The Lady

by K V Johansen

  She had learnt patience there. She thought she had. The patience, not of the spider—that she had always had, when she was Yeh-Lin, who had been serf and concubine, poisoner and wizard, mistress and mother and empress and exile—but the patience of roots in the earth, of the elephant crossing the dry plain, of the hills awaiting rain. Patience of the goddess who one day opened her heart and told the prisoner she held, Go, fly free again. The chains that bound her had long worn away, and she had been content to stay, to watch, as the baobab-river goddess watched, the folk of that land. But like a fledging, or a moth new-hatched, Yeh-Lin had crawled from the nest, her cocoon, to stretch stiff and clumsy wings and find life in them after all.

  She still did not know quite why she was released to the world again. The Old Great Gods would not have wished it so.

  Find out for yourself, the baobab river had told her. Walk gently in the world. You hold it in your hands. The least child does.

  In her wanderings in the dawn-fresh world she had found Deyandara, prickly, angry, unlovable child. She had never done well at motherhood. She had found it no easier, and yet the child needed someone. Not her, really, but she was the only one who seemed willing to take an interest, until the bard Yselly. Better Yselly than her, she had thought, but since she had failed for all her careful trying to pluck that tangled curse fully from the girl—what a mess that was, and so strangely woven, through life and death, and rooted in the land and the goddess of the land—Yselly had fallen to it. Her fault? Maybe.

  Now she had sworn to protect the girl. Sworn to what, she wasn’t sure. Sworn to eyes like the night between the unreachable stars and a weight, a weight in the world she felt heavy even weighed against herself, and yet held so lightly in a single hand.

  Was that what she did, now? Did she act to protect Deyandara? This gathering of powers in Marakand was a great danger; she did not lie to herself in saying so. But a danger how, and to whom? And when?

  To all the human world, maybe? Surely they knew better than to be so. There was the wasteland of Tiypur to remind them, and the blasted dead lands of the eastern shore of the Kinsai’aa. A danger to Over-Malagru, which was Deyandara’s land, they were that. This day, this season?

  Maybe not, but in the long run, they were a danger worse than the mercenaries and traitor lords arrayed against Marnoch’s pitiful band, a danger worse than that army, small though it was, anchored on invulnerable priests that humans and human wizardry could not oppose, and if she did not do—something, she had no idea what—who would? Who could?

  Old Great Gods have mercy. She would die, probably, and ripped from her body she would die a second death, rootless in a world that could not sustain her.

  It was necessary.

  Or perhaps it was merely selfish curiosity. Running her neck into trouble for a childish whim to poke things with a stick to find out what would happen, to stir up trouble, to toss the stones and see where they fell and watch the ripples spread.

  That thought had the heaviness of truth, landing in the chest. Or did she doubt and mistrust herself beyond reason?

  The gibbous moon silvered the hillside and the god in the tree watched her, wary but unthreatening.

  Earth beneath her feet. Stars over her. Yeh-Lin sat, rested her hands on her knees, shut her eyes. She floated, between earth and sky, roots in the deep waters, branches in the clouds. Thought slowed, breath almost ceased. Slow, careful, she laid out the patterns in her mind with the rhythm of her breath, the pulse of the tree’s ponderous tide, leaning to the sun. There was a power in Marakand she did not know. One she did, wounded and enraged and suffering. Could she help it?

  No.

  A third—she could not see the third. But there would be fire, and death, and the ice reached for them all.

  In this time, in this place . . . the dead gathered, puppets of greed, of the desire to possess, to control, to break the world to a single will. The dead . . . ah. And so they did not bleed. Necromancy. Ghatai’s game, that had been. She never had liked Tamghiz, vain and swaggering male arrogance made flesh.

  Durandau brought the army of the kings combined to Dinaz Catairna—finally, after delaying and delaying at the ford of the Avain Praitanna, waiting for Lin and her promised return with Deyandara—but still he hesitated. Durandau the cautious. Rumours ran to him of disease, of death, and now, having given up hoping for his sister, he waited, drawn warily near, the jackal slinking to the wounded buffalo, for disease to do his work for him, against mercenary conquerors and Catairnan lords alike. Since Lady Lin had not, as promised, brought his lost sister to him, the Catairnans were without a blessed and sanctified ruler. Once the land was purged of the strong and quarrelsome who had taken the field . . . he had sons. And brothers. The land would need a king.

  But the invulnerable dead massed against him, protected by a devil’s shield, and Marakand’s hand reached to take all Praitan, which he was too short-sighted to see.

  Deyandara and her Marnoch needed the army of the kings. They needed Durandau.

  The Red Masks would scatter his army and kill the kings, the spearhead and vanguard of Ketsim’s army, the kings would die and the wizards fall and Praitan, weak and lordless, fail. The Five Cities would stretch the tributary lands north, the secretive forest kingdoms reach south, and whatever emerged victorious from the brewing conflict in Marakand roll eastwards.

  That did not protect Deyandara, be she queen or wandering child.

  Find the puppet-master. Wrench the Red Masks from his, her grasp, and the Grasslanders, grown overconfident and complacent, would fall to Praitan spear and sword easily enough. Even if it cost her—everything. She owed everything.

  Yeh-Lin, Dotemon, the Dreamshaper, they named her, though that was mere Northron poetry, surfaced through the dreams, the chaos where all was one and all was possible, death and victory and despair, the girl robed in blue and white, Marnoch at her back, the girl lying naked in the arms of a hard-eyed Grasslander with the scars of Tamghiz Ghatai’s long-dead cult on his cheeks, the girl dead in a burning tower, the girl, eyes shut, arms wrapped about a komuz, a dog resting its head on her feet . . . the girl at her brother’s side, mouthing his words, and dead riding at Marnoch’s side against a horde of Grasslanders, and the high king riding too late . . . the high king falling, spear-stricken, trampled beneath the hooves of riders in red, Durandau stabbed in the heart in his bed, in his tent in his camp, his guards dead, his champion Launval the Elder dead with never time to draw sword, Red Masks moving swiftly through the camp, singling out the kings and queens, the lords, the champions, the wizards, silent and sure as tigers, and a red-cloaked figure crouched over the king, a shadow shape lying on it, drinking the cool-flowing fire of fading life. . . . The girl, smiling, at a great harp in a king’s hall, dog at her side again, the same dog, a dark-haired man in a carven chair . . . Yeh-Lin opened her eyes. She couldn’t see the way. Maybe it was not her choosing that would make it.

  But still she had to choose.

  Deyandara needed the spears of the kings. The spears of the kings could not endure the Red Masks. Yeh-Lin could hunt them, could kill them one by one. But while she was killing one, another could be killing Deyandara, or Durandau, or the threesome of devils in Marakand might see her and ally against her, if they were allies and not already locked in some strife that would destroy the city and distract, perhaps not in time, whichever one it was who claimed the name and rights of the Lady.

  Yeh-Lin sighed. She stood and stretched, and drew her sword, cut a new circle in the dust-dry turf. She began with the simplest of the sword-forms, turning slowly through the circle, drawing in the smallest and softest winds, the breeze that curled about the stems of the grass, the last shimmer of sun’s heat held captive in the day-baked stone. She wove, her sword the weaver’s, beating the layered strands into orderly flow. She drew down the upper airs, slower now, yet slower, for their resistance and their strength, their mindless will to their own course, was great, and they could not be severed from thei
r stream, only borrowed. She wrapped her fabric of winds like scarves, Pirakuli draperies, flowing to sky and earth, horizon to horizon, the great contained in the small, the compass of her arm’s reach. Then she cut the circle, to ride the winds again. Westward, to Marakand.

  Riders of the wind. It was an old title of the imperial wizards of Nabban, though very few among them ever had the strength or the skill to master the art. Half the stories of dragons were only peasants looking up from their fields to see a wisp of cloud flying counter to the prevailing wind, leaving roiling chaos in its wake.

  CHAPTER XI

  Something woke him. Ghu listened, but there was only the wind in the gorse of this stony hillside, the distant murmur of the little stream in the valley bottom, an owl calling, like a warning, far away. He had been dreaming, not of Ahjvar, whose dreams he fell into all too often, nightmare that left him sitting, watchful, unsleeping, while at least the mare and the dogs got their rest, but of Lady Deyandara. In his dream, she slept, while some serpent banded black and orange crept near, and she had tossed and turned in nightmares of her own, unable to wake, while the thing coiled about her wrist, slithered up her arm, circled her neck, black tongue flicking over her face, her eyes, and lips. Wake, he had tried to tell her, but in his dream he couldn’t be certain whether she heard; he only knew she sat, suddenly, and there was no snake, but she stared wide-eyed at or through him, and there was the scent of pine all about, and cool water, as the dream faded. He hoped she had come to no harm. Perhaps he had only woken because she did, or she had, or she would. Would, he thought. The snake had not yet come.

  But then one of the dogs growled.

  Ghu flung his blanket aside and stood, looking up at the sky. He was tired, bone-weary from riding bareback and often sitting at a trot, mile upon day, three weeks now, he thought, three weeks and some, by the moon, which kept track when he forgot to count the days that ran together.

  It was not yet midnight. The stars were scattered with small, moon-silvered clouds, scudding shadows against the sky, and fog pooled in the valley. For a moment the wind, which had blown steadily from the south all day, growing stronger and stronger so that he wondered if some great storm might be beating on the cliffs over which he had lived with Ahj, skirled about, flattening grass into circles, rolling west. Jui, the silver-ash dog, barked and leapt at nothing, teeth snapping. Even his stolen mare, whose weariness must overreach his own, woke, shaking her mane and laying back her ears.

  “No,” Ghu said. Hardly knowing he did so, or how, he reached into the wind and gathered it, shaking it free from the knots that bound it, pulling it, combing it loose.

  For a moment, they stood in buffeting storm. He flung an arm over his eyes against the dust, and the mare swung around, tail-to, head lowered. Jiot, the black and tan, crouched and snarled, and Jui put himself safely behind Ghu’s knees.

  He caught up his forage-knife laid close by the blanket as Deyandara’s wizard landed, shaken from the wind, to stand before him, sword in hand.

  Different, even by moonlight. Not an old woman, now. Black hair swinging to her hips, tangled and knotted by the wind, but beautiful, as a tiger was. Best appreciated from far away. Old eyes. Angry ones, holding their own light.

  “You,” she snarled. But after a moment she sheathed her sword. “How in the cold hells did you do that?”

  Ghu blinked, shrugged, and spread his hands, though he did not lay aside his own blade.

  “Don’t play the idiot with me. I don’t for a moment think you’re the fool the girl takes you for. Nor nearly so young or innocent. What did you do?”

  “I don’t know. What have you done with the lady?”

  “Deyandara? I left her queen of the Duina Catairna and with Lord Marnoch. He’s the Catairnan war-leader. She’s safe enough.” The wizard didn’t meet his eye.

  “You said you’d protect her and take her to her brother.”

  “She didn’t want to go to her brother. Her duty was elsewhere, she decided. I decided I could protect her best by ensuring her duina is safe. And nothing in this part of the world is safe, nothing, with a devil in Marakand. Three devils.” She considered him. “You’re not surprised. You knew there was a devil?”

  “Not three, unless you count yourself.”

  “You see so well, do you?”

  He shrugged again. “Neither goddess nor demon of the earth, nor human wizard. Now you give me the word, and it settles into place on you yourself. What else could you be, except a dragon? And I don’t think you’re a dragon.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Have you ever met a dragon?”

  “Yes.” He considered. “One. Once. I think.”

  Her mouth opened and shut. “You think. You don’t know.”

  “It might have been a dream. I have strange dreams.” Deyandara with a snake about her throat.

  She folded her arms. “I am one of the seven. My name is Yeh-Lin. I was your empress, once.”

  “Never,” he said, “my empress.” And she backed a step. He smiled, to hide his confusion. “I may be older than the little queen thinks, but not nearly so old as all that. Yeh-Lin was dowager and regent, never empress, in the songs of the market-singers, and she was driven to the west and into the tales of the north long ago. Though I’ve heard she came back, too, and then maybe she called herself empress, but she is not in the lists of the emperors sung at imperial funerals and the gods themselves fought her. Yeh-Lin the Beautiful. The devil Dotemon, yes?”

  She seemed not so much to slump as to relax, gesturing with an open hand, letting something go. “Very well, if you refuse to be impressed, I shall stop trying to be impressive.” She eyed him sidelong. Even by moonlight, he could see she was beautiful, her face unlined, now, lips full, her eyes dark, long-lashed.

  “That won’t work either.”

  She snorted. “So Deyandara says. I think she’s mistaken. Shall I be an old woman again?”

  He did laugh, then. “She’s very young. I think her world is very simple. Yeh-Lin, you don’t frighten me. Maybe you should, but you don’t. You are very lovely, and I’d sooner make sweet eyes at a dragon. You were never a convincing old woman.”

  “Yes, I decided I could do without bringing back my aching knuckles and my bad knee. Once in a mortal lifetime was enough. I was an old woman when I drifted to the north.”

  “Fled, the stories say. What are you going to do, since there are three devils in the city? Will you join with one of them, bring allies to Deyandara?”

  “Not likely. But if I can find the one who’s made the Red Masks, I can destroy them, all at once, and Durandau and Marnoch between them can deal with Ketsim and make Deyandara’s duina safe for her—if Durandau will let her rule it, but that’s a separate problem. And what are you doing here? You went into the city to find your assassin. Did he kill the Voice?”

  “Yes,” he answered, because what did it matter? He could see her road, this devil-wizard, through the air, the winds she would gather, how she meant to drop like a thunderbolt upon the city, weaving a dance with her sword against the power that bound the Red Masks, thrusting herself into the heart of it, turning the chains that wove about them to fire, swift and sudden. Ahj—Ahj burning in the fire from the sky, every Red Mask, poor dead slave, burning, cleansing the empty, defiled bodies. That was what the devil intended, and Ahj burned in his nightmares, so many nights that he didn’t even remember, didn’t even wake, but he cried out, reaching . . .

  “Move your hand, Nabbani man.”

  Ghu’s hand was over hers on the grip of her sword. Jui and Jiot had come one to either side, silent, hackles rising. He could see her, see into her, how she was flesh and bone and liquid light, spun together. If she resisted him, if she fought . . . what was he but flesh and bone and a confused dream?

  There was a red light behind her eyes, and he could feel the fires within her, but he only tightened his fingers. They were bone, flesh and bone, and if she wanted to fight him as anything else. . . . She jerked her hand away, lea
ving the sword standing.

  “What are you?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Only becoming. But he has no one else to defend him. I do name him mine, then. In this time, in this place. He will not burn again.”

  The devil was confused, distracted, demanding, “Who?” and though she had backed a step from her sword she still looked at him as a curiosity, a little creature hissing harmless defiance.

  There was a pine on the mountain. There were willows with roots in the river’s rich silt. She had been bound so before. Roots stretched, and for a moment Ghu saw her as bone, a skeleton standing before him, laced with veins of golden light, her veil of hair still silken lovely, white claws reaching for the sword, and then she crumpled into the earth, bone upon bone, and roots held her, under snow, under stream.

  He fell to his knees and tried to breathe.

  “Not yet,” he whispered. “No.”

  The dogs came to him, wet noses, whimpering, pressing, licking their concern, because he hurt and he was afraid and he wept. He didn’t remember why.

  There was a sword standing in the earth, and the long silken tassel of it blew in the wind from the south. It was the east pulled him, dragged, to break his heart.

  Ghu rolled up his blanket, made up his bundle again, whistled for the mare, who came willingly for all the hour of the night, lowering her head to the rope halter and single rein that was all the harness he had for her. She was a hill-pony cross, black with a kite-marked face, tall, but sturdy and hardy, and if she was still a bit on the bony side, she was strong and willing enough, and her unshod hooves were sound. She was looking glossier, maybe even fatter, than when Ghu had slipped her loose from a dealer’s picket line in the night, a day’s journey beyond the Eastern Wall, though for over three weeks she had fed on nothing but what the hills gave. He would ride on now, while it was cool and the wind was fresh. They could sleep through the heat of the afternoon.