Braided Path 03 - The Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  What was worse, it became clear soon afterward that they would not be going anywhere that day. Peithre had improved a little, but Phaeca had become sick. Kaiku talked with Doja, who admitted that it was foolhardy to go on with one of the Sisters down and the other one determined to stay. He broke the news to his men, sweetening it by pointing out that he believed they were safe from the forest in the emyrynn village.

  Kaiku was dubious about this last statement, but it served her purpose. The soldiers accepted their fate with stoic expressions, though later there would be dissent amongst them. The spirits were bad enough, but the sleeplessness was getting to them too. There was something in this place that poisoned the mind, and they did not want to linger a moment more than necessary. She knew how they felt. There was no telling how much longer it would take them to get to the Xhiang Xhi, and every day there was a day back.

  She visited Phaeca. Against Doja’s wishes, Phaeca had moved herself out of her tent and inside one of the emyrynn dwellings, where she had unrolled her sleeping-mat. It was warm and oddly sterile there, an irregularly shaped room with the curve of a tree bole as one wall. Protuberances of sap were moulded from parts of the floor and ceiling, things that could have been sculpture or which might have had a mundane and utilitarian purpose. A thin tunnel, too small for anything bigger than a mouse, opened out into the room. From what Kaiku could determine, it wound all the way up the tree until it was lost in the branches, but she could not imagine what it was for.

  Phaeca was making little sense. She was babbling as if feverish, but she had no temperature, and though she was agitated she was not sallow. She slapped Kaiku’s hand away when it was laid on her cheek, and muttered unpleasant things about her as if she was not in the room. Kaiku knelt by her for a time, deeply concerned. There was no healing possible: she had defences to keep others out, even other Sisters. Besides, the more she studied her companion, the more Kaiku worried that the affliction was not physical at all. Her shrieks had been the loudest last night. Like Lucia, the forest was battering her, and Kaiku did not know how well her sanity would hold.

  Gods, why did we ever come to this cursed place? she thought to herself, but she already knew the answer to that one. They came here because it was their last chance.

  She glimpsed the emyrynn a few times that day, flitting among the trees in the distance. Each time, she stared out into the blue and green folds of the forest and wondered about the nature of their curious hosts. She went to see Peithre, who was very weak but awake, and spoke with Tsata for a time. But he seemed odd to her today: there was something in his manner that she could not fathom, and eventually she gave up on trying and left him alone. The atmosphere in the camp depressed her, but she was stuck here, as they all were.

  She took to wandering around the village, to give herself space to think. The charge laid on her by Asara was a heavy one. At least she knew now why Asara had followed her into the forest: she had an investment to protect. But even if Kaiku could do it, the question was: should she? Did she dare allow a being like that to procreate?

  It was not the same to her as being asked to stop Asara having children. That she would never do. That was taking something away from her. But giving her the ability to breed seemed another matter entirely. It was action rather than inaction: every deed of her offspring, every result would be because of Kaiku.

  What if they all grew with Asara’s abilities? What if they were all as deceitful as their mother? How could they fail to be? Gods, she would be making Asara the progenitor of a new race. A race of beings who could take on any face, any human form; the perfect spies, lethal mimics, with unguessable life-spans. Only the Sisters would be able to penetrate their disguise.

  She caught herself. Her imagination was running away with her, perhaps. There was no guarantee that Asara’s off-spring would inherit her gift. And even if they did, there was no reason why they should become the beautiful and dreadful creatures that Kaiku envisaged. Asara’s nature would not necessarily be theirs.

  But the possibility was there. She could not deny that.

  She wanted to talk it over with Tsata. It was frustrating that he was so close by and yet she was oath-bound not to speak of it. She admired his incisive mind and his honesty. He would have been able to help her untangle the knots. He would have told her that action and inaction are the same in this matter, that if she was prepared to deny Asara the gift of fertility for fear of creating a race of monsters then she should be prepared to prevent her from conceiving too, and vice versa. He would have cut through the deceptions that she made for herself, the double standards and smokescreens of etiquette and belief. He would have told her that the real reason she was debating this was because she did not want the responsibility of having to make that choice.

  She knew all this, but it did not make the deciding any easier.

  Night stole across the land again, and this time there were no moons to leaven it.

  The soldiers had come to dread the darkness. The prospect of sleep was worse than the exhaustion of being awake, and many were too afraid to even try; yet always they were dragged down towards unconsciousness. Sentries nodded at their posts; heads lolled, and their owners were startled awake with a cry as the nightmares leaped hungrily upon them. The forest was a place that tricked the eye anyway, but deprived of sleep as they were, they were constantly seeing movement and fleeting hallucinations.

  ‘We have to set out tomorrow,’ Doja had growled at Kaiku. ‘These men can’t take this any longer. We’ll carry Phaeca and the Tkiurathi woman if necessary.’

  Kaiku had not flatly forebade it, but she was reluctant. In the end, she agreed that if Peithre’s condition improved overnight enough to safely move her, then they could fashion stretchers and set off again. She, too, was concerned about the state of mind of the party. Her kana-ministered metabolism meant that she was not so exhausted as the others, but she feared that accidents were bound to happen if there was much more of this. There were altogether too many rifles and jumpy trigger fingers in this camp.

  But there was one ray of hope among it all: just after the last of the dusk had fled the sky, word came to Kaiku that Lucia was awake and lucid. Kaiku hurried to her, and found her outside her tent. She gave Kaiku a fleeting smile and invited her to walk. They wandered a little way from the camp, among the nacreous wonders of the emyrynn, and Kaiku was relieved to see that she was indeed clear-headed and attentive.

  ‘The Xhiang Xhi is not far,’ Lucia said.

  ‘Is that so?’ Kaiku asked in surprise. ‘We cannot have penetrated very deep into the forest yet.’

  Lucia cast her a slyly amused look. ‘This is a place of spirits,’ she said. ‘We could walk forever and never reach the other side, or we could emerge there within an hour’s march. Distance is fluid here. Don’t you think it a coincidence that this village happened to be so close to where Peithre fell? In a forest this size, wasn’t that extraordinarily convenient?’

  ‘It had occurred to me,’ Kaiku admitted.

  ‘If the Xhiang Xhi did not want to be found, we would never find it,’ Lucia said. ‘But it does.’

  ‘Then why does it not appear? Why put us through this?’

  ‘I don’t know. The ways of the spirits are strange. Perhaps it’s testing us. Perhaps it’s curious about me, and wishes to study me first.’

  Kaiku did not like that thought. ‘You could still turn back, Lucia,’ she said. ‘It is not too late.’

  Lucia gave her a sorrowful look. ‘Oh, it is. Far too late.’ She looked away, out of the village through the dark trees and unfamiliar foliage. ‘Besides, if we turned back now we would never get out of the forest. The Xhiang Xhi wants to see me. It’s intrigued, I think. If not for that, we would not have survived even this long.’

  ‘If it wants to see you, why is it allowing us to be harmed?’ Kaiku asked rhetorically.

  Lucia answered anyway. ‘It wants to see me,’ she replied. ‘The rest of you are expendable, perhaps.’

&nbs
p; Kaiku felt a slow chill creep through her.

  Lucia turned with a suddenness of movement that made Kaiku stop walking. The younger woman gazed at her with an unfamiliar purpose in her eyes.

  ‘Lucia, what is it?’

  ‘There are things I must say to you,’ she said. ‘In case I never again get the chance to speak them.’

  Kaiku frowned. ‘Do not talk that way.’

  ‘I’m serious, Kaiku,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be this clear-headed again.’

  ‘Of course you will!’ Kaiku protested. ‘Once we get out of the forest, you will—’

  ‘Let me speak!’ Lucia snapped. Kaiku was shocked into silence. Lucia softened. ‘Forgive me. Let me say this. That is all I ask.’

  Kaiku nodded.

  ‘I want to thank you. That is all. You and Mishani. I want you to know that . . . I appreciate everything you have done for me. For being like sisters to me. And you have always, always been on my side. When all this is done, I . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I just wanted you to know. You have my love, and you always will.’

  Kaiku felt her eyes welling, and she gathered Lucia up in an embrace. ‘Heart’s blood, you make it sound like a farewell. We will come through this, Lucia. You will live to tell Mishani that yourself.’ Lucia clutched her closer. ‘I will protect you, even if it means my life.’

  ‘There are some things that even you cannot protect me from,’ Lucia whispered. And then she looked up, over Kaiku’s shoulder, and some aspect of her body language told Kaiku there was somebody there. She turned, and it was Heth.

  ‘Is Tsata with you?’ he asked without apology or preamble.

  The tone in his voice killed the caustic reply Kaiku was about to make. ‘I have not seen him,’ she replied instead.

  ‘But he left to go after you,’ Heth said, his features animate with confusion as he wrestled with the unfamiliar Saramyrrhic syllables. ‘Into the forest.’

  ‘I have not been out of the village,’ Kaiku said.

  ‘He saw you leave,’ Heth persisted. ‘I was with him. I did not see you, but he did. He said he must talk with you.’

  An odd foreboding was settling into Kaiku’s marrow. ‘When was this?’

  ‘A few minutes ago. Peithre has worsened; I came to fetch him.’

  Kaiku looked at Lucia. ‘Three nights past, the night I was attacked by the spirit in the trees . . . I saw you walk out into the forest, and I went to follow you.’

  Lucia looked blank. ‘I didn’t leave my tent that night. I was asleep, and there were guards outside.’

  ‘Gods!’ Kaiku hissed. ‘Go back to the camp! Heth, show me where he went!’

  Heth obeyed without hesitation, while Lucia hurried away, alarmed. Kaiku followed the Tkiurathi for a short distance, until he stopped and pointed. ‘That way.’

  Kaiku’s irises turned red. She would never be able to track a Tkiurathi through conventional means, even if she had the necessary skills; but in the Weave she could still hunt him. She could see his scent-trail, the faint agitation of air in his wake, the memory of his breath and the reverberation of his heartbeat.

  ‘See to Peithre,’ she murmured. ‘You cannot help me now.’

  And with that, she plunged into the forest.

  It swallowed her eagerly. Hanging vines and tendrils of blue plants brushed at her as she ran. The ground was treacherous, a tangle of roots and glittering rocks; it rose and dipped and twisted, making her speed reckless. But she read the ground as she read the air, predicting its contours through the threads of the Weave, and she was sure-footed.

  She cursed herself as she went. If only she had pushed Lucia a little more, if only she had thought to investigate further the incident when she had seen her walking away from camp. But Lucia had been impenetrable, her mind elsewhere, and Kaiku had not wanted to cause more trouble among the soldiers before she heard the story from Lucia’s own lips.

  Now she knew that there was no story. Lucia had not gone anywhere. Whatever it was she had been following that night, it was not Lucia. And Tsata had fallen for the same trick.

  If he died because of her stupidity . . .

  She was genuinely, utterly terrified. Not for herself, but for the incomplete half of that thought. She was afraid of the void that would be left in the wake of his passing. Adept at armouring her own heart, she had not realised how much she had missed him while he was away, how much it gladdened her to talk with him, to fence with his foreign mind-set, to simply have him near her. Not until now, not until she thought she might be about to lose him again, and permanently this time.

  She accelerated to a sprint, following his invisible trail, her boots sliding on the ground, her shoulders clipping trees that she failed to dodge entirely. There was a panic welling within her, something that threatened her with madness. She dared not think about what would happen if she found him dead, his eyes milky white and his face a map of swollen veins like the other man they had found. Even if she had to face down that massive shadow, that half-seen beast that had attacked her before, she would not falter.

  The sound of her passing was loud in the silence of the forest, the lashing of fronds against her body and the dull sound of her boots on the dirt. Something was whispering to her, some premonition that told her every second was precious, every instant she delayed could be the crucial one, the difference between facing the awful emptiness of Tsata’s death and the joy of finding him alive and well. Fighting her way through the golden tapestry of the forest, she cried out his name, hoping to warn him somehow, praying that he could hear her and that it was not too late.

  And then she burst through a screen of leaves and into a tiny patch of open ground, and there was Tsata, his outline a million glowing threads, turning towards her in surprise. And over his shoulder she saw something, some black and twisted entity that shared her shape in the physical world but not here in the Weave: a spirit that mimicked others, leading its victims away to kill them. Its illusion failed it then, and it turned its face upon her, and she saw there a doorway to the secrets of the spirit realm, a sight so incomprehensible that it would turn a man’s mind inside out and slay him on the spot. But she was a Sister of the Red Order, and she had seen things that no man had.

  ‘Do not look at her!’ she screamed, grabbing Tsata’s head and pulling it down into her shoulder. Her other arm she threw out at the spirit, and her kana burst free and tore into it. It howled, an unearthly shriek as Kaiku shredded through its defences and ripped into its essence, and then it was rent into tatters.

  The silence returned, and there was only the two of them. Kaiku became suddenly conscious of the nearness of their bodies. She released Tsata’s head and he raised it, a question in his pale green eyes. Though he did not understand, he knew by what he had heard that Kaiku had saved him from something. Their faces were a fraction too close still: he had not drawn away past the point where proximity could still pull lips and tongues together. They trembled there for an instant, on the cusp of that; and then she kissed him, and he melted into her, his arms sliding around her back.

  For a time, there was nothing but the sensation of it, the rhythm of their mouths meeting and parting, the pressure of their contact. Then, as their kisses became shallower until they were mere brushes of the lips, thought began to intrude once again. Kaiku opened her eyes – still blood-red in the aftermath of her kana – and saw Tsata looking back at her. Her gaze roamed him uncertainly, afraid of the blow that would shatter the fragile state they had found themselves in. She traced the lines of the tattoos on his cheeks, the orange-blond sap-stiffened hair, the line of his jaw; and she saw in him the antithesis of all she hated in her life, all the deceit and subterfuge and secrecy that had killed her family and torn her world apart. And yet she waited in terror for him to break the spell, to tell her that this was only a mistake of passion, that his brutal self-honesty would not allow him to go on with this if his heart was not in it.

  He seemed about to speak; but in the end, he moved to
kiss her instead. She pulled away fractionally, and he stopped, confused.

  ‘Peithre has worsened,’ she murmured. ‘You should go to her.’

  His pale green eyes flickered across her face. Then he was gone, disappearing without a word into the forest, leaving Kaiku alone.

  When Nuki’s eye next rose in the east, it found Mishani sitting on the shore of Lake Xemit, looking out over the water.

  It was a cold dawn, and around her she had a heavy crimson shawl, embroidered in gold. Her hair pooled on the cloth that she had laid down to prevent her dirtying her hem. She had been here most of the night, thinking, chasing herself in ever tighter circles until she was left with a conclusion. It was an unwise course, one that she dreaded to take, and she did not want to accept it; yet she knew in her heart that it was inevitable, and her protests were weak and failing fast.

  Presently she heard the tread of approaching feet on the dewy grass slope that led down from the temple complex of Araka Jo. She guessed it to be Yugi even before he walked into her line of sight.

  ‘Daygreet, Mishani,’ he said. ‘May I join you?’

  ‘Daygreet, Yugi. Please do.’ She moved across to make space for him on the cloth, and he sat down heavily next to her.

  ‘No sleep for you, then?’ he said.

  ‘Nor for you, it seems.’ She studied him. He looked dishevelled as ever, and he reeked of amaxa root. It was obvious what had kept him up.

  ‘I begin to wonder how many more nights I have left,’ he said. ‘Sleeping seems such a waste of precious time.’

  ‘That sounds a fast route to madness,’ Mishani said, half-seriously.

  Yugi scratched the back of his neck. ‘This whole land is in the grip of madness, Mishani. If I were mad, I might at least have a chance of understanding it.’

  They looked out across the lake for a time, before Yugi spoke again.

  ‘There is word that your mother will publish another book soon. Cailin speaks of plans in the wake of the information you have given us,’ he said, and coughed. ‘She’s still agitating for an assault on Adderach when Lucia returns. Depending on what news comes from this latest tale.’