Fahrekh turned his gleaming face slowly toward the broken figure on the bed, the afternoon light skipping from plane to plane in triangles of brightness.
‘Yes, my Barak,’ he muttered.
As the Weaver bored into his thoughts and will like a weevil into the bole of a tree, Xejen found his throat free to scream again. Fahrekh found that he worked better when his victims were responsive.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The science of predicting the orbits of the three moons was ancient. Though moonstorms came at apparently random intervals, over hundreds of years it was possible to see a pattern of unwavering regularity. Astronomers could now tell almost exactly when the three moons would be in close enough proximity to spark a moonstorm. Navigators relied heavily on their ability to plot the course of the moons so that they could assess what effect each would have on the world’s tides. Though it was only the learned who knew just when a moonstorm would hit, usually rumours carried far enough among the peasantry to make almost everyone aware of it.
None of which was any help to Kaiku and Tsata, who were out in the open when the moonstorm struck.
There had been developments since the night when they had narrowly escaped the ghaureg, and all thoughts of turning back for home had been cast aside. Though they had previously abandoned any hope of catching or killing one of the Nexuses, they had resolved to observe the flood plain and see if any more information could be gained about the foul, seething building that crouched near the banks of the Zan. They kept themselves at a distance, where the sentries were sparse enough to avoid. Getting close to the plain was impossible now, for it was too well guarded.
Kaiku’s determination to stay was rewarded sooner than she thought. The very next night, the barges began to arrive.
She had theorised that the river must have been the method for getting all these Aberrants here in the first place, and that they must be transporting food from the north which they had stockpiled in the strange building for their army of predators. Kaiku and Tsata had witnessed several mass feedings, in which great piles of meat were brought out on carts driven by the same docile midget-folk that had served the Weavers at the monastery on Fo. She called them golneri, meaning ‘small people’ in a Saramyrrhic mode usually applied to children. She should have expected that they would be here: the Weavers were notoriously incapable of looking after themselves, afflicted as they were by a gradually increasing insanity as a result of using their Masks.
Still, for all that, they had never seen any evidence of river travel until now; but when the barges arrived, it was in a multitude.
They had appeared during the day, so when Kaiku and Tsata breached the barrier that night they found them already waiting. They crowded the banks of the river on either side, a clutter of more than three dozen massive craft along the edge of the flood plain. For two nights a steady stream of carts went back and forth in the moonlight and the golneri swarmed to unload great bales and boxes. Suddenly the Weavers’ apparently random barge-buying enterprises over the last five years made sense: they had been moving the Aberrant predators along the rivers, gathering them together, assembling their forces. Kaiku wondered what kind of influence the Weavers had over the barge-masters that walked the decks, to trust them with the knowledge of this secret army. It had to be something more than money.
On the third night, the boarding began.
The initial shock at finding the flood plain half-empty when they arrived just after dusk was quickly surmounted by what was happening on the river. The Aberrants were being herded up wide gangplanks into the holds of the fatbellied barges, a steady stream of muscle and tooth parading meekly onto the cargo decks under the watchful eyes of the Nexuses. There were so many barges that they could not all berth along the bank at once, and they queued northward to receive their allocation of the monstrosities, and headed upstream when they were done. It seemed that the barrier of misdirection did not cover the river; but then, nobody came this far down the Zan anyway, for the great falls were just to the south and no river traffic could pass that. Kaiku and Tsata watched in amazement at the sheer scale of the logistical maneouvring.