Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  The little dog that slept on the foot of Shevehan’s bed barked, a warning yap. Attavaia woke to hear the scratching at the door below repeated. Shevehan’s wife Ellethan shushed the dog. In their curtained end of the loft, the smith’s two daughters lay tense and listening. Attavaia rolled from their bed, silent on bare feet, picked up her shoes, and tiptoed out, limping. Her bad leg always stiffened on her in the night, strained muscles knotting. Shevehan was already heading down the ladder to the main floor of the house. Her practised fingers found the notch in the board under the sloping ceiling and lifted it. Attavaia squirmed through and doubled up on herself to replace the board, all in silence. Probably nothing, but they took no chances. She had even slept here when the girls were too young for secrets. The hidden room under the eaves was narrow, barely wide enough for two people to lie side by side, too low to even sit up unless she hunched. She pressed her ear to the low wall separating the coffin-like space from the loft.

  “But didn’t she come here?” That was Tsuzas, his voice sounding frayed. “I was sure…she doesn’t know anything about the lowlands, I was sure she’d come to ‘Vaia first.”

  “She’d better not have known ‘Vaia was here,” Shevehan grumbled. “Keep your voice down, man, and come over into the smithy.”

  Attavaia squirmed out again, rat from a hole, and pulled on her shoes.

  “Trouble?” murmured Ellethan.

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Take care. You know what they were whispering in the market today: noekar acting strange, Tamghat coming back from wherever he’s been, no one allowed on or off the temple isle. Something has them stirred up. Don’t let Shevehan do anything foolish.”

  “He does what he thinks he has to, Ell.” She squeezed the woman’s hand in passing. “Attalissa bless. Go back to sleep.”

  They kept their plotting and planning in the smithy, for what safety ignorance of details gave Shevehan’s family. Little enough, if they were caught.

  With the door of the back passage that joined the two stone buildings closed and the broad front door of the smithy tightly shut as well, no gleam of light could betray them. Shevehan had made certain of that long ago. Now he was raking the coals for an ember to light the lamp. That was enough to show Tsu’s face haggard and ill, the aftermath of Narva’s possession. Attavaia reached for him. Shevehan busied himself trimming the wick of the lamp when Tsuzas leaned on her, face buried against her shoulder. The smith coughed before straightening up, not to see what was improper in the Old Lady of the free temple. They all settled down on the edge of the hearth.

  “What’s happened?” Attavaia asked. She left fussing over Tsuzas—he should not have been travelling in such a state—to his other womenfolk. In the shadows, where the smith didn’t need to look, Tsuzas captured her hand, almost clung to it.

  “Elsinna’s gone. She took—” he glanced at Shevehan. “She took the stone.”

  “The—? That stone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gone where? Why? You said the lowlands?”

  “Narva took her,” he said flatly. “So Teral said. Told her to take…the stone…home, it was time. I was up the mountain, far up. And then Narva, a nightmare, I’m still sorting out what he meant, most of it was nightmare, truly, fragments of dream, nothing to remember, no words…” His voice was rising again. “Something’s coming. The mountain shook. I came down. Met Teral. I came here.” Ill and not stopping to rest much on the way, she guessed. “I thought she’d come to you first.”

  “She wouldn’t know to come here, Tsu,” Attavaia said gently. He had to have things explained to him carefully, even simple things, obvious things, when Narva left him in tatters.

  He sighed, rubbed his head with his free hand. “No. I suppose I thought Narva might show her. She’ll be in Serakallash by now, if she wasn’t caught and stopped. She took a pony.”

  “Where’s your own pony?” Shevehan demanded suddenly, going to the door as if to check his yard.

  “Left it with cousins up the valley this evening.” Cousins being trusted folk.

  Shevehan sat down again, frowning, picked up a full pot of water and set it in the coals, shaved some tea into it. “What don’t I know?” he asked, ignored. “What stone? What about Serakallash?”

  “But why?” Attavaia asked. “Why now? What’s coming?” She hardly dared hope. “Tsuzas—?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. It could be.”

  “Attalissa?” Shevehan whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Tsuzas told him. “I’m sorry. Narva is afraid, but I don’t understand what he fears. The sky, breaking…devils. She’s here, they come for her.”

  The pupils of his eyes began to dilate, swallowing the gold. Attavaia seized him by the shoulders, shook him. “Not here, not now. Leave him alone!” she hissed. “This isn’t your place, Narva. You have no right!”

  Tsuzas flung his head back, trembling, teeth clenched. “His blood is my right,” she thought she heard, and then Tsuzas said, “Fool,” and slumped, trembling. She put her arms around him, whatever Shevehan might think. “Centuries he hides from your Attalissa,” he muttered, more coherently, “and then starts shouting under Tamghat’s nose. Something scared him.”

  “She’s here?” Shevehan repeated.

  “Something did stir up the Tamghati,” Attavaia pointed out. “Tamghat went down towards Serakallash almost a week ago, but he rode back into town, down from the southwest temple fields, today. He and a company of noekar. A cousin was going to see what he could find out about that. We should hear by dawn. If she isn’t caught. But—”

  “But why hasn’t Attalissa come to us?” Shevehan asked. “If she’s returned—”

  “We don’t know she has,” Tsuzas said. “What Narva sees—he doesn’t understand it himself, too often. What do we do about Serakallash, ‘Vaia?”

  “Nothing we can do, now,” Attavaia said. “If Elsinna made it there safely—Sera is their goddess and their concern. If they rise up, it will at least draw Tamghat’s attention away from us for a while. Though they’ll just all be slaughtered, if nothing else has changed.”

  “Wasted effort,” said Shevehan. “I thought they were going to wait until we gave them the signal Attalissa had returned? And anyhow, I thought their goddess was dead?”

  “Sera has gone home,” Tsuzas said. Attavaia gave him a sharp look. He seemed himself, free of Narva, but…no smile, just weary certainty. “Attalissa has come home. It’s time.”

  “You just said you didn’t mean…then where is she?” Shevehan asked, and again, “Why hasn’t she come to us?”

  Someone tapped at the door of the connecting passage from the house. They all jumped. Then Shevehan shook his head and Attavaia made a face. For the space of a breath, she had believed it could be that simple: Attalissa would be at the door, Otokas at her shoulder, an army trained in secret in some high valley flowing over the bridge. Shevehan opened the door a crack to let his wife’s face peer around.

  “Your cousin’s here, Shev,” Ellehan said. “Why you men can’t go torch-fishing at a reasonable time of day—”

  “Because there’d be no point in daylight, woman,” Shev retorted. All clear.

  “Thanks, Ell. Attalissa bless.” Sannoras the fisherman slipped around the door and Ellehan retreated. “Sister.” He nodded to Attavaia and to Tsuzas, whose name he had never been given. “Very strange story from the temple, Shev.”

  “Attalissa?” asked Attavaia.

  “You heard!”

  “I…had word.” Her heart began to race and she sat down on the edge of the hearth again, took the cup of tea, bitter and milkless, that Shevehan offered. “Tell us.”

  “Yes, Sister. You know the Lake-Lord’s been gone a week.”

  “And come back today.”

  “Yes. He brought Attalissa with him. They say it’s Attalissa. My cousin has doubts.”

  “Ah.”

  “They say Tamghat finally found her and rescued her from the Blackd
og, but that she’s terribly ill. They showed her to the sisters and took her away again. He’s to wed her in a week or so.”

  “Attalissa wouldn’t submit to that. She wouldn’t submit to being paraded around a captive.”

  “Unless he overcame her with some spell.”

  “Overcame Attalissa? She wouldn’t be a child anymore. She’d have come into her full power by now.”

  “But they say he killed the goddess down in the desert,” Sannoras said. “Defeated and destroyed her.”

  “Defeated, anyway,” Attavaia conceded. Would rumour help or hinder them? If the folk of Lissavakail heard that Sera had returned to Serakallash and the caravan-town was rising in revolt, would they have the nerve to lie quiet and continue awaiting their own goddess, or would they take to the streets and get themselves stupidly killed, disorganized and overmatched before they began? Did she have to ask?

  But she and Jerusha had agreed to rise together, when the time came.

  Did she trust the dreams of Narva’s madness, that was what it came down to. She looked at Tsuzas, sitting withdrawn and still, staring into the glowing coals. Attalissa has come home, he had said.

  “Tsuzas—is it true? Has Attalissa returned? Is it time?”

  He shook his head. “How do I know, ‘Vaia? What’s said is said. If we trust what he sees—”

  “What who sees?” the fisherman asked.

  Attavaia ignored him. “Do you trust? As a priest?”

  “Yes.”

  Attavaia took a deep breath. “Then it is time. Dig up your Northron sword, Shevehan.” As if he didn’t root the uncanny thing out of his floor once a month at least to check on it. She had heard of cursed swords. She could believe it of the one Shev called the Lady. There was anger in those harsh-cut runes on the blade. But it had an edge, it would serve. She shut her eyes. Attalissa, wherever you are, Great Gods, be with me now.

  “Sannoras. The goddess Sera has gone back to Serakallash and the Serakallashi will be rising. We believe Attalissa has returned. Whether she is this captive woman Tamghat showed the temple, or whether that’s some trickery of his, we don’t yet know. But we’ll find out. I want you to do something for me. I’m going to have to go to the temple to find the truth of this. Attalissa and the Blackdog may find us, or they may not. We’ll try to find them. But if I find the goddess, we’ll have to raise the valleys against their noekar-lords and the mercenaries. I want you to go now, to the cousins on Pine Spur, and warn them to watch for a signal from the town this coming night. If it comes, they’re to send their own signals, light the beacons—everything.”

  “Signal from the town, send signals, beacons.” Sannoras nodded. “How do I know these cousins?”

  Attavaia told him which house to go to and gave him the watchwords. “And I need the name of your cousin in the temple,” she said, seeing him to the door.

  “Sister Darshin,” he said. “We meet along the shore on misty mornings and evenings, north of the old water-gate. She really is my cousin, you know. When Shev said I should find someone in the temple I could trust, I went to her.”

  Darshin. Old Lady’s deputy. Attavaia wouldn’t by choice have put faith in anyone who had been so close to Luli in the old days, but Sannoras had been bringing them reliable information out of the temple for years now, and if his cousin had betrayed him, given that he was one of the few who knew where the heart of the free temple lay, Tamghat would have had all their heads on spikes long before this. She laid her hand on the fisherman’s expectant head in blessing before he went out into the paleness of dawn.

  “Attalissa speed you and keep you safe,” she murmured after him. “And us all.”

  “Tonight?” Shevehan asked, eyes gleaming. “She’ll be with us tonight?”

  “Gods help me.” Attavaia sat down abruptly on the floor, her knees failing. “Tsu, if I’m wrong…Why hasn’t she come to us?”

  He moved to her and put his arms around her, saying nothing.

  “Are you going to the temple tonight?” Shevehan asked. “You shouldn’t risk yourself. I could—”

  “You couldn’t look like a sister if you tried, Shev. You have to be here in town. By dusk, I want all the cousins armed and ready to storm the island. Bridge and boats.”

  “When the signal comes.”

  “Yes. Tsu—”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “You won’t make any more convincing a woman than Shevehan.”

  “I have to be there.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sometimes I understand why your sisters get so exasperated with you.” But she managed a smile and got to her feet again. “You’re not going anywhere unless you spend the day sleeping and letting Ellehan feed you.”

  He nodded.

  “And you, ‘Vaia, need to get out of sight,” Shevehan reminded. “Too many people think little Attavaia died when the temple fell, for neighbours to find you sitting in my smithy.”

  Just what she needed. A long, anxious day in hiding with nothing to do but worry about how wrong she was. She had meant to be on her way into the valleys herself by dawn. “Get me bread and water,” she said. “At least if I’m here in the weaponstore I can hear a bit of what’s going on.” A smithy was a natural gathering place for tea-drinking and gossip. It drew Tamghati patrols too, but they had good lookouts, and there was usually a core of old men with nothing better to do than tell innocent fish stories. By evening, Shev would have the word out through all his networks and the town would be tinder, waiting for her spark. She hoped.

  Attalissa willing.

  When it all began, Holla-Sayan had killed a man stealing his horse. Now he had killed a man to steal this horse he rode. The Grasslander had been riding at a good clip, heading away from Lissavakail with some urgency, and when Holla-Sayan stepped into the road and called to him, he shouted, “Way for the Lake-Lord’s messenger!” and did not even turn his mount’s head aside—to be fair, he might not have seen Holla until too late, given it was thick night, but Holla was at war with all Tamghati. He drew his sabre and took his head, and the horse. He ought to have felt some regret for that; he had intended to leave the man unconscious by the roadside, but he was too far away from himself to care, lying down with the Blackdog, holding it calm.

  The messenger carried some sealed scroll in a leather satchel. Holla-Sayan threw the scroll into the lake. He couldn’t read. He drank the man’s flask of millet beer and ate his bread and cheese and turned the horse’s head back to Lissavakail. He had no idea where Moth had gone, and he wasn’t about to let the Blackdog back into the world, not yet, but neither was he going to wait in hiding while Pakdhala was in danger, trusting her fate to another. He was not certain how long he had slept. Too long. The mountains were warm with golden afternoon, the sun heading down into the west. He must have lost a day. Pakdhala was not taken last night, but the night before last.

  The edge of the high snows gleamed with copper sunset when he came to a place he recognized, a collapsed ruin, thin grass sprouting between its stones, where a girl and a dog had once sheltered. He took off the horse’s saddle and bridle and turned it loose to graze along the shore. Mist hung over the lake, hiding the temple, except for the highest roofs, which floated like some demon-built palace in a tale.

  Pakdhala was on the temple islet. The Blackdog strained towards her like a hound pulling at the leash. All his concentration was needed to keep it in check; he did not try to call to her. The last thing he needed was to attract Tamghat’s notice.

  He did not want to do this. Holla-Sayan scrambled down over the jagged slabs of shale, through nettles, and waded into the lake. If he paused to think…Waist-deep, he went under in a shallow dive. He held his breath as long as he could. Knowing he would not drown made no difference. But the lake, when he had to exhale, flowed into him and felt like rest and new strength.

  Holla surfaced, muffling a cough in his sleeve, and studied the shore of the holy islet. Cliffs rose her
e, and the dark crack of the tunnel, not so secret now. Tamghat should be guarding it. He could see no one, smell no one human, no metal-and-stone reek of wizardry, either. The guard would be in the Old Chapel, probably, but if he could come on them unexpected, before they could raise the alarm, he would be in the temple and, perhaps, no one the wiser. If a trap were laid there…he would deal with that when he came to it. Storming the gates, the dog’s impulse, was not clever.

  And that’s why I’m staying in charge, he told it, wading forward. He shook water out of his braids and staggered a bit, heavy with waterlogged clothing. Anyone who decided to take a walk on the shore was going to see the dark trail he left behind him, but there was nothing to do about that.

  The tunnel was as he…remembered, hah: a narrow fissure, lit by overgrown cracks above, which became true tunnel and dipped down into a water-filled blackness like a well. That was worse than the lake, but whatever Pakdhala was facing had to be even worse than this suffocating, drowning grave-pit. Knowing it could not kill him, no more than the lake could, still didn’t help. He went into it sweating and with his eyes shut, as if that could make a difference, came out where he could breathe air again shivering and cold with simple fear and stood waist-deep in water, feet on the first of the steps. The water was higher than it had been.

  Now…

  He ducked under again, feeling around, recoiled almost in disgust when he touched the rough surface of the stone bowl. No slime, no mussels had rooted on it. The bowl was just as it had been when Otokas set it there, feeling the same revulsion at its touch. Holla-Sayan picked it up, strangely heavy, even underwater. Water sheeted away from it, leaving it as it had been, not full, a dark mirror rolling under a rim like a half-opened peony-bloom, a surface that cast its own pewter-dim light upwards.