Tapestry of Dark Souls

by Elaine Bergstrom

  “Go on,” I prompted, eyeing him warily.

  “I’ve not lived in Linde for long, but I’ve heard a great many tales. Some Tepestanis believe that the souls of their dead live on—not in some ghostly other world, but in a physical world with all of the beauty of this one and none of its pain or evil. They believe that all the evil in this other world was miraculously vanquished, leaving a land that is good and pure, a place where a man and a woman can walk beneath the stars without fearing the creatures that hunt the night. Some say the tapestry caused that miraculous cleansing.”

  “Where did it come from?” I asked in a whisper, then added, “The cloth, I mean.”

  “The first tales I know of the tapestry claim it fell into the hands of a warlock who used it to steal the souls of his evil enemies. An even more exaggerated tale adds that, though the warlock destroyed the bodies of his enemies, their evil lived on in the tapestry’s web. Bitter, hating, the trapped souls wove their own spells, increasing the power of the tapestry until even the warlock found it difficult to resist. It’s said that the sorcerer paid a thousand gold pieces for the tapestry, then ten times that to rid himself of it lest he become trapped in its web himself.

  “How did the cloth reach the fortr-Markovia?” I asked, my thoughts muddled by the many tales.

  “Years ago, before I ever came to this village,” the man replied with a nod, watching the door Andor and Dirca had passed through, “three monks came to Linde, carrying a locked box that they kept with them always. One of them was blind, and neither of the others seemed well enough to travel. Yet they stayed here only a night before heading south. Some say these men were of the Order of the Guardians, and that they carried the tapestry in that box.”

  He suddenly reached for my hand. Knowing what sorcery a touch could unleash, I pulled my arm back and eyed him suspiciously. Shrugging, he went on, “Now there’s a legend in these parts, one that tells how our land is peaceful because the cloth is hidden nearby. Few really believe it—but I know it’s true.” His voice became a hiss. “I’ve been to the fortress where the cloth is kept. I know the Guardians and the importance of their work. If your husband’s stolen the cloth, he must return it soon. He’s got very little time.”

  “Because of the curse the woman mentioned?”

  He shook his head. “Maeve meant to frighten you into telling what you knew. She’s always lusted after power.” He paused and, as I was about to ask what he meant, he went on, his voice now an ominous whisper. “For all its beauty, what the cloth does best is absorb and magnify evil. And it has other, more terrible, powers as well. It must be returned to the shrine before the shadows of the full moon fall, tomorrow night.”

  I didn’t want to believe Ivar, yet I had to. Vhar would never drink too much and leave himself open to theft or worse by bragging about a treasure. And, though he was a cruel man, Vhar would never kill for wealth, not until we found that cursed cloth.

  It must have been the tapestry acting through Vhar. It must have been luring us here to unleash its evil.

  I was getting dressed the following morning when a wailing—long and desolate—broke the town’s silence. I unlocked the shutters and pushed them open. The cries came from a nearby cottage where a woman was kneeling beside a window with splintered shutters. Her hands clutched a blood-soaked scrap of cloth.

  I went downstairs. Vhar was nowhere to be seen, but Andor and Ivar were sitting together discussing the killing. “That was the third child taken this month,” Ivar told me bitterly after I asked what had happened. “It’s time for the men to go hunting again,” he added, rising from the table and heading for the door.

  A happy place, Dominic had called this. How terrible a sad one must be, I thought.

  “I need to get something from the storage room,” I told Andor.

  Distractedly peering after Ivar, he took the key from the ring on his belt. “You’ll find the door outside under the stairs,” he said.

  The night fog had made the storage door stick in its frame. I had to kick it open, making a bang I was certain carried from one end of town to the other. Though I expected to see Ivar or Maeve coming to take the tapestry, no one stirred on the cobblestone road.

  I stood on the threshold, staring into the cluttered, musty room, and held back a sneeze as the dust tickled my nose. The same wave of emotion I had felt in the shrine swept over me again, and I knew the cloth was inside the storage room even before I lit the glass-cased candle and began to search. I stepped around Andor’s broken pots and cooking pans, and then my feet were drawn immediately to a box hidden beneath Vhar’s felt-wrapped silver daggers. I opened the box.

  The cloth was inside.

  Why had Vhar stolen it? We were strangers in this land. The sentence for the theft could have been torture or death or worse. As I drew out the shimmering cloth, resting it across my knees, I thought of how poorly I knew my husband and how much I resented him. He didn’t love me. I was a useful possession, like the knives in his crates, like this treasure in my lap.

  My tears fell onto the folds of fabric and, as I brushed them away, the cloth seemed to console me, telling me it belonged to me, that it was mine to command. I knew it had power, a power that would keep me safe, that would guide me wherever my life would go. I suddenly wanted to drape it over my shoulders, to clothe my body in it and wear it in triumph as I walked out of town, away from Vhar, away from my squalid past forever.

  The boldness would be a pleasure, yes. But everyone lusted for the cloth. Vhar would kill for it. If I wished to keep it, and my life, I couldn’t risk such a public display. No, I thought, I must be sly and hide the thin fabric beneath my cloak until I was well away from Vhar and his wrath. I was wrapping the cloth in a plain piece of linen when I heard a board creak outside the door. I jumped to my feet and whirled, staring through the sunlit frame.

  Ivar and one of the monks stood in the doorway. The monk moved into the cramped storage room, his gray-robed form blocking out the sunlight. He moved forward alone as Ivar stepped away in response to some noise. The monk held out his hand and said in a voice that sounded wise and commanding, “Give the tapestry to me.”

  “It’s mine,” I said and backed away from the door, clutching the cloth tightly to my chest.

  The monk walked farther into the room. “You don’t understand the evil of the thing you have taken,” he went on, speaking as a father might to a wayward, well-loved child. “It must go back to the shrine by sundown or its power will destroy you.”

  I moved to my right. He moved with me. I shied left, but, once again, he stood between me and the door. He was so old I could run right over the top of him, but even with avarice blinding my eyes, I didn’t want to hurt the old man. I feinted to one side, then bolted around him on the other.

  How could an old man move that fast? How could his hands be so strong? His fingers bruised my wrists. I felt the cloth falling from my arms and struggled to keep from dropping it. Then abruptly, I heard a thud and the old man, crumpling, released me. I fell forward, my face buried in the rich smooth fabric. It smelled of cloying incense, which seemed to suck the air from me. With effort, I forced myself to my knees and looked up.

  Vhar stood above me, the old monk lying between us. Perhaps my avarice wouldn’t bring me to violence, but Vhar’s would.

  Despair. All my perfect plans were for nothing. I would never escape Vhar now. Never.

  Unless. Unless …

  Words flowed into my mind, words as sweet as the scent of the cloth, telling me what I must do. I didn’t question them. Now, as I write this, I understand fully that I couldn’t question them. I reached behind me and groped in one of the inn’s boxes, my hand closing around the handle of a heavy iron skillet. I held it behind me as Vhar stepped over the body, crooning, “Leith, love, listen to me. Look at the cloth you hold. It’s worth a fortune. All the years we struggled together are over once we sell it.”

  It was Vhar’s business to know the value of things, and, I reminded mys
elf, his common sense was one of the reasons I had married him. Still, as I looked down at the gossamer fabric, I knew I couldn’t let this treasure be sold for any price. Indeed, I could never think of parting with it, in spite of—or because of—its disturbing luxury.

  My confusion must have been obvious, for he knelt in front of me. “Give it to me. You can’t protect it.”

  His hands fell slowly onto the cloth. As they touched it—this treasure I claimed as mine—all the resentments I had buried for so many years exploded into rage, giving me a strength I didn’t know I had. I swung the heavy skillet up and sideways against his head. He fell. I hit him again, and again. Then, dropping the skillet, I pounded him with my fists, stopping only when I was too exhausted to continue. Though wounded, he still lived. As I looked at him, his eyes fluttered and opened.

  He would follow me if I didn’t kill him.

  I pulled one of the silver daggers from the crate beside me. As I did, I saw the blood glistening on my hands, Vhar dazed at my feet and, beyond him, the motionless old monk. I’d never killed another soul, but now, my hot and bloody hand was ready to plunge the dagger into my husband and the helpless monk.

  With a single cry of anguish and guilt, I grabbed the tapestry—knife still in hand—and started toward the open door. As I neared it, Ivar stumbled into the light. He leaned against the door frame, one of Vhar’s knives embedded deep in his shoulder.

  “Wait! Listen to me!” he begged, his voice surprisingly strong. I looked at him with fury. I would kill him if I had to. Vhar and the monk were no longer in my way, but this man dared to bar my path. My mind yielded completely to the powers in the cloth. Nothing would stop me from owning this thing.

  But Ivar didn’t try to call for help. Instead he moved inside and leaned against the wall. His face, ashen with pain, turned sympathetically toward me. “If you won’t return the cloth to the shrine, take it out of this land. Travel to G’Henna before the moon rises tonight. The dark priests there can deal with its evil.”

  “I will leave Tepest gladly,” I replied, my voice pitiless, my knife cold and insistent in my hand.

  “Maeve,” he whispered. I thought of the woman and the power I felt in her and hesitated, listening carefully to his next words. “She may have told …” He halted then continued with a different thought. “Don’t leave this land by the open road. On the other side of the river crossing you will see a footpath heading west. It leads to some underground passages out of Tepest. The path to the right will take you to the passage to G’Henna. To the left you will see one to Markovia. Go the way you must, but go.”

  Kill him, something whispered again in my mind. Kill him or he will follow you.

  The voice was soft, beautiful, compelling. Though Ivar had done me no harm and hardly seemed capable of pursuit, I was compelled to obey the voice. But, as I began to raise my knife for the final, killing stroke, my will stayed my hand. I don’t know how long I stood with my arm raised, trapped by the horror of what I still felt I must do. I only know that my indecision was broken by the sound of a low moan behind me. I turned and saw Vhar on hands and knees, trying to find the wits to stand. Though one side of his face was bloody, and his eyes were glazed from pain, I saw the anger in his expression, and the surprise. As I backed away from him, my grip on the cloth slackened for a moment. Before I could turn and run from the room, the tapestry exercised its own terrible power.

  Whipped by some internal wind, it broke free of its linen cover and billowed out into the storage room. I held tight to one edge, but the rest flapped out, covering Vhar. He cried my name as the cloth fell, and suddenly his voice grew sad and faraway, as though he were plummeting down a bottomless shaft. I pulled the cloth away too late. Worn planks lay beneath it, but Vhar—husband, adversary, friend—was gone.

  Perhaps I screamed—I don’t remember. The tapestry seemed to sense my sudden abhorrence for it, for the thin folds twisted, now trying to cover me. With effort, I snatched the flapping edge and drew the cloth resolutely toward me until I held a small, shimmering bundle once more. Certain the fabric would try to escape my hold, I took off my leather belt and tied it tightly around the center of the folds. Then, for the first time, I looked down with clear eyes at this stolen treasure, this abomination I held in my arms.

  The horror of the last few minutes shattered the spell cast upon me by the cloth, a spell I was certain had trapped me the moment I first saw the cloth hanging in its shrine.

  It was just as Ivar had said. The cloth not only attracted evil, it magnified even the least of it, twisting the smallest annoyance into something dark and lethal. It had used Vhar’s avarice to make him a thief. And me? The cloth had used petty resentments from years of marriage to turn me into a murderer! I felt the cloth radiating a false, comforting warmth, making me long to unbind it and caress it, to yield to its dark, seductive power. But I wouldn’t be tricked by it, not again. No matter what thoughts entered my head from now until the end of the day, I would fix my mind on one end—returning the cloth to its rightful place in the shrine.

  I didn’t tell this to Ivar. I didn’t have to. He noted the change in my expression, the resolve as I wrapped the cloth in a piece of plain linen and gripped it firmly under one arm. With the silver blade hidden beneath the precious bundle, I ran.

  As I crossed the river, I sensed others there with me, watching me. I searched the shadows beneath the thickest stands of trees, expecting to see a gray-robed monk close in and pull this cursed treasure from my grasp.

  None came. The cloth seemed to sigh sadly, growing heavier in my arms, slowing my pace. On the opposite side of the river, nearly hidden by the trees, I saw two paths. The left one angled slightly, then paralleled the road.

  I started down the narrow path, which ended with the uneven opening of a cavern. A pair of pitch-covered torches were propped inside. I dug the tinder box from my pocket and, with a torch in one hand and the cloth in the other, I entered the open mouth of the cave.

  The darkness inside would have been unbearable had I not had torches to light my way. I lit one and carried the other as I started down the path. The damp earth and the darkness pressed around me, muffling even the ragged sounds of my breathing as I hurried on.

  Passages branched out on either side of me. I saw small eyes glowing in the torchlight, predators watching me silently as I passed their midnight lairs. Bats rustled on the cavern ceiling, and small lizards scurried on the slime-coated ground beneath my resolute feet.

  As I traveled in the darkness, I heard whispered promises from the cloth and saw visions of the life I had always longed to lead. I saw the fortress as it had once been. I was its lady, a silver-eyed man its lord, and the stone shrine was an arbor of grapes ripening in the warm, summer sun.

  “Go away!” I cried to all those half-formed dreams, and I quickened my pace.

  The cloth seemed lighter now. Perhaps the earlier use of its power had sapped its strength. Perhaps fear gave me added strength—if I moved too slowly, the torches would burn out, and I would be lost in the twisting passages, condemned to die of hunger or thirst or … madness.

  The first torch began to sputter and die, and I stopped and quickly lit the second. As I did, I heard a brief distant clicking that at first sounded like drops of water falling into some deep underground lake. But the drops moved as I moved, following me as I climbed the path between the sharply narrowing walls.

  The cave ceiling grew lower. My raised torch brushed the stalactites, sending bats to flight. Hundreds whirled around me as I crouched with the flame in front of me, protecting my face. The beating of the thousand tiny wings blew out the torch, and there I remained, my head pressed against my bent knees as the creatures swarmed around me. Somewhere in the distance I heard a high-pitched scream of pain, then a steady crunching of teeth on small bones.

  I relit the torch and drew my knife. Taking comfort in its weight and the gleam of its silver blade, I went on, waving the torch in front of me until the ceiling grew hig
her and the swarm of bats thinned.

  The torch began to flicker and die. The path twisted. Knowing what would happen if the flame were to go out in the blackness of these caves, I broke into a run. Awkwardly dodging the columns and stalagmites that converged around me, I watched as the flame sputtered and went out. Skidding to a stop, I dug out my flint and steel and tried to relight the torch. Sparks snapped, blue and tiny in that vast blackness, but the torch wouldn’t relight. Repeated attempts, each more frantic than the one before, failed.

  And I sat, miserable, in the deepening dark.

  But, as my eyes adjusted, I saw a faint glow of light in the passage ahead. Rolling to my knees, I squinted to make out what was causing it. It looked like sunlight, dim after descending a great distance through earth. Stumbling slowly forward, I reached a twilit section of the cave and glimpsed its mouth some half-mile away, up a broadening slope. Trudging faster, I followed the rising path to the exit.

  Emerging from the cave mouth, I saw the fortress wall loom above me, its stones glowing blood red in the setting sun. The full moon would rise any moment. My eyes found the barren path that snaked up the side of the hill to the fortress. Steep and narrow, it looked far from inviting. But the wider road to the fortress cut farther west, and I had neither the time or the strength to search for it.

  I had just reached the first turn in the road when I heard a rustle behind me and a low growl. I turned slowly, keeping my back to the rocky cliffside and had my first real look at the thing that had trailed me through the caverns.

  It was a black wolf, well over the size of the ones whose pelts decorated The Nocturne’s wall. It crouched behind me with its mouth open, teeth bared, breath hot and cloudy in the damp evening air. I had no protection save the rock wall, and I backed against it, bracing my legs for balance and holding up my knife. The creature eyed the blade with seemingly human apprehension, then skirted to my left, looking for an opening. I felt the cloth twitch, responding to the danger—or the chance for escape. I dropped it between my body and the rock cliff and ignored it, just as I did the pounding of my heart. With my left arm shielding my body and my right hand gripping the knife, I waited for its attack.