'Yes,' she agreed. 'Something happened, something he would not speak of. Do you know what it was?'
'Do you?'
Kaiku shook her head. They trudged a few more steps in silence. The forest had enshrouded them now, and they walked a zigzagging way through the sparsely clustered trees, stepping over roots and boulders that cluttered the wildly uneven ground. A dirt ridge had risen to waist-height on their right, fringed with gently swaying shadowglove serviced by fat red bees. The sun beat down from overhead, baking the wet soil in a lazy heat that made the world content and sluggish. On any other day Kaiku would have been lost in tranquillity, for she had always had a childlike awe of nature; but the beauty of their surroundings had no power to touch her now.
'I watched him these last few weeks,' Asara said. 'I learned nothing more. Perhaps he wronged someone, a powerful enemy. I can only guess. But I am in no doubt that it was he who brought ruin on you last night.'
'Why? He was just a scholar! He read books. Why would someone want to kill him… all of us?'
'For this,' Asara said, and with that she drew from her heavy robe the mask Kaiku had seen her take from the house. She brandished it in front of Kaiku. Its red and black lacquer face leered idiotically at her. 'He brought it with him when he returned last.' 'That? It's only a mask.'
Asara brushed her hair back from her face and looked gravely at the other. 'Kaiku, masks are the most dangerous weapons in the world. More than rifles, more than cannon, more than the spirits that haunt the wild places. They are-'
Asara trailed off suddenly as Kaiku's step faltered and she stumbled dizzily.
'Are you unwell?' she asked.
Kaiku blinked, frowning. Something had turned in her gut, a burning worm of pain that shifted and writhed. A moment later it happened again, stronger this time, not in her gut but lower, coming from her womb like the kick of a baby.
'Asara,' she gasped, dropping to one knee, her hand splayed on the ground in front of her. 'There's… something…'
And now it blossomed, a raw bloom of agony in her stomach and groin, wrenching a cry from her throat. But this one did not recede; instead it built upon itself, becoming hotter, a terrifying pressure rising inside her. She clutched at herself, but it did not abate. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears of shock and incomprehension dripping from the corners. 'Asara… help…'
She looked up in supplication, but the world as she knew it was no longer there. Her eyes saw not tree and stone and leaf but a thousand million streams of light, a great three-dimensional diorama of glowing threads, stirring and flexing to ebb and flow around the objects that moved through it. She could see the bright knot of Asara's heart within the stitchwork frame of her body; she could see the ripple in the threads of the air as a nearby bird tore through it; she could see the lines of the sunlight spraying the forest as it slanted through the canopy, and the sparkle of starfall all about.
I'm dying again, she thought, just like the last time.
But this was not like the last time, for there was no bliss, no serenity or inner peace. Only something within, something huge, building and building in size until she knew her skin must split and she would be torn apart. Her irises darkened and turned red as blood; the air stirred around her, ruffling her clothes and lifting her hair. She saw Asara's expression turn to fear, the threads of her face twisting. Saw her turn and run, fleeing headlong into the trees.
Kaiku screamed, and with that venting, the burning force found its release.
The nearest trees exploded into flaming matchwood; those a little further away ignited, becoming smoking torches in an instant. Grass crisped, stone scorched, the air warped with heat. The power tore from her body, seeming to rip through her lungs and heart and sear them from the inside; but she never stopped screaming until she blacked out.
She did not know how long unconsciousness held her before releasing her back into reality, but when it did calm had returned. The air was thick with smoke, and there came the harsh crackle and heat of burning trees.
She levered herself up, her muscles knotting and twitching, her insides scoured. Panting, she found her feet and her balance. She was alive; the pain told her so. Slowly she looked around the charred circle of destruction that surrounded her, and the sullenly smouldering trees beyond. Already the dampness from yesterday's rains was overcoming the hungry tongues of flame, and the fire was subsiding gradually.
She fought to reconcile the scene with the one she had been walking through when the pain struck her, and could not. Blackened rock faces hunkered out of soil gone hard and crisp. Scorched leaves curled into skeletal fists. Trees had been split in half, roughly decapitated or smashed aside. The very suddenness of the obliteration was almost impossible to understand; she could scarcely believe she was still in the same place as she had been when she had fainted.
The mask, unharmed, lay on the ground nearby, its empty gaze mocking. She stumbled over to it and picked it up. There was a terrible weariness in her body, a hazy blanket over her senses that smothered her towards sleep or unconsciousness or death – she was not sure which, and welcomed all equally.
Her eyes fell upon the crumpled white shape lying nearby. Numb, she staggered over to it, absently stuffing the mask into her belt as she went.
It was Asara. She lay strewn in a hollow where she had been thrown by the blast. One side of her had caught the brunt, evidently. Her robe was seared, her hair burned and smoking. Her hand and cheek were scarred terribly. She lay limp and still.
Kaiku began to tremble. She backed away, tears blurring her eyes, her fingers dragging at her face as if she might pull the flesh off and find the old Kaiku underneath, the one that had existed only yesterday, before chaos and madness took her in a stranglehold. Before she had lost her family. Before she had killed her handmaiden.
A choking sob escaped her, a sound not sane. She shook her head as she retreated, trying to deny what she saw; but the weight of truth crushed down on her, the evidence of her eyes accused. Panic swam in and seized her, and with a cry, she ran into the forest and was swallowed.
Asara lay where she was left, amid the smoke and the ruin, the gently drifting starfall settling on her to twinkle briefly and then die.
Three
The roof gardens of the Imperial Keep might have seemed endless to a child at first, a vast, multi-levelled labyrinth of stony paths and shady arbours, of secret places and magical hidey-holes. The Heir-Empress Lucia tu Erinima, next in line to the throne of Saramyr, knew better. She had visited all of its many walls, and found that the place was as much a prison as a paradise, and it grew smaller ever day.
She idled slowly down a rough-paved trail, her fingers dragging over a vine-laden trellis to her left. Somewhere nearby she could hear the rustle of a cat as it chased the dark squirrels that wound around the thin, elegant boles of the trees. The garden was an assembly of the most delicate foliage and flowers from all over the known world, arranged around a multitude of sheltered ornamental benches, statues and artful sculpture. Sprays of exotic foreign blooms stirred in the minute breeze; birds hop-swooped back and forth, their gullets vibrating as they chattered staccato songs to each other. Distantly, the four spires of the Keep's towers lanced upward, rendered pale by haze; and closer by the dome of the great temple that surmounted the centre of the Keep's roof was visible over the carefully placed rows of kamaka and chapapa trees. Today it was hot and balmy with the promise of a summer soon to come. The sun rode high in the sky, the single eye of Nuki, the bright god, whose gaze lit the world. She basked in his radiance as she watched the squirrels jumping through the treetops and spiralling along the boughs.