A Knot Better Tied Page 4

Well, perhaps there wasn't a lot for a Four Knot to do in a town like Vessit. Maybe all Wolpan's other activities were gentle on the skin. No point jumping to conclusions until they were safe.

  Dora found her breath coming more easily. Thia's grip must have slackened, though Dora could tell by the hot feel of the chafing in her armpit that the Clearseer hadn't let go completely. Still, she had to be fading. Dora hefted the other woman's weight, her shoulder and upper arm complaining sharply. Her own eyelids grew heavy.

  A bad sign; Thia's mind starting to bleed out into the Realm around them. Dora had no free hand with which to try stuffing it back into her head. She watched, helplessly, as platelets of grey-pink and a Second-Realm colour that made her want to retch flickered in response to the Clearseer's wavering logic. Bathed in the glow of Wolpan's raging aura - a quiet voice in the back of Dora's mind screamed warning; you can't normally see auras! - the flecks began to draw in towards them, hungry and seeking.

  In four neat, straight, spiralling lines, the fragments of whatever identity it was flowed into their wake, sucking in more and more of the Realm around them until the Realm itself became an anchor. Wolpan dug her fingers into Dora's palm. Dora reciprocated, knowing the pain would help them both focus. Her grip on Thia allowed no such aid, though she twisted her hand in the fabric of the other woman's dress in case she'd respond to the added tightness.

  Thia's aura already looked like little more than a faint sheen of oil on water. It spread a slick of hues Dora didn't want to think about over the unintelligible view. Dora could feel it lying over the bare skin on the back of her hand. Her own revulsion pulsed out in a wave, driving the aura back and eliciting a sound half-way between a whimper and a mumble from Thia. Her aura spread back the other way, back into their wake where the emerging Wilder waited.

  Wolpan shouted, her words lost in a buzz of displaced air as they scythed past. The Wilder billowed, shrugging off the anger like hair in a stiff breeze. Stealing a quick, hopeful glance ahead, Dora could make out nothing that might be an oncoming Sherim. Would the Wilder be able to? Without the benefit of a stable visualisation, it was impossible to recognise its species, though their continued survival ruled out most of the worst possibilities.

  The creature seemed content to follow them for now, making no attempt to close the last handful of inches. Dora shivered as she realised her trailing feet would be the first thing it touched. She curled her toes, pulling her knees up as best she could despite the obstacle of Thia's limp form. Dora stopped herself, feeling her face set hard in an inward scowl. She couldn't risk exposing the Clearseer for the sake of her own safety.

  Tangled between Thia and Wolpan, Dora could do nothing in defence. They spun too quickly for her to be able even to shout, though Wolpan's efforts in that direction were bearing no fruit. Another glass-edged burst of desperation speared past, framed in the Four Knot's high tones, but the Wilder barely flinched. At this rate, Wolpan would just convince it to try eating them all the sooner.

  Again, Dora tore her eyes away from the thing's rippling tendrils. Ahead, sensations danced in wait for them, their motions outlining the nine half-dimensions of the Second Realm. She felt her consciousness splinter, suddenly, shattering to shards that shattered again and again until a tiny Dora caught the reflection of each moment of consciousness that awaited them.

  She didn't try to rationalise it. She didn't panic or die. She didn't, in fact, exist. She smashed her own internal structure and sent the pieces of herself spinning into the cloud of chaos ahead. The shockwave of tension released through the fabric of the Realm bore her on, with Wolpan's sudden terror a sour note flooding through the memory of Dora's tongue.

  Realmspace folded her into new shapes. Concepts discussed in her training leapt out of the storm. She'd been taught that a human couldn't understand or recognise the ashtmer and ghiten of a Sherim, but there they were, locking together under the force of the fast-approaching consciousnesses of two humans, a Wilder and a thousand-million Doras. The Doras burrowed into the membrane between ashtmer and ghiten, ferreting out the tiniest of cracks with preternatural ease.

  She needed to separate them to allow Thia and Wolpan passage, but what human force could exert such strength in the Second Realm? The vision of the other two women turned at bay with their backs to the wall of the impenetrable Sherim almost pulled Dora back to herself. The human part of her registered the shiver that ran through Realmspace as a creaking sound. Light - real, honest, First-Realm light - peeked around the edges of the ghiten.

  Infinite Doras gave an infinite sigh of relaxation while the tangled bundle of Thia, Wolpan and a lump of flesh she had to avoid identifying dropped out of the sky toward them.

  Then she let herself fall back into herself, screaming every thought she could think of that offered her some semblance of identity. The ashtmer lifted, spinning apart in an oddly mechanical motion while cold daylight burned through, bleaching the dnimric shelds to tefxor.

  Impact with the grass slammed Dora back to herself, alien thoughts and alien language bouncing clear out of her head.

  She put her back to the grass and surveyed the world. Ahead, a great dome of blue filled her view, smudged here and there with white and grey. Its periphery vanished at the edges of her vision behind a ring of half-seen greenery. Easy enough, then, to think of ahead as up, the blue dome as sky. Dora closed her eyes for a moment, then lifted her head and looked around.

  Common sense caught up, reminded her that the First Realm had gravity to select up and down for her. For a moment, she panicked, worried she might have visualised wrong and even now be plummeting to her death, but no. She was lying on grass. Grass was very rarely anything other than the ground. The angular shapes of the dark-needled trees backed up the impression, arrows pointed at the sky.

  It still took a moment for Dora to find the courage to sit up. She grabbed tight handfuls of grass to hold her to the planet, but managed not to whimper when a few of the fine stalks snapped. The feeling of the series of tiny pops reminded her of dragging a hairbrush through bed-ruffled hair in the morning. A problem of the past, thanks to Taslin. She pushed to her feet, reaching out to steady herself against a nearby tree. Her fingers touched flat, finished board where bark should have been.

  The Sherim stood behind her, a round doorway cut into the bole of a gross, fattened pine. No branches grew on this side of the tree, and the bark showed the strain of the Sherim in craggy, distended lines, as if the tree had grown around the Sherim. Fungi marched in wobbly ranks up the flanks of the trunk, but they, too, gave the Sherim a wide berth. The door itself shared the mottled blue-green of the needles, as if it had been painted in deliberate mimicry.

  Dora spun the world around her, stumbling as a lump hidden in the grass tripped her. The Sherim stood in a generous clearing that fell away towards the darkness of the forest proper. Up-slope, a dark crag reared out of the trees, bare and hooked, stark and ominous despite the warmth of the untrammelled sunlight.

  She couldn't see the sea. Well, that made some sense; there were no mountains this big visible from Vessit. They must have come out of the wrong Sherim. How long would it take them to get back? Rel would be without her help - however much he thought he didn't want it - for far too long. Vessit would lack both its Four Knot and its Clearseer.

  Well, the seaside town seldom had serious Second-Realm problems. Perhaps if there was a crisis, Keshnu might allow Rel to help them. Perhaps the Gift-Giver would even step in himself. None of that would help Rel face his trial, though. She needed to get Thia and Wolpan back to Vessit as soon as possible.

  The Clearseer lay only a few feet away, a hand pressed to her forehead, mumbling to herself. Wolpan, further down the hill, looked as if she hadn't yet regained consciousness, her face buried in the grass, one arm out-flung. Probably just logic shock from the Sherim. Dora still wasn't sure what she'd done to get it open, but at least she'd known she was doing something. Heaven alone knew what Wolpan had thought of what she saw.

&n
bsp; Movement flickered at the bottom end of the clearing. Dora studied the treeline, hoping it was just a spasm of the destabilised Sherim. Squinting, she made out a shape cast in shimmering lines like spider-silk catching the sun. Its limbs flickered in and out of visibility too quickly to count, but she knew there would be nine of them.

  Now she could see it in a First-Realm context, it was easy to recognise the Wilder as a Lentu. She could even see how it had appeared as four trailing streamers in the Second Realm, one of the simpler quirks of a human attempt to translate nine half-dimensions into four whole ones. The Lentu would be no problem if Thia could recover quickly.

  Stupid thought. Dora resisted the urge to slap herself. The Clearseer needed at least a day's rest before she could even hope to use her Gift again, and even then she wasn't Rel. There was no guarantee she was strong enough to attempt mixing her Clearsight and her martial training. Wolpan would be no help either. The Four Knot was taking a frighteningly long time to recover.

  The Lentu stirred, its legs finally marshalled into an order that enabled it to move. It solidified suddenly, the mottled brown and green of the forest behind it becoming a rippling pelt sliding over freakish but