Tapestry of Dark Souls

by Elaine Bergstrom

  “Jonathan,” Dominic repeated and wrapped the child in his blanket. He dismissed the others and carried the babe back to his sleeping room.

  Leith had spent so many days composing her life’s story—Jonathan’s only legacy—that it seemed wrong to deny the boy its knowledge. Nonetheless, the Guardians agreed that knowledge of the boy’s possible parentage would devastate him.

  Again in the library, Leo placed his hands over the final words of Leith’s account. He recited a simple incantation and Leith’s words blurred, lightened, and vanished. Taking a pen and imitating her painstaking script, he revised her legacy. Afterward, he read through the account, altering any references to Jonathan’s parentage to make him seem clearly Vhar’s son. The rest of the account remained as Leith had written it. He placed the scroll in a carved stone box in the library with the other histories of the tapestry, then locked the box with a complex spell he and Dominic alone could undo. None of the other Guardians could read, but surely others, thieves and necromancers, would find the histories a key to power.

  In another few months, the child would be old enough to travel. When that time came, they would send him to Kartakass. Leo knew a family there and, with the boy’s fair coloring, he would blend in well. Such things mattered to children. Perhaps someday, the child would return to them. When he did, he would have a right to know his mother’s fate.

  That night, the monks feasted on fresh-killed deer and their last Linde wine, a rare and heady treat. Whether from the wine or ill fortune or fate, Leo tripped as he carried the final vial of dreamless potion from the cupboard. The bottle fell from his hand and landed on the table beside Mattas. The blind monk, groping, caught it and set it upright, after spilling half its contents.

  Leo, Dominic, and Peto drank as Mattas and Hektor prepared to guard the shrine and the fortress. But when they separated for the night, Mattas became faint. His face was flushed, and covered with a sheen of sweat that signaled the return of an old illness. Peto willingly took his place that night, but Mattas had no potion to drink. “It has been so long since I dreamed,” Mattas said as Dominic helped him to his room. “No matter how terrible the visions, I will welcome them.”

  “If you need me, call out and I will come, old friend,” Dominic replied gravely.

  “I’m accustomed to the tricks the cloth’s prisoners play. Remember, you may dream as well tonight,” Mattas replied and began unwinding the bandage that covered his eyes. Dominic recognized the unspoken request and left the old monk. When he had gone, Mattas removed the last of the bindings and ran his fingers over the empty sockets that had held his eyes, pushing against the scarred tissue, thinking of the night so many years ago when fire had fallen in burning sheets from the angry sky, destroying their shrine, their homes, and so many innocent lives. Mattas had been brave then, rallying the Guardians who were unhurt, focusing their minds on their work until their terror subsided.

  In the end, the powers in the cloth had their revenge. They killed all but one of the other Guardians. And they left Mattas with the final, terrible vision of his comrades with blood flowing from cracks in their blackened skin. Even when the fiery bolts struck his eyes, Mattas had managed to continue the chant.

  Even then.

  Whatever boldness he possessed had vanished with his sight. Endurance, alone, remained. He had won that terrible battle. No new cruelty from the powers on the cloth could exceed what they had already done.

  “Come,” he whispered as he lay back on the narrow bed. “Come, dark souls, and show me what you will.”

  As he drifted toward sleep, blood filled his mouth and he coughed, scattering drops of crimson over his pillow. His heart beat faster, fear and weakness combining to make him faint. For a moment, the weakness was so vivid, so real, it couldn’t be a dream. Then, he heard a voice calling him to come begin the chant, calling from a long way off, it seemed. And he knew his night of torment had begun.

  He tried to rise, but found he couldn’t move. He tried to speak, but had no voice.

  Darkness closed around him, and from its depths he heard the other Guardians chanting his name, felt the pressure of the bindings as they wrapped his body, heard the beginning of the long, slow dirge for the dead. He felt himself lifted, carried down the stairs from his chamber to his grave, which was already dug beside the shrine. It was the custom of the order: his soul would guard the cloth in life and in death. And they lowered him to the bottom. He felt shovelfuls of earth dropping on him, weighting him down. He heard laughter … a cacophany of mirth.

  Seductive. Triumphant.

  Night fell. When he was alive, Mattas had been old and shrunken with age. The joints in his hands and legs had been swollen and twisted. But the ghost of what he had once been rose from its grave, restored to youth and perfection. Mattas could once again see as he floated to the front of the shrine, to take his place and wait to join in the long night of chanting.

  Only two Guardians walked from the hall. He stared at the pair, recognizing Dominic and Leo only with difficulty. They had been terribly altered.

  Dominic held a staff, and he leaned heavily on it to take the weight off his weakened legs. His eyes were rheumy, hands white and lined with age. His free arm shook as he stumbled forward to his place before the shrine. Leo stood beside him, also old and weak, but no less resolute. A darkflyer circled above the fortress, throwing a sharp shadow on the courtyard. Others—earthbound beast-men—prowled outside the keep’s crumbling walls. As the last of the Guardians began their ritual chant, the beast-men’s claws and fur-covered hands broke through the rotted doors. The grotesque band of creatures rushed forward, their mouths open and foaming, hungry for the feast. The lead creature, huge and dark, more bear than man, knocked Leo against the stone wall of the shrine. Its gigantic paws ripped through the plain gray cloak and the aged, white skin beneath.

  Starting awake, Mattas calmed his rasping breaths and let his mind again drift toward sleep. As the peaceful darkness of dreamless sleep flowed over Mattas, someone began to whisper in his mind.

  Had Mattas pulled himself fully awake, had he eyes to see, he would have spied the gray shadow beside his pallet, the thin-lipped mouth moving. Throughout the night, the shadow stayed with him, invading his unordered dreams, forming words that fixed on the edge of his memory, “Jonathan will do this. Jonathan will destroy you. Jonathan must be sent away.”

  When Mattas joined the others at the morning meal, he discovered he wasn’t the only one who had dreamed of some terrible future. Dominic and Leo had similar dreams, but Leo’s contained an admonition that the child be kept close, and Dominic’s didn’t include Jonathan at all.

  “Perhaps these were true dreams,” Hektor suggested. “I remember how, in my childhood, my father each morning told us his dreams and interpreted them for living that day. I’d like to know my dreams. I drink Leo’s potion only because you’d banish me from the order if I didn’t.”

  “And rightfully so,” Mattas retorted. “You don’t know what our nights were like before Leo came to us and began preparing his potion.”

  “Mattas’s dream has some merit,” Peto said. “No one stays here without the calling, not even a child.”

  “I agree—we should send the child away,” Hektor added, his opinion utterly unexpected. “But not so far that we can’t have news of him. Not so far that he can’t return to us if he has the calling.”

  “Distance doesn’t matter if his vocation is true,” Peto responded. “I sailed the mists to reach this order.”

  “But if we are wrong about the child—if he is evil—it is better that we know the truth when he is young,” Hektor went on. “Send the infant to Linde. We can get news of him and if our concerns are groundless and he has the calling, he can return to us.”

  “I agree with Hektor,” Dominic said, joining the debate for the first time. “And if he has a choice, as I believe all creatures must, Andor and Dirca can watch over him and see that he makes the right one.”

  Peto g
ave quick support to the proposal. “I vote to send him to Linde,” he said and turned to Leo. Before the monk could speak, the familiar cry of the child filled the hall.

  Leo looked at Hektor, noting how his friend’s expression brightened as he listened to the cry, anxious to go care for the infant. Could he really condemn Hektor to never knowing the fate of the boy? “I agree,” he said, though instincts said the words were wrong.

  “And I,” Dominic said.

  Mattas sighed and nodded wearily. The dreams cast doubt and dissension, and he refused to worsen it. As he shuffled up the stairs and walked into the nursery, he prayed that his concerns were nothing more than the foolish caution of an old man.

  A shaft of sunlight slanted through a narrow window, brightening the floor and the simple wooden cradle that Peto had crafted for the child. Blankets and changing rags lay folded on a shelf against the wall. Knowing Hektor already stood in the room, Mattas called out his name and followed the younger monk’s voice to the bench beside the cradle. Hektor had mixed goat’s milk and grain into a thin gruel that the child sucked greedily from the spoon. When he’d finished feeding Jon, Hektor lifted the infant and lay him in Mattas’s arms. “You had a family once,” Hektor told him. “Did you never sing to your children?”

  If he could have cried, Mattas would have now as he crooned an old, never-to-be-forgotten song and thought of his sons, destroyed in the burning of the temple so many years ago. When he had finished, Mattas lowered his face to brush the infant’s soft hair, inhaling the sweet scent of new life, new hope.

  Dirca had just put the day’s bread in the oven to bake when she saw the shadow move across the eastern window of the inn, heard the quick, familiar knock at the rear door. It had been months since Brother Leo had come seeking Ivar, her sister’s husband, and Dirca went joyfully to unbolt the door.

  As he entered, and they greeted each other warmly, Dirca asked about Leith. Leo shook his head sadly, implying what she assumed had happened. Strength was important in childbirth, though hardly as much as endurance. Leith, so thin, so remote as her time neared, hadn’t enough of either.

  Ivar had never explained to her or Andor how the woman had become were. On the many afternoons she and Leith had spent together, Dirca didn’t think it polite to admit that she knew the truth … how could she not know when the woman wore the wolf amulet around her neck? Dirca would never suggest that Leith’s child might be tainted by her curse. But, in the last days before she disappeared, Leith had grown so fragile she seemed transparent, as if the life growing inside her were a hungry predator, devouring her strength.

  Brother Leo placed a basket on a table and Dirca pulled back the blanket and looked at Leith’s child. She immediately regretted her thoughts. She ran her fingers through Jonathan’s hair, wondering at the softness and the odd silver color. Dirca touched the scar the amulet had left on the infant’s cheek and brushed one of the tiny palms. The child closed his delicate hand in a tight grip over her finger.

  “Leith came to us seeking peace and solitude. We granted it. But we cannot keep her infant,” Leo said. “Jonathan needs a mother, father, other children, companionship, not solitude. We thought of you.”

  He didn’t need to remind her why. Tears came to Dirca’s eyes as she nodded. “I’m certain my husband will agree,” she said. “You’ll find Andor outside, rehanging one of the shutters.”

  “I’ll go ask him as well,” Leo said, though Dirca, her finger still held by the infant’s hand, hardly seemed to hear his words. Her mind was lost in the past, he decided, and, stooping to kiss the child good-bye, left without disturbing her.

  Leo was correct about Dirca’s thoughts. The tragedies of her past returned often to haunt her. She had given birth to two girls in Gundarak, a land where female children were taxed. The amount levied brought privation on most families. Torvil, her husband, wasn’t willing to pay it or support the girls, who would undoubtedly be taken from him later. So Dirca had done what so many women in the land had done. With her own hands, she carried each babe to the hills and left her to die. Afterward, she sat in her plain stone cottage and listened to the distant howls of the wolves, thankful her daughters had been born in winter, when the cold alone would kill them. When she abandoned the second girl a year after the first, she thought of lying down beside the child and letting the cold claim her as well. All that kept her alive was the knowledge that suicide brought no peace in the afterlife. So she lived and prayed each day that the curse of the land, and of her callous husband, would be lifted.

  In her bitterness, she chose a desperate course. During the following spring, the Vistani made their main camp deep in the forest, then set up a second, smaller one on the edge of town. From there, the unaccustomed sound of gypsy music and laughter lured the despondent community into the Vistani’s greedy clutches. Torvil had gone with the other men to the camp to buy drink and, perhaps, women. Some of Gundar’s enforcers also roamed the gathering, allegedly to maintain order, though the enforcers had no better manner than common thugs. Dirca knew that as an unescorted Gundrakan woman, she would be easier prey than the spirited Vistani wenches with their hot-tempered men. But that night was her only chance to buy the potion she needed. She went alone to their camp, staying well in the shadows, searching for a Vistana likely to help her.

  She decided to approach an old gypsy woman who sat behind a wagon at the edge of the camp. The crone tended her own small fire, keeping a pot warmed on the edge of it. From the pot, she poured mugs of a steaming liquid, then sipped it slowly while staring into the fire and stirring its embers. Younger Vistani occasionally brought her meat and bread. Dirca found their respect encouraging, the woman’s remote location from the main activities of the camp comforting. Her husband wouldn’t discover her there.

  Though Dirca was concealed in the shadows, the woman looked at her through the fire; their eyes met. “Step forward, timid child,” she called. “I am Madame Avana. Come and tell me what you must.”

  Dirca did. As she described the birth and death of her two infants, her voice, at first halting, grew bolder. Anger added strength to her words. “Since he won’t do his duty to his children, I will no longer do my duty to him. I wish to conceive no more children. That is the curse I place on him.”

  “And on yourself,” the gypsy reminded her gently.

  “Aye,” Dirca admitted. “Even if there were means to assure boy children, I still prefer none. He deserves this curse. His own mother begged on her knees for the life of his daughters, but he wouldn’t relent.”

  “Strong men have been known to disappear,” Madame Avana suggested. “Curse him, not yourself.”

  “I couldn’t ask for that,” Dirca responded.

  “Even if it were out of your hands?”

  “I’m here, am I not! I would be responsible!” Dirca snapped, wanting to banish the temptation.

  Madame Avana eyed her with greater respect. “So you are. And your coin?”

  Dirca held out five copper pieces, hoping they would be enough. The old woman waited, believing, no doubt, that more would be offered. “It’s all I have,” Dirca said. “And they’re not even mine; my husband’s mother gave them to me.”

  The woman fixed her dark eyes on Dirca’s. “To do this?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Dirca responded. “She knows, and agrees.”

  The old woman laughed softly. “So you both have that same, unyielding strength. You’ll need it tonight.” She lifted the coins from Dirca’s hand and held out her own drinking mug. “Finish this,” she ordered.

  Though the liquid was barely warm, it burned as it flowed down Dirca’s throat, leaving the taste of herb tea and anise. Dirca coughed. Her eyes watered. Nonetheless, she drank it all. The woman poured her more. “Finish this as well,” she said. “I’ll mix your potion now.” She disappeared into her wagon, the pale orange of her lamp throwing light through cracks in the painted door.

  Dirca waited in the shadows, sipping the warm liquid and listening t
o the music and occasional bursts of laughter from the larger encampment. Her foot tapped in time to the drumbeats, and she wished she were unmarried so that she could go dance with the others. The drink strengthened that longing, as if a part of the gypsy soul was fixed in the bitter brew.

  When the old woman returned, she carried a small bottle. “Swallow this once you get home,” she said. “If you drink it now, you’d never get home tonight. Don’t delay in consuming it, for the drink I gave you will kill some of the pain.” She gave a low whistle and one of the young Vistani appeared at her side. “Take the woman home, Alexi, and take care that no one sees you or it will go badly for both of you.”

  Dirca hid the bottle inside her cloak and turned to leave, but the woman grabbed her arm. “Once done, this cannot be undone.”

  “I understand,” Dirca said, thankful for the honesty.

  “Someday,” Madame Avana replied in a traditional Gundrakan farewell, given only to respected friends. She watched Dirca disappear into the shadows.

  “Someday, daughter,” the woman repeated to the darkness and returned to tending her small fire.

  As Dirca expected, Torvil wasn’t in the wooden cottage when she returned. Most likely, he wouldn’t return the entire night. Like many of the homes in their village, Dirca’s had a single room with a small stone hearth. A ladder led to a lofted sleeping space warmed by the chimney. Dirca considered going upstairs and drinking the potion, then decided against it. If the liquid made her ill, she’d prefer to be near the door. She uncorked the bottle and tasted the contents.

  Though many herbs had been added to the mix to make it more palatable, the base still tasted of blood and decay. Dirca gagged on the first sip, then resolutely downed the rest, swallowing long after she had finished in order to keep the brew inside her. As quickly as the nausea came, it passed. Then the pain began, waves of it, like a bloody, stillborn delivery. Dirca rejoiced in the thought, even as she doubled over, stifling the urge to cry out. She threw the empty bottle into the fire, watching the few remaining drops sizzle and burn with a cold, green light. Her knees pulled tightly to her chest, her jaws clenched to keep from screaming, Dirca felt the pain grow until unconsciousness mercifully claimed her. She lay, senseless, until morning.