It thrashed and squealed. Imeris had stitched its head to the entryway.
She could not stop, terrified that it would come apart and re-form. Seizing the loose end of the metal rope, she went up through the ceiling again, coming down on the platform outside the Temple where the monster’s body hunched, its four feet scrabbling at the door frame for purchase, straining backwards.
Oniwak and the three other Hunters clustered there. Crossbow bolts and poison darts stuck out from the creature’s rump. Ibbin darted in, stabbed, and darted out again. Owun played his fiddle, and a cloud of hornets, seeming hypnotised by the tune, swarmed in and out, buzzing and stinging.
“Back!” Imeris tried to bellow with the sword between her teeth. “Get back, for your lives!”
Oniwak looked up at her with something akin to hatred. Nevertheless, he obeyed. They all did. Imeris climbed over the fetid skin, dragging the wire, until the creature’s body was wrapped three times in copper.
Then there was no more wire. She bent the nubby end around another piece of itself and dropped back down onto the platform. She lost the sword as she landed on her back and her bones jarred. Chunks of loose hair, leaf litter, and waist-high splinters carved up by the beast’s claws obscured the place where the sword had landed. She knew it hadn’t fallen to Floor; she’d heard it clatter on the wood.
Her skin started to feel thick again. All her many harness straps, ropes, and fittings were too tight. Her body deformed. Her arms grew longer and her legs shorter.
Oniwak lifted his crossbow. The bolt pointed at her heart.
I would rather be dead, she had time to think, than be part of the monster. But who will kill Kirrik?
Her searching hands closed over the hilt of the sword and for the second time, the prickling transformation reversed, spreading from palms to shoulders and from there up and down her spine. She shook herself off. Rolled free of the debris. Sucked in a sweet breath; yet another chance at life.
Oniwak’s crossbow bolt thudded into the place where she had lain, but she had as little time for him as she had for Sorros.
Holding the bone blade in her left hand, she stabbed with a bore-knife at the ends of the creature’s limbs not contained by the rope. Searched out the pairs of human eyes and drove the knife between them. Did not flinch when she recognised the mournful eyes of Irrafahath, the Bodyguard of Oxor, despite the wasp-stung swellings, or the tear-scarred tracks beneath the lower lids of Ay, once Lakekeeper of Ehkisland, who might have helped her defeat Kirrik.
Legless, tailless, the creature squirmed, a hairy worm wound with gleaming copper ribbon. Imeris staggered back from the beast. She looked up and saw Leaper standing on top of the upper leaf of the Temple, the curving relic of the Old Gods, Tyran’s Talon, in his upraised hands.
“Now, Leaper!” she cried.
Spears of lightning struck between the widespread boughs of the emergent. The crack was deafening. Imeris fell backwards as the whole tree convulsed. Her hair stood on end. She resheathed her spines. Threw a forearm up to shield her eyes as a second bolt struck, and then a third.
She smelled charred flesh. Heard sizzling. A final scream sounded before the silence.
When she lowered her arm, she saw a burned black mountain of meat. Long, jagged cracks in it oozed juices that bubbled and stank. No part of it was recognisable as once human.
No part of it moved.
Imeris blinked, shook her head, and blinked again at the sight of the goddess Ulellin standing on top of the Temple beside Leaper. Ulellin struck Leaper across the face with the back of her slim hand. Wrenched the relic out of his grasp. Leaper dropped to his knees, his expression horrified.
Imeris’s heart was in her throat. They had done it. They had killed Orin’s monster, and the Hunt was complete. She should have been weeping with joy, but her brother had been touched by a deity.
That meant he would have to die.
PART III
The Wings & the Sword
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE GODDESS of wind and leaves had the face of a starved child.
Up close, her large eyes looked sunken. Her brown cheeks were thin. Her black hair, thick and straight, blew to one side in a strong gust nobody else could feel, exposing the nape of a reedy neck.
She stood before the mountain of cooked monster flesh, considering it for a moment. Then, with a flick of her wrist, a gust of wind that everyone could feel blasted the abomination off the branch road.
Imeris watched it fall in silence. She should have felt relief. Orin’s creature was dead. All distractions were past. She was not a Hunter anymore. It was time to hunt Kirrik, the true quarry, at last.
Yet the goddess must pronounce a terrible judgement on Leaper, the boy who had been so determined to go one way only, up into the sun, and stay there. He had always been a talker, chattering away even while the children were on the toilet, so that Ylly and Imeris had impersonated him by making fart sounds between words, and Youngest-Mother had listened, bemused, for hours while he described the battles of ants and tarantulas.
He had nothing to say now.
Ulellin turned away from the char mark where the creature had died, towards the platform where five of the six surviving Hunters stood: Imeris still gripping the bone sword with the leopard-carved hilt that Anahah had made for her, Oniwak holding his crossbow limply at his side, Eeriez with poison knives, Ibbin with his dagger, and Owun with his fiddle, the cloud of stinging insects dispersed.
Daggad came out of the Temple. Imeris was reassured to see him walking unaided and with normal skin and symmetry; she’d imagined him becoming contaminated by Sorros, the pair of them fusing into the creature’s final, much-diminished incarnation. She beckoned, and he circled the seething goddess, joining Imeris and the others.
“The smith?” she asked him out of the corner of her mouth.
“Tied a rope to ’im and threw ’im out the window,” Daggad said under his breath. “Figured if ’e fell below the barrier, ’e might escape the—”
“Silence,” the goddess Ulellin said with all the fierceness and sibilance of the wind.
The six Hunters knelt before her, instinctively, in unison. Imeris peeked up through her eyelashes. On top of the Temple, Leaper remained kneeling. He had not moved, had hardly breathed, since Ulellin had taken the relic. Imeris was so afraid for him.
She could do nothing.
“Holy One,” Oniwak said with his head bowed. “The Hunt is complete. One who walks in the grace of Airak begs your forgiveness for trespassing in your Temple. Permit us to return to the court of my master, the king of Airakland, he who called this Hunt, to have him formally dissolve it.”
“Your master?” Ulellin asked derisively, striding closer to him. “A mortal who believes his will is more important than the inviolable laws of goddesses and gods?”
“The king of Airakland sought to defend his people, Holy One,” Oniwak said carefully without rising.
“And the Skywatcher of Airak who has dared to call lightning in my domain, was he acting under the Hunt’s compulsion, under the orders of your master, the king of Airakland?”
“No.” Oniwak raised his eyes to Leaper. “One who walks in the grace of Airak has never seen that adept before. He’s no part of the Hunt.”
“He is part of it,” Imeris and Daggad objected at the same time. They looked at one another.
“We employed him,” Imeris said.
“We brought ’im into the compact,” Daggad said, pressing his knuckles harder into the wooden platform.
“If you did, you should’ve known better,” Oniwak said, volume rising. “Hunters don’t employ mercenaries. We aren’t merchants, to buy protection. We’re warriors chosen by Ilan’s compass for the skills—”
“The creature is dead,” Daggad observed cuttingly. “Killed by lightnin’, not by your skills.”
“The Hunt was never meant to oppose rogue goddesses,” Imeris said, turning her head to the other side where she could glare at On
iwak. “Mortal hunters might have a chance against ordinary demons—”
“SILENCE,” Ulellin said again.
Imeris looked hopelessly up at Leaper. She found him looking equally hopelessly back down at her. He had been so proud of his idea. Of his ability to help her. To save her.
Now he was going to die for her. And Oldest-Father had charged her with his protection. But what could she do? Try to kill the goddess? The same wind that had carried the remains of the creature away would knock her a thousand body lengths down to Floor before she was permitted to disobey Ulellin.
“Will you sentence one who walks in the grace of Airak—no, one who serves him, for make no mistake, I am his Skywatcher, Oniwak!—to death, Holy One?” Leaper called, his voice enviably steady.
Ulellin turned her back on the Hunters. Fists on hips, she lifted her chin haughtily in Leaper’s direction.
“Kill Leaper the Skywatcher? No! There’s no need.” Imeris’s heart raced at this pronouncement. Ulellin elaborated with increasing malice. “The wind spoke to me of your path. I doom you, by my power, to wander far from home until your mate, your true love, your heart’s desire, grows to love another more than you. Only then will you be permitted to return.” She looked at the relic in her hand, gripping it tighter as though the sight of it stirred her to unimaginable rage. “A much more fitting punishment than mere falling.”
She thrust the relic at Oniwak’s face.
“Holy One—” Oniwak began hesitantly.
“Take this to Airakland at once,” she spat. “Place it into the hands of the Lord of Lightning and no other. Don’t stop to rest until you’ve crossed my border, lest I change my mind about sparing you.”
“Yes, Holy One. Thank you, Holy One.”
Imeris, frozen in dismay by the horror of the wind goddess’s prophecy, was slow to stand. Daggad tugged her elbow to get her to rise.
“Come on, woman,” he said gruffly. “We dare not go back inta the Temple. But remember that Sorros ’as ’is spines. No doubt ’e will untangle ’imself and make ’is way ’ome to Gannak. We must go with Oniwak. This way, to Ilanland.”
She stood but didn’t take a step until Leaper climbed down from the roof of the Temple and stood beside her. They embraced.
“That was close,” Leaper said, a tremor in his voice that hadn’t been there when he’d so boldly demanded that the goddess address his fate.
“What do you mean?” Imeris cried. “Did you not hear what she said?”
“One who walks in the grace of Airak heard her perfectly.” Leaper shrugged. He grinned. “So I won’t leave the forest. Who cares? So what?” He hunched a little, as if realising the goddess might still be within earshot, but there was no sign of her. Daggad waved his hand to indicate she’d floated back up into the foliage. Leaper stood straighter and threw out his chest. “I did it. I killed Orin’s creature. It worked. Get me a lantern as we go. I’ll send a message to Ilanland. A crowd of grateful citizens will meet us at the border. They’ll carry us on their shoulders to the monument tree.”
Imeris, Leaper, and Daggad lagged behind the other Hunters. Every few minutes, Oniwak looked suspiciously over his shoulder at them.
“Woman, I don’t like having you at my back,” he said at last.
“You shot at me,” Imeris reminded him.
“You were transforming into the creature.”
“Also, the last time we spoke, you said you would kill me if you saw me again.”
“He’s run out of bolts,” Ibbin piped up helpfully. “Walk with us.”
“It makes it less obvious,” Eeriez said drily, “how many we have lost.”
Imeris shared a glance with Daggad. He nodded. They dragged themselves tiredly across the intervening space. Leaper looked longingly at Tyran’s Talon, secured by rope to Oniwak’s weapons belt.
As they started off again along a branch road, a light rain began to fall.
* * *
THE BLACK-ETCHED white walls of the monument tree ran with rainwater.
“’Ow,” Daggad grumbled, standing where the curving wooden wall sheltered the great entryway lanterns, squeezing out his long tail of straight black hair, “are we supposed to celebrate properly in the wet?”
Imeris tried to make out the place, across the lake, where the legend of her Hunt was written, but she couldn’t see it through the screen of the downpour.
“Ehkis is crying,” she said. “Her Lakekeeper is dead.”
“She’ll have a new one by now,” Leaper said, sighing. “Let’s just hope Airak hasn’t declared me fallen and chosen a new Skywatcher to fill my place.”
His prediction about the crowd came true. People who had followed them, cheering and pressing food and drinks upon them, now ran ahead down the paths that encircled the lake. They returned with fisherwomen and child divers at their head, urging the Hunters to take shelter around cooking fires. The fires were sheltered from the rain by upturned boats set onto forked posts that formed the fisherfolks’ cramped little houses.
Imeris refused their wine. Refusal didn’t help her to stay awake. Within minutes of sitting down at someone’s fireside, she fell asleep, Leaper on one side of her, Daggad and his great sword and shield on the other, the black mark of his freedom on his drowsy lower lip.
When she woke, it was night. Fresh leaves smouldering on the fire kept the mosquitoes away. She felt safe and comfortable enough to stay motionless for a long time, enjoying the ability to do nothing, then realised that the forked posts were used for smoking fish in times of abundance and the lingering smell reminded her of Oldest-Father and home.
After that, it occurred to her that someone else by the fireside was awake. Two someones. A fat, curious-eyed, scarf-wrapped young woman in the fancy orange robes of a silk merchant, and an angry, frowning, brown-shirt-and-trouser-clad out-of-nicher with her hair in two untidy braids.
“Godfinder,” Imeris said, startled, sitting forwards suddenly and causing the sleeping mountain that was Daggad to shift and moan.
“Congratulations,” Unar said. “You survived.”
“Did you doubt it?”
“The odds were against you.”
“Did you come to see for yourself whether I needed healing? Again?”
“I’d like to pretend that’s why.” Unar waved vaguely in a northeasterly direction. “I was busy finding the new incarnation of Oxor. Again. These careless deities don’t live long, for all their Bodyguards and barricades.”
It was Imeris’s turn to frown.
“Irrafahath did his duty,” she said. “More than most of them, including—”
“Including Bernreb?”
“I was going to say Aurilon.” Imeris picked up a twig to fidget with.
“Will you go back to Aurilon,” Unar asked, “once you’ve seen the king of Airakland? Do you think finishing the Hunt will have surprised Odel’s Bodyguard? She’d expect nothing less from you.”
I will go to Aurilon after I have seen the king, Imeris thought, but not to become her student.
What she said was, “Godfinder, this is a fortuitous meeting. You are well informed. I must have word from Gannak. I must know if Sorros the smith is safe.”
“As to that,” the other woman said, who had been silent so far, “I drew up the coil of rope that Daggad left behind.” She pulled a green coil out from under layers of shining orange fabric. Her hands looked strangely familiar. Imeris stared into the pleasant features and bright eyes, abruptly recognising Anahah.
“I thought you could not take the shape of another person,” she said, taking the coil of rope. “I thought you were afraid to do harm by altering yourself at this late stage.”
Anahah looked mildly offended.
“This is my shape.” His voice was the same, after all. “This is my shape while I’m bearing a child in this body, in any case. You went to so much trouble to slay the beast, should I be ungrateful and walk about in Bodyguard’s clothing in broad daylight with my green skin showing?”
“You let my father die. I have nothing to say to you.”
“Don’t say anything, then. But listen when I say this is the rope that Daggad dangled Sorros from, out of Ulellin’s emergent into Understorey. The knots were secure. The smith couldn’t have freed himself from it without human wit and human dexterity. He hasn’t gone back to Gannak as the last remnant of a demon, but as his own man.”
Imeris fastened it to her harness.
“I made him a promise,” she said.
“What promise?” Unar asked.
“We have to catch Kirrik. Trap her soul forever. So that my sister will give Sorros and his wife another child.”
“It can’t be done,” Unar said flatly. Anahah and Imeris both gazed at her, taken aback by her vehemence.
“You make pronouncements like a king or god,” Anahah said, seeming amused.
“How can you be sure?” Imeris wanted to know. “The last time Oniwak spoke of a soul cage, you said nothing.”
“Kirrik turned my little sister against me.” Unar’s lip curled. “She killed Eilif, the Servant of Audblayin who was my teacher. She has killed the goddess Ehkis twice in my lifetime, and it’s because of her that I … that I … I have magical gifts more powerful than you can imagine, Imeris. Yes, I’ve healed your broken bones, grown dwellings, trained birds to speak, but I also cut down Airak’s emergent. Don’t you think, if there was a way of trapping dangerous souls like Kirrik’s, I would have found it?”
“Powerful you may be, Godfinder,” Imeris said, “but you trained your birds to speak because you were not taught to read. There may be information in ancient writings or the memories of goddesses or gods—”
“Oh, do deities share their knowledge with you?” Unar’s eyes snapped back into focus on Imeris’s face. “Has your sister, Audblayin, explained why your amulet offends her? Did you speak the name of that relic”—she flung a finger in Oniwak’s direction—“in front of Ulellin? You did not. And you must not.” Unar took a deep breath. It rattled as she let it out slowly, calming herself. “She would kill you for knowing it. Any of them would. I should never have told Aforis where it was.”
Echoes of Understorey Page 29