The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

She sang of love, and of loneliness.

  She sang of a flame-haired warrior riding across the sands with her sword, her good horse, her sister. Sulema reached for that song, yearned for it. This was her heart’s desire, her life’s purpose, the one thing she must have or die, and she stretched, gasping, like a child reaching for a fruit that was tantalizingly out of reach. Like fingertips her sa and ka brushed it, the slightest touch, and then—

  “Surrender?” Pythos laughed, a harsh sound that wrenched her back into the present moment and all its ugliness. “What is this? You would have me give this throne and these people into the hands of an usurper’s half-tamed and half-trained daughter. Who, then, would stand between Atualon and the fell armies of Sindan? Who would shield my people from the priests of Eth, the river pirates of Min Yaarif, the undead hordes? Most importantly, who would sing Sajani to sleep, when even now she rouses and threatens the existence of our world? Surrender? I think not… unless, of course, you wish to surrender to me.” He laughed again, swinging his leg as if none of the dangers he had just named might threaten him, and certainly not as if death faced him with a thousand swords.

  The Mask of Akari glinted hard and gold.

  “Sa Atu offers you mercy.” Ismai spoke in a voice rich with wrath. “You should take it. Mercy is more than I will offer you, I and my soulsworn, you stinking dung-maggot.” The dead pressed forward as he spoke. Little now did they look like living women and men. The skin had drawn tight on their faces as they bared yellow teeth like feral things, eyes glowing red in the tired light, and a fell air hung about them.

  “It is not I who stinks of the grave,” Pythos answered, eyes gone hard behind the mask. He straightened, booted feet striking the ground and hands tightening on the arms of the golden chair. “It is not I who stinks of betrayal.”

  “Who have I betrayed?” Sulema demanded.

  “I am not speaking to you,” Pythos sneered. “You know of what I speak, do you not, Kal ne Mur? Or perhaps you need a reminder?”

  Ismai growled in reply. Sulema glanced at him in surprise, and saw that his stare was fastened straight ahead, his face a mask of fury. She followed his line of sight and gasped aloud before she could catch herself.

  Arachnists!

  Arachnists… or something worse.

  From the low doors behind the throne, Atukos disgorged a host equal to Ismai’s in size, and perhaps in number, as well. Women and men in all shapes and sizes, from elderly grandmothers to youths scarce out of childhood they came. They were many-limbed and walked with a horrible sideways shuffle, as the Arachnists did, but wore the black leathers, crimson cloaks, and faceless gold masks of the Baidun Daiel. In their midst walked a tall man, narrow-waisted and arrogant. Power and command radiated from him as if he were Akari made flesh. Sulema knew him at once, by his layers of shadowy robes, his massive hammer, his ruined mask—

  —and by her response to him. Something grabbed her arm, and she looked down to see Yaela’s hand gripping her so hard the knuckles were pale. She met the girl’s jade eyes.

  “No,” Yaela whispered. “Stay.” Only then did Sulema realize that she had been trying to move forward, and she could not have said whether she meant to kill him or kiss him.

  Perhaps both.

  She shook off Yaela’s restraining hand, and cried out in a voice made strong and clear by years training as a warrior in the Zeera:

  “I know you!” she drew a deep breath. “Nightmare Man.”

  “Indeed you do,” the tall figure agreed as he took his place beside the golden throne. “Perhaps you would care to know us better?” And he winked at her.

  “Perhaps,” she allowed, “I will use your guts to string a lyre and you can sing me to sleep at night.”

  “Oh, my dear,” he laughed. “I think not. Your mother might have threatened me so, once. You might have, had you grown to be half the woman she was.”

  “But she has not, beloved.”

  Sulema started. Though his mouth yet moved and his eyes never left hers, the Nightmare Man spoke now with another voice, soft and cringing. The voice went on.

  “She has neither her mother’s heart nor her father’s song,” it said. “She has nothing. She is nothing.”

  “Perhaps not nothing, sweet one.” His voice was smooth and low again. “We shall see.” It sounded oddly as if he was arguing with himself, or as if more than one person inhabited his body.

  Like Ismai, Sulema thought.

  “In any case,” he continued, “whatever you are, whatever you have, you are mine.” Thus saying, he drew a knife and held it point-down before his face, smiling. It was a golden thing, heavy and ornate. A silvery spider crouched atop the pommel, its body a shadow-jewel the size of a plover’s egg.

  Sulema staggered and would have fallen if not for the fox-head staff. The knife in his hands grew closer in her mind, brighter. It slashed across her throat and she was choking—

  No, not I, she thought, even as she fought for breath. Not I. Azra’hael. He killed my kithren. My Azra’hael.

  The spider moved, a living thing. It waved its forelegs in the air, and Sulema knew that it sought her. She could not tear her eyes from it, or move, or speak.

  “You are weak, and you are mine,” the Nightmare Man said in a voice dark and sweet as mad honey. “Your parents would be so disappointed. Join with me, little queen… or die now.”

  Even as the ruined man spoke, however, there was movement behind him. Shadows curled around the foot of the throne like dark waves, or thick smoke, lapping at the gold and the king’s robes. Dark tendrils like writhing snakes tasted, tested the air in the room. These twisted and twined back upon themselves and rose up, a great dark angry funnel of nothing that engulfed Aasah until it seemed as if he wore robes of shadow and sorrow, stitched together with bursts of black lightning. His pale eyes glittered with fury and he spoke, biting off each word as he might bite through an enemy’s throat.

  “You ally yourself with Arachnists, those foul priests of the Cult of Eth,” he spat. “You dare.”

  Pythos drew himself up at that, frowning, brows drawing together in the beginning of an angry scowl.

  “You forget yoursel—”

  “You. Are working. With the Cult. Of. ETH!” Such was his fury that Aasah shook, his voice shook, and shadows flew about the room like wicked birds. It almost seemed to Sulema that she could hear them shrieking with delight.

  “You should not have done that,” Yaela added in a voice that was as smooth and still as her master’s was enraged. From the corner of her eye, Sulema watched as the shadowmancer’s apprentice raised herself up on the balls of her feet and began to dance. As she did so Aasah burst into song like thunder, like a fell prayer. Shadows rose about them in a black tide and rushed at the throne.

  Pythos drew his booted feet up away from the shadows, and his eyes flashed snake-green behind the mask. His own voice rose, filled with the bright power of Akari Sun Dragon. The corrupted Baidun Daiel took a step forward, and another, corpse arms flapping and writhing, pitiable moans escaping from behind the smooth golden masks.

  Behind her Sulema could hear moans and cries of pain from those of the Baidun Daiel who had chosen to ally themselves with her. Yaela and Aasah fell to their knees, then to all fours, and the shadows fled in terror from the bright face of Akari. But Sulema had seen what Pythos was doing and heard the command in his song. It seemed to her much like those exercises Aasah had forced upon her, when she was his student.

  I can do this, she thought. Command the Baidun Daiel. She drew a breath as the shadowmancer had taught her, imagining that the power of Sajani flowed emerald-green and river-blue from the heart of the earth up into her lungs and from there—

  Pain exploded in her shoulder, then her head, and Sulema’s song was broken. Her arm went icy, and then numb. She dropped the fox-head staff and reeled, nearly fainting. The shadow-jewel spider on the golden knife weaved and bobbed, dancing her into its fell web, binding her to the Nightmare Man’s will.r />
  He smiled to see her pain.

  “Sulema,” he crooned, “Sulema. Sweet little princess, dear little queen. Why fight your destiny?”

  Ismai raised his sword high and prepared to charge, but the Nightmare Man pointed the hilt of his blade at Sulema and she fell to her knees, crying out as fire boiled through her veins, licked the back of her eyes, gnawed on her mind.

  “One more move,” he said in a voice as cold as the void, “and she will beg me for death.”

  Gold flashed across the Mask of Akari and the Baidun Daiel stood rigid as statues, or corpses. The shadows winked out and both shadowmancers collapsed senseless upon the dragonglass floor.

  “Excellent,” Pythos intoned, voice resonant with dragonsong. “Sulema, there is no need for this… strife. We are not so different, you and I, nor do our goals have to be at odds. Join me as my queen consort—no, as my queen— and we will rule together from Atukos. Together, we will sing Sajani to sleep for all time, and the world will know peace. Peace, instead of this pointless war! Our people—all our people—will rest easy at night, knowing their leaders are there to protect them. Is that not what you want? Is this not the legacy you fight for?”

  With every bit of strength she could scrape up, everything she had ever learned, every bit of stubbornness honed through a childhood at the feet of a powerful and indifferent mother, Sulema reached for and grasped the fox-head staff.

  Jinchua, help me, she thought.

  Mother, help me, if you can.

  Father, help me.

  She used the staff to push herself to her feet and stood tall and proud, a warrior staring death straight in the face.

  Sulema spat.

  “Your words are pretty,” she forced out, voice thick and slow as if she had a belly full of usca. “But they stink of lies. I am Sa Atu. This is my place, not yours. You know it, I know it… Atukos knows it.” Ehuani, the walls and floors shone with a green-gold light which pulsed in time to her own heart.

  Pythos’s face darkened with rage. “You!” He pointed at the Nightmare Man, stabbing as if his finger was a knife. “Bring her to me! If the little puta will not sit by my side, she will rot in my dungeons—but I will have her, either way!”

  The Nightmare Man laughed.

  “You think you command me?” He laughed again, harder, a great deep belly laugh of genuine amusement. “Little king. Little man. You do not control so much as the dust at my feet. You think I am here to help you sing Sajani to sleep? I have been awake for a thousand years, caught up in the fate of that seven-times-cursed daemon Kal ne Mur. I cannot rest, I cannot die, not till the last days of this world… and I am weary. Weary beyond imagining. It is time for me to end this. It is time for me to sleep. If the only way I can get a bit of peace and quiet is to destroy the world, that is what I will do.”

  As the Nightmare Man spoke, tendrils of shining darkness flowed from the air about him to wrap like spiders’ webs about the usurper king. He gestured with his knife, the webs went taut, and they—yanked—some bright and shining thing from the man on the golden throne. Pythos screamed, a thin and weak sound of utter terror. Then his eyes rolled back in his head till only the whites showed; he sat stiffly upright, and began to sing.

  This was no sweet song meant to soothe Sajani’s dreams and keep her still. This was a harsh discordance, filled with the clang and clamor of war. A breaking song, a waking song, a call to death and fire.

  The world shuddered and bucked as Sajani stirred.

  The Nightmare Man laughed again, more softly now, as he pointed the pommel of his knife at Sulema. The spider leapt, flew shining through the air, trailing a shining gossamer strand behind it, and landed light as dreams upon her shoulder.

  “No!” she shouted, but it was too late. Needle fangs plunged deep into her flesh, pumping venom beneath her skin, filling her with blackness and poison and death. Sulema drew a long, shuddering, agonized breath for one last scream, but felt her body go stiff all over. She was frozen as stone, unable to so much as blink under her own will.

  “Now, sweet Sulema,” the Nightmare Man whispered, “sing for me.”

  Sulema raised her voice and began to sing, to sing Sajani awake.

  FIFTY - ONE

  Daru stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Hannei, the corpse of a slain enemy still warm at his feet, and watched as—once again—Sulema began to wake the dragon Sajani from her eons-long slumber.

  He could feel it in his bones. They itched, worse than his arm had itched those many years ago after he had broken it in a bad fall. His skin crawled exactly as if thousands of tiny spiders were crawling over him, and his vision had that strange flat-and-double quality that could mean only one thing.

  They had come to a crossway.

  He had known as much already, of course. There was that sense of having been here before, of knowing what was going to happen next, a vague dread and anticipation. Pakka was glowing that weird rose-gold hue that she only got when they had come to one of those perilous bubbles in time and place where the events of a world might be altered with ever so slight, ever so careful a push.

  If one was a waymaster. He was, and Daru had long since proven himself incapable of following rules with which he did not agree. He touched the medallion he wore about his neck, took a deep breath, and opened his aetheron eyes.

  “There you are,” he whispered, “nasty thing.”

  The spiderling that had fastened itself to Sulema’s flesh was no spider at all, but a renderer, meant to separate soul and song and free will just as a flensing knife might separate meat and sinew and bone. If Daru’s actions here were unsanctioned, the actions of he who had created such a thing were utter anathema, a violation of all the laws of nature and punishable by termination with prejudice.

  Daru reached out in the aetherlands and touched the thick ropes of unlight that wove like fell spiderwebs between the creature and her master.

  Nightmare Man, Daru thought, that is what he is called here. It hurt his soul to touch the strands, much like the sound of metal scraping against slate or the smell of rotting flesh pained the body’s senses. Such utter wrongness, such discord, the antithesis of beauty and life that was a dragon’s song.

  So very, very unnecessary.

  Daru drew one of the knives from the harness he wore across his chest. Its blade glowed a perfect blue-green in his aethersight, the color of emeralds and amethysts in the light of a young sun, the color of elves’ song. With it he hewed through the burning, sticky stuff. Several strands of it snapped free and rebounded, striking the Nightmare Man full in the chest, causing him to cry out in pain and turn his maddened eyes.

  Ah, he thought, that got your attention. He smiled to show that he was unafraid—a silent lie—and sketched the sigil of Illindra in the air between them. The ruined man’s eyes widened behind the ruined mask, and lips pulled back in a feral snarl. He gestured, and the spiderling returned to its resting place on the pommel of his knife. This he raised before his face and, holding Daru’s stare, answered the challenge with a spell of his own.

  He traced the sigil of Eth in the air. It hovered for a moment, spitting and hissing, burning an open wound across the soft skin of time itself. A smell of sulphur and burnt things filled the chamber.

  Sulema cried out in pain, then resumed singing.

  The world flickered, and Daru beheld with his dreaming eyes a clearing in Shehannam, quiet and untroubled by the worries of the world of men. In this clearing lay a fennec fox, her fur stained red with blood, eyes half-closed, panting in pain as dark bonds wrapped tightly around her delicate body. Fewer than they had been before Hafsa Azeina, Ani, even Sulema herself had hewn them, still they threatened to tear flesh from spirit and send Sulema hurtling down the Lonely Road.

  Back in the waking world, the city of Atukos shuddered in the first throes of death. A crack ran lengthwise across the chamber floor between Sulema and those who would support her, and black grit fell from the ceiling like corpse dust. Smaller cracks bran
ched out from the first as the schism grew wide and deep, and the chamber’s floor began to fall away into the void. The walls of Atukos trembled and heaved, groaning in extremity, as veins of red and green and gold snaked up through the living walls to pulse violently before his eyes.

  Daru saw both worlds at once now, juxtaposed upon one another. In one, Sulema stared at the Nightmare Man through the Mask of Sajani and sang, sang the dragon awake, compelled by his foul magics. In Shehannam the fennec lay bound and dying. Bright eyes closed and she whimpered, a pitiable thing abandoned to death.

  In both worlds the Nightmare Man smiled, seeing at last the fruition of the darkest dreams of his heart. Jinchua would die alone in this dark place, and Sulema; thus Sajani would wake, the world would end, and he would be free. Free to sleep, to die.

  Oh, but you are wrong, Daru thought. You are a foul and friendless creature, and you cannot hope to understand. Jinchua is not alone, because Sulema is never alone. She is loved. He turned his head and caught Hannei’s eye. She nodded. Despite everything, her face softened and she smiled at him. We are loved, he amended, and none of us will ever truly be alone. That thought helped him to breathe more deeply and fully.

  None but you, Nightmare Man.

  Daru hardened his heart against knowledge and pity. He knew the histories of their enemy, his sufferings, the paths he had trodden to bring him to this place and time. Some of the choices had been his own, but many had not.

  There but for the roll of the dice go I, Daru thought. Still, he would do what needs must. He slipped his free hand into the pouch at his belt and drew forth his old bird-skull flute, long concealed from his teachers at the Academ, worn smooth and delicate with a young boy’s tears. As the Nightmare Man’s eyes widened in panicked understanding Daru brought the flute to his lips, and he played.

  He played a child’s tune, a lover’s song, a lullaby. He played flowers in the springtime and a mother’s sacrifice, he played dry wind and sweet water, and stolen kisses beneath the stars. He played friendship and love, and the laughter of children, and a grandmother’s dying smiles. He drew a breath into his strong young lungs, and he played.