Blackdog (35 page)

“Why would he let you know, however he does, that a priestess was coming, and then try to kill me?”

“No awareness,” Tsuzas said. “I did tell you that. Foreknowledge, without judgement of its consequences, even those he himself causes.”

“So all that rock could just come down and crush us, and then he'd wonder where his priests had gone?”

“Possibly. I don't think it's likely.”

“Attalissa save me,” Attavaia muttered under her breath. “Sera, help me. This is your service.”

The overhang seemed a mountain in itself. Under the overhang was a stone-walled corral and a stable against the mountainside, built of rough stone and almost impossible to tell from the natural wall of the cave, even seen close to. A small boy peered down from a loft, staring at them as warily as the furtive cat whose tail she had seen vanish up the ladder at their entrance. The boy came sliding down when Tsuzas called and was relieved of his basket of eggs, commandeered to tend the ponies. He studied Attavaia with wide, yellow-brown eyes, no smile, no words, but seemed competent enough as he took the reins from her, patting the dun's neck. Tsuzas offered no explanation.

The house itself was harder to see in the twilight of the overhang than the stable, a cavemouth or perhaps mine entrance that had been filled, returning it to the look of the mountain, with only a narrow doorway left. Beyond, it opened out in small, dark rooms, some with braziers or butter lamps burning, far warmer than she would have expected, but cold drafts blew in through cracks, black fissures in the walls. These were plastered white, to reflect what light there was, and painted. There were many images of what must be Narva, an inhuman-looking god: four-armed, blue-skinned, sharp-toothed. The eyes glittered, set with turquoise, jet, mother-of-pearl. They watched. She felt Narva watching and clenched her left hand, felt the cut burning. But he did nothing, other than to watch. Gloating, she imagined. Possessing her, now. Or perhaps, if she understood Tsuzas's explanations of the level of the god's existence, only confused, like a dog faced with too many smells.

Tsuzas had eight sisters, one older, the rest younger, all living in the family home; the eldest was married but had recently left her husband in Narvabarkash, bringing her two young boys to serve Narva, to carry on the priestly line. Tsuzas, murmuring that in her ear, did not sound as though that pleased him. All the sisters talked at once, leaving their work of spindles and looms and churns to crowd around her. And not all were there, two were out ranging the mountains, as Tsuzas so often did, she gathered. Their names passed her by in the chaos. There was Mother, quiet and calm, and a chattering woman Tsuzas called Auntie, whom Attavaia gathered was actually his father's third wife and mother of five of the sisters, while the eldest, Teral, was daughter of a first wife now gone to the gods. His father was more recently dead. The terrible grandfather was a frail, bent old man, white-haired, whose hands and head trembled continually. The eyes were keen, though, peering up at her, down at her bandaged left hand, up again, yellow-brown like the little boy's. And up, craning his head around because his neck would not quite straighten, at Tsuzas.

“She is no priestess of Sera.”

“I don't think they have priestesses in the desert, Grandfather,” Tsuzas said easily, and he put a hand on Attavaia's arm. Possessive, she thought, and almost struck it off, but the touch was quite light and as the grandfather swung his stare back at her, she was not so unhappy to be claimed, just then.

“A chosen maiden bearing the desert goddess to sleep in Narva's bosom.” He sounded like he was quoting, but then he made a noise like a cat spitting. “Has Attalissa betrayed us all to this tyrant wizard and added the deserts to her own victims? She's collecting defeated gods now? And we should be her jailers? I'll see you dead, boy, before I let you prostitute what's left of our freedom to Attalissa or her wizard paramour.”

“Grandpapa!” protested one of the sisters. “You shouldn't use that kind of language.”

“Especially when we've a guest.”

“From town.” There was envy in that sister's intonation.

Tsuzas only sighed, but his fingers tightened, ever so slightly, on her arm. Attavaia put a hand over his a moment. She could see him, dark eyes rather than light, but silent and wary, like the boy in the stable. Did the grandfather threaten so often the sisters didn't hear? There had been venom in the words, and how much scarring did it take not to feel it any more?

“Sera was driven from her holy spring when Tamghat conquered her folk,” Tsuzas said. As they sat in the low-roofed herdsman's hut, eating roast hare and partridge the night before, Attavaia had told him some of what passed in Serakallash, how she came to be carrying a dead lump of stone to the Narvabarkash, when she had her own slow-simmering and careful rebellion to prepare. “Sera sleeps. She charged Sister Attavaia, who fought for Attalissa in Lissavakail and for Sera in Serakallash, to carry her here, out of Tamghat's sight, until Attalissa returns to fight the wizard. Treat her chosen servant with respect.”

“We all need to fight Tamghat together, brother,” Attavaia said, more mildly than she was inclined to. “If we don't, the wizard will destroy our gods one by one.”

“Fighting. Narva hasn't survived by fighting your Attalissa, and your Attalissa hasn't done any fighting against Tamghat that I've noticed. Learnt from our lord, I'd guess. If you lie quiet, they don't see you.” Grandfather gave her a yellow-toothed smile, not friendly. “Get used to it, or go serve Tamghat. Give us this Sera's stone, and leave, before the wrath of Narva finds you.”

“I welcome her here, in Narva's name,” Tsuzas said. “
Narva
admits her here, by my hand and blood. You have no right to deny her. And don't, before all the Old Gods, threaten her,” he added, though that sounded more like the angry, defiant boy he might have been and less the priest.

“And that's the final insult—don't think I didn't notice the moment you walked through the door. You have no right choosing a wife without my approval and no right before the god to be profaning yourself with such a one, I wonder Narva didn't throw you off the mountainside like he did your father.”

“That's enough!” Tsuzas's mother straightened up from where she had squatted on her heels, stirring a pot on the brazier. “Leave the girl in peace, Ostap. And remember it was you kept Tsuzas here when he wanted to leave; it's too late for you to deny him to Narva now.”

“Don't mind Father Ostap, Sister,” Auntie chimed in. “His digestion's bad and it puts him out of sorts. Tsutsu, stop trying to drag the girl away. She wants her dinner. Let the gods wait on it, they're surely in no hurry after all this time.”

What seemed like a dozen work-roughened female hands, flashing jewelled rings and golden bracelets, caught at Attavaia, tugged her from Tsuzas to a low chair in a warm corner. Tsuzas watched darkly, leaning on a painted wall, arms folded. Not smiling. His sisters ignored him. His mother took him a bowl of stew first of all, but he shook his head and pushed away without a word, vanishing through a curtained doorway.

“It's all right,” one of the sisters murmured to Attavaia, as Mother, since no one had given her any other name, pressed the bowl of stew on her instead. “He's moody, but he gets over it. He takes himself far too seriously, and always thinks Grandfather means the things he says. He's a dear, really.”

“Tsuzas or Grandfather Ostap?” Attavaia wondered, but the sister had been chivvied off to fetch bread and milk.

If she'd ever met a man who should run away godless to the caravan road and the mercenary's life, surely this was one. The stew almost choked her, under Ostap's eye, but she ate it to please Mother and spite him.

This was the main room of the house, the cooking hearth and the gathering place. The sisters dodged in and out about their business; the peevish-looking eldest, mother of the two boys, raised a surprisingly sweet voice in a weaving song in the next room.

There was an uncle, Umas, who sat, empty-eyed, rocking back and forth in his chair in the corner. Rocking and rocking and rocking. One of the sisters tucked a shawl more tightly around him, patted his head absently, like he was a pet. A white-eyed great-grandmother sat spinning and called the younger ones back to take up their spindles again, unheeded, as they giggled together, looking up at Attavaia as they poured out the tea and served it, Grandfather first, then the uncle, who had to have his hand folded around the cup and the cup guided to his lips. Then herself, as the guest. Tsuzas did not return, and Attavaia didn't know whether to wait or go looking for him. The sisters, four of them bright in scarlet and indigo, crowded around her, cups in hand now, still giggling, asking questions, about Lissavakail, about the temple, about the embroidery patterns the townswomen worked for their shawls and coats. Innocent, girls’ questions, but they didn't take the chill of Ostap's words away.

Another sister, trousered and wrapped in grey and brown shawls, bow and quiver slung from her shoulder, strode in to say there was a patrol searching the village for weapons
again
and whose were the ponies in the stable. She brought the little boy with her, clinging close to her side, still silent. Perhaps silence was a perfectly normal reaction to this…this flock of aunts. Jays, Attavaia decided, and the little boy suddenly smiled at her, plunked himself at her feet.

“Stew?” asked that sister, whose name, Elsinna, Attavaia did catch, in the chorus of enquiry about affairs in the village and news that Tsuzas had gone off chasing an oracle and returned with a priestess that he'd married, yes, married, and Narva alone knew why, but wasn't it fun, to think Tsutsu had finally found a wife…no, it wasn't a wife, it was a trick to fool the peevish old god, and serve him right. “If that's stew, bring me some. I'm starved, I've had no breakfast.” She gave Attavaia a cool nod.

“People who go off hunting Tamghati and leave others to do the real work—”

“I wasn't hunting Tamghati, we don't need that kind of trouble.”

“It's entirely your affair, of course,” Auntie said confidingly to Attavaia, continuing some conversation she wasn't aware she was having. “We won't think any the worse of you, dear, if you don't give him children till after you've dealt with your wizard. Although it does seem peculiar to me, for him to marry in such a rush, when he's been so set against the idea till now, and my own cousin's two girls so willing. It's not like there's many would dare to come up here, and a true wife needs to live under Narva's hand, not like that woman Umas married, who keeps herself and her boys in the village and calls herself a widow now. She's only ever visited once or twice since the accident.”

“What accident?” Attavaia asked, out of a sort of horrified politeness.

“But is she pretty?” Great-grandmother's voice rose querulously. “My Tsutsu should marry a pretty girl.”

“She's got a sharp sword,” Elsinna answered, and for a moment her eyes met Attavaia's and she grinned Tsuzas's grin. “It's like a rich man, Great-grandmama. A rich man is always handsome, and a woman with a good sword is always pretty.”

Great-grandmama dissolved into wheezing giggles, and Attavaia missed the tale of the accident. Something about Tamghat.

“Thank you,” Attavaia said firmly, setting her cup aside and reaching for her crutch. The little boy handed it to her. She levered herself up, dragged the saddlebag with the stone from Sera's well in it over her shoulder.

“Where does she think she's going?” Grandfather Ostap demanded of the world at large, unanswered. “That I should live to have one of Attalissa's unnatural women under my roof, defiling my blood, and the god too lost in dreams to strike her down as she deserves…”

Attavaia had to walk past him, step over his feet, dragging her right leg, to reach the doorway through which Tsuzas had gone, of all the several opening from the room. Ostap had stationed himself on a stool there deliberately. His eyes followed her, malevolent as those of the painted gods, but he made no move to pursue her himself.

“Ah, newlywed bliss,” murmured one or another of the sisters, and yelped. Attavaia supposed an ankle had been kicked.

She pushed through the curtain, having to bend her neck under the low lintel. It was dark, beyond, and the air was cold after the heat of the…the house. This did not feel like a house, though as her eyes adjusted, she could see dim light ahead. She set out towards it, down a passage that sloped slightly underfoot. The walls leaned in; she could touch the roof if she reached up. Walls and roof were smooth and plastered, though, and sudden glints of light suggested more jewelled depictions of Narva, more watching eyes.

The light was a plain clay lamp, burning in a niche cut into the wall. Tsuzas leaned beside it.

“I wasn't sure whether to rescue you or not,” he said, but his expression was empty, not matching the words.

“I wasn't sure whether to rescue you,” she returned, trying to make light of it. Great gods, what a family to take a wife home to. No wonder he had never married. “It might be impolitic. I didn't realize we were at war with Narvabarkash.”

At least she knew there had been war, long ago, which few did even in the temple. Her uncle had told stories, entertaining her and Rideen, Enneas and Shevehan, in the cold winter evenings when they were all young. Heroic sisters of long ago. Small wonder both who could had gone to join them.

“And you might be at war with us again when you were done rescuing me? Grandfather's…not harmless. But not as dangerous as he'd like to think. I'm the only heir he has, so far. The boys are too young yet for Narva to take an interest in them, thank—” He shrugged. “Narva. I wish my fool sister would see she'd be better off raising them Lissavakaili in her husband's household in the village.”

This was not yesterday's manic mad priest. He seemed as bleak and trapped as Attavaia had felt, caged and crippled in Jerusha's bed in Serakallash.

“I see what you meant about enough sisters,” she said lightly. “Was your god always mad, or did this happen recently?”

Tsuzas choked on a laugh.

“They're not so bad, once you get used to them. Well, some of them. In ones or twos. More than three at once is ill-advised. Do you want me to take the stone?”