The Leopard (Marakand)

by K V Johansen

  Thirty Red Masks. Perhaps she should not send so many away, but she wanted the Duina Catairna settled, not breaking out in new pockets of rebellion every time her back was turned. Finish it, leave them broken, too terrified of Marakand’s Lady to dare further resistance, leave the six other kingdoms kingless if possible, if their rulers had joined the high king as they should. Weakened by her divine terror embodied in the Red Masks, the Praitannec warriors would be easy prey for the militias of Marakand, to teach them their business, build their nerve, before she turned her gaze to the Five Cities and the fleets of the coast.

  Thirty Red Masks, ten patrols of temple guard—fifty men—under the new lieutenant of the first company, and a young priest greatly in love with his Lady, Revered Arhu, named the Lady’s Voice in Praitan, with an appropriate handful of attendants. Not enough, counted as bodies, to make much difference in Praitan and a lot of bother and clutter for her Red Masks to have trailing after them. The Red Masks were all she really need send, but for the look of the thing, for her captain’s honour, she wanted a larger escort. She had ordered the commander of the guard to choose men who could ride, and Arhu came of a caravaning family; he knew, she hoped and had made clear she expected of him, how to travel swift and light. Her captain of Red Masks, she told him, had orders to leave behind any who could not keep up, living or dead, as seemed right to him. She should have left some of the Red Masks their voices, to obviate the need for Arhu, but though she meant to discard Ketsim, grown irritatingly ambitious, the men and women who had followed him were still of use. Someone had to speak to them for her, and her own lack of foresight had ensured the Red Masks couldn’t do so.

  The horse of her champion sweated and stamped, jerking its head against the servants who held its bridle. Her own horse was brought up as well. She would ride with them as far as the gate, to see them on their way and send them east with her blessing, as the Lady of Marakand ought.

  They looked a small company, three abreast, silent. Ominously silent. Did not the priests wonder why the Red Masks never made use of the dining hall and the bath-house, why no servants attended them in their barracks, not even to sweep the floors, why nothing was ever drawn from the treasury for their provision, except the entries in the account-books for their armouring and the red cloth of their uniforms? Zora had wondered it. Even if they, humble ascetics that they were, did their own mending and cleaning, ate frugally, and did their own cooking, there should have been some accounting, some trail to follow, of bread and vegetables at the very least, some smoke rising from a kitchen in the forbidden barracks. Zora had spent a furtive festival day, ostensibly ill with a flux, going through account-rolls in the empty office of the temple bursar. Not a sack of meal or an onion had gone to the Red Masks’ use since the order was founded.

  Zora had had no one to tell. If she had been wise, and not a child confused, loyal to her unfortunate father’s diseased fears, Hadidu and Nour could have used that information, used a spy within the temple—

  No.

  The soldiers and priests behind tried to be silent, gratifyingly sensitive to her mood. She smiled at them, remote and austere. Now it was time to ride. She took four Red Masks as her own escort, to see her back through the city, and a double patrol of temple guard as well, for the look of the thing. The priests who had turned out to see them off she dismissed. They would only slow her down, puffing along at the Red Masks’ heels.

  The city was not yet stirring and the streets were clear. Even the professions permitted to keep the second curfew, two hours after sunset, had no licence to be abroad before dawn. Only a patrol of street guard near the gateway between Templefoot and Fleshmarket Wards disturbed the echoing silence, falling to their knees in adoration as she passed. She smiled at them, looked back to see them rising, whispering, eyes wide. They had seen their Lady. For a moment she thought she saw something moving, away down the street near the mouth of a dark lane, but while she blinked and frowned she realized it was only a dog, scrawny and pale, standing ghostlike in the shadows, staring after them. Her champion turned to look back, too.

  She regretted—she did not. She put the night from her mind. There was time enough. Later. Better to send him away now, to deal with Ketsim. One thing at a time. But her champion worried her. The mad and hungry soul bound wormlike within him, echo of herself, no, not that, she was never that, she was different, and she no longer hid within the goddess of the well . . . But he was warm. She held him, she had killed him, and he had not died. Useful. Dangerous. It made no difference. Made him different, valuable, made him the father of kings, yes, of emperors, and she was not some foolish virgin girl to shriek and mew and shrink from doing what was so eminently right and meant. But I am, we are. Silly child. She smiled to herself. And we are not his. We will never be his again. When he comes again, the Malagru will rise in a wall of fire against him, and he shall never pass beyond.

  East Ward was the easternmost corner of the city, but it ended at sheer cliff. Fleshmarket was protected mostly by cliff, but at the southernmost side dropped down and Drovers’ Gate let out onto a road that wandered away southerly into the foothills. There was no road that turned north and east to join the caravan road; the ravine lay between, and before it a steep fall of bare, stony hillside, but there was a track, and her captain could get a horse down it and over the ravine, she was certain. Arhu and the living men would have to do as well, or be disgraced before they ever started. They would cross the ravine and take mounts at the fortress of the Eastern Wall. She had sent her orders in the night, several hours ago. The street guard commander of the Eastern Wall would have had plenty of time. Dawn, was the message she had sent. They must be ready saddled by dawn. If the wall-captain had not obeyed, if he had delayed or protested, or if he attempted argument, if he had not been firm with the horse-dealers of the suburb, roused from their sleep to face the appropriation of their best, her captain would deal with him, and she would appoint a faithful temple guard officer in his place.

  No farewells. A refreshingly silent company. Revered Arhu took his lead from the Red Masks. Most of her priests were forever asking questions. Do you mean . . . ? Shall we . . . ? Are you certain, Worshipful Lady, that we should . . . ?

  The street-guard captain of the Drovers’ Gate turned out with her hair all sleep-tousled and the neck of her tunic pinned askew to oversee the opening of the gate, her guards drawn up in an untidy array to honour them. Zora, for the look of the thing, raised her hand and sang a blessing as the little company marched away, her champion’s horse fretting and prancing.

  She regretted sending him from her side now, wanted to summon him back, but it was necessary. He was aware what he had to do; he would do it and give her not only the Duina Catairna, free of rebels and ambitious mercenaries who forgot their place, but all Praitan. And after, she would drag that worm of death from him and let it howl and fade and be forgotten in the dark; it would be useful in Praitan, maybe, for the fear he could carry with him and let loose among his enemies, more terrible because more base and animal than the spell of awe and terror she allowed the Red Masks to wake when they had need, but she did not want it at her side forever, nor in her bed.

  Her foolish cheeks heated at the thought. Silly child.

  Turning back to cross the market, with its pens and lanes marked off by hurdles, she felt a chill touch her, a breeze from the snow. She looked around, seeking its source. Nothing. A shadow. Another dog, black and brown, slinking along the side of a butcher’s hall. Nothing to send her warnings. Only the morning air stirring, cool off the mountains. The dawn was creeping yellow into the sky, with the high haze that promised a sweltering day taking the edge off its clarity. She would break her fast with Ashir and Rahel in attendance, then grace the morning dances of public worship with her presence. Perhaps afterwards she would ride again across the city and look over the ruins of the temple palace herself. She could see it rising, white and golden, to be a fit home for the Lady of Marakand, but perhaps it would be wiser
to finish the repairs of the Eastern Wall and the Western, especially the Western, first. Still, she could survey it and make her plans. The folk should see that their goddess was great, and glorious, and living as a guest in the simple house of her chief priests like some mere priestess herself would breed nothing but presumptuous familiarity. Besides, the air of suppressed bickering between Ashir and Rahel was intolerable. She would order them to move out to the unmarried priests’ and priestesses’ dormitories, to give herself some peace. They should have divorced years ago.

  But first the dancing, and she swayed to the rhythm of the opening patterns, humming to herself. Perhaps someday, the folk would see their goddess dance. Yes. When there was victory in Praitan, she would dance for them on the palace portico, a thanksgiving in praise of herself. Yes.

  Mikki’s hand was on her waist, a warm, familiar weight. Moth turned into him, pressing close. He made some incoherent noise, breath stirring her hair, and tightened his grip on her as if she might melt away.

  “Breakfast?” she suggested against his chest, which won another grunt from him.

  Through the first part of this night the full moon had dappled their camp in the ruined compound of the priests of Gurhan, silvery light striking down through the leaves of the scrubby plums and cornels that had sprouted amid the ruins of the sprawling house and its outbuildings, a thorny thicket rich with the promise of ripening fruit. The moon would be setting now, away over the deserts to the west, with the tree-grown bulk of Gurhan’s hill between them. The hill wasn’t a knee of the great young mountains to the south at all but some folded and twisted remnant of an older land that even the gods could not recall, fissured with gullies and abrupt ravines, wormholed with caves. Mikki had been exploring them over the past few days, trying to find any lingering trace of the bound god of the hill, while she ventured into the city proper. City folk, and the peoples of the south in general, were not so easy with the demons of the wild as the Northrons or Grasslanders and mountain folk, and she did not think Mikki would be politely respected; he was more likely to be seen as a monster. She might be wrong. She had been before. Still, Moth wasn’t ready to draw the attention of the Lady to other powers stalking her land, not yet.

  Dawn was creeping over the horizon. Moth felt what she could not yet see. The birds, too, knew it, stirring into song, and the great flock of feral parrots, colonists of the hill escaped long since from the menagerie, ascended in a squawking swarm to descend on the fields of the great manors along the roads that rose through the foothills south into the cloud-sweeping Pillars of the Sky.

  Mikki tried to bury his face in her hair. She poked him in the ribs.

  “Breakfast,” she repeated, sitting up away from him.

  He opened one eye. “Is there any?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “A loaf and an egg. You can have it.” The folk in the markets had been too stirred up about their goddess emerging from her temple yesterday, after who knew how many years of speaking only to her priests through her Voice, to care much for old tales of the devils’ wars. She hadn’t seen Ivah about again, either, and the coffeehouse the wizard had dragged the Nabbani—man—into when the street guard came after him two days before had been burnt to the ground that night, along with the houses on either side, the Sunset Ward market the only one subdued and fearful amid all the city’s hysterical stir. She should have followed her own impulse to intervene and claimed him after she’d wrapped herself in the shadows and faded from sight. She rather feared she had lost the both of them now. The man wasn’t any of her concern; if he’d drawn the temple’s attention, that was his own look-out, but Ivah—she owed Ivah nothing and yet . . . and yet she was the daughter of Tamghiz, a second daughter reared to worship him, but trying so damnably hard to be something else, motherless . . . Mikki would laugh at her, the devil Vartu coming over all maternal.

  She hadn’t found any trace of either Ivah or the young man in her wanderings through the city yesterday, shadow-veiled except when she tried to both earn a few coins and reawaken the old memories of the seven devils in the mind of the folk. Stories prodded one to remember, to think, to ask, what is a god and not a god? To recall, perhaps, that folk had in the past dared to stand, weak and mortal though they were, against what seemed to them omnipotence and was indubitably tyranny. Only, though, if one was prepared to hear. Some had been. She wasn’t the only storyteller singing those songs, either, not now. Being old and half-forgotten, they had the attraction of novelty. If someone at some point said, there is a devil in the temple, this rule of the city cannot be the true Lady’s will, they might recall Tamghat dead in Lissavakail the previous summer, and the rumours that said he had been the devil Tamghiz Ghatai. They would have the older, far older tales fresh and alive on the streets. Perhaps, because of that, that there was a devil in their city and a lie in their temple would not be so unthinkable after all. There was a place in those stories for they themselves to be the heroes and oppose the devils, as others before them had done.

  What troubled Moth almost as much as Ivah’s disappearance was that until the previous night she had not been certain she could detect any breath of power, divine or otherwise, in the temple, but on the night after she had met Ivah, when there had been a rainstorm off the mountains, power had emerged, far from being a small goddess of the earth. She did not think that it was in response to any doing of hers—a few stories meant to wake memory should not have woken that—but she could not discount vision and foreknowing, either. She might be anticipated. Something had troubled the supposed goddess enough to draw her out of hiding. It might have only been that the Praitans dared to murder her Voice; it might be more.

  Mikki crawled naked after Moth from their shelter, a lean-to of woven branches built against a ruined house-wall, head-high. It hadn’t done them much good in the heavy rain, but it kept the dew off, and that was preferable to the stuffy goat-shed, the only place still intact. He stretched, yawning; a giant of a man with a shaggy beard and hair of barley gold, eyes the black of sea-coal, gold-furred chest and limbs, too—by night. Verrbjarn of the north, Mikki was only a halfling demon, his father human. His mother had been a great bear-demon, guardian of the Hardenwald. Eye-teeth too large for a human, disconcerting to those who thought him so. He caught Moth in a shoulder-crunching hug a moment, held her with his chin on her head.

  “Going into the city again?” he asked. “You could come see my caves instead. They’re quite nice.”

  “As caves go,” she said drily. “I’ve spent enough time underground in my assorted lives and death, thank you. Enjoy yourself.”

  Mikki grunted. “How long are you planning to spend here, playing skald in the streets? This hill is dull. I may go up into the mountains to hunt, if you’re not going to try to unravel that binding spell on the gods yet. And if there’s neither god nor devil in this city after all . . .” He didn’t finish that thought. “I’m not only bored but hungry, my wolf, and this folk doesn’t seem to know how to honour a skald. Or to pay her.”

  “They don’t know I’m feeding a bear.”

  Moth had not told him yet what she had felt the night of the rain, or that something had emerged from hiding after all. Why, when he already knew that the runes she had cast sent her here, that she had come here to kill, that the sword sent her nightmares and drove her wandering?

  Because she would rather he went away, hunting, safe? Because she would rather he was not by? She could pretend it was the justice of the Old Great Gods she carried; Mikki thought so. When they hunted Ogada it had been justice in the Northron way, vengeance for murdered kin, as well as the command of the Old Great Gods; Ghatai had planned a great wrong against the earth in the fate he had prepared for the goddess of the Lissavakail, and here, in the murder of wizards and the death or sealing away of Marakand’s three gods, great wrong was worked again, but next time . . . and next time . . . when it was someone wandering quiet and inoffensive, when it was the Blackdog, come at last to the Old Great Gods’ attenti
on, not one of the seven but stray kin to them—someday Mikki would have to ask, How far, how long, do we go on? It was not the Great Gods’ justice but their revenge that the sword Lakkariss served. Someday, when she could not hide that from Mikki any longer, he would demand the reason of her.

  “And if there’s neither god nor devil here after all, why do we stay?” he persisted. “Something sealed those gods away and they should be woken and set free, but if you can’t free them, and if it’s gone, whatever did it, we should follow. We do no good here.”

  He found the skin of water she had hung on the branch of a plum last night, brought from the spring that had its birth up the gully past the rockslide-buried, spell-sealed mouth of Gurhan’s cave, drank and sluiced water over his head. The big blue-roan stallion came pushing in. Mikki fended him off.

  “You don’t need it, you’re dead. Moth?”

  “I’m going to the temple,” she said.

  “Ah.”

  The sun, unnoticed, climbed the horizon, and he was a great bear of the northern forest, not a man, barley-golden in the dawn. He nosed into the thin grass by the well, from which they were not drawing their water, filled as it was with the bones of murdered priests, and found the egg, set there last night to keep cool. He cracked it and lapped it up, a few swipes of the tongue, and dealt with the loaf in as few bites, taking her at her word.

  “So there is something there after all?” he asked, stretching, forepaws out, yawning again.