Gods of Nabban

by K V Johansen

Death, death, death. He screams the word after them as they leave him.

  The hangover, when the delirium leaves him, will be worse. He has discovered, though, that if he can manage to vomit, it will not be so bad as it can be. Perhaps this is why the wizards so often die; they have not learned this secret.

  He wishes he could give up and simply die, but there is something in him that is angry, too angry, the ghost of the man who carried messages in coded books for Prince Dan and his rebels, the man whose deep-buried anger remembers that he is Dwei Kaeo and a free man before the gods, a child of Nabban, a soul that cannot be owned.

  He is Dwei Kaeo. He always has been. The gods know it.

  And in the nightmares, sometimes, he can find a place of quiet. In the distance he will see a rider, a white horse, and banners, blue like the sky, black like the night.

  He wakes from those dreams broken and sobbing, bruises burning, scabs cracked and bleeding again, and all the scars of his torture aching and pulling. He weeps because he is alone and his god is gone into dreams and he does not know when the empress will send for him again, to torment and poison him and open the way again for that briefest of glimpses of his god.

  He hungers for the oily bitterness of the tea.

  CHAPTER XIII

  It seemed to Ghu that for Ahjvar, the days rapidly faded again into a haze of dreaming, a confusion of wind and snow, cold and stone. The divination had woken some sleeping fear, torn some half-scabbed scar of the soul, Ghu thought. He should never have asked it of him. Maybe what Ahjvar had foreseen walked too closely with what had been, or he had read it so and sent the underlayer of his mind down that path again. Maybe, Ahj said himself, on one of his good days—when he was speaking, when the words were not too great a weight to deliver and he was capable of seeing and reacting to the world around him—it was only that the tide of his madness turned to flood again, its ebbtime over.

  “You aren’t mad,” Ghu said, which only stopped him speaking again. He was as bad as when they had first set out for the east, or worse. Even Ghu found he began to have doubts Ahjvar could find his way back. When, after half a month more of blurring cold and wind and hunger, the land rose in a day to softer hills and there was turf beneath the thin skin of snow, Ahjvar did not at first seem to understand the desert passage was over. He did not react to the flock of brown and white ground-pigeons that went up in a great wing-clapping cloud from feeding among the grass-seeds—Ahj, who, like the leopard of his sword’s hilt, wild and wary predator, had twitched to every movement and possibility of threat.

  Ghu had his sling out and felled five of them in as many breaths.

  Denanbak was the name of this country, a land of small gods and summer-nomad herders who pastured their herds on the hills, while related tribes tilled the green, better-watered valleys to the east. A folk he knew, not Nabbani, but kin, maybe, coarser-boned and lighter-skinned than Praitan-folk or most Nabbani, and free. Their own gods still lived and they owned no emperor, rarely even cast up a paramount warlord to unite them. Traders, familiar neighbours, enemies old in history, who sold their fleeces, horses, and camels, as well as mutton on the hoof, in the market of Dernang. Almost home. He felt it not with any gladness; Nabban was a weight pulling him down, his return an icy slope he could not climb again. They turned to the southeast. The camels’ humps were going slack, the dogs ribby, and Ahj, Ahj was grey, sunken-eyed. His hands shook, and he stumbled like an old man at uneven ground. They should have gone seeking the winter settlements of the Denanbaki to buy provisions, but “Do we need to?” he had asked, low-voiced. “Just keep going. Go where you need to be. No people. I don’t want people.” A mistake, maybe, to listen to Ahjvar then, to let his unreasoning fears grow, but Ghu suggested it again a few days later and was sworn at, which meant nothing, but there was fear in his eyes. . . .

  Meat. There were the ground-feeding pigeons, hare and pheasants on the hills, and a gazelle would feed them for several days, sparing more peas and barley for the camels. He took the crossbow himself to bring down a gazelle, since when they crossed the trail of the herd Ahjvar was having one of his bad days and better left wrapped up by the fire, staring unseeing at nothing, with Jiot to watch him. The good meat revived him, for a little, and put flesh on the dogs’ bones.

  Here, the desert gnawed the edge of the land, and the wind blew bitter and biting out of the northwest, a constant whistle in the ears, stinging with desert dust and sometimes a fine, hard snow. In the kinder seasons, the chieftains of the land would no doubt watch the road more closely, to claim tolls of the caravan-masters and also to prevent their poaching the chieftain’s game. He had never met a lord yet of any folk who did not think the deer of the hills his own. They wandered far from the braided ruts of the caravan road, taking a twisting way that kept them remote from the winter villages, whose sod-built houses were dug half into the hillsides, so that from a distance it seemed the earth was smoking.

  A caravan passed them, keeping to the road, the one that had dogged their heels through the desert. He thought of trying to persuade Ahjvar of the wisdom of overtaking it, joining it for the last leg. It would be a way to get themselves past the border legitimate and accounted for, set down on paper as caravaneers of a gang. But he did not think any caravan-master was likely to be more pleased by Ahjvar now than they had been in Porthduryan, so he let them go. It would likely have meant an argument with Ahj, anyway. The border was going to be a problem. Wanderers did not just wander in without giving some good account of themselves. There were other ways, smugglers’ ways, high and dangerous ways . . . they would have to abandon the camels. Well, it could be done, when the time came. He would find a way. Every ridge and fold and tree of the god’s mountain seemed to be held in his mind, when he sat silent and listened for it.

  In less than a fortnight’s travelling, in which Ghu knew they were spotted twice, once by children driving cattle along a snowy ridge and once by a hunting party, they came, on the road itself rather than shadowing it, to where a great hogsback hill rose against the southern sky. The caravan road curled around it to the east, crossing an avenue of broken pillars. Ruined walls and snow-filled hollows spread out about the skirts of the hill and halfway up its terraced slopes, where the snow drifted against hard angles of stone. The crest of the hill was bare of any sign of human working, save for the stump of what must have been a tower, a broken ring of great stone blocks, with bushes growing from the joins and thick-girthed poplars inside.

  “Letin,” Ghu said. It must be. There could not be so many ruined cities on the road, and that meant they were very near the border, two days, maybe, or three, at their current pace. But he had known as much by the way the land lifted and by the low mountains, which made a ragged wall to the south.

  Ahjvar made an effort and looked around, flinched when he looked at Ghu, who had a split lip from last night’s dreaming. It ached in the cold, and the scab broke and bled when he spoke, and how did he make that better for Ahjvar?

  “What’s Letin?”

  Words. Words were good.

  “Godless Letin, they call it, in a song we still sing in the north of Nabban. It was a great city where the queen of all Denanbak was wed to the god, but the devil Dotemon duelled and slew him, sword to sword, in fire and thunder and the breaking of the sky. The tower of his worship fell. He was the paramount god of Denanbak and the queen the overlord of all the chieftains and all the tribes, so Nabban took Denanbak and made it a province of the empire. There was a hero united all the tribes again and drove Nabban out during the rule of Yeh-Lin’s grandson, a descendant of the last queen, maybe, but we don’t sing songs about that.” He chuckled. “Probably the Denanbaki do.”

  No folk dwelt there now. It had the emptiness of utter desertion. When they followed the pillared avenue towards what might once have been the city’s heart, they found that good water still welled up from a broken fountain, oozing over its own mound of ice to fill a stone-curbed pool. It flowed away down a channel overhung with bu
sh-willow and red dogwood and dead reeds, bridged with occasional slabs of stone, all that was left of some culvert through the city.

  “Camp here,” Ghu decided, though it was little past noon and usually they would only stop to rest the camels a while, before going on into the dusk. “It should be safe enough. Let the camels forage. You can rest. I’ll hunt.”

  Ahjvar didn’t argue. Ghu didn’t expect he would; too much effort. They offloaded the camels, working in silence, one to each side. Ghu let them wander free of hobble or picket and they headed for the bushes along the broken culvert. Don’t fall in and break a leg, he wished them, but it was mostly eroded to a slope-banked stream now, nature taking back the course it had followed before ever a city grew at the god’s feet.

  That was the emptiness he felt; not that the people were gone, but the god.

  He cleared snow, sent Ahjvar with the axe to cut branches, and built a lean-to in one of the hollows, in the corner of two walls below the wind.

  “Make a fire,” he said. “Make tea. Sleep. Stay warm. I’ll be back by dusk, and I’ll leave Jiot to keep watch.”

  Ahjvar just watched him, kneeling on the floor of brush he had made in the shelter. As if the words made no sense, as if Ghu suddenly spoke Denanbaki or some tongue of Pirakul, sound without meaning.

  “Ahj . . .” He dropped down by him, helpless, hurting so badly.

  Ahjvar touched the swollen corner of Ghu’s mouth. That hurt, too.

  “It’s all right,” Ghu said.

  “It isn’t.”

  “I was tired. I wasn’t fast enough to wake.”

  “Old Great Gods . . .” Ahjvar bowed his head to Ghu’s shoulder, shaking. “I am damned. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  “Hush.” Ghu held him, tight against his shivering, rocking him. “You’ll find a way out. You will. We will. Remember the desert, before the badlands? You were better in the desert. You will be better again. You will come through this.”

  “What if I don’t?” That was a whisper, a breath.

  Ghu didn’t need to answer. He pressed his face to Ahjvar’s hair and thought, not yet, not now, and let him go when Ahj sat back on his heels, eyes shut, hands fisted on his knees.

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “No.” Ahjvar opened his eyes, swiped a palm over his face. “Go,” he said hoarsely. “Go. Don’t get yourself taken for poaching. I’m in no state to talk you out of some angry chieftain’s stronghold peaceably.”

  “Yes, Ahj. Ahj . . .”

  “What?”

  He caught up Ahjvar’s hands. A tremor in the right. In the cold, scars were blanched dead white against the brown. He raised the hands and kissed them, and left Ahj kneeling there. A sharp whistle brought Jui to his side. Ghu headed down the watercourse, gathering pebbles as he went. Jiot remained without a word needed, lying alert in the sun.

  Ghu was gone, and the silence heavy. Wind over the stones. A distant raven. A flock of grey juncos flitted and twittered into the brush and weeds rooted along the edge of the fountain, taking flight again when Jiot, lying atop the wall, turned his head to watch them.

  Cold. Ahjvar got to his feet, stiff as if every year he had lived lay on his body. Fire, Ghu had said, but he didn’t think fire would warm him. One word, three maybe. Let me die. All he need say to end this, to end everything. He could still feel the touch of Ghu’s lips against his hands, still a smear of blood on the right. He pressed that angrily to his own mouth, going out into the sunlight, taking his shield from the baggage, climbing up to a broad plateau and into the harsh wind. Jiot followed, chose another stone. The dun dog turned his head into the wind, sniffing, alert, but after a moment settled and lay down again. The camels browsed unconcerned among the bushes away below, eating with determination. Ghu and the white and grey dog were already lost to sight in some fold of the land.

  Ahjvar stripped to his shirt, laying his coats, sheepskin and camel-woollen, on a bare patch of wall. Jiot, being a dog of good sense, immediately moved over to lie on them.

  He drew his sword and, slowly at first, set himself to work through all the practice-patterns of his long-dead boyhood sword-masters, as he had so rarely since leaving Sand Cove. It hadn’t seemed to matter, when the sword was no longer his first weapon and he had thought he was riding to a final death. Again, and yet again, until he had trampled a great circle in the snow, like a courting grouse’s dancing ground, and was soaking in sweat, folly in this land and season, aching in muscles that had not been so driven since they took to this road. It was something to do. He thought it might shut his mind away, but it did not. No stillness here, no peace.

  Better he were dead. Better dead than dangerous as a mad dog. Better dead than casting divinations that warned so vaguely of doom and forces they had already survived more by chance than any power of their own—if he could be said to have survived, useless as he was.

  Yew and pine. Death and the Old Great Gods. The devils and hope. Betrayal, the berried holly of battle, peace and peace unmade.

  Did he tell Ghu anything he did not already know, or only confirm it? Confirm something Ghu wanted denied. His simpleton boy was foresighted. He had known that much years ago.

  Ghu should be seeking a shaman of this land if he wanted a true divination for the shape of his return to Nabban, not the wreckage Ahjvar had become. He was no wizard to put trust in. He never had been. If anything, it was the king’s champion that the heir of Nabban would need, and not a damned sick and broken madman and self-doubting wizard who cried out at dreams that had no power over him—no power over him, burn that into his heart—and struck out witless at his bedmate.

  Friend.

  Whatever.

  Ghu was peace, yes. A stillness he could hide in. Useless, to be a child and hide, loathing himself, to let someone else ward him against the world and the screaming in his own mind.

  He could try, at the least, to be a king’s swordsman again. And maybe exhaust himself to the point the body would sleep, deeper than dreaming could reach.

  Ghu brought down a pair of cock pheasants so intent on their rivalry he could almost have walked up to take them by hand as they danced and strutted with the first stirrings of spring in their blood, but he kept going after that, the birds hanging at his shoulder, for all it felt an effort to put one foot ahead of the other. Jui flushed a hare. He added that to his catch. Two men and two dogs to feed, and he wanted to make good time the coming day. Something was making him edgy, the dead city, maybe, or . . . he couldn’t say what. He wanted to be out of this naked land. He wanted mountains, trees, white water over stones. This land was too quiet, and he began to feel he moved across it a bright and alien thing, out of place, a glitter of forces that did not belong. Kingfisher-bright against the snow, to senses that could see. Something watched. In his own land he might be a quieter thing. You didn’t see the kingfisher in the woods for all its brilliant blue.

  The wind gusted wildly about him, snow rising in a sudden flurry, a whirlwind. Jui set up a great outraged barking, leaping as if a taunting crow circled him.

  She plunged from the sky in a swirl of colour, peacock-blue and green, red and brown. High boots and red leather leggings, short gown of quilted silk brocade, a confusion of bright flowers wrapped tight with a broad embroidered sash. Incongruous Praitannec plaid blanket worn over her shoulder, Praitannec plaid scarf about her neck, and her sword on her back. The scarlet tassel of its hilt tangled with her black hair loose and long, streaming like a banner in the wind that still gusted around her. Her face was all elegance—high cheekbones, deep brown eyes, warm complexion. A little taller than he. Perfection of beauty. He loved beauty, could see it in even those, man or woman, the world called plain, but she left him cold.

  “Dotemon.” He did not reach for his knife.

  “Nabban.” The devil, the usurping empress of Nabban, the conqueror of Denanbak and Dar-Lathi, north and south, bowed with full and formal mockery. “Yeh-Lin, please.”

  “What are you doi
ng here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “I thought you took oath to Deyandara. Broken so soon?”

  Yeh-Lin shrugged, and waved a languid hand. The captive wind settled and died away. Jui had retreated behind Ghu’s legs, where he grumbled softly.

  “She doesn’t need a tutor any longer. She’s betrothed to the king and gone to the bards. I told her I wanted to go to you and she released me. Here I am.”

  “We don’t want you.”

  “We? Catairlau is with you still?”

  “His name is Ahjvar.”

  “He should have died. I thought you were going to take him from his goddess and let him go. It was for that I put his mad goddess to sleep in the earth.” A red ember woke in her eyes. “You did not leave him walking this world with that hungry thing still in him.”

  “Hyllau I destroyed. Ahjvar is free.”

  “He can’t be free. He is—”

  “I know what he is. He knows what he is. He comes with me by his own will and I will let him go when he wills it. And you will not touch him, Dotemon, or Nabban will see you into a grave there will be no escaping.”

  Wind raised snow about them, snapped at her hair.

  “This is not Nabban,” the devil said, and did not step away, but he saw it—almost she had.

  “Ask him what he wants, if you doubt me.”

  The fire he had seen faded. She did take a step back, to bow again, no mockery this time. “I do not think you would lie to me, Nabban, or to him. Young fools, the pair of you. Is he even sane?”

  “He’s—better. Sometimes.”

  “Poor fools. Take care not to damn him before the Old Great Gods. They’re jealous of what they’ve marked as their own.”

  “The dead, you mean? He isn’t. He may have died, but he lives and breathes and bleeds and keeps his soul. As do you.”

  “I am not under discussion.” She shrugged. “Even I have no idea what to call him, truly.” Her lips curled up. “But ‘dead king’ does annoy him so.”