The Weight of the World

by Tom Toner

  That morning, as she’d awoken to the calls of wandering pedlars to look out of her window at the hills rolling by, something had stuck in her mind. The season of Wintering was a long one, lasting generally from Nevor until at least the thirty-fifth of The Lave. Days were seldom counted unless the month held birthdays or specific events; it just so happened that today, almost on the cusp of Midwintering, was one of those days.

  Today, the twelfth of Ember, was Lycaste’s birthday.

  Her gaze followed the curve of the bright river as it ran north, the cries of the gulls becoming harsh and ugly as they fought over some scrap liberated from the Awgers’ tents, her thoughts far away.

  He was dead. She saw it clearly now. Nobody like him could have survived this long.

  “Eranthis,” Jatropha said from behind her, “how much have you?”

  She stirred, turning and staring at him, unable to think for a moment what the Amaranthine could mean. His body had already elongated into one of its Melius guises, his Amaranthine face magnified and stretched until it resembled that of a handsome Thirdling gentleman. She’d seen the effect before, understanding it was only a trick of the eye, but found still that she’d lost her train of thought. Eranthis blinked. “What’s wrong with your money?”

  He extended his new Melius hand impatiently. “I only need small ribbon for the gate.”

  “Fine,” she breathed, searching her purse and pulling out a bundle of the smallest denominations. “That enough?”

  “Thank you, yes.” The Amaranthine placed the entire knot of colour into the Tollman’s large palm, snapping his fingers at Eranthis once more. “And one for over the side, please—it’s the Mostar custom for luck upon entering the city.”

  “What?”

  “Throw something over. It needn’t be anything much.”

  Eranthis shook her head, registering the Tollman’s impassive look, understanding that he must have seen a thousand such reactions. She muttered, slightly embarrassed, and tossed a tiny strip of silk over, watching it float in the wind.

  “Will that do?”

  “Very nicely, thank you.”

  She sighed, seeing the ribbon twist as it was carried along in the wind, and wondered where—if anywhere—it would land, imagining Lycaste’s own fate tied to such an act of chance. It floated, missing the spikes of some low, stripped dropling trees on the bank and curling back over the river, rising unexpectedly in an eddy of wind and looking as if it might actually clear the walls. Eranthis gazed, entranced, unwilling to lose sight of the silk for fear of what it might portend. Further downstream it dropped, her spirits dropping with it, and caught on the surface of the water, growing dark as it began to sink. An opportunist Awger with a long pole reached out from its position on the little beach, snaring the silk and dragging it back onto dry land. She observed the reptilian thing stuffing its prize into a pocket, trying to decide what that meant for poor, lost Lycaste.

  Bidens, the mayor’s son, met them at the carpenter’s while they waited for repairs to be made to the Corbita, which had taken a beating on the stone-cobbled road from Elbazanion and the hundreds of miles of worn, hilly paths. Eranthis spotted him hurrying through the shaded vaults of the growth-stone courtyard beneath dozens of hanging lamps that glowed with his passing: a lanky adolescent flushing nervous silver at the sight of them.

  “There are serpents that weep with remorse when they devour people. And men who hop about on one gigantic foot.” Bidens nodded earnestly. “Then, when the sun gets too hot, they lie on their backs and shade themselves.”

  Eranthis had trouble picturing what the young man was saying. “They use their foot like a parasol?”

  “Precisely!” Bidens grinned at Pentas, who looked lost in thought as she combed Arabis’s dark blonde hair. In order to be seen in public, the child had been painted with the colours of a rustic red Tenthling. The watery sugar solution tended to attract flies and had caused all manner of tantrums during its application, but Jatropha had deemed it necessary after hearing of their encounter with the chronicler at Acro-polo. “And there are others—”

  “Why not just wear a colour, if the sun’s too strong?” Eranthis interrupted. She was growing irritated with his stories. Little ball-shaped people without bodies or necks, men and women with tails between their legs; it all sounded rather far-fetched. Of course, she and her sister had learned nothing of the West in Provincial school, just as they knew little of the East, or the South beyond the Nostrum. But she supposed these gangly, long-featured people (technically Ninthlings, owing to the spiral nature of the Provinces) were supposed to be descended from the Westerly peoples of the great Province of Tail, just across the sea, and ought to know what they were talking about.

  “A colour?” Bidens asked, shrinking a little at her tone. “No, some colours are rude. Especially black—in the West, one cannot wear black.”

  “Why not?” Pentas glanced up at last.

  He smiled at her, then looked tenderly at the baby. “If you met me in your garden one night and I had coloured black, would you trust me? Black is the colour of secrecy. It’s only advisable among the closest of friends, so have a care not to wear it during your stay.”

  Eranthis frowned. “But black is modesty.”

  “The Pannish, even those from Tail and Azorme, would not see it that way. Also, direct eye contact is not generally permissible until two people have known each other for at least an evening, so be careful.”

  Eranthis sighed, stretching and looking for Jatropha. The Amaranthine was across the workshop, engaged along with the help of various sturdily built carpenters in turning the great wheel, looking for faults in the repairs. A few of its split wooden planks had at last been replaced, and their replacements lay pale against the beams of older, darker wood. A fresh coat of paint had even been applied to the balcony, windows and roof tiles, and now their home for the next few months looked almost new. Eranthis worried as she gazed at it that the brightness of the paint might attract thieves or worse, feeling a creeping unease.

  “But we can speak First there?” Pentas was asking, her words becoming strained with effort as Arabis began to struggle. Eranthis would have to take her soon.

  “Yes. I’ll teach you what you need to know of local dialects.”

  “How long have you spent in Pan?” Eranthis asked, hearing the harshness in her voice. “You can’t be more than, what, twenty?”

  Bidens coloured at her tone. “Twenty-one. My father sent me away to school in Pan—to the High School House at Old Zurine, but the expense was too much and I’ve been back two years now.”

  “And what are you going to do?” Eranthis asked, unable to lighten her voice. “Run tours all your life?” She saw him visibly deflate, hating the way she sounded. Even Pentas was looking at her askance.

  “No, I suppose not,” Bidens admitted. “What with the war and all, we’ll probably have to sell up to some Jalan prince with his eye on the city.”

  “And the Jalan won’t be a problem further west?” Eranthis asked, trying her hardest to smile despite the nature of the question.

  “No, we won’t have any trouble. As long as we stick to the Arteries, there shouldn’t be any problems from here on out.”

  “Aren’t there any pretty girls in the city to catch your fancy?” Pen-tas asked brightly, giving up on trying to calm Arabis and passing Eran-this the baby without a word. “You might wish to go your own way at some point.”

  Bidens appeared to withdraw once again. “I don’t know much about those.”

  Pentas and Eranthis glanced at each other, the memories of Lycaste so strong that for a moment he was almost back from the dead, sitting diffidently before them.

  The plan, Jatropha had decreed, was to journey north along the coast, past Tristel and on to the border between East and West: the grand city of Old Veronesse, gateway to the vast Westerly Province of Pan. From there they could take the good roads into the edges of the Outer Second, where an emissary of the Berenzargols wo
uld be waiting. With that last letter sent by fast bird, Jatropha and his shabby crew had lost any surprise they’d once had. Callistemon’s family knew now who to expect from the West, and what they carried. If they had any desire to benefit from the great gift Pentas brought them, however, they would endeavour to keep this knowledge secret.

  Eranthis walked the walls, listening to the cackle of the Shame-clothed beasts ambling past her on the parapet, Cursed People selling their wares in semi-poverty. Draped around her neck, her purse felt heavy, especially in their company. Jatropha had given them both about a year’s worth of pocket money, enough so that they need not ask him for handouts at every turn, and had agreed a scale for them to borrow more. A trifle mean, she thought, considering his apparent material wealth, and also somehow disconcerting.

  It seemed a pity to leave so soon. She’d considered staying longer, simply refusing to go, but was conscious that her sister wouldn’t leave without her. They had no choice but to serve the Amaranthine’s opaque will a little longer, until the baby was taken, as she most assuredly would be, by those who needed her more. Maybe then Jatropha would leave them, too, ceasing his supply of silk and favours, perhaps arranging them nothing more than a ticket home. Eranthis simply had no idea. A niggling thought surfaced finally as she watched the Cursed People picking through a line of empty jars in the shade of the wall.

  Suppose Pentas denies him her child.

  She saw it unfold. He would take Arabis for himself, paralysing them with his powers, or snatch her away in the night.

  Eranthis stopped, contemplating the brushed hint of the Green-moon in the deep blue afternoon. The Amaranthine wouldn’t hurt her. It wasn’t in his nature.

  But who can know, for sure?

  For the first time, she began to question what in the world she was doing, following such a man to the far corners of the Provinces, indebt-ing herself to him. Was this so different from her past mistakes? She’d run off with a tutor once, thinking it was the start of a great adventure, but he’d been like all the rest in the end.

  He has us by the purse strings, she thought. And spies all across the land. There was nowhere to run even if she wanted to, even if she and Pentas could somehow slip away into the night unseen. They’d be hunted to the very edge of the world.

  PETRICHOR

  The sheets are damp when he crunches them in his hand, throwing them back despite the chill in the air. Sotiris rolls, eyes tight shut, not yet ready to wake, his face pressed into silk that feels rough with embroidery. He scowls into the sheets, misty-headed as if waking from a hangover, charged with revelations and regrets. He doesn’t know this bed.

  Slowly, softly, sounds sink to him. Croaking echoes of a large open place sheltered in stillness from the wind. A bead of rain touches his nose. Sotiris’s frown deepens.

  But there is no headache, none of that buzzing numbness that greets the waking drunk. Sliding his tongue around his mouth, he finds it clean-tasting, the teeth smooth as silk. That fresh, tainted scent of rain—he knows the word, searches for it—petrichor. That scent is everywhere. His eyes open. He sits up.

  A pearl-white sky, stained by a watermark of grey, frames a hillside that leads down to a copse of thick, low trees the colour of dark moss. Where grass should have been there is only a carpet of five-petalled purple and cream flowers that blankets the hill all the way into the woods, shadowed in the wide spaces between the trees. He looks up at the glowering white, sensing that it is late afternoon, at the very earliest, and down at the ornate Melius-built bed he has spent the night in.

  But there was no night, not really. A night of millennia, perhaps. A dream that was his life. But he feels now as if he hasn’t been asleep long. He is here at his own request.

  The trees at the base of the hill sway in the wind, their lowest branches brushing the flowers in the manner of muscular, stately oaks. Sotiris sits up, listening to the hollow flautist calls of the trees’ inhabitants as they witter and sink on the increasing wind. Along the crest of the hill and down into its hollow stand a handful of pale, cubic stone follies, each about the size of a single room. They are arranged like monumental stepping stones leading towards the wood. An idea strikes him and he touches his nose, collecting a trace of the raindrop he’d felt upon waking and bringing it to his lips. The snow, from another dream in some other when. They are one and the same. And so, he hopes, he knows where he is.

  Sotiris climbs from the bed, legs dangling before he drops. He is wearing a black Amaranthine nightshirt that falls almost to his slippered feet. The flowers scrape his calves as he walks, and at his passing, shiny purple insects trailing tasselled limbs zip into the darkening air, one or two larger than his hand.

  Reaching the first of the follies, he finds that it is made from blocks of chalk, cut and mortared precisely in the manner of Georgian sandstone. A symbol graces each of the large blocks, the grooves catching under his fingers as he runs a hand across the stone. A point, like a badly engraved, inverted V. Every block bears the same impression: a steepled, awkward hieroglyph punched firmly into its crust. Sotiris pauses at the building’s side and gazes off into the woods, knowing almost for certain where he shall find her—with or without her spectral chaperone. He sniffs the scented, rain-cool air, sure that Aaron can’t be very far away.

  He circles the structure to find the entrance, arriving at a doorway in its face. The smell—putrefaction like blue cheese—greets him before his eyes can adjust to the gloom, and he turns away quickly with the sleeve of his nightshirt pressed to his nose before looking back.

  Fifty or more metal cages stacked to the ceiling in rickety towers line the walls, while more hang down from chains set into the stone. From each, a gargoyle head peers listlessly, parallel walls of dangling lips and tongues, jutting teeth, vacant, lidded eyes. Cadaverous arms and fingers drape between the bars and willow-slender tails twitch a beat of madness, their tips gnawed to the bone. In form, they aren’t too dissimilar from the creature that put him to sleep, but not quite the same: one or two related species, Sotiris thinks as he looks among the darkened shapes, wondering why they pay him no heed. The stench that breathes through the cage bars doesn’t grow any more manageable, so he steps back a little into the flowers, taking in the floor of the folly where the light touches it. Lying in the path that threads between the cages is a long hooked stick, half of it mostly buried in heaps of damp-dark plumage and splattered excrement, and a misshapen, rust-brittle bucket punched with holes.

  Sotiris waves a hand to dispel the stench and turns away, knowing without wishing to investigate that the other cubes will be much the same, and that Iro will not be among them. He’s glad of such certainty— to thoroughly inspect every hellish cube would take subjective hours. Instinctively he understands that this place, this projected time, is not a dream like any other. It is the memory of a world long forgotten, a place only ever guessed at by men with clumsy brushstrokes. It is Aaron’s world, the place he came from, the time in which he was born.

  A large crescent moon—silver, like the moon from his youth—brushes through the cloud as he reaches the border of the woods, but the effect is not as comforting as it might be. No stars shine, and yet Sotiris is glad. He understands that they will be different here, off somehow, still drifting in cold galactic currents to the positions he knows so well.

  He creeps into the deeper shadow of the trees, through a light mist that has begun to fill the hollows at the base of the hill. That Iro should even be here at all strikes him suddenly as absurd; she has no connection to this place. A brief anger kindles inside him, masking the fear of the darkness under the trees, but it quickly subsides. Aaron has given him an opportunity unlike any other and, so far as he knows, he may wake at any time. He stops, reflecting on the clarity and crispness of his thoughts in this place. Even whilst journeying to the Sarine Palace to accept his crown—though blurred and dreamlike in itself now, as if it happened many decades before—Sotiris had felt his mind slipping out from under him,
a perilous contingent like ice beneath his feet. Here among the trees of a remembered world he feels himself again, fully in command of his instincts and intellect. This place, wherever it is being generated, appears to be the final bastion of his sanity.

  His mind clears further, the branches of the trees cutting through the haze.

  He’d neglected Iro while she was alive. Even before her mind had been thoroughly examined, he’d packed his sister away to the Utopia, leaving her to her madness. It was what they all did, and only the knowledge that the same would be done to him—that he would see her soon on equal terms, dribbling and bewildered—could keep the guilt at bay.

  He remembers her as she was—snatches of voice and temperament, sunlight on her hair. When he’d begun his rise to prominence, she was always the last to comment, seeing through his glad-handing ways with the narrowed eyes of one who’d known him his entire life. They love you for your way with people, she’d said once. But I remember when we were children, and you had none of that. You were an introvert. You had to train yourself to be like this, you had to act the part, so that you might be loved by people who didn’t know you.

  Sotiris remembers he spoke to her less after that, as if she’d called into question the very nature of his character. But she’d been right, he supposed. Natural shyness had forced a fabricated bonhomie into him, a charm that took over all too naturally as the years wore on. That shyness—he pauses, for the night is fragrant with foreign smells—it was what he’d seen in the Melius, Lycaste. He’d seen his old self.

  Reincarnation was a word Sotiris had never liked to speak aloud, but he’d believed in it all the same. Perhaps life had grown tired of his indecision, or forgotten him entirely? Perhaps he and that poor, handsome Melius man were one and the same.