“Gatekeeper,” Aforis said, and Aoun lifted his crumpled, tortured face from his hands in response.
“Yes?”
“Have you ever travelled to Atwith’s Temple?”
“No.”
“Ever received any communication from Atwithland?”
“No.” A spark flared in Aoun’s deep-set eyes. “I serve the goddess of new life.”
Aforis crouched beside him, laying a bracing hand on the other man’s back.
“And it’s imperative that you continue serving her. But before you resume the custom of wandering naked and taking alms, there’s something in Atwith’s Temple you must see. Someone you must meet. I beg you, take this skirt of bones and put it in the hands of its owner. Atwith himself.”
“Impossible. Atwith and Audblayin can never—”
“You yourself are neither.” Aforis was gentle but relentless. “And it’s not true that they can’t meet. She has gone to him now. She must go to him before she can be born again. I promise, if you meet with Atwith, you won’t regret it.”
“How can you promise that? What do you know?”
Aforis hesitated.
“I don’t know anything. There is a curse on me, and what fleeting thoughts I have are quickly lost. Yet this resolution remains.”
Aoun took the skirt of bones.
“The first time I laid eyes on you,” he told Aforis, “a sorceress held your leash. She used you to set the skies on fire with lightning. You threw yourself off the edge of this platform at the first opportunity, rather than allow her to keep using you.”
“The goddess Ehkis saved me. She sent me back to Airakland. Where my Temple was destroyed. I, too, catastrophically failed my master that day.”
“I’ll take this to Atwithland. I’ll meet with Atwith. And if I sense Audblayin in his halls, I’ll beg for her forgiveness.”
Aforis rejoined Nirrin and Leaper. They tried to leave a second time, but before they could take more than twenty steps away from the crowd of Servants and Gardeners surrounding the immobile winged one, they were accosted by an older Servant with a shaved head.
“Tarry another moment, Skywatcher Aforis, I beg you!” the woman called. Aforis waited for her to catch up to him. “Do you mean to leave this demon here?”
“It’s not my demon,” Aforis said, smiling.
“She won’t move,” Leaper told the Servant. “She won’t harm you. You were all there when Audblayin made me her Bodyguard. So long as I don’t fall asleep, the forest is safe.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, short-lived Bodyguard to my dead mistress.” The shaven-headed Servant folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “The barrier is weak. Permeable. The very thing your promotion was supposed to prevent has come to pass. Can’t you feel it?”
Leaper took a deep breath in through his nostrils, drawing in with the scent of mushed fungus, moulted owl feathers, and tapir dung the magical information he’d been too distracted to dwell on.
The barrier was weak. All the invisible threads of life that had pulsed so strongly around him were muted. Only the wards around the Garden and the thread connecting Leaper himself to the Temple remained robust.
“You’re right,” he said, shamefaced. Distantly, he could sense the edges of vigorous, thick, impenetrable barrier separating Canopy from Understorey, along the border of the long, curling, eastern niche of Oxorland, where the sun goddess held sway, and in the south at the falling fig, where Audblayinland, Ehkisland, Ukakland, Irofland, and Oxorland all met. “Our part of the barrier is barely there,” he admitted. “My sister Imeris made peace between the niches and Understorey, so we don’t have attacks from Gannak or, gods forbid, from the Loftfol fighting school, to worry about. But what Nirrin said, about demons entering, and about frightened people failing to pay tribute, starting a cycle of vulnerability, could still come true.”
“What should we do?” the Servant demanded, looking to Nirrin, who was still dressed and armed as Audblayin’s Bodyguard should be, even though her allegiance had changed.
“You must send Gardeners and Servants from house to house, Iririn,” Nirrin answered, seeming stricken that she wouldn’t be the one to lead them. “Warn them of the danger of demons. Offer to bring pregnant women, the elderly, and parents with small children behind the wards of the Garden. All others must be evacuated to the palace. The king must send his soldiers, along with every fuel finder and woodworker, with axe and saw and as many cutting tools as you can gather together, to cut the branch roads behind us as we leave Audblayinland. The entire niche must be separated from the rest of Canopy, for the protection of the other kingdoms, and to keep the panic, fear, and failure of other barrier sections from spreading. When Audblayin’s power returns to full strength, we can regrow the roads.”
Iririn nodded, unfolding her arms, looking ready to begin chopping at branch roads herself.
“We don’t know how long the barrier will be weak,” Nirrin went on. “We don’t know how long it will take for Audblayin to be reborn, or where she will be. The people may need to stay behind wards or walls for successive monsoons, for a season, or for less than half a moon.”
“The Garden and Palace can feed them through several monsoons, if need be,” Iririn said. “But Nirrin, won’t you come with me to the king to explain all of this? The flying monster, the change in Bodyguard, the death of the goddess?”
Nirrin glanced at Leaper and sighed.
“It may be best if the king isn’t told about the change in Bodyguard,” she said. She looked to Aforis. “But we will be passing by the palace on the way to Airakland. If the Skywatcher will permit a short delay.”
“The pressure drawing those who serve Airak to the south is in both of us,” Aforis told her. “If you can tolerate delay, so can I.”
“There’s something else you haven’t thought of,” Leaper told Nirrin. “If you want the roads severed as quickly as possible, there are others you can call on. Understorians. My mothers don’t have spines, but they all once lived in the Garden. My fathers have sworn not to kill chimeras, but other demons have often been their prey. Send a bird to them. They’ll come. Understorians will help you.”
Iririn looked repulsed, but Nirrin nodded briskly.
“Of course. Iririn, fetch writing materials and one of the messenger birds from a cage in my high study marked ‘Our Mistress’s Mother.’ Obviously I no longer have any right to give you orders, but quickly, please.”
The Servant dashed to obey.
“Your fathers,” Aforis said while they waited. “They’re hunters?”
“They taught Imeris everything she knew,” Leaper answered, grinning. It wasn’t strictly true; Imeris had gone to Loftfol and duelled Odel’s Bodyguard Aurilon every year for five years. But it was Bernreb who’d presented her with her first blade, and Marram who’d taught her how to fly.
He almost pitied any dayhunters that tried to get by them.
THIRTY-SEVEN
LEAPER, NIRRIN, and Aforis gazed up at the palace of the king of Audblayinland.
They stood on a smooth, white floodgum path. It connected their tree to the belly of the king’s gobletfruit tree-trunk dwelling, which was fancifully shaped like the figure of a man standing. Its two largest windows and main balcony formed the eyes and mouth of the figure. They glowed orange with braziers, which exuded insect-repelling smoke and smouldered in the dark.
“It’s creepy-looking,” Leaper said. The rooms of the palace were hollowed from the broad chest and square-jawed head of the figure. Both branch-arms were raised high, so that the leafy tips of the spread, reaching fingers formed a green gobletfruit canopy interlocking with the foliage erupting from the head.
No other tree’s foliage touched that of the palace. It was a figure standing alone.
Which means chimeras won’t be able to come near it. Once this road under our feet is cut away.
“It definitely looks friendlier in the daytime,” Nirrin said. “Attention! King’s soldiers! Show
yourselves, if there are sentries at their posts. I have an urgent message for His Royal Highness from the Garden.”
As they waited for the ponderous, bronze-studded gate to be unlocked and two soldiers, armed with spears, to march along the floodgum path to meet them, the entirety of the gobletfruit tree that hosted the palace shivered, shedding a thumb-thickness of its smooth brown skin all at once in great rolls and curls.
“What was that?” Leaper asked Nirrin. Weak as Audblayin is right now, I felt the magic. I smelled the gobletfruit sap. The approaching soldiers ignored the peeling bark, even as a big sheet of it hit the path ahead of them. “Audblayin’s bones!”
“We don’t swear by her bones here,” the closest soldier said, grinning, kicking the bark aside with one sandalled foot as he closed. He wore a short brown skirt and tunic, with leather armour over the top.
“We swear by Audblayin’s pelvis,” added the other soldier. She pointed with her spear at the head section of the palace. Leaper squinted at something grey which crowned the forehead of pale reddish-brown new bark. “That’s the source of the magic that makes our palace grow new skin so quickly and shed it all the time. So’s nothing can get purchase, see? Not demons, and not Understorians.”
“That’s exactly why we’ve come to see you,” Aforis said.
It occurred to Leaper that he didn’t need to be there while they discussed the failure of the barrier and set about preparing Audblayinland for what was to follow. Just as the soldiers began nodding and agreeing to take Aforis and Nirrin to their king, Leaper excused himself, promised to return quickly, and ran lightly along the branch roads towards another gobletfruit tree.
I’ve seen enough of palaces.
He came to a halt in front of the oval-shaped door of the House of Epatut. There, a different kind of guard waited to accost him.
“Not so fast, stranger,” a little girl said, threatening him, shockingly, with the bared spines of an Understorian warrior.
Leaper peered at her in the light of the single Airak’s lantern fixed to the high road along which he’d come. Her face was black as onyx, and as beautiful, yet she had Understorian spines. Maybe she’d fallen from Canopy as a babe and been raised again later, but that wasn’t possible; her accent was entirely Canopian. Leaper drew himself indignantly up, letting his own speech fall into the pattern of the firewheel tree.
“One who walks in the grace of Audblayin,” he said, barely catching himself before saying Airak, “would have words with Wife-of-Epatut, if it please her to receive me.”
“It doesn’t please her,” the girl said. “The silk markets are closed, and this house is not a market. You’re too shabbily dressed to be a very good merchant, anyway. When will you fools learn? She isn’t interested in marrying again.”
“Where did you get those spines?” Leaper demanded, distracted by them, hardly listening. “From Loftfol? I can’t believe it. They’re just selling them to anyone, these days, are they? When I was granted mine—”
Before he could blink, the extended spines were at his throat.
“When you were granted yours?” the girl inquired. “I see neither spines nor empty creases.”
Leaper swallowed carefully.
“I lost them not long ago, in service of my life, thanks to the Godfinder. My name is Leaper. I’ve a proposition for your mistress, not a marriage proposal but a chance to leave the past that haunts her behind. I’ve got nothing to hide. Imeris was my adopted sister. But we haven’t got long. Audblayin is dead, and the barrier has fallen. If Wife-of-Epatut won’t pack up her House and come with me to Time, she’ll have no choice but to take refuge with the other citizens, either at the palace or behind the wards of the Garden.”
The girl withdrew her spines, stepped back, and gaped at Leaper.
“Audblayin dead! How?”
“Betrayed by the Godfinder,” Leaper lied. It came more easily than he’d dreaded. “Servants and soldiers alike will be looking more closely at anyone with ties to Understorey in the wake of this terrible crime.”
She took a while to consider this, and Leaper realised she was older than he’d first assumed; maybe fourteen or fifteen monsoons.
“My name is Oken,” she said eventually. Grudgingly. “I suppose Aunty Igish will have to see you. Go inside. Ahead of me.” Without taking her eyes from him or presenting a front-on target, she opened the oval-shaped door.
Leaper walked down a hallway filled with smoke. The insect-repelling fires here had only recently been extinguished and the door closed for the night. He stopped when he reached a room that reminded him of the storage sections of the palace of Airakland, where slaves stacked the festive makings of yearly celebrations while they weren’t wanted. It was crowded with merchandise. Including a stack of stitched, leather-bound books. Leaper flipped through one. Its paperbark pages were empty.
At the far end, a portrait of Ylly smiled gently down at him from above a long supper table. The table was covered in roasted flowerfowl and steaming mounds of jackfruit mashed with macadamia, which hadn’t been touched, but which made his mouth water.
A busty, pop-eyed woman with colourful silk scraps woven through her hair stood beneath the portrait staring up at it, talking to it.
“I did everything you told me to do, but you knew. You knew I was unworthy.”
Oken prodded Leaper’s back, silently steering him to a wooden chair with high arms and back—a prison chair!—and glaring at him until he sat down.
“Epi?” Wife-of-Epatut turned hopefully, eyes shining, fixed on nothing. “I’ve made you a new tunic.” Slowly, in the silence, her eagerness faded. She looked at Oken. “He’s not here, is he? I’ve imagined him.”
“Yes, Aunty.”
Igish put her hand to her heart when she saw Leaper sitting in the chair.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Leaper. Foster brother to Imeris, Aunty.”
“Oh.” Igish took a deep breath in and out, and then another one, apparently seeking to calm herself, but one hot tear escaped her eye, her hands fluttered, and she erupted into weeping. Oken patted her arm and tried to hush her. When the tears dried up, Igish lifted her lashes and asked her niece huskily, “I’m sorry, was I crying again?”
“Yes, Aunty.”
“What does he want? What do you want, boy? Hopper? Jumper? Whatever you’re called?”
Leaper controlled the urge to get to his feet.
“Igish,” he said earnestly. “Birth mother of Imeris. Wife-of-Epatut. Whatever you are called. You lost Imeris as a baby, when she fell. Later on, you lost your nephew—”
“Son,” Oken hissed.
“Your son, Epi, when he fell. It was in the middle of a footrace, wasn’t it? Imeris told me. Anyway, I’ve just become a father myself, and I’m leaving Canopy. In light of all that’s happened to you, I wondered if you might like to come with me, to the place my son’s mother and I are taking him—that is, to a place where there is sunlight and relative safety, but where the children don’t fall.”
“The children don’t fall,” Igish echoed faintly, her bulging eyes getting wetter by the second. “What place is that?”
“It’s far to the south. A ruined city in the mountains—” Igish began crying harder than she had before, tearing at her hair, howling. Oken seized Leaper by the elbow and began removing him from his chair. “What are you doing?”
“You’ve distressed her enough for one evening,” Oken said. “I think we’ll wait around for that messenger from the palace before we start packing our supplies for the siege. If demons come, I’ll deal with it.”
“Really?” Leaper said contemptuously, staying put in the chair. “How much gold did you fling at the Haakim to get those spines? Exactly how many demons did you kill while you were down there?”
“I never trained under the Haakim. My teacher was the Huntingim. There was a dayhunter in the training temple one time, but he told us to leave it alone, that it would leave when it couldn’t climb higher or find any
food.”
“Oh, your teacher told you not to kill it. I see!” He wrenched his elbow out of her grip, but she began twisting her fingers in his hair, next, in an attempt to remove him.
“You remind me of a boy from Gannak who was there. He tried to feed me to that dayhunter. Tried to stuff me in the window of the training temple, and when it didn’t work, he just let me fall. But I floated. Even though I’m only a girl and my mother had never been to the Temple of Odel, nor sent anybody on my behalf! I’m no—”
“Oken!” Igish’s voice interrupted loudly. “Oken, wait! Leave him. I do want to go with him! I want to go with him to the place where children don’t fall!”
“Yes, Aunty!” Oken chimed, standing back from Leaper at once. He rubbed at his scalp, scowling.
“Tell me again,” Igish commanded gruffly. “A ruined city in the mountains, you said. Far away to the south.”
“Very far,” Leaper said. “You couldn’t continue your work here. You might never be able to come back.”
“The children don’t fall, you say.” Igish was unblinking.
“Nobody falls. That is, they might trip over and fall, but not very far. They wouldn’t fall to their deaths in the dark. They wouldn’t fall to the demons.”
They could fall to their deaths in empty cisterns, the small voice of Leaper’s conscience pointed out perversely. And how do you know what demons might emerge, in Hunger’s absence?
Yet Leaper would be there, in one form or another, to defend the people of the new city.
“And you are the only one who knows the way?”
Leaper shook his head.
“Anyone can find it. All they need do is travel south. But they’d have to travel in secrecy, or the god or goddess of their niche might try to prevent them leaving. And I’m the only one who knows the short way. A way to cross the distance in less than a day. You’d have to be sure of your decision. My short way is one way only. The magic won’t work in the opposite direction. There isn’t any magic in the mountains, not like there is here.”
Tides of the Titans Page 31