The Dragon's Tapestry

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.