Tapestry of Dark Souls

by Elaine Bergstrom

  He howled with agony. His grip slackened, and Maeve managed to jerk herself free. Retrieving her own knife from the floor, Maeve advanced on the man.

  He retreated toward the far comer of the room. As he did, Maeve dropped her weapon and bounded through the open door. Desperate, she didn’t care who might be watching as she ripped at her clothes and ran, changing quickly until, in fox form, she disappeared into the trees. Turning, I saw that Fian had stripped, his body melting into the shape of a huge gray wolf. Leaping through a window, he followed her. There was blood on the floor, but he seemed little wounded by my attack.

  Maeve could never outrun him, never defend herself when he caught her without my aid. I tore the amulet from my neck and a moment later—gripping the wooden hilt of my silver blade between my teeth—I ran, four-footed, after them.

  So many months without the change had slowed my pace, but not my senses. Though I rapidly lost sight of them, their scent lay heavy on the spongy ground, easy to follow.

  Fian was wounded, as likely a kill for the two of us as the animals we routinely hunted. I expected Maeve to rely on me, to turn and make a stand. Instead, she ran east, paralleling the Timori Road before crossing it and continuing along the south shore of Lake Kronov. She undoubtedly intended to tire Fian before their final battle. I hung back, content to follow them and help only if I were needed rather than risk wounding my unborn son.

  The forest thickened. The river made a sudden bend away from the road. Some innate animal sense made me pause and flatten to the ground, creeping through the underbrush. The scents of my lover and my friend drew me forward, despite another, unsettling odor. The farther I crept, the more it became dominant, until I knew it was the growing reek of decay. I wanted to turn and run, but I wouldn’t abandon Maeve. And so I continued on.

  The large, whitewashed cottage that came into view seemed hardly dangerous. It was a cheerless place, darkened by the trees around it. Other than the dense smoke rising from the chimney, no one appeared to be there. Circling around the cottage, I found a pile of goblin bones, boiled clean, pale as a tangled white-oak deadfall. The heads formed a second, smaller pile, the expressions on those that still had skin as disgusting in death as they had been in life. Some were dark, some pale and—I focused more clearly on the stack—some were human. Heads of men, women, and an occasional child were thrown like so much refuse with the rest.

  The fur on my neck rose. Fearful that the slayer of the goblins would take note of me, I slowly backed away, then darted into the scant cover of the woods around. An abrupt rustling sound made me freeze. Terrified, I waited; a woman rushed past me and into the clearing.

  Maeve! Yet her gait was wrong, the scent of death heavy on her body. It was Maeve, and it wasn’t.

  “Fian!” she called, the lilt in her familiar voice teasing, challenging. “Face me as a man, Fian. If you dare!”

  Some time passed before Fian responded. In wolf form, he stepped out of the brush, his head moving right and left as he scanned the shadows beneath the trees. Then, with as much fluid grace as he had shown in our cottage, he assumed his man form and moved toward Maeve, his knife pointed upward, ready to strike. I circled slowly about in the foliage, preparing my attack.

  Maeve moved toward Fian, her arms held out. In the moment when I thought she intended to surrender, Maeve latched onto his arms and pulled them with inhuman strength out to his sides. As she did, she let out a cry of triumph, which was echoed by two coarser shouts from the cottage itself.

  The light around Fian’s body shimmered, forming transparent rods of silver that encased him. Though he struggled and tried to pull away, Maeve easily held his arms until the shimmering ended. With a cold laugh, she let him go, stepping away from his magical cage. His arms remained outstretched, pinned between the glowing bars, and, though he strained to move them, he couldn’t.

  Two horrifying apparitions emerged from the cottage, waddling on their misshapen legs toward the cage and their beautiful captive. One was tall and midnight black with teeth so huge she couldn’t close her mouth, not even to swallow. Spittle leaked down her chin, forming long threads of slime that hung on her shapeless gown. The second appeared only half the size of the first. Jaundiced, leprous, she let out a harsh cackle as she approached the cage.

  These must have been the hags that Andor spoke of, I thought. I wanted to bolt out and save Maeve, but my hackles prickled at the thought, and my intuition insisted that is not Maeve.

  Fian tried desperately to pull his hands inside the cage, begging Maeve to free him. Apparently oblivious to the hags converging on her, Maeve seemed for a moment that she might help. She took his hands again and crooned softly to him as she kissed them. My sharp lupine ears heard her whisper, “Will you love me now, husband?”

  “I always have,” he responded.

  As he spoke the words, she laughed. She wouldn’t be taken in by false promises, not my Maeve.

  At that moment, a second Maeve, with her pointed vixen face and brilliant silver pelt, stepped into the clearing. And the first Maeve shape-shifted into her true form.

  The creature was the smallest of the three hags. Though her skin was green as a toad’s, her eyes bright orange with reptilian slits, she still held some semblance of what might have been her former beauty. Her feet were dainty and, as she moved around the cage, studying her captive, she walked with some grace. Her curse must have been the worst of all.

  “Will you love me?” she asked again in Maeve’s musical voice. One hand—thin, lizard-skinned, with black, curved talons—reached for his. A talon from the other opened a cut in his wrist. She lowered her head and drank the thin trickle that flowed from it, motioning the others forward to join her. As she did, the wound on Fian’s wrist closed and the short, leprous hag bit deeply into his wrist for her taste. The shiny black hag who had waited until the last took her turn, her huge teeth ripping strips of flesh from Fian’s exposed arm.

  “It will give us great pleasure to kill someone as beautiful as you, even more when we think of all the time it will take you to die,” the smallest one said, still using Maeve’s voice. Fian was beyond listening. He screamed, the cries high-pitched, hysterical, insane.

  “Little fox,” the black monster called when she had finished her meal. Her booming voice grated my sensitive ears. “Come forward and claim your prize.” As she said the words, she threw two large bundles of goblin pelts across the clearing. Maeve, still in fox form, retrieved them, dragging them away by their bindings, her tail submissively between her legs.

  The hags were intent on their prize, Maeve on her reward. With Fian’s screams burning my ears, I retreated. Careful to remain downwind from Maeve, I followed her path toward home.

  When she was well away from the house, Maeve stopped and shifted to her human form only long enough to retie the pair of bundles into one large pack and make a collar out of the remaining bindings. Then, with the collar already in place on her neck, she changed again. This time I saw the agony in her expression, heard the pain in her single scream.

  And a wolf stood in the clearing. The huge black wolf I knew all too well!

  She had picked up the binding and begun to run when I overtook her. Circling in front of her, the blade gripped in my teeth, I growled and stood my ground.

  What did I see in those black, feral eyes? Surprise, of course. And sorrow. Then Maeve transformed into her best-known self, a wry smile playing over her rouged lips. “So now you know,” she said. “I am Kartakan. I share my father’s curse as well as my mother’s. I change to whatever form I wish.”

  I cocked my head. Though I couldn’t speak, the question in my expression was clear enough.

  “That horrible trio rules this land,” Maeve said bitterly. “And they rule me. They have placed a curse on me that leaves me no choice but to obey them. Soon I may be powerful enough to break their spell, free at last. No one will rule me then.”

  And me? Who ruled me? With a snarl I sprang, knocking her onto her bac
k. I retreated, momentarily, changed to human shape, and attacked again. Her scream rang out as the knife sliced through her flesh.

  I would have killed her had I not stopped to look into her eyes one last time. So perfect, so beautiful, so resigned. She wouldn’t fight. I could do as I wished. Horrified by the blood-lust within me, I pulled away from her, dropped my blade, and ran.

  The forest provided well for me in the days I roamed it in wolf form. I slept beneath the trees, sifting truth from myth. Maeve was my mistress and, like her mother, once I gave birth, Maeve would control me utterly. I already knew what her first order would be.

  My choices were few and tragic. I could return to the cottage and destroy her, and my sanity in the process, or I could destroy myself and my unborn son. I couldn’t bear the thought of either, so I traveled south and west. With a mountain between me and Linde, Maeve’s pull on me would diminish, as, too, would her hot-edged passion to steal the cloth. I knew then what I must do.

  The next day, I climbed the steep path to the fortress where the Guardians dwell. And though I am a burden on them, they have treated me kindly, seeing to my every need, giving me and the child within the best of their meager fare. They even took turns sitting with me until I forbade them.

  I asked, then, for some means to set down the story of Vhar and me and the cloth. On this scroll, I have written far more than that, but someday you, my son, must understand the reason for what I now do.

  You see, I miss Maeve—miss her more than if I had killed her. So when you are born—Vhar’s child or the child of that night of horror, what does it matter?—I will give you to the Guardians. Then I will go into the shrine and pull down the tapestry from its place on the wall. I will cover myself with its gossamer folds and feel my life dissolve, my soul, my body, my mind stretch like the others on the fibers of the cloth. And though I will have no peace, I will have the comfort of my husband and the others of my kind. Not damned—I don’t think anyone is damned until life ends—but trapped, as I have always been, until the fates judge me.

  PART II

  Jonathan

  I knew the woman would conceive; knew it from the moment I touched her trembling body. Ah, delicious! After so many hungry years of half-life in this prison, her fear bubbled through me, fresh and sweet as new wine. How I used her, feasting on her innocence. How I use her still, tormenting her through all her days of self-imposed damnation. Of all the fools who brought this doom upon themselves, she is the greatest, for she alone possessed the power to destroy my dreams, and she abandoned it.

  Scores of empty nights, and then, this unwilling lover from another world gives me hope! I wait for our child—the destined one to come—and he will set me free.

  Brother Dominic, head of the Order of the Guardians, sat at a table in the dining hall, his face buried in his open palms. Leith’s legacy to her son lay unrolled in front of him. The other four brothers of the order sat around him; they would need to make the decision together.

  The Guardians had known Leith’s mind was unhinged when she came back to them, but even Ivar, Leo’s former teacher, couldn’t discern the source of her strange despair. The monks had watched her, hoping her sadness would lift when her babe was born. Instead, she disappeared less than a week after the birth. Now, far too late to help her, the Guardians had found the scroll she had hidden in their library.

  Now, they understood.

  Though many of their questions had been answered by the scroll of Leith’s tragic account, another, far more serious question had been raised. The child.

  As usual, Mattas was the most direct and the most ruthless, as if the loss of his sight had somehow taken all compassion from his soul. “The infant is the son of one of the souls trapped on that cloth. Destroy him now and be done with it,” the old monk said, chopping the table with his arthritic hands.

  Hektor looked down at the baby sleeping in his arms. A huge man in his prime, Hektor had heavy features and a mane of dark, unruly hair. He look more like the brawler he had once been than the gentle giant who had assisted Dominic with Leith’s delivery. In the days since Leith had disappeared, he had cared for the child as if it were his own.

  Now, the horror in his expression was plain to see. “We are an order that worships peace and harmony,” he said. “Mattas would turn us all into murderers.”

  “Think of the monsters trapped there,” Mattas said. “Undead.”

  “Undead don’t sire children,” Hektor retorted. “Lycanthropes.”

  “Not all were are evil, Mattas. Consider Andor. If Andor had the calling, would anyone here argue against admitting him?” Brother Peto asked softly.

  “Andor was bitten, not born to it,” Mattas replied. “Leith wrote of a silver-haired man from the tapestry.” He brushed his fingers over the bindings on his eyes and continued. “I recall that silver-haired man. I recall his face perfectly because it was the last one I saw before my eyes were burned from my skull. He blinded me. He’s destroying the order. Now the child has silver hair: how can you deny his parentage?”

  “Many children are fair when young. Hair often darkens with age,” Hektor responded.

  “Is there no test we can perform to give us an answer?” Peto asked.

  Dominic noted how Peto’s hands trembled, as they did whenever he experienced any strong emotion. On the nights when the souls in the cloth woke, the pale, thin monk would shake like a willow in the wind. Yet Peto never broke the Guardian’s circle. Dominic marveled at the depth of the young monk’s resolve. He glanced at the others and wondered what had happened to their beliefs, their unity.

  “There’s a way to know if the child is an ordinary infant. I have the means,” Dominic said. “I will call on the god I served before I came to this land. He is the god of the sun and the life it gives. His powers are many. Perhaps he’ll provide us an answer.”

  “And if his answer is that the child is tainted, what will we do then?” Mattas asked.

  “I’ll agree to destroy him,” Dominic replied. He turned to Leo, who sat beside him, listening thoughtfully. “I’ll need your assistance in this. And the others need to know how you stand.”

  “I agree with your decision,” Leo replied.

  “Leo and I will need time in private to prepare,” Dominic said. “We will hold the ceremony here.” Rising, he retired to the library. Leo followed and shut the door behind them. Once they were alone, he sat stiffly on the bench across from Dominic. His dark eyes seemed to bore into Dominic’s, and his voice, though soft, demanded an answer.

  “Your prayers are useless in this land,” Leo said. “Why did you lie?”

  “Mattas is the only one of us who served in the old days, when our order was large and powerful. Now, with so few left in the order, we must stand together. If we murder the child, as Mattas demands, we will be destroyed from within.”

  “But what if Mattas is right? What if the boy is son to the wizard who destroyed the first shrine?”

  “He is an infant. As with any man, his choice for good or evil will come when he is older.”

  Leo considered this. “What part in this charade do you want me to play?” he finally asked.

  “Cast an aura around the child. Green, I think. When I pass my amulet through the aura, brighten it. That should be convincing enough. Afterward, we’ll send the child away.”

  Leo nodded and pulled his spell book from the library shelf. While Dominic sat, praying that his decision had been the right one, Leo memorized the words and gestures of a simple spell.

  At length Leo closed the book, and the pair joined the other Guardians in the dining hall. Hektor reluctantly handed the infant to Leo, who laid him naked on the table in front of Dominic. The child shivered with the cold and seemed to scowl at the indignity, but didn’t cry. His eyes, still that deep shade of infant blue, focused on the nearest object—the amulet Dominic held above him.

  The circular brass amulet bore a sphere with a line arching above it. Once, in a different world, the symb
ol stood for the hope of the rising sun. Dominic smiled grimly; even in this world, it was the sunrise that freed them from their labors beneath the full moon.

  As Dominic recited his incantation, Leo whispered his, and a halo of light began to form over the infant, a brilliant green aura that grew stronger with each spoken word. When the aura reached its zenith, Dominic passed his amulet through the light. Instead of growing stronger, as Dominic had requested, the amulet reflected the aura, sending bright beams of light across the faces of the monks. The beams illumined Mattas’s stoic expression, and glittered on Hektor’s tears.

  As Dominic pulled the amulet away, the aura pulsed, weakened, and slowly died. “It is finished. He is not a son of evil,” Dominic proclaimed. “Now let us take the child outside for his naming ceremony.”

  They conducted the naming ritual out in the cold wind, in front of the shrine’s open doors. If the cloth had any hold on the boy, Dominic hoped it would manifest now. They knelt on the rough stones of the courtyard, the child lying before them. And they chanted words that commended the infant to the path of righteousness.

  “I name thee Jonathan,” Dominic said when they had finished, repeating the name Leith had chosen. “I commend thy soul to goodness.” He reached down to the child’s head with an aspergillum, but the chain of his amulet broke. As the heavy brass disc fell, its sharp edge cut the child’s cheek, and the disc wedged upright in the stones of the courtyard.

  Jonathan turned his face in the direction of the amulet and the edge cut into him again, making a second wound above the first. He let out a single cry, then fell silent as the water dripped onto his forehead to ritually purify his thoughts, his hands to guide his work, his feet to lead him on the path of goodness. As the rite continued, Dominic waited anxiously for some sign. But, the infant lay quietly while the frigid wind shrieked in the fortress walls, and the cloth hung silent, brooding in the darkness of its shrine.