The False Martyr by H. Nathan Wilcox Page B

and
there was no way for him to stop them.
    Opening his eyes, Lius
looked out at the tangle of trees and vines around him. The trees
were tall and gnarled, twisted and weathered. Their leaves formed a
canopy that almost completely blocked the sun. Vines connected
them, long pearl strands shared by clusters of crones. Moss hung
from them, the uncombed grey hair of beggars. The ground was
barren, washed out, and rough. The plants that grew were stunted,
designed to live off floods but transplanted in a desert. Lius
looked at the waterlines on the trees. He was lucky this was not
the rainy season, that the floods had not started, that this was
not a swamp in reality. Still, he wondered how long it had been
since there had been enough rain to flood the Vasuki River Delta.
In the interminable droughts, were these wetlands ever actually
wet?
    Lius considered using his
new powers to find the answer. He could see and understand the
clues around him, could trace the life of the plant before him,
follow its strand to see when it had last been underwater. Then he
remembered where he was and what was about to happen. He closed his
eyes and followed the connections instead to the chaos. It was
closer now, the number of connections fewer, the possibilities to
change it diminished, and not a one of those possibilities bought
him more than a few more hours.
    But there was something
else there too, something past the creatures, something new that he
had not seen in days. There were people. He knew them by the
possibilities flowing from them, tiny threads that could be pulled
to change the patterns around them. Lius had not seen those
connections since he left the city and had never seen them so
isolated, had almost missed them outside of the context he knew.
The creatures stood between them, but people meant possibilities he
could change, outcomes he could control, and, most importantly, a
chance to survive. There was no choice. He ran toward them, toward
them and the chaos that stood between.
     
    #
     
    Lius no longer needed to
follow the strands of the Order to see what was following him. His
eyes, sharp despite all the reading, were adequate to the task. The
creatures were slinking through the trees, black shapes like the
ones that had killed the Xi Valati only four nights ago – it seemed
like weeks. So much had happened since then that Lius could barely
remember that night. He thought back on it like a dream, doubted
still that any of it had been real until he felt the weight of the
box tugging at his shoulders from the pack he had stolen to carry
it.
    Removing the pack, he
tucked it and the book it held into a crevice beneath a tree root
then covered it with leaves and dirt. If necessary, it could wait
there for centuries. The box was perfectly sealed against the
forces of nature and impenetrable to any but those who could read
the Order. Lius had learned how to open it almost immediately but
had been afforded almost no opportunity to actually read it, no
opportunity to do anything other than flip the pages and stare upon
the tight, uniform script of their savior.
    Remaining hidden behind
the tree, Lius reached out to the Tapestry, looking again for the
small band of people that might be his salvation. They were nearby,
but their actions were distinct from those of the creatures –
neither band realized that the other existed. But more than that,
something was not right about those people. It appeared that they
surrounded something that was not human. Or was it? Who or whatever it was,
looked like a hole in the Tapestry. Lius could not read the
possibilities that surrounded it, could not predict what it would
do, or find a way to change it, yet it had strong control over the
actions of those around it, resembling, in that way, not only a
person, but a very influential one. Lius had never seen anything
like it, could not imagine what it was or how it worked, but it
appeared to acting as a stabilizing force, taking even the