The Lord of Lies: Strange Threads: Book 2 (34 page)

‘You should not walk alone, sir,’ said the officer, holding his torch higher.

Forger looked him over, and the soldiers accompanying him. He could bring them all down, here in the dark, and who would know?

No
, he thought.
Why risk it? Don’t get distracted.

‘This is still a dangerous place,’ said the officer. ‘Even for a powerful threader such as yourself. If you want to continue searching, why not come with us?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Forger. ‘Go about your business and leave me to mine.’

Without another word he walked off into the night. Dotted flares of brightness marked other patrols and, from here on, he meant to stumble across none of them. He moved quietly through the buried city, until he came to the clear area before the Spire. Up there, somewhere, if Karrak was to be believed, Salarkis was trapped. Above the distant roof, the Wound rim glowed red in the night. Karrak said he could fix it, but Forger didn’t feel safe even going near it. He
needed proof, either that Karrak told the truth, or lied like a filthy cur.

He needed an Unwoven.

‘Now,’ he said, turning back to the buried houses, ‘where would I find one of you alive?’

He wandered a little, hoping to see some grey figure ducking behind a roof or chimney …

‘Ridiculous,’ he told himself, after a time. ‘Unwoven do not
hide
. The only hope is of finding one trapped.’

With that in mind, he looked for ways to get inside partly buried buildings. He did not fancy sliding down a chimney, but instead went from roof to roof, listening carefully at each for any sounds within. Could an Unwoven have been buried indoors when the Dale collapsed, now sealed up for him like a birthday present? It would not take much to rip through a roof, prise up a floor, reach down and pluck one out, if it were there.

As he considered his options, he heard the sound of rocks clattering not too far away.

‘What’s this now?’ he said. ‘Does fortune favour me?’

Around a house he went, to find the top half of an Unwoven sticking out of the ground – a young one, on the verge of manhood. The boy was scrabbling to get free, and hissed when he saw Forger approach out of the darkness. Forger chuckled, kneeling down just beyond reach of Youngster’s grasping hands.

‘Why, I’m happy to see you too,’ he said. ‘Much easier than hollowing out house after house!’

He seized Youngster’s hands and bent back the
wrists until he heard them snap. Youngster started to bay in rage, but Forger backhanded him hard across the face.

‘None of that, please. Don’t want everyone else getting curious, do we?’

With Youngster suitably stunned, Forger hooked him under the arms and dragged him out of the ground like a stubborn root, badly scraping and gouging the lower half of his body in the process. Slinging the boy over his back, he turned towards the Spire. As he went, he felt a warm trickle down his back, and realised he was being drooled on.

‘Yuck,’ he said.

As he passed through the Spire entrance, Youngster started to awaken, so Forger banged his head against the arch for good measure.

Inside he went more carefully, letting his vision slide to the patterns around him. If Salarkis really was trapped somewhere in here, it was possible there were enchantments woven about the place. Yet, as he climbed, room to dark room, stairway to stairway, he saw nothing at all but the dimly glowing lattices of stone structures and the bodies of slain Unwoven. Had the soldiers been through here? He had not imagined they would dare, but maybe they had.

‘Maybe, maybe. So many maybes.’

With his perceptions so open, he began to feel the thrum of Youngster’s threads against his own. Difficult as Unwoven patterns were to work with, at such close proximity, and with the creature unconscious into the bargain, he
sensed them more clearly than he had any Unwoven before. He stopped for a moment and set the boy down on a step to examine him. As with the others during the battle, he began to see something of
injustice
about him …

I should not exist
, the threads seemed to say.
I should have never been.

Faintly they wavered from the boy, reaching like grey tendrils, up the stairs.

‘What’s this now?’ whispered Forger.

The more he stared at them, the more he comprehended them. They wanted something, they
pointed
to whatever justice it was this dribbling creature deserved. And while, if it had been some fat noble squirming before him, Forger would have done the opposite of what the Spell considered fair, this time he actually wanted to know what it was.

‘You want to go up?’ he said. ‘All right, let’s keep going then.’

He scooped Youngster up like some grotesque baby in his arms.

Soon he arrived in a room where, through a doorway opposite, a stairway was touched by red-tinged moonlight. That, and a waft of cool, fresh air, told him he had reached the last room before the roof. The grey threads emanating from Youngster wriggled towards it, growing more frantic as he moved closer to the doorway – just close enough to see up the stairs, but not to expose himself to the sky above. Quietly he set Youngster down. If Salarkis really was in the
Spire, the roof was the last possible place. For a time he waited, listening. Eventually he thought he heard a slight scuffle on stone and maybe an intake of breath. Was it Salarkis? Was he bound in some way, or did he move about freely?

Youngster let out something of a gurgle, and the scuffling ceased abruptly.

‘Who’s there?’ came a voice.

Forger waited silently, staring carefully up the stairs. After a few moments, he prodded Youngster in the stomach, garnering another exhalation.

A figure stepped into view at the top. Moonlight gleamed off soft skin … gone were the stone scales, the tail, the feathers! Salarkis was restored.

‘By the Spell!’ exclaimed Forger. ‘What has happened to you?’

Salarkis froze. ‘Forger?’

‘Indeed, it is I, still formed and fully fledged. But you, on the other hand, have been ruined it seems. Dear me!’

‘Forger, listen … don’t do anything drastic. There is more to this than meets the eye. Come up and speak with me. I can explain.’

‘Come up?’ Forger chuckled. ‘Are you serious, my love? You were a much better trickster once upon a time.’ He hefted Youngster into his arms, and the boy gave an unconscious grunt. ‘Someone will come up though, and we shall see what happens when they do!’ He swung Youngster back and forth a couple
of times, gathering momentum. ‘One … two … three!’

He released the boy to go sailing up the stairs and land heavily at the top in the open air. A moment later Youngster’s eyes flickered open with a gasp.

‘Who is that?’ said Salarkis.

Some kind of force seized the boy, for he rose steadily from the ground. Forger crouched down to peer upwards, but from his awkward angle, Youngster quickly disappeared from view. What he could see, however, was the way the light of the Wound began to flash frenetically.

‘What’s going on Salarkis?’ he called. ‘Can you tell me?’

There was no answer, and Salarkis had stepped out of view. After a time the flashing ceased and the boy tumbled out of the air, back into a crumpled heap at the top of the stairs. Forger peered at him intently and – yes, yes it was true! No longer did Youngster wear the grey skin of an Unwoven, but was instead flushed pinker than a newborn! No longer did his hurts weep white ichor, but the red ooze of a real boy. His pattern shone clearly, colourful energies circulating atop the fainter, older layers that had, until now, been the all of him.

That which had been taken, was returned.

An unexpected series of images seized Forger. He leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath as his heart pounded. Other Wardens had spoken about such a thing, and he had always sneered at the notion, never expecting it to trouble
him … but now, before his eyes, he saw his life as it would have been, if not for the change.

Regret’s curse had finally found him.

He saw himself standing atop the Spire looking down over the Dale, where Unwoven moved about, many at the Pass which invaders were trying to storm. The city was intact, close to its original splendour, for its people had only recently been turned into Regret’s creatures.

‘I will save you,’ he promised them. ‘I will return and save you.’

A hand rested on his shoulder and he glanced around to see Braston. Beyond him, Mergan and the others were staring up at the Wound.

‘I am sorry,’ said Braston. ‘They do not deserve what’s been done to them.’

‘No need to be sorry,’ Forger said, forcing a smile. ‘I’ll work out how to put them right.’

Braston nodded kindly. ‘And I will help you, if I can.’

Forger remembered what he had not thought about for so long – that he had been born here, a son of the Tranquil Dale. His father had been an honest blacksmith, and he, taking to the bellows at a young age, had earned his nickname.

‘What a good little forger,’ his father would say, rustling his hair.

As a young man he had left the Dale for Tallahow, to seek his fortune and learn more about his threading talents. After he had gone, the once-peaceable ruler of the Dale had started to show
his true colours. Rumours claimed, among other things, that Regret had made the people of the Dale go strange. They had become strong and savage, as if stripped of all capacity for suffering and human kindness, both. The Dale – his home – was closed to all, and any who ventured through the Pass were killed.

A disbelieving Forger had gone to the Ilduin, where he had witnessed raids and seen with his own eyes the shocking fate his people endured – twisted by their mad lord into something less than they had been, rife with carnal appetites and animal barbarity. Soon after that, Mergan had recruited him to kill Regret, and he had journeyed through the mountains with the other Wardens, seeking his revenge. He had hoped, once they succeeded, that his people would be healed.

‘Look!’ said Mergan.

From Regret’s corpse there rose bundles of strange threads.

‘Do not let them settle on you!’ cried Mergan. ‘Make your patterns robust!’

The bundles swirled, but the Wardens obeyed, and Regret’s threads bounced from them, finding no homes.

‘Up!’ said Mergan. ‘Send them up!’

The Wardens formed a circle, forcing the threads into a whirl, and they rose towards the Wound. With one final push they drifted through, into the greater scheme of things, where they belonged. As Forger watched them go, he made a silent oath – he would not rest, would never stop, until he found
a way to restore his people. His father, his mother, his beloved little sister, would not be forced to live out the rest of their days as heartless monsters. He would free them from Regret’s foulness and give them back their humanity.

He would find a way.

Forger blinked, coming back to himself. What more might have become of him in that lost life, faded away like a half-remembered dream. Maybe he would have succeeded in restoring his people, maybe not, but he knew that he – that
other
he – would have never stopped trying. Instead he had forgotten about them utterly. And now, generations later, he had come back to this place and helped destroy them, enthusiastically complicit in the burying of his homeland.

At the top of the stairs, Youngster spluttered blood. He was broken and bleeding, not much more than a corpse in waiting. Devoid of an Unwoven’s toughness, his wounds were fast catching up with him.

‘Sorry, brother,’ Forger said.

Use of the word set his blood on fire. Karrak – his
brother
– wanted him to go up there, to the Wound that put people back how they belonged. Did that extend to Wardens? Was that what had happened to Salarkis?

‘Salarkis!’ Forger bawled. ‘By the Spell, I have had my moment – my moment of Regret!’

A pause, and then, ‘What did you see?’

Forger knew
that Salarkis’s moment had changed him, softened him, stopped him being bad. Had the same happened to Forger? He checked himself as he crouched in the dark, sorted through his feelings … but no, he was the same. He knew he would have cared about the fate of the Unwoven in that other life, but in this one he was not troubled at all – they were but roaches, deserving of their fate. All he felt was fury at one betrayal after another.

‘You let this castrate you, Salarkis?’, he screamed up at the ashen-faced man. ‘One errant vision of a life that never was, made you so
weak
? You held the world in the palm of your hand, and chose instead to whimper and moan?’

How could you do this to me, Karrak? Now I have to kill you too.

Salarkis stared anxiously down the stairs. ‘Forger, please, listen to me …’

‘Do not follow me,’ snarled Forger. ‘I will set traps
beyond
your current skill to unravel.’

He flung up his hands, thickening the air to a barrier over the doorway, so he did not have to listen to any more of Salarkis’s woeful whining. As he turned away, a rage coursed through him so hotly it blistered the insides of his veins.