by K V Johansen
“We will.” As though she soothed a child. Or a half-wild beast.
Kayugh freed her hand from his, still gently, but rested it on his shoulder, an anchoring touch. Or a readiness to seize him if he flung himself over the parapet.
But the other sisters edged away. From the corner of his vision he could see the dog’s shadow lying over him, black form on the edge of existence, a breath from taking shape. The yellow-green peridot light of the Blackdog’s eyes would be burning in his own.
There is a storyteller’s cycle of tales, and they begin like this:
Long ago, in the days of the first kings in the north—who were Viga Forkbeard, and Red Geir, and Hravnmod the Wise, as all but fools should know—there were seven devils, and their names were Honeytongued Ogada, Vartu Kingsbane, Jasberek Fireborn, Twice-Betrayed Ghatai, Dotemon the Dreamshaper, Tu’usha the Restless, and Jochiz Stonebreaker. If other tellers tell you different, they are ignorant singers not worthy of their hire.
Old Lady crouched before the altar in the New Chapel. It was covered with golden plaques depicting scenes of Attalissa’s former glories: processions bearing tribute, warbands of women marching, the god Narva prostrate, raising a pickaxe on extended hands, symbol of his lordship of some of the wealthiest turquoise mines of the high peaks. Slain enemies and accumulated wealth and joyously dancing human souls. The lamplight made the raised figures shimmer and move, gave them life.
In the past, Attalissa had been a true power. A glory to bring folk to their knees, a great mother to them all. When had she fallen away from that? Old Lady didn’t know. Before her time, generations gone. Gods and goddesses rose, and ruled, and fell away to act as nothing more than petty wisewomen and wisemen, as though they lost their will after a few generations of life. That was what all her reading and her study, the travels she had indulged in younger years, had taught her. Gods and goddesses simply…lost interest, like children bored of playing house, of echoing their parents’ strength.
Even the Old Great Gods had abdicated all concern for the world and retreated from it.
She had believed that abandonment to be the truth, in her youth. She knew better now. Like every sister, she had served her turn as a mercenary. From travellers, she first heard of the nameless god who had come to the west, who was spirit, nothing but spirit, and spoke through the conscience and wisdom of priests, not in the supercilious platitudes of a village grandmother. And some said that god was but a servant of the Old Great Gods, a messenger, to call the folk back to their true path. She asked permission to travel herself, and eventually, though the Old Lady of that day was reluctant, received it. In the caravan towns she sought wisdom, and she found it, very occasionally, in travellers’ talk and in a few rare, precious books, gleaned from the treasure trove of the abominable ferrymen on the Kinsai-av. She copied much, since that was what she had leave as their guest to do, but others, the rarest, the truest, she stole. It was unfitting that such books, the teachings of the new faith of the west, should remain in such a place, with the folk of such a defiled and corrupting goddess as Kinsai.
It was not an uncaring abandonment. The world was grown too impure for the Old Great Gods. Devils had walked among the Northron folk and on the Great Grass, had overthrown kings, defied the gods of the high places and the goddesses of the waters, and though in the end the Old Great Gods had heard the pleas of the war-torn world and bound the devils again, they had been angered by the wizards’ pride and human weakness that let the devils loose. They had removed themselves and would not return until human hearts were purified. And that would not happen while humans clung to the little gods and goddesses of the earth, who taught nothing of purity but led men and women to bind themselves in worldly cares.
Like the nameless god of the west, the gods and goddesses of the earth should remember that they were mere messengers, servants; they should lead the way back to the Old Great Gods, lead their folk to make themselves pure. But they could not do so when they mired themselves in the world, hardly different from the folk they guided. People were like children; they needed to see power and authority in order to be drawn to listen, to emulate. To lead folk to cast off the world’s cares, it was needful to have the strength to be respected, to be obeyed. Then, and only then, could the purblind folk be led back to the Old Great Gods.
But there was no strength, no certainty, in the divinities of the earth and waters, and by their example they kept folk fixed to the petty worries of field and trade, the squalling of babes and the pains of old age. They kept human folk from understanding that their true home was not this world, but the land of the Great Gods; they kept them weak, their minds clouded, so that all of human life was passed as one waking in the morning afraid and doubting and wondering.
Luli had been full of fear and doubt and wondering herself, until that last trip to Marakand, twenty years before, when she had been newly appointed Old Lady. It was her scholarship, her curiosity about the world, that led to that appointment, voted on by the sisters, approved by the goddess. Blind. They did not see that she had found a new truth, found the truth, that she knew all the temple a sham, a dead-end trail that trapped them all. The Westrons wrote that the dead, even the purest in heart, could no longer reach the land of the Old Great Gods, never know the great and overwhelming peace they had earned through their sufferings in life. They waited on the road, thousands upon thousands, for the way to open, and that could not happen till the Great Gods returned to the purified earth.
That Attalissa approved Luli’s appointment showed her, beyond any doubt, that the strength of the goddess was a lie, that she knew nothing of the hearts of her folk.
That was when Luli had sinned against her vows in body as well as spirit. And again, Attalissa had never rebuked her. Perhaps had never even known. The final proof Old Lady needed: Attalissa was nothing.
He had agreed with her, in so many things. He was a wizard, a scholar, for all he looked a Great Grass barbarian with nothing more on his mind than horses and women and brawling. He was only a little younger than her, and beautiful, lean and strong and vital like a tawny cat, no dull-witted mountain farmer but a man, truly a man a woman could lean on. She had found herself, astonished and amazed, listening to herself while they talked of more than gods and philosophies and the blindness of human folk who trudged cattlelike through empty lives and never lifted their eyes to the sky. She had found herself on fire, willing, wanting to give him anything, to keep the teasing smile and the knowing, cool eyes hers, to keep the deep voice whispering her name, Luli, against her ear, hoarse with passion she could not have imagined when she chose the temple over marriage to any of the dull, demanding young men of her village.
It was wrong, of course. Not a wrong against Attalissa. A sin against herself, against the Old Great Gods they both sought, to feel this passion, to fix such value to another mortal being, to tie oneself into the world so. But oh, those few days, they had been worth a lifetime…
She had told him of mortal Attalissa and the stultifying empty days, of the temple, all its secrets. Of the old woman her goddess had become, surely soon to die, and the dreary years she could see ahead of herself, the years of her prime, to be wasted rearing a child, like any fat-hipped peasant mother, surrounded by the clamouring needs of the temple that was no place of contemplation, no place to refine the soul, but a training ground for soldiers to safeguard men’s greed for the soulless treasures of the earth. He had said, a man’s, a wizard’s will, wedded to divine power, could start to change the world, could begin the reform, begin to lead the folk towards the true path they could not see for themselves, but that the time and the stars must be right.
She had never, truly, believed that he would come. A lover’s idle speculation, games they played, planning an impossible future. But now, finally, he had come, bringing fire and sword, to tear down the old and build it all anew. And now she was old, while he, a man, aged less swiftly, and being a wizard, less swiftly still. He might yet have only the first grey
in his hair.
Old Lady wept, and the sisters she had summoned to prayer eyed her sidelong at their own empty devotions. But she was not going to be weak, she could not afford to be. The body was nothing; it was the Old Great Gods, the future, she served. In times to come she would be a saint, a servant who had shown not only her folk but her goddess the way back to the Gods. And all she and Tamghat had planned, lighthearted, a lovers’ game, over wine and books in his rumpled bed in a Marakander inn, lay before her. First was to stop the needless fighting. But Spear Lady and the Blackdog were narrow-minded, tradition-bound, and they had turned the sullen child of this incarnation against her. No support there. Let them suffer, then. Fire would cleanse the temple, and she could build it anew, if not as Tamghat’s consort (and such thoughts showed that even she must look deeper into her soul, where the desires of the world yet lingered), then as his partner in all else. Attalissa would thank her for her vision in the end, when in sharing power with the wizard she stretched beyond the limitations of place that shackled all the gods, and understood the freedom she had gained to seek her own soul’s purification and to lead her folk to true knowledge of the Old Great Gods.
“Attalissa enlightens me,” Old Lady said aloud, rising stiffly. Two sisters hurried to offer her support. Her knees creaked, taunted her with pain. “She will have peace with this warlord. He comes to fling open the shutters on a new dawn of glory for Lissavakail, he comes to show us the true path back to the Old Great Gods. We are wicked to resist; it is not Attalissa’s will.”
“Should I go to the Spear Lady…?” her assistant asked, hesitantly. Sister Darshin aspired to the position of Old Lady, was all too assiduous in trying to ease the burdens of office from her, as though she were ancient, not merely arthritic and greying.
Go to Spear Lady Kayugh and the arrogant Blackdog, who thought himself so much closer to the goddess than all the women who truly served her. Go to plot against Old Lady, that’s what Darshin would do, scenting a chance to weaken Old Lady’s authority yet further with that pair of vow-breaking reactionaries, who would have the goddess subordinate to their will forever, having forced themselves into her malleable child’s heart as parental authorities.
“No,” she said. “I’ve already told them we should have waited and offered to negotiate, and they refused to hear the goddess’s word. If they are deaf to Attalissa’s will, they are damned. We will wait here till wiser counsels can prevail.”
The women looked shocked.
“Bar the doors,” she snapped. “Admit no one. Attalissa has been betrayed by those who fight against her will. Attalissa will have peace with this warlord and love between our peoples. We will wait, and welcome him in her name.”
The air smelt heavily of blood; a priestess sat white-faced with her back against the parapet, her arm below the short sleeve of her armour tied with soaking bandages. There was more blood on the stairs where they had carried someone else down.
“We’re nearly out of arrows already,” Kayugh said grimly. “I said we needed to keep more in the stores, but Old Lady said the fletchers’ guild was charging too much and we weren’t going to send more than a few dormitories out as mercenaries this summer.” She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, as if that could settle the unsteadiness of her voice. “’Prayer is our work,’ she said. ‘Lissa forgive me, I should have stood up to her.”
“She is Old Lady.” The Blackdog was Attalissa’s champion, and by tradition avoided becoming entangled in administrative debates among the priestesses. But Otokas should have backed Kayugh up in that. He’d feared to seem partial, to betray that which probably half the temple knew already.
Kayugh handed him an arrow that had come clattering down on the stones behind them. He straightened its fletching absently, found the bowman who had shot it, and sent it back. Not an accurate shot, not a straight flight, but it scratched over the man’s helmet and sent the raider skipping back, to slip and fall on the algae-slimed stones of the shore, in a puddle of torchlight, and Kayugh’s following shot was truer, piercing his unprotected cheek.
“Attalissa’s luck was with me on that one.” Kayugh took a deep breath. “The lack’s past remedying, anyway. Prayer won’t make arrows.”
Otokas nodded, never taking his eyes off the lake. The near shore was littered with raiders dead and wounded. They had come within bowshot carrying torches to light their work, and though the first splashing rush ashore had carried large wicker shields to cover their fellows fixing the last few boats into the bridge, and raider archers had shot blindly at the lightless gate-tower roof, finding targets by mischance, Attalissa’s priestesses had had the better of it.
Where the sisters shot at shadows briefly caught in torchlight or blocking the water’s dark gleam, the Blackdog had clear sight. Otokas had lost himself in killing, settling the dog’s fury against the invaders in the smooth action of draw and release, the selection of targets, picking off the raiders’ archers, always with half his attention on the waiting, watching wizard.
The warlord—the wizard was that, Otokas had no doubt, though wizards were more wont to stand in the shadows at some leader’s shoulder—seemed content to wait, and watch, as his followers died.
Or as the defenders expended their arrows. Sisters of the dormitories assigned to support those on the bell-tower roof brought no more arrows, but began to carry up weightier missiles, in case of a direct attack on the gates the tower straddled. They had already depleted the supplies meant for the water-gate’s defence.
“Crows,” Kayugh muttered. “Seems like there’s two more for every one we kill. Hold, Sisters. Save what shafts we have left. That means you too, Oto.”
He lowered the bow, flexed a hand that was starting to cramp. Kayugh gave him a worried look.
“How’s Attalissa now?”
He was doing his best to shut the goddess out of his awareness, to keep her from knowing just how bad it looked to him, but he could feel her fear nonetheless. And a hard, glowing ember of fury that the girl had no outlet for, save the frustrated tears that she was so far stoutly resisting.
“Afraid. Upset.”
“They won’t be able to starve us out very quickly, and we can keep them from scaling the walls. Serakallash may come in time.”
“They may.” But he heard no hope in his own voice. “If the wizard looks like taking the temple…I’ll have to get her away, Kayugh. Whatever the cost.”
The last of the boats was lashed in place, the holy islet tied to the town’s island again. There was movement on the far side of the channel, horsemen riding to the water’s edge by the first of the boats, torches held high, spreading fire over the water.
“Yes.” Kayugh took a deep breath, flexed her shoulders, and raised her voice. “Sisters—the Blackdog says this warlord is a wizard, and he means to harm the goddess somehow, enslave her or kill her. And the dog says it’s possible, not some nightmare from an old tale of the west. This abomination is what we’re fighting. We’re here to keep him from Attalissa, from the goddess, from the lake, from our little ‘Lissa. Make the wizard your target, every chance that offers.”
“He’s lighting himself up well,” said one, and laughed, no mirth in it. “Afraid we might miss him.”
“If that is him in the centre and not a decoy?”
Faces turned to Otokas. “Yes,” he said. “In the helmet with a bear spread-eagled over it as crest, if you can make that out? His horse is the pale gold mare, with red-dyed harness.” The Blackdog was certain. It could smell the magic rising from him like the scent of new-turned soil in the hot summer sun. And when the warlord moved, he left a shadow-image in the eye, an eddy of red-edged black, like an absence of flame. The Blackdog had never seen the like before—not that it could remember, but to Otokas it felt as though it should remember. That flame-shadow raised the hackles of the spirit.
“We see him,” one of the women confirmed. “Gold helmet? It catches the fire nicely. But forget the horse, dog. They’re all shadows
from here.”
“They’re all ‘it,’ from here. How d’you know it’s a mare?”
“He can smell it.”
“When it gets closer we can check.”
“If it’s a stallion, Oto, you buy a jar of the best Marakander wine for every dormitory.”
“What does he get if he’s right?”
“A kiss from Spear Lady,” someone away to the side called, and there was a flutter of nervous giggling that fell to abrupt silence when Otokas frowned in that direction.
The warlord reached the bridge of boats, and the riders about him dismounted. He did not, staring up towards the gatehouse and its high parapet, the defenders who should have been invisible, since they weren’t such fools as to surround themselves with torches. Otokas felt almost a physical shock, unseen eyes finding him.
I told you, Blackdog. Bring out my bride. I want to wed her with the dawn. I’m surprised she’s stayed hidden behind you this far. I thought she would make some effort to protect her people. Is she grown so cold-hearted, or is it cowardice? Tell her to come out to me, or I will march the folk of the town to the shore, here, and behead them, a dozen at a time, until bodies fill the channel. Tell her, if she fights me, I will set a fire on this town that will burn its folk to ash and poison the lake and her soul with the curses of their ghosts. But tell her, if she comes to me willingly, I will rule as a kindly father, and teach her and her folk both to love me.
Otokas shut his mind against the wizard, felt the faint pressure of attention blocked. The wizard grinned at him, mouthed words in the darkness. He couldn’t read their shape.
The warriors lining the bridge began to drum spears and swords on shields.
The warlord urged his horse forward, stepping, almost hopping, into the first of the boats.
