Gods of Nabban (20 page)

She had been a mother and grandmother, Yeh-Lin, before she gave herself to the devil.

Ketkuiz ended her chant and regarded them anxiously.

“Let her sleep,” Yeh-Lin said. “When she wakes, give her broth. No milk, no bread, no meat, only broth, and in a day or two, when she can swallow it, a little gruel, very, very thin, thin enough to drink. Think that her throat, her stomach, all her inward parts are burned as if a fire has been in her, and judge her care by that.”

“She will live?”

“She has a good chance of living. Tell her parents that. A good chance, if she takes no other illness in her weakness. There is no certainty. I—we, with the gods of Nabban, who are kind and merciful, have done what can be done. We were given a great blessing, to be able to do so much. But it may not be enough. They must have hope and take great care of her, and seek the blessing of your goddess Galicha, whose hand must ever be on the child.”

Ketkuiz spoke to the anxious parents. The chieftain wept, and went to his knees to pat Ghu's feet, and Ahjvar's, and last of all Yeh-Lin's, bowing to touch his forehead to them. His wife simply embraced her, mother to mother, maybe, and Yeh-Lin, an odd look on her face, awkwardly, and then firmly, put her arms about the woman and let her cry on her breast.

“She will always be frail, if she lives,” Yeh-Lin said, over the mother's head. “Ketkuiz, make sure they understand this, please. Shui will be frail. Her heart will be weak. It took a great injury. The fever and seizures have done her mind no damage, though—if I could not have saved her there, I would not have damned her to the life of an idiot,” she added in Praitannec, and then in Nabbani again, “She will not be a warrior. She must not do any great and heavy labour. She must not—when she is older, you must make her understand, she must not bear children. She will not have the strength.”

“She my heir,” Ganzu said, following more Imperial Nabbani than he spoke. “She to take my sword.”

“If she is still to be your heir, then her brother or sister must fight for her,” Yeh-Lin said. “Better, maybe, to name another heir, and let your daughter be trained to some quiet craft.”

The mother put a hand to her belly, then went to the bed and lay down by her daughter, curled around her, protective, stroking her hair.

Probably that was not the way of this folk, to have a chieftain who could not fight. Petty wars among the tribes, raids into or defence against the desert, every few generations some unifying warlord arising and an attack on northern Nabban, that would be the pattern of their life. Well, they would find their way.

More Denanbaki talk, and then Ganzu said, “Sohi my wife watches with the child. The aunts with her. We eat with our guests. We praise the gods, ours and yours. We drink!”

Word had spread through all the settlement. Folk were crowding to the hall, waiting for news. Ganzu cried out to them, arms spread, and some scattered away, voices loud. Dogs barked. They brought burning brands into the hall and lit the stone lamps, which burnt mutton-fat and gave as much smoke as light, and a fire was made in the stove, bronze braziers brought too, to add their share of light and smoke and warmth. The travellers were swept in a crowd to cushions on the dais with Ganzu and the chief folk of his household, the place of honour, displacing the hounds. Food began to appear almost at once, first cold flatbread, leftovers of the day, and bowls of new milk, and soft cheese. A feast was not made in a moment. Bread, cheese, and milk made good enough a feast for Ahjvar. Bone flutes and Nabbani fiddles swirled into music, and Ganzu the chieftain stood to speak, gestured the three of them up in order to embrace them before the hall, kissing both cheeks. Ahjvar saw it coming and succeeded in not flinching at strange arms seizing him, but his heart ran too fast and his mouth went dry. Ketkuiz joined in the embracing and kissing, but added, with a glint of mischief, a kiss on the lips for both Ghu and Ahjvar. He swallowed and rubbed sweating palms on his cushions, sitting again, and saw that his hands were shaking; he wrapped both around the bowl of sweet milk to hold them still. It wasn't even he who held her eye; that was Ghu, not hiding now in wordlessness, not in Ahjvar's shadow, but the centre of them, talking Denanbaki in which Ahjvar caught Nabbani names,
Choa
, the province of the northwest,
kho'anzi
—the title for a lord of a border province,
Dernang
, the town of the northwest pass.
Emperor
. No,
empress.
Yeh-Lin listened, nodding sometimes, frowning, as if she too began to absorb the tribal language. It was oddly isolating, as if amid the noise he alone sat in deafness. Distancing. Safe? No. But he had Ghu on one side and Yeh-Lin on the other and up here on the chieftain's dais no one crowded close against him, except Yeh-Lin, leaning across to speak to Ghu and Ketkuiz on his other side. The shaman's eyes, intent on Ghu, were bright within her tattooed mask.

He shifted back, a little behind them, where Yeh-Lin did not have to touch him when she leaned to catch a word.

Game stews began to appear, Ghu's pheasants and the hare some contribution there, maybe, and collops of mutton hastily seared on skewers. Jugs of buttermilk that fizzed but seemed no stronger than weak beer were passed around, and then more bread, hot, with rice and both sour pickled fruits and others in syrup, some that he knew from the markets of the Five Cities, some he did not. Finally the serving-folk of the hall came with jugs of something that even in the dim lamplight showed a clear yellow-green as it was poured into the drinking-bowls. The taste was strange, not the golden barley-spirit of the lands Over-Malagru. A complexity of herbs. Sweetness. An underlying bitter edge. But definitely the oily, burning kick of distilled spirits unwatered.

“Oh, very nice, very fine,” Yeh-Lin murmured over it. “But not, I'm afraid, meant to be served in bowls that thirsty hunters might take their kefir from.”

Some, most notably the spear-carriers of the chieftain, did not drink, or took only a token mouthful, even in this night of celebration, so Ahjvar trusted he could safely do likewise without giving offence, standing in the same relationship to Ghu. Yeh-Lin did not seem object to having her bowl filled, overgenerous serving or not.

People wandered in, stayed a little, wandered out, the faces changing. All the settlement passed through, he thought, even children darting in for sweets, being chased off back to their beds by their parents. A slim girl in a grass-green coat drifted in like mist, her face marked like that of the shaman, but the pattern was waving grass. Galicha, the goddess of this region. Few saw, and sometimes she was no more than smoke and shadow and streaks of light. She paused a moment, inscrutable, to look down on them. Blue eyes, in this brown-eyed land, deep and dark as the twilit sky, and she looked at Ahjvar as if it gave her some pain to do so, as if he were the false and ugly note in the song. Fine with him. He wanted no truck with gods. But when she turned her gaze to Yeh-Lin the goddess wavered and was for a moment a reflection in water, cloud-shadow on the grass, no more. Yeh-Lin bowed where she sat and Ghu, saying nothing, reached over to put a hand on her. Claiming her. The goddess, a slight human woman again, backed a step away. Now she carried a bronze spear. She had not, before.

Letin is not forgotten
, Galicha said. Ahjvar understood her, though the words were not Nabbani, nor even spoken aloud.

“We'll be gone in the morning,” said Ghu. “All three of us. We mean no harm to your folk or your land. Dotemon is . . . other than she was, she claims. She has so far proven herself so. And she did save the little daughter of your folk. Grant her willing passage through your land, for that.”

And what could a small goddess of the earth do against a devil, but hide and hope for it soon to leave? Galicha of the spring inclined her head and turned to Ketkuiz, who bowed deeply. The goddess rested a hand on her head in blessing. She was gone altogether the next moment, smoke and shadow taking her place.

“Well,” said Ghu, on a long sigh, and since Ahjvar had no more than touched his green whatever it was, drained it for him. “One of us,” he said, “needs to be not falling over, when we leave this place.”

Fair enough. Ahjvar found the words he ought to say, the light jesting of such an evening, but that finding took thought and effort. “Me, is it?”

“You're too heavy for me to carry.” But Ghu's gaze was sober. “Ahjvar . . .”

“I'm all right,” he said. It was a lie, but he would make it truth, or he would sit up and not sleep. The Great Gods knew, if anyone deserved a night when he did not have to put someone else before himself, it was surely Ghu.

Ketkuiz leaned in and asked a question, waved a hand, circling and inviting, taking in the hall. Ghu answered; she asked something further. Ghu was doing most of the talking now, Ketkuiz and Ganzu and the whole of the hall fallen largely silent to listen. Strangers in the hall. Of course they must offer a story.
Marakand
, he heard.
Praitan
.
Deyandara
. There would have been caravans pass through in the autumn with pieces, at least, of that tale, and more would come in the summer.
Marnoch
,
Ketsim the Grasslander
. Ghu gestured, sweeping armies here and there, a glint of enjoyment in his eyes. Not the full true tale, but a bard's telling, Ahjvar could trust that. He still did not want to hear, even without understanding.

Ketkuiz sat very close to Ghu's side now, hip touching hip, and sometimes it seemed he spoke to her, smiling, eye meeting eye, before offering the tale up to all the hall again. Yeh-Lin, a wry smile on her lips, told some little part. Unlike Ghu, she might lie outright and enjoy it. Ghu's bowl was filled again, and Yeh-Lin's.

Too many people, too much noise, and Ahjvar's head ached. It didn't need strong drink to make him feel on the verge of falling over.

He touched Ghu's shoulder in a moment when Yeh-Lin was talking, spoke in his ear. “Too much smoke in here. Headache. I'm going out to walk in the fresh air. You stay. Enjoy yourself. I'll be fine.”

“Ahjvar . . .”

“I think I chased some nightmares away for a little, having someone to fight. It's fine. I'm going to walk and look at the stars. You take care of charming the women. Or whatever.”

Ghu had Ketkuiz's hand in his, but he leaned his forehead against Ahjvar's temple. Said nothing. He never did.

After a long moment, Ahjvar pushed him off, two fingers on his chest. Ghu was, if not drunk, getting there. “She's not married or betrothed or anything, is she?”

“Ketkuiz? Not that she's mentioned.”

“Well, find out before you do anything that's going to involve me in any more fighting today, all right?”

“I'll ask.”

Ahjvar rose and bowed to Ganzu the chieftain before picking a winding way out of the hall into the clean, cold night. The dogs followed him, stretching and yawning.

“Camels?” he suggested, so they went to find Sand and Rust, who were tethered in the lee of a hut wall, the remnants of a heap of dry fodder before them. They woke enough to regard him warily, no doubt dreading, in whatever passed for a camel's imagination, another journey so soon. He wandered farther. No one followed him.

Down to the gate, closed now. A young woman kept watch there and spoke with him, a few halting words to the effect that it was good the Nabbani assassins were dead and the little girl would live if the Old Great Gods willed it, and Ahjvar wandered off again. He stood for a while leaning on a rough fence, watching a pair of foal-rounded mares standing head to tail. Tall, clean-legged, long-backed animals; the style Ghu favoured. Not, he thought, what he himself wanted for close work over hills, battle or cattle-driving. Though for a long race over the open . . . they were not here to buy horses, nor yet to steal them.

Well after midnight, by the stars. He should reclaim his companions before he did have to carry them both to bed, though it would be tempting to leave Yeh-Lin, at least, to sleep it off wherever she fell.

It was not like Ghu to talk so much in company. He usually faded away when there were many eyes to see. Hard to do that when assassins had proclaimed you the great enemy of the empire. Any seer who feared a traveller in Denanbak should be dreaming of Dotemon, not Ghu. What could his simpleton boy do in Nabban? What would he?

Not like Ghu to drink much, either. Ahjvar knew that weary urge to let everything go, just for a few hours. Abandon care. It never worked, but while it lasted . . .

Ahjvar stumbled now with weariness and the dark, feet uncertain on uneven, unfamiliar ground, rutted, crossed with shallow ditches, pock-marked with hooves, made hummocky with frozen droppings. The brief calm that had come with watching the horses faded, left his thoughts fretting in circles, spiralling down into darkness again. Find Ghu. Sleep. Travel. Another day. That was all his concern. Ghu's quest, this. He only followed, and once he saw Ghu safely to wherever it was he needed to be, he could—could let it all go. For good. Stop. At last. And face the road of death, and he was damned. It would be a long one. He would rather his soul was lost into the living pulse of the earth. Better to be an animal and pass on so than to endure his own memory, until at last the long road made him fit for the presence of the Old Great Gods, if ever it could. Rather be destroyed, ended. Out, like a flame, clean and gone. No god would contemplate such an abominable thing, the death of the soul, but Ghu had destroyed Hyllau. He could wish for the same end himself, but Ghu—he did not think Ghu would give him that. It was too great a wrong to the nature of the world.

The feast was fading away. Some of the lamps and braziers had gone out, the fire in the stove had burned low, and most of the revellers were away to their beds. Ganzu the chief was gone. So was Ketkuiz. So was Ghu. Yeh-Lin, unfortunately, was still there.

“Ah, there you are,” Yeh-Lin said. “I have had,” and she smiled at a threesome of old women clustered by her, drinking tea, who smiled back and politely waited out the foreign speech, “quite enough of discussing the virtues of my nonexistent grandchildren back in Praitan in my little Denanbaki. I'm your young god's dear old auntie from Two Hills, by the way, if anyone asks.”