‘Because she understands our speech, Bast,’ said Acciper, pushing Vivian’s hair aside to show the dark markings on the back of her neck.
‘Taal’kai!’ gasped Bastijaan. ‘How is she not dead? What is the meaning of this? Start talking sense, Ace!’
Acciper told Bastijaan everything Vivian had said and done: how she had fallen through the Shääj and found herself in the Ne’erine mines; how a kranijan Artisan had sheltered Vivian and taught her Nasitra’nëja; how Vivian seemed able to understand the speech of inferior creatures. He failed to mention Kate and Lucian at all, as if they were absent.
‘Claims her memory’s broken. Must know who she is,’ said Acciper fervidly. ‘Bast, need your permission to see the Pattern.’
Bastijaan scratched his chin, his large blue eyes blinking Vivian out. For a while, he appeared lost in his own thoughts. Eventually, Bastijaan said ‘you have it’, before handing Acciper a sealed scroll and dismissing him from his sight.
The Pattern of Threads
Vivian, Kate and Lucian were stirred out of the palace, along the busy streets of Lantana and through the city’s Eastern Gate. A forest stretched on the lip of the city, its trees tall and ancient like an army of silent warriors beneath a bleeding sky.
Vivian felt her heartbeat in her throat, as a mixture of happiness and dread coursed through. On one hand, the Artisan had warned her about the Weavers, calling them murderers, thieves of freewill and even false gods. On the other hand, Lady Saah had told her the Weavers maintained records about every individual soul in the cosmos; from the moment their eyes first opened to the instant they shut them. They knew a lot about one’s true purpose in life and had answers to nearly everything. Vivian smiled to herself.
Finally, she would learn why she was here. Why in the game of odds, she had come on top, leading to her adoption. Why her darkest fears and emotions often seemed to manifest in waking reality. More importantly, the Weavers would tell her why her deadbeat Ned parents had come to abandon her in that awful children shelter.
They advanced through the forest in perfect silence until the trees began to lessen and the darkness to thin. Ahead of them was a bright clearing, and something about it filled the forest with all sort of colours.
‘Do you hear that?’ she heard Lucian whisper in Kate’s ear.
It was music like Vivian had never known before. Hypnotic drums – so many drums – and a choir of voices reverberated across the clearing. Voices of men and women, old and young, cascaded from all directions, filling her up like water, like energy.
“Loom of cosmos, Loom of change
Mother of mighty things strange
Whispers of a world turned sour,
Find us in our final hour
Shield our brothers on the morrow
Put the world back in their power”
It made the hair on the back of Vivian’s arms stand, and yet it was more, so much more than goose bumps. Beside her, a tormented-looking Lucian had burst into tears. The music grew louder and louder. It was painful and at the same time, invigorating. It was sound made solid, expressing in music what the wind could in touch.
“Loom of chaos, Loom of light
Relieve us all from this plight
In death we crumple and cowe
Withered is our cosmic flower
Shield our sisters on the morrow
Put your Threads back in their vower”
In the sound of drums and of chants, they entered the clearing the orange skies opening to a new sight. A gigantic loom of bright-glowing metal stretched between the canopies, as far as the eye could see – if only it didn’t have so much difficulty seeing.
Vivian found it next to impossible to look straight at the Pattern. Just like Æurlek had seemed to move about when one tried to read it, so were the billion psychedelic Threads moving in and out of phase in a showdown of colour and heat. She averted her eyes.
‘My eyes are itching,’ she heard Kate complain.
Vivian suddenly became aware of how many bones were in her body and just how heavy they were. Whatever the Pattern was, it wasn’t all solid, nor was it all there. Parts of it seemed to move between dimensions while other parts looked like something seen through a heat haze.
‘What is this darn feeling?’ asked Lucian.
‘Kaalà in its purest form,’ Acciper answered.
The Pattern of Threads was deforming the shape and substance of nearby things. Everything in close proximity to it looked somewhat raw, deformed and the very air around it seemed to sizzle and pop. There was a cool breeze coming from its centre, where the burning radiation appeared to have lessened. Vivian looked up only to find herself staring into a bottomless void; a gaping hole the size of a mountain.
So the Artisan had been right, thought Vivian. The Pattern was failing, and the evidence was the presence of humans in Ærria. It explained her visions, her powers, her disturbing nightmares. They had all leaked through a great hole in reality, crossing the Shroud between Existence and Non-Existence, only to find Vivian Amberville and the unfortunate two who had followed her here.
Vivian gazed at the Pattern. Why was she here at all? What was the purpose of it all and should she ask, would the Weavers reveal it? The Alarians did not believe in coincidence, that much she knew, so there was bound to be a purpose to her surviving the Shroud.
Kaap himself had warned her that once on a path, there would be no undoing of it; he believed Vivian was in Ærria by design. What about the Artisan and her reluctance to speak about Seeing or Weaving? Lady Saah had tried her best to hide the truth from Vivian, but her outcome leaks had a different tale. They spoke of Æbekanta, of Chaos, the opposite of Kaalà and creation as a whole. Was it a coincidence that her son had fallen ill with Filth mere weeks after Vivian’s arrival?
At the center of things was a large stone monument shaped like a sword in the ground and around it, about a hundred hooded figures seemed locked in prayer. They were wearing robes of eye-soaring orange, except for a few ones who wore black. At the sound of them approaching, the Weavers looked up.
‘Middlings inside the Folde,’ said one of them.
‘What sacrilege!’ cried another. ‘Turn them away!’
‘Let them pass. It is woven,’ said a third one. It was an old woman enrobed in dark satin whose eyes were completely covered by a silver film.
Vivian noticed most of the Weavers were blind. Their milky eyes seemed unable to pinpoint where anyone was, and yet somehow they knew humans had entered their clearing. There were spiralling patterns all over their faces; scarified tattoos which seemed to glow a dull shade of amber.
‘Elder Seeress—’ Acciper began, but the old woman stopped him.
‘No need for such courtesy, boy,’ said the old woman, her foggy eyes staring at nothing in particular. ‘Irra Lazuli,’ she told the others. ‘To our human guests, welcome to Garlaan.’
‘How do you know we’re humans when you look exactly like us?’ Lucian asked, despite himself.
‘That’s quite simple, Lucian Blossom,’ Blind Irra smiled. ‘I saw you coming.’
Irra Lazuli pointed at a random spot in the Pattern of Threads that Vivian found painful to look at. The Seeress removed her hood, and Vivian noticed she was one of the few whose face was not covered in scars.
‘And you, boy...’ she told Acciper ‘this is most unusual.’
‘I know,’ said Acciper. ‘But here I stand.’
Blind Irra placed a withered hand on his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry about your hawk,’ she said. ‘I know how much that bird meant to you.’
Acciper’s face seemed to drain of colour. He ripped the skin bag from his chest, laying it on the grass and unfolding it gently. A mass of feather pushed the furs aside and a majestic hawk peaked through, unfolded its wings and took flight, its shriek echoing above the forest clearing.
/> The Elder Seeress looked like Acciper had slapped her. She raced to the loom and grabbed a silvery-white Thread, whose end had a shredded appearance, and placed it in Acciper’s dirty palm.
‘Your hawk is dead,’ said Blind Irra, as though she had not just seen that very hawk take flight before her eyes. ‘It is woven.’
‘I know,’ Acciper repeated. ‘You told me I would rot in Ashlar’s kimberlites. Said my hawk will follow me in death. Forgive me for celebrating your error.’
The Elder Seeress frowned. ‘My error? Your Thread is no longer part of the Weave, boy. You shouldn’t be alive, nor should your hawk, yet here you stand. Such events are unheard of in our Guild. You are living off stolen time!’
‘Figure that out later,’ said Acciper. ‘More pressing things at hand.’
He lifted the scroll he received from Bastijaan. On its unbroken sigil, Vivian noticed the picture of a small burning rose.
‘Need you to look into them,’ said Acciper, handing the scroll to Irra Lazuli.
Vivian didn’t see the point. It wasn’t like the blind woman could read the scroll. She was right. Irra Lazuli merely glimpsed at the Pattern of Threads and said “very well” before returning the scroll to Acciper, unopened.
Acciper gently urged Vivian to the front.
‘She helped me out of prison and mended my hawk. I have a strange hunch that—‘, he broke midsentence. ‘Look into her first.’
Irra Lazuli placed a hand on Vivian’s shoulder.
‘This one suffers from fear,’ she said. ‘And unremembrance.’
Before saying anything else, she took Vivian by the hand and stirred her towards a darker part of the loom.
‘Are you open to knowing?’
‘Err—’ was all Vivian could say before she was pushed into the thickset of Threads. She felt a burning pain in her eyes and the image before her flickered.
She was falling through darkness into a bottomless Nothing. There were fragments of light in the darkness, floating in mid-air like ghostly apparitions, one moment there, the next one mere shapeless vapour.
The vapour reformed into a different image, and now she was on a ship – this one carrying not cargo, but prisoners – bent double over a dead hawk. Acciper lay by Shéy’s side: his lips cracked from a lack of water, his hands in heavy manacles, his chest not moving. By her side was an old man, who whispered “it is woven”.
The image before her flickered, and once more, she saw herself holding a bleeding, but very-much-alive hawk. Acciper was asking her how she had learned Avis’aan.
Vivian’s eyes were beginning to hurt. The hawk had turned into a little boy with skin like a honeycomb. The vapour reformed and Dominus Ashlar was passing her by, two cold lights behind his mask of gold, a bright-glowing crystal fixed on his forehead.
She closed her eyes, but the images continued in her mind. Kaap had just saved her from the Tuuk’ta’ne. She was arguing with Kate next to a gaping hole in reality. Aniya and Darien Amberville were screaming in agony, their faces barely visible amid the tall flames.
Vivian’s eyes filled with tears, her breathing sporadic.
The Manor’s west wing had burst into flame. A reading candle lay forgotten amid the open books. She was in a dark library, talking herself into running away from home. Now she was arguing with Darien about not being allowed to attend school.
Vivian’s eyes continued to burn with rekindled memories. She was now in Ala Spuria, switching numbers with another kid. She had not been chosen. Her coffin was tiny. There were twenty-three white roses on her grave.
‘This is not what happened!’ Vivian found herself protesting, her eyes now burning like embers, and once again, history as she knew it was summoned anew.
Her number had been called. Darien was showing her to her new home. She was unwrapping her first Christmas present: an identity chip with Vivian Amberville written across. She saw herself throwing the ear-piercer across the room while a terrified-looking Ayesha watched.
Vivian’s lower lip trembled. She didn’t want to see this anymore.
‘Go deeper,’ Blind Irra’s voice crept from beyond the darkness.
Part of her didn’t want to relive any of it, and yet Vivian knew that if she travelled far enough into her past, she would see herself being abandoned in Ala Spuria. She wasn’t sure she could stomach the pain, but it was her only chance to meet her parents.
Once against Vivian closed her eyes, letting the memories wash over her. She was suddenly falling faster, much faster than before. There was less darkness too, and a lot more vapour. Her hands and legs bent backwards by her side, she saw the vapour reform into solid images.
Vivian was no longer in Keynes, but in a soaring palace with large stone roses embedded in its walls. She hardly recognized herself under an enormous nightgown of pure silver with patterned green-glowing fireflies, her velvet-black hair intricately braided into a high crown. A nearby painting captured her full presence in oil, and by her side–
She jumped.
—by her side was a pale woman with raven hair and eyes like molten purple. Over little Vivian’s shoulder lingered a merry-looking man in a great dark beard with eyes as dark as hers. All three of them were wearing shirts of dark satin, velvet mantles stitched in silver thread, and massive crowns of solid gold. Their faces were all too familiar to Vivian; the couple had been haunting her dreams for as long as she could remember, except this time they were wearing majestic clothes instead of grubby old Ned attire.
Vivian the child was looking out of a tiny window from what appeared to be a stone tower. The Alarian School of Thought was floating in mid-air, closer than she had ever seen it before. She was bent over the windowsill, talking to the howling wind.
The pain in her eyes was mounting. Vivian clutched her eyes.
Five swans had entered the room. Fine harnesses appeared on their delicate bodies, and Vivian watched her younger self tie a bedsheet between them. She was flying over Lantana on a dark, stormy sky.
Vivian couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Thirsty to learn more, she forced her eyes open. The pain in her head crept down her spine.
She was before the Pattern of Threads, arguing with a wild-looking boy in his early teens. Things like “You can’t leave!” and “You’d forget yourself!” could barely be heard against the sound of falling rain.
Vivian watched in stupor as a younger Acciper pleaded with her childlike self, just as a great dark hole rolled across the metallic loom, consuming all Threads in its path.
“I must,” said Vivian the child, and as soon as she said it, the little boy Acciper was thrown aside, as though by a potent wind, and landed a dozen feet away from the loom. The Pattern had opened, and Vivian stepped through the dark menacing hole, into Existence.
Suddenly, she was back in the present.
Vivian felt a million Threads, pressing over her like a funeral shroud. Gasping for breath, she pushed the curtain of Threads aside. When she opened her eyes, a hundred hooded Weavers – men, women and children –were kneeling before her, their orange robes jacketing the clearing. Why were they kneeling? And what were they chanting?
Into vavera. Staatjar Sunya, perdita dottirsja Alariama .
Vivian stumbled into the clearing, her heart heavy under the weight of what she had seen, on feet too weak to support her. Having been found near the Ghettos, she had always assumed her parents to be Neds – too poor or perhaps too sick to care for their child. Now she was questioning whether her parents were even human. Moreover, the Pattern of Threads had shown her Vivian might not have been abandoned at all; she abandoned them .
Her mind was beginning to clear, and before she could stop it, the Thread in her spine had carried the Weaver’s message to her ears.
It is woven. There is Sunya, Alaria’s missing daughter.
Her hands and feet were trembling. Out of th
e ranks of kneeling Weavers stepped Acciper, and surely had he not caught her, she would have collapsed.
‘Acciper, those things I’ve seen…’ Vivian mumbled, as Acciper helped her carry her weight ‘…were they true?’
Acciper said nothing, but protectively stirred Vivian away from the clearing. The crowds parted as they passed. Vivian quickly noticed the only three people in the clearing who hadn’t kneeled: Kate, Lucian and the Elder Seeress, Irra Lazuli.
‘Remarkable, isn’t it?’ said the old woman, her eyes unfocusedly gazing at everything but the approaching Vivian. ‘Your mind opens when offered something special. Special like a piece of Truth.’
Vivian felt like her entire world had collapsed. Across the clearing, Kate and Lucian gazed open-mouthed at the scene. The Weavers were beginning to stand up and pull back their hoods. The Elder Seeress seized the opportunity to address them.
‘The Missing Thread is found!’ said Blind Irra, her tall voice cascading over the clearing like an unstoppable hurricane. ‘We know her reason for being and what she’s bringing with it.’
Some Weavers dropped their heads. Others tried to look at everything else but the Elder Seeress. They wore a concerned look under their orange hoods. Blind Irra seemed to ignore all this.
‘We hoped this day would not come in our lifetime,’ she said ‘yet here it dawns. You know what must come next. Brother Ran-Mjerk—’
Irra Lazuli turned to a boy-Weaver.
‘—fetch the Unwirer. Tell him a Thread is no longer missing. He can finally unweave her from the loom of all things.’
Weaver Ran-Mjerk gave a quick nod and dashed out of the clearing.
‘Regent never approved an unwiring,’ Acciper objected.
The charred skin around Irra’s blind eyes creased.
‘No boy, he did not. That decision is mine to make.’
It happened swiftly. A thousand Threads emerged from the ground, fastened around Vivian and pulled her to the ground. She opened her mouth in panic, but no sound escaped. Acciper rescinded himself and stepped forward. So did Patricia Kate.
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