Brightly Woven (13 page)

“What put this madness into that head of yours?” Owain asked. “Going alone, without any help, a mad wizard after you—you’ve lost it, lad.”

As if summoned, the rain began once again, and with it thunder that seemed to make the walls of the building quiver. Owain returned to his bed, and I sat back down in
front of the loom. I couldn’t clear my thoughts, and my throat knotted itself as I looked at the outline of North’s hunched shoulders.

The mirror on the far side of the room tumbled to the ground, sending a spray of glass onto the floor.

“Wretched thing,” Owain said, standing to clean up the mess. “An unlucky sign, that is.”

North remained exactly where he was. The feeling of disquiet that washed over me was as cold as the rain had been; its sting didn’t ease until I disassembled the loom.

Owain and I had just climbed into our respective bedding when North finally spoke. It was only two soft words, but it didn’t matter whom they were meant for.

“I’m sorry.”

I bit my lip, wondering what I could possibly say. I couldn’t even look at him.

Owain waved him off, turning over on the floor. “Go to sleep, lad.”

And wake up your old self
, I added to myself.
Please
.

“In a moment,” he said, though he finally sat down on his own bedding. “I’m not tired.”

Of course not. I twisted my blanket between my hands. He tried to hide it, telling me it was water or mead or some kind of ale, but I could always smell the honey and lavender on his clothes and breath. I realized I hadn’t smelled it for some time.

I wasn’t sure when I drifted off, but later that night I awoke
to a fantastic show of lights, burning beneath my heavy eyelids. Even after I opened my eyes, the vision persisted. All around me, a thousand threads of light wrapped around my body and fed into the ground. Red, blue, yellow, green…a pulsing rainbow that began at my heart and seemed to be sewn into every bit of my skin. It was a dream I hadn’t had since I was a very young girl.

It would have been frightening had there not been the heavy shadow hovering just at the edge and the sweet sense of calm he brought.

“North?” I asked.

A hand, finally free of its glove, came to rest on my forehead. It trailed gently down my face and softly over my eyes until they were once again closed, then over my nose and my parted lips.

“You’re dreaming, Syd,” he whispered next to my ear.

Of course I was.

“Sod it
all
!”

I dropped my washcloth on the floor, ducking my head back into the room. Owain was stumbling, half awake, to where North stood, letter in hand. I hadn’t seen Mrs. Pemberly bring it to him.

“What—?” I began.

“We’re under attack by what appears to be a wolf,” he read
aloud. “It howls all night. The children think it’s some kind of demon. The crops have been torn up, and not by the hands of an ordinary man. One child claimed that the wolf climbed into her window, and it was made of light.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means we’re leaving right now,” North said. “For Arcadia. It’s north of here, in the mountains. Two days of traveling, maybe more.”

“What in the world is in Arcadia?” I asked. It was no place I had ever heard of, but Owain and North continued their conversation without me.

“I’ll come with you,” Owain said. “You’ll need support if it’s as bad as it sounds.”

“No, if Syd and I are delayed for long, we won’t make the treaty deadline,” North said. “I think you should ride ahead to Provincia and try to get an audience with the Sorceress Imperial or even Oliver.”

“And tell them what? That you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed?” Owain said.

North snorted. “I doubt they’ll care about that. Tell them that I’m going after a rogue wizard.”

“Who?” I repeated. “Dorwan?”

“Who else?” North dragged a hand through his matted hair. “I knew he had been too quiet; I
knew
he would bait me—but not Arcadia, never Arcadia.”

“What’s in Arcadia?” I asked again.

“A lot of innocent kids,” he said.

I asked, “What if we don’t take the bait?”

North shook his head. “If you think for one moment that Dorwan wouldn’t hesitate to kill a child, then you’ve clearly overestimated his humanity. He’s not bound by anything—by wizard law, by the ways of the hedges. He does what amuses him, and we’ve become his latest game.”

“Why waste the days of travel?” I said. “If we don’t go to him, won’t he have to come to us?”

“I won’t let him hurt one of the kids,” he said. “If I don’t help them, no one will.”

Within minutes, Owain disappeared before I could even give him a proper good-bye. We twisted as far as we could from Mrs. Pemberly’s, but when the black cloak fell around us, I immediately knew something was wrong.

“You took us east!” I said, pulling out the map to make sure. “I said
north!”

“I took you
north!”
he snapped. The wizard stepped away from me, but the moment I held up the map, his anger deflated with a harsh breath.

“You took us east,” I said. “Twist us back and try again.”

“I told you,” he said, his hair hiding his face, “it’s not something I can do on a whim—you have to give me a moment!”

“Then we’ll walk,” I said. “It seems a more efficient method of travel than to rely on your complete and utter lack
of direction. How in the world did you make it all the way out of Cliffton?”

“I had a guide,” North said, storming past me. “Does that make you feel important?”

“No,” I said bitterly. “But it does make me feel useful.”

North bit the side of his thumb, slowing so I could catch up to him. I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, but pulled it back at the last moment. Something about him reminded me of Henry, and that made me wonder what my friend would say if he knew I cared about the wizard.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Arcadia means a great deal to me. Oliver and I spent a lot of time there while we were training with our magister. I thought it was the only safe place left in the world.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said, but he only looked away.

Many miles and muddy roads later, a grimace on North’s face and a new limp told me it was time to stop for the night.

“Lift up your pant leg,” I said, watching his features twist in pain as he sat.

“I’m fine.”

“You can hardly walk, and your cloaks are a mess,” I said. “I’ll bet that dragon did a number on you.”

North grunted, looking away. An ugly burn revealed itself inch by inch as he rolled up his pant leg. I took one look at the
angry, puckered red burn and shook my head. The bandage he had tied around it was loose and dirty.

“All I have is an elixir for the pain,” I said. “If we pass by a market, I’ll see if I can find what I need to help heal the burn.”

As North drank the remnants of an elixir I had made at Mrs. Pemberly’s, the look of relief on his face changed to one of surprise.

“You made this?” he asked, smelling the empty bottle. “It’s a wizard elixir, one of the strongest I’ve had. Where did you learn how to mix it?”

I traded
Proper Instruction for Young Wizards
for his ripped cloaks and sat down to mend.

“I haven’t seen one of these in years!” He thumbed through a few pages. “And you’re even reading it—great gods, why would you punish yourself like that?”

“I’m trying to learn, you know,” I mumbled. “You never tell me anything. I have to find the information out somehow.”

“Ask me a question about magic, then,” he said. “Any question.”

I didn’t even have to think about it. “Why did you choose me?”

“I believe I said a question about
magic
, not my sanity.”

“What do the colors on your cloaks mean? You have five of them, but Dorwan only had blue on his knife.”

“I could have chosen one color for my talisman, but I wanted to be able to use all magic, not one,” he said. “Dorwan stole that talisman from someone, by the way.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

North pulled his green cloak free and held it up. “Each color corresponds to a type of magic. It’s something the wizards invented for themselves, and it has little to do with the actual magic. The colors began as a courtesy in duels, so a wizard would know what world of pain he was about to visit. Now a wizard generally announces his specialty with the prevalence of any color.”

“So why do you have black as your outer cloak, then?” I asked. “I thought that color was used just for traveling?”

North smiled mysteriously, rolling over on the ground. “Black is my color.”

“Then why have all of the colors? Is that even allowed?”

“I use all of them equally,” he said. “And of course it’s allowed. Most just choose not to do it because it’s difficult to have to carry so many talismans. Besides, my father used all the colors. I guess it felt right to honor him like this.”

“So the…talismans,” I said. “Each can only be transformed into one kind of magic?”

“Right, it’s all about channeling the elements, changing the talisman into the one element each attracts. Magisters are the ones to choose the talisman for the apprentices, and depending on what element your talisman is best attuned to, that’s your specialty.”

“And the cloaks took to all magic?” I said. “That was lucky.”

North laughed. “Yeah, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled when
he handed me a piece of red wool on my fourteenth birthday, especially when he turned around and gave Oliver a sword. Oliver’s never let me live that one down, even after I left them.”

“Boys,” I said, shaking my head. “Were you fourteen when you finished training?”

“Yes,” he said. “Oliver went to Provincia to join the Guard, and I went anywhere but Provincia.”

I started with the top cloak, his color, and worked my way in. The black—the cloak that twisted all of the elements together and allowed us to travel—had seen the most trouble and was split almost entirely down the middle. Next, red, fire, sorely torn almost down the middle. Yellow, air and light, untouched save for a singe that even I could not fix. Blue, water, missing a corner. Finally, green, earth, five gashes from top to bottom.

How many times would I have to repeat the same process? I had been with him for only a few weeks and already my stitching crisscrossed every cloak. Sewing wasn’t the same as weaving, not even close. Weaving was the creation of something new, the coming together of a pattern or a scene that took on a life of its own. Mending wasn’t anything more than an insult to battered fabric. It was a lucky day, indeed, when I had to do only one. Five of them were enough to cramp my fingers and strain my eyes.

“Would it be possible,” I said, “to have one cloak able to channel all magic?”

North looked thoughtful. “I’ve read about it being done in the past, but I’ve never found a cloak with an equal amount of every color, and I’ve certainly never been in the position to commission one. But yes, I think it would be possible.”

The green cloak slipped from my fingers and floated to the ground. That was the solution, wasn’t it, to both our problems? A single cloak would provide him with all of his colors at once, rather than having to switch back and forth between the thin, ragged pieces of cloth. I could picture exactly how I would make it, with everything from woven dragons to shimmering grass and mountains. It would be sturdy and well made—to save his skin and my patience. As long as I kept track of how much thread I was using, it could work.