IMERIS CLIMBED through the hole in the barrier that her sister had made for her.
The cacophony of Canopy was welcome. She heard the piping of a pair of plovers nesting on a platform nearby, the creaking of barrow wheels over tree-roads and the whooping of children let loose for the first day of the season to chase complacent birds and rainbows. Most would return safely home. One or two might fall.
Middle-Father waited for Imeris, hanging ape-like from one forearm, scratching his beard in a bored way with his free hand.
“Are you injured?” were his first words when she drew level with him. He was a big man in a leather vest and woven trousers cut off at the knee. Tattoos of beasts and human enemies he had killed covered his pale Understorian skin. Though he served the goddess Audblayin, he could not enter within the warded walls of her Garden on account of having wilfully taken human life.
It seemed the goddess, formidable as she was, hadn’t been able to keep him in the formal Canopian clothes denoting his office as Bodyguard, either.
The sliver of spines visible between his forearm and the tallowwood tree was a little more yellowed. His cheeks were a fraction hollower and his waistline a little thicker. Otherwise, he hadn’t changed since last year. She drew breath.
“Middle-Father,” she said, forcing the words out despite the lump in her throat, “you are my oldest-father now.”
“Issi,” he rumbled, “poor Issi, my Issi. I am your middle-father for always. Do not mourn him. He is already reborn. The goddess came out through the Gate to say as much to me last night. Esse is dead, she said, and born again, I cannot tell you where, only that his soul has passed safely through me.”
They hugged, one-armed. He smelled like sunburn and sap, furs and ripe fruit.
“You have not slept,” he observed. “Did you go directly from Loftfol to battle and then back home alone?”
“Not alone. Youngest-Father was with me. He will make a full recovery, Youngest-Mother said. He will be fine.”
Middle-Father shook his head.
“He will not be fine. I think it almost time for me to leave Canopy. Your sister must find herself another Bodyguard.”
“I think,” Imeris said, attempting a reassuring smile, “I might need to borrow your bed for an hour or two before I go to battle.”
“More than an hour or two,” Middle-Father advised. “Your old foe will not want to take advantage. She will wait.”
“I suspected the break in the barrier would not wait.”
“Indeed. Over our heads, the Gatekeeper has instructions to mend the breach. Within the hour, if you did not come. I waited here to ensure no demon came through.”
Imeris couldn’t suppress a semihysterical laugh.
“What a shame that one did not come!”
“Yes, I know. With Esse gone, perhaps one will get past his traps occasionally and give me something to do.”
Tears might have risen to Imeris’s eyes again if there had been any spare moisture left in her. She climbed past Middle-Father into the brightness and colour of the high branches. Troupes of monkeys and flocks of birds swooped and rustled everywhere in the wet foliage. Be aware of your surroundings at all times, her Loftfol teacher, Horroh, urged constantly, but that was hardly possible in the high branches of the great trees, where the wind and weather kept everything in motion all the time.
Imeris felt more at home in the dim and secret stillness of Understorey.
She found the Gatekeeper sitting cross-legged outside the Garden’s mighty, half-open, carved wooden Gate. To the left of the Gate stood a round-bellied dwelling grown from the living wood of the tree. It was a dwelling made distinctive by an arched entryway with a trickle of water dividing it. A chimney opening belched smoke that smelled of old coconut palm fronds. To the right, the high wall of the Garden concealed the fecund abundance within.
“Good morning, Aoun,” Imeris said, though the sun wasn’t high enough yet for either of them to cast a shadow and she thought this might be the worst morning of her entire life.
The open sky above the Garden was fearsomely vast and mysteriously changeable. Cream and purple-coloured clots of cloud formed a convoy close to the horizon. It was the retreating caravan of the monsoon, dividing sky the colour of molten bronze from a greater, lemon-pale expanse where the last stars of the previous night resisted being extinguished.
“Sister of my mistress,” Aoun acknowledged with a quirk of the corner of his mouth. He was a long-limbed, tapir-brown, quiet Canopian with a warrior’s muscular build, though Imeris had never seen him take a weapon to hand. No spines, Imeris knew, were concealed in the creases of his forearms and shins. His eyes were very deep set, and silver hairs sprinkled his short, black beard. He was a few years older than Youngest-Mother, who had been his friend.
The shiny lantern of his office sat beside him. His feet and knees were tucked under the hem of his white robe.
“I am going to sleep in my middle-father’s house,” Imeris said. If the goddess already knew about Esse’s death, there was no need for them to meet immediately.
“There is a lavishly appointed bed there,” Aoun said. “Wasted, since Bernreb doesn’t use it.”
He meant Middle-Father. Bodyguards didn’t need to sleep. Wakefulness was a gift given to them by the god or goddess they served. An additional aptitude bestowed on Audblayin’s Bodyguard was the ability to fly, but only adepts could take advantage of it, and Imeris’s middle-father had not been born with magical gifts.
His gifts were patience and hunting prowess. His bed was for entertaining his wife, but she had vowed never to visit him in Canopy in the hopes that his term as Bodyguard would finish sooner rather than later.
Before Imeris could go inside the dwelling, a lofty, brown-skinned woman in a floor-length dress and long, straight black hair slipped out of the Gate. She flung herself at Imeris, holding her tightly, so that the diamonds on the dress pressed painful pinpoints into Imeris’s neck and arms.
“Issi!” the new arrival cried softly.
“Hello, Ylly,” Imeris answered, widening her stance, steadying herself against her sister’s enthusiasm. “I mean Audblayin. I mean Holy One.”
It was never clear which element of her sister’s personality was strongest at any particular moment. A year ago, Imeris had greeted Ylly-Audblayin with the same playful ear tugging she’d performed when they’d shared a bedroom, teasing about her tiny ears and saying she would keep pulling until they were stretched to normal size. Only to have the imperious goddess remind her that the penalty for laying hands on a deity was death.
So Imeris allowed her sister to make the first move, always. Even now, when they had both lost a father. Because Ylly had three fathers, all beloved, but Audblayin had hundreds, if not thousands, and not all were remembered fondly.
“Come with me into the Garden,” Audblayin said. Her hair smelled of woodfern and quince, a scent Ylly had always favoured. Imeris herself would rather rub eucalyptus-oil-rich tallowwood leaves on her skin to hide her human scent from prey.
“Holy One,” Aoun said from his seat, “I think your sister must have travelled all night to come to the barrier in time.”
“That’s why we’ll feast together!” The goddess took Imeris’s hands, tugging at them in unison, taking backward steps towards the Garden, ignoring her Gatekeeper. “Before you go to fight with—”
“Wait,” Imeris said uneasily, resisting, leaning away from the Gate. “We must speak of Oldest-Father first. You must discharge Middle-Father from his duties. Let him go to pay his respects. If they do not hold a ceremony at home, he will need to travel to the part of Understorey below Ulellinland where Oldest-Father died to say his farewells.” But Audblayin didn’t stop drawing her forwards, shrugging off her concerns.
“I am the birth goddess, Issi. Middle-Father is my Bodyguard. We do not say farewells. That is nonsense. Oldest-Father is not gone, he is renewed, and by my power. Middle-Father will—”
“You have to let him go home, Ylly!”
“This is his home!” She stabbed a finger at the dwelling by the Gate with its trickle of water and merrily smoking chimney.
“No, his home is with Middle-Mother in Understorey.”
Audblayin’s eyes narrowed.
“She told you to say all this. She sent you to harass me in her stead. This is the same tree where he has lived—”
“But the barrier separates him from his family—”
“I am his family. Leaper is his family, and Leaper lives above the barrier.”
Audblayin tugged her onwards as they argued. They passed through the Garden Gate. Imeris felt a shiver at the meeting of Aoun’s powerful wards with the magic that lived in her protective amulet.
“I am glad you had that amulet,” Audblayin said softly, apologetically. “Did you use the things you learned at Loftfol to fight Kirrik? Most of the ones I love use my power to fight. I feel it. But not you.”
“Everything I did was useless,” Imeris said. The Garden was greener and brighter than any other place she had ever been. Her eyes ached. Her throat ached. Every part of her ached, but she walked on along the tidy, winding dirt paths and singing bridges. When the fern fronds and the flowering creepers whispered and shifted, trying to get closer to Audblayin, whom they loved, Imeris was reminded of the windowleaf tree coming alive to break Oldest-Father’s neck. “Kirrik escaped. She used your power to break his neck.”
“I felt that. Faintly.” Audblayin took Imeris’s hands again. “You were far from here.”
“Then you can tell me how she got away. After Oldest-Father hit her in the mouth, how did she grow that branch and escape?”
“She couldn’t sing or speak, but she could howl around a mouth full of blood. She used that awful sound for her spells. I heard it.”
“Eliminate unknowns,” Imeris muttered. “That is what Horroh says at Loftfol. Now that Kirrik is in Nirrin’s body, how can I eliminate unknowns? The power of goddesses and gods is one huge unknown. Could you not sever Kirrik from yourself, sister, from the source of the magic?”
“No.” Audblayin squeezed Imeris’s hands sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”
“Could you give me an amulet, like this one, but one that will cancel her ability to use your power?”
“No.”
Imeris wasn’t sensitive to magic, but the sudden sternness of Audblayin’s voice let her know that the memories and personality of the girl she’d grown up with were being suppressed by the uncompromising immortal within. The question had touched a nerve.
“Then I must find some other way to kill her!” I will. If I spend my life trying, I will.
In her mind’s eye, she saw herself in the Temple of Odel, humbled yet again by defeat. Every year, she challenged Odel’s Bodyguard to a first-blood contest of hand-to-hand combat. Aurilon was famous for never having lost a duel.
Aurilon knew secrets not taught at Loftfol and would only teach them to Imeris if Imeris managed to surprise her.
How will I know if I have surprised you? Imeris had demanded before their first clash.
You can trust me, Aurilon had answered, giving a rare, reptilian smile. I will let you know. Oh, and there is a time limit. You only have the time until you are beaten in which to show me something new.
Each year, for four years, Imeris had studied hard from books, her fathers, her other teachers. Just as Understorians were vulnerable to the novelty of Canopian fighting styles, she felt convinced Canopians such as Aurilon must be vulnerable to the novelty of Understorian techniques.
Loftfol was the key to defeating Aurilon.
Aurilon was the key to defeating Kirrik.
Kirrik could come after Youngest-Father while I am in Canopy. To finish the job. There is nobody with him to protect him. Imeris shook off the despairing thought.
The first time she’d met Aurilon in a duel, Imeris had fought in overlapping-metal-scale armour, attacking with her curved dagger the way that Middle-Father had taught her. The next time, she’d tried the traps taught by Oldest-Father, but Aurilon hadn’t been lured into them. During the third battle, the Bodyguard had turned back on Imeris the poison needles given to her by the Odarkim; the resulting three days of paralysis had been humiliating. On her return to Loftfol, Imeris had next gone to the Scentingim to learn wrestling methods and rope strangulation.
I was not surprised, Aurilon had informed Imeris as Imeris had woken from a knockout blow to the head, her assassin’s cord lying all but weightless across her lax palm.
Each year she’d delayed defeat a little longer, but to no avail. This year, under Horroh’s tutelage, she must prevail, despite her fatigue. Her attempt on Kirrik had failed, and now the sorceress knew her face. The situation was even more desperate.
Imeris traditionally spent the morning before her yearly duel breaking fast with her sister in Audblayinland, brimming with hope and focusing her determination, just as it was fast becoming tradition that she spent the evening of the second day after her defeat with her brother, Leaper, in Airakland, brooding among the charred, lightning-struck trees. What do you expect, Issi? Under the cold stars, he’d conjured a flicker of lightning over his hand to read her expression by, shrugging when he saw the misery of defeat. You shouldn’t be surprised. All she does is kill people all day. What have you been doing all day? Gutting fish for Oldest-Father, right? You should challenge her to a fish-gutting competition.
“Issi?” Audblayin’s voice was soft again.
“Yes?”
“You could give up trying to kill Kirrik. She can’t get across the barrier. We’re safe from her in Canopy. You could become my Bodyguard. Replace Middle-Father. You’ve been trained by Loftfol. I know you’d be more than capable, and though it seems we’d be breaking the Law of the Balance, which ensures the forest’s vitality, we would not, for neither you nor Middle-Father are capable of drawing on my magic. Aoun’s maleness would suffice. The strength he has accumulated as Gatekeeper and the greater portion of power allotted to him already replaces the traditional strength and power allotment of my Bodyguard. Middle-Father could go home, like you said. Like you wanted.”
“No,” Imeris said, with all the steel the goddess had mustered only moments ago. Even if what Audblayin said was true and there was some kind of exception to the rule that the Bodyguard of a female incarnation of Audblayin must be male, she could not abandon Understorey to the sorceress. “We will breakfast together. I will sleep for a day and a night in Middle-Father’s house. Then Aurilon and I will clash for what I hope will be the final time.”
She forced herself to see the changes in the Garden since the last time she had visited. Whistling ducks peep-peeped in the tallowwood pools, having found their way somehow from the Bright Plain. A goat grazed the grass garden, two suckling kids at foot; Imeris supposed it was the gift of a wealthy patron, an ongoing source of milk and fibre and, later in life, guts for string. The world wore on, and Imeris felt she was trapped, spinning in place, not going anywhere, ever chasing, never catching.
And now Oldest-Father was dead.
This time next year, she vowed she would be laughing instead of crying.
By the end of the next monsoon, Oldest-Father, I swear to you.
Kirrik will be no more.