The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  Now Lucia let herself become aware of the stone beneath her palms, and let the stone become aware of her. At first, the sensations were merely physical: the cold touch against her skin, the pressure of her flesh against the surface. They became sharpened and more acute as she slipped further into her trance, so that she became aware of the infinity of pores and creases in the skin of her hands, and could sense the microscopic cracks and seams in the stone that she knelt on.

  By now she was entirely still, her breathing slowed to a languorous sigh, her heartbeat a dull and lazy thump.

  Next, she let the sharing of sensation spread beyond the point of contact, expanding her awareness to include her whole body: the gush and pump of her blood, the net of follicles on her scalp, the snarled and dead tissue of her scars, the mesh of muscle in her back. She opened to the stone her knowledge of the steadily gathering potential of her ovaries and womb, which would soon become active; of the gradually lengthening bones in her limbs; all the processes of life and growth.

  And with that, she let herself sink further into the essence of the stone, skimming its ancient, grinding memory. She felt its structure, its flaws; she sensed its origins, where it had grown and where it had been hewed from; she knew of its hard, senseless existence. There was no real life in a stone that had been separated from its mountain, cut from the greater entity of the land it was formed in; but there was still an imprint of things that had occurred here, an impression left by time on the character of the place.

  Then, all at once, the shrine woke up around her. She almost lost her trance as her perception widened in one dramatic sweep, and she was feeling not just the stone but the entire structure of the shrine, a millennium of existence revealed to her at once. She sensed the pride and power of this place in its youth, felt its bitterness at its abandonment. This had been a site of great worship once, and it had not forgotten the days when men and women praised in its halls and burned sacrifices on its altars. Then she knew of a long emptiness, and of the coming of the new inhabitant, and the shrine was a place of power once again, though a wan and hollow shadow of its former self.

  She began to tentatively probe, reaching toward this new inhabitant, to make it aware of her. Despite her trance, she was becoming fearful again. Even the oblique sensations she had received about the spirit that dwelt here had been massive and daunting, as if she were an insect brushing up against the flanks of some enormous beast.

  Slowly, the spirit of Alskain Mar roused.

  Lucia felt the change in the air around her with her finely attuned senses. The cavern was darkening, a blackness like smoky ink billowing into the light and defeating the glare of Nuki’s eye. She could hear, distantly, Zaelis’s exclamation of horror as the sight of her was obscured. The small heat that the beam of sun had provided faded away, and the temperature plummeted. She started to shiver; her breath came out in slow jets of vapour. The discomfort was causing her to slip back out of her trance again, and she retreated from the spirit to master herself, to relax.

  But the spirit came after her. Her contact had stirred it, and it would not let her go without knowing something of the nature of the intruder in its lair. Lucia had a moment of terror at its sudden aggression before it engulfed her mind, melding forcefully with her in one cruel deluge.

  There was the briefest instant where she was brutally faced with an immensity impossible to fathom with her human structures of thought. Then she died of shock.

  And kept living.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She lay face down on the floor of the ruined chamber. Her cheek and breasts hurt where she had fallen forward. There was light, pale blue and ethereal.

  She raised herself up on her arms.

  The illumination was coming from beneath the lake, underlighting her face eerily. The entire cavern was aglow. It was bigger even than her initial glimpses of it had suggested. The water cast shining ripples onto the walls and the remnants of the shrine. Overhead, the darkness was total, and no sight of the shaft through which she had entered Alskain Mar could be seen.

  As her consciousness reassembled itself, she realised that the spirit of the shrine was still melded with her. She could feel it, tentative now. It sent a wash of knowledge, a recapitulation and something that she interpreted as an apology. The spirit had accidentally killed her, but only for moments. It had taken that long to absorb the nature of the girl, and to reactivate her biology, to repair the damage done to her sanity. Though she had died, she had not missed more than a couple of beats of her heart; her blood had barely time to slow.

  Lucia realised with amazement that she was communicating with it. Or rather, it was communicating with her. She had known that it was hopelessly beyond her capabilities to make herself understood to a thing that was so alien, but she had never considered that the spirit might be able to simplify itself enough to descend to her level. Yet, in absorbing her nature, it had gained knowledge of her limitations and capabilities, and a rudimentary contact was achieved and held.

  She crawled weakly to the edge of the platform, driven by a half-heard motivation, and knelt by the edge. Then she looked down into the water, and saw it.

  There was no bottom to the lake any more. Though still as clear as crystal, it now plunged away to endless depths, from which the strange glow came. And down there, at some unguessable distance, the spirit looked back at her.

  It had no form. It was like a dent in the water, hovering at the edge of Lucia’s sight, more a suggestion of a shape than a physical entity. Somewhere within it two oval formations that approximated eyes watched her with a frightening intensity. It flickered with the invisible convection of the lake, sometimes jumping for a fraction of a second to another place before returning to its original location, flitting fitfully about while remaining perfectly still. It seemed at once small and looming to Lucia’s eyes. She could not trust her perspective; it was as if she could reach into the water and touch it, though it appeared further away than the moons. Despite its best attempts at a manifestation she could comprehend, it still bent her senses just to look at it; yet look at it she did, for she knew that was what it wanted.

  Awe and joy and raw terror clashed within her. She would never have believed she could ever achieve an understanding with a spirit such as this; but now that she had, she was committed to that contact, and there was no telling what kind of force she was dealing with. It could annihilate her mind in a fit of whimsy; it could keep her trapped here for an eternity as a companion; it could do something entirely beyond her imagination. She was still stunned and fragile from the mental impact of the spirit’s first touch, from her momentary skip across the surface of death; she did not know if she was strong enough to deal with what was to follow.

  But there was no other recourse now. She had questions to ask. Slowly, she spread her hands and laid them onto the cold surface of the lake. She exhaled a long, shivering breath, and a plume of vapour rose around her.

  Then she began.

  TWENTY

  ‘I will not go back!’ Kaiku said, stalking around the rock-lined hollow where the travellers hid. ‘Not yet. Not while we still know nothing about those creatures down there.’

  ‘It’s because we know nothing that we have to go back,’ Yugi argued. He glanced up at Tsata, who was on lookout, crouched on the lip of a flat stone. ‘We have no idea what kind of defences they can muster. And we’re certainly not equipped to try and infiltrate them. What is it exactly you’re planning to do, Kaiku?’

  ‘It is not enough for us to return to the Fold with news of an Aberrant army hiding in the Fault,’ Kaiku said. ‘Why are they here? Who are they intended for? Is it the Libera Dramach, or somebody else? We need answers, not a report that will only breed more questions.’

  ‘Keep your voices down,’ Nomoru told them coldly.

  They had observed the Aberrants and the strange Weaver-like newcomers for several hours before retreating from the edge of the cliff that overlooked the flood plain. Fearing the brightening d
ay, they had pulled back to a less exposed spot where they could chew over their options. Nomoru had found them a pebbly dip between a cluster of tall rocks that leaned together, shutting out most of the sky. Despite the relative ease with which they had penetrated this far into the Weavers’ protected area, they were all becoming increasingly nervous. The lack of any form of guards could be explained by the barrier they had passed through: as with the monastery on Fo that Kaiku had infiltrated in the past, the Weavers believed their barrier was infallible, and did not trouble themselves with security. But still, they had begun to feel that their luck was running thin, and something had to be done.

  ‘If we stay and try to find out more, we run the risk that we are captured or killed,’ said Yugi, running a hand through his hair before readjusting the rag around his forehead. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his stubbled cheeks made him look haggard and weary; but he was the leader here, and he spoke with authority. ‘Then nobody gets any answers, and no warning of what the Weavers are planning.’

  ‘But what are they planning?’ Kaiku said. She was unusually agitated. ‘What do we know?’

  ‘We know that they have a horde of several different species of Aberrant,’ Yugi said. ‘All predator species or specialised in some way. And they’re all pure-bloods; no freaks.’ Yugi shrugged. ‘That means they’ve either selected them very carefully from their natural habitat, or bred them that way. This is what they have been moving in secret with their barges. This is what Lucia sensed on the river.’

  ‘They’re under control,’ Nomoru said. She was sitting on the slope of the hollow, her face striped with the shadow of the rocks overhead, cleaning her exquisite rifle. ‘Should have been fighting each other. They aren’t. So they’re under control.’

  ‘Can they do that?’ Yugi asked Kaiku. ‘Can a Weaver influence that many creatures like that?’

  ‘No,’ Kaiku said. ‘Not even a Sister could keep a constant check on all those minds at once. Not even a hundred Sisters, and they’re a lot more . . . efficient with their use of the Weave than men are.’

  ‘Maybe you’re wrong,’ said Nomoru. ‘Maybe the Weavers can do it.’

  ‘I am not wrong,’ Kaiki returned. ‘I would have sensed it, even if they could. Whatever was going on down there, it was too subtle to be Weavers controlling those creatures.’

  ‘Then what about those black-robed people?’ Yugi suggested. They had seen dozens of them, wandering between the scabrous masses of Aberrant beasts. ‘Are they the keepers of the menagerie?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Kaiku. ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘Could you find out?’

  ‘Not by the method you mean. I do not know what I would be facing,’ she said. ‘If they caught me using my kana, the consequences could be disastrous. For all of us.’

  ‘What about that building?’ Nomoru said, squinting down the barrel of her rifle. ‘Don’t have any idea about that. Need to get closer.’

  ‘It’s a mine,’ said Yugi. ‘Surely that’s obvious? The fact that the blight is present here means they’ve got a witchstone down there. It also means that it’s been awake long enough to start corrupting the land.’

  ‘I think the presence of the building is enough to indicate that they have been here a long time,’ Kaiku pointed out. ‘Yet they have not made any move to attack the Fold. So we can presume—’

  ‘It’s a flood plain,’ Nomoru interrupted, continuing her original train of thought. ‘How do you dig a mine on a flood plain? It would flood.’

  Tsata had been listening to the conversation patiently. It had been obvious to him what to do since the start, but he knew that simple survival logic did not work on Saramyr; they insisted on complicating things. Now that they had argued their way around the subject enough to satisfy themselves, he decided the time was right to interject.

  ‘I have a solution,’ he said.

  The others looked up at where he crouched, his pale green eyes flitting among the broken rocks that surrounded them.

  ‘Two of us stay and investigate,’ he said. ‘Two of us go back.’

  ‘Only Nomoru knows the way back,’ Yugi pointed out.

  ‘I know the way back,’ Tsata said. After a lifetime of navigating his way through dense jungles, the relatively open terrain of the Fault was simple to remember. He could retrace their route easily, and avoid the dangers that they had passed through on their journey here.

  ‘Nobody’s staying,’ said Yugi.

  ‘I am,’ Kaiku shot back.

  ‘You’re the only one who can get us out through that barrier,’ Yugi reasoned.

  ‘Then I will accompany you to the other side and then come back,’ said Kaiku.

  ‘I will stay with her,’ Tsata put in. ‘I would be more use here.’

  ‘You’re both in a real hurry to get killed,’ Nomoru said with a nasty smile. ‘I don’t mind. I’ll go with him.’ She thumbed at Yugi. ‘Safer.’

  ‘We’re all going back together,’ Yugi said. ‘We almost didn’t make it here with four of us. With just two—’

  Kaiku cut him off. ‘You almost did not make it here,’ she said. ‘Need I remind you to whom you owe the fact that you are here at all?’

  Yugi sighed. ‘Kaiku, I won’t let you do this. And certainly not out of gratitude for saving my life.’

  Kaiku brushed her fringe back from where it hung across her face. She had ever been a stubborn one, and now she had her heels firmly planted. ‘It is not your choice,’ she said. ‘I am here as a representative of the Red Order; you do not have rank over me. And Tsata is under allegiance to no one.’

  ‘You’re not even in the Red Order! You’re still an apprentice! Gods, Kaiku, don’t you understand the threat?’ Yugi cried. ‘What happens if you’re caught? You know how paranoid Cailin is about exposing any of her operatives; what do you think will happen if a Weaver gets hold of you? You’ll jeopardise the whole of the Sisterhood! And besides,’ he finished, his voice dropping to a hiss as Nomoru shushed him, ‘you both know where the Fold is.’

  Kaiku was unconvinced. ‘Someone needs to stay and let everyone know if this army begins to move. Only I can do that; only I can get a warning to the Fold instantly if the Weavers start to march.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m mistaken, but hasn’t Cailin forbidden long-distance communication between Sisters?’ Yugi pointed out.

  ‘She has not forbidden it,’ Kaiku replied. ‘She has merely made it clear that it is only to be used when absolutely no other option is available. As now.’

  ‘And you think you are qualified to decide that? You think she would be happy for an apprentice to take that responsibility?’

  ‘I do not care what makes her happy or otherwise,’ Kaiku said dismissively. ‘I am not her servant.’ She paused for a moment, then continued. ‘Why do you think she let me go to Okhamba with Mishani? She needed someone who could thread the Weave. In case we could not get the spy away, I was to send her the information he held. That was how important she considered it. This is how important I consider this. It is our only chance to find out what the Weavers are up to.’ She swept her hand in a gesture of frustration. ‘All this time, we’ve been too careful. Cailin has been too careful. And look at the result. The Weavers have an army under our noses! The Red Order should have been looking for this kind of thing, but Cailin is too afraid of any of them getting caught. If we do not find out now what is happening, it will be too late!’ She met Yugi’s eyes earnestly. ‘We are here and they are not, and if I return, Cailin will never let me get close enough again to make a difference.’

  And there it was. That was the truth of it. If they retreated now, Cailin would not let her risk herself again, and they would have missed a potentially crucial opportunity to discover the Weavers’ plans. She could not turn her back on this. Not with her oath to Ocha still smouldering in her mind, and her family’s deaths unavenged.

  Ocha looked after me once, she thought, recalling her frozen trek through the Lakmar Mountains many years ago.
He will do so again.

  ‘You’ll make a difference, I’ve no doubt of that,’ Yugi said, but he sounded defeated, and Kaiku knew that he would not argue any further. ‘Whether it is a triumph or a catastrophe, time will tell.’ He shrugged again. ‘I can’t stop you, Kaiku. Not by force or by reason. I just want you to know how many lives you’re playing with.’

  ‘For too long we have been too afraid of the Weavers,’ Kaiku said. ‘We have not dared to take a risk. We cannot hide forever.’ She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I will be careful.’

  ‘You’d better be,’ said Yugi, then flashed an unexpected grin. ‘I need you to come back safely to the Fold. So I can kill you for making me worry like this.’

  The humour was forced, and nobody took it up.

  ‘Are you finished?’ Nomoru said drily. ‘Can we go?’

  Kaiku gave her a poisonous glance, then leaned close to Yugi’s ear and breathed: ‘I do not envy your company for the trip back.’

  Yugi groaned.

  Reki tu Tanatsua, younger brother of the Empress of Saramyr, had begun to regret ever visiting his sister at all.

  He sat on the wide stone shelf of a window-arch in his chambers, curled up with the soles of his shoes resting against one end and his back against the other. He was looking out northward over the mighty walls of Axekami and the plains beyond, with the sparkling Jabaza curving in from the left side of the panorama, heading for the horizon and the mountains. It had been a hot and sultry day, and the very land seemed to laze in the burnished light as Nuki’s eye sank to the west. Soft strips of cloud hung drowsily at the high altitudes, barely moving. Reki’s head was resting against the arch, his arms crossed, a study in thoughtfulness lit in gentle fire and warm shadow.