Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  The rest all found things to do, pointless tidying of the grave, dusting hands, anything to turn aside and leave Tihmrose some privacy. Gaguush stalked around to Holla-Sayan.

  “What?” she demanded in his ear. “You should be the first one shouting that none of this is her fault.”

  “But it is. Her choices, long ago…Part of me doesn’t like Attalissa very much.” He said the last lightly, jestingly, but she wasn’t imagining that hot green-gold flare in his eyes. “It’s all right. Holla’s—I’ve—won the argument.”

  “What argument?”

  He grinned, said nothing, but took her hand.

  Attalissa went next to Zavel, and embraced him, kissed his cheek, whispering. He ducked his head, blinking, then clutched her, shaking with a child’s sobs. Gaguush looked away again. Tihmrose was gathering poppies, making a garland for her sister. Some hint of weary peace eased her face.

  The goddess went around them all: Varro, Thekla, Kapuzeh, Django, Judeh. Private words, private thanks, private leave-takings. Went to all but Bikkim, who returned to smoothing the bottom of the grave, covering it with sweet grass. Apart from them already; his own choice, at least. But maybe they’d all chosen what had got them here, even Holla. Maybe she’d ask him, someday, when she felt very brave and had had a cup too many of unwatered wine.

  Attalissa came to Gaguush and Holla-Sayan last.

  “Look after my father,” was what she murmured to Gaguush. “You have no idea how alone he is, right now.”

  “You think he’ll let me?”

  “I think you’d better make him let you. Gaguush…” Attalissa stood back, holding her by the elbows, looking her in the eyes. “Gaguush, I’ve never known a mother. You know that. My mothers were always sent away once the avatar was weaned.”

  “Don’t get all sentimental now.”

  “If not now, when? Let me say it. You were never a mother to me. You were the big sister and the aunt I always needed.” It was Pakdhala’s grin of mischief, directed at Gaguush and Holla both. “So there.” A sudden hug, a kiss, another whisper. “Look after him. Make sure he looks after you.”

  “Not much left to say, is there?” Holla asked, when Attalissa let Gaguush go once more.

  “No.”

  “So.” He shrugged. Held out his arms. “’Dhala—”

  She flung herself into them, clung to him as Zavel had clung to her, a child seeking comfort, one last time. He kissed the top of her head. Neither spoke, and after a moment he turned her loose and went without a glance back at her to help Judeh and the Stone Desert brothers lay first Asmin-Luya, then Immerose, into the grave they would share.

  The goddess dropped the first handfuls of earth, the earth to free the lingering souls. “Be safe on the long road,” she said. And she waited as the grave was filled, and helped the gang to pile the stones into a cairn over it, gaining torn nails and barked knuckles with the rest of them. Pakdhala’s hands, Gaguush thought. Attalissa had created this body from nothing, but it had Pakdhala’s hands, callused by years handling cord and canvas, by bow and sabre and rein.

  A last solemn look around at them all. “Thank you,” the goddess said, and she bowed to them.

  Attalissa walked away.

  Bikkim went with her.

  Gaguush took a deep breath. “Right, then. Let’s go find someplace to sleep a while, because you’re all staggering-stupid on your feet. And we’ll be back here tonight with food and wine and fire, Varro, as big a blaze as you damn well please. And we will drink to Immerose, and Asmin-Luya, and Tusa too. And sing old Doha’s songs, and remember all our lost ones. Even Bikkim, who’s going to marry and settle down, it looks like, and our girl Pakdhala, because she’s not coming back, no more than the rest of them.”

  She shepherded them ahead of her, her weary and her wounded, down towards the valley road. Holla-Sayan walked at her side. And it felt…odd, felt as though he were some new-met stranger with all the potential of that first gaze sizzling between them, that his eyes shifted to watch her, that whatever secrets lay behind those hazel depths were all…kept from her, for now, yes, but kept for no one else. That eye and thought did not slide away, even unconsciously, to seek Pakdhala.

  The mountains hulked around them, and the lowering sun was cool. Mists trailed down the valleys, tracing watercourses. Storm nosed over thin grass he did not need to eat, picking out the juiciest blades.

  “Leave it for the yaks,” Mikki advised, but the bone-horse took no notice. He sniffed at the skewered fish roasting over the fire. “Supper, wolf.”

  “In a moment.”

  “In a moment we’ll have fish-scented charcoal and all our valiant efforts in the river will be wasted.” When Moth made no move to come to the fire, Mikki took the green willow sticks with the fish threaded on them down himself, carefully, with his teeth and hasty mutterings. “Hot!”

  No sympathy. He padded over to watch her. She had thrown the runes once already, after they reclaimed their gear from Sister Orillias, who regretted deeply that they hadn’t come to relieve her of Mistress Gaguush’s camels into the bargain. This second casting, so far as Mikki could tell, was frustrated bargaining with fate on Moth’s part. Send some other sign… Not good. Wood didn’t last long in the damp summers of Baisirbska. There wouldn’t be much to go home to, at this rate. He rested his head on her shoulder, watched as she drew out and set down the carved wooden slips, three rows of three.

  Need. Devil. Journey.

  Sun. Sword. Journey.

  Devil. Water. Speech.

  To Mikki, the runes meant little beyond their names and a way of spelling out inscriptions on things, but these did not look like the road back to Baisirbska.

  “East?” he guessed. “Marakand?”

  “Marakand.”

  “Gaguush’s gang will be heading to Marakand.”

  “Holla-Sayan is nothing to do with us. Let him be a cameleer, for as long as he can pretend he’s still human.” She tossed the slips back into their pouch. “Supper, you said?”

  “And not my fault if it’s cold. But there’s beer from Auntie. At least, what they call beer in these parts.”

  “It’ll do for a wake.”

  “Whose wake?”

  “There’s enough dead to go around. You pick.”

  The sun slid below the horizon, no great stretching of summer days down here, and he found a tunic in the baggage, as much to keep off the cool night wind as for human decency. They sat hip to hip, flaking fish off the bones, watching the stars turning. Vrehna and Tihz ran together, almost touching, still days from conjunction.

  “I found something odd in the temple,” Moth said. “A shrine.”

  “Funny thing to find in a temple.”

  “Quiet, cub. In some sister’s private chamber. A wall niche where she’d painted a god on the plaster, the shape of a man all white and yellow flames. It was in the western wall of the room.”

  “And?”

  “And what about this new god they have in the west, in Tiypur, who doesn’t speak and doesn’t have a place or a body but sends out his priests to tell folk to obey or be damned?”

  “Humans like an excuse to bully other humans and make them slaves in their heads.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Sun in the first of three is ‘dawn,’ isn’t it?”

  “Or east, yes. Usually.”

  “Can’t call Tiypur east, wolf.”

  “I’m not. I’m just…wondering. Cold. A goose on my grave.”

  “More likely a partridge, in the Hardenwald.”

  “Oh, funny cub. We go east to Marakand. But I think we should be listening to any winds from the west.”

  It is said that the seven devils do not sleep, but lie ever-waking within their bonds, and they work against their bonds and weaken them, and they work against their captors and their gaolers sleep or they die, as even gods and goddesses can die, when the fates allow it.

  And perhaps some of the devils are free in the world, and perhaps some are
working to free themselves still.

  K.V. Johansen is the author of nearly twenty books for children and teens, including the award-winning Warlocks of Talverdin and Torrie fantasy series, and the “Pippin and Mabel” picture books, with translations into French, Danish, and Macedonian. She has also written two fantasy short story collections and two books of literary criticism. Born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, she has had a lifelong fascination with fantasy literature and the Middle Ages, which led her to take a Master’s degree in Medieval Studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and a second M.A. in English literature from McMaster University, where she wrote her thesis on Layamon’s Brut, a Middle English epic poem. While now writing full time, she retains her academic interests and is a member of the Tolkien Society and the Early English Text Society, as well as the SFWA and the Writers’ Union of Canada. Visit her online at www.kvj.ca.