Tapestry of Dark Souls Read online

  When the wolf sprang, I was ready. Though I screamed with pain as its teeth closed over my extended forearm, I managed to sink the silver knife into its shoulder. The beast shook convulsively as I sliced upward as Vhar had taught me. The knife cut through the muscles with far greater ease than I had expected against a monster of that size. The beast’s grip on me loosened, and it howled with agony as I twisted the blade, burying it deeper in the animal’s shoulder. The creature released me and backed away on three legs.

  An even draw for the first round; a far better beginning than I had expected. Exhilaration filled me. I held my bleeding arm in front of me as I had before, but this time I held the knife just behind it, taunting the beast. “Come on!” I cried. “Come and we’ll finish this.”

  The animal’s lips curled back, challenging me with its own razor-sharp weapons. I didn’t waver. This time I would sink the knife lower, into its stomach. “One more stroke and it’s over,” I said.

  If I had know the true nature of this monster, I would have understood why it hesitated, why it eyed the silver blade with what seemed like human surprise.

  I had so little time to spare. Despite my every impulse, I attacked, my knife glancing off one of the beast’s ribs. It howled with pain and rolled away from me, off the blade … and, unable to recover, over the edge of the cliff.

  I didn’t look to see how far it had fallen, or to see if it were still alive. I didn’t stop to revel in this first, deadly victory of my life. I didn’t even look at my wound, though I could feel the warm blood running down my arm and off my fingertips. There was no time. The path to the shrine was steep, the sun had nearly set, and I still had a long way to go.

  I remember very little of the climb, save the sheer drops to either side and the sliding rocks underfoot. As I threaded my way along, the tapestry’s weight shifted heavily to one end of the roll or the other. I realized with horror that the cloth was trying to throw me off balance. A moment later, it nearly succeeded, pitching me toward the cliff’s edge. Flailing, I managed to fall so that only my head and one shoulder hung over the edge, staring down a sheer precipice toward the windswept scrub plains below. Afterward, afraid to carry it any longer, I dragged the cloth behind me.

  Ahead, a smoky haze hung over the fortress, as if some fire smoldered underground, about to flare and devour the monks who dwelled there. When I passed through the open gates, the cloth began to tremble, the shimmering folds of fabric working loose from the center of the bundle. But now I knew this was no coincidence, no trick of an unfelt breeze. The cloth feared the shrine as a prisoner fears a solitary cell.

  My hands reached out, clutching the fabric, but the thin cloth slipped from between my fingers, twisting out of my tightest grasp. The loose fabric rose in front of me. The eyes of every face in the pattern turned and fixed on me, the rage in their expressions more frightening than any trial I had faced since I had entered this land. I screamed for help. I prayed to all the half-forgotten gods I could recall, prayed that they might aid me in containing this evil.

  And someone heard. Through the thickening smoke and the flapping folds of cloth, I saw the monks walking toward me, moving between the cloth and the fortress doors. Their eyes were fixed on the tapestry, and their mouths were opened in chants, repeating strange, ancient words over and over. A litany of a single line.

  Their chant had power, a power that forced the swirling cloth up from the ground. Trapped in the cloth’s moving folds, I was lifted with it. Drifting across the sandy courtyard, the cloth bore me through the open shrine doors and into the candlelit space inside.

  I sighed, relieved that my trials were over. But, in the next moment, I discovered that they had just begun. As I clawed myself free of the cloth, I saw that the pattern had begun moving, much as the cloth itself had moved—first slowly, then with increasing agitation. One of the monks, standing just outside the door, reached toward me. Though I tried to grasp his hand, the writhing patterns on the cloth reached out off the fabric, and dragged me back. With growing terror, I watched the monk step away from the shrine doors, which slammed shut in front of him, and I heard the outside bars slide into place. Through it all, the monks’ chant never wavered.

  How could the monks have done this? I thought. How could they lock me in with this hideous thing?

  I looked at the cloth and saw what the Guardians feared most. The shapes took on a shadowy life separate from the fabric, spinning away from it one by one, beating at the door like dry winter leaves in a gale. They slowly took on the substance they had possessed before they were trapped. Real hands pinned my arms and legs and ripped at my clothing. Real voices howled with fury at the chanting captors outside. I howled with them—first with fear and later with the terrible certainty that I belonged with them, that this was the punishment I deserved for my part in Vhar’s end.

  But no! Vhar was alive! I saw his face among the rest. As I opened my mouth to scream his name, all sound in the shrine silenced. A silver-eyed man, the same beautiful creature I had dreamed about, stepped toward me. Silver eyes and silver hair. His cold lips covered mine. His hands, like ice, caressed my sides. More of the whirling souls descended on me, their touch cold as the grave.

  I screamed into the silence. I thrashed, but couldn’t break free. In the hours that followed, I was helpless to do anything, except imagine escape.

  The night’s end was as abrupt as its beginning, the doomed souls’ final pounding against the windows and doors, their final testing of the bars in futile fury, their sudden, smothering silence as the moon set. And then, all the condemned lay around me, flat and dry as leaves in late winter. Yet their eyes still moved, their empty husks trembled with the last moments of life, quiet only when the doors opened and the rising sun fell on them.

  One of the monks came forward, picking up the tapestry that was now an unpatterned shimmering cloth. He dragged it from corner to corner of the shrine, dusting up the dark souls to form a new design, a pattern to hang until the release of the next full moon. My body bled from a thousand bites and scratches, its tissues sore inside and out. I lay unmoving, past all thoughts of modesty, waiting for the monk to bring the cloth and cover me.

  But he didn’t. Instead he fastened the tapestry to its place on the wall, then wrapped me in his outer robe and helped me return to the room where I had slept beside Vhar two nights—a lifetime—ago.

  I rested for days, eating little, drifting in and out of sleep that gave little respite. Nonetheless, I began to heal. When I grew strong enough to understand his words, Brother Dominic came to my room. He held my hand as he spoke the words I expected, and dreaded.

  There were seven in the order when Vhar and I first came here. Now there were five. The old monk Vhar attacked in Linde died. Hektor, the one whose throat he cut outside the monastery, was found quickly and survived. A third, who had been waiting to help me at the river crossing, had been killed. “Judging from the wounds on his body, we assume he was attacked by the same wolf that you fought later that day,” Dominic said. His voice was hoarse with sorrow, but held no hint that he blamed me. Nonetheless, I blamed myself and said so.

  “You were blinded by the powers trapped in the cloth and by the lust the cloth inspires in all who see it,” Dominic responded. “When you understood the dark nature of those powers, you worked to set things right. Had you been less brave and resolute, the evil you saw loosed in the shrine would have been loosed on the world instead.”

  Brave and resolute. I had never considered myself that way. What I had done seemed nothing more than necessity. “Has that evil ever escaped?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Many years ago, before I joined the order, the cloth was worshipped openly in a land far from here. During a full-moon service, the souls trapped on it found the strength to break loose. In the end, the order that worshipped it succeeded in containing the evil, but at a terrible price.”

  He paused. I saw the anguish in his face, but I didn’t ask him to stop the tale. In a moment, he w
ent on.

  “All but the three youngest monks of our order were destroyed. Most of our scrolls dealing with the history of the cloth were burned. Only the tapestry remained, untouched by the battle.”

  “Can the cloth be burned?” I asked.

  Dominic smiled ruefully. “Do you think the order has never tried? The cloth cannot be destroyed by ordinary fire. It cannot be shredded or even torn. All spells used against it seem to increase in power and turn on their casters. Perhaps those who founded our order knew the means to destroy it, but they are long since dead, and those that remain have no such knowledge. The only strength we seem to have is in containing its evil, not destroying it. Now, even that will be difficult, for there are so few of us left, and the evil on the cloth is apparently growing in power.”

  I nodded. It had even managed to send its shadow across the barriers between the worlds to find me.

  “There must be some way to destroy it,” I said.

  “There is a prophecy written on one of our few remaining scrolls. One day love will corrupt the cloth. One day corruption from within will destroy it. We don’t understand the words, but they give us hope that the future may be less burdensome than the past.”

  I looked away from him, out the narrow chamber window at the brilliant blue sky. “The future,” I repeated, thinking that mine had never seemed so unsure. I thought of how solicitous the monks had been in tending my wounds, how careful in conveying their thanks that I had returned the cloth. It seemed impossible that these were the same men who had coldly discussed my murder on the night I came here. Peering intently into his eyes, I repeated the words Mattas had spoken that night. “ ‘It would be better if they die quickly at our hands than that our presence here be known to the world.’ I heard Mattas say that on the night we escaped.”

  “You didn’t drink your wine that night, did you?” he asked. I shook my head and he went on. “Those who sleep within these walls dream as the powers on the cloth wish them to dream. The potion you were given was the same as the one I drink when I am not guarding the cloth or the fortress. It holds the most vivid dreams back.”

  “So, in the morning, you would have simply let Vhar and me leave?”

  He shook his head. “We would have made you forget what you had seen.” He saw my alarm and hastened to explain, “Brother Leo was a wizard’s apprentice before he came to us. He learned his lessons well. Nothing he would have done could harm you.”

  I wasn’t so sure, but it hardly seemed important to mention that now. I had harmed them, and now there was only one way to set things right. “If it is allowed,” I said, “I wish to remain with the order and share in your work.”

  “A woman has never had the calling before.”

  “Nonetheless, I wish to remain.” I meant it. As I spoke the words, I sensed how right they sounded, how at peace I suddenly felt.

  Dominic looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you do have the calling. We shall have to discuss your request.” He hadn’t accepted me outright, but I knew I would be allowed to remain. There were too few Guardians left for the work they did.

  As soon as my arm had healed, I began taking my turn with the Guardians, watching the shrine, making certain that no one disturbed the tapestry’s sleep. Sometimes during those long nights, I would hear the cry of a wolf, the click of claws on the rocky ground outside. The innkeeper in Linde had said that wolves were scarce in this land. I wondered if this was the same one I had wounded.

  In a month’s time, I stood outside the shrine doors with the others, risking my life and my sanity to keep the awakened souls from entering this already-sorry world. “Return to the darkness,” the Guardians chanted in their strange, foreign tongue. And I chanted with them, even though I already sensed that the peace I felt in the fortress was a false one, that the darkness waited for me, as inevitable as the death that comes to all of us.

  I was pregnant. That alone was clear enough within a few weeks of my recovery. I tried not to think of who the father might be, but hoped it was Vhar. We had longed for a child of our own for so many years that I wanted some part of him to live on with me. Besides, I had suspected that I was pregnant before that terrible night in the shrine. Even so, I couldn’t be certain that I had conceived before then.

  Especially since the child growing inside me seemed to have slowly unhinged my mind.

  The symptoms began innocently enough. I began to experience blackouts on the nights I guarded the fortress. At first, they lasted only a few moments, and I thought I had nodded off to sleep. I didn’t mention it to the others, for it hardly seemed important, and I wanted so much to stay with them.

  One night, as I stood at the fortress gates, looking at the jagged shadows the moonlit cliffs threw across the road, a strange longing rose in me. I felt a dread desire to merge with the night, to run free beneath the cloud-swept sky. I thought of the darkflyer and the danger of the cliffs. I thought of terrified travelers and little copper-haired girls with lovely rings on their fingers. I fought the hunger. I hid it, even though it grew ever stronger, ever more insistent.

  Brother Leo seemed the one most sensitive to my struggle. As the moon grew fuller, he demanded that I be allowed to rest, to conserve my strength for the long night of struggle. He gave me draughts that forced my body to sleep. After a time, I thought the hunger had vanished, but the truth was far more brutal.

  It slept with me.

  On the evening of the second full moon since I had joined the order, we Guardians assembled together outside the shrine. The sky lightened as we recited the ritual prayers of preparation and began the chant. With all my concentration focused on the mental bond between me and the other monks, I had no energy remaining to resist the dark forces in me.

  The moonlight washed over the land and, as its silver light touched me, the hunger in me woke and roared. The words of the chant fled my mind. I looked at Hektor standing beside me, at his pale hands, his neck. I could see his pulse throbbing in the moonlight, smell the scent of his life, feel the radiating warmth of his flesh. Prey! I was so hungry. And Hektor’s blood was hot, fragrant. He and all the others were nothing more than meat for my needs!

  My muscles tensed with the desire to attack. My body trembled as what remained of my sanity fought to control this terrible craving. I backed away from the other Guardians, seeking the strength to turn and run.

  I couldn’t. Through my hunger, I felt another, greater pull. The cloth itself was calling to me, inviting me to come and merge with the souls trapped inside. Though the howls of rage beginning within the shrine made me weak with fear, I took a step toward the barred doors.

  A hand gripped my wrist and I looked into Brother Leo’s knowing eyes. He lifted his clenched fist toward my face and opened it. A fine sand flowed through his fingers. As it did, he whispered a few quick words in my ear. Darkness closed around me. I felt myself falling against his outstretched arms.

  The next morning while the Guardians slept, I sat in the empty dining hall, staring at the patch of sunlight tumbling through the open door. A fine day for travel, I thought, trying to focus on the adventure to come rather than on the sorrow of leaving the monks without even a good-bye. I didn’t want to face them, to have to admit that I could never be trusted to guard the cloth again. Wearing only the clothes the Guardians had given me, carrying the knife that had served me so well on the terrible journey here, I stole away from the monastery and down the winding path to Tepest.

  When I decided to take the longer, easier road rather than the dark passage to Tepest, I hadn’t counted on a change in the weather. The sky blackened and the rain, whipped by a frigid wind from G’Henna, beat against my face, blinding me and slowing my descent. The road became slippery, and I stayed close to the cliffside. I had nearly reached the end of the descent when a deafening crack shook the mountain. The air sizzled from the lightning, and a boulder broke loose from the force of the bolt, setting off a landslide directly above me. With a speed I never suspected I possessed, I ran beyon
d the avalanche of boulders and mud. Stopping was far more difficult. As I tried to slow, my foot slipped into a sinkhole in the road, and I fell hard, slamming my head against a rock.

  My ankle throbbed. Consciousness threatened to leave me each time I raised my head. Nonetheless, I had to find shelter or I, and the child in me, would die. Slowly, painfully, I slid down the trail until I reached a stand of trees, which gave some shelter from the biting wind. With my back against an ancient oak, my knees pressed against my chest, and my muddy cloak wrapped tightly around my shivering body, I fell into a wary sleep.

  I woke to utter darkness, and a forest filled with noises. First I heard the sound of an animal rustling in the bushes near me, then a sniffing noise from another direction, as if another creature were trying to identify me by scent. With my back protected by the tree, I pulled out my knife and waited.

  The creatures moved closer—at least four, perhaps five. I heard panting to my right, a string of gibberish from something a stone’s throw in front of me. I waited for the attack, refusing to stab at the darkness in case the unseen hunters had hands to grab my arm or my knife.

  The moments stretched out eternally. When at last the beasts came, they did so from all sides. Something caught my hair, pulling my head sideways, while another creature came at me from the front. With my eyes straining to see in the darkness, I stabbed upward, sinking my knife into its flesh. As it shrieked with pain, I kicked it away and sliced into the arm of the one ripping at my neck. My hands, slippery with blood, lost their grip on the knife and it fell, sliding away into the blackness of the night. Even with the knife I knew I would die. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the child in me, knowing that in a moment the battle would end. They would have me.