The Godspeaker Trilogy (17 page)

I am a knife-dancer, I have my blade. Shall I slit Yagji’s throat, god? Shall I kill him like a goat?

An answer came, not in words but as a feeling.

No . What happened here was sacred business, not the bloody slaughter of the battlefield. Guided by impulse, by the god’s silent voice, she tugged back Yagji’s covering blankets and set the stone amulet on his bare chest. The god was in her stone scorpion, let her stone scorpion be its instrument.

Die, Yagji. Die a sinning man.

She waited, barely breathing. Was it the lamplight or did the scorpion ripple? She could hear her heart beating, drumming for the god.

Yagji woke. His eyes flew open. He saw her standing there and tried to scream, but no sound left his open mouth. He looked at the scorpion on his skin, dark eyes wide with rising terror and pain.

Hekat leaned over him. “You stupid Yagji. I belong to the god. You cannot touch me. You belong to demons.”

A whimper escaped him. He tried to throw the scorpion from him, he could not grasp it, it would not move. He tried to sit up, the scorpion pinned him. He was pinned to the mattress, weighed down by the god. Water filled his eyes, it slid down his cheeks. “ No . . . no . . .” His voice was a whisper, his bones were chalk.

Slowly, so slowly, the god extinguished his godspark. Unmoved, Hekat watched the life drain from his bulging eyes. They dimmed, they faded, they died completely. Yagji was dead, and gone to hell. She lifted the scorpion from his unmoving chest and carried it along the passageway to Abajai’s room.

Serene and sleeping, he did not stir. For a small time she stood by his bed and watched him, breathing deep of the incense he burned against demons. She stared at the scarlet scorpion on his cheek. She had never liked Yagji, but Abajai she had loved and trusted.

Only the god deserves love and trust.

She placed the stone scorpion on Abajai’s chest.

Like Yagji before him the Trader woke startled, his body filled with pain and fear. He clawed at the amulet but could not remove it, its carved stone pincers were sunk in his flesh.

There was sorrow in her this time, for the Hekat who had loved him, for the man she’d thought he was. She banished it, coldly. Sorrow was weak.

“You go to hell now, Abajai,” she told him. “Go to Yagji, he waits for you. The god wants no godspark of a wicked man. You are the meat with maggots in it. You are the horse with a broken leg. I am not your slave, I belong to the god. If you had seen this I would not be here. You would not be dying a sinner’s death.”

His ribcage labored as he struggled for air. His taloned fingers reached for her but she was beyond him. She was always beyond him, she knew that now. He should have known but he would not listen.

Stupid Abajai, deaf to the god.

When the scorpion was finished, and Abajai was dead, she left the villa as she had entered. Unheard, unseen, except by the god.

Sighing, Vortka shifted the offering-satchel from his left shoulder to his right. It wasn’t as heavy as it could be, public offerings had dwindled since the celebrations of Raklion warlord’s victory over Bajadek, but still it was heavy enough. With the satchel resettled and aching his spine, he took his small godknife from his robe pocket and nicked the side of his left hand’s little finger. Crimson blood welled reluctantly, as tired of flowing as he was of cutting himself. Ignoring the small, familiar pain he smeared the snake-eye carved into the godpost at the end of Eluissa Way. Power swelled and surged and he felt a warm pleasure.

I am a godspeaker. I serve the god.

Leaving the newly sanctified and protected Eluissa godbowl behind him he trudged the city’s cobblestones to the next. Its godpost guarded the end of Dog-tooth Alley, which marked the beginning of the Traders district. He’d started collection duty just after newsun, and still the city’s streets were nearly deserted. A few slaves scurried about their masters’ business, some early risers reclined on curtained litters or sat upright in slave-drawn carriages. He did not speak to them, they did not speak to him. Godspeakers were revered and feared, even the novices, something he had never looked for in his life.

Before his father’s death, before his mother became wife to that other man, he’d always thought he’d be a potsmith. That like a good son he’d follow the path trod by his father and his father’s father and his father’s father’s father, all the way back to the world’s beginning. Potsmithing with clay and bronze and reed and carved stone was honest work seen in the god’s eye. He had not asked for more than that.

He had not asked to be a godspeaker .

Like everyone in his village of Todorok, in all of Mijak, he prayed the god saw him in its eye. He attended sacrifice, he obeyed the god’s law, he wore his amulets and made sure the godspeaker never saw him in his eye, for being seen by a godspeaker almost never boded well. He lived his life believing the god did see him, he worked hard as a potboy for his father, knowing he would soon be old enough for proper potsmithing tasks.

But then his potsmith father died and he disappeared entirely from the god’s all-seeing eye. After that came pain and grief, then Trader Abajai with his chains. He saw himself a slave until the day he died. He did not dream the god had another purpose for him.

The instant his fingers closed about the godstone in Et-Nogolor city’s slave pen he knew he was no slave but a chosen servant of the god. The god’s power poured into him, scouring away the old Vortka, polishing the new. The path before him became unknown and unknowable, the god did not share its secrets with mortals. Not until a mortal was needed. That was its way, he would never question it.

True, life as a novice wasn’t easy or painless, but what did that matter? Nothing mattered but the god. It had saved him from slavery, brought him to Et-Raklion, it had crossed his path with the knife-dancer Hekat, that strange fierce warrior-child he had never forgotten.

She is chosen, as I am. In its time the god will tell me why.

Until then he would serve in the godhouse, he would be the god’s slave. Godhouse chains were not so hard to bear.

The godbowl at the end of Dog-tooth Alley was scarcely one-third full. Vortka frowned. Traders were rich men, they could do better than this. He emptied their miserly offerings into his satchel, sealed the godpost and its bowl and walked deeper into the Traders district. If its other godbowls were not more generously filled he would have to tell Salakij novice-master, who would tell Nagarak, and Nagarak would punish the Traders for disrespecting the god.

He shuddered. Foolish Traders, if that was their fate.

The sun was higher in the sky by two fingers now, and more people hurried about their business. If there was one good thing in tramping the streets, emptying godbowls, it was the chance to leave the godhouse for a time, see faces that did not surround him in the godhouse. Many tested godspeakers served in the city, they were the weft and warp of Et-Raklion, of every warlord city in Mijak, but never novices. They could not be trusted with important administrative tasks. If Salakij were to be believed, novices could barely be trusted with a broom.

As he walked the streets he rested his godsense, a godspeaker’s ability to taste emotions and scent a man’s sin, to sense the past and sometimes the future. To know things unknown by any man not touched by the god. It was whispered among the novices that Nagarak had the power to read men’s minds as though they were common tablets of clay, but who could say if that were true? The high godspeaker spawned more rumors than a fly laid maggots. He could not read minds himself, that was all he knew. But ever since he’d woken the godstone in Et-Nogolor he’d been able to sense moods, and sometimes hidden meanings in the world.

That was impressive for a novice godspeaker.

Even as he opened himself to the mosaic emotions of hurrying slaves and bustling Traders he looked around him at the district’s expensive villas. Life was odd, filled with the god’s mystery. If the Trader caravan had not stopped in Et-Nogolor he might have ended up here, a humble slave with a scarlet godbraid.

Abajai and Yagji lived on one of these streets. He would know them at once, but doubted they would recognize him. He had never been a person to them, he was walking coin, gold in chains. Would they recognize Hekat if they saw her? He hoped not, for she was their runaway. Bad things happened to runaway slaves.

He pinched himself, to stop wrong thinking. Worry for Hekat is a sin. She belongs to the god, it will protect her. If you doubt that, you must kneel for the cane .

He did not want to kneel for the cane. Besides, how would Abajai and Yagji see her? Traders had no business with warriors. And Hekat was different now, not just because of the scars. She was taller, stronger, her bones were tightly roped with muscle. Her face beneath its spiderweb had changed, she was a warrior with blood in her eyes. It would be best for those Traders if they did not see her or show they knew her if they did.

With a deep breath in and out Vortka loosened his painful grip on the satchel straps and bent his thoughts towards his duty.

The godpost godbowl on Travas Street was half-filled with offerings, a more satisfactory result even if it did mean the weight of his offering-satchel almost bent him double. He could manage one more bowl’s offerings but that was all, if he filled the satchel to the brim it would pull his spine to pieces, he was certain. To save himself from that calamity he would have to return to the godhouse after his next collection, deliver his satchel’s contents into the godhouse treasury, then return to the city to complete his task.

Tcha. And the godhouse kitcheners wondered at the appetites of novice godspeakers . . .

Swallowing a sigh lest the god think he was complaining, Vortka trudged past villa after villa towards Rokbrot Way, where the next godbowl waited. Just as he reached a long cream stone wall his novice godsense hummed a warning. A heartbeat later he heard a fearful screeching, the sound of panicked running feet. Then the villa wall’s blue-painted door flew open and he looked in surprise upon a panting slave.

“Godspeaker! Godspeaker! My masters are dead! Both of them stone-dead in their beds!”

“What do you mean, slave? How are they dead? What has killed them?”

The distraught slave wrung his plump well-kept hands. “Demons, godspeaker! It must be demons! Please, I beg you, come see for yourself!”

Vortka hesitated. He was only a novice, demons were dealt with by those older and wiser than he. But if he sent for a superior and demons were not present, if he wasted that superior’s time . . .

“Show me, slave.”

The slave’s tear-streaked face quivered with relief. “Yes, godspeaker. Hurry, hurry, follow me!”

Once inside the lavish villa, where more distressed slaves wept and milled, Vortka let his heavy satchel slide from his shoulder to the polished tile floor.

“Someone must stand with these godhouse offerings,” he said. Seeing the slaves start with fright, he took off his amulet and held it out. “Here is my demoncharm, blessed by Nagarak himself. If demons abide here they will not dare strike the wearer of this amulet.”

“You there!” said the slave who’d fetched him, pointing to a young strong man. “Take the godspeaker’s demoncharm and guard his satchel with your life!”

“Yes, Retoth,” the young slave murmured, and did as he was told.

“You are called Retoth?” Vortka asked. The slave nodded. “Then, Retoth, take me to your dead masters.”

T
he slave Retoth was reluctant to enter the cold, still sleeping chamber. Hanging back, he pointed through the open doorway and said, his voice unsteady, “There lies my master Abajai.”

Vortka faltered. Abajai? Was there more than one Abajai in the Traders district? He took a deep breath and entered the room. One glance at the bed’s occupant told him there was not. “You found him like this?”

“Yes, godspeaker. I have not touched him.”

Abajai’s eyes were wide and staring, a fearful glare of agony and despair. Raised and blistered, the flesh of his naked chest echoed the image of a scorpion. The tattooed scorpion in his cheek was faded. Shriveled.

This was godsmite, unmistakable.

“Show me the other one,” he told the slave.

Yagji’s face was a mirror of Abajai’s, a dreadful rictus of terror and pain. Burned in his chest, the same angry scorpion.

“This was no demon,” Vortka told the slave Retoth. “This was the god. Send a slave to the godhouse, tell them Vortka calls for aid. Now , Retoth.”

But Retoth was transfixed. “The god has taken my masters from me?” he whispered. “But why , godspeaker? What was their sin? They were good men, they—”

Vortka struck him across the face. “You dare to question in a room still filled with the god’s dread presence? Do you wish to join your masters in hell?”

Retoth gobbled in his throat, like a chicken. “ No , godspeaker!”

“Then do as I bid you! And put the other slaves away where they will not be troublesome underfoot.”

The slave Retoth stumbled from Yagji’s chamber. A moment later Vortka heard him shouting, and the hurried shuffling of many feet. Ignoring that, he looked again at the body on the bed.

Why are you dead, Yagji, you and Abajai? Why did the god smite you? How did you sin, to be so struck doun?

Burdened with dread, with unanswered questions, he returned to the villa’s entrance hall and waited for the senior godspeakers to arrive.

When they came at last, a breath before highsun, they dismissed him to the godhouse. Relieved, Vortka escaped the villa with his heavy offering-satchel and struggled with it up the Pinnacle Road. After attending sacrifice he witnessed the collected coins and amulets counted into the treasury, then was freed until lowsun to pursue private dedications.

It meant he could hide himself in the library and study the law and godhouse history. He could kneel before a godpost in the shrine garden and open his heart and mind to the god. He could train his body in the disciplines of godspeaker hotas , rigorous exercises designed to tone the body and keep it supple for the god. He could present himself to the taskmasters and offer his flesh for mortification, in remorse for all his novice shortcomings.

He did none of these permitted things. Instead he slipped from the godhouse and went to find Hekat.

She sat on a camp-bed in her shell-barracks, mending a pile of blade-slashed tunics. She was alone. When she wasn’t training or eating she was always alone. Alone with her snakeblade, dancing her hotas again and again. That was how she worshipped the god.

He wondered if she ever got lonely, but so far hadn’t asked her. Something in her face discouraged those kinds of questions. “Hekat,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

She stared in surprise. “Vortka? You should not be here. What do you want?”

“To talk.” He looked at the pile of mending on the floor at her feet. Many of the tunics were stained brownish-red about the fraying slices in the fabric. “These are all yours?”

“Tcha!” she said, and poked the tunics with a bare toe. “Not one of them is mine, stupid Vortka. You think a snakeblade touches me when I knife-dance with my shell?”

“Then who do they belong to?”

“Beginner knife-dancers come to join Raklion’s warhost.” She raised her arms above her head and stretched, like a cat. He tried not to notice the lift of her small breasts beneath the linen covering her body. She was a warrior and he was not a vessel, there could be no meeting of their flesh. To hope otherwise was to condemn himself to the most severe tasking in the godhouse.

“More knife-dancers is a good thing, isn’t it?” he said, distracting himself.

Her scars tangled themselves with contempt. “They dream of glory because we defeated Bajadek warlord, they think every day is a day of war. They think it is easy, to be a warrior.” She smiled, unkindly. “They are learning different. They make me laugh.”

He looked again at the pile of tunics. “If they are not yours, Hekat, why do you mend them?”

“ Tcha !” she spat, and leapt off her camp-bed to dance lightly down the shell-barracks center aisle and back again. “Stupid Zapotar, he punishes Hekat. I did not show myself to him when I came back to barracks last night. He says I sinned. He does not dare beat me, Raklion warlord sees me in his eye, so he says I must not dance my hotas , I must sit in this place and stab myself with needles.” She made a face. “That is not really why he is angry. He is angry because I killed Bajadek warlord, I saved Raklion’s life. He is jealous, I am the best knife-dancer and the warhost knows it.”

Vortka felt his heart squeeze tight. He had heard about Bajadek’s slaying, who had not? But the warlord’s death was not important now. Abajai and Yagji, slain in their beds . “You were out of the barracks last night?”

With exquisite control she turned slow and steady cartwheels between the long rows of camp-beds. The scorpion amulet round her neck swung to and fro, fracturing shadows. As the stone caught the light something about it tugged at his memory, he could not think why and pushed the thought aside for later. She was beautiful, turning cartwheels.

When she was finished she stood before him, fierce and fearless. “The warlord sent to see me. I went to him. We spoke. I returned.”

“When did you return?”

She shrugged. “The godmoon and his wife were in the sky. I paid no closer attention than that.”

“Hekat . . .” Aiece, how his heart was pounding. “Abajai and Yagji were killed last night.”

Behind its scars her face was indifferent. But in her eyes he saw cold flames flickering. “You say so?”

“I saw their bodies. They are dead.” She said nothing. She was not surprised. Seeing that, his skin went cold. “You did not need me to tell you. You knew already.”

“And if I did?” she retorted. “Is that your business? I think it is not.”

She had killed a warlord, slain him with her sharp snakeblade. That was warrior business . . . but the Traders were not. “Hekat, please. Are you bound in this? Is their blood on your hands? Did you kill them?”

“Tcha,” she said, and bent herself backwards until her hands touched the floor behind her. “The god killed them, Vortka. If you saw them you know that is true.”

“But you were there, weren’t you? You are somehow involved.” Curved like a horseshoe, she did not deny it. Staring at her, he felt sick and uncertain, his head felt light. “Tell me what happened.”

With astonishing agility she flipped around and over and onto her feet. “You know what happened,” she said, flicking him a dark look. “The Traders died.”

“ Why?”

“Because they were stupid, they defied the god. They stopped their ears and refused to heed its wanting. They are no loss.”

He could have smacked her. “ Tell me properly . Tell me everything.”

Frowning, Hekat drifted her fingers to the snakeblade on her belt. Then she sighed. “They learned where I was, Vortka. They told the warlord I belonged to them. They told the warlord they wanted me dead. The god does not want me dead, the god sees me in its eye and wants me to live. I returned to their villa. I watched them die. I came back to the barracks and now I mend tunics. That is what happened. You can go away now.”

He had no intention of going anywhere, not until she told him everything. “Hekat, they died by godsmite !”

She smiled, and touched the amulet around her neck. “I know. I put my scorpion on them and the god’s power in me stopped their wicked hearts. They died in terrible fear and pain.” The smile twisted. “Stupid Traders.”

The god’s power in her? How could that be? She was a warrior, only a godspeaker contained the god’s power. Determined to prove her wrong he opened his godsense and looked at her with his inner eyes.

Touching her godspark was like breathing fire. He gasped, muscles spasming, and wrenched himself free of the cauldron that was Hekat before she burned him to ash and crumbling bone.

“You see?” she said. “The god is in me. I live in its eye.”

“I see,” he croaked, his throat scorched. “What you have shown me—it is dangerous to know. If Nagarak finds out . . . will you kill me now, Hekat? Will you put your scorpion on my flesh and watch it send my godspark to hell?”

She dropped to the nearest camp-bed, flames still flickering in her eyes. He felt their echo in his blood. “Why would the god want your death, Vortka? You are godtouched as I am godtouched. You will not betray me. The god knows this and so do I.”

He wet his dry lips. “Abajai and Yagji . . .”

“Are dead because they wished to deny the god’s desire. You love the god, you serve the god, it chose you in that Et-Nogolor slave pen. Do not fear me, Vortka. I am not your death.”

She was so young, yet she had killed a warlord. The god burned in her, its shadows darkening her face. Vortka shivered. “I am frightened, Hekat. You frighten me,” he whispered. “I am a potsmith made slave turned godspeaker. What is my place here? What is yours?”

She laughed at him. “When you found me in the darkness, dancing, then you knew your place in this. As for mine, I will tell you in my time. The god is in us, Vortka. Let it guide you, let it fill you with its desires. Go back to your godhouse. Forget Abajai and Yagji, they are gone to hell. They are devoured by demons for their sins.”

And she was devoured by the god.

She is far beyond me already , he realized, standing. What will become of us as she grows in her power? Why has the god chosen her? What is her purpose? What is mine, that I know this about her?

He had no answers. He returned to the godhouse, to ask the god. The god did not tell him.

He must wait, and see.

Raklion let nothing show on his face when Nagarak came down from the godhouse after highsun sacrifice to tell him of the two dead Traders. He said, “You are certain it was godsmite? It could be plague, returned to plague us. Pestilence sleeps in the sand and soil of Mijak, not long ago these Traders traveled the length and breadth of the land. Who knows what contagion they brought home with them on the soles of their shoes?”

Nagarak would never sit when in his warlord’s private chamber, he paced within its confines, he was a restless man. “I am high godspeaker, yet you ask if I am certain?”

Raklion raised one hand in brief apology. In his chest his heart beat hard. They died of godsmite? Hekat . . . Hekat . . . what have you done ? “Explain this, Nagarak. Why would the god smite these Traders, do you know? Has it told you?”

The merest hesitation in Nagarak’s stamping stride, the slightest flicker of his eyes. “Some godspeaker business is not for discussion outside the godhouse. If these deaths have meaning beyond the sinful lives of the dead I will tell you, warlord. More than that you need not know.”

He knew Nagarak, now. He cannot answer. The god has not told him why the Traders died . Relief and pleasure mingled hotly. It was a clear sign the god wanted Hekat safe. She is a knife-dancer yet the Traders died by godsmite. How could that be, god? Hekat, who are you?

Nagarak stamped to a standstill. “I am here in your palace, I will see Et-Nogolor’s Daughter. Your son ripens in her, I would lay hands on her belly and feel his strength. Take me to her, warlord. I would—”

Knuckles rapped on the door, then his personal slave entered. “Warlord, forgive me. Hanochek warleader would speak with you on urgent warhost business.”

Raklion nodded. “I will see him. Escort Nagarak high godspeaker to the Women’s Chambers, he would see the Daughter and her growing belly. Nagarak, you honor me with your presence and word of that other matter. You will see me in the godhouse at lowsun, for sacrifice.”

“Lowsun,” said Nagarak, and departed with the slave. Hanochek entered on the heels of their leaving, he looked harried and tense.

“Raklion, I wish you would listen to me with your head and not your heart,” he said, throwing himself into the nearest empty chair. “I tell you something must be done, no matter how you feel for the girl, no matter her skill on the Plain of Drokar.”

Hekat, again. Raklion sighed and leaned his elbows on his wooden desk. “Tell me, Hano. What must be done, and why?”

Hano chewed the end of one godbraid, a boy’s bad habit he had never outgrown. “She slew Bajadek warlord, I do not quarrel with that. But there are fools in the warhost who would make eyes at her for doing her duty, for wielding her snakeblade no better or worse than any warrior of Et-Raklion. It bodes badly for discipline, warlord. She is one of ten thousand, not one alone.”

He frowned. “She flaunts Bajadek’s slaying? I have not seen it.”

“No,” said Hano, irritably shifting. “She does not flaunt it, it is flaunted by others. They see her, they flaunt it, they praise her, I tell you it means trouble.”

It was a fair observation. One thing for his warriors to revere an older, seasoned fighter. But a girl barely out of childhood who, according to Hano, kept herself apart and mysterious? As his warleader said, such adoration could only mean trouble, and trouble in the barracks would be told to Nagarak by his godspeakers. He would pay attention to Hekat as the cause of that trouble, he would notice her. Ask questions.

He did not want Nagarak noticing Hekat.

“You are right, Hano,” he said. “The Plain of Drokar was one battle, it is over. Send Hekat’s shell into the wilderness for training. Send Arakun shell-leader’s shell with them so they can skirmish together.” He tapped a finger against his chin, warming to the idea even as it chilled him. Training in the wilderness was no easy business, warriors died in training. God, keep her safe . “Send them to train along the border with Et-Banotaj. Bajadek’s whelp has been silent since Drokar but that might change with the changing wind. And even if he does not think to bark, knowing my warriors dance on his doorstep he will think twice before clearing his throat.”