The Weavers of Saramyr (32 page)

Anais’s anger was only fuelled by his unsatisfactory answer, but she kept her passions well reined. She nicked her gaze to the Guards that stood at the kneeling man’s shoulder.

‘Take him away. Execute him.’

He was pulled to his feet.

‘Empress, I beg of you the lives of my family!’ he cried.

‘Concern yourself with the last moments of your own life,’ she replied cruelly, dismissing him. He wept in fear and shame as he was led away. She had no intention of punishing his family, but he would go to his death not knowing that. For a man who had jeopardised her position with such gross stupidity, she was in no mood for mercy.

She motioned to a robed advisor who stood near her throne, an old academic named Hule with a long white beard and bald

head.

‘Go to the donjon and bring Unger tu Torrhyc to me. See he is

not mistreated.‘

Hule nodded and departed.

The Empress settled back on her throne. Her brow ached. She felt besieged, conspired against by events. The chain of explosions that had ripped across the city in the last hour had happened too fast and were too well coordinated. They had already been in place, awaiting the spark to ignite them. Torrhyc’s arrest threw that spark. There seemed to be no specific targets in mind; they occurred in crowded streets, on ships at the docks, even outside temples. Whoever was behind them, she suspected that their intention was to sow mayhem. Their method was effective. She had already been forced

to send over half her Imperial Guards to quell riots in different districts of the city, but the sight of their white and blue armour only seemed to agitate the crowds.

The Guard Commander’s idiocy had put her in a dire position, but it was not irretrievable yet. Unger tu Torrhyc’s influence was evidently greater than she had first imagined. She knew he was an agitator and an orator of great skill; now it seemed apparent that he had a subversive army working for him. It was not hard to see how a man of his charisma could inspire that kind of loyalty in his followers.

Someone had planted those bombs. She suspected that Unger tu Torrhyc could tell her who.

At that very moment, the subject of the Empress’s thoughts brooded in a cell, deep in the bowels of the Keep.

The prisons of the Imperial Keep were clean, if a little dark and bare. His cell was unremarkable, the same as every other cell he had been put in. And he would be released with his head held high, just like every other time. Noble lords, landowners, even local councils had incarcerated him before. His calling made him many enemies. The rich and powerful did not like to be brought to account for the injustices and evils they brought upon the common folk.

He had begun to view being arrested as part of the process of negotiation now. He had become too dangerous, a threat to the safety of the city. Stirring up trouble, inciting revolution. He had expected arrest; it was a mere flexing of muscle, to show that they were still the ones in power. Afterwards, they would talk to him. He would bring them the people’s demands. They would agree to some, but not all. He would be released, hailed as a hero by the people, and use that status to resume haranguing the Imperial Family until the people’s remaining demands were met.

This time the people’s demands were simple, and not open to negotiation. The Aberrant child must not sit the throne.

Anais had been a good ruler, as far as the frankly despotic system of Imperial rule went. Even Unger would admit that. But she was blind, and arrogant. She was so high up on her hill, in this mighty Keep, that she did not see what was happening in the streets below. Furthermore, she did not appear even to be interested. She dallied with politicians and nobles, winning the support of armies here and signing treaties there, and all the time forgetting that the people she

ruled were crying out in an almost unanimous voice:
We will not
have her
!

Did she think her Imperial Guards could keep the people of Axekami in line? Did she plan to rule them by force? Unacceptable!

Unacceptable!

The people would be heard, and Unger tu Torrhyc was their

mouthpiece.

He had been placed far away from other prisoners, so that he could not spread his sedition among them. A high, oval window beamed a grille of dusk light on the centre of the stone floor. There was a heavy wooden door, banded with iron, with a slat for guards to look in that was now closed. Otherwise, the cell was absolutely bare, hot and gloomy. Unger sat in a corner, his legs crossed, his eyes closed, and thought. He was a plain man, plain of dress and plain of speech, but he questioned all and everything. That made him a threat to those who relied on tradition for their advantage. And whatever his feelings on Aberrants were, the Empress could not be allowed to foist upon the people a ruler that they so vehemently did not want.

His eyes flickered open, and his heart lurched in his chest. There was someone in the cell with him.

He scrambled to his feet. The cell had darkened suddenly, as though a bank of cloud had swallowed the last of the day’s light. Yet, by the dim rays coming through the window, he saw the faintest shape in the far corner of the room. It filled him with an unwholesome dread, emanating malevolence. There had been nothing in here before, and the door had not opened. Only a spectre or a spirit could have come to him this way.

It did not move, and yet he never for a moment doubted the shrieking report of his senses. The air seemed to whine in his ear.

‘What are you?’ he breathed.

The shape moved then, shifting slightly, an indistinct form that brightness seemed to shy from.

‘Are you a spirit? A demon? Why have you come?’ Unger demanded.

It walked slowly towards him. He took a breath to cry for help, to rouse the guard outside; but a gnarled and withered hand flashed into the shaft of dusk from the window, one long finger pointing at him, and his throat locked into silence. His body locked also, every

muscle tensing at once and staying there, rendering him painfully immobile. Panic sparkled in his brain.

The intruder moved into the dim light. He stood hunched there, his small body buried in a mountain of ragged robes and hung with all manner of beads and ornaments. He wore a Mask of bronze, contorted into an expression of insanity; and as Unger watched, he slowly unfastened the latch strap and removed it.

He was like a man, but small and withered and grotesque, his skin white and parchment-dry. And his face… oh, there was ugliness such as Unger had never seen. His aspect was twisted so far out of true that the prisoner would have shut his eyes if he could. One side of the sallow face seemed to have melted, the skin becoming like wax and sliding off the skull to gather in folds of jowl and chop, a flabby dewlap depending from his scrawny neck. His eye on that side laboured to see from beneath the overhanging brow; his upper lip flopped over his lower one. But his right side was no less repulsive: there, his lips had skinned back as if they had simply rotted away, exposing teeth and gum in a skeletal rictus; and his right eye was huge and blind, an orb that bulged from the socket, milky with cataract.

‘Unger tu Torrhyc,’ croaked the intruder, his malformed lip flapping. ‘I am the Weave-lord Vyrrch. How pleasant to meet face to face.’

Unger could not reply. He would not have had the words anyway. He felt a scream rise inside him, but there was nowhere for it to go.

‘You’ve served me well these past weeks, Unger, though you didn’t know it,’ the foul thing continued. ‘Your efforts have accelerated my plans tenfold. I had expected it would take so much more than this to set Axekami on its way to ruin. I had to tread carefully, to keep my hand hidden, but you…’ Vyrrch wagged a finger in admiration. ‘You stir the people. Your arrest has angered them mightily. I never would have thought it so simple.’

Unger was too terrified to think where Vyrrch was leading this; the sensation of having bodily control robbed from him was overwhelming his reason.

‘It was quite a risk, even the little push it took to make the Guard Commander do what I needed. I had thought there would be outrage,
counted
on it… but even I had underestimated the effectiveness of your secret army of bombers, Unger. I would hate to see them stop the good work they are doing.’

‘Not… not…’ Unger managed, forcing the words in a squeak past his throat.

‘Oh, of course they’re not yours. They’re
mine
. But the people and the Empress alike assume you are responsible, so let us not disabuse them of that notion.’

The creature was close enough to touch him now, and Unger could see that it was not wholly real, but faintly transparent. A spectre, after all. It ran a finger down his cheek, and the sensation was like freezing water.

‘Your cause needs a martyr, Unger.’

The spectre seized him savagely by the back of the head, and despite its apparent intangibility, Unger felt its massive strength. His muscles loosened, and he screamed as it propelled him against the wall of the cell, smashing his skull like a jakma nut on a rock, leaving a dark wodge of blood and hair above his corpse.

The gates to the temple of Panazu in the River District of Axekami stood open as dusk set in. Mishani stood beneath them, looking up at the tall, narrow facade that towered over her, its shoulders pulled in tight and sculpted into the form of rolling whirlpools. She was bedraggled, exhausted and suffering from shock, and yet she was here, at the abode of the dream lady. The sounds of Axekami beginning to tear itself apart were audible across the Kerryn. New explosions could be heard, and bright flames rose against the gathering dark. Voices were raised in clamour, mob roars made weak and thin by distance. This night would be an evil one for all concerned.

She walked up the steps to the temple, through the great gates and into the cool sanctuary of the congregation chamber. The interior of the temple was breathtaking. Pillars vaulted up to domed ceilings, painted with frescoes of Panazu’s exploits and teachings. The walls were chased with reliefs of river creatures. The vast curved windows of blue, green and silver in the face of the building dappled the temple in shades of the sea floor, and seemed to stir the light restfully to heighten the illusion. The sound of water was all around: splashing, trickling, tinkling, for the altar was a fountain from which many gutters ran, directing the crystal liquid into artful designs carved into the blue-green
lack
on the floor. The congregation area, where the oblates came to kneel and pray, was surrounded by a thick trench of water in which swam catfish, the earthly aspect of Panazu, and bridged by short arcs of
lack
.

There was nobody here. The place was peaceful and deserted. Mishani shuffled in, and did not even turn around when the gates closed behind her of their own accord. She walked listlessly down the central aisle, her mind and body still numb from the tragedy she had witnessed in the Market District.

‘Mishani tu Koli,’ a soft voice purred, echoing around the temple. Mishani looked to the source of the sound, and found her standing to one side of the chamber. The dream lady. She looked more like something in a nightmare, a tall, slender tower of elegant black, her face painted with crescents of red that ran over her eyelids from forehead to cheek. Her lips were marked with alternating triangles of red and black, like teeth. A ruff of raven feathers grew from her shoulders, and a silver circlet with a red gem was set on her forehead.

She crossed the chamber to the central aisle, emerging between the pillars to stand before Mishani. She took in Mishani’s unkempt appearance without a flicker of an expression.

‘My name is Cailin tu Moritat. Lucia calls me the dream lady. She told me you would be coming.’ Cailin took her by the elbow. ‘Come. Rest, and bathe. Your journey has not been easy, I see.’

Mishani allowed herself to be led. She had nowhere else to go.

Twenty-One

Time did not pass in Chaim. Rather, it elongated, stretching itself flat and thin, sacrificing substance for length. Tane had ceased counting the days; they had merged into one great nothing, a relentless, frowning wall of boredom and increasing despair.

The disappearance of Kaiku had hit them hard. At first there was something akin to mild panic. Had something been into the cave and taken her while they slept? Mamak searched and found no sign. It took a short while before Tane remembered the strange things Kaiku had been saying to him while he drowsed:

The storm kept them in the cave another day. Mamak flatly refused to let them search.

‘If she’s out there, the fool is dead already. When this storm breaks, I go home. You can come with me, or stay in this cave if you

wish.‘

Tane begged him, offered him triple his fee if he would find her. He told her that Kaiku had money, and lots of it. Mamak’s eyes lit at the prospect, and for a moment Tane saw greed war with sense on his face; but in the end, his experience of mountain travel tipped the balance, and he refused. Asara shook her head and tutted at Tane for his loss of dignity in desperation.

‘I want her back!’ he snapped in his defence.

Asara shrugged insouciantly. ‘But she is gone, Tane. Time for a

new plan.‘

When the storm gave up the next morning, they accepted the inevitable and returned to Chaim. Tane talked of raising an

THE WEAVERS OF SARAMyR

expedition to search the mountains for Kaiku - or her body - so that they might at least retrieve the Mask. Tane had not forgotten that without that Mask he had no hope of discovering who had sent the shin-shin that had massacred the priests of his temple. But the plan was unsound, and everyone knew it. Even Tane knew it. There was not a prayer of finding her in all the vastness of northern Fo, with her tracks erased by rain and wind. By the time they came down out of the mountains and were back on the path to Chaim, he had stopped talking about it.