Gods of Nabban

by K V Johansen

  That bit more than her cheek. He pulled away and found his feet again, and she still, with face ruined and eyeless, struck another blow that caught the edge of the damaged armour and opened scars. Strength beyond what that body could claim. He fell to his knees.

  She had him then. Threads of light clung. He drew Ghu’s knife, tucked into his belt at the back. He could feel her, crawling on him. Into him. Not again not again not—

  I have you, Ahj. And we have him. There.

  “A mistake to discard you last night, dead man. This time I will hold onto you, I think, and bring him to me through you. Humanly weak, your little god, but his land is great.”

  Ahjvar pushed her head back, hooked the knife and ripped, not flesh but steel scales fixed to leather, the silk beneath, and the golden chain and the amulet, a crystal of milky quartz the length of a man’s thumb, bound in golden wire—

  —caught it on both shaking and bloodied hands, and she shrieked—

  And silence. She crumpled up half over his knees, cold, dead meat.

  Stone cold in his hands, and the tendrils of white light writhed. They clung, and pulled, web spreading over him.

  You are a fool, dead man. Your soul is not even your own.

  “You think? I know all that I am. What I’ve been made, good and ill, by my road. What he made me.”

  Every man’s dream, a lover who surrenders self, who is nothing but a part of himself. It won’t last. You’ll run from him in the end, and he’ll have to kill you. I know.

  The threads burrowed deeper. Ice in his veins.

  “His champion. His sword. His priest. His friend.”

  His betrayer. You’re an open road into his heart. Your soul winds through his, and through you, I reach into him and take you both. See? It’s already too late. You, him, Nabban. A great land.

  “He is deep water, you know. Darkness. Stillness. Peace. But he says I am a hearth. A fire. And maybe I am. I know fire. I have burned.”

  It was in him, always. All his nightmares.

  Fire might break even stone. Fire purified. Fire freed the dead.

  A fire not of wood or oil or sea-coal. A fire fed on bone and soul, and what froze his hands was soul and stone. His fire had slept in his bones over ninety years. He held it in his mind, wove them together. For fire, alder. And alder, and alder threefold untempered by any other sign. He could feel Ghu’s hands over his, though the white horse and the black-armoured rider were beset, and Ghu had Yuro’s mace.

  Distraction. There must be nothing but what he held in his hands.

  His name was Ahjvar, not Catairlau. He burned regardless, as that self-damned prince had burned.

  In his hands, stone hissed, and seared, and cracked. Gold wire softened, ran, seared him. Stone gone brittle crumbled to sharp-edged grit between his hands and he heard the devil shriek all the way from the western sea, some fragment of his soul broken and destroyed. He felt the souls fly free—Buri-Nai, Zhung Musan, assassins he had killed, wizards and banner-lords chosen her own, her faithful dead, her murdered lowly folk—felt the road opening out before them, drawing them, enticing, fearful, innocently short or penitentially long. And still they flew to it. He could not. He had known this would be and he could not, and neither could he after all endure—

  The fire would not let him go till it was through with him. Skin bubbled, blackened, flaked, and flesh, and there was white bone beneath. The pain screamed through him but he had no breath to scream—Not again, not like this, let me go, let me go, let me go—

  CHAPTER XLIII

  All that way, to have found—whatever it was he had found. If Kaeo were only a passing pleasure for the youngest of the queens of Darru and Lathi, even that was enough, though he would rather it were more. Kaeo thought it might be more. But all that way, to die at the hands of imperial soldiers at last, when he had found his god . . .

  That was the shape of a poem, but it was not truth. He had found the god, the heir of Nabban, and the god had not, in the end, been his. He had come to understand that on the road north. His heart, his soul, had known it, even on the night he sang with Rat against the typhoon.

  “Thank you,” the god had said. For what? For acting as the devil’s messenger and carrying the yellow-haired man’s weapons back to him.

  Thank you. Like a dismissal. Releasing him. Not for fetching that sword along, but for all that went before. Not for what the dying gods had done to him, witting or unwitting. For what he had tried to do, for the Traditionalists, for Prince Dan. For trying, even if he had failed. Kaeo felt that. He understood it. Thank you, for being willing to die. Not for godhead, but for what mattered. For what was right.

  He was not Nabban’s. He was given to himself, to give himself where he would.

  You’re mine, Rat had said, more than once, and whispered it with something like surprise the first time they lay together. He hoped there was not some man back in Darru and Lathi who thought he had an understanding with the youngest queen, and that her sisters did not decide his skull would look better on a royal doorpost.

  Except . . .

  Little Sister, Nabban named her.

  He was not a fool. She had said she was not a wizard.

  He leaned against her back, and she looked over her shoulder.

  “Mine,” he said. “Even if you grow up to be a tigress.”

  She snorted laughter. No denial.

  “Someday,” she said. “Maybe. When I am old, I will go to the river. Until then, I am only your queen and a priestess of a goddess who was and may yet be.” Her Anlau voice, he called it in his mind. An accent of the south, a formality. Rat’s grin. “And whatever else you think I might happen to be. The queens live celibate, you know, but I am—not counted quite in the traditional pattern.”

  A kiss, awkward, she twisting far to meet him.

  Not a fool, and wise enough to know he was a danger to her, clinging to her belt, spy, queen, goddess that might be . . . wife? He was liable to fall off this tall horse and take Rat with him.

  “Let me down,” he said. “I’ll only be a danger to you and fall off and get trampled. I’ll stand by the priest.”

  And what that old unarmed man was doing here, rather than left with the reserve at the river commanded by Prince Dan, he did not understand. Rat hesitated. Then she nodded, seized his arm to steady him as he slithered down. The old priest clapped him on the shoulder.

  He looked up at her and found Rat still looking down, her eyes gone . . . remote, and wide, and glistening. Seeing . . . What he saw, reflected in her eyes. He swallowed, and blinked, their hands still caught together.

  Thank you, the god had said.

  He let her go.

  CHAPTER XLIV

  “Kill them!” the empress shouted. “Bring me the body of the pretender!” And Ahjvar went for her through her giants as the court-dressed women of her bodyguard rushed for the blue banner.

  Ahjvar shouted warning—“Poison!”—and someone shot one of them, but Yuro’s horse crumpled down as if clubbed on the head, and the woman who had raked its nose with a blade like a fruit-knife fell herself, skull smashed by his mace.

  Two were swarming Ivah, aiming for the banner she held set in her left stirrup. She cut down one and the good horse took the other, but two had gotten past and gone for Ghu, who sat motionless, lost in some trance, and weaponless besides, though Snow shifted his weight, preparing to strike. Naked of any armour. The Dar-Lathan man Kaeo flung himself on top of an assassin who dodged Yeh-Lin to come at Ghu. Kaeo knocked the imperial to the ground and was kneeling up to stab her with his sword when she pricked him in the thigh.

  He brought his blow down anyway, even as the Wild Girl screamed his name and wheeled her horse about to come to her comrade. Kaeo pinned the assassin to the earth, fell over her, losing his grip on his sword, and did not move. He had only a scratch and hardly bled at all.

  The rarest of poisons, Ivah’s mother had said. The Wind in the Reeds had them, kept them secret even from the wizards,
lest their workings become known. Venoms from jungles south-over-seas, from fish of the islands where the pearls were found. To be used only at the emperor’s will.

  One had cut her above her boot, but she felt nothing other than the pain she might expect. Clean blade, and as no other wounded dropped dead, the blades of the others were clean, and the Wind in the Reeds died in short order, in the wrath of the Wild Girl of Dar-Lathi and Yeh-Lin’s guarding of the god, and Yuro’s fury, and her own.

  Yuro fell at the god’s side, struck down by some imperial banner-lord who did not live long after, and Ghu, wherever he had been, seemed to wake then, and rolled down his horse’s side and back, an arm wrapped in his long mane, with Yuro’s mace. One of the archers dragged Yuro up across his own horse, weak but moving. The dragon-dogs were gone out over the field. Fear of them broke the companies there, made them bunch and cower or scatter to the woodlands, though Ivah didn’t see them make any actual attack. Sheets of rain chased them, the wind gusting wild from every quarter.

  Cold as winter, and they were being forced away from where Ahjvar fought the empress. He should make short work of her but Buri-Nai—or whatever used her body—seemed a swordswoman of skill to hold her own against him. Ivah unhorsed the banner-lord she fought and killed him as he struggled up, and Ahjvar was down—the empress falling, and he knelt over her.

  Not lightning, but flame red and angry, cupped in his hands—born of them, flame springing up along his arms, flame a bonfire and he lost within it—

  Roaring red, yellow-hot, bright and savage and nothing she could do, no time to weave a spell and it was already too late to save him, no matter what held him bound in the world. The empress was nothing but a dark lump, not even a human shape, and Ahjvar knelt still unmoving, not falling but—a black and hideous thing—hands, teeth, a cheek pale bone, burning into her memory. Ivah could not shut her eyes against it, never would in all her dreams, she thought, and slashed at the man whose halberd tried to tear her down from her horse. The white stallion plunged past her, trampling the last giant standing, and Ghu flung himself down and into the pyre that was his man or took it in his arms, body, fire, and all, and—was gone. Both of them. A clear space, a moment’s calm, breathless.

  The wind died to nothing.

  “The empress is dead!” someone shouted, or wailed, and the dragons circled them. Some of the empress’s people turned to run and thought better of it, as the paler dragon settled behind them, baring teeth, or grinning. A woman with long hair falling from her ornate combs fell to her knees, reversed her knife and drove it into her own belly.

  Not a swift death, that. Ivah rode over and leaned to slash her throat, though it was a mercy she gave because she thought it was right, not one she was inclined of her own heart to give. That one was the last of those women of the Wind in the Reeds.

  A man slid from his horse and went to his knees, his surcoat proclaiming him of the Shouja Clan, the badges of his helmet, his ribbons, marking him a lord, a captain-general of this army, or a part of it. Others, seeing this, dropped as well. Banner-ranked men and women, greater lords of the court in arms, the empress’s own folk.

  “Stop this,” Yeh-Lin said. Their god was gone. Someone had to stand at their head now; they could not wait for his return. “Signal your companies to lay down their arms, and stop this. You make war on your god in the name of a lie, and a fratricide, and an usurper who would have given this land into the hands of the worst of devils. Do not damn yourselves further.”

  Ivah rode to her side. She meant only to say that Dan—anyone but Yeh-Lin Dotemon—should formally take the surrender of the empress’s lords, but Yeh-Lin gave her suddenly a most wicked grin, a dragon’s grin, and bowed, standing at her stirrup.

  “The captain of the archers of the god of Nabban, Lady Ivah, banner-bearer of the god of Nabban, heir of Prince Dan, princess of the Tamghati of the Great Grass, and daughter of Princess Min-Jan An-Chaq, will take your surrender.”

  CHAPTER XLV

  —drowning in deep water. Not the Lady’s well, not the sea.

  River. Current, pushing him. Dimmest of light, golden, faint above. Ghu, holding him against the push of the water that would carry him away, lying with him, and water filling his mouth, breathed in. The pain was in hands and chest and eyes and he had burned.

  Not even a voice in his mind. Only a touch. There was quiet. Safety. Water neither cool nor warm, wrapping close, and he could lie back against Ghu and be still. Not burning. Not drowning.

  Better. That, Ahjvar did hear, and feel as a touch at the same time.

  Water, current wrapping his hands, calming the fires. Water like lips brushing over closed eyes, lips against his ear, but the words were still in his mind. You’re not burnt, Ahj. You’re safe. He’s gone from our land. Lie still.

  You’re not burnt was a lie, but Ghu never lied and Ghu had him, so he was safe.

  “Cold.” His voice was a croak. He was soaking wet, shivering.

  “It’s raining.”

  So it was. Rain, and breaking clouds, and shafts of sun. No people. No voices. Only the sound of the river, loud over stones. How had they come there? Not the important question.

  “Have we won your war?”

  “I don’t know.” Ghu had an abstracted look, hand wound in Ahjvar’s wet hair. Listening. Or searching. “Yeh-Lin’s looking after things, and Ivah is. Buri-Nai’s commanders have offered their swords, though.”

  “I hope the devil broke them.”

  “She has let them keep their heads. I was—not so inclined. For a little. It’s as well as I was not there. You say you’re not safe. I don’t know; I’m not sure that I am, either. They obeyed Yao, they obeyed Otono, they obeyed Buri-Nai—not for any great fear, even, but because they were lords and emperors and that was how things were meant to be.”

  “The ones who chose not to didn’t manage to achieve much.”

  “Dan, you mean. At least they chose to try.”

  “Daro Korat. Daro Sia. Slaves and the poor run off to the edge of the wild and only setting up armed masters over the weaker again.”

  “Yes. They don’t know anything else. They can’t see anything else. Their stories hold nothing else, any longer. Ahj, this land makes me so—angry.”

  “Change it. Give them new stories.” New heroes. The slave who overthrew a tyrant and set free the folk and drove a devil from the land.

  “To shift all the weight of the land?”

  “My granddaughter would say so. Your little bard. But someone’s going to have to set new laws and take thought for new order. That can’t wait. Harvest coming. Winter. Start somewhere. Choa.”

  “Village by village, manor by manor, city ward by ward. Province by province. Yes. Did I say law-speaker?”

  “You said clerk. Be your clerk. It wasn’t imperial law I studied. Five Cities is very different.”

  “Different may be what we need. Law of the Five Cities, law of the duinas, law of Marakand. There was a code of laws before Yeh-Lin. I don’t know what it said. Different, though. Different after Min-Jan, too. Do you think we could make a senate of some sort work?”

  Ahjvar didn’t want to think about it. A land the size of Nabban, a village council, which was what the senate of Marakand was, grown grand and full of itself, with all its factions and family compacts. Or the Five Cities, where the clan-fathers lived in their fortified houses and warred by assassins.

  “God of this land. Will you be emperor too?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t do more than push them to face the right direction. They need to find their own paths, if anything they make is going to endure.”

  He hurt all over, and felt his age, which was considerable. Good just to lie where he was, with the sky over him and his head on Ghu’s lap, Ghu’s hand over aching scars. Unmerciful Great Gods—Yeh-Lin’s blasphemy—his head throbbed, and there was no coffee in all this land. His chest ached, too, and his hands felt raw.

  “Ghu, did I—” He held u
p a hand, studied it. It shook, and hardly seemed to belong to him, for all its familiar old lines and scars. “Was it nightmare, again, or shaman’s dreaming, the place where I burnt the stone?”

  “Does it matter?”

  That was not an answer. He struggled to sit up.

  “Did I burn again?”

  “Hush. Lie down. I held you. I said I would. I couldn’t let you go like that.”

  Curled away, into darkness. Far away, far as he could get. Tasted tears on his face, not his own, cheek pressed to his cheek.

  “Ghu.”

  “I’m here.” In the night. The water sang over its rocks. They were by the rapids. The gorge. Leaves whispered, and a bird was singing. Time lost, as it had used to be, on the road, in hills of the eastern Over-Malagru, in the desert.

  “Don’t leave me alone.” I thought I was better. I thought I’d broken this.

  “I don’t. I won’t.” You are. You have. This, you’ll pass through too. Old scars opened. They’ll heal again. Give yourself time.

  And oak trees. Almost a joke. A shaky one.

  Time and the cork oaks. Mouth moved against him. A smile, a slow kiss. “You put the devil out of Nabban, Ahj. Yeh-Lin didn’t do that. Ahjvar, you know you don’t—” Breath against his ear. “Don’t—bind yourself here, for my sake. Go, if will. If you need to. I didn’t think, when—when you cried out of the fire, that you—I do not think I should be trusted with what you give me. I took you into the river instead. I didn’t think you knew what you said.”

  “And you ask now?”

  “Yes.”

  “You still want company on your road?”

  “Yes, Ahj.”

  “Good. Don’t let go of me.”

  “No. I have you still.”

  CHAPTER XLVI

  Nabban came and went about the camp at the ferry landing and those set up and down the road, a few miles from the battlefield and the hill of his death and rebirth, which they were calling the holy hill, now. There was an old shrine high up there, forgotten and overgrown. The folk of the nearest village had come back, proudly protective of it, and were clearing the old path that snaked up along the ledges, between strange pillars carved in the rough shape of a human figure, head and shoulders, featureless. A holy place before there was Father or Mother, made holy again. Would the god send them a priest, they asked? Their lord and his sons and daughter were all dead in the fighting and his household fled. It was the smith, a serf of the dead lord, who came to them, and Awan who went up the steep path, leaning on his stick, to see the old holy place.