Crossroads of Canopy

by Thoraiya Dyer

  The rain stopped. There could have been no surer sign that the rain goddess had endured a terrible hurt. Edax was not resting. He was not unconscious.

  “You killed him,” Kirrik cried, and whirled to strike Frog, hard, across the face.

  “Not I, Core Kirrik,” Frog protested, sprawled on the path, nursing her cheek. “There was a surge from the prisoner, I lost control for a moment, and ’e—”

  Kirrik struck Aforis, too, though he was not thrown to the ground by the force of it. Nor did he grin at her, or show any sign of triumph. His shoulders heaved, but Unar thought he was crying, not laughing.

  She might have been crying, too. Was it tears, or rain? No, the rain was stopped. It stopped. Is the goddess dead, too? Is that how closely they are connected? Her face felt hot, but maybe that was the steam, the heat from the human cauldron.

  Cut your own throat with those spines. Before they heal. A fit shell for her black soul.

  At last, she admitted to herself what Edax had been trying to tell her. Kirrik would never reveal how to get through the barrier or how to keep her power to herself. The spines she had given Unar were intended for her own use; Unar was her backup body, spare parts, a vessel to hold her soul when her present body became too old or injured.

  Frog’s multiple warnings about attacking Kirrik flashed through her mind. You want to kill ’er, but you would not like what would happen if you tried. Unar put her hand into her pocket and squeezed the tooth through the chimera-cloth blindfold. Now was the time. Unar could break every bone in Kirrik’s body. Destroy her. Rend that body beyond healing.

  But Kirrik would take my body. Push my soul into the ether. Wear my face and lull my friends into lowering their defences. It’s no use. I stole this bone-breaking weapon for nothing.

  “What is your plan, now, Core Kirrik?” Sikakis asked in a low, troubled voice.

  “My plan, Core Sikakis? My plan?”

  “The monsoon is over.” Sikakis gestured in the direction of the empty sky. “You’ve weakened the rain goddess. Your informers spoke true. You could take advantage of this. No Canopian army will be prepared for an assault more than a month early. They’ll be dozing in their barracks. Of course, we’re also unprepared. It will take time to train the men you have to work in units, to gather and secrete in strategic places the supplies they’ll need to sustain repeated assaults. And we don’t have the Talon.”

  Kirrik stared at him, mouth open and chest heaving, the umbrella cast aside, her fingers crooking like claws and her spines extended from their sheathes, quivering.

  “We still have these two,” Frog pointed out shakily. “The man got the better of me, but ’e is a sharper weapon than any old bone, if Kirrik wields ’im. If the rain goddess is injured, let us go and capture ’er right now!”

  “We should wait,” Sikakis said. “Consolidate our new gains. Explore our—”

  “I am tired of waiting,” Kirrik screamed suddenly. She seized Unar, turning her, kicking her in the back of her knees to force her down. “Frog, where is the blindfold?”

  Frog’s tiny hands dipped into the pocket in Unar’s skirts. They pulled out the chimera-skin cloth and unwrapped, not the powerful tooth of the Old God that Unar had stashed there, but the useless amulet that Marram had been wearing when he arrived at the dovecote.

  “Did you think I did not see you take it?” Frog whispered. “I took it back. So dank, Unar.”

  “Give it to me!” Kirrik snatched the blindfold from Frog, letting the amulet fall; it snagged by its cord on the rough bark of the branch. As soon as the chimera cloth tightened over Unar’s eyes, the residue of the magic that had killed Edax became invisible to her. Kirrik’s spittle flecked her ear. “Play as you have never played before, tool.”

  Unar had not jumped to her death. She had no choice but to play. Whatever it was that took shape in Kirrik’s hands, she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t sense it. Only feel the powerful flicker of her weightless mote-self, between hot and cold, up and down, swiftly accelerating heartbeat and silence. Perhaps Kirrik was killing everyone around her. Perhaps she was killing no one.

  Perhaps she was waking all the warriors in her house, preparing for war.

  FIFTY

  EACH OF Unar’s laboured breaths felt as if it might be her last.

  As the vestiges of her strength ebbed, Unar’s weightless motes coalesced into a body again. She lay facedown on the wide branch, her left hand embracing the bark, her right hand holding the ear bone to her lips. Kirrik’s bare foot, with all her weight behind it, pressed between Unar’s shoulder blades. Her skirts slid through Unar’s hair and over her shoulders.

  “More,” someone exhorted. “More!”

  She is killing me. This is what it is like to be used up. To be drained to death.

  Another heave of her chest. Another rush of power through the bone flute and Unar’s body flying apart. Sounds of something enormous breaking. The whole world split in two by lightning and water. But neither were Unar’s domain. It was a monster’s spine that was breaking. Or maybe Unar’s own spine, ground beneath Kirrik’s hate.

  She can’t kill me. She needs my body. Edax said so.

  The forest roared as though a thunderhead had turned to stone and fallen on it.

  “She did it.” Frog’s small, frightened voice. “It is finished. Core Kirrik, she is finished. Please, let ’er go.”

  Frog loves me.

  Weight lifted. Small hands dragged at the blindfold. Unar had no energy for opening her eyes. Her body felt like it would stay limp, forever. She didn’t want to know what she had done.

  “Let her go.” Kirrik’s voice was mocking. “Very well. Rest here awhile, Nameless.” No more pretence about calling Unar by her name. “Recover your strength. And have no fear for Audblayin, I will fetch her for you. You want to know where she is? Not long before you came to us, a slave and her child were sent from the Garden to the House of Epatut. That child is your reincarnated goddess. If only you poor fools had known.”

  Impossible. Unar wheezed. She hadn’t the strength to lift her head.. Audblayin is not a goddess. Not this time. “Audblayin is young. Too young for you to find.”

  He is a boy child. He must be a boy child, if I am to guard him. That’s why I was given the gift. That’s why Audblayin called to me, waking my powers in my parents’ home, before I knelt beneath the night-yew.

  “Birth screams hold a powerful magic.” The mocking voice floated closer. “I heard them, in my future-searching, and I saw the mother’s face.”

  No. It is what I am for.

  “I would have known,” Unar mumbled into the bark. “I stood by the cradle of that slave child. Ylly. Baby Ylly. I would have felt the soul inside her!”

  It’s what I was born to do.

  “Would you? Your bones were sleeping. You were untrained in song-magic. I felt the power in the baby’s cries, but you who are deaf search only with your eyes.”

  It’s why I killed Edax.

  “Isin. Is it true? It can’t be true. You would have told me.”

  Frog’s lips, kissing her cheek. Kissing Unar good-bye. Was she dying, after all? Would Aforis make a better tool for Kirrik to use? A better body for the Master to steal?

  “You speak to the dead.” Frog sighed. “Well, the dead will answer you, this one time. It is true, Unar. Audblayin sleeps in the House of Epatut, child of a slave. Twice, our people have tried to take ’er, tossin’ ’er out a window, and twice she has floated out of our reach.”

  “Someone,” Kirrik said, sounding aggrieved, “made a powerful gift to Odel in that slave child’s name. But it does not matter. We will bring her below. I will carry her in my own arms. This road now leads across all of Canopy. Audblayinland waits at the far end, and Ehkisland lies along the way.”

  “The rain goddess first,” Sikakis suggested.

  “Yes. Lest she recover quickly enough to fend us off. Then, we will take the Waker of Senses, while her soldiers scramble and her adepts do not know
her. Frog, take the man-tool and wake every warrior who can be instantly useful to us. If you can manage that much without losing control of him.”

  “Yes, Core Kirrik.”

  “Fetch the goddess we already have, Sikakis. You are strong enough to carry her. She will get us through. No need to wake her.”

  “Yes, Core Kirrik.”

  “And you, Warmed One.” Kirrik’s breath was suddenly hot in Unar’s ear. She pulled the ear bone out of Unar’s grip. “If I thought I could get one more scrap of magic out of you without killing you, I would take you along. As it is, as I said, you must wait for me here. Resting. Recovering. Be mindful of the lanterns. Forgive me if I do not leave you the means to quench them.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  UNAR WISHED that Kirrik had killed her.

  I was wrong about everything.

  Edax died for nothing.

  Audblayin’s Bodyguard will be a man, again, since she is born a woman. Not me.

  Kirrik recognised Audblayin, baby Ylly, before I did.

  I have no destiny.

  Never before had she been able to see the selfishness of her own actions so clearly. She didn’t always behave in the way that the gods said a person was supposed to behave—showing kindness, consideration, obedience, humility. But the criticisms of her elders hadn’t touched her. Not while she did what was no more than necessary for her to meet her glorious fate.

  Now that there was no glorious fate, she looked back on recent events as though examining the life of a stranger, and she could not love what she saw. Nobody could. No wonder Frog had chosen Kirrik.

  No wonder Aoun had pushed her away.

  Unar kept her eyes closed and covered her ears with her hands. She didn’t object when Sikakis dragged her by one leg off the path, to make room for the pounding bare feet of Understorian soldiers. They poured out of the dovecote as though emerging from another world, hundreds of heavy-breathers who smelled of decades of sleep.

  “The Servant of Airak,” Frog panted, somewhere close by. “’E tried to kill the sleepers, too, Core Kirrik. Then ’e tried to wake the goddess. You should take control of ’im. ’E keeps gettin’ away from me, as if ’e hates ’imself more than I hate ’im.”

  “Do you need more motivation than to save your own miserable life?” Kirrik said, and Unar knew from the cutting edge to her voice that she spoke to Aforis, not Frog. “I could claim a different god today. Your god. Whether he fell or not, I could use you up to find him. I could spend my men’s lives fetching him here.”

  “The other Servants of Airak would kill you,” Aforis said, meeting malice with malice.

  “Not if I put my soul inside your dead bones. I could walk right up to him. He would embrace me.”

  “Pah! You cannot switch bodies and souls. That is the death god’s domain!”

  “I could do it. But it would be wasteful. The time is right to take the others today, not Airak. Airak’s body is a young man’s; he is early in his cycle. I am patient. I can wait until age slows him.” And she petted Unar fondly with her foot as if imagining herself in the younger woman’s skin. “I can wait until his mind begins to decay. Will you obey me today, Servant of Airak?”

  “I will.” Aforis sounded shaken.

  “Lead the way, Sikakis,” Core Kirrik said.

  When they had all gone, the branch beneath Unar stopped vibrating. Everything was still, even the wind.

  No rain fell on Unar. Moisture seeped into her from the wet bark, but that was all. With her hands still over her ears, she heard her own pulse against the nothing noise of trapped air in her ears, or perhaps that was the flutter of feathers. Kirrik’s winged messengers came whatever the time; whatever the weather.

  Time to roll off the edge. Time to fall. All the way to Floor, this time. No nets. No more thinking. No more thoughts.

  Hands lifted her, gently. They peeled her palms away from her ears. Too big to be Frog’s hands, and Frog didn’t really care about Unar, anyway. Nobody did.

  “Are you hurt?” Marram asked.

  Unar opened her eyes. Marram’s fingers were covered in scars, like tiny teeth had torn into them, over and over.

  “I’m hurt in my heart,” she said.

  “Aside from the fact that Oos begged me to go after you, I knew you had not gone willingly.”

  Oos begged you to come after me? Oos cares. But she doesn’t know how worthless I am.

  “You were wrong,” Unar said, eyes still lowered. “I would’ve gone anywhere, done anything, to learn the secret of wielding magic when the gods ordained that I shouldn’t. My heart is bad, Marram. It’s rotten inside. That’s why it hurts.”

  “We do not have time for that. We have got to go after them. They have cut down Airak’s emergent. They will cut down Audblayin’s emergent. The tallowwood. Our home.”

  Unar raised her head. When Kirrik spoke of a path that stretched all the way to Audblayinland, Unar had imagined an extension of the great branches that held the dovecote. Nothing prepared her for the sight through the trees of a great floodgum, as thick through the trunk as the Garden was wide, sliced through a thousand growth rings and fallen, forming a road wide enough for fifty barrows to pass in each direction.

  The great, creamy circle of the severed tree seemed to glow in the gloom.

  “Was that Airak’s emergent?” Unar asked.

  “Yes.”

  “With his Temple in the crown of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the god fall?”

  “He did if he was home. Unar, stand up. We must go. I do not care about Airak. I care about my brothers.”

  But Unar couldn’t care about anything except the pain that hollowed out her middle. She could no longer see the broken tree. The world was blurred by tears. Her body felt too heavy to ever stand or walk again.

  “You go,” she said.

  “And have that evil woman put me to sleep again?”

  “She can’t. Not without me.”

  “Then I need you to help us fight. We do not have magic.”

  “Me neither. Not anymore.”

  Marram sat back on his haunches at that.

  “Is there something that will help?” he asked eventually. “Something she might have left behind in the hut? Birds? Bones? Any kind of tea that Hasbabsah might have taught you about?”

  Nothing will help. Except to let me fall.

  Unar wished she had been hit on the head. She wished she had amnesia. In the corner of her eye, she saw the living barrel where Edax had boiled to death. He was still in it, in memory too close to the present. Unar closed her eyes and shrank away, gasping for breath in between sobs. She wished she knew how to put the hibernating spell on herself, and even then, she couldn’t be sure that those in hibernation didn’t dream.

  Death waited over the edge. She shifted her weight in preparation.

  “You do not want to go down there,” Marram said quietly, catching her as she rolled. “I was only in the water down at Floor for a few minutes, but I almost did not make it to the closest tree. The ripples, you see. The water-dwellers can tell the difference between a river and a living thing falling in.”

  Unar cried until her ribs hurt too much to keep heaving.

  “I’m no use to you,” she croaked. “I’m no use to anybody.”

  “Now, that is not true, is it? Esse said you made only the second-worst rope he has ever seen. Come on. Lean on me. I am not Bernreb. I cannot carry you if you will not walk.”

  Unar leaned on him, but only because he wouldn’t leave her alone. He took her inside the dovecote, and she made no move to help or to hinder, even though the place made her sick. He found fresh fruit for them both, killed several of the birds for them to cook and eat. They tasted better than the owl. Marram put the parchments the birds had carried into the flames.

  “Now,” he said when he had taken her to toilet and back to the fire, “I want you to describe to me, in detail, what the process is for passing through the light of those lamps. I ca
n see they are no ordinary, light-giving lamps.”

  “They keep away demons,” Unar told him dully. “Lightning strikes whatever wanders into the circle of light. Although they seem not to burn the branches that they rest on. Kirrik had a thing like a basin on a stick for putting over them, for quenching the light.”

  He left her for a while, then, ransacking the writing room and the other rooms in search of the bell-shaped bowl on its long rod. Unar stared at the flames.

  “It is not here,” Marram admitted hours later.

  “She’s taken it with her,” Unar agreed.

  “If I cut through the branch, will the lantern fall? Or will it float, like the bones do?”

  “I don’t know. What bones?”

  “There were little pieces of bone, no bigger than grape seeds, wrapped in chimera skin and stowed under her bed. When I shook them out of the cloth, they floated, forming a shape like a dream of half a giant’s skull in dust. Can you use magic like that?”

  “No.” Unar shook her head. “I told you, my magic is gone.”

  “I will try to make something to replace the basin and stick, then. Maybe the bathtub. Can you help me to carry it?”

  Unar shrugged and went to help him.

  They dragged and pushed the copper tub all the way down the corridor. Its feet tore up the wood and its weight fell on Marram’s instep once; he shouted an oath loud enough to wake whatever poor souls still slept in the storey above.

  “How did you wake up, Marram?”

  He lifted his end of the tub again, and hobbled forward with it, turning it to fit it through the doorway to the writing room. Unar backed slowly away with her end, staring into the gleaming curve of its full belly. The thing was expensive. No Understorian, denied the metal-seeded fruit of Akkad’s niche, should have used such wealth in metal simply to hold water. Obviously Frog had friends in all parts of Canopy. Perhaps the bath could contain the power of Airak’s lantern. Perhaps.

  “It was a mistake, I think,” Marram said. “Or the work of the Servant of Airak. I pretended to be still sleeping until the other wakened ones were gone, but the sleepers lay on the other side of me like corpses. It reminded me of a joke my brothers played on me when we were children. Left me crying because I could not wake them. Gave me a preview of their deaths.”