The Last Road Read online

  The Last Road

  ALSO BY K. V. JOHANSEN

  Blackdog

  The Leopard

  The Lady

  Gods of Nabban

  The Last Road

  K.V. JOHANSEN

  Being the final novel of the caravan road

  Published 2019 by Pyr®

  The Last Road. Copyright © 2019 by K.V. Johansen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover photo: Shutterstock

  Cover design by Jennifer Do

  Cover © Start Science Fiction

  Map illustrations © K.V. Johansen

  Inquiries should be addressed to

  Start Science Fiction

  101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, Suite 3705

  Jersey City, New Jersey 07302

  PHONE: 212-431-5455

  WWW.PYRSF.COM

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  ISBN 978-1-63388-554-7 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-63388-555-4 (ebook)

  Printed in the United States of America

  This one is for Ivan, even if he does feel that humans spend far too much time in front of computers.

  (And many thanks are owed to Tom Lloyd, who finally pinned down the elusive series title for me.)

  THE STORY SO FAR…

  Long before these stories began, there was war in the heavens between the Old Great Gods and the powers known to human legend as the devils, who were defeated and sealed in the cold hells. Seven escaped and, being creatures of pure soul like the Old Great Gods, were unable to exist in the physical world for long. These seven entered in a bargain with seven human wizards to share souls and bodies; they became immortal, two-souled beings, incarnate in the world, and human songs and histories tell of ambition, betrayal, wars, conquest, and their eventual defeat with the aid of the Old Great Gods, who sealed them into earthly graves, but did not destroy them, for to destroy a soul is the greatest of sins. The Old Great Gods had no joy in their victory, for by a last desperate act of the seven devils the road to the distant heavens was barred against them, and can now only be travelled by the Gods with such pain and suffering that they rarely, if ever, reach to touch the world.

  “The Storyteller”

  But in time, the devil Heuslar Ogada escapes, and frees Ulfhild Vartu, killing the bear-demon who guards her grave. Ulfhild allies with Mikki, the son of Moraig the bear-demon and a human man, and makes a bargain with the Old Great Gods to hunt down her escaped fellows. To this end she is given the sword Lakkariss, forged by the Old Great Gods from a shard of the cold hells. Moth and Mikki track Heuslar to a Northron queen’s hall and kill him there. Things burn down.

  Blackdog

  During the warlord Tamghat’s conquest of Lissavakail, the caravan-guard Holla-Sayan is possessed by the Blackdog, the enslaved guardian spirit of the lake-goddess Attalissa. Incarnate as a human child, Attalissa is helpless until she comes into her powers with maturity. Although the gods and goddesses of the earth are bound to their own hills and waters, Holla-Sayan takes the girl, whom he names Pakdhala, back to his caravan and passes her off as his own daughter. He manages to find a way to keep the goddess alive even far from her own land. Tamghat is actually the devil Tamghiz Ghatai, Ulfhild’s former husband. Moth and Mikki are roused from their quiet homesteading life in the northern forest by the summons of the Old Great Gods.

  When Pakdhala reaches her teen years, Tamghat sends his daughter Ivah in search of her. Captured and taken to Lissavakail for a ritual which Tamghat presents as a marriage, Pakdhala/Attalissa escapes and joins a rebellion of her priestesses. She has always insisted that Tamghat means to devour her. The Blackdog, in a mindless fury, goes to try to save the goddess. Moth and Mikki, and Holla-Sayan’s caravan gang, also set out in pursuit.

  Tamghiz Ghatai is slain by Moth, but not before Holla-Sayan, facing death and with the Blackdog having turned on him, realizes how the spirit has been bound and releases it at the cost of his human life, then entering into a willing bond with it akin to that between the devil and wizard souls of the seven devils.

  Moth reveals to Holla-Sayan that she believes the Blackdog to be the damaged remnant of a devil’s soul, survivor of a much more ancient war of devils than her own. She also gives Ivah, betrayed by her father, a focus for finding her own life beyond his shadow.

  The traitor chief priestess of Attalissa’s temple, long ago seduced by Tamghat, had been drawn to the secret worship of a landless, bodiless god, a faith centred somewhere in the west, of which only the faintest rumours are reaching the lands of the caravan road…

  The Leopard: Marakand Volume One, and The Lady: Marakand Volume Two

  A year after Attalissa’s restoration in Lissavakail, Ivah is working as a scribe in Marakand. Gaguush’s caravan has come again to the Suburb of the caravanserais beyond the city walls. The assassin Ahjvar, cursed by his goddess Catairanach to remain undying in the world to harbour the parasite soul of her daughter Hyllau, is sent to Marakand to kill the Voice of the Lady of Marakand. Ahjvar kills the Voice but is captured by the Lady’s Red Masks, thought to be a militant order of priests but in truth the product of necromancy, wizards she has executed and stripped of memory to control as semi-autonomous puppets. She kills Ahjvar and makes him captain of her Red Masks for the conquest of the rest of the lands Over-Malagru—but Ahjvar has always claimed to his companion Ghu that he burned to death ninety years before, murdered by Hyllau.

  The Lady chooses a new Voice but wants more than a prophet; the acolyte Zora is given a choice, to accept a bond with the Lady willingly, or to become her puppet. Zora chooses to bond with the supposed goddess, who is in fact the devil Tu’usha. Tu’usha’s former human host/partner, the wizard Sien-Mor, was murdered in her prison-grave by the devil Sien-Shava Jochiz, Sien-Mor’s brother, and her body utterly destroyed. Tu’usha’s soul fled and found shelter with the unwitting goddess in Marakand, whom she then possessed and devoured, sealing the other two deities of the city in tombs. Zora’s mind fractures under the burden of Tu’usha’s soul; the devil herself suffers from Sien-Mor’s mental instability, obsessed with the need to make the city a fortress and an empire to stand against a great danger she foresees coming from the west.

  A revolution of the secret loyalists of the old gods is unleashed, in which Ivah plays a major role as wizard, warrior, and scholar. Moth and Mikki have come to Marakand, hunting the devil there. Moth is reluctant to kill Tu’usha; Sien-Mor was once a friend. Her depressed passivity leaves her vulnerable and she is trapped by the Lady in both the past and an underground cavern that is the source of the deep well. Ahjvar, dead and bound by necromancy, stripped of memory and will, is sent east into the Praitannec kingdoms to lead the forces of Marakand against a coalition of the Praitannec tribes. Ghu sets out east as well, to either free Ahjvar from the Lady’s enslavement, or release his captive soul into death. The devil Yeh-Lin Dotemon, currently tutor to the young bard Deyandara, a descendent of Ahjvar’s who is deeply enmeshed in the politics of the Praitannec tribes and the struggle of the Duina Catairna against Marakand, intends to sever Tu’usha’s link with her Red Masks, destroying them to free their souls and aid the Praitannec kings and queens in their war. To prevent this and save Ahjvar, Ghu reveals himself as something other than mortal human in order to temporarily bind Yeh-Lin and save Ahjvar.

  Ghu seizes Ahjvar from the midst of battle and tears him from Tu’usha’s control. He and Ahjvar destroy the spell binding the Red Masks and the Lady thus loses
her most fearsome weapon. Yeh-Lin Dotemon, despite viewing Ahjvar’s undying state as an abomination, does not kill him, but overcoming the goddess Catairanach, buries her in a deep and undreaming sleep, leaving the mercy of Ahjvar’s final death for Ghu to offer.

  In Marakand, the Lady’s devastating attacks on her own city destroy the goddess Ilbialla. While Holla-Sayan fights the Lady, Mikki descends to the place of Moth’s captivity with Lakkariss and wakes her out of her dreaming. She ascends and fights Zora Tu’usha, who is killed amid the ruins of her temple, leaving the newly re-awakened hill-god Gurhan as the only surviving god of the near-ruined city.

  Moth believes Mikki is a hostage to the Old Great Gods for her service as their executioner. To deny the Gods that hold over her, she leaves him, flying away as a falcon. Mikki is furious, devastated, and determined to search for her, however long it might take.

  Holla-Sayan and Gaguush are expecting a child, and Gaguush, before the civil war erupted, had bought a share in a caravanserai in the Suburb. Holla is resolved to settle into the quiet life of a family man and caravan-master. Ivah joins a caravan to travel to Nabban.

  Ghu, having revealed himself as a being growing into strange powers, tells Ahjvar that he is not yet a god, but is becoming one, and having acted to save Ahjvar from the Lady, he can no longer run from this doom, but must return to Nabban. Ghu promises Ahjvar that he won’t let him be possessed to kill for Hyllau again; rather than ending Ahj’s unnatural life he unravels Hyllau’s soul from his and when she tries again to batten on Ahjvar rather than seeking her own road to the Gods, he destroys her. He also takes over the curse worked by Catairanach that holds Ahjvar undying in the world, making himself the power keeping Ahjvar alive. Ghu promises Ahjvar he will release him into death whenever he asks it, but asks, himself, if Ahj will try to live a little longer, to keep him company on the road he must now follow. To this Ahjvar, who yearns not for death and the road to the Old Great Gods but oblivion, agrees.

  Gods of Nabban

  Ahjvar suffers greatly from nightmares, a torment he cannot escape waking or sleeping. Ghu nurses him devotedly but fears he will never be whole and well again. They are joined by Yeh-Lin Dotemon, who, before crossing the Nabbani border, swears an oath binding herself to Ghu as her god.

  Nabban is torn by civil war. The emperor’s younger brother Prince Dan has raised his banner in rebellion. When the emperor is struck by lightning from a clear sky, Princess Buri-Nai seizes the throne and declares herself the chosen daughter of the Old Great Gods. Buri-Nai’s followers begin executing priests of Mother and Father Nabban; slaves and peasants rise in revolt, promised reform and freedom by Prince Dan. The folk of the southern province of Dar-Lathi, only a generation before the free lands of Darro and Lathi, rise up against their conquerors. Ghu has no intention of accepting the Nabban in which he grew up a slave; he uses the civil war as means to seize political power for those who share his desire for reform. Many in the land, including his former master, the high lord of Choa, recognize him as something holy; others want to believe in any symbol of hope and change; still others see the proclamation of a “holy one” as a ruse of the rebels. Mother Nabban dies and Ghu takes on her role as deity of the waters. The rebellions become a revolution. Ivah recognizes in Ghu the god she has been seeking all her life and becomes his captain of archers.

  Ghu and Ahjvar recognize that Buri-Nai is not acting on her own in her establishment of a new religion and suspect a devil hides behind her. During the battle in which imperial forces try to prevent Ghu’s army crossing the Wild Sister River, Ivah identifies the devil as Sien-Shava Jochiz and rejects his attempt to seduce her to his service as Buri-Nai’s replacement, freeing herself from the spells he has been slowly weaving into her. Ghu and his forces fight and win a great battle, but Buri-Nai, hidden by the power of Sien-Shava Jochiz, has marched near with a far larger army. Many of her followers are tattooed with a symbol that binds the person’s soul, which, on their death, does not seek the road to the Old Great Gods but is drawn away somewhere else. What use Jochiz has for these souls even Yeh-Lin cannot determine. Ghu leaves Yeh-Lin in charge, entrusting her with, he says, Nabban, and goes alone with Ahjvar to confront Buri-Nai. Perhaps he hopes to convince her commanders that she is controlled by a devil; perhaps he plans to assassinate her—Yeh-Lin decides that his true intent is likely to draw the devil out into the open and that he didn’t mean for her to lead a retreat back over the river after all. She and Ivah plan an assault on the empress’s camp, hoping that surprise and fire will give them an advantage to withstand the imperial numbers. Brought before the empress, Ghu is unable to turn Buri-Nai from her obsessed devotion to what she believes is a messenger of the Old Great Gods; Ahjvar tells her court that the devil she worships feeds on the souls of those who are tattooed for her new faith. Buri-Nai orders her giants to kill them; they are struck down by the giants’ spears, but Ahjvar’s thrown knife kills the empress.

  In the battle that follows between Ghu’s army and that of the empress, who though obviously suffering a mortal wound continues to command like a living woman, her body a puppet to Jochiz, Ivah steals the wagon containing the apparent corpse of Ghu and the dying Ahjvar, who insists that Ghu is not dead and that he himself is not dying. Ghu’s body is ice-cold, which is not natural, even for a corpse, and Ahjvar finds a sliver of crystal lodged under his tongue, the focus of a web of foul wizardry or devilry that appears intended to bind and devour his soul. He gives the splinter to Ivah before falling into a dreaming trance in which he finds Ghu at the ruined broch in which they lived before they set out for Marakand; he is able to call Ghu back to himself. Father Nabban has died defending Ghu long enough for Ahjvar to find him; this, Ghu says, was his third death, and the worst. When he wakes it is as the god of Nabban. He and Ahjvar rally their army, which had attacked under the leadership of Yeh-Lin but is being cut to pieces by the imperial forces. Many, though, of the empress’s soldiers, seeing Ghu riding against them, recognize him as their true god. He calls his dogs Jui and Jiot to him, and they come as river-dragons running in the clouds, terrifying the enemy.

  Jochiz in the body of the empress fights Ahjvar, but Ghu is holding Ahjvar closely, soul within soul, through their bond and Ahjvar recognizes the means by which Jochiz is putting himself into Buri-Nai and into the land of Nabban. He seizes the shard of rose-quartz crystal she wears—a piece of Jochiz’s soul, perhaps, and certainly the repository of the souls the devil has stolen. Ahjvar finds the fire within him, in which he died, and the fire of light and warmth that is how Ghu sees him, and with it destroys the stone, severing the devil’s path into Nabban, but he cannot contain the fire which has always waited to consume him again. Ghu leaps into the fire to seize him and they vanish from the battlefield. Yeh-Lin tells the surviving enemy commanders that Ivah, the god’s captain of archers, a princess of the Great Grass and daughter of the Nabbani princess An-Chaq, will take their surrender on the god’s behalf.

  Later, Ahjvar wakes in the river, with Ghu, and experiences a dark, lost time, but again begins to find his way back, assured that Ghu will always hold him safe. Ghu again promises to release him whenever he asks; he again says he will try to stay longer with Ghu on his road. Yeh-Lin speculates that Ahjvar may be becoming an avatar of Nabban (the god).

  Ghu wants to reform many Nabbani institutions from its government to land-holding, but Ahjvar tells him he can do no more than point the folk in the direction he would like them to go, unless he means to be emperor as well as god. Ivah becomes empress, founding the new house of Suliasra, and returning the role to its earlier sacerdotal function, instituting a senate and Ghu’s plans for land reform under the temples and shrines, rather than ruling as an absolute monarch. Many other reforms come to pass, as well as unsuccessful rebellions and uprisings of various factions. Dar-Lathi is given its independence; the Little Sister River has also been waking into life in a new goddess in the Dar-Lathan queen and spy who calls herself Rat, who fought at Ghu’s side in the final battl
e and whose lover Kaeo, who had been Prince Dan’s agent and a prophet of the heir of the gods, lost his life defending Ghu.

  Many years later, Moth arrives at the tomb of the Empress Suliasra Ivah. Ghu and Ahjvar meet her. She has been wandering in far lands. Ghu advises her to seek the one who helps her remember who she is, and Ahjvar gives her the clay disc in which the splinter of the soul of Sien-Shava Jochiz is sealed.

  The whereabouts of two devils, Sien-Shava Jochiz, the much-feared brother of Sien-Mor Tu’usha, and Anganurth Jasberek, formerly an ally of Ulfhild Vartu, are thus far unknown…

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Ahjvar—Consort and Rihswera or champion of the god of Nabban. Long ago and very briefly, a king of the Duina Catairna, a Praittanec tribe now forgotten and absorbed into the Taren Confederacy. Technically dead, by some lights; held undying in the world by his lover Ghu.

  Ailan—Young man of the Taren city of Star River Crossing; viewed by Yeh-Lin as Ahjvar’s acolyte; viewed by Ahjvar as yet another stray who has bafflingly latched onto him.

  The All-Holy—A supposed holy man, a hermit who became the embodiment of the Nameless God of the west, a supposed emissary sent from the Old Great Gods. Actually the devil Sien-Shava Jochiz. See also the nameless god.

  Ambert, Primate—Priest of the seventh circle, spiritual leader and one of the All-Holy’s most valued lieutenants.

  Anganurth Wanderer—A wizard from an unknown land, who bonded with the devil Jasberek.

  Arpath—Teenage Westgrasslander wizard of the Sayanbarkash.

  Attalissa—Goddess of the Lissavakail, a lake and town high in the Pillars of the Sky; once, incarnate as a human child, she was raised by Holla-Sayan as his daughter.