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

by Chris Wooding

  ‘Why break our backs over this? There’s no hurry,’ Yugi reminded them again.

  ‘They are tracking us,’ Tsata said. When Yugi and Kaiku looked at him, he motioned up to where they had come from with a tilt of his head. ‘They are calling to each other. And they are getting closer.’

  Yugi scratched the back of his neck. ‘Persistent. That’s annoying. Who are they?’

  Nomoru had her arms crossed, leaning against a wall of rock. ‘Don’t know their name. It’s an Omecha cult. Not like in the cities. These are very extreme. They think death is the point of life.’ She waved a hand dismissively. ‘Blood sacrifice, mutilation rituals, votive suicide. They look forward to their own deaths.’

  ‘I expect Tsata was something of a pleasant surprise for them, then,’ Yugi quipped, grinning at the Tkiurathi. Tsata laughed, startling them all. None of them had ever heard him laugh before; he had seemed utterly humourless until now. It was inexplicably strange to hear. Somehow, they had expected his expression of mirth to be different to a Saramyr laugh.

  Nomoru did not appreciate the comment. She was already angry at herself for being captured, and perversely she was also angry with Tsata for rescuing her. ‘They weren’t supposed to be there,’ she said churlishly. ‘There were different ones there a week ago. We could have got past them. They didn’t pay much attention.’

  ‘Perhaps that was why they got driven off,’ suggested Yugi.

  She scowled at him. ‘I didn’t want to come this way,’ she said again.

  Kaiku, who was eating a stick of spicebread from her pack to replenish some energy, looked up at her. ‘Why not?’ she asked round a mouthful of food. ‘What is this way?’

  Nomoru seemed about to say something, a haunted look in her eyes; then she clammed up. ‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I know not to come here.’

  ‘Nomoru, if you have heard something about this place, then tell us!’ Kaiku said. Her reticence was more alarming than if she had spoken out.

  ‘Don’t know!’ she said again. ‘The Fault is full of stories. I hear them all. But there’s bad rumours about where we’re going.’

  ‘What rumours?’ Kaiku persisted, brushing her fringe back from her face and giving Nomoru a hard look.

  ‘Bad rumours,’ said the scout stubbornly, returning the glare.

  ‘Will they follow us in there?’ Yugi asked, trying a different tack.

  ‘Not if they have any sense,’ Nomoru said; then, tiring of questions, she told them to get up. ‘We have to go. They’re getting close.’

  Yugi looked to Tsata, who confirmed it with a grim tip of his chin. He hauled himself to his feet, and offered a hand to Kaiku to help her do the same. Their legs were aching, but not so much as they would be tomorrow.

  ‘We have to go now!’ Nomoru hissed impatiently, and she headed off down the narrow grass slope to what lay beyond.

  The slope tipped gently into a broad, flat marsh; a long, curving alley flanked by walls of black granite that trickled and splashed with thousands of tiny waterways. The air was inexplicably chill; the travellers felt their skin pimpling as they descended. Humps of grass and ragged thickets rose like islands above the dreary, funereal ground mist. Strange lichens and brackens streaked the dark walls or straggled from the mire, swathes of sombre green and red and purple. Under the mournful glow of Aurus and Neryn, it lay dismal and quiet, disturbed only by the occasional shriek or croak of some unseen creature.

  The terrain underfoot became steadily wetter, and water welled up in their bootprints. By the time the slope had levelled off enough to become the marsh floor, Yugi was expressing concerns over whether they could cross it at all. Nomoru ignored him. The sounds of their pursuers calling to each other in some dark, sacred cant provided all the reply she needed to give. Though the air around them seemed to dampen sound and foil echoes, it was evident that the cultists were not far away.

  They forged on into the marsh, and the disturbed mist wrapped around their legs and swirled sullenly up to their knees. Already, the water had found ways in through their boots, and their feet squelched with every step. They trudged in single file, the mud sucking at them in an attempt to rob them of their footwear. Tsata took the rear, his rifle in his hands, glancing often back at the slope to the clearing, where he expected at any moment to see more of the dirty figures appear.

  ‘We are too exposed here,’ he said.

  ‘That’s why we’re hurrying,’ Nomoru said tersely, then stumbled and cursed. ‘They’ll never hit us if we’re too far ahead.’

  It was too late to argue the call now, so they laboured through the doleful marsh as fast as they could, following Nomoru’s lead. She seemed uncannily sure-footed, and though a misstep often landed them in the watery sludge that lay to either side of the paths she chose, as long as they walked in her footprints they found relatively solid ground there.

  Suddenly, Tsata clicked his tongue, a startlingly loud snap that made Kaiku jump. ‘There they are,’ he said.

  Nomoru looked back. On the crest of the slope: four men and a woman, two with rifles. They were calling to companions out of sight. As she watched, one of the riflemen aimed and fired. The sharp crack was swallowed by the thick marsh air. Kaiku and Yugi ducked automatically, but the shot went nowhere near them.

  Nomoru slipped back along the line to where Tsata was, unslinging her rifle. For the first time, Kaiku noticed how incongruous the weapon was in comparison with the woman that carried it. Whereas Nomoru was scrawny and scruffy and uncouth, her rifle was a thing of beauty, with a sleek black lacquer on its stock and body, inscribed with tiny gold pictograms, and a swirling silver intaglio along the length of its barrel.

  ‘Stop worrying,’ she told Kaiku and Yugi, as another cultist fired and they cringed from the shot. ‘They’ll never hit us. We’re out of their range.’

  ‘So what are you doing?’ Yugi asked. Standing still in the open while somebody shot at them, no matter how distant, was fundamentally unnerving; yet he did not dare move without Nomoru leading them, for he had already gained a healthy respect for the dangers of the marsh.

  Nomoru settled her rifle against her shoulder, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. A moment later, one of the cultists collapsed, shot through the forehead.

  ‘They’re not out of my range,’ she said. She pulled the bolt back into position to reprime the rifle, swung the barrel fractionally to the left, and fired again. Another cultist went down.

  ‘Heart’s blood . . .’ Yugi murmured in amazement.

  The remaining cultists were hurriedly retreating now, back into the clearing and out of view.

  ‘Now they’ve got something to think about,’ Nomoru said, shouldering her rifle. ‘Let’s go.’

  She made her way to the head of the line and trekked onward. The others followed her as best they could.

  It was not long before Kaiku began to sense a change. At first, it was too subtle for her to identify, merely a feeling of unease. Gradually it grew, until it made the fine hairs on her arms prickle. She glanced at the others to see if anyone shared her discomfort, but nobody showed any sign. She had the slightly unreal sensation of being sealed off from her companions, of existing on a level apart from them, as if she was a ghost that they were powerless to see or touch or interact with. Her kana stirred within her.

  The sensation was emanating from the marsh, from the very ground that they walked on. A feeling of steadily intensifying awareness, as if the land was slowly waking up around them. And with that awareness, malevolence.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, and they stopped. They were midway through the marsh, stranded far from any place of safety, and still the sensation grew, the colossal, rank evil that seemed to bleed from the air. ‘Gods, wait. The marsh . . . there’s something in the marsh . . .’ Her voice sounded thin and weak and trancelike, and her eyes were unfocused.

  As if her warning was a signal, there was a sudden gust of foul-smelling wind, whipping the mist at their feet high above their heads. The
wind passed, dying as quickly as it came; but the vapour stayed hanging there, a white, hazy veil that turned the world around them to grey shadow. From being able to see the length and breadth of the marsh, they found their vision sharply curtailed, and the sensation of being shut in was alarming.

  ‘What had you heard about this place, Nomoru?’ Tsata demanded suddenly.

  ‘It was the only way we could go,’ she snapped defensively. ‘They were just rumours. I didn’t know they—’

  ‘What had you heard?’

  The quiet Tkiurathi’s voice was rarely ever raised, but his frustration at Nomoru was getting too much. She was a complete loner, disappearing on her own without telling anyone why, stashing nuggets of information instead of sharing them so that she could keep control of the group, meting out what knowledge she had as it suited her. It was anathema to Tsata. And now her evasions were endangering the pash, and that could not be borne. If necessary, he would threaten her to find out what she knew.

  There was a silence for a moment, a battle of wills between the two of them. Finally, it was Nomoru who relented. ‘Demons,’ she said resentfully. ‘Ruku-shai.’

  A distant rattling sound cut through the mist, like hollow sticks being knocked together, rising to a crescendo and then dropping away. Yugi let out a breath, turning it into an unpleasant oath.

  ‘It was the only way we could go,’ Nomoru said again, more softly this time. ‘I didn’t believe the rumours.’

  Yugi ran his hand through his hair in exasperation, adjusted the rag tied around his forehead, and shot her a disgusted look. ‘Just get us out of here,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know which way out is!’ she cried, sweeping a hand to encompass the murk that surrounded them.

  ‘Guess!’ Yugi shouted.

  ‘That way,’ said Tsata calmly. He had kept his bearings, for he had not turned or moved since the mist came down.

  ‘They’re coming!’ Kaiku said, looking around in a panic. Her irises had darkened from brown to a deeper, richer shade of red.

  They did not waste any more time. Nomoru took the lead, following Tsata’s direction, and she headed across the marsh as fast as she dared. The mist was not thick enough to make it impossible to see nearby objects, but the accumulation of it over distance rendered anything beyond twenty feet away as an indistinct blur. They waded through the muck in long strides, eyes and ears alert. The rattling came from all around them now, a rhythmic clicking noise that swayed from slow and sinister to rapid and aggressive. The mist ruined any hope they had of pinpointing it. They went with guns ready, knowing that the iron in a rifle ball was the only weapon they had against demons, knowing also that it could do no more than deter them.

  ‘Kaiku,’ said Yugi from behind her. She did not seem to hear him; her gaze was on something beyond what they could see. ‘Kaiku!’ he said again, putting his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him suddenly, as if shaken from a dream. Her eyes were wild, and she trembled. She was remembering other demons, and the terror she had suffered at their hands.

  ‘Kaiku, we need you,’ Yugi said, staring hard at her. She did not seem to comprehend. He smiled suddenly, unexpectedly, and brushed her hair back from where it lay over one side of her face. ‘We need you to protect us. Can you do that?’

  She searched his face for a second, then nodded quickly. His smile broadened encouragingly, and he gave her a companionable pat on the upper arm. ‘Good girl,’ he said, using an affectionate diminutive that Kaiku would have found insultingly patronising in any other situation. Now, however, she found it strangely heartening.

  ‘Come on!’ Nomoru barked from up ahead, and they hurried to catch her.

  Kaiku was in a different world to the others. She had slipped into the Weave, maintaining herself on a level midway between the realm of the senses and the unearthly tapestry that ran beneath human sight. But her heightened perceptions made her open to more sensations than the simple fear that the others had to deal with. She brushed against the enormity of the demon minds, the dimensionless pathways of their thoughts, and it threatened to crush her. She fought to shut it out, to keep herself from slipping off that knife-edge into the yawning void that waited if she should try to understand it. This was of a different order to the moment when she had glimpsed into the world of the Children of the Moons. Kaiku had been overwhelmed then by her own insignificance, how unimportant she was to that incomprehensible consciousness. The ruku-shai were not even close to the power of those terrible spirits, but they hated, and she quailed at the force of it. Their attention was bent upon her now.

  Saramyr legend had it that demons were unclean souls cursed to corporeal form for their terrible offences against the gods in life; neither living nor dead but condemned to the torment of limbo. But in that moment, Kaiku knew that it was not true, that her people would never know their origins, for they were so far from human that it was impossible to believe they had ever walked the earth, that they had loved and lost and smiled and cried like she had.

  She could see through the mist, through the lazily swirling threads of glittering gold; and there she watched the demons pulling themselves up from the mire, their shapes a black, knotted tangle against the purity of the Weave. She could not make out details, but their forms were clear to her. Their bodies were sinuous and snakelike, ending in sharp, cord-like tails. Six slender legs radiated from their underbellies, thrusting upward and outward and then crooking down at a spiked knee joint. They crept onward slowly, high-stepping with exaggerated care, placing their two-toed forefeet delicately. And all the time, there was that horrible rattling as they clicked together the bones in their throat, communicating in their dreadful language.

  ‘Three of them,’ she said, then stumbled and went thigh-deep into a brackish pool of foul-smelling water. Tsata caught her under her arm before she could topple in any further, and lifted her out as if she weighed nothing at all. ‘There’s three of them,’ she repeated breathlessly.

  ‘Where?’ Tsata demanded, urging her into motion once again.

  ‘On our left.’

  Yugi looked over automatically, but there was only the grey shroud of the mist. Nomoru was forging on, almost too far ahead to see.

  ‘Nomoru, wait!’ he cried, and there was an explosive oath of exasperation from up ahead. When they caught her up, she was furious; but it was obvious by now that the anger was merely a thin sheen to contain the raw fear that bubbled underneath and threatened to spill over. As soon as they were close enough, she headed off again, setting a cruel pace.

  ‘How far are we from the edge of the swamp?’ Yugi asked Kaiku.

  ‘Too far,’ she said. She could sense the demons prowling unhurriedly towards them, content to let them wear themselves out, like dogs hunting antelope. They had been on their feet since dawn, and it told in their tired steps and frequent stumbles. The ruku-shai only had to wait, and pick their moment.

  And with that realisation, she halted. She had run from other demons in the past, from the relentless shin-shin. She had spent days and nights hiding from Aberrants in the Lakmar Mountains on Fo, creeping and huddling. She had slunk through the corridors of a Weaver monastery in terror of discovery. Always running, sneaking, shying from the notice of beings more powerful than she was. But those were the days before she had been taught to use her kana by Cailin, before her schooling had made it a weapon she could wield instead of a random and destructive thing. She was not so defenceless any more.

  ‘What now?’ Nomoru cried.

  Kaiku ignored her, turning her face to the blank mist and the demons beyond which were approaching with their languid, mincing gait. Her irises darkened to blood-red, and a wind stirred her hair and ruffled her clothes, momentarily blowing back the gloomy vapour.

  ‘I will not run,’ she said, heady with a sudden recklessness. ‘We have to stand.’

  Her kana burst out from her, a million fibrous tendrils winding away into the golden diorama of the Weave, invisible to the eyes of her companions. The
barrage smashed into the nearest of the ruku-shai, and Kaiku’s consciousness went with it. It was like being plunged into freezing, foetid tar. For a few fractions of a second – though in the world of the Weave they seemed like minutes – she was suffocating, her senses encased in the cloying foulness of the demon, flailing in panic at the unfamiliar brutality of the sensation; and then her instincts took over, and she found her bearings and oriented herself. The demon had been as confused and unprepared for the attack as Kaiku was, but the advantage was lost now, and they tackled each other on equal footing.

  Nothing in the Sisters’ training could have prepared her for this. Nothing in her carefully orchestrated sparring had come close to the frantic sensation of meeting another being in combat within the Weave. Some part of her had thought that she could simply rip the demon apart, tear its fibres in a blast of flame as she had done to several other unfortunates that had crossed her path in the days after her power awakened; but demons and spirits were not so easily despatched.

  They met in a scrabbling mesh of threads, bursting apart and arcing in on each other again like a ball of serpents chasing one another’s tails. The demon fought to track the threads back to her body, where it could begin to do her damage; she strove to foil it while simultaneously attempting the same thing. Suddenly, she was everywhere, her mind fractured and following a thousand different tiny conflicts, here knotting a strand to block the oncoming blackness that slipped along it, there skipping between fibres and probing weaknesses in the demon’s defences. She used tricks Cailin had taught her, finding to her surprise that they came to her as if she had known them all her life. She broke and fused threads to form loops which turned the ruku-shai’s advance back on itself; she created stuttered tears in the fabric of their battleground which her enemy was forced to work around while she sent darts of kana to harry at its inner defences.

  She feinted and probed, now drawing all her threads into a bundle, now scattering them and engaging the demon on many fronts at once. With each contact she felt the hot, dark reek of her enemy, the frightening singularity of its hatred. Again and again she was forced to retreat to sew up a gap that the ruku-shai had opened, to corral its quick advances before it could get to her and touch her with the awful energy that composed it. She shrank before it, rallied and drove it back, then was driven back in turn by its sheer presence. It used maneouvres unlike anything that the Sisters had schooled her in, patterns of demon logic that she could never have thought of.