THE SOUL WEAVER

by Carol Berg

  He had finally settled down enough to take notice of the three odd-looking fellows who had his arms pinned behind him and were folding his legs underneath him so he couldn’t get off his knees. The sight of the thin black arms, the thick brown ones, and the one-eyed face scowling straight at him, no taller than his own face, surprised him just enough to make him listen. “Bloody Jerrat!”

  “I’ve got to go find out what’s going on, Paulo. It’s all connected: the dreams, these disappearances in Leire, the shepherd’s story about his son disappearing… I’ll wager these very same events the Prince is set to kill me for are part of it, too. I didn’t do those things he says, and I didn’t hurt my mother. If you end up believing I did any of it, you can break my neck at your pleasure. Now, go away.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Suit yourself, then. Stay here and rot.” I mounted Jasyr and motioned to the three to let him go.

  He strode across the trampled grass to where his Molly waited for him. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to erase the image of a skinny, freckled boy who twisted painfully with every step. Another vision. A flush of shame heated my skin as jeers of “donkey,” “thief’s brat,” and “cripple” echoed through a dusty street I had never walked. With every mental discipline I knew, I willed the vision away. I had no time for madness.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw Paulo only as he was that night: tall, wiry, surprisingly strong, thrusting himself into the saddle with the two good legs that the Prince - no, that my father, Karon - had given him. He ripped the tail off his shirt, wiped the blood from his face and threw the rag on the ground. “I’m going with you.”

  “With a murderer? A traitor? Would you ride with a Lord of Zhev’Na?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You’ve got some convincing to do.” He didn’t say which way I’d have to convince him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sometime after freeing Paulo and before the two of us rode off together, Vroon and his friends had vanished. Perhaps I hadn’t thanked them properly for saving my life twice in one night. I dared not wait around for them, so, as the moon rose, I set a brisk pace through the winding lanes to the highroad, and then headed northward at a canter. We didn’t stop until dawn.

  As the light crept over the countryside, we searched for a place to rest and water the horses. I picked a spot where the road crossed a wide, sluggish stream, riding a few hundred paces upstream along the marshy bank in hopes of finding cleaner water to fill our empty waterskins. As soon as we dismounted, Paulo settled himself on a hummock of grayish grass that seemed to be the only dry spot within half a league of the stream. From the scowl he had worn since we had left Windham, I saw that asking to share the seat would be of no use.

  So once I had filled the waterskins, I stood stupidly in the mud, stroking Jasyr’s neck and rummaging in my saddle pack, hoping to find my cloak and something to eat. The morning felt chilly, as my shirt was soaked and muddy from my adventures in the damp Windham gardens. All I found in the pack was one spare shirt - an ugly, useless green silk thing my mother had dug out of Tennice’s attic - a change of undergarments and leggings, the silly-looking hat I’d worn as part of my “disguise,” a blanket, two cups, one spoon, a small pot, and my flint and steel. No cloak and not so much as a dry biscuit to eat. Then I remembered I’d left the cloak in the gatehouse at Windham wrapped around a pile of leaves. And as for the food -

  “You won’t find nothing in my kit, neither,” said Paulo, as if he had read my mind or heard my stomach rumbling. “All in the gray saddle pack. You threw it into the corner of the gatehouse. Remember?” He wasn’t finished being angry with me yet.

  “We’ll just have to figure out something. Stop in a village and buy what we need, I suppose.” I turned out my pockets and found exactly twelve coppers. About enough for half a dozen mugs of ale or three loaves of stale bread. I glanced at Paulo.

  “At least you didn’t steal from the Lady before you stabbed her,” he said. “I gave her the silver from selling the horses and the pony trap.”

  No point in arguing guilt or innocence again. “So you don’t have any money, either?”

  “Not a copper. Looks like if we want to eat, I’ll have to go begging. Most people will give you something if you look sorry enough. Bad as I look, that ought to be easy… unless they see you with me, wearing your own mother’s blood.”

  “I’ll go hungry before I beg a stranger for a meal.”

  “Then you’ve never been hun - holy great demons!” Paulo just about jumped out of his skin when Vroon popped out of a willow thicket just beside him, bowing and chuckling. The other two followed right after him.

  “We’ve come to accompany you on your way,” said Vroon, gaping at a pair of moorhens skittering across the sluggish water. He waved his small hand away from himself and his friends. “Pay us no mind.”

  Tired of Paulo’s surliness, I tried asking Vroon a few of the questions that had been bothering me, such as where he’d come from, why he was looking for me, and how he got into my dreams. But no matter how loud I spoke, the three acted as if they couldn’t hear me. It was so annoying that I soon turned my back on all four of my companions.

  But Paulo wasn’t finished with his grumbling. “Too proud to ask for help. That’s nothing new. Serve you right to starve.”

  “We can’t be seen until we’re farther from Windham. The Prince is not going to give up finding me so easily.” But he wasn’t likely to come searching until my mother was all right… or dead. Even as I voiced the thought, I was disgusted with myself. Vile… what kind of creature was I even to think such things?

  “That leaves stealing, then, if we’re going to eat. You’ll make a thief of me. Get me hanged or worse. I didn’t steal even when I was a nub in Dunfarrie! Curse this day everlasting!” He threw a rock into the stream so hard it startled a flock of lapwings, who flapped their way noisily upriver, and Jasyr, who almost stepped on my foot.

  I dodged the horse, but ended up on my knee in the mud. As if I weren’t wet enough… filthy enough… vile enough… “Blast it all, you pigheaded oaf! Just leave, then.”

  “Better an oaf than a murdering sod.”

  “I swear I didn’t hurt her. I couldn’t.” Powers of night, couldn’t he understand how I felt about my mother? The two of them - my mother and Paulo - were the only reasons I was a human person. And I didn’t even know if she was alive.

  “Cold-hearted bastard… just leaving her like that.”

  “What good would I have done her, staying there to get my throat slit? If anyone in any world can help her, it’s my father. You know that better than anyone. He won’t let her die. He can protect her.” I had risked using sorcery to call him.

  “Who else could have done it? You had the bloody knife in your hand.”

  “I pulled it out of her after she was down. I don’t know why.” Stupid to pull the weapon out of a wound like that. “Everything was dark… confusing. I was walking up to her. I heard the strike” - felt the strike deep in my own gut - “and she fell. I just don’t know. I didn’t see it.”

  “Lying coward.”

  “Thickheaded dolt!”

  We traded insults and curses for half an hour. I told him he should stay here and soak his head in the stream while I went looking for the truth. He told me I wasn’t going to throw him away like a gnawed bone. That got us back to how hungry we were and how ridiculous it was that we didn’t know what to do about it.

  Meanwhile, the wide, leathery man and the scrawny black runner examined our horses. They didn’t touch the beasts. Just sniffed at their skin, studied their legs and flanks, their hocks and tails and hooves, and stared into their eyes as if trying to read their thoughts. Vroon was more interested in Paulo and me, poking his head in between us and watching our faces as we yelled at each other.

  When Paulo and I finally ran out of anything new to say, we mounted up as if we had thought about it at the same moment and started back along the muddy bank toward the road. Vroon and hi
s friends trailed along behind. As I turned northward on the highroad, the three of them vanished.

  Paulo shaded his eyes and stared up the road, as if the three might have just sped away exceptionally fast, rather than disappearing in midair. “Maybe they don’t like our prospects. Looks like the wide one eats pretty regular. Do you figure they’re gone for good this time?”

  “I don’t think so. They came for more than just getting me out of a scrape.”

  I just had no idea what that reason might be, and I was too relieved at the moment to figure it out. Foolish to get so angry over nothing. Careless. Dangerous. Why did meaningless things bother me so much? It didn’t matter what Paulo thought of me.

  Before we’d covered another league, a streak of green light split the air above the road just in front of us. I wasn’t too surprised to see our three friends show up again. But now Vroon and the wide leathery man rode horseback, while the runner jogged along beside us on his long, thin legs.

  The brown man offered me a wad of cloth. “Yours?”

  I reined in Jasyr and took the bundle. Everyone else pulled up, too, and gathered around as I shook out the cloth. It was my cloak. “Yes,” I said. “Thank you. How did - ?”

  “And this to be the other’s?” said the runner in his rumbling voice, holding out a bulging gray saddle pack to Paulo.

  “How did you get these?” I asked, suspicious. I didn’t see how they could have sneaked past the Prince or Radele. “Were the people still there? What was happening? My mother… a woman with hair the same color as mine… was wounded. Did you see - ?”

  “Great magics were happening,” said Vroon. “We could not see into them.”

  Great magics… healing, I hoped. I ignored the hard look from Paulo and tried to stay focused on the present. I could do nothing for my mother. “So you just walked in and took our things without anyone noticing?”

  “We are skilled at acquirings,” said Vroon, and the three joined in their now familiar wicked chuckling. “None saw us.”

  Paulo had already opened the bag and pulled out a handful of flat biscuits. One was halfway to his mouth, when he stopped and offered it to the runner who was staring at the dry lump with his glittering amber eyes even wider than usual. “Are you hungry, too… uh… sorry, I didn’t get your name?”

  The runner waved the biscuit away and bowed his head. His skin glowed blue-black like polished onyx. “No name belongs to me as yet. No gift of a name.”

  Paulo took a bite and chewed for a moment, watching the long-limbed man draw circles in the dirt with his toe. “Everybody ought to have a name. In this land we got names even if we’re nobodies.”

  “If I could have a name, I think it would be Zanore,” said the runner, cocking his head thoughtfully. “I feel that name. But it has not been granted to me. Perhaps someday, if I live well.”

  “Nobody has to grant you a name here. If you want to be called it, then just say so.” Paulo passed me the food bag. “Don’t you think he should be called Zanore if he wants?”

  I chose two biscuits and shrugged. “I’ll call you Zanore. Whatever you like.”

  The black runner seemed to grow two hands taller right there in front of us. He bowed first to me and then to Paulo, scraping the dusty road with his spiky silver hair. “I am honored beyond tellings by your naming, great Master. And I thank you for your goodwill, Horseman Mighty.”

  Paulo turned pure scarlet. “My name is Paulo. Does Zanore mean something special, or is it like mine… just a name?”

  “Oh, sir, Zanore is not ‘just a name.’ No name is ‘just a name.’ Names are realness. Hereness. Names are bounded.” He grinned hugely, as if he had explained everything.

  Once I had swallowed the last crumbs of biscuit and drunk a bit of the tepid, murky stream water from my waterskin, my disposition was much improved. I offered the waterskin to the leathery man. He was so much wider than his bony horse, he looked like an owl astride a twig as he sat gaping cheerfully at his two friends. “I suppose you have a name you’re interested in, too.”

  I would have sworn the red tufts of hair on his brown head wriggled in delight. “Ob.”

  “Well then… Ob… I thank you for your help. Have a drink if you want.”

  “Honor.” Though he spoke only one word at a time, his words seemed to have a great deal more bulk than other people’s. He declined the water, but he bellowed a laugh and tipped sideways, making the deepest bow he could manage without toppling from his horse.

  The three begged us to say what else we might need that they could acquire for us. I didn’t want to be greedy, for I had a feeling that their “acquirings” would be at the expense of some terrified villagers. The two horses they rode, though not exceptional, were surely being missed by someone.

  “Nothing just now,” I said. “Unless you could transport us farther away as you did before. I want to go to the dream place, the place you’ve shown me with the black-and-purple sky.”

  The three gave a huge, satisfied sigh.

  “Ah, not so far can we carry you,” said Vroon, grinning so widely it crinkled the skin over his missing eye.

  “You will find your own way there… if you are the one. If not, you will fail.”

  “If I’m the one what?”

  “The One Who Makes Us Bounded. Who gives us names. His coming is awaited most eagerly.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve seen you three in my dreams - you know that?”

  They looked at each other with unreadable expressions. “We came searching for the dreamer. For such a long time we have searched, listening for tales of kings and rulers. Following. Hoping to recognize the dreamer. We felt urgently to come to the fallen fastness, and there we find you! You were not fearful, and so we believe you are the one we have been waiting for. You have… ”

  “… wholeness,” said Ob. His broad brow wrinkled into deep furrows, as if his thoughts were as ponderous as his body.

  Silly. I pulled my cloak around me and nudged Jasyr to get moving.

  The day grew warmer. We continued northward. I tried a few more questions, but our companions held their tongues and shook their heads. They just weren’t going to tell me what I wanted. Part of their game must be making me guess.

  “So how far can you take us?” I said as the road narrowed and curved into the shadowed ravine between two brown hillsides.

  Vroon thought for a moment. “Next topland, anywards. Or mighty treeland sunwards traveling. Or stonewalled fastness coldwards.”

  I puzzled at the odd descriptions as we rode in and out of the patchy shadows and sunlight of the rolling hill country. Topland anywards… Hilltops? In any direction? Mighty treeland… A forest, most likely… a big one. Sunwards traveling. East? No, west, following the sun. The forest of Tennebar lay west of us. And there were a number of stone-walled fastnesses hereabouts - fortresses and castles built to control the approaches to Montevial. And coldwards would be north. Comigor was perhaps five leagues north…

  Of course! Vroon must have picked up the destinations directly from me, not reading my thoughts exactly, because I’d not voiced them even to myself. But he had offered hilltops because I was worried about pursuit, and we couldn’t see more than a half a league in any direction from where we were. He considered Tennebar because that was the route to the Vallorean highlands where the shepherd’s son had disappeared. And Comigor, because I could not ride these hills without thinking of the castle where’d I’d grown up always afraid, and where I’d first met my mother without either of us knowing it.

  The choice was easy. “The mighty treeland,” I said. “Sunwards traveling.” The time wasn’t yet right for going back to Comigor. But a fast journey to Tennebar would give us a terrific head start on any pursuers, putting us two days closer to Valleor and the shepherd’s lay.

  “As you say.” And with no more fuss than if they were preparing supper, Zanore jogged up between Jasyr and Molly and grabbed my right arm and Paulo’s left, while Vr
oon and Ob rode to the outside, taking my left arm and Paulo’s right. Then we fell off the edge of the world again. The last thing I saw was Paulo’s puzzled stare at Vroon and me. And the last question on my lips was answered before I could blurt it out. The horses could indeed come with us, for after some indefinable, unsettling instant. I sat on a nervous Jasyr under the green shadowed eaves of Tennebar.

  “Bloody hell!” Paulo and Molly were backing in nervous circles, and Paulo had to use all his particular skills to quiet his big-hearted mare. Truthfully, I think Paulo was more disconcerted than Molly.

  “Can you take us across this treeland?” I said. “ ‘Sunwards traveling’ yet again?”

  “No more,” said Vroon, grinning. “Your own way must you make. Ob, Zanore, and I will beside you watch, for acquirings you need or guardings. But the way must be your own.” He bobbed his brown beard. “We believe you are the one we hope for.”

  “So what do you make of them?” said Paulo, after the three winked out again, leaving us to ride alone through the forest in the bright noonday. “They’re not from Avonar, are they? I didn’t see nobody like them there.”

  “No. And they’re not from Zhev’Na, either.” Paulo’s face didn’t change when I said that, but he fixed his eyes on me as if he might see something different if he looked long enough. I watched the road. “No one in Zhev’Na had any deformities. Think of the Zhid warriors, still Dar’Nethi in form, but all very much alike, even the women. Perfect variations of the same mold. Similar in stature and strength. No weaknesses. They never transformed Duke into Zhid. The Zhid considered them too short, too small.” I hated thinking about Zhev’Na, much less talking about it.

  “Then are these three from yet another world?”

  “I don’t know… though I’m beginning to have an idea.”