The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  “Ah,” Mardoni said. “If you agree to come willingly and peacefully to your own death, their lives will be spared. Tsali’gei and the child will be banished to the Twilight Lands—assuming the Dae do not kill them outright, of course—and your delightful elderly mother will be escorted to the borders of Sindan. Let her throw herself on the Dragon King’s mercy, if she will.”

  Jian’s mind raced. He did not believe for one moment that his family would be spared his fate.

  “What happened to you, Mardoni?” he asked. “Your fine plans to change the empire and lead the daeborn into a brilliant new future. Have you given it all over to lick the emperor’s arse, or were those empty words all along?”

  “Oh no,” Mardoni answered. His words were soft as doeskin, but the light in his eyes was that of a fanatic. “Oh no, de Allyr, not at all. Your death is to be a glorious beginning for us. When your blood mixes with the still-wet ink of the emperor’s new treaty—”

  “War,” Jian’s heart sank. It would work, he knew. When his father learned that Jian had been killed, he would tear the veil asunder. He would ravage both worlds with tooth and claw, and to Yosh with the consequences. “You expect that the twilight lords will kill the emperor for you.”

  “Shhhhh,” Mardoni said, a finger to his lips, and he winked. “Such words as those would send other heads rolling besides mine, you know… Your son’s would be first, I think. Die quietly and know that by doing so you are freeing us all.”

  “You are mad,” Jian said flatly. “Thousands will die. Tens of thousands. And the veil—” Nobody knew for sure what would happen if the veil was destroyed, but most agreed that it would mean death to them all. “You are insane. Mardoni—”

  “No.” Mardoni cut the air between them with the palm of his hand. “Not another word. What is done is past, Sen-Baradam. It has all been decided. There is only the future, and that future lies with the dawn of a new empire.”

  “And a new emperor, I suppose,” Jian replied. “Is there no mercy in your heart for the innocents who will be slaughtered? How can you live with yourself?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Mardoni answered with a sardonic smile, as he plucked a small golden bell from his sleeve and rang it, “my head is still attached to my shoulders. Come the dawn, you will not be able to say the same. You should have learned your lesson with that peasant girl you did not slay, Daechen Jian. Mercy is for the weak.”

  A trio of soldiers entered the room, and he turned.

  “Take this guest to his new quarters,” he ordered, “and see to it that he remains unharmed. Give him food, water, and bedding.” Mardoni turned back. “This is your last night among the living, Tsun-ju Jian de Allyr. Try and get some rest.

  “I hear the Lonely Road is a long one.”

  THIRTY - ONE

  On the seventh day of the rebirth of Kal ne Mur, a handful of the Lich King’s faithful used sticks and swords and spears to lever open a tent-sized ball of dung and foul offal which Arushdemma had left behind as a parting gift. Therein they found Sudduth befouled and naked, curled protectively around her little clay pot.

  Sudduth uncurled herself and rose, shaking free her glorious waist-length locks and cradling the precious plants close to her breasts as she stepped down from the bonelord’s dung-ball as if she were a queen rising with the first blush of dawn. Stepping gracefully, she paid no mind to the jagged shards of bone that poked at the soles of her feet, or the ragged bit of cloak that clung to one heel as she crossed the distance between them. Sudduth looked neither to the left nor the right, but had eyes only for her king.

  Ismai groaned inwardly. Wars had been started—and ended—by women less angry than this one.

  Shat out by a bonelord, Ismai commiserated. She is never going to forgive this.

  Shut up, Kal ne Mur snapped, and he breathed through the urge to leap onto Mutaani’s back and run for the hills. You know nothing of women.

  I know enough about women to know when I am in trouble.

  You are fortunate she is not vash’ai, Ruh’ayya added. Or you would be digging through the sand trying to find all the pieces of your face.

  Sudduth took her place at his side. Ismai did not mention the viscous filth that befouled her hair and skin, the loss of her armor and clothing, and he most certainly did not wrinkle his nose at the stench, which was all but overwhelming.

  “Sudduth, I am very—”

  She held up a hand.

  “I am fine,” she said in a low and even voice that made all the hairs on both arms stand up.

  “But—”

  “I am fine,” she insisted. “It is fine.”

  “I found your sword!” Uruk shouted. Still waist-deep in shit, he brandished the weapon and grinned. “And one sandal!”

  “Sudduth—” Ismai tried again.

  She reached up and patted his cheek, leaving streaks of green and black bonelord shit on his face, which he did not dare wipe. “We will never. Speak of this. Again.” Sudduth turned and walked away, pausing only to snatch a cloak shamefacedly offered by Findla, who had been a war-chief of Sundergaard in the long ago. Both women turned and glared at him for a moment, and then Sudduth stalked out of sight.

  Ismai let out the breath he had been holding. His face where Sudduth had touched him stung, and it stank, but all in all, he thought, he had gotten off lightly.

  “She took that rather well,” Naara said as she joined him. She wet a rag with liquid from her own waterskin and reached up to wash his face. Ismai rubbed both arms to rid them of chillflesh.

  “I do not remember being so scared in all my life.”

  “Which life?” She made a face at the rag and tossed it onto the sand.

  “Any of them.”

  * * *

  “You owe me a boon.”

  Ismai glanced down at Sudduth. I thought we were never going to speak of this again, he thought. But as it would have been inconvenient for him to die this day, he spoke carefully.

  “Name it.”

  “You—the boy Ismai, that is—mentioned that there was a grove of trees tended by the Zeerani Mothers. If this grove still stands, I would like to plant my children there.”

  “You would go off and leave them?”

  “I… perhaps. If the grove, or some part of it, still stands. If I can find a trustworthy person to tend them. Perhaps.” She frowned down at the little clay pot, and the vigorous sprouts that seemed determined to outlive them all. “I live a dangerous life. The road is no place for them.”

  “It is a hard world,” Ismai agreed, thinking of the boy Sammai. “No place may be safe for them, but we will go.” She stared at him, and he added, “As you wish, we will go. And if it is your desire, I will help you plant them myself, and build a wall around them. If that will make you happy.”

  She clutched the pot tighter. “Surely we do not have time to spend on such a small thing?”

  “We have a few hours to spare for a friend,” he answered.

  Sudduth looked up at him, eyes wide and shining as a live woman’s, and the smile she graced him with was brilliant.

  “You know,” she told him, “when I was young and hotblooded—and had a beating heart—and when you were tall and handsome and held the world in your fist, I loved you a little. But I like you more now.” Then she dropped back to walk with Uruk.

  “If I live and die a thousand times,” Ismai said to himself, “I will never begin to understand women.” Ibna, who walked within earshot, grinned.

  “None of us will. Fortunately for you, you only have to mete out vengeance, subdue a kingdom, and keep a dragon from waking to destroy the world. Simpler things, eh?”

  “Simpler,” Ismai agreed. “And safer.”

  A thousand years of deathless slumber had left the world changed not at all. Nothing was ever simple, and nobody was ever truly safe.

  The Mah’zula formed a loose ring around the perimeter of Aish Kalumm, but these false warriors and their vash’ai danced aside as the Lich King arrived.
Perhaps they had heard of the rout at Urak. None had lived to tell that tale, but rumors flew up and down the Dibris swifter than birds, and bad news swiftest of all.

  Kal ne Mur looked upon the ruins and frowned at the grief tearing through him. He had in his lifetimes razed cities far grander than this had been, and never had he felt such anguish.

  Cities die, he explained. People die. Lovers, and children, and mothers. We are all just sand in the wind, after all. A thousand years from now the greatest of us will only be a remnant of song and poorly understood poetry.

  Except for you, Ismai retorted, and Kal ne Mur was surprised at the anger in his tone. You and your sworn fighters.

  This is true, the Lich King allowed, unless of course Sajani tires of our human blunderings and rises to destroy us all. I have had a thousand years to think on this, and am almost certain we will be obliterated along with the world.

  And if you are not?

  Then we will spend an eternity in the void, envying you who have died.

  “Ah!” he said aloud. “The Mother’s Grove! So a portion of it survived, after all.”

  Ahead of him wardens in blue and Mothers in ragged remnants of robes, a sad and shabby reminder of their old finery, toiled among the remaining trees and the broken statues of vash’ai. He rode through jagged, charred stumps and looked upon the shattered statuary.

  It was not enough for them to destroy these people’s city and their livelihoods, he thought. They tried to destroy beauty and the memories of love, as well. What heart is so bitter that it cannot abide the joy of another?

  A voice rang out from behind him.

  “Hail, Ismai son of Nurati! I see you have returned to me, and this time with a fitting bride gift!”

  Ismai closed his dead eyes and reached for control, lest the lich-wrath burning through him escape and destroy what little was left of this place. It was not Kal ne Mur’s fury, after all, but his own human heart that had been tied to this place, and which now lay charred and shattered as the grove. When he opened his eyes again, it was the boy Ismai who saw what the Mah’zula had done, he who turned his mount and faced his tormentor.

  “Ishtaset,” he said.

  She grinned at him, the very picture of desert beauty, strength and prowess. Kingdoms had gone to war over women less glorious, and wars had been won by warriors less skilled. She was flanked by two fists of her riders, some of whom had been warriors before the fall of Aish Kalumm.

  “Hadda,” he called to one of them. “How can you ride with those who murdered your brother?”

  The warrior’s face reddened, and she averted her eyes.

  “Ah now, beloved, have you no care for my heart? You return to me with a worthy gift, but spare words for other women?” Ishtaset laughed as if she had not a care in the world, as if the Lich King and his hordes of undead had not come to put an end to her and her false Mah’zula. “Where are the tender words for your mate? Where is my kiss?”

  “I would rather kiss Arushdemma,” Ismai replied, and Sudduth burst out laughing.

  Ishtaset’s smile hardened. “And I had had such high hopes for you, little Ismai. Ah well, I suppose the line of Zula Din is not what it once was. But, oh! I brought you a gift too, and you might as well have it.” So saying, she unfastened a largish leather bag from her saddle and slung it underhand at Ismai. He reached out, unthinking, and plucked it from the air.

  It was heavy, and it stank. Ismai’s gut lurched. He had played aklashi too many times as a youngling not to have an idea what was in that bag.

  “Who?” he asked simply.

  The dead froze at the sound in his voice, and all eyes turned to Ishtaset.

  “That little warden you sent out on your errand. Jasin, was it? He had a mouth full of lies and a head full of ideas too big for one such as he.” Ishtaset shrugged and wiped her hands together. “So I relieved him of it.”

  A howl rose from deep in the Zeera, a sound unlike anything Ismai had ever heard. It was not the soft singing of the hot sands, so like his mother’s voice. It was not the wailing cries of vash’ai seeking a kith-bond. It was not even the hopeless wailing of the undead, forever denied the peace and respite of the Lonely Road. This was the sound of trees breaking, of rocks burning, the cracked shriek of a cold and motherless heart.

  Ismai’s grief and rage welled up, endless, edgeless, bottomless, and found an echo in the song of the Lich King. Even as Ismai opened his hand and let the bag drop, even as his Mutaani reared and screamed defiance, a wave of misery rolled from his mouth like cold black fog across the Zeera. Wind whipped across the shattered landscape of Ismai’s youth, the shattered landscape of his heart, and it summoned the Lich King back to his true nature.

  The song lifted, it called, it commanded, and the dead answered. The horde screamed as one, heads thrown back, teeth bared, eyes glinting red and wet in the dying light, and as Ismai lost his war with the Lich King so too did they lose what little hold they had on their humanity. Swords and spears and knives drawn they rushed upon the Mah’zula, screaming for blood and bloody vengeance.

  It rained in the Zeera that day, a bitter red rain that nourished nothing. Ismai did not see who killed Ishtaset, only that she had been killed, trampled and torn almost beyond recognition. Of the Mah’zula not one remained alive, not even those Ismai had known as warriors and with whom he had played childish games just last year. They had betrayed him, and their people.

  False warriors, he thought, and not an echo of sorrow was left to him. Never again will they betray me.

  He would see to that.

  Mutaani danced beneath the Lich King as he raised his arms high and lowered his singing voice to a near whisper. He crooned, he seduced, he cajoled—and he raised them. He raised them all. Bound them to his word, to his will, bound them and bade them stay. Never to rest, never to cease, never to meet up with loved ones along the Lonely Road.

  Ishtaset was first to rise, battered and ruined as she was, and stumble to him on broken feet. Ismai reached down to touch her bloodied short warrior’s mane, but it was Kal ne Mur who smiled. At his touch, Ishtaset was made whole again, and beautiful, if one could look past the blood and gore and the milk-blind eyes of death.

  “My… king…” she ground out in a voice like broken rocks. All around them the newly dead rose in response to the Lich King’s song. Most of them, like Ishtaset, were revenants. Those who had been too savaged by their manner of death to be raised whole would, he knew, combine into a new bonelord, and eventually take a name and its place at the rear of his army.

  The Mah’zula here had been destroyed, as he would destroy them all, and the people of Aish Kalumm had been set free, if not in the manner any of them might have wished.

  Ismai’s fist closed in Ishtaset’s hair. He leaned down so that his face was inches from hers.

  “Now,” he said in a voice harsh from singing and thick with grief, “now you are useful to me, and I have had my revenge.”

  But there was no fear in those eyes, or acknowledgment. There was… nothing.

  “How does it taste, Father?” Naara stared at Ishtaset, and then at him, and a faint frown creased her brow. “How does it feel? Kishah. Vengeance.”

  Ismai released Ishtaset’s hair and his own hold on life. What was there left for him, after this? Ismai straightened in his saddle and frowned down at himself. He had not so much as a smear of blood on him, and that did not seem right.

  “Like nothing,” he told her. “Like nothing at all.”

  * * *

  The people gathered before him. They came wailing and afraid, stone-faced and angry. They came with fear and sorrow and revenge in their hearts, but as he called them, they came, and that was what really mattered. Those of his followers who yet lived looked upon the horde with horror. They had not been able to lay their dead to rest before they rose again—those who could.

  A new bonelord bellowed to the south. Farrakh Nahol’i’khan, it called itself, the black wind that swallows all hope.


  The newly raised dead had sworn no oath to him. They had walked the Lonely Road, if only for a short distance, before being brought back. Had shed their lives, their memories like old clothes, and now, stuffed back into them unwillingly, found the fit not to their liking. These dead wanted no more to do with the land of the living.

  Ismai could feel those trapped souls straining and screaming inside their meat cages, could see the grief and horror on the faces of the people as they looked into the eyes of their erstwhile companions, lovers, sons, and saw… nothing. No love, no hate, no recognition at all.

  Yes, he thought as he watched the people turn away from him. I am a monster, but I am your monster, so be grateful.

  True to his word, he helped Sudduth plant her small saplings. With his own hands he carried pots of water from the Dibris for them, set a low stone wall around them, and bade the living Mothers to tend them well. Then, not trusting to the goodwill of humans toward things they did not understand, he set Ibna to watch over the grove and see to the rebuilding of Aish Kalumm.

  “You wanted to make beautiful things,” he told the too-peaceful warrior. “Here is your chance. I charge you with rebuilding Aish Kalumm, the City of Mothers, larger and grander than it was before, with beauty to be found in every corner. Make it a place of peace and respite, for the heart of every mother is like a garden in bloom. Build a city that is well-guarded and easily defended, for the hearts of men are dark and terrible.”

  “As you will, your Arrogance.” Ibna bowed low, his dark face split with a smile that made him look boyish and alive. “It will be done.” He sauntered off, nearly skipping, to the grove.

  Sudduth stared at the Lich King. “You have done a good thing, your Arrogance.”

  “A small enough thing,” he allowed. “This costs me nothing, will benefit the people, and it will make Ibna happy.”

  “You have… changed. Your heart is soft.”

  “A good change, I hope?”

  “A good change in a friend, but for a king?” She shifted her eyes to look over his shoulder, north toward the land of the Dragon Kings. “Who can say?”