Weavers of Saramyr

Sixteen

They travelled north along the great Dust Road that curved from the south-east to the north-west of Fo, terminating in the mining town of Cmorn on the far coast. The sun was barely up in the east as they set off, and Neryn was still doggedly high in the sky and would have remained visible until the afternoon, clouds permitting. They did not. By midday, what had begun as a few wisps of cirrus had marshalled into a humped blanket that muted the sun, slowly cruising overhead. The heat did not diminish in proportion to the light, but Tane found himself glad of the shade anyway. Life under a forest canopy had not prepared him for the exposure of recent days, and he still found himself becoming woozy if he stood in the glare of Nuki's eye for too long.

Their caravan was pulled by a pair of manxthwa, whose enormous strength powered a train of seven carts. The hindmost five were covered.with tarpaulin and lashed down, packed with a wide variety of supplies for the isolated village of Chaim. The foremost two were for passengers, fitted with a narrow bench on the inner lip of each side so that six people could sit in each cart. A further seat was provided at the front for the driver, a withered, crotchety-looking old man who wore a thin shirt over his ropy frame, and the fat caravan master. Kaiku, Asara and Tane sat in the front passenger cart; the one behind them was full of guards, muttering between themselves and leaning on their rifles.

Tane studied the manxthwa idly as they travelled the Dust Road. They were seven feet high at the shoulder, with short back legs and long front ones in the manner of apes. Their knees crooked backwards, and ended in spatulate black hooves to take the weight °f their immense frame. Their bodies were covered in a thick and shaggy fur of a dull red-orange, a legacy of their arctic origins; and yet the heat of Saramyr seemed not to bother them one bit. Their wide faces were drooping and sad and wrinkled, lending them a misleading impression of aged wisdom, and two stubby tusks protruded from beneath their lower lips, jutting out from squared chins.

What odd creatures they were, Tane thought; and yet perfect. Enyu's creations were each a wonder, even those things that preyed on man. A shadow seemed to settle on his heart as he thought of the Aberrant lady they had met in Axekami. She may have been outwardly unblemished, but inside she was a corruption of Enyu's mould, a horror. The goddess of nature created her children each for a reason, and Aberrants were a mockery of that.

Towards the end of the day, they turned off the thoroughfare, leaving behind the traffic of rickety carts and painted carriages to head northward. The Dust Road had been aptly named, for each step of the manxthwa stirred up the stuff, powdered stone blown off the surrounding land. Most of Fo was a vast, fiat waste of rock and scree, with little vegetation but the hardiest, thorny scrubs. It was high above sea level, higher than the mainland, and its soil was unforgiving. Its bones had been bared by millennia of wind and rain, and made it stark and bleak.

Once the Dust Road was behind them, they travelled on rougher paths, barely more than shallow ruts worn into the ground by the passage of caravans like theirs. They had not gone more than a mile along that way when the driver turned them off the track and circled the caravan.

The caravan master bustled round to help Asara down from the passenger cart. He was bald and rubber-lipped, with tiny eyes and a nose buried in a mass of corpulent, blubbery features. There was a slightly fish-like aspect to his face. His name was Ottin.

'Why are we stopping?' she asked, as she accepted his hand. His skin was clammy and cold.

'It's best not to travel too near the mountains at night,' he replied. 'Dangerous. We will reach Chaim tomorrow, you'll see.'

A fire was made, and Kaiku was surprised to feel the temperature begin to drop hard as the sun fled the sky. The guards took shifts in walking the perimeter of the circle of caravans, while the others sat in the restless light of the blaze. The unfamiliarity of this land, the strangers surrounding her and the promise of danger had combined to make Kaiku feel quite intrepid. She relaxed and lis talk at the fireside, and a strange contentment took her.

'There's a blight on the isle, no doubt of that,' the c saying. It was a common complaint in Saramyr, but they h heard it applied to Fo. 'Cancer in the bones of the earth.'

'It's the same on the mainland,' Tane said. 'A malaise foi we can't find a source. Once the forests were safe to walk; now we know better than to be caught out at night. The wild beasts are becoming more aggressive; and the spirits that haunt the trees are cold and unfamiliar.'

'I don't know from forests, but I can tell you the source all right. Up in the mountains. That's where it's coming from.'

'Such superstitious nonsense!' declared Ottin, glancing at Asara to see if she approved of his outburst.

'Is it?' the driver replied sharply, fixing him with a wrinkly squint. 'You tell me if we don't start to see it in the land, the further north we go. North is the mountains. Makes sense to me.'

About that, at least, the driver was right. By midday it was difficult not to notice. Bare trees thrust out of the soil, their limbs crooked and misshapen, oozing sap from some places where the bark was thin as human skin, and in others bowed down by a tumescent surplus of it. They saw one whose branches grew in loops, straggling out of the trunk at one point only to curve back and bury themselves into it elsewhere. Thin, hooked leaves stood out like spines along the tangle of boughs.

The guards were more alert now. Kaiku noted how they faced outwards from their cart with their rifles ready, and never stopped scanning. She began to pick up on their wariness, and fiddled with her hair nervously. Ottin, apparently oblivious to it all, continued his inane attempts at banter with Asara. She bore it with remarkable patience. It seemed that the discounted fare the caravan master had offered came with a hidden price: taken with Asara's beauty, he tried ceaselessly to insinuate himself into her affections. Kaiku and Tane exchanged glances and smiled in amusement.

But Tane's amusement was only fleeting. Nowhere in the Forest of Yuna had he ever seen the signs of the corruption in the earth as obviously as here. His tanned brow furrowed as he looked out over the empty landscape towards the ghostly peaks of the Lakrnar Mountains in the distance. A sudden flurry of movement among the guards drew his attention to their right, where something darted among an outcrop of rocks, making a throaty cackling sound that echoed in the still air. They kept their rifles ready, but it made no further appearances.

'See?' said the driver suddenly, pointing up. 'Those things are so common, they even have their own name. Gristle-crows, we call them.'

The passengers looked, and saw above them a trio of black birds, swooping and turning. Indeed, they did seem like crows at first glance, but it was only when Tane asserted his perspective that he realised they were much higher than he thought, and therefore larger.

'How big are they?' he asked, unable to credit the evidence of his senses.

'Six feet wing-tip to wing-tip,' the driver croaked back.

Kaiku swore under her breath, an old habit borrowed from her brother and one she had often been reprimanded for as unladylike. It scarcely seemed to matter out here.

Tane peered up into the clouded sky at them. It was difficult to make out details, but the more he looked the more he reconsidered their likeness to their namesakes. Their beaks were thick and malformed, more like keratinous muzzles with a hooked lip at the front. Their wings were sharply kinked in the middle, in the manner of bats' wings, though they were thickly shagged with untidy black feathers. He grimaced and looked away, hoping never to be any closer to them than he was now.

'Interesting,' said Asara. When she said nothing else, Kaiku took the bait.

'What is interesting?'

'This is not the first type of Aberrant that has become so common as to constitute a species,' she said, gazing pointedly at Tane, who ignored her. 'In amongst all the freaks of nature produced by this… corruption in the land, there are many that have flourished. For every hundred useless aberrations there may be one that is useful, that provides its bearer an advantage over its kin. And if that one survives to breed, and pass on its-'

'There's nothing new in what you're saying, Asara,' Tane snapped. 'Those ideas have been part of Jujanchi's teachings for decades.'

'Yes,' said Asara. 'He was one of Enyu's priests, wasn't he? A great thinker, by all accounts. He used his theories to explain

diversity in animals. Strange how his teachings apply to Aberrants, then, when your creed dictates that they are not children of Enyu.'

'Aberrants follow the laws of nature,' Tane replied, 'because they are corruptions of the same basic root. It doesn't make them natural, or any less foul.'

What about me, Tane? Kaiku thought. What would you think of me, if you knew what I was? In truth, she wondered that Tane did not suspect Asara of being an Aberrant, but it seemed that he would rather not know.

'But perhaps this corruption is not corruption at all,' Asara posited. 'Maybe it is only accelerated change. Those things up there may be foul to your eyes, but as big as they are they will rule the skies. Does that not make them a superior breed? Consider, Tane: more new species have probably arisen in the last fifty years than in the last five hundred.'

'Change in nature is slow,' Tane countered angrily. 'It is that way for a reason: so that everything around it can adapt. And besides, this is not just a matter of animal speciation. Crops are dying, people are dying. Not only that, but the spirits are changing, Asara. They grow hostile. The guardians of natural places are fading, being overrun by things like… like the shin-shin.'

'The shin-shin were summoned,' Asara replied. 'To get back that Mask. Or to get Kaiku. That was not the random anger of the spirits that killed your priests. They followed the trail to your temple. If they could get across the Camaran Channel, they would follow it here too; but I suspect we lost them in the city, and the trail is cold now.'

'Then whoever summoned the shin-shin knows how to treat with the dark spirits,' Tane said, suddenly calming and becoming contemplative. 'Could it be that they're also responsible for the sickness in the land?'

The reply that Asara was about to give was swallowed in a sudden riot of movement and noise. Kaiku yelped in surprise as she saw a blur of black lunging out from the stony soil of the roadside, and then their cart was tipped violently and they were flung to one side of it. Tane and Asara were thrown into Kaiku, and the three of them pitched over on to the road as the cart toppled with a loud splintering of wood. Tane rolled away out of instinct as the cart was dragged towards them, but mercifully it did not tip again, or it might have crushed the passengers beneath it. They scrambled clear amongst the shouts and chaos of the guards, who had been similarly surprised, and there they saw what had befallen them.

The Aberrant thing was huge, an ungodly fusion of teeth and limbs that had lain in a burrow by the roadside, disguised by a thin covering of shale, until it had sensed their approach. It was still half in the burrow, with only the foremost part of its body visible. Kaiku caught a horrified impression of a blind, eyeless face that was all jaw and teeth, a mouth stuffed with yellowed, crooked fangs amid a multitude of spiderlike legs that had crammed out of the burrow and enwrapped one of the manxthwa at the lead of the caravan. Both the manxthwa were lowing and bellowing in fear. Ottin had pulled himself clear, but the driver was screaming, trapped and entangled in the tethering ropes that served as bridles for the great beasts.

'Heart's blood, shoot itV Ottin shrieked at the guards, but they already had their rifles up and ready. A volley of gunfire tore into the Aberrant creature and it squawked in fury, but it would not let go of its prize. It was dragging the manxthwa closer to its burrow, with the driver and the rest of the caravan pulled in by the force. Those spider limbs that were not engaged with the manxthwa waved tremulously in the air, seeming poised to strike at anything that came near.

The driver screamed again, begging incoherently as the Aberrant made another effort and dragged its prey another foot closer.

Kaiku reacted suddenly and without thinking. She ran back to the passenger cart, which was still on its side, and clambered on to it. Tane shouted at her to come back, but she barely heard him. The Aberrant thing gave another great pull, and the whole caravan shifted. Kaiku grabbed on and rode the lurch, praying that the cart would not tip further. It didn't. Heart thumping, she edged along it to where the manxthwa were bridled.

Ottin was yelling orders at the guards as they reloaded, though nobody was listening to him. He had backed away to the other side of the road, keeping the caravan between him and the horror that attacked them. As he saw Kaiku climbing towards where the driver was trapped, he shrieked something at her too. Whether he was encouraging her or otherwise, she never knew; for as she looked up at him, the second Aberrant creature burst out of its burrow behind Ottin and enfolded him in its vile arachnid legs. The scream that tore from his throat then was like nothing Kaiku had ever heard or wanted to again, but it was quickly silenced as he was stuffed into the creature's toothy maw with a cracking of bones and a flood of gore.

She scrambled onward, breathing hard in horror. Tane and Asara were firing on the first Aberrant creature, trying to dissuade it from the panicking manxthwa, but it held fast. Kaiku reached the front of the caravan, wedging herself into a corner formed by the overturned driver's seat. The terrified driver was gibbering at her, spittle bubbles flecking his lips. She saw that he was lashed tight to the flank of the manxthwa by the tautened tethering ropes. The spider legs of the Aberrant flexed within a few feet of her, each as thick as her arm, encircling the heaving flanks of the thrashing beast.

And then suddenly the fire was there, leaping into life inside her. She felt it stir with a flood of panic, which only seemed to double its intensity. It wanted out of her, wanted escape from the confines of her body, awakened by the spark of fear and excitement. She grabbed on to the tethering ropes and shut her eyes.

No, she willed it. No, you will stay where you are.

For the first time, she realised what she had done when she turned down Cailin tu Moritat's offer to help her control her power. In one moment she saw clearly what her recklessness had achieved, the price of her impatience, her eagerness to avenge her family. If she let it go here, they would all die.

'Kaiku!' It was Tane, calling her name. He could see that something was wrong with her, but the air was awash with rifle fire, and she could not hear him.

She tried to forget the cries of the driver; deafened herself to the report of the rifles. Peripherally, she realised that some of the guards had noticed the second Aberrant beast and were rushing around to the other side of the caravan to deal with it. She turned her thoughts inward, forcing the heat back into her abdomen as if trying to keep down vomit or bile. The driver howled at her to help him, unable to understand why she had suddenly frozen. She ignored him.

And now it faded, reluctantly receding, defeated by the barrier of her will. Her eyes flicked open, bloodshot and tear-reddened, and she gasped and panted hard. The physical effort had been immense. But she had won out, for now.

The Aberrant beast hauled on the manxthwa again, bringing her roughly back to reality as the caravan was wrenched another few feet closer to the burrow. The manxthwa in its grip was apoplectic with fear, almost within biting distance of the thing. Kaiku cringed as the thing's chitinous limbs stroked the air above her.

She pulled a knife from her belt. It had been with her ever since the Forest of Yuna, when Asara had given her travel clothes to change into; she had scarcely noticed it until now. It was a good forest knife, adapted to skin animals or cut wood with equal ease. Swiftly, she began to saw at the tethering ropes that held the driver. He squirmed, attempting to break free before she had even got through the first one.

'Stay still!' she hissed, and he did so.

Tane and Asara fired, and fired again. The creature that had hold of the manxthwa was by no means immune to the bullets, for they could see the dark splashes of blood that spattered its black body; but it seemed possessed of a suicidal persistence, and would not release the bucking manxthwa from its grip. Tane's weapon fired dry, and he broke it open to put new ignition powder in the chamber, glancing at Kaiku as he did so. She was frantically working on the ropes, her arm pumping as she cut, her face red and sweaty.

The creature braced and hauled with a greater effort than before, desperate to get its meal and get away from the stinging rifle balls. It could not understand why the manxthwa was so heavy, for it had not the brain to realise it was tethered. The puzzle frustrated it mightily. It applied brute strength.

Kaiku cried out as the entire caravan shifted a metre across the road. Asara and Tane had to scatter as the passenger cart finally toppled upside down. Kaiku was pitched over with it, landing heavily on the stony dirt of the road and rolling to a stop a short way distant. The driver gave a strangled shriek, and then the tethering ropes, weakened by Kaiku's efforts, finally gave way. With a triumphant squawk, the Aberrant monstrosity bundled the manxthwa into its burrow and dragged it underground.

Tane scrambled to Kaiku's side, but she was already levering herself up on her elbows. Asara stood over the two of them, framed against the clouded sky, her rifle trained towards the Aberrant burrow.

'Are you hurt?' Tane asked, almost touching her and then thinking better of it.

Kaiku shook her head. 'I do not think so.' She stood up. 'Bruised,' she elaborated. 'Why have the guns stopped?'

Tane and Asara noticed it at the same time. The guards on their side of the caravan pricked up their ears. The train of carts that was snarled and corkscrewed along the centre of the road formed a barrier that prevented them seeing to the other side.

'Ho! Is all well over there?' one of the guards called.

'All's well,' came the reply.

They hurried around the end of the caravan, and there they saw the remainder of the guards clustered around the grotesque corpse of the second Aberrant creature. Its massive jaw lay on the road, its legs limp around it, half out of its burrow.

'It must have been a lucky shot,' said one, prodding it with the barrel of his rifle. 'We got the brain.'

'We should move out of here,' said a short, grizzled guard, evidently the leader. 'Take the remaining manxthwa, and two carts for passengers. Leave the rest.'

'Leave the goods?' another protested.

'There's no caravan master to sell them. We're not paid to deliver goods.' The leader jerked a hand at the approximate location of the other burrow. 'And that thing is still alive, and it will be out again as soon as it's finished its meal'

All of them began to untangle the carts and right those that could be righted. Three guards stood near the burrow entrance, from which the sounds of crunching bone could be heard as the unfortunate manxthwa was devoured. The driver was disentangled from the ropes, but it was too late for him. His neck had been broken, and he stared glassy-eyed towards the earth.

'What was his name? The driver?' Tane asked as he lent his back to the effort of tipping a cart back on to its wheels.

'Why?' one of the guards replied.

'He should be named,' Tane grunted. 'To Noctu, recorder of lives.'

But nobody knew his name.

They managed to get two carts tethered to the remaining manxthwa, who could smell the blood of its departed companion and was snorting skittishly. The Aberrant beast did not emerge again, even after the sounds of feeding had ceased. Leaving the train of goods on the road, they took the body of the driver, wrapped in a tarpaulin, and bundled it in with them. In that manner, they drove on towards Chaim.

'Those monsters are your Aberrants, Asara,' Tane said as they set off, dejected and shocked and tired. 'Those are your superior breed.'

Overhead, the gristle-crows circled and swooped.