Echoes of Understorey
Page 37
“It is time for new life,” she said simply.
The goddesses and gods closed their eyes.
Lantern flames did not flicker. There were no wondrous, thundering sounds, lightning strikes, or levitation. The deities opened their eyes again. For a moment, Imeris thought they had failed.
Nothing had happened.
Then Nirrin yawned and sat up, blinking. The spines of her leg brace caught in the sheets as she drew her legs in. Her jaw dropped at the sight of the deities around the bed. She shook her head. Tried to swallow. Tears brimmed in her eyes.
“Where am I? My mouth is dry.” Imeris gave her some water. Nirrin clutched her arm. “Issi, where am I?”
“In Canopy.”
“She killed me. I felt it. She killed me.”
“Your soul hadn’t been reborn,” Ilan said, frowning. “I don’t know why not. It waited. Together, we were able to retrieve it. The same goes for the merchant woman.” Igish’s slack-lipped blankness had turned to deep, ordinary slumber, complete with impressive snores.
“It is strange,” Audblayin said softly. “Most are reborn almost at once.”
“Ulellin speaks to the wind,” Odel said, “and sees the future most clearly, but I have prescient dreams. Maybe Atwith does, too. Maybe that’s how he knew not to let these two souls pass through him.”
“We should have invited him to the party,” Airak said stonily.
“No,” Audblayin answered. “It’s one thing for the four of us to meet. But birth and death can never be in the same room. Our world would end.”
“Why did you decide to meet?” Imeris asked loudly from her place at a safe distance, shoulder blades against the wall. She caught her sister’s gaze and held it. “Why have you done all this? Why bother to restore my birth mother and my friend? I thought you were rivals. I thought you did not spend your magic on unworthy Understorians!”
The Bodyguards bristled. Daggad smirked.
“I thought about what you said, Imeris,” Audblayin answered tranquilly. “About the squabbles of immortals playing havoc with ordinary people’s lives. About me turning my back on the blameless people born below. About my refusal to open the barrier for you anymore. Instead of cursing me for it, you saved my life.”
Airak stepped up beside her.
“Audblayin has a resident pest in you,” he said, “but in Airakland I have two. They are the Godfinder, Unar, and her ward, my Skywatcher Leapael. After their interference in the Hunt, I had two choices: either listen to them or kill them.”
“Orin would have loved you to kill them,” Audblayin murmured.
“In the past I’ve killed blasphemers as a general rule,” Airak said as though he hadn’t heard her. “It hasn’t secured my domain. This time I chose to listen.”
“I told you when we met upon the border,” Ilan said, one finger upraised, “that mortals had little hope of placating Orin. I warned it would be better for the matter to be resolved by diplomacy among deities. Perhaps we can’t take Audblayin with us into Atwithland, but we can go to Orin. We can go to Ulellin. We must strengthen the bonds between us. We created this forest together.”
This is my Great Deed, Imeris thought. My Great Deed was never going to be the slaying of a creature, or even destroying Kirrik.
It was to bring these four deities here, together in the same niche.
All eyes went to Odel. He shrugged disingenuously and glanced at the former king’s vizier.
“I have a new Bodyguard,” he said. “I wanted to take him for a test outing. He’s fatter than he was before he went to serve the king.”
Igish’s snore rose to greater heights. Attention shifted to the bed. Only Imeris kept her eye on Odel.
When he saw her looking, he winked at her.
Imeris put the slave-making coin on a bedpost, where he could take it without touching her hand.
FORTY-NINE
IMERIS DUCKED inside the entry to the satinwood burl that was the Godfinder’s home.
The caramel smell made her nostrils flare. She vacillated on the doorstep. Daggad almost ran into her from behind. Unar’s thief-catching vine was not yet repaired, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t applied some other form of magical security that might erupt out of the walls and attack strangers.
Behind them, in the open canopy, the sun crept over the horizon. Thin cries of black cockatoos cracking open the last of the satinwood nuts replaced the summer swooping of insect-eating birds after bugs attracted to the pink-tinged, creamy flowers.
Leaper popped up in front of her, grinning. His shin and forearm spines had been unchained.
“Come in, dimwit. You haven’t got the wrong farm.”
Imeris followed him to the main room where Unar, Anahah, and Aforis sat on cushions, drinking ti in the blue light of the lamp.
“Godfinder,” Imeris announced. “You remember Daggad, my fellow Hunter.”
“I remember,” Unar said, pouring another ti, rising to her feet and extending the cup to Daggad. “I thought you had gone to Gannak with Nirrin, Daggad.”
“I went,” Daggad admitted, taking the ti. “We both spent some three weeks there. Imeris stayed in the House of Epatut with ’er birth mother while we were gone. Then we both came back. Nirrin finds Gannak overwhelmin’, she says. Full of too many uncomfortable memories.”
“The girl says so,” Unar asked shrewdly, “or you do? Does she remember the things that the sorceress made her body do?”
“No.” Daggad sipped the ti, avoiding Unar’s gaze. “But she remembers dyin’. She will not go into ’er father’s forge. I ’ave left her with the Servants in the Garden of Audblayin. Bernreb is teachin’ ’er the use of weapons. The Gatekeeper is teachin’ ’er to use her spinewife skills in the service of the goddess. It is obvious they plan for ’er to replace Audblayin’s Bodyguard, if she shows an aptitude for it.”
Unar’s laugh was a little too abrupt.
“If she shows an aptitude,” she repeated bitterly.
“This is good ti,” Daggad said quickly.
“But women can’t be the Bodyguards of women,” Leaper said, looking outraged.
“After your deities all got together for their little chat,” Daggad drawled, “they discovered a whole lotta rules they decided they did not need anymore.”
“My sister has asked me to guard her before,” Imeris said, accepting her own cup from Unar. The look Unar gave her was dagger-sharp.
“The balance,” Aforis said, “will be preserved. Odel’s new Bodyguard is a man.”
“Leaper,” Imeris said, changing the subject, settling on a cushion and trying to avoid looking at Anahah; he sat cross-legged and quiet on a cushion across from her, dressed plainly in a man’s shirt and short skirt, in need of a shave, but with neither infant nor panther parts in evidence. “Have you been in danger from Orin or Ulellin lately?”
“No,” Leaper answered cheerfully. “I told you Airak would look after me. He went to meet with Orin and Ulellin at the Falling Fig and came back in a good mood. So it must’ve gone well.” His expression sobered, and he lowered his voice. “I’ve been having dreams about calling lightning to kill the creature, though. Bad dreams, Issi.”
“I have had some bad dreams myself,” Imeris said with sympathy.
“I felt the lightning go through Orin’s Servants, and they didn’t do anything wrong. They were only doing what Orin made them do. At the time I was a bit giddy that Ulellin hadn’t killed me on the spot, but now it’s haunting me. Maybe the gods can make peace with each other, but they can’t make me forget what I did.”
Imeris shook off the memory of her glider snagging. Her body swinging upside down through the air.
“We remember,” she said, “so we do not make the same mistakes again.”
“You’re right,” Leaper said, raising his cup. “I’ve vowed never to do violence to thinking creatures again.”
“Not even if Airak commands it?” Anahah asked, laughing his quiet, stuttering laugh.
> “He won’t,” Leaper said, scowling. “He’s not like Orin.”
“Nobody is like Orin,” Anahah agreed.
“I thought the Queen of Airakland looked a little like Ilan,” Imeris said, remembering.
“The Queen of Airakland,” Leaper said, licking his lips, “looks like perfection as described by a poet, like loveliness made flesh. I wish she was in my dreams instead.”
“Imeris,” Anahah said suddenly, “I’ve got something to show you.” He stood up. Imeris stood up too, so quickly that she sloshed ti all over herself.
“Show me,” she said, setting the ti on one of the blue chests. She followed Anahah to the mouth of a gloomy tunnel she could have sworn had not been there before. When she glanced back, she saw Leaper still wistfully pondering the Queen of Airakland, Daggad lost in his own thoughts, Aforis opening the door of the stove to add more charcoal, and Unar watching her go with a knowing expression, ti half raised to her lips.
The tunnel was long and dark. They strolled along inside the satinwood branch, beyond the burl that formed the farm. At the end, a new room, smelling even more strongly of caramel, had been formed with wide, clear-glass ceiling panes and chest-high, gauze-screened openings opposite to let the breeze blow through.
The room held little more than table and cot. The cot held a sleeping babe, wrapped in a silk blanket stamped with the sigil of the House of Epatut. For all her protests, Unar, who must have made the room, had decorated the walls with story carvings, slyly including the tale of the giant silkworm, and provided a stuffed toy shaped like a flowerfowl.
Imeris couldn’t look away from the tiny, perfect face. A single clenched fist escaped the blanket, smaller than a spiny plum. The child was black-skinned, but in direct sunlight, even blacker leopard-rosettes were faintly visible.
“She is beautiful,” Imeris said at last. “Does she have that pattern all over her, Anahah?”
She looked up and caught a guilty expression sliding across his face.
“Childbirth was extremely painful.”
“So I have heard. Did you not expect that?”
“It went for hours and hours.”
Imeris laughed. She felt like she had not laughed for a lifetime.
“I have heard that, too.”
Anahah gripped the cot railing with one small, green hand, hanging his head.
“At the last moment, I turned us into a pair of panthers. The pain went away. She came out easily. It was over. She and I were only nonhuman for a minute. Two at most. We were still connected by the cord. I thought I could still change her all the way back, but I couldn’t.”
Imeris smiled. Her hand covered his, but it was too much. Feelings flooded her, and she took her hand away as if his cool skin had burned her. She put her fingers to her lips.
“What have you named her?” she asked, self-conscious.
“I haven’t named her yet.”
“Igish?” Imeris blurted despite herself. “Can her name be Igish? It means—”
“I know what it means. Yes.” He lifted his head. Imeris was relieved to see an answering smile. “She can be Igish. You’ve left Igish the Older for good, haven’t you? Audblayin hasn’t changed her mind about opening the barrier for you.”
“No.” Imeris shook her head. “She has not changed her mind. It is true that I will not see my birth mother again. When I go below the barrier, it will be for good.”
“If I go with you,” Anahah said gravely, “I won’t be able to change anymore. I’ll need to sleep as much as an ordinary person. I won’t be able to protect Igish from demons. But at least she’ll be safe from Orin.”
Imeris’s heart twisted like a wrung cleaning rag.
“Orin has made peace—”
“Orin has made peace with the other goddesses and gods. Not with me.”
“I will protect you both,” Imeris said, and when Anahah took her hand this time, she didn’t pull away. “I will protect you both from humans and demons and gods.” Anahah’s irises turned a darker shade of green. Would they still do that, below the barrier? “We will go to Understorey together. Today, if you wish. I will live anywhere in Understorey with you that is not the home my oldest-father made in Audblayin’s emergent.”
She still loved her sister. But she could not forgive her. Did not want to live beneath her.
“Why stop at Understorey?” Anahah said. “Let’s take Igish with us to Floor. I’ve been there before, at the edge of the forest where the bamboo and long grasses grow. It’s not all darkness, trespasses, and death.”
Imeris’s head spun at the possibilities.
“If we go,” she said, “you have to stop sneaking around. You have to stop following me without me knowing. When you are close to me, you have to call out and let me know.”
“Are you still angry I didn’t save him?” Anahah squeezed her hand tighter. “I was sneaking around because Orin wanted to kill me. I was sneaking around because Kirrik would have killed me. If I hadn’t been sneaking around the Garden, I couldn’t have captured Kirrik’s soul.”
“Kirrik is finished. When we leave Canopy behind, we leave Orin behind, and all that has happened.”
“You’re right. In that case, I agree.”
“Would I have to marry you?” she asked, feeling a pang for Epi, who had been so certain she was destined to be with him.
“You don’t even have to love me,” Anahah answered sadly, and she realised too late she could have framed the question with greater sensitivity. He shifted so the cot was no longer between them and captured her other hand, holding them both tightly, looking intensely up into her eyes. “Love the child, though.”
“I will.”
“I can’t have more children. When I leave Canopy I’ll have all human, all male parts again.”
“I see.”
“You might find a use for those. Later.”
“I think I might,” Imeris said in a strangled voice. “Later.”
Anahah let go of her hands.
“What is it?” he asked gently. “Do you need more time to make sure?”
“No,” Imeris said. “I am sure about Igish, and I am sure about you. It is Daggad I am not sure about. He followed me here. I do not think he knows where to go. We should take him with us. He was miserable in Gannak, and he is almost as good a Hunter as I am. He can help protect Igish, too.”
“Let’s ask him,” Anahah said without hesitation.
Imeris paused to touch Igish’s tiny nose with the tip of her little finger.
“Enjoy the sunlight, little panther, little rainbow-coloured bird,” she whispered. “You will not pass between two realms, like me. You will belong to one.”
Outside the window, a cluster of nuts chewed free by a cockatoo spun through the air, destined to fall though Canopy and Understorey on its way, inevitably, to Floor.
BOOKS BY THORAIYA DYER
Crossroads of Canopy
Echoes of Understorey
About the Author
THORAIYA DYER is a four-time Aurealis Award–winning, three-time Ditmar Award–winning Australian writer based in Sydney.
Visit her online at www.thoraiyadyer.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Twitter: @thoraiyadyer
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Temple Emergents of Canopy
Prologue
Part I: The Dovecote & the Duel
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Part II: The Slave & the Hunt
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Part III: The Wings & the Sword
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Books by Thoraiya Dyer
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ECHOES OF UNDERSTOREY
Copyright © 2018 by Thoraiya Dyer
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Marc Simonetti
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8595-6 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7653-8596-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765385963
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.