The Lady

by K V Johansen

  “Give us some space,” Marnoch told his captain, and Deyandara nodded at hers, waved a hand, sending them all to a distance.

  “There’s something else coming out of Marakand?” Marnoch asked. “Something worse? Then say so. What did you see in the mirror?”

  “I’m certain of nothing. I don’t see why your stony hills and your sheep should interest anything that might have made its lair in Marakand. Those red priests are no priests and no servants of a goddess. They’re a work of necromancy, I’m sure of it, and I begin to see . . . I’m not sure what. It’s hidden from me. But there is a power—there are powers in the city that have no place there, and I think they are what send the Red Masks against you.”

  “What kind of powers? What about the Voice and the Lady? How do we fight them, then?”

  “I’ll know that when I know what, and why. That’s why I must go to Marakand. Why am I arguing with you children?” Hands on hips, abandoning her propped and casual air, she might almost have stamped a petulant foot, if she had been sixty years younger. Mocking of her own irritation. “I mean to serve Deyandara in this, Lord Marnoch. Believe that, if nothing else. I will not betray her, and I will return to her.”

  “That’s great loyalty, for a tutor.”

  Lin shrugged. “I swore.”

  “No,” Deyandara said.

  “I did. I remember it quite vividly.”

  “This isn’t the time for playing the fool, Lin. You know perfectly well what I mean. You can’t ride off back to the city. We need you here. I’ve seen you fight like a woman half your age—like a man half your age and twice your weight. I’m very certain my brother and even his wizards have no idea just how great a wizard you are. You’re the only one with any chance against the Red Masks, unless you can teach Lord Launval the Younger and Lady Elissa to do what you do, or even Mag and the wizards we have here.”

  “I cannot.”

  “If we can kill enough of the Red Masks and capture Ketsim, we can demand Marakand’s surrender. Or kill him and hope his followers break up and scatter. They’re only fighting for money or some promise of plunder. They’re not serving their own gods or kings. They shouldn’t have much loyalty to Marakand. It’s our only chance of defeating them. And if our folk see that the Red Masks can die, they’ll rise up for us. If we go on as we are to join Durandau without you, we’re doomed. Everyone in this army knows it. They all knew when they set out they had little chance of doing anything but dying honourably and—and horribly. The terror of the Red Masks will drive everyone mad, and the Marakander mercenaries will cut us to pieces while we cower. You’re the only hope we have.” She raised her voice over Lin’s beginning protests, “And if you leave, half this company are going to decide you’re a Marakander spy.”

  “There are a few Nabbani among Ketsim’s folk,” Marnoch pointed out. “You could be one of them, that’s what’ll be said.”

  “Colony folk,” Lin said with disdain.

  “I can’t tell the difference,” said Marnoch. “You’ve all got black hair.”

  “You have black hair, Lord Marnoch.”

  “They’ll suspect you, Lin,” Deyandara said, before that could get any more childish. “And from you they’ll suspect me. We’re going to be meeting Durandau before long.” Please, Andara and Catairanach, that it was soon, and that her brother could hold out against the Red Masks till then, take the nearest dinaz as his stronghold and make a stand there. “Then there’ll be people who know you, a whole court that knows you. Once we have Ketsim you can argue with Durandau for going after the masters of these Red Masks, and I’ll argue for you, if you’ve found a way to overcome the Red Masks in Dinaz Catairna. If you can kill them with a sword, you can kill them with wizardry, surely, and more than one at a time. I know you can. That will give us a chance, a fair fight, and that’s all we need. Then you can go to Marakand. But not now. We need all the wizards we have. Besides, Red Masks aren’t the only danger. If Ketsim gets wind of us, he could cut us off from meeting up with Durandau even without Red Masks. We need you here.”

  Lin bit her lip, tapping her foot. She turned to look away again, to the west.

  “Very well.” She faced Deyandara again, frowning. “In that case, I want my supper.”

  “She’s angry,” Marnoch said, as they followed Lin back down to where the camp was spreading out, each company together, two in a valley bottom, three along the hillside opposite. “I’m sorry, Deya.”

  “You’re right, though. We can’t let her go. She’s wrong, for once. On her own against Marakand!” When had Lin become the reckless one and she the voice of reason?

  Marnoch had put his hand under her arm, as if she might find rough grass difficult going. Deyandara tucked it in against her side, dared to smile at him, and found her blush rising, but they drew carefully apart when Fairu rode towards them with some question about sending extra scouts to the east and down towards the dinaz.

  Lin took nothing but beer at their cold and fireless supper, sitting apart, her mirror reflecting that other sky, tilting this way and that, as if she sought for some elusive vision, until Deyandara ordered her to put it away, for fear of drawing Red Masks. Sulking, she would have said, if Deyandara had behaved so.

  Deyandara was dreaming she wandered through pelting sleet with lightning smashing the sky above her. She should get off the high ground, she knew, but she had to struggle to the crest of the steep ridge none the less, to look away, searching, whistling, calling. . . . Badger was lost, and Cricket straying. She was alone on the hills, and if she did not find them she would be alone forever. She carried her komuz in one hand, and the wet would warp and crack it. Its strings were already broken, flailing soundless in the wind. In her dream there was a god. Not Andara, but a god’s voice nonetheless, deep with memory of earth and stone and the roots of trees.

  Queen of this land, beware your goddess. Queen of this land, there will be famine, and war, and the sickness of the soul of the land seeps upwards. The folk will perish and the hills be herdless and the valleys untilled. The cold dark of the stars walks beneath the night and the dead ride the valleys in its service. The songs of the past are past and should not come again. You must make the next king, you must choose, you must fight, you must flee. Queen of this land, wake, wake, wake!

  “Wake up, little bard,” said Ghu, sitting cross-legged under a pine tree, with the lightning playing in its branches. Statues of dogs in polished grey stone sat either side of him, alert and guarding, and their eyes were jewels lit by fire. His own eyes were closed. Snow fell gently onto his black hair, but small flowers, the bluest blue she had ever seen, bloomed all about him in the grass, with tall, water-loving irises and sweet flag, which should not have been growing on a dry and stony hill. Sheets of rain ran over the grass, bending the long blades of the river-rushes, tearing twigs from the tree, tearing whole branches, and the thunder of their breaking woke her.

  What had woken her was hooves. She scrambled groggily from the blankets as Rozen yelped and sat up, someone else treading on her.

  “Marakanders in the camp.” The voice was that of Shaugh, one of her bench-companions, a man formerly of Lord Goran’s household. “My lady, quickly, arm yourself.”

  Rozen was already there, stumbling into her, fumbling to drag Deyandara’s mail shirt over her head. “Hold still, my lady!” Deyandara groped for her boots, glad she’d slept more or less full clothed. She held still long enough for Rozen to cinch her belt tight, assured herself her dagger was easy to hand, but couldn’t find her boots.

  “Lin, make a light!”

  Shaugh seized her by the shoulder. “My lady, to the horses, now.”

  “Lin? Where is she?”

  “She’s gone!” Deyandara heard Rozen moving around the dark tent, blundering into things. “There’s no one else here. My lady, I swear she didn’t go out past me, but she’s gone!”

  “No time,” said Shaugh.

  “Boots,” Deyandara protested, and they were thrust at her. She
got them on over bare feet, hopping as she was half dragged out the door, Rozen running at her side, spear in hand.

  Grey twilight, harbinger of dawn. No small affray, a party of Marakanders stumbling upon their watch unawares. They had come up the valley of the brook, and if the alarm had been sounded at all, it had not given her people much warning. Most had slept in the open, and as she ran, Shaugh’s hand still gripping her arm, a wave of riders on horses and camels swept in amongst them. Some, the heavier sleepers, were ridden down where they lay. The screams were sickening. Some ran for horses, but the picket-lines were a snorting, stamping frenzy of spooked beasts, as much danger to their masters as the enemy was; others ran to rally at their lords’ tents.

  A string of galloping horses turned out to be Faullen and most of her own bench-companions. There was Marnoch, fully armed and on foot.

  “Deya!” He grabbed her, hustled her to the white mare, heaved her up. “Devils take it, why bring her a horse so easily seen? Ride for your brother, don’t wait for stragglers. Go!” He slapped the mare’s rump and leapt out of the way as the horse surged forward, the other riders, six, seven, a dozen, a score of them, including Lord Fairu, closing in around her. Deyandara found her stirrups. She had to hold the mare back to keep her from leaving the others behind. A quick glance behind. Rozen was running after Marnoch. Someone had broken out the banner of the royal house, Hyllanim’s black bull, and pursued Marnoch with it to the slope of the hill below the pine. Men and women, on foot and ahorse, fell back on him. Order was emerging, archers, spearmen, lord’s men, but the ground where they had camped was thick with enemies, not a lord’s warband, maybe, but enough for a raiding party. If they’d met in open battle, not been taken unawares, they could have prevailed, but—Red Masks.

  Where in the cold hells had Lin gone, tonight of all nights?

  Two Red Masks, only two, but they swerved to ride hard after Deyandara’s flying party. She saw the Marakanders close up into a tight body again—some of the shouting was orders—leaving their pursuit of men still chasing horses or running solitary to join larger groups, and then split like a flock of birds, like water meeting a stone, half to gather, waiting, planning, a threat to Marnoch, assessing the moment, half to ride hard after the Red Masks, after her. She looked away, as the Marakanders loosed a flight of arrows against Marnoch’s company.

  She and hers crested the long slope of the hill and pelted down, angling west, though who was choosing their route she couldn’t say. The white mare, maybe. It certainly wasn’t she. Her brother’s army would be somewhere to the south and east, but they could hardly gallop all the way to him even if it didn’t take them under the walls of Dinaz Catairna and Ketsim’s nose. Lose themselves in the hills and valleys, find the regions of stone, of ravines and scarps and steep forest, hunters’ land. They needed to abandon the horses, go furtive on foot.

  “My lady!” Fairu had come in next to her, shouting, pointing. “We need to stop and switch horses, break up, while they can’t see us. They’ll follow the white. Those poplars!”

  A quick glance at the poplars climbing a steep bank away to the left, a quick glance back. The Marakanders were already pouring down the hillside after them, desert-breds pulling ahead. She pointed back. Even if they could put the trees between their pursuers and themselves, there wouldn’t be time to halt. Fairu looked behind, spurred his horse cruelly, crouched low, and the white mare surged ahead with him.

  “You and me,” he shouted. “Mag, I’m taking the queen’s horse, you’ll come with me.” Mag, white-faced behind, nodded. The Red Masks might be lured to follow a wizard. A wizard, rashly working magic, might deliberately lure them, if their obsession overrode whatever orders they had. “Faullen, go with the queen, no matter what.”

  Slowly, she and Fairu lengthened their lead, leaving their companions to follow. Lord Fairu’s bay was red-nostrilled and lathered; it was not going to have much left by the time they did reach the poplars. A horse squealed and screamed, and she looked back, though she shouldn’t have, to see legs flailing, neck twisting, someone’s mount down screaming with another atop it. One horse staggered up, riderless, limped a few yards, and then stood, head hanging. Its rider turned to face the onrushing Marakanders, spear braced. Some of the others checked briefly as if to go back to his aid, then came on, leaving the fallen. The other horse that had gone down still flailed, trying to rise and unable to. Its rider, Andara bless, Shaugh, lay half under it, unmoving. She saw the arrow then, standing from its ribs. It gave up the struggle and stretched itself on the grass, though its side still heaved. The Grasslanders and desert folk shot from the saddle. The man afoot fell and did not rise.

  Fairu looked back as well. “No good,” he said. “We’re not going to have a chance to switch mounts. You might outrun them on your own. Lose yourself in the hills and get to the road and your brother.”

  He let his labouring beast drop back and turned. The white mare slowed, without a challenger at her side, and tried to turn as well. Deyandara set her straight again, kicked her to a new burst of speed. Behind her, there was shouting and the clash of blades.

  She was only the banner. They shouldn’t be dying for her. She wasn’t any more use than one of the younger scouts, no more worth than any of those who only followed their lords because it was their duty. But she was the sign they defied Marakand, that they were still one folk and not a scattering of brigand-lords. She looked back again. Horses ran, riders lashing them. Those unhorsed, both her own and the mercenaries, ran, ignoring one another, or cowered like children fearing monsters, hands over their head.

  The Red Masks rode straight and hard after her on long-legged desert horses. Deyandara felt the edge of the panic claw into her.

  They shouldn’t know her. They shouldn’t care about her. She still couldn’t believe Lin would have betrayed her. Lin might haul her back to her brother by her ear, though she hadn’t, but not betray her life. The mare had the bit in her teeth and was going flat out, swerving away from the valley bottom towards clearer land, but steeper, too. Deyandara crouched lower, smaller, but no arrows came, only the pounding of hooves. “Andara, Andara, please, no, please—” over and over, all the prayer she could shape, mouth dry as sand. The mare suddenly decided safety lay in the shelter of the poplars after all. She veered, flinging Deyandara off-balance, and lifted, leaping like a deer over a summer-dry rivulet that came twisting down the slope, and with her last flash of sense Deya got her foot out of the one stirrup she still possessed, knowing herself falling, lost. She rolled, stunned, with the wind knocked out of her and a searing pain in her shoulder, heard the hooves fade and grow louder again, the mare fleeing, the Red Masks circling, trampling. Her breath came rapid and wheezing, and she couldn’t move even to crawl, couldn’t even open her eyes. Creak and thump, a rider dismounting. There would be the blow of the white staff, a moment of agony, burning, and she would be dead, or they would hack at her, like Gilru, but she wore armour. Her helmet was lost; they would crack open her skull. She heard herself whimpering, high and shrill like a blind puppy strayed too far from its mother’s warm belly, and found that like the puppy she was crawling, blind, flat, and every reach of her left arm was as if their swords had thrust into her shoulder.

  She was seized, struggling, screaming and crying, kicking and punching, eyes finally open and the red woollen tunic filling her vision as he clutched her by the throat, holding her off.

  “Settle down, girl,” said the other, “or it’ll be the worse for you.” The woman caught her arms, twisting them behind her.

  Her knees gave way. She shrieked, because the fire in her shoulder was worse than anything, even the terror. Everything went red with the fire, or maybe it was that the Red Masks filled the world. Her crying was lost. Even her own panting breath was drowned by the hot wasp-buzzing that filled her ears, till that, too, was lost, and darkness claimed her. But she thought, as she slid away, Red tunic, not armour. There was armour underneath. I punched it. Mail. Red Masks don’t
speak—and not the Praitan of the tributary lands.

  CHAPTER X

  The winds were not so favourable this night as when Yeh-Lin Dotemon had made her last journey to the city. They came from the south, carrying memory of the sea, the airs of the lands beyond, the great trees and the blue hills. . . .

  She had to use them anyway. Powers brooded over Marakand. Her mirror had shown her something there, warning, something to come, a rift in the world. The ice of the cold hells. All was still, waiting, poised, but the balance shifted. She could feel it, like muscles tensing to deal the great and fatal blow, something was set in motion, the first shiver far below that would wake the great wave. And the ice would reach for them, draw them in, hungry.

  They were fools. They had all been fools, and they still were. Lin saw them, in her mind’s eye, three powers of the distant fires, grappling over Marakand, tearing one another to pieces over—what? Rule of a little human city, the glory of mere human tyranny? To be a lord over the little lives? They had fallen so far, forgotten so much of what, and of why. Especially, perhaps, of why.

  They were here, she would say to them—but they would not listen. We are here. We are now. We have only here and only now. The ice is behind, the stars beyond our reach. Be here, be now, be in this world and use it with more honour. Be the careful guest in the hall, mindful of your lord and hosts, small and weak and swift-dying as they are.

  Be quiet, and patient, and walk gently.

  She thought of the Eastern Wall three, almost four weeks ago now, and the soldiers who had died there, and shook her head at herself. Hypocrite. Well, she tried. At least the fools at the gate had started that fight. She did try. She held memory of the tree in her inmost heart, her tree, who had wrapped her into her heart and held her like the tender worm in the cocoon, and sang to her, long, long years, sang the life of her land and her folk, the goddess in the baobab with her roots in the deep aquifer under the hills.