Echoes of Understorey Read online

  And lightning fell among the Gardeners.

  These are not only battles of Canopy against Understorey. These are Airak’s Servants attacking the Garden!

  Then the gate cracked open, making her jump. Aoun stood there with his lantern, shadows under his deep-set eyes. When he recognised her, his attention drifted beyond the circle of light, as if he expected Orin’s beast to be following behind her.

  “It is not here,” Imeris said softly, looking up at him. “I need to speak to my sister. I do not wish to wake my middle-father.”

  Aoun sighed.

  “Unlike me,” he said, “your father doesn’t sleep. Remember?” Imeris grimaced. Lack of proper sleep must be impairing her more than she thought. “Go into his house, sister of my mistress. I’ll rouse the goddess for you. Where are your companions?”

  “I have not come to interview anyone on behalf of the Hunt. I wish to ask for the gift of a child, on behalf of an Understorian woman and man.”

  “That’s not for you to ask,” Aoun said, frowning. “She’s a goddess of Canopy. Did Oos suggest that you come? She presumes much for a fallen Servant.”

  “I will ask Audblayin myself,” Imeris said stubbornly.

  She went to Middle-Father’s house. The door was closed. She knocked on it in a pattern they had once used when hauling tree kangaroo carcasses in the dark. The door opened, and Middle-Father’s hairy, hulking, tattooed form filled it.

  “Middle-Father,” Imeris said in the instant before they embraced.

  “Is it dead?” Middle-Father murmured. “Have you killed it? They told me to go down below the barrier to avoid being named a Hunter. I am so sorry! I should have refused. I could have taken care of it.”

  “Magic will take care of it,” Imeris said, letting him lead her inside, where the hearth fire that blazed, bringing beads of sweat in an instant to her skin, was an exact replica of home. “Leaper will take care of it. It will not be long now. Besides, being named a Hunter saved me from becoming a slave.”

  “I worry about you.”

  “Do not worry.” Imeris detached from him, stepping past him, mesmerised by the flames.

  “I am not talking about the beast. Leaper said Loftfol has turned against you.”

  “I killed Horroh the Haakim.”

  “Have you come for a tattoo?” Middle-Father indicated one of his oldest tattoos, of the head coming clean away from the Headman of Gannak’s shoulders, but when his grin didn’t bring a smile to her face, he sighed and squeezed her shoulder. “You respected him.”

  “He underestimated me.” Imeris felt like the words were coming from somebody else. In the flames, she saw Horroh’s face.

  “I am sorry you needed to do it.” Middle-Father went to the table, opened a great corked gourd of turnips pickled in brine, and gave her one to eat. “And proud of you at the same time.” He ate one himself, relishing the salt. “Why have you come?”

  “I need Ylly to—”

  “You should call her Audblayin—” He gestured with his half-bitten turnip.

  “I will call her whatever I—”

  “Issi,” Audblayin said from behind them. A gust of wind made the flames dance and the smoke sting Imeris’s eyes. Stiffly, she turned towards the yellow-robed, jewel-draped woman in the doorway. “What exactly were you going to call me?”

  “Little sister,” Imeris said. “I need your help.”

  “Turnip?” Middle-Father offered. Audblayin made a repulsed face at him.

  “I need to ask for a boon on behalf of an Understorian whose help I need,” she explained. “Sorros the Silent Smith, you remember? Kirrik killed his children. He will help me if you will promise to give him and his wife another child.”

  “A random child from Canopy?” Audblayin asked carelessly. “You can buy them at any slave market.”

  “Of course not. A child of their own flesh.”

  Audblayin drew herself up then, in the manner indicating that Ylly had been pushed to the back of Audblayin’s mind.

  “You’ve forgotten how our world works, Issi. My people bring tribute to the Garden. Their love and devotion feeds my power. That is what allows me to grant their wishes. If I spend my resources below the barrier, where I am weak, on frivolous whimsies—”

  “You would be spending it to help me defeat an enemy!”

  “Orin’s creature is not my enemy.” Audblayin slammed her palm down on the table where the turnips sat.

  “No?” Imeris said in a strangled voice. “It came here, tried to kill your Bodyguard, our own middle-father, did it not? I stood at the Gate of the Garden moments ago and saw a beast very like the one I am hunting facing down some long-dead Gatekeeper. My sister was not there in that moment, but you surely were, Holy One. You say you do not interfere with the affairs of other deities, but do you know what else I have noticed? Since the Hunt began, it has not rained.”

  “Ehkis must have other reasons for that. She does not care—”

  “I think she does! You rarely communicate with one another, you do not see, hear, or touch one another, yet you fight like a human family and your memories are long. I cannot feel it, but somewhere here”—Imeris waved her hand around in the empty air—“your magics are all interwoven with one another’s. Airak allowed his niche’s king to make the call. Ehkis is aiding the Hunt. Ilan as well. You could if you wanted to.”

  “Have you finished interrupting me?” Audblayin leaned with both hands on the table. Green leaves curled out of the gourd; one of the pickled turnips was coming back to life, trying to grow close to her.

  Imeris swallowed. “Yes.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  “AND THEN,” Imeris reported to Daggad, “she repeated what she’d said about the creature not being her enemy.”

  Daggad snorted.

  “That one feels too safe. She relies too ’eavily on ’er Gates and wards.”

  The night had darkened, clouds screening the moon, yet whipbirds had begun calling, indicating the approach of dawn. The trio crouched in a bark crevice below the barrier, Imeris in the middle, with Daggad and Sorros on her left and right sides, the baskets full of tools roped to the lateral branch above them. Imeris and Daggad politely ignored the smell of Sorros’s nightsoil; he’d been unable to manoeuvre so that it fell completely clear of the tree.

  “She said,” Imeris went on quickly, “that Kirrik was her only enemy. She said that if Sorros was to catch the sorceress in some sort of magical metal snare that would stop her soul from fleeing, she would grant him a child in exchange for that tribute.”

  “A magical snare?” Sorros said angrily. “I ’ave never ’eard of such a thing.”

  “Who is this sorceress, again?” Daggad asked.

  “She killed my oldest-father,” Imeris said, at the same time as Sorros said, “She killed my children, Nirrin and Vesev.”

  Imeris and Sorros looked at one another.

  “You admit, then,” she said coolly, “that it was not I. The sorceress walks in Nirrin’s body even now. I have seen it.”

  Sorros buried his face in his hands.

  “I ’ave seen it myself,” he said, voice muffled. “Since she was taken, she ’as been seen on several occasions by warriors and ’unters from the village. I wantedta believe that it was you. You are a killer. You were destined to be a killer. You are a child of killers!”

  Imeris recoiled.

  “What do you mean?”

  He seemed to be weeping. She tried to gently take his elbow, to bring his arm down away from his face, but in an instant his spines were unsheathed, their blunt sides pressing into the flesh of her throat, and Sorros had only to pull his elbow down for the keen edges of them to catch, for her to die as swiftly as Horroh had.

  “Your father killed my father,” Sorros screamed into her face. “The ’unter Bernreb killed the ’Eadman of Gannak! Do you deny that?”

  “No,” Imeris said, suppressing the urge to swallow.

  “’Ere, now, blacksmith,” Daggad said mild
ly. “If you kill ’er, then I will ’ave to kill you. I would much rather we all killed the creature together, followed by the sorceress you Understorians keep mentioning. I ’ave hunted all sortsa things, but never an evil soul that could switch bodies. If that old clockmaker in Eshland could make a soul cage, I do not see why a famous smith could not find a way to forge a magical metal snare to keep a sorceress’s soul inside ’er body.”

  “I am famous for my grief,” Sorros said, staring wildly into Imeris’s eyes. Traces of Nirrin and Vesev were in his prominent cheeks, olive-green eyes and whorl of black hair at his temple on the left side. “When my father died, I did not speak for seven years.”

  “Daggad, on the other hand, did exactly as your father the Headman asked,” Imeris dared. “He has been a slave in Canopy far longer than seven years.”

  Sorros breathed heavily. Daggad’s hand rested against Imeris’s turned back; she felt a knife handle in it, but the Hunter made no move to reach past Imeris and plunge it into the smith. She tried to stay relaxed and still as Sorros looked from her face to Daggad’s and back again.

  Then Sorros opened the fist of his right hand and his spines went back into their seams.

  “I am regretful,” he panted. “You are right. If you are ta blame for your father’s actions, I amta blame for the actions of my father.” He looked to Daggad. “I am regretful you were taken as a slave.”

  “I am my own man now. I am sorry about your father.”

  “’E is reborn, I ’ope, in an ’appier place.”

  Imeris put her fingers to her throat. The skin bore the indents of Sorros’s spines, but it was unbroken. She’d just been very close to being reborn, herself. Her sister would oversee the linking of her soul to a new body. But she had several tasks to complete first.

  Her fingers travelled to the amulet around her neck.

  “This is no metal snare,” she said. “Yet this old bone keeps my soul inside my body, no matter how the sorceress’s magic seeks to separate the two. Perhaps, around Nirrin’s neck, it can keep Kirrik from escaping.”

  “I will ’elp you,” Sorros wept, tears running into his beard. “I will ’elp you kill the creature and the sorceress, both. Only show me the way into Canopy. The goddess did grant us passage?”

  “No,” Imeris said.

  “No?” Daggad repeated, dumbfounded.

  Imeris adjusted the amulet on its woven cord.

  “That is to say, she did not open us a way through the barrier. However, she told me that Oxor, goddess of the sun, has been recently killed by an assassin. Oxor’s Bodyguard died in the Hunt”—she shared a glance with Daggad—“and her Servants were not able to protect her. There is a weakness in the barrier we can exploit.”

  As a result of Oxor’s murder, Audblayin had said, you may find her part of the barrier permeable at its most remote point.

  What point is that? Imeris had asked keenly.

  Audblayin had turned to depart Middle-Father’s dwelling. Over her shoulder, she said grudgingly, The Falling Fig.

  “Last time I ’eard those words,” Daggad murmured, “my wife stood by my side and the Headman thrust his fists towards the sky.”

  “Lead us to this weak place in the barrier,” Sorros said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I will not falter again. I swear it by the souls of my two children and the soul of the third child that ista come. Did the goddess say whether I should bring Nin to the Garden, once I ’ave the sorceress’s soul as my tribute?”

  “No,” Imeris said, beginning the climb back down to the level of the bridges in Understorey. “But by her bones, she will make good on her promise.” Even if I have to drag her down to Gannak by both ears.

  * * *

  “LIGHT A taper,” Daggad whispered, “so that we can see the cursed map.”

  “I have no more tapers,” Imeris whispered back.

  The trees beneath the narrow end of the teardrop-shape of Oxorland were thinner-trunked. They put all their energy towards flowering year-round, monsoon season and dry. It meant the gaps between the trees were wider, the bridges scarcer and sometimes ill-set.

  Imeris leaned back against deeply creviced suntree bark. The empty platform before them, which should have been receiver to the third-last bridge before the Falling Fig, hadn’t been set at all, and Imeris struggled to see where on the map the spinewife had made for them they might backtrack and find another way.

  “Sure would ’elp to ’ave your glowworm friend with us ’ere now.”

  “Maybe if you moved your fat head, I could catch a bit of sunlight.”

  “Maybe if you took over carryin’ one of these tool baskets, I would cast a smaller shadow.”

  “Forget the map,” Sorros murmured. “There is only one way back. We should cross to the rhododendron and try the isu tree.”

  Something swished on the other side of the suntree. The bark carried a faint tremor. If the tree had not been a mere dozen paces in diameter, Imeris might not have heard or felt the disturbance.

  Imeris held up a hand for silence, the map forgotten.

  Youngest-Father? she thought, but it couldn’t be. She’d taken his wings and given them to Odel. He was trapped in the tallowwood tree.

  Sorros pointed back along the bridge in the direction of the rhododendron. Two dark shapes moved there.

  “Loftfol,” Imeris shouted as loudly as she could, thrusting the map into Daggad’s chest. “Show yourselves, cowards!” She seized Daggad by the ear, pulled his head down, and whispered, “Sorros must get through the barrier at the fig. I can get through anywhere. Make sure he gets there.”

  Daggad nodded. Twisted violently and threw Sorros down onto the bridge. The Hunter thrust his arms and legs between the wooden planking, urging the smith to do the same. Tool baskets rattled on their backs. Encumbered, they could not climb quickly. Imeris would have to give them more time.

  Drawing the bone sword crafted for her by Anahah, she cut the ropes of the bridge. It was still connected at the rhododendron end. Daggad and Sorros fell away into darkness. Imeris could only hope that the students of Loftfol would ignore them and come after her.

  She took a moment to string her bow, but the new arrivals did not wait to be shot and killed; satisfaction surged in her as the two murky silhouettes on the far trunk expanded into wing shapes and leaped into the gap before she could nock one of the arrows from Het.

  They would land on the suntree below her. She must stay ahead of them. Reach the barrier first. Stashing the sword and bow across her back once more, she lunged at the tree above eye level, spines ready.

  The suntree betrayed her. Bark crumbled. Her right arm swung free.

  A face appeared around the trunk, startled to find her so close. Imeris swung her spines at it, and the student twisted away.

  Kishsik. The one-handed boy that Imeris had maimed in training. She remembered his hawk’s stare on the day she had beaten him to Loftfol. He’d had two hands then. She had still beaten him. All of them.

  Six years ago.

  A lifetime ago.

  She could beat him again now.

  Forcing her tired body to a burst of speed, Imeris surged up the side of the tree. Spines struck deeply. Loudly. Bark fragments got in her eyes. She closed them. She didn’t need to see.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw herself in the Loftfol training hall, forearm raised, Kishsik’s encircling hand not around her wrist, where it was safe, but around her seams. The action she’d taken, extruding the snake-fang grafts, had been instinctive, as had the drawing back. Horroh had not reprimanded her. Simply taken the boy to the healing room. She had paid his family thirteen yellow-bellied glider pelts, the set compensatory price for a serious wounding.

  It had not restored his hand, however.

  She climbed the suntree with the same focus she’d brought to bear on the river nut tree the day of the race, knowing that the merest slip meant death, but climbing ferociously towards a future where she would kill Kirrik.

 
“I do not understand,” Kishsik shouted up at her, a body length behind. “Why betray us? Why whore for them when they failed you, when they let you fall?”

  Imeris was not fooled into wasting energy on a reply. She tried to close her ability to hear him with the sheer force of her determination, but his heartfelt words made their way past her defences, past the crash and crunch of bark and spines, the pounding of her pulse and the buzz of cicadas in Canopy. The words nestled against her chest.

  She hadn’t betrayed Loftfol.

  Horroh had betrayed her.

  He hadn’t even listened to her! He had assumed she was guilty of reporting on him to Canopian masters.

  I have no masters, she raged inwardly.

  She climbed until the snorting of air through her sinuses sounded like the river running over the entrance to her fathers’ house. She climbed until the red she saw behind her eyes became sunlight glaring through her lids.

  Imeris opened her eyes and found herself in Canopy.

  Kishsik and the other students of Loftfol, who could not pass through the barrier, were nowhere to be seen in the darkness below.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  FLOWERS COVERED the Irofland and Oxorland sides of the Falling Fig.

  That was to say, since the flowers were internal, that the branches were covered in tiny, green, hard fruit that had not yet been entered and pollinated by wasps.

  The Ehkisland portion of the tree glistened with a light lick of rain, giving the lie to Imeris’s assertion that Ehkis was keeping the forest dry in order to favour the Hunt. Still, it had not been enough rain to reach Understorey.

  Imeris wanted to journey through the grey folded boughs, bushy foliage, and fantastic formations of aerial roots to the Audblayinland side of the fig. She wanted to sleep in Middle-Father’s comfortable bed for a week straight.

  She wanted to stay there and never come out. Let him defend her from Orin’s beast. Forget about being a Hunter. Forget Loftfol. Forget Kirrik.

  But everywhere she went, she seemed to make more promises to people. To take on new and greater obligations. Had she really told Sorros she would make sure Audblayin gave him a child in exchange for his help?