The Legacy of Lord Regret: Strange Threads: Book 1 (12 page)

‘A few days.’

‘Hasn’t gone green yet,’ said Borgan approvingly. ‘Oh, and black cress, yes, and … no, I don’t need any halia.’

Rostigan remained silent as the man fussed about, sliding bundles from one pile to another.

‘There,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll take trade for these?’

‘Do you have any food or weaponry?’

‘I have a flash potion or two, handy for blinding an opponent …’

‘Weapons of the more pointy variety, I was thinking.’

‘Mmm.’ Borgan tried to remember whether or not he had a stockpile of swords out the back. ‘Can’t say I do.’

‘I’m afraid it will have to be coin then.’

Borgan cleared his throat. ‘Very well. Let me see now …’ He sized up the bundles he’d chosen, produced a piece of paper and
quill, and started tallying. ‘I’ll give you … let’s say two silver for each bundle, four for the milkweed …’ His glance asked
if this was acceptable, and Rostigan nodded. ‘Give me a moment,’ said Borgan, and disappeared behind his curtain.

He re-emerged with a cloth bag and began to count out silver. It wasn’t as much as Tarzi wanted, but it would have to do.
The ‘troops’ could eat hard-bread if they weren’t paying their own way. Once they reached Althala, it would be Braston’s responsibility
to feed them properly.

As Borgan laid the last coin on the counter one of the shop’s windows broke inwards, the glass splintering. There was a whizzing
sound and Borgan gave a yelp. His hand went to his chest where, embedded through his shirt into his flesh, there quivered
a thin sliver of metal.

‘Wind and fire!’ With a wince, Borgan drew the sliver out easily – it was the length of a pin, only the very end dotted with
blood. ‘What is this?’

‘Something from the window?’ said Rostigan dumbly.

Borgan came around the counter and went to the door. Outside, there was no one on the street.

‘As if I don’t have enough problems without unruly children bursting my windows!’ He turned the sliver for inspection, hand
shaking a little. ‘But it doesn’t look like anything from my building.’

Rostigan shrugged.

‘Well,’ said Borgan, ‘the mayor will hear of this!’

Rostigan pocketed his earnings and allowed himself to be ushered out of the store.

What are you playing at, Salarkis?
he wondered.

He sat on the tavern porch, puffing on his pipe. It was a peaceful spot, at the end of the main street on the outskirts of
town. As the sun set, he found a melancholy stealing upon him. There seemed much to do, when all he wanted was to sit in peace.
Instead, when he closed his eyes, he saw the white walls of Althala looming ahead.

Tarzi, Cedris and some of the others arrived, moving past on their way into the tavern. He gave Tarzi a nod and she plonked
down next to him.

‘How did it go?’ he asked.

‘The mayor waits on a rider to return and verify what we reported,’ she replied. ‘Such a strange thing – who would erect monuments
to Salarkis?’

Rostigan gave his shoulders a slow roll.

‘Are you going to come in?’

‘No, songbird. I shall take in the air.’

She lowered her voice. ‘Did you sell any curltooth?’

‘I sold some of the other herbs. The local merchant could not afford such treasure.’

‘Are you sure? Maybe he had a cask of coin buried out the back, left to him by his old grandmother.’

‘Such an inventive mind. You should find work as a storyteller.’

‘Rostigan, this is serious. We have to get as many people as we can to Althala.’

‘Why is that your responsibility?’

‘Because I’m a part of the world! If it fails, where will I go? Who will I drink with, Rostigan, who shall I sing to?
Who shall I lie in bed with at night with? Nobody, and nothing! Have you not seen the sky this evening?’

She pointed up at something Rostigan had been trying to ignore.

In the sky around the setting sun, among the wash of oranges and reds, darker patches could be seen, like huge, distant bruises
– or as if the sun was a lantern glowing behind a sheet stained by dirty smears. Perhaps, if he hoped it, Rostigan could imagine
they were the beginnings of night, somehow come ahead of greater darkness. Or …

‘Maybe clouds,’ he said.

‘They aren’t clouds, and you know it. The Spell is ailing. Don’t
you
feel compelled to do anything? Aren’t you supposed to be a brave warrior?’

Rostigan felt his face darken. ‘I’m coming with you, aren’t I? You never really asked if I wanted to, and nevertheless, here
I am. Just don’t expect me to help stir up villagers to go and get killed.’

‘Of course not,’ said Tarzi. ‘That would require some hint of emotion, some passion on your behalf!’

She watched him carefully, as if searching for that which she’d accused him of lacking.

Rostigan took a long draw on his pipe.

‘You’re a strange man,’ she said, rising, and went into the tavern.

Night soon swallowed the bruises in the sky. Inside, Tarzi began speaking, and all else fell to a hush. Although her purpose
these days was to do more than simply entertain, she still gave a good performance, twisting words and adopting voices, bouncing
about taking on characters. Sitting alone in the dark, Rostigan listened with half an ear. He didn’t really want to, yet he
found her words infiltrating his calm. Eventually he turned to look through the window behind him. Tarzi was in her usual
place before the fire, adeptly commanding the room’s attention and speaking with great gravitas. In the deep place, Rostigan
knew that she rivalled the minstrels of the greatest kings.

‘Before he fought Regret, Salarkis looked like any man,’ Tarzi said. ‘But afterwards, of all the Wardens, his appearance was
the most changed. The threads that came to him from Regret, were akin to those the mad lord had used to create his monsters.
Salarkis became like a monster himself, with hard scales for skin, sharp teeth, and stone feathers for hair. Rar!’

She lunged at a child on the floor, who squealed with delight.

‘He also received special talents – he could travel quickly, and find someone just by knowing their name. What’s
your
name, sir?’

The fellow she had singled out shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Tavan.’

‘Well imagine, good Tavan, if you somehow earned yourself note in Salarkis’s eyes. Maybe he would come to get
you himself … or maybe he would simply speak your name to a blade and release it. Even if you were far away, the blade would
fly, fly, fly until it
crashed through the glass
…’ She spun and flung up her hands at a window, and Tavan almost jumped out of his seat, ‘and deep into your breast!’

People chuckled at Tavan’s fright, and he blushed.

‘Well,’ he mumbled, ‘see how you like it, if someone says that to you!’

‘Salarkis,’ continued Tarzi, ‘could kill anyone in the world, and he didn’t even need to be there. Not his fellow Wardens,
of course, or no doubt he would have sent knives to Yalenna, Braston and Mergan. Instead he acted as a messenger between the
others, and delighted in joining their destruction. When Karrak attacked Galra, the city’s king chose not to ride out with
his army, but instead cowered in his throne room. Salarkis spoke his name to an axe and sent it over the castle walls, through
a balcony door, down a hall, up some winding stairs and
then
!’ She smacked her hands together. ‘It burst into the throne room and spun towards the king. They say it struck him with a
force that slid his throne to the wall, smashing seat and ribs with equal ease.

‘Oh, they knew good times together, Karrak and Forger, Despirrow and Salarkis. Armies marched, rivers ran red, and Karrak’s
crows grew fat on gobbled eyes. But, one by one, Salarkis’s comrades fell, or disappeared, until he was the last one left.
He fled, and Yalenna and Braston hunted him a long time, sometimes together, sometimes
apart. Eventually it was Yalenna who found him, in the wilds of Dapplewood, near the village that had been his childhood home.’

There came a sigh from the seat beside Rostigan. He froze, hairs prickling along his arms. No one could have taken that position
without him noticing. Slowly he turned, as Tarzi’s words still reached his ears.

‘Little is known of their meeting. When Yalenna returned from it she claimed that she had blessed Salarkis, and that she had
killed him.’

In the shadows by Rostigan, barely reached by the flickering light from inside, a figure reclined as if he had been there
for hours. Scaly arms lay along the arm rests, his tail idly flicking the floorboards between his legs. He smiled at Rostigan,
fangs gleaming behind the dark lips that framed them, and he tilted his head towards Tarzi inside.

‘She’s a pretty one,’ said Salarkis. ‘What’s her name?’

For a moment Rostigan dared not breathe or move. Then, slowly, he set down his pipe.

‘That was you,’ he said, ‘back on the road. Those statues.’

Salarkis gave a little bow in his seat.

‘To what purpose?’ asked Rostigan. ‘Why show off like that? What point in sticking the herb vendor with a needle?’

‘Just trying to get your attention,’ said Salarkis. ‘A little harmless fun. Besides, you’re a fine one to talk about purpose
– you who did whatever you wanted, who tore down kingdoms simply because they were there, Karrak.’

‘Hush! Do not call me that.’ Rostigan glanced back through the glass. No one was watching, but if someone came to the window,
or stepped outside, and saw him talking to
Salarkis
…

‘Let us go from here,’ he said, rising.

‘I want to hear the end of my story.’

‘It’s over,’ said Rostigan, moving down the porch steps. ‘You’re dead.’

Without looking to see if he was being followed, he moved around the side of the tavern and headed out into the fields. There
was a ripple in the air and a heavy crunch on the grass as Salarkis appeared beside him.

‘I see your manners have not improved,’ Salarkis said.

‘What do you want?’

‘Why, the same as you, no doubt. To know what is going on!’

‘I do not care a speck,’ said Rostigan, ‘what is going on. It has nothing to do with me.’

‘How can you say that, when we have all of us come back from the dead?’

Rostigan sighed. He supposed it would have been too much to ask for, for even one of them to have remained at rest, yet if
anyone could tally them, it was Salarkis.

‘I did not,’ he said, ‘come back from the dead.’

Salarkis was surprised. ‘You didn’t?’

He glanced back at the tavern, and Rostigan could see him having thoughts. It was irksome.

‘You did not want me to speak your name where it might be heard,’ Salarkis said slowly. ‘Those people back there – they are
not under your sway?’

‘No.’

‘They do not know who you are?’

‘No.’

‘You never died?’ said Salarkis. ‘You have been alive since …’

‘Yes.’

‘But where did you go? You disappeared! Not even I could find you, and I know your true name, no matter what false word you
presently offer when it’s asked of you.’

‘Rostigan.’

‘Rostigan,’ snarled Salarkis. ‘Why couldn’t I find you?’

‘I didn’t want you to.’

‘I found you today.’

‘I’d forgotten to guard against the likes of you, sometime in the last three hundred years.’

‘How? Please tell me, or curiosity will eat my brain.’

Rostigan supposed there was no harm in elucidating – it was not as if knowing how it was done would render the technique inert.
‘I shrouded my pattern with the borrowed threads of dead crows,’ he said. ‘Dimming my “bright light”, as it were, disguising
myself as one of the flock.’

Salarkis remained confused. ‘But where did you go? Why did you leave us?’

Rostigan snorted disdainfully. ‘Were you such kittens, meek and mild, that you needed looking after?’

‘You wound me, old friend. Why won’t you explain it to me?’

‘It’s nothing I chose to share with you then. What makes you think I wish to now? I was living peacefully – nothing more or
less – before you all came back. Now the sky is bruised, apples have no taste, and doubtless stranger things are on the way.
The corruption is renewed, because of all of you.’