Of Weft and Weave (Dica Series Book 2)

by Clive S. Johnson

  He didn’t notice Nephril’s bemused look for the revelation had gained a firm hold, and was now leading him to something important. Even Nephril’s concerned query fell on deaf ears, as Pettar turned to stare along Weysget Street, to peer after the trader and his burdened asses.

  A question of his own was slowly forming and presently beseeched his suddenly attentive ears, as unknown to him his lips duly echoed, “Why can the land no longer support even the meagre few Dicans it now holds, when in the past it fed millions?”

  It surprised him to hear Nephril answer, “Leiyatel wanes, Pettar. She hath diminished for thousands of years, and with her lessening hath taken rich loam to barren dust.”

  Pettar turned him a shocked face. “Then why isn’t it common knowledge, Nephril? Why…” He stopped, abruptly, for he’d plainly seen that Nephril no longer remembered what he’d only just said.

  His eyes had become vacant, his mouth slack and dry, and his body looked frail and very, very old. It was as though the effort of remembering had exhausted his spirit, had robbed him of what little spark still flared within. Pettar’s concern pushed everything else aside, and so let his recent revelation slip from his mind.

  For the next hour or so, Pettar was more than occupied guiding Nephril along Weysget Street, eastwards towards Bazarral’s busier districts. The buildings that bordered it slowly changed from commercial properties to intimate and ornamented private dwellings. More courtyards, parks and other open spaces soon appeared, thronged with yet gayer folk.

  Every property now struck Pettar’s heart with joy, filled his eyes with their perfect proportions and exquisite detail. There was a never ending expression of perfect symmetry, of ideal ratios, tasteful and restrained embellishment, all matched only by their complementing stone hues. It came together to engender a warm and homely yet uplifting and transcendent experience.

  In fact, its effects were so pronounced and infectious that Nephril eventually began to rally, so much so he at last seemed to be his old self once more. There appeared to be no lasting ill effects, which was fortunate for they’d now come to where people jostled them in greater numbers.

  The folk here wore iridescent doublets in sharp hues of blue, red and black, patterned like shards of glass, their many layers tantalisingly revealed through pattern-matching slits that bowed and ballooned as they walked. Their legs were held sheer in silken-sheened leggings and they generally wore colourful suede boots.

  Both men and women dressed alike, and exchanged nods as they passed by one another, but only looks of intrigue at Pettar and Nephril. Their own plain and dull attire set them apart, made it clear they were outsiders come in to gawp, or to pass through on their way to Galgaverre. Their sandaled feet were a particular embarrassment, dusty and bare between their faded leather straps.

  Here and there, however, they noticed less well-dressed, more plainly attired figures pass almost unseen through the gaiety. They usually carried bundles or ewers, or heavy bags or boxes. These folk were largely the more fortunate rural immigrants who’d found good service here, who’d made accepted places for themselves and blended-in well enough.

  Those who’d failed in that, who’d found their skills lacking in what was valued, were rarely seen in such quarters. They’d become pressed together in the warren of ways and tenements a few miles further south, in Yuhlm. That district mouldered behind the old harbour’s defensive wall, and spread like a sore just a few miles into the city.

  Originally a mix of dockland warehouses and tenement streets, it had, since the collapse of sea trade, mutated into an enclave of nefarious nature, largely alleviated by ale amnesia. Tenements and warehouses alike were crammed with unfortunates and inveterate villains, only made tenable by the placid and pragmatic nature of the Bazarran themselves.

  Pettar reluctantly led Nephril off Weysget Street and down towards Yuhlm itself, on a path that bordered a park within which lay a round and ornamental lake, an island set squarely at its centre. It reminded Pettar of Nephril’s tapestry, the one depicting The Living Green Stone Tree, and he realised he now had yet another likeness before him. Although filled with simple grey water, its island charge held the same design of tree, again clearly fashioned by the hand of man.

  At one time, in the far distant past, its water would have been dyed crimson, to match the patently contrived fruit borne heavily on the tree’s metal boughs. And yes, there, about its broad bole, a faded vermillion serpent still coiled, its head raised and staring out across the lake towards them.

  Pettar glanced at Nephril but he seemed not to have noticed it, more vital certainly, but still shrouded in an innocent fog of forgetfulness. With relief, Pettar guided him around the lake to where their way fell steeply into a narrow dene, leaving the threat of a disabling distraction well behind.

  Pushing against the rise, a young lass and her beau puffed and panted towards their own easy descent. When they passed by, their polite but awkward greetings were tinged pink, and Pettar smiled to himself, noticing the young girl’s tousled hair and the lad’s own sweaty sheen.

  After dropping further, down along the wooded course of the dene’s gurgling stream, they levelled off into a pleasant woodland walk. It was overarched with elm and beech, their vast and knobbly boles speaking of ancient times. The ground beneath them was firm and dry and spread with subtle and varied orchid hues, the air thin and fragrant, the strengthening sunlight dappled and amber across the close-cropped grass.

  Despite Nephril mumbling, “Ganan nioere ta der aedre,” a few times, Pettar’s misgivings were largely allayed by the almost ethereal beauty of their surroundings. The spiritual lift its enchantment bestowed proved all too brief, in stark contrast to what lay beyond its enfolding charms.

  From the base of the dene, standing at the very edge of the woods, they looked out across a sloping meadow. It fell towards a gentle ridge, beyond which lay the mouldering and menacing mass of Yuhlm.

  It was only when they’d finally dropped from the rutted path that led across the meadow, and through a cleft in the ridge, that they came onto the first of Yuhlm’s potholed streets. There, they couldn’t help but notice the smell, were almost overpowered by the lion’s close fetid breath.

  Yuhlm was the natural home to some of the most noxious and unwholesome of trades, the place where they could draw upon a surfeit of empty bellies and lost hopes. Leather tanning was commonplace, as was the mining of salt and lead, and the dyeing of cloth, but the most perilous of all was the work carried out at the kilns, where ores were continuously smelted. It was largely the kilns that stocked the air with its sharp and tangy filth, but the stench of pig’s piss from the tanneries that gave it its body.

  The smell, and its irritating sting at the back of the throat, was nothing more than their first discomfort. The second came by way of the first, and its was Nephril who suffered most. What began as a tickling cough quickly grew to fulsome retching, which his ancient frame could ill abide. It was relieved somewhat when he placed his sleeve across his mouth but still left him unable to speak. Pettar, being much younger, coped far better. He even had space to concede that it had at least removed the risk of Nephril’s Dican accent being incautiously revealed.

  Although they’d passed many people, they’d spoken with none, not a one even making the effort to nod, never mind smile. Pettar’s hope, therefore, of falling to chatting had quickly been dashed, and with it any chance of discovering the whereabouts of Melkin Mudark.

  Just as he was beginning to get desperate, Pettar saw a figure emerge from one of the tenements across the street. It was notable for being both sharply dressed and completely unburdened. By the way it tripped down the steep steps to the street, Pettar was sure it was a man.

  The figure stepped out smartly, and as he came nearer, Pettar saw there were hints about him of those same sharp and bright colours so adored by the Bazarran. Although his jerkin’s cut was simpler and his leggings less shiny, he could easily have passed muster just about anywhere in the cit
y.

  He had jet-black hair, well-oiled and slicked-back, and a small black moustache above which projected a typically Bazarran nose, like a wedge of cheese. It was his keen eyes, though, that began to alarm Pettar. They were fixed on both Nephril and himself, but more worryingly the man’s pace never slackened as he quickly approached, as though set on bowling them over.

  By now they’d stopped, warily, Pettar’s muscles tensing to knots as he set his feet apart, body side-on, fists clenched. The man came to an abrupt halt before them.

  He was a good foot shorter than Pettar, about Nephril’s stooped height, thin and gaunt and obviously purposeful, for his eyes glistened beneath their thin black brows. His mouth, though, carried a distinct and worrying leer.

  Pettar said nothing whilst Nephril still couldn’t speak.

  There was a quick flick of the man’s eyes, seemingly appraising Pettar’s size, before he pointed accusingly. “Thee’s not from ‘ere, is thee? Neither o’ ya! I can tell that a mile off. Ain’t common seeing robes in Yuhlm, no, certainly ain’t, a can tell ‘ee.”

  There was a taut silence for a short while, but when neither of them spoke, he asked, “Ya lost o’ summat, eh? Wandered off t’way ta Galgaverre did thee?” His eyes momentarily left Pettar’s, quickly noting that he carried no weapon. “Don’t tell me t’Galgaverrans are ‘aving hard time of it an’ all. Ha!”

  He backed down a little, but Pettar and Nephril still didn’t speak. After appearing to think awhile, the man quickly stepped back a few paces before smartly swinging about and striding off ahead of them, along the pavement.

  Pettar looked briefly at Nephril and saw a reflection of his own bewilderment. They both then looked after the retreating figure, but it was fortunate that only Pettar found voice. “Wait a minute! Please!” he called.

  The man slowly came to a halt but didn’t yet turn. Again, Pettar and Nephril looked at each other, and again it was only Pettar who stirred.

  He strode after the man, Nephril following on, and came to a halt a few paces behind him. “We’re trying to find a friend, but we’ve no idea where he lives.” The man didn’t move, although obviously listening, but when they said no more, he slowly turned to face them.

  They were surprised to find a grin on his face, not a very healthy one it had to be said, but a grin nonetheless. His eyes took to darting between them but his body seemed more relaxed; shoulders less raised, arms no longer clamped to his sides.

  When he did again speak, it seemed more gentle, less accusatory, but still with a menacing edge. “Bit of a rarity in this place that, friends. Can’t say I’ve ever been asked abart friends afore. Cheap lodgings, places needing labour, brothels an’ pawn shops, aye, you name it, but not friends.”

  He studied them again, but far more closely, and then seemed to come to some sort of decision, although what it was didn’t immediately become evident. “Yer mate ‘ere? He dumb or summat?” He cocked a thumb at Nephril who just smiled back appealingly and coughed.

  Pettar excused Nephril’s lack of voice, blaming the noxious air, but then tentatively asked, “I don’t suppose you know of a Melkin Mudark do you?”

  The habitual leer gave way to unguarded surprise. The man looked at them both in turn, then blew a long breath. “Well! Bugger me! Last name I expected to come from such as thee,” but then he just stared at them in disbelief. Pettar wasn’t sure what it meant but was certainly relieved when the fellow smiled, although taken by surprise by his sudden low bow. “Master Drainspoiler at yer service.”

  Before either of them could speak, Master Drainspoiler said, “Didn’t think Mudark ‘ad friends, ya know, not ones like the two o’ thee, not that’d come here out o’ their own choice, like. Ya sure he’s a friend, ya know, a mate an’ all? Don’t owe thee money or owt does he?”

  Pettar explained that Nephril knew him from of old but had lost contact, that he had something that might be of interest to Melkin, and so wished to renew their acquaintance.

  The mention of something of interest made Drainspoiler’s eyes fair light up, and his tongue protrude ever so slightly. Again, he seemed to be thinking, but when he finally spoke he’d a suggestion in place of an answer. “I think t’best way’s to tek thee ta Three Tuns. Tha’s can bide on ‘is instructions there.”

  Pettar couldn’t decide if it were a wise move or not, so unfamiliar was he with Yuhlm, and could only think to caution, “I’m afraid we can’t pay you for your services, Master Drainspoiler. We don’t carry money you see, but I’m sure…”

  “Hey, don’t trouble thesen about payment … no … if thee truly be mates o’ ‘is then there’ll be payment enough fo’ me in t’fullness o’ time.”

  Before Pettar could clarify what he’d meant, Drainspoiler peremptorily gave a broad smile, winked and set off at some pace along the pavement. Had he not waved behind him to hasten them along, he could so easily have lost them at the outset. As it was, they hurried to catch up just as he turned into an alley that smelt heavily of cabbages, and not too fresh ones at that.

  It was the first of quite a few almost identical such short-cuts, all equally noisome, ones that gave brief glimpses as they crossed them of only slightly wider streets between. All the roads and alleys were laid to setts, the streets boasting broad stone-flagged pavements, the alleys scribed by foetid gutters, but all slippery to the foot. Not only was everywhere mired with shit and scum but was also littered with picked-over carcasses of chickens and pigeons, and even rats and mice.

  In places the stench was overpowering, and Pettar and Nephril had to hold their sleeves across their faces, but Drainspoiler seemed not to notice. It was also strange that whereas their own feet quickly became caked in all manner of muck, his remained perfectly clean, as though a lifetime of negotiating such ways had lent them unnatural powers of evasion.

  It meant he quickly brought them onto a much broader road, one that dropped steeply between large, municipal buildings. What they were, or perhaps more accurately had once been, was impossible to tell. They could all have passed for libraries or courts, for theatres, baths or ballrooms, but all had long since come to quite contrary lives, to much sadder ends.

  As Drainspoiler led them past a side street, they happened upon a small handcart, pulled up onto the pavement, forcing them into the mud and mire of the gutter. Pettar only half noticed it was loaded with what looked like sheaves of reeds. It was their grey and dull lustre, though, that made him look twice, and the clink of them as they were handled that confirmed he’d been wrong.

  They weren’t reeds at all but some kind of thin, drawn-out metal, with copper-coloured bulbs or buds at their ends. A ladder had been leant against a gable wall, with a length being carefully passed from one man to another atop. As they fell from sight, Pettar glimpsed a long run of the same strange reeds, all mated and newly affixed to the stonework, a copper-beaded line strung neatly along a high course of stones.

  That strange new occupation seemed to spark intrigue in Pettar, opened his eyes anew, let him see so many more small but significantly novel acts played out about them. He now recognised just how much subdued surprise swilled about his mind, seeing such mass of folk, their unexpected clamour, their constant drum and clatter and press.

  Although he’d never been to Yuhlm before, he knew it by repute, knew the disdain shown when people spoke of it. From that, he knew it to be a wastrel place. What he was now seeing, however, seemed distinctly at odds with that. Somehow, he seemed to be in a Yuhlm divorced from its renown. However intriguing the thought, he was quickly becoming overpowered by a far more dominant feature, a presence that began quite naturally to swamp all else.

  The harbour’s defensive wall had reared above them ever since leaving the wooded dean, but here, not many streets from its base, it filled the sky before them. Hundreds of feet high and laid of huge, seamlessly jointed blocks of the finest Gray Mountain granite, it literally blocked out not only the sun but much of the firmament. It meant that the nearer they got to the centr
e of Yuhlm the darker it became, for that centre lay at the very foot of the wall, forever in its shadow.

  The whole place was in fact well below sea level, largely reclaimed land wrested from onetime marshlands that had long ago bordered the northern reaches of Foundling Bay. When the first ancient harbour had been built, it had formed two facing arms, leading in to a safe anchorage carved from the old marshes. In time, and with the laying of the Graywyse Defence, it had all become cut-off from the sea and had long since dried.

  It had also laid down rich beds of salt, ones that had proven so useful and palatable to the Dicans. Their insatiable demand had soon marked the place out as workaday, and quickly set its nature as one of toil, as a land both topologically and socially below the accepted norm.

  The place had therefore been the first to witness Dican conceit, the beginning of the long process of inversion. It had seen the conquered tribes of the Dacc of Esna, of the Esnadales and the Vale of Plenty, to name but a few, usurp their onetime Bazarran masters. Although inventive, industrious and pragmatic in all they did, the Bazarran proved no match for Dican intrigue, politicking and double-dealing.

  In time, over thousands of years, it had been the indigenous tribes who’d seen profit in alliance, who’d finally gained the upper hand and laid low the conquering invaders from over the sea. The Bazarran, however, excelled in one respect, in their holding of grudges, ones that festered as they continued to rankle.

  How much that personally vexed Drainspoiler, and to what degree he himself felt it, were obscured by his apparent keenness to help. Pettar looked a little askance at Nephril, wondering how he could possibly have become acquainted with someone like Mudark, someone so obviously held in such esteem and maybe even fear by the folk of Yuhlm.

  How could a highborn Dican have forged anything of value with any Bazarran? Pettar then remembered Nephril’s emphatic correction, how he’d baulked at the term friend. Yes, as an acquaintance it seemed more tenable.