The Lady

by K V Johansen

  —Call them back.

  But they were too many, too scattered, her Red Masks, her will. A third died in Templefoot Ward, almost at her very gate, and—and—they had been dying in Praitan. All was weak and confused and hard to know, but they slipped from her—

  —No, it doesn’t matter. They must die. They are already dead. I don’t hear them. I don’t feel them. Let Praitan go. The dance. The dance is all. The glory of the Lady, we beg her, mercy, forgiveness, help us, help me, help me, help me . . .

  She had lost Red Masks there, how? And in the glory of her champion and the distasteful hunger of the ghost that rode him, and the confused hunting of the demon, she had not realized how her strength ebbed, because as it ebbed it was more difficult to be certain, to know, to feel all points at once, to hold all in one gathered hand. Her wizardry, hive-united, was weakened, terribly weakened. What power walked in Praitan to tear Red Masks from her?

  And the voices distracted her.

  What voices?

  Why had she decided to dance?

  Her body was grown so feeble, skeleton thin. How had that come about?

  There were priests in Pirakul who starved themselves to hear their gods.

  Something—a wind of ice, a current cold and deadly, eagle, snakehead-pike, a fire like moon on snow—lashed into her heart. The rhythm faltered and the tambourine drooped in Zora’s hand. She had not felt it coming. Her champion, her captain—she reached for him, felt an edge of cold iron cut between them, and he was gone, dragged from her grasp, and it hurt, it hurt, the tearing of the chains that wove through them all, because he was not dead as the others were dead. He was not rags and broken threads to leave dry and drifting strands she could knot up again, not a gap to be patched up but a great bleeding tear in her wizardry, and it hurt, Great Gods, it hurt. She screamed, falling to her knees, flinging will to seize him back, to bind him again. The city shook with her rage. She flung her fury out to destroy, but something stood between them, earth of the earth, stone and water, denying her, and wrath rebounded on the city, sought, like lightning, to earth itself in her. The air flashed and burned about her, but she held up her arms against it and was unharmed.

  Would she be the Lady? This was godhead.

  —What have you done? What have you woken? Call it back, beg it to come back, to hear us—

  But it was gone before she could gather wit or power to fling against it again, and the assassin was gone. His god had taken him. That had been no small power of a spring in Praitan. How had she been so deceived as to think—

  “Revered Lady, what is it?”

  Plaster fell, as it had fallen before in her anger, when the stained-glass eye of the dome was shattered. Now the wall hangings had crumbled to ash and the pulpit was ruin. Her Red Masks stood unmoved, unharmed, as she was unharmed.

  A fool priest stood with temple guard about him, hesitant in the porch. Zora whirled from the dance and faced him, straight and stern, tambourine held like a shield.

  “I pray,” she said. “I battle my enemies. Didn’t I forbid any intrusion into my holiness?”

  “Forgive me,” he said, bowing, gesturing the soldiers, also bowing, back, out of the ruin. The roof groaned. “I—I thought I heard a cry. I feared—I’m sorry.”

  There were words in the night. Praitannec words.

  . . . water and stone and blood . . .

  What did he do? Wizard of Praitan, what do you do?

  “No!” she screamed. “What do you do?” She began to sing, to strengthen the bonds, the weaving between her remaining Red Masks, her wizards, her wizardry, to knot it more firmly to herself, to the shell and the shadow that had been Sien-Mor, the ghosts of her bones, the memory in the soul, the only framework and anchor she had for human wizardry. There was no power in her own words, in her own body’s blood and bone, but she was the channel for the Red Masks’ magic, and voiceless, they could sing the spell, weave of her words her greatest work. Even her brother Sien-Shava had not framed anything so beautiful, so strong, so delicate, so intricate in its bindings. It coursed through them renewed, the ones who slew among the gathered kings of Praitan, the ones who stood about the walls, swaying with her rhythm, her beating heart, the one who crept shadowed through the alleys of Templefoot Ward with the barefoot demon stalking him, the one who hastened, Ashir the traitor dead behind him, to bring her the Grasslander who must not free the gods, who must after all be made Red Mask, soon, now, a power she must use, must have now, and now—

  . . . let it be ash, and let it be sand, and let it be dust . . .

  The assassin of Praitan, her dead king stolen from her, turned her own words against her. He pulled down the roof-beams of her hall from within, and stood unbroken, and scattered the palm-leaves of the thatch, and the stars poured in, and it all burned away . . .

  “Dead,” her priest Arhu cried, distant among the army. She had put a small power of the Voice on him, a power of knowing and speaking, and now his mind broke and he ran among the dead and cried the words that choked her mind:Dead, they are dead, he has come, he will not have me, I am not his not his not she he cannot how can he—the Lady has failed and they are dead but he was mine how could they all how could he see—we will all die and the city be empty, the Lady’s chosen the blessed are dead—

  Wizardry poured from her hands and was lost as if she grasped water. She was . . . they were . . .

  Zora was laughing, on her knees in the centre of the mosaic where the dance had brought her, laughing and laughing as she wept, because she was a devil bound in human flesh, and she had no wizardry, and the Red Masks were falling, empty husks, crumpled heaps of soulless bone, and the staring priest with his temple guard fled her and shut the doors, shut her into darkness. She and the true Lady who still endured had won, their miracle had come all unlooked-for, where they only thought to buy time and hope for the rebel’s wizard and the imprisoned gods; nothing now would stop the wizard freeing Gurhan whose priestess Zora should have been.

  The stones of the dome shifted and groaned again, while plaster rained down around her. In the west, the moon had set, and the night was cold and empty.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Ghu seemed to know where he was going. So did Ahjvar. The fool high king had gotten himself trapped by the Orsamoss, or maybe he had meant to meet his allies there, those horns in the distance. . . . The long ridge was a good defensible height, if only you came to it first and seized the length of it. The royal dinaz was where it had always been. His earliest memories were of riding these hills. The world kept slipping away from him, though, and he would surface, heart pounding, gasping, thinking he drowned, that he was being pulled again beneath the surface of the well, or that the hag was rising, but it was only exhaustion. Shouldn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep, on a trotting horse. His body felt strange and slow, heavy, and his mind seemed to run too slowly as well. But that was being half asleep. Half starved and half asleep. He remembered, now, what it was like. He had stopped eating once. Hadn’t helped, of course. The gibbous moon slid down towards the west.

  He jerked awake again. The moon touched the horizon, setting a silver halo on a few towering clouds. Those dogs were running ahead, disappearing over a hilltop. They followed, and he knew that long slope and the sudden height ahead, and the little unfailing brook that snaked along the valley bottom, Catairanach’s waters, but the hilltop flickered and flared in scarlet.

  Straight took them to the steepest face of the hill, the goddess’s spring and no break in the wall, not in his day, at least. He put the weary horse to a gallop, the Old Great Gods alone knew what had already been asked of it this night, and surged ahead of Ghu onto the old track, still there where he expected it, firm and sure underfoot, circling around to the west and the twisting causeway that rose to the gate.

  It wasn’t a mere house that was burning; it was the whole damned dinaz. It lit the sky.

  The gates were shut. No time for the slow rituals of wizardry. Ghu swung his horse alongside, stood in the
saddle with the horse still sidling about, caught the top of the gate and pulled himself over.

  Someone yelled. It didn’t sound like Ghu.

  Ahjvar heard the great bar grinding, and then a leaf of the gate swung outwards. He took both horses through; they hopped and flinched at the blond man who lay there with his throat cut. Ghu said nothing but reclaimed his horse.

  Penned horses, and camels too, were bunched together, jostling and afraid, but safe enough for now. It was the houses, far too few and set in untidy rows, and hummocky dark shapes he realized a moment later were collapsed tents, which burned. The roofs of many had already fallen in and the walls were failing. Save for the noises of the animals, it was strangely silent at this end of the enclosure. Not, he thought, because the place had been abandoned. Because the screaming was over. He knew the meaty smell of roasting human flesh. What in the cold hells had been happening? Beyond a massacre. There were a few bodies out in the wide and weedy lanes, but not many. He could hope the folk had all been dead before the fires, but somehow, somehow he doubted. There was a terrible air to the place, not the physical reek but a battering on other senses, a screaming that was felt, not heard. Somewhere a dog wailed. Ghu was white-lipped and looking—small, and young, the boy who’d sat on his garden wall in the rain, remote and dazed, as if he fled inside himself. The grey-and-white dog tipped its head back and howled. The black-and-tan joined in. Ahjvar reached over to put a hand on his shoulder, to pull him back, because if he lost Ghu . . . he was shaking, he knew it. Fire. Not fire, Old Great Gods have mercy, not fire. After a moment Ghu shook his head, blinking, tilted his head to press his cheek against the back of Ahjvar’s hand.

  “All right,” Ghu said. “I’m here. Go. Jui, Jiot—enough.”

  He was manifestly not all right, pale and cold to the touch.

  The dogs were silent. There was noise enough to the south. They rode to it in the growing grey light, going warily, alert for ambush, but Ghu suddenly slipped down from his horse to turn over a body lying in the lane. The man had been clubbed, the forehead stove in. Ahjvar circled to return, seeing Ghu sit back on his heels, hand on the corpse’s chest. He looked down on a mottled black face. Not charred, which was his first thought.

  “The bleeding pox,” he said. “Ghu, get away. You didn’t touch him—” But of course he had, and still was. “You’ve had the eastern pox, haven’t you?” Please. The man had no scars.

  Ghu shook his head. “I don’t get sick.” He rose, throwing a handful of dirt from the lane onto the body, and caught his horse again, clumsy and seeming half blind, Ghu who always moved with quiet, compact purpose. “They were all ill, in the houses. All of them, and left behind, when their comrades rode out to the battle. Dying. Murdered. Burnt alive. It was their Praitan allies, the folk of the lords who had gone over to Ketsim, who set the fires. Their souls are gone to the road to the Old Great Gods, those that burned, but Ahj, Ahj, their memory is still here, in this earth, in this ash. Do you—Great Gods have mercy, I hear it, still. This place will never be clean again.”

  “Up,” Ahjvar ordered, when it seemed Ghu had lost himself, forgotten what had brought them here and even the horse he leaned on. Ghu looked up at him, vague and lost. “Deyandara,” Ahjvar said, and that brought him back. “Where is she? If it was one of these houses—” they were too late. His horse shied at another body, a woman with a face that looked like a boiling pot, a broken spear standing in her ribs. The girl wouldn’t have ordered this, but she wouldn’t, he thought, have the strength to resist someone ordering it in her name. And it was an effective way of taking back control of the dinaz. But the pox would have done it for them, anyway.

  “Tower,” Ghu said faintly, and mounting again, took the lead at a careful canter, leaving Ahjvar to follow, the horse too tired to make more than a halfhearted token of resistance when Ghu veered sharply between two still-burning ruins, into blinding, choking smoke, and the heat reached for him—No. He didn’t dare shut his eyes; he knew damn well what fire he’d find himself in then. Ghu had disappeared. He caught up, bursting out of the smoke into a churned area like a stableyard.

  The square stone tower, built up against the dinaz wall, was under attack—Praitans, and defending the doorway, a pair of Grasslanders. No, the Grasslanders were trying to force a way out, and the thatched roof was ablaze. They cut down the foremost of the men penning them, forced their way down a few of the steep stone steps, more behind them, Grasslanders and some woman of the west, a handful, half dressed, mostly barefoot. Fire glared red through the doorway. Thatch, on a stronghold. Fools in haste. And no Deyandara among the attackers. Ghu had said, burning, so she would be inside. Prisoner or ally? He ought to be asking himself why the girl was his responsibility, but that was pointless. The Red Mask’s helmet might have come in useful for clearing a way.

  “Keep out of it,” he said, drawing his sword. No time to assemble slow wizardry. They’d scatter from the horse and by the time they realized he was only one—he just had to keep going, to make it onto the stairs without being pulled down and hurt too badly to keep moving. And then deal with the defenders, who would see another Praitan coming at them. There was fire beyond them. Surely nobody was alive.

  “Ahj!” Ghu called, and led off again, so he followed, with the dogs. The Praitans rushed the steps again, as he passed, forcing those trying to escape back. The Grasslanders retreated, slipping, falling, back towards the doorway. One down, two, wounded or dead didn’t matter; once they fell they had no chance of rising. There were more within, shadows in smoke, and another woman fell, the last up. It didn’t take more than one or two bleeding out their life on the stairs to make them slick and treacherous. Those within thrust the door to. They’d rather burn than fall to Praitannec spears? They’d never been touched by fire yet.

  “Here, get back to the gate!” someone shouted, running after him. “If you’re thinking you can get in for that blasted neck-ring, any man drags that from the ashes and doesn’t hand it over to the king’ll be—” His face went wide-mouthed with shock as it sank in he faced a stranger.

  “What king?” Ahjvar demanded, but the man was already turning to run the other way, shouting, “Help, here! The high king’s men are in the dinaz!”

  Ahjvar rode him down with hardly a thought and circled back to Ghu. “They’ve named one of their own king.” Ghu nodded at a window overhead. Narrow, and the shutters were closed, but—maybe. “Fine for an acrobat. You make sure the blessed horse stands still.”

  Ghu nodded and grabbed his bridle, so before he had time to think it through overmuch Ahjvar climbed onto the saddle. The horse shifted its weight about unhappily, ears back. Ghu murmured nonsense to it, and he caught the lintel, pulled himself up as the horse swung right around and away, and kicked. The shutters burst inwards, and he ended up crouching on the sill.

  He squirmed through and narrowly avoided getting himself hung up with his sword, came down awkwardly onto what turned out to be a stone stairway rising along the wall, half-seen through rising smoke. The benches and tables were overturned in a heap, burning, as if someone had made a bonfire of them. Above him on the stairs a beam from the second floor had dropped, and above that was all flame. No one could be alive on the second floor, none on the upper floor beneath the roof, if there even was a floor there any longer. Ghu followed him, landing lithe and silent as a cat.

  Fire roared above, and the burning meat reek was stronger than out in the dinaz. He swayed, deafened by the roar, and crouched down, but the smoke was thick, being sucked towards the window now. There were voices. Figures moving, down on the floor, he saw as the flames dropped and rose again, but there was another wall of fire beyond, between them and the door. If those who had shut themselves in rather than die on the stairs still stood beyond that, he couldn’t see them. But then smoke hid them all, and he hadn’t seen anything but dim shapes to know if the fool girl was among them.

  Voices. A voice. Shouting at him. Calling.

  Cairangorm the
king was dead. He had fallen at the top of the stone stairs that led from the hall up to his private chambers in the loft. He had fallen, and he was dead. It was a sad end for a proud old man who had survived so many raids, so many skirmishes along the caravan road, fallen drunk, and right to the bottom of his new stone stairs in the grand new hall he had built to please his wife. But Lord Talwesach who was his wizard said, poison, and that changed everything.

  There was stone beneath his fingers. He felt it. There was smoke in his lungs, and his eyes ran acrid tears, but he could not die; his curse sealed him to life and even burned, he would live and heal, in time, and he could leap over that fire from this place on the stairs and the girl was beyond it, he heard her calling on her god Andara and on Ghu, of all people, and he could not move, he shook so. He could not even release his grip on the edge of the stairway to stand.

  Poison, Catairlau said flatly, but not in the wine. He cast the leaves in the hall fire to prove the truth himself, being a wizard, and one who would probably have been summoned to Duina Lellandi to serve the high queen there, had he not been his father’s sole adult heir and his champion besides. His hands had not shaken then.

  Poison. Not in the wine, which Hyllau had likewise drunk, but in the water, in the cup, the king’s own cup, in which wine and water had been mixed. No, it wasn’t like the king to drink to drunkenness, but Hyllau never mixed her wine. Lord Talwesach, knocking his hand aside when in fey mood he would have touched the water to his own tongue to test it, tried it with rose for truth and yew for death, and so proved it poisoned. They broke jug and cup and carried the shards to the hall fire below to burn clean. Had Cairangorm gone out to summon help, feeling unwell, or had his body been tumbled down the stairs to explain his death? His ghost had not lingered, and that was strange, when not even the simplest of rituals had been given him yet to free his soul, not a prayer or a pinch of earth, or salt in the mouth, which was a rite of the eastern deserts spread along the road of Over-Malagru. Catairlau called him, summoned him, writing a circle about the bier on which his body lay with the alphabet of trees, which was bordering on necromancy and sin against the Old Great Gods, but nothing woke in King Cairangorm to speak his murderer’s name.