A Tapestry of Magics

by Brian Daley

  They were drawing up on an outlying farmhold, a thriving but ramshackle place, when there came to their ears an uproar. Men, women, and children were shouting at some unseen threat and yelling conflicting exhortations to one another. Chickens, geese, pigs, and hounds raised a din. The brothers reined in as they saw a small buff form come leaping over a tumbled-down fence. Crassmor could see a hoe-swinging farmhand give up pursuit afoot.

  The brothers thought it a farm dog at first; then they saw that it was one of the little wild dog-wolves found in certain parts of the Beyonds, a coyote. This one held in its jaws a weakly struggling hen, leaving a trail of gyrating gray and brown feathers behind it.

  “Here’s luck!” Sandur proclaimed. Crassmor saw that he was gathering himself up for the chase, ready to spur.

  Crassmor overcame his surprise in time to protest, “It’s only a chicken he’s got, Sandur! You’re on Ironwicca’s business!”

  “You’re forgetting whom the coyote raised,” Sandur returned. “We could use that kind of help in this war!” With that he was off, Bordhall taking up a smooth gallop, her muscles rolling.

  Crassmor came after, realizing now what his brother had meant. It might be that this was some simple animal, drifted in from the Beyonds and hungry enough to invade the haunts of men during the day against its habit. But it might also be that this was Coyote, embodiment of its tribe. The tribe of Coyote had raised one of the most formidable heroes.

  Across the open country they went, over terrain that didn’t favor their quarry, which looked fatigued. The riders bore down a meadow after the creature, their horses’ hooves showering clots of turf and grass. The brown-yellow predator hurtled between the rotting, ivy-grown rails of an old fence that should have been replaced long since. Sandur took the fence cleanly; Crassmor kept himself from balking, and Kort carried him well. They were closing the distance, but Sandur made no move to pull forth his bow. The coyote sought to dodge this way and that, but the horsemen veered to either side, driving it on. The land in that area had been cleared long before; there was little cover for the thief. Crassmor heard his brother bellowing to the beast to surrender.

  A broad, deep river cut across the bottom of the meadow. The coyote, running with near-exhaustion, darted to the right, following the bank; the horses could ford far more quickly than he. Sandur, knowing the lay of the land, gave a shout of triumph. Stone slopes, low but sheer, marched along the river in that direction, leaving only a , narrow apron of overgrown riverbank between themselves and the water. The horsemen raced over young weeds, driftwood, rocks, sand, and stagnant pools.

  A quarter of a mile farther along, the cliffs closed down to meet the river. A deep backwater eddied there. The brothers drew up to see the coyote trotting back and forth at bay, hesitant to try to dodge back past them, the pitiful hen hanging, nearly formless, in its jaws. The thief’s weary movements told of its spent strength. Sandur stopped while they were some way off, signaling Crassmor to do the same. Crassmor asked, “What—?”

  Sandur, dismounting, replied, “I want to treat with him, not slay him. The way is narrow here; ride back and forth a little, so that he knows you stand prepared to block it.” With that he walked forward.

  The coyote had stopped to watch now, feet spread, head hung low. Sandur paused a dozen paces away, empty hands wide apart. The beast looked him over with what Crassmor thought to be intelligent assessment. “You are a long way from your home, plains child!” Sandur began.

  The coyote suddenly sat back on its haunches and dropped the unmoving hen, setting one forepaw on her almost daintily, and studied the knight. It panted, its red tongue lolling, its nostrils flared wide, eyes slitted, quite the most devious-looking creature Crassmor could recall having seen. It licked white fangs with a dripping tongue and waited.

  “I have met your folk before,” Sandur continued, “in the Beyonds. And I have met as well the man-child who was raised by your tribe. I thought that, if you were about, he might be. We sorely need his—”

  Sandur stopped, peering more closely at the coyote, who in turn watched him with head canted to one side. Crassmor paused in the slow pacing of his horse. Sandur threw his head back and laughed, the first time he’d done so since his exchange with Ravager. His parley formality fell away. He pointed at the little buff-colored thief.

  “Abandon that shape! Show yourself!” He was trying not to dissolve into belly laughter. “Prankster! Lazy, careless Saynday! You’ve given yourself away once more!”

  Making a more careful examination of the creature, Crassmor saw now that it had a very odd-looking mustache, resembling that of no dog or wolf, hanging down from its muzzle. The coyote gave its snout a waggle, trying to look at it cross-eyed. Then it snorted a sort of embarrassed chortle and somehow looked sheepish. In another moment it began to change shape.

  Crassmor had a hard time following the procedure. The beast’s outlines flowed and elongated. Its pelt changed to red-brown skin and its muzzle retreated into its face. In moments Crassmor, dumbfounded, was staring at a most peculiar man. Sandur, hands on hips, was shaking his head in exasperation, but chuckling.

  The man was gangling, almost emaciated, but his biceps and the other muscles of his limbs ballooned, to draw in tight and skinny once more at his joints. His eyes showed a vast guilelessness which, Crassmor suspected, camouflaged a shrewd turn of mind. A straggling wisp of mustache drooped down around his mouth, his error in disguise. When it came, his voice was high and nasal, plaintive and cracked.

  “Well, Sandur, you still ride pretty good,” Saynday admitted.

  Sandur turned and instructed Crassmor wryly, “When Saynday gives you a compliment, brother, look to your horse, look to your woman, look to your tent, and look to your purse!”

  Saynday erupted in a string of shrill, nasal laughs. “Thou Trickster,” Sandur went on, not without affection, “few ride as well as you run. Tired you must be, to come to bay so easily.” Saynday shrugged; Crassmor noticed that he was covered with sweat. “What brings you here?” Sandur finished.

  Saynday rose from where he’d been squatting on his haunches. He wore low shoes of soft-tanned skins, soled with rawhide, and a much-worn breechclout with tattered beading. He kept one toe on the hen as he grinned amiably at the knight. “Things were pretty quiet, back where I come from—”

  “And where there is no mischief, Saynday will go looking for some,” Sandur said. “Plainly, your hunting has been poor.”

  “Well, I’ve been fuller,” the gangling man admitted, rubbing a shrunken stomach. “This place isn’t much like the plains, you know. But I was comin’ along, to see what was goin’ on in your Singularity. And then I got too hungry when I smelled those chickens.” He conspicuously avoided looking at the deceased hen.

  “Lucky were you that real dogs didn’t pull you apart!” Crassmor called, intrigued and amused.

  Saynday returned the scrutiny. He shook a little bead bag, decorated with feathers and porcupine quills, thonged to his breechclout. “You don’t blame yourself for seein’ a Coyote, do you? So don’t blame the dogs for smellin’ Bear, Wolf, and Mountain Lion.” He suddenly issued the high giggles again. “Those dogs won’t follow without plenty of men with ’em.”

  Sandur said, “I’d hoped I’d come across Coyote himself. The Singularity is in great danger, and all help is needed. I’d hoped that Pecos could be contacted.”

  Saynday fingered his chin. “Well, he’s White Man’s son; Coyote was just lookin’ after him. But he won’t be comin’, Sandur—not if what I smell on you two is war. Bill fights his own fights and does his own deeds; no armies. He’s a fierce one, is Bill, but not one of your soldiers.”

  Sandur looked at the Trickster for a moment, then nodded and reached for his rein, Crassmor having brought Bordhall up during the conversation. “It’s best you were gone, Saynday,” Sandur warned as he mounted. “No prank will keep you from danger here.” Then he was in his saddle, settling his sword.

  Saynday inclined his h
ead, accepting that. “And keep the chicken,” Crassmor added on impulse. “We’ve no time to return it anyway.”

  The Trickster made a mocking imitation of a courtly bow, a burlesque from one who’d never bent knee in earnest. Crassmor frowned and Sandur chuckled. “Looks like I owe you for the warnin’,” Saynday told the knight. And to Crassmor he added, “And, maybe, a little somethin’ for the chicken.”

  Crassmor stopped in the act of reining around. “And how are you to be found?”

  Saynday’s eyes danced. “Just bring along the meat I love best.” He stooped and gathered up the chicken.

  Crassmor would have asked on, but Sandur gestured; they’d already lost precious time. The two cantered back toward the ford in the river.

  They stopped at the granary at Lateroo and, giving Bordhall and Kort a respite they’d more than earned, commandeered two remounts from the Tarrant factotum there.

  There too they heard grave tidings. The King had called up volunteers and levies along with members of most of the martial groups, combining them with a contingent from his small standing army. Apparently a large force of barbarians had moved closer to the Singularity, and battle had been likely. This had been several days before; no later word had come to this outlying place since the departure of the troops.

  Sandur and Crassmor looked at each other, thinking of the Warlord’s boast that he’d already bested the arms of the Singularity. The two made no mention of that to the people there. Sandur, though, under his own authority, instructed the factotum to curtail operations as soon as possible and move his people to the nearest Tarrant stronghold and to send out word for others to do the same.

  Exertion and exhaustion had caused the journey to take on an unreality. Crassmor dully followed his brother across the uplands of Daske, passing among the flocks and herds. They descended through the flowered meadows of Hurnalle, which usually resounded with the axes and saws of lumbermen in the surrounding hills but were now silent except for caroling songbirds. Above them soared gorgeous butterflies with wingspreads of a pace and more. The Tarrant holdings prospered as ever; Combard’s mystic ties to the land were still in effect. Stalks were heavy with yield; herds and flocks were swollen with outsize, meat-heavy animals; trees in the orchards bent under the weight of their fruit. The grass was lush, the timber sound, the weather temperate.

  They rode the border of the lands of House Comullo, the Tarrants’ nearest neighbors, then swung back across tended fields as the sun went down. The brothers followed old, straight roads lit by the brilliant night sky of the Singularity. Wolfing a meal at a roadhouse there, they volunteered no information to host or guests except to advise against straying into the Beyonds. They slept on bedrolls flung down on truckle beds on a floor of cut bracken and resumed their way early.

  They were on main roads now, passing strolling players, postal riders, itinerant workers and artisans, clergy of every sort, pilgrims, and wanderers. There were quacks and healers, minstrels, footloose students, soothsayers, drug sellers and herbalists, beggars, and a number of fellows whom Crassmor suspected of being highwaymen. There were, ominously, none of the mercenaries or swords-for-hire who were usually to be seen, save for those employed by traders or the wealthy. The roads were wet from recent rain, deep with muck compounded of mud and the droppings of horse, mule, cow, sheep, and fowl. Those afoot were befouled to their knees with it; the muck spattered the horses’ legs and encrusted their bellies.

  They saw Dreambourn in the dawn and reached it in early light. By far the Singularity’s largest city, it probed the sky with a bewildering assortment of fortified towers, elfin spires, lacy minarets, and sleek steeples. Many of these were crowned with observatories. Dreambourn’s architecture was a multiform blend of the many influences it had felt. There were crystal manses next to delicate, carven villas; steel cupolas hard by marble forums; geodesic domes and wooden longhouses. Smaller cottages, tents, yurts, huts, and shacks were tucked into whatever space was available. Overhead, Crassmor saw a flock of brilliantly plumed parrots; far off, a pterodactyl glided.

  The city was surrounded by miles of hundred-foot-high walls of tightly joined stone, with ramparts so wide that ten horsemen could ride abreast on patrol. The fortifications made the brothers feel no better; the lizard riders in their staggering numbers wouldn’t be stopped by mere walls. At the entrance to the capital, Sandur motioned to the guard detachment keeping watch in full armor with bows and pikes. It was undermanned, stripped for the King’s expedition.

  Through the main gates of Dreambourn, which rose fifty feet and were arched with white marble, moved the river of traffic which seemed never to stop, day or night. Some of the travelers were residents of the Singularity, but many were those who’d filtered in from the Beyonds. Tinkers bent under heavy packs, and traders tugged at mules, horses, and other less conventional beasts of burden. A dignified gentleman dressed in a tailcoat and homburg hat churned past on a high-wheeled velocipede. Noblemen and ladies made their way along in carriages, or ahorse. Heady perfume wafted to Crassmor from a carefully curtained sedan chair carried by four brawny bearers. Farmers, craftsmen, sly-looking men with weapons and an eye out for opportunity, milkmaids and dancing girls, all passed through there.

  Only a few powered vehicles—a Trevithick steam carriage; an articulated, doughnut-tired rover—were navigating along slowly and carefully. Complicated machinery frequently came to grief in the Singularity.

  Off to one side, Crassmor noticed, were a young man and woman with a nervous, red-haired dog beside them. They were taking it all in with amazement, obvious wanderers-in. They wore similar clothes, faded denim trousers and heavy, checkered flannel shirts under puffy down vests. Their footgear was sturdy hiking boots; each bore a backpack framed with metal tubing. The man saw that Crassmor was inspecting him. He called, “Look, could you help us? We were on the Appalachian Trail—”

  Crassmor felt pity, but had no moment to spare, and gave what brief advice he could. “You’re no longer in your own Reality, but you’ll be safer inside Dreambourn than out!” Then he had to catch up with Sandur, who, preoccupied, had not even noticed the exchange.

  Sandur moved through the throngs with uncharacteristic curtness, making others give way. Many there recognized him, the Outrider, King’s Cup Bearer, renowned champion even among the revered Knights of Onn. Those who didn’t yielded way just the same to the forbidding warrior whose red hair streamed behind him now that he was unhelmeted, his armor and trappings marked by recent combat.

  A group of Glitchen, the little troll folk who so loved abstruse mischief, hastened to drag their sledge out of the way. They were dressed in elaborate outfits of silk and pearl, with curling points on the toes of their shoes and long, drooping ones on the tips of their colorful hats. After Sandur passed them, they resumed pushing and pulling their sledge, whose runners slid with mysterious ease over the cobbles. The Glitchen’s haunts were the caverns and deep places; they must, Crassmor knew, be in Dreambourn to see about expediting their cargo to another Reality, which required costly and expert help. Curious, he read the stenciling on the crates with which the sledge was loaded:

  SILICA THERMAL TILES

  SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM

  N.A.S.A.

  The two brothers went on up the capital’s main thoroughfare, Fey Passage. They ignored temples, taverns, counting houses, bazaars, and the noble edifices and primitive encampments along the way, although there was much that was new. The Charmed Realm was above all a place of change. The scent of fires assailed them with smells of hardwood, dung, coal, and resin. The cobbles were carpeted with droppings, slops, mud, and puddles of brackish water. People moved by in their fantastic variety. Crassmor usually reveled in the city; now he could only think of the danger to it.

  The palace of Ironwicca was known as the Anvil, a squat, dark, adamantine subcity in its own right, a formidable assemblage of creneled turrets, hornwork, battlements, and moats. An equerry came forward to take their reins when they entere
d the courtyard. Members of the Household Guard, tall, redoubtable men in shining mail, armed with swords and polearms and bows, were stationed all through the place. None challenged the two brothers; all knew the King’s Cup Bearer. Sandur was ungauntleted now; the golden heir’s ring of House Tarrant glittered on his finger, an exacting duplicate of the Circle of Onn.

  Sandur walked the long, polished mosaic floors of the palace with wide, urgent strides. A chamberlain bustled up as the two approached the throne room, though, to say that court was not to be held that day. The King was, instead, to be found on the palace roof. A detour up flight after flight of broad stairs took them to the summit of the Anvil.

  On an uppermost tower stood a construction shaped for the King years before by a master craftsman, a worker in metal and clockwork who’d employed more than a little arcane magic in his arts. Fashioned in the form of an egret, it was erect on gleaming gilt legs, eighty feet and more in height, its plumage dazzling with gems and bright filigree, the metal of it iridescent in the sun. A gong, a disk of opal, was set near the sturdy anchoring of one glittering foot; Sandur struck it softly with the padded mallet that hung there. A moment later the bird tower began to move with a smooth working of joints and gears, its head descending. Down and down it came, bearing with it Ironwicca, King of the Singularity.

  Chapter 4

  BACK

  The resplendent egret head stopped only a foot or two from the surface of the roof. It was an observation platform of some size; the King stood there with three others. The brothers were only slightly surprised to see those other three.