The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

  “You have… our thanks,” she muttered finally, and bowed low. The other Ja’Akari followed her lead, most of them eagerly, eyes shining. Ishtaset smiled, and the hairs all along the backs of Ismai’s arms raised up in alarm as she looked straight at him.

  “You are most welcome, cousin,” she purred. “Now… first we will see you children safely home. Then we will set things to rights.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  He came to her in that hour before dawn, when all of the world lies sleeping save soldiers, poets… …and lovers.

  “I am sorry to wake you,” he said, though he was not.

  “I should kick your ass,” Sulema muttered sleepily, though she knew she would not. She heard the shush-shush of his clothes being shed, and moved aside to make a place for him.

  “You must like me, to give up your warm spot.” His voice was smiling. “Oh, now, hush… no need to cry, sweet warrior. I am here. Hush now.”

  “I was worried about you,” she said indignantly. “I really should kick your ass.” Her mouth found his in the dark and she kissed him. Repeatedly.

  “That might be difficult to do,” he said, pulling back a little. His voice was ragged, and warm, and full of laughter. “With you clinging to me like… oh, hey now. Oh. Ah, Sulema…”

  She shut him up.

  * * *

  Later—much later—as the sky began to blush and the stars turned their faces from the Sun Dragon’s glory, Sulema lay listening to the music in her lover’s heart. He was well, he was home, he was returned to her. She twitched in half-sleep, laughed, and kissed his warm skin.

  “Home,” she murmured.

  Mattu, who had been playing with her braids, froze in mid-fondle. “What was that?”

  “Oh, I think I was dreaming, but I am happy to have you home.” She stretched, winced, and grinned the most delicious grin. “We should have a second breakfast.”

  “So Atualon is home to you now?” he said curiously. “I thought you would have ridden free of this place by now.” He sounded… wistful.

  “I had thought to—after I rescued your saucy ass.” She turned her face a little so she could bite his shoulder. “Mmm, but it seems that you do not need saving now, so—” She rolled toward him, the better to take advantage of his proximity.

  “Sulema, wait. I—oh, hey now, that—I need to—ow—Sulema!” He laughed. “I am trying to tell you something important. I… uhhhh…”

  * * *

  “You were saying?” she asked after a time.

  Mattu grabbed her shoulders and rolled them both over so that he had her pinned beneath his weight.

  “It can wait,” he growled.

  * * *

  Much later, as they sat together upon the balcony dining on pears, tart cheese, and a fluffy round bread which was Sulema’s new favorite thing—

  Second favorite, she thought with a grin as she eyed her lover’s battle-scarred shoulders.

  —Mattu told her what he had come to say.

  “Atualon cannot be your home, Sulema,” he said. “You must leave. You must go, and now.”

  “Whuffut?” She swallowed. “What is this? You wish me to leave?” Her eyes flashed, and the bread stuck in her throat.

  “Of course I do not want you to go,” he replied. “Ridiculous girl, but I cannot bear to see you harmed, and if you stay here in Atualon…” Juice dribbled from between his fingers. Mattu grimaced, unclenched his fist, and dropped half a mangled pear over the balcony rail. “Sulema, there are things happening here, and things that are about to happen of which you know nothing. These things are dangerous to you. Very dangerous.”

  He does not wish me to leave. Sulema picked up her mug of coffee and made a face. Cold, ugh. “The world is dangerous, Mattu. I cannot simply leave it. I must learn—”

  “You cannot learn to wield atulfah, Sulema. It is impossible for you to wear the dragon mask.”

  Not the Sun Dragon’s mask, she thought. Aloud she said, “Did everyone know this but me?”

  “In a city of lies and shadows, my dear, nothing remains secret for long. You knew this already? So why are you still here?”

  “I just found out,” she said irritably. “Nobody had seen fit to tell me earlier…” She peered at him over the rim of her mug. “One moment. Why did you never tell me?”

  “I only found out recently, myself. I was going to tell you last night, but…” His voice trailed off.

  “Are you blushing, Mattu Halfmask?” Sulema laughed with delight. “And where is your mask, this morning?”

  “I do not need it. Not when I am with you.”

  For once, Sulema had nothing to say.

  Mattu cleared his throat. “In any case, you must go. Return to the desert, if you would, and if you can remain hidden among your people… or find some other place, where you can keep yourself hidden. Keep yourself safe.”

  “There is no safe place in this world, Mattu,” she said. “Not for me, or for anyone. I would remain with you. Or…” She sat up straighter. “We could leave together.”

  “I cannot leave, not now,” he said, and he frowned. “Not for a long while, most likely. I will be watched very closely, since I am newly returned from Taz Merraj… since she let me go.”

  “She?” Sulema tore a loaf of bread in half. “Oh… you mean the salt queen. Ninianne.”

  “No,” Mattu said. He took the mangled bread from her, set it aside, and gripped both her hands in his. “I mean, yes, the salt queen, who eyes the Dragon Throne with as much avarice as any, but there is one other, Sulema, who would use me to get at your father. Someone who sees the Dragon King’s daughter as a threat which must be destroyed. I speak of Bashaba. She wishes to return to Atualon and resume her place as Queen Consort. Your mother had gone to meet her—”

  “Bashaba?” The name was familiar. “Wait… was she not concubine to the last Dragon King?”

  “She was Sa Atu, the Heart of Atualon—Queen Consort, as your mother is now. Later, Wyvernus accepted her as his own concubine, but then he met your mother, and…” He spread his hands wide and shrugged. “The lovely lady disappeared. Most thought her dead—the usual fate of displaced concubines, I fear—but Hafsa Azeina and Bashaba had been friends from youth, and your mother would not hear of it. So Bashaba was sent to live in hiding, in exile, in Taz Merraj, away from everything she had known. Her children remained behind in Atualon, held hostage to her good behavior, and raised as the Dragon King’s wards—”

  “Wait. Wait.” Sulema’s heart was pounding. “Bashaba is your—”

  “My mother. Yes.”

  “Bashaba is your mother. She now seeks to supplant my mother—”

  “With your mother’s blessing.”

  “—with my mother’s blessing, and what? Bear more children by my father? So you and I would be as brother and sister?” She wanted to throw up. “That is disgusting.”

  “Bashaba is past childbearing. Birthing my sister and me nearly killed her, but she does intend to see her son on the Dragon Throne.”

  “You? But you are—you cannot—”

  “I am nearly surdus,” he agreed. “Like Leviathus. No, not I, Sulema. Her other son, her eldest son, her echovete son. Pythos.” He spat the name as if speaking it had filled his mouth with venom.

  “But… but… he is dead.” She remembered that much. When her father had seized the Dragon Throne, the crown prince of Atualon had been thrown down the side of Atukos, to fall to his death.

  “Rumors of his demise have been proven sadly premature.”

  “Guts and goatfuckery.” Sulema leaned back, shaking her head. “But Ka Atu will never allow it. He—”

  “Needs an heir,” Mattu said softly, “who can wear the mask of Akari, and learn to wield atulfah as he does. As you, being a woman, cannot.”

  “My father would never agree to this,” she said, and she clenched her jaw, blinking back tears of anger. “He would never—”

  “Sulema,” Mattu said softly. Gently. “He already has.�
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  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Hafsa Azeina sat crosslegged in front of the dragon-face fireplace, twisting her hair absentmindedly between her fingers and humming a nonsensical song. Though it was a warm day, the kind that might make a chamberman wish to run off with his bold-eyed soldier and make babies, she had built the fire up and huddled beneath a shawl, a pale shadow of a once mighty queen.

  Not far from her lay a giant saber-tusked beast, one of the greater predators of the Zeera, now gone to dull hide draped over a rack of bone, eyes half-slitted and gleaming dully in the firelight as he dreamed of greater days. An aging woman, a dying vash’ai, terrors of the night who had outlived their prime.

  Unless, that is, one knew how to look. One with the eyes to see would behold a much different picture, painted in darker colors edged all around in shadows and blood.

  She stared into the face of a dragon carved from living stone, and the dragon stared back. Her waking eyes half closed, dreaming eyes half open, she reclined in one world twisting herself a fine new set of wizard-locks, while in Shehannam she hunted.

  Khurra’an had made his kill, and now it was her turn.

  In both worlds she sang, she hummed, for in both worlds her Khurra’an was dying. He sang the death song of his kind, a low, slow dirge of mourning that was devoid of sorrow and regret.

  Khurra’an should be home, she knew, surrounded by his pride, swept along his journey to the Lonely Road by the voices of his people. As it was, she gave him what comfort she might. It was not the death he deserved, but it was all she had to offer.

  Even as she said goodbye to her beloved friend, there were matters to which she needed to attend. Even as she sang her last farewells to Khurra’an, Hafsa Azeina walked the Dreaming Lands, seeking to free her daughter and defeat their enemies.

  In Shehannam, the dreamshifter prowled about the edges of the clearing where her daughter lay dreaming. Here the girl appeared at times as a tiny fennec, then as the warrior-queen she might become, the dreamshifter she might become, the monster she might become. All of these and none of these at once. A pale light like fungus blossomed and pulsed upon one shoulder, sending tendrils of ill intent down her arm and toward her chest. Those tendrils stretched, reached, clawed at her flesh and found little purchase, frustrated as they were by the loremaster’s potions and the shadowmancer’s magics, but ever they pulsed and reached, and bit-by-bit crept closer to that precious heart.

  Though the dreamshifter had been successful in severing many of the bonds that kept Sulema from waking fully, from claiming her own power, none of her magics and none of her weapons had seemed to affect the taint.

  As they had ridden to Atualon she had been able to free Jinchua, the girl’s kima’a, and that had helped, but now she was blocked from entering into the clearing. It was ringed all around with a golden haze, thin and insubstantial-seeming as a dancer’s veils. This magic was new to her, and Hafsa Azeina was reluctant to assault it directly with blade or bow or any of her instruments of death, for fear she might harm her daughter.

  Hafsa Azeina, in her dreaming state, could walk through walls of bone or stone or wood, but this ridiculous, diaphanous barrier kept her from reaching her daughter as surely as the Lonely Road separated the living from the dead.

  Guts and goatfuckery, she thought as Ani might have. And a steaming pile of horse shit to boot. Perhaps the youthmistress’s coarse humor would serve where her own magics had failed. Though the vulgarity did not lift the veil, or her mood, neither did it seem to do any harm. A flash of movement at the very edges of her vision stilled her, filled her with the usual thrill of excitement and dread. She turned her head slowly, slowly… in both worlds. To one who observed her waking body, seated in her rooms in Atukos, it might seem as if she had glanced into the corner of her room, eyes darting back and forth, watching nothing at all.

  There she saw them.

  Na’iyeh. Hafsa Azeina grimaced. Foul things, fouler wrought. They hunted the Dreaming Lands even as she did, and she wondered at their intended prey. Did they dare to stalk her daughter? Fury rose in her heart.

  Fire roared on the hearth. The dragon’s face glowed ruby-hot.

  No, the na’iyeh turned aside from the golden veil. Sniffing, sniffing, wailing, waiting for their prey to fall asleep in the waking world, that it might appear in this one. The na’iyeh were deeply rooted in both. No matter how hard, how fast their prey might run away, no matter how cleverly they might hide, eventually they would sleep and the na’iyeh would find them. The na’iyeh hunted in both lands, and so the na’iyeh always won.

  Unless a greater hunter stopped them.

  The foul things were not hunting her daughter, but their proximity to her suggested that they had singled out prey close to Sulema’s life, to her heart. That would be the na’iyeh’s first mistake, and their last.

  Hafsa Azeina allowed herself a wide, cold smile. She could not help her daughter, and she could not save Khurra’an, but Shehannam was her world, her magic, and in this she was particularly, splendidly gifted.

  She could kill.

  The na’iyeh left trails for those who had the eyes to see. Wide trails like blood-streaked mucus, foul with rot and shining sticky in the odd light of Shehannam. Sharing tangled roots and a communal mind, hunting as a single entity. Their regenerative abilities made them desperately difficult to kill. Cut one na’iyeh scion into three pieces, and within a half-moon’s time you would have three na’iyeh on your tail. Fire—regular fire, from a hearth or campfire—would do nothing more than scorch the fell things and make them angry. They could be melted down with lionsnake venom, as if obtaining such an amount of snake spit would not get you killed. They could be desiccated in the dead waters of Taz Merraj and then burned.

  Or they could be killed by a dream eater with a demon blade.

  This drowse of na’iyeh dreamers had five scions. It was an ancient growth, a couple of hundred years old at least, and wily. Hafsa Azeina could see among its succulent members a new bud, fresh and green, waiting to consume the human body that would bring it to half-life. Dreamers budded rarely, and a bud that was not properly wedded to a living human would soon die and begin to rot, endangering the entire drowse.

  The drowse had to catch a sleeping human unawares, and press her into the bud’s hungry maw, where she would be digested over a matter of moons. Digested, but not killed. To slash a na’iyeh open was to expose the screaming, live, and too-aware skeleton of its maiden prey.

  Hafsa Azeina hid in plain sight, wreathed in shadows of her own making, and sang a long song, a slow song, a song of death and twilight. Intent on their prey, waiting, waiting, the dreamers began to sway as if their thick and thorny branches were caught up in a gentle breeze, but they did not hear the storm coming.

  She raised her voice, just a touch, and drew Belzaleel from his soft sheath. The demonblade said nothing, for the dream eater had come to kill, and it was not in his nature to dissuade her. She raised her voice, and tightened the noose, the net. Let the jaw of her dreaming snare slip just a little, just a little bit closer.

  The na’iyeh twisted, they danced, they writhed to her song, but still they did not hear the storm coming.

  Hafsa Azeina dropped the glamour that kept her secrets. She raised her voice to a crescendo, she raised her demon blade, and the jaws of her trap snapped shut upon the startled na’iyeh. They screamed, they writhed, and beat against the power of her song which held them in thrall, but they could not break free. They were dreamers, but she was the Eater of Dreams, the destroyer, the storm.

  She was upon them.

  Belzaleel bit through the leathery outer skin as teeth through an overripe peach, exposing that scion’s stinking, gelatinous, and foul innards. Hafsa Azeina held the knife carefully, lest that foulness come into contact with her flesh. She was not certain whether a dreamer’s juices would digest her dreaming flesh as it would her waking flesh, and she had no desire to find out. Belzaleel shrieked with glee as he sliced through the thing
’s thin and watery soul, absorbing it, until that scion stiffened, jerked, and fell over dead. Gelatinous putrescence oozed from the slit in its side and a human skeleton slid free from its long prison, hands held before its chest as if to ward off a nightmare, mouth open in a long and disconsolate wail.

  The na’iyeh tried to fade from the Shehannam, but Hafsa Azeina’s song held it—them—without letting go. They lashed out, trying to rake claw-tipped arms across her flesh, but she whirled away, insubstantial as smoke. The pod gaped at her, vulgar pink and hungry, lusting after her flesh and soul, but the blade rose and fell, rose and fell, and one by one the na’iyeh fell, too.

  I am the storm, she thought, face hard, heart hard as one-by-one the skeletons of the dreamers’ victims fell free. One of them wore a necklace of stones and bones unlike anything she had ever seen. Another was tiny, the half-formed remains of a toddling babe. The dream eater looked upon them all with eyes hard as stone as the demon blade Belzaleel glutted himself on their souls. She did not tell herself that it was necessary, or that it was good. It was neither.

  In the end, however, it was done.

  She watched without passion as the grasses and mosses and fungi of Shehannam crept in over the foul leavings. The Dreaming Lands let nothing go to waste, and let no trace of death belie its mask of serenity.

  And now—growled Belzaleel, voice thick, drunk on a feast of old souls—now, Dream Eater, it is your turn to…

  Oh, stuff it, she told him with a weary sigh, and shoved him back into his sheath. You are not going to dine on my soul, not now. Not ever.

  It was worth a try.

  Hafsa Azeina let the green light of Shehannam grow sharp and thin, let the edges be edges and shadows become shadows, and slowly she breathed herself fully back into her own lungs and took up the onerous task of living as an old woman might take up her weaving.

  * * *

  Khurra’an still lay at the outer edges of the fire’s dying light, fading from her waking and dreaming eyes. Hafsa Azeina was startled to find Sulema seated beside him, stroking his great head and staring into the flames.