The Skein of Lament

by Chris Wooding

  Kaiku blinked. She had never heard of a three-sex system on Saramyr. Although, she reminded herself, these things were probably from Saramyr. Some kind of unrecorded creature, warped by the witchstones’ influence into this new configuration? Or had they always been there, hidden within the vast tracts of unexplored land in the mountains, found and exploited by the Weavers decades or centuries ago?

  ‘I would guess that the females share a link with the males,’ Tsata theorised. ‘A kind of hive-mind with many queens. The males are like the drones.’

  Kaiku did not need any more. She could imagine how these things worked: the males crept up on sleeping animals or Aberrants in the wild, affixing themselves, taking them over, making them slaves. The males and the womb-things appeared to be mindless enough, but the females moved with purpose. The males were merely there to create the link to the females, through which the females controlled the subjugated animal. What better kind of defence for a creature’s nest than to use relatively massive and expendable proxies as guards? Or what better hunter-gatherers, since the nexus-worms themselves were physically helpless? She found herself marvelling at the sinister ingenuity of these parasites.

  But the Nexuses controlled the males now. How was that possible? Certainly not through the Weave. It was vital that they knew, if they were to have any hope of disrupting them.

  Kaiku’s thoughts fled as a warbling shriek sounded from the floor of the cavern, ascending in pitch until it hurt the ears. An instant later, it was joined by another, and another. The shrillings were all looking at the spot where Kaiku and Tsata crouched; and now the Nexuses had turned their blank white faces that way too.

  ‘They have seen us!’ Kaiku hissed, remembering too late that the shrillings did not need to see at all, that darkness was no obstacle for their sonic navigation system.

  ‘Time to be elsewhere,’ Tsata muttered, and they ran.

  It was a measure of their determination, perhaps, that they both chose to run onward rather than back, picking unfamiliar territories over caverns they had already passed through. They raced along the walkway, their feet clanging on the metal, and burst into the tunnel on the far side. The wailing of the shrillings was echoing from all directions now. The alarm was spreading.

  ‘Hold this,’ Tsata said, shoving the small sack of explosives into Kaiku’s arms. She whimpered at the rough treatment it was suffering.

  They headed down a bare and featureless tunnel, lit by occasional torches in wall brackets, most of which had gone out. The gas-flames were only generally present in the larger caverns and in areas where normal torches would not provide enough illumination. Shadows flickered by against the rough angles of the rounded walls, some ancient lava tube from an ancient cataclysm. Tsata ran ahead of Kaiku, and she saw that he had his gutting-hooks drawn, one in each hand. Gods, she wished she had her rifle now. She only possessed a sword which she was pitifully ineffective at using. That, and her kana, which would bring every Weaver in the mine down on top of her.

  The shrilling leaped out of nowhere, reaching Tsata as the tunnel kinked right and obscured their vision any further. But Tsata’s reactions were honed by generations of life in a jungle where a man would get less warning than that before he died. He dropped and rolled under the shrilling’s pounce, his blades scything across its unarmoured belly and unzipping it from throat to tailbone. It hit the ground at Kaiku’s feet in a slick of its own guts, pawing the ground helplessly in its death throes.

  But the shrilling had not been alone. Two more of its kind ran into view, accompanied by a Nexus. Kaiku felt a slow chill as she looked upon the thing, seven feet tall and rake-thin, robed and cowled in black with its featureless mask hiding it completely. She put down the stack of explosives and drew her sword.

  ‘Stay back,’ Tsata said, without taking his eyes off the enemy. He was in a fighting crouch now. ‘You would do no good here.’

  He was right; and yet she felt terrible having him face three enemies alone without her, a deep and wrenching fear and guilt that surprised her in its intensity. Subconsciously, she was already preparing her kana. Whatever the cost, she would not let him die at the hands of these creatures.

  The two shrillings came at him at once, moving with the fluidity of jaguars. One of them reared up on its hind legs to strike with the sickle-claws on its forepaws; Tsata used that moment to dart out of its reach and engage the second shrilling, which snapped at his belly with its fanged jaws. He barely evaded the bite, and the smooth bony crest of the creature butted him in the thigh, knocking his counterstrike awry and causing his blade to glance off the scales on its back instead of finding the soft spot where the throat joined the long skull. The first shrilling lashed out with its other claw, overreaching itself in the attempt; Tsata grunted as it tore into his arm, but he turned inside the strike and drove his gutting-hook into the rearing beast’s chest. Its ululating death-cry was deafening, and it appeared to confuse the other shrilling, which suddenly went still as its frequency-sensitive glands were overloaded. The first shrilling had barely hit the floor before Tsata was on the second one, driving both his gutting-hooks into the back of the creature’s neck, slicing through the nexus-worm affixed there. The Aberrant shivered and went boneless, collapsing in a heap, borne down by Tsata’s weight.

  Kaiku had seen the Tkiurathi fight enough times during the last few weeks, but his deadly grace never ceased to amaze her. He faced the Nexus now over the corpses of its shrillings, his bare left arm pumping blood over his golden, tattooed skin to run down the lower edge of his forearm and drip from his wrist.

  There was a moment of hesitation. The Nexus was an unknown quantity. They had no idea of its capabilities.

  Tsata’s good arm snapped out and sent his gutting-hook spinning through the air. The Nexus was either not fast enough to get out of the way or simply chose not to; either way, the blade buried in its body with a sickening impact, and its knees buckled. It fell silently to the floor.

  The Tkiurathi did not waste any time. The cries of the other shrillings were getting nearer. He pulled the gutting-hook out of the Nexus as Kaiku ran up to him.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ she said.

  Tsata gave her one of his unexpected smiles. ‘I had noticed,’ he replied. Then he reached down and tore off the mask of the Nexus, and Kaiku caught her breath at what was uncovered.

  Its face was dead white, cracked with thin purple capillaries, its expression as blank as the mask Tsata had thrown aside. The mouth was a thin slash, hanging open and toothless. Its eyes were large and pure black, reflecting Kaiku as she peered into them with an expression of horror.

  But for all that, it was the face of a child.

  Beneath the veined skin, a multitude of thin tendrils sewed over the forehead and across the sunken cheeks, terminating at the lips and ears and eyes and throat, dozens of tiny bumped lines radiating along the contours of the skull.

  Tsata raised the Nexus’s head and pulled back its hood. Buried in the flesh of the scalp, sunken into the skin, was one of the nexus-worm females, a glistening black diamond shape. Its tail ran down the nape of the neck and disappeared between the shoulder blades, diving into the spine.

  ‘Now we know,’ Tsata said.

  Kaiku sheathed her sword and squatted by the fallen thing, appalled to the point of disbelief. The Nexuses were human symbiotes, their will joined with the nexus-worm females who shared their body. The females in turn controlled the males, who controlled the Aberrants. The Weavers must have been capturing predators for years in the mountains, perhaps subduing them with their Masks before implanting them with worms, building the superstructure of their army. No civilised humans would fight for the Weavers, so they had built a force of killing beasts, monsters spawned by the blight that the Weavers themselves had created. And they controlled them with the Nexuses.

  But children? They affixed the female worms to children? Was that the only way to achieve the necessary integration, to implant them early? Did that explain the f
reakish way they had developed?

  Kaiku gritted her teeth in rage, feeling tears come to her eyes.

  It had no tongue. The stump was still there.

  They did this to children.

  Tsata grabbed her arm. ‘There is no time to grieve for them, Kaiku,’ he said, bringing her to her feet and handing her the sack of explosives.

  Then they were running again. The shrillings’ cries were coming from before and behind now. The tunnel ended in a three-way junction, cluttered with discarded metal components of some kind of half-built contraption. Tsata did not hesitate, choosing a tunnel and heading into it, apparently oblivious to the wound that was streaking blood down his arm. There was not so much noise from that direction, and the tunnel was uneven and rough. It bore the signs of a passage rarely used, and that meant it was less likely that anything would be coming down it. Torches became infrequent, so Tsata snatched one and carried it with him. Kaiku hung back, conscious of letting the flame near the dangerous burden she was carrying.

  The sensation of Weaving crackled over her in a wave, a dark and malevolent interest sweeping the mine. Someone was looking for them. Kaiku carefully made them invisible to the seeker, blending their signatures into the Weave. It was one of the first things Cailin had taught her to do after she had got her power under control, and as bad a pupil as she had been, after five years of practice it was a discipline she was very good at. The Weaver’s attention prickled across them and away, searching the tunnels and caverns. Kaiku did not drop her guard. Now she knew that there was at least one Weaver here sane enough to be a danger.

  She looked back. The sounds of pursuit were echoing up the tunnel from the junction now. She did not think the shrillings were good trackers, but there were few places to hide in these tunnels, and Tsata needed to stop so he could tend to his wound. It was pumping out a worrying amount of blood and leaving a very obvious trail.

  She began to be afraid. Beating the demons in the marsh, healing Yugi, hunting for weeks with Tsata: all these had combined to make her feel somewhat invulnerable of late, more mistress of her abilities and herself, more confident in her choices. But now she became suddenly aware of their situation, and it hit her that they were in the midst of a Weaver lair, surrounded by enemies, and that they might very well not get out again. Her kana was next to useless since she did not dare take on a Weaver; and despite Tsata’s martial skill he tended to rely on surprise to win his battles. He might have killed three shrillings and a Nexus, but it had been a near thing, and despite his uncomplaining nature he was hurt badly.

  Ocha, what have I got myself into? Should I have gone back to Cailin when I had the chance?

  But that thought only reminded her of what might be happening at the Fold now, images of slaughter and terror.

  She pushed her indecision aside. It was too late for regrets or second-guessing.

  Tsata came to a sudden halt. Kaiku caught him up, her gradually reddening eyes flickering nervously over the torch in his hand.

  ‘Down there,’ he said, pointing. There was a gash in the rock at ground level, through which something was moving, throwing back his torchlight in rapid firefly glimmers. It took Kaiku a moment to realise that it was water.

  The tightness of the cleft made her hesitate, a moment of claustrophobia assailing her; but then the trilling of their pursuers sounded again, closer than ever, and her mind was made up. Leaving the sack of explosives, she slid feet-first into the gap. It was too dark to see what was below, but the water hinted at where the ground would be. She slipped as far into the cleft as she could, until her legs were dangling through, and then dropped.

  There was a blaze of pain as something ripped up her lower back, and then a moment of falling. She hit the ground with a jarring impact that buckled her knees. The water was only an inch deep.

  ‘Kaiku?’ Tsata’s voice came through from above.

  She put her hand to her back, and it came away wet.

  ‘It is safe,’ she said. ‘Put out the torch. And watch the rocks; they are sharp.’

  Tsata carefully handed the sack of explosives to her and then slipped through. Once there, he doused the torch in the water, plunging them into darkness. The sound of the shrillings and hurrying feet seemed suddenly louder.

  ‘Can you see?’ Tsata whispered.

  ‘No,’ Kaiku said, wondering if her eyes would adjust as they had last time. ‘Lead me.’

  She felt his hand in hers, the clasp wet and warm. Blood trickled over his wrist and into their grip, across the gullies of her palm, welling between her slender fingers. He was using his good arm to carry the explosives; this was his wounded one. The sensation did not repulse her. Instead it seemed a strange intimacy, cementing their link with his life fluids. She felt an entirely inappropriate rush of pleasure at the sensation.

  Then they were moving. He led her into the blackness, splashing softly as he went. The air was cold and dank down here, the breath of the deep earth, and it took Kaiku a moment to realise that there was a breeze, and that Tsata was heading into it. She was surprised to find that her lack of vision did not perturb her. She was not alone here, and she trusted Tsata absolutely. Once, she would not have even entertained the idea of putting her faith in this man, this foreigner with his foreign ideas, who had once used her as bait for a murderous hunter without a second thought. She wondered if he would do the same thing now. Would the closeness that had grown between them make him loth to risk her life so casually again? She could not say. But she understood his ways better now, his subordination of the individual to the greater good, and she knew that as things stood he would never abandon her down here, would give his own life for hers if it was better for the both of them. There was something touching in the raw simplicity of that.

  She began to make out the edges of the tunnel, and the rippling of the water that ran past their feet. At first it was so gradual that she could not tell whether her mind was tricking her, but then it became too pronounced to discount. The world took shape steadily in a flat monochrome, until she could see as well as if Aurus were in the sky above them.

  After a time, when the sounds of pursuit had faded behind them and it seemed as if they were all alone in the mine again, Tsata drew to a halt at a spot where the tunnel wall pulled away from the stream and the floor rose above the level of the water. Kaiku could feel the Weaver still searching for them, but his probing was far away.

  ‘There is a dry section here,’ he said.

  ‘I can see it,’ Kaiku replied.

  Tsata looked back at her, then for an instant glanced at their linked hands. Kaiku belatedly realised that for some while he had been leading her when she had been perfectly capable of leading herself. She had simply not wanted to surrender that reassuring touch.

  ‘I need to treat this wound,’ he said. ‘It is not closing.’

  The next few minutes, more than any other, taught Kaiku how different the stock of their two continents were, how the Okhamban environment had bred tough and resilient folk while in Saramyr luxury had made the nobles soft. She watched him perform surgery on himself in the darkness, biting her lip as he used the tip of his gutting-hook to scrape out a shard of claw that had broken in the wound, cringing as he used a thin needle of smooth wood and some kind of fibrous thread to stitch the edges together. He refused her help – though she had made the offer with no idea how she could help – and efficiently sewed himself up, with no indication of the pain beyond an occasional hiss of breath across his teeth.

  When he was done, he took a tiny jar of paste from a pouch at his waist and applied it to the still-bleeding slash. His body tensed violently, making Kaiku jump. His features screwed up in an expression of intense pain; the veins of his arm and throat stood out starkly against his skin. A faint wisp of evilsmelling smoke was rising from the wound.

  Kaiku was suddenly reminded of Asara’s words, coming from the lips of Saran Ycthys Marul: in Okhamba there is very little medicine that is gentle. The paste seemed to be lite
rally scorching the wound shut.

  She watched helplessly, listening to Tsata gasp at the shocking agony of the healing process, but finally his breathing steadied. He washed off the paste with water from the stream. His wound no longer bled, instead there was an ugly, puckered scar.

  Kaiku was about to offer some words of comfort when they heard the warbling cry of a shrilling echo down the tunnel. The Nexuses had not given up the pursuit. They had found their quarry again.

  Kaiku hauled Tsata to his feet, hefted the sack of explosives, and they ran once more.

  The tunnel curved downward, and the water gathered pace on its descent, making the floor slippery. The noise of the shrillings had multiplied now. Evidently they had followed Tsata’s trail of blood to the gash where she and the Tkiurathi had slipped through, and surmised where the intruders were. Suddenly, the Weaver’s attention roved over them again, like a cruel and terrible glare; she was almost caught unawares, and she concealed them only just in time. It was because she was so intent on keeping them hidden that she barely noticed the new light at the end of the tunnel, and it was only when the Weaver’s mind was elsewhere that she came back to herself and realised that Tsata was slowing.

  The tunnel ended in a grille, bronzed with rust, an impassable line of thick square columns through which the water sluiced away to the cavern beyond. A foul, uneasy glow bled through from the other side, bathing them in strange light. They could hear the clanking of the Weavers’ contraptions. On either side of the tunnel there were several vertical cracks and openings, all of them barred and dark.

  Tsata had stopped, casting a look back up the tunnel, where the clamour of the chase continued to grow. Kaiku ran past him to the grille. She knew that appalling, unnatural illumination. It was branded on her memory, a nightmare that refused to fade.

  She looked through the grille, and there was the witch-stone.

  They had been brought at last to the bottom of the shaft, the hub of the network of subterranean corridors which the Weavers had taken for their own. The tunnel mouth opened high in the shaft wall, over a massive underground lake, its surface still and black. Two narrow waterfalls plunged from above, throwing up low clouds of mist that hazed the scene. Bare, rocky islands hunched sullenly there, and tapering skewers of limestone thrust upward towards the dizzying heights, where distant fires burned at the tips of the metal gas-torches.