by K. Johansen
But then a man stepped clear, waved a bow in the air. A lean Malagru hillman, his hair in a topknot, bare-chested beneath a goatskin cape, his kilt the dusty colour of stone.
“Up here,” he called. “Hurry.”
They scrambled to him, Lia doing her damnedest to keep up, but when Nikeh offered an arm she took it, slithering down into another bit of cover together, broken teeth of stone and fig trees. A patrol of hill-folk stretched out above, making a slow way up a dangerous ledge. A few in armour among them, others who had somehow made it from the wall. Nobody Nikeh recognized on sight, though Lia traded nods of greeting with some woman who looked back once.
“There’s a better path above, if you can make it up,” the archer said. “I’m Orhan.”
“Lia Dur of the third tower of the wall. Nikeh, apprentice to Scholar Daro Jang of the Nabbani Embassy.” Lia spoke in breathless little gasps. Nikeh was not so sure no ribs were cracked. She put an arm around her.
“We can make it.”
Orhan only nodded. “Come. Lia first. Follow me close. There’s no true climbing. You’ll be fine.”
An encouraging lie.
Sunset, when the Shiprock came in sight. It was still miles distant, a prow of grey stone thrust out from the south into the pass, like a ship nosing from the fog. A height, but a mere toe of the Pillars of the Sky. The road made a sharp jog around it, passing through a narrowing gap. Why had the ancient builders of the Western Wall not set their defences there, Teacher had more than once muttered, as she and her fellow wizard-scholars of the library set their lines and their symbols all up and down its clefts and fissures.
Nikeh had been much called upon for her climbing skills, she of all the scholar-apprentices not fearful of the chimneys and the high ledges.
The windmill stood pale, its sails furled and motionless. Deserted, she suspected. The valley below seethed. Surely the better part of the Westron army. They must have marched without pause, leaving few behind to consolidate their hold on the wall. The action of a raiding band impatient for plunder, not an army, that must seize and hold and defend as it came. A plunder of souls.
They would be exhausted. They would have outpaced their supplies, be thirsty, hungry, wounded…ready to drop where they stood. Almost twelve miles, the distance from the gate of the wall to the Shiprock.
A victory might yet be snatched from this, if only the Stone Desert tribes had not all flitted away to the fringes of their wilderness, out of the All-Holy’s path. But no. The god of the city was the great prize to be taken, and there was nothing any attack from the rear could do to prevent that.
Nothing she could do, either.
Their little band could go no further. Lia sank to the ground at Nikeh’s feet, arms hugged around her body, grey-faced. Even the Malagru-folk were done. The shelter of rocks and scrub and shadow—it was little enough and they could certainly risk no fire. Water-gourds were passed around. Nikeh held one for Lia, made certain she drank. Salt white cheese, smelling high, and flatbread that had gone dry and hard.
“We’ll wait for moonrise, then move on,” Orhan said.
Nikeh squirmed out to where she could watch openly, lying flat within a seam of lilacs, their leaf-buds swollen, not yet opening, at this height. Orhan joined her.
“We should go up to the copper mines,” he said. “I don’t think—I fear we’ll only come to Marakand to see it fall.”
And his home and his kinsfolk would be north, the road, the Suburb, become a deadly river he could not cross to reach them, unless they got far ahead this night. But would Jochiz even allow his army that respite, or would he drive them on by night, with Marakand so close?
He’d come to the city walls with his folk dropping like foundered horses, if he did. If they were not already doing so. But perhaps he did not care. If he could single-handedly blast his way through the gates…
Secrets. Still to be kept. A Westron patrol might yet spring on them from out of some fold and shadow of the mountainside.
Or were the wizards all fled, or dead? Deserted, like Teacher…
No. Teacher served where she was sent, and her empress and god had sent her to be elsewhere. Whatever she did there, served.
Nikeh was only an afterthought.
Child,Teacher would say—almost she heard her—you are never an afterthought. And since I am your Teacher, consider what you have learnt, and that there comes a time for every student to take what they have been given and go on ahead. Thus we move our knowledge through the years, beyond life and life.
“I should bind Lia’s ribs before the light goes,” she said. “She can’t keep up. I’m not sure she can go on at all. If you need to leave us behind, do so. Two can hide more easily than two dozen. Only leave us water and a bow and arrows.”
Orhan nodded. Relief?
But still Nikeh watched, as the white tower flushed ruddy with the sunset.
Gone. Dead. Taken, to become a Westron lookout post—
She felt something run through her body, prone on the rocks. A shudder. Twigs quivered. Someone down in the hollow exclaimed, “Gurhan save, what in the cold hells was that?”
Dust rose first, in small plumes. Or perhaps smoke. There had been much fire-powder involved in the working they had laid.
“What is it?” Orhan whispered.
“Watch,” Nikeh said. “Oh, watch. My Teacher was a great, great wizard.”
She grinned. It was delight. It was a great, hot joy. Lia should see this. And Lia was there to see, teeth clenched, breathing shallowly, but crawling up beside her to look, and the whole patrol and all their straggling soldiers, everyone, and not all remembering to keep down, either, but the light was fading.
Dust, smoke, catching the sunset light, as if the air burned, a lurid and dirty red. She gripped Lia’s hand, hard.
The Shiprock seemed to split open, as if struck by a hammer. Shattering. Sliding away in great rushing cataracts of stone. The windmill vanished in a growing cloud of dust, but for a moment she saw it again, a pale, tilted piece of flotsam, sweeping down, its round bulk still intact, a ship to ride the descending waves of stone. Had there been priests, seers, advancing up the steep paths to secure the vantage point of the mill? To look for the ambush that even a fool would have suspected, at this narrowing of the way? Had the primates and commanders been there, close by, to lead the army through, to whip them to order when the expected ambush came?
The sound came like distant thunder, growing, unending, wave piling on wave.
And then a silence. Only gradually, other sound. Crows cawing. An indistinct faint noise that might be a thousand voices crying out, praying, denying…It faded. Thickening darkness on the mountainside but still the cloud hung, murky crimson, a slow seething that filled the valley.
Might they choke on the dust, those not under the rockfalls.
Probably most had not been. A hope, that they might destroy the commanders. The wizards of the goddess Kinsai had tried some such thing. It was news of that which had made Teacher go to look so thoughtfully at the Shiprock.
She thought the wizards who had made the windmill their base had all gone up the mountainside to watch their work make good. That had been the plan. She had only to get Lia so far, and there would be help, perhaps even knowledge that might speed the healing of broken ribs.
Perhaps news of Teacher.
“That won’t have crushed the whole of the army,” Orhan said. “It can’t have done.” His voice asked her to assert otherwise, to tell him, yes, it was over.
“But the pass is blocked,” Lia said. “Look.”
The dust did thin. Shapes, as if seen through fog. A dam of broken stone, a new ridge, moraine, high and difficult. Fanged and savage. A reef, to shred this army as it crossed. It must come down the other side all in broken pieces, to be opposed in its fragments. And surely, even a devil would have difficulty in blasting his way through what a devil had wrought.
A thought she had not meant to let out where she could see it.
>
She put it away again, the way she did the weight of Birdy in her arms and his wet warmth soaking her, when that came into her head.
Where was the All-Holy, in that mess below? Beneath half a small mountainside of stone? Even Sien-Shava Jochiz must be—inconvenienced—by that.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Sarzahn was lost. Dead. Taken. Or made beast again, it was all one. Ripped away, a fool’s defiance on Vartu’s part—if that had been Vartu. There had been the whiff of a god about it, that severing as he reached too late to hold what ran through his hands like water. A god, and not the old power of the hills who cowered weak and helpless behind Vartu’s shield. Nabban? He dared…? And how? Vartu allied with Nabban, using him, somehow? He had never intended to show her any mercy regardless. Now—she would burn and he would swallow what was left of her, and the god of the hill as well, and come in the end to Nabban, and destroy him.
—he should have devoured Sarzahn so, not to lose him to this foul world that had made a beast of the wreckage of his soul.
Put Sarzahn from his mind. Vengeance for his loss would come, but not now. Now Jochiz had a city to take.
And the folk of this wretched army of his were cattle, mindless of any understanding, fit only to be beaten along their road when they baulked. Beyond reasoning with, many beyond answering even to the driving spur of faith and fervour.
The All-Holy had a captain of archers, who defied the knight commanding him, saying his men could march no further, dragged aside and strangled with his own bowstring, and strung up on a little stunted wild olive as a warning. The rush they had made after the taking of the Western Wall carried them only so far. They wanted to stop, to gorge themselves and drink, like beasts, as if the victory were theirs and not the work entire of their god—his grace, his blessing.
The weak, the wounded—they were left behind, to struggle on or perish in their shame and failure, he did not much care. They were a harvest, either way.
The less time Vartu had to prepare her Marakanders against his coming, the better. He would march them through the night till they dropped, drive them with whips outright if he had to.
“They need to rest, Holiness.” A whine in his ear, a man riding at his side. He had been bleating on some time, unheeded. Primate Ambert. Jochiz turned a look of reproof on him. Forbearing. Did anger cast a light in his eyes? Ambert ducked his head, his horse reacting to a tension on the reins. Jochiz tasted his fear, felt the man’s heart quicken. No doubt he would take it for the light of the All-Holy’s divinity.
“They can’t march all the way to Marakand, Most Holy. Even a courier takes a day to ride it. May we give them some promise of a halt?”
Clio murmured, “It would show wisdom.”
Not Clio. She was dead. The other woman, riding at his side. The bright Northron horse, the cape of mottled silver sealskin.
“The gap,” he said. “We take the gap, the place they call the Shiprock, and camp beyond. If we come too slow, they will hold it against us.”
They already did, unless they were fools—something waited, he thought, a shadow to his seers and even his own vision. Nothing of any account, in the end. Let them fall here, let them fall at the walls of Marakand—so long as they offered themselves, and made his name a conqueror, a god, a force of nature whose great tide sweeping east could not be stopped, that the rulers of Marakand and the cities and the lords of the tribes and even the empress of Nabban should know and fear what rolled towards them, and abandon their gods. That their gods might know themselves abandoned, Nabban be rejected by his folk, deprived of the worship of the godhead he had stolen, mortal fool, claiming what he had no right to be, what was withheld from even the greatest of wizards, even those born of gods, a birthright denied…
Not for much longer. After Marakand—there would be deaths enough before ever he breached its walls; they would be slaughtered in the ravine trying to come at the walls, its bridges denied them. He would let his followers prove themselves there; he needed only the knights, the seers, the administrators of the seventh, his faithful commanders. The rest might die and be replaced, as Marakand abandoned its god for him.
Perhaps, at last…an anticipation to be savoured. Once Vartu was dead. Once Marakand was taken. It would be time, then, to prepare the greatest ritual of them all. Self, sacrificed to self. Heart’s blood offered, heart opened, to take in what he had drained himself to bear, to nourish, to nurture to its ripeness.
The heart ached in his chest. Ached, all through him. Scars of his bleeding burned.
He grew tired. Weary, Sien-Shava’s weakness.
Sien-Mor smiled her old, sweet smile.
She wanted something. She always did.
He rubbed an aching forearm, frowned. The company nearest trudged in silence. No hymns, no chanted prayers. Were they a retreat, a defeat?
“Let them sing,” he told Clio. But of course she was not there. Sien-Mor raised her eyebrows. He looked over to Ambert.
“I shall see to it,” the primate said, and turned his horse aside, summoning a lesser priestess to him.
Why this ache, this pain? Pain was the body’s. It could be set aside, should be disdained. But it warned.
“You won’t bring them to Marakand’s walls even tomorrow,” Sien-Mor said. “They’ll die on their feet if you keep driving them.”
He frowned. She was probing at him, taunting. She always did, in her sly and subtle way. Trying to assert that she too partook of the god their father’s wisdom and his strength, which was not the case. It never had been. One womb, one birth, but her cleverness was only their mother’s, a mortal cunning.
Ache. As if the wounds were freshly opened.
Ache. As if something burrowed into his heart, which beat steady in his chest, which pulsed in the sanctuary of his godhead—
Vartu—
No. Not she. Dotemon. It was Dotemon. Sly, mocking, ever-treacherous—Yeh-Lin Dotemon, and she had crept undetected into the very heart of his mystery. She was there, she was within the cavern, within him, the sacred reservoir of his blood, she dared, she profaned his holiness, she threatened…everything.
“Does she worry you?” Sien-Mor asked. “She should.”
But he was not listening. He dropped the reins on his horse’s neck and shut his eyes not to see her. The ghost. The imagining.
Madness, his sister suggested. Perhaps it was not your doing, what broke me. Perhaps we were always mad, the both of us.
He shut his ears to her and fell away into a place where he could reach and shape, could make a death. Mere wizardry would not serve and he could not turn his back on what passed here in the pass, either. That might be their intention, to distract him from Marakand. Dotemon and Vartu, allied? Perhaps. Far more likely that Dotemon was sent by the god to which she pretended—it must surely be pretence—submission. A spider in cunning, Nabban was, hidden in the heart of his land and sending out his tendrils. Jochiz knew he should have gone to hunt the assassin, that offence of necromancy and abuse of divinity, in the mountains himself when Nabban’s sword came after Sarzahn, should have left the army to its march—even Clio could not have gotten them lost, coming south along the edge of the Malagru. He would prune that arm of Nabban’s reach away soon enough. And this one, Yeh-Lin Dotemon, this traitor who ought to have remained forever damned to the cold hells, he would finish her now. Did that slave-boy made god all undeserving, profanation of the very concept of divinity, think Dotemon so great, so subtle, that one so mighty as Jochiz would not see what she intended?
Jochiz reached, found what he might, to shape, to ride—a small, soft thing, pregnant with potential, hiding in the damp gravel of a passageway worn to a channel by floodwaters. It would serve.
He began to shape it, to put into it his thought, his will. His fire, to consume beyond any restoration.
Sien-Shava rode distracted, abstracted. Some work afoot. Sien-Mor could not tell what he did. Devil’s work. She probed but could get no sense even of where he directed his
attention. Such were the limitations of mortality. If that was what it was called. Ghosthood? She knew the shapes of things, but could no more manipulate them than she could touch or lift or taste. She relaxed her hold on her seeming, a little. Not too much, lest she be swept away, out of this place that seemed so—strange, now. The life burned in everything—human, horse, tree, bird, weeds underfoot. It all pulled at her, and her yearning to fall into it was strong. Free of the body, at last, at last. Free of the pull of the road, the summons she yearned, with all that she was, to obey, and could not not; fighting, fighting, a current that swept against her, a wind, an endless storm of sand, of ice, of timeless, hopeless journeying…Vartu did not know what she had done, summoning a ghost so, tearing her free of the nightmare struggle—and Sien-Shava had always held a little piece of her, even after her soul had sought the road. She had not been whole in so, so long.
How strangely clear, her thoughts. She had not shaped a clear, clean thought in so long.
Quite a few of her thoughts were of how she should like Sien-Shava to suffer—as though pulled again into the world, she took on all the grime of life, the pain and the hate of it, that she had put from herself. Or at least—it was there again, like a garment shaped of memory, of pain and guilt and sin acknowledged and shed like a caterpillar’s last skin, left an empty shell on the twig once the butterfly had flown. She fit herself inside it, and it began to cling to her.
Must she then die, and make the journey, and cleanse herself all over again?
And it had been a long, long road. Beyond enduring. But one endured. It was necessary. Her sins were very great. She had never yet come to the heavens. What she thought she knew—that was only fragments. Tu’usha’s memory.
She rode—she and the illusion she made of her favourite horse, the memory she shaped—as a chill breath, a drifting air. She hoped it was not Vartu that Sien-Shava so intently worked against. Miles, and more lost souls falling by the roadside. Did he mean the whole of this army to die? She began to think he did.
He screamed. He screamed most terribly, and clutched his chest as if struck to the heart, and slumped forward. Unbalanced, fell slowly from his horse, tipping, tipping…she might have reached to stop him, had she any physical form to bear such weight. If she had also wanted to. She smiled, and watched. He slid down the horse’s side, crumpling on the ground. Senseless. Unmoving. Scarlet spread over the unnaturally dustless white of his gown. Scarlet trickled down his wrists. His lips were very pale, blue-grey. Drained.
