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.The True Mask of the Weave-lord Vyrrch was an old, old thing.Its lineage went all the way back toFrusric, one of the greatest Edgefathers that had ever lived.Frusric had formed it from bronze, beatenthin so it would be light enough to wear.It was a masterpiece: the face of some long-forgotten god, hisexpression at once demented and horribly, malevolently sane, his brows heavy over eyes like dark pits.The face appeared to be crying out in despair, orshrieking in hate, or calling in anger, depending on what angle the light struck it.Frusric had given the new Mask to Tamala tu Jekkyn, who had worn it till his untimely death; it was thenhanded on to Urric tu Hyrst, a master Weaver himself.From Urric, it could be traced through sevensubsequent owners over one hundred years, until it had come into the possession of Vyrrch, given to himby his master, who recognised in the boy a talent greater than any he had seen.The True Masks took all their owners had, draining them, rotting them from the inside out; and they kepta portion of what they took, and passed it on to the next wearer.It changed them, imbuing shreds of itsprevious owner s mind and memories and personality; with each owner, it took more and passed moreon, until the clash of influences, dreams and experiences became too much for the mind to bear.Theolder the Mask, the greater the power it gained, and the swifter it drove the wearer to insanity.Lesserapprentices would have died of the shock at just putting this Mask on; Vyrrch was laid low threeseasons, but he mastered it.And the power it had granted him was nothing short of magnificent.What it had taken from him, though, was less glorious.He was nearly forty harvests of age, but hecreaked and wheezed like a man of thrice that.His face had been made hideous.A thousand more minorcorruptions and cancers boiled in his broken body, and the pain was constant.And though he did notrealise it, the Mask had subtly been eroding his sanity like all the others, until he teetered daily on thebrink of madness.But he felt none of the pains in his body now, for he was Weaving, and the ecstasy of it took him awayon a sea of bliss.Like all Weavers, he had been taught to visualise the sensation in his own way.The raw stuff of theWeave was overwhelming, and many novices had found its beauty more than they could bear, and losttheir will to leave.They wandered forever somewhere between its threads, lost in their own privateparadise, bright ghosts mindlessly slaved to the Weave.For Vyrrch, the Weave was an abyss, a vast, endless blackness in which he was an infinitesimal mote oflight.And yet it was far from empty.Great curling tunnels snaked through the dark, grey and dim andfaintly iridescent, like immense worms that thrashed and swayed, their heads and tails lost in eternity.Theworms were thethreads of the Weave, and he floated in the darkness in between, where there was nothingness, only theutter and complete joy of disembodiment.A creature of sensation alone, he felt the sympathetic vibrationof the threads, a slow wind that swept through him, charging his nerves.On the edge of vision, hugewhale-like shapes slid through the darkness.He had never understood what they were: a product of hisown imagining, or something else altogether? Nor had he ever found out, for they eluded him effortlessly,remaining always out of his reach.Eventually he had given up trying, and for their part they ignored him asbeing beneath their notice.Swiftly he glided between the immense threads, a gnat against their heaving flanks.By reading theirvibrations he found the thread he sought and, steeling himself, he plunged into it, tearing through its skininto the roaring tumult inside, where chaos swallowed him.Now he was a spark, a tiny thing that raced along the synapses of the thread with dizzying speed,selecting junctions here and jumping track there, flitting along faster than the mind could comprehend.From this thread to that he flickered, racing down one lane after another, a million changes executed inless than a second, until finally he reached the terminator of a single thread, and burst free.His vision cleared as his senses reassembled themselves, and he was in a small, dimly lit chamber.It wasunremarkable in any way, except for the crumbling yellow-red stone of its walls, and the pictogramsdaubed haphazardly across it, spelling out nonsense phrases and primal mutterings, dark perversions andpromises.The ravings of a madman.A pair of lanterns flickered fitfully in their brackets, making theshadow-edges of the bricks shift and dance.A peeling wooden door was closed before him.Though hewas far from any mark by which to recognise his surroundings, the walls exuded a familiar resonance tohis heightened perception.This was Adderach, the monastery of the Weavers.The room was empty, but he sensed the approach of three of his brethren.While he waited, he thoughtover the news he had to report.He could not imagine how she had stayed hidden for so long.That the Heir-Empress could be anAberrant& how could he have not seen it before? It was only when he began to hear reports fromfrightened servants of a spectral girl walking the corridors ofthe Keep at night that he began to suspect something was amiss.And so he had begun to investigate,searching the Keep for evidence of resonances, tremors in the Weave that would indicate that someonewas manipulating it, in the way a spider feels the thrashings of the fly through her web.He found nothing.And yet something was there.Whatever was causing these manifestations was eithertoo subtle to be detectable even by him, or was of a different order altogether.Eventually his searching bore fruit, and he found the trail of the wandering spectre as she prowled thecorridors of the Keep, a tiny tremor in the air at her passing that was so fine it was almost imperceptible.Yet though he sensed himself drawing close time after time, he never caught up with her; he was alwaysevaded.Frustration gnawed at him, and his efforts became more frantic; yet this only seemed to makeher escapes seem all the easier.Until one day one of his spies overheard Anais consulting a physicianabout her daughter s odd dreams, and the connection was made.Like many, he had never laid eyes on the Heir-Empress, but he had spied on her from time to time.TheHeir-Empress was far too important for him to abide by her mother s wish for her to be kept shelteredand secret [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]