Dialwatcher looked more encouraged now. “Aye! ‘Tis indeed, and what’s more, that arc o’ grey is the very edge of what was once our only world!”
It was as though Breadgrinder’s mind was some wooden engine, like a corn mill or such, slowly cranking, ponderously and with much creaking. “What? You mean the world, our own real world? Where t’Exchange an’ t’farms, an’ … and Grunstaan are?”
By now Dialwatcher’s eyes were fast closed, his lips almost noiselessly mouthing words. Breadgrinder had to ask, “Well?” which made Dialwatcher jump.
It worried Breadgrinder that Dialwatcher now looked startled and fearful, and it wasn’t helped when he could only answer, “Aye, ‘tis so, ‘tis t’world thee sees there, but…”
Nephril pushed between them, face set to a forced smile. He gave Dialwatcher a sideways look, a flick of the eyes, then took Breadgrinder by the shoulders and hurried him up the road.
They soon rose onto the lowest slopes of the Gray Mountains, in amongst their foothills, and lost sight of Breadgrinder and Dialwatcher’s home world. It seemed greatly to ease Breadgrinder, and by it gave ease to Nephril who could then consider far more weightier things.
They’d all fallen silent by now, lost to the incessant climb, all but Dialwatcher who’d slowly begun whimpering. Breadgrinder came alongside and soon realised he was in pain. The trouble was, whenever Breadgrinder tried to catch his eye Dialwatcher would look away. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Breadgrinder asked, “Is thee alright, Dialwatcher? Ya seem to be in a bit o’ pain.”
Pettar had overheard and soon came to walk beside them, looking askance at Dialwatcher’s now hobbling gait. Pettar looked down at Dialwatcher’s feet and suspected yet another case of blisters.
It took him a while to explain what they were, time and a delaying halt that seemed to irk Nephril. Impatiently, he ordered Pettar to carry Dialwatcher, “At least until we are able to make camp, there upon the pass’s saddle. We will have more leisure for blisters then, and much more beside.” He briefly glanced at Penolith.
At first, Pettar carried Dialwatcher as though hardly burdened, but by the time they came to the place they’d camped in on the way down, he was clearly in need of a rest. Lord Nephril reluctantly gave him leave, but warned him to make it brief.
It wasn’t long before Lambsplitter and Melkin were back at the road’s parapet, taking a last look at what they still took to be Nouwelm, just visible below. Breadgrinder wondered what they were looking at and so joined them.
He saw part of a granite-grey bounded circle, nestled within a bend of the brown stripe. At its centre lay a much smaller circle within which a red blotch bounded a teal haze, around which Breadgrinder could see eight black marks, like strokes of a pen. When he looked more closely, though, he soon realised that each stroke was a pair, eight pairs of… Shocked, he now understood exactly what it was he was looking at, and gulped.
He swung about and excitedly called over to Dialwatcher, “Come and look at this. You won’t believe it.”
As soon as Dialwatcher began to rise, Lord Nephril stayed him, his face full of alarm. “Time to move on,” Nephril announced in no uncertain terms, his voice faltering, and smartly led Dialwatcher on and up the road, around its bend and thereafter forevermore beyond Grunstaan’s gaze.
44 Slip into Another World
The climb taxed each and every one of them, not just Dialwatcher and Breadgrinder, although they suffered the most. It had kept them all silent, even at their many stops where they’d gazed out at the unrelenting view. Dark blue heavens had pressed in on thin blue air, bringing unreal clarity to the monotonous expanse of scrub and desert, its ochre-streaked hues steadily retreating behind them as they rose onto the flat saddle of the pass.
For Nephril it was a poignant stretch, a stark reminder of the state he’d been in when first they’d passed that way. It made him draw in fresh mountain air and taste its thin sweetness, its tang of cold-edged scent in his now warm and thriving throat. He ran his eye around the valley whilst feeling the mass of the Gray Mountains reach up at him through his feet.
To the north, the Plain of Newmen’s last stain had sunk away leaving them now between empty blue skies. The one to the south held no proud rise of Castle Dica yet, nor distant smear of the Southern Hills, nor any sight of the briny sea held between the slanting valley sides. They were alone and apart in a lofty world, as though cupped in a celestial hand, and there found a sheltering hollow in which to camp.
When they’d eaten, Breadgrinder, Dialwatcher and all the priests but Phaylan quickly retreated to the shelter in search of sleep, leaving the others contentedly staring up at the growing panoply of stars now chasing the sun towards its diurnal bed. They sat contentedly for some time as dusk steadily gave way to the night, and until the Guardian lightly coughed. Nephril smiled, although none could see it by now, but he willingly gave an ear to Penolith.
“My … my Noble Lord? Perhaps you could see your way to telling us just exactly what’s been going on?”
Nephril strained to see her face but failed, only a hint of curving hair glistening against the blackness. He had to imagine her confused look, one that would otherwise have softened his heart. They all had a right to know, should have known earlier had it been possible. No, only now, only here, hidden from both Certain gazes could he at last speak freely.
He held Penolith’s face in his mind’s eye, so he could say in confidence what he now knew others would hear. “Mine dearest and most loyal Guardian Penolith, thou art right. There has been much I have had need to hold from thee, and with good reason.”
Nephril began by addressing his own miraculous recovery, explained how his meagre weft and weave had been noticed the moment they’d come through the pass. Grunstaan had felt it, had seen its faint flicker in the far off distance, out where nothing had been before, in the out she never knew existed.
It had been her very intrigue that had saved Nephril’s life, for she’d reached out her gaze, and with it, her unknowing embrace. Almost devoid of vigour, his infusion of Leiyatel’s very fibre had then begun to hum, had soon sung in harmony with Grunstaan’s refrain.
His voice had until now been that of the ancient Nephril but it soon changed, quickly became young again. “She fanned mine embers afire, blew distant heat to its cold, dying hearth, and there saw flames grow anew, flames that threw light onto hitherto unknown lands. For the first time, she saw a world beyond her own grey horizon, beyond her dull charges with their dull and disembodied demands.”
Nephril paused, looked inwards and almost pined, “She is so young and alive, virgin yet but oh so eager.” He remembered Dialwatcher and Breadgrinder, and so lowered his voice. “Like all living things she craves contact, must hath knowing of where she be and what profit it holds.”
Penolith simply asked, “Why did we have to leave so quickly, Lord Nephril? What happened during your night with Grunstaan?”
“Ah. Yes. Only last night, eh? So soon from such a narrow escape.”
“Escape?” Penolith and Melkin both cried.
Before Nephril could answer, though, a stray gust of wind cut through the camp. It snatched at the shelter’s fabric before hauntingly and plaintively whistling away through the darkness. Nephril wryly noted, if only half in jest, “Perhaps Grunstaan has already heard that she hath been tricked.”
With the wind now off into the blackness, Nephril explained, “It was through me that she saw and felt the world as we do, a little at least. Through mine own eyes did she see, and with mine own touch did she feel. So keen to know more, she poured succour into mine fibre, succour in which blew the warm breath of life.”
Lady Lambsplitter noted, “Seems to me it was a bit more than just life she blew into you?” at which, had they been able to, they’d have seen how embarrassed he became. Grunstaan, Nephril rather sheepishly admitted, had seen his greatest weakness, the greatest weakness all living things had - their animal yearnings. “She rekindled an age-worn passion!
”
Grunstaan had found in Nephril what she’d only vaguely felt from those Bazarran descendants within her charge. Despite his great age, his long wearied interest and near death, that procreative spark had still hung on. Through revealing weft and weave she’d readily seen bait for the surest of traps.
“‘Tis an inviolable force that all living things hold,” Nephril had vouched. “The most ancient of yearnings, and therefore the one most easily entrapped,” at which Melkin rather ruefully cleared his throat.
“In which case, Lord Nephril, what trap have we so narrowly escaped, that’s so rudely torn us from Nouwelm’s Repository?”
Nephril peered into the darkness towards Melkin’s acid voice, but smiled weakly to himself. “Grunstaan’s knowing of the physical world would hath forever held me close, and by it us all.” He went silent, for his thoughts had drifted far out into a sea of terror he could fain explain.
He remembered the longing that had pushed him so far, that had driven his need of Naningemynd’s solace, there in a lair so far beyond Leiyatel’s reach. He remembered the pain and the struggle, the hard earned end to a wearisome life. Loccianes af Naningemynd. The words that had brought such soothing to his own mind. Aeghwilc awierdnes loccianes. Yes, all pain could indeed be soothed.
It didn’t last, though, for he soon remembered how he’d been torn from that peace, how Grunstaan’s eager gaze had shattered his hard-won tranquillity. How could he explain the utter terror of waking, only then to face undeniable immortality?
Grunstaan was young, far younger than Leiyatel had been when first he’d pledged his allegiance, when quite naively he’d welcomed everlasting life. He’d known it to be eternal then but he’d also been young himself, far too young to know, to understand truly what eternal meant.
Thankfully, Leiyatel’s tenure had been tenuous. Dican profligacy and wanton ways, so decried by the Bazarran, had certainly made sure of that. Leiyatel may have been large but she was still finite, of a stature that could ne’er keep pace with Dican demands.
Not so with Grunstaan, though, and certainly not with such restrained charges. Unlike the Dicans, her immured Bazarran descendants had lean issue, fell to fecundity but one year in three and so, with untaxing wants, could only ever lend certainty to Grunstaan’s perpetuity.
What had then so worryingly stretched out before Nephril had been nothing less than the promise of true immortality. To be snatched from the jaws of one eternal life only to find oneself in yet another, and far more certain one, scared Nephril to unattainable death.
“Grunstaan would never hath let us leave, not in a thousand million years, and far, far more. She had gained what all life craves – to know at large.”
Penolith had been sitting near Nephril, near enough to reach out and place a hand on his arm. She gently caressed it, reassuringly, before quietly saying, “So, my dearest one, you promised her more, didn’t you?”
Nephril was surprised to find himself laughing, quietly but with immense relief. “Aye, I did, and much, much more.”
He’d convinced Grunstaan that his own weft and weave gave poor communion with any Certain Power. “After all.” he’d dissembled, “even Leiyatel had had need of one more wholly of her than I.”
“Storbanther!” Penolith hissed.
“Indeed. Thine own good aide Storbanther was far better fashioned for such, could truly be Leiyatel’s own bodily form at large.”
A ripple of surprise ran through the dark before Penolith said, “You promised Grunstaan her very own Storbanther, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
Nephril had argued an escape. He’d assured Grunstaan that one such as Storbanther could only be wrought within one place, within Leigarre Perfinn, and so she’d reluctantly let them slip free. Not only they but also a volunteer limb, one to be fashioned as the form of Grunstaan within a Dialwatcher skin, one that Nephril had promised would be returned forthwith.
“Well,” Nephril noted, “that had been the agreement anyway.”
Penolith gripped Nephril’s arm and pleaded, “But what of Leiyatel’s own salvation, eh, Lord Nephril? Where in your plans does her surety lie?”
“Yes,” Melkin added. “How’s Leiyatel to be saved when we’ve brought nowt from the Repository?”
Unseen, Nephril lowered his eyes. “Thou hast not been within the Repository, Steward Melkin, for it hast long ago been lost, along with Nouwelm itself, long, long ago fallen to dust and decay in the desert.”
Stunned silence ensued.
Presently and very carefully, Nephril began to explain that what they’d first seen from the pass had indeed been the remains of Nouwelm. “The traces of roads and lanes, those remnants of gable and tower had all been what little now remains of that ancient city, as near as damn it nothing, nothing at all. It hast gone, weathered away long, long ago.”
Lady Lambsplitter’s voice asked, “But what of the library … the one in Nouwelm, or wherever it was we were? What of that?”
Nephril wouldn’t be moved. “Where thou hast been be but a vestige, no more than a shadow of Galgaverre alone, complete with its own small Baradcar.”
They refused to believe him. Although he explained how even the hardy Bazarran had found conditions on the Plain of Newmen far too intolerable, and so had fashioned a safe haven, they still refused to believe him. Very quickly the air filled with their voices, one shooting across the other, none heard amidst the storm of protests.
Nephril had sat back and closed his eyes, had listened instead to the rising wind, heard its searching fingers feel amongst the shelters. Content in his own knowing, he knew he was right, knew that Nouwelm had long since died and left naught but a kernel of descended Bazarran blood. Grunstaan’s meagre bastion now went by no remembered name for, to her own charges, it was nothing less than the whole of their world.
The original Repository had been pillaged, stripped only of what was needed for Grunstaan’s continuance; the mundane and prosaic, procedure and method, the simple wants of upkeep. What had been retained was no more than what now lay within Galgaverre’s own more accessible library.
All knowledge of Leiyatel or Grunstaan’s creation, or of their forging anew, had long been lost, given over to the surety of Grunstaan’s immortality. What they’d all so fervently hoped to find had long since turned to dust, only then to be taken away by the desert winds.
The arguments continued as Nephril settled himself more comfortably, as he serenely pondered the one thing of value their journey would in fact bring back. They may not be carrying any treasure of knowing or lore with which to renew Leiyatel, but on Dialwatcher’s finger rested something of far, far greater worth.
45 The Northern Way Lost
There was little rest gained that night in the pass. They argued their cases back and forth, their voices occasionally having to rise above the increasingly howling wind. Lambsplitter and Melkin still couldn’t believe their journey to be entirely unproductive of the texts and writings they’d so earnestly desired. Penolith and Pettar, more so her than he, were both crestfallen that no rescue of Leiyatel seemed likely, despite Nephril’s rather oblique assurances.
Of those still awake, only Phaylan had kept to himself. He’d watched and then, as night fell, listened to everything whilst his keen mind sorted and sifted. When in the early hours it had all gone quiet at last, he’d felt his way to where he knew Nephril to be, wrapped in his robes and his own close thoughts.
Although a thin crack of light, beyond the Gray Mountains to the northeast, gave some hint of approaching morning, it hardly lit his way. More by feel than sight, he edged towards the rasping sound of Nephril’s breathing and there settled close by. Lord Nephril seemed awake although he’d said nothing. It was actually his quiet humming that showed his mind was still alert.
In one of the wind’s lulls, Phaylan broached, “Lord Nephril?” to which there was a short intake of breath and then a soft but brief laugh, one that betokened a smile.
“Ah, mi
ne quick-witted one. Of course, I had forgotten thine astute senses, thy patient ears and eyes. And what dashed hopes might thee be looking to recover I wonder?” The wind once more howled and held back a reply.
Phaylan felt heather and grass whip annoyingly at his head and so leant forward, out of reach. “My Lord?” he began as the wind finally careened off and left them a quiet interlude. “It strikes me you’ve a purpose, one that should be clear if only people would let go of their fixed minds.”
“Indeed? Is that what thou believe?”
“It’s what I suspect. Seems to me you’ve not told us all, but for a good reason no doubt.”
“There be always more to a view than what one dost see, and ‘tis usually those with least straining sight that doth see it.”
When the wind rose again, they both felt something in it, something sharp and cold. Nephril seemed uneasy as he leant in a little closer. “There be more to a journey than bringing home trinkets, more than mere artefact.”
Phaylan really wished he could see Lord Nephril’s face. He suspected he was missing a lot, but try as he might, could see naught.
Not only could he see nothing of Nephril’s face, but nor could he put together anything tangible from the fragments now crowding his mind. He’d quietly observed all that had happened and been said over the past couple of days and felt there was something plain in it all, but something plainly obscured.
“There’s more to a view, as you’ve said, my Lord. More to a view than those who look hard can see, but also it seems to me, more to a person.”
“Is that so?”
“More to … more to Master Dialwatcher, perhaps.”
Again, the wind rose the keener and more insistently, but Nephril’s sharp intake of breath rose above it. The sky had noticeably lightened now, although revealing little of the ground. What it made evident, though, but only faintly, were elusive flecks of white all about them.
Of Weft and Weave (Dica Series Book 2) Page 39