The Four Profound Weaves

by R. B. Lemberg

  “She wanted to be freed,” I whispered. But perhaps that came later.

  “Two years later, you showed up—you and Bashri-nai-Leylit—with these threads for trade. I took them up without asking what happened. I could see it myself: Bird forsook her.”

  I shuddered. “We had found her when she could neither speak nor sing, for the threads had cocooned her completely. We pulled these threads, so she could sing again, but she told me she would not.” That had seemed so extraordinary to me then—as Khana women are forbidden from song—that Zurya would refuse to sing ever again, even though she was permitted to do so by her people, even though she could sing so beautifully that she brought down the goddess and spun from her feathers.

  Benesret chuckled. “Of course she would not sing again. What hope she had was made into thread, and it choked her. She gave up hope so she would live.”

  I shuddered again. “Among the Khana, only men are allowed to sing, and Bashri . . .” I stopped to gulp a breath, then continued. “Bashri-nai-Leylit had asked me not to sing.”

  But she’d also asked me not to walk around the women’s side of the quarter in men’s clothing, and she’d asked me not to take up underground artifice, for holy artifice was the domain of men; but I did all these other things except sing. I was not sure now why that prohibition had felt holy to me, untouchable. As if my offered voice would offend not just my lover, but the singer-god, Kimri. “I begged Zurya to sing. To sing because I couldn’t.”

  “Did she?” asked Benesret.

  “No. What kind of hope is that?”

  “I welcomed it,” said Benesret. “I took up the threads, and upon my grandmother’s loom I made the greatest treasure ever woven, all the hope and brightness of the world, and the images of my visions from the desert: the drumming eagle, the lizard, the razu beast; and then I gave hope away. I gave this treasure to you, for your master.”

  I said again, wary, “The Ruler of Iyar is not my master.”

  “He locked all this hope away in his coffers. And now I was free to weave from death.”

  “And did you?” Uiziya asked, her voice trembling. “Did you bring the weaves together, bring the sibling gods to you?”

  She shook her head. “I weave from death for the headmaster of the assassins’ school,” said Benesret. “It’s lesser work. Clothes. But never again from hope. My greatest work is gone, and so I cannot bring the weaves together, and I have no hope left to weave another. And now you know where my hope went.”

  “I’ll go then,” I said, uneasy. “To look for it, then.”

  “Look among your own,” Benesret said. “Your Khana people, the men, in their white inner quarter. That’s where you always wanted to be.”

  Perhaps she was right. That I had to overcome my fear of my own people, and go. Perhaps I would find hope then, feel what Zurya had felt so strongly she chose to hoard it, feel what Benesret had sought so desperately only to give it away. For I felt no hope and I needed it, in this place, in all places.

  Dawn was past us now, and the rays of the sun licked my face with the promise of oppressive brightness to come, bringing with it an intent that kindled inside me like dry reeds.

  “Go with him, then,” said Benesret to Uiziya.

  “But Aunt—I want to stay with you and learn—”

  “Yes?” Diamondflies rose off Benesret’s body, and settled upon Uiziya. “Do you understand what awaits you here, child?”

  “Yes,” Uiziya said. “Yes, I am ready.”

  “You refused to learn from Lali’s death; is that why you brought him . . .” she nodded at me, “. . . as a price of your learning?”

  I recoiled, understanding it all in a bright moment. Uiziya’s friendship, her desire to travel with me—all was a ruse, to lure me, to bring me where I could become the sacrifice, the significant death she would weave from. I inhaled sharply, but before I could do anything, Uiziya spoke.

  “Not him,” she said. “Myself.”

  My cheeks flooded with blood, and I swallowed my shame. I’d assumed the worst of Uiziya, the deepest betrayal, when at every step she’d asked if I wanted to continue, taken me to her aunt when I asked and she wasn’t yet sure she wanted to go.

  “Yourself?” Benesret said.

  “Yes, Aunt.”

  “Do not tell me this, child,” Benesret said. The diamondflies moved down, wrapped Uiziya’s right leg with brightness. “For you know what I need is sustenance.”

  “Uiziya, no!” But I was not fast enough, and still I did not fully understand.

  “Take what you need from me,” Uiziya cried, and the diamondflies dug into her flesh, gorged themselves.

  I took a step forward. I thought she’d betray me. Give me to be consumed like Lali in his tent. But she hadn’t. And I would not let her be taken.

  I locked my gaze with Benesret. “Stop it. Stop.”

  “Or else?” She stared right back at me, but her eyes were unfocused. Drawing in power, drinking in my friend’s life in all its brightness. “She came to me. She asked. She consented.”

  I pulled on my powerful deepnames, forming of them a triangle. Benesret laughed, and I could have laughed with her if I wasn’t so angry and so terrified, for there was no way I’d defeat such a person. Behind Benesret, the razu beast reared, its eyes ruby red; and flanking her, I saw ghost assassins in their white, unsullied robes. Even the youth from before was there, the one her diamondflies had consumed; one of his eyes was a maze that led into the Orphan Star’s depths.

  Still I stepped forward. Benesret was feeding. Not as powerful.

  “You wish me to take you, too? Like she wished to be taken?”

  It was useless to fight with Benesret. I had to use my trading skills, my promising skills, like I once used with the Collector, bargaining for my lover’s life.

  “I’ll bring you back the carpet of song that you made in the dawn of our lives, the greatest carpet ever woven, the third of the Four Profound Weaves.”

  What do I need it for?”

  “It is hope.”

  “Hope is with the Ruler of Iyar, the Collector,” she said. “Guarded, I assure you, by the finest of assassins all wearing the cloths I have woven. Hope has been locked away, child.”

  But I saw that she was interested.

  “I will find it and bring it back to you, and you’ll put it together with your other weaves. Call the sibling gods closer.”

  “Ha! Forever you ferry that thing back and forth. It is dangerous to have so much hope. Even the Collector knows it, which is why he has locked it away.” But her stream of diamondlflies weakened.

  “I will find it and bring it to you,” I snarled through my teeth. “I’ve done it before. I will do it again. Let her go. Let her go. Let her go.”

  The diamondflies rose off Uiziya’s body. She toppled forward, face into the dirt, and I caught her. She was breathing. Unconscious.

  Benesret reabsorbed the diamondflies into her body, looking, for a brief moment, content; yet still hungry. “Then take her and go.”

  Quick. Quick. I had to heal her, but it was too dangerous here. I shifted Uiziya’s body onto her carpet of sand. Her leg bled and convulsed under the now-tattered dun dress. I stepped onto the carpet next to her, abandoning my sand-skis. I pulled on my deepnames, trying to make Uiziya’s carpet float. She had a different deepname configuration than mine, a weaker, subtler one, and the carpet was attuned to her. And it was thin. We were too heavy, together, on this carpet. I was not sure that I could make it work.

  My eyes were still locked on Benesret’s. I should not have trusted her, should not have sought her, should not have been lulled by her tale. Yet she had stopped, for now. In the blossoming daylight, the bones of Benesret’s tent glowed pink and triumphant with Uiziya’s stolen blood.

  Benesret spoke. “Yes, my carpet of song is missing from me to complete the great pattern. But I would never be content for my greatest work to be that of hope. I’ll feed on all I’ve ever loved and weave the desert’
s greatest carpet out of bones. I have been studying death all my life, waiting for that. Yet I’m letting her go, as I let the carpet of song go with you forty years ago. Don’t betray me again. Bring it back. Bring her back.”

  I could not make sense of her words, of the world. She could have killed us both easily, I knew now, killed us before we even saw her.

  She said, “Take care of each other.”

  I made the carpet float at last, and steered it west, toward Iyar.

  nen-sasaïr

  I left Iyar as if a lifetime ago, but it had only been months. I left on my sand-skis and veiled like a Khana man, in defiance of everyone—Iyari and Khana, strangers and family, and especially in defiance of Bashri, my Bashri-nai-Leylit, whose soul had been carried aloft by a dove. I had sped through the Desert Gate, tossing a scant bribe to the guards, trusting that I would never come back.

  Well, I was back.

  I remembered my journey west through the desert to the city. The flying carpet, and Uiziya motionless in my arms. The sun forever bearing down, for I did not stop in the heat. The blinding-bright weight of the sky, like the cocoon of sandbirds at my transformation, except that it burned without shielding me, except that there was no joy in it.

  Uiziya had not spoken nor awakened. I kept trying to heal her, weaving my deepnames into familiar healing patterns, but even though her injury was fresh, my magic was powerless to undo it. Uiziya’s leg felt withered to the touch. Just short of the city’s Desert Gate, I shaved my face and retied my sash in a Surun’ man style, deciding that it was safer for me to present as a desert man, not Khana. I drew on my deepnames to help me carry her, for fear that a flying carpet would be taken away.

  And so I stood at last before the Desert Gate of Iyar. Chiseled stone and roses everywhere, masking the rot underneath. From afar, the briny smells of the sea.

  The guards at the gate spoke in the desert’s common language, and I was satisfied that they thought me a Surun’ nomad. Thank Bird for that, for my people were not allowed to wander the streets of Iyar without a special permit.

  “Your sister is diseased,” they said. “You cannot bring her in.”

  “No, no. It’s just her leg. I was told I can find a good physicker here.” I wanted to make a moving chair for her in the city. This idea had possessed me in the desert as I labored to steer the burdened carpet west. I would make for Uiziya a moving chair, like I’d made once for Bashri-nai-Leylit. This was important to me.

  The guards eyed us both warily, but I had plenty of gold from my years of trading, and that helped. Once in the city and out of their sight, I wrapped the unconscious Uiziya in her carpet, and after many at- tempts, I made the bundle float just slightly, and the burden of Uiziya’s body lessened in my arms. I would not be able to carry her long, otherwise.

  Now I hesitated whether to put up my veil. Khana people wore veils whenever they ventured out of the quarter, but the men rarely did so, unless they decided to flee the inner quarter forever. And I was supposed to be Surun’, Uiziya’s brother; that was what I told the guards.

  She had a beautiful, ample shape where Benesret’s feeding fire had not touched her. The carpet eased the burden; I could not help but notice how all of her now was inert in my arms, given in to a place beyond pain.

  I wore no veil as I carried her through the side alleys, out of curious eyes.

  Uiziya e Lali

  I came to. Didn’t it always begin like this? A story, floating somewhere here in the darkness, pulsing with the insistence of pain.

  I could not yet open my eyes, but I saw it. Yes. A story without a name. My left thigh, pulsing in the darkness as I pulsed, screamless, though my throat felt scorched and lacerated with screaming, as if I had given birth.

  This had been no birth.

  Or had it been? Benesret.

  “Take what you need from me . . .” I had said, take it, take it, and she took and took. I had asked her to teach me.

  The hollowness in my ribcage was greater than pain.

  I tried to move. Disoriented.

  The hollowness in my ribcage was the Orphan Star, the star of all those rejected by Bird, the star that watches and waits in the earth beneath the School of Assassins. It was darkness buzzing with death, a star made of diamondfly deepnames that fed on its own and could never be satisfied.

  The desert had revealed itself to me. And everything in it was made of death.

  If I could move my fingers, I could weave from it.

  The realization, jolting-yellow with sun’s brightness. My eyes peeled open and nen-sasaïr’s face swam too close, frowning. “Uiziya? Heart?”

  He’d never before called me “heart”. When I had called him so, he’d winced.

  I tried to speak, but could not. This had been real—bones, and my aunt’s hunger, my learning, the pain. Nen-sasaïr gave me water from his flask, and fussed over me until I could open my eyes and see what seemed much less real.

  I was not in the desert. A city. Stone walls, and the intensity of verdant smells in the air.

  “Iyar,” said nen-sasaïr. He looked as if he wanted to speak on, but I could not listen.

  I was on a carpet. My carpet of sand. It rested not on sand but on stones that dug into my thighs—my right thigh, where I had sensation. In my left, I did not. I was covered with cloth, stained and bloody, but even though I could not see under it, the shape of my body seemed different at the thigh—no longer wide and plentiful as the rest of me, but charred, immovable. Wilted. That, too, was me, as was my aunt’s art and her dereliction.

  “It’s not as bad as it could be,” said nen-sasaïr defensively. “I begged her to stop, and at last she did. It would have been worse if she hadn’t.”

  “All my life I waited,” I said. The first words out of my mouth, but I had to force them out somehow. “Waited for her to come back and teach me.” She hadn’t. She had fed on me instead, just like she had devoured my husband Lali.

  I’d asked her for it.

  “I tried to heal you,” said nen-sasaïr, “but I couldn’t. I will get you a physicker. Just a moment of rest now.”

  I had asked Benesret to take what she wanted because I wanted—I yearned and yearned so much for her touch. And for death? I must have, for all Benesret made and made was death.

  That had been a different me. I could no longer remember. I wanted to be her food. I wanted to prove myself to her. That emotion still stirred me.

  “What you need . . . what I need to make for you,” said nen-sasaïr, “is a moving chair like I made for Bashri-nai-Leylit when she could no longer walk. You could steer it with your deepnames.”

  He wanted to solve my pain, I saw. To solve and make it better. But I had no thoughts like this. I wanted the pain to stop and I wanted, I wanted to understand who I was now. Where I was. I did not want a moving chair.

  “I have my carpet,” I said. I had made it myself, before I truly needed it to help me move. I tried to stir now, to change my position, but even a small motion sent sharp waves of pain up my torso, radiating into my chest and throat. I could not breathe properly.

  And everything in it was made of death.

  Fear flogged me as I gulped the air, stale and perfumed with rot and blooming roses, so different from the expansive desert air. This was Iyar. Iyar. I felt nen-sasaïr’s touch on my good thigh. “I need to get you to a place where you can rest.”

  I turned my head slowly. Tall walls. There was a child here, a child of about eight, and gaunt-looking, with a curious glint of their eye. The child looked at me with that singular hunger that reminded me of Benesret, and I wondered if they were there to witness my death.

  I remembered wanting to die before I tasted death. Before I gave myself to Benesret to feed upon, like she fed upon Lali, like she fed and she spun and she fed. I did not want to be food. I wanted to be a weaver. That was what it all was about, that I wanted to be like my aunt. To weave from hope first, like she did before she could learn to weave death.

 
I tried to speak again. We need to make it to the palace, to the coffers, to that place where song and hope lay hidden, so I can bring it back to Benesret like she wanted, so I can prove myself to her, so that I would no longer be food, so that I too would weave from death.

  But only gurgling came from my mouth, and after it, the soft yarn of darkness.

  nen-sasaïr

  “I know a person like this,” said the child. I had not noticed when he appeared by my side. I was not even sure if the child was a boy; my time among my Surun’ friends taught me that it did not matter. Perhaps this child was an in-betweener, like Kimi.

  I wondered if they were a deepname-orphan, one of these children whose mothers could not take care of them after their deepnames were stripped off by force. In the city, giving up one’s magic was a rite of passage for those non-Khana women who possessed it, much celebrated as an act of distinction. Most women continued their lives after such an event, but some of them, once bereft of their deepname or deepnames, went flat and indifferent. Most got better, but some never recovered. Their children ran wild and barefoot through the city; the mothers could find no solace or reason to continue, the loss of magic more bitter than the veils of death.

  And everything in it was made from death.

  I left the city seeking change, but now that I found it, it wasn’t death but hope that I sought. I had to find a physicker for Uiziya. For her sake, too, I had promised to seek yet again the carpet of hope I had given away forty years ago, attempting to pay for another life.

  “I will weave for you from song,” Benesret told me once, forty years ago. “The third mystery of the everchanging desert: to weave from the colors of rainbow where no rain has fallen on these desiccated sands; for this thread had been spun out of Bird’s own feathers, and so I will weave from it, weave in all the desolate places where only silence and despair had been. And look, this weave is hope: the third of the Four Profound Weaves and the greatest treasure ever woven. I will give it to you so that you can trade the Collector for your lover, for Bashri-nai-Divrah, for her life.”