by H. A. Harvey
“I have to admit,” Ourei responded reluctantly, “It seems possible. Your brother is, as I said, hard to dislike, and I would imagine most who spend much time with him will come to believe in him and love him in their own way. Unfortunately, the martyr is among the most potent weapons of Hope.”
Karen frowned to herself. Did Nian know he may be trading his life for hers?
“That I have no way of knowing, but I do not think he would refuse.”
“I won’t let him.” Karen resolved quietly.
“You can’t oppose the will of an Incarnate, Karen.” Ourei was sympathetic, but her thoughts carried a tone of warning as well. “No mortal can.”
Karen’s eyes narrowed. Ourei was right. No mortal could oppose an Incarnate and hope to succeed, especially Hope herself. That wouldn’t stop her from trying. She thought for only a moment before a solution presented itself. Incarnates were not like the gods, free and masters of their domain. They served Creation, each in their own way, and balanced by the others to Its purpose. Each Incarnate was balanced by another that illuminated their own power while simultaneously acting as their counter. A martyr was Hope’s greatest weapon because it ignited hope in hundreds or thousands when Death ended Hope for one.
“I do not like what you are thinking.” Karen looked at Ourei, surprised as she had not been directing her thoughts. “I do not have to read your thoughts. Your plan is written on your face.”
“Kadia can’t trade what is taken from her reach.” Karen whispered aloud, drawing the attention of the other girls at the odd bit of conversation.
“Think of more than yourself.” Ourei’s thoughts were harsh and insistent. “You tell yourself this would be for Nian, but your brother would not ask this of you, and is likely to continue anyway but driven by vengeance instead of Hope. He will be alone and likely die anyway without Her help, only without purpose and unremembered. Meanwhile, how many of these girls will follow in your attempt?”
Karen didn’t answer and focused on thinking of how soft Ourei’s feathers were as she leaned her cheek against them. For the next few hours, she focused on memories. At first, it was simply to keep the Falon out of her head, but soon enough she found that she’d distracted herself with memories of Nian. She remembered her first outing with Rowan into the forest. Nian had dogged their heels right up to the edge of Old Kendrick’s field, where he stopped short and sat on the fence. He’d tried to convince her to go back and swim in the lake, but to no avail.
“Go on and get munched by bears.” He’d shouted after her. “I’m not gonna come too just ‘cause yer my sis.”
“Liar.” Karen laughed softly to herself.
“No.” Kelly whispered back, a little confused. “It’s really time to go. Are you ready?”
Karen looked around. Dusk had fallen and the wagon was stopped for the night. The other girls were watching her while Ourei sat where she had since entering the wagon. Her eyes were closed and a pleasant smile was on her lips. The Falon bobbed her head oddly.
“What is she doing?” Karen whispered.
“Um, thinking about music or something,” Bridgette replied softly, “To the guard.”
At the side of the wagon, Adrienne held two of Ourei’s feathers apart ever so slightly, peering through the breach as firelight danced across her eye. She turned to Kelly and nodded. Their little thief crept over to the cage door and, drawing a long brooch pin from her dress, bent the tip against the floorboards before reaching around the bars to begin jimmying the lock.
“Where did she get that?” Karen asked Bridgette softly.
“The princess, miss.” Bridgette answered. “She . . . ah, well she floated it over.”
Karen was prevented from any reply as a metallic click cut through the air. The sound seemed unbearably loud in the silent night and Karen could swear it echoed from the mountains around them. All six women crouched in utter stillness, barely daring to breathe as they waited and listened. Finally, after another nod from Adrienne, Kelly eased the door open and waved for the girls to hop down to freedom. Dawn was first at the door, assigned to help the others down quietly as she was the tallest and strongest of them.
“That was fast.” Dawn whispered with a grin as she slid her legs down to touch the ground.
“Bigger lock,” Kelly answered, “Heavier, but way easier.”
“Shh!” Adrienne hissed as she braced her hands on Dawn’s shoulders and the barmaid held her waist to lower her down.
The girls all followed suit until Kelly and Ourei were the only two left. Karen helped Dawn get her down and they all paused to look at Ourei. The Falon smiled and waved farewell. Then the girls turned and ran quietly into the darkness. Karen paused and looked over at the sleeping guards.
“Karen,” Ourei pleaded, “Take your freedom. Go with your friends. I only said it was a possibility. None know the plans of the Twelve.”
Karen crept toward the guard sleeping at his post on the stone next to the wagon. She drew noiselessly up beside him and reached for the dagger at his belt. As her fingers brushed the weapon’s handle, the man gave a sudden cry and swatted something on his arm. Karen jumped in surprise as the guard’s eyes met hers.
The next instant they both sprang to life as the guard grabbed her by the neck with one hand and she drew the dagger. The guard caught her wrist as she hauled the dagger toward her breast. They wrestled briefly but Karen, especially underfed and stiff from lack of motion, was no match for the man. He twisted the dagger from her grip and hurled her to the ground with the same motion. The knife’s blade left a deep gash across the back of her forearm on the way down. The guard cried out for his comrades as Karen scuttled backwards and she staggered to her feet.
Suddenly, Kelly exploded from the darkness and leapt onto the guard’s back. She curled her legs around his chest as she scratched and bit wildly at the man’s head and neck. Two more girls were running up through the shadows. The guard hurled Kelly over his shoulders to land at Karen’s feet and whirled in a panic to face the sounds coming up behind him. Adrienne and Bridgette each leapt to grasp the man by each arm.
A breath later, the guard jerked his right arm back to shake Bridgette off. The girl managed to keep her fingers wrapped behind his elbow, but lost her balance and stumbled forward. Karen saw Bridgette’s eyes go wide in pain as the other three guards reached the melee and caught hold of Karen and the other girls. Bridgette stumbled backward and crumpled onto her back, her fingers grasping at a spreading shadow just below the bosom of her dress. The guard, who Karen recognized now as Ceril, stood staring at the girl at his feet in shock as she gasped in vain attempts to catch her breath. The old slaver stomped and cursed, kicking dirt at the motionless guard. Karen strained against her guard’s grip trying to reach Bridgette’s side, but she was held fast as the young woman’s gasps slowed and stopped and her doe-brown eyes glazed vacant.
Ourei sat weeping with her head bowed as the three women were shackled and loaded back into the wagon. Karen felt eerily numb, and thought she must be asleep, having drifted off while they waited for night to fall. After all, she should have felt the wagon stop. She never felt them leave the road, let alone stop. It was a dream, or Ourei messing with her mind to convince her of the foolishness of her plan. She waited to wake up, watching Kelly curl into a ball against Ourei’s lap. Then she felt a sharp sting of pain as Adrienne wrapped a strip of torn dress around the cut on her arm and the numbness was gone. This was no dream, and it was real. Karen wilted against her friend’s shoulder and wept until she gasped for breath.
“She could not speak.” Ourei’s sorrowful thoughts reached Karen, “She was trying to tell you it is alright, not to be afraid.”
Karen stirred awake, realizing that she must have cried herself to sleep. She found herself on the floor of a cave or cavern of some sort. Around her, the world was utterly black. Slowly, she realized that she could see somethi
ng . . . strange. All around, strange lines of luminous material stretched in every direction into some indeterminable destination, yet seemed to cast no light upon the cavern itself. Some even seemed to drop below the floor of the cavern, and could still be seen extending into the distance. All of the lines were crisscrossing and winding around each other to form what was at once both a hopelessly chaotic tangle and an infinitely complex and beautiful pattern. She stepped cautiously towards a line, reaching out to touch it when a hand reached out and draped a limp section of the strange line across her hand. The strange hand was delicate and feminine. The fingers seemed overly long and each ended in a knife-like nail as long as half the finger upon which it rested.
As strange as the hand was, its odd gift was what seized Karen’s eye. The line was like a thread, but yet unlike any she had seen before. It was itself composed of what seemed an infinite number of smaller lines of light, each a different hue from the next. At times, they seemed a single thing, while at other points some frayed and trailed off to one side or the other. At the core of the line, the lesser lights tangled together much as their broader cousins did about the cavern. Only, within the line, the kinks and tangles of light blended to form images that seemed to pulse, move, and flow.
The more she focused upon the thread, the closer she seemed to be able to look. Her attention closed in upon a single image. She saw a woman a few years older than herself with doe-brown hair and eyes sitting up in a comfortable looking bed. She was drenched in sweat but glowed with joy, holding a small bundle in her arms. A man walked into the image and sat next to her on the bed, kissing her forehead gently. The man’s image was fuzzy and faded . . . no, fading. However, before he became completely invisible, she recognized his face, even with the addition of a scar and weathering.
“Nian?” Karen called in confusion.
“And Bridgette.” A sound, which couldn’t completely be called a voice, came from around her, as though the threads vibrated in harmony to form words. The sound was at once beautiful and terrible in its melody. It was like some grand concerto, but played in exacting perfection without sympathy or passion. “She was to be his reward and he hers, should he serve his purpose and endure. As was his wish, he was to have a quiet, but happy life, insulated from the dangers of his nature. Yet now, this has been cut from the pattern, and will never be. This was a beautiful weave, and took no small amount of effort to create, but will fall to Ruin now.”
“She didn’t have to come back for me. You didn’t have to make her.”
“You overestimate my station. The lives of even the simplest of mortals move and dance of their own will. It falls to me to anticipate, guide, and shepherd them to maintain the pattern. The rise or fall of mountains and the shift of seasons is fated, but to mortals I only lay paths before them. Guides can be set before them and their connections to others may push and pull them, but the choice still lies with them. Each choice, no matter how small, causes the pattern to shift innumerable times. Had the other two chosen to stop as well, Ourei’s message would not reach Noorwood, and thousands of threads would be cut short as a result.”
“You could have warned me.” Karen found herself sobbing as the thread draped over her hand faded and slowly began to vanish.
“Didn’t I? Did you think it was by whim of Luck that a girl with Knowledge and belief in Us, who also possessed Magic gifts and Knowledge crucial to the success of your escape was delivered to you at the moment that her influence would spare your friends? Didn’t she plead, as expected, that you not try to alter Nian’s fate, even foretelling what was likely to, and did, occur?”
Karen stared hard at the last vestiges of the fading strand, burning it into her memory. It wasn’t fair, wasn’t right to punish Bridgette for Karen’s choice. Fate could have just let Karen die in peace and it would have been so much simpler.
“You view your wants higher than the needs of all others? How quickly the pattern of Creation would tangle and end if it bent to the whim of anyone who thought their path was best.”
Karen found herself floating through the cavern, or perhaps the lines floated past her. It was impossible to tell. She came to a stop before one particular line that fed up dimly beneath her feet, until it crossed several other lines and veered sharply in a new direction, becoming thicker and brighter as other lines drew alongside and began to form their own minute tapestry within the surrounding pattern.
“If you look at one line without peering too closely, you will see that only beyond the point of the moment,” The slender hand returned to her vision, a razor-pointed nail lightly flicking a point on the line at Karen’s eye level. “Does the Life become a solid line, anchored to the tapestry. Before this point, do you see its nature?”
Karen followed the thread up with her eyes. As she focused on the upper reaches of the thread, she saw that it was not a single line, or was, but it did not travel in a single direction. Nearly every fraction of an inch, the thread seemed to go in two, three, or even a hundred different directions. Often one or two seemed brighter for a moment, then the thread would slide down and the entirety of the thread would shift. She followed the thread up further and it became so broad and complex, she lost track of all but the brightest path. The line flowed up and into a mass of colliding threads too numerous to count. Their colors coiled and twined about each other into a blur of such brilliance that it was difficult to see. Then she saw beyond that not more than one of each thousand lines that entered the tangle progressed beyond in any direction at all. What had a moment ago seemed so breathtakingly beautiful now held untold terror.
“What is that?” Karen whispered, her voice feeling small and muted.
The delicate and deadly hand made a sweeping motion and the lines vanished. Karen found herself alone in the void. She thought at first that darkness blinded her, but looking at her hands, she was visible as though she stood in noon light, but around and beneath her was nothing. Then she turned and a figure was there, the mistress of the sharp-nailed hand stood looking at her. The woman was tall and almost impossibly thin with flesh that glistened with such unfathomable darkness that the void about her seemed bright by comparison. Her features were in part that of a woman, but also held echoes of some elegant and lethal spider. Each shoulder impossibly spawned three shapely arms that seemed to turn upon the same point but without hindering the other. She was at once as beautiful and enthralling to see as the dancing tapestry had been, but also terrifying and cold in demeanor. Karen could not be sure if she wore a sheer gown and hood, or if the woman’s hair simply coiled about her like a garment. Whether locks of her head or garment, her attire was composed entirely of the glistening threads she had seen before.
“A reckoning.” The sound was still more music than voice, but now seamed to certainly come from the woman. “What may be is beyond your ken to know. Simple Knowledge of what might have been is terrible enough.”
“That was Nian you were showing me, wasn’t it?” Karen gasped in realization. “You’re taking him to that reckoning.”
“Now, that is his brightest path, but it was no design of mine. Until a moment ago, a thread was to divert him from his course after he confronted the task for which my sister chose him.”
Karen rubbed her thumb against the spot where the fading thread had lain across her fingers. “Bridgette. You killed her to punish me.”
“You still attribute this to petty vengeance. Every choice alters those that follow, for the Life that chose and for all those it touches, as well as those touched by them, and on until all of Creation walks a different path because a farmer somewhere lingers with his wife a moment before going to his field. To some, this brings sorrow, others gain joy, but the pattern is just the pattern. What befell the girl was not malicious, but necessary. She was set in place to provide the Hope of reward for your brother. However, his connection to you is all that pulls him toward his task, and was his link to her as well. Choices were m
ade, and I repaired the pattern. Because of those changes, some will not live that might have, others will be spared who were doomed.” The woman advanced and laid a trio of threads on the air between them as though upon a table. “With each change, I bend what I can, but some changes cannot be made without needing to remove threads. These three, I could not make a path for, and so were cut as well. One you knew, the others you never will.”
Karen blinked as her vision blurred and the woman’s silhouette became outlined against a creamy white background. Her head leaned against something soft. She reached up and wiped water from her eyes. The silhouette was no woman, but a slender spider resting upon a milky strip of soft flesh, a small red mark resting just beneath its perch. The spider loosed a streamer of silk from its abdomen and floated out into the darkness as Karen sat up quickly.
Adrienne sat in uncanny stillness. Her hand was still clasped over the bandage on Karen’s arm, and her head was bowed as though she had drifted to sleep. Yet her chest did not rise, and she did not stir when Karen shook her shoulder and called her name. Karen sank back onto her heels facing her friend. She gently lifted Adrienne’s hand from her bandage and laid it in the woman’s lap before calling for the guard. Already, the last few moments seemed to fade into a half-remembered dream. Yet one thing that ran in clear tones through Karen’s memory was the last statement of the Mistress of Webs.
One you knew, the others you never will.
At Ourei’s insistence, the slaver had the guards bury the two girls. Afterward, the guards took watch in pairs. Ceril was one of the first on watch, and spent most of the time standing near Bridgette’s mound, rubbing idly at his blood-stained hand. Karen sat at the very back of the wagon through the night, staring at the graves. When his partner went to rouse the other guards to relieve them, Ceril walked over to the cage, though he didn’t look into it.
