by Martin Davey
Surely the Mahrata would defend him? Tell the ugly old crone that she was wrong, that Marin was her Garanin for now and ever more? But no, the Mahrata looked at him, and her eyes of brown and copper and gold were sad and she smiled and her forehead creased in sympathy of the cruel words. “Yes, Waishimi,” she said, and the world dimmed, all Marin could see was the Mahrata’s smile and then nothing but smoke as he fell to his knees, clawing at the threads in his throat, clawing for breath, his eyes bulging in their sockets, sure to burst at any moment. And even then he loved the Mahrata for not killing him as she had killed Beratak. The darkness smoothed and cleared and he saw a woman on a riverbank, she had short dark hair that shone in an unseen sun and she was smiling at him, welcoming him to her and for the first time he could remember, Marin felt joy in his heart, even when he saw the shadow move behind his love, a black darkness that had no shape but still watched Marin, he felt nothing but joy.
“Wait,” the old crone said from somewhere far away.
Marin coughed and choked and scratched at a cold stone floor. A trail of spit drooled from his lips and he wiped it away with the back of a shaking hand. An old man’s hand that couldn’t be his. Marin gasped and choked and fought back the tears he shed for being dragged away from the riverbank. Had there been another there? A shadow of silence on the riverbank untouched by the sunlight? Unnoticed by the woman with short dark hair? Only his imagination, it had to be. He gasped against the blackness still spotting his vision and pressed a hand to his throat, sure that his life’s blood would be pouring out of him again. Nothing, only the dried, scabbed blood that he had been bleeding earlier.
At some point the crone had hobbled into the room and she stood looking down at Marin as though he stank of something foul and depraved. “You say you found him already like this? Wandering these lands alone in this condition?”
Marin looked up in horror at the woman; Retaj had been right. She had dark eyes in her wrinkled face, dark, youthful eyes full of intelligence, eyes that were beautiful despite the ugliness of the face around them. She was a young woman in an old woman’s body and there was something about that fact that filled Marin with fear and terror, but also compassion.
“Yes,” The Mahrata’s voice came from far away. “Areen and Darl brought him to me. Obviously...precautions had to be taken to ensure he could be trusted.”
Jermatoah nodded, meeting Marin’s eyes. Her own were dark brown, almost black and they were full of life and vigour and light in the shrivelled face and stooped body. She turned away after meeting Marin’s own eyes as though she had seen something vile there. “He might come from the one who has no name, the one fighting for the return of the old gods.” She creased her already lined face in revulsion. “A foul creature, but one we may have need of in our fight against the Keepers.” She waved a withered hand and turned away from Marin, shuffling her feet and leaning on her staff. “You are sure you have it under control? This meddling in matters beyond your understanding will be your undoing yet, Rebekah. You won’t have your beauty to fall back on forever; it is a fleeting thing, gone in a moment.”
The Mahrata’s eyes gleamed in the dim smokiness of the room. “Yes, Waishimi, I performed the letting, I saw his real self. He is no danger to us.” She bowed her head as she spoke, her hair spilling about her ears and cheeks.
“It, Rebekah, never forget that. It might have been a man once, long ago, but now it is an it.” Jermatoah stopped in the doorway leaning on her staff as though wearied by the walk across the room. She didn’t turn around, her back bent almost double and her dress hanging slackly about her swollen ankles. “Keep it if you must until we hear word from its Master, but for now attend to me, child.”
The Mahrata bowed her head, “Yes, Waishimi.” She followed Jermatoah from the room without looking back.
Marin groaned and spat onto the floor, his breaths heaving and straining at the knots in his throat. The woman on the riverbank. He could have been there now, feeling her arm on his and walking by a blue river under a yellow sun. He could have been with her now if Jermatoah hadn’t stopped the Mahrata. He struggled to his feet, the room swaying and veering about him. The Mahrata was willing to have killed him at a word from the old crone. He held onto a shelf until the room stopped rocking before him, bile that tasted of ferris root rising in his throat. The taste of it helped his head clear, made the room still once more. Still he staggered as he walked to the door, the uneven ground not helping his progress. Once he staggered into a cabinet and set a bowl to crashing to the floor, the painted pot shards sharp and something thick and dark leaking about the floor. He ignored it and struggled on toward the grey light leaking through the doorway.
The clouds were thinning now and the army settling into the town, soldiers and women and children talking and laughing, a sound at odds with the age of the place and the thin clouds stealing into doorways and curling about feet and ankles. Marin leaned in the doorway and watched a young woman no older than the woman on the riverbank helping a child take a piss against a stone fountain decorated with a giant bird with a cruel beak. How long since that fountain had heard the sound of running water?
“You look like shit.” Retaj looked dusty and older, still had his sword strapped to his hip.
Marin sighed, and then wished he hadn’t, the effort making him nauseous and sending more hot bile into his raw throat. He would have gagged, but thought it would be sure to tear the thread holding his throat. “What do you want?” The words sounded parched and unfamiliar to his own ears.
“I came to see how you were.” Retaj leaned close, looking into Marin’s eyes.
Since when did Retaj look after him? “Where did the Mahrata go?” The woman with the boy had pulled his breeches back up, the child taking his mother’s hand and pointing to the giant bird on the fountain.
“Over there,” Retaj pointed to a well-trodden path with thick coarse weeds growing either side of it. It looked like the path led off the edge of the world.
“Where does that lead to?”
Retaj shrugged. “Where do you think? Remember the bleeding stones the old man told me about?”
Marin nodded, the ground swaying sickeningly beneath him. “The raving man who you drove away with stones and sticks and yet managed to tell you everything about this place.”
Retaj only nodded and Marin felt in his pocket for the empty pouch, squeezed it to make sure there was no ferris root there. He felt light headed.
“Where are you going?”
Only when Retaj asked the question did Marin realize he’d begun to walk. His feet were taking him to the path leading out to the edge of the world, the cloud swirling about it in grey patches.
“I’ll come with you,” Retaj said when he received no answer.
Marin didn’t wait for him, but the younger man had no trouble catching up. The path had been paved with stone long ago, but here soil and grass and moss had spent the years reclaiming the stone as their own. The path wound up and then down, back into the thicker cloud, the noise of the soldiers behind them dulled and then silenced by the mist. Is this what life was now, drifting through a dull grey world of nothing but mist? The thought of a weaker man. Marin touched the hilt of his sword and saw nothing but the path before him, the only certain thing in a world of fleeting dark shadows in the greyness.
And then, seemingly too soon, they were there. At the bleeding stones, the path leading them to the birthplace of the god. The Paramin was the Blood Lord, born of the blood. Five bleeding stones were arrayed about his throne of brilliant red stone carved high into the side of the mountain, the cloud barely touching its feet. Priests in red-hooded robes stood next to each bleeding stone, bloodied knives in hand. Channels ran from each bleeding stone, joining together in a red basin at the centre of the five stones like upturned baths. The Mahrata wasn’t here. Jermatoah wasn’t here.
“Fuck,” Retaj whispered, and Marin could only nod in agreement. Lying on its knees and elbows, its pasty white flesh trans
lucent, was a bony malnourished creature with long fingers and toes. It reached into the basin with a bony-knuckled hand and shakingly scooped blood to its thin white lips. With each sip, more colour came to the pasty flesh, it seemed to grow in itself, muscle forming on its wasted arms, only for the muscle to be gone once more before it scooped more blood from the basin, the arms and legs and back becoming more muscular for the briefest of moments. It slurped and slobbered as it scooped more blood to its lips.
“Fuck me,” Retaj said as a chant began to arise from the red-robed priests next to each stone in some language that Marin didn’t recognize. The voices of the priests were deep and clear, it sounded almost like a war chant.
Marin drew his sword without a thought and the closest priest turned at the sound. The priest’s hood hung low, but that didn’t hide the raw wound that was its face, the skin had been peeled away, the eyes bright in the raw redness, blue and white tendons shifting and moving like malevolent worms on its cheeks. The teeth looked large and white in its lipless mouth. “Faranin,” the thing whispered, its face seeming to run with slime as it spoke, and Marin nodded though he didn’t recognize the word. He stepped inside the circle of bleeding stones, the clouds swirling all about them. All the people in the bleeding stones were dead, he saw now, all naked, all with throats slashed and cuts hacked into wrists, arms, legs and chests.
The Paramin looked up once, its eyes white and cloudy and bulbous in its hairless face, and it scooped more blood to its thin lips, red running down its chin like strawberry juice. Marin wanted to scream at the depravity of it. This was a god, this was the gloried Paramin who had spread word of his coming with beating drums loud enough to be heard across the span of a continent. This was the dread Blood Lord who would save his people from the Burned King. Reduced to this. Its cock was as shrivelled and hairless as its head and it dangled and flopped between its legs as it scooped more blood from the bowl. Its back grew, muscles and bone thickening for a moment before it shrunk back to the pale white slackness of before.
It looked up at him as it sucked the blood from its fingers. No shame, no pain in its eyes; they were human emotions unknown to the Paramin. Its eyes were milky and lined with blue veins, and as they looked at him, Marin knew. He knew in the deepest part of himself, the part where the woman with the short dark hair lived, he knew that a deal had been struck. The old gods were returning to the world, and they would be weak as few remembered them and their temples and towers had long been destroyed by the Keepers and their followers.
But the old gods were not alone and it was no accident that Marin was here now at this time as the new god, withered and starving through lack of faith, wasted on the ground before him. A deal had been struck, a pact had been made and Marin was here to share his history with the Blood Lord. He looked at the shrivelled, wasted thing before him and dropped his sword to the ground. The creature’s spine was bony and sharp as it bent to scoop more blood from the bowl before it. It swelled like a leech but the blood wasn’t pure enough, it needed to be from a true believer.
The Paramin shrivelled again, a pitiful wasted thing scrabbling on the floor to find the barest sustenance.
Marin drew the knife from his boot, looked at the pasty white thing at his feet as he hefted the weight of the weapon in his hand. The old gods were returning to the world of the Keepers and their champion had sent Marin to welcome the first of them. He turned the knife around in his hand, and then in one smooth motion sliced the blade through his forearm from elbow to wrist. He gasped against the pain, and still he pulled the knife through his flesh, pain like he had never known making his vision dim and his mind rebel against the horror of what he was doing.
He fell to his knees before the god and held out his ruined arm, the gory knife falling from his limp hand to the ground beside him. A believer’s blood. The Paramin smelled it and crawled on all fours to the arm. Still the priests chanted their song, voices deep and swelling as the blood pulsed from Marin’s arm.
The Paramin grabbed his arm, the god strong despite his wasted muscles, and a tongue, long and white and thick snaked out of its mouth and lapped at Marin’s wound, its face already writhing and rippling as it strengthened at the taste of the blood. The grip tightened and squeezed enough to shatter Marin’s wrist and the god slurped and pulled the ruined arm to its face until Marin could feel its teeth on his bone, the Blood Lord’s face hidden in the blood and the veins tearing out of his arm.
So great was the pain, so loud the Paramin slurping at the blood, that Marin didn’t realize the priests had fallen silent until the blade slid into the small of his back. He had been stabbed before and it had felt like being punched, but now he felt the blade cutting, slicing his back, felt his legs go numb. He slumped with a scream of agony, felt somebody catch him under the arms and drag him away from the Paramin. The god was stronger now, after the old blood, the skin not so white and thin. He would have looked human if it wasn’t for the eyes that were now completely red, if it wasn’t for the red veins lining the muscular arms and shoulders, writhing and rippling beneath the skin, the teeth were sharp and pointed and the god snarled as Marin was pulled away from it.
The Blood Lord had only been feeding a moment, Marin’s blood stained its pointed chin and its sharp teeth, but a moment’s feeding could never be enough sustenance after thousands of years of slumber. It barely saw the sword swinging at its neck, too focussed on the old blood spilling from Marin’s arm. Marin screamed as he saw the blade slice into the god’s neck and then again and then again. He couldn’t feel his legs and his arm was a blinding thing of pain and he could feel his body growing cold as the blood spilled from his back, but still he wept for the god being butchered before his eyes.
Only when the Blood Lord was dead at his feet, its neck almost severed, and flesh was barely visible in the blood, did Retaj pause for breath, leaning on his sword and looking at Marin. His smile looked genuinely saddened, “I’m sorry, old friend. I hope you know that.” He picked up the sword again, walked back to Marin.
Marin couldn’t move as he watched Retaj approach him, his vision spotted with darkness. His blood was cold in his veins and his lips felt blue. Even the pain in his arm, the pain in his back, were distant things, things that were happening to somebody else far away. He blinked, the motion feeling slow and distant. The dead god looked like little more than a pile of ragged, bloodied flesh. With an effort, Marin turned his head and saw that the priests were all dead, their peeled faces frozen in lipless smiles despite the slashes in their backs and chests. Marin blinked again as he looked at Retaj, he couldn’t feel his arms now and it was an effort to form the words, “Why? Shalih?” he whispered, the words cold on his lips.
Retaj nodded, his red hair falling about his face as he looked down at Marin. “I’ll take care of her,” he said.
And Marin closed his eyes as the Retaj swung the sword.
CHAPTER 34
She had recognized him, he was sure of it. She must have seen him at the farm when he took Gerard back to Clerk Lovelin. She looked different from the vision, but he knew by now that he would recognize Ysora Siran anywhere. How tall she was, how wild her hair, her nose long and straight, her dark eyes as wild and primal as her hair.
And she dreamed of the old gods, they said. That was why the Clerks wanted her. But how could dreams of the old gods be a crime?
Landros cursed himself silently, dragged away by the two knights in black armour and he was daydreaming about a woman from the cliffs of the Sea. His arms ached and were bruised from the grip of the men and his throat bled from the blade of the old man with the watchful smile. There was no way in the world of the Keepers that he would have shown pain before Ysora.
The garden around the back of Mashin’s house was overgrown with weeds and grass, yellow and red wildflowers growing alongside slanting fences and crumbling walls. An outhouse with a door hanging from the hinges and a broken window squatted in a far corner of the garden. Something small and furry scurried
through the undergrowth as reds and yellows and pinks began to streak across the dawning sky.
The men holding him sounded afraid, their breaths coming loud in their helms. “Where are you taking me?” he asked, still pulling his arms to be free; but they were strong men, the one on his right bigger and stronger than the other.
In answer he was flung to the ground and looking up he saw the bigger of the two draw a dagger from his belt. “We’re taking you nowhere, Kneeler. The lady Laraine gave you the chance to join our fight and still you would rather kneel.” He sounded like he would have spat on the ground if he hadn’t had his helm on. Now he did remove his helm, and he was younger than Landros would have thought. Older than himself, but still young and with his dark hair plastered to his narrow forehead. The other knight did the same. Older, not much younger than Dorian and with short grey stubble scattered about his head like a field of wheat after the burning. “You could have fought with us, fought for your freedom against the armies of the Keepers but still you would rather kneel.”
Landros knew from their eyes that if he waited he was dead. He rose to one knee, the other foot on the floor. Delaying would mean death. Thoughts of Dorian and his betrayal lent him strength as he launched himself at the bigger of the knights. He was a big man, and strong, but the armour slowed him just enough that the dagger he lowered to defend himself only cut Landros’s shoulder and did little to slow the charge. Landros’s other shoulder hit the knight’s breastplate with a painful crash and he wrapped his arms around the man, forcing him backward with as much force as he could muster. They hit the wall of the farmhouse loudly and the knight gasped as the air was forced out of him. Landros had time to punch him once in the face and grab his short dark hair in a fist, forcing his head back against the wall with a sickening thud.