THE SOUL WEAVER

by Carol Berg

  But my mother had stopped it, and the Lords wouldn’t rest until she was dead. So I couldn’t leave her, because I didn’t think anyone else could recognize the Lords when they came for her. After crossing the Bridge with my father, I believed it even more strongly. They would come.

  I worried about the summons from the Leiran King, of course. It could be the first feint to draw her out, but it seemed too obvious for the Lords. They liked the subtler ploys, for there was amusement as well as outcome involved in their games. No matter how much a hunter desires to bag a Cyvernian tiger, taking it while it sleeps away the winter in its cave has little pleasure. It is only in the tracking across the wilds of Cyvernia, and seeing in the trapped beast’s eyes the knowledge of its defeat - only in that completeness of victory does the hunter truly savor his triumph and know that everyone else acknowledges his mastery.

  And so I raised no protest when she proposed the trip to Montevial, but I planned to stay close throughout her audience with King Evard. The Dar’Nethi watchdog was with us, too, and I was willing to concede that he might be useful if danger was about, but his eyes were focused on me, not my mother or anyone who might be a threat to her. The Prince had set him to watch me - not watch out for me. That was a subtle distinction - subtle - and so it worried me very much more than the summons from the king. And my mother didn’t see it at all.

  * * *

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll stay here with the watchdog. Someone’s got to be with her.”

  “You oughtn’t. She said for you to stay out of sight. I would stay with her - you know I would - if she hadn’t told me to watch outside the walls. And it makes sense for me to see what the king’s men are up to.” Paulo handed me his gray saddle pack, which held supplies for our return to Valleor.

  “And what will you do if they made a move to take us? Yell?” That wasn’t fair to Paulo. But I was so tired of Radele looking at me as if I were going to shapeshift into a monster, instead of watching for real danger. And except for the previous night when I had collapsed like a dirt wall, I hadn’t slept more than an hour or two a night in weeks. The night’s sleep had just made me more tired than ever. My head felt like porridge. Something wasn’t right in this cursed place, but I just couldn’t see what it was.

  Paulo and I were standing in the doorway of the gatehouse at Windham. Paulo glanced over his shoulder to where my mother and Radele were talking. He lowered his voice. “If you would only listen, you know - like you could if you wanted - I could yell in your head and the Dar’Nethi wouldn’t even know.”

  “I can’t do that.” I threw the bag across the floor of the gatehouse, kicking up enough dust and leaves to look like a whirlwind had come through. “Reading your thoughts is sorcery every bit as much as changing you into an elephant. I’ve got no power worth talking about, and I don’t want any, and, what puling little I have, I daren’t use. Not ever.”

  “Look, why don’t you lie down over there in the corner and try to sleep? We won’t bother you until we’re ready to leave.” I looked up to see if Paulo had suddenly lost his mind, but he was waggling his eyebrows in the direction of the Dar’Nethi who was walking toward us leading his horse. “We’ll figure out something.”

  “Figure out what?” Radele unwrapped my horse’s reins and those of my mother’s horse from the dead tree beside the stoop.

  “How to get Master Gerick to stay asleep longer than an hour,” said Paulo. “I offered him brandy, but he don’t like the taste. Says he’ll sleep fine if we’ll just leave him alone. Say” - he stepped from the stoop and walked across the carriage park, drawing Radele with him - “I found a place back behind here to leave the horses. Good grass, some water, out of sight. Can’t see the gatehouse from the ground, but if you was to climb that elm, you could likely see the gates and the road and the gatehouse, too. I’ll show you.” Taking the other reins from Radele, he swung up onto Molly’s back and started around behind the gatehouse. I never understood how he could get up so easily. As always, Radele looked at Paulo as if he were dirt, but he wasn’t too proud to follow him out of sight. My mother waved and started up the road toward the main house.

  Taking Paulo’s hint, I quickly piled leaves in the darkest corner of the gatehouse, took off my cloak, and threw it over the pile. Then I slipped out of the doorway into the tangle of shrubs and brush and followed my mother into the gardens.

  I almost came back and crawled under my cloak when I took my first look at the main house. Another vision. Two images, one on top of the other. One was the silent, dead shell that stood before me, and the other was a great house ablaze with light, the music of flutes and strings and laughter floating through the gardens. I would have sworn I was dancing, though I didn’t even know how. My skin flashed cold and hot; my nose claimed that this weedy thicket smelled like roses and perfume and candle smoke. Anger, joy, excitement, and curiosity wholly unrelated to my own state of mind set up such a confusion in my head, I came near banging it on a tree to stop it. After a few moments, the vision dissipated, leaving me in a cold sweat.

  From my hiding place in an overgrown arbor, I heard the queen describe the very creatures of my dream world, come to life in Leire: the dwarf again, and the beast-like man, and the one I thought of as the runner, the dark-skinned one, so very tall and thin, who sped up and down the black roads and the mountain paths in my dreams. These were not creatures of the Lords. I felt nothing of Notole’s teaching in their magics, nothing of Parven’s strategies in their mischief, nothing of Ziddari’s wiles in their interaction with me. They were something else entirely. I just didn’t know what.

  After the queen rode off toward Montevial, my mother sat on the bridge parapet thinking. I did the same in my hiding place, trying to decide whether to tell her of my dreams about the one-eyed dwarf and his friends. My hesitation saved my life.

  “… He remains as he was in Zhev’Na. But tonight he stands within range of my sword, and I must and will destroy him before he can compound his evil.”

  So the Prince of Avonar wanted to kill me. Everything he’d claimed about trusting me and wanting to help me was a lie. He’d almost had me fooled. For the first time since Zhev’Na, I wished for a sword. Well, even without a weapon, I wouldn’t go down easily. I knew some things. As the Dar’Nethi watchdog kept reminding me, I had learned from the masters.

  But as my father raged, I saw he was convincing my mother, too, so I started listening more closely to his accusations. “The Lords never dirty their own hands… some they inhabit… insinuate themselves into a man and displace his soul… take on his life as their own… ”

  It was true he’d told me of the secrets hidden at the deserted bathhouse, and it was true what he said about the Lords taking on the bodies of others to do their will. I had done it when I was one of them, and pleasure was far too simple a word for it. But I’d not taken myself into any Dar’Nethi, nor had I used even one jot of magic since I’d left Zhev’Na. It was too risky and too painful, and I hadn’t power enough, because the passive ways of Dar’Nethi power-gathering nauseated me.

  What was happening?

  Fighting the Prince would not provide an answer. I had to get away until I could sort out the truth. My mother couldn’t save me from the Prince, and I couldn’t save her from anyone if I was dead.

  So, using everything I’d learned of stealth in my training in Zhev’Na, I slipped out of the arbor and away from the bridge and the grassy ravine, deeper into the trees. I had to move slowly, watching for sticks and branches and piles of leaves. The weak moonlight didn’t penetrate the trees. The previous night’s rain had left the dead leaves damp, which helped me move quietly, even though the dew coating the shrubs and vines left my shirtsleeves wet and flapping. I headed away from the gatehouse, thinking that with everything so overgrown I would surely be able to get up a tree, over the wall, and out into the forest. I could probably hide longer than they could look for me.

  I skirted a weedy thicket and crept toward a grove of alders. A
s I neared the circle of trees, I stumbled over something thick and soft in the dark, and landed facedown in the damp undergrowth. Whatever had tripped me didn’t smell too fine, so I assumed it was dead, until it hissed and pulled away. I resisted the temptation to leap up and run. Instead I slithered silently forward on my belly. A faint greenish light glimmered through the leaves. I scarcely dared breathe. Then, all at the same time, the branches in front of me parted, and a hand yanked at my hair, lifting my face up so the green light glared directly in my eyes.

  “Who is it? Another spying one? A servant of the sword-carrier?” A gravelly voice spoke in my ear.

  Hands grabbed each of my arms. I twisted my arms to loosen their grip and drew up my knees to kick their feet out from under them. But I couldn’t get loose, and my captors dragged me out of the bushes and slammed me onto my knees, pinning my arms behind me.

  Night’s mother! Standing right in front of me, as if he had just stepped out of my dream, was the one-eyed dwarf. On one side of me, holding my arm in a grip worthy of a Zhid wrestler, was the wide brown man, and on the other was the wiry black runner, every bit as strong as his leathery friend.

  “Who are you?” I whispered, amazement taking all the fight out of me for the moment.

  “It is he!” said the dwarfish man quietly, putting his finger to his lips and grinning through his beard. “Joyful! Oh, tell us that we have not damaged you, great Master!”

  The two big ones didn’t let go of me, but they eased up enough that I wasn’t afraid they’d break my limbs any more.

  “I’m all right. Where the devil have you come from? What do you want with me? The dreams… ”

  “It is not yet time for your questioning, great Master. You must come to the Bounded… if you are the one we seek. Best follow. And soon! We are here to help you find your way!” He bowed deeply, bursting into giddy laughter. The other two followed suit, the brown man laughing in dry, hacking bleats, and his tall companion in rolling rumbles as deep as the midnight of his coloring.

  “Karon, no!” My mother called out from beyond the trees, distracting me from the mystery of the three. “Gerick, run!”

  Satisfaction rippled through me at that moment. The Prince hadn’t changed her mind; she still believed in me. I would not let her down.

  I shook off the brown and black hands and jumped to my feet. The three of them were still chuckling merrily. I didn’t believe they meant me any harm. “I need to get away from here,” I said. “Someone’s trying to hurt me.”

  “Away?” said the dwarf, scarcely able to swallow his laughter. “We could take you away. A short away. Not all the away. Our way is not your away. You must find your own. But come - ”

  He was interrupted by the snapping of branches behind me. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Sword of Annadis! Tell me this is a dream.” My mother.

  The three burst out laughing again and crammed themselves behind a thick-boled oak tree, while I turned to tell her what I planned. She stood in the shadowed tangle of lilacs, hard to see. Moonlight glinted on the knife in her hand. Perhaps I had been mistaken about her, too.

  Yet even as I hesitated, she threw down her weapon and extended her arms. “Gerick! Your father - Gerick, tell me who you are.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but things quickly became very confusing. I needed to get to her. The sounds coming from the shadows… I knew them well: the soft thud, the rip of muscle and crack of bone, the brief expulsion of air, followed by the quick intake as the pain shot upward. Such sounds always accompanied the hard curve and smooth feel of a knife hilt, and the satisfying release as rubbery flesh and tough cartilage yielded to the honed edge of the blade.

  The tangled, twiggy shrubbery snagged my clothes as I fought to get to her.

  “Mother? Are you all right?”

  But she wasn’t. Her garments were soaked with blood. Wide-eyed, she touched her breast where the knife hilt protruded, and her hand came away covered in blood. I caught her before she fell.

  I had no healing skills, and only the small amount of power that lay unbidden in the hands of every Dar’Nethi. That would never be enough. Only one way to get her the help she needed. Mustering every dram of power and will I could scrape together, I held my back against the door in my mind and called out to the Prince with sorcery. Father, come. Hurry…

  Such anger… withering fury… cold death did I find when I touched his thoughts. Only in its absence did I even begin to realize the grace my true father had brought to my healing.

  She’s here in the alder grove beyond the ruined root cellar… wounded… That was all I could get out before the storm of his wrath engulfed me. I broke off the contact, panting and sweating as if I’d run half a day in the desert. No use to tell him I hadn’t done what he thought, or even that my mother would die unless he came instantly to care for her. He would come. And I had to be gone when he did so.

  I peered through the thick limbs, strained my ears to hear a footstep… a cough… a breath… to tell me that the villain who’d done this was within reach of my justice. The three odd creatures from my dreams were still chuckling, hidden behind their oak tree. Several pairs of boots pounded the leafy ground, but the three men were running toward me, not away. Paulo. Radele. The Prince. Where had the assassin gone?

  I laid my mother in the damp leaves beside the lilacs. She fought for breath, and her hands grew cold though I chafed them unceasingly. Her eyes clouded. What could I say to her? I needed her to know… “Hold on. Trust me.” I couldn’t think of anything else. She wouldn’t want to hear what I was going to do to the person who had hurt her.

  And so I left her, trying to ignore the rumbling in my head that felt like an approaching earthquake, and I hurried to where the dwarf and his companions awaited me. “I must go away from here now.”

  “To what awayness would you go, great Master?”

  “Outside the walls of this parkland, to the outer gate. Can you show me the way out?”

  “Nicely can we do that. But not more? Not into the treeland or the grassy abiding? Not to the place of many walls?”

  I had no idea what they meant. “No. Just show me how to get over the walls and back to the main gate without being seen” - the shouts were getting very close - “and it has to be now.”

  “Now!” said the dwarf.

  “Now!” echoed the brown man and the runner. The two grabbed my arms again and gave a tug. As the thought occurred to me that they were not planning to lead me down any ordinary path, I fell off the edge of the world for the span of two breaths and stepped back onto it right next to the gates of Windham.

  The only ill effect of the strange transport was a distinctly queasy feeling. My nausea wasn’t helped in the least by the bloody knife in my hand. My mother’s knife. Stupid to pull it out of her. I dropped it hastily. My hands were sticky, and I stank of blood. Thank all gods that my father was a Healer.

  “Unsettles the belly,” said the dwarf, grinning. He patted his own substantial paunch and then did the same to mine.

  “That’s a truth,” I said, “but I’ve no sword sticking through my gut, either, and that would be more unsettling yet.” I gave the three a proper bow, and thought that perhaps when I had finished the next step of my escape plan, we might try their magic again. “I thank you, Sir - ?”

  “Vroon?” said the dwarf, hesitantly.

  “I thank you, Sir Vroon. Well done.”

  The dwarf puffed out his chest and grinned hugely. “A name! Do you hear it? The great Master has given me a name! My debt is unstoppable, sir. My honor is to serve you always until the Unbounded is no more, and the Bounded has grown ancient in its days.”

  There simply wasn’t time to decipher his odd speech. My father’s rage rent the night. If I just had enough power left to do what I needed. A simple thing…

  I did. After a long few moments, Jasyr raced through the gates and stopped right in front of me, quivering and tossing his head, just as he did when I galloped away f
rom my dreams. The only problem was that another horse followed right on his tail. And that horse had a rider.

  “I knew it, you bloody bastard. I’ll kill you for this. How could you do it?”

  He was off Molly and on top of me before I could blink, and I was afraid I might have to break both his arms to keep him from doing what he said. His eyes were blazing, and he obviously didn’t care in the least what I did to him, unless it was kill him before he’d done the same to me.

  “I didn’t do it,” I gasped, getting him pinned and making sure I didn’t leave him a finger’s leeway before I’d convinced him. “Any of it. I swear.”

  “She’s dead. You killed her, you black-hearted devil.”

  “She won’t die. He’ll save her. If it’s possible, he’ll do it. I don’t have the skill for healing, so I called him to come. Would I have called him if I wanted her to die? I don’t. Of course, I don’t.”

  “I don’t believe you. Her blood is all over you.”

  Vroon and his friends grabbed Paulo and yanked him out from under me, and he didn’t even notice, any more than he noticed the blood dripping from his nose into the dirt or the fact that his shirt was half torn off him. He never took his eyes from my face.

  “Why should you believe me?” I said. “I wouldn’t either, if I were you. So believe what you want; it doesn’t change the truth.”

  “I don’t want to believe it. I thought I knew you.”

  “Then listen to what I say. I’ll swear on anything you want that I didn’t hurt my mother. I could never do that.”

  “You’ll swear, but it don’t mean dung on my boots when you don’t have a lick of truth in you.” He kicked the bloody knife toward me. “Pick it up and kill me, too. It’s the only way you’ll get away with it.”

  “Go back and help them. Tell my mother what I’ve said. I’ve got to get away or I’ll be dead, too. Then we’ll never know who really did it, or what’s the truth of any of this business. Look who’s holding you. They showed up tonight and helped me get away. Do you remember what I told you about my dreams?”