Leith

Leith is the main protagonist of the first third of the Tapestry of Dark Souls novel. Along with her husband Vhar, they were traveling outlander merchants drawn into Markovia by the Gathering Cloth (also known as the Tapestry of Dark Souls). Vhar's theft of the Cloth triggered a long series of events that ends up with Leith afflicted with lycanthropy and pregnant with the child of Morgoth, an evil warlock stored in the Tapestry. Leith attempted to live with her curse and even joined the Order of the Guardians. However, after giving birth to Jonathan, she surrendered herself to the Gathering Cloth. At the end of ToDS, Leith is reunited with her son with the destruction of the Tapestry before they too are destroyed.

History

Arrival

Prior to their abduction by the Mists, Vhar and Leith were outlander peddlers of silver knives. At the time of the abduction, they were traveling through homeland of Morova to Vezprem with his wife . They became lost when the Mists brought them to Markovia, near the near the monastery of the Guardians of the Tapestry of Dark Souls. Following Leith inside, Vhar met the monastics that resided there. Though they were given shelter, Vhar roused his wife early and bade both of them to flee the monastery for their lives. In reality, he had become ensnared by the corrupting qualities of the Tapestry. He had stolen it, concealed the treachery from his wife, and even stabbed a monk to death on his way out.

The couple fled over the border to Linde, a hamlet in Tepest. At the Nocturne inn, they met Maeve, Ivar (of Tepest), Dirca, and Andor Merriwite. Vhar became inebriated and spilled the beans about his transgression to the other people in the Nocturne inn. Leith discovered the Tapestry, which almost convinced her to murder her husband to escape him and keep it. However, she resisted the compulsion enough merely to try to leave with it. However, the Tapestry captured Vhar and imprisoned him inside it with the other transgressors, trapping Vhar in a horrible state neither truly alive nor dead. This act horrified Leith and disillusioned her from the Tapestry. She left with haste to return to the monastery in Markovia.

Life in the Land of Mists

A large black wolf intercepted and attacked Leith midway through her journey. Leith tussled with the beast and was bitten. However, she knocked it off a cliff before reuniting with the Guardians and passing out, back at their monastery. However, their chanting did little to curtail the Tapestry's wrath against her as it seemingly claimed her as one of their own. They left her and the Tapestry in the shrine room, the next day checking to see she had not been claimed by the Tapestry. After a long period of rest, she joined the order for a time, seemingly bearing the Calling.

More surprises were yet to follow, both of them unwelcome. Leith was going through pregnancy. Though she hoped it was Vhar's child, it was actually sired by the dread wizard Morgoth when Leith had been captured by the Tapestry overnight. To make things worse, she discovered that the black wolf she had fought previously had infected her with the dread disease. After blacking out to the wolf form, the Guardians recaptured her. However, consumed by grief, she abandoned the monastery and fled back to Linde. However, she was intercepted in Markovia by some broken ones. Unexpectedly, she was saved by Maeve. Back in Linde, she received an Silver Amulet of the Beast

The meeting with Maeve allowed Leith to connect with her. They became friends and eventually lovers. After discovering that Leith was a werewolf, Maeve revealed herself as a vixen. Maeve encouraged Leith to become acquainted with her lycanthropy such that she may avoid the madness wrought by denying whom she was. (Maeve had seen this before in her mother, an infected werefox.) With Maeve as a "mentor", Leith learned to accept her curse.

The Truth is Revealed

Good relations between Leith and Maeve were not to last. Maeve's husband, Fian, a werewolf she had been forced to marry back in Kartakass, came hunting for her. She lured him into a trap set by the Three Hags. Leith witnessed all of it and also witnessed Maeve transform into the same black wolf that had infected her so long ago. With horror and dread, Leith abandoned Maeve and fled back to the Order of the Guardians. There, Leith eventually gave birth to Jonathan, wrote him a written legacy, and then surrendered herself to the Tapestry.

Corruption Shall Come From Within

Some 17-18 years after her imprisonment in the cloth (735 BC), Leith was briefly reunited with her son as he fulfilled the prophecy of corruption coming from within the Tapestry to undo it, specifically the "corruption" of love. Leith joined with Ivar and Jon to allow a Lightning Bolt spell to resonate within the Tapestry, bypassing its immunity to magic. The Tapestry and Morgoth were both destroyed, although at the cost of Ivar, Leith, and Jon's lives. Leith was able to fit in an final embrace with her son before they perished.

The spring of the next year (and at the end of the ToDS novel), the heartbroken Sondra returned to the Monastery in Markovia. There she had a pleasant encounter with two spirits she recognized as Jon and Leith.