THE SOUL WEAVER

by Carol Berg

  “This appears quite comfortable, Guardian. My thanks. Now where will my companion sleep?”

  “This person is not welcome in the King’s Fastness. He must remain outside.”

  “On the contrary, sir… ”

  And we went through it all again. The Guardian argued that two guests were just too difficult to manage, that Paulo was dirty and clearly had no business in a king’s house, and was so very… crude. I finally prevailed by saying that Paulo would share my room and my plate if the king’s Guardian could provide no better, threatening to leave immediately if he didn’t agree.

  “You ought to keep your eye on his nasty little thoughts,” Paulo said when we were finally left alone. He stuffed an extra blanket into the slot window, which left the room somewhat drier and warmer, while I pulled the chair and a stool close to the table. Two serving women in belted brown tunics and wide white ruffled collars had delivered a tureen of hot soup, a heaping basket of fragrant breads, and four flagons of wine. “I don’t trust that one no farther than my boot. If I could get into his head like you can, I’d do it in a spit, and see what’s filthy growin‘ in there.”

  He knew well enough that I’d do no such thing. I sat on the stool and started eating.

  “I still can’t figure out this place.” Paulo had dropped into the chair and wolfed down three bowls of soup, four hunks of bread, and most of a flagon of wine before I could blink. “If this is the Breach, then why didn’t we see all this when we got dragged through four years ago? Why don’t the Prince know anything of it?”

  “Maybe he does,” I said, but not really believing it. “He told my mother that the Bridge was getting more difficult to cross. That was one reason he couldn’t come to Verdillon more often. He wouldn’t have lied to her. So, maybe this is a different part or a new part.”

  “Do you think you’ll get a straight answer out of this fellow?”

  I refilled my stoneware cup with the sweet wine. “Probably not. The Source - whatever it is - sounds more promising.”

  “I’ll say this: They got good food.”

  And so they did. By the time we’d emptied the dishes, I realized the wine was far more potent than I was accustomed to. I was about to roll off the backless stool.

  “I should stand first watch,” I said, trying to force the words out past a tongue that seemed three times thicker than usual. “I slept last… this morning… whenever that was we arrived.”

  “Looks to me like they got no morning here. And it looks like you got no head for strong spirits, being a nub as you are, so I’d recommend you take the bed and let a man as can keep two eyes open at once do the watching.”

  I never liked it when Paulo reminded me he was full-grown and I wasn’t yet, but I was in no condition to argue. Somehow I made it to the bed, and I didn’t know anything else until a clearly exhausted Paulo dragged me out of a dreamless sleep. “Come on. Shake yourself up. I got to take a nap, so’s you’ve got to get up.”

  “Don’t want to,” I mumbled. “Best night I’ve had in forever.”

  “Look, I’ve caught the devil in here once already, hanging over your bed, and I showed him out with a good look at my knife. He gave me a, ‘Oh, pardon me. Just makin’ sure everything’s cozy,‘ and I’ve heard him outside the door three more times. But now I’m swiped. You got to get up.”

  The room was dark, and the bed was comfortable, but Paulo’s words had me awake and alert instantly. “The Guardian was in here?”

  “Like I said. The lamps went out all of themselves, right after you was asleep. Wasn’t an hour till he poked himself through the door real quiet. He about chewed his teeth when he found me awake. It’s been three… four hours.”

  “Go on to sleep. I’m all right now. I’ll watch.”

  He was already asleep as he curled up on the floor. He didn’t stir as I dragged him up onto the bed. He wouldn’t care one way or the other, but it made it less tempting for me to get back under the blankets. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and sat on the floor. Only once did I hear soft footsteps beyond the door. I asked quietly who was there and got no answer.

  A few hours later the lamps mysteriously lit themselves, and a polite serving man summoned us to breakfast.

  * * *

  The Guardian was drinking from a silver cup when we were taken to him. I told Paulo not to mention the midnight visits. We would be as closemouthed as our host was. Leave him guessing and on edge.

  “Greetings, traveler,” he said to me, spreading his wide lips over yellowed teeth that spoiled his appearance far more than his bulging cheek. “I look forward to completing our business, so that you - and this other person - can be on your way to wherever you’re going.”

  “I’m also looking forward to concluding our business,” I said. “But it may take several days.”

  His smile withered from the inside out. “We’ll see about that.”

  I bowed to him with my palms extended, as was the Dar’Nethi custom in greeting, but he averted his eyes and motioned a servant to seat us.

  Our plates were already heaped with a selection of foods, and the cups were brimming with something so deliciously fragrant that it cleared your head to inhale the steam. His expression near ecstasy, Paulo speared a chunk of sausage with his knife, but I laid my hand on his arm and pushed the plate away. “We’ll choose our food for ourselves.”

  Paulo’s disappointment was short-lived, for a dozen or more platters with a fine array of breads and meats and fruit sat in the middle of the table alongside several steaming silver pots. We served ourselves from the generous spread, and Paulo filled new cups.

  I was dreadfully thirsty and gulped the hot liquid - wine or cider of some kind - much too fast. The pungent stuff shot straight through my head, so that I came near choking. Just when I was trying to be dignified.

  Paulo grinned and was more careful. The Guardian didn’t seem to notice my discomfiture.

  The man made no pretense of conversation. Every time I addressed him he began shouting orders at the servants, men and women of all manner of odd appearance who scurried about without speaking. I soon gave it up.

  Before Paulo and I were half done, the Guardian popped out of his chair. “I have duties to attend,” he said. “My morning audience awaits. We will have to commence our talk afterward. Our king’s business cannot wait on a stranger’s idle curiosity.”

  “If the king happened to be watching, I’d wager he’d be pleased to see his business being taken care of,” said Paulo to me in a whisper that was far too loud, while savoring the last bites of an anvil-sized slice of ham. “But then, too, he might think his Guardian was enjoying it bit too much.”

  The Guardian hissed and worked his mouth until spit oozed out of it. As he swirled his robe and stomped away, he bumped into a small table, sending it topsy-turvy across the room, and he elbowed two unwary servants so that they juggled their stacks of dirty dishes like performers at a jongler fair. I tried to stay properly sober. But Paulo wheezed and burst out laughing, and I soon joined in. We laughed until we almost choked, and I had no doubt the Guardian could hear us, no matter where he’d gone.

  A foolish lapse, to laugh at a man who felt precarious in his high position. I hoped we wouldn’t regret it.

  When we’d eaten so much that we rolled our eyes at the sight of another sausage, we asked the servants to show us to the Guardian’s audience hall. They bowed silently and showed us to the long room we’d seen the day before. It was jammed with people of every possible shape and size. Through the middle of the crowd stretched a single long queue - petitioners, it seemed. The Guardian, arrayed in his gray robe and gold circlet, sat on his stool beside the chair in front of the gold hanging.

  I almost felt sorry for having annoyed the Guardian so sorely, as he spent the entire morning snapping at everyone who appeared before him. The petitioners were asking the Guardian to intercede with the Source for help in re-creating towers destroyed in the firestorm, in resolving disputes regarding
property or insults, or in redressing their grievances about services unperformed or agreements broken. The session could have been the duke’s assizes at Comigor but for the oddly shaped petitioners and the bizarre circumstances of their business.

  A one-legged man spoke of a well of stone chips, drained dry by a neighboring fastness. A woman with three snakelike fingers on each hand complained that a newly arrived Singlar was harvesting more of something called tappa from her diggings than was his right. She wanted him to be starved for some span of time until the difference was made up.

  People gasped and shrank backward when four men hauled in a monstrous hairy creature, tied with sturdy ropes and rags to muzzle it. The catlike beast’s matted hair and clawed hands were caked with blood, and it fought wildly to get free. I couldn’t understand why they had brought the animal indoors instead of caging it while they did their business.

  “This creature has raged through the Gray Fastnesses for a manylight, Guardian,” said one of the four when the Guardian gave the group permission to begin. “It destroys weak fastnesses and rips up tappa, but does not eat or use it. Now matters have worsened. One Singlar was dead a twolight since, and another in the light just past. We found this beast… eating… the dead one. Our asking is to be allowed to slay the murdering creature before it eats us all.”

  The beast growled and strained against its bonds.

  “The Source has said Singlars must not kill creatures with minds,” said the Guardian, nodding. “But clearly a beast that eats a Singlar is mindless. Your petition is granted.”

  Two Singlars held the writhing animal, while two of them forced back its grotesque head and bared its throat. But its struggles dislodged the binding across its mouth.

  “I ate no Singlar!” cried the beast, snarling. “My den-mates will avenge this lie. And no Singlar in the Gray Fastnesses will live a tenlight more. They - ”

  But the creature, whether monstrous man or intelligent beast, did not finish his threat. One of his captors plunged a sharpened stick into his throat. As they dragged the carcass out of the hall, the blood that streaked the slate floor appeared quite red and ordinary.

  “This place is the damnedest… ” said Paulo.

  “It’s part of the Breach,” I said. “All manner of strange creatures could exist here.”

  The next petitioners were two Singlars together: one a dark-haired girl of perhaps my age, whose face on one side was fairly pretty, though the other side was horribly disfigured, and the other a man about Paulo’s age. The fellow looked very odd for this place in that he had no visible deformity. But when he began to speak, he could scarcely get out a whole word for his stuttering. He asked permission for the girl and himself to share a single fastness, a matter that didn’t seem too mysterious to me, but clearly shocked the Guardian and the crowd of other petitioners.

  “We… we’ve feelings to… to be t… t… together,” said the young man. “But our headman says no Singlar has done so… ever… and w… w… we must make asking.”

  “Feelings? Together?” The Guardian gaped like a particularly stupid fish and then exploded. “Inconceivable! Are we to throw out all our customs for Singlars’ feelings? How dare you propose such a thing? Maintainers! Take this villain and flog him ten. The female is to be taken to the Edge to see where she is headed if this insolence persists. Leave her there to make her own way back to her fastness. If these two speak even a single word to each other ever again, they are to be put over the Edge.”

  Gasps rose from some observers. Others nodded their heads. The girl dropped her hands to her sides and wept silently as the youth was dragged away. But as he wrestled with the two thuggish maintainers who grabbed his arms, he cried out after her. “Denya!”

  The crowd fell into stunned silence.

  “Hog him fifty!” roared the Guardian, shooting out of his chair like a bird startled from its roost. “And bind him outside his fastness for a twelvelight. He must be an example. To throw him over the Edge would take his crime from our eyes. So is the judgment of the King’s Guardian.” He left the dais, sweeping through the gold fabric hanging behind it.

  Two more of the maintainers, easily identified by the knotted rope belts about their tunics, led the sobbing girl away. The crowd broke up and straggled out of the room, murmuring in shock. A name! He’s named her! A portent… evil begets evil… inconceivable… should be thrown from the Edge… will unbound us all…

  “Demons!” said Paulo as we walked toward the curtain. “Don’t leave me here. If a fancy for a lady gets you ten lashes and calling her by name fifty… ”

  We stood unobtrusively in a corner, watching the crowd of Singlars file out of the audience hall and through the rotunda. I glanced at Paulo, wondering if his thoughts had wandered the same path as mine. Though most Leiran commoners were wed by eighteen, Paulo’s comments about the village girls near Verdillon had always concluded with an avowal that none of them could compare to some particular girl he had met in Avonar before he went to Zhev’Na. I guessed that a Dar’Nethi family wasn’t likely to welcome Paulo’s attention any more than the Guardian and his folk welcomed their two rebels.

  When the hall was almost empty, I bade Paulo wait in the audience hall and grabbed the sleeve of one of the house servants who was hurrying past, licking his fingers and brushing crumbs and hair from his white ruffled collar. “Please take me to the Guardian. He agreed to meet with me when his audience session was over.”

  Without a word, the servant bowed and led me, not through the gold curtain, but around through the passageway to a proper door - perhaps so I could see the two maintainers who stood beside the door holding quite normally efficient-looking swords and spears. The servant knocked, stepped inside at a growling summons, and, moments later, held the door open for me to enter.

  The small room, furnished with a wide table, several chairs, and a shelf with cups and porcelain jars on it, was tucked away in an alcove behind the gold curtain. A retiring room, a Leiran noble would have called such a retreat adjacent to his audience hall. The Guardian sat behind the large table, hammering his fingers on the polished wood top, fuming. The morning’s events had clearly unsettled him.

  When the servant closed the door behind me, the Guardian jerked his head toward one of the chairs, and then popped up and strode around the room, fingering the ruby-studded key about his neck. On every circuit his rapid pace billowed the heavy gold curtain that separated him from the audience hall. “Singlars… sharing a fastness… male and female… Disgusting! And names! I must report this to the Source… seek counsel to stop such perfidy. Fifty lashes were not enough. Should have been a hundred. Two hundred.”

  “Your customs here are very different from those of other lands,” I said, folding my hands in my lap. The chair and its lumpy cushions were uncomfortable, but I tried not to shift or fidget.

  “Question our customs, and I’ll show you and your insolent companion the same punishment as that wicked Singlar! We are satisfied with our ways, and you’ll not come here and muddle them. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you can do, or what any empty-headed Singlar thinks you are. I make the rules for the Bounded!” His distress seemed to have lowered his guard on his tongue.

  “Remember, Guardian, all I want is answers.” Well, I also wanted to meet this Source, whoever or whatever it was, but this didn’t seem the time to mention the fact.

  Abruptly, he stopped his pacing, returned to his chair, and began our interview as if nothing had happened. I had come to this meeting alone, not wanting his antipathy for Paulo to make an accommodation impossible. Paulo should be just beyond the curtain, close enough to come if I called, though I wasn’t sure how well he could hear.

  “What answers do you seek, traveler? I have many responsibilities. The dwarf and his companions have clearly disrupted your life with their mistaken opinions. They will be disciplined for it, but not too severely, due to your kind interest in their welfare.” He smiled, but he could have cracked nuts in his ja
w. “I would send you on your way as soon as possible with our apologies and good wishes.”

  I played it just as he did. Answers were the important thing. “I appreciate your time and patience, Guardian. So, tell me, what is this land? Where do you and the other people come from, and why do you seek your king in my dreams? That should do to start.”

  He sat back in his chair, his spine straight, his shoulders rigid. “This land is, of course, the Bounded. We have lived here always, except for the few persons that our overeager seekers have brought us from other bounded worlds. The Source has said that our king would come from another bounded world and would discover us in his dreams, but that he might be lost upon his way. Therefore I was commanded to choose seekers to go to certain places and be visible to the dreamer, so perhaps to lure him here, and then I was to send the seekers through the moon-door to find him. And so I have done. I know nothing of their dealings with you. Many many persons dream of the Bounded, I am sure. Beyond that, we are as we are. It is satisfactory.”

  “And the Unbounded… what is that?” If there was a Bounded, its opposite must also exist.

  He shifted a bit, and a shadow touched his eyes and his face. “It is beyond the Edge. It is nothing. Terrible. Nothing.”

  He was afraid. His fear, deep and profound, shaped his thoughts and deeds. To know more of that fear could be a useful thing. “Was the Bounded at one time the Unbounded?”

  He pursed his thick lips and clasped his hands together tightly on his fine table, considering his answer as if my question were not rampant nonsense. “Some say it. I don’t hold with it. I say we are as we are. I certainly have no memory of such a time.”

  “Why is your king to lead you to victory over all bounded worlds?”

  At this, the Guardian drew himself up even tighter and glared at me. “The dwarf told you this?”