Nona heard the creak of Pan’s bones as she moved. When the nun stood hunched at her side Nona realized with sudden surprise that she was taller than the old woman, and more solid. A single blow would shatter Sister Pan. A sense of unease came over Nona. It felt wrong somehow that so much knowledge and experience could be so fragile.
‘I will show you.’ Sister Pan raised her hand and stared into the space beyond it.
Nona waited, watching. When Nona had arrived at the convent Sister Pan had loomed over her as all the other nuns did. There were still more secrets locked in her head than Nona could ever learn, the keys to powers untold … and yet she looked so small, so frail, waiting to cross the Path, so close that the devils must be licking their lips.
She is old, but I would not dare her.
Nona looked again. Keot was never one to miss a chance to boast. It gave her comfort to know he feared Mistress Path.
‘Watch!’ The air before Sister Pan filled with the bright complexity of the Path, a moving, living thing, twisting through more dimensions than the eye could fathom. ‘When wool is spun on the wheel a single length of yarn is wound around the spindle. But all around that strand of yarn there is a halo of loose pieces, fibres of wool not quite twisted in, wandering out from the main body.’
As Sister Pan spoke the Path dimmed and in the air all around it threads appeared, like stars when the sun has fled the sky. ‘The threads are not the Path but they are of the Path. And because the Path goes everywhere and runs through all things, so do the threads.’
Nona wondered if Sister Pan had chosen to speak of yarn to explain the matter because she knew Nona was a peasant and might not understand a different analogy so well. She was still wondering about it when she became aware that her mouth was open. She closed her jaw with a snap and wiped her lips. The image Sister Pan had made was mesmerizing. With an effort she tore her gaze from it.
‘It’s fascinating, is it not?’ Sister Pan’s smile was a narrow white crescent in the darkness of her face. ‘I could watch it forever.’
The slow motion of the threads reflected in Zole’s and Joeli’s eyes.
‘There’s a danger there,’ Sister Pan said. ‘The Path will throw you, sooner or later, but the threads will hold you. If you lack the will to free yourself they will keep you until your years have run from you and all that remains is to cross the Path into darkness.’ She waved at the pattern and it faded, releasing the others.
Joeli blinked and focused on Nona. ‘Mistress Path, you said that these two novices have no talent for thread-work because they’re so predisposed to violence. But do you think they might just be violent because they know they lack the talent for deeper work?’ A small smile played on her lips, as if the humiliation at the convent table had never happened.
Sister Pan waggled her hand. ‘We shall see. Path-work is closer to the brute force approach of the Red Sister, and thread-work more subtle, like the arts of the Grey Sister, all stealth and guile. Mystic Sisters shade either towards the Red or Grey.’
‘I would rather be open. Straightforward. Honest.’ Nona wrinkled her nose. ‘Manipulating people, using them, feels wrong. It feels like … lies. People should be allowed free will …’
Sister Pan barked a laugh. ‘We’re all puppets. Other people pull our strings every moment of every day. The only difference between us and Sayan-Ra dancing in the street show is that we can also pull our own strings and those of others. Threads aren’t something external to the world that only a privileged few can touch. Every time you speak to someone threads are pulled. Every glance exchanged. Every punch thrown. Every kindness shown. In thread-work we are just more direct about it. More focused.’ She turned and fixed Nona with her dark eyes. ‘You need to know how to draw a thread or how will you prevent your own from being drawn?’ She reached forward, plucking at the air with finger and thumb. ‘At first it will help you to visualize the task, see it before you, use your hands. It’s nonsense of course. Not needed. But the mind loves the familiar. There!’ She pinched and pulled. ‘How do you feel, Nona?’
‘Hungry!’ Nona clapped both hands across her stomach. ‘Starved!’
‘Basic needs, simple emotions, are the easiest to influence.’ Sister Pan opened her fingers as if releasing what she held. ‘And now?’
‘Full of breakfast.’ Nona laughed despite herself, then frowned. ‘But you couldn’t do that with just words.’
‘I couldn’t?’ Sister Pan tilted her head. ‘If I described a roast chicken in exquisite detail, steaming on a plate of buttered potatoes, its skin golden and crisp, seasoned with salt and pepper … your mouth wouldn’t begin to water? Your stomach rumble?’
Nona’s mouth had already filled with saliva. When it came to food her strings were remarkably easy to pull. ‘Hessa worked with threads when she tried to stop Yisht stealing the shipheart.’ She shot an angry glance at Joeli then frowned at Zole, who still, years later, felt tainted by that association. ‘And I saw it because we were thread-bound.’
‘Young Hessa was a remarkable talent. I’ve not seen another so gifted at such an age in all the years I’ve taught. She was a great loss.’ Sister Pan settled her hand on Nona’s shoulder. ‘And perhaps you will have an aptitude for thread-binding, novice. It’s a rare skill and difficult to achieve but always greatly aided by strong and honest friendship between both parties. It only ever works between quantals though. You need to share the same blood.’
Sister Pan stepped back and addressed them all. ‘Two things you should always remember. Firstly: you can never pull the same thread twice. Every action you take changes the thing you act upon and changes its connections to the world. Secondly: you can never pull just a single thread. Every thread is bound to every other, sometimes through many links, though always fewer than you might imagine. Pull one thread and others are pulled: the effect spreads like a ripple on a pond. You can play at thread-work and think that you are alone, but if you pull on a strand of a web hard enough and often enough … a spider will come. It is the same with the threads that bind the universe. Sooner or later you will be noticed. The “spiders” will, like as not, be humans, older, more powerful quantal thread-workers, marjal sorcerers with particular talents, intuitives such as Abbess Glass. But there are bigger spiders out there too. This world is not ours: it is older than us, the Missing were gone before our ships beached here. When the Corridor was a thousand miles wide and there was no moon in the sky they were gone. Echoes of them live among the threads, vibrations that will not fade. And there are others; their servants and things more ancient still. So tread softly, work sparingly, and hope.’ She waved her stump at the walls. ‘In here, however, there is no need for hope. The sigils seal us from the world, and the few threads that penetrate even these walls are beyond your reach.’
The morning’s exercises began with Nona and Zole paired, each seeking to visualize the threads that bound the other to the world.
‘See the Path first,’ Sister Pan instructed. ‘Each of you must see it as it runs through the other. You know it from your dreams. You hunt it in the serenity trance. You follow it every moment of your life. And when the Ancestor grants you grace, you walk it.’
Nona stared at Zole, at the black hair laid flat against her blunt skull, the stone-dark eyes, the broad cheekbones, the reddish hue of her skin as if the burn of the ice-wind had never left it, and the short, hard line of her mouth. She tried to see through the ice-triber to the Path, past her wide shoulders, past the height and strength of her. Time seemed both to race and to crawl in exercises like this. It always felt as if she had been at it an age, and
