Gods of Nabban

by K V Johansen

  Ahjvar rubbed his forehead. Headache. Prayers with the sword? Maybe. What power in Nabban was there to foresee a threat in Ghu and seek his death? Not the god and goddess who called him back. Surely not. The empress the heir of the gods? He did not like the sound of that.

  That was not what mattered, there and then. “I know poisons. Some. Tell me.”

  He knew the symptoms: vomiting, purging of the bowels, deathly chill alternating with fever, and the bloody pinpricks that wept on skin and coloured the tears and saliva, seizures and an agony of the joints that left brave men weeping and begging for death. They called it tears of repentance in the Five Cities, which was only the usual Nabbani poetic circumlocution. It was some blended distillation that cost a fortune, a foul thing that took its time and left its victim lingering all too long. A poison for hatred and revenge, not expediency. They had pricked her with a forked needle, the shaman said. A small dose, then. But a child. And even a small dose was deadly, only . . . slower. He had used it a time or two, when some clan-father insisted and could not be argued out of a cruel vengeance. Pointless. Such slow deaths had done little to feed the hag and keep her quiescent, which had been Ahjvar’s reason for selling himself in the cities in the first place. The girl might linger a day or two yet in the hands of her goddess, but there was no antidote he had ever heard of. To work wizardry against poison was no more effective than to battle it by a physician’s skills—both required understanding of what the poison did, and that the damage be not more than what the body could overcome.

  The assassins had come prepared to compel by such tactics, or prepared, Old Great Gods damn them and make their road a long one, to use such a poison on their ultimate victim.

  He thought of the arrows in the quiver at the dead archer’s belt and sweat chilled him.

  “Come,” he said abruptly. “There’s no antidote, but we’ll see what else they’re carrying. What’s your name?”

  “Ketkuiz.”

  “Ketkuiz. I’m Ahjvar. We’ll go back down. Let me search them. You build a fire.”

  Two distant figures, dark and abrupt against the white hills, had risen out of a fold in the land, proof of how easy stalking was, for all the barren ground. He stopped Ketkuiz with a hand on her shoulder, but he and she were against the trees, dull-coloured, hidden.

  “Your people or more Nabbani?”

  “Ours, no, not on foot. There were only the three Nabbani. Your master?”

  That was where he had expected to see Ghu, yes, but not with another person. Yet something moved white on white, four-legged. Jui, and he breathed again. It was Ghu after all, moving at a steady jog-trot. The one who followed was taller, more slender, long hair loose in the wind and a flash of red at the shoulder, all bird-bright colours against the snow . . . Surely . . . no.

  “Cold hells.” Now he was cold, yes. “Ketkuiz, these assassins, when they said they were sent against an enemy of Nabban, did they say he or she?”

  “A man,” she said. And, losing some of her dull resignation. “Why?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe Letin’s past returns to haunt it after all.” But he left that remark in untranslated Praitannec. “Come. A fire.”

  He waved an arm, stepping away from the concealing trees. Ghu saw him on the instant, waved back.

  All right, then. Both of them all right, for all they each had a shadowing stranger.

  Ahjvar burnt the arrows clean in the fire Ketkuiz kindled, setting the iron points into the hottest heart of the flames. He did not like the glossy dark gleam on them, no. He fed the bamboo quiver to the fire as well, and searched the bodies, inert and awkward weights to move and fouling to the hands. Each wore an enamelled badge on a chain about the neck, some device identifying their service, intricate as a coin or a seal, interwoven geometric shapes, flowers, maybe, on one side, and two characters just as intricate and intertwined on the other. Court script, but so ornately stylized he couldn’t make it out. Each had a tattoo, as well, deep black and new-looking over the heart, a round-cornered rectangle like the border of a slave’s brand. He found the first by accident, getting at the chain of the badge, which that man wore inside his inmost shirt, then pulled open the shirts of the other two and found them marked the same. The script within he could not read, either, but did not even recognize it or what language it might be. Flowing, yet jagged and barbed with thorns. Wrenched further at clothing and found that all three had a slave’s brand on the back of the shoulder. Min-Jan, the imperial clan. Slave-assassins of the emperor? He did not know how to interpret what any of that meant.

  Every damned blade they had carried he laid on the fire, burning clean any poison that might taint them. Good knives, a fine sword, but they could lie here and rust. In a satchel under the last swordsman’s coat Ketkuiz found an array of small jars, stoppered, some sealed in wax and some with their seals cracked, and a roll of soft leather containing several two-tined bronze needles, a blowpipe, darts.

  “Don’t touch,” he snapped, though the shaman had used a dead man’s scarf wrapped about her hand to open the bag. “Let me.”

  The jars were labelled in court Nabbani. All poisons, every one. Most he knew, by name or by sight. Seeds, resins, dust, oil.

  “Out!” he roared when Jiot came nosing in. “Ketkuiz, more wood, a hotter fire. Gods, I hate this, I hate it.”

  “Is there—” she began to ask.

  “No, no antidotes to poison here, not even for these—” He pointed to the jar of small red beans. “—and there is a leaf that taken soon after will cure their victim, often. But there is no antidote to tears of repentance at all, unless maybe you vomited it up the moment after it was taken, though I doubt even that—and certainly not when it was given in the blood. I’m sorry. But we need to burn all this, so there is no accident. Out, dog.” He certainly wasn’t going to carry those foul little jars; he was through with such deaths.

  The ghosts of the slain Nabbani were very still, unnaturally so, not a flicker in the corner of the eye, not a pressure of presence on the mind. He was used to that. The dead saw the wrongness of him, as the living did not. He worked the stoppers out of the jars using one of the assassins’ knives and upended each into the flames, dropping in the emptied jars and corks.

  “Take the dog and get upwind,” he advised, and thought to look to see where the camels had gone. They were far enough away to be safe from the smoke, which turned first heavy and yellowish, then greasy black. Only when every jar and every edge had been given to the fire did he try to reach out to the ghosts, thinking he might persuade them to speak of their master, this empress of Nabban who foresaw and feared Ghu so.

  Nothing remained of the assassins but cooling flesh. He had felt nothing, handling them, but now that he searched—still nothing. Empty, not shocked and quiet, confused and lost as a new infant, which was not uncommon in a murdered soul. Empty, as if . . . but the hag was dead.

  “Did you free the souls?” he demanded angrily of Ketkuiz, who had gone to sit on the wall, Jiot at her side.

  “No. I don’t see ghosts. Are they already gone to the road to the Old Great Gods? I would have left them unblessed with the ghosts of Letin.”

  Earth, fire, deep water, even salt in the corpse’s mouth might set a soul free to the road. Or a god’s blessing, which death by Ahjvar’s sword certainly was not. Baffling, and contrary to nature.

  “There are no ghosts in Letin,” he growled. “Not even these ones that should be here.”

  Except of course the devil Yeh-Lin herself, striding up at Ghu’s side. She had, since he saw her from the hilltop, taken on her old woman’s guise again, her lovely face lined, waist a little thickened, her hair iron-grey and swinging short about her shoulders. Even the splash of brilliant colour she had made against the snow was muted, brocades faded to something more in keeping with her Praitannec plaids. Only the scarlet tassel of her hilt was still bright as blood and flame.

  “Dead king,” she murmured in Praitannec, as Ghu, silent, stepped up on
the wall to look down on Ahjvar’s butchery. Ketkuiz watched him, eyes gone wide. Ghu did strike some women that way.

  “You’re still here—Ahjvar.” The devil made the name sound like a child’s pretence she condescended to share. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I’m not sure you’re a good idea. I thought you swore service to Deyandara. What are you doing here?”

  “Your granddaughter, or whatever you call her, is content and well and in no need of a tutor, as I have already told Nabban. She sends me after you, with instructions to be useful. So. Here I am. Being useful, as you can see.” She offered the dead winter-white hare and brace of pheasants she carried as proof. “What have you done to make Nabbani enemies? You haven’t even crossed the border.”

  “I was wondering if you might know that.”

  “They’re nothing to do with me.”

  “They were sent, the shaman says, by the empress of Nabban, to destroy the enemy of Nabban. He, this enemy, not she, although now I wonder if perhaps whatever oracle sent them made a mistake.”

  Yeh-Lin raised her eyebrows. “Interesting.”

  “Can you read this?” Delicately, he worked the chain and badge off over the dead woman’s head, tossed it up to Yeh-Lin. She snatched it from the air and held it in the light.

  “Oh, you are in trouble, and you haven’t even crossed the border yet. That device is meant to be peonies—the badge of the imperial family.” She turned it. “And this says, in a very obscure form, wind in the reeds. Or reeds in the wind. You could read it either way. Spies. Assassins. The emperor’s own. The Company of the Wind in the Reeds, they were when I formed them to be my eyes and ears in the land. Interesting.” She slipped it inside her gown.

  “What about that?” He rolled over one of the men, exposed the tattoo. Her nose wrinkled fastidiously, but she hopped down, forgetting to seem to have a care for old knees, and came to squat beside him. Touched carefully with a forefinger.

  “Huh.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Interesting.”

  “It’s not Nabbani.”

  “No.” She shrugged. “It is—a calligraphy you would not know.”

  “I know I don’t know it. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “It’s a phrase. The gate and the bridge. That’s all. It means nothing to me. Poetry, maybe. It sounds like something your granddaughter could make a song of.”

  Ahjvar turned away in annoyance.

  Ketkuiz still watched Ghu up on the wall, not the devil. Finally she looked to the old woman, back to Ghu, to Ahjvar, and licked dry lips. No powers here for a great empress to fear, he could see her thinking. No blessings here to save her niece. “Your master,” she said to Ahjvar, softly, as if that might stop the others hearing. “Is he a priest?”

  “No!”

  “He looks no priest. No wizard, either. But they feared him, and I do see there is the hand of a god on him. My lord—” She slid off the wall herself and bowed to Ghu, deeply, in the Nabbani fashion, hands together. “Forgive our aiding your enemies. We were forced. Your swordsman Ahjvar has freed us but please, if you will, lord, come to my brother’s hall. If my niece still lives, perhaps—perhaps she might yet be saved, by your will.”

  Ghu looked down at her, but Ahjvar didn’t think he saw. Fallen into that old deep darkness, maybe, the world losing him. Perhaps he did hear his gods. Or ran, to hide.

  “Your master?” Yeh-Lin murmured. “My, my. I can’t help but notice neither of you has rushed to correct her. And here I thought he was your horseboy.”

  “Shield-bearer,” Ahjvar said. “So? Now I follow him. Ghu?”

  “What sent them to the road?” Ghu asked, returning to himself, coming down to crouch by the dead.

  “I don’t know. They were just gone. I don’t know when.”

  Yeh-Lin spread her hand on the man’s chest, frowned, now. “Interesting. They aren’t gone to the road, Nabban. Can’t you tell? There would be a . . . a scent of it, an echo, the call of the stars. . . .”

  Ghu shook his head.

  “Something has taken them.”

  “No,” Ahjvar said flatly. He felt nauseous, cold and yet sweating again.

  The devil shot him a sharp look. “Not destroyed,” she said. “Not necromancy, either, not exactly. Just . . . taken.”

  “By what?” Ghu asked.

  “I can’t say. I don’t know.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think—nothing,” she said. “What does the shaman know?”

  “Nothing,” Ahjvar said. “She wouldn’t have given them any blessing even if the ghosts had begged.”

  Ketkuiz had waited out the Praitannec discussion in a tense silence, but when they all stood up from the body, she bowed yet again. “My lord—”

  “Wait,” Ghu said. “I don’t know what you want of us. Ahjvar?” He might be asking for an explanation, but he meant, Will you try? Can you try? Try to bear being among people.

  ‘Yes,” he said, before the tide of his fear could start to rise and swamp him again. “We should go. We don’t want to cook here where I’ve been burning poisons, and we owe Ketkuiz all the help we can give. Poison. They forced the folk of this land to aid them against us by poisoning a child. There’s no cure I know, but she wasn’t dead yet when the shaman set out with the assassins. Lin?” He in his turn made the shortened name a question.

  “Ah,” said Yeh-Lin, eyes narrowing. “No promises. Tell me.”

  He did, as briefly as he could. Weariness, now that he had stopped moving, seemed to crawl his veins. Cold beyond hope of warmth, and words a labour. He would not let it pull him under, not yet. Not his doing, this child’s death, but nonetheless . . . he felt the sin of it. It came because they were here, in this land.

  “Maybe,” Yeh-Lin said briefly. And to the shaman, “I don’t think our lord—” and no whiff of irony touched the words, “—can help you, but I know something of medicine and of healing wizardry. I can promise nothing, you must know that, except perhaps to ease her suffering until the end. But I will try what I can do. If,” she said, with what still seemed utter sincerity, “my lord Ghu says I may try.”

  The look Ghu gave her was unreadable.

  “Yes,” he told Ketkuiz. “We’ll help if we can. But we know nothing of these assassins. We’re only travellers. We’re only going home.” As the shaman bowed to him again, he gave Ahjvar’s shoulder a reassuring touch before climbing back to the top of the wall and whistling. Only Ahjvar failed to look impressed when the camels appeared shortly thereafter, looking down and snuffing inquiry.

  They walked, the laden camels following, no need to lead them. Ahjvar fell back to Ghu’s side. They had no language between them that the devil did not speak, but a glance was enough. Ghu shrugged.

  “For now,” he said.

  Yeh-Lin, walking beside the shaman, looked over her shoulder and smiled.

  CHAPTER XIV

  The winter camp of the shaman’s tribe was a village of houses half dug into a south-facing hillside. Riding the horses Ketkuiz and the assassins had left in a gully a mile from the ruins, they wound their way up to the wooden gate between walls of turf and thorn; sheep, roan cattle, tall horses, a few camels—some corralled, some free in the valley below where they could dig for grass—raised their heads to watch them pass. Dusk filled the sunken lane with darkness. Armed warriors met them at the gate, three men and a woman eyeing them with suspicion, two spears crossed to bar the way.

  Ketkuiz called out and launched into long and hurried speech in her own language. Ghu listened, head cocked to one side.

  “You speak Denanbaki?” Ahjvar asked.

  “No.” But then he added, “Not yet.”

  The spears were raised, one man setting off uphill at a run, the woman going to take the camels’ heads.

  “She will see your animals tended and your gear bestowed in a guest-house,” Ketkuiz said. “Come to my brother.”

  Houses and outbuildings wer
e clustered with no defined yards except here and there a pen of hurdles sheltering a calf or ewes with the first of the new lambs, but the chieftain’s long hall was set within its own low bank of turf, more symbolic than practical as a fence. As with the smaller huts, even the portion of the hall downslope was dug into the earth, while at the rear the roof rose nearly from the ground. They dismounted there and a girl—a sister, maybe, for she looked very like a younger copy of the shaman—flew at Ketkuiz and hugged her, before inclining her head solemnly to the strangers and driving the horses off towards one of the outbuildings.

  “This way.” Ketkuiz led them into the hall, but it was empty. A clay stove, cold and dark, ringed by an earthen bench, held the centre, with cushions and rugs laid out in arcs around it. Not a dwelling but a meeting-place of the chief men and women of the settlement, Ahjvar judged. A heap of hunting dogs, sleeping on the rug-covered dais at one end, stirred and stared in silence, offering no challenge to Jui and Jiot. Ketkuiz hesitated there.

  “No,” she said, half to herself. “He will not come. He will not leave her now.” So they followed Ketkuiz through and out a door on the other side, to a house not distinguished from any other, except by its location within the hall’s yard and the presence of the man who had carried the news from the gate now standing at the door.

  A few anxious words were exchanged. Ahjvar could imagine. Of course strangers must be brought before the chief to learn his will, and courtesy also demanded he greet his sister’s guests, if that was what they were, but to intrude strangers on the child’s deathbed. . . .