by K V Johansen
Attavaia had to walk past him, step over his feet, dragging her right leg, to reach the doorway through which Tsuzas had gone, of all the several opening from the room. Ostap had stationed himself on a stool there deliberately. His eyes followed her, malevolent as those of the painted gods, but he made no move to pursue her himself.
“Ah, newlywed bliss,” murmured one or another of the sisters, and yelped. Attavaia supposed an ankle had been kicked.
She pushed through the curtain, having to bend her neck under the low lintel. It was dark, beyond, and the air was cold after the heat of the…the house. This did not feel like a house, though as her eyes adjusted, she could see dim light ahead. She set out towards it, down a passage that sloped slightly underfoot. The walls leaned in; she could touch the roof if she reached up. Walls and roof were smooth and plastered, though, and sudden glints of light suggested more jewelled depictions of Narva, more watching eyes.
The light was a plain clay lamp, burning in a niche cut into the wall. Tsuzas leaned beside it.
“I wasn’t sure whether to rescue you or not,” he said, but his expression was empty, not matching the words.
“I wasn’t sure whether to rescue you,” she returned, trying to make light of it. Great gods, what a family to take a wife home to. No wonder he had never married. “It might be impolitic. I didn’t realize we were at war with Narvabarkash.”
At least she knew there had been war, long ago, which few did even in the temple. Her uncle had told stories, entertaining her and Rideen, Enneas and Shevehan, in the cold winter evenings when they were all young. Heroic sisters of long ago. Small wonder both who could had gone to join them.
“And you might be at war with us again when you were done rescuing me? Grandfather’s…not harmless. But not as dangerous as he’d like to think. I’m the only heir he has, so far. The boys are too young yet for Narva to take an interest in them, thank—” He shrugged. “Narva. I wish my fool sister would see she’d be better off raising them Lissavakaili in her husband’s household in the village.”
This was not yesterday’s manic mad priest. He seemed as bleak and trapped as Attavaia had felt, caged and crippled in Jerusha’s bed in Serakallash.
“I see what you meant about enough sisters,” she said lightly. “Was your god always mad, or did this happen recently?”
Tsuzas choked on a laugh.
“They’re not so bad, once you get used to them. Well, some of them. In ones or twos. More than three at once is ill-advised. Do you want me to take the stone?”
Attavaia shook her head. She unpacked Sera’s rock from the saddlebag and cradled it against her chest, as she had once before. It felt like it was hers, to protect.
Tsuzas picked up the lamp and led the way. Soon Attavaia could not have walked beside him if she wanted to. The passageway became more obviously a tunnel, narrow, dark, and the air felt damp and warm, compared to the outside world. Currents moved and stroked against her. They turned, turned again. She had an impression of open spaces to the sides, brief glimpses of blacker blackness, swallowing the struggling yellow light.
“Don’t try coming alone beyond where the walls are painted,” Tsuzas cautioned. “These are old mine workings, and a maze, intentional or not. There are caves, too, and some places they open up below you.”
Attavaia shivered. The floor was rough and Tsuzas slowed, looking back, giving her an encouraging smile. The walls brushed at her now, rasping on her coat, catching at her shawl and skirts. Their path twisted this way and that; they walked always steeply downwards and her leg began to throb, with a perfectly natural excuse. She should have let Tsuzas carry the blessed stone, should have just given it to him, the moment she realized he was the priest she sought, and ridden away. But it had been too late then. Maybe it had been too late when she answered Sera’s summons.
She found herself walking in a daze, a dream. Most of the light was hidden by Tsuzas’s body. She had the feeling she might have been asleep. Voices whispered, just beyond the edge of hearing. Had he said the mines of Narva, the ones that were still mined, connected with these? He had. It might be she heard miners from Narvabarkash village, miles away. It might be the silver-scaled, child-eating demons of the tales. Wind in high cracks—the air was not stale and choking, as she had feared. They climbed uphill now, and she could not remember when the pitch of the floor beneath had changed. Voices sighed, and asked questions she could not understand. A forgotten language? Rhythm to it. The breathing of the god.
They had stopped.
Are we there? she wanted to ask, and opened her mouth and drew breath, but Tsuzas moved swiftly and laid fingers over her lips. She closed her mouth and nodded. He couldn’t take her hand, both were filled with crutch and stone, but he set his on her elbow and drew her with him, out into an open space.
Peaks of stone, whitish, green-streaked, rose from the floor. They threaded a way through them, a path worn, like the path of a river, eroded by centuries of feet through this range. Some of the mounded peaks rose higher than her head, while others were only knee-high. Dampness stained the floor in places, though the passages had been dry, she thought, drier than she had unconsciously expected. Overhead, the lamplight caught peaks descending, as though somewhere above, higher than the light could reach, was a reflection of the floor. Icicles, Attavaia thought then, craning her head back to see, almost making out the roof, a distant paleness that was not quite the blackness of nothing. Icicles of stone. Water dripped, somewhere, with a noise that echoed and re-echoed. In the distance she could see where floor and roof rose to merge into one another, rough and yet all curves and rounded edges, as though melted. It was very like standing below an ice field, looking up. An icy quality to the rock, a milkiness. Here and there, in the harder-looking stone of the walls, were knobs streaked with colour the lamplight kindled into flame, orange and green and blue, not turquoise but the far rarer opal, which the miners only found by luck and chance, and which all came to the temple, as Attalissa’s greatest treasure.
But not here.
She could hear Narva’s sleep, almost—almost hear his dreams, the murmuring edge of a troubled mind, worrying, gnawing, at the day’s fears. Tsuzas stopped her on the edge of a pool, dark water untroubled by any wind but still shivering, rippling. Warmth rose from the surface, and strange crusts of white and greenish mineral edged the pool. Water dripped, shaking the surface. It stretched away, out of sight, towards distant walls she could only guess at, and the light showed eroded shapes rising from it, the soft stone melting into the water even as it was added to, drop by drop, from above. Stone peaks and pillars lay toppled, crumbling, and others built on them.
Attavaia unwrapped the wedge of sandstone and stood holding it a moment. Awkwardly, she started to lower herself. Tsuzas steadied her, until she was half-kneeling, the splinted leg stuck out absurdly, almost in the water. He knelt down beside her, setting the lamp at the water’s edge.
She laid the rock, Red Desert sandstone, beside it, touching the pool, so that dampness crept up its surface. The stone had come from water’s edge; water’s edge was where it should lie, until the time came for the goddess of Serakallash to return to her own proper place.
“Look after your sister Sera, Narva,” she prayed, because it seemed something should be said. Tsuzas did not reach to silence her, this time. Her voice echoed from the roof and the walls, layered itself, became barely comprehensible: music, or mad muttering. “When Attalissa returns to defeat Tamghat, may you all be free in your own places again.”
What had she said? The water shivered, or Tsuzas did, pressed shoulder to shoulder. It was only a wish, for the world the way it ought to be.
“Free or dead and lost like the Westron gods,” Tsuzas said. “Better empty temples in the wind than the devils walking with the earth’s strength in their hearts. Better silent death lost in stone, better Attalissa’s fool, than ghost consumed into the empty flame.”
“Devils?” Attavaia asked, not certain she had heard
clearly.
Tsuzas made a sort of choking, gulping noise and jerked suddenly, fell against her. She grabbed him, reflex, and felt him rigid, like a man of stone and as unexpectedly heavy. His legs spasmed and his arms twitched, teeth snapping, and then he went limp against her, breathing fast, thick and gurgling in his throat.
“Tsuzas?”
A fit, Attalissa help her. A fit or the possession of his god, and how did one know the difference? His breathing slowed, and he moved a little. She settled his head more comfortably against her shoulder. Reminded, a shaft of tenderness through the heart, of Rideen, that time he was so ill, coughing and coughing, he couldn’t breathe lying down, he had had to sit up all night, her mother or herself holding him, for comfort and warmth. But uncle had asked the goddess, a little thing of two or three, then, and she had wished him well. So Otokas said. And Rideen had recovered, and quickly grown strong again. Strong enough to join the militia, become one of the town’s best bowmen.
Tsuzas sighed and muttered something, his breath gone quieter, more natural, like a sleeper. He showed no hurry to sit up.
“Hey,” she whispered into his hair. “You awake?” The echoes turned her words into sinister hissing.
He groaned, pushed away from her.
“Mostly,” he said after a moment, speaking softly, but the echoes still caught it. “Come.” He found his cap, took up the lamp, helped her up. His smile was rueful, crooked, and his face pale, glistening with sweat. “Sorry.”
Nothing more, till they were out of the cavern. Temple?
“Devils,” Attavaia said, when they were once more in narrow darkness with the walls pressing in and the roof too low. Her voice shook, she realized. “What was that? Narva?”
“Narva,” Tsuzas agreed dully. “Don’t shout. Headache.”
“Sorry.” She reached and touched his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Mostly.”
“Does he come to you often? Like that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember…” She wasn’t sure how to ask.
“Usually. Devils,” he agreed. “Better empty temples than devils.” He looked back at her. “Tell me what happened, when Tamghat took the temple. Attalissa couldn’t face him, and fled. Even grandfather knows it’s not true that she invited him and was abducted by a demon.”
Attavaia told him all she remembered. Her leg was bad, blindingly bad, before they reached the house, and Tsuzas didn’t lead her back to the family but to his own room, a small, white-painted cave with a felt curtain over the low door, a bed and a chest, a sword and spears leaning in the corner, and nothing more.
“Used to be a storeroom,” he said. “I like it. Colder, but quiet.” He was half-carrying her by then, though he looked as sick as she felt. He sat her on the bed, helped her get her leg up. An orange cat appeared from somewhere and settled down beside her, purring.
“Where’s the goddess now?” he asked, when she had told him all she could of what had happened on the holy islet, and at Serakallash as well.
“With the Blackdog. My uncle. I don’t know where he took her. Into the mountains somewhere.”
“Your uncle?” He grinned, as he had on the mountain. “Don’t tell grandfather that, of all things. He prays curses on the Blackdog, every night, for family pride and honour. Don’t look like that. Narva doesn’t hear prayer. What do you know of magic?”
“Hardly anything.”
“Could a wizard do what this Tamghat has done? Think of stories, ’Vaia. He defeated Sera, and she fled because she thought he would destroy her. Attalissa fled because she foresaw he would devour her and she wasn’t strong enough as a child-avatar to resist. True?”
“Yes.”
“Narva…you saw my Uncle Umas. The god took him and my father both, when Lissavakail fell, and left Umas like that. We hoped, at first, he’d recover. It doesn’t look likely now. He was always fragile, too open to Narva’s mind. I think it’s as though a fire roared through him, finally. Burned all his soul away.”
“Your father, too?”
“He—” Tsuzas cleared his throat. “He went out in the fog, up above where some of the old shafts come out. And he walked over a cliff.”
“You mean, deliberately?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Tsuzas sat down on the edge of the bed, avoiding her gaze. “Narva was terrified. We all felt it. What they saw, with the god pouring through them, I don’t know. But then we heard that Lissavakail had fallen, and how. Do you think that’s a wizard, to panic a god that way?”
He deflected her firmly from asking any more about his father. Attavaia touched his arm, gently, got him to turn and look at her again.
“Sera was desperate. Attalissa was panicking. And Narva panicked as well, you’re saying.”
“Because of a wizard?”
Attavaia shook her head in denial. “Not…not a wizard. He can’t be. There’s no wizard in any tale a god need fear on their own ground. Except—”
“Except the seven devils.” Tsuzas said it softly, as if fearing to hear his own words.
“They were killed and buried.”
“Imprisoned, not killed.”
“You really think Tamghat could be one of those, one of the wizards who gave their bodies to devils?” Attavaia wanted to hear him deny it.
“Narva’s never spoken of devils before, not through me, not through my grandfather, that I’ve ever heard or been told,” Tsuzas said. “I think—it’s possible at least—that he’s thought of devils now because of what he sees in you.”
“In me?”
Tsuzas took her bandaged hand in his own. “He can probably touch you now, a little. He might be aware of what you’ve seen, what you know. Impressions, at least.”
What secrets did she know, that the priests of Narva should not? That she was the Blackdog’s niece, nothing more. She had been barely out of her novitiate when the temple fell.
“If Tamghat’s a devil, what do we do?”
Tsuzas actually laughed. “The Old Great Gods only know. Pray. Trust in Attalissa. Narva’s certainly going to be no help.”
She was silent, considering that. Considering her hand, lying in his.
“Are you hungry?” Tsuzas asked abruptly, freeing her hand.
Attavaia shook her head.
“Supper time. It’s no short walk into Narva’s heart. Are you sure?”
“Yes. But you should eat something,” she said. “You still look grey.”
“I’d be sick,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you don’t look so good yourself.”
“The leg.”
“Most people with a broken leg stay in bed. Are you fit to ride tomorrow?”
“Where to?”
“The snows are coming,” he said. “You don’t want to spend the winter with us. Elsinna and I will guide you down, to wherever it is you and your sisters lurk these days. I think Elsinna’d be happy enough to stay with you, actually. She always wanted to go to the temple.”
“I’m not the one to ask…No, maybe I am. Old Lady is Tamghat’s lapdog. The true temple, what’s left of it, is scattered through the mountains. And they all look to me. If you don’t mind, and Narva won’t…won’t kill her, she can swear to Attalissa and be welcome, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Won’t tell grandpapa till it’s too late,” Tsuzas said with satisfaction, his voice slurring. She thought at first it was another fit coming on him, but it was only exhaustion, his eyes falling shut like a little child’s, overcome with sleep. His head nodded.
“Lie down,” she ordered, and moved over a little, leaving him room. Dragged the heavy quilts out from beneath them with difficulty. He was already asleep by the time she covered them both. Chaste enough; they were both fully clothed, hadn’t even got their boots off, and as for reputation, that was long gone.
Eventually, the lamp burned out, but it was a long time before Attavaia could fall asleep. Tsuzas had rolled
so his head was on her shoulder, beard brushing on her cheek, unexpectedly soft.
Before finally leaving Baisirbska, in the spring of the year that the Old Great Gods drove her from her retreat in the northern taiga, Moth and Mikki had lingered in Swanesby much of the summer, while Mikki helped build the growing settlement’s great communal threshing barn, working by night to shape their beams, cut the mortises. Took leave of friends who would probably be long gone to the Gods before he ever came back that way again. Moth had given her histories, bundles wrapped in oiled leather, sealed with knots that were bindings more potent than they looked, to a young wandering storyteller, told him to take them to the king’s skald of the Hravningas in Ulvsness in the west, whoever that might be now, if he ever went so far, or to pass them that way. They’d only rot, left behind. So something of their years in Baisirbska endured.
Still, though they wandered south into the Great Grass after that, as instinct had urged her, season followed season, summer grazing, rich in milk and roasted meat, winter’s hard scraping as the herds huddled against the nor’westers and the tents grew stale with old smoke and old tales told once too often. She went as a warrior, armed, and though they thought her some outlaw banished from the hall of a Northron king, godless as she appeared, she would carry her sword for no clan-lord or chieftain, and called herself only a soothsayer, sometimes, or a storyteller of the Northron folk, not claiming the name of wizard or skald or bard, as the observant suspected she should be, such was her skill with foretelling and small healing, and with words and song. When she read the runes for others, they still answered to the old power that had always lain in her blood. Moth cast the runes for her own course, though, and they fell empty of meaning. She did not reach into the threads of the Old Great Gods’ binding again. She would learn nothing that way and the hungry touch of their tendrils made her ill, though that might be her mind’s working, as a child made itself ill through morbid fears. But she began to feel she had abandoned the home they had made to rot and ice and ruin for nothing. The Old Great Gods were distant and could only touch the world at great cost. Lakkariss was not, though aware in some narrow way, intelligent. She could have stayed in Baisirbska, dug and planted their small fields, worried over her harvest, fished the autumn run of char, waited till the runes showed some clearer path to whatever had woken the sword. She had been driven, animal-like, into flight, and the Gods were no doubt pleased to have broken her stolen peace.
