Blackdog by K. V. Johansen Page A

mind, drowned him, turned everything cool and distant. He slid from the stallion and collapsed on the spring-damp earth.
    Holla could hear voices, soft, urgent, whispering in his head.
    You can't die! The girl crouched by the dog, which was larger than any sheepdog he had seen, and more wolflike, though the head she wrapped in her arms was broader. Its flanks and muzzle were crossed with newly healed scars, but the stump of what looked like a spear-shaft was lodged under a foreleg, and blood soaked its black fur, puddled where it stood. Unnaturally yellow-green eyes, it had, too, unsettling even in this distant, floating dream. You can't let Otokas die.
    The dog licked the girl's tear-streaked face.
    I can't live with this. It's beyond my—the Blackdog's—healing. He'll look after you, this one. I know. The Blackdog always knows. So do you. Trust yourself.
    “Dog, dog!” she wailed, her weeping silent no longer. And, “Otokas, no!”
    It was not her voice, the girl's voice, in Holla's head, but one older and richer, a woman's voice. And the other…
    It's a hard thing to ask of a lowland stranger, unprepared. Will you look after her? Guard her and love her and keep her safe, and bring her home to the lake when the time is right?
    The dog's eyes were burning into his own, a yellow-green fire he distantly hoped was some nightmare dreaming.
    Holla-Sayan found he could move, the fog in his mind clearing, and he rolled upright, squatted on his heels. Hesitantly, he put a hand on the dog's head.
    “I know this story,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I've heard…there is a demon dog guards the incarnate goddess here, and it possesses men.”
    The dog…laughed, maybe, hacking, and coughed blood on his boot.
    Spirit. Not demon, Grasslander. There's a difference. When did a demon ever deign to serve any but the Old Great Gods themselves? My name's Otokas. The Blackdog.
    “She's the goddess of the lake? She's Attalissa?”
    The girl, all childish wounded dignity, scowled at him. “I am.”
    Please. The Blackdog spirit needs a human host.
    Holla-Sayan lurched to his feet, a hand on the stallion's neck to support himself as the world heaved and tipped under him. “What, me? No! I'm not from Lissavakail. I'm not one of Attalissa's folk! I know my own god. I don't belong here.”
    She can't stay here. Tamghat—the warlord who leads the raiders—is no ordinary man. You didn't see him, I know. I did. I don't know what he is. Wizard, at least, and more. Nothing I could fight and survive.
    “Then what do you expect me to do about him?”
    Hide her. Protect her till she comes into her full strength, and can face Tamghat herself.
    Run away. Ride away and leave the child to die at the hands of the raiders, or be sold into the Nabbani abomination of slavery, which tore a soul from its god and its place in the world?
    No. He means to destroy her. Make her strength his own. Maybe…make himself a god in her place. I don't know. Something worse than mere death.
    Something from a tale, but the dog sounded convinced of it.
    “Stay out of my thoughts! I don't care. She's a goddess, she can fight her own battles.”
    Damn priest-ridden mountain folk. In the Four Deserts and the Western Grass, they did not clamour after their gods and goddesses so. The priests sapped the will of the deities, Holla had always thought, and made them weak and helpless as any city lord, too propped up by servants to ever stand on their own. Look at the Lady of Marakand, who had not been seen by her folk in a generation and left her Voice to rule the city unchecked.
    It was not the goddess who would die, but the black-eyed child. She stared at him, a round, mountain-folk face, wet and tousled dark hair cropped at the level of her jaw, mountain fashion, hoops of gold in her ears. Black dress clinging to her, bare feet scratched. She did not look like any divine power.
    “I'll take her with me, get her away from here,” Holla-Sayan said. “That's all. You can't