She raised her staff high, toward the woods from which she thought the Huntress was still watching. Recalling her mother’s words, she did not thank the forest guardian. Instead, she tugged a bead of red salt clay from her locked hair and let it fall to the ground.
“For you,” she called. “In payment of your… hospitality.”
She heard, or imagined that she did, peals of laughter from deep in the wood’s wild heart. All around her, louder and more lustily than they had before, the birds began to sing. She lifted a foot, set it firmly on the path before her—
—and stepped into the hoti.
Sulema looked down at herself. She was dressed as a warrior, and yet she was not. Her vest and leggings were white as river sand and embroidered all over with dragons of blue and gold. She wore a heavy headdress, and without looking knew it would be fashioned of gold, with the red and blue and ice-white plumes of a lionsnake matriarch.
In one hand she cradled the orb of the ne Atu. In the other she bore the fox-headed staff which proclaimed her a dreamshifter of the Zeerani prides. Upon her face, as before, she wore the Mask of Sajani.
As she peered through the eyes of the dragon, it seemed to Sulema that the opponent facing her across the ring was no longer Hannei. This was Kishah in truth, the blades of bloody vengeance. The shadows of death coursed eagerly about her feet as the hounds had followed the Huntress. Hannei Two-Blades was cloaked in death, muted and masked by it as well, her face a grim ruin of the laughing youth she once had been. There was no love for a sister in her eyes, no mirth, no forgiveness.
Sulema firmed her grip on the staff in her hands and took a warrior’s stance. Hannei drew her swords, crouched, and nodded at the Quarabalese oracle who stood just outside the circle. Akamaia thumped her staff down on the hard-packed earth once, twice, three times, as silence seized the Seared Lands.
“Begin.”
The drummers stroked and struck their metal drums, and the bong-pong-tangggg drew an echo from Sulema’s heart. From every heart among those gathered, she imagined, especially those whom an unkind fate had forced into opposition with a beloved. Bong-pong tanggggg. The dance was joined.
Sulema moved first, stepping cat-stance toward the woman who had been her sister, staff spinning before her in a blur of wood and feathers. A threat. Give ground before me, it warned, make way lest your skull be the first set into my throne.
Hannei’s blades answered in kind. Ware, they sang, lest your blood rain upon the ground at my feet, and you become nothing more than the latest of my enemies to die. Beware.
They were upon each other in a twirl, a whirl, a clash of souls, wood and steel, blood and bone. One of Hannei’s blades licked a shallow wound down Sulema’s left arm. Sulema’s staff connected with the back of Hannei’s knee, sending her staggering, face a mute snarl of pain and fury. Back and forth they stalked and spun, struck and countered, and all the while the drums sang, bong-bong-tanggggg, pong-pong tanggggg, bum-bum.
Then Sulema leapt back to avoid a vicious downswing from one of Hannei’s swords, and her opponent’s face wavered oddly before hers in the deadly heat until it seemed not to be the face of her former friend, not a Zeerani face at all, but the ruined mask and wrecked flesh of the Nightmare Man.
“Sulema,” he whispered to her as shadows sprang up all around them, hiding the combatants from view. “My daughter. My sister. My love… why do you fight me so?”
Sulema stopped, panting hard, hands gripping her staff so tightly the knuckles showed white.
“I know you,” she began.
“Yes,” he replied, waving her words away. “Why do you fight me so? There is no need for you to struggle, to die here on the shadowed road. These are not your people. Lay down your staff—give me the mask you wear, the burden you bear—and I swear to you, on Akari’s eyes I swear to you, I will allow you to return home to your people and live out your life as a Ja’Akari. A warrior riding free, under the sun. Is this not what you want, beloved? To be Ja’Akari once more?
“Is this not the darkest wish of your heart?”
He knew her well. Too well.
“It is,” she agreed. She would not lie, even to the Nightmare Man.
“Then give me the mask—”
“It is my wish,” she went on before he could finish, “but it is not my fate. I am no Ja’Akari.”
“Then you are nothing,” he snarled, raising his massive hammer high.
“I am not nothing,” she replied, and to her surprise she laughed in his face. “I am Sulema!”
Her words rang with a truth more powerful than any Sulema had ever known, and as the clarity of them sliced through her Sulema could feel bonds and bindings being sheared away. She laughed as a weight she had not known she carried was lifted from her, and she was filled, filled to bursting, with the knowledge of who and what she had always been.
“I am Sulema!”
With that she kicked a spray of sand and salt and bone into his face—the same dirty trick Hannei had used on her, back in the fighting pits of Min Yaarif—and before he could blink it away, she was upon him. Her staff arched high, swung round for a killing blow—
And stopped short, Jinchua’s laughing face carved atop her staff just touching his hideous mask.
“Begone,” she told him, and she blew into his face through the mouth of Sajani’s mask. “You have no power here.”
With a clap as of thunder the Nightmare Man disappeared, taking his shadows with him.
As the illusion faded Hannei swayed, stunned, and dropped her swords upon the ground. All around them people leapt to their feet, pointing and shouting. The air itself split, revealing a passage out of the Seared Lands, and into Shehannam.
It was a way out, but—
“I do not know the way,” Sulema whispered. She knew they had precious little time, but still Sulema hesitated. Though she had opened a doorway into the Dreaming Lands, she knew no more of that place than any child might. The realization struck her with the power of a physical blow. She clenched her teeth, air hissing out from behind the dragon’s mask as fresh pain stabbed through her shoulder. “Atu forgive me, I am no true dreamshifter. I do not know the way.”
The rent in the air shuddered and tore at her grasp as if she held a live lionsnake. As Sulema froze, caught between the fear of doing something and the terror of doing nothing, the ground began to heave beneath her feet. She cried out in alarm as she lost her footing, and then again in rising panic as the passage into Shehannam flickered, wavered—
And held. The light of Shehannam flared bright, silhouetting that dark figure that appeared now before her, cloaked and hooded in robes as silver as moonslight. Slender brown hands reached up to push the hood back, and a handsome young man grinned down at her as he stepped into the hoti, using a booted foot to break the circle.
He knows Zeerani ways, she thought, shocked. “Who are you?” she asked. Though he had about him the look of the Zeera, this stranger was dressed in clothes unlike any she had ever seen.
“Aaaaaah!” Hannei said, staring. “Aaaah!” and then in her broken voice whispered, “Aaaaru.”
The handsome man laughed, and an enormous glowing mantid peeked out from his mantle.
“Pip-pip peeee,” it fluted at her. “Pip-pip-peeee-oh!”
“Daru,” he agreed. “That was my name… I am Daru! I have come back at last.” He reached out both hands not to Sulema, but to Hannei. “I have come back to show you the way home.”
FORTY
The world was not as he remembered it.
For so long he had carried memory in his pocket like a talisman, and this felt like a small betrayal. The faces he thought should be familiar were sharper and more real than memory had painted them; uglier, meaner, more flawed. Colors were darker, duller. And Sulema—that was Sulema behind the Mask of Sajani, was it not?—was both less and greater than he remembered. Her hair was knotted in the short locks of a dreamshifter, and her golden eyes burned as hot as her mother’s. Everyone
was shorter than they should have been. That made sense, he supposed with some amusement, as he had been much smaller the last time he had seen any of them.
And it stinks. He had become accustomed to living among people who bathed daily, to perfumes and lotions and unguents meant to mask the natural smells of human beings. This, he thought, will take some getting used to. He breathed through his mouth and tried not to be too obvious about it.
Among the faces that stared at him with varying degrees of suspicion, one was most changed and most familiar at once. Hannei. Had a thousand years separated them, instead of just a dozen, his heart would have known her anywhere. Hannei had been badly hurt, badly damaged, but their souls still sang the same sweet song. Their eyes met, and Daru smiled as gently as he was able, with dreams of murder clouding the edges of his vision a dark red.
I will find those who hurt you, he promised silently, every one of them, and I will lay their heads at your feet. Her eyes warmed as if she could hear his thought, and the corners of her mouth deepened just a little.
It was enough.
“Daru,” Sulema breathed, echoing her sword-sister’s whisper. Or were they sword-sisters still? Daru frowned at the hoti he had broken. Then he shrugged. It did not matter, and he had no time for riddles.
Time, he thought with fleeting amusement. A way-master who had run out of time. Doubtless Rothfaust would make a limerick of it, if the ways allowed their paths to cross again.
“Come,” he told them, “and hurry! You must hurry. I cannot hold this open forever, and—” He broke off. Best not tell them what was following, or how close it was, lest in a panic the people trample each other to death and bring his mission to a ruinous end.
Again.
“Just hurry,” he urged.
An ancient woman whose face was a mass of wrinkles peered most suspiciously up at him. Daru could not help but stare back. It had been so long since he had seen someone who had let their face age naturally that he had forgotten what it looked like.
Like parchment, he thought, with all the wisdom of a world written on it, then crumpled till the words are hidden. And so small!
“Who are you, young man,” she said sharply, “to tell your betters to hurry? Or think that we would follow you without—”
She stopped as a harsh wind picked up; a hot wind and dry. It smelled of sour musk and sweet rot and carried within it, faint but to those ears which have been trained to listen, the whispering voices of a thousand Araids. “Pip-pip PEEEEE!” Pakka shrieked, making him wince.
“If you do not come now,” Daru told the old woman in a voice meant to carry no farther than her ears, “you will all die, down to the last child.” He held the way open, held his breath, and prayed to Illindra that this time they would listen to him. He prayed to Ganuth and Chavelle and Beha’a, as well. They were not of this world, but they were gods, and as Rothfaust was fond of saying, it never hurt to hedge one’s bets.
The old woman opened her mouth to argue, but Hannei held up a hand for silence. The wind whispered again, and her eyes widened.
She hears it, Daru thought. She knows.
The Ja’Akari struck together the two dark swords she carried, drawing sparks, and pointed to the open door, scowling in such a way as to need no translation and brook no argument. Sulema glanced at her through the eyes of the dragon’s mask, hesitated for a moment, and then brought the butt end of a fox-head staff down on the ground, gently, as if she feared that in doing so she might cause the earth to shake again.
Oh, but you have, Daru thought, his heart heavy with grief for her pain. Oh, but you will.
“We will go now,” Sulema agreed. “Children and the elderly first, warriors and walkers bringing up the rear.”
“I will lead the way,” Daru insisted. “I can get you to Min Yaarif, but for the sake of all gods we must make haste.”
“I will go with you,” Sulema agreed, “and you will tell me everything.”
“Everything, Dreamshifter?” Daru could not help it; despite his growing sense of urgency, he laughed. “Perhaps not. But I will tell you what you need to know, if you can get these people you have found to move their blasted feet.” He laughed again. Tell you everything, indeed; how many lifetimes do you think we have? He was still chuckling as he entered the Way, leading them all from certain death and into deadly danger. Laughter was better than anger, after all, and they had no way of knowing how many times he had died for them already.
The Ways of Shehannam were more familiar to him now than the world which had birthed and nurtured and killed him a thousand times over. Lush and green, unnaturally so, filled with the songs of birds and the songs of things that pretended to be birds, and thick with webs of dreaming. A fennec fox white as starslight flitted just at the edge of his vision, allowing Daru to catch a glimpse of her but no more. It was Sulema’s kima’a, judging by the staff and furtive sideways glance the girl kept shooting him.
She does not know how foxlike she is becoming, he thought, or how like her mother. Daru did not need to ask after Hafsa Azeina, since the Web of Illindra had sung a dirge at her passing. Long ago Daru had mourned the loss of his mentor and almost-mother. The sight of her peering out from behind her daughter’s eyes brought him little more than a slight wistful pang.
“This way,” he said, taking the left-hand path just before a dying glade. He averted his eyes from the sight of old char, wrinkled his nose at the memory of death. His mission had failed here at least half a dozen times before he had learned the correct turning. “Keep to the path.”
“I have to pee,” an older woman muttered.
“Pee on the path, then,” Daru told her. “Or hold it. Or die. Your choice.”
She muttered darkly, but kept going.
“Are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?” Sulema asked finally. “You disappeared moons ago, not years. Yet now you step out of Shehannam like Zula Din in the stories, all grown up and acting as powerful as my mother.”
“Not as powerful as Dreamshifter,” he objected, old loyalties taking him by surprise. “Not in the same—”
“Daru,” she interrupted. “Guts and goatfuckery, stop prancing around like an oula-dancer and answer the damned question.”
Daru grinned. “You look like your mother and you sound like Istaza Ani. All of your worst nightmares have come true.”
Sulema’s face went white at that, so that her freckles stood out. Her eyes flashed and her mouth flattened in a hard line.
“Yes,” she said in a voice like flint and tinder, “my nightmares.” Hannei, who walked a little way behind them, made a soft and sorrowful sound.
Daru thought of all the times he had watched them die— and the few times he had killed either or both in an attempt to change the end of their story—then shook his head to dispel the images. “I am sorry,” he said at last. For everything, he added silently. I am so, so sorry.
“Pip pip,” Pakka chirruped, light flickering in sympathy.
“I was lost beneath Atukos, deep in the twisting little passageways,” he said. He could not tell them everything. To do so would doom this world. Still, he owed them what explanation he could give. “Khurra’an chased me into a hole as if I were a mouse, and I could not find my way out again.”
“Khurra’an?” Sulema asked, softly. “But why? He is gone,” she added, voice breaking on that last word. “Gone down the Lonely Road with my mother.”
“I am not sure why he chased me,” Daru answered. “At the time I thought he wanted me dead because I was weak. That is what he told me, but the ways of the vash’ai are stranger than we ever knew. They are an ancient race, much older than our own, with minds and magic I do not think we can ever understand.”
Hannei grunted at that.
“They have their own sorcerers,” Sulema said, nodding. “Kahanna. One of them has befriended Ani, though she claims they are not bonded.”
“Ani,” he breathed, but shook his head. “That is another path for another time.”
He gathered himself and continued.
“I was lost for quite a long time. Days, I think, though I have no way of knowing. I found water here and there, and Pakka brought me rats.” He petted his little friend, who preened at the attention. “And bugs, which taste nasty no matter where you are. I found dungeons, and catacombs full of dead Baidun Daiel.”
“They were not dead,” Sulema said. “They—” but she shuddered and would say no more.
“Catacombs filled with sleeping Baidun Daiel, then, thousands of them. I hate to think what trouble they could be, if they might be roused, but I suppose we will have to deal with that later.”
“I suppose we will.” Sulema’s voice was dry.
“I was lost, and hurt, and probably would have died, but Loremaster Rothfaust found me. He took me… far away. For a long time.”
Hannei made a rude noise, and Sulema rolled her eyes at him. “‘He took me far away for a long time,’” she mocked gently. “Daru, that is not an explanation, nor even the sad shadow of one, and you know it.”
“I cannot tell you much,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “It is a long story, and I am… constrained.” Even now, the medallion at his chest burned in warning. “I can tell you that I have been, ah, an apprentice of sorts.”
“You are an apprentice? So Loremaster Rothfaust is… a dreamshifter?”
Daru kicked a rock from the path. It bounced into the underbrush, and he wished he had not done so. It was dangerous to change anything at all in the Ways. Even something so small and trivial as moving a stone from your path might prove the undoing of a thousand carefully laid plans.
“Not a dreamshifter,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “And I have not been an apprentice for a long time.” Many lifetimes, in fact.
“What are you, then? Are you a dreamshifter? You have no staff.”
“Not a dreamshifter. Yet I am stronger than you know.” He smiled at the daughter of his mentor and felt his heart break for her pain over and over again. He had spent three lifetimes of men trying to find a way back to her, to Hannei, to this moment, only to have their lives slip through his fingers time and again. Perhaps this time, this Way, he might succeed where so many times he had failed them. But she would understand none of this, even if he was allowed to tell her—and explaining the Ways to the inhabitants of a dragon-infested world was strictly forbidden. Not even Daru, who was somewhat infamous among the students of the Academ for rule-breaking, dared flout that law. So he said only, “I am a waymaster.”
The Seared Lands Page 34
