Tapestry of Dark Souls

by Elaine Bergstrom

  Within the courtyard stood a small cluster of stone buildings, made of the same brown stones as the wall without. All but a large two-story hall were missing parts of their roofs. One building had burned and was no more than a gutted shell. I took them in with a single, sweeping glance, my eyes centering on a large, lovely shrine close to the far wall.

  The shrine seemed to have been brought to these desert ruins from some more hopeful place, from someplace damp and green. Its walls were built of beautifully matched and mortared red-clay blocks, which didn’t resemble the weathered stones of the fortress. Its high-arched windows, now covered with heavy boards, must have been magnificent when they were glazed. Even without glass, the carved stone casings were skillfully worked, and the shrine radiated a feeling of holiness and soothing power. I pictured it, ivy-covered, in the center of some cool and peaceful town. Grass and flowers would surround it; I could almost see the moist green lawn shimmering like a mirage in that desolate courtyard.

  I shook my head to clear the vision, then walked forward and laid my hands on the solid iron doors. They bore intricate runes, shadowy in the late sun. An unexpectedly terrible chill flowed into my hand and down my trembling arm. I pulled back quickly, strangely certain that if it reached my heart, I would die. Nonetheless, I slid aside a rusty iron bar and tried the doors, hoping for an instant that they would be locked.

  But no, they opened easily. Harsh sunlight fell through the doorway, casting my shadow long and black on the uneven stone floor. If the shrine had ever contained seats or statues, they had long since been removed. I shuffled cautiously toward the altar. As my eyes grew accustomed to the inside light, I saw stubby candles clinging to its dark, stone slab. I paused to find the small flint box I always carried in my skirt pocket and struck a spark.

  And in a single flickering flame, through spiraling dust and cobwebs, I saw it—a silvery tapestry that had somehow held its place against theft and time. It hung from ceiling to floor on the wall behind the altar. Breaking a lit candle free from the altar, I studied the tapestry. Woven into it was an intricate pattern: layer upon layer of men and women, all bearing expressions of such terror and evil that the cloth seemed to depict a crowded street in the netherworld.

  Yet there was a shimmering majesty to the silk. It was beautiful. A strange power seemed to flow from it, filling me with an incredible mix of awe and fear that I can only describe as sacredness. Though I wanted to run from it, I approached it reverently, falling to my knees before it … looking up … whispering half-forgotten prayers I had learned from my mother and the stern-faced priests of our town.

  I know not how long I knelt there. It seemed an eternity—and a mere moment. But a commotion outside broke the cloth’s hold on me. The door swung fully open. A breeze swept through the shrine, and the cloth rippled, producing a sound like fey laughter, as though the souls pictured on the cloth mocked me.

  The chapel grew suddenly darker as a gray-robed figure moved into the doorway. “Come out. This isn’t a holy place,” he said solemnly. I scrambled from my knees and walked hesitantly toward him. His pale face was lined with age, and he hunched over his staff in a way that made him look far shorter than he was. His eyes were bandaged with strips of gauze, and he carried a carved staff to guide his way.

  I stammered my apology, then added, “I thought the ruins were deserted.” The lie was a weak one, especially since the monks had passed me.

  The monk turned to me and spoke so intently that I had the odd feeling he was staring through the gauze. “You did?”

  “Well, yes. The shrine looked so beautiful.” I flushed. How could I have said that? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give offense.”

  “Offense?” he asked.

  “Well, I just mean that …”

  The sound of others came at the door, and stopping mid-sentence, I tried to move past the monk. He gripped my arm with surprising strength and said, “What you have done was very foolish. Don’t you understand the dangers of these lands?”

  “Dangers? No, I don’t understand.” I pulled my arm from his grasp and backed slowly toward the open door.

  The blind man’s expression became thoughtful, then sympathetic. “What is the name of your homeland?” he whispered.

  “We are from Morova. We are traveling to Vezprem for the summer fair.…” My voice trailed off.

  “Was there a fog last night, a strange, sudden fog, darker than a starless night?”

  “Yes,” I said and added, “where are we now?” My voice sounded oddly soft.

  “Markovia … a land of tyranny and darkness.” The words rolled off his tongue like a heavy chant.

  The cloth rustled laughingly in another slight draft from the open door. I felt suddenly faint and dropped to one knee to keep from falling. Outside, Vhar called my name, but I didn’t answer, not even when, on the edge of my vision, I saw him stagger toward the door of the chapel.

  One of his rescuers pulled him back, but it was already too late. Vhar’s eyes were fixed on the shimmering fabric; it had bewitched us both. And where were we now? If he had listened to me sooner, we might have found our way back to Morova to face a winter of hardship, rather than of … of what? The priests’ stories had been as vague as they were terrible. I pushed their memory from my mind. Now I knew the tapestry was enchanted and I suddenly wanted to leave. Turning purposefully from the monk, I walked to the open doors and out into the blasting heat of the afternoon sun. Shading my eyes, I looked at my husband.

  Vhar’s face and arms were scraped, and he limped, but otherwise he appeared unharmed. “Fool woman. Stop next time when I call you,” he grumbled to me.

  “These people aren’t from this land,” the blind monk said to the larger of Vhar’s two rescuers, then added more softly, “Perhaps we should see to their safety and offer them shelter tonight.”

  At this mild suggestion, Vhar’s hand fell to the dagger he carried in his belt. “We have a horse and wagon. We can’t leave them unguarded,” he protested.

  “You are right. There are hunters in these hills,” the large monk said. “One of us can camp with your horse and provisions tonight. I am Brother Dominic, head of the Order of the Guardians, and I offer you the protection of these walls.”

  “And if we choose to leave?” Vhar asked.

  “It would hardly be wise. However, you are free to do as you wish.”

  I tried to catch Vhar’s eye, to suggest that we must go, but he was already accepting the invitation, apologizing for his suspicion, letting one of the monks support him as we walked across the yard. The monks took us to the large building that housed the kitchen and meeting hall. When I think of it now, I wonder how the Guardians could have been so foolish as to let us stay. Perhaps, like Vhar and I, they didn’t see how they were controlled.

  My husband sat on a long stone bench while one of his rescuers, a thin, dark-skinned man with shaking hands, tended his wounds. Brother Dominic waited until Vhar was bandaged before motioning me toward the winding stone stairs at the end of the hall. “Before you leave here, there are things you must know,” he said as we began the climb.

  The ceiling was lost in the shadows above me; soot and cobwebs covered the pillars and beams that supported the roof. Nonetheless, the stone stairs beneath my feet were level and solid. Portraits in peeling gilt frames had darkened with the walls, and their subjects stared sullenly at us as we passed. “Did these people once live here?” I asked the monk.

  “We believe that they still may,” he responded. “At night we sometimes see thin shadows moving along the walls. The wind carries strange howls like the cries of creatures in pain. And there are places in this fortress that even the boldest of us don’t visit.”

  “But they don’t harm you, these shadows?”

  “I think our presence amuses them,” Dominic chuckled. “Or perhaps they are lonely. In any event, they allow us to live here, and we keep them in our prayers.”

  The steps ended with a wooden door. Swinging it wide
, we entered an open tower that overlooked the lands to the north and east. Though the wood floor beneath me seemed sound enough, I stayed away from the tower wall, which was jagged and in ill repair.

  “From the land below, these ancient walls look like part of the mountains. We prefer it that way, for we value our isolation. No one visits here. Indeed, we’ve set a warding spell on the outside walls that prevents anyone who comes from the dread lands about from entering … unless they have the calling.”

  “The calling to join your order?”

  “Yes,” he responded after a slight pause.

  “And the fog your blind companion spoke of?”

  “I came into the land through that fog, much as you did,” he replied. “I told the others about my passage. That’s how Mattas knew to ask about your home.” His eyes, as they met mine, were filled with sympathy. At the time, it seemed natural, since he was a holy man. Later I understood how scarce true kindness was in this cursed land.

  “And the others?”

  “Are from the dread lands around. For some, living here is a sacrifice. For others, the order provides the first real comfort they have ever known.”

  I looked out at the land around us, the cold plains to the west, the blue rivers and dense forest to the north and east. Below me, the road that had led us here was barely visible as a clear ribbon against the sharp sides of the cliffs.

  “This land, Markovia, is an unwise place to linger, as is G’Henna to the west. But if you follow the road back the way you came and stop at the river’s edge, you will see a crossing shallow enough for your horse and cart. The road beyond it leads to a town called Linde in the land of Tepest. It is as happy a place as any I have seen. The people living there should tolerate your presence. In time, they may even come to think of you as one of their own.”

  “I’d rather return to my homeland.”

  “You cannot,” he responded flatly, then his voice softened. “Oh, there are rumored to be ways, but they are few and filled with dangers of their own. Seeking them can take a lifetime and cause far more misery than accepting your fate.”

  Dominic sat on a bench in the center of the tower.

  With difficulty, I pulled my eyes away from the dark landscape and sat beside him, his face in the shadows and mine in the light.

  He whispered a few words of a strange language, then asked, “Tell me how you came here.”

  All my carefully-planned lies were forgotten and I related with as much detail as I could everything that had happened since we left home. Brother Dominic seemed neither surprised nor alarmed by my account. “Two more souls drawn from the outer lands,” he said when I had finished.

  “Drawn by what? The cloth?”

  He shook his head. “You know so much already.”

  “I will pledge to tell no one that you or the cloth are here,” I replied. Though his face was shadowed, I sensed his doubts and knew he had little reason to trust me. We might have spoken further, but a mournful bell tolled, calling us to eat.

  The long wood table in the dining hall could easily seat twenty men. There were eight of us at one end of it. These included Vhar and me, and all the Guardians save the youngest, who had carried his evening meal down the path where he would stay and watch over our horse and cart. The meal was a simple one—coarse brown bread and hard cheese flecked with mold on its rind. For sweets, there were early apples and a mush of sweet blackberries picked from the woods below the castle.

  Though I was sure Vhar had a hundred questions, and even more suspicions, he was wise enough not to broach them to our hosts. Instead, he wore a thin mask of charm. He told the monks false tales of our family and village, thanked the ones who saved his life, and offered to work to repay his debt.

  “I can think of nothing we need done,” Dominic replied. “But if you wish, you could leave one of your knives. Our blades are old. They don’t hold an edge for long.”

  “I’ll show you what I have and see to sharpening yours as well—but in the morning, please,” Vhar said and stifled a yawn.

  Dominic lifted a cased candle from the table and escorted us up a weathered outside staircase to a hallway that serviced the second-floor bedchambers. A bottle of wine sat on the table along with two glasses. “The wine is excellent,” the monk said, pouring each of us a glass. “It will ease the pain and help you sleep,” he said to Vhar and watched while Vhar drank his. I lifted mine, but, though I put the liquid to my lips, I didn’t drink. One of us should sleep lightly, I thought. Vhar, with his bruises and pandering lies, seemed far less capable than I.

  As soon as the door closed behind our host, Vhar began to mercilessly question me. He asked briefly and distractedly about the land and what I had learned, then turned to the one subject that seemed to have overpowered his mind—the tapestry in the shrine. “I saw it for only a moment, and the light was dim. Yet it seemed to glow, to move, to speak to me,” he said. “You were beside it. What did you see?”

  “A shimmering gray fabric with an odd, horrible pattern. The fabric looked like silk,” I said, hoping he would not press the point.

  “It moved. It whispered to me,” he insisted.

  “The breeze moved it. The folds rustled,” I retorted.

  My voice had risen, and he clapped an avid hand over my mouth. “What would such a treasure be worth, I wonder?” he asked.

  I pushed his hand away. “Since the Guardians seem to value it so greatly, quite possibly our lives,” I said and crawled beneath the ragged quilt on the bed. I patted the space beside me. “Come to bed, Vhar. Perhaps you’ll be ready to talk about more important matters in the morning.”

  At any other time, he might have pressed me further, but the monks were filing up the stairs beyond our window. Vhar lay down beside me. As we listened to the Guardians’ voices in the hall, Vhar drifted off to sleep.

  That night, my mind traveled its own dark paths through the fog to the darkness of the shrine, with its horrible, glowing shroud. The dreams were many and troubling, but only the last and most vivid forced me awake. I saw Vhar strike a silver man with his dagger, but, when he raised his hand to strike again, I had become the victim, and Brother Dominic the attacker. His face was a mask of pity and concern, the tip of his blade biting into my throat.

  I sat up in bed, certain that I heard voices and soft footfalls in the hall outside our room. The door was partly open and, when I went to shut it, the whispers became clear enough to understand.

  Four men were in the room next to ours. I recognized the voices of two of the speakers, Mattas and Dominic. The others could have been any of the Guardians, for the rest had said very little during the meal. They discussed what should be done with us now that we knew of their existence here and the treasure that they guarded. Dominic spoke of imprisonment; another mentioned spells that would make us forget everything we had seen. With chilling persuasiveness, Mattas argued for murder.

  Though it might have seemed the kindest solution, I feared the spells most of all, for I had seen the effects of forgetfulness spells gone awry. Men stripped of their memories often roamed the many summer festivals in our land, searching for someone with a clue to their past. In good years, I would give them coins or food. This year, I only looked away uneasily. I stole back to our bed, sliding in beside Vhar. There I lay quietly for a moment, calming myself before shaking him awake.

  “I thought they were far too charitable,” Vhar said bitterly when I had finally roused him enough to tell him all I had heard. We decided to escape, and dressed ourselves quickly. By the time we entered the corridor, the room next door was silent and dark. But we dared not risk a light. Instead, we used our hands to guide us in the lightless corridor until we reached the outside flight of stairs, which led to the yard below.

  There Vhar held me back. “Stay here until you hear me whistle. The exit may be guarded. I’ll clear the way,” he whispered.

  “I have my dagger,” I said. “I’d prefer to remain with you.”

  “You’ll
be a hindrance if there’s a fight,” he replied gruffly. “Stay here.” With that he was gone, the occasional falling pebble the only sound of his passing.

  It seemed that I waited for his signal far too long. I began to expect to hear a cry of alarm from a guard outside, but there was only the distant howl of a wolf, the moaning of the chilling west wind through the cracks in the crumbling battlements above me. I had become certain that Vhar had been overpowered when I heard his familiar whistle. I descended carefully and, recalling the unevenness of the steps, gripped the rotting wooden rail as if it would actually support me.

  Just as I passed, a tread gave way. It fell to the ground below with a sound that seemed to boom like thunder in the silent dark. I went more quickly then, less fearful of falling than of being discovered.

  I met Vhar outside the wall. “Come,” Vhar whispered, and I ran behind him down the path. At the pile of boulders, Vhar went on alone. It always astonished me how, in spite of his stocky build, Vhar could move so silently. His skill served him well that night. When I scrambled over the rocks, I saw the monk lying beside his fire. His blood was black and shining in the firelight. It flowed from his slashed neck into a shallow puddle beside him.

  We didn’t dare to light a torch to guide our way, so Vhar walked in front of the wagon, leading our horse down the twisting path. The wind picked up and the sky abruptly cleared, unveiling the watchful eye of a nearly full moon.

  The sun was rising as we approached the base of the cliffs. Foot-weary, Vhar joined me on the wagon. Below us was a river, winding like a great black snake through the trees. I pointed it out to Vhar and explained what Dominic had told me about the country of Tepest.

  “You also said he planned to murder us while we slept. I would hardly call his information reliable,” Vhar reminded me, punctuating the statement with a derisive snort.

  “I don’t see another road,” I countered.

  The horse rounded a sharp curve and a shadow, huge and dark, rose from the road in front of us. Our horse reared, and the sudden, backward jolt of the wagon nearly threw me over the side. I pulled the knife I always carry. Vhar drew a short sword from beneath the wagon seat as the creature circled silently above us.