CHAPTER III

Ahjvar’s heart still pounded; legs still had that trembling, treacherous edge of failure in the knees. Palms slick with sweat, when he gripped the edge of stone, clambering up, toe in a crack, holding himself that one moment by the toe of his boot and the grip of his fingers till this other foot found the higher hold he had scouted from below. Heaved and rolled himself over the edge, lay on his back a moment, just breathing. Stars above, though light lingered in the west. He held the pattern of the dance in his mind yet, the weaving of movement and blade’s edge that wrote almond, to forbid, and walnut for secrecy, and prickly ash, to deny what was, or might be, worked against him. Wizardry of lost Praitan bound in twig and herb, but he had learned to make it something else long ago, held in body and blood and powers that ran in him beyond his own, strong though he had been in wizardry even when he was—that other man, long ago.

He had run. Not a retreat, not thought and planning and the best choice. Run in panic. He’d felt the devil reaching, as if Jochiz groped to seize the heart out of his chest and hold it burning, a fire that would not let him go till it was finished with him, a fire that would reach beyond him, through him, to consume Ghu—he had not cared for Nabban, in that moment, not the god of the land, his god of the mountain and the river, only Ghu, the light and warmth and heart of him, feared to know him burning in the devil’s hatred till they were dead alike, ash and bone—Not again, not again—

Don’t think it. Don’t. Breathe. Find a stillness. Make the place of quiet, of roots and cold waters rising. The scent of pines. The mass of stone beneath him, not this stone, broken and shifting, tremors and fires beneath—the solid mass of the mountain that was home. Make that stillness. Cold. Sharp. Everything clear. Wizardry wrapping him, shield against the devil, thin enough, but over him too the pines, the snows, a strength not his.

Enough?

No. Not if Jochiz chose to exert himself.

Something reached, touched…passed on.

Or maybe? A touch, where he crouched, as if ducking down might help. Arm over him, body pressed close. Something vast. Even a god strong among the gods of the earth was not a strength to withstand a devil. But enough to be no easy prey. And perhaps the devil was not yet willing to force that fight.

They couldn’t count on it.

The feeling of another by him, over him, faded, and that searching presence did not come again. The last ember-glow of sunset had faded, colour drained out of the thickening night, but a waxing gibbous moon was high overhead and he did not need even that. Owl’s eyes. God’s eyes. Shape of the land, making itself known. He went on, climbing, scrambling, slithering where he had not intended to, but he was still shaken and lost the path he had meant to retrace. Came, by midnight, to where he had meant to lie up to await the dawn. Not a good idea. Keep moving. Still too close, though he had come east into the rising mountains and was in a long furrow that twisted a crooked way south, high broken hills to the west, between him and the Westron line of march.

He thought he had come to the right place, at any rate. Cliff, treeless slope with towering dead stalks of fennel making what looked, all silvered and shadowed, like a dwarf forest of palms. No movement, no sound, but he could—something in him could feel—a warmth, call it life or soul or what you would. Hiding. Patience. Fear and boredom.

“Just me,” he called softly, in a language a hundred years dead. The young man was picking it up, though, in overheard dribs and drabs, putting it together with what lingered in the dialect of Nabbani they called Taren now, and which wouldn’t be understood at all if one spoke it in the empire, outside the ports.

Ailan stirred, uncoiling from the nest he had made himself in the grassy undergrowth, like a fawn left by its mother to wait out the day. Fennel stalks crackled as he made his way down, crawling to where the terrain turned too stony even for those to grow, the open ground by the small meltwater pool, frost-fringed. Feeling his way, mostly. He had his own pack slung awkwardly from one shoulder, dragged Ahjvar’s.

“Starting to think I should come look for you.”

“No! Cold hells, no. Never!”

“Don’t know how I’d find my own way back.”

“You shouldn’t be here in the first place. And better die lost here than run into the Westrons.”

“Cheerful. You hurt? Your voice sounds funny.” A hand came reaching, a wary fluttering. Ailan knew better than to touch him. Ahjvar caught his wrist.

“ It’s nothing.”

“’Course not. Let me see. Is your nose broken?”

“No.”

“Let me see. Make a light.”

Wretched—people didn’t talk back to him. They watched him warily and got out of the way. Called him “Rihswera” as the Nabbani ambassador did, and bowed, and that was just fine if it gave him space.

He called up a light, a silvery moonglow in the hand. Small wizardry and not too likely to draw attention to break his shielding.

His headscarf was sodden dark where he had used it to blot his face, hold his nose, a brief pause in his flight when the dripping down his chin became demanding. Coat spattered with dark stains where he had used it to protect his arm, too. Torn.

“Nori bless, what happened? Did you find—? Here, let me.”

Ailan was only trying to help and Ahjvar did not strike his hand away, when he unwrapped Ahjvar’s scarf from about his neck and used a clean end of it, wetted in the pool, to dab cautiously at his face.

“It’s not bad. We need to keep moving.” Put some more miles between themselves and the Westron camp. They’d have moonlight through the gathering streaks of cloud for a while yet, if they kept out of the shadow of the western slopes. Some pursuit would be out after them with daybreak.

“Not till you’re cleaned up. Old Great Gods, what a mess.”

Ahjvar gave himself up to having his face washed, like a child who’d been brawling and gotten his nose bloodied. There was something…appealing in the way the young man refused to be cowed.

Or aggravating. He should have knocked Ailan around the ears and sent him straight back when he realized the young man had followed, trailing behind him, falling farther and farther back. That he was going to lose himself and die in the damned hills. Went back to retrieve him and—had been so close to striking. And that was what he was used to, Ailan, and so Ahjvar hadn’t. Argued, but didn’t even tell him how stupid he was being, because the Taren had a lifetime of the world telling him he was not fast enough or strong enough or smart enough, and it came down to, not lucky enough, this one. Laid out the sensible arguments, swallowing anger and frustration. Ailan had only gone sullen and angry himself, terrified all the while, which damned well hurt. In the end Ahjvar had given in to the argument that he needed someone to keep watch for him “or something”—Ailan himself hadn’t been able to think of what use, precisely, he might be. Even then he’d still looked like a scolded dog, and still been shaking, inside, with the fear of what he’d chosen. He baffled Ahjvar, he really did, as not the most stubborn and over-confident imperial princess ever had.

Ailan couldn’t find his own way back to the city. That had been the telling argument, in the end. Ahjvar didn’t know what to do with the boy, yet if you took in a feral pup, you didn’t give it a feed and drive it off the next day. But what was it with young strays latching on to him like he was some mother duck, anyway? He was hardly anyone’s idea of a father-figure.

“I guess it’s not broken,” Ailan said. “You look—you scared me. So much blood.”

“Noses bleed.”

“Yeah, yours did. What happened? Did you find him? And he bit you?”

“Obviously.”

“Lucky you still have a nose. Lucky you still have a face.”

“How bad is it?” He couldn’t see, squinting down his nose. Red smears.

“Dunno. ’S all still there. That’s pretty good, really, for a dog attack. More like he was just playing, really. I think you’ve got a hole right through the side, though.”

Forgetting himself, Ailan took Ahjvar’s chin in his hand, frowning, inspecting, and that was too close, too much.

“You could put a jewel in that. Black Desert fashion. Well, for a woman. But turquoise would look good.”

“No.”

“Maybe your god would like it?”

“No!” He could feel the Taren’s breath on his face. Feel his hand trembling. Hear—was it hearing?—the racing heart. Afraid, for all his labouring to make jokes. Ahjvar pushed him off.

“Sorry.” Ailan backed away. “Maybe you’d better wash your beard? Um, I filled the water-gourds before it got dark—”

“Good.”

“— yeah, so you don’t have to worry about dirtying the pool if you stick your face in it…you want me to look at your arm, too? If he can track by smell…”

“Even a mortal hound could follow our scent without the blood.” But Ahjvar did as Ailan suggested. It was sense. Ghu would tell him the same.

Ailan rinsed out the scarf, wrung it and tied it to the strap of a pack to dry. Sat back on his heels, watching.

Nothing but a few scratches on Ahjvar’s arm. Not anything even Ghu would worry about. Ahvar clenched the light in his fist, extinguishing it. The longer he let it go, the greater the chance a wizard’s searching would notice. And he was only guessing human trackers wouldn’t be set loose till the dawn.

“So is he a traitor, or what?” Ailan asked.

They fell into a rhythm of walking, Ailan sticking close enough that Ahjvar could reach to steady him when the ground dropped suddenly or a stone rose to trip him. A silence that felt companionable. For all his willingness—maybe it was need—to chatter when he felt unsure of himself, Ailan could be silent. Foxes were yipping down the valley. Stones, unavoidably, clicked and clattered underfoot. The Taren’s doing, not his. Patches of snow gave Ailan some light, reflecting the moon, but had to be skirted not to leave plain tracks.

“You didn’t answer,” Ailan said softly, when they had come into a stand of trees again, pale trunks twisted by the winds, and were picking a way around snow-patches. “Is the Blackdog a traitor?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happened to him, what’s been done. He’s no prisoner.”

But he did know. He felt the horror of it in his gut, growing into a smothering weight of nightmare, and if he began to brood on that—

Ahjvar had known such service. Better to be dead.

“Jochiz came after me to defend him.”

“You saw the All-Holy?” Ailan’s cautious voice rose, forgetful. “You fought him? Did you—is he dead?”

“Fool, no. I ran away and he stayed to try to save the dog.”

“You killed the Blackdog?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t intend to.” He had only been sent to spy, to speak if he could find the chance. To report back. Not to meddle in devil’s workings that he didn’t understand. Patterns of home, of finding, of a road…wizardry that must weigh nothing against a devil’s chains. He didn’t understand the shapeshifter’s sudden weakness, as if he’d been struck with some poison. The arrow had been meant as a last resort; he’d wanted to talk to the Blackdog, find out what he was doing in Jochiz’s train. Argue with him, if he claimed Sien-Shava Jochiz had some great cause worth his betrayal. Ahjvar might know, too well, the making and the uses of poisons; he didn’t deal in such things any more, and he’d nearly missed, the dog had come on so fast. The wound shouldn’t even have slowed him, unless steel itself was somehow anathema to him, a thing he had never heard of. Something had nearly undone the shapeshifter though, and given him his chance with the spells he seemed to have bound into shape, hands moving, mind drifting, dream-edge walking while he thought he watched, alert. Not quite certain what he had done, even, or what he had meant to do. Lure him within the pattern of them on the ground…?

Ghu was fey and saw what his champion did not, and reached through him…

So what did you think we were doing, idiot boy, weaving spells against a devil? I worry when you start playing with wizardry. You don’t know what you’re doing.

Nothing answered. He touched the necklace at his throat, shells and acorns pierced and woven into a braid of hair, human and horse.

Ghu was very far away, and a god could not reach beyond their own land.

But they lay within one another. They made a new shape in the world. Not a braid. Two rivers that flowed into one.

Whatever had stricken down the shapeshifter, he’d better not be counting on it to last. And he did not think, whatever Ghu might hope— if Ghu had anything at all to do with it and it was not his own uneasy wizardry—that a few twists of weeds in a wish for the lost would do much good.

“It’s whispered the Blackdog’s a traitor,” the storyteller had said. Her name was Moth, or Ulfhild, or Vartu, but Ghu had met her first the day he had also met Ivah, and she had been telling stories then, in a market of Marakand, and so she was forever the storyteller to him. Ghu trusted her, as much as he trusted any devil. Ahjvar himself found her hard to read. Still and cold. Deep water, and dark. “They’ve kept that rumour close, the wardens, but the spies Yeh-Lin recruited reported him as the All-Holy’s most trusted companion throughout the winter. Man or dog, always there, always at Sien-Shava’s side.”

Sien-Shava. Yeh-Lin called him Jochiz.

“How do you decide what name to go by?” Ahjvar asked. An interruption, and rude, but he wanted to understand. Names mattered. His did. It wasn’t one he had been born with, didn’t even belong to his own folk, neither that of his birth nor the one of his choosing. A name of the eastern deserts. He’d taken it off a man he’d killed, another assassin employed by a rival to his then-employer. Probably hadn’t been that man’s own, either.

But it was the name Ghu called him by.

Names mattered, if you would hold the shape of a thing.

“Myself?” the storyteller asked. “Or him? I’m Moth, mostly. It…fits very comfortably. Sien-Shava, though—is Jochiz and only Jochiz, in his own mind. He despises what’s human in himself and yet it shapes who he is, so strongly. More than many of us, I think. So, I call him Sien-Shava. He hates it.”

“Petty.”

She grinned. Always startling. She was so sombre, in manner, in dress. In mood. Mostly she smiled for the bear-demon, for him alone. He had been there too, a great golden bulk slouched between the cedars of Gurhan’s hill. Opening dark eyes, at that.

“Petty,” Mikki rumbled. “But a good thing for us all to remember, Rihswera of Nabban. There is a human soul within him yet, for all he wants to think himself a god, and it was a nasty, corrupted and corrupting little soul when he was nothing but an outlawed wizard. Holla-Sayan is no traitor.”

“No,” Moth agreed.

“Prisoner,” the bear said. “Slave.”

“The Lady did so,” Ahjvar said. He could hardly find his voice. Ailan, sitting chin on his knees a little apart from them all, but where he could watch Ahjvar, frowned at that.

“The dead wizards? That was necromancy.”

“But nonetheless.” It was Gurhan who spoke. The god of this hill, gnarled, worm-holed stone, dwarf held in the feet of the Pillars of the Sky yet more ancient than any of their peaks. He was sole god of Marakand now, and with the devils and Ahjvar in their counsels. A committee, perhaps, preparing for war, in parallel with the senate and the wardens. Out of nowhere he was there among them, standing beside Ahjvar, looking down. His face varied. Malagru hillman, today, long brown hair knotted up in looped braids, pale skin, grey eyes. A city caftan, though, green as the cedars, grey as the stone. He settled down to sit there, put a hand on his shoulder. Ahjvar would have flinched from a human touch. Gurhan’s hand was only a steadying warmth.

“Look for a collar,” Mikki said.

“Speak with him, if you have the chance,” Moth said. “Call yourself an ambassador of the city. Even Sien-Shava may respect that, once or twice.”

“See him,” the god said. “Look into the Blackdog with all that is in you. Weigh what is in him. Then we’ll know. Then we can do, what we might do.”

“Just don’t surprise him,” the demon said. “He doesn’t deal with being startled any better than you claim you do. He bit me once.” He rubbed his shoulder against a tree-trunk.

Moth snickered.

“Laugh, princess. He’s got bloody sharp teeth.” But Mikki was laughing.

“He is of Marakand,” Gurhan said. “He may never have called himself one of my folk, but he fought for us and bled for us and very nearly died for us. He lived here; his descendants live here yet. I don’t care that he is a devil. I find—I do not much care what kind someone’s soul is. He is a good person, Holla-Sayan, and this is his home as much as any place, and I am his god, even if he does not choose to call me so. One of his gods, perhaps. I have the right, and the duty, to claim him. I do. For what strength that may give, whatever you might do.”

“We can’t do anything, yet.” Moth sighed and rubbed her face. “I can’t spare anything from your defence, god of this land. If I look away— Sien-Shava is waiting.”

“Which may be why he’s taken the Blackdog,” Mikki said. “He lost one hostage, so he’s seized another.”

“But Holla-Sayan walks free. There’s something more.”

“Ahjvar?” Gurhan spoke.

Ahjvar looked at the god.

“Holla-Sayan is my son of this city, my adopted son of this city…You know there is more than wizardry in you. If he is lost—please—if you, if the two of you, if Nabban can find the way—make him a road back.”

Dipped his head in a bow. “My lord,” in his own tongue. Gurhan was not that, but he was lord of this hill.

Ailan was so tired he thought he might be falling asleep, only dreaming he was walking, trying and failing to move cat-silent, to be nothing but a flowing shadow. Trying to be what Ahjvar was, and, failing that, to be someone he wouldn’t despise.

Missed his footing in the dark. Missed the ground altogether, a sudden drop he hadn’t seen Ahjvar descend and he pitched forward, jolting fully awake even as the other man reached back and grabbed him, thrusting him upright, not letting go till he’d found his balance.

Somewhere water was burbling, but he hadn’t fallen into it.

“Dark,” Ailan said, stupidly, as if Ahjvar might not have noticed. Angry at himself. Clumsy. Useless. The moon had set.

“You need to rest?”

“No.” He wanted to fold up to the ground, wrapped in his warm new coat, and wait for the waves of exhaustion to roll over his head and bring the safe blackness of sleep.

Ahjvar sighed. Frustrated, probably. Ailan knew he should have gotten some sleep while he was left behind by the pool, but he’d been too frightened, his mind gnawing the bones of fear over and over till he was near whimpering with it—what if Ahjvar didn’t come back, what if they caught him, killed him, tortured him so he told them where to find Ailan, what if he simply decided never to come back…

“Lie down,” Ahjvar said, and pushed him down when he just stood stupidly, words not connecting with anything. “Sun’ll be rising in an hour or so. Get a little rest. We’ll be climbing, come daylight. I need you awake then, not groggy as a drunk.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t. You haven’t done anything wrong. I forget things, is all.”

“Like what?” Ailan asked blearily. The ground was stony. A hollow. Out of the wind. If Ahjvar had forgotten the way back they would wander forever in the timeless mountains, like in a grandmother-tale, and come out when the wars were all over and all the folk of the land were dead.

“I forget that you can’t see in the dark. That you’re only human.”

“I know what you are,” Ailan said, which he hadn’t meant to. He coiled up, head on his arm. Stones dug into him and he didn’t care, hardly felt them. “I go to plays, you know. They come to the cities from Nabban, sometimes. The acting troupes. They play in the guild-courts.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not just a priest. You did tell me that you’re his. I know what that means. The man who gave himself to the god of Nabban—he’s a foreign king who came back from the dead. The actor playing him wears a black mask, like a ghost, but with gold. Not white and black like the gods or red like live people. Black because he died once, died over and over, there’s one play says, after the false empress turns into the devil and—”

“All right, never mind.”

“—and gold because he’s holy, like the god. He comes from the shadows with a sword, and there’s a flash of light and the drums sound like thunder. Just when you think all’s lost, you know.” And he travelled, sometimes, with one of the seven, tamed to Nabban’s service, at his side. Scholar Daro Jang, hah. The ambassador bowed as if she were the empress herself. Well, she had been. Twice. But she had obeyed when Ahjvar summoned her, so that was all right. Though he wasn’t sure he liked the way she looked at him sometimes. As if he were in himself a joke he didn’t see. “I knew you’d come back, when you left me there. I did. I just—I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

“Not going to leave a fool from the city lost in the mountains while I’m still breathing.”

“They call you Rihswera, in the ambassador’s house. Like in the plays. As if it’s your Nabbani name. It isn’t. I know what it means, rihswera.”

“What, then?”

“It’s the warrior who stands with the king or the queen. Their sword and shield. It’s country-folk talk, from old tales. Tribal. Praitannec.” That was Ahjvar’s name for what he spoke, what he tried to teach Ailan, those stray words in Taren that didn’t always follow the patterns, that made folk from imperial Nabban mock that they called themselves Nabbani at all. Whole lines of them, in the songs his mother had sung. “It’s not a Nabbani word at all.”

“Thought you didn’t speak any Imperial.”

“I have some. From the plays. I know whole poems. But rihswera was in the songs my mother sang. She used to sing. Someone broke her lute. And her hands. She didn’t sing after that. Her fingers were all crooked.” He was falling asleep. Thought Ahjvar said something, muttered, angry. Began to struggle awake in case it was at him. Babbling again like a fool. But the man was silent, sitting by him, and maybe there was a hand resting on his head, or maybe he was only dreaming.

The young man was asleep. He was going to break him, dragging him along so relentless, but they had to get themselves lost in the mountains, hidden from Jochiz, from whatever he might send hunting them. The Blackdog, if he hadn’t died of whatever struck him down.

That worried Ahjvar still.

Didn’t think he could have done anything to bring the Blackdog down so dramatically. He was a devil, Moth said, one forgotten by the tales. Didn’t think even Ghu could have.

Something sidelong. Something…

Ailan mumbled in his dreams.

“Sleep yet,” he told him. “I’m watching.” Under Ahjvar’s hand, he was still.

Ahjvar wondered what Hyllanim had been like, who he’d grown into, other than the cursed king of the songs. He’d only known the infant, never the boy, the unhappy man whose children had wasted the duina in their feuding. A solemn baby, as babies went. Ahjvar hadn’t taken much interest in a brother so much younger. Had taken him up on a horse once. That had made the toddler crow happily. He’d been happy too. They’d only gone out around the walls of the dinaz and back by the goddess’s spring. Remembered feeling, then, how small a thing a child was, how warm and alive and easy to delight. How someday he’d have a son, a daughter, and take them up in his arms…not even glancing sideways, very deliberately not even glancing sideways, at the thought, the shadow clinging to his heels, that Hyllanim wasn’t his brother for all he was his stepmother’s child, and someday was not the future.

Mistrust every damned distracting thought. He couldn’t tell what was stirring them up.

He reached—listening, smelling, feeling the dying night…Nothing.

Put it from his mind.

And whatever he had done to the Blackdog, it was done. If the shape-shifter were traitor, better he were dead, and if not—better to be dead than a soul enslaved, with one’s memory, will, self all ripped away, if there was no road to freedom.

Be stone. Be stillness. Be stone and shadow and moonlight, even to a devil’s searching. It wasn’t wizardry he worked. It was…another heart, another hand, resting on his own. Another breath, that should never have reached to this far and alien land, and yet breathed through him.

He wished he were home, and the wish was warm against him, touch of knotted cords binding shells and acorns about his neck.