Of Weft and Weave (Dica Series Book 2)

by Clive S. Johnson

Long lost now, the forgotten wit made close and fine use of time. It locked the secret of their making in the detail of their heating and cooling, in the times and degrees of fire and quench. Not only were chains made in almost unbelievable lengths but also some of such size it took many men to lift but a single link. What were such miracles used for? Where would there be need of such wonders? Pettar had no idea, Melkin but only the vaguest intimation and Nephril a knowing long since forgotten.

  Melkin led them across the paved surround, but at an angle. As they slowly circled the tower, they began to see the ragged rise of scaffolding tenaciously clinging to it, looking more precarious the nearer they got. It shook and shivered as though feverishly hanging on by its very finger tips.

  Its heady rise noisily undulated and jerked against the Gray Mountain granite blocks, as a bloated hose snaked and lashed its way down the centre. At odd intervals, fine, waving hairs of hissing water sprayed noisily from it, and into the consequently mist-filled air.

  At the very base was a squat and circular, brick-built building, dome roofed and windowless, into which the living hose nervously twitched. The nearer they got, the more they could hear a regular creaking noise spilling from an opening through which the hose mysteriously vanished. When they came around the building to a wide entrance, the creaking rhythm was joined by the dull clip of shoe-shod hooves striking sawdust-strewn setts.

  Inside lay a large circular path, at the centre of which lay a wide, recumbent and many toothed wooden wheel. It was driven by a capstan hub through which four long spars were thrust. At each spar end a mule leant heavily against radially-ridged setts, steadily driving the great wheel on. Two drivers, walking between, cast suspicious looks their way until spotting the Steward, then quickly cast their eyes back to their charges, a sudden flurry of whips and admonishing cries driving the mules on the more, making the wheel screech and groan the louder.

  There was little room within, the mules repeatedly passing but scant inches from the entrance, and so Melkin called a halt, much to the mules’ sullen relief. As the leisurely complaints of wood and water and sinew died away, the air became filled with the eerie sound of hissing, the mules bracing themselves against the wheel’s sudden and jarring counter inclination.

  Pettar could hear the strident protest of water as it forced its way beneath their feet, hidden below setts and sawdust. Melkin, though, was keen to get them in quickly, through the asinine engine’s wooden tangle and to an alcove into which they could only just cram. As soon as they were clear of the path, Melkin hastily ordered the mules on, which didn’t prove easy.

  The wheel at first appeared locked, but with lavish use of whips, the animals were urged on into their first few staggered steps, before once again juddering to a jarring halt and braying loudly. More cracks and guttural growls finally levered the capstan and pushed its great wheel once more against the escaping weight of water. Before long it again settled into its incessantly laboured rhythm.

  With the animals back to their habitual strides, and the drivers to their own lazy, flicking gaits, Melkin loudly addressed them. “You’re at what we call our Lifting House.” He tried to sweep an encompassing arm out only to strike a passing mule, as immune to the unintended insult as it was to the intentional whip. Melkin swore at it and again raised his arm, a gesture of rebuff which only struck the next animal.

  Whether he noticed Pettar’s smirk or not, Melkin folded his arms out of harm’s way before continuing. “As you can see, the beasts turn this great wheel by direct ratio, that is, it turns at the exact same speed as they do themselves.”

  He almost flung his arm out again, to point, but remembered in time. “The wheel has teeth, you’ll note, that bite with the teeth of a much smaller wheel, there.” This time he just nodded his head.

  About a quarter of the way around the track, they could see a small wheel. It was flat on its side like the greater one, about a foot across, with its teeth closely meshed with its bigger neighbour’s, but spinning far faster. Whereas the great wheel rumbled and groaned, the small one fair screeched and sang.

  “Its axle sits deep into one of my finest works, if I say so myself,” Melkin expounded, with a plain puff of pride glowing on his face and his head cocked back. “It drives my Legustream Upbregdana which…”

  “A water lifter? Nephril interrupted. “Fascinating! And that be what pushes water into yon hose, I suppose?”

  Although Pettar didn’t follow the detail, he did recognise a returned confidence in Nephril, and an apparent resurgence in his use of the ancient tongue. When Pettar looked at Melkin, he found even more reassurance, but his hopes were to be short-lived.

  When Melkin enthusiastically answered, “Indeed, Lord Nephril, my proudest devising, a way around having to carry pails of water aloft,” Nephril seemed at a loss.

  “Upbregdana? Upbregdana? What on earth could such a thing be, eh, young Laixac?”

  Nephril’s almost childlike look reopened Pettar’s anguish and forced him to fight back tears as Melkin quietly asked, “Don’t you remember translating the name of my device only a short while ago, Lord Nephril?”

  When Nephril simply looked confused, Melkin’s eyes flicked to Pettar, but he said no more, although he seemed, strangely enough, more ebullient.

  They all stood and quietly watched the animals’ incessant labouring, the resigned and dogged attendance of their drivers and the mesmeric turning of the two wheels.

  Melkin presently seemed to reach a decision and almost absently continued his lecture. “The smaller wheel’s axle sits within a circular chamber, about a foot or so across, and has upon it finely wrought blades that sit tight within. At one end a pipe enters, its furthest submerged within a nearby culvert, and at its opposing side another leaves on the long climb up its scaffolded path.”

  He didn’t look at them to judge their understanding, but simply ploughed on as though before one of his classes. “You see, it’s like the college mill’s great wheel but in reverse. Instead of turning in supplication to an overbearing weight of water falling upon its side, my device is turned by these mules, and in its turning the water is made supplicant to that very same urge.”

  He went on to describe how, provided all was first primed with its fill of water, the rapid turning of the blades pushed water before them and, in their turn, pulled in yet more from the culvert. “The great rate of turning is to overcome the head of water’s wish to push back, past the fit of the blades in their housing. It also has to overcome the loss of water at the hose’s many seams.” A rather clouded look passed across his face and his shoulders slumped slightly as he went silent.

  At last, he quietly added, “It tires me to think of all the problems we’ve had. Such a terrible time. What, with fashioning new forms, each truer than the last. The first laboured no more than an hour before it broke, before it ground itself useless. The hard work’s paid off, though, well, somewhat, and they now last a week or so. Still,” he said more volubly, “we’ve learned an awful lot and have brought far keener wit to the college, wit to bear elsewhere.”

  When Pettar asked where all the water went, Melkin grinned. He called the drivers to a halt, and when their mules were once more straining to hold the press of water, led them all from the building.

  Once again outside, he looked up at the tower, rising so massively above them. “In there, Pettar! Into the most perilous place you’re ever likely to come across or stand so near.”

  They all looked up at the dull granite and its great girding metal bands as the asinine engine once more groaned back to life, and Melkin further explained, “In there is the weight of almost two hundred feet of water, and all of it straining hard against the tower’s granite mass, against their ancient, intricate seams and so recently added metal belts.”

  They continued to stare up, but with growing awe and disbelief. “Were the tower to break,” Melkin solemnly added, somewhat ominously, “and the water let loose, then there’d be awful destruction right the way down th
e valley, right down into the very heart of Yuhlm.”

  Pettar was the first to break free of that awful image. “But you’ve made it strong enough, haven’t you, Melkin?”

  “I hope so, but to be blunt about it, no one can be sure. We’ve calculated as best we can, but our knowledge is worryingly scant. A close eye’s kept at all times, of course, in the hope of some warning, some tell-tale crack or leak. We rest largely on luck, though, and our own excessive caution.” Again, they all looked up at the still dry stone faces, the unbroken bands, the almost invisible joints devoid yet of any weep or spurt, and realised they were holding their breaths.

  It was Nephril’s simple intrigue that pushed Melkin’s tour on. “So, what doth thou doest with all that water then, eh, young Melkin?” As though they’d managed to hide its close threat behind the abstraction of ideas, they all breathed more freely again before Melkin led them back across the paving and towards the road.

  Feeling freer to be candid there, still removed from the crowds, he told them about the great pipe that ran from the tower’s foundations. It fed the immense press of its store, of the Legustream Upbregdana’s laboured harvest, down towards the heart of Yuhlm and its ultimate use.

  Melkin revealed how yet more of the ancient writing’s lore had given them advantage, not only in devising ways of delivering the bhleustrang but also in how to gird its strength manifold. “It leaves the tower within a broad pipe that then splits into many much narrower ones, as is needed by the many who have use of it. It happens many times until at last it arrives at the forge or shed, where it’s finally carried within a very narrow pipe indeed. In this way do we more easily convey the bhleustrang, for it’s easy enough to affix such pipes to walls, far easier to bend and direct them.”

  Pettar remembered the cartful of reeds, as he’d mistaken them to be, the ones they’d come across on their way to the Three Tuns. Indeed, they’d not been reeds at all. “When the water finally emerges at its very end,” Melkin was now saying, “where it’s to be put to its use, it has such great force it has to be seen to be believed.”

  They moved on, back onto the broad street with its increase of folk, the ominously oppressive feel of the tower now dropping behind. Melkin revealed there was a place nearby that used the bhleustrang, a weaving shed in which they’d first tried out their ideas, and which still thrived as a result.

  “Mistress Clatterbrayk’s its owner, and her mill one of the very few still independent of the guilds. She saw advantage in the wager we offered, and so readily allowed us use of her looms.”

  Melkin smiled to himself. “And glad I was of her, I’ll have you know. Without her I reckon we’d have got nowhere near as far as quickly.” By then they’d reached a lane that led off between two bawdy-looking taverns. It kept beside a steeply cut stream that ran into a meagre, wooded pond.

  On the far side they could make out the sagging ridge of a stone-flagged roof, from which came a discordant clatter of rapidly reciprocating wood and metal. As they made their way around the chill edge of the pool, along a flagged path, Pettar could feel the growing and urgent rhythms of the mill reverberating throughout his body.

  Like the sound that had heralded the college along Smiddles Lane, this one also loaded the air with its incessant vibrations, but in this case they carried a most novel urgency. Instead of being lulling they stridently beat at his ears, as though impatient for attention. When they reached the mill, at the far side of the pond and part way down the dene’s further slope, Pettar could see those very vibrations rippling out from the banks of the pond, as though whispering through the water.

  By the time they were at the mill’s long and blank rear wall, however, they could certainly hear nothing but its din. It was as insistent as torrential rain, as persistent as a tumbling river in full spate, a cacophony of oft repeated airs and phrases, all beaten together into an overpowering and maddening maelstrom. It could almost have knocked them clear off their feet. Somehow, hidden within it all, they seemed to hear the sound of a thousand hammers fruitlessly beating at the heads of cleats, the swish of a million hen’s wings furiously beating back giants shod only in hobnail boots.

  The soft-edged, verdant and dewy scene that met their eyes as they came to the mill’s gable and its steep flight of steps struck at odds with their ears. Part way down they were met by an open doorway that raged at them like the mouth of a madman. The clatter and knocking, the hammering and clicking, the rattle, rumble and ratcheting spilled out and broke about them like a howling wind of demons. Its unearthly impact, though, couldn’t in any way prepare them for what they saw within.

  Cleanly and evenly lit by jade green light, flooding in through room-long windows, they saw two rows of broad, thundering looms. Maybe five or six to a row, they all frenetically bristled and juddered, and swallowed yarn yanked from great bobbins hung from the joists above. The regular yet jerking rhythm, and the cascade of bright threads, made as if a snaking squall of rain were breaking along the ridge of some distant mountain.

  Within the fevered jitter of small moving parts below, glinting and flashing as they caught the light, long travels of pointed, rosewood shuttles flew back and forth at great speed. Repeatedly, they passed through the warp, each accompanied by its own short flick of the bobbins.

  Before each loom ran a bench upon which sat a hunched figure, usually a woman, their attention held fast to the task literally in-hand. With nimble fingers and keen eyes they picked at twists, smoothed errant ridges and tamped loose wefts. Pettar noticed, as his mind slowly began to order the confusion, wide rolls of growing fabric slowly ratcheting before their knees, largely boasting that favourite Bazarran shard pattern.

  Across the tops of their charges, each weaver mouthed and gestured their discourse; flicked fingers in ornate patterns, prodded various parts of their bodies in intricate ways, and angled their heads just so. They gossiped and chided, cajoled and confessed, were rude, considerate, tender, harsh and funny, as much as at any such gathering, but all conducted through mime against the deafening noise. Very quickly, cocked thumbs and nods alerted them, each in their turn to their surprise visitors, the news spreading like wildfire down the room.

  Instead of reserved deference to Melkin’s presence, though, Pettar was surprised to see their faces light up with joy, for friendly nods and welcoming gestures to be thrown his way. However, their demonstrative chatter promptly died away.

  Pettar wasn’t to know how conversant Melkin was with their strange form of speech, but they all knew. He and his students had spent many hours there as they’d refined their use of the bhleustrang, and it had tutored them well. So, all the weavers knew well enough how easily they could be overheard.

  It seemed Melkin had overlooked the narrow reach of that language for he’d started to explain things to Pettar and Nephril by means of it, only to draw himself up short. He laughed as he realised, then reverted to the parlance of common gesture. He beckoned them near with a finger, which he then used to point out a metal box, affixed to the end of the nearest loom.

  As they looked down at the seemingly uninteresting object, Pettar noticed Melkin sign to the loom’s minder, who answered back with a nod. Melkin reached down and turned a brass knob which brought the loom to an abrupt halt, although little did it lessen the din.

  He deftly flicked some tags and the cover of the box came away, allowing water to gush out before soon dwindling to a trickle. Within, they could plainly see a small wheel formed of vanes, its axle leading off into the body of the loom. On one side, entering through the wall of the box, a short and narrow pipe came to a pointed end, aimed directly against the tip of the nearest vane.

  When Melkin pointed to it and drew his finger back, outside the box and to an unnoticed length of slightly thicker pipe, Pettar immediately understood. He realised he was now looking at the very end of the long run from the Hanging Chain Tower. Here, the tower’s vast press of water finally reached its working point, issued forth with such extreme force that
the vanes were readily spun, and in their turn drove the loom.

  He could see, from the pride on Melkin’s face, that they were looking at yet another of his own successful ideas. His face spoke of satisfaction, of joy in something not only well-wrought, but more importantly, of very real practical use.

  Pettar’s eyes were drawn to Melkin’s finger again as it once more pointed. It traced the path of the spent water to where it would tumble down a broad pipe on the opposite side of the box. He could see that pipe vanish through the floorboards, no doubt to a millstream outside.

  That seemed to be it, the full course of the bhleustrang; from passing culvert, through latent-force imparting Legustream Upbregdana, through myriad diminishing pipes and finally on to its enormous push here, within the Steward’s cleverly contrived but diminutive waterwheel.

  Melkin pushed the box’s tight lid back on and re-secured it, his withdrawing hand revealing a roughly scratched inscription.

  Sluggish flow of water brought to bear

  On yarn and thread of fabric ware,

  And by its leave

  To fashion well

  Its weft and weave.

  As he again looked down at the great roll of stilled cloth, strung so heavily across the loom, Pettar saw Melkin’s signalled words once more command the weaver. He watched her hand grip the edge of a heavy and solid wheel within the loom’s frame, and drag it sharply towards her as Melkin turned the brass knob.

  Quite quickly, the wheel began to turn far faster than any hand could have spun it, and the loom once more burst into life, adding its own anonymous part to the ever-present din. Melkin mutely thanked the weaver, turned and bade the others farewell before leading Pettar and Nephril back out into the cool, green shade.

  They descended the remaining gable steps to the mill’s footings, and there turned onto a well-laid path of soft sandstone flags. It cut straight along a flat part of the dene’s slope towards a small cottage, the door of which was even now beginning to open.