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

by Chris Wooding

  She was exceedingly beautiful, even dressed in dour brown travelling clothes. Her hair was long, with streaks of red amid the natural onyx black, and was left to fall naturally about her face. She wore no makeup, no hair ornaments; the dyed strands of her hair were the only concession to artificiality. Her beauty was entirely her own, not lent to her by craft.

  ‘You swim well,’ she commented dryly.

  Tane hesitated for a moment, and then climbed out to retrieve his clothes. Nudity did not bother him, and he refused to be talked down to while he trod water in the pool. She watched him – equally unfazed – as he pulled on his trousers over the wet, muscular curves of his legs and buttocks. He stopped short of picking up his rifle. She did not seem hostile, at least.

  ‘I am looking for someone,’ the stranger said after a time. ‘A woman named Kaiku tu Makaima.’ He was not quick enough to keep the reaction off his face. ‘I see you know that name,’ she added.

  Tane ran his hands over his head, brushing water from his shaven scalp. ‘I know that she suffered a great misfortune at someone’s hands,’ he said. ‘Are you that someone?’

  ‘Assuredly not,’ she replied. ‘My name is Jin. I am an Imperial Messenger.’ She slung her rifle over her back and walked over to him, pulling back her sleeve to expose her forearm. Stretching from her wrist to her inner elbow was a long, intricate tattoo – the sigil of the Messengers’ Guild. Tane nodded.

  ‘Tane tu Jeribos. Acolyte of Enyu.’

  ‘Ah. Then the temple is not far.’

  ‘Not far,’ he agreed.

  ‘Perhaps you could show me? It will be dark soon, and the forest is not safe.’

  Tane looked her over with a hint of suspicion, but he never really considered refusing her. Her accent and mode spoke of an education, and possibly high birth, and besides, it was every man and woman’s duty to offer shelter and assistance to an Imperial Messenger, and the fact that her message was for Kaiku intrigued him greatly. ‘Come with me, then,’ he said.

  ‘Will you tell me of this . . . misfortune on the way?’ Jin asked.

  ‘Will you tell me the message you have for her?’

  Jin laughed. ‘You know I cannot,’ she replied. ‘I am sworn by my life to deliver it only to her.’

  Tane grinned suddenly, indicating that he had been joking. His frustrated mood had evaporated suddenly and left him in high spirits. His humours were ever mercurial; it was something about himself that he had learned to accept long ago. He supposed there was a reason for it, somewhere in his past; but his past was a place he had little love of revisiting. His childhood was darkened by the terror of the shadow that stood in his doorway at night, breathing heavily, with hands that held only pain.

  They talked on the way back to the temple, as night drew in. Jin asked him about Kaiku, and he told her what he knew of her visit. He made no mention yet of her destination, however. He had no wish to reveal everything to a stranger, Imperial Messenger or not. He felt protective towards Kaiku, for it was he who had saved her life, he who nursed her to health again, and he treasured that link. He would make sure of Jin before he sent her on the trail to Axekami.

  As they walked, Tane realised to his chagrin that he had misjudged the time it would take to travel back from the spring. Perhaps he had unconsciously been slowing his pace to match Jin’s, and he had been so preoccupied in conversation that he had not noticed. Whatever the reason, the last light bled from the sky with still a mile to go. The looming bulk of Aurus glowed white through the trees, low on the horizon. Iridima, the brightest moon, was not yet risen, and Neryn would most likely stay hidden tonight.

  ‘Is it far yet?’ Jin asked. She had politely restrained from asking him if he was lost for some time now.

  ‘Very close,’ he said. His embarrassment at the miscalculation had not diminished his good humour one bit. The single moon was enough to see by. ‘Don’t concern yourself about losing the light. I grew up in the forest; I have excellent night vision.’

  ‘So do I,’ Jin replied. Tane looked back at her, about to offer further words of encouragement, but he was shocked to see her eyes shining in a slant of moonlight, two saucers of bright reflected white, like those of a cat. Then they passed into shadow, and it was gone. Tane’s voice went dry in his throat, and he turned away, muttering a quiet protective blessing. He reaffirmed his resolve to tell her nothing of Kaiku’s friend Mishani until he was certain she meant no harm.

  They were almost at the temple when Tane suddenly slowed. Jin was at his shoulder in a moment.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she whispered.

  Tane cast a fleeting glance at her. He was still a little unnerved by what he had seen in her eyes. But this was nothing to do with her, he surmised. The forest felt bad here. The instinct was too strong to ignore.

  ‘The trees are afraid,’ he muttered.

  ‘They tell you so?’

  ‘In a way.’ He did not have the time or inclination to elaborate.

  ‘I trust you, then,’ Jin said, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. ‘Are we close to your home?’

  ‘Just through these trees,’ muttered Tane. ‘That’s what worries me.’

  They went carefully onward, quietly now. Tane noted with approval how Jin moved without sound through the forest. His mood was souring rapidly into a dark foreboding. He unslung his rifle, and his hands clasped tightly around it as they stepped through the blue shadows towards the clearing where the temple lay.

  At the edge of the trees, they crouched and looked out over the sloping expanse of grassy hillside that lay between the river on their left and the temple. Lights burned softly in some of the temple windows. The wind stirred the trees gently. The great disc of Aurus dominated the horizon before them, lifting her bulk slowly clear of the treeline. Not an insect chittered, and no animal called. Tane felt his scalp crawl.

  ‘Is it always so quiet?’ Jin whispered.

  Tane ignored her question, scanning the scene. The priests were usually indoors by nightfall. He watched the temple for some time more, hoping for a light to be lit or extinguished, a face to appear at one of the windows, anything that would indicate signs of life within. But there was nothing.

  ‘Perhaps I’m being foolish,’ he said, about to stand up and come out of hiding.

  Jin grabbed his arm with a surprisingly strong grip. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You are not.’

  He looked back at her, and saw something in her expression that gave her away. ‘You know what it is,’ he said. ‘You know what’s wrong here.’

  ‘I suspect,’ she replied. ‘Wait.’

  Tane settled himself back into his hiding place and returned his attention to the temple. He knew each of its cream-coloured planes, each beam of black ash that supported each wall, each simple square window. He knew the way the upper storey was set back from the lower one, to fit snugly with the slope of the hill. This temple had been his home for a long time now, and yet it never felt as if he belonged here, no matter how much he tried. No place had ever truly been home for him, however much he tried to adapt himself.

  ‘There,’ Jin said, but Tane had already seen it. Coming over the roof from the blind side of the temple, like some huge four-legged spider: shin-shin. It moved stealthily, picking its way along, its dark torso hanging between the cradle of its stiltlike legs, shining eyes like lanterns. As Tane watched with increasing dread, he saw another one come scuttling from the trees, crossing the clearing in moments to press itself against one of the outer walls, all but invisible. And a third now, following the first one over the roof, its gaze sweeping the treeline where they crouched.

  ‘Enyu’s grace . . .’ he breathed.

  ‘We must go,’ said Jin urgently, laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘We cannot help them.’

  But Tane seemed not to hear, for he saw at that moment one of the priests appear at an upper window, listening with a frown to the silence from the forest, unaware of the dark, spindly shapes that crouched on the roof just above him.
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br />   ‘You cannot fight!’ Jin hissed. ‘You have no weapon to use against them!’

  ‘I won’t let my priests die in their beds!’ he spat. Shaking her off, he stood up and fired his rifle into the air. The report was deafening in the silence. The glowing eyes of the shin-shin fixed on him in unison.

  ‘Demons in the temple!’ he cried. ‘Demons in the temple!’ And with that he primed and fired again. This time the priest disappeared from the window, and he heard the man’s shouts as he ran into the heart of the building.

  ‘Idiot!’ Jin snarled. ‘You will kill us both. Run!’ She pulled him away, and he stumbled to his feet and followed her, for the sensation of the shin-shin’s eyes boring into him had drained his courage.

  One of the demons hurled itself from the roof of the temple and came racing towards them. Another broke from the treeline and angled itself in their direction. Two more shadows darted across the clearing, slipping into the open windows of the temple with insidious ease, and from within the first of the screams began.

  Tane and Jin ran through the trees, dodging flailing branches and vaulting roots that lunged into their path. Things whipped at them in the night, too fast to see. Behind they could hear the screeches of the shin-shin sawing through the hot darkness as they called to each other. Tane’s head was awhirl, half his mind on what was happening back at the temple, half on escape. To run was flying in the face of his instincts – he wanted to help the priests, that was his way, that was his atonement for the crimes of his past. But he knew enough of the shin-shin to recognise the truth in Jin’s words. He had no effective measure against them. Like most demons, they despised the touch of iron; but even the iron in a rifle ball would not stop them for long. To attack them would be suicide.

  ‘The river!’ Jin cried suddenly, her red and black hair lashing about her face. ‘Make for the river. The shin-shin cannot swim.’

  ‘The river’s too strong!’ Tane replied automatically. Then the answer came to him: ‘But there is a boat!’

  ‘Take us there!’ Jin said.

  Tane sprang past her, leading them on a scrabbling diagonal slant down the hillside. The decline sharpened as they ran, and suddenly he heard a cry and felt something slam into him from behind. Jin had tripped, unable to control her momentum, and the two of them rolled and bounced down the slope. Tane smacked into the bole of a tree with enough force to nearly break a bone, but somehow Jin was entangled with him, and as she slithered past he was dragged down with her. They came to rest at the bottom of a wide, natural ditch; a stream in times gone by. Jin hardly paused to recover herself; she was up on her feet in an instant, dragging Tane with her. She scooped up her rifle as it clattered down to rest nearby. The screeches of the shin-shin were terrifyingly close, almost upon them.

  ‘In here!’ Tane hissed, pulling against her. There was a large hollow where the roots of a tree had encroached on the banks of the ditch, forming an overhang. Tane unstrapped his rifle – which had miraculously stayed snagged on his shoulder during the fall – and scrambled underneath, wedging his body in tight. There was just enough space for Jin to do so as well, pressing herself close to him. Mere moments later, they heard a soft thud as a shin-shin dropped out of the trees and landed foursquare in the ditch.

  Both of them held their breath. Tane could feel Jin’s pulse against his chest, smell the scent of her hair. Ordinarily, it might have aroused him – priests of Enyu had no stricture of celibacy, as some orders did – but the situation they were in robbed him of any ardour. From where they hid at ground level, they could see only the tapered points of the shin-shin’s stiltlegs, shifting as it cast about for its prey. It had lost sight of them as they tumbled, and now it sought them anew. A slight fall of dirt was the only herald of the second demon’s arrival in the ditch; that one had followed their trail down the slope, and was equally puzzled by their disappearance.

  Tane began a silent mantra in his head. It was one he had not used since he was a child, a made-up nonsense rhyme that he pretended could make him invisible if he concentrated hard enough. Then he had been hiding from something entirely different. After a few moments, he adapted it to include a short prayer to Enyu. Shelter us, Earth Goddess, hide us from their sight.

  The pointed ends of the shin-shins’ legs moved this way and that in the moonlight, expressing their uncertainty. They knew their prey should be here; yet they could not see it. Tane felt the cold dread of their presence seeping into his skin. The narrow slot of vision between Jin’s body and the overhang of thick roots and soil might be filled at any moment with the glowing eyes of the shin-shin; and if discovered, they were defenceless. He fancied he could sense their gaze sweeping over him, penetrating the earth to spot them huddled there.

  Time seemed to draw out. Tane could feel his muscles tautening in response to the tension. One of the shin-shin moved suddenly, making Jin start; but whatever it had seen, it was not them. It returned to its companion, and they resumed their strange waiting. Tane gritted his teeth and concentrated on his mantra to calm himself. It did little good.

  Then, a new sound: this one heavy and clumsy. The shin-shin stanced in response. Tane knew that sound, but he could not place it in his memory. The footsteps of some animal, but which?

  The yawning roar of the bear decided the issue for him.

  The shin-shin were uncertain again, their reaction betrayed by the shifting of their feet. The bear roared once more, thumping on to its forepaws, and began to advance slowly. The demons screeched, making a rattling noise and darting this way and that, trying to scare it away; but it was implacable, launching itself upright and then stamping down again with a snarl. There was the loping gallop as the bear ran towards them, not in the least cowed by their display. The shin-shin scattered as it thundered along the ditch, squealing and hissing their displeasure; but they gave the ground, and in moments they were gone, back into the trees in search of their lost prey.

  Tane released the pent-up breath he had been storing, but they were not out of danger yet. They could hear the bear coming down the wide ditch, its loud snuffling as it searched for them.

  ‘My rifle . . .’ Jin whispered. ‘If it finds us . . .’

  ‘No,’ he hissed. ‘Wait.’

  Then suddenly the bear poked down into the hollow, its brown, bristly snout filling up their sight as it sniffed at them. Jin clutched for the trigger of her rifle to scare it away; but Tane grabbed her wrist.

  ‘The shin-shin will hear,’ he whispered. ‘We don’t fear the bears in Enyu’s forest.’ He was less confident in his heart than his words suggested. Where once the forest beasts had been friends to the priests of Enyu, the corruption in the land had made them increasingly unpredictable of late.

  The bear’s wet nose twitched as it smelt them over. Jin was rigid with apprehension. Then, with a final snort, the snout receded. The bear lay heavily down in front of their hiding place, and there it stayed.

  Jin shifted. ‘Why did it not attack us?’ she muttered.

  Tane was wearing a strange grin. ‘The bears are Enyu’s creatures, just as Panazu’s are the catfish, Aspinis’s the monkeys, Misamcha’s the ray or the fox or the hawk. Give thanks, Jin. I think we’ve been saved.’

  Jin appeared to consider that for a time. ‘We should stay here,’ she said at length. ‘The shin-shin will be waiting for us if we emerge before dawn.’

  ‘I think she has the same idea,’ Tane said, motioning with his eyes towards the great furred bulk that blocked them in.

  The bear lay in front of their hollow throughout the night, and in spite of their discomfort the two of them slept. Jin’s dreams were of fire and a horrible scorching heat; Tane’s, as always, were of the sound of footsteps approaching his bedroom doorway, and the mounting terror that came with them.

  EIGHT

  Weave-lord Vyrrch shuffled along the corridors of the Imperial Keep, his hunched and withered body buried in his patchwork robes, his ruined face hidden behind the bronze visage of an insane and an
cient god. Once he had walked tall through these corridors, his stride long and his spine straight. But that was before the Mask had twisted him, warped him from the inside. Like all the True Masks, its material was suffused with the essence of witchstone, and the witchstones gave nothing without taking something away. His body was thronged with cancers, both benign and malignant. His bones were brittle, his knees crooked, his skin blemished all over. But such was the price of power, and power he had in abundance. He was the Weave-lord, the Empress’s own Weaver, and he wanted for nothing.

  The Weavers were a necessity of life in the higher echelons of Saramyr society. Through them, nobles could communicate with each other instantly over long distances, without having to resort to messengers. They could spy on their enemies, or watch over their allies and loved ones. The more effective Weavers could kill invisibly and undetectably, a convenient way to remove troublesome folk; the crime could only be traced by another Weaver, and even then there were no guarantees.

  But the most important role of a Weaver was as a deterrent; for the only defence against a Weaver was another Weaver. They were there to stop their fellows spying on their employers, or even attempting to kill them. If one noble had a Weaver in their employ, then his enemies must have one to keep themselves safe. And so on with their enemies, and theirs. The first Weavers had begun to appear around two and a half centuries ago, and in the intervening time they had become a fixture of noble life. Not one of the high families lacked a Weaver; to be without one was a huge handicap. And while they were widely reviled and despised even by their employers, they were here to stay.

  The price paid to acquire a Weaver was steep indeed, and the employer never stopped paying till the Weaver died. Money was an issue, of course; but that money was not paid to the Weavers themselves, but to the Edgefathers in the temples, for they made the Masks that the Weavers wore, and such was the purchase price of the Mask. For the Weaver, there was only this: that whatever comfort he sought would be attended to, every need fulfilled, every whim satisfied. And that he would be cared for, when he could not care for himself.