Tymon's Flight

by Mary Victoria

  For Faith

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Maps

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE SEEDS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  PART TWO BRANCHES

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  PART THREE LEAVES

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  EPILOGUE

  GLOSSARY

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books By Mary Victoria

  Copyright

  Maps

  PROLOGUE

  I saw the shape of God

  Like to a mighty Tree:

  Of fire were Her branches made,

  Fearful Her symmetry…

  —Saint Loa of the Leaves

  The body of the pilgrim, bound to a hastily constructed bier and wrapped in cheap bark-fibre, slid almost too easily over the dirigible’s deck-rail and plunged without a sound into the depths. Father Adelard Ferny leaned over the rail and peered after it. The tiny human bundle dipped and spiralled as it fell between the gigantic leaves of the World Tree, glancing once, briefly, against an outcrop in the sheer wall of the trunk before spinning to oblivion. The priest winced then shrugged as he drew back from the rail. At least there had been no cause for scandal. At least they had been rid of the corpse before they arrived in Argos city air-harbour, and were subjected to unwelcome questions and tedious procedures from the quarantine guards. In the end the sick man had been as self-effacing in death as he had been in life: invisible, emaciated by the fever that took him, no more than a husk of parched skin and dried bone. It was a mercy, thought Father Ferny. A heavier man would have been knocked off his bier during the fall and gone to his rest in ignominious bits.

  The priest turned his attention to the group of foreign pilgrims huddled on the deck of the ship. He was glad to see that they, too, found no cause for criticism in the funeral service. They were not mumbling to each other in their wretched language for once, murmuring the Tree knew what behind his back.

  ‘Nothing is free,’ he declared to his bedraggled flock. ‘The Tree does not give Her blessings for free. One must die so that others may live, so that the canopy may continue to flourish, the rains to fall and the sap to flow.’

  His sermon was interrupted as the dirigible’s ether sacks released a tremendous hiss of gas and the ship resumed its descent towards Argos city. Father Ferny coughed in annoyance and waited for the drawn-out sound to cease. His audience took advantage of the lull to shuffle to the railing themselves, blinking in the updraft.

  A magnificent vista opened before them. The dirigible greatship with its teeming mass of sails and ether sacks was a tiny dot against the western marches of the Tree trunk, a mote on the vertical face of the world. To starboard of the vessel, in front of the pilgrims, stretched a vast and furrowed mountain of bark, so wide that its curvature was almost invisible and so high that both its summit and its base were lost to view. The immensity of the wall was broken by a profusion of spoke-like limbs, the largest many miles in length. Several hundred feet above the dirigible the trunk culminated in the gently rising plateau of branches and twigs that made up the Central Canopy’s crown. Its summit lay more than seven leagues to the north and east of Argos city, and five miles higher, in the frozen Upper Fringes. The greatship had spent the better part of its recent journey in warmer latitudes, skimming in a wide arc about the southern marches of the Tree, just above the leaf-tips. But now as it made its approach to Argos city it sank beneath the green billows—slipped between mottled twig shafts and towers of alternating leaves, taking several minutes to pass each burnished blade. The dramatic Treescapes of Argos were said to be among the loveliest in the world.

  The foreign pilgrims did not appear to appreciate the beauty of the Central Canopy for its own sake, however. They gaped over the railing after their departed colleague as if they were searching the trailing mists for some sign—as if they were expecting him to rise up again, like a saint in rapture. They wore matching tunics of grey. Their faces were ugly and grey, too, thought the priest: dirt-pale and lined with fatigue and privation. They were silent but they smelled. He could not help but shudder as he shrank back from the unwashed bodies crowded next to him at the rail. At last the hiss of ether faded and he was able to speak again.

  ‘Death is a consequence of life. Violence is the price of peace,’ he announced irritably, raising his voice to draw his listeners away from the gulf. ‘It has always been so. Because of our terrible sins, we must buy God’s grace at a price.’

  For two years Father Ferny had faithfully served the Priests’ Council, recruiting these young Nurians from the drought-infested colonies for the annual tribute to Argos. He had travelled the Four Canopies, visiting regions undreamt-of by his colleagues: places where the barbarous natives had never practised proper Tree-worship, never heard of God’s green grace. He had put up with impious pilgrims, insufferable colonists, an impossible climate, all in the hopes of making a name for himself at the seminary. And still he could not get used to that smell, that dirty, thirsty, Godless smell of the Eastern Canopy. It was the smell of slavery, the smell of poverty. The foreigners carried it with them even here in Argos, in the lush green hub of the world. The whiff of drought followed them about like a curse. Look at them, gulping in the wind like fools, he thought. The Dean will be lucky to get a specimen for the Rites out of this lot.

  The Nurian tithe-pilgrims were ostensibly volunteers, though young Adelard had experienced many and varied interpretations of that word during his travels. The eastern colonies, twenty leagues and four weeks’ voyage by dirigible from Argos city, might have been another universe entirely. The Eastern Canopy grew on its own vast outcrop of the Tree, separated from the rest of the world by a gap as much spiritual as physical. The closest branches broke the clouds a day’s journey from the Central Canopy. They were bare and grey, shorn of their green glory, for the East had been leafless for generations. No life-giving sap flowed through its branches; no Tree-water rose in its dry wells. The colonies were truly a Tree-forsaken place. There, a man might fall into bad company and wake up after a night of revelry to find himself bound in service on a tithe-ship. He might find that his own family had volunteered him for pilgrimage after a particularly disappointing vine-harvest. Father Ferny did not ask too many questions of the youths he herded aboard his ship at the height of the dry season. In any event, there always seemed to be enough of the poverty-stricken Nurians willing to sell their freedom—or that of their children—for a few barrels of water. The tribute never went unpaid, and the tithe-ships never returned to Argos empty of cargo.

  And when the foreigners arrived at the site of their pilgrimage the miracles continued. Every year, despite Father Ferny’s private misgivings, one among the group of Nurians invariably offered himself up during the spring Sacrifice. Every year this unlikely volunteer would throw himself into a Tree-rift, eagerly and of his own accord. It was, as the missionary never tired of repeating to his flock, this act of willing martyrdom that appeased the wrath of the Tree and banished the Storm-demons back beneath the clouds at Her feet. For Ferny, like most of his colleagues, believed the world was hemmed in by a godless Void. The Storm clouds that enveloped the base of the Tree were full of legendary horrors. Though it was not possible to see the roiling vapours from the vantage point
of the dirigible, no one on the ship could forget what lay hidden below, under the softly stirring leaves of the Central Canopy. No one could forget where the dead man’s journey would end.

  ‘The weight of sin pulls us all downwards, my children! This is the law that drags all bodies into the Storm!’ intoned the priest, rolling his ‘r’s’ magnificently. The majority of the pilgrims glanced nervously away from the chasm in reaction to his words. He smiled; they were so predictable. ‘We are all sinners, otherwise we would not fall. We are dependent on God’s green grace. No other can save us from the Storm. No other can deliver us from darkness and chaos and carry us up to the light.’

  He squinted up at the sun glancing through the towering columns of leaves. Too high, already—the morning hours were slipping away. The sermon had gone on too long. The funeral ought to be over before they docked in Argos city. If the officials at the air-harbour knew there had been a fever death aboard, the crew would be quarantined for three whole days. And that would cut Ferny’s rest and recreation period down. Besides, the damned Nurry had simply been a weakling. He had been sick during the whole journey, probably sick before he signed on, and had perversely chosen this very morning to give up his pale little ghost. A dud, damn him, root and stock.

  ‘We must mortify the flesh, mortify the heavy, sinful body and become sublime,’ the priest gabbled on, in an effort to finish his homily before they arrived. ‘We must turn our thoughts to Sacrifice, to giving up the body and the things of the body. Only thus do we save our fellow men and earn the right to soar to the highest heavens. The Tree might withdraw Her blessings at any time. Did wrong belief not offend Her in the East and cause the leaf-forests to wither away? Did She not allow the Storm to rise up and whip away the Old Empire in order to punish the heretics and disbelievers? Beware, beware the wrath of God, for Hers is the power to decide—’

  This time he was interrupted by a halfarticulated word, an inadvertent sound from one of the pilgrims at the rail. A moment later a cry went up from the ship’s lookout that caused a chill to pass through Father Ferny, a confused terror.

  ‘Ha-ven!’

  The foreigners jostled each other, leaning eagerly over the side of the ship. Below them, perhaps half a mile from the ship, the towers and turrets of Argos city could just be seen through the thinning mist. The celebrated capital was built in the crux of a branch extending at an angle from the trunk-wall. Four of the town’s five tiers clung to the slope of the limb, spreading down in ever widening circles to a valley-like trench where the branch joined the trunk. As if in answer to the sun, bells pealed out from the peaked roofs of the seminary in the topmost tier, sending another shiver through Adelard Ferny. He assumed it was nostalgia. He was home.

  The sailors bellowed and whistled to each other in the dirigible’s rigging, and the prow swung round in a stately arc as the ship made its final approach to the air-harbour. The foreigners stood agog at the rail, straining to see the object of their journey, the sacred centre of their pilgrimage. At last, half hidden behind an obscuring outcrop in the trunk, a cleft became visible. The Tree-face above the city was split by a narrow rift, a black hole plunging to unseen, inner depths. It was the holiest of holies, the Divine Mouth! Thirty-nine pairs of eyes searched out a winding thread along the bark wall, the ledge that led from the docks to the lip of the hole. The Argosian priests might have been concerned with their Rites and with preserving the world as they knew it, but the Nurians had a marked preference for apocalypse.

  ‘The King will come,’ the foreigners whispered to each other in their own language, as Father Ferny gave up his battle for their souls and hurried back to the Captain’s cabin, his ears plugged against that confounded murmuring. ‘He will die and rise again out of the Mouth. One day, the King will come. We will be free.’

  One had to die so that others might live. It had always been so.

  PART ONE

  SEEDS

  In the seed, the tree. In the boy, the man.

  —Argosian saying

  1

  On a clear spring morning the sound of bells from Argos seminary carried for miles. The shrill voice of the carillon called the priests to temple ritual, marked the saints’ days and holy days and echoed out at regular intervals to proclaim the hours. The first peals issued from the bell-tower at dawn. They tumbled through the Priests’ Quarter and into the terraced town like rain, and rang out almost directly above the novices’ dormitories, serving to rouse the sleepy students for prayers.

  The boy woke that day, as every day, to the familiar sound. The bells were part of the natural order of things: it never occurred to him to imagine a morning without them. He rolled out of his narrow hammock and into his breeches in one practised, fluid motion, coming to a halt by a table on which stood a washbasin and a polished hardwood mirror. The black disc reflected his wiry shadow. He stuck out his chin and peered into the dim image in a fruitless search for stubble. The dormitory was just beginning to come to life and several more figures sat up in the hammocks, groaning and cursing at the bells. The boy made a face in the mirror.

  ‘Give it up, Tymon,’ remarked a voice. A heavy-set youth emerged from one of the hammocks, yawning. ‘You won’t grow leaves till the root gets planted!’

  His comment provoked a smattering of laughter among his fellows, but the lad named Tymon did not allow himself to be bested. He left off searching his chin and grabbed a white tunic, the standard dress for novices, out of a clean pile on the floor.

  ‘Bolas thinks he’s quite the man,’ he observed to the room in general, pulling the tunic over his head. ‘But the only planting he does is in the temple gardens.’

  His answer drew a few appreciative whistles. The hammocks were disgorging their blinking, dishevelled occupants and the students loitered by the two speakers, relishing the debate. Tymon filled the washbasin by the mirror with water from a hardwood jug.

  Bolas grinned tolerantly, tucking a prefect’s green sash over his ordinary white tunic. ‘At least my Rites-duties are over and done with, which is more than can be said for you, bound-boy,’ he said. ‘Where are you off to today in such a hurry? Lentils need sorting in the kitchen? Anyone would think you like doing slaves’ and women’s work.’

  Another round of snickers. Tymon’s back stiffened. The taunts were familiar but never failed to find their mark. To be ‘bound’ or indentured to the priests was one thing. To be a slave, a foreign tithe-pilgrim, was quite another.

  ‘I’m no one’s property,’ he snapped as he splashed water over his hot neck. ‘Besides, what’s wrong with the kitchen? Don’t you enjoy the company of women?’

  He smiled through gritted teeth, dipped his fingers into the basin, and flicked a handful of water at the other boy.

  ‘I have seven sisters,’ muttered Bolas, wiping the droplets from his cheek, with a grimace. ‘I know more about women than you’d ever dream of. Anyway, they’re Impure. Do you want to go to the Guild Fair, or not? Or have you already been barred, you fool?’

  A ripple of agreement ran through the room at his mention of the Fair. The students in the dormitory were all in their Green Year, the time of a young man’s maturity in Argos, and due to celebrate their initiation rites at the spring Sacrifice. The ‘Green Rites’ conferred the advantages and responsibilities of full citizenship, a status available to only a few in the city. One reward of initiation was admittance to the Guild Fair that took place after the Festival. The novices were indifferent to the duties, the laws of Purity and Impurity, and solemn sacraments which accompanied the Rites. But all were agog to attend the Fair. Tymon was no exception.

  ‘Of course I’m going,’ he exclaimed, stung. ‘I don’t kiss the priests’ robes, but it doesn’t mean I’m barred.’

  ‘Well then, be careful,’ shrugged his comrade. ‘You’ll have time enough to play at being a man after Rites.’

  ‘Boys play, men do,’ declared Tymon. ‘And I don’t mind what I’m doing so long as Nell’s around. You’ll have to excuse
me—I have an appointment this morning. Cover for me at prayers!’

  Without waiting for a reply, he dodged past the slow-moving students and out of the dormitory doors.

  The novices’ sleeping quarters were accessible only by ladder. Tymon swung through a hatch in the floor of the exterior balcony, skipping down the narrow rungs with the ease of long practice, his body as taut and tight as a spring. He was now on the cusp of the growth spurt that turns a youth into a man, full of pent-up possibilities. He had few close companions, for his indenture set him apart from the other novices. But he could be trusted to amuse his fellows with his schemes and dreams and had acquired a reputation for high jinks at the seminary. He had other plans that morning besides the supposed aim of lovemaking. The mention of Nell, a kitchen maid, was only a diversion. He might have confided his true motives to his friend Wick, who slept in another dorm, but did not feel like explaining himself further to Bolas. He felt no urge to win the prefect’s pleasure, to confide more fully in the son of a common carpenter. The wider divisions of Argosian society persisted among the students under a thin veneer of equality. A bound-boy could not afford to be too generous.

  ‘Don’t forget your apron,’ Bolas yelled after him in annoyance. ‘And garden duty. Hoi! Tymon! Garden duty! Don’t forget!’

  But by the time the prefect strode out onto the balcony his quarry had disappeared, lost in the tangle of ramps and ladders under the building. Bells continued to peal out over the seminary. Morning light flooded the dormitory building and drenched the slope of the branch behind it in startling yellow. Below, the rooftops of Argos city glistened in the rising sun.

  Halfway down one of the ladders, Tymon paused. The dormitories were at the summit of the seminary, or ‘Priests’ Quarter’, and commanded a sweeping view of the town. Gleaming bark roofs and thatched turrets tumbled higgledy-piggledy down the steep incline of the branch that supported the city, only to come up short against the wall of the trunk. High in that sheer face, the sacred Mouth lurked hidden behind its outcrop, a brooding hollow presence over the town. He did not lift his eyes to the enigmatic cavity. His gaze flitted over the streets, to alight eagerly on the wide-open curve of the air-harbour. The quays inscribed an arc on the southern side of the city, spanning the trench between the supporting branch and the trunk. The West Chasm yawned beyond.