SHADOW WEAVER

by Claire Merle

  Outside, Tug and Brin move about, clearing up. The crescent moon will have risen by now, draping pale blue light across the forest. After a while, boots crunch across the compact snow, heading away from the camp. I push up on my elbow and reach through the mind-world to follow. I hesitate on the outskirts of Tug’s mind, wondering when I push inside whether it will spin me into the high-walled labyrinth of dead-ends and secret passages. But it is surprisingly easy to remain near the outskirts where the memories form and slide back on a constant thread.

  His senses are sharp and detailed as though I have moved inside his skin. I shudder at the bulk and strength of his body, the power in his legs and arms, the feel of his hands twice the size of my own. Embers and pine leaves prick my nostrils, the fresh, wet snow lies on my tongue and in my chest.

  Brin leans against a spindly tree that rises tall into the soft night, his fishnet-head illuminated by moonlight. He chews on a piece of cinnamon stick, spitting bark from time to time. Tug folds his arms, drinking in his companion's animosity as though absorbing it through the pores of his bare chest.

  “Keeping her is a mistake,” Brin says.

  “You took the boy.”

  Brin spits and wipes his mouth with his forearm. “What's one thing got to do with the other?”

  “Everything,” Tug answers, eyes straying to the forest darkness. I remember the wolf dog wrapped in his arms while I was cleaning my wound. Perhaps he has a weakness for underdogs and broken things.

  “We should take her to the tundra camps.”

  Tug snorts. “Don't be ridiculous. A week to get there and a gold sovereign for our efforts. We sell her in the Hybourg, we'll get fifty times that.” He cracks his knuckles, then stretches his thick, naked fingers. I wonder how the cold does not reach his hands and his torso. “Have you never seen one with their eyes settled?” Tug asks.

  “Course not. And I'd rather it had stayed that way.”

  “Listen, if you want to keep her out of your head, build a wall.”

  “A wall?” Brin asks, confused.

  “A wall in your mind.”

  “A wall?”

  “Forget it.” Tug straightens his broad shoulders and the muscles ripple and settle into place. “We're keeping her,” he says. He turns from his companion, strolling back towards the camp where tent poles stand visible between long pine trunks.

  “Well, we can't stand her up in the Pit and sell her along with the boy,” Brin calls after him. “We'd end up dead.”

  Tug keeps walking and Brin catches him up. “We'll set out feelers,” Tug says. “Find the right buyer. Someone discreet.”

  “She's going to get us killed,” Brin mutters.

  The flap of the tent whips up in the wind. I grow rigid as one of the men sets himself down beside me. An unpleasant scent of wet dog and fish wafts through the air so I know it is the Beast-face. His arm brushes my back. I gulp with rising panic, but he lies down and a moment later, Brin enters and lies down on the other side of him. There comes a faint whiff of smoke as the lantern is blown out.

  Unable to relax, I listen to the low breathing of the men and Kel's snoring. I've never been so tired but sleep won't come. The wolf dog's breath blows against the back of my neck. Tug must have him in the fur throws beside him. I fight against my glued eyes, unable to open them. At first, I thought Tug blinded us out of superstition, because he believed our physical sight assisted our 'powers’. But he is not afraid of the glitter-eyes like Brin and most Carucans. For Tug, it is a matter of practicality: I can't see; I can't hunt. Only a fool would try to get Kel away from them now.

  I reach for my lodestone necklace, press my finger into one end of the two-sided arrow. It is my compass and my guide through these wastelands, always pointing to the Bright Star when set on a floating leaf. Clinging to it, I eventually fall into a fitful sleep, still holding on.

  The next three days we trek through an ever-shifting landscape, following the frozen river as it curls south-west through the Silvana hills, hills my father has pointed out many times from the glacial mountains. Tug binds our hands with thick rope every morning and we are dragged blindly along beside the sled, which scrapes across the narrow river as the two men pull their catch of deer, rabbit, and the injured wolf dog. Far easier the frozen river than hauling it across land.

  Kel grows quieter and quieter. At first I draw memories around him, trying to offer comfort, but it does no good. He worries about our parents, and all hope he had of my being able to rescue him has vanished. Only at night does he pull close to me, wrap his arms around me and hold on as if I might disappear.

  It is as I lie resting beside him, listening to his gentle breathing, and the men sit out by the fire, that I travel into their pasts, hoping to learn something that will show me a way out of this. Each night, I skim through their recent memories of the day's progress, matching my own interpretation of the shifting ground, the sounds of the forest, the change in the wind, with their mental images of the landscape. Through their eyes I see where we are headed. I memorize the angle of the sun and the peaks of the mountains, drawing a map in my mind of our progress. After I have done this, I search their lives for useful information.

  Brin is an opportunist, born in the lands between Delladea and Rangrain, two northern forts on the tree line. Both forts are isolated from the rest of the Kingdom, and Brin's village lay outside the forts, outside the protection of any lord. It was often raided. Two of his younger brothers starved to death when they were children. He was thrown out by his father to make his own way in the world when he was twelve, struggled, thieved and served a vast array of cruel benefactors.

  Tug is infinitely more complex. Just when I think I have figured him out, some other passage from his past muddles it all up again. He has been both street-fighter and soldier, low-life drunk and strategist in noble circles. He has fought in campaigns that have gone far south to the Kingdom of Etea and far north, across the tundra, to the Kingdom of Rudeash. He guards many secrets, secrets he hides easily from my sight as though in some distant past he began purposefully concealing them from Uru Ana like me.

  On the fourth day, we reach signs of civilisation and eat lunch, concealed from the river in an abandoned stone home. Brin and Tug do not build a fire. They move about silently, alert to signs of other hunters roaming the forest. From time to time a memory flashes in the mind-world, like lights on the horizon at the onset of winter. Ordinarily, our captors would have no trouble defending themselves against thieves and thugs; it is unlikely they would even be approached. But Kel and I, blinded and bound would arouse interest.

  I'm sitting beside my brother, licking the tiny bones of a half-thawed mudfish when Tug approaches with his wet dog and sweat stink, liquid sloshing in a skin flask. Kel drinks first, swallowing and spluttering.

  “Drink,” Tug orders. I hold my hands still. The rope presses into grooves where it has rubbed my wrists raw. What's going on? The flask is pushed to my lips and smells terrible. Liquid sets my throat on fire.

  “This is going to hurt,” he says. The next thing I know, a toxic-smelling cloth smothers me. Tug rubs the damp fabric into my eyes. It sears like he's peeling the skin off my eyeballs. I panic. His hand claps over my mouth to stop me screaming. I fight, but Tug grips my wounded arm, which sets a new flare of lightning pain throughout my shoulder. I stop squirming so that he'll let go.

  “Almost done,” he says. “But if you scream again I'll knock your teeth out.” I nod, wanting this over with.

  It finally ends. I scrabble to scrape up snow from the ground and pack it on my eyes. The agony ebbs, and I am left weeping pus. Dusky light weaves between my half-closed lashes, but they are no longer stuck together. I can see again. Sort of.

  “Hold the boy,” Tug says.

  “No, please, please,” I beg. “Let me do it.” Kel's small fingers cling to my leg, and he whimpers. “Please,” I say. Through a blurry haze, I see Tug nod at Brin, drop the wet cloth into my lap, and the two of them stroll aw
ay.

  The idea of hurting Kel scorches a hole right through me. But I'd prefer he clings to me, that I am the one to talk him through the pain, than watch Brin hold him down while Tug dissolves the glue.

  My tied hands make the job awkward. I dab Kel's eyes, let him rub his eyelids with snow, then repeat when he is ready. His body trembles and pus oozes between his lashes, but he does not yelp or cry out. Which is just as well. Tug wouldn't hesitate to come and shut him up.

  As I work, I whisper to him that it's going to be all right. Though I know I'm a liar. It's not all right. I haven't stopped them doing this to him. And I'm starting to believe both of us will be sold into strange cities, slaved, and left to live miserable lives where the opportunities of ever seeing each other again will dwindle to nothing. But I cannot ask him to keep hoping, if I give up. What chance does he have then? I will not live in the knowledge that my brother, not yet six years old, has been ruined, broken into a husk of his self, driven into apathy and hopelessness.

  Pa once told me that a man who fights monsters must be careful he does not become one. Men risk turning into the very thing that nearly destroys them. Brin had his boyhood stolen and now he is the monster doing the stealing. I don't know what happened to Tug to rip his heart from his chest. But I must find out. Because he is the one I need to break if I am to save Kel.

  Six

  Hooves thunder through the woods, the forest floor shudders with the approach of many men on horseback. Brin appears, running across the clearing. He hasn't even finished pulling up his trousers.

  “Soldiers!” he shouts.

  Tug kicks me where I sit cradling Kel's trembling body, my brother's eyes weeping pus, raw and itchy from the burning liquid. “Get up,” he growls. He grabs Kel and drags him towards the stone shack. I follow as my brother edges into the dilapidated building, but hesitate on the threshold, fearing this is my chance, and I don't know how to grab it.

  “You should leave our hands untied and not try to hide us,” I say. “It would look better if it appeared as though we were all together.”

  “We are all together.”

  “Not captives,” I clarify. “If Kel keeps his eyes down, no one would know we are not simply a family of hunters, returning to sell the deer and rabbit meat.” Tug grips the hood of my parka and pulls me onto the tips of my toes. The collar of my fur digs into my neck, choking me.

  “If the soldiers find out you're a shadow weaver,” he says, “they'll send you to the tundra camps. Or perhaps they'll decide you're too old and then they'd have to kill you in front of the little one.”

  Camomile soap and summer grass invade my senses. Hair flutters about a pale neck.

  Tug's incongruous memory is so unexpected, I grimace. Fortunately, he is too preoccupied to notice.

  “There's no saving your brother once he's in the work camps,” he says. “Most Uru Ana under those conditions don't survive long.”

  “I'm not stupid,” I say through gritted teeth, because I can't breathe properly; because Beast-face understands me better than I understand him; he preempts my every move and thought.

  “No one has ever escaped the camps,” he says softly. Some secret layer of meaning weaves between his words, reminding me of the way he has built his mind to hide many things from the probing sight of a shadow weaver. Has he worked at the tundra camps? Umbra, shadow weaver, glitter-eyes, these are the slighting names we are usually given, yet Tug uses the name our ancestors who came from Auran, island of the Rushing Winds, called themselves.

  I slip through the cobbled doorway into the rotting remains of a broken home. Winter sun shines through the narrow windows and a hole in the roof. Thick shadows linger in dusty corners and it takes a moment before I find Kel crouched by a back wall. His head rests on his legs, arms wrapped over his tangled hair, as though to protect himself from an oncoming storm. I kneel in front of him and try to lift his bound hands in my own, but his arms are locked in a tight grip.

  The land rumbles like a great beast waking. A distant voice calls orders. I close my eyes and reach towards the voice, encountering many minds. After thirteen, I stop counting. I don't try entering any of them. I don't want to lose my sense of time and risk the soldiers finding me in a half-trance. My eyes flash open as a horse whinnies outside the front window, then blows through its nose.

  “What are your names?” a man asks, his vowels rounded and musical.

  “Tug Briggs,” Tug says.

  “Brin Twinerben.”

  “What is your business out here?”

  “We were hunting.”

  “You return while most are just setting out. How long have you been out here?”

  “A week.”

  “If you have been hunting, where is your sled?”

  Hooves clop around the back of the stone building. I can no longer distinguish the voices enough to make out words. I concentrate on breathing steadily. The smooth light bay coat of a horse appears in the back window, a man's leg hanging off the side. The man jumps down and peers through the slim crack.

  Kel looks up, the gold flecks in his blue irises shimmering in the darkness. I quickly cup my hand over his eyes.

  “It is rare to see the King's soldiers so far north.” Tug's voice moves around the stone house. He speaks as though he wishes only to make conversation, but if I have learned anything about him, it is that every gesture, every word is calculated.

  A light scraping sound signals a presence in the sloping doorway. A tall man with dark hair and a dark green uniform. White bear fur drapes over his shoulders. He wears a fitted hat, also embroidered with the rare snowy fur. “Anyone in here?” he asks.

  “Perhaps you should tell us what you are looking for,” Tug says.

  “Bring a torch,” the officer commands.

  I squeeze my bound hands together, the blood in my veins turning to sludge. A second man approaches behind the officer, carrying a rag burning on a stick. “Don't move,” I whisper to Kel. “Whatever happens stay hidden.”

  As the high-ranking officer enters, I slink to the center of the room. He is suspicious of Tug and Brin with their half-empty sled, and expecting to find something. If he finds me, it should be enough to stop him checking further.

  Flames lick the darkness. The officer steps beyond the shaft of daylight from the front window and stops. His eyes meet mine. He is younger than Tug and Brin, and far younger than my father. Shadows circle his brown eyes. Stubble darkens his pointy chin, except where stitches of a long scar dent the surface.

  My arms dangle awkwardly in front of me. The officer lifts the sleeve of my parka and lowers the torch to my bound wrists. I follow his gaze. My hands aren't even shaking. Before I can stop myself, I have found the passage into his mind, and I am entering it.

  Images ripple like concentric circles from a stone thrown into a still lake.

  Summer. Handsome women in luxurious velvets. Exquisite gardens blooming with exotic flowers and fronds. Laughter.

  Sparring in a tournament. Dirt and sweat. A voice: “The Prince will not make elite captain. Do you understand?” Hitting a hard, dirt ground. Stabbing a man in the leg.

  Running through dungeon passageways. Hooves clattering across a courtyard. A palace high on a hill fading into the distance.

  Scraping aside snow to reveal a frozen face, dead eyes, skin barely blemished by time. A soldier's uniform. “The Prince's escort,” he whispers. “All dead, but no Prince.” A letter with a royal seal. “Find him.”

  The memories seethe together and feel linked to each other, though I have the sense the rings are separated by weeks or even years.

  Disorientated, I realize I have lost my balance. The officer grabs my shoulder. He steadies me with one arm, the torch held in his other arm flickering light across his face.

  “Help me,” I mouth. He stares into my eyes, then releases his grip, turns, and strides from the shack. Beyond the doorway, he barks orders, and mounts his giant stallion. There come the sounds of the horses and their
riders galloping into the forest.

  I am standing frozen to the spot when Tug enters.

  “What happened?” he asks. I shake my head. Apart from Tug and Brin, the officer's mind is the first I have entered for many years. It has left a strange sensation in my body, a feeling of being connected to something greater than myself. “What did you say to him?”

  “What do you think? He saw my bound wrists and decided I was not worth saving.”

  “Where's the boy?”

  Suddenly remembering Kel, I rush through the rubble, throw my arms around my brother, and lift him up. He wraps his legs about my waist. I haven't carried him like this for years, and it is awkward because neither of us can hold on properly with bound wrists and my injured arm. We clamber back out into the setting, afternoon sun.

  “Must have had more important business to attend to,” Brin says.

  “In all my years out here,” Tug muses, “I've never seen the King's soldiers near the Hybourg. Something has happened.”

  Something, indeed. I swallow and hoist Kel higher on my waist. I do not look at Tug as he scoops up the dog, shelters it in the top of his bag and straps on his rucksack. If I catch his eye, I'm afraid he will realize that I know what the soldiers are searching for. Though I have no idea how it might become useful, right now, it is the only advantage I have.

  Seven

  The valley shimmers with light, surrounded by snow covered hills, moonlit blue and eerie in comparison. But I would rather the cold hills any day because below us lies the most lawless destination in the Carucan Kingdom. The only place where Uru Ana are openly sold to the highest bidder. This is where the poachers would have brought my childhood friend, Asmine, if our fathers had failed to rescue her. This is where the vast majority of glitter-eyed children stolen from the Sea of Trees end up before they disappear forever: The Hybourg.