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

two years before this condition ever manifested
itself? She thought back to the circumstances that might have attended her arrival. One of her previous handmaidens had disappeared without word or warning, that was true. Was there anything
suspicious in that? Not at the time – after all, she was only a servant – but in retrospect it made her uneasy. No, she had to think before that.
    She had heard the tales of the spirits of the forest turning bad. She knew the stories of the achicita, the demon vapours that came in the swelter of summer and stole in through the nostrils of
sleeping men and women, making them sick on the inside. She knew about the baum-ki, who bit ankles like snakes and left their poison dormant in the body, to be passed on through saliva or other,
more personal fluids. The poison hopped from person to person, becoming lethal only when it came across a baby in a womb, killing mother and child in one terrible haemorrhage.
    It was the only sense she could make. There was something within, something unknown, something that had lashed out and killed. Had the shin-shin been after her, to claim whatever was inside her?
What was she carrying? What was the condition Asara had spoken of?
    But Asara was gone, and all she had left behind were questions. What manner of thing was she, who could suck the breath from one person and give it to another? Another demon, sent to look after
her own? Who were her masters, the ones who had sent her? And what had her father been involved in, that such a tragedy should be visited on their house?
    She slept, and her dreams were full of a face of black and red, a cackling spirit that haunted her in the darkness with the voice of her father.
    The priests allowed her to use their sacred glade to make an offering to Omecha, the silent harvester, god of death and the afterlife. It lay along a narrow, winding trail that
wove up the hill to the rear of the temple. Tane led the way, taking her hand when she stumbled. Having spent so long in convalescence, her muscles were shockingly weak, and the incline was almost
too much for her to take. But Tane was there, keeping a respectful silence, and with his help she made it.
    The glade was a spot of preternatural beauty, scattered with low, smooth white stones that peeped from the undergrowth, upon which complex pictograms were carved and painted red. There appeared
to be no man-made boundary or border to separate it from the surrounding forest – in fact, were it not for the stones and the shrine, Kaiku would have not recognised it as a sacred place at
all. There was a thin stream running through the glade, with the far bank rising higher than the near side, and a great old kamaka tree surmounting it, its thick roots knotted through the soil and
its pendulous leaf-tendrils hanging mournfully over the water in flowery ropes. On the near side of the stream was the shrine, little bigger than the one that sat in front of the temple. It had
been carved from the bole of a young tree, and the interior was hung with wind-chimes and tiny prayer scrolls. Fresh flowers had been laid inside it, and incense sticks smouldered in little clay
pots to either side.
    She gave Tane a nod and a wan smile, and he bowed, murmured a swift prayer to Enyu to excuse himself from the glade, and retreated down the trail.
    Alone, Kaiku took a breath and assembled her thoughts. There was no emotion involved in this; she had spent that entirely by now. This was ritual. Her sorrow had eaten her from the inside and
then turned and devoured itself into emptiness. All that was left was what was inevitable, what honour and tradition demanded she do. She acceded without complaint. Everything had fallen apart
around her, but this at least was inviolable, and there was some comfort in that.
    She knelt among the incense in the grey votive robe the priests had given her, for she had no formal wear and it was necessary to be respectful here. She prayed to her ancestors