‘So Father Lace was human, once?’ Tymon found himself balking at the idea: he did not feel in any way akin to the dreaded Beast.
‘No, Tymon,’ she said. ‘I said the stories were alike, not identical. There is a great difference in scale. The universe is far older and bigger than you think. Before the Nurian empire, before the Old Ones and all that went before, there was the Envoy and his kind. They have lived for eons. Imagine that. Imagine just how long the Special Envoy of shadows has hung on to his pride and resisted change.’
That was all the information she would volunteer about Lace, however. Despite Tymon’s questions she refused to speak on the subject further, as if it were distasteful to her. She told him to practise his watchwords if he wished to vanquish demons. When they stopped to rest she had him trace out the forms of the Leaf-Letters with shards of twig or bark to memorise the shapes. She made him reel off the names of every single ‘child', offshoot and permutation, until he knew them all by heart.
So it went on through the third day, and then a fourth and fifth. He walked down the line of planks, memorised watchwords and chanted what he had memorised until he felt his tongue would wear out with the soles of his feet. The hours of traipsing through the misty twig-forests melted into each other, changeless and dripping wet. His body began to feel the effects of privation and he suffered from a continual, gnawing hunger. The rain fell without cease; the arid Eastern Canopy appeared to have called down a year’s worth of water to fling at them, when it was least welcome. From what the Oracle had said after Nightside’s departure, Tymon had expected to arrive at a village along the way, or meet travellers coming in the opposite direction, from whom they might beg a meal. But the grey, mournful canopy was devoid of life. Barely a bird broke the silence and the thickets stood empty and cold. The Oracle refused point blank to waste their time, as she put it, conducting another Reading to determine what lay ahead. No whisper of the Sight visited Tymon unbidden, awake or sleeping, and he dared not disobey his teacher by attempting a trance on his own.
By the sixth day his progress had slowed, stymied by fatigue and the sheer distances involved. The road threaded eternally through the thickets, wound up and down limbs and crossed the plunging gaps between the stands of twigs on spindly rope-bridges. His pace reduced to a dreary shamble and he was unable to keep up his chants and exercises. Even the Oracle stopped talking. Despite her previous assurances, he felt a sense of impending doom. Another three weeks’ journey remained before they would arrive in Sheb, if Sheb still existed, and they had eaten their very last packet of bark-flour.
That evening, when he lowered his sling by the side of the road, he found the Oracle absent and her host fast asleep. Neither resurfaced during the night; he was left to deal with his hunger and discomfort alone, as best he could. He wearily constructed another lean-to of shards, tossing and turning on the hard bark a long time before he finally closed his eyes.
Someone was laughing at him. He heard the sound quite distinctly — a snarling, yapping howl of derision. It filled his ears as he awoke abruptly in the hour before sunrise, sweating in the gloom of the lean-to. Outside the moon had set and the twig-tips were murky grey spikes against the sky. The tiny, bundled shape of the Oracle breathed steadily beside him. Though the laughter may have been no more than a dream, it left Tymon with a restless sense of dissatisfaction. He crawled out of the lean-to and sat on his haunches, feeling the dampness of the twig-thicket press against him. Why did the Oracle hold him back? he wondered. He might have practised the trance under her supervision a dozen times by now, and honed his skills. He might have set his mind to rest regarding Samiha and the Freehold or located other travellers on the road. It seemed to him that the Oracle’s caution was excessive. He had experienced no ill effects when he used the Grafting to help Lai. Perhaps extreme circumstances warranted extreme measures. Perhaps his teacher was even testing him. Maybe she expected him to attempt the trance on his own.
On impulse he settled himself cross-legged on the bark, wrapping his cloak about his shoulders. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, repeating the two watchwords the Oracle had said would bring on the trance. Noni, nona, nonen, he murmured. Haya, heya, ho. Self-sacrifice and emptiness, the qualities a Grafter must show in order for the Sap to work through him. We should be grasses in the wind, she had lectured him. We should be hollow reeds and let the Sap flow through us. Where there is pith, selfishness, it cannot go. If we are blocked by fear and pride, it passes by. Heya ho, heya ho, muttered Tymon diligently.
Absolutely nothing happened.
He started again, crooning the ‘words of welcome’ and summoning up his concentration as best he could. The damp chill of the bark seeped through the seat of his breeches. He had to focus on the theme for the Reading, he remembered. That was easy enough. The image of Samiha sprang up in his mind’s eye, laughing softly beneath the sleeping platform in Sheb. He could almost feel her breath on his face. The impression was so strong that his eyelids flew open.
Samiha was not there. The thickets were grey and empty. He had almost decided his efforts had come to nothing, when he realised he could not move. The trance had worked, at least in part: he was rooted to the bark, severed from physical sensation. But there was no Tree of Being, no flaming Sap to be seen. He was still in the ordinary world, caught in some uneasy border area between wakefulness and sleep.
He peered at the twigs ahead of him in trepidation. Something was not right. There was a hole in the thickets in front of him, a blind black gash that grew like a tumour, eating all it touched. Life and form collapsed on contact with it. It consumed the twigs, the bark, the air itself. Tymon was gripped by the conviction that someone or something waited on the other side of that opening. When the gap was big enough — when it had eaten enough of the world — the thing on the other side would come through. A lump of horror rose in his throat. He made out the stealthy tap and scrape of claws, the snuffling intake of breath. He recognised those nightmare sounds, but could not will his limbs to move.
‘Ruha.’ A little figure stepped swiftly in front of him. He saw the Oracle march up to the gap and pull the edges smartly shut, as one would a curtain.
‘Ruha, ruhaya, ruhani,’ she piped in her childish treble. Then she strode back to Tymon, and without hesitation slapped him across the face with the flat of her hand.
He blinked, stirred and came to himself, released from the soured trance. There was no sign of the tear in the thickets. Dawn had broken above the twig-tips, grey and cloudy. A light rain began to fall. The world was reassuringly solid and smelled of wet bark. The Oracle crossed her arms over her tiny chest. He squirmed before her in embarrassment.
‘Next time you open a passage to the Veil, I suggest you just step right through it,’ she remarked, dryly. ‘That way you can kill yourself more efficiently.’
‘I’m sorry, Ama,’ he mumbled, hanging his head. ‘I wanted to help.’
He had encountered precisely the danger she had warned him about. He had made the typical error of an untried Grafter and flubbed the trance, opening up a passage to who knew what horrors. He shuddered at the thought of what lay lurking on the other side of the pernicious gap.
‘I know what you wanted, Tymon,’ she said. Her shoulders sagged in weariness. ‘But remember: I won’t always be there to help you, when you take it into your head to help others.’
She walked back to the lean-to and curled herself up on the bark, out of the rain.
‘I’ve learned my lesson,’ vowed Tymon, joining her. ‘I’ll listen to you from now on, Ama.’
But the Oracle did not answer. She was asleep again, her head with its riot of pale curls propped against the rough wall.
She did not stir a muscle when he lifted her into the sling an hour later and set off down the everlasting branch-road, his stomach empty and his conscience vexed. He felt both ashamed and frustrated by his failure to master the trance, and would have liked to ask the Oracle how to avoid a similar mistake in
the future. She slept on without break that morning, however, leaving him to reflect on his foolishness alone. He wondered whether this was how she meant to punish him for his disobedience.
But by midday, when he had halted and unstrapped the sling, wishing in vain for lunch, he discovered there might be another reason for the Oracle’s absence. He found to his alarm that Lai’s little head was hot, her cheeks flushed with fever. He had no means of treating the sick child and no way of asking the Oracle’s advice. There was nothing for it but to rest himself, and carry on. He took off his own cloak and wrapped it around the girl again thankful that the rain had given way to patchy sunlight. All afternoon he staggered on down the deserted road, weak with hunger. A sense of despair crept over him. In his fatigue he kept wandering off the planks and bumping against the twigs on either side. When nightfall came he lurched a few steps into the thicket and collapsed. He did not have the strength to build a shelter, but lay Lai on the bark beside him and spread his cloak over them both. He did not know if he would have the strength to go on the next day without food. The Oracle did not regain consciousness and the little host burned with fever, whimpering through her dreams.
Sometime in the night, he awoke to find the moon shining in his eyes and Ash sitting by him on the frosty bark. He was not at all surprised to see the fifth Focal on this occasion. The apparition was in keeping with the way the light danced through the twigs, a necessary part of the scene. Ash smiled. He appeared to have lost his scar.
‘You’re running a high fever,’ he said.
Tymon nodded his head. It throbbed and his throat burned as if it were filled with sawdust. ‘Noni,’ he croaked. ‘Noni, nona, nonen.’
Then he fell silent in confusion, realising that he had used a watchword instead of speaking normally.
‘Be that as it may,’ observed the Focal, ‘I fear you have gotten yourself into a spot of trouble. You can’t wait here.’
Tymon nodded again and stood up, shaking. Although the air stung his cheeks and his breath smoked, he did not feel in the least bit cold. His head stabbed with pain as if it contained sharp splinters.
‘It’s my asha,’ he managed to gasp out. ‘I have to do it.’
‘Yes. Well. Some of us don’t acquire a new body every time we expire in the thickets,’ said his companion tersely. ‘Really, she ought to have known better.’
Tymon gathered up the tiny form of the Oracle in his arms, defensive. ‘It wasn’t her fault. Nightside left us and we had to go on. Asha, ashen, ashk.’
‘I see you appreciate your teacher at last,’ sighed the other. ‘Well, don’t stop now. Keep going. Stay on the path.’
‘I’ll ignore all the offshoots,’ babbled Tymon, as he strapped the unconscious Oracle into her sling. ‘I’ll stick to the principal Letters.’
He teetered on the road, the worn lightwood planks bright in the moonlight. He had walked several paces before he heard Ash calling to him.
‘You’re going in the wrong direction,’ remarked the apparition. ‘Turn around.’
Tymon did so, weaving like a drunkard. He craned his aching neck up at the sky, blinking at the swathes of bright stars between the twigs. He had been wrong about this place, he thought. It was not forsaken. The Eastern Canopy was beautiful, simply beautiful. How could he not have seen it?
‘I’m worried about you,’ said Ash, falling into step beside him. ‘One bit of fever and your mind goes to shreds. You’ll be throwing yourself into a Tree-rift next.’
‘Oh, you needn’t worry about that,’ coughed Tymon, his teeth chattering. ‘It’s the wrong time of year for that, I’ll die in spring,’ he added as an after thought.
It seemed to Tymon in his delirium that the world was full of meaning. The Leaf-Letters were everywhere. There was no need for a trance: he simply Saw things as they were. He read messages in the twigs that crossed and re-crossed each other, slicing up the sky; he understood the warnings in the clouds and the song of dappled sunlight. The bark beneath his feet filled him with wonder, for it contained an account of all that had ever been or would ever be etched into its weathered surface. He could have tarried and read those tales for a lifetime, expiring before he was halfway through one crumbling grey shard. The fragility of the world took his breath away. He thought that if he were to touch the twigs growing by the road they would fall to dust. They were gossamer. He himself was about to melt into thin air.
And yet he did not quite lose himself in the euphoria of illness. A dim urgency spurred him on, though he had forgotten where he was headed or why it was so critical that he continue to walk, keep to the path, carry his burden. He did know that the bundle on his back contained something precious. He was transporting a treasure. His journey was important because he was the only one, for the moment, who could accomplish it. He had no concept of time. There was only the eternal present, whether night or day, cold or warm, pleasant or painful. Distinctions became meaningless to him. He called out to the twigs as he passed, hailed them as brothers. They leaned against each other and raised their arms in salute. He must have talked aloud to himself, too, for in brief moments of lucidity he had the sense that somebody had just finished speaking, or singing, or in any case making a great deal of noise.
Or perhaps he was talking to the other one. There was someone else on the road with him. It was not Ash. A shadow accompanied him, a figure in a hooded cloak, appearing in the thickets to his left or to his right alternately, flitting through the twigs. At first he thought it was simply his own outline cast by the light. Then he realised the figure appeared on the wrong side of the road, contradicting the sun. It reminded him of Nightside’s hooded silhouette. It never approached, but walked by him at a steady pace. He did not call to it, unsure of its intentions. It did not appear to wish him harm, however, and he soon grew accustomed to its presence, even glad of its company. Once he waved to it and it waved back. Tymon laughed aloud, for in his unhinged state the autonomous shadow struck him as highly amusing.
So far gone was he that when he ceased to walk and found himself lying prone, he felt he was still moving. This strange sensation appeared to be borne out by the road itself. He lay on his back with his head to one side, unable to shift his limbs. And yet the twigs slipped by, the view before him changed and his voyage continued. The path between the thickets was suddenly wider, a proper highway cut into the bark with two lines of planks running along it like parallel snakes. The cloaked figure still accompanied him, but seemed less independent and alive, flowing over the twigs as an ordinary shade would do. He began to mark the passage of night and day in discrete, alternating segments. The surface beneath him, he noticed, was a comfortable mattress. At the same time as he remembered to feel pleasure, his body made a host of aches and pains known to him. Slowly, life returned and he found himself lying in a straw pallet, blinking at a basket-lantern that swung on a rope from the ceiling above.
There was a continual, grinding noise in his ears. He sat up laboriously and took in the open side, shuddering roof and swaying curtains of a house-cart. At his feet lay Lai, fast asleep and firmly wrapped in a quilt. The child’s face was pinched and drained but no longer feverish. His cloaked companion had disappeared; only the shadow of the cart flitted along the road.
‘Hush,’ said a voice from nearby. A hand pushed him gently but firmly back onto the pallet. ‘You should rest. You’ve been very ill.’
A face, lined and kindly, peered down at him. By the time he remembered that it was the face of a Nurian, a woman, and that she had been speaking in a language he did not normally comprehend, the transformation was complete. The vision of a world without borders faded and everyday reality returned. When the woman spoke again, he was obliged to shake his head and show with gestures of apology that he could not understand her.
‘Speaky Argosi?’ she asked, her eyebrows lifting in surprise.
He nodded, nonplussed. He expereinced the disagreeable sensation he had forgotten a vital truth known to him only an instant befo
re, the world he could no longer remember.
16
‘What are your connections to the Nurry rebels?’
The colonial captain bent over the woman on the floor, shouting in her face. He was a small man, pop-eyed and livid with the sense of his own importance; he strutted about the jail cell as if performing for some invisible audience, hardly giving the prisoner time to reply.
‘I have no—’
‘What did your co-conspirators send you back for? Were you going to place another bomb under the Governor’s palace, rebel slut?’
‘I never placed the first one,’ said Samiha. It was useless. He was not listening.
‘Do you have any accomplices in the city? What are their names? Did you come here to spy for the Lantrian government?’
The litany of questions rattled on. She watched the soldier, astounded.
‘Or did you just come on a rabble-rousing mission?’ He practically screamed in her ear, leaning so close that a gob of spittle came to rest on her cheek. She attempted to ignore it. ‘In that case, you badly miscalculated your popularity, shanti. The residents of Marak have no further use for your mischief. As you saw, they were only too happy to turn you over to my men.’
It was true, thought Samiha, wincing as the soldier bellowed. The populace of Marak had stayed to hear her speak from the roof of the old temple, then stayed to see her arrested by the colonial guard. No one had raised a finger to help. She tried, surreptitiously, to wipe her cheek on a corner of her sleeve.
It was a mistake. The colonial captain reached out like a darting snake and slapped her hand away from her face.
‘My spit stays on you, whore,’ he snarled. ‘You disgust me. You fill me with disgust. My disgust is so great that it spills out on you. You’ll learn to be grateful for it. Won’t she, boys?’
He glanced around at the two other guards who had just entered the cell, his lips distorted in a conniving leer. The two soldiers grinned back vapidly. One, an adjunct of low grade, carried a blunt-looking hardwood knife. The single, smoking candle affixed to the wall behind them guttered and shrank as they passed, as if reluctant to shed its light.
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