tales of the knotlands: mool 30: spinnaret

He stretched his eight limbs and sighed, connections clicked through his mind at an astounding rate: speech, to text, to binary and back again in less time than it took a pupil to react to the light. His many eyes peered through the obfuscation of what appeared to be the story of L’undone. He did [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 29: a bass note

‘I had heard a rumour that you had gone insane and had begun to tear your church apart.’ ‘Does the fire still burn? Has the smoke not cleared?’ ‘I think I understand.’ ‘Let me ask you this, Monsieur Blanc (yes, I think the title appropriate), when a weaver finishes one design does he forsake his [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 28: what to right?

Mool 28: What To Right? He had just finished proofing a manuscript, the blue pen sat beside the fully annotated work — the work was that of his predecessor and, as such, it was complete. He contemplated the quills which sat there in the jar: raven and swan feathers; the ebony and ivory notepaper; the [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 26: filling in the blanks

Carson dragged himself from the rubble – it had taken him an age to dig himself out from under what had been the former residence of his masters. Where were they? What had become of them and their mission? What of the Great Bittern? For a small period of time he had been central to [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 25: a departure

It were as if time had suddenly unstuck itself and began to rush forward about her. A shadow rose up beside her, assembled from the tatters of umbra that danced and shifted at the movement of the fires thereabouts. ‘See them circling in the sky? See the sunset prophesying blood?’ ‘Stranger,’ she answered ‘There has [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 24: a return

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ ‘What?’ ‘Well, so many years of everything just ticking along totally fine and then it all shifts into a period of massive upheaval.’ ‘Ah, but you know what that’s about, don’t you?’ ‘No, not really.’ ‘Well, all these people thought that their world was like a clock, when really it was like [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 23: shiny things

He pulled himself into the reality through the silver seam of a thunderhead; his magic always the buried treasure. ‘Not much left for me, is there? You burned the whole place to the ground.’ ‘I heard there were others coming here.’ ‘The ravens are rumoured to have left the tower and are said to be [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 22: warp

There was little left to burn. No one had stood against the flames – all had either been consumed by them or had stood aside and watched. Watched it all burn down, every line of the weave set alight and left to resolve itself into ash. ‘Something has changed brother,’ he said. ‘Yes, Warp, I [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 21: the diary of sammael peeps (an interlude)

I find myself somewhat changed – a being grown from the flesh of a nightmare, my raven-hued wings unfolding like a fan of knives where once I only had shoulder blades to shrug with. Where I sat with my typewriter narrating the events that unfolded before me now I find myself dipping a quill fashioned [...]

tales of the knotlands: mool 20: the great fire of l’undone

Kern is a stuttering proclamation of victory that lasts as long as a death rattle – a repeated phrase dragged down into the tattered bloody mess of his own death. Her blade, like an obscene tongue forcing itself into flesh to taste the only thing it has a thirst for – a body’s mortal end. [...]