The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

  And now you know. I am not simply ill, dear girl, nor even old. I am dying.

  Sulema gasped, and tears sprang to her eyes. She had known all along, and yet… I’ve just met you, her heart cried out. I thought we had more time. Who will teach me to wield atulfah, if not you? Who will be my father, if not you?

  I am sorry, my sweet girl.

  Aloud he said, “I will not be making the trip to Khanbul because I will not be alive long enough to see them off. You—my heir—will have to send a delegation in my place, as the jackals of the world snarl at one another over what power might be left in my bones. You are all I have left, the legacy I leave to this world, and you are more than enough.” He held his arms wide even now, but his eyes, his smile, were tinted with sorrow. Sulema went to him, and let him enfold her in those still-strong arms.

  “You cannot die,” she told her father, clutching at his robes as a child might. “Atualon needs you. The world needs you.”

  I need you.

  He was the most powerful man in all the world, and he terrified her, but Wyvernus was the only father she would ever have.

  “I will die,” he said in a voice both stern and kind, “but you will live on. You are my daughter—the Dragon’s Legacy—and as long as you abide by your duties Atualon will not fall, nor the world fail.”

  “I am not ready.”

  “No. But you will be.” He kissed her forehead, and pushed her away gently. Gently.

  Sulema bowed her head. “Yes, Father.”

  “Now,” he told her, wiping the tears from her cheeks, “let us watch this spectacle, shall we? It is in your honor, after all.” He smiled as wide and bright as the sun, even as the crowd exploded into screams and thunderous applause.

  TWENTY

  Sulema looked down upon the arena, and this time gasped in wonder. Aasah strode onto the bright field like an eclipse, and the crowd hushed even as the shadows stretched forth to welcome him. He wore a long robe of red spidersilk that fastened at one shoulder, a scrap of red around his waist, and little else. Unconsciously she whistled her admiration. The man was magnificent.

  “Shadowmancer!” a young woman screamed somewhere back in the crowd. “Shadowmancer! Shadowmancer Aasah!” The crowd took up the chant, though he scarce seemed to notice. Stopping near the middle of the arena he took on an air of stillness, his red cloak billowing about him like a dancer.

  Wyvernus turned to Sulema, and his smile was again full of mischief.

  “The ne Atu, of course, should not place bets on the outcomes of these competitions. It would be unseemly. Were I a betting man, however, I would weigh the salt scales in Aasah’s favor.”

  The crowd stilled again as Matteira came into view, carrying a pair of bronze-tipped fighting sticks and walking with an insolent swagger. She was dressed in a tunic of black, with an overskirt of black leather strips studded with bronze, and a short black cape with a blazing sun embroidered on the back. On her face she wore a lapis half-mask in the form of Sajani Earth Dragon, and Sulema frowned. Was the woman’s mask supposed to remind them of her missing brother, Mattu?

  Surely, she played a dangerous game.

  Matteira stopped beside a small brazier and a skinny child dashed across the arena to light it. Red flames leapt upward with a pfwoof and the crowd cheered, having forgiven her any indiscretion.

  However, Wyvernus’s face went to stone. As it did, a single cloud obscured the face of the sun. Thunder rolled in the distance. He had not liked Mattu Halfmask since Sulema had taken him as her lover, and that dislike seemed to extend to the innocent Matteira.

  Sulema patted the Dragon King’s knee. “Tell me you are not going to be one of those fathers,” she teased.

  “Is there any other kind?” But he loosed his scowl, and the cloud passed.

  Aasah raised his arms in a graceful gesture and began to sing. His voice was low and powerful, like the brass bells in Aish Kalumm. The shadows at the edges of the arena leaned in toward him, eager as children, and moved to gather above his head as Shadowmancer Aasah sang of the night.

  Matteira flowed into motion, dipping either end of her fighting sticks into the brazier of red flame, then twirling the weapons around her waist, under her arms, above her head, leaving a trail of bright sparks and black smoke in their wake. The crowd gasped. This was much more exciting than a singing magician.

  “I should have bet on Matteira. She would make a fine warrior.” Sulema planned to corner the other woman as soon as this was over, and demand to learn the flaming staff trick.

  “I would not be so hasty.” Wyvernus looked toward the combatants, and not at her, but she imagined his smile. “Watch.”

  As Matteira stepped toward the shadowmancer, staffs spitting a promise of red death, Aasah brought his hands down in front of him with a surprisingly delicate twist of the wrists, and the shadows that had gathered above his head flowed down around them, becoming a writhing ball of starless night. For a moment he stood, still singing, and then the writhing mass exploded with a scream.

  “Wyvern!” Sulema leapt to her feet, groping at the side where her sword should hang. The crowd lurched back from the spectacle in a hysterical wave.

  Wyvernus laughed.

  Aasah, red cloak billowing behind him, had summoned a wyvern made of shadows… and yet, he had not. A true wyvern, even a male of one of the smaller species, would stand twice again the height of a man, and many times over his weight.

  This wyvern was scarcely a man’s height—even counting its proud crest of spikes—and black as deepest night. This marked it as a female, whereas males were known for their garish colors. Neither was it wholly substantial—when it moved, faint outlines were visible of the far side of the arena, as if the creature were made of glass filled with smoke. The little wyvern tipped its broad head from side to side, birdlike, following the movement of Matteira’s flaming staffs. Then it opened its broad and toothy maw, and squeaked.

  Sulema’s mouth fell open. “Is it real? I want one!”

  Wyvernus chuckled. “Illusion,” he assured her, “though real enough for this. Aasah is one of a handful of magicians skilled enough to create a shadowshift solid enough to touch, and he can only sustain it for the length of a single song. Watch!”

  Seemingly unfazed, Matteira stood poised on the balls of her feet, waving her flaming torches back and forth, back and forth in a pattern that might have been meant to confound the shadow beast. It followed the movement for a few passes, and then paused as Aasah’s voice changed in pitch, shaking its head as if waking from a dream. Then it gave a whistling little hiss, flapped its wings, and pounced, though it did not fly.

  Matteira twirled one way, while her sticks twirled a counterpoint, and she ducked and rolled as the creature squawked its disappointment. There was applause, then laughter as the thing stomped its clawed feet and began to scratch at the ground as if searching for lost prey. Sulema watched Aasah. His hands moved as he sang, making graceful little bobbing and weaving motions.

  Like a puppetmaster, she thought. Interesting.

  Matteira leapt from her roll, snapping her spine around in a way that made Sulema wince, and brought both sticks together with a crack in a move meant to crush the beast’s head from behind—but her blow met only air. The wyvern snapped its head back and whipped around in a shadowy blur that had the crowd moaning oooohhhhh. It struck like a snake at Matteira’s feet, sending her into a quick backward dance, and again, snatching one of the flaming sticks from her grasp and sending it in a high blazing arc to be snuffed out on the far side of the arena.

  The creature—or perhaps it was Aasah—misjudged the third strike, however, and received a burning poke in the eye. The shadow-thing let out a high, angry kai-yii-yii, rearing back and clawing at its face. The crowd moaned again, unhappy that the beast should be harmed, illusion or no.

  Matteira took a defensive stance as the thing reared back. A dull shadow covered her face as the sunlight filtered through its leathery wings. Its spiked tail
waved gracefully from side to side and it bobbed its head, hissing malevolent threats from between those sharp little teeth, and then it charged. This time when Matteira rolled the wyvern leapt after her, back arched and talons extended for the kill. It landed with its full weight upon the young woman’s back…

  …and Aasah brought his arms up, sharply. The timbre of his voice took on a low, commanding note. The wyvern flapped its wings, clumsily, and stumbled to stand beside its opponent instead, one clawed foot holding her firmly to the ground. It craned its neck and regarded Aasah for a long moment, then drew back its thin reptilian lips and hissed.

  Very interesting, Sulema’s mother would have said.

  The wyvern ceased its protest, stretched its long neck out, and nudged the prone form beneath its feet. Matteira struggled under its claws for a moment before tossing the second staff away and slapping the ground three times.

  “Yield!” she cried. “I yield!”

  The sound of a gong shivered brassily across the spectacle grounds, and again, and thrice, throbbing away into silence. The wyvern’s spiked head rose to consider the crowd, and one might have heard a rabbit’s last breath for all the sound there was. Then it bellowed.

  “Aasah!”

  And again.

  “Aasah!”

  Thrice it called out, and suddenly the shadows spiraled back toward the shadowmancer, dancing, playing, then back to their proper places far from the bright eyes of the sun. The still-singing sorcerer brought his hands slowly in and to his chest, pressing them together, and his voice slowed, softened, caressed the last notes of his song in a way that had every woman in the crowd—and doubtless half the men—entranced.

  Aasah strode to the prone and panting form of his opponent, helped Matteira to her feet, and then turned to face the crowd, arms upraised. The gems in his skin glittered in the sunlight, and sweat sheened his face.

  The crowd was silent.

  The crowd went wild, and he acknowledged their adulation with a tired wave of one hand as he turned and walked away from the arena. Two of the Draiksguard came to help Matteira, though she waved them away and saluted the crowd before gathering her smoking sticks and departing.

  Sulema leapt to her feet, ululating and shouting, face flushed and split in a wide grin. The Dragon King stood beside her. Gone for the moment were her fears for the future.

  “Did you see that?”

  Wyvernus smiled indulgently. “This is why I never bet against Aasah. If you think that was something, just wait till you see his apprentice. The girl is… surprising.”

  Sulema raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “I thought you said we ne Atu do not bet?”

  “I said should not.” Wyvernus took his seat again, and below them the crowd followed suit. “Even a king does not always follow his own best advice.”

  * * *

  A new hush fell over the crowd, and when Sulema looked down, Yaela stood in the center of the arena, still as a summer day. In truth, she was one of the prettiest women Sulema had ever seen. Nurati had been possessed of a beauty that would one day be legend, and her daughters were all known to be lovely from infancy, but something about this girl drew the eye and invited speculation.

  Yaela showed far less flesh than the desert-born, even less than the Atualonian women. She was wrapped and draped neck-to-ankle in spidersilk of palest green that matched her eyes, contrasted beautifully with her ebon skin, and hinted at lush curves while revealing nothing.

  Unlike her master the shadowmancer, Yaela neither inspired nor sought illumination. She seemed quiet, devoted to her mentor and seldom seen far from his side, though doubtless many a man would have liked to lure her away from her studies. Sulema’s servants had whispered that Yaela had been little more than a child, stick-thin and feral, when Aasah had fetched her from their homeland in the Seared Lands, and though she had grown into a cultured young woman, she still wore an air of wild mystery wrapped as close to the skin as her silks.

  At first, they said, it had been rumored that she was an exotic plaything Aasah had bought from the slavers in Min Yaarif, but the shadowmancer quickly cut those whispers to the bone. He made it clear that he would brook no threat nor unkind word toward his strange young charge, and none dared risk the wrath of Shadowmancer Aasah.

  Isara Ja’Akari and her vash’ai entered the arena, and the crowd sighed like a wind through the river reeds. Sulema leaned back in her chair with a grunt of satisfaction.

  Now we shall see.

  Isara claimed the arena as her own, moving with a catlike air of possession equaling that of sleek Sinharai at her side. She was the very image of a warrior, from the golden cat’s-mane headdress that marked her as Zeeravashani to the gold-and-soot dappling of her skin. The laces of her vest were loosely tied, and the golden bands on her arms matched those set high on Sinharai’s tusks. Sulema could not help but smile at the sight.

  “I wish we could bet on the fights.” She leaned forward in her seat, and Wyvernus patted her hand indulgently. “Now you outlanders will learn what it means to face the Ja’Akari.”

  Wyvernus grinned. “I would take that wager, were we not ne Atu.”

  Yaela raised her arms above her head in a fluid gesture, pointed one bare foot before her, and held this graceful pose for a long moment. She closed her extraordinary eyes and took a deep breath, as if seeking courage.

  Isara drew her shamsi, threw her head back, and ululated a challenge. Sinharai accompanied it with a bone-rattling roar, the golden cuffs on her tusks seeming to catch fire in the sunlight. The Zeeravashani rushed toward the magician’s apprentice. It looked to be a short match.

  Then Yaela began to dance.

  Her foot snaked forward, up and around in a graceful curve, and she twisted her wrists and undulated her hips as she began to spin. Slowly, at first, then faster, hands describing strange symbols in the air and bare feet patter-pattering against the ground. Faster and faster. Her green silks billowed about her lithe form, and the air seemed to thicken, time to slow, and shadows were sucked into her dance as debris into a whirlpool.

  Sand kicked up and spat forth from beneath her feet, and specks of black like sparks from a dark fire danced in the air as the shadows congealed and obscured the dancer’s whirling, twirling, writhing form.

  Isara Ja’Akari threw up an arm and turned her face away, and Sinharai crouched, snarling. Tongues of dark flame licked up from the ground, consuming the dancing girl. They pulled inward like the bud of a dark, dark rose and then blossomed above her head, exploding into a screaming darkness that had the front rows of spectators shrieking and scrambling over one another to get away.

  Bintshi!

  In the center of the arena stood a sleek, almost birdlike form with glossy black feathers rising into a crest atop its narrow head, neck long and scales so black that it drank the sun and let no light escape. Half again as tall as Aasah’s wyvern had been and more solid, the thing unfurled its batlike wings and brought them down to the ground with a sound like thunder and a smell of burnt sulfur. Long, beaklike jaws gaped, and its black eyes narrowed, glittering with malice. The thing shook its head from side to side and hissed, a rattling whisper of pure malevolence that raised every hair on Sulema’s body.

  The onlookers were consumed by a wave of panic, but Isara shook herself and laughed in the shadow’s face. That sound, pure and light and mocking, drew every eye in the arena, and the crowd held its collective breath at the sight of the warrior twirling her shamsi above her head, flash-flash-flash in the bright midsun, as likewise Sinharai yowled a cat’s song of death and contempt. When the warrior paused in her posing to laugh again and raise both hands in a very rude gesture, the throng erupted in a pandemonium of shouts and whistles and stamping feet. Isara yanked the laces of her vest open, pointed her sword toward the seething creature, and her mouth moved. Sulema could hear nothing over the roar of the crowd, but she knew what the warrior shouted.

  “Show me yours!”

  …and the crowd went m
ad.

  Yaela swiveled her hips, arms extended, wrists poised with almost exquisite grace, feet skimming along the ground in a quick and complex pattern. As she danced, the bintshi ducked its head back along its neck, an odd graceful movement, and bobbed twice, swaying like a venomous snake considering its prey. Then it opened its mouth and began to sing.

  To Sulema’s ears, newly attuned to dreamshifting and to atulfah, its voice was sweet and light as that of a finger-bone flute, dancing and sparkling through the heated air. To the others, who knows? Every woman received the song of the bintshi in her own way, or so it was said. As for the men… it was well known what effect the song had upon men, even a false bintshi crafted of shadow and night and the dark whispers of a young girl’s heart. The crowd’s murmur grew, and grew ugly, giving voice to the beast’s fell hungers.

  Then Yaela slipped. It was the slightest misstep, quickly corrected, but it was enough. The bintshi paused in its singing and whipped around to face the dancing girl, shadowy form writhing and billowing as if something inside it was trying to escape. It crouched, tail lashing side to side as it prepared as if to leap upon the shadowmancer’s apprentice.

  It all happened so fast. The warrior and her vash’ai charged the crouching bintshi, roaring at the tops of their lungs. Sinharai leapt toward the beast, mouth open, claws extended, even as the warrior’s blade flashed down. Nothing could withstand the Zeeravashani—not the false bintshi, not the city, not even Death herself. Even as the sun-blade struck, the form of the great black beast shuddered and writhed, consumed in black flame and emitting a terrible darkness that was seen rather than felt.

  Sulema held her breath and gripped her father’s hand until his knuckles cracked. Even so, he sat silently. The bintshi squealed, a high, thin sound that shattered the air, and a blast of dark energy sent warrior and vash’ai alike tumbling through the air with such force that they hit the arena wall and fell boneless to the ground. Many among the crowd screamed.