Stonewielder (7 page)

‘You have plenty of others to choose from.’

‘Yet here I am speaking to you.’

He straightened, towering over her, and she raised her chin to meet his gaze. Her tangled black hair blew about her face like a cowl. He had to flinch from the depths of those compelling eyes. ‘Well, you’re wasting your time.’

‘You presume to know what I am doing? They mock you, you know. Call you farmer. Dirt-grubber. Coward.’

‘And I grow things called tomatoes, beans, marrow.’ That raised a brief haunted smile. ‘You do not need me. I’m told you have many of the aristocrats. The pure-blooded ruling families.’

‘True. Sons and daughters of the highest Jourilan names have marched up to my modest fig tree. “Teach me,” they demand. “Instruct me in this new way we hear of.” Already perhaps they are too far down the wrong path. But I cannot show them that – only you can.’

He studied his dirt-smeared hands; cut and bloodied, calloused, nails broken.
Just as during all those years of training and duelling
. ‘They won’t listen to me. I’m … of the wrong background.’

‘Ah yes. That taint so shameful to the Jourilan. Mixed blood. Do you know the name of your ancestors, Ivanr?’

He shrugged, his gaze hooded. ‘My mother said her people were of the Red-Rock tribe of the Thoul-Alai. That is all I know.’

The Priestess’s voice hardened in sudden outrage. ‘Your people were of the Toblakai, Ivanr! Blessed of the children of the Great
Mother! Some of you survive, isolated, in pockets here and there, despite the best efforts of all those who have stolen your lands.’

‘Stolen? Strong language for an outlander.’

Now the Priestess hugged her angular frame, the lines at her mouth deepened in shadow. ‘It is a story not unfamiliar to me.’

Ivanr stared wonderingly.
So, a vulnerable side. An opening up. Careful. Seduction bears many faces
. ‘Immaterial. What’s done is done. Nothing can bring back the past.’

‘I would never seek that.’ Her words were softer now, her tone closer to that of her true tender age. He felt the wounds that she carried and something within him ached to hold her, to soothe that pain.

Dangerous indeed
.

‘The question is how to proceed into the future. You, Ivanr, the warrior champion who defied the call to the Stormwall. I have heard many rumours as to why. But I have my own theory …’

His gaze found a flight of crows crossing over the face of the distant Jourilan central plateau. Smoke obscured the north horizon; he shielded his eyes, squinting.
Burning already – damned early
. ‘It was cowardice – leave it at that.’

‘No. It would be cowardice to leave it at that.’

He let his hand fall. She eyed him levelly, almost coolly, and he felt himself shrinking under that steady gaze.
Such suffering scoured into that lined hatchet face that should be unmarred! And a haunting glow as well- the lingering hint of the revelation everyone whispers of? Who is he to dare dispute this one’s choices? But surely he must be unworthy! How could he, who once gloried in conflict, possibly serve Dessembrae, the Lord of Tragedy, or any of these foreign gods?

‘I couldn’t. I’m not—’

‘Not worthy? Not pure enough? Not dedicated enough? Not … certain? None of us is. And none who is certain interests the Lord of Tragedy.
Those
minds are closed. He requires the mind be open.’ She now seemed to eye him sidelong, almost mockingly. ‘It was your open mind that led you to your conclusion, to that intuitive flash that so changed you, yes?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You saw instinctively, on your own, the uselessness of it all.’

Gods, this woman was dangerous! How could she know? And yet – wasn’t this the essence of her sermonizing, her own message?
He ran a hand across his slick forehead and said, his voice hoarse,
‘Dangerous talk, Priestess. Talk that can get a man, or a woman, put to death.’

‘So you
are
afraid …’

He offered a half-smile. ‘Of the Jourilan Emperor’s torture pits, yes.’

‘
They
aren’t the enemy. The enemy is ignorance and hate. Aren’t these worth opposing?’

Pure idealism. Ye gods, where does one begin with such a one?
His gaze found the peppers ripening at his feet. ‘Priestess,’ he began, slowly, ‘you don’t really think you’re the first, do you?’ He waved to encompass the fields. ‘The Lady Our Saviour has kept a tight watch on her garden all these generations. She weeds thoroughly. And ruthlessly. No unwelcome invader has been allowed to take hold. I’ve seen it before.’

The Priestess raised her gaze, and perhaps it was day’s late argent light, or a reflection of some kind, but the eyes flared as if molten.

‘Have you not wondered,’ she asked in a low voice, ‘why you must constantly weed in the first place?’

He cocked his head, uncertain of her tack.

‘It is because the weeds are far hardier than the crop you’re trying to raise.’

Ivanr found that he’d flinched away. He paced the field, stepping between the plants.
Damn you, woman! How dare you plague me with such outrageous demands! Haven’t I done enough? But perhaps walking away wasn’t enough. Perhaps walking away was never enough
. He stopped his pacing. Turning to her, he could only offer his mute denial.

She approached gently, as if afraid he would flee, and proffered a hand. ‘Take this. And come to my fig tree. Sit at my side. Listen to the message that has come to me. I believe you are already far down the path.’

When he would not raise his own hand she took it and pressed an object into it. Her hand was a fraction the size of his, yet far harder. As sharp and unyielding as stone slivers. She walked away, the long tatters of her robes dragged behind through the stalks. Ivanr opened his hand. A square-cut iron nail like a sword in miniature, with a lace of leather drawn through the small loop that was the grip and pommel. The symbol of the cult of Dessembrae.

Word of the heresy of polytheism had come north down the mountain foothills only a few years ago. It had been twice that time since
Ivanr had refused the Call and thrown down his swords in the dust of the training grounds at Abor. They’d imprisoned him, beaten him almost to his death, cursed him as half-breed Thel scum – not that his background had mattered while his sword served. But they would not kill him; not great Ivanr whom they had lauded as the greatest Jourilan champion in living memory.

And so it was that he had found himself blinking in the unfamiliar bright sunlight with only the rags about his loins to his name. The guards who had prodded him from the wagon threw a skin of water at his feet and told him that if he returned to the city he’d be killed out of hand. The wounds on his lashed back split open as he knelt to pick up the water.

He had walked south. At first he thought he’d simply keep walking until his feet brought him to the vast glacier wilderness held in abeyance by the Iceback range. Where he would no doubt have perished. But when he reached the foothills he came across many more of his kind, clustered in small family camps around smoking firepits, digging the earth beside the road. Some purebred, some mixed – remnants, those bearing the mark of the prior inhabitants of the land. Some markedly tall, like himself, others broad and low to the ground. The Thoul-Alai, or variously ‘Thel’ or ‘Thoul’, as the invaders had parsed. And so he decided that here was perhaps where he belonged. He selected a section of a hardscrabble unfavourable hillside, and planted.

The local ranchers who raised a breed of cattle called Baranal thought him mad and regularly ran their beasts through his field. His fellow Thel also thought him touched; none of them farmed. But it seemed to him that a society reliant on a way of life no longer viable, namely hunting and gathering, really ought to adapt. He judged farming a reasonable substitution.

Then word came of this new cult. Blasphemous! They deny the Goddess! They speak against the Stormwall! This priestess who led them was a witch who enslaved men with sex. They held orgies at which babies were murdered and eaten.

It seemed strange to him that everyone should be so ready to believe that a cult that preached nonviolence should also be murdering babies. But from what he’d seen in life there was much insanity surrounding religion.

Then the first of the prisoner gangs came shuffling along the road that ran through the valley beneath his hillside. A corpse suspended from a gibbet swung at the head of the column. After working the
day with his back pointedly turned to the valley, Ivanr finally threw aside his digging tools and walked down to where the Jourilan captors had staked the chain gang. An officer of the detachment came out to meet him, flanked by troopers.

‘These are the heretics?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ The officer watched him narrowly; Ivanr saw many of his brother and sister Thel among the shackled prisoners. None raised their heads.

‘They are for Abor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Execution?’

‘Yes.’

‘The usual? Stoning? Crushing? Public garrotting and impalement? Or just plain crucifixion? Violent ends for people who swear to nonviolence.’

The Jourilan officer’s gaze hardened even further. ‘Is that an objection?’

‘Just an observation.’

The officer motioned him off. ‘Then observe from far away.’

A month later Ivanr was sitting in front of his sod-roofed hut sharpening his tools when a file of dusty beggars approached. An old man led them, of pure Jourilan invader stock, haggard and unwashed, but holding his head high and walking with a firm stride, planting a walking staff strongly before him. He stopped his band of followers a discreet distance off then stepped up and leaned on the staff.

‘Spare a drink of water for those who thirst, stranger?’

Ivanr set down his sharpening stone. He scanned the horizon for any Jourilan patrol. Saw none. ‘Aye.’ He carried out a small keg of captured rainwater and a tarred leather cup. The old man bowed, took a small sip, then handed on the keg to his band. The entire time, the dark eyes slitted in his sun-burned, lined face did not leave Ivanr’s.

‘You are from the south?’ Ivanr asked.

‘Aye.’

‘You carry word of this new faith?’

The cracked and bloodied lips climbed with faint humour. ‘We follow the Priestess and bring the word of her teachings. Word of the new faith revealed to her. A faith that embraces life. Rejects death.’

‘You reject death?’

‘We accept it. And thereby deny it any power over us.’

‘And you are headed north?’

‘Yes. To Pon-Ruo.’

‘I think you’ll find what you deny waiting for you there.’

Again, the half-smile. ‘Death awaits us all. The question, then, really should be how to live.’

‘You mean survive?’

‘No – how to live one’s life. Harming others is no way to honour life.’

Ivanr, who up until then had merely been amusing himself, shivered at those words. The old pilgrim did not seem to notice; he gestured to Ivanr’s fields. ‘Farming honours life.’

Ivanr waved the man off. ‘Take the water and go.’ He walked away.

‘You cannot hide from life,’ the old man called after him. ‘You harm yourself and give power to that from which you turn.’

‘Go!’

The old man bowed. ‘We honour you for your gift.’

Just go, damn you!

*    *    *

Of all the places to die in Banith, Bakune believed that this was very probably the ugliest. He could almost smell the madness that must have driven the old woman to her death here in this dead-end alley. What he could not avoid smelling was the stale sweat, the animal fear, and the dried piss.

She’d been a nun in attendance at Our Lady the Saviour Cloister and Hospice. That much the Watch had ascertained. A woman gone mad to end her life in a frothing twisted heap at the back of a garbage-strewn alley, fingers bloody and torn where she’d clawed at the stone walls.

And he’d almost missed this one.

The Watch hardly bothered to call him in any more. Just another corpse. The Assessor came, poked about, asked his obtuse questions, then went back to frown and potter over his reports. What was the use? For his part, Bakune saw that while the Watch respected his judgements from the bench, all the same they wished he’d just stay in his chambers. After all these years it was becoming, well, an embarrassment.

But there was something different about this one. What was a nun
of the temple doing outside in the middle of the night? How had she gotten out without anyone noticing? And why? Why lose herself in this warren of alleys? Lunacy, he supposed, was the easy answer.

But too glib for his liking. The temple revealed little of the finer points of its faith, let alone its inner workings. How could this embarrassment have escaped its self-policing? No doubt the madwoman had been under virtual house arrest for some time now, perhaps locked in an ascetic’s cell. A visit to the cloisters might just be in order.

He straightened from the stiffened corpse to find that his escort, two soldiers of the Watch, had retreated to the mouth of this rat-run of an alley, where it met a slightly larger and less choked back way. Sighing, Bakune stepped over the rotting garbage and dumped nightsoil to join them.