by K V Johansen
The hall might need that proof, but he did not. He went to the lady’s bower beside the king’s hall, where in her grief she had withdrawn, alone, saying she would see none but the new king. Even her son and his nurse were ordered away.
He couldn’t stand. He could crawl. He could feel his way, blind in the smoke. She caught his hand, and her fingers were like claws. She pulled him forward, arms locked behind his neck, and he fell onto her.
Catairlau was his father’s champion as well as his heir and his wizard, and if it was not quite justice, with no accusation made before the hall and the goddess and no proof laid before the king’s councillors, it was not quite murder, either. He had been king-presumptive scant hours when he went into the bower of the king’s wife Hyllau with his sword drawn.
She was in her bed, waiting for him. She must have seen her death in his face; he saw hers change as she leaned up on an elbow, naked and welcoming, her hair unbound and combed in a curling cascade down one shoulder, not quite hiding one breast, her sly, sweet smile stretching to an ugly grimace.
“He was old!” she shouted at him, as if that were a shield.
It was all her defence. But she was mad. He had always known it. But he forgot why she was accounted the third wizard of the king’s hall, with himself and old Talwesach, though her wizardry was not theirs. A child who could not be bothered with tutors, who ran ahead of them and thought she had nothing to learn, and was never any use but when she stood with them in a drawing of the wands, because she had no structure, no discipline, knew few spells and saw no need, but spilled petty spite in ill-wishing when slighted. In her tantrums small lightnings crackled on her nails and she would laugh and say, “There, don’t make me cross. You see what happens. I can’t help the way I am.” But underneath it all had lain a great dark reservoir, which only leaked and spat in the small seeping spring of her tempers, and now she was afraid, as she had never been afraid, and her rage had never been so great, either. Insulted, thwarted, rejected. She cowered down into the deep feather mattress as he reached for her hair to drag her out where he could kill her cleanly, without hacking and chasing, and the bed erupted in fire. She shrieked and clutched at him.
Her fingers were claws and she pulled him down, and then she laughed in his face and cried, exultantly, “But he’s dead. We could have ruled together now, it could have been your time. I’ll see you dead instead, if you’re such a fool. My mother will come for me, you’ll see, before you burn. I’ll be the king’s mother if not a king’s wife. I don’t need you.”
Her hair was already burning, shrivelling, and she screamed and screamed, but he couldn’t break free of her. The linens burned, and the feathers, and they stank worse than hair. Catairanach wailed and screamed at him for leading her daughter into this place. He had killed her darling, led her into this step by step, poor Hyllau, who should have been protected and understood . . . but he was burning, and she was already black and crumbling beneath him. The goddess had him in the spring beneath the mountain ash, in the waters beneath the stone, and Hyllau was a little child, and an infant, small and curled and beating tiny fists, but she smiled the same sly, sweet smile and opened knowing pebble-brown eyes at him, and she was a spark of light and he swallowed her, with Catairanach’s hand on his lips.
“Ahjvar!”
There were ashes, hot, and charred posts, and stones, and he was ash and flaking, blistered skin. He crawled away blind, seeking water, cold water, where he could die and drown. His hand found the hilt of his sword. After a while he used one hand to close the other around it, and used it as a prop to stand. His baked eyes could see, hazed and dull. There were shadows moving, but they darted and swooped like swallows, too swift to be known as folk of the hall. Their voices were high and chittering and far away. They didn’t see him, either. That was because he was a ghost. Catairlau the king was dead. He heard them say so. Hyllanim the king saw him, ever-solemn infant, and clung more tightly to his nurse’s shirt, watching. He walked out where there should have been a wall, and fell down the steep hillside that was almost cliff, and found the water, which did not ease the burning. Flesh wept into the water, and the spring ran fouled. Catairanach sang over him, but her songs were for Hyllau. He wove his own words into her song, only half aware he did so, dreaming, nightmares, caught in the fire. Hatred of Hyllau, cursing her lust for the shell of kingship, her greed and ambition and childishness, his own besotted folly, which had been as selfish, as blind, and it was only later he knew he had cursed what they had made between them too, the child who was not his father’s son, and all who came after him, and as the king was the heart of the duina, all his folk.
He didn’t remember what came after, not for a long time. There were stories of a creature in the night, which came to the dinaz and dragged men out to slaughter. When he did find himself again, he sought the wild places and tried to keep away from men, but Hyllau was with him in the long nights, and there was always the fire. It would be right, if he burned. If she burnt him again, calling him, holding him, long enough, this time, hot enough, even he could die—
“Ahj!”
Not Hyllau’s arms, fingers clawed into his back. Ghu’s, locked about his chest, holding him back as he crouched with one hand on the edge of the stairs and one reaching into nothingness, blistering, fire below him. Ghu was coughing, his body shaking, wheezing; Ghu couldn’t drag him back, but he wouldn’t let go, let him go into the fire, not like that, into Hyllau’s arms, which still reached for him. Ahjvar flung himself back so violently they both struck the wall behind, holding onto Ghu like he was a log in a drowning sea.
“You’re here, Ahjvar. Not there,” Ghu said. “Never there.” But every word was a bone-shaking cough that rattled the both of them, face against his chest. “Deyandara. Down—”
“Get out.” Damn Deyandara. He shouldn’t have led Ghu into this. He shoved him back towards the window. “Out.” He could hear the goddess of the spring, calling his name, exultant and afraid, and Hyllau, feel her fingers like grappling hooks, digging in—
“Ahjvar,” Ghu said, and grabbed him again by the shoulders, resisting being forced to the window. “You’re Ahjvar. Not Catairlau. I didn’t take you from the devil in the well to give you to the fire. Don’t listen to them.”
“All right,” he said, to make Ghu let go, but he still heard them, Catairanach screaming, Damned fool, cursed and cursed again, she is yours. Forget the outlander halfling, let him burn. Do you want her to die here? She’s the last of my children, the last, the last, the last of Hyllau’s children, and you leave her to burn, worse than Hyllau who never meant you to die, you know she didn’t, she couldn’t have, she loved you. It was you who held her in the fire when I could have saved her body and soul. Be cursed again. You’ll never come to the Old Great Gods’ road, you’ll burn in the night forever—
“Don’t listen,” Ghu said, and his lips brushed Ahjvar’s like a blessing before he let him go and went out the window. Ahjvar saw him drop and stumble away, falling on his knees, head down, coughing and coughing, and a pair of the Praitannec traitors closing in, spears levelled. Ghu, crouched and bowed and shaken with coughing as he was, had his hand to the handle of that great wicked knife at the small of his back and the dogs were slinking up, so Ahjvar turned away and stood, breathing smoke. Shaking, still. I can’t walk into fire, he had said. I can’t, I can’t, I’ve tried, and Great Gods have mercy, he could not take that step and he was going to fall, down into the hungry flames and Hyllau’s open mouth. So he leapt.
CHAPTER XIX
The trap door slammed open. Chieh and Lug and a handful of others burst upwards. Deyandara put her back to the wall, her hand on the knife hidden in her sling, but they hardly spared her a glance. Lug, flushed and sweating, and another couple of big men knelt down on the door, holding it closed against some battering from below. Chieh dragged at Ketsim, who groaned heavily and struck out at her, fumbling, half-falling from the bed. They were all shouting in Grasslander, at one another,
at whoever was below, Deyandara couldn’t tell.
“Marnoch!” she shouted, and that did draw Chieh’s attention. The woman left Ketsim and crossed the room in three long strides to hit her.
“Not your bloody allies,” she snarled. “This lot want you as dead as us. That weasel-faced eastern lord’s named himself king.”
Lord Fairu had said a pair of eastern lords had driven his folk from their land, and one was allied with the Marakanders. . . . There had been a Praitan at the feast she might have described as weasel-faced, if she’d been in any mind to describe him at all. “Hicca?” she asked.
“Him. Treacherous bastard.” Chieh leaned to peer out the window. “He’s laid his plans quickly, on top of Siman’s betrayal. I wonder if he knew in advance? Starts to make me think the tales are true and the whole duina is cursed and damned, and anyone who tries to rule it. Nothing’s gone right for us since Ketsim took the Voice of Marakand’s gold. Do you smell smoke? They’d taken oath to Ketsim! They spread out quiet among us, they were sleeping all among us, but tonight they weren’t. They must have had some signal. They all started killing at once, stabbing people in their sleep, all in the dark and unarmed.”
“You trusted a traitor,” said Deyandara. “What do you expect?”
Chieh shot her a dirty look and crossed to the opposite window, let out a yell. Deyandara and the Grasslanders all crowded to her. The houses and tents of the dinaz were burning. People screamed, and dark shapes ran between them, but they weren’t making any effort to drag anyone to safety that she could see. Deyandara licked her lips. “You said they’d left the sick and the dying behind.”
Chieh turned away, calling Ketsim, who rolled unsteadily to his feet and joined them, taking a possessive hold on the elbow of Deyandara’s still-aching arm. She clenched her teeth on a moan and kept her hand on the hilt of her hidden knife. If he ordered her killed, at least she wouldn’t die alone.
The battering at the trap door had ended. So had the noises of murder below. The Grasslanders put their heads together, debating.
They were foxes, run into their den by the dogs, and only one way out. That never ended well for the fox. Call Ghu, Catairanach had said, but she had been dreaming. He had been there for her twice, though, out of the hopeless darkness.
“Ghu,” she whispered. She had felt so safe, sitting by him on that roof in the suburb of Marakand. “Ghu, Andara, help me. Please.” Andara, Ghu, Old Great Gods . . . Durandau, Marnoch, someone would come, someone surely must come seeking her. They were burning the dinaz; this tower was thatched like any humble hut, and the sparks would spread, and the lower floors were held against them. . . .
The night stretched on long into nightmare after that. Hicca’s bard came and tried to make some bargain with them. Chieh was translator, none of the Grasslanders having learnt Praitan, nor possessing more than their lord’s halting trade-Nabbani. Ketsim, sitting holding his head, growled and snarled and refused every offer, though Chieh began to try making bargains on her own terms for her lord and her husband and friends to be left to live or die in peace. Ketsim’s wits weren’t so addled by fever or grain-spirit that he didn’t notice, though, and that led to far too long a quarrel between them, which Deyandara couldn’t follow, while Hicca’s people shouted insults below. She went to sit by the south window, leaning her head against the wall, eyes shut, imagining Marnoch riding to the gate, her brothers, all of them, at his side, the river of horsemen pouring in among the burning houses, riding to the tower, and Marnoch at their head . . . Ghu’s hand finding hers in the candlelit darkness and whispering for silence, slipping away through walls that somehow weren’t there, and the rain beat down around them, lightning lit the tower, and Ahjvar set his sword against her throat. Kill her, Hicca said, and she’s the last of them, the last of Hyllanim’s line. The last of the curse on the Duina Catairna. A new age, a new king, and the duina renewed. She jerked awake. They were opening the trap door, torchlight flooding up, drowning the feeble candles.
“Girl!” Chieh hauled her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
“We’re going?” she asked hazily. “No!”
“We’re going,” said Chieh. “You’re staying. Hicca wants you after all, you and the gold about your neck.”
“No!” She wrenched her arm away.
“Or kill her yourselves and throw her down to us,” someone called up, and laughed.
“You get her only once we’re out the gate,” Chieh shouted angrily, and grabbed again for Deyandara. Ketsim’s hand came down on her arm; Ketsim’s sweat-slick face leaned in close, his breath foul with the disease.
“No,” he said. Chieh let her go and took a step away. “She kill you, before another man take you, but she is not buy my life with my little wife.” And then a torrent of furious Grasslander that had Chieh bowing, white-faced. In that distraction, Hicca’s followers tried to force their way up, and one of the Grasslanders was killed before they got the trap door closed again.
Was the night growing thinner? More shouting, more battering, and Chieh refused to look at her, keeping close to Lug’s side, while Ketsim clutched her hand. Then silence below.
More low-voiced Grasslander discussion.
“Maybe they go for axes,” Ketsim translated for her, as if that should be a comfort. “But if I, I Hicca, not wanting queen, not wanting Grasslander lord, I set fire.”
“Barbarians,” muttered Chieh. “My lord—” And more in Grasslander. Ketsim seemed to agree with whatever she proposed, this time. “We’re going to rush them,” she told Deyandara. “We put you in the middle, we get out, we get whatever mounts are closest, and we head south to the road. Can you ride a camel?”
“No!”
“Siman probably took all the camels. Do you have a knife?”
Deyandara shook her head, hoping she hadn’t hesitated too long.
“Useless. All those drunks at the table, and you didn’t manage to hide yourself a knife?” The woman thrust a sheathed dagger at her, and Ketsim let her go to take it, nodding approval.
“Good,” he said. “You kill Hicca for me, little kitten, little wife.” He laughed and ruffled her hair; Chieh laughed with him. Even Lug smiled, though his face was drawn tight and he kept swallowing, as if his stomach fought him. Another of the Grasslanders already showed a face rising in blisters; she leaned on the wall, stroking the point of her spear with a whetstone.
Deyandara smiled. So now she had two knives. And her smile felt as false as their laughter, because what good would it do? It was the Catairnan curse on her still, that she should end up here with her own folk bargaining for her death and her only defenders her enemies.
A man at the window looking out over the dinaz spoke intensely. Deyandara went to look. Marnoch—of course not. Praitans, yes, archers, and they were shooting fire-arrows at the tower, while the roofs of the houses fell in behind them. Tendrils of smoke began coiling down through the thatch, new and summer-dry.
A nod from Ketsim, and one of the men pulled up the door. The blistered spearwoman went down in a rush, Lug close behind her, and shouted, one word.
“Fire,” said Chieh, and Ketsim seized Deyandara, hauled her down with them, into the sleeping-chamber of the bench-companions, which looked more like a yard where the fall butchering had taken place, blood pooled on the floor, bodies still in their sodden blankets, bodies sprawled ugly and ungainly on the floor. She squeaked and jumped back from something underfoot, saw it was a hand. No arm. Just a hand. Straw, rubbish, bedding, broken spear-shafts, arrows, bows, were heaped in the corners, already ablaze, flames reaching for the rafters of the upper floor, and there was a fire set under the stairs down which they had run. It smelt of pitch.
“The bastards were setting this while they were still talking to us,” Chieh said. “And they’ve taken every bit of armour, not left so much as a shield. I told my lord only a fool trusted a Praitan.”
One of the bodies moaned, and the sick woman started to it but was ordered back by Ketsim. They were
n’t going to carry the wounded. A moment’s pause, while Lug threw up, and then they went down the stone stairs to the hall in the same order. This time they were opposed before they ever got off the stairs, and the woman went over the side, no railing. Lug made it a little farther, bearing down one Praitan with his rush, but someone with an axe cut his leg half away, and he went to the floor on his face and was hacked to death there, with Chieh screaming after him, her sabre sweeping Ketsim’s way clear, Deyandara dragged stumbling in his wake.
A bonfire of furniture burned in the centre of the hall where they had feasted, and its flames reached to the ceiling. The door was held against them, shouting, jeering Praitans. They called her the traitor and a whore of Marakand. Ketsim put himself between her and a thrown spear, not for her own sake, but because he let no one take what was his, she knew, but still, he did it. She caught him as he staggered back against her. No armour, she thought dazedly, surely he remembered he had no armour, and then, unable to hold up his weight, she went down to the floor, kneeling, with the Grasslander lord slumped against her. At least he was a good thick body against a second spear, which followed.
In a song he would have had some last words for her, and she too, would no doubt have forgiven him his rough wooing, but he just muttered and groaned, and she didn’t know if he died then, or later, but she stayed holding him until most of the mercenaries had forced the hall clear of Praitans and gotten so far as the door. The pitch-fuelled fire on the floor under the upper stairs burnt through about then, and a burning beam came down onto the stone stairs. More burning timbers fell, their supports gone. The stairs were cut off and so was the door, but Chieh and one of the men had rushed back for her as they fell, or for Ketsim, not knowing if he were dead or wounded, and now there were the three of them huddled together and the smoke making a blind hell of it, smoke roiling and red-lit, and the heat growing. The door was in the direction Ketsim was facing, but Chieh had moved him, dragged and turned him, shouting his name, and Deyandara found only fire, crawling that way. When she stood the very air was hot and choked her. The floor was cooler, safer. She could still breathe, though she coughed, and wherever the smoke parted, there were flames. Chieh ran against her, fell, and clutched her.
