Braided Path 03 - The Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  ‘Fall back!’ Doja cried. ‘Protect Lucia!’

  ‘Which way?’ Asara called, addressing Lucia, who was gazing into the middle distance. ‘Lucia, which way do we go?’

  ‘They’re so angry,’ she whispered.

  Kaiku wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and moved Asara aside. ‘Which way, Lucia?’ she asked, gently. ‘We have to leave.’

  At the sound of her voice, Lucia’s focus shifted to her. She trembled for a moment, then flung her arm out and pointed into the trees. ‘That way.’

  ‘Fall back!’ Doja cried again to the soldiers who were retreating towards them, loosing shots into the trees. And with that, Lucia and her retinue ran, away from the village, and the forest closed around them.

  The emyrynn broke cover with a harmonic cascade of piercing howls. They burst out into the open, sprinting on all fours, moving like liquid. Their curious musculature gave them a disconcerting gait, rippling them left and right in a sinuous charge towards the men who were covering Lucia’s retreat. Those who still had powder in their chambers fired off what shots they had, but all of them missed. Some turned and took flight at the sight of the creatures; some stayed and fought. The outcome was the same. The emyrynn tore into them with surpassing savagery, gouging at faces with their small, sharp antlers, ripping at throats with their blade-like teeth. They bounded onto their prey, bore them to the ground like hunting cats, then shredded them while they were helpless. Their white fur became stained dark red, their muzzles wet with blood. They revelled in the slaughter.

  Lucia and Kaiku hurried into the forest, the centre of a stumbling cluster of soldiers who fought to protect them from every side. There were perhaps ten soldiers left now including Doja; also with them went the three Tkiurathi and Asara. Kaiku’s eyes were blurring with tears that fell from her lashes with the jolting of her feet on the ground, but she did not notice. She was seeing past them. The forest could not obscure her vision; it had turned to a transparent mass of golden sinews, and within it she saw the emyrynn stalking. Hundreds of them, converging on the village.

  ‘Kaiku, can you see them?’ The voice was Asara’s.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are they coming after us?’

  Kaiku looked. She had dared to hope that vacating the village might curb their wrath, that the emyrynn merely wanted their unwelcome visitors gone. But now she saw, as the last of the soldiers who had stayed behind were killed, that some of the emyrynn had set off in pursuit, following the trail Lucia and the others had left.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  There were scattered emyrynn ahead of them and to either side as well. Some were moving away, either ignorant of their presence or uninterested. Others lay in wait in hollows or in the branches of trees, plainly hoping for their victims to come near. Though some of the creatures seemed content to leave them be now that they were driven off, others had decided to hunt them. There was no way they would be able to escape without further bloodshed.

  ‘Can you speak to them, Lucia?’ Kaiku asked. ‘Can you explain?’

  Lucia did not hear her. She was sobbing and panting, propelled along by Doja’s strong arm, tripping on branches and roots. She seemed seized by some fear that she could not identify, gazing around wildly like a madwoman, fleeing without hope of escape.

  Kaiku breathed a curse. They had no choice but to go where Lucia led them, and abandoning the village had robbed them of any place to make a stand, however futile. The low, slanting light of Nuki’s eye forced its way dimly through the canopy, but the trees were too dense here to see far, and only Kaiku could spot the emyrynn as they darted nimbly through the trees. The forest still resounded with the fading echoes of their comrades’ screams, and the only other sound was the scraping of twigs, the thump of boots and the rush of exhaled breath as they raced away from the emyrynn village. That, and the endless, monotonous tapping in the distance that had plagued them for days.

  Gods, what were they hoping for, anyway? That the emyrynn would turn around and give up? That was a slim chance indeed. They would run, they would fight, and after that they would die. The odds were impossible. But there was nothing else left to do.

  ‘There are two of them, ahead and to our left,’ Kaiku called, as she sensed their approach. The soldiers shifted their blades, ready to receive the creatures; but Kaiku got to them first. Though there was something of the spirit world in them, they were not as hard as demons or Weavers to over-match; but they were awkward and unfamiliar, and it took time to engage them, longer than she would have liked. She would be unable to deal with more than a few at a time.

  She used her kana to reach inside their minds and stun them into unconsciousness. She was reluctant to kill them if she could help it.

  ‘They have been dealt with,’ she said.

  ‘Any more?’ Asara asked, as they scrambled up an incline thick with bluish bracken, shepherding Lucia awkwardly onward.

  ‘Three from behind,’ Kaiku said. Her heart sank as she saw them arrowing through the forest. ‘They will catch us in a few moments. Three from the right. Two ahead.’ She grimaced. ‘I cannot protect you from all of them.’

  ‘Then you take the ones that are following,’ Doja said tersely. ‘We’ll handle the rest.’

  The soldiers had slung their rifles back over their shoulders and drawn swords by now, for ranged weapons were useless in the confines of thick undergrowth. Despite Kaiku’s warning, they were still not prepared for the emyrynn when they attacked. They expected to be able to hear the stirring of leaves, the rustle of bracken as their enemies neared; but the emyrynn were like ghosts, and made no sound at all. They sprang as if from nowhere, took down two of the soldiers, ripped out their throats in a single bite and were gone before anyone could lay a blade to them.

  ‘Keep going!’ Doja cried, as some of the soldiers faltered. The wounded men were still flailing, gurgling out their last. ‘We cannot stand here!’

  In the forest behind them, three bright blooms of fire ignited. Kaiku turned back to Doja, her eyes hard. Now that they had shown their intentions beyond all doubt, she would not be merciful to these creatures any longer.

  The five remaining emyrynn attacked all at once. The soldiers had a few seconds to prepare at Kaiku’s cry, and then the enemy were among them in a blur of white and a flurry of teeth. Asara, faster than most, ducked under the leap of one of them and divided it neatly in half along its midriff; Kaiku incinerated another. Between them, the soldiers took down a third, but as the remaining two disappeared they left behind one man dead and another with a stump for an arm, spewing blood. There was a scramble to get a tourniquet on the wound, during which the group’s onward motion collapsed: they would not leave one of their wounded behind when there was still a chance of saving them.

  ‘More! All around us!’ Kaiku barely had time to shout before the emyrynn were among them. They had seemed to appear out of nowhere, even to her Weave-sight, a dozen of the creatures flitting suddenly into existence. She saw Tsata slashing with his gutting-hooks, darting between the emyrynn’s antlers, protecting Heth and his burden Peithre. She saw Asara dodging and slashing, her movements fluid, honed by ninety years of practice and a perfect metabolism. And she saw the soldiers fighting, and Doja being savaged, and Lucia fallen to the ground where another of the creatures was about to pounce on her . . .

  Kaiku was about to obliterate the threat to Lucia when she was knocked aside, crashing into a tree trunk with the weight of an emyrynn, its teeth fastened in her shoulder at the collar. Too many of them; she hadn’t seen it coming. She screamed with the pain. Blood pumped between her attacker’s teeth as it bit deeper into her flesh. Then her kana reacted, seizing the creature and flinging it away from her with enough force to break its back against a thick bough. She clutched her torn shoulder, blood pulsing through her fingers. Her body was already repairing itself, but it was sapping vital resources she needed to protect others, and she was already looking to Lucia, a terrible fear gripping her heart. She wo
uld be too late, too late to save her from the emyrynn now.

  But then a new sensation bore down on her, a terrible, crushing presence that drove her to her knees with its fury. She looked up, and blanched as she saw it.

  The beast. The vast shadow that she had met a few nights ago was back, its colossal bulk swelling up to the treetops. Its bellow, midway between a roar and a screech, shook the earth and blasted a hurricane through the forest, sending men and women and emyrynn alike tumbling and scrambling. The trees hissed and rattled as the wind wailed through their branches. Kaiku was blown back into the base of a tree, the breath squeezed from her lungs, her hair whipping around her face. She gritted her teeth against the agony from her shoulder, eyes shut tight, fighting down the urge to shriek. The creature was a black wall of rage in the Weave, a power that Kaiku could not hope to match. Her kana recoiled from it, retreating, curling up inside her.

  Silence. The hurricane died all at once, faint skirling gusts chasing away through the trees to nothingness. Leaves drifted slowly earthward, spiralling clumsily.

  Kaiku opened her eyes. The site of the ambush was strewn with bodies, men and emyrynn alike. Bloody swatches of white fur lay alongside torn corpses. She saw Asara getting to her feet, her blade hanging loose in her hand. Tsata and Heth crouched protectively together over the prone Peithre. A few soldiers were stirring, but not many. The emyrynn were gone.

  At the edge of the carnage stood Lucia, staring up into the face of the beast. Its shape was hidden from sight by the trees, and by the darkness that it exuded like smoke, but it was still possible to make out its size. Small, glittering eyes regarded her. She was a tiny morsel to it, minute and insignificant; yet she stood there alone, and it glared down on her, the heavy soughing of its breath faintly audible, as slow and massive as waves on a beach.

  Gradually, the survivors of the massacre rose, their gazes pinned to the monster. All except the Tkiurathi. Kaiku stumbled over towards Lucia, her hand clutching her shoulder where her wound was sealing itself, but as she neared Tsata he looked up at her, and his eyes were wet. The shock of that stopped her for a moment. She had never seen him weep before. Then she glanced down at Peithre, and saw that she was dead. They had protected her from the emyrynn, but in her weakened state the exertion of being carried so violently had proved too much. Heth was bent over her, his shoulders shaking. Kaiku met Tsata’s gaze once again, but her eyes were bleak and she had nothing to give him; then she staggered away, towards Lucia.

  Lucia was swaying slightly as Kaiku came to stand near her. She did not dare get too close, afraid of breaking whatever spell held the beast in check. Lucia’s eyes were rolled up in her head and flickering with movement.

  ‘Gods, what has happened here?’ she whispered, though she said it more to herself than to anyone else, and expected no response.

  Lucia surprised her. ‘It is an emissary,’ she said, the words barely formed as if she spoke them in a dream.

  Kaiku thought for a moment. ‘Of the Xhiang Xhi?’ she asked.

  ‘Leave our dead,’ Lucia murmured, ‘and follow.’

  Kaiku closed her eyes. She had been sure to memorise the names of each and every man and woman in the party before they set off into the forest, for she had believed that many would not live to leave it and they would need to be commended to Noctu after their deaths. As long as she had their names, the place where their bodies lay meant little.

  She raised her head and met the expectant faces of the survivors, Doja was among the fallen, and those who believed in leaders looked to her now.

  ‘We leave our dead,’ she said, her voice almost breaking as she spoke. ‘We leave our dead and follow.’

  It was several hours later that they came across the entrance to the Xhiang Xhi’s lair.

  Kaiku remembered little of the intervening time. She trudged dazedly through the forest with the rest of them, in something like a state of shock. The beast led them, always ahead, a colossal shadow that was never quite seen, a fraction too distant to make out in detail.

  She wept as she went, mainly for Phaeca but also for the other men who lay behind them and Peithre, whose body Heth carried and refused to leave. She had kept herself at a distance from the soldiers, out of habit – she was a Sister, and she could no longer easily mix as she had in the past – but the suddenness of their deaths, the frightening savagery of the emyrynn, had shaken her badly. She knew enough of war and killing, but she was not inured to it entirely.

  Other thoughts had briefly intruded on her misery. Thoughts of the beast that they followed, and how it had not been attacking her that day but that it had for some reason been protecting her from the spirit that had taken Lucia’s shape. It had prevented her from being lured away; her, and her only, for the other soldiers had been left to their fate. Why was that? Why had she been treated differently?

  Then there were the memories of the moment she had shared with Tsata, and her argument with Asara. Both were decisions she had to face, matters of huge importance to her; and yet for now she could not bring herself to care about them. All she wanted to do was to get away from this gods-cursed forest and never look back.

  But there was one more challenge yet, and it was Lucia who had to face it.

  They would have known when they came to the boundary of the Xhiang Xhi’s domain even if Lucia had not told them. The air was thick with the presence of the great spirit, a charge in the air that made the fine hairs on their bodies stand on end. It came from a tunnel mouth sunk into a hillock, on either side of which stood twisted old trees like pillars. The beast crouched atop the hillock, obscured by undergrowth, sapping the day’s light from the air.

  ‘You can go no further,’ Lucia said to them all. She appeared sharper now, her mind clear. ‘It is up to me now.’

  Nobody argued, not even Kaiku. She knew it would come to this. Lucia made no ceremony about it, merely looked over her shoulder at the seven ragged figures that remained of the twenty-four that had followed her into the forest. Her eyes lingered on Kaiku’s for a moment, and she tried a smile; but it felt false, and it faltered, so she turned away and walked into the tunnel. They watched as the darkness consumed her, and then she was gone.

  At first they were listless, unsure what to do or what to say. Then they began to settle themselves to wait: the three surviving soldiers together, Tsata and Heth with their burden, Kaiku and Asara both sitting alone.

  After a time, Kaiku got to her feet and joined the Tkiurathi.

  NINETEEN

  There was no light in the tunnel, and Lucia was forced to feel her way along it. Her fingers trailed over the moist soil of the tunnel wall, bumping occasionally against protruding roots. It was silent. The babble of the spirits and the animals was quiet. Nothing existed except the Xhiang Xhi.

  She wished she could stay here, in the peaceful dark, where there were no voices to plague her. To rest, to sleep in this precious hush just for a single night, would be a prize beyond anything she could ask for. To be this clear-headed forever, not to be burdened with the knowledge that outside this oasis of calm lay chaos, and that even if she survived this she would have to return to it. A place where her thoughts were fogged and a thousand whispers clamoured for her attention, and to even interact with humankind was a struggle to focus.

  But it was only a wish. There was no sanctuary for her. She went on through the tunnel, until a short way onwards she saw a ragged oval of grey, with roots hanging across it like a curtain. She pushed through them and stepped into the domain of the great spirit.

  It was a gloomy dell that she found on the other side, a hollow surrounded by thick forest which leaned overhead to make a roof of tangled branches. The ground was marshy; ridges of turf rose out of the water, dividing it into brackish pools full of weeds, and thin mists hung in the cold, still air or slunk close to the earth. An occasional tree grew in the dell, ancient and knotted, its leaves brown and dead.

  She could sense the spirit here, a vast and brooding melancholy, its
attention fixed upon her. The force of its presence was oppressive, the magnitude of its power beyond comprehension. She had spoken with many of the land’s oldest spirits since that day when she had descended into Alskain Mar, deciphering the ways of their kind; but this was a thing apart, older than the rocks, older than the rivers, older than the forest it dwelt in.

  She waited. Though she was afraid, she was armoured by fatalism. Her life had led to here, and she was as ready as she could possibly be. If it all came to nothing, then that was the way it would go. She could do no more.

  Nothing stirred.

  After a time, she took off her shoes and walked forward, picking her way from the edge of the dell along a bank of earth towards a tuffet that poked out of the marsh. Chill water welled up between her toes as the soft grass sank beneath her feet. When she reached the tuffet, she knelt there, and laid her hands upon the ground. She bowed her head and let her breathing slow, readying herself to enter the trance-like state necessary for communication with the spirits.

  ((There is no need, Lucia. I am not as the others are))

  She tensed. The voice had been like the sigh of a dying man, a breath of air through a dusty temple. In all her life, a spirit had never spoken to her before. Contact had always been achieved without language, a primal, empathic exchange. It was a meeting on the most basic of levels, because it was the only way beings utterly alien to each other could reach some sort of understanding.

  ((I understand you)) said the Xhiang Xhi. Her thoughts were as transparent to it as if she had said them out loud. ((They are as children to me, and lack wisdom. They do not know how to think as you do))

  She felt dizzied. Children? Heart’s blood, this being saw the other spirits as children? What kind of fool had she been, thinking that she was ready for the Xhiang Xhi? She dared not consider what might happen if she had tried to meld with it as she had with the others.