Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  Nightmare, in which she struggled, mired in the seething bitumen pits of the Black Desert, trying to reach her own body. It walked away from her. Pakdhala surfaced into herself and discovered it still wasn’t a dream, as it had not been the last time, and the time before that.

  Bikkim was dead. She had seen him lying, his throat cut, as she walked, each step dragging what felt like a heavy chain, from her bed. She raged and cursed and screamed for her father, for the Blackdog, but that was only in her mind, and she battered herself senseless on glass walls without ever being able to reach him, to reach herself. When she was small there had been an old man in Marakand, a kinsman of the twins’, who lived with their family and sat propped in bed, watching the children. He couldn’t speak. He moved his limbs like they were dead things dragged with some last, failing strength. He dribbled when they spooned food into his mouth. But his eyes were alive, and he watched, and wheezed at some funny story Immerose told. She had come to that, and death was not going to release her. Like the old man, a prisoner buried alive within—not a corpse. A puppet. Ivah clutched her close.

  From Serakallash to Lissavakail was a two-day journey on horseback, a little longer on foot, but not much so, because of the narrow trails, the sharp rise and fall of them, which meant horses mostly walked. These galloped, blind in the dark, but even so they could not hope to outrun the Blackdog, no matter how often they switched horses, as they had twice already, Grasslander warriors camped and waiting, delicate, gazelle-legged desert-breds waiting saddled as though all had been prepared for days. The rolling pastures of Serakallash were left behind and they climbed the foothills, into the twisting mountain track, stone underfoot, stone all around, the scent of home.

  The wind bit, carrying the scent of sand, the harsh dry air of the desert. A storm still rode in their wake. That wouldn’t stop the Blackdog.

  Dawn crept into a bruise-yellow sky and the leading riders turned, taking a track that ran up the side of a steep spur.

  “Where are you going?” Ivah called hoarsely. She had been weeping, in the dark when she thought no one would notice. Pakdhala had seethed with hatred for her, for her daring to weep for Shaiveh left behind, when Bikkim was dead at the Grasslander’s hand.

  “Your lord father’s orders, my lady,” their leader said from Ivah’s side. “He said to meet him here.”

  “Meet him?” Ivah asked. “He said nothing to me about—”

  They called Ivah “my lady”…her father’s orders…No. Pak-dhala convulsed, freeing herself from Ivah’s grip. She went sliding like a trout, hit the ground among the hooves. A horse lifted and jumped her as she rolled. She might have been knocked out for a moment; the next she knew, there were booted feet all about her, people cursing and Ivah crying, “’Dhala, ‘Dhala, are you all right, are you hurt?” as if she cared.

  Pakdhala got an arm under herself. It dragged like a stick from her shoulder, but she fumbled herself up on it, pulled until her knee came up and she rocked there, trying to get the other leg to answer.

  And they would all stand around and watch her crawl slowly to freedom? Hah. Little fool. So she could move of her own will, after a fashion. She shouldn’t be showing them that. She flopped on her face and strong arms gathered her up.

  “No offence, my lady, but you don’t weigh much more than she does and next time it might be you both landing under someone’s hooves. I’ll take her, by your leave.”

  “Do,” Ivah snapped, as though she meant something else entirely.

  This man handled Pakdhala as though she were glass, calling over a woman to feel her arms and legs, feel over her chest and back, to be sure she had taken nothing worse than bruises. She wished something was broken and that it would cost them a few heads, but felt no more battered than she did after coming off Sihdy a time or two when she was young, or when that spotted colt of her uncle’s threw her.

  Ivah was surreptitiously spitting on the end of her scarf, trying to wash her bloody face clean. Daylight showed her a mess, her nose swollen, her upper lip black with bruise. Hah.

  But they rode up the path, walking now, knife-edge of the ridge, thin brown grass plastered flat by the following wind, and down to the floodplain of a shallow river, where loose stones clattered underfoot. Not another relay of horses waiting. A round felt tent, the Grasslander house, was erected on the river’s edge, and out the low door—he strode towards them, smiling, arms wide.

  “At last! Great Attalissa, my most gracious lady, we have you safe at last. Welcome, welcome home to your kingdom.” He even had the accent of the mountains now, or he put it on, mocking.

  Hunger. Such hunger. He was a fire, to consume all he drew into his embrace. She had not seen him at Lissavakail. He looked so…human. The way the caterpillar looks itself, till the wasp that has grown inside it drills a hole in its back and emerges.

  “You’ve been badly used,” he added. “Your captors will suffer. Every blow repaid twelvefold.” Pakdhala tried to pull away from his reaching hand, could do no more than stiffen her joints. But the caress did not touch her, not quite. She still felt it, as if he left some poison in the very air.

  “Father…” Ivah said.

  Tamghat ignored her. “Quickly, Ketsim. Take the goddess to the centre of the circle—there. Lead your horse. Don’t scuff the lines more than you can help.”

  The tent was coming down, all the camp disappearing into bundles on packhorses.

  The circle was a triple line poured of what looked like ash and sulphur and some red powder, a great sweeping enclosure drawn over the stones. Pakdhala tried to tip herself, to fall and erase some of the scrolling writing that ran around the circle. Any delay—the Blackdog was coming, she knew that as she knew the sun rose in the east. But the governor of Serakallash kept a tight hand on her arm as he guided the horse over the marks, and she stayed in the saddle.

  “Father!” Ivah demanded, and Tamghat rounded on her.

  “What have you done with Shaiveh?”

  “She stayed to let me get the goddess away. As you’d have wanted.”

  “You fled and left her to die, you mean. A loyal noekar deserves better from her lady. What were you whoring with on the desert road?”

  “What? No one!”

  “Don’t lie to me! Was it that she-cat Kinsai? You took her into your bed and mind, didn’t you? Nabbani trollop! I should have drowned you when you were born and found an honest woman of the Grass.”

  “Father, I don’t know what you mean.” Ivah slid from her horse and ran to him, stumbled to her knees. Did she fall, or did he really expect her to kneel grovelling at his feet? “Father, please, I don’t understand you. What have I done wrong? I found the goddess and brought her to you. I did the spells as you told me. It all went as it should. We even outran the Blackdog.”

  “And what did you bring with you? A spark of Kinsai’s will, or something worse? Did she woo you to her side with some tale? Did you let her in, or were you just too weak? Did you surrender without even a fight that might have warned me?”

  “I don’t understand!” Ivah’s voice rose shrill. Some remote part of Pakdhala even pitied her. “I brought the goddess—she is Attalissa, you said so yourself.”

  “I came to you, daughter, to let you know how you were to elude the Blackdog. I came to your dreams, and I was attacked.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You! You couldn’t if you wanted to. You couldn’t muster the strength of mind to get my attention. Whatever you’ve let ride you, you won’t be carrying it back to Lissavakail. I won’t be ambushed in the midst of the most important working the world has ever seen. I won’t have her using you against me.” He drew his sword.

  Ivah screamed and ducked, hunkering down hands over her head, sobbing. The hurrying Tamghati folk paid her no heed, put great effort into not looking. Pakdhala, carried by the horse as Governor Ketsim turned it in the centre of the circle, had no choice.

  Tamghat stared down at Ivah a long moment, mouth pulled into a sneer
. Then he turned away. “Coward to the end,” he said. “Even your cursed mother died on her feet.”

  He strode to a horse, sheathing his sword. “Everyone not within the circle now gets left behind to face the Blackdog,” he snarled, riding to Ketsim’s side. “Scuff the lines and it’ll cost you your head.”

  Somehow they all crowded in, men and women, horses and baggage. Tamghat began to chant, eyes shut, swaying from side to side. The language was very old-fashioned Grasslander, drawn high and thin and wailing, peppered with words that sounded like nothing she could imagine at all.

  Some noekar had dropped the bridle of a sweat-dark horse, one of the last relay, and it stood outside the circle, swishing its tail, cropping a tuft of grass. Deliberate? Pakdhala thought so. Hoped so, wanted to believe in kindness. Ivah didn’t notice, still hunched small as she could make herself, still weeping.

  The air went watery around them, the landscape running like cheap dyes. Horses laid back their ears; some fought their bits, trying to flee. The ground hit them, hard. Horses stumbled, folk afoot fell. They were in a field of shoulder-high green millet, trampling the sweet stalks, some of the horses, quickly recovered, already snatching greedy mouthfuls. She recognized the place, the shape of the cradling horizon, though not from this life. Farmlands of the temple a few miles from the Lissavakail.

  She could feel the waters of her lake, cool, deep, pulling her.

  Pakdhala was taken from the horse, Tamghat standing close, never touching her. They bundled her into an elaborate, high-wheeled cart, a box lacquered red and black, covered with plaques of gold and turquoise. Its roof rose in a multi-tiered spire; the curtains were heavy brocade, shutting out all light. The yak-cross oxen drawing it were both black, their horns decked with red tassels. Two noekar, both female, were ordered in after her. There had been no priestesses there. Had he slain them all? In Serakallash they said many had died when the temple fell or been executed after, and others had surrendered to serve the conqueror. One of the warriors leaned over her to lace up the curtain. Ah, Tamghat did not wish the folk of Lissavakail to see her brought back an ill and constrained captive. Or he did not wish them to see their goddess a caravan-road mercenary. Either way, if she could shift herself over—she should hear when they crossed the bridge. Once they were in town, if she could fall, if people could see…

  “Sleep, Attalissa,” Tamghat said from outside. “Sleep, my dear.”

  That was all she knew.

  The Blackdog would come for her and she would die as she deserved. Perhaps it would at least be Holla-Sayan who killed her and not the beast. Ivah sat waiting as the wind died and the sand ceased to blow, its purpose served. Even getting to her feet took more strength of will than she could find. A horse whinnied, left behind by the spell, abandoned by its herd. There was a step on the stones behind her, and Ivah looked around. She had nothing to say to Holla-Sayan, but she would at least see him again before she died.

  Not Holla-Sayan. Some Northron woman. Left behind like the horse? Her pale hair was windblown and her clothes red with dust. She blinked grit from her eyes, shook herself, animal-like, and dust rose in a cloud from a cloak improbably shingled with feathers.

  “Carried her off to the temple, has he?” she asked conversationally. “I thought he would.” She walked away around what the wind of their going had left of the lines of powders, head cocked, reading the words still written there.

  “Hmph,” she said, coming back. “What are you still doing here?”

  “He left me behind,” Ivah said blankly. “He called me whore and left me behind.”

  “He does that to those who outlive their usefulness, those he’s drained to nothing.”

  “He as much as said I’d betrayed him.” Ivah looked up, seeking some explanation from the stranger, from the sky, from the world in general. “I never did anything to him. It was he who stopped coming to my dreams.”

  “Ah.” The stranger rubbed her face, left pale streaks. Had she ridden through the storm? A messenger pursuing them from Ketsim’s household in Serakallash? Now she would leave, knowing Ivah outcast, knowing talking to her an offence to Tamghat.

  “Poor Ivah. It was to be expected, I suppose. Did it never occur to you not to do your father’s will, to take the space the freedom from his watching gave you and travel on with the gang to Marakand?”

  Ivah stared. “But he told me to bring Attalissa to him.”

  “And you do what he tells you, ya. But now he has told you he doesn’t want you, told you to go. What will you do?”

  Ivah shook her head. It didn’t matter. There was nothing to do. The Blackdog would come for her.

  The stranger might have read her mind. Maybe it was in her eyes.

  “The goddess isn’t here, so the Blackdog isn’t interested in you. Holla-Sayan, should you ever run into him again, will be.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Don’t expect me to salvage the wreck of your life. Your mother asked me to save you, but there comes a point when you can only save yourself. This is it.”

  “But what can I do? Where should I go?”

  “How should I know? Only go cautiously. The Blackdog went by just now, but the gang is following, and you don’t want to meet them on the road either.”

  “I have no home. No folk.”

  “You’re not alone in the world in that. Don’t try to feel sorry for yourself. Your Shaiveh is dead for you, Bikkim will never speak easily again—Attalissa of the lake may die. Did you see them dying in Lissavakail when your father took it? Did you see the hill of skulls in Sera’s spring as you rode into Serakallash? You’ve come out of Tamghat’s grasp alive, which is more grace than many get. Go to Marakand. That’s what everyone else in this part of the world does when they want to disappear. Isn’t it?”

  “They kill wizards in Marakand.” She didn’t offer it as protest; it was simply what came into her mind. Marakand. They killed wizards. But it caught the woman’s attention. Her grey eyes narrowed.

  “Do they? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should find out.” The stranger offered a hand. Ivah took it automatically, climbed stiffly to her feet and found, not surprisingly, that she still had to look up. She was used to being short. Northrons, even the women, made her know it all over again.

  “I should find out?”

  “Someone should. What else do you have to do with your life?”

  Ivah shook her head, not in denial, just…emptiness.

  “You have a good horse there. Trade it for a camel, join a gang, I don’t know. But don’t sit around waiting for death to find you, Ivah. It comes fast enough anyhow. Defy him. Claim yourself.”

  “Defy death?”

  “Near enough. I meant your father, though.”

  The horse had wandered close, curious. When the woman reached for the bridle it tossed its head and shied away, almost falling in its haste to turn. She gave a laugh that didn’t sound happy, turned her shoulder on the beast. “At least unsaddle the poor brute if you’re planning to sit moping all day.”

  “Moping? Devils take you, Shai is dead, she’s dead and it’s my fault! I left her. Pakdhala’s going to die, I know she is, no matter what my father says about marriage, and I…I did that, too, and she trusted me, she liked me, not even Shaiveh would have liked me if I wasn’t my father’s daughter.” Screeching, her father would say, and she couldn’t curse any further, couldn’t see, for the great heaving sobs.

  “So who was Pakdhala’s comrade, the person whom she liked? Not your father’s daughter. Who are you when you’re not that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Find out.” The stranger put a hesitant hand on her shoulder, and Great Gods, her impulse was to fling herself at the woman and howl on her breast like a child, not to pull away. “You can’t change what’s done, Ivah. What’s to come…Pakdhala isn’t dead yet, but it’s not you who can save her. The Blackdog might not come looking for you, but if you turn up und
er its nose it will remember you. Just…go on, and remember, and choose differently. You’re not useless, you’re not untalented, you’re not weak, you’re not stupid. You don’t need Tamghat to be your strength.”

  Ivah gulped. She wiped her face on her sleeve, but felt strangely quiet, unashamed. Madness, a stranger to come out of nowhere, knowing her so well.

  “All right?”

  Ivah shook her head. The woman let her go.

  “You will be. Don’t put yourself in the way of Gaguush’s gang. I doubt they’ll forgive betrayal.”

  Words spoken a few moments before sank in. “You knew my mother.”

  “I talked to her last autumn.”

  “But she’s…she’s dead.”

  “Ya. I buried her, after a fashion. Set her free, anyhow.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” She said that without thinking.

  The woman shrugged. “I threw your sneaking father out of your dreams for good. You could thank me for that, too, someday, when you’re ready. Spite him, Ivah. Seize your life for your own.”

  Then she was gone, a falcon in the sky.

  “You—” Ivah screamed after her, screamed again in wordless anger. She snatched a handful of dry grass, knotted and wove it, flung it, a dark spear trailing streamers of fire, after the speeding bird. The falcon dropped, wheeled away, soared higher and was gone, and the spellbound weapon disintegrated. Ivah sat down again, holding her head. It ached. Throbbed, tears and the mess of her nose together making it unbearable. “Mama,” she whimpered. No one to answer. “You made him hate me, you damned—” But she didn’t know what to call the woman, and screaming tantrums at the sky was…was not her father’s daughter. She sighed, held her nose. Great Gods, but it hurt.

  She was a damned wizard. She knew spells that could heal a battered nose more quickly than nature allowed, if only she trusted her own working of them.

  The horse came back.

  She was a wanderer, she was godless, she was…she was on her own. Which might mean free, she supposed the Northron wizard, whoever she was, would say, but free just meant abandoned and forlorn and outcast, alone. It also meant no one else was going to look after the horse and, stupidly, what came to her mind was what Gaguush would say about someone who left a hard-worked animal uncared-for to see to their own comfort. Ivah got up again, held out a hand, chirping to the golden mare. “Come, beauty, we’ll make you more comfortable. Come and we’ll go to the river.” She choked on another sob, swallowed it. “We both need a wash.” And once she’d worked on her nose so she could breathe again, she would see what she could do to coax the hair back to the Nabbani “tam” syllable branding the horse’s rump. She couldn’t take a horse across the Salt Desert, and she didn’t need to be turned in as a horse thief when she tried to sell it in Serakallash. She would go to Marakand after all, though she didn’t want to seem to be taking the meddling stranger’s advice. Marakand was at least someplace new, someplace she had never been with Shaiveh, and a stage on the road to Nabban. Maybe she could find the truth of her mother’s kin, learn she really was a princess, be welcomed by the emperor as a long-lost granddaughter, greater and grander than any Grasslander warlord could ever dream. Hah. Winter-tales for market storytellers.