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

by Chris Wooding

  ‘Or maybe you do not see your own motive.’

  ‘Woman, if you don’t shut up right now then I will be forced to do something to you to shut you up.’

  ‘Oh?’ Mishani said innocently. ‘And what might that be?’

  Bakkara showed her, and after that she let him sleep; but she was awake, and thinking.

  She could not leave Zila: Xejen would not let her. And she certainly had no intention of remaining trapped in here for the next year. Instead, she had concocted a plan to invite Barak Zahn into the town in order to sound him out about Lucia, to make the negotiations she had wanted to make in Lalyara. To try and recruit him to the Libera Dramach with the news that they had his daughter. In Zila, she would bargain from a position of advantage, and Zahn would have to listen to her. But again, Xejen was the problem; he would stop her as soon as he knew what she was up to.

  Xejen was an obstacle that had to be removed. Bakkara was not only the better leader, and the person most able to keep Zila in order and safe from their enemies, but he was also more malleable. Therefore, she would slowly work on both Bakkara and Xejen, undermining the one with the other to bring Bakkara – and hence herself – out on top. Once Bakkara had the primacy, she could manipulate him into her way of thinking, but Xejen was too intransigent, too rigid in his zeal.

  This was her aim, then. She only needed time . . .

  It was dark where Mos was.

  The air stank of blood. Monstrous shapes loomed half-seen to either side and overhead. A quiet clanking came from above, the tapping of chains as they stirred in the heat. The only light was a sullen red glow from the embers of the fire-pit.

  Into that light came a dead face, a corpse-mask of emaciated flesh in a ghastly yawn, hooded and shadowed. Mos looked at it across the fire-pit. His own features were haggard and drawn, his eyes swollen with weeping, his features slack.

  Above them, Weave-lord Kakre’s kites of skin gazed down emptily from the blackness.

  ‘He is gone, then?’ Kakre croaked.

  ‘He is gone,’ Mos replied.

  ‘You have sent men to search for him?’

  ‘He will not get far.’

  ‘That remains to be seen.’

  Mos looked down into the embers, as if there might be some solace there.

  ‘What possessed me, Kakre?’

  The Weave-lord did not reply. He knew well what had possessed Mos; but even he had not expected the Empress to commit suicide. It would have been enough for her to be beaten so that Laranya’s father could learn of it and be incited to gather the armies of the desert in outrage. This was a better result than he could have hoped. And having Mos kidnap Reki in order to minimise the damage was just perfect; all it would take was a small leak of information, arranged by Kakre, and Tchom Rin’s response would be assured.

  Kakre had gone to Mos after the beating and found him weeping and pathetic, pleading for help – as if Kakre was someone he could confess to, who might offer succour. It had been made to look like coincidence, but very little that Kakre did was without forethought. While he was with the Emperor he could not Weave, for Weaving required all his concentration and Mos would know.

  He had not been able to witness Laranya’s last moments; but he had been provided with a perfect alibi that exonerated him from any suspicion of a hand in the Empress’s death. Even Mos – poor, poor Mos – had never even thought of the possibility that the dreams that sent him mad had been coming from Kakre. Kakre had been too sly; he had cut away that line of reasoning from Mos’s mind, so that it never got to flower.

  ‘Barak Goren tu Tanatsua will hear of his daughter’s death long before Reki reaches him,’ Kakre rasped at last. ‘And he will know the circumstances. Laranya was not discreet about her condition.’ He stirred, his hood throwing his face into shadow. ‘Her hair was cut, Mos. You know what that means.’

  ‘Perhaps if we have Reki, his father may pause and listen to reason.’ Mos’s words were empty of feeling. He did not really care either way. He was merely going through the motions of being Emperor, because he had nothing else left now.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Kakre said, ‘preparations must be made. With your marriage to Laranya, the desert Baraks were pacified for a long time; but now that link is severed, they will react badly. They have ever been the troublesome ones. Too autonomous for their own good, within their trackless realm of sand.’

  Mos gazed blankly at Kakre for a time, sweat creeping from his brow in the heat of the skinning-chamber.

  ‘If they come to Axekami, they will encourage the other discontented Baraks,’ Kakre told him. ‘Imagine a desert army marching through Tchamaska and up the East Way, intent on demanding satisfaction for Laranya’s death. Imagine how powerless that will make you seem.’

  Mos could not really picture it.

  ‘You should send men to Maxachta,’ the Weave-lord advised. ‘Many men. If you must meet them, meet them in the mountains at the Juwacha Pass. Contain them there. Prevent them from coming into the west.’

  ‘I need all my men here,’ Mos replied, but there was no strength in his voice.

  ‘For what? For Blood Kerestyn? They have made only noises and taken no action. It will take them years to become strong enough to challenge you. Axekami is unassailable by any force in Saramyr at the moment; unless the desert Baraks join with those in the west, that is.’

  Mos thought on that for a little while.

  ‘I will send men,’ he said, as Kakre had known he would. Mos had not been listening to his advisers, and Kakre had carefully underestimated the size of the forces that were being ranged against the Emperor in the wake of the gathering starvation. The signal would be sent tonight to Barak Avun tu Koli, advising him to begin the muster of the armies. The Imperial forces were dividing, and many thousands would be marching far from Axekami to meet the potential desert threat, leaving the capital weaker for their absence.

  The game begins, Kakre thought, and behind his mask his ruined face twisted into a smile.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Kaiku slid recklessly down the shale slope, her boots pluming dust in the sharp white moonlight. Tsata had already reached the bottom and was levelling his rifle back up it, to where the undulating rim was framed against Aurus’s huge, blotched face. At any instant, he expected to see the silhouette of their pursuer blocking out the light, for it to come raging down after Kaiku.

  The ghaureg roared, a sound that was a cross between a bear and a wolf cry. It was closing on them fast.

  Kaiku fled headlong past him as he covered the point where he guessed the Aberrant monster would emerge. The land around her was virtually devoid of vegetation, just a broken tangle of rocks and hard, stony soil. She made for a spot where the land slipped lower and a ridge rose up on the left. Maybe cover could be found there. Or maybe the ghaureg would just use it to jump down on top of them.

  Then Tsata was with her, taking the lead. They ran at a crouch down the decline, the ledge screening them from view. The ghaureg bellowed again, terrifyingly close. Over the thump of her heart and the scuff of their footsteps she heard the creature loping nearer, its heavy tread reminding her of the sheer mass that their pursuer possessed. If they got within reach of those arms, those rending hands, they would be ripped to pieces.

  The apparent disappearance of its prey gave the Aberrant pause. Tsata and Kaiku took advantage of that to put distance between them and it. The decline became shallow and fractured, depositing them into a wide, flat-bottomed trench scattered with rocks. On the far side, a natural wall rose to higher ground, pale and grim in the combined light of Aurus and Iridima, whose orbits had lately begun to glide closer, threatening the prospect of a moonstorm if the third sister joined them in the nights to come.

  Kaiku struck out for a cluster of rocks. They were too exposed here. If they could get out of its sight for long enough, she was sure it would give up the chase. Though the ghauregs were brutal and dangerous, they were not the most intelligent of the predator species that the
Weavers had collected.

  But Shintu was not on her side that night. They had almost gained the shadow of the rocks when the Aberrant appeared on the ridge. Kaiku caught a frightened glance of its shape, its head low between its hunched shoulders as it surveyed the trench. Then it saw them, its eyes meeting Kaiku’s and sending a shiver down her back. With a howl, it leaped from the ridge down to the floor of the trench, a clear twenty feet; Kaiku felt the impact of its landing through the soles of her boots.

  Ghauregs. They were the largest of the Aberrants that Kaiku and Tsata had yet encountered in the Fault, and by far the most vicious. But they were also the most disturbingly akin to humans, and that struck Kaiku worst of all. When she had first heard their roars and seen their shaggy outlines in the night, she had found them unsettlingly familiar; it was only days later when she realised that she had hidden from those very creatures in the Lakmar Mountains on Fo, huddling and shivering in the snow during her lone trek to trace her father’s footsteps back to the Weaver monastery. Then, they had been ghostly, half-seen things, glimpsed against white horizons; now they were brought into relief, and she found that they were worse than she had imagined.

  They stood eight feet high, though their habitual slouching posture meant that they would be even taller if fully upright. They were somewhat apelike in appearance and though they could run on all fours, their back legs were thick and large enough to allow them to stand on two legs, and they tended to walk that way, contributing to their grotesquely human-like appearance. Their skulls were huge, dominated by enormous jaws that were heavy enough to account for their slouch. The jaws were like steel traps, bearded with shaggy fur and full of omnivore teeth, blunt at the sides and sharp at the front. Small, yellow eyes and a snub snout were little more than mechanisms for locating what to eat next.

  Their bodies were covered in a thick grey pelt, but their hands and chests and feet were bare, and the skin beneath was a wrinkled black. Though they did not have the natural weaponry of some of the other predator species, they made up for it in sheer size and power: their strength was truly appalling. And they were not slow, either.

  Kaiku froze for the shortest of seconds as it landed in the trench and began to pound towards them on all fours, paralysed by the sheer size of the beast. Then Tsata was pulling her again, and she fled.

  Her kana boiled inside her, fighting for release, as they raced across the trench. She dared not let it go. She had only been able to get away with using it before, on the dead shrilling, because she had employed it in an extremely subtle way. If she did something as violent as attacking the Aberrant, the Weavers here would detect it and spare no effort to find her.

  Yet they were fast running out of other options.

  ‘Here!’ Tsata cried suddenly. ‘This way!’

  Tsata sprinted past her in a burst of speed and changed direction, heading up the trench to where a section of the far side had split and cracked, making a shallow fissure in the rock. Tsata reached it at a run and clambered up. Kaiku reached the sheer wall a moment later, her rifle clattering painfully against her back as she threw herself up at the fissure. She was no stranger to rock-climbing – it had been one of the challenges she and her brother Machim had competed at when they were children – but she could afford no purchase on her first try. Fear made her waste a second looking over her shoulder. The ghaureg was racing towards her, galloping on its knuckles, its matted hair flapping against its massive body.

  ‘Climb!’ Tsata shouted, and she did so. This time she found something to grip on to, wedging her fingers inside the fissure, and she pulled herself high enough to get a foothold. Tsata’s hand was reaching down to her. Too far away. She found another purchase, took the strain on that and scrabbled for another, higher spot to put her free boot.

  ‘Kaiku, now!’

  The toe of her boot dug in, and she propelled herself with it, her hand reaching for his. He caught her with a grip like a clamp and wrenched her upward, the veins standing out on his tattooed arm. She was pulled over the lip and into his arms an instant before the ghaureg reached her, and its hand missed her ascending ankle by inches.

  There was no time for relief. Kaiku extricated herself from her companion’s grip and they ran again. The ghaureg could jump, but it was too heavy to get much height. The top of the trench wall was out of its reach, but it would not be long before it found an alternative way up.

  Things had become too dangerous. Whatever the truth about the relationship between the Aberrants and the strange, masked handlers – which Kaiku had dubbed Nexuses – it was obvious that the Weavers knew something was amiss inside their protected enclosure, and had determined to remedy it. Kaiku and Tsata’s forays through the barrier had become progressively more risky. The blighted, bleak land that surrounded the flood plain where the Aberrant army was stationed now swarmed with sentries. Time and again they had been forced to retreat without getting anywhere near the plain, let alone managing to find one of the Nexuses. Tsata’s suggestion that they should kill one of the black-robed figures so that Kaiku could try and divine their nature was looking increasingly impossible; and it was becoming apparent to both of them that they could not keep on trying with things the way they were. Sooner or later they would be caught or killed.

  The ghaureg was just bad luck. Normally they were easy enough to avoid, for they were hardly silent creatures and not particularly skilled hunters, relying on brute strength to dominate the food chain in the snowy wastes they had been gathered from. But Kaiku and Tsata had been avoiding a furie that had picked up their trail, and in their haste to get out of that Aberrant’s path they had accidentally ran into another. It was the kind of slip that Kaiku had begun to think Tsata incapable of making, but it appeared that even the Tkiurathi was fallible.

  She just hoped that discovery would not cost them their lives.

  ‘Which way is it?’ she panted, as they raced over the uneven ground.

  ‘Ahead,’ he replied. ‘Not far.’

  Not far turned out to be a lot further than Kaiku imagined, and by that time the ghaureg was on them again.

  It spotted them from a rise in the land as they headed across a slice of flat terrain, and howled as it gave chase. Kaiku observed that it seemed to be the way of the ghauregs to go to high ground when trying to spot prey, for they were without natural predators and hence unafraid of revealing themselves out in the open. She noted it in case they ever had the misfortune to deal with one again. Staying low and close to obscuring walls was the best policy when trying to avoid this species.

  But it was too late now. The beast was thundering down after them. They scrambled up a shallow slope, dislodging rocks and soil in little tumbles as the ground shifted beneath their feet. At the top was a withered clump of blighted trees, stark in the moonlight, which Kaiku recognised. They were at the edge of the Weaver’s territory.

  ‘The Mask, Kaiku!’ Tsata urged, glancing back along the flat ground that they had just crossed. The ghaureg burst into sight, galloping relentlessly after them.

  They ran again as Kaiku pulled the Mask out from where it was secured to her belt. But she had secured it too well, and in her haste the lip snagged on her clothing and the Mask spun from her hand, clattering to the stone, its mischievous face leering emptily.

  She swore in disbelief. Tsata had his rifle out in a moment, tracking the approaching Aberrant as Kaiku ran over to where her Mask had fallen. The ghaureg had covered the distance between them fast, and Kaiku was not exactly sure how far the barrier was from here, and whether they would get to it in time.

  It was the last, fleeting thought that crossed her mind before she scooped the Mask up and put it to her face.

  The warm, sinking sensation of mild euphoria was stronger this time, more noticeable than it had ever been before. The intimation of her father’s presence was stronger too; the smell of him seemed to emanate from the grain of the wood, gentling her as if she were a child in his arms again. The Mask was a perfect fit for her face
, resting against her skin like a lover’s hand on her cheek.

  ‘Run!’

  Tsata’s voice shattered the timeless instant, and she was back to the present. The Mask was hot against her: the barrier had to be close. She fled, and Tsata dropped his arm and fled with her. The ghaureg bellowed as it raced up the treacherous incline, unhindered by the sliding soil, its hands and feet digging deep into the earth and throwing out stony divots behind it.

  ‘Give me your hand!’ Kaiku cried, reaching back for Tsata. The barrier was upon them, suddenly, and she realised it was too close, for if Tsata was not with her then he would not get through.

  He reacted almost before she had finished her sentence, springing toward her and clamping his hand tight around hers. The ghaureg was mere feet away from them now, blocking out the moons with its bulk, its teeth dripping with saliva as it roared in anticipation of the kill.

  The Weave bloomed around Kaiku, the world turning to a golden chaos of light as she plunged headlong into the barrier. She felt Tsata loose his grip instantly, felt him tug to the right as his senses skewed and he tried to change direction; but she had his hand, and she would not let it go. She pulled him as hard as she could, felt him trip and stumble sideways as his body went in a direction that all his instincts told him not to. His balance held for several steps before the two of them fell out of the other side of the barrier, and the Weave slipped into invisibility behind them.

  Tsata was on his hands and knees, the familiar listlessness and disorientation in his eyes. Kaiku ignored him, her attention on the ghaureg. The creature had turned around and was racing away from them at an angle, pounding back into the heart of the Weaver’s territory as if unaware that its prey was no longer in front of it. She kept her gaze on it until it had disappeared from sight behind a fold in the grey land.

  Tsata recovered quickly, by which time Kaiku had reluctantly taken off the Mask. She had begun to feel guilty about doing so of late, as if it were some sort of betrayal, that by doing so she was disappointing her father’s spirit somehow.