by K V Johansen
’Lissa—
Yes. Don’t leave it here for him. Take it down to the lake. It’s too heavy for me to carry.
That was not right; the lake was not the place for it. The dog was reluctant. But the Blackdog would not argue with the goddess, when it was her own mysteries she dealt with.
But for a moment, with almost a sense of relief, he saw the bowl slipping in his grasp, shattering on the stones, spilling out its water…
That hit him in his very bones. He shook his head, confused at his own imaginings. No. I shouldn’t touch it.
“You’ll have to, Oto,” Attalissa said simply. “I trust you. Don’t drop it. It’s important.”
“If you say so.”
The hole beneath the altar was narrow, lightless, and a damp, chilly air rose from it. Meeray crouched to peer down.
“That explains why the altar’s always so cold and sticky,” she said, with false cheer. “I always thought it strange, that mildew would grow on brass. Where does it go?”
“To the southern shore, under the overhang where the split pine grows. You know that deep crack there, that we’re always telling the novices to watch they don’t break a leg in? It runs under that, where it comes out to the lake. It was meant as a way for the dog to come and go unseen from the temple.”
And the dog had killed the priests of Narva, who were strangling Lissavakail’s trade, sending fighters to kill traders on the road down to the desert. It had been a ruthless age, and Attalissa…harder. The god Narva kept to his mountaintop, now. His folk still sent a tithe of their turquoise to the temple every year, and Attalissa’s priestesses kept the slopes of the Narvabarkash free from bandits and raiders, protecting Narva’s folk like their own, even the priests, who had dwindled away to a family of half-mad farmers.
Narva himself would be no help to them; his great vision that had once spanned the mountains almost to the foothills had been long since destroyed, for Lissavakail’s safety. He kept disembodied to his cave, and spoke in oracles, when he spoke at all; most believed him dead and gone.
Meeray frowned at the dank hole. “Should we follow?”
Otokas shook his head. “You’d drown. It drops below the level of the lake for longer than you could hold your breath, before it rises again. It’s meant as a trap. I’m sorry. Once we’re gone, slide the altar back. Then go.”
“Go where?” Meeray asked. “The main gates?”
Otokas hesitated. But the women at the main gates were lost and from the report Meeray had, those at the water-gate as well. Sending a handful more to die with them would not slow Tamghat any, even if the wizard were temporarily exhausted of magic. He should have sent his niece away before the attack began. They should have sent all the young women, so that there would be a temple for the goddess to come back to. His sister had never wanted Attavaia to go to the sisters anyway.
“Over the walls, wherever you can. Attalissa will come back. You know that. When she’s able, she’ll come back. And she’ll need her women then.”
“The longer we hold here, the more time you have to get her away,” Meeray said. “Don’t waste it. Go on.” She dropped to her knees, took the girl’s hands. “Remember us.”
Attalissa gravely kissed her forehead, looked around at the other women.
“I bless you,” she said. Her voice trembled, and she scrubbed the back of a hand across her eyes. “Oto…”
He had to grit his teeth as he picked up the stone bowl. It was surprisingly light, but dank, like handling a dead thing. The water within seemed to move with its own life, against the expected balance as he crooked it in his arm.
“Keep her safe,” Meeray said, and the other women spoke too, reaching hands to touch the girl as she followed him, clinging tightly to his free hand, down the steep steps beneath the altar.
Ten steps down, and then the heavy altar ground over them again, cutting off all sound from above and plunging them into a darkness so absolute it was impossible to tell if his eyes were open or shut. Even the Blackdog was blind. But there were no wrong turns to take; the only danger was slipping on the unevenly carved steps.
Where are we going, dog? I can’t leave the lake.
You’re going to have to. We’ll hide…somewhere…till you’re grown and can drive the wizard out.
What about the sisters?
They’ll follow, if they can.
Don’t lie to me, dog.
He smelt the water before his foot splashed into it.
“What do I do with the bowl? I don’t want to take it with us.” Wherever they were going.
“Set it in the water,” she said faintly. “Let the lake run into it. What it holds won’t be harmed, won’t mix with the lake water. Just so it’s in the lake, and he can’t see it.”
“What is it?” He was reluctant to ask. She was no demon, to keep her heart hidden, but it felt like…something heavy, with potential, with force.
“Something old and best forgotten,” she said. “Something from the earliest days of the temple. But I still have to keep it safe. Put the bowl down, dog. In the water.”
Otokas did so. He was just as glad to let it go. The rough stone seemed to burn, now, even through his heavy sleeve, even through the bronze armour. And he didn’t like to hear the child’s voice sounding so…ancient. She could not carry the full burden of the goddess yet, and should not have to.
“Let me go ahead.”
Attalissa hung back obediently as he went forward. The steps ended, but stone underfoot continued to slope steeply away, until he was waist-deep and could stretch out to swim. It was true, he could swim easily in armour. The goddess’s waters held him, carried him. He could not drown, no more than could a fish. His reaching hand touched the lowering roof and he ducked under, let touch and ancient memory guide him down into the narrow, water-filled tunnel, which twisted and dropped and twisted again, following a tangle of jagged fissures and eroded natural tunnels, widened and made passable, cut by one of the earliest Blackdogs. It was standing water, refreshed when the lake rose up with spring flooding or autumn rains; it was the water of the Lissavakail nonetheless, and washed through him like the fires of life, burning out weariness and fear. No need to breathe.
They came up, having passed under half the holy islet, in a natural crack so narrow his shoulders scraped the sides, though the walls rose twenty yards overhead, narrowing to no more than six or eight inches wide. Attalissa followed close on his heels as they climbed over broken stone, dead shells crunching under their feet. A star or two shone down through the heath and bramble tangle that overgrew the fissure. Ahead, the crack broadened out, and the lake was a pale shimmer.
Otokas hesitated on the water’s edge, looking up and down the shore, smelling humans somewhere near, and smouldering pitch, but Attalissa pushed past him. She gave a little sigh as the wavelets broke caressingly around her knees, pulling her out like gentle hands.
Light flared on the water from above, and voices shouted. Arrows hissed into the lake around them.
Attalissa dove.
Sword in hand, Otokas spun to face the raiders sliding down the sloping rock face by the crack. A watch posted and waiting. The wizard must have divined for hidden exits; no one had ever known of this but the goddess and her most senior servants.
Or they were betrayed. That was the dog’s instinctive distrust of the world.
Head for the south shore! he ordered Attalissa, and then they were on him, half a dozen men and women, and another group caught from the corner of his eye, scrambling along the rocks. Two men pushed off in a light boat, shouting directions at one another, pursuing faint ripples that might only be the wind.
The first to close with him was a Grasslander woman, and he kicked her legs from under her, stabbed down as she struggled, on her back in the water and the stones beneath her slippery with algae. He blocked another’s slashing stroke from the left and was struck from behind, a sword’s edge turned by his armour but the blow drove him to a knee, waist-deep in the
lake. Too many of them for the man alone to fight. He dropped his sword and let the Blackdog take him.
A moment of searing pain as the dog tore fully through into the world, flesh and bone and fury. A man screamed and gurgled and kicked the water to a froth, throat bitten through. He crushed another’s thighbone in his jaws, flung that one into deeper water to drown like a pup throwing a rat. It was a nightmare, one that haunted his sleep, memories of past lives: the taste of blood, the softness of muscle and the crack of bone, of steel as he bit through a blade he disdained to dodge, the eager joy in the enemies’ screams.
They hurt him, cut him, burned him while they still had torches, but the Blackdog was spirit and could not die so easily, and the man would heal from most wounds. Otokas did not care if he did not, once he had let the Blackdog loose. He lived, and died, to protect Attalissa. There were twelve dead in the water and at the water’s edge and two on shore who ran. He bounded after the slowest, ran him down, snapping through the rings of his byrnie to throw him by his shoulder, tearing his arm half off, a second bite through his windpipe and he raced after the last. She still carried a spear and as he leapt she turned and hurled it. It took him under a foreleg in an earlier stab-wound already half-closed, and he stumbled, rolled, shattered the hampering spear-shaft with teeth that could break stone and steel, and bit through her throat.
The boat still cut through the water, chasing phantoms of moonlight and wave. Attalissa would be deep, below any reach of their sight or weapons. One stood in the bow, arms full of fishing net. He pitched overboard when the Blackdog rose from the water, a hound the size of a yearling yak swarming into the boat, nearly swamping it, and went down struggling in his tangled cords. The other screamed, tried to lift an oar from its tholepin to use as a weapon, and choked in his own blood, throat crushed and torn.
All of them. Safe. He could rejoin the goddess. They would not be followed, for a little while.
Blood seeped sluggishly around the spearhead and he licked it, tasting it. Warm, salt, human.
For Otokas, it was a killing blow, beyond any power of the spirit’s to heal. He knew. The Blackdog host had died in battle before, more than once, and once by treachery, and many times more an easy, gentle death in his bed, an old man in whom the Blackdog could no longer maintain health and strength. Death was easy. It was leaving Attalissa’s care to another that was hard. But the dog could keep life in him a while longer, if he did not return to his own body yet. The Blackdog slid back into the water and swam, beneath the surface like an otter, after his goddess.
The boat, half-filled with water and riding low, bobbed behind him, and a rising wave climbed the top strake. It settled lower, filled, and sank, pulling down the raider’s body with it. On the holy islet, flames rose from the kitchen roof.
The roar of falling stones still echoed in Attavaia’s ears. A pillar of dust and smoke climbed over the western end of the temple, visible as a reddish cloud, holding the glare of fire. Crouched on the roof near the Inner Court, she had seen women suddenly flee the bell-tower, her uncle and Spear Lady leading them, and the tower crumbling in on itself, the gates hurled across the Outer Court, mowing down her sisters. She had bitten, hard, on a hand jammed into her mouth, not to scream. As the warlord rode in, Otokas had gone, no doubt to the goddess, vaulting the gate to the Inner Court, a shadow blacker than night. He never saw her there on the roof, though he of all of them would have been able to. The warlord—wizard, all too clearly—shouted something, raised a hand, but the dog was gone by then and the surviving sisters charged. She saw Spear Lady caught in torchlight a moment, lost her in the roar and the darkness and the raider army rolling in like the leading edge of an avalanche.
Jump down, run along the top of the Inner Court wall, join them, for all the good one more sword would do. For a moment it seemed right, as though that one sword might tip the balance, or perhaps because it would be easier to die here, now, than later.
She had orders. Attavaia turned away and crawled up the gentle slope of tiles to the flat roof, caught a higher eave and heaved herself up, and so over the jumble of interlocking roofs she had learned as a novice, sneaking out for sins no worse than unlawful feasts by moonlight and rooftop games of It, played on silent, heart-pounding tiptoe.
It was amazing no one had been killed, or even broken an ankle. It was amazing no one had been caught, as though all the old sisters forgot, once their novitiates were over, what they had once done.
Or it was winked at, if the girls did not make their breaking of rules too obvious, because the stealthy exploration and the nighttime frantic scrambles were training.
Sister Chanalugh had not asked her if she could find a way over the roofs to see what was happening at the western gate. She had just said, Go. There was no other way to see; once there were no more arrows left in the armoury, the outward-opening door behind those in the Lower East Court had been barricaded within as a further line of defence, at Sister Chitora’s orders.
Attavaia slid at the last, knocking tiles loose, clumsy with more than weariness. They shattered on the pavement hard on her hissed warning, and she caught the eaves and hung a moment before she dropped, a firm hand catching her, steadying—Sister Chanalugh, who had charge of the water-gate defence now that Sister Chitora was lying insensible. A brazier glowed on the paving stones, shedding a little light, and someone was making tea.
Attavaia laughed and gulped and bit her lip before it turned into something Sister Chanalugh would call hysterics.
“The raiders are in the Outer Court and almost everyone’s dead,” she reported in a whisper. “I saw it—the warlord made the tower fall and the gates flew across the court. It was like a scythe mowing hay. They just…” She tipped a hand. “And then the raiders poured over the rubble. Uncle—the Blackdog’s gone to the goddess. He couldn’t stop that wizard. If he could have, it’d be over now. What are we going to do, Sister? They’ll be into the Inner Court by now.” She rubbed a sleeve across her face. There was blood on it. Sister Chitora’s. Attavaia had helped carry her down from the wall.
“Hold the water-gate, as Spear Lady ordered,” Chanalugh said.
“Until when? They’re in the temple! Spear Lady’s probably dead by now!” Attavaia’s voice rose and Chanalugh gave her a shake. Others turned, the damage done, even faces atop the squat water-gate tower showing pale down into the court a moment.
Someone pressed a cup of milky tea into her hands; there was even a pitcher of fresh yak’s-milk out here.
Well, they needed their strength; it was no foolish indulgence. Too hot, too sweet, and she gulped it down, scalding her mouth.
Her hands were shaking.
“We heard the tower falling,” offered a girl belonging to her own dormitory, her childhood friend and neighbour Sister Enneas. “Like thunder.”
“We defend the goddess,” Sister Chanalugh said firmly. “So long as we can.” She turned and stalked off, a tall, ungainly body, gift of a foreign father. They called her Sister Stork, behind her back.
“And then what?” someone asked, off in the darkness.
“Then we die,” muttered Enneas. “’Vaia, did you hear, did Attalissa really say this warlord was a wizard come to eat her?”
That rumour, and worse, had been running through them as they carried sheaves of arrows from the armoury, met other girls wide-eyed and edgy in the passages on their own urgent errands.
“I don’t know.”
“Did the Blackdog say? He would have told you.”
“He told me—”
A shout, a burst of light. Someone had lobbed a jar of burning pitch up over the wall, shattering on the stones, spraying fire. A sister shouted, spattered with it, but mostly on the bronze scales of her armour, a little on the cloth below the short metalled sleeves, quickly beaten out.
Nothing followed it. They grew bored, outside, and wasted what must have been meant for making torches.
Attavaia climbed the narrow stairs to the tower roof, looked down.
The foreign mercenaries seemed in no great urgency. They clustered not right at the gate, but further down the steep climbing path, and a handful on the lakeshore. They had a boat, but there were no longer any scaling-ladders in it. Till Sister Chanalugh had sent her scouting over the roofs, she had thought that despite the horrible losses they had suffered here at the water-gate, they would win. The raiders had nearly come over the walls, and had been driven off. Their bodies, and those of sisters, too, littered the ground at the wall’s foot. Many had slid and bounced all the way down. It was not quite a cliff here, but there was no straight way up.
The raiders were fewer in number than they had been when they retreated from the wall, fewer even than there had been after she had fired what was their last arrow and watched a woman fall and counted, Six. She had taken six lives. She wondered how many Rideen had claimed, before they killed him at the town bridge. They would have killed him; her brother would not have run. Perhaps he and she would meet on the long road to the land of the Old Great Gods and compare their tallies.
Most of the attackers here must have been summoned off to some other duty, and these remaining were counted enough to keep anyone from escaping this way.
The temple’s boats had gone with the lay-servants, the novices, and the old who could be persuaded to go, before the raiders had come to pen them in. Some might still be on the lake, depending on where they sought to land.
A strong swimmer could make the southern shore. She had done it twice, once to prove to herself she could, once to win a bet with Enneas. Best to start from the southern tip of the islet, though.
“They’ll wait till dawn,” Sister Chanalugh said softly at her side. “Have your dormitory collect all those tiles you broke. Knock down some more, and bring them up here. It’ll slow the godless bastards down a little, anyway.”
