The Lady (11 page)

A listening silence.

“It was only a story of a distant land,” Hadidu said. “Even though it was but last summer that Attalissa returned to her lake. Even when the Tamghati survivors came up the pass from the Four Deserts, fleeing the wrath of the mountains and the Red Desert, it was only a story, and the Voice of the Lady hired them to fight the temple's wars in Praitan. We have had peace with the tribesfolk Over-Malagru for long years now, and the temple hired this warband that had followed a devil to make war on them.”

“The Praitans murdered the Voice!” someone called, shadow against a far fire.

“A conquered folk will use what weapons they can,” Jugurthos retorted, as Hadidu hesitated. “They were conquered by the treacherous murder of a Praitannec queen by temple ambassadors and by terror of the Red Masks, but we're not here to talk about Praitan.”

“Show us the dead Red Mask!” someone else shouted. “We're not here for a storyteller!”

Hadidu drew a long breath. He put Jugurthos's reassuring touch off and raised a hand. “You know me, many of you. Hadidu. The coffeehouse of the Doves, there, the ruin, was mine. And I am not here to tell you stories, save one. This is all one story, do you not see it yet? You know me, and some of you know me truly, a story you've buried in your hearts and kept secret, keeping faith with me. Keeping faith with my mother. Keeping faith with Ilbialla, who was goddess of our ancestors here, with her brother Gurhan of the Hill and sister the Lady of the well, in equal respect and equal love, time out of mind. I was the orphan the master of the Doves took to raise with his own children. The little cousin who was no cousin. My name was Esau, once. On the day the Lady's temple guard murdered the priestess of Ilbialla, my mother, and hacked my grandmother and my infant sister to pieces in the earthquake-ruins of our house, the master of the Doves saved me. You all, all you folk who live about the market square, all who knew or suspected and kept silent, saved me, so that I am here today to tell you, now is our time. Now we, who kept faith in the shadows and the silence, must save our city.”

Jugurthos forced his attention back to the audience, drawn nearer by the passion of Hadidu's words. He watched for the incongruous movement against the light of the bonfires, the reach for bow or javelin or stone. Hard not to turn and stare at the priest, though, as rapt as they. If he didn't know Ilbialla to be sealed or dead within the tomb, he would have thought his friend god-touched, inspired, speaking, if not prophecy, then words of divinity nonetheless.

“Do I need to tell you of the evils done in the Lady's name, these three decades past? The murders, the folk slain in the streets by bullies and thugs in the uniform of a private army, no better than an invading barbarian horde, acknowledging no law of the people? The men and women and even children taken, who are never seen again? Marakand was a great city, famed for its library, for its scholars, its wisdom. Where are our wizards now? What folk slaughters its own divinely blessed, who should be there for its aid and comfort? The temple of the Lady, which used to feed the homeless and the hungry, became nothing more than an invading warband, led by a tyrant such as took Lissavakail in the mountains, oppressing the folk, killing those who spoke against it as the senators faithful in upholding the law of the city were killed, with a barbarity you wouldn't find even in Nabban. Was that the act of a goddess? Of a holy priesthood, a temple founded to care for the poor and the sick? Such charity was ever the true Lady's calling. And like a warband the false temple has robbed the folk for its own gain, its priests grown fat on your poverty, your taxes supporting its agents of your oppression, feeding an army, the temple guards, whose only real enemy is you, the folk. It has divided us from our neighbours, turned kin against kin, friend against friend—suburb against city—to stop us uniting against our oppressor, who is the
false
Lady of Marakand.”

Movement, far closer than Jugurthos expected. He had seen no one crossing the square. He turned, crouched into the darkness, saw a man intercepted by a pair of guardsmen to stand, hands raised in a gesture denying threat. Caravaneer; he made out the silhouette of knee-length coat and braids. And a sabre at his side. He wasn't one of those who had come in with the sandal-maker; none of those had moved from the group on the other side of the tomb. No way any others should have been let armed through the city gate. No way anyone should have been let through the city gate at all.

“And we must unite. We must stand against this devil—for the rumours you have heard are true. The thing that calls itself the Lady is a devil, one of the seven of the north. We have a duty, not only to ourselves, to our parents, our dead, not only to our living, to our children, our future, not even a duty to our lost gods, but to all humanfolk, and to the gods of the high places and the goddesses of the waters and the demons of the wild. We have a duty, under the Old Great Gods, to stand against the devils and deny them the place they would take in this world.”

Jugurthos dropped from the tomb and went to the detained man. The caravaneer had folded his arms now, head cocked a little to one side, listening, face expressionless, but it might be just the damned tattoos that made him look so dark and unreadable. His face was covered in them, temples and cheeks. A man of the deserts or the Western Grass.

“You Captain Jugurthos?” he asked in the desert dialect that was the common tongue of the western road and one of the two languages of the city, the other being a Nabbani dialect, not that real Nabbani of the far empire would admit it as such.

“Yes,” Jugurthos answered warily. “You are—?”

“Holla-Sayan!” Talfan elbowed and ducked around a guardswoman, halted in confusion. Ah. Owls flaring wings, curling around the eyes, snakes writhing on his cheeks, those were Westgrasslander markings. This was the man she had thought she had known. The Blackdog. Talfan steadied the baby with a hand. “Oh. Holla-Sayan. Is Varro . . . ?”

“He's talking. Still.”

“With whom?”

The caravaneer shrugged. “People. A magistrate—the one they didn't kill, some caravanserai owners, some caravan-masters and such. I've a message for Hadidu, from Nour.”

“Nour!” Talfan silenced herself with a hand over her mouth, a hasty glance up at Hadidu, who spoke on unreacting to her shrill cry. Perhaps he had not made out the word.

“. . . Not in vengeance, not in the blood-lust of a roused barbarian. We are Marakand. We must be true to Marakand. We are a civilized folk, a folk of law, and we have our law still, we have our senate, the senate of the three gods, we have our street guard—” Some dodging in from Captain Hassin, a murmured word. Hadidu nodded, not pausing. “We have, under the law, provision for a militia, when the city is threatened. It is threatened now, and not by Praitan. How many of you offered your names to the temple or the magistrates, swept away by the false Lady's charms or thoughts of Praitannec plunder? You were willing to fight for a lie. For the sake of the three true gods, hold yourselves ready to fight instead for the truth, for Marakand, and for your gods, lost though they may be.”

“Nour!” Talfan hissed. “Alive?”

Jugurthos didn't have words.
Nour
, in defiance of all hope.

“That's Hadidu up there, is it?” Holla-Sayan asked, looking around the market square. “You won't take the temple with this few.”

“We're not planning to,” Talfan retorted. “Not
tonight
, anyway.”

“You don't want to give her time to recover her balance. A speech isn't going to keep her behind her walls.”

Jugurthos silenced them both with a lifted hand.

“I beg you, if you hear me with an honest heart, if you do nothing else, carry these words to the city. The folk must know. They must be warned of the cost of denying the truth. Will you have the city follow this devil, this slayer of our true gods, to destruction? Each one of you must choose, must stand for what you know is right before the gods and the Old Great Gods. The Red Masks are fearsome, yes. Pitiable, corrupted, and abused shells, victims of necromancy, their souls, we trust and pray, gone to the Old Great Gods. We still cannot fight the Red Masks, you and I, mortal as we are, but we have allies who can. The Lady's unfortunate slaves cannot infect you with the madness of their terror any longer. That is our greatest weapon, that is why we must act
now
, while the false Lady, the devil in the temple, is weakened by the loss of her greatest weapon, which was our fear.

“Marakand's gods are lost, maybe, or maybe dead, I don't deny it. But the Old Great Gods are over them, and you all, every one of you, will come at the end of your long road to stand before them. Will you have to confess then that you broke faith with memory of your gods, that you denied Ilbialla and Gurhan and the true Lady of the Deep Well, whatever dire fate has befallen her, to worship a damned and outcast devil? To give honour to a murderer, a child-killer, a necromancer who torments even the dead? If you do not now stand against her sin, now that you see it and know it for what it is, you make it your own. You will carry that guilt when you come at last before the Old Great Gods. It is better to die fighting for what is right before men and gods and Old Great Gods, than to live long, corrupting your soul by partaking of such wrong as this Lady has brought to Marakand.”

Hadidu fell silent. Tulip took him by the arm, looking around. This was no time to show uncertainty. Jugurthos caught the edge of the tomb and swung himself up to the roof again.

“We can't fight her one by one,” Hadidu shouted. His voice had gone hoarse. No, don't. Jugurthos wanted to say. Leave it right there. You have them. But Hadidu seized him by the shoulder. “In the old days, when the city was threatened, the senate would appoint a warden, a Warden of the City to rule over the three wall-wardens who command the guard, to rule over even the senate. The senate now is divided and broken. Though some may hold true to the old gods in their hearts, they sit under the Lady's thumb, they speak only what the priests tell them, and worst, they do it too often not even for fear, but for selfish gain. But the senate is meant to be only the voice of the Twenty Families to which we all, in greater or lesser degree, belong, the voice of folk, and the voice and the will of the folk must be greater than the Voice and the will of the Lady. In the name of Ilbialla and Gurhan, let the folk name a Warden of the City, to lead us through this time of darkness. Name Jugurthos Barraya, Captain of the Sunset Gate and heir of both Petrimos Barraya and Elias Barraya, to lead you.”

They roared, like the blood in his ears. Hadidu ducked his head.

“Hadi—” Jugurthos's whisper was strangled. He had seen that somehow getting himself proclaimed Warden of the City was the only way to take the authority he would need, to stop it all being a few riots followed by victory for the temple in the city's uncoordinated confusion, but he had meant to get the other captains, or a majority of them, behind him first, to get some faction of the senate to name him so. Hadidu gave his shoulder a squeeze and turned him loose, shoved him half a step forward.

Jugurthos was suddenly entirely sympathetic to Hadidu's earlier shaking fear, now that all those eyes were seeing him. Stripping him naked, to fail and burn, sun and heat and flies and a rotting public death, taking them with him, carrying them all . . . which was what he had just forced Hadidu to, was it not?

He swallowed, took a steadier stance on the barrel-vaulted roof and raised a hand, commanding silence. They gave it.

“The Lady's fled to her temple,” he told them, “but she isn't going to stay there. We
can
fight the Red Masks, with the help of our allies in the suburb, wizards and demons—”

“The suburb murdered Magistrate Tihma,” muttered Hassin at his back. “Tried to burn my gates. If they'd gotten through . . .”

“We have someone getting them under control,” Jugurthos muttered back and prayed—to whom?—that it was true, or would be by morning. Kharduin, for love of Nour if nothing else, wouldn't stand for the suburb warring on the city. He raised his voice again. “And we can certainly stand against the temple guard. Sunset Ward and Riverbend—” He paused, looking at Hassin.

“And Riverbend,” Hassin affirmed.

“—will fight for the three gods, for Ilbialla of Sunset, for Gurhan of the Hill, for the true Lady of the Deep Well, captive though she may be or murdered by this devil. For our gods or for memory of them. For Marakand free under its ancient law, which was the expression of the will of the folk, for the good of the folk. No kings in Marakand, no warlords, no tyrants, whether they rule through the sword or the mask of a god. We can stand against the devil. We will. I, and Captain Hassin Xua, and Hadidu Esau, beloved chosen of Ilbialla. We don't fight alone. The suburb is in arms, a wizard chosen and blessed by the Old Great Gods has come from the wilderness, a great bear-demon of the wilds has heard the prayers of the lost gods, and the Blackdog of Lissavakail, who slew the devil of Lissavakail, has been sent, a goddess's gift to a goddess, Attalissa's gift to Ilbialla, to our aid.” And if they had vanished by morning, the mysterious powers that had arisen to fight the Lady beyond the walls, still, they had been there, and that was gift enough. “You can join us, you can raise your friends and family to join us, or you can flee. You can even choose to fight for the devil who has slaughtered so many honest folk of Marakand, who's hiding coward in her stolen temple like a rat in a hole this very moment. You are a free people. None can compel you, if you withstand your own fear. But you have to choose. Now. Tonight. No one can hide any longer. We've been set free of that slavery at last, by the grace of the Old Great Gods and their blessed wizard. Come. All of you here, come. See, bear witness, here by the tomb of Ilbialla. The wife of Ergos the sandal-maker, taken by Red Masks thirty years since as a wizard for her coin-reading, taken for death in the deep well and her corpse enslaved by the devil necromancer. That's what you've feared all these years. That's what's ruled you. A devil, a necromancer, and a perverter of the dead. Come. See her. Pray for her. And make your choice.”