The grass rolled out to the horizon. The loamy surface upon which it grew undulated in dips and mounds, but did not appear to be supported by any branch. Like an impossibly green and sturdy version of the Storm, it was broken only by columns of vegetation atop some of the slopes, twisting umbilical cords between loam and sky. The sky was vast, blue, and empty. All of Tymon’s instincts clamoured to him he was standing on a cloud and would pass right through, for no loam could be so solid or continuous. He reeled with vertigo and knelt down, pressing his fingers into the grass. A sweet smell filled his nostrils.
‘Well, you certainly don’t waste any time getting to the end of things,’ remarked the Oracle.
She emerged from the tangled vegetation behind him as if she had been there all along, waiting. She appeared as her older self again, grey-haired and handsome. His trance-body had become like hers, he saw; not the heavy illusion of flesh but an insubstantial, shimmering Sending. He would not fall through the loam. Indeed, he appeared to have very little tactile presence in this world at all, as if he were just remembering what it was like to touch grass and loam, not actually doing so. Only his sense of smell remained acute, delighting in the warm summer scents. He was filled with an irrational surge of wellbeing, as if he had just come home. He pushed the absurd thought away. He had a goal to accomplish.
‘Where’s Samiha?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Close by,’ answered the Oracle.
‘Where?’ He glanced about him. He had been sure he was moving toward his love, but now there was no sign of her. The grassy expanse was deserted. They were alone.
‘He’s not ready,’ interrupted another voice.
They were not alone, after all. Tymon glanced over his shoulder to see a man step out from behind the obscuring column of the Tree. He recognised his old guide, Ash, with surprise and pleasure. But the Focal’s face was troubled as he bowed to them. He held a pruning sickle, the blade bright in the sunlight; it was made of orah, Tymon grasped, though a type of that material different from any he had yet seen. It shone like the Sap with a fiery sheen.
‘Why did you bring him here, Matrya?’ frowned Ash. He might have been a ghost, but seemed more real and solid than they were, more in tune with this world. He rapped his fingers on the bark of the Tree. ‘He’s not supposed to come here until the life cycle is complete!’ he protested.
‘I didn’t bring him,’ replied the Oracle. ‘He managed it all on his own.’
Tymon’s attention wandered. Nobody was addressing him directly, and he felt like a small child whose elders speak of him over his head. He shaded his eyes, searching the loam-world for clues as to Samiha’s whereabouts. He had not considered the Tree of Being might have an end, or that other states might exist outside it. He noticed the other Focals from Marak were there, too. They sat at intervals among the branches of the Tree, half-hidden in the foliage, trimming it with their sickles of orah. He stared distractedly up at the green branches swaying above him. The Tree seemed too small. Despite the immense distance he had traversed within it, the whole thing appeared to have a circumference of little more than twenty paces. He studied the other columns of vegetation in the distance. They would be about the same size as the one he stood by. He shivered as the bizarre comprehension sunk in. His universe was merely one of many. There were other Trees of Being.
‘On his own?’ echoed Ash, in astonishment. ‘How so?’
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ noted the Oracle. ‘I suspect it’s because of her.’
The way she said it recalled Tymon’s attention. His eyes snapped back to his teacher, following her gaze. She was surveying the branches on which the Focals lavished their attention. He squinted at the tangle.
There was a face among the leaves.
He bit back a cry and sprang forward, scrabbling at the foliage. Samiha! He pushed aside the obscuring branches and found her there, before him. She was enmeshed in the Tree. She was the Tree. Her torso was part bark, part woody flesh. Her legs and feet were anchored in the loam and a mass of subsidiary branches sprouted from her arms, chest and back. Each strand of her green hair culminated in a spray of leaves. Her face, indeed most of her body, was covered in a membrane like the skin of a new plant. The bark was not rigid. He could see the breath rising in her chest, the delicate movement of the iris beneath each closed eyelid. The Tree-Samiha was asleep.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded of the Focals. ‘Why does she look like this?’
They paused their work to stare at him for a moment, but did not reply.
‘That is the true nature of your friend,’ answered the Oracle. ‘You wished to find her, to Read her. Here she is.’
‘I still say he’s not ready,’ cautioned Ash from the sidelines.
‘Well, we can’t wait for him to be,’ the Oracle replied. She smiled encouragingly to Tymon. ‘Read, child. Read, and you will find the vision you seek.’
Even as she said it, he began to recognise familiar shapes in the tendrils about Samiha’s head. He remembered the Oracle’s twig lessons. Haltingly, like an unpractised schoolboy, he reached out to trace the Leaf-Letters sprouting from his love in abundance. Ilim, Kudarat, Haya, Seth … The Letters appeared singly and together, some formed out of a conglomeration of others, and some like Haya existing in the space between. There were more than he could ever hope to discover, let alone interpret.
‘There are so many,’ he faltered. ‘How will I Read them all?’
‘You won’t,’ laughed the Oracle. ‘If you tried that we’d be here till the end of eternity, and the gardeners would lodge a complaint.’ She grinned at Ash, who stifled a sigh. ‘Remember, you’ve stepped outside your own universe,’ she continued to Tymon. ‘You aren’t bound by its laws any more. You don’t need to remain apart from the one you love. Touch her. Hold her. Read her.’
He acquiesced, feeling rather awkward with the Focals and the Oracle watching his every move. He placed his arms about Samiha’s slender trunk and pressed his ghostly face against hers. There was some sensation; he felt the cool grain of her cheek and breathed in a lungful of her perfume, a richer, sweeter variant of the grass-scent. He almost jumped out of his insubstantial skin as the Tree responded, quivering in his embrace. Samiha’s expression changed slightly, like that of a dreamer.
‘Definitely not ready,’ grumbled Ash.
‘Don’t be afraid, Tymon,’ urged the Oracle.
He took a deep breath and tried again. The Tree-woman baffled, even repelled him. She was both Samiha and not Samiha, both the girl he knew and something more, incomprehensibly alien. She shivered and rustled under his touch. Her skin was sticky. It clung to him like prickling static, drawing him in.
A man kicked a body on the floor.
‘Knowledge!’ exclaimed Tymon. He extracted his fingers hastily from the branch where they had sunk in, merging with the bark. ‘Ilim. She will cause good and evil to manifest themselves. She is the Judge …’
‘Go on,’ said the Oracle again, as he trailed off. ‘Speak the prophecy.’
Tymon hesitated. This experience was the exact opposite of the joyful freedom he had felt while travelling with the Sap. The Reading of Samiha confused and depressed him. He feared what the letters had to say. Reluctantly, he let his dream-fingers dissolve into the bark once more. The image of the man kicking the body flashed before him. He knew now who lay in the dark and dismal prison cell. The knowledge twisted in his gut like a blade. Truth spilled from his lips, racking him.
‘Her fate will be our reckoning,’ he gasped. ‘All our actions will be judged in this Action. All our good depends on this Good. If she is treated unjustly, how can we hope for mercy?’
He snapped his mouth shut and tore himself away from the clinging branches with an effort of will. He whipped around to face the Oracle and the five quiet gardeners. They had stopped their work to watch him, perched in the branches above.
‘This is awful!’ he cried. ‘I love Samiha. I can’t stand to see her hurt. I’d like n
othing better than to punish anyone who touches a hair on her head. But I also know she wouldn’t want this. She wouldn’t want to be this Judge person. How can the fate of one woman decide everything for a whole world?’
He was beginning to appreciate, dimly, that there was a unifying purpose in all that happened to the Kion. The Leaf-Letters spelled it out. Samiha’s life was quite literally crawling with meaning. But he could not yet piece together the story or decipher the significance of the whole.
The Oracle gazed at him calmly. ‘You’re not done,’ she said. ‘Let the Reading take its course. No prophecy is complete on its own.’
She was right, of course. He had extracted himself from the intolerable vision before it was finished. He glanced back at the peaceful face in the Tree, wondering how it could hide such a tumultuous experience. He had to Read Samiha’s life through to the end, however painful it might be. Gingerly, he took the Tree-woman in his arms again. The leaves closed about him, caressing, until he was lost from sight.
‘It’s a travesty,’ complained Ash in an undertone to the Oracle. ‘He has no idea who she is. He’s wading about inside her like a suckling beast.’
‘They’re all like that in the beginning,’ replied the Oracle. ‘Give him time.’
The Focal’s eyes gleamed. His companions waited among the branches, still and patient as statues.
‘Well, we have time, Matrya,’ said Ash. ‘We have all the time in the world. It’s just that I’m afraid he doesn’t.’
18
Search.
The prisoner’s eyelids fluttered open. She lay on her back on a table in a high-ceilinged room, in flickering candlelight. It was a ship’s hold, only accessible by a ladder leading to a hatch in the ceiling. From outside came the faint call of sailors and the creak of ropes. A dark form loomed over her: she flinched.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ murmured Father Ferny. His brows knit with concentration as he placed a candle on a stool nearby, and bent over her. ‘This will only take a moment.’
The priest sprinkled spirits on a cloth from a small flask and cleaned the wound on the woman’s chin. By good luck the soldiers had not botched her looks entirely, he thought. There was just this one massive cut. If he could salvage the face, all would be well. It was the only part of her that would show at the trial, after all. He threaded a fine bone needle and passed it through the flesh of her chin, drawing the split tissues together. She winced, but remained mute in the light of the candle, her eyes fixed on him.
‘Almost done,’ he said brightly, cutting the excess thread with a small knife. ‘There. You’ll heal just fine if you don’t touch it for a while.’
The prisoner did not answer, staring at him like a wary animal. She wore a pilgrim’s grey shift that hung down to her scrawny knees. It was hard to think of her as a woman at all, thought Ferny. Besides the ugly colour of her skin, she was too thin, with the build of a starved boy. It did not help that they had cut off her hair in the colonial prison. She had been so misused, so systematically mauled during her two weeks of confinement there, that he had feared for her life. It would not do to bring a dead sorceress back to Argos city. But she was recovering well — physically, at any rate. Most of the damage the soldiers had done could be hidden. This would be the job that secured him his tenure, he thought. He had to handle it right.
‘You just rest there a bit,’ he told her, forcing himself to meet that animal gaze. ‘I’ll go get you some water. I bet you’d like some water, hey?’
She said nothing at all and continued to watch him as he hurried up the ladder from the hold to the deck. Sailors’ voices drifted through the open square of the hatch, accompanied by the occasional hiss of ether. The dirigible sped its way over the canopy.
Truth.
‘It’s just a formality,’ said the priest to the prisoner sitting across from him at the table. ‘A simple admission of your activities in Marak, not a repudiation of your faith.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, if you do wish to recant, you have only to say the word. I will be more than happy to assist you in writing your confession, shanti. It won’t buy your freedom but I imagine it will save your soul.’
He remained silent, giving her the opportunity to speak. The Council wanted this troublesome priestess, an advocate of the notorious Sap cult, convicted of heresy and treason. They needed a confession of her involvement with the Nurian revolt and would no doubt extract it by torture in Argos, if necessary. Should she recant now, it would be an even greater coup. The rebel priestess repents! It would be worth a thousand tenures. Ferny could almost taste the accolades. But the shanti only sat propped up in the chair opposite him, as mute and shrinking as an idiot, gazing at the fresh-cut sheaves of paper and writing paraphernalia on the table. Her head from where he sat was obscured by the candle-flame, so that a yellow glow seemed to spring from her shoulders. He hoped the soldiers had not knocked the sense out of her completely.
The prisoner’s body had healed over the past two days but her mind, apparently, had not. She had said no word in all that time and barely touched her meals. A full plate of food sat in a corner of the hold, along with a jug of water. She had drunk the water, he noted. He supposed it was a start.
‘I have to officially identify you first.’ He dipped his quill pen into a small inkwell. ‘Name it?’
Her answer, when it came, seemed to have traversed an enormous distance to pass her lips. Her voice was so faint he could barely hear it.
‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to repeat that,’ he replied cheerfully, tapping the excess ink off his pen.
‘I am Samiha, twelfth Kion of the House of Saman. You have no right to hold me here. I charge the colonial soldiers in Marak with gross abuse of a prisoner under their guard. I charge you with criminal negligence for allowing it to happen.’
Ink dripped off the quill-tip as the priest gaped at her in shock.
Power.
‘Let’s go through this again,’ sighed Father Ferny, pressing his fingers against his aching forehead. Three days on, and the heretic had not changed her preposterous story; he always got the hard cases, he thought.
‘You’re not the Kion of Nur,’ he said, slowly and clearly, as if speaking to a child. ‘The Kion is a man. His name is Jah Saman. He lives in the north Domains.’
‘That was my father. He died some years ago. I am now Kion of Nur.’
Ferny gazed at the blurred lines of the confess ion-leaf. ‘You can’t be the Kion,’ he muttered through the searing pain in his temples.
There was the ghost of a smile on the prisoner’s scabbed mouth. She sat straighter in her chair, as if she took heart from the discussion. She had begun to eat again, he reflected dolefully, eyeing the empty plate and jug in the corner. He told himself he ought to be pleased. But her renewed liveliness irked him. He guessed now why she had roused the soldiers in Marak to such paroxysms of fury. She was both helpless and inviolable, both weak and strong. It was most perplexing.
‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ she murmured. The wounded animal look had left her eyes: they shone intently in the shadows of the hold.
‘How in God’s green name would I recognise you?’ he snapped, losing patience. ‘I’ve never set foot in the Nurry shrine.’
‘I just wondered … I remember you quite well.’
‘Well, good for you,’ he sneered. ‘Now, I’d be grateful if you could remember yourself and give me your real name.’
‘I’m sorry for any confusion,’ she replied calmly. ‘But I am who I say I am. Just ask the Council’s new recruit, the one travelling with you.’
Ferny frowned. How did the prisoner know about the recruit? He had picked up the defector in secret. ‘What makes you think he’ll confirm all this nonsense?’ he objected. His voice sounded peevish in his own ears.
‘He?’ echoed the prisoner. Her lips stretched, painfully, into a smile. ‘But of course, the Council doesn’t recruit women, does it? Well, your recruit — what did he say his name was?’
‘Jed,’ answered the priest, stiffly.
‘Jed, then,’ she returned without missing a beat, ‘is well aware of my identity. He was once a Grafting student, you see.’
Beauty.
The priest sat hunched in his chair, tapping the nib of his pen against an empty sheet of paper in sullen fury. Not one line of confession had he extracted from the woman sitting opposite him in an entire week. Not a word had she said regarding her rebel activities. When she spoke it was to exhort him on spiritual matters, to argue and reason with him, as if he were the one in the wrong. A week after her ordeal in Marak, her bruises had barely healed, and yet she had acquired a new lease of life. She had completely taken over their daily interviews, transforming what was supposed to be an interrogation into a debate. She seemed intent not simply on protesting her innocence but on proving her point. She had acquired an extensive knowledge of Argosian holy writ from some benighted source, and used it like a weapon. She quoted volleys of scripture at him until he could have torn up the prophecies of Saint Loa and stuffed them one by one down her throat. He no longer found the Kion pitiable in the least.
Her identity had been confirmed by the Nurian defector travelling with them to Argos, a character who was himself a complete enigma to Ferny. The improbably smooth and beautiful youth had been delivered to him by one Ephelius Gowron, a sometime agent of the Council in the colonies who inspired little confidence in Ferny. The agent had, by the same token, unloaded a diabolical machine into his care, said to fly without the wind. All items in question — prisoner, defector and mechanical abomination — were to be transported to Argos city, in secret. Ferny felt rather put upon. Were it not for the assurances of the Special Envoy, and the letter bearing the Council’s seal that had awaited him in Marak, he would have dismissed the whole affair as a peculiarly cumbersome rebel plot. But it appeared for now that everyone was telling the truth. Gowron was an agent of the seminary; the prisoner was indeed the Kion of Nur; her former subject was genuinely seeking asylum in Argos. It had been gratifying to receive a personal letter from the Envoy, thought Ferny, raising weary eyes to the harridan across the table. But was it really worth this amount of trouble?
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