Gods of Nabban (37 page)

“Some quiet chamber where the holy one will not be troubled. I don't know . . .” The old man looked around the room, his expression baffled. “We can't stay in here. None of us can stay in here.” The old man was too weak to sustain any authority for long, overwhelmed and undone. Someone needed to take thought for all that needed doing.

“Yes,” Ghu said. “You need to find some better place to rest, Lord Korat, and someone you can trust to order things in your name. Your house-master is traitor to you and may be dead.”

Already was dead. Murder done, hard on the heels of rumour that the Daros rose again. Willow clung to her grandfather's side and Ghu was not feeling very forgiving. Other needs were more pressing. He gathered his thoughts again.

“Lord Korat, you're ill. You can't take thought for everything. Appoint your son your castellan.”

“My son,” Daro Korat said, softly, slowly, as if turning the words over, bringing them out into light and air.

“He can run these great stables, so he can run this castle. They're not so different. Advise him yourself, and he'll learn what he needs. I'll want Lady Nang Lin elsewhere.”

“Yuro,” the Kho'anzi said. Closed his eyes a moment, ran a hand over his lips. “Yes.”

“My lord!” Yuro protested. “You can't—”

“Do it, Yuro,” Ghu said flatly. “Because there are others less fit will be quick to put themselves in that place.” And the old man's in no shape to resist them, he did not need to say, not to Yuro.

The stable-master gave him a long, considering look. Bowed to his father. “My lord.”

Daro Korat reached for him, took his arm to pull himself upright again.

“Witness,” he called, and—they were already the focus of all attention, but the silence deepened. “Witness all of you. This is my natural son, Daro Yuro, and so it will be set down in the records of the clan. I acknowledge and claim him, before you and the gods and the holy one of the gods.”

And so Yuro was freed. So simply. Words. Ink would make it lasting truth, ink, and the iron, and sick smell of seared skin.

Not in his Nabban that would be, no. Set it witnessed in the records of the Daros, for the law, for the clan, that Daro Korat acknowledged his son, yes. But the other,
no
. Here it ended. There would be no burning to prove the slave was freed.

No slave and free.

“He will hold the keys—someone find the keys; Zhung Musan's man will have had them. I appoint Lord Yuro castellan of the White River Dragon, to order all as he sees fit and needful in my name. Further, I name him guardian to my granddaughter and heir Daro Willow should the Old Great Gods call me before Lady Willow's majority, the gods and the Old Great Gods and the holy one of the gods being witness.”

Trust, indeed, to name one bastard of his blood guardian of the other. The child had seniority in the records of the clan, acknowledged from her birth, but—wise to confirm her his heir? That depended on Yuro.

The Kho'anzi let himself down again. Liamin frowned at Ghu.

“You look to the Kho'anzi,” he told her and Yuro both. “We'll take care of ourselves. Castellan, send to Lady Nang Lin if there's anything . . .” He waved a vague hand. “Ahj. Come.” Praitannec. “I want to find the devil.” And pass by the kitchens outside on the way to the north tower where he felt she now was, filch themselves a dish of cold barley or millet porridge and weak beer, of which there would be plenty, always, unless things were very much changed. He did not think any were going to deny him, or even his dogs. Not for godhead. For Ahjvar at his back.

“He's right, though,” Ahjvar said. “You should sleep.”

“Not yet.” Keep moving now, or be washed over and drowned. “If you held the town, Ahj, and suspected the castle had been taken from within by the Daro Clan again—would you sit and wait?”

“No. We don't even hold the castle yet.”

“Yeh-Lin will, soon enough.” She would have thrown down the bridges, surely, which it seemed Daro Korat never had done, either against his son, who had probably never pressed a siege, or against Zhung Musan. “But we'll be besieged here so soon as whoever has command over the moat in Dernang realizes something is wrong.”

“Yes.”

“So. I need to talk to Yeh-Lin. Then we sleep, a little. Food first.”

“Not hungry.”

“You will
eat
.”

At one turn of the stairs, Ahjvar walked into the corner of a wall, as if vision failed him, though the light grew with the morning. Nacrous mist still trailed in the corner of Ghu's eye, in the shadows. Illusion of his weariness, trickery of Yeh-Lin's—he did not believe that. Last breath of the goddess? Folk of the castle, slave and free, huddled whispering behind doors, with furtive scuttlings, always out of sight behind or before them, as rumour ran on slippered feet. Runners passed them, boys and girls wide-eyed with wonder and fear relieved. Soldiers, a lord, a lady with them, held vital points—stairways, the central halls. Daro soldiers, ragged and soiled with imprisonment. Zhung sitting weaponless, under guard, commoners and banner-ranked and their esquires together in the great hall. Many had cast off their helmet-badges, but prudent to disarm them anyway. The floor was bloodstained, but the bodies had already been carried away.

“Holy one . . .”

A whisper in the air, a susurration of voices, a thought.

“Holy one—?” Movement out of the shadows of a square pillar, and Ahjvar slammed past him. Ghu flung himself sideways, shoulder into Ahjvar's swordarm. Supplicant, groping—blind, he realized now, having registered only the empty hands as Ahjvar had reacted. The man fell, colliding with them. Ahjvar froze where he was, arm pinned against the pillar, breathing hard.

No soldier. The man wore the simplest of court robes, three layers and fine blue leaf-printed cotton outermost, dishevelled, sashless and all unfastened. Some amulet or badge swinging on a bright chain. His cap had fallen from his balding head and the thin bun of greying hair at the nape of his neck was straggling loose. Wounded. The white tunic of his underclothing was bloodstained over the left breast, but Ahjvar had not touched him.

Ghu wasn't sure he dared remove his weight from Ahjvar to take the groping hand of the fallen man.

Fallen wizard. Plum Badge rank, second of the five. Above a mere diviner, but no powerful worker, more likely to be a scholar. That was knowledge he did not think he had possessed even a few days ago. The hand found his foot, gripped, and the man bowed his head over Ghu's boot. “Holy one,” he whispered again. “Forgive me, forgive me, I didn't know.”

Ahjvar dragged a breath almost as near a sob as the crouching wizard's and jerked away from them both.

“Outside,” he said in Praitannec. “Ghu—”

“I know. It's all right, Ahj, just—just put up your sword and wait. You, Nang Kangju—” the name was there in his mind—“Stand up.”

“I didn't know it was you, I didn't know you were come. I knew it must be a lie, when they said the gods were dead and the empress had become the goddess of the land, but I was afraid to speak. Even when they killed the priests, I was afraid to speak, and I knew I shamed the gods, but I did not speak. I did not know, forgive me . . .”

Ghu stooped and pulled him up. What to say? This Kangju was hardly the only one to be silenced by fear. In all the empire, the thousands . . . He shook his head, wordless. The man stared, pupils dilated black, spilling tears, and clutched Ghu's hands. Not blind, but blinded. The wizardry still clung about him, isolating him from—something else. Ahjvar's doing. Scent of sap, torn bark. He pulled the man's inner tunic back from his chest, scored and bleeding, slashed and slashed again, not deep but savage. The cloth itself was not cut.

“Who did this to you?” he asked gently. “Nang Kangju . . .”

“I couldn't come to you with her mark on me,” the wizard said simply.

“Whose mark?”

“The goddess's. The sign of our service to the empress.”

“All of the empress's servants are marked?”

“No, holy one. Only the chosen.”

“The wizards?”

“No, holy one. Only a few of us. We aren't to speak of it. We don't know who, but—people talk. Or one sees. I don't know why I was among them. Perhaps because I was always a true dreamer, I don't know. I only know we are summoned, a few. And she has us marked by her own tattooist. It was a great honour.” His face twisted, tears spilling. “Forgive me, lord.”

Black, amidst the sticky red. Tattoo. Ghu covered it again. Better it did scar, maybe. Break the pattern, whatever it was. Whatever it did.

A dreamer, not a scholar after all. Souls drawn away, lost to the Old Great Gods. Would the wizard Ahjvar had thrown from the stairs have such a tattoo? Would Zhung Musan? He must have Yeh-Lin look before the bodies were buried. But Kangju's sightless eyes were a more immediate matter.

“Ahjvar, can you—did you mean to blind him?”

Ahjvar stood back to him now, watching the room, sword still in hand. They were the focus of all eyes, but from a safe distance.

“What?” Weary confusion, not looking around. “I don't know. What did I do?”

Ghu did not think it would be lasting. It was only a spell worked in haste, to stop him seeing . . . mirror, there had been a mirror or some reflecting surface, Kangju had watched as they crossed the mulberry orchard. He was only dazed, dazzled, not so much blind as unseeing, to prevent him being the eyes of another . . .

Eyes of another, bound in blood and ink. But for a soul to be snatched away—

Later.

The shape of Ahjvar's spell—neat and precise, it was, for all its haste, which maybe should not have surprised him—was indescribable, not to be grasped by eyes or hands, but a shape none the less. Ghu simply unmade it, released the channelled power, borrowed of the earth's life, to flow as it would again; the wizardry did not resist him.

The wizard blinked, more tears spilling, and tried again to kneel.

“Go to the Kho'anzi, to Lord Daro Korat,” Ghu said, and looked around, beckoned a young Daro soldier. That name, too, he could find, if he sought it, as if the Mother held them all, every breathing soul of the land, and her passage through him had left them here. And what else? “Take him to the Kho'anzi, Daro Nai. Tell your lord, here is an imperial wizard who wants to swear renewed service to the gods.”

The soldier bowed and took the wizard's arm, not ungently, when Ghu handed him off. He gave Ahjvar a wide berth, though.

Ahj did not look well, grey and sweating, when he turned back from watching the soldier away.

“Ahj?”

He seemed to have to grope for words, swallowing, frowning. “Burning,” he said at last.

Ghu's heart clenched. “No, Ahjvar, it's not.”
You're not?
Now he was afraid, as he had not been even with Zhung Musan's blade swinging for his throat.

“Smoke.”

“That's outside, remember?” He took Ahjvar's arm, wanted to pry that sword from his hand but did not suppose Ahjvar was going to let it go. “Yeh-Lin will take care of it, whatever it is. Maybe only the kitchens. We're going that way. Come. Walk.”

“I know it's not real. I can see—I can see you. You're all white light. I can—but there's fire. That—who was he?”

“Wizard, Ahj. You didn't hurt him. He meant no harm. I sent him to the Kho'anzi.”

“Wizard. I—he was—a thing, in the fire.” Barely audible. “He was her. Burning. Black and still moving. Don't let me go. Don't let me
near
anyone. I can hear the fire, Great Gods, Ghu, help me. I'm so tired now and I can't trust what I see—”

“Look at me. Look at
me
, not the wall.” Ahjvar's eyes were wide, blind as the wizard's had been, and staring over Ghu's shoulder. “See me. You're—dreaming. Awake and dreaming. Come.”

“Too many people.” But the eyes found him, did see.

“Good. Yes. We'll go outside. Come.”

He gripped hard, didn't let Ahjvar break away from him. He spoke Praitannec, not allowing silence in which shadows could grow. Warning him of every encounter, as if he did guide a blind man through a perilous landscape.

Across the gravelled terrace again, bright now in new sunlight, down steps into another walled yard, where the buildings of the kitchens and kitchen-stores were. Ahjvar shrugged himself free from Ghu's grasp, dragged the back of a hand across his face.

“I can't stay here,” he said.

“I know.”

Stir and bustle and shouting, all the usual life within. People must eat, whoever ruled the keep, but here was a quiet corner behind the woodshed, shadowed and mossy and overlooked. Ghu led Ahjvar into it.

“Too many people.” Ahjvar shook his head as if to clear it. “Even silent, there's too much noise, something like noise, I can't—”

“It's all right, Ahj. It's all right.”

Eyes shut, Ahjvar sank down to his heels. He shivered, coatless, wet with others' blood. His own, too.

Ahjvar couldn't go on this way. Not among people. Ghu could not always hope to stop him when he saw some horror that wasn't there and struck to kill enemies a year gone from the world. He squatted down on his heels as well and tilted his face to the sun.

There truly was a tang of smoke, harsh in the air. That could not help. None clouded the sky, though.

“Ghu . . .” Ahjvar's hand groped and found his. Cold, as if there were no life left in him.

No peace. No healing in this world. He began to fear that was so, and he could not hold Ahjvar here in torment, he would not.

Not yet, not here, not like this. Not in blood and fear and weary defeat, with the unburied dead all around him. Let him at least die in some tranquil place, let there be beauty about him, not walls, not—