The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

“What was the nature of this vow?” the oracle persisted. “Have you come to lead us all from this place? To bring us forth into the land of water and sunlight, as our queen believes? Are you a hero? Or have you perhaps come for something… lesser?”

  “Lead you all from Quarabala?” Sulema replied, shocked to her core. “No. I vowed to journey to Quarabala and bring one young girl named Maika back to her aunt,” who neglected to tell me that this girl is a dragonforsaken queen—“and nothing more. What makes you think I could do such a thing?” Or that I would want to? “For that matter, I do not understand why your people have left their cities for the Edge. To hear Yaela and Aasah tell it, Saodan is a place of unparalleled beauty, while the Edge is—” she coughed, and felt her face flush as she realized belatedly that her words may cause offense—“um, not.”

  “Saodan is glorious,” Maika agreed, laying a hand on Sulema’s arm. That caused her to twitch. “Or it was, at least. But Quarabala is dying. Even as we speak, the Araids move against us. They have been breeding in the deep, dark places, the ancient cities long denied to us, and they are massing armies of Arachnists and reavers. They have already overrun Saodan, forcing us to flee. Some say…” Her voice trailed off, and then strengthened again. “Some say they have turned Illindrists and shadowmancers against us, creating sorcerers that work shadowmancy on the spiders’ behalf.”

  “This is true,” Keoki said, pushing to the front of the audience. “One such abomination led the reavers from which we narrowly escaped. A shadowmancer turned Arachnist.” An angry murmur sprang up at that, but fell quiet when the young queen took one of Sulema’s hands in her own and raised it high.

  “In your appearance, my prayers to Illindra have been answered,” she said. “There are too few shadowmancers left in all of Quarabala to protect my people from the wrath of Akari, as we attempt to escape this land… unless, as Akamaia tells me, their shadowshifting is enhanced by the song of atulfah which underlies all magic. Only the Dragon King of Atualon can wield this power… and see, his daughter has been led to us in our time of need. She has come to lead us from the Seared Lands and to freedom from the Araids.”

  “Is this true?” the oracle asked, staring intently at Sulema’s face. “Is this why you have come?”

  Sulema desperately wanted to agree that yes, this was why she had made the terrible journey to Quarabala—to save them all, like a hero in the old stories, like Zula Din leading her warriors forth in days of old. Desperately wished it was so, that she was the true daughter of a dreamshifter and a Dragon King, gifted with the powers of two lands. But truth is not born of desperation.

  I barely made it here alive, she thought, and that was with help. Is it truly within my power to help these people?

  No, she realized, it is not. If I try leading these people to Min Yaarif, I am more likely to get them all killed.

  “No,” she said, voice heavy with regret. “I made a vow to Yaela that I would retrieve her niece Maika and return with her to Min Yaarif. That is all. She neglected to tell me that Maika is a queen.” And I would like to kick her ass to the Zeera and back for that bit of trickery, she thought.

  To her surprise, Maika turned to the stout woman with a triumphant smile. “See?” she said to the oracle. “I told you she would tell the truth. Warriors of the Zeera always tell the truth, is that not so, Sulema?”

  “Ehuani,” she agreed, slowly. “We find that there is beauty in truth. But I do not see how this changes anything. Four of us barely made it here alive. Without Keoki we would have died. He and Yaela have both told me that there are not enough shadowmancers to protect all of your people from the sunlight, should they attempt to leave the Seared Lands in any number. I am sorry, truly I am, but I am just one warrior…

  “I do not have the power to help you.”

  “She speaks truth,” the oracle agreed, staring oddly at the spider’s web. “She has chosen her path.”

  “Akamaia?” Maika asked, following it with a command—a queen’s command to one she loved. “It is time.”

  The old woman reached out a shaking finger and touched the spider’s web. The spider, Sulema was pleased to note, did not stir.

  “You are right,” she agreed reluctantly. “It is time.”

  “Time for what?” Sulema could not keep the cross note from her voice. She was tired, sore, well out of her depth— and weary of magic and magic-workers. They act as if my “no” was a “yes.”

  “I cannot wield atulfah,” she explained again, trying for patience that she did not feel, “at least not enough to be of use to your people. I am barely trained. Even if I had the Mask of Akari here in my hands, it would not be enough… the sun dragon’s mask only resonates to men. I truly am sorry,” she continued. “I would help your people if I could, but I did not come here to save you all. I just came for one little girl. Nobody told me that she was a queen…”

  That sounded plaintive to her own ears, and she stopped.

  Maika patted her shoulder. “You think you have only come for me, but really you have come for all of us… and for this.” She fumbled at a large leather bag that hung at one hip, stained and worn and completely at odds with her raiment. “Ah! I tied this knot too tight.” Finally she reached into the bag with both hands, pink tongue sticking out one side of her mouth. “This is yours, you know. We have borne the burden of it for too long.”

  “Wha—” Sulema began, then stopped mid-word, mid-thought, mid-breath, and the world stopped with her. Maika drew her hands from the bag, and in them she held an exquisitely wrought mask of lapis and tourmaline, agate and amethyst and jade. It caught the stars from the skies far above, caught the light of the fires that raged at the center of the earth, glowed with the illumination of endless dreaming.

  Sulema, it sang to her. Daughter. It is time.

  Sulema reached out, drawn as a moth to flame.

  She took up the Mask of Sajani…

  and the dragon stirred in her sleep.

  Sulema ignored the Quarabalese counselors that vied for her attention, Hannei’s nudges and attempts at hunter-signs, paying scant heed to the aches of her own body or anything but the mask which she held cradled in her lap.

  The Mask of Sajani. The moment she took it the ground had shaken again. She hoped it was not an omen. Yaela had told her about it, but Sulema had never really believed her and had all but forgotten the second reason behind her quest in the desperate days since. Yet now that she held it Sulema found that she could scarcely take her eyes from its beauty or imagine her life before the mask, and knew that it was precious to her.

  Akamaia explained that it was a relic from the First Days, in the long ago of legend when men and women ruled Atualon from a dual throne. Before the Sundering, before the kings of Atualon broke the world into pieces, sa and ka were one. Sun magic and earth magic, dark and light, kith and kin were balanced and there was harmony.

  “War came to the lands of men,” she finished, “and when the last true queen of Atualon saw in her heart that Kal ne Mur would never be dissuaded from his plan to wield atulfah in battle, she fled to her allies and kinsfolk in Quarabala. Our libraries were great, and we prided ourselves on being peaceful, an illuminated people of learning and lore, elevated above the concerns of more barbaric, warlike folk…” She shook her head and sighed at the folly of her ancestors, and she was not alone.

  “Our pride was so bright it blinded us. When the war between nations could not be won with half a magic, Kal ne Mur laid blame at the foot of his queen, and of her people, and he smote our land with the wrath of Akari. Nine out of ten people died in that time of grief. Those few who survived did so by skulking in cellars and storerooms, underground places filled with shadow and spiders and despair. Yet survive they did, and they built our cities again, this time far below the ground. I allow that it is not the land of glory and wonder it was before the Sundering, but until the Arachnists came with their reavers…” Slowly she stroked her fine robe of spidersilk. “We were not so badly off.�
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  “Why leave such a place at all, then?” Rehaza Entanye asked. She stood some distance behind Sulema. “I cannot speak for the Zeeranim, for I have never visited their golden lands, nor for the Atualonians, who live in palaces of dragonglass, but to one who grew up on the streets of Min Yaarif—” Her voice faltered. “To one from Min Yaarif, Saodan is a place of stories and wonders. If I were blessed enough to call such a place home, I would die in her defense rather than let her be taken by monsters.”

  “And yet the monsters have come, and we could raise no real defense against them,” Akamaia answered, biting the words off as a seamstress might bite thread. “Long have the spider queens dwelt in the dark and deep places from the time before the days of old. Seldom have they bothered us directly before now, though those who ventured into their lands rarely returned. Even that uneasy truce is over, I am afraid. Arachnists, those wicked sorcerers who worship Araids as gods, have woken those gods from their neutral slumber and have persuaded them to grow their armies of undead—”

  “Reavers,” Sulema said, and a cold pain lanced through her wound.

  “Reavers,” Akamaia agreed.

  “They have been attacking our settlements all along the outskirts of Quarabala,” Maika added. “We do not know for how long. Just that runners we have sent out do not come back.”

  “Or worse, they come back transformed, as reavers,” Akamaia said. “Our builders have erected walls and barricades, but those have not been sufficient. You have come to Quarabala in our final days. Soon even this forsaken place will be overrun and Arachnists will rule the Seared Lands from the furthest outposts, to Saodan, even to the very Edge.” She sighed and leaned heavily on her staff, as if this long speech had taxed the last of her strength.

  “The Arachnists are seeking the mask,” Maika said.

  “Perhaps,” the oracle allowed.

  “They are,” the girl insisted. “I have seen it. Just as I dreamed that a savior would come.” She waved a hand at Sulema. “Come to lead us to the green lands.” All eyes turned toward Sulema—some hopeful, most as skeptical as the dark whispers in her own heart.

  “I am no savior,” she said. “Ehuani, I am just… just Sulema Ja’Akari. I cannot do this thing. I cannot save you.”

  Hannei’s grunt expressed more clearly than words what she thought of that, and every face in the room echoed the rebuke. Even the mask stared up at her accusingly.

  “I cannot,” she insisted. “Atulfah broke the world once, in the hands of a Dragon King wearing a mask. It could break the world again.” Especially if I am the one wielding it, she thought, though shame held her tongue. Akamaia looked as if she had bitten into rotten meat.

  “Do not think for one moment, Zeerani, that the Araids will stop at the Edge of the Seared Lands. Once they have annihilated our people, what is to stop them from coming after yours? The only things that have kept you uplanders safe are our walls, our warriors, and the gaze of Akari, which they cannot abide. If it is true that they have turned shadowmancers to their cause, and might travel upon the shadowed roads—” She broke off, shaking her head. “My people, your people are in danger, and you would refuse the only weapon available to us—to you. Why? Because it is the weapon of your enemy?” As the old woman gestured to the mask in Sulema’s hands, her voice rose almost to a shout.

  “It is not that—”

  “I understand.”

  The room went silent as Maika spoke. Her high and gentle voice took on a strange resonance, and her eyes were unfocused as she laid a hand on Sulema’s arm.

  “I understand, Sister Queen,” she went on. “You are afraid of what will happen if you try to wield atulfah and fail… but you are more afraid of what you might become if you succeed. You are afraid that through you, imperfect as you are and with the heritage of two terrible magics in your blood, the mask would work magic too terrible to imagine.”

  “Yes,” Sulema whispered. Though Sulema had not thought of it in quite that way, her heart froze at the girl’s words.

  I am the daughter of the dream eater and the dragon. What sort of monster might I become, if I am given power such as this? Her mother’s tent had contained the skin and sinew and bones of slain enemies, turned into instruments of dark magic. Were I queen of Atualon, in truth, I might sit upon a throne of their skulls.

  The idea did not displease her.

  That alarmed her even more.

  “You say you are only a warrior,” Maika said, “and that you want none of the power in this world. But I think you are lying to yourself. I think this mask frightens you because you want it so badly.”

  Something stirred in Sulema then; an ugly thing, dark and monstrous and lustful. The hunger for might with which to smash her enemies and remake the world in her own image. She met the young queen’s gaze, and in those brown eyes she saw an echo of her own desire, the darkest wishes of her heart. She thought of the reavers, the Arachnists, of Pythos and those men who had hurt her. She thought of the Nightmare Man laughing at her over the broken body of Azra’hael.

  She thought of her enemies, all of them, lying dead and broken.

  Her hands tightened on the Mask of Sajani.

  I could defeat them with this, she knew. If I were to wear the Mask of Sajani, I could truly become Sa Atu, the Dragon Queen of Atualon, with the ability to remake the world—

  Or destroy it.

  And which path would you choose, O Queen? Jinchua’s voice mocked her from a place deep in the dreaming lands. Are you a hero, or are you a monster? Do you really want this knowledge, and all that comes with it? The pain? The power?

  “Do you want it?” Maika asked again.

  “Ehuani,” Sulema whispered. “I do want it.”

  “Then take it.” And the queen of Quarabala bent her head to the Dragon Queen of Atualon. Sulema hesitated no further. She brought the Mask of Sajani up to her face, and looked upon the world through the eyes of the dragon.

  * * *

  The world was a song. That song was intoxicating.

  After the greeting and feasting and endless talking of people who had made a grand plan and were now terrified of facing it, the Quarabalese assigned rooms to the weary travelers that they might rest peacefully before the next round of talk and planning. No sooner was she alone than Sulema retrieved the Mask of Sajani from its bag.

  Such an ugly thing, she thought, irritated, in which to store a wonder. She held it cradled in her hands, turned it this way and that, admiring the weight of it, the smooth bronze surface where the mask was meant to touch skin, the many faceted jewels that caught the mirrored light and sent rainbows dancing along the pale walls. Gems of grass-green and leaf-green, blue as the Dibris, blue as the sky, mixed with stones the color of coffee and sunrise and amber. The colors and sizes of these gems, the way they had been set into the metal so seamlessly, recalled her father’s globe to mind.

  Sulema retrieved that, as well, and admired the two treasures as she held them in her lap. She had never had much fascination for jewelry or trinkets, as her friend Neptara had, but she felt in that moment a fierce love of these beautiful things, so finely wrought, so precious.

  On a whim, she took up the mask and pressed it once more onto her face. By some magic of its own it clung to her like a second skin, needing no strap or hood to bind it into place, and molded itself to the contours and planes of her features as if it had been made for her and no other.

  It is mine, she thought. Mine. Though she had not sought this thing for herself, and would not have said she wanted it, now she claimed it for her own as greedily as a child clutching a handful of honey-cakes.

  As Sulema looked through the eyes of the dragon it seemed to her that she saw this broken place as it once had been, as it could be again, and this also she coveted. The walls smooth and bright, tiled in vibrant colors. It would have a sand floor, dyed indigo like the sky at midsun, here a gaily painted doorway, there a pile of thick soft mattresses with linens folded and stacked just so. These thin
gs spoke to her of a beautiful world, of precious human lives, of songs and stories and art, and she wanted to hold it all and never share, never let go.

  Mine.

  As she shifted position to look around the room, the globe still in her lap rolled to one side. Sulema caught the heavy orb before it could fall and held it up to her dragon’s eyes, and saw—

  Oh, she saw—

  Everything.

  Through the eyes of Sajani, the bauble she held cradled between her hands was more than an artist’s depiction of the world, magical or no. It was the living world itself. The sands of the Zeera shifted and sang as she watched and wondered, the seas writhed with serpents, a heavy mist ebbed and undulated along the shoreline of Sindan. She could see a crack of corruption where the restless dead had been interred in Eid Kalmut, and the tiny, glittering splendor of Atualon, the fortress Atukos at its heart.

  Mine, she thought, and black anger rose in her heart. Mine. She brought the world closer to her face and breathed upon the city of her begetting, which was rightfully hers to rule and which had been stolen from her by Pythos.

  That son of worms took my home from me, she thought. He rules over my people—likely he sleeps in the bed where my mother and father made me.

  As her wrath rose, it seemed to Sulema that the city grew larger in her view, closer, as if she swept down from a great height. There were the fields and farms that lay around her city, little people leading their little lives, the great clean streets, the manses of the parens and craftmistresses. The walls and turrets of Atukos, which let in joyous welcome under her warm regard. It seemed to her that the fortress cried out to be relieved of its occupation, and for her to come home, come home, to oust the usurper.

  There he was, the soulless maggot, standing on her father’s balcony with his thieved robes and golden crown, arms upraised as he regarded her city as his own. She hissed and drew nearer, wanting to claw and bite, to rend his flesh, to tear him from her rightful place.

  Pythos looked up. He must have seen her, then, because his eyes widened and he gave a shout of fright. Sulema cried out in victory, her voice the high, pure ululation of Sajani, and reached out, meaning to strike him down.