The Lady (50 page)

Thank you, Deya.
Three, was it, he had slain? Hardly any. And it was hardly a legal marriage: abduction and intended rape, no god bearing witness and even if it had been otherwise, unconsummated—but if she could carry them past all that unquestioned. . . . Once get Marnoch acknowledged by even some of the kings . . . it would be so much simpler to settle it in the circle, by the sword's edge. Which was why he was no fit king, certainly, such thinking.
Catairlau?
he heard whispered by the Catairnan bard, who had let
Cairangorm's heir
pass unremarked, or had missed it. Forget that. How many bards were here, how many voices who knew the law? The one at his back was not asking the questions a speaker of the law should, at this point.

“You married
Hicca
?”

“I was married to Ketsim the Grasslander, and my lords and ladies, and my lord brothers, and grandfather of the Lellandi, if you
all
hadn't sat so long in your tents waiting and hoping the pox would do your work for you, there would be many fewer widows and orphans in my
duina
now. I will speak for myself. I have bloody well earned that right—”

Not bardlike, that phrasing. Keeping bad company lately. He saw Yeh-Lin's lip twitch, out of the corner of his eye. Also not true, that lives would have been saved if only they had acted more swiftly. The Red Masks would have broken them and left the lands kingless, if Ghu hadn't come for him. But shame them, yes, she had the right idea there, because there was still Marakand, and the temple might yet raise a real army from the city, without relying on the necromancy of its false god, and the iron road from the forest still crossed Praitan to the Five Cities.

A crane flew in the open door of the tent, silencing Deyandara. The white wings shed a silver light over them as she landed, rustling and settling her plumage.

“Orsa,” he said, and bowed. That much courtesy he could find.

“Catairlau. And Deyandara. Who speak with full right for this land.” Her voice was human enough, soft and high, and gave the words an ironic twist as she bobbed her head to them and turned to give Durandau a long, head-tilted look along her beak. The high king did not bow but dropped to his knees.

She reared back and beat her wings. Everyone there went down on their knees, save Ahjvar himself and the devil. He wasn't kneeling to the gods who had turned their backs on him, however well-disposed they might be now, and the devil merely folded her arms and looked sardonic. The look the goddess gave her was equally so, though how a crane could convey that much expression . . .

“The goddesses of this land have spoken through the web of waters, and the gods through the deep bones of the hills, and
they
affirm, Marnoch of the Red Hills will be king of the
duina
, as Catairlau who was king has said and Deyandara who is queen has said. Marnoch will speak with the gods of the hills and the goddesses of the waters, a new god will be chosen to give his name to the land. The high king will acknowledge this, or there will be a new high king, for even Praitanna of the Avain Praitanna, the great river, the goddess of the Duina Praitanna, the heart of the seven kingdoms, even she says, it shall be so. The folk of this
duina
have suffered the neglect and disdain of their chosen goddess long enough. Catairanach is gone. Let no one call her back.”

Feathers drew out like tendrils of mist, still glowing as if caught in sunlight, and she drifted, a shadow-bird, then a form like a child, to Deyandara, putting arms about her, with the kneeling girl's head bowed to her shoulder. If the goddess spoke to her it was in silence, for Deyandara alone, but then she raised solemn silver eyes to Ahjvar.

“Your place is not here, Catairlau,” he heard, but the goddess's lips did not move.

“I know,” he said roughly. The black dog wagged its tail, all adoration of the goddess, but nothing else stirred, as if they all hung in the dream of a moment, stretched long.

“I am sorry,” Orsa said. She raised one hand towards him, didn't touch, but he could feel the damp, cool air of dawn about her. “There is too much death in you, and no peace for you here. Catairanach is sunk deep in forgetting, but the thing that you carry lives without her and is still beyond us. Go.”

He sheathed his sword, fumbling. It took several tries. Bent to kiss the top of Deyandara's head. He didn't think she knew he was there, to know it was farewell. So the gods took that, too. “Be well, granddaughter,” he wished her. A breeze flapped the tent door and stirred Deyandara's hair, touched Marnoch's where he knelt, his eyes fixed on Deya, not the small goddess.

“You,” he said, because it wanted saying even if the man couldn't hear, “do well by her. And come the winter solstice, they'll be electing a new high king. Durandau can't hold it after this. None of these here have proven they deserve such a place. You see it's you. Time it came back to us.”

“And you accuse me of wanting to make emperors,” Yeh-Lin said. “I'll tell him. I'll tell
them
. I,” and she raised eyebrows at Orsa, “am not going anywhere, yet. I swore to serve Deyandara. I think I shall do so. For a little longer.” She grinned. “If only to tease these little gods.”

Orsa did not look best pleased at that.

Good.

So he left them.

The long shadows were falling from the west, and away from the pavilion of the high king's council, the business of the camp was going on, loudly, both in mourning and triumph. The captains of the kings would be pursuing the Marakander survivors, disarming them, chivvying them to the road. If they wanted less trouble, they should see their enemies had mounts and food and give them escort, Marakander and Grasslander alike, till they were well into the rising hills before the pass, but that wasn't Ahjvar's affair to order. Nobody paid him any attention. He felt slow as an old man, clumsy as a drunk, and sick with he didn't know what. Weariness. Hurt. He would call curses down on the gods of all Praitan, except he had given up cursing and he was too tired. He didn't know where Ghu had gone.

But the dogs found him, nosing in one from each side, as if he needed herding, and then Ghu was there, a shadow battered and smoke-blackened and hollow-eyed as he himself must be.

“Sleep,” Ahjvar said with weary relief. “And if I don't—you promised.”

“I know.”

He could feel the sunset, the darkness, a weight pressing on him. He could feel the hag, too, still wailing for her mother and the shattering of her world, twisting, a worm in his heart. He stumbled at hollows and tussocks. If he fell, Ahjvar was going to lie where he landed, and the Praitan army could damn well go around him. A few dogs came alert and watched them, and horses turned, prick-eared and nostrils flaring, but the men and women didn't look, except maybe one or two, wizards, perhaps, who looked, and frowned, and looked away. They were shadow, that was all, and the mist of Orsa's swamp; the little brook that wound between the hills was filling the valleys with fog. Ahjvar followed Ghu down into it.

CHAPTER XXXII

Holla-Sayan went to the suburb through the Riverbend Gate. Dust hung thick and high over Sunset, staining the sunlight. Crowds of folk pressed that way, patrols of street guard trying to send them to their homes. Fire, earthquake, a fireball from the sky . . . rumour was rife in the air. The death of Ilbialla and, already, the death of the Lady had somehow run ahead of him, though that last must be speculation, and no one retelling the news seemed to know if they meant the true Lady or the devil. He might wonder if they even remembered there had been a true Lady of Marakand at all, or how long it would be before it was forgotten. Greenmarket and Riverbend did not seem much affected by the destruction of the holy places, beyond yet more cracked plaster and on the main thoroughfare, paving stones humped and rippled into odd ledges, as if the earth sank beneath city's weight. Even four-legged he stumbled at them, one-eyed, vision gone flat.

Captain Hassin of Riverbend Gate came tearing out of the tower guardroom after him, shouting for news, but he jogged on, pretending he didn't hear.

Holla-Sayan was through. Let the captain wait for messengers from Jugurthos Barraya. Making the city free again was what Jugurthos and Nour and Hadidu had planned for, been raised for, the younger two, all their lives. It was up to them. They didn't need him or shouldn't, and he didn't want to be needed by them. He was no magistrate, no captain. The dog killed. That was all. He was only a caravan mercenary, a camel-driver, and his wife owned camels and half of the least-profitable caravanserai of the suburb.

He caught scent of Gaguush before he saw her, but then he found her amid the shadows, sitting on the ground at the caravanserai gate in the shade of the draggled incense cedar. Just sitting, chin on her knees. Hurt, he thought, and then, disaster come to the baby . . .

She looked up, found him, and surged to her feet, into his arms as he shifted to meet her.

“Are you all right?” he asked, but of course she was, the light that had come to her face when she raised her eyes to his . . .

“Am I all right? Am
I
all right?” Her hand cupped to his face, didn't touch. “I am now. Bashra damn you, can you see at all?”

“It's getting better.” It didn't hurt so drowningly as it had; that had to be better, didn't it? “The Lady's dead, the devil.”

“I didn't mean you had to go and—”

“I didn't. I'm afraid the city's going to say that, though.” Holla-Sayan thought of Lissavakail, where the priestesses and the folk of the town had seen the death of the Lake-Lord at Vartu's hands, and still the stories ran up and down the road, now, that the Blackdog had saved them. “Again. What were you doing out here?”

“Waiting,” she said. “What did you think? Just waiting. It's what the wives of heroes do in all the tales, isn't it? Come inside. I'm putting you to bed, and I'm going to sit across the doorway with a naked blade to make sure you stay there, this time.”

“Don't you dare.”

“And why not?”

Because he wanted to hang onto her. He wanted to burrow into her warmth and be wrapped in her arms and legs and never move again. He didn't know what she saw in his face, but she took his head in her hands, carefully, and backed him up against the wall and kissed him, pressed hard, body to body, for all they were out on the public street. She did let him up to breathe, after a while, when someone leading a skittish camel colt by paused to make remarks, which were, on the whole, approving.

“Come inside,” she said. “Idiot.” That, amiably, to the boy with the camel. “Come inside, Holla. We'll clean up your face. And there's tea.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

In the cave, time passed. The earth, sometimes, trembled, but only as a faint wave rippling over a calm lake. Ivah felt fear ebb. Maybe it was the cool twilight, lit by the one small high windowlike opening in the stone wall behind her. It was not so large a cave that it could hold any deep darkness, with the morning sun outside, but she made a small light and let it drift. The cave was dry and empty, clean of the debris of animals and birds, but then, it had been sealed from the world for thirty years or so, and a holy place tended by priests before that. Exploring in the dim far reaches—it ran maybe forty feet back and downwards, no more—she found tarnished silver lamps set in natural niches in the wall, not symmetrically arranged, just here and there, where a ledge or a hollow gave place for them. She set light on them, though any oil was long since gone, and they made a star-scatter around the walls.

Mikki had said this mountain, dwarfed to a hill by the Pillars of the Sky beyond, was wormholed with caves, but there was no other opening into here, not the narrowest crack for a fox to squeeze through. She did not think she would have had the courage to explore into any tighter and darker place, anyhow. It was not as though the god were locked in some physical space, which she could find and rap knuckles against for a signal.
Knock twice if you're still alive
.

She settled herself and watched the silvery lights until they seemed to float, and the rocky wall beyond to swim into mottled cloud, a cloud of tiny suns burning through. She could hear water, distantly running. Imagination. She put thirst from her mind, and the pounding of her head. After a while she fished in her pocket for charcoal and wrote on the uneven, clean-swept floor, in long, vine-curving tendrils, the word she had become certain was the name of the god Gurhan, in the script from the tombs that no one could read.

After another while she cut a left-hand finger and began to shadow the black lines in blood.

Nothing changed. The light of the lamps dimmed with her weariness, that was all, and as the sun climbed higher over the ridge and the dust of the air outside settled, the daylight grew stronger.

But did the silence of the cave grow stronger, more aware, listening?

How much of the inscription on the cave had been the actual spell, and how much merely its defences, the killing words to protect what lay within? Had it been symbol of the thing, or the thing itself? Focus of the wizard's active will, like a sign calling light, which was nothing once one's mind was off it, or something set to endure beyond her death? That mattered. If the former, then the damage was only minor; it might weaken it a little, but not be the start of any great unravelling. If the latter, then the wizardry lay in the words, and they were flawed, now, a hole knocked through by the devil's own attack.

“Gurhan?” she tried. “Gurhan, your people need you. Can you hear?”

There was nothing, except that the cave did not feel empty. But it hadn't when she crawled—was shoved—into it, and that might be imagination. Mikki would have noticed; he was demon, kin in nature to the gods of the earth.

Mikki hadn't come inside.

“Gurhan, what do you need me to do?”

There was a listening air to the silence, and was the water louder? She set hands against the stone floor, either side of the name, and let her lights go out. The shaft of sunlight slanted golden, dust-dancing, over her shoulder to strike the far wall.