Of Weft and Weave (Dica Series Book 2) Read online

  Of Weft and Weave

  Book 2 of the Dica Series

  (Revised Edition)

  Clive S. Johnson

  Daisy Bank

  This eBook edition first published in 2012

  Dica Series - Minor revisions published in July of 2012

  Revised Edition for formatting changes published in June 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Clive S. Johnson, 2012 (2014)

  Ver 1010/1

  The right of Clive S. Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  All artwork; cover, maps and illustrations by the author. Copyright applicable.

  Also by Clive S. Johnson

  The Dica Series

  Leiyatel’s Embrace (Book 1)

  Last True World (Book 3)

  Cold Angel Days (Book 4)

  An Artist’s Eye(Book 5)

  Starmaker Stella (Book 6)

  I dedicate this novel to my close friend Gillian Acum for her early encouragement to publish Leiyatel’s Embrace, and for the proof and beta reading care she has put into all six works.

  i Maps

  Table of Contents

  Also by Clive S. Johnson

  i Maps

  1 Mystery Missive

  2 A New Day

  3 Into the Lion’s Den

  4 Lion or No

  5 Diagnosis and Direction

  6 Bhleustrang Treowlicas

  7 Safe in a Gross World

  8 Of Weft and Weave

  9 Into Sharp Relief

  10 Melkin Makes an Overture

  11 Galgaverre

  12 Life is but a Journey

  13 A Good Wind that Fills the Sails

  14 Then Let Me Begin

  15 Once Upon a Sorry Time

  16 The Crux

  17 Be the Blood but Bound

  18 End of an Era

  19 To Kith and Kin

  20 Best Laid Plans

  21 The King’s Departure

  22 A Final Laying to Rest

  23 Estranged

  24 A Portent is Witnessed

  25 To Embark Anew

  26 Time and Tide

  27 From Without the Walls

  28 To a Parting of the Ways

  29 In the Nick of Time

  30 A Limb Saved

  31 A Discovered Invitation

  32 The Lost Northern Way

  33 Leiyatel’s Gaze

  34 The Strawbac Hills

  35 A Partnership Cemented

  36 Highs and Lows

  37 Over the Edge of the World

  38 Grunstaan

  39 A World Apart

  40 With Consummate Ease

  41 Beyond the Call of Duty

  42 Light at the End of the Tunnel

  43 An Imperfect World

  44 Slip into Another World

  45 The Northern Way Lost

  46 The Castle Gained

  47 Of a Darn Unpicked

  48 Slip Away

  49 A True World

  About the Author

  1 Mystery Missive

  The Graywyse Defence Road was empty. It had held true and straight on its relentless march north, other than a gentle rounding of Bluff Point some nine miles ago. It doggedly carried on as far again, making of its end nothing more than an indistinguishable pinprick against the grey-green spread of the Forest of Belforas.

  To the west, beyond the fifty feet of the Graywyse Defence Wall top and a couple of hundred feet below, ruffled whitecaps raked the sea’s swelling, grey mass. Out of sight at the foot of the wall, waves unceasingly and impotently crashed against its foundation rocks.

  The metallic tang of salt-laden air blew in from the sea, bending sparse grasses and weeds in the road’s deep grooves. It blew to the east, up against the steep rise of the castle’s stacked walls and halls, against its towers and turrets. Their imponderable mass climbed dankly to the low cloud now hanging motionless like an ethereal vault, leaving thousands of feet yet before the castle’s hidden summit.

  Pettar’s breath added even more moisture to that already in the air, as it had since leaving Galgaverre early that morning. He’d readily fallen to close thought, letting it obscure his dull and lifeless surroundings, and had simply followed his feet on their own familiar course. On this occasion, however, he wasn’t returning to his Ambec flock, but was upon an errand for another.

  A strange errand it had to be said, but one he couldn’t refuse his old mentor. He owed Storbanther much, much for the many hours of help and encouragement he’d given Pettar during his childhood, and on into his manhood years. For all that, though, Pettar still felt uneasy. There’d been something about Storbanther that had always made Pettar wary, something that had, and still did, keep them both very much at arm’s length.

  Even now, well into adulthood, Pettar still couldn’t pin it down. Although Storbanther’s request had seemed straightforward enough, it was as though he’d been hiding a whole world behind his back, and Pettar didn’t like it. Maybe it would become clearer when he’d delivered the missive, when he’d found its recipient and unfolded its strange words before him.

  He surfaced from his musing, but wasn’t at all surprised to find the road still seemingly endless, just as many stark sentry towers ahead, bleakly guarding an unchallenging seaboard approach. Even the press of deserted, jumbled and jostling properties on the landward side appeared as endless, as they stared out, blithely ignoring the grey seascape before their hollow, blind eyes.

  Pettar wasn’t quite going all the way to the end of the road, not quite, maybe four or five miles short of the wall’s eventual turn east, where it strode along the Eyesmouth Estuary’s southern shore. His destination was the Terraces of the Sunsets, where he expected to find the recipient of his missive.

  He’d hoped - unlike the convoluted, meandering and busier ways of Bazarral - that the quiet and empty wall would have given him a chance to puzzle out some meaning from the message. Despite turning its words over and over in his mind, though, he had done little more than garble them, and so eventually gave up trying.

  There was little else of interest in view, so when he eventually caught sight of a man’s figure in the distance, it came as a surprise and a relief. Whoever it was, he sat at the very edge of the wall with his feet dangling above the huge drop, hunched forward and away from a rusted old frame rising close behind.

  The man didn’t move, except for the slow rise and fall of his head above his chest. Pettar was almost on top of him before he realised he was fast asleep. Gentle snores came from him, but they were soon wafted away by the slight breeze coming in off the sea.

  He was, at it turned out, the very man Pettar had sought, although looking much older than when last they’d met; a face more deeply lined, eyelids heavy and dark, his almost non-existent lips cutting a dry and cracked slash across his yellowed, paper-thin skin. His nose also seemed much larger than Pettar remembered, overarching his lips with a quivering dewdrop ready to fall. Only a broad and high brow looked completely familiar, it alone affirming who the man really was.

  Pettar was afraid to startle him, considering how close he was to toppling
, and so quietly hung back. He watched, mesmerised, as the head continued to rise and fall with the man’s slow breathing. Pettar was just about to turn his attention to the frame when the old man spoke.

  “And who be thee who standeth quiet by me, eh? Who be astudying me?”

  Pettar saw the eye nearest open, its pupil peering at him sideways. Of all he’d seen, it was that one feature that truly spoke of the old man’s name, that revealed its owner’s once quick wit and keen mind, that clearly stated, ‘Here be Lord Nephril, Master of Ceremonies to the many kings of Dica’.

  That he now wasn’t about to plummet was a great relief to Pettar, bringing a broad grin to his face. “Hello, Nephril. ‘Tis I, Pettar. How’ve you been keeping all these years, eh? what must be, well … quite a number now.” Nephril looked blankly back. “You remember me don’t you, Nephril?”

  Presently, more words did seep from Nephril, but they seemed to drift in from far away and came in a thin and cracked voice. “Pettar? Pettar? Now, who be thee who names thyself Pettar, eh? Do I know thee? Do I know a Pettar? Have I indeed ever known a Pettar? And which Pettar be thee, if I truly have known any?”

  Squatting down to his eye level, Pettar looked deeply into Lord Nephril’s eyes and explained, “I’m Pettar Garradish … of Galgaverre, of the line Garradish. Surely you remember me?”

  Something distracted Pettar, something that passed on the other side of Lord Nephril and up to the frame behind him. It was a length of rough twine, stained and possibly oiled. It came up over the wall’s edge, passed by Nephril’s knee and finally wound around a drum fixed within the frame. As Pettar stared at it, perplexed, Nephril exclaimed, “Pettar Garradish? Garradish, eh? Now, that name rings a bell.”

  Just as he’d said those very words a bell did ring out, a small tinkling sound that came from the frame. There, within the rusting metal, Pettar saw a shiny bell come to a sharp halt before once more twitching into life and sending out another insistent call.

  Without quite believing how fast Nephril moved, Pettar saw he was now on his feet, racing around to the side of the frame where he began furiously winding a long handle. The twine skipped and jumped as its rough threads snagged and bumped over the wall’s edge, drawn by Nephril’s frantic activity onto the frame’s rumbling drum.

  Nephril urgently called out, “Quick! If thou be here to share mine repast then be thee quick to earn it.” When Pettar just stood and stared, Nephril urgently added, “Help me wind up our dinner then. Come on, jump to it! Hasten thyself!”

  On Pettar’s side of the frame an identical handle spun in a blur, giving a couple of raps to his knuckles before he could grab it. When he did, their combined effort made the twine add a harmoniously high whistle to the drum’s baritone bearings. Although they wound the line in quickly, they were at it for some time before Nephril shouted, “STOP!”

  Everything now seemed unnaturally quiet, even the sound of crashing waves breaking far below largely muffled by the damp and misty air. Pettar was amazed by how unaffected Nephril seemed; not a trace of sweat, breathing level and slow compared with his own moistening gloss and panting breath.

  Without pause for a rest, Nephril reached forward and carefully drew the line in, hand over hand, as he stepped to the edge and leant out. The twine kicked back and forth as it rose, the occasional wooden clatter coming from below until a strange wheeled block appeared some way ahead of a large and flapping fish.

  Quick as a flash, Nephril had their meal on the floor where he bludgeoned it twice before it lay between them, stilled and glistening. He looked up at Pettar. “T’will be plenty for the two of us methinks, even with thine own stout body’s needs,” and he grinned.

  With a couple of deft moves, he secured the block, the frame and its line, and popped the fish into a bag which he slung over his shoulder. Before Pettar knew it, he was being hurried along the road. He soon realised they were almost below the Terraces of the Sunsets, their dramatic, unique and extraordinary sweep quickly coming into view.

  Once the abodes of those Dicans who weren’t highborn but who had riches enough to offset it, the Terraces stretched extensively along some six or seven miles of the castle’s less precipitous lowest slopes. They rose almost seven hundred feet in a series of irregular steps, each unique in its own way, each fashioned to express the same Dican self-importance and individuality.

  Their chambers and other such spaces were all built either into or against the very rise of the mountain within. Before their variously grandiose and idiosyncratic elevations, carefully manicured gardens would have been kept, giving the best impression of space within the narrowly confined shelves. Some had been highly successful, a few but apologetic, and most simply falling that little bit too short.

  However, that had been many hundreds and sometimes thousands of years ago, when prestige had been all. By Nephril and Pettar’s time it had all become overgrown, dilapidated and quite deserted. Despite it, and possibly by that very virtue alone, the place held an enchantment all its own; a warm, colourful and inviting informality set amidst an austere and dark host.

  There was, however, one freshly swept and carefully tended terrace amongst the hundreds of dishevelled neighbours, a modest space uniquely fronted by seven white marble pillars. It was to that very oasis of order that Lord Nephril now hurried Pettar.

  As they left the road behind and passed through a small arched gateway onto a muddy lane, Pettar asked, “Wouldn’t it be far easier to fish from one of the lower levels, Nephril?”

  Nephril glanced at him with a vaguely anguished look. “The effort of getting down be far too great to profit by. I would have to double mine catch to repay such toil. Thou see, the nearest stairwell be some miles off and the climb more than two hundred feet. Far too daunting a task for one of mine own great age.”

  Whilst he’d been explaining, they’d left the lane into a ginnel that rose steeply between retaining walls of neighbouring terraces, its well-worn stone steps slippery and far from safe. It forced a caution that swept aside Nephril’s thoughts, long enough to be quite forgotten by the time they came out and onto a far better paved lane.

  The practical problems of fishing from such great heights still fascinated Pettar, though. “It must be hard to cast a line out so far as to be sure of clearing the wall’s sloping descent?”

  Nephril laughed. “Nay, young … now, what did thee say thy name was?”

  “Pettar, Nephril, my name’s Pettar.”

  “Ah! So thee said. Yes, now I remember. Well, there be no need for casting, young Pettar, for the line need only be lowered down the wall.”

  When Pettar’s disbelief finally showed, Nephril drew them to a halt. “Thou must hath seen the wooden block that came up afore the catch, eh? Did thee not see that then?” Pettar said he had. “Then there thou saw thine answer.” When Pettar still looked mystified, Nephril sighed. “The baited hook be carried within that block, and it hath wheels upon each face so whichever way it falls it rolls freely down the wall until lowered to the sea. There, its heavier upper end tips, so the baited hook slips free and into the depths, with the block as a float. So, dost thou now see how I doth save mine self a deal of effort?”

  Pettar’s sudden understanding made him grin broadly. “Did you fashion it yourself, Lord Nephril, or has it always been here?” He didn’t immediately get an answer, but was led instead along the lane until it too began to rise steeply. Before they’d reached the top, however, Nephril turned them into a narrow snicket that soon became a passageway, cut deeply into the very rock of the mountain.

  As Pettar’s eyes slowly adjusted, he could make out a few sparse tallow torches, sputtering in their wall brackets, marking the slow curve that led them around the back of Nephril’s chambers. At a particularly dark point, Pettar was snatched into an almost invisible side way that itself curved to a lone torch at its end.

  There, Pettar was politely asked to avert his eyes so Nephril could open up his chambers, whereupon Pettar soon felt fresh air gent
ly caress the nape of his neck. When he was allowed to turn back, he saw a section of the wall had silently swung out, forming a doorway to a darkened room.

  Inside, a few candles still dimly guttered in their wall brackets but revealed little. Pettar could just make out a desk and a sofa, and maybe a chair or two, but otherwise little else. What he did note, though, was a strange musty smell that seemed to fill his nose like honey fills the mouth, an oddly dry and yet smooth smell as of mildew or mushrooms overlaid with old rose petals.

  Just as he was trying to place it, the small room filled with a damp and grey light, as Nephril opened yet another door. In that revealing light, Pettar saw they were surrounded by book- and manuscript-laden shelves, before which ancient and worn sofas and chairs were arranged, with a corner desk stacked high with tomes.

  In fact, volumes littered the floor in stacks and piles, with here and there an overturned mug or goblet. Not all the light fell to revelation, though, for Nephril’s slight frame filled much of the doorway, and from which his voice then beckoned Pettar on.

  The room he was led into was in stark contrast. Larger and loftier, and flooded with daylight, its contents filled Pettar’s eyes with a sumptuous and garish cacophony. The walls were hung with a number of richly coloured tapestries, each depicting various scenes from within and without the castle. To his left, and behind a huge dining table, a varied and verdant scene of hunting hung; the stag at bay before a party of huntsman nobles, their dogs harrying the prey with retainers passing bow and arrows to their lords.

  On his right were two more hangings, a pair it seemed, one of a man in fine and stately attire, imposingly erect before a massive grand pile; all pillars and pediments, sash windows and sweeping stairs. The other depiction was perhaps his good lady wife, sumptuously arrayed in ballooning silk and velvet folds. A small lapdog stood tensely at her feet, with a satin bow about its neck, and they too both stood confidently before an equally resplendent elevation; a temple of sorts with a gold dome held aloft on bluestone columns.