The bonesinger sang to the dream eater sang to the waymaster and they all sang to her, called to her, called her to hearth and home and sleep, sleep, sleep…
The bonds of life and love steeled over her, the most delightful of traps, the sweetest of prisons. Sajani, content to have been caught once more, settled her heart and her claws, closed her tourmaline eyes, tucked her nose beneath her wings, and drifted back to dream once more of warriors and wardens, of lovers and liars.
After all, she reasoned, the story was not over… and she wanted to know how it ended.
* * *
Sulema.
Sulema.
SULEMA!
Let me sleep, she snarled. Let me be. Sulema rolled over, scowling in annoyance. She had been enjoying her dreams and did not wish to be reminded that she had a body, at least not just yet. I am tired. Let me dream!
This is not your dream, Kithren. You do not belong here.
Wake, Kithren. Wake now.
But the dream…
Are we always to rescue you? The voice was teasing, gentle, but there were teeth to it as well. These fastened upon her soul, lifting her from the dragon’s dream like a sire carrying his precious cub. They carried her home.
* * *
Sulema woke.
The first thing she noticed was that her shoulder did not hurt.
The second was that her mouth tasted of week-old corpse.
The third thing she noticed, as she came fully into herself, was that she was bare-ass naked and twined about an equally naked, very male body. She jumped, rubbing sand and salt and blood from her eyes and trying to push away.
Strong arms held her fast.
“It is okay,” a deep voice said, familiar and yet… not. “Shhhh. You are safe. You are safe.”
“You are not!” she growled, breaking free and sitting up. She shook her head to free it of cobwebs, and looked down upon the lean, dark body of Ismai. “Where are we? What happened?”
“We are—I am not sure where we are,” he said, sitting up and drawing his knees up to his chest. He sounded young and unsure of himself, but not nearly as young as he had been just a few moons before. His voice had changed, and his face—
“Ismai!” she gasped. “Your eyes!”
Ismai reached up to touch his face. Though he still bore the hideous scars of burning, his eyes were clear as a summer sky—and as golden as her own. They regarded her with wary amusement.
“Your skin!” he replied.
Sulema looked down at her naked body. Her skin, though still as freckled as ever, was so deeply mottled that she thought she looked half vash’ai. She craned her neck and gazed around with a growing sense of wonder and confusion. Somehow, they had managed to wake up naked as babes on a white sand beach within sight of Atukos. Thick plumes of clean white smoke billowed up from the fortress, and she could smell the odd tang of burnt magic. They were alone, unharmed.
Completely bewildered.
Memories surfaced, faint and sweet.
“I was—I was caught in the dragon’s dream,” she said. Faint sounds of music were there in her heart.
“So was I,” Ismai answered. Then he bolted upright.
Snarling forms, golden and glorious and fierce, burst from the sedge grass a short distance from the dreamers. Sulema shrieked with surprise, and Ismai tried to scramble to his feet before falling hard on his butt, legs splayed and eyes as round as moons. Three young vash’ai—two sparse-maned sires and a dusky queen—leapt to the beach, tumbling round their humans like overgrown kittens, tusks gleaming in the bright light of day.
Got you, Mai’hael the laughing exulted. Sulema knew him instantly; knew his name, his heart, the color of his bright soul. He was hers, and she his. Got you, Kithren.
Little cub, Ga’hael the serious chided, padding toward her like the fires of dawn and ignoring the rambunctious play of his brother and Ismai’s Ruh’ayya. You need to be more aware of your surroundings, lest you become meat. Were you a tarbok, my teeth would be in your belly!
I love you. That was all Sulema could manage before her kithren bowled her over with their paws and their adoration, even as Ruh’ayya wrapped her forelegs around Ismai, bearing him to the ground and licking his face half off.
Drunk on new love and the surprise of finding themselves still alive, the five of them rolled and played and laughed on the beach as the day grew long and old. Loath to seek out their companions, even to find out how much of their world was left standing, they found themselves content to chase the waves and each other and let the great gray waters wash away blood and ashes and the taste of memories. Awareness woke slowly in Sulema’s heart—that they had nearly destroyed the world, that they may have saved it. That neither they nor their lives could possibly ever be the same. Soon enough the world would come looking and it would find her, shackle her once more with the bonds of friendship and honor, pin her down with the weight of a dragon’s legacy.
For these few moments, however, she was content to simply be.
More than content. She was complete. She was—
“Sulema!” Ani’s voice sounded, recalling them to here and now. “Ismai!”
“Dreamshifter!” A deep voice she knew was Daru’s, clear and strong as the call of a golden shofar. Then a sharp whistle sounded once, twice, three times. It was Hannei’s hunting signal. They had been found.
“We are in trouble now,” Ismai whispered. He grinned, winked one golden eye, and Sulema knew him in that instant as a man and a king and a lover. She walked to him, and he enfolded her in his arms.
Let come what may, she thought. I am ready.
“It is only trouble if you get caught,” she reminded him.
“Then we are in trouble, sweet warrior queen,” he said, “for surely I am caught.”
Ismai bent his face to hers, and they kissed.
* * *
Far below them, in the dark and deep…
The dragon smiled in her sleep.
FIFTY - FIVE
He found her in the healer’s rooms, seated cross-legged beside the body of Aasah. His late father’s shadowmancer lay still, the bier around him piled high with white flowers, hands crossed over his chest in the manner of their people. The stars set into his skin glittered even in the dim light of a single oil lamp. For a mercy the sorcerer’s eyes were closed, his face peaceful in death as it had not been in life.
“Yaela.”
Her face when she turned it to him was tear-streaked, wild and dreadful in her grief and impossibly beautiful.
“I loved him,” she said without prompting, “and I hated him. He was my friend, my master, my brother. He brought me forth from the Edge and made me who I am, and then he broke me. He was everything I had in the world, and he betrayed me.” She bent her head over the dead man, hair falling like a shroud. “He gave his life for me. How can I still hate him?”
“Yaela.” Leviathus crossed the floor to stand by her, heedless of the jagged stones, the still-rumbling mountain, the bitter-sharp smell of death. “Yaela, come away. We will see him buried, or burned if that is your wish. Come away.” He reached a hand to her and she took it, let him pull her to her feet.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” she answered. “Are you?”
“I will have a few new scars,” he admitted, “but none worth writing a book about.” She looked at him in surprise at that, and laughed, startling both of them with the sound. Together they walked from the sad room, leaving the empty shell of Aasah behind them.
Free of the Draiksguard, whose services Leviathus had politely but firmly refused, and unhindered by the imperators, whose confusion he could not help but pity, he wandered with Yaela through the halls and rooms of his childhood home, marveling that a place could feel familiar and alien at the same time.
Then again, he reasoned, I myself am changed.
I have made some improvements, Azhorus noted in the back of his mind. Though you are a work in progress, to be sure.
At last they came into his suite of old rooms and stood upon the balcony, looking out over Atualon and the sea beyond. A red day was dawning, sharp with hope and foreboding. Yaela laid a hand upon the balustrade and Leviathus covered it with his own. She did not pull away but sighed deeply. Leviathus thought that he had never in his life seen a woman so lovely, or so sad.
“What is wrong?” he asked, for it seemed to him that they had grown close enough that she might answer, where before her heart and mind had been closed to him.
“The people of Quarabala, such as would flee their homes, have been saved,” she said at last. “Their future is yet uncertain, and the danger they face now is no less than before, only different. Aasah had treated first with Wyvernus, and then I suppose with Pythos, to aid the Dragon King in return for lands where my people may abide, and wherein they may build homes and cities.
“But Aasah is dead. Who now rules in Atukos? And with the thoughts of Atualon turned inward, who now might speak for the Quarabalese, now that Quarabala is lost to us and Aasah fallen into shadow? What future have I given my sister’s daughter—a homeless people to lead in rags, as beggars with no homeland and no hope?” She sighed again.
“My sister rules in Atualon, or will once she is elevated to the throne,” Leviathus told her. “Sulema is fair-minded and soft-hearted, for all that she was raised by barbarians. More so for having been raised by barbarians, perhaps. A childhood spent in Atualon might have simply molded her into one more golden-tongued liar. Sulema has spent time and shed blood with the warriors and leaders of Quarabala; surely she will grant them a boon of land.”
“Grant them a boon.” Yaela made a face. “The women of Quarabala do not accept charity, king’s son. Should the Dragon Queen offer land in return for nothing, Maika will refuse it. To accept another queen’s charity would be to lose face before the people, and then she would be no queen at all.”
“Ah. Well.” Leviathus hesitated. Her hand beneath his was so warm, so precious, and her face so grave and strong, that his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, making speech difficult. He drew a deep breath and went on, though he was in that moment more daunted by the prospect of her rejection than he had been by the likelihood of death in battle. “Well. I have a proposal for you, if I may.”
She looked at him, and it seemed to him a strange light was in her eyes. Strange, but not unfriendly. “Go on.”
“Well, ah. The river pirates and I, some of us at least, are of a mind to found a city of our own. Land was promised to us by the Dragon Queen, fertile land near the mouth of the Dibris, land which has never been settled because the leviathans claim those beaches and have never suffered the presence of men. But Azhorus has been speaking with his people on my behalf. Many of them are of a mind to parlay with us, as there are things we two-leggeds can offer them. They have a taste for land-meat, and a love of pearls and jewels, and—what?” he broke off at the look on Yaela’s face. Her eyes were bright with mirth, and dimples appeared deep in her soft cheeks.
“You have maps drawn up already, I would wager on it,” she told him.
“Well… yes,” he admitted, and felt his face flush warm. “Maps help me envision things, you know. There will be a place for a great library, greater than the world has ever seen. We can lead expeditions into Quarabala some time hence and retrieve the books and scrolls of your people. It will be wonderful,” he finished. If only I could make her see, he thought. Perhaps if I showed her my maps…
“A place for my people. A place for my Maika to grow into her power. A place for our books,” she said, and the dimples deepened, by some magic making Leviathus’s knees go weak.
“Yes,” he said. “For all those things.”
“And what of me?” she asked, pulling away and placing both hands on her hips. “Shall I have no part to play in this new world of yours?”
His tongue clove fast to the roof of his mouth again. “What? I, uh, of course, you—”
“I suppose,” she went on as if he had not attempted to speak, “I should have to make a place for myself.”
Then Yaela the shadowmancer stepped close, twined her arms about his neck, brought his face down to hers, and kissed him as if no woman before her had ever kissed a man.
Thus was Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu—son of a king, brother of a queen—conquered.
FIFTY - SIX
Before the sun had fallen far from the moon, a great ringing voice rose out of the east, powerful as the dawn, sweet as birdsong. The White Nightingale raised up a canticle of joy for all the people of Sindan to hear:
“Sing now, O people of the Forbidden City,
for the days of your slavery are ended for ever,
and the Shining Walls are thrown down.
Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Sundered Lands,
for your deepest wish has been answered,
and the veil is torn,
your emperor has come through the Twilight Lands,
and he is victorious.”
Jian stood alone upon a balcony of the Palace of Flowers. He could see below him, spread out like an embroidered cloak, the cities and towns and farms of Sindan, and beyond them the Kaapua, sweet River of Flowers. Beyond that, away to the west…
“What are you doing?”
The soft voice of Tsali’gei broke through Jian’s reverie. He turned slightly and smiled, gesturing so that she might come stand by his side and look out upon the land. He held out his hands for his son—the small one was sleeping, for a change. Holding him close, he kissed the impossibly soft and sweetly fuzzed little head.
“What are you doing?” his wife asked again, regarding him with wide and too-knowing eyes.
“Look,” he said, pointing with his chin. “The wall is nearly down. Soon all the people of Sindan will be able to come to Khanbul without fear of punishment. They are free—free to go as they will, to love whom they will, and to dream of a better tomorrow. We have done this.”
“I hope the people remember it when there is little but dreams in their bowls,” she remarked somewhat dryly. The war had, indeed, made a mess of things. The harvests would not be robust this year, maybe not for many years to come. “And you never answered my question.”
Nor did he now, but Jian put his arm around her waist and drew her close, and she let it be. Though his sword had been washed clean of an emperor’s blood, nevertheless his eyes were drawn inexorably to the west, and it seemed to him that the peace in his heart was no more than the stillness between one breath and the next.
The Dragon Queen of Atualon, he thought, holds the chains that bind Sajani in one hand, and atulfah in the other. Until those chains have been broken, none of us can be truly free. Tiachu’s crown will not be the last to fall at my feet.
For the moment, however, Tsali’gei was there, and their little son Tiungren, and the sunset was beautiful. Let tomorrow come tomorrow; for now, he would have peace. He stood with his arm around his wife in the rose-gold light of a dying day as the White Nightingale sang on.
“Sing and be glad, O ye children of the East,
for your Daeshen emperor has come to you
from across the veil,
and he shall dwell among you.
Caring for you as a son
as a brother
as a father
all the days of his life.
The lands that were sundered shall be renewed,
and the deep magic returned to the world of men,
and Sindan shall be blessed
above all others
in the dreams
of Sajani.
Sing all ye people!”
In his mind’s eye the people of Sindan lifted their long-bowed heads and looked to Khanbul. When they saw that the shining wall of swords was being torn down, that the Forbidden City would be forbidden to them no more, and that the chains of slavery had been lifted from their shoulders, they sang.
He heard the song rising up from below. With all their hearts, they sang.
> FIFTY - SEVEN
All things had been made new and ready in Atukos, the queen’s fortress at the heart of Atualon. Kentakuyan a’o Maika i Kaka’ahuana li’i’s own Iponui had run themselves to exhaustion in order to spread glad tidings to all corners of the known world, from Min Yaarif in the west to the Sindanese empire in the east.
The new emperor of Sindan had sent emissaries and gifts of goodwill to the new Dragon Queen and her consort Ismai ne Mur. From every land known to humankind and Dae the people came, women and men, soldiers and scribes, to stare in wonderment at the sparkling city and her now-legendary queen. The flame-haired warrior from the Zeera—she who had inherited the gift of dreamshifting from her mother and the gift of dragonsong from her father, she who had raised armies of the dead and sang the dragon Sajani back into eternal slumber, and in so doing had saved them all. She had become a hero from the old stories, her shadow grown longer with each minstrel’s retelling.
Of the Quarabalese queen, made a refugee along with those of her people who had escaped the Seared Lands, there were a few mentions, a few wondering glances, but these Maika brushed aside with a humble smile. “Let the night be eclipsed by the bright new dawn,” she told her aunt Yaela, “as it always was, as it should be—for the best stories, the best plans, are woven in secret and told in whispers.”
Now the imperators in their splendid armor led their host toward the shining fortress, and every eye of Atualon shone with tears of wonder as they advanced, line upon line, their ranks swollen with the braided and antlered and horned heads of those who had been Zeerani warriors, Salarians, and pirates of river and land. Dragon helms of gold and lapis glowed in the sunlight, sword and spear flashed bright with pride as the Dragon Queen flexed her claws for all the world to see.
Such an impressive display of force had not been witnessed for ages, not since before the dark days of the Sundering. They came to the Sunrise Gate and halted in front of the walls. There stood women and men in the new blue-and-green spidersilk robes of the Divasguard, armored with snarling helms of Sajani and armed with newly made shamsi, single-edged swords of rare red iron, a gift from the queen of Quarabala as a gesture of goodwill and gratitude.
The Seared Lands Page 47
