Braided Path 03 - The Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  Yugi did not appear to be listening. He took his hand away, suddenly unable to get comfortable on his mat. The curvature of his spine was annoying him. He got up into a cross-legged position with some difficulty, only to find that his knees were now causing him bother and he had merely shifted the ache from his upper back to his coccyx. He reached for the hookah, but Nomoru caught his arm and guided it back to his lap.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Not going to watch you end up like my mother.’

  ‘Come under with me,’ he said, his pupils huge and bright though his face was slack.

  She shook her head. ‘You know what happened last time.’

  ‘Weavers won’t get you here. You can trust me.’

  She looked away from him. ‘I don’t trust anyone.’

  He was hurt by that. For a moment, there was nothing to say.

  ‘Where did you go? In Axekami,’ he asked at length. Sparkling shapes were whirring about the floor like translucent wriggling eels. ‘I was worried.’

  ‘No you weren’t,’ she said. She leaned back on her hands. ‘Easier to get away on my own. Had to see an Inker.’ She drew up her sleeve, where a freshly completed tattoo of a hookah with a dagger in it stood out against the paler pictures surrounding it. ‘Paid the debt I owed Lon. Or Juto. Doesn’t matter which.’

  He was getting more lucid now. Amaxa root was shortlived in potency, and required a constant topping-up from the hookah to remain effective. The spirit that lived in the corner of his room was nothing more than a grey smear now, if ever he had seen it at all.

  Suddenly he reached out and slipped his arm round Nomoru’s waist, drawing her to him. He lay back as she moved with the pressure, uncrossing his legs so that she could slip onto his chest, her thin, hard body resting down the length of him. Her face was close enough to his so that he could feel her breath on his face, the sensation narcotically amplified to a rolling cloud of fire on his stubbled cheek. He studied the newly cut contours in her skin, his eyes flicking across them in fascination. Then he put his lips to hers. Her tongue was small and she tasted sour and kissed too hard, but it was familiar to him and he liked it. The amaxa root sent sparkling bursts from his mouth throughout his body.

  She pulled away from him. ‘Take that off,’ she said, touching the trailing end of the rag tied round his forehead. ‘Feels strange.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, with a tired sigh. They had been through this before.

  She was cooling again. ‘She’s dead. It’s done. Take it off.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  She looked down at him a moment, then shrugged. ‘Worth a try,’ she said, and fell to him once more.

  The roof gardens of the Imperial Keep had withered and died. Where once they had been verdant and lush, planted with trees and flowers gathered from all over the Near World, now they were a brown, skeletal wasteland. The flowerbeds were a mush of detritus and spindly crinkles that were the remnants of bushes. The trees sloughed bark and oozed sap, and the leaves were all gone. It was a doleful and tragic place, and few came here now. The murk closed it in, a smoky grey canopy, and a bitter wind chased sticks and twigs across the flagstones.

  Avun met the Weaver in a small paved area screened by a dense tangle of branches on all sides. At its south end, a double set of steps flanked by small statues of mythical beings led to paths set higher and lower in the gardens. There was a carved wooden bench, dull from lack of care, but Avun did not sit. He stood with a heavy cloak wrapped around him, for the lack of sunlight and the wind made it as cold as he could ever remember being in his life. The branches rattled a macabre and erratic rhythm as they tapped against each other.

  The Weaver came slowly up the steps from below. He was young, not so raddled as others of his breed, and he moved with a slow and controlled gait. His Mask was all angles of gold, silver and bronze, his cowl hanging loosely over it. The patchwork robe was stitched and patterned crazily; there seemed to be some kind of order there, but Avun could not grasp it. He gave up looking. Perhaps it would be best not to work it out.

  ‘Lord Protector,’ he said, the voice made tinny by the metal Mask.

  ‘Fahrekh,’ Avun replied.

  ‘I assume you have heard about Kakre’s injudicious choice of victim today?’

  Avun blinked languidly. ‘He was a useful general.’

  ‘He may still be alive,’ Fahrekh said. ‘Though I doubt he will be good for much any more.’

  ‘He had been with Kakre too long before I found out,’ said Avun. ‘There is no point antagonising the Weave-lord now. My general would not lead the Blackguard so well without half his skin.’

  ‘And without half his sanity, I suspect.’

  Avun did not care to think about it. ‘This has become intolerable,’ he muttered.

  ‘Indeed.’

  There was a silence between them. Each was waiting for the other to say what they both thought. In the end, it was Fahrekh.

  ‘Something must be done.’

  ‘And what do you have in mind?’ Avun said carefully, though he knew full well what it was. They had fenced around this before. Avun had no idea about Fahrekh’s feelings, but he was gods-damned if he was going to incriminate himself by being the first to speak it out aloud.

  ‘We will kill him, of course,’ Fahrekh said.

  Avun regarded the Weaver with hooded eyes. Could he trust this one? He still had a suspicion that Fahrekh was only faking complicity, that this was some test of loyalty by the Weavers. If he went along with it, would they treat him as a betrayer?

  ‘You would kill one of your own?’ he asked.

  ‘It is necessary. We must cut off the spoiled right hand to save the arm.’ Fahrekh’s voice was an even and measured monotone. ‘Kakre is a liability. For the good of the Weavers, he must be removed.’

  ‘Will he stand down?’

  Fahrekh chuckled. ‘No Weave-lord has ever stood down before. Besides, he is too irrational now. He will not see things as we do. The Weavers need a new and clear-sighted leader, or our ambitions will go unfulfilled.’

  Avun thought about this. He had learned a lot about the Weavers in his time as Lord Protector, through observation and conversation and by listening to Kakre’s periodic fugues. Discovering the power structure of his allies was an important goal for him: their strength lay in secrecy, and Avun was determined to uncover them.

  How was it that the Weavers were so united in purpose? And how could that be squared with the way they would kill each other in times past at the behest of their masters? At first he had believed that there was a coterie of Weavers in Adderach dispensing orders, but that was not good enough. In two hundred and fifty years he would have expected at least a few coups, power struggles, something like that. Yet there was no evidence of such. There were certainly disagreements about the way things should be done from time to time, but never about the ends, only the means.

  Avun had not been able to understand it to his satisfaction, but he had established some things. The Weavers did not appear to know themselves where their direction came from: it was simply an instinctive drive towards the same goal. Whatever provided this goal was vague and indistinct, not an absolute dictator or an entity that was in complete control of the Weavers; it was simply a knowledge that all of them accepted and did not question.

  There had never been a usurper in the Weavers before; but then, they had never needed one until now. Weave-lords had become liabilities to their patrons in the past, but they had been mere inconveniences. Kakre was the first Weave-lord who had command: command of the Aberrant armies, the feya-kori, and through Avun, the Blackguard. And a commander who was insane worked against the best interests of the Weavers.

  Avun had to decide: was Fahrekh genuine, or was this all a trick?

  ‘How would you do it?’ he asked.

  ‘I will catch him after he has Weaved. During his mania, when he is vulnerable.’ Avun could feel the Weaver studying him from behind his Mask. ‘I will need you to help me,’ he s
aid.

  This was what Avun had feared. To commit himself would mean his death, if Fahrekh was false.

  ‘What would you have me do?’

  ‘We must contrive a reason for him to Weave. Something very difficult. I will supply you with the task; you must persuade him to take it up. Once exhausted, I will strike.’

  ‘And after he is dead? I suppose you will be the new Weave-lord?’

  ‘For the good of the Weavers,’ Fahrekh said. ‘I shall expect your immediate support.’

  The branches rattled as the two of them faced each other beneath the iron-grey sky. Avun knew there was no way to be sure of the creature before him. Who could tell what kind of madness lurked beneath that surface? But he also knew that Kakre was a liability, and becoming more so by the day, and sooner or later he might take it into his head to get rid of his Lord Protector. There was risk in both action and inaction, and in the end, he had to trust his intuition. And he was an expert betrayer.

  ‘I will do as you ask,’ he said.

  Fahrekh nodded slowly, once. He turned and departed without a word. Avun watched him go, and then clutched his cloak tighter around him. It really was cold out here; he had begun to shiver.

  FIFTEEN

  Nuki’s eye rose on a clear, chilly day, the grass trembling with dew; but Kaiku, Lucia, and their companions were up long before, and as they ate a cold breakfast, their eyes were on the trees. The endless wall of trees.

  They had camped within sight of the southern edge of the Forest of Xu, on the north bank of the River Ko. Few of them had slept much that night. Those that did woke unrested, complaining of ill dreams. There were twenty-five of them in all: Kaiku and Phaeca, Lucia, Asara, the three Tkiurathi, and eighteen other men and women of the Libera Dramach. They were here to face the Forest, and to find that which lurked at its heart: the Xhiang Xhi, most ancient and powerful of all the land’s spirits.

  Kaiku returned to the camp, having washed in the river. Her teeth should have been chattering, but the autonomic reaction of her kana had raised her body temperature enough to cope. She was taking such things for granted now, her sense of wonder having faded over time. Perhaps she could not yet bring herself to believe Cailin’s screed about how the Sisters and certain other Aberrants were superior to those who had not been changed by the Weavers’ blight; but she could not resist a private smirk of amusement at the sight of the other soldiers hopping and flapping to warm themselves after dunking their stripped upper bodies in the freezing water.

  She stood on the crest of the river bank and debated for a moment whether to dress herself as a Sister or to remain in her tough, sexless travelling attire. She decided on the latter, in the end. It felt somehow false to put on the face of the Red Order to go into the forest. The forest would not be fooled.

  She stared grimly at the trees, the border between humanity’s realm and that of the spirits. They stretched from horizon to horizon east to west, and rose upon hills in the northern distance. The Forest of Xu was the single largest feature of Saramyr west of the mountains, almost three hundred miles north to south and two-thirds that in width, bigger even than the colossal Lake Azlea which neighboured it. The only information about what lay within were rumours and legends, and none of them pleasant. The Saramyr folk had learned long ago that their land was big enough to live in without disturbing the spirits, and the Forest of Xu was the densest concentration of spirits in the land. Half-hearted attempts at exploration had been made, in advance of a foolhardy plan to build a road through the trees to facilitate trade between Barask and Saraku. Few who went in there had ever come out. Those that did escape left their sanity behind.

  It would be suicide, then, to set foot in such a place. But this time, they had something new. This time, they had Lucia. And on her slender shoulders rested all their lives.

  As if sensing her thoughts, Lucia appeared at her side. Kaiku glanced over at her, then back at the forest.

  ‘It hates us,’ Lucia whispered.

  ‘I know,’ Kaiku murmured. ‘It has a right to.’

  A line creased Lucia’s brow. ‘We are not the enemies, Kaiku. The Weavers are.’

  ‘The Weavers were like us once,’ Kaiku said.

  ‘But it is their god that makes them what they are,’ Lucia said. She sounded frail, ready to shatter, and part of Kaiku did not even want to respond to this. But she had to now.

  ‘Their god never made anyone join the Weavers. Not after those first ones. The rest came of their own free will. He never made them put on the Masks. That was ambition, and greed, and the need to control and dominate. There is no depravity they commit that was not already there inside them. It is only that their consciences have withered.’ She brushed her hair back from her face. ‘They are just men. Men who wanted power, the way all men do.’

  ‘Not all men,’ said Lucia.

  Kaiku looked over at where Tsata was sitting cross-legged, talking with his two companions. She nodded slightly. ‘Not all men.’

  ‘Don’t despair,’ Lucia said, laying a hand on her arm. ‘Please. You have always been stronger than me. I can’t do this if you don’t believe.’

  ‘Then do not do it,’ Kaiku replied, turning to her. ‘Go back, and I will go back with you.’

  Lucia’s smile was sad. ‘You have always thought of me over everybody else,’ she said. ‘Even if it cost the world, even if it cost the Golden Realm itself, you would have me prize my own safety before others.’ She embraced Kaiku. ‘You, and you only.’

  Kaiku felt a slow tightening in her heart; she knew by Lucia’s tone that there was no dissuading her.

  Lucia released her and looked into her eyes. ‘Nobody is safe any more, Kaiku.’

  They made ready to leave as the dawn light grew. Little was said. There was a palpable air of foreboding among them. A pair of manthxwa had been brought as pack animals, but like the ravens that had accompanied Lucia on her journey from Araka Jo they refused to go nearer to the forest than they already were. In the end the travellers were forced to distribute their supplies as best they could and turn the creatures loose. Only the Tkiurathi did not seem intimidated.

  Kaiku caught Asara looking at her strangely. Asara did not break the gaze; in the end, Kaiku did. Gods, it was bad enough going in there at all, but with Asara’s black hints at some debt to be discharged, she was not sure whether that woman was to be trusted. Why had she come? She was never one to recklessly endanger herself. What price would she demand of Kaiku in return for saving her life?

  There was only one reason why the Aberrant spy was here, risking her life with the rest of them. She had unfinished business.

  When they were ready, they gathered at the edge of the trees. Beyond, the forest was a tangle of boughs and bushes, the ground knotted with hillocks and roots. Birds chittered, insects droned, distant animal cries could be heard. There was nothing out of the ordinary that they could see; but some prickling sense on the fringe of perception warned them against stepping past the ranked trunks of the border, something deep and primal.

  They were waiting for Lucia. She wore no armour like the soldiers, only some time-stained peasant clothes that did not suit her frame and made her seem small. She carried a pack as the rest of them did, at her own insistence, though they had loaded it lightly. She stood with her head bowed, her short blonde hair hanging forward, the burned skin of her neck exposed. They wanted her to turn and rouse them, to give them some of that fire that had blazed during the assembly at Araka Jo; but she had none to give them. Instead, she hitched up her pack to make it sit more comfortably on her shoulders, looked up, and walked into the forest. Without a word, the others followed.

  At Lucia’s first step beyond the barrier of the trees, the forest fell silent. It spread outward in a wave, as if the tread of her foot had triggered some great ripple like a pebble dropped in a pond. As the ripple passed, the birds stopped singing, the insects quieted, the cries of the animals died in their throats.

  The intruders found themselve
s subject to a hush so profound that it was unnerving. The creak of leather armour and the rustle of their clothes were the only sounds they could hear, beyond the faint stir of the wind across the plains and the distant hiss of the river. They felt subtly fractured from reality, bereft of the spectrum of background sounds which had surrounded them to some degree all their lives. The silence ached.

  They went on. If they had harboured any doubt that the forest was aware of them, it had been discarded now.

  The trees thickened as they went further inward. The bulk of the companions travelled in single file, threading their way around the rise of tuffets and rocks, hopping over dry ditches. The Tkiurathi took alternative routes, spreading out, reading the land. Though Lucia was their navigator they would not let her take the lead. She walked in front of Kaiku, occasionally shouldering her pack anew as it began to chafe. She was not strong: a sheltered childhood and adolescence had given her no experience of physical hardship. But though she struggled, she did not complain.

  Nobody spoke for what must have been an hour at least. The sense of oppression in the air was heavy, and getting heavier. Kaiku could feel the presence of the spirits here; they pervaded the place like the scent of disuse in a vacant house. They were waiting, breathless with malice and appalled that these humans would dare to enter their realm.

  Kaiku hoped that Lucia knew what she was doing. She was certain that Lucia could communicate with these spirits easily enough, but whether they would listen to her was another matter. And when – if – they got to the Xhiang Xhi which hid at the heart of the vast forest, would Lucia’s abilities be up to the task?

  She recalled trying to reason with her back at Araka Jo. Why here? she had asked. Why this? Of all the spirits in the land which inhabited the deep and high and empty places, why choose the Xhiang Xhi?

  ‘Because the other spirits hold that one in awe,’ she had replied, half-listening. ‘Because no other could rouse them. This one dwarfs all the spirits in Saramyr. Even the Children of the Moons fear the Xhiang Xhi.’