Tapestry of Dark Souls

by Elaine Bergstrom

  Though the stranger had shown no sign of this power, the whispers still flew through the village. He had come to learn our secret. He had come the morning before the full moon. Despite the danger, the ritual would have to take place. We told the man that we had no shelter that night and insisted he leave.

  I saw the anger flash in his pale eyes. He sensed his betrayal, for until that moment, we had been perfectly kind. I didn’t approve of what the others did, approved even less of the blood they would have spilled had he refused to go. But he left that night, with only a few words of reproach. Our hearts were troubled by what we had done; if he were truly a traveler, we had condemned him to a terrible end. We watched him disappear into the evening mists, then turned to prepare the ritual.

  At the height of the ceremony, the stranger returned and entered our shrine through the open doors. I don’t know how long he stood there, watching our ritual, listening to our chants. But suddenly he was singing, singing in a voice louder and purer than our combined tones. His words profaned the holiness of our shrine and mocked our gods. And, when we looked at him, we saw his form change, his features transmute to resemble those of our gods.

  Rage rose in me as I rushed toward him, part of the mob ready to destroy him. As we reached for him, the air in our shrine exploded into a shimmering cloud, a cloud of sparks spiraling in frenzied orbits around us. We were frozen in place. Some wizard’s trick, I thought, for I could breathe and see, though the sting of the burning sparks maddened me. Paralyzed, unable to scream, I watched him walk through the glowing shrine to the altar where the cloth hung.

  Despite my agony, I heard the beauty of his laugh as he ripped the cloth from its holy place. “You would condemn a stranger to death to protect this? This!” His hands grabbed an edge and pulled, as if to rip the tapestry in two.

  It was the last act his living body committed. The cloth lashed out, covered him, smothered him, absorbed his life. The cloud of sparks vanished as the man did, until not even a trace of heat remained.

  That night, we buried our dead and set about trying to forget. How naive we were to think that no power could challenge the Gathering Cloth.

  Next evening, we discovered our mistake. As the moon rose full once more, the trapped souls also rose. The town died that night. Even small children were destroyed in fiery agony as the priests’ spells were twisted against us. In the end, High Priest Wolgar chanted a different incantation, one meant to contain the evil rather than destroy it. With his last breath, he finished the liturgy. The few of us left repeated it, drawing the souls out of the town, back into the shrine. And, somehow, we pushed the shrine doors shut with our burned and bleeding hands.

  But the dead of our village didn’t rest. Like the poor condemned souls in the land around us, they rose, clamoring with charred lips for a revenge we couldn’t grant, and for the sleep of death.

  Only three of us, the least powerful of our order, escaped the terrible wrath of the evil trapped in the tapestry. Nearly all our order’s scrolls were destroyed; the spell that contains the dark souls on the cloth is known through memory alone.

  Though one of us is badly wounded and another blind, we three will leave here tomorrow and search for a new hidden resting place for the tapestry. I set down these words so that others may take warning of the power of the dark souls trapped in its web.

  The account ended as abruptly as it had begun. Jonathan sat and stared at the writing. He recalled Maeve’s mention of the tapestry and knew he had discovered the secret the order guarded. “Thank you,” he whispered to the shadow that had guided him to the scroll. As he returned the scroll to the ledge on which it had been hidden, his attention was drawn to the crevice beyond its resting place.

  With a single command, Jon shrank the balls of light, intensified them, and sent them rolling through the narrow opening into a larger passage beyond. Heedless of the fear prickling his spine, Jon polymorphed into a mouse, squeezed through the opening and, with his lights to guide him, crawled forward.

  The passage grew larger. In just a few feet, Jon was able to resume his true form and stand. A cold wind struck his face, giving hints of an exit somewhere ahead. Jon thought of the goblins and the other creatures Mattas said lived underground, but he took comfort in his lights and the fire at his control. The passage headed eastward, twisted, and began to rise. Glowing phosphorus veined the walls, and tiny blue lizards skittered from beneath Jon’s feet as he pressed on. Traveling almost a quarter mile, he reached a cavern more vast than the one Ivar had claimed as his own.

  The balls of light couldn’t touch all the corners of the room. Jon sent them rising. They spiraled upward until they reached the milky stalactites hanging far above him, stalactites that dripped cloudy water into the shallow pools that patterned the cavern floor. In the pools he saw fat, glowing leeches and striped green fish that darted through the water. They fled his shadow and the balls of light he had brought with him.

  He thought of the research he could perform in this vast cave, more deeply hidden than Ivar’s. Heartened, Jon went on, looking for an outside entrance. He discovered it after a long though easy climb. Like the opening from Ivar’s chamber, it was hardly more than a crevice in the rock, just wide enough for him to slip through. It had apparently been overlooked even by the goblins. He stood on the icy precipice of the entrance, his hair whipped by the bitter wind. He smelled the smoke of distant Linde and saw in the valley below the shadowy outline of Maeve’s cottage.

  Close yet hidden. Even Ivar couldn’t complain about the work he would do here. Nonetheless, Jon decided this place would be his secret. Thinking his absence might have been discovered, he turned and rushed back through the cavern and passage to the familiar comfort of Ivar’s chamber.

  In the weeks that followed, Jonathan retreated from the world above the caverns. With precise care, he copied in a second spellbook every incantation he had learned. He added many he had ignored because they couldn’t be worked in the close confines of Ivar’s chamber, and he was forbidden to cast them outside.

  He also set about transforming the vast cavern into his own. Fire quickly warmed the frigid waters in the pools. The leeches died, the fish starved, and the lizards retreated to less-traveled passages. Colored lights brightened the emptiness, dancing like an aurora trapped in stone.

  Jon studied with stolen time. He returned to the inn through the underground passages when possible and walked back above ground when it wasn’t. Only once was his absence noted, and then he rattled off a prepared excuse. If it hadn’t been for Sondra, he would have left the town altogether, living like a hermit in his bone-white cave.

  One morning, a few weeks after he’d begun working in his cavern, Jon took leave of his work to sit in Ivar’s cavern and write a new song. On festival night, he would sing the story of the three hags, idealizing their fall from beauty and grace so that they wouldn’t be insulted should they hear. But he also included enough truth that the verses would serve as a warning to the town. As he recited the poetry aloud, he heard the whisper once again. The indistinct words came in front of him, behind him, in the dark shadows of the caverns around him. Jon mouthed a few words and thrust out his arms. The glowing balls that lit the room exploded into a light that would rival the sun’s.

  The shadow of a man stood beside him, the features almost clear. As Jon stared, the form shimmered and vanished, leaving only the emptiness of a memory, the weariness of power spent.

  The vision left only a final parting word. As much thought as sound, as familiar as the dreams Jon had dreamed in the isolated, wind-swept fortress, the word rolled through the cave.

  “Home.”

  “Soon,” Jon whispered lovingly to the empty room. If he wanted to know the secrets of the fortress, he had best acquire the means to learn them. He worked for hours, studying spells that detected magic, unlocked doors, would make even a wary man sleep.

  In the afternoon, as he always did, he went upstairs to eat and spend the next few hours with hi
s betrothed. The sun warmed the air as they walked outside, holding hands.

  Sondra looked at him sadly. In spite of the attention he lavished on her in the last few weeks, in spite of how lovingly he held her hand, he rarely spoke to her. Today, she decided to break through his silence. “You’ve been absent from the inn so often lately. Are you learning as much as you hoped?” she asked, her voice as light as she could make it.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Could you share some of it with me?” she went on.

  “I thought you had no desire to learn,” he said, looking at her coldly.

  Even Mishya would be preferable to this! Sondra pulled her hand out of his and began walking back to the inn alone. Jon hesitated, then followed, tugging at the sleeve of her coat until she stopped and faced him. “I’m sorry. Please don’t go,” he said.

  Sondra glanced at the boys in the festival square, who had stopped building snow forts to watch the couple. She looked longer at Jon, seeing how much he wanted her to stay, and seeing something more—a strange satisfaction, as if her anger made him proud.

  She thought of the shy boy she’d first seen in the woods, and she wondered what had happened to him in this month since they had decided to marry—how sad, how remote, how secretive he had become.

  Magic required great energy and intense concentration. Hadn’t her father told her that often enough? She was Ivar’s daughter, she ought to understand her betrothed’s preoccupation. She stepped closer to him and laid a gloved hand on his cheek. He would share whatever troubled him in good time. Like the good wife she would soon be, she decided to be patient now, ready to listen when he finally talked of his work, ready to support him.

  The thought stayed with her the rest of the day and grew more sour as the sun dipped low. That night, despite misgivings, she went down to Ivar’s cavern.

  Had she come a few moments earlier, she would have found an empty room. Instead, she discovered that her betrothed was somewhat dirty, a bit out of breath, as if his work exhausted him.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, noticing that her feet were bare and she wore only a thin night shift under her cloak. He thought perhaps the goblins had attacked. His fingers tingled as he prepared a spell to defend his betrothed’s family.

  She shook her head and went to him. Wrapping her arms around him, she kissed him deeply, trying to return the passion of his kiss from the festival night.

  He pulled away, almost angered by her forwardness. “Is this right?” he asked.

  “You didn’t know?” She smiled at his naïveté. “Once a couple announces their betrothal and is certain of the marriage, in matters of … intimacy they are already married. In most families it is even encouraged. As to our marriage, I am certain. Are you?” She took his hands and lifted them to the cord that held her cloak together.

  Sondra’s trust humbled Jon. “Come, I will share a secret with you,” he said and led her in mouse form through the narrow passage to his private place. She marveled at the pools, the white stalactites hanging above her, the sprays of colors his magic made on the pale rock walls. As globes of light danced above them, they consummated what they had agreed on months ago when she had first seen him standing in the shadows of the trees.

  “I would do anything for you,” she said, no longer concerned about the wall of secrets he had built around himself, thankful only that she was inside it with him.

  Odd how the past becomes clear when it no longer matters. Though I cannot recall my name, I know that people worshipped me once as they never did my master. I was sent not to destroy but to be destroyed. It is frustrating to dwell on the past when so little of it can be recalled, but I can hope that someday …

  On the night of the next full moon, the creatures of the cloth rested. The Guardians, apprehensive of this odd peace, continued their night chant, and, in the pauses between the words, heard a rustling sound within the shrine, like the tumble of dry leaves in an autumn breeze. Occasionally before, they had sensed decreases in the power of the creatures trapped on the cloth, but never this strange quiet. It was a portent, and they waited anxiously for what the future would bring.

  One night flowed into the next, and little changed save that a brief winter thaw brought Jon to visit. He gave the Guardians sweet bread from Dirca, a jug of cloudberry wine from Andor, and potions from Ivar to treat winter colds and Mattas’s arthritic pain. The monks sat with Jonathan in the great hall, listening to his stories of Linde. After their evening meal, they drank the wine while Jonathan played his songs for them. Then he spoke of his affection for the people of Linde and, more importantly, of his upcoming marriage.

  He expected congratulations. Instead, the revelation was greeted with stunned silence. “Are you so certain this is the future you wish?” Dominic finally asked.

  “I am. I was certain the first day I saw her.”

  “Then a toast to Jonathan and Sondra!” Hektor said, raising his glass. The others joined in the toast, but only Hektor appeared truly happy. The others seemed disappointed, as if they had planned something different for him. He was tempted to remind them that they had suggested he leave the fortress—they had wanted his future to be his own choice. But it hardly seemed right to mention that now. Besides, he’d come here to look for secrets. He’d hardly be able to do that if he weren’t on good terms with the monks.

  That night, he only pretended to drink the potion Leo brought him. Afterward, he lay with his eyes open, watching the candle cast dancing shadows through the room, waiting for the whispers, the solid shadow, the shimmering figure of the man. An hour passed. The monks in the rooms around him slept dreamlessly, but the figure didn’t come to Jon.

  Nonetheless, he decided to act.

  Pulling on a hooded black cloak, he padded silently on bare feet down the dark hallway, down the narrow stairs, and through the great hall into the stone-walled chamber Dominic and Leo used as their library. The room was small and narrow, the ceiling lost in the shadows above. The wooden table, which took up much of the space, had nothing resting on it. Jon thought of how cluttered the table had been when he’d been studying in this room, and felt a pang of guilt for what he intended to do.

  If he were discovered here, he would repeat the conversation he had overheard at the inn and insist that he had a right to know what had happened to his parents. In a way, he hoped he would be discovered so that the matter could be brought into the open once and for all. Perhaps the Guardians would only tell him lies and hide the truth, but he was certain he would find the truth here. He left the matter to the fates, risking a light so that someone might see, moving slowly and softly so no one would hear.

  In the past, he had been allowed to read the scrolls kept in the polished chest of drawers that covered one wall. He would find no secrets there, he knew. Instead, he began moving his fingers over the stones on the wall, then over the worn timbers of the floor until he encountered a loose one.

  Dirt had settled in the cracks around it, and Jon could only lift the long board with difficulty. But when he had, he knew he’d found what he sought. He became even more certain when he was unable to open the unlocked black marble box.

  He’d spent weeks preparing for this moment. He attempted the most powerful spell he knew for opening locks. It took a number of minutes before he finally got it right. At last, the stone lid shook and settled more naturally on the box. It lifted easily then. Inside were scrolls written in Leo and Ivar’s familiar hands. He ignored those, seeking one whose parchment seemed newer, whose small script was unfamiliar.

  … I am certain the tapestry called me.…

  By the time Jon finished his mother’s account, his hands were clenched into fists, white knuckles showing the emotion the rest of him hid. He rolled the scroll, tied it, and returned it to its box. He didn’t attempt to reseal the box; he didn’t care if the Guardians discovered what he had done. Everything seemed clear to him now, as if a voice from the darkness had revealed the truth.

  The Gua
rdians had lied.

  He heard voices in the great hall beyond, and the sound of doors opening as the Guardians filed out to begin their morning prayers—prayers he finally understood. Fearful he would be discovered, he waited in the library, scarcely breathing and forbidding himself to cry. He waited with one of the common scrolls unrolled on the table before him until the Guardians began their chant. Then he hurried out to his room. There he lay, awake on his soft, narrow bed in the room Mattas had given up for him because it was warmed by the flue of the hearth below. He bundled beneath the feather quilt Peto had sewn for him and looked out the window, which had been enlarged when the monks made the room his nursery.

  No, he didn’t think of all they had done for him or how much they loved him—only that they had lied. As he meditated on this, the heat of anger moved through him, quietly invading every tissue. He no longer had to hide the emotion, it was simply there, like his hands or his feet. Accepted. As much a part of him as his past.

  He thought nothing of his mother any longer. She had tried to murder his father. She had abandoned him. Her family meant nothing to her, nothing at all, and so he would leave her to her fate.

  But his father, his father was alive, trapped on the cloth, and no one had tried to free him!

  Throughout the day, Jon considered confronting the Guardians and demanding an explanation. But he held back. The Guardians had lied to him for seventeen years. They wouldn’t tell the truth now.

  By evening, his false contentment had worn thin. Hektor asked him to walk outside the fortress for awhile. They stopped at the bluff overlooking Tepest. “Is something wrong?” Hektor asked. “You’ve been so quiet tonight.”

  “I was wish I knew some spell to split my soul in two. I love Sondra and want to stay with her, but I miss you all so much.”

  “There’ll be other visits,” Hektor responded. “You made the right choice. Your mother would agree.”