The Weavers of Saramyr (24 page)

‘What is in the bag, Father?’ Mishani asked, feeling her blood begin to run cold. She knew what the Barak was asking her, and knew equally that she could not refuse him. He had not mentioned her absence at council by accident; he was making another point of her recent disobedience.

‘A nightdress,’ he said. ‘Beautifully embroidered; a work of art. It is infected with bone fever.’

Mishani had expected as much, and made no reaction.

‘The Heir-Empress will sicken within a week, die a few weeks later. Perhaps a few others in her chambers will catch it too. Bone fever strikes at random; nobody will suspect the gift. And even if they do, it cannot be detected, and thus cannot be traced to you or me,’ he said.

Or Sonmaga
, Mishani thought sourly, knowing him to be the author of this plot. She wondered what he had promised Avun for using his daughter this way. The use of poison was still counted an acceptable, if not honourable, method of assassination. But use of disease was abhorrent, and rarely even considered. Only barbarians would do such. What depths her father and Sonmaga had stooped

THE WEAVERS OF 5ARAMYR

to; and what depths they would condemn her to, if they made her their accomplice.

No
, she thought.
Not accomplice. Scapegoat
.

She looked hard into her father’s eyes. She believed he thought it would work, and he thought he was doing what was good for the country. But she knew also that if she were somehow caught, he would cut her loose like an anchor from a ship to save his family. She had seen moves like this a hundred times in court, but she had never been the subject of them before. Never had she felt so cheapened, never so much a pawn as now; and the one who wounded her this way was the one she trusted most in the world. She felt fundamentally betrayed, and in that she felt the love she bore for her father curl up and die. She was shocked at how fragile a thing it must have been.

Mishani gazed at the stranger on the bench next to her a moment longer, then dropped her eyes to the pool before them. Sun glittered in the edges of the ripples.

‘I will do as you say,’ she said. She could scarcely do otherwise.

At the foot of MountAon, the great monastery of Adderach crouched and glowered, a testament to the insanity of its architects. Its form was bewildering to the eye, the sand-coloured stone of its skin moulded so that it seemed to melt from one form to another: here a narrow walkway, terminating over a drop; here a sculpture of howling demons; there a redundant minaret, a half-constructed window, a corkscrewing spire. One wall of an entirely disused wing was crafted in the shape of a screaming face, thirty feet high, teeth bared and eyes wild. Statues stalked the desolate surroundings, the delirious babblings of mad minds scoured by cold winds from the upper altitudes. Lonely walls stood, guarding nothing. Inside, staircases went nowhere, whole wings were inaccessible because nobody had thought to build a door, cavernous halls vied with tiny rooms too small to stand up in.

It was a masterpiece or an atrocity, born of a thousand projects of whim and caprice that somehow fused together seamlessly into one; and it was such a place that the Weavers had made their cradle of power, from which they watched over the land of Saramyr and made their plans.

The Weavers had no recognisable heirarchy. Their structure was anarchic, random and operating under uncertain values; but there

was one overarching principle that united them all, and that was the good of the whole. Though individually their motives were saturated in dementia, they each worked together towards the same goal at any given time. None questioned this strange group consciousness; nobody asked who set the goals, who directed their efforts, whether it was a majority decision or the determination of a select few. It simply
was
. The force that kept them coherent was a web that bound them all together, like the sublime threads of the Weave.

The monastery was built over a vast, labyrinthine mine. It had lain disused for over two hundred years now, but still it stood, and creatures of a foulness beyond imagining roamed its tunnels in the blackness. The mine had been the site where the first of the witchstones had been found, two and a half centuries ago, buried deep beneath the earth, and from there the Weavers had sprung.

At first the miners had no idea what they had found. They were simple, tough and honest folk, working a seam of iron deep in the TchamilMountains, far from civilisation; at that time, the mine was new, and nothing Aberrant stalked the dark passageways as they did today. Living as remotely as they did, the miners had built settlements, and among them were stoneworkers and carpenters and the like: artisans. They came to view the thing that the miners had found, and it was they that gave the substance its name.

It was plain from the first that this was no ordinary stone. For one thing, a man could sense it just by being close. The hairs on his arm would stand on end, his skin would crawl, his teeth tingle. Not in fear, but because he stood in the presence of energy. The air felt charged around the stone, like it was before a moonstorm, and even the most pragmatic of those hardy folk were forced to admit that.

The second odd thing was the state in which it was found. It was a vast, uneven hulk of black, grainy stone, like an outcrop of volcanic rock; except that it was discovered deep underground, whole and unattached, inside a small cave. The surrounding stone had been melted to glass by unimaginable heat, and no matter how they mined, there was no evidence of a seam anywhere. It was impossible that it could have formed naturally. Which begged the question: how did it get there? Could it have been a relic of the

Ugati, the native folk who had lived in Saramyr for uncountable years before the first Emperor drove them out?

The history of the Weavers was not clear on exactly what happened next. All that is certain is that the artisans began rubbing dust from the surface of the witchstone and infusing it into their crafts. Perhaps it was the strange properties of the stone that attracted them, or the novelty of an entirely unheard-of substance integrated into their work. Carpenters rubbed the dust into the grain of benches, stonemasons mixed it in with mortar. It was an odd craze, but no odder than a hundred thousand others across the land. The empire in general knew this much about the origin of the Weavers only because some of the folk from the settlement made the trek across the mountains to try and sell their wares, confident that their new edge would appeal to the markets in the west. Their samples were well received; the raw sense of energy they gave out amazed buyers. During that time, the folk of the settlement told people about their strange discovery. When they had sold their samples, they returned home to fulfil the orders that eager customers had made. They never came back.

The settlement was silent for years. Remote as it was, buried in the trackless mountains, it faded into memory. The initial flurry of excitement in the markets diminished and the witchstone artefacts were forgotten.

What happened during that time is a matter of speculation.

At some point, the decision was made to introduce witchstone dust to the craft of mask-making, and during that period some experimenter must have discovered the other powers of witchstone dust. There is no telling how the process began, or how it went on. Perhaps, at first, they used it as a narcotic, for long-term exposure to witchstone caused disorientation and euphoria. Later they discovered that having it close to the face - and hence the brain - was the most effective method of attaining that feeling. From there, small and rudimentary effects in the physical world were noticed. While under the delirium of the witchstone, a cup would be moved without anyone touching it; a flame would flare or gutter; a man might know the thoughts of his friend and be suddenly aware of his innermost secrets. It can only be guessed how arduous the path was from simple addiction to an unknown substance to gaining control of it. How many of them stumbled unwittingly into the full light of the Weave, and lost their minds and souls to its glory? How many

atrocities of rape and murder and mutilation were committed in the agonies of post-Weaving withdrawal? History does not recall. But when they emerged again from that settlement after their long silence, no women and children were left.

Two centuries ago, the first Weavers appeared in the towns and cities of Saramyr. Their powers were weaker then, and cruder; but they already moved with one purpose, operating to a master plan. Subtly, they infiltrated the homes of the noble classes, making themselves invaluable. In those days, the people of Saramyr were naive to the Weavers, and those that proved an obstacle to them were simply
influenced
, their minds and opinions changed to suit the plan. In a matter of a decade, they were integrated; and from there they began to grow, and build, and scheme.

In a firelit chamber somewhere in the depths of Adderach’s convoluted arteries, an apparition of Weave-lord Vyrrch hung in the air. It was a dim and blurred ghost, a mottled smear of brown and grey and orange, approximating the colours of his patchwork robe. Curiously, the form seemed to gain definition the closer it came to his Mask, as if the Mask was the focus of the phantom. It was the only thing sharply defined, a translucent bronze face amid the ether of Vyrrch’s body.

The three Weavers that Vyrrch faced were different to the last three, and they had been different to the three before. Lacking a heirarchy, the Weave-lord had no superiors to report to; instead the three Weavers present would disseminate the information throughout the network using the Weave. They, in turn, spoke for the others.

‘The Empress is being less than cooperative,’ observed one, whose name was Kakre. His Mask was of cured skin stretched over a wooden frame, and made him look like a corpse.

‘I expected no less,’ said Vyrrch, his croaking voice seeming to come from the walls around them. ‘But the situation turns to our advantage. It would be… inconvenient if she abdicated now.’

‘Explain yourself,’ demanded Kakre. ‘Is not the Heir-Empress’s claim to the throne a great threat to the Weavers?’

‘Indeed,’ Vyrrch replied. ‘And as things stand, the forces on either side are evenly matched. But I have not been idle in the Imperial Keep. The Baraks dance to my tune.’

‘And what advantage for us?’ whispered a fat Weaver, his face a

blank oval of wood with a long, braided beard of animal hair depending from it.

Vyrrch turned his gaze to that one. ‘Brother, I have plans in hand to rid us of the Empress and her troublesome brood. I have struck a pact with the most powerful player in this game; and when he becomes Blood Emperor, we will be raised up with him. We will no longer be merely an accessory to government; we will be the power behind the throne!’

‘Be careful, Vyrrch,’ warned Kakre. ‘They do not trust us, do not want us here. They will turn on us if they can. Even your Barak.’

‘They suspect,’ added the third weaver, whose black wooden Mask wore a snarl. ‘They suspect what we are about.’

‘Then let them suspect,’ Vyrrch replied. ‘By the time they realise the truth, it will be too late.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Kakre, ‘you had better explain to us your intentions.’

Vyrrch returned to himself shortly afterward, his consciousness flitting down the synapses of the Weave to arrive back at his physical body. His breathing fluttered, and his eyes, which had been open and glazed, focused sharply. He was sitting in his usual place, amid the stench and rank squalor of his chambers. For a time he composed himself, awaiting the backlash of withdrawing himself from the sheer bliss of the Weave. Recollection slotted into place around the usual patches of amnesia, and he looked around quizzically. He vaguely remembered having a girl brought to him yesterday, a particularly spirited little thing as it turned out. He’d had her trussed up, like a spider with a fly, intending to keep her and feed her and use her as necessary. The motive behind it eluded him; perhaps he had wanted instant relief for his next post-Weaving psychosis rather than having to wait for the servants to bring him what he needed on request. The clever bitch had slipped her bonds somehow and was loose in his chambers, hiding. She was trapped in here with him, for he wore the only key to the heavy door that would give her freedom, and he never took it off. He liked that. A little game.

He felt no desire for her now, though. Instead, he felt a sudden and overwhelming compulsion to rearrange his surroundings. An alien and quite dazzling logic had settled on him, a way things should be done, and he saw as if in a vision from the gods how he

should alter his living space. He got up to do so, knowing it to be just another form of mania, but powerless to prevent it anyway. The girl could wait. Everyone could wait. Then when he was ready, he’d have them all.

Sixt

een

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.