by Sam Bowring
‘Come,’ said Tarzi, touching his cheek. ‘We have been in the heat too long – let’s retire to the shade.’
He allowed her to pull him to his feet, glad she had no inkling of what had just happened. But he had seen the world blink, and still would not have picked the day.
Later that afternoon they moved away from the coast, through a vale in which the trees stood politely to the sides. Soon the waves were a distant echo, muffled by wooded hills lying between. Moving around the base of such a one, they stumbled onto a cobbled road.
‘Well,’ said Tarzi, ‘perhaps we’re not as far from Silverstone as we thought.’
‘No.’ Rostigan stared gloomily at the road. No wonder Tarzi had grown impatient – he must have dragged her along the beach for longer than he’d realised, to have arrived here so quickly. ‘Perhaps we’ll even reach the city before nightfall.’
The road led through uneven land, up and down hillocks choppier than waves. At the crest of one they passed a guard post – a rickety wooden tower with an unlit brazier at the top.
‘Strange,’ said Tarzi. ‘That should be manned. Where’s the guard?’
Rostigan shrugged. Scanning ahead, his far-reaching gaze caught movement in the lower distance. A figure ran along a row of rushes by a stream, wrapped up tight in a red cloak, face masked by a kerchief and a broad hat – a woman, maybe. She disappeared into the trees.
‘I don’t know,’ he muttered.
‘If I’m right, Silverstone is over the next rise.’
It’s so quiet, he thought. We should hear the city by now.
On they went, up the next hill to the crest. From there they looked over the old floodplain valley on which Silverstone had been built. Named for the shining blocks used to construct it, the lavish city crept up into the hills themselves, all the way to templed peaks. Bustling with people, and famous for its bathhouses steaming with mineral salts found in these hillsides, it had always been a place of abundance.
‘By the Spell,’ said Tarzi, her jaw going slack. ‘What … how can this be?’
A great field of exposed, empty earth lay in the very shape that Silverstone had been. Its edge wandered across the floodplain, up into the hills and back around again in a huge brown circle. It was as if every brick, every building, every person and thing had been lifted away, leaving nothing behind.
Rostigan felt heavy, sick confusion bitter in his mouth, as if the residue of curltooth somehow even enhanced the taste of that.
Was this his fault?
‘Rostigan!’ cried Tarzi, grabbing his arm. ‘Where’s the city?’
‘Shh,’ he said, holding up a hand. She fell silent, wondering what he listened for. Then she heard it too – a voice, female and lyrical, ghostly and distant. It was too soft to hear the words, until they stole closer like a breeze.
Pride, they say, before the fall
Yet Silverstone stands great and tall
And then a tinkling laugh, fading into the rustling grasses.
A strange feeling took hold of Rostigan. Was it horror, or relief?
‘What was that?’ said Tarzi fearfully.
‘Get down.’ He pulled her to the ground.
‘Ouch!’
‘We do not want to be written about from afar.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Could it really be? How was that even possible?
He remembered the figure fleeing into the trees. Who had that been? Someone afraid of what they had seen here? Or her?
‘Stealer,’ he muttered.
‘Stealer?’ Tarzi echoed, dumbfounded. ‘What are you talking about? She died hundreds of years ago.’
‘Yes,’ said Rostigan. ‘And it was the knights of Silverstone who killed her.’
STEALER
Rostigan hoped he was drawing a particularly long bow, yet its arrow seemed to point a true target.
‘Come, Tarzi,’ he said, trying to sound certain as he collected his thoughts. ‘You know the tales of her, probably better than I. Follow me – we stand out here like boils on a backside.’ He began to elbow his way down the slope.
‘Well, of course,’ she growled, huffing after him, ‘but as tales, not current occurrence!’
‘Shh!’ Their voices were carrying well over the eerily quiet hills. ‘Here.’ He crawled to some bushes by the side of the path.
Tarzi peered off through the leaves as if the city might reappear. ‘I know people in Silverstone,’ she murmured. ‘What could have done such a thing?’
She turned back to Rostigan, who stared at her sombrely.
‘Stealer?’ she said, incredulous. ‘You cannot be serious.’
‘The floating voice,’ said Rostigan. ‘That’s something spoken of, isn’t it? Stealer’s echo, a mark in the air of what she had done? That she had stolen?’
Tarzi’s expression remained dubious. It was not surprising, he supposed. He was not even sure why he tried to convince her – perhaps as a way of convincing himself.
‘There are plenty of threaders,’ Tarzi said, ‘who can produce a voice from the air. Tide’s end, I even know a ventriloquist or two.’
‘And these ventriloquists,’ Rostigan wet his lips, ‘are they also able to remove whole cities from existence?’
And, he added to himself, on the beach, you did not notice, but the sun blinked … a thing not seen since the days of Regret, and the Wardens.
Should he tell her about that? He had withheld at the time so as not to worry her, yet now here he was trying to persuade her of Stealer’s return, apparently based on nothing more than a hunch. His actions, he knew, had become somewhat contradictory. If he really wanted her to believe him, he should reveal what he had seen. Certainly the disappearance of daylight fit with histories which she herself recounted, legends known all over Aorn. She told them often – had done so, in fact, just before they had struck out on their latest sojourn into the wilderness, many nights ago …
Tavern-goers refilled their glasses and settled back to listen as Tarzi walked the tiles before the fire.
‘Once,’ she said, ‘there lived a powerful threader, who would become known as Lord Regret, who ruled over the Tranquil Dale – back when it was a welcoming place, full of fine folk like you and me. Regret was a colourful fellow, thin as a stick, who liked to wear flamboyant robes and dye streaks in his wild hair. His bright appearance, however, hid a dark interior, and as time passed this became more and more apparent. Monstrously gifted, he could conjure rainbows or summon bones from people’s bodies with equal ease.’
She made a snatching motion at a seated farmer, who flinched, and others chuckled.
‘Worst of all, Regret learned – no one knew how, nor does to this day – how to manipulate the Great Spell itself! Not just the patterns born from it, which are the domain of all threaders – trees and cows and rainbows and bones – but the very fabric of existence, from which all things come. He set to work changing the world to match his twisted vision of it, born of delirium and nightmare. Starting with his own domain, he stripped his once-happy subjects of their humanity, turning them into pitiless creatures unbound from reason.’
‘The Unwoven,’ someone muttered, and others trembled.
‘Aye, the Unwoven. But creating them was just the beginning. As Regret put his hand behind the world and wrenched at threads he found there, he injured deep and age-old patterns. Imagine it, my friends – the Great Spell, altered by a madman’s will! All that sprung from it affected, a forest grown in poison soil, the repercussions felt all over Aorn. Children were born with limbs missing, plants that never flowered before broke out with aberrant blooms, and sometimes during the day, the sun would simply vanish, as if it were an eye that had shut.
‘Regret was selfish, and insane, and did not care that his meddling threatened the nature of all things – revelled in it, in fact. Armies marched to try to stop him, but the Dale entrance was narrow and well defended by the Unwoven, who had an unnatural strength about them, and an unwillingnes
s to die. They fought as if they loved their master, though to look upon them, one would not think them capable of love anymore. As Aorn’s soldiers fell in their thousands, it seemed there was no hope of penetrating the Dale and that the world was doomed to be swallowed by Regret’s chaotic ambition.’
‘The Wardens came!’ called someone excitably.
Tarzi arched an eyebrow, as if to say ‘I’m telling this tale’, and waited until she commanded silence once again.
‘Indeed. Eight heroic threaders – the best Aorn had to offer – banded together to defeat the mad lord. They called themselves Wardens, and journeyed into the Roshous Peaks, a treacherous place at the best of times, now full of the creatures Regret had made. Taking this route, they approached the Dale from the north, away from its southern entrance where armies dashed themselves to pieces. From a high vantage they overlooked Regret’s Spire, and saw that which now hung above it – a strange rent like a gaping wound in the sky, revealing the threads of the Great Spell for all to see. Here, then, was where Regret had torn open the veil of the world.’
Tarzi prodded the fire with a poker, releasing a spurt of sparks.
‘The Wardens went to the Spire roof, to see if they could close the Wound. That was where Regret found them, attempting to undo his handiwork. And do you suppose he was happy?’
She cast the poker aside and outstretched her hands, as if to cast spells. Folk in the front row shifted uneasily.
‘No,’ she hissed, ‘he was not happy! Decidedly unhappy in fact, and when Regret was unhappy, misery washed from him like a grey haze. He could make a person remember all the ill they’d done in their life – all the mistakes made, all the wrong turns taken – until they felt like naught but a pale imitation of what they could have been, had they but lived a little better.’
There was more than one shiver at the idea.
‘Through such bleakness, the Wardens fought on. It is said the battle lasted for a day and a night, though for those involved, time passed differently. Regret had added to and rewoven his own pattern in unnatural ways, giving himself strengths he had never been born with – even transforming himself during the fight, into something like his own foul creations, with bat-like wings of human skin, and flesh for hair and glowing eyes.’
Rostigan, sitting alone at the back of the room, drowned a half-smile in his mug. The last time Tarzi had told this tale, Regret had become lizard-tailed with flaming fingers. He supposed she felt it necessary to add such detail, since little was known for certain about the fight itself.
‘Standing together,’ Tarzi continued, ‘the Wardens managed to prevail. Some say it was Yalenna who finally burst Regret’s heart in his chest, others claim it was Mergan, or that as a group they tore him apart, scattering him across the roof. At least one thing is known for certain – Regret was finally dead.
‘What, though, of the threads he had stolen from the Spell, and made a part of his very self? To give himself strength, to gain unnatural skills? What happened to them, do you suppose?’
Tarzi focused on a cross-legged boy, staring up at her in wonder.
‘They went into the Wardens,’ she said, splaying a palm wide on the boy’s chest, ‘becoming a part of their own patterns! Worming inside, altering each and every one of them into something other than what they had been. None of them would ever age again – maybe because the threads they now carried were too important, too permanent – but that was not all that had changed. Strange new talents were theirs to command, and some of them, like Forger and Stealer, may as well have changed into different people entirely; depraved and bloodthirsty, maybe driven mad by their transformation, they were certainly no longer recognisable to their old comrades. Fortunately others, like Yalenna and Braston, remained as good as ever, despite what had been forced into them.
‘The Wardens were saviours for a brief moment in time, but in the days to follow, the battles they waged against each other would draw in the rest of the world, and make Aorn’s people wonder if they would have been better off under Regret. And, through the Wardens, his corruption lived on …’
‘Are you sure?’ Tarzi glanced at the sky, as if it might fall dark again. ‘Maybe you imagined it.’
Rostigan barely heard her. Not even a trace of Silver-stone’s threads remained. It had not been ripped away, it had been removed.
‘Rostigan?’
‘No. I did not imagine it.’
‘But what does it mean?’
‘I don’t pretend to know for certain, but if … someone … stole an entire city they may have punched enough of a hole in reality to send out ripples, maybe big enough ones to explain the flickering of daylight.’
Tarzi’s eyes shone in fear.
‘And I saw someone,’ Rostigan added, ‘just before. Cloaked, running away, and wearing a broad hat too.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘I did not think it significant at the time.’
‘I’ve seen paintings of Stealer. She always wore a hat.’
‘Yes.’
‘And covered her face.’
‘This figure wore a kerchief.’
‘That does not change the fact that Stealer was killed!’ Tarzi rubbed her temples furiously, muttering to herself. ‘Knights rode forth from Silverstone, dressed not in armour, but plain trousers and tunics. Riding mares unremarkable in nature or colouring, wielding dull and simple swords. And since there was nothing about them to turn into poetry, when they found Stealer in the woods, her quill could not save her. As she burned, all the things she had stolen were returned to the world.’
Rostigan nodded. ‘That is the tale.’
‘That is the tale from three hundred years ago.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Are you saying you don’t think she really died?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
‘I don’t know.’
Rostigan did not voice that, for some time, he had been growing concerned about the Spell. It wasn’t just the increased rumours of worms and silkjaws, or the battle at Ilduin, or even the moment of night on the beach … it was the sight of a falling leaf spinning too slowly, or an animal running backwards in a way that seemed impossible, or an odd scent wafting in the air, like earth burning. It was knowing that the Wound above Regret’s Spire had never been closed and, more and more, it was a feeling he had.
He had not tried to explain it to Tarzi. She was young, and for her the world was as it had always been.
Looking about, he thought he spied the place where the figure had disappeared – yes, there, by a stream running into the woods. His head pounded – if Stealer really was loose again, there would be much grief for the people of Aorn. Even the other Wardens had been afraid of her. Immune to her gift they may have been, but she could still vanish castles from under their feet, armies from their fields. If Rostigan had a chance, here and now, to stop her before she did any more harm, before the world even knew the peril, before she could add new pages to her legend …
Now was the kind of time when he bemoaned Tarzi’s company most. And, frustratingly, exactly the kind of time which she stayed with him to witness.
‘I must track the woman I saw,’ he told her. ‘It’s the only way to be sure. And, if it is Stealer, I must kill her.’
Despite everything, a wild excitement filled Tarzi’s eyes. ‘Imagine the song should you best her!’
‘Do not wish such things upon the world,’ Rostigan said darkly. ‘Hope that I am wrong.’
It was growing dark and the stout trunks were thickly crowded, in places almost wall-like. Fallen trees lay at odd angles, pushed from the earth by the hungry roots of others, but without the space to fall.
Rostigan moved under a slanting trunk, Tarzi on his heels trying to remain as silent as he. She was fairly adept at it, he had to admit – as light on her feet here as when she sprung from tabletops performing stories – and yet there still sounded the occasional scrape of her boot on bark, or the crackl
e of leaves underfoot. It was dangerous – if the woman they pursued really was Stealer, the last thing he wanted was for her to hear them coming.
The trees gave way briefly to stony ground by the side of the stream. Rostigan entered the clearing carefully, but no one was there. Instead, on the opposite side of the clearing, a strange sight greeted him. Running in a straight line off into the dark was a passage between trees too uniform to be natural. Its floor was lightly churned, earth caving inwards where the roots of stolen trees had been. As Rostigan drew closer, a whisper wafted forth.
Standing in a wooden queue
South to north, straight and true
‘She carved herself a path,’ he said.
Tarzi bit her lip. ‘At least it will make her easy to follow.’
‘Only for me.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, songbird, time for you to roost a while.’
‘How am I supposed to recount your doings if I’m not there to behold them?’
‘Or indeed, if you are rhymed out of the world?’
‘I wasn’t making any noise!’
‘You were doing well, but you must understand that this errand is madness. If Stealer really is somewhere ahead, there’s every chance I won’t return – and I won’t risk you into the bargain. She adores beauty, they say, so you’d be the first to find your way onto the pages of her notebook. The greatest hope is to take her by surprise – something I can achieve more easily without you.’
Tarzi sighed and dropped her pack to the ground. She looked caught between being annoyed and slightly pleased with the compliment.
Rostigan went to the mouth of the passage. There were fresh footprints in the earth, mockingly petite. He glanced back at Tarzi – she had not protested overmuch, and he suspected she might still try to follow. Perhaps she would decide she could remain a safe distance behind him and observe any confrontation from hiding.