The Lady

by K V Johansen

  And so died the true Lady of Marakand, at the last, worn-out and weary and choosing, maybe, to end, freed of Tu’usha. The deep well was dry. The temple folk were, comically, trying to scramble over a head-high wall into another courtyard, each pulling the other back in his or her efforts, no mutual aid, all selfish panic. Sickening. Wearying. Moth took a deep breath, but the Blackdog thought she roused herself against the priests.

  “Don’t kill them. Let’s just, just go. Find Jugurthos, it’s all his problem now.”

  Jugurthos, whoever he was, wasn’t her problem, either. The cut across Holla-Sayan’s face was crusted black now, his eye . . . she hissed in sympathy and put a hand over it. He was devil; the body did restore itself, though not so swiftly as she might, weaker, less certain in himself. Even that eye would see again. In time. But it was an ugly wound and the pain of it would be mind-numbing. She eased that, at least. For the rest, he could find his own way. She was . . . hurt. And was going to hurt worse.

  Blackdog, she said, not for Mikki’s hearing. Zora, this girl, the devil, was Tu’usha the Restless, who had been Sien-Mor. Sien-Mor was destroyed, though I think a part of her soul must have endured in Tu’usha, broken and insane. I did warn you, a devil could be killed. But even rootless in the world Tu’usha didn’t die with Sien-Mor as she should have; she fled somehow and lived off the fading Lady, the true goddess, until she found a willing human to bond with again, this poor Zora, who wasn’t strong enough for such a union. It was her brother Sien-Shava who had destroyed Sien-Mor, her brother and her lover, and he still had some bond with Tu’usha. I don’t think she knew it. He felt it when Tu’usha died. He was here; he knows she is dead, and he knows me. So.

  “Bad?” he asked aloud.

  Sien-Shava, Jochiz Stonebreaker? Yes. He was—I don’t think I can withstand him. Not alone. But if I go seeking the others, and not to slay them . . . the Old Great Gods will come to know. They will.

  They expect you to be able to defeat him, sometime, though.

  I don’t suppose they care so very much, which of us kills the rest, so long as Lakkariss takes us all in the end. And I’m running out of enemies, Holla-Sayan. Should I flee from Sien-Shava and start hunting my friends? She had never had any plan for that but to delay and delay and put off the inevitable choice.

  Gaguush is pregnant and has bought a caravanserai,the Blackdog told her. I’m tied to Marakand, for her lifetime, even if I go to the road again. So you’ll know where to find me.

  I told you to run from me, dog. I told you.

  “Then do something,” he said aloud. “Fight them, instead. We did . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t remember, the dog doesn’t remember and the thought’s right there, I can almost—”

  “Leave it. And I can’t! You know I can’t.”

  “Do what? Can’t what?” Mikki asked. “Fight who?” When neither answered he growled, “Devils, hah” and nosed at her. “All right, princess, up. Time to make ourselves scarce. I left Ivah in Gurhan’s cave. You and the dog can argue your secrets there, if you must, and we can see if there’s any hope of Marakand’s gods.”

  She stood, sheathing Kepra, taking up Lakkariss again as well. It shed flakes of frost as she shoved it home.

  Nothing she could do. Nothing but run. Sien-Shava, once he made up his mind that someone was his enemy, which she had carefully never openly been, had a foul, cruel streak that would never hesitate to use whatever means he found to inflict hurt. Fighting Jochiz only put Lakkariss into his hands; she had always known he must be the last, because he would be the death of both of them. So put no victims into his hands to use against her now, not Ivah, who could have been but was not her daughter, not innocent Holla-Sayan, who stood too clearly aligned with her despite their brief acquaintance, not his Gaguush nor his child. And not Mikki.

  Blood-soaked head, Mikki’s head, toothless, eyeless, in a Grasslander cult niche. She had dreamed that, when they lingered in the mountain winter, where they had fled, ostensibly so that Mikki could sleep and recover from his near-death of heat and bitter water in the Salt Desert. Mostly, though, she had been putting off the descent to Marakand and what she did not want to face. Not, perhaps, the warning from the Old Great Gods she had thought, but vision of another threat altogether.

  It was not as though they watched her every thought and every act. They could not. The world was too remote. And in the end of the wars in the north, when the Old Great Gods had intervened to bind the seven, the road between the human earth and the distant heavens had been barred to them, to be taken only at the cost of great suffering, so for the Old Great Gods to act in the world, now, was too difficult and painful a journey, except in the most urgent need.

  They would pay that price, if need be. One had been sent to bargain with her, if you could call it that, for the wielding of Lakkariss. They would most certainly fulfill the threats that they had made, then, in that dark night under the unreachable stars.

  She could not make their threats empty, but if there was distance, if there was . . . time, perhaps the Old Great Gods would believe their threats had become empty. Or they would become empty of their own accord. Or perhaps not. A wound might heal to a scar, or to an abscess. But at least if she stood alone, then Sien-Shava, hunting her, would find no one else to hurt. Because he would hurt someone, that was certain. Even the ghostly memory of Sien-Mor in Tu’usha had been his, and what was his, no one else should touch, even after he had thrown it aside.

  “Mikki . . .” She traded a long look with Holla-Sayan—he knew, and he turned away. She took Mikki’s head in her hands, ran them down his neck, leaned her face against his long muzzle a brief few heartbeats.

  “What?” he said. “My wolf, what’s wrong?”

  “Mikki . . . go back to the north. Go home to the Hardenvald, if you love me. Go be what you should have been.”

  “Moth . . .”

  She backed away. “Go. I don’t need you following me any longer.” She drew the feather-cloak from her belt, grey silk shingled with forest gleanings, eagle, hawk, falcon, owl, and lammergeier and raven of the mountains, recent repairs. Swept it around her shoulders.

  White gyrfalcon, spiralling high. She climbed, until the city swung below her, scarred and small and pale, and only the Pillars of the Sky stood tall against the sun. She wheeled south into them and did not circle back.

  CHAPTER XXX

  “Ulfhild, damn you—” But she was gone, lost against the dazzle of the high snows, and roaring at the empty sky did no good. “And you—” Mikki wheeled on Holla-Sayan, teeth bared. The man dropped into the dog again, blood-matted and half-blind, and he couldn’t take out his temper on one who’d got those wounds for Moth’s sake. “Cold hells take you both. Again.” Mikki turned away. “I’m sorry. Come on. Out of here.”

  Holla-Sayan, human again, though he ought to have known by now four legs were surer when you could hardly stand upright, limped after him, caught up and walked with a hand on his shoulder, letting Mikki take his weight when the ground betrayed him.

  “Tell me,” Mikki said at last.

  “I—Great Gods, Mikki, what can I tell you? I think she isn’t coming back.”

  Mikki stopped but didn’t look around. Stone before him, ash drifting over paving-stones. They had done nothing about the crumpled body and fallen head of the young priestess, or whatever she had been before she was a devil, but she wasn’t theirs and he didn’t care.

  I know. Mikki had seen it in her eyes. His wolf in tears. “Why?”

  “I swore not to—”

  “Tell me, damned dog, or—” He sighed. “Just tell me.”

  “Lakkariss.”

  “What about Lakkariss? A bargain for a weapon to destroy Ogada, who murdered her brother and slew my mother, that she’d bring justice to the others, that’s what she wants me to think, but she didn’t need that damned shard of the hells to kill Heuslar Ogada. She didn’t need to go hunting Ghatai, or Tu’usha, at all.”

  “You’d have left
Ghatai to make himself a god, destroying Attalissa, a real goddess, not some imposter like the Lady? To do—whatever it was he intended, after that?”

  “I wouldn’t, though there wouldn’t be much I could have done about either. But Vartu—yes, probably. Maybe. I don’t know. So what about Lakkariss, dog? I’m not an utter fool. I know this wasn’t some change of heart and a chance to serve the Old Great Gods. I’ve asked. She slides aside from answering and over the years I’ve learnt not to ask. Press her too hard and she walks away. Always comes back, though,” he added under his breath. “Never looked like that. So,” more clearly, “Why has Vartu become the headsman of the Old Great Gods?”

  “You’re their hostage against her.”

  Mikki shut his eyes, which didn’t help. Moth, Moth, Moth. He ached with the loss of her, already. After a moment he started walking again.

  The tunnel, the whole cliff-wall of the sunken dell of the temple, had collapsed inwards. Priests and temple guard milled about where the tunnel to the gate had been, shouting uselessly at one another, but they scattered away when they caught sight of the bear. Mikki showed his teeth to hurry them on, and picked a way up the unsteady slump of fractured stone, the—dog now—following.

  And she said, Sien-Shava, that’s Jochiz, I think, will be hunting her, now, for killing Tu’usha. She—I don’t know, Mikki, she seemed afraid.

  “Huh.” A haze of dust hung over the ward, yellow in the morning sun. Part of the wall between the wards had fallen, and several houses. He needed—to be out in the wild places, away from men and their unending noise.

  There were soldiers in the street, but they wore the black scarves of the loyalist militia or the grey tunics of street guard, and he recognized a few of the captains as Jugurthos’s men, and there, Jugurthos himself. The Warden of the City shouted and waved down the overexcited boys who’d been setting arrow to string, turned his pony their way.

  Holla-Sayan, human, sank down on the dusty blocks of the fallen gatehouse as if he were simply too tired to go on. “What now?”

  “Here? That’s Hadidu’s problem, and Jugurthos’s and the senate’s, not yours and not mine. You belong to Gaguush and your child. Marakand’s had enough from you.”

  Holla-Sayan nodded once. He was grey with weariness. “Mikki, what are you going to do?”

  “Find Moth,” Mikki said. That seemed obvious, once voiced.

  “Where?” asked Holla-Sayan. “How?”

  “I don’t know where, yet, but how not, when she holds my heart?” He set his muzzle on the devil’s shoulder. “Go to your wife, Blackdog.”

  “Yes.” Holla-Sayan looked up. His left eye was swollen and filled with blood, unseeing, but that was an improvement over what it had been. “Yes.”

  “Blackdog, Lord of Forests.” All Marakand had picked up that title from somewhere, but Jugurthos knew Mikki’s name. The formality was for the benefit of the Clothmarket captain, riding cautiously up beside him. Jugurthos waved the man irritably away. “What’s happened in the temple?”

  “What’s happened in the city?” Mikki countered.

  “Ilbialla’s slain. We came to—I don’t know what we came to do. We took Templefoot Ward easily, they couldn’t surrender fast enough. It seemed almost every second man was a deserter from the temple guard or even a priest or priestess, and all saying the Lady was an imposter, and mad, or knew one who had told them so. We found the fires down about the temple and the gates open, but I wasn’t certain I wanted to order my people inside. Certainly not once the lightning struck. Or whatever it was. It’s quiet now?” He made that a question.

  “The Lady and the devil who took her name are both dead.”

  “Dead. The devil. But then—” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Then, it’s over.”

  “For us. Not for you. Your city. What about Gurhan? Ivah?”

  “We’re not sure. Nour and Hadidu have gone up there, and the senate is—they all came hurrying to the palace steps after the second blast . . .”

  “Cattle,” muttered Holla-Sayan. “All standing under the one tree on a hilltop. In a thunderstorm. Idiots.”

  “I did think so. I ordered them to scatter till we knew what was going on, or—or, I don’t know what I thought could come. But Beni Sessihz stayed, sitting there in his chair. To be a sign, he said, that this time the senate stood for the gods, uncowed. Silly old—coughing so he can hardly breathe. He should be home in bed. He’ll make himself a legend yet.” Jugurthos watched Holla-Sayan warily. “The priesthood of the Lady, the temple guard. Are any of them left in there?”

  “I didn’t do any of that, it was the devil.”

  “Yes,” said Mikki. “Some have survived. And think what you do next, Warden. It will shape what your city becomes. Dog . . .” Ivah’s fine, or she should be; I left her safe in Gurhan’s cave and there’s been no second attack on it. But we need to get out of here, before the Warden mistakes us for gods and makes this whole mess of a city our problem.

  A nod, no more. Mikki waited, until man slipped into dog again and the Blackdog had loped, still limping, down the street. Leaving the Warden of the City without any further word—and the man only bowed and did not call after them—Mikki followed so far as the open space of the Greenmarket, where camels and carts came with cut fodder for the household goats and the beasts of burden kept within the city walls. It was deserted now, save for a patrol on guard about the market blockhouse.

  You all right, bear? Holla-Sayan asked suddenly, then, looking around.

  “No,” he said. “But I will find her. Go to your wife.”

  I’ll see you again, then. Sometime. Sayan bless.

  He watched the dog running, gone. He wouldn’t see Holla-Sayan again, not in Marakand. He wouldn’t go back to find Ivah, either. She would be fine. She was safe in the god’s cave; she would emerge to find her friends, her allies. She didn’t need him, an unlikely step-step-father, to watch over her shoulder. He was going. Leave everything, his axe, his carpenter’s tools, even the damned horse-skull; he couldn’t lug such things about with him. Just—go. To where he belonged. Which wasn’t the Hardenvald. Demons hid their hearts, it was said, in the land that gave them being. Hah. He’d left the Hardenvald behind long ago. It wasn’t stone and hill and forest that anchored him.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  They rode slowly, letting the horses walk. Ghu did not speak or even look either of them in the eye, and Ahjvar, without question, took Deyandara up behind him, though she had always had the impression he wanted her as far from him as possible, before. Now she knew why, and he seemed to have stopped caring. Or maybe a granddaughter wasn’t a woman, didn’t stir up nightmares by her closeness. It was oddly comforting to lean against him in her weariness, to be a child with a grandfather, safe. Their course took them winding through valleys, keeping low, below the horizon. Though they passed a pair of dead Grasslanders, Ketsim’s messengers to Durandau, maybe, both with arrow-wounds, a token handful of earth thrown over them as a blessing, they saw no sign of Hicca’s folk. There were few signs of anyone, though there were villages, folk whose lord had been the queen direct, in this region. Ghu was choosing a course that took them by the remoter pastures. The murrain hadn’t hit the cattle here. Those, they did see, and sheep, and an occasional distant shepherd who usually vanished at the sight of them. Twice their winding crossed the track of many riders.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, eventually.

  “There was a battle fought at Orsamoss. Just last night. Do you know it?” Ahjvar shook his head. “Seems like years . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Your folk aren’t all traitors. A force under some of your lords came in time to save the high king, when the Red Masks and Marakanders broke his army and put it to flight. How they knew to come—maybe they were coming to meet him anyway.”

  “What happened to the Red Masks? Ghu told Lin—”

  “I did.” Ahjvar laughed. She didn’t think she’d heard him laugh before; this raised the hair o
n her arms. “The Lady made a serious mistake there. I hope someone’s able to take further advantage of it in Marakand.”

  She waited, but he only said, “I’m thinking it was your Marnoch who led the Catairnans to Durandau.”

  “Not my Marnoch. But probably.”

  “Our Marnoch? I hope he lived.”

  They were both sober and silent as Ghu after that. She fell asleep leaning against Ahjvar’s smoky back, feeling the heat of him even through his coat. She slept soundly as she ever had in her safe bed, till he woke her, reaching back to tap her hip.

  “Down,” he said.

  She didn’t see any danger, but she did as he said. They were in a valley bottom, below a brush-covered hillside, with Ghu circling back to them.

  “Ahj?” he asked.

  “Something I have to do,” Ahjvar said. “Before sunset. In case it’s too late, later.”

  He left them both standing to roam up into the scrubby trees, moving slowly, stiffly, putting out a hand now and then to steady himself against a trunk. Deyandara looked to Ghu for an explanation.

  “Too late for what?”

  He shrugged.

  Ahjvar wasn’t gone long. He returned with a handful of long, leafy switches.

  “So . . . Granddaughter. This curse of mine. You still going to call it a story?”

  “I—they didn’t die because I went to the dinaz, Cattiga and Gilru. They didn’t. Did they?”

  “Great Gods, no. If anyone . . . but that’s a lot to blame on one curse. We never had the southern pox in the land in my day, though.”

  “Winds change,” said Ghu vaguely.

  Ahjvar gave him a strange look. “Yes,” he said, and knelt down, offered a hand, and drew Deyandara down facing him.

  “Your stories tell you I was a wizard?”

  “Yes. Of course. You couldn’t have cursed the duina, otherwise.”