The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  Jian had never been in the midst of such a throng. As he passed a squad of yellow Daechen, who bowed before him like wheat in a storm, he reflected that never in his life had he felt so alone.

  “They honor you,” Mardoni remarked.

  “Mmmm,” Jian grunted, though he thought, This honor looks too much like fear. In his experience fear was a path which, like the deep river, flowed only in one direction— toward death. In observing the interactions between Dae, human, and daeborn he had concluded that it is in the nature of man to fear that which he does not understand, and to kill that which he fears.

  He strode through the people of Khanbul like a farmer through the fields, fingering his scythe and considering where and when he should begin the harvest. Though on some level he pitied the people of Sindan, no longer did he love them. His love was reserved for those of his kin in the Twilight Lands, and for his little family here—Tsali’gei and their son. Everyone else he considered a threat to him and to those he loved.

  Save your compassion for those who can do you no harm, his father Allyr had advised him. And understand this: only a dead enemy can do you no harm. Allyr’s heart was as cold as the sea which had birthed them, and as true. His words had become Jian’s law.

  No weakness, he reminded himself as they passed a group of children playing hoop-toss and chanting as the colored circles flew through the air among them.

  When the Dragon wakes at last,

  Who will rise and who will fall?

  Shaman, sorcerer, lover, liar,

  Who will rise and rule them all?

  No quarter, he thought further, hardening his heart as he watched a young merchant’s apprentice scramble to hide behind a food cart. No mercy.

  At last they reached the palace.

  Though Jian had spent five long years in the Twilight Lands, surrounded by magic and beauty and grace unthinkable in the lands of men, still he caught his breath at the sight up close of the Palace of Flowers. It shone beneath the tourmaline sky like a crimson lotus blossoming in still waters, serene and beautiful. The golden-tiled roof rivaled Akari’s gaze in its brilliance, and the many-colored windows dazzled even eyes grown accustomed to wonder.

  Flowering trees—tended and twisted by dedicated gardeners whose tongues and eyes had been put out so that they might live only for their precious charges—lined the wide, steep steps that led up to the palace. The way was illuminated by magical lanterns of wormsilk and spidersilk, and as they mounted the stairs soft petals were crushed beneath the feet, fresh-cut flowers by the tens of thousands sending up a fragrant dying prayer.

  Lashai of a kind Jian had never seen—red-clad servants with faces pale and beautiful as candles—opened the massive gold doors, and a score or more of young women and men, naked and exquisite, emerged from the palace bearing wide woven baskets. Laughing silently, they flung yet more petals before Jian’s feet. Their smiles were wide and perfect, and their eyes shone dark and lovely and empty as obsidian.

  As Jian crossed the threshold at Mardoni’s side, white light bloomed around them painfully bright and pure. The doors closed behind them with a soft, deep, mournful sound like an enormous golden bell, tolling the empire’s doom.

  Jian squinted against the brilliance of the luminists who lined the long hall and the steps up to the dais of the emperor’s throne, but he never slowed his stride. Neither did he bow head or bend knee in the emperor’s presence. He was the daeborn son of the Sea King, and the sea bowed to no man.

  Daeshen Tiachu sat upon a massive throne, higher than the tallest man’s head. It was carved of blackthorn and polished till it gleamed like a live thing. The symbol of the white bull rose over his head, wrought so cunningly—of human bone, it was said—that it seemed the beast would break free and trample them all underfoot. More luminists clustered about the throne like brilliant flowering trees, clad in sunlight, stern-faced and sun-eyed, each of them beautiful as a faceted gemstone, deadlier than a thousand swords.

  The emperor himself was imposing even by daeborn standards: broad-shouldered and with the bull’s neck of a fighting man, with dark eyes shadowed by a pair of massive bull’s horns. He made no move to stand and did not address them as they approached.

  Mardoni stopped at the foot of the dais and dropped to one knee, then bent so low that his forehead touched the bottom step. Jian merely inclined his head, drawing an angry hiss from some.

  “Your Illumination,” he said, in a voice meant to carry to the far corners of the wide hall. “I have come as you asked.”

  Daeshen Tiachu sat still and silent for many long moments, staring down at Jian and the rest of the entourage. His face showed no more emotion than a dancer’s mask, and his eyes showed less than that.

  “So,” he said finally in a voice like soft blue thunder, “the sea has come to the mountain. Come, Tsun-ju Jian, son of the Sea King. Sit. We have much to discuss.” He indicated a place at his side.

  Jian took a deep breath and set one foot upon the lowest step, feeling that the moments of his life till this one had been raindrops in a river, and that this was the sea.

  * * *

  The emperor proposed, through Mardoni’s mouth, that the problems of Sindan be laid neither at the feet of the Daechen nor the twilight folk—for were they not kindred?

  “It is the self-proclaimed Dragon Kings and Queens, who would style themselves as leaders of the world,” the emperor’s proxy argued, and the other Sen-Baradam muttered agreement. “The Dragon King claims to sacrifice his very life to keep Sajani asleep lest she wake and destroy us all, yet who is to say the atulfah could not be wielded as well—or better—by his Illumination? Surely the wisdom of Khanbul is better suited to the civilized use of magic than the barbaric singing of some western king.”

  The greatest threat, he pressed, was Atualon itself, long gripped by internal wars of succession, and this eternal bickering threatened to destroy all the lands, not just those in the north.

  “It is the duty of the Sindan daeborn,” Mardoni said, “spawned man and magic, to take charge of this holy duty.”

  Not a word was spoken of coastal raids, or the winnowing of daeborn youths, or of wives and children held hostage. These unspoken words threatened to drown out all other arguments in Jian’s mind.

  In the end he agreed, however, as he and his father had intended, to set aside the difference between Dae and daeborn and humankind, for the good of the empire and the peoples of the world. An illuminated scroll was presented and described to those present. Written in ink and iron, it was a treaty between the Sindanese empire and the twilight lords.

  Those in the hall held their collective breath, like a man dying on the battlefield not ready to let go of hope, as Jian dipped a bear’s-hair brush into ink mixed with his blood, and the emperor’s, and the light of Illumination.

  He signed the document.

  Tsun-ju Jian de Allyr

  Son of Tiungpei the pearl diver of Bizhan

  and

  Allyr the Sea King

  In this year of Illumination

  The emperor smiled at last and wrote his own name with a flourish. Tiachu leaned back into the hard back of his throne and raised a massive hand above Jian’s head.

  “It is done,” he intoned. “Let there be light.” The illuminists in the hallway glowed with their emperor’s satisfaction, highlighting the bloodthirst of those assembled.

  What he also meant was: Let there be war.

  Jian saw that it was good. And it was terrible.

  * * *

  After the treaty had been signed, the doors were opened and a festival commenced. Gifts were presented first to his Illumination the emperor, and then to Jian. Practical gifts of horses, swords, books, even a full set of exquisite raptor-hide armor, presented by a young woman whose face was vaguely familiar, and who was introduced to Jian as a commander of one of the empire’s new battalions of raptor fighters.

  Most interesting was a torque of gold and red iron given to him by a pair of you
ng daeborn who had walked all the way from Salar Merraj. Sea-bear’s eyes, faceted bits of dragonglass, glittered at the ends of the torque. It was not a practical thing, but it was beautiful. One of the sea-bears, he thought, looked female, where the other was decidedly masculine. It reminded him of Tsali’gei. He smiled at the antlered young girl as she placed it around his neck.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I am no one,” she answered in a hollow voice, lifting her chin in an arrogant manner.

  “We are Kanati,” the youth who had accompanied her said, a bright-eyed young man. “And Awitsu.” Though his voice and manner were soft, almost apologetic, the hairs on the back of Jian’s neck prickled when their glances met. Son of the Sea King or no, Sen-Baradam or no, he had the distinct impression that were he to raise a hand against the girl, this youth would tear him flesh from bone.

  More than you appear, are you? He favored the lad with the sharp-toothed smile of a predator. You are not alone in this, youngling.

  The boy met him stare for stare, and a small smile formed at the corners of his mouth. He nodded, and the two backed away, bowing in the proper manner of emissaries.

  Overhead the moons and stars could be seen through panes of colored glass, and the hours swam by like silvery fish. When an emissary from some far province was in the middle of a long speech—about honeybees, Jian thought, but perhaps it was meant to be a metaphor of some sort—the emperor raised his hand again, and the gathering went silent. Even the candles seemed to cease sputtering, the shadows to hold their breaths.

  “Enough,” Tiachu said. With no further explanation, he rose to his feet, and every person in the room fell bonelessly to the floor.

  All save Jian. He stood, ruefully figuring that it would be a breach of etiquette to rub his numb-tingling hindquarters and wondering what sort of obeisance—if any—he should make. Groveling was out of the question, but as he had agreed to limited service under the emperor, perhaps he should at least take a knee? Never would Allyr bend, he was certain of it, but Jian was his father’s son, and not a Sea King himself.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Just as he had settled on a deep nod of respect and a slight bend at the waist—enough to indicate honor without servility—the emperor turned to him. As he stepped closer, Jian was forced to look up, up, up to meet those too-bright, too-knowing, too-old eyes.

  “You are tired,” the emperor said. “It is time for you to rest.”

  Jian stifled a yawn, suddenly and completely fatigued. Was it magic of some kind, he wondered, or just the late hour? In the end it did not matter. The emperor’s dark gaze swept across the room, sending the crowd tumbling backward through the door. When they had all gone—all save Mardoni, still on his knees at the foot of the dais—the emperor turned away from Jian, dismissing him as a man might a glove dropped and forgotten beside a muddy road, there to be trampled in the empire’s march to war.

  * * *

  “Well,” Tsali’gei said when he returned to their chambers, “I can see that the emperor has not had you killed yet.” And then she proceeded to kiss him half to death. Jian began to wonder whether she had it in mind to conceive a second child then and there when a soft sound drew his attention. He turned toward it, and his heart stopped short as he all but dropped his beloved on her pretty little butt.

  “Mother,” he breathed.

  Tiungpei stood poised in the doorway to an adjoining room, one hand on the half-open door and the other pressed over her heart as if to keep it from flying away at the sight of him. She was smaller than he remembered, older, more bent, and more frail, but in her eyes and the proud way she held her head lay the strength of a woman who had loved the sea.

  “Jian,” she said, and her voice cracked his heart.

  “Mother,” he answered, his voice the small echo of a sea-bird calling to the waves. “I have come back to you. I did not forget.”

  Tiungpei loosed her hold on the door and moved quickly across the room. Jian held out his arm and enfolded her, enfolded both of them, clinging to his lost ones and filling his heart with their presence.

  In that moment, he knew, the fate of the world was sealed.

  * * *

  At the end of his third day in the Palace of Flowers—three days filled with assemblages, and decrees, and false jeweled smiles—Giella, the White Nightingale, flew to land at his side.

  She seemed to him to have flown in truth. The feathered print of her red robes, hiked up and tied at the waist to display red silk pants, the crest of feathers at her temples, even the bright laughing intelligence in her strange eyes gave the impression that she could spread her arms and take flight. That she had left the wild skies to come to him filled Jian with a foreboding kind of pleasure.

  Birdlike, too, was her stance as she perched on the delicate rail of the balcony upon which he stood. Balanced on one foot, arms outstretched, long red sleeves fluttering in the evening breeze.

  “That seems risky,” he commented, leaning upon the railing and pretending to himself that he was not trying to steal a peek as the wind plastered the silk robes close to her body. The White Nightingale laughed, her pale throat arched against the indigo-bleeding sky.

  “What, this?” she teased, hopping from foot to foot light as a wish. “Or the color of my robes? Or our meeting here, now?”

  “All of these and more,” he said. “If you were seen wearing the emperor’s colors—”

  “If I am seen in the city at all, it will be my head,” she chided softly. “No comfort girl is allowed in Khanbul at all after dark, and a comfort girl who is also a trained assassin?” She sat back on her haunches, paying no mind to the cliff-sheer drop beneath her, and waggled a finger in his face. “My being here would likely cause both of our heads to roll, O Son of the Sea King.”

  “Why have you come, then?”

  “Because I can,” she quipped. “Who is this emperor”— she made a rude noise with her tongue— “to tell me where I may and may not go? What colors I may or may not wear? I am Giella, daughter of the Twilight Court. As I was promised to this world, so was this world promised to me. It is mine, to travel where I will, wearing what I will, and…” She leaned close, so close her red lips brushed Jian’s ear and made him shiver. “…loving whomsoever I choose to love.”

  “Giella—”

  “Also,” she went on, ignoring him, “I have come to warn you about Mardoni. He is not your friend, Jian. He smiles to your face, while sharpening his knife for your back. Rumors are cropping up in Khanbul and in Sindan beyond, falsehoods he has planted like mushrooms in his dark and shit-filled mind, that you seek to set yourself on a level with the emperor. Already it is known that you refused to bow before the throne of the White Bull. Many of the Sen-Baradam whisper in dark corners that your intent is to make the bull bow before you.”

  “Ah.” Jian sighed. “I wish I could say that I was surprised.”

  “Let me grant your wish, then!” Giella said with a girlish laugh. She sprang down from the balustrade and before Jian knew it, kissed him full on the mouth.

  He kissed her back. Knowing he would regret it later, regretting it even then. He wrapped his arms around the White Nightingale and drew her close, reveling in her bright heat and lithe body, the dangerous strangeness of her, the intoxicating scent of Daezhu.

  “Now you can say you are surprised,” she murmured against his chest. “I have granted your wish.”

  “Giella,” he said too late, drawing back just enough to pretend that he was resisting, yet not far enough to be believable. “I cannot. Tsali’gei—”

  “Is your wife and your true love,” she finished, placing a finger upon his mouth. “I know this. I am just—” She looked up and into him, then changed what she had been about to say. “Just here to tell you to be careful. It would be safest for you to take Tsali’gei and the child back to the Twilight Lands, and forget the world of men.”

  “Would that I could,” he answered, and he meant it. “But the oracles
have spoken, and they all say the same thing. That Sajani is indeed waking, threatening the Twilight Lands as well as this one. The chance to unite all lands—Twilight, Sindan, and Atualon—under a single power is simply too great an opportunity to pass up. Besides, the ink has not yet faded on the treaty. Were I to be harmed while here in the Forbidden City, the armies of twilight would fall upon them like iron rain.”

  “All lands united under a single banner, hm?” Her lips brushed his again, and then she pulled away. Jian let her go, reluctantly. “Under whose banner, I wonder. The white bull? Your father’s silver seashells? Or perhaps you think to unite the world beneath the banner of the blue bear?”

  “Hush,” he scolded, watching with some regret as she leapt gracefully back to the knife’s edge of the balustrade. “Your mouth is too big to speak of such things. I do not care what banner the world chooses to march beneath, so long as it is united and kept safe for us. For all of us,” he added, thinking not only of himself and the other daeborn, but of the Twilight Lands, the common village folk. Even the peoples of Atualon, he supposed, deserved a chance to raise their children in peace.

  “Hush,” she mocked, “your mouth is too pretty to speak of such grand dreams.” And she leapt backward into the night sky, laughing.

  With a cry Jian leaned out over the railing, but she was gone. Only her laughter, the scent of her hair, and the warmth of her kiss upon his lips lingered as proof she had ever been there.

  TWENTY - FIVE

  Morning burst upon the Edge hot and dry, with a hint of spice in the dusted air that mocked the refugees with memories of hearth-bread and pies. Maika worried as she climbed the wide stone steps to the rooms into which her counselors had insisted upon settling her—she did not want the bakers to be digging new hearths in this place; she did not want her people to get comfortable and attempt to resume some semblance of their former lives. As terrifying as she found the prospect of leading a doomed march aboveground with too few shadowmancers to shield them from the deadly sun, Maika knew that to remain here was folly. Even now, runners returned from scouting missions with wounded from an encounter with a greater predator, or with a voice shakily recounting tales of reavers hunting the road behind them.