Of Weft and Weave (Dica Series Book 2)

by Clive S. Johnson

  19 To Kith and Kin

  The Esnadales had been pleasant enough, mellow even, what with the warm sun and cloudless sky, no wind to speak of and the smell of new mown grass filling the heavier than usual air. Nephril and Phaylan’s steady path northwards had taken them up Cleofandale, through its broad, lower spread towards a sharp and steep head.

  Their way had been wide and smooth to begin with, down amongst the dale’s prosperous and extensive farms, where it cut cleanly across their gently swelling fields and meadows. Their occasional crossings of the River Cleofan had been made on stout, stone bridges or across shallow, grooved fords where their feet were kept well clear of the water’s quickened body.

  As they’d climbed, the path had slowly narrowed and grown uneven, meandering its threaded way through the increasingly scarred landscape. It forced the path more often beneath overhanging rocks as the dale began to narrow, along heady ledges cut deep into steep, grassy slopes or around cascade- and spume-filled cuts.

  Behind them, the lower spread shallowly fell away towards distant Galgaverre, its inner sanctum always hidden behind its unobtrusive walls. Further west, along Galgaverre’s northern border's unnaturally grey, dull and straight line, the sparse tumble of Bazarral’s outer suburbs marked the wall’s end, drawing the eye to the city’s jumbled and mellow-stoned heart beyond.

  Before them, the dale’s head had beckoned the more, until the path wound its way onto the scree littering its craggy feet. To either side, sheer rock faces denied all but that one ascent, steering those who ventured that way unerringly to its dark, vertical climb.

  Nephril had chosen it for its speed, for its almost unerringly direct route to the Royal Court and the king’s lying-in-state. It wasn’t a popular way and so they’d met with no one since entering the dale.

  He’d not really relished the company of the king’s messenger and had therefore dismissed the herald to go ahead by his own easier but longer path, choosing Phaylan instead as his companion aide. It was the lad’s first time abroad, other than short trips into Bazarral, and he was certainly finding the experience fascinating if somewhat daunting.

  That he could begin to look down upon Galgaverre as though poring over a map simply enthralled and did much to distract him. While Nephril sat and gathered his elusive energy for the stiff climb ahead, Phaylan stared out at the view, increasingly more enthralled as his fears diminished.

  “Can we see the Steward’s own precinct from here, Lord Nephril? Where was it now? Helm wasn’t it?”

  Nephril smiled, indulgently. “Yuhlm, Master Phaylan, the ancient and original district of Yuhlm,” and he looked that way despite knowing it to be hidden. “I am afraid not, Phaylan, for it be too distant and below the ancient cliffs that now mark its border. It lies, though,” and he pointed southwest, “just there, beyond that great dome. Dost thou see? The one glittering so proudly in this lovely sun.”

  Phaylan peered intently. “What? Where the tops of those three towers can just be seen poking up?”

  Nephril nearly choked and shot Phaylan a disbelieving look. “Thou hast fine eyes, mine young and fresh lad, fair put mine own ancient ones to shame.” He peered the harder but still couldn’t see them himself and so sighed.

  The climb, once they’d scrambled to it against the loose scree, proved a lot more strenuous than he remembered. It wasn’t surprising, given how long it had been since last he’d passed that way. Although sheer, steps had long been worn or cut into its rock; some forming steep stairs whilst others climbed like ladders within the narrow rock chimneys.

  At the very top, they came into a totally different world, a slightly sloping expanse of rock rubble and coarse grasses that untidily skirted an irregular hotchpotch of walls higher up. Some of them enclosed yards or gardens, others courts and cloisters, but most were either gable ends or rear elevations of a ramshackle stagger of dwellings. They ran as a ragged edge far into the distance to either side, like the shores of an island rising from the green spume-flecked, stone-sea of the Esnadales’ barren heights.

  They were approaching the Upper Reaches, an old and disused mantle to the mountain, longest abandoned due to its inclement exposure. At its distant east end, along the mountain’s lopsided shoulder, the Scarra Face fell sheer to the Warmswin’s gorge a few thousand feet below. The Upper Reaches were, quite understandably, a most desolate place these days, little frequented, and usurped by easier, lower routes about the castle, albeit of far greater length.

  Had it still been thronged, they’d have had to have travelled some way to find the nearest gateway through the wall, but now they’d no need of caution. There were no proud landowners to stock their yards with vicious dogs or gardens with geese, no gardeners or their hands to bar the way with hoe or rake. Only stone and brick and mortar now stood in their way, and Nephril knew of an easy breach.

  He purposefully led Phaylan along a narrow path that sidled up to the wall, one scribed upon the landscape by nothing more sentient than sheep. It brought them to a very old garden wall, long ago tilted inwards at its centre, making for an easy climb up its sloping side to its broken top.

  Nephril led the way along it until they reached a still upright wall of an adjoining building, its occasional missing stones forming a perfectly good ladder down its furthest side. Before he started their descent, though, he turned to Phaylan and warned, “This be thy last chance to look out upon the southern districts, thy last view of Galgaverre and the Southern Hills. Until thee return, that is, if thy path doth indeed come this way. Take stock of it now. Fill a corner of thy mind for the cold nights ahead.”

  When Phaylan had finished taking that last look, and had turned to follow, Nephril was already waiting in the garden below. Soon beside him, they crossed through its tangle of undergrowth and quickly came out into an alleyway between two neighbouring buildings, both awash with balconies and porches.

  In front of them ran a broad street across which yet more impressively tiered properties faced them, but instead of setts or cobbles or flags, the road’s surface was the very rock of the mountain, sculpted and formed for the purpose. To Phaylan, it looked as though it had all been cut with the ease of a hot knife passing through butter on a warm summer’s day.

  Many more such cleanly cut streets carried them around the daunting rise of Mount Esnadac’s higher flank, keeping them on gentler climbs towards the long ridge that swept down to the Scarra Face. Their road led them to a shallow sway in its back from where their surroundings soon began to change.

  The previously spacious plots and sprawling properties gave way to shops and stores, to occasional short towers and long barter halls, all intimately thrust together, cheek by jowl. The road was just as broad but its pavement had narrowed, boasting frequent breaks for yard entries and other such openings and gateways.

  It was also steeper and so afforded a clearer view. To the east, through the gaps between buildings, they caught tantalising glimpses of the Towers of the Four Seasons below. It was mainly their crystal domed pinnacles for much of their lower reaches were still obscured beyond the steep fall of rooftops between.

  Southernmost, the Spring Tower’s citrus-tiled flanks looked dulled by the centuries to a grimy ochre. Alongside, only a short distance away, the Summer Tower stood with its once verdant brilliance now dulled to a sad jade, then the Autumn Tower’s carmine bricks blackened by the ages to a dirty brown before the final and northernmost Winter Tower still shone out its stark white marble glory.

  Ahead, seen between the street’s opposing buildings, a slice of the distant Forest of Belforas appeared to form a plinth for the monumental rise of the Strawbac Hills beyond, which in their turn shouldered the far more distant wall of the Gray Mountains. Quite by chance, that whole illusion of a monument held aloft the one grey gap in their jagged march of snow-capped summits. Nephril and Phaylan both stared at it, both confronted their distant northern goal and each in their own way shivered.

  Their eyes were only snatched away when the stre
et turned to the west. Its gentle curve had slowly brought them sight of the Star Tower, its ice-like glittering rise reaching far into the heavens. There was nothing around its feet but the meagre, almost insignificant rise of everyday buildings, simple halls and houses, mills and mansions and a few seemingly diminutive towers. There it stood, in glorious isolation, a stark and solitary shaft, a seeming needle pricking star-holes high in the sky.

  Phaylan gasped, although Nephril hardly noticed, his interest now solely on the jet-black patchwork a league or so beyond, where lay their journey’s end - the Outer Courts with the Royal Court itself at their centre.

  Nephril was too aware that they were now entering a completely different world, that they’d finally come to the true Realm of Dica. They’d left behind the stolid, dependable and mechanicking Bazarran only to find themselves amidst the duplicitous, scheming and politicking descendants of the tribes of the Dacc of Esna.

  They were Nephril’s own people, he was saddened to say, his kith and kin, the tribes and their successors from whom he had sprung. Now they seemed to him as no more than aliens, as demons who’d offended against all that was right. They’d bettered Nature not through their own wit and skill but through theft. They’d raped and pillaged Leiyatel’s bounty and were now reaping their just reward.

  Before the street dropped too low, Nephril caught a glimpse of Grayden Head to the northwest, there at the mouth of the Eyeswin, and wondered how its folk would be taking their sudden royal loss. What kind of icon would King Namweed finally make? “The end of the royal line,” Nephril quietly mused. “The very last king of Dica.”

  Who would lead them now, would provide the glue to hold their complex society together? “To be honest,” he said aloud, “I do not give a damn,” to which Phaylan cast him a puzzled eye, only to notice where Nephril’s now stared and so turned his own that way.

  The Eyeswin’s broad estuary glinted with reflected sunlight, sparkling like a diamond diadem beyond the headland’s stark silhouette. A massive, domed building straddled that darkly pointing finger, like a gaudy ring.

  Nephril knew it well, as all Dicans did, knew it to be the Kings’ Mausoleum and the very end of his duty. An end to many things, he thought. A last chance to dwell at ease within his own land.

  Had it not been for the Star Tower’s hold, Phaylan might have noticed Nephril cast further looks down the fall of the castle’s north-eastern side. He would have seen him look beyond Foundering Wall’s vast terrace, with its hidden Garden of the Forgotten, further down still into the tangled warren of ways that was far off Uttagate, where that ancient district seemed to swoon against the Great Wall’s embrace.

  Had he done so then without doubt he’d have noticed Eastern Gate filling the wall’s blank march, rising two hundred feet above Eastern Street as it secured its massive gates. He may then have seen Nephril’s expression cloud, as his lordship imagined Penolith’s party soon squeezing their way through its meagre side door. By then he and Phaylan should be with them, if all went well.

  In three days’ time they would pass between the gate’s embracing arms, out along Eastern Walk, and across the Eyeswin Bridge to the junction with the Lost Northern Way. From there, that ancient road would take them along the banks of the Eyeswin, past the Ambec Village before turning sharply north, out across the Vale of Plenty to the forest’s obscuring mass.

  Three days. Enough time, Nephril was sure, to stand King Namweed to rest, to say farewell to his own ancient haunts and finally gain Layther Manse, atop Scout Hill, from where they’d watch out for Penolith’s arrival.

  Now, though, their approach to the Star Tower had wrapped Phaylan in awe. The young priest craned his neck to look up its seemingly impossible height only for his mind to reel at the task. A little way off still, down the castle’s flank, its base lay hidden within a close jostle of buildings. It seemed to Phaylan that he could almost reach out and touch it. It looked cold, like ice, for it was seemingly clad in glass or crystal, jagged, almost frosted in a way that made it gleam and sparkle.

  It looked very thin but it was only its great height that belied its true girth, its soaring reach that narrowed its profile to that of a pin. It had, though, no pricking point to its pinnacle but a crystal dome set about by a platform.

  Phaylan quietly asked, “What’s it for, Lord Nephril?”

  “To preen and puff out the Dican chest, to fan garish feathers in coquettish display and so strut them before some phantom foe.”

  It was only when Nephril smiled knowingly that Phaylan saw the jest, but only that, not the weighty seriousness behind it that had actually driven Nephril’s words. The tower had had professed purpose, it was true, to observe the heaven’s hoard of stars clear of the castle’s glare, but there was far more to it than that. Had it been conceived and built by the Bazarran then it would truly have been nothing more than that, but not when begot by the Dicans. “Ostentatious display, Master Phaylan, just simply showing off,” and that was all Nephril would say on the matter.

  They never actually came to the tower’s base for the street they were now on turned sharply north and fell steeply between stepped buildings, their roofs dropping away down the hill like two great flights of steps. At the bottom, Nephril and Phaylan came before a bowed wall, its castellated top curving well out from its plinth foundations. Sharply pointed turrets hung out yet further still in their close march along its top.

  They’d reached the Outer Courts, and for the first time since leaving the Esnadales, encountered another person. In fact, it was his voice they first met for he’d called down to them before they’d seen him.

  On top of the wall stood a resplendent figure in lapis lazuli encrusted, ebony silk tunic and breeches. A gold-veined barathea cloak, thrown dashingly over one shoulder, hung to his highly polished, black, calf-length kid boots, a long silver rapier menacingly glinting at his hip. He’d doffed his silver-garnished shako, its plume nodding gaily from where he’d placed it on the wall, and was now waving at them enthusiastically.

  Nephril at first looked perplexed, but then the voice came again. “Lord Nephril isn’t it?” to which he nodded. “Please, mi Lord, if you wouldn’t mind making your way to the postern, I’ll come right down and let you in.”

  Nephril again nodded and then explained to Phaylan, “One of the king’s guard … his personal guard, not just the household lot!”

  He led Phaylan some way along the wall to a shadowy arch. Just inside, dark and forbidding, a musty smelling pair of wooden doors creaked and cracked as someone on the other side tried to open them. When a sudden thump suggested the use of a shoulder, they both smartly stepped back before the doors swung creakily out to a jarring halt.

  The guard's head popped out. “Welcome, mi Lord, we’ve been on the lookout for you. Please, please do come in. Quarters have been made up for you, so I’ll take you there now, if that’s to your liking?” Yet again, all Nephril could do was nod.

  20 Best Laid Plans

  It was an eerie silence. Even in the remotest parts of the castle some extraneous noise could always be heard; some whistle of the wind, some distant call of a bird, the crumbling fall of desiccated, age-flaked plaster or the drip of dormant damp. But here, where dim, grey light speckled the mote filled air, shafts of sunlight only silently struck slanting columns about the still, supine figure of King Namweed.

  At the centre of the Great Hall rose an alabaster dais, a narrow walkway about its plinth below which granite steps swept down to a tiled floor below. King Namweed rested here serenely, dressed in his finery, symbols of office neatly arrayed upon his chest, hands resting at heart and hilt. Upon a carefully angled and unnecessarily cushioned head, a slightly overlarge crown threw back the sun’s rare treasure, stones and gems sprinkling the air with their diademed dust.

  Nephril stood at the king’s feet and looked along his impassive figure, to the hairs still sprouting from his nose, strangely competing, in a wayward wand of light, with the crown’s own glitter. Nephril’
s own nose, though, detected traces of embalming fluid and wax, the oils and unction so essential to the preserver’s art. In death the king had better colour than Nephril and appeared more vital, as though but simply sleeping. A fine testament, Nephril was pleased to note, to the conserver’s persisting skills.

  He’d been standing here some half hour or so, long enough it had plainly been deemed, for he then heard the distant arrival of a pair of feet. He didn’t turn but instead followed the approaching footsteps by ear, heard them cross the vast floor and slowly climb the steps behind him. He soon felt the nearness of a man, the more pungent odour of genuine life.

  For some reason Nephril couldn’t take his eyes off those damned hairs, mesmerised by their glistening as though they spoke of moist, warm breath. Nephril’s new company quietly stood at his side for a moment before gently coughing.

  Without turning, Nephril asked, “How did he meet his end, Lord Que’Devit?”

  There was a distinct hesitation and then another brief cough. “Well, you see, his … his majesty’s malady finally overtook him … as it were.”

  Nephril briefly turned to Lord Que’Devit’s discomforted face but had to turn away, to look back at the King and sigh. “Nothing too embarrassing, I hope?”

  Lord Que’Devit sounded decidedly relieved to report that there’d been no scene or the like, that the king had, well, as he eventually put it, “Simply passed into a calm and tranquil sleep after quaffing the draught.”

  Nephril asked if Que’Devit knew where he’d got it from, but Que’Devit shrugged as he raised his eyebrows. “Could have been an heirloom I suppose, considering how common it’s been of late within the line.”

  “Most uncommon to hath done it without first leaving an heir, though,” Nephril noted before they both fell silent.

  Que’Devit was the first to move. He stood at the king’s head from where he looked down with derision and disappointment. It saddened Nephril, although far less so than he’d expected.