Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  “If you go back, that wizard—if he is a wizard, your dog believes he’s something else, I think, some demon gone bad, perhaps—will claim you. Make you his bride as he threatens and rule with your authority, at best. At worst—maybe he can leech off what power you have, batten on you and feed. My children at the ferries think it’s possible, if he’s not entirely human but something closer to us.”

  Pakdhala shivered. Feed off her. She had never lost the nightmare conviction that the warlord intended her utter destruction.

  “Kinsai. Forgive me. They say you…the gods of the eastern shore, it is said you destroyed them, long ago. I don’t—” Pakdhala clamped suddenly shaking hands between her knees. She had never felt Kinsai so still, so great and potent a power. The whole weight of the river, massed to strike. The lake of Lissavakail was nothing to the might of the Kinsai-av. “But I saw it, back when the warlord first appeared. I understood what Tamghat meant to do. Consume me, make me a mere part of himself, my power his, my being lost in his. Did you…is this possible?”

  “We could all have died, one by one,” Kinsai said quietly. “Long before the devils’ wars the Northrons sing of. They hid within me. We became one, to withstand the storm unleashed over the black hills. But they could not survive as individuals within me. They were weak, small gods and goddesses. It was not my will, to overwhelm them. But I did, I took them into myself and their power became mine. They return, some few, as shadows of what they were. Ghosts, almost.” Her eyes gleamed like pearls under the moon, ghost-pale. “Attalissa, you will not survive, not as yourself, if that wizard is capable of what you foresaw, if you surrender to that. You need to be strong enough to let him make his attempt and turn on him. Devour him, instead.”

  “I’m not strong enough. And I don’t want him…” within me, in any way. She could not stomach sharing even that thought with Kinsai, the image it brought to her. “I can’t believe, anymore, that I ever will be strong enough. To even resist him, let alone defeat him. There’s something wrong with me.”

  “Perhaps. Like a woman whose monthly courses never begin. It happens. Perhaps you need to die, and try again.”

  “No!”

  Kinsai chuckled. “Then take your dog. Use it.”

  “Use it how?”

  “As I used my brothers and sisters of the eastern shore.”

  “No!”

  “Why did you enslave it, if not to use it, someday?”

  “Enslave it? I didn’t.”

  “Don’t be a child. You can’t hide in that innocence now. I don’t know what the dog was, when you bound it, but it’s more akin to that devil-wizard than anything else.”

  “Devil?”

  “Who knows? I’ve never seen him. He might be. They do say one or two of the bound seven got loose some generations ago, in the north. Or he could be demon’s child, god’s child, who can say? Not one of mine, mind, my children have better natures, and nothing like that power; I have more sense than to let it pass to them in such strength. But it hardly matters, how he came by his power. Don’t try to ignore the truth. You’ve bound yourself into that weak body and now you hide behind poor Holla-Sayan, who’s doomed by that parasite soul he carries, and you know it. You can’t save him; he’ll try to fight Tamghat for you, and die, killed by the wizard or by the dog tearing free at last. Your only choice is to rip the dog from him, take it into your own soul, and kill the warlord yourself.”

  “I can’t do that. Anyway, the dog only goes to male hosts.”

  “You made it what it is. Virgin goddess, but you liked having a man about to cringe at your feet, didn’t you?”

  “I did not! I did not make him anything—I don’t remember.”

  Kinsai dissolved into sudden fog and an angry smashing of waves over the stone. Open your eyes, damned fool! Stop pretending innocence. If that wizard consumes you, he’ll eat his way along the desert road with nothing to stop him—I’ll be the next true power he takes, or the Lady of Marakand, and then the Old Great Gods themselves won’t be able to stop him, if ever they find a way back to the world. Holla was damned from the moment you tricked him into helping you, with your sweet, lying child’s innocence. Kill him now or watch him killed later, it’s all one in the end. Make the dog part of yourself, or see yourself fed to the wizard. You created this situation, with your spirit slave and your little-girl games of mortality.

  Harm Holla-Sayan and I’ll give myself to the wizard, to see you destroyed!

  Kinsai laughed, a disembodied voice over the water. “I like the man too much to betray him so, Great Attalissa, and I want no part of whatever the Blackdog truly is. But he’s doomed. It’s time you stopped hiding behind him and did something.” Before we all perish through your weakness like your sister Sera of the Red Desert.

  ’Dhala, what are you doing up the river? At-Landi’s no place for a girl your age to go wandering alone. You promised you’d stay with the others. Her father, and angry.

  Get away from the river, she almost screamed. Just…go back to Gaguush. Stay away from Kinsai, and leave me alone.

  ’Dhala—

  Do what I say, dog! And she flung him away, hurting him, she felt, and slammed her mind closed against him.

  She stumbled away from the river herself, feet finding painful rocks and shells, vision reduced to the merely human by tears. Anger. Shame? What in the cold hells did Kinsai think she knew, anyway? Pakdhala dragged on her boots, set off along the road, above the reach of Kinsai’s waters, half-running, and then running outright, running, running, but memory, mere echo of memory, nothing more certain, snapped at her heels. The Blackdog was no slave, the dog was her protector, it had always been, she and the Blackdog and the waters of Lissavakail…She shaped herself a body in a woman’s womb, flesh of her flesh, a village diviner, a woman strong in wizardry, if untrained. She was born a wizard, Attalissa incarnate, because…because…something hunted in the mountains…something savage and sorely wounded, mad and afraid, but never dying, and the villages lost yaks, and ponies, and goats, and herders to it, never many, but unceasing, over the years, as it fed the physical body it struggled to hold together, and a goddess of the waters could not lure it down to the lake, could not force it into a more useful shape, but such things wizards’ power could do—

  “No!” she screamed. “I didn’t!”

  “’Dhala? Pakdhala? Are you all right?” Not her father but Bikkim, peering into the darkness, sabre half-drawn. “Are you alone? Are you hurt?” Imagining the Great Gods knew what.

  She scrubbed a gritty coat-sleeve over her eyes, mortal embarrassment. “Bikkim. It’s all right. I just…” She found no explanation. “What are you doing out here?” Sniffed and hoped he didn’t notice.

  “Looking for you,” he said grimly. “Everyone at the wedding-feast thought you were at the caravanserai. And Django thought you’d gone with the rest of us. Holla-Sayan came down to the beach looking for you. He sent me.”

  “Oh.”

  They stood in awkward silence.

  “Where is he?” She wouldn’t reach for him, to find out. Raised voices floated from the landing beach. She hadn’t realized she had run so far back towards the town.

  “He went back to Attapamil’s to find Gaguush. Told me you’d gone up the north road along the river. Um, he said you might want company.”

  Neither of them commented on how improbable that was, that Holla-Sayan should do such a thing.

  “Are you all right?” Bikkim asked more gently. He reached out a cautious hand, found her arm. “It’s not this thing about you being a wizard…upsetting you, I mean? Even if you do have a tutor, no one’s going to make you leave the gang for an apprenticeship if you don’t want to go, you know that.” He tried a smile in the darkness. “It’d be over Holla’s dead body, anyway.”

  Just then, that wasn’t funny. “What tutor?” she asked.

  “You didn’t know? I thought that was why you’d…anyway, some Nabbani coin-thrower is coming to Marakand with us, and Gaguush w
ants her to tutor you.”

  “Oh,” Pakdhala said, without much interest. Bikkim smelt of the bathhouse, and herb-strong soap, and…maleness.

  “We should head back to the landing beach,” he suggested. “They roasted a pig.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ll walk you back to the caravanserai, then.”

  Pakdhala shook her head. “Bikkim? Just stay with me here for a while. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want a crowd. And I don’t want to be alone.”

  “I…um. I snitched a flask of Varro’s cousin’s captain’s meadu. I think you’d like it. It’s got honey in it. Or is made from honey. Or something. Tastes sort of like the ghosts of flowers. A bit.”

  She found his hand.

  “But I should walk you back. Your father’d kill me, if he thought—”

  “Holla-Sayan,” she pointed out, hearing herself saying the words, “sent you. And if you ask and I say yes, there’s not much he can say. Sayan knows, I’m old enough to marry.”

  “I don’t have much to offer you, Pakdhala.”

  She gave a single choking laugh. “More than I have. I’m sorry, Bikkim. I didn’t mean anything about marrying. I mean, I wasn’t saying you should…just…” She rubbed the sleeve over her face again, feeling her eyes prickling. His hand was so warm; she could feel all the bones in it, feel the blood racing, the life of him, such a fragile shell for the soul. So nearly lost, that night by the cataract. “I’d like it, if you wanted to just…stay here a while. With me. And…and see what happens. That’s all.”

  His hand tightened around hers. There was meadu singing in his blood; it was perhaps a little unfair of her. He might have protested more, sober. Or not. Perhaps not.

  “I will marry you,” he said. “I always intended to. But the caravan’s no place to bring up children, despite Holla managing it, and I don’t have a home to give you.”

  Great Gods forgive her, she could not tell him here, now, she could not marry him, could not…would not likely live past this next desert crossing, because she could not pass by Lissavakail again, she could not leave the folk suffering, Kinsai made her see that, if nothing else. Let the wizard devour her and go determined, bloody-minded and fighting as a caravaneer could be, and take him by surprise, destroy him from within. Feeble hope. She had never become Attalissa, she was no true goddess, but maybe she could be, just once, all Pakdhala, and Holla-Sayan’s daughter, who’d shot her first bandit when she was only twelve.

  “Always intended?” she asked, as they went blundering off the road and up a sheep-shorn hillside, Bikkim near-blind in the dark, but courteously leading. Something to say, anything to say. “Even when I was a snotty little brat right off the mountain? Gaguush says I was terribly rude to everybody.”

  “Well…” he conceded. “You were a homely thing, fat as a spring chicken and with no manners. You’ve improved some since then.”

  “Only some?” They sat side by side, their backs against a solitary walnut tree. Bikkim handed her the flask and she sipped it cautiously. It burned in her throat. “Strong…not as bad as the grain-spirit they drink at home on the Western Grass, though.”

  “Improved a fair bit,” he said generously, and with a knuckle brushed straggling hair, damp with river and tears, away from her face, leaned in to kiss her. His lips were unexpectedly soft, beard not so scratching as she had expected. She made herself relax, put her arms around him, cautiously. He squirmed and reached around her to take the flask away. “Don’t be pouring good drink down my back, or I’ll change my mind about your manners improving.”

  She laughed and leaned against him, felt her tension, at least some of it, burning away like mist in sunlight. “Bikkim?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?” They kissed again. She thought she did better, this time. Traded the flask back and forth.

  “For not making me go back to town.”

  He groaned. “Don’t remind me. I might be sensible.”

  “We’re both too sensible, too much of the time,” she said. “This is supposed to be our reckless youth.”

  “We don’t have…the world’s not so easy.” The fear of Tamghat, for him, for his children…he was the only surviving sept-chief of the Battu’um. He had that to fear if he married, Tamghat finding out the Battu’um chiefs’ line continued. If…what had Tihmrose said about counting the days…it won’t keep you safe but it might at least make you luckier than Immerose, and remember there’s quite a lot you can do that’s just as enjoyable without ever…Tihmrose had given her quite a few details…she could try…

  She didn’t want to think that way, tonight. Tomorrow could look after itself, for once. She didn’t want to think at all.

  “We’ve got tonight.”

  Holla-Sayan lay on his back, staring up into the darkness of the timbered roof. Gaguush sighed in her sleep, tucked against his side. He patted her absently, clenched his fist and pushed at the Blackdog. It was pacing, snarling, whining…that was how he pictured it, at least, caged within him, and growing more frantic every hour that Pakdhala kept him shut out.

  He wasn’t necessarily in better shape himself. Angry, yes. Afraid. He’d never known her to act this way, and Kinsai, somehow, seemed the precipitating factor. And he couldn’t damn her and go find her despite her words—the dog, for all it drove itself mad, madder, with anxiety, could not, as he found when he tried, disobey.

  He had never expected that. Otokas had never experienced that force of will.

  So he sent Bikkim, because Bikkim was standing near, at that moment, looking too old for his years, and lonely, and relatively sober. And if she were his daughter…he’d trust Bikkim alone with her. Or, no, he was very much afraid that he had just set up a situation that was…his mother’d kill him, no decent father would…they weren’t even betrothed. At least, he’d trust that Bikkim and she would do each other no harm. He’d trust…The Blackdog overwhelmed him for a heartbeat, red rage, no one, nothing, could be allowed so near the goddess…Holla shoved the dog down. The whole gang was expecting the two of them to wed, eventually, the way Bikkim watched her, the way she smiled at him…when the two of them realized it.

  Hells, he sent Bikkim, and not Tihmrose who was also still relatively sober, to spite the dog and the goddess and the damned temple and priestesses and Attalissa herself. Pakdhala had every right to Bikkim, if she wanted him and he wanted her.

  But if it was Kinsai who had made her react with such fear…No, if she were harmed, the dog would know, shut out as it was. He would know.

  But she feared something of Kinsai.

  There had been a demon at the landing beach, when he went to Varro’s cousin’s feasting to find ‘Dhala. A giant even among Northrons, seven feet tall, startling, even in firelight, because his face was cream-pale, not burnt ruddy or brown. He was dressed plainly for a Northron, in only a faded and somewhat ragged brown tunic, bare-legged, barefoot, no bright colours, no gold or amber at throat or wrist, not even a glass bead. Odd enough, a demon who seemed more or less human in appearance, but for a demon to come into a crowd of humans that way…definitely strange. He’d been eating and drinking and singing with the ship’s crew, clapping the bridegroom on the back and making what seemed as if it had been some joke, because the bride had shrieked with laughter and pounded on his shoulder with her fist. Even the Blackdog could find nothing too much to fear in a demon, however far from his proper place in the world. It was Holla’s suspicious mind that tried to make something of it, and watched the giant, even after he sent Bikkim off after Pakdhala. But the demon made no move to follow, showed no interest in Holla-Sayan himself beyond lifting his drinking horn in a wordless toast, when he caught his eye across the pit of glowing embers where the pig had roasted. Obviously seeing him for something other than entirely human, but he was not fearful as the desert demons were.

  Holla-Sayan had left after that, but still felt uneasy, as though something watched him. As he walked aw
ay the demon had been chanting to an enthralled audience that included Varro. Some old Northron tale, by the rhythm of it. A demon bard? Something watched, though, a feeling, a scent…wizardry…it had disappeared.

  He had thought, for a moment, there was a woman leaning on the seated giant’s shoulder. But there were only shadows, even to the Blackdog’s eye.

  Maybe the lying Nabbani, who had watched him so slyly the whole time she chattered at Gaguush, had followed the gang to the landing beach.

  Gaguush would hear no more of it, and if he made a greater issue…hard to explain why. He had nothing against wizards himself; it was the Blackdog hated the smell of them. But he distrusted that Nabbani woman in particular, because she snuck up to Gaguush in the teahouse with a spell of some sort on her, and she lied when she called herself only a diviner, weak and no wizard.

  Dog? Father?

  He had half a mind to ignore the goddess. Was too greatly relieved to do it. Done sulking?

  I wasn’t…I was. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I shouted. I’m sorry I hit you.

  He snorted, and Gaguush grunted. Hit me? You could call it that. Do that again and I’ll put you over my knee like you’re eight. It hurt. What happened?

  There was silence.

  Kinsai… he prompted. You warned me away from Kinsai.

  I’ve…dealt with Kinsai. I think. She won’t touch you.

  I can defend my own virtue, you know. At least, sometimes. Gaguush understands.

  More silence.

  It wasn’t that? he asked.

  She was threatening…she thought I should…

  Should what?

  She drew away for a moment, and the dog tensed.

  Nothing. ‘Dhala—Attalissa—was lying. To the Blackdog.

  You don’t want to take everything Kinsai says as the utter and entire truth, he suggested.

  No. But she was still keeping him at a distance, shutting away thought, emotion…

  She wasn’t back in the caravanserai.

  Bikkim with you? he asked guardedly.

  Yes.

  He forced the Blackdog down. Ah. So you’re all right, then?