The Legacy of Lord Regret: Strange Threads: Book 1

by Sam Bowring

  Quickly he went down the stairs and through the building, seeing no sign of the woman he’d rescued. Hopefully she had crawled into a cupboard or some such, if she had any sense.

  He burst out onto the street, where Tarzi was relieved to see him.

  ‘Thought you were going to leave me,’ she said, a hint of tears about her.

  ‘I did suggest you stay inside,’ he offered back a little begrudgingly, though he took her and held her close.

  Several ’jaws passed overhead, aiming for a neighbouring street, and they heard someone calling orders. Moving towards the sound, they came upon a squad of soldiers led by a threader, who was springing sparks from a torch to light their arrows. One of the ’jaws went down flaming and crashed into a house, while the others arced back up into the sky.

  ‘Stay inside, citizens,’ came shouted words from somewhere. ‘Lock your doors and bar your windows.’

  It seemed that, following the initial surprise, the army was finally getting organised.

  Rostigan let his mind go back up to his crows, taking in a bird’s eye view of the city. The streets were emptying of commoners, and variously sized groups of soldiers moved about. Others still funnelled through the northern gate from the camp, spreading into the city quickly. Fires were dotted about, such as the one blazing on the roof where the flaming ’jaw had just now crashed, and some of them were growing larger. White shapes whizzed past, or fell, abandoned by the pecking crows once they started to plummet. Crows fell too, amidst a rain of black feathers. He blinked back to his own vision and saw feathers falling around him. More feathers than bodies, at least.

  ‘Crows!’ he heard someone yell. ‘What curse is upon us now?’

  ‘This must be Karrak’s doing!’ answered somebody else. ‘He sent silkjaws first, now his crows!’

  Tarzi’s grip on Rostigan tightened. ‘Do you think that’s true?’

  Rostigan scowled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No one but Regret could command silkjaws. And look – the crows are not after the people.’

  He pointed at a silkjaw trailing loose strands, dogged by cawing attackers.

  ‘They fight the silkjaws?’ said Tarzi in amazement.

  ‘Maybe they’re just being territorial?’ said Rostigan lamely. Lord of Lies, he had been called, but what he offered up now by way of explanation felt like a poor excuse for falsehood.

  A threader reached up towards the burgeoning fire on the nearby roof, and, with a flick of his wrist, wrenched apart the flames to twining twists. There would be others working similarly, and though it had been scorched, Althala would not burn.

  In the sky, the silkjaws seemed to be climbing, others taking off to join them.

  ‘They’re leaving!’ someone shouted.

  It was true. With fire and sword waiting for them, no large groups of unprotected townsfolk left to dive upon, and the crows attacking too, it seemed the bloodthirsty and opportunistic attack was over. All over the city, cries of defiance chased the departing silkjaws up into the air … but there were many dead as well, and Rostigan knew the morrow would not be a joyful one.

  Feast while you can, he sent his crows.

  REUNION

  It was much cooler now, the fall of night having robbed the Roshous Peaks of heat. On the plateau, some distance from the tomb, Yalenna and Braston sat watching Mergan eat all the food they had brought with them. Braston was eager to threadwalk home, but he was making an effort to be patient. Mergan was not ready – even he could see that.

  Yalenna found it hard to accept the state they had found Mergan in. She remembered a strong and lively old man, and would not have recognised this bedraggled, grey, painfully thin fellow on the street, even without the wild beard and long hair tangled down his back. His clothes were threadbare rags, amazing they still clung to him after all this time, and he smelled of ancient dust. At least the water and food were having some effect, returning a speck of colour to his cheeks. His body might heal quickly … what really concerned her was his mind.

  He muttered and sent them darting glances, still uncertain if they were really here. He was not even convinced that he was here. To see him this way broke her heart – to know that, while she and Braston had slumbered peacefully, he had been trapped in living anguish.

  We should have kept looking. Oh, we should have.

  He was turning a small piece of bread in the air, hovering it just above his finger. He gave a flick, and it sped into his mouth, where he snapped it up.

  ‘Magic,’ he whispered, and she nodded.

  Only briefly had she felt what he had endured for centuries. Upon entering the tomb, her blessings had evaporated, and all threading ability with them. It had been odd and uncomfortable, as if she had forgotten how to breathe, and she had deeply feared that it would last – even though, as she thought about it now, losing her blessings was the very thing she was trying to do.

  ‘Ah,’ Mergan said, smacking his lips, ‘is there any more bread?’

  ‘Not here,’ said Braston.

  ‘What about those berries?’

  ‘My friend, once we return to Althala, I will throw you a feast to rival anything your imagination can conjure.’

  ‘My imagination?’ echoed Mergan worriedly.

  Braston looked to Yalenna for help.

  ‘Do not fear.’ She laid a hand on Mergan’s knee and he stared at it in confusion. ‘You will be well again.’

  Was it him she tried to convince?

  He took a deep breath. ‘How long?’ he croaked.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘How long inside?’

  ‘Oh.’ Yalenna almost could not bring herself to tell him. ‘Some … three hundred years.’

  She thought this would shock him, but he gave no immediate reaction. Instead he picked his teeth, producing a berry seed, which he quickly returned to his tongue.

  ‘We thought you dead,’ said Braston. ‘And … well … so were we, for most of that time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We thought we were helping,’ explained Yalenna sadly. ‘By killing the others and then ourselves … we thought we would heal the Spell, by returning the threads we had taken.’

  ‘The Spell,’ echoed Mergan.

  ‘It didn’t work. We have, all of us, returned. Only some few days ago.’

  ‘The Spell is not healed?’

  ‘No. In fact it seems, with our return, to be getting worse.’

  Mergan dug around in the bottom of Braston’s satchel for crumbs.

  ‘Did you find anything in the tomb?’ asked Braston. ‘Any clues as to what Regret did, or how he did it? What we need to set things right?’

  Mergan’s expression darkened. ‘There’s nothing in there. Nothing … five thousand, four hundred and … nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘You say that the others … yes, I can see their faces … they have returned from death?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Braston, ‘and we must once more put them down! You’ll help us, now that you’re fighting fit again, won’t you old boy?’

  Mergan stared at him for a bit. Then his eyes slid sideways. Yalenna shot Braston a reproving glare, and he shrugged in confusion.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ Mergan sighed. ‘My mind has been so stretched, for so long. I tried to keep it busy, in the beginning. Thought about how to escape – tried to discover the locks in my mind that stopped me using my magic. Thought of what I could shout at Unwoven if ever they came near, until I learned they could not hear me. They saw only a wretched old man soundlessly screaming in a dark doorway, seeming like a ghost no doubt.

  ‘I tried to keep myself company, talking to myself, until my throat dried out. Pain kept me occupied for a while, as my body withered, my stomach blackening to a nut … and then, after a time, pain smoothed out to a kind of fuzziness. Only my eyes grew sharper as I learned every corner of my prison in what little light the days brought, trying to find anything to assist me. At one stage I became obsessed with the notion that I could not see colours or shades in the dimness, that
there might be something written on the walls, or the coffin, but I had no means of making light to read it. I ran my hands over every surface, trying to find paint, or ink, or any slight change in texture that might indicate words. I wondered if I could taste what I sought, and wrote the words I hoped to find with my arid tongue upon the stone.

  ‘Sometimes I slept. Maybe years without moving. Drifting, dreaming of better times … of you two coming to rescue me … of my granddaughters, waking to realise they must be old women, judging by how many days I’d seen go by. Sometimes I dreamed of myself as I really was, lying there, imprisoned in both dream and life. And then …’

  He put his head in his hands. ‘Ah! Ah!’

  A wracking fit took him, bending him forward over his crossed legs, to rock as he wept.

  ‘Oh, Mergan,’ said Yalenna softly, placing a hand on his back. ‘I cannot ask you to forgive us.’

  Braston looked close to tears himself, his head sinking to his chest. ‘Sorry, dear fellow. We really let you down, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ sobbed Mergan into his lap. ‘Yes!’ And then, ‘No.’ He raised watery eyes. ‘It’s not your fault. Why didn’t I say where I was going? I was too impulsive.’ He screwed up his eyes. ‘What a fool.’

  ‘You were trying to help Aorn,’ said Braston.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’re free now!’

  Mergan gave a sad smile, and rested a finger on his temple. ‘I don’t think so.’ He crumpled the satchel he still clasped. ‘Is there any more bread?’

  ‘Plenty of bread, back in Althala,’ said Braston.

  Mergan shook his head. ‘It’s no use.’

  ‘Tell us what you need, old friend.’

  ‘Peace,’ he said. ‘Peace I will not find in life.’

  His plaintive look made Yalenna tremble.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘You can’t understand, so I beg you to trust me, beg you to help me in this way. Death is my only hope of release. I have tried to find it for myself, but I heal, always. If you do it for me, you could make certain that I shall never wake again!’

  Yalenna shuddered at the thought, for she wanted no more friends’ blood on her hands – but did she owe him what he asked?

  ‘We are proof,’ she said sadly, ‘that death won’t solve your troubles.’

  ‘I do not care!’ he hissed, his sudden vehemence making her start.

  He blinked as if seeing her for the first time, then wiped his eyes and gave a sniff.

  ‘Can’t tell you how much I needed a good cry,’ he said. ‘Tear ducts, hot and full – I can’t begin to describe the sense of release! Even my running nose is welcome.’ His giggle frightened her. ‘Do you have any more of that bread?’

  Braston frowned. ‘We told you, not here.’

  Mergan grunted and rose to his feet, his eyes taking on a hard look. Uncertainly, they followed him up.

  ‘But what,’ he said, ‘is this talk of death?’

  ‘No talk,’ said Braston quickly. ‘Unless you mean the deaths of our enemies!’

  Mergan rounded on him in anger. ‘No! I care not for enemies. I’ve done enough! I’ve lived too long without choice or decision. I met my fate because I lived only for others. From now on, I decide what I do!’

  Yalenna spread her palms, trying to calm him. ‘Yes, that’s fine, of course. It’s all right, Mergan.’

  ‘Think how comfortable it will be,’ tried Braston, ‘to sleep in a real feather bed.’

  ‘Not enough to tide me over. You think I owe it to you, is that it? That I will once more work and toil in a manner of your choosing?’

  ‘That is not how it was,’ said Yalenna, growing slightly annoyed, ‘nor is it what we ask of you now. We have always been a team. By the Spell, Mergan, you were the one who assembled us!’

  ‘That I will strive and sacrifice,’ he continued as if he had not heard her, ‘for the good of a land that forgot me? That I will join you, you who forsook me so absolutely, who left me to languish and decay?’ He rounded on Yalenna. ‘You think I want to die? You are mistaken! What I want is to live!’

  He stabbed twin fingers at them, and whorls of compacted air smacked her and Braston in the foreheads. She flew backwards, limbs trailing, as blackness took her.

  Sometime later she awoke, sore and a little stunned. Braston was nearby, leaning on his sword, staring out at the lightening of the sky. Dull streaks on the horizon were slowly melting with the encroachment of sunrise.

  ‘Mergan?’ she asked.

  Braston glanced down at her, then turned back to the coming dawn.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  Yalenna’s instinct was to search, though she knew there was no point. Mergan could be anywhere, having had ample time to threadwalk while they were out cold.

  ‘Yalenna,’ said Braston softly, ‘he will come to us. He’s simply confused – he still thinks this is all a dream. No doubt a few days will convince him otherwise.’

  She wasn’t so sure, but gave a little nod.

  ‘He doesn’t really hate us,’ said Braston.

  Again, she wasn’t so sure.

  Together they concentrated on threadwalking back to Althala. As she tried to focus, her mind kept slipping back to Mergan’s angry, twisted face. Forcing him out of her head, she squinted southwards, until the world started to seep. Light oozed past like streams of honey as her undone threads sped across the Ilduin, towards the amorphous white mass of Althala. She made for the square but somehow it rejected her, buffeted her, and she swirled. Although she had no real consciousness at that moment, she followed Braston’s similarly affected threads, as they doubled back to a different familiar landmark. Then, together, she and Braston re-formed on the road leading through the northern gate.

  Braston glanced around. ‘Why did we arrive here? I was envisaging the square.’

  ‘Me too.’ She was addled, disoriented. ‘This happened to me once before,’ she rubbed her temples, ‘when there was an unexpected obstacle standing where I aimed. Maybe there are too many people in the square?’

  ‘Why? There is no special occasion today.’

  She held her quivering stomach, still a little queasy as her pattern reassembled.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ he said.

  Off the road sprawled the recruits’ camp, but amongst the smouldering fires and strewn belongings, there did not seem to be many people. On the outer edges, where the newest arrivals had been setting up, tents were standing half-erected, a horse or two wandering untended. No Althalan officer would ever let such tardiness descend unless there was good reason. Meanwhile folk were trickling through the gate, moving to and from open plains to the south where mounds were burning. A cart appeared, piled with human corpses, the driver shooing away crows that continuously tried to land on it.

  ‘An attack!’ exclaimed Braston. Yalenna, still a little dazed, followed him as he took off towards an officer directing traffic. The man’s eyes widened as he saw Braston stomping towards him.

  ‘My lord!’ he said, and hastily bowed.

  ‘Enough of that!’ snapped Braston. ‘Tell me what has happened here!’

  ‘Silkjaws, my lord. They came in the night. We –’

  Braston was already moving past him, into the city. Yalenna, trailing behind, heard the man finish.

  ‘– have been looking for you.’

  The streets of Althala were a terrible mess. Bodies lay here and there, though efforts were being made to remove them, if not yet the stains they left behind. Many buildings had been marked by fire, some of them damaged badly. A bloody, smoky smell hung in the air and bits of silk blew about, and black feathers. Crows cawed and supped on the dead, squawking angrily as they were chased away. They were bolder and more plentiful than seemed right.

  Yalenna caught up to Braston as he inspected the tattered carcass of a silkjaw, which soldiers had been about to heap onto a cart with other white remains.

  ‘If I had known,’ he growled, ‘that this was where they headed �
� instead,’ he kicked the ’jaw angrily, ‘we sat idly feeding bread to a madman!’

  ‘Braston!’ chastised Yalenna, surprised he would undermine what they had done, even in the face of such tragedy.

  He ignored her, staring at what he’d revealed on the underside of the ’jaw – two dead crows, tangled in its silk.

  ‘Were the crows present during the attack?’ he asked a soldier.

  ‘Indeed, lord. A great many of ’em, came up out of nowhere. They’re making the clean-up damnable too.’

  Braston turned to Yalenna with rage smouldering in his eyes.

  ‘Don’t leap to conclusions,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Why in Aorn not? This has Karrak’s taint all over it.’

  ‘Perhaps … but do you not also think the Unwoven could be responsible? You suggested yourself that the chanting, the dancing, might be some form of control. What if they were saying to the silkjaws, go and stab Althala in the heart? What if Regret’s people have inherited the knowledge of how to set their pets on targets from afar?’

  Braston was looking everywhere but at her. ‘See, they’re all over the place – more crows than is natural, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Braston –’

  ‘I heard what you said.’ Angrily, he turned away.

  They arrived at the castle square, from which much of the clean-up was being organised. Groups of soldiers waited to be given orders and silkjaws were being heaped in piles ready to be carted away. Before the castle entrance, a collection of officers, courtiers and threaders stood, listening to someone speaking. As the Wardens drew closer, they saw it was Loppolo.

  ‘… Threaders, I want word sent to Sortree, Ander, Brightrock and all settlements within distance of the Peaks, to warn them of this menace. Make sure to include the Plains Kingdom, for they are much closer to the mountains than we. They may have been attacked already, for all we know.’

  The threaders nodded and headed into the castle. They would travel up to the highest points, from which messages could travel the furthest distance.

  ‘We must make preparations in case they return,’ continued Loppolo. ‘Double the guards on the city walls, and make sure they have fire on hand at all times. Also –’