by Sam Bowring
‘I really don’t,’ said Jandryn breathlessly in her ear, ‘want to tell Rostigan I lost his lady.’ He was on his feet a moment later, leaping towards Third-worm.
As the soldiers who had fallen in the water struggled against the current, one gave a yelp and was dragged under. A moment later he erupted upwards wrapped in black lengths, his cheeks puffing purple as the air was squeezed from his lungs.
In a daze, Tarzi got to her feet. She saw soldiers setting about First-worm, which was spraying white from so many small cuts that finally it seemed to be growing weaker. In a frenzy it flung itself against them, crushing some as others fell upon it, to hew out larger and larger chunks of quivering black flesh. Its head came up briefly to receive a slice across the brow, and a row of its eyes burst like silver grapes. One of the threaders shouted for people to clear away, advancing with her torch, and flames leapt to sizzle across First-worm’s length, making it writhe as those pinned beneath tried to scrabble free.
Third-worm wheezed with its horrible, airy voice, and tried to slither towards the river.
‘Oh, no you don’t!’
Jandryn drove his sword down hard through the base of its tail, pinning it to the rock.
As River-worm strangled the hapless guard in the water, it twisted and turned under an increasing torrent of arrows. A misfire struck the guard’s neck, ending his struggle. Others, loosed at close range, peppered the worm’s hide, and the frothy surface of the water grew slick with its white blood. The two other threaders arrived at the water’s edge – finally doing something, thought Tarzi – and twin levitated rocks hurtled in from either side of the creature’s head, to pulp it solidly out of shape. The worm curled backwards and sank out of view.
Third-worm wrenched free of Jandryn’s sword, splitting its own tail down the middle like a ragged forked tongue. Surrounded by guards on all sides, it swept its head back and forth while drooling copiously. It seemed to know that it was dangerously exposed and stilled for a moment, great body quivering. Then a grey mist spilled from it – from the joins of its segments, from its mouth and oversized human nostrils. The soldiers closest coughed, glanced around uncertainly, and slowed. The cloud spread outwards, enveloping them all. Tarzi could not help but breathe it in, though it tasted like nothing but vapour on her tongue.
Were they really doing something worthwhile here? she wondered. A few monsters dead in the dark, when the world was full of countless more? What a tiny, pathetic struggle. It all seemed so hopeless and overwhelming, she wanted nothing more than to sit down and cry.
Sit down and cry … sit down and cry …
She had never sat down and cried in her entire life!
She straightened as she strummed the lute for all her worth, the vibrating strings flicking away slime. She raised her voice in full-throated melody.
The prince, he set aside his crown,
Took her hand, soft as you please.
Let’s walk, he said, let’s walk then,
Down by the willow trees.
As Third-worm tried to make for the water, swords cascaded across its back. It moaned and fell short, and Jandryn appeared to sweep down at its neck. Again and again he heaved his blade, until the head collapsed to a sagging fold, like a sack emptying of its gluggy white contents. Finally he stopped, breathing hard, his shoulders rising and falling with his exertions. Misted blood and grey vapour began to disperse.
‘Get this scum into the river,’ Jandryn snarled.
Soldiers and threaders stirred to obey. All the while Tarzi continued strumming, hoping to dispel the last of the worm’s influence. As the two remaining carcasses sank into the flow and disappeared, it almost seemed there was a collective sigh of relief. People began to speak again, and soon there was even a laugh or two, and a couple of slaps on a back.
Jandryn approached Tarzi, reaching to still her frantically strumming hands.
‘Do minstrels,’ he said, ‘ever sing about their own feats? You may have earned the right.’
She tried to a smile, but felt that nothing save the light of day could wipe the smear from her soul.
THE NESTS
The crow had been hard to find, harder still to coax into service. It could not see any reason to place itself in grave danger by flying through silkjaw-infested territory. Rostigan did not try to convey to it the wider importance of the mission, for to crows the concept of helping was unfathomable. He had instead been forced to grow loud in its head, shouting his demands until he had overwhelmed it with his will. Even now his hold was tenuous, as the bird’s instinct was to fly lower and get to safer territory immediately. He would not have it for long, he knew, one way or another.
‘Do you see anything?’ asked Yalenna.
The bird climbed higher over the Peaks, and from above he spied the winding path to which he and Yalenna had threadwalked. He could not see them, he noted with satisfaction, so their camouflage was evidently working. What he could see, ahead, was a crevasse across which hung a strange white netting, standing out starkly from the orange mountaintops. It was the silkjaw nest which Yalenna and Braston had discovered when they had come here to rescue Mergan from Regret’s tomb. What Rostigan wanted to know now was, was it the only one?
There was a high plateau at the end of the path where, according to Yalenna, Regret’s tomb was built. Beyond it, by some hundred paces, Rostigan spied a second nest. It was the same size as the first, and also hung in a cleft between mountainsides. Rostigan urged the crow to dive lower but, as it began its descent, his connection to it was abruptly severed. He blinked, turned his own eyes upwards, and saw a silkjaw whirling away with something black in its mouth.
Rostigan sighed. Every time he lost a crow to a cause they did not understand, they would be less likely to serve him willingly the next time.
‘Did you see anything?’ Yalenna repeated.
‘Yes, there is a second nest. Up there, past the plateau. I could not tell if there’s a way to get to it.’
‘There has to be. When I was here with Braston we saw Unwoven bringing bones to make silkjaws. Without access, a nest would be useless.’
‘Come, then.’
They set off.
Around them, Yalenna maintained a shimmering haze to shield them from sight above. She had done a masterful job, creating a complex network of dust, heat and light which Rostigan could not help but admire – but then, she had been Priestess of Storms, and her command of the elements was accordingly well beyond his own. The memory of her in that guise seeped him for a moment in the deep place, and, as she walked ahead, he saw her wearing her brilliant white robe with the lightning clasp at her shoulder.
‘Here,’ she said, back in plain trousers and shirt.
The path curved along a crevasse. Looking down, they saw a silken surface in which there bobbed the strange bundles of half-formed silkjaws. One, barely more than a head, snapped its jaws and sunk away into the weave.
‘Well,’ said Rostigan.
‘Yes, quite.’
He reached into his satchel and produced a torch and flint, which he handed to Yalenna. She considered them earnestly.
‘Are you not the better of us with fire?’ he asked.
‘I’m not certain. Fire has never been my strongest talent.’
‘You will be better than I, believe me.’
‘Very well.’
He glanced around. ‘Wait. Our efforts may attract attention.’
He let his vision slide. There was not much life here, but the faint threads of static patterns glowed throughout every structure. He chose a place back the way they had come, where the path curved around a jutting rock face, and reached his influence into it. With a gentle tug he drew its threads towards him, spilling rocks over the path. It wasn’t the most forbidding of obstacles to hold Unwoven back, but at least it was something.
Yalenna took a dagger from her belt and used it to knock a spark onto the torch. It sprung alight, almost invisible in the brightness of day.
‘
You really think this will work?’ she said.
‘I don’t see why not. Silkjaws are lousy with fire, so surely a web of the stuff they are made from is just as vulnerable. That’s probably why Regret hid his birthing grounds up high, where no one would know about them.’
Yalenna made a motion over the torch, stretching the flames taller, then folding them back over themselves, then stretching them again, repeating the process several times, as if she was working with elemental dough. The torch began to burn with a powerfully concentrated intensity, and Yalenna held it at arm’s length over the ravine. She splayed the fingers of her other hand, and multiple blazing streams burst forth, diverging downwards to hit the webbing at different points. As they raked across the surface, almost-born silkjaws writhed and shuddered as they singed away, jawbones clacking loudly over the roar of fire. Smoke billowed up thickly, as Rostigan had feared – a beacon that would mark their location for leagues around. Fully grown silkjaws were already rising from the Peaks around them, and he drew his sword, unsure if Yalenna would be able to maintain their protective shimmer while distracted.
‘Are we done yet?’ he asked.
‘No. It burns too fast.’
He glanced into the crevasse and saw what she meant. While the surface of the nest was dense enough to turn the streams of fire into blooms where they contacted it, and leave gaping holes everywhere she directed them, the silk was so quickly converted to ash that the nest as a whole did not actually take. Yalenna had to keep moving the streams back and forth as the nest collapsed in on itself, working her way deeper and deeper. The surface was lowering quickly, yet from the little they glimpsed through the smoke, it looked as if there was still a hundred paces or so of silk before the bottom of the ravine.
‘Be swift,’ he said.
‘I am being swift,’ she muttered, the torch vibrating in her hands as torrents continued to pour from it.
Rostigan realised he could no longer sense any shimmer about them. A silkjaw that had been flying past confirmed this by whipping about and diving in their direction. Rostigan gestured at a rock nearby and it flew upwards, hitting the creature square in the face.
Smoke was now oozing over the place where they stood, and it was becoming difficult to breathe.
Well, thought Rostigan, I may not be a master of the elements, but I do still know a trick or two.
Sending his influence into the smoke, Rostigan swirled it around them like a shifting shawl, being careful to trap a pocket of clear air in with them. Yalenna was now shooting blind, her fire plunging out of view into a white abyss while she sweated copiously, and he did not think it was just with the heat – even for a Warden, such spellcasting would be taxing.
Finally the last stream of fire left the torch, to curl away like a red snake into the smoke and disappear.
‘That must be all of it,’ she said.
‘I think so. Come, let us move on.’
Mergan was inspecting one the Dale’s few operating black-smiths. Inside he had found a sooty Unwoven labouring industriously, smashing away with his hammer while he answered Mergan’s questions. Scattered about the workshop were swords heaped in piles, or standing in old urns and barrels, and whatever else would hold them.
‘You work here all the time, then?’ said Mergan.
‘Every day, lord,’ said Sooty.
‘Just you? Nobody else helps?’
‘I don’t need any help.’
Mergan frowned – he did not understand how the Unwoven functioned as a society, and wasn’t even sure he cared, but he did need to know what resources he had at his disposal.
No, no, came an interior voice, don’t be so flippant. You do care. If you are to control them, you must care.
‘All right!’ he snapped at the air.
Sooty did not seem to mind the outburst.
‘But why,’ said Mergan, ‘should you be the one slaving in the heat while others do nothing? As they eat and sleep and rut and dance, here you are, banging away.’
Sooty rolled his eyes, an effect exaggerated by the way the whites shone from his blackened face.
‘Because I want to,’ he said, as if it was obvious.
Mergan stroked his beard. Either there was an impenetrable logic to Sooty’s answer, or it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard; he could not work out which.
He decided to try another angle.
‘Who taught you how to be a blacksmith?’
Sooty shrugged. ‘Some other Unwoven.’
‘Did he work here before you?’
‘Yes. He showed me how to do this and that. One day he decided he wanted to work with the cows instead and left. I haven’t seen him since.’
‘How long ago was that?’
Sooty paused in his hammering and thought for a moment. ‘Mmm. Maybe twenty or forty years?’
Mergan fished a sword out of a barrel and turned it for inspection. It was a simple, sturdy weapon – iron hilt and blade, quite sharp but not very well balanced. Clearly it relied on the strength of the wielder over any finesse.
All the others were the same.
‘Do you only make swords?’
‘It’s what I like to make.’
‘Do you know the other blacksmiths in the Dale?’
‘No.’
‘There are five or six of them, as far as I can tell. The last one I visited makes all kinds of things. Swords, maces, breastplates …’
‘We live your touch in different ways, lord.’
Mergan nodded. ‘As I intended.’ He stroked his beard some more. What did he even need here?
‘Where do you get your ore?’
‘There are others about who like to dig it out of the ground.’
‘And they bring it to you?’
‘No. They just dig it out.’
‘So who brings it to you?’
‘Others.’
Mergan shook his head. A kind of order, anyway, a vague semblance …
Scarbrow came striding into the smithy.
‘Lord Regret! There is smoke in the mountains!’
Mergan hurried outside, where various members of his nameless entourage – the ones who liked to guard him, he supposed – stood staring at the Peaks at the end of the Dale and the great plumes of smoke rising behind them.
‘What is up there?’ Mergan demanded, then wondered if he was being too free with his ignorance. No one seemed to suspect him, however.
‘We have maintained the nests you built, lord,’ said Scarbrow. ‘They are the only thing I know that could burn like that.’
‘The nests?’ Mergan could not simply ask what they were. ‘What have you been doing to my nests?’
‘Our people still take bones to them, though more seem to like doing it recently. Some days ago the dancers went there to set the white fliers loose on the untarnished stronghold.’
Silkjaws.
‘Which stronghold?’
‘That way,’ said Scarbrow vaguely, waving southwards.
Althala.
Mergan had not much thought about silkjaws, but if there was a place where they were made, of course his old friends would want to interfere with it.
‘How dare they!’ he spat. ‘Haven’t they caused me enough trouble?’
‘Who, my lord?’
‘The Wardens, of course!’
Scarbrow scowled. ‘We shall go immediately to kill them!’
‘You’ll never get up there in time,’ said Mergan. ‘Stand back, and keep everyone away from me. I must concentrate uninterrupted if I am to threadwalk.’
‘Yes, lord.’
Mergan sat down and closed his eyes. With a tinge of dread, he thought about the place he knew best in the Peaks, where it would be easiest for him to return – the place that haunted his dreams, and many a waking hour as well.
Regret’s tomb.
Not inside it, he promised himself giddily. He pictured the plateau that the tomb looked out onto, the only view he’d had for centuries.
Inside h
is smithy, Sooty was continuing work. Clank went his hammer, clank, clank …
Four times … five times … six times …
‘Tell him to be quiet!’ roared Mergan.
Scarbrow disappeared inside and moments later the clanking stopped.
All right, thought Mergan. Now get me to the tomb.
With Yalenna’s haze protecting them once again, she and Rostigan arrived on the tomb plateau. It was higher than the surrounding land, though not by much, like a slightly taller wave in a choppy sea. Rostigan looked curiously at the columned entrance to the unspectacular building crumbling against a bump of mountainside. He had imagined something more austere, or formidable – though as his vision shifted to the tomb’s patterns, the interlocked threads that enclosed it made him uneasy, and he did not feel inclined to go anywhere near them.
Yalenna stared back the way they had come, and it wasn’t hard to guess what she looked at – from their vantage they could make out the distant Wound, though from their angle it was quite flat, like a coin on its side.
‘Is there no way you can think of …’ she said, then sighed and shook her head. Turning back to him, ‘The second nest was beyond this place?’
‘Yes. Eastwards.’
They moved around the plateau edge and, as they came to its eastern side, spotted another white web nestled in a ravine similar to the first. There was a path leading down to it between mounds of rock, quite straight and narrow for a hundred or so paces. Eager not to linger, they continued on. At the end of the path a square ledge protruded out over the ravine and, as they peered over, a newly birthed silkjaw swivelled its head upwards. From beneath the haze it could see them clearly, and clapped its jaws angrily.
‘I’ll need a fresh torch,’ said Yalenna.
Rostigan fished about in his satchel and retrieved one, handing it to her.
‘I’ll probably lose control of the haze again,’ she said, glancing at the sky. Silkjaws were dotted about everywhere. ‘They’re riled up now. As soon as it goes they will come for us.’
Rostigan considered a nearby pile of loose rocks. A ready source of projectiles, but would it be enough?
