Vivian Amberville - The Weaver of Odds

by Louise Blackwick

  ‘Arena? What did you mean by arena?’

  ‘They call it the Pentahedron ,’ whispered Acciper, drawing through the air a figure with five plane faces with his finger. ‘The arena where they hold the Weaver Trials. All three of them. Positioned right underneath the Alarian School of Thought.’

  ‘So the Trials are some kind of Olympic games?’

  ‘Don’t know what “olympic” means but they are indeed games,’ said Acciper, his hazel eyes filling with images only he could see. When he recomposed, he added, ‘dark and dangerous games, like nothing you seen before. Now, first of them— the Trial of Paths –’

  Acciper Sparrowhawk took another bite from the apple. Vivian sat on a nearby chair, listening intently.

  ‘—First Trial’s tricky,’ he said, nibbling on his succulent apple. ‘Sort of a race, but on vertical. Couple hundred feet high, above arena, they get these great levitating slabs of stone that move up and down and left to right,’ he said, while Vivian’s jaw hung open. ‘Trial of Paths ends when you have reached topmost platform.’

  ‘You’re joking! I have to jump onto constantly-moving platforms at TWO HUNDRED FEET IN THE AIR?

  Just then there was a noise like a fumble of locks and Vivian sprang to her feet, making panicked gestures towards the door. Acciper put his half-eaten apple down and dived under the bed. The door to Vivian’s quarters opened with a squeak, letting in a tall man in bulky armour.

  ‘Who’re’ ya talkin’ to, hmm?’ barked the guard, lifting the visor of his helmet and giving the room a sweeping look. ‘We heards voices.’

  ‘M-myself!’ said Vivian, in great effort to fight the tremor in her voice. ‘Weaver Haral told me to p-pr-practice.’

  ‘Well practice with yer mouth closed,’ grunted the guard. ‘What’s tha ya has there?’ and to Vivian’s horror, the guard pointed at the massive heap of skins that was Acciper’s shaggy coat.

  ‘T-that’s what I’m practicing on,’ improvised Vivian. ‘Trying to Weave into it, wasn’t I? Make it turn green.’

  ‘Don’t let foods lying about like tha’! Tis disgustin’!’ he indicated the apple cores on Vivian’s nightstand, before slamming the door shut.

  Acciper dashed from under the bed, picking a spider from his long, auburn-brown hair. ‘Well, that’s that. You now know what to expect in the First Trial,’ he said fearfully, grabbing his fur coat and stepping onto the window’s ledge. ‘Can’t do anything more for you. Better be on my way.’

  ‘Wait!’ Vivian lounged forward, grabbing his hand and pulling him off the windowsill. ‘Wait! You haven’t told me any details. I need to know everything if I am to stand a chance—’

  ‘You better off not knowing details,’ Acciper whispered back, unclenching himself from Vivian’s grip. ’Just know you allowed to bring one item into arena; different one for each Trial. Course, competitors won’t know what they be facing, so more often than not they bring wrong thing. That way it encourages Seers and Seeresses to sign up – foresight is rare talent to have – and the Guild greatly benefits from—’

  ‘Cor, can I really bring an item? Because I know exactly what to—’

  ‘Can’t bring that knife, though,’ Acciper interrupted. ‘Know Daimey bent the law and let you keep it but Æbe’trax is forbidden in Trials.’

  Vivian punched herself in the forehead. ‘Right. Right. Lucian mentioned it before. Hmmm, if the Trials were in my world, I could have simply rented a small halopad to fly me over—’

  ‘Halo-what?’ Acciper asked curiously, his foot still on the windowsill.

  ‘It’s a flying— never you mind. What about your Weaver Trials? What did you bring?’

  ‘Brought Shéy, of course. You not technically allowed to bring any sort of living creature in the arena, but I use Avis’aan to call her to me,’ said Acciper, who seemed to have changed his mind about leaving and slipped back into an armchair. ‘Completed task by flying my way up.’

  ‘So Avis’aan allows one to talk to birds?’

  ‘Avis’aan controls most flying creatures, remember?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Stop assuming I remember stuff like that. My memory is a mess’ said Vivian crossly.

  ‘What about me?’ said Acciper. ‘Remember much?’

  ‘Now that you mention it... I remember something. Something rather embarrassing.’

  ‘Mind telling?’

  ‘You... you were a wild lad, a head taller than me. You sneaked into the tower once, disguised as my chambermaid. I remember laughing about your horrible dress. You brought me fresh apples from the forest... and a flute to call every bird to me – not that I needed it.’ Vivian smiled, her eyes agleam with old memories.

  ‘Never needed it, no. Avis’aan your invention. You taught me that. Strange language of flying creatures. Good times,’ Acciper heaved a sigh. Vivian’s nostalgic eyes suddenly switched back to horror.

  ‘Never you mind all that! The Trial, Ace. They’re for Weavers and I am no Weaver, am I?’ Vivian cupped her cheeks. ‘My mind couldn’t turn off a candle if my life depended on it. I can’t control hawks, like you, and I’m not particularly athletic either. I could go the old-fashioned way and jump my way across but what if I fall?’

  ‘You fall, you die.’

  ‘Thank you captain obvious,’ said Vivian nippily. ‘Guess it all depends on that one item I bring. I need to make dead sure it evens the odds a bit.’

  ‘Well, actually…’ Acciper grabbed another apple and bit into it, discarding the previous apple core on top of the nightstand.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘No, no, I shouldn’t,’ said Acciper, biting into the apple for lack of something to do. ‘I mean, don’t want you to worry—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s… something else.’

  ‘Spit it out, Ace!’

  ‘First Trial would seem almost doable if it weren’t for the Alters.’

  ‘Alters, what Alters?’

  ‘Alters,’ repeated Acciper, chewing his apple a little too loudly. ‘Alter Egos. Your Alter Egos. Alternate versions of you from parallel realities.’

  Vivian snorted. The idea alone sounded ridiculous.

  ‘I thought you said it was a race.’

  Acciper took another bite from the apple. ‘And a race it is, but not against competitors. Against yourself. Copies of yourself from parallel dimensions.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’ Vivian rolled her eyes. ‘What would be the purpose of me facing another me?’

  ‘Four more yous,’ added Acciper. ‘They bring only the four most powerful dimensional yous into the Pentahedron, under a heightened point of convergence. More than five Vivians in the same universe could collapse reality.’

  ‘Look, this is insane—’

  ‘It’s tradition. Trial of Paths not about completing an airborne obstacle course. It’s about Convergence – unifying all paths by defeating your most powerful Alters. It’s about becoming the best of you, in this reality and the next. Only then will a true Weaver emerge.’

  Vivian removed her fist from her mouth. Whatever she expected the First Trial to be, it was nothing like this. For a while, she merely just stared into empty space, doing her best not to picture her death in a hundred horrible ways, while Acciper Sparrowhawk ate through her fruit bowl.

  ‘That makes it simple, doesn’t it?’ said Vivian after the longest silence. ‘I’m not going to compete in this madness.’

  ‘Course you’re not. Came all this way just to say you won’t have to show up. Daimey can’t force you into it. Trials are entirely voluntary. If I were you, I’d pull out and live a long and fulfilling life.’

  Acciper had said all this very quickly, before becoming somewhat interested in the leather straps of his boots. Something was wrong, thought Vivian. If she could simply walk out at any time, why did it take Acciper so long to come
see her?

  ‘Something tells me pulling out of the Trials is not an option,’ said Vivian tentatively, taking the polyhedral die out of her pocket and giving it a sharp look. ‘Ace?’

  ‘Course it is!’ said Acciper, with an enthusiasm very atypical to his general sullen and composed nature. ‘Just the beauty of it. No one can force you to throw your life away for Weavership.’

  ‘If I could walk out at any moment, Daimey wouldn’t have posted guards at my door, watching my every move,’ said Vivian, giving the plastic die a little squeeze. ‘She’s going to kill me anyway, isn’t she? Unwire me, or something. The Guild supports that anyway.’

  Acciper sunk his teeth into the juicy pulp of an apple, muffling his response.

  ‘Won’t do anything directly. Daimey cares too much about her image to make such mob-stirring decision. Daimey gives the order and she goes down in history as regent who executed her sister. Our regent is huntress. She sets her traps and waits for poor beast to fall to its doom. If I know Daimey, she would orchestrate everything in such way as to make it seem her sister longed for Weavership.’

  ‘And if I step out—’ Vivian whispered.

  ‘She would execute your human friends and make you watch,’ said Acciper quickly through a mouthful of apple.

  All of a sudden, Vivian’s worst fears got confirmed.

  ‘Overheard Daimey discussing the option. Daimey hopes that taking your friends will break you so bad you no longer care if you live or die. She really wants you in those Trials.’

  ‘When I arrived here our brother, Bastijaan was the ruler, and not Daimey. Why did Bastijaan approve an Unwiring? He seems so nice.’

  ‘Bastijaan made king interim because Daimey freaked out on a forced marriage and exiled herself to Kranija. While she away, heard the Guild acted very peculiarly… almost as if they’ve been carrying out instructions. When Daimey came back, she resumed power like nothing happened. Pretended to save you from the Guild, when all she wanted was to rid hersef of you—’

  ‘Why doesn’t Daimey just bloody kill me herself, then?’ said Vivian, through gritted teeth. ‘Why drag me into a horrible, humiliating death? Why not just let the Unwirer get on with it?’

  ‘Told you why. Publicly executing her own sister is terrible move for someone who wants to rule with the people behind her,’ said Acciper, replacing his nibbled apple core with a ripe plum this time. ‘Daimey is queen regent until Queen Mother returns, and when Alaria returns and finds her youngest daughter, Sunya, alive and well, she will pass royal privileges onto you, the youngest in line. Daimey wants to make sure that won’t happen by having you “tragically killed” in upcoming Weaver Trials. If Alaria hears Daimey had you executed, she won’t pass the Seat onto Daimey. But if Daimey makes it look like you died for Service and Nobility— ’

  ‘This is it, then,’ she said dejectedly, the Kiscube still enclosed in her little fist. ‘It’s the end of the line for me.’

  Vivian’s head was spinning. To have Daimey as sister was a thousand times worse than the prospect of living in a children shelter. She let a deep sign, her face sinking ever deeper into her tiny hands. If she refused to compete in the Trials, Kate and Lucian would meet their end. If she competed, she would meet hers.

  ‘Shouldn’t have told you,’ complained Acciper. ‘Really shouldn’t. Now you going all noble, just to save friends, instead of saving your own skin.’

  Vivian open her fist, her eyes affixed on the bit of plastic in her palm. The Kiscube die stuck out defiantly, its little coloured numbers covered in sweat.

  “It is your destiny to choose and with every choice, the worst of you must die to validate the better you. Great choices will have demonstrated morals, but bad choices will have taught you purpose.”

  Matijas’ parting words rung in her ear, echoing what she, herself was thinking. If she had to choose between her own cursed life and the much-better lives of her friends – them, who followed her into this mad and dangerous world just to bring her back – she would always choose her friends, a million times over. She was a disease to this world, anyway. There was no meaning to her life at all.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you anything,’ Acciper kept repeating under his breath, reading into Vivian’s silence and assuming the worst. ‘Going to lose your motivation—’

  ‘I’m going to win,’ she whispered, turning her twenty-four-sided die in her hand.

  ‘And didn’t need to know about Alters either. Anything happens to you—you say something?’

  ‘I said I’m going to win!’ said Vivian, a little louder, but cautious enough not to lure in the guards again. ‘Who knows what would happen to Kate and Lucian if I— if I lose. I cannot afford to lose.’

  Acciper looked impressed and sceptical at the same time.

  ‘Few heartbeats ago, you at the end of your line. What changed?’

  ‘I did,’ said Vivian, dropping the Kiscube, which rolled away at random, only to stop upon the orange number twenty-three. ‘I just sacked the mean commentator living in my head!’

  The Forests of Arc Luteus

  The following day, Vivian told Kate and Lucian everything she had learned about the First Trial from Acciper Sparrowhawk. As she had half-expected, the story was met with Kate covering her cheeks in horror and Lucian breaking both his quills without having written anything at all.

  ‘Well, that solves it, doesn’t it?’ said Kate after all the horrible details surrounding Daimey’s plot had sunk in. ‘You can’t have that double-eyelashed wench climb the throne. You need to stay alive until the Queen Mother, Alaria gets back. I guess it all comes down to that one item. That telekinetic knife-thing would make sense.’

  ‘Acciper pretty much told me it won’t be allowed,’ recalled Vivian. ‘I’m going to have to think of something else.’

  Kate brandished her burlesque dress. ‘Did that Artisan you’ve been living with teach you anything worth trying?’

  ‘Lady Saah taught me a lot of things. How to drive out pus. How to seamlessly stitch a wound. Everything about blood replenishment and tissue reconstruction, but nothing on surviving a deadly fall.’

  ‘Why did Matijas give you his tears?’ asked Lucian.

  ‘He said he wanted me to remember a bunch of things,’ said Vivian, fingering the little vial-on-a-chain around her neck.

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Something about making tough choices and closing that hole in the Pattern,’ mumbled Vivian, ‘but more specifically, Matijas wanted me to remember that “everything I can imagine is real”.’

  Lucian scratched his chin. ‘Well, every grown Weaver knows that, but you’re not there yet.’

  ‘Matijas was no longer himself. Spoke like a grown man,’ said Vivian, letting go of the vial at once. ‘All Black Flu Delirium, I suppose.’

  Kate pushed her forehead against the wall, her fingers in her hair. ‘Well, no use talking about the words of an addled kid. We need a way to keep Vivian alive!’

  ‘Hold on, I may have something,’ said Lucian. ‘Ace said you created the language of flying creatures, Avis’aan. Maybe all you need is to call something large to you… his hawk, for instance.’

  ‘His hawk is still healing, Lucian. And besides… the whole Avis’aan thing was a long time ago. I can’t call to me as much as a summer-fly. Believe me, I’ve tried.’

  ‘Maybe you can be allowed a grappling hook,’ Kate suggested.

  ‘You can’t grapple against moving slabs,’ said Lucian. ‘Even if she manages it, it won’t save her from falling.’

  ‘Not unless she can turn into a pillow,’ mumbled Kate, eyeing the great pile of scrolls Lucian had brought along with increased disappointment, ‘or a bouncing rubber ball.’

  ‘Well anything is possible with Weaving. The mind is the limit,’ said Lucian, detaching a particularly old and yellowed rotulus from the pile. ‘This scroll focuses on master
ing lengthy jumps. It doesn’t protect against falls.’

  ‘Viv fell through the Shroud and survived,’ said Kate, snatching the rotulus from Lucian’s hand and struggling to decipher the runic script. ‘ The— the art of— long— jumps .’

  ‘No use, Kate. That’s all very advanced Weaving.’

  ‘Don’t bring her down, Lucian,’ chirped Kate. ‘Vivian nearly put out that candle yesterday.’

  ‘If only she had more time,’ argued Lucian. ‘She can’t apply any of that by tomorrow.’

  Kate calmly turned her back to Lucian, fluttering the rotulus before Vivian’s eyes.

  ‘Don’t listen to this naysayer. We can do this, Viv. We can learn this.’

  ‘You’re wasting valuable time trying to teach her some jumping moves,’ Lucian insisted. ‘The ground won’t be any softer if she falls. We need to find something else.’

  But Vivian wasn’t listening. She seemed to have fallen in some form of stupor. Kate worryingly waved her hands before her.

  ‘Viv?’

  ‘Lucian is right,’ said Vivian, making Kate’s silver eyebrows to furrow. ‘The ground won’t be any softer. But I… I can be lighter .’

  Kate and Lucian exchanged worried looks. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  Vivian jumped up in excitement, a manic look in her eyes.

  ‘Viv?’

  ‘There is a way to lose weight!’ she blurted out ‘ All the weight, in fact.’

  ‘W-what?’

  ‘This is it, Kate! Whenever a patient would be too heavy to lift with a stretcher, the Artisan would ask me to brew a Featherweight Philtre – a weightlessness potion – to make the injured as light as air!’

  Unable to sit still anymore, Vivian began pacing the room. For the first time in many restings, she felt a warm feeling coursing through her body. This is it , she thought, the answer to all my problems .

  ‘Just— just think about it!’ Vivian continued excitedly. ‘Anyone drinking it could jump incredible distances! And instead of falling, one would simply float towards the ground. All I would need to worry are the four competing Alters.’