The Lord of Lies: Strange Threads: Book 2 (39 page)

In Mergan she saw glimmers of his old self, unlike the most sorrowful member of the group. Hanry – his injuries attended to, wearing a patch over his eye, and now standing about the same height as Rostigan – was a fragile wreck, never far from tears. Sitting here amongst friends, at least, she had seen a few hesitant smiles cross his face.

‘So,’ said Mergan, patting his mouth with his sleeve, ‘what will you do now, my dear?’

‘Head to Althala,’ she replied. ‘Though I might wait here for Jandryn. Or perhaps I will travel slowly, take in the countryside on the way.’

‘Good, good.’

‘What about you?’

‘Me? Hmm. Well, I suppose I’ll return to Althala too. Maybe even try to trace my lineage.’

His look was somewhat
haunted – Yalenna knew he had left behind children, and granddaughters, when he had been sealed up in the tomb.

‘Although,’ he went on, ‘perhaps I should take another journey first.’ He raised his voice so it carried across the table. ‘There is hurt in Ander, I hear.’

Hanry froze, a slice of cake halfway to his mouth. Miserably, he put it down.

‘Perhaps I shall visit the place,’ Mergan went on. ‘My skills may be of use in restoring the city. And, of course, if anyone wants to come with me …’

He left the question hanging, and they all stared at Hanry. After a moment, he gave a stiff nod.

‘I will accompany you.’

‘Good,’ said Mergan. ‘I will be glad of the company. I can keep an eye on your hurts as well, my boy – make sure they do not fester.’

‘Thank you,’ said Hanry.

‘Maybe I’ll come too,’ said Salarkis. ‘Don’t really know what else to do with myself, and I certainly wouldn’t mind stretching my legs.’

‘Yes,’ said Hanry, waving the cake at him. ‘You’ll have to get used to walking everywhere now, won’t you?’

‘As will we, if he’s coming with us,’ said Mergan dryly.

‘You think you’ll find any resistance in Ander?’ asked Yalenna.

‘The way I hear it, Galra and Sortree already march to free the city. Without a certain influence over them, I doubt the Tallahowans
will prove too fearsome. I’m sure that by the time we get there, there will be little to fix but a few broken bones.’

Forger’s influence gone
, she thought.
Have all my blessings faded too?

She sipped her ale. She did not care.

Tarzi bounced past, stopping by Rostigan to aim a string of notes at him.

‘He won’t dance!’ she cried, forlornly casting a hand to her brow. ‘Oh, but he never dances with me!’

Rostigan frowned with distaste. ‘Skullrender,’ he said, ‘does not dance.’

‘What a fool!’ declared Mergan as he rose. ‘May I take his place?’

‘Of course!’ said Tarzi, managing to offer an arm while she continued to play. ‘Though in return you must tell me of your battle with Lord Regret. No minstrel in three centuries has had an eyewitness account to work with!’

‘Ah, I would be happy to! You see, it was a dark time, and a terrible tyrant ruled the north … so I scoured the land for the best threaders I could find, a group who would become known as the Wardens …’

She twirled him away into the crowd, and Yalenna was gladdened to see it.

‘He doesn’t know what he’s in for,’ said Rostigan.

Yalenna sighed contentedly. Sitting together, sometimes laughing, taking simple pleasures, watching Hanry eat his cake … it seemed but a taste of what was to come. For a moment she
saw Braston sitting across from her in an empty chair … and beside him Despirrow reclined in his fancy robes, and they chortled away with each other like they used to do. Even Jillan was there, for a moment – the quiet, thoughtful girl she had been before earning the name Stealer. How she had loved her gardens and growing things … had even found flowers to pick on the way through the Roshous Peaks.

Yalenna raised her mug.

‘To old friends,’ she said.

Later that day, Yalenna ventured outside and found Rostigan smoking his pipe on the porch. He gazed off down the town’s main street, which had been decorated with coloured string and bundles of blooms. People everywhere were carousing joyfully, and children ran about between their parents’ legs.

‘Look at that,’ she said, leaning against the rail.

He smiled slightly. ‘Yes.’

‘So, you managed to dodge a question in there.’

‘Oh?’

‘What will you do now?’

He pursed his lips as he restocked his pipe. ‘Tarzi is keen to be off,’ he said. ‘Always itching to travel, that one, and Aorn is full of taverns waiting to hear her newly spun tales. I think she’s worried that other minstrels might get ahead of her and muddy the stories to which she has borne witness.’

‘I thought the tale’s content did not
matter? It’s all in the telling.’

‘Exactly,’ said Rostigan. ‘But either way, Tarzi thinks it should be her to capture our exploits in verse. Otherwise it would be like they never even happened.’

‘Well, if you ever visit Althala, be sure not to drift through like a ghost, won’t you?’

‘I promise.’

There was something else, though she was loathe to discuss it. Not in the face of such celebration.

‘Something troubles you?’ said Rostigan.

‘It’s just … well. I asked a couple of locals, and it seems that apples have not regained their taste.’

‘I heard the same.’

‘And word is that Silverstone has not returned.’

‘This too, I have heard.’

She studied him carefully. ‘You’re sure you really went up? You gave it all back?’

He gave her a hard stare as he puffed on his pipe. ‘I did.’

‘Then why haven’t Stealer’s takings come back into the world?’

He shrugged. ‘How can we know what happens to threads reclaimed by the Spell? I’m afraid the things that Stealer took may have been sucked in with the rest. Maybe one day the Spell will spit them out again, maybe not. It may not happen until we’re all long dead. After all,’ he waved a hand, ‘it took three hundred years to bring you lot back.’

Yalenna nodded.
She did not want to dwell on it. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s a small price, I suppose, given the one we might have paid.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And what of … your search?’

‘For
her
?’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps I grow tired of chasing that which I already possess.’

Yalenna smiled, and stood on tippy-toes to kiss his cheek.

‘I’m glad for you.’

He nodded, tapping out his pipe. ‘Come, Priestess, let us return to our fellows … I think we both deserve another drink.’

Rostigan loped along, too slow for the bundle of energy who bounded ahead of him in fits and spurts. He chuckled at her and, the next time she ventured too close to him, grabbed her by the arm.

‘No rush, Tarzi,’ he said. ‘The road will wait for us.’

Indeed the road stretched long before them and, for the first time in a while, it was just the two of them on it together.

‘We’re not getting any younger,’ she wheedled. ‘And if we don’t hurry, we won’t make it to the next town before sunset!’

‘Good,’ he said.

She sighed exaggeratedly and tried to match his ambling pace. Despite her best efforts she kept overtaking him, then having to wait.

‘Honestly!’ she said, hands on hips. ‘You don’t just look like a statue – you move like one!’

It wasn’t so bad, he thought. They would wander again, stay here and there, and he would sit and smoke his pipe, and listen to her stories. Maybe
Tarzi was not the object of his search, but what did that matter, really? He loved her some, and they had come this far together. If
she
happened by in the meantime, well,
she
could wait. After all, he had all the time in the world.

With that understanding, came a certain relaxation. He would never push Tarzi away, never put either one of them through that pain. Why do it now, when they had already been together for, what had she said? Decades.

She saw him considering her, and poked her tongue out. It was a girlish gesture, in keeping with how he saw her, belying the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, the slight sag of skin at her elbows. Ah, such a tenacious little thing she had been – to catch his gaze and trick him into taking her with him – and still was, despite her advancing years.

He would outlast her, that was the way of things. And then, someday …

Silently he made a promise to the Spell.

If I do find
her
again … if you deign me deserving of a second chance … then I will give you back what is yours. I will return to the Spire and surrender it all.

Until that time came, however, he would live as he had lived before – frugal with his power, buried deep inside, until it was almost
forgotten. It hadn’t been him to bring the corruption to a head, and he did not think that one Warden continuing to exist would do Aorn much harm. There were the apples, of course, and Silverstone … and a corridor of trees in a wood somewhere, a bridge, and a fish stolen from a stream … but he had done enough for the world that he could live with his decision. Besides, it wasn’t like those things would never come back. It would just take a little time.

He could still be hard, it seemed, when it was needed. He’d had to be, to put so many untruths into people’s heads – to fool Tarzi, and Jandryn, in those last days of battle, to have committed the acts necessary to convince Forger of his friendship. Had to be, to make Salarkis believe he really had gone to the roof and given back his threads. To lie to Yalenna’s face, after everything she had done.

How can we know what happens to threads reclaimed by the Spell?
he had asked her.
Should I really give up something
, had been his actual thought,
that I have searched for, for three hundred years?

That was the problem with lies – it wasn’t the telling, but the keeping, which proved most difficult. Guilt could riddle a person until they felt the need to expose themselves, as if they could not continue on without first laying bare their infected soul. It was a selfish thing, really, to hurt others with such revelation – just because one was too weak to keep a secret and live with it.

Ah, well. He had
an advantage in that regard, he supposed. It would all sink eventually, like everything did, down into the deep place.

‘Look!’ said Tarzi.

She had found a tree which hung heavy with the spiky fruit she liked, and jumped up on the spot trying to grab one. Rostigan drew his sword and used it to lower a branch down within her reach.

‘Make sure you pick a few,’ he said. ‘Who knows when we’ll be along this way again.’

‘Wait! Hanry, come back here!’

The father was exasperated
with his small clan, his young children running about everywhere, getting in the way of the cart he pushed. Beside him, his wife was much calmer.

‘Let them go,’ she said. ‘Children will be children.’

She smiled at him reassuringly – he always worried too much, and saw danger wherever he looked, even on this well-worn path over hills between woods, where the smell of greenery mixed with the salty tinge of the sea.

‘Can you hear the waves?’ called their eldest daughter. She was more excited than the others about seeing the ocean for the first time, as she’d been promised this trip for a while.

‘Not yet, dear.’

The youngest, a little boy, came racing up the hill proudly clutching a prize.

‘What have you got there, Hanry?’

He held it up
and, seeing what it was, his parents chuckled to each other.

‘Why are you laughing?’ asked Hanry. ‘Look, it’s pretty – I found a whole tree of them!’

‘He doesn’t know,’ said the father, shaking his head. ‘Well, how could he?’

‘What?’ demanded Hanry. ‘Is it poison?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ The mother took the fruit from her son. ‘It’s an apple.’

‘An apple?’

‘Yes. They look nice, but they don’t taste nice. Legend says they used to, but I don’t believe it.’

‘Try it Hanry!’ cried the eldest daughter.

‘Yes, try it, try it,’ urged the younger one.

‘Can I?’

‘Well, it won’t do you any harm. You won’t like it though, I’m warning you.’