The Last Road

by K. Johansen

  The air tore with the sound of thunder and his brother was on them, finally, realizing Sarzahn’s peril, turning sword in hand on the assassin who had come here for this, no spy but a lure and a trap. Sarzahn lurched to four feet again and staggered forward to defend the one who was life and need and heart of his world, but fell as their swords rang, his brother in rage, voice low, venomous, the assassin fighting for his life and he would die, no other outcome, though they danced as equals and it was not the swift thrust and ending Sarzahn expected, his brother—playing, surely, not pressed to hold his own, never.

  They were half-dissolved in light, as if they melted, gone to colours, streaked and bleeding into stone, into sky and the white slash of birch, their twigs black cracks that webbed the sky, the searing blade-edge breaking the air. The second sword his brother bore, slung high under his arm, was a cold stillness, a solidity that resisted the dissolving fire and flow that Sarzahn’s failing vision made them.

  The assassin was being forced back, though—was giving ground at least—and his brother reached and began to pull to him those threads of light, those chains of fire, of power that bound the wizard and fed or were fed elsewhere. Began to gather light into fire, to burn, to destroy.

  No. Again, the voice, the frantic thought, commanding, desperate. His? His, but he did not think he knew it.

  Jochiz, he cried, and reached for him, clinging, clutching, a drowning man to pull down a swimmer. Not with teeth, clawing feet, grasping hands. Just reached with everything that was in him, soul to soul and held, dragged close, desperate, needing…It was the pain, the poison, working in him, whatever spell—it must be the poison he had swallowed, searing him hollow, leaving the terror of a howling, empty night—

  His brother flinched away from the swordsman and Jochiz’s cheek was opened, had already been opened by his enemy’s sword when he flinched, impossibility, but he dashed blood away with a careless hand, turned away disdainful and the swordsman-wizard was in flight, dodging through the trees, making for the high rocks. Was gone. Illusion. Wizardry. Scent of him, blood and snow. His brother shouted, Imperial Nabbani, maybe, insult perhaps, and laughed, angry. Allowed the Marakander that coward’s retreat. Strode down on Sarzahn wrathful at the distraction that had let his enemy escape.

  Dragged his head up. Hooked a finger and cleared a painful mass of hard stalks out of his throat, face twisting at the muck of slime and blood. Let him fall, crouched over him.

  Sarzahn’s body was fevered, shivering, panting. Jochiz shoved at him, pushed him into a human form again, and he sweated, shivered still. Torn coat, torn skin and muscles of his back, searing, some poison at work, some wizardry, sinking threads deep into him, weaving, writing…burning patterns like and unlike Northron runes, he saw in the eye of the mind, painted in blood, in light, in the sky before him, in the stone, on his eyes.

  He couldn’t read them. Mind, memory, tried, and lost the sense.

  “Nabban,” his brother said, as if it were a curse. But at least he could understand speech again. “They’ve heard rumour of you, my dog. But the necromancer greatly underestimates you if he thinks his slave’s mere wizardry will—” Laughed, not finishing his thought, and his hand was rough, stroking hard over the wound, a touch with devil’s powers in it, burning out the wizardry of death. A wound which would have healed swiftly on his own but for the gnawing poison, a pain that was not— not unwelcome, a pain that promised—bitterness in his throat, bleeding, scored, scarred down his throat but it reminded him—the pain, the poison he had swallowed had a voice, a song, a whisper—

  Listen. He didn’t say that aloud or even for his brother’s hearing. He did not say it at all. It was not his own voice and yet he knew it as he knew his bodies, the swift flow between them. It whispered, deep, Be still, lie still, listen, wait.

  “Later,” his brother said. “Later you shall kill him for me, and we will tear his necromancer god between us, and swallow him.”

  The fever was a darkness devouring him. He let it take him. His brother was by him. That was enough.

  CHAPTER III

  Ahjvar’s heart still pounded; legs still had that trembling, treacherous edge of failure in the knees. Palms slick with sweat, when he gripped the edge of stone, clambering up, toe in a crack, holding himself that one moment by the toe of his boot and the grip of his fingers till this other foot found the higher hold he had scouted from below. Heaved and rolled himself over the edge, lay on his back a moment, just breathing. Stars above, though light lingered in the west. He held the pattern of the dance in his mind yet, the weaving of movement and blade’s edge that wrote almond, to forbid, and walnut for secrecy, and prickly ash, to deny what was, or might be, worked against him. Wizardry of lost Praitan bound in twig and herb, but he had learned to make it something else long ago, held in body and blood and powers that ran in him beyond his own, strong though he had been in wizardry even when he was—that other man, long ago.

  He had run. Not a retreat, not thought and planning and the best choice. Run in panic. He’d felt the devil reaching, as if Jochiz groped to seize the heart out of his chest and hold it burning, a fire that would not let him go till it was finished with him, a fire that would reach beyond him, through him, to consume Ghu—he had not cared for Nabban, in that moment, not the god of the land, his god of the mountain and the river, only Ghu, the light and warmth and heart of him, feared to know him burning in the devil’s hatred till they were dead alike, ash and bone—Not again, not again—

  Don’t think it. Don’t. Breathe. Find a stillness. Make the place of quiet, of roots and cold waters rising. The scent of pines. The mass of stone beneath him, not this stone, broken and shifting, tremors and fires beneath—the solid mass of the mountain that was home. Make that stillness. Cold. Sharp. Everything clear. Wizardry wrapping him, shield against the devil, thin enough, but over him too the pines, the snows, a strength not his.

  Enough?

  No. Not if Jochiz chose to exert himself.

  Something reached, touched…passed on.

  Or maybe? A touch, where he crouched, as if ducking down might help. Arm over him, body pressed close. Something vast. Even a god strong among the gods of the earth was not a strength to withstand a devil. But enough to be no easy prey. And perhaps the devil was not yet willing to force that fight.

  They couldn’t count on it.

  The feeling of another by him, over him, faded, and that searching presence did not come again. The last ember-glow of sunset had faded, colour drained out of the thickening night, but a waxing gibbous moon was high overhead and he did not need even that. Owl’s eyes. God’s eyes. Shape of the land, making itself known. He went on, climbing, scrambling, slithering where he had not intended to, but he was still shaken and lost the path he had meant to retrace. Came, by midnight, to where he had meant to lie up to await the dawn. Not a good idea. Keep moving. Still too close, though he had come east into the rising mountains and was in a long furrow that twisted a crooked way south, high broken hills to the west, between him and the Westron line of march.

  He thought he had come to the right place, at any rate. Cliff, treeless slope with towering dead stalks of fennel making what looked, all silvered and shadowed, like a dwarf forest of palms. No movement, no sound, but he could—something in him could feel—a warmth, call it life or soul or what you would. Hiding. Patience. Fear and boredom.

  “Just me,” he called softly, in a language a hundred years dead. The young man was picking it up, though, in overheard dribs and drabs, putting it together with what lingered in the dialect of Nabbani they called Taren now, and which wouldn’t be understood at all if one spoke it in the empire, outside the ports.

  Ailan stirred, uncoiling from the nest he had made himself in the grassy undergrowth, like a fawn left by its mother to wait out the day. Fennel stalks crackled as he made his way down, crawling to where the terrain turned too stony even for those to grow, the open ground by the small meltwater pool, frost-fringed. Feeling his w
ay, mostly. He had his own pack slung awkwardly from one shoulder, dragged Ahjvar’s.

  “Starting to think I should come look for you.”

  “No! Cold hells, no. Never!”

  “Don’t know how I’d find my own way back.”

  “You shouldn’t be here in the first place. And better die lost here than run into the Westrons.”

  “Cheerful. You hurt? Your voice sounds funny.” A hand came reaching, a wary fluttering. Ailan knew better than to touch him. Ahjvar caught his wrist.

  “ It’s nothing.”

  “’Course not. Let me see. Is your nose broken?”

  “No.”

  “Let me see. Make a light.”

  Wretched—people didn’t talk back to him. They watched him warily and got out of the way. Called him “Rihswera” as the Nabbani ambassador did, and bowed, and that was just fine if it gave him space.

  He called up a light, a silvery moonglow in the hand. Small wizardry and not too likely to draw attention to break his shielding.

  His headscarf was sodden dark where he had used it to blot his face, hold his nose, a brief pause in his flight when the dripping down his chin became demanding. Coat spattered with dark stains where he had used it to protect his arm, too. Torn.

  “Nori bless, what happened? Did you find—? Here, let me.”

  Ailan was only trying to help and Ahjvar did not strike his hand away, when he unwrapped Ahjvar’s scarf from about his neck and used a clean end of it, wetted in the pool, to dab cautiously at his face.

  “It’s not bad. We need to keep moving.” Put some more miles between themselves and the Westron camp. They’d have moonlight through the gathering streaks of cloud for a while yet, if they kept out of the shadow of the western slopes. Some pursuit would be out after them with daybreak.

  “Not till you’re cleaned up. Old Great Gods, what a mess.”

  Ahjvar gave himself up to having his face washed, like a child who’d been brawling and gotten his nose bloodied. There was something…appealing in the way the young man refused to be cowed.

  Or aggravating. He should have knocked Ailan around the ears and sent him straight back when he realized the young man had followed, trailing behind him, falling farther and farther back. That he was going to lose himself and die in the damned hills. Went back to retrieve him and—had been so close to striking. And that was what he was used to, Ailan, and so Ahjvar hadn’t. Argued, but didn’t even tell him how stupid he was being, because the Taren had a lifetime of the world telling him he was not fast enough or strong enough or smart enough, and it came down to, not lucky enough, this one. Laid out the sensible arguments, swallowing anger and frustration. Ailan had only gone sullen and angry himself, terrified all the while, which damned well hurt. In the end Ahjvar had given in to the argument that he needed someone to keep watch for him “or something”—Ailan himself hadn’t been able to think of what use, precisely, he might be. Even then he’d still looked like a scolded dog, and still been shaking, inside, with the fear of what he’d chosen. He baffled Ahjvar, he really did, as not the most stubborn and over-confident imperial princess ever had.

  Ailan couldn’t find his own way back to the city. That had been the telling argument, in the end. Ahjvar didn’t know what to do with the boy, yet if you took in a feral pup, you didn’t give it a feed and drive it off the next day. But what was it with young strays latching on to him like he was some mother duck, anyway? He was hardly anyone’s idea of a father-figure.

  “I guess it’s not broken,” Ailan said. “You look—you scared me. So much blood.”

  “Noses bleed.”

  “Yeah, yours did. What happened? Did you find him? And he bit you?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Lucky you still have a nose. Lucky you still have a face.”

  “How bad is it?” He couldn’t see, squinting down his nose. Red smears.

  “Dunno. ’S all still there. That’s pretty good, really, for a dog attack. More like he was just playing, really. I think you’ve got a hole right through the side, though.”

  Forgetting himself, Ailan took Ahjvar’s chin in his hand, frowning, inspecting, and that was too close, too much.

  “You could put a jewel in that. Black Desert fashion. Well, for a woman. But turquoise would look good.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe your god would like it?”

  “No!” He could feel the Taren’s breath on his face. Feel his hand trembling. Hear—was it hearing?—the racing heart. Afraid, for all his labouring to make jokes. Ahjvar pushed him off.

  “Sorry.” Ailan backed away. “Maybe you’d better wash your beard? Um, I filled the water-gourds before it got dark—”

  “Good.”

  “— yeah, so you don’t have to worry about dirtying the pool if you stick your face in it…you want me to look at your arm, too? If he can track by smell…”

  “Even a mortal hound could follow our scent without the blood.” But Ahjvar did as Ailan suggested. It was sense. Ghu would tell him the same.

  Ailan rinsed out the scarf, wrung it and tied it to the strap of a pack to dry. Sat back on his heels, watching.

  Nothing but a few scratches on Ahjvar’s arm. Not anything even Ghu would worry about. Ahvar clenched the light in his fist, extinguishing it. The longer he let it go, the greater the chance a wizard’s searching would notice. And he was only guessing human trackers wouldn’t be set loose till the dawn.

  “So is he a traitor, or what?” Ailan asked.

  They fell into a rhythm of walking, Ailan sticking close enough that Ahjvar could reach to steady him when the ground dropped suddenly or a stone rose to trip him. A silence that felt companionable. For all his willingness—maybe it was need—to chatter when he felt unsure of himself, Ailan could be silent. Foxes were yipping down the valley. Stones, unavoidably, clicked and clattered underfoot. The Taren’s doing, not his. Patches of snow gave Ailan some light, reflecting the moon, but had to be skirted not to leave plain tracks.

  “You didn’t answer,” Ailan said softly, when they had come into a stand of trees again, pale trunks twisted by the winds, and were picking a way around snow-patches. “Is the Blackdog a traitor?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happened to him, what’s been done. He’s no prisoner.”

  But he did know. He felt the horror of it in his gut, growing into a smothering weight of nightmare, and if he began to brood on that—

  Ahjvar had known such service. Better to be dead.

  “Jochiz came after me to defend him.”

  “You saw the All-Holy?” Ailan’s cautious voice rose, forgetful. “You fought him? Did you—is he dead?”

  “Fool, no. I ran away and he stayed to try to save the dog.”

  “You killed the Blackdog?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t intend to.” He had only been sent to spy, to speak if he could find the chance. To report back. Not to meddle in devil’s workings that he didn’t understand. Patterns of home, of finding, of a road…wizardry that must weigh nothing against a devil’s chains. He didn’t understand the shapeshifter’s sudden weakness, as if he’d been struck with some poison. The arrow had been meant as a last resort; he’d wanted to talk to the Blackdog, find out what he was doing in Jochiz’s train. Argue with him, if he claimed Sien-Shava Jochiz had some great cause worth his betrayal. Ahjvar might know, too well, the making and the uses of poisons; he didn’t deal in such things any more, and he’d nearly missed, the dog had come on so fast. The wound shouldn’t even have slowed him, unless steel itself was somehow anathema to him, a thing he had never heard of. Something had nearly undone the shapeshifter though, and given him his chance with the spells he seemed to have bound into shape, hands moving, mind drifting, dream-edge walking while he thought he watched, alert. Not quite certain what he had done, even, or what he had meant to do. Lure him within the pattern of them on the ground…?

  Ghu was fey and saw what his champion did not, and reached through hi
m…

  So what did you think we were doing, idiot boy, weaving spells against a devil? I worry when you start playing with wizardry. You don’t know what you’re doing.

  Nothing answered. He touched the necklace at his throat, shells and acorns pierced and woven into a braid of hair, human and horse.

  Ghu was very far away, and a god could not reach beyond their own land.

  But they lay within one another. They made a new shape in the world. Not a braid. Two rivers that flowed into one.

  Whatever had stricken down the shapeshifter, he’d better not be counting on it to last. And he did not think, whatever Ghu might hope— if Ghu had anything at all to do with it and it was not his own uneasy wizardry—that a few twists of weeds in a wish for the lost would do much good.

  “It’s whispered the Blackdog’s a traitor,” the storyteller had said. Her name was Moth, or Ulfhild, or Vartu, but Ghu had met her first the day he had also met Ivah, and she had been telling stories then, in a market of Marakand, and so she was forever the storyteller to him. Ghu trusted her, as much as he trusted any devil. Ahjvar himself found her hard to read. Still and cold. Deep water, and dark. “They’ve kept that rumour close, the wardens, but the spies Yeh-Lin recruited reported him as the All-Holy’s most trusted companion throughout the winter. Man or dog, always there, always at Sien-Shava’s side.”

  Sien-Shava. Yeh-Lin called him Jochiz.

  “How do you decide what name to go by?” Ahjvar asked. An interruption, and rude, but he wanted to understand. Names mattered. His did. It wasn’t one he had been born with, didn’t even belong to his own folk, neither that of his birth nor the one of his choosing. A name of the eastern deserts. He’d taken it off a man he’d killed, another assassin employed by a rival to his then-employer. Probably hadn’t been that man’s own, either.