Against the Unweaving

by D. P. Prior

  The two smaller moons glared down at her like a pair of crooked eyes, coldly distant, the eyes of a sated predator too stuffed to pose a threat at the moment, but given long enough… Her skin crawled, and a tingle tripped along her spine. No way she was gonna chance sleeping on her own, but no way she was going back to the fire, either.

  What she needed was a vigil, time to pray, get her soul back in synch with Nous. No, what she really needed was a drink, something to drown out the hunchback’s voice still echoing around her skull, calling her a whore, blaming her for Shader’s failings. Blaming her for everything. Hadn’t she done all this for Shader’s sake? Joined the Templum, dedicated her life to Nous, all so he wasn’t diverted from the destiny Huntsman, or Aristodeus, or Nous Almighty himself had in store for him? Wasn’t it enough to make the sacrifice without having Dave accuse her of doing the opposite? Wasn’t it enough she could still feel Gaston between her legs, slipping about inside like some writhing slug? That shogging, twisted, hunchbacked, dribbling freak needed to watch his tongue, coz he had no idea what she’d been through. What she’d lost.

  She squeezed her eyes tight against the faces of her folks, butchered on their own doorstep. She winced at the image of Sammy running off alone, and it felt like a rock had replaced her stomach when she thought of what the shaman had done to him, how her little Sammy had rejected her, left her with nothing. Nothing but Nous, and that amounted to pretty much the same thing.

  She pulled the scabbard over her head and set it on the ground. The hilt of Callixus’s sword rippled with black flame that defied the stark moonlight.

  You have me, it seemed to whisper.

  She scoffed and shook her head. That just about took the sodding biscuit. What, was she hearing voices now?

  No.

  She scrabbled back against the trunk of the tree, her hands walking up the bark till she was standing.

  “Shog, I’m losing it,” she muttered. The muscles throughout her body clenched, and she started to shake. Her breaths came in staccato gasps, and she began to swoon. A pint would settle her, or maybe a couple. Always did the trick in the past. Shog, a bottle of wine, even. Spirits. Anything. She looked from side to side, as if she expected to see a bar or a wine rack. Her mind’s eye replayed her showing up at Gaston’s with a bottle in either hand.

  Only yourself to blame, whore.

  She gagged and almost chucked up her guts.

  The sword hilt pulsed and twitched, and her vision narrowed until that was all she could see. She fell to her knees, reached out with a shaking hand, and caressed the pommel. A sigh blew through her mind. Whether it was hers or someone else’s, she couldn’t tell. She curled her fingers around the handle and pulled the blade free. Acid coursed through her veins, and her heartbeat tripled, hammering out a dizzying tattoo that built and built till it threatened to explode from the top of her head. She turned the sword, brought its keen edge to the inside of her forearm. She gasped as the skin popped and hot blood seeped out. It stung at first, but she pressed deeper and then sliced, drawing the blade across her arm till oozing rivulets ran toward her wrist, pooled stickily in her palm, and dripped between her fingers. She shuddered and gasped. The sword hilt felt like a burning coal, and it sent tendrils of soothing heat deep into her muscles. Her shoulders dropped, her heart rate slowed, and she leaned back against the welcoming bark.

  She started at a footfall in the undergrowth. A shadow loomed, and she dropped the blade, clutching her arm to her chest to keep it from being seen.

  “Shit,” she hissed as the front of her robe was soaked with hot wetness. She grimaced, shut her eyes tight, and clenched her jaw as Shader stepped out of the gloom and tilted the brim of his hat to cover his eyes. Nous all pissing mighty, she knew it was him coming. Why the shog couldn’t he just leave her alone?

  She turned her back to him, felt the tension rack up a notch. Perhaps, in the dark, he’d not seen.

  “You all right?”

  Rhiannon looked at him over her shoulder, forced a smile. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Dave. You shouldn’t have to listen to that. Maybe I should have—”

  “It’s fine. Really.” She smiled again, but her lips were drawn taut over her teeth. She wasn’t fooling anyone.

  Shader’s eyes flicked to the sword on the ground. He took a step toward it.

  “It’s all right. Leave it,” Rhiannon said. “I was just… You know.”

  “I’ll wait for you back at camp.”

  Rhiannon nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, do that. I won’t be much longer.”

  He turned, but before he’d taken a step, her heart leapt into her throat.

  “Deacon.”

  He spun to face her. “Yes?”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Dave or Shadrak?”

  She gave a little laugh. “Either of them.”

  “Dave, I don’t know. Either he’s from Nous, or he’s from the Demiurgos. Right now, I’ve no way of knowing. Shadrak, on the other hand, has something of a track record.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Shader glanced at the black sword again, his eyes lingering too long for comfort. “Nothing.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Rhiannon.” Shader stepped in close.

  She tensed, wrapped her arms tighter about her chest.

  “Rhiannon,” he said again. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

  She let out a shrill, hysterical laugh. Shog, she sounded like a loony. “You mean a confession?”

  Shader’s hand snaked out, gripped her by the shoulder. “I’m not a priest.”

  She gave up hiding what she’d done to herself, twisted round to face him, let him see her cut. “Well, you sure act like one.”

  He released her shoulder and cupped the back of her hand in his, gently lifting her arm. She watched him intently, bracing herself for the scolding.

  “Rhiannon,” he started, then clenched his teeth. With enforced softness, and without looking her in the eye, he said, “Need clean water.”

  “Got any booze?”

  Shader shook his head. “Pity. That would have done it.”

  “For drinking, I mean.”

  Shader let go of her hand and drew his gladius.

  Rhiannon winced and pulled back. She stared at the blade like it was a snake poised to strike. Her heart was racing again, and she was breathing ten to the dozen. On the ground, the black sword hissed, though whether out loud or in her mind, she couldn’t tell.

  Shader frowned and shook his head. “I was going to have it heal you,” he explained. “Never mind.” Instead, he cut a strip from the hem of his surcoat, re-sheathed the shortsword, and proceeded to bind her forearm.

  Calm washed over her in cool waves that lapped at her burning nerves.

  “What’s going on, Rhiannon? Between you and Nous, I mean.”

  “Could ask you the same question.” Her arm smarted from the cloth, and she tried to snatch it away, but Shader’s grip was too strong.

  “Grit your teeth. There, all done.” Shader tucked the loose end in and sat down on the root. “I was skeptical about your calling, first off, but back there, at the Templum of the Knot, you seemed…” He struggled for the right word, chewed it over. “… happy.”

  Rhiannon snorted and lowered herself beside him. “Yeah, well a lot’s happened since. Pain and suffering’s meant to temper you, isn’t it? Sort the wheat from the chaff.”

  “I don’t know any longer.” Shader cupped his chin in his hand, absently stroked his stubbled cheek with his fingertips.

  “You might at least quote the Liber at me, chapter and verse. Soror Agna would have done, in any case.”

  Shader nodded, but he may as well have been a hundred miles away, talking with someone else. “Adeptus Ludo always used to lecture about the golden thread running through the Liber. I had this suspicion he was a bit of a crank, a heretic even. Stupid, really, because of all my teachers, he always spoke the
most sense. The Gray Abbot said pretty much the same thing. He told me the scriptures we have now were cobbled together by the Liche Lord of Verusia posing as a pious friar. You see, somewhere in this tome—” He slapped the pocket of his long-coat. “—is an original teaching. It’s still there, according to Ludo. At least, the essence of it is, just waiting to be teased out.”

  Rhiannon shifted to get comfortable. They’d not mentioned this at the templum. Soror Agna had always insisted on the literal truth of the Liber. For her, there were no inconsistencies that couldn’t be surmounted with faith. The priests had all been the same, unquestioning in their obedience to the written word, and if a passage was unclear to them, they would defer to Mater Ioana.

  “You know, I never thought of it before,” Rhiannon said. “I’d always assumed it was the word of Nous or Ain or whatever. Never could get my head around that stuff. But sometimes the priests would argue about what a verse meant, and they’d go to Ioana for interpretation.”

  “She knew,” Shader said. “At least, she had an inkling of the truth, I’m sure of it. My point is, how do we know what Nous wants if we don’t even know which parts of the Liber are from him, and if we have no authoritative way of interpreting the golden thread, even if we could find it?”

  “It’s about love, any way you look at it, isn’t it?”

  Shader looked at her as if she’d just spoken in a foreign language. “I’m not sure what that means.”

  Rhiannon’s eyes wandered to the black sword. She reached for it, started to wipe the bloodied blade on the tree root. “Me neither. Why don’t you ask the freak? He seems pretty certain about everything. After all, he’s the Voice of Nous, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe,” Shader said, standing. “Maybe he is.”

  “What, so you think I’m a whore, too, do you? Thanks a bunch.” She expected Shader to laugh, but he remained stony-faced.

  “I need to be harder, Rhiannon,” he said. “Harder. Come on, we’re leaving.”

  “But it’s still dark.”

  Shader’s hand enclosed the pommel of the gladius, as he headed back into the undergrowth.

  What if I don’t want to leave? she wanted to yell at him. What if you’re better off without me? Shog, she could have used some reassurance right about then; could have used him begging her to return to camp, but what did he go and do instead? Shogging turned his back on her; walked off, knowing all the while she’d have no choice but to follow like an obedient dog. She’d half a mind to stay put. Half a mind to shog off by herself. She cast a look at the shimmering face of the largest moon, glanced at its sisters staring down at her, playing their patient game.

  “Shit,” she said, whacking the black sword against the tree. “Shit, shit, shit.” She struck the bark three more times and then stomped off after Shader.

  A THING THRICE DEAD

  Gilbrum’s feet barely touched the marshland as he sped through the mangroves. Walking trees, he called them, their roots like giant spider’s legs encroaching upon the brackish water.

  Three sets of footprints shimmered like stars to his elvish vision. There should have been four. He’d known from the first there was something wrong about the hunchback. He should never have let them go with him. He’d seen no other choice, being duty bound not to leave the marsh himself. But then he’d realized, that made him the same as the dwarves, set in their ways, refusing to lift a finger to help the outside world. Theirs was a self-imposed exile, a penance, but his was a virtue no longer called for. What good would it do to restrain the Sour Marsh at the expense of all Creation?

  He followed the tracks in between a cluster of bubbling pools, up a mud-slicked bank, and into the damp grasses skirting the entity he’d come to call home. Another step, and it was all over. Decades of service wiped out with a single act of disobedience. He lifted his foot… and set it down again. He couldn’t do it. What if the reverse were true? What if it was a temptation, a trap? Perhaps the saving of Creation was a task for others. Was not reneging on one’s responsibilities an act of pride, and wasn’t that how the Demiurgos found his openings?

  He closed his eyes, visualized Shader, Rhiannon, and Shadrak on their way to Arx Gravis. Could the hunchback really lead them there? Could he be trusted?

  Accept it, Gilbrum—a voice from the past, long before he’d been assigned to the Sour Marsh. Dol Arium the prophet, speaking from the boughs of the Tree of Eingana, as he did to every child coming of age. Accept what is not yours to change. A leaf fallen from the tree is a thing thrice dead: to self, the people, and to the law.

  “But what if everything ends?” he cried to the sky. “What does it matter then?”

  But he knew what the prophet would say. Every elf did: Be true or be nothing. Duty first, duty always.

  “Shader!” he called, not expecting to be heard. And then, more gently, he added, “Your god be with you.”

  The wind gusted, bringing with it the scent of lizard-men. He spun, nocking an arrow to his bow in one fluid motion.

  There were two of them, face down in the grass, patiently stalking him like a pair of alligators. His arrow thrummed through the air and thudded into the loamy earth between them.

  “Begone,” he said. “I’ve no time for this.”

  But even as they scurried for the mangroves, a thought struck him.

  “Wait!”

  The brutes turned to face him.

  “Skeyr Magnus,” Gilbrum said. “Take me to him.”

  The lizard-men looked blankly at him.

  “Skeyr Magnus. Your leader. Take me…” Gilbrum let out a sharp breath and rapped his fingertips against his head. “Leader,” he repeated, and then made a fist and a crackling sound.

  The lizard-men flung themselves to the ground and moaned.

  “Yes,” Gilbrum said, approaching. “Skeyr Magnus.” He touched one on the shoulder, and it lifted its head, the glimmer of understanding in its amber eyes. “Take me—” Gilbrum tapped his chest. “—to Skeyr Magnus.”

  He followed them deep into the Sour Marsh, across bogs and thickets, coming at last to a basin littered with bones and loud with the croaking of frogs. Skeyr Magnus was crouched down, poking and prodding at the gauntlet attached to his arm with a thin-bladed tool. An open case of assorted tools was beside him on the ground. A dozen or so lizard-men lazed around the basin, but they sprang up when they saw Gilbrum, grabbing spears and clubs and forming a protective circle about their leader.

  Skeyr Magnus bashed the gauntlet against the ground. There was a hiss and a shower of sparks, and then nothing but a plume of smoke.

  “See what you do. This close!” Skeyr Magnus held up his thumb and forefinger to indicate. “This close to mending. Tell Skeyr Magnus, elf, why he no kill you.”

  Gilbrum smiled. “Because you’ve tried, and you know it is beyond you.”

  “One day,” Skeyr Magnus said. “One day Skeyr Magnus catch you dozing. So close…” He blew smoke off the gauntlet. “Know-how, Skeyr Magnus has. Took it from Gandaw. Fix glove, then fix you, maybe.”

  Gilbrum seated himself cross-legged on the ground and rested his bow across his thighs.

  Skeyr Magnus narrowed his eyes then shrugged and set about packing away his tools.

  “What is it you plan to do?” Gilbrum said.

  “Fix glove. Kill you.”

  “No, not about me. I mean, since you escaped the Perfect Peak, you’ve done nothing but skulk about the Sour Marsh. I’ve been watching you.”

  Skeyr Magnus rubbed his lower jaw and rolled his head. After a moment, he stood and picked up his tool case. “Skeyr Magnus patient. Fix glove, grow strong, then go back.”

  Gilbrum waved his hand in the direction of the Dead Lands. “To the Perfect Peak?”

  “Kill Gandaw,” Skeyr Magnus said. “Take science.”

  “Then what?”

  Skeyr Magnus gave a low throaty laugh and spread his arms to encompass his lizard-men. “Who knows? Go to New Jerusalem, maybe.” The lizard-men made a collective soun
d that could have been a gasp. “Live good life.”

  Gilbrum nodded slowly. He felt quite certain Skeyr Magnus didn’t mean good in the moral sense.

  Confirming his thoughts, the lizard-man said, “Good food, wine, women.”

  Gilbrum’s stomach clenched at the thought, but he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. The lizard-men were only what Gandaw had made them, and the human part still desired human comforts. He gave Skeyr Magnus a sharp look. What if need of comfort wasn’t the only human quality remaining to them?

  “And if they won’t give them to you?”

  Skeyr Magnus made a fist of the gauntlet. “Then Skeyr Magnus take. Science too strong for humans.”

  “If that’s your plan, you’ll need to make a move soon,” Gilbrum said as he stood. “Very soon.”

  “Not ready,” Skeyr Magnus said. “Not stupid, Skeyr Magnus isn’t. He wait. Fix gauntlet. Grow strong.”

  “You are wise,” Gilbrum said, “but you may not have the time.”

  Skeyr Magnus glared at him, the muscles about his neck twitching. “Who say?”

  “Sektis Gandaw has commenced the Unweaving of all things.”

  “Pah!” Skeyr Magnus said, turning on his heel and gesturing for his lizard-men to follow.

  “If you don’t believe me, look to the skies above the Perfect Peak. Already there is a cloud.”

  Skeyr Magnus whirled on him. “Skeyr Magnus come from mountain. If Unweaving start, he know. He see it. You lie. Want Skeyr Magnus to attack now when he weak. You too tired to hunt, elf? Want Gandaw to kill us for you?”

  Gilbrum took a step toward him. “I do not lie. It has started. We must help each other, work together. Go to the edge of the Dead Lands. Watch the sky and see for your—”

  One of the lizard-men grunted and fell like a stone, blood bubbling from his mouth. A silver dagger jutted from his ribs. From a treetop there came another flash of silver, then another, and two more lizard-men fell. Gilbrum shot a look at Skeyr Magnus, but the lizard-man was already bolting into the underbrush with the rest of his people in tow.