The Leopard (Marakand)

by K V Johansen

  No wizards in Marakand, no. They went to feed this working, knotted into it like so much thread, slaves beyond death.

  Kepra’s edge would bite them, with her hand behind it. Moth didn’t bother, caught the upraised staff of the first down in her hand, earthing the fire of it, and wrenched the binding of the wretched, broken thing away. It fell. She swept the rags of soul together in her hands and asked, “Who were you?”

  But there was little left. A scent of roses and wood-dust, memory of a woman, tumble of brown curls, an infant’s hand clutching his finger. She breathed on them and they burned away, clean, at least, and the animal wailing that had been the thing’s existence years it could not count was silenced. The other she burned, body and spells and broken soul and all, and set the white fire to eat the first body too, lighting the chamber as if by trapped lightning. The thin struggling weeds that grew beneath the eye of the dome shrivelled and fell to ash; the rotten boat steamed and followed them. Mist rose from the well. The place seemed dark to the eye afterwards, small and close.

  Mikki would not call that quiet as a cat, no. Not human wizardry, either, and she had been noticed, oh yes, she might as well have walked into the Hall of the Dome behind the dancers and shouted her name. Not much time now.

  The mist on the surface of the water wavered. She walked to the brink of the crack, knelt there, a hand in the dark water.

  Lady of Marakand?

  Something was there yet, hidden in the water. Something stirred, drew away in fear.

  Lady of the Well. What is the Lady in the temple?

  Barely a whisper. You.

  Not I. What has become of Gurhan and Ilbialla? Can you see them? Can you reach them?

  Gone. Lost. Dead.

  Not dead. What has she done to you? How does she hold you?

  The Lady of Marakand dreamed of worms, devouring a fish from the inside out till it was nothing but husk, a swimming, rotted corpse that would fall apart and release the bloated worms to find a greater host and feed again. Moth herself, maybe. Or Moth had come to devour what was left of her.

  No, Moth told her. Not that. Who is it? Give me the devil’s name. Tell me what this devil wants of you. Such half-hearted conquest made no sense, ruling a city as a hidden goddess, but doing nothing beyond its walls save the recent and again half-hearted small war against a small tribe. Madness, a child’s play, begun and forgotten, or a dotard’s feeble fumbling after the self that age had robbed away.

  But it might be a deliberate game, a pretence of folly, hiding a trap, as the folk of the marshes of coastal Tiypur had once used tolling dogs, to lure waterfowl into their nets. In which case . . . Moth had come wandering in under the net as tamely as any goose drawn by curiosity about the frolicking dog. She still didn’t know why the Lady, goddess true or false, would have woken so few days after her coming, when all she had done was walk softly and tell stories.

  It might be that Lakkariss stirred in dreams other than her own.

  Or not a trap at all, but someone’s pretence at being a goddess gone mad, small and cruel, but of no great danger to the larger world, and so not worth the attention of the Old Great Gods, not with Tamghiz Ghatai threatening to make himself a god of the earth. Cunning, maybe, and sly. She—or he—had had long years left in peace to do—whatever it was she or he did, after all, till Ghatai drew the Great Gods’ attention to the western caravan road and the neighbourhood of Marakand. And until the Old Great Gods woke the sword and set Moth wandering again.

  She didn’t know, she did not know. She wanted a clear enemy and a clean fight. And to go home with Mikki to the north.

  What does she intend, this devil hidden in the heart of Marakand?

  A cringing fear was her only answer, the terror of a small and broken thing, cowering, near-mindless. There was no trace of another power that she could find, only the one in the temple, aware of her now, wavering, drawn, but uncertain.

  Do you remember your name? Moth asked. You were not always the Lady, small and weak in your well. There are echoes in your waters of older times. There is strength to carve the mountains. Do you feel it still? Shall I show you? Do you want to remember?

  Could she? Maybe. Even the greatest rivers trace their waters, through many channels, many streams, many gathering lakes, to the smallest springs. Every ocean holds, deep and distant, memory of the ice on some mountain’s peak. What had the Lady of recent years been? They called it the deep well, but this cavern had been a pool, a cave half-filled, not so many years since. The signs were all about her, the boat she had burned, the stains on the wall, the change in workmanship on the lower stairs. The reservoir had sunk away, drained into the rock, as the goddess’s strength and will faded, as the false Lady fed on her. But before that . . . Moth reached for deeper, older times. The echoes were all around them. Strength, maybe, to break the other prisoned gods free, without need to decipher and unravel stroke by careful stroke the spells binding them and to set her wizardry against the great chain of power and will that the inscription only anchored.

  The Lady of the temple drummed fingers on the railing of her pulpit as the dancers whirled, flutes rising over the bells, the drums running. She frowned, clenched hands to fists, spread them carefully, smiled. Two Red Masks, her escort, stirred as well, no longer statue-still, alert, uncertain. Send them, keep them close? The Lady’s lips moved. Fingers drummed again.

  She is no longer within you, is she? Moth picked memories free, delicately, offered them back to the goddess. She has seduced one of your own . . . priestess . . . not your priestess. A girl born to the service of the god on the hill. I see her, almost. She kills in your name, Lady of the Deep Well, Lady of the Dead River, Lady of Waters that Once Were. She profanes all that you built with your folk in the long slow years. Do you remember?

  No. That was clear suddenly, and bitter, desperate. I do not, I do not, she has taken it all, it is all gone. I am lost, I am lost, I cannot find my way . . .

  Take my hand, Moth said. Let me see, and I can show you, now, before she comes here. Remember the strength of your lost days. Help me. I want to free your fellow gods of this land.

  No! Water roiled and the goddess, the godhead in the water, recoiled in a mindless terror, beyond all reason, animal madness. Stone screamed and shifted. Moth swore and lunged and seized water, seized in immaterial fire immaterial soul and held it tight as a panicked, flailing child, a wounded animal, plunged through the water into darkness, dark water, a cavern of cold memory. She could find the way, she could see it, the path of the water, dark and secret, the tide of the years. She showed the goddess, drew her into it, a current pulling them, falling.

  Do you see, Lady of Marakand? In this place you are strong. Your heart is still here, if you can reach it again, remember . . .

  The ground shook. Plaster cracked. In the Hall of the Dome, the patterned blue glass of the eye, which scattered flakes of light like butterflies when the sun was high, rained down in biting shards and twists of lead. Dancers scattered, shrieking, worshippers yelled and shoved and trampled as the Lady fled her pulpit, white veils trailing, hands outstretched, screaming words that none in the temple knew, but wrapped in black water Vartu heard them.

  She is mine! No gods but the Lady in Marakand and I am the Lady and she is mine and you dare—you dare—you dare, kinslayer, murderer! I see you now. This is my place and she is mine—you will not have her he will not have her he will not have me again you will not betray not be his death my death traitor heart in our midst the sword of the night bringing death the long night of the ice will be your death not mine not ours not the ice I will not we will not we are not she you cannot take us traitor back the Lady is mine and I am the Lady—

  Moth fell, holding the Lady, and Tu’usha burst the timbers of the door of the Dome of the Well. She hurtled down the stairs and plunged like a kingfisher into the water, clutching close with clawed hands as Vartu pulled the Lady into her own lost memory, drew her through days and ages to the years of her stre
ngth. Water, lightless and cold, flowed into them. It could not quench their fires, but it wrapped them, held them close, and the Lady whispered, whimpered, not so mindless, not so panicked as she had seemed, triumphant in her terror, I have learnt, this much I have learnt from within your madness: to hold, to trap in my turn. She drowned them both in her waters and told the devil holding her there, Now I know you, now I see you for what you are. You are mine, you have made yourselves mine, to die here with me in my lost days, and my city is free of you.

  The city was white and golden in the sun, and shrank, and dwindled away, and rose again. The goddess whispered words that came from the heart of the mountains and secret springs beneath the high ice, holding them, enfolding them, chaining the devils in the waters of memory.

  Darkness, cool and flowing, and the silver light on the rippling current, the quiet murmur of the waves on the shore, the moon pouring from the sky, the river of the stars carrying them, the road in the black night . . .

  Vartu thought it might not be so bad a thing to lie forever in the deep waters under the stone, fire bound in water. Thought slowed, stretched long, the flood and ebb of the river’s cycles, snowmelt freshet and summer’s drought, the churned mud of autumn rain, the high waters locked in ice and the hoarfrost on the reeds, snow sifting to fade into black water, the spate of the river’s joyous wrath when spring came round again and freed the locked and frozen valleys high among the peaks . . .

  But there was the demon, waiting. The cub, whispering stories to her bones . . . the young man who went wandering with his sea-rover cousins but came back always to the heart of the forest, to his mother’s den, carrying tales of the changing world to the bound and sleeping devil the great bear guarded . . .

  Sleep, the river murmured, but the bear’s cub lay by her, waiting, keeping watch against the darkness that threatened to eat her heart, keeping her from falling, from drowning in that darkness, now and always, and if she turned away from her road they had sworn to slay him, the Old Great Gods of the distant heavens . . .

  She reached for him, but he was not there, of course not. The river had drowned her deep, wrapped her and held her. Water flowed over her, but for a moment she found herself; she was not water. Neither was she thought and flame and old bone, but Moth. She remembered. Black eyes and golden pelt, and he named her Moth . . . She opened eyes to water, water filling the tunnels and the wormholes of its own slow gnawing, the secret courses of the Avain Marakanat, that river was. It wrapped the city called by its name, and the city was the queen of the empire that stretched from the western border of the Stone Desert to the coast of the Gulf of Taren, whose soldiers marched armed with bronze, because only now were the folk of the forest beginning to work the grey iron and the wizard-smiths of the forest kept this secret from the enemy to their south, from great Marakanat, goddess and city and empire. And this lightless water held, too, even older, the little scattered village on the shores of that river, the place of the three gods, where the traders came up from the hills of the east to take away the flint of the desert; the tools the folk of this age used were bone and stone and fire to clear the forested hills. The water shifted with the tide of the Lady’s memory; the village built a wall against the raiding tribes of the Stone Desert, and they spoke a language even the devils did not remember, but now the words in the mouths of the city folk were the speech of the Malagru hillfolk, slid twisting through the years, and the slow pulse of the Lady’s tides pulled her down again, whispered, Quiet, rest, sleep, as I promised you, we will sleep together and fade here, until even the water forgets . . .

  Not I, she thought, You promised me nothing. I promised you I would show . . . but she was water . . . There was a song in the water, arms about her, holding her fast. Not Mikki, not dead Tamghiz, her husband whom she had slain. Arms of fire, and they burned, as her nightmare had burned, and Sien-Shava said, You will all come to me in the end, Vartu Kingsbane, but the singing voice was not Sien-Shava’s. High and clear as a child’s, it drank in the magic of fourscore wizards or more. How many more? She could not hear their voices, not see the fire of their souls, dark and twisted and broken as they were. The voice drank their magic and spat it out again in words of weight and power, light and strong as silk.

  Human wizardry. The Old Great Gods did not fear human wizardry. They hardly took thought to notice it, but the seven devils of the north had learned to wield it. It let them work in the world, beneath notice, till they grew too loud, and it did not wound the world, as the unleashed full force of their own will and soul might. Too many such scars on a world and the walls of it weakened, and the annihilating void waited, hungry . . . They had nearly broken the world, long and long ago, and Tiypur in the west bore the worst scars, a godless land, with hills where all life perished.

  Thunder that was stone, a roof falling. The weight of stone came down, entombing goddess and devil. Real, illusion, dream of the sinkhole falling that had been . . . it held them.

  Darkness. Deep water.

  Traitor, the Lady whispered, Tu’usha whispered into her slow and sinking mind. You brought me to this. I followed you out of the cold hells, Vartu, and you brought me to mad Sien-Mor. She is dead, and I am the Lady of Marakand. Sleep here with the nameless goddess, till even your souls fade from the earth and you wail like her, a nameless ghost. Sleep here, until you die the final death and are forgotten even in the sagas you shaped yourself, Ulfhild Vartu.

  The entrance to the cave that felt as if it had been the root and anchor of the hill-god Gurhan’s presence in the world had been mostly buried in a landslide, long enough ago that the slope of scree was bound in place with tall poplars, suckers grown to a leaf-shimmering grove. What was left had been closed with stone and mortar and sealed with a deeply cut inscription in letters Mikki didn’t recognize, though some looked a little like the writing in an old Pirakuli almanac they’d once owned, and some uncomfortably like the inscription that twisted like vines on the hilt of the obsidian-bladed sword of the Old Great Gods. Digging away the fallen rock was not going to undo that binding. Even if he did find some shaft or passage that led into the cave from behind or beneath, he would hardly find the god waiting, laid out in deathlike sleep. Gods had no physical form in the world but by their own choice and at their own will.

  Gurhan’s steep hill was not a clean and simple upswelling, some foothill of the Pillars of the Sky but an older stone, ridged and furrowed and closely folded, a knot of hills pressing together, worm-gnawed within by forgotten waters, covered in forest which the folk of Marakand either feared or revered; they left it uncut, unharvested, almost untrodden, not venturing far under its eaves even in search of summer fruit, though there were raspberries and currants ripening in plenty over the stonier ground where the trees were thinnest. Mikki made what second breakfast he could off of such fruit and stalked and killed a couple of fat red squirrels, which was better. There didn’t seem much point in further exploration of the caves and tunnels. He had found all that a bear of his size could get into and, by night, most of those that would allow a man passage. Nothing below ground held any lingering trace of the god. It was up to a wizard, which meant Moth, to make some counterspell of unbinding. All a demon could do was call. He had called; he couldn’t make himself heard and wasn’t answered. He couldn’t go down into the city, and no matter what he threatened, he wouldn’t go back to the mountains leaving Moth restless and evasive behind him. The Old Great Gods drove her. He didn’t think she would ally herself with whatever old comrade it was who had taken up this sick-minded cult of wizard-murder, and he didn’t think she had any ambition left to move the tides of human affairs, but—they should have gone to the temple and challenged the Lady to come out, to justify herself and face justice if she could not. Called her out, in the old Northron way, and had done with. Scouting, hah. Moth was working herself into a state of paralysis again, as she had hunting Tamghiz, and that she had once loved the man, and that he had been working spells against them to keep them wandering,
she said, had been some excuse, but here, no. What mercy for such a butcher and an oppressor of men, whatever friendship there had been once between you? They had come to carry out the Great Gods’ justice; they should do so and be gone, and maybe Lakkariss would then leave them in peace another score or century of years. They could retreat to the north, to the pines and some loon-haunted lake.

  To the south, the unreachable white peaks of the Pillars of the Sky floated, a distant dream of snow, above the blue of their slopes, fading again into blue. Even in the deep gullies of Gurhan’s hill the day was already hot. Mikki was making for a cool gully where a trickle of water found its way down an old, man-made channel when a deer leapt up almost at his feet. A small deer. A decently supper-sized deer, and surely after dark it would be safe to make a fire, when night would hide their smoke. He wheeled about after it, crashing through thickets of raspberry cane and hazel, down steep ferny plunges and up through poplars again, to where the ground was broken and treacherous, all rubble beneath the deceptive green, and the pillars of the palace porch stood like survivors of a forest fire. The deer bounded lightly through it all, not breaking a sapling-thin leg in a crevice as it ought to have, and darted away into the woods beyond with a taunting flash of its tail, but he knocked some ill-balanced stone loose and started a rockfall, clatter and rumble into an unseen opening, and had to swerve and land stumbling, nearly twisting a shoulder, when he smelt almost too late the rank scent of blistering blister-vine at his feet. By the time he recovered, the deer was gone and he was already panting, dizzy with running in the heat. Bad idea. The Salt Desert had almost killed him; he should have learnt from that. He didn’t belong in the cursed south.