Shouting erupted from the tents whence Askander had come, and someone screamed in fury. Then there was a sound—such a sound, a deafening crack like thunder that had them all clapping their hands to their heads. The vash’ai roared.
Askander spun about and sprinted toward the tents like a bee-stung horse.
“Baidun Daiel,” Hafsa Azeina called back over her shoulder. She, too, was running.
It occurred to Ani much later that if a dreamshifter is running, perhaps the wisest course of action is to run the other way.
SEVEN
The feast-day revelers scattered before the dreamshifter as tarbok before a hunting cat, and well they might. Echoes of her unease shivered through this world and the Other, growing stronger as the crowd parted and Hafsa Azeina saw the tableau before her.
A young Ja’Akari, vest torn and angry red marks livid against her bare flesh, was being held back from a green-robed Atualonian man by a pair of stone-faced wardens. The girl radiated fury. Her young vash’ai, a coal-and-gold male, was lashing his tail and singing as he tried to find a way past green-eyed Paraja.
The Atualonian man seemed to have fared poorly against his opponent. He was face-down in the sand, with two warriors sitting on his back and another binding a tourniquet around the bloody stump where his right hand had been.
She nudged Khurra’an. Kithren, get that cub out of here before he makes matters worse.
Khurra’an flattened his ears.
Please.
His girl was attacked. This kill is his.
Please, she repeated. Bloodshed between the vash’ai and the outlanders at this point would be like walking into an oilsnake’s den with a lit torch.
He twitched the very tip of his tail, and his voice was very soft. I will lose face because of you. Again. There is a debt of blood between us if I do this thing.
Agreed.
Khurra’an roared, and the young sire yowled back, fury bristling from every hair of his lean body. The older sire let his lower jaw drop, displaying massive gold-cuffed tusks in a blatant threat, and the smaller male slunk away, snarling and looking back over his shoulder.
Barekh says you owe him blood debt as well, the great cat said.
The two of you can fight over my stringy carcass later, she snapped back. Now let me get to the bottom of this…
Goatfuckery?
She snorted. Best I get this sorted before Nurati…
The crowds parted again. This time reverence, not fear, shuffled their feet as the First Mother swayed gracefully through their midst. Her feet were bare. She wore bells upon her wrists and ankles, and bells in her hair. A translucent linen shift parted as she walked, displaying her moon-round belly and swollen breasts to their best advantage. Umm Nurati, the most fecund First Mother in living memory, was the living embodiment of the river Dibris— beauty and fertility in a harsh and barren world.
“She does not even waddle,” Ani whispered close to her ear. “It really is not fair.”
Hafsa Azeina did not reply. She had learned long ago that “fair” was an empty word devoid of truth, and it certainly did not apply to people such as Nurati or Ka Atu.
Or to a dreamshifter, for that matter.
A fist of older Ja’Akari, faces hard as flint, came to surround the First Mother. Each of them had the dappled skin and fierce eyes of those long-bonded. As their vash’ai padded out to stand with Paraja one of the larger sires, a scarred old tusker, butted the vash’ai queen affectionately under her jaw and shot an insolent side-eyed look toward Khurra’an.
What was that all about? Hafsa Azeina asked him.
It is of no concern to a human. He would say no more.
Interesting. But she thought it very quietly.
Umm Nurati stopped, and the warriors stopped with her, and when she raised one hand the crowd went silent but for the wailing of an infant and the hoarse cries of pain coming from the one-handed man.
“Tell us, Gitella,” she said to the Ja’Akari with the torn vest, “what happened here?”
“That fucking cunt! She cut my hand off!” screamed the outlander.
Nurati did not so much as look at the man. Her eyes lit upon the First Warrior, standing near her warrior with a face of stone and anger. “Sareta?”
Sareta nodded to one of the warriors who was sitting on the man’s back. The girl, grinning widely, took off her tunic and stuffed it into the man’s mouth, muffling his shrieks.
“Now then.” The First Mother held out her hand to Gitella, and gave the girl an encouraging smile. “What happened?”
“This… this maggot-crotched outlander came at me with his filthy mouth and his filthy eyes, and he grabbed my tit. Hard,” the warrior said. Her hands shook as she pulled the ragged edge of her vest back and exposed an ugly row of angry red rake-marks. “So I cut off his hand. My Barekh would have finished him, but Paraja would not allow it.”
“Paraja was right,” Nurati said. “Both sides must be heard before death is handed out. I would hear the outlander’s words. Oh, and First Warden, if you would bring the… yes, thank you.”
Askander had slipped away and returned with a heavy woven basket of river-grass with an iron chain and collar attached. The Atualonian man’s eyes bulged even further when he saw this, and he renewed his struggles.
Save your energy, Hafsa Azeina thought. You will need it for the chase.
Not that it will make much difference. Khurra’an yawned a laugh.
Ehuani.
The warriors stood, dragging the bloodied man to his feet between them. His eyes darted about the crowd, desperate and wild. They lit with hope when Leviathus stepped into the ring of angry pridespeople.
“What is this?” Leviathus frowned.
“Your man is accused of assaulting one of our warriors, ne Atu,” Nurati explained. Her voice, usually strident, had softened to a honeyed contralto. “We were just about to ask for his side of the story.”
“Just about to… but the man has already lost a hand!”
“He touched me!” Gitella cried, and spat upon the sand. “He is fortunate I only took a hand.” Her vash’ai emerged, clearly subdued and accompanied by Khurra’an, and took his place at the girl’s side.
Leviathus looked at the girl, taking in her torn vest and the look on her face, and then to his own countryman, sagging handless and white-faced between two furious warriors. He looked then to Umm Nurati and bowed deeply.
“Meissati,” he said, “if I may…?”
She nodded her assent.
Leviathus closed the distance between himself and the accused, and reached for the cloth gag, but a gasp from the audience stayed his hand.
Several Baidun Daiel—a dozen, maybe more—had appeared in their midst as if risen from the sands like dark ghosts. One of them, a slight, lithe figure, strode without hesitation to stand beside Leviathus. It gestured gracefully to the doomed man, tilted its gold-masked face in inquiry.
“Very well,” Leviathus said, stepping aside. “If it is my father’s will.”
“What is this?” Umm Nurati demanded. She would have stepped forward but for the knot of warriors who closed about her like a protective fist, naked blades flashing in the midsun glare.
Hafsa Azeina stepped forward, joining the game with a reluctant sigh. “The Baidun Daiel are… connected to the Dragon King. They can see for him—”
“And speak for him.”
The crowd went silent, the singing dunes went silent, the world went silent at the sound of that voice. It was the voice of a young woman, light and sweet—and it was also the voice of a man, a voice as dark and rich and dangerous as blackthorn honey. That more powerful voice rode the first as a man might ride a horse, and it came from the blood-robed mage. Even as it spoke, the smooth and featureless mask shifted as if a man’s face pressed out from behind a curtain of gold. Golden eyes fixed upon her, and golden lips formed the ghost of a smile.
“There you are, little one,” it rasped. “Did you really think you could h
ide from me forever?”
Hafsa Azeina did not answer. A shudder took her from head to toe, and the words stuck in her throat like crow’s meat.
“Father,” Leviathus murmured, and dropped to his knees. The rest of the Atualonians, to a soul, fell to the ground like so many sheaves of wheat under the reaper’s blade.
“What goes here?” The face of the Dragon King grew more distinct upon the mask, and as it did so the girl’s voice was lost. “Why am I called? I was at song.” He asked the question of Leviathus, but those hard bright eyes never left Hafsa Azeina’s.
“There has been a bit of a… situation. One of our men may have assaulted a young woman of the Zeeranim…”
“‘May have?’”
“Your Arrogance,” Nurati interrupted as she stepped forward, “we have heard the girl’s words, but we have not yet questioned the man.” The Ja’Akari murmured angrily at this, and the girl with a torn vest flushed with rage.
“Ah, so it is truth you want, is it?” Golden lips curled into a sardonic smile. “I have heard that your people value truth above their own lives.”
“Ehuani,” murmured the warriors.
“Ehuani indeed. If it is truth you want…” The Baidun Daiel turned abruptly toward the accused and tore the cloth from his mouth.
“My king,” rasped the man. He would have fallen to his face had he not been held. “My king…” He looked up, beseeching, and then froze. A look of horror such as Hafsa Azeina had never seen rippled across his face. The lips pulled back from his teeth, his eyes went wide and wild, and the cords in his neck stood out as if he would shriek till his heart burst. But there was no sound, and the silence was terrible.
Then there was sound, and that was more terrible still. The sound and smell of bloody meat hissing over a fire, the hiss and pop and crackle of a man being seared from the inside out. Stinking, oily smoke poured from his mouth, and as the warriors dropped the man in horror, he thrashed and twitched upon the sand. At the very last a long grayish wisp of smoke rose from his nostrils, and a face like smudges of coal opened its mouth in a silent scream.
The desert wind, capricious and merciless, tore his burnt-out soul to shreds.
The Baidun Daiel turned back to the stunned crowd. The face of Ka Atu smiled once more, as a magician might smile at the reaction of very small children to his simplest tricks.
“Your warrior was telling the truth,” he said. “This man did, indeed, assault and accost the young woman. I assure you he will not do so again. Are you satisfied?”
Askander cleared his throat.
“No?”
“Actually,” the First Warden said, though his voice was not as steady as usual, “as the warrior is ours, and the grievance is hers, justice was ours to mete out. That life was not yours to take.”
Ani, behind her, made a worried sound in her throat. Ware, Askander, Hafsa Azeina thought. You do not know this man as I do.
The expression on the golden mask did not change. “Very well, Pridesman. I owe you a life. You may have… this one.” The Baidun Daiel went stiff all over. Waves rippled across the golden face from the center and out toward the edges as the mask became blank once more, a smooth and polished oval without the slightest hint of a human face save the eye-holes.
The Baidun Daiel fell to the ground like a rag doll dropped by a careless child. The Zeeranim, the Atualonians, even the other Baidun Daiel stepped back from the bodies that lay prone upon the sand.
Not Daru, of course. Hafsa Azeina had not seen her apprentice until that moment, had not even known he was there, but nodded her approval as he stood his ground.
And not Hafsa Azeina, foremost dreamshifter of all the prides. She shook herself like a wet cat and stalked forward, not bothering to wrinkle her nose at the smell of burnt flesh. She had smelled worse.
She had done worse.
The Atualonian man was dead—past dead, the soul burnt out of his body—and she paid him no mind, kneeling instead beside the night-bound form of the Baidun Daiel. She rolled the body face-up, surprised at how light it was, how slight, how easily it turned toward her. A small gasp escaped the crowd as the golden mask fell away…
…The years fell away, and Hafsa Azeina was again a young mother, clinging desperately to the side of a fortress wall, peering through an arrow-slit window and into a chamber of horrors. She knew this face, this girl. Had watched her die at the hands of Ka Atu, so very long ago.
“Tadeah,” she whispered. She could hear her other self, her dream-self, screaming in rage and horror. She gathered the girl up into her arms, ignoring the mutters and curses and shouts, ignoring the sun and the sand and the wind and her own tears. “Oh, Tadeah.”
A shadow fell upon them, but she did not care. For Sulema’s older half-sister, whom she had loved as her own, opened those wide blue eyes and smiled.
“Zeina,” she said. “You have come. I knew you would save me.”
“Of course I came,” Hafsa Azeina choked on the lie. Tears dropped fat and hot from her eyes to fall upon the girl’s face, even as tears of blood welled and spilled from those wide blue eyes. “How could you think I would not come for you?”
“How could you think to escape the Dragon King?” the girl rasped. Her lips were flecked with bloody spittle, her skin fading to a deathly white. “No one may defy the will of Ka Atu. Not even his… his own… daughter.” Her eyelids fluttered, and she closed her eyes with a rattling sigh. “I am so tired. So tired, Zeina.”
Hafsa Azeina leaned close, so close her lips brushed the girl’s ear. Already she could smell death upon the girl. “Stay with me,” she pleaded. “Tadeah, please stay.”
The girl barely breathed, and her lips scarcely moved, but her words rang in Hafsa Azeina’s soul like stones dropped into an empty well.
“You left,” she whispered. “You left me to die.”
EIGHT
“I am stronger than they know.”
Daru’s legs were trembling again.
He tried to take a deep breath, to fill his lungs all the way down to the bottom of his belly, as the dreamshifter had taught him. He looked over to where the First Warrior was speaking with the newest Ja’Akari, Hannei foremost among them. Hannei had been his minder when he was tiny and nobody expected him to remember that, but he did, just as nobody had expected him to survive when his mother had died of last-laugh fever and he had been born early and weak.
Daru especially remembered a night when his lungs had been bad again, and he was moved into a little room by himself. The healers had filled the room with fragrant steams and herbs, and told him it was for his own good, but he had believed—and still believed—that he had been hidden away so that he could die without upsetting the other children. He had heard one of the boys say as much, and Hannei’s sharp words were forever etched upon his heart.
“He will live,” she had insisted. “He is stronger than you know.”
Now he stood motionless, silencing the tremble in his legs, worried that the First Warrior would notice that he was still there and send him away. He was not supposed to be overhearing the words she spoke to these girls. This was a secret and sacred time for them and he was just a boy. But he could hardly be expected to play aklashi with the other boys, to race horses or parade himself in front of the vash’ai in the hope that they might consider him as a companion for one of their cubs.
He did not wish to draw the attention of the vash’ai, at all. Daru could feel the great cats watching him, always watching, and he knew what they thought of allowing a weakling to live. Khurra’an was bad enough—the huge sire ignored him as if that alone would cause him to cease to exist—but Paraja was a million times worse. She had looked at him once, when he was very young, and she had gotten into his head, and told him to die. That was when his lungs had gotten sick and they had hidden him away.
But he was stronger than they knew.
He pretended to be studying his fingers, and peeked at Hannei out of the corner of his eye. She was tall, an
d proud, and beautiful like a hero in the old stories. Not a trickster like Zula Din, but a real hero, living a life of truth ja Akari—under the sun—in service to her people. Some day, he knew, Hannei would be the First Warrior, foremost warrior of the pride. She would wear a cloak of serpent’s hide and lionsnake feathers in her hair. He, Daru, would be First Warden and kneel at her feet during the Feast of Daylight Moons. Never mind that this was an impossible dream for a weakling boy, the child who was born to die. He was stronger than they knew. And he had seen it.
Hannei saw that he was watching them, and gave him a wink and half a smile.
One of the other girls noticed him standing there, and elbowed her, smirking. Hannei pretended not to notice, but when the girl attempted to jostle her again, she stepped back so that the other lost her balance and nearly fell.
The First Warrior stopped midsentence and turned her head to the girls. “Is there a problem here, Annila?
Annila, a pretty curly-haired girl, turned red as a sunset. “Apologies, First Warrior. I was… there was… this boy should not be here.” She jerked her chin in his direction.
The First Warrior did not turn. Daru realized that she had known full well that he was standing there. “Does the presence of one small boy interfere with your concentration, then? Perhaps you would like to join the dance next year instead.”
“No, First Warrior.” The words tripped over themselves in their haste to get out. “I am sorry. I just… ah.” She bowed low, face still aflame. “These are not words for a boy to hear.”
The First Warrior regarded Annila for a long, heavy moment. The girl remained bent as she was, obviously wishing that the warrior’s attention might be directed elsewhere. After a few heartbeats’ time, she turned her face so that he could just see one cheek and the corner of a dark eye. Her face did not move, but Daru thought she was laughing on the inside.
Laughing at him.
“Annila has no manners, but she does have a point. Unless you have also decided to become Ja’Akari?”
The Dragon's Legacy Page 10
