The Legacy of Lord Regret: Strange Threads: Book 1 (16 page)

Forcing himself to turn away, he felt a strange sensation prickling at his eyes.

It had been cowardly, he supposed later, to vanish without dissembling his empire, or standing up to his cohorts. He had abandoned
a cart he should have set fire to, instead leaving Forger to pick up the reins. But he had been in a strange state that night,
and the transition to decency had not been instantaneous. He’d wanted to be good, but for selfish reasons, so perhaps in the
hurry to reinvent himself, he had actually failed to do it convincingly. To this day, he was not sure if he really cared for
the people he helped, or if he’d worn the mask for so long, he had forgotten what he really looked like. He
knew
the difference between right and wrong, at least, but then again he always had – the Karrak of old had simply chosen to ignore
the concepts completely. Maybe he was only acting, trying to fit into the Spell in a normal, mortal way, in hope of one day
being rewarded by finding
her
again. If his persona was a facade, he was masterful at maintaining it –
look at me
, he thought,
on the road to join Braston’s army, because that’s what any honourable warrior would do
.

Or perhaps it was the first chance he’d had, in three hundred years, to prove that he’d really changed.

But did it matter either way? Did the Spell even care, if one could attribute
care
to such an underlying force? Would he ever slip back into its patterns as if he belonged?

And would Braston understand? Would he forgive? Yalenna might, for they had been friends once. Would she remember that?

‘Come on, old statue,’ said Tarzi, startling him as she took his arm. ‘You’re falling behind.’

Rostigan blinked – it was true. The group was growing distant on the road ahead.

‘Sorry, songbird,’ he said.

‘Tired?’

‘Just …’

Well, why not?

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A little tired.’

Her grip tightened. Following her gaze, he saw what she saw: a dappled butterfly flitting along gaily, rising and falling
on a gentle breeze – backwards.

‘Enter,’ said Yalenna to the knock at the door.

She was grateful for the distraction. For some days she had been waiting for Braston to seek her out, ever since he had promised
to do so. She would not go to him – he knew where she was, and she understood why he had trouble facing her. She reminded
him of his fears, and he was enjoying playing ruler too much to face them.

Still, she could not wait forever. This room, plush and cheerful as it was, with its fat curtains and four-poster bed, was
beginning to feel like a cell. She did not like to venture out, she had found – did not like the amazement and worship that
greeted her everywhere she went, as she might once have done. The trouble was, the joy she lent people was all a lie. She
was here because something had gone very wrong. She hoped, if she cloistered herself, she would limit the damage caused by
her never-abating
blessings. While the other Wardens ran about the world doing whatever they chose, it seemed.

‘I said enter!’ she repeated, rising from her chair by the window. It wasn’t Braston, for the knock was far too timid.

The door opened to reveal Captain Jandryn. She had commandeered him, in a way, made him promise to report to her every day.
Still nervous in her presence, however, he entered clutching his helmet to his chest.

‘Thought you’d set down roots out there,’ she said tersely.

‘Apologies, my lady.’

This wasn’t like her. She should go to Braston and wring his thick neck for making her wait this long. She would have done
so already, she told herself, if she hadn’t needed the time to think. What did she want Braston to do, anyway? What was their
first step? She did not know, could not appeal to him until she’d figured out what she expected of him.

After what I talked him into, no wonder he doesn’t want to hear my ideas
.

It made her stomach turn to think of it.

‘What news?’ she asked.

Jandryn cleared his throat. ‘From Tallahow,’ he said. ‘It seems that Forger has taken back his throne.’

That got her attention.

‘Forger? Oh, that is fine, is it not? Braston and Forger both shifting things about, taking thrones that aren’t theirs … I’m
sure it won’t have any affect on the Spell
at all
.’

She slumped back in her seat. From there she had a view through a window over the city, and the makeshift camp beyond its
walls, where multitudes who had answered Braston’s call to arms were being housed and trained.

‘They offered
me
my old temple back, you know,’ she said, ‘and what did I tell them?’

‘Um …’ said Jandryn.

‘I said no, of course! They already
had
a Priestess! A rightful one, come to the position by her own path! A rightful path!’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Your oafish ruler
had better work up the courage to visit me soon, or I am going to bless his buttocks with my foot!’

In the face of her anger, Jandryn dried up completely.

Yalenna tried to calm herself. She was the serene and peaceful Lady of Blessings, after all.

Eventually Jandryn found his courage. ‘Do you wish me to take a message to the king, my lady? About you wanting to see him?’

‘The
king
,’ she answered, ‘knows where to find me, and you can wager he hasn’t forgotten I’m here.’

She ran her finger down the spines of piled books, which she’d had brought to her from the castle library. Histories, mythologies,
spell books … none containing any hint of what she must do.

‘That will be all,’ she said.

Jandryn mumbled his thanks – for what, she wasn’t sure – and left.

She let her head fall to her hand. Fighting the corrupted Wardens, she and Mergan had pointed Braston in many directions.
Perhaps he was simply fed up with her.

Mergan
– finding him was something she needed to do, at least that was certain … but even that she could not begin, for where to
start looking? She still did not know where he had gone. Surely if he lived again, he would make his way to Althala? Yet there
had been no word of him at all.

‘Ah,’ said a voice, and her head jerked up.

Salarkis sat grinning in an armchair opposite, wearing nothing but a belt of daggers round his waist.

‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Let me see the one pretty face amongst us all.’

Yalenna’s blood quickened. Was he here to avenge himself? She found herself both afraid, and strangely glad to see him.

Did the blessing she had given him still hold sway?

‘It’s good to see you too, old friend,’ she said, and he chortled in a way that was not at all amiable.

Before his transformation, Salarkis might have been the best of all of them. He had a touch of wanderlust about him, and travelled
the land helping people as best he could. A rare sort not driven by personal gain, but by deep-seated kinship with his fellow
human beings. It had taken a while for Mergan and Yalenna to track him down, for he preferred the edges of things, where folk
were most vulnerable, and
souls most lost, but once they found him, it had not taken long to convince him to join them in bringing down Regret.

After the change, scant remained of the Salarkis who had been. Chaos became his entertainment, and he revelled in discovering
the names of important people and sending knives to find them. Then, after the deaths of Forger and Despirrow, bodies stuck
with his blades had mysteriously ceased to fall. Yalenna and Braston hunted him anyway, for it was not just his crimes he
had to answer for. After a year of searching, rumours had brought Yalenna, alone, to a small village on the cusp of Dapplewood.
Here she found the people afraid, for though the wood was cheerful and sunny, no one had ventured into its interior for months.

‘Haunted by a black ghost, ma’am,’ said one man. ‘It hates the living – jealous I reckon – so best not to gain its attention.’

Into the wood Yalenna had gone, quietly and carefully, expecting only more dead ends and false trails. Instead she came upon
a stout, sturdy hut in a once-cleared area that was growing overshadowed with encroaching canopy. Scattered about were family
things – an outdoor table, a high chair, a wooden ball and other toys, all looking as if they’d been left to the elements
for some time. Beside the hut was a thick-trunked tree, one branch dangling with a rope that had maybe once been used to swing
out over the beautiful, clear pool beside the house. Now the only thing swinging from it was a man’s body, cuts showing in
his desiccated flesh, the blood that had spilled from them now
dry stains on the tattered rags that had been his clothes. And sitting on a rock at the pool’s edge was a dark figure, his
feathered tail swishing in the water.

She moved towards him, bare feet padding across the grass. She did not wish to startle him, yet it became inevitable as she
drew closer and still he did not notice her. One of her blessings bounced from him, unable to penetrate his scales, and his
head snapped about, his snarl deepening when he saw who it was.

‘Please,’ she said, spreading her palms, ‘can we not speak a moment? We both know you can fade at whim, and I can do nothing
to stop you. But I’ll go on searching for you forever if you do not hear me out.’

His eyes slid across the foliage behind her. ‘Where’s Braston?’

‘I don’t know,’ she answered truthfully. ‘Looking for you, yes, but not with me. We thought it best to split up to cover more
ground.’

‘How enterprising of you. Perhaps, though, you should leave me be. You have already dispatched the others, and I,’ he glanced
at the slowly turning corpse, its mouth a yawning O, ‘have lost my claws.’

‘It does not look like that to me.’

‘Why, because of him?’ He gestured at the body. ‘I am not evil for killing this man.’

Yalenna wondered how long ago the deed had been done. Weeks, at least, by the state of decay – so what was
Salarkis still doing here, staring into this pool with distant eyes? She dared to hope it was a good sign.

‘Who was he?’ she asked.

‘Nobody. A woodsman. I did not even know his name. Nor did I use magic to kill him. Those wounds I gave him with my own hands,
while looking in his eyes.’

‘I see. That’s better, is it?’

‘Yes!’ Salarkis snapped. ‘He was a villain – a small one, compared to some, but how badly he treated his pretty wife and little
children. The tyrant of his own pathetic kingdom, and like no father should ever be with his daughters.’

Yalenna frowned. ‘And where are they now, this wife and family?’

‘Gone.’ He gave an idle flick of fingers. ‘Fled. They cried for him, that was the worst thing. But fear of me is stronger
than grief, and so, gone.’

‘So, you rescued them?’

‘Don’t go painting me in that fashion. I could have killed the bastard cleanly, but you see the marks, see how many? A slow
bleed it was, nothing peaceful. So don’t skip gaily down that path.’

‘I wasn’t about to declare you a paragon of light, Salarkis. However, Forger said something before he died – something about
you getting tangled up in the web of your past.’

‘Quiet about that.’

‘Have you started to remember? Please, I only want to help you. We are old friends, aren’t we?’

He turned back to stare into the shimmering water.

‘Has it come back to you?’ she pressed. ‘Your former life? Was this you trying to help somebody? In your own way, in this
quiet corner of the world, where no one else could see it? How long have you been sitting here, trying to make sense of this
death?’

He did not answer.

‘Regret touched us all,’ she said, ‘but perhaps, for all the ruin he caused, his latent curses did some final good. There
are things you
should
regret, Salarkis.’

He got a look on his face then, which, for just a moment, made him seem like his old self.

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘These eyes don’t cry, Priestess. This heart is cold.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Despirrow had his moment of Regret, and Stealer too. They saw the lives they would have led, save for the change. Yet the
experience passed them by, leaving not a scratch! So why must
I
endure this torment?’

Yalenna wanted to hug him then, hard in her soft hands – but she dared not.

‘Maybe because you’re better than them,’ she said. ‘The best of all of us, with the farthest to fall.’ She sighed. ‘When Mergan
and I asked you to come with us and kill Regret, what was it you were in the middle of doing?’

The scales of his brow kinked.

‘You were helping villagers whose crops were yellowing with disease. You were initially reticent to join us, to save the world
from wider evil because you could not differentiate
it from what beset those farmers. Pain is pain, and theirs was yours.’

‘Thank the Spell,’ he spat, ‘I am not so afflicted anymore. To go through life
feeling
every last thing, when there will always be pain, always misery. The moment you heal one hurt, ten more spring up, as if
healing actually planted the seed! To think,’ he flung up his hands in disgust, ‘that I believed I could make a difference!’

‘But you do still care. I can see it,
sense
it.’

‘Your senses do not penetrate me.’

‘I’m not speaking of threads and patterns. I can see you with my eyes, hear the quaver in your voice.’

He looked up at the sky.

‘You see what is happening to the world,’ she said. ‘The newborns with their twisted limbs, the rents in the earth, the strange
winds and the scents they carry! You know that all is crumbling – soon it won’t be saved for anybody, whether they be good
or evil. You do not want that.’

His shoulders slumped. ‘What can I do?’

Yalenna took a deep breath. ‘Let me bless you.’

He searched her face for a trick. ‘You can’t,’ he said. He reached for one of her little bundles in the air, and it glanced
off him. ‘We cannot affect each other – that has always been the nature of our gifts.’

‘Not without assent,’ she said.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Then there’s no harm in letting me try.’

‘What blessing would you bestow, if you could?’

‘Peace,’ she lied. ‘I can give you peace.’

He was hesitant, and yet he wanted what she offered. The chaos he spread had spread inward also. He was a broken thing, a
fragmented hybrid of all his selves.

‘You cannot harm me with a blessing,’ he said slowly. ‘Else it would not be as named.’

‘How true.’

‘How do I … let you in?’

‘Just like that.’

‘Just like what?’

‘By deciding to.’

He considered her offer. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Bless me, then. But, if you are deceiving me …’

Yalenna did not wait for him to finish. In that moment of acquiescence, he was open to her powers. The blessing she had moulded
for him while they talked, she sent at him. It hit him full in the chest and he jolted as if electrified, as the threads she
had fashioned integrated with his pattern. He slid forward off the rock, to his knees on the grass.

‘What … what have you done?’ he gasped. ‘This is not peace!’