THE SOUL WEAVER

by Carol Berg

  “Is everyone here a cripple or were they made so by this Guardian?”

  “They are as they are,” I said. “You could say this is a world of outcasts, leftovers, ones people in our world would find unacceptable. They weren’t - ”

  “And those three monsters came and stole people like these from Leire” - she waved her hand to the growing crowd following us through the dark streets - “frightening everyone to death. Brought them here to live like this, as if this were something better.”

  “Vroon and two friends were sent to our world to look for this king. They just thought… Well, they were trying to help, I think. The Bounded is a very new world. They have little experience to - ”

  “And then they make a boy their king!”

  Having a conversation with Roxanne was like walking through a field of dartweed. You ended up getting pricked just about everywhere a needle could stick you.

  “I’ve no intention of being their king forever. I just need some information from this Source. The Guardian was in the way.”

  “So you’re not going to stay here and sort out the mess you’ve made.”

  “As soon as Paulo is well, I’ll find out what I’ve come here to learn. Then I’ve got to go back, get some things straightened out. Make sure some people are… all right… ”

  “… and take me back.”

  “That, too. But meanwhile, yes, there are some things need doing here, and as I upset the order, I might as well do them. Then they can name someone else to be king if they even need one.”

  “So why was I brought here? Do you know what they did to my father? They don’t have any prophecies about driving rightful kings mad or abducting princesses, do they? Whatever my failings, I don’t exactly match what your odd friends were looking for.”

  We had come to the commard in front of the Blue Tower again, but here was another mystery laid out right in front of me. “I know what happened to King Evard, and I asked Vroon about it. He swore they had never touched the king. He admitted everything else - taking the other people and taking you.”

  I waved toward a set of towers we hadn’t explored yet, and we set out that way. “What did you see on the night your father was attacked?”

  Roxanne didn’t balk at extending our excursion. She seemed to be all right about anything as long as she was talking. “It was the night of my birthday feast. We were going to have such a magnificent party - they were bringing Kerotean fire-eaters - but Mama had it announced that Papa was occupied with a messenger, and she needed to attend him. Half the guests stood up to leave. No one wanted to waste their time if Papa and Mama weren’t there to see them ogling and coveting me. I was furious with Papa, so before the towels and water bowls were cleared away, I went looking for him. I couldn’t find him anywhere he might be ‘receiving messengers,’ so I went to his bedchamber. The guards didn’t want to let me in, but I… insisted.”

  That scene wasn’t difficult to imagine.

  “Papa was sitting on his bed, looking as if someone had hit him on the head, and a man was touching him… arranging him.” Roxanne shuddered. “The man was tall, dreadful - well I didn’t actually see his face… and perhaps he wasn’t all that tall. His size was unremarkable, in fact. He wore a servant’s cloak with a hood draped down low. But I’ll never forget his voice - soft, gentlemanly, whispering horrid things, calling Papa ‘the father of chaos.’”

  “Was he the same man you’d seen before? Your mother said you’d seen a threatening man in your apartments.”

  Roxanne turned approximately the color of fireblossom. “No. He - Well, I made those reports when I was much younger, and they perhaps weren’t… accurate. This was quite different. I screamed for Mama and the guards, but by the time they came, the man was gone. No one saw him leave the room.”

  “When Vroon took you… was the man there, as well?”

  “No. I locked myself in Papa’s room, telling everyone I was going to stay there until they believed me. Foolish, I know, but I couldn’t think what else to do. I was so angry and so afraid. Yes, afraid. I’m not a fool; Leiran nobles are not the most forebearing of subjects. If word got out about Papa’s condition, he would have been dead by midnight, and I’d have been married to whichever of the closest contenders lived until dawn. Poor Mama… ”

  She inhaled deeply. “Anyway, I fell asleep on Papa’s bed and got waked up by a huge flash of green fire… The dwarf babbled nonsense, and when I told him who I was and threatened to have him flayed, the three horrid creatures dragged me off here like old baggage.” As we rounded a corner and entered the commard once again, she was glaring at me.

  Taking a deep breath in hopes I could get out the explanation before the next barrage, I tried to explain what Vroon had told me. “The three Singlars followed me to Montevial, pursuing this stupid notion that I’m their king, just because I have these vivid dreams. When they discovered that a real king lived in Montevial, they came looking in the palace and found you. And when you… uh… went on… about being a king’s daughter and how you were destined to rule, Vroon says they got scared that you might actually be the one they were looking for. They didn’t dare let you go, so they brought you here straightaway.”

  Vroon had actually said that by the time she finished yelling at them, they were all but certain she couldn’t be the Bounded King, but were afraid of what she might do to them if they let her go. That detail seemed best left for later.

  “This isn’t exactly the kingdom I have in mind. So I suppose that when they talked about ‘the one’ - that was you?”

  “I didn’t - They shouldn’t have taken you.” I wasn’t going to apologize for something I’d had nothing to do with. Certainly not to her.

  “I’m the Crown Princess of Leire. I survived it.”

  We had come to the steps of the Blue Tower again. After “thinking ourselves in” and summoning the waiting Singlar women to join us, I bowed. “I’ve told the servants to give you whatever you need.”

  To my astonishment, she curtseyed in return. “Tell me, do you dine alone in your royal dining room, Your Majesty, or may a former playmate join you?”

  I almost choked. I’d sooner dine in the middle of a nettle patch. “I eat with Paulo,” I said. “He’s not used to being laid up and needs me to talk to him. There’s not much room - ”

  She raised her eyebrows, turned her back, and walked away, her soggy, overlarge robe sweeping behind her like coronation-day regalia. I felt like a glob of mud on the floor.

  After three days, Nithea declared Paulo ready to eat real food. On the fifth day, I took him walking a few steps through the halls. A week and his ribs no longer pained him so badly, though Nithea kept them bound up tight. His hands remained heavily bandaged. Nithea had begun to “work the bones” now the festering was gone. Paulo didn’t want me with them when she did this, saying only that he’d be grateful if I could find some herb that deadened feeling… maybe from the neck down… while she worked her magic.

  “What she does isn’t magic,” I told him. “It’s just the way of things here.” I explained it all again as I had to Roxanne.

  “And the princess… ”

  “She’s civil. Zanore takes her walking every morning, and Vroon says she’s trying to teach the servants how to sew and how to serve food properly and make her bed. She’s not hit anyone or taken an ax to them.”

  “That’s a surprise. She seems such a… ”

  “… wretched brat?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “She is. Whenever I see her, she takes me to task about the food, the clothes, the temperature, no windows, her bodyguards, no sunlight… everything. I think it’s just she doesn’t know how not to complain. I stay as far away from her as I can.”

  “She is fine-looking, though, even when I saw her. Strange to think you might have been married to her by now.” Paulo seemed to enjoy the thought.

  I just found it alarming. “So, I guess some good came out of my being stolen away.”

&n
bsp; He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Someday you’ll get all this sorcery and doom and king business out of your head and figure out there’s other things for a man to think about.”

  On the day Paulo felt strong enough to climb the stairs to the portal, we set out for my long-delayed visit to the Source. Only an hour or so remained until time for the lights to go down. I had sat all day in the audience hall, hearing the petitions of a far-flung group of Singlars who wanted to dig a trench to draw water to their tappa fields from another tower cluster’s supply.

  “Are you sure you feel up to this?”

  Paulo pushed my hand away. “If you don’t get to it, you’re going to forget what you come here for. I don’t want you getting to like this king business too much. I’d give a deal to see the sun sometime soon.”

  We made the stomach-jolting passage to the garden that was still blooming as if this particular spot were forever spring. The yellow daylight was hot as we clambered down the steps. Paulo stopped just inside the cave mouth, close enough to listen.

  “I’m depending on you,” I said. I hadn’t thought this venture would make me feel so unsettled, wound up tight with my stomach gnawing on itself.

  “I’ll be here.”

  Torches still burned in the sconces on the walls, making the cave sparkle, just as on our first visit. I walked the short distance to the spring. The basin itself was nothing remarkable, a slight depression in shallow shelf of rock that protruded from the mossy niche. The blue-green water seeped out of the surrounding rock to fill the basin and looked to be far deeper than the shallow bowl could possibly permit. I couldn’t resist the urge to dip my hand into it.

  “So you’ve come at last.” No sooner had I touched the water than the clear voice surrounded me, reverberating in my very bones as if the icy water had penetrated my skin and carried the sound directly into me.

  “You know who I am?” I said, peering under and around and behind the basin, examining the niche and the surrounding crystals as closely as possible. Finding nothing. I could see no hiding place in the alcove at the end of the cave, no sign of where the speaker might be found.

  “You are the One Who Makes Us Bounded, our long-awaited king. You have lived in two worlds and found your place in neither, but in this world will you find the healing you seek.” I still couldn’t tell if the speaker was a man or a woman, but the smooth texture of the voice made me think of it as a “she.”

  “I’m not looking for healing, only answers.”

  “Only a small part of your questioning can I satisfy. All answers can be found within yourself.”

  “Who and what are you?”

  “I am the Source - the first root of this world, not yet buried deep by the weight of years.”

  “Why are you so sure that I’m this king? How did you get into my dreams? How did you learn of me?”

  She laughed softly. “So many questions… Here is one answer to satisfy all. As a stone falls to the land of which it is a part, as the rain finds its way to the sea which is its essence, so have you found your way to the Bounded. The stone dreams of the earth. The raindrop dreams of the ocean. And the earth needs no one to tell it of the stone’s existence.”

  Vagaries and poetic speech - just as I had always read about oracles and prophecies. No absolutes. No matter what happened, a believer could always claim the sayings were truth, and a skeptic call them nonsense. I rested my back on the cave wall and thought about questions. Paulo’s presence hovered behind me, so the next would be for his satisfaction as well as my own need.

  “Are you… is any of this the work of the Lords of Zhev’Na?”

  “The Bounded is beyond the reach of the Lords as long as you are beyond the reach of the Lords.”

  I couldn’t decide whether or not that was reassuring. “Then who was the Guardian? The only reason I’m going along with this king business is to undo the things he’s done.”

  “The Guardian it was who first spoke to me. His intent seemed earnest, his hand firm and enduring to guide the Singlars as they emerged from chaos.” For the first time the voice reflected surprise… puzzlement. “Has he failed you, lord king?”

  “He bound the Singlars to their towers with threats and punishments, beating and killing them, forbidding them company and pleasure, even denying them comfort and healing for their wounds and diseases. The Guardian said it was your commands he undertook. Why do you control the Singlars so cruelly, starving and punishing them?”

  “No, no, my being is not cruelty. I entrusted the Guardian with the search for the king, but his reports never showed these things that trouble you. I shall have to consider the Guardian and hear your tales of the Singlars.” Legitimate concern. Legitimate sadness. “Sadly, intents are often flawed… misdirected. Sometimes we fail to pay attention to things we ought. You know this.”

  I ignored the personal jab. The amethyst walls glittered in the torchlight, and I traced my fingers over the sharp facets of a crystal the size of my hand. “How long has the Bounded been in existence?”

  “I have no concept of how long, but my nature is to be buried by the passage of time. A time will come when you and I no longer hear each other’s voice, but it is not yet.”

  “What are the firestorms?”

  “They are beyond my knowledge. They come from outside, and you must stop them or the Bounded will be returned to what it was.”

  Returned to chaos. “How can I stop them if I don’t even know what they are?”

  “You are with us and cannot be other than you are.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “It is the most fundamental truth. It tells me that you can learn the nature of the storms. Though you belong here, you, like the storms, come from outside the Bounded. And the storms are aimed at you.”

  I was getting nowhere. How had the Guardian ever managed to get information specific enough to act on? Perhaps I had to frame my questions differently. I still had the most important thing to ask, yet I didn’t expect an answer any clearer than those I’d already dismissed.

  “Do you know who stabbed my mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know who betrayed the Prince’s - my father’s - plans?” It didn’t seem necessary to explain what plans or who my mother and father were. This voice expressed the same understanding of me that I felt for this strange land.

  “Yes.”

  Cold, tight, I moved toward the basin again, as if proximity might make me hear the answer better. I would tolerate no mistake. “Who, then?”

  “I will not answer that.”

  My fingers gripped the rim of the water bowl as if I could rip it from the solid stone. “Tell me!”

  “It is not time for you to know.”

  “This is madness!” I threw up my hands, wishing for something to break or throw, yelling at the ceiling and the walls and the floor of the damnable place. “You… whoever you are… whatever trickery you work… you’ve used a thousand words, but you’ve told me nothing at all! It’s so easy to play the prophet, to tell me how wise and knowledgeable you are, but you speak in circles and refuse me the answers I need most.”

  “To tell you these things would be a distraction from all you must accomplish here. Your people need your care, more even than I - ”

  “These are not my people!”

  “Be patient. Learn of your true self. Return in a hundredlight from this, and I will reveal what you ask of me. Until then, think carefully on all I have said.”

  “A hundredlight! A hundred days? Impossible! I don’t even know… do you know if my mother is alive?”

  “That I do not know. Ask me no more this day, 0 king. Secure your place in this, your new world. Help your - ”

  “How can I waste a hundred days? I have to go.”

  “And where would you go that is closer to the truth than in your heart - here, in the Bounded? Power awaits you here, and peace. Only death awaits you elsewhere.”

  Disgusted with myself for trying
to force some meaning into gibberish, I turned to leave.

  “Before you go, young king, will you not taste of the water that gives life to your land? To all others it is alien - poison - but for you it holds comfort, strength, and nourishment. It is of you, and thus it will sustain you in whatever trials you face.”

  I dabbled my fingers in the cold blue-green, scooping the water and letting it dribble through my fingers. “I don’t think so. I don’t trust your all-knowing benevolence.”

  “As you wish. I will await your return. Come to the Source for counsel as you desire, but wait a hundredlight for your deeper questioning.”

  “A waste of time,” I said to Paulo, as we emerged from the cave. “I should have known no ‘prophetic voice’ would tell me anything useful. And three months to try again.”

  I strode down the path through the grove, only realizing, when Paulo grunted, how he was straining to keep up. Stopping at the pool, I gazed up at the falls for a bit, allowing him to catch his breath before we went on. The light had faded while we were in the cave. Sparrows and finches chattered as if the change were true sunset, and the call of a thrush pierced the cooling air with the clarity of a flute. In the shadier corners of the garden, lamps hung on iron posts gave off a warm glow that brightened even as the yellow-orange glare above us dimmed.

  “So, what do you think?” I said, when Paulo’s expression looked a little less anxious. “Did you feel the same things as before?”

  “You’re not going to like what I say.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I think you need to get away from here. You oughtn’t stay - not even one more day.”

  “This Source business is idiocy. I’ll agree. But” - how could I explain what I felt here in the Bounded, despite the day’s frustration? - “she was right about one thing. Where would I go?”

  “It wasn’t so much the voice, but the place… the whole thing. There’s something wrong - something hidden. It’s what she’s not telling you that makes me skittish. I think we ought to leave. Go home. Hide out in Dunfarrie or Montevial if we can’t go home. Get to Avonar somehow, if that’s where you need to be to find out what’s going on with you.”