Wildmane Read online

  “I was wrong.” He could not put words to the tumultuous emotions that roiled within him.

  “I may not be able to see you, but I can hear Oedandus snapping and hissing over there. Well good, be angry. Let it burn in your heart. Let it burn you to a cinder. Better that than live as a coward.”

  “Silasa...” He growled. “I have tried everything! Do you think I would sit idle for three hundred years?”

  “Try harder.”

  He spun, stalked to the far end of the chamber and punched the wall. Rock crunched, and pieces fell to the floor, smeared with the blood of his quickly healing knuckles.

  “Who told you the GodSpill was returning?” she asked softly. “This acquaintance of yours.”

  “Orem.” Medophae bit the words out like he was chewing leather.

  “And what does he want you to do?”

  “He says the Fountain is leaking GodSpill. He says he has found a threadweaver, the first in a dozen generations. He says he is taking her there. He wants her to figure out what Harleath did, somehow undo it.” He shook his head. “It’s ridiculous on every level. Even if the GodSpill is returning. Even if what Harleath did can somehow be undone, Daylan Morth was a master of the GodSpill, outstripping every other threadweaver who might hope to compare. Some fledgling girl, raised in this barren land with no notion of the GodSpill or how it works, will never be able to understand what that man created. The best threadweavers of the Age of Ascendance couldn’t understand Daylan’s Fountain.”

  “This Orem,” she said slowly. “He was right about the GodSpill returning.”

  Medophae growled.

  “He probably has found a threadweaver, then. If I have risen, it’s likely. Maybe she can undo what Harleath did.”

  “A scared young girl?” He shook his head. “Even if she can access the GodSpill, she won’t know anything. It took most threadweavers years to learn just the basics. Without a real teacher, there’s no way she can undo what Harleath did. Certainly not what Daylan did. It’s a fool’s errand.”

  “Then be a fool.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  “Anything is possible. You have a god flowing through your veins—”

  “—who brings only destruction,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I see,” she said. “You’re a monster, is that it?”

  “I always have been. I just didn’t have the wit to see it.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Well, right now, monsters are what’s needed.”

  “What?”

  “Go,” she said. “Be a monster to those who would hurt this young threadweaver, to those who would tear her down. Protect her. If you can’t be a hero, then suffer in silence with your guilt and be the monster she needs.”

  “Be a monster to the monsters,” he said. “That sounds a lot like trying to be a hero.”

  “Does it? How interesting,” she said in a flat tone.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t care.”

  She was relentless. She always had been. He bowed his head and, despite himself, he cracked a smile.

  “You’re sort of mean,” he said.

  “I suck blood to live.”

  He laughed.

  “You’re going to go?” she asked.

  He sighed. “I suppose I have to. I wouldn’t survive here. Living with a conscience equipped with actual claws and fangs.”

  She smiled. “Good. Will you do me one favor, though?”

  “Standing here while you stab me with your wit isn’t favor enough?”

  “Stay one more day and night,” she said. “Stay while I regain my strength.”

  “I’ll stay as long as you need me,” he said.

  “Only until I can hunt for myself. Then you go.”

  “Then I go.” He murmured the words, feeling the doom of them thudding in his heart.

  26

  Mirolah

  Mirolah looked up from the huge tome at Orem, who happily read from his towering stack of books two tables over. They had arrived in Denema’s Valley three days ago, and the library was not to be believed. Bookshelves lined every wall in the great room. Ancient tables were scattered across the floor in disarray. Some lay rotting beneath the shattered dome in the center, but many still stood near the precious shelves that had been preserved from the elements. Thankfully, the ceiling surrounding the dome was intact, sheltering the books that had huddled silently for centuries, and there were dozens of studies that branched off the great room, holding even more books. Moss grew everywhere: on the tables, on the walls, on the ceiling, even on some of the books, but strangely there was no moss in the studies or on most of the shelves. Denema’s Valley was humid every moment of the day, benefitting from the constant breeze that blew off the wide Dragon River. The rest of the city she had glimpsed was a carpet of moss and foliage, but the library, strangely, had been mostly spared.

  Since they arrived, Orem had required Mirolah to spend hours each day reading selected books. At first, she’d been thunderstruck by the place. It was like she had been stealing loaves of bread her whole her life and suddenly she had been led to a bakery full of twenty different kinds of bread, plus pastries and muffins and biscuits and tarts and...

  She had dived in with gusto, absorbing everything he put in front of her. But that had been three days ago. The novelty had worn off, and the outdoors called to her almost every minute of the day. She remembered the breeze on the prow of the ship. The call of the water of the Inland Ocean. The call of the forest just outside these walls became louder with every passing hour, it seemed. She wanted to get outside. She wanted to practice actual threadweaving.

  Orem looked up, raised an eyebrow, and she went back to reading.

  The gods created a vast tapestry, and we are that tapestry. Every single thing we know in this life is a part of it, and the GodSpill was an accident that allows threadweavers to manipulate the world. My well-learned predecessor, Grevian Belshra, once surmised that Amarion holds pockets of GodSpill, and that we threadweavers can see it and coax it out of these pockets into thin, threadlike lights, to be shaped by our intent and our imagination. With the utmost respect for Threadweaver Belshra as an academic, I must dare to refute his conclusion. I do not believe the GodSpill is pulled from scattered reservoirs of power and formed into threads. I believe that we are the threads. Me, Threadweaver Belshra, every tree in the forest outside my study, the very stones of the building in which I write this record. And the GodSpill is an accidental glass of wine dumped upon us long ago before Sasha Braen’dite closed the Godgate and saved the world.

  These threads we see are not a manifestation of the creative god force we call GodSpill. These threads are the original creation of the gods. We can only manipulate them because they are soaked with GodSpill, but the threads were always there. I have discovered that these threads can be found everywhere, not just in Threadweaver Belshra’s described “pockets.” Not only that, but, upon intense study, I have found that I can perceive that these threads are composed of even smaller fibers. Though I cannot see past that, I surmise that those smaller fibers are comprised of even smaller fibers yet, perhaps descending into an infinite minutiae that only the gods themselves can see. This tapestry of our world and our lives was designed to be something specific, but when the GodSpill stained it, it changed. We changed, some of us becoming threadweavers who are less powerful, more limited gods ourselves, as we can make changes to the tapestry like they once did....

  Mirolah closed the cover and looked at the name of the author: Korleithan Ket. The man knew what he was talking about. In fact, it seemed silly to her that anyone would believe that the GodSpill pooled in “pockets” of anything. It was in the threads. It was the threads.

  She sighed and pushed the book away. Her head felt like it was packed with sand.

  “I do not know how much more I can read,” she said to Orem, who turned the page of his tome. “I feel like I’m forgetting everything I read on the first day as
I cram in more ideas.”

  He smiled, but didn’t look up from his book. “Research is an acquired taste. It will grow on you.”

  She thought of moss growing on her head like it grew on everything else in this city. No.

  “We spent all of yesterday studying,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, turning another page.

  “And the day before.”

  “Yes.”

  How could he talk and read at the same time?

  “I wish that we could spend months here,” he said. “It would do you good to read every book on these shelves.”

  The bright bridge connected her to Orem all the time now. In fact, everything she looked at became a part of her through that brightness in the air. She focused on the book Orem was reading. The threads became starkly apparent, with the muted, earthy colors of something that had once been alive but was no longer. She was finding many differences in the threads of various objects, and each difference had significance. She tried to see Korleithan’s “smaller” fibers. She couldn’t.

  She lightly twisted two of the threads in her mind’s eye, and pulled on them. She had discovered that she didn’t need to actually touch the threads with the fingers of her hands. She could imagine fingers touching them instead, which allowed her to manipulate things from a distance.

  The book Orem was reading snapped shut, brushing his nose. It swiveled around and leapt into the air to hover above him. Startled, he glanced up, then fixed her with a reproving gaze. “My book, if you please,” he said sternly.

  She shook her head.

  His lips became a firm line. “Put it down. I was reading something that might be important.

  “I’m tired of important,” she said. “I want to have fun.”

  “This isn’t a game, Mirolah. We need to educate you as quickly as we can. Every day that passes could be the crucial—”

  “Every day that passes could be boring,” she cut him off. She tugged gently, and the book floated into the center of the room where there was no ceiling. It stopped over a large puddle.

  He looked positively parental, like Lawdon on one of his tirades. “That tome is irreplaceable. I beg you, put it back on the table.”

  “I think there is a table in that puddle somewhere. Parts of one, anyway.”

  “Give me back my book.”

  “What did you call it when you put this moldy old knowledge to use?”

  “Practical application.”

  “How can you fault me for ‘practical application?’”

  His face remained stern, but she could see the change of emotion in the colors of the threads that crisscrossed his body.

  “There is a time for practice, and there is a time for study,” he said. “Rest assured, you are going to have plenty of time to practice—”

  “I thought you said that every day that passes could be crucial.”

  “If we had to flee from danger, you could still practice wherever we go, but you cannot take a library with you. This may be the only time you have to access this knowledge.”

  “So you’re saying I should just suffer and endure until circumstance takes me away from this place?”

  “No, that’s not what I—”

  She made the book float over to her. She took it gently from the air and tucked it under her arm. She started for the door.

  “Mirolah, I was just in the middle of a passage. I would like to finish.”

  “I would like to swim,” she said. Stavark had been teaching her how to swim in the wide, slow river. He said it was difficult for most humans to learn, but she had taken to it naturally, like she’d always known how, but had just never been able to practice. Swimming made sense. It felt even more like flying than standing on the prow of a ship. “It’s hot. Don’t you think it is hot?”

  He sighed loudly.

  She held up the book. “I’ll give it back.” She grinned, stepping closer to the broken archway that was the entrance to the library. “If you can catch me before I reach the water.”

  With that, she dodged around several dilapidated desks and made it to the archway, then turned to look at Orem. He stood, watching her, as though he had no intention of following.

  Then he suddenly shoved his chair back and lunged for the door on the other side of the library.

  She squealed and ran into the street. It suddenly occurred to her that she had erred in her judgment. The door on Orem’s side of the library was closer to the water. She furrowed her brow, about to race off in belated pursuit...

  ...and she stopped. No. Not on foot. She’d never get past him on foot. She focused on the threads that connected her to the ground and pulled gently, just like she had done with the pot. Slowly, she began to rise into the air.

  27

  Orem

  Collectively, Orem had spent over a year’s worth of days in Denema’s Valley ever since Medophae had shown him where it was. Arguably, he knew the city better than anyone else in Amarion.

  And so he knew that Mirolah would never reach the river before him. He shot out of the library at a dead sprint, but once he was out of sight, he slowed to a jog and took several shortcuts through the broken buildings to reach the cove where Mirolah had been learning to swim. She was right, of course. He was most likely being a bit too stuffy. Orem loved to pore over books, and when the mood struck him, he could spend days at a time in any library, and most especially this library. This was where he had formed the idea that the next threadweaver must have already surfaced, and that he had to look for that person.

  The day was hot, a last gasp of summer in the midst of fall, so it made sense why she wanted to take a break. In this weather, even Orem could see the allure of having a swim.

  He understood. It was difficult for the young to sit still. Hadn’t he been the same? When he was her age, he had traversed Amarion east to west and north to south, sticking his nose into every mystery he could find. He did not spend days in libraries; that came later. Many of his acquaintances had asked him what drove him so, to risk the dangers of forgotten areas of Amarion. Sometimes even Orem wondered why. Curiosity? A sense of purpose. It had always been there, lodged deep in his heart. It was what pulled him to his feet when the sun rose every morning. It was what had brought him all the knowledge he had gathered, knowledge that no other man alive possessed, save one. It had brought him to Mirolah.

  Orem broke free of the buildings and jogged into the forest. The swimming cove was not very far now.

  Ah...Mirolah. Now she was something that Orem had not expected. Of course, it had been unreasonable to expect a threadweaver to emerge in the lands in the first place. But even if he’d had a dozen guesses as to what that threadweaver would be like when he finally found her, he wouldn’t have been able to guess she’d be like Mirolah.

  Orem had expected a scared young man or woman. Threadweavers were cursed almost everywhere in Amarion, so it stood to reason that an emerging threadweaver would be frightened at best, twisted into self-loathing at worst. When he found her, he had been ready to cajole her out of her reluctance.

  He hadn’t expected how much she would change from that young woman, and how quickly. The transformation she had undergone since they had left Rith was startling. The scared and carefully modulated girl he had met in the tile maker’s house was gone. In her place was a bright-eyed, curious woman. An adventurer.

  When they began this journey, he had visions of holding her hand like he would a child, leading her through the first steps of threadweaving until her natural aptitude lifted her free of his book learning. But she surpassed his knowledge of the GodSpill in the first few days, moving that pot, learning that the word “threadweaver” wasn’t just a creative title.

  The GodSpill loved her. She absorbed it like a sponge. And as she progressed, he began to understand how little he really knew about threadweavers. He had only books, the culled thoughts of certain threadweavers. He was limited by their experience, their perspective. He could imagine how one might reall
y go about threadweaving, but he really had no idea. He had felt so learned before he met Mirolah. Now he felt like a legless man watching an athlete sprint. He scribbled notes, connecting information he had long ago studied but only now understood. The levitation of his book today—impossible for him—was like second nature to her now, nothing more than the beginning of a game.

  He had secretly hoped of one day unlocking the potential within himself to learn threadweaving. He felt that if he could just begin a new age of wonder by releasing the GodSpill back into the lands, such a thing could be possible for him. But watching Mirolah, rather than reinforcing his dream, slowly stifled it. She was a fish in water, and he couldn’t even find the lake.

  He felt he should be jealous, but strangely he wasn’t. It was impossible to be jealous of her. He used to wake every morning with only a dream of breaking barriers between people and Amarion’s mysteries. Now he woke every morning to watch Mirolah doing it. He was here, now, while history was being made. Legends would be written about this someday. It was intoxicating.

  Orem broke free of the trees and slowed to a walk. He paused and looked over his shoulder. No Mirolah. She’d have to give him his book back now, but she’d won all the same. He didn’t feel like reading anymore.

  As he crested the bank that fell away to the sandy shore, he stopped in surprise. Mirolah stood on the beach at the edge of the wide sandy bank, bare-breasted in the sunlight. Half of her clothes lay scattered in the sand. She looked up at him as she tugged at the drawstring of her skirt. She wiggled it down over her hips and let it drop, standing in her small clothes against a backdrop of blue sky and green forest on the far side of the slow moving river. She shook her head.

  “You’re not a very fast runner, Orem,” she tsked disapprovingly, without a trace of modesty.

  He was at a loss for words. “I...” He cleared his throat. “What are... How...”

  “How did I get here so fast? Practical application.” She winked at him. She turned and ran into the water, lifting her knees high as she tried to hop past the shallows. When the river came up to her thighs, she worked her way forward one hip at a time, then dove in.