CHAPTER XVI

Two days had passed since he met the flying devil, but Ghu tried not to think of her. He did not think she would be held for long, not a devil of the cold hells, whom it had taken the Old Great Gods to bind in a lasting grave, and even then, clearly, that had not been enough—but perhaps she had been a dream altogether. Perhaps she had not, and he thought, a wizard with the heart of a dragon, a tiger, she would forget her plan to destroy the victims of necromancy and come in wrath after the one who had defied her. Better, maybe, that she did, rather than that Ahjvar should burn.

If he were not dead.

Yesterday he had made a camp and rested the mare, hunted to feed himself and the dogs and slept through the noon and afternoon heat, riding on into the night again. This day he had let her take only a short noon rest, pressed with urgency, unable to settle. Jui and Jiot had watched hopefully as he took out the sling he had made, but he had only wandered, collecting suitable stones, and the cock-pheasant which had gone bursting into the sky from almost beneath his feet had been allowed to fly.

The dogs had settled for digging out mouse-nests, but they watched him now as he walked, the mare plodding wearily like a third dog a few yards away, snatching a mouthful of grass now and then, flicking her tail at the flies. The sun was setting. He ought to find water, if only a damp spot where he could make a scrape, and camp. Hunt, or cook the breadroot he had dug the day before the night he met the devil. He wasn’t Ahj, to push himself to death to prove a point. It was dangerous to fall into dreams, where the world went soft and thin, where then and now,there and here ran together. Where he could think the very real devil he had met was a dream.

But he was close, he knew it. They had fallen behind—well, he had fallen behind, the first day; he had not thought it wise to venture back through the Eastern Wall to the suburb to steal a horse, and he had been a day on the road afoot before he found one he fancied and a man he didn’t mind injuring with the loss of a beast. He would have taken a mount of greater speed and less calm wisdom, if one had offered, but the proverb that beggars could not be choosers went for thieves as well, at least when the road had not obliged him with a dealer in a better class of stock, before he left it for the empty places. He had caught up again, he thought, crossing the hills. The Red Masks had followed the road until they came to the commonly used track that angled north to Dinaz Catairna. Sometimes he saw them, dreaming, maybe, or hovering half between sleep and dream. Dead men, dead women, not sleeping, lying unseeing under the turning stars, while the horses, hard-used and making worse time because of it, after so many days on the road, slept and found relief from their nightmare days. They knew what they carried, unhappy creatures. There were living men with them, and they slept some distance off, with watches set, and fires that burned all through the night, and when it rained, as it had, a night or two, they huddled under their capes and kept silent, afraid.

They saw that the Red Masks did not eat. Their growing fear was a cloud.

Sometimes he thought he dreamed the Lady reached for the Red Masks, and there was music, high and silvery, voices like glass and crystal, that only they could hear. Or maybe they sang themselves, voiceless.

And Ahj among them.

He was close. Maybe tomorrow, he would come up with them. And then?

He had no plan.

He didn’t realize how close, till he saw Jui sink to a crouch in the blowing grass of the hilltop as he walked up himself, incautious.

Ghu dropped flat. The horse, after a mildly startled look, lowered her head and began to graze in earnest, nothing there to startle anyone, a lone horse wandering, and she was below the skyline anyway. Jiot slunk to his side.

Across a boggy valley bottom, green and with pools of standing water between thickets of sweetgale and islets of scrub willow, a slow stream twisting through, rose a long ridge like a wave, facing him. The northern height of it had been made a camp, and it was defended with banks of new-heaped earth at which people still laboured, spears of sharpened willow set at angles facing outward. Banners were flying with embroidered symbols of trees and stars and knotted shapes he didn’t know how to name. The hill dipped to the south and rose again, and on the southern and lower, flatter crest of it, about half a mile from the north, spilling down and out of sight to the east, was a moving cloud of mounted folk, horsemen and cameleers, and spearmen and archers afoot, with many different banners. Praitans, he thought, and Grasslanders under orange banners, and there were men of Marakand in red capes, tight together on the crest of the hill, and a priest in yellow sitting on a horse with his hands raised in prayer or blessing. And the Red Masks he had followed all this way, but there were more than thirty gathered here now.

The Praitans on the northern hill worked frantically, and a skirl of Grasslander horsemen charged them, riding in to shoot and wheel away, yelping like dogs. Arrows answered, and he thought some had fallen on both sides, but the Red Masks did nothing, and the Marakander camp—but it was half Praitan—drew in on itself, more coming up from the east and spilling down the west to settle along the edge of the bog, kindling fires. Taunting, not attack. Pickets went out from the Marakanders, scattering southwards, and others disappearing over the ridge, back the way they had come. They must believe some other force might come up to join with the high king.

Why not attack while the Praitannec army was hurried and harried, scrambling to raise some defences? The Praitans looked to have the Marakanders and their allied Praitans and mercenaries outnumbered. Save for the undying Red Masks and the terror they could bring, and perhaps—almost certainly, more Marakander allies out of sight, along the eastern side of the ridge.

So why not attack the Praitans now?

He saw men about the Red Masks, saw the sharp gesture of a hand, denial, the wave of bowing heads, the withdrawal from what had to be at best an unsettling and intimidating presence, the silence. Ah, the Marakander allies were asking the same question, and the Red Masks refused.

They were waiting for nightfall. Ahjvar—she—was waiting for nightfall.

He wondered if Deyandara were there, among the lords who tried to raise some obstacle against mounted attack, knowing, as they must know, that it would be futile when the Red Masks rode against them and its defenders fled. There were dead lying, he saw now, the length of the ridge, humans and horses. They had been pursued to that point and then . . . then the Marakanders chose to wait.

Because the Praitans, pursued too closely, might scatter and leave victory uncertain, disappear into their hills against another day?

But the Praitans, unwisely, had turned to face them.

Because they were cornered. The swamp curved north beyond the head of the ridge. They had been in a rout, hunted and herded in panic, and now they had a respite and faint hope, which would be denied.

Was that Ahjvar’s humour? Ghu was afraid it might be, or not Ahjvar’s but the other’s.

The swamp fell into darkness. There was a goddess in the stream that meandered through it, and her presence gathered, drifted into the Praitannec camp. A little goddess, no power to oppose Marakand, but mist rose, cloaking the hill. Jui growled.

“Jui,” Ghu called softly, a murmur only a dog would hear. “Jiot. With me.”

He left the horse to her rest, a good journeying pony, but she had no speed and would only panic, brought where the scent was all of blood and death and fear. When she raised her head, still chewing, and took a step after him he whispered, “No,” and willed her wandering far from violent and ruthless men, sweet grass and coming in time to some master who would hold her dear. She flicked an ear and turned away, drifting south. Ghu angled down the hill, towards where the swamp had seemed narrower, less spattered with ponds and open water, save for the stream. He was among the tussocks of the rising ground, barefoot and wet nearly to the waist, but not making too much noise, he thought, when there came a thunder of drums, brief and shocking, and then a great roaring. But the Red Masks had already gone before; he had felt the wrongness of them pass down from the southern height as he waded the brook. The mist, which had been climbing the ridge, rolled back like a racing ebb-tide.

Fire roared up in the trenches before the rough earthworks. Horses and camels and riders fell under a storm of arrows. He chose his target carefully, a Grasslander coming from his right, spear brandished high, and felt the stone fly true. The man was dead in the instant, struck in the temple below the rim of his helmet. The horse slowed and swerved aside from the dragging corpse. Ghu ran, caught the bridle as it shied, mounted and leaned to haul the body loose, with a silent blessing for the soul, lost and afraid and not even quite knowing it was dead, yet.

He was sorry. He thought, this is what I fall to. Murder for a horse. And I told Ahj I would not learn to kill from him.

It was a good Grasslander horse. Jui barked once, overexcited, then was silent. He turned the horse downslope, riding along the edge of the marshy ground. Someone shot at them, at Jui’s pale coat, but the dog ran down and into the edge of the mist, and Jiot was shadow in the night. He reined back to a trot, the horse stirred by the rush above, the shouts and neighing, some charge of the Praitans out through the gap in their fires, but it was not a well-led sortie. There was screaming within, and he felt the terror of the Red Masks swelling.

The spell of terror was not so certain and solid a thing as it had been, weak and—discordant. It faltered and surged; some did find mastery of themselves and stand against it, but that only meant they died fighting, because no matter how skilled a warrior might be, the Red Masks went armoured in spells that shed blows. He had seen it.

“Ahjvar!” he shouted, which was pointless. He set another stone into the pouch of the sling, a second in hand, ready, dropped a man senseless who sat a fretting camel watching the steep westward slope of the besieged camp, and then the woman with the horse beside him, both living, stunned, and as the third man, a Marakander guardsman, turned to see, raising a horn to his lips to signal, Jiot surged past and leapt at his throat.

Ghu had not intended that. The man shrieked and flailed at the dog and fell off his horse, which bolted, kicking him in the leg but missing Jiot. Jui ran to join in, and he whistled them both back, sharp and urgent. They obeyed. The man, still shouting, crawled towards the bodies of his stunned companions. Since he was shouting, Ghu could at least trust he hadn’t yet taught his dogs to kill, though Jiot seemed a little too willing to get into the spirit of the night.

“No,” he told him. “With me.” But he had what he wanted, an open way to thread through the angled stakes, and no mercenaries to think him one of their own, leading them in. He swung down to lead the horse, keeping its bulk and shadow between himself and any watching archers above, ducking under its neck as he snaked back and forth, almost to the fires.

The trench was continuous, and it burned without any fuel. Some wizardry fed it. He shut his eyes a moment. Heat. Heat to his left. There was wood, a bonfire. To his right, some distance, another. Between—it was only the illusion of fire. The horse smelt smoke, saw flame, and fought his grip. Jui grinned. Jiot tilted his head to one side, panting. They saw. They understood. Fire that wasn’t. The world had become so much more interesting, since they began to follow him. They were young enough to think so still.

The horse was a problem, but he might want its height within. He flung his headscarf over its eyes, murmuring endearments, and led it at a trot to the ditch, which was not steep enough to throw it at that speed, though it plunged and scrambled clumsily. Partially grassed—it was an old earthwork, hastily refortified, that must be why the army of the kings had made for this place. A dinaz long-abandoned? He pulled the scarf free and swung himself up again as they mounted the dyke beyond and bolted down. Someone saw him and shouted, and he dropped to cling to the horse’s side, putting it between himself and the Praitan, but shouted, too, “A friend! Where’s the Lady Deyandara?” The name had at least had the virtue of confusing them. A moment’s confusion was enough, and he was lost in the dark, cantering, trusting there were no more stakes set, or trenches, and hearing the clash and ring of swords away to his right again. Dark figures rose and fell against the fires, atop the mounds, but the light was sinking and then went out. A wizard had died.

Word floated, thin in the night.

“. . . the king, get the king away . . . Durandau . . .”

He rode to the Red Masks and jerked the nearest from the saddle. He didn’t need the knife; an open-handed blow was enough, seeing the thing, the twisted remnants of it, driving it free, speaking a word of peace over it, and rest, and safe journeying on the road if it could find its way. He did not think she could, this broken remnant of a woman’s soul. Peaceful dissolution into the earth’s long breathing, that was all he could offer or she could hope, had she anything left in herself capable of hope. The husk fell away empty, and he caught the descending blow of a staff in his left hand, twisted it, pulling the man, a boy he had been, hardly yet growing a beard and so afraid, fleeing through the streets from guards sent by his own cousins, and all he had done was play with the coins, he knew no spells to raise against his enemies . . . he was freed and gone, and a woman afoot, white-faced, panting, with a rod of braided woods in hand, shouted, “The king, go with the king!” at him, trusting he was some ally, however unexpected, but he was not here to save her king. Her, yes, as she raised an arm that shook against Red Masks also afoot—the Praitans had been killing their horses, and they clambered over bulky bodies, living horses stumbled and were hampered, a barrier as effective as the shallow trenches—she was here before him, so he would save her, but he did not see any kings.

Or Ahjvar.

He had to touch them. Ghu circled through, and here the footing was made uncertain by more than fallen horses, here they had stood, a tight knot of Praitans who had not run, who had nerved themselves to endure the panic, who had stood, and there were banners, trampled, and the corpses of men and women, and many were scorched. He pulled down three more Red Masks. They pressed in against him, ignoring the wizard, who staggered with weariness. He reached through their tame lightning and shed it as if he were stone. He was stone, he thought, and they pressed against him because they knew it; they wanted a final death, they came to him eager as a blind puppy seeks its dam’s teat, driven thoughtless to her heat and scent, the one overriding urge. “Go to your king,” he called to the wizard, and, “Is Deyandara here? Take her away!”

“Deyandara?” she said, in shock. “No!” But she caught the bridle of the horse of a fallen Red Mask and fled away into the night, over the north and down towards the swamp.

There. A lone Red Mask, afoot, and though it carried a sword, it stabbed a man with its dagger and dragged him close as he died, and dropped the body, went after another, hacking it two-handed, kneeling over it, hand on its bleeding wounds. Then it ran towards a knot of milling warriors afoot, Praitan fighting Praitan.

It was not Ahjvar, but the other, the hag, the cursed ghost who rode him, and not killing once, but again and again, feeding without falling away, growing stronger. Would even daylight drive her back now?

A Red Mask had Ghu by the foot. His horse squealed and reared, eyes rolling white, came down and bucked, another clutching breast-strap and saddle-skirt as if it would clamber up. He struck right and left and gave them what they sought; they were not even bringing weapons against him now, desperate. He could feel their desperation, as if they knew . . .

All the Red Masks were bound together. He wheeled the horse free of them and rode for the shadow that had killed another man and sent the enemies, king’s men and traitors, flying as one band. Jui and Jiot had kept back from the Red Masks, but now they closed in with him again, snarling at a Praitan who for a moment turned his way, spear lowered. She thought better of it and ran.

“Ahjvar!” he called, and there was no check in the thing, no reaction at all. In the darkness there was a second shadow, a hint in the tail of the eye, a woman’s long hair, trailing smoke, cracked skin edged in flame. “Hyllau!”

She, it, Ahjvar’s body, the Red Mask’s crested helmet, spun to face him, sword raised. He rode as if to ride it down and turned the horse aside at the last moment, feet free of the stirrups, flung himself onto Ahjvar’s body, striking the sword-arm up, bearing him down. He ripped the helmet free, laying the blade of his forage-knife across the throat above the hauberk’s collar, the crooked knife easy to the task, resting there.

Behind him dogs snarled. One yelped, and was silent. There was a thud, something heavy hitting the earth. He did not look around.

“I will kill him,” he gasped, and the body that tensed to heave him off was still. “I will. And I can. The death he’s been seeking, I can give him that. Rather than let you have him, I will kill him, and set him free, and leave you lost and wailing in the world, houseless and fading and forgotten as his corpse rots around you.”

She moved against the blade, and a dark line opened, black in the bright moonlight. He didn’t change the pressure on the knife, didn’t raise it even the slightest, wrist locked, but a sob choked him. For a moment he didn’t think Ahjvar’s heart was beating, and maybe the devil had killed him after all and there was nothing left but Hyllau’s madness. The body beneath him was hot, as if it burned. But under his other hand the chest moved. Still breathing. Slowly. The blood welled to the rhythm of a pulse.

Hyllau hissed. The eyes focused on him and the lips worked, as if she might speak. A hand clawed upwards, but he held the knife steady, unblinking, and the blood dripped down into the trampled grass. The eyes lost their focus, staring blind into the night, and she sank away. Ghu gasped, another sob, shaken, and maybe raised the blade a hair’s breadth, but if Hyllau had retreated, it was still a Red Mask controlled by the Lady he had beneath him. The hand moved for the sword it had lost when he bore Hyllau down.

“No,” he said. “Ahjvar . . .”

He couldn’t see the cocoon of spells, but he knew they were there, a spider’s silken shroud, wrapped and woven tight, smothering, and if the souls of the other Red Masks had been torn to threads to weave their own chains, Ahj’s, he thought, could not be, because Catairanach’s curse bound him whole and entire to continue unbroken in the world, to be the womb, the cyst of Hyllau’s waiting, with all the strength of her land forged adamant-hard in rage and grief. Ghu reached into the devil’s shroud and ripped, the blade of the forage knife honed to the edge of the mountain’s wind, capable of sheering stone. For a moment he hung in dark water, saw fire twisted and caught in ice. He cut the devil’s bonds away and dragged Ahjvar free of them, into moonlight and night.

Nothing seemed to change, except that Ahjvar’s hand found his sword and clenched on it. Then the eyes shut and he tried to roll away. Ghu moved to let him go. Ahjvar was breathing, now, as if he had been running. Or drowning. Thrust himself up on his arms, coughing, choking. Warily, because startling Ahj when he had a sword in his hand was a bad idea, Ghu put a hand between his shoulders, spread flat, just enough pressure to let the man know he was there, as he would walking behind a horse.

“Ghu?”

“I’m here.”

“Good.” Ahjvar went down flat again, head cradled on an arm. “Damn all gods an’ Old Great Gods too. Headache.”

“I know.”

Nothing more. Ghu looked around, drawing a knee up to rise. They were in the middle of a battlefield, but battle had shifted aside—because there were Red Masks here, waiting, watching, a double handful of them, half mounted and half afoot and two lying empty that he had not slain.

And Jui, and Jiot. Silent, standing like sentinels, hackles bristling, guarding him.

A dog, a half-grown stray from the city streets, could not do what wizards could not, and tear a ruined soul from the devil’s grip. Jiot looked round at him, stirred the base of his up-curled tail, hesitant, checking. Had he done right this time?

Ghu crawled to them, a hand on both. “Don’t run so far ahead of me,” he said. “Don’t . . .” But he had taken them to follow him; already they saw his road, and that he could not turn back, not now; he’d gone too far this night and unwitting drawn them with him. Should he ask them to stay behind? “Good dogs,” he said weakly.

One Red Mask backed away and turned its horse to ride after easier prey, obeying its Lady’s will, that it should kill kings and wizards and take this land for Marakand. But the others still wavered, not even able to shape a thought, a hope, but still . . . waiting.

Ahjvar came crawling to him, used his shoulder to heave himself up, stood swaying, legs braced. “Where in the cold hells are we?” he asked, and added, “Get back. These things don’t die. Necromancy . . .” Then he fell again. Ghu caught the sword so that he at least did not fall on his own blade.

“Drowned,” Ahjvar said vaguely from the ground. “I was drowning. Her face kept changing—Ghu!”

Down by the swamp, where the flow of the battle had shifted, people shouted and shrieked and died.

“Go,” he told the dogs. Just that, and they went, racing, grim and eager.

“Collecting dogs now? Cheaper than horses,” Ahjvar said. “The moon’s wrong.” He tried to haul himself up again, using Ghu as a prop.

Ghu pushed him off. “Stay out of the way.” Ahj was weak as an invalid and clumsy as a drunkard.

There were too many. He felt the fear radiating from them, stronger now, as if something knew there was opposition it had not expected. He could almost hear the high, silver singing, a voice of ice and garrotter’s wire.

“Ahj,” he said, as these Red Masks, his Red Masks, still watched him. But a stir ran through them. They would not wait for long. “You were Red Mask. Do you remember?”

Silence.

“Ahjvar?”

“No.” But he added, “She’s singing. I can hear her. They can hear her. It’s in their minds, they’re singing. The Lady’s words.”

“You’ve been inside it. Ahj, can you see it? Can you break it? I can only set them free one by one, and even the dogs . . . it will only take one arrow to kill me or them, still, and there are so many of the Red Masks. She shields them from spells and weapons, but you’ve been inside. Are you—can you even understand me?” he cried, because Ahjvar was bowed over his knees, and the Lady had wrenched some of the watching Red Masks back to her will. He had to keep them from Ahj, who couldn’t move to defend himself.

But Ahjvar dragged his sword from Ghu’s hand, muttering, “That’s not a bloody shield, don’t use it like one,” and added, “Good,” as Ghu kicked a Red Mask off and it did not move again.

Something mastered them, turned them, and they all fled into the night, to where, he feared, they could do more harm at less risk.

“Where are we?” Ahjvar asked.

“Praitan. The Duina Catairna. A hill by a swamp.”

Ahjvar swore. “Who are we fighting?”

“You and I? Mostly everyone,” Ghu said, because without the Red Masks making them an island to be avoided, they probably would be. Even short of full, the moon was bright enough that staying still would not hide them. “I look like one of Ketsim’s mercenaries, and you—”

“She’s been out.”

“Yes.”

“Someone’s tried to cut my throat.”

“Yes. Sorry. I didn’t want to, but she wouldn’t—she didn’t kill only once, she kept hunting.”

“Would you have?”

“Yes, Ahj.”

Hand on his shoulder.

“How many?”

“I don’t know. But I think it was she who was commanding the army here, not you. She waited for dark, and you’re not such a fool as to start a battle in the dark. Half the dead have probably been slain by their own friends.”

“How many?” And he didn’t mean friend and foe mistaken in the night.

“Many, I think,” Ghu said gently. “Maybe,” he added, “at least, they were not all Praitans.”

“Not on the road here, they weren’t,” Ahjvar said grimly. “I remember, a little. The soldiers were afraid. What Praitans are here?”

“The high king—Duina Andara, Duina Broasora. Others. I don’t know all the banners.”

“How many Red Masks?”

“You had thirty when I followed you from Marakand. But there are more.”

“If you’d cut my throat, Ghu—could you have killed me?”

“You would have died, Ahj.”

“Would I.” It was said carefully, not a question.

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t mean for what might have happened, either, and Ahjvar knew it. Not for what he might have done, but for what he had not done, in all the years of nights Ahj would have welcomed it. But he could not have, then. He could not.

“You know you can’t let her loose with wizardry, Ghu. You know that.”

“I know, Ahj.”

“Promise me you won’t.”

“I won’t.”

“Then break that seal, before we make this a kingless land. I can hear. I remember the shape of the Lady’s spell, and it’s only human wizardry, no matter how many wizards are woven into it, working it, no godhead to it at all. All I need to do is break it from within, and she didn’t make it dreaming anyone could. Her defences all look outwards.”

“She was never a goddess.” But he used teeth and his left hand to pull at the knots of his purse, never leaving aside his knife, letting Ahj, barely able to stand, guard him, while he felt around for the clay seal that Deyandara had thought a blessing-piece, what seemed so long ago. Catairanach’s token.

“I saw a goddess in the well,” Ahjvar said.

“Maybe she showed you a lie.” Ghu knelt again, with the clay disc in his hand, found a flattish stone for an anvil, and with the handle of his knife pounded the seal to dust. Nothing spectacular followed. At the first shattering there was, maybe, the fresh scent of water, a moment. That was all. He swept the dust into his hand, but, since Ahjvar had turned away, simply wiped it into the grass. A knot of fighting came their way, Praitans forcing Praitans back, and impossible to know which had come with the high king or which were the traitors. They saw the dark shape of Ahjvar, the Red Mask’s long cloak, black though it was in the moonlight, and all fled.

Mist crept up the hillside. Ahj had a handful of stems, was muttering over them.

“Don’t need the damned weeds,” he said, looking up. “Not really. Enough to know they should be here. Make me a circle and keep it clear.” But he began laying out whatever it was he had found anyway, starting at the east, so Ghu cut a circle in the turf around him, no more than drawing a line with his knife blade, but the light of the moon, low in the west, found it, and it glowed a spider-silk thread.

The mist stopped at the line and followed it.

Let me help you.

“You can freeze in the cold hells for all I care.”

“Ahj!” But there had been no help for Ahjvar when he sought it, from any of the gods or goddess of Praitan, had there?

And what was I to do against Catairanach, whom the folk of this land had given care of this land? the little goddess asked. Here, in this, I can help. If you will allow it, king of the duina.

“We need three,” Ahjvar almost snarled. “I didn’t want to have to count the damned hag anyway.”

Which was yes. She took no form at first, beyond the mist, but though the ridge had no god, she was the brook that spread through the swamp, and she rose in shimmers of mist and moonlight, a shape that might be birdlike, a heron, maybe, or a crane. Ghu reached a hand and drew her in, and dew silvered them, mist-wrapped. He stood ready against anything human or Red Mask that rushed them, but the Red Masks were scattered, and the humans moved away from the eerily shimmering patch of light. There were drums again, but he didn’t know what they might signal. Horns distant to the north.

“Poplar,” Ahj said, at the east, ignoring it all. “And gorse,” at the south. “Yew.” That was west, but the hill had been all grass and small flowering things. It was only knotted grass that he flung down at each point. He drove his sword in at the north, after a glance at the stars, and hung a crooked wreath of twisted weeds on the crossguard. “And we three, who are water and stone and blood.” Ghu shivered at that, but Ahjvar was half singing now and, Ghu thought, hardly heard his own tongue as the words flowed through him. “Through fire, through water, and the third is the fire and the water of the blood you have stilled, the hearts you have taken, the minds and the souls and the bodies you have profaned. These are the words you have made and I unmake them. You took me into your song and showed me the way of it, and I find my place in it again and stand there with a whole heart and a soul unbound, unbroken. The barred hall is unbarred from within, the gates flung open by those who stand within, the great citadel laid open by the least soldier who stands within. The chains you have laid about them with their own souls are unmade by we three together, strand by strand and link by link, word by word by note we unmake your making and lay it bare to the moon and the wind and the witnessing stars. Let it be ash, and let it be sand, and let it be dust flung to the four corners of the earth and the high stars their home on the cleansing wind.”

He sang, then, words Ghu didn’t know, but they sounded of the sea and the sea-folk who built no ships but came sometimes from the south in the long outrigger canoes. He didn’t suppose Ahjvar knew what he sang, either, only that it was the shape of the binding of the Red Masks that the Lady had left in his mind, and he wove grass as he sang, where a spell with more time to consider its making might have used twigs. In his woven grass, he set the wizards’ alphabet of the trees against the wizards’ words of the sea, and the virtue went out of the Lady’s words and the shape of the binding frayed and loosened. The lingering silver song of the Lady faltered and failed, because it was woven of the Red Masks’ own wizardry on a framework already grown brittle, frail, the power behind it weak and dying. Ghu felt as if Ahjvar set his back against him, braced to face some great battering, and the little goddess of the brook wrapped wings of mist about them, all her will and her grief at the wrongness of the necromancy pouring through into Ahjvar’s will against the Lady.

His voice grew softer, slower, lower, and the words faded. The last twist of sweet-scented bedstraw and wiry grass fell from his fingers and was caught by the wind, carried out of the circle. He swayed, but Ghu caught him before he could fall.

“Done?” he asked, when Ahjvar stood leaning on him, unspeaking, for so long he wondered if he had fainted. Or if it would be Hyllau who raised her head.

“Better be. Let her out.”

“Who—?” Ah, the goddess, who coiled now about their feet, a snake of moonlit mist. He cut the circle he had made with his knife again, brushed it away as if flinging back a curtain.

Help him, the goddess whispered, for Ghu alone, he thought, as her presence faded down to the waters. But take him away, out of this land. We will not have him here.

Ahjvar was on his knees again, shivering.

“Come on,” Ghu said. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” Ahj managed at last, a hoarse whisper. “Great Gods, Ghu, where?”

“Anywhere,” he said. “Away from here. If there are no Red Masks, let the Praitans win their own war. Come. But first we get you out of that red.” Though pausing to strip him of the Lady’s livery while battle still rolled about them—if it did, it had all gone silent, the only cries far in the distance now, except for the moans of some wounded man closer at hand. Another voice spoke, though, Grasslander, and the moaning was stilled. He got the dirty red silk off Ahjvar, anyway, and the shirt of scales, and led him like a blind man down towards the west. They almost stumbled on a body, a tall man with his hair in desert braids and a spear-thrust in the great vein of his thigh, with all the ground about him soaked, but he was tall, and not yet stiff, so Ghu hauled off his dark coat, trying to keep it out of the bloody puddle, though the hem ended up sticky with it, and made Ahj put it on, to stop his shivering as much as to change the look of him. Ahjvar seemed content to lean on him, too exhausted to walk. If he let him down, the man would sleep where he lay.

Screaming. A man running, screaming, the Marakander western road tongue and bastard Nabbani of the eastern jumbled together, “Dead, dead, they are dead, he has come, he will not have me, I am not his not his not she he cannot how can he—the Lady has failed and they are dead but he was mine how could they all how could he see—we will all die and the city be empty, the Lady’s chosen the blessed are dead—”

The priest might not have even seen them. He ran and screamed like he was mad, and the skirts of his pale robe were stained dark. There was nothing in his hand but a guardsman’s cudgel, but Ahj thought it attack, and that woke him so that he shoved Ghu back and stepped to the side of the priest’s path, taking his head as he went.

Ahjvar’s hands were still shaking as he cleaned his sword on the grass, and Ghu had to tug him up again as he knelt, staring at the ground, at the hilt of his sword, at nothing. He talked Ahj on as he would a frightened horse, till the dogs, whom he had almost forgotten, came racing up. Jiot limped, little slowed, and Jui whined and thrust his head against Ghu.

“Brave dogs,” he told them. “Good dogs, such good dogs,” but he didn’t have a hand to spare, keeping Ahjvar from falling. They didn’t seem to mind, closing in, one at either side, content.

They came on a Red Mask, fallen, and the clothes and armour were hugged in close, nothing but bones within, withered and dry, and the roots of the grass and the bulrushes were reaching, crawling, pulling. It sank, slowly, taken into the earth. Ahjvar retched and swerved away.

He wanted a horse, and there was a horse, his horse that he had ridden against the Praitan camp, he was certain, with the mist coiling about it, caressing and soothing, and another stray by its side.

“Thank you,” he told the goddess.

He had to shake Ahjvar to get him to look around, to see the horses and make for them, and guide his foot to the stirrup, he shuddered so badly.

“Coffee,” Ahj muttered at one point, through clenched teeth. “Head hurts. Coffee.”

“Hush,” Ghu said. “You’re frightening the horse.” But Ahjvar always frightened new horses, a little. They smelt his poisoned second soul.

Ghu walked, leading both horses, the dogs ahead now, following a trail of mist and fox-light. The moon was sinking low in the west. It would set before dawn and leave them in darkness for the last hours of the night. They should find a safe place where Ahjvar could sleep, and ride again with the dawn, away from here. The goddess did not speak, but they crossed the swamp no more than fetlock deep and found a hard-bottomed ford through the brook. He turned northerly, for no good reason that he knew.

Deyandara had not been with the kings here.

He thought he heard his name in the wind, a whisper, in the little bard’s voice.

A curse of ill-luck on the royal blood of the Duina Catairna. Ill luck and ill-chancing, in every choice. He hadn’t wanted her to come with them to the city, hadn’t wanted her following Ahjvar, but her inherited curse was on her no matter whom she followed, and there had been death, always, shadowing her, since she came into their affairs.

“Ahjvar,” he said. “The Dinaz Catairna. Where is it?”

Ahjvar looked around, as if he might see some hall of ninety years ago on a nearby hill, but he had only been looking at the shape of the horizon, the hills against the sky. He pointed, west and north.

“Is it far?”

A shake of the head answered.

“How far?”

“Leave it to the kings,” Ahjvar said, his words slow and slurred.

“No,” Ghu said, slow himself, words rising unconsidered. He could hear her . . . feel the racing of her heart, as if he held her, her breath sobbing, choking, wheezing, and stilled. The dead weight of her. Not yet. But how far, how far, and these horses, too, were weary. “No. Not the kings. Fire, and treachery. They plan to burn the little bard.”