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

by Chris Wooding

  Phaeca drew her breath in over her teeth. She was peering down the alley, where the lithe shape of a shrilling was silhouetted against the lighter street. It paused, head swinging one way and then the other, deciding which way to go next. The seconds it took making up its mind were agony for the Sister, who was praying to all the gods at once that it should go on its way and leave them alone.

  But the gods, if they heard her, were feeling malicious that day. It turned towards them, and into the alley.

  ‘It’s coming,’ she warned.

  Lon cursed. ‘Get that grille off!’ he urged Juto, who gave him a roundly offensive oath as a reply. He had given up trying to pull and was shaking it instead, trying to work it loose from its setting. He had made some progress, for the stone was crumbly and weak, but it was still firmly in place.

  ‘How close?’ he murmured.

  ‘Close,’ Phaeca replied.

  ‘How close?’ he hissed.

  ‘I don’t know!’ she said. She had never been good at judging distances.

  Kaiku began to look over the edge of the step, but Lon pulled her down, and Phaeca with her. ‘It’ll see you!’

  The warbling they could hear was merely the lower end of the aural spectrum of the shrilling’s calls, which rebounded from objects and were picked up and sorted by sense glands in their throat, in a manner analogous to that of bats. The Sisters had captured live specimens in the past and studied them well.

  Juto had freed up the grille a little, but not enough. The warble of the shrilling was becoming louder. He shook the grille hard. It was breaking away the stone bit by bit, scraping out dust and tiny pebbles, but it was still not coming free.

  ‘Sweet gods, come on,’ he pleaded. The shrilling was almost upon them now, they could hear it, as if it were standing right beside them . . .

  Phaeca grabbed his arm.

  And they were still, all of them, like statues hunkered together. A moment later, the shrilling’s head appeared, its long skull curving back to a bony crest, its sharp teeth bared beneath its rigid upper jaw. It came slowly forward, bringing its scaled, jaguar-like forequarters into view, and there it stopped, cooing softly, looking up the length of the lane.

  The creature was mere feet away from where they crouched motionless in the shadow of the steps. They could see the rise and fall of its flanks, hear the hiss of its breath. They were paralysed, some ancient and primal biological response freezing them to the spot like a mouse in sight of a cat. It seemed ridiculous that the thing was right in front of them and it had not yet pounced.

  But it did not see them. The darkness was too deep for its peripheral vision to pick them out, and its echo location system was too directional to detect them. At least, until it turned its head.

  Still it did not move. The outsize sickle-claws of its forepaws tapped softly on the cobbles. Some animal intuition was pricking it, a sensation of being watched, of the nearness of other beings.

  Go, Kaiku urged silently. They were close enough so that she could see the glistening black nexus-worm buried in its neck. Heart’s blood, go!

  She could sense Lon reaching for his dagger, moving slowly, slowly. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she dared not make a noise, fearing that even the movement of her lips or the disturbance of her exhaled breath would tip the balance here and bring the creature down upon them. Her kana was on a hair-trigger, coiled inside her, ready to burst free in an instant.

  The shrilling padded onward.

  Kaiku could barely believe it. They watched it go, prowling up the lane, its sinuous form exuding a deadly confidence, its tail dragging behind it. She thought it was a trick at first, and she kept thinking that right up until the point where the Aberrant turned out of the end of the lane and was lost from view.

  They sagged with ragged sighs of relief.

  ‘I think we all owe Shintu a year’s worth of thanks for that one,’ Phaeca murmured, invoking the trickster deity of luck.

  Lon was chanting a mantra of swear-words that were lurid enough to make even Kaiku uncomfortable.

  Juto, visibly rattled, got to his feet and kicked the grille he had been trying to loosen. It broke free and fell into the basement.

  ‘Come on,’ he said in disgust. ‘The sooner we’re out of this gods-damned place, the sooner I get paid.’

  They came upon the pall-pits not long afterward.

  Nomoru had still not returned, and Kaiku was worried despite herself. She did not like the surly scout – nobody liked her, as far as she could fathom, though she and Yugi did seem to have a tacit connection – but she had become used to her, enough so that her disappearance made Kaiku concerned for her well-being. Phaeca was more pragmatic: she was only hoping that Nomoru had not got herself caught or killed and alerted the enemy to their presence. But the Weavers seemed quiet now; in fact, there was a curious absence of them, for when Kaiku and the others first arrived in the city there had been periodic sweeps across the Weave to look for Sisters or other anomalies, and in the last few hours there had been none.

  The pall-pits were set into the hillside at a slight angle, and from where the intruders hid at the edge of the housing district they could see the whole terrible scene. A great swathe of the city had been levelled to make space for the pits, and rubble still surrounded them, half-standing walls and split beams and spars of metal piled in heaps or leaning against each other to form bizarre and discomfiting sculptures of ruin.

  Beyond the waste ground the disorder ceased: the pall-pits themselves were built with ruthless precision. They were two sets of concentric circles side by side, enclosed by a wall of metal. Each circle was stepped lower than the last as they progressed inward to the gaping holes at the centre, colossal black maws that exuded turgid, oily smoke in vast columns. Wide, smooth ramps led from the inner pits to their outer edges. The red light of furnaces blazed along the tiers, trapped behind grilles and slats and vents, painting the pits the colour of dirty blood. It sheened across a grimy warren of pipes.

  They paused for a time in the shadow of the houses, surveying the cluttered waste ground. The glow from the pall-pits pushed back the darkness; they would be exposed when they broke out into the open. Lon was more nervous than ever now, glancing here and there, his fingers twitching as if playing some invisible instrument. He kept on choking back coughs, occasionally eliciting an annoyed glare from Juto.

  ‘We’ll never make it across that,’ he murmured. Then, tangentially: ‘Where is that bitch?’

  Kaiku felt irritated that he should be abusing a companion of hers, no matter how disliked she was; it made her feel cheap and disloyal to tolerate it. ‘Will you be quiet?’ she hissed sharply, and he gave her a resentful glare and held his tongue.

  ‘We’ll make it,’ Juto said, responding to Lon’s first comment. ‘The fog’s coming. Let’s wait a while.’

  Juto was right. There was indeed a thickening in the air, the murk drifting down in veils too heavy to stay aloft. The rank taste in Kaiku’s mouth that had been there since they had arrived in the city became more pronounced, an unhealthy metallic tang.

  ‘Could have done with this earlier,’ Juto observed, scrunching up his face.

  ‘Does it happen often here? The fogs?’ Phaeca asked.

  ‘Once in a while. Not often. Seems we really do have Shintu on our side tonight.’

  The haze sank into the streets quickly, concealing the pall-pits and turning the waste ground into a red mist, in which shadowy shapes hulked like the carcasses of wrecked ships. At Juto’s signal, they scuttled out into the disconcerting light, running low towards a heap of rubble and rusty iron beams. They skidded into cover in a scramble of loose stones, and Juto was just scanning to be sure all was clear for their next run when Lon grabbed his arm.

  ‘We can’t go,’ he whined.

  ‘What?’ Juto said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘The fog. It’s the demons. It’s the demons!’

  A spasm of disgust passed across Juto’s face. Lon was cringing, his
eyes darting about.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Juto snarled. ‘It’s just fog. It doesn’t mean it’s the feya-kori’s doing.’

  ‘It’s the demons!’ Lon cried, trailing off into a strangled whimper as Juto grabbed him by the throat and pulled him closer, so that they were eye to eye.

  ‘It’s just fog,’ he said menacingly. There was a moment when they held each other’s gaze, and then Lon looked down and away. Juto released him. ‘You’re the one who knows the way into this place. Get moving, or I’ll shoot you myself.’

  With that, he broke cover, dragging Lon with him. The Sisters followed close on their heels. They charged through the dense red miasma, hid, looked around, ran again. Once Phaeca saw a dark shape lumbering at the limit of their vision, a mist-ghost that she swore was a ghaureg; but it did not appear again, and they had no choice but to go on. There would never be any better conditions for an infiltration.

  Eventually they reached the wall of the pall-pits. It loomed out of the red fog before them, resolving into detail as they neared, a grotesque hybrid of stone and plates of metal. With Lon in the lead, they skirted round the curve of the wall, eyes straining for any sight of Aberrant guards in the swirling murk.

  But fortune was with them once again: they reached Lon’s secret entrance without being spotted. It was a square hole in the wall, where a panel had either come loose or been ripped off, hidden behind a pile of rubble and joists. Lon paused at it, looked pleadingly at Juto.

  ‘It’s the demons,’ he whispered.

  ‘Get inside!’ Juto snapped, and they crawled through and into the pall-pits.

  EIGHT

  The murk was so heavy inside the pits that it was all Kaiku could do not to retch. Her eyes teared and became bloodshot, and her skin crawled. Her kana was ridding her body of the impurities she was breathing, and it was literally seeping out of her pores. She wanted nothing more than to be gone from here; but she had a task to complete, and there was no turning back now.

  The tiers were mazed with huge pipes, or cut through with trenches. While it made picking their way to the centre a complicated task, it also kept them well hidden as long as they crouched. It was barely possible to see the next tier down anyway, and the pits themselves were only visible as a fierce red haze. They headed to the right side of one of the ramps that ran from the edge to the smoking abyss. While it would provide the most direct route, it was too exposed to travel on, and they found themselves wondering why it was so smooth and featureless when every other part of the pall-pits was so densely packed.

  Lon knew his way, it seemed, however reluctant he was to follow it. He led them between bellowing furnaces that made the Sisters shy away; down steps of metal that clanked underneath their shoes; past slowly rotating cogs that rumbled threateningly. Kaiku had been near Weaver machinery before, but the din threatened to overwhelm her. She would have clapped her hands over her ears to shut it out, if she thought it would have done any good.

  The murk seemed to be getting thicker as they descended, and with it a steadily growing sense of something . . . other. The Sisters exchanged a glance; they both felt it. Lon had not been lying: there were demons here. Even keeping their kana reined tightly, it was impossible not to register their presence in the Weave. It became more pronounced as they neared the centre of the pit; a vast and infantile malevolence, beyond human understanding, brooding in the depths. The feya-kori.

  ‘They’re here,’ she said quietly.

  ‘As promised,’ Juto replied.

  Phaeca was getting as jumpy as Lon now; Kaiku could see her out of the corner of her eye, starting violently whenever a swirl in the fog suggested the shape of an enemy. Despite her nausea and the fear of her surroundings, Kaiku was more experienced at this kind of thing than Phaeca was, and she held her nerve more steadily.

  ‘Be calm, Phaeca,’ she murmured. ‘I will do the work. You have only to conceal me.’

  ‘Gods, there’s something wrong,’ Phaeca replied, her angular face rendered sinister by the light. ‘There’s something wrong.’

  ‘I know,’ Kaiku replied. ‘Let us do what we have to and be gone.’

  They clambered down a ladder onto the lowest tier, and their surroundings opened out fractionally. There were fewer pipes here, only a few hulking metal chambers of some kind, and just visible across a short expanse of metallic flooring was a railing, beyond which a raging torrent of red smoke churned upward. The bellow of the furnaces all around the interior edge of the pit was deafening.

  ‘Close enough for you?’ Juto cried over the noise.

  Kaiku gave him a look and disdained to respond. She walked to the railing, Phaeca trailing at her heels, and looked down. The smoke stung her eyes abominably. She blinked and turned away to Phaeca.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Phaeca nodded.

  ‘Then let us begin.’

  They eased into the Weave together, subtle as a needle into satin.

  This time, there was little of the euphoria that usually attended entry into the golden stitchwork of reality. Instead, a cold ugliness swamped the Sisters, emanating from all around, dimming the shine of the threads that sewed through their surroundings. The pall-pit before them was a black abyss of corruption, a dreadful tangle of fibres that sucked and boiled, concealing all within. Here in the Weave, the presence of the demons was more terrifying still: immense, dormant monstrosities just below the surface of their sight.

  Dormant, and yet becoming less so. For now the Sisters realised that their growing awareness of the feya-kori had not been because they were getting nearer to their targets. It was because the demons were waking up.

  ‘Oh, gods, Kaiku,’ Phaeca said aloud.

  ((Stay with me)) came the reply across the Weave, phrased without words. ((We have time))

  Phaeca, despite her terror, did not falter. She knitted the Weave around them, blending them into its warp and weft, deadening the faint emanations of their presence. Kaiku was going to have to use her kana if they were to learn anything about the demons, and while she would make every effort to be as delicate as possible, it would still draw Weavers. Phaeca’s job was to disguise them as best she could.

  Kaiku fought to keep her composure amid the swelling awareness of the feya-kori. A part of her was sorting the implications of their situation even as she sent her kana into the pall-pit. The feya-kori could not have known they were here; they were not even using their powers to any appreciable degree when the murk began to descend. She refused to believe that the creatures were waking up in response to the Sisters’ presence. Part of her thought that it was a trap, that the demons knew they were coming; but who could lay such a trap? Certainly not Lon, who was plainly terrified, and not Juto, who was in as much danger as all of them if the demons emerged before they had time to get away.

  Nomoru?

  She did not dare to think about it further. Gently, she subsumed her consciousness in the greasy plethora of the pall-pit. It cloyed and stroked at her, making her feel befouled. She ignored the discomfort and concentrated on reading the threads, following thousands of them at once, mapping the contours of their movements, picking them apart to understand their composure and purpose. She could feel Phaeca’s presence behind her, brushing away her trail with consummate artistry. And in the depths, she could sense something massive stirring, and prayed it was only a murmur in the demon’s sleep.

  The belching smoke in the pall-pit was heavy with metals and poison. Kaiku set herself to tracing it, seeking out its source. She slid through vents, down black, churning pipes, spreading out across the city. Phaeca sent her a warning resonation, indicating that she would not be able to disguise Kaiku if she dispersed her kana so widely. Kaiku drew back, limited herself to following only a dozen or so routes. She felt suddenly irritated that she had been checked by her companion: she had a scent, and a suspicion was growing in her mind that she was eager to prove.

  She followed it back to the factories, the grub-like buildings of the Wea
vers where men laboured, uncertain as to what they were producing. But Kaiku saw now. What they were producing was the smoke. It was piped from the buildings to the pall-pits, into a steam-driven system of gates and vents and airlocks and furnaces that regulated pressure and heat and refined the raw pollution into an even more concentrated form. And what ended up in the pall-pits was not like normal smoke.

  It was congealing.

  The awakening of the feya-kori was sudden and terrible. Kaiku felt the Weave bunch around her, drawing inward around the pall-pit, and a huge and baleful mind uncovered itself as if an eye had blinked open, drenching the Sisters in a wave of hostility. Kaiku pulled away, caring nothing for subtlety now, only wanting to escape the pall-pit before her kana became ensnared in the demon. She could not be sure whether they had noticed her or not, so minuscule was she to its attention; but their course was clear either way. They had to go. The smoke in the pit was thickening to a solid, and the feya-kori were coming.

  She and Phaeca returned to themselves at the same moment. Perhaps seconds had passed in the world of human perception: Juto and Lon were still watching them expectantly. The Sisters twisted away from the barrier, their kana-reddened eyes wide in alarm, and in that instant a colossal arm of rank and foetid sludge reared out of the pall-pit behind them. Kaiku saw the horror on the faces of the two men, felt the sickening weight of inevitability as the arm descended . . .

  It crashed down on the edge of the pall-pit, several metres to their right.

  Kaiku did not even have time to feel relief that it had missed her. The need to escape was overwhelming. She could hear the hissing as the demon dripped and spattered over the metal, could sense the force of its presence emanating from the pall-pit. It was climbing out.

  Juto and Lon had already turned to run, but they stopped still even as the