The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  “And if they do?” she asked, though the answer was all around her in the hard stares and bright red steel of the Quarabalese warriors.

  “I will protect you,” he answered, so earnestly that she did not laugh.

  They traveled through that night and into the next day as the chasm grew wider and deep enough to shade them from the sun. Here and there the walls cracked open to the sides, revealing tangles of thorny black roots—manna, they were called, and the Quarabalese stopped to tap the roots for clear liquid that looked and tasted almost like water. Occasionally there was the shoddy evidence of human habitation. A pile of moldy blankets, dented cooking pots, the greasy remains of a hastily doused fire. Mean lives, furtive and small, carved out of rock and root and thin air.

  Once, Sulema saw—or thought she saw—a small face peeking out at them from a tiny hole high in the wall, no larger than a hare’s warren.

  “A girl,” she said, and pointed. “There are children here?” Such a thing was unthinkable to her. In the Zeera, children were precious, and cared for by all. That one might be left in such squalor shocked and disgusted her.

  “Not for long.” Keoki shrugged, unconcerned, not bothering to look up. “It is a harsh world.”

  “But… children.”

  He looked at her then, a pitying expression on his face, and shrugged.

  “They are low-caste children, your Radiance. Not such as should trouble the minds of you or me.”

  There was nothing Sulema could say to that, and the small face—if indeed she had even seen it—disappeared. She resolved to say nothing more.

  It is not my concern, she tried to tell herself. These are not my people, their ways are not my ways. All I have to do is get to the damn city, find Yaela’s little niece, get her back to Min Yaarif somehow, and I will have fulfilled my vow.

  The thought tasted like a lie, and she could not spit it out.

  * * *

  They encountered no more of the residents of the Edge— none save a small herd of dhurra, which looked like kin to the Zeerani tarbok. In better days Sulema would have wanted to hunt them. Now she was content to pass them by, and grateful that they were not predators or fighters.

  Or little girls.

  After three days of marching steadily on and down, the sky was so far above them that sunlight was a distant, dim memory, and the moons just a fever-dream. The Quarabalese climbed the rock cliffs as they traveled at night, searching for manna root to tap or to burn, and for small game animals. The walls grew steeper, the road cobbled with smooth stones and well-tended. Finally their group was hailed by a small and only somewhat shabbily dressed family—a man and four women, one of whom had an infant at her breast.

  “Lokahei,” Tamimeha called. “Ka maluhei. O ka anta?”

  “Lokahei,” the man replied as the woman clutched her child. “Eh ta maluhei. Nenu o’Okapai.”

  “O’Okapai.” Tamimeha relaxed, and her fellow warriors did the same. “Hau wen anta mapopi I ka nassa atei annu hoi’I, ta?”

  “Ta,” the man agreed, and he turned to one of the women. “Holo, Ipua.” The woman bowed to the man, and then to them, and set off down the path at a dead run.

  “She will tell them we are coming,” Tamimeha said. She did not meet Sulema’s eyes, had not since the night she walked off with Niekeke and returned alone.

  “His nag is very obedient,” one of the Quarabalese warriors murmured approvingly.

  “Nag?” Sulema inquired.

  “His wives,” Rehaza Entanye replied, gesturing at the women.

  “Ah,” Sulema said, but what she really meant was, What a load of fresh churra shit. She had not yet arrived in Quarabala, and already she could not wait to be gone from this place. Murder and slavery and sunlight that kills, she thought. It is no wonder Yaela fled this place. The only question is why she left her niece behind in this forsaken land.

  “Your eyes are full of questions,” Keoki remarked. “Perhaps I can give you the answers you seek?”

  “I am not seeking answers,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Just one young girl, and then another sorcerer to get us back to Quarabala.”

  “And maybe a bath,” Rehaza Entanye said, laughing. “You stink!”

  “A bath,” Sulema agreed. She did stink. “And then I am away from this place.”

  “As you say,” Keoki replied. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

  * * *

  Sulema looked up at the tall columns and smooth walls of yet another nameless abandoned city, the bones of a place which once must have outstripped Atukos for grandeur. “I cannot imagine what Quarabala must have been like, before the Sundering.” Then she grimaced, wondering whether she had misspoken. Surely these people did not want to be reminded of their loss, any more than the Zeeranim would wish to be reminded of the empty seats in the Madraj, the empty cradles in Aish Kalumm.

  Tamimeha just sighed and shook her head. “None of us can,” she agreed. “Nor will we ever see its like again, not in our lifetimes.” Then she turned her head as the sound of distant drums reached their ears. “Ah! She is come!”

  To a one, the Quarabalese warriors—who had been flanking them as a guard, or as an escort, or possibly both— dropped to their knees, heads bowed in obeisance.

  “Down!” Tamimeha growled when she was aware that the uplanders still stood. “On your knees, the queen is come! Not you, your Radiance, but you other two, on your knees.”

  Rehaza Entanye sank to her knees. Hannei looked from her, to the Quarabalese warriors, to Sulema, and folded her arms across her chest.

  “A Zeerani warrior does not kneel to any queen or king,” Sulema explained to the tall warrior. “She would rather die.”

  Swords and spears stirred to life. “Then she dies.”

  Sulema drew her own shamsi, and Hannei her dark blades. “If you seek to send my sister down the Lonely Road, I will send you there instead, and go with you.” Anger welled up that it should come to this at last. To be attacked for not kneeling to an outlander queen! “Who wants to come with us?”

  “Come with you where?” a voice called, young and full of laughter. “Are you going on an adventure? Perhaps I should join you. I am weary of this place.”

  The drums had stopped.

  Still scowling, Sulema looked up and saw a young girl with opaline eyes, cat-slit like those of Yaela and Aasah, odd and beautiful. She was surrounded by warriors all clad in red spidersilk and blood-iron mail studded with jewels, brilliant for all that they bore the dust of hard travel. Foremost among these was a stout woman whose braided hair, piled atop her head, was nearly as tall as she herself. The lot of them stopped as the girl came to a halt, and the woman with glorious hair drew herself up to her impressive height and intoned:

  “Hail the queen, all hail the queen; long is her shadow and longer still may she reign! The Queen of Quarabala is come to speak with Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu, Dragon Queen of Atualon. All hail the queen!”

  The Quarabalese around Sulema pressed themselves flat upon the ground, so that they were nearly kissing it. Sulema pursed her lips, sheathed her sword, and folded her arms across her chest much as Hannei had done.

  “I have told you,” she grumbled to Tamimeha, “I am no queen.”

  “You are,” the beautiful child disagreed, “you are the Dragon Queen of Atualon. I have seen you in my dreams, and often. You have been sent by Illindra in our time of need to lead us to the green lands.” Those odd pale eyes, cat-slit as Yaela’s and Aasah’s were, danced with amusement.

  Sulema realized she was gaping, and shut her mouth. Time of need? Lead them to the green lands? If this was a joke, it was not funny.

  “I, ah, and who are you?” A dreadful suspicion had begun to form in her mind, and with it anger at the manner in which she had been tricked. Bring back my little niece, Yaela had said. Daughter of my dead sister. The only family I have left…

  The girl regarded her with a sober intelligence well beyond her years. “I am spider to yo
ur dragon, and queen in these lands. Queen Maika su Palehaleha i ka Kentakuyan, first of my name, to be precise.” She bowed her head, and Sulema could see now—in the slump of her narrow shoulders, the shadows under her eyes that spoke of long weariness, and the wary hope that had these people all standing on a knife’s edge, that these people had traveled a road as hard as her own. “I welcome you to the Seared Lands.”

  “You are Maika.” Sulema groaned and closed her eyes, conjuring for herself the image of the shadowmancer’s apprentice with her wide green eyes, her earnest face, and her solemn mouth dripping with lies. “You are Maika. The next time I see Yaela, I am going to kill her.”

  THIRTY - FOUR

  The chamber Tamimeha had found for them had only one entrance: a narrow rift in the wall scarcely wide enough to be considered a doorway. The counselors to whom Maika had sent a secret summons had to squeeze themselves through it awkwardly and one at a time, and then seat themselves upon the dirt and bone dust. They shifted for position, eyeing one another and their queen, wondering, she suspected, who knew what and which games were being played.

  “These are not people who are used to being ordered about,” Akamaia whispered at her side. “They are wearied from the road, and sick with loss. They will not thank you for this.”

  Let them be angry. Maika lifted two fingers from the arm of her tall manna-wood chair and Akamaia subsided, muttering under her breath. Let them learn to obey me now. They will thank me once we have reached the cool green lands. She herself was sweating like a wrestler, and her thin frame was all but crushed by the weight of expectations; those of her people and her ancestors, as well as her own.

  Six of these seven were those surviving counselors whom she and Akamaia had deemed most powerful and least likely to betray them. The seventh was invited because he was the most easily manipulated. Once they were settled, she held up both hands for silence.

  Lehaila’s robes of state, stiff with the slain woman’s blood, had been draped across Maika’s lap. The counselors to a one avoided glancing at it just as they avoided meeting their queen’s changed eyes.

  Eyes of Pelang. The eyes of a seer, blessed—or cursed— depending on who was asked. Rare were the children born with such eyes, and to seek the Araids’ gift voluntarily was a thing done twice in recorded history. Each of those instances had been leaders seeking power in times of great need.

  Each had led to utter disaster.

  Let us hope, Maika thought fervently, that our need is enough to overcome ill fortune.

  “Counselorwomen, counselormen,” she said aloud. “Trusted advisors.” This last with a nod toward Akamaia, and toward Tamimeha who stood guard at the doorway. “As you know, we have received an—irregular—visitor from Atualon. We find ourselves this night at a crossing of paths, a place at which a decision must be—”

  “Decision? What decision?” The nasal tones of Counselorman Tanneu cut across her voice like a claw. “This Atualonian girl”—he hissed the word—“if she is who she claims to be, which I doubt, is nothing more than a political refugee come to us for help at a time when we must help ourselves first. What decision do we need to make, aside from the decision of whether to drive her to the surface to die, or leave her behind us for the reavers? A daughter of Akari is not to be trusted.

  “It was a Dragon King who broke the magic and sundered the world,” he continued. “How can you even contemplate that this supposed daughter of a Dragon King will be our savior? Atualon is the source of all our misery. I say we lock this little buta up, her and her pet shadowmancer, as well. This—Keoki—has brought our enemy into our lands and endangered us all. I say his life and hers are forfeit.”

  Maika firmed her mouth and stared straight over the heads of her counselors. She had anticipated this outburst. It was, in fact, the reason Tanneu’s name had been added to the list of invitees. He could be prodded into speaking words of dissent, and so allow Maika the opportunity to quell it. Still maintaining her unreadable expression, she nodded at Tamimeha.

  The warrior hefted her spear, strode to the bench where Tanneu was seated, and rapped him smartly on the back of his skull with the ironbound butt of her spear. The counselorman’s eyes rolled back in his head and his corpulent form slid from the bench, and boneless as jelly.

  “A crossing of paths,” Maika continued as Tamimeha resumed her post, “and I have seen that path which will take the people of Quarabala to safety. I have paid the price so that I might see the way—our only way—free from the danger that stalks us. Let there be no further discussion.” She stared hard at them, with her eyes of Pelang. She had seen the Web of Illindra, and her vision of truth could not, must not, be questioned. If they strayed but a little—

  Death for us all. Death, and dishonor, and the cobwebbed embrace of a reaver’s grave.

  “You tell us that you have the dragon’s daughter guiding us to safety, and I cannot doubt you.” Counselorwoman Nuha spoke in a low, clear voice. “Please consider this and forgive me—I do not mean to offend, merely to ask—they say that the dragonspawn has powers. How do we know that she has not used her fearful powers to mislead us, Resplendence? Atualonians are well known for being slippery as cave eels. How do we know that she is truly come to save us?”

  Maika watched as a trickle of sweat ran down the woman’s temple. It grieved her that these people, most of whom had shown her nothing but kindness, had to be made to fear her now.

  But a queen could not afford the luxury of a soft heart.

  “I appreciate your concern, Counselorwoman, and your bravery.” Maika inclined her head fractionally. “But you misunderstand me. The dragon’s daughter is not the savior of Quarabala.”

  She paused, let the soft gasp of their surprise settle like dust, and pinned each of them with her otherworldly stare. “This daughter of the dragon is not our savior, though she will lead us to the one who is. In this game of spiders and dragons, Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu, dreamshifter, Zeerani warrior, self-styled queen of Atualon… is little more than a pawn. As are all of you. As am I, truth be told, though I am a stronger pawn than most. Stronger than you knew, before this day. It is time that you learn.”

  She lifted her hands from the arms of her chair and clasped them together in front of her. When she pulled them apart, a swirling darkness was revealed, a window into an infinite abyss brilliant with the sung bones of dead worlds. Binding them all, naming each world, its song, its doom, the Web of Illindra shimmered with light and life and hope.

  Hiding the effort and pain which it caused her, Maika brought her hands together again and the vision winked out with a pop and the smell of sulphur.

  “There is only one way to save my people, and we will take the path I have chosen,” she said, her words rich with the energy she had revealed. “What is more, I will kill anyone who seeks to deter us from it.” She touched Lehaila’s bloodstained robe. “As I have said, there will be no further discussion.”

  There was shocked silence at her words, her tone. Maika held them all with the power of her eyes—her blessed, cursed, far-seeing eyes of Pelang.

  The silence was broken by the sound of a manna-wood staff falling to the floor. Akamaia sank to her knees, and then to all fours, pressing her face to the dusted earth. When at last she lifted her face, her sunken cheeks were wet with tears.

  “Oh, my queen,” she whispered in a voice hoarse with joy. “Oh, my queen, I swear loyalty to you, obedience to you, upon the song in my bones I swear it.”

  One by one, the other counselors kneeled before her. Maika noted which of her counselors gazed upon her with adoration, and which of them cut their eyes at their fellows before kneeling, or grimaced, or narrowed their eyes in shrewd thought.

  Their obedience was slow, and it was forced. But it would do… for now.

  She gestured. One by one they regained their seats, and Maika motioned to Tamimeha. The tall warrior’s cheeks were also wet with tears, her eyes lit with a fanatic’s joy. Maika knew that the Iponui was hers,
heart and soul; they would die for her.

  This would do, as well.

  “Tamimeha,” Maika said, “would you repeat your words to me from this morning, so that our loyal citizens may hear? Reveal to them the latest news from the road behind us… What word from the Iponui?”

  “Only this, your Resplendence.” Tamimeha gestured, and warriors entered through the narrow doorway dragging a live reaver, bound with spidersilk and sun-iron. To a one the counselors gasped and recoiled. Maika did not, though her heart lurched in her chest. Tamimeha continued, “This reaver was once a woman I knew, a runner from Padua. Of all the runners sent to spy the road behind us, she—this— was the only one to return.”

  One of the counselors moaned, a low, grieving sound that trailed off into muffled sobbing. Maika reached out with sa and ka, and with her sight of Pelang sought to look inside the reaver’s chitinous skin. She could feel nothing familiar, nothing which might tell her that this had once been a woman. The voice of Na’eth whispered hungrily in Maika’s ear, raising chillflesh along both arms.

  Hisssst, hissssst. Give it to me, child.

  Maika closed her eyes and let the sticky strands of Na’eth’s magic flow through her. The reaver arched its back and hissed, thrashing against her—its—restraints as the spider queen bound it to her web. Power surged through the young queen, making her skin itch, her eyes ache, and filling the audience chamber with iridescence so beautiful it was akin to pain.

  The reaver screamed, a high thin wail that trailed off into the distance, and black smoke poured from its fanged mouth as the spirit of Eth was forced to vacate its unwilling host. Finally the monstrous thing collapsed, dead, emptied of the corrupted spirit that had held it in thrall, foul-smelling ichor flowing from its mouth to puddle on the floor.

  The counselors were frozen in terror.

  Now is the time to bind them to my will, as well, Maika thought.

  “Our best and bravest warriors have failed,” she said as gently as she could. “Arachnists drive their reavers close on our heels, and as far as we know all of our settlements have been overrun. There will be no respite or rescue from the outer settlements. There will be no return to Saodan, nor to any city of Quarabala, now or ever. Ho’olau is no more. Mawai and Kaha’ai and Auhei—”