The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  It was a song of love, a song for all times and all places. As the music wound round and round the room, seducing them all, Sulema’s breath hitched and her own song faltered as she hearkened to Daru playing. Horses in the sunlight, and aklashi, and a belly full of mead. Hannei’s hand rose to touch Daru’s shoulder as he played lovemaking in the morning hours, a young boy’s first crush, a warrior’s laugh for no reason at all.

  He played for them singly, for everyone in the room, for the world. He played for the children, most of all, the children in each of them and those who had been stolen away. As he played, and as those assembled mid-death stared rapt, the Exceptional Children were called forth from passageways long forgotten. They danced. Most of them were shades, unquiet souls fell and deadly with eyes like dark stars, but some were living children, thin and feral-eyed but still breathing, still real.

  A very young girl of perhaps six summers, clad in a filthy gown of indeterminate color, half-stumbled, half-skipped to Daru and stood, looking up at him with hollow, hungry eyes.

  “Play,” she commanded, then she looked around at the other exceptional children, and at the adults who had failed them. Her voice rose high and piping as Daru’s flute. “Play!” she said again, smiling a fox smile, sharp white teeth and a taste for blood, then she ran laughing to touch a bigger boy on the arm.

  “Play!” he shouted, and then the room was full of children skipping, running, dodging between pillars and over dead bodies in a frenzied game of not-it. They howled, voices rising like the Wild Hunt, and one by one the adults began to join in.

  Watching them over his wicked flute, Daru saw the dead Sudduth and a white-cloaked Salarian sit cross-legged, facing each other to begin a game of bone-dice. Two Zeerani warriors drew a hoti and began to spar, while others watched and cheered. Yaela threw back her head, ululating, and threw her body into a dance that sent all the shades in the room to spinning with delight. As his own magic, world-born and star-trained, began to take hold, every soul living and dead joined in the game of life.

  Screaming they ran, they danced, they gamed and sang, compelled to show their love of and to the world. Only the Nightmare Man stood apart, the only one among them who was truly and forever alone and unloved.

  Ah, Daru thought, how his eyes burn! He played on, and on, even as his heart wept at the man’s wretchedness.

  The Nightmare Man lifted his knife again, hand shaking, and pointed it at Daru. A long tendril of darkness broke away from its binding of Sulema and her fennec, and swayed like a venomous snake seeking a rat. Finally, it scented Daru and struck, quick as thought, quick as death.

  Pakka was faster. She launched herself with a shriek at the dark thing, and her furious light flared blinding bright, burning the tendril away to smoke and ash.

  “PIP-PIP-PEEEE OH!” she screeched, triumphant.

  Again and again the Nightmare Man struck, trying to silence Daru’s song, the gorgeous, terrible reminder that of all things everywhere he was least loved. Again and again Pakka trilled and flew, striking the shadow-webs with her serrated forearms, snapping them in half with her powerful mandibles, blinding them with her butt-light. Little queen, Daru thought, how I love thee. How far they had traveled together, and through such perils. The Nightmare Man could never comprehend such a love as theirs, and so he could never hope to combat it.

  At long last, the assault accomplished what Daru had hoped. The Nightmare Man’s strength and attention had been diverted enough that Sulema’s little fennec slipped her dark bonds and darted away into the green forests of Shehannam. This in turn enabled Sulema to break free. She stopped singing to the dragon Sajani and turned to face the Nightmare Man, and her golden eyes behind the jeweled mask burned hot with an inhuman wrath.

  “YOU,” she said, and her voice sent shimmering tremors through the fabric of the world. “YOU!” She raised her golden sword, and it shone like the heart of the sun.

  “Ahhh,” the Nightmare Man said. The knife fell from his trembling hand, but before Sulema could move he reached up to grasp the medallion he wore at his throat.

  Daru started, and his music skipped a beat. No, he thought, no. It cannot be. Then the Nightmare Man turned his terrible tortured gaze upon him. When he held up the medallion in anguished defiance, Daru knew that yes, it was so.

  “Akhouti,” ground the nightmare voice. “Salhach a akhoutek. Anneh akhoutek! Salhach a hei!”

  Never in all his endless years of hunting had Daru heard a more heartfelt plea. Tears stung his eyes, but he shook his head. “It is too late for forgiveness. I am sorry, akhouti,” he said. Brother. “I am so, so sorry.” He reached for his knives.

  “Eh na mutaahna kulkem!” the Nightmare Man spat. He made an obscene gesture with his free hand—a fist opened and shut, a flick of the wrist—and the greater part of those humans who had moments before been fighting, playing, or dying fell motionless as old bones to lie upon the rubble of the floor.

  The Nightmare Man had lived long, long beyond the reckoning of men, of vash’ai and even waymasters, though not perhaps in the reckoning of dragons. He had been fighting, and he had been running to fight another day and another, since the days of Zula Din, of Ishmalak and Devranae and Kal ne Mur. He ran now, tearing open a door between worlds as casually as a warrior might flick open the flap of a friend’s tent. The Nightmare Man stepped through, and it began to close with a flash of dark light.

  But Daru, who was much, much older than he seemed, had hunted prey nearly this dangerous and desperate, and was not easily taken by surprise. Grasping his own amulet he reached out in three worlds, holding the way open. Sweat sprang up on his brow and he trembled, though to untrained eyes it would appear as if he simply stood in the middle of a broken chamber with one hand held upraised. A dark shimmer of air like a small cloud hovered just beyond his fingertips.

  Shadows began to pour into and out of the dark place. In the belly of Atukos, buried and forgotten to the world of men, he could hear—or perhaps feel—the thousands upon thousands of not-dead Baidun Daiel as they began to moan and stir.

  Sulema had not fallen, nor Ismai, nor—strangely—had Sulema’s half-masked lover. “Sulema,” Daru called to her in a strained voice. The medallion clenched in his fist began to hum, then grow hot, and finally to crack. “Sulema—GO! Follow him!”

  Sulema turned her face to hiss at him, and in that moment, she seemed more dragon than woman. Then she turned toward that doorway through which her enemy had stepped, and which Daru held open only through great strength of will. She nodded to herself and seized her fox-head staff. With his dreamshifting eyes Daru watched her spirit self, her intikallah, step out of her earthly body and into the portal through which the Nightmare Man had escaped.

  The dark doorway wrenched itself free from Daru’s grasp and slammed shut.

  Sulema’s body slumped to the ground, pale and lifeless.

  The stones and bones of Atukos one by one began to tear loose and fall to the ground, threatening to crush the humans within. In the catacombs far below the Baidun Daiel—those once exceptional children who, like the Nightmare Man, had been betrayed, buried, and forgotten by the Dragon Kings of Atualon—began to scream.

  FIFTY - TWO

  “Sulema!”

  The sight of her dropping lifeless to the cold floor was more than Ismai could bear. Crying out, he fought the invisible web of the Nightmare Man’s weaving, straining forward till he could feel the cords in his neck standing out. It felt as if he would tear muscle from bone.

  The pain was exquisite—worse than dying, worse even than living—and he halted to catch his breath, blinking bloodied tears from his dead eyes and shuddering in agony. Just then Pythos, released from the Nightmare Man’s spell, cut his magical song short and shook his head as if waking from a dream.

  Then the Dragon King smiled to find his bondage lifted, the Nightmare Man gone, and his enemies unable to move. When his eyes lit upon the still form of Sulema he laughed aloud, staggering to his feet and reac
hing for the sword scabbarded at his waist. This he drew and started down the steps to where she lay helpless, one arm folded unnaturally beneath her, hair a tangle of sunset wizard locks, and her face—

  I love that face, Ismai thought. I love her. I have always loved her.

  As do I, Kal ne Mur agreed. She is… everything… to me.

  To us.

  Even as sand and wind combined become a storm, Ismai and Kal ne Mur roared with fury and with one last great effort burst through the bonds of magic that held them fast. Moving slowly as if in a dream he hefted his own sword and pushed forward to meet the usurper king. When Pythos brought his sword down for a killing blow, it was met and blocked by Ismai’s shamsi—the very blade his mother had given him, marking him out as the favored son of her heart. The ring of steel on steel was as a bell tolling.

  The shock of that blow traveled up Ismai’s arms to his shoulder, to the very core of his being. Shaking him, waking him, making him whole. Filled with a sudden fire that was half joy, half rage, he threw his head back and laughed at the surprise on the Dragon King’s face, and then used the blade’s momentum to wheel round, pivoting on the ball of his foot as he had seen the warriors do a thousand times. As he had done himself as Kal ne Mur. He brought his blade round again to slash across Pythos’s sword arm just below the shoulder.

  Blood sprayed in his face hot and salty and good. Pythos ap Serpentus ne Atu, first of his name, dropped his sword and yelled in pain. He did not have time to recover, or run away, or even turn from the next attack. So swiftly did Ismai’s shamsi turn about, hissing through the air and whispering of death, that Pythos still had a look of surprise and the beginnings of anger on his face when his head toppled free of his shoulders to roll and bounce across the floor of his throne room.

  His headless body, spraying blood in all directions, jerked in a death-jig before folding at the knee and waist to flop indecorously close to Sulema.

  Ismai flicked his blade, sending thin ribbons of blood to fly across the chamber, then drew it across his tunic and sheathed it as if he had all the time in the world. Crossing the room he bent over the bleeding head of his foe and seized the Mask of Akari. It was surprisingly light in his hands and regarded him with sober intent.

  Deep within him, Kal ne Mur shuddered in pleasure and dread.

  It begins again.

  So it does, Ismai answered, and gently—gently—he placed the dragon’s mask upon his face.

  It burned. Ah, it burned. In his mind’s eye Ismai saw again the snake-priestess of Thoth as she sprayed venom into his face, his eyes. This, however, was a fresh torment, hot and new, searing the skin and bones, stabbing into his eyes like knives heated in a smith’s forge. Ismai clenched them shut, which availed him little, and ground his teeth together against the agony, allowing only the smallest, softest hiss to escape. It was worth it. Sulema was worth it—if by this he could gain some small hope of saving her, he would pay this price a thousand times over.

  There was a flash bright as the birth of a new sun. Ismai staggered but did not fall. As the light faded slowly, slowly, it took with it the searing pain. The mask grew cool against his skin, comforting. It accepted him as a rider chooses a new mount and worked to train him to its will.

  Kal ne Mur, still and forever part of Ismai’s song, was no stranger to the dragon’s magic and pushed back against it, setting boundaries so that he would not be suborned.

  Thank you, Ismai whispered deep within his soul. He opened his eyes carefully, braced against the pain, expecting to see only those things the dead king might show him.

  He stared about the room with surprise.

  His living eyes had been restored to him.

  No, he thought. Not restored. Akari has taken my eyes from me and replaced them with his own.

  Never had he seen the world like this. Colors for which he had no name leapt out at him, heartbreaking in their loveliness. So keen was his sight, so sharply defined, that it almost seemed as if he could see through things into the heart of them, the essence.

  A sound disturbed his fascination. A soft sound filled with anguish, it pierced the dragon’s spell and brought him back to the world of men. He glanced down and beheld his love, his Sulema. Mattu Halfmask had gathered her limp form into his arms and was bent over her, weeping.

  Ah, Ismai thought. Ah. Sympathy for the man filled both his hearts, but it was the pity of a rich man for the poor, for someone who never had and never would claim his own golden fortune. Mattu was the second son of a forgotten king, and he was a man who loved a dragon. For these sorrows Ismai would forgive this trespass. Lowering himself, Ismai crouched beside Sulema and her grieving lover and pulled her into his arms. Mattu was loath to let her go but Ismai’s strength would not be denied.

  “Give her to me,” he said as gently as he was able. “I can do what you cannot. I can help her.” Reluctantly, Mattu surrendered Sulema’s limp and still-warm body into Ismai’s care.

  “If I thought you meant her harm,” he said in a choked voice, “I would kill you.”

  Ismai smiled, then stood, clutching Sulema to his breast. Precious she was to him, beyond salt or breath or all the beauty of the world. Life radiated from her, hot and wild, belying the stillness of her face and pale cast to her skin. It seemed in that moment that he held everything in his arms that was right and good, every true thing that made life’s next breath worth fighting for.

  Chaos still reigned in that chamber. Paying no heed to the blood at the steps of the throne, to the dead and the undead and the unwholesome things which had once been Baidun Daiel, to whom he owed a soul-debt, Ismai strode out through the broken door. He shone with the light of Akari, and so dreadful was his masked face that none could bear the sight of him.

  The secret ways of Atukos were known to him, above and below. Kal ne Mur had caused many of these same hallways and passages to be carved from the living stone, shaped as the sleeping dragon herself would have them. Down and around and up he hurried, moving faster as he went, unhindered by battle fatigue or the dear weight in his arms, till at last he reached the mountain steps. Steep and slick, treacherous to those feet not meant to climb them. To Ismai they were welcoming as a garden path, and he ran up them two and three at a time.

  Finally he reached the lake of dragons’ dreams and kings’ songs, and only then did he stop. His chest heaved and he trembled, not from exhaustion, but from some nameless excitement. The lake smoked and boiled with Sajani’s disquiet and Akari’s wrath. Walking slowly to the very edge, he saw clearly that this was not water but the fine, clear stuff of magic. Any stone thrown into this lake would dissolve and be lost forever.

  Sulema was not breathing. Though the Mask of Sajani glittered with the lively light of a thousand green stars, her eyes behind the mask were half-closed and dull, and her flesh was cooling.

  She is lost already, he thought, and I am lost without her.

  “Sulema,” he whispered, and bent his face to her. The masks met, and a single clear note pierced the cool morning air like a bell.

  Ismai gathered his courage, the audacity of hope, and stepped into the lake.

  FIFTY - THREE

  “Sulema…”

  His call was a chain, a thorned vine, a binding web, trying to trap her in place and in time. She flitted aside gossamer-light, death-quick, content to forget and unbecome and simply be.

  Sulema rose up on the wind, spreading herself out thin as a dragon’s wings, and let the skinned man’s dreams of agony bear her up, up, pressing like a kiss against the blissful dark. She burst into candescent song, and lost herself in the wonder of her own creation. She was light, she was love, she was song and story and color, she was—

  “Sulema!”

  His voice trapped her; her name wrapped her within the limits of a human skin. The song shattered into words, harsh and atonal. The words became flesh, and the flesh became pain, and she remembered who she was.

  “I am,” she whispered, and she wept at the sound of her
own voice, at the human mouth too small to speak of big things. “Sulema.”

  The infinite became finite. Nothing thickened, quickened, creating a Sulema-shaped void which she filled with tears and blood and pain until she had arms, legs, and hair, and a beating heart. Sulema opened her eyes and saw far above her a thin and wavering light.

  Sun, she thought. Sky.

  Air.

  She moved her arms, her legs, sluggishly at first but with purpose as she became reacquainted with flesh and bone, thought and need. Her lungs remembered that she needed air, her legs remembered how to kick, and her heart remembered everything else. Ismai, she remembered. Daru, and Ani. Mattu Halfmask.

  Hannei.

  Kishah—vengeance.

  Love for her sword-sister smote her, pierced her, made her whole again. In the end it was not vengeance, but love, which drove her to kick and thrash her way back to the surface, breaking through the Dibris with a gasp and a wail as the air burned her lungs, as the pale moonslight burned her eyes, even through the mask…

  She brought her hands to her face, wondering. Indeed, she wore the Mask of Sajani, comfortable as her own skin, cool as starslight. Her fingers remembered its ridges and facets, and her soul remembered what it had been like to be a dragon, outside of time and space and the confines of human life.

  I am so small, she thought, dismayed.

  So limited. So… human.

  The thought slipped away with the current, washing over her, bouncing away down the river like debris after a cleansing storm. With a grunt of effort she struck out for the shore, wishing—not for the first time—that she had paid better attention when her mother had tried to teach her to swim. Not that there had been much use for it in the desert.

  Her bare feet found purchase at last, and Sulema pushed herself up through the strong waters onto the river’s edge, shivering a little with cold and exertion. She wished for clothing, and a weapon, and for a horse—

  A soft whicker made her jump halfway out of her sodden skin. Further up the river’s edge stood a horse. Not just any horse, but Hafsa Azeina’s snarky little gray mare, who had thrown Sulema more times than she could count, and who had died during the attack on her mother in Eid Kalish.