Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  No. It wasn’t a word; it was the dog’s whole being that howled it, but underneath, underneath something flared with grim satisfaction.

  I think so. That one silver thread the dog had lodged in his heart, the burnt scars on his fingertips from when he touched that shimmering, shifting barrier…when he followed that path, it led here, to this. Moth—Vartu—will find the goddess. She said so. She’ll find Pakdhala. You know we can’t fight Tamghat and hope to survive, and he wants to make you part of himself. What will that do to Attalissa? Otokas feared that; that’s part of why he wanted me to take her to the desert road. We’re putting you out of his reach, so you at least don’t go flitting to him like a mindless butterfly without a fight when I’m dead, right? If we’re going to die today, don’t you want to die your own master?

  That wasn’t an argument the dog understood. The drive to serve Attalissa, to protect Attalissa, ruled. It surged up, shredding a way through him as he fought to hold it down. Holla-Sayan pitched forward on the stairs, screaming, every bone, it felt, dissolving in fire, but as he fell he hurled the bowl into the blackness ahead.

  It struck stone and shattered like glass, shards flying, the grey, nacreous liquid it had held rising like a lily, a fountain, limning stone edges, sending strange oily lights running over the surface of the water as he fell beneath it.

  Sayan…please…not yet…

  He was dying. The dog had torn into the world through his physical body, ripped him open. He lay on the steps where he had fallen, half-in and half-out of the water, and blood soaked him, sticky and hot. A twisting tree of fire swayed before him, murky reddish light, liquid pewter veins. It rose suddenly to the low roof, flaring bright, and vanished, leaving Holla-Sayan in blackness his eyes could not pierce. Everything was muted, sound and scent dim, even his gasping breath, even the blood.

  The dog was gone.

  There was still Pakdhala to find.

  He crawled, one step higher, another. Fell with his arm beneath him and felt it grow warmer, wetter. Ragged rent in his coat and everything beneath. Farther up. Farther, through the square hole in the roof, in the chapel’s floor. His fingers touched wood greasy with rot. The sides of the altar. Dragged and lay against it, but even with his shoulder he could not move it, just lay there, leaning slightly, sinking under cold waves of pain.

  The Sayanbarkash again. Home. The farm, all the low, green, turf-roofed buildings. The god’s hill swelling in the distance, long ridge dominating the skyline. He wanted to be there.

  Die unburied beneath the altar and rot here, be bound a ghost until someone found his bones, found his stinking corpse and shoved him back into the lake, to free his soul.

  Not that. Not that. He wanted to be home. Try it all again, make better choices…could not wish himself never curious about the mountains, Pakdhala unfound. Could wish her a lost child, only that. Should have married Gaguush. Coughing shook him back into the present and grim pain, and then his chest forgot how to inhale and his throat caught on nothing. After a moment his body remembered the way to breathe again. This time. Cold.

  Light hung before him, dim, drifting silver. It clung to him by a thread, one thread that had not been broken, an umbilical to feed its crippled fire by connection to the realm of the humans’ and gods’ and demons’ earth, where its nature did not belong. It ate his pain, it drank what grasp on the world he had left, clinging to life itself. It grew, flecked with red, retreating from wherever it had gone, regrouping in this coffin of an altar. The red was muddier than before, the colour of old scabs, the silver darkened to pewter, streaked tarnish-black.

  So long a road, to die together trapped here, neither able to find their way home.

  You didn’t have to take me with you. He was alone in his head, couldn’t speak. For a long time, it seemed a long time, he just looked at his hand by the light that was the devil. Finally the hand moved, stretched towards the thing.

  “Need,” he managed, “save…‘Dhala.”

  The devil…did not care. The devil was satisfied Attalissa would die.

  “Not die. Ghatai’s stronger. Eats her.”

  Ghatai would be stronger. Ghatai would storm the heavens and open the hells and the Old Great Gods would be afraid.

  “No. Vartu. Sword. We saw.” The obsidian blade that carried a gateway to the hells, that was itself a shard of the cold hells. “Ghatai…won’t free th’ells. Wants. Torule. You. All worlds. You don’ trus’ him. You know.”

  So cold he could not feel the stone he lay on, could not feel the hand that lay dead-grey in a pool of glowing pewter.

  “Pakdhala,” he said at last, forcing open eyes that had closed he did not know when. “You remember. All av’tars. Know her. Growing. Why you come back here?”

  The devil wanted to die, did not want to die alone. Wanted a companion as it waited. Beyond death, there was no self. Not for…Holla did not understand the shape of that thought. God and devil. What it was. Creature of the remote heavens.

  Great Gods and devils were the same. One side lost in a war so long ago…

  “Don’ care. ‘Dhala. You…want… to die?”

  It would not be a slave again.

  “Me. Neither. Want. Mygirl. Safe. Whatever price.”

  The devil had no face, no form but that dwindling swirl of light, but he thought it turned its full attention to him.

  The devil was afraid.

  “Me. Too.”

  The devil was afraid of him. Of being used.

  “Trust. Both.”

  Better to die free. Both of them.

  “Both. Free. Better live.”

  He felt that silver thread linking them heart to heart, as though it lay between his fingers. Break it and they would both die at once. Together they held one another in life a little longer, fading in strength.

  “Come,” he invited, a whisper, and the devil came in a rush, pouring over him, sinking into him, filling veins and heart and marrow, convulsing his body, blinding him, white sky burning, burning him away, flesh and blood and bone.

  The priestesses called this the Dawn Dancing Hall, although Tamghiz found it difficult to imagine Old Lady Luli dancing at dawn or any other time. The great rectangular pavement was a mosaic tiled in three shades of blue, while the gilded beams of the roof were supported on pillars carved into spirals like narwhal horns and painted brilliant red, with gilded flowers around their bases and capitals. On three sides it was open to the wind, a platform thrust out towards the southeastern edge of the holy islet, looking down on the edge of town and away into a vista of rising peaks. A notch in the horizon spilled out the rising sun at the spring equinox, though they hadn’t managed to align their dancing hall with it. Still, unless he climbed to one of the ice fields, he wouldn’t be likely to find a better place to welcome the rising conjunction. If the Dancing Hall hadn’t been here, he would have torn out the walls of the adjacent novices’ hall and built something similar.

  Vrehna and Tihz already drew near one another in their celestial dance, mounting the heavens in the northeast. The long side of the Dancing Hall faced them almost square on. He aligned his great circle to where they would appear over the mountains, turn burning into one, six nights from now.

  He didn’t trust to chalk and powder for this working, but mixed pigments and oil and painted the hundreds of symbols and paths of power, forming the patterns stroke by delicate stroke. Chiefs among his noekar stood guard, three to a corner, day and night, and others patrolled the perimeter of it. He wanted no second An-Chaq interfering. He had warded it, too, against the one great threat he feared, though he had little strength to spare for anything but the great working to come.

  Painting the spell this way tied him to Lissavakail, though. He had refined it since the time he had planned to draw it all out in one intense casting, to take the goddess on the same day he took Lissavakail. As bad as Ulfhild and her wretched poetry, always realizing perfection lay still out of reach and pulling what was done apart to build it again. But he wa
s right to do so. This was stronger, surer, more elegant. Providence. Had all gone as he intended, the goddess might have been able to fight the spell as he had originally shaped it. This, though, this would hold her. Further providence that she was so weak, still disconnected from her powers, and holding her captive was so simple a matter. He would bring her here, reunite her with her lake just as he drew the final runes to close the circle and as the planets rose above the mountains.

  Meanwhile he had to build the spell, so that it all hung ready, lacking only the final elements. He worked at it day by day, as Vrehna and Tihz pulled to one another. He had no strength, no concentration, to spare for any more great workings, nor had he the time to ride to Serakallash to investigate the great stir and turmoil he had felt.

  —It was Sera, taking back her land.

  —It could not have been. I slew her.

  —I doubted. I knew something was wrong, even then. I should have hunted her. I should have questioned the sept-chiefs.

  —Ketsim has grown lazy and overconfident. He said there was no rebellion left in them. That patrol that came in this morning said there were fireworks seen from the desert edge the night Ketsim set out with the goddess. Signalling? Who? If they’ve hired mercenaries out of the desert…

  —If Sera is back, she will be mine anyway. If not, they can go to ruin godless. Serakallash doesn’t matter any more. Serakallash was a game. This is all a game, remember? I, we, don’t need kingdoms on this earth.

  —They should honour us in fear.

  —They will. But what if they weren’t signalling mercenaries for some uprising? What if she’s plotting with Serakallash? I felt her. She’s near. I threw her off the track for years, but she’s here now.

  —As I wanted.

  —Yes. I want her here for this. But if there’s any danger, it’s in her.

  —I’m stronger than her. I always have been. She doesn’t frighten me.

  —She’s mine. She will be mine again.

  —Sometimes I feel her watching me.

  —Delusion. She hates me still.

  —Her fate and mine run together. She can’t escape me. She knows it. She’s drawn back to me. That’s why she stalked my daughter, turned her against me. As she did my son.

  —These things don’t matter. Games, as much as this game of being lord of this wretched town of yak-milking peasants. When I’m able to open the road to the heavens again, when the strength of the earth shatters the citadels of the Gods, then she’ll know me her lord, Vartu will follow then.

  —She’ll be the first. Only the first. Followers betray. She was never trustworthy. But when I take her and make her mine as I make the gods of the earth mine…the Great Gods themselves will fear us.

  —She’s near.

  —That’s wrong.

  “Great Gods damn it!” He had to rub out a quarter circuit of the lesser arc, sit in meditation an hour, clearing his mind, rocking and chanting, before he began again. It was Vartu, working against him, leading him into distraction and self-doubt, as ever. That was what she intended in Serakallash; it might even be illusion, this feeling of Sera’s presence in her waters again, meant to pull him away from Lissavakail.

  His thoughts were wandering again, when they should be most focused. Tamghiz Ghatai sat back on his heels, took a deep breath, eyes on the distant peaks. He was nerve-wracked as an apprentice preparing his masterpiece. That was the problem with human flesh and human soul, they wound one into human life again, and all its chattering, nattering, self-gnawing stupidities.

  I am Ghatai. Ghatai, Ghatai, Ghatai. I am…stars and darkness and fire and ice, soul born of worlds unseen. I am Ghatai… He rocked to the chant, eyes closed, until the word was all there was, self without thought. Ghatai. He finished the day’s working as heavy mist coiled from the lake’s still waters and the evening shadows flowed over the Dancing Hall. Then he lay there, calm and still and briefly at peace, in the centre where he would place the avatar, and he waited for his stars to rise. He checked on the girl once, touching her mind. Still asleep under drugs and spells, dreaming of camels. Her guards were alert, the wards he had set on her lay quiescent. The wretched Blackdog had not come yet, to be put out of its misery and pulled into Ghatai’s soul. Soon, though. Perhaps tonight. The spells he had set on the avatar’s body would hold it, or any other devil’s soul that happened to touch his prize, long enough for him to reach the room and deal with them, whichever it was that came. For now, he could rest, and watch the stars rising.

  He touched the breast of his shirt and the hard, silk-wrapped length of bone that lay against his chest all the time now, over his heart as if he held his child there. This had nothing to do with Vartu, or with Ghatai. Sometimes he was simply Tamghiz, and he was waiting for Ulfhild.

  Were there any hearts at all in the temple still Attalissa’s? Pakdhala surfaced into a hazy wakefulness, feeling that she had been shaping that thought through long, slow dreams, as she rocked, safe and secure, to red Sihdy’s pace, her father’s arms about her. Safe and secure, hidden from view, snuggled into his chest, happy, loved, half-drowsing. Ah, she had done that herself, made a hidden citadel from which to rise, slow and unseen. And now she was awake.

  But not much further ahead. Still none had understood her plea, none had come with water from the lake…but of course, there were the guards. If one of the novices were clever, she might mix lake-water in with the drugged beer and honey, but if they had been raised as hostages to Tamghat, she supposed they hadn’t exactly been encouraged to think for themselves. She tried her strength. Walls. She still could not reach the dog. And if she fought them…Tamghat would know long before she breached them.

  Pakdhala forced lead-heavy eyelids open. The room was dim, with splashes of dusk’s copper light painting the walls through the piercings of the shutters. Another night on its way. One shutter was folded back, and by rolling her eyes she could just make out a woman with Salt Desert tattoos on her face. She sat on the balustrade, leaning forward, head against the fists that clutched her spear.

  Bored, and not terribly alert. Hah. Though Pakdhala could do nothing with that at the moment. The other, a Grasslander woman—always women, did he not trust men near his intended bride or was it genuine respect for her modesty?—stood with her shoulders propped against the doorframe. As Pakdhala watched through slitted eyes she pushed herself off and began slowly pacing the room.

  “Hope someone does come,” the one on the balcony said, and laughed. “This is bloody boring. Four hours to go?”

  “Don’t wake her!”

  “She wouldn’t wake if we shouted. Wizardry.” She waggled her fingers. “What do you make of old Eyeless Darshin, pottering up on the last watch mumbling about water? You know what she had in her jug? Lake muck. Said ‘the lady wanted water.’”

  “She’s mad. Senile. Her wits went when our lord put out her eyes. Or maybe before—you’d have to be a bit addled to go after him with a kitchen knife, seems to me.”

  “Well, yeah. But still, the thing with the water—seems so unlikely I kind of wonder if there’s sense to it, you know.”

  “Old Dardar talks to trees and flowers and sings lullabies to the lake.”

  “Lullabies?”

  “True. Haven’t you seen her? Off pottering along the shore early in the morning, falling in half the time. Singing baby-songs. There’s no sense to anything she does.”

  “Well, maybe. They dumped the pitcher over her head and kicked her downstairs, anyway, so whatever she was up to, it didn’t come to anything.” The Salt Desert woman sighed. “Silly child. You wouldn’t catch me running off with dog-monsters if my lord announced he had a fancy to be my husband.”

  “Don’t be irreverent.”

  The desert woman, too young to have been noekar when the temple fell, pouted, sighed, and turned her back to look out over the lake. They fell into silence again. The Grasslander moved pieces on a Nabbani chessboard, no doubt confusing whatever game had been left half-played.

/>   A shadow flickered over the red glow of the shutter-piercings and the desert woman turned her head, braids swinging, to watch something.

  “Why’s our lord shooting birds now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Funny thing to do.”

  “Hardly your place to question him, is it?”

  “The mountain girls are missing most of the time anyway. When I was little I always heard what great archers they were, these mountain priestesses.”

  “It’s not like we’ve let them get much practice lately. Half the novices have never touched a bow.”

  “Oh, now who’s questioning our lord’s wisdom?”

  “Hold your tongue and keep your mind on your duty, why don’t you?”

  The desert woman grumbled into welcome silence. Pakdhala felt herself start to sink under it, sleep clawing her down. She forced her eyes open again, bit the inside of her lip until it bled. Pain helped, sped up her heart. The taste of blood overwhelmed the lingering bittersweet coating on her tongue.

  What could she do within these walls, beyond shouting and beating her fists and generally throwing a tantrum? She could not reach the Blackdog, could not fight the barriers around her without drawing Tamghat’s attention and finding herself pushed into wizardrous sleep again. She clenched her teeth and kept her breathing even, quieting a rising panic. That would draw Tamghat’s attention as surely as the tantrum she imagined.

  Holla-Sayan carried his home and his god in his mind. Most caravaneers would say they did, with their little talismans that proved to themselves they were not godless, but her father could reach down inside himself and find the Sayanbarkash’s strength, certainty of who he was and where he belonged. She had felt it in him. Was she hollow, that she had no resources, no foundation, when she was locked up within herself? Who was Pakdhala, on her own, without the flow of other minds around her, without the spark of godhead that flickered so feebly?

  A caravan-mercenary. An archer. A camel-leech. She could bake good stone-bread, too, and had studied the falls of the coins in Nabbani divination. Perhaps—