Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  “You’re not Pakdhala,” Bikkim said then. “You were in her, but you weren’t her.”

  “Pakdhala was a name to hide under. I was always…just me. Spoilt mountain brat, remember? Fat as a spring chicken? Really. A human incarnation, but only me.”

  Cautiously, Bikkim took her hand, turned it over in his own, searching it. Somehow they ended up with their fingers interlaced.

  Zavel, watching silent, sighed, and helped a very pregnant woman to a seat on the base of a pillar. The goddess glanced up, met her eyes. The woman stared back, sad and afraid and ashamed and defiant.

  “The temple will change,” Attalissa said. She looked to where a young couple were approaching. The god who had fought Ghatai with Attalissa dove towards the man like a swallow swooping home. “It must. My Old Lady is married.”

  “My lady!” The approaching woman, limping, one arm in a makeshift sling, looked stricken. “I tried. I kept my vows.” The man, the god now lodged in his heart, as if he found it some sort of refuge, also limped, an arm over her shoulders.

  “Kept your vows? Great Gods, Attavaia, how?” Attalissa asked, and looked at the man with just a flicker of a smile.

  The priestess hesitated. The corners of her mouth quirked up. “It wasn’t easy.”

  “Then you’ve been wasting time,” Attalissa observed. “Sister Pollan—”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” the pregnant sister asked.

  Attalissa bowed her head. “Yes,” she said gently.

  The woman rocked silently, arms cradling her belly, tears leaking down her face. Attavaia went to her.

  “The temple needs new order, new life,” Attalissa said, and glanced at Bikkim, raised his hand to her lips. He looked wondering, astonished. “No one should have to forswear love for my sake. All my sisters who want to come home. Children…I see no reason to turn them away. Unmarried sisters in the dormitories, married sisters with households in the town, why not? Pollan, I know it is small comfort, but you won’t be alone, you and your babes. You have family here, always. Zavel.” He looked up. “Zavel, your father…I’m sorry.”

  He nodded, blinked. That was all.

  “Varro, can you find Tihmrose? She’s down on the shore.”

  “Ya. Um. Lady.”

  So many were dead. One of the wooden barracks-blocks of the Tamghati still burned. Attavaia, leaning on the god-bearing priest, was saying she had stopped the killing of Tamghati who surrendered, though many, especially the noekar-lords and the bear-cultists, had fought to the death. What did Attalissa want done with them?

  “Disarm them. Tell them to be on their way to the desert road. Give them millet and water, though, tell them the wrath of the lake and the mountains will fall on them if they rob any on the way.”

  “Sera won’t thank you.”

  “They’re only mercenaries, not backed by even a wizard. Sera can cope,” Attalissa said tartly. “And if she can’t, I have no doubt Mistress Jerusha can. Let them disperse to the road and lose themselves in Marakand, find themselves honest lords and thank you for your mercy the rest of their lives, Attavaia, Tsuzas.” Holla-Sayan.

  He had to quash the impulse to bat her away. Part of him wanted to flinch from her touch.

  Are you Holla-Sayan?

  Mostly.

  You look like Tamghat, inside.

  Can’t help that.

  The owl-wizard is another devil.

  Yes.

  So are you. You let the Blackdog take you over.

  No. We both decided to live. I wasn’t going to let you die here.

  Holla, I’m sorry.

  My choice, in the end.

  I brought this down on you. You made me see what a wrong I had done to Sera, when I was a little girl, you remember? You taught me to see the world, to have Sayan’s wisdom. I saw what I had done to the god Narva, and I’ve tried to make amends. Her thoughts ran on the priest and his god. But I never questioned what Hareh and I did to…to that nameless wounded devil, between us. I never thought on it at all, and yet I knew I had worked some great sin, or I would never have buried the secret where even my own heart forgot it. I did you great wrong, and I can’t ever restore what I’ve taken from you. From you both.

  It’s past, he said. Regret mends no bones. A saying of his grandmother’s, her namesake. There’s no going back for any of us.

  What will you do now?

  He shrugged. Gaguush was close against his side. Go back to the road. Cross the Kinsai-av and go home, when we next head west, and tell my mother and father they’ve lost a granddaughter.

  Tell them I love them. Tell them I will think of them, always. Holla—Father—do one last thing for me? As my father?

  He invited her to tell him.

  Take my body to the lake.

  “Wait here,” he told Gaguush. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Why?” she asked, but fell silent when she saw what he was about.

  The shore facing the town was closest, but he went the other way, over the land-slipped wall, around to the west. Somewhere out there lay the bones of Otokas.

  Pakdhala didn’t weigh much.

  He waded in chest-deep. The lake took her from his arms, drew her under, out of sight. “Sayan bless you,” he said. “Whatever there is of you his child still.” Foolish, to pray over an empty shell while the living soul set about consolidating her folks’ reconquest. But he felt better for it.

  When he splashed out, scrambling up the rocks, Moth was there watching, Mikki looming behind her. She sat down, back against the trunk of a pine, gestured him to join her.

  He found a rock, weary of a sudden to his bones. “Now what?” Holla-Sayan asked.

  Moth shrugged. “What will you do?”

  “Go back to the road with Gaguush. Go home and tell my family what’s become of Pakdhala.”

  She nodded. “Cub? I need to talk to him.”

  “What, without a chaperone?” But the demon lumbered to his feet. “Shout if he tries to bite, wolf. Same goes for you, I suppose, dog.”

  Moth gave Mikki a faint smile and a shove. He padded away.

  “You’re killing the rest of the seven, aren’t you? There’s stories—Varro said you killed the queen’s lover at Ulvsness, a few generations back, and I heard a skald once who sang it was Heuslar Ogada back from the dead who came wooing the queen there. And now Ghatai. Why?”

  “Because I must.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you remember? The Great Gods want us all gone from the world, want us all dead or bound beyond any threat to their dominance of the heavens.”

  “No. Nothing. Except…ice. I remember ice.”

  “Don’t think of the ice.”

  “You carry it. Lakkariss.”

  “I’m coming to that. We seven escaped the cold hells again, long after the war you perished in, more or less. Long ago still. We thought we could use the earth to make war on the heavens.” A bitter smile. “It didn’t work. Humans are…confusing. Too ambitious, too treacherous. Too faithful. Too strong. We lost our way, very much so. Some of us went mad, I think, devil or human or both. And you know the sagas, the lays that say what followed. But we barred the world to the Old Great Gods as they brought us down. They can’t come here easily any longer. Ogada began to break the bonds that held us and came to free me—we were kin, allies, he thought, despite what he’d done.”

  “What had he done?”

  “Killed my brother.” Her eyes flashed red.

  That was not what the stories told of the fate of Hravnmod the Wise, when they named her Vartu Kingsbane. She shrugged. “By then…there seemed no point to anything. The war was lost. The hells were sealed, the heavens out of reach. But there was Mikki.”

  “If it was Ogada killed Hravnmod…” he said hesitantly, “I can see the reason for your vengeance. But did you hate Tamghiz so much? Or is it only guilt, that you will keep the others from damaging the world now?”

  There was the sword, that sword. He could feel its awareness of him.r />
  “The Old Great Gods can still touch the world, but only with great effort and pain. And they will not have us roaming free, although it takes a lot before they notice us, I think.”

  “And?” he asked.

  “And. The sword is theirs. They…have claimed a hostage against my refusing them.” Ah. He did not need to ask who. “But Holla-Sayan, they knew nothing of the lost one who became Attalissa’s Blackdog. They haven’t seen you. You have no idea—do you understand what that means? You are free.”

  “I’m a devil, and I’m free?”

  “Ya.”

  He rubbed his face. “That brings me back to, now what?”

  “Take what joy you can. Don’t draw their attention.”

  “Go back to Gaguush and stay out of your way?”

  “Ya.”

  “For how long?”

  She shrugged. “A god of the earth might kill you, a lucky one. I could. One of the others could. Lakkariss wants to take you. Other than that—who knows, on this earth?”

  “Gods save me.”

  “They’ve already damned and rejected you.”

  He had chosen. He didn’t see that he could have chosen otherwise without betraying who he was; he could not have refused to save Pakdhala. But what still called itself human said, Gods forgive him. Sayan forgive him.

  Holla-Sayan smelt the bear returning before he heard the quiet scuff of his pads on the stones. Mikki settled into their silence, laid a bone at Moth’s feet.

  “Sorry,” he said, wiping away dampness with a delicate paw. “Only way to carry it. Should we send her home? That lad Varro might know someone heading north. And someone should warn him about that sword he scavenged.”

  Moth picked up the armbone, turned it thoughtfully in her hands. “She’s long mourned and in the mound and taken the road to the Gods,” she said. “This can rest here in as much honour as anywhere.” She cast it out into the lake with barely a glance. “Tamghiz sent her to murder Hravnmod’s boys,” she said to the questions neither of them were asking. “Young children, they were. I killed her, ya, when I couldn’t stop her any other way.” She stood up. “Holla-Sayan—go well. Don’t come looking for us. Tell your friend Varro that if he has any sense, which he may not, he’ll throw Red Geir’s cursed sword in the lake for Attalissa to keep. Mikki, what have you done with Storm?”

  “Left him with the camels and all. We could walk there,” he added. “Together. Nice landscape, on the way down.”

  “Is this going to involve someone’s sheep?”

  The bear rumbled a chuckle. “I was thinking fish.”

  “Think where you left my fishhooks.”

  “With the camels,” he sighed. “Ah well. There’s probably good fishing in the river that runs by there, too, and I suppose we can go walking together in the mountains some other time. See you, dog.” He rocked Holla with a heavy paw and waded into the water. “The little goddess told me she wants to talk to you, Moth.”

  “I don’t want to talk to her.” Moth drew out the close-folded feather-cloak from her belt and shook it loose. “Meet you on the road, cub.”

  She was gone. Pakdhala had called her an owl-wizard. Something halfway between hawk and eagle, Holla-Sayan would have said.

  He got to his feet stiffly, feeling several centuries in his bones. And that was probably young, he supposed, if he’d survived, however meagrely, the wars that killed the gods Westron Thekla still prayed to. Or for?

  Attalissa was walking among her folk, Bikkim following at her shoulder, with Attavaia and Tsuzas like a court. He was not sure he wanted to talk to her. Not yet. The body of Tamghiz was gone and the rest of the gang had vanished to see to their dead, but Gaguush still waited near where he had left her, sitting on the edge of the raised pavement, leaning forward, folded arms on her knees. She jerked and raised her head when he sat beside her. Sleeping.

  “You’ll be staying here,” she said flatly.

  “No.”

  “The Blackdog doesn’t leave Attalissa.”

  “I’m not the Blackdog. I’m…I don’t know who, anymore. And she can stand on her own. I’m free of Lissavakail. Do you still want me?”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions,” she muttered at her feet. “Bikkim’s staying. He says he has no right to go to Serakallash; he wasn’t there when they needed him, he belongs with Pakdhala, whatever she calls herself, and the Battu’um can choose other chiefs. He says.”

  “They burying Immerose and Asmin?”

  “Trying to find a cart. There’s a lot of dead. Some valley up to the east, that’s where they take them.”

  “We should go with them.”

  “We will. ‘Dhala—Attalissa—is going too. Though not with us. What happened to your Northron friends?”

  “They left.”

  “Good. I’ve got merchants to get to Marakand, if they didn’t get themselves killed in whatever Jerusha brewed up in Serakallash. I’m shorthanded, but not so desperate I’ll hire devils out of old tales.” Shorthanded worse than she knew, Holla realized, as his thoughts ran on Serakallash. Now he knew. Tusa was dead, entombed in sand. She had walked into storm seeking an end of pain. Poor Zavel.

  He kissed Gaguush, cautiously, and she didn’t flinch away.

  “You’re mine now?” she asked.

  “As long as you want me.”

  “All my life.”

  All her life.

  There were no single graves. The Valley of the Dead was a meadow, bright with mountain poppies, blue and purple and white. Mounds of stone dotted the slopes, cairns marking more recent deaths. The stony soil did not permit deep digging, but cairns were shifted, stone reused, as bodies, souls long gone, went back to the earth. Old bone, mostly fragments, worked its way to the surface again, feeding the meadow grasses.

  The high-wheeled yak-carts came and left their burdens, returning to Lissavakail for more, an unending procession of them. The gravediggers, who seemed at times to be everyone in the valley, scraped shallow pits. Tamghati were heaved in anyhow, stripped of anything of value. Attalissa’s folk were laid with more care, shoulder to shoulder in death, as they had stood. Kinsfolk or the priestesses took their weapons and armour. Rocks were shifted from other cairns or hauled down the mountainsides to cover the mud-scars and protect the shallow graves from scavengers. Flowers fell beneath the trampling.

  “They don’t belong here,” said Gaguush. “They should go to the desert.”

  No one contradicted her; they could not carry bodies to the desert. Instead they had brought Immerose and Asmin-Luya partway up a hillside and laid them amid waving grass and scattered stones, debating, lost, foreigners here. Priestesses ignored them, too busy with their own fallen. Everyone was. Gaguush couldn’t blame them, but…but she did. The Lissavakailis had died for their goddess, as was right and their duty. Asmin and Immerose had died for their friend, for a cuckoo-child. Wasn’t that a greater sacrifice? And where was Attalissa?

  The lake-goddess, followed always by a swarm of blue-clad women, moved among the mass graves, blessing, praying, taking farewell of those who had died for her. Even Bikkim had left her. He sat by Asmin-Luya’s hacked and half-dismembered, sacking-shrouded corpse, an arm over Zavel’s shoulders. Holla-Sayan had told the boy his mother was dead too, down in Serakallash. Gaguush would have waited, waited till they learned the truth by natural means, but maybe she’d have been wrong to do so. What use was false hope?

  “Everyone’s digging wherever suits them, boss,” said Varro. “We’ve as much right as the rest of them. Can we build a pyre? There’s juniper down along the road.”

  “No,” said Gaguush. “Barbarian.”

  “You burn me, when my time comes. I want the fire, not the mound.”

  “I’ll leave you for the jackals, is what I’ll do. Go find us something to dig with.”

  Holla-Sayan rose to his feet and walked off. He moved like a ghost, a wind, drifting, stalking…she couldn’t put a finger on it, but he trailed menace, a lion skirting a herd i
t did not, for that moment, intend to hunt. Something had changed within him. He was free of service to the goddess, he claimed, but he was still whatever the Blackdog had been, if not something else. Gaguush would not let even her mind shape the thought, something worse. But they all felt it. He jerked his chin in a summons and Varro scrambled to catch up.

  They were back with spades and two pickaxes before long. The Blackdog could requisition what he would among these people. But he offered her his hand to heave herself wearily up, and he was only Holla-Sayan, tired and battered, leaning his forehead on her shoulder a moment, holding her close. She imagined monsters, that was all.

  They dug the grave deep, deeper than the shallow pits down in the valley, taking it in shifts, levering out the stones. The bones of Asmin-Luya and Immerose would never rise to scatter through the grass. Tihmrose wept, silent tears streaking a filthy face. She turned her back, arms clenched tight across her ribs.

  Gaguush felt the sudden rising tension in the air, as if a storm rolled down off the mountains, and looked around. Attalissa climbed the hillside to them, alone, the blue-clad guards left behind.

  And Holla-Sayan moved away so that the grave was between him and the lake-goddess. That was…different. The pickaxe in his hand looked like a weapon, till he seemed to see it and softly laid it at his feet. That was the storm-weight that had rolled over them.

  Attalissa stopped. They all stopped.

  Bashra save them, this was Pakdhala, this was Holla’s daughter, her daughter, as much as she would ever have one, the child he had barely let out of his sight in all too many years. Gaguush made an angry noise, not even a growl, and started forward.

  “Brat,” she began. “You took your time—”

  “I belong to all of them, as well as to you,” Attalissa said—and it was Attalissa who spoke.

  But Bikkim said simply, “You’re here now. We knew you would be.”

  “I…” Attalissa looked around at them, a long look shared with Holla-Sayan, shook her head, and went to Tihmrose. The storm-weight lifted, or was pushed away, but Holla still kept withdrawn, arms folded, standing back from them all.