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

‘You’ve always
been teased,’ he said. ‘Yes?’

‘My … my lord?’

‘Had those teeth ever since you were just a baby rabbit, haven’t you? Children can be so cruel. You know, if ever I think I’ve learned all there is to know about causing pain, I watch a group of children for a while.’ He laughed gently. ‘“Chomper” they called you, eh? Very creative.’

The girl blinked. She had not heard that name in years, and had tried indeed to forget it.

‘Hard to forget though, isn’t it?’ said Forger. ‘Not when others carry on the tradition.’

This was marvellous. At first glance, her threads had given him a vague idea of how she fit into the world, but the more he chose to concentrate, the more he learned about her – her past, her present, how life had treated her. It struck him that he could become the very opposite of Braston – he could sense the injustice people had suffered and then inflict
more
upon them! Imagine the potential for pain when he could see where the sore spots already lay, to know people’s greatest fears, to treat them with sublime unfairness …

‘Delara is the worst,’ he said, ‘isn’t she? The prettiest of the servant girls, but with the meanest heart. Why does she laugh at you, when she has it all?’

The girl quaked as she sank to her knees at his feet. ‘Please, my lord … don’t kill me.’

‘Kill you? I’m trying to talk to you!’

‘I’m sorry about my teeth.’

Forger laughed.
‘Why should you be sorry? You didn’t choose them, did you? You were born with them! So this Delara calls you “Peggy”, yes? Does it in front of the other girls, so routinely that it’s become casual … “Peggy” has, in fact,
become
your name. And it means that you can never forget, doesn’t it? Every small interaction makes you recall your dangling stalactites. If only they just let you get on with things, if only they would
leave you alone
. But you’ll never get a man, says Delara, for even if he could forget the barriers standing in his way long enough for a single kiss on your wedding day, he would surely remember them once they closed around his manhood – would fear for its safety indeed, so she says, doesn’t she, Peggy? Then she laughs, and they laugh at you with her.’

Tears showed in the girl’s eyes, accompanied by fear and confusion. Forger savoured the misery that came from her, a subtler flavour than he was used to.

‘You can’t even eat,’ he went on, ‘in front of a man, can you? You don’t want him to see those pillars crashing down. Why did the Spell make you this way? Why are you being punished like this? Your entire person, reduced to a single physical aberration that no one can ever see past.’

She spoke in a choked whisper. ‘Damn the Spell.’

‘Aha! Well, I see you, miss. I see the face behind those chompers.’

He reached out to cup her cheek, his touch stilling her quivering.

‘My lord?’

Her eyes
bulged, and he withdrew his hand. Her falling tears dried up at once, as if a door had closed on them forever.

‘What … have you done to me?’

‘All that we have spoken of, I have taken away.’

She touched her chest as if to check whether her heart was still beating.

‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

‘Good,’ she said, in surprise. ‘By the Spell … I do not care anymore!’ She looked at him in wonder. ‘My lord, I do not care about being called stupid names!’

‘Good for you, Peggy.’

‘But why have you done this?’

Forger shrugged. ‘I know what it’s like to be ugly. Now, how about you fetch this Delara, eh? Time that someone made her understand what it’s like too, don’t you think? Maybe it can be you.’

She stared at him a moment, then smiled slowly.

‘As you command, lord.’

She left the throne room, passing Threver on her way out.

‘Ah, Threver,’ said Forger. ‘What report?’

‘Your army is set to march.’

‘Excellent. Tell them to commence. We will catch them up in an hour or two.’

‘Very good, lord.’

Yes
, thought Forger,
very good.
Soon it would be time for the screaming, the fire, the
injustice
of it all.

Well, maybe he didn’t always know what he
should
be doing, but at least he knew what he liked.

Salarkis opened
his eyes before knowing he was awake. Lying on his stomach, he blinked slowly, eventually focusing on a small piece of grit lodged under the fingernail closest to his face. His whole side was sore, as if bruised from a fall. Dimly he tried to reconstruct what had happened.

Fingernail …

Bruised and sore …

He sat up with a start, staring at his hand. His flesh was soft, pale. His stony scales were gone! He was light again, lighter than if he’d come ashore after swimming through mud for leagues. He was naked too, save for the belt loosely encircling his waist, one of the dagger points scratching his leg.

‘Wind and fire …’

He unclasped the belt, letting it fall away. Not only was his body lighter, his mind was too. Gone were the threads that had invaded his pattern so long ago, twisting him with murderous desires and chaotic thoughts. His sense of self was solid – he knew exactly who he was!

He was a man again.

He stared up at the Wound in wonder. How had this happened? Had the Spell really retrieved that which had been taken from it, without any prompting from him, no effort made on his behalf? Was his presence in its vicinity enough for it to swipe back what it needed to heal itself? He thought about the corpse of Regret, the stolen bundles lifting from it to go into him and the other Wardens as they had stood in this very place. Why hadn’t the Spell taken its threads back then? Had it needed time to make some strange adjustment, whatever was necessary to allow it to retrieve itself? The Spell, he knew, was a changeable thing.

‘Stupid
Spell,’ he said, and laughed. ‘You could have saved us a lot of trouble by working this out an age ago.’

He pinched his cheeks, knocked a fist to his forehead, gave his manhood a swish, and laughed again. It was like waking from a long, vivid dream – but, he quickly realised, not a very good one. Memories flashed through his mind, quickly quelling his joy – people screaming while he cackled, blades travelling impossible distances to sink into innocent breasts, cities burning, Karrak gleefully slapping him hard on the shoulder while a dying king sagged on his knees before them …

It’s not my fault
, he told himself.
It’s the price we paid for ridding Aorn of Regret.

His crimes were not so easy to dispense with, but he did not intend to wallow in self-loathing or self-pity. That was not the kind of man he was. He was a good, happy fellow – that was right, wasn’t it? The thoughts and actions of his previous self he did not empathise with at all. Thinking about what had driven him was like trying to recall a colour he had never seen.

Not me. It was not me!

Troubled or not, there was no denying he was in quite a predicament. The Dale below crawled with Unwoven, the sight of them making him shiver. They lived in the ruins of what had been a proud city, stretching along the length of the valley floor. Spilling up the slopes on either side were less permanent dwellings scraped together from mud and branch, all the way up to what looked like fields in the higher reaches. Grey figures moved about everywhere, and Salarkis crouched down lest one of them spy him. He experienced his first sinking feeling since waking – it was probable he could not escape by threadwalking, since it was not a talent he had possessed in mortal life.

He decided
to try anyway. Maybe the fact that he now remembered how it was done would help him? He concentrated hard, imagining himself coming apart at the seams, as he had done before so habitually and often that it had required no thought. His pattern, formerly so easy to unravel, was now stubbornly firm and solid. After a long while of trying, he sighed and opened his eyes. His limits now felt drastically constrictive in comparison to what they had been.

I’ll adjust
, he told himself.
I am still a powerful threader.

It had to be true, but what had been strength now felt like weakness, and self assurance did not change the fact that he was stranded.

Maybe he could fashion something to cross the gap back to the plateau and flee into the Peaks? Although, was that really an answer, with the mountains riddled by silkjaws and worms?

He quickly ran
through his options, and without much else available, took a dagger and made his way towards the flight of stairs which led into the Spire proper. He heard nothing below, so crept down the stairs to a doorway with no actual door, and peeped through into the room beyond. Mould and patches of moss grew everywhere, lit up by a couple of portholes punched in the wall. It did not look like anyone had been here in a long time, which somehow seemed incredible. Did not the hordes of Unwoven outside revere the tower of their master? Even if they didn’t put it to practical use, surely they would visit it sometimes?

The only way onwards was a corkscrew stairwell, down which he discovered more dark rooms. As he went he poked about in corners and crevices, padded along empty corridors. Once or twice he thought some lump beneath mould might prove to be something useful, and lifted up a sheet of the stuff. Each time clouds of spores sent him hacking, while the space beneath revealed itself empty of anything save more tightly compacted mould. As his coughs echoed loudly through the tower he feared they would be answered by the sound of running footsteps, and yet, each time, nothing.

Everything had rotted to dust. There was nothing in the Spire.

Eventually he reached an antechamber at the bottom, dispirited that he had not found a single thing. At least, he supposed, as long as he stayed inside, he was apparently safe from the Unwoven.

Not from
starvation, however.

The only way out was a small archway. There may have been a door there once, or double doors even, but now it stood permanently open – the breeze that came through was a welcome relief after the musty Spire air. He paused just inside it, peeking out.

The Spire was built at the top of a rise at the Dale’s northern end. About thirty paces down a slope of patchy earth and grass, the huts began. If the Spire was as abandoned as it seemed, Salarkis found it odd that the Unwoven lived so close to it. If there was something about it that they venerated, or feared, surely they would keep a little distance? Instead, many of them moved about just outside, and all around.

He receded into the dark to consider his next move.

As Yalenna strode
through Althala Castle, people pressed their backs against walls to get out of her way. Her eyes projected fury in a focused beam and, with her white Priestess’s robe flaring behind her, she seemed to take up the entire corridor.

Braston, her friend and ally, a force for good in a troubled world, had been murdered for nothing more prosaic than power. Responsibility for the act was shared, in part by the Warden Despirrow, in part by Loppolo, the former king of Althala who Braston had dethroned – and who Yalenna was now on her way to see.

‘Yalenna,’ tried Rostigan, struggling to keep up without breaking into a jog, ‘should we not speak on this a little?’

‘We’ve spoken. For weeks.’

During the long night they had recently spent together, when Despirrow had stopped time for longer than he had ever done before, she and Rostigan had had nothing to do but talk. Surprisingly, she had actually grown to enjoy his company. Maybe it was because they had known each other as mortals, before the Spell’s stolen threads had changed them so drastically, and now he seemed more like the man he had once been. She could sometimes forget, for a while, that he had become the Lord of Crows and ground the people of Aorn under his heel.

‘And when
we spoke,’ he said, ‘you advocated forgiveness for Loppolo, yes?’

‘That was before I knew he’d succeeded, when I thought he was but toying with fancies, before I imagined such an insignificant man actually capable of killing Braston.’

As they approached Loppolo’s quarters, the two guards outside grew tense. They were plainly unsure about what to do if Yalenna tried to storm past them without permission, which, unfortunately for them, was also quite clearly what she intended to do. She helped solve their dilemma by swiping a hand and sending them stumbling away down the corridor to collapse in an undignified heap. Without breaking stride she gestured at the door and sent it crashing inwards.

Voices from inside rose in alarm as she moved through an antechamber into Loppolo’s entertaining area. The man himself sat on a couch, a plate of biscuits on the low table before him, while a few other nobles were scattered about clutching goblets of wine. All stared at Yalenna with startled expressions.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s this? A nice little celebration?’

‘Er …’ Loppolo
rose. ‘Just some afternoon refreshment.’ He became aware of others watching and tried to hide his nervousness. ‘That aside,’ he said, forcing a haughtier tone, ‘by what right do you enter here unannounced, Priestess? You may be a Warden but, with the passing of Braston, I am King of Althala once again!’