Gods of Nabban by K. V. Johansen

scraping a little of the scabby dark skin away with a thumbnail to show fibrous yellow flesh. “This one I know. We call it tranceroot. Poison yourself with that, all too easily.”
    â€œWizards use it?” Maybe that was what had killed the man. Fallen dead and into his own fire.
    â€œ I don’t,” Ahjvar said pointedly, and returned it to its place. “It comes from the desert, though. One of the shaman’s nine holy herbs, I think. The apothecaries call it dreamer’s yellowroot in Nabbani.”
    He hadn’t heard of it by either name. It probably meant, though, that this was a holy man of the tribes whose territories lay hereabouts. But not a priest with frequent visitors.
    â€œWe should go.” Ahjvar had a tight, weary look about the eyes again. It wasn’t the death; it was the burning. Ghu led the way back outside, leaving even the brick of tea. They had plenty of that, at least. Now, if there had been coffee . . . hah, the Leopard of Gold Harbour wouldn’t be above looting coffee, no.
    â€œYes,” he said, but when Ahjvar headed for the gap in the thorns he turned aside to crouch by the corpse, taking up a handful of ashy dust.
    â€œA wandering god?” The ghost’s voice—thought, perhaps, more than voice—was soft, bemused. “So far from your land. A river. Are you? A man and a river? Are you come here seeking answers?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThey do come.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe folk.”
    Ahjvar stopped and turned back to him, knelt down, a careful hand on his shoulder. “Ghu . . .”
    â€œDo you see him?” he asked.
    â€œThe ghost? Old man. Yes. A little. Thin old man.”
    â€œWandering god. And a web of bone and fire. Why do you hold this man here, when he should be gone to his road?” Not accusing, just mildly curious.
    â€œDon’t.” Ahjvar backed away. “Ghu, let him go. Come away.”
    â€œA wandering god. You should hurry home. They’ll take your land from you.”
    â€œWho will?”
    â€œA fallen star.” The thought drifted, attention sharpened. “A lie. A hungry fire. The road . . . it calls, and I cannot answer. Let me go?”
    â€œWould you have us bury you? Do you have kin near, someone we should take word of your death?”
    â€œOh, let the birds feed. They are the desert. I am the desert. Let me go back to the desert, bone to dust. It was always kinder than kin. They would have taken me back to snuffle and dribble in their tents, scolded and babied in the smoke and the squabbling. Better it came this way, quiet and quick and kind. I only fell, a little pain in the heart and I fell, and . . . and then I was free. Why do they make death so difficult? They will find the bones, when they come again, and bones are all we are, bones and dust and the fire of the stars . . . You ride to war, young wandering god. Is it worth it? Why do the gods demand the blood of their folk to feed their land?”
    â€œWhy say so? It’s the folk who make war, not the gods.”
    â€œNot you. Not your land. Not the one who hunts you.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œA lie. False god, false truth, false hope for a dying land. A waking devil. Is she? Not she, hunting, but you are the quarry none the less. A false true god, yes, hunting. Take care, young river, take care lest you fall and fail and fade and leave an emptiness and an empty folk that will welcome what crouches quiet, waiting, in the west and reaching fingers even into . . .”
    â€œ Ghu! ” Sharp fear in Ahjvar’s voice.
    The presence of the ghost drew in on itself, shivered small and weak and afraid. “You should not linger on the way, child of river, child of mountain.”
    Ghu held up a hand to Ahjvar, who stooped to take up a handful of sand and would have cast the ghost away with it.
    â€œDo you say I do?”