4
AURIENNE SUFFERS IN NATURE
Aurienne
n addition to managing a Fyren and his irrational expectations, AurienneI was responsible for Swanstone’s Centre for Seith Research. She had been bullied into the directorship six months ago by the Heads of her Order in spite of her protestations. Like any researcher worth her salt, Aurienne had outright refused the position, preferring to continue her pursuits in the lab— the noble advancement of knowledge, etc. And, also, she would rather die than do anything involving so much admin.
However, when old Haelan Whiffleby had retired last autumn, the Heads identified Aurienne as his logical successor, because she was ruthlessly organised, always had Things Under Control, and, additionally, everyone was a bit frightened of her. Aurienne argued that these were not leadership qualities, that she was a researcher above all, and also, as previously indicated, she would rather die than deal with admin. A silence had followed this pronouncement, after which the Heads had looked at one another, and Abercorn had said, fine, they would appoint Murbock-Biddle as Director.
This was a distressing suggestion, given that Murbock-Biddle was a cretin. In the face of this underhanded tactic, Aurienne had accepted the directorship and inherited Whiffleby’s quarters at the top of the north tower, furnished largely with spiders and spores of mould.
She had also inherited his quotidian serving of problems. Today, an assortment of perfectly resourceful Haelan, suddenly bereft of all débrouillardise, approached her with the following issues: There was a leak in the ceiling of Lab 5 and what should they do? They were low on tissue culture media and would she approve another order and please sign these forms to bypass the procurement process because they would be out by tomorrow otherwise? Would she permit a subscription to the following periodicals, which were not relevant to seith research but nevertheless seemed interesting? The chromatography refrigerator wasn’t working, and also could they institute a policy on allergens in the Centre because someone almost died because someone else ate a shrimp?
Aurienne’s lab was a raft of sanity among the sea of admin. That was where she repaired to—not to say, fled to—presently. Loose hair was not permitted in the lab; she twisted her plait into a bun transversed with a bone curette and instructed it to stay there. (Sometimes her hair obeyed and sometimes it didn’t. Life was full of such anxieties.) She strode into the lab to find a group of apprentices observing a pair of senior apprentices working on her current study. Tentative title: Evaluating Peripheral Seith Channel Trauma: A Histological Approach. Not snappy, but eminently informative, which was the greater goal.
The apprentices in their dark grey robes clustered in an anxious knot at the end of a workbench, observing the two older ones. Corinne and Nym were on the cusp of earning their wings, so close to coming into their Haelan whites that their robes were of the palest silver.
Corinne was hunched over a microscope, calling out findings to Nym.
“Specimen three: microrupture. Specimen four: episeithial tear. Specimen five: microrupture. Specimen six: loss of undulation. Specimen seven: episeithial stretch—er, or tear. Oh, Haelan Fairhrim, you’re here—what do you think?”
Aurienne peered into the microscope. “At least one seith fibre terminates in a gap. It’s a tear. Line up to have a look, you lot.”
Thus addressed, the apprentices shuffled into a nervous queue to peer at the specimen.
Corinne scribbled out a note. “The zone of transition between stretch and rupture is so narrow.”
“It is,” said Aurienne. “That’s why six paragraphs of our methodology lay out our quantification process.”
The apprentices dispersed and Corinne returned to her place at the microscope. “Specimen eight: microrupture. Specimen nine: loss of undulation. Specimen ten…”
When Corinne and Nym had finished, Aurienne ran through their findings. “I’d like you to examine the relationship between the microarchitectural ruptures and injury severity grades. Use Wilcomb’s correlation with Hall’s correction.”
“Yes, Haelan Fairhrim,” said Corinne and Nym.
“Have you remarked this interesting pattern of minimal injury to the episeithium and periseithium under acute stretch conditions?” asked
Aurienne.
“Erm—no,” said Corinne.
“Make a note of it,” said Aurienne. She turned to the young apprentices.
“You’ve observed this study from the beginning. Any thoughts on limitations we ought to highlight?”
The apprentices shrank away from her until they hit the worktop, where they coagulated into a petrified blob.
“There are loads worth mentioning,” said Aurienne encouragingly, and suggesting, she hoped, that she ascribed their silence to a surfeit of ideas rather than a dearth.
The coagulated apprentices were incapable of voicing opinions on limitations, focusing their efforts instead on looking exactly like young owls.
Aurienne turned her enquiring gaze to Corinne and Nym, and it was their turn to coagulate.
“Erm—perhaps I would suggest that our stretch test doesn’t accurately mimic real-life injury scenarios,” suggested Nym. Nym had the peculiar quality of being always uncertain and yet always right. “Also, we’ve focused the study on seith fibres extracted from forearms. Seith fibres from other areas may have different biomechanics.”
“Very good,” said Aurienne. “Include those. I’d also like you to add the boilerplate about any histologic evaluation risking artefacts from handling the tissue. Also indicate that the seith fibres were not in a living organism when subjected to the injury—which, as we know, affects elastance.”
While Nym and Corinne scribbled, Aurienne dismissed the younger apprentices. They bowed vigorously with their hands on their hearts and scuttled out.
“How are you two progressing on seith transfers?” asked Aurienne. “I’d like to move on to cadaver workshops in the autumn; I’ll have to make the
arrangements soon.”
“Not well,” said Nym.
“I blew up a cantaloupe,” said Corinne.
“You’ve been doing daily practice?” asked Aurienne.
“Yes,” said Corinne. (Nym nodded and looked tearful.) “You mustn’t be discouraged,” said Aurienne. “You haven’t yet got your tācn. Few of us can achieve the required level of seith control without one. I want you both to have a break. No more practice. Two weeks off. We’ll start fresh from the basics afterwards.”
“Yes, Haelan Fairhrim,” came Corrine and Nym’s relieved responses.
They made their bows and left.
So much for the rational portion of Aurienne’s day. Now for the mad portion: tonight was the full moon, and it was time to meet the Fyren.
AURIENNE TOOK A WAYSTONE TO the Shaggy Chimera for the evening’s rendezvous. The pub had long shut down; its door swung in the breeze, accompanied by forlorn squeaking.
A hirsute chimera wound its way across the pub’s faded sign, which had lost several letters, and advised Aurienne thus:
SHAG
HIM
Aurienne received the instruction with hostility.
In the continuing comedy of errors that was her life, she squelched off into the muck at the edge of the nearby pool, and waited for a murderer.
Her data for March’s full moon—when the tales were good enough to specify—favoured the edges of pools or ponds when it came to place (eighty- nine percent), and sunset when it came to time (seventy-seven percent). This particular pool, the Wasdale fairy pool, had been mentioned by name in a work of Cumbrian theology: some archdruid had managed to cure an ovate of the black fever with nothing but a touch and a push of seith right where Aurienne stood. It had happened two centuries ago, on the day of the Cúsc moon, as the sun set.
A lovely tale. Not at all sound science, however, and Aurienne, hanging about among quagwort and frogbit, felt like a fool. A frazzled, slightly moist fool.
But it was the day of the Cúsc moon, and the sun was beginning to dip, and, fool that she was, she would be giving the thing a real go, per Xanthe’s instructions. How had she gone from her lab’s rigorous science to this? She must take care not to injure herself due to methodological whiplash. (Limitations in the current study: Everyone Has Gone Mad.) Time ticked on. The Fyren was late, which was, somehow, not a surprise.
Finally, there was movement near the waystone across the pond, and there he was: the murderer.
Spring had sprung in floods of mud. The Fyren picked his way through it with obvious disgust. Aurienne watched his progress without advising him that a path ran the other way round the pool.
The Haelan maxim was Harm to none, but private fantasies couldn’t be policed, and Aurienne indulged in one involving the Fyren slipping and drowning, and thus putting an end to both of their miseries.
He was regrettably sure-footed.
Mordaunt did not bother to greet Aurienne but rather carried on a muttered commentary as he squelched towards her: “Why isn’t there a road?
Has anyone been here since the fall of Byzantium? This is gooier than Woden’s eye socket.”
More whinging than Aurienne had expected from a Fyren. Weren’t they meant to be rugged killers? This specimen had the fortitude of wet quiche.
Though the weather was fine, Mordaunt kept his hood up. Aurienne had no objections. She knew what lay underneath—a caustic eye and a vexatious mouth—and missed the sight of neither.
Mordaunt plucked down his cowl, sniffed in her direction, and said, “You smell like death.”
“I’ve been experimenting on seith fibres extracted from human cadavers,” said Aurienne.
“I knew it,” said Mordaunt, followed by the lofty pronouncement: “I have an extraordinary sense of smell.”
It seemed too facile to point out that, indeed, this seemed to be the only
sense he had.
“Is that blood?” asked Aurienne.
“Just a bit of battle sweat,” said Mordaunt.
“Yours?” asked Aurienne, with a moderate effort to keep the hope from her voice.
“No,” scoffed Mordaunt. “What a stupid question.”
“Is it? You’ve taken a few stabs in the course of your career. I’ve seen the evidence.”
Mordaunt waved a hand. “Memories of bygone days. I’m nigh untouchable now. My mark today did make a stabbing attempt—but he only
had a spoon.”
“A spoon?”
“He was eating yoghurt,” said Mordaunt, by way of explanation.
“You—you killed someone while they were eating yoghurt?” asked
Aurienne.
“Yes. It was good yoghurt, too.”
“You ate the yoghurt?”
“After he was dead, yes. He’d hardly touched it. What? What’s the matter? Have you mistaken me for someone respectable?”
“Have you any sense of honour whatsoever?”
“No,” said Mordaunt. “Anyway, I came here for a healing, not an assessment of my morals. Can we get on with it?”
Aurienne stared at Mordaunt. The shadow under the hood stared back at her.
He was well on his way to dying. There would be one less of him in the world. It would all work out in the end.
It was time to continue this farce of a healing exercise.
Aurienne made a curt gesture to their surroundings. “So—a thin place.”
“Does it feel thin to you?” asked Mordaunt.
Aurienne looked around. The sun glinted on the pool. Water gurgled down a smallish waterfall at its far end. Swallows dipped and swooped.
Tender grass peeped from black earth. A fat bumblebee investigated her bun.
“No,” said Aurienne. “It feels ordinary.”
“I thought so, too,” said Mordaunt.
“We’re here because a fragment of Cumbrian theology mentions a wondrous healing on this very spot, two hundred years ago, at sunset on the day of the Cúsc moon. It’s one of few sources that offered the triumvirate of time, place, and moon, and so here we are.”
“I trust the Cumbrian theologists,” said Mordaunt.
“I don’t,” said Aurienne. “A few pages later, their recommended remedy for wet gangrene is to suck it out of the affected appendage.”
“Wet gangrene?” repeated Mordaunt.
“Yes.”
“Sucking?”
“Yes.” Aurienne enumerated a few examples for his edification. “Fingers.
Toes. A penis, in one unusual instance.”
Mordaunt stiffened. “I will vomit yoghurt on you if you continue.”
“I would’ve thought you’d have a strong stomach for this sort of thing: gore and viscera and assorted nastiness.”
“Gore, yes; viscera, yes. Gangrene gobjobs, however, are not part of my repertoire.”
They waited for the sun to set. The first midges of spring discovered them. Aurienne and Mordaunt swatted them away.
The sun sank a bit lower. Aurienne stood still; Mordaunt shifted from foot to restless foot. Approximately a billion midges deployed their next sortie and decided to hover at nostril height. Aurienne and Mordaunt twitched and slapped at them. The midges left again.
They watched the dance of the swallows.
Suddenly, Mordaunt looked as though he’d experienced a Thought.
“What?” asked Aurienne.
Mordaunt pushed the toe of his boot into the mud and drew out some lines.
“Fancy a game of noughts and crosses?” he asked.
Aurienne stared at him. After the lapse of a suitably lengthy silence to convey how inane she thought this question was, she said, “No.”
Mordaunt shrugged and began to play noughts and crosses against himself.
The sun sank a little more. A breeze played across the pool and sent ripples dancing around the reeds. The smell of last autumn’s rotting plant
matter wafted up from damp earth.
Mordaunt stalemated himself.
The midges came for round three and were beaten back again.
Mordaunt began some impatient pacing along the pool’s edge.
The sun reached the skyline at the far end of the field. Finally, the light gentled, softened, and turned golden.
“Hood and neckcloth off,” said Aurienne, sanitising her hands.
Mordaunt did as he was told immediately. An improvement from the last time. Good: Aurienne did not like repeating herself.
Under his scars, the Fyren had arranged his features into something neutral, bordering on indifferent. This was belied by the expectant flicking of his gaze from the pool to the setting sun. He really had some level of hope.
The hum of the fat bumblebees quieted. A warbler sang its soul into one last song. The swallows netted the softening skies and faded into gathering dusk. Stillness reigned.
Aurienne, fool that she was, strained her senses for some kind of change as the sun set and they reached the moment between day and night. A shift in the winds, perhaps, or a distant Druidic chanting, or the portentous flight of a murder of crows.
None of these things happened, of course. Everything remained perfectly ordinary.
Mordaunt had removed his neckcloth. There was something of entreaty in his manner, in the way he clasped it between his joined hands, in the way he bowed his pale head as Aurienne came near.
He was tall, but she was tall, too, and found the back of his neck an easy reach. Setting aside her disgust at wasting seith on so vile a creature again, she pressed her tācn to his skin.
Like the rest of him, the skin at Mordaunt’s nape was marred. On the diagonal, Aurienne felt the ropiness of a long ridge of scar tissue—the mark of a whip, if she were to guess. Then there was the messiness where the maul had hit him to create the injury that had so damaged his seith system.
Her tācn glowed white between her fingers as she summoned her seith.
Mordaunt stood rigid, tense, anticipatory.
Aurienne followed her seith into him and travelled the damaged lines of his seith channels. Deep into his seith system she pushed, through his brachial line into the intercostal, into the subcostal, into the lumbar, and down into the sacral plexus. She lingered longest where the degeneration had set in, at splitting myelin sheaths and deteriorating nodes, along seith channels that were little more than necrotised furrows.
The sun hovered at the edge of the horizon and was, for a moment, both under it and over it, and, for a moment, it was neither day nor night.
The earth tilted. The sun found its vanishing point.
And Aurienne’s seith—and all her years of experience, and her finesse, and her control—did nothing at all.
She withdrew from Mordaunt and blinked herself back into the world,
into an evening of pale violet.
The full moon had risen.
Mordaunt rubbed at the back of his neck. “Should I feel—different?”
“It didn’t work,” said Aurienne flatly.
Failure—and embarrassment at having tried something as stupid as this— made her callous. She’d been right. Nothing to be found here but a loss of time and temper.
“It was just like every other attempt at healing seith rot,” said Aurienne.
“You can’t bring dead things back to life.”
Mordaunt’s jaw was clenched. He had done worse than her: he had hoped in earnest, and his disappointment was all the harsher. He tied his neckcloth on and drew his hood over his head. Now only his mouth was visible, pulled down in a bitter line.
“You thought it’d be that easy?” asked Aurienne.
“With the right combination of place and time and Haelan, I was foolish enough to cherish a hope.”
“This process is going to involve a lot of trial and error,” said Aurienne.
“Mostly error. You’d better get used to it.”
Mordaunt was distraught and sulky. To be fair to him—not that he deserved fairness, but Aurienne could be generous—he was going to die.
“Mightn’t we make another attempt tonight?” asked Mordaunt. “While the moon is full?”
“The data favours sunset as the best time for this particular moon,” said Aurienne. “Anything else will be a waste of time. Not that this wasn’t already a waste of time.”
“Surely twenty million thrymsas buys me a measly second attempt,” said Mordaunt. “Indulge me with one more imposition on your time.”
“And squander my seith again? I think not. We can both find better ways to spend the evening.”
Aurienne turned towards the waystone, intent on regaining Swanstone and leaving Mordaunt to his doomed hopes.
Gloved fingers caught her sleeve.
Mordaunt, abandoning, with evident pain, all dignity, said, “Please.”
Above them hung the full moon—ghastly, beautiful, uplit by the dead sun.
A solitary raven made an arcing trajectory across the sky.
Xanthe had told Aurienne to give the thing a real go.
She had enough seith.
In the face of her unyielding silence, Mordaunt salvaged the shreds of his dignity; his face closed, his earnestness disappeared. He pulled his cowl over his face, became a thing of shadow, and turned away.
Aurienne rustled about in her satchel and pulled out a notebook. “I detest operating in this improvisatory manner”—Mordaunt pivoted— “just titting about the countryside without a plan—”
Mordaunt, seized with sudden liveliness, leapt to Aurienne’s side. “Let’s tit about. I love titting about.”
He crowded Aurienne and her notebook, and tried to read over her shoulder.
Aurienne held her notes to her chest until he backed away. “The entire point of my research was to be systematic about aligning thin places with in- between moments. About following the data. However, in the face of your insistence, and in the absence of the chance to devise an actual plan—”
Mordaunt asked, with energy, “Where shall we go?”
“My inventory of specific Cúsc moon locations is paltry,” said Aurienne.
“This pond was my best option. The next best was the most feeble of sources —a single line in an old Dyfedian ballad mentions hot springs that were
curative at the Cúsc moon.”
“Which hot springs?”
Aurienne consulted her list. “Er…it simply said ‘the waters at Kentigern.’ ”
“Let’s go,” said Mordaunt, striding towards the waystone.
“We don’t even know if the springs still exist.”
“We’re going to find out. I don’t know how many full moons I’ve got left. Come on. Stop dawdling.”
The suggestion that Aurienne, of all people, would ever dawdle was as impertinent as it was ridiculous. She picked her way through the wet grass to the other edge of the pond—the one with the path—and beat Mordaunt to the waystone. She waited for him there, bursting with restrained disdain.
Mordaunt, as he approached from the other side, looked preoccupied— but this time, it wasn’t because of the mud.
“If I lose my seith, I won’t even be able to use waystones anymore.”
“Correct,” said Aurienne.
“Fuck,” said Mordaunt.
Aurienne offered no sympathy.
“You’re pitiless with your truths,” said Mordaunt.
“You’d prefer the comfort of lies?” asked Aurienne.
This gave Mordaunt pause. “No,” he said at length. “There’s something stirring about these sincere cruelties of yours.”
“Cruelty is your domain, not mine.”
Aurienne tugged a well-worn map of the waystone graticule out of her satchel and found the town of Kentigern. “The closest pub will be the Randy Unicorn.”
Mordaunt did a double take at her. “The Randy?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” said Mordaunt. There was something significant in the syllable.
Something amused in its delivery, too.
“What?” asked Aurienne.
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
Aurienne knew very well that it wasn’t nothing, but she didn’t wish to give him the satisfaction of her curiosity. They removed their gloves to press their tācn to the waystone. Mordaunt’s tācn flared an ugly red. Aurienne despised the sight of the thing. How many had died by that hellhound’s ruddy glow? How many innocents?
She looked away, repulsed. Her palm found cool stone. Her own tācn glowed white between her fingers. The waystone awoke. Mind the gap flashed. Aurienne and Mordaunt were dragged into the ley line and hurtled towards Kentigern.
The pond dreamed on under the quiet sky.
