The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

  Kithren, Ruh’ayya wailed, but it was the ghost of a thought and required no answer. Ismai hardened what was left of his heart, tightened his grip on the bone pole, and pushed, pushed, pushed.

  The going was not difficult, traveling as they were with the current and in no particular hurry. The walls of Eid Kalmut grew steeper and darker till the sky overhead was a blistering white-blue sear. Ismai craned his head to look up once, and it seemed to him that what he saw was not the sky at all, but another river, blue and pure and sweet as in the songs of old. It seemed as if he were a dead shade floating up and away into oblivion.

  It hurt his eyes to see it.

  It hurt his heart to think of it.

  “Do not,” Char cautioned, her voice heavy with compassion. “Ismai, do not wish for such a thing. That is the land of the living, and the way is shut to you now. To both of us.”

  Ismai rubbed the tattered and dirty hem of his once-fine touar across his dead eyes, though there were no tears, and returned his gaze once more to the river of death.

  The walls of the valley were steep and pale, striated with the ages of man and before-man. They were rippled and fluted as if shaped by a delicate and playful hand. The dead were here, too, keeping their long and peaceful watch from their thrones of wood or bone or precious metals, gazing down upon the travelers with eyes as dry as Ismai’s own. As they passed beneath those faces, those great women and men of long ago days, it seemed as if they might have smiled.

  “This is not so bad a place,” he remarked as they made their slow way past one low and particularly splendid tomb in which a warrior-woman clad in bronze and obsidian sat on a mound of furs, cradling a clay mug between her dark and bony hands.

  “No,” Char agreed, and a smile flitted across her face. “Not so bad at all.”

  The walls of the valley drew close, then receded to the point that Ismai had to squint to see either side, and closed in upon them once more. The harsh light of the living world grew softer, kinder, throwing shadows flesh-pink and purple across the faces of the waitful dead so that their eyes seemed to move, their mouths to smile or frown or yawn. Night fell, though almost imperceptibly so. The sky changed, the walls changed, but ever the river stayed the same, slow and cool and smelling of copper and the cinnamon-rot scent of the crimson flowers all along its banks.

  Ismai pulled his pole up, firming his grip on the cool rough bone as the river tugged and played with it, and then pushed down, feeling the end catch sometimes in weeds or reeds, and the good solid feel of the river bottom as he pushed against it, sending them ever onward. He and Char worked together, silent except for their breathing—hers soft and barely there, his own raggedy and jaggedy—until the moons rolled away, and the stars as well, and all there was in the world were a boy, a girl, and a river that sang with the voices of the dead.

  “I am not tired,” he remarked at one point, and grimaced at the raven’s caw of his own voice.

  “No,” Char agreed, and he waited for her to go on.

  She did not.

  The air about them grew subtly brighter, and at first Ismai reacted as if Akari had begun his ascent. He tugged the veils of his touar around his face, but it was not the dawn of a new day at all. Rather, the blood-red blooms on the banks of the Ghana Kalmut had begun to glow from their centers, a pale and pretty light like the first blush of dawn, and the perfume they sent out into the night grew stronger, sweeter. Ismai breathed deeply and imagined, as he did, that the essence of these flowers soothed the pain of his burns and kept fatigue from settling into his muscles. He shot a suspicious glance at Char, but she hid a smile behind her hair and layers of strange clothing, and said nothing.

  The flowers crowded ever more thickly against the river’s banks, spreading out into a soft mantle like a Mother’s robes sewn with precious stones. They clustered most densely upon the northernmost bank, fading away to the south and west, and Char pointed with the top of her bone pole to where they glowed brightest.

  “There,” she said, and her voice was light and soft with unshed laughter. Ismai bent into his pole, nearly falling over the side of the boat as their craft shot eagerly as a fresh horse towards the ruddy bank. They pushed through a mat of flowers and reeds and soft mud, and shoved together, grunting with the effort, until they were well and truly grounded.

  Char stepped from the boat onto shore, and Ismai followed. He watched nonplussed as she drew their craft high up onto the bank. When he offered to help, she shook her head and laughed.

  The flowers crowded round the landing, cobbled with pale round stones stained a faint red in the flower light. They bordered a short path overgrown with goatfoot and mint, and grew in a scattering around the mouth of a tall, wide cave. Char pattered on ahead, her little bare feet barely skimming the ground, but Ismai dragged some distance behind. That cave was dark—darker than the starless sky so far above, darker than the emptiness behind his own dead eyes when he closed them. He imagined that a cold wind breathed forth from that gaping maw, full of voices and fell laughter—

  “Ismai,” Char called, dancing on the balls of her feet. “Come on!” She disappeared into the cave.

  Ismai shook the dread from his shoulders and followed.

  * * *

  There was nothing. Only a few steps in and there was no light, no sound, no movement in the air. He tried reaching out to Ruh’ayya, to no avail. He tried stretching his arms out in front of him and felt nothing, saw nothing. He turned his head this way and that, trying to catch the faintest sound or smell—

  “Ismai,” Char said again, her voice at once exasperated and full of mischief. “Come on.”

  She touched his arm, and Ismai screamed like a little boy, jumping half out of his skin. She laughed at him and he frowned.

  “That was not—oh.” He stopped and stared in surprise. “I can see.”

  Char snorted a laugh, turned, and trotted away down a narrow path. Ismai shook his head and trotted after.

  What choice do I have, after all? he thought. And what have I left to fear?

  The path wound on and on, angling steeply down so that Ismai had to skip in an attempt to keep up with the fleeing Charon and not fall on his face. He angled this way and that, so abruptly that several times he narrowly avoided smashing into the walls. The air grew cool and dry so that it burned his throat and lungs and his poor dead eyes, and the ground beneath his feet was soft as pounded sand. Char’s laugh and the sight of her tattered skirts urged him on, so he ran, legs pumping faster and faster, heedless of the dim light and the narrow way.

  The path dropped away beneath his feet, and Ismai yelled as he tipped forward into oblivion, arms pinwheeling, death opening its hard maw to swallow him whole.

  A hand grabbed the back of his touar and yanked him away from the edge. Ismai turned on her, heart pounding fit to burst, breath thundering in his ears. Then anger’s flames flickered and died at the sight of Char’s face.

  Her eyes were lit with joy, and her ruined face was wreathed in a wide smile of delight. Those dark eyes, wide as the desert sky, dark as the deepest wish of his heart, sparkled with life.

  “Ismai,” she said, reaching out to tug at his sleeve, and dancing with excitement. “Ismai, we are here!” She swept her arm in a wide arc, and Ismai, obedient to her every whim, turned to look.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  A cavern opened before them, deep and wide as the Madraj, and like the Madraj it was wound round and round with tier upon tier of stone seats. Upon these seats sat warriors, stern and upright even in death, with golden swords laid across their knees. Ismai’s heart leapt.

  Many of these warriors were men.

  “It is just like in the old stories,” he said, wondering. “Or like the dreams I used to have, before…”

  “Before they killed them,” Char whispered. “Your old dreams. This is a new dream, Ismai, one we can share.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “You will.” She tugged at his
sleeve, laughing again. “You will.”

  Char led the way down a steep ridge, a narrow ledge of rock that was not quite stairs. Ismai breathed a sigh of relief when at last they reached the bottom, but scarce had time to draw a breath before the girl took off running and he was forced to chase after her once again. He laughed, as well, and his throat did not hurt as much as it had.

  Running across the pounded sand floor of the arena, they laughed as if they were not lost in the shadowed heart of the world. As if they were not pinned beneath the gaze of a thousand thousand of the ancient dead. As if they had not come to the end of everything. They laughed as if they were alive, and young, and flush with friendship.

  Coming to the foot of a high stone dais, Ismai looked up. The laughter died in his lungs so that he choked on it.

  In the middle of the dais sat a massive beast of a man, crowned and antlered and clad in gold-chased armor that gleamed even in the dim light of the arena of the dead. Beside him sat the statue of a woman as fierce-eyed as Sareta, as beautiful as his own mother. It was not difficult for Ismai, raised on stories of past glory, to guess who that woman must be—and, by her presence, the identity of the long-dead man, whose eyes seemed to glitter beneath his crown.

  “Ahsen-sa Ruh a’Zeera,” Ismai breathed, “Spirit of the desert wind. First Rider of the Mah’zula.” She who had raised the armies of the Zeeranim from obscurity and propelled them into legend.

  “Kal ne Mur,” Char said. “The Dragon King. The one true king.” She started up the steps, and half-turned toward Ismai as he stood staring at the seated figures, frozen with awe. “Come, Ismai. It is time.”

  His feet dragged him all unwilling up those last few steps, taking him to the feet of the man who broke the world, and there they stopped. His soul and his heart fluttered like birds in a cage and urged him to fly, to fly, yet he stood rooted in fear and an odd, cold anticipation as Char turned her back on him. She stood on tiptoe and whispered into the ear of the long-dead king, as she placed her small, ruined hands on either side of his face and kissed the dead lips.

  Still Ismai stood without moving as she came to him, eyes bright with some fell and eager light, as she pulled him down to her and pressed her mouth to his in a long and passionless kiss.

  This is wrong, Ismai thought, waking from his stupor too late. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He tried to pull back, to pull away, but Charon clamped her small hand onto the back of his neck with all the strength of the river, of tree-roots and sinew and bone, and she forced his mouth to open with hers. Ismai gasped and choked as something hard and round and cold passed from her mouth into his. He fought and flailed as she pulled back, stared into his mouth, and breathed. The sweet-rot scent and taste of the red flowers filed Ismai’s senses and he bucked, he thrashed—

  He swallowed.

  A cold wind rose around Ismai’s heart, sucking the breath from his lungs and the sight from his dead eyes. It swept all memory from him as a sandstorm sweeps away all trace of a dead warrior, covering him in layers and layers of hot red memories not his own. He pushed the girl away from him, frowning as she staggered and fell to her knees. Ismai then—

  Ismai? No, not I.

  —lifted one hand in front of his face, and flexed it, frowning at the smooth young skin. A good hand, big and strong, not yet grown to manhood but large enough to hold a sword.

  “Where is my sword?” he asked, and he frowned again at the youthful rasp of his own voice. “Where… am I?”

  The girl child, still kneeling, looked up at him. At the sight of her face, so small, so wounded, his heart kindled to fury.

  “Who has dared do this to you?” he roared, and then, “Who are you? Who am I?”

  “Do you not remember?” The girl’s voice caught in a sob, and she struggled to rise. “I am Charon… Char. I am your—”

  “Daughter,” he finished, and he held out a hand to raise her up. He looked deep into those wide, dark eyes, so beautiful, so like her mother’s. “Not Charon. Not Char. You are, you are…” He groped for the memory like a blind man in the dark.

  “Naara,” she whispered.

  “Naar-Ahnet,” he said, sure that it was so. He reached out to touch her face, and as he did so, the skin beneath his fingers took on the flush of health, of youth. Even as he watched, the charred and ruined mess of her face began to knit together, to heal.

  Char—Naara—closed her eyes and sighed.

  “Father,” she said, and a tear slipped from beneath her dark lashes.

  “Yes, my darling child,” he said, “it is I.” Kal ne Mur. The Dragon King.

  The Lich King.

  He gathered her up into his arms, and kissed her weeping face, as all around them the dead began to stir.

  SIXTY-TWO

  Perri had been of the air, and to the air he would return. They rubbed whale oil and dragonmint into his skin and hair until he glowed with a false blush of health. Stitching and binding his wounds, they hid them beneath fine robes and the silver-and-blue lacquered armor of a bloodsworn soldier.

  They built a pyre made of sandalwood and sant, agarwood and pine. Upon this high and precious bier was placed a bed of fragrant herbs, soft grasses, and such flowers as blossomed into summer. Daechen Perri, born of a son of twilight and a daughter of man, was laid to rest beneath the stars, beneath the moons and the wide, wide sky. Jian Sen-Baradam himself brought forth a torch, touching it to the oil-soaked straw and bits of yellow silk which bound the structure together.

  The wind blew in from a faraway sea, rousing the fire to wrath. Flames like oulo dancers wreathed in smoke danced across Perri’s empty shell as he had once danced with a pretty girl at Nian-da, both of them laughing and leaping higher, higher as the red-robed monks tossed firecrackers at their feet. Then the boy was gone, meat burned from bone and bone to ash, borne up by the wind as a babe in its mother’s arms, up up up to dance with the distant indifferent stars.

  Jian peered in rage and longing through the smoke at the sea, and the sky, and the pale sands, wishing for a wind to blow his friend home. But the sea was still the same, and the sky was still the same, and his friend was still gone, a streak of soot, a scattering of cinders scarring the night’s lovely face.

  The wind was heavy with salt, and the dreams of dae princes, and the tears of lost boys. It struck at the burning pyre, tore at Jian’s hair where it whipped free from his helmet. The wind howled at the moons like the voices of a thousand Issuq lost on the waves, lost to their own kin, lost, lost, lost.

  The howling, the smoke, and the dancing flames woke something deep in Jian’s breast, because a bond of brotherhood sealed in blood could never be truly broken, nor could the smile of his friend be forgotten. He stepped through the smoke and into the sea, the wide and welcoming arms of his homeland, and in the starslight and moonslight he beheld with eyes neither truly human nor truly dae the edge of a shimmering veil, that gossamer border between the world of men and the lands of twilight, thin as a caul between twins.

  The wind tore at the veil, at weft and warp of daekin and man. It tore and howled just as his heart stormed and raged, but the stars could not be bothered to care, and laws older than the moons forbade his crossing. He could not pass. He could not, it was forbidden…

  Then the halfkin child, grown now, strengthened by song and longing and the kisses of a lost wife, held both hands before his face. There was blood beneath the nails, his own or that of another. There was ash upon his sleeve, the remnant of blood and bone and promises broken before they could become anything.

  * * *

  Deep in their dungeon the Sisters stirred. They screamed and gnashed their broken teeth, and black tears streaked their faces like soot.

  “He burns,” the first sister wailed. “Do you see him? Do you see?”

  “He sings,” the second sister cried. “Do you hear him? Do you hear?”

  “Aaaahhhh,” the third sister moaned as she thrashed against their common bonds. “Aaahhhh, ahhh, aaaahhhhhhh!”

  T
hey fell silent again, still and dead as old meat.

  * * *

  Far away, long away Jian Sen-Baradam brought the pad of his thumb up to his mouth and bit down, hard. His blood dripped thick and crimson into the rising tide.

  Drip…

  Drip…

  Drip…

  Three drops thrice shall bind his heart

  Lest that heart betray him.

  The son of two lands looked through the veil with his father’s eyes, Issuq eyes, born of sea and longing and the loneliness of a twilight lord. He saw upon the water a path made of moonslight and mer-dreams, a wide and shining road upon which he might walk to the land of his father’s people, to find an army fit to break the Forbidden City, and steal an empire.

  He rubbed hands together till his fingers were bloody, and then seized the fabric of the Sundering Veil.

  Grasping it, he tore.

  DAMNED

  He followed her from the Dreaming Lands to the road he could not take. As she walked, barefoot and naked and bereft, her soul shed its cares like a living woman might shed clothes. Weapons she left behind, dagger and staff and lyre. Love and hate fell from her skin like winter’s mantle grown too warm to bear. Her little feet left no impression upon the sand, her moonsilk hair did not stir to life in the harsh winds of summer, but she cast a faint shadow upon the ground.

  This penumbra whispered as she passed. It stroked the face of a well-hidden hare. The creature, frightened into stillness, crouched low, so the hawk overhead never saw it, never stooped for the kill.

  Well, he thought, that is interesting. He had thought this woman, this Eater of Dreams, might be the one to finally bring him peace. In the end, however, she only brought death to herself, her love, and her world. He should have known better than to cling to hope.