The Last Road

by K. Johansen

  Sien-Shava Jochiz saw, felt, something. He struck backwards even as Ailan lunged, straight and true. Not his sword the devil swept around but a lash of white fire that knocked the young man flying, rolling when he hit the stones, a black path coiled around his back and arms like the welt of a whip left in the thick wool of his coat, maybe the flesh beneath. He did not get up. But Ahjvar had moved, striking, not the throat, no, the heart, cut the heart from his body, some old, old magic there and the devil leapt away and flung his sword like a spear. It did not fly true. They stepped aside and were running in to take him when he slid the second sword down into his hand and brandished it, sheathed.

  Even so it made a coldness in the air, a crack into winter. Or something very like. But it was a thing of the heavens, the hells. Moth’s sword. They had seen it before.

  It was only a blade and stone or steel, theirs was just as to be feared, now.

  Jochiz maybe saw that in their eyes. He backed again to give himself room and drew the blade, dropping the wood and leather scabbard that any fool would keep to parry with, and the narrow black sword was obsidian, maybe, or ice, or glass, or steel with the gloss of polished stone, but all up and down its length ran a tracery of script in silver. A moss of frost grew on it, born from the air’s touch, and delicate white feathers, turning to flakes and drifting down. They hesitated. Not for fear of it. In wonder at the beauty, the unworldly song of it, thing that should not be, could not be, existing in this place, this world.

  Jochiz grinned, misunderstanding hesitation.

  The sword was a blade, an edge, whatever it else it might be and might hold and it knew this, too, and in its forging was the severing of soul from soul, the unmaking of that alloy of human and Old Great God that was the bound devil in the world, and how little different was what stood before it, god and man in one—

  Jochiz came at them and Ahjvar wanted his own sword, wanted reach, but they had what they had and it was their dance—

  Though Ghu’s best tactic, he had told Ahjvar once and not entirely in jest, was to hide behind Ahj when he could not get in close to cut throats, preferably from behind. Or hamstring them. He-they went down to their knees, sliding, rolling, came up with Jochiz slashed and pitching forward, but it was not enough; the devil held himself together still, though he could not, it seemed, burn again into fire. They held him from that; they might yet take him that way, and have a dead wizard sent to the road with all his great and many sins upon him, an Old Great God loose and lost, to fade, they might hope, and die, withering in the world for which it was not meant…

  Gods he was fast, fast as Ahjvar, who was hurt, who was tiring. The black sword left cold in the air, struck, chill, to the marrow in its mere passing. Snatched the air from the lungs like deep frost on mountain height. Ahjvar swept up Ailan’s dropped short-sword to his recovering left hand, but it was still they who were beaten back, giving ground each stroke, some searing pain, some new wounding they had not noticed. The black sword bit as keen as glass, hip, ribs, and blood new-staining their left hand, which was Ahjvar’s own, to match the gore of their right, which was not.

  Ghu within him might hold flesh and bone to itself, what had once been bone and ash, and yet now the fire was burning high in Jochiz again, a frame and cage, he was become, and there would be no tiring him, no matter how he bled when they struck into fire, into flesh.

  “I never thought—” Jochiz said. He gasped. He fought for air. He bled. But still he spoke and pressed and the sword laid another touch, a bite of frost over the chest—

  “—that I might kill a god so, hand to hand. And I have your name, Nabban, and your man’s blood and what may I make of that, to take you and your land…and all the world lies open, once I am all that you are—”

  “You could never be anything that he is or ever was,” Ahjvar—it was most definitely Ahj, and a breathless snarl, and a lunge with the stabbing sword that made Jochiz reel back and fall—

  —Jochiz fell, like any faltering human, flat and stunned and bleeding, heart-wounded, and the ice of the black sword came crawling up his arm like ants—

  But he rocked to his feet again even as they swooped to cut again that throat, the shapes of death and binding a possibility, a hope, and they dodged back from what must have killed any man had it struck and for a moment paused, both alike, Jochiz and Nabban, a few breaths gasped.

  There must be an ending.

  I can take him with me. Let me go.

  No.

  You promised, Ghu.

  I was lying.

  You don’t lie.

  But he would, he would in this, not like this, not ever, to cut his own heart free to what should once have claimed it, what might no longer claim it, grown into something greater, deeper, god-soul enduring in the land—

  He did not think Ahjvar, even truly willing, which he was not, might take that road any longer, no more than any god of the earth might fling himself to the distant heavens and say, come untangle this mess that your kind has wrought in this world…

  And Jochiz laughed, lunging up, flesh, bone, spilling light. The black sword drove at them.

  Thunder cracked over the city and she was on her feet, and Mikki, and the Blackdog startled up out of the deep stillness that had held him much of the day, a baying bark that trailed off into a confused snarl, looking around, uncertain. He was the man, then, a hand on Mikki’s shoulders, braced, but weaponless, not even a knife.

  “Jochiz.” Holla-Sayan said.

  The runes Moth had built all these long weeks flared and burned as if traced in lightning, and were gone.

  Jochiz. All defences of the walls torn down, and Gurhan vulnerable. But Jochiz did not appear here among them, though the god stood by. Priests and priestesses from over the eastern ridge of the gnarled hill were running, some of them, the young and fleet, and street-guard with them for what that could do, for the cave and the most sacred sanctuary, as if by defending that they might yet save the god.

  Jochiz. He was—

  Old Great Gods damn—

  “Ahjvar,” she said, and her hand went to her belt, but her feather cloak was in the god’s sanctuary. She was on her feet and running, and Mikki came crashing down the hillside after her, snapping saplings, and the Blackdog after him.

  Gurhan was before them, but he said nothing, stepped aside from the cave’s entrance to let her pass. The cloak was flung with their other few things, there on a stone, and she caught it up, a mottled softness that was too light for its size, stirring faintly like weed in water as it lifted into the air.

  “Go to your folk,” she told the god. “Be with them. Find your strength in them and be their strength. He will not have you, I promise.”

  Gurhan—Gurhan bowed, and was—not gone, not in this place. But no longer a visible thing, only rock and tree and the deep, deep stone on which the city was founded, and its waters too.

  The light dimmed. Mikki, great bulk blocking the entrance.

  “Moth,” he said.

  “Move.”

  “Moth—Let him keep it, you said. He has Lakkariss. He can kill you. You. Vartu. Both and all of you.”

  The ground beneath them trembled. Stone slid. A breath-holding pause, and again it shook, violent shudders. A tree cracked, up the western ridge, and crashed down.

  “Gurhan,” Holla-Sayan said, warning. “Jochiz—” He sniffed the air like a dog. “Gods, Moth, Jochiz is here in the city.”

  “Cub, move and let me go.”

  “I was ill. I was weary and heartsick still and I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to know and—and after I still did not want to know and I let it slide and told myself later, later, and it was always later. You were late coming to me. So late. You left me in his hands a year and more around, Ulfhild, my princess, my wolf, and you did not do that without great need. I do trust that. I do.” His voice almost broke. “What do you mean to do?”

  She said nothing. What could she? But she stepped into him, arms around the neck, heavy again with
muscle, the deep fur, the warmth, the clean beast-smell of him, old oak leaves and earth, as if memory of the den lay in his pelt. Such warmth. Such strength to lean on, to lose herself in. To give herself to. Held, hard, to him, and if that was heartbeats, breaths of life for her, it was surely stealing them from the beloved of the god of Nabban and his faithful young man. But she held there regardless and felt the deep breath he heaved, the tremor that shook him.

  She took his head in her hands and kissed him, closed her eyes, open-mouthed, tasting the heat of him, the breathing, thrumming vital life. The sweet warmth. The urgent hunger, to have, to hold, to press close and closer yet, to make two so close to one as bodies could be and yet be two, souls distinct. A worship, a wonder.

  Broke from his hungry, desperate mouth—as if he might hold her there, forever—and he lowered his head, pressed his long face against her breast, and she held him still, face buried in his fur.

  “You were the best thing ever in Ulfhild’s life, Mikki,” she said, muffled, and if her voice shook, what did it matter. “In mine. Now let me go.”

  He backed away. A step. Two. And Styrma, good Storm, flicked his ears and stamped and nodded.

  “You were only ever a ghost,” she told the bone-horse. “You’ve served longer in this world than any wizard’s making should have endured.”

  Memory and an old skull, nothing more. He tossed his head and nickered.

  “Oh, go and run where you will, fool beast.”

  Met Holla-Sayan’s eyes. Said nothing.

  She couldn’t. She seized on Mikki again, holding hard, arms about his neck. Clung there, while he leaned against her, careful weight. Too long. Let him go and laid the feather-cloak to her shoulders. “You saved me, Mikki. You know you did. My dear heart, be well and never despair. Hold to joy. That gift you gave me.”

  “Moth…”

  Look after him, Blackdog.

  She flew.

  “Ulfhild!” he howled, and reached after her, rearing up on hind legs.

  Moth! No!

  She shut him out.

  A falcon plunging from the sky. Moth struck like the lightning, a tattered swirl of silk and feathers and pale hair unfurling between them. Sword met sword and the obsidian did not this time shatter Northron steel. Ahjvar reeled back, ended up down on one knee, bracing himself on the short-sword, breath dragging in his throat, smoking in air grown winter-cold, dry and painful. Ice growing, spreading along the cracks between the stones of the pavement.

  They kept some space between them, the two devils, but the black sword seemed almost to shiver, like a dog keen to leap. Did the silver lines shift and crawl? Change?

  “I told you to keep out of my way. You and your beast. I hope you had some pleasure out of him worth your ruin. You should have kept running.”

  “Should we? Where did you mean to stop? How far? Nabban? Pirakul? The south? The lands of my far ancestors beyond Pirakul? We never ran. We only went to choose our ground.”

  “Is that what you call it?” Jochiz laughed. “In that case you took your time, Vartu.”

  She flinched at that; Nabban saw it.

  “I’m here now.”

  “You did not have to be.”

  “Oh, but I did. Since the moment I woke in the far north, since the moment he cried out, the wolves of your necromancy pulling him down, I have been on my way here. Sien-Shava, I was putting myself from the world. I was sleeping…I would have faded out of all thought and memory. You called me back when you took Mikki.”

  She glanced back at Ahjvar, through him, into Ghu. Briefest inattention. Smiled, even as Sien-Shava Jochiz lunged forward. Met him in a clash and flurry of movement, of steel, silk, feathers, that ended with them locked together, the black sword forced up between them, and neither blade to bite.

  Ahjvar did not think the iron rings of her mail would turn the stone’s edge; Ghu knew so.

  Frost silvered her, whitened the dark hair of Jochiz, fringed his beard.

  “Lakkariss,” she said. “Shard of the cold hells and a rift to drag back what escaped. But we know that is a poet’s tale. We know the hells so, and the heavens. A tale, and a truth beyond words. But words have shaped Lakkariss for this world. And words have reshaped it. Time I completed them.”

  Jochiz was already breaking free, shoving her from him, but she turned and stood ready, laughing, as he came on in another rush, using the edge this time, swinging. Moth lowered her sword and sang.

  It cut the air. It resonated deep in the bones, and the stones beneath them shuddered. Words, maybe. They could not grasp the shape of them, not Ahjvar, not Ghu, not human ear nor god’s understanding. Music, voice, thought, a power shaping, a thing that lived in itself—

  The sword cut. That, they saw, even as they surged up again, too late, to do whatever it was they might have done to stop that blow. They saw the blood spray, the singer silenced, reeling back, and the silver script traced on the black blade turned crimson as storm sunset, drank, it seemed, that blood, that staining, burned in brief fury, and she was not falling but striking then, a two-handed blow that split his skull and she took her left hand free to catch Lakkariss falling by the blade, pinched it from the air and flipped it and stabbed left-handed then, and the air cracked in its wake and the song she had broken off echoed and re-echoed even as she fell, folding over, the silver lines running with Ulfhild’s blood, with Sien-Shava’s, smoking, frost in sun, burning into the air. They rose, words written in air. Souls? They made clouds, winter-fog dense, cold.

  God’s vision saw them die. Ulfhild, Sien-Shava, human souls torn away, dissolving into silver, into frost, no blessing, no road awaiting, though Ahjvar, Ghu, reached a hand, cried her name. Saw them die, Vartu, Jochiz, saw the fires annihilated, fed to the silver smoking frost, saw the flame of Vartu leap to meet what came even as it faded and Jochiz roiling, brief futile struggle to fight free. Lakkariss melting, ice in the sun, smoking, rising—

  Saw them gone, bone to ash to nothing but rising mist and light, sacrifice of blood and soul consumed in the making—

  The air tore, where frost and smoke, blood and silver and souls had in destruction made a way.

  Darkness beyond. The black between the stars. The lightless heart of stone. That which has no name.

  Heavens. Hells. Fissure growing wider. Road, he thought, Ahjvar did, felt the old pull of it, the shape, the need, but it touched and let him go; it was not his road, not any longer.

  Road. River. Dark wind, roaring free.

  Light. Darkness burned into white flame, into tongues of ice, into colours: silver, red, green, gold, blue, nacreous crawling light, spilling out, rising, streaking the sky. Twisting, clashing.

  The roads of the heavens were opened and the seals of the cold hells breached. The sun was setting, and the Old Great Gods and the devils of the cold hells poured into the world.

  On the mountainside, where the hill folk patrol camped fireless and cold above the ruins of the Shiprock, Nikeh cried out. Lia did. Orhan—a yell. Shielding eyes.

  Something—distant, far beyond Shiprock. Light. White. Green, red, gold—cold light, bursting the night. Sound. Thunder. Rising. Rising, rising, till Nikeh screamed and it rose higher through her screaming and into silence and the ringing of her ears, the searing after-image of the light in her eyes, sight and sound one pain, ebbing, but she could hear how almost, the sound that was no longer sound echoed and re-echoed, washing between the mountain heights.

  “Gurhan bless.” Lia’s voice was a child’s whimper, high and thin.

  “Old Great Gods defend us.” That was Orhan.

  Nikeh was silent then.

  Over Marakand, the cold fire burned the sky. It spilled to fill the valley between the mountains.

  She had dreamed a woman, once, whose body was washed through with such light.

  “No,” Ghu said. “This ends.”

  Ahjvar pushed himself to his feet. Ailan breathed, good. Life burned bright in him. He should gather him up off the cold stones…Ghu
wasn’t there. He had spoken himself. The world about was strange, over-bright, over-sharp, a construct cast in light like glass, like steel. The light of the Old Great Gods—so close, so distant.

  Old Great Gods, devils. There was no difference to be made between them. And beyond, within…

  A pressure, building. A river dammed.

  A frantic flying storm of starlings, caged—

  Now,Ghu said, and they reached, they spread their arms wide, inviting, and they reached—they were the world, and the world within them, god in man in god and the dreaming soul of the world finding its way to a voice that might speak, an eye that might see, at last. Come home.

  Invitation, not command. There was—they stared into the heart of what was not a sun, what seared the soul and not the eye, and there were no words, there was no image to hold, only—there was the stuff of life, of the world, the stuff of soul, and some souls sought refuge in the Gods, and some were ready, eager, long, long held away, and these heard, and answered.

  They opened themselves, a gateway, and the light poured into them, through them, he and Ghu, he and Ahjvar; they made of themselves a bridge, a road, a riverbed coursing with what they could not hold, being in the world and of the world, god made man made god…the world within the god, the soul that was the Soul, the great heart of all that was, that the Old Great Gods had bled away, little by little.

  The soul of the world is a wholeness, and it is not whole. That which should be of it, in it, is lost. The soul, the life. Not Ghu’s thought. Not Ahjvar’s. Not words. An understanding, a plea…it found its way into them all, and Gods trembled with it.

  The souls that sought healing and rest in the heavens. In time, they must return. They were a part of the world’s own soul. The world was wounded, when the heavens folded closed around them and barred their return.

  And the devils, too—severed, held apart. A deep wrong.