Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(98)

Aurilon’s nostrils flared. She quivered. Then she was gone.

“Come, Unar,” Odel said.

For a moment, Unar was afraid to enter the circle of blue-white light that emanated from the closest of Airak’s lanterns, but then she remembered these ones were safe and produced only light. The fish-shaped Temple was twelve trees away, the spiralling planks that had seemed perilous no longer frightening to a Gardener with spines to catch against the sweet-fruit pine if she lost her balance.

Unar stood in the room, laden with tributes, where the bronze dish, blazing, floated in the shallow pool, and swept her eyes across the tangle of offerings.

“Where is the cloth, Holy One?” she asked. Odel, behind her, didn’t reply, and when she turned to face him, she took an involuntary step back.

The chimera filled the doorway to the Temple.





FIFTY-FOUR

THE DEMON rippled and flexed its claws.

“How has it come here?” Unar asked without thinking; it was obvious how the chimera had come into Canopy. Odel had torn a hole in the barrier because she had asked him to.

“Forget about finding the tribute,” Odel said without taking his eyes from the mesmerising glow of the chimera’s twin bulbs. He stood between her and the beast with the taper in one hand, the other hand relaxed at his side, and he’d sent his Bodyguard, his only real protection, to Ehkisland.

“I can use Audblayin’s power to—”

“I forbid you to use Audblayin’s power in my realm. In any case, other than the barrier itself, magic will not affect a chimera.”

“Airak’s lantern held it at bay.”

“Did it? Did you see it turned back by the lantern? Or did you see a demon playing with you, as a monkey plays with an injured bird? You carried chimera skin on your person and your magic was spent. It couldn’t be sure what you were. But now it knows.”

“But the lanterns protected the dovecote from demons.”

“Other demons, perhaps. Not chimeras. They are ancient creatures, close kin to the Old Gods. You said the woman, Kirrik, was a sorceress; a soul-switcher. If she spoke true, it’s likely that she gained that power by merging her bones with those of a chimera; the stench of that foul deed would be itself enough to keep other chimeras away.”

Unar wanted to laugh. If chimeras could smell past deeds, it was a wonder this one wasn’t repulsed by her, too. She scrabbled in the mound of tributes for a tasselled spear and a costly, inscribed sword with an ivory handle, hefting them in her hands.

“I’ll distract it,” Unar said. “You can go to the king of Odelland. Order his soldiers to go after Kirrik.”

“You can’t kill it, Gardener Unar,” Odel said sadly, “and this king would not spare a single soldier for the defence of a niche not his own. You must go after Kirrik. Perhaps we’ll meet again in my next life.”

And he blew out the taper with a gentle breath, just as the bunched chimera leaped at him, teeth bared.

Odel staggered backwards a quick dozen steps with the beast’s jaw closed on his shoulders and neck. The chimera followed furiously on its hind legs, tail lashing the floor. Unar circled sideways around them, sword and spear still feebly raised, watching with dismay as the god crashed backwards into the pool and burning branches tipped from the bronze bowl over both of them.

“Holy One!” she cried.

“Go!” Odel shouted as he and the beast both began turning the white-hot colour of the bathtub right before it shattered. The chimera had let go of him, god’s blood on its black teeth, trying to back away, but Odel’s arms were locked around its neck and he whispered fiercely in the place where its ear should have been.

Unar dropped the weapons and ran.

She ran through a night that beat with the overwhelming percussion of frog song until her bleeding feet screamed. Odellanders stared at her as she pushed past them, but nobody hindered her flight from the Temple. She was crying again.

Another god, dead because of me. Everything I touch turns to poison. Everyone I try to save turns to dust.

Would Odel’s power still keep baby Ylly from falling, if the chimera destroyed him? Or was Audblayin made even more vulnerable by his imminent death? What if Kirrik’s people threw Audblayin out another window, with nobody waiting to catch her this time, and she did not float?

Unar stopped to rip more sections of her skirts away and bind her feet in them as best she could. She’d gotten turned around somehow. This wasn’t the road she’d travelled before, and this late at night, only a few unlucky slaves still laboured along the lower paths.

She tried to control her breathing. Tried to feel her connection to the Garden. She couldn’t, immediately panicking that despite everything, Kirrik had managed to cut the emergent down.

There.

There it was.

Unar took another deep breath. The Garden was still there. She knew which way to go. Ignoring the pain in her feet, she flew along the streets of Canopy, across the border into Ehkisland. There was an autumn market there, being unshuttered and stocked in the dark by slaves and the stricken, which shouldn’t have opened until the true end of the monsoon. Unar didn’t stop to speak to them.

Seven trees later, she found the place where Kirrik and Sikakis had come through the barrier.

At least, bodies whose throats had been slashed by serrated spines lay around the turning that led to Ehkis’s emergent. Unar froze, indecisive, at the junction of wide, flat lateral branches. Her ears felt sharpened to points.