The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  “She lies!” Baoud cried. “I would happily take salt—”

  “No!” An older woman pushed her way to the front of the growing crowd. “Ayya, the girl speaks truth. She offered salt, and this pig’s ass and his pig’s ass friends made to attack them instead.” She glared at the three men, who had all gone red-faced and silent. “Do not think your mothers will not hear about this, all three of you. Shame!”

  “Shame,” several bystanders muttered. Sulema noted, wryly, that none of these people had spoken up before the yellow-robed woman had appeared.

  Ayya, if that was her name, pursed her lips.

  “Did you steal from this man?”

  “I did not steal,” Sulema explained. “I took two handfuls of dates to eat, because I was hungry.”

  The woman shot her a sharp look at that, and then turned to Yaela. “And did you offer to pay in salt?”

  “I did,” Yaela said. “I offered a handful of red salt, as payment for the dates and for the insult.”

  Ayya stared hard at Baoud. “And did you and your companions think to attack these women, in an attempt to take flesh-price instead?”

  The man’s mouth worked as if he had bitten bitter fruit.

  “I did. We did.”

  Several people in the crowd began to mutter. The woman in yellow clapped her hands together once, twice, three times, and they fell silent.

  “This is my judgment,” she said. “The Zeerani girl is guilty of theft. She is sentenced to five lashes with a cane”—several onlookers sucked in a breath—“to be given if and only if she offends any other law within a two-moon, as it is permissible to suspend punishment for one crime, one time only.” She glared at Sulema. “The ways of Min Yaarif are not the ways of the Zeera. It is your responsibility to learn our laws and learn them quickly. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Sulema said. She bowed her head and felt her cheeks go hot with embarrassment. “I am sorry, ehuani. I have been an idiot.”

  “You have,” Ayya agreed. “Again, did you offer to pay a handful of red salt?”

  “I did,” Yaela said.

  “You will pay one half-handful of red salt to the merchants’ guild, to pay for the dates and the insult, and one half-handful of red salt to the peacekeepers’ guild, to pay for my time.” Yaela nodded in agreement.

  “What about me?” Baoud asked. “They stole from me!”

  “You,” Ayya said, “I find guilty of intended rape. I declare your merchandise forfeit to the merchants’ guild, to disburse as they will. I further declare your dick forfeit, as you have used it to offend the peace of Min Yaarif.” She pointed to one of Baoud’s companions. “You will remove the offending member with a machete.” Then she pointed to the other. “You will wear it around your neck for one week as a reminder to others that citizens and visitors to our fair city are not to be molested.”

  Baoud cried out and fell to his knees. The yellow-vested men surrounded him and his companions. They were seized and borne away, wailing and struggling to no avail.

  Ayya stared hard at Yaela, and harder at Sulema.

  “You are to go straight to the guilds and pay your fines. I trust that there will be no more trouble from either of you?”

  “No,” Yaela said.

  “No,” Sulema agreed. She met the woman’s eyes, though it shamed her to do so. “I am truly sorry to have caused this much trouble. It will not happen again.”

  A corner of Ayya’s mouth quirked. “Do not make a promise that you will be unable to keep, young Ja’Akari. Trouble follows your kind like night follows day. Oh, and, ladies?”

  “Yes?” they said together.

  “Welcome to Min Yaarif.”

  * * *

  Half a fistful of Yaela’s salt tablets bought them a bath and beds at an inn, and food fit for the festival of Jadi-Khai. Having bathed and eaten, the two women sat in a comfortable silence and watched the river turn red as Akari dipped his wings and dove beyond the mountains in search of his sleeping love.

  Sulema could have slept, but she was in that comfortable state of being full and clean and in no immediate danger of being run through with a sword or torn into pieces by a pack of mymyc. It had been long since she had seen a sunset, so she lingered. River serpents sang to one another in the glooming, a sweet counterpart to the sound of the Zeera, so close Sulema’s heart could taste sand upon the wind.

  “They sound happy,” she remarked.

  “How can you tell?” Yaela glanced at her curiously over the lip of a water pipe, face wreathed in pinkish smoke.

  “I… I am not sure. You just can, if you listen. Hear that?” She paused as a sweet trill pierced the darkening sky. “They do not sound like that when they are aroused or angry. Or when they are mating.” She winced at the memory. “That sound will give you a headache for weeks.”

  “Hm.” Yaela placed the end of the hose between her lips, and water gargled merrily. “Often I have listened to the song of serpents, but I never thought about them having moods. Perhaps you are more sensitive because you are echovete, able to hear atulfah?”

  “Perhaps.” Sulema’s enjoyment of the serpents’ singing paled at the reminder. “I do not know.”

  Bruise-purple darkness bled across the sky, and the lights of men leapt up in tiny, futile attempts to keep it at bay. So many people packed into one place—hundreds and hundreds of them—made Sulema’s skin crawl. She longed to ride across the singing dunes with her sweet Atemi, and Hannei, and no need at all for words or fire or… anything.

  When this day began, I had been cast into a pit and left to die, she thought, scolding herself. Ungrateful wretch. But the thought did not stop her heart from longing.

  “Home,” Yaela remarked around the pipe’s mouthpiece, and fumes curled from her mouth as if she was Sajani incarnate. “Never closer, never farther away. I could be home in three days if I started dancing now—”

  “Dancing?”

  “Dancing,” Yaela affirmed. “As you have seen, this is my gift. In order to bind shadows to my bidding, I dance, and weave them into a veil of darkness so thick it shields me from Akari’s wrath. If I stop, the shadows dissipate, and when the sun comes up—” She blew out a fat puff of smoke, “Poof! Just like that.”

  “Poof, just like what?”

  “In the Seared Lands, if you are aboveground when the sun comes up, and have no spun shadows to protect you,” Yaela blew another puff of smoke, this time directly into Sulema’s face. “You burst into flame and burn away to ash. Poof!”

  Sulema waved the smoke away with a grimace. “Not a good way to go.”

  “No.” Yaela’s teeth flashed white through the gloom and the smoke, a wicked smile as if she remembered some secret joke. “But it is better than being eaten by a bintshi. Faster, too. And less messy.”

  “There are not many bintshi on our side of the river. We have our share of greater predators, though. Na’iyeh, wyverns, bonelords, oujinn—”

  “Dreamshifters,” Yaela added softly. “Dream eaters. But those are monsters, not predators.”

  Sulema stiffened. This sorcerer is not a friend, she reminded herself. Standing abruptly, she said, “I am tired. It is time for me to go to bed.”

  “Stay. Please, stay.” A woman’s voice flowed from the near darkness, and her form followed. Startled, Sulema rocked onto the balls of her feet, the better to flee or to fight. Yaela just took another puff of her pipe, but her eyes illuminated by the glowing coals were wide and wary.

  “I am sorry, I did not mean to startle you.” The woman smiled disarmingly, dimly visible in the near-dark, spreading both hands wide to show that she bore no weapons. “I have been seeking the two of you all day and look! I have found you. May I?” Without waiting for an answer, she plopped her butt on the ground next to Yaela and reached for the water pipe. Yaela handed it over.

  Peering through the gloom, Sulema studied the woman as she smoked. She was long-limbed and well-muscled, with the kind of thoughtless grace and the scarred for
earms earned through a life of fighting. “Who are you? What do you want from us?”

  “She is Rehaza Entanye,” Yaela answered, taking her water pipe back from the woman.

  It was the stranger’s turn to be startled. “You know me?”

  “I know of you,” Yaela answered, and she set her pipe aside. She gestured, and Sulema crossed to sit reluctantly at her side.

  I wish I knew half of what was going on.

  “If you know of me, then you can guess why I have come.” Gloom turned to darkness, so that Sulema had to squint to see the woman. She glanced at Yaela, whose eyes had begun to glow like jade held up before a fire.

  I bet she can see just fine.

  “You want us to fight in the pits,” Yaela said. “We are not interested.”

  “Oh?” Sulema did not need eyes that could see in the dark to know that the woman was smiling. “I suppose you are going to tell me there is no price that could entice you.”

  “None.” Yaela’s voice was flat and hard.

  “Neither of you?” she glanced at Sulema from the corner of her eyes.

  Sulema snorted. “I am Ja’Akari. We fight for honor, not for outlanders.”

  “Ah, that is a pity. Especially when one considers tomorrow’s prize—a war-bred asil mare. And look! One of you happens to be a Zeerani warrior without a horse.”

  Air hissed between Sulema’s teeth before she could stop herself.

  “Yet you would not be interested in this mare, in any case. She is golden as the Zeera—an unlucky color, I am sure—and a bit of a handful, having recently been held in captivity in the far-off and fabled land of Atualon. I am afraid that the Atualonians do not know how to properly care for such a creature. She is half-starved and mad from being beaten, but I am sure that whoever wins her will—”

  Sulema exploded to her feet, and the night washed red as blood pumped behind her eyes.

  “Atemi!”

  “Sulema—” Yaela warned.

  She spun about to face the glowing eyes.

  “They have my Atemi!” She threw the words violently, beyond rage or reason.

  “The mare is yours, you say?” The stranger’s voice was thick with laughter. “What an odd bit of… luck. Convenient, to be sure.”

  “Atemi is mine,” Sulema insisted. “And I will have her back. Or I will burn this place to the ground.”

  “As you say.”

  “We will not fight,” Yaela insisted, but her voice lacked conviction. “We cannot—”

  “Ah, I understand. Surely two young women such as yourselves are… what? Adventurers? Travelers? Heroes, come to Min Yaarif in search of a quest? Or perhaps you already have a quest in mind… Kentakuyan.”

  Yaela’s eyes blazed against the night.

  “One of royal blood such as yourself—forgive my presumption—is no doubt uninterested in such lowly treasure as a half-dead horse,” Entanye continued. “Now, what prize might my mistress offer that would entice such a one as yourself?” She paused as if to think. “Hmmm…”

  The night grew abruptly deeper, ink-dark, black as the pit of the belly of a beast. Shadows, Sulema realized, and chillflesh raised the hairs on her arms. Shadows flowed outward from the place where Yaela sat, as water would spill from the banks of the Dibris after a spring flood.

  “Oh, I know!” Rehaza Entanye continued as if she had not noticed. “Surely you wish to return and visit your— homeland?—and all your friends and relatives. But in order to do that, you need a skilled shadowmancer. One not previously known to those who guard the ways. If at least one of you agrees to fight in the pits, my mistress offers as your prize the services of Shadowmancer Keoki, who finds himself in her employ.”

  A hissing sound rose about them, a rustling noise like the sound of scales, or bat’s wings, or nightmares.

  Shadows, Sulema realized, and shuddered. Grown so real we can hear them.

  “You dare,” Yaela said. Her voice was smooth and unruffled, but her eyes glowed bright as the moons.

  “Three days,” Rehaza Entanye said, and her voice had lost all trace of mirth. “The Fight of Champions will be held in three days, and I have been instructed to invite the two of you to compete. This is an unusual privilege, and I expect you to be properly grateful for the opportunity. No doubt you will beat the lesser competitors—the fighting has gone on now for nearly three months, and only the best are still alive, but still they should be no trouble for the likes of a— Ja’Akari, you say? And a shadowmancer’s apprentice, by the looks of your unscarred skin? Indeed, only our champion might prove any real challenge to you, and it is this fight that my mistress most wishes to see.”

  “Who is your mistress?” Yaela asked.

  “Who is this champion?” Sulema asked. She did not give two shits from a sick churra about this woman’s mistress. She would win back her Atemi, and that would be that.

  “My mistress is none of your business. Do not cast your net at a dragon, child. As for our champion.” She chuckled. “You will have the honor of fighting Kishah Two-Blades herself.”

  “Kishah?” Sulema asked, intrigued despite herself. “That is a Zeerani word. It means—”

  “Vengeance.” The woman stood, her face lit by the pale green fire of Yaela’s wrath, and smiled at them. “I will see you in three days, warrior.” She walked away without bothering to look back.

  Sulema and Yaela stared at each other, lit only by starslight and moonslight as the shadows dissipated and the apprentice’s eyes returned to normal.

  “I cannot fight in the pits.” Yaela’s voice was tight with an unspoken plea, her body tense. She would not meet Sulema’s eyes. “I am forsworn.”

  “I will fight, then,” Sulema said. “I have no choice.”

  “There is always a choice,” Yaela said. “Just never any good ones.”

  TWELVE

  “No,” Hannei signed. “No.”

  The pain in her heart felt worse than anything she had ever experienced. Worse than the pain of betrayal she had felt when Sareta sold her into slavery. Worse than the pain of having the tongue sliced from her mouth.

  Worse than watching Tammas die?

  She imagined a flutter deep within her belly and laid a protective hand over her thickening abdomen. No, not worse than that. She had died with Tammas, and lived now only for his child.

  “Yes,” Rehaza Entanye said. “You will do this thing, Kishah. Do I need to remind you of your pact with Sharmutai?”

  No, Hannei thought, but this time she kept her hands as still as her face. The pitmistress had reminded her of her damn vow yesterday, today, and she would again tomorrow. It is almost as if they do not trust me. The notion brought a grim smile to her mouth. The two women stood facing each other across a table of silverwood, finely carved with scenes of battle and glory and inlaid with river pearls.

  “Nothing is too good for my champion,” Sharmutai had said, upon showing Hannei to her new quarters. “I shall dress you in silks if you like, drown you in pleasure slaves and spiced wine. And when you die,” she said as she kissed Hannei on the forehead as if she were a favored daughter, “I will dress you in silks and commission poetry fit to make the sky weep.”

  “I understand that you know this girl, this child warrior and pretender to the Dragon Throne. It may be that you were once friends—you are of an age, and you barbarians are a close knot. It is a vast land, the Zeera, but a small village all the same, am I right? A girl can hardly get laid without bumping into a cousin, as they say. But answer me this, Kishah Two-Blades, where was this fine friend of yours when that cunt warleader of yours was selling you to Ovreh? Off in her father’s kingdom sitting upon a golden chair and being wooed by the world’s finest assholes, I should think.

  “Did she give up that golden chair and ride to your aid when you needed her? No? Then why should you give up your life to spare hers? Sharmutai has sent me here to tell you this, slave—kill this girl today, this last spawn of the dragon, and she will consider your contract fulfille
d. You have only to do what you do best. Kill, and you will be free. Free to go wherever you like. You could remain in Min Yaarif and spend the rest of your days growing indolent with the rest of us. Or return to the Zeera and wreak bloody vengeance, as I know you want to. Or grow wings and fly to the fucking moons, for all I care.

  “You can do anything you want, once you have killed this one little redheaded cunt. But you will kill her, Kishah, that I promise you.”

  Hannei watched as Rehaza Entanye poured the black wine known as dragon’s blood into a goblet of glass and raised it in mock salute. She reached for the second goblet, but the pitmistress slapped her hand away.

  “Now, now,” she said, laughing, and her eyes as she looked upon Hannei were filled with an emotion too terrible to name. “Think of the baby.”

  THIRTEEN

  The worst part of wearing another person’s bones was how much they itched.

  Istaza Ani wore the face and form of a dead man as she led her stallion Talieso through the gates and into the too-crowded streets of Min Yaarif, wrinkling her nose at the smell of so many humans packed armpit to armpit. She would think a city with so many public baths would smell better, but no. Gladly would she have shed this disguise and fled the sights, sounds, and smells of civilization. More gladly still would she have ridden back into the heart of the Zeera to pick up the life she had set aside.

  Had she ever thought raising the children of the prides to be a thankless task? Had she ever considered her lover Askander Ja’Sajani the biggest pain in the arse this side of the Jehannim? She would have welcomed them now—but that life was lost to her. As much as the notes of a flute were lost to the wind. Fondly recalled, but beyond all hope of recovery.

  Where there is life, there is yet hope, Theotara had said to her, and more than once. That was all well and good, but the old warrior had never considered the life of a bonesinger. As long as there were bones in this world, Ani could extend her existence until it was a song without tune, a story whose original intent was buried and forgotten in the pages of time. What hope could be left to her then, when all she knew was sand, and those she had loved were gone to dust and legend?