The Legacy of Lord Regret: Strange Threads: Book 1 (19 page)

He thought about what he would do if Despirrow ever came near Tarzi. The man scared her most, he knew, out of all the Wardens.
She had told his tale recently, in fact, at one of their tavern stops on the journey here.

‘After Regret,’ Tarzi said, stalking before the fire, ‘Despirrow and Braston returned to Althala together, but it soon became
clear that the mindful and conscientious Despirrow of old had been replaced by as selfish a man as you could ever hope not
to meet. Not only that, but the change had given him a most incredible gift for tying knots in the very threads of time –
he could halt the world for everyone else, while he moved about freely.’

Tarzi held up a wooden ball. ‘Anyone who catches this, I’ll share a bed with tonight.’

Surprised men sat up straight, eyeing off the ball. Tarzi turned, and threw it in the fire. There were groans of disappointment,
and a husband or two had his arm squeezed for letting one slip.

‘If you had been Despirrow,’ said Tarzi, ‘you could have been there in time, by stepping out of it. He used his gift to hunt
pretty flowers, and took them wherever he found them, even if her betrothed, or mother or father, was standing right beside
her on the street, their unseeing eyes frozen as she mewled piteously, asking why they didn’t help, as Despirrow set about
her.’

The briefly jovial mood departed, and the women who had squeezed their husbands did it again, this time out of fear.

Tarzi shook her head as if coming out of a daze, and Rostigan wondered if she had affected herself with her own words.

‘Braston sniffed out Despirrow’s new nature soon enough, for the king had been through changes of his own. He was able to
see
where there was wrong in the world, and it became his obsession to remove it. And although he could not read Despirrow’s
threads directly, he
could
see them in the women Despirrow raped. Thus he learned the terrible truth, that he had lost his friend to a disfigurement
of the soul. He went after Despirrow, but Despirrow sensed the danger and fled. It was not until years later that Braston
managed to finish the job. But how?’

She cast around at blank faces, and it was the innkeeper who answered.

‘Poison,’ he said, while pouring into a cup.

The old man the cup belonged to shot him a scowl. ‘Whaddaya say ya given me?’

‘Poison,’ nodded Tarzi. ‘Braston went to a whorehouse Despirrow liked to visit, and left a standing order to slip a packet
of powder into Despirrow’s wine when he next appeared. Paid handsomely by Braston, with the promise of more if they succeeded,
the whores did as they were bid. Despirrow drank the wine, and, by the time he sensed what was happening to him, it was too
late. Stopping time didn’t help him, since he was still his own poisoned self. He tried to reach Braston – what else could
he do but try to discover what was killing him, and get the antidote? – but he could not summon the concentration to threadwalk,
through the fug of pain.’

Rostigan thought of Stealer’s eyes, opening even after he had split her head in two. Wardens were hard to kill – so what rare
strength of poison had Braston used on Despirrow?

Nothing known to the wider world, that was certain.

Time unfroze, and immediately someone barged into him.

‘Sorry!’ said a youth, backing away. ‘Didn’t see you there, sir.’

‘Rostigan?’ came Tarzi’s voice. ‘Where did you get to?’

He had moved a little from where he’d been before the freeze, so hoped no one had been looking directly at him – if they had,
it would appear as if he had blinked out of existence. Thankfully the officer was still weaving through the crowd ahead, having
noticed nothing.

‘Here I am.’

‘Come on,’ Tarzi said. ‘We don’t want to fall behind, lest we lose our new quarters!’

‘No,’ said Rostigan. ‘I’m sure they will be splendid.’

‘What’s gotten you all grouchsome?’

Rostigan frowned. ‘Nothing,’ he said, in an entirely unconvincing tone.

Great chunks of orange stone rose and fell on either side of the winding path, making for a jagged horizon. It was as if,
Yalenna thought, there were hills at the top of the mountains. A strange place and unsettling, too close to the sun to support
any greenery. The vegetation that did exist was thorny, dark, and gave the illusion of being dead.

Ahead of her, Braston squinted into the sky.

‘What is it?’

‘Thought I saw a silkjaw.’

She glanced around warily. There were plenty of monsters in the Roshous Peaks, but she had constructed about them a shimmering
haze to mask their passage from eyes above. Already a flock of silkjaws had flown overhead without attacking, so she was confident
that it was working. Things on the ground concerned her more.

‘Come on,’ said Braston, though it wasn’t she who had stopped.

He was in his element – happy there was something tangible to achieve, that she had come to him with a mission instead of
questions he’d rather not think on. Well, she thought, if he helped with the pieces of the puzzle, even while ignoring the
completed picture, it might be enough.

‘Why didn’t we know about this tomb?’ he muttered for the second or third time since they had arrived. That had been back
down the path, towards the Tranquil Dale. They could only threadwalk to places they had already visited, and had chosen a
plateau overlooking the Dale and Regret’s Spire. Above the Spire, the Wound was clearly visible, its red, ugly edges framing
a view of the great threads beyond. Braston had turned away from it quickly, and she had followed, and not mentioned it since.
Far from being healed, it looked like it could be growing worse.

‘How could we?’ she replied. ‘Regret planned to live forever, so why would he even build a tomb?’

‘I suppose he was simply being thorough,’ said Braston with a scowl.

‘What I don’t know,’ said Yalenna, ‘is why Mergan didn’t tell us about it, or ask us to accompany him. Maybe he thought he
was protecting us from some risk, or something equally arrogant. And what did he think he would find in there?’

‘Maybe it’s not really a tomb at all, but a store of Regret’s foul devices and artefacts.’

‘Let’s just find it,’ said Yalenna; this guesswork was starting to annoy her.

Ahead the ground dropped away into a gaping ravine on one side of the path. As he reached it, Braston gave a stifled exclamation
and fell to a crouch, peering over the edge.

‘Careful!’ he hissed. ‘Get down.’

She did so, creeping up beside him to peer over the edge, to see what had ruffled him.

For a moment she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. At the bottom of the ravine, hidden between mountains, was something
like a white lake. It wasn’t water, however, but silk, cobwebbed thickly from mountainside to mountainside. The surface moved
as strange lumps quivered, and here and there a long bone stuck out, or a weakly flapping wing – then a snout broke free,
opening to reveal fangs. The silkjaw worked to free itself of the netting, using clawed wing tips to haul itself along the
surface until it reached the edge. There it clambered up the rock face to a ledge where others were perched, testing their
wings and swinging their heads about to peer at each with hollow eyes.

‘By the Spell,’ murmured Yalenna. ‘This must be where they come from.’

‘Regret’s breeding ground,’ agreed Braston disgustedly.

‘You think he created this?’

‘He must have. No other had the skill to subvert the natural order this way. No rutting, no birth … just
things
, coming together.’

‘Come, let us away.’

‘We should do something. This evil cannot be allowed to continue.’

‘We have a task, Braston.’

‘Maybe it would burn? Silkjaws have a weakness for fire, and this is the very stuff they’re made of. We should set the whole
thing ablaze.’

One of the silkjaws seemed to look up at them, though it was hard to tell from its empty gaze. Still, the effect was unnerving,
and Yalenna began to inch back from the precipice.

‘We have no means to make fire,’ she said. ‘We aren’t prepared.’

He kept watching, bristling.

‘Braston, don’t be a fool! We will stir them against us if we remain.’

‘Look!’ He dropped from a crouch to lying flat. On the other side of the crevasse was an outlook, which evidently led to the
Dale. Unwoven were appearing there, dragging large sacks, which they upended over the edge. Bones went tumbling down to bounce
across the surface of the silken lake, until the webbing caught them up.

‘They’re carrying on Regret’s work,’ said Braston. ‘Giving the silkjaws what they need to form!’

‘Where did they get so many bones?’

The two of them exchanged a glance.

‘The raids,’ said Braston. ‘They’ve been carrying off their victim’s bodies.’

Yalenna frowned. ‘I’d been imagining that was to eat them.’

‘My guess also. Remarkable how that now seems preferable. This further travesty … well, how could anyone know?’ He shook his
head. ‘Would that someone had wiped the Unwoven out while we were gone. Or that
we
did, before going.’

She wasn’t sure if there was accusation in his voice or not.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s why you raise your army, isn’t it? Part of it, anyway?’

He grunted.

Across the way the Unwoven had emptied the last of their sacks. They started to chant, raising their hands to the sky and
dancing about.

‘Now what?’ said Braston.

‘Who knows? Now come, please – maybe when we find Mergan, he’ll help us deal with this birthing ground.’

Reluctantly Braston complied.

No sooner had they moved away from the ravine than the sound of many wing beats came from all around. Yalenna felt her skin
turn clammy as white bodies rose on mass from the mountainsides. She flattened herself into a boulder’s shadow, pulling Braston
after her.

‘Stay hidden! We cannot fight a sky full of them!’

‘Calm yourself – it’s not us they’re after, I think. Look.’

The creatures swirled to a massive flock, biting and buffeting each other excitedly as they continued to rise.

‘There’s so many,’ she said. ‘More than existed in our time.’

‘It’s still our time.’

On the other side of the crevasse, the Unwoven stopped their chanting and gave a single clap. As a group the silkjaws dove,
disappearing behind a mountain-top.

‘Do you think,’ said Braston, ‘the Unwoven are controlling them somehow?’

Before Yalenna could answer, all heat went out of the air, though the sun still shone and the rocks glowed orange.

‘Did you feel that?’

Braston sucked his finger and held it up to test for a breeze. Then he bent to a thorny plant that stuck up through a crack
and carefully prodded it.

‘Time’s stopped,’ he said.

‘Despirrow.’

Braston nodded darkly. He looked around as if the man would leap out of hiding.

‘He isn’t here,’ she said.

‘I know.’

For a while they trod carefully as they moved on, lest some usually slight but now fixed thing in their path trip or slice
them.

Eventually time started again, and Yalenna wondered what their enemy had been up to.

At the top of the path they reached a vast plateau, on a level with the surrounding peaks. At the far side was a building,
a crumbling block set against a spurt of mountainside, its columns framing a doorway that led into darkness.

‘Not exactly austere,’ said Braston.

A drier, dustier, deader place, Yalenna could not remember. Birds had long ago abandoned these mountains, and not even twisted
thorns grew here.

‘Careful,’ she said, as they approached the building. ‘There’s some strange threads about it.’

‘Isn’t that what we were expecting?’

Braston drew to a halt before the ominous doorway. The structure was wrapped in some kind of protection, a mesh of barbed,
tightly interlocking threads that pointed inwards, keeping whatever they held inside.

‘Easy enough to pass in,’ Yalenna said, ‘but not out?’

It was a formidable trap, the threads like none she’d ever seen, shiny and metallic to her senses. They had not been fashioned
in any natural way – more of Regret’s abominable work.

There was some odd refuse scattered about the entrance too – a wicker basket full of decaying bread crumbs, a bunch of flowers
withered to stalks, a small knife, a few stains on the rock.

‘Hello?’ called Braston, making Yalenna jump. ‘Are you in there, old man?’

‘Braston!’ she cautioned.

The threads rippled gently as his shout went through them, yet no echo returned from the dark interior.

‘What?’ he said. ‘It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but …’

Maybe Mergan was standing right there on the threshold, calling for help, unheard. The thought made her shiver.

‘We have to get in,’ she said.

Five thousand, four hundred and sixty seven
…

That was the number of tiles on the floor, if he counted broken ones and corner ones as whole.

Five thousand, two hundred and twelve
…

That was if he only counted intact ones.

Five thousand, three hundred and seventy
.

That was if he matched broken ones to count as whole ones, putting together halves or thirds as best he could.

Sixteen
.

That was how many vases had been in the entry corridor.

Two thousand, three hundred and fifty one
.

That was how many pieces the vases now lay in, including the only whole one remaining, which counted as a single piece.

Sixteen
.

That was how many stands for the vases. Or maybe they weren’t vases, but urns? Perhaps the vessel was defined by what it contained,
and since these contained nothing, or
had
contained nothing, it was hard to tell which they were, or had been.

Urns or vases, urns or vases … urns or vases … URNS OR VASES?

Panic seized him.

One
.

A dead spider – or, at least, there had been one, a long time ago … dust now, not even a mark on the ground where it had been,
so maybe it did not count anymore. He pressed close, inspecting the place … was that still a tiny hair there, the last identifiable
piece of the animal?

One
.

That was the number of coffins – a sunken stone troth that had never seen Regret’s corpse, its heavy lid resting against the
wall beside it. There were little dents and imperfections in the lid, but they ran into and crossed over each other, so it
was difficult to tell where one ended and the next began, and thus he had given up trying to find a way to count them.

He watched the last standing vase, tall amongst the broken shards of the others. He could break it too, he thought. He could
change the number of pieces on the floor, give him something new to count. The temptation was great, especially when the rage
came, yet this last vase he revered. There wasn’t much he could affect down here, not much he could change, except this last
vase.

Saving it for a special occasion?

He giggled, and the sound of his own voice frightened him.

Maybe he feared that when the last vase fell, he would truly be gone, his tenuous grasp on his sense of self finally broken.
Maybe the fact that it remained proved he still had some control. Maybe it was important to know there
was still a decision he could make. He could keep making it too, keep deciding to leave the vase alone – whereas, if he smashed
it, there would be no decision left. Although sometimes there seemed to be another – he could decide to try and escape Regret’s
maze.

Not much of a maze
, he would laugh, or cry. Just one corridor, really, running in a circle. Enter, and it seemed like there were two, one to
the left and one to the right, but they curved towards each other and met at the entrance to the coffin room, enclosed by
them in the tomb’s centre. Sometimes he would see how fast he could make circuits of the corridor, around and around and around
and around – but when time had no meaning, how could he measure speed?

He could still see out the entry door, could see the sun rise and set, so there was that. How many circuits could he do in
one day? He never kept going long enough to find out – he would always forget what he was trying to achieve, and dwindle down
to rest, only to realise later that he had failed again in his meaningless task.

Sometimes he would lie at the door looking out, but the view was the same bleak piece of rock. Sometimes he saw silkjaws or
Unwoven out there, but that was an infrequent break in the monotony.

One
.

That was how many bodies he had, and currently it was crawling into the coffin room. He could still make its arms and legs
move, slowly getting about in his endless prison.
Was he going to get into the coffin? Not today, though sometimes he did.

Why won’t you die?
he screamed.

Like the other Wardens, he had stopped ageing. And if starvation was going to kill him, it was taking a really, really long
time.