Braided Path 03 - The Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  Instead, he was blinded by a rare window of clarity upon himself, a moment in which he saw what he had become, free of delusion and madness. His bladework had been steadily deteriorating for years now. Most of the sculptures that he kept had been cut in the days before the Weavers shattered the Empire. His arthritic hands trembled as they held the knife, and he was more a butcher than a surgeon of late. But it was not only his coordination: his mind had rotted too. The effort of summoning and controlling the feya-kori had battered the frail mush of his physical brain, turned him addled and senile, and he saw now the damage it had wreaked and how much more it would do next time he roused the blight demons from their pall-pits.

  For a short time, he knew what he was, saw the ruin he had visited on his body and mind, and he screamed and cried and clawed himself; but it passed, and the thoughts became too hard to hold on to, and dissipated like smoke.

  Fahrekh found him like that: curled up, a heap of rags and hide, the dead-skin Mask pressed to the floor, caked with grey dust. He stood in the doorway for a time, his angular face of bronze, silver and gold expressionless.

  ‘Weave-lord Kakre,’ he said. ‘You seem unwell.’

  ‘Get out,’ Kakre croaked.

  ‘I think not,’ came the reply. He walked into the room, until he was standing over the Weave-lord, who strained his neck to look up at the younger Weaver.

  ‘Get out!’ he hissed again, and was racked with spasms.

  ‘We have matters to discuss, you and I,’ Fahrekh said slowly. ‘Matters of succession. Specifically, mine.’

  Kakre’s head snapped up, suddenly lucid. Fahrekh’s impassive Mask gazed back at him.

  They plunged into the Weave together, and battle was joined.

  It was in the abyss that they met, the endless, watery dark which was Kakre’s preferred visualisation of the fabric of reality. Whether by accident or design, it was Fahrekh’s too, and he was equally happy with the interpretation. As they attacked each other, their interactions with the Weave took on the form of fish to fit their surroundings. Thousands of individual strings of thought became shoals of piranhas, riding the invisible cross-currents which flowed in mazy twists all around them. On either side of the fray, the masters of the conflict floated, maintaining their positions amid the whip and slide of the Weave. Kakre was a ray, Fahrekh a massive black jellyfish, its tentacles deadly purple streamers. These were the representations of their physical bodies, the core of their presence in the Weave. The piranhas were their fighters, a dizzying multitude of mind-strands that darted through the space between them, seeking for a way through the enemy shoal. They savaged one another, bursting into bright blooms of scrabbling gold threads as they hit, illuminating the darkness with brief globes of light that knotted inward to infinity and collapsed.

  The squabbling of the piranhas was enacted faster than the eye could follow. They arced and looped in squads of dozens, thrusting or retreating or laying decoys. Smaller fish darted around the periphery of the thrashing battlefield, trying to circumvent the conflict and reach the enemy: some would be caught by their opponent’s defences, others dashed to pieces in the cross-currents. The Weavers had innumerable tricks: using fish to shield other fish, slingshotting off the edge of invisible whirlpools, laying sluggish bait which would explode into an insoluble labyrinth of tangles when engaged. It was a dizzying tableau of astonishing viciousness, hidden beneath a thin skin of illusion to protect the minds of the combatants from the raw and maddening beauty of the Weave.

  And Kakre was losing.

  Though less than a second had passed in the world outside the Weave, where time was governed by the sun and the moons, the private battle had passed through a multitude of shifts and phases, as of a military campaign enacted at extreme speed. Kakre was canny, and had tricks learned from long experience; gaining mastery of the feya-kori had taught him some things that Fahrekh had yet to fathom. But he was making mistakes. Little slips, infinitesimal blank spots in his mind where once a reaction would have been instinctive, sinister patches of forgetfulness that drifted across his psyche, robbing him of focus. Fahrekh was young and burning with energy; his vigour made up for his relative lack of finesse. Kakre’s shoal was losing ground, becoming tattered. Holes were opening in his defences faster than he could stitch them shut.

  But there was worse. Kakre was exhausted. His physical body was tearing itself apart under the stress of the combat. He could feel his systems wrecking themselves in an effort to provide him with the strength to fight, and there would soon be nothing left for him to draw on. Fahrekh, who would have been a difficult opponent even when they were on equal footing, had caught him at his lowest ebb. Kakre could not win; he was only delaying the inevitable.

  Well, if that was so, it was so. Kakre would never relinquish himself. He would fight till his dying breath.

  His moment of defiance was his last thought before Fahrekh outmanoeuvred him totally. His enemy had been gathering forces behind a knitted ball of decoys, and now they suddenly shot out and round, engulfing Kakre’s shoal like a hand closing into a fist. Kakre abandoned them immediately, knowing they were lost, and began creating a new shoal; but he had no vitality to give them, and they were sickly and slow. Fahrekh’s ravening horde swept them aside and tore towards Kakre’s unprotected ray to rip him apart.

  And in that instant, the Weave-whale appeared.

  It burst out of nothingness, filling the black abyss, overwhelming them with its sheer scale. The impact of its arrival blasted across the Weave like a detonation, scattering Fahrekh’s shoal, buffeting them with a shockwave. Fahrekh managed to hold his coherence, but Kakre tattered away, losing his grip on the Weave, dissipating back into his physical body again.

  It was sheer insane fury that saved him. There was no confusion as he was wrenched back to the world of human senses, no hesitation, and no conscious thought involved. Riding a wave of rage, a scream ripping from his throat, he lunged at Fahrekh, drawing his skinning knife from his belt. Fahrekh, stunned by the Weave-whale, was not fast enough to react. Kakre drove the blade beneath his metal Mask, ramming it deep into the soft flesh under his chin, through his palate and up into the front of his brain. The force of it took Fahrekh off his feet, and he collapsed to the floor in a billow of dust with Kakre on top of him. Still screaming, Kakre plunged the knife into Fahrekh’s throat and chest again and again, drawing spurts of blood into the air, hacking flesh to moist ribbons. Finally, in one last, disgusted motion, he tore off Fahrekh’s Mask and buried the knife up to the hilt in his eye; and after that, he was done.

  He slid off the corpse of his enemy, his patchwork robe wet with blood, and lay there for some time, the only sound the laboured wheeze of his breath, slowing and slowing until he fell asleep.

  SEVENTEEN

  There was a village inside the Forest of Xu.

  At least, when they had first laid eyes on it, they had assumed it was a village. They still were not entirely certain even now, as dusk approached on their second day in the forest. It was something so utterly alien to their experience that they had no adequate parallels to draw.

  It was built around the existing trees with no apparent boundaries, sprawling up the trunks into the canopy and spreading along the ground in a curiously organic fashion. The constructions were formed of a glistening substance, hard as rock and smooth to the touch, predominantly an icy blue-white, but sometimes shaded brown or green. It had a subtle iridescence and a maddening quality that was not quite translucence but more a chameleon-like mimicry of colour: it seemed to change its hue to whatever lay behind it, depending on where the viewer stood. When Kaiku laid her hand on it, she left a hazy pink imprint which faded after a time.

  Tsata, particularly, had been fascinated by how this strange village had been built, and it was he that found the key, and uncovered the secret at least partially. The substance was sap, bled from the trees and hardened through some unknown art into a multitude of shapes. Every construction, no matter how remote, was even
tually linked to a tree bole at some point, though no evidence of cutting could be found. And now that they had established this, it was possible to see a certain flow to the architecture, a kind of glacial creep around which offshoots had been moulded with exquisite artistry. Kaiku had the uncomfortable sensation that the village was still growing; indeed, she found evidence of channels in which glistening sap still lay, oozing with excruciating torpidity towards the tips and edges of the existing constructions, which were wet with the stuff. She guessed that this would be moulded and hardened too, in time, to form another offshoot.

  The village was an exhibition of dizzying variety. Wide discs buried in the bark of the trees were set in irregular patterns, sometimes growing in size as they ascended, sometimes diminishing. Spiky sprays erupted into the air. Gossamer threads were stitched through the branches, or formed twisting, unsupported bridges that defied physics. Some of the dwellings were like uneven pagodas, others smooth semicircular domes, still others jagged starbursts of colourful sap. Many of them had no visible means of entry. Some were up in the trees: inverted cones of three-quarter circumference growing out from the trunks. Venous tubes like tunnels ran between them, sometimes fracturing into smaller capillaries that tapered away to nothingness as they ran like shatter-cracks along the bark.

  Different building styles were evident in different parts of the village, one graduating into another as the eye followed the lines of the dwellings. Some had been sculpted like coral, hulking accretions of sap that branched and overlapped in a dozen different formations and colours; others were thin and needle-like, white clusters of stalagmites rising high overhead; still others were cloudlike and billowing, rounded shapes heaped together like a pile of snowballs.

  Kaiku, Asara and Tsata were the first to see it, and it was only afterwards that Tsata pointed out they were probably the first humans ever to have done so. The impact of that had made Kaiku lightheaded, and she had to sit down for a short while.

  They had to assume that it was built by the emyrynn, but their only basis for that was the way the creatures had led them here. Once Kaiku and her companions had arrived, the emyrynn disappeared entirely. Upon exploration, there was no sign of life here, nor any indication that anyone or anything had ever occupied these bizarre abodes. Either that, or the inhabitants had deserted this place on their approach, taking everything with them, leaving it preternaturally spotless.

  Tsata returned and led the rest of the party to the village. Lucia seemed to believe the spirit-beasts were trustworthy, and they had little alternative but to take her word for it. If that was the case, then had they been provided this place for shelter, somewhere to rest their wounded? Was it possible that these creatures were benevolent rather than hostile? Though many of them suspected a trap, for spirits were notoriously tricky, they settled themselves for the night. The disconcertingly alien surroundings were made more ominous by the eerie quiet and failing light. Doja insisted that they camp in the open and not sleep inside any of the sap-buildings. His men were only too glad to comply.

  Neryn was waxing tonight, casting a soothing green light through the interknit branches overhead. Aurus was low in the northern sky, visible only by her glow on the edges of the leaves. Kaiku wandered through the camp amid the restless murmur of the troops, distracted by the architecture. The troops cast unfriendly glances at her. She was alone, and content to be so. Lucia was asleep; Phaeca had also retired, complaining that she felt ill; Tsata and Heth were tending their fallen comrade and would not leave her side.

  Kaiku had spotted Asara earlier that evening, leaning against the side of one of the emyrynn dwellings, watching her while she absentmindedly cleaned her rifle. Kaiku, suddenly tired of her manner, had strode over to her to have this out; but she had picked up her rifle and gone before Kaiku got there. Obviously she did not want to talk then.

  But now, suddenly, she appeared at Kaiku’s side. ‘I wish to speak with you,’ she murmured.

  ‘And I with you,’ Kaiku replied.

  ‘Not here,’ said Asara. ‘Come with me,’

  Kaiku followed as Asara led them away from the camp. The village spread and towered around them, the silent edifice of an unknown species, aloof and impenetrable. They went some way from the camp, until they were sure there was nobody around, and there Asara stopped. For a moment, she did not turn; her shoulders were tight with suppressed emotion. Then she seemed to make a decision, and she faced Kaiku.

  Kaiku studied her expectantly. The almond-shaped eyes painted in soft green, the dark skin, the achingly exotic beauty of her all belonged to a stranger, but under that she was still Asara; wonderful, treacherous Asara, whom she loved and hated in equal measure. The woman who had given her life, and taken for it a piece of Kaiku’s essence and left a piece of her own, little splinters of desire that had lodged in their hearts and never quite worked free. Each wanted what the other had: that sliver of themselves that had been lost in the transaction.

  Eventually, for Asara seemed so uncertain, it was Kaiku who spoke first. ‘What is my debt, Asara?’ she asked. ‘What would you have me do to redress the balance between us?’

  ‘You admit that you owe me, then?’ Asara said quickly.

  ‘I do owe you,’ Kaiku said. ‘But do I owe you enough to do as you ask? I will hear what you have to say before I decide.’

  ‘Very well.’ Asara still seemed wary. ‘But you must swear first that what I have to ask you will never be repeated by you to anyone. To anyone. Whether you agree or not.’

  ‘You have my oath,’ said Kaiku, for she knew that Asara would go no further without it, and she wanted this done.

  Asara regarded her carefully in the darkness, her eyes glittering. Debating whether to trust her.

  ‘Asara,’ Kaiku snapped, impatient. ‘You have followed me this far. Do not fool yourself into thinking you are making a choice; you made it some time ago. You have shadowed my footsteps too long. What do you want?’

  ‘I want a child,’ Asara hissed.

  There was silence between them. Asara retreated, spent by the effort of the admission. Kaiku stared.

  ‘I want a child,’ she said again, quieter. ‘But I cannot bear one.’

  ‘Why not?’ Kaiku asked, slightly dazed. This was her secret longing?

  ‘I do not know why not,’ Asara replied. ‘I can . . . change myself, but only to an extent. I can take on the forms of men and women, but not of beasts, nor of birds. I can alter my skin and my shape, but I have limits. What I can do, I do by instinct. I do not know how it happens. I cannot see inside myself. I cannot fix myself.’

  It made sense to Kaiku then. ‘You want me to make you fertile.’

  ‘You can do this!’ Asara said, and there was naked hunger in her voice. ‘I have heard of the deeds you and your kind are capable of. I have seen Sisters bring men back from the brink of death, healing with their hands. I watched you save that Tkiurathi woman’s life just hours ago! You have the power to repair whatever is wrong with me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Kaiku.

  ‘Perhaps?’ Asara cried.

  ‘I am not a god, Asara,’ Kaiku said. ‘I cannot create what is not there. I do not know what kind of changes Aberrancy has wreaked in you. What if you have no womb? I cannot give you one.’

  ‘Then look! Look inside! You can tell me!’ Asara was desperate now; her hopes had been vested in this for so long that the possibility of them being dashed was too much for her to take. For so long, lonely and empty; ever outcast, ever unable to fill the void that yawned inside her. There were none like she was, even among the Aberrants. In all ninety of her years, she had never found another. And it was Shintu’s cruellest trick indeed to make her ageless and yet rob her of the power to procreate.

  But Kaiku’s brow was creased in a frown. ‘I will have to think on this, Asara.’

  ‘You owe me,’ Asara spat, her fear turning to fury. ‘I gave you a life; now you give me one!’

  ‘And what would you do with it, Asara?’ Kaiku
asked. Her hair hung across one eye, but the other one regarded Asara steadily. ‘What would I be unleashing if I allowed more creatures like you into the world?’

  ‘It is the right of every woman! I was denied!’

  ‘Are you even a woman?’ Kaiku asked. ‘Were you one to begin with? I wonder.’ She had lapsed into the tone she used when she wore the make-up of the Sisterhood: stern, authoritative. ‘Perhaps the gods had a reason to deny you. Perhaps one of you is enough.’

  ‘Do not pronounce moral judgements upon me!’ Asara raged. ‘Not when you and your Red Order plot and scheme towards the throne. Your conscience is not unstained, Kaiku. Ask Cailin why your kind let the Weavers take the Empire. Ask her if hundreds of thousands, if millions of lives were worth sacrificing so that the Sisterhood could rise!’

  Kaiku gazed at her levelly. ‘Perhaps I will,’ she said, and she turned and walked away. She could sense Asara’s hateful glare prickling against her nape, and was half expecting the spy to attack her out of sheer thwarted anger; but Asara let her go.

  Kaiku let the quietude of the forest envelop her, broken only by the sinister ticks and taps in the distance. Once her mind was still, she began to consider what Asara had said.

  They spent an uneasy night within the emyrynn village, but when dawn came they were still all there. None of them were in good shape, however. Terrifying dreams haunted them, and the early watches had been punctuated by the shrieks of waking men. Most gave up trying to sleep, too afraid of what lurked just beneath the skin of unconsciousness. Those that persevered caught snatches of slumber, a few minutes at a time, before awakening in a worse state than they had been before. Tempers were fraying among the men. They resented the forest and the spirits and so, lacking targets, they snapped at each other.