The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  “Sweet golden child,” Ismai purred. He was rewarded as she flinched from the death in his voice. “How short your memory, and how very wrong you are. Indeed there is a king in the Zeera, and always has been. You may not remember me, but as you can see”—he spread his arms, indicating his undead armies—“I do exist. Indeed, I have never left.”

  The dreamshifter stepped forward.

  “A king you may be,” he allowed in a quavering voice, “but you are no king to the living. The dead have no power here, unclean spirit. Begone!” Thus saying, he brought a small whistle to his lips and blew.

  A sharp note thrilled through the air, sweet and commanding. Shadows fled before the dreamshifter’s magic, shadows Ismai had not realized were there, and the day became terribly bright. It rose and fell in a song of warning and dismissal.

  Had he indeed been a spirit, Kal ne Mur would have been obliged to return whence he had come. Had he been a living man, Ismai would have been terrified as the music tugged at his soul and threatened to tear it loose. But they were neither spirit nor flesh, living nor dead, and Ismai threw back his head and laughed. Then he reached out with one hand, seized the music, and pulled.

  The dreamshifter stiffened all over and collapsed upon the sand, breathless and blue.

  “The dead,” Ismai informed the remaining supplicants, once he had stopped, “have power where I say they have power. As you will learn.”

  “No,” the snake-woman whispered as she stared in horror at the corpse. “No!” She reached for the small bottles of venom strapped to her chest.

  “Sudduth?” Ismai said casually. He stretched, enjoying the feel of sunlight on his shoulders. It had been too long.

  “My king?” She all but danced beside Mutaani, and her eyes were rubies.

  “Kill them for me.”

  “Yes, my king!” Sudduth raised her voice in a joyful ululation and charged forward.

  “Papa?”

  Ismai looked down, surprised. “Yes, Naara?”

  The living began to scream as Sudduth and her sword danced among them.

  “I want to kill them, too.”

  “There are hardly enough for Sudduth, let alone… oh, very well,” he relented, seeing the disappointment on her sweet face. “I suppose you all want to play?”

  A hungry roar rumbled all about him, and the Lich King sighed. He had never been very good at denying his children their hearts’ desires. Raising his right hand, pointing to Akari, Ismai bid him witness the dawn of a new day. Then he brought it down, pointing to Sajani, that she might take the souls of the newly dead under her wing.

  “As you will,” he said. A howl rose round him, a shout, a canticle of death, and Ismai closed his eyes.

  The world is made of music, he thought as the horde surged past, screaming for blood, and never have I heard a song as sweet as this.

  * * *

  The false Mah’zula died well, Ismai would grant them that much. In the end, however, it meant no more than footprints in the sand. They were grievously outnumbered—would have been so, ehuani, had they faced Sudduth alone. The bloodlust was upon the horde, so the golden warriors were swept up and away in the killing wind, leaving behind nothing more than memories and the sharp smell of blood.

  The remaining snake-woman was a hindrance. She had bound to her three young lionsnakes, and these rushed forward shrieking, spitting venom, and slashing the Lich King’s forces with wicked claws. Three of his warriors went down beneath their assault, white bone and red meat exposed to sun by the burning venom. These would have to be raised again, Ismai knew, and they would not be best pleased.

  He raised his hands to call his forces back, grimacing as Sudduth strode toward the bright monsters. Her face was enfilthed with her enemies’ gore and she was laughing, but Kal ne Mur’s memories bade him be wary. If this one died and had to be raised again, she would be in a foul mood for moons, and not even his status as her king would be proof against the sharp side of her tongue.

  One of the lionsnakes struck. Sudduth danced to one side and slashed at it, drawing an agonized bellow and a face full of acid. She shrieked, and the Lich King raised both hands, prepared to end the thing himself. Then he hesitated. Interfering with a fight Sudduth had chosen may well piss her off more than being killed again. Whichever choice he made—to save her life or give her another—it would likely be the wrong one.

  Women, he thought. Living or dead, I will never understand them.

  Before he could call upon atulfah, however, another king entered the fray. The singing sands vomited forth a monstrous tangle of bones, dead trees, and horror as Arushdemma rose from the sands between Ismai’s fighting force and the lionsnakes, bellowing his bloodlust. With his great maw stretched wide, the bonelord whipped around fast as malice and snapped up two of the lionsnakes. A cluster of wicked eyes turned toward Sudduth and the third lionsnake, locked in mortal combat and oblivious to all else, and a foul gurgling laugh rose from his sulfurous depths.

  “No!” Ismai shouted. “I forbid it!”

  But it was too late. That toothed cavern gaped wide enough that three horses abreast might have ridden into that mouth and down the throat. Arushdemma undulated across the Zeera faster than a dead man could blink. He snatched up the lionsnake, and then he snatched up Sudduth for good measure, sinking away into the sands still gurgling with terrible laughter.

  Again, a small hand touched his leg. Again, Ismai looked down upon the wide-eyed face of his only daughter, his fiercest love.

  “Father,” she said. “I am sorry.”

  “So am I,” he sighed, closing his eyes. “Sudduth is going to be so angry.”

  * * *

  After the incident with the bonelord, the undead army lost enough of its blood frenzy to be manageable. They marched on for another day and a half, never stopping to rest, until they encountered a fist of wardens that stood between the horde and the camp.

  Stern-faced and proud, though with eyes showing big and white as those on spooked horses, they stood ready to die in defense of their people. One, a strapping young man still in the first flush of manhood, tugged at Kal ne Mur’s memories. A descendent, perhaps, of an old acquaintance…

  No, thought Ismai. I know him. I know him from this life.

  “Jasin,” he said. “Jasin Ja’Sajani.”

  “Ismai?” The young man stepped forward, his face a mask of fear and astonishment. “Ismai Ja’Sajani?”

  “Ja’Sajani no more,” Ismai answered. “Though Ismai was my name, once.”

  “Who are you?” an older warden called, no less frightened than Jasin, and no less determined to die. “What are you? What do you want from us?”

  Your love, Ismai thought, your loyalty. The part of him that was Kal ne Mur pushed those emotions away and banished, too, the vash’ai whose passions threatened his control. Silence, he scolded. This is war, and in war there is no time for love.

  “Only this,” he answered the Zeeranim, smiling and holding both hands palm-up to show that he meant them no harm. Not today, at any rate. “I require no more than that you ride to the prides and bring them my message.”

  “What message would that be?” a third warden asked.

  “Ride to Nisfi, to Urak and Shahad and Rihar.” Naara stepped forward and raised her arms, letting the wind whip her robes around her skinny little figure and carry her voice. “Bring them glad words, for your king has returned.”

  “The Zeeranim have no king,” Jasin objected, but his voice was unsure.

  The Mah’zula rode out, Ismai thought, and only the horde returned. Surely they know it is futile to resist. Do not resist, little warden. For the sake of your people, do not resist.

  “Here rides your king,” Naara corrected him, gently, kindly. “Kal ne Mur, who once was your friend Ismai, and now is both. Bend your knee to him and share in his glory. Bend your knee to him, and let us remake this land, to raise up the Zeeranim into the glory of Akari once more. Bend your knee to him—

  “—or die
.”

  Kal ne Mur could feel the horde behind him gathering itself, could feel their misery and their weariness and their battle-lust. Above all, they longed for rest… but in the absence of rest, they longed to kill.

  The wardens could feel it too, it seemed. One after another they sank to their knees in the sand. Jasin was not first, but neither was he last, and Ismai breathed a sigh of relief. He had not wanted to slay a friend.

  “Ride now, my faithful,” he called out to them, “ride forth in joy! Carry this news to every corner of the Zeera, and let the people rejoice. For unto them—unto you—the king is risen.”

  Kal ne Mur, the dead whispered. Ismai, Kal ne Mur.

  The king is risen.

  TWENTY - THREE

  Sulema and Hannei sat at ease in Hannei’s quarters, deep in the heart of one of Sharmutai’s estates. Sulema could not help but stare at the walls, the pools, the slaves in their bright garments. Everything was red, the red of life-giving and precious salt from Quarabala. It seemed to her that the amount of salt used to dye a slave-boy’s robes might have been enough to sweeten the water of a pride for a year.

  She reached out and picked up the salt-clay mug one of the boys had set before her and took a polite sip of dragonmint tea.

  Red salt clay for a mug, she thought, indignation rising, when the prides go without sweet water. Red salt clay used to build slaves’ houses, when we do not have enough in Aish Kalumm to preserve our meat so that the mothers might bear healthy children. How many lives were spent to make this mug?

  Still, she could not deny that the tea was delicious.

  Scouts had been sent into the foothills, to spy out the best paths to take—or at least identify the worst paths, as Leviathus had said, laughing—and emissaries had been sent by him and by Hannei’s owner, the whoremistress Sharmutai, to negotiate safer passage with the mountain clans. He had offered them the use of the pirate clans’ palace while they waited. Sharmutai had refused to let Hannei spend so much as a night away from her until the day of their departure, and Sulema would not leave her friend alone, so they slept and ate and trained with Hannei’s whoremistress and waited, and waited, and waited some more.

  Hannei stared out the small round window. Sulema could not read her friend’s expression, but she seemed neither content nor ill at ease in her surroundings. It seemed as if she was neither heartened by Sulema’s presence, nor bothered by the slave’s collar about her throat, nor excited at the prospect of adventure. Sulema burned to ask her about the scars on her back, about how she came to lose her tongue, about the alarming whispers she had heard in the market regarding goings-on in the Zeera, but Hannei had shut her out completely, declining even the crude hand-talk of hunters. She had locked herself away more effectively than if Sharmutai had shut her into a whore’s room and thrown away the key.

  Sharmutai, Sulema thought, and felt her lip curl in half a snarl. Hannei’s owner. The thought of any Ja’Akari beaten, savaged, raped—enslaved—was a call to battle-fury worth dying for. That it had happened to Hannei was unmistakable. That it had happened to Hannei and Sulema, her sword-sister, had let so much time go by without avenging it was unthinkable.

  Yet here they sat, sipping tea from red salt clay, waiting for someone else to tell them what they might or might not do with their lives. She set her cup down with such force that the cup chipped, throwing out shards of red clay. One of these struck Hannei high on the cheek, drawing blood.

  Hannei turned her face fractionally, just enough to glance out of the corner of one eye, and for a moment Sulema saw a beast peering out at her, a deadly predator waiting for the cage doors to spring open. Just as quickly the impression was gone again, and Hannei looked back out the window. The last rays of a dying day glinted dully off her collar and caressed her face with golden light, shining on the blood that dripped down her cut cheek like a tear.

  * * *

  It was almost a small-moon before the scouts and emissaries returned, the trips to market were successfully completed, and they could finally be on their way. Sulema had reluctantly parted with her Atemi. Even if the mare had been able to traverse the mountain passes, Yaela had explained to her, the shadowed roads to the Edge and then the heart of Quarabala would be death for any horse. Sulema had found a girl from Uthrak, a newmade merchant’s apprentice, who had vowed to care for the mare as a child until Sulema could return to claim her.

  “If I die,” Sulema told the fierce-eyed youth, “and Hannei as well, Atemi is to be given to Aamia, half-sister of Saskia, who died for me.” The merchant’s apprentice nodded her assent, and Sulema watched as the better half of her heart walked away.

  Jai tu wai, she promised Atemi silently, caressing the hilt of the fine shamsi with which the Uthraki had gifted her. We will ride together again, my love.

  The party gathered beneath the shade of an enormous tent, a riotous patchwork of colorful fabrics that came, Leviathus had told her, from ships the pirates had captured.

  My brother is the pirate king and my sister is a slave, Sulema thought.

  Yes, Jinchua barked in the back of her mind, but who are you?

  Not a dreamshifter, Sulema barked back, and she slammed her mind’s door on the Dreaming Lands. Not ne Atu, she thought to herself, shutting out the dragon’s song as best she could—and certainly no slave to the reaver’s venom. The pain in her shoulder had subsided to a dull ache, a cold spot scarcely as big as a thumbprint. Sulema pushed away, as well, the knowledge that Yaela’s supply of medicine was nearly depleted. There was every likelihood that she would die before that ever became a problem.

  Not far away Yaela spoke to Leviathus of the paths they might take through Jehannim, the supplies they had to hand, and the dangers of sun-sickness, mountain-sickness, and the likelihood of being eaten by greater predators. It seemed to Sulema that the sorcerer’s apprentice, whose mad quest this was to begin with, had absented herself too much from these preparations until Leviathus had appeared. Leviathus, for his part, argued that they were under-supplied and under-prepared. To Sulema, who was used to riding out into the desert with nothing besides a weapon, some water, and her horse, their preparations seemed endless. And she was weary of watching the two of them fighting their too-obvious mutual attraction.

  I wish Sareta was here, she thought. Or Istaza Ani. Or my mother. Or—

  They had no seasoned warriors, no dreamshifter, nobody here who could lead them safely to Saodan and back again.

  I will just have to pretend that I am such a leader and take charge of this goatfuckery. Otherwise we will be standing here until the dragon wakes, still arguing about whether we have enough rope.

  “Is it true,” she said, interrupting their endless debate, “that the mountain clans have been paid not to interfere with our passage?”

  “Yes,” Leviathus said, “but you will still need—”

  “We have purchased weapons? Water? Pemmican?”

  Her brother and Yaela both made faces at that. Let them. Nobody liked pemmican, but taste was beside the point.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Good,” Sulema said, holding up a hand to fend off any further discussion. “Let us go to the merchants’ house, retrieve our supplies, and be off at latesun.” Leviathus opened his mouth to argue, but Sulema scowled him into silence.

  “My quest,” she reminded him, “my rules. We are going to the Seared Lands to retrieve one young girl, not riding to Atualon to wage war upon Pythos. The fewer mouths we must feed, the less equipment we have to carry, the better. We are not churrim. Let us stop chewing our cuds and go.”

  The pirates who flanked Leviathus grumbled a bit at this, but Leviathus waved them to silence. Even so he did not look happy about it. Hannei pursed her mouth and nodded approval.

  “Good,” she signed. “We go.”

  Sulema let out a long breath. Her heart pounded in her ears as if she had been running. She had seized control of the group, and they had accepted her command. They had a plan, such as it was, an
d Leviathus would no doubt pack enough supplies for them to survive an apocalypse of the risen dead.

  Then why did it taste like the kiss of doom?

  * * *

  Sulema shook her head at the size of their party. A fist of pirates had insisted upon providing an honor guard for their king, Sharmutai had sent a handful of slaves to keep an eye on Hannei, and three white-cloaked Salarian merchants had somehow convinced somebody that they should tag along as if this was a journey to procure salt and other rare goods from the Seared Lands. There were slaves to bear their packs, others to tend their beasts, a painted boy gifted to them by the whoremistress to tend to their clothes and makeup.

  “No,” she said firmly, though the last caused her a pang. Surely the boy reminded her of her mother’s lost apprentice, Daru, and would have been better off with them than he had been in the comfort house. “The mountains are no place for merchants, or softlanders, or children. So large a group will attract bandits and greater predators. No. We will number only as many as are needed—myself and Yaela, Hannei, Leviathus, and the shadowmancer Keoki. We will take one churra, and only as many provisions as we can carry ourselves.”

  Sharmutai was not pleased, and it looked as if she was not used to hearing the word “no.”

  “You must at least take Rehaza Entanye,” she insisted. “Or I will not allow you to take my Hannei.”

  “Agreed,” Sulema said. “Another fighter will be welcome, but no more. No more.” She held up a hand to forestall the dozen arguments that bloomed around her like flowers after a rain. “A small group has better chance of success.”

  Better than one bloated by incompetents, she thought.

  Leviathus puffed out his cheeks, no more used to being thwarted than the whoremistress.

  “You have never crossed the Jehannim,” he pointed out. “You could hardly find them on a map.”

  “No,” Sulema agreed, “but while you were learning to read maps, I was learning to survive in harsh conditions. We were,” she added, indicating Hannei, who nodded. “This is our world more than yours, ne Atu.”