TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Deborah A. Wolf and Available from Titan Books
Title Page
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Copyright
Dedication
Map of The Dragon’s Legacy
Dramatis Personae
THE SEARED LANDS
Illindra’s Web
Bitter Sweet
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty - One
Twenty - Two
Twenty - Three
Twenty - Four
Twenty - Five
Twenty - Six
Twenty - Seven
Twenty - Eight
Twenty - Nine
Thirty
Thirty - One
Thirty - Two
Thirty - Three
Thirty - Four
Thirty - Five
Thirty - Six
Thirty - Seven
Thirty - Eight
Thirty - Nine
Forty
Forty - One
Forty - Two
Forty - Three
Forty - Four
Forty - Five
Forty - Six
Forty - Seven
Forty - Eight
Forty - Nine
Fifty
Fifty - One
Fifty - Two
Fifty - Three
Fifty - Four
Fifty - Five
Fifty - Six
Fifty - Seven
Fifty - Eight
Jehannim
APPENDICES
The Lands of the People
The People
Terms, Phrases, and Places of Interest
ALSO BY DEBORAH A. WOLF AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
The Dragon’s Legacy Saga
The Dragon’s Legacy
The Forbidden City
The Seared Lands
Daughter of the Midnight Sun
Split Feather
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THE SEARED LANDS
Paperback edition ISBN: 9781785651144
Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785651151
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: April 2020
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Deborah A. Wolf. All Rights Reserved.
Map illustration by Julia Lloyd.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This book is dedicated to
MY MOM
—who read me stories,
MY DAD
—who took me hunting.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Ani (Istaza Ani): Youthmistress of the Zeerani prides. Though she has no children of her own, she loves her young charges fiercely.
Daru: A young Zeerani orphan, apprenticed to Hafsa Azeina. Born a weakling, Daru is keenly aware of the thin line that separates life from death.
Hafsa Azeina: Former queen consort of Atualon, mother of Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu, and foremost dreamshifter of the Zeeranim.
Hannei: Expatriate Ja’Akari, Hannei Two-Blades is known in Min Yaarif as the esteemed pit fighting slave Kishah.
Ismai: A Zeerani youth who once wished to break tradition and become Ja’Akari, now held in unofficial thrall to the Mah’zula leader Ishtaset. Ismai is the last surviving son of Nurati, First Mother among the Zeeranim, of the line of Zula Din.
Jian: A Daechen prince and Sen-Baradam of Sindan.
Kal ne Mur: Lich King of Eid Kalmut, and a former Dragon King of Atualon.
Leviathus: Son of Ka Atu, the Dragon King, brother to Sulema Ja’Akari, Leviathus was born surdus, deaf to the magic of Atualon and thus unable to inherit his father’s throne.
Maika: Kentakuyan a’o Maika i Kaka’ahuana li’i, last of the Kentakuyan, traditional rulers of Quarabala, Yaela’s niece, and newly confirmed queen in Saodan.
Sulema Ja’Akari: Ja’Akari warrior, daughter of Zeerani dream-shifter Hafsa Azeina and Ka Atu, the Dragon King of Atualon. Considered by some to be the rightful Dragon Queen of Atualon, by others nothing more than the daughter of a usurper.
ILLINDRA’S WEB
Born of salt and laughter and love of the long, slow night, the wind danced down the streets of yesterday. It sang as it danced, painting pale stone with dried-blood dust. It was a small magic and sly, power enough to raise a little army of shadows best left dead and gone but not to keep them.
Shadows thus summoned, feckless and fell, found themselves caught in the sticky web of time and death and infinite thought. They faded away as they had come, weeping lullabies of apathy and rage.
Fainter than memory, pale as filtered sunlight from the world high above, the mistral capered and laughed between the shining strands of an Araid’s lair, hung with traps and songs and dreams of fresh blood. The spider slept, as the shadows slept, dreaming of the day it would rise and feast upon the bodies of men.
Soon, soon.
Not today.
Aasah the Illindrist’s apprentice lifted his face to feel the breeze, breathed deep its song of blood dust and salt dust and the sorrow of lost mates, and smiled in gratitude as it caressed his skin, drying the fear-sour sweat.
If I die today, I die, he thought, but the wind will live on.
It was a comfort.
The song in the wind beguiled his heart, fanning the embers of youth. The dust beneath his bare feet was cool, here in the belly of the world. The bone walls and ventricular halls of the long dead sea-thing into which his ancestors had carved this city were as cold and still as any forgotten thing, Yet the stirring air spoke to him of life, and hope, and a’a pua’a oneho—the heart of a dragon at the heart of the world.
He turned his face toward the dreamed-of surface, closed his eyes and smiled, imagining what must it be like to gaze upon a world of sunlight and rain, breath and bone and blood, in days before things were cursed? Thus dreaming, so blind, he let his feet choose his way in blessed darkness.
The breeze lifted its voice in prayer, and his heart beat tha-rum tha-rumble, and his bare feet shushhh-shushhhed along the pounded sand, and joy lifted him up. It cajoled his limbs to dance, raised the breath from his lungs an
d up, up through his chest, his throat, his singer’s mask, till he was a note in the song, a twirl in the dance of life. Thus did Aasah the Illindrist’s apprentice, on this day of his naming—this day of his death— dance blind down a road best left forgotten, down and out of the world of man, down and out of now and here.
Into the Web of Illindra.
He sang and danced, for he was a two-soul man. Male and female, sa and ka. Gifted and cursed, he sang and danced, laughing as the tears coursed down his dusted cheeks. Clothed in courage and terror he leapt, chanting an exaltation of life even as he left life behind. Aasah stepped once, twice, three times into the footprints of his own ancestor who had fled in terror from the very thing he sought—
Seeks, would seek, had sought, he thought, as his master had taught him. For every thing, every action exists in all times and all places at once.
Infinite and bold as a dragon, infinitesimal as dust he flew—
flies, would fly, had flown
—and in the end, as both dragon and dust are wont, he was—
is, would be, had been
—caught.
Long he hung in the spider’s web, a sacrifice come to the knife. He had been raised for this, trained and anointed and blessed for this. Every mouthful of food he had consumed, every breath sighed, every kiss denied, had been a step in the dance that had brought him here, a note in the long song of his people’s atonement. The sins of his ancestors had led him here, and he would accept with a grateful heart whatever may be.
Or so he thought, until the web began to tremble.
A great weight descended from above, a heaviness in time and space, mind and heart. The web that stung and held him to this time and place shivered, sending ripples of chillflesh along his bare and hairless skin. Aasah had dreamed of this since the night he first slept alone, had thought himself prepared.
I know, he thought—
knows, will know, had known
—nothing.
It took all the strength he had, heart, body and mind, to remain still and willing as the thing crept nearer. The web swayed and then shook till his bones rattled and his head whipped back and forth. Blood poured red and molten through the stone caverns of his heart, heat enough to burn himself free, should he so choose. The wind swept his arms, his legs, pulling at his hands and feet, promising to show him the way to escape, should he so choose. He could abandon this mad and futile quest, give his people over as sacrifice in his place, should he so choose.
The world went still and the thing stood over him, legs as long as three men laid head to foot stretching up to the stars. Clusters of eyes like wicked stars glittering with their own pale light all turned toward his pliant form, fangs like polished dragonglass curving out and down as it prepared to strike. He had seen this—in every dream he had seen this, and in every dream he had been faced with the choice. Live, or die?
Life, or death? sang a voice in his mind, his heart, his bones. Life, or death? sang his ancestors. Life, or death? sang the shadows. Choose, choose, choose.
He chose—
chooses, would choose, had chosen
—death.
—and life.
Aasah stared straight into the eyes of death and life and all things in between. He hung suspended from one ankle in the Araid’s web, a model of the Illindriverse so vast his mind could not conceive its scope, so small his soul could not find it. At each joining of this web hung a glistening, shimmering drop of atulfah—pure magic, dragon’s song manifest. In the act of falling into this web, Aasah saw, he had torn the fabric of time and space, had rent an ugly wound in the flesh of the everything.
Ah, he thought.
Thus seeing, thus knowing at the last, Aasah made his choice.
He flung his arms wide, so that they stuck fast to the strands. The web burned as it touched his skin, branded him traitor and sacrifice, betrayer and hope. Aasah flung his head back to scream, but a song came out instead as the Araid waved its vast forelegs over his human flesh. Once it passed over him, sending a cold chill through his blood. Twice again it passed over, and his soul quailed. Thrice, and Aasah let out his final breath in a long, slow hymn, begging and granting forgiveness for the pain he had caused—
causes, would cause, had caused
The spider’s myriad eyes flashed, its forelegs stilled, and drops of venom formed on the needle tips of its curved fangs. Though he had come as a willing sacrifice, though every step down the path of his life had led him to this meeting of webs, Aasah trembled beneath the enormity of his own death, and dread burned through him in a thrill akin to lust. Fear smote the self his training had not fully eradicated and brought with it the final revelation any man needs in order to survive his own death, and become wise.
Oh, he thought—
thinks, would think, had thought
Oh.
A drop of venom fell, as a star might fall through the midsummer sky, and as it fell it burned. Aasah opened his eyes wide, so as not to miss a moment of what was to come. Opened his arms wide, and his heart.
“Yes,” he whispered to the spider, “for my people. Yes.”
Swifter than grief the Araid struck, fangs sinking into his flesh. Aasah opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. There was no air, there was no time, there was—
is, would be, had been
Nothing.
BITTER SWEET
“Sssssst,” Etana held out a hand, blue and gold and glittering against the soft night sky. The small caravan behind her halted. Someone at the back of the line coughed—a youth, no doubt, unaccustomed to choking on the red salt dust of Quarabala’s hard-baked surface. “Sssst!” she hissed again, viperish and sharp. She had neither the time nor the patience for soft-footed fools new to the run.
Long ago the fires of Akari had destroyed the grand cities of Quarabala, so that the people had been forced to shelter far underground in the rifts and rents in the earth made by Sajani’s attempts to wake. When the days of the Sundering had passed, the Quarabalese had found themselves isolated from the rest of the world by a road made practically impassable by the deadly heat. As they recovered, the people had made a life for themselves far from Akari’s wrath. They fashioned cities from the bones of the world, far less grand than those they had lost, but not without grace and beauty, and mined the mineral-rich red salt which sustained all life and which could be found nowhere else in the world. Eventually they learned to travel overland in small groups, shielded from the sun by shadowmancer magic, though such travel was risky at best and only undertaken by small groups of individuals driven by need or greed.
As the population of Quarabala grew, their fertility rates buoyed by easy access to red salt and at a safe distance from the wars that ravaged the far green lands, settlements pushed farther and farther from the queen’s city of Saodan. These settlements served a noble purpose, as well; they served as a defense against the Araids, great spiders who had dwelt in caverns below the world’s surface and to whom the priests of Eth paid foul homage.
But Araids were not the only danger, here at the heart of the world.
Amalua’s fingers drummed against her arm in a quick tattoo, runner’s code for those times when silence meant life.
Hear something? the younger woman asked.
Etana reached out and made her reply against her companion’s taut flesh.
No. Feel something. Close. Close.
Run? Amalua asked, with two fingers pressed hard.
Proximity to any settlement meant predators, and the recent earthquakes which had brought them to check on the outer bastions would have roused some of the nastier ones from their deep homes. Etana had no desire to become a runner who had almost made it to her journey’s end.
No, she answered. Wait. Listen.
The travelers stood for a long while, quiet as deep shadows. Etana and her swift companion were beacons against the endless dark, painted as they were with whirls and sworls of glow paste in shades of green and blue. The palms of th
eir hands and soles of their feet had been smeared with a thick paste of honey and gold dust—and other, less pleasant, things.
Such brilliance marked them out to one another as they made their way from city to settlement and back again. It warned lesser predators that they were dangerous—or at least unpleasant to taste—and gave greater predators easier targets than the salt caravans or settlers whose lives they were sworn to protect. They were the Iponui, swift-footed, stout-hearted warriors of the Quarabala, marked out as the lights that would one night guide their people home.
One night, but not this night.
On this night, Etana let her ka flow light as a mother’s song, searching for bright, hot life against the burned-out husk of their world. Prickly-sharp she could feel the bright souls of the small knot of salt guildsmen and healers who traveled in her wake, and sharper still the soul of the shadowmancer who trailed them, ready to give magical assistance if it were needed. Etana fervently hoped it would not be needed—a shadowmancer’s fees, were she required to perform, would be astronomical.
Beyond the shadowmancer, she felt nothing.
In the shallow crevasses that mocked the true path, nothing. But high above their heads, faint and fluttery as a new babe’s cry, she could feel a hundred tiny lives hungering, hungering. Etana let out her breath in a laugh, though she kept it silent. More than one of the greater predators knew how to mask their soul-scent from one such as she. Still, it was a relief to find that the disturbance she had felt posed no danger to them.
“It is nothing but a flock of hali’i,” Amalua whispered, and her voice was thick with suppressed mirth, as well. “Shall I tell the others that my mother is frightened of birds?”
“Impertinent brat,” she laughed. “Would you prefer to make the return trip by yourself?” Etana squeezed her arm affectionately and let her hand fall away.
“Shall I run on ahead?” Amalua said.
“You just wish an excuse to stretch those long legs of yours.”
“That I do.” White teeth flashed. The night was loosening her cool grip on the Seared Lands. “I hate crawling along with these soft-feet. Morning is near, and I have no wish to burst into flame.”
“Run then, and tell them we are coming. We will be there soon.”
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