The Lady (40 page)

“Gaguush will cut me down as soon as look at me.”

“Be persuasive. Get Holla-Sayan's child away from Marakand, if you have to bespell the woman or hit her over the head to do it.” Another bear's kiss, and then a shove that sent her sliding with a yelp down a long slope of rubble, into the darkness.

CHAPTER XXIII

No. No no no nonono it must not be it cannot be they must come he will come and he will see I've left the well and he will see me now he sees me now. Without Praitan without the east without my captain my king my commander of armies I cannot stand I cannot hold the pass will lie open to him I cannot we Marakand traitor Marakand he has ensnared them to his will already he is here he must be here he works in shadows he has done this she has done this traitor cuckoo child she leads me aside you lured me from the well you stayed my hand when I should have been strong your whispering goddess your dreaming god betrays your gods betray your city my city my safe castle
.

The dome groaned and grated above her. Zora rose slowly to her feet.

Do you think I did not see not hear how you whispered together how you danced?

The temple. She did not need it any longer. She could use it no longer. She could be goddess no longer. She had been lured out of her safe hidden place within the well, within the shell of the Lady of Marakand and the mask of the Voice of the Lady, seduced by the dancing girl's desire to rebuild and renew. Seduced by her own desire to be flesh again, and walk the world, and no longer to lie a cocooned grub, to act and not lie passive—but that had been her error. She was no empress, no Yeh-Lin or Tamghiz to rule, to take command into her own hands; her brother had always said so and he was wise where she was a child. She was no Ulfhild or Heuslar, to look at the land and her king's desires and say, to achieve them we move here, strike there and this falls in some distant place and that one must then move. She did not play chess or fox-and-raven or the game of the white stones on the board of the living world, she did not see the threads that led one thing to the next when the minds and hearts of men were the pieces she moved. She did not understand, and she had lost, and she had no wizardry left, because even the last frail wisp of Sien-Mor on which she had anchored the first wizard to be Red Mask must have been torn away.

The gods dared make league against her. Their priests called the mountain out of the east to destroy her servants, her Red Masks, and the demons of the north, and the mountains, and she had done all that she had done to save their city, to save them, blind they could not see the light she brought the hope the fire that would bar the pass against the fire in the west and the sword came out of the forgotten night—

The gods watched her. She felt their awareness gathering, because her spell had been weakened, had been damaged, cracked. It would hold, yes, it would hold against mere human wizardry, it must, but they woke, and they watched, they saw or they dreamed, they knew, Ilbialla and Gurhan waking from sleep, their will reaching and with the dawn there would be the Grasslander wizard crouched on her knees muttering as if mad, Grasslander words Nabbani words her hands stained with blood with the red dust the poison with ash barring her face and salt on her tongue she whispered and she chanted and she wrote the name of Ilbialla in the script of the Old Great Gods. How could she know she see she hear she looked up into Zora's eyes. She had seen one so, chanting with the bear's blood on his brow. Tamghiz. This wizard was his. She should have known from the bear, by the bear she should have known him his totem his worship his eyes so sly and mocking in the wizard-woman's face and in her vision the woman licked her lips and tasted ash and wrote again unseeing unknowing leagued with Ulfhild against her come as harbingers of her fall she was nothing without her brother she knew—

You think so? You and your gods? You think Tu'usha is so weak?

Zora spread her arms like a falcon at the height of its climb and shrieked, swept them down, tearing the veil of the worlds, flinging heart and soul against the wizard her enemy the tool of her enemies the god of the hill of the city which must stand fortress against the west, but the wizard was not there was only vision only what may might have been would in the dawn be—

—No!
And she screamed aloud with Zora's voice, “No, Gurhan, no!” But it was done, and in the valley of Gurhan's cave it was as if the sky fell. The men and women there died in the instant, souls flung to the Great Gods' road in fire, and she drank the light that lit the sky through even the eye of the dome, spread to it as a flower to the sun, and felt the fire wake within her. But the girl Zora fell to her knees and struggled for her will, and she had to fight the both of them, the girl and the goddess, fight herself in their horror, rocking, clawing at her arms, her face, screaming at them,
If not mine then whose, then whose, traitor, I am Gurhan's given named to him at my birth I am the Lady I am Marakand and she you will not you must not I we will burn will drown the sword is ice is night is an ending coming hear me help me hold me give me strength only a little a little longer
,and a hand grasped hers, held it, Papa's hand cool and free of the fever Gurhan's hand sun-warm stone strong the Lady's hand old and knotted and withered, tenacious as old roots, they all held a part of her and Ilbialla stood behind Gurhan and reached to her—

Her enemies gathered.
Smoke and scarlet fires twisting into a pillar. Sword like a splinter of stone, spinning frost across the stars
. She had seen that before, when she dreamed in the well. A black smoke shot with lightning that flew with a hurricane's speed, and her Voice had known them when she cried,
Death is walking the road of death of dreams of walking death is sleep is ice is death
,and they did not see she fought to save them blind they were and in their blindness served the end of all things and when all was at stake there was no room for pity for mercy for remembering the little gods and the little souls did they not see—

Plaster. Mortar. Stones, raining on her.

Not yet no not yet not now, wait he comes I come I will keep you safe hold you against the world only wait and I will be with you.
Her voice, the Lady's, they had been the one and she did not know whose these thoughts were. The god of the hill called to the girl within her and she longed for his promises, the dead demon who had guarded her and been her friend in the fire when all was peace . . . he would come. He promised. And meanwhile, she would be safe within her wall of flame.

Zora crawled for the door, as the dome came down in thunder.

Where?

Voices cried, clamoured. She stood atop a hill of fallen stone, gaping pits about her, tilted blocks, dust yellowing the air, clogging nose, itching on her skin, her eyes weeping with it. Hill of stone, she at its height just touched by the dawn's first light. Ruin of the Hall of the Dome. She looked about. Priests. Temple guard. Servants. All huddled distant, as far as they could be and yet still gawk at her ruin. Fear was on them, horror, terror. No reverence, no. No adoration. What did they see but a madwoman in a ragged gown, hair in knots, face bleeding, hands stained, and the blood all caked with dust? And they were trapped with her within the temple, where their own choices had brought them, their own fault; they had loved her and they betrayed her, they had nothing to bewail now.

Godless Marakand. It had betrayed her. Zora betrayed herself.

“You abandoned your gods for me,” she said conversationally, but they were too far away to hear, most of them. “You did. So they will die. You could have been strong. You could have been a fortress and held the pass of the Malagru, you could have been an empire, but you were too weak too useless you could not even be led be driven where you should have gone you only cowered and crept and your weakness betrayed me.”
My weakness betrayed me I was too weak too wandering too lost in mad Sien-Mor she betrayed me she made me weak she makes all fail. They betrayed me to her
.

And now the night comes
.

Again she gathered herself. “Do you think I need
pretend
to be a god?” she cried to the staring priests. “No gods in Marakand. Only the Lady and the Lady, I am the Lady. If you are not mine, then whose?” She flung lightning to clear them from her sight, swept courtyards and the narrow passages between the buildings with the sheeting fire. Few had time even to scream, as bones burst and flesh became ash, and the gardens turned to baked clay.

And then she struck again, with all her will and all her strength, dropping fire like a shooting star to obliterate tomb and well and goddess and all, in the market where Ilbialla stirred in nightmare dreams and reached to cry out to her priest.

No more hiding
.

No more gods
.

She was Tu'usha the Lady of Marakand, and she did not know why she wept.

CHAPTER XXIV

Up the ravine of the dry river beneath the city walls was fastest, for the dog. Holla-Sayan had not forgotten the fires that ringed the temple. He went up the crumbling cliff and over the roofs of the houses there, down into Greenmarket Ward. There were no folk, despite the fear of earthquake, in the streets near the temple. Hiding indoors to await events; he doubted any were still abed. A drift of ash and brick and discoloured stone followed the temple wall itself, houses that had been. The fire flared and crackled as he passed, rising higher, heat stretching tendrils to take him. No illusion, and not wizardry, either. Into Templefoot Ward. A cloud of dust hung over the temple itself, and it was a moment before he noticed what he did not see, the absence of the high Hall of the Dome. Time to find out if he could walk through this devil's fire, he supposed. Somewhere along here there should be enough rubble he could leap to the top of the wall. If he survived so far—he smelt the bear before he saw Mikki, in the shadow of an abandoned coffeehouse across from the temple gates, and loped up to him.

“Knew you'd come here,” Mikki rumbled. “Take that.” A paw knocked something slithering over cobbles to his feet, and he jumped back before it could touch him. Lakkariss. Damned and damning sword, he'd thought it lost with Moth. And he did not want it lying at his feet.

What has she done? Where's Ivah?

“Ivah's safe, for now. Varro's dead. Something cut the Red Masks free of her, not Moth, and the devil's tried to destroy the gods,” said Mikki, and Holla-Sayan listened, watching the fire, while the demon told him of the night's happenings. At some point he shifted to man's shape and, doomed and damned devil he was, took up the sword. The weight was only what he might have expected of a long Northron blade, but the cracked leather scabbard was cool under his hand. And the leather itself tooth-marked.

Varro. He felt as if he'd been struck a blow, but there was no time, no place for grief. Or guilt. He should have been there to fight in the Fleshmarket in Mikki's place. And all those daughters fatherless. Sayan, Attalissa forgive.

His fault beyond that. Moth had told him to get Red Geir's sword off Varro, who had picked it up on the battlefield at Lissavakail, some Northron tale of a curse. He had told Varro so, but the Northron had laughed, and a man couldn't go stealing his friend's sword—

“I can't use that,” he said of Lakkariss. He could feel it now, growing, not exactly heavier, but as if it knew his hand and pulled him to it. “I'm not strong enough.”

“Not to fight the devil,” Mikki said. “I know what Moth says of you, and she's not trying to be insulting, usually, just saying what's true. Maimed and soul-scarred and weak. But strong enough to take the sword, yes, you are, Blackdog. You'd better be, or it will take you. It's nothing to me. Just an edge. It only lives for her. But in your hands it should remember it's ice—and that's fire, and I can guess which is stronger of those two. Lakkariss.” He growled. “You think I don't know what it is? A weapon forged by the Old Great Gods, hah. Maybe. Out of what? Bloody devils, the pair of you, keeping secrets. The damned sword wants to take Moth, doesn't it? So it can bloody well find her. But if you and I are such fools as to let that mad devil get a weapon that can cut a way into the cold hells—we will be justly damned by all the gods of the earth and the Old Great Gods as well. But Moth's in there. Somewhere. And she
can
fight this devil. She just—she needs to want to.”

Holla-Sayan, reluctantly, slung the baldric over his shoulder and drew the sword. The tapering blade was obsidian. Maybe. It drank the light. Ice that might cut steel. It seemed to fill the world, as if he fell into it, and vision grew stained with copper light: black ice, black stone, fires prisoned deep within, and in the white sky the moons bled into towering clouds. Mikki was gone to shadows, as of movement under trees, and the scent of forest earth. Then the blade grew into a crack in the world, a fracture into darkness. Mikki nudged him and his other hand found the amulet bag and the stone of Sayan's barkash. He had told the child-goddess there was magic in it, that first day.
So we always know our home, and our gods know us.
It was only a reminder, now, that he knew his home and the promise his god had made him. No power in that, not against Lakkariss, which cared nothing for gods of the earth, but it was good to remember. He made himself see only the glossy surface, and the edge, and hoarfrost forming on it. So. He would set the ice of the cold hells against the devil's fire.

Frost painted ferns on the blade; they smoked away and grew again, but banners of fog began to coil about him as he walked into the heat. The flames leaned away, as if Lakkariss were a wind blowing against them, and they turned from yellow-white to scarlet, twisted and hissed. The shadows grew strange, light falling from every direction, disorienting, as the fire closed about him, Mikki keeping close at his left side, and the sky grew copper stained, but a greenish flame streaked his hands, and there was a sound like water rising in his ears, words in it, but he could not hear. He set the point of Lakkariss to the cobbles of the gateway at his feet, there, where the line of fire ran blinding white, rooted in the stone and shivered, cold. For a moment he seemed to be the sword, to know what it was to be ice. The air hissed, and a slick of ice ran before him up the gilded wood of the carven gates. The whole line of fire died, hissing, steaming, like a torch plunged into water, all along the temple wall.