Tapestries

Tapestries is one of the two pre-revisionist Magic anthologies. It was published in July 1995. Authors include David Drake, Morgan Llywelyn, S.M. Stirling, and 14 others. It was edited by Kathy Ice.
==Overview==
Title 	Author 	Publishing date	Set 	Setting (plane)	Featuring
Tapestries	Kathy Ice and various	July 1995 	Fourth Edition	Dominaria 	Kyree, Larut, Indorin, Adriel, Oria, Pyrin, Kyyrao Grrenmw, Grover, Loot Niptil, Corsen Mon Duur, Anaytha, Sular, Malkean Feorr, Shinra, Windgrace (mentioned), Dreadfang, Leen, Scio, Mita, Seran, Katlya, Shaim, Rag Man, Keil, Terena, Aedhan, Macha Mac Aonghus, Beothach, Erko, Roech, Fergus, Grenfher, Semion, Grinstable, Karin Amberly, Dane Isely, Krebbel, Glemp, Eod, Dolena, Brons, Crane, Thorking, Mons, Carnach, Dochyel, Thurka, Orshk, Kovar, Girga Sul, Arngh, Halrak, Daisilodavi, King Amjad, Ittono Khairt ni Hata Kan, Yyelor, Glinham, Eziir, Haprina, Pringle, Odamulus, Niptea, Kolli, Morl, Dason, Kalenth Ush, Thane Du-Moriss IV, Bayende, Noranda-Zang, Caskor, Gloom, Celia, Anaki, Turul, Inasha, Akkurdal, Seg, Unekti, Telier, Sauruven Hellwald, Thomil, Eumenes, Eurynomous, Dog Squat, Roxanne, Theobald, Malfegor, Kilian, Mirindil, Sharlory, Guineren, Alzarakh, Ramion, Tyndryn, Melelki, Tamun, Sekena, Reod Dai
==Featured cards==
Ivory Cup.jpg|<c>Ivory Cup</c>
Serra Angel.jpg|Serra Angel
Hero.jpg|<c>Benalish Hero</c>
Kobold.jpg|<c>Crookshank Kobolds</c>
Brass man.jpg|Brass Man
Rag man.jpg|Rag Man
Llanowar Elves.jpg|Llanowar Elves
Dwarven Demolition Team.jpg|<c>Dwarven Demolition Team</c>
Basalt Monolith.jpg|<c>Basalt Monolith</c>
Goblin Rock Sled.jpg|<c>Goblin Rock Sled</c>
Black Knight.jpg|<c>Black Knight</c>
Royal Assassin.jpg|<c>Royal Assassin</c>
Shanodin Dryads.jpg|Shanodin Dryads
Lesser Werewolf.jpg|<c>Lesser Werewolf</c>
Frozen Shade.jpg|<c>Frozen Shade</c>
Lost Soul.jpg|<c>Lost Soul</c>
Nightmare Horse.jpg|Nightmare
Land Leeches.jpg|<c>Land Leeches</c>
Scathe Zombies.jpg|<c>Scathe Zombies</c>
Drudge Skeletons.jpg|<c>Drudge Skeletons</c>
Zombie Master.jpg|<c>Zombie Master</c>
Hurloon Minotaur.jpg|Hurloon Minotaur
Stone Giant.jpg|<c>Stone Giant</c>
Goblin Balloon Brigade.jpg|<c>Goblin Balloon Brigade</c>
Dragon Whelp.jpg|<c>Dragon Whelp</c>
Ironroot Treefolk.jpg|Ironroot Treefolk
==Stories==
*Thief's Flight, by Carla Montgomery
** 4100 AR, Erg Mirab - Kyree, a member of the Haari tribe of the Erg Mirab that utilizes flight spells, has to steal something valuable from Indorin's Tomb as a rite of passage. Kyree climbs the mountain pass where the tomb is located and enters its inner chambers, finding an <c>Ivory Cup</c> in the hands of Indorin's sarcophagus. But when Kyree takes the cup, a Serra Angel named Adriel awakens and chases after her. Kyree uses her flight spell to evade the angel for a while, but Adriel eventually catches up to her and they struggle in the clouds above a lake. Kyree loses one of her swords, breaking her flight spell, and falls to the lake below. As she is drowning, she reaches out and grabs at what looks like the crescent moon above. Suddenly, she wakes, sopping wet, in her Clan's cave in the Aerie. She has lost the Ivory Cup but is instead clutching one of Adriel's golden feathers, the crescent moon which she thought she saw. This feather is even more valued in the eyes of her tribe than the cup, and thus her Task is complete and she has become a full-fledged member of the Haari.
*What's in a Name?, by Michael A. Stackpole
** 4100 AR, Red Iron Mountains - Loot Niptil is an amnesia-afflicted wizard, who is a refugee of a planeswalker fight, summoned to do battle and then left behind when the planeswalkers were done. He is picked up by a group of cat warriors, who see him as their "precious loot", and dub him "Nipped-Tail", which becomes shortened to "Niptil". Loot and two of the cat warriors, Kyyrao Grrenmw and Shinra team up with a dwarf named Corsen Mon Duur and an unnamed <c>Bebalish Hero</c> to travel to the Peregrinator Complex, an abandoned monastery that has become infested with <c>Crookshank Kobolds</c>. When they arrive, Corsen reveals that his family is being held hostage, and he lures Loot and the others there on the orders of the kobold leader, Dreadfang. Dreadfang needs Loot's wizard abilities to read the text barring the way into a treasure chamber. The text hints at a curse affecting the name of the person who enters, but as Loot has forgotten his name, he is ostensibly immune to the curse. He starts handing the treasure over to Dreadfang but slips on ruby and is knocked out. When he comes to, he realizes the wording of the curse means that all the loot is now cursed, since Loot is his new name. Loot lets Dreadfang wield a sword from the stash, and the Crookshank leader immediately swings and stabs himself to death. The rest of the Crookshanks then clear off, and Corsen's family is released, divvying the now de-cursed treasure among them.
*The Brass Man Who Would Sink, by Hanovi Braddock
**Before -5000 AR, unknown location in Dominaria - A miller's son is being forced into marrying a local noblewoman who is known to have her husbands killed. The boy flees to a farmer's house, and an old lady and the farmer's daughter tell him that he can avoid the marriage using a Brass Man he found in the bushes. The noblewoman repeatedly asks the boy to do impossible tasks, like tilling an entire field in a day, threshing all the wheat in one day, and milling all the grain in one day. The Brass Man helps him complete all the tasks but asks the boy if he's allowed to sink into hell after each chore. The farmer's daughter refuses to let the Brass Man sink until the noblewoman sends out a huntsman to spy on the pair. The huntsman discovers the Brass Man has been doing the tasks for the boy, so the noblewoman claims the contract must be upheld, kidnaps the boy, and also claims the Brass Man for good measure. While riding past a cemetery, the boy then finally tells the Brass Man that it may sink, and it causes the entire carriage with noblewoman, huntsman, and horses to sink into the earth, leaving only the boy behind. The boy and the farmer's daughter then marry for love.
*Inheritance, by S. D. Perry
** 300 AR, Bade Mountains - Mita is the only girl in a village with only boys and women. When the boys grow older, they slowly get sick one by one, and are quarantined until they die. The village's hunter, Seran, brings an emaciated woman, Keil to the village. Keil is pregnant, and the women all start acting very nervously, warning the children from going out into the woods. Mita eventually confronts her mother to find out the truth, but her mother only gets even more scared and rushes out. Mita sneaks out into the village and discovers her mother with the village's storyteller Katlya, whose son Shaim was the first to die. Mita eavesdrops on their conversation, and learns that all the children in the village, including her, are children of the Rag Man, and are fated to turn into Rag Men themselves. In a panic, Mita runs away and decides to never return, but her father finds her in her dreams and tells her she is special because she is the first and only woman to be changed. From then on, Mita can travel everywhere see the world in dreams, and gather strength from those who would shun her. 
*Gathering the Taradomnu, by Mark Shepherd
** 3800 AR, Ruadach - An elven princess named Terena, travels to a distant corner of Llanowar to gather Taradomnu root to cure her father, the king Aedhan, who has been poisoned by her power-hungry brother Beothach. On her way, she met a nice human boy named Grenfher, whose family and village had been killed by the xenophobic prince. Prince Beothach finds them and attacks them, but Terena uses the Taradomnu herbs to form a <c title="Circle of Protection>Circle of Protection: Black</c>, making her brother's death magic rebound back onto himself, killing him. That night, Terena and Grenfher make love, a taboo union between elves and humans. However, getting back to the Elfhame, she discovers she is too late to heal her father, as he has been assassinated by Semion, the healer's assistant, the night before. Because of Ruadach inheritance law, the throne is destined to go to the sons of her now-dead brother, since Terena has no children herself. Fortunately, the healer Macha Mac Aonghus is surprised to sense that Terena has been pregnant since the evening before, which allows her to take the throne for herself and her half-human child according to the letter of the law.
*Smoke and Mirrors, by Ben Ohlander
** 4100 AR, Posied Hill - Commander Grinstable has orders from Lord Karin Amberly to take the castle of the evil Lord Dane Isely and rid the valley of its blockade. Since Lord Amberly has promised to kill failing underlings and display their scalps at a feast, Grinstable is fearful of the outcome. The rain has been coming down for days, turning the valley into mud, collapsing siege tunnels, rusting catapult bolts, and making everyone miserable. Finally, as Grinstable is about to send a letter to plead with Amberly for more time, a small squad of Posied Hill dwarves led by Glemp shows up. They complain that Grinstable's troops have been cutting their trees and squashing their posies without permission. Grinstable asks them to help her end the siege, and they agree to do so if only to preserve their posies. Glemp has the aid of Eod, a demolitions expert leading a <c>Dwarven Demolition Team</c>. They feel confident in ending the siege in a day. Just as the fuse goes off, Grinstable tells the dwarves that the castle is supposed to be claimed for Amberly, not destroyed. It is too late - the dwarves use too many explosives and the entire castle is reduced to a huge crater that quickly fills with water, forming a lake that blocks access to the valley completely.
*The Light in the Forest, by Michael Scott
** 4100 AR, northern Aerona - The aging mercenary Dolena has been hired as a trail guard for the dwarf Crane, but fears she won't be able to work soon since her eyesight is fading. While guarding a caravan she notices an odd glint of light in the forest and goes to investigate. The trail drover Brons follows her, hoping to kill her and take whatever she finds. What they find is a mysterious <c>Basalt Monolith</c> that oozes mana, heals scars, and reverses aging. Brons knocks Dolena out with a flail, something that would have killed her had not the Stone of Mana immediately healed her. Brons gets too close and stays too long to the stone, and quickly regresses past youth and childhood into a rapidly shrinking embryo and is gone. Dolena gets up and walks away, healed of both her new and her old scars, and with her eyesight and vitality restored.
*Dochyel's Ride, by David M. Honigsberg
** 4100 AR, Rundvelt - A young goblin named Dochyel decides to become a rock sledder and quickly rises among the ranks to become the best sledder of Rundvelt. To decrease the fatalities of rock sledders when raiding villages, Dohcyel convinces the old war hero Pashalik Mons to support the creation of an improved <c>Goblin Rock Sled</c> with space for two goblins, not just one. This enables each sledder to bring a raider to the front line sooner. The Rundvelt goblins test the sled on a village and it works, with the sledders now bringing defenders with them as they crash through the village walls. In praise to Dochyel, he rises to be the new star of Rundvelt, to the point where goblin children pretend to be him while playing. 
*Heart of Shanodin, by Bruce Holland Rogers
** 4180 AR, Shanodin - Sent by the king Amjad, the assassin Daisilodavi and the knight Khairt are heading for the Heart of Shanodin to kill Lord Glinham, an enemy of Amjad. The two of them do not like each other, the knight thinking the assassin too foppish and the assassin thinking the knight too sour. The magic of the Heart of Shanodin brings out one's true self, turning their prey from spoiled merchant to holy sharing the words of the Prophets. Khairt too changes, becoming once again Ittono Khairt ni Hata Kan, a wrestler from Oneah and a lover of beauty. He falls in love with a <c title="Shanodin Dryad">Shanodin Dryads</c>, and they dance together in the forest. Meanwhile, Daisilodavi's true self is an actor, so he can still play whomever he wants to. As he wishes at that moment to be the assassin, he can kill Glinham as ordered and makes ready to leave. However, Ittono Khairt ni Hata Kan refuses to leave, preferring to remain to dance with his dryad. But suddenly he wakes as if from a dream to realize Daisilodavi has killed the dryad as well. The two men almost kill each other, until Daisilodavi reveals he only killed the dryad to keep the knight for himself. Together, the <c>black knight</c> Khairt and the <c>royal assassin</c> Daisilodavi leave Shanodin, a bond now between them, and head back to their dark lord of Amjad.
*Animal Trap, by M. C. Sumner
** 4100 AR, northern Aerona - A fourteen-year-old girl named Kolli is sent by her employer Dason to work for the fur trader Morl. Morl sends her into the woods to find out the secret from the Keldon trader Kalenth Ush, who has an unexplainably large supply of silver wolf pelts, which threatens to put all of his competitors out of business. Kolli finds the Keldon's sheds and reports to Morl that Ush must be raising silver wolves himself, but Morl is skeptical. He sends Kolli back to give him actual proof of her suspicions. However, this time she finds out that the trader has been abducting travelers, and has been changing them into werewolves before skinning them and selling their exotic pelts at a high price. Ush discovers Kolli and captures her, biting her shoulder. Kolli manages to escape capture, but then transforms into a werewolf herself. After a chase where Morl is killed by the larger werewolf, Kolli can kill him using a sword. In the morning, she transforms back into a human. Unsure if her condition is permanent, she frees the remaining prisoners of Ush and appropriates his gold.
*The Theft of Bayende, Heart, and Soul, by Billie Sue Mosiman
** 4100 AR, Kieve - The wizard Thane Du-Moriss IV, has set up his land of peace on the stormy island of Kieve and settled down with his pregnant wife, Bayende. But the evil Noranda-Zang tracks him down after ten years of hunting across the planes. With the help of the <c>Frozen Shade</c> Caskor and the <c>Lost Soul</c> Gloom, Noranda-Zang enters Thane's house while he is away on town business and murders Bayende, creating a grisly scene of her and the unborn child's corpses. In grief, Thane spends the next seventeen years tracking the dark wizard and finally finds him in the land of Everlorne. He encounters the dark wizard's adult son and kills him, leaving Noranda devastated. Du-Morris feels no joy at exacting his revenge though, just more misery, knowing that he and Noranda are going to be at war forever.
*Wellspring, by Cynthia Ward
** 4100 AR, unknown plane - An old elf tells a story about the origin of the Wizard Tyrant. Two elves, Anaki and Turul were caught in a water dragon's cave. Turul was dying, and Anaki drew all the mana from the surrounding forest to destroy the two dragons and their eggs and heal Turul. Thinking it was the dragon's fault that the land had been destroyed, Anaki taught her technique to Turul, but he also destroyed the plain they were standing on. After that, they used their magic responsibly, using it only to save lives. Together, they had a son, Akkurdal, who grew up also learning their technique to drain the land of mana. However, he abused this power, first to torment his friends, then to summon <c>Land Leeches</c> which ran amok and killed several of the onlookers. His parents dispelled the leeches, but not before Akkurdal's friends had been killed. When his parents berated him, Akkurdal ended up killing them in a rage, and turning them into <c>Scathe Zombies</c>. When the surviving villagers tried to stop him, he killed them too and turned them into <c>Drudge Skeletons</c>. Akkurdal eventually had a son who ended up trying to assassinate him, but even he was killed and turned into a <c>Zombie Master</c>. After all this spellcasting, the land around Akkurdal had turned into the Great Waste, a swamp 1000 leagues wide, and he is known as the Wizard Tyrant. Unbeknownst to Akkurdal, though, his son had had a daughter before he died - and this daughter is the old elf telling the story. She is not old, she is prematurely gray from the use of magic, and she has discovered a mana that Akkurdal is now familiar with - the red mana of the mountains, and she vows to kill him with this aggressive magic.
*Dryad's Kiss, by Morgan Llywelyn
** 4100 AR, unknown location - The old hermit Telier has spent his entire life learning magic, without success. He simply cannot get a grasp of magic no matter how hard he tries. There is always something holding him back - fear, timidity, reluctance. Now he has to hew the last tree of a hollow nearby to make firewood, but the tree is strong and healthy, and he does not manage to pull down any branches with his frail old body. But when he touches the tree, it feels warm, like flesh. Suddenly he can see that the tree has mana running through it. He finally understands that he has to give himself fully over to the mana to be able to use magic. He lets himself be embraced by the tree, whose branches are the arms of a dryad. With their embrace, he disappears. Villagers eventually come looking for him, but find nothing, only a lone, healthy tree.
*The Lament, by S. M. Stirling
** 4100 AR, the Gurdurngs - The <c>Black Knight</c> Sauruven Hellwald meets Eumenes, a mourning <c>Hurloon Minotaur</c> in the Gurdurngs. The minotaur and his mate Eurynomous were summoned in a planeswalkers' duel and she was killed by a <c>Stone Giant</c>. The knight helps with the lamentation ritual and the two then plan to go and kill the Stone Giant. But then Sauruven is summoned by his planeswalker master Thomil for a duel, while Eumenes is summoned by the opposing planeswalker. The two newly forged friends are forced to do battle, and the knight kills the minotaur, sings the lament for his friend, and then goes and kills the Stone Giant.
*Airborne All the Way!, by David Drake
** 4100 AR, unknown location - The wizard Malfegor's goblin aides Roxanne and Theobald oversee the setting up of a <c>Goblin Balloon Brigade</c> called "Dumber Than" led by Dog Squat. They are facing an army of white-clad orderly troops, but their balloon flies higher than an arrow shot and enables them to dump heavy rocks on the enemy from up high. However, Roxanne gets tangled in the rope as they lift off and is pulled up into the air along with the balloon. They haul her to safety into the basket of the balloon and set out in the wrong direction. They end up throwing out all the rocks and being buffeted by Malfegor's winds enough that one of the Dumber Thans throws up over the side, causing an enemy below to blow out their airbag by toppling their ballista. As the balloon crashes down toward the panicking enemy troops below, the goblins prepare to start biting them. 
*Not Just Another Green World?, by Peter Friend
** 4100 AR, unknown plane - Three cute sapient creatures on an unnamed world that only contains green mana find an injured human. The man, Alzarakh, hails from Dominaria, but fled across the Blind Eternities after a duel. After spending some time recuperating through the help of healer Guineren and the local magic, he teaches Tyndryn, one of the children, how to summon an <c>Ironroot Treefolk</c>. However, when she casts it, she sends out a call across the Multiverse, alerting Azarakh's pursuers about her location. From the sky a terrible attack shoots out, zapping the child with a rainbow-colored ball of cold flame and several lightning bolts, killing her. The locals accuse Alzarakh of arranging for this to happen on purpose, deliberately losing his spell and allowing Tyndryn to find it, so that his enemies would kill her and think him dead, abandoning their pursuit. Instead of proclaiming his innocence, Alzarakh starts to threaten them, and they immediately overwhelm and brutally murder him with their green magic.
*The Going Price, by Sonia Orin Lyris
**170 AR, Crimson Peaks - The three dwarves Melelki and her daughters Tamun and Sekena find a bunch of dragon eggs and start selling them to a man called Reod Dai. This story is no longer canon, as the later novel And Peace Shall Sleep provides a contradictory account of the same story.
==References==
Category:Anthologies