Echoes of Understorey Read online

  “Gone,” Imeris answered, staring at Youngest-Father’s relaxed face, his cheeks brushed by closed lashes. “Dead. Killed by Kirrik.”

  Five days since their defeat at the hands of the sorceress, Imeris was weak with exhaustion and grief, and dizzy with hunger. She hadn’t stopped to forage or hunt, uncertain as to the effects of Youngest-Father’s continued deep sleep. He’d fallen under Kirrik’s spell before. The Godfinder had slept peacefully under the influence of a similar spell for many years. This one, though, had been cast with malice.

  “Marram isn’t dead,” Oldest-Mother said, feeling Imeris’s forehead, pinching the loose skin on the backs of her hands. “He isn’t, or you’d have put him in a tree-bole with his wings and brought back only a token.”

  “He is not dead,” Imeris agreed, still shivering. Heat from the blazing fire shrank her woven clothes as they dried. It made her eyes gritty. There was a painful, pinpoint throbbing between them. Her bones ached from nights spent dozing vertically, roped and wedged by her spines in the sides of trees.

  It was night now. She recalled it when her roving eyes found the embroidered hangings that covered the passages to other rooms deeper inside the tree, the cavernous fireplace lined with stone stolen from Floor and the multiple rows of spits of drying fish, but no Middle-Mother or Youngest-Mother.

  They were sleeping.

  “I’ll wake Oos,” Oldest-Mother said, lifting her hands reluctantly from Youngest-Father’s throat where a pulse should have beat strongly. She bent under one of the embroidered hangings, hesitated. “His wings.” She jerked her chin at the chimera cloth and handles which hung from Imeris’s climbing harness. “They shouldn’t stay so close to the fire. If you won’t go and lie down, go and oil them. He’ll need them.”

  Oldest-Mother left the room. Imeris pulled the wings away from her harness. She was still standing there, holding them, mind too fogged to remember what she was going to do with them, when Youngest-Mother arrived.

  Youngest-Mother, whose name was Oos, was much taller than Oldest-Mother, and the better part of two decades younger. Where Oldest-Mother had straight white hair and skin the colour of mother’s milk, Youngest-Mother was dark as polished blackbean seeds with beautiful full lips, her hair like a thundercloud with the first few threads of white for lightning.

  She held her thirteen-pipe flute gently in long, slender fingers. There were no spines in her forearms or shinbones. She had come from Canopy, not long after Imeris herself had fallen as a baby.

  “What happened?” Youngest-Mother asked in her melodious voice.

  Imeris flinched, recalling her clumsy launch. The way the leaves had caught her and the glider had failed. A movement she’d performed a thousand times but bungled when it really counted. Kirrik would be dead now if not for her blunder. Oldest-Father would still be alive. Youngest-Father’s condition was all her fault.

  There must be no mistakes, she’d told herself, and then done the exact opposite.

  “Oldest-Father is dead. Kirrik put Youngest-Father to sleep. He has not moved—”

  Youngest-Mother released her breath sharply all at once. She embraced Imeris, whose arms did not respond until after Youngest-Mother had released her.

  “Thank the goddess you’re not hurt.”

  “It was my fault.”

  “No. This is Kirrik’s work and hers alone.”

  “Can you save Youngest-Father?”

  Youngest-Mother turned to the limp shape sprawled across the table.

  “One who walks in the grace of Audblayin can and must revive him. Unar found a way to wake him once before. So will I.”

  Youngest-Mother had spent her youth as an adept in the Temple of Audblayin. Unar, the Godfinder, had been her friend. At one time, Youngest-Mother had been a target of the sorceress herself, though she wished now to believe that Kirrik had forgotten her.

  She set the thirteen pipes to her lips. They vibrated with her exhalation, but no sound came out of the flute.

  Imeris shivered.

  “What have you discovered?” she whispered when Youngest-Mother lowered the flute.

  “I’m not sure,” Youngest-Mother replied, her thick brows knitting. She was still staring in consternation at Youngest-Father when Oldest-Mother returned to the room.

  “The monsoon is finished,” Oldest-Mother said meaningfully to Imeris, but Imeris couldn’t think about going to Canopy until Youngest-Father was safe. She gave a slight nod to acknowledge the information, returning her attention to Youngest-Mother’s face.

  Imeris didn’t like to interrupt Youngest-Mother’s train of thought, but Oldest-Mother said, “There are bite marks on his legs and arms, Oos. Over the old scars.”

  “Kirrik had control over snakes,” Imeris said dully. “Her latest dovecote was constructed of them.”

  “Spinewives practice hatching the snakes from clutches of eggs,” Youngest-Mother said absently, “to save the villagers having to catch them.”

  “She had spines,” Imeris went on, her eyes never leaving Youngest-Father’s face, “implanted in all parts of her to prevent anything coming close. Her magic put him to sleep. Vines under her control broke Oldest-Father’s neck and dragged him inside the tree trunk. I hit her in the mouth with a throwing weight. She escaped on a windowleaf stem that carried her to another tree before falling away.”

  Oldest-Mother brought a bowl of water and a cloth. She began cleaning Youngest-Father’s dirty face; she put a second, wetter cloth to his cracked lips.

  “You’re lucky,” Youngest-Mother said, “that her focus was on escape. That she didn’t send windowleaf stems through your heart.”

  “How have these strongest of her powers returned, Youngest-Mother? Are they not Audblayin’s powers?”

  “Yes.” Youngest-Mother’s lips puckered. “Nirrin would have been a spinewife of Gannak. In Gannak, which lies closest to the seat of Audblayin’s power, the natural affinity of anyone born gifted is for life and birth magics. Kirrik couldn’t displace your souls, because of the amulets you wore, but she could use Nirrin’s skills.”

  “And how,” Imeris asked, “do we defend ourselves from those, Youngest-Mother?”

  “You’ll have to ask that question of your sister. Quiet, now.” Her brow relaxed. “I think I see a way to wake him.”

  She blew into the pipes, silently, again. The flames in the huge hearth flickered. Youngest-Father did not immediately stir. Oldest-Mother drew the damp cloth away from the patient’s mouth. She sat with her hands on her knees, watching.

  Then Youngest-Father drew a deep breath. His lashes fluttered. His spines relaxed partway out of the seams in his arms. He breathed out again.

  “You’ve done it, Oos,” Oldest-Mother said, relieved.

  “He was only brushed by the edge of the spell, I think,” Youngest-Mother said, lowering the flute for the second time. “Or it’s simply that Nirrin’s power is an order of magnitude weaker than Unar’s was. Help him to drink and then take him to his bed, Ylly.”

  Oldest-Mother obeyed.

  Only when he was gone from the hearth room and Oldest-Mother had returned did Imeris feel as though she’d relinquished his weight. She collapsed into one of the chairs. Her shoulders trembled, and she took Oldest-Mother’s damp cloth, putting it to her own lips.

  “The monsoon is over,” Oldest-Mother told her a second time. “The old year is over. The new one has begun. Will you go to Canopy?”

  “Yes,” Imeris said wearily. She wanted sleep more than she wanted anything, except to defeat Kirrik, and clearly she needed more training, more practice, if she was ever to hope to do that. Oldest-Father would not want her to hide in a hole and weep. He would want her to carry on along the path he had chosen for her.

  “Then I won’t need to send any messages to your sister or your middle-father. You can tell them about Esse.”

  “Send a message to Leaper. I may not see him.”

  “Do not die, falling from the wet bark of your own tree, because you are too
tired to think. Your sparring partner will still be there next year.”

  “Will she?”

  “If she isn’t,” Youngest-Mother said wryly, “and your famous duels are finished, you’ll have won by default.”

  Our duels are not famous, Imeris thought. Nobody will hear of them until the day I win one, and even then, if it takes too long, they will say it was because she was old and her strength failed.

  The monsoon is over. Why now? Why tonight? You are a cruel goddess, Ehkis, Bringer of Rain.

  Imeris would have to climb through the night to reach the Temple of Audblayin by morning. Her sister would be waiting for her. Imeris had an ongoing appointment with Aurilon, the most feared fighter in Canopy.

  “His body is already sealed into a great tree,” Imeris said. “Will you perform some ceremony anyway? Put his rustiest fishing traps into some wax-filled hollow?”

  Youngest-Mother and Oldest-Mother shared a glance.

  “We’ll speak with Marram in the morning,” Youngest-Mother said.

  Oldest-Mother put a grilled fish on a leaf-plate in front of her.

  “Eat,” she said gently.

  But it was Oldest-Father’s voice Imeris heard in her head at the sight of the fish.

  You do not need fruit. You do not need Canopian food. Good Understorian river fish is best.

  Imeris remembered glancing up at him, meeting his serious and unbending eye, seeing her face, many shades darker than his, reflected in it.

  You do not know what is best for me, she’d thought angrily. If nobody needs Canopian food, and Understorian river fish is best, why do the women of Canopy have healthy babies every year while Understorian mothers fall pregnant once a decade? How many unborn ones did Middle-Mother lose?

  Imeris had fantasised, constantly, about the things she could say to Oldest-Father to cut him to the bone. Yet she’d been taught that respect for elders was paramount. She had never used those tempting, mentally practiced word-weapons, and now she never would. Was she glad of it? Relieved? Or resentful? Perhaps if she’d been raised in Canopy, things would be different.

  Imeris gazed at the pale flesh of the fish next to her liver-brown skin. Youngest-Mother reached out and enfolded Imeris’s fingers in hers.

  “Every time you came back to us from Loftfol,” Youngest-Mother said, “without a promise-band around your arm, Oldest-Father would fret. He was terrified that one day you’d go to Canopy and never return, like your brother and sister before you. In the end, you were with him. In the end, you fought by his side.”

  In the end, I failed him.

  Now, more than ever, I must find a way to destroy our enemy, whether that way is Loftfol or the teachings of Aurilon.

  They cried together for a good hour or more. Softly, so Middle-Mother and Youngest-Father would not wake. All the times Oldest-Father had been cantankerous and cruel were forgotten, as were the times when Imeris had been obedient and dutiful. All she could remember of him was integrity. All she could remember of herself was defiance.

  Imeris dried her eyes. She touched her left arm where a betrothal-band was traditionally tied. So Oldest-Father had wished for her to find a mate at Loftfol, perhaps as much as he had willed her to supersede them all.

  She thought of the young warriors at the school, every one of them disciplined and athletic. Attractive. Youthful. They were dream mates and could be valuable allies in battle. Yet each was fanatically Understorian to the core. It was not that they had initially mistrusted her Canopian origins. They might scorn her for being a woman, but until the accident with Kishsik, they had never scorned her for that. Babies fallen from Canopy were gifts of the gods. Fortune smiled on them, if they survived, and Imeris had survived in a more unusual way than most.

  No, it was not until Kishsik’s injury that they doubted her loyalties. In two more years, Imeris would reach the black cloth rank; she would have studied the warrior arts at Loftfol for seven monsoons in total. If chosen as Leader, she would be set the task, the Great Deed, of recruiting an army to take with her into the sunlit city of the cruel oppressors.

  But Imeris had a birth mother she’d never met, somewhere in the city of the cruel oppressors. Her brother and sister were Canopians.

  “Oh, Youngest-Mother.” She sighed. “I could not wed a warrior of Loftfol.”

  “Because there aren’t any other women there?” Youngest-Mother asked with an arched eyebrow. It was Oldest-Mother who shared her bed.

  “Not that.” Imeris picked at the edges of her leaf-plate, eyes downcast. “Though I once wished that I could love Nirrin the way you love Oldest-Mother. When I think of bedmates, it seems I solely think of men. But who could I trust with my family’s secrets? And what stranger could truly see me, not just my fighting skills or as the way open into Canopy, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know.” Youngest-Mother hesitated. She straightened the twisted shoulder strap of Imeris’s climbing harness. “To an Understorian you’re a weapon. To a Canopian, a slave. I couldn’t begin to tell you where to seek for a companion.”

  “Perhaps in Floor,” Imeris said with a hoarse laugh, “where they cannot see me at all.”

  NINE

  IMERIS CLIMBED through the hole in the barrier that her sister had made for her.

  The cacophony of Canopy was welcome. She heard the piping of a pair of plovers nesting on a platform nearby, the creaking of barrow wheels over tree-roads and the whooping of children let loose for the first day of the season to chase complacent birds and rainbows. Most would return safely home. One or two might fall.

  Middle-Father waited for Imeris, hanging ape-like from one forearm, scratching his beard in a bored way with his free hand.

  “Are you injured?” were his first words when she drew level with him. He was a big man in a leather vest and woven trousers cut off at the knee. Tattoos of beasts and human enemies he had killed covered his pale Understorian skin. Though he served the goddess Audblayin, he could not enter within the warded walls of her Garden on account of having wilfully taken human life.

  It seemed the goddess, formidable as she was, hadn’t been able to keep him in the formal Canopian clothes denoting his office as Bodyguard, either.

  The sliver of spines visible between his forearm and the tallowwood tree was a little more yellowed. His cheeks were a fraction hollower and his waistline a little thicker. Otherwise, he hadn’t changed since last year. She drew breath.

  “Middle-Father,” she said, forcing the words out despite the lump in her throat, “you are my oldest-father now.”

  “Issi,” he rumbled, “poor Issi, my Issi. I am your middle-father for always. Do not mourn him. He is already reborn. The goddess came out through the Gate to say as much to me last night. Esse is dead, she said, and born again, I cannot tell you where, only that his soul has passed safely through me.”

  They hugged, one-armed. He smelled like sunburn and sap, furs and ripe fruit.

  “You have not slept,” he observed. “Did you go directly from Loftfol to battle and then back home alone?”

  “Not alone. Youngest-Father was with me. He will make a full recovery, Youngest-Mother said. He will be fine.”

  Middle-Father shook his head.

  “He will not be fine. I think it almost time for me to leave Canopy. Your sister must find herself another Bodyguard.”

  “I think,” Imeris said, attempting a reassuring smile, “I might need to borrow your bed for an hour or two before I go to battle.”

  “More than an hour or two,” Middle-Father advised. “Your old foe will not want to take advantage. She will wait.”

  “I suspected the break in the barrier would not wait.”

  “Indeed. Over our heads, the Gatekeeper has instructions to mend the breach. Within the hour, if you did not come. I waited here to ensure no demon came through.”

  Imeris couldn’t suppress a semihysterical laugh.

  “What a shame that one did not come!”

  “Yes, I know. With Esse gone
, perhaps one will get past his traps occasionally and give me something to do.”

  Tears might have risen to Imeris’s eyes again if there had been any spare moisture left in her. She climbed past Middle-Father into the brightness and colour of the high branches. Troupes of monkeys and flocks of birds swooped and rustled everywhere in the wet foliage. Be aware of your surroundings at all times, her Loftfol teacher, Horroh, urged constantly, but that was hardly possible in the high branches of the great trees, where the wind and weather kept everything in motion all the time.

  Imeris felt more at home in the dim and secret stillness of Understorey.

  She found the Gatekeeper sitting cross-legged outside the Garden’s mighty, half-open, carved wooden Gate. To the left of the Gate stood a round-bellied dwelling grown from the living wood of the tree. It was a dwelling made distinctive by an arched entryway with a trickle of water dividing it. A chimney opening belched smoke that smelled of old coconut palm fronds. To the right, the high wall of the Garden concealed the fecund abundance within.

  “Good morning, Aoun,” Imeris said, though the sun wasn’t high enough yet for either of them to cast a shadow and she thought this might be the worst morning of her entire life.

  The open sky above the Garden was fearsomely vast and mysteriously changeable. Cream and purple-coloured clots of cloud formed a convoy close to the horizon. It was the retreating caravan of the monsoon, dividing sky the colour of molten bronze from a greater, lemon-pale expanse where the last stars of the previous night resisted being extinguished.

  “Sister of my mistress,” Aoun acknowledged with a quirk of the corner of his mouth. He was a long-limbed, tapir-brown, quiet Canopian with a warrior’s muscular build, though Imeris had never seen him take a weapon to hand. No spines, Imeris knew, were concealed in the creases of his forearms and shins. His eyes were very deep set, and silver hairs sprinkled his short, black beard. He was a few years older than Youngest-Mother, who had been his friend.

  The shiny lantern of his office sat beside him. His feet and knees were tucked under the hem of his white robe.

  “I am going to sleep in my middle-father’s house,” Imeris said. If the goddess already knew about Esse’s death, there was no need for them to meet immediately.