The Lady (51 page)

There was thunder, and the earth shuddered yet again. A cascade of pebbles rattled down the far wall, and grit rained from the roof. Ivah hunched against it, heart jumping, but the hill did not come down around her.

A crack had opened in the far end, or something cast a shadow, black, narrow, and the sound of water was suddenly loud, a bright chiming stream over stone. She didn't dare move. If shadow, it stood behind her. But it broadened, split, and there was still a fissure into darkness, and a shape that came forward. First it drifted, being shadow, and then dust-motes golden against the dark, and then a man in a white caftan, bare feet silent.

He crouched down, still silent, and took her hands. His were cool, like earth merely shaped to mimic flesh and bone. His face was not an old man's, though his hair was silver-white.

He said nothing. She could not speak, but she felt as though he drank, somehow, from her, all the memory of what had been, and yet withdrew his seeking and delicately looked away when she felt burgeoning all the life that had brought her to Marakand. He leaned brow to brow and then kissed her forehead, let her hands go to brush a trail of tears from the corner of her eye with his thumb, though she had not known she was weeping.

“The devil is dead,” the god said then, in a voice that was soft, and deep with the colours of the earth, and yet not so deep as Mikki's. A singer's voice. “The devil is dead and her works undone, but the Lady Marakanat my sister is dead, and Ilbialla, beautiful Ilbialla is burnt from the world. My poor Mansour's child is dead and gone to her long, long road. But there is still one priest who thinks of the good of the folk in this city, and honest and honourable men and women who will seek to bring justice to its laws and its rule again. Daughter of the Great Grass and Nabban, come with me to find them.”

There had been no place in Jugurthos's foray to Templefoot Ward for a caravaneer still too weak to walk even half a mile without sitting down for a rest, or a wizard whose chief strength lay in minor wardings. Or for Hadidu, still stunned and devastated with his grief, too wounded for mourning. Nour and Hadidu stayed, sometimes joined by Tulip, watching the patrols go to and from the ruin of the market, couriers clattering up, getting occasional reports. They heard how the valley of Gurhan's cave had been swept by fire before ever Ilbialla was attacked, the details of Fleshmarket's bloody night and victorious morning, with the temple forces pushed out once again. The Red Masks had all been mysteriously destroyed in the night, as well, and the old menagerie keeper murdered, and a gang of priests and temple guards badly disguised as caravaneers were found slaughtered to a man far too near the library for anyone's peace of mind. Extra patrols of the militia were sent to the hill. They heard how Jugurthos, forcing the barricaded gateways into Templefoot easily, had found the ward mostly undefended, but the temple itself a battleground for—he didn't know what, his confidential messenger to Tulip and Hadidu said, and so he held back, waiting, uncertain at the last.

But the fires died, and after one final concussion that shook the city and set the dogs and babies howling, there was stillness, and only a golden haze, like the aftermath of a sandstorm, in the bright noon.

Nour had just spotted one of the couriers again, the woman with the piebald who tended to have the more personal of the verbal reports for their ears alone, when Hadidu, who'd been kneeling, eyes shut and head cradled on his arms in the crenel of the tower's battlements, lurched to his feet.

“Gurhan,” he said, almost whispering.

“What?” Nour took his arm, thinking he was drowsing and might topple over the edge.

“Gurhan! Did you hear him?”

Nour didn't accuse him of dreaming then. Hadidu's eyes were fixed somewhere else, remote, shadowed with grief and yet no longer hopeless in defeat. Seeing—Nour couldn't imagine what, something beyond Ilbialla's death, that was certain. And he'd had nothing stronger than sweet coffee.

“No. Hadi, wait—”

But Hadidu was running down the stairs, leaving Nour to follow.

CHAPTER XXXIV

The scent of smoke was strong in the air, but that was drifting over from the Praitannec camp; it was nothing to do with the ghost. Or maybe it was their own hair and clothing. The smell of corrupting bodies was only his imagination, though the crows still squabbled and the ravens cried harshly, on the ridge over the Orsamoss. Ghu would have gone farther, but Ahjvar, who had gone down to hands and knees in the brook to drink, heedless even of his sword, had simply collapsed again as Ghu tried to take him along a folded furrow of the hills, away from the smell. Ghu had dragged his arm over his shoulder, forced him to walk a little farther, just a little, to where a thicket of juniper poured down a steep and stony bank, and there he had fallen again, crawling in under the spiny boughs. It was shelter enough. There were no fugitives here, and they had passed through and beyond the roaming Praitannec pickets in the fog.

“Food?” Ghu suggested, crawling in after him and sitting by his side, back against a trunk and branches brushing his hair. Jui and Jiot settled a little away, each curled into a knot, sleeping the moment they lay down. Food. Not that they had any. He would have to make a raid on the camp and steal a couple of waterskins while he was at it. Maybe find Deyandara and make his farewells. She would be all right, now. Ahjvar's curse on her ancestors was cleaned away, and she was among friends. The death he had felt lying over her was lifted. Even Yeh-Lin meant well by her, though how long that would last. . . . And the goddess Orsa had gone to the kings. Praitan could save itself, now. “Bread, Ahjvar, if I can find any?”

Ahjvar, lying with his head on his arm, didn't answer.

“Ahj?”

He stirred, just enough to roll over. “No. Don't go anywhere.”

“Food and drink. You look like a dead man.” He did, frighteningly so, gaunt and grey.

“I am a dead man. Don't leave me alone.”

Food and water and dry clothes. Ahjvar was soaked from his plunge into the brook, and shivering, but his skin burned, not a good sign, Ghu thought. He unrolled his bundle and wrapped the blanket around Ahjvar.

“Catairanach's gone and I'm still here. It should have ended. She should have ended. We should have died with the damned goddess.”

“Yeh-Lin didn't kill the goddess.”

“She should have killed me.”

“Ahj, no.”

“You will kill me. You promised you would. When the hag wakes again—before she wakes again, Ghu, Great Gods, please.”

“If—”

“You can. You didn't lie to me, gods, you didn't. Because she'll kill you, she'll kill you first of all, and Ghu, I can't, she's a wizard again, with all my strength and her own will, and you can't just tie me up this time.” His voice rose, panicked.

“Hush, hush. I haven't lied to you, Ahj. I don't lie.”

“You don't tell me things.”

“Sometimes I don't. I'm sorry. Sometimes I don't know things. I don't see myself.”

Ahjvar's hand was on his wrist, fingers digging in like claws. “You're not another devil.”

“No.”

“Who are you, really?”

“Ghu.”

“
What
, then?”

“Nabban,” he said, reluctant, as if the words alone made it true and if he could hold them back, they might still find the ruin on the coast of the Gulf of Taren again, and the sea, and the south winds on the downs. “I am . . . becoming . . . Nabban. But I don't always see that. I forget it, for long times. Believe that, Ahj. I don't—didn't, always know. Yeh-Lin says . . . but I could not have saved you, when I sat on your garden wall in the rain. I only knew I wanted to—to be some light, in your shadows and your pain.” A breath. “You drew me like a fire,” he whispered.

There was no retreat. He did not think he could go back to not seeing himself, to drifting, simple and wide-eyed, waiting, not knowing what he waited for. Some step had been too far. When he freed the first of the Red Masks, maybe. When he pulled the dogs to him, into the current of becoming, and they forged ahead on his road, looking back, tails wagging.
Hurry up, then, if we're going this way, things to do. . .
. When he killed a man for a horse, for Ahj. That was not his road, but it fractured the shell of innocence, left him no retreat. Or when he put a devil of the north into the earth, even if only for a little, because she threatened what he had taken it upon himself to protect.

His. He did not want to become like Catairanach, destroying what he most desired to hold.

“The sun's setting.”

“Yes, I know. Come here.”

Ahjvar rolled over, laid his head in Ghu's lap like a weary child. Ghu pulled the blanket over him again, fingers in his hair. He burned, and shivered.

It had been so easy to thrust the broken souls of the Red Masks out of the web the Lady had made. They had no real bond to the husks of their bodies any longer; they had yearned to be free, even though the soul itself was broken and decayed, the self lost, the road of the Old Great Gods beyond reach. It was so easy to kill a man. Not Ahjvar, though. Catairanach had made him to endure in the world, and if Ghu did not unmake that, he would so endure. Maybe Ahjvar was right after all, and he had been dead these ninety years, and was only a thing, shaped by the goddess's curse to be a vessel for the entangled souls. Simple, perhaps, if not easy, to pluck them free and cast them to the road to start their long journey. But together? He had no idea. What if Hyllau still battened on Ahjvar, still clung, rooted in him? What had Yeh-Lin said, If you have to kill him, let it be for his own sake?

“Ahjvar? I could—send you to the road. Both of you. I could.”

“I'm tired, Ghu.”

“I know. I know.” He stroked his hair, soothing.

“I don't want to wake up wondering who I've killed. No more mornings.”

“I know.”

“She's not going to let me go, this time. She's strong. The Lady—”

“Hush, Ahj. Ahjvar, if I—”

Too late. Ahjvar shuddered, and dogs both came alert, growling, as the man rolled over and the eyes glared up at him, but Ghu held him, fingers touching the lips, the other on his heart.

“No,” he said, and turned his hand, closed his fist. He had her, a grip on her, at least, and he held Ahj. “He won't be yours, tonight. Ever again.”

Rage. No fear. She was more than the Red Masks had been; she was will, and memory, but, he thought, as an animal's memory. Emotion and urge. Did she have a voice he could give back to her? He didn't think so. She had never spoken when she had Ahjvar's tongue to use. Perhaps her thoughts no longer ran in such shapes; he had no way of knowing, if she could not or would not speak. He would not step within her soul to see what truly lay there. And what could she say? That she had a right to survive? Not over others' lives. She had slain herself in spite and arrogance, destroying the life she could have had in her greed and pride. Hyllau had destroyed herself; she had no right to take Ahjvar with her. No defence.

It was not so simple as to drive a broken soul from a broken body, out of the knot of the Lady's necromancy. Not so simple at all. He had slowly to tease out the strands of Hyllau's soul, gathering them, a great, mucky, rooted thing, that ripped, sometimes, and tore, and if souls could bleed, he thought Ahjvar bled. It was not seeing but a feeling under his hands, and the scent of smoke and burning flesh. Ahjvar for him was sea air and thyme, and the sound of waves below the cliffs, but under that Catairlau was old, frail bone and ash, and the hag clung to him, new tendrils latching on as fast as Ghu could draw them out. Dreamless Catairanach held her victim close, the goddess's will still wrapped round him, as a dead man's hand still gripped his spear on the battlefield, or a slain mother her living child; the goddess bound him to be the shelter for the child even such a desire as hers had not been able to save. There had been nothing of Hyllau to remake save teeth and a few charred shards; Hyllau's fire had fed on herself first of all, bursting from within, before it reached for her lover.

Ghu could wish he had not seen that, felt that death.

Better to let them go together after all. Ahj
remembered
that, felt it, still, in his dreams.

Hyllau's desire, poisonous, prompting him to cut them both away . . . oh, she was sly. She still held what she claimed for her own and would deny it to anyone else.

The devil Yeh-Lin Dotemon hadn't slain Catairanach, though she could have. Maybe she chose not to kill for her own reasons; maybe she had learnt mercy and temperance, as she said. Maybe she had seen there was no life in Ahjvar, but what the goddess shaped for him.

Yes, it was better Ahj at least die free of Hyllau. There was a horror for endless nightmare, that what Ahjvar called the hag might feed on him, even after the death of the body, even as his soul sought its way to the Old Great Gods.

Hyllau struck suddenly for Ghu's throat, breaking free, but he caught the hands and folded them back down. Ahjvar might be the stronger man, but not tonight.

“No,” Ghu said, holding her. He shut his eyes, and reached.

The mountain and the river. Always there. All he had ever had to do was let them take him.

No more wandering.

Black water, the lightless depths and the unmelting snow that burned against the sky, the stone that bound them, running under all the brown land, the green land, from the deserts of the north to the sea. This was Nabban.

She cowered, clung, but he followed her easily now, traced every root and every thread, loosed every claw and gathered her into his hands, and he walked Catairanach's sleep and slid himself where she had been, edging her out of what she had shaped, the will that, even unconscious, held Ahjvar to the world.

Not what he had promised.

But I love him
.

So had Hyllau.