The Lady (46 page)

Moth was a column of nacreous light, spreading to winglike white flame, towering high, and she flung Tu'usha from her and was Ulfhild again, still wrapped and shadowed by cold plumes of light. If it was white bone that gripped the black sword's hilt, a skeleton's hand, what did that matter? Flesh was necessary, and yet illusion, though the body might scream with the pain of it. Stumble and sway unsteady, trapped in it, weakened by it, fall fainting of it. Not here. Healing was hers. Flesh and sinew were hers, for her willing it.

The girl's dark eyes stared up at her, with Tu'usha's fire running through her veins, and she rocked and rocked her body.

Flesh, sinew, skin made whole, though streaked with scarring, because the body, also, had its memory. The leather wrapping that hid the inscriptions on Lakkariss's black hilt was burnt away and it was cold in her hand. Moth clenched her teeth on pain and stilled her shivering.

“I heard them, you know,” the girl said. “Dying. The guards in Gurhan's valley. The folk in Sunset Market. The priests. I hear them now. They scream. Am I going to hear them forever?”

“Tu'usha knows that answer.”

“I hear him, too, now. Do you?”

“Sien-Shava?”

“No. My god. I thought I'd killed him—” Words tumbled faster, slurring together, in haste to be spoken. “She'd killed him she wanted to burn Gurhan from the world I wanted him gone if he could not be mine as he should have been not served by a godless wizard freed by the godless wizard so he burned as I burned. But I failed I was too weak I was too merciful and
I hear him
. He says, the road is long, very long.” Tears began to streak her face. “There is no forgiveness only pity no mercy only sorrow no going back only the road. I shouldn't have let her I shouldn't I shouldn't have given up I shouldn't have but I did I did try I did we did the Lady whispered and I tried you know I tried. You know what she is what I am mad but not so mad you know what I could have done to this city these rebels to you this folk these gods you know I didn't. I only wanted to save them, to fight Jochiz when he comes.”

“That, I know.”

The girl's face hardened. “He won't be so easy to kill as I, Vartu.”

“No.”

Light flickered behind Zora's eyes. “The girl is too half-hearted, a broken little thing. She was a child, never tested. She never had a chance to grow strong in the world. My mistake. I saw her and I saw myself in her, but I didn't truly know her. I should have waited. If I'd won that Grasslander wizard to be mine . . . she was one fit to bear a devil.”

“Ghatai's daughter? She'd have been too strong for you.”

Fit to stand with them, yes . . . no. Don't even think it.

“So arrogant. So certain. You and Jasberek both. Arrogant. Cold. We were only ever weapons you thought you could use, not comrades in the fight. Don't pretend that isn't so. But at least here in this world, now, it's you who'll pay for my failure. I was right, you know, Vartu. Jochiz will come, and he'll kill you all, you and your demons and your gods and the folk of all the gods, and he'll climb over them to the heavens, with your sword of the cold hells to cut his way. But . . .” She looked down at her hands, writhing together, looked up again. “If you weren't alone, if you had allies against him, strong allies . . . what if I came with you? I could join your train, with your demon and your dog. We could find others, you could call others, like this dog, if you've found the way . . . I'd be better, you know, if I had someone, if I had you, to follow. I always was, I always needed that. Someone to help me but no one ever helped me no one ever asked ever spoke ever told me—” Her teeth snapped together, eyes blazing. “Sien-Mor is
dead
. I do not hear she doesn't speak—no!” She gasped, clenched fingers on the stone, squatting splayed like a frog. “It is only that I remember, she isn't in me any longer, she isn't she burned he burnt her I watched her let her burn . . . Zora might learn strength from you.”

“No.”

The devil stared. “So kill me, then, if you must. My brother will avenge me. You were always afraid of him, King's Sword.”

“Zora, he doesn't even know you. Sien-Mor is dead, you say. Remember? You said he killed her, his sister. What's Zora, to Sien-Shava?”

“My name is Tu'usha,” she screamed, pushing herself up as if to spring, and a dark fire flickered where her hand touched the stone. “Sien-Mor is nothing. Zora is nothing.”
I am Tu'usha—and Vartu, you brought me to this
.

I know. No forgiveness, only the road
.

Abruptly calm, Zora dropped back, kneeling, arranging the torn skirt of her gown to modestly cover her bleeding thigh, folding her restless hands in her lap. She looked up with Sien-Mor's closed and knowing smile.

“You will take me on that road, companion, ally, or bondwoman, because otherwise you will have to kill me kneeling before you. I am through with fighting. You will have to kill me so, unarmed, submissive and surrendered. Can you? Can Ulfhild?”

Sien-Mor should remember, Tu'usha. I suspect she does, if you do not. The King's Sword was also the king's executioner. But I'm very sorry for this priestess you've seduced and betrayed. At least she heard her god
.

Moth brought Lakkariss around left-handed, and the girl's eyes had time to widen in purely animal fear before the edge of the obsidian blade struck. Tu'usha howled, shrieked, torn to streaks of light—

—and a second voice echoed hers, a scream of rage, of fury and loss, and a will reached after. It found nothing to hold. There was nothing but the empty body, soul or souls all stripped from it. The watching, waiting thread fell away. His cry dwindled to the howling of the wind, but it was a wind that in that moment knew Vartu and cried her name—

—the sky burned white and the black cliffs of ice rose to meet it. Lakkariss was a rift in the veils of the worlds. The ice sang loud in Vartu's ears, deafening her to the faint sounds behind, reaching to tear her soul from soul, hungry, to devour her, make her ice of ice, unknowing, unthinking, unfeeling, the death that is the void of the self, all fires quenched.

Don't bloody listen to it!
Mikki shouldered into her, a paw slamming down on her wrist. Moth drew a breath, and the air bit with the sunless winter cold of Baisirbska. She was on her knees amid blocks of stones run and fused glassy together, with the white frost creeping over it in lace-edged spears. The girl was dead, gone, and if Lakkariss left any human soul to take the road to the Old Great Gods it was a mercy beyond her knowing. She doubted. She let both swords fall and buried her face in Mikki's deep fur, looked up only when Holla-Sayan's hand gripped her shoulder. He sank down on his heels with a sigh.

Thunder again, a slow, long groan. The Dome of the Well collapsed inward, a half of its courtyard sliding down after it, and the barracks beside crumbling, and a house, out of which a score of priests and guards and serving-folk ran shrieking, to cower along the walls, staring at ruin, as the dust rose and silence fell.

And so died the true Lady of Marakand, at the last, worn-out and weary and choosing, maybe, to end, freed of Tu'usha. The deep well was dry. The temple folk were, comically, trying to scramble over a head-high wall into another courtyard, each pulling the other back in his or her efforts, no mutual aid, all selfish panic. Sickening. Wearying. Moth took a deep breath, but the Blackdog thought she roused herself against the priests.

“Don't kill them. Let's just, just go. Find Jugurthos, it's all his problem now.”

Jugurthos, whoever he was, wasn't her problem, either. The cut across Holla-Sayan's face was crusted black now, his eye . . . she hissed in sympathy and put a hand over it. He was devil; the body did restore itself, though not so swiftly as she might, weaker, less certain in himself. Even that eye would see again. In time. But it was an ugly wound and the pain of it would be mind-numbing. She eased that, at least. For the rest, he could find his own way. She was . . . hurt. And was going to hurt worse.

Blackdog
, she said, not for Mikki's hearing.
Zora, this girl, the devil, was Tu'usha the Restless, who had been Sien-Mor. Sien-Mor was destroyed, though I think a part of her soul must have endured in Tu'usha, broken and insane. I did warn you, a devil could be killed. But even rootless in the world Tu'usha didn't die with Sien-Mor as she should have; she fled somehow and lived off the fading Lady, the true goddess, until she found a willing human to bond with again, this poor Zora, who wasn't strong enough for such a union. It was her brother Sien-Shava who had destroyed Sien-Mor, her brother and her lover, and he still had some bond with Tu'usha. I don't think she knew it. He felt it when Tu'usha died. He was here; he knows she is dead, and he knows me. So
.

“Bad?” he asked aloud.

Sien-Shava, Jochiz Stonebreaker? Yes. He was—I don't think I can withstand him. Not alone. But if I go seeking the others, and not to slay them . . . the Old Great Gods will come to know. They will
.

They expect you to be able to defeat him, sometime, though
.

I don't suppose they care so very much, which of us kills the rest, so long as Lakkariss takes us all in the end. And I'm running out of enemies, Holla-Sayan. Should I flee from Sien-Shava and start hunting my friends?
She had never had any plan for that but to delay and delay and put off the inevitable choice.

Gaguush is pregnant and has bought a caravanserai
,the Blackdog told her.
I'm tied to Marakand, for her lifetime, even if I go to the road again. So you'll know where to find me
.

I told you to run from me, dog. I told you
.

“Then
do
something,” he said aloud. “Fight them, instead. We did . . .” He shook his head. “I don't remember, the dog doesn't remember and the thought's right there, I can almost—”

“Leave it. And I can't!
You
know I can't.”

“Do what? Can't what?” Mikki asked. “Fight who?” When neither answered he growled, “Devils, hah” and nosed at her. “All right, princess, up. Time to make ourselves scarce. I left Ivah in Gurhan's cave. You and the dog can argue your secrets there, if you must, and we can see if there's any hope of Marakand's gods.”

She stood, sheathing Kepra, taking up Lakkariss again as well. It shed flakes of frost as she shoved it home.

Nothing she could do. Nothing but run. Sien-Shava, once he made up his mind that someone was his enemy, which she had carefully never openly been, had a foul, cruel streak that would never hesitate to use whatever means he found to inflict hurt. Fighting Jochiz only put Lakkariss into his hands; she had always known he must be the last, because he would be the death of both of them. So put no victims into his hands to use against her now, not Ivah, who could have been but was not her daughter, not innocent Holla-Sayan, who stood too clearly aligned with her despite their brief acquaintance, not his Gaguush nor his child. And not Mikki.

Blood-soaked head, Mikki's head, toothless, eyeless, in a Grasslander cult niche
. She had dreamed that, when they lingered in the mountain winter, where they had fled, ostensibly so that Mikki could sleep and recover from his near-death of heat and bitter water in the Salt Desert. Mostly, though, she had been putting off the descent to Marakand and what she did not want to face. Not, perhaps, the warning from the Old Great Gods she had thought, but vision of another threat altogether.

It was not as though they watched her every thought and every act. They could not. The world was too remote. And in the end of the wars in the north, when the Old Great Gods had intervened to bind the seven, the road between the human earth and the distant heavens had been barred to them, to be taken only at the cost of great suffering, so for the Old Great Gods to act in the world, now, was too difficult and painful a journey, except in the most urgent need.

They would pay that price, if need be. One had been sent to bargain with her, if you could call it that, for the wielding of Lakkariss. They would most certainly fulfill the threats that they had made, then, in that dark night under the unreachable stars.

She could not make their threats empty, but if there was distance, if there was . . . time, perhaps the Old Great Gods would believe their threats had become empty. Or they would become empty of their own accord. Or perhaps not. A wound might heal to a scar, or to an abscess. But at least if she stood alone, then Sien-Shava, hunting her, would find no one else to hurt. Because he would hurt someone, that was certain. Even the ghostly memory of Sien-Mor in Tu'usha had been his, and what was his, no one else should touch, even after he had thrown it aside.

“Mikki . . .” She traded a long look with Holla-Sayan—he knew, and he turned away. She took Mikki's head in her hands, ran them down his neck, leaned her face against his long muzzle a brief few heartbeats.

“What?” he said. “My wolf, what's wrong?”

“Mikki . . . go back to the north. Go home to the Hardenvald, if you love me. Go be what you should have been.”

“Moth . . .”

She backed away. “
Go
. I don't need you following me any longer.” She drew the feather-cloak from her belt, grey silk shingled with forest gleanings, eagle, hawk, falcon, owl, and lammergeier and raven of the mountains, recent repairs. Swept it around her shoulders.

White gyrfalcon, spiralling high. She climbed, until the city swung below her, scarred and small and pale, and only the Pillars of the Sky stood tall against the sun. She wheeled south into them and did not circle back.

CHAPTER XXX

“Ulfhild, damn you—” But she was gone, lost against the dazzle of the high snows, and roaring at the empty sky did no good. “And you—” Mikki wheeled on Holla-Sayan, teeth bared. The man dropped into the dog again, blood-matted and half-blind, and he couldn't take out his temper on one who'd got those wounds for Moth's sake. “Cold hells take you both. Again.” Mikki turned away. “I'm sorry. Come on. Out of here.”