The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  Aasah is of these people, she knew immediately, though their eyes were brown as any Zeerani’s and their skin unscarred. And Yaela. It occurred to her to wonder—even as she shook free of gore and surprise and made ready to rejoin the battle—to wonder how tiny, lush Yaela could ever have been born of such tall stock.

  Three more warriors passed by, all women. Two of them carried spears, the third bore a kind of long spiked hammer and a delicate-looking oblong shield. Their long legs carried them over the ground quickly and gracefully. Sulema had heard that when Akari showed his face over the Seared Lands, any soul unfortunate enough to be caught aboveground would be burned to ash, so the people of Quarabala learned from childhood how to run faster than tarbok, faster than the wind—faster than daybreak. She had never believed those stories growing up. Now, with the stories made flesh, she found it difficult not to believe.

  Keoki’s magic failed him. The song died upon his lute and his half of the shadow-storm faltered and fled. As it did, the Quarabalese warriors poured from the cracked earth at the Edge and ran to their aid. The tides of combat shifted as spear and hammer and bow sang of death and victory and one more sunrise.

  The reavers fell back before the onslaught, but it was too late. The swarm was overwhelmed as a warrior with one sword and a single sword-sister and a Quarabalese army found her enemies falling before her like sand in a strong wind. The Arachnist shadowmancer was one of the last to fall. When he did, his magic snuffed out with such force that it made her ears pop.

  It is over, Sulema thought wonderingly as she wiped her blade on corpse rags. She grimaced at the ringing pain in her ears and swallowed, trying to clear them. By Akari, it is over and I am still alive.

  She turned to share this thought with Hannei and stopped mid-swallow. Her sword-sister stood with both swords held loosely in one hand, dripping blood and ichor, though none of it appeared to be hers. Her shoulders were curled forward, and one arm was held protectively across her abdomen. She had a wistful, frightened, faraway look in her eyes, a look that any woman would recognize. Sulema had last seen that look upon a friend’s face when Neptara had announced her pregnancy.

  “Hannei!” Sulema whispered, shocked. “Um Hannei?” Hannei twitched, and for a moment her face was white in the night with terror. Sulema started toward her, but Hannei held up her empty hand in a pleading gesture.

  No, she mouthed. No. And she turned away.

  Just then, someone touched Sulema’s wounded shoulder. She jumped, startled and hurt, and turned so abruptly that Keoki released his grip on her and took two hasty steps back. The shadowmancer gathered himself and smiled. His eyes were full of moonslight, his fingers dripped blood onto the angry ground, and his words carried all the tender weariness of the world.

  “Sulema an Hafsa Azeina, an Wyvernus ne Atu,” he intoned, “Dragon Queen of Atualon, I am humbled to present you to her Highness, the Grand Princess Tamimeha.” The woman with the odd hammer stepped forward. One hand curled around the handle of her weapon, which she held casually slung across her shoulders.

  “Your Radiance,” Tamimeha said, and her smile was solemn in the moonslight. “I thank you for honoring us with the opportunity to kill our enemies. It is a glorious night.” She held out both her hands.

  Pushing the revelation about Hannei to the back of her mind, Sulema clasped them warmly and returned the woman’s somber look with the grin that had gotten her into—and out of—trouble, for as long as she could remember.

  “Ehuani, I am no queen—but it is a glorious night,” she agreed. “I thank you, your Highness, for honoring us with the opportunity not to die.”

  The Quarabalese went still for a moment, and then burst into uproarious laughter. Tamimeha slung her free arm across Sulema’s shoulder and hugged her tight, as a sword-sister might have done.

  “Come then, daughter of the dreamshifter, and let us feast and drink to our mutual honor. After,” she sniffed the air delicately and winked, “you have bathed. Aueh, but you stink!”

  THIRTY - THREE

  There were no leavings at this end of the shadowed road, nothing to mark the beginnings or endings of desperate journeys, no bones or knives or scraps of life. Sulema wondered at the abandoned hulk of a city she had at first mistaken for a jagged mountain range. As they passed between ruined red-brick buildings, fine as small palaces, she felt the weight of their judgment pressing upon her.

  My Atualonian ancestor did this, she thought, remembering the stories Istaza Ani had told her. That Dragon King—Kal ne Mur, he did this when he loosed atulfah and sundered the world. The buildings stared down at her with empty eyes, and Sulema felt they loved her not. This ruined world is the true legacy of the Dragon Kings— and my inheritance.

  The road they traveled became wide and well-worn, and led them through the gaping walls of a city that in its day had been grander even than Atukos. Darkness came upon them as they walked through the giant arched doorway, and Sulema shivered.

  “This is the great city of Saodan?” she marveled. “It feels like a tomb.”

  “This is not Saodan; it is nothing more than a nameless city like any number scattered across the Seared Lands. Nevertheless, you speak of my homeland, and though she is not what she once was—thanks in no small part to your forbears, Sulema—Quarabala is no tomb.” Keoki frowned. “In ages past she was the center of commerce and culture for all the world. This city was so minor that we do not even remember its name, and yet even this humble place was grander in its time than the palaces of Atualon or Sindan. And Saodan—Saodan—was a jewel in this world like no other, so splendid that our dreams are too small now to remember the least of her glory. Atualonian kings and Sindanese emperors alike tried—and failed—to seize our land and claim her riches as their own. Scholars traveled a lifetime to spend a single year in the libraries of Saodan, monks and sorcerers and mystics would have given their thumbs for a glance at our sacred texts. And the music…” His voice trailed off, wistful, and with bloodied fingers he stroked a soft lament upon his lute. “The music. The art. The stories.” He sighed. “Saodan was the heart of the mightiest civilization ever to begrace our world, yet it is all but a memory now. Memory and shades of the dead, buried far beneath the flesh of a lost world.”

  “Not all is memory,” Tamimeha chided. “Not all is lost.”

  “Not all,” Keoki agreed, and he silenced his music. “But most.”

  “It is much the same where I come from,” Sulema agreed, thinking of Aish Kalumm, of the empty Madraj waiting for the return of the people.

  Keoki frowned. “But Atualon is thriving—so I hear. Thriving and wealthy and prosperous.”

  “I do not come from Atualon,” Sulema explained. “My mother and I escaped from that place when I was small. I was raised in the Zeera. The Zeeranim are my people.” Beside her, Hannei grunted agreement.

  “Ah, that explains your sword, then. And your, um, your vest.”

  There was a slight cough, and Sulema glanced at Keoki. He was blushing.

  He likes me, she realized. Just what I need—a sorcerer with a crush.

  Hannei made another disturbing noise, and Sulema realized that her sword-sister was laughing at them.

  “When will we reach the city?” she asked for a change in subject. “The new city, I mean—your people did rebuild, did they not?”

  “They did,” Tamimeha agreed. Her eyes sparkled with pride in the low torchlight, and dimples appeared at the corners of her stern mouth. “The heart of Quarabala is now buried deep beneath the ground, carved into the bones of the world. Even one born as you were in the shining city of Atualon, and raised among the glorious singing sands of the Zeera, would not find our Saodan wanting for beauty and wonder.”

  “If I can get a bath and something other than pemmican to eat, I will be happy,” Sulema said. “Then I am to find a girl, for so I am sworn, and return her to her aunt’s care. Maika, her name is. Do you know of her? She is young, not yet come of age, and, ah…” She realized Yaela h
ad never told her what the girl looked like, and scowled. “Most likely she is short for your kind?”

  “There are many girls named Maika,” Tamimeha answered, and something in her expression was unreadable. “Perhaps we can find yours, but first, we must travel through the Edge of the Seared Lands, where my people await your arrival.”

  “Await my arrival?” Sulema asked. “I do not understand. There are none in Quarabala who know of my quest.” Come to think of it, Tamimeha and her warriors had seemed to be expecting them, which was impossible, unless…

  Magic. Sulema made a sour face; even here in the Seared Lands, she could not escape magic or the politics of power. Would she never be free of it?

  “You will see. Tomorrow night, you will see. For the rest of this night we will walk, and tomorrow we will rest and tend to our wounds in this old place. Tomorrow night, we make a final run for the Edge.”

  The Quarabalese warriors shared another enigmatic look, and Sulema rolled her eyes.

  “But…”

  “You will see,” Tamimeha answered in a voice that reminded her of Istaza Ani, one that let Sulema know she would get nothing further from this woman. “Tomorrow night, you will see.”

  * * *

  They walked the remainder of that night in silence through the once-splendid halls and passages of the ancient city. As they passed the remains of a garden or statue, or passed through an elaborately carved doorway, Sulema wished she could have seen this place as it once had been. It was not difficult to imagine the ornate fountains filled with water-lotus and fish, or the courtyards with musicians and storytellers, and it ached her heart to think that all of this had been destroyed by men with a lust for war and dominance.

  All this beauty lost forever, she thought, trailing her hand along a wall engraved with flowering vines. And for what? So some man could park his arse on a golden throne and eat stinky cheeses. If I were truly the Dragon Queen—

  The wall beneath her hand trembled and Sulema froze, seized with the irrational certainty that her thoughts had woken Sajani, and that the world was about to end. Dust fell, and then rocks; the walls of the city swayed and danced to the notes of a song even more ancient than itself as the earth tore asunder. The warriors’ voices rose in alarm and pain as walls which had stood for millennia swayed, failed, and collapsed, the dust of their destruction rising like the smoke of a funeral pyre.

  Mother, Sulema thought, and reached out with her mind—but her mother was dead, gone ahead of her down the Lonely Road, and could not save her. Nor would Wyvernus sing Sajani to sleep this time; they were both gone, leaving the world dim and hopeless, and it was all her fault—

  Ja’Akari! snapped the voice of Istaza Ani where it slept deep in her heart. Stop crying over spilt usca and do something! Are you a milk-mouthed brat, or are you the warrior I raised?

  Under the sun, I am Ja’Akari, daughter of the Zeera, Sulema thought. The storm within her stilled, even as the world around her went to pieces. I am the daughter of Hafsa Azeina, I am the daughter of Wyvernus.

  I am SULEMA!

  She raised her voice in song.

  Untrained as she was and without the aid of a dragon mask, weary and wounded and far from the comforts of her home, still she was Sulema, and she was something. She had her shamsi at one side, and her sword-sister at the other, and the song of the Zeera in her heart.

  It is enough, she told herself, and let the song that kindled in her heart burst through the dragon’s mask, the paper-thin maze of bones in her face that made those of her line unique in all the world. It will have to be enough.

  And it was, for now.

  The infant song of the dragon’s daughter rang through the bones of the world. It whispered as a wind through Shehannam; the Huntress paused, lifting her eyes from the game trail, and her hounds raised their bloodied muzzles to howl at the ghost moons. Sulema’s song swept across the sands of the Zeera, and roused the golden sands to harmony; it dropped like flowers into the swollen waters of the Naapua, upon the Forbidden City itself, and woke in the heart of a trapped sea-thing a canticle of joy. Born of the innocent hope of a dreamshifter’s daughter, the song wove itself into the breath of the world and the dreams of a dragon, who roused, stirred, and drifted back to deep slumber.

  * * *

  Sulema woke and found herself lying next to a small and cheerless fire. The faces of her companions were as grim, and no few were bruised or bloodied. “There was an earthquake?” Rehaza Entanye said. She stared into the fire, and there was a question in her voice.

  Sulema did not answer it, but the stares of accusation lay upon her like a cairn of stones. I am the daughter of the dreamshifter, she thought, daughter of the dragon. Death and destruction follow me like shadows. She said nothing, but sat up and accepted a waterskin from Hannei.

  The world had stopped quaking; Sajani, it seemed, had chosen not to wake from her dream just yet. But soon, Sulema thought, soon. She did not know whether her small song had played any part in this, only that the power she could summon fell desperately short of what would be needed to save the world should the dragon truly fight to wake.

  One of the Quarabalese warriors began to moan. At first Sulema supposed he had been among those wounded in the earthquake, but soon learned that it was much worse.

  “Niekeke has been bitten,” a Quarabalese woman whispered to Tamimeha where she stood near the fire. “He is turning.” Tamimeha closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she seemed to have aged ten years.

  “At daybreak,” she told the other woman, who bowed and faded back into the shadows.

  “He was bitten?” Sulema asked.

  “By a reaver,” one of the Quarabalese said.

  “He will die at daybreak,” Tamimeha explained in a flat voice that invited no discussion. “Better that than to become one of the forsaken.”

  “Forsaken?” That needed no explanation, really. “Do your people not have a cure for this… affliction?” She had hoped that the Quarabalese would be able to provide medicines for the reaver venom in her own blood, since Yaela had carried the loremaster’s potions with her. Given Tamimeha’s unyielding countenance, however, she decided it best to keep that a secret after all.

  Tamimeha shook her head. “Such a cure exists, but it requires the venom of a young nahessa—what you would call a ‘lionsnake.’ That, and magic I do not possess and could never afford. Such a thing is more precious than salt.” She glanced over her shoulder, and for a moment her eyes went dark with grief. “Worth more than the life of a simple warrior.”

  “That seems… harsh.” Heartless, she wanted to say. “How can a thing, even a medicine, be worth more than the life of a person?”

  “You think me too hard, daughter of the dragon?” Tamimeha turned her head to glare, never slowing the pace. “What if I were to tell you that Niekeke is the son of my wife’s sister, blood of my love? Would you think me heartless, I wonder?” She curled her lip. “We are a harsh people. This is a harsh world. Better you learn that today than tomorrow.” She turned away again. “Come now. Too long have we waited for you to wake. Earthquake or no we have far to travel, and daybreak waits for no woman. Not even the daughter of the dragon.”

  Tamimeha increased their pace to a brisk jog, and there was no further talk of the glorious past or of bright tomorrows.

  * * *

  The group traveled through the night and came to the far side of the ruined city just as the sky came again into view, and was taking on a warning blush. They made camp, and it was a grim affair. Niekeke’s groans grew more anguished; the faces of his countrywomen and men grew harder, lined with grief and determination. As shade-cloths were slung over ropes and fires built, Tamimeha called for the youth to be brought to her.

  He was young—younger than Sulema, hardly more than a boy. Sweat rolled down his brow, his face was pale ash from the effort it cost him to walk upright, and Sulema could see that he was biting his cheek to keep from crying out in pain.

  The front
of his shirt was covered in blood.

  So young, she thought. So brave. Braver than she, who kept her own affliction a secret.

  “Niekeke,” Tamimeha said, and reached out to touch his face. “Niekeke. You have been bitten by a reaver. You are turning.”

  “Y-yes, Auntie,” the boy said between clenched teeth.

  Tamimeha opened her mouth, but he held up a hand and touched her cheek gently, gently.

  “It is okay,” he told her, and he did his best to smile. “It is okay, Auntie.”

  Tamimeha’s heart broke through her eyes. Fat tears rolled down her face.

  “Nie-nie, I am a war leader. I have to—I have to—”

  “It is okay,” he told her again. He set down the sword he had been carrying, unbuckled the knife-belt at his waist, and let it fall to the ground. “It has been a good run. I am ready.”

  Tamimeha closed her eyes and firmed her quivering mouth. Then she took a deep breath, opened them again, and enfolded the youth in a long embrace.

  “Let us go, then,” she said to him. “Sweet boy.” She kissed his forehead.

  The other Quarabalese averted their eyes as Tamimeha took the boy’s hand and led him away, into the darkness.

  * * *

  They broke camp at dusk and set forth along the wide road, which led on and down and steeply down. The cracked, dry walls of the earth rose up to either side as they descended, until the burnt surface of the land was a distant memory far overhead. Tamimeha went before them, her eyes flat and joyless. Hannei and Rehaza Entanye chose to travel among the Quarabalese warriors at the rear, leaving Sulema to walk beside Keoki. She did not mind. Of all her available companions, he was for the moment the least taxing, and she was weary.

  “So this is the Edge,” she remarked.

  “This is the Edge, and welcome to it,” he agreed. “Shithole of the world.”

  Ahead and below them, in the thick gloom, came the occasional rustle and scrape of bodies moving out of the way. “Are those people I hear, or animals?”

  “Both,” he replied. “Low-caste people with thin blood and no luck. They live here, if it can be said to be living, at the edge of the Edge. They should not bother such a large and well-armed party as ours, though.”