by Sam Bowring
‘Th … thank you,’ the fellow managed.
‘My pleasure!’
Forger trickled influence into the man, first using it to firmly close his jaw. His eyes widened in alarm as Forger moved on into his wound. Carefully, Forger tore at it internally, creating a series of pathways that ran around major organs, like worms curling around apples. The man tried to thrash, but Forger held his extremities in place, so it looked as if he lay still.
Forger gave a satisfied sigh. Maybe the agony emanating from a single soldier wouldn’t grow him back to full size, but it certainly took the edge off his craving. As he strolled along absorbing as much as he could, he fell to thinking.
Ah, Karrak – I do hope you’re telling the truth about it all.
In reality, much as it saddened him to admit, he still could not trust Karrak completely. Oh, it had suited his purposes to pretend that he did – he did actually believe the Unwoven needed wiping out, and Mergan too, tasks more easily accomplished with allies – but when it came to the bigger picture … when it came to the Spire …
As he approached the Pass he saw tents had gone up, and there were blankets laid out where wounded were being brought to healers. Soldiers trickled down the slope carrying bundles of torches – it seemed they were to work through the night, as Karrak had predicted. Yalenna was there and, when she spotted him, he waved cheerfully while simultaneously eking a few last morsels from his quivering bundle. Then he sealed the soldier’s throat and a few moments later the man was dead.
Yalenna came towards him with a healer on her heels. ‘Who have you got there?’
Forger let his shoulders sag. ‘Ah, alas! I fear I am too late.’ He laid the man at the healer’s feet. ‘Do what you can, good healer, but I fear I did not bring him to you in time. He took a terrible blow from an Unwoven, poor fellow.’
Yalenna stared hard at him, and he raised his eyebrows innocently.
What do your suspicions matter, dear Yalenna? You have to go along with it, don’t you? You need me, for whatever reason, and one death does not change that.
As the healer took away the corpse, Forger looked about in appreciation. ‘My, aren’t we a bunch of busy bees!’
Yalenna nodded. ‘We will coordinate from here until we’re certain they’re all dead. We do not want to vacate the Dale overnight, only to return and find it guarded once more.’
‘No need to explain yourself to me, I’m sure,’ said Forger. Then he spotted something in the healer’s area that made his eyes narrow. ‘Or is there?’
He stalked towards Mergan who was propped up against a rock, unconscious, bound tightly, with a bloodied bandage on his brow. A bloody bandage which told Forger he had been given care.
‘Hanry …’ said Yalenna warningly, stepping between him and Mergan.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ asked Forger in a low, dangerous voice.
There was no reason, as far as he knew, to keep Mergan alive. Killing him had, in fact, been part of Karrak’s justification for why they’d had to deal with the Unwoven before visiting the Spire – free the world of his corruption, he had said, and it may be easier to heal the Wound.
‘He might be able to help us,’ said Yalenna.
’What?
‘I know it is unlikely, but maybe I can talk him around.’
‘Are you as mad as he? He thinks he is the Lord Regret! He threw an army of Unwoven against us. We must kill him immediately!’
Their voices were attracting stares. Yalenna gestured for him to follow her away a little from the camp. He did so, curious as to how she planned to sell this.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘we may need all the help we can get in closing the Wound.’
Forger shook his head. ‘What we propose to attempt is already risky enough. Do you think I would trust him while we stand so vulnerable? Even if you claim to have talked him around, I would not accompany him to the Spire. You will have convinced one volatile ally and lost another. Gained nothing.’
It was a good argument, and he was proud to have come up with it.
Yalenna sighed. ‘Mergan is my friend. Was my friend, anyway.’
So was I, he thought. Yet something tells me you would not argue to save my skin if it was me lying there, tied up and helpless.
‘But you are right,’ she continued. ‘We should not take him to the Spire. I was foolish to suggest it. However, if we succeed in healing the Wound, who knows what the effect may be on him? If he awakes in a better world, free of corruption, perhaps he will be well again?’
In which case, thought Forger, he will remain my enemy.
Despite everything in him screaming to finish Mergan off, his way forward was confusing. He was not at his strongest, nor among friends, were he to be unveiled. It all came down, really, to whether he believed Karrak or not.
‘Is there anything to eat around here?’ he muttered.
Yalenna looked somewhat relieved – perhaps she thought the change of subject meant he had accepted her words.
‘I’m sure we can find something,’ she said.
She went off looking – the Priestess of Storms, bent on her mundane task because she somehow believed that food would take his mind off his own unravelling future.
It would have been amusing, were he not so angry.
A NIGHT IN THE DALE
Salarkis stared across the Dale while his stomach grumbled. Mergan had not sent food in days, and the Unwoven who patrolled the Spire below no longer responded to his cries – did not even show themselves at the bottom of the steps. Could he leave now, if he could get past them? He was unsure.
From his high vantage, he’d had a spectacular view of the Dale collapsing in on itself. He still could not believe the great sheets of rock he’d seen rumbling from the hillsides to cover the city and, more importantly, the large gathering of Unwoven inside the Pass. The Spire had tremored mightily, making him worry it would fall. The valley floor has risen to the level of its entrance without blocking it, the hill it had stood on buried beneath. At the Pass, human soldiers had appeared, storming the Dale to kill its remaining denizens.
Had he dreamed it, he wondered? Did his deprivation cause him to hallucinate, to imagine an answer to his predicament? He looked again and it seemed real.
He suspected there were Wardens present, for what other possible explanation was there? Perhaps he could blame the failing Spell, but typically its degradation was random, while the avalanche seemed to be aimed squarely at the Unwoven. He thought the tiny specks moving about the Dale looked like Althalans, and could only hope that Yalenna or Braston was with them. Perhaps he could fashion another message, though his mind reeled at the thought of such heavy labour, and he had no way to tell who he would really be sending it out to.
Would anyone come for him? The sun was blurring messily into the horizon, and the thought of staying here alone held more terror than any previous night. Above him, the Wound rippled angrily, the cracks that grew slowly outwards from it so full of menace that he wondered how he would ever find sleep beneath them. He sat down at the top of the stairs, trying to ignore his thirst and think.
A commotion broke out in the room below. Swords clashed, followed by a heavy thump.
‘Who’s that?’ called Salarkis. ‘Who’s there?’
He thought someone stood just inside the door, out of view.
‘Sneaking inside of doorways?’ he said. ‘Breathing louder than a gust through dry leaves?’
‘I am not sneaking,’ issued up a familiar voice.
Salarkis tensed. He had been expecting some dull-witted Unwoven, if anyone.
‘Karrak?’
‘I told you not to call me that.’
Salarkis frowned, trying to remember the other name …
‘Rostigan!’
‘Aye.’
He rose and flew down the steps. Rostigan had come! He bounded through the doorway with such momentum, there was no other option but to throw his arms around the man. Was he reckless, to be pleased to see him? It did
not seem, in that moment, like he had any other choice.
In the dark, Rostigan gently pushed him away.
‘Patience, Salarkis. It is not safe for you.’
‘What do you mean? Didn’t you cut through the last Unwoven to get here? They couldn’t have escaped you in the Spire, it’s all but one winding stair.’
‘I have slain those I came across.’
‘And the army – hasn’t it killed the rest? I saw it from on high. What of Mergan?’
‘We have captured him.’
‘Will you bring him here? The Wound, it could heal him, put him back the way he was!’
He tried to move past Rostigan, who held a firm hand to his chest and stopped him in his tracks.
‘First tell me how that works, precisely,’ Rostigan said. ‘Your message said the Wound took back your threads without any choice being given.’
‘I don’t know what more to tell you. It lifted me up, I blacked out … when I came to, I was myself. As you can see with your own eyes!’
Rostigan nodded. He reached to his belt, untied a small sack, and handed it over.
‘What’s this?’
‘Open it.’
Inside was bread and a water skin. Although Salarkis was famished, his stomach turned to see it.
‘Why do you bring me this?’
‘I want you to stay on the roof just a little longer.’
‘What? Why? I want to join you, to see Yalenna.’
‘Forger is with us.’
‘Forger?’ Salarkis paled.
‘Yes. I’ve convinced him I am the Karrak of old and have discovered a way to heal the Wound. Tomorrow morning, Yalenna and I will lure him up to the roof. He does not know that once he’s there, he will be robbed of his threads.’
Salarkis frowned. ‘So why do I have to stay?’
‘Because I had to account for you in my lies. I told Forger that Mergan had you trapped here – somewhat true, I suppose – and we cannot risk him seeing that you’re no longer a Warden.’
Salarkis went to object, but could think of no reasonable course other than what had been suggested. He had grown self-concerned, he realised – had forgotten the grander scheme of things, as hunger and thirst had driven him to distraction. For a moment he felt an old calm return, perhaps for the first time since changing back to a mortal.
He opened the water skin. ‘Well, it sounds like a masterful ruse. If it works.’ He took a sip. ‘Tell me, though – what happens after that? The Wound will need each and every one of us in order to truly heal.’
‘Forger carries threads from Despirrow and Braston.’
‘Braston,’ Salarkis echoed, sadly shaking his head.
‘You did not know?’
‘No. What of Yalenna? Blessings they may seem, but she is poison too.’
‘Yalenna will give back her threads also.’
There was one Warden Rostigan had not mentioned. Staring now at his unreadable stony face, Salarkis wondered if he dared to ask.
‘And you?’
Rostigan set a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘That is the other thing,’ he said, ‘I wish to talk to you about.’
Loppolo turned up, finally, and despite Yalenna’s private feelings, she found it proper he was there.
‘Who would have thought,’ he said, happily rubbing his hands as he stared about, ‘that I would live to stand within the Tranquil Dale!’
‘You’re very lucky,’ said Yalenna dryly, which had the desired effect of assuaging his good mood.
As the sun set, groups of soldiers moved near and far about the valley. Shouting and sounds of killing were growing less frequent, however.
‘Shall I send out torches to the patrols, Priestess?’ asked Jandryn.
‘Yes.’
Loppolo nodded, as if the idea had been his. ‘No sense stopping when we’re so close to finishing, eh?’
Yalenna hardly heard him. She suddenly realised she could not see Forger … had not seen him for quite a while, in fact.
Where was he?
‘You should not walk alone, sir,’ said the officer, holding his torch higher.
Forger looked him over, and the soldiers accompanying him. He could bring them all down, here in the dark, and who would know?
No, he thought. Why risk it? Don’t get distracted.
‘This is still a dangerous place,’ said the officer. ‘Even for a powerful threader such as yourself. If you want to continue searching, why not come with us?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Forger. ‘Go about your business and leave me to mine.’
Without another word he walked off into the night. Dotted flares of brightness marked other patrols and, from here on, he meant to stumble across none of them. He moved quietly through the buried city, until he came to the clear area before the Spire. Up there, somewhere, if Karrak was to be believed, Salarkis was trapped. Above the distant roof, the Wound rim glowed red in the night. Karrak said he could fix it, but Forger didn’t feel safe even going near it. He needed proof, either that Karrak told the truth, or lied like a filthy cur.
He needed an Unwoven.
‘Now,’ he said, turning back to the buried houses, ‘where would I find one of you alive?’
He wandered a little, hoping to see some grey figure ducking behind a roof or chimney …
‘Ridiculous,’ he told himself, after a time. ‘Unwoven do not hide. The only hope is of finding one trapped.’
With that in mind, he looked for ways to get inside partly buried buildings. He did not fancy sliding down a chimney, but instead went from roof to roof, listening carefully at each for any sounds within. Could an Unwoven have been buried indoors when the Dale collapsed, now sealed up for him like a birthday present? It would not take much to rip through a roof, prise up a floor, reach down and pluck one out, if it were there.
As he considered his options, he heard the sound of rocks clattering not too far away.
‘What’s this now?’ he said. ‘Does fortune favour me?’
Around a house he went, to find the top half of an Unwoven sticking out of the ground – a young one, on the verge of manhood. The boy was scrabbling to get free, and hissed when he saw Forger approach out of the darkness. Forger chuckled, kneeling down just beyond reach of Youngster’s grasping hands.
‘Why, I’m happy to see you too,’ he said. ‘Much easier than hollowing out house after house!’
He seized Youngster’s hands and bent back the wrists until he heard them snap. Youngster started to bay in rage, but Forger backhanded him hard across the face.
‘None of that, please. Don’t want everyone else getting curious, do we?’
With Youngster suitably stunned, Forger hooked him under the arms and dragged him out of the ground like a stubborn root, badly scraping and gouging the lower half of his body in the process. Slinging the boy over his back, he turned towards the Spire. As he went, he felt a warm trickle down his back, and realised he was being drooled on.
‘Yuck,’ he said.
As he passed through the Spire entrance, Youngster started to awaken, so Forger banged his head against the arch for good measure.
Inside he went more carefully, letting his vision slide to the patterns around him. If Salarkis really was trapped somewhere in here, it was possible there were enchantments woven about the place. Yet, as he climbed, room to dark room, stairway to stairway, he saw nothing at all but the dimly glowing lattices of stone structures and the bodies of slain Unwoven. Had the soldiers been through here? He had not imagined they would dare, but maybe they had.
‘Maybe, maybe. So many maybes.’
With his perceptions so open, he began to feel the thrum of Youngster’s threads against his own. Difficult as Unwoven patterns were to work with, at such close proximity, and with the creature unconscious into the bargain, he sensed them more clearly than he had any Unwoven before. He stopped for a moment and set the boy down on a step to examine him. As with the others during the battle, he began to see something of
injustice about him …
I should not exist, the threads seemed to say. I should have never been.
Faintly they wavered from the boy, reaching like grey tendrils, up the stairs.
‘What’s this now?’ whispered Forger.
The more he stared at them, the more he comprehended them. They wanted something, they pointed to whatever justice it was this dribbling creature deserved. And while, if it had been some fat noble squirming before him, Forger would have done the opposite of what the Spell considered fair, this time he actually wanted to know what it was.
‘You want to go up?’ he said. ‘All right, let’s keep going then.’
He scooped Youngster up like some grotesque baby in his arms.
Soon he arrived in a room where, through a doorway opposite, a stairway was touched by red-tinged moonlight. That, and a waft of cool, fresh air, told him he had reached the last room before the roof. The grey threads emanating from Youngster wriggled towards it, growing more frantic as he moved closer to the doorway – just close enough to see up the stairs, but not to expose himself to the sky above. Quietly he set Youngster down. If Salarkis really was in the Spire, the roof was the last possible place. For a time he waited, listening. Eventually he thought he heard a slight scuffle on stone and maybe an intake of breath. Was it Salarkis? Was he bound in some way, or did he move about freely?
Youngster let out something of a gurgle, and the scuffling ceased abruptly.
‘Who’s there?’ came a voice.
Forger waited silently, staring carefully up the stairs. After a few moments, he prodded Youngster in the stomach, garnering another exhalation.
A figure stepped into view at the top. Moonlight gleamed off soft skin … gone were the stone scales, the tail, the feathers! Salarkis was restored.
‘By the Spell!’ exclaimed Forger. ‘What has happened to you?’
Salarkis froze. ‘Forger?’
‘Indeed, it is I, still formed and fully fledged. But you, on the other hand, have been ruined it seems. Dear me!’
‘Forger, listen … don’t do anything drastic. There is more to this than meets the eye. Come up and speak with me. I can explain.’