by Martin Davey
She closed her eyes against the shaking. The girl had been bound, captive to a god. Was there a message in her dreams for her? Some warning? The girl had been wrong; her vanity had led her to think the god would help her, pity her. But what had caused Ysora to stray from the path of the Five? Love? No, because she didn’t love Tiege, she didn’t know him enough. Then what? Lust? She thought of his long legs and his dark hair and eyes. But there was his story of Yerotan, of how Cioran was a liar. And there he had been, hanging from the beams striping the ceiling, swaying and spinning as though he had just been struck once more. His smooth hard chest covered in bruises and cuts. She hadn’t seen his face, his head bowed and covered by his dark hair. Was he really Redmond? Or had she only been so eager to believe his story because it explained why her mother had never looked for her? Because if she believed Tiege’s story then she didn’t have to think of her mother carrying on her own life happy without Ysora there? Was that her own vanity?
The shaking took her then. Violent and agonizing, enough to make her slump down to the floor, jarring her cheek against the damp wood and biting her tongue. More blood trailing down her chin. “Please...” she said again.
“She’s going again,” said a voice, far away. “What the fuck is wrong with this woman?”
She might have screamed as her whole body spasmed on the floor, dirt and dust and splinters scraping against her arms and legs. Images streamed behind her eyes. Images of forests and veirwood trees standing tall against a moonlit sky of blues and blacks. Images of gods made of rotting vegetation that writhed about their bodies, images of young, yellow-haired girls hanging high in trees, hair falling about their faces and arms stretched out high above their heads, cruel rope burning the skin.
Ysora screamed again at the sight, her own skin burning and peeling against the rope.
She looked dead, this girl, hanging there high in the branches. No god had come for this one. Forsaken by her god and her people and left to rot in the branches of the veirwood. She was wearing a simple green dress, the colour of the forest, and her yellow hair spilled about her face.
“No!” Ysora screamed, knowing what was about to happen, but powerless to turn away as her body shook and shook, and her legs kicked and scraped on the floor, her bound hands clawing at the wood under her back.
And then the girl did look up, and the girl smiled at Ysora. Birds had been at the girl’s face, pecking and scratching and eating. The eyes were gone and the cheeks were scratched with bloody cuts and shreds. And still the girl smiled at Ysora.
And still Ysora screamed and screamed. A boot came off as she kicked and lashed out at the sight. “Ysora...” the girl whispered through shredded lips, the teeth white behind the blood. And Ysora wept and screamed and fought against the arms trying to hold her still, bit and scratched and kicked until she was still and sobbing quietly into the man’s thin shoulder. He smelled of bitterfall and damp wardrobes and he hushed and stroked her hair as he held her to him knelt on the floor.
Geyan, she slowly came to realize as she sobbed quietly against the bony shoulder. Geyan the spider was holding her and shushing her like a child.
“The sooner they get here and take her away the better.” A harsher, louder voice. Farmer Mashin.
Ysora tried to swallow away the memory of the girl with the torn eyes and cheeks, but still the memory remained as she tried to push Geyan away. It was like trying to extricate herself from a web, every time she moved one long thin arm away, another wrapped itself about her.
“No,” she murmured, her throat thick and her mind slow from the dream. “No,” she said again, louder this time.
“She’s possessed, that’s why the Clerk wants her. That’s why she did what she did.” Heavy footsteps paced about the room, circling like a wary animal, old and weakened and hunted by younger challengers for its den. “It’s the Nameless One,” Mashin reasoned, “she’s possessed by the Nameless One.”
The chest against Ysora’s cheek heaved in a sigh. “You see the Nameless One in every corner. He’s dead. Dead for thousands of years, slain by the Keepers. This new reverent you doesn’t suit you, Mashin.” He stroked a bony hand through Ysora’s hair.
“What was that? Did you hear that?” Mashin walked over to the window, his long loose-necked shirt billowing about his massive body. He tried to move a three-legged table and a wardrobe pock-marked with woodworm. The entire pile of furniture creaked and shifted and Mashin jumped away with surprising speed.
Ysora tried to pull away again, but Geyan held onto her, he was strong for such a skinny man. “I heard nothing, if anything it’s probably the Guardian come back to check on Ysora.”
Mashin turned away from the furniture, pursing his wet lips, a sheen of sweat glistening in the grey light on his drooping cheeks. “Yes, well, that woman carrying on like that isn’t doing my nerves any good. Can’t hear a thing with all that screaming.” He stooped as best he could to look at Ysora, frowning as though he was checking on a hog at the market and not liking what he was seeing. “We could have the entire Town Guard down there and not know it with all that noise.”
Ysora had started to shake again, her entire body thrumming like a taut wire, and Geyan held her all the tighter. It only made her claustrophobic, and fight against his grip all the more, her breath coming light and fast and high in her throat, making her vision blur and her head feel light. Something was calling to her somewhere beyond hearing, somewhere beyond sight. It had the faint smell of damp forest floors, of raindrops dripping off fat green leaves, of small things scurrying through ancient gnarled roots and black birds with black eyes sitting on black branches. “No...” she whispered against the shaking, “Please...”
“Hush,” Geyan said. He stroked a hand through her hair again, until suddenly grabbing a fistful of it and jerking her head back, making her look into his dark eyes. “Quiet,” his teeth showed as he spoke, his long face turned into a sneer. He gave her hair one last pull, and Ysora tried to ignore the flaring pain even as she tried to ignore the call of the veirwood and the Gaidan.
Geyan pushed her away, spilling her onto the floor like an old carpet. “Cioran said the Watch is coming for her.” He brushed his breeches down with his hands as though having Ysora held to him had soiled them. “You think the Guardian will let them take her? Did you see the way he spoke about her, looking down at us as though we couldn’t be trusted with her?”
“Don’t speak ill of the Guardian, Geyan,” Mashin said, walking over to the door, his footsteps loud and mingling with the sounds and calls of the forest. A god walking through a forest full of veirwoods and slanting sunlight and dew-glistened bushes with sharp thorns and twisted roots. She tried to sit up, but the floor veered beneath her, damp leaves sticking to her hands and grey light blinding her vision.
“Please...” Ysora rolled over on the floor, hard wood and soft damp leaves and gnarled roots piercing her back and hips and legs. Squalid grey light making her squint against the pains in her brain.
Neither man looked her way. “Is it speaking ill of somebody to say they have fallen in love? You saw the way he looked at Hest when he knocked her out.”
Something important in that, but the shaking was taking her over again, a young girl calling to her from impossibly high in giant trees, snakes and spiders and other, worse things seeking out her young warm flesh.
“The Guardian is above such feelings,” said the other man. “His love is only for the Keepers. Have you ever seen him look at a woman in all the years he’s been here? Maybe he took pity on the girl—can you hear that?” A pause and then more silence, “The Watch, they’re here, I think.”
The Watch. Was that the men with the red coats? With the young man with fury in his eyes and violence in his hands? She tried to stand again, the shaking wasn’t just in her hands now, it was in her entire being. She tried to rise, getting to one knee before she fell back to the ground. “Please.”
“They won’t—“
And then the
door exploded inward, a noise which made Ysora cringe against it, splinters and shards of wood showering her hair and shoulders. Shouting, men shouting, some in fear and some in anger. Maybe she even screamed herself.
The terrible, awful sound of a sharp knife slicing through soft flesh and the room filled with the rancid smell of shit and blood. And then the sound again, twice in quick succession and something soft and wet landed on the floor close to her foot.
Ysora shivered and cowered, her hair over her face, waiting for the blow that was surely to come. Waiting for the sharp blade to slice through her flesh as easily as a chopping knife through chicken. Would she smell her own spilled bowels before she died? Even as she shivered and waited to die, she turned her nose against the stink of the room. A young girl with empty eyes and bloodied, scratched cheeks smiled with split lips and waited for Ysora to join her.
“Stand, woman,” a gruff voice said, and a gruff hand landed on her shoulder and pulled her to her feet.
Ysora couldn’t see anything behind the shield of her spilling hair. “No,” she screamed, kicking out at her attacker. Shivering wracked her body, and still she kicked and struck out at her killer.
The man shook her like a struggling cat. “She’s gone,” he said. “You really want this?”
It was a cool voice that answered, cool and refined and it reminded her of Guardian Cioran with its guarded intelligence. “I’d hate to think we’d killed these men for nothing, Shen. Bring her, we don’t have much time before she’s lost to us.” A movement in the doorway, the sound of a back or a shoulder brushing against a doorframe, “And by the sounds of it, Ket has found the other. Hurry now.” No urgency in the voice despite the words.
“Come, woman.” Now Ysora could see the man whose grip felt as though it was grinding the bones in her arms. Rhodry? No, it couldn’t be, the beard was thicker, the eyes more creased at the corners.
Her vision blurred, Guardian Cioran was holding her, watching her from cool grey eyes, now it was Tiege and he was smiling his thoughtful smile, then it was Rhodry filled with drunken, lustful, jealous rage.
The sound of a black bird with bright eyes trilling as it watched a young girl rotten and eaten hanging from a wet rope in a damp forest. And Ysora raised her head once more as the man dragged her across a floor slippery with something thick and wet, and when he looked at her, a dry black tongue thick as rope snaked out between his flaking lips.
That was when she truly did scream, scream enough to tear her throat and hurt her ears.
CHAPTER 27
Only when the camp was packed and moving did Marin realize how large it had grown over the past week. The Canaristi had hoped to turn the Seekers away with their murders and tortures, instead they had driven them into the arms of the Mahrata and her Army of Nations.
She had laughed when Marin had called it that, her Army of Nations. “Oh, Marin,” she had said, “It is an army of one nation, the nation of the Paramin.”
Marin wondered how many of the soldiers and farmers and women and children stretched out for half a league or so behind him had even heard of the Paramin. Though it was true that some had turned into fervent devouts almost the second they had joined the camp and were making it their work to spread the word of the Blood Lord. The Mahrata had done nothing to encourage this, though she had done nothing to discourage it either. They reminded Marin uncomfortably of the Canaristi with their bright eyes and their twisted faces and their godly talk. He spat a gob of brown phlegm into the halter grass.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that, you know.” Retaj was walking alongside him, trailing his fingertips through the dry and parched halter grass.
Marin chewed his ferris root slowly and looked at his companion for a long moment before turning his head and spitting again.
Retaj sighed and carried on walking, his red hair ruffling in the breeze, the sword carried easily on his hip. He had once tripped over swords when he carried them like that, now he almost looked like a soldier the way he walked.
“Have you ever noticed how the drums are no louder here than when we first heard them?” Retaj spoke quietly, though there was nobody close to them. Marin had organized the Mahrata’s followers: women and children at the back, the mountains protecting one flank while he sent a wing of mounted men patrolling the other flank. Swordsmen at the front, where he walked. And then, in the middle of it all, the Mahrata sheltered in a carriage, more of a cart with a tent built upon it and the banner of the Paramin flying high above. More and more banners with the red tower on the black field were beginning to appear throughout the army. A Kaldunuan up ahead wearing rusted armour, held a spear up with the banner tied to the point of it, a Marshman with his colourful clothes billowing in the breeze held aloft a pike with the banner of the Paramin tied to it. Had they really taken to the Blood Lord or were they only doing it to feel as though they belonged to the Mahrata?
Marin shook his head. His mind was everywhere and nowhere and then all in the same place, with the same person. Difficult to think of anybody or anything except the woman travelling in the cart behind them. “Drums?” he said slowly.
Retaj looked at him, a smile that was never really a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “The drums. We heard the drums from how many miles away? Some of these men have been following the sound of the drums from all over the continent, so really our ears should be bleeding out of our arses this close to them, but still they don’t sound any louder. It’s always the same sound.”
Marin chewed on his ferris root, letting some of the brown gunk slide down his throat before he coughed. He’d never thought about that before, but it was obvious now Retaj mentioned it. “Maybe the drums aren’t even in the mountains at all? Maybe they’re further away and we aren’t getting any closer?”
Retaj shrugged, walking easily with the sword swinging at his side. If Marin hadn’t known the man, he would have thought him a man to be wary of, a man to avoid a fight with if possible. A week ago, he would have thought the idea comical; since then he’d seen Retaj fight the Canaristi. “I think the Mahrata knows more about where this Paramin is than she’s telling. And this old woman who used to be her teacher or something?”
“Jermatoah,” Marin said.
“Yes, her. Well, that would be too much of a coincidence for me. I think she knows more than she’s telling us.”
Coincidences. Retaj happening across the only man to ever escape from the Servants of the Blood, and telling him of another path through the mountains. Servants of the Blood, Mahrata’s. Marin scratched at his throat. He didn’t like coincidences. “What is there to hide? She told us she thinks her Paramin is about to be born and she wants to be there to lead her god to his home.” Marin shrugged and scratched at his throat. The path at the foot of the mountains was old and broken, rocks and pebbles digging painfully into his feet. He needed some new boots, these were shot, the soles thin and the leather faded. There had been a time when he would have broken into a room, stolen some boots and been away, never to return again. He couldn’t help missing those days; the days when he had been answerable to nobody but himself, the days when a raging god had haunted his nights, but the days were his own. Now the enraged god had left his dreams, but was his life his own?
Retaj had no trouble walking on the path; his boots were thick and sturdy. Marin might once have killed the man for those boots. “No, Marin is a killer and a murderer,” the woman on the riverbank had said.
“Nothing to hide?” Retaj laughed, causing a few soldiers to turn back to look at them. A random lot they looked: skins of every colour, armour of every shape and shade, some rusted, some pitted, and some wearing nothing but thick leather armour, not to mention the Marshmen in their colourful, flowing clothing. Retaj gestured to these fighters once they had turned back to the path ahead of them, talking and laughing amongst themselves. “What about this new god these men are going to be fighting for? The Blood Lord? What do we know of him?” He waited for an answer, got none but a gob of b
rown spit flying out into the withered halter grass. “These men know only the Mahrata, know only her beauty and her grace. That’s who they fight for, not this new god she says is being born out there.”
Marin chewed his ferris root and scratched at his throat. He had seen the way the men looked at the Mahrata, hunger and lust and wonder in their eyes. Was that how he looked at her? Even the women seemed struck by the beauty of her, self-conscious hands reaching for their own hair, smoothing it and tucking it behind ears. “Is that a problem? If that is what it takes to get us where we need to be, does it really matter who they fight for? For all I care, they can fight for the geese in the sky as long as it means they watch my back and hold the line steady.”
“And what when the god is born? What then? What if the Blood Lord needs more sacrifices to make him strong? What if the only people there are the very ones the Mahrata used to get her there in the first place, the men and women who had fought for her?” Retaj’s green eyes moved to Marin’s throat, “What if there are to be more like you, what then?”
“What—“ Marin began, but then there was a whisper of wind. Marin knew that sound. He sank to his knees, three men ahead of them already falling to the ground face first, arrows protruding from their backs, the arrows still shaking from the impact as the men fell. His sword was in his hand before he knew it and he rose to one knee, senses on full alert, waiting for the feel of an arrow piercing his flesh. He chewed his ferris root like never before, hot and acrid saliva sliding down his throat even as he chewed.
A moment of stunned silence as the reality of the fallen men spread throughout the army. Screams, shouts, cries of rage and the whinny of horses mingled into one confused cacophony as people fell to their knees, ran along the line of the march, and drew their weapons. Heads turned this way and that, looking for the source of the arrows. The sound again, a tearing of the air, a sound of death. Somebody screaming and the sound of steel crashing to the ground. Marin pulled himself up, aged joints protesting. Two Marshmen were down, arrows in a back and a stomach, blood spilling and leaking about their bright clothes. A man in armour was down on one knee, gauntleted hand holding the arrow sticking out of his neck near the collarbone. His visor was up and Marin could hear his ragged breathing even over the shouts and screams. Marin looked at the man, looked all about him, already cringing in anticipation of the next volley of arrows.