The Spellcoats (22 page)

The mage turned his crooked face toward the mill and saw my rugcoat. I saw his face change with fear. He leaned out across the River, staring, as if he were trying to read it. As he was a mage, perhaps he
was
reading, with his eyes on two invisible horns, like a snail. I wanted to snatch the coat away, but I dared not let him see me. I stood helpless. Robin, who is no fool, even ill, lay quietly and stared at me as anxiously as I stared across the River. And at last the mage turned away downstream, and Zwitt went back toward Shelling. I took my rugcoat and hid it under Robin's bed, until I could finish reading it elsewhere.

I told Robin. I would like to weave a curse on Zwitt because of the panic and terror Robin has been in. She said we must get away at once. She got up and fell on the floor. I yelled for Duck, and luckily Hern came, too, and we got her back to bed. We are all very frightened. We know we should tell the King that the One says we must leave, but we are afraid Robin will die if we do. And as Duck pointed out, Robin's soul will be caught by Kankredin's net, which is just as bad as if he had caught Gull. We do not know what to do. Duck and Hern have kept watch these last three days, but the mage has not come back. We think he has gone to Kankredin. Hern says this gives us seven days or so. In that time I
must
cure Robin. I have inklings already.

As soon as Robin was settled, I set up new warps in my loom. This was because of the understanding that came to me when the mage was afraid of my weaving. When mages weave, what they weave is so. That is why his gown shows
hidden death
. That death, to whomsoever it was sent,
is
the very words that boast of it. It is the same with Kankredin's gown. The River is bound, Gull's soul endangered, and the soulnet set up by Kankredin weaving those words.

My weaving is a performing, too. I am sure of it. When I compare my close and intricate weaving with that of the mages, so loose, large, and crude, I know I am a greater weaver than they. Setting up my threads, I felt very vengeful and vainglorious. I meant to curse Zwitt, to weave that our King became serious and courageous, and then to say that Kankredin and his net crumbled into the sea. That is why I put in my wish that I could turn the Shelling people's feet the wrong way. I am quite relieved to look across the River and see that their toes still point to the front. I know why. I am like Hern. I need understanding. When I have woven my understanding, then Kankredin will have cause to fear.

This is what I must understand. Why is Gull's soul of such special value? Why is Robin so ill? And what is the One? These questions are all bound to lesser ones, such as what have Hern, Duck, and I sworn to the Undying that we will do? The answers all lie in my first rugcoat, and they are coming to me as I weave.

Robin seems calmer this evening. Before I read my rugcoat, I would have put her panic over the mage down to illness. She has not seen Kankredin. We have not told her much. But now I am sure Robin knows many things the rest of us do not. It is her birthright, as mine is weaving.

I can weave this, yet I get angry when Uncle Kestrel tells me that we gave offense in Shelling! It is not very logical. I read my rugcoat, and I remember, and I know that we all, even Gull, who is the most modest of us, felt and behaved as if we were special people. I think we are now. But the fact is I had no grounds to think it then. I had no business to set myself up. I am ashamed. I could almost apologize—no, not to Zwitt or Aunt Zara.

Here I stopped to light the lamp. Robin seemed asleep, with her yellow candle face turned to the wall. I shut the door to the River and read my first coat again. I do not blame myself about the One now. I see him roosting cunningly in his fire and contriving that I should appear before Kankredin in Robin's skirt, so that Kankredin thought I was of no account as a weaver. I think he arranged I should betray him to our King, too, and that we should be summoned to Kars Adon, though what his purpose was, I still have no idea. If I go back, I can even think that the One used Kankredin's power over Gull for his own end, to bring us to the Rivermouth. And I am certain that Tanamil delayed us until we would arrive as the floods went down.

Just beyond that place, when we first saw the tides, I looked carefully at my account of the Heathen girl on the roof. I noticed that Robin had not been herself even then. I tell hardly a tenth of what we all said—if I put in all Duck and I say, my rugcoat would be too large for a giant—but Robin says barely a tenth of that. But about that Heathen girl—I had left out what she was wearing. I jumped up to ask Hern.

The latch clicked and Jay came in. “My!” he said. “That's a beauty of a coat, lass. Who's the lucky man?”

I said I had made it to take my mind off Robin. True.

Jay glanced at the bed and saw Robin was asleep. He put his face down by the lamp and whispered, “When do you think she'll be well?” He had a significant twist to his face, but I had no idea why. I tried to keep my eyes off the jumping stump of his arm and did not answer. Then Jay leaned closer still and said, “When will she be well enough to listen to advances from an honest man with one arm? I think she likes me enough, and I want to be sure of her before it's too late. Understand?”

I could not think how to tell him what Robin thought of him. “Not really,” I said, and looked at the floor because my face was so hot.

“The King,” Jay whispered. “The King, little lass! The thought is shaping in his head that he has no wife, and he needs the power of the One. Has he never talked to you? Hasn't he mentioned that he needs an heir?”

“Did he mean he wanted to marry Robin?” I said. “It never entered my head!”

“Lucky for me you didn't understand him,” Jay said. He was all merry with relief. “Speak to your sister for me—quickly, soon. Tell her I can't knowingly go against the King, so it's up to her to marry me before the King declares himself. You say that. Tell her she's the sweetest girl I know.”

Then he went. I sat and stared at Robin's yellow face. She bounced up out of her pillow as soon as the door had shut.

“What shall we do about
this
?” I said.

“Jay wants the One,” Robin said, “just like the King. Oh, I wish I was dead!” It was the first time she had said that, but I know she meant it. She plunged down on her bed, crying, and rolled about wretchedly, tipping the cats off.

“No, stop,” I said to her. “I'm thinking of something. I almost have already.” I dashed off to find Hern, as I had meant to before Jay came.

Robin called tearfully after me, “Tanaqui, I'm sorry. All I seem to do is complain at you. You're so patient.”

Patient! If Robin only knew. “I've nearly hit you a thousand times,” I called back, and went flying out into the blue evening.

Hern was sitting moodily against a tree. Beyond him the King's campfires sent merry streaks down into the water of the millpond. I could hear people singing. “Hern,” I said, “when Gull and Father went to war, what did you swear to the Undying?”

“I said I'd free the land from Heathens,” Hern said sourly. “Ha-ha! Go away.”

“Oh,” I said. I could not see what the One could make of this oath. Mine was easier. I had asked to be sent to war as a boy, and Ked had indeed taken me for a boy because I was wearing Hern's clothes. “Another thing,” I said to Hern. “That Heathen girl on the roof who told us about the tides—what was she wearing?”

Hern scowled. “A sort of blue rugcoat—No. She couldn't have been. Heathens don't wear rugcoats. I don't know.”

That was it. “Tanamil wore one,” I said.

“Kars Adon would probably say he'd gone native,” Hern said gloomily, showing where his thoughts were. There has been no news of Kars Adon since the broken bridge. “Go away.”

I went away and looked at my rugcoat under the lamp. When Robin asked what I was doing, I said I was sewing it up and I would go to bed soon.

“I looked at it,” said Robin. “It's beautiful. But why do you use that strange word for river? I keep thinking you're talking about the One.”

It was like a great light cast. “Robin,” I said, “I knew you'd help me!” She meant Tanamil's sign for the River. It is not unlike the sign for
brother
. I had often noticed that. Now I plunged outside for a handful of rushes from the millrace and wove them together furiously under the lamp. I wove the two signs of my own name:
Tan—aqui
. I weave it here to show. See: together,
rushes
; apart,
younger—sister
. Then I took more rushes and wove again:
Adon, Amil, Oreth
, the One's secret names.
Adon
is as much as to say
Lord
, the difference of a thread.
Oreth
I do not see so well. It is a sign for weaving, or knotting, but not the usual one. But
Amil
is
River
, all but a thread. I took all the rushes undone except that name and the front of my name and held them together in front of me.

So now I know. I have been weaving it until late at night because Robin is still too upset to sleep. And I still cannot believe that we are wrong and everyone else is right and the One is indeed the River. But I know what I must do. I must find Duck. He has the Lady inside his shirt.

3

Duck was nowhere. I took the lamp and went upstairs to bed in the end. And the first thing I saw was the Young One, thrown out of my bed on the floor. I rushed to pick him up. He is so worn and old that I was afraid Duck had damaged him. Duck had thrown him out. He was in my bed asleep. He says he prefers it to sleeping in a tent. I held the Young One under the lamp and made sure he was not broken. The light made the smile move on his worn clay face. Then I shook Duck.

“I'm not asleep,” said Duck. He was in his maddening mood. “The King told me about needing an heir, too.”

“Then why didn't you come down when I shouted for you?” I said. “I want to know what you swore to the Undying.”

“Do you?” he said. I told you he was maddening.

“And I want Mother,” I said.

Duck had thought he was the only one who understood. He was annoyed. “You can't have her,” he said, and sat up against the wall with his arms wrapped round himself.

“She's my mother, too,” I said. “I wouldn't ask if I didn't need her.”

“You're not having her,” he said. “I found out before you did, and she's mine.”

I was too angry to argue anymore. “You selfish little beast!” I shouted, and jumped on top of him. We wrestled and struggled. “I need to talk to Mother!” I shouted. Duck at the same time screamed that the Lady was his and I was stealing her. Half the boards came off the trestles of the bed. We crashed to the floor. I heard Robin call out weakly from downstairs, and the door latch rattle as Hern came in to find out what the noise was. I had my hand on the Lady by then. Duck had my hair in both hands and was shaking my head about.