Women. They were a crafty breed. Altogether too crafty, if the evidence of the past was to be believed. The Weavers' membership had been exclusively grown men for a reason: children were too undisciplined, and women too good. It had become very obvious during the earliest days of the witchstones' discovery that the female talents far outstripped those of men in the manipulation of the Weave. The Weave was the essence of nature, and men could only force nature to their will, clumsily and callously; women were part of it, and it came to them like the cycles of the moons. In those first years of madness, hidden at the settlement in the mountains where the great monastery Adderach now stood, the women had almost surmounted the men in power; but it was a mining village, and women were few in number there. The slaughter was quick. Once the men had felt the witchstones' touch, what lingering consciences they had were swiftly cast aside. From that day forth, only adult males had been accepted into the brotherhood, men who came seeking knowledge or power or sublimity.
It had been the same thinking that prompted the practice of killing Aberrant infants these last centuries, when it was suddenly noticed that girl children were being born with a rudimentary ability to control the Weave. Somehow, through the witchstones' influence on their parents and their parents' diet through the corrupted soil, the foetuses were gaining an instinct that the Weavers had had to learn. And it was as natural to them as breathing. But the Weavers were already well established by then, and the common folk were afraid of the freakish powers the infants displayed: so the practice of murdering Aberrants began. Not just the ones who could Weave, for that would make the Weavers' intentions too plain. All of them had to die, to keep the Weavers' secret.
But he had no time for such musings now. He scoured the Keep with one portion of his consciousness, searching for the anomaly in the Weave that had so alarmed him before. The bombers were out of the picture, annihilated by their own creations. Vyrrch had been forced to take direct control in those final moments, for there remained the possibility that the cat's-paws might balk at suicide. Vyrrch saw that their will remained strong until the fiery end.
The intruder had briefly dropped its guard after the bombs had exploded, but Vyrrch had been busy dealing with other things and, frustratingly, he could not pounce on it. Now he bent all his attention to the task of locating it again. With the Keep in chaos, the rest of the plan would run its course. His most pressing concern was this unknown enemy in their midst.
But Vyrrch had been a Weave-lord too long; he was too used to moving unchallenged, unaccustomed to opposition. He spun and threaded the loom of the Weave, but he did not notice the black widow creeping up the strands of his web until she was almost upon him.
Too late, he realised his mistake. This was no clumsy blundering like that of a lesser Weaver; this was an altogether different class. Even the most powerful of Weavers left tears where they went, snapped threads and tangled skeins; but she was like satin, gliding through the Weave and leaving no trace of her passing. This was a woman's way through that bright world, and Vyrrch saw they had been right to fear it.
He drew himself back suddenly, in terror, knowing that she was inside his defences. Desperately, he struck at her, but she moved like a breath of wind. She feinted and dodged, plucking threads as decoys and then sliding nearer when his attention was elsewhere. The Weave-lord began to panic, trying to recall the old disciplines he had known so well before he became complacent, the arts that would drive her out of him; but madness had robbed them from his memory, and he could not piece his thoughts together again.
'Get away from me!' he shrieked aloud into the silence. The jackal started and fled in a scrabble of claws.
He turned his thoughts inward, feeling her gossamer progress along the threads that linked him with the outside world, the suck and flow of his breath, the touch of his skin against his clothes. Frantic, he began to knot, setting up traps, corrals of fibres that led into labyrinths that would lose her for an eternity. But he could barely feel her, let alone stop her, and all he was doing was delaying the inevitable anyway. He could not afford even the slightest portion of his mind to trace her threads back to their source. He did not know who or where she was; he had nowhere to strike.
And she seemed to come from all directions at once, darting here and there to nip and tug, sending false vibrations thrumming down the glittering fibres of their battleground. He flitted to and fro in the grip of increasing panic, laying tricks and feits for her; but nothing was effective, and he realised in despair that he had no other methods to use. He saw then how one-dimensional his command of his powers were; he, the greatest among the Weavers. For so long had he enjoyed supremacy that his ability to adapt had rotted and fallen away. He could not beat her.
With that realisation, he dropped his defences. This, more than anything he had done so far, caused the intruder to hesitate in uncertainty, and it gave him the time he needed. He drew in the Weave as if he was gathering a vast ball of yarn, sucking it into his breast. Too late, his attacker saw what he meant to do, but by then she could do nothing to prevent it. He threw out the spool, putting every ounce of his strength into it, and it unravelled and spawned a million threads that flew away across the landscape of the Weave, curling and spinning randomly and everywhere. A great clarion call, a deafening broadcast to every Weaver and sensitive in Saramyr and beyond. The intruder reeled with the potency of his cry, a wordless shriek of warning to all his brothers. Beware! Beware! For women play the Weave!
But Vyrrch was clever, and amid the uncountable threads was one that was different, one that was tautly focused and directed. And in the depthless dark where they hid from the daylight, four demons of shadow raised their heads as one, eyes blazing like lamps.
The message was simple. An image of Lucia tu Erinima, Heir-Empress of Saramyr, layered with impressions of scent, location, the near-imperceptible vibration that was her presence: all the things the shin-shin needed to track her. And with it was a simple command, phrased not in language but in an empathic blaze of intent.
Kill.
Then Cailin struck, the bite of the black widow coming from nowhere, and he realised she had slipped past his every wall and reached his core. His senses were paralysed, his control of the Weave gone. He was helpless. There was a moment of utter and abject horror as he felt her coiling in his brain, taking the thread of his life in her fingers, toying with it. Then, with a twist, she snapped it.
In his chambers, the Weave-lord screamed, spasmed, and slumped forward on to the floor.
There was silence again. It lasted perhaps an hour before the jackal plucked up the courage to emerge once more from where it had fled. It was another hour or more before the girl appeared, her clothing tattered and torn, her face covered in grime. She peered around the doorway, trembling in fear and hunger. There had been no noise but a soft lapping sound for what seemed an eternity.
The Weave-lord was face down, naked beneath his rags. Thick blood from his nose, eyes and mouth had pooled inside his Mask and run out on to the filthy tiles. The jackal was licking at it still.
She stood there watching, hardly daring to hope. She feared a trick. Only when the jackal began to eat Vyrrch's fingers did she believe it was not. He was dead.