Gods of Nabban

by K V Johansen

  Sometime, too, the starveling boy had become a man, slight, but with a muscular grace and power in movement that ought to be turning the girls’ heads in some king’s hall, not . . . Anyway, he should have a better weapon than that damned peasant’s knife.

  “We should look for their horses,” Ghu called matter-of-factly. The torn ruin of the coat he had been wearing since Marakand was sprayed with blood. Not, Ahjvar trusted, his own, in that quantity, or he would not be standing. Ghu shrugged the filthy rags from his shoulders as Ahjvar crossed to him, frowned at the hand, still gripping his sword, that Ahj pressed to his left arm.

  “Bad?”

  “No,” Ahjvar said firmly. It was only seeping.

  Ghu made some exasperated noise. Ahjvar ignored him and warily took his hand away, but no great spreading of blood followed, so he had spoken truth. Shallow. He wasn’t the only one with a dulled blade.

  There were no ghosts hovering over the still humps of the dead Ghu had left. A man with his throat cut, neatly, if you could say that, and precisely. The other had been stabbed, a wide mouth of a wound ripping up through leather, between horn plates. They had carried Grasslander sabres and a spear.

  “You shouldn’t be getting in close like that. Great Gods, Ghu—”

  “Once I am in that close, there’s not much they can do.” Ghu considered the smallest man and hauled off his boots, caravaneer’s leather-soled felt.

  “You can’t take on a swordsman with a knife!”

  Ghu’s eyes flicked up at him, brows raised, but he didn’t deign to answer. And the boots appeared to fit. He considered the taller of the two, who likewise seemed mostly dressed for the caravan road. Not Ahjvar’s height, but large feet.

  “No,” Ahjvar protested.

  “We’re heading for the desert, Ahj. And winter is coming.”

  Ahjvar’s footwear was a horseman’s heeled leather, no warmth, and ill-fitting anyway. The last remnant of the Red Mask’s gear, uniform of the servants of the Lady of Marakand. He should be glad to be rid of it.

  “Robbing the dead. Fine. Take a sword, too, then. You need—”

  “Ahj, you think you can make me a good swordsman before we come to Nabban?”

  He had no idea what Ghu was capable of. “Maybe. Probably. Competent.” Ghu would not be merely competent, whatever he set his hand to, but not likely they would have the energy, travelling hard, to spare for such things when they made their evening’s camp. Ahjvar doubted he would, anyway. He wanted, right now, nothing but to lie down and lose himself in nothingness. A dream-free nothingness. “Probably not.”

  “Then don’t bother.”

  “And what if you can’t dance in and cut throats?” He crouched to clean in the grass his sword and the hand sticky with his own blood.

  “I hide behind you.” Ghu’s smile down at him was that of the innocent of Sand Cove. “Put those boots on.”

  Ahjvar took an undamaged shield from one of the Grasslanders for good measure, one of Ghu’s. He had stopped caring how he was hurt years ago, but it was Ghu going to pay, now, if he got himself laid out half dead in the midst of a fight. Half dead, or—whatever. He didn’t feel up to peeling one of the better-equipped out of their armour and Ghu didn’t suggest it.

  No sign Ghu had flung even the token handful of earth over the brigands he had slain, yet by the time Ahjvar trailed him down towards the coulee, trying not to cringe at feeling the shape of a dead man’s feet, the ghosts were silent and gone from the others too. A word from Ghu might be blessing enough. He supposed even they deserved it. Less blood on their hands than on his, whatever they had done, and yet theirs would be a long road to the Old Great Gods. It was unlikely the shepherd had been their only innocent victim.

  He gave in to having his arm bandaged before they broke camp and set out to follow the dogs, who found the horses downstream, though regretfully they turned the beasts loose to be claimed by whoever might find them. Trying to trade them wasn’t going to be worth the risk of being mistaken for part of some brigand gang themselves. They took what spare clothing from the saddlebags seemed a reasonable fit, and what gear would be of use, which was much of it. The greatest prize was a bulky Grasslander-style sheepskin coat, rolled tight and carried against the winter. Too small across the shoulders for Ahjvar, it was a loose fit on Ghu. They would be glad of it before they came to Nabban, he supposed. Even such things as a whetstone, a flint and firesteel, the woman’s axe—all might get them further on their road. A case of needles, which he dissuaded Ghu from trying out on his arm; it was really not all that bad. Blankets, food, a couple of purses of Marakander coin, a sack of barley, which the camels were going to need if they were to do more than meander, grazing as they went . . . Ahjvar left the looting to Ghu and went to sit by the stream, methodically working over his sword’s edge with the stone. It had seen little use, all things considered, in the last ninety years or so. Just as well, no doubt, from its maker’s point of view, or the blade’s steel edge would have been taken back to its pith; his weapons in the Five Cities had generally been less honourable ones, knives and poison and the garrotter’s cord.

  His arm throbbed and still bled sullenly, his head ached, and he would have lain down to sleep again if it were not for fear of the nightmares or some local chieftain’s handful of spearmen coming upon Ghu at his methodical robbery. Satisfied with the blade’s restoration at last, Ahjvar leant his head on the bole of a willow and found he had shut his eyes anyway.

  Nabban. Ghu was drawn east now as the geese were pulled north in spring. The empire was a land of what, in any other place, would be many gods protecting many folks. There were only two gods in all Nabban now—Mother Nabban of the rivers, Father Nabban of the heights—and they called Ghu home . . . but what followed on that?

  “You’ll like this.”

  He had slept. The sun was hot, even through the willow leaves, climbing towards noon. Ghu dropped something at his side. A stirrup crossbow cased in oiled leather, and a quiver, six bolts left. Good Gold Harbour work. He recognized the maker by the patterning of ships on the stock.

  “We could go back down to the Five Cities,” Ahjvar said.

  He had lost track of time, the passing weeks and the phases of the moon; they had wandered far from the road, their course more winding than a slow river of the plains, and some days he had not been fit to travel at all. Days. Weeks, maybe. He couldn’t say. He wasn’t sure where they were, except well east of the kingdoms of Praitan, nearly to Porthduryan, where the eastern desert road began. There was a second land route to Nabban, a way that ran south of the deserts, north of the eastern forests, but it climbed high into mountains before dropping to the free city of Bitha. Not a road for winter. The third route was by sea from the former colony cities, a dangerous voyage, very long; the coast was savage and the sea beset by storms, and yet it would leave behind the assumption that they were more of the warlord Ketsim’s brigands; Ghu, at least, would be in a known world on board ship. He had worked his way west from Nabban by sea. From here, the nearest port of the Five Cities would be Sea Town, far away south somewhere. Noble Cedar Harbour was seven hundred miles down the coast from there. It had been a long time since the Leopard had hunted in either. A lifetime, for other men.

  “I could easily earn enough to pay our passage by sea.”

  Ghu’s face went still, utterly without expression, black eyes dark as night, as ageless. “No.”

  Ahjvar hadn’t felt much but weariness and fear since the battle at Orsamoss, but that woke some spark of anger. Difficult enough, what Ghu set out to do, but he made it worse dragging Ahjvar with him, and the desert . . . “You want to try to cross a desert you know only from caravaneer’s tales, in winter, with what we can steal from bandits hardly better off than we are?”

  “You don’t kill for me, Ahjvar. Not like that.”

  He looked away. Ghu crouched down by him, took his arm, turned it to look at the deep purple bruises blooming on Ahjvar’s wrist. Brushed a thumb over one,
as if to undo it. Or the rope scars beneath, and the mottled burns, livid, not yet fading to silver. “Besides, we still have your bracelets, remember?”

  He did not. So many things lost, but the memories he would leave by the wayside he could not shed. But yes, hazily, he remembered. Thick gold rings with leopard’s-head terminals, heirlooms, like the sword, of his house. Useful now and then over the years when he had needed to swagger as a noble of Praitan in some disguise about his work. Not robbed for the temple after all; they had been taken and restored; he had been sent out wearing them, her captain, her—don’t think of her. Bracelets. His. Gold. Wealth to outfit them for several journeys, but difficult to sell for anything near their worth. Difficult, in this land, to find anyone who could afford to buy, or who would want such killable wealth under their roof, in a land so brigand-plagued. In the cities, though . . .

  “We could buy passage fit for most respectable merchants, once we came to a place to sell that gold, ragged as we are,” said Ghu. “But Ahj . . . you want to be shut up in the close quarters of a ship? For months, if the season’s bad? Dreaming?”

  “No.” He kept his eyes on the water. He dreamed of water, flowing into him, burning in the lungs like fire, the deep still water of the Lady’s well. He’d gone into the sea once, long ago, when he had still hoped there might be a way to die and take his curses with him.

  “Come away,” Ghu said quietly. “They had still the haunch of a sheep. We might as well have the good of it, once we put enough miles between ourselves and this place to risk a fire. There’s bread to eat till then. And you do need stitches in that cut if it’s to heal clean.”

  Ahjvar nodded, trying to summon the will to move.

  “It was the coffee I meant you might like, actually. Not the crossbow.”

  “Coffee?” He looked around at that.

  Ghu laughed, shook a rattling cotton bag. “Nothing to grind it with, but there’s bound to be stones wherever we camp. Now—come.” As if he were one of the dogs.

  The dying gods dream of salvation, a gambler’s doomed hope. Do they see him? He thinks not. Their own dreams drown them: they dream of their child, cast to the winds—all their last and fading thought. Their hopes of him leak, and the prophets spill words of storm and a land made new.

  It will be so, but not by the heir of the gods.

  A gift to the emperor’s daughter, an ambassador from far, far in the west, sent to great Yao of Nabban, famed even in distant Tiypur, with tribute of sea-silk and cameo-work in onyx and agate, and drugs and dyestuffs and poisons. A rough, barbarian thing, the gift, a trinket that drew her eye, hers out of all those who looked on it, displayed in the mother-of-pearl-inlaid chest with the greater jewels destined for the imperial treasury. He had made it so, like a caravan-mercenary’s amulet, to prevent it being desired, and so lost to some imperial wife or favoured lord who would be no use to him. It would draw the one he sought: the lever, the stepping stone, the pebble of his avalanche. He had not been certain who it might be, but there was faint wizardry lingering in all Min-Jan’s descendants, their foremother’s legacy, and he had been certain the seed he sent would find some fertile ground in which to sink its roots.

  A door, to be opened.

  And so it has proved.

  CHAPTER II

  Mia leapt onto the stage flourishing a scarlet-painted wooden sword, the comet’s tail of her horse-hair wig swirling after her. The basswood mask, eyes edged in red to show the character’s devil-bonded nature, was also meant to show feminine perfection, a smooth, small-mouthed oval, subtly carved and tinted. Kaeo sprang before her with a shout and they fought back and forth, omitting none of the nine significant forms, each held a moment for the appreciation of the audience, who, here in the Golden City, the imperial capital, knew precisely what they should be seeing and would be loud in disapproval if there were any flaw in the performance. His own mask was a masculine mirror of the Yeh-Lin one Mia wore, manly perfection, the eyes outlined in gold, the faint colouring likewise mixed with gold dust. The pair of masks was the most valuable of all the troupe’s possessions save the theatre itself, carved by a master over a century before, heirlooms, and the master of the company kept them under lock and key in his own home, entrusting them to his slave-actors only just before each performance. Not the way to get to know a mask, to learn to live it. Kaeo would have hung his on the wall and meditated before it while learning his part if he had been able to treat it in the usual way.

  The Min-Jan robes were the real thing, cast-off brocades passed down through some upper servant of the palace, even if the armour was nothing but lacquered paper-pulp. Would any sane warrior have worn armour over a full court robe? Kaeo thought not. His mind was wandering and he sweated, though it was autumn and, even in the lands below the lower mouths of the Wild Sister, the days were cooling in a welcome manner, for all that the season brought storms to smash the shore and destroy the harvest.

  And to drive impoverished free peasants to the money-lenders, and to debt, and the selling of their children.

  Almost time. Mia rolled to Kaeo’s feet, arms flung wide. She was still the most athletic of the women, still boyishly slim; she was twice his age and complained of painful joints in the winter damp, though not where Master Wey could hear.

  “My son,” she cried, and sang the long verse about sparing the breast he had suckled, parting the neck of her robe, though not enough to reveal her still-high and lovely, well Kaeo knew it, bosom. It was an old play, much honoured, but what imperial woman these days would suckle her own child? The audience took it to show Yeh-Lin’s coarseness, her peasant origins, rather than as a touching plea for filial mercy.

  Some vulgarian called out, “Show us what you’ve got!” A figure moved, down by the raised causeway that crossed the courtyard from the encircling veranda to the stage. Master Wey did not stand for that sort of thing. The Flowering Orange company was one of the oldest and grandest of the many theatre troupes of the city. The heckler would be shown the gate, most ungently. Or possibly the canal, if he put up a fight and annoyed Big Yen, who would even now be forcing a way through the crowd, a stirring as though a pig marched through grass, unseen. But there was a second stirring, people moving from the gate, crossing the packed yard, and the audience pushing to move back. Those who had paid for a place and a seat on the veranda or upper galleries leaned to look down, distracted.

  Magistrate’s guard of the Osmanthus Moon district. Nothing to do with him. Could not be. Sweat trickled down chest and back, slicked Kaeo’s face. The air felt heavy, smothering, as if a typhoon were pushing up along the coast, but there had been no warning of it from the office of the Pine Lord of Wizards, no criers in the public squares. Kaeo blinked sweat from his eyes. Not a typhoon. He was abruptly light-headed, chilled and weak in the knees. Afraid. Dear Father Nabban, Mother Nabban, let him get through this. They pursued some thief who had taken refuge among the crowd, that was all.

  Mother Nabban and Father Nabban, the two gods of great Nabban, drifted onto the stage with little mincing steps, robed in white and black respectively. Their masks, white-haired, serene, were not as old as the Min-Jan and Yeh-Lin set, but were nonetheless done in the ancient style in which the faces of the gods were delineated strictly in white and black. They seemed to swim and pulse and turn to mist.

  Yeh-Lin—Mia—clasped his ankles. “My son, my son,” she moaned, which was not the line; she had spoken the line, his cue, and he had been silent, staring away at the misty gods, whose outstretched hands—no, they did not reach for him; they stood correctly remote and serene, hands tucked inside the sleeves of their robes.

  Kaeo dragged his attention back to her. “Foul mother!” he cried. “Murderess of the folk! Destroyer of the gods!”

  Which was not historically accurate. When Emperor Min-Jan defeated his usurping mother in battle on the Solan Plain, she was an ageing wizard, not a beautiful, immortal devil. It was later that she returned as Dotemon the Dreamshaper, to seize the Peony Throne an
d make war on the manifold gods of Nabban. Kaeo knew he read too much poetry, too much history. His mind overflowed with irrelevancies, distracted him—good to be distracted, there might be a wizard and who knew what a wizard of the imperial corps might pluck from a fearful man’s thoughts—the play, the play, he must think of nothing but the play. Concentrate. Breathe. It was too late to run . . . Line?

  He drew a breath, standing with the tip of the lacquered wooden sword on Mia’s bared throat, and began to sing. Min-Jan had shown mercy, of course. He was no matricide. He had exiled his mother, who had ruled as regent since his infancy, bade her be gone from Nabban and never return. A great and misguided mercy, the historians would say, and the one folly of his reign. She had returned a devil.

  He could not remember the words, but they poured through him. He could have sung Min-Jan in his sleep.

  The audience stirred, the silence gone sharp and deep. The drums whispered with his pulse. The flute rose and coiled around him, but it faltered, uncertain. Yeh-Lin—Mia, it was Mia, pinched his ankle, her hand hidden by his robes. Inside the mask, her eyes were wide and her lips moved.

  The leading pair of guards vaulted onto the stage and, at the back of the courtyard, a woman shrieked. As if that were a signal, the silence shattered. Shouting, cursing, wailing of children, as the nearer crowd surged and seethed and tried all at once to flee out the narrow gates, while those further back shoved and elbowed and tried to force closer to see.

  Kaeo’s knees gave way and he sank down on the boards of the stage.

  A wind blew through the courtyard, and the canopy that protected the stage cracked like a sail. Very dramatic, he thought, in some mad, distant part of his mind. Master Wey would approve. Something smashed. The tall ceramic pots of the orange trees flanking the gate had fallen. Trees old as the masks. As beautiful. As pointless.