by K V Johansen
“And these prophets they take and use, these prophets who die for them—”
“That is not their will. That is—their dreams and their nightmares, spilling into the souls of this land. Not their will. We will end it. We will end it soon.”
He felt Ahjvar stiffen at we.
“The gods and I,” he said, which probably did not help, though it separated him from them, a little. “I am whole,” he said. Words were too weak a thing to say what he meant. “I am myself. Always. Trust.”
Silence, and a long sigh. He did not think Ahjvar conceded anything, but the man let it go for the time, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “Good,” Ghu said, and that brought the shadow of a smile. It had been what Ahjvar called his talking to horses and idiots voice, though he hadn’t meant to sound so. “Are you hurt?” he thought to ask.
“Not so it matters.” Ahjvar flexed his shoulders and finally looked around. A deep breath. “Now what? Did your gods think of that? They’ll burn us out.”
“Not if we hold the whole of the castle.”
He moved away from the wall, only a step or two, and shrugged the ruin of Ahjvar’s coat away. The movement drew a tassel-helmeted banner-lord’s attention and the man bowed, and then they watched, seeing him again, all that upper chamber, and there was awe in their eyes. Not for him, please the gods, who had been there. It was surely Ahjvar who was the bright-burning alien thing in the room. But they did not see Ahjvar as Ghu did. Ahj was only a filthy foreign caravaneer stained with blood not his own. It was Ghu they saw. Only him. He had brought the gods to them. The dying man was gone, Liamin’s attention turned to the wounded she could help. Zhung man, confused, filled with sorrow in the presence of his gods. “Go,” he whispered wearily, as that ghost flew to him. “Safe journey, be free.”
Figure in the open door and Ahjvar put himself before Ghu again. It was an armoured banner-lady, her face smeared with soot, her helmet under her arm. No imperial badge on her helmet. None on any here, save for the dead. She dropped to her knees and, in the widening of her eyes, Ghu saw his godhead reflected. He was—too present, in this place. No hiding. Filthy, bloody caravaneer though he might seem to be.
“Holy one? Holy one, Lady Nang Lin sends me to say, we hold the gatehouse and the stable block, and the empress’s company of the barracks has surrendered. What will you have her do with them, she says? And men of my banner have the entry-hall of the castle and hold all the stairs for you, Zhung though they are. The Daro soldiers are freed from the cellars and armed. Lady Lin has set them to take back the castle ward by ward, gathering the Daro folk to them as they go. I am Lady Zhung Ti-So’aro and I swear myself and the soldiers of my following to the holy one and Lord Daro Korat under the true gods. And Lady Nang Lin says, is the Kho’anzi Daro Korat in good health, or will you have her act as your seneschal this day, to set all in order until you can make better provision?”
He caught himself before he asked, “Who?” Nang was a common Solan Province name. Maybe it was even Yeh-Lin’s own true clan. And she asked most circumspectly who commanded here, while taking charge herself. Doing only what he would have had to order done himself, if he had thought of it. To hold this room was not to hold the keep; to hold the keep was not to hold the castle.
Or Choa Province.
“The empress’s soldiers not of your own households, not trusted by you personally—disarm them,” he said. “Confine them. The Kho’anzi will take their oaths and yours, too. Later.”
It already was morning. He might know it, if a soldier meant his swearing, when he gave his hands to the Daro lord. He could weed out those already unfaithful in their hearts, set them to guarded tasks of rebuilding, maybe, whatever it was Yeh-Lin had burnt, or Zhung Musan before her, and the postern gate was broken open. . . . He should be there to see what she did, but he did not think he could walk down all those stairs now, and there was still the Kho’anzi to face. Lord Daro Korat, his master, who had papers to say Ghu was his chattel, seated now on the couch, his swollen foot propped on a cushion, white hair all cascading down in disorder, frowning at him, not in disapproval so much as puzzlement.
“They’ll swear to the holy one of the gods, their captains say,” Lady Ti-So’aro told him, “if it’s your will to show mercy, holy one. Lady Nang Lin sent that word too. They saw, we all saw, the great light that came upon the tower, as if the moon became a river and poured into it. It’s on you still, holy one.”
What?
Moon on fog. Maybe. Moon on fog and a yearning for some wrongness to be set right and done with. He did not think the Zhung warriors and imperial soldiery had been happy in their general. Though he would not put it past Yeh-Lin to have made some false wonder, to awe them. He would argue that with her later.
Faint pearly shadow lingered yet, in the corner of his eye when he moved.
“Later,” he said. “We will do all that must be done later. Tell Lady Nang Lin to do what I would have her do—” safe as he could make that command, “to hold the castle for the Kho’anzi and the gods, till he is recovered. Thank her. Thank you, Ti-So’aro.”
“My lord.” She bowed, on her knees.
“And stand up,” he added, in unreasonable irritation.
She rose to bow again, before she left him.
Thus he stole the castle from his master, and did anyone notice? Not the Kho’anzi. There was another came in, before he could cross to the old man. Horsemaster Yuro, looking awkward, head ducked a little like a dog expecting reprimand, cudgel in one hand and the other clasping that of the girl Willow. Willow, on her feet, was still in the grubby scant gown of the lowest scullion, bruised above the black scabbing of her cheek, but her skin was dry and her eyes clear. She did not let go to run to her grandfather, but jerked at Yuro’s hand and brought him forward, when the stable-master would have gone to his knees, the lord’s eye falling on him.
“Grandfather.” Willow bowed, most properly, but Lord Korat rocked to his feet and embraced her.
“Willow, my girl, Willow.” Whispering, as if a cry might blow the child away, show her to be nothing but a ghost. When Yuro would have stepped away to kneel, Daro Korat caught the horsemaster’s arm and pulled him close as well. “My boy,” he said. Yuro looked stricken.
Well. So. Ghu took a breath and crossed to them, with Ahjvar at his shoulder and the dogs to either side.
And the old man, clutching at Yuro to keep himself from falling, knelt. To him.
“Don’t.” No honorific came to his tongue, not with Ahjvar beside him, a knot of anger against not only gods but this feeble old man, but he caught at the Kho’anzi’s arm and steadied him to his feet again. A knob-jointed hand seized his sleeve, clutched him, staring close.
“Holy one. I dreamed of you. In all the nights, in the darkness, since the priests died, I have dreamed you were coming. . . .”
“That’s only three nights, Lord Korat,” Liamin murmured, edging close behind, reaching for him, not touching, but wanting to take him, to make him sit again. “You remember?”
The Kho’anzi frowned. “Yes, yes. Of course. But holy one, I know you . . . ?”
“It’s Ghu, my lord,” Master Yuro said. “One of my boys. The one who brought the white colt down from the sacred mountain after that spring storm? We’d thought the boy drowned, some years ago.” A sideways glance at Ghu. “He claims—”
The old lord never took his gaze from Ghu’s face, but his frown melted to a smile. “Ah! I knew that I knew you, holy one. And you were here among my folk?” He hobbled a step back and Liamin was there to take his elbow. He bowed, most formally. “Tell me what you will of me, and if I can, it will be done. How would the gods have me serve?”
Dernang. Choa. Castle, town, province. A road. South. The rebel prince, somewhere, and the wreckage of his army, his lords and his clerks and all. . . .
A questing coldness reached again for him, threads like cobweb, drifting on the wind, to cling.
Ghu brushed them away. They dri
fted back. A breath. A long exhalation, steadying himself. He was nothing, only the water and the mist off the river, nothing to see, nothing to touch, nothing to hold. An emptiness. But the lord watched him, wanting words.
“Make this place safe,” he said. “We start from here.” Remembered. “Make yourself known to your own folk again; the prisoners are freed. There’s a Zhung banner-lady, Ti-So’aro. She’ll swear herself and her retainers to you, she says. Fold her into your own folk; there was truth in her heart. She’s with—with my—” What was Yeh-Lin? And where? “My captain, Nang Lin. She’s taking the castle with the Daro soldiers Yuro freed.” Or has taken? “There’s a Zhung banner-lord. I don’t know his name.” His eye found the man, leaning wounded on one of his retainers. A nod. The man bowed low. The name came to him. “Zhung Ario. Others who serve the true gods.” Another thought. “No revenge on the Zhung and the empress’s soldiers. My lord, swear them to you if they will and if not, guard them. We can’t begin with the killing of those who’ve surrendered to us, with the murder of prisoners. We will not.”
Begin what? The Kho’anzi did not ask. Did he know himself? He was no longer certain. But there was an imperial army in the town still, and it would hold the roads and the border posts. He must learn the truth behind Meli’s vague and confused understanding; he must understand the shape of things. . . .
“We will do no murder,” Daro Korat said. His voice was firm now, however flushed his cheeks with fever. “Holy one . . .”
Ghu needed out of this room. He understood of a sudden how Ahj must feel, in a small closed space with people all around him crowding close, a weight of eyes and attention, crushing—and that reaching awareness found him again. It sought the presence of the river. He was only a man, and weary and battered. Only a man among the many here.
He was not.
The room seemed very unsteady around him. A ship, swaying deck. The walls were smoke. Or moving water. Ahjvar steadied him.
“Liamin.” The Kho’anzi transferred his grip to a startled Yuro’s arm. “Find my own chamber-servants, if they’re still among the living, or any of the household you trust. Have them tend the holy one.”
“I can’t sleep inside here, under this roof,” Ahjvar said abruptly, almost a whisper, desperate. “Ghu, they are too many, they keep moving. I can’t watch them all and I can hear—something’s burning.”
He touched Ahjvar’s hand for reassurance that he had heard the Praitannec murmur. “No, it is not, not inside here. There was a fire down towards the gates, but Y—but Lin will have dealt with it.” And was probably the one to have started it. Fire to frighten out those who held out against her. . . . Although the Kho’anzi was right; he craved rest and drink and food, and he was hardly the only one in such desperate need. He forced his dizziness away. No time. Ahjvar’s hands shook; his speech had been slow and slurring. He looked ready to fold to the floor.
“Some quiet chamber where the holy one will not be troubled. I don’t know . . .” The old man looked around the room, his expression baffled. “We can’t stay in here. None of us can stay in here.” The old man was too weak to sustain any authority for long, overwhelmed and undone. Someone needed to take thought for all that needed doing.
“Yes,” Ghu said. “You need to find some better place to rest, Lord Korat, and someone you can trust to order things in your name. Your house-master is traitor to you and may be dead.”
Already was dead. Murder done, hard on the heels of rumour that the Daros rose again. Willow clung to her grandfather’s side and Ghu was not feeling very forgiving. Other needs were more pressing. He gathered his thoughts again.
“Lord Korat, you’re ill. You can’t take thought for everything. Appoint your son your castellan.”
“My son,” Daro Korat said, softly, slowly, as if turning the words over, bringing them out into light and air.
“He can run these great stables, so he can run this castle. They’re not so different. Advise him yourself, and he’ll learn what he needs. I’ll want Lady Nang Lin elsewhere.”
“Yuro,” the Kho’anzi said. Closed his eyes a moment, ran a hand over his lips. “Yes.”
“My lord!” Yuro protested. “You can’t—”
“Do it, Yuro,” Ghu said flatly. “Because there are others less fit will be quick to put themselves in that place.” And the old man’s in no shape to resist them, he did not need to say, not to Yuro.
The stable-master gave him a long, considering look. Bowed to his father. “My lord.”
Daro Korat reached for him, took his arm to pull himself upright again.
“Witness,” he called, and—they were already the focus of all attention, but the silence deepened. “Witness all of you. This is my natural son, Daro Yuro, and so it will be set down in the records of the clan. I acknowledge and claim him, before you and the gods and the holy one of the gods.”
And so Yuro was freed. So simply. Words. Ink would make it lasting truth, ink, and the iron, and sick smell of seared skin.
Not in his Nabban that would be, no. Set it witnessed in the records of the Daros, for the law, for the clan, that Daro Korat acknowledged his son, yes. But the other, no. Here it ended. There would be no burning to prove the slave was freed.
No slave and free.
“He will hold the keys—someone find the keys; Zhung Musan’s man will have had them. I appoint Lord Yuro castellan of the White River Dragon, to order all as he sees fit and needful in my name. Further, I name him guardian to my granddaughter and heir Daro Willow should the Old Great Gods call me before Lady Willow’s majority, the gods and the Old Great Gods and the holy one of the gods being witness.”
Trust, indeed, to name one bastard of his blood guardian of the other. The child had seniority in the records of the clan, acknowledged from her birth, but—wise to confirm her his heir? That depended on Yuro.
The Kho’anzi let himself down again. Liamin frowned at Ghu.
“You look to the Kho’anzi,” he told her and Yuro both. “We’ll take care of ourselves. Castellan, send to Lady Nang Lin if there’s anything . . .” He waved a vague hand. “Ahj. Come.” Praitannec. “I want to find the devil.” And pass by the kitchens outside on the way to the north tower where he felt she now was, filch themselves a dish of cold barley or millet porridge and weak beer, of which there would be plenty, always, unless things were very much changed. He did not think any were going to deny him, or even his dogs. Not for godhead. For Ahjvar at his back.
“He’s right, though,” Ahjvar said. “You should sleep.”
“Not yet.” Keep moving now, or be washed over and drowned. “If you held the town, Ahj, and suspected the castle had been taken from within by the Daro Clan again—would you sit and wait?”
“No. We don’t even hold the castle yet.”
“Yeh-Lin will, soon enough.” She would have thrown down the bridges, surely, which it seemed Daro Korat never had done, either against his son, who had probably never pressed a siege, or against Zhung Musan. “But we’ll be besieged here so soon as whoever has command over the moat in Dernang realizes something is wrong.”
“Yes.”
“So. I need to talk to Yeh-Lin. Then we sleep, a little. Food first.”
“Not hungry.”
“You will eat.”
At one turn of the stairs, Ahjvar walked into the corner of a wall, as if vision failed him, though the light grew with the morning. Nacrous mist still trailed in the corner of Ghu’s eye, in the shadows. Illusion of his weariness, trickery of Yeh-Lin’s—he did not believe that. Last breath of the goddess? Folk of the castle, slave and free, huddled whispering behind doors, with furtive scuttlings, always out of sight behind or before them, as rumour ran on slippered feet. Runners passed them, boys and girls wide-eyed with wonder and fear relieved. Soldiers, a lord, a lady with them, held vital points—stairways, the central halls. Daro soldiers, ragged and soiled with imprisonment. Zhung sitting weaponless, under guard, commoners and banner-ranked and their esquires
together in the great hall. Many had cast off their helmet-badges, but prudent to disarm them anyway. The floor was bloodstained, but the bodies had already been carried away.
“Holy one . . .”
A whisper in the air, a susurration of voices, a thought.
“Holy one—?” Movement out of the shadows of a square pillar, and Ahjvar slammed past him. Ghu flung himself sideways, shoulder into Ahjvar’s swordarm. Supplicant, groping—blind, he realized now, having registered only the empty hands as Ahjvar had reacted. The man fell, colliding with them. Ahjvar froze where he was, arm pinned against the pillar, breathing hard.
No soldier. The man wore the simplest of court robes, three layers and fine blue leaf-printed cotton outermost, dishevelled, sashless and all unfastened. Some amulet or badge swinging on a bright chain. His cap had fallen from his balding head and the thin bun of greying hair at the nape of his neck was straggling loose. Wounded. The white tunic of his underclothing was bloodstained over the left breast, but Ahjvar had not touched him.
Ghu wasn’t sure he dared remove his weight from Ahjvar to take the groping hand of the fallen man.
Fallen wizard. Plum Badge rank, second of the five. Above a mere diviner, but no powerful worker, more likely to be a scholar. That was knowledge he did not think he had possessed even a few days ago. The hand found his foot, gripped, and the man bowed his head over Ghu’s boot. “Holy one,” he whispered again. “Forgive me, forgive me, I didn’t know.”
Ahjvar dragged a breath almost as near a sob as the crouching wizard’s and jerked away from them both.
“Outside,” he said in Praitannec. “Ghu—”
“I know. It’s all right, Ahj, just—just put up your sword and wait. You, Nang Kangju—” the name was there in his mind—“Stand up.”
“I didn’t know it was you, I didn’t know you were come. I knew it must be a lie, when they said the gods were dead and the empress had become the goddess of the land, but I was afraid to speak. Even when they killed the priests, I was afraid to speak, and I knew I shamed the gods, but I did not speak. I did not know, forgive me . . .”