He watched me for a time, and then went back to his work. When I felt his eyes were no longer on me, I breathed in a long breath. The snake did not always strike. Sometimes it waited. Maybe I did not taste very good. The thought made me smile, in spite of the danger, and I let myself sink a little bit deeper into the weaving, though I still sat upon my foot to make sure I worked nothing strange. My fingers found the rhythm and my threads followed it.
We had many working songs and prayer chants. Some were meant only for the ears of my sister and my mother and my sister’s mother, but some I might sing for my brothers or any of the relatives who lived in our father’s tents. There were other songs for when a caravan came to visit us, though that did not happen very often, and there were songs that we girls made up to suit ourselves as we worked when our mothers were not with us.
I picked one of my favorites now. It had a soft melody that belied its natural rhythm. A man might think it a lullaby, fit only to soothe a child to sleep, but when its steady beat was put to thread, it helped to guide, to lead even the newest of weavers through the steps to a finished cloth. We had sung it together, my sister and me, and all the girls with fair voices who sometimes wove with us. It was not meant to be sung alone, and was missing parts, but I liked it enough that I could put in the pieces that were not there, even if Lo-Melkhiin could not.
I was halfway through the third verse when I felt a shadow, and knew he stood beside me. I forced myself to finish the line I wove, hands as steady as I could manage, though the viper hovered even closer. When I was done, I set the loom aside, and looked up at him.
“My love, you sing a man to sleep,” he said to me. He had not seen the real purpose of the song, and that made me glad. “Come to bed, then.”
He did not touch me. I took the pins from my hair, and shed the dress so that I stood before him in henna and shift alone. If he knew what the symbols meant, he gave no sign. I did not think he did. Men did not, usually. It was only women’s art, after all.
“Come to bed,” he said to me again.
I turned my heart to stone, and climbed into bed with the viper.
FOR FOUR MORE NIGHTS, Lo-Melkhiin came to me for supper, then the evening’s work, and then to bed. The henna mistress drew her signs on me each time, and the girls coiled my hair and pinned it, and put me in a dress of fine make. Each night, the henna burned a little stronger, the pins stuck fast to my hair, and each dress had the embroidery of the most delicate touch.
Lo-Melkhiin’s maps were marked, and the cloth grew under my hands. I kept the eating knife close to me when I could, and sang the songs from our father’s tent when I could not. If he noticed, he did not care. Each time he invited me to bed, it was the last thing he said to me, and never once did he touch me. There was none of his cold light, nor any of my copper fire, yet I did not feel at all weakened. The henna kept my copper fire strong. Each morning, he was gone before I woke to a steaming cup of tea on the table beside my bed.
When I woke, I went to the bathhouse. It was empty when I arrived, but before I could take off my shift one of the attendants appeared as always, like I had rung a bell for them. They took the shift away and brought me a new one while I soaked the night’s henna away. It did not disappear entirely. Often the henna mistress merely traced over lines, renewing them and their power in my skin. Perhaps that is why they burned with greater intensity when she put them on my body. It was the same for my hair. While I sat in the bath, they brought a trough of heated water to the ledge behind my head. If I put my head back, they combed my hair in the water. It leeched some of the color, but not all of it.
When I was dried and dressed, I went to the weaving room. I opened the door without knocking, as was my custom, and was surprised to find that all the women looked up at me, rather than keeping their eyes on their work.
“Oh, lady-bless,” said the oldest weaver, “it is only you.”
“Only me?” I said to her, taking an empty seat amongst the spinners. They passed me a basket, whorl, and leader thread, and I began my work.
“Lady-bless, Lo-Melkhiin has come here every day since he woke up from his illness.” This from the spinner who often spoke before she thought. “He watches us, and sometimes lays a hand upon us, and tells us our work is good.”
The old weaver made an impolite sound. My hands were busy, so I couldn’t use them to cover my mouth. Instead, I stopped my smile before it showed. The old weaver did not think that Lo-Melkhiin would know good thread if it tripped him.
“I swear, lady-bless, we did not tempt him here,” said the spinner. “He just appears.”
“The lady does not care if he finds one of you pretty,” the old weaver said.
Again, I had to hide my smile. Jealousy was the last emotion I would feel if Lo-Melkhiin took to pursuing the spinner-girls. I was more concerned with what they had made after he touched them.
“Tell me,” I said to the spinner. “Where is the thread you spun after he came and saw you?”
“I burned it, lady-bless,” she said, looking down at her spindle at last, though it did not spin. “It was not fit for use.”
“And her three years in this room,” said the old weaver. “She has not muddled her thread since she first came to me. He scared her that much.”
They showed me the other pieces then. An embroidery full of snarls, more lumpy thread, wool carded so badly it might not have been carded at all, and a loom that they had been forced to cut the warp from so that they could start afresh.
I watched the spinner. Her thread was clean now, and even as ever, though her hands shook slightly as she fed wool into her work as the spindle dropped. She had seen the viper in him, I knew, and she worked still, because she did not know what else to do. I caught her whorl so it would not undo, and put my hands on hers. Copper fire spread between us, more than when I had touched the healer, and she stopped shaking.
“There,” I said to her. “Everything will be all right now. When Lo-Melkhiin comes, send a girl for me, and I will come after, and help you clean up the mess.”
The weaver made another impolite noise, and this time I did smile. I raised my hand to touch her, but before I could, the copper fire leapt from me to her, lighting her eyes and straightening her spine. She coughed once, and I started in surprise, and then bent back to rethreading the loom as though nothing had happened. She worked much faster now.
I took my seat with the spinners again, and thought about how I might help them. I had spun for a vision, once. Perhaps now I could spin the copper fire into the thread. My mother and my sister’s mother had laid down lines of strange-smelling salts that our father brought from far away in circles around each of our father’s tents. They did not stop ants and bees from coming in, but they did stop scorpions. And vipers. Lo-Melkhiin would come in—I could not keep him out—but I wondered if I could spin copper fire to keep his cold light from frightening the work again.
I took up my basket of wool again, and reached for the whorl. I began to spin, and let myself fall into the trance without fighting between one blink and the next.
This time, instead of flying across the desert, I hovered in the ceiling of the room, where hot, scented air rose and idled before it found its way out the screened windows. I looked down and saw all the looms at work, all the whorls spinning, and all the needles as they flashed in and out, pulling the silk threads behind.
I could see traces of Lo-Melkhiin’s cold light. Unsurprisingly, they collected near the prettiest of the spinners, the quickest of the stitchers, and the most talented of the weavers. At least he had some measure of craft-knowledge. I dropped the thread I spun on each light, smothering it in fire, and then moved my whorl on to the next one. When I had cleaned up the leavings, I turned my thoughts to how I might protect the room.
My mother had left a circle of salts, and that was enough, but scorpions were much shorter than Lo-Melkhiin. Still, that was the best place to begin. Perched on the air near the ceiling, I trailed the new copper-spun th
read behind the whorl as I moved it slowly around the room. Then, because I could not think of another way, I repeated the process near the ceiling, level with where I floated. The two lines of copper fire reached for one another, but stayed in place where I left them. As I relaxed my hold, the lines blurred. I tightened my grip again, like I would hold a goat’s legs to keep it from straying, but they fought me harder than any goat I had ever restrained.
I could not stay in the ceiling of the spinning room forever. If my first idea had failed, I would have to let it go, and then try to come up with another. I released the copper fires. To my surprise and relief, the lines stayed where I had set them. Threads of fire broke loose, reaching up from the floor and down from the ceiling, the way a gage-tree’s roots stretched for water. They intertwined with one another and flared strong in my vision. I recoiled from the brightness, and dropped the whorl. I fell as it did, and woke up in my seat, the old weaver shaking me by the shoulders.
“Lady-bless!” she hissed. She did not wish to shout and cause alarm. I knew if I did not wake, she would pinch me, or worse.
“I am here,” I said to her. “It is done.”
“It certainly is,” she said to me, and I looked down at my hands.
I had been spinning undyed thread, as we all were, but that was not the color I had spun and wrapped about the skein at the bottom of my basket. As I had spun white thread when I sought my sister, I had spun copper thread now, so bright even inside the room that it seemed to have its own fire.
“Lady-bless!” said the spinner.
“You will still your tongue,” said the old weaver. She looked around the room. “You will all still your tongues. This stays between you and your smallgods.”
They murmured their agreement, and I felt a stirring in my blood. The old weaver said their smallgods, but I knew at least some of them sent their whispers out to me, though I could not say how I knew it. I nodded to the old weaver, and left them to their work and their prayers. My blood hummed as I went out from them.
In the cooler air of the garden, I paused. Before, Lo-Melkhiin had been content to take his power from men, and inspire their creations. Now, it seemed, he had turned his efforts to the women who lived in the qasr as well. He was not desperate for power; I could tell by the strength of the cold light in the spinning room. More likely, he had forgotten that women do work, too—useful work. He thought he could hasten them along as he had the men, and he had, but at too steep a cost. I hoped he stayed away from the kitchens. The head cook did well under Lo-Melkhiin’s influence, but many of his assistants were women or boys, and I had no desire to eat burned or raw bread.
He had not touched me in five days. Had he learned that my power was made stronger by his? Had he tried to find another source, in hope of weakening me? If he had, it had been a failure. The henna mistress and the women who dressed my hair had more than enough power in their work to keep me strong. I did not like that in order for my strength to increase, his must too. I did not like that I relied on him for anything, least of all this. Perhaps it was time to visit my sister in the present, not seek out visions of her past, and see if the cult of my smallgod had done what she hoped it might.
I was halfway back to my room and the weaving there when it occurred to me that Lo-Melkhiin would have visited more rooms than the spinning room. I had warded that place, but I knew that he must have left his mark on others, and that the work done there would be just as muddled. A qasr needs a king; so went the saying. That was what men thought. A king needed a qasr just as much, and the qasr had to operate smoothly, sheep to the wadi, or the flock would disintegrate.
I needed more wool, I thought, and if I could find a way to spin it without turning it impossible colors, so much the better. I resolved to send for a basket, or more, when I had the time and the privacy to lose myself in a spinning trance. It could not be today. The sun was well past its highest point, which meant I must dress for supper; and then the uncomfortable weaving, with the viper watching me whenever I moved; and then another still night in bed with Lo-Melkhiin.
I WAS NOT DEAD IN THE MORNING, but when I woke, I thought I might be the next thing to it. I could barely sit up to drink my tea; I was weak as a newborn lamb. When my breakfast was brought, the smell of it made me heave up all I had drunk.
“It’s all right, lady-bless,” cooed the serving girl, as she helped me back to my bed. “If you miss one day, it will still work.”
“I do not feel all right,” I told her. The world spun around me, and I could not make it stop.
“You look very pale,” she said to me. “I will fetch a cold cloth and the healer, and tell the cook. He does not like it when we vomit. He says that is the first sign that the sun has been too much.”
When she said it, it sounded straightforward. I had seen men felled by the sun if they worked through the heat of the day or if they did not drink enough. Yet I knew that could not be the cause of my illness. I had not spent enough time in the sun. The girl was gone before I could say any of that to her, though, so I waited in my bed, and hoped my head would not split in half before she returned.
I dozed, and when I dreamed, I saw a lion. It drank at an oasis in the cool of the morning. I knew that it was the oasis from Lo-Melkhiin’s map. He had pored over it, planning every angle of this hunt. I had thought he might be plotting where to find his next bride, but I ought to have known better: he did not care from whence we came.
There were no tents in this oasis, and it was far from a path of trade. Only a madman or a man with very good horses would ride so far, to an oasis on the way to nowhere. Lo-Melkhiin was not mad, easy as it might have been to accept him if he were, but he did have good mounts.
The lion was old, its mane tawny and bright in the sun. Its back and face were scarred with long claw marks. It had fought to keep this oasis, and driven off or killed younger lions to do it. He kept no pride in his old age, but he kept his home in the desert.
Lo-Melkhiin hunted him for no reason other than to kill him, and he had nowhere to go.
I saw the other guardsmen draw back, an empty saddle where Lo-Melkhiin had left them behind to do the hunt alone. Before the demon, Lo-Melkhiin had hunted lions that were a threat. This old creature was too smart to harry the villages and oases of men. And now he would grow no older.
As I watched, Lo-Melkhiin came down to the water of the oasis, across from where the lion stood. The old beast stared at him, wise enough to know that fleeing would get him nothing. For a moment I thought Lo-Melkhiin might spare the beast, but then he hefted his spear in one hand, and between one breath and the next, landed it between the old lion’s eyes.
It fell face-first in the water, fouling it with its blood. Lo-Melkhiin drew a knife and whistled for the men to come, and I knew he meant to skin it. That I would not watch. I felt the vomit rise in my stomach again, though I did not think I had anything left; and then I was in my bed, and the serving girl held my hair as I emptied my stomach again. This time, only white water came out. The cook watched me, shaking his head.
“Juice, lady-bless,” he said to me. “As much as you can.”
“I wish you would mind your own craft,” snapped the healer.
“I’ll fetch it,” said the girl, but the cook shook his head. She had to stay as long as one of the men was with me.
The healer examined me quickly, a soft hand on my forehead and a light touch at my wrist.
“Lady-bless, did you have wine?” he asked me.
“No,” I said to him. My voice was hoarse. “I drank water, and ate what was brought.”
“Did you sit in the sun?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Perhaps she is only tired?” the serving girl suggested. “She spent the whole afternoon in the spinning room yesterday, and the girls there said she spun without stopping for hours.”
As soon as she said the word “spinning,” my stomach heaved again. She was so fast, turning me and holding my hair back from the bowl. I had
nothing to bring up, but I appreciated her efforts in any case.
“Perhaps that is what has taken the water from your body,” the healer said. He was not entirely incorrect, but it was not for the right reason. “Today you must stay abed, drink everything that busybody from the kitchen brings you, and touch no craft.”
I nodded, miserable, and the serving girl put another cool cloth to my head.
It was the copper fire that had done this—or rather, the fact that I had done so much spinning with it. It had been too much. Once the healer left and the serving girl went to fetch a comb, I could not stop myself from crying. I had only been able to protect one room. I could not shield the other work rooms if this was the result.
Soft hands undid my braids, and began to work through my hair with the comb. I forced myself to breathe softly, hoping that I would fall asleep and rest without dreaming. I had no wish to see more lions meet their end. Not even the thought that I might see my sister tempted me to seek a dream. I wanted only blackness and oblivion.
A finger brushed my skull. It was much too big to be the serving girl’s. I tried to move before I remembered the consequences, and then struggled weakly while Lo-Melkhiin wound his fingers tightly into my hair.
“I went out for a lion this morning, my wife,” he said to me. It was the over-friendly tone I hated. My head already ached, and his grip on my hair exacerbated it. “But you know this. I would tell you that the beast ravaged poor men’s sheep and stole poor women’s children, but you know better.”
I said nothing, and his hands tightened. “Tell me!” he commanded.
“I saw,” I said to him, spitting the words the way a viper spits poison. “I saw you kill the old lion, far away from where he might have done harm.”
“Good,” he said to me. “I do not like to kill without an audience.”
A Thousand Nights Page 14