The Lady

by K V Johansen

Lin merely smiled, closing her hand on her light, which winked out. Fairu backed away a step.

  “Catairanach will appear again when she judges we have need of her,” the bard Gelyn said. “I, for one, have faith in my lady Deyandara and acknowledge her Cattiga’s heir and successor. I speak for my father in this as well.”

  “I was willing to swear to Lady Deyandara as my queen at Dinaz Catairna the night the goddess sent her away,” said Lady Senara, who was surely too old to be carrying a spear into battle, but who wore a sleeveless vest of leather and bronze scales nonetheless, her white hair braided tight around her head. “I still am.”

  Fairu, after a moment, bowed his head. “Since the war-chief and the bards place their trust in Lady Deyandara, I will do likewise. For now. Let her prove worthy of it.”

  “Thank you,” Deyandara said, when it became clear everyone, even Lin, now waited for her to say something. It came out sounding dry and sarcastic and rather like what she thought Lin—or Ahjvar—might have said, not the gasp of relief she actually felt, not for the fact that Fairu accepted her, but that there would be no duel between champions. She had no fear of Lin failing to win any fight to blood or death in the circle, but it would be a devils’ victory, apt to create more strife, raise accusations of unlawful wizardry, because how could a woman of Lin’s age do what she did? Or was it wizardry, some spell preserving youth’s strength and speed, and without it would her self-proclaimed champion creak and groan and stoop?

  The tone bit. Fairu flushed but gave another, deeper, bow.

  “Now,” said Marnoch, and his smile, finally, was welcome, for her, her alone and not Catigga’s heir, “your news, Deya?”

  She left most of their tale for Lin to tell, of Marakander scouts evaded or ambushed.

  “And you bring no word from the high king at all, Lady?” Fairu still sounded mistrustful.

  The question was meant for Deyandara. Lin waited on her answer. “I wasn’t going to come back to you on my brother’s leash.”

  “We’ll see the truth of that once we meet him, I suppose. And what about this assassin?” asked Fairu. “Do you mean the Voice is dead? Do the Marakanders at the dinaz know it yet?”

  “I don’t know,” Deyandara had to admit. “She was alive when I left Marakand, but news couldn’t have outrun us, anyhow.” The Voice dead, or Ahjvar, and if Ahjvar, then likely Ghu as well. She had tried not to think of them at all since leaving the city behind; there was nothing she could do about them. That she had carried the goddess’s command didn’t make her responsible for Ahjvar having obeyed it. It was all very well for him to risk a horrible execution for himself, but to drag his servant into it . . . getting angry about that did her no good. She should have tried to command Ghu to come with her. He wouldn’t have listened. He only saw Ahjvar.

  “Does it make a difference?” Lord Goran asked. “If the Voice is dead, if she isn’t—we still have to retake Dinaz Catairna and see Ketsim’s head buried beneath the gate.”

  “It may make a difference to what the Marakanders do,” the bard Gelyn observed. “Should we risk the wizards, my lady?”

  After a moment and a glance at Lin, arms folded, silent and smiling tightly at her shoulder, Deyandara realized that question, as well, was meant for her.

  “I don’t—what do you think, Lord Marnoch, Lady Lin? Has anyone learnt how near the Red Masks have to be to find a wizard?”

  “Pagel may have discovered it. He was the soothsayer of my household, who got his fellow scouts killed,” said Fairu, with a dark look at Lin. “The third died later, did Marnoch say? Pagel knew he was forbidden to use magic, even the little divination he was capable of. Whatever powers the Red Masks have, they’re strong, and it goes beyond spreading panic like a stench around. It was the Red Masks in a body who rode first into the storm that came about the dinaz in the morning as we abandoned it. I saw. I was with the rearguard, the last left to witness. But when they rode over the brook that’s fed by Catairanach’s spring the rainstorm ended. The waters calmed, the wind died, the fog burned away—and maybe the goddess with it, for all we can tell. And those of us who were left in the burning dinaz to try to get a true report of their numbers and what they might do next fled, mad and wild as our horses with terror. We shouldn’t risk bringing that down on ourselves. Trying magic here might be like building a great beacon on a hilltop to signal where we are. They may already be sniffing us out.”

  “If a little light were going to draw them, they would have been on our heels days ago,” Lin retorted. “I’m so dreadfully lazy about kindling fires with flint and steel. So frustratingly slow, when one has been riding all day and wants one’s supper.” A cheerful lie. Deyandara suppressed a smile. They had been living mostly on oatmeal soaked in cold water, raisins, and the leathery, sweet-salt smoked meat Lin had been carrying, not risking a fire made by whatever means. “Your unfortunate soothsayer must have been very close to the Red Masks when he made his ill-fated experiment. Divination is usually a fairly quiet undertaking, as it were. It makes few ripples on the surface of the world. That’s why even the weakest in talent can eke out a living as soothsayers. Perhaps I could meet your wizards, Lord Marnoch?”

  She didn’t quite imply the other Catairnan wizards were mere soothsayers as well, though her tone walked close to it. Not even Fairu protested the insult; all Praitan knew the weakness of Catairnan magic.

  Divination for the fate of the Voice had had to wait until morning. The wizards wanted daylight, but dawn came with mist filling the valley of the brook they followed. The tops of the willows broke the surface like islands in a pearly lake. Deyandara stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. A chance to wash in a basin of hot water, to wash her hair for the first time since the bathhouse in the suburb of Marakand, a night’s sound sleep on soft blankets in a tent, and a large—and blessedly hot—breakfast had somehow brought home to her body all the weariness of the past weeks, months, of travelling. She could have slept the day around, but the warriors were breakfasting, the scouts and outriders spreading in a fan before them, her tent was already down, and the wizards were waiting. Her braids had been wound close around her head, held with many pins. Someone had provided a close-fitting helmet, one of the few women of the bench-companions a shirt of scales, heavy on her shoulders but not over-large. She would be much more comfortable in leather, like the huntsmen turned scouts, skulking in cover and shooting unseen. No sword; she hadn’t the skill or the strength, but she had her bow and a new, long dagger. With Lin at her side she did not need a sword herself. Marnoch had set Faullen to be her groom, with Rozen, a young woman of the scouts, to be body-servant to her and Lin; both were guards as well and carried spears as they followed her, still in their scruffy leathers and green and brown plaids. Not much of a royal household, but she wasn’t much of a queen and didn’t command much of an army.

  She wasn’t queen yet, anyway. It needed more than blood, or even blood and choosing by the last queen; only the acclamation of the lords and the blessing of the goddess could make it true, and what happened when the goddess denied her before them all? Shame, dishonour . . . escape from the need to take on the duty she owed the aunt she had so briefly known?

  “Lady.” Mag, an older wizard-woman of Yvarr’s household, greeted her and Lin both with a cheerful grin. Hallet, a brown-haired man from the western hills, distant cousin of Gelyn, bowed more formally, while the third wizard, his brother Haildroch, looked up from the small fire, kindled with two sticks, which he was puffing into life, feeding carefully with small twigs. Haildroch winked at her. The yellowish smoke smelt of pine needles. Beyond the lords their bench-companions and household folk crowded, and beyond them anyone else who had no other pressing task. Witnesses, she supposed. Lin stood at her back again, not, after all, taking part.

  Deyandara had seen divination performed often enough in her brother’s hall, either the simpler casting of the leaves on water or into fire, which one alone could do, or this greater ritual of the wands, which needed th
ree. Hallet, who had the best voice, began without any warning to sing a prayer, swaying back and forth to the beat of Mag’s drum. The onlookers fell into silence, or at least subsided to a distant whisper and mutter on the fringes. Catairanach blesses the willow, roots in deep waters. Catairanach blesses the alder that burns hottest . . . the oak that crowns the heights, the elm of the straight grain . . . the Old Great Gods hold the world in their cupped hands. . . . Haildroch passed the wands, long slim twigs from each of the eight trees of the sun, the eight trees of the moon, and stalks of the eight holy herbs, through the smoke three times. Some, the willow and alder, poplar and rose, yarrow, dock, and nettle, were new-cut, their green leaves unwithered. The smoke, instead of rising, began to pool about the three of them and their fire, like the mist in the valley bottom. It was the sort of airless, windless morning that promised a scorching day, but the smoke roiled and turned as if tugged by conflicting breezes. Someone coughed.

  “Three questions,” Haildroch said.

  “Three answers,” Mag responded, while Hallet still sang. It was no longer a prayer but one of the old chants that only the wizards and the bards preserved; the words had meaning for few even of them. There did always have to be three questions, or three faces to your question, and three wizards. Lin’s Nabbani coin-throwing involved no prayer or ritual at all, only scraps of poetry that went with the configurations of the coins. She always seemed amused by the Praitannec method, even the simpler casting of the leaves, though she would play the drum for Launval the Younger and Elissa, when Durandau called for a soothsaying in the hall.

  Blessed by the smoke, the twigs were arranged like a nosegay of flowers in Haildroch’s hand.

  “Is the Voice of the Lady of Marakand gone to the Old Great Gods?” he sang, weaving the words into Hallet’s chant. He wandered the circle, stopped before Gelyn, who knew what she was to do. The bard closed her eyes and plucked a twig. Yew. Deyandara saw the dark needles and knew that one. Anyone would. She sighed with relief, even as Haildroch held the wand high and named it. Mag sang, “The Voice has passed through the darkness, the Voice has taken the road.” Haildroch threw the yew twig on the fire.

  Death, the simplest meaning of the yew, and that meant Ahjvar had succeeded; she could hope after all that he had escaped safely, as he presumably had so many times before, and that Ghu had found him and they were safe and out of Marakand. She also hoped Ahjvar had not beaten him for giving away the horses.

  “Is there strength in our enemies yet, or do they falter in the loss of their great priestess?” Haildroch took his fistful of wands to Marnoch, who, a hand over his eyes, drew out two.

  “The oak and the elder.”

  A stir, faces settling into grimness. Oak, at least, always represented strength and age and that which endures time itself. Not, in this context, a good foretelling for them.

  “There is strength unbroken among our enemies,” Mag sang. “Though the Voice is dead, there is new life, new strength, new will.”

  It was not a matter of merely knowing what each twig or stalk or leaf stood for. If it were so, every man could cast for his own fortune. It was the power that flowed through a wizard’s blood, which ran ahead of thought and voice and flung back echoes of the eternal stars, the words that spilled from the wizard chosen to answer, all unknowing. Haildroch crossed the circle again. Deyandara felt herself blushing, all eyes on her. She should have known when he went to Marnoch in the second place, Marnoch who was war-leader and lord of them all for this time. No wizard had ever offered her the choosing in a wand-divination before; they wouldn’t, not in her brother’s hall. Her curse, her ill-luck, couldn’t be allowed to taint any wizards’ working. But she was the great lady here and must be the third.

  Haildroch hesitated. There, he would turn away, go to someone else. But he was only waiting for the wording of his question to come to him.

  “What strength is there then to oppose us in Dinaz Catairna?” he almost whispered. “What strength is there in Marakand? What power dares keep Catairanach’s queen from her own?”

  No friendly winking now, just dark, unfocused pupils. With the eyes of all the war-council on her, Deyandara froze. Lin kicked the back of her heel. She snatched jerkily at the twigs, forgetting to close or cover her eyes, gripping the wands in a sweating fist. Her palm stung and burned. She looked to see what she had chosen. Gorse. Nettle. Dry stalk of old thistle. Haildroch didn’t take them from her but raised her hand by the wrist.

  “Gorse,” he cried. “Nettle. Thistle.”

  “Ever-blooming,” Mag cried in answer. “The undying come to war. The poison burns in the heart of the well of Marakand and they will know grief and bear the punishment that must be theirs for they have slain my Voice my word my chosen one and brought me to this and they dare to rise against me they dare to slay my chosen my servants my own to send my own against me I see her now she dares to set herself against my will the land is mine this land is mine she will not you will not be their queen their god—” Mag’s voice rose to a scream. “You will die again and die again and die again for we are dead and she is dead and the fire can burn even you as she burned—” The drum had fallen. Mag clawed at her own face, and Hallet, waking from his trance, flung himself to her, seizing her hands, shouting her name. Haildroch dropped Deyandara’s arm. The spined wands fell, trampled as Lin pushed past her, sweeping a hand, hissing some word that sent a white fire flaring like lightning, making a circle, leaping from body to body all around the ring. Mag burned in it. Deyandara saw her own shaking hands outlined, the red rash of the nettle rising on her palm turned into a tracery of white like frost, Marnoch’s dark hair silvered as if with age. The smoky fire roared up, consumed in a sheet of lightning. It settled into ash as the last smoke billowed skyward. Everyone fell back. Mag moaned and rocked herself in Hallet’s arms but raised her face while people were still holding out their hands, touching face and hair, reassuring themselves they were whole, unharmed.

  “What in the cold hells was that?” Mag demanded. Her voice squeaked like a child’s. She wiped her scratched face on her sleeve, pushing herself up shakily by Hallet’s shoulder.

  “Protection,” said Lin drily. “It would seem we have still the power behind the Red Masks to deal with.” Her fingers dug into Deyandara’s shoulder, gripping like claws.

  “What power?” Haildroch asked.

  “That,” Lin said, “is what I am wondering, too.”

  “But Catairanach marches with us,” Marnoch said, and seized a spear from Faullen standing near, brandished it high, shouting for silence, commanding the eye of all about. “Catairanach and the justice of the Old Great Gods go with us. You saw the sacred fire drive the enemy’s will from our midst.”

  “And Lady Lin has slain Red Masks,” Deyandara added. “Even if Ketsim’s mercenaries still hold the dinaz with the red priests’ aid, they’re not invincible. I’ve seen them die.”

  “Oh, hush, child,” said Lin, but she folded her arms and looked reassuringly foreign and dangerous as all nearby turned to stare. Deyandara flushed. “Well, you have. They need to know.”

  “One Red Mask. Once.”

  “That’s more than anyone else can claim,” said Marnoch. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner, Lady Lin?”

  “Because I’m an old woman and my lady’s guardian, not some assassin or a Northron berserk for you to send to the fore.”

  Marnoch’s eyes narrowed. “We can talk about that later, in a less public place, I think.”

  “And how did you do it?” demanded Hallet.

  “I—” Lin waved hand. “It’s not something I could teach you.”

  “Hallet,” said Marnoch. “Not here.”

  “That wasn’t any divine fire, that drove—whatever it was—from this drawing of the wands,” Hallet persisted. “It was you, but what kind of spell—”

  “I couldn’t teach you,” Lin repeated.

  “And after that, better the folk believe the gods do march with us,” muttered Haildroch
. “As I’m sure Catairanach does, in spirit, at least, if she can’t lend any practical aid. Marnoch . . .”

  “I know.” The war-leader took Hallet’s arm. “Listen to Haildroch. Don’t speak of this beyond the lords in council. Only those at the front saw what happened; let it be thought the goddess’s work, for now, to give them heart. Look after Mag.”

  Mag was rubbing her temples as if with headache. The other two wizards swept her away, to find their horses and servants and make ready to set out. Marnoch spoke a few words to the lords and ladies, and they, too, scattered, to speak to their captains and their village-captains. In a very short time the company was on the move again, travelling in a single winding column, with pack-ponies in the rear, no wagons. The lords rode with their own mounted bench-companions, but over the course of the day each of the four tended to drift to Marnoch and away again. A council on the move.

  It was Deyandara they discussed. She knew it. Whenever they stopped to rest the horses and let the stragglers catch up, the lords all came together with the wizards and Gelyn. Deyandara didn’t feel comfortable joining them but kept a little apart with Lin and her shadowing scouts. When the purple dusk began to stretch long from the west and they made their camp—the last at which they would put up the tents or risk cook-fires—the bard came to summon her, bowing low.

  They met in the open, and again, the bench-companions of the lords made a ring, and beyond . . . it seemed half the camp gathered, beyond. Deyandara’s knees had gone watery. She knew what this was about, but when Lord Fairu stepped forward she thought for a moment she was wrong, and it was a challenge of her truth instead, till he dropped to his knees.

  “Lady,” he said. “Will you swear, in the name of Catairanach our goddess and Andara your god, and in the sight of the Old Great Gods above, that you are the bastard-born daughter of Palin, only brother to our queen Catigga, and that she so acknowledged you to be?”

  Deyandara swallowed. Why did he have to be their spokesman?