The Carpet People

CHAPTER 4

"Wights," said Bane. "Don't speak to them unless they speak first."

"I saw them last night in a dream ... " began Snibril.

Pismire showed no surprise. "You've got one of their belts. You know when you really work hard at something, you're really putting yourself into your work? They mean it."

Snibril slipped the belt from his tunic and, without quite knowing why he did it, slipped it into his pack.

Behind them the rest of the carts slowed down and drew to the side of the path.

The wight-drawn wagon rumbled on until it reached the cairn. Both parties looked across at the others. Then a small wight left the cart and walked across to Snibril and Bane. Close to, its robe could be seen to be, not just black, but covered in a crisscross of faint grey lines. The deep hood covered its face.

"Hello," said the wight.

"Hello," said Bane.

"Hello," nodded the wight again.

It stood there, and said nothing else.

"Do they understand language?" said Snibril.

"Probably," said Pismire. "They invented it."

Snibril felt its steady gaze from the hidden eyes. And he felt the hardness of the belt rubbing into his back, and shifted uneasily. The wight turned its gaze on Bane. "Tonight we eat the Feast of Bronze. You are invited. You will accept. Seven only. When the night-time fires are lit."

"We accept," said Bane, gravely.

The wight turned on his heel and strode back to the wagon. "Tonight?" said Pismire. "The Feast of Bronze? As if it was Feast of Sugar or Hair? Amazing. I thought they never invited strangers."

"Who's invited who?" growled someone from inside the cart. There was a stamping about, and Glurk's head poked through the curtains over the front.

"You know what I said about getting up ... " Pismire began, but since Glurk was already dressed there was very little he could do, except wink slyly at Bane and Snibril.

"Wights? I thought they were just a children's story," Glurk said, after it had been explained to him. "Still, it's a free meal. What's wrong with that? To tell the truth I don't know more'n a scrap about them, but I never heard of a bad wight."

"I'd hardly heard of wights at all until now," said Snibril.

"Ah, but you weren't alive when old Granddad was," said Glurk. "He told me he met one in the hairs once. He lent it his axe."

"Did he get it back?" said Pismire.

"No."

"That was a wight all right, then," said Pismire. "They tend to be too preoccupied to think about simple things."

"He said it was a good axe, too."

"There's no question of refusing to go," said Pismire.

"That's right," said Bane.

"But it's so easy to get things wrong. You know how sensitive they are. They've got all kinds of strange beliefs. You've got to know that, you two. Tell them, General."

"Well," said Bane, "seven's very important to them. Seven elements in the Carpet, seven colours-"

"Tell them about the Chays."

"I was coming to that ... seven Chays. They're like ... periods of time. But not regular ones. Sometimes they're short, sometimes they're long. Only the wights know how long. Remember the belt? Seven squares, and each represents a Chay. So the Chay of Salt, you see, is a time when people prosper and trade, and the Chay of Grit is when they build empires and walls ... am I going too fast?"

General? thought Snibril. That's what Pismire said. He wasn't thinking. And a general's a chief soldier ... and now they're all looking at me. None of them noticed!

"Hmm?" he said. He tried to recall what Bane had been saying. "Oh ... so tonight's Feast means we're in the Chay of Bronze, yes?"

"It means it's starting," said Pismire. "It's a time of war and destruction."

Glurk coughed. "How long does this last, then?"

"It'll last as long as the wights think it will. Don't ask me how they know. But tonight wights all over the Carpet will celebrate the Feast of Bronze. It's something to do with their memories."

"Sounds a bit unbelievable to me," said Glurk.

"Oh, yes. But that doesn't mean it isn't true."

"You certainly know a lot about them," said Snibril.

"I don't," said Pismire, simply. "You never know anything where wights are concerned. You remember tales, see things, pick up little bits of knowledge here and there, but you never know anything for certain."

"All right," said Glurk. He stood up on the driving-board of the cart. "We'll go. Don't see we can do nothing else, anyway. Bertha'll come, and Gurth, and, let's see ... yes, Damion Oddfoot. It strikes me that when a wight asks you to dinner you go, and that's it. In sevens."

They entered the wights' little camp sheepishly, keeping together.

Wights always travelled in numbers of seven, twenty-one or forty-nine. No-one knew what happened to any wights left over. Perhaps the other ones killed and ate them, suggested Glurk, who had taken a sort of ancestral dislike to axe-stealing wights. Pismire told him to shut up.

The oldest wight in the group was the Master. There were twenty-one in this group and Pismire, looking at their cart, pointed out the big varnish-boiler on top of it. Wights specialized in smelting the varnish that was mined at the Varnisholme, the giant pillar of red wood in the north known as achairleg in Dumii. Then they went from village to village, selling it. Varnish could be cast into a spear head, or a knife, or just about anything.

Snibril wondered how long would it be before anyone noticed he had shoved the belt back in his pack? But he wasn't going to give it up, he told himself. They'd be bound to want it back if they saw it.

There were seven fires, close together, and three wights around each. They looked identical. How do they tell one another apart, Snibril wondered?

"Oh, there's something else I forgot to tell you," said Pismire, as the wights busied themselves over their cooking pots. "They have perfect memories. Um. They remember everything. That's why they find it so hard to talk to ordinary people."

"I don't understand," said Snibril.

"Don't be surprised if they give you answers before you've asked the question. Sometimes even they get confused," Pismire went on.

"Never mind about them. I'm confused."

"They remember everything, I said. Everything. Everything that's ever going to happen to them. Their minds ... work differently. The past and the future are all the same to them. Please try to understand what I'm saying. They remember things that haven't happened yet."

Snibril's jaw dropped.

"Then we could ask them-" he began.

"No! We mustn't! Why, thank you," Pismire continued, in a more normal voice, taking a plate from a wight, "that looks ... um ... delicious."

They ate in silence. Snibril thought: do they say nothing because they already know what it was they said? No, that can't be right-they'd have to speak now to remember having said it ... or ...

"I am Noral the kilnmaster," said the wight on his left.

"My name-"

"Yes."

"We-"

"Yes."

"There was-"

"I know."

"How?"

"You're going to tell me after dinner."

"Oh." Snibril tried to think. Pismire was right. It was almost impossible to hold a conversation with someone who'd already heard it once. "You really know everything that's going to happen?" was all he could think of.

There was the trace of a smile in the depths of the hood.

"Not everything. How can anyone know everything? But a number of things I do know, yes."

Snibril looked around desperately. Bane and Pismire were deep in conversation with wights, and were not paying him any attention.

"But ... but ... supposing you knew when you were going to die? Supposing a wild animal was going to attack you?"

"Yes?" said Noral politely.

"You could just make sure you weren't there?"

"Weren't there when you died?" said the wight. "That would be a good trick."

"No! I mean ... you could avoid-"

"I know what you mean. But we couldn't. It's hard to explain. Or easy to explain and hard to understand. We have to follow the Thread. The one Thread. We mustn't break it."

"Doesn't anything ever come as a surprise?" said Snibril.

"I don't know. What is a surprise?"

"Can you tell me what's going to happen to me? To all of us? You know what's been happening already. It would help a lot to know the future."

The dark hood turned towards him.

"It wouldn't. It makes living very hard."

"We need help," said Snibril, in a frantic whisper. "What's Fray? Where can we go to be safe? What should we do? Can't you tell us?"

The wight leaned closer.

"Can you keep a secret?" it said, conspiratorially.

"Yes!" said Snibril.

"Really keep a secret? Even though you'd give anything to tell other people? Even though it's like trying to hold a hot coal in your hand? Can you really keep a secret?"

"Er ... yes."

"Well," said the wight, leaning back again. "So can we."

"But-"

"Enjoy your meal."

"Will I?"

"Yes. You certainly did." The wight went to turn away, and then turned back. "And you may keep the belt."

"Oh. You know I've got the belt."

"I do now."

Snibril hesitated. "Hang on," he said, "I only said that because you-"

"It's best if you don't try to understand," said Noral, kindly.

Snibril ate for a while, but the questions kept bothering him.

"Listen. Everything happens," said Noral. "Like a Thread of the Carpet. Nothing can be changed. Even the changes are ... already part of the future. That's all you need to know."

It was a strange meal. You could never be certain if the person you were talking to was listening to what you were going to say in ten minutes' time. It only cheered up a bit when one of the wights gave Glurk an axe. It was his grandfather's, although the handle and the blade had been replaced a few times.

Bane and Pismire were quiet when the travellers went back to their carts.

"Did they tell you anything?" asked Snibril.

"No," said Pismire. "They never do. But ... "

"It's the way they acted," said Bane. "They can't help it."

"They don't like what it is they're not telling us," said Pismire.