The Dragon's Tapestry

“If the magic were fading, could a mere Oldwife do this?” Marwen said. She stretched her arms out, fingers extended. Slowly the smoke gathered like breeze-blown mist between her outstretched arms, its grayness acquiring a gritty texture, darker, heavier.

Marwen smiled to herself, partly in pride, partly in the pure joy of the magic. It was a mastery like no other, in which she tuned her spirit to see all other things in their spirit form and then commanded them to be as she willed, as a painter wills color, as a weaver wills thread, as a poet wills words. The smoke that had only a short time before spoken the language of grow­ing rushweed gathered at her fingertips and allowed itself to be molded and formed into the shape of a large ip, its tongue leap­ing from its mouth like a lick of fire.

Marwen laughed quietly as she saw through the haze of her little trance the astonished faces of Maug and Crob. But then the laughter died to a hiccough, and her hands dropped to her sides.

Always before, a smoke sculpture had faded as quickly as it was made, leaving the watchers wondering if their eyes had tricked them. But this time it did not fade; it boiled and bubbled and was no longer an ip but a dragon, its tongue a flame. Tiny glowing embers that burst from the fire hovered in the dragon’s head like eyes, and the eyes turned to Marwen and saw.

Marwen cried out, and her breath made the smoke wings lift. The wind outside beat on the house like the sound of great wings. The windowboard burst open, and the wind roared like fire and wailed like children in pain. Crob jumped up and pushed the windows closed.

“What is it?” Politha was saying. “What is the matter?”

Gritting his teeth, Camlach rolled on to his knees, thrust a fist into the smoke dragon. Shards of smoke roiled around the room a moment and then faded.

For a long time, the room was full of silence. The wind shook the loose windowboards, and the rain fell hard as hail into the thatched roof.

“I’m sorry—I don’t know what happened,” Marwen said. “It is a trick I have done since childhood.” Marwen could still hear her heart. The embers had looked at her and had seen her.

“I have never seen anything so—so beautiful,” Crob said. “I believe the rusty lock you removed to free Camlach was ready to break. But this ...”

“It is evil,” Maug said standing up stiffly. “Her tricks have brought nothing but evil.”

“Hush,” Politha said. “A newly named Oldwife must get used to her new powers.”

Camlach stood and faced Maug but said nothing. Maug sneered and sat down. Marwen had not intended to use her magic this way, with tricks and illusion, and in a way it had not even been her spell. There had been some other force at work, some power that had sensed her own and had touched and embellished and magnified it. It was not a force of good.

“I felt almost as if the eyes of the dragon could see me, as if it were seeking me,” she said staring at the fire.

“I know what the dragon seeks,” Camlach said. “He has sent messages by way of many a horrified survivor. He seeks the wiz­ard, but all say he seeks in vain.”

“Because there is no wizard.” Crob said.

Maug said, “Aye.”

Camlach glared at Maug. “So said my people of dragons.”

Maug snorted, and then there was silence.

Crob left off his shoemaking and joined them by the fire, shivering. “If the wizard lives would he let his people die by this dragon? Only one thing to vanquish this great evil, and that is a well-placed arrow.”

The wind buffeted against the house with a force like the beat of great wings and screamed in the doorjambs and the chimney.

Politha groped with her hand for Crob. “This storm ...” she whispered.

Everyone listened. Maug’s head was bent back, staring up at the ceiling. His mouth gaped open, his body tensed as if he were about to run. A brief white light blinked in the chinks of the walls and the heavens cracked and thundered from end to end. The shutters burst open again, and the wind swooped in with a roar.

“One Mother save us,” Politha said. Maug leaped up. His knees were bent and his hands fisted and he looked wildly from the ceiling to Marwen and back again, his face flickering red and black in the firelight.

“It is not a storm but the dragon’s firestorm,” Maug said between gritted teeth. “I’ve heard it before.”

Marwen breathed deeply. There was the smell of wet burning straw bricks and the cry of an infant on the wind.

Crob stood to close the shutters. The rain lashed at the sheets of leather and the wind blew the fire out. Crob stuck his head out the window.

“There is fire—in the town below,” he cried.

“Perdoneg!” said Maug. “She’s brought ’im. The witch brought ’im.”

“Hold your tongue,” Camlach said to Maug.