The Storyteller and Other Tales

by K V Johansen

  The palace courtyard was paved in stone and brick. The great plaza that raised the palaces over the city was paved in stone. Only the city streets would, despite their paving and the sweepers, be muddy all the rainy season, with a stinking mix of dirt and dust and dung, and all the rubbish of the households overlooking them.

  But there was only the one guarded gate, and First-Son had no leave to be out.

  He-Redeems went about his work quietly, taking each lamp from its niche and setting it on the carefully-balanced tray without so much as the click of bronze on bronze. This was the Divine Daughter’s bedchamber, and although it was empty, it was resonant with the holiness of a temple. The air smelled of her perfume. He was as careful as he always was, but he still felt an impetus to hurry. He would take the lamps from the Divine Daughter’s private apartments down to the oil-store in the cellar to clean and refill them, and once that task was done, he would be able to do those of the infants’ rooms. It was his favourite part of the day. Few were trusted with the daily tasks of their mistress’ apartments, and fewer still were permitted near her children.

  The prince and the princesses, the children of the Divine Daughter, would be a month old on the following day. They had been born small, but strong, and now they throve and grew. Three babies at one birth, and all survived — not one of the women in the palace had ever heard of such a thing. Skarritha’s mercy was boundless. He-Redeems loved them as passionately as he did Barley’s unborn baby, perhaps even more. He could almost regret that Barley’s pregnancy had not occurred at the same time as that of his mistress. She might then have been chosen as a wetnurse for one of the babies. If the god meant her child to die anyhow, at least that would have given her something greater to love.

  So far, Barley’s condition remained a secret between the three of them, but despite this Barley cried at night when she got to brooding on what might come. Like First-Son, she was unable to trust to Skarritha’s infinite wisdom. He-Redeems wished Barley could be permitted to see the babies, the grandchildren of Almighty Skarritha. In their presence it was so easy to feel a calm, peaceful assurance that Korthan lay in the lap of the god, loved and secure from all dangers beyond. Small worries of individual lives and deaths shrank to their true size, then. All were under the sheltering hand of the god. If only Barley and First-Son could learn to understand that.

  He-Redeems took the last lamp and went back into the receiving room, closing the door softly behind him.

  “Sir —?” he began to ask, turning to see a man moving towards him. He thought for a moment the Hound was one of the small troop, the Hand, that were the Great Lady’s personal bodyguard. But he was not. He-Redeems knew all nine of those men and women well. This man was a stranger, and the woman behind him also.

  And then the feet were kicked out from beneath him and he fell, tray and lamps flying, remnants of oil spattering across the floor and wall. Slaves learnt not to fight back, ever. He yelped and curled up, arms wrapped around his head, as someone kicked him again, calling him ... heretic?

  He did not understand that. He tried to pull himself into a smaller space, but they grabbed his arms and hauled him up, two Hounds, and were dragging him across the room before he had his feet under him.

  “I didn’t do it,” he cried. “Sirs, please, I’ve done nothing. I didn’t do it.”

  He had no idea what he might have done, but he was certain he had done nothing, nothing at all, in all his life, that the thonor would care about, nothing even that the chamberlain might discipline him for, beyond keeping Barley’s secret.

  “Please,” he begged, trying to hang back and only hurting himself. “Please, oh please, what have I done? And you can’t leave that mess in there, my mistress might slip in the oil, please ...” To his shame he was starting to cry.

  “Stop whining,” the woman Hound said. He-Redeems bit his lip, trying to bite down the panic with it. They had mistaken him for someone else, they must have, that they came for him this way, as if he could hurt them, as if he were an enemy. His heart was pounding so that he could barely hear anything, just a strange roaring, like he was drowning, and the floor moved under his feet like a river’s flowing. He scrabbled for footing on the stairs, stairs ... they were very far away, not flat at all but sickening, unsteady. They came rushing up to meet him, hitting him, hard, and a Hound swore, his voice stretched out and distant.

  He fainted, like a girl.

  Sound came back first, his ears ringing, and then a burst of pain as someone slapped his face. He-Redeems tried to lie still, so they would go away, but he was slapped again, harder. His eyes opened by themselves, and he whimpered.

  “Good enough,” said the Hound, rising from where he knelt over He-Redeems’ body. “You’ll wait here, heretic, until the Great Lady is ready to deal with you.”

  “I’m not, sir, please, I’m not ...” But the words bubbled through blood from a split lip and both the thonor were leaving, closing a door, shutting out all light.

  “I’m no heretic!” he wailed after them. “Please! Someone’s told you lies, sirs. Please! I swear, by holy Skarritha’s name!”

  But he was alone, and no-one answered. He flung himself flat on his face and prayed, for Skarritha’s mercy, for Skarritha’s forgiveness for whatever unwitting sin, whatever wicked thought, had earned him such punishment. But he was no heretic. Never that. He prayed, and he wept.

  In time there were footsteps outside, and a woman’s sobbing. The noise drew nearer, passed, and the woman shrieked. The footsteps faded away but the screaming and sobbing went on, wordless rage and terror. He shut it out, closed himself up in his prayers.

  When there were no words left for praying, when all his being was simply a quiet devotion to the god again, He-Redeems sat in the farthest corner of the small room, his arms wrapped around his knees, and waited. There was no light except a thin line under the door. He did not mind. Skarritha was light and darkness both, day and night, and night in day. He had brought night to day, eclipsing the sun to proclaim the advent of his reign as a mortal woman in Korthan. He could bring light to this darkness, to He-Redeems’ penitent heart. If he was to die, Skarritha, who knew and saw all, would know He-Redeems was no heretic, no matter what the priests or the judges or the thonor believed. Skarritha knew his soul was pure.

  The woman sobbed more quietly now, the sound worn hoarse and weak.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he called. “Skarritha knows the innocent.”

  There was silence, and then a voice barely recognizable as Barley’s called, “He-Redeems? He-Redeems! They’re going to kill us as h-h-heretics.” She stuttered on the word, barely able to get it out, and burst into tears again. For the first time he got up and tried the door. It was locked.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said again. “I know you’re a true worshipper of Skarritha. Everyone knows. It’ll be all right.”

  “They’re going to kill us,” she said dully, when her tears at last gave out. “They’re going to take us to the temple and cut our throats. Or burn us.” She didn’t seem able to stop sobbing, but now it was a dry, gulping noise, nothing more.

  “Everyone knows we’re not.”

  “No-one will speak for us, He-Redeems. Don’t be a f-f-fool. They’d be as good as accusing themselves too. Even First-Son won’t dare.” She drew a long, sighing breath. “I wish they’d locked us up together.”

  “So do I.”

  It would be a comfort, to be with Barley. But they shouldn’t need such comfort. Skarritha held them in his hand, always. The god knew his own. He said as much to Barley, and she agreed, faintly, that yes, Skarritha knew his own.

  The light under the door faded away. No-one came with water or food.

  “He-Redeems?”

  “What, Barley?”

  “Pray for me? I’m not a very good person. We don’t have time to pray, in the kitchens. And I g
et angry, when I think they’ll take my baby away. I think it isn’t fair the god made me be born a slave, and I know I should accept what’s sent, that we’re all Skarritha’s but ... but sometimes I wonder if we aren’t. I never meant to be bad. I thought maybe things would be different if — if they — if it was true they would come back .... And now I’ll never have the baby at all. Pray for me, for mercy.”

  He had no idea what she was talking about, but it didn’t matter. She was too distraught to make sense. “Don’t cry,” he said. Her voice was nothing now but a hoarse croak, and his little better. “Don’t. Of course I’ll pray for you. I always do.”

  “You’re always so good. It’s so easy for you. But I want to be with Skarritha when I die. I do. I do! Skarritha forgive me! I don’t want to be damned, I don’t want to be alone in the darkness.”

  “You won’t be. Skarritha knows you’re innocent. Go to sleep now, Barley. I’ll pray.”

  And he did, shaping the words in his head, with soundless, painful lips, until he drifted into sleep himself.

  He-Redeems slept badly, waking often to an empty stomach and a parched and painful throat. He dreamed of drinking, of jars of cool water and of the river, wide and slow. And in his dreams he could not get the water to his mouth; it ran from his hands, or he floated away as he reached for it. What woke him for good was Barley’s crying out again, desperate, “He-Redeems! He-Redeems!”

  There was daylight under the door once more. He flung himself down, saw sandals and thick male ankles on either side of slim bare feet that stumbled and staggered in passing by, and then they were gone, up the unseen stairs, and she was still calling his name. And then she wailed, “First-Son!” and he heard nothing more except another door closing.

  The day passed. Water became the entirety of his thoughts. This was beyond thirst, a driving madness. He ceased to worry even about Barley, ceased almost from prayerful thoughts, except the drumming litany of Skarritha, water — plea or command or curse He-Redeems could not have said.

  When they finally came for him he was lying curled up, mindless and unresponsive as a wounded animal. The Hounds dragged him up the stairs into the courtyard; it wasn’t until the noon sun struck him in the eyes that He-Redeems groaned and began to struggle upright.

  They let him stand, holding him, and waited while he blinked his sight back.

  The first thing he saw was a body hanging from the gallery. It swayed and turned gently in the breeze.

  The man had not been hanged. The corpse was black with caked and stinking blood from the chest on down, a wound back and front, with broken, jagged rib-bone showing. It shimmered, seethed, with a skin of flies.

  It was First-Son. His eyes were gone, and a crow circled over the yard, cawing.

  “Friend of yours?” said a Hound.

  He-Redeems choked, felt the world going distant again. He dug nails into his own palms and dropped his head, eyes shut. A Hound jerked it up again, and he wrenched himself loose, his throat, his whole body heaving, fell to his knees and was sick, little though there was in his belly.

  “Now that’s a proper reverence for the apostate,” one of the thonor said, and they dragged him up again, to lead him along under the gallery.

  They were heading for the reception rooms, where the Great Lady entertained her guests. He was filthy, unwashed, he couldn’t come before her so, and for a moment that was all he could think of, the insult his presence must offer her.

  He could not believe, as soon as it was out of his sight, that that thing back there had been First-Son. It could not be. It must not.

  Tears leaked from his eyes, ran down his face, stinging the rawness of his lips. At least Barley had not been hanging there too.

  They took him into the White Room, the walls of which were of unrelieved white plaster, the floor of white-glazed brick. It was a very big, empty room, rarely used except when a governor or priest was called before the Great Lady for a reprimand. A black-lacquered chair sat against the far wall.

  They shoved him down to the floor and stepped away. He-Redeems huddled with his face to the floor, praying. He could form no words of his own, whispered instead the invocation the priests used every morning, a great presumption. He was not worthy to utter the words.

  He fell silent when he heard the rustling of stiff skirts across the floor, the tapping of sandals, the heavier tread of armoured soldiers.

  “Did you see what is hanging in the courtyard?” the Divine Daughter’s voice asked.

  “The Great Lady speaks to you. Look up,” a Hound said, and jabbed him with naked sword, hard enough to leave blood welling on his arm.

  He-Redeems raised his head, shaped the word, yes, but could give it no breath. It seemed to be enough for her.

  “A slave of my house,” she said. “My house, born in my house, and he went out by secret ways to meet with apostates and heretics. Do you know what they did, He-Redeems-His-Father?”

  It was the first time she had used his name since asking it, years before.

  “Mistress,” he croaked. “I know nothing.”

  “They met, every first quarter of the moon, to pray to gods whose names they did not know, gods who are long gone from Korthan. They told one another that there would be no sickness, no sorrow in all Korthan, if only they could have the old gods back, the gods who set all the cities of the plain to fighting, who sat by and let kings and dark sorcerers oppress their worshippers. The heretics whispered and plotted to find sorcerers, to bring them to the city, to overthrow our rule, they hoped. We are fortunate indeed they found none.”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  “Do you know what they were, He-Redeems-His-Father?”

  “Mistress,” he protested. “I know nothing of them.”

  “They were greedy, foolish men who dreamed of setting themselves over their fellows, who felt Skarritha had not rewarded them as was their due. They did not want to accept what Skarritha in his infinite wisdom decreed for them. So like sulky children running to grandmother, they made a little game of heresy, trying to lure the Nine back. But First-Son, this slave of my household — what do you know of him, He-Redeems-His-Father?”

  He-Redeems only shook his head.

  “You were very close. Unnaturally close, some would say. Did you never go with him down into the city?”

  “Mistress, I never go to the city, except to the temple on the holy days, when I’m permitted.”

  She was not so much listening to his words, he felt, as tasting or smelling them, following like a hound back into his soul, to find what was truly there.

  “Did he never show you what he had found while repairing the shelves, the broken passage at the back of the oil-cellar, that led into the sewer and the canal?”

  “No, mistress.”

  “You are known to be a very devout man, He-Redeems-His-Father. Did he never suggest to you that your piety was misplaced?”

  “No, mistress.”

  She waited. She knew.

  “He mocked me, Great Lady,” He-Redeems whispered weakly. “But it was only teasing, mistress. He called me ‘priest’s-boy’. That was all. Because I had served in the temple. He ... he felt I prayed too much. Maybe ... maybe he felt I presumed to a priest’s sanctity, that I should be humbled. I never meant any offence to the god.”

  “No. Do you defend him?”

  “I ... mistress, Great Lady, he was my friend.” His heart hammered wildly. “He ... I knew nothing of any evil in him. If... if you say it is true, Great Lady ...”

  “If?” she asked.

  “... then I must believe you. Mistress ...” and he looked at her, pleading, meeting her eyes without flinching, as he never had when he shared her couch. “Please, mistress. Is it true?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He bowed his face back to the floor.

&
nbsp; “Such heretics cannot expect to exist in Korthan unnoticed,” she said, very gently. “Thonor found their meeting place, learned their names. First-Son was recognized and followed home a month ago. The night before last he was taken at their meeting, He-Redeems, and killed as he sought to flee. A coward’s death.”

  Skarritha forgive him, he had seen First-Son coming back from that meeting a month before, mud on his feet, coming across the yard, yes, from the cellar where the oil-store was. He had seen an armed man following him, too, and had said nothing. Skarritha forgive him.

  First-Son, forgive him.

  “Imagine, He-Redeems. First-Son thought he would offer prayers to the damned and outcast Nine, and he had no names to call them by. Do you think his gods heard him?”

  She did want an answer to that, stared as though her eyes could see the thoughts forming before they ever rode his tongue. And the thought that formed first of all was that she herself had lain with a son of the Nine, that yellow-eyed young man, the monster who had got her with child and escaped, and was not that worse than praying to gods whom everyone knew Skarritha had long ago defeated?

  “In the temple they say the Nine answer prayers only to deceive, mistress, if they ever do at all.”

  “But what do you think?”

  “Mistress?”

  She waited.

  “I never think about the Nine at all, Great Lady, except to pray that merciful Skarritha will keep all your cities safe from their evil.”

  “Do you pity your friend, He-Redeems? Do you mourn him?”

  “I ...” But he could not, must not, lie to Skarritha’s Daughter. He looked up again, somewhere about the belt of her gown, which was cloth of gold, the gown she wore to the temple rituals. Rituals ... if any of the heretics had survived their capture, they would have been executed in the temple, to purify Korthan again. “Mistress, he was my friend. I grieve that my friend was so deceived and fell into such evil ways. I ... I would wish him alive, Great Lady, and a good, god-fearing man, as I know he used to be, before he went astray. If he were alive I would pray that great Skarritha lead him back to right belief. But it is too late for that, and he is damned. So I must not pity him. I hate his sin.”