The Last Road

by K. Johansen

  There should be demons born of the earth in Nabban. There should be gods and goddesses and demons reborn into the west.

  The cold hells. Do you see? That was a whisper, a thousand voices, thoughts.

  There was a shifting within the light, a stirring as of storm. An urge to deny? To prevent?

  “Are we Jochiz, to be thieves of the soul?” Dotemon. Ahjvar’s mind made it Yeh-Lin’s very voice.

  A terrible yearning, a pain. Hands, heart reaching to enfold, to hold self to self, to make whole what is sundered.

  A division that should never have been made.

  The severed self that seeks its restoration.

  What is sundered must be whole.

  The Old Great Gods hold the world, the souls of the world. The guardians, in their awe and their wonder at what the soul of the world makes of itself in its passage through its self-knowing lives…But they too are of the world, of the soul of the world, apart and containing…

  But do not come into the world to walk among human-folk again. This is not your place.

  Light faded.

  Ahjvar was on his knees again, propping himself up with his hands on the stone, braced like a drunk.

  It was still there, the one who had been Yeh-Lin. A last figure of light, almost a woman’s shape. He couldn’t have said how he knew her, it, from any other.

  “Dotemon,” he said.

  Yes, the God said.

  “Sort it out, old woman.”

  Do you think we move in the breaths you measure, dead king? Trust me.

  And then Dotemon too was gone.

  Mikki sat on the steps above the plaza, naked, human in the night. Ulf-hild’s sword across his knees, finger tracing the runes on the blade.

  There had been nothing else to save of them. Ash. Fragments of steel and bone. She had made of herself and Sien-Shava a great pyre, in the end. But her sword had survived.

  “What does it say?” Ahjvar asked.

  Past midnight, and the moon was rising over the roofs. Torches burned on the pillars of the library’s long arcade. Down in the plaza, a patrol of street-guard passed, lanterns swinging, and then a pair of couriers on wearily clopping ponies. The senate palace was ablaze with light. Captains and wardens summoned; there had been much traffic early in the night. Quiet, now. There was a still an army encamped in the pass, broken and confused though it might be. Stories of madness, of the seers and highest of the priests struck down with apoplexy, left mumbling imbeciles, were coming to the city. Yeh-Lin’s spies, abandoning the army for good, brought news. Work-gangs of Westgrasslanders were deserting wholesale and vanishing down into the desert, taking the better part of the camel-lines with them. Ambassador Ilyan Dan was in the senate. He had been sending pages out to the Rihswera, who would not come in to speak to them with the authority of his god. Reports, and requests for advice.

  What could Ahjvar say that the ambassador could not put in better words? No slaughter of the broken and confused, the god-bereft and starving. Show mercy, and the truth of the gods. Gurhan was there, to say all that was needed. He had sent the latest weary child back with that word—whatever Gurhan says, Nabban affirms. His land. Hear him.

  A great light from the sky. The Old Great Gods, descending at the last, to save the world from the devil who would have destroyed its gods. The folk who had witnessed, who had not been under their beds or deep in their cellars in terror—there was nothing but awe. Wonder. No understanding of what they had seen.

  The way of humankind. Moth, Yeh-Lin…old tales. If they came into this, in after years, it would be as devils, destroyed by the Old Great Gods.

  Not how it should be.

  He just wanted to go home. God-bereft. No warm voice, now, in his head, no words not his own in his mouth, the feeling gone, that he was held, that a hand lay on, within, his own. Just an exhaustion that struck bone-deep. And he ached, throbbed, with wounds half-healed. Rags of his shirt glued to him. He’d shed his coat, too fouled and shredded to bother with.

  He was cold, and his head ached.

  He sat down by the demon. Pain there, unwounded, that cast his into nothing.

  Ailan, huddled at a little distance on a lower step, looked up. Looked away. He should send the lad to the ambassador. A gift. Or at least order him to the Nabbani house to find himself a bed.

  Touched the blade, one finger, drawing the demon’s attention. Wanting to make him speak. To make the world real.

  “I don’t know the runes.”

  “Kepra,” Mikki said, voice low, hardly audible. “Its name is Kepra. Keeper. She brought it from the Drowned Isles. Keeper. The Wolf made me for Hravnsfjell.” He turned it. “Strength. Courage. Wisdom.” Looked up, met Ahjvar’s eyes. Stood the sword between them. The hilt was gilded, studded with garnets. A royal sword. “On the cross-guard, here, it says—a prophecy, a curse. She never told which she believed. She made jokes, that it was a charm against rust and breaking. Until the last road, and the last dawn.”

  “Ah.” He could think of nothing more to say. I’m sorry? He’d want to take a man’s head off for that, were it him. Ghu would—not need to say anything. Only to be there, so that Mikki was not alone.

  The Blackdog lay behind them, like a watchdog overlooking all the plaza. He stirred, sat up, and came down to sit on Mikki’s other side, battered human.

  “Make a song,” he said.

  “She was the skald. She should have been. Where her heart lay, always.”

  “The first time ever I saw you, you were singing. A wedding in At-Landi. Northrons come south on the rivers. Some cousin of Varro’s, I think.”

  “Oh.”

  “Make a song of the truth, before it’s all forgotten. So that she’s not forgotten. What she made of herself matters.”

  What Ahjvar had been thinking. “Yeh-Lin, too.”

  “She went to the west—Moth said.”

  “He killed her there,” Ahjvar said. “We took her home. She died in Nabban. But first she struck him down, even if it was not to the death.”

  They waited. He told them. A wake. A remembering.

  Wondered where Nikeh was, and how he might tell her. Whether she had ever known Yeh-Lin’s true nature.

  “Moth had been writing the lays of the Drowned Isles, before we came south,” Mikki said, after. As if it followed naturally.

  It did.

  “That was when we came to find Ghatai. She sent what she had done to the royal hall at Ulvsness. I don’t know what ever became of them. I don’t think she ever finished.”

  The night wore away in such small memories, passed slow between them like coloured stones, turned in the hand, while the moon rose. More messengers went out from the senate palace, and some of the wardens, soldiers about them. Faint noise from the city. Militias moving.

  Mikki fell into silence. A deep breath that came out choked. Holla-Sayan put an arm around him. Ailan was asleep, coiled up on his lower step like a little dog. Like a dog, he whimpered and twitched himself awake, jerked upright on a cry of pain, looking around in nightmare terror. Found Ahjvar and sighed, which brought another whimper with it, and eyes squeezed tight a moment.

  “Ailan.” Ahjvar held out a hand. Ailan came up the steps, stiffly, face tight with pain, breathing too deliberate, shallow, and sat again, one step down. Lugging a bundle with him, something wrapped in his scarf. All the rest they’d had with them left in the plaza. Probably to be looted for relics of the presence of the Old Great Gods. The holy kettle…That had been a decent crossbow.

  Ailan’s shivering ran through him in waves. His teeth chattered loudly.

  Ahjvar put a hand on his head. Cold. Pain. The burns were bad. Weeping. Bruises would heal on their own, but that…He shouldn’t have left the man lying there all the night. His responsibility. His…gewdeyn. Spear-carrier. Follower. He could…feel the raw flesh, the blistered swollen matter that threatened a death-carrying rot, the screaming nerves. What wizardry might do, and god’s blessing…in mountain ash, cypress, white-b
lossomed rose. Protection, healing, purification. After a moment Ailan let out a long and easier breath, leaned against his knee, like a little child, and his shivering eased. Ahjvar held his head there and let him lie.

  And then Mikki was weeping, choking with it, howling, and Holla-Sayan knelt, holding him, rocking him. One might wish elm for peace, cypress for healing…but that was a long, hard road.

  Friendship, most of all.

  Could reach, find the Blackdog’s mind. A strange turmoil there. A strange creature, no peace in him, under that surface of calm. Not anything Ahjvar could ease, or carry. Not anything Holla-Sayan was asking for help with. You’ll stay with him?

  Yes.

  Gurhan, then, walking quietly, as if he had come down from his hill, though perhaps he had only taken physical form here, coming down the steps. Crouched down, to put a hand on the demon.

  Weeping must end, and did. They held him, the Blackdog and the god of the city, until he could look up, wiping his face on his arm.

  “Come back to the hill,” Gurhan said. “Come into the stone and trees, away from here. Rest.”

  “Ya,” Mikki said, with a kind of weary obedience. Looked at the sword still in his hand.

  “Yours broke,” he said to Ahjvar. His voice was gone to a thick croak, very quiet, too, but Ailan stirred and raised his head.

  “I have it,” he said, and he did, too, that bundle in his scarf. “Can a smith—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Ahjvar said. “I’ve Ghu’s knife. For the road.”

  “Oh.”

  And what did it cost Ailan, dragging that weight in his condition? “But thank you. It was a good thought. When we get home, maybe the empress’s swordsmith can try.” He did not think the steel, the sword itself, could be saved. Did not think it would be wise to try, broken on that unearthly edge. But the ancient hilt, and a new Nabbani blade…well, maybe. Maybe someone else might carry it, someday.

  Ailan had gained a little height, he was sure, and certainly some breadth across the shoulders, since he picked him up in Star River Crossing.

  “You use a Northron sword,” Mikki said. “Take Kepra.”

  “Mikki—”

  “I’m no swordsman. Take it. A demon made it, the Wolf-Smith of Ulvskerrig. Take it to serve your god.” Mikki pushed it to him. “Its last road isn’t mine.”

  The weight was easy in his hand. Felt—like it belonged.

  “Good,” Mikki said, and used Ahjvar’s shoulder to heave himself to his feet.

  The eastern sky was thinning, stars growing pale. He was a bear before he reached the top of the stairs. The god of Marakand and the Blackdog went either side of him, close, just touching. Gurhan looked back once. Gave Ahjvar the shadow of a bow.

  “Come on,” Ahjvar said, in the Praitannec that there were only three of them left in the world to speak, now that Yeh-Lin was gone, and Ailan’s was still hit and miss. “The ambassador’s house. Walk that far, and then you can rest.”

  “Will they still come?”

  “The Westrons? Who knows. But they won’t pass the walls if they do. Leave them to the Marakanders and Gurhan’s mercy, poor lost folk. Not our land. We’re done.”

  He hoped. He wanted to go home.

  Touched the necklace at his throat, but it was gone. Burnt away in the fires of Jochiz. Well, the binding that mattered between them was not something even a devil had broken, and if he carried no elusive road of wizardry any longer…there was still the long true road, and it ran east, into the dawn.

  Something rubbing, inside his shirt, caught against his cinching of his belt. He searched, like a man chasing fleas. Seashells, ash-stained.

  Laughed.

  “What happens to me?” Ailan asked, low-voiced, “when you go home?”

  “You want to stay here?”

  “No.”

  “Good. The empress can use a man who speaks half a dozen languages and knows the lands between us and Marakand. Ghu can. A good man, and a brave one, who keeps his wits about him and watches the world.”

  “I only speak…three?” He was counting on his fingers, frowning. Not noticing, how the pain no longer hammered him down. “Does the Marakander Nabbani count separate from Taren?”

  “I’m not done with you yet.”

  “Oh.” Ailan considered that. “Good?”

  Ahjvar put an arm around his shoulders, comradely, and because he might have pushed the healing along a little and turned back the tide of fever, but Ailan was still stumbling, nearly dropping. “Long road home. Good you learn the way.”

  In the sanctuary of the god’s cave, Mikki had fallen into the deep sleep of exhausted grief. Holla-Sayan sat by him. Didn’t want him waking to find himself alone. There would be more weeping yet, and anger, and the deadly dull weight that pulled one down beyond all caring. Gurhan went out again among his folk, with the priests and the priestesses. The voice of mercy, of reason. The army of the All-Holy, in piecemeal confusion, offered its surrender. Some parts of it. Rebellions of its conscripts and converts made small massacres among the red priests and the officers. Some of the faithful fled back down the pass from the imagined pursuit of an army of devils. But most were grateful to lay down arms. To be fed.

  “There is a god in you,” Gurhan said, and Holla-Sayan, who had slipped into a weary sleep himself, sat up. Afternoon, already. Sun bright beyond the curtain of leaves.

  He met the god’s eyes, considering.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “I know. I tried—we tried. I wasn’t sure. Jochiz was working against him. We were desperate—Sayan and I. The dog, too. Sarzahn.” It felt strange, to give it a name. Strange, but—welcome. “I thought we had failed, the dog and I. Lost Sayan even as we tried to hold him. But…I can’t hear him now. Yet I think he called to me. I think he was calling, all the time I was lost under Jochiz’s binding.”

  “You’ve swallowed him,” Gurhan said.

  “No. Jochiz was trying to. We needed to hide him. Sera of the Red Desert was carried to the Narvabarkash, sleeping in a stone.”

  “Or he has swallowed you.”

  “No.”

  “I do think so, brother,” said Gurhan gently. “He may be sleeping in you, dormant and dreaming, but he is—not to be so easily disentangled as a goddess from a stone of her spring. What was Sayan is…alive within you. A potential, to be reborn. You are—”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I do think it took all three of you,” Gurhan said. “Willing. You are—when I look at you, when I try to see, what lies beneath…not a tangle. A braid of light. Like what Ahjvar and his god have become, I think. Man, the broken remnants of the one called Sarzahn—and the god, coiled within you. Waiting to wake.”

  “In his own land.”

  “In you.”

  A deep breath, then. He shut his eyes. Sarzahn was quiet. No pain. No rage, the dog’s barely-leashed anger. Only…a settled certainty. In himself.

  A wholeness.

  And the sure knowledge. He needed to go home.

  EPILOGUE

  …over the months following the Battle of Marakand

  They were waiting. No one said for what. Not all the folk of Kinsai would leave Lissavakail with the first caravan, and little of the library, though the chests were stacked ready in storerooms of the island temple. The first party went only to visit the ruins, to see what was left and decide what might rise again.

  On the shores of a river bereft of its goddess.

  Only Iarka grew impatient, but she had most urgent need to go. Restless, pacing, as if that would help. Swelling visibly, Jolanan thought. Seven, heading for eight months.

  “I want to be in my own land by midsummer day. I want the river. She needs the river.”

  “We’ll go,” Jolanan told her. “The three of us, if we have to.” It was on her way home. Find Reyka’s band. Find Lazlan and Tibor. Find what had become of the folk of the Jayala’arad, the first to fall to the Westron army. News, swift messengers, down the caravan road. Dreams of seers. The Al
l-Holy, the devil Jochiz, fallen. Destroyed, and much of his army with him, and its wreckage—to be pitied, Attalissa said.

  No one thought the tribes of the desert were likely to view it so.

  And if Jochiz had fallen—

  There had never been any word of Holla-Sayan.

  Rifat, always at Iarka’s side, nodded. “Alone if we have to. But Attalissa says, wait, just a little longer.”

  Wise to go in a caravan. There would be brigands, lawless folk, desperate, even if the broken army of the west were not straggling home.

  “Wait for what?”

  “She doesn’t say. I can’t see. Can you?”

  “No. Only—something. In the mountains. And I don’t care, I want to be travelling, before it’s too late. You’re going to have to lug me along like baggage as it is. I hate this. I wish we laid eggs.”

  Which meant they all ended up laughing, a bit desperate.

  Three, when the time came, or four? Tashi had followed and had stayed in Lissavakail, when Jolanan went up into the mountains again, not gone back to his own people in the Narvabarkash. She was glad of him. Five. Rifat’s little brother Besni was not going to be separated from him again.

  Jolanan left Iarka and Rifat and went out from the town, restless as much as Iarka and certainly more mobile. Tashi joined her, with a dog at his heels. They climbed up one of the steep paths that spread out up the mountainsides above the track that led around the lake and down to the desert. A view, there. Endless peaks rising, white-cloaked. The lake held blue below, green-fringed now with spring’s advance. The town, stone-built and mud-plastered, tinged golden by the morning light. Washing blowing on rooftops. Tashi didn’t say anything. Neither did she. Found a boulder big enough for two to sit and watch.

  Restlessness stilled. Like waiting, watching the cattle. Tashi’s hand lay by hers, and then touched, questioning. She laced her fingers through his.

  Hardly surprised when she heard footsteps on the stony path behind. Looked to see Attalissa, a physical presence, striding up to them, dressed as one of her priestesses, but her hair swinging in a caravaneer’s long braids. A girl in her teens, she looked this morning. Smiled and raised a hand in greeting, but then her gaze shifted beyond.