With Doctor Sho’s support, I managed a few more steps, toward a turning in the road which led it away from the cliff. Just a bit beyond that point, I told myself, I could sit for a moment to catch my breath and--hopefully--a scrap of warmth.
When we reached the bend, the dog barked and loped off the road. It disappeared into the undergrowth between a pair of pine trees that creaked and popped as they swayed, ready to snap and crash to the earth.
“Hey!” Doctor Sho called after it. He peered into the sodden undergrowth. “What’s got into it?”
The dog returned a moment later. It stood between the swaying pines and barked again, then vanished back into the forest.
“There’s nothing that way but the face of a cliff,” Doctor Sho said. “Bloody mutt’s smelled some carrion along that deer trail, I wager.”
The dog returned, glared at Doctor Sho, then at me, and stamped its front legs. It barked again and turned its back to us, but stood where it was, looking over its shoulder.
“Stupid dog,” Doctor Sho muttered. He waved it toward us. “C’mere you scoundrel. I didn’t fix you up so you could lead us off to drown in a ditch.”
The dog huffed indignantly, and fixed me with a long, reproachful stare. As I met its scarred, milky eye I felt the same heady weight that came upon me that first night at the Temple of the Flame, when I stood before the stone gaze of the gods.
I pulled away from Doctor Sho.
“Where’re you going?” he shouted after me.
I could offer him no explanation beyond my faith in this dog, which bore the same scars as the god who had called me back to Nayen.
“First you murder half a patrol, then you go wandering off into the woods in the middle of a typhoon,” Doctor Sho muttered, but I heard the squelch of his feet in the mud behind me. “That’ll teach me to take on a traveling companion. Pfa!”
The dog loped ahead of us, hale but for the angry red lines that crossed its face. The path ran uphill, angling away from the road. The mud was slick and forced us to crouch and pull ourselves along, using the trees and saplings for handholds. The dog stopped beside the basalt cliff, its tongue lolling and eyes expectant.
“See, I told you. Now let’s head back to the road,” Doctor Sho said.
As he spoke, the dog vanished from view. Doctor Sho grumbled, but we followed, and found a narrow gap in the cliff face between two hexagonal columns of basalt. One rose straight from the ground, the other at an angle, so that they met several handspans above my head. I saw no sign of the dog.
“It’s a cave,” I said. “Not a rotting carcass after all.”
“There’s probably a dead animal somewhere in there,” Doctor Sho said. “And if there’s not, there soon will be. A cave in a typhoon! Nearly as stupid an idea as murdering a dozen men in the only town to be found for miles. We’ll be trapped and drowned.”
As if in answer, a bark echoed from the opening.
“It’s shelter,” I said. “And we’re uphill. The whole valley would have to flood for the water to reach us. Let’s at least have a look inside.”
“You have no idea what could be in there,” Doctor Sho said. “Bears…something worse!”
“Would the dog lead us into a bear’s den?”
“He might well lead us to something worse.”
“Why are you so afraid?” I said.
“I’m just being sensible!”
“And I’m exhausted,” I said, and sidled in after the dog.
“Boy,” Doctor Sho shouted after me, but I ignored him. The narrow cave made for slow going. It was just wide enough for me to fit sideways, with my back against one wall and my chest against the other. When I was out of the rain, I released the spell that held the wind at bay.
Doctor Sho yelped and the wind whistled past the mouth of the cave.
“You could have given me some warning!” he shouted.
The fingers of cold that had gripped my spine finally released. Relief washed through me, and I found the strength to conjure a flame. I held my right hand up to light the way.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s dry, and it looks like it widens out up ahead.”
“Fine then, if you’re going to be a bastard about it,” he said. “But I’m not leaving my medicines behind.”
He pushed, and I pulled, and though the chest of drawers lost a few more pieces of decoration we managed to make steady progress. As we ventured deeper, I noticed stains on the walls in a deep red and rich brown. I held my flame closer and saw that they were images of tiny, abstract people doing battle with a smear that might have been a bear, or an oversized wolf, or a ferocious creature lost to time.
The cave doubled in width, then doubled again. The walls were no longer basalt, but the older stone that lies at the heart of mountains. A narrow path wound through a forest of stalagmites. Their deep shadows moved with us as we progressed.
“We should leave,” Doctor Sho said suddenly, his voice a whisper that nonetheless echoed through the cave.
I began to ask him why when my light revealed the dog, sitting on its haunches at the feet of a woman. She was tall, but stooped, with eyes that peered out from deep wrinkles. The skulls of birds hung braided in her long white hair. The cape of woven grass she wore glistened where it had been stitched with the feathers of crows and ravens.
“Do you fools know what it is that leads you?” she said.
“A dog,” I said. “Marked like the wolf god Okara.”
“A lying, loathsome, cowardly bastard is what,” she said. “A dog! Ha! He’s no more that dog than he is one of the countless statues your idiot ancestors built to him. And the favor they thanked him for? Hardly a favor at all.”
The dog blinked at the flame in my hand and huffed. The woman peered past me and showed her yellow teeth.
“Been a while, Sho.”
Doctor Sho crossed his arms and glowered at her.
“Not even a greeting?” she said. “Well, I’ll learn how you got mixed up in this sooner or later.” She turned her attention to me. “And you, what do you think you’re doing wandering through my woods tossing magic about like a tomcat tosses piss in breeding season?”
“I was holding back the storm,” I said, taken aback. “Okara told me to seek a woman of the bones.”
She shook her head, clattering the skulls in her hair, and glared at the dog. “Does the pact mean nothing?”
The dog whimpered. The woman rolled her eyes, then fixed them on me.
“I’m the one you seek,” she said. “Call me…Hissing Cat, I guess. There were other names, but that’s a fine one for the mood I’m in.” She ventured further into the cave. I hesitated, unsure whether she meant for us to follow.
“It’s not too late to turn back,” Doctor Sho murmured.
“You know her,” I said. “If there’s reason to be afraid, tell me.”
“Boy, you’re in the company of a god and a witch of the old sort. What isn’t a reason to be afraid? Let’s be gone from here.”
“You’d prefer the storm to this woman Hissing Cat?”
“I would prefer to be flayed alive.”
“Why?” I said. “Always you blame me for ignorance yet share nothing of your knowledge. Tell me why I should leave with you, and how she knows you, and I will consider leaving. You won’t make it far on your own.”
Doctor Sho shifted from foot to foot and pulled at the wisps of his beard in agitation.
“Fine then,” I said, and followed Hissing Cat. The dog--who I could no longer resist thinking of as Okara--fell into step at my side. A moment later I heard Doctor Sho grumble, and then his footsteps echoing behind me while he hurried to catch up. Hissing Cat had become a silhouette in the dark ahead of us. She carried no light--but what obstacle, the dark, to a woman on familiar terms with gods?
“So, you’re coming after all,” she said.
“I would not give up this opportunity,” I said, trying to keep the fear she stirred in my gut from sounding in my voice. “All my li
fe I have longed for magic. Okara said you might teach me and--”
“Did he now?” Hissing Cat crossed her arms and faced us. The wavering light made her face seem craggy as the stone. Okara shied behind my legs.
“I know a little already,” I said. “I was Hand of the Emperor, though…” I showed her my left hand. “I cut myself free of them, and now I’ve struck out on my own. When I was young and had no witch-marks I tried to veer--unsuccessfully, but I worked the magic all the same. And now I can wield some Sienese sorcery, even without the tetragram, though not with any nuance.”
“Sien is an Empire?” she said. “I’ve been away too long. And all you’ve told me is that you’re sensitive, curious, and foolhardy. The first is your only asset.”
“I’m much less foolhardy than I was.”
She laughed, and I feared the stalactites would crack and fall on our heads. “Oh my. That’s one I’ll need to write down.”
“Please,” I said. How could this path, too, be a dead end?
“Why should I teach you?” she replied.
“Because if you do not teach me, I will teach myself. I don’t know the havoc I might wreak--but I think you do.”
She considered this. “I don’t hear a threat, more a…childish warning.”
“Does that mean you will teach me?”
“I will not teach you magic, child. The pact forbids it,” she said, and returned to the path. “But you have other questions, I’m sure. And I need something to do while I wait out this storm.”
“What is this pact?” I said. What, if not magic, would her lessons be? “Okara spoke of it as well. Something about the witches of the old sort holding the gods to an ancient agreement.”
“Oh, it binds us too--more than them, in many ways,” she said. “That is something I can teach you, I suppose. Though not now. I like to sit down when I bloviate.”
As we delved deeper into the cave--Hissing Cat leading the way, Okara at my heel, and Doctor Sho muttering along behind--the paintings on the stalagmites and the walls became more frequent, and more complex. Many showed scenes of hunting, like the one at the mouth of the cave. Others were more placid. A family gathered around a fire. A herd of antlered beasts grazing between stands of trees. One drew my eye and held it. It showed a seated figure surrounded by a fractal pattern in white chalk, like lightning, but rounded, and radiating out from the figure’s head like a crown.
“Did you paint these?” I asked Hissing Cat.
The skulls in her hair clattered as she glared over her shoulder. “How old do you think I am?”
I had no answer.
She saw the figure that held my attention. “A witch of the very old sort,” she said wryly. “No. These were here when I found the place. The hands that painted them died long before I came spitting and yowling into the world.”
“What brought you here?” I said.
“A much longer journey than yours,” she said. “And one I’ll not tell standing in the middle of this cave, especially not when we’d be sitting ‘round a warm fire by now if you’d stop asking so many questions.”
“I warned you that I was curious.”
The cave opened into a vast chamber. The roof was high enough that the light of my little flame never touched it. If not for the echo--and the stalactites jutting down out of the dark--we might have walked beneath a night sky empty of stars.
At the center of the chamber stood a column in the shape of an hourglass, formed by the meeting of stalagmite and stalactite. Hundreds of handprints, all in different colors and sizes, covered the entire column, beginning at the floor and rising beyond the reach of my light.
“Yes, yes, it’s very moving,” Hissing Cat said. “Come. My home is just ahead.”
“How did they make it?” I said.
“Sho, is there a way to shut him up?” she said.
“If you ignore him long enough, he gets all quiet and introspective,” Doctor Sho said. “That’s been my strategy.”
“I’m not that talkative,” I protested. Okara whined--in solidarity with me, I told myself, and not in agreement with Hissing Cat.
The forest of stalagmites thinned, and a warm light appeared ahead of us. Soon it resolved into a smoldering campfire. Behind it, bathed in shadow, stood a house in the old Nayeni fashion. Its roof was tiled like the Temple of the Flame, and it had a timber-frame construction, the wood fitting together with pegs and glue rather than nails.
Beside the campfire stood a pile of what I at first took for flat stones, but as we drew nearer, I saw that they were bone. Bovine shoulder blades, dozens of them, piled like detritus. They were carved with letters I did not recognize.
“Before you ask,” Doctor Sho whispered. “Those, and not the skulls, would be the bones. The skulls are new...among other things.”
“What’re they for?”
“So many questions!” Hissing Cat said. “No more talking until after I eat. I had a soup ready when you fools wandered into my home. It’s thin, but you’re welcome to a cup. Mushrooms and…” The skulls in her hair clattered as she turned and smiled. “…bone broth.”
We followed her into the single, broad room of her house. A brazier full of old coals stood at its center. A collection of shoulder blades hung on the walls, carved with the same strange letters and defaced with long, jagged cracks. She had hung them haphazardly on pegs, and I could deduce no reason why these, and not the others, deserved to be displayed rather than cast aside.
The soup was simple, but hearty and satisfying, and though I nursed a thousand questions my exhausted mind soon succumbed to my full stomach. Hissing Cat unrolled a straw mat for me, and chuckled as I sprawled out and began to doze.
“This one, really?” she said, as Okara padded up to me. The dog barked and curled up in the small of my back. Hissing Cat shrugged, and I realized as sleep took me that we had not warned her of the danger that followed in our wake.
* * *
My mind swam through a scattered dream. A vision of oceans surging, hurling black waves high that boiled into steam. The earth splitting wide and bathing primordial forests in flowing stone and flame. Towering figures strode through it all, like great ships cutting their wakes deep into the pattern of the world, with ribbons of harsh light unfurling from their heads.
I woke to a sudden snapping noise and a smell like burning dust. Doctor Sho snored nearby, one arm tangled in the straps of his medicine chest. I rose, accidentally nudging Okara awake, and followed the sound and smell out into the cave.
Hissing Cat crouched over her fire, pressing the tip of a long needle into the coals. With her free hand she took a shoulder blade from the pile beside the fire. The runes that marked it seemed logographic, like Sienese writing, but written with symbols I had never seen before. She pressed the white-hot tip of the needle to the center of the shoulder blade. With a curl of acrid smoke and a loud snap, the bone cracked. Hissing Cat studied the fractures, muttered to herself, and tossed the shoulder blade into the darkness, where it shattered against the stone.
“As I recall--and I haven’t been in society for some time, so I might be wrong--it’s rude to stare at other people,” she said, and reached for another shoulder blade.
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” I said.
“Then you should have stayed asleep,” she said. “Or kept out of my cave. And before you ask, I’m trying to decide what to do about you and your…dog.”
“The bones give you your answers.”
She nodded. “These runes are my question. When the bone cracks, it gives me an answer--sometimes as simple as yes or no, though not in this case. Sometimes I see the answer and feel relief. Sometimes I feel regret. Either way, I know the choice I should make.”
“That seems unnecessarily complex,” I said.
“When I and the world were young, the witches of the very old sort who could sense the pattern of the world, but who did not understand it, used this method to divine the pattern’s will. They believed that by fittin
g their actions to their divinations, they could avoid calamity and prolong their lives. Which was…partly true. Knowing that a volcano will erupt, or a locust swarm descend, or a wildfire break out is useful. But knowing a calamity will come is not always enough to avoid it. Sometimes such knowledge is more a curse than a blessing.”
“Yet you keep their ways alive.”
“You are being very careful not to phrase your questions as questions.”
“I don’t want to overburden you.”
“Yet you felt no compunction about inserting yourself into my life and demanding knowledge that I cannot give.”
“Because the pact forbids you to give it,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, and pressed the needle to the bone. She studied its cracks for a breath longer than the last, then set it down beside the fire and motioned for me to sit. “That knowledge, at least, I can share. Though there is little to teach.”
I sat across from her and could not resist glancing at the shoulder blade she had kept.
“I won’t waste your time with tales of the war between the gods at the world’s dawn,” she said. “Know only that there was a war. One that filled the sky with lightning, sundered the land, divided the waters, and bore mountains with fire for their afterbirth. Into this chaos, humankind was born, cleverer than its animal kin, able to discern the deeds of the gods from the pattern of nature, and terrified of their power. In their fear, many begged the gods for mercy and favor, but others nursed their outrage and sought the power to shape the world as the gods did.
“It was a power they already held. For humanity had something of the divine. Awareness, but more than awareness. The power to consider, and to choose. Not all used that power, and most lived straightforward lives, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain with only a modicum of thought.
“But among those who did use that power, the first witch was born. Not when she crawled from her mother’s womb, but when she reached out to the world, felt the shape of the pattern, and--as she might bend her own arm--bent it to her will. She taught others, who taught others, and soon there were enough to challenge the gods, to demand that they cease their endless war with all the calamities it wrought upon the world. Of course, the gods refused. We were rude creatures in their minds. Would you accede to the demands of a dog?”
The Hand of the Sun King Page 32