The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  “Keila,” she said, “what are you doing here?” She walked warily to the mare, who stood with one leg cocked, placid as any gelding and real as Sulema herself. Beside her, neatly folded as if laid out by Atualonian servants, lay a warrior’s garb—trousers and vest blue as a warden’s touar, embroidered all over in gold, and a headdress of lionsnake plumes grander even than Sareta’s had been.

  Thrust into the soft sand, laughing at her—Sulema was sure of this—was the fox-head staff.

  “Jinchua,” she said, shaking her head. “I might have known. Am I dreaming, then, or is this real?”

  Yes, her kima’a laughed, deep in the forests of Shehannam. Also, yes. Life is a dream, and human life is a nightmare. Have you learned nothing at all, then, in all your travels?

  “Neither so much as I should have, nor as little as you might think,” Sulema answered, donning the warrior’s garb. It was light and comfortable, and fit perfectly—of course it did—and Sulema ran a hand over the thread-of-gold. Despite the odd circumstances, she wished for a hand-mirror. Snugging the headdress firmly into place atop her wizard locks, she took up her staff with a sigh of long suffering, then eyed Keila askance.

  “You are not going to throw me this time, are you?”

  The little mare huffed as if she had been insulted, but made no protest when Sulema leapt easily onto her back, nor gave one of those sideways hops for which she had been so famous.

  “Okay then,” Sulema said, still mightily suspicious. Dream-clothing and a dream-staff were all well and good, but she was not going to trust the illusion of a placid dream-Keila.

  “Let us be gone.”

  Do you know where you are going? Jinchua asked. Sulema could see the little fennec in her mind’s eye, pink tongue lolling, laughing at the world. She smiled at the image.

  She really is my kima’a, she thought. Churra-headed brat.

  “Back to the beginning, of course,” Sulema replied. “Het het!” She put her heels to Keila’s sides and the gray leapt to life, sweet as a song, swift as the wind. Sulema gave an exultant “Ai-la-la-la-la!” brandishing her staff and leaning forward into the whipping mane.

  It will be a beautiful day, she thought as the first pale fingers of dawn parted the sky above them. A beautiful day to die.

  * * *

  He was waiting for her in the Madraj, as she knew he would be.

  Standing upon the hallowed grounds, long the living-and loving- and dying-place of the Zeeranim, defiling their memories with his foul presence. The late light of the moons, the early light of dawn kindled on his dull and ruined mask, setting it aflame. There in the arena he leaned on a hammer, mocking her with his stance, his eyes, his very presence, as he watched her dismount and approach. Sulema’s heart clenched and her stomach churned as she saw the ring he had laid around himself—a ring of burned-out skulls. Some of them had been children, she saw, and others still had the remnants of charred braids clinging to them, leaving no doubt as to their identity.

  He draws a hoti of death, she thought, with the faces of my people. She stopped mid-stride to glare at him, and he smiled a beautiful smile at her reaction.

  “Welcome, Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu,” he said, holding his arms wide, hefting the great war hammer as if it weighed less than his conscience. “I have been waiting for you.”

  “Nightmare Man.” She spat upon the ground. “I have come to kick your ass.”

  His eyes lit on the staff she bore, on the mask she wore, on everything she was. His lip curled in a sneer of such contempt.

  “So.” He nodded. “You have become your mother’s daughter after all. And your father’s. You have become that which you hate.”

  “Not at all,” she replied. There was no anger in her voice, none in her heart. “I have become that which I am.”

  “And what is that, Sulema?”

  She laughed at the Nightmare Man, then again at the flash of fury in his eyes.

  “Khutlani,” she told him. “Do not say my name. Your mouth is too small to speak such big things.” With that, she stepped over the small, sad skull of a child, and into the fighter’s ring.

  There was no play, none of the feints or posturing that would have marked a match between two warriors. The hammer whistled through the air with a thousand-voiced howl. Sulema crouched and drove up into the blow, snarling like a vash’ai behind the dragon’s mask as she spun the staff from hand to hand. Their weapons met, slid, rebounded, whirled and met again.

  Sulema was strong.

  He was stronger.

  The hammer shaft thrust at her belly, the head smashed through the air and Sulema leapt, legs churning, staff singing a song of sand and fire as the hammer failed, again and again, to find its target. But only just. Sulema was fast.

  The Nightmare Man was faster.

  She landed solid blows on his wrist, his upper arm, his ribs, and one on the back of his knee, but to no avail. The Nightmare Man stalked her around the hoti, hammer shrieking its bloodlust as it missed her face, then her leg by the breadth of a bad dream, a shadow’s kiss. His smile told her this was a game to him, and the obsidian chips of his eyes said that it was only a matter of time before his blows landed.

  Akari Sun Dragon spread his wings across the desert sky, kindling the Zeera to light and life, the sands to song. A blow Sulema did not see coming took her in the gut and she stumbled back, gasping, hunched about the pain and trying to keep her guard up. A low moan of fear rose up from the ring of skulls as her heel brushed the edge of the hoti.

  “Leave, and you die,” the Nightmare Man told her. He held his hammer easily and turned his face to the morning, closing his eyes as if nothing she might say or do could possibly matter. Sulema straightened as best she was able and brought the staff back up.

  “I am going nowhere,” she said. Her voice was a low growl that echoed in the empty eyes of the Madraj. “You will die this day.”

  “I will not die this day, daughter of the dragon,” he replied. “I cannot die, nor sleep, nor escape the dream of this mortal horror, not till the end of this world.” He turned his face and looked upon her with eyes that were ancient and terrible with grief.

  “The nightmare is your own,” she murmured.

  “It is—and do you feel a moment’s pity for me, beautiful child? Would you put down your staff if you could, and heal my pain?” He took a step toward her, and Sulema’s breath caught in her throat as his gaze caught hers and held.

  All the stars in the sky are in his eyes, she thought. All the worlds in Illindra’s web.

  The Nightmare Man lifted a gloved hand and gestured her nearer. Sulema’s feet dragged against the sand as she took a step toward him. Another… and another. A low growl rose in her throat, again to echo among the empty seats of the Madraj. Then she glanced over the Nightmare Man’s shoulder, beyond the hoti, and saw the eyes.

  Gold eyes and green, yellow eyes and amber, they stared. The vash’ai had come, wild sires and queens with tusks ungilded, spirits untamed, untrammeled, free and deadly as the Zeera herself. The great cats sat and lounged and prowled among the seats and arches, peering at the combatants and singing a low, growling, monotone song unlike anything Sulema had ever heard.

  Her steps dragged her ever nearer to the Nightmare Man, so close she could feel the cold heat of his body, hear his breaths. He smiled, reached out and took her fox-head staff, dropping it upon the ground. Next, he tore the Mask of Sajani from her face and tossed it aside as one might a trinket.

  “Sulema,” he purred, cupping her cheek in one hand. He raised his hammer high with the other, and it laughed at her in the cold morning light. She could not tear her gaze from his, not even to witness her own impending death. The Nightmare Man gave off waves of grave-cold, bone-cold, drowned-in-the-river cold. She shivered, and he smiled to see it.

  “You,” he said, drawing her closer, the hammer higher. “You have caused me such trouble.”

  The song of the vash’ai rose about them, and Sulema smiled between c
hattering teeth.

  “You f-forget one thing.”

  He hesitated, eyes flashing. “And what is that?”

  “It is only t-t-trouble if you get c-caught.”

  Quick as cat’s claws she struck, reaching over the Nightmare Man’s shoulders with both hands, taking hold of his cloak, and yanking it up over his head so that he became entangled in it, just as Hannei had done to her in the fighting pits. Dishonorable, she had said then, and dishonorable it was.

  But it worked.

  She twisted the cloth so that the Nightmare Man’s face and arms were well and truly tangled, and then wrested the hammer from his hands. She dropped her grip on his cloak and took a step back, swinging from the leg, from the hip, with all the strength in her wounded shoulder and all the kishah in her heart, and when that blow landed the sun—

  Just for a moment—

  Winked out.

  The Nightmare Man’s skull crumbled like a fistful of eggs. His hideous mask flew end over end to land outside the hoti and the hammer shattered with a high, metallic shriek. He fell to his knees, and then to his face in the sand, and the ground beneath Sulema’s feet opened to receive him.

  She stumbled backward, away from the widening crack, snatching up the Mask of Sajani and her fox-head staff lest the gaping maw swallow them both. As she and the vash’ai stared in silence, the limp dark form fell from sight, one arm sliding and flopping in a grim parody of a farewell wave as he disappeared.

  “Jai tu wai,” she called, and then wished she had not. Dead or no, she had no wish to see that face ever again, not in the least of her dreams.

  The sunlight flashed again, or perhaps it was her. Sulema remembered, now that it was too late, that she had used her mother’s tricks to get to the Madraj. She was in this place in spirit only, and could feel the connection to her body growing thin and weak. Too late she realized that although her mother had taught her how to leave the corporeal form, she had never learned how to get back again.

  Perhaps if I dove into the river? But even as the thought surfaced it swam away again, leaving not so much as a trickle of bubbles to show her the way home. A wave of dizziness overtook her. Sulema raised a hand to her face and realized that she could see through herself. She was fading, blowing away on the wind, lost like a bad dream in the light of a new day.

  Perhaps it is best, she thought. Perhaps it is best that I die. Ani herself said that none should hold the powers of dreamshifting and atulfah in the same body. It is too much power for one person to wield. I am too much.

  A glint of sunlight on twisted metal caught her attention and she thought she smiled.

  At least he died first. I accomplished that much, at least— and the Zeera is singing, she is singing me to sleep.

  Then she realized it was not the Zeera.

  The vash’ai stirred from their perches and lounging spots in the sunlight, left off their circling and posturing, and came to her. Young cats dark as soot, old queens with yellowed eyes and hanging bellies, and greatest of all, the pale broken-tusked form of the kahanna who walked with Ani but claimed her not.

  “Inna’hael,” she said, recalling his name, and smiled as the sunlight flowed through her to stain the dirt. “I am glad you are here. I would not want to die alone.”

  Nor shall you, he replied in her heart and mind. His voice was stern and deep and all things good, and Sulema wept with joy to have heard the words of a vash’ai before she died. He sounds like Azra’hael, she thought. My Azra’hael. My everything.

  Azra’hael was my son and heir. Inna’hael drifted closer, until his face eclipsed the sun in her eyes. He was one of our greatest warriors. I forbade his leaving the prides, I forbade his bonding you. I did not think a human worthy of one such as he.

  Spirit though she was, and dying, Sulema’s heart cracked and bled.

  I am sorry. And she was. Had he remained in his place and not come seeking her, Azra’hael would not have died.

  I am not, he replied, purr-soft. My son was right: you are worthy. I was wrong. A flash of broken tusk, a cat’s laugh. It will not happen again.

  She is worthy. Another voice, deep but lighter than that of Inna’hael, and a bright light that hurt her weary eyes. A young vash’ai, thick-maned and powerful, stepped up to stand beside Inna’hael. I will have her. She smells of blood and fire, and I am hungry.

  And I, a third voice said, light as a spring breeze and full of laughter. This male was dark and heavily scarred, with a torn ear and laughing blue eyes. She smells of mischief, and I am bored.

  There you are, Inna’hael said, displaying his tusks in a cat’s grin. Long you wished to be Zeeravashani, little one— you should have been more careful of your wishes. These sons of mine are trouble enough to make even one such as you have second thoughts.

  They are beautiful, Sulema protested, reaching out her fading hands toward the vash’ai. They are perfect.

  So be it, the broken-tusked sire said. He opened his mouth wide and breathed upon her face. The hot carrion stink of his breath enfolded her. He opened his mouth wider, and roared, propelling her away, away, away.

  FIFTY - FOUR

  Sulema swam again, but this time she was not alone. Two beings of light supported her as she rose through Illindra’s web, the worlds glistening and tickling her skin like bubbles as she drifted out of time and mind until at last she was caught up in the swirl of song, a riff, a chord of the discordant, beautiful, gorgeously messy life that was her own world, her own time and place and bonds of honor.

  Newly born, the Song of Sajani swept her up in a rising tide, swirling and rolling around her, dragging her over reef and wreck and casting her at long last on the sands of the same beach and into the same life, the same body from which she had wandered.

  So the Song of Akari called her, as well, called her home whole and alive. Sunlight warmed the mask she wore, falling once again upon her face. It warmed her throat, her skin, her hair, her eyelids. Strong arms held her in the here and now, and a voice—a man’s voice—chanted her name like a prayer.

  “Sulema. Sulema,” it said. “Oh, Sulema, oh my love…”

  Stirring, she opened her eyes and looked into the other half of her soul. She reached up to touch his face, knowing at last that his wounds were a prayer of love and that she was the answer.

  “Ismai,” she whispered. “Ismai, I am here.”

  “I see you,” he whispered. His arms tightened about her, and hot tears washed her face. “I see you.”

  The Mask of Akari gazed down upon the Mask of Sajani, and Sulema could feel them, could hear them—dragons beyond all thought of here and now, beings of such magnificence that life itself was just a dream to them, this world a passing fancy. Akari sang to his mate, calling her to wake, to live, to come to him, to love.

  Sulema was swept away in the beauty of their joy as Sajani, roused from her dream of ages, answered. The ground beneath her trembled, then shook. Ismai released her from his embrace, stood, grasped her hands and pulled her to her feet.

  “Come,” he said in a voice that was not wholly his own. “It is time.”

  “No, you come,” she corrected him, none too gently, in a voice that was deeper and richer than hers had ever been. “This is my world.” She led him down the mountain path and into the forest as the lake began to boil, the fog to rise, the ground to ripen, to tremble and swell as if it would burst open.

  She sang as she walked, as powerfully and as naturally as a human babe taking in its first breath, and he sang with her. Their voices rose in prayer, in exultation, in the mating-song of dragons, the dirge of a dying world come to its rightful end. Their path took them down into Atukos, her dragonstone walls lit in a boreal display of scintillating greens and blues and golds blazing in ecstatic welcome at the return of the queen.

  Sulema-Sajani trailed her hands along the walls as she took him down into the heart of Atukos and then into the great hall. She ran up the steps to her throne. There was blood there as she claimed her rightful
seat, and Ismai-Akari took his place beside and behind her.

  “It is time,” she told him.

  “Yes,” he agreed, bowing his head. “It is time.”

  The dragonstone walls of Atukos began to coruscate with flames of gold-green and sea foam, the floors to buckle. A fine mist rose about her feet, thickened to fog. A storm of magic rose in answer to the dancing of her heart. The dragon would wake, as dragons must, and this world, this finite pearl, would be strung in the web of her memories, to live on only in the infinite heart of a dragon.

  Ismai went to his knees and lifted his arms high. His mask glowed as brightly as the desires of her heart and he sang, of life and love and poetry, of strife and betrayal and war, of all the doings of kith and kin he had witnessed unfolding on this tiny, bright world beneath his wings as his love slept on.

  Something dragonish appeared in Sulema’s heart, then— the fierce and jealous love of life. She wished to wake, to sing to the infinite her adoration of humans, of sisters and lovers and vengeance. She opened her mouth to sing, to wake Sajani fully, to break the bonds of slumber and set her free.

  A single note caught at the edge of her soul and tugged.

  She paused, mid-breath, to listen.

  It was a delicate sound, dark and lovely, thin as birdsong and strong as a young girl’s determination to live. It rose into a trill like a sweet-throated exultation and fell with a clash like the breaking of swords. This was a new music, limited and imperfect, but for all its imperfection it had a rough, wild beauty.

  * * *

  The world was a song—an exciting song, born of the loves and stories and tears of countless tiny lives. Old as rock it was, and yet—and yet, there was a new voice on the wind, a refrain she had never yet heard. Sajani stopped mid-stretch to listen to this new sound, this delightful cacophony, and thus her soul was trapped. A web was woven around her not of balance and purity and perfection but of strife, and pain, of the fool’s song of courage to press on when all hope has failed. The laughter of a sword-sister with no voice; the lament of a mother over a lover she has killed with her own hands; the wails of a sea-thing child caught between wave and wind.