The Leopard (Marakand)

by K V Johansen

  Smoke. But there would be a kitchen somewhere within the temple grounds, and the night air in this hollow was damp, carrying scents. It was only kitchen-smoke. Looking down into the ravine, he could see the paleness of a night-mist rising.

  She stirred, and it wasn’t the kitchen fires any longer.

  Not yet.

  Bells rang. Ahjvar flinched, though he had been expecting them. It was only the city curfew. Sunset, officially, but the temple lay lower than the city, and darkness pooled here earlier.

  In addition to the gleams showing through the carved screens opposite, there was a little glimmer of light in the hospice, a wink of it moving past shuttered windows, as though someone carried a candle up on the fourth storey, into one room and then the next and the next, then vanishing, so maybe the wine-seller’s rumours had been worth the groping. He had hooks and rope and had planned to get in by a high window, but the arcade roof was not even his own height below. Ahjvar kept a grip on the edge of the wall as he tested it, thinking of the missing galleries, ready to pull himself back up if it were too rotten to bear his weight, but it seemed sound enough. The scent of smoke abated. He could spend days stalking, scouting, planning routes, learning his quarry’s routines and customary defences, and she would wait. She enjoyed it. Like a huntsman taking pride in his hounds, perhaps. It let him choose, anyway. Made him the guilty party. It was still cleaner.

  He tested the shutter of the nearest window. Solid. They were meant to open inward, no hinges on the outside that he could tell, but there was no give at all in the centre: not merely latched, which would be easy enough, but perhaps wedged shut? No sound within. He moved along, trying them. All firmly fastened, even the one in the centre, which came down to what had been the gallery floor and had functioned as a door, once upon a time. Keeping people out, or in? Out, and probably the shutters of the higher windows, which did not have a convenient thieves’ walkway beneath them, would merely be latched and he could slide them open with a thin knife. If they were keeping someone in, though, even the less-accessible would be more permanently sealed. The rumour of the Voice’s madness made him consider that not utterly unlikely, and there was no sound at all within, no light. A warm summer night, not one against which to close the shutters.

  He tried a small noise, a rap on the wood with the hilt of a knife. No stir of a disturbed sleeper. He slid the blade up, found a latch and flipped it, found another, and still, as he had thought, the door did not open. Near the bottom, and again at the top, an immovable block. Barred? Nailed? If so, it seemed nothing that he could move either up or aside with the knife. He retreated along the arcade roof to the outer wall again, and pulled himself back up, considering. He had time. It didn’t have to be tonight; he hadn’t planned on that. The hag slumbered again, easy, quiet. He felt utterly alive, every nerve and sinew alert, and the slow weight of the bleak years burnt away like mist in the morning. The hospice’s river-doors might be barred, or merely locked and forgotten. Worth checking. Back down the wall, feeling his way carefully in the dark, remembering his route, then along the edge of the foundation, feeling over the wall for traces of the old stairs, the old landings, whatever had been there that would mark a door above him. He remembered seeing one, yes, and then he felt it, where the stonework of stairs still clung in broken fragments. Enough to climb, warily, till his fingers pressing through the thick clinging vine—grape, he was certain—found wood instead of stone.

  The door’s hinges were on the inside. The latch-handle was still in place, and there was a keyhole, so it might not be barred within. Crouching on a protruding nub of stone like a cormorant hunched on its rock over the sea, Ahjvar went through his bundle by feel, eyes closed. There was nothing to see, anyhow, in the black night, not even starlight to gleam on metal, clouds rolling down from the mountains. Closing the eyes brought greater sensitivity to the fingers, he always found. Something—a grappling hook—slid and slipped, and grabbing blind he caught it before he lost it clattering down the stones of the once-riverbank. Found a set of cast bronze hooks and wrenches, long-stemmed, delicate, but heavy enough to press the weight of an iron lock without bending, strong enough not to break when twisted. Chose those which seemed the best fit for the size of the lock’s hole and felt his way into it. Seized up, he decided, not surprisingly. He had oil and ink-brushes in several sizes. He tried to sit without thinking, without feeling, with an angler’s patience, waiting for the oil to do its work, to break the seal of rust and float the dust free. He usually could be still and calm once he was about such work. The concentration brought a sort of peace that he only found elsewhere with Ghu’s arm over him, with Ghu’s breath in his hair. He’d never been one to find other men particularly attractive, but Ghu was—a comfort. Leave it at that. The Old Great Gods knew he hadn’t let himself have the faintest glimmering of desire for anyone, woman or man or even Ghu, since he surfaced from the madness to find Miara dead, strangled, and the spells she and he both had thought would hold him, would kill him—Great Gods, such a thing to ask of the woman who loved you—sloughed off, shattered, and gone to ash.

  It was not wizardry had destroyed Miara’s spells; neither he nor she had that to call on now, by Catairanach’s blessing, the one mercy—or piece of common sense—the goddess had shown. It did not balance that no wizardry seemed to have a hold on her, though. If he could ever find a way to kill a god . . .

  But he was fretting after Ghu despite telling himself he would not, and if he did not find that stillness, that quiet hunter’s centre, he was going to make mistakes, and fools would try to kill him, and more people would die. None of whom would be he, no matter how he suffered. Even the cage in Sea Town, when they’d taken him quite justly for the murder of some poor sailor . . . he ought to have nightmares about that, but he didn’t, didn’t remember much of it. He’d been willing to see how long it really could take him to die, but she had risen, someone must have come too close . . . the Tzian clan-fathers had thought a man who didn’t seem capable of dying could have his uses. That set him on this road. They were all dead now, with one thing and another. Him, mostly. They’d managed to fail to hang him when he started to scare them more than their rivals did; bad luck, ill chance, or a miracle in the failed knot. That was after they’d found he couldn’t be poisoned. Made very sick and angry, yes, but not poisoned, not to death.

  Even the brightest stars were veiled, and the night was not cooling off as one expected in the mountains. The first whisper of storm? The key-hooks again, a slight give, maybe. More oil. He gave it as long as it took him to silently recite the alphabet of the trees, with the three sacred blessings of each letter’s namesake as the Praitannec wizards Over-Malagru reckoned them, asserting some discipline over his wandering mind, and then the hooks moved, the thin wrench was able to turn. The lock clunked, loud enough to make him freeze motionless, listening. Nothing stirred.

  The door might, of course, also be barred.

  It wasn’t, though he had to give it a hard shove. The hinges creaked.

  Another silent waiting, with no stir. He rolled everything up again, including his cloak, and belted on his sword properly. Even if he told himself he was only scouting this night to find if the Voice were here at all, there were still Red Masks to consider. He tried to do as little damage as possible to the vine, weaving his way in like a ferret.

  He was in a fairly broad passageway, Ahjvar judged, feeling along either wall. Two doors to one side, one to another. Two opened stiffly into rooms that smelt, like the passage, stale. Windowless. The other led to a descending stair from which a cold, damp air arose. He didn’t venture down. The passage ran to another door, which did not squeak, and beyond the air was better. There was even light. He edged out cautiously, but it was only a silver lamp sitting in a wall-niche: some night-light, which at least told that the building was in use, and that people would not be unexpected in this—entry hall? Maybe. Double doors, unbarred. He tried one, and it opened smoothly. A courtyard beyond, not the same one
on which he’d gazed down earlier, a dark hedge running along the buildings that framed it. So . . . he could have gone around and come in the front door. Right. It didn’t seem to be guarded, but it was overlooked by buildings that showed here and there a glimmer of light, and lamps burned at this door and at an archway opposite. Visitors might be expected? He left the lit areas, found more disused rooms, all smelling of dust or mould. Some were furnished, simple bedframes stripped of mattress and blankets, jumbled anyhow, shoved out of the way. He thought for a moment he had trodden on bone, stooped to pick it up and found broken crockery. He felt over the window. A lath had been nailed along the sill to keep the shutters from being swung inwards. He shook them. They did not rattle, but the wood felt old, dry, rain-damaged. He could smash through them any time noise ceased to matter. Good to know.

  But the lamps were lit for something, for someone. Finally he found stairs and started up. Lamps burned in wall-recesses at every turning, polished brass or silver, not clay, and the oil was scented, an incongruity with the abandoned rubbish below. It was the fourth floor on which he had seen the moving light, but Ahjvar checked each as he came to it, listening, smelling, wary for the faintest gleam of illumination, before he ever opened any door. The second-storey rooms were empty, as were those of the third, except for one, which was scattered with wooden chests and lacquered boxes. It smelt strongly of mice and mouldering cloth. The fourth floor, then.

  The central passageway of the fourth floor, when he cautiously let himself out onto it, was carpeted, silent, and well-lit. It felt lived-in. He opened doors more warily, no need to go in and feel his way around, with the puddles of light shed by the passage lamps. Empty. A storeroom, but a neat and tidy one, clearly not abandoned. A . . . library? A wall that was floor to ceiling with what looked like nest-boxes, anyway, each filled with scrolls, and another wall with shelves of codices, a table of waxed tablets for notes and drafts, paper and reed-pens and pots of Westron ink, a tall writing-desk by the window. He went in. These shutters pulled open easily. He looked down on the mist-filled ravine. The taller trees made floating dark islands above it, and moonlight turned the fog to a flowing ghost-river. He closed the shutters, as the breeze threatened the orderly papers on the table.

  A woman’s wail checked him in the doorway as he would have slid out into the passage. He stepped back and closed it to a crack, keeping an eye to it, dagger in hand. Wordless, the cry rose to a howl like that of the newly and suddenly bereaved, helpless, without hope of comfort.

  The door across from him opened. Two women hurried out, both in white nightrobes, the younger struggling into a grey caftan, the elder shielding the flame of a lamp with her hand. They pattered barefoot down the corridor to a farther room on the ravine side, and the elder, with a key on a long cord around her neck, unlocked a door.

  “Revered One? Revered Lilace, Voice, what’s the matter?”

  He felt the satisfaction of the lock turning over. The wine-seller’s tale had been truth. The Voice lived in the old hospice. But locked in. A prisoner of the temple, or mad?

  Either way, he thought, not a power to make war, murder queens, and steal a kingdom. Not the fit object for Catairanach’s vengeance. Not his place to point that out. He was no champion, whatever the goddess said, to question his king as was any free Praitan’s right and a lord’s duty. An assassin of the Five Cities with a commission did not protest that a particular killing was bad policy. And the goddess had promised him an ending in return for this. So. Though she had demanded others, too, and he might serve damned Catairanach and his—her—folk, better if he found, afterwards, who truly set the temple’s course and dealt with them as might the Leopard, if not an honourable champion of the duina.

  “I will go,” a voice wailed. “I will go, I will go, I will go now, oh, spare the child, don’t heed her do not heed me I will not—I will have youth I will have beauty I will have the dancer the orphan girl to be my daughter my child my beloved my own my beautiful queen and he is come for me let him come let me go . . .”

  The voice trailed off into sobbing once more, and another said, “Set it down, when she speaks, set it down.”

  “But Dur, she’s said all that before, this afternoon, in the pulpit.”

  “Even subtle differences can have significance. Go fetch a tablet, girl, and set it down. Always bring a tablet. You’ll have to learn that, if you want to keep this position.”

  The younger woman hurried out—and where else was she going to find a writing-tablet but in this library?

  Now or later. This had been scouting. He had more than half meant to return to the ravine, to plan his way once he knew the place. To draw it out over days. Odds were the priestess would fling open the door, dash in, dash out, never see him if he kept still in the corner behind it.

  Great Gods, he didn’t ask for mercy, just let there be an end to this. A few more murders and an end.

  Ahjvar caught her as she darted in, a little slip of a thing, hand over her mouth. She struggled and bit him but, pinned against the wall, couldn’t get herself free. He slashed the thin cotton of her night-robe with the dagger in his other hand, then ripped the whole hem off and stuffed it in her mouth to gag her, tying it with the sash of her caftan, which he dragged free one-handed, forcing her to the floor. More or less sitting on her, both hands free again, he tore further strips of the night-robe and bound her hand and foot, propped her in the far corner, comfortable as she could be, and left her with her caftan decently wrapped over her naked legs for her modesty. Sheathed the dagger and went swiftly, then, to the door, shutting it quietly behind him on her terrified eyes.

  The elder priestess—nursemaid or secretary or perhaps both—had not yet called in impatience to hurry her on.

  In the Voice’s apartment, the lamp burned on a low table, surrounded by cushions in the fashion for desert dining. The room’s carpet muffled his footsteps. There was a bed, high and ornately carved in the Five Cities style of fifty years ago, all animal grotesques and squinting faces peering out of foliage. The shutters were open, but the window was barred. The Voice, surely the Voice, an elderly woman of desert ancestry, brown-skinned, black-robed, tall and gaunt, white hair the dingy yellow of old cotton all in flyaway wisps, knelt on the floor by the bed, rocking her body back and forth.

  “It will be done it will be done it will it will I do not will I did not see I see I see him now I will not will have him take her let her go she is done she is finished she fails she is yours I will have youth oh let me go let me go let me go—”

  Old Great Gods have mercy. Spittle bubbled at the corner of her mouth, and the priestess crouching before her, hands on her shoulders, did not move to wipe it away but merely said, in an echo of Ghu’s talking to horses and nightmare-mad fools tone, but with all the kindness worn away, “Speak more slowly, Revered Voice, I need to remember your words till the clerk returns. Who do you see?”

  The Voice’s dark eyes glanced aside to his and what was almost a smile twisted her face. “Now I will escape you,” she whispered. Her rocking stilled, hands, writhing and fluttering, settled to her lap. “Now, now, now, you cannot keep me now not now not here but oh why oh why oh why my lady where is she where is she where are you?”

  “Mina, what kept you? I’ll set down what you’ve missed—”

  The priestess climbed stiffly to her feet, a hand held out for the tablet even as she turned. Ahjvar was already crossing the room. He punched her, hard below the ribs, before her mouth was halfway open on a cry. Too hard, maybe, for an ageing woman, when a blow like that could lay out senseless a well-muscled man in his prime. He caught her as she crumpled, lowered her to the floor; she still breathed, anyhow. The Voice continued to gaze up at him.

  “I’m tired,” she whispered. “Did you know she is mad? The Voice is mad, the Lady is mad, the city is blind, and you should kill her too. Someone should.”

  That sounded halfway sane.

  “You should be quick,” she added. “Dead king of the Duina
Catairna, she sees you, she dreams the Lady dreamt she sees you she wants you she says no gods but the Lady in Marakand and you brought him here I see him I dream him if she does not no wizards in Marakand no powers in Marakand she eats wizards so you will be hers she will make you hers no champion but hers and you will be high king under the empress of Marakand and she will feed the death that lives in you on her enemies on the enemies of Marakand on the wizards of the tribes and the cities will fall but we will stand against the west that is coming the death that is coming, the sword that is coming out of the north but he will destroy her tell her the west is death is—No—we will build the fortress here and hold the east and he will break against us against the swords of the tribes against the fleets of my cities against my king who cannot die who carries death who—” She screamed abruptly and bit her own arm, wide-eyed, rocking again. “Let me go!”

  He had stood, shocked, when he had let nothing of this victims stay him, distract him, move him, not in long years. He crossed to her in a stride, with the thin waxed strangler’s cord in hand.

  “I am sorry for the girl, though,” he thought she said. She reached to clutch not her throat but his hands, not struggling, holding them as if to make sure he didn’t leave her, till her fingers grew slack and fell away, and she uncoiled. She embraced the death, the torn moment when earth touched the road of the heavens, and rose stronger, and the fire felt like it would split his bones, but she fell away like the slumping dead priestess, like a sated snake, to sleep. A little while.

  Ahjvar didn’t die. He hadn’t really expected to. Hope had gone to ash long ago. Anyway, Catairanach wanted more than the one. And the Lady had known her servant was about to die. He ran for the door, drawing sword and dagger, but they were already crossing the threshold, two priests in red armour, faces hidden by masked helmets, naked swords in hand. A third came behind them, armed with a white staff. An eerie light crept over them, like slow lightning, sullen red.