“You’ve said your good-byes, here,” Unar surmised. “That’s why everyone’s crying. You’re ready to see the sun in a place where your own mother can never walk free.”
“So much bitterness, Unar.”
“I saved you,” Unar said, pleading. “I saved you. Can’t you force the Garden to let me in?”
“No.”
Unar put her face in her hands.
“Maybe it would be better if you went without me.”
“I don’t think so. Aoun is waiting for you.”
“For me?” Unar barked a laugh. “Aoun loves the Garden.”
“He loves the Garden,” Audblayin agreed. “But he hasn’t changed the key.”
I will not cry. Unar disguised her sorrow with rage. “So he hasn’t changed the key. So what? It will never turn for me!”
Audblayin’s smile deepened.
“No. I don’t suppose it ever will. But he gave it to you, and he hasn’t taken it back. It means something to him. A bargain. A promise. He’s very powerful now. I am the living goddess Audblayin, and I can’t force the Garden to let you in. But the Gatekeeper could, if he were ever to choose you over me.”
Unar took a deep, shuddering breath.
“That day will never come.”
“I agree,” Audblayin said simply. “There is too much honour in him. The Servants chose well, when they chose him.”
SIXTY-ONE
UNAR WENT into the hearth room.
It was discoloured with age and smoke, and the tapestry hangings were faded, but the great table was the same, even if it hosted extra chairs. Esse hung fish over the fire as though he hadn’t moved for seventeen years. The back of his head looked the same as it always had, but his ears looked bigger and there was a stiffness in his crouch that hadn’t been there before.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Bernreb said gruffly from his chair. His beard was salted with grey, and the snarling animals that covered his arms and chest were faded, the flesh beneath slightly sagging, but he still looked as though he could split a chimera skull with a single blow of a cleaver.
Unar stared at the red and green vest that he wore. It was made in the colours and the cut of a Gardener.
“My middle-father will be my Bodyguard for a time,” Audblayin said. “Until I can find another to trust. Canopians are strangers to me, though I have fuzzy memories of Canopian men and women that I have trusted before. Still, they’re like tales told at a fireside that I vaguely recall.”
Your Bodyguard? But the Bodyguard must be an initiate. An adept.
“Take care of yourself, madwoman,” Marram told Audblayin warmly. Of all of them, he seemed to have aged the least. Unar thought he still looked boyish, but she couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. Bernreb preoccupied her. “It cannot be easy having a goddess in your head.”
“I am the goddess, Youngest-Father. Do not fear. I’ll take care of this body. I’ll take care of little Ylly.”
“You can’t think they will let Bernreb into the Garden,” Unar said. She pointed to the depiction of a headless man etched into the burly hunter’s pale skin. “He’s a murderer, the same as me.”
“As for that,” Audblayin said, “I don’t intend to stay in the Garden all the time, as I have done before. When I’m in the Garden, I won’t need a Bodyguard. The strength of my Gatekeeper has seen to that. When I’m outside the Garden, that’s when I’ll have my middle-father with me.”
“Understorians can’t walk free in Audblayinland. Unbroken spines are not permitted.”
“Then I’ll have to see the king,” Audblayin said calmly, “about what is permitted and not permitted. Refresh yourself as needed, Godfinder. I mean to reach Canopy before high noon.”
“Not without me,” a child’s voice said with determination. Unar turned to face a boy who couldn’t have been older than nine or ten but who was almost her height, white as churning river water but with something darker in the sound of him. It was something she recognised with her magic sense, the same sense that had told her about Kirrik’s kin.
“Frog’s soul,” she whispered, stunned.
Bernreb’s giant hands massaged her shoulders, or perhaps he was holding her up by the shoulders like giant pegs holding up a drying shirt.
“This is my son,” he boomed proudly. “Leapael.”
“I am Leaper,” the boy said fiercely, and grimaced the way that Frog had grimaced. “Not Leapael. I will go one way, and that way is up. I want to see the sun, all day, every day. You cannot make me stay down here, Middle-Father. Issi promised to take me with her.”
The mischievous-looking girl’s grin slipped, and Sawas pinched her.
“That is not Issi’s decision to make. I should have whipped her for helping you to get spines so young.”
“It is my decision,” Leaper said loudly.
My sister’s soul.
“Why couldn’t you wait?” Unar accused Audblayin. “Why couldn’t you let me share in the joy of it, this time? First you separate us by distance and now, again, by time?”
“I had no part in Frog’s fall,” Audblayin said. “You saved me, Unar. You said so. Ylly’s life was your gift to me. Now I give this gift to you.”
“Too late! Frog didn’t love me. She was already half grown. This boy is the same. He doesn’t know me.”
“He thirsts for the heights. That much is the same. The rest is up to you.”
“Do not talk about me,” Leaper said crossly. “Do not talk about me! Tell Middle-Mother that I can go to Canopy, if you want to talk!”
Sawas sighed. She shared a long look with Bernreb.
“You can go,” she said. “So long as you obey your middle-father and your sister, you can go. Thank Audblayin I’ll be rid of your complaining.” And then she seemed shocked by what she had said, covering her mouth and looking at Ylly.
Unar went to the fishing room to wash herself and her clothes. There were fewer storage racks and ropes in there now, more benches and buckets for washing, and ointments and sweet-smelling tinctures. She opened the stopper of one gourd of wood fern and another of distilled quince, marvelling at how strongly they brought back her earliest premonition.
She restoppered them and put them away, wiping her hands uncomfortably on her cut-off skirts. The river was a thin trickle, parting the smokescreen that kept the opening closed to biting intruders.
Oos arrived with Unar’s old green Gardener’s breeches in hand.
“Do you want to wear these?” She touched Unar’s cheek in the dim, greenish glow of the fluorescent fungi, and her eyes slitted a little with envy. “They’ll fit you. You are still so young.”
Unar took the breeches from her and traced the faded cloth.
“No. I have no right to them now.”
“What will you do?”
Unar wanted to tell Oos that she had nothing left to do, once Audblayin was delivered, but to die, but she was overcome with giddiness at the realisation she didn’t want to die anymore. He thirsts for the heights.
What could she do, in place of allowing herself to fall like a leaf?
The rest is up to you. Unar licked her lips.
“Become a fuel finder, I suppose,” she said slowly. “My father may still be alive. Although I doubt it. Frog said he was bleeding for wood in Eshland. What have you done for sixteen years, Oos? Stayed here? Lived here? Without a thought for the Garden?”
Oos shrugged prettily and looked at her feet.
“I’ve become an accomplished musician, Unar. I’ve travelled the twelve towns of Understorey, playing with Marram, while Ylly and Hasbabsah tended the sick. Though I’m sure you noticed Hasbabsah is gone.” Yes. Unar remembered Leapael’s voice. Great-Grandmother is dying. “We couldn’t go to Gannak, because of the history that Marram has there, but you’ll see when you go outside, Unar. It’s only in the summer that the great trees stand apart. In the dry season, there are ropes and bridges connecting all of these people in a vital, beautiful web. They have so little, bu
t they all work together. And what is the Garden but the place where the goddess resides? All this time, we’ve had her here, with us. We’ll miss her.”
“The Garden is more than that,” Unar muttered, dunking her hair in a bucket and shivering as she worked out the soapleaf lather with her fingers.
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know.” But she did know. It was the place where Aoun waited.
I will not weep.
* * *
AUDBLAYIN OPENED the barrier for the diverse little party.
Leaper climbed the fastest, scuttling up the vertical surface like a skink. The snake-tooth spines seemed large on his lithe body, compared to Bernreb’s, but Unar supposed hers were proportionally the same. Third in line after Leaper and Bernreb went Issi, with a swiftness and stamina that made Unar think, with another pang, of Edax. Seventeen years since he had died, and who still mourned him? Aforis, perhaps. Perhaps even the goddess Ehkis. The old acquaintances of a deity might seem fireside tales, but the heroes of tales could be as close as kin if the tales were told with conviction.
Issi would want to meet her real mother, Unar supposed. She wasn’t sure she could remember the way to the House of Epatut.
Fourth was the goddess Audblayin herself, less sure of her climbing skills than the others. Or maybe her mind was on the task ahead, of claiming her rightful place while keeping her father and siblings from harm.
Fifth, and last, came Unar. To be higher than a goddess was disrespectful, after all, and she would have to be careful not to touch Audblayin anymore. It might have been an aftereffect of her long sleep, or simple reluctance to confront her failure again, but she climbed through the barrier almost wishing it would close on her.
Magic rushed into her lower belly as she returned to Canopy, swirling invisibly around her, welcoming her like an old friend. Audblayin gasped and went limp, hanging from the tree like a piece of fruit, until Unar climbed up to her and kissed her cheek.
One final touch.
The aroma of quince and wood fern was overpowering.
“Wake up, Holy One,” she said.
Audblayin’s lashes fluttered.
“What’s wrong with her?” Leaper called down the trunk of the great tree.
“Nothing,” Unar called back. She lowered her voice. “Can you keep climbing, Holy One?” She knew what was wrong. She had gone to merge with the tallowwood, only to find Audblayin already merged with it.
“I think so,” Audblayin said faintly, and struck out with her forearm at the tree. She followed up with the opposite knee. “It hurts her, when we climb.”
“She doesn’t mind,” Unar said, hovering, waiting to catch Audblayin if she fell. “Pain reminds her that she is alive.”
They reached the platform in front of the Great Gate before noon, as Audblayin had wished. The carved doors themselves were open. Aoun stood outside them with a shaven-headed Gardener, now a white-robed Servant, whom Unar vaguely remembered.
Aoun carried the lantern of his office in smooth fingers that had never been scarred by fighting. His handsome face carried a little more flesh around neck and jaw, he wore a short, tidy beard and his eyes seemed slightly more hooded, but the steadiness, the solidness of him, had not changed.
“Are you the Gatekeeper?” Bernreb asked him.
Unar made a choking sound.
Aoun looked at her and frowned, slightly. He opened his mouth as if to speak, said nothing, and pressed his lips closed again.
“Only devotion to wickedness,” the shaven-headed Servant said, her eyes wide, “could have kept you so young, Gardener Unar.”
But Aoun directed open astonishment towards Audblayin, now, and his hand holding the lantern trembled.
“It’s not wickedness, Iririn,” he breathed. “Audblayin has come home. It was she whom Unar brought to me in the middle of the battle. Wasn’t it, Unar? But I didn’t know her. I didn’t take her.”
“It’s well that you did not,” Audblayin said, as the two white-robed Servants sank to their knees. “New life does not need love to grow, but I have felt it, stronger this time than ever before, and I will grow it too, wherever I can. There will be no more slaves in the Garden. Adepts will serve by their own free will or not at all. Stand up, you two who have pledged yourselves to me. I go to see the king, and I require formal robes and a suitable retinue.”
“Of course, Holy One.” Iririn jumped up and went into the Garden. Unar thought she might vomit with envy at the way the wards parted for the woman.
“Aoun, my Gatekeeper,” Audblayin said, and another spasm went through Unar’s body at that. Aoun belonged to this woman, body and soul.
She would never use that body for what I would use it for, Unar thought, her treacherous body aching in a way she had never thought it would ache again.
“Holy One,” Aoun said, his composure recovered.
“This is my middle-father, Bernreb. I wish him to be my Bodyguard. He cannot enter the Garden. He cannot go to the night-yew tree. I wish a house to be built for him, here, outside the wards.”
Aoun inclined his head.
“I’ll send a message begging the wood god for his assistance with this task, Holy One.”
“There’s no need. The Godfinder is suited to the work. I will move away so that you may speak together. She will be allowed to use my power.” Audblayin gave Unar an unreadable glance. “For this undertaking alone, Unar. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Holy One,” Unar said. Oh, she understood. She was not to try to force her way into the Garden. She was not to try to extract any secrets from Aoun. Like Bernreb, she would loiter outside the wards, but that didn’t mean she was not bound to serve and obey.
She laughed, darkly, as the goddess turned away, leaving her with a man who still made her skin prickle and her hands clench to keep from touching him.
“What is your desire, Gatekeeper?” she asked distantly, pleasantly. “What design shall I sculpt for you with the limited magic I am to be permitted?”
“Unar.”
“Yes, Aoun?”
“How is it you haven’t changed?”
“But I have changed, Aoun. Just not where anybody can see.”
He nodded. Unar felt his magic gently touching her bones where the spines had been set. For a moment, he stood back, appraising her, and then he closed the space between them and folded his arms around her. Dependable as living wood. As pricked by the pain of Unar’s spines as the tallowwood had been, and as forgiving.
Unar couldn’t speak. Her face flushed and she dared not move. She must still be sleeping inside the tree. It couldn’t be real. Aoun did not hold people. He stood apart, as aloof as a god.
“Audblayin would grow love,” he whispered into her hair. “Grow a house up around us, Unar.”
She cooled her heat and urgency by melding with the tree, drawing on water seven hundred body lengths below, in the darkness of Floor. The bodies of Servant Eilif, Kirrik, Frog, and fifty unknown soldiers were part of the soil that sated the great tree’s hunger. River, sky, and sun all came together to form the wooden shelter that sprang up around them, shutting away the light.
Aoun let go of her. She staggered. He was laughing softly, relighting the lantern.
“Is this much like the place where you’ve lived?” he asked, the lantern light revealing a room not so very different from the hearth room of the three hunters’ home.
Issi came in through the open door and beamed at them.
“My father will be happy,” she said at once.
“But not you?” Unar asked, silently cursing her for intruding.
“I am not staying here.” She lifted her chin, a proud huntress, daunted by nothing. “I am going to Odelland. There is a warrior there, called Aurilon, who has never lost a duel. If she will teach me, I will learn from her.”
The fool whisked away and was gone. Bernreb and Leaper replaced her. The boy immediately began to howl.
“This is just like home. What
did I even climb up here for?”
“You won’t live here, Leaper,” Audblayin said, passing through the doorway behind him. She was robed in cloth that seemed made of dewdrops, her spines covered and her feet booted. Unar realised the robe was covered in cut diamonds. The goddess’s gaze went from Unar’s face to Aoun’s. When it returned to Leaper, her expression firmed. “You will live with the Godfinder in Airakland, far away, at the other end of Canopy.”
Unar felt as though she had been slapped.
“You don’t trust me to stay close to the Garden,” she said.
“I’m trying to make it easier for you, Unar,” Audblayin answered. “It will be easier for you if there is no temptation.”
Unar looked at Aoun. She looked back at Audblayin. Her heart felt heavier than stone, and for a moment some of the old self-loathing, the old anger, swept through her. It would be easier if she did let herself fall. For Aoun. For Audblayin. For everyone.
“The god of lightning,” Leaper said with awe, already seeing through the sister he hadn’t known was a goddess, but whose power over new life clearly failed to capture his imagination. “Yes. Airakland. Yes! Have you been there before, Godfinder?”
Godfinder. There it was again. A little piece of a less glorious destiny. A clue to why she had been born with such a powerful gift and sent to the Garden.
Unar forced herself to take Leaper’s hand. Moving away from Aoun was more difficult than making tallowwood walk. For an instant, she could hardly breathe. There he was, in the corner of her eye.
No, she wouldn’t look at him. She would look at Leaper. His face shone with eagerness. There was plenty of light still left in the day. Plenty of time to cross the border.
“No,” she said, feeling the lives, bright with power, behind her. Bernreb, wry. Audblayin, decisive. Aoun, obedient. “I’ve never been there.” Not to the Canopian part of it, anyway. “But I hear tales of towering floodgums, black from being struck by lightning, and houses that blaze at night like moonlight poured through the veins of a giant leaf.”
“And what about Airak? Is he as tall as one of the great trees? Does lightning shoot out of his eyes?”
“I never met Airak,” she said, “but I met one of his Servants. A brave man, and strong. Let’s find out together.”
Crossroads of Canopy Page 34