The Legacy of Lord Regret: Strange Threads: Book 1

by Sam Bowring

  ‘Tarzi,’ he said.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘In your stories, when someone is told to stay behind, they never do.’

  She grinned. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Don’t smile, girl,’ he snapped. ‘Stealer is no laughing matter. Her return could mark the beginning of a new chaotic age. Perhaps there is but one chance, one small and tiny chance, to stop her now before that happens. Is that worth jeopardising for a tale to tell drunkards?’

  Tarzi’s glare was icy.

  ‘Promise me, promise that you will not follow.’

  She sat down heavily on a log.

  ‘Tarzi?’

  ‘I promise!’

  ‘A real promise, true? You will not sit for an hour, grow bored and creep along after?’

  ‘Wind and fire! I promise, you insufferable man.’

  ‘Good.’ He turned away.

  ‘What makes you think you have this small and tiny chance anyway? If it really is her, which there’s no way it can be.’

  ‘I have my reasons.’ Rostigan took a deep breath, and entered the passage.

  He went more swiftly than before, for he predicted Stealer at tunnel’s end, and that was not yet in sight. Insects and worms that had made their homes in the earth around absent roots now wriggled free and exposed. The passage never deviated, and, as night fell, the wood grew blacker and blacker.

  How deep have you gone? he wondered. How far do you flee?

  He winced as his boot crunched a beetle.

  Finally, ahead, he caught the twinkle of firelight. He slowed, stepping in shadows not found by the rising moon. Softly he approached the end of the passage, which he could now see opened up into a small clearing. He paused on the threshold, peering through gaps in the trees. There, on a rock before the flames, sat a lone figure.

  She was the very image of her portraits. Small and slender in a scarlet cloak, under which other layers wrapped her tightly – gloves and leggings, boots done up to her knees, her shirt almost flat across her chest. Her kerchief was draped across her knee, but the broad-brimmed hat still hid her face. The quill in her right hand came down to meet the notebook in her left, and the point flew deftly across the page. There was a glimmer of threads streaming in from the air around her, only visible in the moment before they reached her. She chuckled, a wet sound, and a moment later her ghostly words floated out of the air.

  Apples taste so fresh and sweet

  It’s what makes them so good to eat

  In the dark Rostigan felt his heart grow cold. Had she really just done what he thought she had?

  ‘See if you like that, Aorn,’ she muttered to herself. ‘So precious a simple thing, you probably didn’t even know you had it, but you’ll notice now it’s gone, gone, gone …’

  A night bird hooted on a branch above her. She glanced up at it, and Rostigan saw glittering eyes and a mouth that there was no mistaking. Jagged strips of flesh were missing from her lips, leaving the rest to hang like tattered curtains that permanently revealed her yellowed teeth.

  As the bird stretched its wings, her quill descended toward a fresh page.

  ‘Such whimsical destruction,’ said Rostigan.

  She started, her eyes snapping to where he lurked, quill hovering at the ready.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she hissed through jiggling lips.

  ‘Do you really need a bird in your collection, when you already took a whole city today, Stealer?’

  She laughed. ‘I thought I was forgotten after so long, but I do myself discredit.’

  ‘Who else would purge Silverstone from the face of Aorn?’

  ‘Yes, it was I – and, knowing that, you still sneak upon my fireside, bold enough to speak when most would flee? Do you fancy yourself protected, there in the shadows?’

  ‘If you cannot see me, surely I am safe from being described.’

  Her laugh was louder this time. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard the tale of the knights who slaughtered me? It’s given you false confidence. Do you really think there’s nothing to be said about someone, just because they dress in brown trousers and only carry stupid blunt weapons?’

  ‘Then how did they kill you?’

  ‘We all sleep sometimes. It seems that men would rather remember themselves as gifted planners, rather than brutes who butchered a woman in her bedroll.’

  ‘And why,’ he said, ‘have you returned?’

  ‘Do you know, it is the strangest thing – I have no idea at all. Just woke up as if I never left, imagine that! I think it was even in the same place as where they killed me, though the landscape has changed a little so I can’t be certain.’

  ‘Aorn was better off without you. It will be again.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Her eyes narrowed, and her quill darted across the page.

  He makes a dangerous remark

  This skulking fellow in the dark

  Her words crawled up Rostigan’s arms like ephemeral centipedes … and passed him by. Stealer’s expression turned to one of shock. She leapt to her feet and bolted.

  Rostigan had not expected her to flee. He bounded after her, his bulk a hindrance in the confines of the wood. She darted ahead, a flash of scarlet slipping between crowded trees. Gritting his teeth, Rostigan ignored the long scrapes of clutching twigs down his arms, the sharp branches that gouged him or flew at him in shards as he slashed them from his path. He heard her curse, and rounded a trunk to find her struggling with her cloak tangled in a bush. She ripped free and spun to face him as he advanced, her eyes widening at his raised sword.

  ‘Wait, it’s not fair!’ she cried. Her hand flew up as she tried to undo the threads of his sword, but with a mental flick he batted her influence away.

  ‘Don’t you want to talk?’ she said. ‘I only just –’

  He smashed the sword down between her eyes, driving bits of skull deep into her neck.

  Rostigan carried the body back through the trees. She did not move, yet he thought there was life in her still – that, if left alone, she would eventually heal. Wardens had always been considered something close to immortal.

  He arrived at her campsite, where the fire still burned. It had done the job once – no reason to think it would not again.

  ‘Tarzi!’ he bellowed, down the long passage.

  She must be a league or so away, but he was sure she would hear him through the still night. She would want to look on the body, to see the mouth that removed all doubt, and thus have something to put in her stories.

  ‘Tarzi!’ he shouted again. ‘It is safe to approach!’

  He propped Stealer against a rock in an affectation of recline, taking care to remove the notebook and quill from her person. From either side of her split skull, her eyes suddenly became aware. They flickered to him, full of hate, and she gurgled somewhere down in her spliced throat, below the mess of her ruined lips.

  ‘Patience,’ he said.

  He turned away, inspecting her notebook. Her writing was spidery yet legible. There was a verse about a guard in a guard post, followed by one about Silverstone, one that had created the passage in the trees, and finally, one about the taste of apples. The rest of the pages were blank.

  He crouched down before her. ‘What business do you have in the world, Stealer? Why have you returned? How?’

  She could not answer.

  After a while he heard Tarzi approaching, and went to show himself at the mouth of the passage.

  ‘Rostigan?’ she called nervously.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Come and see, for I would not leave you with nothing for your songs. Come and look upon Stealer while you can.’

  Tarzi entered the clearing, her face going white at what she found there.

  ‘That’s her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stealer? Not some … I don’t know … imposter, following in her footsteps?’

  ‘If so, they did a good job replicating her likeness. Not that you can really tell now, I suppose.’

  She clutched his arm. ‘
She’s looking at me.’

  ‘Do not fear, she cannot hurt you. I thought you would want to see her before I consign her to the flames.’

  ‘But how did you best her?’

  ‘I was lucky. I was able to circle around to where she sat and strike before she knew I was there.’

  Tarzi stared a moment longer. ‘It’s really her, isn’t it? That mouth …’ She trailed off, looked away.

  Rostigan felt like a cur who had dragged home a dying bird to its owner. ‘Enough?’ he asked.

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Very well.’

  As Stealer’s eyes flashed in protest, he lifted her up under the arms and draped her across the fire. The gurgling in her throat grew louder, her fingers waggling spasmodically to a whir. Rostigan quickly gathered armfuls of dry brush, which he dumped around her.

  ‘Must be terrible,’ he said matter-of-factly as he worked, ‘to go the same way, again, so soon.’

  The fire began to belch blackly and soon all movement stopped. Fat sizzled on crumbling bones.

  ‘Let us away from here,’ whispered Tarzi.

  Rostigan ignored her, waiting for something she could not see. He wanted to make sure Stealer was gone for good.

  With no flesh to reside in, the threads of Stealer’s pattern began to unwind, losing their – her – shape. Soon they were as wavering and random as the twirls of smoke they danced between, and fading quickly. Rostigan sent his gaze deeper, chasing after them, and they rekindled briefly to his vision … but, just as on the beach, there came a certain depth past which he could not see. Stealer’s threads disappeared beneath the veil of the world, back into the Spell, and were gone. Only one bundle remained, like an ethereal tussock of twitching blue seaweed, which snapped off from the rest to bounce along a narrow plane between the layers of existence. Rostigan grimaced – it seemed these threads could not penetrate the veil, something he had feared but not expected. He felt certain they were the ones stolen from the Great Spell, gone to Stealer through Regret, and now, seemingly, they could not return to where they belonged.

  Before he could ponder anything much, the bundle rushed directly towards him. He started raising a hand to ward it off, but it sped up and slapped against his chest – no, not his chest, the centre of his being – worming its way into his pattern. Although the sensation was not quite pain, it was tumultuous nonetheless, as parts of him disconnected and reconnected to make room for the new addition. He felt lines travelling up inside him toward his mouth, where his lips began to tingle.

  No, he thought, fearing the splitting of his flesh.

  He reasserted himself, concentrating hard on keeping his own threads in place. Rejected from his lips, the lines curved downwards on themselves to hook into the greater bundle. This itself seemed unable to settle, as stronger, more sedentary structures refused to budge in its way.

  You can’t go where you want, can you?

  The bundle spread out into him nonetheless, seeming to make secondary choices. Meanwhile he stood rigid, unable to move or gasp as he suffered an interior rearrangement of the self, until he might even have blacked out on his feet.

  ‘Rostigan?’

  Tarzi touched his shoulder. How much time had passed? It did not feel like mere moments, yet nothing in her manner suggested he had been standing there long. She was nervy, but her furtive glances were being directed at Stealer’s remains.

  ‘Can we go?’

  Rostigan was no longer aware of the new threads moving inside him. Sickeningly, he suspected they had meshed with his own until they were not sensed as foreign. Did he feel different? He was not sure. When the Wardens had absorbed Regret’s stolen threads, it had changed them both in ability and personality. Formerly good people have been driven to commit unspeakable acts of evil, seemingly without reason other than for their own greed and enjoyment. Did he now possess some overwhelming need to plunder the world’s beauty, as had been Stealer’s favourite pastime? With relief, he decided he did not think so. For one thing he had avoided being inflicted with a gruesome dripping mouth, so maybe he had escaped the rest as well? Patterns were not all the same, and he had denied the bundle seating itself as it had wished.

  He struggled to hide his concern as Tarzi led the way out of the clearing.

  ‘So,’ she said, after a while, seeming happier now that they were away from Stealer, ‘Silverstone should be returned now, yes?’

  Rostigan grunted noncommittally.

  ‘By the Spell,’ she went on, ‘that was really something. I can’t believe it Rostigan – you actually killed Stealer!’

  ‘Yes,’ he managed, in a cracked voice.

  They spent the night in the clearing by the stream, where the ground was flat and dry. Rostigan lay awake trying to work out what had happened to him. Perhaps he had just imagined it – perhaps Stealer’s threads had merely wafted his way as they rejoined the Spell, and it had only seemed like they had gone into him, when in fact they’d gone right through him – but no amount of wishing could make him believe it.

  He rose and went to the stream with Stealer’s notebook and quill. As he sat by the water, a lone fish broke the surface, maybe trying to swim to the bright face in the sky. He frowned, quill poised above paper – he had never been much good at rhymes. After some thought, and having decided the quality of the verse did not matter, he set down words.

  The moonlight dims

  as the little fish swims

  There was a soft plip as water rushed in to fill the space left behind as the fish disappeared. The words he had written whispered out of the air, and his heart fluttered to hear them spoken aloud in his own voice. He glanced at Tarzi but she was sleeping peacefully.

  In disgust he threw the notebook and quill into the stream, though he knew it would not make any difference. They were common objects, nothing special, just a record of Stealer’s trophies. It was to Rostigan the fish’s threads had come, never travelling through any quill or being captured on any page. He could form the stealing words however he wished – on paper, sketched in dirt, in his mind.

  He almost marvelled that an understanding of Stealer’s talent came to him so naturally. Would have, if he had not been so repulsed. At the least he was thankful that he felt no satisfaction at the theft.

  Morning came, and they made their way back through the wood, out onto the hills. As Tarzi raced up to the crest that overlooked Silverstone, Rostigan saw hope fall from her face, and guessed the reason why.

  The city had not returned.

  THE TEMPLE OF STORMS

  Yalenna opened her eyes. Her cheek was pressing against white stones, so smooth they almost seemed soft. She ran a finger over them, beneath the cocoon of her own snowy hair.

  She sensed people nearby and, glancing through her tousled strands, saw bare feet going about their business across an open area. On her other side was a marble statue set into the wall – a young woman with a serene face staring into the distance, her long tresses spilling freely down her back, wearing a robe clasped at her shoulder with a lightning strike brooch. As Yalenna saw it, she became aware of something jagged digging into her own shoulder, crushed between it and the floor. She pushed up on her hands, curling her feet beneath her, and saw the same lightning strike clasping her own robe.

  She was awed and perplexed, though her surrounds were familiar – she was in the Temple of Storms – and yet there had never been a statue of herself here.

  ‘Storm’s end!’ came a voice nearby.

  It was a man also in a white robe, who stared from her, back up to the statue, then at her again. Others nearby were stopping too, men and women in the same temple garb, edging closer and whispering excitedly.

  ‘She looks just like her!’

  ‘Wind and fire, it cannot be.’

  ‘The Spell remembers all patterns. All things are possible to return.’

  ‘Nay, it must be some ruse, some trick.’

  ‘I say it is a miracle. I say we are blessed.’

  Som
e of them began to drop to their knees, while others peered on, uncertain.

  Yalenna frowned in confusion, not because of the gathering crowd, but because she was finally beginning to wake up.

  She should not be here.

  She had died here.

  Years after the Wardens had toppled Regret, and those corrupted by the task had been laid to rest, she and Braston had realised that they themselves spread the corruption too. Not in the same violent, chaotic way as some of the others, not in a way that drove them to destroy … yet they destroyed nonetheless, slowly and surely, simply by being. The powers granted to them should not have been, and their continued use damaged the very nature of the world. Now she could feel it happening again.

  Blessings began to seep from her. Tiny whorls of bundled threads breathed from her, floating off to find people to sink into and entwine with. Perhaps the person blessed would go on to find their true love, or win at cards, or be visited by fine pigeons every morning for a week. There should have been no harm in spreading such good, yet she understood too well that it changed things in ways the world had not expected. Maybe the man who found his true love would abandon his wife, leaving her forever heartbroken. Maybe the loser at cards would grow angry with his opponent’s run of luck, and drunkenly draw his dagger. Maybe a pigeon’s chicks, unguarded in the nest while their parents were away, would be carried off by possums. Her blessings, she knew, affected the course of lives. She could not stop them, however, and did not even choose the nature of their expression unless she put her mind to it.

  It had not been easy for her, or Braston, to learn that their gifts were actually harmful. It was with a grim acceptance that they had decided, for the good of the world, to leave it. Thus, once the other Wardens had been dealt with, her last memory was of lying down here, her belly full of quiet poison, drifting off peacefully while her worshippers wept around her.

  Yet here she was again.

  How long had she been gone?