'Your kana is like any wild beast. It is uncontrollable, primal, apt to lash out when angered. Before you can begin to train it, you must first muzzle it, leash it, render it harmless. Or at least as harmless as you can make it.'
Kaiku felt a thrill of unease. For the last week she had been rigorously prepared for this by Cailin; yet now the moment was here, she was afraid. Afraid of what was inside her, of what it might do; afraid of the agony it brought when it boiled up through her veins. Cailin had schooled her in mantras that would calm her mind, warned her of the things she might see and feel, taught her the many things she must not do when the procedure was underway.
You will be tempted to resist. Every instinct will tell you to attack me, as if I were an invader. If you do so, I will kill you.
It was not a threat, merely a fact.
'I will sew myself into you, Kaiku,' she was saying, her low voice moving around behind as she walked. 'Were you not talented in the ways of the Weave, you would not even know I was doing it. But you have… defences. I am a foreign element, and your mind and body will try and expel me. You must not let it. You must remain passive, and calm, and let me do my work. I will muzzle the beast within you, but I cannot do so while you resist.'
She had heard it a dozen times before now, but it was all theoretical. Nothing would truly prepare her for the plunge. There was no precedent for this, even in her deepest memories. What if she could not do it?
She knew the answer to that. And yet it never crossed her mind to turn back and give up.
Cailin rested her slim, pale hands on Kaiku's shoulders. 'Are you composed?'
Kaiku took a deep breath and let it out, her eyelids fluttering. 'I am ready,' she lied.
'Then we will begin.'
The beast tore free from its lair with a ferocity and suddenness that was overwhelming. It roared and scorched its way up into her breast like a demon, raging and burning. Her eyes stayed shut, but inside the world exploded into an incomprehensible sea of golden threads, an endless, dazzling vista with no sky, no ground, no boundaries at all. For an instant, she knew nothing but terror as pain racked her, the searing wake of her kana fighting to be free.
Then, suddenly, she reorientated. By what instinct she navigated, she could not guess; but in a moment the unearthly complexity of the dazzling junctions and infinite lengths seemed to make sense to her, to fit in some indescribable way. These were her threads, she recognised. This was herself, her territory within the Weave, the space occupied by her body and mind. She felt the rushing stream of golden blood pumping from the thick knot of her heart, saw it disseminate gradually out through capillaries to feed her flesh. She felt the anxious pre-awareness of incipient life in her ovaries, a cluster of mindless hopes, swarming with potential. She sensed the tide of the air sucking into her lungs, a curling muddle of fine fibres tugged in and spewed out again.
But there was something terribly wrong. A foul, cancerous unknown, a sickening, creeping blight that was seeping into her like blood into a rag, fast, fast, an invasion and violation of the most horrible kind…
She saw it then, in her mind's eye, coiling along the golden threads towards her heart, tentacles of light sliding into her territory, into the very fibres of her body, the striations of her muscles. Everything in her wanted to be rid of it, to expel this vileness from her. Her kana blazed in response, threading out towards the invader, to burn it out with cleansing fire…
No!
It was Cailin. She willed her kana to stop, to accept the invader even though every one of her senses screamed against it; and somehow it responded, stalling in its assault. It railed at her attempt to hobble it, but this was different to when it had been unleashed before. This time, the kana was still within her body, and had not broken free of the boundaries of her territory. Here, she could master the fire.
She let herself go mentally limp, beginning a mantra over and over. The onslaught continued through her, creeping in towards her core like the paralysing bite of a spider. She felt panic rising within her. What did she know, truly, of Cailin tu Moritat? She was opening herself up to this woman in a way more intimate than making love, giving her the freedom to do anything to her, to turn her lungs inside out or burst her heart or rearrange her thoughts so she was a willing slave to Cailin's whims. How could she trust anyone that much, let alone this enigmatic Aberrant who was more of a stranger to her than Tane or Asara?
She forced the thoughts down, concentrating on her mantra. Too late now, she told herself. Too late. And yet still the urge grew, to lash out, to expel this invader and be whole and unsullied again. The presence of Cailin was abhorrent, as Cailin had told her it would be. Your mind will see me as a disease, she said, and it did; it took all her willpower to stay still while the foulness consumed her.
But the alien threads were quick, slipping into her heart where they were pumped around her body, and with them came a strange, soothing sensation, as of ice put on a burn. Her kana quailed, but she sensed that the worst was over. The calm spread through her, swamping her inexorably, its touch bringing peace to the fibres of her body. No longer did it seem a disease that had swallowed her, but a benediction, and distantly, subtly, she felt Cailin begin her work…
The Fold was ever ready for battle, a fortress against the dangers of the Xarana Fault. Though there was no true army here, there was a hard core of military expertise culled from the populace, a combination of Libera Dramach and those who had been recruited or drifted their way in. Bandit leaders and strategists for the nobility sat side by side in war councils, the organisational brain behind the defence network of the Fold. And though there were few professional soldiers here, there was no shortage of volunteers to safeguard the newfound freedom that this isolated community offered. Everyone within the valley was expected to hold their own when the time came, and a man who could not shoot a rifle or use a sword or crank a ballista was dead weight. Training was informal, for most of these people were not warriors by nature, and the Fault's terrain was better suited for guerilla tactics anyway; but there were not many here who would be unable or unwilling to fight when the time came. And in the Fault, the time would come sooner or later.
Even as night settled into the creases of the world, the work went on by the glow of paper lanterns and bonfires. Fire-cannons were rolled out and cleaned. Ballistas stood silhouetted imposingly on the ridges, backlit by the flames. Mine-carts full of ammunition were rolled along the system of tracks that ran along bridges between the biggest plateaux. Scouting parties slipped quietly back into the Fold, barely noticed. Lifts squeaked and creaked as their pulleys strained against guide wheels and cogs.
Tane sat on the grassy side of the wide, shallow valley that cradled the Fold and hid it from sight. The folk here had warned him not to go out alone at night, but he was unable to reflect and meditate amid all the activity on the steps, so he took the risk and retreated to the darkness. Now he was glad he had.
He looked out over the cascade of the land, a hundred lanterns in bright points tumbling down the dark platforms and plateaux into the valley, pools of light hanging in the deep, abyssal darkness. The windows of the buildings that crowded the steps of the Fold speckled the black with yellow twinkles like grounded stars. High
above, only Aurus rode the sky tonight, her vast face looking down on him, the dim white of her skin blotched with patches of pale blue. It was beautiful, to be here, to see this. He gave thanks to Enyu, and felt a strange contentment within.
These last weeks had been a turbulent time for him. It seemed that he had been running to catch up with himself ever since he had first found Kaiku, unconscious and fevered in the Forest of Yuna. It had taken her arrival – and the events that came in her wake – to knock him out of the life he had settled into ever since his mother and sister had left him alone.