He lowered his hand, turned back. The sun came up fast this far south and the buildings stood fully revealed. The biggest, right in the middle of the city, was faced in red stone and glowed. Even as he watched, the two main doors swung open. Immediately, archers either side of him raised their bows. Tokat had told him that he’d given orders to shoot at anything that moved – though it seemed no one had yet been hit.
‘Wait!’ he yelled. The men eased their strings and he looked again at the door. A face appeared, a voice called. A woman’s.
‘Will you talk, Intitepe?’
Intitepe? Only in his marana when he felt indulgent could a woman call him by his name. He was ‘lord’, ‘king’, ‘god’! And talk? He ground his teeth. Kill was what he was there to do. But since Tokat’s failure had delayed that, he might as well find out more of what he was dealing with. Who.
‘Yes,’ he shouted across the gorge, ‘I will talk. But who is it that would talk to me?’
‘Oh, Intitepe! I am of course heartbroken that you do not know me,’ the woman called. ‘For did you not say that you would hear my voice for ever? Every time you looked up at the star you named for me?’
He remembered then. Her voice. That star. ‘Besema,’ he hissed, under his breath. ‘Besema, you bitch.’
They stood in the hall, Besema at the front, her hand on one door, Norvara and Yutil behind. Only Atisha sat, and that was because she was nursing Poum.
She had started when she heard his voice and the baby had started too, unfixing and staring up, her expression the one she wore before tears came. Atisha had latched her again before that happened, though she could not prevent the tears that fell from her own eyes. Part of her still did not believe that the man who had claimed to love her beyond all measure, who had demonstrated it for two glorious years, now hated her. That he who had been her teacher in all things now wanted to be her slayer. Worse, even worse, that he wanted to slay what they had made between them, this innocent at her breast. She wiped her eyes, with the thought draining any further tears.
‘Why would you talk?’ she asked. ‘We know what he wants. What he’s here for.’
‘But we don’t know how he plans to get it. I would find out.’ Besema turned and smiled. ‘Besides, I know how to make him angry – and an angry man, even if he is also a god, makes mistakes.’ She bent, picked up a soldier’s kite-shaped shield, and stepped fully into the doorway. ‘Do I need this, Intitepe?’ she called. ‘Will you have one of your archers shoot me if I put it down?’
‘I will not. Come to the edge and let us speak. Your archers could shoot me here just as easily.’
‘I could,’ said Norvara, hefting her bow. ‘But he would only die for a short time, whereas you—’
‘I do not think he will,’ Besema said. ‘And I would like to look into his face one more time. I will read the truth upon it, as I always did.’ She turned to Atisha. ‘Stay out of sight, little one.’ With that, she laid the shield down, and walked from the doorway.
Norvara looked at Yutil. ‘Shall we?’
The smaller woman smiled. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ She bent, picked up a shield. ‘But I will take one of these.’
‘And I,’ said Norvara, snatching up another. ‘Let us go.’
‘Don’t!’ Atisha called, too late. Rising, still feeding Poum, she went to peer around the edge of the door, and watched three wives of the Fire God stride to meet him again.
‘Who is it that comes?’
‘Can you not see, Korshak?’
He grunted. ‘Just tell me, will you, Gistrane?’
The huntress smiled. In their time together – the long, terrible voyage to Ometepe, the time in the land, she’d found so many ways to make the horse lord angry. His weak eyes were just one. She peered down from the crag they sheltered behind. ‘Three women come. Two hold shields. They walk to the gorge, to where a bridge must have been. I can see burnt ends on each side.’
‘Is she one of them? The one we seek?’
‘No. These three are old. Strong-looking, though.’ She licked her finger, raised it into the air. ‘There’s a bit of a breeze. But I think I could still kill two of them before the third escaped back inside.’
‘And why would you do that?’ Korshak snapped. Then he saw her face. ‘Ah, I see. You tease me again. I would have thought you’d have got tired of that by now.’
‘Never,’ Gistrane replied. ‘Now, be quiet. If your sight is not so good, at least you can hear what these have to say. Oh,’ she added.
‘What?’
‘He is going down to this side of the gap. The one we fought. The one who ran. This god of theirs. Intitepe.’ She smiled again. ‘The one you lost.’
‘I will not do so again,’ the horse lord growled. ‘Shall I call the monk? He speaks their tongue better than either of us.’
For ten years before Gistrane had made her voyage, ships had sailed to Ometepe. Few vessels made it through the tempests, the vast seas, but two eventually did and both carried monks, who’d hidden in remote villages, aweing the locals and sending back the language they learned using their globes. All who were to travel afterwards learned the language of the One as well as they were able. Gistrane understood a fair amount. Korshak, like his eyesight, was weak.
She shook her head. ‘Leave him be. I speak it well enough. Besides, the monk is busy, trying to reach the seafarer through his glass.’ She leaned forward sharply, her eyes afire, her breath coming short. ‘Hah! And I think we will need the ship now, and fast.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I see another in the doorway, watching. And she is holding a baby.’
‘The baby?’ All resentment passed from Korshak’s face. It was replaced by wonder. ‘Are you saying you see … Him and Her?’
‘Perhaps.’ Gistrane’s voice had lost its edge too. ‘Perhaps I do,’ she breathed.
‘Then I should call the monk.’
He made to rise. She put a hand on his arm, pulled him down. ‘Leave him. Listen. They speak.’
Atisha’s sight had always been good. So even though the sun was lost to cloud and a light rain had started to fall, she could still quite clearly see the expression on Intitepe’s face change as he recognised the three who stood before him. Shock was swiftly displaced by fury. Calculation followed, covered by a smile.
‘My Ones!’ he cried across the gorge. ‘Yutil. Norvara. And you, Besema. What joy it gives me to see that you all live.’
‘So much joy, I am sure,’ replied Norvara. ‘As I am also sure you forgot about us the moment we were replaced.’
‘It is not true,’ he protested. ‘Every night I look into the sky, and see each one of you in your star …’
‘… “for you are immortal too now, and will for ever be remembered in the skies!”’
Their chorused reply made his face flush. Somehow he controlled his voice. ‘You sadden me. You know what we had. Each of you knows it. For a time each of you was the One. The joy of that. The sadness too. For you each also know that while you are subject to time’s laws, I am not. It has always been the way—’
‘Your way, Intitepe,’ Besema said. ‘Your laws.’ He started to protest but she cut him off. ‘Why are you here?’
Once more Atisha saw him choke his anger back. ‘This is my realm,’ he said, his voice level. ‘Every part of it. And in every part of it I have to be obeyed. That is the small price all must pay for the peace this land has known for nearly five hundred years. Obey me now. End this foolishness.’ He nodded. ‘Then I will forgive you all. Then I will let you return to your lives.’
‘And the price for that, Fire God?’
‘Obedience,’ he swallowed, ‘the baby, and Atisha.’
‘Yes,’ replied Besema, ‘I thought it might be that.’
She said nothing more. But Intitepe saw no concession in what she had said
. So he looked beyond them, and raised his voice. ‘Atisha! Listen to me! I was wrong. Wrong to let you go. Wrong to threaten your … our child. Come to me now and let me put the wrongs right. You both will live. I swear it. Live with me, in your old home.’
There was a time when Intitepe could have sworn that corn flour was gold dust and she would have believed him. Never again. Carefully laying Poum down on a blanket on the floor, Atisha stepped into the doorway. ‘You are a liar. A murderer. And you are no god, only a cruel tyrant who has lived too long. I will never listen to you again.’
The rain was falling harder. ‘You have heard her answer,’ said Besema. ‘Ours is the same. So what will you do? Even here we have heard the rumours. Your peaceful land explodes in rebellion. In every part of it, people are crying “enough”.’ She leaned forward and spat into the gorge. ‘So hadn’t you best go deal with that? For by the time you work out a way to cross this gap, you may not have a land left to rule.’
He stared at them for a long, long moment. Finally, he spoke, and there was nothing in his tone, no fury, no bitterness. Only certainty. ‘You were the wisest of any of the Ones, Besema,’ he called. ‘None have surpassed you. But it seems age has taken its toll on your wisdom. Or you would have realised that I have not come all this way just to shout across a gorge. And that I have already worked out a way across it.’ He smiled now. ‘So I offer you a last chance to submit. If you do not, know this: that when we come, as we shall, my soldiers will have the freedom of all your bodies before they kill you. And I will fuck all three of you one last time before you die.’
He waited. When Besema didn’t reply, he turned and walked away. Immediately, men ran forward. They raised bows and shot fast, though the shields Norvara and Yutil hefted as they backed off to the house, Besema between them, took care of the arrows.
Distracted as they were, it was Atisha who saw the other men advancing to the gorge. Hundreds of them. Some lowered ladders onto ledges within it, some brought beams and planks to its edge, many began hammering, sawing, working …
… on the bridge that they began to build.
By the third day, the rain had turned to snow. Winter had come in sudden fierceness. But neither a world surrendering to white, nor the arrows that they sent, slowed the remorseless creeping of the bridge. Men died, clutching at a feathered shaft suddenly sprouting from their necks. But women died too, for when one arrow flew out, fifty were returned. So they stopped shooting, watched other men die, slipping from slick wood to plunge screaming into the gorge. But the Fire God had hundreds at his command, so there was always another man to step up and wield bow or hammer. The bridge came closer with every dawn. And it would be completed by the next one.
The meeting was called for midnight. Every woman in the city, except for the few who kept lookout – and the former governess, Muna, still wailing in her cell – was there. Every woman had a voice though only a few spoke, representing the different choices, which had come down, truly, to just two: give up the newcomers, Atisha and her child; or die fighting.
After all who would speak had had their say, and the room had begun to dissolve into separate, harsh arguments, Besema climbed onto a table and waited. One by one, everyone noticed her. Silence came. She spoke.
‘I have heard you, all of you. In the end, each woman has a choice to make, each is in charge of her own fate. I cannot decide for you. But I can tell you this. For those of you who look for mercy in the tyrant, know that there is none in him to be found.’ She pointed down to Norvara and Yutil who stood before the table. ‘We three – no, we four, for Atisha was also his One for a time – know him as only his closest lover can. Know that his sole concern is himself. His long life. His rule over his realm.’ She swallowed. ‘The spy we captured also told us the news: his realm dissolves in revolution. As it does he will become again the savage he was all those years ago. He will kill all who oppose him, as he killed his father. As he killed his seven sons. As he will kill all of us.’
A few of those who would still surrender raised their voices at that. Besema lifted her arms and they quieted, as she continued. ‘He will kill all of us. He will have to, and in as terrible a way as possible. Order his soldiers to rape and torture us to death then spread the story wide, so others will hear, and cower in their homes in terror.’ She shook her head. ‘But shall I tell you of a different story that can be told? One that will spread ahead of him through the land, and bring those people from their homes in freedom’s cause? The story of women who would not kneel or lie back before the conquerors. Who fought to the last strength in their arms, died with one last word on their lips: Hope.’
Again a murmur came, though this was more a growl. She waited for it to rise and settle, then spoke again. ‘This woman, this child,’ she said, pointing to where Atisha stood with Poum, ‘they are who the Fire God fears. If we gave them up now, we would still die. But our deaths are nothing, a few more grains of sand on the beach of time. But in their deaths dies his fear and so our hope.’ The voices sounded louder; Besema raised her own voice above them. ‘So again we come to that choice: die in terror before a tyrant. Or die with our sisters … in hope.’
Many – most – crowded forward, that word on their lips. Only a few still stayed back. Again Besema raised her hands, gestured for quiet, again, more reluctantly, it came. ‘I know that not all of you believe me. And I told you that each must decide her own fate. I tell you mine – and Norvara and Yutil have given me permission to tell you theirs, which is the same: to fight to the end of our strength and when that ends – to burn this hall to the ground and us with it. A beacon of defiance that will be seen across the land.’ She looked across the heads of those who were pushing to the front to those hanging back. ‘But to you others, those who doubt or fear, or who believe any life is better than none, to you I suggest a different choice. Either go out when the hall burns and offer yourself to the tyrant and his men, or … at first light tomorrow, use the ropes and nets we have woven and hung over the cliffs and flee.’
‘What?’ A woman Atisha did not know pushed forward. ‘This is possible?’
‘Possible – and most dangerous,’ Besema replied. ‘Norvara here will tell you the way of it. If you are young and strong you may manage it. While we who are old will stay,’ she smiled, ‘and light the beacon.’
Using her friends’ hands, she climbed down from the table. Many mobbed her, but Norvara and Yutil took them aside. Besema crossed the room, straight to Atisha. ‘They must all decide for themselves now. I have made my choice.’
‘And I?’ Atisha sighed. ‘I would like to defy the tyrant too. But I cannot make your choice, because of her.’ She swung Poum gently back and forth, the child agitated by all the voices. She thought back to the cliffs, the men she’d watched falling off them, and shivered. Remembered too how her sense of balance had changed since her child’s birth. Still, what choice did she have? ‘I … I will have to risk the climb.’
‘You will not. For you there is yet another choice. One I could not share.’ Besema pulled a burning torch from its wall mount. ‘Come.’
They went the way they had the night Atisha first came to the city – from the hall, through the twisting passages, finally out into the night, though there was even less to see now, with the snow falling so thick. By touch and memory more than light and sight, they found their way. The llamas were white mounds huddled together against the wall of their enclosure and did not mob them for apples this time. The two women stumbled at last into Besema’s room, gloriously warm and bright from lamps and a glowing fire. While Fant brushed against their knees, whining his joy, Atisha looked around her. She wished only that she could remain where she’d been briefly happy, eating rich stews, listening to women’s stories, to their laughter. But she could not. Could not even sink down as she wanted to do, rest and feed Poum, because Besema had not paused in the room, nor set down her torch, but carried it to the back door, the entranc
e to her private space where Atisha still had never been. ‘Leave her to Fant,’ the old woman said, ‘and follow me.’
With that, she pushed open the door, and went out. Atisha set Poum down on her nest of skins and blankets, Fant flopped down beside the child and turned his soft ears for the babe to tug at while Atisha rose, followed Besema.
She was surprised, for she stepped not into another warm room, but into the cold again. Besema waited in a shelter, wood-braced, its reed roof jutting out a little way into a large open space, with the fall of cliffs beyond. ‘Look there,’ she said, pointing to the ground.
The snow had ceased as suddenly as it had come. The light from the one torch Besema still carried and the two which she lit from it was not great. So Atisha found it even harder to understand what she was looking at.
A huge sack lay there, dusted in snow. It was shaped like a globe and at one end, on its side, was a woven reed basket the size of a table, with walls the height of a small man. ‘What is it?’ Atisha asked.
Besema took her arm. ‘Come and see.’
Closer to, Atisha saw that the sack was also woven. Kneeling, her touch told her that the wool was the finest, the lightest, taken from the inner part of the llama’s coat. She’d pushed her finger through slats made from thin reeds that spread over the entire surface like a kind of net. She rose, and Besema led her to the wicker basket which she now noticed was attached to the sack with spun hemp rope. ‘But this,’ she began, ‘this is—’
‘Yes, child.’ Besema was beaming now. ‘This is the same as you saw before in my room. The globe that floated. Only much, much bigger. And this is your hope. Your escape.’ She took Atisha by her shoulders, pulled her close. ‘Though since I have only tried it once, and discovered many dangers when I did, you may come to long for the simpler perils of the cliff.’
Dawn. A few snowflakes fell – slantwise, for there was a slight breeze now, blowing from the south.
Smoke in the Glass Page 27
