The Four Profound Weaves

by R. B. Lemberg

  But I could not sing yet. With a terrible sound in my mind, my two-syllable snapped, and my ears filled with a terrible noise. The torturer tried to burn the deepname out, but in the tug and struggle between us, the name was not dead, just broken. It was longer and weaker now, a three-syllable where a two-syllable had once been.

  I swayed on my feet. Pain twisted and burned me, but the noise in my ears receded and the holy song flowed in me once again, supporting me. I looked inward now. Healing magic was difficult and imprecise, and I had failed to heal Uiziya, but I heard it said that delicate healings were easier with long names. Shaking, I made a new healing structure with my weak three-syllable deepnames: one of them whole and afraid, the other broken, struggling, longer than it was before, but alive. Gritting my teeth, I directed my will at the twisting rod.

  Then I spoke to the faces in the iron, an echo of the god’s melody in my mind.

  “Silent or screaming, I hear you. I see you. Juma—oh Juma—song is forever only a breath away. Do not be afraid to be heard—yes, even in your death—for if your voice is heard, it is no longer possible to pretend that you do not exist.”

  “What are you saying—?” In the torturer’s hand the rod twisted, each face straining to open its mouth.

  One by one, the faces began to sing, the song of rage and heat and blood overflowing with the voices of the torturer’s victims, his loved ones twisting in unbearable pain of their love. The torturer shook his hand, frantic to get the weapon away from him.

  At this moment I aimed my painful, exultant, weaker and yet more deliberate magic. I wrapped the twisting, roaring, singing rod in my structure of deepnames and drove it up, into the torturer’s eye, through his skull.

  He fell down. Slowly, I spun my magic once more and destroyed the lock. My power was no match for the torturer’s, but I knew mechanical things.

  I stepped out, stealing furtive glances upon the body, the still-twitching rod. I told myself to take the rod, but I was terrified, even though I had healed it.

  My head felt splitting with pain. I could no longer hold my magical structure. Kimri’s song steered me away, out of these chambers, and down the stairs, farther below, toward Uiziya e Lali.

  Uiziya e Lali

  I heard the rattling of flesh-encased bones beyond the door. Nen-sasaïr. I ignored him.

  I had finished my weave. The Ruler of Iyar would come for me, to take the carpet I had made, and to kill me. Until then, I did not want to move.

  On my loom, the finished piece glittered, a tapestry of hurts that wept and screamed and cursed and blessed and fell silent, exhausted, before taking up speech again. My great tapestry of death, Benesret’s dream, which was now my work.

  The lock clicked, and clicked again, and flew open at last.

  I spoke. “Cease your steps and come no further, for it is not a place for men.”

  Nen-sasaïr ignored me. Stepped over the threshold. Walked closer.

  He looked wounded and yet buoyant, as if some echo of song held him up. His bloodshot eyes were on the loom. He looked at the great work I had made, the ornamentation I had created from all those slain here—the white weave of the bone-thread; the pale gray shapes of birds; a red slash of horizon swelling with dawn.

  “Step no further,” I warned him. “For I had woven from death, and only death lies this way.”

  “I must. I will. It is my lover you have woven from.”

  One voice separated itself from the threads and sang in nen-sasaïr’s language.

  nen-sasaïr

  “Forty years.”

  I shuddered, hearing it. Hearing her—the lilt of her voice, that little breath she took at the end of each sentence. She had been young still, Bashri-nai-Divrah; barely twenty when she died in this place.

  My own voice, bounded with years, tired, lower than ever she heard it, was old. Old and pleading. “We brought the carpet to buy your life back, but you were already dead.”

  “He tricked you, you know. He needed your ardor to bring back the carpet.”

  Yes, I’d realized that, years ago. He had lured Bashri-nai-Divrah in on purpose; the treacherous trade had been no accident.

  “I am so, so sorry,” I told her, words that I yearned for forty years to say. “I am sorry for your death. For your imprisonment here, even after you died. I am sorry for us. For the years. I am sorry.”

  The tapestry sang with her voice. “And have you found solace in the years?”

  “Yes.” I said, “When I went back to find Benesret. I transformed my body.”

  I did not know what I wanted her to say. I always knew. How could you do this, go against the law? I still love you: a man, a woman, I would always love you. I’d be with you, if I could live.

  But what she sang was, “Where is Bashri?”

  The question staggered me, burned me worse than the torturer’s rod of faces. I had been called Bashri, and so was Bashri-nai-Divrah, but Bashri was always and ever Bashri-nai-Leylit. We two others took her name when we formed our oreg, our trading-group, our family, our lovers’-group. Bashri-naiLeylit, who did not want me to change, who kept my cloth of winds in her strongbox until she died—this was the question asked now by my other lover, even from beyond death.

  I said bitterly, “Bashri-nai-Leylit was carried aloft by a dove. In her old age.”

  I do not know what I wanted to hear. I am sorry, perhaps. Or Did she speak of me before she died?

  The tapestry sang instead, “Was she happy?”

  It was a tapestry, and it was my lover. The other Bashri. Bashri-nai-Divrah.

  “No,” I said. “We were not happy. My secret burdened her and bent her, until she could hold it no more. And I could hold it no more. So I traveled to find my Surun’ friends, and transformed my body, even though I am old.”

  The carpet spoke, but no longer in the voice of Bashri-nai-Divrah alone. I heard many voices together. Some sounded ancient and some were new; some were Khana, most were Iyari, and some I could not understand at all. I could not distinguish among them; the voices were threads, each separate and yet woven tightly together. The carpet of death spoke to me.

  “The Ruler of Iyar keeps secrets—”

  “He keeps us, and all those works of our hands, of our splendor, locked forever—”

  “It is wrong to make a treasure of another, however tenderly kept—”

  “There is no right or wrong here. Only bones.”

  The tapestry fell silent.

  Uiziya said, “He will send someone to fetch my carpet, if you want to wait here with me.”

  I did not want to remain there. The carpet of death sang and beckoned, drawing my soul in to join in the weave. The darkness around it was complete. I had lived long enough; wasn’t it better to be woven with my dead lover, to sing forever like I had wanted to sing?

  We could perhaps find him on our own, the Ruler of Iyar, wandering through the corridors. Uiziya could not walk, and I wasn’t strong enough to support her well. The moving chair I had made was destroyed, and Uiziya’s carpet of wanderlust had been taken.

  “I will stay,” I said.

  We waited, together, in the dark by the carpet of death.

  Uiziya e Lali

  We did not have to wait long for guards to arrive. They looked terrified of the place that now gaped cavernous and hungry, emptied of bones. The guards poked and prodded at nen-sasaïr, but they brought me a cane and allowed him to support me. I carried the carpet of death over my shoulder; the guards would not touch it, and would not touch me, and maybe because of that they wanted both us alive.

  The Ruler of Iyar waited for us in a chamber of stone full of armored chests that stood open, overflowing with all manner of treasure—tapestries and carpets, small rugs of bird feathers made in the Mon Mountain fashion, spidersilk sashes embroidered with gold. His birdcage stood open and empty; the enjoyment of his treasures required him to step outside it. He was attended by three new people who had replaced his torturer, his physicker, and his assass
in.

  When the guards brought us in, he was not surprised to see both of us together.

  “What happened to my assassin and my torturer? Never mind. People always disappoint you,” he said. “Yet I am their anchor, their center, their core.”

  “Those who have forsaken you are dead,” I said. “You killed many of them yourself, remember?”

  “Isn’t it the same? You yourself were forsaken, and so you have woven from death. As you have woven from death, so I wish to preserve my subjects, to shelter them, treasure them. My torturer imitated me, you know. A pupil always tries to follow his master. Just as you followed Benesret.”

  No. Not like I followed Benesret.

  But the Collector spoke on. “He killed his family, even his child, to be treasured within the rod. I thought that ingenious, until he, too, deserted me. People disappoint you. Treasures alone will never forsake or betray you.”

  I saw now the weavings spread at his feet.

  The multicolored cloth of winds felt new. Made by a skilled yet young weaver, it scintillated with all the promise of joy, of dawns and of butterflies; a few of the small pink ones fluttered up from the weave. I had seen this cloth of winds before, just before we left the encampment—woven by Kimi, nen-sasaïr’s youngest grandchild. Next to the wind-cloth, my own old and tattered carpet of sand appeared restless, shivering on the floor as if ready to fly away.

  Last was that great and intricate weave of blue and emerald green that I remembered from my youth; I had stood by my aunt’s loom to witness its weaving. Zurya of the Maiva’at had sung the singing thread from Bird’s own feathers until it choked her. My aunt had woven from that pain, and the glory of Birdsong, and from her own yearning. Benesret’s greatest hope—to weave from death, but her greatest weave, in the end, was hope.

  The Ruler of Iyar said, “I see the carpet of death in your hands. You have completed it. Brought it to me. Now spread it at my feet, with the others.”

  He motioned to his guards, and they forced both of us down, nen-sasaïr to his knees, me down by his side. Together we spread my tapestry at his feet, by the carpet of song.

  The Ruler of Iyar smiled down at us, at my pain. Then he stepped on the carpet of wind. His feet crushed the fluttering butterflies, and nen-sasaïr cried at my side. The Ruler of Iyar had taken his lover away, just as now he stepped on his grandchild’s great joy.

  “Change is a lie,” said the Ruler of Iyar to nen-sasaïr. “You tried to change so much, you ran away to the desert, but you ended back here.”

  The Ruler of Iyar stepped next on the carpet of sand, and I cried out, for he was walking on me. “All your yearning and wanderlust had come to nothing. You journeyed only for my purpose.” And it was true—I came here from the snake-Surun’ encampment, to weave for him at his command, from these bones he had made.

  He stepped on the great carpet of song, and there was a great outcry from it, a scream of a wounded bird, for it was upon the goddess’s own feathers that he was stepping now, and it tore me apart. “Hope is always the easiest to defeat,” he said. “You gave it up to me, yourselves.”

  I found no words to defy him, and neither did nen-sasaïr.

  “Now,” the Ruler of Iyar said, “The four weaves are together. The secret of the gods, as you said.”

  He stepped on the carpet of death. On my sisters.

  nen-sasaïr

  He stepped on the carpet of death, and as he did, the song I kept hearing since I had touched the lock in the Khana quarter began to surge in me, filling my broken, painful mind, filling all the empty silent spaces behind my eyes, in my throat.

  “The secret of the gods,” said the Ruler of Iyar. “What is it? I’m waiting. Or have you lied?”

  I spoke. “With the weave of sand and wind supporting them, the weave of death will bring Bird closer, for she comes for the dead in her many forms; and the weave of song will bring forth her brother, the singer, Kimri.”

  The Ruler of Iyar frowned. “Is that all?”

  I took a deep breath, and opened my mouth once again.

  “Bird’s feathers made the threads that Benesret wove into her great carpet of song; and the bonethreads Uiziya had made from the women you killed will now sing. Hope and death; the siblings are intertwined, and this is the mystery of the ever-changing desert. Hope cannot be given away, to you, or to anyone. Hope is the song which arises from silence where all our voices had been; all those locked away against their will one day will surge again, come forth with great exuberance, sweep the world in a reverberation of rainbow more true than your Rainbow-Tiered Court.”

  I noticed now that I had been singing; I sang all those words that came through me, out of me, and the weavings of death and of hope joined me now, bringing closer the goddess and the god, the siblings, into this place. “Because the dawn is never far away.”

  And then I sang and sang, not seeing anything anymore, for the god had brought me my name.

  My throat hoarse from effort and silent at last, I opened my eyes and saw them all on their knees—not just the two of us, but the Ruler’s guards, and the Ruler of Iyar himself, shielding his ears in vain against the triumphant music. The siblings were intertwined: Bird’s brother contained all the world’s dead, brought to him by his sister Bird, but he did not take them. The song did not have the power to kill, only to sway and strain and wound and heal the hearts of those who heard it.

  I looked at the faces around me. Uiziya. The guards. The Ruler of Iyar. Ecstatic, remorseful, defiant.

  Uiziya’s hands stretched out, as if in supplication, toward the tapestry she had woven from bones. The Ruler of Iyar screamed at her, against the surging of the song, “They are mine! All mine! I preserve them! All mine!”

  She tugged on the carpet made of all the dead women he’d killed and hidden. The motion unbalanced her, and I saw the pain in her face as she pulled and pulled on the carpet. Screaming with the exhaustion of her body, screaming her anguish, her defiance, she lifted it up and threw it.

  The carpet of death wrapped around the Ruler’s head. His shoulders. His arms. And it fed.

  Uiziya e Lali

  Leaving the palace, I was shaking with exhaustion and overcome by the body’s pain, but nen-sasaïr supported me. He found a plain staff, a cane I could lean on, and he draped it with my carpet of sand. Its magic helped me move. Nen-sasaïr found another cane for himself too—he was shaken and hurt, though it was nothing I could see. Still, he carried the carpets of wind and song. I carried the carpet of death slung over my shoulder; I held on to my new staff with the other hand. It was a precarious balance, but nobody else would touch the white carpet, not even nen-sasaïr.

  That fear was a helper to us; in the confusion of the Collector’s demise, the palace guards would neither touch nor hinder us, their eyes wide at the whispering carpet of death, then shying away. Perhaps they were secretly relieved that the Collector was dead, but I thought it more likely that they wanted to avoid his death and its weaver. And so we escaped.

  Dawn was breaking over the springflower city of Iyar, and from the rooftops of the palace, a plaintive sound of a reed pipe could be heard. I expected something grander—the wailing of wind-pipes from all the roofs of the city, a great tumult of people—but perhaps that would come later. I would have to sleep soon, but it was not safe yet to do so, and so we pushed through. The carpet of song that nen-sasaïr carried revived us just enough to make it to the gate.

  Juma’s friend waited for us there, a small child of eleven or twelve, an in-betweener called Riát. Nen-sasaïr talked to them. I was barely awake by then. Something about the rod.

  “I could not touch it,” nen-sasaïr said. “I was afraid to pick it up. It is still somewhere in the palace, in the dungeons, but we were too exhausted to go look for it—my magic was broken—I’m sorry—”

  “I guess you cannot help being old,” said the child. And to me, “Is it true that your carpet ate the Collector?”

  “The souls of those he harmed
devoured him,” I said.

  “Just like the rod devoured Juma’s dad.”

  “She does not know about the torturer,” nen-sasaïr said. “I am sorry we could not do more.”

  “You have done enough.” The child looked up and west, in the direction of the palace. “Perhaps the name-orphans of Iyar can collect what is ours.”

  “Be careful,” said nen-sasaïr.

  “Get some sleep,” said the child.

  But we could not sleep in the city. Once out of the gates, we made my carpet of sand fly again. Not too far away, we found a small, fertile valley, and an orchard of plums, and there we slept for three days. I guess we really could not help being wounded and old, but the plums and the sleep did their work. Nen-sasaïr’s head did not hurt as much anymore, though he still complained that he heard, when he was tired, either terrible noise or the holy song, and he wasn’t sure how to combine his new deepnames.

  “This configuration, I do not even know what it is called. It does not feel stable.” But he tried, again and again, to use it; it did not work nearly as well as before, but his healing improved, and he eased my pain, if not his own.

  After resting some more, we flew southeast, leaving behind Iyar’s lush orchards and fields, toward where the sand greets the sky.

  We journeyed for days until at last we found Benesret’s encampment of bones on a different outcropping of rock; while we traveled, she had migrated south. In the light of mid-morning, the skulls and bones looked almost pacified, pressed down under the growing weight of the sun.

  I let the carpet of sand touch ground, and nen-sasaïr helped me stand. I supported myself on my cane. The pain of my withered leg was familiar now, and duller, just another insistent part of the song of pain that my body made.