Carol Berg - THE SOUL WEAVER

The tangled, twiggy shrubbery snagged my clothes as I fought to get to her.

“Mother? Are you all right?”

But she wasn’t. Her garments were soaked with blood. Wide-eyed, she touched her breast where the knife hilt protruded, and her hand came away covered in blood. I caught her before she fell.

I had no healing skills, and only the small amount of power that lay unbidden in the hands of every Dar’Nethi. That would never be enough. Only one way to get her the help she needed. Mustering every dram of power and will I could scrape together, I held my back against the door in my mind and called out to the Prince with sorcery. Father, come. Hurry…

Such anger… withering fury… cold death did I find when I touched his thoughts. Only in its absence did I even begin to realize the grace my true father had brought to my healing.

She’s here in the alder grove beyond the ruined root cellar… wounded… That was all I could get out before the storm of his wrath engulfed me. I broke off the contact, panting and sweating as if I’d run half a day in the desert. No use to tell him I hadn’t done what he thought, or even that my mother would die unless he came instantly to care for her. He would come. And I had to be gone when he did so.

I peered through the thick limbs, strained my ears to hear a footstep… a cough… a breath… to tell me that the villain who’d done this was within reach of my justice. The three odd creatures from my dreams were still chuckling, hidden behind their oak tree. Several pairs of boots pounded the leafy ground, but the three men were running toward me, not away. Paulo. Radele. The Prince. Where had the assassin gone?

I laid my mother in the damp leaves beside the lilacs. She fought for breath, and her hands grew cold though I chafed them unceasingly. Her eyes clouded. What could I say to her? I needed her to know… “Hold on. Trust me.” I couldn’t think of anything else. She wouldn’t want to hear what I was going to do to the person who had hurt her.

And so I left her, trying to ignore the rumbling in my head that felt like an approaching earthquake, and I hurried to where the dwarf and his companions awaited me. “I must go away from here now.”

“To what awayness would you go, great Master?”

“Outside the walls of this parkland, to the outer gate. Can you show me the way out?”

“Nicely can we do that. But not more? Not into the treeland or the grassy abiding? Not to the place of many walls?”

I had no idea what they meant. “No. Just show me how to get over the walls and back to the main gate without being seen” - the shouts were getting very close - “and it has to be now.”

“Now!” said the dwarf.

“Now!” echoed the brown man and the runner. The two grabbed my arms again and gave a tug. As the thought occurred to me that they were not planning to lead me down any ordinary path, I fell off the edge of the world for the span of two breaths and stepped back onto it right next to the gates of Windham.

The only ill effect of the strange transport was a distinctly queasy feeling. My nausea wasn’t helped in the least by the bloody knife in my hand. My mother’s knife. Stupid to pull it out of her. I dropped it hastily. My hands were sticky, and I stank of blood. Thank all gods that my father was a Healer.

“Unsettles the belly,” said the dwarf, grinning. He patted his own substantial paunch and then did the same to mine.

“That’s a truth,” I said, “but I’ve no sword sticking through my gut, either, and that would be more unsettling yet.” I gave the three a proper bow, and thought that perhaps when I had finished the next step of my escape plan, we might try their magic again. “I thank you, Sir - ?”

“Vroon?” said the dwarf, hesitantly.

“I thank you, Sir Vroon. Well done.”

The dwarf puffed out his chest and grinned hugely. “A name! Do you hear it? The great Master has given me a name! My debt is unstoppable, sir. My honor is to serve you always until the Unbounded is no more, and the Bounded has grown ancient in its days.”

There simply wasn’t time to decipher his odd speech. My father’s rage rent the night. If I just had enough power left to do what I needed. A simple thing…

I did. After a long few moments, Jasyr raced through the gates and stopped right in front of me, quivering and tossing his head, just as he did when I galloped away from my dreams. The only problem was that another horse followed right on his tail. And that horse had a rider.

“I knew it, you bloody bastard. I’ll kill you for this. How could you do it?”

He was off Molly and on top of me before I could blink, and I was afraid I might have to break both his arms to keep him from doing what he said. His eyes were blazing, and he obviously didn’t care in the least what I did to him, unless it was kill him before he’d done the same to me.

“I didn’t do it,” I gasped, getting him pinned and making sure I didn’t leave him a finger’s leeway before I’d convinced him. “Any of it. I swear.”

“She’s dead. You killed her, you black-hearted devil.”

“She won’t die. He’ll save her. If it’s possible, he’ll do it. I don’t have the skill for healing, so I called him to come. Would I have called him if I wanted her to die? I don’t. Of course, I don’t.”

“I don’t believe you. Her blood is all over you.”

Vroon and his friends grabbed Paulo and yanked him out from under me, and he didn’t even notice, any more than he noticed the blood dripping from his nose into the dirt or the fact that his shirt was half torn off him. He never took his eyes from my face.

“Why should you believe me?” I said. “I wouldn’t either, if I were you. So believe what you want; it doesn’t change the truth.”

“I don’t want to believe it. I thought I knew you.”

“Then listen to what I say. I’ll swear on anything you want that I didn’t hurt my mother. I could never do that.”

“You’ll swear, but it don’t mean dung on my boots when you don’t have a lick of truth in you.” He kicked the bloody knife toward me. “Pick it up and kill me, too. It’s the only way you’ll get away with it.”

“Go back and help them. Tell my mother what I’ve said. I’ve got to get away or I’ll be dead, too. Then we’ll never know who really did it, or what’s the truth of any of this business. Look who’s holding you. They showed up tonight and helped me get away. Do you remember what I told you about my dreams?”

He had finally settled down enough to take notice of the three odd-looking fellows who had his arms pinned behind him and were folding his legs underneath him so he couldn’t get off his knees. The sight of the thin black arms, the thick brown ones, and the one-eyed face scowling straight at him, no taller than his own face, surprised him just enough to make him listen. “Bloody Jerrat!”

“I’ve got to go find out what’s going on, Paulo. It’s all connected: the dreams, these disappearances in Leire, the shepherd’s story about his son disappearing… I’ll wager these very same events the Prince is set to kill me for are part of it, too. I didn’t do those things he says, and I didn’t hurt my mother. If you end up believing I did any of it, you can break my neck at your pleasure. Now, go away.”

“I won’t.”

“Suit yourself, then. Stay here and rot.” I mounted Jasyr and motioned to the three to let him go.

He strode across the trampled grass to where his Molly waited for him. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to erase the image of a skinny, freckled boy who twisted painfully with every step. Another vision. A flush of shame heated my skin as jeers of “donkey,” “thief’s brat,” and “cripple” echoed through a dusty street I had never walked. With every mental discipline I knew, I willed the vision away. I had no time for madness.