The Dragon's Tapestry

Vijocka rubbed the leafdust in her hands, back and forth, again and again, until it was gone. She closed her eyes, held her hands to her face, and breathed deeply.

Finally she said, “Prince Camlach told me that he thought he had found the wizard’s heir. I remember well his words, his hope.”

“I have no tapestry to prove such a thing,” Marwen said.

Vijocka looked at her but with the eyes of one who is seeing the past. Her hands rested still and spellwise on her knees. “The house of Nimroth, the poet, is not many miles north of here,” she said. “When I was growing and serving my apprenticeship, he would come of a year and sing and tell his tales and then be gone again for many suns. As a girl I remembered his visits with joy, for they were holidays, and the work would be put aside to listen and dance to his music, even by my mother, the Oldwife.

“One day I became ill, so ill that even my mother could not cure me. She had not always treated her calling with respect, but she loved me and searched the lore books day and night for a spell that would abate the fever that burned my life-fires lower each day. Finally I became delirious. I remember that, as my mother cast herself across my bed, weeping, a woman appeared inside the room. Old she was, wrinkled and crippled with years. Her shoes were the yellow of the sun, and her apron shone with the blue of heaven. She beckoned to me, and I longed to go to her. And then something happened: Nimroth, the poet, appeared in the open door of our house, only his face was not smiling and innocent as I remembered it from days past but sad and full of wisdom, and in his hand was a staff that glowed with a radiant white light. Gently, lovingly, he put his hand round the old woman’s shoulders and led her out of the house.

“Thereafter I returned to good health. My mother had been asleep with sorrow when all this happened, and so I carried my secret alone, letting it ripen inside me, leading me deeper into the magic. Nimroth did not speak to me of it when he came to the village as a poet, though sometimes he caught me looking at him. Then he would stop smiling, and the wisdom in his eyes would shine.

“One day he came through our village and to my window. He was going away, he told me, for a long time, perhaps forever. I offered to provide him with an heir (though shyly and clumsi­ly), but he merely smiled and seemed glad to know that I had not forgotten or thought it was delirium that day when I discov­ered he was the wizard. He told me that the dragon Perdoneg was growing in power, that one day he would escape his prison and come seeking to kill the wizard and his heir. He told me that if the wizard and the heir were killed, there would be no peace, neither in this life nor the next. He explained that what he was about to do would thwart the dragon. Then he would speak no more of it. I fed him and he left.”

Vijocka drained her bowl.

“But now, my friend, if you would so honor me, I will share your sadness. Tell me how you come to be without your tapestry, and if I have any magic to help you, I will.”

Marwen spoke haltingly of how her mother, Grondil, had hidden her tapestry so that the people would not offer her, a nameless orphan, as a gift to the Taker. She did not weep when she told Vijocka of her life as a soulless one, but she wept as she told of her joy when she discovered that she did have a tapestry.

“But it was destroyed,” Marwen said glancing toward her apron pocket.

“Was there no witness to your tapestry?” Vijocka asked.

“None at my birth and only one after.” She drew Cudgham-ip carefully out of her apron pocket and placed him on the ground. He yawned and blinked his bleary eyes and slowly began moving about the room, devouring insects that hid among the wild flowers. Marwen followed him with her eyes. “This is my stepfather, Cudgham. He showed me where my tapestry was hidden, and before I could see it, he thrust it in the fire. In my rage I cast a spell on him that did this. Later I tried to reverse the spell, but I could not.”

Vijocka watched the ip crawl about the room, his legs heavy and slow, his tongue quick.

“To reverse the spell, you must forgive him,” Vijocka said at last.

Marwen stared. She felt the heat rising in her face.

“Then he must remain always an ip,” she said slowly.

“Time is not your friend,” Vijocka said. “If you truly mean to do battle with Camlach against Perdoneg, likely you will die.”

“Yet I cannot forgive. Because of what he has done, I am doomed to live in torment.”

“We give ourselves up to torment, Marwen,” Vijocka said. “You cannot have forgotten that. If the spell is reversed, he can stand witness while I make you a new tapestry.”

Then Marwen was angry and her voice was sharp.

“What if he refuses? He burned it once, he may have some reason for not wanting me to have a tapestry. What if he lies, if he witnesses wrongly?”