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

by Chris Wooding

  If Saran had expected a barrage of abuse or denial, he was disappointed. The Saramyr pantheon had never held anything but three moons, and the genealogy of the gods was something taught to all children at an early age. To accept what he was suggesting ran counter to more than a thousand years of belief. But the assembly looked merely dazed. A few belligerent dissenters said loudly that his idea was ridiculous, but soon quieted, finding little support. Kaiku had sat down, overwhelmed suddenly by a terrible, creeping dread that made her lightheaded and faint.

  ‘Are you unwell?’ Cailin asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ Kaiku said. ‘Something . . . there is something about Saran’s account that is troubling me.’

  ‘You think he is wrong?’

  ‘No, I think he is right. I am certain of it. But I do not know why I am certain.’

  Zaelis stood up. ‘I believe I understand,’ he said, his molten voice commanding attention. ‘You think the fourth moon . . . Aricarat?’ Saran tilted his head in a nod. ‘You think that Aricarat was destroyed somehow back when the world was young, and that it fell to earth in pieces. And these pieces are the witchstones.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Saran said.

  ‘This is a wild theory, Saran.’

  ‘I have evidence to support it,’ the Quraal man said, unruffled. ‘But that will bear close examination, and will take time. There are dry tomes and parchments that require translating from dead languages.’

  ‘You will permit me to see this evidence?’

  ‘Of course. I am convinced of its authenticity. Anyone who wishes can study it.’

  Zaelis limped in a slow circle around Saran, his brow furrowed, his hands linked behind his back. The wind chimes rang softly into the silence. ‘Then I will reserve judgement until I have done so; and I would urge you all to do the same.’ This last was addressed to the general assembly. He returned his attention to Saran, stopped pacing, and put a curled forefinger on his white-bearded chin. ‘There is one thing that puzzles me, though.’

  ‘Please,’ Saran said, inviting his inquiry.

  ‘If pieces of the moon rained down all over the Near World all that time ago, then why are they only found in the mountains? Why not the deserts and the plains?’

  Saran smiled. He had been anticipating this.

  ‘They are in the deserts and the plains,’ he said. ‘You are looking at the matter from the wrong angle. First, we should be asking how we know where the witchstones are at all. It is only through the Weavers. How do the Weavers find them? That I do not know. But until five years ago, the Weavers were not allowed to own land in Saramyr; the only places they could inhabit were the mountains, where no land laws applied as there were no crops to be had. It is not easy for them to mine something out from so deep underground and keep it a secret; yet in the mountains, behind their shields of misdirection that our spies cannot penetrate, they have leisure to do so. The reason that the only witchstones we know of are in the mountains are because they are the only ones the Weavers have been able to get to.’

  ‘But not any more,’ Zaelis concluded for him.

  ‘No,’ Saran agreed. ‘Now the Weavers have bought land all over Saramyr and guard it jealously, and on that land they erect strange buildings, and not even the high families know what they do there. But I believe I know. They are mining for witchstones.’

  There was a grim attentiveness fixed on him now. It was not a new idea to them, but in conjunction with what Saran believed he had discovered about the origin of the witchstones, it made for an uncomfortably neat fit.

  ‘But why seek out new witchstones?’ Zaelis asked. ‘They seem to have enough for the Edgefathers to make Masks.’

  ‘I do not pretend to know that,’ Saran said. ‘But I am certain that they are seeking them. And that is not the worst of it.’ He spun around melodramatically from Zaelis to face the audience again. ‘Extrapolate from this. Since they first appeared, the Weavers have infiltrated society and made themselves indispensible. You pay a terrible price for their powers, but you cannot be rid of them. Now that they are part of the empire itself, they are even harder to dislodge. All of us know that the Weavers must be removed; all of us know that they desire power for themselves. But I ask you, what if the Weavers’ sole purpose is to find these witchstones? What if they grow to dominate all of Saramyr? Even if they somehow subverted your entire continent, they would be stuck. No other land would permit Weavers onto its shores in any number; we have a healthy and sensible mistrust of them. So what then?’

  ‘They invade,’ Cailin said, standing up herself. All eyes turned to her. She walked slowly into the centre of the room to stand by Zaelis, a tower of darkness against the noon sun. ‘Perhaps you extrapolate too far, Saran Ycthys Marul.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘And perhaps not. We know nothing of the motives of the Weavers other than what history has shown us; and in that, they have proved to be as aggressive and acquisitive as they have been able while still at the mercy of the high families. But I believe soon the high families will be at the Weavers’ mercy, and then there will be no stopping them. And there would be no stopping an invading army backed up by Weavers, either. No other country has any kind of defence against that.’ He looked to Tsata again; Kaiku caught the brief glance. ‘This is not only a threat to Saramyr; this is a shadow that could fall on the whole of the Near World. I would have you aware of that.’

  His report concluded, Saran walked to where the tattooed Tkiurathi was and sat next to him. It had been a lot for the audience to digest, and it was uncomfortable for them. He could see some of them already dismissing his findings as ridiculous speculation: how could he make guesses like that, with the little they knew of the Weavers? But they were the voices that would bring down the Libera Dramach if they were allowed to prevail, for Saran knew better than to allow the Weavers even an inch of leeway, to let them have the benefit of any doubt.

  ‘Saran’s information sheds a somewhat more foreboding light on another piece of news I received this morning,’ said Zaelis. ‘Nomoru, please stand.’

  It was a young woman of perhaps twenty winters who responded. She was wiry and skinny and not particularly attractive, with a surly expression and short, blonde-brown hair in a ragged, spiky tangle. Her clothes were simple peasant garb, and her arms were inked with pictures, in the manner of street folk and beggars.

  ‘Nomuru is one of our finest scouts,’ Zaelis said. ‘She has just returned from the westward end of the Fault, near where the Zan cuts through it. Tell them what you saw.’

  ‘It’s what I didn’t see,’ Nomoru said. Her dialect was clipped and sullen, muddied with coarse Low Saramyrrhic vowels. Everyone in the room immediately placed her as being from the Poor Quarter of Axekami, and weighted their prejudices accordingly. ‘I know that area. Know it well. Not easy to cross the Fault lengthways, not with all that’s in between here and there. I hadn’t been there for a long time, though. Years. Too hard to get to.’

  She appeared to be uncomfortable talking to so many people; it was obvious in her manner. Rather than be embarrassed, she took on an angry tone, but seemed not to know where to direct it.

  ‘There was a flood plain there. I used to navigate by it. But this time . . . this time I couldn’t find it.’ She looked at Zaelis, who motioned for her to go on. ‘Knew it was there, just couldn’t get to it. Kept on getting turned around. But it wasn’t me. I know that area well.’

  Kaiku could see what was coming, suddenly. Her heart sank.

  ‘Then I remembered. Been told about this before. A place that should be there, but you can’t get to. Happened to her.’ She pointed at Kaiku with an insultingly accusatory finger. ‘Misdirection. They put it around places they don’t want you to find.’

  She looked fiercely at the assembly.

  ‘The Weavers are in the Fault.’

  ELEVEN

  The Baraks Grigi tu Kerestyn and Avun tu Koli walked side by side along the dirt path, between the tall rows of kamako cane. Nuki’s eye
looked down on them benevolently from above, while tiny hovering reedpeckers swung back and forth seeking suitable candidates to drill with their pointed beaks. The sky was clear, the air dry, the heat not too fierce: another day of perfect weather. And yet Grigi’s thoughts were anything but sunny.

  He reached out and snapped off a cane with a twist of his massive hand; a puff of powder burst out from where it was broken.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, proffering it to Avun. His companion took it and turned it slowly under his sleepy, hooded gaze. There were streaks of black discolouration along its outer surface, not that Avun needed such a sign to tell it had been blighted. Good kamako cane was hard enough to be used as scaffolding; this was brittle and worthless.

  ‘The entire crop?’ Avun asked.

  ‘Some can be salvaged,’ Grigi mused, waddling his immense frame over to the other side of the dirt path and breaking off another cane experimentally. ‘It’s strong enough, but if word gets out that the rest of the crop is afflicted . . . Well, I suppose I can sell through a broker, but the price won’t be half what it could be. It’s a gods-cursed disaster.’

  Avun regarded the other blandly. ‘You cannot pretend that you did not expect as much.’

  ‘True, true,’ said Grigi. ‘In fact, half of me had hoped for this. If the harvest had picked up this year, then some of our allies would be having second thoughts about the side they had chosen. Desperation makes weak links in politics, and they’re easily undone when times turn.’ He tossed the cane aside in disgust. ‘But I don’t like seeing thousands of shirets in market goods going to waste, whatever the cause. Especially not mine!’

  ‘It can only strengthen our position,’ Avun said. ‘We have made preparations against this. Others are not so fortunate. They will see that the only alternative to starvation is to oust Mos and put someone who knows how to run the empire on the throne.’

  Grigi gave him a knowing glance. There was something else that they did not say, that they never spoke of any more than necessary. Getting Grigi on the throne was only part of the plan; the other part was getting the Weavers away from it. Neither of them had any particular animosity towards the Weavers – no more than any other high family had, anyway, in that they resented the necessity of having them – but they sensed the popular mood, and they knew how the common folk felt. The peasantry thought that the Weavers were responsible for the evil times that had befallen the empire, that their appointment as equals to the high familes was an affront against tradition and the gods. Avun did not know whether that was true or not, but it really didn’t matter. Once Grigi was Blood Emperor, he would have to cut the Weavers down to size, or the same thing that was happening to Mos would happen to him.

  But it was a dangerous game, plotting against the Weavers under their very noses. For like all the high families, Grigi and Avun had Weavers in their own homes, and who could tell how much they knew?

  They walked on a little, until the dirt track emerged from the forest of kamako cane and curved left to follow the contours of a shallow hill. Below them, Grigi’s plantation spread out like a canvas, uneven polygons of light brown tessellating with fields of green, where the cane had not yet been stripped and still retained its leafy aerial parts. In between were long, low barns and yards where harvesting equipment was left. Men and women, genderless beneath the wide wicker hats that protected them from the sun, moved slowly between the rows, cutting or stripping or erecting nets over the unblighted sections to keep off the persistent reedpeckers. From up here, all looked normal, and faintly idyllic. An untrained eye would not guess that there was poison in the earth.

  Grigi sighed regretfully. He was being philosophical about his loss, but it still made him sad. Waste was not something he approved of, a fact evidenced by his enormous frame and ponderous weight. In Saramyr high society, it was usual to prepare more food than was necessary, and let diners pick and choose as they would; people ate only as much as they wanted and left the rest. That lesson had never taken with Grigi, and his fondness for fine meals and his reluctance to leave any on the table had made him obese. He wore voluminous robes and a purple skullcap, beneath which his black hair was knotted in a queue; a thin beard hung from his chin to give his fleshy face definition.

  To look at him, it would not be easy to guess he was a formidable Barak, and perhaps the only contender to the throne since he had annihilated Blood Amacha’s forces. He appeared rather as a pampered noble, gone soft on luxury, and his high, girlish voice and passion for poetry and history merely corroborated the illusion. But gluttony was his only vice. Unlike many of the other Baraks, he did not indulge in narcotics, bloodsports, courtesans or any of the other privileges of rank. Beneath the layers of fat there was hard muscle on a broad skeleton well over six feet in height, a legacy of a ruthless regime of wrestling and lifting heavy rocks. Much like his companion Avun, whose languid, drowsy manner hid a brain as sharp and unforgiving as a blade, he was often underestimated by those who assumed that the weakness of character that led to such excess hinted at a weak mind.

  If he had any fault, it was the one that his entire family shared: he was bitter about the twist of fate that had dethroned his father and allowed Blood Erinima to become the high family over a decade ago. If not for that, Kerestyn would still have been the head of the empire. It was his bitterness that led him to make an ill-advised assault on Axekami during the last coup; ill-advised because, despite his clever disposal of Blood Amacha, he had not counted on the cityfolk uniting to repel his invading force, and they kept him out long enough for Blood Batik to enter the capital at the east gate and take the throne themselves.

  Now the people of Axekami wished they had let him in, he thought darkly.

  But if it was fate that had torn Blood Kerestyn from the Imperial Keep, then it was fate that would put them back there. His father was dead now, and his two older brothers carried away by crowpox – so called because nobody ever survived it, and crows gathered around in anticipation of a meal. The mantle had passed to him, and now things were turning his way again. Nobles and armies flocked to his banner, supporting the only real alternative to the Blood Emperor Mos. This time, he vowed, he would not fail.

  They ambled in the sun for a time, walking along the side of the hill to where the trail began to take them back through the fields of kamako cane, towards the Kerestyn estate. It was one of several that the family owned, and he and Avun had been using it as a base for the diplomatic visits they had been conducting among the highborn of the Southern Prefectures. The Prefects were gone now, rendered unnecessary by the Weavers, who made it pointless to appoint largely independent governors over distant lands when instantaneous communication meant that they could be overseen from the capital, and thus power kept with the Imperial family. But the Prefects’ wealthy descendants remained, and they were appalled at seeing their beloved land rendered barren by the blight. They were eager to make promises to Grigi, if he could stop the rot in the land. Of course, he had no idea how, but by the time they knew that it would be too late.

  ‘What news of your daughter, Avun?’ he asked eventually, knowing that the Barak would walk in complete silence all the way back to the estate unless he spoke first.

  ‘Her ship should have arrived several days ago,’ he said offhandedly. ‘I expect to learn of her capture very soon.’

  ‘It will be something of a relief to you, I imagine,’ Grigi said. He knew the whole truth behind Avun’s rift with his daughter; in fact, he had been instrumental in spreading the smokescreen to save face for Blood Koli. ‘To have her back, I mean.’

  Avun’s lip curled. ‘I mean to ensure that she does not embarrass her family this way again. When I return to Mataxa Bay, I will deal with her.’

  ‘Are you so confident that you have her, then?’

  ‘Her movements have been known to me ever since she arrived in Okhamba,’ he said. ‘And my informant is extremely reliable. I do not predict any difficulties. She will be in very capable hands.’

>   When Kaiku arrived at Zaelis’s study, she found Cailin already there. It was a small, close room with thick wooden walls to dampen sound from the rest of the house. One wall was crammed with ledgers, and a table rested in a corner with brushes scattered haphazardly across it and a half-written scroll partially furled. The shutters were thrown open against the afternoon sun, and the air was hot and still. Zaelis and Cailin were standing near the windows, their features dimmed by contrast to the bright external light. Birds peeped and chittered on the gables and rooftops below.

  ‘How could I have guessed you would be first to offer your services?’ Cailin said wryly.

  Kaiku ignored the comment. ‘Zaelis,’ she began, but he raised a seamed palm.

  ‘I know, and yes you may,’ he replied.

  Kaiku was momentarily wrongfooted. ‘It appears that I have become somewhat predictable of late,’ she observed.

  Zaelis laughed unexpectedly. ‘My apologies, Kaiku. Do not doubt that I am grateful to you for the good work you have done for us these past years; I’m glad that you still have the enthusiasm.’

  ‘I only wish she were so eager to apply herself to her studies,’ Cailin said, arching an eyebrow.

  ‘This is more important,’ Kaiku returned. ‘And I have to go. I am the only one who can do it. The only one who can use the Mask.’

  Cailin tilted her head in acquiescence. ‘For once, I agree.’

  Kaiku had not expected that. She had been ready for an argument. In truth, half of her wanted them to argue, to forbid her to go. Gods, just the thought of it made her afraid. Crossing the Fault was bad enough, between the terror of the spirits and the murderous clans and the hostile terrain; but at the end of it waited the Weavers, the most deadly enemy of all. Yet she had no option, not in the eyes of Ocha, to whom she had sworn an oath of vengeance. She did not want to throw herself into danger this way. She merely had to.