“I heard you the first time.” The woman stopped. Brown hands reached up and pushed the hood back, revealing the laughing face of a young woman. She was deeply striped and spotted, marked more strongly Zeeravashani than any warrior Sulema had ever seen, and her grin was pure mischief. “I may be old, but I am not deaf.”
That voice!
Sulema froze in place, even as her sword-sister brushed past her at a dead sprint. Hannei dropped both swords as she ran, laughing and crying horribly, and swept the woman up into a crushing embrace. Talieso snorted and tossed his head, dancing to one side, pretending to be spooked. Sulema stared from the stallion, to her sword-sister and this… stranger… and back again.
“Istaza Ani?” she asked finally, as Hannei set the woman back on her feet, patting her and grinning from ear to ear, tears streaming down her face. “Istaza Ani? Is that you? But how…”
“It is just Ani now, brat,” the woman said. “I am too young to be youthmistress now, I think.”
“But… but…” Daru had grown old, and their youthmistress had grown young. Next thing we know, she thought sourly, the moons will rise in the daytime, and Akari will fly at night. Men will be warriors and women will wear veils. “I do not understand,” she wailed at last, feeling every minute of five years old again.
“That has not changed, at least,” the not-so-strange stranger laughed. “Though I see that you are a dreamshifter now, and you—” She broke off, looking at Hannei, and her face darkened with anger. “Ah, my Hannei, you have not been well treated at all. I would like a word with whoever has done this to you. You have both changed.”
“We have changed?” Sulema squeaked. “You—you—I thought you were a stranger, leading Talieso. I might have killed you!” she finished lamely, though in the next moment she realized this woman would not be easy to kill.
“Ah well, it is a beautiful day to die.” Ani laughed, arms outflung, her snarling cat’s face turned up to the sky as if she would drink it. “But it is a better day to live. Come! We have much to discuss. I have food ready for you, and usca!”
“Usca?” Sulema exclaimed. Her eyes met Hannei’s. They shared a grin, and for a moment—a moment only—all was right in the world.
* * *
They made camp there, under the shadow of the Bones of Illindra. So Sulema named them, having no better idea for what to call the stones and mindful of the stories she had heard of the spider-goddess who gave birth to all worlds and hung them all in her great web.
The people of Quarabala broke off in small groups to tend their hurts, to tend their young, to tend their hungry bellies with meager dried meat and gulps of water. For so many people to descend upon Min Yaarif at once would have been seen as an act of aggression. It would be best, Ani suggested, that they send a small contingent to the city to negotiate passage through and onto other lands.
Which other lands, she did not say, and Sulema hoped someone had an idea. Her father, she knew, had promised lands to Aasah in return for the Illindrist’s service, but that was as far as her knowledge stretched.
Yaela might know, she thought, and sent up a fervent wish that the shadowmancer’s apprentice had survived Jehannim and would meet them, perhaps as early as tomorrow. And perhaps, she thought wistfully, my brother will be with her. Perhaps one or the other of them might have a plan to resettle the people of Quarabala—for certainly the citizens of Min Yaarif would not be willing to accept so many refugees into their midst, and the proud warriors were unlikely to accept a life of slavery. Sulema also wanted to have a word or three with the green-eyed bitch for not mentioning that her little niece was also queen of Quarabala.
Her arm was a hot mess of fiery pain, and she had been having odd dreams of spiders and dark places filled with the restless dead. She needed the reaver anti-venom, and she needed it yesterday.
She stood beneath a carved spider’s leg of twisted stone, rubbing her shoulder absently, when she heard footsteps approaching from behind. She turned and was surprised to see Ani, carrying something cradled in her arms. The youthmistress had always moved in silence.
Either my hearing is getting better, she thought to herself, or Ani is getting old, no matter how she appears.
“Where have your scars gone?” she asked. The youth-mistress had been as proud of her battle-scarred hide as Askander had been of his.
Ani shrugged. “Gone,” she said. “When I sing my bones into another shape, and then back again, there can be… changes. I am never quite the person I started out to be.”
“Sing your bones into another shape. So it is true—you are a bonesinger.”
“I am.” She stared at Sulema over the dark bundle. “Does it matter?”
“You knew my mother was a dream eater.”
“I did.”
“Do you know what that means?”
Ani regarded her for a long and solemn moment.
“I do.”
“Friends do not judge one another for practicing forbidden magics.”
“No.” Ani smiled at her, and Sulema saw the shadow of a much younger Ani, one whom she would have liked to call “sister.” “Friends help friends bury the bodies. Here, help me with this, would you, daughter of my old friend?”
“Certainly I will,” Sulema said, taking the bundle. For all its bulk, it was lighter than she had expected, and sent a strange cold tingle up both her arms. “Mother of my heart.” For so Ani was, and so she had always been. It was past time Sulema acknowledged all this woman meant to her.
Ani stared at her, and tears filled her eyes. “Daughter of my heart,” she said slowly. “Let us camp here tonight in this dark place, shall we? Beneath the shadows of the stars. Let us eat, and drink usca—you and I, and Hannei, as well—and let tomorrow bring what it may.” She reached out, took a corner of the bundle, and tugged.
“Nothing would please me more… oh. Oh!” Sulema gasped as the cloth she had been holding billowed out into the windless night. It filled the night sky, writhing and rippling like the sides of some tormented creature. Scales gleamed, teeth flashed, claws grasped, and eyes—dozens of them—stared out at her from the sides of her mother’s tent.
“What? How did you… what?”
“Best not ask,” Ani replied easily. She grabbed a corner of the unruly shelter and used a bone peg to set it firmly into the ground. “I will get this set, while you fetch Hannei. I want drink, and sleep, and my man Askander, but two of the three will do for this night, I suppose.”
Sulema turned on her heels and trotted off in search of Hannei. She wondered whether her sword-sister would agree to join them, and how Ani had come by her mother’s dreamshifting tent, and whether there was usca enough for all of them. In the end, she was gifted with answers to two of her three questions, and counted herself well satisfied.
She lay that night beneath the moons, beneath the humbled stars, beneath the eyes of her mother’s vanquished enemies, and let herself be spun into darkness.
* * *
Upon waking the next morning, Sulema realized three things, and in quick succession.
Usca still gave her the worst hangovers.
Hannei snored worse now that she had lost her tongue.
Ani had slipped away some time during the night.
The first realization—the dull throb of her head and the hare’s-ass taste in her mouth—was so all-encompassing that it took Sulema a moment to fully realize the import of Ani’s absence. When at last it sank in, she shook Hannei awake, dodging fists and feet. Apparently usca was no kinder to her sword-sister than it had been to her. Then she struggled free from her tangled vest, which was sorely in need of a good wash, and ducked out the tent flap into the thin light of a new day—
There she found the whole world waiting to greet her.
Ani stood at the fore. Sulema’s heart leapt in the presence of her erstwhile youthmistress, and she pushed away any notion of treachery. Forbidden magic or no, the song in Ani’s bones was a true one and loyal. A vash’ai stood at t
he bonesinger’s side, nearly as big as Khurra’an, pale as the dawn before a storm. He was a broken-tusked wild king of the desert, and the sight of him filled her with an equally fierce pride.
We are Zeeravashani, she thought. My people and his. Wild or no, bonded or no, we are one. The great sire looked at her, into her, and grunted his approval.
“Instead of bringing you to Min Yaarif,” Ani said with a grin, “I brought Min Yaarif to you.”
Sulema’s eyes widened with surprise. Leviathus was there, resplendent in the striped trousers of a river pirate and the white vest of an Atualonian princeling.
I knew it would take more than a mymyc to bite through his stubborn hide, she thought with pride for her brother. Even so, a wave of relief surged through her. A crown of sea-bears’ claws graced his brow, and a pair of long, thin blades were sheathed at either hip.
Then the smile dropped from her face. At his side, swathed in spidersilk the color of new leaves, eyes wide with dancing delight, stood Yaela.
Yaela may have freed me from Pythos’s dungeons, but her manipulations and half-truths nearly got us all killed, Sulema thought. She has much to answer for. If she gives me the cure I was promised, and the world for which we bargained, still I am not sure I will forgive her. She sent me on a quest into the Seared Lands to bring back a girl, and instead I have walked into a nightmare and returned with her people.
And Sulema was not the only one with a mind to vengeance.
From the corner of her eye she saw Hannei start forward, swords drawn, a snarl contorting her beautiful face. Her eyes were fixed on Sharmutai, who in turn was staring at Sulema with an expression of naked hostility. Rehaza Entanye stepped toward Hannei, hands upraised, as the whoremistress turned to a swarthy woman behind her and that woman hefted an iron-tipped staff, ready to fight.
“Guts and goatfuckery,” Ani spat, “put your weapons aside, all of you. No bloodshed before breakfast.” When it became clear that her words were not being obeyed she repeated, “Put your weapons down.” There was a power in her voice, old as the roots of hills, of a kind that Sulema had never felt before. Weapons were sheathed and hate-filled eyes averted… for the moment.
“Wise choice,” the bonesinger noted dryly. “I will set the lot of you to shoveling churra shit—do not think I would not. Now! Let us break our fast together as we decide the fate of the world.”
“We are missing a player,” Leviathus noted. “The Dragon Queen is among us,” he nodded to Sulema, “the queen of Quarabala—and the pirate king as well, or so I am told—but where is the Lich King?”
“Lich King?” Sulema stared. “What, or who, is the Lich King?” He did not sound like someone she would care to meet.
“A horror from the old stories.” Maika’s voice rang out as she took her place beside Sulema. She had dressed in Quarabalese finery, orange and red, black and yellow— hastily, it seemed, as her braids wanted straightening and her robes were wrinkled. A jeweled filigree like the Web of Illindra bound up her braided hair, and a crown of pale jewels graced her smooth dark brow. “Do you claim now that those stories are real?” There was an edge of fear in her voice.
“All stories are real,” Ani smiled. “You of all people should know that, queen of a lost people. Welcome, young Maika. I am delighted to see that you and your people have made it to safety.”
“There is no safety in this world,” Akamaia said. She had taken her place beside Maika. “You of all people should know that, Bonesinger. And you will address Queen Kentakuyan a’o Maika i Kaka’ahuana li’i as ‘your Magnificence.’”
“There is no safety in this world,” Ani acknowledged with a slow nod, “but the Dziranim, like our Zeerani cousins, give no honorific to queen or king. Still, empty bellies make for hard heads. Let us fill ours, that our minds may be open and our words soft, shall we?” Her eyes were bright and her smile wide, but Sulema knew the threat behind her words. Tension built beneath the twisted rocks like thunderclouds in the spring. Silence fell upon them.
Hannei’s stomach snarled like a vash’ai.
Snickers broke out among those close enough to hear, and the tension was broken.
“It is settled, then,” Ani said. “Let us eat!”
* * *
The servants and slaves of Sharmutai laid out pillows and cushions, dining-cloths and bowls of sweet water, and the assemblage settled down to break their fast. Sulema chose a particularly beautiful purple cushion for her own, and leaned close to Hannei, who reclined nearby.
“You did that on purpose,” she accused. That had been one of her friend’s oldest tricks, swallowing air so that she could make her stomach rumble loudly at inopportune times, to the delight of her pride-mates and the disgust of their elders.
Hannei stared at her, the very picture of youthful innocence.
“Ehuani,” Sulema whispered to her friend, and touched her arm. “You were right all along.” There was more beauty to be found in facing the truth than in dreams and wishes.
Saghaani, mouthed Hannei, touching her heart and pointing. You. Right. Also.
Then Sulema knew that all was well between them. As voices rose and rumbled all about them, as introductions and alliances were made, two warriors of the Zeera exchanged mugs of sweet water and a solemn, silent vow.
Sisters.
Forever.
* * *
All that remained were crumbs, and a third mug of coffee had just convinced Sulema that she might, indeed, be able to conquer the world, when the Lich King joined their party.
Her first warning was a low rumble, nearly inaudible. Ani leapt to her feet, Inna’hael following. Only then did Sulema realize that the pale sire had been growling. The party’s attention was turned from the thin niceties of people who were politely—but with growing impatience— avoiding a necessary and ugly discussion. Sulema raised a hand to shield her eyes from the bright midmorning sun and gasped.
A man moved toward them across the hot sands. The way he strode spoke of a warrior-king—of that there could be no doubt—conquering and claiming all around him with every step. Broad of shoulder, loose and narrow of hip, he wore an antlered helm and gold-chased armor, and the sword at his side was long and broad.
A fell light was in his eye, and his mouth was hard; grim was his face and grim his companions too, and these could be none but the armies of dead roused somehow from their ages-long sleep in Eid Kalmut. At the king’s left side walked a young girl, dark and darkly lovely and no less formidable than the antlered man. At his right hand, wearing half a mask and all the confidence of youth, walked the last man Sulema might have expected—or wished—to see.
All thoughts of fear or wonder were driven from her mind as fury bloomed hot and dry in her breast.
“Mattu Halfmask,” she hissed, making as if to rise to her feet. He said he loved me, she thought. That he could not live without me. Then he left me to die in his brother’s dungeons. “That half-faced, half-witted, half-dicked son of a diseased goat, he—”
A hand clamped hard on her wounded shoulder, drawing a surprised yelp of pain. Sulema shook free of the grip and rounded on her attacker but froze at the look on Hannei’s face. Her sword-sister had gone pale with shock and was pointing toward the Lich King, mouthing something that Sulema could not quite catch.
“What?” She looked at the king, then back at her friend. “Yes, Ani—Bonesinger Ani—seems to know him. So what is it that—”
She stopped, struck dumb with her mouth hanging open.
“What!” she shouted. “Is that…! Is that…!”
It was Ismai, as Hannei had been trying to warn her. The younger son of Nurati was also—somehow, impossibly—the Lich King of Eid Kalmut. Sulema moaned and bowed her aching head, cradling it in both hands.
“If I am dreaming,” she said to Hannei, “please wake me. If I am not—ow. Ow!”
Hannei punched her again, hard, in her wounded shoulder. She glared at Sulema, hands flowing into the quick, harsh hand-language of hunters.<
br />
Sleep. No. Wake. Everything—here she gestured around them, at the entire assemblage, the land and river and sky above—everything. Gone. Shit.
Then all eyes were on the two Zeerani warriors, as disapproving scowls appeared on every face, and they offended allies and enemies alike.
By bursting into uncontrollable laughter.
* * *
The world had indeed, as Hannei had said, gone to shit. The dead walked again, and Ismai—Tammas’s sweet little brother—was their king. The Lich King! Pythos ruled from Atukos, and the Nightmare Man was working to wake Sajani through him. She had helped to lead an entire people onto the very doorstep of Min Yaarif, and she had no idea where they might go from here. Hannei was a cold-hearted killer, Ani was a mistress of dark forbidden arts, and Sulema—
Sulema would have torn her way back into Shehannam and run all the way back to the Seared Lands if it would get her away from the endless talking. The sun set, food was brought—three meals in all, plenty of food if not of the best quality—and still the planning rolled on and on.
She supposed it was necessary, but Sulema was a warrior, not a general. The rush of their final battle had worn off, and Sulema mostly just wished for sleep.
Now and again the ground would rumble and that would cause a momentary lull in their discussions; the reminder that if they failed here, if their desperate plans to topple Pythos and put Sulema on the Dragon Throne were unsuccessful, the whole world would pay the price.
Finally, the edges of the sky went to red, and an agreement was reached. Though it seemed at times like madness, they would combine their forces, meeting on the banks of the Dibris in a two-moons’ time, and set forth for Atualon. Together they would wage war upon Pythos, upon the Nightmare Man, and any who dared oppose them.
The Seared Lands Page 38
