Echoes of Understorey Page 24

  Daggad obeyed.

  Imeris clumsily rubbed at the snakes’ blood, clumped and clotting on Daggad’s skin, on the table, and on the bindings holding him down. She darted a glance at Anahah.

  “You flew higher than the forest,” she said. “When you were a bird. What are the stars?”

  “Airak’s lanterns,” Anahah said softly, without looking up from his task. “Carried above the clouds and abandoned there by the winged. Not even a Bodyguard of Orin dares fly that high.”

  “What are the winged?”

  “Something between oversized human and flying snake, all made of fallen leaves.” Anahah’s cloth skirted the edge of a row of new spines. He frowned in concentration. “Kin to chimeras and titans, but where chimeras didn’t have the brains to be a threat to their cousins, the winged did, and were banished for it.”

  “And what are titans?”

  Anahah looked at her at last, his frown deepening.

  “Weren’t you a student at a famous school?”

  “A fighting school.” Imeris flicked her cloth back into the bucket and pressed her knuckles to her hips. “You know what kind of school.”

  “You know plenty about the titans.” Anahah’s hands went still. His eyes narrowed. “There were thirteen of them. The forest was raised when they died. Sometimes they looked like giant lizards, sometimes like men and women of a height with the great trees. You call them the Old Gods in Understorey. In Floor, they fossick for their bones.”

  THIRTY

  IMERIS ACCEPTED the carefully tailored map with her head bowed in thanks.

  Sariras had used different coloured inks to represent the great trees. Poinsettia pink for bloodwoods. Lichen grey for floodgums. Orchid bulb blue for quandong. Some of the trees were represented by dyes made from their own leaves or bark: strangler fig red, tallowwood green, and acacia brown.

  Ulellin’s emergent, windowleaf over floodgum, was shown as a blob of grey surrounded by a circle of pale citrine. It was the one. The tree where the Bird-Riders had led Imeris, where Kirrik’s dovecote had been and Oldest-Father had died. Would Kirrik be more likely to build again in the same niche, or less likely? She could have asked Sariras for rumours, but the loss of Ay the Lakekeeper had cautioned her not to seek allies for the fight against the sorceress until the Hunt was done.

  “Thank you,” Imeris said. She hesitated with Anahah and Daggad in the grey milkwood archway, just short of the curtain of toxic sap-rain. Caught the spinewife’s gaze and glanced upwards. “What will we find in your tree at the level of the city?”

  “I do not know,” Sariras said, raising her brows, passing Imeris an umbrella, “but a great deal of faeces comes down the south side, so you had best climb up the north.”

  Once on the other side of the dripping arch, Daggad grimaced as he set his steel spines into the tree. They were strapped onto his arms and legs over the top of the raw wounds of his new implants. Anahah, too, wore the beginner’s attire, the metal more clumsy than living fangs and in need of sharpening every hundred body lengths or so. The sharpening would interrupt their upward advance, but they no longer had the option of Imeris going first and then throwing down a rope.

  It was her imagination, yet she felt distinctly less welcome in Canopy already. Their auras were fading fast. Even an hour on the low roads would be enough to restore it, and then their route would take them back down to Understorey, where neither Orin’s creature nor Oniwak could get revenge on them.

  I can only trust Sariras’s word, Imeris thought grimly, securing her own grip on the grey, oozing milkwood bark, that she will not send Loftfol after us, seeing as she now knows every single tree we will be travelling on.

  At that moment, a feathery weight struck near her head. She ducked and shrugged, trying to dislodge the bird. It was grey speckled with black. An owl? It must be confused. There was daylight, somewhere above the trees. Maybe it was sick.

  “Made a new friend?” Daggad drawled, looking down at her.

  “It’s a mimicbird,” Anahah said. “They weave floating nests on the forest floor. It’s rare to see one in Understorey.”

  Imeris jerked her head to one side, away from the bird, trying to see it clearly. It gripped her shoulder with long, splayed toes and blinked black, beady eyes. Then it stretched its long feathery throat towards Canopy and mimicked a young, male, human voice.

  “Father’s grave!” it cried.

  It sounded like Leaper.

  “Was that you or the bird?” Daggad asked.

  “Father’s grave!” the bird screeched. “Father’s grave!”

  It flew down towards Floor while Imeris remained frozen in astonishment.

  “Never mind,” she eventually called back up to Daggad, thinking, Leaper got my message. The Godfinder has taught him her bird-taming tricks. He’s agreed to meet me at Ulellin’s emergent.

  Oldest-Father’s grave.

  * * *

  THEY APPROACHED Ulellin’s emergent at the level of the Temple.

  It was a night and most of a day since they’d left Het. Much energy had been wasted passing back and forth through the barrier and avoiding as many eyes as possible. Imeris still wasn’t sure whether she felt safer in Canopy or Understorey. Daggad’s spines still weren’t healed enough for him to use them.

  Anahah avoided transformations when he was in Canopy, much as being invisible could have been useful to the party, because he said it would be like lighting a bonfire for Orin. As if the soldiers of Orinland with their feathered spears that pointed in his direction weren’t bad enough.

  “What do people ask Ulellin for, anyway?” Imeris wondered aloud, peering around the vine-wrapped trunk of a sweet-fruit pine at the emergent, only one tree away. Slaves and citizens burdened with tributes crossed two swaying bridges of windowleaves, high and low, to a polished, bronze-coloured structure shaped like two great wooden windowleaves, one above and parallel to the other, the sight of which made Imeris’s skin crawl.

  It looks just like Kirrik’s dovecote, only larger, made of wood, and without the snakes.

  Ulellin’s Temple had come first, she supposed.

  “Fortunes,” Anahah said. “Prophecies.” And Imeris remembered what the fiddler, Owun, had said to Ingaget about discovering his lost wife’s fate.

  Daggad, his mouth full of the sarsaparilla-flavoured leaves off the vine, gave Anahah a sceptical look, spat the leaves out, and waved a hand at some out-of-nichers in ragged shirts and skirts.

  “I think those ones just want the vines they tend to produce more leaves. Ulellin is the goddess of leaves.”

  “Wind and leaves,” Anahah said patiently. “Look at the man pushing the barrow on the high road.” Imeris and Daggad turned their heads. The man wore silver-studded silk robes over split skirts and sandals whose silk ribbons wound all the way to his knees. His barrow was emblazoned with the orange hammer and tongs of what Imeris guessed was a coppersmith guild or wealthy House. It was stacked high with greenmango fruit. Anahah gave a low laugh. “Those won’t be ordinary greenmangos. He’s from Akkadland. They’re metal-stone fruit, changed by the goddess to have copper stones inside instead of seeds. That’s what it costs to know your future, citizens. Ulellin listens to the whispers of the wind. She interprets those whispers without error.”

  Daggad spat another ball of chewed leaf pulp as the man from Akkadland disappeared into the wooden Temple.

  “What if she tells ’im ’e is goin’ to get bit by a scorpion and die tonight? Think ’e will be allowedta have his metal-stone fruit back?”

  “No,” Anahah said.

  “Follow me,” Imeris said. “There is nobody on the lower crossing.”

  As they approached the Temple on the living, green bridge, single file with Imeris in front, she saw deeper into the Temple. Its lower entrance was crisscrossed with thousands upon thousands of orange-brown vines, each one perfectly straight, but forming the pattern of a spider’s funnel, leading the eye to a lush topiary in the shape of an openmouthe
d woman’s face.

  Wind rushed in through the funnel. It caught the edges of the ragged family’s clothes as they laid their tribute, a woven doll of windgrass and a fragrant fiveways fruit shaped like a man, inside the cavernous mouth of the leafy mask.

  Imeris stepped off the side of the bridge before it reached the Temple. She caught herself on the juicy flesh of the windowleaf trunk with her spines, moved down out of the way, and waited for the others.

  “Use your hands and feet,” she told them. “There is a dead floodgum tree underneath. So many smaller trunks crossing the main trunk make easy holds, and you can save your metal spines.” Sariras’s gifts grew smaller with every sharpening.

  “How far down is the … is your … is the grave?” Anahah asked.

  Imeris tried not to recall the sight of the windowleaf trunks closing around Oldest-Father’s body, covering his face, smothering him away from the light forever.

  “It is quite a long way down,” she said, “but Leaper does not know exactly how far. We will sleep for a few hours on this side of the barrier. Then we will descend as far as we must to find him.”

  * * *

  THE TRIO stopped to break fast in a natural hollow in the crisscrossing windowleaf trunks.

  It was shallow. They rested with floodgum bark at their backs and their heels dangling down, and it was there that Leaper found them, eating nut mix, fruit, and bean cake at the crack of dawn.

  “A nest of owls!”

  Imeris’s chin jerked up at the sound of her brother’s voice. Leaper’s regrowing hair was backlit by one of Airak’s lanterns that hung from a wooden pole strapped to his back. “One big and broad, one tall and thin, and one so small he’s barely there—just like my three fathers used to be. Congratulations, Issi. You’ve got me back down here at last. I’m Leapael after all.”

  “Leaper,” Imeris said, embracing him awkwardly around his climbing harness, coils of rope, axes, lantern, Skywatcher’s black skirt, and brass bracers. “What is all this?”

  “When we’ve finished talking and I’ve paid my respects to Oldest-Father,” he said, “I’ll need to rope a few trunk sections heavier than me, cut them free, and let the rope carry me back up to Ulellin’s Temple. Why climb when you can fly?”

  “You have lost your climbing fitness, you mean.”

  “Nothing of the sort! I’m being time-efficient. Besides, if I’d asked Airak to unlock my spines, he’d have known what I was up to. Introduce me to your fellow Hunters.”

  “This is Daggad, originally of Gannak,” Imeris said. “He was chosen from the niche of Audblayinland.” Dangling from his rope, Leaper put his right hand over his heart and made a foolish, twitchy bow that Imeris supposed he had learned in the royal court. “Are you in pain?” Imeris asked him, and he straightened his body satisfactorily. “This is Anahah.”

  Leaper peered keenly at the silent, unassuming-looking outcast. Here, the greenish-gold colour of Anahah’s skin and eyes could be misconstrued as the combined effect of blue lantern and green foliage.

  “However she chose you,” Leaper murmured, “one who walks in the grace of Airak wonders if she’ll choose your successor by some other method.”

  “Be polite,” Imeris said sharply. “Orin has tried to kill all three of us. The other Hunters would like to kill Daggad and me. Oh, and Loftfol is bent on killing me.”

  “Fruit?” Daggad asked, offering Leaper an enormous handful. Leaper picked out a few magenta cherries.

  “I need information,” Imeris went on, “and everything learned by the Godfinder’s birds seems to find its way to you.”

  “I didn’t need Unar’s birds,” Leaper said, grinning, “to find out you killed several pieces of Orin’s monster in Ehkisland.”

  “The only effect I had on it,” Imeris answered with dismay, “was to force it to replace its dead pieces with the bodies of my companions.”

  “I wish I were a Hunter.” Leaper sighed. “I’d finish that creature off in no time. Have you seen Ulellin’s Temple up there? It’s shaped like an eel trap. A perfect one-way tunnel to a room crisscrossed with vines. I’d replace every vine with copper wire. Once the beast was inside, I’d call lightning and laugh while it died. Every piece fried at once with no chance to replace any of them.” He split the fruit with a thumbnail, evicted the seed, popped the sweet flesh into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. “Loftfol, though, I’ve no idea what to do about that.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  IMERIS SHARED a glance with Daggad.

  “You could kill the creature without having to be a Hunter,” she pointed out, just as Daggad said, sounding shaken, “You could not call Airak’s lightnin’ to Ulellin’s Temple!”

  Leaper laughed and took some more magenta cherries from Daggad’s hand.

  “What about baiting the trap?” Imeris asked. “Whether you used me or used Anahah, the bait would die in the trap along with the creature.”

  Leaper threw seeds petulantly over his shoulder.

  “Would not. I have better control over my power than that.”

  “Do you? Even in a different deity’s niche?” Imeris’s thoughts raced. This could be the end to an extremely undesirable situation, two Hunters on the run with the beast’s intended prey; if Leaper really could kill the thing, life above the barrier would return to normal for her, leaving only Loftfol to worry about as she pursued the sorceress Kirrik. Daggad, grateful for his freedom, would no doubt help her in that enterprise, taking Oldest-Father’s place, and if Anahah could transform into a chimera and chimeras could smell the soul of a sorceress, as the Godfinder had indicated, all could be set to rights, leaving Loftfol to be pacified by Kirrik’s head and Imeris’s explanations. The curse would fall on me, Anahah had said, unless I used that form to save another’s life, but he would be saving a life: He would be saving Imeris and all of Kirrik’s future victims.

  “Whatever niche it is makes no difference to me,” Leaper said carelessly.

  “How can that be?” Imeris stilled his hand with her own. “This is no time for boasting, Leaper. Can you truly accomplish what you claim?”

  “Will it help if I swear it on Oldest-Father’s grave?” Leaper sneered abruptly in her face, so angry that he reverted to the Understorian syntax of their childhood. “Even the smallest and the weakest sibling has his own feelings and thoughts. You might have been his favourite, and Ylly might have turned out to be a goddess, but I have my uses, too!”

  “Me? His favourite?” Imeris goggled at her brother. “Nothing I ever did was good enough for him. You called Middle-Father a slave, and he laughed. I called Oldest-Father a slave, and he never forgave me; he beat me half to death, took my weapons away, and did not call me by my real name ever again!”

  “Not where you could hear him,” Leaper retorted. He mimicked Oldest-Father’s stiff carriage and said in a flat, harsh voice, “Issi is a Heightsman. Issi comes home. She steals away from Loftfol every chance she gets to visit her fathers. She shows the proper respect. She has the strength of a man. Never mind that Leapael is lazy and inept. Issi will defend the home when I am gone.”

  “I never—” Imeris tried to interrupt, stricken, but Leaper continued over the top of her, kicking at the tree in a fury.

  “Issi this, Issi that! Too late for me to visit him now, isn’t it? And where are you? Not defending the home, are you? You’re here, hiding from Orin’s beast, begging me to defend you! If only Oldest-Father could see us now!”

  Imeris punched him in the mouth. Hanging from his rope, he escaped the full force of the blow. He tried to punch her back, but by then he was spinning, flailing; at some point they stopped trying to hit each other and just struggled to hold on to each other; it occurred to Imeris that he might fall, and then she would have killed her brother as well as her teacher, besides being responsible for Oldest-Father as well.

  The sound of her own ugly crying was horrible in Imeris’s ears. It didn’t help that Leaper was bawling, too. Daggad pulled them both back into the
hollow. He and Anahah said nothing while Imeris and Leaper cried and held each other. Leaper, like any young Skywatcher and regular at the king’s court, had anointed himself with oils. He smelled like frangipani over sweat and char and sand.

  “I pretended to be asleep,” he gasped against her shoulder, “when he needed help checking the traps.”

  “I made fun of him,” Imeris said hoarsely, “because he was afraid to fly.”

  “I despised him for having no magic ability.”

  “He would not let me visit Nirrin. I wished for him to die.”

  “I wished that Airak was my father instead. I told him so. To his face, Issi.”

  When she felt calm, and when Leaper’s trembling subsided, Imeris pushed him out to arm’s length.

  “You are not the weakest,” she said. “Nor the smallest, come to that.”

  He pulled a cord out of his shirt. It secured a chimera-leather pouch around his neck. Inside, there was a curved, flattened ivory shape like an animal’s claw. It was the diameter of his palm.

  “This is Tyran’s Talon,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his other hand. “I overheard the Godfinder telling Aforis it was in the Earth-House of Hundar. That’s a mud building below Airakland where Understorians from the village of Hundar meet and trade with the Floorians of Gui. Our Temple also trades with Gui. They’re our source of black sands. For a price, I was able to convince one of the Gui traders to put the Talon into one of the bags of sand, which I intercepted.”

  “You have a long story about this thing and where it came from,” Imeris said, staring at it, “but no mention of what it does.”

  Shame darkened Leaper’s cheeks.

  “It’s a bone of the Old God who became Airak,” he said in a rush.

  Imeris understood at once.

  “It makes you stronger than you should be in Airak’s power.”

  “They’d take it from me if they knew. I’m only a Skywatcher, and—”

  “And they do not like it when we have their bones,” Imeris said softly, touching her amulet.