Gods of Nabban

by K V Johansen

  He had shouted. Hadn’t woken Ghu. That, at least. Let him sleep. His throat was raw with some cry, with rising bile, and he gagged on the stink of burning. No fire. Not real. No death. He sweated and shivered and simply lay down where he was.

  He could still feel her under his hands, feel her weight, always, every day. Lifting her, how cold she had become, by the time he had dug her grave on the hilltop by the hawthorn, and her ghost was gone, gone, the hag left no ghosts. . . . He began retching again, pushed himself to hands and knees and crawled back to the tree. Narrow-bladed knife in his hand. The edge sliced flesh of his arm with hardly any pressure. In the past he had tried a knife under his own ribs, more than once; the curse wouldn’t let him go so easily and he didn’t mean to try it now, but the blade was cold and real, the blood hot, welling up, trickling down into his palm. The pain only a dull ache among others, not enough. He felt himself falling, pulled, hands on him—

  No. Sank the knife in the earth, drew his knees up, and sat huddled.

  Couldn’t go on this way. Couldn’t.

  Leave Ghu alone at the mercy of his gods, with only the devil his friend.

  “You know you dream. You need to learn it in bone and blood and heart. You need to understand it in your dreams, so that they are no longer real when you dream them.”

  Yeh-Lin sat down by him. Ahjvar lifted his head. She stretched out her legs, crossing her ankles. Hadn’t heard her approach. The dogs hadn’t barked any warning. She’d changed her appearance once more, a woman in her prime again, long hair black as Ghu’s, but smooth and sleek as silk in the moonlight.

  He’d been waiting for moonrise. Only a silver sickle, now. Scant light, but she seemed to gather it to herself. His forearm throbbed where he had cut it.

  “I know that.”

  “You know. So you say. You don’t seem to understand what it means. Listen to me. Knowing is not enough. You need to learn to feel it in your bones. Maybe he needs to leave you to dream, to find your own way out.”

  Had they not had this conversation before? Maybe he had dreamed that.

  “What good did that do?” By the churning of the mould, it had been no swift waking. He had fought—nothing. Scrabbling like a man in a fit. Because there had been no one within reach. Time enough to hurt someone, oh yes. Time enough to kill. It had gone on until his own choking pulled him back.

  “At least you did wake.”

  He had feared he might not, that some echo of the hag’s nighttime killing might take him over forever, if Ghu were not there to pull him back. So yes, he could be thankful that at least he had woken.

  “Dead king, do you want to die?”

  “Are you offering to kill me?” His voice rasped, raw and weary. Kill him. The devil likely could, at that. The Lady hadn’t managed it, for all she had slain a goddess. Hadn’t understood what she dealt with, that was all. Dotemon, however, knew.

  She chuckled. “Your young god has made threats of what he will do to me, should I do so. I have no wish to make him act on them. No, I am not offering to unmake you. I am merely asking what you want. And you are not answering, dead king.”

  “Will you stop calling me that? My father was king. My brother—my son was king. I was a few hours between them.”

  “But all the songs will have it the day of the three kings. Two is so . . . un-Praitannec. Unsatisfying as poetry. I notice you are still not answering.”

  “I thought you were going to take Dernang.” He should have been angrier that she trailed after them and did not busy herself with whatever it was Ghu had set her to do, but he was too exhausted for anger now. He should have been afraid.

  “Dernang is mine. I do as I am bidden. I think you will find my method to have been—amusing. You do know you are followed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Be wary. The wizard is Bamboo rank. See how I watch over your former shield-bearer? And over you. Are you not fortunate? Your young god takes my empire, which I could reach out my hand and reclaim, and I serve him most faithfully as he does so. So—is it that you will not leave him, or is it that you fear the road?”

  No, he did not fear the road to the Old Great Gods. Only he was so mortally weary, and the way was so long, and his burden so great. . . . To be lost on the way in his torment. To fail, and fall, and lie forever in nightmare, dead and trapped and unending . . . a hell he inhabited already. That, he feared.

  Hyllau’s oblivion had been mercy, whatever Ghu thought.

  Yeh-Lin was a warm pressure against his side, too close and yet—a comfort. When had she become a friend? “Still no answer? Tell me, what do you want of him?”

  “Nothing. Death.” No. Nothingness. To end. For pain to end. For Ahjvar who had been the Leopard, who had been so many other names, and in the beginning of all Catairlau, for Catairlau to end, simply end.

  “He was angry once when I called you that. Your name is Ahjvar, he said.” She answered thought, not speech.

  “Catairlau is long dead.”

  “So are you. Or you should be.”

  He remembered burning. Remembered seeing his own hands, black crust and white bone. Seeing with eyes that should have been shrivelled and blind.

  “Fire is warmth and life, too. Light in the darkness.”

  You drew me like a fire, Ghu had said, after the battle at the Orsamoss. Ghu was not fire. He was deep, clean, quiet water; he was the peace in the darkness of the night; he was warm silence. I wanted to be some light in your darkness.

  And he had left Ghu sleeping alone, without fire or warmth or watch. Alone, maybe, always. Doomed to godhead.

  “This is a dream.”

  “You think so? Do you have so much imagination, to dream me? Imagine you can change your dreams, then. Kiss me.”

  He turned his head to stare. “Why?” That put his face far too close to hers, almost nose to nose as she watched him with a wry smile, but pride wouldn’t let him flinch away then. She knew it, too.

  “To prove you can.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Yeh-Lin looked away. “What honour do you do your lover’s memory, letting the faintest hint of desire make you ill, making her a horror you carry with you, a corpse lying between you and any passion you might find? What of her life, her love, her courage—what she dared, to fight with her human wizardry against the god-bound ghost that rode you? What of her joy in you?”

  “I shouldn’t ever have let myself be near her.”

  “No. That, you should not have done. But you did, and there was a good time, before the end. Do you even remember her, Miara, in herself? Or is all that is left of her what you have made of her, a horror to yourself? Is that justice to her memory?”

  “No.” Very quietly.

  “So. So kiss me. Great Gods above, I am Yeh-Lin the Beautiful and I should not have to beg. I am not used to begging.”

  “Beg away,” he growled.

  “Or is it that you prefer your women older?” She glanced at him sidelong, grey streaks running back from her temples, the laugh-lines crinkling about her eyes and mouth.

  There should not be light to notice such things. He shrugged and shifted sideways a handspan or so, couldn’t summon the energy to move further.

  “Ahjvar.” So quietly. Yeh-Lin knelt up facing him, put a hand on his chest. He clenched his jaw, trapped and not going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him jerk away like a dog from a blow. “Do think on what you want, what you need from him. You are a weight on him, a burden of his own choosing, yes, but all Nabban falls on him and he needs either his champion at his back to help him bear it, or to be free of ghosts. Your ghosts. You.”

  Racing pulse, drumming in his ears. He could hurl her away. He had moved so that the knife pressed against his hip, and he was hardly unarmed, besides. He held himself still.

  “Tell your own ghosts they are dreams. They are dead and gone. They are a sickness of your own mind. Tell Miara, she is dead and gone to the Old Great Gods—”

  But the hag
had fed—

  “Don’t! She is free and gone, beyond pain, beyond reach of hurt, beyond any saving or damnation and whatever came to her soul, all that is of her in this world is what you carry. Do you want that memory to be the manner of her death, or her life and her valiant heart? Start there. Tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” His voice croaked.

  “Tell me she lived. She loved. She was beautiful.”

  He swallowed. Took her hand, carefully, off his chest. But her fingers folded around his, very lightly, and he made himself not pull away, as Yeh-Lin sat back on her heels, facing him. Let himself hold her hand. “Tell me.”

  “She wasn’t, really.”

  “Tell me who she was.”

  “She—she served in the queen’s hall, when she was younger. Not the first of the royal wizards, but not the least. But when her husband died and her sons were grown Miara went to the hills. She belonged on the hills. She liked the silences, and the wind. She tamed hawks and flew them. She didn’t take them from their nests, she coaxed them from the sky, wild birds, and they hunted for her. . . .”

  He could see her. Plain, broad-faced, blue-grey eyes. A woman with her brown hair greying and in a long and wind-ravelled plait. Grinning at him, triumphant, having got a red-tail to settle on his arm a moment, for all the corrupted taint of him. Laughing at his pleasure in her joy, in this place on the hills where for a little the cities and the work he found there to keep the hag quiescent and fed could be forgotten, almost.

  Only ever almost.

  “Remember her truly, now. If you are dreaming now, think: you dream her truly.” Yeh-Lin touched his face. Wet. Tears, or dew. Sitting out in the cold night, grappling ghosts. “Look at me. I am not the Lady. I am not Tu’usha. One woman is not another. One devil is not another. One love is not another. If I am only your dream, I can do you no harm, and if I am not, I will not, I say it. Do you need to be afraid?”

  There was a fire within her. It was not his nightmare, his memory of burning, of Hyllau burning; it was the devil’s soul, a flicker in her eyes. The Lady had burned so.

  “I am not the Lady, Ahjvar, and you are stronger than she ever was. For all of her, and Hyllau, and your viciously foolish goddess, you are unbroken yet.”

  He leaned abruptly forward and did kiss her, with his heart racing too fast and not from any arousal of desire. She put her hands, not about him—he stiffened and almost pulled away when she moved—but only on his shoulders. What she made that kiss was neither chaste nor brief, but her lips and tongue were sweet and careful. When finally she pulled away from him, smiling, he was most definitely . . . not without any arousal of desire.

  “There,” she said. “Now I have something worth dreaming of, to keep me warm tonight, if Nabban’s tasks allow me any time for sleep. You—I could wish it so for you as well, but I doubt it. This is the best you’ll allow yourself.”

  “Now you’ll say you are a dream after all?” Amused in spite of himself. Annoyed, too, as if he were the butt of a joke and could not quite see how.

  “I claim nothing. Certainly not you. But dead king, you should not kiss someone so if you don’t mean it.”

  “I shouldn’t!”

  She laughed at him again.

  “Tell your ghosts they are dreams and you are done with them. Teach yourself to wake; learn to make some truth in your dreams. Find your way out of the fire, or go to find your road. Choose. Choose soon, for young Nabban’s sake.” She tugged him to her by the collar of his ragged shirt and kissed him again, on the cheek this time, sisterly. Pressed her face to his a moment, hair sliding soft and scented, oddly, of gorse and thyme like the hills of southern Praitan, clean and homely, before she stood up, a mist he had not seen arise eddying about her. He turned his head to watch her going, but she was not there.

  The thin moon was climbing through the trees, trailing scarves of cloud. He could still feel the devil’s mouth on his, warm and soft and insistent, and his eyes had that hot, swollen feeling. A man might shed tears in his dreams. A change, to dream of kissing the damned devil, to dream a kiss that was not a horror. It still heated him. But what put those words in her mouth? A bard, a wizard grown old enough to be wise might say she spoke the thoughts that he, waking, could not shape; that he counselled himself.

  Ahjvar did not trust that he had come to any wisdom yet, but of a sudden sleep was heavy on him, and did not seem worth fearing. He curled up where he was and dreamed again of wizardry brushing at the edges of his mind, though it was the cold that woke him. Chilled to the bone and shivering in a grey and drizzling morning, though he was under both the blanket and Ghu’s coat. Ghu himself was sitting where Yeh-Lin—where he had dreamed Yeh-Lin had sat, with Ahjvar’s sword beside him, turning that discarded knife in his hands.

  He dropped it point down by Ahjvar’s face when he saw him stirring, and got to his feet, sweeping up his coat. “Idiot. What good will taking a cold do?” He sounded—angry.

  Ghu walked off without waiting for Ahjvar to gather himself up. Dry brown blood crackled and flaked away as he flexed his hand. Ah. Ahjvar rubbed away what traces he could, too late. The cut on his forearm was scabbed black and healing. Nothing to do about the stained sleeve. Wash it when he could, but that shirt would really be better off decently buried. The fresh stain on the arm was the least of it. He caught up back where they had first camped, found the horses lipping up a last trace of spilled grain. The man at the foaling pasture had sent them off with more than bad beer, obviously.

  “Eat,” Ghu said. “Don’t feed the dogs. They’ve been hunting zokors. They’ll do.”

  Whatever those were. He took a stale bun and the flask of water Ghu passed him, ate in silence, watching while Ghu bridled and saddled the horses, moving about them with quiet efficiency. Still Ahjvar’s groom, halfway to godhead or not.

  “Ghu? This holy place of your god—much farther?”

  Ghu turned from cinching the bay’s girth, stood scratching the horse’s cheek. “Late afternoon, maybe, if we don’t push it. Before evening, anyway. Up above the trees.”

  “Do you need me?”

  “Ahjvar—”

  “I’d rather—just wait. Here. Somewhere. Quiet. Alone.”

  A long, long silence, then. The bay turned his head against the motionless hand. “Swajui,” Ghu said at last. “Nobody goes up to the Father’s sanctuary on the mountain, unless they’re called. Not even the priests. I would have taken you regardless. But Swajui is the Mother’s place here on the mountain. The name’s for the shrine and sanctuary both.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “A shrine—people go there. They went for the healing waters and the counsel and prayers of the priests, but the sanctuaries are the holy places of the gods, places for the gods alone. I don’t know what you’ll find at the shrine of Swajui. It—hurts. Even to think of it, it hurts. I don’t think you should go there. There are none living left. I think it was burnt. But that wasn’t the Mother’s sanctuary. If you go higher, go up to the pines where the cold springs rise, that’s the true holy place, the Wild Sister’s own. The priests went there. Folk did, sometimes. Called, or seeking her in solitude. I don’t think Zhung Musan’s soldiers went so far. The shrine was enough for them. Visible and known. There’s nothing to show the holiness of the sanctuary, to folk that don’t know it or can’t recognize it. If you can’t recognize it, you can’t find it, I suppose.” Another long look. “You’ll know. Wait for me there.”

  “Your goddess won’t want me there. Gods don’t.”

  “She’s gone, Ahj. She—died, I suppose. As we took the castle.”

  “Ah, Ghu.”

  “Go to the sanctuary of Swajui. Go up to the pines. I’ll find you there. A day, a few days, I don’t know. Wait for me.”

  They rode slowly, as if, for all Ghu’s urgency to flee the castle—and it had felt like flight, Ahjvar thought now—he was reluctant at the last. The drizzle gave way to a damp wind, but the clouds did not thin. Despite the gre
y day, the birds were loud with spring song. Once a swarm of sandy-furred monkeys went leaping, almost flying, away overhead through the upper branches of the barren trees, exciting the dogs, but Ghu called them back before they could launch themselves into the forest. Ahjvar dropped behind, watching the trail they had ridden, but the grey woods covered all the winding, climbing, plunging track.

  Prickling unease. Neither Ghu, nor the dogs nor horses, seemed to feel it. He wondered, though, if he would really dream vague and subtle spells pressing against him. He never had before. Subtlety was not a notable feature in his nightmares.

  Ghu reined in after perhaps three wandering miles; they had been riding along a ridge like some hunched spine of stone, but ahead it entered a narrow place, overhung with stone and trees. Another track branched away, plunging down to the west.

  “Here,” he said quietly, pointing to the left. “That goes to the shrine of Swajui. The main road to the shrine comes up from Dernang; we came east of that, through the greater hills. From the shrine, there’s a path that climbs north. Steep and twisting. Nothing to mark it from any other forest trail, but it follows a stream. You’ll know it, I think. Ahjvar . . .”

  “Better you face your god without dragging me along.”

  “Don’t—” But whatever Ghu meant to say he thought better of. Held out an open hand, letting the words go. Urged Snow on into the narrow defile. Halted, though, before the first turn that would have taken him out of sight, looked back. “Talk to the horse,” he called. “Use his name.”

  “I don’t speak Denanbaki.”

  “Try Nabbani, Praitannec—Evening Cloud doesn’t care.” A flashing grin, a nod like a salute, and he was gone. The dogs lingered, watching Ahjvar.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t need nursemaiding. Scram. Go with Ghu.”