‘I did,’ replied Losara. ‘But I am not sure I can do that.’
‘No?’ asked Eosene sweetly. ‘Could it be, perhaps, that the gifts given to weavers by Arkus himself are not as easily learned as cutting up bread or squatting to shit?’ She chirped cheerfully as she flew from Losara’s shoulder. ‘Reddle, as my favour I ask you to kill the Shadowdreamer !’
Reddle’s eyes flickered in fear, but he picked up a blunt rake that had been leaning against the sty fence. He lurched towards Losara, raising the weapon. Clandra grasped him with a cry and roughly he shook her off to shamble onwards, slow but driven, the rake ready to strike.
Losara frowned. Surely the bird did not think this cripple represented any real threat? He dissolved to shadow and re-formed on the flats some distance away. Reddle looked around, perplexed, spied Losara a moment later, and began shuffling towards him again. At his current pace, it would take him some minutes to arrive.
Lord? Where did you go? Ah.
The weaver flew out of the sky and landed on Losara’s shoulder.
‘What was the purpose of that?’ asked Losara, a vague irritation nudging at him.
‘Just something to think about,’ said Eosene. ‘The fact that someone keeps a secret does not stop them from acting upon it. Someone in your ranks could decide to kill you without uttering a single word about why.’
‘I take your point,’ said Losara gloomily. ‘But there was no need to illustrate it so. Will that man now wander forever trying to find me?’
‘Let us head back to him,’ said Eosene. ‘I will nullify what I asked him for.’
‘Anyway,’ said Losara, ‘if I cannot replicate weaver magic in the first place, there was no reason to learn such a lesson.’
‘I thought it might make you feel better,’ said Eosene, ‘to know your idea was flawed from the start, so cannot be blamed on any deficit in your own abilities.’
Losara nodded. ‘I see.’
‘Reddle,’ called Eosene as they drew nearer, ‘I retract my favour. You owe me nothing.’
Reddle collapsed to his knees, sobbing. ‘Forgive me, lord! It was the weaver! I could not stop! Please …’
Clandra fell beside him, encircling him protectively in her arms. ‘He did not mean it, lord! It was that bird!’
Their voices combined to a pitiful gabble, which Losara quickly found irksome. ‘Enough! You will not be punished.’ He grimaced. ‘I have learned what I needed to, and cannot ask for more.’
‘Do not fault yourself, lord,’ said Eosene. ‘Weaver magic is a complex thing, bestowed only upon my kind.’
‘Yes,’ said Losara. ‘I will have to find some other means.’
Eosene flew down to the ground, and hopped about to face him.
‘Taking your leave now, lord?’
Losara stared at her blankly for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘I should return to the army.’
‘Yes,’ said Eosene. ‘Return to your army, and do not pander to them any more. They are yours to do with as you will, and just as you have no right to weavers’ secrets, they have no right to yours.’
Losara felt the words sink in and take root in his mind. Eosene was right. There was no need to waste time getting sidetracked in this attempt to indulge the curiosity of those who were born to serve him without question.
With a renewed sense of purpose he sped away across the Ragga Plains, and as he went he found his head beginning to clear. Strange, as he had not noticed it fogging in the first place, but looking back now he remembered his recent actions only dimly, as if he’d taken a strong drink. Surely the bird had not …but yes, as the distance between them grew, he began to feel sure that Eosene had been manipulating him. Then came the realisation that this expedition had put him in danger, and he had not even noticed it happening. At worst he had been toyed with. At best he had received advice that now seemed tainted despite the truth of it. But still, it was as he’d always been told, yet somehow forgotten in his need – never trust a weaver.
•
Eosene watched the Shadowdreamer depart, impressed with the way he could come and go wholly in the shadows. Thank goodness the champion of Fenvarrow had some talent, at least. She shook her little head. Such arrogance to think he could master her gift simply by seeing it occur.
She glanced at Reddle, still snivelling in the dirt. Would she have preferred that he had somehow succeeded in killing the dreamer? With the death of the blue-haired men, balance would have been restored, but that mattered little to Eosene – all she cared about was that Arkus did not win.
I suppose a good way for that to happen would be if he were destroyed for all time , she thought. Thus I suppose I will hope for such an outcome, and not be the one to try killing you, Shadowdreamer.
Meanwhile the two pig farmers were finally realising that Losara was gone.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it seems you no longer owe me a favour, Reddle, although your wife now does. So unless you want me to have her walk into Ryme Lake up past her head, or close her legs to you forever, you’ll go fetch me some fresh meat.’
She cast a last look in the direction Losara had departed. ‘Bugs indeed,’ she said, and twittered merrily.
Abomination
Fahren tried to steady his hands despite the roiling in his guts, and closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of her as she lay there, so peaceful, still looking like that young girl who’d shown such promise. ‘Surely there is another way,’ he murmured.
‘You have the orders of your god,’ came Battu’s voice behind him. ‘If you cannot follow him, who do you fight for?’ Once again Fahren found himself wishing that Arkus had left Battu as he had been. It was true that, after being bound to help, Battu’s trustworthiness was no longer in question …but as a side effect Battu was now free to be as unpleasant as he liked, and the subservient, even friendly, demeanour he had previously carried was gone. Evidently he no longer felt he had to impress Fahren with decorum, as he had nothing left to prove.
Taking a deep breath, Fahren began to channel. His power entered Elessa’s corpse, and dimly he sensed the path her soul had taken when it had departed beyond the veil of the world, like footprints of the soul almost faded away. He let his power follow those footprints, felt it meet some kind of resistance, then slip through into an unknown other side.
‘Like fishing,’ said Battu. ‘Except the fish is already hooked and you create the line.’
It was odd to think that part of him was now entering Arkus’s Great Well of Souls. He let his power spool out, felt a warm glow travel back along it to suffuse him.
‘Do not be seduced,’ he heard Battu say. ‘Search.’
He concentrated, trying to find anything that recognised the body he channelled through. For a time there was nothing, and he wondered if he had done something wrong. Then he felt a contact at the end of his ‘line’. It bounced brightly as he seized it tightly, mercilessly.
It , he chastised himself. No kind word for that which remains of Elessa’s soul.
As he retracted his power, she struggled frantically. It sickened him to hold onto her so fast, drawing her towards him. The warmth he had been feeling turned stiflingly unpleasant, hot in his lungs. There was a faint popping as he dragged her through whatever barrier separated the Well from the world, into herself. For a moment nothing happened, and he dared to hope that he had failed.
Then Elessa Lanclara opened her eyes with a gasp. Fahren’s hands trembled as he lowered them, staring with disbelief upon what he had wrought. In all his life he had never done anything that felt so viscerally wrong …yet he had stepped through the door and there was no turning back.
‘Well,’ said Battu. ‘Didn’t think you had it in you.’
Elessa’s hand went unsteadily to her chest, as if she sensed she had no breath, and that her heart did not beat. Slowly she lifted her head, and Fahren forced himself to meet her gaze, though he wanted nothing more desperately than to bury his ashamed face in his hands. He tried to smile, and felt as if his face would crack like dropped crockery if he managed it. How much of her is left ? he wondered. So long in the Well meant that parts of her would be gone, dissipated into the collective, perhaps reborn. Would she even remember who she was? Maybe it would be a blessing if she didn’t.