Tapestry of Dark Souls

by Elaine Bergstrom

  “Have you learned nothing in your years here?” Mattas admonished him. “There are powers in these lands that would take great interest in your existence. Would you like to be a slave of Markov the beast lord? Would you like me to repeat the story of the three flesh-eating crones of Tepest? Evil wields the only real power in these lands. The rest of us survive as best we can, and the wisest men know enough to hide.”

  “The goblins would’ve killed the girl,” Jon retorted. “They kill many in Tepest.”

  “Mattas!” Dominic exclaimed. Jon saw the shock in Dominic’s expression and heard the resignation as he added, “Jonathan wasn’t seen by anyone but the girl. His presence was fortunate.”

  “And I worked no magic,” Jonathan repeated, looking at Leo as he spoke, but seeing no sympathy in the man’s expression. Jon had no explanation as to why the wolves were trailing him. Leo no doubt believed that he’d summoned them. There would be no lessons in the morning, probably none for weeks. Jonathan had discovered a spell in one of Leo’s books that he thought would make his teacher obey him. He wished he had the courage to try it.

  “It’s natural that he would want a glimpse of Linde. He may be going there soon enough,” Hektor said, gripping the boy’s hand in support.

  “It seems to me that he’s already visited Linde once too often,” Mattas grumbled. The others ignored him.

  “It’s done now,” Dominic said levelly, lifting his plate from the table and nodding for Jon to do the same. “It won’t happen again, so we need discuss it no further.”

  That night, the voice was stronger and more insistent. Jon sat up and reached out in the direction of the voice. The shadows in his room merged and acquired the shimmering silhouette of a man. “Who are you?” Jon asked. He received no reply and turned to light the candle beside his bed. The golden light of the candle drove the shadows from the room. Jon was alone.

  The following morning, Jonathan sat cross-legged on one of the battlements of the Guardian’s fortress, facing a wide crevice in the crumbling outer wall. In the distance, just visible through the trees, lay the green hills of Tepest, cleared for cattle and crops. He thought of the girls he had seen laughing by the river—thought particularly of the one brave girl who’d used her small blade to face down half a dozen goblins.

  He pushed himself to his feet. The chores were done and it was scarcely midday. He picked up the sack of fresh bread from the ground beside him and, with all the stealth he could muster, descended the steps to the courtyard. Mattas was dozing against the sunny wall of the shrine. Jon didn’t want to wake him and answer the usual questions about where he was going.

  When Jon first began roaming the hills around the fortress, he had thought of the beast-people solely as dim-witted and mad. Leo and Mattas had said that the creatures would crush Jon or carry him off to Markov if they caught him. When he was younger, he relied on his sharp senses and intelligence to keep out of their sight. Now, he knew spells to make them regret any attack. So far, he had no reason to use them.

  There were two communities of beast-men in the area. The larger group was fierce and well ordered. Guards circled their crude encampment, making Jon’s spying attempts difficult. The second community was looser-knit, its members constantly on the move, hunting in packs like the animals they resembled. Jon had observed both groups from a distance, but knew he couldn’t approach them without risking capture.

  That day, Jon hunted rabbits, not beast-men. Tearing chunks off a loaf of bread, he lured the rabbits into range of his sling and managed to kill five. He would take three to Leo to cure. The two others he took to a shallow valley near the river. Stepping into a small clearing in its thicketed scrub forest, he let out a low whistle. Soon after, a trio of figures—two male and one female—emerged from the trees. They had human faces, but the bodies of unnatural creatures. They were outcasts from the beast tribes, their legs and backs twisted. The smaller of the two men was missing an eye, the socket oozing a yellow pus onto his fur-covered cheeks. Until Jon had discovered the group, they had been starving, surviving on berries and an occasional river fish.

  Unlike the large beast tribes, this crippled band had no regular shelter. They were constantly in the open, always on the move. They fled the others of their kind as well as Markov, who, they were certain, would end their miserable lives.

  Jon had observed the little band for months. He watched the way they gestured to one another as they rested, the way they cared for one another. Gradually, he came to understand that, though they were deformed and dim-witted, they had once been human, and some of that humanity remained. Could he approach them? Learn to understand them? He only knew he wanted to try.

  He began by leaving food for them, whistling each time he dropped a gift, then hiding in the withered trees. Later, he let them glimpse him, moving a bit closer to them after they approached the meat. Eventually, they let him stand near them, let him touch their coarse fur, let him share their simple exchanges.

  Last time Jon had met them, there had been two others in the band. One was a tiny woman, who had the sole alterations of a soft, golden-haired pelt that covered her body, and a blank emptiness in her blue eyes. A huge man also accompanied them, his body resembling a bull’s, with rear hooves, and horns grafted unevenly to his low forehead.

  “Where?” Jon asked, holding his hands out to indicate the two missing members of their party.

  The woman tried to explain. Her mouth, hardly more than a thick scar across her scabrous face, couldn’t form words. Little remained of her tongue, so her voice had the inflections but none of the syllables of speech. Tears fell from her slitted eyes, and she lowered her head and covered her face to hide her shame.

  The one-eyed man touched her arm. His expression grew painful as he sought for some way to explain. Then, silently, he displayed the raw gashes on his side and pointed toward the river, gesturing that Jon would find the answer there. Jon nodded and picked up the sack, holding it out to the crying beast-woman. She took it from his hand and opened it. The three looked inside, eying the feast within. They turned to Jon, bowing effusively in genuine thanks. The smaller of the two men kissed Jon’s hand, the larger stroked his silver hair with a huge bear paw that wasn’t meant to occupy so thin an arm. The woman tried to smile, then ripped a few pieces from the broken loaf and, holding them delicately between the curved red talons of her fingertips, fed them to a ferret sitting on her shoulder.

  Jonathan had often seen the beast-women with pets, but he had never spotted a single child among any of the beast tribes. When Markov created these horrible mutations, he apparently also made them sterile. Jon often wondered if the children would have been human or if they would have been animals. He knew the story of the one who had created them, a man so twisted that the Vistani called him “the master of pain.” The Guardians had made certain Jonathan learned of Markov well before he set foot outside the fortress. The stories had given him nightmares of being bound to a table in Markov’s estate, the sharp blade of the knife glistening in the firelight as it descended to cut away his human flesh.

  “Monster,” Dominic had called him. “Twisted genius. He sets himself as far above men as we do above the beasts we use for food.”

  Jon thought of those words while he watched the trio devour the rabbits he had snared, ripping the limbs from the carcasses, eating the meat raw, wiping the blood from their hands with hunks of bread torn from the loaves. When they had finished their feast, Jon asked them to take him to the place where the others had died.

  The pair had been killed at the edge of the swift, rocky river. Their ravaged bodies had been ripped apart, their limbs stripped of their flesh and arranged in a heap on the bank. Near them, untouched and unmoving, lay the creature that had killed them. It was the most lethal beast-creature Jon had ever seen. It had human feet, a human face, human breasts—useless without infants to suckle—and the sleek body and tail of a mountain cat, mutated to monstrous size. Its mouth hung open, the long feline fangs in
denting the lower lip. Even dead, the thing made Jon shudder. The thought that there must be more of them hunting the area made him want to run back to the protective walls of the fortress.

  “You killed this?” Jonathan asked, pointing to the cat-woman’s body, then to the wounded beast-man.

  The man nodded. As he did, he let out a long, grunted laugh and proudly beat his chest with an open hand. When the blustering had ended, the beast-man crouched beside the riverbank and pulled a short sword from a hiding place in some deep bushes. He handed it to Jonathan, gestured significantly, and began to shamble away.

  “No!” Jon said and laid it back into the beastman’s hairy hands. “Keep. Use.”

  The creature returned it to the thick bushes where it had been hidden. Jon retrieved it and tried to give it to him once more, though he knew it was already hopeless.

  The man was shaking his head and Jon was trying to explain that he should keep it when a low snarl came from the brush farther up the bank. As Jon turned toward the sound, he heard a second snarl, and a third.

  The woman shrieked and tried to run, but her ruined legs produced only hobbling. Jon rushed after her and pulled her back, motioning for the others to retreat to the river. As soon as their feet touched the frigid water, the trio refused to go any farther. Jon imitated a cat clawing for its prey, but the three still wouldn’t move. Exasperated, Jon thrust the sword against the beast-man’s chest. “Then fight!” he ordered and reached for his sling. The stones were small, better suited for hunting rabbits and squirrels than the huge cat-men stalking from the trees, forming a half circle around them.

  Why didn’t they attack? Jon wondered. Their little group was helpless, perfect prey, and yet the catmen waited. In a moment, Jon understood. The thing that followed the pride into the clearing was undoubtedly their leader.

  In some perverse joke, Markov had polymorphed mountain cats by giving them human faces, then created a lord of the cats from a human by giving him a cat face. Though he had a human body, his legs were feline, and his human arms ended in huge cat’s forepaws. He fixed his orange eyes on Jon, and the others followed his lead. Their gaze dizzied Jon, and he understood. They didn’t intend to kill him. Instead, they would charm him into sleep, then kill and devour the others. Once they had feasted, they would take Jon to Markov, who would use his body as he had all the other unfortunate strangers who wandered the land.

  Fear gave Jon strength, and he managed to avert his eyes before sleep claimed him. Drawing on all the skill Leo had taught him, Jon prepared the only attack that might destroy the beasts. He spread his legs for balance and dug his heels into the spongy earth of the riverbank. His hands were pressed together as if in prayer. The words formed slowly in his mind. As they did, he poised his fingers and waited.

  The cat-men paced on all fours, moving closer as they waited for an order from the orange-eyed creature at the rear of the deadly pride. Ignoring them, Jon concentrated on the power building inside him, trying to harness the flow of energy as Leo had instructed.

  He wasn’t sure how long the cat-men waited before they made their move, but when they did, Jon was prepared. His hands pointed forward and a sheet of fire moved out from his fingers. One of the attackers, his fur in flames, rushed to the river and was swept away by the rapids. The rest weren’t so lucky, for Jon had lowered his hands, setting fire to the grasses around them. Sensing his advantage, the armed beast-man attacked, stabbing his sword into the shrieking cats, disabling them. His companions followed and crushed their heads with rocks.

  The power Jon had focused vanished in the single blast of flame, but the battle wasn’t finished. The catfaced leader of the attack had merely been singed by the flames. Now he retreated slowly toward the trees, his mouth open, the long feline fangs bared. With a savage cry, Jon pulled the short blade from the beast-man’s hands and pursued the leader. Though he was weary and far less powerful than the creature he followed, Jon had to make this a fight to the death. Markov’s creation couldn’t live to tell his evil master what Jon had done.

  The blade Jonathan held seemed far too short and blunt to be of any use against such a deadly foe. He reminded himself of the beast-man who had killed another of these cat-faced monsters. Jon knew the monster had more agility, more skill, and far more power than he. He would disobey no one if he used his magic now. Heartened, Jon slowed his pace and began a second incantation. The terrain grew rougher. Huge boulders covered the ground. As Jon expected, his foe waited on top of one of these. He halted and raised the blade in both hands waiting for the creature to leap.

  He saw the dull surprise in the creature’s eyes. The illusion Jon had cast made him seem taller than his actual height, though still thin and weak. With a nod of grudging respect for Jon’s brave stand, the creature pounced, aiming for Jon’s throat.

  Perhaps the beast’s aim was faulty. Perhaps Jon’s illusion had worked. No matter. As the predator’s body passed above him, Jon stabbed upward, ripping into the cat’s belly, twisting the blade as the beast screeched and fell. The clawed feet lashed out, but Jon was ready. With a single cut, one of its legs dangled, loose and bleeding.

  The beast rolled over, thinking only of escape as it pulled itself toward higher ground. Jon hacked at it from the side, playing with its misery as the cat-man would have played with his. Finally, breathing heavily, he knelt above it for the last, killing stroke to the back of the neck. As the tip stabbed deep into the creature’s body, the blood spurted out onto Jon’s face, into his open mouth. He choked on it and swallowed as the creature quivered and lay still.

  He had killed it!

  This wasn’t some game animal dying meekly to fill the Guardians’ hunger but an adversary—powerful and cunning. He had used all his training with a steadiness he never thought he possessed. The blood of this creature seemed suddenly sweeter, the taste something he should savor and remember. He sucked the thick red drops from his hair, licked the backs of his coated hands, reveling in the taste.

  It had all been so perfectly done! Jon’s laughter flowed like an evening song through the trees. The group he had left by the riverbank heard it and approached him cautiously. Still laughing, he motioned for them to come forward and view his kill.

  Markov will never know what I did here, Jon thought with relief. He handed the sword back to the beast-man, went to the river, and washed the blood from his body and clothes. When he left the crippled band, he knew he would likely never see them again. Even so, he didn’t look back. His thoughts were on something far more important than these pitiable creatures. He thought instead of his power, his knowledge, and how he could increase both.

  At supper that evening, Jon told the others his decision. “If it is no trouble, I would like to go to Tepest as soon as possible … before I change my mind,” Jon said, trying to look uncertain, though he was determined to go. Dominic, his face grave and his eyes grim, yielded his place at the head of the table. Jon responded to the gesture with pride, sitting as if he belonged in the leader’s seat. As he ate, Jon saw the others watching him. Some of them watched him with fearful expressions. Others flashed him brief smiles of hope, as if they considered some future when the fortress would be his rightful home.

  The Guardians had taught him so much in his years here, but so little about the purpose of their order. He knew they wished to live apart from the world. They told him the shrine was the house of their god, the center of their faith, and a place that, in their humility, they dared not enter. All the rest was a mystery they couldn’t share unless he discovered a calling, a vocation to join their order. Once he had tried to pry more out of them, asking countless questions. Every question was left unanswered or rebuffed. He’d stopped asking long ago.

  Though he would be in the fortress only a few more days, he decided to solve what few mysteries he could. That night, after Jon had prepared for sleep, Leo came to his room to give him the nightly potion that would allow him to rest undisturbed. Jonathan drained the tiny glass, but let most o
f the drug pool under his tongue when he swallowed. As soon as Leo left, he spit it into his water jug, then rinsed out his mouth—the drug was more bitter than usual. Last night’s presence hadn’t been a dream. He hoped that tonight he would discover who it might be.

  In spite of the little he drank, Jon soon slept. He might not have awakened at all that night, but a touch on his shoulder, light as a breath of wind, roused him. His head ached, his mouth was dry, and the bitter taste of the potion was intense and nauseating.

  Jon stood, staggered to his bedroom door, and found it locked. Though he beat on it until his hands were bruised, no one came.

  Were the other monks as drugged as he had been? He pushed open the shutters and stared out beyond the fortress, where the long, dark shadows of the towers fell over the moon-drenched land. He had never realized the moon could be so bright. He leaned far out his window until he could see the full, magnificent circle of the moon and the stark gray patterns on its face. As he balanced there, his eyes glowing silver in the light, he heard the Guardians’ chanting coming from below, from inside the fortress walls. And with it came a soft, muffled sound—shrieks of pleasure, screams of pain.

  These weren’t the ghostly howls heard so often in the cracked, windswept walls of the fortress, nor the whisper of his drugged sleep. No, these sounds were more sinister, more alive, yet no less familiar. He had heard these voices before in a monthly dream that went back to his earliest memories.

  He listened more carefully. The chant and the frenzied cries were both coming from the area near the shrine. One of the Guardians’ secrets. Someday, he vowed, someday he would learn what it was that they guarded with such fervor.

  By morning, he’d forgotten how long he had sat by the window, how many times he had tried to force the door. When he woke again, his fists were clenched, bruised, and bleeding. His knees were pressed against his chest, and he shivered, though the morning sun baked his room.