Vivian Amberville - The Weaver of Odds

by Louise Blackwick

  ‘My dear family sure loves towers,’ remarked Vivian. ‘Did Acciper say anything else? About the upcoming Trials and all?’

  ‘He didn’t say what they’re about, if that’s what you mean,’ said Kate. ‘But I can tell he wanted to talk about you. I expect he’ll want to pay you a visit soon.’

  ‘Can’t imagine why he hasn’t visited me already. I had so much to ask him. So much to catch up,’ Vivian sighed. ‘He’s been avoiding me like the plague ever since I got entered in the Trials. I expect everyone still thinks I’m the monster who’s messing up reality.’

  ‘The only monster around here has violet eyes and two pairs of eyelashes—’ Kate heatedly ranted until Lucian whispered ‘Shush!’ and signalled to the towering figures in shiny armour posted at Vivian’s chamber doors. Kate immediately fell silent, and resumed to checking herself out in a nearby crystal mirror.

  Vivian pressed her forehead against the table, her thoughts not very far from Kate’s. Why did her sister save her from Irra Lazuli just to throw her in the middle of an even more dangerous event? Why didn’t she offer Vivian a choice before signing her up?

  Vivian’s dark mood didn’t improve until the orange hem of Brother Haral’s robes swept over her threshold to announce she was expected downstairs, for her daily lesson.

  ‘Are we not training in the Archery Den?’

  ‘Not anymore, Your Grace,’ said Brother Haral, a skinny Weaver with a hoarse voice and a moustache like a walrus. ‘I had the Round Room booked for ourselves.’

  ‘Please stop calling me that. It’s getting on my nerves,’ Vivian requested for an umpteenth time.

  ‘I can’t, Your Grace. I am obliged by law to show my respect,’ said the Weaver.

  Vivian returned him an exasperated look. Acciper had been right in splitting the world into thieves and pretenders, she quickly thought. If they were gonna serve her as mincemeat for mindless entertainment, at least they should stop feigning respect.

  ‘This way, if you please.’

  Getting to the Round Room seemed like the longest walk of Vivian’s life after traversing Kranija – from the ore mines of Ne’erine to the merchants’ urb of Solidago – with a rotting foot and in nothing but pyjamas. With its interminable hallways and never-ending flights of steps, Palas Lumina took forever to traverse.

  Breathlessly clutching at her side, Vivian staggered into a large, circular room with windows like portholes and tall, white-bricked walls. A thin sliver of orange light bathed the chamber in a warm, diffuse light. In the hub of the Round Room was a narrow stone dais with a single white candle atop.

  Brother Haral raised his hands as thought in prayer, and the candle ignited with a deep, purple flame.

  ‘What are those?’ Vivian pointed at several large golden tablets adoring the circular walls.

  ‘The Ten Postulates,’ said Brother Haral, caressing the bright-glowing runes of a nearby tablet. ‘Also known as the Weaver’s Codex.’

  Vivian approached the nearest tablet. A series of dancing runes moved in and out of focus, until the Thread in her spine had forced them to settle.

  ‘ As the Weaver, so is the Thread ,’ Vivian read aloud. ‘What’s that all about?’

  ‘It is not my place to teach you, Your Grace,’ replied the Weaver, combing his walrus moustache with his long fingers, ‘you are not a Weaver just yet. The Alarian School of Thought is the only place one can submerge into the complex arts of Weaving.’

  ‘Give me a hint, then,’ Vivian insisted. ‘It might increase the odds of me actually learning something, for a change.’

  ‘Increase the odds?’ the Weaver puffed out. ‘Odds don’t exist, Your Grace.’

  ‘So everyone keeps telling me, but I can roll any number I want and Blind Irra called me—’

  ‘—a “Weaver of Terrible Odds”, Your Grace,’ said the Weaver. ‘Terrible or resplendent, odds stay unweavable . Irra knows it. She made the discovery in the first place. Odds cannot be woven upon, because they are—’

  ‘—part of Lazuli’s Law of Exception!’ said Vivian quickly, having just realized something. ‘ That which cannot be touched by hand, cannot be moved by Kaalà .’

  ‘How do you—’ the Weaver begun, but Vivian cut him in mid-sentence. A really crazy idea had just entered her mind.

  ‘Brother Haral, is the Weaver Codex common knowledge in Ærria?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Of course not!’ he said, obviously disturbed by the thought. ‘No one but a Weaver knows of its existence.’

  ‘Could they have picked its ideas up from somewhere else? Say, in another School of Thought?’ she insisted.

  ‘Your Grace, ours is the only School of Thought there is,’ said Brother Haral. ‘And the Codex is a secret document a Weaver alone has access to.’

  ‘I have access to it right here,’ said Vivian mockingly, pointing at the golden tablets.

  ‘And you’re as close to understanding it as you are to putting off that candle,’ said Brother Haral, changing the subject. ‘Now, if it pleases Your Grace, should we return to the lesson at hand?’

  Vivian rolled up her sleeves and reluctantly sauntered her way to the center of the room. She faced the white candle and its little purple flame, her back turned to Brother Haral, who predictably told her to ‘ Put it out ’.

  She spent the good part of the evening squinting her eyes in various degrees and pulling all sorts of constipated expressions in attempt to extinguish the candle with her mind, only to fail at it over and over. It was difficult to bend all thought on putting out the flame when her mind was filled with anxiety over the upcoming Trials and random thoughts like “ this is stupid” and “it can’t be done ”. The Weaver’s constant rant in the background wasn’t helping it either.

  ‘Once more, Your Grace: reason in straight lines, not serpentines. You must think with the end goal in mind. The moment you start thinking of yourself as a Weaver, the power of Weaving is yours, and you know why? Because being comes before doing . There is a reason you were pulled through the Pattern. You needed to regain your memory, to be at home with yourself, to know where you came from; you needed to find yourself back. To be reigns supreme, and once you know who you are, you become one with your purpose.’

  A little over an hour later, Vivian was beginning to lose focus.

  ‘Gah!’ she screamed, her head throbbing in concentration, her eyes stinging from the heat of the candle. ‘It’s–not—bloody–working!’

  ‘It is!’ said the Weaver. From his enormous orange sleeve he extracted a long-fingered arm. It took Vivian a while to understand what he was pointing at.

  A forgotten wooden goblet was rattling loudly. So were the ten golden Postulates of the Weaver Codex. The candle flame seemed undisturbed and yet something was happening. A soft chill brushed past Vivian’s shoulder, like a gentle gust of wind on a hot summer day and Brother Haral gathered his orange robes tighter around himself, his teeth chattering underneath his walrus moustache. And still the candle burned on, undisturbed, and Vivian didn’t dare break eye contact with it.

  There was something else too… something that made Vivian’s skin crawl. She sensed a change in the texture of her surroundings, as though reality itself had turned, like milk gone sour. Her long velvety hair had risen as though suddenly submerged in water, its gangly hairs floating about her sweaty face. A wave of darkness filed into the room and the rest of the world held its breath.

  ‘Nearly there, nearly there,’ she heard the voice of the Weaver emerge like from the end of a long tunnel.

  Something was finally happening to the candle. Not unlike the forked tongue of a lizard, its purple flame had split in two while the candle trembled, shuddered and shook, miniscule sparks popping in and out of existence. Like two coexisting realities, the candle was burning and had stopped burning, both within the same amount
of space.

  ‘You are doing great, Your Grace. You just need to believe more in what could be , instead of what is . Reality is what goes around in people’s heads, brought to life by Kaalà, what middlings limitedly call imagination . We are in a constant cycle of creating reality and perceiving that which is being created. There can be no perception of reality without you entering it; shaping it in your image. Have faith in yourself, Your Grace. Believe!’

  ‘I’m believing as hard as I can!’ said Vivian without blinking.

  ‘Not hard enough,’ the Weaver urged on, circling Vivian. ‘You’re still holding onto belittling thoughts. You’re still having doubts. You are afraid, too afraid of whom you may turn into if that candle goes out.’

  ‘I’m not afraid!’ Vivian lied.

  ‘You are, Your Grace, as you should be. Power is not only might, but duty. There is no coincidence I chose a candle for our lessons. Having unleashed it upon your adoptive family, you fear Fire above all else.’

  ‘I— what? How can you possibly know—’

  ‘We have Seers here who have unravelled your Thread. We know you forgot to replace the oil in your parent’s quarters, when your housemaid came down with pox. We know it resulted in the decimating fire in the western wing. Even in their death, you chose to block those memories. It is a shame your adoptive family had to die in such brutal fashion so that you may learn responsibility . Absorb that truth, Your Grace. You are responsible for their death, inasmuch as you are now responsible for the fate of the Pattern.’

  ‘I just want to—’ mumbled Vivian, but felt her voice breaking. Brother Haral went on.

  ‘Weavers are not without fault, Your Grace. There is darkness in us, but there is also light. There can be no good without evil, for they are faces of the same coin, and like all currencies, we can choose whether we spend it for good or for evil. In that regard, you are luckier than most, Your Grace, for you see – the process of becoming a Weaver is a painful, soul-searching one. It takes a shattering emotional trauma for one to learn the true meaning of responsibility ; who we are and what we are meant to do in this life. For a Weaver to be made, they need to be un-made , in the deepest, truest form of being.’

  Vivian let out a stifled cough. ‘You think I never thought of that? You think I don’t blame myself for it every day?’

  Brother Haral smiled his walrus smile.

  ‘To feel responsible is one thing; to blame yourself is another. Your Grace, you have a mean commentator living in your head, repeating all the bad things people have said to you. Many of these things you repeat yourself, which is why you’re stuck. You blame yourself for the Amberville’s death, and in doing so, you are blocking yourself. You are blocking your powers with guilt.’

  ‘C-can’t help it. Won’t help it. I earned that g-guilt,’ she slurred, her eyes in tears. ‘They d-died because of me!’

  ‘More will die, if you don’t control that power!’ threatened the Weaver, and for the first time, Vivian felt the bitterness in his words. ‘That hole in the Pattern is nothing but the Chaos in your heart. Yes, your destructive thoughts, your poisonous emotions have killed your family, but your guilt is killing us all!’

  The Weaver’s words pierced Vivian like a hot knife. Any other human would have told her she was being too hard on herself; that the fire in the west wing was an accident and that her anger with her parents had nothing to do with it, but not Brother Haral. The Alarians didn’t believe in accidents, coincidence or white lies, even if they made people feel better. The Alarians knew that to lie was to allow Chaos to alter reality. The act of Weaving meant to change reality from within; change reality by entering it.

  ‘I’m not here to tell Your Grace is not guilty,’ Brother Haral continued, ‘but to make amends, she must stop lying to herself. She must learn to own that guilt. She must learn to control her thoughts. To express her feelings !’

  Vivian coughed. The air seemed to rapidly leave the Round Room, and along with it came a feeling of terrifying dread, of impending doom. If a bird hadn’t hit the windowpane at that exact time, letting in the wind and putting out the candle, Vivian would have surely collapsed under her mounting anxiety.

  ‘It’s done…’ she muttered, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her sleeve, ‘… it’s not burning anymore.’

  Brother Haral rubbed his hands together, his walrus face breaking into a satisfied smile for the first time since they had begun training.

  ‘You are getting closer, Your Grace,’ he said heartily, pacing back to the circular window and bolting it shut once more. ‘The way you forced our reality to assume the one living in your awareness. You were closer today than ever before. Too bad the candle went out when that window burst open.’

  Vivian lifted her head, looking scandalized. ‘What do you mean, “ too bad the candle went out ”? That was the goal, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well yes, Your Grace, though you were supposed to put out that flame yourself, not let the draft do it.’

  ‘You told me to think with the end goal in mind!’ said Vivian crossly. ‘The goal was to put out the candle, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Once more, Your Grace lies to herself,’ said the Weaver. ‘You didn’t change reality yourself. You allowed the circumstances of reality to do things for you .’

  ‘The candle is out, isn’t it?’ spat Vivian. Her attempts to Weave into the candle had deepened her bad mood. ‘The flame went out!’

  ‘It may well be so, Your Grace, but that’s not what Weaving is,’ said Brother Haral patiently. ‘You were to cast your mind into the flame, Weave your will into its texture, and make it go out.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’ argued Vivian, her small fists clenched ‘What was supposed to happen, happened. I called forth the number you wanted! That bird hit the window, brought in the draft and snuffed the flame!’

  ‘Your Grace was closer today,’ repeated the Weaver, undeterred by Vivian’s mounting anger. ‘You nearly forced your own reality upon the reality at hand.’

  A small vein throbbed in Vivian’s temple. She felt tired and angry and all she wanted was someone to tell her she did well. That her ordeal hadn’t been for nothing.

  ‘Nearly? What do you mean by nearly? I put out your damn candle, didn’t I? And for the last time, call me Vivian!’

  Brother Haral returned a moustached smile. ‘Your Grace must be tired. You made great progress, though it cost you a lot of stamina. Our training resumes same time, tomorrow. Make sure you practice—’

  But Vivian stormed out of the Round Room, slamming the door in her rear. The two guards posted at the entrance automatically followed her, their shiny armour clattering away down the deserted corridor.

  Back in her chambers, Vivian spent the remainder of the evening in her cosy bed inside the alcove by the fireplace, muttering to herself. It was a long while until her anger subsided enough to allow her to change into her nightgown and get ready for bed. She absent-mindedly dipped her toothbrush in a small jar containing powdered Lalu and Siccaberos – the Alarian equivalent of toothpaste – and lazily began brushing her teeth while watching the setting white dwarf Jaari descend behind the great Mount Ra’nun.

  A while later, the orange sun, Ikko, followed his brother below the horizon, plunging the red rooftops of Lantana into a buttery darkness. It was a while before her tired eyes registered that Acciper Sparrowhawk was at her window.

  ‘What the—’

  ‘Shhh!’ said Acciper, swinging himself onto Vivian’s windowsill and slipping into her bedroom. ‘Or those goons posted at door likely kick me out.’

  ‘Well, they should. You are breaking an entry,’ said Vivian, though she did drop her voice to a soft whisper. ‘We’re in a hundred foot tower. How on earth did you get up here?’

  ‘Been climbing these rooftops soon as I could walk,
’ said Acciper, although Vivian thought he sounded rather out of breath. ‘Sorry I didn’t come to you sooner. Thought it look suspicious if I visited you right away.’

  ‘A lot of people visit me. I’m something like a curiosity, didn’t you hear? Blind Irra and I, the only two people in Garlaan who aren’t free. Why would visiting me be suspicious?’

  Visibly overheated, Acciper removed his thick fur coat and shamelessly helped himself to cool water from Vivian’s bedside pitcher.

  ‘Because I’m one of the few here who’s been through the Weaver Trials and lived to tell the tale.’

  Vivian’s mouth fell open. ‘Y-you’re one of them Weavers? Then why aren’t you up there!’

  ‘Never a Weaver, no’ said Acciper, now sinking his teeth into a juicy apple. ‘Failed my second Trial, so never made it into Alarian School of Thought. But every leap I help organize pre-selection process. Can tip you off on what to expect.’

  ‘Humour me, then,’ said Vivian, with an air that suggested she had given up on life altogether. ‘What should I expect?’

  Acciper Sparrowhawk looked into Vivian’s coal-black eyes and said ‘expect to die. Competition’s rigged and you’re training for naught. First two trials nothing to do with Weaving.’

  ‘Thanks for coming all the way up here just to confirm what I already know,’ she gulped, turning her back to Acciper. ‘Still... if it’s not about Weaving, why are they training me for? What are the Trials about? Describe them for me.’

  ‘No point describing all three,’ said Acciper. ‘Would only fill you with worries. Learned something watching generation after generation perish in that arena: keeping a clear head works wonders.’