She gaped at him like a toothless spider. 'You have a brain like pumice stone – throw stuff at it and it just sinks in! Disappears.
Vanishes. Even when I piss on it, the piss just poofs! Gone! Oh how I hate you, husband. With all your obnoxious, smelly habits – gods, picking your nose for breakfast – I still get sick thinking about it – a sight I am cursed never to forget-'
'Oh be quiet. There's nutritious pollen entombed in snot, as everyone well knows-'
A heavy sigh interrupted him, and both Dal Honese looked down at Mappo. Mogora scrabbled over and began stripping away the webs from the Trell's seamed face.
Iskaral Pust leaned closer. 'What's happened to his skin? It's all lined and creased – what did you do to him, woman?'
'The mark of spiders, Magi,' she replied. 'The price for healing.'
'Every strand's left a line!'
'Well, he was no beauty to begin with.'
A groan, then Mappo half-lifted a hand. It fell back and he groaned again.
'He's now got a spider's brain, too,' Iskaral predicted. 'He'll start spitting on his food – like you do, and you dare call picking my nose disgusting.'
'No self-respecting creature does what you did this morning, Iskaral Pust. You won't get no spiders picking their noses, will you? Ha, you know I'm right.'
'No I don't. I was just picturing a spider with eight legs up its nose, and that reminded me of you. You need a haircut, Mogora, and I'm just the man to do it.'
'Come near me with intentions other than amorous and I'll stick you.'
'Amorous. What a horrible thought-'
'What if I told you I was pregnant?'
'I'd kill the mule.'
She leapt at him..
Squealing, then spitting and scratching, they rolled in the dust.
The mule watched them with placid eyes.
Crushed and scattered, the tiles that had once made the mosaic of Mappo Runt's life were little more than faint glimmers, as if dispersed at the bottom of a deep well. Disparate fragments he could only observe, his awareness of their significance remote, and for a seemingly long time they had been retreating from him, as if he was slowly, inexorably floating towards some unknown surface.
Until the silver threads arrived, descending like rain, sleeting through the thick, murky substance surrounding him. And he felt their touch, and then their weight, halting his upward progress, and, after a time of motionlessness, Mappo began sinking back down. Towards those broken pieces far below.
Where pain awaited him. Not of the flesh – there was no flesh, not yet – this was a searing of the soul, the manifold wounds of betrayal, of failure, of self-recrimination, the very fists that had shattered all that he had been… before the fall.
Yet still the threads drew the pieces together, unmindful of agony, ignoring his every screamed protest.
He found himself standing amidst tall pillars of stone that had been antler-chiselled into tapering columns. Heavy wrought-iron clouds scudded over one half of the sky, a high wind spinning strands across the other half, filling a void – as if something had punched through from the heavens and the hole was slow in healing. The pillars, Mappo saw, rose on all sides, scores of them, forming some pattern indefinable from where he stood in their midst. They cast faint shadows across the battered ground, and his gaze was drawn to those shadows, blankly at first, then with growing realization. Shadows cast in impossible directions, forming a faint array, a web, reaching out on all sides.
And, Mappo now understood, he stood at its very centre.
A young woman stepped into view from behind one of the pillars. Long hair the colours of dying flames, eyes the hue of beaten gold, dressed in flowing black silks. 'This,' she said in the language of the Trell, 'is long ago. Some memories are better left alone.'
'I have not chosen it,' Mappo said. 'I do not know this place.'
'Jacuruku, Mappo Runt. Four or five years since the Fall. Yet one more abject lesson in the dangers that come with pride.' She lifted her arms, watched as the silks slid free, revealing unblemished skin, smooth hands. 'Ah, look at me. I am young again. Extraordinary, that I once believed myself fat. Does it afflict us all, I wonder, the way one's sense of self changes over time? Or, do most people contend, wilfully or otherwise, a changeless persistence in their staid lives?
When you have lived as long as I have, of course, no such delusions survive.' She looked up, met his eyes. 'But you know this, Trell, don' t you? The gift of the Nameless Ones shrouds you, the longevity haunts your eyes like scratched gemstones, worn far past beauty, far past even the shimmer of conceit.'
'Who are you?' Mappo asked.
'A queen about to be driven from her throne, banished from her empire.
My vanity is about to suffer an ignominious defeat.'
'Are you an Elder Goddess? I believe I know you…' He gestured. 'This vast web, the unseen pattern amidst seeming chaos. Shall I name you?'
'Best you did not. I have since learned the art of hiding. Nor am I inclined to grant favours. Mogora, that old witch, will rue this day.
Mind you, perhaps she is not to blame. There is a whisper in the shadows about you, Mappo. Tell me, what possible interest would Shadowthrone have in you? Or in Icarium, for that matter?'
He started. Icarium. I failed him – Abyss below, what has happened? '
Does he yet live?'
'He does, and the Nameless Ones have gifted him with a new companion.'
She half-smiled. 'You have been… discarded. Why, I wonder? Perhaps some failing of purpose, a faltering – you have lost the purity of your vow, haven't you?'
He looked away. 'Why have they not killed him, then?'
She shrugged. 'Presumably, they foresee a use for his talents. Ah, the notion terrifies you, doesn't it? Can it be true that you have, until this moment, retained your faith in the Nameless Ones?'
'No. I am distressed by the notion of what they will release. Icarium is not a weapon-'
'Oh you fool, of course he is. They made him, and now they will use him… ah, now I understand Shadowthrone. Clever bastard. Of course, I am offended that he would so blithely assume my allegiance. And even more offended to realize that, in this matter, his assumption was correct.' She paused, then sighed. 'It is time to send you back.'
'Wait – you said something – the Nameless Ones, that they made Icarium. I thought-'
'Forged by their own hands, and then, through the succession of guardians like you, Mappo, honed again and yet again. Was he as deadly when he first crawled from the wreckage they'd made of his young life?
As deadly as he is now? I would imagine not.' She studied him. 'My words wound you. You know, I dislike Shadowthrone more and more, as my every act and every word here complies with his nefarious expectation.
I wound you, then realize that he needs you wounded. How is it he knows us so well?'
'Send me back.'
'Icarium's trail grows cold.'
'Now.'
'Oh, Mappo, you incite me unto weeping. I did that, on occasion, when I was young. Although, granted, most of my tears were inspired by self-pity. And so, we are transformed. Leave now, Mappo Runt. Do what you must.'
He found himself lying on the ground, bright sun overhead. Two beasts were fighting nearby – no, he saw as he turned his head, two people.
