A Knot Better Tied Read online

gesture again.

  Dora rolled her eyes. She gestured You search - I'll guard. The other Four Knot's face stiffened, which was an improvement, and she bent back to her work. Dora turned her back and made a cautious start at patrolling the clearing. Ahead, the gnarled, ancient roots of one of the vast trees rose in colour from brown through red and into a fleshy pink, beginning to glisten as they did so.

  Dora's mind slid instantly into recognising them for giant entrails, and she stumbled backwards, gorge rising. A gust of wind from behind brought her Thia's fresh, sea-salt scent, laced with Wolpan's irritation. Dora glanced over her shoulder, but Wolpan still knelt alone. Fresh worry hit Dora's already-riled gut. Had they taken too long bickering? Had Thia sunk past recovery?

  Training told her to mark off time taken through the rescue, but short-term memory eluded her. She'd arrived, started visualising Thia - was that when Wolpan had interrupted, or was that later? How long had Dora followed the distress call before coming to the forest floor? Her argument with Wolpan was a blur of panic and aggression. She hadn't been aggressive, had she? That had all been the other woman, afraid of a more competent, practiced Four Knot invading her patch.

  Hopefully Wolpan could at least keep track herself. Dora left her to it and paced out the distance to the point where the roots began their transformation into viscera. Stopping short, she turned to put them to her left and walked on, dividing her attention between watching her feet and the roots, in case they started changing again. Maybe if she went this way the shapes would change instead, and give her more to work with.

  The colours faded slowly from the woodland as she walked, the crisp, clear edges of leaves and branches blurring together. Not knowing quite why, Dora spun neatly through two steps, enjoying the feel of her ponytail swinging out. As the forest whirled, it flicked back into focus as a simple concrete-and-plaster room, the walls sculpted into elegant, abstract swirls. Wolpan nestled in the core of one curl, barely three inches high.

  Letting her body sway to match the pattern on the walls, Dora made her way back to her colleague's side. To her surprise, Wolpan didn't swell up to normal size; instead, Dora was able to cup the Four Knot in a protective hand. Wolpan shivered and looked up, but didn't seem to realise what had happened. Shielded from the truth by her own visualisation of the forest, probably. She'd be much easier to protect like this, provided she didn't panic at Dora's disappearance.

  A tingling spread through Dora's hand, as if a net of impossibly fine threads trawled her. Of course. Wolpan's search for Thia. Dora shifted her hand, trying to get out of the way, but the tingling stayed. She wondered if Thia felt the same sensation. Maybe that was why she could never sit still. Certainly, the tickling gave Dora the inescapable urge to shake her hand. Or scratch her nose.

  Her thoughts went back to Thia, pulled by some twist of the Second Realm. They'd met only a couple of times, both encounters brief, but Dora had been instantly drawn to the Clearseer's intensity. She was like Rel, focussed on her work, but more willing to trust her colleagues to share in the labour. Less proud. Why had she come to the Second Realm today?

  Clearseers went to the Second Realm to make long-range or particularly detailed Clearviewings, usually to expand on a more cursory First-Realm viewing that promised major danger. Back home, Rel went to the Second Realm three or four times a year, but Vessit was a much safer town than Federas. On the other hand, Thia wasn't as strongly Gifted as Rel.

  Vessit's Gifted had all been shaken when Keshnu explained about the strange Sherim beside the chasm that ran under the town. Thia must have spent a good deal of time immersed in the future, trying to map out the effects. Perhaps she'd found something that bore further investigation. A shiver ran through Dora. Rel's cell was very close to that problematic Sherim. Tiresome as he was being, she still didn't want to lose him. What had Thia seen?

  "Nothing good." Tiredness gave the Clearseer's voice an almost southern drawl. The words fell out of her as a shower of embers, and Dora jerked her foot back out of the way. Thia stood before her, the top of her head barely higher than Dora's chin, her eyes glazed, her hair wisping out in the first stage of what would become chaotic tangles.

  She'd appeared at Dora's scale, not Wolpan's. The other Four Knot still knelt, cupped in Dora's palm, staring about in confusion. Without thinking about it, Dora spun Wolpan's visualisation through some peculiar angles and wound her up to the right size. Wolpan staggered, gagging, and Thia caught her. The Clearseer's strength remained, then, despite her dazed demeanour. Logic burnout seldom overwhelmed physical training.

  Wolpan got her wits back, just managing to keep from speaking until she'd looked away. "What? What did you do?" Her voice became a single sharp-tipped rod of silver, arcing away to a tree in the distance where it drilled a hole right through the wood.

  Thia turned to look at Dora, her eyes still unfocussed. Dora frowned at her, then realised Wolpan hadn't been addressing the Clearseer.

  What had she done? "I... Thia came back together on this scale rather than yours. I was using the larger scale to stand a better guard. I'm not sure... I wonder if maybe we interfered with one another when we were following the distress call and got settled in the wrong place."

  Wolpan's face hardened. Stiffly, she made the gestures for More explanation needed - Not here.

  Dora nodded. She pointed to Wolpan, then traced a circle in the air with one finger - You find the Sherim - and put her arm around Thia's back. The Clearseer gripped Dora's dress at the opposite shoulder, pulling it uncomfortably tight across her throat, but she supported most of her own weight.

  Already disturbed, Realmspace folded back around them as Wolpan cast out in search of a route to a Sherim. The towering trees shrank sharply to freakish shrubs, some fat-trunked but tiny, others with broad-spreading canopies hiding trunks that had diminished to twig-thickness. The veil of flowers tore away from the sky, leaving an angular, fractal scar behind. It mesmerised, drawing the eye down through illusory spirals to a point at which conscious thought began to fade.

  Dora pulled her attention back and covered Thia's eyes. The Clearseer didn't protest. Her skin was cold to the touch, clammy despite the complete absence of sweat. Dora managed not to swear out loud, feeling her fears for Thia's well-being running through their wavering reality as tremors. She should have been able to work out how long Thia had been under. She should have been able to save the Clearseer more quickly.

  The ground convulsed, bouncing Dora off a high bush that left prickling leaves tangled in her sleeve as she reeled to steady Thia. They needed to move, and soon. Two angry, frightened people in this patch of Realmspace had been dangerous enough. With Thia's wandering, burnt-out mind in tow, they were hopelessly vulnerable. What was taking Wolpan so long? The Four Knot's face could have been carved from stone, her cheeks reduced to flat, severe planes. Her eyes were closed.

  Her mind pressed out into Realmspace as a taut line, tying her to the distant Sherim. Dora watched, fascinated beyond horror, as Wolpan pushed out further, the straight edges of the scene twisting and distorting under the spell of the Four Knot's Gift. The world began to align with Wolpan's intent; a simple path for them to get Thia to safety. They'd all pay for it in fatigue later, but home was the first priority.

  Dora squeezed her eyes shut as logic yielded, her stomach turning one way and her balance the other. Her knees gave out as the ground beneath her feet rippled again, and a blast of wind slapped her forward. Thia yelped, limp in Dora's grasp as they staggered and fell. Dora forced herself to look up as they passed through where the ground should have been.

  Colours and shapes danced around them in kaleidoscopic chaos. No amount of rationalisation would make sense of the sensations. Nausea rose just high enough to put a sour taste in the back of Dora's throat before giving up altogether. Wolpan leaned down with a hand outstretched, her Gift a blue, metallic rope tethering her to the distance. The Four Knot's eyes were wide, her lips pulled back in a snarl.

  Dora managed to
overcome the shiver that shot through her - what was Wolpan so angry about? Was it really human to get angry in a situation like this? - and, straining at the limit of her reach, got her fingers into contact with the other Four Knot's. Contact sucked them together with an odd popping noise that burst through the surrounding storm as a thick spray of violet.

  Acceleration stretched every joint in her body as Wolpan's connection to the Sherim reeled them in. Behind, Realmspace exploded out of itself, the pent-up emotions of the confrontation in the clearing released as barbs of light that dazzled with menace. Dora curled herself tighter around Thia, clenched her grip on Wolpan's hand until the other Four Knot grunted.

  The grunt Dopplered past in a shimmering array of red crystal, lost as soon as seen amid the chaos through which they plunged. Dora fought the urge to seek First-Realm patterns in the confusion. Any part of it might be a hostile Wilder, whose attention they could not afford to draw. She let the colours whirl in silence and tried to keep her mind only on her sense of touch.

  Despite grime picked up from the search - why had she felt the need to kneel and press her hands into the ground, anyway? - Wolpan's hand was soft in Dora's, the skin chill enough to seem damp.