He glanced around. *Wait. Our efforts may attract attention.'

He let his vision slide. There was not much life here, but the faint threads of static patterns glowed throughout every structure. He chose a place back the way they had come, where the path curved around a jutting rock face, and reached his influence into it. With a gentle tug he drew its threads towards him, spilling rocks over the path. It wasn't the most forbidding of obstacles to hold Unwoven back, but at least it was something.

Yalenna took a dagger from her belt and used it to knock a spark onto the torch. It sprung alight, almost invisible in the brightness of day.

*You really think this will work?' she said.

*I don't see why not. Silkjaws are lousy with fire, so surely a web of the stuff they are made from is just as vulnerable. That's probably why Regret hid his birthing grounds up high, where no one would know about them.'

Yalenna made a motion over the torch, stretching the flames taller, then folding them back over themselves, then stretching them again, repeating the process several times, as if she was working with elemental dough. The torch began to burn with a powerfully concentrated intensity, and Yalenna held it at arm's length over the ravine. She splayed the fingers of her other hand, and multiple blazing streams burst forth, diverging downwards to hit the webbing at different points. As they raked across the surface, almost-born silkjaws writhed and shuddered as they singed away, jawbones clacking loudly over the roar of fire. Smoke billowed up thickly, as Rostigan had feared * a beacon that would mark their location for leagues around. Fully grown silkjaws were already rising from the Peaks around them, and he drew his sword, unsure if Yalenna would be able to maintain their protective shimmer while distracted.

*Are we done yet?' he asked.

*No. It burns too fast.'

He glanced into the crevasse and saw what she meant. While the surface of the nest was dense enough to turn the streams of fire into blooms where they contacted it, and leave gaping holes everywhere she directed them, the silk was so quickly converted to ash that the nest as a whole did not actually take. Yalenna had to keep moving the streams back and forth as the nest collapsed in on itself, working her way deeper and deeper. The surface was lowering quickly, yet from the little they glimpsed through the smoke, it looked as if there was still a hundred paces or so of silk before the bottom of the ravine.

*Be swift,' he said.

*I am being swift,' she muttered, the torch vibrating in her hands as torrents continued to pour from it.

Rostigan realised he could no longer sense any shimmer about them. A silkjaw that had been flying past confirmed this by whipping about and diving in their direction. Rostigan gestured at a rock nearby and it flew upwards, hitting the creature square in the face.

Smoke was now oozing over the place where they stood, and it was becoming difficult to breathe.

Well, thought Rostigan, I may not be a master of the elements, but I do still know a trick or two.

Sending his influence into the smoke, Rostigan swirled it around them like a shifting shawl, being careful to trap a pocket of clear air in with them. Yalenna was now shooting blind, her fire plunging out of view into a white abyss while she sweated copiously, and he did not think it was just with the heat * even for a Warden, such spellcasting would be taxing.

Finally the last stream of fire left the torch, to curl away like a red snake into the smoke and disappear.

*That must be all of it,' she said.

*I think so. Come, let us move on.'

Mergan was inspecting one the Dale's few operating black-smiths. Inside he had found a sooty Unwoven labouring industriously, smashing away with his hammer while he answered Mergan's questions. Scattered about the workshop were swords heaped in piles, or standing in old urns and barrels, and whatever else would hold them.

*You work here all the time, then?' said Mergan.

*Every day, lord,' said Sooty.

*Just you? Nobody else helps?'

*I don't need any help.'

Mergan frowned * he did not understand how the Unwoven functioned as a society, and wasn't even sure he cared, but he did need to know what resources he had at his disposal.

No, no, came an interior voice, don't be so flippant. You do care. If you are to control them, you must care.

*All right!' he snapped at the air.

Sooty did not seem to mind the outburst.

*But why,' said Mergan, *should you be the one slaving in the heat while others do nothing? As they eat and sleep and rut and dance, here you are, banging away.'

Sooty rolled his eyes, an effect exaggerated by the way the whites shone from his blackened face.

*Because I want to,' he said, as if it was obvious.

Mergan stroked his beard. Either there was an impenetrable logic to Sooty's answer, or it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard; he could not work out which.

He decided to try another angle.

*Who taught you how to be a blacksmith?'

Sooty shrugged. *Some other Unwoven.'

*Did he work here before you?'

*Yes. He showed me how to do this and that. One day he decided he wanted to work with the cows instead and left. I haven't seen him since.'

*How long ago was that?'

Sooty paused in his hammering and thought for a moment. *Mmm. Maybe twenty or forty years?'

Mergan fished a sword out of a barrel and turned it for inspection. It was a simple, sturdy weapon * iron hilt and blade, quite sharp but not very well balanced. Clearly it relied on the strength of the wielder over any finesse.

All the others were the same.

*Do you only make swords?'

*It's what I like to make.'

*Do you know the other blacksmiths in the Dale?'

*No.'

*There are five or six of them, as far as I can tell. The last one I visited makes all kinds of things. Swords, maces, breastplates a'

*We live your touch in different ways, lord.'

Mergan nodded. *As I intended.' He stroked his beard some more. What did he even need here?

*Where do you get your ore?'

*There are others about who like to dig it out of the ground.'

*And they bring it to you?'

*No. They just dig it out.'

*So who brings it to you?'

*Others.'

Mergan shook his head. A kind of order, anyway, a vague semblance a Scarbrow came striding into the smithy.

*Lord Regret! There is smoke in the mountains!'

Mergan hurried outside, where various members of his nameless entourage * the ones who liked to guard him, he supposed * stood staring at the Peaks at the end of the Dale and the great plumes of smoke rising behind them.

*What is up there?' Mergan demanded, then wondered if he was being too free with his ignorance. No one seemed to suspect him, however.

*We have maintained the nests you built, lord,' said Scarbrow. *They are the only thing I know that could burn like that.'

*The nests?' Mergan could not simply ask what they were. *What have you been doing to my nests?'

*Our people still take bones to them, though more seem to like doing it recently. Some days ago the dancers went there to set the white fliers loose on the untarnished stronghold.'

Silkjaws.

*Which stronghold?'

*That way,' said Scarbrow vaguely, waving southwards.

Althala.

Mergan had not much thought about silkjaws, but if there was a place where they were made, of course his old friends would want to interfere with it.

*How dare they!' he spat. *Haven't they caused me enough trouble?'

*Who, my lord?'

*The Wardens, of course!'

Scarbrow scowled. *We shall go immediately to kill them!'

*You'll never get up there in time,' said Mergan. *Stand back, and keep everyone away from me. I must concentrate uninterrupted if I am to threadwalk.'

*Yes, lord.'

Mergan sat down and closed his eyes. With a tinge of dread, he thought about the place he knew best in the Peaks, where it would be easiest for him to return * the place that haunted his dreams, and many a waking hour as well.

Regret's tomb.

Not inside it, he promised himself giddily. He pictured the plateau that the tomb looked out onto, the only view he'd had for centuries.

Inside his smithy, Sooty was continuing work. Clank went his hammer, clank, clank a Four times a five times a six times a *Tell him to be quiet!' roared Mergan.

Scarbrow disappeared inside and moments later the clanking stopped.

All right, thought Mergan. Now get me to the tomb.

With Yalenna's haze protecting them once again, she and Rostigan arrived on the tomb plateau. It was higher than the surrounding land, though not by much, like a slightly taller wave in a choppy sea. Rostigan looked curiously at the columned entrance to the unspectacular building crumbling against a bump of mountainside. He had imagined something more austere, or formidable * though as his vision shifted to the tomb's patterns, the interlocked threads that enclosed it made him uneasy, and he did not feel inclined to go anywhere near them.

Yalenna stared back the way they had come, and it wasn't hard to guess what she looked at * from their vantage they could make out the distant Wound, though from their angle it was quite flat, like a coin on its side.

*Is there no way you can think of a' she said, then sighed and shook her head. Turning back to him, *The second nest was beyond this place?'

*Yes. Eastwards.'

They moved around the plateau edge and, as they came to its eastern side, spotted another white web nestled in a ravine similar to the first. There was a path leading down to it between mounds of rock, quite straight and narrow for a hundred or so paces. Eager not to linger, they continued on. At the end of the path a square ledge protruded out over the ravine and, as they peered over, a newly birthed silkjaw swivelled its head upwards. From beneath the haze it could see them clearly, and clapped its jaws angrily.

*I'll need a fresh torch,' said Yalenna.

Rostigan fished about in his satchel and retrieved one, handing it to her.

*I'll probably lose control of the haze again,' she said, glancing at the sky. Silkjaws were dotted about everywhere. *They're riled up now. As soon as it goes they will come for us.'

Rostigan considered a nearby pile of loose rocks. A ready source of projectiles, but would it be enough?

*Shall I try to command the fire instead this time?' he offered.

*Do you think you can?'

*It will probably take me longer than you.'

*Can you make us a haze then?'

*I don't think so.'

*Really Rostigan, why did I even bring you?'

She tried to cover with a smirk, but he felt the truth of her exasperation.

*Perhaps I have a less artful version,' he said, and gestured at the rock pile. Rocks lifted up, and he guided them to construct something of a floating dome around Yalenna and himself * not a complete barrier, but it cast a shadow and obstructed them from view on the path side and above, and no silkjaw would approach from what was soon to be the fiery side. Some of the rocks spun slowly in the air, and he brought them closer together to still them, adding more to fill in the gaps.

*Not too bad,' said Yalenna.

*Not as subtle as yours.'

*It'll do.'

*All right. Ready?'

She lit the torch. Once again she folded the flame over itself, building it to a white hot intensity. At the splaying of her fingers, streams burst forth * and the silkjaw clacking its jaws went up in a puff, its blackened bones falling away. Over the burgeoning roar and sizzle, Rostigan thought he heard an angry shout, and peered through the cracks in his floating rock shield. A lone figure made his way down the path, his tattered robe flying about his bare feet.

*Mergan,' Rostigan muttered. It was an unwelcome, unexpected sight * the man's last meeting with Yalenna had been a troubled one, and who knew what his purpose was in being here? It seemed odd that he would tarry about the tomb where he had been imprisoned for three centuries, but what else could explain his presence? Hopefully he did not mean any harm, for ever since the change his threading ability had been beyond compare. Would he listen to reason? Would he give Rostigan a chance to explain that he had forsaken the sinful ways of Karrak?