The Leopard (Marakand) (18 page)

But the wizard dismounted to clean her sword first and rode with the reins slack, fingers weaving patterns in the air. A fog began to smoke from the dry riverbed, from the stagnant pools and the hot stones. It crawled over the road, overtook them, filled the rift between the mountain walls and wrapped them from sight.

“Better,” said Lin. “Now we ride.”

By noon Ahjvar was awake again. He wanted coffee, but since he wasn’t going to get any, he made do with a broken biscuit and a drink from a drying, algae-slick puddle in a hollow of the stone ledges, the last of some rain. He couldn’t see the road for the broad band of ravine-scrub, and if patrols used the path along the ravine bottom, none came by that afternoon. He could have been alone in a wilderness, rather than squatting on the edge of a teeming city. He made a foray into the trees, found cherries already ripe, which made a better meal than the very stale biscuit baked by Ghu on a stone at some campfire days gone, and wondered whether the city folk were forbidden the ravine or only afraid of it. The reed-cutter of the previous day had not acted as though he had been about any illegal harvest. Perhaps it was fear; here under the trees he thought he felt the dead. Not ghosts, unburied, no lingering trapped souls, but death nonetheless, a grave-hill’s calm. The river had dried long ago; the stands of fruit-trees amid the willow scrub, the silver-leafed, whispering poplars, were all only just come to maturity. Let grow since the earthquake? His foot, kicking at the mould of fallen leaves between the broken stones and plaster, turned up broken bone, a human jaw. So they had dumped not only the ruins of the city here but its dead of the catastrophe. They might fear to eat the fruit or burn the timber that grew from their parents’ bones, yes.

He retreated to the crevice, lay half-drowsing, waiting for the dusk, and slept once more, dreaming. It was not a bad dream, as dreams went. Miara. Not her death. Just Miara, a long time ago, and no pain in the dreaming, no murder, but he woke with damp eyes and thought about dropping from the top of the cliff, once he climbed so high, or a roof, but he would somehow survive, battered and broken maybe, but still, by miracle and luck, as alive as he was now.

It was having sent Ghu away brought that on, but at least the man would never haunt his sleep. One death he needn’t carry.

The lengthening shadows made black pools of the wooded ravine. Ahjvar set out, while he could still see enough to stop him turning an ankle in a crack or blundering into a tangle of blister-vine. The cliff to his right dropped lower, topped here with crooked buildings, some roofless, abandoned. He skirted a heap of nettle-grown rubbish that was just asking to be used as a ramp, and the cliff, dropping lower, was again surmounted by a stretch of wall. The temple grounds occupied what might have been a bay of the river once, or perhaps some earlier earthquake had made the land sink, a depression like the hoofmark of a giant’s horse, stamping down. Here the south shore of the ravine rose in shelves of stone and steep banks of broken rock intermingled to meet crumbling wall and the blank backs of temple buildings, all the lower windows bricked shut, most of the doors, though not all, likewise. Some of the doors that still might be usable from within were overgrown with vines, though, or opened from empty space, landings and water-stairs long crumbled. Between buildings, the temple’s wall was in even worse repair than that of the city. An old man could climb it. He did, as the last of the red-tinged twilight wrapped around him.

Lying flat atop the wall, the faded black cloak pulled over him, Ahjvar could see into a courtyard. It looked abandoned. Dry weeds grew between its stones, and the laurel trees at the four corners were scraggly and unkempt, wind-broken twigs and dead weeds littered around their feet. The building that backed onto the yard seemed in better repair. Light glowed through piercings in its carved window-screens. The building which made the eastern end of the courtyard was roofless and looked to have burnt long ago. Perhaps this was the abandoned backside of the temple, the equivalent of old outbuildings left in case they came in useful someday. There had been talk in the caravanserai suburb of rising tolls and duties; the money wasn’t showing here. But then, Grasslander mercenaries probably did not come cheap. To the west, the wall on which he lay abutted the old hospice. He recognized its placement, at least. Four storeys high, with wide windows for fresh air, and a pitched roof. There had been arcades running along the east, and if he remembered correctly, the unseen south, the front. There had been wooden galleries above the arcades, too, but on this eastern face they had been stripped off. It was blotched now as if with bruises, plaster crumbled away, and what was left dirty, stained with dust and soot, fading into the night. Abandoned, maybe, despite the wine-seller’s tale, but it was a place to start.

Smoke. But there would be a kitchen somewhere within the temple grounds, and the night air in this hollow was damp, carrying scents. It was only kitchen-smoke. Looking down into the ravine, he could see the paleness of a night-mist rising.

She
stirred, and it wasn’t the kitchen fires any longer.

Not yet.

Bells rang. Ahjvar flinched, though he had been expecting them. It was only the city curfew. Sunset, officially, but the temple lay lower than the city, and darkness pooled here earlier.

In addition to the gleams showing through the carved screens opposite, there was a little glimmer of light in the hospice, a wink of it moving past shuttered windows, as though someone carried a candle up on the fourth storey, into one room and then the next and the next, then vanishing, so maybe the wine-seller’s rumours had been worth the groping. He had hooks and rope and had planned to get in by a high window, but the arcade roof was not even his own height below. Ahjvar kept a grip on the edge of the wall as he tested it, thinking of the missing galleries, ready to pull himself back up if it were too rotten to bear his weight, but it seemed sound enough. The scent of smoke abated. He could spend days stalking, scouting, planning routes, learning his quarry’s routines and customary defences, and
she
would wait. She enjoyed it. Like a huntsman taking pride in his hounds, perhaps. It let him choose, anyway. Made him the guilty party. It was still cleaner.

He tested the shutter of the nearest window. Solid. They were meant to open inward, no hinges on the outside that he could tell, but there was no give at all in the centre: not merely latched, which would be easy enough, but perhaps wedged shut? No sound within. He moved along, trying them. All firmly fastened, even the one in the centre, which came down to what had been the gallery floor and had functioned as a door, once upon a time. Keeping people out, or in? Out, and probably the shutters of the higher windows, which did not have a convenient thieves’ walkway beneath them, would merely be latched and he could slide them open with a thin knife. If they were keeping someone in, though, even the less-accessible would be more permanently sealed. The rumour of the Voice’s madness made him consider that not utterly unlikely, and there was no sound at all within, no light. A warm summer night, not one against which to close the shutters.

He tried a small noise, a rap on the wood with the hilt of a knife. No stir of a disturbed sleeper. He slid the blade up, found a latch and flipped it, found another, and still, as he had thought, the door did not open. Near the bottom, and again at the top, an immovable block. Barred? Nailed? If so, it seemed nothing that he could move either up or aside with the knife. He retreated along the arcade roof to the outer wall again, and pulled himself back up, considering. He had time. It didn’t have to be tonight; he hadn’t planned on that. The hag slumbered again, easy, quiet. He felt utterly alive, every nerve and sinew alert, and the slow weight of the bleak years burnt away like mist in the morning. The hospice’s river-doors might be barred, or merely locked and forgotten. Worth checking. Back down the wall, feeling his way carefully in the dark, remembering his route, then along the edge of the foundation, feeling over the wall for traces of the old stairs, the old landings, whatever had been there that would mark a door above him. He remembered seeing one, yes, and then he felt it, where the stonework of stairs still clung in broken fragments. Enough to climb, warily, till his fingers pressing through the thick clinging vine—grape, he was certain—found wood instead of stone.

The door’s hinges were on the inside. The latch-handle was still in place, and there was a keyhole, so it might not be barred within. Crouching on a protruding nub of stone like a cormorant hunched on its rock over the sea, Ahjvar went through his bundle by feel, eyes closed. There was nothing to see, anyhow, in the black night, not even starlight to gleam on metal, clouds rolling down from the mountains. Closing the eyes brought greater sensitivity to the fingers, he always found. Something—a grappling hook—slid and slipped, and grabbing blind he caught it before he lost it clattering down the stones of the once-riverbank. Found a set of cast bronze hooks and wrenches, long-stemmed, delicate, but heavy enough to press the weight of an iron lock without bending, strong enough not to break when twisted. Chose those which seemed the best fit for the size of the lock’s hole and felt his way into it. Seized up, he decided, not surprisingly. He had oil and ink-brushes in several sizes. He tried to sit without thinking, without feeling, with an angler’s patience, waiting for the oil to do its work, to break the seal of rust and float the dust free. He usually could be still and calm once he was about such work. The concentration brought a sort of peace that he only found elsewhere with Ghu’s arm over him, with Ghu’s breath in his hair. He’d never been one to find other men particularly attractive, but Ghu was—a comfort. Leave it at that. The Old Great Gods knew he hadn’t let himself have the faintest glimmering of desire for anyone, woman or man or even Ghu, since he surfaced from the madness to find Miara dead, strangled, and the spells she and he both had thought would hold him, would kill him—Great Gods, such a thing to ask of the woman who loved you—sloughed off, shattered, and gone to ash.

It was not wizardry had destroyed Miara’s spells; neither he nor
she
had that to call on now, by Catairanach’s blessing, the one mercy—or piece of common sense—the goddess had shown. It did not balance that no wizardry seemed to have a hold on
her
, though. If he could ever find a way to kill a god . . .

But he was fretting after Ghu despite telling himself he would not, and if he did not find that stillness, that quiet hunter’s centre, he was going to make mistakes, and fools would try to kill him, and more people would die. None of whom would be he, no matter how he suffered. Even the cage in Sea Town, when they’d taken him quite justly for the murder of some poor sailor . . . he ought to have nightmares about that, but he didn’t, didn’t remember much of it. He’d been willing to see how long it really could take him to die, but
she
had risen, someone must have come too close . . . the Tzian clan-fathers had thought a man who didn’t seem capable of dying could have his uses. That set him on this road. They were all dead now, with one thing and another. Him, mostly. They’d managed to fail to hang him when he started to scare them more than their rivals did; bad luck, ill chance, or a miracle in the failed knot. That was after they’d found he couldn’t be poisoned. Made very sick and angry, yes, but not poisoned, not to death.

Even the brightest stars were veiled, and the night was not cooling off as one expected in the mountains. The first whisper of storm? The key-hooks again, a slight give, maybe. More oil. He gave it as long as it took him to silently recite the alphabet of the trees, with the three sacred blessings of each letter’s namesake as the Praitannec wizards Over-Malagru reckoned them, asserting some discipline over his wandering mind, and then the hooks moved, the thin wrench was able to turn. The lock clunked, loud enough to make him freeze motionless, listening. Nothing stirred.

The door might, of course, also be barred.

It wasn’t, though he had to give it a hard shove. The hinges creaked.

Another silent waiting, with no stir. He rolled everything up again, including his cloak, and belted on his sword properly. Even if he told himself he was only scouting this night to find if the Voice were here at all, there were still Red Masks to consider. He tried to do as little damage as possible to the vine, weaving his way in like a ferret.

He was in a fairly broad passageway, Ahjvar judged, feeling along either wall. Two doors to one side, one to another. Two opened stiffly into rooms that smelt, like the passage, stale. Windowless. The other led to a descending stair from which a cold, damp air arose. He didn’t venture down. The passage ran to another door, which did not squeak, and beyond the air was better. There was even light. He edged out cautiously, but it was only a silver lamp sitting in a wall-niche: some night-light, which at least told that the building was in use, and that people would not be unexpected in this—entry hall? Maybe. Double doors, unbarred. He tried one, and it opened smoothly. A courtyard beyond, not the same one on which he’d gazed down earlier, a dark hedge running along the buildings that framed it. So . . . he could have gone around and come in the front door. Right. It didn’t seem to be guarded, but it was overlooked by buildings that showed here and there a glimmer of light, and lamps burned at this door and at an archway opposite. Visitors might be expected? He left the lit areas, found more disused rooms, all smelling of dust or mould. Some were furnished, simple bedframes stripped of mattress and blankets, jumbled anyhow, shoved out of the way. He thought for a moment he had trodden on bone, stooped to pick it up and found broken crockery. He felt over the window. A lath had been nailed along the sill to keep the shutters from being swung inwards. He shook them. They did not rattle, but the wood felt old, dry, rain-damaged. He could smash through them any time noise ceased to matter. Good to know.