The Ascendancy Veil (33 page)

Mishani knew the rest from Zaelis: how Yugi had drifted into the Libera Dramach; how his natural leadership skills and experience had made him more and more invaluable until he had become Zaelis’s right-hand man; how, after Zaelis had died at the Fold, he had become the head of the Libera Dramach. And she understood him now.

‘You do not want to lead these people, do you?’ she asked.

Yugi looked at her for a long moment, then tilted his head in affirmation. ‘I’m no general like Zahn. I don’t have the vision and ambition that Zaelis had. I led a hundred men and I led them well, but in the end I failed and it cost me the only thing I ever . . .’ He looked away. ‘Ah, what use is talking?’

‘You could step down,’ said Mishani.

‘No, I couldn’t. Because I’m still the best gods-damned leader they’ve got. Zaelis may have picked his men well, but he couldn’t get generals, he couldn’t get war-makers. They belong to the noble houses, and the moment one of them get near the Libera Dramach, the moment
politics
becomes involved, then it’s over for us. They all want Lucia.’

Mishani nodded. ‘There is sense in what you say. Even Zahn would be a danger. But can you lead thousands to war, Yugi? Your skills were of great use in the Fold, but then you were fighting as bandits fight. It may come to a moment when you must be a general, and your choices on the battlefield will cost many lives. Will you be able to make those choices? Or will you hide in your drugged dreams?’

Yugi looked grim. ‘If it’s my punishment that I must suffer to lead these men and women, then I’ll bear it because I have to. The gods certainly have a sick sense of humour, to make revenge on me for my past misdeeds by giving me more lives to ruin.’

‘They do indeed,’ said Mishani.

Yugi got to his feet then. Nuki’s eye had risen a little more by now. The lake was blue, and the air was warming. ‘Thank you for hearing me out, Mishani. I don’t know why I chose to talk to you of all people, but I’m glad I did.’ He looked up the slope, to where the white temples of Araka Jo stood crumbling. ‘How is it that our past dictates our future?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Where’s the sense in that?’

And then he was gone, walking away from her, and she was alone again.

She sat for a long time and thought on what he had said. Then she returned to her house and began to pack what things she needed.

She was going to see her mother.

Few slept in the forest that night, but for Kaiku it was not out of fear of dreams.

She wandered the emyrynn village alone after Tsata had left her, traipsing listlessly between the iridescent columns and swirls and spikes that clung to the trees and sprawled along the ground. Fretfully replaying the moment in her mind when they had kissed, picking it apart to find what meaning she could therein. What had been in his eyes when she had halted him? Would it have been better to have let him kiss her again before giving him news of his ailing kinswoman? Did he interpret it as an excuse for rejection? And indeed, in Kaiku’s intention, had it been that? Did she shy from him on purpose, using Peithre as an excuse to get herself out of it? Gods, she did not even know herself what she had wanted then; but retrospect was a hard eye to cast upon her actions, and she was full of regrets and uncertainties.

She had achieved no resolution by the time dawn came, and she heard Phaeca’s scream.

Her meanderings had almost brought her back to the camp when the sound reached her. It took longer to process than it otherwise would, for the sleeplessness was beginning to tell. She wasted a second on incomprehension before breaking into a run, sprinting around the tent cluster where others were getting to their feet. She reached the alien dwelling where Phaeca had been resting, pushed aside the soldiers who crowded around the entranceway and went inside.

Phaeca was still screaming. She was hunkered against the tree bole that formed one wall of the room, her possessions and bedding scattered across the floor. Blood ran from the walls and lay in pools on the floor, smeared at the edges where her heels had slipped in them. Chunks of smoking flesh and blackened bone were strewn about. Some of them were whole enough to still have the fur on. White fur, soaked in red.

Kaiku stared at the scene, aghast. ‘Phaeca, what have you done?’ she breathed. Her voice rose in anger and disbelief. ‘You
killed
one of them? You killed an emyrynn?’ She crossed the room and grabbed hold of Phaeca’s shoulders, shaking her roughly. ‘Why?
Why
?’

‘It was trying to kill
me!
’ Phaeca shrieked. ‘It was in my room! I woke up and it was in my room!’

Kaiku squeezed her eyes shut. The scene as it might have happened played across the darkness: Phaeca, awakening from a nightmare to find an unfamiliar creature before her, lashing out with her
kana
. She was already in a state of questionable sanity, driven to raving and feverish mutterings by the malevolence of the forest. The sight of the emyrynn must have been too much for her. Or maybe it
had
attacked her. Maybe she was telling the truth. It didn’t matter, in the end. She had killed one of them.

‘This is not
your
room,’ she said, her voice quieter now. ‘You were sleeping in its home.’

A cry of alarm went up in the camp, and those soldiers at the doorway turned back to look. ‘There’s something moving out in the trees!’ came the shout.

‘Do you know what you have done, Phaeca?’ Kaiku said, her tone heavy with despondency. ‘Your actions will be the death of us all.’

At that, Phaeca’s face twisted into a snarl, and she launched herself at Kaiku.

Kaiku did not expect it in the least. Perhaps, had she thought on it, she would have been more careful in her words. She knew how fragile her friend was in this place. But though she had worried about Phaeca’s state of mind over the past few days, she had never once thought that she might become violent. Even in the wake of what she had just discovered, she assumed the killing of the emyrynn was an accident, a reaction rather than a premeditated act. The sight of the Sister’s face twisting into a contortion of such utter hatred made her quail; and then she was being carried out of the doorway of the dwelling by the weight of the attack, scattering the soldiers there, and she fell onto the blue-green grass outside with Phaeca atop her.

The savagery of Phaeca’s assault stunned her; she only resisted at all because instinct drove her to. Phaeca raked her face with her nails, slapped and punched at her head, shrieking and screaming oaths and curses in a coarse Axekami dialect that was entirely unlike her usual mode of speech. Two of the soldiers, unable to credit what they were seeing, reached down to pull the crazed Sister from her victim; they were flung back and away by an invisible force that flattened the grass and cracked the sap wall of the emyrynn dwelling.

It was the outrush of Phaeca’s
kana
that brought Kaiku to her senses. The wrenching of the Weave sparked an answer in her own body, a surge of energy that she fought to curtail before it broke out of her, fearful of hurting her friend.

She should not have done so. It took her too long to realise that Phaeca’s
kana
was not only directed at the soldiers, it was also directed at her. Phaeca was attacking her in the Weave, and that made her intent lethal.

She surrendered herself to the will of her
kana
. Time decelerated to a crawl in the world of the five senses, while beneath its skin the Sisters clashed at blinding speed. Kaiku’s fractional hesitation had afforded Phaeca an advantage. Only when she had cast aside all doubts and had realised that her friend really meant to kill her, that this was a fight for her very life, did she lend her will to the conflict and begin resisting in earnest.

But by then it was too late. Phaeca had undermined her, laid traps that foiled her attempts at constructing defences. Kaiku constructed labyrinthine tangles only to have them come apart at a single tug. She built snares to delay her opponent and watched them fall to pieces when they were sprung. By the time she had got her barriers up, Phaeca was already behind them, and Kaiku was forced to abandon them and back away further. The assault was relentless, furious; she crumbled under it. Phaeca was not as good as Cailin, but she was still better than most Weavers, sliding and shuttling like a needle. And Kaiku had been taken totally by surprise, had still refused to believe it even when she had realised what was happening.

Phaeca burst through the holes in Kaiku’s stitchwork and reached into her body, grasping, encircling her heart, sewing into muscle and bone. Kaiku screamed in horror, a wordless mental anguish at the violation, the knowledge that she had no way to fight back now and that this cry would be her last.

Then the pain hit her. Phaeca was tearing her apart. She had done it to others before, and always wondered what it must have felt like, the kind of agony they would suffer in the instant before they died. Now she knew. It was as if her every vein and nerve were being pulled forcibly from her flesh, sucked out like tendrils through her skin to be cast away. The torture was incredible, overwhelming . . .

. . . and suddenly gone.

She was alone in the Weave. Phaeca had disappeared, with only an aching pulse of sadness left in her wake.

Her mind settled again, reorientating her senses. She left the Weave, her
kana
turning inwards and scouring her for damage. Her red eyes refocused and the light of dawn in the forest filtered back.

There was a weight atop her. A booted foot braced against it and shoved it off. Asara. She reached down and helped Kaiku up.

‘I had no choice,’ Asara said. ‘It was her or you.’

She forced herself to look at Phaeca. The Sister lay face-down, her hair bloody. Shot through the neck.

‘It was her or you,’ Asara said again.

Asara’s voice was dim and tinny in Kaiku’s ears, cushioned by a numb blanket that had settled on her. Her vision had narrowed, the periphery hazed. She felt fractured from her surroundings, barely aware. Around her, gunshots and cries, denting the whine of the blood in her ears. She could not reconcile the figure lying before her with the woman she had known. The fact that this husk of flesh was here did not equate with the certainty that she would never see nor speak with Phaeca again.

‘Kaiku, we have to go,’ Asara was saying to her. Then, turning her so that she was looking into her eyes. ‘Do you hear? We have to go
now!
’

She could see over Asara’s shoulder, into the trees that surrounded the village. Of course, of course. The retaliation. From the foliage, white shapes were slinking, muzzles wrinkled and teeth bared. The emyrynn were coming. Their hospitality had been abused.

‘Where is Lucia?’ someone cried. ‘Where is Lucia?’

It was that name that brought Kaiku out of her daze. With a whimper, she moved to flee into the camp and search, thinking only of the need to protect her. Asara grabbed her arm.

‘She is there,’ Asara said, pointing. And indeed she was, with Doja and a half-dozen soldiers clustered around her. Tsata and Heth were approaching, Peithre carried in Heth’s arms. Kaiku saw him and motioned towards Lucia, then ran that way herself, with Asara following.

Phaeca
. . .

Kaiku shoved the grief away. She could not allow herself to think on it now. There were others whose lives would depend on her. Lucia was all that mattered.

The emyrynn were coming from all around the village, but they appeared in greatest number at the point where the camp lay against the outermost edge. They sprang through the leaves, sleek and graceful, their white fur pristine. Such beautiful creatures, but their faces were sharp now, grinning in animal rictus, and there was deadly purpose in their steps. The soldiers were firing into the undergrowth, rifle balls clipping purple stems and ricocheting off tree trunks with a splintering of wood. They hit nothing. The emyrynn appeared in glimpses, and each glimpse showed them to be ever closer to their prey.

‘Fall back!’ Doja cried. ‘Protect Lucia!’

‘Which way?’ Asara called, addressing Lucia, who was gazing into the middle distance. ‘Lucia, which way do we go?’

‘They’re so angry,’ she whispered.

Kaiku wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and moved Asara aside. ‘Which way, Lucia?’ she asked, gently. ‘We have to leave.’

At the sound of her voice, Lucia’s focus shifted to her. She trembled for a moment, then flung her arm out and pointed into the trees. ‘That way.’

‘Fall back!’ Doja cried again to the soldiers who were retreating towards them, loosing shots into the trees. And with that, Lucia and her retinue ran, away from the village, and the forest closed around them.

The emyrynn broke cover with a harmonic cascade of piercing howls. They burst out into the open, sprinting on all fours, moving like liquid. Their curious musculature gave them a disconcerting gait, rippling them left and right in a sinuous charge towards the men who were covering Lucia’s retreat. Those who still had powder in their chambers fired off what shots they had, but all of them missed. Some turned and took flight at the sight of the creatures; some stayed and fought. The outcome was the same. The emyrynn tore into them with surpassing savagery, gouging at faces with their small, sharp antlers, ripping at throats with their blade-like teeth. They bounded onto their prey, bore them to the ground like hunting cats, then shredded them while they were helpless. Their white fur became stained dark red, their muzzles wet with blood. They revelled in the slaughter.

Lucia and Kaiku hurried into the forest, the centre of a stumbling cluster of soldiers who fought to protect them from every side. There were perhaps ten soldiers left now including Doja; also with them went the three Tkiurathi and Asara. Kaiku’s eyes were blurring with tears that fell from her lashes with the jolting of her feet on the ground, but she did not notice. She was seeing past them. The forest could not obscure her vision; it had turned to a transparent mass of golden sinews, and within it she saw the emyrynn stalking. Hundreds of them, converging on the village.