“You are more her mother than Hafsa Azeina ever was.”
Ani startled upright and whipped around.
“Khutlani, girl.” She scowled. “You are not so tall that I cannot kick you in the head, you know. It is rude to sneak up on an old woman… rude, and dangerous.”
“Yes, Youthmistress.” Hannei bowed, fist to heart and unrepentant. “But it is truth, all the same.”
“Where is your horse?”
“Tied near the churrim, and with your tack and all of our supplies ready to go.” She cleared her throat. “Mekkia is in heat, so I will be riding Lalia. She is new to me but seems well behaved.”
“Lalia? I know that filly. I am surprised that Rama Ja’Sajani let her go.” The Uthrakim were notoriously tightfisted when it came to their mares.
Hannei shifted uncomfortably beneath her gaze. Ani knew her girls to the marrow of their bones, and this one was hiding something. Well, there would be time to ferret it out as they rode. She sized up her companion and made a mental bet with herself that if she did not have the full story before the day was out, she would ride to Askander Ja’Sajani and pronounce herself ready to bear his children.
Again.
They tacked up their horses and started out at an easy trot along the southeastern route toward the Bones of Eth. If they took this way past the Bones they would eventually come to Eid Kalmut, the Valley of Death. The southwestern route would take them instead across the Dibris to Min Yaarif, a den of outcasts and slavers. Beyond that city of ill repute lay the jagged peaks of Jehannim and, eventually, the Seared Lands.
Hannei was quiet, even for her. The girl’s silence might be excused away as the need to concentrate on riding a new horse, but Lalia was a sweet little thing, uncomplicated for such a young mare. Nevertheless, Ani decided against pressing her with questions. Though never as openly rebellious as Sulema, the dark-haired beauty could be as stubborn as any rock in the Zeera.
They ate as they rode, and their pace was easy enough. Over the miles a comfortable silence grew between them. Ani had trained four crops of cubs during her years as Youthmistress, and one would think that by now she was used to the shock of transformation as her girls grew into capable young women overnight. But each time was like a new year’s pressing of jiinberry wine, bitter and sweet, with a hard kick to the gut and well worth the headache.
* * *
The sun was getting old and coppery in the second day of their journey before Hannei pulled close on her gray filly. Ani slowed Talieso to a lazy trot, which was much easier to do than it had been in his youth. Their youth.
“Youthmistress?”
“Hannei Ja’Akari.” She smiled. “What bothers you?”
“I wish you would not read my mind like that.” The girl scowled, half in jest. “I want… I need to ask you something.”
Ani nodded and kept her eyes to the ground in front of them. There had hardly been any spoor all day. It was unusual, and change made her nervous.
“What do you think of…”
“What do I think of what?” she prodded.
“What do you think of… Sulema?” The name came out in a rush, and Hannei looked away. “Do you think she will live?”
“If anyone has the will and the power to heal her, it will be Ka Atu. Hafsa Azeina tells me that his magic is very powerful. And he is her father, after all.”
Hannei nodded, still not meeting her eyes.
“I also think that is not the question you truly wish to ask. I hope you know that when you are ready, I am here.” She gave Talieso his head, but had to press his sides before he picked up his pace. “I spoke true when I told Nurati that I care for all my girls, Hannei.”
Hannei had never been a talkative child. She had let her sword-sister chatter on for the both of them. Bold, bright, audacious Sulema, first to jump into a pit, last to look for snakes. Sometimes Hannei had followed in Sulema’s wake, sometimes she stood apart, but always she kept her silence, even when being a tell-tale might have spared her backside. She rode easier as the day wore on, but she kept whatever was troubling her locked behind those big brown eyes.
She has her father’s eyes, thought Istaza Ani. He had been a churra-headed pain in the ass, as well.
Akari Sun Dragon grew red and lazy in the west. They were not far from the Bones of Eth, but Ani had no desire to be near that accursed place after darkfall. She began to cast about for water. Her ka was not particularly strong, but she knew there was a small oasis nearby. It should be easy to find, even with her limited abilities. She spared a glance at Hannei and nodded approval at the girl’s half-lidded, unfocused look before closing her own eyes.
Talieso jogged on, unconcerned, his warm sides pressing gently against her calves. So strong, her boy, so sure of himself. Though the Zeera was ever-changing they had ridden this way before, and his senses were much better than hers. She touched his presence as she allowed her own to roll out like a thin mist upon the desert, clinging, stretching, seeking… She felt his aura as a cool green-blue, her own a fairly dull red, the color of clay, shot through with streaks of brown and green.
This was Dzirani magic, sung into her bones with her first taste of mother’s milk. Her secret—and her death, if it were known. Each land had its own magic, but bonesingers were welcome in none of them.
Talieso turned his head to the north just as she caught a ripple of pale blue at the far edge of her sensing.
“There.” She opened her eyes to find Hannei pointing. “Water, not sweet but not too stale. Do we camp tonight?”
Ani nodded, once. “You have been to this oasis before?”
“No, Youthmistress. I have been to the Bones of Eth, but we have always taken the northernmost way.”
“Then that was well done, young Ja’Akari.”
Hannei flushed with pleasure, but the praise was not enough to loosen her tongue.
They camped that night in a strip of green, in the shadow of the Bones of Eth. Once a jewel of the Zeera with trees and tarbok and small flocks of birds, the oasis had lost battle after battle against the long heat until now it was little more than a rattle of dry grass in the dead wind, a puddle of water with a stale, boiled taste to it. Talieso snorted, unhappy, but drank his fill several times over. Hannei’s filly was not as easily convinced. She roared through her soft little muzzle and stared at the two-legs, plainly indignant. When no sweeter water was forthcoming she finally drank, but with such an expression of disgust that Ani had to smile. Mares could be such silly creatures…
…and so could young girls. Hannei scouted dutifully, fed the horses their measure of grain, built a small fire shielded for stealth, dug out the food and waterskins, but kept her eyes averted and her mouth shut the whole time. Istaza Ani sat on a bit of dried deadfall and watched the performance with pride, admiration, and irritation.
“Listen, girl…” she began.
“Hannei Ja’Akari, not girl.” She handed Ani her ration of waybread and pemmican, and met her eyes square for the first time that day. “I will take first watch tonight, Istaza Ani. Shall I wake you at sixmark?”
Ani accepted the food with a smile, and a rueful shake of the head. “Wake me at three. We will leave the horses here and walk the rest of the way while the sands are still cool and the hatchlings still slow.” She cracked a flat of waybread in half. “Are you going to tell me what is bothering you, or do I have to beat it out of you with a stick?”
Hannei’s lips quirked. “You would have to catch me, first.”
“You are an insufferable brat.” She washed down a mouthful of bread, and made a face. “And this water is stale.”
“It is. The hearthmothers say the salt jars are not keeping it sweet.”
“Za fik. We will have to send a delegation of Ja’Sajani to Salar Merraj, I suppose.” One more thing to worry about.
“I overheard Umm Nurati speaking with Hafsa Azeina about trading for more jars, before they left. She said they would be passing through the Saltlands.” The girl fou
nd sudden interest in her handful of pemmican and began poking through it, looking for berries. “Youthmistress?”
“Hm?” She turned her head and looked toward the grazing horses, the better to let the girl speak.
“They say Sulema was hurt in her head, not just her body. Before the healers put her into a sleep, she was screaming about… strange things.” She hesitated. “Talking to someone who was not there.”
Ani thought she understood the girl’s worry now. A warrior had to rely on and trust her sword-sister. Those who had been broken in the head through illness, or injury, or a cruel twist of fate were not suited to a warrior’s life.
“Hafsa Azeina is a skilled dreamshifter. Sulema is in good hands.”
“But dreamshifting is not a healing magic, is it? It is a killing magic… and Hafsa Azeina was born an outlander.”
The last word was spoken with distaste. Outlander. As if foreign ways were wicked ways, to be feared and reviled. Ani tried not to let the alarm show on her face. Such old hatreds rang in her ears with the lingering screams of massacre.
“I have never heard you speak of outlanders in such a way. Where is this coming from?”
Hannei shrugged, clearly unhappy.
“Hannei, listen to me. You are a good girl, and you are a smart girl. If someone is spreading such thoughts among the Ja’Akari…” She struggled to rein in her lecturing tone as the girl’s eyes went opaque and her mouth set in a stubborn line. “Hannei, you must tell me. Who has been saying such things to you?”
“No one, Istaza Ani. It was just a thought. Forgive me.” Hannei tossed the handful of pemmican into her mouth and washed it down with stale water. Her face was blank. Ani had lost her.
“Hannei…”
“Hannei Ja’Akari.” Hannei touched her oiled temple with one finger. Ani sucked in a sharp breath at the insult. “You should sleep, Youthmistress. It is late, and I have first watch.”
It is not as late in the day as you think, girl. I was Ja’Akari before your mother decided to chase your father round the campfire. But Ani did not say the words. She got up to check on her horse—not because Talieso needed checking on, but because if she did not take a great many deep, slow breaths she was going to kick the brat’s ass from here to Aish Kalumm—and then chose a low, smooth place for her bed.
There she lay, wrapped in her saddle blanket and her aggravation, listening to the crackle of fire and the laughter of stars, cold and very far away. She closed her eyes and drank deep of the cooling night air, but it was long before she slept, and her dreams were troubled.
* * *
In her dreams she was busy lecturing her girls—naked but for a pair of blue trousers, though it made sense at the time—and then someone grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and shook till her teeth rattled. She gagged at the hot, wet stink of carrion.
Wake. Wake. I like my prey to see me before I eat it.
Ani opened her eyes and looked death straight in the gullet.
NINETEEN
“If I die today, I will die facing my enemy.”
Istaza Ani was gone.
Hannei woke from a deep slumber to find that the Youthmistress had left her behind as if she was the smallest of children. Judging by the spoor, Ani had been accompanied by a warrior and her vash’ai.
The Ja’Akari burned with shame. It was inconceivable that she might lie asleep as strangers entered their camp, spoke with the youthmistress, and left again. Worst of all, her sword and bow lay untouched—a blatant insult.
She tugged the laces on her vest tight—though it made her healing ribs ache—grabbed her weapons and the brass box Umm Nurati had given her, and gave Lalia and Talieso the briefest once-over before taking off toward the Bones at a dead run. She stepped in the other warriors’ footprints, an old Ja’Akari trick meant to confound an enemy.
These tracks led straight and true toward the tormented shadows of the Bones of Eth. The morning air was still cool, so she slung her bow across her back, tucked the box in tight against her body, and ran.
The way was short, and her legs long, so she was not much winded by the time she reached her destination. She slowed her steps, lightly, lightly on the sands, a whisper only, pulling in her ka so as not to alert her quarry. She opened her mouth as wide as she could and breathed out long, slow, gentle breaths.
Nobody here but the wind, she sang silently, nobody here but the sand… and the towering and twisted Bones of Eth clawing forth from the Zeera like the flesh-stripped hand of some monstrous felldae.
Sweat poured down her back, under her arms, between her breasts. She grimaced—lionsnakes could taste a body’s heat upon the air—but there was nothing to be done for it now save put one foot in front of the other, down the twisted path and shadows that chilled the heart but never the body.
Halfway down the path, she heard the most dreadful sound, a strange ululation that rose and fell before trailing off into a whooping scream. The scream broke off, and then… nothing. Her heart tripped over its own shadow, but Hannei pressed on.
If I die today, she thought, I will die facing my enemy.
As she stepped between the ugly striped rocks, she could feel the air cooling and clotting about her like dead blood. It stank, and it hummed with the voices of a handful of lesser scavengers— buzzards, sandgulls, the yipping bark of a fennec. The wind kicked up sand-dae and they swirled mockingly about her ankles, promising to scour the flesh from her bones once she was dead.
A small and bug-eyed shape streaked by, screeching and shaking bright plumage in a show of defiant terror, before she could react. So, the whelps had hatched… but where was the youthmistress? Where was the warrior who had come upon them in the night, and left her sleeping?
She heard the songs of three bright souls then, one after the other, a song woven warp and weft by the deft golden fingers of the Zeera. The first song was the desert herself, a low and throaty croon, like the song of a mother to her favorite child. Long had Hannei been dancing to this song, the dance of her life, and always it had soothed her soul.
The second song was a wyvern’s cry, a sweet and mournful note, and triumphant. It is known that the wyvern will only sing to its prey when it is sure of the kill. This second song brought her up short, to the delight of the sand-dae, who skipped in small circles and danced the Dance of the Fainthearted Warrior.
The third song stopped her heart and made it wait three beats before allowing it to start up again. It was the roar of a vash’ai, a deep, rumbling bellow that shook the sands and caused the very ground beneath her feet to recoil. For a moment after there was silence, the deep silence of a well gone dry, of death in the night, the silence at the end of all hope.
It seemed to her, for the first time, that life was rather too short. But she would face death like a warrior, under the sun she would. With trembling fingers she found the laces holding her vest closed, and tugged them apart, baring her breasts in a show of contempt for whatever enemy lay in wait.
It was a good day to die.
“Show me yours, bitch!” she shouted, glad that her voice did not betray her fear. The Bones swallowed her bold words and gave her nothing in return. Not an echo, not an answer, not a hint of what might lie ahead. Hannei dropped the brass box, drew her yet-unblooded shamsi with the faintest whisper of death, and ran to meet her doom.
The air cleared as she passed through the pillars, and Hannei leapt onto the hot yellow sands with a defiant yell.
The scene that met her eyes was so utterly wrong that she stumbled to a halt, gasping as the parched air sucked her lungs dry.
There, in the far dark corner of the most cursed place she knew, stood Istaza Ani, covered in blood and entrails. The youthmistress was crouched on the balls of her feet, wielding a long leg-bone club. Her mouth stretched wide in a rictus snarl, and she stood facing the biggest and most disreputable-looking wild vash’ai Hannei had ever seen, a massive sire with a broken tusk.
The cat opened his mouth and roared, and Hannei f
linched at the power in his voice. He shook his head and swiped sideways at Istaza Ani with the speed of a striking serpent. Ani bent backward so fast it seemed she would topple into the sand, and her braids whipped about like a dancer’s as she spun sideways with a high kick, light as a silk flower, fingertips of her free hand brushing the ground.
Hannei had never seen Cub Paints the Sky so flawlessly executed. She stood in open-mouthed amazement, sword dangling forgotten in front of her.
Istaza Ani threw her head back and let loose with the same strange singing, screaming ululation Hannei had heard earlier, then whirled as quickly as the vash’ai had struck, lashing out with her club. The weapon hit something with a wet thunking crunch, and sent a small grayish form shrieking through the air. When the hapless lionsnake whelp hit the ground, dazed, the vash’ai pounced like a kitten and bit it in two with one snap of his great jaws. Istaza Ani straightened, trilled again, and then she threw her arms wide open to the sky, tossed the blood-slick braids from her face, and laughed.
“Blood and bloody entrails!” she whooped. “That was a fine bit of goatfuckery!” She turned toward Hannei. “A good morning to you, Ja’Akari. Did you have a nice sleep, while we were killing the whelps for you?” She gave her club an efficient flick, and flung a viscous string of red-black gore upon the pale sand.
“I… I…”
“Yes, yes, I know. Close your mouth, there’s a good girl, and take your box and go get that last whelp. I stunned the little fucker, so it should not get far.”
“Youthmistress?”
“You are still here? You are still talking? Run, girl! Oh, but keep your eyes peeled. There’s a young wyvern flapping around somewhere. He’s got a belly full of whelps and he’s afraid of Inna’hael, here, but he’s big enough to be nasty.” She smiled fatuously at the vash’ai, who was rubbing his face in a puddle of blood.
The Dragon's Legacy Page 21
