1
Yaz and Mali
Yaz
had walked on water her entire life, and now in this place where it
fell molten from the skies they planned to drown her in the stuff.
She
knelt on the rock, staring down into a sinkhole at the water some forty
feet below. A black depth waited for her, unrippled by the wind,
untouched by the sunlight that reached only halfway down. The
sheer-sided hole might have been poked into the stone by the finger of a
god. The far wall lay more than ten yards away and on that side an iron
ladder led down into the depths, marking the stone with rusty tears.
Even
if the ladder were on her side it would be of little help to Yaz. Her
hands were held out to either side of her neck by a heavy iron yoke that
had already scraped her wrists raw. The metal was hot, having soaked in
the sun, which seemed to shine more strongly here on Abeth's belt. To
her left Quina knelt, similarly yoked, her ankles bound with rope where
Yaz's remained free. To Yaz's right, Thurin then Erris wore the same
iron restraint and watched the same dark waters.
Throughout
all her troubles since dropping into the Pit, Yaz had never come quite
as close to death as that day fishing the Hot Sea when the dagger-fish
had dragged her brother beneath the waves and she'd gone down with them,
unable to let go. Here she was again, facing the same end.
The
audience this time was much larger and far less friendly. Nobody would
be paddling to the spot where she went down. None of them would try to
save her.
Eular, who had been high priest at the Black
Rock, was somehow a major figure in a very different faith down here in
the green lands. Now he stood with his masked and eyeless face turned
towards Yaz and the others from the far side of the sinkhole. Standing
with him were the abbess and the two sisters superior: Mistress Path-or
Sister Owl as she had first introduced herself-and Mistress Shade. Nuns
and novices ringed the perimeter. None of them looked happy about the
proceedings.
Yaz kept her gaze on Eular. She remembered
the debris in the hidden room behind Arges's statue back in the Black
Rock's temple: a shattered gate. It was clear now that the gate had been
broken after Eular used it to escape to the Corridor, and that he must
have used it many times before that day. His double life between the
caves of the Broken and the Black Rock had been a triple life. He'd
maintained yet another personality, using the wonders of the Missing to
skip through time and space, supporting at least three separate
existences. Somehow he'd carved out a position in the green lands among
the people he claimed had blinded him. His manipulation of threads could
only have taken him so far-the rest must have been down to external
help. Seus must have been at work in this place for years.
From
her place on the rim of the Glasswater sinkhole, Novice Mali watched
the four ice-tribers on their knees awaiting execution. Unlike them she
had been allowed to stand, but like them she wore the yoke. The device
was designed to restrain people with two hands, and Mali would have
found it easy to pull her wrist stump clear, but Sister Cup had secured
her elbow to the ironwork with rope. In any event, there was little Mali
could have achieved with that arm free. The stump ached all the time
and became agony at the lightest touch.
Oddly, when she
didn't look at the stump, Mali could imagine she still had the hand. She
could even wave the fingers or make a fist, almost as if there were a
ghost hand there, and that in some parallel Abeth an unmaimed Mali
occupied the same space. She'd even found that when it came to
manipulating the invisible threads that join each thing to every other,
it was her missing fingers that were the most deft, capable of feats of
dexterity her fingers of flesh and bone were not.
Mali
forced herself to look at the four ice-tribers who had saved her. Sister
Pine stood behind them in the white habit of the executioner. Yaz and
her friends looked so lost in Mali's world, just as she had been lost in
theirs. She remembered their tears of wonder when she'd led them out of
the cave, as if the trees and bushes had been heaped mounds of gold and
gems. Everything had amazed them: chickens, nuns' habits, the archon's
horse . . . And now, a day after their arrival, they were all to be
killed. Mali's heart hurt worse than her wrist.
The trial
in Persus Hall had been a farce. Mali had answered the archon's
questions, protested when he called her a liar, and hung her head when
he laughed at her talk of gates that crossed thousands of miles in an
instant. Archon Eular had called one of his Church guards to the stand, a
woman he said had survived the ice-tribers' raid in which the white
box, later found on Yaz, had been stolen from a priest named Pather, who
had sadly been killed in its defence.
The woman had
pointed at Mali and with unwavering conviction had stated before the
court and beneath the timeless gaze of the Ancestor that Mali had been
with the raiders, though possibly a prisoner.
The tribers
had, Archon Eular maintained, captured Mali on the ice, slaughtered her
friends, and coerced her to lead them through the empire in search of
plunder. Having murdered Father Pather and stolen Church property, they
came to Sweet Mercy seeking new things to steal. It seemed, he said,
that they had used unknown magics or poisons to break Mali's will. It
was the only explanation for her lies, unless of course she had turned
willingly to their cause. Eular had produced the handful of stardust
taken from Yaz and claimed it as an example of the corrupt magics of the
ice they had used to twist Mali's mind. He had snuffed out its light,
claiming that he channelled the purifying power of the Ancestor, and had
let the lifeless grains tumble through his fingers to the floor.
Yaz
and her friends had said nothing during the trial. In fact nobody had
asked them to. Sister Owl and the archon were the only ones who could
speak to them, and Yaz had told Mali not to reveal that the two of them
could understand each other. Sister Owl had watched the whole
proceedings, stony-faced, saying nothing despite her curious interest in
Erris. Apparently her respect for the office of archon prevented her
from contradicting him in court. And, truthfully, what could the old
woman say on the subject that did not come directly from the mouths of
the accused?
So now Mali stood yoked beside the
Glasswater. Her yoke bore a sigil that prevented her reaching the Path.
She knew she wouldn't be drowned, at least not today: the sigil made the
yoke far too powerful to risk losing it in the mud fathoms down at the
bottom of the sinkhole.
Although Abbess Claw had been
largely silent during the trial she had been insistent on two points.
Firstly, there would be no rush to judgment in the case of a novice of
Sweet Mercy. If Novice Mali had been controlled then the means of that
control would be identified and neutralized. Secondly, when Archon Eular
had called for his men to take the tribers out into the square and
behead them Abbess Claw had stood from her chair.
"At Sweet Mercy we drown."
The archon had raised a brow at that. "I beg your pardon?"
"We execute by drowning in the sinkhole."
Archon
Eular had shaken his head, the white mask hiding his expression. "I
don't trust that. I want their blood on the ground before me."
"You
don't trust drowning?" Abbess Claw's trilled laugh sounded all wrong.
Mali had never heard the abbess laugh before. "Do you think the ice
tribes are part fish, archon? I doubt they can even swim, though that's
immaterial; they will be weighted."
"Perhaps they have powers . . ." Irritation coloured the archon's voice.
"Powers?" The abbess raised a brow.
"You have to ask? In this place where half your novices show the old bloods?"
Abbess
Claw pursed her lips. As close to a shrug as Mali had ever seen. "And
we have to scour the empire for them. And even then not one of the girls
here can breathe water."
"I insist-"
"Archon
Eular." Claw lowered her voice though the whole of the Persus Hall
could still hear her, its collective breath held as they watched on,
amazed that the abbess would defy an archon over so small a thing as the
manner of four foreigners' deaths. "Archon Eular, you are new in your
post and perhaps less familiar than you might be with the convents and
monasteries that you now oversee on behalf of the high priest. Within
the confines of this convent the laws by which we have lived for more
than two centuries are paramount. Church law says these four must die.
Convent law says it will be by drowning. It would be unfortunate for us
to put your authority to the test so early in your new post over such a
minor detail. Sister Owl will keep close watch on the prisoners and in
the unlikely event that they attempt to use magic to escape their fall,
she will counter any such efforts."
The archon drew breath to answer. Abbess Claw beat him to it. "But I will have tradition followed."
"Fine."
Eular had thrown his hands in the air. "Drowning it is, then. I will be
attending the execution so let's make it as soon as possible."
"Thurin Hellanson!" Abbess Claw called across the sinkhole. "You have-"
"Not him. Put the girl in first," Archon Eular interrupted.
Abbess Claw turned her head slowly and gave the archon a hard stare. "Quina of-"
"The other one! The darker girl."
Despite
her promise to Sister Owl, Mali started to try to force her way to the
ice-tribers. She tried to see the Path but instead the damned sigil
filled her vision, splitting her head with a wedge of white agony. "This
is murder! These people helped me!"
Someone put a knee
into Mali's spine and a gag into her mouth, pulling back until she was
forced to her knees. Still she tried to fight them. Yaz was a powerful
quantal, and when she unleashed her power, people Mali loved might die.
Mali could warn the nuns, but even if she was believed, Mali couldn't
take away the tribers' last remote chance of escape, however doomed any
such attempt might be. Worse still was the idea that Yaz's efforts in
rescuing Mali, pulling her from death on the ice through that distant
gate, had drained her: she'd not used the Path to fight Haydies or his
guards, even when the three-headed dog was on the point of slaughtering
everyone. And although those events seemed as distant in time as they
were in space, they were actually only on the previous day.
The
abbess drew a deep breath, fingers drumming on her crozier. "Yaz of the
Ictha, you have been found guilty of the crime of murder by a court of
the Church. Sentence is now to be carried out. May the Ancestor have
mercy and join your soul to the great tree." Abbess Claw made the sign
of the arborat, one finger starting low, tracing the taproot, another
finger joining to trace the trunk, then all fingers spreading as they
rose to trace the branches. "Have you any last words?"
Across the empty yards Yaz frowned, her mouth struggling to shape unfamiliar words. "Priest . . . Eular . . . lies."
The
abbess gave a curt nod and Sister Pine pushed Yaz forward. She fell
without a scream and hit the water, vanishing before the splash cleared.
Quina started to wail.
Mali broke free for a brief
moment, howling behind her gag. The abbess glanced her way with an
unreadable expression as two nuns wrestled her back down.
Abbess Claw raised her voice to execute a second sentence. "Thurin H-"
"The other girl next," Archon Eular cut across her. "But let's be in no hurry about it."
Where
Yaz had fallen the ripples were still spreading out towards the
opposite wall. A scattering of bubbles rose lazily from the spot where
she had gone under. For what seemed an age everyone watched in silence
as the ripples faded away. One lone bubble broke the surface.
"Making
them wait is cruel, archon." The abbess raised her hand to signal
Sister Pine. "At Sweet Mercy we are not cruel. We are just."
Eular
caught her arm and pressed it down, though Mali had no idea how he saw
it. Or indeed how he had known that Yaz's bronze skin was darker than
Quina's pale one. "Indulge me."
Abbess Claw sighed and stepped back.
On the far side Erris pitched forward without being pushed. He hit the water with an enormous splash.
"Stop them!" Eular roared. "Don't-"
But
Thurin was already falling as Erris hit the water. With a desperate
wail Quina fell to her side and rolled over the sinkhole's edge,
screeching as she dropped.
"Stop them?" The abbess turned
to fix Archon Eular with a curious stare, head tilted to the side. "It
was your sentence that demanded their lives."
Eular stood
staring at the churning water, fists balled at his sides, as if from
behind the closed ceramic of his mask those empty sockets might see all
the way down into the Glasswater's murky depths.
2
Yaz
Yaz
had fallen much further before and into colder water, but never wearing
an iron yoke that weighed half what she did and kept her hands
immobile. She hit the water hard enough to leave her head ringing with
the impact. In the next moment everything was bubbles and churning
light, the yoke swiftly dragging her down. Terror surged, trying to
force her last breath from her lungs. The depths into which she was
sinking were black, beyond the reach of daylight, and she had no idea
how long it would take her to reach the bottom. Already pressure was
building around her, pressing on her chest to release its air, weighing
against her eardrums, and promising to crush her like rotten ice.
Thurin
was supposed to go in first. Thurin was supposed to go in first. Eular
had seen through their plan and now she was going to die.
She
hit the bottom unexpectedly and black mud swirled, replacing the weak
light from above with impenetrable night. The mud enfolded her in a
slimy embrace. She fought against panic. She couldn't tell if she was
entirely within the muck or lying on some yielding surface. Somehow
drowning in mud seemed worse than drowning in water. The yoke's weight
provided a definite sense of down but she couldn't find any footing to
right herself. Instead she forced herself to stillness. The air in her
lungs would turn sour more swiftly if she struggled.
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