Read Online The Leopard (Marakand) by K.V. Johansen - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: K.V. Johansen
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brought home a half-witted beggar’s brat as a catamite? I’m sure I’d remember if I’d said anything of the sort. It’s not the kind of thing one says in passing and forgets.”
Ghu walked to the cliff’s brink, staring out past the sea, beyond the horizon, into what depths or heights Ahjvar couldn’t think. Ghu’s soul wandered, and sometimes he seemed nothing but a shell, a little, hollow child, waiting. To be filled with what?
“There is death, in Marakand,” he said abruptly, but his voice was still soft, gentle, sleepy, even, and very far away. “Death and deep water. Death and fire. Death and ice.”
Ahjvar shivered. A thing said thrice bound itself into the world.
“Death,” he said, “you should have learned to expect by now, chasing after me.” And he strode off barefoot, inland to the hills. Ghu didn’t come after him.
He shouldn’t have come back, but slept out in the open. He should have expected what followed. The nightmares returned that night. Ahjvar woke shrieking, soaked in sweat, striking out blind and mad at Ghu, who withstood the blows to pin his arms and whisper stupid soothing nonsense into his hair like he was a wild and panicked horse. He ended up curled, shivering, with his head on his knees, pressed against the cold and reassuring wall, solid and rough and real, and had he hit Ghu’s head against it? He thought so, but the man was still on his feet and moving.
“Stupid,” he said, and his speech was slurred, because sometime between then and now Ghu had forced more than one beaker of straight distilled barley-spirit on him. “Told you, get out of the house when I start screaming.”
“It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right.” He squeezed his eyes shut on the little bard’s face gone to stretched black skin, crackling on a grinning skull.
“Go to sleep.” Ghu pushed him over and squirmed down to lie against his back, pulled one blanket over them both, an arm around him like a mother holding an infant against the night. And then he lay there singing Nabbani nonsense lullabies in a voice barely audible. Maybe they were charms, for all the man denied being a wizard, because Ahjvar slid away into deep sleep, and that night there were no more fires in his dreams.
In the morning, Ghu had a scraped cheek that needed tending, and Ahjvar a thumping headache that he ignored, because he thoroughly deserved it, seeing the state of Ghu’s face. They stuffed the hens and chickens and the protesting rooster into two sacks and tipped them out in the widow’s garden as they rode by. The sun was barely rising. Only the widow’s dog saw them go.
When Deyandara returned to the assassin’s house later that morning, having remembered in the midnight with a jolt a part of her errand unfinished, she found the hens gone and the ruin abandoned.
The high road, a succession of rambling tracks and drovers’ trails, followed the snaking course of the Praitanna River, which was the Avain Praitanna in Praitan, north from the great port of Two Hills to the caravan way that ran from Marakand to the distant east. Even that was not a highway, not once it left the mountain pass, but a braided trail of many threads, wandering up and down to this walled dinaz and that village of watering-places and camping grounds, crossing and recrossing. Some threads, drovers’ tracks, mostly, swung away south again to the other ports of the Five Cities, where the coffee and incense and ivory came up into the Gulf of Taren from the southlands beyond the sea, and the iron of the hidden forest kingdoms, the wool and tin of northern Over-Malagru, the olives and wheat and wine of the Tributary Lands went to the lordly dark merchant-princes of the ships.
Ahjvar set his course to the northwest instead. He took the wild paths, the ones only the locals and the wanderers knew, the steep climbs where winter rain stripped the thin soil from the stone between the thickets of myrtle and spiny gorse, humming with
Ghu walked to the cliff’s brink, staring out past the sea, beyond the horizon, into what depths or heights Ahjvar couldn’t think. Ghu’s soul wandered, and sometimes he seemed nothing but a shell, a little, hollow child, waiting. To be filled with what?
“There is death, in Marakand,” he said abruptly, but his voice was still soft, gentle, sleepy, even, and very far away. “Death and deep water. Death and fire. Death and ice.”
Ahjvar shivered. A thing said thrice bound itself into the world.
“Death,” he said, “you should have learned to expect by now, chasing after me.” And he strode off barefoot, inland to the hills. Ghu didn’t come after him.
He shouldn’t have come back, but slept out in the open. He should have expected what followed. The nightmares returned that night. Ahjvar woke shrieking, soaked in sweat, striking out blind and mad at Ghu, who withstood the blows to pin his arms and whisper stupid soothing nonsense into his hair like he was a wild and panicked horse. He ended up curled, shivering, with his head on his knees, pressed against the cold and reassuring wall, solid and rough and real, and had he hit Ghu’s head against it? He thought so, but the man was still on his feet and moving.
“Stupid,” he said, and his speech was slurred, because sometime between then and now Ghu had forced more than one beaker of straight distilled barley-spirit on him. “Told you, get out of the house when I start screaming.”
“It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right.” He squeezed his eyes shut on the little bard’s face gone to stretched black skin, crackling on a grinning skull.
“Go to sleep.” Ghu pushed him over and squirmed down to lie against his back, pulled one blanket over them both, an arm around him like a mother holding an infant against the night. And then he lay there singing Nabbani nonsense lullabies in a voice barely audible. Maybe they were charms, for all the man denied being a wizard, because Ahjvar slid away into deep sleep, and that night there were no more fires in his dreams.
In the morning, Ghu had a scraped cheek that needed tending, and Ahjvar a thumping headache that he ignored, because he thoroughly deserved it, seeing the state of Ghu’s face. They stuffed the hens and chickens and the protesting rooster into two sacks and tipped them out in the widow’s garden as they rode by. The sun was barely rising. Only the widow’s dog saw them go.
When Deyandara returned to the assassin’s house later that morning, having remembered in the midnight with a jolt a part of her errand unfinished, she found the hens gone and the ruin abandoned.
The high road, a succession of rambling tracks and drovers’ trails, followed the snaking course of the Praitanna River, which was the Avain Praitanna in Praitan, north from the great port of Two Hills to the caravan way that ran from Marakand to the distant east. Even that was not a highway, not once it left the mountain pass, but a braided trail of many threads, wandering up and down to this walled dinaz and that village of watering-places and camping grounds, crossing and recrossing. Some threads, drovers’ tracks, mostly, swung away south again to the other ports of the Five Cities, where the coffee and incense and ivory came up into the Gulf of Taren from the southlands beyond the sea, and the iron of the hidden forest kingdoms, the wool and tin of northern Over-Malagru, the olives and wheat and wine of the Tributary Lands went to the lordly dark merchant-princes of the ships.
Ahjvar set his course to the northwest instead. He took the wild paths, the ones only the locals and the wanderers knew, the steep climbs where winter rain stripped the thin soil from the stone between the thickets of myrtle and spiny gorse, humming with
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