“Yes, he is dead,” said Tanamil. “No one can work with souls who is alive. All the mages pass through death. Then they clothe themselves in their spellgowns, which are their acts of magery and their new bodies both together.”
I had wondered why hidden death had worn his gown trailing beneath his horrible rugcoat. I sat at my loom, shaking, in the cold half dark. Two good thoughts came out of my terror. The first is that I, too, have passed through death, and I am more their equal accordingly. The other thought caused me to catch one of Robin’s girls and send her down to Hern, to tell him that the way to disable a mage was to cut him out of his gown. Hern sent back to thank me. He sounded almost respectful.
If Kankredin had sent the wave on again at once, he would have destroyed us. Tanamil was climbing down to mend the nets, and I had then woven only as far as my talk with Kars Adon in his camp. I had to stop for the night then. But I could feel that Kankredin was—not uncertain; he still thinks he will win—made cautious. Something had opposed him when he least expected it. I think the nets stopped him from seeing who it was. Duck says they are meant to. So he decided to wait until we puny living creatures were exposed in our folly by day. He can work by dark, but he knows, by the same token, that we also appear mysterious and large in the night. See the way I am beginning to think like a witch! So the wave stood in the lake until dawn, and our army slept by relays on the ledges.
Robin hardly sleeps at all. She has the girls, women, and small children all organized. Some run messages. Some carry away the wounded, and others nurse them. Others again are made into an army for a last defense.
“No,” Jay wants me to say. “Not the last defense. The last but one. I’m your last defense.”
It rather pleases me that the Heathen girls do not make the best soldiers. You would expect them to. The Heathen men show a toughness and courage that Jay often admires. But none of the Heathen girls is strong, and they are scared of being mannish. It is our own tough village ladies who are the army. Robin has sent Aunt Zara down to the next ledge today, armed with a spindle and a gutting knife. Aunt Zara is a match for any mage. She was always half a witch. That is why she hates me so.
And now I come at last to the battle, which has raged below me as I weave for two days now—as I weave and weave and weave. I dream of weaving when I sleep. But no one has slept much since the dawn when Kankredin moved the wave in against us.
Jay tells me that it came on slowly, observing. Kankredin may not have seen the great net hung in the boiling spray at the foot of the falls. Or perhaps he despised it, not knowing it was the work of the Undying. I could hear from here the repeated boom, boom, boom, as the wave reared and smashed and reared again. Duck came panting over the turf to tell me Kankredin had realized the net’s purpose too late. The net broke under the wave, and the wave shattered with it. I could hear the cheering as the mages were swept floundering back into the lake. From there a good half of their captured water escaped, they say, and the River is running again as a trickle. They cannot now come against us as water. But they have amassed the rest of the wave and they use it now as a ladder to rear their onslaught up the falls.
Since midday yesterday they have been coming—as fire, as wolves, as scaly creatures with snapping mouths, and all manner of horrible things. Each mage can make himself seem several of these shapes at once, so men often strike at the false shape and leave the mage unharmed. The worst of their power is that they can come straight up the middle of the falls, where it is hard to reach them. Hern has hung ropes across to help his fighters come at them. And as each fresh batch of nightmare creatures scrambles up, men shout, “Only mortal men!” and they hack at them without fear for their souls. We have lost many men drowned.
When the mages come to the nets, they are forced to appear in their own shapes. They fear this and slash at the nets to break them. Duck and Tanamil sit, with their minds dwelling on every knot in the rushes, holding them together as long as they can. And while the mages attack the nets, Hern’s army attacks them, yelling, “Cut his coat off!”
The first day we lost, besides the great net, four small ones. Hern and his people were driven to the fifth ledge. Today is worse. They are up on the ledge but one below me now. The women have gone into battle. The yelling is deadly. Uncle Kestrel is hovering on the edge of the turf, trying to watch. He is fond of Aunt Zara, the old fool. Poor Uncle Kestrel was brought up here, shaking all over, yesterday evening.
“Those mages are too many for me,” he said. “I had enough of them last winter. I’ll stay here and be your last guard, Sweetrush, with Jay here.” I have made him stay in front of me, with the sun at his back. I do not want to confuse his shadow with my grandfather’s again.
Robin has just gone down into the fight, taking her nurses with her. Tanamil is waiting by the smoking spring to pipe me to the One. We have agreed I must sew the coat by the Riverbed. Tanamil says there will be time. Time is slow there. I have put needles and thread in my rugcoat and gone on weaving. I have not finished. I have not used my bobbin of strange thread yet. I look out, and all I can see is giddy blue landscape far below. But the sound of the fighting is terrible, and so near.
Aunt Zara has been led back up here, laughing like a madwoman. She has cut the coat off a mage. I knew she would be a match for them. She is so excited and horrified and pleased that she has spoken to me for the first time for six months.
“Right in the midst of him with the gutting knife!” she shouts. “I waited and I aimed, and I got him, right in his midst! Cut the coat off him like apple peel! And, do you know, he was rotten inside. Black and rotten! Think of that, Tanaqui!”
“Aunt Zara, I think you’re marvelous,” I said. I do. I could kiss her, though I know I shall hate her again tomorrow.
The shadow of the One fell across my loom as I wove this. It is not so much a shadow as a shape of greenish light, with that bent head and nose I know so well. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tanamil kneel and bend his head to the ground. That would have shown me who it was, even if Duck had not climbed just then over the edge of the turf. What Duck can see I have no idea, but he is shading his eyes as if against a strong light, and he looks as if he might have passed through death, like a mage.
While Duck stares, my grandfather has put a vision in my head. “Weave this, Granddaughter,” he seems to say, “and use the thread I gave you. It was Cenblith’s.”
I saw the shadow of the One, Adon Amil, Orethan the Unbound, rise up in his steamy cave, and rise through the earth, through rock and through clouds, until he stood like a mountain, towering above us. Like this, he took the edge of the turf beside me and pulled it, as I would pull a rugcoat up round my shoulders, and he clothed himself in this and in the land that lay below. And as crumbs fall from a coat as you move it, the falls, the lake, and the green valleys beyond were spilled downward and tipped away toward the sea. With the land rolling and ruined, Kankredin and his mages were tipped, too, helplessly, until the grinding
of the pulled earth grated them to powder, scattered them, and buried them. The River was tipped and spilled even after this, until it ran as a thread, which thread became a thousand streams, as many as the threads of my weaving. And the land was a new shape. Only then was my grandfather satisfied.
This vision I have woven with Cenblith’s thread, knowing it will come to be. I thought the space of the vision was months, but when it was over, Duck still stared and people were in the middle of movements they had started when my grandfather’s shadow fell. They are coming back onto my ledge in confusion, Robin, Hern, and all the army. Jay has his sword drawn. The mages are just below. It is time to finish my weaving and take my second coat through the River of Souls to put it upon the One. Then I will come back to see if my vision has come to pass. And if I have failed, I shall go back to the River of Souls for the third and last time.
Final Note
Spellcoats, as they are called, are mentioned frequently in folklore and legend, but these are the only two examples ever discovered. They were found in the marsh above Hannart, when the new fort was under construction on the mountain known locally as The Old Man. They are both preserved by the marsh to a wonderful degree. The colors are bright and clear, and the threads undamaged. The gold band at the hem of the second coat was slightly spoiled when a dishonest workman tried to pull the threads out, but this has now been restored.
The coats were known to be of immense antiquity, but they were not recognized for what they are straight away. We are indebted to Earl Keril for first pointing out that the designs bear strong affinity to letters of the old script. Since then both coats have been carefully studied and the foregoing translation made.
The story is largely self-explanatory, but certain obscurities in the text have been amended to avoid confusing the reader. The following remarks may be of use to students.
Hern Clostisson seems unquestionably to be the same as the legendary Kern Adon, until now thought to be first King of Dalemark. The nameless King is not known, nor is Kars Adon.
Duck/Mallard is dubiously identified with Tanamoril (the name means “youngest brother”), the piper and magician of many folktales. It is not known how far the tales confuse him with Tanamil.
Concerning Robin, we may point to the belief that a robin can answer the questions of those in trouble.
Gull seems to be the same as the Southern hero Gann, whom the witch Cennoreth went in search of.
The Weaver herself has been identified with the Lake Lady, the Fates, and with the southern cult figure of Libby Beer, but not satisfactorily. The witch Cennoreth is the most likely possibility. She is frequently called the Weaver of Spells. A drawback is that, like Gann, she figures only in stories told in the South. However, the name Cennoreth—which is a Southern form; the (unrecorded) Northern form would be Kanarthi—can be interpreted as River Daughter (Cenn-oreth), although another interpretation would make it Woman of the North (Cen-Noreth).