The Lady (22 page)

The devil was confused, distracted, demanding, “Who?” and though she had backed a step from her sword she still looked at him as a curiosity, a little creature hissing harmless defiance.

There was a pine on the mountain. There were willows with roots in the river's rich silt. She had been bound so before. Roots stretched, and for a moment Ghu saw her as bone, a skeleton standing before him, laced with veins of golden light, her veil of hair still silken lovely, white claws reaching for the sword, and then she crumpled into the earth, bone upon bone, and roots held her, under snow, under stream.

He fell to his knees and tried to breathe.

“Not yet,” he whispered. “No.”

The dogs came to him, wet noses, whimpering, pressing, licking their concern, because he hurt and he was afraid and he wept. He didn't remember why.

There was a sword standing in the earth, and the long silken tassel of it blew in the wind from the south. It was the east pulled him, dragged, to break his heart.

Ghu rolled up his blanket, made up his bundle again, whistled for the mare, who came willingly for all the hour of the night, lowering her head to the rope halter and single rein that was all the harness he had for her. She was a hill-pony cross, black with a kite-marked face, tall, but sturdy and hardy, and if she was still a bit on the bony side, she was strong and willing enough, and her unshod hooves were sound. She was looking glossier, maybe even fatter, than when Ghu had slipped her loose from a dealer's picket line in the night, a day's journey beyond the Eastern Wall, though for over three weeks she had fed on nothing but what the hills gave. He would ride on now, while it was cool and the wind was fresh. They could sleep through the heat of the afternoon.

CHAPTER XII

“Something's wrong.”

Deyandara looked up wearily. Chieh, the Nabbani woman from Gold Harbour, was scowling across the valley to the rising hill crowned by Dinaz Catairna. Deyandara had been riding in such a pain-numbed daze she hadn't noticed when cresting the last ridge brought them within sight of it.

It was wrong, the way the very shape of the land had changed. As Lin—cold hells take her for a false and lying traitor—had reported, the south side of the hill had been quarried away into a cliff, and a stone wall topped the ramparts. A square stone tower of three storeys, its roof thatched—easy to set that alight with a fire-arrow—overlooked the wall at the south.

The Grasslander man, whose name sounded like Lug, tugged at Deyandara's reins, drawing her horse closer. Not the white mare but some stray from the battle they had captured in passing as they raced away. She had woken from her faint to find the two of them shoving and kneading at her dislocated shoulder. Screamed in agony and fainted again. Now it ached mind-numbingly and her left arm was useless, strapped to her chest. Chieh claimed her father had been a surgeon and she knew what she was doing, the arm would be fine given time and rest, but Deyandara didn't think she trusted that. And her right wrist was tied to her saddle, which meant she was going to pull that arm as well out of joint, at best, if the stupid horse shied at anything and she fell.

A day and a half they had ridden, and there had been no pursuit that Deyandara noticed, though they had dodged and twisted up and down the valleys. Neither had there been any sign of the rest of the Marakander mercenaries, either flying back to the
dinaz
in defeat or returning victorious with Marnoch's head on a spear. She ought to be glad of that, at any rate, but it had become hard to rise above the pain to feel anything except a sort of hopelessness.

She was Lord Ketsim's prize, and he was going to make himself king through her. Red Masks. That plan was a secret from the Red Masks. The Voice of Marakand and her temple certainly wouldn't want Ketsim setting up as king in his own right.

“The Voice is dead,” she had said with satisfaction, but that was yesterday when rage still bubbled through the pain and exhaustion. “You don't have a paymaster in Marakand anymore.”

Chieh had shrugged. “There's always a new high priestess,” she had returned. “Anyway, if there's no paymaster in the city, all the more reason for the warlord to take the kingdom for himself, right? But I wouldn't believe that. If the temple meant to cut us off and abandon their plans for the Duina Catairna, they'd recall the Red Masks.”

How had they dared imitate the Red Masks?

If anyone had even looked closely, Chieh had said, laughing, they'd have been done for. Painted imitations of the masked helmets, odds and ends of red changed into just before the battle—Ketsim's own folk had known nothing of any Red Masks riding with them, which had made their fear that much worse, a good joke on her own comrades, Chieh thought. Deyandara did not find it amusing. There was something shaming in knowing that it was her own belief, the belief of every man and woman there, that had so reduced them to senseless flight, Praitan and Marakander mercenary alike. Even the white mare had panicked, recognizing the look of what had so terrorized her at Marakand's Eastern Wall. All a ruse to capture her, because Ketsim had known that the rightful queen was with Marnoch and marching south to meet up with the high king.

She was reminded of how it had seemed she was sought in Marakand, and how it had seemed more likely it was Ahjvar, a Praitannec fighting man, who drew their attention, and she only as his companion. Heir to the
duina
or not, she didn't feel important enough that the Voice of Marakand should have been dreaming of her, but in Dinaz Catairna, someone certainly had been. Pagel, the soothsayer scout captured not long after Marnoch's band set out. The Red Masks, said Chieh, didn't after all kill but carried off all captive wizards to Marakand.

“Ketsim argued them out of taking Pagel, said he had better uses for him that served their Voice,” Chieh said. “They don't say a thing, so no knowing what they thought, but they let him take the soothsayer. Not that he's worth much. It takes that liquor the Grasslanders brew up from some root or other to get anything useful out of him. I tried to teach him coin-throwing—my gran did a bit of that—but it was no use. This business of throwing leaves on smouldering coals to get a smoke, it seems to me you might as well play with the dregs of your tea, which my gran did too and admitted she always made it all up. Less coughing if you use tea, and you get a nice drink out of it. Pagel said the queen was with the rebel lords, ‘Not the queen but the bride of the king, the mother of kings,' he said, which gave Ketsim ideas, if he didn't have them already. He's setting up trouble for himself, I think, with Marakand and his sons, but that's his look-out. Yours too,” she had added, generously. “But there's years before your sons would be any threat to his. A lot can happen between now and then.” She had eyed Deyandara speculatively. “You're going to need friends in the hall, as your folk say. I don't have much liking for Ketsim's sons.”

Deyandara had managed a nod. She had learned enough sense, she hoped, not to throw away a weapon when one was offered to her.

She tried to make herself take an interest now. Information. She needed to know everything she could, if she were to have any chance of escape, or of survival.

Escape to what? Marnoch, Fairu, Gelyn . . . they were probably all dead behind her, and the oath Lin claimed she had made to Ghu was worth nothing.

But now Chieh said, “Something's wrong.”

“What?”

Chieh gave her a look that suggested she was half-witted not to see it for herself.

“No banners at the gate.” She spoke to the Grasslander man Lug, and when he nodded, urged her horse ahead, while he waited with Deyandara.

Deyandara shut her eyes for a while and imagined her brothers, all of them, at the head of an army, rushing over the crest of the long ridge to the south. She would fall weeping in Durandau's arms now, if he came for her. When she opened her eyes again the day seemed colder, grey despite the sun. Nothing moved except some sheep, straying shepherdless along the slope below them.

That seemed wrong. Chieh appeared again, winding back between the snaking dykes that made the approach to the
dinaz
gate a trap for the attacker. She waved her arm in broad sweeps. Lug grunted—he mostly seemed to grunt, or maybe that was what the Grasslander tongue was meant to sound like—and put the horses into a trot down across the valley bottom, over the stream, and up to meet her.

They talked together anxiously in the speech of the western road. Lug drew out a little pouch on a thong about his neck and kissed it before hiding it away under his shirt again. In reaction, Deyandara's free hand went to her own amulet, the carved disc of thorn from Andara's hill, but her bonds wouldn't let her raise her hand so far.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Trouble,” said Chieh. “Come on. Your lord needs you. Maybe it will make a difference.”

She spoke to Lug again, and they rode forward together, with Deyandara in the middle. Voices carried, as they approached the gate itself, out of the muffling baffles of the dykes. Shouting. Grasslander.

She sat back hard, and the war-trained horse stopped, braced a moment against Lug's tugging, till he slapped it.

“What kind of trouble?” she demanded.

“You know what I said about Ketsim's sons? Son trouble.” Chieh frowned. “We've only been gone a week, Lug and I. Everything was fine when we left, or my lord would never have sent us. He needs his tent guard about him, with this lot. Someone said there's fever in the
dinaz
, too.”

Fever . . .

“What kind of fever?” she asked sharply, and Chieh, native Over-Malagru like herself, with a few faint silvered pock-marks on her cheeks, which were hardly noticeable, the eye distracted by some longer, ritualistic slashes, turned a sour smile on her.

“Your guess is as good as mine, at this point. Is it true there was a curse on this land before we ever came?”

“Yes,” said Deyandara.

“That explains a lot. We should have gone west. I'm going to cut your hand free. You're going to smile nicely at Ketsim—he's the man on the steps—like a proper bride rescued from the rebels with her brother's blessing, and you're not going to bolt for the gate or shout at any Praitans you see or spit in his face, right? There's enough here still loyal to Ketsim to make mincemeat of you, and the rest will make mincemeat of you anyway, if you don't have our protection.”

Deyandara, dry-mouthed, nodded. Chieh was as good as her word, and, Deyandara's wrist cut free, sheathed her knife and drew her sabre, shouting something as they emerged from between the gates.

From inside, Deyandara would not have recognized the place. The round, dry-stone walled houses with their thatched roofs were Praitan enough, but they were marshalled in rows, occupying only a small area of the scorched and weed-grown ground, and none had any wattle-fenced vegetable-garden or fruiting bushes about it; no hens scratched in the lanes, no children scampered about. Most of it, especially near the gate, was given over to paddocks for horses and camels. They rode down the central lane, turned sharply, and came to another open space where mounted riders on horses and camels milled about the foot of the tower she had seen rising above the walls. Banners—presumably the ones Chieh had missed at the gate—drooped from several spears, long scarves of brilliant orange.

Men and women turned at Chieh's shout, hostile faces, mostly Grasslanders, a few Nabbani or Praitan, a few Marakanders or tattooed desert folk.

One man stood alone in the doorway of the tower, with spearmen ranged below on the stone stairs. He folded his arms, smiled, and roared something. Deyandara clenched her teeth and swallowed. She didn't smile, but she didn't snatch for her reins to wheel the horse away, either. This wasn't the time. Not yet.

Ketsim—that must be he—had the look of a stout man who'd lost too much weight too quickly, his face sagging, maybe ageing him past his due. His cheeks were marked with parallel slashes that had left scars deep enough to stop his beard growing there, the same deliberate scars that marked Chieh's face, and Lug's. His hair and skin and eyes were all light brown like just-turned beech-leaves, but near his head his many long braids had turned white. He wore bears' teeth clattering in the ends of braids, a bright cloak of Praitannec plaid over a leather jerkin, and no shirt, so that his arms showed the same fleshiness-gone-slack as his face.

“He's saying that your coming is proof of the alliance with your brother, that the Marakanders are soft and priest-ruled and will never even challenge us.” Chieh kept close at her side. Ketsim kept speaking, against a low undertone of other voices. Deyandara wasn't the only one there who didn't speak Grasslander, or the tongue of the western road, or whatever this was. “And he says that now you've come, Catairanach will bless him and bless the land and lift her curse from it, they don't need to fear the fever. . . . Cold hells, I don't like the sound of that. Now his eldest son—that's him there, with the beard dyed with henna—is saying that the Praitans have always known the land was cursed, and the Voice of Marakand knew it, and that's why the temple sent foreigners to do the fighting for them, so the curse would fall on us rather than Marakand, and they could reap the spoils after the land was barren of folk—he's a fool, what's here worth fighting for? All Marakand's ever wanted is an easy route to the iron of the forest kingdoms, and that trade vanished east as soon as you surrendered to us.
They
won't be half so easy a conquest. And look, that's a man of the Marakander temple guard right beside him, smiling, he doesn't have any idea what's being said. So Siman, that's my lord's son, now he's saying he's not keeping good men and women here to die, now that the Red Masks have abandoned Ketsim and gone to their Marakander captain—Old Great Gods, is that what's set spark in the tinder? He and his brothers are going to fight for the captain from the city, who isn't afraid to move against the king, but then they'll go to Marakand and demand what's owing to them, and go home to the Grass wealthy; they've had nothing but ill-luck since the Lake-Lord died, and his father's a fool for thinking he could ever wear those boots.”