The Lady (47 page)

Holla-Sayan, human again, though he ought to have known by now four legs were surer when you could hardly stand upright, limped after him, caught up and walked with a hand on his shoulder, letting Mikki take his weight when the ground betrayed him.

“Tell me,” Mikki said at last.

“I—Great Gods, Mikki, what can I tell you? I think she isn't coming back.”

Mikki stopped but didn't look around. Stone before him, ash drifting over paving-stones. They had done nothing about the crumpled body and fallen head of the young priestess, or whatever she had been before she was a devil, but she wasn't theirs and he didn't care.

I know
. Mikki had seen it in her eyes. His wolf in tears. “Why?”

“I swore not to—”

“Tell me, damned dog, or—” He sighed. “Just tell me.”

“Lakkariss.”

“What about Lakkariss? A bargain for a weapon to destroy Ogada, who murdered her brother and slew my mother, that she'd bring justice to the others, that's what she wants me to think, but she didn't need that damned shard of the hells to kill Heuslar Ogada. She didn't need to go hunting Ghatai, or Tu'usha, at all.”

“You'd have left Ghatai to make himself a god, destroying Attalissa, a real goddess, not some imposter like the Lady? To do—whatever it was he intended, after that?”

“
I
wouldn't, though there wouldn't be much I could have done about either. But Vartu—yes, probably. Maybe. I don't know. So what about Lakkariss, dog? I'm not an utter fool. I know this wasn't some change of heart and a chance to serve the Old Great Gods. I've asked. She slides aside from answering and over the years I've learnt not to ask. Press her too hard and she walks away. Always comes back, though,” he added under his breath. “Never looked like that. So,” more clearly, “Why has Vartu become the headsman of the Old Great Gods?”

“You're their hostage against her.”

Mikki shut his eyes, which didn't help. Moth, Moth,
Moth.
He ached with the loss of her, already. After a moment he started walking again.

The tunnel, the whole cliff-wall of the sunken dell of the temple, had collapsed inwards. Priests and temple guard milled about where the tunnel to the gate had been, shouting uselessly at one another, but they scattered away when they caught sight of the bear. Mikki showed his teeth to hurry them on, and picked a way up the unsteady slump of fractured stone, the—dog now—following.

And she said, Sien-Shava, that's Jochiz, I think, will be hunting her, now, for killing Tu'usha. She—I don't know, Mikki, she seemed afraid
.

“Huh.” A haze of dust hung over the ward, yellow in the morning sun. Part of the wall between the wards had fallen, and several houses. He needed—to be out in the wild places, away from men and their unending noise.

There were soldiers in the street, but they wore the black scarves of the loyalist militia or the grey tunics of street guard, and he recognized a few of the captains as Jugurthos's men, and there, Jugurthos himself. The Warden of the City shouted and waved down the overexcited boys who'd been setting arrow to string, turned his pony their way.

Holla-Sayan, human, sank down on the dusty blocks of the fallen gatehouse as if he were simply too tired to go on. “What now?”

“Here? That's Hadidu's problem, and Jugurthos's and the senate's, not yours and not mine. You belong to Gaguush and your child. Marakand's had enough from you.”

Holla-Sayan nodded once. He was grey with weariness. “Mikki, what are you going to do?”

“Find Moth,” Mikki said. That seemed obvious, once voiced.

“Where?” asked Holla-Sayan. “How?”

“I don't know where, yet, but how not, when she holds my heart?” He set his muzzle on the devil's shoulder. “Go to your wife, Blackdog.”

“Yes.” Holla-Sayan looked up. His left eye was swollen and filled with blood, unseeing, but that was an improvement over what it had been. “Yes.”

“Blackdog, Lord of Forests.” All Marakand had picked up that title from somewhere, but Jugurthos knew Mikki's name. The formality was for the benefit of the Clothmarket captain, riding cautiously up beside him. Jugurthos waved the man irritably away. “What's happened in the temple?”

“What's happened in the city?” Mikki countered.

“Ilbialla's slain. We came to—I don't know what we came to do. We took Templefoot Ward easily, they couldn't surrender fast enough. It seemed almost every second man was a deserter from the temple guard or even a priest or priestess, and all saying the Lady was an imposter, and mad, or knew one who had told them so. We found the fires down about the temple and the gates open, but I wasn't certain I wanted to order my people inside. Certainly not once the lightning struck. Or whatever it was. It's quiet now?” He made that a question.

“The Lady and the devil who took her name are both dead.”

“Dead. The devil. But then—” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Then, it's over.”

“For us. Not for you. Your city. What about Gurhan? Ivah?”

“We're not sure. Nour and Hadidu have gone up there, and the senate is—they all came hurrying to the palace steps after the second blast . . .”

“Cattle,” muttered Holla-Sayan. “All standing under the one tree on a hilltop. In a thunderstorm. Idiots.”

“I did think so. I ordered them to scatter till we knew what was going on, or—or, I don't know what I thought could come. But Beni Sessihz stayed, sitting there in his chair. To be a sign, he said, that this time the senate stood for the gods, uncowed. Silly old—coughing so he can hardly breathe. He should be home in bed. He'll make himself a legend yet.” Jugurthos watched Holla-Sayan warily. “The priesthood of the Lady, the temple guard. Are any of them left in there?”

“I didn't do any of that, it was the devil.”

“Yes,” said Mikki. “Some have survived. And think what you do next, Warden. It will shape what your city becomes. Dog . . .”
Ivah's fine, or she should be; I left her safe in Gurhan's cave and there's been no second attack on it. But we need to get out of here, before the Warden mistakes us for gods and makes this whole mess of a city our problem
.

A nod, no more. Mikki waited, until man slipped into dog again and the Blackdog had loped, still limping, down the street. Leaving the Warden of the City without any further word—and the man only bowed and did not call after them—Mikki followed so far as the open space of the Greenmarket, where camels and carts came with cut fodder for the household goats and the beasts of burden kept within the city walls. It was deserted now, save for a patrol on guard about the market blockhouse.

You all right, bear?
Holla-Sayan asked suddenly, then, looking around.

“No,” he said. “But I will find her. Go to your wife.”

I'll see you again, then. Sometime. Sayan bless
.

He watched the dog running, gone. He wouldn't see Holla-Sayan again, not in Marakand. He wouldn't go back to find Ivah, either. She would be fine. She was safe in the god's cave; she would emerge to find her friends, her allies. She didn't need him, an unlikely step-step-father, to watch over her shoulder. He was going. Leave everything, his axe, his carpenter's tools, even the damned horse-skull; he couldn't lug such things about with him. Just—go. To where he belonged. Which wasn't the Hardenvald. Demons hid their hearts, it was said, in the land that gave them being. Hah. He'd left the Hardenvald behind long ago. It wasn't stone and hill and forest that anchored him.

CHAPTER XXXI

They rode slowly, letting the horses walk. Ghu did not speak or even look either of them in the eye, and Ahjvar, without question, took Deyandara up behind him, though she had always had the impression he wanted her as far from him as possible, before. Now she knew why, and he seemed to have stopped caring. Or maybe a granddaughter wasn't a woman, didn't stir up nightmares by her closeness. It was oddly comforting to lean against him in her weariness, to be a child with a grandfather, safe. Their course took them winding through valleys, keeping low, below the horizon. Though they passed a pair of dead Grasslanders, Ketsim's messengers to Durandau, maybe, both with arrow-wounds, a token handful of earth thrown over them as a blessing, they saw no sign of Hicca's folk. There were few signs of anyone, though there were villages, folk whose lord had been the queen direct, in this region. Ghu was choosing a course that took them by the remoter pastures. The murrain hadn't hit the cattle here. Those, they did see, and sheep, and an occasional distant shepherd who usually vanished at the sight of them. Twice their winding crossed the track of many riders.

“Where are we going?” she asked, eventually.

“There was a battle fought at Orsamoss. Just last night. Do you know it?” Ahjvar shook his head. “Seems like years . . .”

“Yes.”

“Your folk aren't all traitors. A force under some of your lords came in time to save the high king, when the Red Masks and Marakanders broke his army and put it to flight. How they knew to come—maybe they were coming to meet him anyway.”

“What happened to the Red Masks? Ghu told Lin—”

“I did.” Ahjvar laughed. She didn't think she'd heard him laugh before; this raised the hair on her arms. “The Lady made a serious mistake there. I hope someone's able to take further advantage of it in Marakand.”

She waited, but he only said, “I'm thinking it was your Marnoch who led the Catairnans to Durandau.”

“Not
my
Marnoch. But probably.”

“Our Marnoch? I hope he lived.”

They were both sober and silent as Ghu after that. She fell asleep leaning against Ahjvar's smoky back, feeling the heat of him even through his coat. She slept soundly as she ever had in her safe bed, till he woke her, reaching back to tap her hip.

“Down,” he said.

She didn't see any danger, but she did as he said. They were in a valley bottom, below a brush-covered hillside, with Ghu circling back to them.

“Ahj?” he asked.

“Something I have to do,” Ahjvar said. “Before sunset. In case it's too late, later.”

He left them both standing to roam up into the scrubby trees, moving slowly, stiffly, putting out a hand now and then to steady himself against a trunk. Deyandara looked to Ghu for an explanation.

“Too late for what?”

He shrugged.

Ahjvar wasn't gone long. He returned with a handful of long, leafy switches.

“So . . . Granddaughter. This curse of mine. You still going to call it a story?”

“I—they didn't die because I went to the
dinaz
, Cattiga and Gilru. They didn't. Did they?”

“Great Gods, no. If anyone . . . but that's a lot to blame on one curse. We never had the southern pox in the land in my day, though.”

“Winds change,” said Ghu vaguely.

Ahjvar gave him a strange look. “Yes,” he said, and knelt down, offered a hand, and drew Deyandara down facing him.

“Your stories tell you I was a wizard?”

“Yes. Of course. You couldn't have cursed the
duina
, otherwise.”

“Throwing poison into the headwaters,” he said. “Of course it's going to taint all the watercourses flowing from there, in some way, greater or lesser. On and on. We could make a blessing-piece and bury it, but it's all gravel here, no clay, and I think this will do it, with you here, queen of the
duina
still, and last child of Hyllau.” His voice was rough on the woman's name.

“It's a spell?”

“Of a sort. Ghu? Here. The third. For witness.”

Ghu knelt down carefully, so they made, between them, a triangle.

“It's simple,” Ahjvar said, and if she didn't doubt it was possible, she might have thought he sounded defensive about that. “But to the point.” He thrust his dagger into the soil and sliced the grassroots. “Now. Birch,” he said, putting one long, smooth-barked twig into her hand. “Hawthorn. And hazel.” He clasped both her hands around the twigs like a nosegay of flowers, folded his own over them. But the base of the hawthorn had been stripped of thorns. She could feel how his hands shook, then, and they felt fevered, dry and burning. But his burns had gone scabby already. “. . . which are new life, and kingship, and purification,” he said. “I, who was Catairlau, say, let the evil and the ill-wishing I put on the son of Hyllau and the children of Hyllanim and the land of Hyllanim, witting or unwitting, be past and done with . . .” His grip on her hands was crushing. “. . . and never return upon them.”

He brought her hands down to the earth, and together they laid the twigs in the slit in the turf, pressing it down over them, burying them. And with their faces so close together, he kissed her forehead, still holding her hands.

“So.” Let her go and sat back, with a brief flash of a smile. “Since I don't remember what I said, being busy dying at the time, that'll have to do.”

She wasn't sure what she could say, so she took her time about wiping the earth off her hands and standing. Did she feel lighter? That was simply having lost the feeling Ahjvar was about to shout or strike out at her in some disdainful impatience. He looked—she wanted for a moment to wrap him in blankets and smooth the hair out of his eyes, tell him it was all right, everything would be fine in the morning, as her nurse had done when she was small and ill. Ghu was still looking at the flattened grass. He put his own palm over it. Ahjvar didn't see, head down, eyes shut. When Ghu raised his hand, there was a bright-green shoot of spring there, forcing through the grass. Birch, hawthorn, hazel? Deyandara couldn't tell, not from the small furled leaves.

Ghu rose and walked away, leaving Ahjvar there, unmoving. She touched his shoulder, warily, and when he looked up, eyes bloodshot and grey-shadowed, offered her good hand. He took it and almost pulled her down, as if he truly did need her weight to brace against in rising.