by Martha Wells
Rian said nothing for a moment, then, "Why don't you use your magic?"
Maskelle smiled to herself. The night was turning wild, the wind was up, and the river still rushed through the pylons supporting the post. She said, "It's not mine to use," and walked away.
Chapter Four
Rian watched Maskelle walk back toward the fire. He had had a long journey, made longer by the fact that he didn't know where it would end. Travelling through the lowland jungles had meant unfamiliar and dangerous animals, raiders, poisonous plants, and strange people with inexplicable customs. He had been hunted by the savages that lived in the deep jungle, chased by the ten-foot tall flightless gankbirds that populated the hills, and then lately drowned in the near constant rain, which had driven him to the point where he would have been ready to sell his body for dry clothes, if only someone had given him the opportunity. The journey had almost ended on the river fighting those motherless drunken raiders and cursing his own stupidity. Instead he had found a woman worth following.
She was also a woman who thought a curse that could make a thing of painted wood stand up and walk was a minor annoyance. He had seen what the priest-shamans of the Sintane were like. But she had saved his life, and it wasn't as if he had anything to lose. Nothing matters, remember? You gave up your honor, he reminded himself. At least she could have the courtesy just to admit that she was a powerful wizard, but from what he had seen of the Kushorit and their Koshan priests since crossing the Empire's boundary, they were none of them entirely sensible people.
The leader of the Ariaden had come back from disposing of the puppet's box and now stood staring at Rian, his expression a grim glare. Considering that he was nearly a full two feet shorter, Rian didn't find it a particularly daunting sight. Rastim said, "I don't know who you are, but you watch your step. She's an important lady in the Celestial Empire. A powerful lady."
Rian shook his head and looked away to conceal his grin. No, really? When the obvious eluded him to that extent, he would lay down in a hole and the little actor would be welcome to cover him up. "What's the Adversary, and how is it different from a Voice of the Ancestors?" He had been hearing people swear by the Adversary most of the way through Gidale Province and more and more since he had crossed the border into the Empire proper, but he had never heard what it was or that it had a voice. Rian had learned Kushorit back in Riverwait, to speak to the provincial traders who travelled across the Sintane to the mountain caravan trails, and who often brought important news of what the other Sitanese Holder Lords were up to. He knew enough of the language for everyday conversations, but had never learned the subtleties, and he had been unable to tell if the people were afraid of the Adversary, or worshipped it, or both.
Rastim looked cautious, as if the question held a hidden trap. "What are you talking about?"
"You heard me. To the priests at the big temple, she said she used to be the Voice of the Adversary. What did she mean?"
The Ariad's face went still and sincere, by which Rian took to mean that he was about to hear a very big lie. He wasn't disappointed. Rastim glanced around, as if checking for hidden watchers, as if the rest of the Ariad weren't staring curiously at them from across the little circle of wagons, and said in a whisper, "The Adversary's a demon, the demon of all demons."
Rian folded his arms and looked bored, because he knew that would annoy the little man more than anything else. "That's pig shit. The Koshans don't believe in demons. We know that even in the Sintane, play actor." Nobody was really sure what the Koshan religion was, but they knew what it wasn't, and it didn't have anything to do with the grubby cult of demon worship that had spread in some of the outer provinces, with its curses and witching dolls and trading blood for supernatural favors. The odd thing was the Koshan temples in the provinces hadn't tried to stamp it out, the way the Dial priests had. The Koshans had simply treated it with a supreme indifference that was more damning than any attack.
Rastim glared. "All right, all right. It's some Koshan thing, like some spirit of bad luck and vengeance, or something."
"Bad luck?" Rian sounded skeptical, though he thought Rastim might be telling the truth now, at least as he saw it.
"Bad luck and bad things that happen, something like that. And taking revenge on people. And justice. If it was part of any sensible religion, they would call it a demon. They all get together and draw lots for who has to be its Voice. A symbol for it is carved into the base of every doorway of every temple, to scare other demons away."
The last part sounded inexplicable and Koshan enough to be true, at least. Rian drew breath to pursue the question, but from across the camp Maskelle said, "Rastim, we can't stay here."
She was standing by the banked fire, her arms folded, staring off into the night. Rastim muttered, "I was afraid of that," and went to her.
Impatiently she pushed her dark hair back from her face and in the glow of the firelight Rian could see the loops and whorls of the Koshan tattoo, just at the edge of her hairline. She said, "We have to push on to Illsat Keo tonight, or we'll just have more trouble."
Rastim shook his head. "What good will that do? It will be just as bad there as here."
"Not there. Illsat Keo is a Temple of the Adversary."
"Oh." Rastim said, shifting uncertainly. Rian noted that he didn't look quite so unconcerned about the Adversary as he had implied before. Maybe the Ariaden believed more of that demon story than he had thought.
Maskelle was looking up at the cloud-heavy sky. "When we get up on the road, move the body to my wagon."
Grumbling, but not too loudly, the Ariaden made ready to leave. They were so afraid of the cursed puppet Rian knew it must have done much worse than walk out during plays or knock on its box. Rastim seemed to be the only one nervous of the prospect of visiting a Temple of the Adversary; but then the others seemed to know little of the Koshans. Not that Rian knew much of them either.
Until crossing the river he had avoided even the small villages, in case the hunters the Holder Lord's Heir had sent dared to trespass so far on Imperial territory. One night not long after he had crossed the border he had stumbled on what seemed to be a small abandoned shrine, and driven by pouring rain and exhaustion, he had spent the night on the stone flags under the dome, looked down on by the hundreds of faces carved into the walls. In the morning he had realized what he had been too dazed to notice the night before: the shrine had been empty but clean swept, undisturbed by animal droppings or even blown leaves and dust, and he knew it wasn't abandoned. He had fled, not wanting to be seen by even some lonely Koshan monk-caretaker.
As Rian helped harness the oxen, he watched the post guards watching them. The factor came out on a balcony, wrapped in a sleeping robe and a disgruntled air, but no one attempted to interfere with them. Either the post guards weren't inclined to pursue a problem that seemed to be leaving of its own accord, or the factor wasn't anxious for another confrontation with Maskelle. From the gossip Rian had heard from the boatmen, everyone who worked in the compound agreed that she had gotten the better of him in the first one.
***
Once clear of the compound, Maskelle's wagon took the lead with Old Mali at the reins. It was so dark up on the road that even though each wagon had a lantern hanging from the box, the Ariaden called Firac still had to walk ahead with another lamp. The breeze had died and there was an odd kind of suspended silence in the night that Rian didn't particularly like. The cool air was still heavy with water, but the rain hadn't returned, and without it the jungle at the edge of the road was almost too quiet. It wasn't true jungle; Rian knew there were farms and little villages all through here, and the belts of trees concealed cultivated fields, but for all that they could be in the middle of wild nowhere.
He walked back down the road a short distance past the reach of the lamplight and then returned to stand beside Maskelle, who was leaning on her staff and watching the wagons crawl by from the muddy verge. "They're not following us," Rian said, not t
hat he was much reassured by it.
"But something else might be?" Maskelle asked, watching him.
He shrugged, feeling he was being tested. Maybe she wanted to know how much of the night's ambient tension he could sense. "It just feels wrong, like something's breathing down my neck."
She smiled pityingly. "The Infinite touches everyone," she said, but her tone was more self-mocking than anything else.
"Tell it to keep its hands to itself," Rian suggested, and went to check the other side of the road.
Maskelle went up to ride on her wagon next to Old Mali and Rian walked beside it. They kept moving at the same slow pace, seeing no one else on the road. Rian still felt they were being followed, though he knew there were no wagons or horses on the road behind them, not for several hundred yards at least. He had spent most of his early life either hunting or being hunted by raiding parties of the nomad tribes in the mountains above Tarkat. His instincts told him something was stalking them, and if it wasn't the post guards sent by the vengeful factor, then it was something worse, from the river. In the dark he could see Maskelle's head that kept turning toward the dark belt of trees, which didn't help either.
The time passed and they travelled quietly; only the occasional snuffling of an ox or a sleepy murmur from one of the other wagons disturbed the peace. After a time, Maskelle climbed down from the wagon and walked along the roadside next to Rian, the glow of the lamp tied to the wagonboard lighting their way. She muttered, "If it has any wits at all, it has to know we're making for the city boundary and Illsat Keo."
Rian assumed "it" was another water demon, following them along the river's course. If it was something worse, he wasn't going to ask. "If it could stop us and it doesn't, there's got to be a reason for it," he said, thinking of an ambush somewhere ahead in the dark.
"So say it doesn't want to stop us." She halted on the muddy bank and leaned on her staff, thoughtful. The wagon with the lamp pulled ahead and Rian couldn't read her expression in the dark. Sounding frustrated, she said, "I can't tell if it's self-aware and following us out of some intelligent motive, or if it's just a remnant of what attacked us before, tied to the boy's body and trailing it. Or if it's both."
"When are you going to get rid of the body?" Rian asked her. The corpse had been rolled in an old blanket and placed in one of the canvas slings that hung underneath the wagon, which were used to haul fodder for the oxen.
"When we pass the dike that crosses the road and marks the outer boundary of the city. It's not far now; we've already passed the first of the Passage Markers." These were waist-high square stones carved with protective symbols that stood on either side of the road at intervals of twenty-one feet, and would apparently continue all the way to the city. Rian had seen them on the roads that led to the smaller shrines and temples; they were another one of those things Koshans thought necessary.
"Does it make such a difference whether we dump the body inside the boundary or outside it?" Rian knew little about magic and less about religion, but he had been here long enough to know that the Kushorit never put anything anywhere, not a road, not a water trough, and probably not a pig sty, without a reason involving spirits and the Infinite.
She nodded slowly, looking off into the dark.
Rastim's wagon drew even with them, and he peered down from the seat. "What is it?" he asked.
"I almost made a mistake," Maskelle told him.
An hour later the road began to rise and Rian knew they must be nearing the dike. In country that flooded during the rainy season, the city would need massive dikes as well as canals to control the water. Maskelle was riding on the driver's bench of her own wagon, and when the upward slope became more dramatic, she tapped Old Mali on the shoulder. The old woman guided the oxen to the side of the road without a word and Rian waited beside it. The other wagons rolled slowly past them, the sleepy faces of the Ariaden peering curiously out; only Rastim knew what they meant to do.
When the last wagon passed, Rastim reined in and said worriedly, "Are you sure about this?" He tipped his head toward Rian significantly. Rian glanced upwards in annoyance.
"Yes, yes," Maskelle said impatiently, shooing a grumbling Old Mali across the muddy road to Rastim's wagon and glancing over her shoulder back toward the river, as if she could feel something watching them from that direction. "Just hurry and go."
Old Mali climbed up onto the bench and settled herself with a gusty sigh. Reluctantly, Rastim pulled a battered shovel out from under the bench and tossed it down to Rian, then he shook the reins and the wagon rolled on.
Rian moved ahead, finding a good spot at the side of the road. Maskelle cut the ties holding the sling to the underside of the wagon bed as he started to dig. Rian had pointed out that burying the sling with the corpse was a waste, but apparently once it had been in contact with the curse living in the boy's remains, it couldn't be used to carry food anymore, even food for animals.
As Maskelle came back toward him, she froze suddenly. Rian dropped the shovel and reached for his siri, but she wasn't looking toward the jungle. She stood with her head tilted a little, as if listening intently to the undercurrents in the night.
When she shook herself and moved forward again, Rian picked up the shovel again. He felt obligated to point out, "This is still a stupid way to get rid of a corpse. When it rains again, which will probably be in the next hour, it'll wash right out of this bank."
"We're not hiding it from the Imperial Constabulary," she told him impatiently, "we're laying a curse." She helped him dig, scraping the muddy dirt out with her hands. The night was very dark with just the one lantern, and Rian could almost feel the stalking presence buried in the jungle himself.
"Wouldn't it be better to dump the body into the canal?" Rian said, but he didn't stop digging.
"This body is still cursed. If we dump it in the canal, something else will inhabit it."
Rian grunted, acknowledging that that was a good enough reason. "But burying it is different?"
"Farmers in the outer reaches bury their dead this way, giving the body to the earth spirits after the soul is fled to the Infinite. This boy's soul was long gone before his body stopped living, and this just might protect it from being used again." She stopped to look around at the surface of the muddy roadway briefly, as if expecting to see something appear on it. "Earth spirits usually accept the offerings gradually, over time, but then the ritual is usually performed by laymen and not consecrated Voices."
"So it's better to bury him," Rian muttered, trying not to think about demons living in the dirt under his feet. If I learn any more about the Koshan view of the world, I'm going to be afraid to touch anything, water, dirt, trees. They kept digging, Maskelle reminding him, "It doesn't have to be deep, just enough that we can cover him completely." Rian nodded; he could hear branches and palms thrashing somewhere in the brush and thought, It’s close.
Finally, Maskelle said, "All right, that should do it," and sat back on her heels, breathing hard.
Rian tossed the shovel aside and ran for the body, dragging it in the sling back toward the hole. Maskelle helped him bundle it in. He grabbed the shovel again, but she held up a hand. "Not yet."
He hesitated, glancing toward the trees and the heavy brush. The thrashing was closer, as the intruder in the jungle fought its way toward them. What it was fighting, he had no idea, except that it was obviously fighting something. Rian dropped the shovel and drew his sword, putting himself between Maskelle and the edge of the trees. Whatever she was going to do, he didn't want it interrupted. "What else is out there?"
"The trees, the rocks, the moss, the birds, everything in the jungle. The spirits that live there resist the intrusion." Maskelle spoke hurriedly, clawing through the pile of dirt. She had dropped her staff beside the pit, and in their haste they had buried it.
Maskelle uncovered the staff and scrambled to her feet. Rian could hear her whispering something, not in Kushorit, but some language that sounded very like it.
The thrashing came to the very edge of the brush, just within the deep shadow. Rian tensed and one of the oxen lowed in alarm. But the noise abruptly ceased. The ground grew warm, a heat Rian could feel through his worn boots. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw a low ground mist creeping over the open pit. It was swirling around his feet. He swore under his breath, tried to ignore the prickle of unease crawling up his spine, and faced the dark trees again.
The smell of rot came up from the pit, heavy and sickly sweet in the damp air. Maskelle stepped back from it. "Now we can cover him up."
Rian watched the edge of the trees, wary for a trick. "It won't try something else?"
She shrugged, looking around for the shovel. "It might. I've never seen a dark water spirit so strong before. Whatever cursed the boy's body must have done something to it." She paused and added, "But for now it's going back to the river."
Rian waited another moment then shook his head, sheathed the siri, and took the shovel away from her. It didn't take long to cover the pit, and soon they had the wagon moving again.
***
Illsat Keo wasn't visible from the road, but Maskelle had described the marker at the head of the track that led to it to Rastim and all he and the others had to do was follow the short trail through the trees to the temple's gate. When she and Rian reached the marker, she could tell they had been here by the deep ruts in the mud, which told a story of a wagon wheel sunk deep and freed by hard labor. "Looks like they made it all right," she said, then noticed Rian was looking up at the marker post.
It was a round pillar, the stone stained by moss and wrapped about by a few vines. At the top was a carved image of a gashwing, the largest of the flighted birds in the central lands and a carrion-eater. The gashwing was one of the Adversary's incarnations and a common symbol for it. She said, "Let's go," wondering if Rian would comment, but he said nothing, just guided the wagon off the road, turning it to avoid the spot where the Ariaden's wheel had come to grief.
