Chapter 19 #3
Instantly, the trees before us began to shiver, like a gang of thieves rounded up by the canton custodi.
Where the silvery smokes lingered heaviest, the trees shook even more.
I turned my eyes to the curious grouping of branches above the footprints, where so many grew at the wrong angles: they were parting, ever so slightly, as if desperate to escape one another.
“The forest is old and grand,” said Tauri softly. “But it was built by design. The Khanum crafted it as one might a fortification—and all walls must have gates. Those in the wood are old, but…they are still available, to those who know how to open them.”
The Orbiis signum picked up the smoking thurible and approached the trees. The branches began to part before her, as if bent backward by a colossal, invisible hand, revealing a narrow, leaf-covered path leading into the forest—precisely where I’d spied the two footprints.
The Orbiis militis produced a mai-lantern, lit it, and cast a bright, white luminescence about us. Then she turned to Tauri and nodded.
“We must follow their trail, of course,” said Tauri. “But I hope it will be direct, at least. There’s but one seam built into this fragment of forest. Are you ready, Kol?”
I looked at the thurible, then at the trees ahead, which were shivering and trembling as if in fear of us.
My memories danced and chuckled in my mind, and my eyes fluttered as I remembered.
Off on another forest jaunt, Master Burav? I’ll tell no one. But why’ve you not got your lantern and smokes, sir?
“Lantern and smokes…” I said softly. “A…a servant said this to Ippeas Armenta as he fled the Burav mansion—another forest jaunt, bringing lanterns and smokes.”
Tauri’s face was like alabaster in the lantern light. “So Dolabra told me.”
“How difficult, sir, is it to get a thurible like that?”
“Very. Only the Orbiis are permitted to know of these arts.”
“Yet Burilis Burav was of your order, sir.”
“So he was,” said Tauri. “And if he’d been caught with such a device after his service, he would have been imprisoned. But now he is dead. Only his works persist, though they plague us still. Now come, Kol. Let’s enter.”
—
Our party ventured into the shivering canyon of pale trees.
The sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard: so much creaking, straining, and groaning of tremendous fibers and twists of wood, like thousands of ancient throats crying out at once.
Then the trees closed behind us, sealing us within the sea of trunks and boles and shimmering leaves.
We slowly continued forward. Even though I wore the Orbiis mask, I still felt a thrum of dread within my skull as we walked the path.
Everything was close and cramped, and always trembling.
The shifting of the light grew deeply unsettling, for as the trees bent and twisted to permit our passage, the afternoon sunlight shifted and flickered as well.
Between this and the bright lantern the Orbiis militis bore, my eyes could never adjust. I felt there was always something crawling just past the veil of white branches and dark purple leaves or whispering in the near darkness.
But perhaps most disturbing of all was the geometric structure of the forest about us.
It was something in the pale boles of the trees, the way they grew from such set nodes, the angles of their branches and the structures of their crowns.
The mind somehow sensed that there was a pattern hidden there, some fractal recursion repeated again and again, like a theme echoed in a script of music.
It dizzied the eye too much to look at it.
At one point I groaned softly and set my eyes on the path at my feet.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d see it, Kol,” said Tauri lightly.
“Sorry, sir?”
“The pattern. The shapes in the trees.”
“Yes, sir. It’s…upsetting, for some reason.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “It is evident to spatiasts like myself. Only here can you feel the full power of the Khanum…A strange thing, to be adrift in a creation wrought by a mind you cannot comprehend! It’s like studying a tapestry, and attempting to imagine the loom that made it, only for it to defy you.
You and I are hardly more than beasts when put against such an intelligence.
Yet keep your eyes open! I’m sure our killer went this way.
I can see signs of it in the path before us. ”
We continued through the wood, which only seemed to grow darker and greater with each step. I felt as if we were in a mine deep in the earth, traveling through some tiny crevice, unable to see what lay ahead.
Then Tauri stopped. “Here,” he whispered. “Here, hidden in the edge of the seam!”
We grouped about him. He was crouched beside something in a small ditch beside the path. Someone had cast a rough rope net over it, though the fibers of the net had been painted purple and gray. If we hadn’t been carrying such a bright lantern it would have been nearly invisible.
“Check for graft trips,” said Tauri softly. “Or lines, or triggers.”
The Orbiis officers knelt and inspected the net carefully, peering over each thread of fabric as if it had been spun of fine gold. Finding no threat, they pulled the net away.
Beneath it lay a large trunk, wrought of planed wood and latched shut, though it did not bear any lock.
Again, the Orbiis officers studied the trunk, tapping on it and feeling it, their eyes trembling and quaking as they did so.
I guessed that, as spatiasts, their augmentations granted them some advantage in manipulating physical matter: I knew their Sublime type was remarkably skilled at craftsmanship, at least. Then, with another nod, they braced themselves, unlatched the case, and carefully opened it.
Then they held the lantern aloft so we could peer inside.
Within the case lay several objects, all carefully arranged at the bottom, as if waiting for us. Two of them were dreadfully familiar: a set of pipes, each about as long as a man’s forearm, with strange fluting structures built into their necks.
My eyes fluttered as I compared them to my memory of the tool that Velona Armenta had wielded to make her little cat Coral dance. “It’s like the drokha-cat pipes,” I said softly, “but different. More complex.”
“Because they are crafted to dominate a much more complex mind, I’m sure,” said Tauri.
He knelt and plucked up the next object, which lay beside the pipes: a small glass vial containing cloudy water. It bore a small tag of paper, with a date: some four months ago.
“It’s water,” said Tauri softly, “infected with the web. No doubt it’s the strain used to infect humans. More poison, then, to infect another water source!” A sour laugh. “Very thoughtful of them to date it! It must expire eventually in a sealed container…”
Then he fished out the final object in the trunk: a small, slender parchment book. He flipped through it so we could see.
“A music book,” he murmured. “With each tune notated…of course! Here. This one is the awakening tone! This wakes the fungus up, makes it infect the brain further, so it will be receptive to conditioning. Then these songs here—they are conditioning tones. Unlabeled, because the pipe-player can use them as they wish. Each tune crafted so they’re not at all alike, so you can link any behavior you wish to it and force the host to perform them without confusion.
” He shook his head. “They are instructions. A guidebook on how to dominate the human mind once it’s been infected with the web… ”
He flipped to the last page. This tune was different: it was drawn very clearly, and unlike the others it was labeled with one word—LYSIS.
“Lysis,” I said. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” said Tauri. “Lysis is a…a medikker term, for when an infected body tissue breaks down, or bursts. I am unfamiliar with its use in herding cats with the web. And here, at the bottom, another note—NOT IMMEDIATE.”
I peered closer at the note with him. “Written in block lettering, of course,” I said. “So the handwriting couldn’t give the author away…”
“Yes. They were clever. But I’m troubled it’s here at all—because presumably the killer already knew how the web works, yes? So why write instructions? Unless…”
“You intend to educate another in its use,” I said quietly. “Yes.”
“This is a cache, then. A tool kit prepared for someone to find, along with all the instructions necessary for its use.”
“And for all we know, there are more caches out there, hidden in the wood.”
Tauri groaned. “There is more than one killer at least, then. More, we still don’t know where the damned web comes from!
How did they produce a strain that affects humans?
It would have required a tremendous source of human cadavers to do so, and I know of no such thing!
To create it without that is beyond all the arts of the Apoths and Orbiis. ”
My gaze wandered among the pipes, the cloudy vial of water, the booklet in Tauri’s hands. “Even Burilis Burav? We’ve more reason than ever to suspect him now, even in death.”
“I don’t know. As I said before, he came well before my time. If he’d been a genius with the Apothetikal practices, I feel I would have heard of it.”
“Is there any more in the booklet, sir?”
“No. Just these songs, and…”
He flipped through the pages again—yet this time a narrow slip of parchment fell loose and went flittering down to rest at our feet.
I stooped, picked it up, and held it close to the lantern to read.
“Hum,” I said softly.
There, scrawled on the parchment in careful block lettering, were the words: YOU SAY WHEN THIS IS DONE, ALL WILL BE FORGIVEN. YET I NO LONGER BELIEVE IN FORGIVENESS—FROM YOU, OR ANY GOD. I WILL FIND YOU IN THE AFTERLIFE AND brING ETERNAL TORMENT WITH ME. THIS I SWEAR.
We all sat in silence in the dark, shivering trees, absorbing those words.
“Well,” said Tauri. “Whoever our killers are, I, ah, get the impression that at least some of them don’t get along.”