CHAPTER XXXIV

Ahjvar staggered to his feet baffled and blinking at slanting afternoon light where had been darkness, unsteady on even ground, balance expecting soft and rolling forest mould. Still hearing voices.

“Ahjvar,” Ailan said, fervent as prayer, and reached a steadying hand for him, which he allowed. Understood again where he was, found the world solid around him after all. It hurt, as waking from a dream. Close almost to touching, and now he was fallen away.

And Yeh-Lin was dead. But taken, at least, from a grave in Jochiz’s unholy ground.

“What happened?” Ailan was asking—repeating, he had asked more than once, his voice an echo, a confusion.

“What?” Ahjvar asked. Shook his head against a growing pain, a headache blossoming, thunder brewing and he did not need this, not here, not tonight. “Yeh-Lin—” he began, and frowned at the blue sky, nothing but a few white tatters of cloud trailing from the southern peaks, while the storm-megrim pressed and edged his vision with streaks of murky colour—

He lashed out and flung Ailan away as the sky split, or his head, white searing the eyes, slid aside from the descending blade, the man, the burning bolt of light that contained and was barely contained by the human shell, heard the thwack of the steel striking stone and the burning man in all his wrath and glory stumble off-balance.

No shield, no armour, no helm. Sword in hand. Ahjvar drew the heavy dagger to guard, went in with a sweeping blow that Jochiz, turning, caught and slid off his blade. Backed from the edge whirling up, spilling flame, the man himself still burning, as if a shadow of pale fire followed him. A flurry of blows, then, and Jochiz defending with a hand raised, no shield, no buckler, but the spilling light of him hazed and dazzled and Ahjvar knew when he had connected, felt the blow in his shoulder, the brief jarring resistance as Jochiz dropped his warding arm and turned away and came back low, swinging up, but then the devil was moving freely again, no lame limb, no hesitation, no blood, teeth bared in a grin that was fury. Nothing human in his eyes at all: hollows in a skull, windows in a lantern.

Fighting for his life at last, an enemy who did not need to match him with the sword but nearly did, and it would take only one strike, with the devil’s strength and will in it—the devil’s malice reaching into him, seeking a grip on what held him in life, to sever artery and muscle, sinew and bone, and the old, old weaving that Ghu had made his own.

Jochiz was vast, to some sense that was not the eye. A weight. He pulled the stone of Marakand to him. He pulled the god of the hill.

No rite, no song of binding and death. Only a reaching, the many waving tendrils, tentacles of some sea-creature, touching, clinging with a thousand barbs, pulling—and runes flared in light, and words rang hard, like silver strings and brass, in denial. But still the devil reached and the god of Marakand—frayed.

Jochiz blazed. Higher. Deeper. As if he expanded, grew, in dimensions unseen.

Laughed. Gathered himself, greater and vaster. Reached again to seize Gurhan, crushing the already failing runes, the priests and their prayers, the god’s own resistance—a hunger, pulling. With no faltering of attention for the work of his sword.

Nothing Ahjvar could do. Jochiz might, but he could not, face two directions at once. He shut out Gurhan’s pain, the prayers and the wizardry of his defenders, the cold hard edge that raised again a wall, a last sanctuary, about the god, now that the bounds of the city were broken. Legacy, something set to wake and hold, no active working in it. He had no sense of Moth at all.

Nothing he could do. Fight the battle before him, and endure, till—till something changed.

Yet Ahjvar forced the devil to give up ground. No place to corner him, no rough footing to unbalance. Nothing but the flat white paving and the vast open space. The folk who had wandered it fled to the far reaches—only Ailan, spare a corner of thought—Ailan on his feet again with his damned short-sword in hand standing off, as if he watched for an opening and would rush in to stab the devil.

“Get to Moth!” Ahjvar shouted, wherever she was, whatever she did—it gave the boy purpose and reason to run, to be saved from this—

Ghu, he thought. To die for you, yes—and could he drag the soul of the human Sien-Shava with him when he died, when that devil’s sword took him as it must and ripped him from love and curse and life and all? Could he wind it into himself and pull it to the road and leave the devil broken, a damned and inhuman soul adrift in a world that could not sustain it, powerless, no more to threaten gods of the earth, no march on Nabban that empress and wizards and banner-lords and the army and fleets could not defend against, and the god safe in the land…

Or—now—and he was in, striking aside the devil’s sword with the dagger and the heavy Northron sword had its opening, the whole of his body a prayer behind the edge, the whole of his body, his will, the dance, in yew, which was death, and he cut the head of Jochiz from its body, he did, he felt it, he saw, the startled moment, the brief searing pain, the terror—

—the flaring screaming light, flame white and marble-streaked, red, gold, and the head did not fall, the blood did not spray, the man did not fold to the ground, only the blade came whistling around and Ahjvar struck with the left-hand dagger what was not flesh and took no harm, though his own blow wrenched and twisted and something in his shoulder gave, lance of pain down his side. The dagger dropped from numb fingers—his sword again to turn and slide the devil’s edge away as he moved back—but it struck hard and edge to edge. The blade of the leopard-headed sword shattered, shattered like glass to flying shards and the force sent Ahjvar stumbling to his knees.

Arm did not answer, to catch himself, his left, and he was reaching with his right, the forage-knife sheathed at the small of his back, the broad curved blade, recovered balance on his knees and was up in a rush, a sweeping slash upwards that he followed with the whole of himself, into the fire.

It wrapped him. It tore air from his lungs and burned the water from his eyes, stink of burning hair, the heat on the skin, and yielding firmness giving, the knife buried to the grip, the wet heat of it, the opened belly and the shriek that was human, the body he leaned into solid and its fires contained, staring, bloody neck-wound half-healed, and they were crashing down, with the god’s knife buried in the devil’s guts and the god’s hand on it, the god in him, a clean cold certainty of stone and water and the green great breathing land, that would not lose him, lose Ahjvar, who was life and love and warmth and the only thing in the end that mattered to the man still in the heart of the god—life and love and his own beating heart. He ripped up and rolled away, the knife held hard, skin to leather-wrapped grip, blade and hand slimed with blood and filth to the wrist. To his feet and his left arm not answering and had he done it, broken that body past restoration, severed the devil from his anchor in the world—

—Tu’usha, Sien-Mor dead, body destroyed, had taken refuge in a goddess, a welcomed fugitive who betrayed and devoured her host and seduced a new human partner to carry her—

—Jochiz tried it. He reached for Ahjvar, hasty chains of wizardry, shapings of devil’s will, no seduction but the mindless possession of enslavement was his intention, a vessel he thought to seize and deny to Nabban.

No,Ghu said.

Flexed left-hand fingers. They hurt, but they answered. Ache, deep in the bone of the upper arm. Better than what had been before.

Wizardry for the binding of a devil. It had taken the Old Great Gods themselves, aiding the wizards of the world, to bind the seven in their half-death, half-sleeping prisons. A wizard in godhead, a god in wizard’s understanding…

They might try—

The devil was a mass to him they could hardly come to grips with.

Ailan had not obeyed Ahjvar. He moved behind Jochiz, slowly, sword held most correctly for a thrust to the devil’s kidneys and if in that moment’s distraction he, Ghu, they struck for that still-healing throat and carried in mind and blow the patterns of yew, and the male holly, and hermit’s pepper for binding, and the great knot of sealing that was a pattern of the Great Grass—

Sien-Shava Jochiz saw, felt, something. He struck backwards even as Ailan lunged, straight and true. Not his sword the devil swept around but a lash of white fire that knocked the young man flying, rolling when he hit the stones, a black path coiled around his back and arms like the welt of a whip left in the thick wool of his coat, maybe the flesh beneath. He did not get up. But Ahjvar had moved, striking, not the throat, no, the heart, cut the heart from his body, some old, old magic there and the devil leapt away and flung his sword like a spear. It did not fly true. They stepped aside and were running in to take him when he slid the second sword down into his hand and brandished it, sheathed.

Even so it made a coldness in the air, a crack into winter. Or something very like. But it was a thing of the heavens, the hells. Moth’s sword. They had seen it before.

It was only a blade and stone or steel, theirs was just as to be feared, now.

Jochiz maybe saw that in their eyes. He backed again to give himself room and drew the blade, dropping the wood and leather scabbard that any fool would keep to parry with, and the narrow black sword was obsidian, maybe, or ice, or glass, or steel with the gloss of polished stone, but all up and down its length ran a tracery of script in silver. A moss of frost grew on it, born from the air’s touch, and delicate white feathers, turning to flakes and drifting down. They hesitated. Not for fear of it. In wonder at the beauty, the unworldly song of it, thing that should not be, could not be, existing in this place, this world.

Jochiz grinned, misunderstanding hesitation.

The sword was a blade, an edge, whatever it else it might be and might hold and it knew this, too, and in its forging was the severing of soul from soul, the unmaking of that alloy of human and Old Great God that was the bound devil in the world, and how little different was what stood before it, god and man in one—

Jochiz came at them and Ahjvar wanted his own sword, wanted reach, but they had what they had and it was their dance—

Though Ghu’s best tactic, he had told Ahjvar once and not entirely in jest, was to hide behind Ahj when he could not get in close to cut throats, preferably from behind. Or hamstring them. He-they went down to their knees, sliding, rolling, came up with Jochiz slashed and pitching forward, but it was not enough; the devil held himself together still, though he could not, it seemed, burn again into fire. They held him from that; they might yet take him that way, and have a dead wizard sent to the road with all his great and many sins upon him, an Old Great God loose and lost, to fade, they might hope, and die, withering in the world for which it was not meant…

Gods he was fast, fast as Ahjvar, who was hurt, who was tiring. The black sword left cold in the air, struck, chill, to the marrow in its mere passing. Snatched the air from the lungs like deep frost on mountain height. Ahjvar swept up Ailan’s dropped short-sword to his recovering left hand, but it was still they who were beaten back, giving ground each stroke, some searing pain, some new wounding they had not noticed. The black sword bit as keen as glass, hip, ribs, and blood new-staining their left hand, which was Ahjvar’s own, to match the gore of their right, which was not.

Ghu within him might hold flesh and bone to itself, what had once been bone and ash, and yet now the fire was burning high in Jochiz again, a frame and cage, he was become, and there would be no tiring him, no matter how he bled when they struck into fire, into flesh.

“I never thought—” Jochiz said. He gasped. He fought for air. He bled. But still he spoke and pressed and the sword laid another touch, a bite of frost over the chest—

“—that I might kill a god so, hand to hand. And I have your name, Nabban, and your man’s blood and what may I make of that, to take you and your land…and all the world lies open, once I am all that you are—”

“You could never be anything that he is or ever was,” Ahjvar—it was most definitely Ahj, and a breathless snarl, and a lunge with the stabbing sword that made Jochiz reel back and fall—

—Jochiz fell, like any faltering human, flat and stunned and bleeding, heart-wounded, and the ice of the black sword came crawling up his arm like ants—

But he rocked to his feet again even as they swooped to cut again that throat, the shapes of death and binding a possibility, a hope, and they dodged back from what must have killed any man had it struck and for a moment paused, both alike, Jochiz and Nabban, a few breaths gasped.

There must be an ending.

I can take him with me. Let me go.

No.

You promised, Ghu.

I was lying.

You don’t lie.

But he would, he would in this, not like this, not ever, to cut his own heart free to what should once have claimed it, what might no longer claim it, grown into something greater, deeper, god-soul enduring in the land—

He did not think Ahjvar, even truly willing, which he was not, might take that road any longer, no more than any god of the earth might fling himself to the distant heavens and say, come untangle this mess that your kind has wrought in this world…

And Jochiz laughed, lunging up, flesh, bone, spilling light. The black sword drove at them.

Thunder cracked over the city and she was on her feet, and Mikki, and the Blackdog startled up out of the deep stillness that had held him much of the day, a baying bark that trailed off into a confused snarl, looking around, uncertain. He was the man, then, a hand on Mikki’s shoulders, braced, but weaponless, not even a knife.

“Jochiz.” Holla-Sayan said.

The runes Moth had built all these long weeks flared and burned as if traced in lightning, and were gone.

Jochiz. All defences of the walls torn down, and Gurhan vulnerable. But Jochiz did not appear here among them, though the god stood by. Priests and priestesses from over the eastern ridge of the gnarled hill were running, some of them, the young and fleet, and street-guard with them for what that could do, for the cave and the most sacred sanctuary, as if by defending that they might yet save the god.

Jochiz. He was—

Old Great Gods damn—

“Ahjvar,” she said, and her hand went to her belt, but her feather cloak was in the god’s sanctuary. She was on her feet and running, and Mikki came crashing down the hillside after her, snapping saplings, and the Blackdog after him.

Gurhan was before them, but he said nothing, stepped aside from the cave’s entrance to let her pass. The cloak was flung with their other few things, there on a stone, and she caught it up, a mottled softness that was too light for its size, stirring faintly like weed in water as it lifted into the air.

“Go to your folk,” she told the god. “Be with them. Find your strength in them and be their strength. He will not have you, I promise.”

Gurhan—Gurhan bowed, and was—not gone, not in this place. But no longer a visible thing, only rock and tree and the deep, deep stone on which the city was founded, and its waters too.

The light dimmed. Mikki, great bulk blocking the entrance.

“Moth,” he said.

“Move.”

“Moth—Let him keep it, you said. He has Lakkariss. He can kill you. You. Vartu. Both and all of you.”

The ground beneath them trembled. Stone slid. A breath-holding pause, and again it shook, violent shudders. A tree cracked, up the western ridge, and crashed down.

“Gurhan,” Holla-Sayan said, warning. “Jochiz—” He sniffed the air like a dog. “Gods, Moth, Jochiz is here in the city.”

“Cub, move and let me go.”

“I was ill. I was weary and heartsick still and I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to know and—and after I still did not want to know and I let it slide and told myself later, later, and it was always later. You were late coming to me. So late. You left me in his hands a year and more around, Ulfhild, my princess, my wolf, and you did not do that without great need. I do trust that. I do.” His voice almost broke. “What do you mean to do?”

She said nothing. What could she? But she stepped into him, arms around the neck, heavy again with muscle, the deep fur, the warmth, the clean beast-smell of him, old oak leaves and earth, as if memory of the den lay in his pelt. Such warmth. Such strength to lean on, to lose herself in. To give herself to. Held, hard, to him, and if that was heartbeats, breaths of life for her, it was surely stealing them from the beloved of the god of Nabban and his faithful young man. But she held there regardless and felt the deep breath he heaved, the tremor that shook him.

She took his head in her hands and kissed him, closed her eyes, open-mouthed, tasting the heat of him, the breathing, thrumming vital life. The sweet warmth. The urgent hunger, to have, to hold, to press close and closer yet, to make two so close to one as bodies could be and yet be two, souls distinct. A worship, a wonder.

Broke from his hungry, desperate mouth—as if he might hold her there, forever—and he lowered his head, pressed his long face against her breast, and she held him still, face buried in his fur.

“You were the best thing ever in Ulfhild’s life, Mikki,” she said, muffled, and if her voice shook, what did it matter. “In mine. Now let me go.”

He backed away. A step. Two. And Styrma, good Storm, flicked his ears and stamped and nodded.

“You were only ever a ghost,” she told the bone-horse. “You’ve served longer in this world than any wizard’s making should have endured.”

Memory and an old skull, nothing more. He tossed his head and nickered.

“Oh, go and run where you will, fool beast.”

Met Holla-Sayan’s eyes. Said nothing.

She couldn’t. She seized on Mikki again, holding hard, arms about his neck. Clung there, while he leaned against her, careful weight. Too long. Let him go and laid the feather-cloak to her shoulders. “You saved me, Mikki. You know you did. My dear heart, be well and never despair. Hold to joy. That gift you gave me.”

“Moth…”

Look after him, Blackdog.

She flew.

“Ulfhild!” he howled, and reached after her, rearing up on hind legs.

Moth! No!

She shut him out.

A falcon plunging from the sky. Moth struck like the lightning, a tattered swirl of silk and feathers and pale hair unfurling between them. Sword met sword and the obsidian did not this time shatter Northron steel. Ahjvar reeled back, ended up down on one knee, bracing himself on the short-sword, breath dragging in his throat, smoking in air grown winter-cold, dry and painful. Ice growing, spreading along the cracks between the stones of the pavement.

They kept some space between them, the two devils, but the black sword seemed almost to shiver, like a dog keen to leap. Did the silver lines shift and crawl? Change?

“I told you to keep out of my way. You and your beast. I hope you had some pleasure out of him worth your ruin. You should have kept running.”

“Should we? Where did you mean to stop? How far? Nabban? Pirakul? The south? The lands of my far ancestors beyond Pirakul? We never ran. We only went to choose our ground.”

“Is that what you call it?” Jochiz laughed. “In that case you took your time, Vartu.”

She flinched at that; Nabban saw it.

“I’m here now.”

“You did not have to be.”

“Oh, but I did. Since the moment I woke in the far north, since the moment he cried out, the wolves of your necromancy pulling him down, I have been on my way here. Sien-Shava, I was putting myself from the world. I was sleeping…I would have faded out of all thought and memory. You called me back when you took Mikki.”

She glanced back at Ahjvar, through him, into Ghu. Briefest inattention. Smiled, even as Sien-Shava Jochiz lunged forward. Met him in a clash and flurry of movement, of steel, silk, feathers, that ended with them locked together, the black sword forced up between them, and neither blade to bite.

Ahjvar did not think the iron rings of her mail would turn the stone’s edge; Ghu knew so.

Frost silvered her, whitened the dark hair of Jochiz, fringed his beard.

“Lakkariss,” she said. “Shard of the cold hells and a rift to drag back what escaped. But we know that is a poet’s tale. We know the hells so, and the heavens. A tale, and a truth beyond words. But words have shaped Lakkariss for this world. And words have reshaped it. Time I completed them.”

Jochiz was already breaking free, shoving her from him, but she turned and stood ready, laughing, as he came on in another rush, using the edge this time, swinging. Moth lowered her sword and sang.

It cut the air. It resonated deep in the bones, and the stones beneath them shuddered. Words, maybe. They could not grasp the shape of them, not Ahjvar, not Ghu, not human ear nor god’s understanding. Music, voice, thought, a power shaping, a thing that lived in itself—

The sword cut. That, they saw, even as they surged up again, too late, to do whatever it was they might have done to stop that blow. They saw the blood spray, the singer silenced, reeling back, and the silver script traced on the black blade turned crimson as storm sunset, drank, it seemed, that blood, that staining, burned in brief fury, and she was not falling but striking then, a two-handed blow that split his skull and she took her left hand free to catch Lakkariss falling by the blade, pinched it from the air and flipped it and stabbed left-handed then, and the air cracked in its wake and the song she had broken off echoed and re-echoed even as she fell, folding over, the silver lines running with Ulfhild’s blood, with Sien-Shava’s, smoking, frost in sun, burning into the air. They rose, words written in air. Souls? They made clouds, winter-fog dense, cold.

God’s vision saw them die. Ulfhild, Sien-Shava, human souls torn away, dissolving into silver, into frost, no blessing, no road awaiting, though Ahjvar, Ghu, reached a hand, cried her name. Saw them die, Vartu, Jochiz, saw the fires annihilated, fed to the silver smoking frost, saw the flame of Vartu leap to meet what came even as it faded and Jochiz roiling, brief futile struggle to fight free. Lakkariss melting, ice in the sun, smoking, rising—

Saw them gone, bone to ash to nothing but rising mist and light, sacrifice of blood and soul consumed in the making—

The air tore, where frost and smoke, blood and silver and souls had in destruction made a way.

Darkness beyond. The black between the stars. The lightless heart of stone. That which has no name.

Heavens. Hells. Fissure growing wider. Road, he thought, Ahjvar did, felt the old pull of it, the shape, the need, but it touched and let him go; it was not his road, not any longer.

Road. River. Dark wind, roaring free.

Light. Darkness burned into white flame, into tongues of ice, into colours: silver, red, green, gold, blue, nacreous crawling light, spilling out, rising, streaking the sky. Twisting, clashing.

The roads of the heavens were opened and the seals of the cold hells breached. The sun was setting, and the Old Great Gods and the devils of the cold hells poured into the world.

On the mountainside, where the hill folk patrol camped fireless and cold above the ruins of the Shiprock, Nikeh cried out. Lia did. Orhan—a yell. Shielding eyes.

Something—distant, far beyond Shiprock. Light. White. Green, red, gold—cold light, bursting the night. Sound. Thunder. Rising. Rising, rising, till Nikeh screamed and it rose higher through her screaming and into silence and the ringing of her ears, the searing after-image of the light in her eyes, sight and sound one pain, ebbing, but she could hear how almost, the sound that was no longer sound echoed and re-echoed, washing between the mountain heights.

“Gurhan bless.” Lia’s voice was a child’s whimper, high and thin.

“Old Great Gods defend us.” That was Orhan.

Nikeh was silent then.

Over Marakand, the cold fire burned the sky. It spilled to fill the valley between the mountains.

She had dreamed a woman, once, whose body was washed through with such light.

“No,” Ghu said. “This ends.”

Ahjvar pushed himself to his feet. Ailan breathed, good. Life burned bright in him. He should gather him up off the cold stones…Ghu wasn’t there. He had spoken himself. The world about was strange, over-bright, over-sharp, a construct cast in light like glass, like steel. The light of the Old Great Gods—so close, so distant.

Old Great Gods, devils. There was no difference to be made between them. And beyond, within…

A pressure, building. A river dammed.

A frantic flying storm of starlings, caged—

Now,Ghu said, and they reached, they spread their arms wide, inviting, and they reached—they were the world, and the world within them, god in man in god and the dreaming soul of the world finding its way to a voice that might speak, an eye that might see, at last. Come home.

Invitation, not command. There was—they stared into the heart of what was not a sun, what seared the soul and not the eye, and there were no words, there was no image to hold, only—there was the stuff of life, of the world, the stuff of soul, and some souls sought refuge in the Gods, and some were ready, eager, long, long held away, and these heard, and answered.

They opened themselves, a gateway, and the light poured into them, through them, he and Ghu, he and Ahjvar; they made of themselves a bridge, a road, a riverbed coursing with what they could not hold, being in the world and of the world, god made man made god…the world within the god, the soul that was the Soul, the great heart of all that was, that the Old Great Gods had bled away, little by little.

The soul of the world is a wholeness, and it is not whole. That which should be of it, in it, is lost. The soul, the life. Not Ghu’s thought. Not Ahjvar’s. Not words. An understanding, a plea…it found its way into them all, and Gods trembled with it.

The souls that sought healing and rest in the heavens. In time, they must return. They were a part of the world’s own soul. The world was wounded, when the heavens folded closed around them and barred their return.

And the devils, too—severed, held apart. A deep wrong.

There should be demons born of the earth in Nabban. There should be gods and goddesses and demons reborn into the west.

The cold hells. Do you see? That was a whisper, a thousand voices, thoughts.

There was a shifting within the light, a stirring as of storm. An urge to deny? To prevent?

“Are we Jochiz, to be thieves of the soul?” Dotemon. Ahjvar’s mind made it Yeh-Lin’s very voice.

A terrible yearning, a pain. Hands, heart reaching to enfold, to hold self to self, to make whole what is sundered.

A division that should never have been made.

The severed self that seeks its restoration.

What is sundered must be whole.

The Old Great Gods hold the world, the souls of the world. The guardians, in their awe and their wonder at what the soul of the world makes of itself in its passage through its self-knowing lives…But they too are of the world, of the soul of the world, apart and containing…

But do not come into the world to walk among human-folk again. This is not your place.

Light faded.

Ahjvar was on his knees again, propping himself up with his hands on the stone, braced like a drunk.

It was still there, the one who had been Yeh-Lin. A last figure of light, almost a woman’s shape. He couldn’t have said how he knew her, it, from any other.

“Dotemon,” he said.

Yes, the God said.

“Sort it out, old woman.”

Do you think we move in the breaths you measure, dead king? Trust me.

And then Dotemon too was gone.

Mikki sat on the steps above the plaza, naked, human in the night. Ulf-hild’s sword across his knees, finger tracing the runes on the blade.

There had been nothing else to save of them. Ash. Fragments of steel and bone. She had made of herself and Sien-Shava a great pyre, in the end. But her sword had survived.

“What does it say?” Ahjvar asked.

Past midnight, and the moon was rising over the roofs. Torches burned on the pillars of the library’s long arcade. Down in the plaza, a patrol of street-guard passed, lanterns swinging, and then a pair of couriers on wearily clopping ponies. The senate palace was ablaze with light. Captains and wardens summoned; there had been much traffic early in the night. Quiet, now. There was a still an army encamped in the pass, broken and confused though it might be. Stories of madness, of the seers and highest of the priests struck down with apoplexy, left mumbling imbeciles, were coming to the city. Yeh-Lin’s spies, abandoning the army for good, brought news. Work-gangs of Westgrasslanders were deserting wholesale and vanishing down into the desert, taking the better part of the camel-lines with them. Ambassador Ilyan Dan was in the senate. He had been sending pages out to the Rihswera, who would not come in to speak to them with the authority of his god. Reports, and requests for advice.

What could Ahjvar say that the ambassador could not put in better words? No slaughter of the broken and confused, the god-bereft and starving. Show mercy, and the truth of the gods. Gurhan was there, to say all that was needed. He had sent the latest weary child back with that word—whatever Gurhan says, Nabban affirms. His land. Hear him.

A great light from the sky. The Old Great Gods, descending at the last, to save the world from the devil who would have destroyed its gods. The folk who had witnessed, who had not been under their beds or deep in their cellars in terror—there was nothing but awe. Wonder. No understanding of what they had seen.

The way of humankind. Moth, Yeh-Lin…old tales. If they came into this, in after years, it would be as devils, destroyed by the Old Great Gods.

Not how it should be.

He just wanted to go home. God-bereft. No warm voice, now, in his head, no words not his own in his mouth, the feeling gone, that he was held, that a hand lay on, within, his own. Just an exhaustion that struck bone-deep. And he ached, throbbed, with wounds half-healed. Rags of his shirt glued to him. He’d shed his coat, too fouled and shredded to bother with.

He was cold, and his head ached.

He sat down by the demon. Pain there, unwounded, that cast his into nothing.

Ailan, huddled at a little distance on a lower step, looked up. Looked away. He should send the lad to the ambassador. A gift. Or at least order him to the Nabbani house to find himself a bed.

Touched the blade, one finger, drawing the demon’s attention. Wanting to make him speak. To make the world real.

“I don’t know the runes.”

“Kepra,” Mikki said, voice low, hardly audible. “Its name is Kepra. Keeper. She brought it from the Drowned Isles. Keeper. The Wolf made me for Hravnsfjell.” He turned it. “Strength. Courage. Wisdom.” Looked up, met Ahjvar’s eyes. Stood the sword between them. The hilt was gilded, studded with garnets. A royal sword. “On the cross-guard, here, it says—a prophecy, a curse. She never told which she believed. She made jokes, that it was a charm against rust and breaking. Until the last road, and the last dawn.”

“Ah.” He could think of nothing more to say. I’m sorry? He’d want to take a man’s head off for that, were it him. Ghu would—not need to say anything. Only to be there, so that Mikki was not alone.

The Blackdog lay behind them, like a watchdog overlooking all the plaza. He stirred, sat up, and came down to sit on Mikki’s other side, battered human.

“Make a song,” he said.

“She was the skald. She should have been. Where her heart lay, always.”

“The first time ever I saw you, you were singing. A wedding in At-Landi. Northrons come south on the rivers. Some cousin of Varro’s, I think.”

“Oh.”

“Make a song of the truth, before it’s all forgotten. So that she’s not forgotten. What she made of herself matters.”

What Ahjvar had been thinking. “Yeh-Lin, too.”

“She went to the west—Moth said.”

“He killed her there,” Ahjvar said. “We took her home. She died in Nabban. But first she struck him down, even if it was not to the death.”

They waited. He told them. A wake. A remembering.

Wondered where Nikeh was, and how he might tell her. Whether she had ever known Yeh-Lin’s true nature.

“Moth had been writing the lays of the Drowned Isles, before we came south,” Mikki said, after. As if it followed naturally.

It did.

“That was when we came to find Ghatai. She sent what she had done to the royal hall at Ulvsness. I don’t know what ever became of them. I don’t think she ever finished.”

The night wore away in such small memories, passed slow between them like coloured stones, turned in the hand, while the moon rose. More messengers went out from the senate palace, and some of the wardens, soldiers about them. Faint noise from the city. Militias moving.

Mikki fell into silence. A deep breath that came out choked. Holla-Sayan put an arm around him. Ailan was asleep, coiled up on his lower step like a little dog. Like a dog, he whimpered and twitched himself awake, jerked upright on a cry of pain, looking around in nightmare terror. Found Ahjvar and sighed, which brought another whimper with it, and eyes squeezed tight a moment.

“Ailan.” Ahjvar held out a hand. Ailan came up the steps, stiffly, face tight with pain, breathing too deliberate, shallow, and sat again, one step down. Lugging a bundle with him, something wrapped in his scarf. All the rest they’d had with them left in the plaza. Probably to be looted for relics of the presence of the Old Great Gods. The holy kettle…That had been a decent crossbow.

Ailan’s shivering ran through him in waves. His teeth chattered loudly.

Ahjvar put a hand on his head. Cold. Pain. The burns were bad. Weeping. Bruises would heal on their own, but that…He shouldn’t have left the man lying there all the night. His responsibility. His…gewdeyn. Spear-carrier. Follower. He could…feel the raw flesh, the blistered swollen matter that threatened a death-carrying rot, the screaming nerves. What wizardry might do, and god’s blessing…in mountain ash, cypress, white-blossomed rose. Protection, healing, purification. After a moment Ailan let out a long and easier breath, leaned against his knee, like a little child, and his shivering eased. Ahjvar held his head there and let him lie.

And then Mikki was weeping, choking with it, howling, and Holla-Sayan knelt, holding him, rocking him. One might wish elm for peace, cypress for healing…but that was a long, hard road.

Friendship, most of all.

Could reach, find the Blackdog’s mind. A strange turmoil there. A strange creature, no peace in him, under that surface of calm. Not anything Ahjvar could ease, or carry. Not anything Holla-Sayan was asking for help with. You’ll stay with him?

Yes.

Gurhan, then, walking quietly, as if he had come down from his hill, though perhaps he had only taken physical form here, coming down the steps. Crouched down, to put a hand on the demon.

Weeping must end, and did. They held him, the Blackdog and the god of the city, until he could look up, wiping his face on his arm.

“Come back to the hill,” Gurhan said. “Come into the stone and trees, away from here. Rest.”

“Ya,” Mikki said, with a kind of weary obedience. Looked at the sword still in his hand.

“Yours broke,” he said to Ahjvar. His voice was gone to a thick croak, very quiet, too, but Ailan stirred and raised his head.

“I have it,” he said, and he did, too, that bundle in his scarf. “Can a smith—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ahjvar said. “I’ve Ghu’s knife. For the road.”

“Oh.”

And what did it cost Ailan, dragging that weight in his condition? “But thank you. It was a good thought. When we get home, maybe the empress’s swordsmith can try.” He did not think the steel, the sword itself, could be saved. Did not think it would be wise to try, broken on that unearthly edge. But the ancient hilt, and a new Nabbani blade…well, maybe. Maybe someone else might carry it, someday.

Ailan had gained a little height, he was sure, and certainly some breadth across the shoulders, since he picked him up in Star River Crossing.

“You use a Northron sword,” Mikki said. “Take Kepra.”

“Mikki—”

“I’m no swordsman. Take it. A demon made it, the Wolf-Smith of Ulvskerrig. Take it to serve your god.” Mikki pushed it to him. “Its last road isn’t mine.”

The weight was easy in his hand. Felt—like it belonged.

“Good,” Mikki said, and used Ahjvar’s shoulder to heave himself to his feet.

The eastern sky was thinning, stars growing pale. He was a bear before he reached the top of the stairs. The god of Marakand and the Blackdog went either side of him, close, just touching. Gurhan looked back once. Gave Ahjvar the shadow of a bow.

“Come on,” Ahjvar said, in the Praitannec that there were only three of them left in the world to speak, now that Yeh-Lin was gone, and Ailan’s was still hit and miss. “The ambassador’s house. Walk that far, and then you can rest.”

“Will they still come?”

“The Westrons? Who knows. But they won’t pass the walls if they do. Leave them to the Marakanders and Gurhan’s mercy, poor lost folk. Not our land. We’re done.”

He hoped. He wanted to go home.

Touched the necklace at his throat, but it was gone. Burnt away in the fires of Jochiz. Well, the binding that mattered between them was not something even a devil had broken, and if he carried no elusive road of wizardry any longer…there was still the long true road, and it ran east, into the dawn.

Something rubbing, inside his shirt, caught against his cinching of his belt. He searched, like a man chasing fleas. Seashells, ash-stained.

Laughed.

“What happens to me?” Ailan asked, low-voiced, “when you go home?”

“You want to stay here?”

“No.”

“Good. The empress can use a man who speaks half a dozen languages and knows the lands between us and Marakand. Ghu can. A good man, and a brave one, who keeps his wits about him and watches the world.”

“I only speak…three?” He was counting on his fingers, frowning. Not noticing, how the pain no longer hammered him down. “Does the Marakander Nabbani count separate from Taren?”

“I’m not done with you yet.”

“Oh.” Ailan considered that. “Good?”

Ahjvar put an arm around his shoulders, comradely, and because he might have pushed the healing along a little and turned back the tide of fever, but Ailan was still stumbling, nearly dropping. “Long road home. Good you learn the way.”

In the sanctuary of the god’s cave, Mikki had fallen into the deep sleep of exhausted grief. Holla-Sayan sat by him. Didn’t want him waking to find himself alone. There would be more weeping yet, and anger, and the deadly dull weight that pulled one down beyond all caring. Gurhan went out again among his folk, with the priests and the priestesses. The voice of mercy, of reason. The army of the All-Holy, in piecemeal confusion, offered its surrender. Some parts of it. Rebellions of its conscripts and converts made small massacres among the red priests and the officers. Some of the faithful fled back down the pass from the imagined pursuit of an army of devils. But most were grateful to lay down arms. To be fed.

“There is a god in you,” Gurhan said, and Holla-Sayan, who had slipped into a weary sleep himself, sat up. Afternoon, already. Sun bright beyond the curtain of leaves.

He met the god’s eyes, considering.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I know. I tried—we tried. I wasn’t sure. Jochiz was working against him. We were desperate—Sayan and I. The dog, too. Sarzahn.” It felt strange, to give it a name. Strange, but—welcome. “I thought we had failed, the dog and I. Lost Sayan even as we tried to hold him. But…I can’t hear him now. Yet I think he called to me. I think he was calling, all the time I was lost under Jochiz’s binding.”

“You’ve swallowed him,” Gurhan said.

“No. Jochiz was trying to. We needed to hide him. Sera of the Red Desert was carried to the Narvabarkash, sleeping in a stone.”

“Or he has swallowed you.”

“No.”

“I do think so, brother,” said Gurhan gently. “He may be sleeping in you, dormant and dreaming, but he is—not to be so easily disentangled as a goddess from a stone of her spring. What was Sayan is…alive within you. A potential, to be reborn. You are—”

“I didn’t—”

“I do think it took all three of you,” Gurhan said. “Willing. You are—when I look at you, when I try to see, what lies beneath…not a tangle. A braid of light. Like what Ahjvar and his god have become, I think. Man, the broken remnants of the one called Sarzahn—and the god, coiled within you. Waiting to wake.”

“In his own land.”

“In you.”

A deep breath, then. He shut his eyes. Sarzahn was quiet. No pain. No rage, the dog’s barely-leashed anger. Only…a settled certainty. In himself.

A wholeness.

And the sure knowledge. He needed to go home.