Blood and Ivory-A Tapestry Read online

  Behind it was another and another. Many disintegrated at a touch, their woof of old cloth hanging in rotten tufts on the rougher warp threads. Cords snapped. Faces distorted in silent shrieks and slumped down in a cloud of dust. As each fell, the Highlord sobbed out its name.

  Ganth huddled beneath this storm of destruction, too weak to escape. His heart fought in his chest. Fragments of burial cloth clung to the cold sweat on his face. He gagged, tasting, breathing the dead.

  Through the billowing dust, he saw Rawneth standing by the bier. She was softly clapping her hands in delight.

  "Go down, go down, old house," she crooned. "Fall to ruin—go!—so that others may rise."

  Behind her stood the one who had come with her in the guise of servant and spy. She couldn't see his face, but Ganth did. It was twitching from one cast of features to another, over and over, with each name that Gerraint cried, with each falling banner. Cruel as the portraits often were, the caricatures mirrored on that shifting face were obscene in their gleeful malice. What in Perimal's name had Rawneth brought into the heart of the Knorth? Did she even know herself? A creature out of legend, out of childhood nightmare, one of Gerridon's fallen, a darkling changer . . .

  "Gran!" Ganth cried, and hid his face from it in the crook of his arm, "Gran, help!"

  For a moment, he saw her tiny form sitting hunched on her bed, head in hands, supported by Aerulan. She seemed to hear, tried to rise, but fell back. "Oh, my strength is spent! I am too old. Child, fight him! Feel your anger. Draw power from it, as I do!"

  But his heart was clawing at his chest like a trapped animal and he . . . couldn't . . . breathe . . .

  Harsh panting echoed his own. Gerraint stood motionless in front of him, gripping the banner that hung over Ganth's head. The changer had raised his own hands and was cowering behind them in mock terror. Ganth knew suddenly beneath which tapestry he had taken shelter.

  Gerraint braced himself and jerked downward. There was a tearing sound. Rawneth stared. So did the changer, with lowered hands and a blank countenance probably as close to his own as he still possessed. The banner fell, folding on top of Ganth as if bending over him. A terrible face rushed toward his. Gerraint had wrenched down those concealing fingers, tearing them clean out of the tapestry. Beneath were empty sockets streaming with blood: she had clawed out her own eyes.

  Power and madness . . .

  Ganth tried to thrust the banner away, but it clung, its threads wrapped tightly around him. The stench of moldering cloth half-choked him. He could feel the weight and dying writhe of the body that they had clothed—Trinity, dead how many centuries?

  Madness and . . .

  "Let me not see, "keened a threadbare voice in his ear, in his mind. "Let me not see. Oh, Jamethiel!"

  Ganth gasped for air, struggling to free himself. His thoughts swirled like birds flung up into a storm-torn sky, the dark earth reeling under their wings. Death was nothing, or should be. The pyre freed the soul from its cage of flesh. To be trapped, while even a bone remained unburnt . . . horrible, horrible.

  But what of blood? Sweet Trinity, how many here had died violent deaths and still carried the stains of their passing on their banners, long after they themselves were nothing but ashes on the wind? This lady whose name he didn't even know . . .

  "Oh, Dream-weaver! Why did you do it?"

  . . . how long had she hung here in agony and mute despair?

  His own mother, Telarien, had bled to death in childbirth. If he were to look into her eyes now . . .

  "No." Ganth lurched to his feet, still trapped and blind in the other's death throes, her memories like bleeding wounds in his mind.

  " 'Then went my lord Gerridon to his sister and consort, Jamethiel Dream- Weaver, and said, 'Dance out the souls of the faithful, that darkness may enter in. And she danced . . . ' Oh, sister-kin, let me not see! But I have seen. "

  Ganth staggered into someone—Gerraint, he thought—but his own terror had already broken the Highlord's grip on his mind, and if he had hurt his father, he neither knew nor, for the moment, cared.

  Then he fetched up against something else hard enough to double over it. Finally, he managed to claw the rotten shroud away from his face. He was leaning over the catafalque, over his brother's corpse. Greshan's lips parted as if to speak. What moved them, however, was only the white seethe of maggots that bred in his mouth.

  "NO!"

  Ganth shoved his brother away. The corpse fell off the other side of the bier, trailing flies, and hit the floor with a meaty thud. The pall, dislodged, slid down over him. From where he sprawled by the northern wall, Gerraint cried out in horror. Turning, Ganth tripped over the banner that had slid down to entangle his feet, and fell hard on something that knocked the breath out of him.

  Looking up, dazed, he saw Rawneth laughing down at him: "Little man, I could watch you all night."

  "Oh, sh-shutup!"

  Someone must have opened the door, Ganth thought as he groped for the thing that had nearly broken his ribs. Certainly, there was a powerful draft, almost a wind, whipping his hair into his eyes. Thunder rumbled, muffled to a tremor in the stones. Something above fell with a clatter. Banners rustled uneasily as air rushed down the spiral stairs at each corner of the lower hall. Maybe the keep's roof had blown off. Maybe the old walls would tumble in on them all. Best, perhaps, if they did.

  "A dying, failed house" his father had said, and what had Rawneth chanted? "Fall to ruin . . . go!"

  Something jerked at Ganth's foot. He looked down to see threads wrapped around his ankle like fingers, clutching. The wind was tugging at the tapestry. That was all. Then a face lifted out of the tangle of flying cords, eyes ragged bleeding holes, blanched lips mouthing words he tried not to hear:

  "My soul and honor I ransomed with my eyes. I have seen, I have seen, but oh, kinsman, let me not fall!"

  His hand closed on Kin-Slayer's hilt. He wrenched free the blade and hacked at that terrible face, at those desperate, clutching fingers. "Filthy Shanir, let go of me!"

  She . . . it . . . the banner tumbled away, driven by the wind toward the guttering torches and between them, through a stone wall that was no longer there.

  A vast space opened up beyond, and the wind poured through into it as if into a gaping mouth, fringed with unraveling banners. Ganth stared. This was hardly what he had meant when he had wished that the keep would fall in on them all. Instead, it seemed to have opened outward—into what? The flaring torches dazzled his eyes. He regained his feet, holding Kin-Slayer.

  "Did you expect this?" he demanded of Rawneth.

  She shook her head, staring. "No. Oh, no."

  The void drew him. He moved toward it, shielding his eyes from the torchlight. The wind faltered, then turned, sluggishly, to breathe in his face: Haaahhh . . . It stank of old, old death, of ancient sickness and despair. Aaaahhh . . . a slow, deep inhalation, as of a sleeping monster, and the banners clung, shivering, to the keep walls. Haaahhh . . .

  At first, it was like looking into deep, black water, a darkness thick enough to move with its own slow respiration. Then Ganth began to make out a floor, dark marble shot with glowing veins of green that seemed, faintly, to pulse. It stretched far, far back to a wall of still, white faces. Like the chamber in which he stood, the monstrous hall beyond was lined with death banners, but thousands upon thousands of them, a mighty host of the dead, watching.

  Under their eyes, two figures revolved around each other, the one in black only visible when it eclipsed the one clad in white. They appeared to be . . . dancing.

  Ganth edged closer to the wall that wasn't there, drawn by that second figure. He was almost sure that it was a woman.

  Let me not see . . .

  Something brushed against his face. Jumping back, startled, he saw what he had previously been looking straight through: the merest wraith of a banner stretched across the void's mouth. Like flies caught in a long abandoned web, old blood held tufts of rotting cloth to frayed threads.
The whole shivered and seemed to gather itself. For a moment, Ganth looked into the ghost of a face known to him only from legend.

  "G-glendar?" he stammered.

  Question answered question, in a wisp of breath: "Have you seen?" The specter shuddered. "I have seen. " And it fell to dust.

  "Rise up, High lord of the Kencyrath," the Arrin-ken had said to Gerridon's younger brother on that terrible night—Glendar, whom his family had counted as worthless, who had been taught to think of himself as little better. "Your brother has forfeited all. Flee, man, flee, and we will follow." And so he fled into the new world. Barriers he raised, and his people consecrated them . . .

  But those people were gone, their banners torn down by a grief-mad father, and the way that they had guarded in life, in death, lay open. Huddled against the northern wall, Gerraint hid his face in his hands and wept at what he had done.

  The changer laughed. "Ah, Glendar. Who will remember you now, you who could have lived forever? Knorth, you should rejoice. See? There in the shadows walks your own true lord and master. The Arrin-ken can't change that, not in three millennia, not in a thousand."

  As Rawneth turned on him, his face immediately reassumed the aspect it had worn in the courtyard, the only one, apparently, that she knew. She slapped him, hard. "My spy. My creature. Who are you to say such things?"

  The blow twisted his smile, and his eyes glittered before he cast them down in mock abasement. "Why, mistress, how could I be your . . . creature and not know your mind? Have I said anything that you have not already considered? Then consider this also: to whom do you owe loyalty? Where does your honor lie?"

  Ganth backed away, toward his father. He felt the other's words twist like a knife in his soul. What if Glendar and all who had followed him were the truly fallen, for having abandoned their rightful lord? Where lay honor then? Perhaps the emptiness he had always felt came from living a lie.

  The darkling eyed him askance. Little man. Hollow-heart. My master could make you whole.

  Rawneth drew herself up. "Change is coming, and we Kencyr must change or perish. My honor follows my interest. What can this shadow lord do for me?"

  "Ask, and see."

  She laughed, but behind the mask her black eyes shifted to the beckoning darkness and she bit her lip. She would kill the man who played her for a fool, but if this offer was real . . . She approached the breach, swaying willow-supple. Her voice, mock coy at first, sharpened with an ambition as keen as hunger, as strong as madness:

  "Master, master, will you grant me my heart's desire? Will you raise the dead to love me? Will you give me an heir to power?"

  A long pause. The darkness breathed in . . . and out, in . . . and out. Ganth swayed, dizzy, unconsciously trying to match that vast respiration. Then, out of the shadows, a voice spoke. It was slow, deep, and distorted as if heard under water. Ganth couldn't distinguish the words, but Rawneth listened, rigid, her mouth partly open.

  "Yes," she breathed. "Oh, yes!"

  Gerraint made an inarticulate sound and struggled to rise. Ganth put a hand on his father's shoulder to restrain him. They both stared at Greshan as he stood in dusty black beside his bier, smiling.

  Rawneth gave a crack of laughter edged with hysteria. To stifle it, she jammed her knuckles into her mouth and bit them until they bled. Then she glided toward the man whom she had chosen as her mate. Her hair unbraided by itself as she went and floated up as if she were descending into deep water. They began to circle each other, two figures of darkness, hands down at first, then weaving in the kantirs of the Senetha, almost but not quite touching. Skin tingled with the nearness. Breath wove with breath on flushed lips. Ambition was there, but also thwarted lust sharper than famine, so that even Ganth ached with it where he stood, watching.

  "I will have my will," murmured the Randir, "now and forever. It has been promised to me." And she gave Greshan her bloody hand to kiss.

  Gerraint tried again to rise. Again, Ganth pressed him down, not taking his eyes off the two by the bier.

  Greshan looked at him askance and raised an eyebrow. What, will you allow your brother to be blood-bound by your mortal foe? He gripped Rawneth's hand so that her bones ground together. She shuddered in luxurious pain.

  "Here?" he said, with a glance at the bier.

  "No. I have a more . . . fitting place in mind. Come with me, my love, my consort. Come to Kinzi's precious Moon Garden, and let her watch."

  "Go on ahead, my lover, my mate. I will join you there."

  "Soon, then."

  They kissed as if they would devour each other, and parted.

  "Remember your word, Highlord," she said over her shoulder, "if that still counts. My son will be your true heir." With that, she departed in a swirl of her starry skirt.

  Gerraint beat his fist against the floor. The emerald signet cracked stone. "Why didn't you stop them?" he cried at Ganth. "He is confused, seduced by that . . . that . . . but you—you were always weak and jealous. Always! And so you stood aside. Greshan, my son . . . "

  "He isn't G-greshan," said Ganth. "Forget the face. Look at the clothes."

  The changer grinned, his features shifting almost at random. He pulled up his hood to over-shadow them.

  "So I fooled you too, old man, but not you, boy. And you did nothing. You must truly hate that woman. Ah, but she is clever. I told my master that if I brought her here, now, she would find her way to him. Darkness seeks its own level."

  "Then seek yours." Ganth stood between the changer and his father. "In the shadows or in the garden, I don't care. Just g-go—"

  The changer eyed the sword in his hand. "That blade and I will meet someday, but not tonight. As for going . . . " He craned around Ganth to address Gerraint. "Do you really want that, old man, with our business unfinished?" He stepped back and flipped aside a corner of the pall. The flies that had gathered, thwarted, on the cloth, rose in a swarm and settled again on Greshan's sprawling corpse. "He isn't getting any fresher, you know."

  "Oh, for Trinity's s-sake," said Ganth. "If you won't call a priest, father, I will. Here. I'll s-start the damned pyre myself."

  Stepping to the wall, he took down one of the torches. Before he could turn, however, something smashed into the back of his head. Stunned and bleeding on the floor, he looked up to see Gerraint standing over him with a fragment of paving stone in his hand.

  "F-father!"

  "Greshan is my son. I have no other." He turned, panting, to the changer. "I've come this far, broken oaths and betrayed my house—all for its own sake, I swear! Do you swear your lord can do this thing?"

  "Gerridon is your lord too, old man, whatever the Arrin-ken say. Ask, and see."

  Gerraint made a choking sound, then lurched around to face that breach into eternal night.

  "Master, master!" he cried. "Will you grant me my heart's desire? Will you restore my son to me?"

  Ganth struggled up on an elbow. His head was splitting and his vision blurred, or perhaps the latter came from trying to focus on that vast, shadowy hall beyond the keep's chamber. The void breathed in . . . and out, in . . . and out. Then it spoke, in the distorted rumble of a voice in an empty room, buried fathoms deep.

  Ganth was vaguely aware of the dark figure who had come almost to the threshold. Like his servant, he was cowled and muffled, but somehow gave the impression of a leanness bordering on famine. That, Ganth dimly supposed, was Gerridon, the Master of Knorth, who had betrayed all for this meager, immortal life. So many death banners, rank on rank . . . had he devoured all his followers, to come to this? His hall, Perimal Darkling itself, surrounded him like the belly of a beast that has swallowed everything, even itself, and still hungers for more.

  But it was not at Gerridon that Ganth looked. Behind him, in the middle of that cold hall, Jamethiel Dream-Weaver danced. A slim, graceful figure in white with flowing black hair, she seemed untouched by shadow or age, innocent beyond evil, beautiful enough to stop the heart.

  Wraiths danced with her
, tattered souls shivering in the threads of their death banners, torn loose from the keep and swept in this maw of darkness. There was Glendar, hardly a wisp. With a sigh, he melted into his sister's white arms and was gone. One by one, the others followed, their empty threads tumbling to the cold, dark floor. Only a ragged specter with bloody eyes remained. She and the Dream-Weaver circled each other, one dance mirroring the other in water-flowing kantirs, drawing ever closer.

  " . . . sisterkin . . . "

  One, or both, breathed that word, and they came together. Jamethiel stroked the other's wild hair, murmuring words Ganth could not hear, as hard as he tried. Then, very gently, she kissed those ruined eyes. With a shudder, the gaunt ghost folded into the Dream-Weaver's embrace and gave up her tortured soul, lip to lip.