by K V Johansen
He could feel it, if he tried, cold, sharp-edged. It was real to what he was.
Words had power. Hareh knew this.
“Then the Blackdog tells you, Attalissa has returned and has need of your service still, and no curse of a Grasslander wizard, devil-souled or not, may bind you here.” The words came in the dead speech of old Tiypur, thought shaped by what the devil held of Hareh’s mind, but they were said, and the ghosts understood. “Come with me.” He added, in plain speech of the caravan road, “Once I figure out how to leave myself.” He pulled the door open, peered into the low tunnel they had made. They had moved a lot of rock, for women with nothing but lake-water to sustain them. They had tried to follow the known corridor, though. Above lay layers of shelving rock that must have crumbled downwards. The buildings of the whole south side of the temple complex must have rocked and shifted as if in earthquake.
Back into the lake and ashore elsewhere?
The dog—still no other name—thought not.
The dog was the shape of his slavery, of his service, but on the other hand, it was familiar and came with ease. He tore through broken stone, claws, a force that drove the shards of shattered ceiling aside, hauled himself into open space again, an overgrown subsidence where the southern wall of the temple compound was cracked and slipping as if undermined, which in truth it was. Above, the temple rose, climbing the rocky hillock into which it was rooted. The fog had lifted, only a few banners still smoking over the lake when he looked around, and the stars burning whitely, so distant, so remote, lost to him…
Fire burst nearer, a thunderclap echoing and re-echoing off temple walls and enclosing mountains, carried by the waters. Red chrysanthemum floating down, petals fading slowly, sparks dying in the lake. Another, white, and red again, and two yellow. A final green one, each a resounding bang. There were shouts within the temple. Lights kindled, dancing past windows. One bound took him to the roof of the kitchens.
A bell in the town began to clang, and from the corner of his eye he saw another fire-tube blossom, somewhere in the mountains, and then, slowly, the bloom of a beacon-fire grew.
Holla-Sayan shook dust and stone-chips from his coat, flowed back to human form. This was not the Blackdog’s twofold existence, he had no other being. He remade himself, remade what he had been, and now his clothing was whole and the cuts and broken claws healed as he rubbed mud from his face, drew the sword that he had, what? Dissolved to ghost and remade? The physical and the fire of his being flowing one into another…Ghatai could do this too. He was going to be very hard to kill.
Meeray’s dormitory formed up around him.
“What are the Blackdog’s orders?” she asked. He could feel the tension of the ghosts, quivering like hounds straining at the leash. More urgent, though, he knew where Pakdhala was, searching for him, seeking a soul she touched and recoiled from in horror and still longed to find.
Not Pakdhala. Attalissa, whole and entire.
The lake, of course.
And he had been pushing her away, that old, deep hatred beyond thought reacting, all this time, while his attention had been on other things.
He was aware of Ghatai, too, a building thundercloud of uncertainty and anger. Ghatai’s awareness swung, questing, seeking the goddess. Found her free. Found the Blackdog.
“Go!” Holla-Sayan sang. “Raise the temple for Attalissa!” He didn’t look back to see how or where the ghosts dispersed to, simply ran along the roof, dropped down to the herb garden, and went in the unguarded door.
’Dhala! He’s found you!
Father! Holla-Sayan, I thought you were…Gods, Holla, what’s happened to you?
An old woman lurched up from what seemed to be her bed, a huddle of ragged quilts in the corner, but her lurch carried smoothly on into the thrust of a long knife from which he rocked aside, catching her wrist. Not a lucky strike in the dark; she was blind, she had tracked him by his boots on the floor. Her eyes were empty, scarred sockets, but her expression was grim, mortally determined, as she suddenly dropped all her weight from that wrist and swung a sandled foot upwards. He twisted from that, faster than thought, released her.
“It’s the Blackdog, Sister Darshin.”
On her knees on the floor, she raised her head. “Truly?”
“Yes.”
“Not Otokas.”
“No.”
Her face twisted, weeping tearlessly, not for Otokas, but with relief. “The wizard has her, Blackdog, he’s bespelled her somehow.”
“She’s free, and the temple is rising. Did you hear the fireworks calling the valleys? Will you fight?”
Darshin laughed bitterly. “I wash dishes, Blackdog, and these new novices tie my sandal-straps together and laugh when I fall. I’m Eyeless Dardar, addled as a forgotten egg. But other than me, you won’t find many will fight for her. We all know what the Lake-Lord can do.”
“You haven’t seen what we can do yet,” he said, and that we was his thoughts running on Vartu, wherever she was, not the little lake goddess.
Gods—no, don’t swear by the treacherous Great Gods, ever. His thoughts staggered a veering course between the man he had been and the devil.
“Call Meeray, ask her where you’d be most use,” he suggested. Pakdhala, I’m coming to you.
“Meeray’s dead, Blackdog.”
“I know. Call her.” He took off running again, left Darshin behind, flowed into the dog’s form and launched himself down the stairs.
Blackdog, Holla, no! Stay away!
Gaguush tried a series of deep, slow breaths, but they didn’t help the tightness in her chest. Call it the thin mountain air, not heart-clenching fear for a wretched, unfaithful Westgrasslander and a brat who wasn’t his any more than she was hers. Call it exhaustion. They’d had hard riding, half a day of it in the teeth of a storm, and little sleep. She’d have expelled from the gang anyone who used one of her beasts as they’d used them in this chase, and she’d probably have beaten whoever it was to boot. Definitely docked their pay. Another breath.
“Which way?” Immerose asked. They were huddled in a narrow lane, armed and armoured to the full extent of the gear they’d brought, exhausted and footsore. Since sometime that afternoon, Gaguush had had the strange, floating feeling of dream or fever, as if the world had gone slightly off-kilter and she was slipping away from it. They had overtaken Asmin-Luya and Django the first morning, the two of them in the midst of a furious argument over whether or not to follow a single Tamghati mercenary they’d spotted slinking along through the hills back towards Serakallash. She’d ended that and swept them on with her. The poor camels and Master Mooshka’s horses had been left behind today at the shepherd’s hut where the priestess calling herself “Auntie Orillias” lived with a handful of younger priestesses, most of whom had come on to Lissavakail with the gang. Orillias had sniffed at the notion that her goddess could possibly have been captured by the Lake-Lord, but she had not been unwilling to help. “Sister Vakail” was a powerful name, it seemed. Orillias had stayed to watch the beacons, as she had for years.
And while they were making their stealthy way down to the lakeshore where there was supposed to be a boat kept by someone’s cousin, muttering about the fog that had lifted too soon, there had been an explosion of fireworks from the far side of the temple islet, and answering beacons on the high ridges, running away out of sight into the mountains.
The boat hadn’t been there, but one of the sisters had gone scouting and reported, in her barely comprehensible mountain speech, the guardpost that oversaw the bridge to be ablaze, the bridge itself in the hands of the stonecutters’ guild, busily building a drystone wall to bar the bridge to Tamghati reinforcements from outside. They simply walked across, introduced as mercenary allies come seeking a kidnapped comrade.
Simple, hah. In the dark, no one was going to see the fluttering indigo rags they all wore, strips hastily torn from shawls and head-scarves to tie about neck or brow. What use was a token when it had been invente
d by some stonecutter’s wife on the spot and no one else knew about it? The Lissavakaili rebels would see a long-braided shadow too tall for a mountain native and that would be enough. Bashra help her, she wanted to die in her own tent in her own desert.
And at her bedside a crowd of devoted grandchildren—greatgrandchildren—yes, while she was dealing in wishes. Not in some ill-organized peasant uprising which seemed to be taking its own leaders, if these sisters were supposed to be that, all unawares.
“Gaguush, which way?”
She rubbed her eyes and looked around. Nodding off on her feet, she was. She had missed something. “How the hell do I know? Ask the sisters.”
“They’ve gone. Said they had to meet the guild-leaders. Weren’t you listening? Boss, you all right?”
Immerose had always been smugly capable of sleeping soundly anywhere, even on the back of a camel, while the rest of the human race dozed and woke and dozed again.
“Idiots! All four of them shouldn’t have gone. We’ll be taken for Tamghati.”
“Then let’s get moving.”
Immerose, who by her face had been about to ask which way yet again, backed off, as someone put a hand under Gaguush’s elbow. The demon, of course. The first dawn as they travelled had proved true everything Varro’s winter-tales said about him. Really a bear, or really a man? Man enough now, at any rate, and even a crazed Lissavakaili out for foreign blood might have the sense to pick a different group to attack.
“The temple’s west of here,” he said gently. “Your Holla’s there, I think.”
“And your Moth?” she muttered. Her Holla. Hah. He was the Blackdog; she had thought it bad enough she had to share him with that long-forgotten mountain-trollop and then with Kinsai of the great river, but he belonged to the goddess of Lissavakail until he died.
“Ya. Come. Come quietly, and perhaps they’ll ignore us.”
“That’s a wish.” But maybe it was demon magic, because the mobs in the streets, which were flowing in much the same direction, did ignore them, or glance and glance away.
There was another bridge to the temple island, plain timber and held against them by Tamghati mercenaries. The sounds of oars and hushed voices, the sudden leaping slap of water away in the darkness, suggested a flotilla on the move. Now they were trapped among this useless confusion of townsfolk.
Not so confused after all. Their milling numbers took on form, rough division into companies, and they did have leaders, men, and a few women, under sudden banners of tattered blue. Weapons, too, slings, bows, spears, pitchforks, iron-spiked staves, and here and there a sword—how much of that iron had she carried to Jerusha Rost-vadim? Clever little townsfolk, using their guilds as the framework of their revolt. This wasn’t a mob; it was a militia, rising up according to some plan. Gaguush felt a lot better about being on their side, or she would if she didn’t look so much like she belonged on the other.
And she hadn’t come here to get her gang mixed up in a war. Gaguush looked around. Django and Kapuzeh and Asmin-Luya, calm and grim. Django had acquired a torch from somewhere. Kapuzeh put an arm around Thekla, who had no business being in a fight, especially on foot. The little Westron cook smiled up at him. Gaguush looked away. Send her back into the town, to hide and wait? Send young Zavel with her—they could look after one another. Where was the brat? There, chatting earnestly with one of the girls who’d come with them from Orillias’ and a bull-necked man wearing an old bronze helmet wound with indigo cotton. The priestess picked a fine time to reappear. She should send Judeh back as well. He looked ill, as he always did when a fight was in the offing, though no one could ever call him a coward. But a physician, even a mere camel-leech, was going to do far more good for everyone if he stayed out of the fighting. Immerose and Tihmrose leaning together, Tihmrose at least as weary as she ought to be, but both looking as grimly determined as Django and his brother. Bikkim, Bashra and the Great Gods bless him, his attention fixed on the island as if he could scent Pakdhala there—at least he wouldn’t be on her conscience, he had as much need to be here as she did. Varro testing the edge of his sabre and chewing his moustaches. She added to her tally Tusa missing in Serakallash, Holla-Sayan and Pakdhala still to be found.
Her gang. Her little world. All the family she owned to. “Zavel? Zavel!” She caught the boy’s attention. “Take Thekla back into town and find a safe place to hole up. Judeh, go with them. You’ll be a lot more use to the injured there.”
Blank looks. Thekla shook her head. Zavel went back to his conversation. “’Dhala might need me,” Judeh said.
Idiots. Fine. “Varro? You’re a Northron, you know boats. Can we take a boat and get over there?”
“Be on the wrong side of the line when battle’s joined,” Varro pointed out.
“We’re not here for a battle, we’re here to find Holla and Pakdhala! Use your head.”
Mikki let go her arm, looking about, head and shoulders above most of them, and she had the sudden notion he was about to abandon them, to charge the bridge alone or something equally and stupidly befitting a Northron hero separated from his heart’s companion. She grabbed him by his tunic. “Stay with us.”
“I said I would. They are great fools, these Tamghati who face us.”
“Why?”
“There are archers behind them.”
Gaguush could see nothing beyond the points of light that were the Tamghati torches. “How does that make them…you mean townsfolk archers?”
“Women in bronze armour.”
“Priestesses might be on their side.”
“The way they’re slinking around, they do not look to me like reinforcements. More like an ambush from behind.”
Zavel came pushing his way back to her. “Sister Nenniana says that Shevehan Smith there says—he’s some sort of lieutenant to the Old Woman of the free temple—he says that Attalissa is on the temple island and they’re waiting for some sign from her. But that the fishermen’s guild and the boatbuilders’ and some other one have made a landing and are going to attack the Tamghati barracks in the temple compound, and when that comes Shevehan will have the folk here attack the bridge anyway from this side. They believe their goddess will deal with Tamghat. I…I didn’t know what to say, boss. What do we tell them? If Pakdhala’s his prisoner—even if she is a goddess really, she’s in his power. He’s going to slaughter them like he did when he took Serakallash.”
“Nothing we can do. They’re not going to listen to us, lad. We’re going to find our people and…” And what? Fool she was. Die with them, probably. “Varro—boat?”
“Something’s happening.”
Torches whirled and flared as Tamghati tumbled and fell, broke ranks and re-formed under shouted orders. Over the sudden uproar of shouting and screaming rose a ragged, shrill cry of, “Attalissa!”
The guild-leaders lost what command they had of their militias. The whole mass surged forward, rushing the bridge, and to stand firm amid that was like trying to swim upriver at the Fifth Cataract.
“Stay together!’ Gaguush yelled. “Django, Kapuzeh, keep Thekla out of it!”
Hells. She drew her sabre and wished for Lion beneath her and a good long spear. Show these godless mercenaries they weren’t up against a mob of peasants after all.
“Luck,” Mikki wished her, and then he roared, nothing human in the sound, and charged the bridge. Lissavakaili parted for him, closed up behind, and he was in the vanguard that took the bridge and hit the Tamghati. Gaguush thought she saw the demon, pale hair flying, axe swinging, making for a mounted Grasslander, probably a noekar, and she lost sight of him in the darkness.
Then they were across the bridge, some sabre-wielding Red Desert man came at her, and she lost everyone but Varro at her shoulder, fighting in the dark.
Regaining your powers makes no difference, Attalissa of the lake. You are mine. I never intended you to remain so uselessly human as you have been all this life of yours. You will come to me—now.
The devil
was angry, but it was the anger of a father at an obstreperous child, certain of his ultimate dominance. He pulled at her. Pakdhala felt the tug, threads knotted and woven into her soul, as though her heart was a netted fish. She had not even noticed that spell laid on her amid all the others as she slept. Halfway down a flight of stairs that went nowhere, she fell to her knees, head bowed, fists clenched, trembling. Above her, the temple was waking. Before her, rubble blocked the way to the Old Chapel. She did not dare reach out to the Blackdog, not with Ghatai riding her mind. Her stomach heaved, but her belly was empty. She clenched teeth as well as fists and swallowed, cold and sweating.
Come, Attalissa. The time isn’t right, but I think we need to begin regardless, before she gets at you. You don’t want your soul to become a battleground between us.
Running to her father. What could Holla-Sayan do, Blackdog or not, if he even existed anymore in whatever madness had irrupted in that corrupted remnant of a devil’s soul?
In town, there were folk poised, awaiting Attavaia’s signal. All foredoomed, if Ghatai took her. All foredoomed, if she did not fight.
At least if the Blackdog was out of her reach, she could not be tempted to bind a devil to her own heart of her own will.
Ghatai wanted her. She would go to him.
He felt that acquiescence, that meek turn, the slow, shaking clamber back up the cracked and dusty stairs.
Good girl. The thought purred.
She kept her own thoughts quiet, especially when Attavaia’s fire-tubes hissed into the sky. She did not hear the explosions, but she felt, over town and temple, flares of attention, sharply focused, some eager, frightened, exhilarated, some wondering. Ghatai turned furious attention elsewhere and she drew a deep breath, feeling stronger and steadier at once. But then, there before her in the lightless, abandoned corridor was a sister she knew, Altira, one of those who had tried to soothe a hysterical child in the Old Chapel, when Tamghat came. Dead since then, and casting her own dim light, in her fierce attachment to the world she should have left behind. Altira saluted. “Lady.”