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

by Chris Wooding

  She woke each time with tears running down her cheeks, and the sadness lingered long into the morning. She did not speak of it to the others. They would not have understood. Nor did she understand, then. It was only in that moment of perfect clarity, when she had stared into the fire after all were asleep, that she knew. Ocha had heard her oath made in the Forest of Yuna. She was to avenge her family. He would not brook delay or retreat; he demanded action and strength of heart.

  And so she did the only thing she could do: she took the Mask, and walked into the storm. Though the wind tore at her and the rain lashed her with freezing darts, she knew at that moment what she was doing was the will of the Emperor of the gods.

  After that, things deteriorated.

  For a day she stumbled through the furious wind and rain and lightning. The pain of endurance seemed nothing to her at first, for she knew it was not without purpose. But soon it began to wear at her resolve, as her teeth chattered and her skin prickled with freezing droplets. She pulled her hood tighter to her head and staggered on, not knowing where she was going, trusting to Ocha to guide her.

  How she survived that first day, she did not know; her existence had degenerated into a nightmare in which the very air was against her, trying to push her over with great gusts and whipping her exposed skin mercilessly. Her lips were cracked and her eyes bloodshot, her cheeks tender and raw.

  She found herself an overhang for shelter, little more than a scoop of rock in a sheer, broken face. It kept off the rain from above, but water still ran along the ground from upslope and the wind howled through her niche. At some point during the day, unnoticed by Kaiku, the thunder had passed on, and this was her first glimmer of hope; for though she believed she could not make another day in this storm, she knew she would be moving on whatever the weather at dawn. She prayed to Panazu for an end to the downpour.

  Somehow, she slept, exhaustion overcoming the excruciating discomfort of her meagre shelter. That night, she dreamt nothing.

  She awoke to the splash and patter of water, and the dazzling light of a cold, clear sky turning the flat planes of wet stone to sparkling brightness. The storm had passed.

  Painfully, she pulled herself from her shelter and tried to stand up in the glare of Nuki’s single eye. A crippling cramp put her back down on to her knees, the legacy of sleeping on freezing rock. One of her arms and one thigh were numb, and she could not curl her fingers more than a feeble twitching. But soon the blood returned to her body, and she flexed her hand into a fist; and though she ached, she felt an inner rejoicing, and sent thanks to Panazu for answering her prayer.

  She stood up then, and looked about. The mountains seemed so different when she was standing on them than they did from a distance. From afar, their immensity rendered them simple, vast ridges of rock that tapered towards a peak. But once among the folds and crevices and slopes and bluffs that formed their skin, it was suddenly more complex, for stone reared high all around and it was difficult to imagine a world outside, where the land was flat and not circumscribed by frowning buttresses of grey and black. Perspective became skewed, and navigation ceased to be as easy as it seemed from a vantage outside the mountains.

  She took the Mask from her pack and looked at it. It leered back at her, an insouciant, disrespectful smirk frozen on its red and black face. For this, her family had died. For this a temple of Enyu had been destroyed, its priests slaughtered. She turned it over and examined it. She held in her hands a True Mask, and if she believed what she had been told, it would show her the path to the place where it was made. The hidden monastery where the Weavers lived.

  She had been putting the moment off as long as she could, fearful of that small margin Mishani had warned her about, the slim chance that she might slide through the seams in the wood into insanity and death. But really, she had made her choice when she decided to walk out of the cave, and procrastination felt false now.

  The time had come. She put it to her face.

  The effect, if anything, was something of an anticlimax. She did not die, nor go insane. She felt a certain strangeness, a sensation of being detached from the world she saw through the carven eyepieces; and the wood of the Mask seemed to warm and soften against her face, feeling more like a new layer of thick skin than something rigid. Then there was an overwhelming contentment, like sinking into the plush folds of a soft bed. After a time this faded as well, and she felt only faintly foolish for having been so worried.

  She set off again. She had not known what kind of guidance she might expect from the Mask, and for a time she doubted it was guiding her at all. Then she remembered what Cailin had told her, that the Mask would only work once they neared the monastery. But how far was that, and in what direction? It could be on the other side of the mountains!

  She shook herself mentally. Such thoughts brought her no profit. She had taken this journey as an act of faith, and faith was needed to sustain her. She believed that Ocha would not abandon her so, when it was he who had set her on this path. But then, who knew the ways of the gods, and what mortal pieces they might discard or forget in whimsy or caprice?

  The next few days were progressively worse. Her meagre rations dwindled to nothing; most of the food had been in Mamak’s pack. She wandered higher and higher into the mountains, taking no direction, choosing instead that the gods should determine her way.

  She came across small Aberrant creatures time and again, often so malformed that they were slow enough to catch with her hands, or pick off with her rifle. But she would not eat Aberrant flesh; she mistrusted it abominably. Out of desperation, she tried a fleshy root that poked from cracks in the stone at the base of rivulets and small waterfalls, feeding tough, thorny weeds. It made her gag and retch, but it was subsistence. She dared not try others she saw, for the trees and plants they supported seemed warped by blight, and she feared poisoning herself. She broke away bundles of brittle twigs from the crooked trees for firewood, but they were near-impossible to burn, and she could only ever manage a small blaze after an hour of effort, by which time it seemed scarcely worth it.

  By the next day the fleshy root disappeared entirely, and she was forced to spend most of her day foraging for food, which slowed her further. The temperature dropped sharply. Her route was taking her higher into the peaks, and frost dusted the ground, even in the sunlight. She wrapped her coat tight around her, but the cold seemed to seep in anyway, and her teeth chattered whenever she stood still for more than a few minutes. She stuffed the coat with grass and whatever bitter foliage she could find and used it as insulation.

  The terrain became hard, and she found herself climbing. Twice she escaped death by pure chance, when some instinct warned her a handhold was about to crumble or a ledge was unstable. Other times she hid in fear as great, shaggy man-things lumbered past her, or stood in grey silhouette, haunting the horizon. The Aberrants bayed at night, when she froze in hollows or crevices she had squeezed herself into for shelter; but miraculously, though it seemed they were all around, she did not come across a single one at close quarters. They were distant things, suggested shapes that moved in valleys far below or lurked in shadows. Gristle-crows glided overhead now and again, but they did not seem interested in the stumbling figure beneath them. Perhaps they recognised her purpose, and kept away.

  This is my test, she repeated to herself, a mantra that kept her walking and putting one foot in front of the other. This is my test. But at some point her mind wandered, and when it came back to her the mantra had changed. This is what I deserve. This is what I deserve.

  And she knew then the real reason why she had walked out into the storm that night. Starvation and exhaustion had chased the clutter from her mind. Here, though she sweated and reeked and felt like an animal rather than a woman, though she had scrabbled in the dirt for foul roots to abate the ache in her stomach, she had found self-knowledge and clarity.

  She hated herself.

  I am Aberrant, she thought. And I will pay for it, and pay a
gain, until my debt is met.

  And then the blizzard came, howling out of nowhere and catching her unawares. There was no shelter for her, no respite from the maelstrom. She felt the cold of death settle into her marrow. Her lips were tinged blue, her tanned skin pale, her muscles cramped and aching. Tiny crystals of ice hid in her eyelashes, having found their way through the eyepieces of the Mask. She shivered uncontrollably as if palsied. Such weather would have tested the hardiest of mountaineers, but Kaiku was starving, tired, and under-equipped. Soon the cold seemed to seep away, and she began to feel the heaviness of sleep upon her, dragging her down, dulling her mind.

  When I sleep, I die, she said to herself, and some force inside her kept her walking, powered by will alone. She had something she had to do, something she was meant to . . . something . . . something . . .

  Then, a light. She blinked away snow, disbelieving. There was fire, burning within a cave, bright with warmth. Heedless of danger and bereft of thought, she staggered towards it, knowing only that warmth meant life. Her rifle, which she had been using as a walking staff, still trailed in her numb hand, cutting trenches in the snow behind her. Now she could smell cooking meat, and her hunger quickened her pace. She tripped and stumbled the last few feet, almost falling into the cave, a small avalanche of snow around her boots.

  There was something sitting at the fire, a shape confusing enough that her bewildered and deadened brain could not at first pick it out. Then it shifted, and a long sickle gleamed in a hand. None of this really registered with Kaiku, until she heard a shriek and saw a flurry of movement come racing towards her; then instinct took over, and she brought up her rifle to protect herself. There was a chime of metal, and her rifle was jarred in her hand by the sickle; then the report of the weapon, deafening at such close range, as something warm and heavy crashed into her. They went down together in silence, landing in the snow, Kaiku still too confused and stunned by the noise of the rifle to understand what was happening. She did not even realise it had been primed.

  They lay there, still, the musty smell of the thing atop her slowly pervading Kaiku’s senses.

  This was strange, she thought.

  Then she felt the liquid warmth spreading across her collarbone and throat and down her chest. Blessed warmth! The feeling brought back the memory of the fire, suddenly like a beacon to her. Slowly and by degrees, she shifted the bulk of the thing that had attacked her, not even caring what it was or why it had stopped moving. She crawled to the fire, and the heat of the blaze made her skin sear and itch; but she endured it long enough to pull the roasting creature from the spit before she retreated to a less painful warmth. The gods knew what it was, but it was the size of a small rabbit. She tore off her Mask. Aberrant or not, she no longer cared. Greedily, she ate the meat half-cooked, blood running down her chin to meet the blood that soaked her neck and breast, but before she got past halfway she had fallen asleep, sitting cross-legged with her head hanging inside its furred hood.

  She awoke several times throughout the next few days, though she remembered virtually nothing of them afterwards. There was a small hoard of firewood stacked at the back of the cave, and a pack with delights such as bread, rice and a jar of sweet fried locusts, hunks of dried meat and even a smoked fish. Like a dream-walker, Kaiku rose periodically, motivated by bodily needs too primal to bother her conscious mind. Somehow the fire kept going, even though it almost burned out twice; Kaiku automatically dumped firewood on it when her precious source of warmth seemed ailing. She ate, too, mechanically dipping into the pack and eating the food therein with no preparation; she did not cut the meat, nor the bread, but bit mouthfuls of both off and then fell asleep again.

  Finally, she returned to true wakefulness and realised that she was still alive. It was night, but the fire was burning low, and the blizzard had stopped. Shadows shifted disconcertingly across the rock walls with the capricious sway of the flames. The whimpering cry of an Aberrant beast sounded distantly, echoing across the peaks. For a time she lay where she was, trying to remember. She could not think how long she had slept, or even recall how she came to be here. The last thing she remembered was the blizzard.

  She put fresh firewood on the blaze, thanking providence for this haven but still utterly confused, and it was then that she saw the thing at the mouth of the cave. Puzzled, she walked over to it. At first it seemed like a heap of discarded cloth in a tailor’s store. Looking closer, she saw that it was a robe, a heavy garment patched together from a multitude of different hides and materials with no sense of order or symmetry. With her boot she pushed the corpse over on to its back.

  The robe was indeed heavy, with a cowl that was far too big, threatening to swallow the face it sheltered. But it was not a face; it was a Mask. A strange, blank thing, white, its brow quirked as if curious, with a carven nose but no mouth. The right side, from cheek to chin, was bored with small holes such as might be found on a musical pipe or a horn, set in no particular pattern. The left side was cracked and shattered by a rifle ball, and its ivory colour stained and bloody. The furs around the stranger’s neck were flaky red with dried gore.

  She looked down at the figure for a long while before gingerly removing the Mask. The face beneath was pale and hairless, with bulbous eyes frozen wide in death and narrow, white lips. A little freakish in appearance, perhaps, but definitely a man. A Weaver. She had killed a Weaver.

  The stranger’s coat looked warm. Kaiku set about stripping it off the corpse. Suddenly energised, as if in reaction to the days of inactivity in the cave, she took snow in her hands and scrubbed out as much of the blood as she could, then set it to dry by the fire.

  When she was done, she stripped the corpse’s underclothes – even the soiled and wet leggings that felt like sealskin – and washed them too. Her fear of the cold was greater than her disgust at the voiding of the man’s bladder and bowels in death. With those set to dry, she rested by the fire.

  Later she dressed herself anew, stuffing her own clothes into her pack. The leggings and hide vest fit snugly, and the heavy robe of patchwork fur was extremely warm. She began to sweat in the heat of the fire, and relished the discomfort for its novelty.

  Whoever this Weaver was, he had been on a journey when he was caught in the blizzard. He had provisions for several days’ travel, and he had gathered firewood before the snows became too bad. He was digging in to wait for the snowstorm to pass. It was this stranger’s foresight – and the fact that he had conveniently managed to die – that had saved Kaiku’s life.

  This man came from somewhere, Kaiku thought. She wondered how far away that somewhere was.

  She ate, slept, and woke with the sun. It was a new dawn, fresh snow was on the ground, and the sky was a clear blue. Today was the day she would leave.

  She picked up her father’s Mask and looked at it, as she had done many times before. Its vacant gaze held no answers. She put it on, and once again it gave her nothing.

  ‘I am not done yet, Father,’ she mumbled to herself, and set forth into the snow again.

  TWENTY

  The Barak Avun’s rage knew no limit.

  ‘You had her alone, you offered her the gift, and then you took it back?’ he cried.

  Mishani looked at her father, all glacial calm and studied poise. Her hands were tucked into the sleeves of her robe and held before her; her hair fell in black curtains to either side of her thin face. They were in his study, a small, neat room with dark brown furniture and a matching wooden floor. Fingers of evening light reached through the leaves of the trees outside and in through the shutters, tickling bright motes and making them bob and dance.

  ‘I did, Father,’ she replied.

  ‘Ungrateful child!’ he spat. ‘Do you know what we were promised for your service? Do you know what your family would have gained?’

  ‘Since you saw fit to exclude me from your dealings with Sonmaga,’ she said icily, ‘I do not.’

  Mishani was really quite surprised by the vehemen
ce of her father’s reaction to her news that the Heir-Empress had not received the infected nightdress. He seemed to have abandoned all dignity, red-faced and shaking with anger in a way that she had not seen him before. The remnants of the old Mishani wanted to comfort her father, or at least fear his wrath; but in her heart, she was scorning him. How easily she had torn away his façade of unflappability. She had told him the honest truth about what had happened in the roof gardens of the Imperial Keep. She could have lied, told him that Lucia was too well guarded or that they had intercepted the gift she brought; but she would not degrade herself so. She held herself with pride in the face of her father’s fury. If not for years of conditioning, she would not even have troubled to maintain the formal mode of Saramyrrhic used to address a parent.

  ‘Where did I fail with you, Mishani? Where is your loyalty to your family?’ He paced around the room, unable to stand still. ‘Do you know how many lives would have been saved if you had done what I asked?’

  ‘If I had murdered an eight-harvest child?’ Mishani replied. Her father glared at her. ‘Say it, then, Father. Do not hide behind euphemisms and evasive language. You are quite willing to have me bear the burden of your actions; at least have the courage to admit them to yourself.’

  ‘You have never spoken to me this way, Mishani!’

  ‘I have never had cause to until now,’ she said. Her voice was perfectly level, chilling in its rigidity. ‘You dishonour yourself, Father, and you dishonour me. I do not care to know what Sonmaga promised you. Even if it were the keys to the Golden Realm itself, it would not have been worth what you asked me to do. You made yourself his pawn for a reward; that I could understand. But you made me your pawn because you knew I could not refuse. You took advantage of me, Father. I would have done anything you asked if I could have done it with honour, no matter how hard it was. I have killed to protect you before!’ His eyes widened at this; though he had suspected the death of Yokada to be no accident, the admission was still a surprise. ‘But this? To give an infected nightdress to a child, and have her die a lingering death? I will not stoop so low, Father. Not even for you.’