The Four Profound Weaves

by R. B. Lemberg

  The torturer remained outside.

  It was dark among the whispers, but the birdcage throne lit up with bluish deepname lights, casting shadows over a vast, cavernous space. It was full. Full of skulls and finger bones and thigh bones and ribcages as far as the eye could see. Between the human bones I saw smaller skeletons. I recognized sandbirds—I never thought that they died—their long curved beaks of bone and long, long legs. I saw many smaller bird skeletons, too—long-legged and short-legged, with wide beaks, with narrow beaks. Feathers and flesh would tell me their names, but all that remained was bones.

  I could not support my weight, and so the assassin carried me, breathing heavily with the effort. We moved upon a narrow path among the bones.

  “Most people know,” said the old man in the birdcage throne, “that I thirst for great works of art from the farthest corners of the world, for they nourish my spirit, and I am nourished, too, by the knowledge that they would be safe in my care. Few know that I have a second collection. I do not like for either to be seen.”

  The physicker translated, but many of the words were lost, mumbled and swallowed in his fear. I waited for the translation to conclude before giving a nod. The assassin’s fingers dug into my arms in his effort to hold me.

  “Wild peoples outside of the city allow their women to bear deepnames,” said the Ruler of Iyar. “But here in Iyar we are better. We know that women given magical power are born for distinction, but they have holier tasks than magical geometry.”

  The physicker translated his words.

  Yes, we learned this, the desert over: in the springflower city of Iyar, women with magical ability were praised as brides; they married well and could live richly, but always at a price of their power. We wondered sometimes, in the desert, why they didn’t all leave. It seemed so strange for us that they would accept their fates when freedom awaited outside of the city.

  But I had not left my place either. I sat immovable for forty years before I could muster the will to do something. Nen-sasaïr waited, too, for forty years, to go through his ritual. It is only in stories that change is easily found.

  The Ruler of Iyar spoke again. “Attending to one’s husband, ornamenting his honor, the birthing and rearing of children, the smooth running of the household—those are the acts of a civilized woman. Certainly, even in the great Burri desert, you heard.”

  I waited for the physicker to translate, then spoke. “I heard.”

  “But some of our women,” the Collector continued. “Some are rebels.”

  He swung his arm higher, letting the light of his magic snatch mountains of bones from the dark’s domain, then return them to darkness as his hand moved on. “Look how beautifully they shine. I will leave you a light for your loom, and you will weave from these women, my dear, weave for me a carpet made of death. And thus shall my two collections meet in a treasure which will surpass all.”

  The physicker shook through the translation. I did not think he would last much longer.

  Supported by the solidity of the assassin’s grip, I spoke. “I asked you to take me first to see my aunt’s carpet, so that I will learn to surpass it.”

  “No,” the Ruler of Iyar said. “I do not want your artistry to be contaminated by its screeching. If you please me with the weave, then you may indeed see it, and know that you have surpassed her.”

  The voices of the bones were louder now, talking. Questioning me. I needed to be alone with them. I needed to sit.

  I said, “I am satisfied.”

  The Ruler of Iyar nodded, and the assassin stepped forward, shifting me in his arms. The motion twisted me, long and horrible. Twitching in pain, I saw a long blade glint in the assassin’s hand. He split the physicker’s throat without letting me fall, without sullying his garments, or me.

  The physicker toppled onto the white domain of bone.

  “He was not one of us,” the Ruler of Iyar said simply. “And so he had seen too much.”

  I did not answer. I was barely able to breathe. And I was not supposed to understand.

  The Collector left a small light for me, and made the throne float out through the opening.

  The assassin remained behind. With me, in this treasury of death, by the newly dead and the old.

  “Find for me a place that is not bone,” I said to him in Surun’. “For I must begin my preparations, and I will not sit on my sisters.”

  He found such a place for me, and lowered me down, with my back away from the door. My face toward the shuddering whispers.

  nen-sasaïr

  My body wasn’t broken. The structure I had created had dampened my fall. But I was badly bruised, and almost crying out from the pain. My legs folded under me. In the darkness, I stretched out my hand and touched old dry stone; the weight of the earth pressed below and above. I had to have light, but it took me ages to summon even a single deepname. Shaking with fatigue and pain, I lit a candlebulb, a small ball-shaped light. The first magic one learns in childhood: the easiest, the quickest, the kindest.

  The candlebulb floated just above me, illuminating a tunnel of dark gray stone. To my right, I saw a narrow, circular opening in the wall. I had come through there—down the narrow, sharp stairs. I climbed up, however long it took, I would perhaps emerge again in the streets of Iyar.

  Uiziya. I had to find Uiziya.

  I clambered to my feet. I felt battered, unsteady. The dull aches in my spine radiated all through my torso, but I forced myself to move forward. I should have made the moving chair for myself, not for Uiziya. Maybe.

  My hands squeezed into fists. It was as if I was still holding the handles of Bashri-nai-Leylit’s chair as she sat, no longer well enough to steer it with her deepnames. I wanted—what had I wanted then? Some control, like she had over me all my life. Control over movement, for hadn’t she told me, Don’t leave me. I do not want you to go. You cannot be a man.

  Don’t change.

  And I did not want to lose her, so I stayed until death had loosened our grip on each other. But now I betrayed Uiziya, because either gripping or leaving was all that I knew.

  I walked forward for what felt like hours. The underground maze of stone corridors held me, and perhaps it did not matter if I moved at all. I was here, neither dead nor alive, and my motion or stillness did not change anything. I could as well stop and lie down on the floor.

  There was chalk underfoot—I’d just noticed—and the stone walls here were marked with names, and yet more and more names, as I followed them. The names of all the rebels—the women who dared bear deepnames in the springflower city of Iyar. Laaguti Birdwing, the most famous rebel of them all, who broke out of the palace dungeons with a small handful of other prisoners; the rebels escaped these walls and fled Iyar in a ship, sailing into the wests unknown. I read her name out loud, and then the names of her friends, scribbled in the same old, large curving script. And then even more names, in newer scripts of Iyar. I walked forward, reading them under my breath. Were some of these rebels changers, like me? In-betweeners, like my grandchild Kimi? Would I ever know? Why were their names written here?

  I touched one of the names, brought the chalk to my lips, expecting it to be bitter. But I felt no taste, for my gaze fell upon one name in particular. It wasn’t in Iyari, but in Khanishti, the language of the quarter, curving and small like the Birdseed writ. The name of my lover who perished under the weight of the palace.

  Bashri-nai-Divrah.

  She had been barely twenty. All three of us had been so young when we first formed our oreg and became lovers. Bashri-nai-Divrah had gone out of the quarter to trade. In concession to our faith and custom, Khana women were permitted to keep their deepnames outside the quarter, in Iyar, if they were properly veiled. But the trade that Bashri-nai-Divrah was invited to had been a ruse. Her veil had been torn away by her tormentors, and that was considered her crime.

  The Ruler of Iyar took Bashri-nai-Divrah, and the two of us could buy her life back with the greatest treasure
ever woven. Except that when we returned with it, she was already dead.

  I had to move on, but I could not bear leaving. But something had changed in the air.

  I turned away from the wall and saw ghosts.

  At first, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Bubbles of soft white floated around, filling the narrow corridor. They had no bodies, just faces, each screaming itself wide open. A young man. An old man. Two older women. A younger woman. A child.

  They all had sharp teeth, and all of them wailed soundlessly, circling me. I tried to summon my deepnames, to push the bubbles away, but a voice came out of the darkness of the corridor ahead. If you attack them with magic, they’ll tear you apart.

  A man emerged, and I recognized him from many whispered descriptions, the legends of fear. The royal torturer with his iron rod. The faces in it he commanded to tear and bite at his victims; the faces ate flesh and drank the souls of his victims; the faces always obeyed his will out of love.

  The torturer lifted his rod. “Come on,” he called to the ghosts. “We found the intruder. It’s time to go home.”

  The older ghosts flowed into the rod. It had appeared smooth just a moment ago, but now it grew chiseled faces. As one, the faces began to scream, their iron mouths opening and closing.

  The ghost of the younger man grimaced, but followed the others into the rod. The child still circled me, wild-eyed, sharp-toothed. I heard its voice, as loud as if it was in my head.

  IT HURTS

  “Juma!” The torturer called. “Come here! Juma!”

  IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS

  The child floated around me as I searched frantically for something to say. I met your friend out above—a friend who worried about you—is this man your father?

  The child ghost floated, reluctantly, finally, into the rod, just as guards caught up with the torturer. I was too dizzy from shock and pain to resist.

  Uiziya e Lali

  I had grown into my pain, sitting immovably among my sisters. By the door, the assassin was still. The light my captor left had fizzled out, and I was attending to darkness. One by one, the bones spoke to me, telling the stories of the women they had been.

  An ancient voice emerged first, with a singsong, elegant cadence. “I was proud to become one of Laaguti’s rebels.” I wanted to hear more of this story, but then another voice distracted me.

  “Children,” another voice came. An Iyari voice, it sounded old-fashioned, but not as ancient. “I could no longer care for my beautiful children. After my deepnames were destroyed, I fell into despair . . . they became name-orphans, wandering the streets . . .”

  And I heard another Iyari voice, quiet and plaintive. “I waited for Bird to take me, but she did not come for me—she did not come for any of us, so our souls were stranded here . . .”

  I wanted more time to think about these stories, to remember what stories I heard in my youth, to ask the bones questions, but I could not. I had to attend to the dead, attend quietly while hundreds of voices emerged all around me, attend as well as I could.

  A Khana voice, young, its lilting tones reminding me of Bashri-nai-Leylit when I met her decades ago. “. . . I ventured out of the quarter . . .”

  A voice from the desert came next, not snakeSurun’ but in the cadence of one of our neighboring encampments. “One and three syllables make the Maker’s Angle, which in the desert is called the Weaver’s Promise—I did not know that as a woman I was not allowed to carry magic in Iyar . . .”

  A deep Iyari voice. “. . . so I kept my deepnames in secret. I did not want to rebel, I just wanted to keep making art . . .”

  “. . . she made glass sculptures, these big multicolored birds . . .” another voice echoed. “You need two deepnames to make the glass sing, she taught me in secret . . .”

  “. . . and then they came for us . . .”

  I kept turning my head as the bones told their stories, attending, remembering. From farther away in the darkness another Khana voice came, older-sounding than the first. “I am a woman, but I wanted to sing, my deepnames lifting up my voice—to sing to Bird . . .”

  The voices spoke faster now, pushing tightly together like threads on a loom, and I could no longer distinguish among them.

  “. . . because we needed to eat . . .”

  “. . . I think Bird came looking for us, but she could not find us . . .”

  “. . . a Khana woman can keep her deepnames in Iyar if she is properly veiled . . .”

  “. . . Bird could not find us—for he has locked this place away from Bird . . .”

  “. . . I want my children back . . . I want my magic back . . .”

  “. . . I’d kill him for this, I’d tear him apart . . .”

  “. . . of the throng of us, Laaguti managed to escape with only a handful of others, sailed west and beyond the sea, but we were recaptured and tried . . .”

  “. . . so I studied magical geometry in secret . . .”

  “. . . tormentors tore my veil away from me, but it was I who was punished . . .”

  I listened to the bones of my sisters.

  nen-sasaïr

  They threw me, bruised and fettered, to my knees before the birdcage throne. I was dizzy and in pain, but this was a relief, too, after the stone-chiseled tunnels with their chalk names and their ghosts. And yet fear gnawed me. We were in the green layer of the Rainbow-Tiered Court, in a deepnamerich garden inside a lush chamber ornamented with royal swans. The birdcage was green to suit; its bars were enameled in a verdant hue, and its base and ornate crown chiseled out of malachite. Green ribbons wound from the crown of the cage, spilling gently onto the floor.

  In the birdcage, the Ruler of Iyar reclined on cushions. He was dressed in robes of lustrous green, tied at the waist with a treasure of emerald. Inside this elaborate construct, he appeared stooped and hungry. Looking at me.

  I had seen him, forty years ago, in this court. It had been a red day, and he had worn crimson. He was a man in his prime then, flush with his lust for more woven treasure and blood. His beard had been only barely touched by ash, his hands powerful, unwrinkled; his fingers heavy with ruby and bloodgarnet rings.

  Such a vivid thing to remember after forty-odd years. I thought again about our lover, who died in this place. Bashri-nai-Divrah was the reason that Benesret’s great weaving of song came to exist, for the Ruler of Iyar had promised us our lover’s life exchanged for the greatest treasure ever woven.

  “Come closer, intruder. I recognize you,” said the old man in the birdcage. A studious-looking youth by the throne began to translate these words into Surun’, but the Ruler of Iyar waved him down. “No need. She was born here. She can speak my language.”

  “It’s he,” I said. “He can speak your language.”

  The Ruler of Iyar laughed. “Yes, yes, of course. I am well aware of the temptation to play with desertmade weaves. I possess such an artifact—a cloth of winds—in fact, I collected several, even just lately. But change is not a thing I embrace. Changing my body to that of a woman would never occur to me. But I understand why the opposite would be tempting. Bashri-nai-Tammah.”

  The name fell from his lips like poison that drips from a festering wound. I knew that he spoke only to torment me, but I had to respond. “I no longer carry that name.”

  He waved that away. “You think me unkind, but I could have told my torturer to kill you.”

  The torturer stood by the Collector’s side, his rod of faces intent on me. I saw in it the faces of old ghosts and young; and I stared at the face of Juma, who used to be a child playing in the narrow side alleys of the outer streets of the city. IT HURTS. Juma’s mouth opened wide, and within it I saw rows and rows of sharp, iron teeth. IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS

  I tore my eyes away from the living rod.

  “In fact, since you’re here,” the Ruler of Iyar said briskly, “I should thank you—for delivering the Surun’ weaver to me.”

  “Where is she?” I squeezed out. “Where
is Uiziya?”

  He spoke, sweet satisfaction poisoning his voice. “She is busy. So very busy.”

  “I have to see her.”

  He ignored me. “I should thank you, also, for delivering yourself to me. The men I sent to fetch you were too weak, but you helped me out. I will not make the mistake again; my torturer will make sure you are safer from now on.”

  “I need to see Uiziya,” I repeated, stubbornly. She taught me this, my friend, the woman who never gave up. But I had left her. The brilliant green of the palace’s emerald tier could not quite obstruct the truth—beneath these silks and these grasses, I sensed only death.

  The Collector said, “Remember how, forty years ago, how you brought me a carpet of song? Hope, wasn’t it. Hope that was made from the feathers of the goddess.”

  “Yes, I remember.” I swallowed, for I had abandoned my questions and followed his words instead. “What hope did you feel when you carried it, Bashri-nai-Tammah, woman of the people of the Khana?”

  I turned my head away from him. From his misnaming and mis-telling me, from his warping me out of my life. What hope did I feel then? That Bashri-nai-Divrah would live. But, in truth, as I carried the carpet that sang the melodies spun from Bird’s own feathers, I dreamt even stronger of my own need, never to be called a woman again, to live in a body that matched how I knew myself to be. It would be forty years be- fore I could finally live. For a short while.

  “What hope did you feel,” I asked the Collector, “these forty years ago, when you took the carpet of song? You hid it away.”

  He laughed, a croaking sound from an ancient throat. “Why, I hoped to collect even greater treasure.” He looked at me, shrugged. “So many feel that there must be something more to my ambition. What more is necessary? I want things to remain, sacred and sovereign and unchanging. I want to preserve what is best. It is a noble purpose. I am not greedy for luster. I spend all my day ruling from my cage. Like the goddess Bird, who is never seen until one’s final breath, I am hidden from view within these layers of stone. But I want the world to be brought to me, so I will preserve it. The landmass’s truest and brightest, its art, its desire, its will, stripped of the perversions and impurities of flesh and stored away to be treasured forever. What greater ambition is needed?” He grimaced. “But I waited—you might understand it, body-changer—I waited for forty years for this carpet. I held your lover hostage while Benesret wove the treasure of song. Now I’ll hold you hostage while her niece weaves from death. I am grateful to you for this balance. Balance is key.”