Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  Fear? Secrets even the dog must not know? Holla-Sayan blew out the lamp and left her, shutting the door behind him, wishing he could lock it against whatever threat came. There were too many threats and the Blackdog could only be in one place at a time.

  “Immerose.” He caught at the Marakander’s sleeve. “Where’s Bikkim?”

  “Went up to the roof, I think.”

  Holla nodded, headed for the stairs to the upper floor and the ladder to the roof.

  “Hey, Holla, say thank you, you graceless ploughboy.”

  He waved a hand over his shoulder.

  “And anyway, you need to let the pair of them sort out their own problems…”

  Bikkim, as he’d hoped, was alone, leaning on the parapet, looking down over the town.

  “Storm’s coming,” Holla said needlessly, joining him, and they both turned to the north, where the sky hung thick and brown. “Bikkim. I need to ask you something.”

  “Do you?” Bikkim scratched his chin. “If this is about Pakdhala—”

  “Yes.”

  “I do mean to marry her, if she’ll have me. She’s not a little girl anymore, you have to—”

  “Bikkim—don’t. I don’t care, I don’t…it doesn’t matter. Just listen.” He knew the gang was half-convinced he was sliding into madness; he knew he was starting to look it, the twins had cornered him to tell him so and Judeh had taken to standing over him to see he remembered to eat in the evenings. Even ‘Dhala, so withdrawn since her abrupt decision to return to Lissavakail, had ordered more than once, revenge for all his nagging over the years when her strength failed her in Serakallash: Father, dog, eat. Sleep. Don’t let the dog make you ill. And, There’s nothing out there. You’ve been seeing shadows since At-Landi, but Kinsai would have warned us. And Ivah is harmless, don’t start on about her again. I like her. You’re letting the dog’s worry about returning and its fear of wizards become an obsession.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Will you look after Pakdhala for me?”

  “What? Great Gods, Holla—” Bikkim put a hand on his arm and he flinched. “You’re not that ill. Are you?”

  “Tonight. Now. Guard her tonight.”

  “Oh.” Bikkim hesitated. “Why? From what?”

  “Ivah.”

  “Holla, I don’t think Ivah has that sort of interest in her. Shaiveh wouldn’t stand for it, for one thing, and—”

  Holla-Sayan seized him by the shoulder. “Shut up. Listen.” Sayan help him, he could hardly hear his own words over the drumming, rising need of the dog to be running, to be hunting that…whatever it was…the presence that stalked them, trailing all the way down from At-Landi, always out of reach, always vanishing, fading into grass and stone and sky like it was a demon of the wilds, which it was not, it was hot metal and cold stone, it was…he did not know, and the dog could not remember.

  “Ivah lies, she lies in everything. She’s a wizard, not some petty diviner, no matter what she claims. Wizardry made Gaguush take her on. She’s fenced about with spells so I can’t see beyond the surface of her, her or Shaiveh, and she has allies. There’s something out there, in the desert, and it’s coming closer. Now. This evening.”

  “Holla…” Bikkim tried to pry clenched fingers out of his shoulder. “Holla-Sayan, let go, dammit, that hurts.”

  Holla backed away, arms wrapped close against doing any more harm. “Just…guard her tonight. She’s sleeping down in the west corner alcove, by the gate. Don’t let them near her, the wizard and her shadow. Your word you will.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  “Trust you,” Holla said indistinctly. “It doesn’t want to, but I do.” Great Gods, but he was making no sense and Bikkim was staring. “Stay with her. Now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He pushed past Bikkim, stumbling, hardly able to hold himself together, to keep the dog from hurling itself into the world. Almost fell down the ladder, headed out, blind to everything but the barred door in the gate. A woman stood there, between him and the door. No, he told the dog. No threat, no harm, just Mistress Jerusha and she’s opening the door.

  “What is it? Who are you?” Jerusha Rostvadim demanded of whoever was beyond. A woman, a tired horse, he smelt that much. Smelt the mountains, high stone and swift water: she was clothed in yaks’ wool, dyed with mountain dyes. Smelt…the lingering touch of some god. The dog growled and he seized it back from the edge of the world.

  “I’m a…a cousin of Sister Vakail’s,” the woman outside said. “Are you Jerusha?”

  “Might be. Sister Vakail has a lot of cousins. Which one are you?”

  “Elsinna. From Narvabarkash. I’ve brought you the stone that wasn’t buried with Enneas.”

  “What?”

  “Please, let me in, before someone sees me.”

  He had known an Enneas once. Two little girls in trouble for filching honeycomb from the larder and his sister furious because he laughed and took them up to see the new calves as he had promised anyway, spoiling them when they should have been punished…

  That was Otokas.

  “What are you talking about?” But Jerusha was pulling the door open and a mountain woman, dressed like a man, or so they’d have said in the mountains, dragged in a brown pony. She grabbed for her knife, seeing him at Jerusha’s back, and then her eyes widened. Holla shouldered past them both before she could say anything. The caravanserai master’s daughter snatched at his sleeve.

  “You—Holla-Sayan—there’s a storm coming. Better stay in.” He shook his head mutely without turning around, but he could feel her scowl and exasperated shrug. “Then remember the damned curfew and get back before sunset. You don’t want to end up in the gaol and your mistress’ll tan your hide if she has to bail you out.”

  She slammed the door behind him. The bar thudded home.

  “Who was that?” the mountain woman demanded. “His eyes—”

  “His eyes? I suppose he’s handsome enough, if you like that sort, which personally I don’t. A mad caravaneer. All mercenaries are a bit mad, but sometimes that one’s more than a bit. Leave the pony, I’ll send someone to see to it. You’d better come into the house and explain what in the cold hells you’re babbling about.”

  There was no one in the street, no open gate in any of the blind walls of the caravanserais. The dog poured into the world and Holla let it run, tracking that scent that was not a scent, metal and stone and ancient fire, tracking an echo of a memory of ice.

  He was losing his long fight with the dog. He had thought they had a truce, a balance, until this thing began to stalk them. Its presence woke him sweating in the night, seeing a bear-crested helmet livid with reflected flame and eyes burning that were no reflection at all. Now the dog would rise up, pulling him down, drowning him, so that man’s thoughts and man’s reason were swamped, as they had not been, not entirely, even in the times they had gone after bandits. There were nights now he remembered only brokenly, if at all. Their truce held insomuch as the dog was willing to let him back, in the end, when they did not find the thing it hunted.

  If whatever stalked them was Tamghat’s ally, why had it not acted? If it was not, why did it follow? Why did it only follow, and fade away elusive as a dream, leaving him with nothing but animal scent and old bone, random on the wind? And why had damned Kinsai said nothing as it trailed them down the east bank?

  Maybe they were mad, he and the dog together, and the thing they chased only an illusion, a twisted memory of Tamghat, a fever-dream, nothing more.

  It was not slipping away this evening. It burned before them in the air, the twisted thing that had come against Lissavakail, fire and blood and stone, old bone, coming, pursuing Attalissa. A woman, a horse, something that seemed to fade in and out of vision. Wait… He was lost. The dog hurled itself against it and hit the ground, rolling under a blow that swept it from its feet, a weight great enough to hold it pinned.

  The dog grew horse-sized, twisted, teeth clashing, taste of blood
and then only fur as the great bear reared free and struck again, massive body crushing the dog and a paw pressing its head into the ground, so it snapped and snarled and choked on dusty earth.

  “What in the cold hells is it?” someone asked.

  A sword bit the earth, a yard from the dog’s frenzy. A crack in the air, breathing cold. A road into a landscape of white sky, black stone, black ice, seams of molten red rock. The dog’s shock froze it still and Holla dragged himself, not into the world, but at least out of the morass of rage and panic that surrounded the dog’s core.

  “Thought that might get his attention.” A woman squatted down before him, just out of reach, a long Northron sword across her knees. “Now…Hah. They said the goddess was guarded by a demon.”

  “Or abducted by one.”

  “Ya, but you tell me what this is.” They weren’t speaking any language he knew. The dog heard, and understood.

  “Bad-tempered?”

  “That too.”

  “I can’t hold him much longer, wolf. Night’s about on us and he weighs more than I will.”

  The thing that looked like a woman and was not Tamghat considered him, reached a hand. The dog snapped and should have taken that hand off, but she was faster and her touch burned, resting between his eyes.

  “Lie still. Let me see what you are. Both of you.” I don’t mean any harm to your goddess. I want the one who calls himself Tamghat.

  It didn’t occur to the dog to doubt. It sighed, a long and weary sigh, fell back to something approaching mortal dog-size, and lay still. Then it stretched its head back, lying prone on the earth, until it pressed its nose against the woman’s wrist. It felt like…it felt it had all unexpected turned a foreign corner and found it was home. She ran her hand over its muzzle, let it lie. The dog whined.

  “Great Gods be damned.” She whispered it, sat back away from him. “Mikki…let him go.”

  “Are you sure?” The bear…was a man, shaking unkempt hair out of his eyes, a man naked and quite unselfconscious about it, who rolled from the dog and knelt by the woman, watchful, his shoulder welling blood.

  The dog let Holla-Sayan go then. He dragged a rasping breath that he felt in every rib.

  The man—the black-eyed Northron giant from At-Landi—offered a hand as he propped himself up, the world spinning, but it was the woman held him with her eyes. Another Northron, younger than him, old as his mother—he couldn’t place her. Pale hair that could have been age or youth’s silver-gilt beauty. Old eyes, though, with fire living behind them.

  “Why does it believe you?” For a dizzy moment, that was his most pressing thought. “It never believes me. Why should I believe you? You’re the same as Tamghat.”

  The man snorted. “Caravan-man, you should try not to insult people who, you might notice, aren’t cutting your fool head off.” He spoke Grasslander now, fluently, but with a thick accent, and clasped his hand over his bleeding shoulder. “You could have tried asking questions before biting, you know. You’ll make more friends that way.”

  “Believe me because my sibling does.” Her Grasslander might have been native.

  “What?” He felt slow, stupid, exhausted from weeks of little sleep and too long fighting the dog. He had missed something.

  “Sibling?” the bear-man said to the woman. “I thought the stories of the Blackdog put it back well before the war of the seven devils, before the kings in the north.”

  “That wasn’t the first war the Great Gods fought in this world. Long and long ago—forgotten long and long ago, and the defeated forced back into the cold hells for eternity.” The woman switched back to Grasslander. “But you—”

  “Devils?” Holla asked, desperately, the dog still following the Northron speech. “What?”

  “The soul possessing you is what the world calls a devil. It’s little more than a ghost feeding off you, Holla-Sayan, and that ghost is bound in such spells…But that is what it was, once.”

  “No.”

  “Ask it, if you won’t believe me.”

  “I can’t. It doesn’t think that way. It doesn’t…it doesn’t have conversations. It doesn’t have words.”

  “Perhaps not. Its name is gone, it’s wounded beyond recovery, there’s only a fragment of its heart remaining and that is lost to it, but it survives.”

  Holla shook his head.

  “Think of the wreck of a man returned from battle, a body that doesn’t die but lingers, a soul that seems mostly to have fled to the Great Road to the heavens. Your dog is that. It was a terrible battle. Powers loose in your world that had no place or right to walk it.”

  He felt empty, purged of some great weight. The relief was the dog’s: this stalking power was no threat to the goddess. And Great Gods, Holla was so weary. That a devil soul lived parasite in him was too much; he had no energy to worry about it.

  “Then I’m going back to town. If it’s Tamghat you’re after, come with me. Pakdhala says we’re going up to Lissavakail tomorrow and she won’t tell me what she means to do. She can’t fight him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s weak. She’s a human girl. And I can’t fight him. His warriors killed me, last time. Killed the man Otokas, I mean. He threatened to take the dog himself.”

  “He won’t,” the woman said grimly, and she stood, sheathing her sword, the steel one, before taking the stone sword from the earth. A web of frost crackled on the dry grass. “This is Lakkariss, Holla-Sayan, and it could destroy either of us, being what we are. One way or another, I will see Tamghiz Ghatai does not devour the Blackdog.” She sheathed the sword in a scabbard on the horse’s shoulder. He saw night sky through the horse, night and bone. It snorted at him.

  “Your mistress isn’t going to like me.” For a hazy moment he thought she meant Gaguush. “But then, I don’t think much of slavers, so we can all dislike one another equally.”

  “What are you?” he asked desperately.

  “Who is the more courteous question. My name’s Moth, these days. This is Mikki. Mikki, put on some clothes?”

  The man laughed, shrugged into a tunic from the horse’s baggage, and unstrapped a long-hafted axe, which he rested first on one shoulder, then, wincing, the other. The woman muttered under her breath and took him by his front, pulled down the shoulder of his tunic, and tied a pad of cloth over the bite. The man grinned sheepishly, winked at Holla.

  “Who, then?” Holla frowned, climbed to his feet. He felt like he’d fallen off a mountain, or that one had fallen on him. “Tamghiz Ghatai—why do I know that name?”

  “Fireside tales, caravan-man,” Mikki said. “In the days of the first kings in the north there were seven devils—”

  “Sayan. I thought they were imprisoned, those seven.”

  “Some have escaped,” Moth said.

  “You’ve escaped. Which one are you and if you’re planning to kill him, what do you mean to do after?” Are you a threat to the goddess, is the dog deluded? He did not ask that, but she saw it anyway.

  Moth hesitated, then, Northron formality, touched a hand to her chest. “Ulfhild Vartu,” she said. “I’ve given up making emperors, Holla-Sayan. I make sagas, these days. Histories, when the damned Great Gods let me. And I will stop Ghatai making himself a god of the earth. If I can.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Then he will consume both of us and your mistress as well, and raise the earth against the heavens. There may be no more left of either than that wasteland along the Kinsai’aa.” She considered. “Time was, I’d have welcomed that.”

  “Not now?”

  She grinned. “Westgrasslander—you’re not the only one with a farm to go home to.”

  “Not much of one,” the bear-man muttered. “I think we should move house, wolf, to someplace with a shorter winter. Take land in the Hravningasland.”

  “Too many neighbours. Too many kinsmen.”

  “You see?” Mikki asked him plaintively. “I’m condemned to a hermitage.”

>   “You’re a demon,” Moth said. “You like wilderness.”

  “I’m a carpenter, princess, and I like people.” They had fallen into Northron again. The dog found the banter incomprehensible and ceased to pay attention to the words. No threat here, and Pakdhala was alone. Holla-Sayan sighed and let the dog flow back into the world, turned to lope south. They could follow if they would. He didn’t care. The dog did, though, very much, the only emotion it had ever had that was not centred on the goddess. But its thought ran on the goddess again, its goddess left alone with only a weak mortal man to defend her, the enemy whose shape it had known, all unaware, but known as the chick knows to cower from the broad-winged shadow in the sky, all too close. But under that, under that…some smouldering heat that was rage and hope and longing—it was oblivion it yearned after. The dog wanted to die and saw, at last, death within its reach.

  Moth and the ghost stallion caught up with him. Mikki, warm demon heat in the dog’s awareness, earth and root and a forest in his blood, jogged behind. The dog settled into a pace he could match.

  The dog, for the first time in its existence, wanted company.

  Come sunset, fast horses would be waiting for Ivah at Mooshka’s gate with a warrior escort, Ketsim, the governor of Serakallash, had assured her. And still her father did not contact her. Waking or sleeping, he had not come to her mind since that night of nightmare. Ivah wished she could feel it was trust, confidence in her, but she more than half-expected it was the opposite, and that once she brought the goddess to Ketsim’s house, the noekar would take Pakdhala, on Tamghat’s orders, riding at messenger speed with relays of fast horses, to be the one to hand the goddess over and bask in her father’s satisfaction.

  Tamghat only needed Ivah to cast the spell. And if she failed that—better not to go back to him at all, better to take poison and die like a failed Nabbani assassin.

  At times like this, she desperately needed a god to pray to. Any god.

  Mother Nabban, Father Nabban…how could she pray to them, she who had never been closer than she was now to the great empire ruled by…who? Her grandfather, an uncle, a cousin?