by K. Johansen
Very few human souls. She had thought each of the castles, Upper and Lower, a village sufficient unto itself.
Moth coaxed Mikki down. He leaned on her, shivering. Eyes—not empty. Fixed on the ground, and unseeing, though, as if he were driven far back, deep inside himself. Lost.
He flinched from the older woman’s offered hand, but then, hesitantly, took it. Good. That was good.
A boy had come out of a dark archway to take the horse. Not a servant, not in this place. Dark eyes, dark skin, black hair, thin gold earrings, and no tattoos. Wizard, cook, gooseherd, boatman? He might be anything on any day. Another of Kinsai’s folk, one way or another. Certainly a wizard, as the two women were. The look he gave Moth was wary, bordering on fear, but he made a noise of pity when his eyes rested on Mikki. “Great Gods bless,” he said, Black Desert tongue, and she didn’t snarl at him. He means well, Mikki would have said.
“Come,” Deysanal said.
The chamber they came to was warm, a fire burning high on the hearth, a bed already prepared on the floor, mattress, blankets, a basin of water, clean cloths. Two beds. A thin, dark man who moved like a bird, a bit hunched, one shoulder twisted higher than the other, but not much impaired in his movements by it, all darting hands and eyes—he knelt by the young Westgrasslander, humming to himself. An old man held an ordinary clay oil lamp close. Bloody rags cast aside. Holla-Sayan, all too clearly told to stay out of the way, crouched to the side. Jolanan, the girl’s name. She lay limp, deep in spell-bound sleep, and the humming wove some pattern Moth would hear, if she were curious and concentrated, but she was not. Let the physician, or surgeon, work his wizardry however he wished. He glanced over to nod at her.
“Nicely done,” he said, and sketched a rune in the air with a bloody finger. Not power in it, only an echo of what she had worked, to stop the bleeding and fix the broken, grating edges where they should be before the brain took some damage. Showing he saw and understood what she had done. She was so startled she almost laughed. Long time since anyone had condescended to treat her as a mere equal in wizardry.
Wizard-surgeon at his own art. She could only bow, awkward incline of the head, leaning under Mikki’s weight, in acknowledgement.
“Let him down here on the floor, lady,” Deysanal said. “Better we get him clean and see what harm he’s taken before the sun comes. I don’t like the look of those sores on his neck.”
“No,” Moth agreed. “I can tend to them.”
The younger woman, Iarka, went without a word to take the lamp from the old man. She must have been forty, Moth thought, wizardblood, goddess-blood, lengthening her days and her youth even in a third generation. A new life burned within her, glowing like the warmth of a lamp. New kindled, and yet so strong. The physician looked up, smiled, the two of them bound in that one look. Affection, friendship, pain…
There were strange undercurrents in this place, patterns in the river water, shade and sunlight falling deep, and secrets. None she need concern herself with.
“I dreamed of devils,” the old man said. “Devils, and a sword made of stars, and the sky breaking. And here you are, Ulfhild Vartu. But where is the sword of the cold hells?”
He sounded as if he were still dreaming. A stocky, white-haired man, with Holla’s hazel eyes. Old. Old for even a wizard. Dressed as if for the day in trousers and shirt and jerkin—none of them had the look of folk roused unexpected from their beds in the small hours. His long hair was braided like a caravaneer’s. Warden of the castle.
“With Sien-Shava,” she said. “I can’t and won’t fight him for you. Not here, not now. I have no weapon against him. Sword to sword he would likely best me. To fight him otherwise—you of all people should know the cost of that. There are dead lands between here and the Fifth Cataract, and those are ancient, from long before ever I walked in this world. And the Dead Hills over the Karas.”
His gaze lingered on Mikki. He nodded. Almost smiled, eyes sharp now, the clear gaze of a much younger man. “I’ll fetch some soup. We seem to be living on soup, these days. There’s always a kettle in the kitchen. Blackdog—” and when Holla-Sayan didn’t react, “Father, you can do nothing here. Come lend me your arm on the stairs.”
“I am sorry,” Moth said. “Sorry for the loss of your goddess. Sorry I can do nothing for you.”
Stiff words, maybe, but the warden bowed his head, accepting them. “We—were prepared. We had said our farewells. And no, we do not ask you to fight for us here. We do what we must, ourselves, as do you. The tide, as you Northrons say, races to engulf us all. Strange thing, a sea. I always hoped one day to travel the river-road, take the Varr’aa and come to the shores of the sea. Well, we save what we can. Our time comes when fate above the Gods decrees, doesn’t it? To young and old alike. And now we’ll fetch that soup, lady. You look like you could use a decent meal yourself.”
The warden went off, not leaning noticeably on his staff or on Holla-Sayan, silent, obedient, at his side.
No one to run their errands.
No children. No truly elderly, either, beyond the warden himself.
They stripped Mikki, she and Deysanal, and washed him while he knelt on the floor, shivering, in a growing puddle of water. Washed even his matted hair and beard, best they could, warm water and soap that smelt of lavender. The water in the deep basin grew quickly brown and was renewed, once, three times. A pair of men come from somewhere, not speaking, but fetching hot water, more rags and towels, for both the physician and Deysanal. Going to build up the fire again. Wizards, both.
They worked their way down from Mikki’s face. He was a mess of scabs and old, festering wounds, especially about his neck and shoulders. Many scars, too, but some were open and seeping. The livid red ring of the collar was weeping. Moth began a song of healing for body and mind alike, one that wove itself in words, in poetry that had been old even in the Drowned Isles, and it did take, settling on his skin, seeping in to wrap his heart, a fine warmth, and his shivering tension lessened. He leaned his head against her. Deysanal left the more intimate washing to her, busied herself wringing out his hair with a towel.
He looked better when they were through. A little stronger, even. That was the song and the runes she had set earlier. One of the nameless men had brought bandaging and a loose gown, but she glanced at the growing grey in the narrow window above and shook her head. Such things would only be pain and encumbrance when his body changed beneath them.
Holla-Sayan and the warden had returned by then, and the soup was chicken and vegetables. Moth coaxed some into Mikki, and once he had a taste of it he would have drunk a kettleful, gulping like a dog, but she kept it to a single bowl, taken slowly. Then he was falling asleep, sagging against her, gone, finally, slack and trusting, so Deysanal rescued the bowl lest it spill the last broth and Moth laid him down and covered him in blankets.
He stirred, just to pull them up over his head.
If that was what he needed, well then.
And dawn broke in the east they could not see out this riverward window. A much greater bulk under the blankets. She sat down on the floor, sword laid aside, legs stretched out before her—perhaps they could lend her some socks and boots—and a hand on the hump of blankets that hid Mikki’s head. Shut her own eyes. The warden, the physician, Iarka, the other men who had lingered to mop up the floor, had all gone away sometime at the last. Even Holla-Sayan; she had heard the physician ordering him away, saying that the girl would sleep, that he could do nothing, hovering over her, and the warden needed speech with him…
Deysanal brought a quilt and spread it over her lap, startling kindness, as if she needed looking after.
“There’s soup, still, lady,” she said, “in the kettle on the hearth. Eat when you’ve a mind, and let him eat again, too, when he wakes.”
Ulfhild had been “lady.” Sister of the king. Ulfhild Vartu was—not deserving of that. Nor of this care.
Well, it was for Mikki’s sake they offered it, not hers.
/> “Thank you, lady,” she said. There were no hierarchies among the ferry-folk, only elder and younger and the warden respected by all, but she gave the title anyway. It seemed fitting.
Deysanal gathered up the last rags—no, that was her old woollen cloak—and carried that away, closing the door softly behind her. Silence, then. Only the fire, and ducks on the river out the window. Grey daylight and rain, soft spattering on the broad ledge.
Mikki’s paw came out from under the blankets. She stroked a finger over the back of it, wary of seeing him jerk from the touch, but claws flexed and the paw pulled away only to be laid again over her hand, heavy, rough. Coarse hair between the pads prickly. Warm.
She sighed. Squirmed around so she could lie down, cold hard floor beneath her hip and shoulder, but her head on a pillow by his, blanket-shrouded though it was. Shut her eyes.
Slept, maybe. Almost. Drifting into the edge of his dreams. Running, running, and the wolves, dead already though their hearts still beat, shaped to madness, to hunger, and the burning collar, the parasite chains, fangs of lampreys anchored in his heart…
Sleep, cub, she said, and made a different dream, a place of birches white against a sky so blue, and the first bright golden-green of spring, the birds singing silver-gold ecstasy, the tapestry of small flowers, nodding bells and open stars, rolling out over the moss, blue and white and pink, between the first uncoiling ferns. A wolf walking there, along the bank of the brook, lean and grey, and a golden bear, and the light on the water…
Jolanan, waking, to a room of dim light, and pain, but a dull, remote sort of pain, that felt almost as if it belonged to someone else. Someone beside her, her hand loosely held in theirs. Couldn’t see anything clearly. Couldn’t breathe except through her dry mouth. Smacked her lips and tried to swallow and at once there was a hand under her, helping her sit up, a bowl held to her, a voice.
Holla’s. Reassuring her, she was safe, she was in the Upper Castle of Kinsai’s folk. She was hurt but would get better, there was a wizard-surgeon here named Rose, who had tended her and promised she would recover. Broth, not tea, in the bowl. She drank. She slept again.
Dreamed there had been a bear in the room, dim and blurry, stretched on its side on a white mattress opposite her, with blankets over it like a sleeping man, only a paw, the tip of a nose, an ear, sticking out.
Waking, sleeping, eating, carefully. Her face hurt, a constant grumble of thunder-pain, with jagged searing flashes like lightning whenever she made any careless movement—yawn, smile, frown, or laid her head down on the pillow. A confusion of memory. Night. A ferocious roaring. Shapes like monsters swarming out of the dark to pull her down, to kill, and the monster, roaring, come out of the darkness to her aid.
The scabs, when Jolanan untied the bandage that covered the loose dressing, were gut-twisting to touch, thick crust that devoured her left eye, her nose. At least it wasn’t sticking to the linen any more. A thing on her, a growth like fungus on a log, a hideousness. No pain until she pressed, fingertips flinching away. She breathed through her mouth. Couldn’t do anything else. Her nose was still thick, filled as if with dry clay. Bled if she tried to force air in or out. She had nearly passed out the day before when she sneezed.
Let the wound have some air. It was quiet here, no wind, no flying grit. Warmth. A fireplace. Holla was off with the warden of the castle, they all were. Mysterious talk, mostly in languages she didn’t understand well. Usually it was the desert tongue dialect of the caravaneers, but sometimes Holla spoke Northron with the tall pale-haired woman he called Moth, who kept a vigil on the other side of the room, by the bed where the shapeshifting demon lay.
Jolanan had thought the bear a dream, but he was there, in daylight at least, a vast golden-furred bulk with eyes black as charcoal, who lay and looked into nothing, and did not speak, though he could. His name was Mikki and he slept, most of the time, or shut his eyes and pretended he slept, made sleep a wall against—Jolanan couldn’t guess what.
By night he was a man. A creature of a winter’s tale.
Moth coaxed him up to pad heavily around the castle, but he followed her as if giving in were easier than resisting, and came back to lie down again looking at nothing. Stirred though, and looked around for her, if Moth made to leave his side. So she did not. She sat by him, lay on the bed by him, arm over him, pressed to him, man or bear.
It ought to have been…uncomfortable, that closeness witnessed, an embrace better kept for an enclosed bed and the decent blanket of the dark, but it only made Jolanan feel…lonely.
Moth was not merely a wizard. The devil Ulfhild Vartu. The young Black Desert-born wizard Rifat had told her so.
She did not seem particularly fearsome.
Neither did Holla. Yet he was the Blackdog. Not a demon, Rifat tried to explain, in awe, in admiration. Shapeshifter, dog, two-souled, immortal and yet not quite a devil.
And the songs were wrong. He had not killed devils. Only fought against them, in wars long before she was born.
Going to his son at the castle. A joke. Such a joke. The warden of the castle, who was a true son of the goddess Kinsai, not merely her child by virtue of being of the ferry-folk. A wizard, long-lived beyond human years, but mortal. An old man, very old, almost two hundred. Holla’s son and Kinsai’s. Holla-Sayan, his proper name, but he hadn’t told them it, because Holla was common enough but Holla-Sayan was the brother of an ancestor of Reyka and Lazlan, and the name, and his history, known to them. A family secret. Lazlan had known, when he came back to the fire, and he had not told her.
Holla-Sayan was old, ancient, immortal in the world.
And she was only a cowherd, and her twenty-first birthday had passed sometime in the summer, when she was riding with Tibor, with Lazlan’s skirmishers, hunting straying scouts of the Westron army.
She wanted, like Mikki, never to leave her bed. But that was— childish. Not on the demon’s part, no, she didn’t mean that, the moment she thought the word of herself. Childish because she was only wounded, the fate of battle. Whatever had come upon him was something else. His silence, his sleep, his shutting out of everything, even the devil who hardly ever left his side…maybe, in time, he would heal, the wounds no one could see growing scabs, that would fall away as the scabs of his body had in a short few days, and leave clean scars. She hoped so, for the devil’s sake. The woman looked as if her heart were breaking.
Jolanan remembered how it had felt, sitting by her father’s bed, waiting for him to die. Better if he had. He would have said so.
She brought tea for Moth, and a dish of it for Mikki, too. The castle seemed more like a camp than a household. In the kitchen, she might do as she pleased. They took it for granted when she started to tend the fire and the kettle of soup or stew that was always kept going for whoever needed it. Something she could do to help whatever it was they did. Whatever they worked at, in the rooms of closed doors, they did not often take regular meals together. Rifat or one of the others would wander by to tell her where something might be found or to bring her a fish or a freshly plucked and drawn fowl. She found the pantry store, a crock in which yeast still bubbled, made bread.
They stood on the edge of something, all this castle.
The army of the All-Holy waited over the river.
Jolanan woke in panic, something near, claws on stone…black shape, by the dim light of the fire that never went out. Not huge and frightening, no, just an ordinary dog. But not. Coiling into a knot on the slate-flagged floor to sleep, as a dog would. She had heard his toenails clicking. Dog. Moth even called him that, often, speaking to him, as if it were a nickname. Sleep-mazed, Jolanan reached over, rubbed his head as she would have, one of her own herd-dogs coming to lie by her bed. Froze, then, her hand there. Realizing what she did.
Eyes opened. There was light in them. Not reflection. A faint and shifting yellow-green.
She took her hand away. He had felt like an ordinary living thing. Warm. Soft-furred. If he had been a real dog, sh
e would have stroked his ears next. He hadn’t touched her, hadn’t held her hand, kissed her, since she woke properly—but he crept in to sleep by her.
She turned over, face to the wall, lying on her right side, so that everything, fire and shapes and the gleam of his eyes, was shut out.
Click of toenails as he padded away again. The devil, keeping her vigil on the other side of the room under the window, spoke softly. Holla didn’t answer.
The bread was rising. She had found a sack of split peas, added them, with more water and some dried herbs that smelt like food, not medicine, things from far Over-Malagru, she thought, to the big soup kettle. In another, water was kept just simmering for whoever might want tea; it was filled from the well, fresh and clean and free of the taste of river, somehow. She had been to see the horses, finally getting the rest they deserved under Rifat’s care. The wizard boy had found her eggs, laid by the hens they had not yet eaten. She would beat them up, cook them with onions and some of those herbs, find Deysanal or Iarka to let them know, to let the others know, there was a good hot dish ready. She was not even certain how many people there were in the castle. Less than a dozen, perhaps.
She poured hot water onto the shaved curls of tea in a bowl for herself, dropped in a brown lump of sugar. Watched the tendrils of darkness flow out from the tea, the scent of smoke rising. She could smell again. She could breathe. The bones were in their right place, pushed and pulled by the surgeon Rose’s cunning, maybe, or by his wizardry, flesh and skin stitched. Her feet on the threshold of the road, an axe across the face like that; her eye burst, pulped, slashed open like a half-cooked egg—her mind offered visions, each more gruesome than the last.
She could see her reflection in the tea, like Arpath, looking for knowledge of the future. A dark-mirrored truth.