by Martin Davey
Dorian looked at him and Landros did his best to meet his eyes. The sound of laughter, loud and bright in the sunshine as a group of young men and women passed by. Landros envied them their freedom and peace of mind.
“What woman? Who’s in Yerotan?” Dorian finally asked.
Even Kerona had begun to give up hope of leaving anytime soon, and she scratched at the hay beneath her feet, her long neck reaching down to sniff and nibble. “Her name is Ysora Siran,” Landros said. “The woman we saved from Gerard, she fled to Yerotan.” He pulled Kerona’s neck up, turned her around. It was beyond time they should be leaving. The bells would be ringing for the Commune soon and he wanted to be as far away from Katrinamal as possible when news of the Clerk’s death was announced. He closed his eyes a moment, remembered his mother, her face sloughing away, her nightdress clinging to her skeletal body, remembered the Clerk’s shocked face as he watched his life’s blood spilling to the ground before him. The remembering made his face feel pale.
A hand landed on his arm, and he almost lashed out, controlling himself only at the last moment. It was Dorian, leaning across his horse, “Since when did the Town Watch begin accosting frightened women?”
A question that Landros hadn’t wanted to think about. “Ours is not to think, ours is to do,” Clerk Lovelin had said. And hadn’t Clerk Killian said that finding the woman would have saved Clerk Lovelin? His head was beginning to hurt, it was the job of the Clerks and the Keepers to see into the future and worry about all the permutations. He was a Captain of the Watch, his job was to do the bidding of the gods like everybody else in the world. Was it worth the freedom of one woman to aid in the battle against the Nameless One? Or to free Elian from the Clerk’s grasp? “He questioned the why!” Clerk Lovelin had said of Dorian. One of the few times Landros had seen passion in the man’s eyes.
“That is what the gods want us to do, that is what we will do,” he said, avoiding Dorian’s eyes. “Who are we to question the gods?” He kicked Kerona into motion and she trotted to the open gate, shaking her head, eager to be on the way.
Landros only wished he could feel the same way.
CHAPTER 26
It was warm. The kind of suffocating, stifling warmth that made it difficult to breathe. How long had she been here, swinging from the tree, the ropes burning her wrists, her own weight tearing at her shoulders? She couldn’t remember. Time had no meaning here in the forest. All was darkness. Shadowy, furtive things shuffling on the forest floor, black-winged birds rustling through the leaves about her, only serving to make her loneliness more complete.
Her shoulders ached and her wrists burned. Her lips were cracked swollen things and her tongue felt fat and awkward in her mouth.
How long must she endure this? She looked down at the forest floor far, far beneath her. All was shadow. It was a world of greys and blacks and dark browns and greens. Roots and leaves and thorns and branches and bushes fought for mastery of the ground beneath her, sinewy vines snaked up the trunks of the veirwood trees, mighty ancients that had ruled the forests for thousands upon thousands of years. This was the place of Gaidan, the forgotten god, the one they had betrayed. The one who had forsaken them when the Keepers came to destroy the world.
Tears fell down her cheeks and onto the sodden brown leaves so far below her. What if the Gaidan ignored her prayers? She would be left here to wither and die among the red leaves and black branches of the mightiest veirwood in the forest, food for the stormweavers and briasin already landed on the branches about her and cocking their heads and looking at her from black -bright eyes, preening at wings of brown and green. There was something comforting in that, that her remains would in some way fly and glide about the veirwood, part of her would race through the trees and soar up and up to the bright blue sky beyond and then down and down into the dark mysteries of the forests and the god that walked there, striding about his domain on legs of whipping, snaking roots. How long since the Gaidan had walked the veirwood? How long since the people of Fenneswood had forsaken him? But time had no meaning here in the forest.
Her shoulders ached and her wrists burned. Her lips were cracked swollen things and her tongue felt fat and awkward in her mouth. She couldn’t swallow.
The armies of the Keepers were only two weeks march away now, more and more people were fleeing to and past Fenneswood; men in coats of steel and blood, women with babes clutched in arms and terror and grief and loss in their eyes. Tales of great battles with thousands of men fighting under skies of reds and yellows, of screams and blood, where horses charged and arrows flew and the sounds...it was the sounds the women spoke of the most. Even at home, waiting for news of loved ones, children clutched to their breasts, still they could hear the sounds of the battle. The screams and the clash of steel upon steel. “Come with us,” they had said. “Come with us. There is a man, a man in the north with an army, they say he is the only one who can face the Keepers in battle.” None had left. The people of Fenneswood had been a thousand thousand years living next to the forest. Though they had forsaken the Gaidan, he would return now, wouldn’t he? How long had he been silent? How long since the people of Fenneswood had turned away from the ways of their god and ceased their offerings? But time had no meaning in the forest.
Her shoulders ached and her wrists burned. Her lips were cracked swollen things and her tongue felt fat and awkward in her mouth. She couldn’t swallow and her head now hung forward, her neck unable to bear its weight.
The Gaishan had wept when all the children of the town had gathered in the hall and selected their veirshan from the tray he held before him. She had been blindfolded as she had made her choice, but she had known all the same. All the other veirshans had been smooth to the touch, no bigger than a marble and just as cold and lifeless. The one she had chosen had thrummed with life and warmth as soon as her searching fingers had brushed against it. It had rolled away when she touched it, more veirshan rolling in its place, but she had sought it out again, the Gaishan weeping softly to himself as she ran her hand across the tray, her eyes sightless behind her blindfold. And there it was, warm and vital and full of the power of the god. She had grasped it as soon as she felt the warmth lest it roll away again.
And she had known. Even as she walked past all the other children, some brave and some afraid as they looked down at the veirshan in their small palms, she had known she would be chosen. And when the Gaishan had cut open her veirshan and wept even more when he saw the red heart within instead of the green, she had met his eyes and smiled. It had only made him weep all the more. How long ago had that been? How long until they had brought her to the forest with ropes coiled about their shoulders and sorrow in their eyes? But time had no meaning in the forest.
Her shoulders ached and her wrists burned. Her lips were cracked swollen things and her tongue felt fat and awkward in her mouth. She couldn’t swallow and her head now hung forward, her neck unable to bear its weight. And now she didn’t know whether she slept or woke and she didn’t think it really mattered anymore.
It was dark. It was always dark in the forest. Dark and warm and quiet. Was it always this quiet in the forest? When they had first hung her here high among the branches of the veirwood she remembered sounds; scurrying among the undergrowth, the calls of the stormweavers, high and harsh, the challenges of the stags calling each other out to fight, the rustle of leaf and bush, the flapping of a giant owl’s wing. Never a quiet moment in the forest. But now all was silence. A silence so complete she found it difficult to breathe in it.
She was young. She couldn’t remember how young anymore, but she knew she was young by the reckoning of the people of Fenneswood and that was why their voices broke in the song of Gaidan when they lashed the ropes about her shoulders and her wrists and hung her from the mightiest veirwood of them all. ‘What if he doesn’t come?’ the Gaishan had wailed. ‘We’ll come back for you, we’ll bring you down if he doesn’t come, if he has truly forsaken us.’ She had been the only one not
weeping as they released her from the platform. ‘No,’ she had told them. ‘He will come when he is ready.’ After all, time had no meaning in the forest.
Her shoulders ached and her wrists burned. Her lips were cracked swollen things and her tongue felt fat and awkward in her mouth. She couldn’t swallow and her head now hung forward, her neck unable to bear its weight. And now she didn’t know whether she slept or woke and she didn’t think it really mattered anymore. She had to be dreaming. There was sound now, something coiling and writhing and it was coming towards her along the ropes suspending her high above the forest floor. She opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized she had closed them. Tried to lift her head but it was no use, the pain in her shoulders and neck were too great. Instead she looked down, far down to the forest floor.
And saw a god.
And the god saw her. And it had eyes bright as sennablossoms.
And then she knew she had been wrong. She was beautiful and she had always known it. She was young and she had always gotten what she wanted. She had thought the god would find her and be struck by the beauty of her face and the beauty of her sacrifice and he would return her to the town, thought he would return to his people, his followers, and help in the war against the gods from the skies. But she had been wrong. He was a god. A god with legs and arms that shifted and writhed about his form as he looked up at her. He was a thing of the forest, not of the human world; he was made of vines and roots and other black damp things that oozed and snaked about his body in perpetual motion. And his face, framed by a blanket of green leaves and vines that blew in some silent breeze, was black and dark; and a tongue, thick and long as a slug brushed its cracked lips as it looked up at her and lifted a hand to guide the snaking things coming down the rope toward her bound wrists.
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She screamed. Long and loud and high, enough to tear at her throat. And then she felt the ropes tight about her wrists and she screamed some more, thrashing and lashing out against the things snaking down the ropes towards her hands. Things that would unfasten her bonds and send her falling to the embrace of the Gaidan. Someone talked and Ysora drowned them out with more screams. Shouting, some of the voices sounded worried and she screamed and screamed until she couldn’t scream anymore. Until she felt her bare feet on a hard wooden floor. Until she felt her clothes about her body. Until she realized her hands were bound behind her back and not above her head hanging from the branches of some mighty tree.
“Ysora. Ysora.” Not a patient voice, but human all the same. A man, gruff and angry, but also sounding a little afraid at the noise she was making.
Breaths coming harder, high in her throat and difficult to catch. She was panting like a dog. Like Godie. What would happen to him at Cioran’s house? She shook her head. Focus. Think of herself and worry about the dog later. She screwed her eyes tight and then opened them, still shaking, still gasping for breath.
Two men now, looking at her. Afraid and angry at being made afraid. The fat farmer, Mashin. Handy with his fists, he was. And the other, the spider, she always thought of him as, with his long thin arms and legs and black clothes. Geyan, that was his name. Despite Mashin’s slaps and pinches, she’d still rather be left alone with him than Geyan, the way the spider looked at her with his sweaty hands pressed together.
Ysora closed her eyes for a moment, remembering a girl hanging in a forest, her arms high above her head, the weight of her small body tearing at her shoulders as a god from nightmare looked up at her, its vines and roots and dead things writhing about its body like a cloak of squirming maggots.
Another shuddering breath and she opened her eyes again. How long had she been here now? But time has no meaning in the forest. Ysora gasped and blinked again. A rope-thick black tongue scraped across lips dry and flaked as bark. She shook her head against the memory of the girl. What had happened to the people of Fenneswood? To the Gaishan who had wept as he saw the blood red heart of the veirshan? He had known. Ysora remembered his eyes. The Gaishan had known what that red heart had meant.
But that was three thousand years ago. If it had happened at all. They were always like this, the dreams. Images and memories of them seeping into her mind on waking until she relented and carved their image and sated their hunger to be returned to the world. Could memories really hunger?
She had been wrong, the little girl’s horror and fear at that realization made a tear fall from Ysora’s eye and she looked to Mashin and Geyan, her hands already shaking with the need to be carving. “Please,” she whispered. Her lip was thick from a blow she couldn’t remember and her head sang with pain from the blow she had taken when she walked into the room. She still didn’t know who’d done that. Not Cioran. It couldn’t have been Cioran.
The room was empty of furniture except the broken chests and wardrobes and tables stacked against the grime-stained windows. Grey light leaked limply through the pile and the room was the grey of an old vest washed too many times. Tiege had been taken away before she had woken. Taken to be killed. If he wasn’t already dead. “Please,” she said again, blinking away the tears.
Geyan and Mashin leaned against opposite walls, both of them looking down at her. “Now you beg? After spying on a Guardian of the Keepers?” Mashin laughed, his fat neck quivering, his chin vanishing into the folds of flesh. He made Len look thin, this man, with his thick brown hair cut unevenly in clumps as though he had taken a pair of shears to his own head. He looked nervous, too; his fat, heavy eyes constantly looking to Geyan and then back to Ysora. “So what is it, girl, Dreaming of the Keepers, were you? Paying for your sins?” He smiled, but there was fear there, fear at the noise she had been making. The screams. Maybe he was worried about the judgement that was to be passed upon himself.
Ysora rested her head back against the cool wall behind her. It smelled of damp. All these rotten empty rooms at the top of the house and the faded glory beneath; it was as though the house was an old bitter lady still clinging to her past beauty on the outside, the rooms of her mind hidden from view and echoing with past betrayals and bitterness.
Betrayals. Ysora had betrayed Cioran. But he couldn’t have been the one to strike her. He couldn’t have been. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. Not in front of Geyan. She didn’t like the way his dark eyes brightened when she bled or when she wept. He took a pleasure in it that was frightening to see. Instead she smiled at them both, even as she thought of Tiege hanging from the beams, his flesh striped with red welts and pouring blood, she smiled. “That’s something you will be finding out soon enough, I hear. The judgement of the Keepers. How will they judge you, Mashin, when you go to meet them in Insitur? Or have they already started Visiting you in your dreams?”
He moved quickly for such a big man. Striding across the room, his gut shaking as he walked, he swung and slapped her hard across the cheek. Hard enough for white light to spark across her vision and her ears to explode with noise. She landed with her back still against the wall and her cheek against the bare floorboards. The blow had done nothing to cease the shaking in her hands, still they craved to do their work. She let her eyes fall closed just for a moment. How long had she been here? A day? Less than a day? Two days? But time has no meaning in the forest...She opened her eyes and struggled to sit back up, not an easy thing to do with her hands bound behind her back. Despite herself, she realized she was crying. Whether from the pain, or the shame, or for Tiege, or for her betrayal of Cioran, she didn’t know.
Farmer Mashin still stood over her, blue eyes small in a fat face bright with sweat. He was shaking as badly as she was, fighting the urge to strike her again. At least that meant they’d been told not to hurt her too much. She fought back to a sitting position, something warm trickled down her chin. Mashin had probably split her lip again. She thought of Tiege hanging from the beam, blood welling from countless cuts on his chest and back, and she thought of a little girl so sure the god would take pity on her because of her pretty smile and her golden hair. Things could be worse. Sh
e hated thinking that, it was what her mother had always said. How would her mother treat these men? She would sit there and say nothing and glower at them until they quaked with fear and did her every whim. But then her mother never dreamed of ancient gods warring against the Keepers.
“You will do well to remain quiet during your stay, Ysora. Farmer Mashin is not a man renowned for his patience,” Geyan said, his arms folded and his foot resting back against the wall. Ysora couldn’t help hating him more than Mashin.
She let the blood fall down her chin as she looked up at Mashin. The walk across the room had left him breathless. “What is going to happen to me?” she asked, not for the first time. She wanted to ask about Tiege, but she still wasn’t sure what they knew about her and the man who had once sat in his Faraway Tree dreaming of forgotten kingdoms.
“What do you think happens to those who work against the gods?” Mashin’s booted feet were small, looking even more so under that giant body. “Who was it you were working for? Why would anybody want to spy on the Guardian?”
Ysora wiped her chin on her shoulder, feeling the blood smear on her skin. How to come to this? How could one woman make so many wrong decisions? And all she had wanted to do was be good in the eyes of the Five. “I want to see Cioran,” she said.
“I hardly think you’re in a position to tell us what you want.” Geyan unfolded himself from the wall like a spider stirring on its web. “Guardian Cioran left this morning. He had a Visit last night by Keeper Liotuk, he says. They are coming to take you to the Clerk in Katrinamal.” He smiled, his eyes dark and bright as those of a bird perched in a veirwood tree.
Ysora’s stomach fell away from her as though she had jumped backward off a cliff. The Clerk in Katrinamal. “The Clerk wants the woman!” Her hands shook even more, her body vibrating in sympathy with them. Why hadn’t she stayed away from trouble? The men in the red coats. She knew it would be those who came for her. “The Clerk wants the woman!” Violent men with vengeance in their eyes and swords in their hands. The casual, graceful violence with which the young man with wet hair hanging to his shoulders had dismissed Gerard’s weak struggles.