of what is obviously a great gift of magic?”

Merva answered in a loud voice, her composure gone. “If her magic is great enough to save us against dragons, let her save herself!” She looked at Marwen. “Return to us, and I will recon­sider your fate, but the wilderness is a place that cares not for lit­tle girls’ tears. The Council is ended.”

She turned and walked away.

“I didn’t cry,” Marwen called after her, and she thought Merva’s step faltered.

In a few moments, the entire crowd had returned to their work and their play, leaving Marwen alone except for the three young men and Master Clayware. The old man opened his mouth, then closed it again.

The three young men mounted wingwands, and Marwen was instructed to ride behind Maug. He smelled sour, and there were pimples on the back of his neck. She hung on to the wing-wand’s shell rather than put her arms around him, but the take­off jolted her and she grabbed on to his shirt. He turned his head toward her.

“Don’t be shy, witch. If you think I’d fancy an ugly like you, you are wrong.”

Master Clayware raised one hand, and Marwen thought he would have called them back if he could.