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

by Chris Wooding

  And yet, they were evenly matched. Their struggle swayed one way and another, but essentially they were at a stalemate. And gradually, Kaiku became accustomed to the conflict. Her movements became a little more assured. She felt less like she was floundering, and more in control. If the demon had thrown all its strength at her in the beginning, she might have been defeated; but she was learning its ways now, for its methods were few and often repeated. She found with a fierce delight that she could spot the demon’s tricks and prevent them. The ruku-shai’s inroads into her defences became less frequent. She realised that, untested as she was, she was quicker and more agile on the strings of the Weave than the creature she faced, and only her inexperience had allowed it to hold her back thus far.

  She began to think she could win.

  She gathered the threads under her control into a tight ribbon and went spiralling skyward, dragging her enemy with her like the tail of a comet. She took the demon dizzyingly high and fast, keeping it snared with hooks and loops, and it was bewildered by this strange offensive and slow to react. Dogging it with swift attacks, she drew its attention far from the core of its consciousness; then, nimbly, she cut it loose and plunged, skipping onto different threads and racing back towards the demon’s body, circumventing the battle front entirely. The ruku-shai, realising that it had been lured away from the place it was meant to be defending, followed as rapidly as it could. But Kaiku used all her speed now, and her enemy was not quick enough. She crashed up against its inner defences like a tidal wave, utilising the full force of her kana, and they crumbled. Then she was in, racing through the fibres of the ruku-shai’s physical body, scorching through its muscles and veins, suffusing herself into every part of its alien physiology.

  There was no more time for subtlety. She simply planted herself inside it, and tore apart the black knot of its being.

  The demon emitted an inhuman clattering from its throat as it ruptured from the inside. A cloud of fire belched from its mouth, its limbs and belly distended, and then it exploded into flaming chunks of sinew and cartilage. Kaiku felt the rage and pain of its demise come washing over her as she withdrew her kana, an aftershock across the Weave that stunned her with its force. She snapped back into reality, her kana retreating into the depths of her body again, recoiling from the backlash of the demon’s ending.

  She blinked, and suddenly she was no longer seeing the Weave but the grey mist, and her companions staring at the muted bloom of flame that had suddenly lightened it on one side. Perhaps a second had passed for them, if that; but Kaiku felt as if she had fought a war singlehanded.

  Her momentary elation at being the winner of that war disappeared as she heard the rhythmic gallop of the approaching demons. She had beaten one, but its companions were enraged, and they were no longer content to wait on their prey. Their rattling took on a harsher pitch that hurt the ear. The dank curtains of vapour coalesced into two monstrous shadows. She did not have time to gather her kana again before the ruku-shai were upon them.

  They burst from the gloomy haze, their six legs propelling them in a strange double-jointed run. They were seven feet high from their wickedly hoofed toes to the knobbed ridge of their spines, and over twelve feet in length, a drab green-grey in colour. Their torsos were a mass of angles, plates of bony armour covering their sides and back. It grew in sharp bumps and spikes like a coat of thorns, smeared with rank mud and trailing straggly bits of marshweed. Their heads were similarly plated around their sunken yellow eyes and forehead, and when they opened their jaws a cadaverous film of skin stretched across the inner sides of their mouth.

  They smashed into the group, catching them off-guard with their unexpected speed. Kaiku threw herself aside as one of them thundered past her, lashing its tail in a blur at her head. She fell awkwardly, tripping on a clump of long grass and going down full-length into a vile slick of sucking mud. Her attacker pulled up short, rearing on its back four legs, and drew its front ones up like a praying mantis, spearing her with a deadly regard. Then a rifle sounded, and the ball sparked off the armour on its cheek. The demon recoiled, and Kaiku felt Yugi’s arm on her, pulling her back to her feet.

  She found her balance just in time to catch sight of the other ruku-shai over Yugi’s shoulder. It had also reared in a mantis position, and as Kaiku watched in horror it jabbed a blow at Tsata with its hoofed foreleg, faster than the eye could follow, sending the Tkiurathi reeling back in a spray of blood to collapse against a marshy hillock. An instant later, it came for them.

  ‘Yugi! Behind us!’ she cried, but she was too late. The demon’s cord-like tail whipped Yugi across the ribs as he turned to respond to her warning. He sighed and fell forward onto Kaiku, his muscles going slack all at once. She caught him automatically; then she heard another rifle shot, and the angry, clattering snarl of a demon. She threw Yugi’s limp weight down, registering momentarily that the demon who had stung him was now flailing in agony at a wound in its neck where Nomoru’s rifle had pierced its armour.

  But the ruku-shai who had first attacked them was looming over her now, its forelegs held before it and its mouth open, crooked and broken fangs joined by strings of yellow saliva as they stretched apart. A sinister rattle came from deep in its throat.

  She had only an instant to act, but it was enough. With an effort of desperate will, she marshalled her kana from within, and throwing out her hand at the demon she projected herself into a furious attack. The Weave erupted into life around her as she narrowed her energies into a tight focus, driving into the demon’s defences like a needle through stitchwork, leaving nothing back to protect herself. The ruku-shai was not quick enough to mount an effective counter, overcome by the suicidal audacity of the maneouvre, and Kaiku lanced into its core in the space of an eyeblink and ripped it apart.

  The force of the explosion scorched her muddied face as the demon was destroyed. Somewhere behind her, Nomoru was swearing, foul curse words in a gutter dialect thrown at the last demon as she fired again and again, repriming between each ball as she pumped shot after shot into the creature. Ignoring Yugi, Kaiku turned from the flaming remains of her victim and stumbled to the scout’s aid.

  Nomoru was standing over the prone form of Tsata on the hillock, holding the ruku-shai at bay. Each time she hit it, the creature writhed in pain as the iron in the rifle ball burned its flesh; but each time it came for her again, and Nomoru’s ammunition could not last forever.

  Kaiku cried out in challenge. She was wading through the marsh towards it, her irises a deep red and her expression grim. The sight of her approach robbed the demon of the last of its spirit, and with a final rattle it plunged away into the mist.

  Nomoru squeezed the trigger for a parting shot, and her rifle puffed uselessly. Her ignition powder had burned up. She glanced at Kaiku with a flat expression, revealing nothing; then she crouched down next to Tsata, and rolled him over.

  ‘Get the other one,’ she said to Kaiku, not looking up.

  Kaiku did as she was told. The air was becoming less oppressive, the evil departing like an exhaled breath, the mist thinning around them. She felt numb. The demons were gone, but she was racked with tiredness, and the sudden departure of adrenaline from her system left her trembling.

  Yugi lay sprawled face-down, his shirt torn open where the tail of the ruku-shai had hit him. Blood welled through from beneath. Kaiku knelt down by his side, her heart sinking. She pulled off his pack, then turned him over and shook him. When that produced no response, she shook him again, his head lolling back and forth as she did so.

  Puzzlement turned to alarm. He had not been hit hard. What was wrong with him? She had no training in herbcraft or healing; she did not know what to do. The cushioning folds of exhaustion were not enough to suppress the new horror rising up inside her. Yugi was her friend. Why was he not waking up?

  Omecha, silent harvester, have you not taken enough from me already? she prayed bitterly. Let him live!

  ‘Poison,’ said a voice by her sh
oulder, and she looked round to see Tsata crouching by her. His face was bloodied with a deep gash, and his right eye was swollen shut. When he talked, his bruised lips made a smacking noise.

  ‘Poison?’ Kaiku repeated.

  ‘Demon poison,’ Nomoru said, from where she stood over them. ‘The ruku-shai have barbs in their tails.’

  Kaiku remained staring at the face of the fallen man, which was turning steadily a deep shade of purple as they watched.

  ‘Can you help him?’ Kaiku said, her voice small.

  Tsata put his fingers to Yugi’s throat, feeling for a pulse. Kaiku did not know to do that. It was not part of a high-born girl’s education. ‘He is dying,’ Tsata said. ‘It is too late to remove the poison.’

  The mist had almost sunk back to the ground now, and in some peripheral part of her mind Kaiku realised that they were three-quarters of the way through the marsh. The cultists on the other side were gone.

  ‘You get it out,’ said Nomoru. It took Kaiku a moment to realise who she was addressing.

  ‘I do not know how,’ she whispered. She did not trust the power inside her enough. Suddenly she felt a crushing regret for all those years she had spurned Cailin’s advice to study, to learn to master her kana. Wielding it as a weapon was one thing, but to use it to heal was a different matter entirely. She had almost killed Asara with it before, and later she had almost killed Lucia, all because of her lack of control. She would not have Yugi’s death on her hands, would not be responsible for him.

  ‘You’re an apprentice,’ Nomoru persisted. ‘An apprentice of the Red Order.’

  ‘I do not know how!’ Kaiku repeated helplessly.

  Tsata grabbed her collar and pulled her towards him, glaring at her with his good eye.

  ‘Try!’

  Kaiku tried.

  She threw herself into Yugi before her fear could overwhelm her again, placing her hands on his chest and squeezing her eyes shut. The veined film of her eyelids did nothing to block the Weave-sight as the world turned golden again. She plunged into the rushing fibres of his body, knitting past the striations of muscle and into the weakening current that kept him alive.

  She could sense the poison, could see it as it blackened the golden threads of his flesh. The slow thunder of his heart throbbed through her.

  She did not know where to start or what to do. She had hardly any formal knowledge of biology and none of toxicology. She did not know how to defend against the poison without destroying it and Yugi with it. Indecision paralysed her. Her consciousness hung within the diorama of Yugi’s body.

  Learn from your surroundings. Mould yourself to them.

  The words that came to her were Cailin’s. A lesson taught long ago. If all else failed, go limp and let the flow of the Weave show you how to move.

  Yugi’s body was a machine that had run efficiently for over thirty years now. It knew what it was doing. She only had to listen to it.

  She began a mantra, a meditation designed to make her relax. Against all odds, it began to ease her, and the rigid form of her consciousness began to disseminate, to melt like ice into water. Kaiku was startled by how easily her kana responded to her command. What had moments ago seemed an impossible task became simple. She allowed herself to be absorbed into the matrices of Yugi’s body, and let nature instruct her instincts.

  It made perfect sense: the circulation of the blood, the flickering of the synapses in his brain, the tiny pulses through his nerves. By becoming part of it, she found his body as familiar to her as her own. She found that she knew what to do on a subconscious level rather than a conscious one, so she let her kana guide her.

  The poison spread like a cancer, with even the tiniest part blooming out evil threads of corruption if left unchecked. Kaiku was forced to move within the fibres of Yugi’s body with the precision of a surgeon, tracking the dark coils amid the glowing tubes of his veins and capillaries, defending his heart from the insidious inward progress of the invader while simultaneously cleansing the befouled blood that passed through it with every weakening beat. The mental strain of trying to keep Yugi alive while neutralising the poison was immense, and more so because she had little idea of what she was doing; but she found herself gaining the upper hand, her kana working with a mind of its own, seeming to be only nominally under her control.

  She chased the poison. She knotted and looped it to arrest its progress. She gently excised corrupted threads and sent them elsewhere, discharging harmlessly into the swamp around her. She erected tumorous barriers that it could not pass, and then took them down when the danger had gone. Twice she thought she had beaten it, only to find that a tiny shred of poison had been overlooked and was creeping inward again. Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her, but her will held strong. She would not let him die. She would not.

  Then, unexpectedly, it was done. Her eyes flickered open, irises deep crimson, and she was back in the marsh once again. Tsata was looking at her with something like awe in his gaze; even Nomoru bore an air of grudging respect. Yugi was breathing normally, his pallor back to its usual hue, sleeping deeply. She felt disoriented; it was a few moments before she realised where she was and what had happened.

  Gods, she thought to herself in stark disbelief. I did not realise. I did not see what I could do with the power inside me. Why did I not let Cailin teach me?

  A sense of elation more deep and profound than any she could remember touched her. She had saved Yugi’s life. Not by bearing him out of danger, or protecting him in battle, but by physically drawing him back from the brink of death. She knew well enough the perilous euphoria of the Weave, but this was a different ecstasy, purer somehow. She had used her power to heal instead of to destroy; and what was more, she had done it without ever being taught how. A smile spread across her face, and she began to laugh with relief and joy. It was some time before she realised she was crying also.

  FIFTEEN

  The Blood Emperor Mos woke with a shout from a dream. He gazed wildly around, his meaty hands clutched tight to the gold sheets of his bed; then sense returned to him as he realised he was awake. But the dream lingered: the humiliation, the sorrow, the rage.

  It was too hot. Past midday, he guessed, and the Imperial bedchamber was stifling despite the open shutters. The room was designed to be wide and airy, with a floor of black lach and a single archway leading to a balcony high up on the north-eastern side of the Imperial Keep. Smaller, oval windows flanked the archway, beaming painful brightness into the room.

  Mos lay on the bed that formed the centrepiece. Most of the other furniture was for Laranya – dressing-tables, mirrors, an elegant couch – but this was his, a gift from an emissary of Yttryx that he had received near the start of his reign. At each corner of the bed, the ivory horns of some colossal Yttryxian animal formed the bedposts, six feet long and curving outward in symmetry, ringed with gold bracelets and studded with precious stones.

  The room smelled of sour alcohol sweat, and his mouth tasted of old wine, befouled by the dry mucus in his throat and on his tongue. He was naked amid the tangle of covers that his nocturnal thrashing had displaced.

  His wife the Empress was not in the bed with him, and by the absence of her perfume he knew she had not slept there the previous night.

  Recollection came sluggishly. Aestival Week was still young. He remembered a feast, musicians . . . and wine, a lot of wine. Vague images of faces and laughter scattered across his mind. His head throbbed.

  An argument. Of course, an argument; they seemed to be doing that more and more of late. When two firebrands clashed, sparks flew. But he had been in a conciliatory mood, still feeling faint tatters of guilt for that moment in the pavilion when he had almost struck her. He had made it up to her somehow, and they had celebrated through the night. Feeling that their temporary peace was fragile, he had even tolerated the terrible company she attracted, forsaking his more stolid and interesting companions for his wife’s repellantly gaudy and theatrical friends.

  O
f course, Eszel was there, and her brother Reki. The bookworm seemed to have found his element among Laranya’s lot. Mos remembered swaying drunkenly, not saying much, while they talked gibberish about inconsequential matters that seemed designed to exclude him from the conversation. What did he know of the ancient philosophers? What did he care for classical Vinaxan sculpture? Beyond occasional attempts by Laranya to rope him into the conversation, like throwing scraps to a starving dog, he had absolutely nothing to contribute.

  He frowned as bits and pieces slotted into place. A feeling of resentment, that they were not paying attention to him, their Blood Emperor. Satisfaction that his presence was making both Reki and Eszel very uncomfortable. Ardour . . . that was very strong. He remembered wanting Laranya, a deep stirring that needed satisfaction. Yet he would not ask his own wife to come to bed with him, not in front of the peacocks she was mingling with. It offended his sense of manhood. She should come with him when he told her to; he would not beg. Heart’s blood, he was the Emperor! But he feared an embarrassing rejection if he commanded her, and she was too wilful to be sure of a yes.

  He wanted to go, and he wanted her to come with him. He did not want to leave her here. Sometime during the night, in a moment of drunken clarity, he realised that he did not want to leave her with Eszel. He did not trust what they might do, once he was gone.

  Dawn was the last thing he could recall. By then, unable to keep awake beneath the smothering blanket that wine had laid over his senses, he announced loudly and awkwardly that he was going to bed, gazing pointedly at Laranya as he did so. The peacocks all bade him farewell with the usual graceful rituals, and Laranya kissed him swiftly on the lips and said that she would be there soon.