‘Thanks,’ said Vivian, wrapping the cloak around her shoulders and dashing towards the exit.
‘Vivian, wait!’ Ærinna called after her. ‘You can’t go in there yet. The arena is still being prepped for the Trial.’
‘But I’m late for the Trial,’ Vivian frowned.
’Late? There’s plenty of time till sunrise. Why don’t you wait along with the others?’ Ærinna smiled, indicating a reinforced door leading to an adjacent room.
Feeling rather confused, Vivian gathered the cloak more closely about her and stepped through the indicated door only to find a sea of familiar faces sitting around a table. The plump girl Ann’Ka was there, helping herself to a platter of cookies; the skinny boy, Eerik was deep in conversation with Tatee, whose tall forehead was wrapped in bandages; the ginger girl, Elisja was trying to lift little Yamme’s heavy-duty sword to everyone’s entertainment. When they saw Vivian come in, all five of them rushed forward to shake her hand and congratulate her on her last performance.
‘That was brilliant, Vivian!’ screamed Elisja. ‘Must be the youngest person ever to have done it!’
‘Umm—’
‘All that residual Kaalà made the arena very unstable,’ said Tatee, running one finger over his bandaged head. ‘The Guild had to stop the Trials.’
‘I don’t underst—’
‘Blimey Vivian, the Subexistence!’ chirped Eerik. ‘Wish I could’ve seen that. You are so, so lucky!’
Vivian crossed her arms. ‘Is anyone going to explain what you’re talking about?’
‘You mean you don’t know ?’ Yamme covered her mouth, her eyes searching for the others. ‘You guys, she doesn’t know. ’
‘Know what?’ Vivian asked, looking slightly vexed.
‘During the Second Trial – the one about the fears – reality, as we saw it, parted in two—‘ said Ann’Ka.
‘—and in those few moments you were struggling with the flames, everyone got a glimpse of the hidden dimension—’ Eerik stopped mid-sentence for the sake of creating a dramatic pause.
‘—Subexistence, Tylorria, the World Below!’ Elisja butted in, when Eerik’s dramatic pause proved too long to bear. ‘You’ve accessed a place very few Weavers can see!’
‘I still don’t understand,’ grumbled Vivian.
The little Yamme fastened her sword to her belt and said, ‘you’ve woven yourself into Subexistence, Vivian. Into the hidden, forbidden dimension of Tylorria ! You’ve been to the root of all possible paths, choices and outcomes.’
‘I—what?’
‘They weren’t wrong when they said you were a formidable Weaver of odds and circumstances,’ said Elisja excitedly. ‘The most a person has ever done was to See into the Subexistence, but you— I mean, you’ve actually been there.’
‘I hope you didn’t try to change anything,’ said Eerik, looking thoughtful. ‘That would be disastrous. No one is supposed to alter the past, not even Weavers—’
‘I thought it... it all happened... in my head,’ muttered Vivian.
‘In your head? You got all burned up, silly.’
‘Subexistence is a very real place, Vivian.’
‘Tatee speaks truth. We all saw it!’
Vivian felt the ground underneath her drop as her mind unwillingly wandered to the events of the Trial... A horrible feeling of dread swamped her over, as her mind recalled that fated day at the Pattern, when the Weavers had loudly called for her death.
And before she knew it, Irra Lazuli’s words flooded her mind like bile, like foaming poison, until something inside her mind clicked, and Vivian finally understood the curse she carried... why she had been locked in a tower... why the Guild had so desperately wanted her dead...
‘Vivian, are you alright?’
...the Chaos in the world; the hole in the Pattern; Matijas boyish face covered in painful hives; Darien and Aniya’s carbonized bodies sinking beneath the flames...
‘It’s probably just nerves. Give her some space.’
‘True, that. This is our last Trial. Exciting isn’t it?’
...symptoms, all of them symptoms of the same terrible sickness... but she couldn’t just roll with it; she wouldn’t...
‘Vivian, where are you going? The Trial’s about to start!’
She didn’t know nor cared who had asked the question. All she knew was that she needed to get far away from everyone; a world’s away...
‘Vivian, we’re supposed to enter the arena! All eight of us—’
She didn’t even realize two more had joined their numbers: Jaan, the oldest of their group, and Luus, the boy with ebony skin – who looked so remarkably like Matijas, the boy she had doomed, the boy she had condemned... But no, she needed to get away from them, all of them, for who knew what she might do next. Who knew whose life she’d ruin...
Someone’s hand had found hers, half-pulling, half-guiding Vivian along an underground corridor.
‘Those things you’re thinking... stop thinking them,’ said a voice, and Vivian looked up into the beautiful face of Lady Saah, wondering, questioning, what could have possibly brought her there.
‘You’ve taken responsibility—blame—for my son’s death,’ said the Artisan, her warm hand still leading her on, to where exactly, Vivian didn’t know. ‘And I did nothing to prevent that. I‘ve kept away from you – couldn’t bear look at you – though I knew better than to blame an innocent soul for something I’ve always known, something I’ve never accepted. I did know better than to shove you aside...’
And still Lady Saah was leading her down the purple-lit corridor, the warmth of her hand spreading through Vivian like the breath of life.
‘You were right, dear. You were right. My son was a Seer, and as every Seer, he had known for a very long time the day he would die,’ confessed the Artisan, leading her paces towards the ever-increasing roars of applause and the massive metal door dividing the stony foot of Mount Ra’nun from the enormity of the Pentahedron.
‘My death will be marked – Matijas said to me – by the arrival of a girl who walks all worlds. It is woven – he said – and to all eyes but mine, she will seem like a harbinger of doom, an unwirer of threads... when her purpose, her true purpose is to weave us back together... deliver us from odds-against and the most terrible outcomes. Her arrival will mean my death, Mother, but whatever the costs, don’t send her away but offer her a place in your heart,‘ spoke Lady Saah, and Vivian was suddenly reminded of that strange night at the Haijk when the Artisan had been so distrustful of Vivian; so distrustful, in fact, that Kaap had leapt between them, placing himself as shield...
‘And then Matijas told me—’ Lady Saah continued. ‘I won’t be there, Mother – I won’t be there to see it – but you will. It is woven. As easy as it may be to distrust her – hate her almost – you must arm her... give her the best weapons of our lore: the means to understand the world—’
Lady Saah gently ran a finger down Vivian’s nape, where the Taal’kai still burned a fierce black, two arrows facing each other at the tip.
‘—and the power to change it.’
‘The knife!’ said Vivian giving the Artisan’s hand a little squeeze. ‘He meant the knife.’
‘It’s up there,’ said Lady Saah encouragingly. ‘Along with whichever Truth my son wanted you to see, the night he gave you his tears.’
‘So it is true? His tears will show me the future?’
‘Yes and no, dear. Seer tears will encode symbols of the present and metaphors of the future’ said the Artisan. ‘Whatever Matijas wanted you to see, I cannot say. Only one thing I know for certain: everything happens for a reason.’
‘You reckon your son wanted me to... to be a Weaver?’
‘You are a name, dear... and a name can be a million things,’ said Lady Saah. ‘But if I know anything about my son is that he had lived
his whole life with the end in mind. Which end, I cannot say, but I place my trust in what he told me, as he breathed his last breaths. It was at his word that I closed down the Haijk and followed you to Lantana, even if that meant... reuniting with some of my old friends.’
Vivian wanted to ask what Matijas said on his deathbed that convinced the Artisan to help her. She felt, however, that it was not her place to ask such question. Lady Saah stirred her into the arena.
‘You got this far without help...’
‘I won’t be without help,’ she gave her Shadowhide cloak a friendly pat, and Kaap let out a soft rattling noise, similar to the purring of a cat.
‘Know what, dear? I reckon they were right about you. About being one, I mean.’
‘One what?’ Vivian frowned.
‘A Weaver of odds,’ said the Artisan. ‘Believe me or not, dear, you made the most unlikely thing imaginable, likely.’
‘What thing?’
‘You made me like you,’ said Lady Saah through watery eyes.
Vivian sketched a smile, which the Artisan returned with embarrassment. Their eyes locked, black against silver, and for a few moments the only sound present was the drumming in the arena, and the cheering of large crowds.
‘I’m sorry I ever doubted you,’ said the Artisan, swaying on the spot like a heavy pendulum, before finally pulling Vivian into a smothering hug. ‘Good luck, dear!’
As suddenly as it had come, the embrace came to an end, and a good thing it did too. It had cost Vivian every bit of strength to resist cowering behind the Artisan’s skirt like a little girl, and forget all about the dangerous Trial ahead.
‘See you soon,’ said Vivian quickly, trying to hide her eyes. ‘Ready, Kaap?’
The cloak gave her shoulder a little squeeze, and in the sound of hypnotic drums, chaotic cheering and deafening applause, Vivian stepped into the arena.
There were twice as many spectators than the last time, which made Vivian very self-aware of her gait and how ridiculous her arms must look, flipping about so aimlessly. The other seven participants had already assembled around a central dais, where Brother Haral had placed a small ornate box; a box that Vivian knew to contain the Tear of the Goddess, the reality-changing crystal used in every Trial.
‘Gather round, gather round,’ said Brother Haral, and the eight participants formed a circle around the central dais and the beautifully-sculpted, unopen box. As soon as they were in position, the Weaver swept his orange robes aside and detached an animal horn from his belt, placing it to his moustached lips.
‘In the Trial of Paths, you have seen them use strength and ingenuity, as they sent forth the best of themselves.’
The audience, larger than Vivian had ever seen it, roared with delight, and the colossal arena was flooded by an ear-splitting buzz. Brother Haral raised a hand, and the buzzing was brought to a dim.
‘In the Trial of Fears, you have witnessed them battle themselves, as they faced against their darkest fears and most dreadful demons.’
Once more the crowds became wild, and this time Brother Haral’s amplified voice barely managed to quiet the masses.
‘Yes, well done participants, well done participants. There is, however, one aspect of you left untested. Before you earn the right to study Weaving, you must demonstrate the very things that set Weavers apart: focus, discipline, and unparalleled willpower . To demonstrate all three... and prove yourselves worthy of our School of Thought—‘
His long-sleeved arms were raised into the air in a V-shape, indicating the floating citadel, whose rocky underside was suspended in mid-air a five hundred feet directly above the arena.
‘—you first need to need to get there !’
The Weaver cowered over the ornate box and flung its lid open, revealing a tiny, light-giving crystal shaped like a tear. The audience let out a sonorous “Ooooh!” at the sight of the massive staircase that had materialized at the heart of the arena, and Vivian very nearly snapped her neck trying to behold it.
The staircase spiralled from the arena’s hub all the way to the floating citadel in the sky, but something about it gave Vivian the jitters. Its large, monolithic steps would have looked very much safe to climb, if the staircase had been, to any extent, solid.
If either smoke or cloud had been made into steps, it would have looked sturdier than whatever gust of wind this staircase was made of. A lonely crow had demonstratively flown right through the top of its steps without as much as a “caw-caw” on its part.
‘ Shaa’janta ,’ said Brother Haral into his improvised megaphone. ’More popularly known as ghostmatter. Now, for all of you estrange with the material, know this: ghostmatter solidifies only in the presence of Kaalà, which makes your Trial of Wills rather straightforward—’
Vivian glimpsed at the other participants and saw her own fear reflected back from seven circumferential directions.
Brother Haral licked his walrus moustache clean. ‘Whoever among you reaches the top of the School of Thought before high noon will have earned their right to study there. Two things will get you disqualified: one – sabotaging one another – and two – reaching the top of that staircase without making use of it. Any questions?’
The participants unanimously shook their heads. Brother Haral placed the animal horn to his mouth and worded a hearty, ‘BEGIN!’
It was bedlam. The first few minutes – or as the Alarians called them, longbeats – the participants had pointlessly attempted to climb atop a slab of stone with the consistency of runny porridge. Regardless how much Vivian concentrated on making the slab solid, her feet kept punching through its ghostly, translucent shape, to no visible avail.
Forty-five longbeats into the Trial, the highest anyone had got was Step No.2, which drove little Yamme so excited, she immediately lost all focus and needed to start from the bottom.
‘I don’t know what I did!’ Yamme repeated every time someone asked. ‘Whatever it was, it’s no longer working. Can’t do it anymore! Just can’t!’
And she resumed to trying to rematerialize the first step, only to fail time and again, like the rest of the others.
The plump girl, Ann’Ka, appeared to have stopped trying to physically climb the staircase, and was sitting in the sand, with her eyes closed and her legs bent awkwardly under her, meditating. This behaviour convinced Luus and Eerik to do the same, each of them now focusing on a different slab of ghostmatter.
In the meantime, Vivian had tried every form of Weaving imaginable, but no matter how many times she addressed the common denominator, “ Solid ”, the ghostly steps refused to solidify.
‘Kaap can tunnel through everything. Kaap can take Vivian to top,’ the Hole-in-the-Wall kept repeating inside her mind. ‘Though Vivian lose Trial, for Vivian never activated Shaa’janta—’
‘For a moment there, Yamme has done it, so at least we know it’s possible,’ went on Vivian’s conversation in her head. ‘Kaap, couldn’t you quickly look into Yamme’s head? See what she did—’
‘Kaap already looked. Yamme do nothing different than Vivian or rest.’
‘Kaap, maybe you can wrap yourself around the steps—’
‘If Kaap turn himself into staircase, Vivian not use ghosty-staircase but Kaap’s body instead. Vivian disqualified.’
‘Urgh, I don’t understand!’ she punched herself in the forehead. ‘Why did it work for Yamme? What did she do ?’
‘Yamme do no different than rest,’ Kaap’s small voice repeated in her mind. ‘Yamme want step solid and solid it turned.’
‘Then why didn’t it work for me? Brother Haral said we are to use the staircase, but he didn’t mention how to use it. How does this ghostmatter-thing work anyway?’
‘Kaap not understand how ghosty-matter work, but Kaap find it difficult to tunnel through it. Kaap always borrow Kaalà f
rom reality to change reality but ghosty-matter no Kaalà. Ghosty-matter just empty vessel where no energy live.’
Vivian sat on the warm sand, her eyes tracing the rising contours of Ikko and Jaari. ‘It’s nearly noon, Kaap. Won’t be long until high noon.’
And then it happened again. For the briefest moments, the girl with ginger curls, Elisja, managed to make her first step solid, but when she tried to repeat the process for the second step, both steps had reverted back to ghostmatter.
Following Elisja’s success, the other participants had gathered around her, giving all their attention to how she had done it, and as they did so, Vivian noticed one of the slabs kept flickering on and off between phases, its contour neither translucent nor solid.
And the solution hit Vivian so suddenly, so obviously, she spontaneously jumped to her feet. ‘I’ve got it! I know how it works!’
The oldest of them, Jaan, tossed her a sceptical look. ‘How?’
With seven pairs of eyes pointed at her, Vivian stepped into the middle of the group, her eyes agleam with hope.
‘Ghostmatter is like an empty container, right? It has no energy of its own, so it needs other forms of energy to gain substance. Thought energy – Kaalà – and plenty of it, too!’ she told them, to a general uproar.
‘Think we don’t know that?’
‘Duh! Tried it, failed it—’
‘It doesn’t work!’
Vivian patiently waited for them to finish before she added, ‘it does work as long as we focus on the same thing, all of us, together!’
‘What is she saying?’ Tatee nudged Yamme, who shrugged.
‘I’m saying… if any of us wants to get up there, we need to work together. “ Focus, discipline, and unparalleled willpower ”,’ Vivian recited. ‘Not as individuals, but as a group. Don’t you see? Brother Haral has hinted us the solution: it is forbidden to “ sabotage one another ”. Why would it be forbidden? Because true Weavers don’t sabotage another’s work. Their efforts are always combined . The first two Trials were individual tests, so why would they cram us together this time around? Because none of us has “unparalleled willpower”. Not on our own, at least.’
Vivian Amberville - The Weaver of Odds Page 37
