Crossroads of Canopy

by Thoraiya Dyer

  “We’re already wet,” Unar told her, and would have stepped forward, but Frog grabbed her by the seat of her pants and yanked back.

  “Do not go into the light,” she hissed.

  “Why not?”

  Frog stripped a piece of bark from the side of the road and tossed it contemptuously towards the lantern. Immediately, lightning crackled out of the lantern and set the bark on fire. It fell, smouldering, for a few body lengths before the rain quenched it.

  “The lanterns keep the demons out,” Kirrik said, smiling at Unar, and lowered the black bowl over the top of the golden cone like a slave snuffing a tallow candle. The blue-white light vanished. Unar could still see in the light from the other three.

  “Go,” Frog said, her fist now striking Unar in the lower back, and Unar walked forward until she stood in front of Kirrik, the black bowl between them, the rain diverted by the tilted, stretched leather making a river to one side of them. Unar was much shorter than Kirrik and didn’t like having to look up at her.

  “You people are my sister’s protectors?” she asked. “Her adopted family? She owes her life to you?” Her questions were ignored.

  “If you come into the Master’s domain, you will be called Nameless the Outer, until the Master chooses to give you a name. You will call me Core, or Core Kirrik.”

  Unar grimaced. Even the Servants hadn’t taken away her name. But Frog had said the test would be of her ability to serve. She mustn’t make a mistake simply because she was tired.

  “Yes, Core Kirrik,” she said, more humbly than she’d ever been able to say Servant Eilif’s name. Her eyes went to the firelight in the little windows. She imagined she could feel the warmth already. The Master would see them right away, Kirrik had said. Unar must maintain her humility until that meeting was over.

  “Come past me, Frog the Outer,” Kirrik said, and Frog led Unar until they both stood well behind the taller woman. Kirrik lifted the black bowl. The deadly ring of blue-white sprang up again across the road. Kirrik followed Frog and Unar towards the doorway of the dovecote. Frog opened the door. Kirrik remained silent until Unar tried to pass through the doorway.

  “You will stay outside with me tonight, Nameless the Outer. We stand watch until dawn. It is Frog the Outer, alone, that the Master wishes to see.”

  Unar looked at her. Was this a test, too? She looked at the building. It had no eaves. Five days in the downpour, and she was still not to be permitted shelter.

  “Yes, Core Kirrik,” she said. “Can I have one of those?”

  “You are already wet, as you said. What use would an umbrella be?”

  Unar considered growing herself a shelter out of bracket fungus.

  “Give the bone flute to Frog the Outer,” Kirrik said, as if she’d guessed Unar’s thoughts. “You will not use magic here without the Master’s permission.”

  Unar hesitated. Frog grimaced. Kirrik’s eyes narrowed, and Unar finally bowed her head, holding the ear bone out to Frog.

  “Yes, Core Kirrik.”

  She could always sing, if she had to. Nobody would take her magic away from her again.

  Frog pulled the door of the dovecote closed behind her.

  FORTY-THREE

  UNAR’S STOMACH growled.

  “Will we be eating, while we’re on watch?” she asked.

  Kirrik, hands clasped over the umbrella’s handle, jerked her head in the negative.

  “The Master is fasting. It helps him to see the future more clearly. While he fasts, so do we.”

  “And what is the Master looking for in the future? What is it that you do? What do you hope to achieve?”

  No reply. Unar pressed on.

  “Core Kirrik, you said I woke you from a future-searching. In Canopy, only the goddess of wind and leaves can speak prophecies that come true.” Although unspoken prophecies can come true, too. “Will I be taught to see the future?” She was aware she sounded too greedy, too eager. But how much faster would she find Audblayin if she could see into the future? Pretending nonchalance, she murmured, “I don’t need to see it, anyway.”

  But Kirrik heard her.

  “No? You are so certain of your destiny? And what is that, then? Tell me.”

  Unar floundered for a moment. The test is of your ability to serve, Frog had said. Should she say that her destiny was to serve the mysterious Master? Unar needed to learn everything that these Understorian sorcerers and sorceresses could teach her, the better to equip her to leave them behind. But what if they caught her lying? They wouldn’t teach her anything.

  “There are five paths leading to this house, Core Kirrik,” she said. “Should I watch the other side, so we can see in both directions?”

  Kirrik’s smile only deepened at the change of subject.

  “In the rain, vision is not our most valuable sense. Did you not serve Audblayin? Can you not discern the approach of living things without using your eyes?”

  “I could. When I was in Canopy. I could try, here, but you said I wasn’t to use magic without the Master’s permission.”

  Kirrik laughed softly. There was magic in her laugh, darker and different from the power in Oos’s voice, or Unar’s.

  “If you cannot use your ears without opening your mouth,” she said, “I will watch for both of us until you learn.”

  Unar’s whole body ached. She was famished. Core Kirrik stood and stared into the rain like the legs hidden beneath her black skirts were made of wood. Unar looked for a flat part of the branch to sit on.

  “You will stand and watch,” Core Kirrik said.

  Unar had never wanted to disobey an order more. Fragments of speech beat about her exhausted brain. The Master will decide what you are to be taught. You are so certain of your destiny? And what is that, then? The place where we meet. Where the Master rules. What is it that you do?

  This is anyone’s home who would fight for justice.

  It dawned on Unar that the justice Frog referred to was the freedom for Understorians, perhaps even Floorians, to walk in direct sunlight. Could that be part of Unar’s destiny, something she could be truthful about? Was it something that she should help fight for? It was the logical extension of her abhorrence of how slaves were treated. If there were no slaves, though, who would do the work? The poor would. Stricken and out-of-nichers. Canopians, like her own mother and father.

  Unar thought, Let them do the work. I don’t care about Understorians, Floorians, or Canopians. I care about my sister and about finding Audblayin, proving that the Servants were wrong about me. Proving that Aoun was wrong.

  He had said, You’ve breached wards that have been impenetrable for four hundred years, Unar. I can’t imagine a true disciple of the Garden would ever do such a thing. And also: Only banishment to Understorey could make you safe.

  How could he have ever thought she would be a danger to him? No matter how he always sided with the Servants against her, she could never do anything to hurt him. Not much, anyway.

  Only another adept could do this to you. Break your bonds this way. Who was it? I’ll kill them.

  Unar sighed.

  I’ll break your bonds, Aoun.

  She resisted the urge to sit.

  “Very well. I can stand and watch. What exactly are we watching for, if the lamps keep demons out?” Even as she asked, Unar realised she knew the answer to her own question. She had seen Bernreb, Esse, and Marram use ropes and gliders to overcome all sorts of obstacles.

  Not in the rain, though. They didn’t fight in the monsoon. The five-month monsoon that would not end for another two months, unless something drastic happened to Ehkis, the rain goddess.

  “If you had met the Bringer of Rain’s Bodyguard,” Unar said, “you wouldn’t be worried about the monsoon ending early.”

  “Oh,” Kirrik said scornfully, “is he fearsome, indeed? Is he a ruthless killer? Does he stay by her side every moment? Is that how you were able to meet him, in a great meeting, a council of deities?”

  “No,”
Unar admitted. “Our deities don’t meet. They stay in their own niches. Edax was … He is … His goddess sleeps at the bottom of a deep pool. Anyone would find it boring, to stay by the side of a sleeping goddess at the bottom of a pool. He could, if she commanded it. He showed me. It’s not by the application of magic, but by a permanent change to his body. He can stay down for days without air if he has to. Like the goddess. But nobody else can, so why bother? She’s safe there.”

  “Except from the treachery of her adepts. Everyone knows that Canopians are deceitful. Do not think you will get close to the Master until you have been deemed trustworthy.”

  “I’m not treacherous! And the goddess Ehkis doesn’t need to fear the treachery of her adepts. She’s well loved. Rain makes life.”

  “Bria’s Breath.” It had the sound of a curse, and the air around Kirrik seemed to ripple; the closest of the lamps momentarily dimmed. “Eggs and semen make life, girl. What does your fool mistress teach you? Can you not think of anything the goddess Ehkis has to fear?”

  “You don’t mean to suggest that Ehkis fears Audblayin,” Unar blurted, but abruptly she realised something else: Kirrik appeared to be in a position of seniority over her, but here she was, outside in the rain, right beside Unar, the lowest of the low. “What did you do to offend the Master, Core Kirrik? What fool question did you fail to answer?”

  At last, Kirrik took her eyes from the darkness beyond the death-lamps.

  “I am here because my future-searching showed that I must be here. Something is coming. Would you meet it alone, Nameless the Outer?”

  Unar felt a chill.

  “What is it?”

  “Something that threatens the Master’s plans.”

  “And what are the Master’s plans?”

  “How do you find the barrier from this side, girl?”

  It seemed a non sequitur; Unar struggled to make the connection. Did the Master mean to destroy the barrier? That was impossible. And why? There was a way through. Otherwise Hasbabsah couldn’t have become a slave.

  “How do I find the barrier? I haven’t seen it. I haven’t touched it since I fell.”

  But I’m sure it has a weakness. Somewhere. The window of the Odelland palace opened for me, and so did the wards of the Garden.

  “And if you desired to feel the sun, what then? If you needed fresh fruits to cure a child’s illness? What if you had fallen and your family remained above, and they were forced to watch while demons ate the flesh off your bones?”

  “That would be my misfortune.” If I hadn’t been born gifted. “The barrier is to keep demons out of Canopy. Without it, chimeras would grow fat, and it would be the end of us all. The gods use more than half their strength maintaining it. Each one spends power on the section that protects their niche.” That was what Unar knew for sure. What came next was guessing. Thinking aloud. “They can’t fashion one that lets Understorians in but keeps demons out. Any large, warm body—”

  “Lies. Chimeras live in Understorey, and yet we thrive. And Canopians pass through the barrier. Why them and not us?”

  “Canopians are born under the gods’ protection. It’s your misfortune, as I said.”

  “Why can they not protect everyone? Are they so weak?”

  “No! That is, I don’t know—”

  “One Forest,” Kirrik said. “One people. That is what the Master seeks in the future. That is what we hope to achieve. We believe the gods can and should protect everyone. And if they cannot, they are not true gods, and should be killed to allow the Old Gods to return.”

  The Old Gods cared for everyone, Hasbabsah had said. Now Kirrik seemed to be saying the same thing. Yet Unar had seen a neck bone in the bedchamber of a princess, and an ear bone in Frog’s custody. And those had not been small bones. They had not been human bones, and in her experience it was rare enough for humans to care about other humans.

  From which distant country would the Old Gods come, if their souls were to be reincarnated in the bodies of giants? And why did the Canopian gods have to die for it to happen?

  FORTY-FOUR

  THE THREAT predicted by the future-searching did not materialise; nothing menaced them in the night.

  By morning, Unar had stopped turning Kirrik’s One Forest speech over in her mind. She was so tired she could barely think or speak. Imagining Frog, snug inside the dovecote but no doubt restless with anxiety that Unar would fail the test, was all that kept Unar’s eyes from closing and her cheek from sinking to the branch.

  The notion that she still owned the energy to somehow get her breeches down and urinate off the edge also faded. She’d let loose, uncaring, and the seat of her pants had felt warm for a moment. Eventually, the relentless monsoon had washed the warmth away.

  Now songbirds flew down from the bright treetops, entering into the tiny windows of the dovecote. The death-lamps of Airak burned steadily, neither flickering nor waning, though they seemed dimmer as cloud-scattered daylight infiltrated as far as it ever would in Understorey, where the sun never warmed anyone.

  Contrary to what Kirrik had said about fasting, cooking smells and men’s voices came from the closed door of the dovecote. More tiny birds fluttered down, wet and bedraggled, to enter the windows, and some of them left, again, flying up towards the light.

  At last, the heavy door swung back and Frog’s big eyes peered out at Unar and Kirrik.

  “The Master says you may enter and break your fast. But be quiet. ’E is upstairs. Sleepin’.”

  Core Kirrik passed the umbrella to Frog and swept immediately past Unar, through the open door. It took Unar’s fogged mind a few more moments to absorb what was happening. She still didn’t move until Frog took her hand and tugged.

  “This way.”

  “I did what she told me,” Unar said, too loudly, but the world was weird and tilting. “I passed the test.”

  “That was not the test,” Frog said. Unar felt as though she’d been flattened by a broken bough. That was terrible news. And the world was tilting even more. Unar lost her balance. Stumbled through the doorway. Her hands and knees found polished floor in place of rough, wet bark.

  She had tumbled into a cloakroom. Lit by an Airak-lamp of the nondeadly variety. Unar slowly raised her head to see not only heavy fur cowls and rows of strange boots with separated toes, but unfamiliar weapons with spikes and multiple curving blades.

  “Let me help you up, Outer,” said a voice like a belling ox, and Unar realised that one of those pairs of boots was occupied. A man’s broad black hand was extended towards her.

  Somebody else from Canopy. Somebody else who has fallen.

  “Warmed One,” Unar gasped, grasping the hand, and as it drew her to her feet, she absorbed the rich layers of embroidered silk that covered the man from neck to knees, the way his priceless outer coat was cut off at the elbows to leave his forearms bare, and the scar-like seams where his climbing spines were hidden.

  “My One Forest name is Sikakis,” he said. There was grey in his black hair and beard, but his grip was strong and his dark eyes unwavering. “I was Acis, once, a prince of Airakland, but those days are far behind me.”

  “You will leave Core Sikakis alone,” Kirrik snapped, unseen, from beyond the cloakroom. “He has no time for you, Nameless. Come here!”

  Unar went, stumbling a little. The floor was uneven where the five branches beneath joined one another. Kirrik waited in a room with a round table and sixteen chairs around it, none of them occupied. In the centre of the table, the blue-white light of another lantern overpowered the yellow light from a hearth fire on the right-hand side. To the left-hand side, a writing desk was covered in scrawled-on parchments and the droppings of tiny birds, who sat on rows of perches pecking grain from wooden feeders. Shelves on every wall held leather-bound books, stacks or rolls of skins and paper, and row upon row of stoppered ink bottles and feather quills.

  “Is this a library?” Unar asked, bewildered. “A school?” She had expected more weapons. Space for
fighting men to train. Cooks to feed the warriors and seamstresses to repair their armour. From the outside, it was a large building.

  She had expected something similar to, but on a grander scale than, the three hunters’ abode. Nets, traps, and stored supplies. Was this how the Master and his servants would seek justice? How they would kill the new gods and bring back the old ones? With only one old prince and his black-skirted hag, one clever child and an army of pink parrots and blue wrens to do his bidding? No wonder he had sent Frog to fetch a fallen Gardener.

  And no matter how she thought on it, Unar couldn’t see a way for the Master to kill deities who were almost instantly reincarnated. Kill them all at once, and the Old Gods will return, Hasbabsah had said, but gods didn’t stay dead. Everyone knew that.

  The Master was mad. But even madmen had tricks that could be learned.

  “You are wetting the carpet, Nameless. Stay away from the writings. Stand by the fire.”

  Unar obeyed, still uncoordinated and aching. Three pale Understorian men—so there are a few more fighters—came from beyond the bird room, glancing at Unar and dismissing her before saluting Kirrik with their fists to the left side of their chests.

  “We will not fail, Core Kirrik,” one of them said.

  “So Core Sikakis has already assured me,” Kirrik said drily. “Follow him, now. The Old Gods’ blessings go with you.”

  “Shall I quench the lamp for them, Core Kirrik?” Frog asked. Kirrik lifted a finger in assent, and Frog hurried after the men.

  Kirrik stared at Unar for what seemed like a long time.

  “Well. I suppose I must feed you if the Master’s orders are that you are to be fed. Clearly you are in no condition to feed yourself. Everyone knows Canopians are weak, but I hadn’t expected this.”