by K. Johansen
His children would have been saved. Should have been, even so. He had come to them too late, kept and questioned by the commander of the attack, who knew him faithful, and yet claimed doubts, mistrust, some trick or trap—until too late, he had come, and the house had been burned over them. The rubble was too much, stones and broken tile and crockery and charred timbers, ash, all filling the cellar. There were so many dead, and so many dying, defiant, damning themselves…
The body did not matter, once the soul was gone. He had not dug through the rubble for them. They were not among the living. It was enough.
His wife had survived the taking of the tower, gravely wounded, but died on the pyres, cursing him. He on his knees, weeping, cursing, begging her…So many chose death.
How could a man of the faith, as the Westgrasslander assassin must have been, turn his back on that, once having given himself? How could he not see, be so blind? Did he not understand the horror of a lost soul’s slow decay? Did the nothingness that awaited not terrify? That assassin’s body had been found, and he or his comrades had even cut away the symbol of the faith, as if to renounce it with his body as well as his heart. Such fanaticism, blind and deaf, when the All-Holy held out his hand to save.
It was consciousness of sin, of failure, that made Philon’s thoughts walk such paths, brought again his children’s faces, their very voices, to his ears, made him want to weep not for them but for all children yet living who were denied that salvation. It was not his duty to guard the prince’s sleep. He was risen from being a mistrusted and closely watched advisor in matters related to the folk of the new-conquered town to master of Dimas’s household and eventually, his counsellor, his confidant, his right hand. Almost, sometimes, he thought, a foster-father to the youth Dimas had been, and by his sacrifice an example of what faith should be.
“The sin was not yours,” Primate Ambert said. Philon, clad only in his drawers, knelt at his feet, though he himself was, honour far above his due, of the lower step of the seventh circle, raised by the All-Holy’s own decree after the crossing of the Karas range, before the armies divided. His chest throbbed and he felt weak, as if he might faint, but he knelt for humility, not for weakness, and to abase himself for his failure. The wound, shallow but long, was a slash that began above one nipple and ended below the other; it was stitched and salved, bound and blessed. “You should not have slept so heavily, but it was not your duty to wake through the watches of the night, and if not for you we might not know even their number. What penance, though, for those who should have watched, and were deaf and blind?”
“They should atone with their lives,” Philon said. Dimas was dead. What less could they offer? “He was among the best of us. Surely most beloved by the All-Holy. He brought all of us living—all of us who were blessed in our strength and the All-Holy’s grace, across the Salt.”
That had been a terrible time, worse than the crossing of the Dead Hills, worse than the mountains, and they had had the All-Holy with them then. Those who perished through their weakness at least died in the comfort of knowing their souls would be gathered safe by the All-Holy.
Even such sinners as these two soldiers, who knelt stone-faced, awaiting the primate’s judgement, had that comfort.
Primate Ambert nodded. “Yes,” he said, and there was sorrow in his voice. “Such a failure cannot be forgiven in life. In death, there is atonement. And there are the lives of their two faithful comrades, as well, for which they may be held responsible. Where two fell, four might have prevailed, if only they had not failed in watchfulness.”
“We heard nothing, Most Blessed Primate,” one man protested. “The heathen assassins came with wizardry, they must have. We heard nothing till the Blessed Philon cried out. We nearly took them, too, but by their heathen wizardry they escaped us, not just us, all the soldiers of the prince’s own company, all the servants, half the camp was roused and they weren’t taken.”
The other said nothing, but he wept, his sobs gulping, like a child. Weak.
“Take them out,” the primate told his own guards, and the fifth-circle knight who commanded them bowed, gestured. “Let the sentence be carried out straightway. Hang them.”
The weeping man bolted to his feet with a yell of denial. Philon, still on his knees himself, swung a heavy arm around his legs and brought him down, a savage lashing pain across his chest his reward. He gasped and panted, curled up over his knees.
“My brother,” Primate Ambert said in concern, and crouched to set a kindly hand on Philon’s shoulder.
He was able to straighten up again. New blood was seeping through the bandages.
“The surgeon must attend you again.”
He managed to murmur thanks. The coward soldier was being dragged away, thrashing and wailing. The other, with greater dignity, walked, though he was trembling and fell in the tent’s doorway, and had then to be held up by two guards.
Ambert crooked a finger, summoning a lesser clerk to aid Philon to his feet. “Come to my tent. Sister Floran can tend you there. There are matters of which we must speak.” And to other men and women of the blessed departed’s household: “One of you fetch Blessed Brother Philon a clean robe.”
They passed out of the tent into the morning haze. There was already a gallows. In the past days, converts had been taken trying to slip away into the mountains, and even among these blessed and desert-tried, there were thieves, mad and desperate murders. The influence, perhaps, of the wizards and gods or demons of Marakand, driving small discontent to brew up into greater sin. A priestess of the fourth circle was praying, a blessing that exhorted the condemned men to embrace their love for the All-Holy and seek his grace and forgiveness with their last breath and thought.
They stood them on a trestle, precarious balance. One fell of his own accord or weakness before the prayer was finished, and flailing, knocked the trestle away and so hanged the other. The crowd gathered beyond the barrier of soldiers to bear witness roared.
It was surely not laughter. He saw the struggle, the jerk, as someone, probably one of their own comrades, caught the thrashing legs and hung from them, to break the soldier’s neck. And then the other. Did they deserve that mercy? Perhaps. Their sin had been unwitting, not willed. He did not draw Ambert’s attention to it.
“A Marakander in a false robe may be difficult to find,” the primate was saying. “But Westgrasslander tattoos are harder to hide or to feign. Did you see the pattern on his face?”
“Unfortunately, no. Only the darkness, enough to know he was tattooed.”
“They won’t have acted alone. Their allies will be found.”
“Apostates,” Philon said heavily. “Or heathens who have infiltrated the camp. I wish—why are people so blind? Why can they not see? To die and damn your soul to wander till it withers away to nothing, lost to the Old Great Gods—to condemn your children to such a doom—” It made him sick. Sometimes he thought he should have taken his children and gone to some place where one might hold the faith openly, seen them initiated, saved. Abandoned all thoughts of greater duty.
Selfish sin, to think so? Perhaps.
He had sacrificed his children’s souls to better serve the All-Holy. He had murdered and lied, and made his life a lie. Others had been saved, by that sacrifice. Not all the folk of the village had resisted. Not all had burned. The All-Holy did bless him.
“There must be a new prince of Emrastepse,” Primate Ambert said. “You were kin of the former lords of that folk, were you not?”
“My grandfather was prince, and my uncle, before my cousin.”
“Did it never gall you, that the tower was appointed to Dimas, an outsider, when you were of the faith, and, by natural law and the laws of our land, its living heir?”
“I’ve only ever sought to serve the All-Holy how best I might. The folk would not have had me, then. They thought me traitor.”
“Even though they had seen the true road to the Gods and given their hearts and souls to the All-Holy?�
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“Even then.”
“And now?”
“We’ve been long away. Only the Old Great Gods know who among us shall ever reach home. It will be as the All-Holy wills.”
“Indeed,” said Ambert.
CHAPTER VI
Jochiz was aware of the stir coming up the line, the courier passed along from one lesser-captain to the next, and then to Primate Clio, recently restored to her position as commander of the Sacred Guard. Restored, forgiven—humbler and more careful, one might hope, in considering what did and did not serve the All-Holy. Let the stump of her right wrist ever remind her. The emissary of the Old Great Gods did not break his given word, even when that word was pledged to a devil and the enemy of the Gods. Eagerness for approval might grow into pride, he had chastised her, while his sister’s ghost whispered, Let her die. It was to spite ever-spiteful Sien-Mor that he had not finished what his enemies had begun, and left Clio dead with the knights who had paid the price for her folly in seeking to ambush a devil.
Only that. Not any affection he had for the woman.
Desire was not affection.
That lay at the root, therein lay the rot, of all cracks in his soul. Blood. Bone. Flesh. Filth. Flaw.
His thoughts were too easily distracted. It was the ghost of Sien-Mor, whispering into Sien-Shava’s mind. But she was not, she could not. Sien-Mor was long, long dead, and whatever tattered remnant of her had persisted, an echo in Tu’usha’s heart of fire, that was gone, too, murdered by Vartu, and vengeance would yet come for that, for his sister’s death…
It was only his own human weakness to which he gave his sister’s name, and had since first he started to hear her after her death, those faint traitor thoughts trying, failing, to lead him to doubt himself. He had no sister. Tu’usha had never been close to him, to Jochiz. This was the miring humanity of Sien-Shava again, confusing him.
Years he had endured such thoughts, and they had grown stronger over the winter past, much, much stronger. No doubt it was his approach to Marakand. Sien-Mor had nothing to do with that city, and yet…in his thoughts, in human weakness of thought, it brought her to mind.
He was stronger than that. It was only the mortal man within failed him, as ever he had.
It was Clio herself who turned her horse and rode back alongside the orderly column to him, overruling the protest the courier seemed to want to make, taking his message-case from him and dismissing him to find his own place in the march. The knights about the All-Holy saluted their commander and let her through. Their All-Holy rode alone, save for his brother; clerks, commanders, even the greatest of the primates, those who oversaw the circles or had nominal charge of the spiritual well-being of the towns back in Tiypur, were banished to let him ride in peace.
Sarzahn only did not disturb that peace; a comfort, to have him near. When Jochiz had thought, for a moment, that he had lost him…but he had recovered swiftly from whatever spell the assassin had tried to work against him. Weak, yes, but conscious. Exhausted from whatever fight his body had made against the wizardry, or perhaps poison, overcome before Jochiz himself could seek it. Sarzahn had only needed desperately to sleep—the weaknesses of the physical body, even for such as they. Were the rulers of Marakand such fools they thought human wizardry might truly incapacitate so great a being…?
They were, yes.
The priests and primates who rode behind, outside the cordon of his knights, buzzed with their wondering at what news the courier might carry. They remained silent—they had that wit—but he felt their anxiety prickling his skin. Glanced back, swatted them with a look.
Sometimes he dreamed he struck them all down, ripped their souls away or blasted them with lightnings called from a clear sky, only to cleanse his mind of their nagging chatter, their fear and their ambition, their doglike worship, their clinging. Each thought the All-Holy a precious thing of their own, a relationship needed by the god he was. Now. For a little longer.
If the primate of the sixth circle had been among them, rather than farther back in the dust somewhere meditating on his aching bones and thinking dire loathing of his horse, the All-Holy might have summoned him up to ask why the diviners of the sixth had not known in advance if there were some disaster.
The All-Holy might ask why he himself had not.
Prince Dimas should not have pulled ahead. Such care had been taken, using the diviners to keep the marches paced to meet. But there had been too little water; in the past weeks Dimas had pushed on, defying the orders of the All-Holy himself spoken through the fire. Protesting that too many would die, if he did not reach the rising lands and wells and streams about the feet of the Malagru, where the pass of Marakand began its climb.
Perhaps Dimas now paid the price for his folly and Marakand had managed some unexpected alliance with its not-always-friendly Taren neighbours and attempted to break him before he could lay siege to their outer defences.
Jochiz should have known, if so, but he was spread so far, so many threads…He shut his eyes to the dust, closed ears to the muted hollow beat of hooves and feet, the noise of minds that became a babble of hope and fear and boredom and dull pain, the road, the road, the road so long…
Gone. Dimas was dead.
Could have cursed aloud. Might have, if he had been alone. They dared—
It was pointless. Dimas might have been an effective administrator of an army on the march, but he was hardly irreplaceable once Jochiz arrived himself. It was defiance. It was spite. It was—
There was a graver matter, now that he reached out of himself to notice it. There was—an absence.
There were—or were not—souls. Lost. Lost to him, in their thousands. The desert—the town of the desert—they stole what his priests had claimed—
How—?
Abruptly, he felt how the scars of his arms, scars upon scars, scars of the All-Holy’s sacred sacrifice, ached. But that was humanity’s weakness. His brother gave him an incurious look, alerted by his anger, but content to wait for explanation.
“All-Holy,” Clio began, making as deep a bow, due reverence, as she might while on horseback. “A courier has come from the Army of the South, bearing a letter from its primate.” She offered it, awkwardly, in the hand that held her reins. And she never glanced aside to his brother; she fought down, every time she must be in the presence of the two of them together, a seething brew of resentment and fear. Her virtue in doing so, her strength, did not go un-noted. It was for victory in that daily battle that he had restored her to her primate’s rank. “He says—” She lowered her voice against overhearing. “—that Prince Dimas is dead. Slain in his sleep by a heathen assassin.”
“This I know,” Jochiz said gravely, as he took the rolled and sealed letter. Ground down anger, crushed it under his will. Deal with this. The other was beyond reach, for the time being. He should never have left the disposition of the southern road in the hands of humans who judged men by the strength of their faith.
Broke the seal and swiftly scanned it over.
Primate Ambert said nothing that Clio had omitted, only details. Traitor converts had murdered the prince; one was dead, the others were sought among the Westgrasslanders. Some were being questioned by the diviners and at the time of writing, six traitors who spied for the Marakanders had been thus revealed and summarily executed, but the other assassin—there had been one more at the least—remained unknown. He had begun the execution of every tenth Westgrasslander convert and would continue until the guilty confessed or the All-Holy commanded otherwise. The guards who had failed in their duty were dead. Blessed Brother Philon, who had served many years in Emrastepse as Master of the Tower for Dimas and was moreover, in Ambert’s most humble judgement, a man of wisdom and devotion who had been as much a father to Dimas and an example in faith and service as the high servant he was, would be taken into Ambert’s household to continue to carry out his duties of overseeing all things concerned with the administration of the high command for Ambert until the
All-Holy might make his own arrangements. He might also, if the All-Holy found him worthy, be well elevated to the rank of prince, since Dimas had left behind no heirs. This honour, naturally, was the All-Holy’s to bestow. Ambert only sought to offer most humbly his unworthy thoughts…
“Fetch my clerk,” he told Clio, whose rank should have spared her errand-running, but did not. “Order a fresh horse for the courier.”
He would appoint Primate Ambert to command of the Army of the South until his own arrival at the Wall of Marakand. And the executions were well thought of. The killer would break, sooner or later, but more importantly, the faithful would see how their god protected his own. That the innocent died was no concern; the folk would know they went to their deaths safe in the service of the All-Holy, if they were true in their hearts, their souls flying to his embrace. He might do what he wanted with Blessed Brother Philon. A man of great devotion and sorrow, which only made his service more faithful. Let him not be made prince, though. They were far from the west; whatever governor had been left in place might carry on governing till the sea ate the rocks away, for all he cared. Jochiz had no intention of marching any of them home, and Ambert need not be encouraged to get above himself, as Clio had. A mistake to show too much favour. He would rebuke the primate, gently, for that suggestion, yes.
And today he had no patience with the stupidity of the devout. Against the cunning of the gods, devotion was useless. Attalissa and Sera would have time to regret they had tried to spit into the wind.
“Go,” he said. “What are you waiting for? Go.”
Clio bowed again and took her leave to obey.
Jochiz beckoned his brother closer.
“Arrogance,” he said. “Do they think him irreplaceable? They could not be so stupid. A gesture of no more weight than a child throwing stones.”
Sarzahn waited gravely.
“Vartu rules the Marakanders, whether the senate knows it or not. Vartu and I had an agreement. She has broken it.” Yes, he would have let her go, ignored her yet, had she wandered off into the wilds with her beast and been content.