Echoes of Understorey

by Thoraiya Dyer

  Leaper nodded.

  “I wasn’t boasting,” he said. “I’ll kill Orin’s beast for you, if you want me to.”

  “Will the goddess not be in ’er Temple when you call lightnin’ to it?” Daggad asked incredulously. “She and ’er Bodyguard and all others who serve ’er?”

  “Ulellin lives in the leaves,” Leaper said without taking his eyes from Imeris. “At the very branch tips, tossed by the wind. She and her Bodyguard and all others who serve her. They’re wafer-thin, like leaves themselves, and the leaves move to catch their feet whenever they take a step. They come down every ten days or so to eat and drink and for the goddess to repeat in normal speech what the wind’s told her. Lightning travels down through trees, not up. Springing a trap in the Temple wouldn’t harm her.”

  “What about the king’s fortune in wires? Where would they come from?”

  “The copper in the metal-stone fruit, Daggad,” Imeris said, touching his arm. “The tribute we saw the man wheeling along the bridge.”

  “You would need a coppersmith to shape them. It would take a week.”

  “I know the smith in Gannak,” she said, surprising herself. “We were going to go there anyway. And Leaper said the goddess comes down only every ten days.”

  “You wouldn’t really need to replace every vine with a wire,” Leaper said. “The trap would still function with every second or third one replaced.”

  “Ulellin won’t forgive you, Skywatcher,” Anahah said softly, speaking to Leaper for the first time. “Her memory is long. You’d draw the mantle of future secrecy and fear from your sister’s shoulders onto your own.”

  “A future like yours, you mean?” Leaper said scornfully. “Airak will protect me. I’m loyal to him.”

  “I don’t question your loyalty,” Anahah said. “I was a loyal Bodyguard for many years. It’s their loyalty to us I no longer trust.”

  Leaper’s chin lifted.

  “My sister is Audblayin. She’s Issi’s sister, too. Slander her, and we’ll see if your ability to survive lightning is any better than the creature’s.” Anahah’s expression didn’t change, but one hand fluttered reflexively to his abdomen.

  “Stop it, Leaper,” Imeris said.

  “You fight like a young crocodile,” Anahah said, “whose throat hasn’t yet sealed against the water. You’d drag an adversary into the lake to drown him, not caring that you’d drown yourself as well.”

  Daggad, who had gobbled down a few bean cakes while he reconciled himself to the idea of desecrating the wind goddess’s sanctuary, perked up interestedly.

  “What do I fight like?” he asked.

  “A tree bear,” Anahah answered, still watching Leaper. “Very bold against enemies of your own size and calibre, but underestimating the efficacy of a spider’s venom.”

  “And me?” Imeris prompted.

  Anahah met her gaze in the blue light of Leaper’s lantern. He hesitated.

  “You should use whatever set bridges you can find at this level,” he said. “We must all return to Canopy. Our auras are fading. I’ll keep to this tree while you fetch your smith from Gannak. With new scent laid over old and plenty of greenery to camouflage myself in, I’ll be safe until your return, but be careful. The beast will be close by.”

  “We will be careful,” Imeris said, feeling a pang to part with him. Even without his powers, his presence and his knowledge were a comfort. “We have the map. The next time you see us, we will have the Silent Smith, Sorros, to help finish the beast once and for all.”

  “I’ll leave the lantern here,” Leaper said, “nailed to the tree. Send me a message when you need me again. This one burns cold, big sister. It’s no good for starting cooking fires, but it’ll be safe for you to put your hand into the light.”

  “Not one of yours, then?” Imeris laughed as he used the blunt end of his axe to fasten the lantern in the hollow.

  “Not one of mine,” he admitted. “I stole it from the Shining One myself.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  “THAT CANNOT be all of it,” Daggad said.

  From their position in a rare Understorian-level lateral branch, the village of Gannak was visible all at once. Connected by the ropes and pale wooden boards of its bridges, all set by this hour of the morning, it comprised a dozen trees whose windows flickered with firelight. Their external platforms and some of the bridges were also lit, by scented bark torches for the midautumn festival day, Full-Belly, which would culminate by early evening in feasts and singing.

  “Has it not grown since you left?” Imeris asked.

  “It ’as shrunk. Or I ’ave grown.”

  “Or you have gotten used to Canopy.” She shrugged a little. It seemed smaller to her, too. The sight and smell of the Full-Belly torches drew her back to a time when she raged against her fathers for forbidding her trips to Gannak. A child’s careless tattling in the village could have been dangerous to her fathers then.

  It was dangerous to them now. Loftfol had watchers in Gannak. She was glad to have approached it from the opposite direction to the tallowwood tree where her fathers had raised her.

  “The forge is in the jackfruit tree,” Imeris said, struck by the painful memory of how Nirrin and Vesev had died. “Nirrin’s house—Nin’s house—is in the ulmo tree.” That other memory, of filching honey, made her smile. “The forge is closer, but Sorros might not be working on a festival day.”

  “What else would ’e be doin’?” Daggad asked grimly. “’Is children are dead, and you called ’im Sorros the Silent. Is ’e likely to be at the ti-house having a chat?”

  “To the forge, then.” Imeris didn’t want to go to the forge. Not really.

  Daggad went down ahead of her, roped to her harness, as he was trialling his new spines for the first time this morning and Imeris had talked him into using caution. He was a heavy man, and she wasn’t sure that if he fell she’d be able to hold them both, but it made her feel slightly better.

  They passed through a beaded curtain of dried, painted quandong seeds in the side of the jackfruit tree to find the forge fire dark and cold. Imeris’s skin prickled at the haunting presence of Vesev and Nirrin. She felt sure their souls had been reborn by now, but the sensation of watching eyes remained present.

  Forgive me, Oldest-Father. If I had known what Nirrin was that day, if I had killed her before she could escape …

  Imeris lit a taper, dropped it into a ghost gourd, and hung the gourd at her waist. Daggad moved past her, deeper into the wide, circular space.

  In the dim room, Imeris could now make out hammers and tongs hanging from pegs on the walls, cold-working tools and bell moulds on bench tops, bags of precious sand, lumps of beeswax, charcoal piles, sharpening stones, and immoveable-seeming anvils. Split skins of a very small number of half-rotted, mango-smelling fruit revealed seeds of iron, copper, silver, and gold.

  “Not laminated.” Daggad grunted, picking a half-polished sword blade up from a table. “It is the cast duplicate of a Canopian sword. Just like the weapon you carried when we met. I suppose I should be glad you ’ad solid steel and not tallowwood.” He put down the blade and picked up a wooden sword, leather wrapped around the handle, razor-thin chips of metal set into the edge and point.

  A black shape leaped out from under a table, swinging a hammer the size of Daggad’s head.

  “The smith! Do not harm him!” Imeris cried. Daggad’s instinct must have been to slash his attacker with the wooden sword; he threw himself backwards instead, and the hammer crashed into the table over which Daggad had bent his head. “Sorros, stop, we are friends, I am Imerissiremi!”

  The silhouette turned to her, blanched, black-bearded face and short black hair revealed by the light of the gourd lantern, teeth bared.

  “No traitor’s spawn will steal from me,” Sorros seethed. “I know who you are. They came ’ere, your fellow students. They warned us you would seek new weapons.”

  “I have weapons!” Her heart knocked hard against her ribs. She
’d never seen Sorros like this before, and it was as frightening as if he were possessed by a sorceress himself. “I came seeking your wife and you.”

  “You will die before you raise a hand to ’er! It was no accident my son and daughter died when they were with you.”

  Imeris also hadn’t heard Sorros speak so many words in the entirety of their acquaintance. She put another table between them when he raised the hammer and took two steps towards her.

  “No,” she said, holding her empty hands high. “It was no accident. The sorceress needed your daughter for the magic she would someday wield. Vesev died because he was in the way. That is not why I need Nin.” As she spoke the words, she suspected it was useless. Sorros would never agree to help her. Loftfol had turned every weapons maker in Understorey against her, and Gannak had been against her fathers, especially Middle-Father, from the beginning. Sorros continued his advance, teeth gritted, hammer raised. What could she do? She couldn’t kill him.

  “Wait,” Daggad said. “I know you. The boy who ate all the checkers pieces because ’e lost the game.” Sorros lowered his hammer. Daggad smacked himself in the forehead with the hand not holding the wooden sword. “No. Why would she do that? Why would she marry House Gannak’s youngest? Gods’ bones! What an insult! The boy who ate the checkers!”

  Sorros drew himself up indignantly.

  “Who are you? ’Ow do you know me?”

  Daggad put the wooden sword down, because he needed both hands to contain his laughter.

  “The boy who ate the checkers,” he hooted, pointing at Sorros. “The boy who shat splinters for a whole monsoon! It was too muchta hope that she would choose somebody sensible the second time around. Well met, Gannak Sorros, the Silent Smith, Lord of Checkers.”

  “Give me your name, dunderhead!”

  “I am Daggad, sonna the spinewife Rididir. You and I shared a classroom, on the rare occasions you cameta school, before you went to your uncle’s village to ’prentice to the smith. You were away when I set off on the raid, but we shared somethin’ else besides the classroom. A wife, it turns out.”

  Sorros stared. He waited until Daggad stopped laughing. Imeris kept the table between them, still uncertain.

  “Nin is at the ti-house,” Sorros said at last. “Helpin’ to prepare the feast.” Imeris thought of the breakfast table of Audblayin, overflowing with greater amounts and varieties of dishes than Sorros had likely ever seen. Feast had a different meaning in Canopy. In Gannak, the name of the festival reflected the fact that only a once-yearly feast could result in a full belly. “I am regretful, Daggad, to tell you that your mother is dead. Our daughter, Nin’s and mine, who would ’ave been the new spinewife, is dead also.”

  “May she be reborn a goddess,” Daggad said lightly.

  “Your companion could tell you more of Nirrin’s death.” Sorros frowned heavily at Imeris.

  “My companion, as you call her, is enlisted by the Canopian Hunt to kill a demon set loose by the goddess of birds and beasts. I ’ave been named a Hunter also. If you cometa Canopy, if you help us, I promiseta make no claim to Nin, to your house or your belongin’s.”

  “You ’ave no claim! They said you were dead!”

  “I am not dead.”

  “’Er life is with me. She would not chooseta go with you.” Sorros set his hammer down on the anvil with a clang. “And I do not believe you would force ’er.”

  Daggad sighed. He rubbed his chin. “No,” he admitted. “I would not. Come along, Imeris. We must find ourselves another smith.”

  “Daggad,” Imeris said, startled, “you must stay here. This is your home. Canopy cannot come after you here. Epatut and Otoyut cannot come after you. Forget the Hunt. Leave the creature to me.”

  “I ’ave no home,” Daggad said. “I ’ave no wish to be a wedge between my once-wife and this man. Besides”—he ducked his head to hide his expression and waved in her direction—“a skinny girl like you could not carry the necessary equipment up to the Temple. Whether ’e makes wire by cuttin’ thin strips from ’ammered sheets or by forcin’ it through a confined channel in a die, drawplates, swage blocks, and ’ammers are ’eavy.”

  “I am curious,” Sorros said, “about ’ow you intendta take me through the barrier to Canopy to make a wire snare for a demon.”

  “More than a simple wire snare is needed,” Imeris said.

  “The birth goddess owes my companion a favour,” Daggad said.

  “Wait a minute!” Imeris moved out from behind the table, towards Daggad. “No. It was my intention to bring the metal-stone fruit down for the smith to work on below the barrier where he would be safe from the creature.”

  “Many favours,” Daggad told Sorros, ignoring her. “You could say Imeris and Audblayin were like sisters.”

  The smith tangled his fingers in his beard.

  “Could these many favours extend,” he asked, “to granting my Nin another child? It is late for us, I know. We ’ad not dared to ’ope. I might risk facing a demon, for a child’s sake. Is the demon a dayhunter?”

  “It is no dayhunter,” Imeris growled.

  “Leave a message for Nin,” Daggad said. “Tell her you will be battling demons for ten or twenty days.”

  Sorros picked up a stick of charcoal and began riffling through a drawer for something to make marks on, but then he hesitated.

  “Battling demons in Canopy when they care nothing for our demons down ’ere. Bah!” He shook his head and resumed rifling. “You ’ad better make it worth my while, once-’usband to my wife.”

  “Come with us to Audblayinland,” Daggad said. “We will ask favours of the goddess together.”

  “Unless the asking meets with a favourable response,” Imeris corrected him, still irritated, “there will be no passage to Audblayinland.”

  Sorros loaded himself and Daggad with the tools he thought he might need. He led them by quiet back bridges to the tree that was furthest from the centre of the village. It was a gobletfruit, uninhabited. The cool, smooth, richly coloured orange-brown bark was lightly pitted as though raindrops had made an impression on it.

  The three of them had climbed only a dozen body lengths or so before Imeris, in the lead, noticed Daggad looking back towards the village, frozen against the tree trunk.

  “What is it?” she called down to him, but when she saw where he looked, she caught her breath and covered her glowing gourd with one hand.

  Outside the spiny plum which hosted the ti-house of Gannak, one of the torches had gone out. A tiny, distant figure stretched a taper to relight it.

  “It is not ’er,” Sorros said gruffly from below both of them. “Whoever it is, they are too far away to take notice of that weak excuse for a lantern. Carry on.”

  But Daggad didn’t move.

  “Daggad,” Imeris said sharply. He looked up, and she lifted her hand from the ghost gourd at once; his expression was agony.

  “I should ’ave done what your fathers did,” he said, stricken.

  “Commit murder and go into exile?” Imeris struck her spines, hard, into the bark of the tree. “You would have lost her anyway.”

  * * *

  IMERIS FELT nothing as they passed through the barrier.

  Daggad followed her easily. Yet when she looked back, Sorros pressed his hands against something invisible and unyielding. Light from Airak’s lanterns and the full moon illuminated his awestruck face.

  “Now what?” Imeris asked, inching along a lateral branch, making room for Daggad. Sorros could not reach them.

  “Now,” Daggad answered, shifting the pair of baskets laden with blacksmith’s tools on his back, “you run aheadta the Garden. Get your sisterta come back ’ere and bargain with Sorros.”

  “It is the middle of the night,” Imeris argued. “Even if the goddess Audblayin did come to the barrier to bargain with murderous outlawed Understorians in full view of her subjects, she would not come now.”

  “Somebody will come.” Daggad plucked at the knots in
the safety line holding him to Imeris. “You can do the bargainin’. Somebody with the power to open the barrier will listen to you.”

  “You forget.” Imeris snatched her rope away from him. She coiled it efficiently in her all-but-healed hand. “I cannot enter the Garden.”

  “But you can try to get Sorros what ’e wants. Ulellin’s Temple is waiting. Anahah is waiting.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Wait above the barrier,” she said, “to refresh your aura, but do not lose sight of Sorros. We do not want him changing his mind just yet.”

  When she had climbed high enough to reach the low roads of Canopy, she stopped to empty her bladder, wash her hands, and splash some water on her face. It had been days or weeks since she had felt safe enough to have a proper, long rest; until the creature was slain, she had no choice but to carry on.

  The Great Gates of the Garden were deserted. Lanterns lining the platform in front of the Gates threw the carvings into dramatic relief.

  Battles. Audblayinland soldiers in two-by-two centipede formation, short swords raised and long spears levelled. They gripped branch roads beneath their studded sandals and faced Understorian warriors with wild eyes, thin lips, noses like blades, and spines out in all the usual places as well as some fanciful ones. Imeris had rarely looked at the finely detailed background carvings. She didn’t care to see herself depicted as a beast.

  Yet, this time, something caught her eye. One of those smaller, backgrounded scenes. A Gatekeeper of the Garden, lantern held high, summoned a maze of vines against a creature with a tusked head and what might have been spots or might have been twelve pairs of eyes. In another difficult-to-decipher, almost-hidden scene, the soaring Bodyguard of Audblayin met a winged animal made of leaves in the skies over the Garden.

  Imeris touched the wood of the Gate, a subconscious gesture, as if she could brush away the bristling Servant in the foreground of the image and more clearly see the smaller shapes of Gardeners. They hurled seeds at a cohort of invaders who had hair and eyes half light and half dark. The seeds sprouted in the hair of the invaders, and roots tried to strangle them.