Sulema put the thong around her own neck and tucked the lump into her vest, though she felt foolish. “Thank you, Daru. I will return it.”
“No need, Ja’Akari. I have several. Besides, I am doing this as much for myself as I am for you.”
“Hm?”
“I am not afraid of you, Ja’Akari… but I am afraid of your mother.”
“That makes all of us.” Sulema tried to smile again, but it probably looked more like a grimace. “Thank you, Daru.”
“You should probably not ride far. Your arm—”
“I know, Daru.”
“And Dreamshifter says there are greater predators near—”
“I know, Daru.” She rolled her eyes.
“I know you know, Ja’Akari,” he told her, and his voice was very soft. “But a warrior who has lost her vash’ai will often take foolish risks.”
Sulema stared at him. She had told nobody about Azra’hael. How does he know?
“The shadows told me,” he whispered as if she had spoken aloud. “I have not had a chance to talk to you before this, but I wanted to say…” His eyes were dark pools of sorrow. “I am very sorry for your loss, Zeeravashani.”
Zeeravashani.
Sulema turned on her heel and fled before a single tear could fall.
* * *
Sulema had to admit, it was better once she was out and away from the camp. The only voices left in her head all belonged to her, and had been with her for as long as she could remember. Voices that nagged and picked at her every fault and reminded her, like a children’s song that goes round and round without end, of every thing she had ever done wrong in her life. The worst of these she imagined as a twisted shadow perched behind her on the saddle, sharp of tooth and wit as it mocked her in a shrill whisper.
Azra’hael, it whispered. You failed him. You killed him. You never deserved him and now he’s gone, gone, gone.
Gone, gone, the other voices laughed. Gone.
Not even Zeeravashani for a day, it hissed. If it were not for you and your stupidity, Azra’hael would still be alive.
Azra’hael, the others agreed. Azra’hael…
…Azra’hael…
Consumed as she was by despair, Sulema did not notice when Atemi perked her ears forward and went stiff all through the neck as if she, too, could hear the whispering voices. She did not notice the little dance her mare did with her feet or the tension that shuddered through her hindquarters, loud as a shout to any warrior who knew her horse. Sulema was listening to the false voices in her mind, not the true voice of her good mare, and so she did not heed her friend’s warnings.
Thus it was that the moment she realized that the whispers were not all inside her head, that there was a strange smell on the wind and a strange feel to the air, was precisely one moment too late. Atemi launched herself straight up as if she would jump the moons, and Sulema found herself tossed through the air like a basket full of wheat.
Her first reaction was shocked indignation. The first rule of the Zeera is that a warrior never comes off her horse. Her second was trepidation, as she had just enough time to realize that it was really going to hurt when she hit the ground. Her third reaction, as her not-yet-mended flesh struck the earth and she rolled ass-over-end-over-ass down the dune, was to scream.
Fortunately she passed out before she could do much more than suck in a mouthful of sand, and the dark veil lifted from her eyes as quickly as it had come. It occurred to her later that had she screamed, or had she lain senseless and vulnerable for more than a heart’s beat, surely her story would have ended there. Her next stroke of good fortune came when Atemi, more curious now than spooked, followed her rider down the dune as if to ask why she had decided to fly away.
Sulema pulled herself to her feet with a stirrup, and into the saddle with sheer stubbornness. Though she wanted nothing more than to ride back to camp and have her hurts tended to—her arm inside its cast felt distinctly wrong—she could not ignore the sounds that came to her ears now that her mind had quieted. The whispers had grown into shouts, and the unmistakable ring of steel on steel, and cries of pain and panic. Slavers, most assuredly, and their party was riding right for them. Her duty as Ja’Akari came before duty to self. Of course, such duties would be more easily carried out had she not ridden out alone and unarmed.
Stupid, the twisted shadows whispered. Stupid, stupid girl.
Enough, she whispered back. I do not have time for your lies. Sulema banished the fell voices from her mind, and rode cautiously toward the sounds of battle. One look, she thought, one look and I will ride back to camp and alert the others. One look, and I will go. Keeping the nervous Atemi at a tight walk, she crested the top of the dune.
One look, and she knew that her luck had run out.
There were slavers, sure enough, a largish band of raggedy-looking men, heavily armed and poorly mounted, but they were not setting up an ambush for the Zeeranim. Rather, they were under attack by a knot of things. Nightmare creatures that were shaped like men, that stood upright and dressed like men, but the sight of them sent a wash of cold horror up Sulema’s back and froze her mind in a moment of gibbering panic.
The things’ skin shone pale and hard as a scorpion’s chitin in the rich moonslight. They spoke in a harsh chittering buzz, and when they moved—she watched one of the things scuttle sideways and then leap onto a slaver with a thin shriek—when they moved, she wanted to puke up every meal she had ever eaten. They looked wrong, they sounded wrong, and worse—they felt wrong. Like poison in sweet wine, like living flesh gone rotten.
An oily smell like burnt cinnamon and blood rose to meet Sulema, and Atemi flew into a panic. Sulema let her have her head, hissing between her teeth as the mare bolted back the way they had come. Pain knifed up her spine and through her ribs and ground its teeth in her broken arm, but she knew she had to return and warn the others.
As they labored up the next dune, Atemi balked and came up in front, nearly unseating her rider for the second time in one day. Sulema grabbed the mane with her off hand, letting loose a string of curses that would have done Istaza Ani proud, but broke off mid-guts-and-goatfuckery, heart in her open mouth, stunned to the marrow of her soul. A hundred warriors, more perhaps, crested the dune and poured down the side toward her and Atemi like a flood of water from the old stories. They were the desert made flesh in their golden robes and bright breastplates of wyverns’ scale, bleached and stiffened hair swept back from their faces like the manes of the wild vash’ai that flowed among them, eyes ringed about with kohl so that they burned like cinders in a funeral pyre. They were more deeply dappled and powerfully muscled than any warriors Sulema had ever seen. Beside them, First Warrior would have seemed a frail old lady with feathers in her hair. These were the Ja’Akari of legend, the golden warriors, the First Women, fierce and proud and free. They were everything Sulema wanted to be, and her heart leapt even as they rode her down.
The riders in front glanced her way as they passed by, but looked away again without so much as a nod. As if she were a child, mud-streaked from a game of aklashi, and they the true warriors riding out on Ja’Akari business. It stung. It stung, because the dismissal she read in their eyes rang true. Had she not ridden out this day unarmed and heedless as a milk-breathed brat? Wounded, unhorsed, and now fleeing an enemy? Oh, it stung. As the last of them rode past, Sulema swung Atemi round and followed.
Not safe, her mind suggested. Not a good idea. But she could no more have resisted following these women than she could have resisted touching her mother’s dreamshifting staff, when she was small and lonely and afraid of the dark.
The golden Ja’Akari coursed silent and sure across the desert. They broke upon the manlike creatures steady and sure as Akari spreading his wings across the sky, and as the Sun Dragon throws back the night so too did they throw back the enemy. If there were screams, they did not come from the warriors, grim-faced and true.
Nor did the creatures seek to flee. Outnumbered as
they were, they turned almost in unison, and their pale hard faces shone with fell glee as they leapt bright-eyed and open-mouthed to meet their doom. No quarter was given, nor was any sought, as the sight of each force drove the other into a frenzy of bloodlust. The few remaining slavers, cowering, were trampled beneath the hooves of the Zeeravashani as the warriors swept like bloody rain across the sands, shamsi flashing with delight, then wheeled to charge again.
Sulema rode with them, lifted up light as a feather by the song in her heart. This, she thought, and this, and this. One of the warriors grinned at the look on her face, and tossed her a sunblade hilt-first. She caught it in her off hand and shouted as she drove Atemi into the melee.
Time slowed and her head spun as if she were once again caught in the spider’s web, watching the events unfold from afar. Her blade rose and fell, rose and fell like the moons, like the desert tides, singing a song of blood, sweet and harsh and true. A monster looked up at her from the belly of a gutted horse and hissed, and leapt. She swept the head from its shoulders as if they were playing a game, and laughed at the look on its face as it bounced away. The sky dimmed, the world clenched around her until it was nothing but a fistful of sand and blood and white, white bone. She ducked a thrown blade, and kicked away a hand that would have dragged her from the saddle, and for a while she fought muzzle-to-tail beside a thin warrior whose mouth was a bloody snarl.
When the fist opened and released them all, a handful of bright warriors and three vash’ai lay upon the sand unmoving among the bits and pieces and torn bodies of the chitinous things, blood and ichor soaking into the soft sand. Somewhere, a man was screaming, a nerve-scraping sound that grew weaker, and weaker, and gurgled, and finally stopped.
Several of the warriors had dismounted and were poking at the bodies, dispatching those monsters and slavers that still had a bit of life left to them, and dragging the dead into a pile for burning. Sulema slid from her saddle to join them and then wished she had not, as her knees buckled and she sat down, hard. She would stand, and join these strange and wonderful warriors, she would find out who they were, where they had come from, why she had never heard of them… just as soon as the pain let up.
As she sat splay-legged on the sand, Atemi pawing impatiently near her leg, a pair of beaded wyvern-hide boots stepped into view. Sulema looked up and saw a swirl of golden robes, a shining bone-and-scale breastplate in the olden style, and dark eyes in a dark face, bright with good humor above a stern mouth.
“So, little softlander.” Her voice was low, her words oddly clipped, as if she did not wish to waste a bit of breath on them. “Lost and alone, a stranger under a strange sun. What to do with you, little lost kitten?”
Sulema made as if to stand, but the stranger rolled her wrist easily, and the point of a shamsi brushed against her throat.
“Ehla, yeh Adalia, neyya, this one is our guest. A wounded warrior, yet she fought well today… for a softlander.” Another woman—taller and older than the first, with a heavily scarred face— stepped into view and patted Atemi on the rump. Sulema recognized her as the warrior who had tossed her a shamsi. “Well mounted, too… though perhaps next time she will bring her own sword.”
* * *
Sulema reclined near the fire, washing down honeyed locusts with the harshest usca ever to set fire to a warrior’s belly, and pondered the great knot of confusion her life had become. Mere moons ago she had been a simple girl with a simple life, looking forward to riding alongside her sword-sisters and betting on which of them might first lose her virginity, and to whom.
Now the world was a tangled mess of spiders’ web and blackthorn, and she was caught in the middle with no way out.
“More usca?” Ishtaset smiled, and the scars on her face and the glint of firelight in her eye made it seem conspiratorial. “I find it cuts through the most complicated of riddles. Sometimes before I pass out.”
Sulema found it hard to imagine this woman ever losing control of her faculties, and shook her head, setting aside the clay mug.
“Thank you, no. I have suffered a recent blow to the head…”
“To your arm, and your face, and your ribs as well, I can see. Fall off your horse often, do you?”
“A lionsnake fell on me, actually.”
“Did you win, at least?” This from the woman Adalia.
Sulema shrugged. “I am here. She is not.”
“False modesty in a false warrior.” Adalia snorted. “Look at her, with her outlander hair and her outlander eyes… a boughten child, no doubt.” She spat, a shocking waste of water.
“Adalia, you may leave.” Ishtaset put her horn of usca aside. Her eyes were no longer smiling.
“Rajjha…”
“Leave. Now.” When the other woman huffed off, the warrior made a strange little gesture with her hand. “I will not apologize for her, ehuani. Her mother was killed by outlanders, and she will never forgive your kind.”
“My kind? I am no outlander. I am Zeerani. I am Ja’Akari, like you.”
“Ja’Akari, those children who claim to live under the sun, but live between walls of stone and roofs of clay?” Her laugh was harsh as a crow’s. “Ja’Akari, I? I think not. I am Mah’zula, girl. We are Mah’zula.”
“Mah’zula?” Sulema gaped. “The First Women? They have been gone for a hundred years. More. The Mah’zula are lost in the wind.”
“Are we? Who says this thing?” The warrior’s scarred face twitched with open amusement.
“First Warrior—”
“Ah yes, Sareta.”
If Sulema’s mouth hung open any wider, she could have swallowed a lionsnake. “You know Sareta?”
“I know of Sareta Ja’Akari. I also know of the moons-haired dreamshifter from the northern lands, and of her flame-haired daughter. A warrior always knows her enemies.”
These women, these warriors were the sa and ka of every dream Sulema had ever had as a young girl. “I do not wish to be your enemy,” she said. I wish to be you, she thought.
“Do you not?” The woman saluted her with the mug of usca, and a sardonic smile. “We shall see.”
* * *
They spoke of many things, long into the night. Ishtaset described a pure, nomadic life lived by the tides of wind and sand and moons. Never staying in one place for long, never building settlements.
“Roots are for trees, not for women,” she laughed. “Does Akari sit in one place in the sky, and grow fat and soft? No, and neither shall we, his true warriors.” She spoke of running with the wild vash’ai, bound to all and to none, hunting as a member of the pride. She guessed at Sulema’s lack of sleep, the waking nightmares that had plagued her since the Bones of Eth, and suggested that the vash’ai healers might cure her better than any human king.
“They have their own magics, bound to thorn and moonslight, and more powerful than we can know,” she said.
Ishtaset went on to suggest that Sulema might live among the Mah’zula, one of them, free to roam with the wandering stars. Free from the Mothers, and her mother, free from the shadow of the Dragon King her father.
Free.
Long after Didi had rolled away to her little bed, Ishtaset roused the single surviving slaver, a youth not yet old enough to have grown a beard. She bound his wrists before him and tied him behind her horse, a rangy red mare with a deep chest and snarky look. He rolled his eyes in terror of the beast, but when he would have spoken Ishtaset backhanded him casually across the mouth, and laughed at the look on Sulema’s face.
“I know you softlanders allow your males a loose rein,” she teased, “but you really should train them young. It is easier on them if they learn their place in life early on. And this one is less than a man, he is a slaver.” She stared at the boy, and a slow smile warmed her face. “Was a slaver.”
When they came to the edge of her mother’s camp, Sulema was surprised to see how exposed it seemed, how noisy and chaotic and out of place with the outlander soldiers and even the Ja’Akari running abo
ut like children, calling her name. She should have felt guilt at having been gone for so long and causing such worry, and she knew it, but what she felt most was embarrassment.
Ishtaset laughed again, doubtless reading the thoughts on her face, and leaned from her saddle to give Sulema a hug, just as if they were sword-sisters.
“Softlander or no,” she said, “you are welcome among us, Sulema Firehair. Return to us some day and we will make you strong and teach you the way of the true warrior, not this pale imitation of life you have been living.” She handed over the boy’s leash, and slipped away into the night.
A part of Sulema’s heart rode away with her. She wondered if the word ehuani would ever taste so pure again, or clean, as it had when she was among the Mah’zula.
TWENTY - THREE
A camp never sleeps, the king’s son thought to himself. Someone is always sharpening a blade, or braiding a pair of sandals, or eating, or farting, even during times of war when stealth is needed. And this was no tactical camp, but an odd assemblage of people—many of them young soldiers, armed and dangerous, some of them old politicians, sleek and deceitful. Statesmen, family men, and at least three different kinds of sorcerer. The air seethed with suspicion and magic and lust. A potent mixture, not conducive to a restful night.
Leviathus gave up trying to sleep and rose from his bedroll with a grimace. He had to pee, anyway.
He made his way to the hastily dug latrines, face heating as he passed through the Zeerani camp. Eyes gleamed out at him from the dim circles of their small and shielded fires—cats’ eyes, women’s eyes, lingering upon him with open hunger so that he wished he had dressed in more than a long tunic and sword belt.
There was a single guard at the stinking sand pit, and he was relieved to see Zeina’s little apprentice. The Ja’Akari did not know to turn away and give a man the courtesy of a private piss, and holding it in was painful.
The boy sat with his back against a stack of baskets and boxes, eyes wide against the night. He flushed and looked away as Leviathus emptied his bladder, hugging bony knees to his thin chest. When Leviathus was finished, he turned to the child and grinned.
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