The ascendancy veil bp-3

by Chris Wooding

  'Lucia!' Mishani shrieked from where she lay in the mud. 'Lucia! Stop them!'

  But Lucia could not hear her, and the Xhiang Xhi paid no attention. It waved its hands above its host's head like the conductor of an orchestra. The Sister that had accompanied her as a bodyguard was looking from the carnage below to Lucia and back, uncertainty in her eyes.

  A soldier came crawling up the hillside, fighting against the wind and rain, his eyes fixed on Lucia in supplication.

  'Save us!' he cried. 'Save your people!'

  But Lucia did not answer.

  'Why won't you help us?' he demanded.

  The Xhiang Xhi reached down to him, encircling him in its huge, spindly hands, and crushed him to a pulp with a cracking of bones.

  Mishani screamed as blood spattered her. The horror and shock were too much. Her mind was frozen, her body paralysed.

  Then Lucia jerked violently, as if some invisible force had punched her in the gut. The Xhiang Xhi shrieked, a long, drawn-out wail. And Lucia dropped, falling from where she hovered just above the ground. She collapsed as she hit the earth, crumpling like a ball of paper. The Xhiang Xhi, still attached to her, began to darken and attenuate, reaching toward the west, lengthening like a shadow at the end of the day until it stretched across the whole battlefield and over the horizon, to where the Forest of Xu lay. Then perspective twisted, and it was gone.

  The effect on the spirits was immediate: they began to settle and fade. The river went quiet, its flow diminishing and retreating. The smoke from the chasm no longer hung in the air but sank and dispersed. The wind died, dropping from a hurricane to a light breeze. The lightning stopped.

  Silence ached. Only the Children of the Moons remained amid the death that surrounded them. Their swords had lowered, and they looked up at the moons above. The clouds were coming apart; the unreal sensation in the air was passing. Even the rain had lessened to a drizzle, and finally stopped altogether.

  The moonstorm was over. A shimmer passed across the Children and they disappeared. The three moons drifted their steady way apart in a gradually clearing sky.

  Mishani was curled up, trembling, still in shock. The sense that the danger had passed was a relief too precious to believe. She was alive, she was alive, beyond all hope it had seemed. She would have lay there for much longer, if not for one thing: the reason she was even here in the first place.

  Lucia.

  She crawled on her hands and knees to where Lucia lay. A frail thing, eighteen harvests, her clothing plastered to her body. And red, red blood, soaking her stomach, where she had been shot.

  Mishani sobbed her name, gathering her up so that Lucia's head lay in her lap, and shook her. Lucia's eyes flickered open, and they were blue and distant. She tried to smile, and coughed instead. Blood ran over her lips and down her chin.

  'I'm sorry, Mother,' she whispered. Mishani knew then that it was not her face Lucia was seeing, but Anais'. Already her gaze was becoming dim.

  'Ssh,' she said. 'Ssh, do not speak.' She looked up at the Sister, who was standing over them and looking down. Her make-up had not even been smudged by the rain. 'Can you not help her?' she demanded, her voice shrill.

  The Sister shook her head sadly. 'The power that kept her from the Weavers' attentions keeps her from ours as well. We cannot touch her. I cannot heal her.'

  'Then what good are you?' Mishani shrieked. The Sister did not answer, and Mishani turned back to Lucia. 'What good are you?' she murmured again, helplessly.

  'I didn't know,' Lucia was saying, her eyes roving. 'I didn't know they'd take so many. They took so many, Mother. They said they'd only take a few. A few lives to satisfy them. Because they hate us. Because that was their price.'

  'Oh, child,' Mishani wept. 'Why? Why did you do it? Why did you agree?'

  Lucia coughed again. Her chin and breast were soaked in crimson now. The night had gone still. There seemed nothing in the world but the three of them on the hilltop.

  'I couldn't let them down…' she whispered.

  Mishani began to weep anew at that. Gods, this poor girl, this appointed saviour who had spent every moment of ten years under the crushing expectation of the world. Could she have walked out of that forest a failure, after all the lives already given in her name? No. She had taken the Xhiang Xhi's bargain: a sacrifice in return for the spirits' help. Mishani could only imagine how that had torn her apart.

  And now she was here in Mishani's arms, a rifle ball in her. Her skin was grey, her hair in wet draggles. Her slowing heartbeat pulsed in the crook of her collarbone. She was seeing beyond, into somewhere Mishani could not follow.

  'Help me, Mother,' she said, her voice trembling. 'I don't want to die. I don't want to die.'

  But Mishani could not form a reply. Her throat was locked with grief, her body racked by it, and all she could do was cry as Lucia gave a long sigh, and her last breath was driven from her lungs. It was some time before Mishani heard the footsteps of Barak Zahn, and she looked up. He slumped to his knees, his face a mask of disbelief. He did not try to take Lucia from her. To do so would be to admit that it was real, that this had really happened, that he had lost his child for the second and final time.

  She wondered how historians might one day justify this loss. Would they count it worthy that the Weavers' army had been stopped, even at such a terrible cost? No, there was not even that to offer succour. To destroy the enemy was one thing, but the armies of the Empire were destroyed too. There was barely enough in reserve to defend their lands now. The same could be said of the Weavers, but the Weavers bred armies faster and stronger than humans did. The two forces had wiped each other out, levelled the score temporarily, but the reality was that the Weavers had won in the long term. Without this army, they needed less food. They could survive another two years, perhaps three, on what they had. And in that time they could launch a new offensive, one that nobody could stand up to. The Empire had bought itself a stay of execution, no more.

  Everything now relied on one thing. Cailin's plan had to work. They had to destroy the witchstones. It was their last and only hope.

  Those soldiers that had survived stood around the tableau on the hilltop: their fallen saviour, her head in Mishani's lap; the broken Barak on his knees; the impassive Sister. They felt the uncertainty that Mishani felt, and they dared not think of the future now.

  Among them stood a thin woman with tangled hair and a sullen cast to her face. She watched the scene for a time, then turned away. Grief and death were not new to Nomoru: she had seen enough as a child to last her a lifetime. Her only concern was that nobody knew who it was that fired the shot which killed their beloved Lucia. And beneath that, there was the slightest twinge of embarrassment at her shoddy marksmanship. After all, she had been aiming for Lucia's head. When dawn came, the battlefield was empty. Starfall drifted down in the aftermath of the moonstorm like tiny flakes of glass, glinting as it caught the sun. The armies of the Empire would search for their comrades and loved ones when Nuki's eye had risen high, but until then they had retreated, unable to bear staying in the abattoir that the banks of the River Ko had become. No carrion birds or flies troubled the corpses: the residue of the spirits was too strong here.

  On the north side of the river, amid the uncountable thousands of those that had died, there stood a mound of earth the size and shape of a small, hunched man. Its visage, what there could be seen of it, was a gaping face, emaciated like that of a corpse.

  The effigy lasted until mid-morning, when the sun warmed and dried it. It began to crack slowly; and then the Weave-lord Kakre crumbled, bit by bit, until he was nothing more than powdery dirt on the wind.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Kaiku stood on the foredeck of the junk and looked bleakly towards the grey peaks. She clutched her robe to her chest with one hand, cinching it tight against the chill sea breeze. She could have warmed herself up with a thought, but she wanted to suffer. It suited her mood.

  The sky was overcast, and though it wa
s spring there was no hint of it today. A dozen ships swayed at anchor before and behind her. They shed small rowing-boats periodically that ferried back and forth from the drab shingle beach to the south, a slender finger of the Newlands that extended along the line of the coast and stopped just east of the looming, slanted bulk of Mount Aon.

  For days they had been skirting the northern edge of Saramyr and there had been nothing but sheer black rock, great mountain walls that plunged vertically into the sea and offered no purchase for a landing. Kaiku had gone to starboard every morning and watched the thin plume of dark smoke from the volcanic Mount Makara drift steadily away to her right. And now here they were at their destination, a bay of stony beaches and hard planes of slate which ran inland for a few short miles before the mountains rose up again. This was where they were to make landfall, where the seven hundred Tkiurathi would disembark and make their way southwest to Adderach.

  Their voyage had been favoured by Assantua, it seemed. The moon-tides had gone their way and the winds had been good. And though they had been forced to take a somewhat indirect route – passing Fo on its western side to avoid the heavily trafficked Camaran Channel – and more than once they had been forced to detour while the Sisters cloaked them from the attention of distant ships, still they had arrived on the exact day they had intended to. Or so Cailin assured them, anyway. Kaiku had stopped counting long ago.

  The journey had been a miserable affair even before Kaiku had learned of the Empire's pyrrhic victory and Lucia's death. After that, she remembered little, and the discomfort and boredom of their confinement seemed insignificant in comparison to her grief.

  She was trapped on this ship. Even her cabin held no privacy, for she shared it with two other Sisters, and that she counted as a luxury compared to the holds of the junks, where the Tkiurathi slept in cramped confinement. She took to wearing the make-up of the Order, because when she did so people tended to leave her alone. Often she was seen wandering the decks at night like some dark spectre, and the sailors became used to the sight after a time and ignored her. The other Sisters mistrusted her; though Cailin had told nobody of their argument at Araka Jo, Kaiku's disdain for their cause was subtly evident, and they sensed this. Cailin was on another ship, and had maintained an icy silence which suited Kaiku.

  In her more bitter moments, she found a dark satisfaction in the knowledge that Lucia's death had robbed Cailin of her champion, that the Pre-Eminent must have been furious to learn how her carefully laid plans for the Sisterhood's future had been ruined. But that was small comfort: it was a setback at worst, and Kaiku knew Cailin would overcome it. If the Weavers fell, it would be the Sisters that claimed the victory, and the Sisters that would rise to take their place. Kaiku could scarcely bring herself to care. Why should she concern herself with a world so full of horror and sadness, a world that seemed to exist only to break her heart over and over? She cared only for her sorrow, and nursed it well.

  Now she watched the sailors taking the Tkiurathi to shore. They were eager to get off the junks, having been tormented by conditions during the long journey. Though they had endured it without complaint, they hated to be penned in, and the overcrowded ships – much smaller than the massive vessels that had brought them across the sea from Okhamba – were claustrophobic in the extreme.

  In less than a week, it would all be over. Seventy miles across the mountains lay the first monastery of the Weavers, and beneath it the first witchstone. Given that they were unsure of the terrain, they could not be certain of the exact timing of their arrival, but they kept in sporadic contact with the Sisters that accompanied the desert forces which approached from the south, and they coordinated in that way. Their activity in the Weave was heavily disguised: each communication was attended by several Sisters to ensure that no hint of their location could be divined. Their part of the operation relied on stealth.

  If all went to plan, the Weavers' forces would be drawn out of Adderach to meet Reki's army in the south, whose progress had been well marked. They would not expect an attack from the north, from the sea. Kaiku doubted greatly if the Weavers would extrapolate a threat to Adderach from the daring breakout the Sisters had achieved at Lalyara: for all the Weavers knew, they were simply trying to save the Empire's fleet, and had sailed south to the safer ports of Suwana or Eilaza. Besides, the Weavers did not know that Muraki tu Koli had given away their plans; that much was evident by the way they fell into the ambush at the River Ko.

  The prospect of having done with it all, one way or another, was comforting to Kaiku. She did not consider the shades of grey between success and failure: either the Weavers would be destroyed, or she would. She held on to the memories of her family, of Tane, of Lucia, and used it to fuel her hatred. Death would not be so bad now, if it could take her away from the cruelty of this world.

  But first there was something she had to do. When they reached the barrier of misdirection that the Weavers would certainly have erected around their monastery, she would have to wear the Mask again.

  It lay still in her pack in her cabin, now at the bottom and buried in clothes. At night, it whispered to her, tempting her with promises of her father. It was infused in some way with his essence, an essence that it had robbed from him, as it was also infused with hers now. If she wore it, could she once again attain that peace of her childhood, the comfort of her father's presence, the unthinking security he offered? No, she would not allow herself the luxury. It was a narcotic, offering anything she wanted in return for taking everything she was. But each time she was forced to use it, it became harder to resist, and after so long in such close proximity she had almost caved in more than once, hoping for refuge in its warm folds. Only her sour and venomous abhorrence of the Weavers and their devices kept her from doing so.

  But when they came to the barrier she would have to put it on. Though the Sisters were capable of getting through without much effort, there was no guarantee that the Weavers would not detect their intrusion, and the element of surprise would be lost then. The only sure way they had of passing unnoticed was the Mask.

  This Mask, this Mask that had cost her family's lives, was still one of the most important weapons they had. There had been no others: those Masks that the Sisters had taken from dead adversaries were too old and powerful to dare investigate, and would kill or corrupt any Sister that wore them.

  So it was down to Kaiku. She would have to lead seven hundred Tkiurathi and almost fifty Sisters through the barrier. It would take hours, and she would be wearing that awful Mask all that time.

  Her eyes flickered over the mountain peaks, and she sighed. Let it all be over. Just let it be finished.

  She sensed somebody by her side, and turned slightly to acknowledge Tsata. He had been wary around her ever since she had learned of Lucia's death, unsure whether she needed him to comfort her or if she wanted to be left alone. There had been little talk between them lately. He had busied himself with matters among his people in the hold.

  'How are the Tkiurathi?' she asked. Her voice seemed foreign to her, older than before.

  'Well enough,' he replied. 'They know how much is at stake since the battle at the River Ko. They will not falter. The journey through the mountains will restore their spirits after so long trapped in these ships.'

  Kaiku brushed her hair away from her face. 'What will you do… afterward?' She looked at him. 'When this is all done?'

  Tsata held her gaze for a long time before replying. 'That will depend on how things turn after we have reached Adderach,' he said. 'I will not say I have not thought on it, but there are too many factors.'

  Kaiku nodded in understanding. It was no evasion; he was being honest. But honest though he was, he had picked up a habit of employing Saramyr ways while dealing with Saramyr, and the unspoken implication was clear. What it depended on was her.

  And what did she want to do? She had no answer to that. The only person other than Tsata she had left was Mishani, but who could say in what directio
n their lives might take them? Tsata would probably return with his people, and Mishani would engage herself in something diplomatic which would keep her travelling. But for Kaiku, there was only a void, an emptiness that would be left by the fulfilment of her promise of revenge. In happier times she might have thought of it as boundless opportunity, but now she saw only a frightening loss of purpose.

  She felt a surge of resentment. Why should he rely on her? Why should her decisions be so important to others? Why, if the world was so determined to wound her, was it so reluctant to let her divorce herself from it?

  She realised that she was succumbing to self-pity again, and caught herself. No, she would not go that way. This man at her side loved her, and he was a man worthy of her love in return; it was her fault that she was reluctant to give it, and no one else's. There were things she wanted to say to him, things that nestled so deep in her that she did not know whether they would survive the journey out, the harsh process of speech. Promises, pledges, oaths. Words that were solid and real, to fix her back to the world of light and laughter that she had drifted away from. But everything seemed so frail and ephemeral to her now. She wanted to tell him these truths in case either of them should die in the coming conflict, so that he would not be left unknowing, but she realised also that if they did not die, she would have to live with the things that she had said, and she was not yet ready for that.

  She could not think on it. It was a decision too great for her in the face of all that was to come. Afterward, let things fall as they may. For now, there was only revenge, and the promise of an ending. The world was glutted with death these days, but it could stand a little more.