Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 (19 page)

           
"Then those who can must go
after him," Ochen said. "The crossing alone is not the end of it.
Even does he reach Tharn's resting place, still he must work the gramaryes of
raising."

           
“Those
who canl”
asked Katya. "What mean you by that?"

           
"That such magicks ward the
gates as deny entry to most," the wazir answered. "There have been
those of my calling, in the past, who dared the attempt, seeking to destroy the
Mad God. Instead, it was they who were destroyed."

           
Bracht snorted sour laughter,*
drained his cup. "The odds stack daily higher against us."

           
"Would you turn back
then?" asked Ochen, his voice deceptively mild. "It is not too
late."

           
"All men must die." The
Kern stared at the ancient sorcerer as if puzzled, or affronted. Reaching for
the decanter, he shook his head. "Is that reason to give up?"

           
"No," murmured Calandryll,
the single negative echoed by Katya, who added, "Think you we should
survive?"

           
"You've encountered a gate
before, no?" Ochen met the gaze of her grey eyes with the tawny twinkle of
his own. "And lived to tell the tale, no? Did the spaewife in Lysse not
speak of three? And in Gessyth, did the Old Ones not say the same? I think
perhaps you three in all the world might survive."

           
"We three?" Calandryll
looked to Cennaire, almost reached out to take her hand. "Are we not four
now? Five, do you take a part."

           
"For now, aye." Ochen
nodded, agreeing, looking himself toward Cennaire. "It is my belief the
Younger Gods brought you four together, and you shall have all the aid I may
command. But be it needful you go beyond this world . . . then—there—I cannot
know."

           
"You'll not make the
attempt?" demanded Bracht. "Be it needful?"

           
"All men must die." Ochen
succeeded in aping the Kern's earlier expression, even mimicking his tone.
"No, I do not tell you I'll not make the attempt. Only that I may not
survive it."

           
"I think perhaps you've the
blood of Cuan na'For in your veins." Bracht's teeth flashed white in the
gloom, his blue eyes crinkling as he laughed approval of the old man's courage.
"Was there insult in my words, I apologize."

           
"You need not," said
Ochen, "but I thank you."

           
"Likely, then, we three alone,-
be it necessary." Calandryll turned from the wazir to Cennaire, back.
"Shall Cennaire be safe, do we attempt this crossing?"

           
Ochen looked to the Kand woman, not
speaking for a moment. Cennaire met his unfathomable gaze, wondering what
thoughts passed behind his furrowed brow, what doubts, what judgments. Then he
smiled again and ducked his head, saying: "It may be the three
axe
become four. But fear not, the lady
Cennaire rides under wardship of the clan Makusen, and shall be safe."

           
"Perhaps," Calandryll
suggested, "it were better she remain in Pamur-teng."

           
"No!" Cennaire blurted.
"I go where you go."

           
What motivated her then, she was not
sure. Whether fear of Anomius's wrath were she left behind, or genuine
reluctance to leave Calandryll's side, she did not know,- only that, somehow,
she must remain with the questers. That above all else,- the reasons, could she
ever define them, could come later.

           
"Lady . . . Cennaire." Now
Calandryll did take her hand, earnestly. "It may be you cannot go where we
must. And surely Pamur-teng must be a safer refuge than the battlefield or the
Borrhun- maj."

           
"I'll not leave you," she
returned, fervent in her confusion, willing him to accept.

           
He squeezed her hand, smiling
gently, and said, "If we must go through this gate, or attempt the
mountains, either might destroy you. I'd not have that on my conscience."

           
"Then do not; let it be on
mine," she answered, wondering if—as Anomius had once, cynically,
suggested—she did indeed grow a conscience. "But still Pd go with
you."

           
His smile brightened, as if some
scarcely dared for hope was confirmed by her words. Almost, she felt guilty as
he took her other hand and said, "I'd not see you face such hazard. No,
this task is ours, as it was scried. You've no need to put your life in
jeopardy."

           
His eyes were alight, yet still
grave: she had no need of preternatural senses to know his ardor then, and
almost cried out that she had no life to risk, only the hope of becoming again
her own woman, free to choose her own course, masterless. She shook her head,
seeking the words that might persuade him, frightened of revelation and of
failure, no longer certain which she feared most.

           
Ochen came to her rescue.
"Pamur-teng is a long ride distant," he murmured. "Do we reserve
such decisions until then?"

           
Gratefully, Cennaire nodded. Bracht
and Katya exchanged glances, partly surprised, partly amused. Calandryll let go
her hands, once more blushing as he saw his comrades' speculative stares. Less
confidently, he agreed: "Until we reach Pamur-teng."

           
"Which journey/' Bracht opined,
"may well prove hazardous enough itself."

           
"How so?" Calandryll
turned to face the Kern. "We ride with Ochen, with Chazali's warriors as
escort. Think you the rebels, or these tensai, shall threaten us?"

           
"The rebels, no." Ochen
answered in Bracht's stead. "Perhaps the tensai, do they grow bold enough.
But I suspect your comrade thinks of another danger."

           
Calandryll frowned incomprehension,
met with Ochen's bland stare, Bracht's grim chuckle.

           
"Do you forget the gramaryes
Rhythamun leaves behind?" asked the Kern, his visage abruptly serious.
"The dire-wolf in the
Gann
Peaks
? His possession of Morrach? The affliction
in this keep? Think you he'll not set his trail with similar obstacles?"

           
"Dera!" Calandryll gasped,
nodding, and sighed. "Aye, I'd put those things behind me."

           
"It may well be," Bracht
warned, "that more lie ahead."

           
THE sun was only a little way risen
when they quit the keep, the air offering a chilled reminder that summer aged,
ground mist swirling ethereal about the fetlocks of the horses, a brumous sea
that dulled the steady pounding of their hooves. Chazali, his jet armor
glistening beetle-bright, led the way, a retinue of fifty kotu-zen in loose
formation behind, protective about Calandryll and the others, Ochen riding with
them, the brightest of all in a brilliant traveling robe of gold and silver.
The Jesseryte warriors were armed with swords and long, recurved bows, and it
seemed to Calandryll they were a formidable enough force to deter any save the
largest of tensai bands. Of defense against Rhythamun's magic, he was less confident,
remembering Ochen's suggestion that the mysterious power discerned in him
rendered him more vulnerable on the occult plane. Still, he told himself as
they cantered briskly northward, Ochen had also suggested that forewarned was
forearmed, and the wazir's own power was surely protection against fell
sortilege. Such doubts he relegated to the hinder part of his mind,
concentrating on the way ahead.

           
There, the mist began to dissipate,
melted by the climbing sun and the wind, revealing a flat landscape of grass
duller than the lush verdancy of Cuan naTor, as if thirsty. There was no formal
road, but the passage of centuries had eroded the green for a width of some
fifty paces, exposing a swath of yellowish-brown earth packed hard as stone by
hooves and wheels and tramping feet. It ran straight for leagues, a ribbon that
passed beyond Calandryll's vision, lost in the featureless blur of the horizon.
Overhead, birds wheeled on the thermal currents rising from the Kess Imbrun,
dark specks against the steely blue expanse of sky, that marked to the east by
narrow streamers of white cloud.

           
There was something indefinably
forbidding about the terrain, a brooding sensation that reminded Calandryll of
the unpleasant presentiment he had felt on approaching the keep. It seemed,
almost, that the land waited, aware of their passage, watching silently like
some vast beast, and he shivered involuntarily despite the burgeoning warmth.

           
"You feel it, too?" .

           
He turned, startled, to find Ochen
close by his side, looking up, the ancient face shaded by the brim of a
fanciful cap, though not so much he missed the inquiring gleam in the wazir's
slitted eyes.

           
"I felt ..." He shrugged,
unable to express the sensation clearly.

           
"Watched?" the old man
asked. "As though hidden eyes are on you?"

           
Calandryll nodded, glancing swiftly
to Bracht and Katya, riding side by side, apparently unconcerned.

           
Surely were there anything tangible,
the Kern's keen senses would have noticed, but neither one showed any hint of
foreboding, only pleasure at the freedom of the open country, of being again
ahorse.

           
"What is it?" he queried,
growing nervous, thinking that if Ochen felt it, then it was not an imaginary
experience.

           
"The land is troubled,"
Ochen called over the steady drumbeat of the hooves. "The aethyr is
disturbed. War spills blood, and that is felt in the occult realm. Linked as
you are to the aethyr, so you feel the land's bane."

           
Calandryll frowned. "I've not
known such feelings ere now," he shouted. "Save on entering the keep;
and that was surely the aftermath of Rhythamun's magicks."

           
"Moment by moment we draw
closer to those portals Tharn may use," Ochen returned. "And that
same spilled blood strengthens the god. You feel that, I think."

           
"Then shall it get worse?"
The thought was ugly, disconcerting. "Shall it grow daily stronger?"

           
"Likely it shall." Ochen's
equanimous agreement was alarming. "But doubtless you'll learn to live
with it; learn to accommodate it."

           
Calandryll swallowed, tasting dust
on his tongue, and wiped his mouth. "None others seem aware of this."

           
"They are not," called
Ochen. "But they are not invested with that power residing in you."

           
Calandryll grimaced: did this
strange power sorcerers discerned in him offer any advantages, he had yet to
find them; so far, it appeared chiefly a disadvantage.

           
Ochen saw his expression and smiled,
albeit a trifle solemnly. "I believe," he declared, "that when
the time comes, you'll find that strength a greater boon than bane."

           
"When the time comes?"

           
He waited for an answer, but the
wazir gave none, only nodded, still smiling, and allowed his mount to drift a
little distance away, deliberately precluding further conversation. Calandryll
watched him awhile, thinking that Bracht had spoken aright when he complained
of the riddles spoken by mages. Even so, the explanation went some little way
to easing his discomfort, for it was one thing to feel watched, unaware of the
reason, and another to know the cause. He still felt as if invisible eyes bore
into his back, but Ochen's words—as likely had been the intention—rendered the
experience more bearable and he squared his shoulders, endeavoring to ignore
the sensation.

           
It grew easier as the day grew
older, though there was little enough to occupy his attention. The landscape
continued monotonous, a flat plain devoid of features other than the brown line
of the track that ran ever onward through the grass,- the'Jesserytes seemed
indisposed to conversation, the which, anyway, was difficult at the pace
Chazali set; Bracht and Katya appeared lost in their delight at the ride; and
Cennaire seemed too occupied with holding her seat to risk the distraction of
words. As the hours passed, Calandryll became familiar with the feeling,
resisting the impulse to rise in his stirrups to scan the surrounding
countryside, settling more easily on his saddle, letting the chestnut gelding
match the gait of the accompanying horses.

           
They halted at
noon
, where a low well of yellow stone stood
beside the trail, and Calandryll found himself seated next to Chazali, the
kiriwashen unlatching his face-concealing veil from the downsweeping cheek
pieces of his helmet and pushing back the metal that he might eat. Hoping he
gave no offense, and intrigued by the custom, Calandryll ventured to ask why
the Jesserytes favored such masks.

           
Chazali swallowed bread,
meticulously brushing crumbs from his short beard, and said, "That those
we slay shall not take our image with them into the next life," in a tone
that suggested the answer was obvious.

           
He appeared to consider that explanation
enough until he caught Calandryll's dubious frown and expanded: "Must I
slay a man, he is likely to curse me for it. Does he die with my face in his
eyes, his ghost will remember and perhaps come back to haunt me. Is it not so
in Lysse?"

           
"No." Calandryll shook his
head. "We believe the dead are gone from this world. Save a necromancer
call them back, they go to face Dera's judgment and may not return."

           
"That is odd," Chazali
said, carefully polite. "I had wondered why you rode unmasked."

           
"Does Horul not judge your
dead?" Calandryll wondered.

           
"When it is their time,
aye," answered Chazali, seeming now a little disturbed by the tenor of the
conversation. "But these are matters better answered by a wazir—Ochen
might explain better than I."

           
It was clear enough indication of
reluctance on the part of the kiriwashen and Calandryll let it go, determining
that he would question Ochen later, for that part of Him—albeit diminished
somewhat by the exigencies of the quest—that remained scholarly hungered for
knowledge of the strange people become his allies.

           
The afternoon passed without event;
without, indeed, any change in the terrain or the pace of their passage. The
Jesseryte horses, for all they were of lesser stature than the Kernish animals,
were hardy beasts, cantering tirelessly onward, devouring the leagues between
the well found at noon and that beside which they halted as the sun touched the
western horizon.

           
The moon, a sliver cut now from its
fullness, rode above the eastern skyline, the first stars glinting faintly in
the blue velvet twilight. The kotu- zen, although usually attended by kotu-ji,
seemed entirely familiar with the necessities of travel, stringing the horses
on a picket line and starting cookfires with taciturn efficiency. A guard was
mounted, the bows broken out from their stowage, and food set to cooking.
Darkness fell as they began to eat, the night still save for the strengthened
wind that rustled, eerily to Calandryll's thinking, through the grass. The
familiar stamp and snort of horses, the cheery blaze of the fires, even the
silent, sable-armored warriors, were comforting—the sensation of brooding,
watchful eyes increased with the coming of the night, as if the darkness
coagulated, solidifying beyond the fireglow into a vital, physical presence.

           
It was the desire to stay that
feeling no less than genuine curiosity that prompted Calandryll to engage the
wazir in a dialogue.

           
"These wells," he began,
as casually as he was able, "do they mark all the road?"

           
"Aye." Ochen drew his robe
closer about his slender frame, the fantastic embroidery painted crimson by the
fires, his gnarled hands lost in the wide sleeves. "Between all the
tengs—at least, as often as is possible—the trails are set with wells that
riders may find each noon and evening. That"—he chuckled—"was one
gift the Great Khan gave us. It was on his order the wells were dug— that his
armies might always find water."

           
"The Great Khan,"
Calandryll murmured. "You never speak his name."

           
A hand, the painted nails glinting
bright, emerged from the wazir's sleeve to shape a gesture in the empty air as
he shook his head. "Nor is it written," he said. "Nor do any of
the monuments he built to himself stand still. Such was decreed by the Mahzlen
and the wazir-narimasu: that all the Great Khan wrought should be forgotten,
never again repeated. When he died, his body was burned and the ashes cast into
Lake
Galil
, that they might be carried out of the
land."

           
Calandryll nodded, feeling the wind
stroke his hair. For an instant he thought spectral fingers brushed him, and
fought the urge to duck his head. Instead, he settled a hand about the hilt of
his sword, finding reassurance in the contact, and said, "Fd not give
offense, but I spoke this noonday with Chazali, about the veils worn by your
warriors."

           
He repeated what the kiriwashen had
told him, and Ochen bowed his head a moment, then said, "I think your Dera
is very different to our Horul, as your land is different to mine. Our lives
are different, and perhaps so are our deaths—here we believe that none lives a
single life, but several, the number determined by the deeds performed in each
existence. When a body dies, the spirit enters Zajan-ma—that place beyond this,
where spirits not yet sundered from their worldly existence dwell—and there
await rebirth: his, or her, next cycle upon the land. Horul sets each soul a
task that the reborn must dispense before they go on. Finally, when the cycle
is completed, those souls who have satisfied Horul are granted eternal rest in
Haruga-Kita."