by K. Johansen
Threefold blessings of the Old Great Gods.
The All-Holy, Beloved of the Heavens.
He is the Bridge where there is no Road.
Strange, how human he seemed. A man, nothing more. But Vartu had seemed so too, against all his expectation. A woman, ageing, tired, fighting her grief to keep a strong face to her beloved, to hold him to some road back into the light. Not at all what he had thought a devil might be, for all of the stories he had heard of her, servant to the Old Great Gods though she might be. Expected something more angry. More arrogant. More careless of all about.
There was a horse brought over for Jochiz. He rode, for his dignity. Robed in white, his hair and beard long and curled in ringlets. They had carved faces and little grave-gift figurines of such men, princes and magistrates, in odd corners about the castle. Folk brought them sometimes out of the west, knowing how the children of Kinsai were pleased by such oddities of the world.
Jochiz rode to the causeway, and an array of clean-shaven priests walked at his back. Many were of the sixth circle, wizards. They wore pleated red robes, white copes, caps of crimson and white, some even ornamented with golden thread. Trout judged most to be mere diviners, not true visionaries to whom dreams might come unsought. Weak in power, worse educated.
Jochiz left his horse and crossed the causeway afoot.
So.
It came.
One always thought one had tomorrow.
Jochiz had no rams, no engines of war at all. Armoured priest-knights likewise afoot waited, in orderly ranks, behind the vanguard of seer-priests. Their attention was fixed only on their All-Holy, the very spear’s point of their assault. If the folk of the castle had had any defence to make, would the Westrons even have raised their shields, down there, the warden wondered? Or would they have stood, reverential, and died, as arrows fell?
It didn’t matter. Perhaps none of this mattered, perhaps they should have fled with the caravan. Perhaps he should have stayed alone. It had been he who wanted this. Break all threads. Hide all trails. Make an end, that no faint spoor of what might come to be remain, to come to a devil’s notice.
Too late to change course. The river flowed.
Jochiz raised his arms and began to sing. Trout felt the force of the spell. For a moment, he could almost see the shape of it. Taste of salt, and burning sun, white sand and palm-green hills. Gulls crying. Song, wizardry, of a distant land.
“Time to go down,” he said, and Deysanal took his arm.
He could feel it when the ancient timbers of the gate, oak gone iron-hard, flared and crumbled. There was no resistance, no wizardry in them. Just good stout planks, swiftly consumed in the wizardry. Did it disconcert their enemy, that lack of resistance?
They would have a choice of ways within. Trout pictured them, advancing through the ashes, the high officers, the devils’ commanders, those who followed and who led, the seers who aided him in his song-weaving death, consuming the souls of children to devour those of the gods. Those who glorified him, and basked in his glory. Ash, dust from the ruin of the gates, might rise to smudge their robes. Seers, minor wizards, spreading out through the castle to recite small bindings against the rejected, the elderly, those left behind. Perhaps to seek out whatever of value or historical interest may have been overlooked. The priest-knights following, to do the butchery, or to take prisoners for later execution. Edifying, no doubt, for the Westron devout. Jochiz himself—what would he be seeking?
Any lingering echo of Kinsai.
And thus—
This.
Trout and Deysanal waited in his study, the top chamber of the north tower. The physician, who had once had another name but had been Rose since he drifted up at the castle, a stray of the caravan road, joined them there. No words needed. Rose and Deysanal interlaced their fingers, briefly, but then Deysanal moved away to look a last time out the window, stepping carefully over what was prepared. They could hear sounds from elsewhere. Cries. Small battles. Priests dying, and knights. And sometimes wizards of Kinsai. They were few, those who remained. Enough, though. Perhaps too many. But it mattered that nothing linger, no faint memory of the goddess, that might otherwise…draw attention.
They had all agreed. Best to be thorough.
The door, latched but not locked, smashed open, kicked. A dramatic gesture, not needed.
Jochiz strode in, alone. Smiled.
The floor was a maze drawn in chalk, in charcoal and river-silt, laced and knotted around vessels of water: beaten copper, cast bronze, plain earthenware, fine coloured glass. Silver. Gold. Carven wood. A pattern, for those who knew the reading of it. Unlikely the sea-island devil did. Small stones, river stones, rounded and flattened, were scattered throughout the room.
Not random.
Jochiz frowned, hesitated to step.
Too late.
The warden had been leaning on his staff. He straightened up. To his left, the physician drew a deep breath, tucked his bony, nervous hands into his sleeves. To his right, Deysanal smiled at Rose, at him. At Sien-Shava Jochiz.
She held a cup, red-glazed, chipped on the rim. There was nothing in it but water. River-water. Kinsai’s water.
His daughter’s eyes fixed on his again. Trout nodded. In the distance, there was another cry, another death. Deysanal parted her hands, let fall the cup. It smashed, spilling water into the pattern, and the warden swept his staff in a low arc, like a man scything hay. He struck nothing, but the fire Rose had kindled on the hearth roared out into the room as if a Northron firedrake had plunged down the chimney. Every vessel in the room cracked or shattered.
And the walls. And the roof. And the floor.
The castle fell.
The river came rushing, churning, roaring eager, to hurl itself through the ruins, sweeping all away.
Water, sky, stone. Trout had always known the manner of his death.
Sien-Shava Jochiz stood on the hill of the quarry, breathless. Angry. Not afraid. Had they thought he could drown?
His robes were wet to the waist. Clio, a handful of others of his close court, were on their knees, sodden and gabbling prayers.
Fools.
On the road south, Iarka wept.
CHAPTER XXIV
…late in the summer, and the All-Holy has conquered the Western Grass
The young man was watching him.
He had been watching, lounging against a wall, when Ahjvar rode in the gate. A group of youths stood there, idling away a warm evening, talking, laughing, a play-scuffle that ended in arms draped over one anothers’ shoulders, sharing an apple…he wasn’t one of them. Apart. Even shabbier. He had turned to follow Ahjvar with his gaze, a flash of copper-bright hair. Ahjvar had been looking back and had seen. Looking only because that red-haired young woman he had called his granddaughter had been in his thoughts, here deep in the heart of what had once been Praitannec lands, where he had been hearing the language still spoken among the country folk.
The scrawny youth’s look, for that instant, was intent, fixed. Dog, its whole being pointed at what it would hunt. Then it was gone and he was watching the others again; a wariness, as if their friendly scuffling might turn on him and be not so friendly. Ahjvar looked away.
The Heron had been recommended by the cook of a caravan he’d met heading east and had camped with two nights previously. Not a caravanserai but a decent inn for a traveller with only a few beasts to put up, and fair enough in its charges. Said cook’s wife’s cousin’s father-in-law…the usual sort of thing. But it was as good a recommendation as any.
Star River Crossing was changed. It had never been the most prosperous of the Five Cities, not a sea-harbour but a hundred miles inland on a river, the Noreia. It had grown larger, busier, an important node on the eastern caravan road No rival to Marakand in itself, though the weight of the Taren Confederacy was that, these days. There had been war a mere thirty years earlier. Taren tolls and taxes on the road, the caravan road that had always been free, belonging to no folk
and to all. Settled, eventually, when the Five Cities began to quarrel between themselves and some of the outlying regions, the old tribal kingdoms that had lost their queens and kings a century or so before, grew restless, threw up pretenders…that hadn’t lasted. The clan-fathers and -mothers who ruled the cities settled things between themselves in their traditional manner, which meant assassination, and in their new, which meant negotiation, and in the end the Confederacy had endured and come to some agreement with Marakand that seemed to please everybody but the caravan-masters, who paid tax on what they carried between east and west at Star River Crossing, as the shipmasters did at the four seaports. Not that distant Noble Cedar Harbour was more than a nominal part of the Confederacy. It had its own ways and kept to them.
Memory of Praitan might be fading and the folk of the many gods of the lands Over-Malagru all one now, tribes and cities all Taren whatever god or goddess they held to, but not so many more days’ travel and it would be Ahjvar’s own hills the road passed by. His horizons. The shape of the sky you never forgot, and the wind with the scent of the earth and the green of home…
He could wish for a devil’s powers, to be ride the wind and be gone from all this land, whatever it called itself these days. Get to devils-damned Marakand and have done with.
He had a stronger yearning to take the road to the southwest, cut down to Two Hills, where once Ghu had stolen horses—abandoned not long after in a harried few days they’d been hunted through the hills by bodyguards of a dead clan-father, and then he’d taken Ahjvar’s purse and spent the entirety of it on better beasts, having a taste well beyond their means—before ever a red-haired bardling came to drive them from their strange—it had not been peace. Their waiting. It had only ever been that.
Ride to Two Hills, and down the coast to Gold Harbour where the Leopard had been a name to fear, even by the clan-fathers who hired him, unchancy, uncanny, unkillable, they said, with more truth than they knew. And beyond, south again, to a fishing village where a stone cliff, wave-battered, overlooked the little cove, and the air on the high downs smelt of thyme and lavender.
Not his impulse, and no, he would not. Better to let it live in memory, anyway, than to taint it with seeing what no longer was. It would be changed. All changed. Their broch had been a ruin when they lived there, the path that joined them to the land narrow. Probably an island now, or washed away altogether, the ancient stone tower and the garden, the plum tree and the wall where they had sat to watch stars and storms and sunlight…
Changed and gone. Let it live in what Ghu had made of it. His peace.
He was lonely. He had been on the road six months. Six months out of Nabban, where air and stone and water held him, ran through him, breathed in him.
Here he was something else, caught between life and death, out of place, out of time, an uneasiness on the edges of the awareness of the gods and the goddesses of the land.
The bones of his father and his son alike were lost, forgotten, long gone back to the earth. The name of the goddess who had once been his was equally unknown on the road, in the villages. A bard might remember her: Catairanach. Remember the ill-fated kings Cairangorm and Catairlau and Hyllanim, the songs and the curse of the Duina Catairna. If he found one. If he asked. He would not.
No music in this inn, which was rougher than he’d been led to believe, but the stabling, at least, was adequate, the food blandly overcooked. He was low on funds. They always were, he and Ghu. What coin he had came from the imperial treasury, which would provide for his camels in Marakand too, once he came to the ambassador’s house there, but meanwhile the beasts had to eat and the barley and beans he had bought them in Porthduryan were running low. He would rather have slept rough and avoided the city altogether but for that, and the feeling that a wise man would try to gather some news of the road ahead.
This place between the old wall of the city he had known and hunted in, and the new, encircling its growth, provided that. Nothing of great concern. Risk of brigands, outlaws, in the wild places. “Out along the tribal lands, beyond the Praitanna River.”
His lands, his folk…
Brigands were a useful way of replenishing a thin purse. They invited their fate. Shouldn’t think that way. Desperate ordinary folk more often than not, lost, their place in the world slipped away from them. Still.
A lone traveller, someone who didn’t belong to the road like a bard or a soothsayer, ought to join a caravan or one of the parties that clubbed together to hire city-licensed guards to see them safe to the pass, the old man who oversaw the stables told him.
Indeed, that was wise.
Advice repeated by the woman who took his coin for the high attic room. They were wary, the stabler and the mistress of the place. Polite, but not entirely welcoming.
Possibly he looked more a brigand than an honest guest.
Possibly he should seek out a bathhouse. Cold water washing had its limits. But why bother, before he came to Marakand? Still eight hundred miles of mud and dust before him.
They couldn’t place him. He spoke what was now called Taren Nabbani, but found, after so many years, that accent and words kept straying into Imperial; the two hadn’t been mutually comprehensible to most even in his day. Another, younger woman, bringing the mutton and carrots and bread that was the evening’s dish, with a cup of beer, asked his god, an effort to pin him down to a place, and he said Moyugh, who was one of the four deities of Noble Cedar Harbour and had been when it was the Duina Moyughan before ever a ship of defeated rebels came west fleeing Empress Yeh-Lin’s first reign. No reason to lie, but he’d said his name was Strath, which was a good Praitannec name, unlike Ahjvar; he vaguely thought he had used Strath before, maybe when he was in Sea Town. Just habit, the lie.
Except that the red-haired youth had slipped in not long after he had. And had got himself a cup of something and was leaning back against the long counter, watching again.
A man who’d seen twenty, maybe, but barely and no more. Too thin for his height, which wasn’t great. Not armed, that Ahjvar could see, not even a knife for eating. Short wrapped gown a faded yellow-brown, too broad in the shoulders, too long in the sleeves, old tears mended, fraying at the hems. Narrow-legged trousers that were the style in these lands now. Mended carefully, but much, both knees patched, mismatched. Sandals. Washed and shaven, hair still damp, in fact, and curling on his shoulders. Necklace of glass beads, red and blue. Praitannec enough—they’d say tribal, here—to wear earrings, only the thinnest of wires, which few among the Tarens did any longer. Finery that mattered something more to him than the few days of comfort selling them might have bought?
Nervous. Carefully not being nervous, leaning there, so casual, cup in his hand, looking like he waited for a friend, but the hand of the elbow that propped him on the counter was almost a fist, and the thumb fretted against the fingernails, then fingertips over the heel of his hand, fidgeting, fidgeting…
No one else there who had that alert air, not even anyone who was better, more professional in their watching, who might have set the man to it as a distraction. No one too careful in not noticing him. Ordinary, all ordinary. Only awaiting some friend—he had looked friendless, there by the gate—more likely an assignation he was doubting would be met and Ahjvar was a curiosity; there could be nothing more ominous than that in his eyes, which were elsewhere, now. On his cup, on the two grey-haired women talking low, heads together, laughing. Anywhere but on Ahjvar’s corner. Flicking back, and he took a deep swallow of his drink.
Watching. And scared.
Ahjvar didn’t like the city, and he ought to take himself up to the private room he had paid for, and lie quiet, if he could not sleep. He was starting to get the frantic, thought-killing urge to keep moving, keep moving no matter what to have it over with, and the camels couldn’t stand such use.
Practice for Marakand, that was what this night here was. For when there would be no escaping. Endure it. People and noise and the press of bodies all about.
Eyes. Hands. Couldn’t watch everything. Couldn’t feel he didn’t need to, still, after all these years.
The youth hadn’t needed to risk being seen following. Just asking along the street after Ahjvar had gone by would have been enough. He wasn’t exactly not noticeable, a lone traveller with two camels, ancient Northron sword, bright pale hair.
The youth crossed the room, weaving around the tables. Other travellers, mostly, judging by dress and the accents, not locals. The food wasn’t such as would bring the neighbours in. Nor the beer. Ahjvar was eating with torn bread and a knife that looked like what anyone might carry for dining, but was far too sharp. Wiped it absently on the bread, waiting, sitting back, his shoulders against the wall. Corner table Ahjvar had successfully kept to himself so far. The youth slid onto an empty stool with the other wall to his back, not facing him, too near, knee brushing knee. Flinched away. Ahjvar did. So did the stranger, which was—odd. He didn’t look…unused to the game he seemed to be playing.
Set down his cup of wine, not yet emptied, like an invited friend. Smiled at Ahjvar. He was flushed, a little drunk already. Strong unwatered wine on an empty stomach, Ahjvar guessed. Thin face, sharp bones. Hard living. Sweet smile, younger than his eyes. Neither necessarily lying. Actor on the stage, and a brittle veneer of courage his only mask.
“Go away,” Ahjvar suggested, watching the hands more than the face.
The hands were very nervous.
“You want company? I can buy you a drink.” The young man waved a hand vaguely in the air, not looking around, but it brought over the older woman who tended the barrels behind the counter, a pitcher in either hand. She gave the redhead a raised-eyebrows look, familiar, disapproving—shrugged when he flourished a pair of copper coins at her, poured wine, raised the other pitcher with an enquiring look at Ahjvar.
