The Leopard (Marakand) (2 page)

Ilbialla—Goddess of a well in Sunset Ward in Marakand, patron of Sunset and Riverbend Wards, formerly served by a single hereditary priest or priestess.

Iris—Third of Varro’s and Talfan’s four daughters.

Ivah—A wizard, whose father Tamghat was, unbeknownst to her, the devil Tamghiz Ghatai.

Jasberek—One of the seven devils, merged with the wizard Anganurth.

Jasmel—Eldest daughter of Varro and Talfan.

Jecca—A Praitannec brigand.

Jochiz—One of the seven devils, called Jochiz Fireborn; bonded with the wizard Sien-Shava.

Judeh—A Marakander-born caravaneer of Gaguush’s gang.

Jugurthos Barraya—Captain of the Sunset Gate fort of the Marakander street guard; son of two executed senators and dispossessed heir of the main branch of the Family Barraya.

Kapuzeh—A member of Gaguush’s gang, originally from the Stone Desert, brother of Django.

Keeper—Moth’s sword, forged by the demon wolf-smith, inherited from her grandmother. “Keeper” is the meaning of its proper name, Kepra.

Kepra—Moth’s Northron sword. For the inscriptions on it, see “The Storyteller.”

Ketsim—A Grasslander warleader, formerly among the chief of Tamghat the Lake-Lord’s
noekar
, or vassals, and the governor of conquered Serakallash, now a mercenary hired with his followers to take the Duina Catairna for Marakand.

Kharduin—A caravan-master from the eastern deserts, Nour’s partner in business and otherwise.

The Lady of the Deep Well, Lady of Marakand—the foremost of the original three gods of Marakand, served by a large number of priests and priestesses. Though the most-worshipped of the three gods, she never appeared to any but her priests. The Voice of the Lady was her intermediary in dealings with the city.

The Lake-Lord—Title taken by Tamghat as ruler of Lissavakail.

Lakkariss—A black sword, which at least looks to be made of obsidian, belonging to Moth.

The Leopard—see Ahjvar.

Lilace—The Voice of the Lady, a priestess chosen to be the shy underground goddess’s intermediary with the city, also a prophetess.

Lin—A wandering Nabbani wizard, tutor to Deyandara.

Lug—A Grasslander warrior, one of the mercenary Ketsim’s
noekar
and tent-guard. Husband of Chieh.

Lu—A Five Cities caravaneer and horse-dealer involved with Nour and Hadidu in smuggling the wizard-talented out of Marakand.

Mansour—Member of the family of priests of the Marakander hill-god Gurhan; father of Zora. Used the alias Mankul and lived as a street-singer after the massacre of his family and the proscribing of his god.

Marnoch—Queen Cattiga’s chief huntsman, son of Lord Seneschal Yvarr, warleader of the Duina Catairna after Cattiga’s murder.

Miara—A wizard and friend of Ahjvar’s, who died long ago.

Mikki—Moth’s demon lover, a
verrbjarn
, or werebear, bear by day and man by night; his father was a Northron sea-raider turned homesteader, his mother a bear demon of the Hardenwald and the guardian of the grave of the devil Vartu.

Mina—A priestess of the Lady.

Moth—A Northern wanderer, wizard, warrior, storyteller; the devil Ulfhild Vartu.

Mother Nabban, Father Nabban—River and mountain, the only gods of the Nabbani empire.

Nasutani—A young Grasslander caravaneer in Kharduin’s gang.

Nour—Marakander wizard and caravaneer of the eastern road, brother-in-law of Hadidu, business partner and lover of Kharduin.

Ogada—One of the seven devils, bonded with the Northron wizard Heuslar.

Otokas—A Lissavakaili man, host to the Blackdog before it took Holla-Sayan.

Pakdhala—Name used by the goddess Attalissa as Holla-Sayan’s supposed daughter.

Palin—A bard and prince of the Duina Catairna, alleged true father of Deyandara, brother of Queen Cattiga.

Petrimos Barraya—Senator of Marakand, husband of his cousin Elias Barraya, father of Jugurthos; executed in the cages shortly after the earthquake.

Praitanna—Goddess of the River Praitanna and the Duina Praitanna, one of the seven tribes of Praitan; regarded as the greatest of the seven patron deities of the
duinas
.

Ragnar—A Northron caravan-master, cousin to Guthrun of Kharduin’s gang.

Ragnvor—A queen of the Hravningas in the north, long ago, descendant of Hravnmod.

Rahel—A Marakander priestess of the Lady, Beholder of the Face of the Lady, wife of Ashir.

Rasta—The elderly master of a caravanserai in Marakand’s suburb, where Gaguush’s gang usually puts up.

Sa-Sura—A Nabbani merchant lodged at Master Shenar’s caravanserai.

Samra—A Marakander wineshop keeper’s daughter, wife of Mansour and mother of Zora.

Sayan—A god of the Sayanbarkash in the Western Grass, Holla-Sayan’s god.

Sayyid—A servant in Hadidu’s coffeehouse.

Senara—Older lady of a northern region of the Duina Catairna.

Sera—Goddess of Serakallash, a town in the Red Desert on the western caravan road.

Seoyin—A Nabbani man in Kharduin’s gang.

Shemal—Young son of Hadidu, nephew of Nour.

Shenar—Master of a caravanserai in Marakand’s suburb where Kharduin’s gang is lodged.

Shija—A priestess of the Lady, Mistress of the Dance.

Sien-Mor—A wizard from the southern ocean who became the devil Tu’usha; younger sister of Sien-Shava.

Sien-Shava—A wizard from the southern ocean who became the devil Jochiz; older brother of Sien-Mor.

Storm—A bone-horse, a necromantic creation anchored to a horse’s skull; Storm appears to have ideas of his own, which a bone-horse should not.

Styrma—Storm’s name in Northron.

Syallan—Catairnan shield-bearer to Lord Angress, intended to be champion to Prince Gilru; his illegitimate half-sister on their father’s side.

Talfan—A Marakander apothecary, wife of Varro, mother of Jasmel, Ermina, Iris, and an infant daughter.

Tamghat—Name used by the devil Tamghiz Ghatai when he conquered Lissavakail.

Tamghiz—Grasslander chieftain and wizard bonded with the devil Ghatai; onetime husband of Ulfhild; father of Ivah.

Thekla—A Westron woman in Gaguush’s gang.

Tihmrose—A Marakander woman in Gaguush’s gang.

Tulip—Adjutant (and mistress) of Captain Jugurthos Barraya of the Sunset Gate garrison in Marakand.

Tu’usha—One of the seven devils, called Tu’usha the Restless by the Northron skalds; bonded with the wizard Sien-Mor.

Ulfhild of Hravnsfjall—King’s Sword of Hravnmod the Wise and his younger sister; wizard who became the devil Vartu Kingsbane. She, however, maintains she did not murder her brother. Once married to Tamghiz; their children were Maerhild and Oern; see Moth.

Vardar—A man of the Malagru hillfolk in Kharduin’s gang.

Varro—A Northron man in Gaguush’s gang, married to the apothecary Talfan.

Vartu—One of the seven devils, bonded with the wizard Ulfhild; see Moth.

Viga Forkbeard—One of the first three kings in the north.

Watcher—The apothecary Talfan’s watchdog.

Xua—One of the Twenty Families of Marakand.

Yeh-Lin the Beautiful—A Nabbani wizard, courtesan, general, and regent, or possibly empress, depending upon which history you prefer to believe; became the devil Dotemon.

Yselly—A Praitannec bard with whom Deyandara travelled as an unofficial apprentice.

Yvarr—Seneschal of Queen Cattiga of the Duina Catairna, father of Marnoch.

Zavel—A Serakallashi-raised Grasslander in Gaguush’s gang.

Zora—A dancer and musician in the temple of Lady, daughter of Mansour, the only survivor of the massacre of the priests of Gurhan.

In the days of the first kings in the north, there were seven wizards . . .

Mountains rose into a frost-cold sky, but she lay in a hollow of ash and cinder and broken stone. Fire ringed her, lighting the night. She could not move. The dead did not. Her body had faded and failed; well, she had never felt it was hers, anyway. Even the woman she had been before . . . before she was what she had become, when she was only one, weak and mortal, solitary, that woman had not felt she owned her body. It had never been more than an awkward shroud of flesh, a thing wrapping her, a thing that betrayed her, a thing
he
owned. Since she was a child, she had only lived in it, a prison of hip and breast and smooth brown skin. She had longed to leave it behind, and never dared. He would be hurt if she left him behind, and she mustn’t hurt him, ever. He had saved her life when they were children, or he a youth on the edge of manhood and she still a child. The war-canoes came out of the south and the king’s palace burned, flames rising from its wide verandas, and the great village burned, all the palm-thatched houses, and the fishermen’s huts on the white beach.

Who had they been, she and her brother? Noble or servant, tiller or fisher? She did not remember. She remembered the raiders, the folk of the next island but one southwards, the strange accents, the stone axes. She remembered a man with red feathers in his hair and a gold ring around his neck. She—no, she did not remember that. She would not. She remembered her brother, looking down on her, and a spear standing out from the red-feather man’s back. Her brother had not said anything, only flung his own sealskin cape over her nakedness and walked away into the night, but she had followed. They had salvaged a canoe and left, going island to island, sometimes staying, taking service here or there, that chieftain, this queen, that king, but travelling, travelling . . . no one liked her brother to stay long. They did not like his eyes. He doesn’t blink enough, a woman had told her once, a wizard who wanted to take her as an apprentice. She didn’t even let her brother know the offer had been made. She had known what his answer would be. Her brother warned her against the danger of allowing strangers to falsely try to win her love.

Wizards, royal wizards, they had been, before their king and his queens were slain and his palace burned. Her brother said so, and whether it was truth or lie she did not know. It might have been true. It became that. He learned from every master he found, and took what learning was not given willingly. They had the strength, the two of them together. They took the knowledge to make his strength dreadful. He could have made himself a king, but that wasn’t what he wanted. In time they came all the way up the islands to Nabban. Such a vast land, not an island, and beyond it, land and land and no ocean, lands even without water, lands where water stood half the year turned by cold to stone, and still he pulled her on with him, never sated. He would learn more, be more. Always. And she followed. Of course she did. He was all she could call hers.

But now she was dead, or near enough. Flesh had long rotted, and it was over. Now she was her own. She could sleep through the centuries, a conjoined soul bound still in the remnant of a human body, a lace of bones buried in ash and cinder, protected by a fire that never died. The Old Great Gods and the wizards allied with them had thought it a prison as well as a grave when they left her here, bound in spells that they believed the seven devils themselves could not break. And that meant even
he
, who was the strongest of them all, could not come at her. She was . . . her own, as the long years did pass, and she knew peace.

But the bonds of the Old Great Gods failed. Not all at once. Slowly, fretted away by cautious and patient work. First one, then another, ravelled them to nothing and stretched again into renewed life, crawled from the grave, walked the world.

Not she. She did not want the world. She wanted sleep; she wanted forgetting. The wall of flame, which would burn so long as the strange gases roiled in the earth and found vents to the air, was no prison but a safe castle, all her own. Her undying fire would hold her, safe and warm, forever, and the spells that bound her in what could pass for death were spells of sleep and safety, like a lullaby woven over a baby. The little soul of the earth that guarded her, a creature of fire, a demon whom she knew only as a flicker lizard-like over her mind, was all the companion she needed. It never spoke.

Her brother called her.

She did not answer. She would not wake. He could not reach her here, safe behind her wall, behind flame born of earth and lightning, of deep and secret wells. Like a little child, she curled her soul-self up small and still, trying to be invisible, intangible. She was dead, but not dead enough. He had found her.

One day, he was there amid the broken mountains, standing on the edge of her flame.

Come
, he said, and when she pretended she was not there, he dragged the chains of the Old Great Gods from her interwoven double soul, from her bones, and forced flesh to those bones again, shaping her, not as she had been, not the woman she had grown into, but the girl of the islands, the little sister.

Open your eyes
, he ordered.
See me. Come with me. We are betrayed
.

The little demon of the fire flung its flames about him, trying to keep her, to defend her as no one ever had—her gaoler, warder, companion of centuries. Her brother snarled and burned into flame himself, golden, brilliant, furious. He tore down the walls, found the demon’s heart, the heart of the flame, and crushed it, reached for her—