The Leopard

by K V Johansen

  She saw what followed only dimly. The Blackdog ripped them from their Lady’s web, and Mikki turned back and forth before her, so sometimes there was only a golden-furred flank and sometimes a great paw and once, twice, red-dyed boots and a white staff burning, a desert sabre striking when a Red Mask forced past the Blackdog, but the demon was always there behind him, between Ivah and her death. Claws raked or teeth tore and like the dog, Mikki dragged them dead from the chains that bound them. Ivah was knotting, twisting, tangling her threads now. She forced herself to slow down, to pick carefully, thumb and fingertip, sobbing with every breath, hands shaking. She felt as if she were being beaten down to the earth and yet was numb. There were more of them, more than six destroyed, and yet more came, wasps drawn to defend their hive-mates, to kill by a hundred stings. Mikki stumbled, sides heaving, head hanging, in a moment when she saw the Blackdog fall, but he rose up shaking free of them, and she had it, the shape of that one spell; she caught it and held it, and the threads of it led away though all the nest of them, to the queen herself.

  The spell could be rebuilt, word by word, but not quickly; it was a song, she thought, in its making, but she saw it as cat’s-cradle, and cat’s-cradle was what she held to the sun in the moment when she was kestrel, between sky and grass.

  She called fire, with the character held in her mind, no hand free to write it. Fire answered. White fire, the light of the stars. Her ribbons of bark burned, and the Nabbani characters in blood on her skin burned with them, cool as water, as starlight on snow. Her cat’s-cradles fell away into ash, and Holla-Sayan was again a man, slashing a Red Mask down, shouting something. He had been trying to tell her something for a while now, Ivah thought, but she had walled herself against him or made him into her wall, and she had not been able to hear till he spoke aloud.

  “Wizards,” he said. “We might still save them. You’ve done it, haven’t you? The light on them’s gone out.”

  She nodded, tried to find words, and even her whispers broke, rasping and choked as sand in the throat, swallowed and tried again, managing, “The fear’s broken. That’s all. Still can’t kill them.”

  “All?” he said, and something else maybe, to Mikki, that she could not catch, but he was a dog again, loping away around a dune of bodies. Nothing stirred, except the hem of a red cloak in the wind.

  And a man, Salt Desert tattoos, bloodied head, with a spear in his hands, running up from behind and nearly flattened by Mikki.

  “Where have they taken them?” he asked. Two more men and a woman drifted up. They all looked ragged, tattered and beaten; her eye was seeing not the body but something of the heart. Tattered and beaten but on their feet again. They smelt of smoke. Caravaneers, armed and grim. “My lady?” the stranger asked. “They took my wife. Where?”

  Ivah pulled herself up by Mikki’s flank. What did they take her for? Why ask her? She wanted to weep. She had nothing left. The demon turned his head to nuzzle her shoulder. For a moment she leaned on him, face buried in his fur.

  “They had her there,” she said. “I didn’t see . . . more came.”

  “Some took the prisoners and ran,” said Mikki. “We can follow. You can’t fight the Red Masks.” The desert man didn’t flinch. His mouth thinned. He meant to. “But you’ll stand when they come. This wizard of the Grass has torn their terror from them. Set your spears against the temple guard. They’ve hidden behind the Red Masks long enough. Ivah, up.” He crouched, and she mounted again, thinking, no, no, she couldn’t, not again, she’d done enough. But there wasn’t any such thing as enough, was there?

  She found her voice. “This Lady of Marakand is a devil,” Ivah told the caravaneers. The more who knew that, the better. “She’s no goddess. Kin of the Lake-Lord of Lissavakail, and he died, you remember, he died for what he dared against the goddess of the lake. This devil from the well is a necromancer, and the Red Masks are dead. The Red Masks are what becomes of the wizards she takes.”

  Grim faces grew bleaker, and for a moment she thought the man would weep, but he only swallowed and stepped near, reaching to touch her, to touch Mikki, as if to assure himself they were real. When Mikki broke into a lumbering trot they followed, all but one. Afraid and hanging back, Ivah thought, but when she looked back, too weary to be angry or sorry, that man was pounding on a tavern door, shouting, “Come out! Come out and fight! Are you humanfolk or rabbits? There are demons killing the Red Masks and a devil has taken the Lady’s place!”

  When she looked back again, she had a dozen armed people behind her. Not all folk of the road, either.

  Dead temple guard and another pair of Red Masks unmoving in the street marked Holla-Sayan’s passage.

  “Come out!” the Salt Desert man began shouting. “Come out and fight! A devil has taken the temple and the city. Come out and stand against her, save the wizards!”

  “A great wizard of the Grass has come to fight her!” a woman called. “Even the Red Masks fear her. Come out and fight!”

  What?

  Mikki gave a cough that she realized after a moment was a laugh. They were surging ahead now. Someone carried a Red Mask helmet on their spear, brandishing it like a banner.

  Hurry up, bear. She heard that.

  Mikki broke into his rolling lope again, and her followers ran after her, still growing. Some word was spreading, but the Old Great Gods alone knew how it might be changing as it ran. If they flung themselves against the Red Masks . . . and the Lady herself had done nothing, yet. Ivah knew she should have told these people to run away. She couldn’t save them.

  The street here was very broad, a place where a market might spill out before the shops, but beyond, it narrowed between warehouses again. In the distance, one blazed high. Temple guard barred the near end of the street to them, and Holla-Sayan paced back and forth before the line of their spears. They had a bunched and shuffling look, as if it would not take much to send them into retreat, but behind them were Red Masks. The Lady was using her living guardsmen to guard her Red Masks. No wave of nauseous fear hit Ivah, except what was due the moment, and that was bad enough. The Lady rode a horse that looked beaten and broken to the strange vision she still held, though to the outer eye it was sleek and spirited. The Lady. A girl younger than Ivah herself, very slender and beautiful, white surcoat, white silk scarves fluttering over a Red Mask’s armour, bare-headed. Among the Red Masks were those who swayed, silent, but in unison. The Lady’s lips moved, equally silent.

  Singing. She worked her spells in song. Something was being prepared against them. Ivah shut her own eyes, found the place of grass and sky within her, floated on kestrel’s wings, and faintly, faintly she heard, but the words eluded her. Fire, a rain of stones maybe. Something. The Lady made the shape of the spell, and the Red Masks poured themselves into it.

  They’re going to attack us, Holla. A spell. The swaying ones. She didn’t know how she did it.

  I feel it. It’s in the earth. Do you see the wagon?

  The wagon. There, a wagon drawn by a team of oxen, Red Masks about it, and bodies tossed onto the bed like gathered faggots of wood. They were trying to back and turn it where the street narrowed, and the oxen blew and stamped and pulled against one another, trying to break free of their yoke, fearing the scent of the dead.

  “We’ll take the wagon, dog,” Mikki said. “You stop the singing, if that’s what it is.”

  And the Lady, meanwhile . . . She watched, eyes half-shut, lips still shaping voiceless words. But Holla-Sayan paced forward, snarling, slow and inexorable, throwing his own aura of terror onto the massed temple guard, whether he knew it or not, and they fell back a little, edged sideways, thinned their centre, while men in ribbons tried to hold them firm.

  “The prisoners aren’t dead yet,” Ivah told the men and women nearest her, hoping it was true. “We’ll fight the Red Masks. You deal with the temple soldiers, get us through to them.”

  The street vibrated beneath them. Ivah shut her mind to the singing, drew Nabbani characte
rs in the air, setting protections on herself and Mikki. All she could do. Holla-Sayan charged the line. Temple guard scattered or died. The caravaneers, Marakanders of the suburb among them, poured ahead of Mikki, roaring to give themselves heart, making for the gap the dog had made.

  The street crumpled and rucked up as though something stirred beneath it, flinging men off their feet, and walls cracked, swayed, fell in on them, on temple guard mostly, but screams came from within the buildings, and fires rose swifter than any cook-fire should have spread, beams blazing, tiles cracking in the sudden heat. The Lady spread her hands and brought them together, and the flames were drawn out and together as if she closed a gate, but most of them were through. Ivah had no weapon and hardly the strength left to wield one. She crouched low, clutched Mikki’s fur, and tried to weave more protections with her mind alone, imagining the pull of ribbons on her fingers.

  Holla-Sayan was not bothering with the silently singing Red Masks. He killed one, she saw, but another nearby took up the swaying, and the words still flowed in some undercurrent of her mind, lightning, she thought, and thunder, and she looked up to a sky where black cloud boiled into life from nothingness. Old Great Gods, she had nothing to set against this. The air smelt raw, metallic.

  The Lady flung a hand against Holla-Sayan, and the street erupted beneath him, hurling him sideways, but he rolled and then she lost sight of him as Mikki flung himself at the Red Masks around the wagon. The oxen bellowed. The wagon had gotten wedged lengthwise across the street.

  “No teamsters among you?” Ivah shrieked, almost laughing, and she raised a hand, not able to spare both, to sketch characters of breaking and severing. The bows of the yoke splintered. One ox wrenched itself free, lowered its horns, and charged, temple guard and caravaneers scattering alike to let it through. The other tried to follow, stumbled on the centre-pole, wheeled around, and tossed a Red Mask, galloping a few yards before slowing to a purposeful trot. It didn’t look likely to stop till it reached the Eastern Wall, and good luck and blessings on it, Ivah thought. The Red Mask it had hurled into the wall did not rise again. Make them know they’re dead, Holla-Sayan had said. But all the while, she kept up the shield in her forefront of her mind, and the thrusts and blows that came at Mikki glanced aside. Mostly. One Red Mask only was left of those who guarded the wagon, and despite that the caravaneers were already swarming over it, pulling the senseless prisoners out, dragging them like dead things in their haste. This last was a swordsman, some warrior-wizard whose fragmented soul still held its old skills fast. The demon was wounded, moving without grace or speed, barely holding his own, even with her shielding . . . if only she had a weapon. The Salt Desert man clutched a fish-tattooed woman to his side, standing legs braced on the wagon bed, and hurled his spear into the back of the Red Mask. It struck armour and fell aside. Ivah let go her grip on Mikki and slithered to the street, groping for the spear, found the strength to stand and darted sideways, found her moment and thrust for the back of the leg, below the edge of the skirt of plates, felt the head bite deep through leather and tendons, hamstringing him neatly, so he folded down, and Mikki with one movement raked his helmet off and smashed his skull against the dust-covered paving-stones.

  “Get up, get up, girl!” Thick and lilting Northron, urgent.

  Ivah hadn’t realized she was down, crumpled on the road. She clawed her way up the demon’s side again, standing, couldn’t find the strength to pull herself to his back, but everything had gone still and calm around them. A back was against hers, a hand reaching from the side to steady her, another wiping at her cheek for her, bleeding from some flying chip of stone. Dust made a golden haze in the air, and the sky was clearing.

  “The lightning,” she said. “The lightning—” But there was none. The bolt had never fallen. “Where’s the Blackdog? The Lady—” She tried to pull herself to Mikki’s back, merely to see, but she shook too badly. Many hands heaved her up, folk standing, hands on the demon as if he were some talisman or maybe a horse that needed steadying. One or two of the rescued wizards were even on their feet, megrim-grey, and a few more awake enough to be on their knees, vomiting.

  She still couldn’t see. Temple guard had mostly fallen on their knees, not sick but likely to be dead unless some law of honourable war prevailed, which wasn’t looking likely. The slaughter of the surrender had already begun. Some protested, Marakanders and folk of the road both. She croaked a protest herself, she had to, but nobody paid her any heed now. At least some guardsmen were hustled away, hands on their heads, prisoners, though to what fate she couldn’t guess. The roof of a small workshop, burning, fell in, and the smoke coiled about them, choking and acrid. Motionless Red Masks were stripped of their helmets, and an old man in a caftan silently wept, rocking, clutching a Red Mask’s limp body, a woman’s brown hair lank over his arm.

  Mikki’s ribs heaved beneath her.

  “The temple!” one of the caravaneers shouted. “The devil’s fled to the temple!” And they surged up the road, flowing past, even those who seemed to have appointed themselves for a time her guards and Mikki’s.

  So many had not actually been here to fight. The folk had poured out, following those who had dared to follow her. Now they formed a pack, hunting, shouting of devils and victory and the treachery of Marakand, the murder of caravaneers. They left murdered temple guards in their wake. If they went in such bloodlusting riot through the city . . . murder and rapine and no warlord to command and control them.

  “The temple is your enemy!” she shouted. “Not Marakand! Not the city!” But they didn’t hear or didn’t listen.

  Others remained, pulling stone and brick and timbers aside from the walls and roofs that had fallen when the Lady raised the earth against Holla-Sayan. Voices cried beneath the rubble, but there were enough hands, she thought, to free them, those who still lived. She couldn’t find the strength to move from where she lay over Mikki’s neck.

  The Lady had vanished.

  Something came, like a sandstorm from the desert. It sought her, and it hated, hungry. Zora felt it, and for a moment the Red Masks faltered in their searching, as she almost—almost pulled them all back to her.

  No. She was not some child, some weak little girl, some naive dancer. She had walked among the stars when Marakand was a village of a dozen huts. She would not run. And there was nothing in this land she needed to fear, not now that Vartu the traitor was captive in the well. Some small power of the earth, that was all, some traitor beast of the Malagru hills that thought the suburb its own and would soon learn otherwise.

  She carefully marshalled the words that rose, jumbling. We must retreat not risk ourselves not risk our city leave the Red Masks to search leave the guard to hunt to learn to stand to die not us not me. No, coward child, it is nothing you cannot withstand reach out your hand it dared the temple it killed the Red Masks it stole Nour from you from us from me it must break and bow and learn my mastery I have we have we not have we broken gods?

  Hush, hush, hush. She smiled at nothing. There were no priests to see, coward priests, more trouble than use in such a day. The search was going well, Zora thought, carefully. She had not found Nour, but he could not have been in any shape to run far. She would come to him, as they cut off the suburb, lane by lane, searching every inn and caravanserai, every shop and hovel. Temple guard made certain the folk knew what would come to them, if they dared open their doors again after they had been searched. The Lady would know, they said, and the Red Masks would return. Once the Red Masks had been in, with her divine blessing glowing in their unseen eyes, there was no danger any would be so foolish as to offer shelter to a fugitive. The terror of her divinity would make a man bar his door to his brother. Bar the pass to her brother, hold safe the east . . . Besides, the temple guard promised that any who did shelter wizards, whether scholars or caravan guards or tramp soothsayers, would burn. Praitans, too. Even the temple guard could execute Praitans, assassins who dared defy the Lady, to keep her from her own.
Poor Lilace. They had fired a Praitannec-owned warehouse over the body of its master and his servants when they first marched from the gates, a carefully calculated gesture. The Lady was merciful, but the Praitans had presumed too far upon her clemency. She was unhappy with Praitans, at present. She did not think of her beautiful champion, leading his mounted company of Red Masks east. She did not.

  Lane by lane, they moved through the suburb. The temple guard fought with a gang of caravaneers hiding a wizard in their centre. The caravaneers forced their way free, so she sent Red Masks to haul out the wizard and scatter in terror all who defied her. The temple guard were useless. Bully-boys who thought their lot in life was to accuse her folk of blasphemy and take bribes for overlooking it. Time they learned otherwise and earned their bread with their sweat and blood, yes. She sent more of them to seal off the perimeter within which the Red Masks searched, and hoped there would be more escape attempts to try them. Those wizards who tried to hide or to weave defences about the places they hid only revealed themselves as if they had lit a bonfire. She took eight, and then ten easily, though most were minor soothsayers, coin-throwers, and smoke-readers who barely understood their art and had not the strength to work any but the smallest spells, fools who told themselves they were not truly defying the decree of the Voice, because they were not wizards, but there was still half the suburb to search.

  The Red Masks were the twigs of her nest, woven close about her, and something ripped one away. She hissed and reached after it, but the remnants of its broken mind and soul flickered through her fingers like darting fish, minnows eluding a child’s snatching hand, and faded into nothing.

  Another. She felt each loss, as if her own nerves and sinews were being plucked away, and the pain of the loss burned. Kill it, kill my enemy, tear it from the world in turn. Zora shouted aloud in her rage, “Kill him!” and a householder already on his knees on the threshold of his workshop, a saddler who had opened his door willingly, was run through by a patrol-first of the guard.