Granted, that particular sojourn had been a little hairy. But he'd come back with a string of beauties.
As a child he'd wanted to learn the art of angling, but the women and elders in the tribe weren't interested in that, no, just weirs and collecting pools and nets. That was harvesting, not fishing, but young Iskaral Pust, who'd once run away with a caravan and had seen the sights of Li Heng – for a day and a half, until his great-grandmother had come to retrieve him and drag him screaming like a gutted piglet back to the tribe – well, Iskaral Pust had discovered the perfect expression of creative predation, an expression which was – as everyone knew – the ideal manly endeavour.
Soon, then, and he and his mule would have the ultimate excuse to leave the hoary temple of home. Going fishing, dear. Ah, how he longed to say those words.
'You are an idiot,' Mogora said.
'A clever idiot, woman, and that's a lot more cleverer than you.' He paused, eyeing her, then said, 'Now all I need to do is wait until she's asleep, so I can cut off all her hair – she won't notice, it's not like we have silver mirrors hanging about, is it? I'll mix it all up, the hair from her head, from her ears, from under her arms, from-'
'You think I don't know what you're up to?' Mogora asked, then cackled as only an old woman begotten of hyenas could. 'You are not just an idiot. You're also a fool. And deluded, and immature, and obsessive, and petty, spiteful, patronizing, condescending, defensive, aggressive, ignorant, wilful, inconsistent, contradictory, and you're ugly as well.'
'So what of it?'
She gaped at him like a toothless spider. 'You have a brain like pumice stone – throw stuff at it and it just sinks in! Disappears.
Vanishes. Even when I piss on it, the piss just poofs! Gone! Oh how I hate you, husband. With all your obnoxious, smelly habits – gods, picking your nose for breakfast – I still get sick thinking about it – a sight I am cursed never to forget-'
'Oh be quiet. There's nutritious pollen entombed in snot, as everyone well knows-'
A heavy sigh interrupted him, and both Dal Honese looked down at Mappo. Mogora scrabbled over and began stripping away the webs from the Trell's seamed face.
Iskaral Pust leaned closer. 'What's happened to his skin? It's all lined and creased – what did you do to him, woman?'
'The mark of spiders, Magi,' she replied. 'The price for healing.'
'Every strand's left a line!'
'Well, he was no beauty to begin with.'
A groan, then Mappo half-lifted a hand. It fell back and he groaned again.
'He's now got a spider's brain, too,' Iskaral predicted. 'He'll start spitting on his food – like you do, and you dare call picking my nose disgusting.'
'No self-respecting creature does what you did this morning, Iskaral Pust. You won't get no spiders picking their noses, will you? Ha, you know I'm right.'
'No I don't. I was just picturing a spider with eight legs up its nose, and that reminded me of you. You need a haircut, Mogora, and I'm just the man to do it.'
'Come near me with intentions other than amorous and I'll stick you.'
'Amorous. What a horrible thought-'
'What if I told you I was pregnant?'
'I'd kill the mule.'
She leapt at him..
Squealing, then spitting and scratching, they rolled in the dust.
The mule watched them with placid eyes.
****
Crushed and scattered, the tiles that had once made the mosaic of Mappo Runt's life were little more than faint glimmers, as if dispersed at the bottom of a deep well. Disparate fragments he could only observe, his awareness of their significance remote, and for a seemingly long time they had been retreating from him, as if he was slowly, inexorably floating towards some unknown surface.
Until the silver threads arrived, descending like rain, sleeting through the thick, murky substance surrounding him. And he felt their touch, and then their weight, halting his upward progress, and, after a time of motionlessness, Mappo began sinking back down. Towards those broken pieces far below.
Where pain awaited him. Not of the flesh – there was no flesh, not yet – this was a searing of the soul, the manifold wounds of betrayal, of failure, of self-recrimination, the very fists that had shattered all that he had been… before the fall.
Yet still the threads drew the pieces together, unmindful of agony, ignoring his every screamed protest.
He found himself standing amidst tall pillars of stone that had been antler-chiselled into tapering columns. Heavy wrought-iron clouds scudded over one half of the sky, a high wind spinning strands across the other half, filling a void – as if something had punched through from the heavens and the hole was slow in healing. The pillars, Mappo saw, rose on all sides, scores of them, forming some pattern indefinable from where he stood in their midst. They cast faint shadows across the battered ground, and his gaze was drawn to those shadows, blankly at first, then with growing realization. Shadows cast in impossible directions, forming a faint array, a web, reaching out on all sides.
