The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil by Chris Wooding Read Free Book Online

there was little he could do for her now that she was physically well again. He made her eat, though
she had no appetite. He prepared a mild sedative – a tincture of blue cohosh and motherwort – and gave it to her to gentle down some of her worse fits of grief. He made an infusion of
hops, skullcap and valerian to put her to sleep at night. And he sat with her.
    Then one morning, as he came into her room with a breakfast of duck eggs and wheatcakes, he found her at the window, looking out over the Kerryn to the trees beyond. Insects hummed in the
morning air. He paused in the doorway.
    ‘Daygreet,’ he said automatically. She turned with a start. ‘Are you feeling better?’
    ‘You are the one who has been looking after me,’ she said. ‘Tane?’
    He smiled slightly and bowed. ‘Would you like to eat?’
    Kaiku nodded and sat down cross-legged on her mat, arranging her sleeping-robe about her. She had little recollection of the past two weeks. She could remember impressions, unpleasant moments of
fright or hunger or sadness, but not the circumstances that attended them. She remembered this face, though: this bald, shaven head, those even, tanned features, the pale green eyes and the light
beige robes he always wore. She had never imagined a young priest – to her, they had always been old and snappy, hiding their wisdom inside a shell of cantankerousness. This one had some of
the air of gravity she usually associated with the holy orders, but she remembered moments of light-heartedness too, when he had made jokes and laughed at them himself when she did not. By his
speech, she guessed he had come from a moderately affluent family, somewhere above the peasantry though probably still local. While he was educated, he was certainly not high-born. The complexities
of the Saramyrrhic language meant it was possible to guess at a person’s origins simply by the way they used it. Tane’s speech was looser and less ruthlessly elocuted than hers.
    ‘How long has it been?’ she asked, as she slowly ate.
    ‘Ten days since we found you. You were wandering for some time before that,’ Tane replied.
    ‘Ten days? Spirits, it seems like it was forever. I thought it would never pass. I thought . . .’ She looked up at him. ‘I thought I could never stop crying.’
    ‘The heart heals, given time,’ Tane said. ‘Tears dry.’
    ‘My family are gone,’ she said suddenly. She had needed to say it aloud, to test herself, to see if she could. The words provoked no new pain in her. She had mastered her grief,
sickened of it; though it had taken a long time, her natural wilfulness would not let her be kept down. Her sorrow had spent itself, and while she doubted it would ever leave her entirely, it would
not swallow her again. ‘They were murdered,’ she added.
    ‘Ah,’ said Tane. He could not think of anything else to say.
    ‘The mask,’ she said. ‘I had a mask with me . . . I think.’
    ‘It was in your pack,’ said Tane. ‘It is safe.’
    She handed her plate back to him, having eaten only a little. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For taking care of me. I would like to rest.’
    ‘It was my honour,’ he replied, getting up. ‘Would you like a tea to help you sleep?’
    ‘I do not think I will need it, now,’ she said.
    He retreated to the door, but before he reached it he stopped.
    ‘I don’t know your name . . .’
    ‘Kaiku tu Makaima,’ came the reply.
    ‘Kaiku, there was someone you mentioned several times in your delirium,’ he said, turning his shoulder to look at her. ‘Someone you said was with you in the woods. Asara.
Perhaps she is still—’
    ‘A demon killed her,’ Kaiku replied, her eyes on the floor. ‘She is gone.’
    ‘I see,’ Tane replied. ‘I’ll come back soon.’ And with that he left.
    A demon killed her , Kaiku thought. And I am that demon .
    She did rest for a time, for she was weakened by her ordeal. She felt more drained than she had ever thought it was possible