The Lady

by K V Johansen

  “Throwing poison into the headwaters,” he said. “Of course it’s going to taint all the watercourses flowing from there, in some way, greater or lesser. On and on. We could make a blessing-piece and bury it, but it’s all gravel here, no clay, and I think this will do it, with you here, queen of the duina still, and last child of Hyllau.” His voice was rough on the woman’s name.

  “It’s a spell?”

  “Of a sort. Ghu? Here. The third. For witness.”

  Ghu knelt down carefully, so they made, between them, a triangle.

  “It’s simple,” Ahjvar said, and if she didn’t doubt it was possible, she might have thought he sounded defensive about that. “But to the point.” He thrust his dagger into the soil and sliced the grassroots. “Now. Birch,” he said, putting one long, smooth-barked twig into her hand. “Hawthorn. And hazel.” He clasped both her hands around the twigs like a nosegay of flowers, folded his own over them. But the base of the hawthorn had been stripped of thorns. She could feel how his hands shook, then, and they felt fevered, dry and burning. But his burns had gone scabby already. “. . . which are new life, and kingship, and purification,” he said. “I, who was Catairlau, say, let the evil and the ill-wishing I put on the son of Hyllau and the children of Hyllanim and the land of Hyllanim, witting or unwitting, be past and done with . . .” His grip on her hands was crushing. “. . . and never return upon them.”

  He brought her hands down to the earth, and together they laid the twigs in the slit in the turf, pressing it down over them, burying them. And with their faces so close together, he kissed her forehead, still holding her hands.

  “So.” Let her go and sat back, with a brief flash of a smile. “Since I don’t remember what I said, being busy dying at the time, that’ll have to do.”

  She wasn’t sure what she could say, so she took her time about wiping the earth off her hands and standing. Did she feel lighter? That was simply having lost the feeling Ahjvar was about to shout or strike out at her in some disdainful impatience. He looked—she wanted for a moment to wrap him in blankets and smooth the hair out of his eyes, tell him it was all right, everything would be fine in the morning, as her nurse had done when she was small and ill. Ghu was still looking at the flattened grass. He put his own palm over it. Ahjvar didn’t see, head down, eyes shut. When Ghu raised his hand, there was a bright-green shoot of spring there, forcing through the grass. Birch, hawthorn, hazel? Deyandara couldn’t tell, not from the small furled leaves.

  Ghu rose and walked away, leaving Ahjvar there, unmoving. She touched his shoulder, warily, and when he looked up, eyes bloodshot and grey-shadowed, offered her good hand. He took it and almost pulled her down, as if he truly did need her weight to brace against in rising.

  Ahjvar still didn’t suggest she ride with Ghu when he brought the horses up to them, holding Ahjvar’s stirrup as he mounted, boosting her up behind.

  Deyandara told herself she had to stay awake, because she thought he might be sleeping in the saddle and she’d end up with worse than a shoulder out of joint if they both fell together, but she must have dozed, because she twitched awake at the shifting of muscles as Ahjvar turned to look at something. She looked around herself and saw a rider on the skyline above them. Her heart lurched, but then she recognized the slim shape, the long hair blowing. Which made her think again,Yeh-Lin? The rider turned towards them, angling down a sheep-cropped hillside.

  “We’ve decided,” Deyandara said in haste, before she lost her nerve to speak at all. “I’m going to name Marnoch king over the duina.”

  “Oh? Did he decide that for you?” A jerk of the chin at Ahjvar.

  “No! I decided.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Leave her alone,” Ahjvar growled. “Or were you planning on ruling Praitan through her? Not much of an empire, after Nabban, but I suppose you’ll have to start somewhere to build it all up again.”

  “I am not seeking empires or dominion in any form. And I certainly wouldn’t start with the Praitannec kingdoms if I were. You’re doomed. The Five Cities will eat you all, in the end. Speaking of empires.”

  “Not while the clan-fathers of the cities keep having one another’s throats cut,” he said. “And emperors have ridden over cities from out of the wild lands before.”

  She sniffed. “I have better things to do with my time. Deyandara, I brought you a gift. It’s around somewhere.” Lin—Yeh-Lin—looked about, as if expecting to see whatever it was hovering mid-air.

  Her tutor was one of the—“Seven devils?” Deyandara whispered, just to have it given words, if only for herself, but Yeh-Lin waved a dismissive hand. Neither of the men seemed to care.

  Ghu still said nothing, but he pointed. His dogs were away up the hill, with a third, smaller, long-haired and black, in the centre of a knot of sniffing.

  “Ah, there it is.” Yeh-Lin whistled, and the dog, slinking a little, broke away from the others and came to her, wary and crouching. “I can’t help the way I smell,” the devil said, a little defensively, Deyandara thought, to Ghu. “I like dogs.”

  His own followed and stood watching her, not bristling now but definitely watching.

  When Deyandara swung a leg over and slid down the horse’s flank, the dog came to her, pressing close, wriggling, licking. It smelt of smoke, and for some reason that made the tears stand in her eyes.

  “It’s all right,” she found herself murmuring to it, into its fur. “It’s all right now. Little black fox, it’s all right.” Foolish. It had been all right, since Ahjvar had seized her from the fire. And she and the land were no longer cursed.

  Ahjvar watched her for a time, then turned his horse nearer, offered a hand to her uninjured arm.

  “Up,” he said. “We need to make a king.”

  Ahjvar only wanted to lie down and sleep, and let Praitan tear itself apart in fighting over rule of this duina if it wanted to, but he couldn’t. He had gone beyond hurting, beyond exhaustion, into some floating dream, like a fever. He needed to stay awake. Things he had to do, before the darkness came. Something had changed, though. He didn’t know what, but the world felt off-kilter. Maybe it was having unwound that ill-wishing from the land, having found some place in his heart that wanted to do so, some crumbling of a rage that had turned long ago to stone. Or maybe it was only himself, the wizardry so long buried seeping into its old channels again. His. The hag’s. He could feel her, as if she dreamed too, floating in the same uneasy haze. Not it, not sated, sleeping, a curse he could push from his thoughts for a day, a week, months, but she. And even in their floating dream, she wept, wailed, like a lost child. The sun was standing towards the west. But there were things that must be finished, first. That thought kept returning. For a moment he couldn’t remember what he had to do. The curse on the girl. Not that. Over. Better. He wished Ghu would at least look at him.

  A king for the duina. Marnoch of the Red Hills.

  The devil, surprisingly, did not argue or try to bully the girl out of standing aside for Marnoch, saying with apparent approval, “Good. She’s never wanted to follow that road.” And Ghu gave Yeh-Lin his own nod of approval at that, which Ahj took for a sign of truth in the devil’s words.

  “Catairanach . . .” Yeh-Lin said hesitantly, then, watching Ghu.

  “Damn Catairanach,” Ahjvar said, eyes shut. “I’m not asking her.”

  “No, you won’t be. Will you make a new god of the duina as well, assassin? Catairanach is gone.”

  Deyandara clutched at him. Ghu didn’t look surprised at all. Ahjvar was dizzy. His ears rang, and the hag’s weeping . . . she knew, she had felt it, she . . . he should be dead. He should be dead with her, Great Gods, Catairanach was gone and her curse went on, and Ghu would die, Ghu might kill Red Masks but he was not a Red Mask and the hag would kill his friend . . .

  “Ahjvar,” Ghu said softly. “It’s all right.”

  What was?

  “Dead?” Deyandara asked. “The Lady killed her?” She sounded simply bewilder
ed.

  “Catairanach is sleeping,” Lin said. “Forever, I do hope. She was no fit guardian for a folk. Sleeping and dreamless, though. I am not a torturer.” She sniffed. “Buried, and rather deeper than—”

  “That’s enough,” said Ghu. “Good. Gone,” he continued firmly. “So leave the new king to find his new god.”

  By luck, though Ahjvar did not believe it was mere luck, Ghu led them so that the first warning they had of the high king’s camp was a picket of scouts Deyandara said were Marnoch’s folk. They spread out in an arc, arrows on the string, even after Deyandara shouted to them, calling one of them by name, that it was all right, she was safe and well, Lady Lin was no traitor. Faullen, she called the grizzled man who seemed to be the leader of the four of them, and he rode forward alone, warily, while the others hung back, guarding.

  “Ketsim’s?” he asked.

  Lin snorted. “Don’t make me kick you in the head again, boy.” Her appearance had changed at some point as they rode; her hair iron-grey and cut above her shoulders, her face elegantly weathered. Not an illusion; Ahjvar would have noticed her working any spell so complex. Yeh-Lin. Well, Ghu seemed not to mind; at least, whatever had pushed him so inward did not seem to be fear of the devil. If anything, the wariness ran the other way.

  “The high king,” Ahjvar said. Speaking hurt, and his voice croaked hoarse in his own ears.

  Deyandara, interrupted in her explanations—admirably concise and simple, all things considered—of abduction by false Red Masks, the falling-out between Grasslander factions and then between Ketsim and the chief of his Praitannec allies, rescue by old companions of the road, took a breath he felt against his back and said, “Yes. We need to see my brother. And Lord Marnoch, if he—is he . . . ?”

  Her breath caught and she sighed with relief as Faullen said, “He’ll be wanting to see you, too, my lady. By your leave, I’ll come back with you myself. I’m still your man.”

  She nodded.

  Ahjvar listened, drifting half into dream again, to Faullen telling the girl all that had happened since the night she had been captured: how Marnoch had rallied his folk and they had put the mercenary attack to flight, and Lord Fairu was wounded; how, not knowing where the supposed Red Masks had taken Deyandara, they had grimly continued their march to meet up, they hoped, with the high king, knowing, or so they thought, themselves too few to prevail in any assault on the dinaz on their own. How scouts had told of the new gathering of Marakander allies, Praitannec traitors, and its core of Red Masks, and the desertions had begun, men and women slipping away.

  “If we’d had a longer march,” the scout said cheerfully, “there’d have been just the lords left, maybe. But as it was, two days after you were taken—we knew we’d come up with Durandau in the next day, and we knew the damned Marakanders were somewhere near, the new ones, and we’d crossed the trail of what looked like a force come from the dinaz to meet them—Mag, she’s a wizard of Marnoch’s household, my lord,” he added aside to Ahjvar, who managed to remember to nod, as if that mattered . . . and to stir to thought again enough to wonder where my lord had come from. Nothing Deya had said, circumspect at last. “She’s been, well, odd, since that drawing of the wands that went so strange. Quieter. Twitchy. Has dreams. We were lying up for the night on a hillside, no fires or anything, naturally, and planning to be in the saddle again in the foredawn, and those that could sleep were doing so, though I doubt that was many. Then Mag started crying that the king must ride. ‘Ride, ride, ride for Orsamoss,’ she said, ‘or the high king falls and Praitan with him, in the wars of the kings and the quarrels of the tribes,’ and she was so wild, so intent, Marnoch and the lords just sounded the horns and roused us out, before anyone really thought and asked, ‘The king must ride?’ And when they did start asking, some took it for a sign you were dead, my lady.”

  “Ah,” was all Deyandara said to that.

  “But riding in the dark, no matter how well you know the hills, and there weren’t that many who did, it can all go a bit like a dream, half-asleep and first you’re afraid and then you’re thinking, we’re going to die, and then . . . there were fox-lights running over the ground, and we took our guide from them. And then we didn’t need them, we heard the battle, more a running pursuit, north of that swampy ground they call the Orsamoss, and I guess the goddess of the place had sent the fox-lights, and maybe the dreams to Mag, too. They’d been fighting up on the ridge where the kings had fortified a camp, fighting in the dark, if you can imagine. There were Red Masks, and they had the high king put to flight. They’re saying the Red Masks had overtaken him and he was surrounded, a little knot of his household folk about him, when a pair of demon wolves—or dogs, I’ve heard both, or dragons, even—creatures made of shadow and mist and moonlight, with eyes of fire, came up out of the grass and attacked the Red Masks, and let him break away. I don’t know, there are always stories, you know. I didn’t see any demons myself.We came up just about then and the kings came to Marnoch’s—to your banner, I should say—and Lady Elissa, the high king’s wizard, was saying the Red Masks were all slain and the land itself was eating their corpses. That cry was going about, and the Marakanders must have known it for truth, because they started to fall apart, as if they couldn’t fight without their priests. The Grasslanders did better, but even they broke when Marnoch and Durandau rode against them . . .”

  Faullen’s tale of the battle turned then on the aftermath, surrender, flight, the dead and wounded. Names, old Lady Senara dead, who shouldn’t have ridden to battle at all, young Lady Dellan gravely wounded, the wizard Hallet dead, and Lord Launval the Elder, the high king’s champion, slain by the Marakanders’ red-priest captain, and his kinsman Launval the Younger, the high king’s wizard too—Yeh-Lin made some sound of grief then, and he thought the girl was weeping, silently, against his back, at the names—and the king of the Duina Galatan and his brother too . . . and they’d found wizards, prisoners, all bound and hacked to death, bodies still warm; the Marakanders denied them rescue even as they broke and fled.

  Ahjvar really did stop listening, then. He thought he fell asleep, trying to shut it out, but he woke at the horse’s sudden jinking sideways and Deyandara’s squeak of alarm at it, caught his balance as he was falling and looked around, hand on his sword. After a moment he knew the shape of the horizon. They were in a valley north of the Orsamoss ridge, where another height rose, crowned with tents and banners, ringed with disorderly camps like a constellation of infant villages. At least they kept a good watch; the horse had been excited by a skein of mounted spearmen cantering up to challenge them.

  He could hear the crows and ravens over Orsamoss, even from here, and there were vultures floating in the distant sky, drawn over who could know how many miles.

  Faullen rode ahead, across the shallow waters of Orsa’s brook. There was a brief exchange of words, with much excited gesturing, before he beckoned them on and the riders parted to let them through.

  “Lord Marnoch’s with the kings, my lady, my lord,” he said. “They’re planning their attack on Ketsim at Dinaz Catairna. And arguing. Durandau’s for waiting here.”

  The kings and queens were meeting in the high king’s pavilion at the crest of the hill, where the banners of the seven duinas and the eagle of the high king flew. There were more challenges, but Faullen dropped his avuncular manner and sang out gravely, “The queen of the Duina Catairna comes to take her place at the conclave of the kings” without a hint of his satisfaction, till he glanced back and winked at Yeh-Lin.

  “Ahjvar . . .” There was a hint of panic rising in Deyandara’s voice. “What do I do? What do I tell them?”

  “Ketsim’s dead, the war’s over, it’s Grasslander gangs and lost Marakanders they need to deal with.” His head throbbed. His chest hurt. Finish this, and he could sleep.

  “Not that. Marnoch. Is there even something that has to be said? I don’t know any stories of how it goes, I don’t know any words. Nobody’s going to listen to
me if I say I’m standing aside for Marnoch. My brother will just do what he wants over me, refuse to accept it, say I’m distraught or hysterical, appoint one of my other brothers regent.”

  “Stand aside—?” Faullen asked in a whisper. “My lady, there’s no need for that, even if Ketsim did—”

  “Oh, do shut up,” said Lin. “No, I’m sorry, Faullen, but it’s her choice and her right, she’s not a child and she knows herself and her own mind, and what the duina needs now—”

  “Shut up, all of you,” Ahjvar snarled, and Ghu turned his horse to make himself a barrier against Lin, and Faullen, and everyone, put a hand on his shaking arm. He needed to get away from here and it wasn’t even the curse and the hag he feared in this moment but his own exhausted loss of reason. Easier just to kill the damned high king and ride away. Find a ditch to crawl into and sleep, and if the hag woke when night fell—Ghu had promised. Old Great Gods, let it be soon. Let it be over. But he would like to sleep, first.

  At a sign from the escorting riders they dismounted before the high king’s pavilion.

  “I’ll let the high king know you’ve returned, my lady, and ask if—” one began, and Deyandara, bent to fondle the little black herding bitch Lin had brought from the dinaz, straightened up to interrupt.

  “Not a truant child,” she said, though her voice was unsteady.

  “Is the queen of the Duina Catairna excluded from the council of the kings?” Yeh-Lin purred. The tent flaps were drawn back. She simply swept through as of right, Ahjvar following with Deyandara and her dog scurrying by his side. The spearmen tried to flank them, disorderly, uncertain. Faullen trailed unnoticed.

  The high king, a man of about thirty or so, sandy-haired, with dark Nabbani eyes from some colony ancestor, sat on a folding chair, although he looked as if he would rather be standing with his back to a wall and not looking up at the men and women who stood around, the last harsh words of debate trailing off as a blond man with a bloody bandage around his brow said, “—which you would throw away, and if you’d come sooner we . . . my lady!” And then, deliberate, with a deep bow, “My queen.”