by Sarah Zettel
No one sane, they said, would go near the place. The village had paid a sorcerer to go in and exorcise the spirit, but the man had been found the next day sprawled on the road in a stupor, his red hair turned stark white.
Which told Sakra plainly that the “sorcerer” had been one of the many charlatans who made their living off the credulous in Isavalta, although he said nothing of that to his hosts. He just went quietly to the house and opened the way to the Land of Death and Spirit for the unhappy ghost so that her gods and her husband could come for her. Then, he’d moved what belongings he had into the empty dwelling, coming and going at night. It was a rude home, with only two rooms beside the tower and a peasant’s furnishings, but it was secure and that was what he required.
Now he squatted before his hearth, striking sparks from his flint and steel and trying not to shiver. Outside, the sound of Captain Nisula’s departing escort faded into the twilight. Nisula had left him with the promise that he would be in port for another week should Sakra have need of him. Sakra had thanked him, and at the same time hoped there would be no such need.
At last the tinder of wood shavings and pine needles caught and Sakra sat back on his heels, feeding twigs to the red-gold flames and watching them grow to reflect off the pots and kettles stacked beside the hearth. The familiar sight soothed him, clearing his mind for calm thought, for which he was grateful. He had a long night’s work ahead of him.
Sakra laid a split log on the fire and watched the flames curl around it. Satisfied that he had not smothered his infant fire, he set his back to it, his gaze sweeping his home. Bundles of herbs hung from the rafters, and some of Nisula’s men had gifted him with small game so he would not go hungry in case the mice had gotten into his flour and corn in his absence. Several shelves adorned the walls to hold his tools and what few dishes he owned, and two small, carved wooden chests. Underneath them waited three more chests, each the size of a man’s torso, locked with iron and banded with silver.
The question had become how best to find out what he needed to know. The crow’s stepchildren were unreliable in this matter, preferring to show off their cleverness to adhering strictly to their bargains. Besides, Sakra did not wish to turn to them too often. The powers of this land did not deal gently with weakness, or with debt too great and too slowly paid.
Which meant he had to make use of older and, in some ways, more dangerous servants. Which meant he could hesitate in his preparations no longer.
There was that which could not be permitted entry to the home. A spell that used the self could be performed when the self was protected. But for a spell that called on the binding of others, the self had to go into danger. That was the way of things. Without that balance and that discipline, the act of binding could become too easy, the pleasures of the power too corrupting. Such a binding would turn to curse the one who made the bond. This was not a rule anyone seemed to have told to Kalami, or indeed the dowager.
Patience did not rest long with Sakra. He paced the tiny hovel what felt like a thousand times while kettle after kettle of water came to a boil over his fire. The copper bath lifted down from its pegs over the mantelpiece filled only slowly, but it did fill.
When he had emptied the last kettle into the bath, Sakra turned to his smallest chest. Standing close so that his breath would touch its lock, he unbound the thong that held his hair back and let the braids fall loose about his shoulders. He found the three he needed by touch and untied them, combing his fingers through the locks to loosen them. In answer, the lock on the chest came open with a dull click.
Sakra reached inside and brought out the single, grisly talisman the chest contained. A severed foot wound around with a black cord spun from Sakra’s own hair squatted on his palm. It was old, dried and shrunken, but one could still see that its tough skin was smooth and a muddy red, and that its stunted toes had black claws curving from them.
Sakra set the unsavory thing down on the table. Composing his mind to the necessity of his actions, Sakra stripped off his coat and his shirt. He folded them carefully and laid them both on the bench. He removed boots and trousers and leggings, until he stood in nothing but his breechclouts. He took up the withered foot and unwound just enough of its binding cord to tie it to his right wrist. With the talisman cradled in one hand, Sakra opened the door.
The winter cold engulfed him immediately and his feet recoiled from being placed in the snow to walk from the hovel to a place in the lee of a drift of snow where he had poured boiling water and permitted it to freeze into an oval of ice black with the night it reflected. A mirror would have been infinitely preferable for this task, but he had none. Kalami had seen to it that his precious glasses had been smashed when he was removed from the court.
The winter scoured his body with its harsh cold. His feet were already numb. His clumsy fingers brushed away the latest coat of snow from the ice patch and set the talisman on its smooth surface. Unwinding more of the cord so that he could stand up straight, Sakra positioned himself at the edge of the ice patch, lifting up one foot and pressing it flat against the joint of his right knee so that he stood balanced. A fresh blast of the winter’s wind shook his skin and gripped his bones. Sakra forced his mind clear. He lifted his hands and pressed his palms together directly in front of his eyes.
This was what these northern sorcerers had never learned, the power that came of suffering, of discipline. They reveled in their magics that came at no cost, so it seemed, to themselves. This was why in the end so many of them succumbed to the vanities and fears that were inherent in their own natures.
And before you suffer from too much pride, he told himself, remember why you have come to be here in this wilderness.
The cold rocked him again and Sakra swayed on his one leg, coming close to falling, but he righted himself. He pushed his thoughts aside. Now was not the time for reproach or wounded pride. Now was the time to do his work.
Sakra took in a deep breath that nearly paralyzed his lungs, but he forced them into motion. Raising his unbound hand straight in front of him as if lifting a knife to point at the sky, Sakra began to sing.
He sang loud, long and high, his fierce well-trained voice absorbed quickly by the clouds and the snow, and yet the wind shivered at its sound. His breath was a white cloud of steam in the darkness and his free hand moved through it, brushing it from one side to the other, shaping the patterns in breath, wind and song.
“Twelve leagues you walk from me.
Eleven leagues you hear my voice.
Ten leagues you feel my touch.
Nine leagues you know my bond.
Eight leagues you rebel from me.
Seven leagues you hide from me.
Six leagues you deny me.
Five leagues you remember me.
Four leagues you hear me.
Three leagues you turn to me.
Two leagues you run to me.
One league you obey me.”
Over and over, his voice forced the song into the world. Over and over his hand wove the pattern through his steaming breath. A crow settled on a branch overhead, sending a shower of snow down onto the nearest drift. Sakra ignored it and began the song again. The cold was gone, the pain and even the numbness was gone. There was only the song and the pattern, again, and yet again.
Around his still wrist, the hair cord thickened and changed until it became an iron chain. Sakra began the song once more, his fingers weaving through the steam in front of his eyes. The ice also to all appearances began to steam, but the vapor thickened and reddened, taking on a weight and opacity that belonged to no such element. Gradually, the form became the color of old blood. It grew heavy and brutish arms. Claws curved from its stubby fingers as well as from its toes. Fangs and a tongue protruded from a gaping mouth beneath eyes yellow and round like golden saucers. Real gold dangled in the shape of rings in its pendulous earlobes. It wore armor of leather and scales and its right hand clutched a spear. The iron chain tethered its ankle to
Sakra’s wrist.
Sakra lowered his foot so that he might stand more firmly. The warmth of his magic flowed through his blood to sustain him, but that would not last. The cold would have its way before too much longer.
“I require that you see a thing for me,” he told his demon.
The demon ran its long, black tongue around its lips. “Then adhere to your promise.”
Sakra fingered the chain. It was a thing wholly of his creation and it could not refuse him. With a swift jerk, he pulled free one of the links. The chain was still whole, but it was a handspan shorter now. The freed link vanished in the next puff of wind. When the chain was down to its last link, the demon would be freed from Sakra’s service. It would also attempt to kill him. Sakra had known that when he bound it.
The demon licked its lips again.
“See for me who it is Valin Kalami has found.”
The demon turned to face the north and squinted its great eyes at the night.
“I see him.” The demon pointed to a place where Kalami saw only darkness and the shadows of trees in starlight. “He boards a boat of his own making and casts off. He raises its sail and starts off across the waters. He seeks the far shores, beyond the Home Lands.”
The Home Lands. The demon meant the Land of Death and Spirit.
The demon’s eyes narrowed down to yellow slits. “He seeks blood. Blood and an enemy. No. An ally. Innocence and ignorance. A woman. A daughter. A mother. Love and hatred, vision and blindness. He has found all these things.”
Here Sakra commanded the demon as he could never command the crows. “Speak clearly, or I shall strengthen your chain.”
The demon snarled, and saliva, or perhaps it was blood, fell from his lip and hissed against the snow. “You cannot require me to see so far. There is no place for my kind in that world where he has gone.”
“Has it a single name, what he seeks?”
The demon’s ears waggled. “Avanasidoch.”
Even though he had thought the name himself, it still hit Sakra hard enough to stun his will, and cold slammed back against his body like an iron weight. It could not be. The Avanasidoch was legend. Wishful thinking on the part of troubled Isavaltans.
The demon leered at him. “What else shall I see for you? What other glad tidings can I bring you so that I might see your face so full of fear again?”
Anger rallied Sakra’s will and lent him a little, feeble warmth. “Watch your tongue, slave. You are still mine, and if you continue in your insolence, I shall put a ring through that tongue of yours as well.”
In answer, the demon stuck its tongue out straight and waggled it at him. “So many years in this wasteland and you still believe it is your home. You still believe that all things are written in the books and you do not heed the words and tales that gather on the wind. They are the wisdom here.” It grinned in satisfaction. “But there, you will not listen to me either. Send me away. I grow cold.”
It was a taunt that Sakra could not ignore. Pain burned in every limb now and a dull heavy ache spread from behind his eyes and around his skull. His trembling would not stop. But he did not release the demon. Instead he reached out and snapped another link free from the chain.
“If the time is good, show me to Xiau-Li Taun.”
The demon snarled and tugged hard on its chain, but the iron was still too strong for it and Sakra remained unmoved. Gnashing its teeth, it faced the south and squinted hard.
“The time is good.”
It gathered up two loops of its chain gently around its arm and plunged back into the ice from which it had formed.
The chain played itself out, and further out, until it stretched straight and rigid from Sakra’s shaking wrist into the blank, black ice. Sakra forced his frozen feet to shuffle forward and made his aching knees bend until he could see into his ice. His eyes glimpsed dim reflections, and in another heartbeat all became as real and clear as if he stood in that faraway house in Camaracost.
Camaracost waited on Isavalta’s southernmost coast. There, they filled their warehouses with goods from every part of Isavalta and Hastinapura, and more than occasionally with smuggled luxuries from Hung-Tse.
And, also more than occasionally, with information from Hung-Tse. It was an open secret in Medeoan’s court that her lord sorcerer journeyed to Camaracost to speak with one of those merchants willing to sell his information along with his silks. Patient bribery and application had told Sakra that the merchant’s name was Havosh, and that he in turn had a scribe in his employ named Xiau-Li Taun whom he dared not fire, even though Xiau-Li had developed a dangerous habit. Every few days, Xiau-Li would lock himself in the smallest storeroom of the warehouse and drink Isavalta’s famous peppery liquor until he grew insensible.
But before he lost consciousness, he frequently saw the ghost of his uncle come to berate him.
Broken barrels and torn bundles filled the tiny, dusty room. A mouse wandered across the dirt floor, nosing at a bale of spoiled cloth. It stood on its hind legs and nibbled delicately at the bale, a connoisseur testing its vintage. Xiau-Li, already collapsed into the corner behind the door, raised his tiny cup to the creature and gulped down its contents. He had dressed carefully for his debauch and it was as well, for the gray cotton robe was smudged with dust and cobwebs, and splashed with liquor. He must have been running his hands through his hair, because more dust and cobwebs smeared his face and head and his hair stuck out wildly in all directions.
“What a fine figure of a nephew I have.”
Slowly, Xiau-Li lifted his watery eyes from their contemplation of the mouse, which, having decided the cloth was to its liking, had begun to burrow its nose into the mealy brown folds.
“My uncle.” Xiau-Li set his cup down delicately, and with the slow deliberation of one who is very drunk began to bend his legs in an attempt to gather them under him so that he might kneel properly before the ghost of a respected family member.
The ghost waved its hand. “Stay as you are, nephew. I would not have you injure yourself.”
“You are most excellent and kind, Uncle.” Xiau-Li collapsed back against the wall, his face flushed with his exertions.
Sakra had never known whether the “ghost” truly resembled Xiau-Li’s uncle. It did resemble the tomb carving — a bald, withered old man with his hands folded across a gnarled walking stick. That seemed to be enough. Xiau-Li’s expectations completed the illusion. “At least you thought to save your good clothes, and thus the expense.”
Xiau-Li batted at the wrinkles in his old, cotton robe. “It was you who taught me to think of details, Uncle.”
“And no doubt, you are able to buy yourself a better quality of debauchery with that savings.” The ghost sniffed his disapproval at this possibility.
Xiau-Li lifted one finger and tapped it against his temple. “Details, Uncle. Just as you taught me. I have always tried to do as you taught me.”
In response to this declaration of filial obedience, the ghost only sighed. “I wish I had taught you sobriety instead.”
At these words, Xiau-Li’s happy face plunged into misery. Tears began to spill from the corners of his eyes. “I have failed you. I have failed my family. I have failed myself. I am unfit.” He reached for the leather bottle and tipped it over his cup. “I am unfit.” A silver stream of liquor poured down, and Sakra imagined the sharp scent of it burning his nose and palate.
And if he downs much more of that, he will be beyond me.
“Would you redeem yourself, Nephew?”
Xiau-Li lifted his eyes, his mouth open in speechless wonder, as if he had just been told he would be assumed into the home of the gods. He laid the bottle gently down, and gathered his legs under himself so that he bowed on knees and elbows to his uncle’s ghost. This time, Sakra let him make the gesture. “Tell me how.”
“Your master takes letters from the sorcerer Kalami, does he not?”
“He does, Uncle.” Xiau-Li nodded eagerly, believing he had finally found a
way to please his stern relative.
“And you read these letters to him, for your master, while he has many skills, cannot read them himself.”
“No, Uncle. That is, yes, I read them, for he cannot.” Xiau-Li’s eyes lifted just far enough so that he could see the liquor bottle lying in front of him, and then slipped sideways to see the little cup brimming with its precious silver fluid.
“Very good, nephew,” said the ghost in a more gentle voice than he had used yet. “Have you ever read any that speak of a hostage in the Heart of the World?”
“No, Uncle.” Xiau-Li’s hand inched along the floor toward the cup, as if he were a child who thought that if he moved slowly enough the grown-up would fail to see what he was doing.
“Do you speak the truth, Nephew?” said Sakra sternly. “I shall be most displeased if you lie to me.”
“No hostages.” Xiau-Li walked his fingers up the side of the cup, until the tip of his index finger touched the liquor. “He speaks of the movement of cows, the price of wheat, and he urges his daughter to be a good girl.”
“Daughter? He speaks of a daughter?”
Xiau-Li lifted his finger out of the liquor and stuck out his tongue so that a drop could fall onto it. He retracted his tongue and closed his eyes in blissful reverence. “His daughter learns well from her tutors. His daughter is an obedient and sober child.” Xiau-Li’s head dropped forward until his forehead rested on the floor. “Not me. Not me.”
“His daughter does this in the Heart of the World?”
Xiau-Li nodded. More liquorish tears spilled down his cheeks, making dark, damp patches on the dusty floor. “Not me. Not me.”
“Go to sleep, Xiau-Li.” Sakra gripped the demon’s chain. “Take me home.”
The warehouse, mouse and drunken Xiau-Li all faded into darkness and Sakra became aware of a great heat in his body and a leaden lethargy of all his limbs. Sleep. He had worked so hard and done so much today. He needed sleep and this warm and comfortable darkness was exactly right for that. Perhaps the demon had indeed taken him home. It was that hot. Perhaps he even now lay in his chamber, and on the other side of the carved screen Ananda slept on her silken pillows safe from the world and free from harm. He would open his eyes and he would see the moonlight shining from the window of her sleeping alcove into his. All he had to do was open his eyes and it would be true.