Braided Path 02 - The Skein Of Lament

by Chris Wooding

  Tsata broke out some cold smoked meat and split it with Kaiku, as he always did, and for a time they sat in silence, watching the rain and listening to the saw and scrape of the sky tearing itself to pieces. The desolate scene flickered purple in the backwash of the eerie lightning that attended the phenomenon.

  Kaiku felt uneasy. Moonstorms had always frightened her, even as a child; but events in her past had rendered them heavy with bad memories. Her family had died in a moonstorm, poisoned by her own father to save them from what the Weavers would do to them. And both that moonstorm and the subsequent one had seen her fleeing for her life from the shin-shin, the demons of shadow that the Weavers had sent to claim first her and then Lucia.

  There was concern in Tsata’s eyes as he regarded her.

  ‘It will be brief,’ he said reassuringly. ‘The moons are only passing each other; they have not matched orbits.’

  Kaiku brushed her hair away from where it hung across one side of her face and nodded. She felt a little awkward as the recipient of his sympathy. Why had she told him about her family, anyway? Why had she talked of her past to him? It was strange, that one as guarded as she was should have done so: and yet, somehow, to speak of such things with him did not seem as hard as it did with anyone else. With anyone Saramyr.

  Kaiku had lost track of the time that had passed since she had left the Fold. A month? Had it been that long? The beginning of Aestival Week and her betrayal by Asara in the guise of Saran seemed distant memories now; she had been too busy to dwell on it. The land was beginning to feel autumnal, the mugginess of summer dispersed by cooler breezes even if the heat of the daytime had not diminished by much. The food they had brought with them had been eaten long ago, so they hunted animals outside the Weavers’ barrier when they were not sleeping, or gathered roots and plants to make stews. There was a kind of cleanness to the way they had been living since Nomoru and Yugi had departed. The diet was rough and had far too much red meat in it for Kaiku’s liking, but she felt oddly close to the land, and that made her happy.

  By night, they braved the Aberrant sentries, and Kaiku was becoming very good at the lessons Tsata taught her. He no longer had to worry about keeping an eye on her when they were sneaking through the rucks and pleats of broken land. Rather, he had begun to rely on her, making her more of a partner and less of a pupil. She had become stealthy and adept at hiding, more observant and competent than she had been a few short weeks ago. And in those weeks they had come to know one another very well, in a way that they never had on the confinement of the ship from Okhamba to Saramyr.

  Kaiku had disliked him for a long time after he had risked her life as bait for the maghkriin back in the jungles of his home continent; but now she understood him better, and it made perfect sense through his eyes. She knew it was probably a transient thing, like her friendships with the travellers who had accompanied them on the junk the first time she had crossed the ocean; but for the moment, she felt closer to him than anyone she could remember in recent years. The constant companionship, the weeks of doing everything as a pair, reminded her of the relationship she had shared with her brother Machim, back in a time before she had ever known true loss.

  But for all that, there were still barriers; it was just that they were in different places to the usual ones. She had surprised herself by telling him about her family, yet he had never spoken of his own. She knew why well enough: because she had not asked. He would not refuse her if she wanted to talk about him – Okhambans, she had learned, were notoriously co-operative – but it was that very knowledge that prevented her. She felt that by asking him she might be forcing him to speak of something he did not want to, and that he would be bound by his nature to suffer that for her. She still did not wholly comprehend his mentality, and was wary of being as rude to him as he unwittingly was to her at times.

  Perhaps it was the strange, faintly unreal atmosphere of the moonstorm, or the sudden feeling that she had been cheated out of her secrets while he still kept his, but she decided then to risk it.

  ‘Why are you here, Tsata?’ she asked. Then, once the first step was taken, she said with more conviction: ‘Why did you come to Saramyr? Gods, Tsata, I have been with you practically every moment for weeks now and I still know nothing about you. Your people seem to share everything; why not this?’

  Tsata was laughing by the time she had finished. ‘You are truly an amazing people, your kind,’ he said. ‘I have been tormenting you all this time and you have resisted your curiosity so.’ He smiled. ‘I was interested to see how long you would hold out.’

  Kaiku blushed.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘You are so obsessed with manners and formality that you have not dared ask me about any information I did not volunteer first. With all you have learned about me and the Tkiurathi, have you not guessed the value of openness yet?’

  ‘It is because you are so open that I did not want to ask you about things you had not mentioned,’ she replied, feeling embarrassed and relieved at the same time.

  He laughed again. ‘I had not expected that. I suppose it makes a kind of sense.’ He gave her a wry glance. ‘It seems that I am not as familiar with your ways yet as I thought.’

  The skies screamed overhead, and a jagged shaft of vermilion lightning split the distant horizon, making Kaiku cringe unconsciously.

  ‘Saran was the same,’ Tsata said. ‘He never asked me my motives, was content in ignorance. He believed that it was my business, I suppose, and not his.’

  ‘Hers,’ Kaiku corrected bitterly. Kaiku had told him about Asara, though not about how she had almost coupled with her. Tsata had not been in the least taken aback by the deception, or by the idea of an Aberrant that could take on other forms and other genders. There were frogs in Okhamba that could change sex, he had told her, and insects that could rebuild their bodies in cocoons. She was not without precedent in nature, only in humanity.

  Tsata became thoughtful for a moment. ‘The answer to your question is simple,’ he said at length. ‘Saran told me of his – or her – mission, and of the danger the Weavers posed to Saramyr. He also spoke of what he believed might happen if they won this continent. They would invade others.’

  Kaiku nodded at that: it ran concurrent with what she had already guessed.

  ‘I went with him to the heart of Okhamba to see if his theories bore weight. I returned convinced.’ He rubbed absently at his bare upper arm, fingers tracing the green swirls of the tattoo that covered him. ‘I have a responsibility to the greater pash, that of all my people. So I determined to come to Saramyr and see the threat for myself, to observe what your people’s reaction would be and to carry the news back home if I could. I will need to tell my people as Saran told yours. That is why I came here, and that is why I will have to leave.’

  Kaiku felt abruptly saddened. It was no more than she had expected, but she was surprised at her own reaction. Their time in this isolated existence was limited, and his words were a reminder that it would have to end soon. The return to the real world, with all its attendant complications, was inevitable.

  ‘That is what I had surmised,’ Kaiku said, her voice not much louder than the hiss of the rain. ‘It seems I am learning to predict you also.’

  Tsata gave her an odd look. ‘Perhaps you are,’ he mused. He looked out over the bleak, rain-lashed landscape for a short time, listening to the horrible racket of the moonstorm.

  Kaiku stiffened suddenly. She scrambled to the edge of the rock shelf and looked about.

  ‘Did you hear something?’ he asked, appearing next to her in a crouch.

  ‘The barrier is down,’ she said.

  Tsata did not understand her for a moment.

  ‘The barrier is down!’ she said, more urgently. ‘The shield of misdirection. It is gone. I can sense its absence.’

  ‘We should get back to the flood plain,’ Tsata said.

  Kaiku nodded, her expression grim. The barrier had come down. The Weavers were not hiding any mo
re.

  She dreaded to think what that might mean.

  Cailin tu Moritat’s eyes flicked open, and her irises were red as blood.

  ‘Kaiku,’ she breathed, aghast.

  There were two other Sisters in the conference chamber with her. It was one of the upper rooms of the house of the Red Order, its walls painted black and hung with pennants and symbols of crimson. They had been sitting on mats around the table in the centre of the room, talking softly over the maelstrom that howled and battered at the shutters like some hungry and thwarted beast. The glow of the lanterns and the sinuous path of the scented smoke from the brazier that sat between them had taken on a malevolent quality under the warping influence of the moonstorm, and their identically painted faces seemed narrow and shrewd with conspiracy.

  The other two looked at Cailin. They did not need to see her red eyes to know that something had happened; they had felt it stroking past them, a whisper in the Weave that could only have been one of their own.

  Cailin stood up suddenly, rising to her full height.

  ‘Gather our Sisters,’ she said. ‘I want every one of us that resides in the Fold to be here in this house in an hour’s time.’

  She left the room before the others could rise to obey, stalking away and down the stairs, out onto the muddy, makeshift streets. It was barely midnight. Zaelis would still be awake. Not that she would have hesitated to rouse him anyway; this was far too important.

  She passed along the deserted ways of the Fold, a tall and thin shadow slipping through the rain, seeming to slide between the droplets, for as heavy as the downpour was it only dampened her slightly. She was furious and afraid all at once, and her thoughts were dark as she went.

  Kaiku. Gods, how could she be so reckless? Cailin did not know whether to applaud her or curse her. She had been in an almost constant state of worry since Yugi and Nomoru had returned with news of the Aberrant army massed on the banks of the Zan, and of Kaiku’s refusal to return. If Kaiku had been captured during that time, the Weavers would have flensed her mind and gleaned everything they would need to know about the Red Order. Now, Kaiku had used the Weave to send a message more than a hundred miles, spooling a thread across all that distance. It only took one Weaver to sense it, to catch that thread and piggyback to its destination or track it to its source, and all the Red Order’s years of secrecy would be undone. Bad enough that the Weavers knew there was one Aberrant woman who could beat them at their own game – the previous Weave-lord Vyrrch had warned them of that just before she killed him – but one was only a freak occurrence, a lone misfire of nature like Asara was. Two of them communicating hinted at much greater things, at collaboration, at organisation. If the Weavers caught even the slightest indication of the Red Order’s existence, they would dedicate all their efforts to wiping them out.

  The Red Order were the single biggest threat to the Weavers, maybe even greater than Lucia herself, because against them the Weavers did not have the superiority afforded them by their Masks. The Red Order could Weave too, but their power was inherent and natural to them, and that made them better at it than men, who needed clumsy devices to penetrate the realm beyond the senses.

  But the Sisters were few, too few. And Cailin dared not expose them unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Now, perhaps, that time had come. For as angry as she was with Kaiku for taking such a risk, Cailin was equally disturbed by the message. Matters had taken a very grave turn. Action was needed, and soon; but it might not be in the way that Zaelis imagined. Cailin’s overwhelming priority was the survival of the Red Order. Beyond that, very little mattered.

  Though the journey between her house and Zaelis’s was a short one, the rain had stopped and the skies quieted by the time she got there. The moons were gliding apart again, and the raging clouds now drifted listlessly, thinning and dispersing. The storm had been quick and savage, and its ending was as abrupt as its beginning.

  The dwelling that Zaelis shared with his adopted daughter Lucia was an unremarkable one, nestling on one of the Fold’s upper tiers amid several other houses that had been built to the same design. It was a simple, two-storey building of polished wood and plaster, with a balcony on the eastern side to look out over the valley, and a small shrine by its door with carved icons of Ocha and Isisya surrounded by burnt incense sticks and crushed flowers and smooth white pebbles. A single paper lantern burned outside, illuminating from within the pictograms of welcome and blessing it offered to visitors. Next to it hung a chime, which Cailin struck with the small hammer that hung alongside it.

  Zaelis was at the door almost immediately, inviting her inside. It was a humble room, with a few mats and tables, potted plants nodding drowsily on stands, some ornamental weapons on the wall and an oil-paint landscape from a Fold artist whose work Zaelis seemed to admire, though the appeal had always escaped Cailin. A single lamp hung from the ceiling, putting the epicentre of illumination overhead and casting flattering shadows on everyone within. Lucia sat cross-legged on a mat in her nightgown, drinking a herbal infusion from a ceramic mug. She looked up as Cailin came in, her eyes blandly curious.

  ‘She couldn’t sleep,’ Zaelis explained. He noted absently that Cailin’s twin ponytails should have been dripping with water, the raven feathers of her ruff lank with moisture, her make-up smudged; yet none of these things were true. ‘The moonstorm.’

  Cailin did not have time for niceties. ‘Kaiku has contacted me across the Weave,’ she said. Zaelis’s face fell at her tone. Lucia, unperturbed, continued to regard the Sister over the rim of her mug, as if she was merely relating something that the girl had known all along.

  ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘It is very bad,’ she replied. ‘The Aberrants are most certainly under the Weavers’ control, through the medium of those beings that Yugi reported, which she calls Nexuses. Several nights ago most of them departed northward by barge up the Zan, but thousands were still left. Now all but a few of those have departed as well. The Weavers have dropped their barrier, and the Aberrants are on the move.’

  ‘Where?’ Zaelis demanded.

  ‘East. Across the Fault. Towards us.’

  Zaelis felt a pit open in the bottom of his stomach. ‘How long?’

  ‘They travel fast,’ Cailin said. ‘Very fast. She estimates we have four days and nights before they are upon us.’

  ‘Four days and nights . . .’ Zaelis repeated. He looked dazed. ‘Heart’s blood.’

  ‘I have matters to attend to in the wake of this news,’ Cailin said. ‘I imagine you do too. I will return in a few hours.’ She gave Lucia a peremptory tilt of her head. ‘I doubt any of us will sleep tonight.’

  With that, she was gone as fast as she had come, walking back towards the house of the Red Order, where she would prepare for the arrival of her brethren. Around her, the first gently glittering flakes of starfall had begun, tiny crystals of fused ice drifting down in the green-tinted light of the triple moons. It would fall sporadically for the next day or so. She ignored it, for her mind was on other things. She did indeed have matters to attend to, and a decision that might well be the most important she ever had to make.

  The Fold had been compromised, and the Weavers were coming. She knew as well as Zaelis that four days and nights was not enough time to try and evacuate the population of the Fold across the hostile Fault, and even if he did, they would be caught on the run and killed. Where would they go? What would they do? He would not abandon all he had worked for, all his weapons and supplies and fortifications; nor would he abandon the townsfolk. He would be forced to make a stand here, at least until an alternative could be made feasible.

  Her choice was simple. Zaelis and the Libera Dramach were bound to this place, but she was not. Should the Red Order stand with them against the Weavers, or should they leave them to their fate?

  Yugi arrived at Zaelis’s house shortly afterward. Lucia had dressed, and returned to her spot on the mat. She should have been asleep by now, but she
did not appear to be tired in the slightest.

  Zaelis had been too preoccupied to disapprove. His mind was full of dark musings in the wake of Cailin’s news. He was thinking of Weavers, and gods, and Alskain Mar. Did the Libera Dramach even stand a chance, if what the spirit had shown Lucia was true? If this was indeed some conflict of the gods, what hope did they have of resisting the tides? Were they like some cork bobbing on a stormy ocean, powerless to act, merely staying afloat? He had a depressing sense that his life’s work had been merely an illusion, an old man’s folly, creating a resistance that could not, in the end, resist anything. He blamed Cailin, bitterly, for bringing them to this: for holding them back, for advising secrecy when action was needed. And now, finally, their cover had been somehow torn away, and they were exposed. They were not strong enough to fight the Weavers head-on, Zaelis knew that. Yet the alternative was to give up, and that he could never do.

  He realised immediately that Yugi had been smoking amaxa root. It was in the sheen of his eyes and his dilated pupils, and the pungent smell still clung to his clothes.

  ‘Gods, Yugi, I need you clearheaded!’ he snapped in lieu of a greeting.

  ‘Then you should have called for me in the morning,’ Yugi retorted cheerily. ‘As it is, I’m here. So what do you want?’ He saw Lucia and gave her a little bow. Lucia returned it amiably with a dip of her head.

  Zaelis sighed. ‘Come inside and sit down,’ he said. ‘Lucia, would you brew something strong for Yugi?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ she replied, and obediently went to the kitchen.

  Zaelis sat opposite Yugi on the floor mat and studied him, gauging how far gone he was and whether he would take in anything that was said. Yugi’s recreational use of amaxa root had always been a source of worry, but he had been doing it ever since Zaelis first knew him, and despite the dangers it had never bloomed into addiction. Yugi seemed to possess an unusual resistance to its withdrawal symptoms, and he insisted that he was able to take it or leave it as he chose. Zaelis had been sceptical for a long time, but he had been forced to accept after a while that Yugi was right. He was able to go without for weeks and months at a stretch, and it had never affected his reliability. He said that he used it to ‘cope with the bad nights’. Zaelis was unsure what this meant, and Yugi would never talk about it.