Dreams of Steel Page 9

  They whispered while I thought. They didn’t expect anything from me.

  There was a small spell which could be used to blind the unaware briefly. Perfect, if I could manage it. I recalled it all right. One of those children’s things that used to be as easy as blinking. I hadn’t tried it in ages. There’d be no way to tell if it was working, unless I messed it up so badly the sentry sensed me and gave the alarm.

  Nothing to lose but my life.

  I went into that spellcasting as though it was the most dangerous demon-summoning I’d ever done. I did it three times to make sure it had a chance to take, but when I finished I didn’t know if I’d succeeded or failed. The guard didn’t look changed.

  Sindhu and Narayan still had their heads together. I said, “Come on,” and returned to the edge of the light. No one was in sight but that guard.

  Time to test it or chicken.

  I walked straight toward the sentry.

  Narayan and Sindhu both cursed and tried to call me back. I summoned them with a gesture. The guard couldn’t see me.

  He didn’t see me!

  My heart leaped as it had when I’d summoned the horses. I beckoned Narayan and Sindhu, indicating they should stay out of the guard’s direct line of vision. He might remember someone he saw head on. And he would be questioned later.

  They slunk past like dogs, unable to believe he couldn’t see them. They desperately wanted to know what I’d done, how I’d done it, if they could learn to do it, too, but they dared not say a word.

  I parted the tent flap an inch, saw no one on the other side. The interior was compartmented by hangings. I slipped into what must have been the audience area. It constituted the majority of the interior. It was well appointed, further evidence that Jah had put his own comfort before the welfare of his men and the safety of his homeland.

  I had learned better as a child. You win more loyalty and respect if you share the hardships.

  Eyes still big, Narayan gestured, reminding me of the layout as he had it from his spies. I nodded. This late Jah should be asleep. We moved toward his sleeping area. I moved the hanging with a dagger. Narayan and Sindhu got their rumels out.

  I know I made no noise. I’m sure they didn’t. But as we went in Jah boiled up off his cushions, flung himself between Narayan and Sindhu, bowling them aside. He charged me. There was a lamp burning. He saw us well enough to recognize us.

  Ever a fool, Jahamaraj Jah. He never yelled. He just tried to get away.

  My hand dipped to the triangle of saffron at my waist, yanked, flipped. My rumel moved as if alive, snaked around his throat. I seized the flying end, yanked the loop tight, rolled my wrists and held on.

  Luck, fate, or unconscious skill, none of that would have mattered had I been alone. Jah was a powerful man. He could have carried me outside. He could have shaken me off.

  But Narayan and Sindhu grabbed his arms and held them extended, twisted them, forced him down. Sindhu’s bull strength counted most. Narayan concentrated on keeping Jah’s arms extended.

  I got my knees into Jah’s back and concentrated on keeping him from breathing.

  It takes a while for a man to strangle. The skilled strangler is supposed to move so quickly and decisively that the victim’s neck breaks and death comes instantly. I did not yet have the wrist roll perfected. So I had to hang on while Jah went the hard way. My arms and shoulders ached before he shuddered his last.

  Narayan lifted me away. I was shaking with the intensity of it, the almost orgasmic elation that coursed through me. I’d never done anything like that, with my own two hands, without steel or sorcery. He grinned. He knew what I was feeling. He and Sindhu seemed unnaturally calm. Sindhu was listening, trying to judge if we’d made too much noise. It had seemed a ferocious uproar to me, there in the middle of it, but evidently we’d made less racket than I’d thought. Nobody came. Nobody asked questions.

  Sindhu muttered something in cant. Narayan thought a moment, glanced at me, grinned again. He nodded.

  Sindhu pawed through Jah’s clutter, looking for the ground. He cleared a small area, looked around some more.

  While I watched him, trying to figure out what he was doing, Narayan produced an odd tool he’d carried under the dark robe he’d donned for the adventure. The tool had a head that was half hammer, half pick, that weighed at least two pounds. Maybe more if it was the silver and gold it appeared to be. Its handle was ebony inlaid with ivory and a few rubies that caught the lamplight and gleamed like fresh blood. He began pounding the earth with the pick side, but quietly, unrhythmically.

  That wasn’t a tool that would be used that way ordinarily. I know a cult object when I see one, even if it’s unfamiliar.

  Narayan broke up the earth. Sindhu used a tin pan to scoop it onto a carpet he’d turned face down, careful not to scatter any. I had no idea what they intended. They were too intent on what they were doing to explain. A litany of sorts, in cant, passed between them. I heard something about auspices and the promise of the crows, more about the Daughter of Night and those people-or whatever they were.

  All I could do was keep watch.

  Time passed. I had a tense few minutes when the guard changed outside. But those men had little to say to one another. The new men didn’t check inside the tent.

  I heard a meaty whack and muted crunch, turned to see what they were doing now.

  They’d gotten a hole dug. It was barely three feet deep and not that far across. I couldn’t guess what they meant to do with it.

  They showed me.

  Narayan used the hammer face of his tool to break Jah’s bones. Just as Ram had been doing with a rock that morning in that draw. He whispered, “It’s been a long time but I still have the touch.”

  It’s amazing how small a bundle a big man makes once you pulverize his joints and fold him up.

  They cut open Jah’s belly and deposited him in the hole. Narayan’s final stroke buried the pick in the corpse’s skull. He cleaned the tool, then they filled the hole around the remains, tamping the earth as they went. Half an hour later you couldn’t tell where they’d dug.

  They put the carpets back, bundled up the excess dirt, looked at me for the first time since they’d begun.

  They were surprised to find me impassive. They wanted me to be outraged or disgusted. Or something. Anything that betrayed a feminine weakness.

  “I’ve seen men mutilated before.”

  Narayan nodded. Maybe he was pleased. Hard to tell. “We still have to get out.”

  The firelight outside betrayed the positions of the guards. They were where they were supposed to be. If my spell worked a second time we’d only need a little luck to get out unseen.

  Narayan and Sindhu scattered dirt as we walked toward our camp. “Good rumel work, Mistress,” Narayan said. And something more, in cant, to Sindhu, who agreed reluctantly.

  I asked, “Why did you bury him? No one will know what happened to him. I wanted him to become an object lesson.”

  “Leaving him lie would have told everyone who was responsible. Innuendo is more frightening than fact. Better you’re guilty in rumor.”

  Maybe. “Why did you break him up and cut him open?”

  “A smaller grave is harder to find. We cut him open so he wouldn’t bloat. If you don’t they sometimes bloat so much they come up out of the ground. Or they explode and loose off enough gas so the grave can be found by the smell. Especially by jackals, who dig them up and scatter them all over.”

  Practical. Logical. Obvious, once he explained it. I’d never had occasion to conceal a body before. I’d surrounded myself with very practical-and clearly very experienced-murderers.

  “We have to talk soon, Narayan.”

  He grinned that grin. He’d tell me some truth when he did.

  We slipped back into camp and parted company.

  I slept well. There were dreams but they weren’t filled with gloom and doom. In one a beautiful black woman came and held me and caressed me and called
me her daughter and told me I’d done well. I wakened feeling refreshed and as vigorous as if I’d had a full night’s sleep. It was a beautiful morning. The world seemed painted in especially vivid colors.

  My exercises with my talent went very well.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The disappearance, without trace, of the high priest Jahamaraj Jah, so trivial an opponent that I recall him only as a faded caricature of a man, stunned the thousands cluttering the region around the Ghoja ford. A whisper went around saying he had schemed against the Radisha and myself and that had sealed his fate. I wasn’t responsible for the rumor. Narayan denied having said anything to anybody. Two days after we buried Jah everybody was convinced I’d eliminated him. Nobody knew how.

  They were scared.

  The possibility had a big impact on Blade. I got the feeling he thought I’d gone through some rite of passage and he could now devote himself to my cause. I was pleased but had to wonder about a man so devoutly antagonistic toward priests.

  I had Narayan spread word that I still needed recruits, especially skilled horsemen. Another two hundred Shadar enlisted. Likewise nearly five hundred survivors of the Dejagore battle, though many just wanted regular meals or the comfort of a known place in the hierarchy. Taglian caste systems encourage dependence upon hierarchy. The chaos at the ford provided none of the benefits of social rigidity, only the handicaps.

  I told Narayan to think about expanding the camp. Soon we’d be overcrowded. I told Blade to look for likely leaders. We’d never have enough of those.

  The Taglians continued to amaze me. They remained pacifistic in their thinking, yet admired what they thought was the direct and casual way I disposed of enemies. The bigger the violence, the more they would applaud. As long as they were not threatened personally.

  The Radisha sent for me the third morning after Jah’s death. It was a brief interview, of no consequence except that I left convinced that Smoke was more than a fakir. He’d penetrated the veil of time well enough to assure himself that I’d had a hand in Jah’s disappearance. He was more frazzled than ever. For the first time the Radisha was rattled.

  She saw her control slipping.

  That night she and Smoke and a few followers slipped over the Main and headed north. She left Swan and Mather to pretend she was secluded in the fortress. That deceit was useless. Narayan told me what was happening before the Radisha hit the water.

  The day was noteworthy, too, because we enlisted our first nonveterans. There were just three of them. Two were friends of Narayan’s friends. But their arrival was a sign that word was spreading and there were Taglians willing to join the cause.

  Drills and training continued, as intense as I could make them, always designed to strip each man of all loyalties but those to his comrades and commander.

  Former slaves had become the most plentiful volunteers-and best students. They had nothing else. The Shadowmasters had destroyed their world. I thought it might be a good idea to send trusted men to roam the lands below the Main in search of more men without strong ties to Taglios.

  Narayan and Sindhu told me the Radisha was doing her sneak. I listened, then said, “Sit. The time has come.”

  They understood. They didn’t look as distressed as I’d expected. They had talked it over and had agreed to open up. “Who are you? What are you doing?”

  Narayan took a deep breath. He did not look me in the eye. “Mistress, we are Deceivers. Followers of the goddess Kina, who has many names and many guises but whose only truth is death.” He went into a long-winded explanation about the goddess and how she related to the gods of Taglios and its neighbors. It was an improbable mishmash like that surrounding the genesis and attributes of most dark gods. Narayan plainly had not thought much about the doctrine. His explanation didn’t tell me much except that he and Sindhu were devoted to their goddess.

  It took some pressure but they admitted they worshipped Kina, in part, by committing murder.

  Sindhu volunteered, “Narayan, jamadar of the Changlor band, is famous among us, Mistress.” Evidently he broke the silence because it wasn’t good form for a man to brag about his own accomplishments. “He has given the gift of paradise to more than a hundred souls.”

  “One hundred fifty-three,” Narayan said. That, apparently, was not considered braggery.

  “Paradise? You want to explain that?”

  “Those whose lives are taken for the goddess are freed from the Wheel of Life and ascend to paradise immediately.”

  The Wheel of Life was a Gunni concept. You kept going around and around, rebirth after rebirth, till the good you did sufficiently outweighed the evil. Then you were allowed escape. But not to paradise. Paradise was not a Gunni concept. The Gunni who escaped the Wheel became one with the generative force that had created the Lords of Light, the gods, who were its champions in the endless struggle with Shadow, which would be defeated only when the generative force had absorbed so many good souls it filled the universe. Shadow, of course, fought back by leading men to evil.

  Paradise is a Vehdna notion, something originally imagined by adolescent males and dirty old men. It is stocked with all the comforts a male from a hard world could lust after. In particular it is infested with eager virgins of both sexes so the elevated will have something with which to while away eternity.

  The Vehdna paradise gives no gate passes to women. The Vehdna say women have no souls. The gods created them to bear children, serve the lusts of men, and work themselves into early graves.

  The Vehdna doctrine is the most perniciously anti-female of Taglios’ cults but the most flexible as well. They have their female saints and heroines, and the Vehdna amongst my soldiers adapted to my command more easily than did the Shadar or Gunni. They just cast me in the role of their warrior saints Esmalla (three of the same name, from the same lineage, scattered over a century about eight hundred years back) and concentrated on doing their jobs.

  The religions in my end of the world had not made more sense. I did not criticize Taglian beliefs. But I did ask questions. Understanding is an important tool.

  Narayan insisted his beliefs were not derivative. He claimed Kina worship antedated all other religions. What I saw were echoes of its primal influence. “Mistress, it is said the Books record the histories of the Children of Kina back to the most ancient times, when men first received the gift of letters. It is said some are in tongues no man has spoken in ten thousand years.”

  “What books are these? Where are they?”

  “The Books of the Dead, they’re sometimes called.

  They are lost now, I think. There was a very bad time for the Children of Kina a long time ago. A great warlord, Rhadreynak, forged a vast empire. He insulted Kina. She visited vengeance upon his house, but by chance he was spared. He launched a crusade without mercy. The keepers of the Books fled into a hidden place. All who knew where they had gone were devoured by Rhadreynak’s wrath before the sainted Mahtnahan dan Jakel broke his neck with the silver rumel.”

  Sindhu said something in cant, softly, the way men of other paths would say “Praise God” or “Blessed be His Name.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Mahtnahan was the only silver rumel man ever to have lived. The only Deceiver ever to have sent more than a thousand souls to paradise.”

  Sindhu said, still softly, “Every man, when he plies his rumel for the first time and knows the ecstasy of Kina for the first time, aspires to the heights attained by Mahtnahan.”

  Narayan brightened, grinned his grin. “And to his luck. Mahtnahan not only freed us of our greatest persecutor, he survived the killing. He lived another forty years.”

  I led them on through legends and oral histories, interested in the way Croaker would have been interested, intrigued by the dark history. Over and over, Narayan insisted there were true written records somewhere and that it was the great dream of every jamadar in every generation to recover them. “This is a feeble world today, Mistress. The great
est powers afoot are these Shadowmasters and they don’t really know what they’re doing. The Books... Ah, the secrets said to lie within their pages. The lost arts.”

  We talked about those Books again. I did not swallow their story whole. I’d heard similar legends about books filled with earth-shaking secrets before.

  But Narayan did startle me with a description of the place where they had been hidden.

  It could have been the caverns I visited in my dreams. As they might have been recalled after a thousand years of oral history.

  The history of Kina’s cult might deserve some study someday. After I secured myself in today’s world.

  I had not spent all my time just waiting for Narayan to decide the time was ripe to let me in on a few secrets. Over the weeks I had done my listening among the men, had dropped a question here and there, to hundreds of individuals, and had put together a fair picture of the Kina cult as it was seen from outside.

  Every living Taglian had heard Kina’s name and believed she existed. Every Taglian had heard of the Stranglers. They thought of them more as bandits and gangsters than as religious fanatics. And not one in a hundred believed the Stranglers existed today. They were something from the past, eradicated during the last century.

  I mentioned that to Narayan. He smiled.

  “That is our greatest tool, Mistress. No one believes we exist. You have seen how Sindhu and I make little effort to hide from the men. We go among them and say we are the feared and famous Stranglers and they had better not displease us. And they don’t believe us. But they fear us even so, because they know stories and think we might try imitating the Deceivers of old.”

  “There are some who believe.” I suspected those included Smoke, the Radisha, and some others in high places.

  “Always. Just enough.”

  He was a sinister little man. And probably really a vegetable peddler honored in his community as a good Gunni, good father, good grandfather. But during the dry season, when large portions of the Taglian population were on the move for reasons of trade, he would be, too. With his band, pretending to be travellers like other travellers, murdering those others when the opportunity arose. He was good at that, obviously. That was why Sindhu thought so highly of him.