Read The Lord of Lies: Strange Threads: Book 2 for Free Online Page A

preferred that they were the ones to make the effort. If they meant to kill him, he certainly wasn’t going to help.
    Blades began to show though the wood, letting in slivers of sunlight. Soon woodchips were flying inwards, and Mergan waited with his arms folded. He wasn’t going to cringe in some corner of the house, so he may as well be there to greet them. Finally there was a hole in the door big enough for a person to step through, and Unwoven jostled to look inside.
    ‘Do notenter!’ came Scarbrow’s voice. ‘Out of my way!’ He muscled others aside to appear at the door-hole. ‘Spirit,’ he said, ‘can you leave this place?’
    ‘Stand back,’ said Mergan.
    Scarbrow obeyed, and Mergan stooped to pass through the hole.
    Outside Unwoven stood in a semicircle peering at him curiously, while others down the street seemed less interested. Streaks of blood painted the town – through the dust and up and down walls, and across the bodies of villagers strewn about. A little way off a smashed-in hut was on fire, and Unwoven were dragging a horse carcass onto the flames.
    ‘How can you be sure it’s him?’ Scarbrow’s companion asked.
    ‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Scarbrow. ‘I know his face well enough. I visited the tomb often as a child, brought offerings and spent long hours trying to hear his wisdom.’
    ‘I recognise him too,’ said another.
    Mergan wasn’t sure what they were talking about. The tomb? Offerings? No one ever visited him there. Had they? He would remember it if they had. He screwed up his eyes.
    And he did remember.
    He saw the view through the tomb doorway, which neither he nor screams could penetrate. Outside, Unwoven came almost to the threshold – children and adults, kneeling in worship or laying down bundles of grass wrapped in red ribbons, strangely shaped rocks or other useless objects. Mergan raged at them,
let me out
, beating his chest, tearing his hair. His visitors echoed his actions, danced around, flung their hands up to the heavens. How many times had it happened?
    Maybemany.
    Maybe
three thousand and sixty-six
times.
    How could he have forgotten such a thing? Had he forgotten, or had he just not thought about it for a while? Had these events been unimportant at the time, bleak and hopeless punctuations in his long internment?
    Scarbrow stalked forwards and reached a hand to Mergan’s shoulder. Mergan felt the great potential in that grip, knew it could grind his bones to dust.
    ‘How can this be?’ said Scarbrow. ‘You are his spirit, are you not? How do you now have flesh? How do you come to be here, outside your tomb?’
    Mergan began to understand. The implications of Scarbrow’s words so terrified and enthralled him, that he threw back his head and howled with laughter. They had seen him at the tomb! For centuries they had gone there to make him offerings.
    They thought he was Regret’s ghost.
    At the sound of his laughter, the Unwoven nearby left their smoking horse to approach.
    ‘Who is this?’ demanded one of them. ‘Why haven’t you killed him?’
    ‘Don’t yourecognise him?’ said Scarbrow derisively.
    They stared at Mergan hard, and some of them took on astounded expressions. They whispered to the others, who stared again with renewed interest.
    Mergan felt he should say something if he wanted to bolster their misconception and avoid a grisly fate. ‘You have no doubt heard,’ he said, ‘although maybe not, cloistered as you are in the Dale … that those who once deigned to end my rule, have returned to the world. The Wardens!’
    The Unwoven nodded, their expressions full of wonder. He did not hate them, he realised – he had once, hadn’t he? But now the chaos in their hearts seemed familiar. So rife was Mergan himself with corruption, and so alone, that these people seemed to share his fate, outcast and broken.
    ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘if Wardens can return from the dead, why can’t I? It’s only fair. Thus I have finally broken