Blackdog (17 page)

He jerked his head at Siglinda and Ova. “With me. I'm going to bathe in the lake.”

Ghatai's soul suddenly wanted out of this cage, this temple, this grave he made for himself. Bind himself to the goddess and he might be bound to these bloody mountains, trapped, chained into the earth again—it would not happen. He was stronger, he would take Attalissa and break her and she would serve him. And he would lie with Siglinda, who was clean and straightforward and honest human in her heart, in Attalissa's lake, claim it for his own.

And Ova could suffer embarrassment, waiting on them, since the boy hadn't the will to win his way to Ivah's bed.

Later, after swimming and lovemaking and dinner with a silent and nervous daughter too pretty to be wasted on homely Shaiveh, more's the pity, and he'd get no grandchildren that way, either, Tamghiz left Siglinda and Ova sprawled sleeping in the antechamber, two other of his bodyguards retrieved from assessment duties at the town guildhall to stand watch over his door. He paced the long balcony, watching the lake. The waters were calmer now, and the sunset gilded the surface, recalled molten rock.

Fire, under the dominance of the Palace of the Moon. He could tell the girl otherwise, but he felt fire in his bones again. Destruction and death, and a return. Put with his own forecasting, old friends and old betrayals, a husband betrayed, the brotherhood that ended in death, and Ar-Lin, the constellation Ar-Lin, in past, present, future. The mythological Ar-Lin, murderous wife, faithful and betrayed lover, was a Nabbani tale set on those stars, but it felt like the right one. That was the secret to the star-chart, trusting, when the heart chose one story over another. Those shamans and wizards of the Great Grass, who knew only their own tales, worked groping in the dark.

The wandering stars of war and love and judgement had all fallen into the future when he cast for them, which only confirmed what the constellations said, and the fixed gate that predominated was for divinity, but running counter, which could mean broken, or it could mean active, pushing against the current of the world. That, that alone he was not confident of. For the rest, the stars spoke too clearly of love turned to treachery and death, and he did not think the streams of fate carried him intimations of An-Chaq's return, or those other wives so long forgotten it was an effort to dredge up their names.

So, he had an idea now which of his fellows might be loose in the world. Ulfhild was not, perhaps, the company he would have chosen for a reunion. He'd trust her no farther than he could see her, but in the end—he knew the shapes of her treachery, and the keys to it, and that meant he could predict when and where to trust her, and when to guard his back. Which was love, in a way. She'd fight him, of course. Vartu Kingsbane would not stand by and see him find his way to godhead in the world, leaving her behind. But once he had Attalissa's soul within him, once they were one, Tamghiz and Ghatai and divine Attalissa, he would feel the shape of the world, he would reach into its soul, draw on its vast strength—shake the distant thrones of the Old Great Gods and demand for all his damned and forgotten and outcast fellows,
Why did you betray us?
And he would share that knowledge with Ulfhild Vartu, offer it, win her with it.

Win her again, and free them all, call them all to him…take them all into his heart, Vartu first of all. They would be one, and the Old Great Gods would know what it was to be afraid.

But not yet. Tamghiz Ghatai drew three of the looped cords off his shoulders, wound patterns through his fingers, complex as the calligraphy of Nabban. Not yet. Let her not come to him until he was ready, let her wander, always finding other trails, finding arguments in her own mind to turn aside for a time—she was ever good at that. Fix her coming to the stars, to the joining of Vrehna and Tihz, fit signifier of their reunion. He would divert her, so that he would be one with Attalissa before he faced her.

And to be doubly sure of her, he would send…Ova—yes, Ova, since Ivah didn't want him—on the long journey to the northwest, to the kingdom of the Hravningas, to the royal mounds at Ulvsness, the Ravnsbergoz. Grave-robbing would offend the man, but a loyal
noekar
, a loyal thegn, Ova would say, would overcome that scruple in his lord's service, at his lord's need, and to earn his village. So long as Ova found the right grave…Tamghiz had been at the burial, of course, but landscapes changed over time and it was not so easy to say this mound or that, when more had been raised since, and others reopened. Still, he could divine for it. The stars favoured him that it had not been a royal ship-burning as her mother wanted; they laid her in her grave dressed in silk, his silk, and sable skins. And gold and amber. If the mounds were unrobbed, as they should be, lying in the shadow of a god's mountain, there was jewellery to know her by. All he needed was one bone.

Now the devils, having no place, have no bodies, but are like smoke, or like a flame. And these seven devils, who were called Honeytongued Ogada, Vartu Kingsbane, Jasberek Fireborn, Twice-Betrayed Ghatai, Dotemon the Dreamshaper, Tu'usha the Restless, and Jochiz Stonebreaker, hungered to be of the stuff of the world, like the gods and the goddesses and the demons of the earth at will, and as men and women are whether they will or no, and having a body, to have a place in the world, and make themselves of the world. They rebelled against the just punishment of the Old Great Gods, and escaped from the cold hells. They made a bargain with the seven wizards, that they would join their souls to the wizards’ souls, and share the wizards’ bodies, sharing knowledge, and unending life, and power. But the devils deceived the wizards, and betrayed them.

S
era's spring welled into a jagged-edged pool in the red rocks of the caravanserai ridge, which thrust out north from the town into the desert. The clear water swirled and eddied there, and wound away down through the stone, murmuring in a narrow channel a child could step across, chiming like bells over little ledges and falls. It reached the desert sands in a mat of ever-green sedges, spreading in braided threads through a thicket of saxaul before it seeped away, lost under the red sands.

“Water for water,” the caravaneers said, when they spilled out the last warm dregs from their gourds and goatskins onto the worn and pitted rocks and the sand around the spring. And they knelt to fill at least one token gourd from the goddess's own waters, before returning to their caravanserais and the town's deep wells.

Sometimes, it was said, Sera herself would rise from the spring and speak to them. Gaguush swore she had seen her once, a woman shadowy and insubstantial as a ghost, mother-naked. Her hair swept into the water and became the deep pool's shadows, and the tattooed horses of Serakallash had galloped on her mist-dim skin. Bikkim said she rose to talk with native Serakallashi more often than not, if they came alone, with earnest intent and need of counsel in their hearts. Holla-Sayan had never seen her and had no desire to now.

“Water for water,” Pakdhala said, and tipped out the gourd she had brought. It stained the rock dark, gathering dust as it flowed, and disappeared into the spring-green grasses that crowded the bank.

Sera my sister of Serakallash, I am Attalissa of the Lissavakail in the mountains. I have been driven from my lake by a great evil, and I come to your place with peace in my heart. I want to warn you of this wizard, who calls himself Tamghat, and ask your leave to pass through your land.

That was not the fearful girl but the goddess entire, as she had not been since she told him,
Prayer is for them, dog, not us.
Confident, regal.

Told Otokas.

Arrogant, Holla-Sayan thought. There was no
asking
in her tone, merely assumption of right and Sera's acquiescence.

The grasses hissed like arrows in flight, beaten flat in a swirling wind, and the water rose in waves, splashing them.

“Go away, and take your murdering dog with you!” Sera did not bother with silence, or dignity. If she had been a woman, she would have spit at them; her voice was shrill with anger. “Are you thinking you can ask me for
help?
Abandoning your people, running down here to be pursued by that…thing? I can see the fear of it, taste the shape of it, in your dog's mind, and I tell you, I won't have you leading it to my folk, whatever it is, wizard or mad demon like your dog. Go back to your lake where you belong!”

The goddess whirled into a pillar of water, dark and glittering in the early morning light. Sand drove against them, sharp and stinging. Pakdhala cried out and covered her face, and Holla shouted, felt the blaze of anger turning liquid, dissolving through him.

“Leave him alone!” Pakdhala shouted, like a little child defending her elder from bullying, all bristling impotent outrage.

Sera laughed, the column of moving water chiming, but Holla thought the laughter forced. He had known too many brawls to mistake the nervous assumption of carelessness for firm-footed confidence, even in a god. Sera was afraid.

But he could not see that she had cause for fear. Otokas's memories knew the Blackdog could not overcome a goddess in her own ground.

“Is that all you are, great sister of the Lissavakail? A little girl, who stamps her foot and threatens and hides behind her slave? But you've always been good at doing that. Leave him alone, or what? You'll kill my folk, bring your priestesses down here, make me one of your protectorates? I think not. You attracted this mighty wizard, you left your folk to him and fled yourself—you fight him.”

I can't yet. I'm weak.

Wilfully weak, avatar of Attalissa. Don't cry to me about it
.

I have to hide.

Not here you don't.

Fear was stronger yet in the taste of Sera's words. She should be afraid of Tamghat, not of them. Attalissa was weak and the Blackdog only a mortal body men could kill, while she was a goddess in the heart of her land. But the Blackdog reacted to her uncertain fears and aggressive bluster as any dog would to another that snapped and snarled and cowered at once; it pushed at Holla, wanting to prove its own dominance and assure Attalissa's safety by cowing Sera.

Pakdhala, childlike, was growing angry in her fear and confusion. Holla tried to take her hand, to lead her away, get them both out of this place where they did not belong and were not wanted.

The Blackdog fought him. It thrust bone through his bone, nerves through screaming nerves, wrestled to push him from the world. It felt as though it and he were one…thing…and that
thing
stood with its right and its left on either side of some barrier. Night and day, water and air. Life and death. And it dragged him, turned, and the dog was in the world. He was blinded by the pain of it for a moment, felt his heart had faltered and started again, felt a sheet of fire had washed through him. It was the dog's heart he felt, anger like a fortress wall raised around the goddess against the world, and she was the hard core of the world all the wild stars circled. But his own thoughts, his own mind, were wound over and through the dog's wash of emotion. He flailed away from it in terror, felt as though he might pull free…remembered,
knew
the danger in that, the dog free without the man's will and understanding to leash it.

There was pattern within memory, within the memories that were not his, patterns of control. Experience asserted itself. He snarled at Sera, that much escaped him, but he stayed where he was, crouched between the goddesses, and Pakdhala gripped the long fur of his ruff, anchoring him. Pakdhala. Not any damned foreign goddess but a girl whose hand shook, holding him back, because she almost knew Sera might shatter him from the dog and leave him dead and the dog seeking a new host, lost and panicked and preying on whatever man chanced by. Only
almost
knew. In her conscious mind she was afraid only because she was a child, and an adult shouted with anger she only half-understood, and the world threatened once more to fly apart in violence.

No
, he told the dog, and memory knew, if he did not, the way back, and the man was in the world again.

He knelt, his face dripping with sweat, breathing as though he had in truth been wrestling.

“Sera,” he said. “Lady of Serakallash, I'm sorry. We never meant to offend you. I don't understand how we have. She's a child. She means no harm. And you know me. I've been here so many times. She thought it was courtesy to come to you. We've no strength to be a threat, you have to know that. If we did, we'd be back in Lissavakail dealing with Tamghat.”

The column of twisting water subsided, but the pool still churned storm-like, cloudy with sand. “I knew you, caravaneer, Westgrasslander of Sayan. You belong to Attalissa now. I pity you.”

“Pity her, Sera. She's a little girl, and she's afraid.”

“Attalissa knows nothing of pity and will have none from me. You know this and you know why, Blackdog. Take her and go.”

“I'm with a caravan-gang. We're leaving this morning, but I can't avoid Serakallash. I'll have to come back.”