Weavers of Saramyr

Twenty-Nine

Night fell, but it brought no respite to the people of Axekami. Instead, the darkness bore fear on its back, and panic rode alongside. The western walls of the city were under attack from the forces led by Blood Kerestyn. The air boomed with the sound of fire-cannons, and the ground shook. Men ran back and forth in flaming silhouette along the mighty walls of Saramyr's capital. Guard-towers swarmed. Rifle reports punctuated the constant, low roar of battle. Boiling oil was tipped down on to the invaders in a ponderous deluge, followed by agonised howls from below. Ladders clattered on to the battlements and were flung back again, shedding screaming soldiers as they toppled. Distant voices carried on the hot wind, disembodied barks of command or wails of pain.

In the streets of the city, gangs of men roamed with torches in their hands and makeshift weapons sheening dully in the light of the three moons. All the sisters had come out tonight: massive Aurus, bright Iridima, green Neryn. They occupied different positions in the sky, but it would not be for long. Their next few orbits would bring them into dangerous proximity. A moonstorm was coming.

Nobody slept tonight.

The gates of Axekami were closed, both to keep out intruders and to pen in the frantic populace. Many had taken to the walls themselves, their desire to defend their territory greater than their disgust for their Empress and the monster she intended to rule her people. The white and blue armour of the Imperial Guards mixed and mingled with a thousand different fashions, as men brought their old bows and rifles to bear on the forces of Kerestyn. The weeks of unrest and violence on the streets had heated the blood of the folk of Axekami, and while half of them willingly united against a common foe which was trying to force its way into their city, the other half rioted and looted in protest, demanding that Kerestyn be let in and the Empress give up her throne.

The guards at the eastern gate had been turning away people all day, and continued to do so after nightfall. Traders, frantic relatives, people desperate to salvage or defend their homes; everyone was refused. A small camp of rejected travellers had grown by the side of the road. Only nobles and people of importance were allowed inside the city, and then only after approval from the Keep.

When a simple covered cart rolled up, pulled by a pair of loping manxthwa and driven by a grizzle-jawed young man and his elegant wife, the commander on duty made ready to send them on their way like the others. But when he began to say the words, they came out not quite as intended. And he could not on his life think why he had ordered the gate guard to open up, Keep approval or not; nor why he had not thought to even search the cart. Afterward, he could hardly credit that he had not been dreaming; but the only thing he could really remember with any clarity was the lady's green eyes inside her hooded robe, and how they had suddenly darkened to red.

The tarpaulin was pulled from the cart a little while later, slung back by the young man to uncover the stowaways hidden beneath. They had stopped in a short dead-end alley just inside the city's eastern gates, with tall, deserted buildings rising over them on three sides, blocking out the green-tinted moonlight. They slipped out silently, flexing cramped and numb limbs, and assembled around the cart before the young man and the lady. She was Cailin tu Moritat, surprisingly beautiful without the fearsome makeup of her Order. Her hair was drawn back into a long braid, and her features were sharp-cheeked and catlike. The man was Yugi, the leader of this expedition: a roguish-looking bandit in his late twenties with a devilish smile and dirty brown-blond hair held back from his eyes by a grimy red sash. Despite Cailin's presence, it was quite obvious who was in command. Yugi represented the Libera Dramach, and it was they that held the loyalty of the multitude at the Fold. The Red Order were few in number and, powerful as they were, they were not the driving force here.

Mishani smoothed down her expensive robe and arranged her hair swiftly with the help of Asara. Kaiku glanced at Tane, who raised an eyebrow at Mishani as if to say: How vainl Kaiku could not suppress a smile. It was a joke; they both knew that Mishani's appearance was of paramount importance. She had an audience with the Empress in the morning.

'That was the easy part,' said Yugi, addressing them all. 'From here on in you must be on your guard at every moment. Mishani, Asara: in the next street waits a carriage that will take you to a safe house. In the morning, you make your way to the Keep at the arranged time.'

Mishani and Asara nodded their understanding.

'The rest of us have an altogether less pleasant way to spend the night,' Yugi said with a grin. 'We go on foot from here. We have a rendezvous to make.'

Nine of them set out into the city after Mishani and Asara had gone. Along with Kaiku, Tane, Yugi and Cailin were five other men of the Libera Dramach, chosen for their skill at stealth and combat. Just walking the streets was dangerous in Axekami at the moment; strength lay in numbers.

Yugi took them down narrow alleys and through a dizzying maze of back-streets, heading away from the Kerryn. The sounds of the assault on the western wall reached them even here, and the night was full of strange cries and unsettling noises. More than once they heard running footsteps, multiplying suddenly and married with cries of rage as a chase began. The mobs were out tonight, and there was nobody on the streets not looking for violence. Those they passed in side-alleys or huddled in dark doorways – the destitute and vagrant – cowered away from them. Yugi paid them no mind. He was leading them deep into the Poor Quarter.

The buildings seemed to pile up on one another around them, leaning in closer, groaning and warping under their own weight. Timbers bent dangerously, and the labyrinthine streets became cluttered with debris. Shutters hung askew from dark windows. Fire-gutted buildings displayed blackened ribs. Makeshift bridges spanned the diminishing width of the streets, ladders that went from window-ledges to adjacent rooftops. Here it was deserted, but Kaiku felt the unshakeable sensation of being watched. She glimpsed faces retreating from windows as she looked up at them, candles hastily snuffed at the approach of footsteps. Yugi was deliberately keeping them off the main thoroughfares to avoid meeting anyone, but into what danger was he taking them? They had been kept largely in the dark about the details of the plan to kidnap the Heir-Empress, for reasons of security; but it served only to make Kaiku more nervous when she had no idea what lay ahead. She felt the reassuring weight of her rifle against her back, and the sword at her hip, but even they offered her little comfort.

'In here,' Yugi said suddenly, stopping before a doorway in a derelict building that had been covered over with planking and then broken again. He ushered them within, following last after he had seen the coast was clear. This, then, was their destination, Kaiku thought with mingled relief and trepidation. They had been lucky to get this far through the city without coming across any of the mobs; but where were they to go now, from the heart of the Poor Quarter?

Inside, the darkness was deeper still. The green-edged luminescence of the three moons beamed in through chinks and slats in the wooden walls, coming from three directions at once to render the interior in a dim, unsettling light. Whatever this place had once been, it had been abandoned for years. Rubble, broken planks and unidentifiable debris littered the squalid, narrow rooms. Insects droned about in the hot night, exploring the carcass of a dog that had recently expired here.

'Where is he?' Cailin asked sharply, seeming to direct the question at nobody in particular. 'Down,' Yugi said. 'Come on.'

He led them through a series of similarly deserted rooms until he came to a hatch, which he pulled up to reveal a set of wobbly wooden steps. A light burned somewhere below.

'It's us,' he hissed down, before descending. The others followed carefully.

It was a cellar. The warm, damp air tasted of mould, and the stone of its walls looked aged and crumbling in the lantern's glow. The man holding the lantern was murmuring with Yugi as Kaiku came down into the room. He was thin and slightly gaunt, with a worried expression on his brow. His short hair was greying towards his fortieth harvest.

The last man down closed the hatch behind them, shutting them in.

'We're all here? Good,' said Yugi. 'May I introduce the man who will be guiding us the rest of the way. There have been doubts voiced from the start as to whether a group of men – and ladies -

such as us could even get into the Imperial Keep, let alone to the Heir-Empress herself. But this man did it alone, and unaided; and he got close enough to the little Heir-Empress to cut a lock of her hair. This is Purloch tu Irisi.'

The five men of the Libera Dramach burst into amazed exclamations. Kaiku and Tane, who had never heard of him, kept silent and glanced at each other. Tane gave Kaiku a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. He was just as nervous as she was, yet his presence made her feel a little safer, and she was glad of it.

'Through there,' Purloch said, motioning to a shadowy alcove in the wall. He raised his lantern obligingly, and they saw that a narrow hole had been knocked through it. 'The city's sewer pipes run against this cellar. They also run up the hill, and beneath the Imperial Keep. I used them before to get in, though there's no telling whether they found out and shut off the way. I don't think so. Nobody goes down there unless they have to.'

One of the men went to the hole and peered through, into the dark. 'What's down there?'

'I don't know, and I don't want to find out,' Purloch said. 'But I heard them last time, on my way out.'

'Heard what? the man demanded.

'It doesn't matter what,' Yugi answered sternly. 'Light your lanterns. We're going down there. Ladies, I must apologise in advance for the stench, but-'

'Don't be an idiot,' Cailin said, crippling his gallantry. 'Do not think us frail. Either of us could collapse your heart with a thought.'

Yugi grinned, but there was uneasiness at the edge of it, and he was lost for something to say for the briefest of moments. His eyes flickered to Kaiku, appraising her anew. What Cailin had said was not strictly the truth, at least where it concerned Kaiku; but it gave Yugi pause.

'With such pleasant company, then, this journey will simply fly by!' he declared, recovering admirably.

The dank underworld of the city sewers was not a place Kaiku had ever imagined finding herself. Their world was circumscribed by a wet arc of light that curved over the tunnel walls ahead of them, and beyond it was only a black abyss which threw back a starfield of tiny glimmers as lapping water or moist bricks caught their lanterns' glow. The stench was indescribable. Tane had vomited almost immediately upon entering the sewers, and retched frequently even after his stomach was more than emptied. Several of the other men were similarly afflicted. Kaiku felt permanently on the verge of bringing up her last meal, but somehow the cloying reek never quite made her stomach rebel. Cailin appeared unaffected. Nobody was surprised.

The sewers of Axekami were a network of channels, dams and sluice-gates, flanked by wide stone paths for the sewer workers to use. With the unrest above, they were confident that nobody would be working tonight; but the thought of what they might find instead preyed on their minds.

Kaiku kept her eyes on Purloch as they walked the wet paths with the murky effluent of the city flowing past them. He was plainly terrified, his eyes skittering to every shadow, jumping when a rat scrabbled or a piece of junk in the water bumped against the lip of the path. What had he encountered down here that had scared him so? Had this man really penetrated the Imperial Keep? And if so, then why was he ready to do it again? What had turned him to the cause of the Libera Dramach? It was while musing on this question that she remembered the words of Mishani, on an occasion when Kaiku had asked her the same thing during their time in the Fold.

You only have to see her to know, Kaiku. She will win you with a glance.

Was that it? Had Purloch been so touched by the Heir-Empress? Was she truly such a transcendental creature?

None of them spoke as they walked through the endless dark of the sewers. Existence dwindled to the circumference of their lantern light, and the irregular ticks, patters and splashes of the diseased things that lived here. Purloch was leading them from memory, taking them up slanted inclines, through bottlenecks, over thin metal bridges. The omnipresent nausea that their surroundings induced compounded their misery, but there was nothing to do but plod on. They would be walking till dawn warmed the earth above, so Purloch had told them; but it was necessary to be in place under the Keep by the morning, for that was when the plan would be carried out.

Kaiku was crowded with doubts. Tane walked before her, and her eyes ran over his shaven skull and lean back. The sight of him brought a faint tinge of guilt. She had thrown herself recklessly into this affair, without knowing what she was getting herself into; but that was all right, that was her way. She had ever been headstrong and stubborn. Stubborn enough to walk alone into storm-lashed mountains, anyway. She had never really considered the chances of success then, nor did she now; they were not factored into her way of thinking. Yet her decision to come meant Tane had come too, and that was another matter.

She was not oblivious to what he clearly felt for her. He had followed her since the Forest of Yuna, stood by her side even after he discovered she was the thing he most abhorred. He loved her, she saw that. And she could not deny the desire he provoked in her. It was a heady thing to know that she could have him with a word, that he would come to her bed at her command. And yet it was a dangerous game, to play with men's hearts, and she was not so cruel. It would not be right, not now, not when she was still coming to terms with herself, with her power and her new life as an Aberrant, with Asara…

The memories of that night in Chaim caused her to flush. The heat of the moment had been overwhelming, but it had been too brief to make sense of it. Giddy with Asara's assertion that she should unshackle herself from the restrictions men had made for her, she had acted on a foreign impulse and subsumed herself in it. But all too soon the moment had been interrupted by Mamak… no… by the terrible feeling she had experienced when Asara had kissed her that final time, the awful hungriness of her, and how it had seemed her very insides were being wrenched free.

She was too confused to think on it now. Just as she dared not truly consider the implications of what she had learned in the Weavers' monastery. There was too much, too much, and she knew that if she looked at it all at once it would crush her. She would think only of what was in front of her, going one step at a time. It was the only thing she could do.

Her thoughts scattered and her blood froze as an ungodly noise sawed through the silence. For a moment, nobody moved. Everyone was listening. It came again, echoing from a different tunnel this time. A creaking screech like the turning of a vast and long-rusted wheel.

'It's them,' Purloch whispered.

'It's what?' demanded one of the other men. 'It could be anything. A sewer pipe… a gate opening…'

'No,' Cailin said quietly. 'I sense them. They are coming.' She looked up, her eyes passing down the line to rest on Kaiku. 'We cannot face them here. Run.'

A third screech was her reply, louder than the last and closer. Purloch took flight, his boots skidding on the slippery floor in his haste to get away. The others followed closely, running as fast as they dared. The paths that ran alongside the flow of sludgy water seemed suddenly narrow now. The lantern light swung wildly around them, glinting off the bright, black eyes of rodents and other, less identifiable things that scattered at their approach. The screeches began to come more frequently; inhuman, malevolent sounds that could not have been made by any natural thing. They reverberated through the darkness, seeming to come from all directions at once. Kaiku felt them, a creeping sensation at the base of her neck. Demons.

Shin-shin she thought, and a sudden wild panic gripped her. They raced up a set of steps that ascended alongside a series of foul waterfalls. Tane stumbled and retched on his way up, falling to his knees. Kaiku crashed into him from behind, and immediately began pulling him to his feet, fear making her rough. He scrambled up, tangling himself in the rifle slung across his back. The others were already racing ahead, leaving Kaiku and Tane behind, taking the light with them. Neither Kaiku nor Tane carried lanterns.

'Wait!' she cried, as she wrenched Tane's arm out of his rifle strap and righted him. An explosive cacophony of howls sounded from the darkness behind her, terrifyingly close now.

'Come on! Up here!' Yugi cried down the stairway to them, and Tane finally got his feet under him and ran. Kaiku was close on his heels. She heard a scraping sound from behind, as if something were crawling on to the stairs, but she dared not look back. Her breath came in frantic gasps, and Tane could not move fast enough for her.

They burst out into a large, star-shaped chamber into which five tunnels opened. The water here was shallow, and a great circular drain lay in the centre of the floor, its rusty slats open to drink the putrescent water. Between the efforts of the drain and the way the hard stone floor rose up here, the water was only thigh-high. A narrow path ran around the edge of the chamber, but the intruders had already forsaken it and gathered in the water, around the drain, back to back. The creaking wails echoed around them, coming from the dark maws of the tunnels. Kaiku and Tane splashed into the water and joined the others, Tane retching anew at the cold touch of the effluent and the seeping of human waste that soaked his legs.

And then, as one, the wailing stopped. Silence fell, but for the stirring of the water around their feet. Purloch began to mutter a prayer to himself. Swords and rifles were held ready, all eyes on the five passageways. The light of their lanterns seemed to gutter, reminding them of how frail the margin was by which they were allowed their vision. If the lanterns were dropped or extinguished, they would be left in the endless dark, and nothing could save them then.

Kaiku became aware that she was shivering. Not with cold, but with tension. Her kana lay quiescent inside her, suppressed by whatever method Cailin had used to stop her being a danger to others; but she wished now that she had at least that to fall back on. Anything, anything to avail her against the things she felt creeping on the edge of the light.

It rose slowly from the water before her, just inside the mouth of the tunnel they had come from. A black, bedraggled shape, hunched over with its filthy hair hanging across its face, dripping putrid water. From its mouldering robe, its hands were curled into claws, white and bloodless and scabbed. A single eye glittered behind the matted curtain of hair, fixing Kaiku with a paralysing gaze. It exhaled a long, rattling breath.

'Gods! There's one here too!' someone cried, and Kaiku tore her attention away for a moment to glance at the second creature that had limped into the light from another tunnel. This one was emaciated and skeletal, a half-rotted corpse with its lower jaw hinged only at one side, and hanging together by a few strips of decaying flesh. It jerked along upright, its head lolling, but the sharp light in its eyes never left the people gathered in the centre of the chamber.

'What are these damned things?' Yugi whispered.

'Maku-sheng,' Cailin replied. 'The spirits of unclean water. They have taken the dead they have found down here and made them their own.'

'Another!' someone cried. It was grotesquely fat and naked, one side of its belly a gaping green wound through which the rotting slither of its intestines was wetly visible.

'And here!'

'Here, too.'

They were surrounded. The demons made no move to approach, only glared at them balefully. A whisper seemed to run around the chamber, a susurrus of hissing. The creatures were conversing at a pitch just outside human hearing. Kaiku was trembling uncontrollably now.

Suddenly, the long-haired demon raised one grimy hand and pointed, an ear-splitting howl coming from her. Her hair fell back from her face, and Kaiku glimpsed a horrifying visage of wrinkled, sagging flesh and long, decaying teeth; then the demons attacked.

All around them, the creatures came through the tunnels, bursting from the darkness and lunging into the chamber, loping and jerking as their atrophied muscles carried them inward. Yugi's rifle roared first, the report of his weapon echoing away in all directions through the sewers. The fat maku-sheng's head exploded in a wet shatter of bone fragments and clotted fluids, and it fell backwards into the water. Those who held lanterns brought their swords to bear, swinging them into the oncoming tide of dead flesh, slicing effortlessly through marrow and sinew. The long-rotted creatures came apart beneath the edges of the blades, toppling into the water; but a moment later the same creatures they had cut in half were coming back at them again, flailing through the murky water while their severed legs twitched uselessly behind them.

'They will not stay down!' someone cried, and a moment later he screamed as one of the things fell on him, its teeth biting into his throat. His scream became a gurgle and his lantern fell into the water with a hiss. The light dropped a notch in the chamber, further cloaking the broken shapes that surrounded them.

Kaiku hastily fumbled her rifle up to fire at the long-haired demon advancing on her, but the shot clicked dead. Her ignition powder had got too damp to light. Baring its foul teeth, the demon lunged at her, and then Tane was there with a cry, his sword stabbing deep into the creature's breast. Kaiku scrambled back, dropping her rifle in the water and wrenching free her own sword; but the demon had already pulled away with a shriek, snapping Tane's blade with the twisting of its body. It retreated a few steps, its eyes glimmering with malice, and a moment later another of them burst out of the water, right in front of Tane. Cold hands clawed at him, and crooked teeth sunk into the meat of his leg.

He cried out in agony, staggering back and swiping downward with the remaining length of his blade; but though he hewed through most of the dead thing's throat, still it held on to him, pawing at his thigh and worrying the chunk of flesh it had in its mouth. Kaiku's sword seemed to elude her panicked grasp, but she somehow swung it down across the thing's shoulder blades, hacking it hard enough for it to make an involuntary shriek and release Tane. As it splashed beneath the water, Tane raised his injured leg and stamped on its head, crushing its skull against the floor in a vile bloom of dark fluid.

Kaiku felt the stir of the Weave around her, and realised suddenly that Cailin had entered the fray. Her eyes were the deep, sulphurous red that heralded the use of her Aberrant power. Three of the maku-sheng went flying to smash bonelessly into the chamber wall, thrown away by her kana. The surrounding creatures recoiled, screeching, then attacked with redoubled fury a moment later. The knot of defenders around the centre of the room broke under the assault, splitting apart. The lantern light swung away from Kaiku, plunging her into darkness. Something lunged at her; she parried it, and felt a spray of something cold and foul-smelling across her cheek as her sword bit into dead flesh. Retreating in horror, she tripped against the covering of the drain in the centre of the room. There was a moment of sickening inevitability, and then she felt her balance desert her and she fell. The chill, polluted water closed around her head with a splash.

She flailed, gagging, and broke the surface for the merest of seconds; but then the long-haired demon was on her, its scabrous hands at her throat, forcing her back under into the lightless murk. There was no breath in her to scream. She kicked and thrashed, but the force pressing her down was too strong, relentless. Animal panic seized her. Her lungs burned, reaching for air that was not there. Unconsciousness swarmed at the edges of her vision, a sparkling blanket that encroached further and further towards the centre. She was dimly aware of underwater sounds, the splash and babble of her own weakening resistance, the noise of a rifle shot, the sound of howling as Cailin annihilated another swathe of demons. But it was all fading, receding, and behind her eyes she could see the Weave again, the glittering path that had led her once to the Fields of Omecha and the gatekeeper, Yoru, took her to the Gate but no further. Perhaps this time, she thought, as her struggles ceased… perhaps this time… she might join her brother on the other side…

But in the Weave of her body, something was stirring, thrashing. A knot was fraying. Consciousness fled her, but there was still something awake inside, fighting and twisting, picking at the fibres of Cailin's artistry. Her kana had been bounded and suppressed, but not beaten. Even as Kaiku's brain accepted her death, the creature within her fought against it, unravelling its bonds frantically, until with a snap they slipped free-

'Kaiku!' Tane cried. He had been casting about frantically for signs of her, having lost her in the chaos of the battle; but only a single lantern remained, held like a treasure by one of the Libera Dramach men, and it was barely light enough to see on the periphery of the luminescence. Now his eyes settled on the demon, hunched over in the water, pressing down on something; and he caught sight of the limp hand floating on the surface next to it. With a howl of anguish, he leaped at the thing. It raised its head in alarm, but at that moment Kaiku's kana finally loosed itself. Tane fell backward, shielding his face, as the demon shrieked and exploded. A blaze of fire threw yellow light across the murky water. The creature's burning, broken husk staggered away a few steps, animated by some shreds of remnant life; then it teetered, and plunged into the water with a hiss.

The other maku-sheng were squealing anew, having felt the force of the blast. Tane paid them no mind, picking himself up and forging over to Kaiku. He dragged her out of the stench and foulness, and her face came up pale, open eyes gazing crimson and sightless, hair plastered to her cheeks.

'Not her! No!' he shouted, though to what god or aspect of fate he addressed his denial he could not say. He sheathed his broken sword, heedless of the demons swarming about in the darkness, and hooked his arms under Kaiku's armpits, towing her through the water to the path at the edge of the chamber.

Cailin was a fearsome sight in the shifting light of the single lantern, her black hair straggled and her eyes burning red. She looked like a demon herself. She flung her hands out again and again, sending her kana racing along the threads of the Weave to tear and knot and twist, rending apart the bodies of the maku-sheng. With each one she destroyed, she sensed the demon spirit fleeing invisibly from the now-useless corpse, rippling away through the foul water in search of a new host. Yugi fought stolidly alongside her, guarding her back, his rifle firing again and again, repriming between each shot with remarkable speed.

And then a single, keening howl rose from the demon pack. They halted in their attack, drawing to safe distance from the huddled defenders, glaring at them with their shining eyes from the shadows. The whispers began again, though no mouths moved. Yugi kept his finger tensed on the trigger, Purloch standing close to him. Four of the five men of the Libera Dramach floated amid the putrid mass of re-killed corpses. The last, a man just out of his youth called Espyn, held his lantern high and his gore-streaked sword ready, but the tip trembled perceptibly.

There was a stirring, and the demons retreated, backing out of the light into the shadow as smoothly as they had arrived, being swallowed by the tunnels around the chamber. In moments, they had disappeared.

Yugi breathed out a shaky sigh. 'Gone?' he asked Cailin.

'They will come back. We should not be here when they do.' She looked up suddenly at a movement, and saw Tane heaving Kaiku on to the path at the chamber's edge. 'Gods,' she breathed, and waded through the thigh-high water as fast as she could go. 'Espyn! Bring the lantern!' she commanded, and he scuttled to obey.

Kaiku's lips were blue, her red eyes glazed, her hair lank and sodden. Tane was reaching into her open mouth and pulling out some unidentifiable detritus from her throat as they arrived, haste and fear making him panicky.

'Is she breathing?' Purloch asked, casting quick glances at the tunnels behind them in case any of the maku-sheng should return.

Tane ignored him. 'Can you do anything?' he demanded of Cailin.

'She slipped my conditioning, got through my barriers,' Cailin said, with something like wonder in her voice. 'Heart's blood, she has a greater talent than I thought.' She looked at Tane. 'Without her conscious control, her kana would rebel if I tried. It would kill her.' She missed the irony of her statement, but nobody felt like making a joke of it.

'Then I will do it,' Tane replied. He crossed his hands and pumped her chest with the heel of his palm, then put his lips to hers and blew breath into her lungs. How cruel that it should be like this, he thought; their first kiss, so cold and foul-tasting and passionless.

But then he was at her chest again, pumping, breathing, pumping, breathing, while the others looked at him as if he was mad. None of them knew the technique for reviving drowning victims, but Tane had learned it from Enyu's priests long ago.

'Wake up, for the gods' sake!' he shouted at her, pumping again. 'This is not the end of your path! You have an oath. An oath.' Another breath, blowing hot life into her waterlogged lungs. Then pumping. 'You're too damned stubborn to die like this!' he cried.

And as if Omecha himself had reached down and touched the dead woman beneath his hands, she jerked and spasmed into life, rolling on to her side and vomiting bilious sewer water across the path. She retched and retched, cleansing herself agonisingly, as Tane laughed with joy and tears ran down his face and he gave praise to the gods. Yugi clapped him on the back in congratulation, calling him a miracle-worker. Kaiku's retching gradually subsided, and she lay gasping like a landed fish, weak but unhurt.

Cailin shook her head in amazement, a smile on her lips, and wondered how many lives her potential apprentice had left.