The Skein of Lament Read Online Free PDF

cupped hands held before her, left hand above the right and palm down, right hand palm up as if cradling an invisible ball. The guide – a leathery old Tkiurathi woman – stood nearby and watched disinterestedly. Once Kaiku was done and had passed through the gate, they headed into the jungle.
    The journey to the rendezvous was only a day’s walk, a spot chosen – Kaiku guessed – because it lay almost equidistant from three towns, one of which was Kisanth while the other two lay alongside a river that led shortly thereafter to another sea port. The spy had selected this place to be deliberately vague about their place of departure, in case anyone decoded all or part of the message that had been sent to the Fold. Kaiku found herself wondering about this person she was meant to meet. She did not know their name, nor whether they would be male or female, nor even if they were Saramyr at all. When she had protested at being kept in the dark by Zaelis and Cailin, they had merely said that there were ‘reasons’ and refused to speak further on it. She was not used to having her curiosity frustrated so. It only piqued her interest further.
    From the moment they left the perimeter of man’s domain, the land became wild. The roads – heading away to other settlements and to the vast mountainside crop fields – were going in the opposite direction to that in which Kaiku wanted to go, so they were forced to travel on foot and through the dense foliage. The way was hard, and there were no trails to speak of. The terrain underfoot was uncertain, having been moistened by recent rains. Kaiku’s rifle snagged on vines with annoying regularity, and she began to regret bringing it at all. They were forced to scramble their way along muddy banks, clamber up rocky slopes that trickled with water, hack their way through knotted walls of creepers with knaga , a sickle-like Okhamban blade used for jungle travel. But for all that, Kaiku found the jungle breathlessly beautiful and serene in the quiet before the dawn, and she felt like an intruder as she went stamping and chopping through the eerie netherworld of branches and tangles.
    The land warmed about them as they travelled, bringing with it a steadily growing chorus of animal calls, creatures hooting at each other from the meshed ceiling of treetops high above. Birds, with cries both beautiful and comically ugly, began to sing from their invisible vantage points. Frogs belched and croaked; the undergrowth rustled; fast things flitted between the trunks of the trees, sometimes launching themselves across the travellers’ path. Kaiku found herself unconsciously dawdling, wanting to soak up the sensations around her, until her guide hissed something sharp in Okhamban and she hurried to catch up.
    Kaiku had harboured initial doubts about the guide she had found, but the old woman proved far stronger than she looked. Long after Kaiku’s muscles were aching from trudging along cruel inclines and chopping the omnipresent vines that hung between the trees, the Tkiurathi forged unflaggingly onward. She was tough, though Kaiku guessed she must have been somewhere past her fiftieth harvest. Okham-bans did not count years, nor keep track of their age.
    Conversation was limited to grunts and gestures. The woman spoke very little Saramyrrhic, just enough to agree to take Kaiku where she wanted to go, and Kaiku spoke next to no Okhamban, having learned only a few words and phrases while at sea. In contrast to the excessive complexity of Saramyrrhic, Okhamban was incredibly simple, possessing only one phonetic alphabet and one spoken mode, and no tenses or similar grammatical subtleties. Unfortunately, the very simplicity of it defeated Kaiku. One word could have six or seven discrete applications depending on its context, and the lack of any specific form of address such as I, you or me made things terribly hard for one who had grown up speaking a language that was unfailingly precise in meaning.