The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  “This,” she said. The closest slave reached out to hand it to her but shrank back at the last moment.

  “Take it,” he whispered hoarsely. Perhaps a slave was not allowed to touch a weapon? Sulema shrugged and seized the staff, easily pulling it free of the rack. Indeed it was of fine make, better than she had thought, light and well-balanced, with the supple strength of a master-crafted weapon.

  “Thank—” she began, but the slaves were already hurrying away, dragging the weapons rack between them.

  “—you,” she finished, perplexed. She shrugged away their odd behavior. Outlanders are strange, she told herself. I should not be surprised when they behave strangely. I wonder if they will let me keep this staff when I am finished? I will have my mare, and a weapon, and a companion who can wield shadow magic.

  Not a bad start, for someone who is supposed to be dead.

  She ran one hand up and down her new staff, familiarizing herself with the feel and weight of it, and her palm encountered an irregularity in the wood. She held it closer to her face, squinting against the sunlight, and when she saw the maker’s mark her fingers tightened so that the knuckles turned white.

  Jinchua. The face of a fennec laughed out at her, cunningly wrought into the wood’s grain, as if it had grown there and been harvested just for this day. Would she never be free of the legacy of her mother’s dreamshifting magic? The only way it would be worse would be if it bore the dragon’s mark of her father as well.

  No. Oh, Yosh no.

  Her heart pounding harder than it had at the thought of dying in single combat, Sulema turned the staff end for end, sliding both palms up the smooth wood. There, where a second maker’s mark might be, she found—

  Nothing. Oh, thank Akari. But as she thumped the butt end of the staff against the ground, a bright flash caught her eye. Pressed into the iron cap at that end of the staff was the stylized image of the sun dragon’s mask in hot, angry gold.

  Sulema gripped the staff in both hands, held it up to the sun, and screamed in fury. Somewhere in Jehannim, she knew, Jinchua barked with laughter.

  A voice boomed across the stadium.

  “GENTLE PEOPLE OF MIN YAARIF! MERCHANTS AND MURDERERS, LOVERS AND LIARS! WHORES AND PIIIIIIRATES!”

  Sulema jumped half out of her skin as a voice boomed behind her. She spun to see a smallish man of indeterminate age. He was wearing a hat made of dead things and speaking through some sort of shofar-looking bronze object that made his voice roar out like a wyvern’s.

  “YOU SEE BEFORE YOU A DAUGHTER OF THE ZEERA. BEHOLD SULEMA THE MAGNIFICENT, JA’AKARI WARRIOR AND CHAMPION OF HER PEOPLE, SCOURGE OF RAIDERS, LOVER OF MEN AND WOMEN, WHO HAS SLAIN NOT ONE, NOT TWO, BUT THREE LIONSNAKES IN SINGLE COMBAT!”

  “Guts and goatf—!” Sulema exclaimed, but the crowd’s roar of approval drowned out her words. The booming man ignored her protestation and went on.

  “THIS BEAUTIFUL BARBARIAN PRINCESS COMES TO MIN YAARIF IN SEARCH OF SUPPLIES AND ALLIES! SHE SEEKS NEITHER RICHES NOR LOVERS, BUT ADVENTURERS TO JOIN HER ON A NOBLE QUEST TO SAVE THE PEOPLE OF QUARABALA!”

  “Noble quest?” Sulema stopped even trying and stood staring at him in open-mouthed shock. Was he insane? “Allies?”

  “Beautiful barbarian princess?”

  “I just want my horse!” she shouted, but nobody was listening.

  “…SO DEDICATED TO THIS CAUSE, THIS OBSESSION, THIS NOBLE QUEST, THAT SHE HAS CONSENTED TO A FIGHT AGAINST THE NASTIEST, THE DIRTIEST, THE DEADLIEST PIT CHAMPION EVER TO PISS UPON AN ENEMY’S HEAD.”

  That, Sulema thought, does not sound promising.

  “KIND CITIZENS, ROGUES, WHORES, PICKPOCKETS AND SCOUNDRELS, THE LOT OF YOU, I GIVE TO YOU THE SCOURGE OF MIN YAARIF, THE SLAYER, THE PUNISHER, THE AVENGER! I GIVE YOU BLOODY VENGEANCE AND THE SILENCE OF THE GRAVE! I GIVE YOU…”

  The crowd drew its collective breath and went still.

  “KISHAAAAAAAHHHHH TWO-BLADES!”

  The loud little man pointed up, and Sulema followed his gesture in time to see a dark and sinister figure, tall and hooded in funereal gray and black, appear at the lip of the fighting pit. The newcomer strode down the ramp lightly, easily, a loose-hipped fighter’s stance that said I will win today, and not you. I will live today, and not you. The hilts of two long, straight swords rose over the figure’s shoulders.

  Why do I think they should wield a shamsi? The hairs on Sulema’s arms stood stiff. The slim brown ankles, the way the fighter moved, these things spoke to the marrow of her bones and the blood in her heart. Why do I feel I should call her “Sister”?

  No. No. It is impossible.

  The fighter reached the pit floor and strode silent as death to face Sulema. Strong brown hands reached up and pushed the hood back, and her heart shrieked to a stop.

  “Hannei,” she gasped. “Hannei!”

  The face of her sword-sister turned toward her, and a stranger’s soul stared out from behind an enemy’s eyes. She raked Sulema from sandaled feet to shorn scalp with one long glance, curled her upper lip in contempt, and spat upon the sand between them.

  Sulema’s heart stuttered to life again when she saw Hannei’s hands curled at her sides. In hunter-sign she was speaking to Sulema.

  “Go. Home. Go. Home.”

  Sulema held her staff between them and stared into the face she loved more than her own.

  “Cannot,” she answered.

  Some trick of the light then made it seem as if a sheen of tears washed across Hannei’s eyes, there and gone again. She shrugged out of her black robe, revealing studded and padded leather armor as fine as Sulema had ever seen. A device was worked upon the chest; a fool’s mask with its mouth opened wide in a grimace of pain, blood pouring out.

  Hannei spat once more upon the ground, turned her back on Sulema, and walked the required five steps from the center of the fighting pit. There she reached up over her shoulders and unsheathed both swords. Those swords of black iron, Sulema saw, did not have the dull edge of a pit fighter’s weapon. She looked from the death-sharpened blades to her sister’s grim expression, and she knew.

  She turned her back on Hannei and took five steps, half expecting a blade through the back. This was not meant to be a fair fight, after all, but an execution.

  “Well, fuck it,” she muttered. “I guess it is a good day to die, after all.” She tightened her grip on the staff, imagining as she did so that she could hear Jinchua’s barking laugh. She turned to face her childhood friend as the small man bellowed,

  “LET THE GAME BEGIN!”

  Where are you? Their eyes met, and Sulema searched that dark gaze for some sign of her sword-sister, wondering at the angry face before her. Who are you? Where is my Hannei?

  “Sister,” she signed, and wished that a hunter’s signals could convey more meaning than “goats here” or “lionsnake there” or “danger, run.”

  “Go,” Hannei signed one last time. “Go home. Run home.” She still held her two swords, but her body was stiff.

  She does not want this any more than I do, Sulema realized.

  “No,” she answered. She was—they were—both bound to this fate, as surely as she was bound by the blackthorn vines in her dreams. “Trapped. Ehuani.”

  Hannei crushed her eyes shut, and for a moment her face contorted with grief.

  Then she shook herself, opened a stranger’s eyes, and flowed into a fighter’s stance. Hannei held her twin blades in front of her and pointed them both at Sulema. The fingers of her left hand curled inward, toward her heart.

  “Here. No truth. Only vengeance.”

  And then her sword hand, in a final message.

  “You die.”

  They circled each other warily, paying no attention to the little man, or the bloodthirsty crowd, or the sun pounding down overhead. Sulema watched Hannei move, studied the way she held two swords lightly, easily, how her center of gravity flowed, and her face emptied of all emotion. Her former sword-sister had grown more thickly muscled since they had
ridden together just this spring—

  A lifetime ago, she thought, for both of us.

  —and stepped more surely upon the pounded sand. Hannei had ever been Sulema’s peer when they trained as youngsters. One would excel at archery, the other at forms, but so closely matched in skill that they were considered true sisters, heart-sisters, the very ideal of saghaani.

  This, Sulema realized as she watched Hannei advance, could no longer be said to be truth. She had spent months recuperating, and then confined, in the soft lying outlands. Hannei, it seemed, had suffered a fate perhaps harsher than her own. The hot stare of Akari, the merciless pounding of a hard land, had forged her into a blade meant for killing.

  I might have beat Hannei in a fair fight, once, she thought. But looking at her now…

  Use me, whispered a seductive male voice, deep and sweet. The Mask of Akari stamped into the end of her staff flared bright in her mind’s eye. Sa Atu. Sing the song of death, the song of my people, and you will taste victory with your enemy’s blood.

  Jinchua barked a fox’s laugh. Use me, she insisted. Dreamshift. Close your waking eyes, and let the dreaming mind guide your hand, and you will fashion objects of power from your enemy’s bones.

  Use me, use me, use me, the sun whispered, and the sand, and the desert wind. Let us use you.

  Sulema stopped her pacing, threw back her head, and shouted in wordless fury at the world. Hannei stopped as well, and answered with a scream so ugly and blood-choked that the assembled crowd edged back from the fighting pit. It seemed in that moment that Akari Sun Dragon himself turned his face away from them in fear, that the world went dark…

  And then the two warriors raised their weapons and charged.

  * * *

  The song of Hannei’s dark blades became quickly apparent, as did the sting of their kiss. Half a dozen small bleeding mouths, like the ones on her opponent’s breastplate, opened on Sulema’s arms, her thigh, her back, as she twisted and tried to find some quarter from which to attack. Like the wind Hannei came on and on, like death, implacable and relentless. It was all Sulema could do to keep from being spitted like a tarbok.

  Hannei did not play, as she had when they were young just a handful of moons ago. She did not smile, or dance back from the reach of Sulema’s staff any more than was needed to deflect the blows, but came at her with a bold focus that would have drawn a nod of approval from Sareta herself.

  Sulema swung her staff up, deflecting one blade, and its sister snuck beneath her guard to open another, wider smile along her ribs. She hissed in pain as she spun with the blow, scattering blood upon the packed earth, and brought her weapon to bear as she had intended, striking Hannei hard one-two first on one hip, then the other. Hannei grunted and staggered back, but turned away a third blow almost contemptuously—and she kept on coming.

  I stepped into this pit without first checking for vipers, Sulema thought bitterly. Ani would be disgusted with me…

  The dark sister-swords flicked toward her face and she spun away again, and again, and again, retreating from the onslaught so that it seemed she was running in circles around the pit, backward.

  There was no sign of love on Hannei’s face, in her eyes. Sulema had caught glimpses of scars, terrible scars, on the back of Hannei’s arms and legs, her neck. What little flesh was exposed on her back was a horror, and there was something wrong with the way she held her mouth.

  What have they done to you? she asked in her heart, as Hannei looked for an opening in her guard. The black blades flicked and swayed like serpents’ tongues, hungry for another taste of her blood. Sulema’s staff whipped out, striking first a blade and then Hannei’s shoulder in quick succession. What have they done to us?

  Then there was no further room for thought, or pity, or love, as the women stopped retreating and moved in for the kill.

  It was a fight Sulema could not win. She had known from the first flurry of strikes that Hannei had every advantage. She was better trained, in better condition, better armored and armed. The most Sulema might have hoped for was a draw, and a favorable vote from the judges.

  Hannei’s first sword bit deeply into her staff. The second bit into her upper arm, just beneath the spider wound, slicking away a mouthful of flesh. Sulema cried out in pain as her weapon was wrenched from her grasp. A kick she never saw hit her midsection and she went down hard, rolling as she fell while the blades licked the air behind her, savoring her pain and terror.

  I do not want to die, she realized. Not like this. Not by my sister’s hand. She raised both arms in a vain attempt to ward off the killing blow—

  The wind stopped.

  If you did not want to die, a voice laughed, taking the place of the wind, you should not have brought a staff to a sword fight.

  A low hum like rocks singing rose from the ground, the air, from everything. Sulema’s bones itched as the sound grew in intensity. It came in waves. Hannei’s swords fell to the ground and she clapped both hands over her ears, mouth open in a wordless yell so that her face matched the mask on her bloodied breastplate.

  Sulema clapped her hands over her ears as well, though it did no good at all. The sound came from the middle of the world, from the middle of her very bones. Hannei dropped to her knees and Sulema curled into a ball as agony radiated from the half-healed wound in her shoulder.

  “Bonesinger!” someone screamed from far away. “Bonesinger magic!”

  Impossible, Sulema thought, the Dziranim are long gone. She found herself curling into a tighter ball, even as a whimper was forced from her throat. It hurts…

  Shush, the laughing voice said. Shhhhh. The pain eased, ebbed, flowed away, then abruptly the hum ceased. The wind picked back up, tentatively, and stroked across Sulema’s shorn scalp as if a hand were brushing hair from her eyes.

  Be good, now. Sulema felt—she would have sworn it, ehuani—lips pressing against her forehead, a hand upon her cheek.

  Istaza Ani? No one else in her life had ever touched her so, not even her own mother. Yet that was absurd, an even crazier thought than the existence of a bonesinger.

  Hannei collapsed in the dirt near Sulema and lay on her back, arms out to the side and fingers digging into the sand. Sulema unfurled slowly, like a blackthorn flower uncertain of the sunlight. Her staff lay a short distance from her fingertips, but Sulema found that she had no desire to pick it up and wield it against Hannei, now or ever.

  Whatever lies between us, the exhausted thought came, we are still sisters. I will not bear weapons against her again.

  Hannei turned toward her, grimaced, and looked away again. She made no move toward her swords. The sun pressed down upon Sulema, the world pressed up, and the wind danced on her sweat-slick, blood-slick skin.

  Those onlookers who had chosen to remain stirred, and a few began to cry out.

  “Fight! Fight!”

  Then a new cry rose up to drown the voices calling for blood. Not the painful, roaring hum of whatever magic had overtaken them before, but the joyful voices of dragon-kin raised in greeting.

  The serpents were singing. And though Yaela had not been able to hear it, to Sulema the emotion in those ancient voices was clear as sun and sand. They were happy.

  But why?

  “Pirate king!” someone shouted. “The pirate king is come!”

  Those who were left around the entrance grew agitated, then parted to admit the cloaked figure of a man, tall and imposing. He stood silhouetted against the sun, hands on hips, regarding the two women who lay on the ground. The pirate king, Sulema guessed, come to see blood spilled upon the sand.

  Let him come, she thought, rolling reluctantly to all fours, and then forcing herself to stand upright. I will fight the pirate king instead. No longer will I fight my sword-sister for the pleasure of these outlanders.

  Hannei gained her feet as well, and together they stood looking up at the tall man as he began his descent. Sulema took a warrior’s stance, disdaining the dream-cursed, dragon-cursed staff.
<
br />   Let him come, she thought again. I will die, but it will be a death of my own choosing.

  As the man reached the floor of the pit, alone, he pushed back his hood and Sulema saw that his hair blazed blood-red in the sunlight. He extended both arms toward her, laughing as she gasped in shocked recognition. He grasped her shoulders in his strong hands and gave her a resounding kiss on each cheek.

  “Sister!” Leviathus called out, loudly enough for all to hear. “Well met! Well met, indeed!”

  “Leviathus!” Sulema leapt into his embrace, and they half crushed one another.

  The crowd above fell silent, and then erupted in riotous cheers.

  Hannei held both hands up before her mouth, dark eyes gone wide. Leviathus laughed again. Sulema grabbed her brother’s shoulders and held him at an arm’s distance, staring up into his handsome, laughing, sunburned face. It felt like a dream, like the best dream ever.

  “Leviathus,” she said. “What in the name of Zula Din’s tits are you doing here?”

  “You have not heard?” His grin was wide and beautiful as life under the sun. “While you have been lounging about in Atukos, growing fat and lazy, I have become the pirate king of Min Yaarif.”

  “The world has gone mad.” She swayed on her feet, wearied beyond all hope of rest. “Completely mad.”

  Leviathus leaned in closer, face completely serious now, and whispered into her ear,

  “You have no idea.”

  FIFTEEN

  “To set sail upon the River of Life is perilous. Ever her currents draw you in, directing your course. No matter how strong the vessel upon which you embark, eventually Life will cast you into the arms of her lover, the great sea that is Fate; there your vessel will be broken and remade until it is strong enough to brave the storm’s wrath, or until it breaks apart entirely, leaving you to drown or be cast out upon strange shores…”

  —From the Song of Illindra, by Athalia sud San Drou, as translated by Loremaster Rothfaust in the Third Age of Atualon

  Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu stared across the rim of a salt-crusted goblet at the crowd gathered before him, wondering at the strange shores upon which the tides of Fate had cast him.