The Lord of Lies: Strange Threads: Book 2 (29 page)

Crows were not the only strange occurrence on her mind. She was sure, when the Unwoven had fallen into the pit, that she had heard words echo out of the air. She had not quite caught them, yet the voice had been familiar. Or did the fact that the ghostly rhyme accompanied a miraculous disappearance, coupled with the knowledge that Rostigan had been there when Stealer had died, point her to some strange conclusions? He had told her, after all, that the threads of Wardens sought new homes when their hosts were killed.

‘Stay close, minstrel.’ This from Loppolo. ‘I don’t want to misplace you.’

There was pride in his voice, as if keeping her safe was an important duty. As if somehow it made up for him hanging back from the fighting.

‘Do not fear!’ Rostigan’s cry reached her ears. ‘We do the Spell’s bidding! We are supposed to win!’

She was strangely comforted, and some of her doubts faded.
We are supposed to win.
The thought stuck with her, pushed others away, lifted her spirits. She watched with a swelling breast as he continued to show the world how he had earned his renown. She would have a talk with him later, indeed she would, and get to the bottom of where he had gone, and what else precisely was going on … but in the meantime, perhaps it was simply permissible to love him with all her heart.

Forger caught hold
of a flying sword, and something about it bothered him. It fit quite well into his grip – not entirely, yet it was unmistakably more comfortable than that first one he had tried. Was it bigger? He turned it for inspection, then took measure of himself against the people around him. There was no doubt about it – he had gotten smaller.

Nothing to worry about
, he told himself. There was still great power coursing through him, and by no means was he at the end of his reserves, but the fact remained that while he used his gifts without causing any pain, he was spending without replenishing.

He heard a low moan from a soldier lying on the ground. The young man was badly wounded, with no telling if a healer could save him. Quietly, impulsively, Forger reached out his influence and thrummed the exposed nerve endings of the soldier’s wounds. The young man screamed, but there were plenty of screams, and Forger did not think one more would be noticed. With a little flush of pleasure he absorbed the garnered pain.

Karrak stalked up, flicking sticky white blood from his blade. ‘I think they’re thinning out,’ he said.

‘Or I have grown too short to attract their attention anymore,’ said Forger.

‘If that is the case, let us go in search of them!’

As they picked their way through the fighting, Forger kept an eye out for anyone else he might surreptitiously feed off.

Yalenna glanced
around for whatever was next. To her surprise, it seemed like stocks of Unwoven were actually dwindling. The pit was empty save for arrow-speckled bodies, a few still writhing, and human dead. Over on the opposite side she thought she spotted Mergan for a moment. Unwoven were thicker there, for less Althalans had gotten around that far before the enemy had begun to pour out.

A bold idea struck her.

‘Don’t follow me,’ she said to Jandryn.

‘What?’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘just don’t.’

He would be all right, she told herself. He had a band of good soldiers with him who had killed many Unwoven together. If they survived, they could rightly call themselves veterans.

She turned and jumped into the pit.

‘Yalenna!’

She ignored his call and landed on the slope, her momentum carrying her downwards at speed. The earth was soft and her feet threatened to sink and make her stumble, but she conjured wind to help her balance. At the bottom the slope levelled out and she dashed across the centre of the bowl, leaping and dodging as half-dead Unwoven snatched at her. Upon reaching the other side, she channelled wind to boost her upwards, whipping her hair about in front of her eyes. Near the top she took a great last leap, summoning
a final blast that lifted and carried her to rise the last few paces out of the pit and land on her feet.

Here, she was no longer among friends. Unwoven all around uttered a low collective hiss, and she reached for anything about them she could influence – a pair of pants, a leather belt, a sword, a steel helm – and flung objects together, dragging their owners with them. Unwoven staggered about, crashing into each other, pricking themselves with swords, butting heads. It was not enough to kill them, but it kept them at bay.

‘Make way!’ came Mergan’s voice. He appeared, hopping nimbly to avoid his stumbling minions. His eyes shone madly, and his face and beard were covered with jam. There was not much left, by the looks of the jar in his hand.

‘You’ve strayed off the path, my dear,’ he said.

This time she did not allow herself to get drawn in by his nonsense. She reached out with all her might, intending to crush the brain in his head. He gave a cry and pinched his brow. She added wind to her assault, directing it hard against all before her. Mergan staggered backwards, robe flapping, while his Unwoven struggled to reach her. One, with a crooked scar on his brow, crawled on his belly, and she sent a shower of dirt into his eyes that set him blindly pawing. Desperately she squeezed at Mergan’s mind, trying to squash it beyond recognition, but the next moment his pattern snapped back into shape – her ethereal grip soundly rejected.

‘I can’t believe you would do that!’ he gasped, with a kind of horrified indignance.

‘Why?’ she said furiously. ‘You do realise this is not a game, don’t you? The things you’re doing actually have consequences –
wake up
why don’t you? The Mergan I know would be ashamed of you!’

He blinked at her, her words washing right over him. ‘Well,’ he growled, ‘if that’s the way you want to tussle …’

Perhaps she had been unwise to pick this fight. His influence seized her like a steel claw, digging in under her skin. Her wind died away like lost breath as she concentrated everything on keeping herself whole – on pushing him out whenever he tried to settle on a heart, an eye, a liver, a backbone. It was the most she could do to assert her pattern, but she could not be rid of him altogether, as he slipped painfully from one place to the next. Her bones began to throb. She fell to her knees. The scarred Unwoven rose to his feet but Mergan waved him away as his grip grew more insistent. He laughed, holding the jam jar higher, as if it was a trophy.

Jam was the least of what he deserved.

Yalenna lashed out, catching Mergan off guard with her target, and the jar exploded in his hand. Splinters lodged deeply in his palm as sticky remnants fell to earth. Mergan gave a wail of abject sorrow, which turned to hate so quickly that Yalenna thought his tears might evaporate as steam. He howled and both his hands shot to the sky.

She was hurled upwards
as if loosed from a catapult, air whistling in her ears as she arced out over the sea of battling forces.

‘Will you look at that,’ said Forger.

No arguments now
, Rostigan sent his crows, more forcefully than he had ever commanded them before.
Do exactly as I bid.

Half-dazed and slightly nauseous, Yalenna passed the apex of her climb. Forcing herself to focus, she tried to muster wind beneath her, but it did little to slow her fall. A rush of air to aid a leap from a pit was not the same as halting a downwards plummet, it seemed. She could not even send her influence downwards to soften the oncoming ground, for it was hidden by hard, spiky warriors.

Would she die? She wasn’t sure. If she didn’t, she certainly would be broken for a while. If she did, she hoped at least to land near Rostigan, for he was the only one she trusted with her threads.

A wing slapped her forehead, and something sharply tugged her hair.
Leave me alone
, she thought, imagining some silkjaw had come to bother her in these last, maudlin moments.

A dark shape floated across her vision and seized her by the flapping sleeve. Claws settled all over her, up and down the length of her
arms, across her back, pinching her bare skin or grabbing onto hair and clothes. As the crows beat their wings, their multiple grips digging into her painfully, her fall slowed.

She could not believe that he had done this.

Rostigan
.

Now a little wind did help, a gentle upwards draft – not enough to tear free the birds, just enough to buoy them. More settled on her as she flew over the upturned faces of amazed soldiers, angling towards the ground. Despite the help, she could tell the impact was still going to hurt, and she would be lucky not to break anything. Then, as she was nearing a crash, other influences took hold. She tracked them to Rostigan – and
Forger –
holding their hands up towards her. They steadied her as she descended and, as her feet touched the ground before them, the crows immediately dispersed. She wobbled slightly, blood rushing back into countless places, and with all manner of scratches, yet happy nonetheless.

‘Boys,’ she breathed. ‘Thank you.’

Rostigan nodded stoically, while Forger beamed.

‘Why, Yalenna,’ he said, ‘it has been
such
a long time!’