Daru started. What was she talking about? A boy, become a warrior? He shook his head, and saw her mouth twitch. She was laughing at him.
“Good. I do not have time for more than one troublemaker today. Go on, Daru, see if your mistress has something for you to do. Or go find something to eat before a strong wind carries you away to the Edge.”
Annila, straightening, did not bother to hide her mocking smile. Hannei gave him a look of sympathy, but one of the other girls laughed out loud. Daru turned and fled, tears welling in his eyes and threatening to spill over.
He had no intention of seeking out his mistress, who had hardly spoken to him at all since those outlander ships had come to Aish Kalumm, except to send him running for the root of this herb or the stomach of that lizard, and some of the things she had asked for gave him a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Umm Nurati would be there, and with her Paraja. The vash’ai queen would stare at him with her yellow eyes, thinking he ought to be dead. Worst of all, Tammas Ja’Sajani would be sitting in the stands watching Hannei, and she would watch him back.
Hannei would choose him, everyone could see that. They said that Tammas Ja’Sajani would never allow himself to be hayatani, but Hannei was no ordinary girl, and the warden was just the sort of man she should choose. Strong, and handsome, and whole. The vash’ai did not see him as a weakling cub unworthy of the food on his plate or the breath in his lungs.
I am stronger than they know, he thought, dashing the tears from his face with the side of his hand, hard enough to hurt. I will be stronger than him, some day. I have seen it.
He had come to a place he knew, close enough to watch the doings in the Madraj, but hidden from view. A low growl stopped him in his tracks and he looked up, wary. If the vash’ai ever caught him alone…
He stumbled as his weak legs turned to water. It was a vash’ai, all right, a young female the color of moonslight on black water. She was close enough that a half-hearted leap would bring her within killing distance, and she was sitting on her haunches, laughing at him.
“Ruh’ayya, do not scare him. Hello, Daru.”
“Ismai?” His voice was a breathless squeak. “Ismai? You have… you are…”
The older boy walked to where the vash’ai sat, and scratched behind one huge ear. She rumbled low in her throat, a sound that never failed to turn Daru’s insides to water, and knocked her head against his shoulder. Ismai laughed and stared at the cat with big eyes and a lopsided smile.
“We are Zeeravashani,” he said. “Yes. Ruh’ayya chose me. Is she not lovely? Is she not the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?”
Daru eyed the vash’ai warily. She was certainly one of the largest he had ever seen. Half-grown, she was still nearly as big as Paraja. “She is very pretty, Ismai. But you are…”
Ismai stroked the cat as if he could not resist touching her. “Too young. I know. Nobody has ever heard of Zeeravashani this young. But,” he shrugged, blushing a little, “Ruh’ayya is different.” His voice trailed off. He smiled. “Would you like to touch her?”
His heart tripped. Touch a vash’ai?
“She says you may. She says…” He tipped his head to one side, eyes unfocused as he spoke with his companion. “She says you are stronger than you seem. She likes you.”
Daru could hardly refuse such an invitation. He shuffled forward until he was so close he could feel heat radiating from the vash’ai, smell her breath, see the fine lashes that ringed her moonsilver eyes. She huffed a breath, impatient, and tipped her head so that he might stroke along her jaw. Daru stretched forth his trembling hand and touched life itself. She was, oh, she was hot to the touch, he could hear the breath purring and rumbling in her throat, it sang it in his bones. Her fur was thicker and coarser than he had imagined, and bristled under his hand as if each hair was alive and aware of his touch.
“Oh, Ismai,” he breathed. “She is wonderful.”
Ruh’ayya swung her huge head around so that she was staring straight into his eyes. He thought he might lose himself in their pale depths, if she let him. She blinked, and showed her tusks in a little cat-laugh, and padded a short distance away. Then she flopped to the ground and began washing her enormous paws, as if she were a small-cat and nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.
“She is, is she not?” Ismai agreed.
“Is this why you are in trouble? The First Warrior is coming to find you, when she is done with the girls.”
“I do not know. Probably.” Then he grinned, the same Ismai Daru had always known. “But it is worth it.”
Daru had to agree. For a moment he let himself imagine…
Not for you.
He jumped like a startled horse, and met Ruh’ayya’s bright stare. “What?”
“She spoke to you?” Ismai glanced at the vash’ai. “I did not know she could do that. What did she say?”
Ruh’ayya mocked them both with her eyes.
Daru shrugged and stared at his feet. Not for me, he thought. Of course such a one as she could never be mine. “Khutlani,” he suggested in his quietest voice. For surely his mouth was too small to voice such a large wish.
Ismai grinned and ruffled his hair, just like a grown-up. “She is rather imposing, ehuani. Perhaps you might come hunting with us one of these days. It will take a lot of meat to feed her, she is still growing.”
“Hunting.” Daru schooled his face to stillness, a taste like bitter medicine filling his heart.
“Yes. Hunting. You are old enough, and—” Ismai eyed him critically “—I think you are strong enough. You could keep up with us if you ride.”
“I… I… I never…”
Ismai shrugged dismissively. He had left his childhood behind in the blink of Ruh’ayya’s silvery eyes, and Daru struggled to catch up. “Never sat a horse before, I know. I will teach you. It is not that difficult, Daru, truly it is not. You are Zeerani. It is not fitting that you should not learn to ride. You are Zeerani,” he repeated, as if that was important.
A roar from the crowd drew them both to an arch overlooking the arena. Tammas Ja’Sajani sat astride Azouq, not a stitch of tack between them, and they were performing the Dance of Kiadra. The near-legendary blue roan stallion moved like magesilver, like shadows in the pale moonlight, and his hide shone like a silver bell. Tammas’s vash’ai Dairuz sat near the dais, head thrown back and soot-and-ash mane drinking the sunlight. His eyes were half-closed and his mouth half-open as he roared and purred and crooned.
Azouq leapt high into the air, kicking out with his hind legs. Tammas threw his arms wide, ululating a challenge, and Dairuz roared with such force that Daru’s feet tingled. The crowd answered Dairuz. Shrieking, stomping, clapping, blowing the shofarot, the people sang the Song of the Zeera.
Longing burned in the marrow of his bones, and filled his mouth with bitterness.
I am Zeerani, his heart insisted, and, This, and, Yes. His spirit cried out for the life that his body denied him.
“Now imagine that Tammas is your brother.”
Daru jumped, startled, and turned to Ismai. The older boy shook his head, lips twisted in a wry smile. “Imagine that the old stories wrapped themselves in the painting of a hero and came to life, and that is your older brother.” He sighed. “You are lucky.”
“Lucky?” Daru’s laugh was ugly to his own ears. “Lucky. Under the sun, I am so fortunate I envy myself.”
“But you are lucky,” Ismai insisted. “You are the strongest dreamshifter’s apprentice in a hundred years. You get to live with her… train with her.”
“The strongest apprentice in a hundred years? Who says this?”
“My mother, for one, and you know that whatever she says, comes to be. The dreamshifter may see the future, but the Mothers make it so. They say you have already walked the paths of dreams. What is it like?”
“Shehannam?”
Ismai nodded. “Is it like the dreams you have when you are asleep?”
Daru looked out across the
arena, but his mind’s eye was focused on the lush green paths of Shehannam. The strange trees, silver and gold and straight as river reeds, and the shadows… It was not the same as being asleep, not the same at all. You could not die in a sleep-dream. You could not kill. He remembered the making of his bird-skull flute, and shuddered.
“I am sorry.” Ismai looked embarrassed. “I should not have asked.”
Daru shrugged. “That is okay. It is just… Shehannam is hard to describe. Dreamshifter does not like me to speak of it.”
Ismai nodded. “Hafsa Azeina casts a long shadow.” He jerked his chin toward the Madraj. “Just as my brother does.”
Your brother does not kill people in their sleep, Daru thought.
Ruh’ayya stared at him as if she could read his mind.
Ismai glanced toward the arena and then froze.
“Au’e. Ai yah.”
Daru followed Ismai’s gaze. A pair of naked combatants had entered the Madraj. He grinned. “Sulema looks fine today, does she not?”
Not as beautiful as Hannei, his heart whispered. He urged it to silence.
Air hissed between the older boy’s teeth. “Is it that obvious?”
“I am small, Ismai, not blind.” He was happy for the change in subject. “Everyone knows you favor Sulema. The dead know you favor her.”
Something cold chuckled in his ear at that, and a chill hand scraped down his spine. Daru bit his lip and wished, for the thousandth time, that he would learn not to say such things.
But Ismai was not listening. His eyes followed the dreamshifter’s daughter. “She is like a poem given breath.”
“Do you think she will beat Hannei?” Daru pressed close to the low stone barrier, wishing his eyes were sharp like a hawk’s. The two Ja’Akari bowed to the audience, then to each other, and then they both sank down into a fighting stance. They were the best of this year’s new warriors, and would fight for the right to be named champion.
“Of course,” Ismai said. “Well… I think she will. But they are both very strong.”
Ruh’ayya grumbled a laugh at this.
“Strong by human standards,” agreed Ismai. “Shush! Listen!”
The drummers had taken up their positions, and the thrum-thrum-throb-shuuuushhhh of fingers against hide drew an echo from Daru’s heart. From every heart in the Madraj, he imagined. Thrum-thrum-shushhhhhh and the girls spun into motion.
Hannei moved first, stooping to grab a handful of sand, and then she flipped completely over, twirling and spinning, braids whipping about her face. Sulema bent back, and her feet too came up and over. Their bodies, oiled and muscled and scarred, glowed with fierce beauty. One girl would attack and the other would counter, back and forth like the play of fire and shadow. It was a kind of music—battle-cries and the grunt that followed a well-placed blow, the beating of the drums, the pounding of his heart.
Sulema screamed and leapt into the air, legs churning as if she walked on the wind. Hannei spun to the side like a sand-dae, and the red-haired girl’s kick found only air. Flame and water, wind and sand, the two girls told the story of the Zeera with their strong young bodies and the fire in their hearts.
Then it happened.
The girls spun face-to-back-to-face, trading blows and kicks and blocking each with such speed the movements blurred into one. Sulema snapped a kick up and to the side just as Hannei dropped low. Sulema’s foot connected with the other girl’s chest, there was a sharp crack, and Hannei crumpled to the ground.
Silence fell upon the Madraj. Not the silence of a summer’s hunt, or the silence of a winter morn, but the silence that stalks a sick child in the night. Daru knew this silence. Ignoring Ismai’s hand that tried to clutch at his tunic, Daru leapt from the low balcony. He landed badly, in a heap, teeth snapping shut and splinters of fire shooting up both legs, and then picked himself up and took off at a hobbling run across the arena.
Hafsa Azeina got there first.
Sulema was crouched at her friend’s side. Hannei lay limp, eyes rolled back in her head and the skin around her mouth a hideous shade of purple-gray. Her mouth parted and a trickle of bright, bright blood rolled down her cheek to stain the skin at her temple.
It is not right, Daru thought wildly, not right that she should die before the sun had turned her skin brown, before she had a chance to prove herself. It was not right that those bright eyes should ever grow dim, ever.
Sulema screamed, and her scream made the shadows hum with pleasure.
Daru could feel the danger pressing close. The Madraj was home to many ancient and malicious beings, things that were not fond of humans and their meddling ways. Fell spirits that liked to still the heart, shadows that hungered after the breath of a young boy. Or a girl just becoming a woman. He limped to a halt near the girls and closed his waking eyes so that he could see better, as he had learned to do when he was very small and very sick and had been shut away to die. The world grew dark, and then flashed into bright relief as his dreaming eyes came to life.
He saw them. Shapes like ill-formed children, less substantial than smoke, clawing at Hannei’s mouth with long, greedy fingers, leaning close to sip at her breath. One of them saw Daru watching and turned the hot red glare of its eyes upon him. It shrieked, a long, thin wail of hate and despair from beyond the ends of the earth, a piercing sound that hurt his ears and made him feel as if he would wet his pants, right there in front of the whole pride.
“I know you,” Daru whispered to the shadows. His breath rasped in his throat, and it hurt to draw breath. “I know you, ja Akari I know you, under the sun I see you, felldae.”
Someone laid a hand on his shoulder, and Hafsa Azeina spoke nearby. Her voice was loud and slow, and he did not understand the words she said. He shook the hand off and faced the shadows. The first spirit hissed at him, teeth and tongue flickering like dark flames in the wide hole of its mouth. The other felldae looked up from their feast and hissed as well, a sound like tea-kettles and chattering urns, but he would not listen to them. Their song was death, and he had heard it all before.
Without taking his eyes from the creatures, Daru reached into the left sleeve of his tunic and drew forth a bird’s skull, as oddly formed and wrong as the felldae. This he raised to his mouth. He pressed his lips to a small, precise hole that he had drilled into the paper-thin bone, and blew.
This time, the shadows fled.
NINE
“A mother plants trees so that her children may have shade.”
Nurati hurried down to the arena as quickly as she could, but the stairs were steep and the moon of her belly had eclipsed her feet some time ago. Thus it was that by the time she stepped onto the hot sands of the arena, the girl Hannei was already being helped to her feet.
She will live, all thanks to Atu she will live. The prides could ill afford to lose one so young and strong, especially one whose blood traced back to Zula Din. A faint relation, perhaps, but enough that she had already been written into the Book of Blood along with the best possible mates for her. The very best of possible mates, indeed—Nurati intended that this young woman should bear children by none other than her own son, Tammas.
But only if Sulema, that little red-haired cub of a she-daemon, did not mess things up. Nurati was First Mother, mother to all the prides, and she would not allow the line of Zula Din to be fouled with outlander blood.
She stopped short of the scene, leaning heavily against an arched doorway. From this vantage point, she could watch the game play itself out, moves and counters on the board of life.
The dreamshifter and her daughter helped Hannei Ja’Akari to her feet. Istaza Ani was there, and the dreamshifter’s weakling apprentice as well. He had been playing that moons-cursed flute of his, unnatural little thing that he was, and as a small crowd of the concerned gathered around Hannei he scrambled to his feet, swaying like a reed in the wind. He was shoved aside and disregarded… but Nurati saw.
She saw how his eyes darted about, following things that
could not be seen by ordinary humans. She saw him kiss the bird’s skull and tuck it away again. That one was only half in the land of the living—so she had always thought—and needed but a gentle push to the other side.
He is just a cub. Why do you hate him so?
He is weak. Weak and strange since birth, and stranger every day he spends in her presence. Nurati watched as the dreamshifter thumbed Hannei’s eyes open and peered into them. She shuddered. To have those golden eyes staring into one’s own soul was the stuff of nightmares. You should have killed him when you had the chance.
Paraja’s voice in her head rolled with laughter. He is stronger than he looks, Kithren. I encouraged him to die. He chose to live.
Are those teeth of yours for show, then? Are your claws dull?
She could feel Paraja’s presence as the great cat came to sit silently at her side. Have a care with your words, human.
Forgive me, O Queen, I speak only out of concern for my people.
There was no answer. Well, let her sulk.
Through her link with Paraja, she felt another approach before a hand touched her shoulder. “The girl will live.”
“Of course. She is of good stock.” She turned her head slightly and nodded to Sareta, now and for the rest of their lives First Warrior. “Is the girl Sulema our champion, then?”
“So long have you known me, and still you do not grasp the way of the Ja’Akari.” Sareta shook her head, a faint smile deepening the creases in her face. “Watch.”
Even as they watched, Hannei Ja’Akari shook off those who would help her, support her, take her from the field of battle. Her voice carried to the far corners of the Madraj.
“No. I do not yield. No.” Though she could not stand straight, though she barely stood at all and her skin was a ghastly shade, she swayed into a painful approximation of a fighting stance. “I do not yield.”
The noncombatants pulled back as the girls faced off. Sulema Ja’Akari was slow to take a stance, and reluctance screamed from every line of her body. Nurati wondered: did she want this thing so badly that she would risk further injury to her own sword-sister? The girls were close, everyone knew this.
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