“Oldwife of Rute, let your hands be blessed,” Marwen said smiling to herself. “A sister desires rest and repast if it is in your power to give.”
As she spoke, a woman emerged from the shadows. She was probably about ten suns older than Marwen, but she, too, wore the knee-length braid of a virgin. Her hair and eyes were black as winterdark, her skin a warm dark brown.
“You are a sister?” the girl said. “Let me see your tapestry.” She did not mean the whole tapestry, she meant only the corner in which was inscribed the calling. Marwen thought this through rationally, calmly, while her stomach squeezed into a tight painful ball.
“This is the first time I have been asked while traveling in your land these many days,” Marwen said, and she tried to smile. It felt more like a grimace.
“Well, but I am a true believer,” the dark woman said, “and these are evil times.” Her accent was lilting, making each word sound new in Marwen’s ears.
“I, also, am a believer,” Marwen said, “but I have no tapestry.” She could not believe she had uttered those words, and she listened carefully to the silence into which they fell.
The dark woman’s face did not change.
After a moment Marwen felt she could not bear the silence, that she must fill it up with words and explanations and excuses. The wind pushed at her back. She felt her face twist a little, and she cleared her voice so that it might sound sensible and mature.
But before she could open her mouth to speak, the woman held up her hand, her palm, toward Marwen.
“I see that your story is a painful one, one that should not be traded for food and rest or even for compassion. Come in, and if we can be friends, I will share your burden.”
The woman’s name was Vijocka. She moved and walked with long graceful movements, taming the fire, quieting with a spoon a pot of bubbling mudbeans. Her demeanor was both queenly and plain, her speech was gracious and yet as familiar as family. She did not smile easily, and yet her laughter was quick and strong. She was large-breasted and tall, handsome. Marwen could sense her good strong magic.
Her home was sparsely furnished with a greatrug, pillows, and a clay table, but everywhere Vijocka had planted flowers in the broken shells of wingwand eggs: blue onion and liferoad, untamable mopple and soft brown leaflullen bloomed in the nooks and crannies.
She served Marwen fruit, beans, and porridge, then left to feed Mothball, while Marwen ate. When she returned, estwind was blowing dry and cool through the east window and with it came the scent of fresh-cut brome grass, as though a large wingwand herd grazed nearby.
“Do you have wingwands?” Marwen asked.
“I make a place for them to mate and lay eggs,” she said. “I do not own them, though when I am in need, they will often take me where I must go. I suspect by your accent that you have come a long way, and your beast tells me she is very tired. Why have you come so far?” She poured Marwen a bowl of tea.
“You can speak with the beasts?” Marwen asked timidly.
“They allow themselves to be understood by me,” the woman answered.
There was silence in the room for a time. Marwen listened to the wind. She shivered. Was it speaking her name?
“You live very near the dragon, Perdoneg,” she said.
Vijocka nodded. “The evidence of his destruction fills the northern sky,” she said. “Many of the people of the village Rune-dar have left their homes and fled southward, for the dragon often comes to rest on a hill near their village. More leave every day, for their terror sears their hearts and devours their courage more surely than the dragon might do their flesh. I have spent many weeks now in prayers and fasting for the words of the spell that might protect the people. The words do not come. There is no magic to stay this fell creature—its magic is too great for those of our order.”
She said it with such quiet courage that Marwen knew it was true.
“It is strange then that the dragon does not use his magic but only his fire.”
Marwen stopped, her bowl of tea halfway to her mouth. Her reflection in the bowl was gold-skinned and lambent, astonished. It was true, but it had not occurred to her.
“He kills like a beast,” Vijocka continued, “with talon and tail, and with fire. But he uses no magic. His fire is weapon enough, though. He seeks the wizard and believes that the wizard and his heir, if he has one, will come to do battle with him if he continues to kill. But it is more than that. It is vengeance upon Morda-hon, that great wizard of ancient days, for keeping him in his prison for many ages. It is sickness and hatred. It is darkness and evil.” Her head and neck were very erect as she spoke, and her eyes were lit with a quiet flame. “We will be without hope when the dragon uses his magic.”
The wind blew on Marwen’s tea, ruffling her reflection. She looked up. “There is one who is seeking a way to rid us of this evil,” Marwen said. “It is to him that I go, for I would help him.”
“You mean Prince Camlach,” Vijocka said. “He stayed with me on his journey northward, while his men slept in my fields. How do you, a Venutian, know the Prince?”
“I helped him once,” Marwen said. She warmed her hands around her bowl, swirled the muddy leaves at the bottom. “He asked me to help him stop Perdoneg, but I refused.”
“And now you have come to help,” Vijocka said. She shook her head. “You are brave, for had I lost my tapestry, I would not face death willingly until I had it again. Do you know what is in it?”
Marwen shook her head. “I have never seen it.”
Vijocka looked at her long and hard, and Marwen met her gaze.
“You do realize what would happen to you if you were to die before your tapestry were fulfilled?”
Marwen smoothed her skirt with her hands. “If I die without my tapestry, I know I must go to the land of the lost and labor in Perdoneg’s kingdom. Yes, I am afraid, but I am more afraid to run away.”
The dark woman leaned over and plucked a dead leaf from a stalk of leaflullen. Grondil’s hands on Vijocka’s arms, Marwen thought, strong and rough, steady as stone, and she thought then that she could utterly trust this Oldwife.
“Vijocka, on my way to the Oldest, the One Mother sent me a seeing. In it the dragon called me ‘daughter of Nimroth, heir to the wizard.’” The dead leaf in Vijocka’s hand crumbled to dust. “I think it might be me that the dragon seeks, for the wizard himself no longer dwells among mortals.”
Vijocka rubbed the leafdust in her hands, back and forth, again and again, until it was gone. She closed her eyes, held her hands to her face, and breathed deeply.
Finally she said, “Prince Camlach told me that he thought he had found the wizard’s heir. I remember well his words, his hope.”