CHAPTER XXIII

For Ahjvar, the journey to the god’s mountain passed like a dream, like memory of fever. Night. Fog. Cold water. The road rising from the flooded lands, angling to the northeast. Not the highway to the pass to Denanbak. Lanes and trackways Ghu seemed to know blind. Crouched silent, waiting, as some patrol rode by, betrayed by their hooves and desultory voices, by their torches sullen red in the fog. Meat-filled dumplings and cold tea from a flask in the lee of an empty herder’s hut. They were among hills, climbing out of the fog and into a slow dawn, a sunken track through a grove of drily-whispering bamboo, then trees about them, a rocky, boulder-strewn ground. Lee of a boulder, warm in the sun. Dragged by Ghu out of dreams so foul he could only crouch, gasping and retching, for what seemed an age but probably was not. Arms hard around him, breath against his hair. His name, over and over, until he turned his face against Ghu’s shoulder and sobbed like a child, while the dogs nosed at him in concern.

Ahjvar didn’t speak, even once he could. The only words he could find in that place would ask for his death.

They climbed another mile in silence. Maybe it was two. Hay meadows, and thorn-hedged pastures, winter-brown and with snow still drifted in the northern shadows. Ghu led; Ahjvar followed. Ghu looked back often, waited when he lagged, feet heavy. More grey pastures, horses tiny and distant in a steep valley, a stream tumbling down shelving stone ledges between slender smooth-barked trees, some white flower like a carpet of snow between their interlaced roots.

“I’m going for horses,” Ghu said. Watched his face. They had drunk. The water was cold, with the taste of stone in it. They sat on a stony step, spray misting over them. “All right here for a little?”

Ghu looked drawn and grey, older than his years now. No god but a man pushed to the fraying edge.

Ahjvar went to kneel by the water again, drank again, bathed his face. The little brook had risen up over the flat stones of the ledges. In the deeper channel, small fish hung, wriggling to hold position, gathering strength to leap, to climb to the next stair.

“Go,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll wait.”

Ghu still hesitated.

“Go on.”

Ghu nodded, touched his shoulder as he sat down, back against the stone, sword across his lap, and left him, keeping under the shadow of the trees. Both dogs stayed, this time.

Ahjvar found the acorns shoved into his purse, sat hunched forward, worrying one through his fingers. He drifted, fighting sleep. No thoughts. Only the shape of the nut, the sound of the water, birds. Jui scratched and shook himself and curled on the stone to sleep. Jiot came to lie with his muzzle on Ahjvar’s boot. Small white clouds, scudding like a flock of sheep before the wind. Change in the weather. Rain on its way. Maybe not this night. He must have touched the edge of sleep again, or dreams came into his waking. Wizardry seeking to fix a hold on him, to catch at his sleeve. . . . He walked about and broke the stalks of last year’s dead weeds, stripped a few twigs. Some kind of beech, but he had given up keeping to the strict patterns of the spellcasting of Praitan. Let the weeds and twigs be what he told them they were. Laid out three patterns, one within the other, of three points each, the innermost three paces a side. Heather for dreams, hazel to purify, cypress for sleep and healing. Then mountain ash at all three points, for protection. Outermost three all prickly ash, to break and scatter and turn the illusion of wizardry that he dreamed against itself. To keep it from him, in his waking. He didn’t sit down again but shed Yeh-Lin’s blanket and began to work through the old exercises, making something new of them. Weaving a pattern through the wizardry. To keep his mind from wandering into dreams, to feel sun and sweat and blood coursing in his veins, to know he lived, he alone, the hag gone from him and the deeds of his hands his own.

The sun was dropping into the west when the dogs stirred and the wind brought the scent of horses and oiled leather.

Horses at an easy canter. Ghu. A great black-legged white Denanbaki stallion, moving like flowing water, bright as the moon, and following it, no leading rein, a dusky bay. They jumped the stream lower down, came up through the trees at a long-swinging walk.

Ghu on a swift horse was an eagle on the wind. He should always be so, not worn and bruised and shadowed.

Ghu looked down on him, faintly smiling. “My white colt. Isn’t he grown fine?”

A king of horses, this was. Ahjvar remembered some night—Sand Cove, it was, and a storm, and the waves lashing and raging at the cliff, and the wind howling like the ghosts of wolves. The two of them sitting against the wall, out of the downpour, warming themselves with spiced wine—their roof repairs of the ruined broch never did last well and sodden turf followed by the weather had come down on the hearth, for neither the first nor the last time. Ghu had spoken of a wind that shrieked with the voices of dragons, and snow driving hard as whips on the mountain of the god, a difficult foaling, a mare strayed high above the trees and the snow burying them, boy and mare and foal together. But it was the god’s mountain, he had said, as if that mattered. And he had brought them down, sometimes carrying the foal, who must have weighed as much as he did then, after the blizzard, and . . . that was all the story. It had been maybe the most words Ahjvar had ever heard from him, at that point. He had been shivering in that autumn storm with cold or remembered cold. Ahjvar hadn’t supposed the value of the slave nearly lost to death on the mountain’s forbidden height had been counted anything to compare to that of the mare he had been sent to find, and he had not gotten up and moved away when Ghu huddled over to press against his side.

That foal, here and real, tying time together.

Standing still, his shirt soaked through with sweat—the light wind cut with an edge of snow. Ahjvar shivered. “Yes.” Beautiful, yes, hard and sudden as an arrow to the chest. Horse and rider. He turned away. “For a race on the flat. For hill-work—”

“They were born to hills, Ahj. You’re thinking of western desert-breds. But if we do go cattle-raiding, I’ll let you choose.”

He snorted, heading to the stream, to drink and wash at least his face once more. Water like ice. He felt chilled to the bone. “They let you take them, or are your Castellan Yuro’s men coming after us to get them back?”

“I knocked Chago down,” Ghu said seriously, as Ahjvar returned, swinging the blanket over a shoulder, pinning it with the devil’s gold. “Nothing to do with the horses. Old. Settled. Chago says, the bay they bought from Denanbak two years ago and his name is Evening Cloud, a stablemate to the white and trained to battle. Oh, and he—Chago, I mean—gave me food and a gourd of millet beer. I expect it’s very bad. What they make up here at the high pastures always is. Eat, sleep, or ride through the twilight?”

“Ride. What’s the white named?” Ahjvar asked. He didn’t really care, but Ghu did.

“Sia gave him another name. I’ve always called him Snow.”

A name a child might give a puppy. Ghu had given all their horses such simple and obvious names, the ones Ahjvar owned, the ones they had stolen, once, twice, when he had gone to Two Hills on business of the Tenju clan-father. Born in a blizzard. Snow. What else? Ahjvar startled himself, laughing.

They rode past the twilight, eating soggy buns and passing the sour beer back and forth between them. The dogs went crashing off in pursuit of some small beast, came back bloody-muzzled and pleased with themselves. When they lost the last light and stopped in the shelter of a fern-hung outcropping of rock, making no fire, Ahjvar found he could not bring himself to lie down. Dreams prowled the edges of his mind. He felt them there, gnawing, waiting.

“You sleep,” he said. “I’ll watch.”

Measure of Ghu’s exhaustion that he didn’t debate it, just lay down rolled in his filthy sheepskin coat, the dogs curled nearby. Ahjvar paced a little, checked the horses, turned loose without hobble or picket. The stallions were quiet, not disturbed by the oddity of their night. Ahjvar set his back against the rock, tilted his head to watch the stars turning slowly through the leafless branches overhead. Frogs sang in a loud chorus, echoing and answering, all around. Up in the trees, maybe. Distant water rang over stone. Always water, it seemed, in these mountain foothills. The birth of the Mother of Nabban. Eyes closed. No good. He paced a circuit of their camp again, ended up squatting on his heels by Ghu. Touched the back of his hand. He didn’t stir. Ahjvar spread Yeh-Lin’s blanket over him. Cold to keep himself wakeful. Maybe. He drew his sword, drove it into the earth a pace from Ghu’s head, and walked off, climbing several low shelves of stone, choosing a way that seemed thick with the boles of trees, and—he found by blundering into it—a thicket of that bush with the hanging, leathery leaves. Good to have all that between them. He found a way around and still wouldn’t lie down, but sat leaning on a tree, watching the sky again. If he slept, he would probably fall over. If he didn’t wake himself tipping, and if he dreamed, he would probably make enough noise to wake Ghu, either shouting or—Old Great Gods prevent that he walked in his sleep, don’t even think it, don’t let thought of the hag rise—if he did walk he would be sleepwalking, only sleepwalking, as men did, not hunting open-eyed and ghost-ridden, and walking blind in his sleep he would crash and trip and fall or tangle himself in the brush, and Ghu would wake. . . .

Best he could do. But he would fight to stay awake, waiting for moonrise, and then for the following dawn. Name the constellations as they cleared that gap between the branches, count the hours thus. Tally them in the leaf-mould, each he could name, to have that focus to his watching. Thin ribbons of cloud trailed over the stars. Eddying like smoke. Drifting.

Fingers still clenched on her throat, though she had stopped fighting, stopped moving long before. Words, broken, the mind could not hold even the echo of them, the woven patterns of the twigs on the beaten earth floor where they had knelt broken and torn by her thrashing, the three beeswax candles set likewise on the floor knocked over. One had set a pattern of thorn to smouldering. Stench of burning hair, strong, and roasting flesh, but Miara was not burning, that was another time, another woman. Miara was dead, Miara dying, gasping and choking beneath him, the spell they had designed and she had worked, his wizardry having been sealed beyond his reach or the hag’s, broken as its patterns, as the cords of her throat, and he was on his knees, gasping to breathe, torn fingers splayed where they had clawed against the stony ground.

He had shouted. Hadn’t woken Ghu. That, at least. Let him sleep. His throat was raw with some cry, with rising bile, and he gagged on the stink of burning. No fire. Not real. No death. He sweated and shivered and simply lay down where he was.

He could still feel her under his hands, feel her weight, always, every day. Lifting her, how cold she had become, by the time he had dug her grave on the hilltop by the hawthorn, and her ghost was gone, gone, the hag left no ghosts. . . . He began retching again, pushed himself to hands and knees and crawled back to the tree. Narrow-bladed knife in his hand. The edge sliced flesh of his arm with hardly any pressure. In the past he had tried a knife under his own ribs, more than once; the curse wouldn’t let him go so easily and he didn’t mean to try it now, but the blade was cold and real, the blood hot, welling up, trickling down into his palm. The pain only a dull ache among others, not enough. He felt himself falling, pulled, hands on him—

No. Sank the knife in the earth, drew his knees up, and sat huddled.

Couldn’t go on this way. Couldn’t.

Leave Ghu alone at the mercy of his gods, with only the devil his friend.

“You know you dream. You need to learn it in bone and blood and heart. You need to understand it in your dreams, so that they are no longer real when you dream them.”

Yeh-Lin sat down by him. Ahjvar lifted his head. She stretched out her legs, crossing her ankles. Hadn’t heard her approach. The dogs hadn’t barked any warning. She’d changed her appearance once more, a woman in her prime again, long hair black as Ghu’s, but smooth and sleek as silk in the moonlight.

He’d been waiting for moonrise. Only a silver sickle, now. Scant light, but she seemed to gather it to herself. His forearm throbbed where he had cut it.

“I know that.”

“You know. So you say. You don’t seem to understand what it means. Listen to me. Knowing is not enough. You need to learn to feel it in your bones. Maybe he needs to leave you to dream, to find your own way out.”

Had they not had this conversation before? Maybe he had dreamed that.

“What good did that do?” By the churning of the mould, it had been no swift waking. He had fought—nothing. Scrabbling like a man in a fit. Because there had been no one within reach. Time enough to hurt someone, oh yes. Time enough to kill. It had gone on until his own choking pulled him back.

“At least you did wake.”

He had feared he might not, that some echo of the hag’s nighttime killing might take him over forever, if Ghu were not there to pull him back. So yes, he could be thankful that at least he had woken.

“Dead king, do you want to die?”

“Are you offering to kill me?” His voice rasped, raw and weary. Kill him. The devil likely could, at that. The Lady hadn’t managed it, for all she had slain a goddess. Hadn’t understood what she dealt with, that was all. Dotemon, however, knew.

She chuckled. “Your young god has made threats of what he will do to me, should I do so. I have no wish to make him act on them. No, I am not offering to unmake you. I am merely asking what you want. And you are not answering, dead king.”

“Will you stop calling me that? My father was king. My brother—my son was king. I was a few hours between them.”

“But all the songs will have it the day of the three kings. Two is so . . . un-Praitannec. Unsatisfying as poetry. I notice you are still not answering.”

“I thought you were going to take Dernang.” He should have been angrier that she trailed after them and did not busy herself with whatever it was Ghu had set her to do, but he was too exhausted for anger now. He should have been afraid.

“Dernang is mine. I do as I am bidden. I think you will find my method to have been—amusing. You do know you are followed?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Be wary. The wizard is Bamboo rank. See how I watch over your former shield-bearer? And over you. Are you not fortunate? Your young god takes my empire, which I could reach out my hand and reclaim, and I serve him most faithfully as he does so. So—is it that you will not leave him, or is it that you fear the road?”

No, he did not fear the road to the Old Great Gods. Only he was so mortally weary, and the way was so long, and his burden so great. . . . To be lost on the way in his torment. To fail, and fall, and lie forever in nightmare, dead and trapped and unending . . . a hell he inhabited already. That, he feared.

Hyllau’s oblivion had been mercy, whatever Ghu thought.

Yeh-Lin was a warm pressure against his side, too close and yet—a comfort. When had she become a friend? “Still no answer? Tell me, what do you want of him?”

“Nothing. Death.” No. Nothingness. To end. For pain to end. For Ahjvar who had been the Leopard, who had been so many other names, and in the beginning of all Catairlau, for Catairlau to end, simply end.

“He was angry once when I called you that. Your name is Ahjvar, he said.” She answered thought, not speech.

“Catairlau is long dead.”

“So are you. Or you should be.”

He remembered burning. Remembered seeing his own hands, black crust and white bone. Seeing with eyes that should have been shrivelled and blind.

“Fire is warmth and life, too. Light in the darkness.”

You drew me like a fire, Ghu had said, after the battle at the Orsamoss. Ghu was not fire. He was deep, clean, quiet water; he was the peace in the darkness of the night; he was warm silence. I wanted to be some light in your darkness.

And he had left Ghu sleeping alone, without fire or warmth or watch. Alone, maybe, always. Doomed to godhead.

“This is a dream.”

“You think so? Do you have so much imagination, to dream me? Imagine you can change your dreams, then. Kiss me.”

He turned his head to stare. “Why?” That put his face far too close to hers, almost nose to nose as she watched him with a wry smile, but pride wouldn’t let him flinch away then. She knew it, too.

“To prove you can.”

“What does that mean?”

Yeh-Lin looked away. “What honour do you do your lover’s memory, letting the faintest hint of desire make you ill, making her a horror you carry with you, a corpse lying between you and any passion you might find? What of her life, her love, her courage—what she dared, to fight with her human wizardry against the god-bound ghost that rode you? What of her joy in you?”

“I shouldn’t ever have let myself be near her.”

“No. That, you should not have done. But you did, and there was a good time, before the end. Do you even remember her, Miara, in herself? Or is all that is left of her what you have made of her, a horror to yourself? Is that justice to her memory?”

“No.” Very quietly.

“So. So kiss me. Great Gods above, I am Yeh-Lin the Beautiful and I should not have to beg. I am not used to begging.”

“Beg away,” he growled.

“Or is it that you prefer your women older?” She glanced at him sidelong, grey streaks running back from her temples, the laugh-lines crinkling about her eyes and mouth.

There should not be light to notice such things. He shrugged and shifted sideways a handspan or so, couldn’t summon the energy to move further.

“Ahjvar.” So quietly. Yeh-Lin knelt up facing him, put a hand on his chest. He clenched his jaw, trapped and not going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him jerk away like a dog from a blow. “Do think on what you want, what you need from him. You are a weight on him, a burden of his own choosing, yes, but all Nabban falls on him and he needs either his champion at his back to help him bear it, or to be free of ghosts. Your ghosts. You.”

Racing pulse, drumming in his ears. He could hurl her away. He had moved so that the knife pressed against his hip, and he was hardly unarmed, besides. He held himself still.

“Tell your own ghosts they are dreams. They are dead and gone. They are a sickness of your own mind. Tell Miara, she is dead and gone to the Old Great Gods—”

But the hag had fed—

“Don’t! She is free and gone, beyond pain, beyond reach of hurt, beyond any saving or damnation and whatever came to her soul, all that is of her in this world is what you carry. Do you want that memory to be the manner of her death, or her life and her valiant heart? Start there. Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” His voice croaked.

“Tell me she lived. She loved. She was beautiful.”

He swallowed. Took her hand, carefully, off his chest. But her fingers folded around his, very lightly, and he made himself not pull away, as Yeh-Lin sat back on her heels, facing him. Let himself hold her hand. “Tell me.”

“She wasn’t, really.”

“Tell me who she was.”

“She—she served in the queen’s hall, when she was younger. Not the first of the royal wizards, but not the least. But when her husband died and her sons were grown Miara went to the hills. She belonged on the hills. She liked the silences, and the wind. She tamed hawks and flew them. She didn’t take them from their nests, she coaxed them from the sky, wild birds, and they hunted for her. . . .”

He could see her. Plain, broad-faced, blue-grey eyes. A woman with her brown hair greying and in a long and wind-ravelled plait. Grinning at him, triumphant, having got a red-tail to settle on his arm a moment, for all the corrupted taint of him. Laughing at his pleasure in her joy, in this place on the hills where for a little the cities and the work he found there to keep the hag quiescent and fed could be forgotten, almost.

Only ever almost.

“Remember her truly, now. If you are dreaming now, think: you dream her truly.” Yeh-Lin touched his face. Wet. Tears, or dew. Sitting out in the cold night, grappling ghosts. “Look at me. I am not the Lady. I am not Tu’usha. One woman is not another. One devil is not another. One love is not another. If I am only your dream, I can do you no harm, and if I am not, I will not, I say it. Do you need to be afraid?”

There was a fire within her. It was not his nightmare, his memory of burning, of Hyllau burning; it was the devil’s soul, a flicker in her eyes. The Lady had burned so.

“I am not the Lady, Ahjvar, and you are stronger than she ever was. For all of her, and Hyllau, and your viciously foolish goddess, you are unbroken yet.”

He leaned abruptly forward and did kiss her, with his heart racing too fast and not from any arousal of desire. She put her hands, not about him—he stiffened and almost pulled away when she moved—but only on his shoulders. What she made that kiss was neither chaste nor brief, but her lips and tongue were sweet and careful. When finally she pulled away from him, smiling, he was most definitely . . . not without any arousal of desire.

“There,” she said. “Now I have something worth dreaming of, to keep me warm tonight, if Nabban’s tasks allow me any time for sleep. You—I could wish it so for you as well, but I doubt it. This is the best you’ll allow yourself.”

“Now you’ll say you are a dream after all?” Amused in spite of himself. Annoyed, too, as if he were the butt of a joke and could not quite see how.

“I claim nothing. Certainly not you. But dead king, you should not kiss someone so if you don’t mean it.”

“I shouldn’t!”

She laughed at him again.

“Tell your ghosts they are dreams and you are done with them. Teach yourself to wake; learn to make some truth in your dreams. Find your way out of the fire, or go to find your road. Choose. Choose soon, for young Nabban’s sake.” She tugged him to her by the collar of his ragged shirt and kissed him again, on the cheek this time, sisterly. Pressed her face to his a moment, hair sliding soft and scented, oddly, of gorse and thyme like the hills of southern Praitan, clean and homely, before she stood up, a mist he had not seen arise eddying about her. He turned his head to watch her going, but she was not there.

The thin moon was climbing through the trees, trailing scarves of cloud. He could still feel the devil’s mouth on his, warm and soft and insistent, and his eyes had that hot, swollen feeling. A man might shed tears in his dreams. A change, to dream of kissing the damned devil, to dream a kiss that was not a horror. It still heated him. But what put those words in her mouth? A bard, a wizard grown old enough to be wise might say she spoke the thoughts that he, waking, could not shape; that he counselled himself.

Ahjvar did not trust that he had come to any wisdom yet, but of a sudden sleep was heavy on him, and did not seem worth fearing. He curled up where he was and dreamed again of wizardry brushing at the edges of his mind, though it was the cold that woke him. Chilled to the bone and shivering in a grey and drizzling morning, though he was under both the blanket and Ghu’s coat. Ghu himself was sitting where Yeh-Lin—where he had dreamed Yeh-Lin had sat, with Ahjvar’s sword beside him, turning that discarded knife in his hands.

He dropped it point down by Ahjvar’s face when he saw him stirring, and got to his feet, sweeping up his coat. “Idiot. What good will taking a cold do?” He sounded—angry.

Ghu walked off without waiting for Ahjvar to gather himself up. Dry brown blood crackled and flaked away as he flexed his hand. Ah. Ahjvar rubbed away what traces he could, too late. The cut on his forearm was scabbed black and healing. Nothing to do about the stained sleeve. Wash it when he could, but that shirt would really be better off decently buried. The fresh stain on the arm was the least of it. He caught up back where they had first camped, found the horses lipping up a last trace of spilled grain. The man at the foaling pasture had sent them off with more than bad beer, obviously.

“Eat,” Ghu said. “Don’t feed the dogs. They’ve been hunting zokors. They’ll do.”

Whatever those were. He took a stale bun and the flask of water Ghu passed him, ate in silence, watching while Ghu bridled and saddled the horses, moving about them with quiet efficiency. Still Ahjvar’s groom, halfway to godhead or not.

“Ghu? This holy place of your god—much farther?”

Ghu turned from cinching the bay’s girth, stood scratching the horse’s cheek. “Late afternoon, maybe, if we don’t push it. Before evening, anyway. Up above the trees.”

“Do you need me?”

“Ahjvar—”

“I’d rather—just wait. Here. Somewhere. Quiet. Alone.”

A long, long silence, then. The bay turned his head against the motionless hand. “Swajui,” Ghu said at last. “Nobody goes up to the Father’s sanctuary on the mountain, unless they’re called. Not even the priests. I would have taken you regardless. But Swajui is the Mother’s place here on the mountain. The name’s for the shrine and sanctuary both.”

“There’s a difference?”

“A shrine—people go there. They went for the healing waters and the counsel and prayers of the priests, but the sanctuaries are the holy places of the gods, places for the gods alone. I don’t know what you’ll find at the shrine of Swajui. It—hurts. Even to think of it, it hurts. I don’t think you should go there. There are none living left. I think it was burnt. But that wasn’t the Mother’s sanctuary. If you go higher, go up to the pines where the cold springs rise, that’s the true holy place, the Wild Sister’s own. The priests went there. Folk did, sometimes. Called, or seeking her in solitude. I don’t think Zhung Musan’s soldiers went so far. The shrine was enough for them. Visible and known. There’s nothing to show the holiness of the sanctuary, to folk that don’t know it or can’t recognize it. If you can’t recognize it, you can’t find it, I suppose.” Another long look. “You’ll know. Wait for me there.”

“Your goddess won’t want me there. Gods don’t.”

“She’s gone, Ahj. She—died, I suppose. As we took the castle.”

“Ah, Ghu.”

“Go to the sanctuary of Swajui. Go up to the pines. I’ll find you there. A day, a few days, I don’t know. Wait for me.”

They rode slowly, as if, for all Ghu’s urgency to flee the castle—and it had felt like flight, Ahjvar thought now—he was reluctant at the last. The drizzle gave way to a damp wind, but the clouds did not thin. Despite the grey day, the birds were loud with spring song. Once a swarm of sandy-furred monkeys went leaping, almost flying, away overhead through the upper branches of the barren trees, exciting the dogs, but Ghu called them back before they could launch themselves into the forest. Ahjvar dropped behind, watching the trail they had ridden, but the grey woods covered all the winding, climbing, plunging track.

Prickling unease. Neither Ghu, nor the dogs nor horses, seemed to feel it. He wondered, though, if he would really dream vague and subtle spells pressing against him. He never had before. Subtlety was not a notable feature in his nightmares.

Ghu reined in after perhaps three wandering miles; they had been riding along a ridge like some hunched spine of stone, but ahead it entered a narrow place, overhung with stone and trees. Another track branched away, plunging down to the west.

“Here,” he said quietly, pointing to the left. “That goes to the shrine of Swajui. The main road to the shrine comes up from Dernang; we came east of that, through the greater hills. From the shrine, there’s a path that climbs north. Steep and twisting. Nothing to mark it from any other forest trail, but it follows a stream. You’ll know it, I think. Ahjvar . . .”

“Better you face your god without dragging me along.”

“Don’t—” But whatever Ghu meant to say he thought better of. Held out an open hand, letting the words go. Urged Snow on into the narrow defile. Halted, though, before the first turn that would have taken him out of sight, looked back. “Talk to the horse,” he called. “Use his name.”

“I don’t speak Denanbaki.”

“Try Nabbani, Praitannec—Evening Cloud doesn’t care.” A flashing grin, a nod like a salute, and he was gone. The dogs lingered, watching Ahjvar.

“No,” he said. “I don’t need nursemaiding. Scram. Go with Ghu.”

Jui gave one sharp bark. Protest or agreement? But they both left him, breaking into a flying lope to overtake the vanished horse. The bay raised his head and whinnied after them.

Ahjvar turned him aside to take the descending western trail.

Not far, though. He hadn’t survived decades as a Five Cities assassin on immortality alone, and to ignore the little nagging prickles of unease was—never wise. Even when they were nothing more than a bad dream or a grey day. Sometimes they weren’t.

The horse sidled around restlessly when Ahjvar dismounted, not happy at being separated from the others. Ahjvar tugged at the bridle, addressed one dark eye. “Stand, damn it.” No idea what commands or signs a Nabbani-trained warhorse knew. “Evening Cloud. What sort of name is that for a horse? Sounds like someone should write lovesick poetry to you.” He tried the Praitannec. “Gorthuerniaul . . .” Shook his head. Too long. “You. Niaul. Stand, or I will tie you to a tree.”

The head turned to study him, but the sidling stopped. “Better.” He unslung the bow in its leather wrappings, hung the quiver over his shoulder, and led the horse off the trail. They were out of sight from the fork and someone would have to come beyond the first bend to see that his tracks turned aside.

It wasn’t the landscape for a mounted fight. He shoved the plaid blanket and the scarf with its flashes of kingfisher blue into a saddlebag, fished out a headscarf that might have been russet originally but had faded in the past year to a mottled dun, and wrapped it as if against desert snow and sand, covering pale hair and beard. He left the horse with another terse, “Niaul, stand,” heading up a steep shoulder, stone beneath the moss and groping tree-roots, worked his way down from that height, back to where he could see the trail down the mountain and the path to Swajui branching off. A good vantage-point and a long, clear stretch of the trail. This western slope of the ridge dropped away abruptly, almost a low cliff. Little cover, with the trees and bushes so bare. The thin soil supported only sparse undergrowth, but rid of the plaid and with hair covered he was dull and drab as a nesting bird. A winter-broken bough would make a scribble of twigs before and alongside him; there were a few stalks of some seedy weed, but mostly it was stillness that would hide him.

He spanned the bow, slotted in a bolt, put quiver and sword where he could quickly lay hand on either, and settled himself to wait. He might have had only a couple hours of sleep in the past gods alone knew how long, but no heaviness tried to close his eyes now.

Might have been dreaming. It had been a night of strange dreams, surely enough. Devils damn all devils. But for the same vague, subtle pressure of a spell to come twice, when he had never dreamed anything of the like before . . . No. He didn’t have such dreams.

No wizardry raised his hackles now. Nothing. Birdsong. The shrill barking cry of some animal he didn’t recognize, far in the distance to the east. Blackflies settling to bite, a first crop of spring annoyance. He hadn’t noticed them, riding with Ghu. If the horse was too badly tormented, he was going to wander off.

Was it quieter, down the trail?

A bright blue bird flew up crying alarm, raising a flock of little black twittering ones.

Hooves.

Could, of course, be some hunter, even a pilgrim seeking the gods. Not very damned likely. Not even a fluffy seedhead fouled his line of vision down to the bend. So.

They came around the corner, two riders abreast. Good sturdy horses. Lacquered scale armour, helmets with ribbons. Not Zhung, the characters on the breast of their deep rose surcoats. Min-Jan. Imperial officers, not banner-lords or the spear-carriers of banner-lords. Imperial officers’ livery, at any rate, and the enamelled badge on their helmets the same. How many behind them?

He let them come on, farther than he had intended, waiting for their followers, but none appeared, and the two were deep in some low-voiced discussion, the horses walking. Argument, he thought, from the way the thick-bodied older man gestured.

Still no followers. Very, very slowly, he shifted position a little, lining up the bow to cover the area where the trail forked. Much closer than he wanted, really; there would be no time to prepare a second shot. He wanted to hear what they said, know what they were. Not a troop riding to the destruction of Father Nabban’s holy site, as he had for a moment thought, seeing the livery. The regular army did not conscript women for the common soldiery. He wasn’t sure about the officers.

They reined in and the woman, thinner, younger, her face flecked with pale pock-marks and her hair cut short, leaned to study the tracks, not dismounting.

“They’ve split up.”

The older man pulled off his gloves, tucked them into his belt, and licked a finger. Not testing the wind but writing on his wrist in saliva. Wizard. Ahjvar felt the subtle pressure again, a will imposing itself on the world. The man pressed his wrist to his lips, eyes shut. Not officers, just the uniform as a mask.

“The holy man went up the mountain,” the wizard said.

“Don’t call him that. It sounds like treason. Or heresy. Something.”

The wizard ignored that. “The guardian, whatever he is, left him and turned west.”

“Seems unlikely.”

“That’s the path to Swajui, captain. It’s a holy place. Why not?”

“Why not? Would he leave the holy man? If they’ve split up, it’s because they know they’re followed and he’s doubling back behind us.”

“I’ve made sure they don’t.” Smug bastard. Mistaken.

“You say. They killed three of our best in Denanbak. Hope you appreciate I didn’t send you with them.” The woman considered, eyed the wizard sidelong and tilted her chin up the trail. “That one is the one who matters.” She hesitated. Artfully. Did the wizard feel a prickle of warning on his spine? He should. She was about to make him a stalking goat, if he had the wit to see it. “What do you foresee if we do split up here?”

“Nothing,” the wizard spat. “I see nothing. I have seen nothing. They’ve been hidden from me since yesterday. Only glimpses, hints . . .”

“Are we even following the right men? If you’ve led me a wild goose chase . . .”

“I don’t make that kind of mistake, captain.”

“Fine, fine, they’ve split up. You head to Swajui and I’ll—”

No question which of these two was most dangerous to himself. An assassin of the Wind in the Reeds. One shot. Ahjvar took aim on the woman’s eye. At this range, he could have hit her with a thrown pebble.

And just as he would have squeezed the trigger, the wizard spurred his horse forward, coming between him and the assassin. “I’m not going after that guardian alone, whatever he is, and I’m not going to be bait in any trap for him for you. He’ll be no threat once the holy man is dead.”

Likely true enough. Bones and ash. Ahjvar shot the wizard instead, since the man now blocked the assassin. The iron head of the quarrel shattered his cheekbone, tore through his brain. Ahjvar was on his feet, sword in hand and slithering trunk to trunk down the steep slope, leaping the last drop even as the wizard fell, caught in his stirrups, spooking his horse, which bucked and shed the corpse. The other spurred forward, sword sweeping around. Ahjvar dropped under the blade and slashed open the beast’s belly as he rose. Ghu would not like that, and he was sorry for the need. The assassin vaulted clear of the screaming, kicking shambles and landed on her feet.

Shield lost in the keep. The woman was armoured, but a head and a half shorter than Ahjvar, her blade likewise shorter than the Northron sword, single-edged like a Grasslands sabre but broader, heavy. Ahjvar drove in hard, forcing her back, but she circled away, moving uphill. Fast, damnably fast, and balanced and confident. Professional, in fact. And she’d probably both slept and fed better for many days. On the other hand, Ahjvar wasn’t worried about dying.

He counted on that too damned much and he knew it. Tried not to. He could be laid out on death’s threshold for days, recovering from what should have been fatal. Time enough for the assassin to catch up with Ghu and kill them both with that one death. Time to stop being a death-wooing fool, but he’d said that before. Should have told the devil to find him a shield. Heavy dagger to guard his side. He didn’t follow in close again, shifting slowly around, inviting—he was too damnably tired to let this be dragged out, and the other probably intended that, Ahjvar’s haggard face betraying his weakness.

Had her, the assassin moving in where Ahjvar wanted her. Sweeping kick as if to hook the woman’s legs out from beneath her, contemptuously avoided along with the sword’s swing she shouldn’t have been so focussed on. Dropped his shoulder, dagger punching swiftly below the skirt of scales, slashing upward. Ahjvar let the dagger go and shifted to a two-handed grip on his sword, weight and height his advantage now as the wounded woman staggered back, blood darkening her bright trousers. Maybe he’d gotten lucky and hit the great vessel of her thigh. Ahjvar didn’t wait to find out, struck the woman’s left wrist and likely broke it, though the glove was armoured and he didn’t take the hand off. The slender knife the Nabbani had snatched for went flying. Poisons in Denanbak. Didn’t want any edge to touch him. Battered the woman down with both hands on the sword again, breaking more bones, stamped on her swordhand as she tried weakly to rise, and thrust still two-handed beneath her jaw.

Death, and no lingering ghost. A moment’s shock and fear and rage and she was gone. Ahjvar went back, scooping up his dagger, shaky, to finish the poor blessed horse. A beast-soul returned to the earth it belonged to; that, at least, was as it should be.

He had no desire to strip either victim of armour to look for the tattoo he was almost certain he would find, at least on the woman. Leave that mystery for Yeh-Lin. He did fish in the neck of her armour to pull out the ornate badge on its chain, just to confirm. Wind in the Reeds, though neither stealthy nor secret here, riding out as an officer of the army in all confidence. And the wizard—raging ghost.

He considered questioning him. Ghosts didn’t lie. Couldn’t be compelled, either. To draw anything useful from a reluctant and resisting ghost took patience and calm he currently lacked. This one was inchoate and might take days to draw himself together. Ahjvar gave him earth and checked for his badge. Not Wind in the Reeds, no, but a wizard of the imperial corps, Bamboo Badge Rank, the second highest, was it not? Conscripted from Zhung Musan’s service before the castle fell by the assassin . . . or had she been set to serve with him in response to some alarm the wizard had taken, some foretelling of Ghu’s coming? He should have asked Yeh-Lin for news of the town, but he forgot—that was only a dream.

Habit of the past year meant he considered for a moment what might be salvaged, but no, he didn’t even want to check the saddlebags for food. And no point pulling the bodies off the road, since he couldn’t hide the dead horse. Leave them for a warning. He cleaned his blades and scrubbed blood from his hands in dirt and old leaves before climbing back up the ridge of stone to hunt for quiver and crossbow, retraced his steps to check on the horse. Horses. The wizard’s was out among the trees nearby, reins tangled in one of those evergreen bushes. He gave the bay a pat and praise for standing and went, circling carefully, talking soothing nonsense as he would have so long ago, before he’d stopped caring for anything, and was able to come up to the stray without panicking it, though the bay—Niaul—trailed after him, trampling through brush like an ox. He dumped the other horse’s saddle, freed it of its bridle, and it bolted away. He caught Niaul, took him further down the trail to Swajui, and left him to stand again. He’d be a fool to trust there were only the two.

But drifting a mile back down the trail, concealed in the forest, watching, only found him the straying horse again, peacefully grazing the first shoots of new grass on a sunny edge, though he waited until well into the afternoon. Cast his own spell, too, weaving it of the old patterns and the sword’s edge. Nothing followed, nothing stirred, either on the track or in the forest. He picked his way back up to his own horse, not wandered too far, and took the path to Swajui.