The day was long, and the way was long, and Sulema was half dead before it began. But she was warrior-trained, warrior-born and bred. Half dead was simply a reminder that she was wholly, fully, fiercely alive.
The wind had shifted, bringing word of places where the mountains met the rivers and serpents sang in the flowering shallows, of dark shadows, deep hidey holes, of land held up to the gaze of Akari Sun Dragon like a handful of jewels. Ahead lay a town. The sand beneath her feet was slippery-soft and that was good, because it made her slow down, placing each foot with deliberation, and not think too much about the pain in her neck and shoulders.
And arms.
And back.
No, she mused, I am not thinking of the pain at all. She laughed silently at herself, alive and free once more under the sun. Ehuani, it was a good day not to die in the bowels of her enemy’s prisons.
The way to Min Yaarif was not difficult to see. Faint paths became clearer and more frequently used as they wound their way down the foothills and toward the wide Dibris. All roads—Istaza Ani had been fond of saying—led to Min Yaarif, as all strands led to the center of a spider’s web. Sulema wondered if this was true, and why, and what lay in wait for her at the center of this web.
She also wondered how someone who looked so small and fragile could be so dragon-blasted heavy.
Yaela groaned, and her weight shifted so that Sulema nearly lost her footing.
“Wake up,” she suggested, less than sweetly. “Walk your own self down the mountain. I am tired of carrying you, and your tits in my face make it difficult to look for snakes.”
Yaela groaned again, kicking feebly as Daru used to during one of his fits. Sulema stopped in the middle of the path, bent beneath the weight of her companion.
“Are you awake?”
“Uhhh,” Yaela answered.
“Good.” Sulema dipped one shoulder, ducked her head, and dumped Yaela unceremoniously, bag and all, into the sand on the side of the road. Her legs threatened to buckle beneath her, but she forced them to be still, and her back to straighten, and shook the weariness from her arms. Not dead yet.
Yaela curled into a tight ball, arms cradling her head as if protecting herself against an assault, and a single soft whimper escaped before she went still and limp. Then she straightened, yawning and stretching, opened her eyes, and scrunched her face against the late sun.
“Whaaaat…?” she said, yawning again before rolling into a seated position. She looked up at Sulema and frowned. “Where are we? And why are you still here?”
“We are almost to Min Yaarif, by my best guess,” Sulema snapped, turning on her heel as if to continue alone. Ungrateful whelp. She rolled her shoulders. “And I am still here because I am Ja’Akari. A warrior does not break her vow, even if it means carrying your fat arse down a mountain.”
“Fat arse.” Yaela’s voice was flat and hard. After a surly silence, she added, “Thank you. I did not expect—” She groaned. Sulema stopped and glanced over her shoulder to see Yaela pushing herself upright. The woman swayed where she stood, and her face had a gray cast to it.
“You thought I would kill you, take what you carry,” she said, “and run all the way home to the Zeera without looking back.”
Yaela stared straight at her, unblinking.
“Yes.”
Sulema snorted. “That speaks to your honor, not mine. Come, we need to get to shelter before the sun goes down. I hear that mymyc are excellent night hunters.” She rolled her shoulders again—they ached, but it was a good ache, she decided, free from the burn of reaver’s venom—and walked the rest of the way down from the hills toward a town that lay waiting for them crouched beside the river.
Like a giant spider.
She did not look back.
* * *
“Is stealing not dishonorable?” Yaela asked around a mouth full of dates. “You are going to get us both in trouble. I have salt enough to pay for food.”
“It is not stealing to take food if you are hungry,” Sulema protested. “That law is older than the Zeera. And I am hungry.” She shrugged, unconcerned. “Also I thought it best that we avoid talking to people when we can. I would rather our whereabouts not become common knowledge. Besides, it is only trouble if you get—”
“You!” a voice roared from the other end of the alley.
“—caught,” Sulema finished. “Ah, horse shit.”
“Do not run,” Yaela cautioned. “If you do, they will catch you anyway, and kill you before you can fulfill your vow to me. At best they would cast us both naked from the walls of Min Yaarif, where we would be eaten by the great desert cats, and we have yet to find the shadowmancer Keoki.”
“Vash’ai do not eat people.” Sulema wrinkled her nose at the idea. Three men approached them, but they did not move like warriors. None of them were particularly impressive, so she dismissed them as a threat. “And I am no coward, to run from trouble. So we spend an afternoon cleaning churra pits or washing the vendor’s soiled clothes—”
“What are you talking about? This is not the Zeera. In Min Yaarif, thieves do not pay the price of stolen goods by performing chores. Here, they cut off your hand. Or your foot. Or your head. Sometimes they sell you into slavery—you, and all your companions.” For all her dire words, Yaela appeared more irritated than frightened. “Au Illindra, you desert crawlers have heads full of cobwebs. Shut up and let me do the talking.”
Sulema opened her mouth to protest, or argue, or come up with some witty retort—desert crawlers? Heads full of cobwebs?—but Yaela turned to address the men who had come close, and the handful of curious onlookers who had followed, no doubt hoping for some entertainment.
“A heart welcomes you, good men,” she called out. “How may we serve?”
“As prisoners,” the man in front replied. He was the tallest of the three and, judging by the scowl on his face, he was the angriest as well. “That little bald shit stole food from my cart.”
Yaela glanced back at Sulema and shook her head in exaggerated sorrow. “This one? She is an idiot, a foreigner, and cannot be held responsible for her actions. What is the value of the goods she took?” She touched the bag at her shoulder. “A handful of red salt?”
Sulema stared at her. The dates she had snatched had not been worth more than three pinches of white salt, never mind red.
The man frowned thoughtfully, and his companions looked to him.
“You can pay?”
“I can pay.”
“In that case”—the man smirked, eyes crawling over Yaela and then Sulema in a manner that made her skin crawl—“how about you pay me with a handful of pussy?” He grabbed his crotch at them, and his companions laughed. It was an ugly sound.
A few in the crowd chuckled, as well. Others appeared uncomfortable at the exchange.
Sulema glanced at Yaela and was shocked at the naked fury on the other woman’s face. Her eyes had gone wide and black, and she bared her teeth in a snarl that would make any vash’ai proud.
“Then I will fight you for it,” the shadowmancer’s apprentice said. Her voice was soft, soft as a killing wind, soft as poisoned honey and hungry shadows. She raised an arm in a delicate arc, cupped her hand before her face and blew. Shadows poured from between her fingers like smoke from an oil lamp.
She is bluffing, Sulema thought. The shadowmancer’s apprentice trembled with the effort it cost her to summon even this small handful of shadow. But two can play this game as easily as one.
“Works for me,” she agreed aloud, stepping into a fighting stance. Though it seemed a lot of fuss over a few dates, and though she was a three-day journey past exhaustion, it occurred to her that a good brawl might cleanse her heart of anger—and these shit-brained outlanders had just volunteered.
“Shadowmancer,” one of the tall man’s companions muttered loudly, tugging at his sleeve. “My friend, this fight is not worth it.”
“A shadowmancer and a desert slut,” the third man agreed, “shorn of her braids.” He held up both hands and took a step back. “Not worth the risk, even for prime pussy like this.”
That was enough for Sulema. “Desert slut?” her voice raised to an outraged squawk on the last word; she had been called slut by these men one time too many. She spat on the sand and yanked her vest open in a show of contempt. “I will teach you to mind your tongue, you—”
“Geth! Geth!” someone shouted, and the crowd of onlookers parted to let a woman through. She was tall and well-muscled, and reminded Sulema immediately of Sareta. She wore robes of pale yellow, and a pale yellow wrap at her brow emphasized the most beautiful cloud of black-and-silver hair Sulema had ever seen. Her dark eyes were wide, and almond-shaped, and filled with a hard expression that said there had been enough nonsense for one day. She was flanked by four enormous hard-faced men in yellow vests and white trousers.
Yaela curled her hand into a fist, and the shadow-smoke faded away. Sulema dropped her stance and bowed her head. She knew trouble when it had caught her.
“What is all this?” the woman snapped, mouth set in a firm line as she eyed the tall man. “Baoud, what do you do here?”
“These women stole from me,” he said, his voice aggrieved. “I am simply trying to support my family, and they stole from me. I seek justice.”
“Justice, hm.” The woman glanced at Sulema, but addressed her words to Yaela. “Does Baoud speak true? Did you steal from him?”
“He speaks true in part,” Yaela agreed. “My companion, being an idiot child who does not know the ways of this place, took a handful of dates to fill our empty bellies. I offered to pay this man in salt, but he thought to take payment in girl flesh instead.” Her shadow-filled eyes glinted dangerously. “We refuse.”
“She lies!” Baoud cried. “I would happily take salt—”
“No!” An older woman pushed her way to the front of the growing crowd. “Ayya, the girl speaks truth. She offered salt, and this pig’s ass and his pig’s ass friends made to attack them instead.” She glared at the three men, who had all gone red-faced and silent. “Do not think your mothers will not hear about this, all three of you. Shame!”
“Shame,” several bystanders muttered. Sulema noted, wryly, that none of these people had spoken up before the yellow-robed woman had appeared.
Ayya, if that was her name, pursed her lips.
“Did you steal from this man?”
“I did not steal,” Sulema explained. “I took two handfuls of dates to eat, because I was hungry.”
The woman shot her a sharp look at that, and then turned to Yaela. “And did you offer to pay in salt?”
“I did,” Yaela said. “I offered a handful of red salt, as payment for the dates and for the insult.”
Ayya stared hard at Baoud. “And did you and your companions think to attack these women, in an attempt to take flesh-price instead?”
The man’s mouth worked as if he had bitten bitter fruit.
“I did. We did.”
Several people in the crowd began to mutter. The woman in yellow clapped her hands together once, twice, three times, and they fell silent.
“This is my judgment,” she said. “The Zeerani girl is guilty of theft. She is sentenced to five lashes with a cane”—several onlookers sucked in a breath—“to be given if and only if she offends any other law within a two-moon, as it is permissible to suspend punishment for one crime, one time only.” She glared at Sulema. “The ways of Min Yaarif are not the ways of the Zeera. It is your responsibility to learn our laws and learn them quickly. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Sulema said. She bowed her head and felt her cheeks go hot with embarrassment. “I am sorry, ehuani. I have been an idiot.”
“You have,” Ayya agreed. “Again, did you offer to pay a handful of red salt?”
“I did,” Yaela said.
“You will pay one half-handful of red salt to the merchants’ guild, to pay for the dates and the insult, and one half-handful of red salt to the peacekeepers’ guild, to pay for my time.” Yaela nodded in agreement.
“What about me?” Baoud asked. “They stole from me!”
“You,” Ayya said, “I find guilty of intended rape. I declare your merchandise forfeit to the merchants’ guild, to disburse as they will. I further declare your dick forfeit, as you have used it to offend the peace of Min Yaarif.” She pointed to one of Baoud’s companions. “You will remove the offending member with a machete.” Then she pointed to the other. “You will wear it around your neck for one week as a reminder to others that citizens and visitors to our fair city are not to be molested.”
Baoud cried out and fell to his knees. The yellow-vested men surrounded him and his companions. They were seized and borne away, wailing and struggling to no avail.
Ayya stared hard at Yaela, and harder at Sulema.
“You are to go straight to the guilds and pay your fines. I trust that there will be no more trouble from either of you?”
“No,” Yaela said.
“No,” Sulema agreed. She met the woman’s eyes, though it shamed her to do so. “I am truly sorry to have caused this much trouble. It will not happen again.”
A corner of Ayya’s mouth quirked. “Do not make a promise that you will be unable to keep, young Ja’Akari. Trouble follows your kind like night follows day. Oh, and, ladies?”
“Yes?” they said together.
“Welcome to Min Yaarif.”
* * *
Half a fistful of Yaela’s salt tablets bought them a bath and beds at an inn, and food fit for the festival of Jadi-Khai. Having bathed and eaten, the two women sat in a comfortable silence and watched the river turn red as Akari dipped his wings and dove beyond the mountains in search of his sleeping love.
Sulema could have slept, but she was in that comfortable state of being full and clean and in no immediate danger of being run through with a sword or torn into pieces by a pack of mymyc. It had been long since she had seen a sunset, so she lingered. River serpents sang to one another in the glooming, a sweet counterpart to the sound of the Zeera, so close Sulema’s heart could taste sand upon the wind.
“They sound happy,” she remarked.
“How can you tell?” Yaela glanced at her curiously over the lip of a water pipe, face wreathed in pinkish smoke.
“I… I am not sure. You just can, if you listen. Hear that?” She paused as a sweet trill pierced the darkening sky. “They do not sound like that when they are aroused or angry. Or when they are mating.” She winced at the memory. “That sound will give you a headache for weeks.”
“Hm.” Yaela placed the end of the hose between her lips, and water gargled merrily. “Often I have listened to the song of serpents, but I never thought about them having moods. Perhaps you are more sensitive because you are echovete, able to hear atulfah?”
“Perhaps.” Sulema’s enjoyment of the serpents’ singing paled at the reminder. “I do not know.”
Bruise-purple darkness bled across the sky, and the lights of men leapt up in tiny, futile attempts to keep it at bay. So many people packed into one place—hundreds and hundreds of them—made Sulema’s skin crawl. She longed to ride across the singing dunes with her sweet Atemi, and Hannei, and no need at all for words or fire or… anything.
When this day began, I had been cast into a pit and left to die, she thought, scolding herself. Ungrateful wretch. But the thought did not stop her heart from longing.
“Home,” Yaela remarked around the pipe’s mouthpiece, and fumes curled from her mouth as if she was Sajani incarnate. “Never closer, never farther away. I could be home in three days if I started dancing now—”
“Dancing?”
“Dancing,” Yaela affirmed. “As you have seen, this is my gift. In order to bind shadows to my bidding, I dance, and weave them into a veil of darkness so thick it shields me from Akari’s wrath. If I stop, the shadows dissipate, and when the sun comes up—” She blew out a fat puff of smoke, “Poof! Just like that.”
“Poof, just like what?”
“In the Seared Lands, if you are aboveground when the sun comes up, and have no spun shadows to protect you,” Yaela blew another puff of smoke, this time directly into Sulema’s face. “You burst into flame and burn away to ash. Poof!”
Sulema waved the smoke away with a grimace. “Not a good way to go.”
“No.” Yaela’s teeth flashed white through the gloom and the smoke, a wicked smile as if she remembered some secret joke. “But it is better than being eaten by a bintshi. Faster, too. And less messy.”
“There are not many bintshi on our side of the river. We have our share of greater predators, though. Na’iyeh, wyverns, bonelords, oujinn—”
“Dreamshifters,” Yaela added softly. “Dream eaters. But those are monsters, not predators.”
Sulema stiffened. This sorcerer is not a friend, she reminded herself. Standing abruptly, she said, “I am tired. It is time for me to go to bed.”
“Stay. Please, stay.” A woman’s voice flowed from the near darkness, and her form followed. Startled, Sulema rocked onto the balls of her feet, the better to flee or to fight. Yaela just took another puff of her pipe, but her eyes illuminated by the glowing coals were wide and wary.
“I am sorry, I did not mean to startle you.” The woman smiled disarmingly, dimly visible in the near-dark, spreading both hands wide to show that she bore no weapons. “I have been seeking the two of you all day and look! I have found you. May I?” Without waiting for an answer, she plopped her butt on the ground next to Yaela and reached for the water pipe. Yaela handed it over.
Peering through the gloom, Sulema studied the woman as she smoked. She was long-limbed and well-muscled, with the kind of thoughtless grace and the scarred forearms earned through a life of fighting. “Who are you? What do you want from us?”
“She is Rehaza Entanye,” Yaela answered, taking her water pipe back from the woman.
It was the stranger’s turn to be startled. “You know me?”
“I know of you,” Yaela answered, and she set her pipe aside. She gestured, and Sulema crossed to sit reluctantly at her side.
I wish I knew half of what was going on.
“If you know of me, then you can guess why I have come.” Gloom turned to darkness, so that Sulema had to squint to see the woman. She glanced at Yaela, whose eyes had begun to glow like jade held up before a fire.
I bet she can see just fine.
“You want us to fight in the pits,” Yaela said. “We are not interested.”
“Oh?” Sulema did not need eyes that could see in the dark to know that the woman was smiling. “I suppose you are going to tell me there is no price that could entice you.”
“None.” Yaela’s voice was flat and hard.
“Neither of you?” she glanced at Sulema from the corner of her eyes.
Sulema snorted. “I am Ja’Akari. We fight for honor, not for outlanders.”
“Ah, that is a pity. Especially when one considers tomorrow’s prize—a war-bred asil mare. And look! One of you happens to be a Zeerani warrior without a horse.”
Air hissed between Sulema’s teeth before she could stop herself.
“Yet you would not be interested in this mare, in any case. She is golden as the Zeera—an unlucky color, I am sure—and a bit of a handful, having recently been held in captivity in the far-off and fabled land of Atualon. I am afraid that the Atualonians do not know how to properly care for such a creature. She is half-starved and mad from being beaten, but I am sure that whoever wins her will—”
Sulema exploded to her feet, and the night washed red as blood pumped behind her eyes.
“Atemi!”
“Sulema—” Yaela warned.
She spun about to face the glowing eyes.
“They have my Atemi!” She threw the words violently, beyond rage or reason.
“The mare is yours, you say?” The stranger’s voice was thick with laughter. “What an odd bit of… luck. Convenient, to be sure.”
“Atemi is mine,” Sulema insisted. “And I will have her back. Or I will burn this place to the ground.”
“As you say.”
“We will not fight,” Yaela insisted, but her voice lacked conviction. “We cannot—”
“Ah, I understand. Surely two young women such as yourselves are… what? Adventurers? Travelers? Heroes, come to Min Yaarif in search of a quest? Or perhaps you already have a quest in mind… Kentakuyan.”
Yaela’s eyes blazed against the night.
“One of royal blood such as yourself—forgive my presumption—is no doubt uninterested in such lowly treasure as a half-dead horse,” Entanye continued. “Now, what prize might my mistress offer that would entice such a one as yourself?” She paused as if to think. “Hmmm…”
The night grew abruptly deeper, ink-dark, black as the pit of the belly of a beast. Shadows, Sulema realized, and chillflesh raised the hairs on her arms. Shadows flowed outward from the place where Yaela sat, as water would spill from the banks of the Dibris after a spring flood.
“Oh, I know!” Rehaza Entanye continued as if she had not noticed. “Surely you wish to return and visit your— homeland?—and all your friends and relatives. But in order to do that, you need a skilled shadowmancer. One not previously known to those who guard the ways. If at least one of you agrees to fight in the pits, my mistress offers as your prize the services of Shadowmancer Keoki, who finds himself in her employ.”
A hissing sound rose about them, a rustling noise like the sound of scales, or bat’s wings, or nightmares.
Shadows, Sulema realized, and shuddered. Grown so real we can hear them.
“You dare,” Yaela said. Her voice was smooth and unruffled, but her eyes glowed bright as the moons.
“Three days,” Rehaza Entanye said, and her voice had lost all trace of mirth. “The Fight of Champions will be held in three days, and I have been instructed to invite the two of you to compete. This is an unusual privilege, and I expect you to be properly grateful for the opportunity. No doubt you will beat the lesser competitors—the fighting has gone on now for nearly three months, and only the best are still alive, but still they should be no trouble for the likes of a— Ja’Akari, you say? And a shadowmancer’s apprentice, by the looks of your unscarred skin? Indeed, only our champion might prove any real challenge to you, and it is this fight that my mistress most wishes to see.”
“Who is your mistress?” Yaela asked.
“Who is this champion?” Sulema asked. She did not give two shits from a sick churra about this woman’s mistress. She would win back her Atemi, and that would be that.
“My mistress is none of your business. Do not cast your net at a dragon, child. As for our champion.” She chuckled. “You will have the honor of fighting Kishah Two-Blades herself.”
“Kishah?” Sulema asked, intrigued despite herself. “That is a Zeerani word. It means—”
“Vengeance.” The woman stood, her face lit by the pale green fire of Yaela’s wrath, and smiled at them. “I will see you in three days, warrior.” She walked away without bothering to look back.
Sulema and Yaela stared at each other, lit only by starslight and moonslight as the shadows dissipated and the apprentice’s eyes returned to normal.
“I cannot fight in the pits.” Yaela’s voice was tight with an unspoken plea, her body tense. She would not meet Sulema’s eyes. “I am forsworn.”
“I will fight, then,” Sulema said. “I have no choice.”
“There is always a choice,” Yaela said. “Just never any good ones.”
“No,” Hannei signed. “No.”
The pain in her heart felt worse than anything she had ever experienced. Worse than the pain of betrayal she had felt when Sareta sold her into slavery. Worse than the pain of having the tongue sliced from her mouth.
Worse than watching Tammas die?
She imagined a flutter deep within her belly and laid a protective hand over her thickening abdomen. No, not worse than that. She had died with Tammas, and lived now only for his child.
“Yes,” Rehaza Entanye said. “You will do this thing, Kishah. Do I need to remind you of your pact with Sharmutai?”
No, Hannei thought, but this time she kept her hands as still as her face. The pitmistress had reminded her of her damn vow yesterday, today, and she would again tomorrow. It is almost as if they do not trust me. The notion brought a grim smile to her mouth. The two women stood facing each other across a table of silverwood, finely carved with scenes of battle and glory and inlaid with river pearls.
“Nothing is too good for my champion,” Sharmutai had said, upon showing Hannei to her new quarters. “I shall dress you in silks if you like, drown you in pleasure slaves and spiced wine. And when you die,” she said as she kissed Hannei on the forehead as if she were a favored daughter, “I will dress you in silks and commission poetry fit to make the sky weep.”
“I understand that you know this girl, this child warrior and pretender to the Dragon Throne. It may be that you were once friends—you are of an age, and you barbarians are a close knot. It is a vast land, the Zeera, but a small village all the same, am I right? A girl can hardly get laid without bumping into a cousin, as they say. But answer me this, Kishah Two-Blades, where was this fine friend of yours when that cunt warleader of yours was selling you to Ovreh? Off in her father’s kingdom sitting upon a golden chair and being wooed by the world’s finest assholes, I should think.
“Did she give up that golden chair and ride to your aid when you needed her? No? Then why should you give up your life to spare hers? Sharmutai has sent me here to tell you this, slave—kill this girl today, this last spawn of the dragon, and she will consider your contract fulfilled. You have only to do what you do best. Kill, and you will be free. Free to go wherever you like. You could remain in Min Yaarif and spend the rest of your days growing indolent with the rest of us. Or return to the Zeera and wreak bloody vengeance, as I know you want to. Or grow wings and fly to the fucking moons, for all I care.
“You can do anything you want, once you have killed this one little redheaded cunt. But you will kill her, Kishah, that I promise you.”
Hannei watched as Rehaza Entanye poured the black wine known as dragon’s blood into a goblet of glass and raised it in mock salute. She reached for the second goblet, but the pitmistress slapped her hand away.
“Now, now,” she said, laughing, and her eyes as she looked upon Hannei were filled with an emotion too terrible to name. “Think of the baby.”
The worst part of wearing another person’s bones was how much they itched.
Istaza Ani wore the face and form of a dead man as she led her stallion Talieso through the gates and into the too-crowded streets of Min Yaarif, wrinkling her nose at the smell of so many humans packed armpit to armpit. She would think a city with so many public baths would smell better, but no. Gladly would she have shed this disguise and fled the sights, sounds, and smells of civilization. More gladly still would she have ridden back into the heart of the Zeera to pick up the life she had set aside.
Had she ever thought raising the children of the prides to be a thankless task? Had she ever considered her lover Askander Ja’Sajani the biggest pain in the arse this side of the Jehannim? She would have welcomed them now—but that life was lost to her. As much as the notes of a flute were lost to the wind. Fondly recalled, but beyond all hope of recovery.
Where there is life, there is yet hope, Theotara had said to her, and more than once. That was all well and good, but the old warrior had never considered the life of a bonesinger. As long as there were bones in this world, Ani could extend her existence until it was a song without tune, a story whose original intent was buried and forgotten in the pages of time. What hope could be left to her then, when all she knew was sand, and those she had loved were gone to dust and legend?
What use was a beating heart, when the one for whom her heart beat had turned his back on her?
Human, Inna’hael chided, you bore me.
I bore myself, she admitted, shaking off her self-indulgent mood as Talieso might shake off dried mud. She had come to find Sulema. All roads led to Min Yaarif, and the bones had told her that the girl had ridden this way. She would give Sulema what aid she could, but from a distance. The girl would not know her now, and Ani would not burden her with the curse of forbidden magic. It was the duty of every warrior to slay a bonesinger, and Ani had no wish to force the daughter of her heart to choose between duty and love.
You do not wish to know which way her blade would fall, Inna’hael observed.
It was not a lie.
The form Ani wore did not draw a second glance, save from the vendors who lined either side of the road. A nondescript Zeerani warrior leading an old gray stallion, this was nothing new or exotic, though she might prove an easy mark for a merchant’s apprentice. Indeed, a young girl approached her now, bowing and smiling and offering spiced meats on a stick, sizzling hot from the fire. The scent reached Ani’s nostrils, and her stomach began to gnaw at her. When was the last time she had eaten?
She could not recall.
Smiling at the waif she reached for the pouch at her waist. It was heavy with coins and salt tablets. Several of those whose bones she had worn in Atualon had been wealthy, and her needs had been few.
A young man walked by, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, and his smile was pure mischief, reminding her strongly of a young Askander. A different hunger rose in her and she smiled back, a baring of the teeth that sent the young man scurrying away from her in alarm, as any prey will which scents a greater predator.
The worst part of wearing another person’s bones was how much they hungered.
She melted beneath the old woman’s hands, delighted to be wearing her own shape for a change, though her own body had grown so young and strong and free of scars that Ani hardly recognized it. Her belly was full of meat and cheese and bread, her head full of usca, and she had chosen this bath-house because the woman who gave massages was as stringy as an old goat and half as attractive, therefore unlikely to arouse a bonesinger’s more dangerous hungers. Warm oil and honey poured across her skin, warm and fragrant steams rose from the hot rocks near her feet, and she was for the moment content.
“What do you do here, Meissati?” the old woman asked as she kneaded two lifetimes’ worth of anger from the flesh. Her voice was gorgeous, deep and sweet, giving lie to her frail features. “The Zeeranim do not deal in flesh, so your visit is unusual. Not unwelcome, mind you—desert warriors are always welcome in my house, so clean and so courteous— but unusual.”
“Mmmmmf.” Ani did not open her eyes. “I am come to make sure none of the asil are being sold by outsiders.” A plausible lie. The prides’ horses were valued above salt or rubies, and it was forbidden for any but the Zeeranim to own one—indeed, to touch one. For certain kinds of people, this was oftentimes more of a draw than a deterrent. Warriors had made asil raids on places such as Min Yaarif, and would do so again. “Have you heard of any such a one offered by the traders?”
There came a long pause, so long that Ani found herself holding her breath in anticipation of the woman’s answer. Perhaps her lie had contained more truth in it than she had known. The idea of one of these outlanders riding an asil made her blood hot.
“I have,” the woman whispered, leaning close to Ani’s ear. “I will tell you what none other will—perhaps, though it is not a secret. One of your horses is to be awarded to the winner of a championship pit fight, three days from now.”
Ani grunted and opened her eyes. The old woman drew back, hands held up in supplication.
“I only tell you what everyone knows!”
“I will not hurt you.” Ani sat up and rolled her head from side to side. Blessed Atu, that feels good. “You are sure the horse is asil?”
“Yes, a golden mare, and the most beautiful I have ever seen. Though your own white stallion is very pretty,” she added hastily.
Guts and goatfuckery; if the prides hear of this, Min Yaarif will be overrun with screaming warriors. “Tell me about this fight.”
“It will be spectacular,” the old woman breathed. Despite her fear, her eyes lit with anticipation, and she smiled a near-toothless smile. “Our own champion, Kishah, is to face one of your Zeerani warriors. They say she is Zeerani, anyhow, though I rather doubt it myself. Whoever has heard of a desert barbarian with hair like the setting sun? No doubt she is some Atualonian slave, bought and trained for the pits. Still, the whole city will be there to watch the fight, and not just because of the prize. Sharmutai only lets her pet fight the most exotic battles, and only the wealthiest will be able to afford seats near the front. Rumor has it that the pirate king himself will attend, the one who talks to river serpents! I will be there myself…”
The voice went on, but Ani stopped paying attention. A Zeerani warrior with hair like the setting sun? It could be no other.
“I will go see this fight,” she said. “If the mare is indeed asil, as you have said, honor demands that I bring her home. I will buy her—”
“They will not sell her to you, Meissati,” the woman said. Her smile dropped, and she wrung her hands. “Neither will they allow you to attend this fight. Oh! I should not have said anything.”
“Well then,” Ani said, “at least tell me of this champion of yours, this… Kishah.” She smiled the gentlest smile she could manage and averted her eyes so that the old woman would not see her intent. She lowered herself back to the table, indicating that the massage should continue. “If I cannot watch the fight myself, perhaps I can imagine it through your words.”
A long moment passed, and then the hands returned to Ani’s shoulders. The touch was hesitant now, stiff, as if the woman was ready to flee at the slightest hint of danger.
“Kishah Two-Blades,” she began, “Sharmutai’s champion of champions, is the fiercest and deadliest fighter to enter the pits, at least in my lifetime. They say she has no tongue. Certainly she has no pity. They say that Sharmutai feeds her the flesh of those she has killed…”
Ani made a show of relaxing, of breathing deeply and murmuring at appropriate times. She only half-listened to the older woman’s stories, though, waiting for her guard to drop. She already knew what she needed to know—
“I will be there myself—”
And the old woman had lived a full life, after all.
The very worst part of wearing another person’s bones was the price she had to pay to obtain them.
* * *
The old woman passed between the gate-guards without challenge. They knew her as a woman who had been a famous courtesan in her youth, a whoremistress in middle age, and who now supplemented her retirement hoard by selling the skills and knowledge of a lifetime, serving the human body and all its needs. Doubtless they assumed that she had been hired to soothe the hurts of some favored pit fighter, or to limber tight muscles for an oncoming fight. She nodded at the guards over her herb basket, stopping only to pet a blue-crested raptorling on a golden chain.
“Pretty girl,” she said, and offered it a dried fish from her basket. The young raptor hissed softly but accepted the bribe. It was not fooled by her stolen bones but felt no real loyalty to these men who had chained it for a life of servitude, and so did not screech an alarm.
Straightening, the bonesinger-in-disguise made her slow way down a smooth-cobbled path between rows of stone and salt-brick houses, past fountains and gardens and pools filled with colored fish. The bright moonslight cast sharp shadows. Some of the houses were lit from within. From a few came the sounds of merriment, or lovemaking, or fighting. Ani had noted more than once the similarity between those last two. Other houses were dark, brooding over their inhabitants’ suffering, perhaps.
There was beauty here, the kind of beauty which could be purchased with gold or salt or blood, but there was little joy. This small fortress-like estate was a home for pit fighters, and the fighting pits of Min Yaarif—though the source of dark pleasure—was the death of all hope.
This one, she thought as an especially large and well-appointed house caught her eye. It was an elegant dwelling meant to house a single fighter, not one of the long dormitory types meant for those whose blood was more cheaply spilt. Though the dwelling was silent, a warm glow of candlelight came from within. How does Vengeance spend her free time? Ani wondered. Drinking? Whoring? Reading a book, perhaps? What would she do if her life was not otherwise occupied with dealing death?
What do you do, indeed, Bonesinger? Inna’hael asked. He was nearby—not within the walls of Min Yaarif, but not far, either. Mostly you spend your waking hours mewling for your lost mate like a cub cries for its mother.
Ani stiffened at this but masked her reaction with an old woman’s naturally halting walk as she started up the steps to the salt-brick mansion.
That was not necessary, she answered.
None of this is necessary, Inna’hael sent. We should just kill all your kind and be done with it.
“Halt!”
Ani jumped half out of the old woman’s skin, and it was not an act. So preoccupied had she been with her own thoughts and the kahanna’s that she had not noticed the guards as they stood in the shadows. Foolish, foolish. The warriors she had raised would have laughed in astonishment to see their old teacher caught out in such ignominious fashion.
“You scared me!” she accused in a tremulous voice. It was not her own, any more than this face, this body, these bones were her own.
“Where do you think you are going?” The woman stepped forward into the moonslight. She was tall, dark as the shadowmancer Aasah and his little apprentice, though there were no stars in her skin and her eyes were dark and natural-looking.
“Where does it look like I am going?” she snapped, a wealthy old woman irritated by the presence of ignorant youth. “I am come to make Kishah ready for her forthcoming fight. Unless you would like to explain to your mistress why her pet was not given the services she paid for? I am very expensive.” She sniffed, tottered the last few steps up to the door, and stood staring belligerently up at the young woman.
“Let her through.” A second guard, this one a man, stepped forward and touched the first guard’s shoulder. “It is only old Ulseth, and she is expensive. Excuse this one, Meissati, she is new.”
Ani sniffed. “Very well—”
“No.” The young woman shook off her companion’s hand and shot him a hard glare. “Not until I see what you have in your basket, Meissati.”
“Teatha—”
“Orders from Rehaza Entanye, Kaneh. Unless you would like to explain to her and to the mistress”—here she lowered her voice—“how we let an assassin walk past us? Every visitor is to be searched. No exceptions.”
Kaneh sighed, but shrugged. “You are right. Hand over the basket, Grandmother.”
Ani huffed but handed them the basket. The guards removed her bottles and bundles of herbs, treating them with respect. The former youthmistress found herself grudgingly approving of young Teatha, especially as she so carefully examined each bottle and bundle, sniffing and pinching and frowning in concentration.
“This is catbane,” Teatha said at one point. “It can cause the kidneys to bleed and fail.”
“It can,” Ani agreed, “but only when given in great quantities, and fresh. A small amount of dried leaf, such as this, can help to purify and strengthen the blood. It is also useful for forcing water from a body—”
“A trick to help a fighter make weight.” Kaneh chuckled. “Are you satisfied, Teatha?”
“I suppose.” Yet the warrior still eyed Ani suspiciously.
“I cannot fault you for your diligence,” Ani grumbled, repacking her herbs and bottles with contrived irritation, and returning Teatha’s glare with one of her own. “It is the mark of a good guard, after all. And you know your herbs. Perhaps if you tire of working for Sharmutai, you could come work for me.”
Teatha nodded but did not answer. Ani covered her basket once again and waited as the guards opened the doors for her.
“Thank you,” she said, then, “you may leave us. This is private business.” She shut the door in their faces and turned.
She found herself standing at one end of a wide, warm room. The walls and floors were honey-colored. There were only two small windows, set high and too small to allow entry to much more than an evening breeze and a little bit of light, though the far end of the chamber was taken up by a wide hearth, in which blazed a merry fire. It was sparsely furnished, nearly bare. In the center of this room was a low wooden table surrounded by cushions, desert-style, and a single figure reclined upon these. She was hooded, brown-skinned hands turning the pages of a book.
Ani waited. Though the pit fighter did not speak— perhaps she had no tongue, after all—or so much as move to acknowledge her presence, Ani could feel heat and fury rolling from the supine form, hotter than the fire upon the hearth. And deadlier. The bonesinger was reminded of a wild vash’ai, crouched and ready for the kill.
“Your mistress hired me,” Ani said at last, “to bring potions and salves which will help ready you for the champion’s fight.” She reached into the basket for an ordinary-looking glass bottle, full of death. Death for the champion of Min Yaarif, and more likely than not death for the guards, as well. But why stop at a few more murders when she had come so far already?
Why, indeed? Inna’hael asked softly. When have your kind ever stopped at murder?
As if she had heard the vash’ai, the figure sat up abruptly. The silk hood fell back, exposing her face, and Ani gasped, dropping the bottle back into her basket.
Hannei, she thought, oh my Hannei, oh my girl, what have they done to you?
But she could not, dared not reveal herself, not even to this girl she loved. Hannei was Kishah now, Kishah Two-Blades, whose name was vengeance. And she—
I am no one, Ani thought, reaching for a different bottle. I am a bonesinger—my bones are no longer my own, and my life is forfeit.
The worst part of wearing another person’s bones was… everything.
The Pit of Min Yaarif was neither as grand as the newmade Sulemnium in Atualon, nor as steeped in honor and tradition as the Madraj in Aish Kalumm. This was a simple hole in the ground, with one ramp leading down, and another on the far side leading back out for any who might survive the day’s entertainments. The walls were red brick, made not with red salt, she had been told, but fashioned from the mud and sweat and tears of countless slaves sent here to die.
Sulema stood at the precipice and found herself smiling. She had been unable to grasp the politics of Atualon, unable to fight the dragonstone walls of Atukos. This she understood. This she could overcome. This was her world…
“Come on, girl, what are you waiting for?” One of the slave handlers put a hand in the middle of her back and shoved. Sulema sidestepped the pressure easily, turned and grabbed the man by the front of his robes. She dragged him so near she could have bitten his nose.
“Touch me again,” she growled, “and I will kill you.” She gave his face a light, contemptuous slap and tossed him aside. “I am no slave,” she said, glaring at the gathering crowd. “I am Ja’Akari. Touch me at your peril.” She brushed the sand from her vest, straightened her spine, and took her time walking to the down ramp. The people before her parted to let her through, many of them smiling or nodding their approval.
“Good, good,” Rehaza Entanye murmured, close behind her. “Give the people a show before the show, whet their appetites.”
“What show?” Sulema asked, dismissing the outlander woman as casually as she had thrown the man. “If any of you touch me, you will die. I am done being civilized.” Leaving them all behind she walked down the wide ramp.
It was a fine day, bright and hot under the eyes of Akari, and the path was smooth and easy, having been pounded flat and hard by the feet of those who had gone before her. Some of them had died—perhaps most of them had died— some had lived, and Sulema thought in that moment that it did not matter. In the end, all would be bones bleached in the sunlight, pounded into sand and trodden under the feet of new generations of fools come to try their luck in the game of life.
It was a fine day to die.
It was a fine day to live.
It was a fine day to be a warrior. Sulema stopped halfway down the ramp, tilted her face up to the sun, raised both arms above her head, and laughed for the sheer joy of saghaani, of the beauty in youth. The people who clustered thickly about the mouth of the pit, come to watch her die, raised their own voices in a ragged cheer.
“Ja’Akari!” someone shouted. “True warrior!”
“Ehuani!” shouted another. “Ehuani!”
And the crowd took up this chant.
“Ehuani!”
“Ehuani!”
“EHUANI!”
Though they were outlanders, doubtless ignorant of the meaning of the word, Sulema grinned and waved at them and danced to the roar of their approbation as she ran the rest of the way.
Two male slaves stood in the middle of the pit, hooded but otherwise naked. Between them they held a rack of weapons for her consideration. These were of crude make, with the pointy ends wrapped in tarred rags, as if a weapon made for killing might be dissuaded from that purpose.
Stupid. Sulema snorted. The halberds and maces she dismissed outright, and a short sword in the Atualonian style drew a scowl. There were three blunted shamsi of indifferent make—those blades had been stolen by raiders, no doubt, ground dull and pressed into slavery along with their former owners. At last she chose a blackthorn staff. It was of better make than the rest of these weapons, smooth and unadorned, capped with black iron at either end.
“This,” she said. The closest slave reached out to hand it to her but shrank back at the last moment.
“Take it,” he whispered hoarsely. Perhaps a slave was not allowed to touch a weapon? Sulema shrugged and seized the staff, easily pulling it free of the rack. Indeed it was of fine make, better than she had thought, light and well-balanced, with the supple strength of a master-crafted weapon.
“Thank—” she began, but the slaves were already hurrying away, dragging the weapons rack between them.
“—you,” she finished, perplexed. She shrugged away their odd behavior. Outlanders are strange, she told herself. I should not be surprised when they behave strangely. I wonder if they will let me keep this staff when I am finished? I will have my mare, and a weapon, and a companion who can wield shadow magic.
Not a bad start, for someone who is supposed to be dead.
She ran one hand up and down her new staff, familiarizing herself with the feel and weight of it, and her palm encountered an irregularity in the wood. She held it closer to her face, squinting against the sunlight, and when she saw the maker’s mark her fingers tightened so that the knuckles turned white.
Jinchua. The face of a fennec laughed out at her, cunningly wrought into the wood’s grain, as if it had grown there and been harvested just for this day. Would she never be free of the legacy of her mother’s dreamshifting magic? The only way it would be worse would be if it bore the dragon’s mark of her father as well.
Her heart pounding harder than it had at the thought of dying in single combat, Sulema turned the staff end for end, sliding both palms up the smooth wood. There, where a second maker’s mark might be, she found—
Nothing. Oh, thank Akari. But as she thumped the butt end of the staff against the ground, a bright flash caught her eye. Pressed into the iron cap at that end of the staff was the stylized image of the sun dragon’s mask in hot, angry gold.
Sulema gripped the staff in both hands, held it up to the sun, and screamed in fury. Somewhere in Jehannim, she knew, Jinchua barked with laughter.
A voice boomed across the stadium.
“GENTLE PEOPLE OF MIN YAARIF! MERCHANTS AND MURDERERS, LOVERS AND LIARS! WHORES AND PIIIIIIRATES!”
Sulema jumped half out of her skin as a voice boomed behind her. She spun to see a smallish man of indeterminate age. He was wearing a hat made of dead things and speaking through some sort of shofar-looking bronze object that made his voice roar out like a wyvern’s.
“YOU SEE BEFORE YOU A DAUGHTER OF THE ZEERA. BEHOLD SULEMA THE MAGNIFICENT, JA’AKARI WARRIOR AND CHAMPION OF HER PEOPLE, SCOURGE OF RAIDERS, LOVER OF MEN AND WOMEN, WHO HAS SLAIN NOT ONE, NOT TWO, BUT THREE LIONSNAKES IN SINGLE COMBAT!”
“Guts and goatf—!” Sulema exclaimed, but the crowd’s roar of approval drowned out her words. The booming man ignored her protestation and went on.
“THIS BEAUTIFUL BARBARIAN PRINCESS COMES TO MIN YAARIF IN SEARCH OF SUPPLIES AND ALLIES! SHE SEEKS NEITHER RICHES NOR LOVERS, BUT ADVENTURERS TO JOIN HER ON A NOBLE QUEST TO SAVE THE PEOPLE OF QUARABALA!”
“Noble quest?” Sulema stopped even trying and stood staring at him in open-mouthed shock. Was he insane? “Allies?”
“Beautiful barbarian princess?”
“I just want my horse!” she shouted, but nobody was listening.
“…SO DEDICATED TO THIS CAUSE, THIS OBSESSION, THIS NOBLE QUEST, THAT SHE HAS CONSENTED TO A FIGHT AGAINST THE NASTIEST, THE DIRTIEST, THE DEADLIEST PIT CHAMPION EVER TO PISS UPON AN ENEMY’S HEAD.”
That, Sulema thought, does not sound promising.
“KIND CITIZENS, ROGUES, WHORES, PICKPOCKETS AND SCOUNDRELS, THE LOT OF YOU, I GIVE TO YOU THE SCOURGE OF MIN YAARIF, THE SLAYER, THE PUNISHER, THE AVENGER! I GIVE YOU BLOODY VENGEANCE AND THE SILENCE OF THE GRAVE! I GIVE YOU…”
The crowd drew its collective breath and went still.
“KISHAAAAAAAHHHHH TWO-BLADES!”
The loud little man pointed up, and Sulema followed his gesture in time to see a dark and sinister figure, tall and hooded in funereal gray and black, appear at the lip of the fighting pit. The newcomer strode down the ramp lightly, easily, a loose-hipped fighter’s stance that said I will win today, and not you. I will live today, and not you. The hilts of two long, straight swords rose over the figure’s shoulders.
Why do I think they should wield a shamsi? The hairs on Sulema’s arms stood stiff. The slim brown ankles, the way the fighter moved, these things spoke to the marrow of her bones and the blood in her heart. Why do I feel I should call her “Sister”?
No. No. It is impossible.
The fighter reached the pit floor and strode silent as death to face Sulema. Strong brown hands reached up and pushed the hood back, and her heart shrieked to a stop.
“Hannei,” she gasped. “Hannei!”
The face of her sword-sister turned toward her, and a stranger’s soul stared out from behind an enemy’s eyes. She raked Sulema from sandaled feet to shorn scalp with one long glance, curled her upper lip in contempt, and spat upon the sand between them.
Sulema’s heart stuttered to life again when she saw Hannei’s hands curled at her sides. In hunter-sign she was speaking to Sulema.
“Go. Home. Go. Home.”
Sulema held her staff between them and stared into the face she loved more than her own.
“Cannot,” she answered.
Some trick of the light then made it seem as if a sheen of tears washed across Hannei’s eyes, there and gone again. She shrugged out of her black robe, revealing studded and padded leather armor as fine as Sulema had ever seen. A device was worked upon the chest; a fool’s mask with its mouth opened wide in a grimace of pain, blood pouring out.
Hannei spat once more upon the ground, turned her back on Sulema, and walked the required five steps from the center of the fighting pit. There she reached up over her shoulders and unsheathed both swords. Those swords of black iron, Sulema saw, did not have the dull edge of a pit fighter’s weapon. She looked from the death-sharpened blades to her sister’s grim expression, and she knew.
She turned her back on Hannei and took five steps, half expecting a blade through the back. This was not meant to be a fair fight, after all, but an execution.
“Well, fuck it,” she muttered. “I guess it is a good day to die, after all.” She tightened her grip on the staff, imagining as she did so that she could hear Jinchua’s barking laugh. She turned to face her childhood friend as the small man bellowed,
“LET THE GAME BEGIN!”
Where are you? Their eyes met, and Sulema searched that dark gaze for some sign of her sword-sister, wondering at the angry face before her. Who are you? Where is my Hannei?
“Sister,” she signed, and wished that a hunter’s signals could convey more meaning than “goats here” or “lionsnake there” or “danger, run.”
“Go,” Hannei signed one last time. “Go home. Run home.” She still held her two swords, but her body was stiff.
She does not want this any more than I do, Sulema realized.
“No,” she answered. She was—they were—both bound to this fate, as surely as she was bound by the blackthorn vines in her dreams. “Trapped. Ehuani.”
Hannei crushed her eyes shut, and for a moment her face contorted with grief.
Then she shook herself, opened a stranger’s eyes, and flowed into a fighter’s stance. Hannei held her twin blades in front of her and pointed them both at Sulema. The fingers of her left hand curled inward, toward her heart.
“Here. No truth. Only vengeance.”
And then her sword hand, in a final message.
“You die.”
They circled each other warily, paying no attention to the little man, or the bloodthirsty crowd, or the sun pounding down overhead. Sulema watched Hannei move, studied the way she held two swords lightly, easily, how her center of gravity flowed, and her face emptied of all emotion. Her former sword-sister had grown more thickly muscled since they had ridden together just this spring—
A lifetime ago, she thought, for both of us.
—and stepped more surely upon the pounded sand. Hannei had ever been Sulema’s peer when they trained as youngsters. One would excel at archery, the other at forms, but so closely matched in skill that they were considered true sisters, heart-sisters, the very ideal of saghaani.
This, Sulema realized as she watched Hannei advance, could no longer be said to be truth. She had spent months recuperating, and then confined, in the soft lying outlands. Hannei, it seemed, had suffered a fate perhaps harsher than her own. The hot stare of Akari, the merciless pounding of a hard land, had forged her into a blade meant for killing.
I might have beat Hannei in a fair fight, once, she thought. But looking at her now…
Use me, whispered a seductive male voice, deep and sweet. The Mask of Akari stamped into the end of her staff flared bright in her mind’s eye. Sa Atu. Sing the song of death, the song of my people, and you will taste victory with your enemy’s blood.
Jinchua barked a fox’s laugh. Use me, she insisted. Dreamshift. Close your waking eyes, and let the dreaming mind guide your hand, and you will fashion objects of power from your enemy’s bones.
Use me, use me, use me, the sun whispered, and the sand, and the desert wind. Let us use you.
Sulema stopped her pacing, threw back her head, and shouted in wordless fury at the world. Hannei stopped as well, and answered with a scream so ugly and blood-choked that the assembled crowd edged back from the fighting pit. It seemed in that moment that Akari Sun Dragon himself turned his face away from them in fear, that the world went dark…
And then the two warriors raised their weapons and charged.
* * *
The song of Hannei’s dark blades became quickly apparent, as did the sting of their kiss. Half a dozen small bleeding mouths, like the ones on her opponent’s breastplate, opened on Sulema’s arms, her thigh, her back, as she twisted and tried to find some quarter from which to attack. Like the wind Hannei came on and on, like death, implacable and relentless. It was all Sulema could do to keep from being spitted like a tarbok.
Hannei did not play, as she had when they were young just a handful of moons ago. She did not smile, or dance back from the reach of Sulema’s staff any more than was needed to deflect the blows, but came at her with a bold focus that would have drawn a nod of approval from Sareta herself.
Sulema swung her staff up, deflecting one blade, and its sister snuck beneath her guard to open another, wider smile along her ribs. She hissed in pain as she spun with the blow, scattering blood upon the packed earth, and brought her weapon to bear as she had intended, striking Hannei hard one-two first on one hip, then the other. Hannei grunted and staggered back, but turned away a third blow almost contemptuously—and she kept on coming.
I stepped into this pit without first checking for vipers, Sulema thought bitterly. Ani would be disgusted with me…
The dark sister-swords flicked toward her face and she spun away again, and again, and again, retreating from the onslaught so that it seemed she was running in circles around the pit, backward.
There was no sign of love on Hannei’s face, in her eyes. Sulema had caught glimpses of scars, terrible scars, on the back of Hannei’s arms and legs, her neck. What little flesh was exposed on her back was a horror, and there was something wrong with the way she held her mouth.
What have they done to you? she asked in her heart, as Hannei looked for an opening in her guard. The black blades flicked and swayed like serpents’ tongues, hungry for another taste of her blood. Sulema’s staff whipped out, striking first a blade and then Hannei’s shoulder in quick succession. What have they done to us?
Then there was no further room for thought, or pity, or love, as the women stopped retreating and moved in for the kill.
It was a fight Sulema could not win. She had known from the first flurry of strikes that Hannei had every advantage. She was better trained, in better condition, better armored and armed. The most Sulema might have hoped for was a draw, and a favorable vote from the judges.
Hannei’s first sword bit deeply into her staff. The second bit into her upper arm, just beneath the spider wound, slicking away a mouthful of flesh. Sulema cried out in pain as her weapon was wrenched from her grasp. A kick she never saw hit her midsection and she went down hard, rolling as she fell while the blades licked the air behind her, savoring her pain and terror.
I do not want to die, she realized. Not like this. Not by my sister’s hand. She raised both arms in a vain attempt to ward off the killing blow—
The wind stopped.
If you did not want to die, a voice laughed, taking the place of the wind, you should not have brought a staff to a sword fight.
A low hum like rocks singing rose from the ground, the air, from everything. Sulema’s bones itched as the sound grew in intensity. It came in waves. Hannei’s swords fell to the ground and she clapped both hands over her ears, mouth open in a wordless yell so that her face matched the mask on her bloodied breastplate.
Sulema clapped her hands over her ears as well, though it did no good at all. The sound came from the middle of the world, from the middle of her very bones. Hannei dropped to her knees and Sulema curled into a ball as agony radiated from the half-healed wound in her shoulder.
“Bonesinger!” someone screamed from far away. “Bonesinger magic!”
Impossible, Sulema thought, the Dziranim are long gone. She found herself curling into a tighter ball, even as a whimper was forced from her throat. It hurts…
Shush, the laughing voice said. Shhhhh. The pain eased, ebbed, flowed away, then abruptly the hum ceased. The wind picked back up, tentatively, and stroked across Sulema’s shorn scalp as if a hand were brushing hair from her eyes.
Be good, now. Sulema felt—she would have sworn it, ehuani—lips pressing against her forehead, a hand upon her cheek.
Istaza Ani? No one else in her life had ever touched her so, not even her own mother. Yet that was absurd, an even crazier thought than the existence of a bonesinger.
Hannei collapsed in the dirt near Sulema and lay on her back, arms out to the side and fingers digging into the sand. Sulema unfurled slowly, like a blackthorn flower uncertain of the sunlight. Her staff lay a short distance from her fingertips, but Sulema found that she had no desire to pick it up and wield it against Hannei, now or ever.
Whatever lies between us, the exhausted thought came, we are still sisters. I will not bear weapons against her again.
Hannei turned toward her, grimaced, and looked away again. She made no move toward her swords. The sun pressed down upon Sulema, the world pressed up, and the wind danced on her sweat-slick, blood-slick skin.
Those onlookers who had chosen to remain stirred, and a few began to cry out.
“Fight! Fight!”
Then a new cry rose up to drown the voices calling for blood. Not the painful, roaring hum of whatever magic had overtaken them before, but the joyful voices of dragon-kin raised in greeting.
The serpents were singing. And though Yaela had not been able to hear it, to Sulema the emotion in those ancient voices was clear as sun and sand. They were happy.
But why?
“Pirate king!” someone shouted. “The pirate king is come!”
Those who were left around the entrance grew agitated, then parted to admit the cloaked figure of a man, tall and imposing. He stood silhouetted against the sun, hands on hips, regarding the two women who lay on the ground. The pirate king, Sulema guessed, come to see blood spilled upon the sand.
Let him come, she thought, rolling reluctantly to all fours, and then forcing herself to stand upright. I will fight the pirate king instead. No longer will I fight my sword-sister for the pleasure of these outlanders.
Hannei gained her feet as well, and together they stood looking up at the tall man as he began his descent. Sulema took a warrior’s stance, disdaining the dream-cursed, dragon-cursed staff.
Let him come, she thought again. I will die, but it will be a death of my own choosing.
As the man reached the floor of the pit, alone, he pushed back his hood and Sulema saw that his hair blazed blood-red in the sunlight. He extended both arms toward her, laughing as she gasped in shocked recognition. He grasped her shoulders in his strong hands and gave her a resounding kiss on each cheek.
“Sister!” Leviathus called out, loudly enough for all to hear. “Well met! Well met, indeed!”
“Leviathus!” Sulema leapt into his embrace, and they half crushed one another.
The crowd above fell silent, and then erupted in riotous cheers.
Hannei held both hands up before her mouth, dark eyes gone wide. Leviathus laughed again. Sulema grabbed her brother’s shoulders and held him at an arm’s distance, staring up into his handsome, laughing, sunburned face. It felt like a dream, like the best dream ever.
“Leviathus,” she said. “What in the name of Zula Din’s tits are you doing here?”
“You have not heard?” His grin was wide and beautiful as life under the sun. “While you have been lounging about in Atukos, growing fat and lazy, I have become the pirate king of Min Yaarif.”
“The world has gone mad.” She swayed on her feet, wearied beyond all hope of rest. “Completely mad.”
Leviathus leaned in closer, face completely serious now, and whispered into her ear,
“You have no idea.”
“To set sail upon the River of Life is perilous. Ever her currents draw you in, directing your course. No matter how strong the vessel upon which you embark, eventually Life will cast you into the arms of her lover, the great sea that is Fate; there your vessel will be broken and remade until it is strong enough to brave the storm’s wrath, or until it breaks apart entirely, leaving you to drown or be cast out upon strange shores…”
—From the Song of Illindra, by Athalia sud San Drou, as translated by Loremaster Rothfaust in the Third Age of Atualon
Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu stared across the rim of a salt-crusted goblet at the crowd gathered before him, wondering at the strange shores upon which the tides of Fate had cast him.
He had been to Min Yaarif before. As the surdus son of Wyvernus ne Atu he had been his father’s proxy. Knowing that his backside would never warm the Dragon Throne had not kept the would-be wielders of power from pressing their lips to it—figuratively speaking, of course, though many would have done so literally had he welcomed such attention.
Min Yaarif, being a known den of iniquity, had long been the watering hole of choice of slavers, merchants, politicians, and other persons of dubious moral value. Leviathus had even been entertained in this very hall—by a former pirate king, no less, though that had been many years ago. The food had been terrible, and the place had reeked of terrified slaves and ill-gotten wealth.
The river pirates’ current leader, having been reared somewhat more gently and educated most expensively, knew that good spidersilk lanterns sent a more welcoming message to guests than, say, severed and rotting heads.
More welcoming—but no less threatening.
Magical floating lamps of spidersilk from Sindan, red salt vessels from Quarabala, dragonglass goblets and a roast of blue goat from Atualon; these things spoke of immeasurable wealth and power.
“So,” he said to his sister over the drink-induced din of the gathering, “the desert slut has decided to play at being queen.”
The room went altogether still.
“Why now?” he continued. “I thought you wanted no part of our father’s world. Certainly when we were together in Atualon, you could speak only of being healed and returning to your warrior’s life in the Zeera. What has changed?”
Hannei, sitting to Sulema’s left, set her drinking horn down with a soft and ominous clack. Sulema, at whom his comment had been directed, only shook her head and smiled at him as if she could see through the bright striped silks of a river pirate, through the knives and sword of a soldier son, through the dubious honor of having been born ne Atu, all the way down to his center. In this, and in many other ways, she reminded him of her mother.
Hafsa Azeina would see me as I truly am, he thought with a fresh pang of grief, though I hardly know myself. She would crack my dreams open like an egg and suck out the gold of my soul.
“I would rather be a desert slut than the Dragon Queen of Atualon,” she answered, speaking to him as if they were alone in the room, or as if she did not give a horse’s fart what anyone else thought of her. In this, also, she was like her mother. “Certainly it would be a more honest—and cleaner—way of life. But our father is… our father is dead.” She took a hurried swallow of mead to wash the roughness from her throat.
“The Dragon King is dead,” she continued, “and Pythos has taken his place—along with the dragon mask. He has the blood of my people on his hands, and he threw me in a dungeon.” Sulema scowled then, and her golden eyes flashed deadly bright. “He took my horse,” she added, as if saving the most grievous crime for last. “And we still have not been reunited!”
“You will have her back soon enough,” he said. “As for Pythos’s list of crimes… though I grieve the loss of my father—our father—his death was not unexpected. Nor was it brought about by any machinations of Pythos, but by the hand of Hafsa Azeina.” He held up a hand to still Sulema’s protestations. “Or by his own folly, depending on your point of view. I share your sorrow, sister, but aside from leaving you to die and rot in a dungeon, which is a thing kings are wont to do, and aside from stealing your fine horse, it seems as if Pythos’s only crime was to survive our father’s attempts on his life, when we were all very young.
“Moreover, he is trained to wield atulfah, and you are not—as yet. Our father Wyvernus was a usurper, as he wrested the throne from Serpentus, Pythos’s father. Is it not appropriate that Pythos be left to rule in Atukos, and to use the Mask of Akari to bind Sajani in her endless slumber? You could finish the task which has brought you to Min Yaarif and return to live out your days among the Zeeranim.
“Surely you would not trade the life of a warrior under the sun for the dark path of vengeance?” he concluded.
Hannei picked her goblet up and brought it down hard on the table again. She made a series of hand gestures which looked quite rude, and which caused Sulema to laugh.
“Yes,” she agreed, “he did inherit our father’s endless love of speech.” She turned. “Leviathus, if only you were echovete, you could be king in Atualon—and talk the dragon to sleep— and I could go back to riding my horse and hunting. I do not wish vengeance for its own sake, and neither do I particularly desire to be the Dragon Queen. Queens do not drink usca, or play aklashi, and they spend their days surrounded by windy old men who smell of cheese.” Sulema wrinkled her freckled nose, and it made her look years younger.
I wish we had grown up together, he thought. I wish we might do so now. But he was no longer free to choose his own path. He had never been free: born the son of Ka Atu, he now sat in this hall as king-elect of the river pirates, chosen to represent their interests among the land-loving merchants and leaders of Min Yaarif. He had been chosen by the sea serpents as well, and they spoke to him even as vash’ai spoke to their bonded warriors. None of these were honors to which he had aspired or even earned, though he did his best to live up to them.
As does she, he realized. My sister, in truth.
“If you do not seek the Dragon Throne out of vengeance, or a desire to rule,” he asked, “why, then, seek it at all?”
Sulema shifted in her seat, looking uncomfortable, though that might have been from the cuts and bruises she bore. She and Hannei had beaten the juice out of each other, to be sure.
“You cannot hear it, can you?” she asked in a soft voice. “None of you can hear it. Sajani is rousing—that is the reason behind these recent earthquakes, mild though they have been. I believe that is the reason the mymyc attacked us, and probably the reason that the sea serpents have decided to speak to you, when so far as we know they have never spoken to any human. Istaza Ani once told me that such odd things happened before, when the sun dragon’s attempts to wake Sajani—and the magic of Kal ne Mur as he attempted to bind her in sleep—sundered our world. The song of Sajani grows in strength, as does the song of Akari. They seek each other, and I fear she will wake this time. We here, all of us, everything”—Sulema lifted both hands, palms up—“we are nothing more than a dream to Sajani. She will wake and break free from this world so that she can join her lover. Then none of this will matter; not you, not me, not vengeance. There will be no horses, no usca, no brothers.” She looked at Hannei. “No sisters. Nothing.”
As she spoke, Leviathus thought he understood. “Pythos is echovete, and was trained by his father. Surely he…”
“Pythos has the Mask of Akari, yes, and he is trained to use atulfah. He could continue the work of the Dragon Kings and keep Sajani asleep, I think, if he so chose. But I think, I feel…” She closed her eyes and frowned, as if listening to the discordant notes of a far-off song. “That is not his intent. I can hear the song of Ka Atu, I can feel the dream of Sajani, and they are… wrong.” When she opened her eyes again, they were dark with worry. “I do not think Pythos is singing Sajani to sleep, as our father was. His song is different. I think Pythos is trying to wake the dragon.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” a woman in the crowd said, speaking unexpectedly. “The Dragon Kings have always mucked about with our lives, but why end the world? Surely he must know that it would mean his death as well.” It was the whoremistress Sharmutai, whose hatred of the Dragon Kings was one of Min Yaarif’s worst-kept secrets. Sulema looked at the woman, curled her lip as a cat might if it had smelled something particularly vile, and directed her answer to Leviathus.
“I do not know. Outlander ways are strange, but this makes no sense to me, either. Perhaps he thinks somehow to survive Sajani’s waking… or perhaps he is mad.” She bit her lip and scowled. “I suppose ‘why’ does not matter, so much as the knowledge that we must stop him. If we do not, we are all dead, and our petty quarrels mean nothing.”
“You wish to dethrone Pythos out of the pureness of your heart, then, and not for love of power, or vengeance?” The whoremistress did not conceal her disbelief. “The ne Atu are not known for their honor.”
“I am ne Atu.” Sulema smiled a grim little smile. It had taken no less than the imminent end of the world to break through her stubbornness and wrest this admission from her. “But I am Ja’Akari as well. I will do as I must, as honor demands. I will go to Quarabala and retrieve the child for Yaela, as promised, and I will retrieve the Mask of Sajani of which she has spoken, so that I might throw down Pythos and sing Sajani to sleep, because no one else can.” She sighed, picked up her goblet, found it empty, and sighed again. “Because it is my duty.”
Hannei touched Sulema’s shoulder and made a sign. Sulema nodded.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Mutaani. There is beauty in an honorable death. I will do this, or I will die trying.”
My sister, thought Leviathus, though his throat was so tight the words would not form, refused to be named champion of her people, and will now become champion of the world.
“I will help you, as I can,” Yaela spoke up. The shadowmancer’s apprentice sat in a far corner of the room, wreathed in shadow and mystery and her own impossible beauty, and Leviathus—as usual—tried his best not to stare at her.
Yaela is beyond you, he reminded himself. Especially since Mariza—
He drowned the thought with spiced rum, refilled his goblet, and raised it toward his sister. “If, as you say, Sajani is truly waking, and if Pythos is doing nothing to stop her— or, worse, if he is actively trying to rouse her—then, Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu, sister of my heart, would-be queen of Atualon, you have my support.” He waved his hand to sweep the room. “Mine and that of my people… pending a vote, of course.”
Sulema froze with her refilled goblet half raised to her lips.
“Vote?”
“I am a king, to be sure,” he said. “But I am not a Dragon King. I am a king of pirates, and we are a civilized folk.”
The hall erupted in cheers and laughter loud enough to wake the dead.
Loud enough to wake a dragon.
Yet not nearly loud enough to wake his stone-dead heart.
* * *
“The king is dead. Long live the king.”
Mahmouta came to stand beside him. Leviathus did not turn his face from the river, so beautiful in the light of the dying sun, silver and gold and pearl. Azhorus the serpent was stirring beneath the water—he preferred to sleep in the dark and deep during the hottest hours of day, and to hunt and sing under the moons.
Even in his half-slumber, their bond heightened Leviathus’s senses to a near painful edge. He could hear a lizard’s belly scraping across the sand half a league away, he could taste the dying breath of a man murdered in a dark alley, he could smell blood that had not yet been spilled.
“Long live the king, indeed.” He laughed, despite the chill in his bones and the foreboding in his heart, despite the trembling awkward state that Yaela’s presence always incited, despite the lateness and strangeness of the hour. He laughed despite everything, and because of it, and because there was no king of pirates once they left land for the sweet, clear truth of water. It was a joke older than Atualon, and perhaps the only true secret ever to be held in Min Yaarif.
Mahmouta, whom the world thought had been queen of pirates before Leviathus came along, took his hand and squeezed. He would not consent to be her twenty-first husband, but their friendship ran deep as the swift Dibris.
“Is it true?” she asked. “What the girl says about Sajani?”
“Yes,” he told her, “it is true.” He did not have to wait for Azhorus to wake. Now that he knew what name to put to it, Leviathus could hear the song of Sajani as she rose up from the sea of dreams. It was a beautiful song, lovely as life, dark as the void between stars. Now that he knew its source, Leviathus found the song terrifying as the end of all stories.
She let out a long breath. “Can you not wield the Mask of Akari yourself?”
“No. Neither can anyone else, to my knowledge. There were always whispers that Pythos had sired a child upon this or that concubine of Serpentus, and occasionally a rumor that a child might be able to wield atulfah. I have always made a point of tracking such stories down, and that is all any of them ever proved to be. Stories. If Sulema’s suspicions are right—if Pythos is trying to wake Sajani—Sulema is our only real hope.”
“It will not break your heart,” she pointed out, “to have a valid excuse to revenge yourself upon the usurper of your father’s throne.”
“It will not,” he admitted, “though Pythos might no doubt say the same. Had Wyvernus not overthrown Serpentus, perhaps we would not be facing such perilous times as these. Which of us has the right of it, do you suppose?”
“There is no right. There is no wrong. We are pirates, remember? Right and wrong are beyond the likes of us.” She squeezed his hand again. “In a pirate’s life there is only power… and profit.”
Leviathus squeezed back, glad for the comforting strength of her grip, wishing that she were strong enough to pull him from the depth of his despair. Not even Azhorus had been able to do that, and the serpent loved him more deeply than the stars were high.
“I suppose you are right,” he agreed. “And I suppose you are here to tell me that we must help my sister save us all.”
“Of course I am,” she said, “and of course we must.” Her hand was warm in the swiftly cooling air. “There is no profit to be made in a dead world.”
He had hoped it would be easy to slip back into the world of men, as easy as slipping into an old robe. It seemed as if he should be able to just shrug his shoulders and feel the world settle around him again, light and comfortable as wormsilk and as easily forgotten.
Yet as he rode with an entourage toward Sindan, Jian found himself shaking his head at his own naivety. It was not for the first time, he realized… and probably not for the last time, either.
Jian had accepted the emperor’s offer, false though it might be. In truth, though he had made a show of conferring with his father and weighing every consideration, he had made up his mind well before Mardoni’s lips had stopped moving. Though his campaign against the emperor’s might had provided great satisfaction, the dark pearl Jian had long clutched to his heart had been a desire to return to the world of men, wreak vengeance for the deaths of his family, and to topple the rulers of Sindan.
When those he loved were returned to him, as if fetched from the Lonely Road, the shock had served to enflame his desire to end a reign which kept an entire population bound in servitude, where daeborn children such as he were sacrificed to the emperor’s war machine. If those in power thought they could avert the wrath of the sea-bear prince, they were deeply mistaken.
Jian had every intention of delivering the empire to his father. It was, he had decided, a dream worth dying for.
He was dressed in sea-silks and silver. A circlet of silver set with moonstones and mother-of-pearl graced his brow, and at his waist he wore the sword his father had given him, the blade of bitter tears. The hilt was chased in silver and bound with sharkskin, the tang was red steel and the blade had been fashioned from sky-iron which had fallen into the ocean long ago. It shone like moonslight on dark water, rippling and changing in the light of day. Jian could hear it whispering to him of long songs and deep water. It wanted war, this blade; the world that had birthed the sky-iron must have been a warlike place, torn asunder when its own dragon had woken.
This blade loved nothing more than the dance of death.
Soon enough, Jian thought, but not today.
Riding beneath the baleful eye of Akari, he blinked in the harsh light and grimaced at the jolting walk of the four-legged horse he was forced to endure. He missed his sleek and smooth-gaited palantallomir, the misted skies, the cool air of the Twilight Lands. Even the halfbreed Daechen looked too alike here, a sharp and dreary contrast to the varied faces and forms of those who comprised the Twilight Court.
Still, he would not have traded this moment in time for any other. Tsali’gei rested in the carriage that jolted down the road ahead of him, with their son at her side. He would endure anything the world might offer, for their sakes.
He would end the world, for their sakes.
“Tell me, de Allyr,” a soft voice sang at his side, “about the world of our mothers and fathers. Tell me about the Twilight Lands.”
Jian turned his head fractionally to smile at Giella. She was as beautiful as he had remembered—more, for being real—fierce and intense as her mother.
“Wei xun yu,” he said, “the Twilight Lands. What have you heard of them?”
“Only the stuff of children’s tales,” she replied wistfully. “Talking bears and eight-legged horses. People with antlers and horns and feathers.” She touched the spray of bright red feathers at her own temple. “Others who can shift their shapes to become animals. Never-ending hunts, never-ending feasts. Poems that were begun before the first human took her first breath, and which have not yet reached their endings.” Her smile was a little self-mocking. “As I said, the stuff of children’s tales.”
“All of it is true,” he said to her in a voice hardly more than a murmur, moving his four-legged horse closer to hers for privacy. “And more. More. It is so beautiful it will break your heart. There are rivers of mist so thick you can swim in them, so wide you cannot see the far shores. Music so deep it pierces rock and bone. Colors too fierce to name, and the stars…” His voice trailed off, and he dashed a sleeve across wet eyes.
“The stars?”
“When this is over, I will bring you home with me,” he told her in answer, “with me and Tsali’gei. Then you will see for yourself. Your place is there, not here”—he indicated the land around them—“in the world of men. Your mother waits for you. In your absence, she has amassed an arsenal of weapons for you.” He grinned. “She is sha-rai, you know, a warrior of great renown. When all this is over, we will all go home. You will always be welcome in our house.”
“Your house,” the White Nightingale murmured, glancing at the carriage. “Of course.” Eyes sharpening, she leaned across her saddle and whispered, “When all this is over? What do you mean?”
Jian regretted saying even that much. “Oh, you know,” he said, “my time as the emperor’s general. Surely he cannot mean for me to remain in the Forbidden City forever.” His eyes told her a different story, however, a deeper truth.
When all this is ours, he thought fiercely, and our two lands made one.
Giella smiled a sharp smile, a raptor’s smile—her mother’s smile. Satisfied, she leaned back into her saddle and nodded.
“Of course,” she agreed. “I look forward to it.”
They arrived on foot at the Gate of the Iron Fist as the sun was setting—a fitting omen, Jian thought with a grim smile. The city was smaller and less grand than his memory had made it, the Wall of Swords more tawdry than impressive, the waters of the moat clogged with offal. He stared up at the faces of the two giant warriors and frowned.
“Do they look different to you?” he asked Tsali’gei.
“No, why?” She looked up from the small, fussing bundle she held clutched to her breast, and frowned. “They are stone. How can they be different?”
Jian averted his gaze from the monumental warriors, lest his interest draw scrutiny. “Never mind,” he told her. “My memory must be playing tricks on me. You have seen them every day, after all, while for me it has been years.”
“I still do not understand how it is that years pass in the Twilight Lands, while here it has only been a few months since you left. I suppose I should be grateful that you remembered us at all—ow!” She yelped, turning her attention back to the babe. “He bit me! Little beast! I do not look forward to his first teeth.”
Her delighted face was the most beautiful thing Jian had ever seen, and the music of her laugh sweeter than the most ancient of poems.
“Remember you?” he said under his breath, too softly for even Tsali’gei’s sharp ears to catch. “Not a day went by that I did not mourn you, my love. Not a day went by that I did not burn to avenge your death. I returned to your grave, only to find you alive and well. What would I not do to keep you so?”
They passed through the gates beneath the stone giants. His memory was true; they had changed. The golden one stood with his arm upraised in victory. The red giant, however, though he still knelt bareheaded upon the grass, no longer had tears upon his face, and his eyes were fixed upon the face of his enemy. The fallen warrior bided his time, Jian knew, waiting for the moment to rise up and strike the other down.
As he walked down the Path of Righteousness, Jian trod again upon the skulls of the fallen, and found that it no longer bothered him. They had had their chance, after all, the defeated ones. Their attempts to challenge Daeshen Tiachu, the White Bull of Khanbul, had left only swords and skulls to crumble into dust.
It is my time now, he told the restless spirits who resided there. I am Tsun-ju Jian de Allyr, son of Tsun-ju Tiungpei and Allyr de Devranallenai. I will succeed where you have failed. He glanced back, and in the light of the dying day it seemed as if the red stone giant peered at him… and smiled.
Counselors were wise and learned—every child in Quarabala was taught this. Warriors were brave and strong. Illindrists were elevated, all-seeing, and queens—
Queens were infallible.
The line of Kentakuyan had been sent to Sajani Earth Dragon as a dream and breathed to life through her by the First Woman, Zula Din, she who was the huntress, the trickster, the lover, and the mother all at once. Skin dark as the night sky between stars, she was so closely bound to the web that it was not uncommon for the children, especially girl children, to be born with eyes of Pelang. Eyes which could see the world as it was, as it had been, as it might yet be. No girl born with the cursed gift could ever be queen, of course—to bind heavens and earth in such a manner was to invite the dragon’s waking. It was a mark of Illindra’s favor, nevertheless.
These things were set in the bones of the people, these truths, these songs and stories of knowing. Deeper than words engraved in rock—for rock could be shattered—this knowledge had been a truth known to Maika before she learned to speak her own name.
Counselors were wise.
Warriors were strong.
Queens were infallible.
Why, then, had her counselors not known this would happen? Why had her warriors not been able to stop the murder of her people? Why—
Why—
Why have I failed my people?
Maika sat upon the dusty ground that served as her throne now, paying little mind to the words swirling about her head like storm dust, or the sad travelers’ fare that had been set forth to tempt her appetite. How could she eat, when Amalua could not? How might she enjoy even the thin comforts of manna water and dried meat, when children— her children, her responsibility, her failure—lay dead and bloating among the sung bones of heroes?
The pain was beyond understanding.
Why have I failed my people?
“We have no hope now of reaching the greenlands if we all journey together,” Counselorwoman Lehaila said. Her face was properly grave, her words measured as she tried yet again to condemn Maika’s people to death. “With the loss of Su’umara, we have left to us no more than three shadowmancers and six apprentices, one of whom is little more than a child. With rest, these shadowmancers would be able to protect a few of us against the heat of the Seared Lands just long enough for us to make it to the Jehannim, if we move with extreme haste.
“We must carry only that which we need,” she continued, “and—though it grieves my heart to say it—leave behind those who cannot hope to keep the pace. Perhaps, once we reach the cool green lands, we might send back help.”
That elicited a cry of outrage from many of those assembled.
Many—but not all. Maika was shocked and disheartened to note that too many of the Quarabalese were willing to listen to Lehaila’s cold words.
“Perhaps the Araids will see fit to grant us mercy, rather than the long, slow death of a reaver’s venom,” Akamaia said in a voice that was nearly a shout. “You say your heart is grieved, but would you so easily abandon our elders, our children? Would you so easily abandon me, old friend? You say, ‘once we reach the cool green lands,’ but by ‘we’ you mean ‘I.’”
Counselorwoman Lehaila stiffened her spine, face darkening with embarrassment, and she could not meet Akamaia’s eyes.
“If we are to save any small part of Quarabala,” she protested, “sacrifices will need to be made—”
“Oh, but we will be making those sacrifices, will we not? Not you. What are you willing to sacrifice, Counselorwoman? One of your husbands? A daughter, perhaps? Surely Puanale is too young to—”
“Enough.” Maika slapped her hands on the dusty ground and stood. Had her hands been bigger, or her legs longer, it might have felt more impressive, but it was all she had to work with.
“Your Magnificence—” Lehaila began.
“Mana’ule o ka enna i ka pau,” Maika intoned with power, channeling her impotent fury into the words. “Paleha ia’u, e pau ia’u! I am finished listening to your traitorous words, all of them. We will not abandon the least of my people to these foul sorcerers or their spider-masters. We will not, not as long as I am queen, not as long as I breathe. By the ancestors, by the blood in my veins, I swear it!”
The stone around them rang with the sincerity of her words, and the counselors fell silent. For a common woman to swear upon the ancestors was sacrosanct. For a queen—
“I am finished,” Maika said, controlling her breath as Aasah himself had taught her, so that the words were calm and even. A storm of fire and shadows raged in her soul, but she was a queen—curse the ancestors for it—and the least she could do was pretend to be infallible. “Return to your duties. Tend my people. Tend them as carefully as you would your own families. We will leave here together, or we will die here together.”
Turning on her heel Maika left them to stare after her. Her heart fluttered like a caged beast, eyes burned with tears that she could not, would not shed.
Ancestors hear me, she prayed, and the words seared into her very bones. Help me find a way to save my people, and I will pay any price you ask. Any price at all.
From the halls of her ancestors, buried deep in the shadows of memories in her blood, she imagined that she heard a reply:
If you wish to find the way, child, a cold, dark voice whispered, you must first learn to see.
The world of the living had long ago shunned and forgotten Kal ne Mur. He wore the body of a young man clothed in the ancient armor of a dead king. The dead were his only companions, and his mouth full of dust.
“War is what we do,” he had told Ibna, and this was true. There would always be war, and those too foolish to cease fighting. When all roads lead to war, he thought, stepping out onto the burning sands of the Zeera, one might as well go down fighting. His horde of ungrateful dead had lost their taste for war—ehuani, perhaps he had as well— but when the heart has gone to char and grave ash, its song is easily silenced.
He sang as he walked, though it pained his borrowed burnt lungs and cracked lips. This voice was still so ill-fit, the throat untrained. A song of fire and poetry, of life and lust, of blood and mead. The dead came shuffling behind him, drawn by his song and their foolish vows. The sad truth was that they had nothing better to do than wage war and kill and die.
And die.
And die.
Ismai, whose body this was, would have set Ibna free from his vows that he might create beautiful things. Yet such a kindness might doom them all, and so Kal ne Mur bound his undying legions with the song of ages past. With his ka he found them, with his sa he bound them, with atulfah he bade them obey.
Those who had sworn to him in life came as women and men, warriors and wardens, soldiers and runners. As they drew near to their king, they grew ever more lifelike in appearance and manner so that if one did not look too closely—especially at the eyes—they might be mistaken for living people, though curiously dressed.
Those who had not sworn to him in life answered to him in death, as well, and theirs was a less perfect union. They came to him as a penitent comes to punishment, groaning in pain and fear as their souls were dragged back from the Lonely Road and stuffed into bodies that had long forgotten them. Milk-dead eyes glowed a sullen red, in those faces as had eyes at all. In the others, empty sockets blazed like the fires of Yosh, and bones whispered together of vengeance in the thin night air. Kal ne Mur gazed upon the dead without regret or pity and urged Ismai within to do the same.
We are one, he told the boy whose life he had stolen. Your body is too damaged to live without my power, and I cannot be free without this living flesh. It will be easier for us to do what must be done if we work together. In truth, the boy might still cast him out of the body they now shared, to the detriment of them both. See, I have brought you an old friend to be a comfort in these dark times…
The boy’s eyes caught sight of her, staggering among the throngs of wailing dead, and his spirit thrashed so that it was nearly wrenched from the Lich King’s grasp.
“Ehuani,” he gasped, and it hurt everywhere. “Ehuani.”
She came to him, his beloved, his beauty in truth, stumbling and struggling and blind. Her eyes had been pecked out, her face was shrunken tight against her skull, and her hide burned away in patches where the snake-priestess’s venom had struck. Her left shoulder was stained red with the blood that Hadid had spilt to free him.
Hadid died to free me, Ismai thought, and Ehuani died to bring me here. Pain swelled his heart; it overflowed and watered the gardens of hatred, of anger and fury. Now it is the Mah’zula’s turn to die.
In this we are agreed, Kal ne Mur whispered from the dark wells of his heart. They have slain your family, your friends— they have slain your very world. Indeed, they have slain you, for would you not die, were I to do as you wish and depart this body? Is this not enough? Will you not join me now and repay those who have wronged you, a hundred times over?
The flames of hatred leapt in Ismai’s heart, fanned by the Lich King’s bloodlust, and then fell away to ash. He had never been a killer. Leave me alone, he thought miserably. He reached out to touch Ehuani’s shoulder, the dull gray hide which had once shone like molten silver and pulsed with life. She stood still at his touch, dead and still and uncaring, and all the emptiness of nothing pooled in her eyes.
If I leave you, you die, the Lich King said.
So I die. There are worse things than death.
There are better things than death, too, young warden. The chance to save a friend… Jasin yet lives, does he not? And Hannei? And… Sulema?
Sulema.
Ismai shook his head. “They are beyond my help,” he said aloud, “certainly beyond my reach.”
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps they have all perished, in which case there is the sweetest fruit of all. When the tree of life has withered and all hope is lost, there is yet one black fruit of which you may eat, and that is… kishah.
Vengeance.
Kishah, Ismai thought, tasting that ancient and fell word for the first time. Kishah. It was a bitter conceit, and yet Ismai realized he had never tasted anything sweeter.
What say you, beautiful youth? Will you cast me out and die, or will you take up my sword and use it to strike down our enemies?
Kishah.
The dead turned their incurious faces toward him as if they, too, awaited his decision. A stray breeze played through Ehuani’s lank and knotted mane, stirring it—though not to life. Never again to life.
“My beauty,” he said to her, and his voice broke. “My beauty in truth. My friend. My friend.” He pressed his face into her cold and stinking neck, wishing that he had eyes left that could cry, for surely she had been worth a river of tears. He pressed the flat of the Lich King’s sword against her shoulder—he had drawn it, unthinking. And yet—
“Yes,” he said, and his whole being flooded with relief as he let go his reluctance to do harm. It was right, it was good. He pressed a kiss into Ehuani’s mane and turned his head to press another against the heartless steel. Sharp as pain the blade was, after all these years, and by this he knew that the pain of loss would never dull.
“Yes,” he said again, and “yes” a third time, as the Lich King rose within him, filling him like blood, like sweet water, like passion. Ehuani quickened beneath his hands, for she had in her way been sworn to him. Her dull silver hide turned to right shadow, to soot, to obsidian; she shone like a star without a heart. She tossed her head, eyes glowing a dull red as she struck the sand with a sharp hoof, impatient to be off.
Ismai took a half-step back and the song of atulfah caught in his throat at the sight of her. She was sleek as a dream, deep-chested as the west wind, and her eyes were stars, cold and distant and bright. Her hide shone like water over black rocks, save her left shoulder upon which Hadid had died, and which was stained a deep and abiding red. So beautiful, his Ehuani—
“No,” he said to her. “No. There is no beauty in truth, only in death. I name you Mutaani.”
Mutaani reared at the sound of her name, screaming, and the dead flinched back.
“Yes, my lovely girl,” the Lich King said to his dark mare. “Let us ride, let us ride now to the land of our enemies, these false Mah’zula, and bend them to our will.” He leapt onto her back and laughed as she reared again. “To the pridelands!” he shouted to his fell host, sheathing his sword and digging heels into Mutaani’s sides. “To vengeance!”
From ten thousand throats came a cry, hungry and despairing.
“VENGEANCE!”
They flowed across the desert beneath the cold eyes of the moon, as a shadow within a shadow within a dream.
The wind was born of an undead king, and it had a name.
Kishah.
“Ai, lovely girl!” she said. “Ai, my bright love.”
Sulema stood at Atemi’s shoulder, one arm draped across her mare’s withers. As she had since she was a gangly child of eleven, she pressed her nose against her horse’s neck and dried unwanted tears in the coarse mane. Atemi made silly faces, twisting her soft nose this way and that, exposing her gums, and generally giving lie to the dignified nature of asil horses.
Finally letting go, Sulema inspected her mare. Atemi’s hooves needed trimming by someone who knew what to do with the bottom half of a horse. She needed to lose weight, and some goat-assed outlander had chopped her forelock short.
The important thing, however, was that they were together again. Atemi had forgiven her for taking them so far from home and showed little sign that she was bothered at all by their recent adventures. It was more than Sulema could say of herself. Her shoulder ached, itching and burning, and her ears rang with the constant presence of the dragon’s song. She had been trained to hear the song, but not to control it, and she could not shut it out of her head.
Her heart hurt, as well, and with this reunion her emotions threatened to overwhelm her. In a short space of time she had gained and lost a father, lost her mother, and watched friends die. Because of her. All because of her. She had never asked for this thing, but there was no escaping the truth that if she had never abandoned her people for Atualon, lives that had been shattered would still be whole.
Her world would still be whole.
Sulema worked her hand into a pouch tied at her waist until her fingers found and tightened on the rose-rock sandstone globe. When she was not holding the globe, it seemed to her that it might be lost. When she was holding it, she was plagued with fear of dropping the thing. She drew the globe forth and breathed a shaky sigh of relief. If changes in the world showed as physical changes in the stone, as Ka Atu had taught her, how could she be sure that damage to the stone would not likewise influence the world? She had no father to ask and would not care to find out by destroying some far-off country with her clumsiness. She had ruined enough lives already.
Hannei.
Saskia.
Daru.
Mother…
It was a litany of guilt played over and over in her mind, a dirge sung in counterpart to the constant hum of atulfah, the relentless drumming of her heart, an endless canticle of wishing herself back into a life that was gone, long gone.
All because of me.
It seemed then that the wind spoke with the voice of her old youthmistress. Dear Ani, lost like Daru or dead like her mother no doubt, because she had been too foolish to stay with her sisters and live an ordinary life.
Such power you claim, to have unleashed massive destruction upon the world. In that moment the voice of Ani mocked, both gentle and sharp. And so much of it while you slept. For one so mighty, you seem to be spending much of your time wallowing in self-pity.
Sulema straightened, wiping her face and looking around. Surely that voice was a shadow in her mind only. Istaza Ani was gone.
She is right, though, Sulema thought to herself. Even though she may walk the Lonely Road, Istaza Ani shows me the way. For a moment, standing beside the river with her father’s sorcerous globe, her good mare, and a heart full of ghosts, Sulema felt less alone in the world.
Perhaps Ani is not dead, she mused. Leviathus said that she was alive, last time he saw her, in the company of those false Mah’zula. She brushed away the rage that swept over her at the thought of how her brother had been abused by those false warriors. Then she peered at the globe. I wonder… could this be used to find a person? To see things as they are happening? Perhaps I might see how the people fare. I might find Ani… or Daru.
Sulema used both hands to bring the globe close to her face. It was dusty from long travel, so she blew upon it, and it seemed to her that the Zeera glowed faint gold in answer. She held the globe so close and stared so hard her eyes crossed and hurt a little.
Probably wishful thinking, she decided at last. I long to go home, so—
But no, this close she could see that there had been changes. Parts of the Zeera, where she had blown away the dust, indeed gleamed in the rising light of dawn. Other parts, especially at the junction of the Dibris where lay Aish Kalumm, seemed to lie in shadow. Sections of the globe also seemed troubled. The Valley of Death emitted a faint, ugly light, and even—she sniffed—a whiff of corruption.
A strange dull haze lay over the far-off country of Sindan. Sulema touched it, and marveled that her fingertips felt cold and wet, as if they had been thrust into a mist. These things, combined with Leviathus’s description of the Mah’zula, gave her a pang of disquiet. If she left now for Quarabala, would she be turning her back on the people when they most needed a warrior?
If I do not, I am turning my back on a vow, she thought. How, then, could I ever again call myself Ja’Akari? Can a warrior who is no warrior serve her people?
A dull headache began to pound between her eyes, in time to the world’s endless insistence that she be this, do that, come here, go there. Sulema wished she might leap onto Atemi’s back and ride… but where, exactly? Which path might lead her to peace, when the whole world seemed to have gone mad?
The only peaceful road is the Lonely Road, and I am not yet ready to die.
Then live, Ani’s imagined voice replied. Do what needs to be done and stop whining.
Sulema snorted a laugh. If Ani was, indeed, dead, perhaps this was the youthmistress’s spirit, showing her no mercy. And Ani or no, the voice was right. She might as well pull up her warrior’s trousers and get on with it. There would be no peace for her until she did so.
Sulema gave the globe a final longing glance. Ehuani, there would be no peace for her anywhere until she had fulfilled her duty. A true warrior could not simply set aside the burden of her obligation—not until she had breathed her last. Probably not even then.
I wanted to be a warrior more than anything else.
And do you still? the youthmistress asked in her imagination. Knowing more of life, understanding the weight of duty, do you still choose the way of Ja’Akari?
Yes, Sulema realized, I do. I would not choose another road, truly, even if it were the path to peace and ease for myself.
Now, my girl, Ani’s voice came, fading but full of pride, you are truly a warrior.
Though she knew it was but the faded ghost of memories, Sulema smiled for the first time in a long while. She tucked the globe carefully back into its pouch and gathered up Atemi’s lead. Her mare came away from the sparse river grass with no show of reluctance. Indeed, her ears pricked forward, and her huge soft eyes shone with eagerness.
“Are you ready for a new journey?” Sulema asked, and she grinned at Atemi’s answering snort as the golden mare danced in place, eager to be moving. “We will be riding over mountains thick with wyverns and mymyc and worse, and then straight into the Seared Lands themselves. Yet you do not care which road we take, do you, my love? As long as there is adventure at either end, and danger in the middle. So bold, my sweet girl. So beautiful.” Sulema kissed Atemi’s nose and thought she could do worse than emulate her horse.
She will ride into danger and never look back.
I will do no less.
Now, my girl, she whispered to Sulema, you are truly a warrior.
Ani watched with her mind’s eye as the daughter of her heart shook her head and smiled, no doubt believing that the voice in her head was nothing more than a memory. Nevertheless the seed was planted. How many times had she given one of her girls such a gentle nudge? How many times had she advised Hafsa Azeina thus, with a rough-edged tongue and a too-soft heart?
As many times as there are stars in the sky, she thought, as many times as there are worlds in Illindra’s web. She liked to believe that not all her advice had fallen on deaf ears, that not all of her tears had been shed in vain.
Letting the vision fade away she grimaced at the pain. Her skull felt as if there were a dragon inside it, trying to get out. I wonder if the world hurts like this, she thought, as Sajani fights to wake?
The ground beneath her feet rumbled in answer as an aftershock sent small pebbles tumbling.
A cool breeze rose from the river and caressed her sweat-beaded forehead, played with her hair. She sank to her knees and then twisted to sit cross-legged upon the river’s edge, listening to the song of the Dibris. How like the Lonely Road it must be, going on and on, ever changing, never resting, never returning to the lands or lives it once had touched.
A soft whicker sounded behind her, and she was shoved half over as Talieso nudged her shoulder.
“You know me, eh, my love?” she said, reaching up to stroke his silk-soft muzzle. “True friend. Though I hardly know myself, these days.” It was true. The hand that reached up to touch her horse was a stranger’s hand, the dark braids whipping into her face were glossy-black without the slightest hint of her hard-earned gray. Gone were her scars, marks of struggle and honor. Gone were the laugh lines and frown lines given to her by her many students.
Just as Askander was gone…
For one so mighty, you seem to be spending much of your time wallowing in self-pity.
You throw my words back at me? she growled at Inna’hael.
I mirror your truth, just as the Web of Illindra shows all truths, the feline answered, unperturbed, even those truths which are lies we tell ourselves.
You speak in riddles, she told him. You would have gotten along very well with Hafsa Azeina. The memory of her lost friend brought tears unbidden to her stranger’s eyes, and she dashed them away with the back of one hand.
The dreamshifter and I were… acquainted, he said in an odd tone. And I am not wrong.
Are you ever wrong? she asked. There was a long silence, and at last he answered in a voice as strange and sad as any she had heard.
Yes. Yes, I have been very wrong… but not in your lifetime, little huntress. The grief in his words echoed the grief in her heart, so she did not press. Besides, there was work yet to be done.
The girls’ fight in the pit had passed without either of them killing the other, thanks in some small part to her meddling in their skulls, but in every future the bones whispered to her that one would kill the other. Some fates were preordained, her father had insisted, fixed as stars in the night sky.
She would have none of that. She had never believed, as a good Dzirani might, that there were songs written into a person’s bones which could not be unsung. Ani was as stubborn as the desert is hot, as Askander was fond of saying, and not even bones were immutable to a bonesinger. Any path might be abandoned, once one realized it led to dark places. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and thought of Hannei.
It was a simple thing, to picture the girl in her mind’s eye. She drew from the deep well of her memories: Hannei as a fat-cheeked cub, cutting her first teeth. Hannei as an angry new orphan, come to live with the youthmistress and those of her year-mates whose mothers had died or, like Hafsa Azeina, declined to raise their own children. Hannei with her arm in a splint after some foolery with Sulema. Ani pictured herself standing next to the girl, laying a hand on that arm and speaking to those broken bones, so long knit, stronger now than the surrounding tissue but never perfectly straight. It was a break, a discontinuum, a doorway—
A doorway through which the bonesinger entered, unbidden, forbidden. Ani found herself in a dark, warm, alien place surrounded by the song which was Hannei, and let herself spread out like drops of blood in the river, or like drops of poison in a lover’s cup.
Hannei, or Kishah as she was called now, had been cold-faced and silent when Ani had seen her. She had accepted the basket of salves and harmless apothecaries, though one nondescript bottle had been discreetly tucked back into a fold of Ani’s robe; the poison meant for Sulema’s rival would not, on this day, end Hannei’s life. Hannei had received the medicines silently and without so much as a flicker of recognition. Had she not raised the girl herself, Ani would have thought her a still pool, unruffled by the wind.
On the inside, where her bones held the truth, Hannei was a raging storm. The red song of heart’s blood, of fury; the black of betrayal. Little was left of the song of Hannei, soft-hearted warrior girl of the Zeera. All that remained was what could be seen on the outside, a scarred and broken shell of a woman fit only for killing things.
Oh, Ani thought, her own heart breaking again. Oh, my poor girl. A second heartbeat thrummed along with the first, fast as a hummingbird’s, soft as spidersilk, bright and lovely and very, very small. It flitted round the storm that was Hannei, wings caught and tattered in the tumult of her wrath, breaking itself against the hard edges of her heart. A child, its life scarcely more than a candle lit against vast darkness, trying to win its mother’s love, and failing utterly.
Not again. The thought came from that part of Ani that could, as Askander would say, outstubborn a rock. Never again. I will not make the same mistake Hafsa Azeina made, to turn aside from a child in the pursuit of pain. I failed her in this… but I will not fail you.
Softly she began to sing a canticle, a hymn, a lullaby for bones. She sang of long days on horseback, of fighting-drills and mead, sandstorms and giggling girls. She sang of saghaani, and mutaani, and ehuani.
Kishahani, Hannei sang back. The only beauty is in vengeance.
Still Ani went on. She sang of the river in springtime, of stallions and mares, of mothers and babies and handsome young men. She sang of sword-sisters and lionsnake whelps, and spiders’ eggs, and courage. She sang of Hannei Ja’Akari, champion of the people, as true a friend as any woman could ask for.
Remember who you are, girl, she coaxed. You are Hannei Ja’Akari, daughter of Deaara and of Mazuk Ja’Sajani. The blood of queens flows hot in your veins and your bones sing of honor. Remember.
I am no one, Hannei replied, wroth and aggrieved, heart’s voice black and ragged. I am nothing. I am Kishah, and my heart is hollow.
You are Hannei, Ani soothed, gentle and implacable as any Mother. You are beloved.
The tiny heartbeat flared in agreement, so bright and sweet and pure that for a moment Hannei’s attention was turned from the source of her own pain. She looked toward the child’s bright light. For a moment the storm stopped raging, the voices stopped screaming. In her mind’s eye Ani saw her as a young girl standing naked and alone in the desert, surrounded by enemies—and night was falling.
Come, Ani said to her, holding out a hand. Come. Let me help you. Let us love you.
I cannot, Hannei answered. I cannot. She turned her face and thrust Ani and the child both away from her. Ani fell from the song of Hannei into darkness, into the soft cold well of her own being, but not before she saw hot tears on the girl’s frozen cheeks.
Well? thought Inna’hael, as she returned to herself—as much of herself as remained, in any case. Have you convinced them not to kill each other?
It was a start. She curled forward and held her head in both hands. Ai yeh, the pain. I showed my girls the path of love. It is up to them to walk it. There is yet hope.
Foolish little huntress, Inna’hael chided, though not without fondness. You and your little human dreams. While you were tracking tarbok, you missed the scat of the greater predator.
What? What are you talking about?
Only this, he answered. Come see.
Abruptly Ani cried out as teeth seemed to close on her neck and yank her backward. They pulled free her spirit form, and she watched her body slump into the dirt as her essence was carried away as if she were an errant cub.
Let me go!
Inna’hael ignored her cries and struggles—perhaps he laughed a little, catlike—dragging her helpless ka over the city and the river, along the trade road and across the singing dunes toward Aish Kalumm. Even from this distance she could smell the savor of burnt bones, hear the weeping dead seeking, seeking the lives they had known.
Please, she begged, please no. Not there. I cannot—
But he was not taking her to Aish Kalumm.
Inna’hael’s spirit form stopped high in the air above a small oasis, midway between the Nisfim herdgrounds and the Valley of Death. Once a great lake favored by herders and hunters, it was now barely more than a muddy pit. A force was gathering there, armed and armored, ten thousand strong or more, or she was no battle-mistress.
Atualon invades the Zeera! she thought, and redoubled her efforts to break free. Let me go! I must warn—
Bonesinger, he snarled around a mouthful of her spirit. You are not stupid. Neither are you blind, or deaf. What do your eyes tell you? What do the bones tell you?
Ani stopped fighting, stopped being stupid, and looked again. Really looked this time, with the eyes of one who had walked too near the Lonely Road. She listened, as well, so that she could hear the bones. For where there had been war there were always bones. The bones were singing to her. They sang, as always, of mortality, of breath cut short and stillborn dreams. They sang to her of their own deaths, those of their beloveds, deaths to come.
Ani stared at the dark mass of warlike figures far below. One of them stood above the others, armored and with an antlered helm, his arm draped about the shoulders of a young girl. As if he sensed her presence, this man turned his face up to the sky. Ani saw him clearly, and her soul froze in horror. She knew this boy, burned face or no, dead eyes or no. The last time she had seen this youth, he was trying to convince Sareta to allow him to ride as a warrior.
Ismai, she thought dismayed. Ismai, what is this madness?
The bones sang to Ani, enjoining her to share their delight.
The king is risen, they rejoiced. The king is dead. Long live the king.