The Legacy of Lord Regret: Strange Threads: Book 1 (3 page)

It was growing dark and the stout trunks were thickly crowded, in places almost wall-like. Fallen trees lay at odd
angles, pushed from the earth by the hungry roots of others, but without the space to fall.

Rostigan moved under a slanting trunk, Tarzi on his heels trying to remain as silent as he. She was fairly adept at it, he
had to admit – as light on her feet here as when she sprung from tabletops performing stories – and yet there still sounded
the occasional scrape of her boot on bark, or the crackle of leaves underfoot. It was dangerous – if the woman they pursued
really was Stealer, the last thing he wanted was for her to hear them coming.

The trees gave way briefly to stony ground by the side of the stream. Rostigan entered the clearing carefully, but no one
was there. Instead, on the opposite side of the clearing, a strange sight greeted him. Running in a straight line off into
the dark was a passage between trees too uniform to be natural. Its floor was lightly churned, earth caving inwards where
the roots of stolen trees had been. As Rostigan drew closer, a whisper wafted forth.

‘She carved herself a path,’ he said.

Tarzi bit her lip. ‘At least it will make her easy to follow.’

‘Only for me.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, songbird, time for you to roost a while.’

‘How am I supposed to recount your doings if I’m not there to behold them?’

‘Or indeed, if you are rhymed out of the world?’

‘I wasn’t making any noise!’

‘You were doing well, but you must understand that this errand is madness. If Stealer really is somewhere ahead, there’s every
chance I won’t return – and I won’t risk you into the bargain. She adores beauty, they say, so you’d be the first to find
your way onto the pages of her notebook. The greatest hope is to take her by surprise – something I can achieve more easily
without you.’

Tarzi sighed and dropped her pack to the ground. She looked caught between being annoyed and slightly pleased with the compliment.

Rostigan went to the mouth of the passage. There were fresh footprints in the earth, mockingly petite. He glanced back at
Tarzi – she had not protested overmuch, and he suspected she might still try to follow. Perhaps she would decide she could
remain a safe distance behind him and observe any confrontation from hiding.

‘Tarzi,’ he said.

‘Mmm?’

‘In your stories, when someone is told to stay behind, they never do.’

She grinned. ‘What of it?’

‘Don’t smile, girl,’ he snapped. ‘Stealer is no laughing matter. Her return could mark the beginning of a new chaotic age.
Perhaps there is but one chance, one small and tiny chance, to stop her now before that happens. Is that worth jeopardising
for a tale to tell drunkards?’

Tarzi’s glare was icy.

‘Promise me,
promise
that you will not follow.’

She sat down heavily on a log.

‘Tarzi?’

‘I promise!’

‘A real promise, true? You will not sit for an hour, grow bored and creep along after?’

‘Wind and fire! I promise, you insufferable man.’

‘Good.’ He turned away.

‘What makes you think you have this small and tiny chance anyway? If it really is her, which there’s no way it can be.’

‘I have my reasons.’ Rostigan took a deep breath, and entered the passage.

He went more swiftly than before, for he predicted Stealer at tunnel’s end, and that was not yet in sight. Insects and worms
that had made their homes in the earth around absent roots now wriggled free and exposed. The passage never deviated, and,
as night fell, the wood grew blacker and blacker.

How deep have you gone?
he wondered.
How far do you flee?

He winced as his boot crunched a beetle.

Finally, ahead, he caught the twinkle of firelight. He slowed, stepping in shadows not found by the rising moon. Softly he
approached the end of the passage, which he could now see opened up into a small clearing. He paused on the
threshold, peering through gaps in the trees. There, on a rock before the flames, sat a lone figure.

She was the very image of her portraits. Small and slender in a scarlet cloak, under which other layers wrapped her tightly
– gloves and leggings, boots done up to her knees, her shirt almost flat across her chest. Her kerchief was draped across
her knee, but the broad-brimmed hat still hid her face. The quill in her right hand came down to meet the notebook in her
left, and the point flew deftly across the page. There was a glimmer of threads streaming in from the air around her, only
visible in the moment before they reached her. She chuckled, a wet sound, and a moment later her ghostly words floated out
of the air.

In the dark Rostigan felt his heart grow cold. Had she really just done what he thought she had?

‘See if you like that, Aorn,’ she muttered to herself. ‘So precious a simple thing, you probably didn’t even know you had
it, but you’ll notice now it’s gone, gone, gone …’

A night bird hooted on a branch above her. She glanced up at it, and Rostigan saw glittering eyes and a mouth that there was
no mistaking. Jagged strips of flesh were missing from her lips, leaving the rest to hang like tattered curtains that permanently
revealed her yellowed teeth.

As the bird stretched its wings, her quill descended toward a fresh page.

‘Such whimsical destruction,’ said Rostigan.

She started, her eyes snapping to where he lurked, quill hovering at the ready.

‘Who’s that?’ she hissed through jiggling lips.

‘Do you really need a bird in your collection, when you already took a whole city today, Stealer?’

She laughed. ‘I thought I was forgotten after so long, but I do myself discredit.’

‘Who else would purge Silverstone from the face of Aorn?’

‘Yes, it was I – and, knowing that, you still sneak upon my fireside, bold enough to speak when most would flee? Do you fancy
yourself protected, there in the shadows?’

‘If you cannot see me, surely I am safe from being described.’

Her laugh was louder this time. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard the tale of the knights who slaughtered me? It’s given you false confidence.
Do you really think there’s nothing to be said about someone, just because they dress in brown trousers and only carry stupid
blunt weapons?’

‘Then how did they kill you?’

‘We all sleep sometimes. It seems that men would rather remember themselves as gifted planners, rather than brutes who butchered
a woman in her bedroll.’

‘And why,’ he said, ‘have you returned?’

‘Do you know, it is the strangest thing – I have no idea at all. Just woke up as if I never left, imagine that! I think it
was even in the same place as where they killed me, though the landscape has changed a little so I can’t be certain.’

‘Aorn was better off without you. It will be again.’

‘Oh yes?’ Her eyes narrowed, and her quill darted across the page.

Her words crawled up Rostigan’s arms like ephemeral centipedes … and passed him by. Stealer’s expression turned to one of
shock. She leapt to her feet and bolted.

Rostigan had not expected her to flee. He bounded after her, his bulk a hindrance in the confines of the wood. She darted
ahead, a flash of scarlet slipping between crowded trees. Gritting his teeth, Rostigan ignored the long scrapes of clutching
twigs down his arms, the sharp branches that gouged him or flew at him in shards as he slashed them from his path. He heard
her curse, and rounded a trunk to find her struggling with her cloak tangled in a bush. She ripped free and spun to face him
as he advanced, her eyes widening at his raised sword.

‘Wait, it’s not fair!’ she cried. Her hand flew up as she tried to undo the threads of his sword, but with a mental flick
he batted her influence away.

‘Don’t you want to talk?’ she said. ‘I only just –’

He smashed the sword down between her eyes, driving bits of skull deep into her neck.

Rostigan carried the body back through the trees. She did not move, yet he thought there was life in her still – that, if
left alone, she would eventually heal. Wardens had always been considered something close to immortal.

He arrived at her campsite, where the fire still burned. It had done the job once – no reason to think it would not again.

‘Tarzi!’ he bellowed, down the long passage.

She must be a league or so away, but he was sure she would hear him through the still night. She would want to look on the
body, to see the mouth that removed all doubt, and thus have something to put in her stories.

‘Tarzi!’ he shouted again. ‘It is safe to approach!’

He propped Stealer against a rock in an affectation of recline, taking care to remove the notebook and quill from her person.
From either side of her split skull, her eyes suddenly became aware. They flickered to him, full of hate, and she gurgled
somewhere down in her spliced throat, below the mess of her ruined lips.

‘Patience,’ he said.

He turned away, inspecting her notebook. Her writing was spidery yet legible. There was a verse about a guard in a guard post,
followed by one about Silverstone, one that
had created the passage in the trees, and finally, one about the taste of apples. The rest of the pages were blank.

He crouched down before her. ‘What business do you have in the world, Stealer? Why have you returned? How?’

She could not answer.

After a while he heard Tarzi approaching, and went to show himself at the mouth of the passage.

‘Rostigan?’ she called nervously.

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Come and see, for I would not leave you with nothing for your songs. Come and look upon Stealer while
you can.’

Tarzi entered the clearing, her face going white at what she found there.

‘That’s her?’

‘Yes.’

‘
Stealer
? Not some … I don’t know … imposter, following in her footsteps?’

‘If so, they did a good job replicating her likeness. Not that you can really tell now, I suppose.’

She clutched his arm. ‘She’s looking at me.’

‘Do not fear, she cannot hurt you. I thought you would want to see her before I consign her to the flames.’

‘But how did you best her?’

‘I was lucky. I was able to circle around to where she sat and strike before she knew I was there.’

Tarzi stared a moment longer. ‘It’s really her, isn’t it? That mouth …’ She trailed off, looked away.

Rostigan felt like a cur who had dragged home a dying bird to its owner. ‘Enough?’ he asked.

‘Enough.’

‘Very well.’

As Stealer’s eyes flashed in protest, he lifted her up under the arms and draped her across the fire. The gurgling in her
throat grew louder, her fingers waggling spasmodically to a whir. Rostigan quickly gathered armfuls of dry brush, which he
dumped around her.

‘Must be terrible,’ he said matter-of-factly as he worked, ‘to go the same way, again, so soon.’

The fire began to belch blackly and soon all movement stopped. Fat sizzled on crumbling bones.

‘Let us away from here,’ whispered Tarzi.

Rostigan ignored her, waiting for something she could not see. He wanted to make sure Stealer was gone for good.

With no flesh to reside in, the threads of Stealer’s pattern began to unwind, losing their – her – shape. Soon they were as
wavering and random as the twirls of smoke they danced between, and fading quickly. Rostigan sent his gaze deeper, chasing
after them, and they rekindled briefly to his vision … but, just as on the beach, there came a certain depth past which he
could not see. Stealer’s threads disappeared beneath the veil of the world, back into the Spell, and were gone. Only one bundle
remained, like an ethereal tussock of twitching blue seaweed, which snapped off from the rest to bounce along a narrow plane
between the layers of existence. Rostigan grimaced – it seemed
these threads could not penetrate the veil, something he had feared but not expected. He felt certain they were the ones stolen
from the Great Spell, gone to Stealer through Regret, and now, seemingly, they could not return to where they belonged.