Echoes of Understorey Read online

  “There is a lavishly appointed bed there,” Aoun said. “Wasted, since Bernreb doesn’t use it.”

  He meant Middle-Father. Bodyguards didn’t need to sleep. Wakefulness was a gift given to them by the god or goddess they served. An additional aptitude bestowed on Audblayin’s Bodyguard was the ability to fly, but only adepts could take advantage of it, and Imeris’s middle-father had not been born with magical gifts.

  His gifts were patience and hunting prowess. His bed was for entertaining his wife, but she had vowed never to visit him in Canopy in the hopes that his term as Bodyguard would finish sooner rather than later.

  Before Imeris could go inside the dwelling, a lofty, brown-skinned woman in a floor-length dress and long, straight black hair slipped out of the Gate. She flung herself at Imeris, holding her tightly, so that the diamonds on the dress pressed painful pinpoints into Imeris’s neck and arms.

  “Issi!” the new arrival cried softly.

  “Hello, Ylly,” Imeris answered, widening her stance, steadying herself against her sister’s enthusiasm. “I mean Audblayin. I mean Holy One.”

  It was never clear which element of her sister’s personality was strongest at any particular moment. A year ago, Imeris had greeted Ylly-Audblayin with the same playful ear tugging she’d performed when they’d shared a bedroom, teasing about her tiny ears and saying she would keep pulling until they were stretched to normal size. Only to have the imperious goddess remind her that the penalty for laying hands on a deity was death.

  So Imeris allowed her sister to make the first move, always. Even now, when they had both lost a father. Because Ylly had three fathers, all beloved, but Audblayin had hundreds, if not thousands, and not all were remembered fondly.

  “Come with me into the Garden,” Audblayin said. Her hair smelled of woodfern and quince, a scent Ylly had always favoured. Imeris herself would rather rub eucalyptus-oil-rich tallowwood leaves on her skin to hide her human scent from prey.

  “Holy One,” Aoun said from his seat, “I think your sister must have travelled all night to come to the barrier in time.”

  “That’s why we’ll feast together!” The goddess took Imeris’s hands, tugging at them in unison, taking backward steps towards the Garden, ignoring her Gatekeeper. “Before you go to fight with—”

  “Wait,” Imeris said uneasily, resisting, leaning away from the Gate. “We must speak of Oldest-Father first. You must discharge Middle-Father from his duties. Let him go to pay his respects. If they do not hold a ceremony at home, he will need to travel to the part of Understorey below Ulellinland where Oldest-Father died to say his farewells.” But Audblayin didn’t stop drawing her forwards, shrugging off her concerns.

  “I am the birth goddess, Issi. Middle-Father is my Bodyguard. We do not say farewells. That is nonsense. Oldest-Father is not gone, he is renewed, and by my power. Middle-Father will—”

  “You have to let him go home, Ylly!”

  “This is his home!” She stabbed a finger at the dwelling by the Gate with its trickle of water and merrily smoking chimney.

  “No, his home is with Middle-Mother in Understorey.”

  Audblayin’s eyes narrowed.

  “She told you to say all this. She sent you to harass me in her stead. This is the same tree where he has lived—”

  “But the barrier separates him from his family—”

  “I am his family. Leaper is his family, and Leaper lives above the barrier.”

  Audblayin tugged her onwards as they argued. They passed through the Garden Gate. Imeris felt a shiver at the meeting of Aoun’s powerful wards with the magic that lived in her protective amulet.

  “I am glad you had that amulet,” Audblayin said softly, apologetically. “Did you use the things you learned at Loftfol to fight Kirrik? Most of the ones I love use my power to fight. I feel it. But not you.”

  “Everything I did was useless,” Imeris said. The Garden was greener and brighter than any other place she had ever been. Her eyes ached. Her throat ached. Every part of her ached, but she walked on along the tidy, winding dirt paths and singing bridges. When the fern fronds and the flowering creepers whispered and shifted, trying to get closer to Audblayin, whom they loved, Imeris was reminded of the windowleaf tree coming alive to break Oldest-Father’s neck. “Kirrik escaped. She used your power to break his neck.”

  “I felt that. Faintly.” Audblayin took Imeris’s hands again. “You were far from here.”

  “Then you can tell me how she got away. After Oldest-Father hit her in the mouth, how did she grow that branch and escape?”

  “She couldn’t sing or speak, but she could howl around a mouth full of blood. She used that awful sound for her spells. I heard it.”

  “Eliminate unknowns,” Imeris muttered. “That is what Horroh says at Loftfol. Now that Kirrik is in Nirrin’s body, how can I eliminate unknowns? The power of goddesses and gods is one huge unknown. Could you not sever Kirrik from yourself, sister, from the source of the magic?”

  “No.” Audblayin squeezed Imeris’s hands sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

  “Could you give me an amulet, like this one, but one that will cancel her ability to use your power?”

  “No.”

  Imeris wasn’t sensitive to magic, but the sudden sternness of Audblayin’s voice let her know that the memories and personality of the girl she’d grown up with were being suppressed by the uncompromising immortal within. The question had touched a nerve.

  “Then I must find some other way to kill her!” I will. If I spend my life trying, I will.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw herself in the Temple of Odel, humbled yet again by defeat. Every year, she challenged Odel’s Bodyguard to a first-blood contest of hand-to-hand combat. Aurilon was famous for never having lost a duel.

  Aurilon knew secrets not taught at Loftfol and would only teach them to Imeris if Imeris managed to surprise her.

  How will I know if I have surprised you? Imeris had demanded before their first clash.

  You can trust me, Aurilon had answered, giving a rare, reptilian smile. I will let you know. Oh, and there is a time limit. You only have the time until you are beaten in which to show me something new.

  Each year, for four years, Imeris had studied hard from books, her fathers, her other teachers. Just as Understorians were vulnerable to the novelty of Canopian fighting styles, she felt convinced Canopians such as Aurilon must be vulnerable to the novelty of Understorian techniques.

  Loftfol was the key to defeating Aurilon.

  Aurilon was the key to defeating Kirrik.

  Kirrik could come after Youngest-Father while I am in Canopy. To finish the job. There is nobody with him to protect him. Imeris shook off the despairing thought.

  The first time she’d met Aurilon in a duel, Imeris had fought in overlapping-metal-scale armour, attacking with her curved dagger the way that Middle-Father had taught her. The next time, she’d tried the traps taught by Oldest-Father, but Aurilon hadn’t been lured into them. During the third battle, the Bodyguard had turned back on Imeris the poison needles given to her by the Odarkim; the resulting three days of paralysis had been humiliating. On her return to Loftfol, Imeris had next gone to the Scentingim to learn wrestling methods and rope strangulation.

  I was not surprised, Aurilon had informed Imeris as Imeris had woken from a knockout blow to the head, her assassin’s cord lying all but weightless across her lax palm.

  Each year she’d delayed defeat a little longer, but to no avail. This year, under Horroh’s tutelage, she must prevail, despite her fatigue. Her attempt on Kirrik had failed, and now the sorceress knew her face. The situation was even more desperate.

  Imeris traditionally spent the morning before her yearly duel breaking fast with her sister in Audblayinland, brimming with hope and focusing her determination, just as it was fast becoming tradition that she spent the evening of the second day after her defeat with her brother, Leaper, in Airakland, brooding among the charred, lightning
-struck trees. What do you expect, Issi? Under the cold stars, he’d conjured a flicker of lightning over his hand to read her expression by, shrugging when he saw the misery of defeat. You shouldn’t be surprised. All she does is kill people all day. What have you been doing all day? Gutting fish for Oldest-Father, right? You should challenge her to a fish-gutting competition.

  “Issi?” Audblayin’s voice was soft again.

  “Yes?”

  “You could give up trying to kill Kirrik. She can’t get across the barrier. We’re safe from her in Canopy. You could become my Bodyguard. Replace Middle-Father. You’ve been trained by Loftfol. I know you’d be more than capable, and though it seems we’d be breaking the Law of the Balance, which ensures the forest’s vitality, we would not, for neither you nor Middle-Father are capable of drawing on my magic. Aoun’s maleness would suffice. The strength he has accumulated as Gatekeeper and the greater portion of power allotted to him already replaces the traditional strength and power allotment of my Bodyguard. Middle-Father could go home, like you said. Like you wanted.”

  “No,” Imeris said, with all the steel the goddess had mustered only moments ago. Even if what Audblayin said was true and there was some kind of exception to the rule that the Bodyguard of a female incarnation of Audblayin must be male, she could not abandon Understorey to the sorceress. “We will breakfast together. I will sleep for a day and a night in Middle-Father’s house. Then Aurilon and I will clash for what I hope will be the final time.”

  She forced herself to see the changes in the Garden since the last time she had visited. Whistling ducks peep-peeped in the tallowwood pools, having found their way somehow from the Bright Plain. A goat grazed the grass garden, two suckling kids at foot; Imeris supposed it was the gift of a wealthy patron, an ongoing source of milk and fibre and, later in life, guts for string. The world wore on, and Imeris felt she was trapped, spinning in place, not going anywhere, ever chasing, never catching.

  And now Oldest-Father was dead.

  This time next year, she vowed she would be laughing instead of crying.

  By the end of the next monsoon, Oldest-Father, I swear to you.

  Kirrik will be no more.

  TEN

  ODEL’S EMERGENT stood high above the other great trees.

  Imeris took a moment to gaze down at the green patchwork. It looked so different from above. She was used to gazing up at it from deep down among sombre, towering trunks.

  The gaps between leaves were dark instead of cloud- or sky-bright, their shifting and flailing movement hypnotising to watch. Wind and the foraging of creatures four- and two-footed made the many shades of citron, lime, emerald, beryl, and gleaming greenish-black ripple like the fur or feathers of some breathing thing.

  She couldn’t see any boundary to the forest in the east, west, or south. To the north, a half circle of pale yellow plain divided Odelland from the edge of Audblayinland. The Floorians who lived there, Imeris supposed, must see each other in daylight all the time. She remembered the feel of the Bird-Rider at her back.

  She remembered her clumsy attempt at gliding down to kill Kirrik.

  Now, as then, her spines trembled in their long bone sheaths.

  Today I will win.

  Aurilon will share her secrets.

  And when I have learned them, Kirrik will not escape from me again.

  After her long, nightmare-filled sleep in Middle-Father’s dwelling, she felt Oldest-Father’s death, not as proof that Kirrik’s defeat was impossible, but as part of his final command to her and her final responsibility to him.

  Odel’s Temple above her was a great edifice of golden sweet-fruit pine heartwood. Formed by magic or metal tools into the shape of a scaly carp balanced on its parted lips, it rested where the growing shoot of the tree should have been, at the apex of a white spiral plank-stair around the outside of the tree connecting a handful of wide branch paths. Below the stair was a gaping, east-facing tree hollow, Odel’s Test, where parents had once flung their children over the edge to be sure of the god’s protection.

  The tree’s arms, cast wide around it, formed a picturesque frame but offered minimal shelter from the wind. The Temple’s wavy fishtail stuck up far beyond the drooping fingers of fine moss-green needles and tiny, scaly, branch-tip fruit. Imeris walked along one of those arms, flattened on top into a smooth pathway with a low, woven rail of pegs and vines. She had borrowed a pair of her father’s loose Canopian trousers to cover the creases in her shins where her spines lay.

  Her forearm spines, she didn’t wish to cover. Inside the fish-shaped Temple, she took off the pretty embroidered robe that Audblayin had given her and draped it over the edge of a vast, floating dish where offers were given to the god. Her sleeveless tunic freed her arms but covered her good climbing harness so that enemy hands couldn’t grasp it.

  She tried not to feel naked without knives, traps, cords, or poison.

  Your own Understorian body, Horroh had said, is all that you need. Trust it.

  Several slaves were there, setting tributes from their masters on the dish and whispering the names of young children, but the god himself and his Bodyguard were nowhere in sight. The internal staircase that led down to Odel’s Test had been covered by a perfectly fitted sweet-fruit-pine plug, but Imeris knew where it was.

  She waited until she was alone in the Temple with the hovering offerings and the blue-tinged lanterns.

  Then she knelt on the floor, set her spines into the fitted puzzle piece, and pulled it open like a trapdoor.

  The stairwell wasn’t lantern-lit, but yellow sunlight entered it from somewhere, most likely the outer opening into the hollow below. Imeris slipped quietly into Odel’s Test, pulling the trap shut over her head, listening intently.

  Aurilon owned a colour-shifting chimera skin, too, and she used it, not for gliding, but to move invisibly through the darkness. It was the skin of the demon that had killed Odel’s previous incarnation, ending a middle-aged man’s life but not the eternal soul of the god.

  A curse had fallen upon Aurilon at the chimera’s slaying.

  All killings of chimeras ended in curses.

  But it hadn’t affected Aurilon so far, not where Imeris could see, anyway. Odel had told her that curses were patient.

  Turning a corner, she found Odel’s Test newly repurposed as a kind of library or scholarly study. The gaping eastern hollow did admit the morning light and permit a view of supplicants approaching the Temple. On the other side of the much-widened space, a west-facing annexe like a beehive had been built onto the side of the tree, with tall, elliptical glass windows.

  Odel sat behind a desk in the annexe. His black hair was in short twists, and his head dipped low over parchment. According to Aurilon, Odel’s previous, older incarnation had been prone to sleeping by day and wandering restlessly at night by taper light. The smoke and smouldering heat of the taper had provided a focus, a way to help him distinguish between visions and reality.

  This younger version had a keen instinct for recording histories. He valued ink galls and a comfortable chair over walking boots and silks. Imeris admired his physique, the strong hands, ink stained, so often covered by gloves, bare to her scrutiny for once. In this place, contrasting with the way he appeared in public, he cared only to wear a robe unlaced, uncrossed and slipping away from his bare brown shoulders. Imeris could make out the hem of a short wrap skirt covering his thighs. That was all.

  There was no sign or sound of the Bodyguard.

  It was warm in the room. The glass windows, Airak-made, didn’t open and the air was still. If Odel were to cover the open hollow with a curtain, the study would become an oven.

  “You are one day late,” he said pleasantly, without looking up from his work. It appeared to be a copy of an older, torn manuscript: On the Flourishing of Temperate Trees in the Event of Concurrent Weaknesses of Sun and Rain Goddesses. Beneath it, she glimpsed an unrolled scroll titled Predicting the Rare Occurrence of Snow in Winter: A Study of A
irak’s Emergent.

  Not answering immediately, Imeris moved silently into the circle of direct sunlight, taking care that her face remained shaded, searching the dim corners for Aurilon’s camouflaged presence.

  “There were complications, my lord,” she said after she’d completed half the circuit.

  “Remember, Imeris. If you touch my bare skin, your life is forfeit.”

  “I know the laws of Odelland, my lord.” She slid across the smooth wood, searching.

  Searching.

  “I’m sick of the pair of you breaking my things.”

  “She finds it entertaining to watch me struggle to avoid you, my lord.”

  “It’s not entertaining,” Odel said, frowning but still not looking up, “to execute someone for no reason except that they’ve brushed up against an immortal.”

  “Could you not change this unjust law, then, my lord?” Imeris cracked open a cabinet, peered inside, and found it full of shelves and papers.

  “I can’t change all the laws at once.” He set the quill in the well and raised his hazel eyes at last. The honeyed light turned them the colour of tallowwood; the colour of old amber. “They already take any opportunity to murder me. Can you imagine if I stirred them up too much? Aurilon tells me you’re quite free with the person of Audblayin, but then again, your sister lives in her Garden behind her Gates and wards and is generally safer than most.”

  Imeris circled again, still keeping her back to the blinding sun.

  “Perhaps you could tell me where your Bodyguard is, my lord. I could try to draw the battle out of your holy Temple—”

  She felt the slight give beneath her feet in the instant before the second trapdoor opened. As she started to fall, Imeris’s instinct was to put her spines out and stick to the lip of the opening.

  Aurilon had used her instincts against her before. Imeris made two parallel bars of her forearms in front of her face, protecting her head. She dropped, unresisting, into darkness.