by Martin Davey
A small thing and yet still she didn’t move to knock on the door.
Should she knock or should she walk straight in?
More people walked past her, more than one of them looking in curiosity at the woman standing in the road with the huge dog by her side. More unfamiliar faces in a village full of unfamiliar faces. Ysora had once pitied the people of Yerotan, born and raised and never leaving the confines of the village, never seeing the wonders of the world the Keepers had made for them. But now it seemed as though everybody she knew had left the village in her absence.
But then what was it the man had said? That he had been attacked by a sheep in farmer Retol’s field? Ysora remembered Ira Retol, a man with a fat belly hanging over his gut and a fat chin bunching about his neck like pasty dough. She used to play in his field, her laughter loud as the old slob had tried to chase her and her friends away. Even now she could remember the strangled sounds of him gasping for breath. Had she known that man with the mocking smile and the innocent eyes? She looked back to where she thought he would still be watching her. He was already gone, nothing on the corner but a stray chicken scratching in the dirt.
And then, just as she turned back to the house she had been raised in, she found that she wouldn’t have to decide whether to knock or not. The door was already opening, and Ysora steeled herself to meet her mother like a woman bracing herself to stand before a gale.
Strangely, despite walking through all Yerotan and not seeing a person she recognized, it had still not occurred to Ysora that her mother might have left. The woman was as much a part of Yerotan as the very house she lived in, as much as the weeping willow next to the inn, as the spire of the Keepers’ temple.
The man who came out of the house was as strange to Ysora as all the other people she had seen in the village. He looked thoughtful, his eyes downcast until he raised them and saw Ysora standing and watching him.
“Can I help you?” He was young, perhaps of an age with Ysora, with fine dark hair swept untidily away from his aquiline nose and he had the air of an aged man who had spent much of his life among books. In fact he had a book, a small leather tome clutched under an arm.
He was wearing the green smock of a Guardian of the Keepers. Two crests were woven into the cloth at each breast, on the left was the crest of the Five, and on the right the three flames blazing across the star-studded sky. The crest of Keeper Liotuk.
Ysora couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. She stared at the priest and shook her head, her tongue felt thick in her mouth. “No, no,” she finally said. “It’s nothing really.” She turned to leave, grateful for the feel of Godie’s thick side pressed tight to her legs. Her mother had moved along with the rest of the village. Ysora walked beneath the shade of a scrawny silver atlas tree, no idea where she was going to go, no idea what she was going to do.
Her mother was gone.
The one time she had ever needed her mother and she had disappeared with the rest of Yerotan.
“Ysora? Ysora Siran?”
Ysora stopped, her heart lurching, a cold fist tightening about her neck. She didn’t turn.
“I thought it was you,” the Guardian said. “I think you need to come in, girl.” His voice was regretful, soft. He sounded like somebody trying to coax a stray cat down from a tree. “Come in, come in to the house.”
She did turn now, the sun bright in her eyes, the inside of the house looked dark. The Guardian was smiling at her, he might have been older than she first thought; crow’s feet creased his green eyes as he smiled. He held the book loose in his hand, the other hand held out to her as though he wanted to take her arm and escort her to the little house.
“I had nowhere else to go,” she said. She felt lost and small.
“I know, child. I know.”
And the Guardian now did take her arm and lead her back to the house.
CHAPTER 11
The Mahrata’s camp was really a scattering of tents, perhaps twenty of them, and other, cruder shelters. Most of the tents were thin and torn, leaning precariously. Some of the men sat under shelters fashioned from two poles stuck in the ground with dirty, ragged clothing that might once have been shirts or tunics tied to a rope between them. The soldiers wore no uniform, their clothes and armour mismatched, looking like they had been stolen from various corpses in various countries. Foul meat stunk the air and clogged the throat as it steamed in pots over open fires. Some of the men played lazy games of dice, others sat alone gazing across the sea of halter grass rippling in the morning breeze.
Marin guessed that the Mahrata had about sixty soldiers under her command, maybe a third of those southerners with long yellow hair like Areen and Darl, the two who escorted them through the camp. None seemed unduly concerned about the prisoners, though Marin could feel dispassionate eyes follow him as he passed, weighing and measuring him, watching his walk, how he carried himself. The natural way fighting men had of sizing each other up.
“This Mahrata of yours, she has a strange way of going about looking for men and seeking help. Has she never thought of just asking?” Retaj’s shoulder brushed Marin’s as they stepped over tent wires and pegs hidden in the halter grass, their two southern captors a stride ahead of them. The only allowance Areen and Darl had made for Marin’s sickness was to bind his hands in front of him rather than behind his back, though still the rope was tight enough to make his fingers swollen and red.
Darl, the big man who Marin had thought a giant at the inn in Weaslit was a full hand taller than Marin and his thighs were thicker than some tree trunks. “The Mahrata asks for nothing, riverman. If you had come willingly with no fight you would be dead now. Where we go we don’t want bargainers and cowards.” The big man strode through the halter grass, the sword strapped to his back gleaming under the glare of the sun. Areen, the smaller southerner didn’t turn, his breathing rattling through his shattered nose.
Retaj had trouble keeping his balance with his hands bound behind his back. He had a welt the size of a child’s hand on his cheek, dark and bruised and red like a rotten apple, and scraggly red hairs were trying to make home on his jaw. Marin had never seen him looking so old and tired. He dreaded to think what he must look like himself.
“I did think we’d reached an agreement at the inn, though,” Retaj said. They were clear of the shelters now, all except for a lone red tent, finer than the rest, further down the slope. Ears of blue-green halter grass nudged the canvas like insistent children. “Is the rope really necessary?”
“The Mahrata will decide what is necessary, riverman. She will decide whether you’re worthy to join her cause.”
Retaj looked back at the sunken eyes, the tattered tents and the foul cooking behind them. “And what happens to those who are not worthy?” A question Marin had also considered, though he thought the answer would be something he might not want to hear.
“Wait here,” Areen said. He had a bloody cloth in his hand, though he had stopped pressing it to his nose. His long blonde hair shone in the sun like a field of wheat.
The door of the red tent was hanging closed, rippling in the breeze. The camp was hushed behind them, only the hissing of fires, the occasional murmur of quiet voices. Louder than all this, louder than anything Marin had ever heard in his life, was the beating of the drums.
“What in the name of the Keepers have you got us into here?” Marin watched the two southerners approach the tent. They walked like trained fighting men, arms and legs loose and muscled under the leather armour. Marin still felt weak and nauseous after the nightmare, after the torture of Keeper Martuk. He was getting too old for this. Too slow. There had been a time when he had the energy, the will, to fight anybody, to travel anywhere, even after his nightly tortures. Now the mere thought of climbing the mountains, of fleeing these southerners and their Mahrata made him tired to his very bones. He could finally understand the tales of those animals of the Beholden States who would lie down and die on the spot once they reached a certain age.
> “That’s the thanks I get for saving our lives? Look at them, look at this shit-hole of a camp. You think they’d just have left us alone if they thought we were no use to them?” Retaj shook his head, the cut on his welt had opened again, a bubble of clear liquid shining in the wound. “We need them to think we’re useful, Marin. And try and keep it down on a night. What was all that about last night?” He wiped his cheek with his shoulder, eyes watching the southerners at the red tent. “Stand tall, Marin. You’re supposed to be a fighting man, you look more like something I dug out of the ground.”
Watching the southerners kneel before the tent, halter grass brushing his own bound hands, Marin felt very far from home. Mahratas. Paramin. Beating drums that shook the earth. Southerners with braided blonde hair from some place called Terofir. Even the halter grass itself. All things he would never have even heard of before he fled the will of the gods. He tried to picture the man he had been then, picture the man in the memory-dream walking on a green riverbank with a woman with short brown hair and eyes that shone brown in the sun. He couldn’t think what she was seeing as she looked at him and laughed and reached out to touch his face. It was like watching the memory of a stranger. Would the man he had been then recognize the tired old fighter with bound hands standing in a field a world away? Most likely he would have laughed at the grey hair and the weakness and turned away. Marin only wished he could do that now, turn away from his own weakness, turn away from the choices he had made, from the man he had become.
Without any sign from the kneeling southerners, the door of the tent was pushed open and a young woman in a blue dress that hugged her figure so tight that it creased across her hips held it to the side. She held the dress with one hand as she stepped from the tent, watching her feet. Marin was treated to a glimpse of an ankle, the beginning of a swelling curve of a white breast.
“Shit. They say she can read minds? I’m screwed,” Retaj whispered. He glanced to Marin, red circles rimming his usually clear green eyes. Marin wondered if the drums were still giving him the splitting headaches. “I wish I could say it had been a pleasure, Marin.”
“I don’t think they said she reads minds, only that she is a good judge of character or something.” Marin didn’t altogether convince himself.
“Then we’re both screwed.”
Marin could only nod as he watched the Mahrata rest a small hand on the heads of Areen and Darl, both still kneeling in the halter grass. She was the kind of woman who made him wonder that any man could ever know the joy of waking up next to her. That anybody could know the joy of making love to such beauty. It was a wonder that such loveliness could exist in the same place, the same world as himself standing there with his wispy grey hair tickling his forehead and blood and vomit staining his face like gory tears. The Mahrata looked like she was from another world entirely, somewhere as glorious and unknowable as Insitur itself.
A stray lock of hair, some bright colour between brown and red and brushed to shine, fell from behind her ear as she smiled down at the two kneeling soldiers. Finally straightening, she tucked the hair behind her ear with a grace that made Marin ache in the pit of his stomach.
The tent had been pitched behind the fitful shelter of a low stone wall , the stones loose and grey, some long vanished or stolen by people long gone to the embrace of the Sleeper. Black-branched trees leaned over the wall, straining with every sinew to be away from the sound of the drums still beating their unrelenting beat. In the presence of the beauty of the Mahrahta, the drums sounded majestic, almost beautiful in their raw power.
She bade her men rise from their knees. Only when the men did stand did Marin see that she was shorter than he had thought. She walked with her back straight and her steps short and delicate, her feet naked and white, barely seeming to bend the halter grass beneath them.
“These were the only two in the village?” Her voice was light, almost nasal, and her eyes, when she looked at Marin, were clear and bright and gleamed with a raw sexuality that made his entire body ache with need. The woman was young enough to be his daughter, she looked so good and pure and innocent that such a thing as sex should be beneath her, something too dirty and messy, but those eyes...Marin’s mouth felt dry.
“Yes, Shalih.” It was the big man, Darl who answered. His shoulders bunched under his leather armour as he gestured to Marin and Retaj. “They put up a little fight, Shalih, this is the one who broke Areen’s nose.”
The Mahrata smiled, her eyes, copper and brown and gold and bright. “A little fight is good, is it not? We are, after all, in search of fighting men.” Her teeth were white and even, her cheeks pale and faultless. Marin didn’t think he had met anybody who looked so clean and good. He had never felt so filthy and old.
“And this is the other one,” Darl said redundantly. “A talker who says he has travelled the mountains before.”
“A long time ago, to be sure, my lady, but I remember the path well. I’d be happy to show you the way. I’d be glad of the company--my friend here; while, though a Master with his sword, isn’t the best company, it has to be said.” These last words were quiet; as he spoke, the Mahrata walked towards him slowly, looking up into his eyes all the while.
“And where is it you’re from, Retaj Omirrin?” Her eyes flickered over Retaj’s face as she spoke, strands of her hair fluttering in the wind.
Retaj breathed heavily under the scrutiny of the Mahrata’s eyes and Marin wondered if he too saw the raw sexuality there. “Neusanti, my lady. A small town to the north famous only for being home to Leston Kistery who was chosen by the Keepers to build the temples in their own city.”
The Mahrata only nodded, her eyes never leaving Retaj. “And what brought you all those years ago to cross these mountains?” Her blue dress shimmered in the sunlight.
Retaj’s answer was quick, “Ever since I left Neusanti, I’ve been travelling these lands, my lady. Sometimes stopping here or stopping there, but never long enough to call any place home. Once, long ago, I stopped to wonder what was on the other side, so I and a group of friends took ourselves into their snowy peaks one summer.”
“And what will we find there in those mountains? What is beating the drums, what is capable of making such a noise?” She was standing so close now that Marin could believe that Retaj would feel her breath on his face. Jealousy swelled within him like an unfolding flower; he could die a happy man if he could feel that breath touch his own face.
Retaj didn’t seem to feel the same way. “I’m sure I have no idea, my lady. Isn’t that why we all travel this road? To find out what is up there making all the noise? Marin and I weren’t the brightest pots on the rack to be travelling just the two of us on such a road, but in partnership with you and your,” he glanced behind at the stinking camp, “fine men, I think we will all be safer when we head up into the mountains.”
“Safer.” The Mahrata nodded and turned to Marin, her smile was enough to bring gladness to his heart. “And you, so much pain, so much sorrow.” She reached out a white hand, her dress shimmering with the movement. A white hand, soft and cool as a cloud brushed his cheek. Despite himself he couldn’t help leaning to the touch like a widower reaching for his wife in the dead of night. Still the Mahrata smiled but now her brow was creased, her eyes full of sympathetic hurt. “What brings you so much pain, my friend?” She looked deep into his eyes and Marin might as well have been asked to take the moon from the sky as to look away.
Or to tell this woman the truth. To tell anybody that he had defied his god. “Being attacked while I was only trying to find a dry bed for the night has that effect on a man my age, my lady.” He tried to sound gruff and confident. Instead he sounded petulant.
The smile remained, though her eyes were searching, thoughtful as they fixed on his. There was an intelligence there, a confident sexuality that took his breath away to see. “Indeed. Should you remain with us, we will try to see that your nights remain undisturbed.” The wind wisped the halter grass about them, sent s
mells of foul meats burning in filthy pans across their faces, fluttered the Mahrata’s hair about her pale cheeks. She tucked it away behind her ear. “And,” she continued, “What is it you expect to find in the mountains, my sleep-deprived friend?”
“The Nameless One.” The sudden answer surprised Marin himself. “Only the spawn of the darkness could create such a noise.” He felt as though the entire camp had paused and was watching his back. “Or one of his minions.” He added as an afterthought. “The Prince of the Marches.” Why was he saying these things? Had he really thought them at all? All he was aware of was hearing the drums weeks before and deciding to follow the sound if for no other reason than to satisfy his own curiosity. That and to give his life some sense of purpose.
“And does it say something about the source of your pain that you seek out the enemy of your gods?” The Mahrata wondered. She saved Marin the trouble of answering by turning away. A brief pang of regret that he never got to feel her breath on his face.
“I can tell you that the drums herald the birth of the Paramin.” She stopped, turned to face the two men, her hair shining in the sun, her blue dress clinging to her figure. “And this,” she spread her arms indicating the camp before her as though it were a glittering army to make the very Keepers tremble, is the beginnings of an army to bring him home to his people.”
The Mahrata smiled. It was a smile which brought joy to Marin’s heart just to look upon, though her words only made him pity her delusion. Without even looking at Retaj, he knew his red headed friend would feel the same. It was a bad thing to annoy a deluded woman at the best of times; one with an army behind her, however small and filthy, even more so. “The Paramin will be weak after his birth and will need us to bring him home where he can grow strong and save his people.” She looked from Marin to Retaj and back again as though waiting for either one of them to smile in mockery. “You are both born of the Keepers, but the power of the Keepers is weakening. How else can the Burned King defy them so? Already his armies stand at the gates of my home, nothing to stand in his way once the walls fall. The Paramin will do what your gods have failed to do, defend his people with all his might.”