The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  Unless, of course, they died in the attempt. In that case their bones would bake to a fine dust and their spirits become angry shadows, the better to harass and hinder those arrogant enough to tempt a similar fate.

  This end of the shadowed road, Keoki told them, was known as the Leavings. He was not sure whether it was because the traveler was leaving the livable world for the Seared Lands, leaving the Seared Lands, or because it was littered with the leavings of unnamed, unsung travelers who had attempted this same desperate journey in order to bring the life-sustaining red salt found only in Quarabala to the rest of the world. There were bits of clothing scattered about, rags of silk and linen and leather. Tools and weapons of various make, necessities that had become unnecessary. The bones of a horse made Sulema fiercely glad she had sent Atemi to Uthrak.

  If I die in this place, she silently asked Akari, let my good mare lead a happy life. Give her stallions and foals to love, and a girl wiser than myself to love her in return.

  Here, it seemed to her, was the story of humankind written in trash. The chronicle of people willing to shed everything in a desperate attempt to flee an inhospitable land in search of new life, and others willing to risk life to travel into the Seared Lands in an equally desperate bid for red salt and wealth. Only refugees and merchants would be foolhardy enough to attempt this crossing.

  Refugees, merchants, she amended silently, and one reckless warrior. She grimaced as smooth stones rolled underfoot to reveal themselves as a rib, part of a shoulder blade, the head of a femur.

  She, Hannei, and Rehaza Entanye bound veils across their faces like the touar of Ja’Sajani, and these were soon caked with the pale gray dust. Sulema’s eye burned, her small ruff of hair grew heavy with the stuff, and her skin itched. She prayed to Akari, as he rose in the sky above them, that there were no strong winds in this land akin to the violent dust storms of the Zeera.

  Sulema sighed into her veil, already hating the chafe of fabric against her skin and the taste of stale air, and plodded on.

  * * *

  The air grew hotter, drier, and more hateful, the ground harder underfoot, and the eye of Akari more baleful with every step until Sulema could have screamed in frustration—had she been able to catch her breath. They had scarcely left the foothills of Jehannim, and already Sulema felt as if she would burst into flame at any moment.

  It burns my lungs, she thought between gasps. What kind of people would choose to live in a land where the air burns your lungs?

  They did not stop for food or drink, but took mouthfuls of water from skins as they jogged on toward Min Yahtamu. Sulema managed to choke down a bit of salted tarbok and wished she had not, as the salt seemed to immediately leech water from her mouth and throat, leaving them burning worse than before. Neither did she nor her companions speak to one another. The only sounds were the soft thut-thut-thut of their feet on the unyielding ground, occasional gasps for air, and the soft music that flowed forth from Keoki’s lute.

  As Keoki played, shadows boiled up from the road itself, a dark tide of malignant interest which washed over them with each note, each stride, shielding their thin skins from Akari’s hungry gaze. The shadows brushed against Sulema as she moved; they played with her short hair and whispered obscene suggestions into her ears, just beyond her hearing. It was all but intolerable, but the Quarabalese paid it no more mind than they paid the heat and the dry air and the silence of a dead land. Sulema supposed they were used to it, just as she had been used to her mother’s dreamshifting; in a world of darkness and dangers, some evils were necessary.

  Rehaza Entanye led, Hannei had settled into the rear, and Sulema loped along beside Keoki. The shadowmancer moved as if through a dream with his eyes half open and mouth working. It reminded her of her mother’s dreamshifting. Sulema assumed he was as vulnerable in his unaware state, so she positioned herself as a vash’ai might have done, eyes darting this way and that, as vigilant as she could be in a land where nothing grew, or moved, or lived.

  I will never complain about the tedium of guard duty again, she vowed silently, or the heat of midsun in the Zeera. I wonder if death is this boring. An image came to her mind then, of herself as a shade, haunting this very road, of long ages spent doing nothing but waiting for a feckless traveler to pass so that she might hinder and harass them. It seemed to Sulema that this would be the deepest and worst level of Yosh.

  Eventually Akari tired of trying to roast them through the veil of shadows and flew on toward tomorrow. Their shadows stretched long behind their weary feet. Sulema’s legs burned like meat in the campfire, Rehaza Entanye staggered and nearly fell, even Hannei struggled to keep shuffling along. Only Keoki, thinnest and weakest of them, seemed to have no difficulty with the pace. His music wound on, over and through their little group, urging them forward to life, to life.

  Sulema shot the boy an admiring glance, and only then did she see the streaks of red and black blood smeared across the face of his lute like war paint.

  They reached the tumbled rock bones of Min Yahtamu just as Akari dipped his wings and dove beyond the horizon. Though the crumbling walls and collapsed tile roofs afforded no real shelter, Sulema could not help feeling that they had achieved something grand, and let out a dusty yell of victory. Keoki jerked at the sound as if startled from a bad dream; his legs and music faltered to a stop. Tremors wracked his thin frame and he dropped to his knees before the broken gates.

  “Water,” he whispered. She raised one of her own waterskins, bringing it to his mouth, and held it as he sucked it half empty in one long, greedy, desperate pull—without spilling so much as a drop. His wide, pale eyes rolled up and stared through her, unfocused.

  “Thank you,” he managed. His hand spasmed across the strings of his lute, striking a discordant note. The shadows which he had ensorcelled dispersed, spitting in disappointed wroth. Sulema meant to take a scant mouthful of water from the skin, but when the liquid touched her tongue, she found herself seized by a violent thirst and emptied the other half.

  Rehaza Entanye stumbled to stand beside Sulema. She tore the veils away from her face and breathed in long, ragged gasps as she gazed upon the ruined city.

  “Min Yahtamu,” she whispered. “The city of lost souls.” And she laughed as at a bitter joke. “This was the heart of the world, once; all of the wealth of known civilization flowed through here. Salt and spidersilk, wine and spices, slaves and sweet water. The queen of commerce, they called her. Now the queen is dead, and her sister Min Yaarif is nothing more than an ugly old whore that gives all her customers the pox.”

  Hannei jogged to a halt beside Sulema and regarded Rehaza Entanye in a long, unreadable stare. She did not hurry to remove her own veils, or partake of meat or water, but touched Keoki’s shoulder, startling him again. She gestured at the buildings, the sky, and then back at the road behind them; he nodded and followed her into Min Yahtamu. It seemed to Sulema as if the shadows of Min Yahtamu reached out to greet him.

  “Hannei has the right of it; we need to find what shelter we can, and quickly,” Rehaza Entanye said. “And build a fire with whatever brush we have left. The nights are likely to be cold, even so close to the Seared Lands—and the smell of blood will bring predators.” She followed Hannei and Keoki into the darkening ruins.

  Strangely enough, these words gave Sulema new strength. Hunger, thirst, and greater predators—these were dangers she had faced before, honest and straightforward enemies that she knew how to fight.

  They found a squat, square building which seemed solid enough, and which was too small to house any unpleasant surprises. It had a narrow doorway, no windows, and a roof that was mostly intact; as good as a palace for travelers in need. Smaller and less grand by far than its wretched neighbors, the building had been used for storage in days gone perhaps, or housing for animals, or some such humble thing. Soot-stained walls and the leavings of fires told them that these stout walls had sheltered travelers in recent days; again Sulema found reassurance in th
is proof that they were not the only ones mad enough to make this journey, though the sense of comfort was born of her own wishes; she had no way of knowing whether those who had gone on before had made it to their destination in one piece.

  Keoki swayed on his feet as if he had drunk more usca than was good for him, mumbled something incoherent under his breath, and then collapsed upon the dirt floor. Sulema and Rehaza Entanye both rushed to kneel at his side, but he seemed unharmed.

  “He is just exhausted,” Rehaza Entanye said, and Sulema agreed. They arranged the sleeping sorcerer upon his cloak, covering his exposed skin with another, as Hannei pulled sticks from her pack and built a fire.

  Sorcery, treachery, and dragon’s magic, Sulema thought as Hannei’s fire set the shadows to dancing. These are things I can neither fight nor control. But thirst, and weariness, and the threat of predators in the darkness? Bring them on, world. Show me yours.

  Foolish child, Istaza Ani would have scolded. Do not taunt an enemy until you have learned the reach of her sword.

  * * *

  The women broke the day’s fast on dried meat, dried cheese, and cruelly rationed water, and this mean meal was shared in an uncomfortable silence. Sulema did not trust the slave-trainer any further than she could have thrown her after the day’s run and had no desire to speak to her. She kept sneaking looks at Hannei, who mostly stared into the fire or into the growing dark.

  That one, it seemed, had no desire to communicate with her and likely would not have spoken even if she could. The shadowmancer lay where they had rolled him in his cloak, occasionally letting out a long, low moan in his sleep, like a child suffering from nightmares. Sulema would have welcomed the company of Leviathus, or Ani, or Daru. She wondered where her mother’s apprentice might have gotten to, and feared he had met an unkind fate.

  This saddened her. The world had never seemed to want the boy around, and he had deserved better from all of them.

  A rustling interrupted Sulema’s reverie, along with a chittering. The women leapt to their feet, swords drawn, forming a wordless shield between the sleeping sorcerer and the world outside. Sulema understood—they all did— that any of the rest of them were expendable; without one, the others might survive. Without their shadowmancer, however, they would be burned to smoking husks at the first light of day.

  The chittering grew loud, louder, and finally its source was revealed. It was an enormous insect like a soldier beetle but longer and flatter, its shiny black carapace marked in red like a splatter of fresh blood. It skittered out of the night and came at them through the narrow doorway, mandibles gaping. Sulema skewered the thing with her shamsi and flung it back out into the darkness, grimacing at the crunching sounds that followed, and wiping yellow ichor from her sword.

  Clusters of tiny, glittering eyes appeared in the darkness outside their shelter like stars caught in Illindra’s web, and Rehaza Entanye spoke at last.

  “It is going to be a long night.”

  * * *

  The beetles were no more than the first wave of things that wanted to dine on human flesh, and they were not the worst. The lizards, Sulema thought, were the worst. When killed they smelled of human excrement, and they were the most persistent. The besieged women used an alarming amount of the fuel they had brought with them from Jehannim to build their fire so high and so hot that their little shelter seemed a sweat lodge.

  Finally even the lizards abandoned the attack, either daunted by the defenders’ fierceness or—more likely—sated by the flesh of their own fallen comrades. The crunching and slurping noises continued almost till dawn, but by then Sulema was too weary to be horrified and drifted off. She fell asleep between one breath and the next straight into a dream of masks and murder—

  And it was time to wake, to stand, and to start the whole thing over again.

  Keoki woke last and hardest; Rehaza Entanye had to shake the shadowmancer to his senses. He ate a little food and drank a little water as if neither held any interest. When he had finished he ran tattered fingers across the bloody strings of his lute, winced, and began to play. Shadows once again sprang from the ground, weaving themselves into an unwilling protection as they danced to the shadowmancer’s tune. The three weary travelers shouldered their packs and steeled their hearts as they made ready to leave the wretched husk of Min Yahtamu and begin the desperate run for the Edge.

  “Guts and goatfuckery,” Sulema grumbled as she stared out across the shadowed road. “The Jehannim are a blight and last night was a misery. Surely a bit of a run cannot be worse than what we have already endured.”

  “Ahhhhhh,” Rehaza Entanye sighed, “I wish you had not said that.”

  * * *

  Hands gripped Sulema’s shoulder, digging into the half-healed flesh where she had been bitten and sending waves of agony rippling across her back and arms. She sucked in a breath to scream, but the air burned worse than her wounds, and she managed only a strangled wheeze.

  “Sulema.” It was Rehaza Entanye. Her words swam up to her like bubbles from the bottom of the river. “Sulema, it is time to stop. Sulema, stop.”

  Sulema forced her legs to cease moving, her lungs to keep sucking air, and willed her heart to keep pumping as someone squirted water between her clenched teeth. Water. Water. So cool and wet and good she nearly wept.

  She was struck in the face once, twice, three times, so that she reached out and grabbed the hand that was doing so, blinking an angry eyeful of sand away to glare through the deepening gloom into the face of her attacker.

  It was Hannei.

  Sulema growled at her once sword-sister, and Hannei growled back.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Rehaza Entanye said sharply. “Get some meat and water into your stupid mouths and get ready to fight. They are coming.”

  Sulema spat sand and blood upon the seared earth, narrowly missing the collapsed form of the shadowmancer, and stared into the rapidly growing darkness. Already she could see pale eyes staring at them from the deepening gloom, scavengers eager for the taste of her flesh. From somewhere far away, a harsh voice screamed, the sound rising higher and higher till she could not hear it, though she knew it was still there. The eyes winked out as that voice was answered by another, and then a third, much closer now.

  “Reavers!” Rehaza Entanye shouted, voice high with panic. “Ware reavers!”

  Sulema drew her shamsi, willing it to shop shaking, and spat again.

  “Show me yours, you goatfucking sons of… goats.”

  Hannei drew her own swords, dark blades seeming eager to drink in the night. Her shoulders shook, and a terrible raw laugh came from her open mouth.

  Well, Sulema thought, I suppose it is better than crying…

  There came to Sulema’s ears a terrible hissing, as if all the spiders in the world had converged upon the small group and meant to make an end to them. These malevolent voices grew closer, closer, until Sulema could see the creatures to which they belonged.

  What might have once been human loped toward them, now and again leaping forward or scuttling sideways like pale two-legged Araids, mouths gaping wide in hungry grins devoid of humor or soul. The sight of them kindled the pain in Sulema’s shoulder into a white-hot agony, and she screamed in terror and in fury.

  Their faces, the way they moved, the way the rising moonslight shone upon their chitinous white skin roused Sulema to a visceral wrath. She screamed again, choking on her desire to kill these things, to fall upon them and chop the abominations into pieces so small their own mothers would not recognize them.

  Hannei stared at her, surprise upon her face, and then her face broke into the first real smile Sulema had seen since their meeting in Min Yaarif. Their gazes met across drawn blades, and the two of them shared a moment of bloodlust and bravery.

  Rehaza Entanye attempted to rouse the shadowmancer, to no avail. She straightened from a crouch, glanced at her companions, then at the advancing line of fellspawn. She drew her own sword and set her feet in a fighter�
�s stance, baring her teeth at their enemies.

  One of the pale shadows sprang toward them, and Sulema’s world shrank to a pinpoint of pale hides, burning eyes, and clawlike hands grasping at her skin. She ran to meet the foremost of the creatures, so caught up in battle-lust and hatred that all her training, Ani’s wise words, and endless battle drills fell away like shed skin. There were only the dark, looming shapes and hated faces to cleave and rend and smash.

  Driving the point of her blade through one throat, she dodged a spray of ichor and spun to sweep the legs from beneath a second assailant, cleaving that one’s spine between its shoulder blades as it tried to regain its feet. Hannei danced beside her, hewing limb from torso with her dark and dancing blades, mouth open in a terrible silent laugh as the two of them cut a path of destruction through the advancing line of monsters.

  For monsters they were, unnatural things born of unclean magic. Though they wore the faces and tattered clothing of the people they once had been, Sulema felt no kinship with these foul beings, no sorrow for what they had suffered in life. She embraced the flames of hatred and revulsion which engulfed her, driving her on even when the remaining reavers hesitated and would have pulled back. Passion sent her into the night in pursuit of the retreating enemy when common sense and years of hard training would have held her back.

  She skewered the last of them with her shamsi, turning her blade so that it grated between the thing’s ribs, and felt no pity in her heart as a monster with the pale face of a young boy fell in pieces at her feet.

  Not human, she told herself as she came to a halt at last, far from the sight of her companions and with nothing left to kill. These are things. Monsters. Not human. Chest heaving, muscles in her arms burning, her shoulder a cold inferno of agony, she was so overcome with dark frustrated anger that she threw back her head and howled.