Free The Lord of Lies: Strange Threads: Book 2 by Sam Bowring Page B

words do not penetrate my thick skull,’ said Blue-eye. ‘Though my thumbs will penetrate yours.’
    Salarkis sent out his influence, but Blue-eye’s pattern was too coarse and strong to affect. He tried to pull away physically, but it was like trying to pull down a tree. Desperately he cast about for anything to help him – and inside the Spire saw the glint of his discarded daggers.
    Your lack of name will not protect you from me, Blue-eye.
    Twin blades scraped along the floor and lifted, flew together out of the darkness at speed, and sunk into Blue-eye’s blue eyes. The Unwoven gave a perplexed grunt, but his grip did not relax as he turned his head this way and that, slicing his eyelids on the protruding blades as he tried to blink them out. Salarkis willed the blades further into his skull, squishing sticky white dollops from the punctured sockets. Finally Blue-eye shuddered and his hand went limp.
    Salarkis stumbledbackwards into the shadows and fell on his buttocks. Looking up, he was chilled to find Unwoven at the doorway staring in at him. They must have been almost upon him when he had finally struggled free. They did not, however, cross the threshold.
    There was no time for relief. Maybe the Unwoven would not enter this place, but he did not think that would apply to Mergan. Without pausing to catch his breath, he rose and headed to the stairs.

    Mergan arrived at the Spire entrance. Unwoven who had been in pursuit of Salarkis gathered outside, seeming uncertain over what to do next. As Mergan slid off his horse, he felt a little uncertain himself. It
had
been Salarkis, hadn’t it? Salarkis as a man, as soft-skinned and brown-haired as before the change. How had he shed his stone, his tail? How had he come to be in the middle of the Tranquil Dale, wandering through Unwoven territory in disguise?
    Mergan gazed up the grey, lichen-coated walls. From this angle he could not see the Wound, but he wondered if it had something to do with Salarkis’s transformation.
    ‘I donot wish him killed,’ he announced. ‘There are five or six questions I want to ask him, maybe more.’
    The Unwoven stared at him in silence.
    ‘What are you waiting for?’ he snapped. ‘Get in there after him!’
    Scarbrow appeared by his side. ‘My lord, we will do as you order, of course – but is it your will that we be turned weak, winsome and whiny?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Your Spire, lord – you do not know? We have avoided it for many years.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Sometimes those who enter change. Into things alike to what we would have been, if not for your glorious gifts. Kin to the untarnished who live outside the Dale.’
    Mergan frowned. Unwoven changing into ‘untarnished’ sounded similar to what had happened to Salarkis, yet he did not believe it would occur simply by stepping through the doorway.
    ‘And what,’ he asked, ‘do these changed Unwoven report about the experience?’
    Scarbrow shrugged. ‘It has been many years since it happened, but stories say they were killed quickly by our people.’
    Something about the Wound
, Mergan thought,
undoing the work of Regret? Taking threads? Or giving them back? The Unwoven are, after all, defined by what they were stripped of. Putting things right?
    ‘Ithought,’ said Mergan, ‘that my children knew no fear? Yet here is a place they dare not tread.’
    ‘Fear, no, we do not know this thing. We have heard it described, tried to understand it. It sounds like little more than frailty, for which we have nothing but contempt.’
    Scarbrow snarled with such animal ferocity that it sent prickles down Mergan’s spine – though whether they were good prickles or bad, he wasn’t sure.
    ‘So,’ said Scarbrow, ‘while we would not wantonly throw away our strength – if you command it, we will enter the Spire.’
    Mergan tapped his elbow thoughtfully. ‘No.’
    ‘Maybe now that you are back the Spire can be reclaimed? Legend tells of a time when it held no danger for