The Lady (19 page)

She dropped her gaze again. Nodded, shortly. The torc made the back of her neck ache. She handed the comb to Rozen and with a gesture borrowed from Lin, swept her warriors around her.

“What did they do to them?” she asked.

“You should ask, what we've learned. Or what they've done, in the months they've been taking such tribute from the villages.”

“Marnoch will tell me that.”

“This isn't Pirakul. I don't see your Marnoch skinning men alive, no matter what he wanted to know of them.”

“I thought that was a Nabbani torture.”

“Really? Huh. I wonder who they blame in Pirakul? Anyway, they were beaten. The woman's hand was put in the fire when they tried to tell us that they saw a large party of Red Masks and temple guard to the southwest, two days ago. A hundred riders or so. Marnoch thinks it true, that Marakand is sending more of its red priests to reinforce Ketsim against Durandau's coming. Goran thinks it a desperate lie to deceive us and set us fleeing.” Lin added thoughtfully, “It was true, or both of these Marakanders believed it to be so. They couldn't agree how many were Red Masks. I wonder how many there ever were in Marakand?”

“What about the village we saw?” Deyandara asked. “What did they say about that?”

“They didn't know anything. Their own captain's assigned village is to the west; they were escorting tribute to Ketsim.”

Deyandara frowned. “At least the Red Masks they saw—they say they saw—should pass south of us, if they haven't already. We should camp here another day to be sure of it. They shouldn't have any reason to turn up towards us. How near do they have to be to detect wizardry, do you think?”

“Do you want me to find out?” Lin chuckled. “They're likely at the
dinaz
by now. If my queen wishes, I'll try to find them, once these are dealt with.”

These
were a woman with long braids and a man with swirling lines tattooed in black on his forehead. The man's hands were bound behind him; the woman's were not, and one was swollen and red, blistered and seeping. She clutched her wrist with her good hand, and her eyes were glazed with pain, not seeing them. The man's nose and mouth bled, and his eyes were swelling shut.

Marnoch caught Deyandara's eye, so she went to his side, face set not to show anything, to him, to the prisoners, who probably could not see, to any of the lords who might yet doubt her fitness, or their warriors standing about. Which had held the woman's hand in the fire? She didn't want to know. It could have been Marnoch. It could have been any one of them. But any one of them, all of them, could die, if they rode unwitting into Ketsim's mercenaries out in force, or if they met the company of Red Masks. She thought of Cattiga again, astonished, bleeding, murdered, and Gilru running to his mother. She was able to look at them then.

“My lady,” said Marnoch. “Lady Lin's told you what we learned of them?”

“Briefly, yes.”

“Is there anything else, my lady?”

Should there be? She shook her head. “No.”

Marnoch gave a sign to two of his household men. They killed the woman first, striking off her head where she knelt. The man struggled and was kicked down to his knees. Maybe they had been friends, lovers, kin. It took two blows of the axe to sever his head. Grooms dragged them to a shallow grave already dug. So swiftly it was over. So easily.

Lin had not even stayed to watch. She had walked a little away from them all and stood alone, under a leaning pine atop the ridge they followed, looking west. No, looking at something she held in the palm of a hand. Deyandara touched Marnoch's arm and started up that way, but of course, all her spearmen, eight men and two women, had to follow, spreading out around her, and his as well. Lin glanced over her shoulder and turned to them, looking down again. She held a disc of polished silver or a mirror of glass on silver, maybe, with a complex spiral pattern cut into it of cobweb-fine Nabbani characters. The reflections of clouds like wisps of fleece and the green boughs overhead seemed to hump and rise and twist away down the spiral as Lin angled it, becoming a stormy sky, leaden, copper-lit, with swirls of grey that could have been rain or smoke. She saw Deyandara craning to look and tucked it away inside the breast of her coat, leaning back against a shoulder-high cairn of piled stone beneath the tree. It marked the ridge as a holy place. Some god dwelt here, revered by the folk whose pastures these were, or had once been, who were nonetheless Catairanach's. There were always a few lesser gods and goddesses scattered across any god's
duina
. Lin treated the cairn as a piece of furniture.

“Devils take it, Lin! Don't scry for Red Masks, you'll bring them down on us! Remember that scout.”

“I need to leave you for a little,” Lin said. “Lord Marnoch, you'll keep her safe.”

“Nobody is leaving,” Marnoch said.

“Lady Deyandara did tell you I killed a Red Mask at Marakand, yes? You wanted to know how. I still can't tell you. But those Red Masks and guard from the temple have changed their course and are heading for the track up from the road. They're riding against Durandau now. The high king is just south of the
dinaz
, and no matter how small the troop, he has no way to fight Red Masks. I swore to protect Deyandara, though. Not your queen and not your tribe, not this land, but her. Since she is your queen now and the heart of your tribe, I do serve that, and by what I hear and what I see, I think I can probably serve her cause better . . . doing what has to be done now, than I would by standing among a crowd of perfectly able warriors all eager to lay down their lives for her.”

“You're going back to Durandau?” Deyandara asked.

“No.”

“You're not going to fight dozens of Red Masks on your own?”

“I don't know what I'm going to do. We don't know how many there are with Ketsim. We don't know how many more there may be in Marakand. It's Marakand that sends them. I'm going to the city.”

“Tell me why,” said Marnoch.

“What good does that do us?” Deyandara demanded. “You know something about them you haven't told us.”

“I don't know.”

“You guess.”

“I might, but I hardly serve you well with guessing. I need to know.”

“Needing and wanting aren't the same thing. You told me that.”

Lin blinked. “Did I?”

“Yes. I forget why.”

“Probably you were being foolish.”

“Probably I was. Possibly you are.”

“Deya, dear child, I am old enough to have survived any number of follies. I have vast experience of them. This, however, is need. I can only be in one place at once. I can defend you against Red Masks. I can't at the same time defend your brother, or the goddess of this land, or Marnoch, or his old father up north, or the folk. Remember what the wands told. The Voice is dead, but the power behind Marakand is ancient and unabated.”

“Give us some space,” Marnoch told his captain, and Deyandara nodded at hers, waved a hand, sending them all to a distance.

“There's something else coming out of Marakand?” Marnoch asked. “Something worse? Then say so. What did you see in the mirror?”

“I'm certain of nothing. I don't see why your stony hills and your sheep should interest anything that might have made its lair in Marakand. Those red priests are no priests and no servants of a goddess. They're a work of necromancy, I'm sure of it, and I begin to see . . . I'm not sure what. It's hidden from me. But there is a power—there are
powers
in the city that have no place there, and I think they are what send the Red Masks against you.”

“What kind of powers? What about the Voice and the Lady? How do we fight them, then?”

“I'll know that when I know what, and why. That's why I must go to Marakand. Why am I arguing with you children?” Hands on hips, abandoning her propped and casual air, she might almost have stamped a petulant foot, if she had been sixty years younger. Mocking of her own irritation. “I mean to serve Deyandara in this, Lord Marnoch. Believe that, if nothing else. I will not betray her, and I
will
return to her.”

“That's great loyalty, for a tutor.”

Lin shrugged. “I swore.”

“No,” Deyandara said.

“I did. I remember it quite vividly.”

“This isn't the time for playing the fool, Lin. You know perfectly well what I mean. You can't ride off back to the city. We need you here. I've seen you fight like a woman half your age—like a
man
half your age
and
twice your weight. I'm very certain my brother and even his wizards have no idea just how great a wizard you are. You're the only one with any chance against the Red Masks, unless you can teach Lord Launval the Younger and Lady Elissa to do what you do, or even Mag and the wizards we have here.”

“I cannot.”

“If we can kill enough of the Red Masks and capture Ketsim, we can demand Marakand's surrender. Or kill him and hope his followers break up and scatter. They're only fighting for money or some promise of plunder. They're not serving their own gods or kings. They shouldn't have much loyalty to Marakand. It's our only chance of defeating them. And if our folk see that the Red Masks can die, they'll rise up for us. If we go on as we are to join Durandau without you, we're doomed. Everyone in this army knows it. They all knew when they set out they had little chance of doing anything but dying honourably and—and horribly. The terror of the Red Masks will drive everyone mad, and the Marakander mercenaries will cut us to pieces while we cower. You're the only hope we have.” She raised her voice over Lin's beginning protests, “And if you leave, half this company are going to decide you're a Marakander spy.”

“There are a few Nabbani among Ketsim's folk,” Marnoch pointed out. “You could be one of them, that's what'll be said.”

“Colony folk,” Lin said with disdain.

“I can't tell the difference,” said Marnoch. “You've all got black hair.”

“
You
have black hair, Lord Marnoch.”

“They'll suspect you, Lin,” Deyandara said, before that could get any more childish. “And from you they'll suspect me. We're going to be meeting Durandau before long.” Please, Andara and Catairanach, that it was soon, and that her brother could hold out against the Red Masks till then, take the nearest
dinaz
as his stronghold and make a stand there. “Then there'll be people who know you, a whole court that knows you. Once we have Ketsim you can argue with Durandau for going after the masters of these Red Masks, and I'll argue for you, if you've found a way to overcome the Red Masks in Dinaz Catairna. If you can kill them with a sword, you can kill them with wizardry, surely, and more than one at a time. I know you can. That will give us a chance, a fair fight, and that's all we need. Then you can go to Marakand. But not now. We need all the wizards we have. Besides, Red Masks aren't the only danger. If Ketsim gets wind of us, he could cut us off from meeting up with Durandau even without Red Masks. We need you here.”

Lin bit her lip, tapping her foot. She turned to look away again, to the west.

“Very well.” She faced Deyandara again, frowning. “In that case, I want my supper.”

“She's angry,” Marnoch said, as they followed Lin back down to where the camp was spreading out, each company together, two in a valley bottom, three along the hillside opposite. “I'm sorry, Deya.”

“You're right, though. We can't let her go. She's wrong, for once. On her own against Marakand!” When had Lin become the reckless one and she the voice of reason?

Marnoch had put his hand under her arm, as if she might find rough grass difficult going. Deyandara tucked it in against her side, dared to smile at him, and found her blush rising, but they drew carefully apart when Fairu rode towards them with some question about sending extra scouts to the east and down towards the
dinaz
.

Lin took nothing but beer at their cold and fireless supper, sitting apart, her mirror reflecting that other sky, tilting this way and that, as if she sought for some elusive vision, until Deyandara ordered her to put it away, for fear of drawing Red Masks. Sulking, she would have said, if Deyandara had behaved so.

Deyandara was dreaming she wandered through pelting sleet with lightning smashing the sky above her. She should get off the high ground, she knew, but she had to struggle to the crest of the steep ridge none the less, to look away, searching, whistling, calling. . . . Badger was lost, and Cricket straying. She was alone on the hills, and if she did not find them she would be alone forever. She carried her komuz in one hand, and the wet would warp and crack it. Its strings were already broken, flailing soundless in the wind. In her dream there was a god. Not Andara, but a god's voice nonetheless, deep with memory of earth and stone and the roots of trees.

Queen of this land, beware your goddess. Queen of this land, there will be famine, and war, and the sickness of the soul of the land seeps upwards. The folk will perish and the hills be herdless and the valleys untilled. The cold dark of the stars walks beneath the night and the dead ride the valleys in its service. The songs of the past are past and should not come again. You must make the next king, you must choose, you must fight, you must flee. Queen of this land, wake, wake, wake!

“Wake up, little bard,” said Ghu, sitting cross-legged under a pine tree, with the lightning playing in its branches. Statues of dogs in polished grey stone sat either side of him, alert and guarding, and their eyes were jewels lit by fire. His own eyes were closed. Snow fell gently onto his black hair, but small flowers, the bluest blue she had ever seen, bloomed all about him in the grass, with tall, water-loving irises and sweet flag, which should not have been growing on a dry and stony hill. Sheets of rain ran over the grass, bending the long blades of the river-rushes, tearing twigs from the tree, tearing whole branches, and the thunder of their breaking woke her.