The Last Weave by Andrew Zurcher

Author:Andrew Zurcher [Zurcher, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2021-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

“I gave you strict instructions to wake me.”

Ghast glared up at the tall wraith who stood before him. He had woken to the hard rattle of wooden shutters clacking against their frames, wresting wildly against their hinges. Fumbling into consciousness, he had groped with his eyelids for the light of morning, trying to force them open against the wrong dark. It should have been dawn. Light ought to have been streaming into the old stone room from a thousand cracks and slits. But there was nothing—only a storm of wind and occasional waves of what sounded like pelting rain that swept against the outside walls. He had slowly recognized the truth: that it was still night, that it was darkest night, a raging, merciless night. He had bellowed, not in agony but in command, and the door to the chamber had at last swung open. This fawning servant had come to his bedside, handing him a little lamp, then waited.

“Will you eat?” the wraith had asked.

A heaviness in his arms, in his head, had perplexed him as he swung his body round to sit on the edge of the bed. He had known then that the lethargy in his limbs, the wrongness of the dark, the meekness of the servant had meaning. He had felt the bedclothes against his skin: wet, matted, sour.

“I gave you strict instructions to wake me.”

“We tried to wake you,” said the wraith. “You were not yourself.”

Ghast dared not frown. He knew then that he was still not himself, and snatches of what had seemed like an awful nightmare stirred from his memory like monsters surging from a deep ocean. He looked down at a hand that was rising where it seemed he had raised it. It was trembling. He placed it on the lamp, which was hot to the touch. He left it there, burning.

“I will have fruit,” he said. “Bring it to me, and another light, and a change of clothes.”

The wraith left the room, and Ghast waited as his quick steps sounded away down the long hallway outside, merging into the sound of the storm. He took his hand from the lamp, and smelled as he did so the faint stench of burned skin. He held on to the pain in his hand as if it were a rope pulling him from the deep, from the surging memories of his voice; his voice that had cried out, calling for heads, calling for slaughter, calling for the huddled ruck of settling wings and stabbing beaks of vultures.

Whatever they had seen and heard, it was no matter. Had they been in any doubt before, they would fear him now.

After he had eaten a little plate of fruit and changed into fresh clothes, he draped himself in blankets and sat at a wooden desk in the corner. Two lamps created a pool of steady glowing, and he worked between them. The light and the work staved off the heaves of wind rushing through the valley outside.

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