The Lady (33 page)

Or Ahjvar.

He had to touch them. Ghu circled through, and here the footing was made uncertain by more than fallen horses, here they had stood, a tight knot of Praitans who had not run, who had nerved themselves to endure the panic, who had stood, and there were banners, trampled, and the corpses of men and women, and many were scorched. He pulled down three more Red Masks. They pressed in against him, ignoring the wizard, who staggered with weariness. He reached through their tame lightning and shed it as if he were stone. He was stone, he thought, and they pressed against him because they knew it; they wanted a final death, they came to him eager as a blind puppy seeks its dam's teat, driven thoughtless to her heat and scent, the one overriding urge. “Go to your king,” he called to the wizard, and, “Is Deyandara here? Take her away!”

“Deyandara?” she said, in shock. “No!” But she caught the bridle of the horse of a fallen Red Mask and fled away into the night, over the north and down towards the swamp.

There. A lone Red Mask, afoot, and though it carried a sword, it stabbed a man with its dagger and dragged him close as he died, and dropped the body, went after another, hacking it two-handed, kneeling over it, hand on its bleeding wounds. Then it ran towards a knot of milling warriors afoot, Praitan fighting Praitan.

It was not Ahjvar, but the other, the hag, the cursed ghost who rode him, and not killing once, but again and again, feeding without falling away, growing stronger. Would even daylight drive her back now?

A Red Mask had Ghu by the foot. His horse squealed and reared, eyes rolling white, came down and bucked, another clutching breast-strap and saddle-skirt as if it would clamber up. He struck right and left and gave them what they sought; they were not even bringing weapons against him now, desperate. He could feel their desperation, as if they knew . . .

All the Red Masks were bound together. He wheeled the horse free of them and rode for the shadow that had killed another man and sent the enemies, king's men and traitors, flying as one band. Jui and Jiot had kept back from the Red Masks, but now they closed in with him again, snarling at a Praitan who for a moment turned his way, spear lowered. She thought better of it and ran.

“Ahjvar!” he called, and there was no check in the thing, no reaction at all. In the darkness there was a second shadow, a hint in the tail of the eye, a woman's long hair, trailing smoke, cracked skin edged in flame. “
Hyllau!
”

She, it, Ahjvar's body, the Red Mask's crested helmet, spun to face him, sword raised. He rode as if to ride it down and turned the horse aside at the last moment, feet free of the stirrups, flung himself onto Ahjvar's body, striking the sword-arm up, bearing him down. He ripped the helmet free, laying the blade of his forage-knife across the throat above the hauberk's collar, the crooked knife easy to the task, resting there.

Behind him dogs snarled. One yelped, and was silent. There was a thud, something heavy hitting the earth. He did not look around.

“I will kill him,” he gasped, and the body that tensed to heave him off was still. “I will. And I can. The death he's been seeking, I can give him that. Rather than let you have him, I will kill him, and set him free, and leave you lost and wailing in the world, houseless and fading and forgotten as his corpse rots around you.”

She moved against the blade, and a dark line opened, black in the bright moonlight. He didn't change the pressure on the knife, didn't raise it even the slightest, wrist locked, but a sob choked him. For a moment he didn't think Ahjvar's heart was beating, and maybe the devil had killed him after all and there was nothing left but Hyllau's madness. The body beneath him was hot, as if it burned. But under his other hand the chest moved. Still breathing. Slowly. The blood welled to the rhythm of a pulse.

Hyllau hissed. The eyes focused on him and the lips worked, as if she might speak. A hand clawed upwards, but he held the knife steady, unblinking, and the blood dripped down into the trampled grass. The eyes lost their focus, staring blind into the night, and she sank away. Ghu gasped, another sob, shaken, and maybe raised the blade a hair's breadth, but if Hyllau had retreated, it was still a Red Mask controlled by the Lady he had beneath him. The hand moved for the sword it had lost when he bore Hyllau down.

“No,” he said. “Ahjvar . . .”

He couldn't see the cocoon of spells, but he knew they were there, a spider's silken shroud, wrapped and woven tight, smothering, and if the souls of the other Red Masks had been torn to threads to weave their own chains, Ahj's, he thought, could not be, because Catairanach's curse bound him whole and entire to continue unbroken in the world, to be the womb, the cyst of Hyllau's waiting, with all the strength of her land forged adamant-hard in rage and grief. Ghu reached into the devil's shroud and ripped, the blade of the forage knife honed to the edge of the mountain's wind, capable of sheering stone. For a moment he hung in dark water, saw fire twisted and caught in ice. He cut the devil's bonds away and dragged Ahjvar free of them, into moonlight and night.

Nothing seemed to change, except that Ahjvar's hand found his sword and clenched on it. Then the eyes shut and he tried to roll away. Ghu moved to let him go. Ahjvar was breathing, now, as if he had been running. Or drowning. Thrust himself up on his arms, coughing, choking. Warily, because startling Ahj when he had a sword in his hand was a bad idea, Ghu put a hand between his shoulders, spread flat, just enough pressure to let the man know he was there, as he would walking behind a horse.

“Ghu?”

“I'm here.”

“Good.” Ahjvar went down flat again, head cradled on an arm. “Damn all gods an' Old Great Gods too. Headache.”

“I know.”

Nothing more. Ghu looked around, drawing a knee up to rise. They were in the middle of a battlefield, but battle had shifted aside—because there were Red Masks here, waiting, watching, a double handful of them, half mounted and half afoot and two lying empty that he had not slain.

And Jui, and Jiot. Silent, standing like sentinels, hackles bristling, guarding him.

A dog, a half-grown stray from the city streets, could not do what wizards could not, and tear a ruined soul from the devil's grip. Jiot looked round at him, stirred the base of his up-curled tail, hesitant, checking. Had he done right this time?

Ghu crawled to them, a hand on both. “Don't run so far ahead of me,” he said. “Don't . . .” But he had taken them to follow him; already they saw his road, and that he could not turn back, not now; he'd gone too far this night and unwitting drawn them with him. Should he ask them to stay behind? “Good dogs,” he said weakly.

One Red Mask backed away and turned its horse to ride after easier prey, obeying its Lady's will, that it should kill kings and wizards and take this land for Marakand. But the others still wavered, not even able to shape a thought, a hope, but still . . . waiting.

Ahjvar came crawling to him, used his shoulder to heave himself up, stood swaying, legs braced. “Where in the cold hells are we?” he asked, and added, “Get back. These things don't die. Necromancy . . .” Then he fell again. Ghu caught the sword so that he at least did not fall on his own blade.

“Drowned,” Ahjvar said vaguely from the ground. “I was drowning. Her face kept changing—Ghu!”

Down by the swamp, where the flow of the battle had shifted, people shouted and shrieked and died.

“Go,” he told the dogs. Just that, and they went, racing, grim and eager.

“Collecting dogs now? Cheaper than horses,” Ahjvar said. “The moon's wrong.” He tried to haul himself up again, using Ghu as a prop.

Ghu pushed him off. “Stay out of the way.” Ahj was weak as an invalid and clumsy as a drunkard.

There were too many. He felt the fear radiating from them, stronger now, as if something knew there was opposition it had not expected. He could almost hear the high, silver singing, a voice of ice and garrotter's wire.

“Ahj,” he said, as these Red Masks, his Red Masks, still watched him. But a stir ran through them. They would not wait for long. “You were Red Mask. Do you remember?”

Silence.

“Ahjvar?”

“No.” But he added, “She's singing. I can hear her. They can hear her. It's in their minds, they're singing. The Lady's words.”

“You've been inside it. Ahj, can you see it? Can you break it? I can only set them free one by one, and even the dogs . . . it will only take one arrow to kill me or them, still, and there are so many of the Red Masks. She shields them from spells and weapons, but you've been inside. Are you—can you even understand me?” he cried, because Ahjvar was bowed over his knees, and the Lady had wrenched some of the watching Red Masks back to her will. He had to keep them from Ahj, who couldn't move to defend himself.

But Ahjvar dragged his sword from Ghu's hand, muttering, “That's not a bloody shield, don't use it like one,” and added, “Good,” as Ghu kicked a Red Mask off and it did not move again.

Something mastered them, turned them, and they all fled into the night, to where, he feared, they could do more harm at less risk.

“Where are we?” Ahjvar asked.

“Praitan. The Duina Catairna. A hill by a swamp.”

Ahjvar swore. “Who are we fighting?”

“You and I? Mostly everyone,” Ghu said, because without the Red Masks making them an island to be avoided, they probably would be. Even short of full, the moon was bright enough that staying still would not hide them. “I look like one of Ketsim's mercenaries, and you—”

“
She's
been out.”

“Yes.”

“Someone's tried to cut my throat.”

“Yes. Sorry. I didn't want to, but she wouldn't—she didn't kill only once, she kept hunting.”

“Would you have?”

“Yes, Ahj.”

Hand on his shoulder.

“How many?”

“I don't know. But I think it was she who was commanding the army here, not you. She waited for dark, and you're not such a fool as to start a battle in the dark. Half the dead have probably been slain by their own friends.”

“How many?” And he didn't mean friend and foe mistaken in the night.

“Many, I think,” Ghu said gently. “Maybe,” he added, “at least, they were not all Praitans.”

“Not on the road here, they weren't,” Ahjvar said grimly. “I remember, a little. The soldiers were afraid. What Praitans are here?”

“The high king—Duina Andara, Duina Broasora. Others. I don't know all the banners.”

“How many Red Masks?”

“You had thirty when I followed you from Marakand. But there are more.”

“If you'd cut my throat, Ghu—could you have killed me?”

“You would have died, Ahj.”

“Would I.” It was said carefully, not a question.

“I'm sorry.” He didn't mean for what might have happened, either, and Ahjvar knew it. Not for what he might have done, but for what he had not done, in all the years of nights Ahj would have welcomed it. But he could not have, then. He could not.

“You know you can't let her loose with wizardry, Ghu. You know that.”

“I know, Ahj.”

“Promise me you won't.”

“I won't.”

“Then break that seal, before we make this a kingless land. I can hear. I remember the shape of the Lady's spell, and it's only human wizardry, no matter how many wizards are woven into it, working it, no godhead to it at all. All I need to do is break it from within, and she didn't make it dreaming anyone could. Her defences all look outwards.”

“She was never a goddess.” But he used teeth and his left hand to pull at the knots of his purse, never leaving aside his knife, letting Ahj, barely able to stand, guard him, while he felt around for the clay seal that Deyandara had thought a blessing-piece, what seemed so long ago. Catairanach's token.

“I saw a goddess in the well,” Ahjvar said.

“Maybe she showed you a lie.” Ghu knelt again, with the clay disc in his hand, found a flattish stone for an anvil, and with the handle of his knife pounded the seal to dust. Nothing spectacular followed. At the first shattering there was, maybe, the fresh scent of water, a moment. That was all. He swept the dust into his hand, but, since Ahjvar had turned away, simply wiped it into the grass. A knot of fighting came their way, Praitans forcing Praitans back, and impossible to know which had come with the high king or which were the traitors. They saw the dark shape of Ahjvar, the Red Mask's long cloak, black though it was in the moonlight, and all fled.

Mist crept up the hillside. Ahj had a handful of stems, was muttering over them.

“Don't need the damned weeds,” he said, looking up. “Not really. Enough to know they should be here. Make me a circle and keep it clear.” But he began laying out whatever it was he had found anyway, starting at the east, so Ghu cut a circle in the turf around him, no more than drawing a line with his knife blade, but the light of the moon, low in the west, found it, and it glowed a spider-silk thread.

The mist stopped at the line and followed it.

Let me help you
.

“You can freeze in the cold hells for all I care.”

“Ahj!” But there had been no help for Ahjvar when he sought it, from any of the gods or goddess of Praitan, had there?

And what was I to do against Catairanach, whom the folk of this land had given care of this land?
the little goddess asked.
Here, in this, I can help. If you will allow it, king of the
duina.

“We need three,” Ahjvar almost snarled. “I didn't want to have to count the damned hag anyway.”

Which was yes. She took no form at first, beyond the mist, but though the ridge had no god, she was the brook that spread through the swamp, and she rose in shimmers of mist and moonlight, a shape that might be birdlike, a heron, maybe, or a crane. Ghu reached a hand and drew her in, and dew silvered them, mist-wrapped. He stood ready against anything human or Red Mask that rushed them, but the Red Masks were scattered, and the humans moved away from the eerily shimmering patch of light. There were drums again, but he didn't know what they might signal. Horns distant to the north.