Pale Queen's Courtyard

by Marcin Wrona

  Chapter 12: Anki Gave Us Words

  A silver latticework of irrigation canals stretched out from the Shalumes, cutting the green fields outside Inatum into a map of square countries, each delineated by a watery border that gleamed in the light of morning.

  The driest patches of land were planted with date palms, their clustered fruits still hard. The fields watered by the canals were displayed various states of progress. Some had already been sowed and planted, while others were even now being furrowed by meagre-looking oxen struggling under the weight of the plow.

  The labourers had risen with Shimurg, as was their lot. Kamvar and Akosh had left Inatum at dawn, and already the land beyond the city’s gates was buzzing with the excitement of the planting season’s final busy weeks.

  And flies. Don’t forget flies. Kamvar felt a tickle at the back of his neck too late, and slapped at it with a sigh. The welt would itch from here to Numush-ummi, and it was not alone.

  “Akosh, we need to get moving, if only to be harder targets for these vile flies,” said Kamvar, swinging effortlessly into the saddle. The men had stopped their horses only briefly, to break their fast with bread, dates and an herbed cheese. Kamvar, raised among the legendary horsemen of Sarvash, would have been content to eat in the saddle, but the older man had much not liked that idea.

  Akosh sighed and put what remained of his breakfast back into its waxed pouch. He hung the pack from his saddle-horn and clambered atop his horse. They had been given three mounts each, all of them strong creatures by Ekkadi standards.

  Hardly a surprise. Crossing the Hunt was a fool’s gamble. Whatever else could be said of Lugal Zagezi, he had been generous and cooperative enough to make a good impression. Kamvar wondered how soon gifts would make their way to Inatum from the mountains of his homeland. That was to the good. Last night’s events had convinced Kamvar that the Prophet needed as many allies in this land as he could find.

  “Let’s go, then,” said Akosh.

  Minutes later, the farmland thinned abruptly, reeds and scrubby bushes having won a momentary respite in their battle with the civilized world. They were perhaps a two-hour walk from the city proper; near enough that the fields they had passed were tended by farmers who lived within the walls of Inatum, but far enough that Kamvar did not envy them the trip. Most of the men who came out this far had built tiny reed huts in which they could live comfortably enough for a few days at a time, if they could stand the isolation.

  This, Kamvar reflected an hour later, was the true face of Ekka. To his left, the glittering Shalumes reclined languidly in its green bed. The rains – such as they were – had widened both the river and the verdant belt around it, but they had also turned soft, springy earth into deep mud. A little over a stone’s throw from the river, green turned to the pale yellow of drying grass. A stone’s throw from yellow was dun. Beyond that, he saw nothing but cracked earth baked hard by relentless Shimurg, and the blowing sands of the desert.

  This was the land the Ekkadi had tamed. From the thin belts of life that were the two great rivers, they had built a thriving empire. They had fed the sands with the river’s grace and turned them to soil, then turned that soil into the bricks of their cities. Sarvash was itself a harsh land, but not like this. Nothing Kamvar had ever seen was quite like this.

  And they say wandering tribes eke a life from the deepest deserts. The Ekkadi, for all the faults ascribed them back home, were unquestionably a resilient people.

  It was not long before scrub turned once again to fields, and a series of stumps rising against the horizon took on the familiar mushroom shape of mud-brick huts with roofs of woven reeds. Tahmin and the others must have passed through here. Perhaps one of the villagers could tell them how long ago that had been.

  “Let us stop here, Akosh,” shouted Kamvar over the thunder of hooves striking hard earth. Their horses had held up well enough, although they neared the end of their laudable resilience. The beast under Kamvar shivered and sweated from exertion. A rest would be welcome, for the horses and for them.

  “Oh, thank the gods,” said Akosh.

  As they drew closer to the cluster of huts, the villagers started to make themselves more apparent. The midday meal had drawn to a close. Brown-scorched farmhands had begun to make their way back into the relentless sun, back to their empty fields. Kamvar slowed, and reined in his horse before a pair of shirtless young men who stared sullenly.

  “Good day, friends.” Rolled eyes told Kamvar what the villagers thought of that. He continued. “I believe other soldiers came through here earlier – did you see them?”

  One of the men shrugged. “I was in the fields. Didn’t see them. There’s lots of travelers that pass through here.”

  “And how many of them are Sarvashi soldiers? Come now, you must have heard something.”

  The man sighed. “Maybe I have. There was a ship docked here, earlier. I heard some chatter about a bunch of… of outsiders. I didn’t pay it no mind – the spring planting needs to get done, and fast, before the rains return and we have to trudge through ankle-deep mud to get our seeds in the ground. And before they stop altogether.”

  “Those sound like our men. Do you have a dockhand I could speak with?”

  The farmhand stared at Kamvar as though he had grown another head.

  “Look around you,” he said. “Between the two of you, you could count all the men in this village and still have a hand left over. Dockhand, pah. Maybe you’d like to talk to the town magistrate, or the architect, or the oracle.”

  Kamvar started to speak, but Akosh interrupted him. “Watch your mouth, Wardum. I just rode my old arse sore enough that I’m not sure I can sit down, and I’m in no mood to listen to a farmer crack wise.”

  Anger flashed in the farmhand’s eyes. “I am Mushkenum,” he replied. “Not that it matters to the likes of you lot. Look, I’ve work to do. You want to talk to someone about visitors, talk to old Adumi. I hear they did.” It was the last word, and spoken with venom. The two men they had accosted pushed past Kamvar’s horses and walked toward the fields. A formless unease crept into Kamvar’s thoughts.

  “What do you suppose that bit meant?” asked Akosh.

  “I’m not sure I want to know. But I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Adumi was a village matron transplanted, it seemed, directly from a relief. She was stout, as they all were, with wispy white hair, missing teeth, and an unveiled face that bore the lines of years gone by. An angry red welt had nearly closed one of her eyes, and gave her face the appearance of a perpetual squint.

  ‘I hear they did.’ Poor woman.

  “My name is Kamvar. I am looking to rejoin my company, who I believe passed through here…”

  “Oh, that they did,” said Adumi, scowling. “They passed through just long enough to shout threats and beat me.”

  Kamvar felt abashed. In a land in which hatred for his people already simmered, they needed as few of these situations as possible. At least, Kamvar reflected, this village was far enough away from the cities that its story would not spread as far or as swiftly. The thought made him feel even guiltier. Perhaps it should spread. Is this what the Prophet had in mind? Beating old ladies?

  “Why did they hurt you?” he asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

  “You know,” she said, pointing to the ball of woolen thread in her lap, “I’m busy. I have to finish weaving a shawl for my granddaughter, and talking to Sarvashi is not helpful.”

  “Please,” said Kamvar. “We only want to understand what happened here, and how long ago.”

  “Five, maybe six hours,” she said, then sighed and put down her knitting needles. “They came to our village asking questions about a man traveling with a girl. I told the one-armed man that I knew nothing of it. He accused me of lying, and I told him to show some respect for his elders. It seems Sarvashi have precious little of that. And that’s the whole of the story. Now will you leave me alone?”

  “Yes… yes,
of course,” said Kamvar, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

  The woman sniffed loudly and returned to her labours.

  “A pleasant fellow, your Barsam,” said Akosh as they rode away.

  “I don’t want to think about it.”

  Hot wind whirled the stinging grit of the road into clouds that hung dancing in the air like locust swarms. The hooves of their mounts flattened shrubs and pounded dirt into the curved impression of horseshoes. The tracks were deep, for they had pushed their horses hard in the dry country far from the river. Leaves and birdsong would certainly have been more pleasant than sand and a flatland wind unbroken by a barrier of trees, but not at the cost of a fresh horse breaking its leg.

  He and Akosh had left one exhausted pair of horses at a village now hours behind them, with instructions to send the horses back to Inatum and perfect awareness that such a thing would never happen. They had only one change of mounts remaining and two days’ ride to Numush-ummi.

  The pace, hard though it was, felt slow. For all that his thighs had grown unused to the saddle in the weeks gone by, Kamvar was Sarvashi. His childhood had been spent on horseback, and he could easily eat in the saddle, or vault from a flagging horse to its replacement without the need to stop. Akosh had no such facility. For the first time since they had met, the old man looked his years.

  They had spoken little during the gallop, choosing in place of chatter a companionable silence. It was just as well, for Kamvar needed the time to think. The sweating mount beneath him had brought to his mind the wide plains of Sarvash, the flat expanses of grass beyond the hills and the snow-capped mountains near his home city. How many days had he spent with the wind in his face?

  His father had taught him to ride, as was customary. They had worn paths fit for ox-carts into the grass, father atop his splendid chestnut Yazeja, and he first atop a pony, then a horse barely out of its awkward coltishness, then a stallion no less fierce than his father’s. Years later, after both his father and Yazeja had died – the former to barbarian axes, the latter to a disease that had required Kamvar himself to wield the merciful knife – he had returned to those plains as part of the citizen levy, striking out with spear and bow to patrol the lands or chase after horse thieves.

  Sarvash was jagged stone or grassy, featureless plain, and yet his memories made it so beautiful.

  Akosh is right. He would return, this time to stay.

  Kamvar had tired of making war on men whose harm was to scripture, to orthodoxy. Younger men could carry that burden. He would return to his home in the hills, and teach his own son to ride horseback and shoot a bow; to live a peaceful life, among goats and horses and simple men and women. His Ashuz would not be made a weapon. He would not stain northern snows with blood as his grandfather had, nor would he become a spear of the faith like his father.

  I hope. First, Kamvar had to return home alive.

  “How, how on earth, do you hill-men manage to live on horseback?” Akosh sat cross-legged with his back against a stone, shifting uncomfortably. Kamvar smiled and handed him what remained of the hunk of drying bread that he’d been gnawing on.

  “We have more horses than men, some years. And ours are wilder than these,” said Kamvar, pointing to the weary beasts they had stripped of rein and saddle. He felt a twinge of guilt – these animals, strong though they were, could not be accustomed to the hard use to which they had been put, not in this land where men traveled first and foremost by river. He shuddered to think what they would make of his homestead, with its craggy hills and hard ground.

  Still, we gave them a bit of a rest… not that an hour’s enough after what they’ve done. Kamvar decided that he would saddle the last pair of horses when it came time to leave. They were not fresh, not any longer, but at least neither had suffered under a man’s weight.

  “We were always told,” said Kamvar, “that our lands were so hard and unforgiving that Sarvashi men and horses had to be stronger than any other.”

  Akosh snorted. “If you wish to see harsh, I can take you into the desert one of these days.”

  “I don’t. Not especially. You know, I miss the mountains. It seems somehow wrong to see an unbroken horizon in every direction.”

  “Aye, this land’s flat as a table,” said Akosh, shifting his weight gingerly and wincing at his strained muscles. “You should come to Karhan one day. Deep forests, tall hills, and everywhere the scents of cedar and sea.” He sighed.

  “Why did you leave?” asked Kamvar. He saw Akosh fight down a grimace, and wondered if it was inspired by his question or the ride. The old man broke a piece from the bread and tossed the rest to Kamvar.

  “Pack that up, will you? I’ve had my fill.” He sat silently for a moment, then continued. “There was nothing for me there, Kamvar. I was a wild man when I was young. I was to be a carpenter, as my father was, but I treated my apprenticeship with disdain. A lecture here, a whipping there, none of it helped. I cared for nothing but drink and the honey-pots of the village girls. One day, my father grew angry with my irresponsibility, and he struck me. I struck him, harder, and he cast me out.”

  “And you left?” asked Kamvar.

  “The village? Yes, I left. I wandered around Karhan for a time, making my way towards Lanapish. I decided I was to be a great warrior, you see. After your people took Ekka back from the Artalum, the brutes decided it was time to make war on us. The soldiers of Lanapish had been fighting with them for decades already when I was a young man, and they were famed in our parts.”

  Akosh smiled ruefully, and pulled at his beard. “I didn’t realize then that food does not simply grow by the roadside, and soon the hunger made me mean. I killed a man that I came across, a merchant. That was my first taste of blood – real blood, not splitting a lip with my fist – and it changed me. I knew I’d done wrong, but I could not return home and admit to my shame. So I pressed on. Became a soldier, went to war, married and lost a wife, went to war again.

  “I returned to my village one day to ask my father’s forgiveness, only to learn that he had died not a year after I left. At that time, I had already befriended Amashuk. Ila-uanna’s husband, you remember? He came to Karhan regularly in those days, shipping linen there, and lumber back. I had been assigned by the city to guard one of his caravans to the lumberyards along the Cedar Road, and we grew to like each other. You would have liked him also – an honest man, and thoughtful like you. Well, he was in Lanapish when I returned from my visit home, and I must have looked desperate and lost, for he offered me a post in his household. That is how I came to live among the Ekkadi.”

  “And you have never returned home?” asked Kamvar.

  “A few times. Amashuk returned there each summer to conduct his affairs, and I went with him. Only when he grew old enough – and rich enough – that he preferred to send representatives instead of going in person did I stop going back.”

  “Do you want to return? Your sighs seem to say ‘yes’.”

  “Do I?” Akosh looked up at the thin, wispy clouds. “I suppose. It’s a beautiful land, and it still has a hold on me. But I don’t know, Kamvar. I feel that my life has taken me down a different road. I no longer know anyone. Hell, I have lived as many years outside Karhan as I ever spent there. Ekka has become my home, for better or worse.”

  “Do the Ekkadi not consider you a foreigner?” asked Kamvar.

  “Sometimes, and a barbarian besides. But at this point, the Ekkadi have seen so much of my people that they treat us well enough. And I am as much a foreigner to my own country in any case. Bah. I am growing maudlin. Enough of this. We should saddle the fresh horses and continue on.”

  Kamvar nodded and stood up – spryly, by comparison to Akosh, whose sore discomfort was palpable. He put a warm hand on his friend’s shoulder and went to the saddles. The flagging horses would not be happy to continue onward, but then, neither was he.

  They rode into the evening, until it was too dark to see the wending of the Shalumes and the nature of the
ground under their horses’ hooves. When the dawn woke Kamvar from dreams of his farmstead, they mounted again and pressed on.

  That afternoon, wilderness turned once again to field, and Kamvar found himself watching Numush’s walls seem to rise up from the haze at the horizon. Even now, several hours away, he could see the awesome scope of the sprawling sister cities.

  “It’s enormous,” he said to Akosh. The morning’s thunderous gallop had slowed to a brisk trot, in an effort to spare horses that were surely near collapse. Kamvar was glad that there was no longer any need to shout; his throat was raw from even the infrequent conversations of their too-swift ride.

  “The Numushes? Oh, they’re legendary. It’s said that when the Artalum breached the wall, it took three days and three nights for word of it to travel from the west gate to the east. It’s an exaggeration, of course, but there it is.”

  As they drew ever closer, Kamvar found that he could easily believe it. The city was larger than any he had ever seen. He recalled his amazement when the Hunt’s ship had first docked in Sarvagadis. He had always known that even Ashavan was little more than a village by Ekkadi standards, but reading about the enormous beacon towers of Sarvagadis in a scroll had certainly not prepared him for the sight of them rising straight and tall from the harbour, ancient kings with fiery crowns.

  So it was with the Numushes. He had read that the city was at one time home to almost a million people, and had dismissed that as a flight of fancy. As he and Akosh rode through the city’s outlying villages, each the size of a Sarvashi town, the walls drew ever closer, until they dominated the entirety of his field of vision; until there were walls in every direction but back.

  How will we ever catch anyone here?

  Even the horses seemed intimidated. As they drew close enough to tell the ochre steps of the city’s great ziggurat from its dun walls, the beasts slowed to a walk, their heads hanging like those of pilgrims nearing a holy place.

  “Kamvar? Are our horses about to die beneath us?”

  Probably.

  “They’re no more used to this sort of trip than you are,” he said. “To be frank, I’m impressed that they’ve served us this long. I think poor Lugushu’s back would have given out within hours of leaving Inatum.”

  Kamvar pointed to the temple whose topmost steps rose above the city’s walls. “Who is the god of Numush?”

  “Chagasha, as I recall. A harvest goddess said to be the loving and loyal daughter of Kutuanu and Nin,” said Akosh after a moment’s reflection. “I’m surprised your people didn’t tear this one down as well, come to think of it.”

  “I suppose even the Hounds don’t fear the harvest.”

  Were we right to tear down the Serpent’s – no, Nin’s – temples? He felt strange pronouncing the name, even within the sanctity of his own thoughts. The priests never did. It had never been Nin, the Pale Queen, the Ekkadi night goddess. She had been stripped of her former dignity, made into nothing more than another face of Angramash, the Serpent. But was it really so? Surely, the night was not so terrible that only evil men loved it. Had the Ekkadi loved Nin as this Chagasha did? Some certainly must have, if entire cities had been dedicated to her name. Could all the men and women in those cities have been base? Are all the men and women of Sarvash noble and kind? Think, Kamvar. People are the same every place you go.

  Had Akosh loved her? That was a question he would have to remember. There was more to this land than what the Hounds had spoken of. Much more. It would be foolish to forgo the chance to learn its secrets.

  “Akosh?”

  His voice came out uncertain. The old man turned to him, a bushy eyebrow raised.

  “How did the Ekkadi feel about Nin? As a whole, I mean. We’ve always been taught that there was little resistance, that the Ekkadi themselves helped us tear down Nin’s temples, singing while they did so. I recognize that for what it is. Now, anyway. But… I guess what I want to know is just how much damage we did.”

  Akosh looked at him curiously for a moment, and then responded, slowly at first while he gathered his thoughts.

  “It’s… well, there’s no ‘as a whole’ with Ekka, first of all.” He pointed to Numush. “Numush, for instance, was part of its own country, before the soldiers of Hatshut really and truly forged the Ekka we know today. Then it was among the first cities taken by the Artalum when they invaded in turn.

  “Kamvar, these people, they’re accustomed to conquerors. I know that you know that, but I’m not sure you truly realize what it means. Of course they went along with your Kingpriest’s demands. Hell, maybe some of them did sing his praises. But they’ve not forgotten what was done. There’s a saying among them: ‘Anki gave us words, and made us men’…”

  Kamvar had heard it. Had seen it, and everywhere. Every scribe’s robe – and in this country, scribes were many – was embroidered with the same slogan.

  “… do you know what that means, Kamvar?”

  Kamvar did not respond. Although he thought he understood, he wanted to hear it from Akosh.

  “These people have been writing everything down for centuries. You could go to Numush’s hall of records right now, and if you know how to search you’ll learn what Mashu the goatherd paid in return for feed on this day hundreds of years ago. Hell, thousands of years ago, when the gods built these cities. They record everything, and they forget nothing. And while you may think you’ve conquered them, they know it’s only temporary. Mark me, the moment your Kingpriest is too weak to pacify Ekka, your people will be chased away at spear-point, and Nin’s temples will be rebuilt.”

  “So they love her still?” asked Kamvar.

  Akosh shrugged. “Some do. Some don’t. Some never did, and some don’t care either way. But even a man who cares nothing for Ekka’s gods will bristle at foreigners telling him which of them he should and shouldn’t worship. And he may not do anything about it now or an hour from now, but he won’t forget.

  “Those are the Ekkadi. Their country has been here for more lifetimes than any man can count, and when your many-times-great grandchildren are dust, the kids here will recite poems that are ancient even now. Ekka forgets nothing.”

  Torches were already lit when they reached the city gates an hour later. Chagasha’s looming temple hid fading Shimurg from view. How many times, Kamvar wondered, had this scene repeated? How many times had Shimurg flown over Numush?

  “Kamvar!”

  Tahmin dropped the bread he’d been eating to the table and leapt to his feet, wrapping his arms around his childhood friend.

  “Oh, thank Ahamash. You’re alive,” said Tahmin, pushing Kamvar back out to arm’s length and looking him up and down. “What happened to your arm?”

  Kamvar shook his head. “Long story. We ran into some … patriots, let’s call them. Akosh is with me also. He’s just wrangling with the stable boy.”

  Tahmin cocked an eyebrow quizzically. “What were you doing out at night anyway?”

  “Um.” Should I be embarrassed? It seems silly. “Akosh and I were bored after sparring, so we went into town to find a pleasure hall.”

  Tahmin laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “So while we threw open every door in the Lugal’s palace to find you, you were off dancing and drinking? Kam, my friend, let’s keep that between us. I’ve a feeling Barsam would have your head. Ah, Akosh! Welcome back.”

  Akosh clapped Tahmin on the shoulder, then pulled the younger man into a bearish embrace.

  “Where is the Hound, anyway?” asked Kamvar, looking around the inn room.

  “Nerkut. Sit. I’ll explain, and then we’ll need to be off.”

  Tahmin recounted the events of the last three days. They had rowed hard the entire way to Numush-ummi, in search of the inn where sorcery had been reported. The innkeeper had been instructed to leave everything as it was, and as soon as they saw the corpses, it was clear that they were on the right track. The first had been a cruel-looking man, arched backwards, rigor mortis freezing his face in
to a terrified, wide-eyed grimace. They had found two more, a pair of lovers in the next room, whose deaths had already become a local sensation. Maddened by sorcery, they had clawed each other to death.

  “When we arrived,” Tahmin continued, “the city guard explained that they’d chased after the girl and this Leonine. They’re still together – he seems to have become her guardian. They had dogs and everything, but they found nobody. Shocking, I know. We did some investigating around here, and turned up nothing at all. This city is not like Inatum, Kam. Nobody’s seen anything, nobody knows anything. So here I was, expecting who knows how many more months of boredom and futility. Well, at dinner that night, the Lugal’s men brought us a messenger bird from Nerkut. Barsam read it, and the smile on his face… it was terrifying, but what a relief. The girl’s been found, Kam. I don’t have all the details, but Barsam took the ship on to Nerkut.”

  “And left you here to wait for us?” Kamvar asked.

  “Guilt by association. My orders were to wait four days, and to ride on to Nerkut if you didn’t show up. But since you’re here, fancy another trip? We’ve a boat waiting.”

  “No,” Kamvar replied, sighing. What he truly fancied was a meal and a bed. “But I suppose such is our duty.”

  “You’ll need to be as dutiful as the Jazds to defray our dear Hound’s wrath, I think. Oh, Kamvar, the meals you’ll cook, the tunics you’ll launder.”

  “Just don’t grow too jealous,” Kamvar said. “I’m sure you’ll be back to your role as company cook soon enough. On that note, I’m starving. We have time to eat, I imagine?”

  “Oh, yes. Good thinking,” said Akosh, sitting down to the table and eyeing Tahmin’s fallen bread dubiously. “I could do with some meat.”

  Tahmin clapped his hands loudly. A gangly inn-boy came running with the promise of seared lamb and cracked wheat.

  “Eat well, Kam,” said Tahmin. “Think of it as your last meal before the execution.”

  “Funny,” said Kamvar. “Very funny.”