by K V Johansen
“I don’t weigh in the balance. Go, if you will.”
“No.” Ghu tried to speak lightly, but he felt his smile twist. “It’s not for your sake, Ahj. Don’t think that.” He drew a deep breath. “I know where I need to be.”
“So, then.” Ahjvar caught Ghu’s arm to pull himself upright again. “All downhill from here, at least.”
No choice, really. Far too late for that. Ghu nodded and started to pick his way down, taking a slantwise path. Loose stones rattled away from his feet, for all his care. The land whispered, a slow weight growing against the ears, a light touch like the brushing coil of a cat around the ankles. A wave, rising over him.
“Son of Nabban.” He caught himself on the nearest stable thing, which was Ahjvar, and looked back. Yeh-Lin still stood above them, a twist of smoky darkness against the sky, edged in light, veins of fire glowing within. He blinked that vision away. Only a woman dressed in the fashion of another age.
She waved a hand along the line of the border. So, she felt it too. No surprise. “This. I . . . would rather not, unasked. I would return in your service, or not at all. I swore so.”
“To whom?” Ahjvar demanded.
“To myself, when I left Praitan to follow your young god. You’re not the only who doesn’t trust himself without a polestar.”
“When did I say that?”
“You never did. Will you tell me it is not your truth nonetheless, dead king? Nabban, I swear—”
“Don’t,” Ghu said.
“But I do. I did not kill the goddess who wrapped my grave in her roots above the buried river, beyond the green mountains of the priests, in the dry south across the sea. No other one of the seven came to battle her and call me back. The chains of the Old Great Gods were weakened, yes, and I could have put forth my strength and broken them, and I did not. She let me go, Nabban. She told me, ‘You have work to do in service to this world before the end. Redeem yourself. Go.’ She said that, my tree, my old river-goddess, and she set me free. But still she holds a part of me, that I may not—be the danger I was. I am—leashed. I do not fight my leash. She is right to constrain me. Do you see it?”
There was a tremor in Dotemon’s voice that Ghu did not know if he could swear was truth. That she was restrained—he did not know either. He did not know how she might appear, that fire in her, in her full strength. She was a devil. The tales said there was no truth in them.
The wordless gods, aware through him, grew small and hard with apprehension, the way some sea-thing might draw in on itself. But they did not wake into any anger, any denial, even in their fear. Their judgement lay surrendered, in this moment, to him.
Why? How could they trust to his judgement? He was too small and young and human for this.
He could not look to Ahjvar for guidance. Ahj, as the devil claimed of herself, only waited. Only followed, with no strength but to carry himself, if that.
He did like her, wanted to like her or the person she seemed to be, but she had charmed armies to their destruction and set the pattern for Nabban to become what it was.
So might he. In what cause?
“Where will you go, if I send you away?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Nabban. To find the others, I suppose. To find my death, maybe. There is a sword of ice waiting for us all.” The last was a whisper.
He tried to listen to the land. It feared. In her, there was fear, too, that he would send her away. That she would be alone. Was that why she followed, simple loneliness? Fear of her fellows. It was not his, to save her from her fears. But in her, too, there was a yearning, a reaching for peace, for place, to know the green hills and the wild and the slow-snaking rivers again.
Ghu found words. Tasted them. Reluctant. Uncertain.
“Come, then. You’ve given your oath. I take it. And I hold you to it, Dotemon. Serve Nabban. Serve me.”
Yeh-Lin drew her sword, then, one swift movement, and closed both her hands over the blade. He saw the blood fall, felt it, hot drops on the boundary of Nabban soaking his earth, his skin. Could taste it in his mouth, warm and salt.
“Yours,” she said. Only that, and she went to her knees, forehead to the stones, sword laid before her.
“Idiot,” he said. “Stand up and come on.”
But there had been no mockery in her prostration.
Yeh-Lin came down to them slowly, stood breathing deeply, looking down into the valley. The thin red lines across her palms were already scabbing.
“Hah.” She looked up then, meeting his eyes. Grinned. “Home, Nabban. Do you feel it? We’re home.”
“Yes.”
“Well, come, then.” She laughed aloud and dodged past, clapping him on the arm as she went. Abandoning all caution, she plunged a zigzag course like a hare down the slope, ploughing through snow, slithering on stone, catching herself on the isolated grey trunks to change course, exuberant as a girl. The dogs surged after her, Jui yapping like a pup, skittering and skidding.
Ghu watched her disappear into the first thick stand of pines, a bright flash of colour before she was lost amid the crooked boles. A flock of birds took flight, scolding, wheeling against the sky. He laughed and caught at Ahjvar again.
“Come on. It’s spring down there.”
They followed breakneck in the devil’s wake.
After the first stand of woods they all lost their reckless abandon. The light began to fail, the sun plunging towards the unending mountains that stretched west, and there were long and sudden drops, deep gulleys filled with ice, the meltwater chiming through it, woken by sun and soon to sleep again.
Darkness wrapped them by the time they reached the thick forest of the valley bottom, and scents of pines and moss. It was as though they had walked out the dying of the old year and into the new, the big flower-buds swelling on the understorey rhododendrons, a chorus of frogs singing in the branches overhead.
Ahjvar dropped his pack and slid to sit himself against a tree, eyes closed, as if too tired to stand. But he spoke. He had not, much of the day past. “Yeh-Lin the Beautiful. Loose in Nabban.”
“Like you, dead king, I am but another of Nabban’s hounds.” Yeh-Lin bowed to them both. “Though handsomer than the four-legged ones and better-tempered than you.”
“Do you want to be buried again?” Ghu asked lightly. “Plenty of trees here to put you under.”
“One of his hounds, until he sends me away,” she amended.
“And what cause would you give him to do that, old woman?” Ahjvar demanded, opening his eyes again.
“I don’t know. But he will, someday. I see it.” Her eyes were shadowed. “I—Old Great Gods, I do not care. Not for any betrayal of mine, I swear it, again. And we are here, now.” She chuckled. “And there is a civilized town only another day’s march distant, and in the foreigners’ ward there are bathhouses that will admit even the likes of you, barbarian that you are, and if you two will avail yourselves of them, I will finally be rid of the stink of rancid rykersyld. Or filthy, unwashed male, which is almost the same thing.”
“No money,” Ghu said. “And we’re not going into the town.”
“Then the first brook we come to, you are going to wash. Both of you.”
“No soap,” Ghu said.
“I,” Yeh-Lin said, “have soap.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, Nabban, I do. But what you need is a razor, because those few otter’s whiskers that seem to be all you can grow are not going to charm the girls.”
“Ketkuiz didn’t complain.”
“Ketkuiz probably thought a man who smelt like camels was at least a change from men who smell like horses. And do I look to you as if I have ever in my life been in need of a razor?”
“I don’t know. Old women. Bristly chins.”
“The first brook we come to, heir of Nabban, I am going to push you in and hold your head under.”
“I can’t drown, you know. And it’s barely spring.”
“Cold baths are good f
or you,” Yeh-Lin said. “At least if soap is involved. And you’ll wash what of your clothing can be washed. Damned Great Gods, listen to me! I am not here to be mother to either of you.”
“Dotemon the Dreamshaper lures us to our doom,” Ahjvar muttered. “We survive the badlands in winter and she kills us with a spring ague.”
“A long-laid plan,” said Yeh-Lin. “I shall then rob you of your—your—you have absolutely nothing I would think worth the stealing. And bury you under a tree, I suppose. Both of you in one grave. A touching ballad.”
“A cautionary tale,” Ahjvar countered, eyes shut again. Last night he had nearly flung himself and Ghu both into the fire in his dreaming.
“Children, you really do reek. Why aren’t we going into town? I was looking forward to a hot meal and a soft bed, even one with fleas, in addition to the bathhouse.”
“We have no papers, no caravan-master to say we’re his folk,” Ghu said. “They’d have turned us back at the border for that alone. Ahjvar looks like trouble—you do, Ahj. No magistrate’s guard is going to let you walk the streets without question. And I’m a runaway. There are people in this part of the world who might even know me, for all I’ve grown up since then.”
“Slave, Nabban?”
“Yes,” he said shortly.
“I said Ghu was a slave’s name, when first we met. I only meant to be rude. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Why a slave’s name?” Ahjvar asked. He caught at Ghu’s arm, heaved himself up again as the night settled around them, mountains claiming the sun.
“Because it’s a joke,” Ghu said. “It’s Lathan, from the south. Listen, I hear water. There’s a brook near. We’ll camp by it.”
“Why is it a joke?” Ahjvar persisted.
“It’s a name you’d give a dog,” said Yeh-Lin.
“Or a horse,” Ghu said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s my name. I didn’t see any smoke, coming down from the mountain. No villages, no soldiers. We should be safe to make a fire. I’ll cook. Find wood, you two.”
Her eyes were open, blue-grey, empty. Lips blue, mouth bruised, and the marks of his thumbs on her throat. Brown hair, a few white threads shining in the candlelight, snarled his hands.
No. No. No.
Two of them, dead where they had scrambled in confusion from their sleep. Old man, old woman, blood pooling together on the rush-strewn floor. The door hung broken.
King, champion, sword. Hot hands on him, digging in, burning. A body lying over him.
Open your eyes, dead man.
Blistered skin, crumbling to the touch. Slimed with stagnant water.
Knife in his hand, the small, fine blade.
There was a fire behind her eyes.
Pain, a sharp blow. Hand opened.
“Ahjvar. Ahj!”
Eyes opened too, on night, on firelight. Ghu, who had struck his hand against a twisted root to break his grip on the knife. Ghu, who snapped, “Get that,” at the devil. Ghu kneeling over him, pinning him down. Yeh-Lin far too close beside him, on one knee, plaid over her shoulders as she had slept, sweeping up his small last knife in her hand.
He gasped for air, throat raw. Not smoke. Not water. He had forgotten how to breathe. Ghu hauled him up, dragged him close. He pressed closer yet, shaking.
“Great Gods damn, we need to search him before we lie down to sleep,” Yeh-Lin said, and rubbed a tear below her breast, a dark smear in the amber firelight. “It’s all very well saying the dogs will keep watch, but they don’t seem to have been watching him.”
Safe. Ghu had him. Yeh-Lin flicked the bloodstain with angry fingertips and the darkness was gone, the brocade whole.
“Not faster than me after all,” he muttered into Ghu’s shoulder, but the words came broken, stuttering.
“I was asleep.” Outrage in her voice. Yeh-Lin drove the knife point down into the moss at his side. And then, more gently, “Tu’usha—the Lady—is dead. That is truth. You know it. I saw it in the mirror. I told you before—I can show you, if you will. If that would help.”
“No.”
“She has no hold on you; she will not touch you again. She is gone from this world; the black sword took her. I am not she. And I’m not hurt. You couldn’t do me lasting harm if you tried, Ahjvar, so sleep, both of you. I’ll sit up. No more dreams tonight.” He flinched from her hand, but she did not touch him, only sketched something in the air. “Possession atop possession. I suppose the wonder is you’re as sane as you are.”
“Don’t—”
“Too late. And it’s only small wizardry. It won’t hold you if you fight it. So don’t fight it. Let it be. Sleep.”
“Don’t.”
“Sleep.”
The weariness was too heavy and the panic that wanted to break free was muffled, stilled against warmth, a song half-whispered.
“Not a horse.” Mumbled protest. Ghu sang to horses. But he gave up the struggle, did not want to wake, after all, to remember he had forgotten the knife at his wrist. Ghu had him still, lay down with him on their coats. Ahjvar curled against him, head on his chest, held to Ghu as if the night might yet tear him away. Yeh-Lin piled blankets over them and retreated to the fire. He shut his eyes, not to see the flames reflected in hers.
Sleep, she said, or maybe it was memory. Know you dream. Learn to fight the dreams, not your friends.
The sun was high when Ahjvar awoke, standing almost at noon. The fire was down to embers and no one was near but the dogs. He crawled out of the nest of blankets and coats chilled and stiff. Spring, maybe, but winter’s cold had rolled down off the mountain in the night. Splashing, out of sight. Under the densest pines the ground was clear, soft-carpeted with bronze needles, but where the canopy was thinner, leather-leafed bushes were snarled and woven into impenetrable thickets. He wound around several such and found Ghu downstream, crouched on stone, wringing out a sodden bundle of greyed linen in water already climbing its banks.
Shirtless, roughly-shaved—and that was his little knife tossed into the moss—wet-haired, and goose-bumped. “You missed breakfast, Ahj, what there was of it,” Ghu said over his shoulder. “Soap, there, on that rock. Wash off one layer of grime at least and make the devil happy.”
“We can’t go on avoiding settled areas much longer, can we?” Ahjvar asked. “Soldiers? City guard, that sort of thing?”
Better lost in the wilderness forever?
“Checkpoints on the road, on gates, yes. Probably more than usual, with the fighting the Denanbaki warned of. We’ll need to dodge all that. We don’t have papers.”
“At some point there’ll be people.”
He did not want people. It had been a relief, like a weight taken away, when the Denanbaki left them.
“Yes, Ahj.”
“Let me look at that brand.”
Ghu rose and mutely turned his back. The slave-mark was old and silvery white against the skin of his left shoulder.
Ahjvar traced the outline, a round-cornered rectangle long as his thumb, three fingers wide. Not too distorted. Born into slavery, but at least they hadn’t set the iron to the little child’s flesh. This had been done when he was nearly full-grown, or it would not be still as legible as it was on the man. He had never given it much thought. The old burn was puckered and hard beneath his fingertips. Daro Clan, it said within, in ornate and searing calligraphy even the blind could read.
“How do they cancel it for a freedman?”
“A second brand set near it. And papers, too. There’s always papers. Everyone in the empire needs papers, if they travel even so far as the next town.”
“Another brand. Great Gods be merciful.” Ahjvar flattened his hand, hiding the scar. Dripping black hair brushed his fingers. Ghu usually hacked it off before it grew long enough to reach his shoulders. “Papers I can forge, if I have the wording and the pattern of the seal. Well, and ink and paper and brushes too, but—”
“Yes. Ahjvar, don’t do that unless you mean it. It’s, it’s very hard not to no
tice. I try, but—gods, don’t do that. Please.”
He had, unthinking, drawn his hand down, thumb tracing the spine.
Ghu turned against his hand, solemn, watching him. His eyes were not dark brown but black, truly black, night and deep water. Not men, nor gods, Ahjvar had said, what seemed very long ago. It had always been women who drew him, women he had tangled, in the long dark years, with his memory of that waking, of Miara dead, so that he never forgot, ever, what he had become, and desire died stillborn. Mad. Unclean. A horror in the world. He had grown to be sickened by almost any human touch at all, however casual, knowing what he was, what his hands had done, but Ghu had never—he had never feared Ghu near him, his mere presence a refuge and a stillness that he had craved before he ever recognized that deep enfolding calm as what kept him from trying too hard to drive the boy away.
This, though . . .
Ghu was . . . Ghu. Only Ghu. Water-chilled skin warming to skin.
The chiming of the brook over stones sounded very loud.
He still tried to kill the ghosts of his past in the night. His mouth was dry. The knife had bitten flesh. An edge fit to shave with. It could have been Ghu.
“Children,” Yeh-Lin sang out, from the camp farther upstream. “Someone come gut these fish for me. I did not come back to Nabban to be your cook, but if I must, I expect help.”
“Can you cook?” Ahjvar called over his shoulder. He retreated a step, dropping his hand in something like relief.
“Can I cook? Champion of the Duina Catairna, I grew up in a one-room hut in a village of Solan, on the southern banks of the Wild Sister where she grows tame and broad among the canals. I was a virtuous maiden planning to marry the son of a woman whose hut was across the village paddies from ours, until a banner-lord’s son murdered him thinking thus to make me his mistress. Which is when I ran away to what they call now the Old Capital, to seek my fortune, as they say. Can I cook? If there is anything to cook, I can cook it. I can also butcher a pig, heckle hemp, spin, weave, milk a buffalo, drive an ox, and handle a boat. You’d be surprised. But that doesn’t mean I enjoy it or that you get out of gutting fish.”
Ghu caught Ahjvar, hand on the back of his neck. “Later,” he said on a breath, and left him.
