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

by Chris Wooding

  Kaiku stole glances at the woman as she chewed, eyes roaming over the pale green tattoos that curled over her cheeks and poked from her shirt collar, wondering what thoughts passed through her head. She had not wanted any payment for her services as a guide; indeed, it was an insult to offer any. Mishani had explained that since the guide lived within the town of Kisanth, then at some level that was her pash and thereby she would willingly offer her services to anyone within that town who needed them and expect the same courtesy to be offered to her. Kaiku had been warned to be very careful about asking anything of an Okhamban, as they would almost unfailingly oblige, but they would become resentful if their nature was abused. Okhambans only asked for something when they could not do it themselves. She could not pretend to understand their ways, but she thought it seemed a strangely civilised and selfless lifestyle in a people who were generally thought of as primitive in Saramyr.

  Night had just deepened to full dark when they arrived at the Aith Pthakath. They came at it from below, following a narrow stream bed until the trees abruptly fell back and exposed the low hilltop hidden in amongst the surrounding jungle. No trees grew on the hill, but in their place were the monuments of ancient Okhamba, built by a dead tribe long before any people’s history had begun to be recorded.

  Kaiku caught her breath. Aurus and Iridima shared the sky for a third successive night, lighting the scene in a wan white glow. Aurus, pale but patched with darker shades, loomed massive and close to the north. Iridima, smaller and much brighter, her skin gullied with bluish cracks, took station in the west, above and behind the monuments.

  There were six of them in all, bulky shadows against the sky with the curves of their faces limned in moonlight. The tallest of them stood at thirty feet, while the smallest was a little over fifteen. They were sculpted from a black, lustrous stone that was like obsidian in quality, set in a loose ring around the crest of the hilltop, facing outward. The largest squatted in the centre, looking over Kaiku’s head to the east.

  The guide grunted and motioned at Kaiku to go on, so she stepped out of the trees and into the clearing, approaching the nearest of the monuments. The riotous sound of the jungle had not diminished one bit, but she felt suddenly alone here, in the presence of a humbling antiquity, a place sanctified by a long-dead people before any of what she knew existed. The statue she approached was a squatting figure hewn out of a great pillar, features grotesquely exaggerated, a prominent mouth and huge, half-lidded eyes, its hands on its knees. Though the rain of centuries had battered it and smoothed its lines so that they were indistinct, and though one hand had broken away and lay at its feet, it was incredibly well preserved, and its blank, chilling gaze had not diminished in authority. Kaiku felt minuscule under its regard, this forgotten god.

  The others were no less intimidating. They were seated or squatting, with swollen bellies and strange faces, some like animals that Kaiku had never seen, some in disturbing caricatures of human features. They guarded the hill, glaring balefully out at the trees, their purpose alien and subtly unsettling.

  Kaiku hesitated for a few moments, then laid her hand on the knee of one of the idols. The stone was cool and brooding. Whatever power this place had once seen had not been entirely dispersed. It retained a sacred air, like an echo of distant memory. No trees had encroached here, nor had any animals nested in the crooks and folds of the statues. She wondered if there were spirits here, as there were in the deeper forests and lost places at home. The Tkiurathi did not seem to be pious at all, from the accounts of the travellers she had talked to on the Heart of Assantua. Yet here was the evidence that there had once been worship in this land. The weight of ages settled on her like a shroud.

  She became conscious that the guide had joined her, and removed her hand from the statue. She had forgotten the reason she came here in the first place. Looking around, it became evident that the spy was not here yet. Well, she was early. The rendezvous was at midnight on this date. They had cut it extremely fine on the crossing, slowed by unfavourable moon-tides caused by some inept navigator’s miscalculation of the orbits, but at least she was here now.

  ‘Perhaps we should look around the other side of the hill,’ she suggested, more to herself than the guide, who could not understand. She made a motion with her arm to illustrate, and the guide tilted her chin up in an Okhamban nod.

  In that instant, a thick arrow smashed through her exposed throat, spun her sideways in a geyser of blood and sent her crashing to the earth.

  Kaiku was immobile for a few long seconds, her mouth slightly open, barely certain of what had just happened. Flecks of blood trembled on her cheek and shoulder.

  It was the second arrow that broke the paralysis. She felt it coming, sensed it slipping through the air; from her right, from the trees, heading for her chest.

  Her kana blazed into life inside her. The world became a shimmer of golden threads, a diorama of contours all interlinked, every vine and leaf a stitchwork of dazzling fibres. The pulsing tangles that were the statues of the Aith Pthakath were watching her with dark and impotent attention, aware, alive in the world of the Weave.

  She swept her hand up, the air before her thickening invisibly to a knot, and the arrow shattered two feet from her heart.

  Sense finally caught up with instinct and reaction, and she exhaled a frantic breath. Adrenaline flooded in. She barely remembered to rein her kana before it burst free entirely. If it had been a rifle and not an arrow, if it had been her and not the guide that they had aimed at first, would she have been fast enough to repel it?

  She ran. Another arrow sliced from the trees, but she felt it going wide of her. She stumbled, her boot sliding in the soil and smearing dirt up the leg of her trousers. Cursing, she scrambled to her feet again, tracing the route of the arrow in her mind. Her irises had darkened from brown to a muddy red, seeing into the Weave, tracking back along fibres torn into eddies by the spin of the arrow’s feathered flight. Then – having established the rough location of her attacker – she was racing for cover once more. She slid behind one of the idols as a third arrow came at her, glancing off its obsidian skin. A flood of silent outrage rippled out from the statues at the desecration.

  Find them. Find them, she told herself. She wanted to cringe under the weight of the idol’s gaze, its ancient and malicious interest in her now that she had stirred the Weave; but she forced herself to ignore it. They were old things, angry at being abandoned by their worshippers and ultimately reduced to observers, incomprehensible in purpose and meaning now. They could not harm her.

  Instead she sent her mind racing along the tendrils of the Weave, scattering among the trees to where her attacker was, seeking the inrush of breath, the knitting of muscle, the heavy thump of a pulse. The enemy was moving, circling around; she felt the turbulence of its passing in the air, and followed it.

  There! And yet, not there. She found the source of the arrows, but its signature in the Weave was vague and meaningless, a twisted blot of fibres. If she could get a purchase on her attacker she could begin to do them harm, but something was defeating her, some kind of protection that she had never encountered before. She began to panic. She was not a warrior; with her kana out of the equation, she was no match for anyone who could shoot that accurately with a bow. Shucking her rifle from her shoulder, she primed it hurriedly, tracking the hidden assailant with half her attention as they dodged through the undergrowth without a whisper.

  Get away, she told herself. Get into the trees.

  And yet she dared not. The open space around her was the only warning she had of another attack. In the close quarters of the jungle, she would not be able to run and dodge and keep track of the enemy at the same time.

  Who is it out there?

  She raised her rifle and leaned around the edge of the idol, aiming at where she guessed her attacker would be. The rifle cracked and the shot puffed through the trees, splintering branches and cutting leaves apart.

  Another arrow sped f
rom the darkness. Her enemy had gained an angle on her already. She pulled herself reflexively away as the point smacked into the idol near her face, sending her stumbling backward. She noticed the next arrow, nocked and released with incredible speed, an instant before it hit her in the ribs.

  The shock of the impact sent sparkles across her vision and almost made her pass out. She lost control, her kana welling within, all Cailin’s teachings forgotten in the fear for her life. It ripped up out of her, from her belly and womb, tearing along the threads of the Weave towards the unseen assassin. Whatever protection they wore stopped her pinpointing them, but accuracy was not necessary. There was no subtlety in her counterstrike. Wildly, desperately, she lashed out, and the power inside her responded to her direction.

  A long swathe of jungle exploded, blasted to matchwood, rent apart with cataclysmic force and lighting the night with fire. The sheer force of the detonation destroyed a great strip of land, throwing clods of soil into the air like smoking meteorites. The trees nearby burst into flame, leaves and bark and vines igniting; stones split; water boiled.

  In a moment, it was over, her kana spent. The jungle groaned and snapped on the fringes of the devastation. Sawdust and smoke hung in the air, along with the faint smell of charred flesh from the birds and animals that had been unfortunate enough to live there. The surrounding jungle was silent, stunned. The terrible presences of the idols bore down on her more heavily than ever, hating her.

  She teetered for a moment, her hand going to her side, then dropped to one knee in the soil. Her rifle hung limply in her other hand. Her irises were a bright, demonic red now, a side-effect of her power that would not fade for some hours. In past times, when she had first discovered the awful energy within her, she had been unable to rein it in at all, and each use would leave her helpless as a newborn afterward, barely able to walk. Cailin’s training had enabled Kaiku to shut off the flow before it drained her to such a state, but it would be some time before her kana would regenerate enough to allow her to manipulate the Weave again. She had not unleashed it so recklessly for years; but then, it had been years since she had been in such direct danger.

  Kaiku panted where she knelt, scanning the destruction for signs of movement. There was nothing except the slow drift of powdered debris in the air. Whoever had been aiming at her had been in the middle of that. She’d wager there was not much left of them now.

  A movement, down the hill at the treeline. She spun to her feet, snatched up her rifle and primed the bolt, raising it to her eye. Two figures burst into the clearing from the south. She sighted and fired.

  ‘No!’ one of them cried, scrambling out of the way. The shot had missed, it seemed. Ignoring the ache and the insidious wetness spreading across her side, she reprimed. ‘No! Libera Dramach! Stop shooting!’

  Kaiku paused, her rifle targeted at the one who had spoken.

  ‘Await the sleeper!’ he cried. It was the phrase by which the spy was to have been identified.

  ‘Who is the sleeper?’ Kaiku returned, as was the code.

  ‘The former Heir-Empress Lucia tu Erinima,’ came the reply. ‘Whom you yourself rescued from the Imperial Keep, Kaiku.’

  She hesitated a few moments longer, more in surprise at being recognised than anything else, and then lowered her rifle. The two figures headed up the hill towards her.

  ‘How do you know who I am?’ she asked, but the words came out strangely weak. She was beginning to feel faint, and her vision was still sparkling.

  ‘I would not be much of a spy if I did not,’ said the one who had spoken, hurrying up towards her. The other followed behind, scanning the trees: a Tkiurathi man with the same strange tattoos as her guide, though in a different pattern.

  ‘You are hurt,’ the spy stated impassively.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Saran Ycthys Marul,’ came the reply. ‘And this is Tsata.’ He scanned the treeline before turning his attention back to Kaiku. ‘Your display will have attracted anyone hunting for us within twenty miles. We have to go. Can you walk?’

  ‘I can walk,’ she said, not at all sure whether she could. The arrow had punctured her shirt and she was certainly bleeding; but it had not stuck in her, and she could still breathe well enough, so it had missed her lungs. She wanted to bind herself up here and now, terrified of the moist stain that was creeping along the fabric under her arm; but something in the authority of Saran’s voice got her moving. The three of them hurried into the forest and were swallowed by the shadows, leaving behind the grim sentinels of the Aith Pthakath, the body of Kaiku’s guide and the smouldering crackle of the trees.

  ‘What was it?’ Kaiku asked. ‘What was it out there?’

  ‘Hold still,’ Saran told her, crouching next to her in the firelight. He had slid off one arm of her shirt, exposing her wounded side. Beneath the sweat-dirtied strap of her underwear, her ribs were a wet mess of black and red. Unconsciously, she had clutched the other half of her shirt across her chest. Nudity was not something that most Saramyr were concerned about, but something about this man made her feel defensive.

  She hissed and flinched as he mopped at her wound with a rag and hot water.

  ‘Hold still!’ he told her irritably.

  She gritted her teeth and endured his ministrations.

  ‘Is it bad?’ she forced herself to ask. There was a silence for a few moments, dread crowding her as she waited for his answer.

  ‘No,’ he said at last. Kaiku exhaled shakily. ‘The arrow ploughed quite a way in, but it only scraped your side. It looks worse than it is.’

  The narrow cave echoed softly with the sussuration of their voices. Tsata was nowhere to be seen, out on some errand of his own. The Tkiurathi had found them this place to hide, a cramped tunnel carved by an ancient waterway in the base of an imposing rock outcropping, concealed by trees and with enough of a bend in it so that they could light a fire without fearing that anyone outside would see. It was uncomfortable and the stone was dank, but it meant rest and safety, at least for a short time.

  Saran set about making a poultice from crushed leaves, a folded strip of cloth and the water that was boiling in an iron pot. Kaiku pulled her shirt tight around her and watched him silently, eyes skipping over the even planes of his face. He caught her glance suddenly, and she looked away, into the fire.

  ‘It was a maghkriin,’ Saran said, his voice low and steady. ‘The thing that tried to kill you. It got here before us. You are lucky to be alive.’

  ‘Maghkriin?’ Kaiku said, trying out the unfamiliar word.

  ‘Created by the Fleshcrafters in the dark heart of Okhamba. You cannot imagine what the world is like there, Kaiku. A place where the sun never shines, where neither your people nor mine dare to go in any number. In over a thousand years since the first settlers arrived, what footholds we have made in this land have been on the coasts, where it is not so wild. But before we came, they were here. Tribes so old that they might have stood since before the birth of Quraal. Hidden in the impenetrable centre of this continent, thousands upon thousands of square miles where the land is so hostile that civilised society such as ours cannot exist there.’

  ‘Is that where you have come from?’ Kaiku asked. His Saramyrrhic was truly excellent for one who was not a native, though his accent occasionally slipped into the more angular Quraal inflections.

  Saran smiled strangely in the shifting firelight. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Though we barely made it. Twelve went in; we two are the only ones who came out, and I will not count us safe until we are off this continent entirely.’ He looked up at her from where he was grinding the leaves into a mulch. ‘Is it arranged?’

  ‘If all goes well,’ Kaiku said neutrally. ‘My friend is in Kisanth. She intends to have secured us passage to Saramyr by the time we return.’

  ‘Good,’ Saran murmured. ‘We cannot stay in towns any longer than necessary. They will find us there.’

  ‘The maghkriin?’ Kaiku asked.

  ‘
Them, or the ones that sent them. That is why I needed somebody to facilitate a quick departure from Okhamba. I did not imagine I could take what I took and not be pursued.’

  And what did you take, then? Kaiku thought, but she kept the question to herself.

  He added some water to the paste of leaves and then leaned over to Kaiku again, gently peeling her sodden shirt away from the wound. ‘This will hurt,’ he warned. ‘I learned this from Tsata, and in Okhamba there is very little medicine that is gentle.’ He pressed the poulticed cloth against her wound. ‘Hold it there.’

  She did so. The burning and itching began almost immediately, gathering in force and spreading across her ribs. She gritted her teeth again. After a time, it seemed to level off, and the pain remained constant, just on the threshold of being bearable.

  ‘It is fast-acting,’ Saran told her. ‘You only need hold it there for an hour. After you remove it, the pain will recede.’

  Kaiku nodded. Sweat was prickling her scalp from her effort to internalise the discomfort. ‘Tell me about the Fleshcrafters,’ she said. ‘I need to keep my mind off this.’

  Saran hunkered back and studied her with his dark eyes. As she looked at him, she remembered that her own eyes were still red. In Saramyr, it would mark her as Aberrant; most people would react with hate and disgust. But neither Saran nor Tsata had seemed concerned. Perhaps they already knew what she was. Saran had certainly seemed to recognise her; but the fact that she was under the tuition of the Red Order – and hence an Aberrant – was not widely known. Even in the Fold, where Aberrants were welcomed, it was best to keep Aberration a secret.

  ‘I cannot guess what kind of things dwell in the deepest darknesses of Okhamba,’ Saran said. ‘They have men and women there with crafts and arts foreign to us. Your folk and mine, Kaiku, our ways are very different; but these are utterly alien. The Fleshcrafters can mould a baby in the womb, sculpt it to their liking. They take pregnant mothers, captured from enemy tribes, and they change the unborn children into monsters to serve them.’