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

by Chris Wooding

  She heard Zaelis cry out ahead of her. The fourth shin-shin had appeared from the trees, blocking their path, rearing up on its stilt-legs with a screech. Zaelis’s horse brayed and swerved aside to avoid the demon in its path. Its hooves found a patch of slick stone and skidded, and Kaiku watched in horror as it twisted and went down. Zaelis took the brunt of the fall, cushioning Lucia with his body; Kaiku heard the snap as Zaelis’s leg went, crushed under the flank of the horse. He bellowed in pain, but Kaiku was already bearing down on him, leaning from her saddle.

  ‘Give her to me!’ she called desperately, slowing as much as she dared.

  Zaelis, understanding dimly through the fog of agony, lifted the child up as far as he could; and Kaiku snatched her, the weight of the dying girl smacking into her arms and almost pulling her from her saddle. She reined around, righting herself, and came face to face with the shin-shin that had emerged from the trees. She took a single gasp—

  – and then Asara’s rifle cracked out across the night sky, and the shin-shin was blown aside by the force of the shot. It flailed on the ground, its black stilt-legs pawing spastically. Its three companions looked up at where the shot had come from, and one of them erupted into flame with a howl. Cailin was there, emerging from another gap in the rocks, her eyes blazing red.

  ‘Go!’ Zaelis roared, his molten voice breaking under the pain as his horse thrashed itself upright and left him lying there.

  Kaiku needed no second prompting. She spurred her mount savagely, and it leaped away towards the trees, chased by the sawing shriek of the storm as the moon-sisters watched her go.

  She plunged into the dark, wet world of the undergrowth, where every shadow was a hard face of wood and every wrong move promised a sudden end. Her ears filled with the sinister hiss of branches as they waved under the onslaught from the sky, slapping her shoulders as she passed. She was riding one-handed, the other arm crooked around Lucia, the Heir-Empress’s head jogging against her chest.

  The ground suddenly dropped before her and her horse reacted before she did, turning to take the slope at the best angle it could. Kaiku held on for her life as her mount slid and slipped through the trees and rocks, and it seemed their luck could not hold, that every near-miss and narrow dodge brought them closer to the moment when they would collide with a tree and she would be broken like a twig doll.

  And yet somehow the slope gave up before her horse did, and they bolted out into a narrow gully, with a stream running along its bottom. They pounded through the shallow water, throwing splash and spray up behind them. Kaiku knew they were beyond help now. There was no way the others could have followed her down here, much less find her again. She could only hope that the other shin-shin had suffered the same fate as the one Cailin had burned; but she dared not wait around to see. Whether it was her or her burden the shin-shin sought, she fled.

  The walls of the gully seemed to narrow, and when the storm shrieked again she shrieked with it, for the sound was amplified and deafening along this corridor of rock. Her eyes were narrowed against the pounding rain, yet she seemed to be able to see almost nothing, and had no idea whether she was heading toward level ground or a cliff that would send her to her death.

  It was the latter. Some instinct warned her, some part of her subconscious that recognised the change in turbulence of the stream ahead, and she reined her mount in hard enough to bruise its mouth. The stallion whinnied in pain, scrabbling to a halt. Kaiku leaned back in her saddle and held Lucia tight to avoid being tipped over the horse’s neck, down the fatal plunge to moon-washed treetops below. Hooves skidded on wet stones, and Kaiku felt a sickening lurch as she realised that they might not stop in time; but then her mount found its purchase, and they came to rest inches from the precipice. Kaiku gazed out over the dark landscape, so far down, and her stomach churned at the thought of toppling through that endless space, the jagged rocks of the cliff wall rushing by, rains dashing against her face, hurtling towards the ground below . . .

  With a rough tug, she pulled the stallion away, looking over her shoulder as she did so. Two of the shadow demons dropped from the treetops into the gully behind, their lantern-eyes trained unwaveringly upon the child in her arms.

  ‘You will not have her!’ Kaiku spat into the howling wind. Then her horse tugged left, against the reins, and she saw that the gully had crumbled enough at the cliff edge to form a ragged, unstable slope that they could use to clamber out. The horse wanted to try it, motivated by the terror of the things behind; but Kaiku knew better. Its hooves were not equipped for such uneven terrain. But her feet were.

  She swung down off the horse and slung Lucia over her shoulder like a sack. Her arms and legs were aching, and the child needed better care than this, but she had no time to be gentle.

  ‘You will not have her!’ she screamed again, and the moonstorm keened in response. With that, she scrambled up the broken slope, inches from the precipice to her right. A thin film of water slipped and hurried past her feet, and twice she stumbled and had to put a hand down to keep her balance, but she gained the lip of the gully, and saw there were trees again, crowding up to the edge of the drop. Her lungs burning, she threw herself into the dark shelter of the branches; though she knew that from the shin-shin they provided no shelter at all.

  Her breath came out in pants, her heart thudding in her ears, as she pushed though the dark, dripping netherworld of the trees. She could not outpace them like this; she could only hope to hide until daybreak or until help could arrive. A wild thought came to her. If she could find an ipi, like Asara had that first time she had met the shin-shin . . . but ipi dwelt only in the deep forests, and this was little more than a dense fringe of woodland.

  You cannot hide. You cannot outrun them. Think!

  Her mind flitted traitorously to her kana, the sleeping thing lurking within her that had caused her so much pain. Though she might have used it as a last resort, even knowing it had nearly killed Asara and may yet account for the death of the little girl that jounced and jerked against her shoulder, she knew she did not even have that option now. She had not rested enough since the last time it had burst free; there was nothing inside her to draw on. She had drained herself.

  There would be no reprieve this time.

  The trees gave up suddenly, discharging her on to a flat table of rain-battered rock that jutted out into the night sky. The three moons glared at her, arrayed directly ahead, their edges overlapping amidst a nest of churning cloud and jagged tines of purple lightning. Their luminescence reflected wetly on the cold stone at her feet. She staggered to a halt.

  ‘No . . .’ she whispered, but even from this distance it was possible to see that she had cornered herself. The table of rock ended in another precipice; she could see by the curve of its edge that it ran all the way round to either side of her. She had been fleeing along a steadily narrowing promontory, from which there was only one way out: back the way she had come.

  She heard the shin-shin wail from the trees behind, and whirled in terror. That was no option.

  Frantically, she fled across the bare rock to its edge. Perhaps there was a way down, perhaps it was not as bad as it seemed, if there was even a lake or a river there then she might dare to jump . . .

  But the precipice fell on to a jumble of rocks below, a maw of wet and broken teeth that waited hungrily.

  She spun round, the limp form of Lucia still in her arms and wrapped in the sodden blanket, but she knew what she would see before she looked. The shin-shin were there, creeping out of the trees, three of them. The creature Asara shot had not stayed down, and they had escaped Cailin before she could inflict any further damage on them. They came prowling into the moonlight, their bodies slung low between their stilt-legs, yellow eyes glittering like burning jewels.

  Kaiku clutched the child tight, feeling Lucia’s small heart beat against her breast. The creatures had slowed, knowing their prey was helpless and at their mercy. Kaiku took a shuddering breath and looked over he
r shoulder at the fall behind her, the rain plunging past to plash on the stone far below.

  Dying is not so bad, she thought, remembering her words to the Empress. But she had so much still to do. An oath unfulfilled, a new life to begin. She did not want to die here.

  Lucia stirred against her, whimpering.

  ‘Shh,’ she murmured, her eyes never leaving the steadily approaching demons. She found the lip of the precipice with her heel. ‘I will not let them take you, Lucia.’ The wind whipped and teased around her, pulling her, and she thought what it would be like never to feel such a wind again on her face, and wanted to cry.

  The shin-shin stiffened suddenly, frozen. They turned their heads to the sky, raising themselves up on their tapering limbs as if sniffing at the air. Kaiku watched them in mingled puzzlement and terror. What was this?

  A gust of wind blew a sheet of rain across the rock table, and as it passed something seemed to glimmer within it. It was gone so fast that Kaiku doubted it had been there at all; but the shin-shin reacted, the focus of their gaze shifting to where the glimmer had been. One of them took a hesitant step back, uncertain.

  Kaiku looked behind her for the briefest of instants, suddenly convinced there was something over her shoulder that she could not see. But all there was was the massive, blotched face of Aurus, seeming big enough to swallow the sky, and beside her was the white disc of Iridima with the blue cracks and lines that gullied her skin, and hiding behind and between them both, peeping out, was the clear green ball of Neryn.

  She turned back, and gasped. For now she could see something, a faint iridescence that seemed to hang in the air. Before her eyes, the shimmering coalesced and separated into three. The moonstorm screamed in fury behind her, and the shin-shin’s pointed limbs tapped on the stone as they skittered back a few steps, heads bobbing in confusion.

  The disturbances were taking on form now, towering to twice Kaiku’s height. Slowly the sparkling rain began to gain coherence, knitting shape from the falling droplets of water and merging into a spectral mass.

  The very air seemed to go still as the spirits took shape, and Kaiku’s breath died in her throat.

  They were slender, but great cascades of hair like feathers fell down their backs, and their radiance was a cool, cold light. Long robes, at once magnificent and ragged, tangled around their ankles and wrists, shreds of swirling fabric and strange ornaments swaying as they moved. Their skin was too taut, stretched across them in mockery of human form. They were women in shape, but terrifying of aspect, their features shifting and melting like the moons’ reflection in a disturbed pond. They seemed emaciated yet somehow smoothed, joints and angles too curved, not prominent enough, like waxworks softened by the sun’s heat. Long, hooked fingernails sprouted from thin, cruel hands. They looked down on Kaiku and the child, and in their eyes was a malice, an incomprehensibility of purpose that made Kaiku’s body weak and her soul shrivel. It was like looking into eternity, and seeing only the void.

  Yet in her terror she knew them for what they were, for there had been legends told of them since long before she was born. They came only on nights like this, sometimes to wreak vengeance, sometimes to bring spite; other times to heal, and protect and save. Their motivations were beyond human ken; they were mad, as the wolves who howled at their mistresses in the darkest nights. The spirits of the moonstorm. The Children of the Moons.

  They turned to the shin-shin, and the shadow demons retreated warily, flattening themselves in submission. But the Children of the Moons were not so easily placated. The shin-shin mewled and writhed, and Kaiku was appalled to see the creatures she had so feared abase themselves before these monstrous spirit-women, how much greater the magnitude of the Children’s power must be. The shin-shin seemed robbed of their demonic arrogance, cringing helplessly as the spirits approached them. Bright swords slid from beneath shredded, incandescent robes. The shin-shin responded in a frenzy, but like pinned butterflies they could only thrash. They could not escape. The swords glittered, rising in an arc.

  The massacre was short, and ugly. The shin-shin jerked and spasmed as they were cut and torn, their bodies rent and dismembered, their blood steaming and turning to vapour as it spewed from them. The Children of the Moons hacked the demons apart, taking them to pieces with their shining, rain-wet blades. Kaiku’s view of the killing was obscured by the dreadful sight of the spirit-women, but she could hear the repulsive – and surprisingly human – impact of blade against flesh, the breaking of bone, the crunch of gristle. The joyous, grating shrieks of the Children mingled with the shin-shin’s wails and drifted into the storm-torn sky.

  In moments it was over, and the demons had faded into nothingness like a dream.

  Kaiku shivered in the rain and the wind, the girl still clutched to her, her terror not lessened in the least by the departure of the shin-shin. For the great spirits now turned their ghastly eyes back upon her, and they came close until they loomed over her again. She had nowhere to go, not even an inch she could back away to without plummeting to her death.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Gods, would it have been better to have jumped than to face this? Were these creatures any better than the shin-shin? She felt as if her soul could take no more, racked as it was with fear and pain and weariness. Get it over with, then. Have it done.

  She opened her eyes again, and found herself face to face with one of the Children of the Moons.

  The spirit was down on one knee, bringing herself to Kaiku’s level. Her vast and fearful face was only a foot from Kaiku’s own, her nose and cheeks seeming to dissolve and reform with the slight inclinations of her head, her eyes like pits into the aether. Kaiku felt her blood cool and slow as she looked into them.

  Then the spirit brought her hand up, and with the long, curved nail of her index finger she touched the bundle in Kaiku’s arms, the lightest pressure on the blanket that enwrapped the Heir-Empress. Kaiku felt a shudder run through her, a soft charge of something so sublime that she had no name for it. She felt herself lifted from within, as if her body had become suddenly buoyant, a rush of ecstasy such as she had only felt before when she had touched the hem of death and looked into the Weave. A joyous awe threatened to swallow her whole, and she saw suddenly the nature of these awful beings that stood before her, saw them for the unfathomable, magisterial vastness they embodied, so far beyond humankind’s understanding that she felt like a mote in the ocean in comparison. She saw into the world of the spirits for an instant, and it humbled her.

  And then a gust of wind blew a stinging wave of rain across her face, and she shut her eyes against it. When she opened them again, the Children of the Moons were gone.

  She stood on the edge of the precipice, the rain swirling around her and the moonstorm slashing the clouds with lightning in the sky behind. Shakily, she stepped away from the drop, staggering to the safety of solid ground. The trees rustled emptily, a hollow audience to the wonder and terror of the last few moments. She raised her face to the sky and felt the rain lick it with warm spittle, and she could not think of a single thought or word that would sum up the experience of gazing into the face of one of the great spirits, of being touched by it. Stunned with awe, she barely noticed the child in her arms stir, nor did she see when the Heir-Empress opened her eyes. She only noticed Lucia was awake when the child put her arms about Kaiku’s neck and hugged her.

  ‘Did you meet my friends?’ Lucia asked, and Kaiku nodded and laughed and cried at the same time.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Weeks glided into months, and the summer grew old.

  The Libera Dramach maintained a perpetual readiness in anticipation of any retaliation from Axekami, their spies ever alert in the streets of the capital and all over the Xarana Fault; but as time drew out they began to believe they had no need of such rigid vigilance, and they relaxed somewhat. The Heir-Empress really had been stolen away unobserved. Saramyr was a vast place, and a thousand men might search for a thousand years and never find her. She
had vanished without trace, and out of the sight of the world.

  Most of the Fold had no idea who the new girl was. A large proportion of them had taken to this life amid the pleats and valleys of the Fault simply to escape their fetters outside, or to avoid the Weavers. Their interest in the politics of the Libera Dramach was non-existent; they simply had lives to live, and they had found a place to live them. And so it was only the core of the Libera Dramach who knew the secret of the girl in their midst, knew of the power she wielded and who she truly was. For the common folk of the Fold, Lucia was just another new girl, another refugee from one conflict or another, and that was not unusual.

  Lucia herself recovered from the burns she had suffered, but she never lost the scars. Her upper back and the nape of her neck were wrinkled and puckered, and though the redness faded over time, they were still an abomination against the clear, unspoilt skin that surrounded them. Lucia, converse to expectations, chose not to grow her hair back to its previous length, but instead had it cut boyishly short. When Zaelis gently pointed out that long hair might hide her scarring, she simply gave him one of her unfathomable looks and ignored his advice.

  At first, Zaelis was protective of Lucia and acted as a father to her. His broken leg had healed badly and left him with a pronounced limp, but it did not stop him keeping her apart from the other children and away from harm. Of all people, it was Mishani who finally talked him into letting her run free. Lucia had never tasted freedom, never lived a life outside a gilded cage, always too important to be risked. But on the day of the new Emperor’s accession to the throne, Mishani went to Zaelis and spoke with him. She was ever the persuasive one.

  ‘She is not the Heir-Empress now,’ Mishani pointed out. ‘And she should not be treated like one. You’ll make people suspicious.’