The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  But there was something terribly wrong. A foul, cancerous unknown, a sickening, creeping blight that was seeping into her like blood into a rag, fast, fast, an invasion and violation of the most horrible kind . . .

  She saw it then, in her mind’s eye, coiling along the golden threads towards her heart, tentacles of light sliding into her territory, into the very fibres of her body, the striations of her muscles. Everything in her wanted to be rid of it, to expel this vileness from her. Her kana blazed in response, threading out towards the invader, to burn it out with cleansing fire . . .

  No!

  It was Cailin. She willed her kana to stop, to accept the invader even though every one of her senses screamed against it; and somehow it responded, stalling in its assault. It railed at her attempt to hobble it, but this was different to when it had been unleashed before. This time, the kana was still within her body, and had not broken free of the boundaries of her territory. Here, she could master the fire.

  She let herself go mentally limp, beginning a mantra over and over. The onslaught continued through her, creeping in towards her core like the paralysing bite of a spider. She felt panic rising within her. What did she know, truly, of Cailin tu Moritat? She was opening herself up to this woman in a way more intimate than making love, giving her the freedom to do anything to her, to turn her lungs inside out or burst her heart or rearrange her thoughts so she was a willing slave to Cailin’s whims. How could she trust anyone that much, let alone this enigmatic Aberrant who was more of a stranger to her than Tane or Asara?

  She forced the thoughts down, concentrating on her mantra. Too late now, she told herself. Too late. And yet still the urge grew, to lash out, to expel this invader and be whole and unsullied again. The presence of Cailin was abhorrent, as Cailin had told her it would be. Your mind will see me as a disease, she said, and it did; it took all her willpower to stay still while the foulness consumed her.

  But the alien threads were quick, slipping into her heart where they were pumped around her body, and with them came a strange, soothing sensation, as of ice put on a burn. Her kana quailed, but she sensed that the worst was over. The calm spread through her, swamping her inexorably, its touch bringing peace to the fibres of her body. No longer did it seem a disease that had swallowed her, but a benediction, and distantly, subtly, she felt Cailin begin her work . . .

  The Fold was ever ready for battle, a fortress against the dangers of the Xarana Fault. Though there was no true army here, there was a hard core of military expertise culled from the populace, a combination of Libera Dramach and those who had been recruited or drifted their way in. Bandit leaders and strategists for the nobility sat side by side in war councils, the organisational brain behind the defence network of the Fold. And though there were few professional soldiers here, there was no shortage of volunteers to safeguard the newfound freedom that this isolated community offered. Everyone within the valley was expected to hold their own when the time came, and a man who could not shoot a rifle or use a sword or crank a ballista was dead weight. Training was informal, for most of these people were not warriors by nature, and the Fault’s terrain was better suited for guerilla tactics anyway; but there were not many here who would be unable or unwilling to fight when the time came. And in the Fault, the time would come sooner or later.

  Even as night settled into the creases of the world, the work went on by the glow of paper lanterns and bonfires. Fire-cannons were rolled out and cleaned. Ballistae stood silhouetted imposingly on the ridges, backlit by the flames. Mine-carts full of ammunition were rolled along the system of tracks that ran along bridges between the biggest plateaux. Scouting parties slipped quietly back into the Fold, barely noticed. Lifts squeaked and creaked as their pulleys strained against guide wheels and cogs.

  Tane sat on the grassy side of the wide, shallow valley that cradled the Fold and hid it from sight. The folk here had warned him not to go out alone at night, but he was unable to reflect and meditate amid all the activity on the steps, so he took the risk and retreated to the darkness. Now he was glad he had.

  He looked out over the cascade of the land, a hundred lanterns in bright points tumbling down the dark platforms and plateaux into the valley, pools of light hanging in the deep, abyssal darkness. The windows of the buildings that crowded the steps of the Fold speckled the black with yellow twinkles like grounded stars. High above, only Aurus rode the sky tonight, her vast face looking down on him, the dim white of her skin blotched with patches of pale blue. It was beautiful, to be here, to see this. He gave thanks to Enyu, and felt a strange contentment within.

  These last weeks had been a turbulent time for him. It seemed that he had been running to catch up with himself ever since he had first found Kaiku, unconscious and fevered in the Forest of Yuna. It had taken her arrival – and the events that came in her wake – to knock him out of the life he had settled into ever since his mother and sister had left him alone.

  His apprenticeship at the temple was a refuge, a restoration for the crime he had committed. He regretted less the fact that he had murdered his own father, but more that his actions had driven away the rest of his family. His mother was ineffectual without her husband’s control, incapable of initiative. His sister had been recently raped. The misfortunes that could have assailed them were legion, and he would never know. For weeks he had tried to track them, to find word of them in nearby towns; but they had vanished, like smoke in the wind. Then the guilt had set in, the terrible weight of what he had done. Despair took him, and he languished in his empty home for weeks. After that, he had gone to the temple and offered himself to Enyu. If he could not heal himself, perhaps he could heal others. Grief-stricken, he was not thinking as clearly as he might have been; but the priests accepted him, and there he found order, a routine, and time to piece his life back together.

  But it was the wrong life, and he had taken it for the wrong reasons. He had not the temperament nor the discipline nor – he sickened to admit – the raw faith to dedicate his life to serving Enyu in a temple. Kaiku had been the catalyst that had shown him that. He still believed Enyu had spared him from the slaughter at the temple for a reason, but it was not the reason he had first envisaged. She had sent him to walk among the Aberrants.

  When he had left Asara in Chaim and gone south, he had sought only to get away from her. He could not bear the thought of Asara’s mocking gaze, or what he might say to Kaiku if she ever returned from the mountains. He needed to be alone, to think things through. He had ever been a solitary child, and he was used to his own counsel; now he needed the peace to listen to it.

  You believe your journey was ordained by your goddess, that you were spared for a purpose; but there is no greater foulness to Enyu than an Aberrant. Reconcile these things, if you can.

  Asara’s words haunted him as he took a ship from Pelis, back to Jinka and the mainland. He could not reconcile them. Was this a test of his faith? Was he supposed to help them, or thwart them? Were they not all working towards the same goal: finding the hand behind the shin-shin? Was there a lesson to be learned here, or was he simply not seeing it? Whichever way he turned, he came up against the same block: Aberrants, whether they were inherently evil or not, were perversions of nature, products of the blight that had stricken the land. How could he believe that any path that Enyu set him would coincide with theirs?

  He thought about it all the way back to Axekami, where he found the city in turmoil. It was only then that he realised he had given himself no plan, no destination, and that he had nowhere to go. What money he had with him was fast running out, and there was no prospect of getting any more. He had relied on Kaiku and Asara’s charity since he had joined them, and payment for the journey back from Fo had sapped the little he had taken from his temple when he left. He thought to find another temple of Enyu, who would not turn away one of their own. Not in Axekami, for it was evident the capital was a seething boil of anger at the moment; but there were others elsewhere, where he could
find calm and meditate on his quandary.

  Yet he did not go to a temple. That would be going backwards, settling himself into the life that Kaiku had torn him from. And whatever else had come of it, he had not forgotten the feeling of rightness he had experienced as he and Asara sailed out of the Forest of Yuna towards Axekami. That feeling told him now that the temple of Enyu was not the answer. Instead, he went to the temple of Panazu.

  Getting into the city was not easy, but Axekami had not closed itself off completely. Many folk were leaving in terror as martial law gripped the interior, and a way out was a way in. Tane had not forgotten the note Asara had left him. He was still no closer to an answer than he ever had been, but he had learned that he would never find the truth by leaving the path he had taken. All he could do was follow it and hope things became clearer. That was his reasoning, anyway. He resolutely refused to recognise the tug of his heart in the matter, and he would not think of Kaiku at all.

  Now she had returned to him. The news she brought staggered them all, revealing the full extent of the Weavers’ evil, showing them finally the source of the sickness in the land. Alone, she had walked into the wilderness, and come back bearing something more precious than all the jewels in the world.

  It came to him then as a revelation. In his arrogance, he had always imagined that he was the one ordained by Enyu for great things. There had always been beneath his reasoning a selfish centre, considering all events in relation to him. But it was Kaiku who had found the source of the blight, picking up a thread woven by her father and following it to its end. Who knew how far back into time that thread stretched, the accretion of knowledge by scholar after scholar, building into wisdom? It took the courage and guile of one man to find the secret; but it took the strength of his daughter to bring it back. It was not Tane’s path that was important, but Kaiku’s. All that the priests of Enyu’s temples had been working for these past decades, with their prayers and meditation, had been unravelled by an Aberrant, the most cursed of nature.

  Then why was he there? As a witness? As one who should guard her? As a representative of Enyu’s will? He had not been particularly successful at any of these tasks.

  Perhaps you are just here, Tane, he thought. Perhaps there is no greater plan, or if there is, it is too great for you to see it. You always were too introspective. That is why you never made a good priest. Too many questions, not enough blind faith.

  It was not satisfying, but it would do for now. Whatever the real answers, he had no doubts about Kaiku now. He would follow her where she went. As if his traitor heart would allow him otherwise . . .

  ‘Out of the question,’ Cailin snapped. ‘She’s too valuable.’

  ‘Nobody knows that more than me,’ Mishani replied. ‘But if you want me to go, she goes too.’

  Mishani and Cailin faced each other, locking eyes and wills. Cailin was almost a head taller than the diminutive noblewoman, but Mishani was not in the least cowed by her opponent’s size or fearsome appearance. They stood in one of the upper rooms of the house of the Red Order, a long building with a curving, peaked roof which overhung the balconies running around its first floor. In contrast to the somewhat ramshackle nature of its surrounding buildings, this one was tidy and precise, with pennants of red and black hanging from the balcony rail before the entrance.

  ‘You would willingly put your friend in danger, Mishani,’ Cailin accused.

  ‘No,’ said Kaiku, from where she leaned against a wall boyishly. ‘I asked her. I demand to go.’

  ‘So do I,’ put in Tane, who was watching from the other side of the room. Asara stood near him, a faint smirk on her face.

  ‘Why?’ Cailin asked, her voice cold. ‘You are no warrior. Have you killed before? Have you, Kaiku?’

  ‘I made an oath to Ocha,’ said Kaiku calmly, ignoring the question. ‘My enemy are the Weavers. The Weavers want Lucia dead. I wish to be part of any effort to thwart them.’

  ‘You will be!’ Cailin said, anger creeping into her tone. ‘You will learn to be a more powerful force than you can imagine. Dying in the Imperial Keep before you grow into your strength is futile.’

  ‘Cailin, she speaks sense,’ Asara said. ‘The Keep guards will expect warriors, much as those you have already chosen to go. They will not suspect women and priests.’

  ‘She is dangerous still!’ Cailin hissed, flinging out a finger at Kaiku. ‘She has only begun to learn how to suppress her kana. If she should unleash it within the Keep, we would all be killed.’

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic,’ Asara said. ‘You merely wish to protect your investment.’

  Anger blazed in Cailin’s eyes, but Asara met her gaze with an insouciant stare.

  ‘It is only two more, Cailin,’ Mishani said. ‘You have asked Asara and I to go because you need us. I am the only noble you have who is willing to set foot in Axekami again; Asara is an experienced handmaiden. But I will not go unless Kaiku goes. And Tane, if he wishes. You said yourself that we four trod a braided path. Perhaps it is braided more tightly than you think.’

  Cailin framed a retort, then swallowed it. She rounded on Kaiku. ‘Is your mind made up in this?’

  Kaiku shrugged, an imitation of her brother from long ago. ‘I have no choice. I made an oath.’

  ‘Oaths can be interpreted any way you see fit,’ Cailin pointed out archly. ‘Very well then. We leave for Axekami tomorrow. All of us. If we do not move soon, we may lose our chance. The danger to Lucia grows daily, and we have little time remaining, if my sources tell me true.’ She swept around and stalked out of the room, her black dress trailing behind her. ‘We will steal the Heir-Empress from under their noses,’ she declared as she left.

  Kaiku gave a smile of thanks to Mishani, and wondered what she had let herself in for.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The armies of Blood Kerestyn and Blood Amacha faced each other across the grassy plain to the west of Axekami. The morning sun beat down on them, already cruelly hot and not even close to its zenith. It glinted off swords and rifles, sheening down the edges of pike blades and making men shade their eyes and squint. To the west, Blood Kerestyn, their gold and green standards limp in the windless humidity. To the east, Blood Amacha, a swathe of brown and red mingled with the colours of other, lesser families. Fire-cannons brooded in the swelter, their barrels fashioned into the likenesses of demons and spirits, their mouths open to belch flame. Between the armies was the killing ground, a great strip of untrampled grass where they would meet if it came to conflict.

  The sheer weight of numbers was immense. Amacha’s army had been swelled to over ten thousand, and Kerestyn had more than that, a wave of soldiers that had washed over the land and now teetered on the edge of breaking. From the city walls, they melted into two huge pools of blades and guns and armour. The front ranks were foot soldiers, horses pawing at the dirt and manxthwa loping back and forth, the soldiers standing ready, hair damp with perspiration. Behind them were riflemen, most in rows but some gathered in little clusters, cleaning and checking their weaponry. Further from the front ranks, the tents began, angular polygons of colour ranging from simple and utilitarian to complex and grandiose. Where the battle lines were still, the rear of the armies was a swarm of activity, a constant shifting of supplies, troops, and information. Tents were being erected; cannons were being repaired; armour was fixed or handed out. To the east, the enormous beige walls of Axekami were a frowning barrier that dwarfed them all to insignificance, stretching to either side of the battlefield and curving out of sight, a bristling mass of guard-towers behind which the jumble of the city’s streets could be seen cluttering their way up the hill towards the Imperial Keep, its gold walls paled by distance.

  The two vast forces shimmered in the heat haze, waiting.

  The armies of Blood Kerestyn had begun their march on the capital some days ago, but they were slow, detouring to amalgamate with other, smaller forces on the way, minor families who had allied themselves with the Kerestyn cause. A furth
er delay was caused by the need to skirt Blood Koli’s lands around Mataxa Bay. The Barak Koli had firmly allied himself with Sonmaga, for better or worse.

  Blood Kerestyn had been ousted from the throne by Blood Erinima over a matter of dishonour, not warfare. The last Kerestyn Blood Emperor, Mamis, had lied to the council of nobles over a matter of great importance and been discovered. He had done the sensible thing and abdicated, for the council had given a unanimous vote of no-confidence in their ruler after that; Anais’s father had filled the void. But though Kerestyn had lost the might of the Imperial Guards, which were sworn to protect the Blood Emperor or Empress regardless of their family, they had retained the vast strength which had won them the throne in the first place. And they had bided their time, waiting for an opportunity just such as this.

  Sonmaga tu Amacha was no less ambitious, but his ambition outstripped his means somewhat in this matter. He believed passionately that the Heir-Empress should be removed from the line of succession, even if Anais stayed as Empress. If only that cursed Mishani woman had done what she was supposed to, then all this could have been averted. He didn’t want a civil war, principally because he suspected he would lose it. In ten years, when he had enough support, when his plans had come to fruition . . . maybe then would be the time to strike. But getting rid of the Aberrant Heir-Empress would solve all their problems. Kerestyn would no longer have a righteous cause motivating them, and their support would swiftly peel away if they chose to press their suit upon the capital. He wished he’d just had Purloch kill the little bitch when he had the chance, instead of settling for a lock of her hair; but Purloch had disappeared the moment he was paid, and had not been found since.