lowborn, feared by the highborn. To steal the threat from this, she would do no better than to marry him instead of Urusander.’
‘It is well then,’ snapped Syntara, ‘that Mother Dark does not seek our counsel.’
‘Upon that we agree,’ replied Emral.
‘But even that will change, Sister Emral. What then? Are we to stand before her snarling and spitting at each other?’
‘With luck, you will have aged by then, and so found for yourself some wisdom.’
‘Is that how you interpret the lines upon your face? Since you stare endlessly into that mirror, you must know those flaws well by now.’
‘But Sister Syntara,’ said Emral to the vague form standing behind her own reflection, ‘it is not me that I am looking at.’
Caplo Dreem and Warlock Resh rode at the forefront of the train. Behind them, unflanked and trailed by a half-dozen Shake, rode T’riss, astride her horse of bound and twisted grass. The black of the grass blades had faded in death; the simulacrum was now grey and brown, and in drying the entire creature had tightened in form, until the grasses bore the appearance of muscle and raw bone, like an animal stripped of its hide. The holes of its eyes were now spanned by the webs of funnel spiders. Caplo repressed an urge for yet one more glance back to the Azathanai and her ghastly mount.
His hands were sweaty inside their leather gloves. Up ahead, the forest’s edge was visible in a swath of dulled sunlight, as if the shadow of clouds resided in his own eyes, and he found himself fighting a shiver.
Beside him Warlock Resh was uncharacteristically silent.
As promised they had delivered T’riss to the Yan Monastery, riding into a courtyard filled with brothers called in from the fields and assembled to make formal greeting to the Azathanai. Many among the crowd had recoiled upon seeing the horse of grass — or perhaps it was its rider’s growing power, which Resh said roiled about her in invisible yet palpable currents — or the blankness of her expression, the flatness of her eyes.
Little had been said on the journey back to the monastery. None knew what they were bringing into the community; none knew what threat this Azathanai posed to Mother Sheccanto. Born of the Vitr was a fearful notion. Caplo regretted the enmity of the Warden, Faror Hend — he would have liked to question her more about T’riss: the first moments of their meeting; the details of their journey through Glimmer Fate.
Politics was worn like a second skin, smooth as silk when stroked but bristling when rubbed the wrong way. Caplo was as quick to make enemies as friends, and he had chosen wrongly with Faror Hend. Now that she was upon the other side, he would have to give thought to diminishing her reputation. But he would need his talent for subtlety, since she was betrothed to a hero of the realm. It was all very unfortunate, but a spy was the repository of many unpleasant necessities. The profession was not all daring and romance, and at times even the mask of seduction could turn ugly.
His thoughts returned to that fateful meeting between Mother Sheccanto and T’riss. There had been no delay in ushering himself, Resh and the Azathanai into the chamber of the Mother, known as the Rekillid — the old tongue word for womb. The candles of gold wax lining the walls had all been lit, bathing the round room in soft yellow light that seemed to lift towards the domed, gilt ceiling. The vast woven rug, rich with earth tones, was thick enough to swallow the sounds of their march across it to where waited Mother Sheccanto, seated in the high-backed chair of her office.
With Warlock Resh upon the Azathanai’s right and Caplo Dreem upon her left, they walked without speaking until halting five paces from the dais.
Caplo saluted. ‘Mother, the bandits have been eradicated. In sorrow I must report that no children were saved.’
Sheccanto waved one wrinkled hand in dismissal, her watery eyes fixed upon T’riss, who seemed to be studying the rug underfoot. ‘Warlock Resh,’ Mother then said, making a command of the name.
Bowing, Resh said, ‘Mother, the report of the Warden is that this woman emerged from the Vitr. Her escort named her T’riss.’
‘A Warden versed in the old tongue, then.’
‘Faror Hend, of the Durav, Mother.’
‘She had wise and knowledgeable parents,’ Sheccanto said, nodding. She’d drawn her hands into her lap and there they fidgeted, gripping one another as if to still an unseen tremble, but her gaze had yet to shift away from T’riss. After a moment, she lifted her chin and raised her voice, ‘Will you be a guest among us, T’riss?’
The Azathanai looked up and then away again, now studying the walls. ‘This light is pretty,’ she said. ‘I saw a fountain in the courtyard, but it seemed shallow. There is a dryness here that ill fits a mother’s home.’
Breath hissed from Resh’s nostrils in a rush, but a twitch from Sheccanto stilled the warlock, and then she said, ‘If you will not be a guest among us, Born of the Vitr, then we shall not delay you longer. It is your desire to speak with Mother Dark? We shall provide you a suitable escort.’
‘Your faith is empty,’ said T’riss. ‘But I expect you already know that. There was a spirit once, a god of sorts. From the river near here. It reached through the earth, pulsed in the well you bored in the courtyard. But now even the fountain is lifeless. In chaining and harnessing the power of the water, you bound the spirit and stole from it its life. The free shall live but prisoners shall die.’
‘It would seem,’ said Sheccanto — and now her trembling was beyond disguising — ‘that you lack the usual Azathanai tact.’
‘Tact?’ Still her eyes cast about in the chamber, more wandering than restless. ‘Mother, I am sure you mean amused condescension. Azathanai are amused by many things, and our superiority is not in question. Tell me, do we visit often? I imagine not, since the power that now grows from this realm called Kurald Galain is cause for consternation.’ She had slipped her feet from the odd grass moccasins she had been wearing, and now dug the toes of one foot into the deep plush of the wool rug. ‘Someone will come, soon, I expect.’
‘Is that someone not you, then?’ Sheccanto asked.
‘You are dying.’
‘Of course I am dying!’
‘No god sustains you.’
‘No god sustains any of us!’
‘This is wool. It is the hair of animals. You keep these animals for their hair, although some you slay — the newborn and the very old. There is a smell to the meat when it is old, but the meat of the young is most succulent. Mother, the bandit mothers opened the throats of their children — they would give you nothing. Many of your monks are old. Your cult is dying.’
Sheccanto sagged back in her chair. ‘Get her out of here.’
‘I accept your offer,’ T’riss said then. ‘I will be your guest, for this night and the next. Then we shall depart for Kharkanas. It is my belief now that Mother Dark has made a grave error in judgement.’ She turned back to the entrance. ‘Now, I will bathe in the fountain.’
‘Warlock Resh,’ said Sheccanto, ‘escort our guest to the fountain. Lieutenant, remain a moment.’
T’riss left her odd moccasins on the rug where she had kicked them off, and followed Resh from the chamber. As soon as the heavy curtains settled once more, Sheccanto rose from her chair. ‘They murdered their own children? Next time, employ stealth. Attack at night. Kill the mothers first. Your failure here is a grievous wound.’
‘We lost a generation to the wars,’ said Caplo, ‘and this cannot be replaced in a single day, nor from a single camp of wayfarers. Mother, they fought with the ferocity of wolves. We shall travel further afield next time, and employ the tactics you describe.’
Sheccanto was standing on the dais, tall and gaunt, a figure of wrinkled skin and prominent bones beneath her robes. Below the wattle of her neck, he could see the lines of her ribs, and the hollows beneath her jutting clavicles looked impossibly deep. Of course I am dying! This confession had shocked him. There was more to the Mother’s frailty than her two thousand years of life. It was said that there were great healers among the Azathanai. Caplo wondered if some desperate hope had been blunted in this meeting with T’riss.
‘I am not dead yet,’ Sheccanto said, and Caplo saw how her eyes were fixed on him, sharp as knife points.
‘Mother, it is my thought that T’riss is a damaged Azathanai. The Vitr has stolen much of her mind.’
