Into the Narrowdark, page 9
“Please, my lord, I tell you only the truth,” she said. “I met her, the one you speak of. I spoke to her—not today, but another time. She . . . she said things to me I could not understand, and when I saw her wagon today, I remembered and thought about it.” She hurriedly told him everything that happened before, when Ommu had ensorcelled a queen’s guard and brought Tzoja into her sanctuary.
“Insolent little bitch.” Jijibo’s smile remained merry. “Here,” he told the guards, “take up the other one. She looks a bit more delicate. Perhaps her friend will speak more freely when she hears her crying.”
“No, my lord!” Tzoja cried. “I am telling you the truth!” But already the guards had grabbed Vordis and held her tightly as Jijibo produced a long needle from the sleeve of his robe. He probed first at the girl’s neck, then at her ears, cocking his head as if measuring the quality of her weeping protests.
Tzoja threw herself down and crawled toward Jijibo until she could wrap her arms around the Hikeda’ya noble’s cold legs. “Please do not hurt her, Lord Jijibo. She is one of the queen’s healers, too. The queen will not like it.”
For a long moment he stared down at her, his eyes so full of mad amusement that she had to look away. As she wept and pleaded, she saw for the first time that the other figure in Jijibo’s bed was no living being at all, but a thing made of jointed wood like a string-puppet with no strings, its face blank and featureless. “Oh, please, please, my lord,” she cried, trying to push this new, confounding horror from her mind, “I do not know what I have done wrong. I swear I have told you all the truth I know.”
“Have you, then?” Jijibo turned away from sobbing Vordis, which was some consolation at least. “Perhaps she truly does not know,” he said as if to someone—perhaps the wooden doll, Tzoja thought, and felt as if she would be sick. “But could that be? I should test it. But perhaps Great-Grandmother would indeed take it amiss if I carved this pretty little joint of meat into slices.” He squatted in front of Tzoja, his pale, rootlike manhood dangling only a short distance in front of her. “Let us try again, creature. You see, I know you, Slave Tzoja, plaything of the Enduya. Many of us know about you. But why should deathless Ommu take an interest?”
She could only shake her head.
“I might almost believe it a coincidence,” he said slowly, “but it is one coincidence too many, don’t you think?” His words seemed offered to the air. “But perhaps the poor cow is ignorant of that, too.” He extended his arm, held her chin with one of his chilly hands, then slapped her hard with the other. “I told you, I know you, mortal wretch. You fled from your master’s house. You made your way to Suno’ku’s lake and you met my children there. You have no secrets from me.”
His children. The Hidden. Then Jijibo really was their ‘Lord of Dreams.’ Tzoja had guessed rightly, but now she wished fervently it had never happened. “I met . . . strange creatures there.”
“Strange?” Again he slapped her, then caressed her face as if to make it right. “Not strange. Beautiful. The Hidden are so beautiful I can scarcely stand it. What right does a vile thing like you, a . . . random thing . . . have to call them such a name?”
“I am sorry, my lord. They were kind to me.” Until they betrayed me.
“Pfah.” Jijibo abruptly stood. “They should have killed and eaten you. Then they would not always complain to me that they are starving. Still, I cannot help loving them. I made them, did you know?” He stared at her. “No, how could you? How could such as you even understand an art like mine? Neither Yedade nor his vaunted father ever managed such a thing, though they tried. Even the Mother of All does not know all I can do.”
Jijibo began pacing now, as if he had forgotten Tzoja, Vordis, and the guards entirely. “But they all think to keep me from what I want. Except Great-Grandmother. She understands. And when the day comes . . .”
He broke off and returned to Tzoja. “Look!” His face again loomed close to hers. “She trembles—ah, see! She thinks her life is all she has to lose. Do I dare show her the gulfs she cannot imagine, the empty places beyond what she knows?” He giggled. “Ah, ah—what a sweet pleasure that would be. She has a certain faded charm that would be bliss to destroy. And the other—she is blind! All those other senses that could be exploited, nursed, caressed with so many kinds of agony—!” He stopped abruptly. “But still, all that talk of her line. All that talk of the last king . . .” He lifted a clawlike white hand and scratched absently at his belly and the pale, wispy patch of fur below it. “Perhaps I should consider more carefully. Yes! Never give in to the pleasures of the moment without looking to the future.” He fixed Tzoja with his night-dark eyes, lips stretched in another dreadful grin. “You see, the only way to be certain you will not offend someone . . . is to birth your own victims.”
Tzoja had lost the strength to do anything except crouch and silently pray.
“Take them back,” he told the guards at last. “I will learn no more because she knows no more herself. But now I also must worry for my beautiful children back at home. Did I leave them any food? It is so hard, sometimes, when my mind is so full of ideas—!”
Jijibo turned his back on them then and went back to his bed, stretching his lean body beside the silent wooden manikin. After a few more moments had passed the guards decided Jijibo had finished. They hauled both women to their feet and shoved them toward the door.
When they had been returned to their wagon again and the Hamakha soldiers had locked them in, Tzoja and Vordis fell onto the nearest pallet, clutched each other, and wept, mostly in silence, until they fell asleep exhausted in each other’s arms.
4
One Way Out
Nezeru held up her hand for silence, but the young mortal took a last step. The faint sound of his boot scuffing against the passage floor—pif—seemed as loud to her straining ears as a crack of thunder. She took a breath to calm herself. The youth was not even useful as a shield between herself and her enemies, as she had originally planned, because she had to make him walk behind her so she could hear what was in front of them. At least, unlike Jarnulf, this creature was not trying to make her doubt herself. Still, she thought, it might be a simpler and more merciful thing to draw her sword, Cold Root, and have the young fool’s head off now, before he gave them away to her enemies.
Despite the mortal youth’s noisiness, she could hear nothing except the deep, nearly inaudible groans of shifting rock common in underground places, but she could smell the resins that some in her Sacrifice Order used on their armor. Hikeda’ya warriors were somewhere close. She had known she would have no easy escape from Da’ai Chikiza, but she had chosen the abandoned city out of deadly necessity, not strategy.
“Do you hear anything?” the mortal whispered. Nezeru was concentrating so fiercely that his words seemed loud as a shout. She whirled on him in fury and her hand dropped to the hilt of the witchwood sword.
Whatever else he might be, the youth was not completely stupid: He recognized Nezeru’s rage and quickly took a few steps backward, lifting his hands as if in surrender. Something about his expression abruptly drained much of her anger.
With those round ears and that tousled hair, he looks like Minku, she thought. The little brown stoat, whose name meant ‘Slippery,’ had been the only one of her father’s wife’s familiars that Nezeru had been able to stand. Her stepmother’s other companion creatures had always reminded her of Khimabu herself, sharp-eyed and spiteful, but Minku had been a clown, knocking things off tabletops to chase them across the floor as they bounced away, or climbing into ridiculous positions and then chittering in dismay until someone helped him down. Like this mortal, whose thick hair stood up where it shouldn’t, Minku had possessed a tuft of fur on the top of his narrow, brown head. When her father’s wife had grown frustrated with the animal’s misbehavior and had told one of her servants to take it away and drown it, Nezeru had felt her dislike of cold, beautiful Khimabu harden into something like hatred. Nothing since had changed that.
So you miss Minku, do you? she sneered at herself. By the Garden, are you really sparing this clumsy fool’s life because he reminds you of a dead animal? How many ways can you shame the teachings of your order?
“Back,” was all she said. “This way is guarded.” This time she let him lead, half-hoping for a Sacrifice ambush that would solve the problem for her.
* * *
* * *
They paused in an empty storeroom so she could consider her next move. She could tell he wanted to ask her something, but that he had been sufficiently alarmed by her reaction to his most recent words that he did not want to chance it. Suppressing a sigh of frustration, she said, “Speak.”
“Nezeru—that is your name, yes? I have that right?”
She only stared at him. At least Minku, for all his playful wickedness, hadn’t asked questions.
“I wondered . . . I wondered where you learned to speak Westerling. To speak my tongue. Do they teach it to all Norn soldiers?”
“Norn?” It was a word she only dimly remembered.
“Hikeda’ya.” He pronounced it as though he had a mouth full of sticks. “Your people.”
“In my order, they teach us only war.”
“Then how is it you speak my tongue?”
“My father knows some of that speaking. He learned from his—” She did not know the mortal word for s’huo-gan, which was the most fitting term for Viyeki’s old teacher and superior, the former High Magister, Yaarike sey-Kijana. “He learned from his master. But also my mother teaches me.”
Memories swam up as Nezeru spoke, like eager fish coming to be fed, of her visits home from the order-house during festivals and holy days, of her desperation to be with her father even when he was at work in his study. He had always seemed pleased to see her when she arrived but would fall into long silences as he perused his parchments and his old books. After a while she had usually surrendered to what felt like a shameful need, retreating to her mother’s tiny chamber and climbing into bed with her, to be enfolded in Tzoja’s soft arms. Sometimes her mother would sing to her, explaining the songs’ mortal words, and though the tunes seemed almost bitterly discordant to Nezeru, the words, once explained, had always soothed her, songs of childhood and sleep and parents watching over their young.
She had lost something since those days, she realized, though she was not sure what it was. But for the first time she recognized an ache that had been with her for as long as she could remember.
“Why did your mother know Westerling?” he asked after a long silence.
Nezeru did not reply immediately, but her own hesitation annoyed her. What did she care what a mortal thought? “She is like you,” she said finally. “Not Hikeda’ya.”
The youth’s eyes widened. “Your mother is a mortal like me?”
Nezeru shrugged, uncomfortable. “It is not strange, so. Mortal slaves make babies for nobles. My father is a noble.” For a moment she succumbed to pride. “High Magister of the Builders’ Order.”
“Whatever that is,” he said. “But is your mother really mortal? You say she’s a slave?”
“All mortals in Nakkiga are slaves.”
The one who called himself Morgan settled back against the storeroom wall. For the first time, she saw disgust in his expression. “So someone stole her from her own family, then your father raped her.”
For a moment, she puzzled over the word, then as his meaning became clear, she found herself with one of her knives in her hand, its tip lightly touching the mortal’s throat.
“She is a slave. My father does nothing dishonorable.”
This time Morgan did not attempt to escape her anger. His face showed little expression. “Well then. Kill me because I told the truth.”
She hissed between her teeth. What was this madness among mortals, this idea that they somehow owned the truth? “You do not know anything. My father is kind to her. He gives her everything. He cares for her more than his wife.” She spat out this last, though she was glad of it, glad it was true. For a moment they remained that way, eyes locked, Nezeru’s knife still pressing against Morgan’s neck.
“Go on,” he said at last. “You only mean to use me as a shield, anyway. What do I care whether you kill me or one of your Sacrificer friends does it?”
“Sacrifice,” she said. “Not Sacrificer. And I told you—they are no friends. They want me dead.”
“Hah.” He scowled. “I just want to go home, then you can kill each other for all I care.” Still, despite his bold words, the youth slowly leaned away from the knife; after a moment, Nezeru lowered it. “So,” he said, “is there some way we can both get what we want and not let your Sacrificers—Sacrifices—get what they want? Because they may want you more than me, but I don’t think they’ll let me live if they catch us.”
She looked at him with a flicker of admiration. He might be a mortal, with all the clumsiness and foolishness that meant, but he was not a coward. Still, he cares too much about living. He would not make a good Sacrifice.
“Here is a problem,” she said at last. “Everywhere we go, I smell and hear them waiting. If we rest, when we move again they will be closer. But it is not me they are hunting—they do not know I am here. They search for the Zida’ya who lived in this city, the ones who escaped them.”
“What do you mean, they’ll be closer?”
“It is something we are taught in Sacrifice Order, a movement for searching. It is called Funnel Net, and it is like what the fishermen use on rivers. Start very wide, then it goes more . . .” she struggled for the word, tried to show him with her hands, “more thin.”
“Narrow,” he said, imitating her gesture. “Starts wide, then gets narrower. In other words, they’re closing in, but doing it slowly so we don’t slip past them somehow and get away. But you said they’re not even looking for us.”
“But they will catch us, still. And then we die just the same.”
They sat in silence for some time. Nezeru was still sifting the breeze for unusual scents, still listening for anything out of the ordinary.
“I have a little food,” he said at last, and began to unroll his sleeve. “The Pure, the Sithi that live here, they gave me some bread and honey. I’m afraid I ate the honey already . . . and most of the bread.” To her astonishment, he smiled as though a little ashamed.
Do these mortals show everything on their faces? How can they go through the world so naked? How can they give away so much to their enemies?
But then she saw the crusty end of bread he held out to her with an unsteady hand. She worried it might be a trick and reached out carefully to take it, her other hand on the hilt of her knife, but the one called Morgan remained stock-still, as though she were a horse that might startle. Nezeru sniffed the bread, then put it into her mouth, realizing only as she did so how long it had been since she had eaten anything. His offering felt and tasted strange, so soft that it did not seem bread at all, certainly not hard, chewy pu’ju, but instead as light as cloud-fungus and almost as sweet as the black honey from Nakkiga’s lowest slopes, where the heather bloomed for only a few days in high summer. In fact, the bread was so light and soft that it seemed to disappear even as she chewed it, leaving her moments later with nothing but an empty mouth, an awakened hunger, and the faint taste of flowers on her tongue.
“Good,” she said almost breathlessly. “You say the Zida’ya make that?”
“The ones who live here did.” He looked up, as though he could gaze through stone. “The ones who used to live here. They must all be dead now.” A look crossed his face, an expression of stark mourning she did not understand. Surely he could not have known the so-called Pure well enough to feel much about their deaths.
These mortals. Their moods may be complicated and mysterious, but they are also meaningless, from what I have seen. She was thinking about Jarnulf again. They are like the roots of foxberry mats, broad but shallow.
Still, even the brief taste of the Zida’ya bread had lifted her spirits, and the urge to dispatch this noisy mortal was at least temporarily in abeyance. “Rest,” she told him. “I will watch. We must try again soon to find a way out before the Funnel Net is drawn too tight.”
“Your kind don’t sleep much, do you?” Morgan asked, but almost immediately yawned. “Must be nice. All that time to do other things.” He had a sudden thought. “Do you drink wine? Your kind, do they drink wine?”
She was a little startled. “We do. We drink many things.”
“And do you have anything to drink with you?”
She patted her drinking skin. “Water.”
He scowled and stretched himself beside the rough-hewn stone wall, his scabbard scraping on the cavern floor as he made himself comfortable. “Not what I meant.”
* * *
“Please forgive me, Kuyu-kun Sa’Vao,” said Little Snenneq to the ancient figure in the tattered cloak, “but it seems my ears did not hear you correctly. It sounded as though you said, ‘now we have come to the end of the world.’ But this is not the end of the world, or even the outskirts. This is the great forest that men call Aldheorte.”
The hairless head swung side to side in gentle negation. “You may call me Kuyu-kun. You may also call me the Sa’Vao if you wish. Both name and title are not necessary each time.”
Snenneq tried to smile and nearly succeeded. Qina was impressed with her beloved’s patience. “That is well. But what did you mean with your words about the end of the world?”
“Come, join us at our fire,” said Kuyu-kun. “Share our meal—it is meager, I fear, for two such young and healthy Qanuc as yourselves, but you are welcome. Then I will answer your questions.” He turned to the one who had brought them. “Tih-Rumi, you and the others give our guests room to sit.”
