The Way of the Rose

by Tricia Sullivan

Genres: Science Fiction; Genetic Engineering; Hard Science Fiction

Synopsis

With the land of Everien in chaos as a voracious timeserpent wreaks havoc, Istar and her companions - Taratel, Jaya, and Tarquin the Free - embark on a perilous quest to the lost city of Jai Pendu in order to harness the power of the Sekk and the ancient sorcery of the elusive skyfalcon, in the epic conclusion of the Everien saga.

Release date: April 30, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 192

Sample

When a spider spins a web, she doesn’t use a ruler or a compass to calculate her angles. She weaves a perfect pattern every time, making corrections and changes at need as she goes along—but no one ever told her how. She doesn’t even possess a brain by the standards of people. She will never stand back and appraise her web from a distance—she is too small. But she will eat the prey she catches in it, and she will lay eggs whose inhabitants will weave their own webs.

So who is being clever—the spider or the web? And is consciousness the beginning of knowledge, or its end?

I am Jaya. I have been both the spider and the fly, and I can tell you this: the fly and the spider and the dew that makes the web visible are all part of something larger and more strange. For the spider to be conscious of herself, to know what she is, would mean she would equally know all that she is not, bringing great loneliness. But we all know about that. Because we are human. We nurse both consciousness and loneliness, inventing gods to keep us company while the spiders keep spinning in perfect ignorance. We are severed from the world—that is why we worship animals and use them and keep them close to us. Even as we subjugate them, we miss being like them. They are connected.

The timeserpent has a human face. It was built by human thought. But it was never human, and when its mouth yawns open, its face is seen to be a joke that all but disappears in the folds of its time-devouring and infinite body. It is the actualization of the impossible. The timeserpent’s mathematics defy the understanding of a man or woman for whom time is like a wind, with direction and force. The timeserpent is not conscious like we are. It speaks our language with about as much effort as we need to make our hair grow. The timeserpent is no more aware of us than this—maybe less. But we conceived it. We made it.

How do we feel about that, children of Everien?

Well, how does the ocean feel about humans, her progeny? We cannot know. We have grown so far from our mineral origins that the ocean does not understand us, but we, somehow, still cry out for her in our very blood. How does a man feel about the timeserpent, which is his? He created it but does not understand it. The timeserpent is the parasite of the world, conjoining and severing the world from itself, leaving holes and bridges, gateways and windows, lattices of possibility climbing in every direction.

We are a self-propagating accident. We are meaning from meaninglessness and back again. And when we made the timeserpent, we birthed the accident of accidents, the math that breaks our minds. Discovering fire was child’s play—it was the big toy by which we built our castles of abstraction. But this time we are being left behind. The nature of timeserpents being what it is (or isn’t), there’s nothing to say that the perverse creature didn’t create us so as to bring itself into being. That the web didn’t weave the spider. Look hard and you’ll see: there is nothing at all to prove that causality only runs one way.

TIMESERPENTS ARE THE bane of storytellers. They cut to the ending without reference to its antecedents. They put contradictions side by side, just for laughs. They tunnel connections between things that have none, and cut sensible things in half. They spoil magic tricks. Being a person in the presence of a timeserpent is a little like being a beam of light in the presence of a prism. You really don’t have a choice but to be cut up in pretty pieces and bent at an oblique angle.

So: if you are reading for truth, stop now. You will find more in the dust on your windowsill. Truth and timeserpents are like oil and water.

“Shit,” Istar said into the frozen night. After the wraith of her breath disappeared, she repeated, “Shit shit shit.”

She wanted to tear her hair out. But she had cut off her braids when she tried to climb the cliff to escape Eteltar’s secret world. Now there was nothing to get a grip on. Instead, she grabbed the bones of her skull and squeezed with gloved fingers. She never ceased to be astonished by the hardness of her own head.

That was why she couldn’t believe it was possible to kill a man by crushing his skull like a melon. To do so would require unimaginable strength.

Yet if Taretel was behind this deed, she should not be surprised. Taretel, who in some other world or some other time had the wings of a bird and the mind of a wise man, was known here in Everien as a murderer and madman. He must have killed Birtar. Why, she could not understand. But there was much about Taretel that no one understood.

It had happened in the night, in the snowfall, when the winds came howling from the west, bearing ash and ice and everything in between, for the Li’ah’vah had passed there, changing air to stone and night to day. Last night, while Istar was dozing, Birtar must have come to watch the giant who everyone believed to be a Sekk master—everyone but Istar. There had been a time when Birtar had regularly done this duty, being one of the few men in her borrowed army, besides Pentar, that Istar could trust. But after what had happened yesterday, she had refused to allow Birtar near to the prisoner.

Yesterday. She had thought her situation complicated then—but now yesterday’s problems seemed gloriously easy to solve. Yesterday had marked the end of the first week following the passage of the Li’ah’vah through Everien’s mountains, a week during which Istar’s small army had been making steady progress toward the old camp above Fivesisters Lake, where Jakse had found the Knowledge cave. Yesterday, when Pentar had urgently come to summon Istar to talk strategy, he had brought Birtar to watch the prisoner for a short time. Normally, Birtar adopted a dispassionate attitude toward Taretel; but yesterday his manner had been strange. He had approached the bound and blindfolded Taretel with a swaggering air, one arm extended as if prepared to shove or slap the bigger man; but as he got closer, his reluctance to touch the Sekk became apparent in his posture, and in the end he drew his sword and prodded the prisoner with its tip as if Taretel were a shark or other sea monster that he had caught by luck and now didn’t know what to do with. A snarling noise came from the black-clad giant, whose silver braids blended with the snow like the plumage of an arctic bird. At Istar’s side, Pentar stiffened.

Nonplussed by Birtar’s behavior, Istar said, “Don’t provoke it.” She was careful not to call Taretel “he.” To speak of Taretel as human would only complicate matters. “It cannot walk quickly and it is bound. There is no need to keep it at sword point.”

“Nevertheless, I will,” Birtar answered somewhat shrilly. “It is my sword, and I will use it as I need.”

Istar thought his fear and Pentar’s were ludicrously magnified, but she said nothing. She turned to Pentar.

“What’s the matter? Tell me what’s happened.”

Pentar visibly collected himself, trudging some little distance away from Birtar and the Sekk as if unwilling to speak with Istar within their hearing. She kept the Sekk in her peripheral vision. She trusted neither it nor Birtar.

“It’s Tash,” he replied. “You remember how easily he fell back before us in Tyger Pass?”

“He did not live up to his reputation,” she said.

“He is a shrewd commander. I am sure that he knew he was at a disadvantage and decided to draw us into a location where he could have us at his mercy.”

“What are you talking about? Where is he now? I don’t see how we are at anyone’s mercy. We are a small force and no one knows where we are, and with the Li’ah’vah slicing up the landscape it is hard to see how Tash will have anyone at his mercy.”

“This is not the time for overconfidence.”

“I am not overconfident. You still have not told me what you know. Keep the analysis and give me the facts.”

“Very well. I sent a bird to Jakse and it has not returned. We know that he was associated with some of Tash’s people at Fivesisters Lake, and we can only assume that Tash knows about the Sekk cave by now. He was going downland from Tyger Pass, but he could have beaten us to the road and overtaken us. He could have gotten to the cave ahead of us.”

“Could have, might have … what other evidence is there for this story? You sent a bird and it didn’t come back. That could mean anything.”

“Come with me.”

He had stopped at the base of a large pine standing in partial isolation within the canopy. Istar could see that footholds had been sliced in the bark, and there were rope burns on the dead lower branches. Seahawks used lookout trees when they could, and this was a typical specimen. She glanced over her shoulder toward Birtar and the Sekk. The latter was backed against the trunk of a tree, still and subdued, while Birtar, sword still out, paced in restless half circles around him. Istar was uneasy about leaving the two unattended, but Pentar was looking at her in such a way that said she had better climb the tree or he would begin to believe her Enslaved by the Sekk.

She climbed. Pentar soon disappeared below, although she could hear his voice calling up to her through the branches.

“Look west-northwest. Do you see the lake?”

Istar was struggling to get a clear vantage in that direction, since the tree seemed to want to give her a solid foothold only on the south side. At length, climbing a little higher than she really ought to, she fought her way to a position where she could look through the branches and see the horizon to the north. To the far left, where the slopes of the mountains made a steep V, she could just discern the lower end of Fivesisters Lake, frozen solid and covered with snow. The trees that had displayed their brilliant colors the last time she’d been in these parts were now naked, visible as a gray, characterless furze. The evergreens still hid the slopes of the hills, though, dark and secret.

“I see the lake,” she called, and then, almost immediately after, “What the hell’s that?”

There was smoke coming up from the dark trees on the shores of the lake. A lot of smoke.

“Do you see it?” Pentar’s excited voice drifted up.

“I see smoke. What’s causing that?”

“A camp. A battle. Hard to say, specifically—but that’s where Tash was headed.”

Istar shaded her eyes against the snowglare and looked carefully. “That’s one hell of a fire. I’ve never seen a forest fire in winter.”

Pentar said something she could not make out, and she ignored him for a moment, still looking intently. From this perspective she could not see the area where Xiriel’s cave had been purported to be. She wished that Xiriel had sent a bird or left a message in some other way. No one but he had a clue what to do about the cave, and Istar had been puzzling for some time over how to handle Jakse if she reached him before Xiriel could. Xiriel had left Jakse to guard the cave on behalf of the rebels, but Jakse had later taken up with Dario, a Clanswoman who had thrown her lot in with Tash. A typical Wasp, Dario was obviously hedging her bets as to who would emerge ruler of Everien: Tash or the rebel Clansmen; and as long as Jakse was associated with Dario, Istar could not trust him. She could not very well walk up to the cave and take over under such uncertain circumstances. For that matter, she did not know what the nature of the cave and its artifacts might be. Besides, with the captive Taretel in tow, she was wary of going anywhere near a reputed Sekk lair. Who knew how her prisoner might react if confronted with a Sekk—much less, how he would react if what Xiriel believed were true, and the Lake of Candles was in fact the very wellspring from which the Sekk were born. Istar felt insecure enough hiding out in the woods with only her own loyal followers to answer to, without blundering straight into a possible conjunction of Tash, the Sekk, and Jakse.

But the smoke could not be ignored, and she couldn’t hide in the woods forever. If nothing else, their provisions were running out, and in late winter hunting was difficult, and foraging, impossible. The men were spooked at the vision of the Li’ah’vah, and eager to return to some outpost of civilization from which they might hope to get news of their country and families.

Istar stared at the smoke. She didn’t know what to do.

She slithered out of the tree and, without looking at Pentar, said, “I agree that it is worrisome.”

“What should we do?”

“Well, we must not panic,” she said. “Tomorrow we move to the rendezvous and see what the scouts have to say. Maybe they can give us more information.”

“So we do nothing?”

“It is only one night,” Istar said mildly, and turned to go. She didn’t like leaving Taretel out of her sight.

Pentar said, “Wait. Just stay a moment, and talk.”

Istar fidgeted, but complied.

“I don’t like the way you spend all your time with the Sekk,” he said. “When I’m talking to you, sometimes I don’t know if I’m talking to you or to him.”

“Him? Don’t you mean ‘it’?”

“You know what I mean. There’s something different about this Sekk.”

Yes, Istar thought. There is. You don’t know the half of it.

“I’ve heard the stories about Taretel, and I’ve now seen his cave. We recovered some of his writing and we crossed over into that other … place … where we found you and a lot of birds, and some kind of crazy writing on the cliff face, like an Everien symbol-code.”

“What?” Istar was shocked. She knew that Eteltar had been carving something on that cliff, but she had never been able to stand back from it enough to get a good look at it. “How did you see his sculpture?”

“When I came down the rope, of course. And again, when I dragged you back up it—but you wouldn’t remember that part. You were unconscious. The writing was singular, Istar. If we had not been in such haste, I would have explored the cave, too. And then what would I have found? The grave of Eteltar? Istar, tell me. It weighs on you, this secrecy. I can see it. Just tell me what happened, and then we can decide what to do.”

But Istar wasn’t listening to him. What had Eteltar been writing on the cliff, and why? The desert below, he had told her, would not be inhabited for a long time, and only the time-traveling horses of Or ever went there. So who was he writing the message for? And what did it say?

“Now you’re off in a fog again!” Pentar grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her. “Istar, we’re in a wood in the middle of winter, we’ve seen a Li’ah’vah loose in Everien, our men are scared, and Tash is nearby. You must get out of your own head and act.”

Suddenly she was angry. Pentar didn’t know the first thing about it; he had not spent half a year climbing impossible cliffs and jousting verbally with the capricious half-man Eteltar, as Istar had. She had spent all her energy trying to convince Eteltar to trust her, to love her, to help her and her people—only to be ripped away from his remote niche in time when Pentar had “rescued” her. Now she had to confront every day the spectre of the Sekk that Eteltar had left behind like a ghost. Why, if it weren’t for Pentar and his do-gooding intervention, she would have woken up that morning to a new beginning with the winged man. Had Eteltar not made love to her? Had he not told her his history and what had happened to divide him so? Therefore, in time he would have showed her what he was sculpting. In time he would have let her pass through the hole in the sky, the interdimensional portal that led to his ice-cave, where she might comprehend the research he had done. In time, maybe, they would have together found a way to make him whole again. And then Istar would have been whole. She would not be a wretched half-man of an Honorary herself, doomed to this stupid existence, deprived of love and children and all the things she had never wanted because she had never been allowed to want them but now she did—damn it. But now all that was left of the one she wanted them with was Taretel, the blindfolded Sekk kinslayer who would probably lay Istar’s throat open, given half a chance.

Seething, she narrowed her eyes and spat in the snow.

“You never should have come for me, Pentar. I didn’t ask you to rescue me. I never asked you to save me, but you keep bloody doing it. Did you ever once think it might be better to leave me to my fate?”

He stared at her, stunned. The cold bitterness in her own voice surprised her, but she found she could not soften it.

“Istar, don’t—”

“Leave me alone! You want the men? Take them. They’re yours. I’ll take my prisoner and go.”

“You can’t—”

“Watch me.”

She turned and, evading his grab, pounded through the snow to where she had left Birtar and the Sekk. Pentar called after her. “You’re fucking suicidal, Istar! That’s it! That’s the last time I do help you!”

Birtar was sweating and pacing, blowing plumes of air as he circled the Sekk like a nervous guard dog. He was apparently oblivious to the drama that had been developing between Istar and Pentar, because he glanced once over his shoulder when he heard her coming, then returned his attention immediately to the Sekk, saying, “He’s vicious. Even without a weapon, I fancy he’s dangerous.”

“What is going on?” Istar said sharply. The Sekk was standing there all too coolly for her comfort. Birtar was not the type to get worked up over nothing.

“He keeps lunging at me and trying to head-butt me,” Birtar complained, and Istar noted that the snow was a ruin of disturbed pine needles and clods of torn earth where some violence had occurred. “I’m going to have to cut him in a minute. Why don’t you bind his legs?”

“It was quiet until just a minute ago,” Istar said, alarmed at Birtar’s use of the personal pronoun—Sekk were invariably referred to as “it” or “they” to make it easier to kill them. “Have you done something to provoke it?”

“No!” Birtar answered a little too vehemently, and she saw that he was terrified.

“That’s all right, Birtar,” she said softly, surprised at the composure in her voice so soon after her outburst at Pentar. “I’ll take over.”

He glanced at her once and shook his head. “It’s too late for that. Don’t you see what he’s doing?”

“It’s just standing there,” Istar said.

“No!” cried Birtar, dancing first to one side and then the other, keeping the Sekk always at sword point. “He’s being quiet now you’re here, but he was not like this before.”

“Then I won’t leave it,” Istar said simply. “You can go now. It’s all right.”

He shook his head adamantly, like a stubborn child, she thought. She did not think the Sekk was Enslaving Birtar, despite his bizarre behavior. There had been no singing, for one thing, and no eye contact.

“You didn’t touch it, did you?” she asked.

“No! Are you crazy? Istar, get it through your head—this one’s a killer. He killed Ranatar, he killed whole villages. He killed my brother. Agh, I could be sick just to look at him.”

“The Sekk is a prisoner,” Istar reminded him. “We agreed it was my responsibility. Now step away.”

“Taretel is mine. For Thietar. He’s mine.”

Istar was shocked by Birtar’s behavior; after all, he had forfeited his right to kill the Sekk in favor of Istar, and he had supported her command of this dubious army wholeheartedly. But there was no time to think about what had changed his mind. Istar drew her sword and edged into a position from which she could intercept Birtar if he attacked the Sekk, or vice versa. “Don’t be stupid. Birtar. You won’t bring Thietar back by killing Taretel.”

He hesitated, lowering his blade fractionally, and she seized her moment, throwing herself bodily against Birtar and knocking him aside, then interposing herself between the unarmed Sekk and the Seahawk, who now sprawled in the snow, furious.

“The Sekk Taretel is my prisoner,” she said coldly. “No one may take its life but me. Or is this the faith you show me after your fine, brave words before Atar and the other deserters?”

Birtar got to his feet, brushing snow off himself and shaking his head.

“You’re mad,” he whispered. “What they said is true. You’re as mad as he is.”

Things might have gotten ugly then, but Pentar arrived with three young soldiers and told Birtar to clear off.

“Listen to me, Birtar,” she heard Pentar say to Birtar. “Do not be provocative. Do not tread so lightly with the Sekk! You know what this one is capable of.”

Birtar glowered and said nothing, but they went away together, Pentar returning only long enough to grumble in Istar’s general direction that their conversation earlier was forgotten, as far as he was concerned, and he would make preparations to meet with the scouts as she’d wished. Istar had thought that was the end of the episode with Birtar—an emotional outburst brought on by stress, and too much time spent in the wilderness, and fear of the Li’ah’vah. Certainly she was in a frayed and edgy condition herself.

She had fallen asleep thinking not about Birtar, nor Pentar, nor the men she was supposed to be leading, whose attitude toward her was so dubious. She was thinking about Eteltar, and his wings, and his smell. It was an uneasy repose, a soldier’s half-sleep. Yet she had not awakened to the sounds of murder. There had been no cries, no sound of a scuffle, no warning. When Istar roused two hours before dawn, she could see her prisoner standing against a nearby oak. Taretel was in his characteristic posture: legs slightly apart, hands bound behind his back, blindfolded and gagged but showing no indication of being cowed or in despair. His head was up. Alert.

He never slept.

She shivered and shook off a sprinkling of snow that had drifted from beneath the branches of the firs to settle on her cloak. She blinked and yawned as sleep tugged at her again; then she gave a little start. There was something on the ground at the prisoner’s feet. Istar rose, lit a torch, and went toward Taretel, who made no move. Birtar’s body was lying buried beneath an inch and a half of new-fallen snow.

She looked at Taretel. Because of the blindfold, there was no expression in his face to be read, yet she stared at him anyway. She could not comprehend this act. Birtar had defended Taretel to the other Seahawks, even though he believed him Sekk, and even though he had good cause to hate this silent renegade who had brought about the death of his brother, Thietar. Because Istar vouched for Taretel, Birtar had agreed that the prisoner might live.

Now Taretel had murdered him. It did not seem to have been much of a fight. The snow was disturbed, but there was no mark on Taretel. Birtar’s head was crushed, and a great deal of blood had come from the soft eyes, the ears, the mouth, and the nose, freezing in the snow where he lay.

She walked around the clearing, wondering what had happened. Birtar had not drawn a weapon or injured Taretel. Istar and her prisoner had camped some distance from Pentar and the soldiers as a safety precaution against just this sort of thing, and even now, with Istar walking around with a lit torch, no one in the main camp took notice. During their daily travels, Istar and Taretel were in the habit of walking well behind the rest, and he was never out of her sight. She was very careful with him, even more cautious than she needed to be, probably to compensate for her personal feelings for the man … or thing … or whatever he was.

But she had not been cautious enough.

Now she felt ill. After yesterday, she should have known something bad was going to happen. Yet she had to sleep. Everyone had to sleep sometime, damn it.

Taretel did not stir while she made her examination of the scene. She found herself observing details: the mud on Birtar’s bootprints, the places where snow had dropped in quantity from tree branches above, the fact that Birtar’s dagger was missing and was neither on his corpse nor on Eteltar. As she did these things she felt strangely emotionless. It would have been more in character for her to fly raging at Taretel and seek revenge, but she felt no desire to do so. She possessed, in fact, a complete lack of feeling.

“Why?” she said softly.

Taretel did not answer. He never did.

IT WAS ALMOST light. She tied Taretel to a tree and went to tell Pentar what had happened. She did not tie him very tightly. Somehow she was hoping he would take this chance to be gone.

The camp was stirring, already a nervous hive of activity as the men anticipated meeting up with the scouts that had been sent out to assess the effects of the Li’ah’vah. Istar had designated the southern end of Fivesisters Lake as the rendezvous, and they should reach that point today with a bit of luck. There was no guarantee they would be able to get there, of course; already they had encountered one barrier in the forest that they could not pass through: a distortion in the air and in the earth, accompanied by a sheer, thin noise like very dry wood burning. They had avoided this area; they had no choice. Whenever they tried to get close enough to see what was wrong with the landscape, their thoughts became disordered and they wandered in useless circles until they were obliged to return.

“It is some malignant effect of the Li’ah’vah,” Pentar said. “It makes everyone queasy and fearful. Let us stick to the solid ground we know.”

Under different circumstances, Istar might have been tempted to press an exploration; but with Taretel attached to her, Istar’s priorities were different. She only wanted to find out what had happened to Everien; where the timeserpent was now; and who else had survived its eruption. Today, she had hoped to have that satisfaction, by the shores of Fivesisters Lake. She tried to cheer herself up by reminding herself that in a few days, the scouts might even reach the Knowledge cave that Xiriel had discovered. Maybe he would even be there—she had been hoping for it. Now she needed a piece of good luck more than ever.

She found Pentar talking to a couple of the youngest men, instructing them on how far ahead to scout and what to do if they encountered another region affected by the timeserpent. When he saw the look on her face, he sent the boys off and went with her apart from the others. Quietly, she told him what had happened, and together they walked back to Istar’s separate camp. Pentar looked at Birtar’s body and swallowed hard. She watched his face crumple, aging by years in a matter of seconds, and she wondered what she herself must look like. Birtar had been a devoted suitor to her sister. What would she tell the twins, if she ever saw them again?

Pentar stalked around the perimeter of the clearing just as she had done, observing everything with the same dark intensity. Occasionally he stooped to examine the snow more closely. When he returned to her, they stood silently for a few minutes.

“It is plain that they fought,” Pentar said at last, looking at the snow.

“I disagree. There is no blood.”

“They may have wrestled. Look at the way the pine needles have been dug up from under the snow and tossed around. That doesn’t happen by normal traffic.”

“That happened yesterday, when Birtar was teasing the Sekk. Taretel never attacked any of us before.”

“That doesn’t make him any less dangerous. But I’m not sure it was Taretel who started the fight.”

Istar snorted. “I agree that Birtar was acting strangely yesterday, but if he wanted Taretel dead, why didn’t he just come up behind him and cut his throat?”

With that, Pentar produced a slender knife. Istar recognized it as Birtar’s hunting knife.

“It was lying in the snow, five yards behind Taretel. It could have been knocked aside in the scuffle.”

Istar swung her head in frustration. “What the hell is going on, Pentar? Birtar was talking like a lunatic yesterday. You don’t think he was Enslaved, do you?”

The dark-eyed Seahawk took a deep breath and cleared his throat. He said, “Birtar came and spoke to me yesterday. He said something I did not understand. He said that he knew for certain that Taretel is not a Sekk.”

“Not a Sekk?” Istar snapped. “Then what quarrel could he have had? You see, Pentar? Birtar did not assault Taretel, and Taretel did not kill Birtar. He couldn’t have—he was bound and weaponless. It must have been some other creature; who knows what monster might stalk these forests. …” She knew she sounded absurd, and she let her voice trail off. This was her fault, and she couldn’t bear it.

“We found no tracks of creatures or monsters. Listen, Istar, and I will tell you a pretty riddle. After what happened yesterday, I kept an eye on Birtar. I followed him into the forest, where I found him weeping. He did not wish to speak with me, but I pressed him, and in the end he told me that Taretel is not a Sekk, that he did not sing, that he bled but then healed too quickly—and you have seen how he recovered from a hamstringing that would have lamed other men for life. Birtar also said that back in Tyger Pass, Taretel had spared Thietar for some reason.”

“These things may be true,” Istar said. “But what caused Birtar to say them to you, and never to me? He watched Taretel like … well, like a hawk. He was fascinated by him. He helped me to mind him, and he defended Taretel against the others. But yesterday, he was vi