Blackdog (67 page)

—It was Sera, taking back her land.

—It could not have been. I slew her.

—I doubted. I knew something was wrong, even then. I should have hunted her. I should have questioned the sept-chiefs.

—Ketsim has grown lazy and overconfident. He said there was no rebellion left in them. That patrol that came in this morning said there were fireworks seen from the desert edge the night Ketsim set out with the goddess. Signalling? Who? If they've hired mercenaries out of the desert…

—If Sera is back, she will be mine anyway. If not, they can go to ruin godless. Serakallash doesn't matter any more. Serakallash was a game. This is all a game, remember? I, we, don't need kingdoms on this earth.

—They should honour us in fear.

—They will. But what if they weren't signalling mercenaries for some uprising? What if
she's
plotting with Serakallash? I felt her. She's near. I threw her off the track for years, but she's here now.

—As I wanted.

—Yes. I want her here for this. But if there's any danger, it's in her.

—I'm stronger than her. I always have been. She doesn't frighten me.

—She's mine. She will be mine again.

—Sometimes I feel her watching me.

—Delusion. She hates me still.

—Her fate and mine run together. She can't escape me. She knows it. She's drawn back to me. That's why she stalked my daughter, turned her against me. As she did my son.

—These things don't matter. Games, as much as this game of being lord of this wretched town of yak-milking peasants. When I'm able to open the road to the heavens again, when the strength of the earth shatters the citadels of the Gods, then she'll know me her lord, Vartu will follow then.

—She'll be the first. Only the first. Followers betray. She was never trustworthy. But when I take her and make her mine as I make the gods of the earth mine…the Great Gods themselves will fear us.

—She's near.

—That's wrong.

“Great Gods damn it!” He had to rub out a quarter circuit of the lesser arc, sit in meditation an hour, clearing his mind, rocking and chanting, before he began again. It was Vartu, working against him, leading him into distraction and self-doubt, as ever. That was what she intended in Serakallash; it might even be illusion, this feeling of Sera's presence in her waters again, meant to pull him away from Lissavakail.

His thoughts were wandering again, when they should be most focused. Tamghiz Ghatai sat back on his heels, took a deep breath, eyes on the distant peaks. He was nerve-wracked as an apprentice preparing his masterpiece. That was the problem with human flesh and human soul, they wound one into human life again, and all its chattering, nattering, self-gnawing stupidities.

I am Ghatai. Ghatai, Ghatai, Ghatai. I am
…stars and darkness and fire and ice, soul born of worlds unseen.
I am Ghatai…
He rocked to the chant, eyes closed, until the word was all there was, self without thought.
Ghatai.
He finished the day's working as heavy mist coiled from the lake's still waters and the evening shadows flowed over the Dancing Hall. Then he lay there, calm and still and briefly at peace, in the centre where he would place the avatar, and he waited for his stars to rise. He checked on the girl once, touching her mind. Still asleep under drugs and spells, dreaming of camels. Her guards were alert, the wards he had set on her lay quiescent. The wretched Blackdog had not come yet, to be put out of its misery and pulled into Ghatai's soul. Soon, though. Perhaps tonight. The spells he had set on the avatar's body would hold it, or any other devil's soul that happened to touch his prize, long enough for him to reach the room and deal with them, whichever it was that came. For now, he could rest, and watch the stars rising.

He touched the breast of his shirt and the hard, silk-wrapped length of bone that lay against his chest all the time now, over his heart as if he held his child there. This had nothing to do with Vartu, or with Ghatai. Sometimes he was simply Tamghiz, and he was waiting for Ulfhild.

Were there any hearts at all in the temple still Attalissa's? Pakdhala surfaced into a hazy wakefulness, feeling that she had been shaping that thought through long, slow dreams, as she rocked, safe and secure, to red Sihdy's pace, her father's arms about her. Safe and secure, hidden from view, snuggled into his chest, happy, loved, half-drowsing. Ah, she had done that herself, made a hidden citadel from which to rise, slow and unseen. And now she was awake.

But not much further ahead. Still none had understood her plea, none had come with water from the lake…but of course, there were the guards. If one of the novices were clever, she might mix lake-water in with the drugged beer and honey, but if they had been raised as hostages to Tamghat, she supposed they hadn't exactly been encouraged to think for themselves. She tried her strength. Walls. She still could not reach the dog. And if she fought them…Tamghat would know long before she breached them.

Pakdhala forced lead-heavy eyelids open. The room was dim, with splashes of dusk's copper light painting the walls through the piercings of the shutters. Another night on its way. One shutter was folded back, and by rolling her eyes she could just make out a woman with Salt Desert tattoos on her face. She sat on the balustrade, leaning forward, head against the fists that clutched her spear.

Bored, and not terribly alert. Hah. Though Pakdhala could do nothing with that at the moment. The other, a Grasslander woman—always women, did he not trust men near his intended bride or was it genuine respect for her modesty?—stood with her shoulders propped against the doorframe. As Pakdhala watched through slitted eyes she pushed herself off and began slowly pacing the room.

“Hope someone does come,” the one on the balcony said, and laughed. “This is bloody boring. Four hours to go?”

“Don't wake her!”

“She wouldn't wake if we shouted. Wizardry.” She waggled her fingers. “What do you make of old Eyeless Darshin, pottering up on the last watch mumbling about water? You know what she had in her jug? Lake muck. Said ‘the lady wanted water.’”

“She's mad. Senile. Her wits went when our lord put out her eyes. Or maybe before—you'd have to be a bit addled to go after him with a kitchen knife, seems to me.”

“Well, yeah. But still, the thing with the water—seems so unlikely I kind of wonder if there's sense to it, you know.”

“Old Dardar talks to trees and flowers and sings lullabies to the lake.”

“Lullabies?”

“True. Haven't you seen her? Off pottering along the shore early in the morning, falling in half the time. Singing baby-songs. There's no sense to anything she does.”

“Well, maybe. They dumped the pitcher over her head and kicked her downstairs, anyway, so whatever she was up to, it didn't come to anything.” The Salt Desert woman sighed. “Silly child. You wouldn't catch me running off with dog-monsters if my lord announced he had a fancy to be my husband.”

“Don't be irreverent.”

The desert woman, too young to have been
noekar
when the temple fell, pouted, sighed, and turned her back to look out over the lake. They fell into silence again. The Grasslander moved pieces on a Nabbani chessboard, no doubt confusing whatever game had been left half-played.

A shadow flickered over the red glow of the shutter-piercings and the desert woman turned her head, braids swinging, to watch something.

“Why's our lord shooting birds now?”

“I have no idea.”

“Funny thing to do.”

“Hardly your place to question him, is it?”

“The mountain girls are missing most of the time anyway. When I was little I always heard what great archers they were, these mountain priestesses.”

“It's not like we've let them get much practice lately. Half the novices have never touched a bow.”

“Oh, now who's questioning our lord's wisdom?”

“Hold your tongue and keep your mind on your duty, why don't you?”

The desert woman grumbled into welcome silence. Pakdhala felt herself start to sink under it, sleep clawing her down. She forced her eyes open again, bit the inside of her lip until it bled. Pain helped, sped up her heart. The taste of blood overwhelmed the lingering bittersweet coating on her tongue.

What could she do within these walls, beyond shouting and beating her fists and generally throwing a tantrum? She could not reach the Blackdog, could not fight the barriers around her without drawing Tamghat's attention and finding herself pushed into wizardrous sleep again. She clenched her teeth and kept her breathing even, quieting a rising panic. That would draw Tamghat's attention as surely as the tantrum she imagined.

Holla-Sayan carried his home and his god in his mind. Most caravaneers would say they did, with their little talismans that proved to themselves they were not godless, but her father could reach down inside himself and find the Sayanbarkash's strength, certainty of who he was and where he belonged. She had felt it in him. Was she hollow, that she had no resources, no foundation, when she was locked up within herself? Who was Pakdhala, on her own, without the flow of other minds around her, without the spark of godhead that flickered so feebly?

A caravan-mercenary. An archer. A camel-leech. She could bake good stone-bread, too, and had studied the falls of the coins in Nabbani divination. Perhaps—

Perhaps she was a fool. She was a
wizard.
She had been born a wizard, the first time she had been born. That had rather been the point. And she had been wizard-born a time or two since, and what was a wizard but a human touched with a distant echo of the earth's strength? Which was all she had, a human body without the blessing of any sister-goddess, without any bond with her own waters.

Ah.

She let herself sink into a deep, dark calm. Drift through memory. She had studied Nabbani divination, yes, though Ivah had taught her no spell-working, but long, long ago…Westron forms rose in memory, and Nabbani symbols. For what she needed to do, there were no traditional words shaped by the mages of Tiypur, no series of signs passed down by the masters of Nabban. But Westron wizardry did not depend on tradition like that of the east, not in its deepest and oldest form, the one her lover Hareh had taught her so, so long ago, when this all began. Indeed, there was one school of thought that said each spell must be new-made, used once and never again.

Pakdhala found the barrier that encased her.

On the wall, shadow.

In the empty room, echo.

In the deep pool, reflection.

She lay so still, within her mind. Echo and shadow and reflection lay over her.

The doe steps from the mist.

The grebe rises from the lake.

The sun is born from darkness.

Like a breath slowly released, she slid through the barrier, slowly, so slowly, leaving not a ripple, not a tear, not an eddy to tug at Tamghat's attention. Behind her, something still slept, an illusion of sleep.

Nothing happened. No taunting, no touch or taste of the Lake Lord in her mind. She reached first for the Blackdog and it was as though she stared into a deep well. She recoiled, heart pounding. That was not Holla-Sayan, that was…She stretched to him again.
Dog? Holla-Sayan? Father?
Even that did not draw him to her. Great Gods, he was lost, mad, devoured—but that deep well had none of the maelstrom of madness which, festering, had burst from the dog a time or two in the past, when the host was unfit and fell to it.
Holla-Sayan!

The Blackdog raised walls against her, not as the dogs had always done, to keep some parts of their minds and lives private, curtains she could have breached with hardly a thought had she ever had need. These—she could not even find a way to come to grips with these. Alien. Ice that burned.

Pakdhala stared into the shadows of the ceiling. That was…that could not be Holla-Sayan.

Dead. And the Blackdog in some new host, some damned mercenary of Tamghat's, some—not Tamghat himself, not that. She would have known. He would have made certain she knew, not ignored her, shut her out.

The walls had felt like nothing human.

But…it
had
been Holla, she knew it as she knew his voice. Some lingering scent, some shape of mind.

And just for a moment, before she realized that, the back of her mind had thought, if her father was dead, she could take the Blackdog into herself as Kinsai had advised…She was appalled.

Wherever and whatever the dog was, she could not lie here waiting for it, for him, to get himself killed assaulting the temple.

She could not tell where he was. That was not right either; she always knew, even weak and ill in Marakand.

She could not do wizardry in such a turmoil of mind.

Don't think of him now.

Stillness. Quiet. The enduring heart of her soul, the lake, deep and waiting strength.

Nabbani wizardry was what she needed this time. She dragged, so slowly, an arm. It moved from her shoulder, like a dead thing. Dragged at the other. Got one hand from her side to her thigh, a start, and the two guards did not notice the movement. The light was fading fast. So long as she made no sound, they would not look. The quilt was such a weight, like ropes tying her down. The Grasslander woman walked close by the bed, going out to the head of the stairs. A murmur of voices—there must be guards out there as well. She came back carrying a lighted lamp, which she set in a niche by the door. No light for the one outside, but that made sense; she would see better, watching the roofs, in darkness. The Grasslander closed the door and turned the chair so she could sit with her back to the wall, staring at the bed, but the curtains framing the head of the bed caught enough of the lamplight to leave Pakdhala in deep shadow. After a while Pakdhala dared begin on the other hand. It would not move. She dragged at her hands till tears of frustration prickled behind her eyelids, rested, started again. Then, finally, hand touched hand.

There was sudden movement on the balcony, a soft sound, like the wind in grass. A groan.