THIRTY - ONE

On the seventh day of the rebirth of Kal ne Mur, a handful of the Lich King’s faithful used sticks and swords and spears to lever open a tent-sized ball of dung and foul offal which Arushdemma had left behind as a parting gift. Therein they found Sudduth befouled and naked, curled protectively around her little clay pot.

Sudduth uncurled herself and rose, shaking free her glorious waist-length locks and cradling the precious plants close to her breasts as she stepped down from the bonelord’s dung-ball as if she were a queen rising with the first blush of dawn. Stepping gracefully, she paid no mind to the jagged shards of bone that poked at the soles of her feet, or the ragged bit of cloak that clung to one heel as she crossed the distance between them. Sudduth looked neither to the left nor the right, but had eyes only for her king.

Ismai groaned inwardly. Wars had been started—and ended—by women less angry than this one.

Shat out by a bonelord, Ismai commiserated. She is never going to forgive this.

Shut up, Kal ne Mur snapped, and he breathed through the urge to leap onto Mutaani’s back and run for the hills. You know nothing of women.

I know enough about women to know when I am in trouble.

You are fortunate she is not vash’ai, Ruh’ayya added. Or you would be digging through the sand trying to find all the pieces of your face.

Sudduth took her place at his side. Ismai did not mention the viscous filth that befouled her hair and skin, the loss of her armor and clothing, and he most certainly did not wrinkle his nose at the stench, which was all but overwhelming.

“Sudduth, I am very—”

She held up a hand.

“I am fine,” she said in a low and even voice that made all the hairs on both arms stand up.

“But—”

“I am fine,” she insisted. “It is fine.”

“I found your sword!” Uruk shouted. Still waist-deep in shit, he brandished the weapon and grinned. “And one sandal!”

“Sudduth—” Ismai tried again.

She reached up and patted his cheek, leaving streaks of green and black bonelord shit on his face, which he did not dare wipe. “We will never. Speak of this. Again.” Sudduth turned and walked away, pausing only to snatch a cloak shamefacedly offered by Findla, who had been a war-chief of Sundergaard in the long ago. Both women turned and glared at him for a moment, and then Sudduth stalked out of sight.

Ismai let out the breath he had been holding. His face where Sudduth had touched him stung, and it stank, but all in all, he thought, he had gotten off lightly.

“She took that rather well,” Naara said as she joined him. She wet a rag with liquid from her own waterskin and reached up to wash his face. Ismai rubbed both arms to rid them of chillflesh.

“I do not remember being so scared in all my life.”

“Which life?” She made a face at the rag and tossed it onto the sand.

“Any of them.”

* * *

“You owe me a boon.”

Ismai glanced down at Sudduth. I thought we were never going to speak of this again, he thought. But as it would have been inconvenient for him to die this day, he spoke carefully.

“Name it.”

“You—the boy Ismai, that is—mentioned that there was a grove of trees tended by the Zeerani Mothers. If this grove still stands, I would like to plant my children there.”

“You would go off and leave them?”

“I… perhaps. If the grove, or some part of it, still stands. If I can find a trustworthy person to tend them. Perhaps.” She frowned down at the little clay pot, and the vigorous sprouts that seemed determined to outlive them all. “I live a dangerous life. The road is no place for them.”

“It is a hard world,” Ismai agreed, thinking of the boy Sammai. “No place may be safe for them, but we will go.” She stared at him, and he added, “As you wish, we will go. And if it is your desire, I will help you plant them myself, and build a wall around them. If that will make you happy.”

She clutched the pot tighter. “Surely we do not have time to spend on such a small thing?”

“We have a few hours to spare for a friend,” he answered.

Sudduth looked up at him, eyes wide and shining as a live woman’s, and the smile she graced him with was brilliant.

“You know,” she told him, “when I was young and hotblooded—and had a beating heart—and when you were tall and handsome and held the world in your fist, I loved you a little. But I like you more now.” Then she dropped back to walk with Uruk.

“If I live and die a thousand times,” Ismai said to himself, “I will never begin to understand women.” Ibna, who walked within earshot, grinned.

“None of us will. Fortunately for you, you only have to mete out vengeance, subdue a kingdom, and keep a dragon from waking to destroy the world. Simpler things, eh?”

“Simpler,” Ismai agreed. “And safer.”

A thousand years of deathless slumber had left the world changed not at all. Nothing was ever simple, and nobody was ever truly safe.

The Mah’zula formed a loose ring around the perimeter of Aish Kalumm, but these false warriors and their vash’ai danced aside as the Lich King arrived. Perhaps they had heard of the rout at Urak. None had lived to tell that tale, but rumors flew up and down the Dibris swifter than birds, and bad news swiftest of all.

Kal ne Mur looked upon the ruins and frowned at the grief tearing through him. He had in his lifetimes razed cities far grander than this had been, and never had he felt such anguish.

Cities die, he explained. People die. Lovers, and children, and mothers. We are all just sand in the wind, after all. A thousand years from now the greatest of us will only be a remnant of song and poorly understood poetry.

Except for you, Ismai retorted, and Kal ne Mur was surprised at the anger in his tone. You and your sworn fighters.

This is true, the Lich King allowed, unless of course Sajani tires of our human blunderings and rises to destroy us all. I have had a thousand years to think on this, and am almost certain we will be obliterated along with the world.

And if you are not?

Then we will spend an eternity in the void, envying you who have died.

“Ah!” he said aloud. “The Mother’s Grove! So a portion of it survived, after all.”

Ahead of him wardens in blue and Mothers in ragged remnants of robes, a sad and shabby reminder of their old finery, toiled among the remaining trees and the broken statues of vash’ai. He rode through jagged, charred stumps and looked upon the shattered statuary.

It was not enough for them to destroy these people’s city and their livelihoods, he thought. They tried to destroy beauty and the memories of love, as well. What heart is so bitter that it cannot abide the joy of another?

A voice rang out from behind him.

“Hail, Ismai son of Nurati! I see you have returned to me, and this time with a fitting bride gift!”

Ismai closed his dead eyes and reached for control, lest the lich-wrath burning through him escape and destroy what little was left of this place. It was not Kal ne Mur’s fury, after all, but his own human heart that had been tied to this place, and which now lay charred and shattered as the grove. When he opened his eyes again, it was the boy Ismai who saw what the Mah’zula had done, he who turned his mount and faced his tormentor.

“Ishtaset,” he said.

She grinned at him, the very picture of desert beauty, strength and prowess. Kingdoms had gone to war over women less glorious, and wars had been won by warriors less skilled. She was flanked by two fists of her riders, some of whom had been warriors before the fall of Aish Kalumm.

“Hadda,” he called to one of them. “How can you ride with those who murdered your brother?”

The warrior’s face reddened, and she averted her eyes.

“Ah now, beloved, have you no care for my heart? You return to me with a worthy gift, but spare words for other women?” Ishtaset laughed as if she had not a care in the world, as if the Lich King and his hordes of undead had not come to put an end to her and her false Mah’zula. “Where are the tender words for your mate? Where is my kiss?”

“I would rather kiss Arushdemma,” Ismai replied, and Sudduth burst out laughing.

Ishtaset’s smile hardened. “And I had had such high hopes for you, little Ismai. Ah well, I suppose the line of Zula Din is not what it once was. But, oh! I brought you a gift too, and you might as well have it.” So saying, she unfastened a largish leather bag from her saddle and slung it underhand at Ismai. He reached out, unthinking, and plucked it from the air.

It was heavy, and it stank. Ismai’s gut lurched. He had played aklashi too many times as a youngling not to have an idea what was in that bag.

“Who?” he asked simply.

The dead froze at the sound in his voice, and all eyes turned to Ishtaset.

“That little warden you sent out on your errand. Jasin, was it? He had a mouth full of lies and a head full of ideas too big for one such as he.” Ishtaset shrugged and wiped her hands together. “So I relieved him of it.”

A howl rose from deep in the Zeera, a sound unlike anything Ismai had ever heard. It was not the soft singing of the hot sands, so like his mother’s voice. It was not the wailing cries of vash’ai seeking a kith-bond. It was not even the hopeless wailing of the undead, forever denied the peace and respite of the Lonely Road. This was the sound of trees breaking, of rocks burning, the cracked shriek of a cold and motherless heart.

Ismai’s grief and rage welled up, endless, edgeless, bottomless, and found an echo in the song of the Lich King. Even as Ismai opened his hand and let the bag drop, even as his Mutaani reared and screamed defiance, a wave of misery rolled from his mouth like cold black fog across the Zeera. Wind whipped across the shattered landscape of Ismai’s youth, the shattered landscape of his heart, and it summoned the Lich King back to his true nature.

The song lifted, it called, it commanded, and the dead answered. The horde screamed as one, heads thrown back, teeth bared, eyes glinting red and wet in the dying light, and as Ismai lost his war with the Lich King so too did they lose what little hold they had on their humanity. Swords and spears and knives drawn they rushed upon the Mah’zula, screaming for blood and bloody vengeance.

It rained in the Zeera that day, a bitter red rain that nourished nothing. Ismai did not see who killed Ishtaset, only that she had been killed, trampled and torn almost beyond recognition. Of the Mah’zula not one remained alive, not even those Ismai had known as warriors and with whom he had played childish games just last year. They had betrayed him, and their people.

False warriors, he thought, and not an echo of sorrow was left to him. Never again will they betray me.

He would see to that.

Mutaani danced beneath the Lich King as he raised his arms high and lowered his singing voice to a near whisper. He crooned, he seduced, he cajoled—and he raised them. He raised them all. Bound them to his word, to his will, bound them and bade them stay. Never to rest, never to cease, never to meet up with loved ones along the Lonely Road.

Ishtaset was first to rise, battered and ruined as she was, and stumble to him on broken feet. Ismai reached down to touch her bloodied short warrior’s mane, but it was Kal ne Mur who smiled. At his touch, Ishtaset was made whole again, and beautiful, if one could look past the blood and gore and the milk-blind eyes of death.

“My… king…” she ground out in a voice like broken rocks. All around them the newly dead rose in response to the Lich King’s song. Most of them, like Ishtaset, were revenants. Those who had been too savaged by their manner of death to be raised whole would, he knew, combine into a new bonelord, and eventually take a name and its place at the rear of his army.

The Mah’zula here had been destroyed, as he would destroy them all, and the people of Aish Kalumm had been set free, if not in the manner any of them might have wished.

Ismai’s fist closed in Ishtaset’s hair. He leaned down so that his face was inches from hers.

“Now,” he said in a voice harsh from singing and thick with grief, “now you are useful to me, and I have had my revenge.”

But there was no fear in those eyes, or acknowledgment. There was… nothing.

“How does it taste, Father?” Naara stared at Ishtaset, and then at him, and a faint frown creased her brow. “How does it feel? Kishah. Vengeance.”

Ismai released Ishtaset’s hair and his own hold on life. What was there left for him, after this? Ismai straightened in his saddle and frowned down at himself. He had not so much as a smear of blood on him, and that did not seem right.

“Like nothing,” he told her. “Like nothing at all.”

* * *

The people gathered before him. They came wailing and afraid, stone-faced and angry. They came with fear and sorrow and revenge in their hearts, but as he called them, they came, and that was what really mattered. Those of his followers who yet lived looked upon the horde with horror. They had not been able to lay their dead to rest before they rose again—those who could.

A new bonelord bellowed to the south. Farrakh Nahol’i’khan, it called itself, the black wind that swallows all hope.

The newly raised dead had sworn no oath to him. They had walked the Lonely Road, if only for a short distance, before being brought back. Had shed their lives, their memories like old clothes, and now, stuffed back into them unwillingly, found the fit not to their liking. These dead wanted no more to do with the land of the living.

Ismai could feel those trapped souls straining and screaming inside their meat cages, could see the grief and horror on the faces of the people as they looked into the eyes of their erstwhile companions, lovers, sons, and saw… nothing. No love, no hate, no recognition at all.

Yes, he thought as he watched the people turn away from him. I am a monster, but I am your monster, so be grateful.

True to his word, he helped Sudduth plant her small saplings. With his own hands he carried pots of water from the Dibris for them, set a low stone wall around them, and bade the living Mothers to tend them well. Then, not trusting to the goodwill of humans toward things they did not understand, he set Ibna to watch over the grove and see to the rebuilding of Aish Kalumm.

“You wanted to make beautiful things,” he told the too-peaceful warrior. “Here is your chance. I charge you with rebuilding Aish Kalumm, the City of Mothers, larger and grander than it was before, with beauty to be found in every corner. Make it a place of peace and respite, for the heart of every mother is like a garden in bloom. Build a city that is well-guarded and easily defended, for the hearts of men are dark and terrible.”

“As you will, your Arrogance.” Ibna bowed low, his dark face split with a smile that made him look boyish and alive. “It will be done.” He sauntered off, nearly skipping, to the grove.

Sudduth stared at the Lich King. “You have done a good thing, your Arrogance.”

“A small enough thing,” he allowed. “This costs me nothing, will benefit the people, and it will make Ibna happy.”

“You have… changed. Your heart is soft.”

“A good change, I hope?”

“A good change in a friend, but for a king?” She shifted her eyes to look over his shoulder, north toward the land of the Dragon Kings. “Who can say?”

“You worry that a soft heart is a sign of weakness.”

She looked at him again, white teeth flashing in a grin.

“I? I have nothing to worry about.” She laughed aloud. “I am already dead.”

Ismai led his horde to the river Dibris, and the Atualonian ships that had been dragged upon the sand until such time as the river serpents might subside, allowing them to return to Atualon. But crews had been slaughtered by Ishtaset and her Mah’zula before they could use their vessels to escape.

The great vessels had been dragged from the river and onto the sands where they lay forlorn. Ismai watched as they were now eased back into the water, the striped sails rigged and readied, and strode up the gangplank onto the deck of the bold and beautiful dragon-headed ship.

It seemed large enough to Ismai to carry an entire village up and down the Dibris, but even such a large craft as this would be vulnerable to the great serpents that swam the waters of the river, let alone the sea, and they had none of the red-cloaked sorcerers on board to keep them safe.

Never fear, little prince, Kal ne Mur reassured him. I created the Baidun Daiel, and there is nothing they can accomplish with their sorceries that I cannot. They amplify my power, it is true, but the magic is my own.

I am not sure whether I should be relieved by this, Ismai responded, or frightened.

Soft-hearted, as Sudduth says. He smiled to himself. He rather liked the boy, and that was just as well, since they shared a body.

The ships were poled groaning and creaking to the river deeps. Striped sails fluttered, settled, filled, and the vessels began to make their graceful way north.

“Do we sail for Atualon, then?” Sudduth asked.

“In time,” Ismai answered. “We sail first to Min Yaarif, that I may send messages to the queen in Quarabala. Long have the Kentakuyan owed me fealty, and now is the time for me to call old debts due. Quarabalese assistance will be essential in reclaiming Atualon. Our numbers are great, and with living Quarabalese warriors among us it is certain that we will overwhelm the Atualonians. After all”—and he smiled at her— “my last and most beloved queen, and many of my best fighters, hail from that land.”

“Ah, to see my home again…” Sudduth shook her head. “But no, the land of my birth is no doubt as dead as the Zeera I remember. Not to mention the ancient alliance. Friendship is strong if it lasts a season, let alone many lifetimes of men.”

“Friendship is fickle, this is true,” he allowed, “but hatred runs as deep and cold as this river. The Quarabalese, I understand from young Ismai’s memories, have endured many miseries since I… went to my rest. Surely they will be eager to join with me in common enmity. And if they are not eager, well…” he shrugged. “We will burn that road when we come to it.”

Far away, river serpents bellowed in alarm. No Baidun Daiel would be necessary to keep the beasts from destroying the ships, after all—the leviathans’ natural fear of the Lich King would suffice. It was a silly thing over which to feel regret, but Ismai sighed. It would have been marvelous to see the river serpents and the sea-things, and listen to their songs at sunset.

As the ships picked up speed, a young vash’ai queen wailed from the riverbank.

There is no room for love, Kal ne Mur reminded Ismai. He closed his heart, his mind to Ruh’ayya. No time for regret. We have a world to conquer, or to destroy.

Again.

The setting sun streaked the sky with claw-marks and turned the river red as shared blood.

It was glorious.

THIRTY - TWO

Sulema and Hannei flanked the shadowmancer, and Rehaza Entanye brought up the rear. Keoki strummed his lute as they trotted on, humming under his breath even as his companions struggled to breathe the thin, burnt air. So powerful was the sorcerer’s eagerness to reach his homeland that the air about them seethed and groaned under the weight of spun darkness. The shadows beneath their feet urged them on.

His shadowshifting protected them from the worst of the heat but Akari soared high, withering the Seared Lands with his hot and angry glare, searching for those who had dared deny him his love, that he might smite them. The world might have forgotten the Quarabalese, their shining cities and poetry, songs and shadow-magic, but Akari Sun Dragon would never forget, never forgive. Those who had traveled this road in days past had left sign of their own desperate struggles as they shed their earthly possessions and fought for their lives.

Here was an ancient waterskin, so desiccated that it turned to dust beneath Hannei’s heel. There was a knife, long as a short sword almost, its edge glowing faint blue in the filtered light of Akari’s wrath. Infrequently—but not nearly infrequently enough for Sulema’s peace of mind—they would pass the desiccated corpse of one who had not, nor would ever, reach her destination.

These last were by far the worst. Some lay curled on their sides, hands tucked beneath their cheeks, as if they had only just fallen asleep and might rise again and join the travelers. Only a bit of exposed bone or a shriveled foot, still in its sandal, gave lie to the dream. Others lay with backs arched, throats torn, mouths and shriveled eyes wide in endless screams of dusty agony as they stared despairingly into the hot maw of death.

At one point they passed the huddled figure of a mother with her arms wrapped about a tiny child. One arm was upraised as if to protect the fragile white skull that she held pressed against her breast. Sulema averted her eyes but knew the sight would stalk her dreams forever.

“Why does nobody care for them?” she asked no one, but knew the answer even so. The small effort it cost her to speak was too much to have spent. To attempt this shadowed road was to make a final, desperate attempt at life. Never so much as a breath or second glance would be left to spare for the dead.

At Sulema’s words Hannei cut her eyes sideways, and that look was as heavy as a slap to the face.

You know nothing, she said, as clearly as if she still had a tongue. You are weak. Sulema knew it to be true and felt herself shamed.

The shadowmancer stumbled just then, jerking Sulema’s attention away, and then his trot turned into a lope, long legs stretching so that the others had to pick up their pace as well, lest they be left behind to become landmarks for future traveling fools.

“What…” Rehaza Entanye began, panting the word, but grunted in surprise even as Sulema herself saw what had caused their sorcerer to pick up the pace. Ahead of them, at the very slice of the horizon, she could see that the ground was rent with deep fissures. They were harsh, these wounds in the earth, dark and sharp as if they had been drawn upon the burnt ground with a quill dipped in ink, and they gaped like thin, angry mouths, ready to swallow the mean flesh of unwary travelers.

They had nearly reached the Edge of the Seared Lands, and it was the most uninviting sight Sulema could have imagined. Part of her wanted to grab the shadowmancer by the nape of his neck and demand they turn back.

“Run,” Rehaza Entanye groaned between gritted teeth as she passed Sulema. Her eyes were wide as a spooked horse’s.

Sulema glanced over her shoulder and then wished she had not. Through the boiling air behind them she could see what at first appeared to be an advancing storm of some sort, a roiling line of darkness. Through this, as if through the thin veil of a shy lover, she could see a horde of pursuing reavers.

In their midst was a horror.

It was man-sized and roughly man-shaped—if a man might have as many arms as a spider had legs—but the chill that stabbed through her heart and grabbed at her reaver-infected shoulder was born of a terror that no mere human could induce. Eyes red and burning as old coals stabbed at them through the cover of false night, and when the thing raised its many twitching arms, bidding the shadows to its will, Sulema could see the tiny glint of a million stars set into its char-black skin.

It was an Arachnist, she knew, a spider-priest, one who worshipped the Araids as gods. She had never in her worst dreams imagined that a shadowmancer might become such a creature.

“Guts and goatfuckery,” she spat, turning back and increasing her pace. Just moments ago she had been weary enough to lie down and die. Now every fiber of her being shrieked at her to run, to live. “What is that?” she croaked painfully. “I have never heard of an Arachnist shadowmancer.”

Keoki, though still deep in his trance, turned his head and glanced behind them. His dreamful eyes widened, widened, and the shades about them writhed as his music faltered.

“Run,” he rasped in unconscious imitation of Rehaza Entanye. “Run!”

Sulema sucked in a deep breath of seared, corpse-smelling air, and ran, certain it would not be enough. Her body flooded with the false vigor that came with dreadful fear; she shed fatigue and felt, in that moment, that she could have outrun Atemi. But the cracks ahead of them lingered teasingly at the horizon’s edge, while behind them she could hear the rustling, buzzing, and occasional screeching laugh of the swarm of reavers. Chillflesh raised painfully as she imagined them falling upon her from behind, rending her flesh.

Or worse.

Then Sulema felt the call of the sorcerer who pursued her, calling, calling… He has come for me, she thought, and knew it for truth. The spider-priest’s sorcery pulled at her blood, her bones. It grabbed at her fleeing spirit as a lover might grab at her clothes, stripping away her defenses and leaving the soul naked.

If I was my mother, they would not dare threaten me, she thought. She would turn his skin into a drum and make him dance to its rhythm. If I was my father, they would run from me in terror—he would call upon Akari and blast them to ashes. But I am just a warrior with a sword, no horse, and no sword-sisters…

She ran till her lungs seared and legs screamed, till her heart felt as if it would burst from the efforts—and knowing it would never, could never be enough. As the Edge grew near, and her enemies drew nearer, Sulema stretched her legs, pumped her arms—

So close, she thought. We were so close. The sun was setting. Just a few minutes more, a few strides more, and they might have made it to safety.

Something brushed her from behind, drawing a line of fire along the skin of her back. Sulema shrieked, ducking her attacker, and then staggered as white agony lanced through her older wound.

One sword, no horse—

It is time, little one, crooned a thin and wicked voice in her mind. Sulema slowed, then turned as if in a dream, filled with dread the color of old blood. There stretched a line of reavers, veiled in shadow, insectoid eyes glittering in their eagerness. They were not as near as Sulema’s fear had led her to believe, but entirely too close to lend strength to any hope of escape. The Arachnist-thing rose high in their midst, corpse arms twitching as he raised them toward her. One bloated hand wielded a whip of black fire; Sulema could only surmise that this had been the cause of her pain. The lash flicked out again, and again, hungry for another taste of her.

Come, the Arachnist coaxed, mocking her struggle. Come to me, to us. Come to Eth, join—

A hand closed hard on her shoulder and Sulema jumped half out of her soft human skin. Her companions had stopped when she did and stood with her, gasping and desperate.

“Hhhhaaak,” Hannei growled at her, squeezing again, painfully. Only then did Sulema realize that she had been dragging her feet toward the Arachnist and his promise-threats. She willed her feet to stop moving, and a thin howl went up from the ranks of the reavers. They slowed in their advance.

One sword, no horse… and one sword-sister.

It came to Sulema, in that moment, that a warrior with a sword and one sword-sister needed nothing else in the world. She caught Hannei’s gaze with her own. Sister, she signed. Come, sister. We fight together. Mutaani. Hannei hesitated for a moment and then firmed her mouth and nodded. Sister, she agreed. Mutaani. She drew the twin blades at her back, and Sulema pulled her shamsi free. Together they would find the beauty in death.

Keoki took a deep breath, bent over his lute, and his fingers attacked the strings in a battle-frenzy. Shadows rallied to his call and the world about them faded to near black. Rehaza Entanye, who had been staring at the girls with an unreadable expression on her face, shrugged and took hold of her war hammer, gripping it with both hands. She rolled her head this way, that way, and spat as if readying herself for yet another battle in the pits.

“It is a good day to die, as you desert sluts are so fond of saying,” she grinned. “Might as well get it over with.”

Though she was wreathed in shadow and pain, weary and beyond the reach of hope, Sulema felt the world lift from her heart. I am a warrior, and nothing less. She tugged her vest open, baring her breasts at the enemy, raised her sword, and laughed a true, deep belly laugh. It was enough that she would die beside her sister, as a warrior should, she realized. It had always been enough.

“Show me yours, you rotten sons of churra shit!” she yelled, mocking the reavers and their foul master. “Show me yours!”

The Arachnist hesitated a moment, and then with a high, thin wail of rage brought his many arms down and pointed them toward Sulema and her companions. The black whip snapped over their heads, urging them on.

“Kill them!” he shrieked.

At that moment Akari Sun Dragon folded his wings and dove beyond the horizon. The sky flared bright and hot one last time, and then an indigo veil was pulled across the face of the land. Sulema tipped her head back and took a deep breath, looking up and up and up. By day, the Seared Lands were the stuff of nightmares, but by night they were lovely. And in the end, she had kept her vow.

She wanted to live. Oh, how she wanted to live.

But it was a very good night to die.

The reavers hissed, and laughed, and leapt.

Shy, sweet Keoki, who had been shooting Sulema adoring glances since first they had met, dropped his mantle of impotence and strode toward the swarming attackers. His voice rose in song, a clear, sweet tenor that blended perfectly with the rippling music of his lute—and the shadows along the path rose to do his bidding. Like a sandstorm of lost souls, borne upon the wind of his passion, they crested toward the foul, pale shapes. The reavers halted, and Sulema’s heart lifted to see them pull back.

We are so close, she thought, casting a longing glance over her shoulder. She imagined that she could see, deep in the nearest crevice, the faint, encouraging wink of fire. If we ran—

A shout rang out from the swarm’s midst. The enemy’s shadowmancer raised a multitude of writhing, twitching corpse arms as if he would pull down the moons. The shadows around him leapt at his command. Sulema could almost hear them howling, hungry for flesh and the breath of the living. The two darknesses met with a clap as of thunder. Black lightning—that was the only way Sulema could describe it— burned through the air and smote the ground, blasting holes deep enough to swallow a horse, sending chunks of bone and salted earth high into the air.

Every hair on Sulema’s body stood on end, and a buzzing filled her head with such pressure it felt as if her eyes would pop. She ignored this, and ignored the stench of the battling shadow-storms, as well—burnt blood and hot metal, an angry red smell. Instead she concentrated on choosing a target.

I cannot kill them all, she realized, but I can surely take out some of the goatfuckers before they get me. I think… that one, first.

“You!”

The reaver she had targeted turned its face toward her and hissed, showing rows of inward-pointing teeth embedded in a wide, round maw.

“Yes, you, you turd-spawned abomination!” Sulema shouted, pointing her sword. Even though the land about them was cooling, the air was hot enough to burn her lungs. She ignored that pain, too, and laughed in her enemy’s face.

“Are you hungry, asshole? Eat my sword!”

Hannei glanced at her, surprised, and then grinned and shook her head. The battling storms howled about them, and the reaver Sulema had singled out crossed the distance between them in a series of deathly quick bounds. Sulema drew herself up into a fighting stance and let all the tension of a lifetime drain away.

I am coming, Azra’hael, she promised the one who had been meant for her. Soon I will join you on the Lonely Road. And I will bring this one’s head with me.

Then there was no more time for thinking.

Sulema had fought before, with fists and staff and feet, with sword and knife and bow. She had trained with her sword-sisters, fought her enemies, had slain a lionsnake by herself. This, she was certain, would eclipse it all.

The reaver did not move like a natural thing. It flashed this way and that, twitching and jumping, so rain-and-lightning quick it might have outrun its own shadow in broad daylight. It was strides away, and then it was upon her. Sulema twisted away from the monster and brought her shamsi down, expecting resistance as her blade bit deep into its neck. She overbalanced, however, and stumbled forward as she sliced through the night air. Years of training saved her hide as she followed through with a crouch and whirl, taking the reaver full in its chest with the point of her sword.

Bright-sharp as her blade was, it skittered sideways off the thing’s body with a scraping sound as of metal on naked rock. Black ichor oozed from a deep wound—not nearly deep enough, not a killing wound—as the thing reached clawed fingers for Sulema’s face. It bared venom-fouled fangs at her, insect eyes hungry and mocking as it opened that horrible mouth wide, wider.

A spear stabbed over Sulema’s shoulder and pierced the reaver’s face. It exploded in a rain of brains, blood, and clotted gore, drenching Sulema with viscous, stinking dead-man-bug guts.

“Pfaugh!” she spat, stomach heaving in protest. “Oh, that is just—”

The spear retracted, leaving the reaver to collapse twitching upon the dead ground. A man brushed past, darker and taller than any Sulema had ever seen. Black as shadows, silent as death as he ghosted past, hardly sparing a glance as he hefted a wicked iron-tipped spear and jogged into the maelstrom. Another passed her, and another, and then a woman, tall and proud and bald as her companions, and as beautiful.

Aasah is of these people, she knew immediately, though their eyes were brown as any Zeerani’s and their skin unscarred. And Yaela. It occurred to her to wonder—even as she shook free of gore and surprise and made ready to rejoin the battle—to wonder how tiny, lush Yaela could ever have been born of such tall stock.

Three more warriors passed by, all women. Two of them carried spears, the third bore a kind of long spiked hammer and a delicate-looking oblong shield. Their long legs carried them over the ground quickly and gracefully. Sulema had heard that when Akari showed his face over the Seared Lands, any soul unfortunate enough to be caught aboveground would be burned to ash, so the people of Quarabala learned from childhood how to run faster than tarbok, faster than the wind—faster than daybreak. She had never believed those stories growing up. Now, with the stories made flesh, she found it difficult not to believe.

Keoki’s magic failed him. The song died upon his lute and his half of the shadow-storm faltered and fled. As it did, the Quarabalese warriors poured from the cracked earth at the Edge and ran to their aid. The tides of combat shifted as spear and hammer and bow sang of death and victory and one more sunrise.

The reavers fell back before the onslaught, but it was too late. The swarm was overwhelmed as a warrior with one sword and a single sword-sister and a Quarabalese army found her enemies falling before her like sand in a strong wind. The Arachnist shadowmancer was one of the last to fall. When he did, his magic snuffed out with such force that it made her ears pop.

It is over, Sulema thought wonderingly as she wiped her blade on corpse rags. She grimaced at the ringing pain in her ears and swallowed, trying to clear them. By Akari, it is over and I am still alive.

She turned to share this thought with Hannei and stopped mid-swallow. Her sword-sister stood with both swords held loosely in one hand, dripping blood and ichor, though none of it appeared to be hers. Her shoulders were curled forward, and one arm was held protectively across her abdomen. She had a wistful, frightened, faraway look in her eyes, a look that any woman would recognize. Sulema had last seen that look upon a friend’s face when Neptara had announced her pregnancy.

“Hannei!” Sulema whispered, shocked. “Um Hannei?” Hannei twitched, and for a moment her face was white in the night with terror. Sulema started toward her, but Hannei held up her empty hand in a pleading gesture.

No, she mouthed. No. And she turned away.

Just then, someone touched Sulema’s wounded shoulder. She jumped, startled and hurt, and turned so abruptly that Keoki released his grip on her and took two hasty steps back. The shadowmancer gathered himself and smiled. His eyes were full of moonslight, his fingers dripped blood onto the angry ground, and his words carried all the tender weariness of the world.

“Sulema an Hafsa Azeina, an Wyvernus ne Atu,” he intoned, “Dragon Queen of Atualon, I am humbled to present you to her Highness, the Grand Princess Tamimeha.” The woman with the odd hammer stepped forward. One hand curled around the handle of her weapon, which she held casually slung across her shoulders.

“Your Radiance,” Tamimeha said, and her smile was solemn in the moonslight. “I thank you for honoring us with the opportunity to kill our enemies. It is a glorious night.” She held out both her hands.

Pushing the revelation about Hannei to the back of her mind, Sulema clasped them warmly and returned the woman’s somber look with the grin that had gotten her into—and out of—trouble, for as long as she could remember.

“Ehuani, I am no queen—but it is a glorious night,” she agreed. “I thank you, your Highness, for honoring us with the opportunity not to die.”

The Quarabalese went still for a moment, and then burst into uproarious laughter. Tamimeha slung her free arm across Sulema’s shoulder and hugged her tight, as a sword-sister might have done.

“Come then, daughter of the dreamshifter, and let us feast and drink to our mutual honor. After,” she sniffed the air delicately and winked, “you have bathed. Aueh, but you stink!”

THIRTY - THREE

There were no leavings at this end of the shadowed road, nothing to mark the beginnings or endings of desperate journeys, no bones or knives or scraps of life. Sulema wondered at the abandoned hulk of a city she had at first mistaken for a jagged mountain range. As they passed between ruined red-brick buildings, fine as small palaces, she felt the weight of their judgment pressing upon her.

My Atualonian ancestor did this, she thought, remembering the stories Istaza Ani had told her. That Dragon King—Kal ne Mur, he did this when he loosed atulfah and sundered the world. The buildings stared down at her with empty eyes, and Sulema felt they loved her not. This ruined world is the true legacy of the Dragon Kings— and my inheritance.

The road they traveled became wide and well-worn, and led them through the gaping walls of a city that in its day had been grander even than Atukos. Darkness came upon them as they walked through the giant arched doorway, and Sulema shivered.

“This is the great city of Saodan?” she marveled. “It feels like a tomb.”

“This is not Saodan; it is nothing more than a nameless city like any number scattered across the Seared Lands. Nevertheless, you speak of my homeland, and though she is not what she once was—thanks in no small part to your forbears, Sulema—Quarabala is no tomb.” Keoki frowned. “In ages past she was the center of commerce and culture for all the world. This city was so minor that we do not even remember its name, and yet even this humble place was grander in its time than the palaces of Atualon or Sindan. And Saodan—Saodan—was a jewel in this world like no other, so splendid that our dreams are too small now to remember the least of her glory. Atualonian kings and Sindanese emperors alike tried—and failed—to seize our land and claim her riches as their own. Scholars traveled a lifetime to spend a single year in the libraries of Saodan, monks and sorcerers and mystics would have given their thumbs for a glance at our sacred texts. And the music…” His voice trailed off, wistful, and with bloodied fingers he stroked a soft lament upon his lute. “The music. The art. The stories.” He sighed. “Saodan was the heart of the mightiest civilization ever to begrace our world, yet it is all but a memory now. Memory and shades of the dead, buried far beneath the flesh of a lost world.”

“Not all is memory,” Tamimeha chided. “Not all is lost.”

“Not all,” Keoki agreed, and he silenced his music. “But most.”

“It is much the same where I come from,” Sulema agreed, thinking of Aish Kalumm, of the empty Madraj waiting for the return of the people.

Keoki frowned. “But Atualon is thriving—so I hear. Thriving and wealthy and prosperous.”

“I do not come from Atualon,” Sulema explained. “My mother and I escaped from that place when I was small. I was raised in the Zeera. The Zeeranim are my people.” Beside her, Hannei grunted agreement.

“Ah, that explains your sword, then. And your, um, your vest.”

There was a slight cough, and Sulema glanced at Keoki. He was blushing.

He likes me, she realized. Just what I need—a sorcerer with a crush.

Hannei made another disturbing noise, and Sulema realized that her sword-sister was laughing at them.

“When will we reach the city?” she asked for a change in subject. “The new city, I mean—your people did rebuild, did they not?”

“They did,” Tamimeha agreed. Her eyes sparkled with pride in the low torchlight, and dimples appeared at the corners of her stern mouth. “The heart of Quarabala is now buried deep beneath the ground, carved into the bones of the world. Even one born as you were in the shining city of Atualon, and raised among the glorious singing sands of the Zeera, would not find our Saodan wanting for beauty and wonder.”

“If I can get a bath and something other than pemmican to eat, I will be happy,” Sulema said. “Then I am to find a girl, for so I am sworn, and return her to her aunt’s care. Maika, her name is. Do you know of her? She is young, not yet come of age, and, ah…” She realized Yaela had never told her what the girl looked like, and scowled. “Most likely she is short for your kind?”

“There are many girls named Maika,” Tamimeha answered, and something in her expression was unreadable. “Perhaps we can find yours, but first, we must travel through the Edge of the Seared Lands, where my people await your arrival.”

“Await my arrival?” Sulema asked. “I do not understand. There are none in Quarabala who know of my quest.” Come to think of it, Tamimeha and her warriors had seemed to be expecting them, which was impossible, unless…

Magic. Sulema made a sour face; even here in the Seared Lands, she could not escape magic or the politics of power. Would she never be free of it?

“You will see. Tomorrow night, you will see. For the rest of this night we will walk, and tomorrow we will rest and tend to our wounds in this old place. Tomorrow night, we make a final run for the Edge.”

The Quarabalese warriors shared another enigmatic look, and Sulema rolled her eyes.

“But…”

“You will see,” Tamimeha answered in a voice that reminded her of Istaza Ani, one that let Sulema know she would get nothing further from this woman. “Tomorrow night, you will see.”

* * *

They walked the remainder of that night in silence through the once-splendid halls and passages of the ancient city. As they passed the remains of a garden or statue, or passed through an elaborately carved doorway, Sulema wished she could have seen this place as it once had been. It was not difficult to imagine the ornate fountains filled with water-lotus and fish, or the courtyards with musicians and storytellers, and it ached her heart to think that all of this had been destroyed by men with a lust for war and dominance.

All this beauty lost forever, she thought, trailing her hand along a wall engraved with flowering vines. And for what? So some man could park his arse on a golden throne and eat stinky cheeses. If I were truly the Dragon Queen—

The wall beneath her hand trembled and Sulema froze, seized with the irrational certainty that her thoughts had woken Sajani, and that the world was about to end. Dust fell, and then rocks; the walls of the city swayed and danced to the notes of a song even more ancient than itself as the earth tore asunder. The warriors’ voices rose in alarm and pain as walls which had stood for millennia swayed, failed, and collapsed, the dust of their destruction rising like the smoke of a funeral pyre.

Mother, Sulema thought, and reached out with her mind—but her mother was dead, gone ahead of her down the Lonely Road, and could not save her. Nor would Wyvernus sing Sajani to sleep this time; they were both gone, leaving the world dim and hopeless, and it was all her fault—

Ja’Akari! snapped the voice of Istaza Ani where it slept deep in her heart. Stop crying over spilt usca and do something! Are you a milk-mouthed brat, or are you the warrior I raised?

Under the sun, I am Ja’Akari, daughter of the Zeera, Sulema thought. The storm within her stilled, even as the world around her went to pieces. I am the daughter of Hafsa Azeina, I am the daughter of Wyvernus.

I am SULEMA!

She raised her voice in song.

Untrained as she was and without the aid of a dragon mask, weary and wounded and far from the comforts of her home, still she was Sulema, and she was something. She had her shamsi at one side, and her sword-sister at the other, and the song of the Zeera in her heart.

It is enough, she told herself, and let the song that kindled in her heart burst through the dragon’s mask, the paper-thin maze of bones in her face that made those of her line unique in all the world. It will have to be enough.

And it was, for now.

The infant song of the dragon’s daughter rang through the bones of the world. It whispered as a wind through Shehannam; the Huntress paused, lifting her eyes from the game trail, and her hounds raised their bloodied muzzles to howl at the ghost moons. Sulema’s song swept across the sands of the Zeera, and roused the golden sands to harmony; it dropped like flowers into the swollen waters of the Naapua, upon the Forbidden City itself, and woke in the heart of a trapped sea-thing a canticle of joy. Born of the innocent hope of a dreamshifter’s daughter, the song wove itself into the breath of the world and the dreams of a dragon, who roused, stirred, and drifted back to deep slumber.

* * *

Sulema woke and found herself lying next to a small and cheerless fire. The faces of her companions were as grim, and no few were bruised or bloodied. “There was an earthquake?” Rehaza Entanye said. She stared into the fire, and there was a question in her voice.

Sulema did not answer it, but the stares of accusation lay upon her like a cairn of stones. I am the daughter of the dreamshifter, she thought, daughter of the dragon. Death and destruction follow me like shadows. She said nothing, but sat up and accepted a waterskin from Hannei.

The world had stopped quaking; Sajani, it seemed, had chosen not to wake from her dream just yet. But soon, Sulema thought, soon. She did not know whether her small song had played any part in this, only that the power she could summon fell desperately short of what would be needed to save the world should the dragon truly fight to wake.

One of the Quarabalese warriors began to moan. At first Sulema supposed he had been among those wounded in the earthquake, but soon learned that it was much worse.

“Niekeke has been bitten,” a Quarabalese woman whispered to Tamimeha where she stood near the fire. “He is turning.” Tamimeha closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she seemed to have aged ten years.

“At daybreak,” she told the other woman, who bowed and faded back into the shadows.

“He was bitten?” Sulema asked.

“By a reaver,” one of the Quarabalese said.

“He will die at daybreak,” Tamimeha explained in a flat voice that invited no discussion. “Better that than to become one of the forsaken.”

“Forsaken?” That needed no explanation, really. “Do your people not have a cure for this… affliction?” She had hoped that the Quarabalese would be able to provide medicines for the reaver venom in her own blood, since Yaela had carried the loremaster’s potions with her. Given Tamimeha’s unyielding countenance, however, she decided it best to keep that a secret after all.

Tamimeha shook her head. “Such a cure exists, but it requires the venom of a young nahessa—what you would call a ‘lionsnake.’ That, and magic I do not possess and could never afford. Such a thing is more precious than salt.” She glanced over her shoulder, and for a moment her eyes went dark with grief. “Worth more than the life of a simple warrior.”

“That seems… harsh.” Heartless, she wanted to say. “How can a thing, even a medicine, be worth more than the life of a person?”

“You think me too hard, daughter of the dragon?” Tamimeha turned her head to glare, never slowing the pace. “What if I were to tell you that Niekeke is the son of my wife’s sister, blood of my love? Would you think me heartless, I wonder?” She curled her lip. “We are a harsh people. This is a harsh world. Better you learn that today than tomorrow.” She turned away again. “Come now. Too long have we waited for you to wake. Earthquake or no we have far to travel, and daybreak waits for no woman. Not even the daughter of the dragon.”

Tamimeha increased their pace to a brisk jog, and there was no further talk of the glorious past or of bright tomorrows.

* * *

The group traveled through the night and came to the far side of the ruined city just as the sky came again into view, and was taking on a warning blush. They made camp, and it was a grim affair. Niekeke’s groans grew more anguished; the faces of his countrywomen and men grew harder, lined with grief and determination. As shade-cloths were slung over ropes and fires built, Tamimeha called for the youth to be brought to her.

He was young—younger than Sulema, hardly more than a boy. Sweat rolled down his brow, his face was pale ash from the effort it cost him to walk upright, and Sulema could see that he was biting his cheek to keep from crying out in pain.

The front of his shirt was covered in blood.

So young, she thought. So brave. Braver than she, who kept her own affliction a secret.

“Niekeke,” Tamimeha said, and reached out to touch his face. “Niekeke. You have been bitten by a reaver. You are turning.”

“Y-yes, Auntie,” the boy said between clenched teeth.

Tamimeha opened her mouth, but he held up a hand and touched her cheek gently, gently.

“It is okay,” he told her, and he did his best to smile. “It is okay, Auntie.”

Tamimeha’s heart broke through her eyes. Fat tears rolled down her face.

“Nie-nie, I am a war leader. I have to—I have to—”

“It is okay,” he told her again. He set down the sword he had been carrying, unbuckled the knife-belt at his waist, and let it fall to the ground. “It has been a good run. I am ready.”

Tamimeha closed her eyes and firmed her quivering mouth. Then she took a deep breath, opened them again, and enfolded the youth in a long embrace.

“Let us go, then,” she said to him. “Sweet boy.” She kissed his forehead.

The other Quarabalese averted their eyes as Tamimeha took the boy’s hand and led him away, into the darkness.

* * *

They broke camp at dusk and set forth along the wide road, which led on and down and steeply down. The cracked, dry walls of the earth rose up to either side as they descended, until the burnt surface of the land was a distant memory far overhead. Tamimeha went before them, her eyes flat and joyless. Hannei and Rehaza Entanye chose to travel among the Quarabalese warriors at the rear, leaving Sulema to walk beside Keoki. She did not mind. Of all her available companions, he was for the moment the least taxing, and she was weary.

“So this is the Edge,” she remarked.

“This is the Edge, and welcome to it,” he agreed. “Shithole of the world.”

Ahead and below them, in the thick gloom, came the occasional rustle and scrape of bodies moving out of the way. “Are those people I hear, or animals?”

“Both,” he replied. “Low-caste people with thin blood and no luck. They live here, if it can be said to be living, at the edge of the Edge. They should not bother such a large and well-armed party as ours, though.”

“And if they do?” she asked, though the answer was all around her in the hard stares and bright red steel of the Quarabalese warriors.

“I will protect you,” he answered, so earnestly that she did not laugh.

They traveled through that night and into the next day as the chasm grew wider and deep enough to shade them from the sun. Here and there the walls cracked open to the sides, revealing tangles of thorny black roots—manna, they were called, and the Quarabalese stopped to tap the roots for clear liquid that looked and tasted almost like water. Occasionally there was the shoddy evidence of human habitation. A pile of moldy blankets, dented cooking pots, the greasy remains of a hastily doused fire. Mean lives, furtive and small, carved out of rock and root and thin air.

Once, Sulema saw—or thought she saw—a small face peeking out at them from a tiny hole high in the wall, no larger than a hare’s warren.

“A girl,” she said, and pointed. “There are children here?” Such a thing was unthinkable to her. In the Zeera, children were precious, and cared for by all. That one might be left in such squalor shocked and disgusted her.

“Not for long.” Keoki shrugged, unconcerned, not bothering to look up. “It is a harsh world.”

“But… children.”

He looked at her then, a pitying expression on his face, and shrugged.

“They are low-caste children, your Radiance. Not such as should trouble the minds of you or me.”

There was nothing Sulema could say to that, and the small face—if indeed she had even seen it—disappeared. She resolved to say nothing more.

It is not my concern, she tried to tell herself. These are not my people, their ways are not my ways. All I have to do is get to the damn city, find Yaela’s little niece, get her back to Min Yaarif somehow, and I will have fulfilled my vow.

The thought tasted like a lie, and she could not spit it out.

* * *

They encountered no more of the residents of the Edge— none save a small herd of dhurra, which looked like kin to the Zeerani tarbok. In better days Sulema would have wanted to hunt them. Now she was content to pass them by, and grateful that they were not predators or fighters.

Or little girls.

After three days of marching steadily on and down, the sky was so far above them that sunlight was a distant, dim memory, and the moons just a fever-dream. The Quarabalese climbed the rock cliffs as they traveled at night, searching for manna root to tap or to burn, and for small game animals. The walls grew steeper, the road cobbled with smooth stones and well-tended. Finally their group was hailed by a small and only somewhat shabbily dressed family—a man and four women, one of whom had an infant at her breast.

“Lokahei,” Tamimeha called. “Ka maluhei. O ka anta?”

“Lokahei,” the man replied as the woman clutched her child. “Eh ta maluhei. Nenu o’Okapai.”

“O’Okapai.” Tamimeha relaxed, and her fellow warriors did the same. “Hau wen anta mapopi I ka nassa atei annu hoi’I, ta?”

“Ta,” the man agreed, and he turned to one of the women. “Holo, Ipua.” The woman bowed to the man, and then to them, and set off down the path at a dead run.

“She will tell them we are coming,” Tamimeha said. She did not meet Sulema’s eyes, had not since the night she walked off with Niekeke and returned alone.

“His nag is very obedient,” one of the Quarabalese warriors murmured approvingly.

“Nag?” Sulema inquired.

“His wives,” Rehaza Entanye replied, gesturing at the women.

“Ah,” Sulema said, but what she really meant was, What a load of fresh churra shit. She had not yet arrived in Quarabala, and already she could not wait to be gone from this place. Murder and slavery and sunlight that kills, she thought. It is no wonder Yaela fled this place. The only question is why she left her niece behind in this forsaken land.

“Your eyes are full of questions,” Keoki remarked. “Perhaps I can give you the answers you seek?”

“I am not seeking answers,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Just one young girl, and then another sorcerer to get us back to Quarabala.”

“And maybe a bath,” Rehaza Entanye said, laughing. “You stink!”

“A bath,” Sulema agreed. She did stink. “And then I am away from this place.”

“As you say,” Keoki replied. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

* * *

Sulema looked up at the tall columns and smooth walls of yet another nameless abandoned city, the bones of a place which once must have outstripped Atukos for grandeur. “I cannot imagine what Quarabala must have been like, before the Sundering.” Then she grimaced, wondering whether she had misspoken. Surely these people did not want to be reminded of their loss, any more than the Zeeranim would wish to be reminded of the empty seats in the Madraj, the empty cradles in Aish Kalumm.

Tamimeha just sighed and shook her head. “None of us can,” she agreed. “Nor will we ever see its like again, not in our lifetimes.” Then she turned her head as the sound of distant drums reached their ears. “Ah! She is come!”

To a one, the Quarabalese warriors—who had been flanking them as a guard, or as an escort, or possibly both— dropped to their knees, heads bowed in obeisance.

“Down!” Tamimeha growled when she was aware that the uplanders still stood. “On your knees, the queen is come! Not you, your Radiance, but you other two, on your knees.”

Rehaza Entanye sank to her knees. Hannei looked from her, to the Quarabalese warriors, to Sulema, and folded her arms across her chest.

“A Zeerani warrior does not kneel to any queen or king,” Sulema explained to the tall warrior. “She would rather die.”

Swords and spears stirred to life. “Then she dies.”

Sulema drew her own shamsi, and Hannei her dark blades. “If you seek to send my sister down the Lonely Road, I will send you there instead, and go with you.” Anger welled up that it should come to this at last. To be attacked for not kneeling to an outlander queen! “Who wants to come with us?”

“Come with you where?” a voice called, young and full of laughter. “Are you going on an adventure? Perhaps I should join you. I am weary of this place.”

The drums had stopped.

Still scowling, Sulema looked up and saw a young girl with opaline eyes, cat-slit like those of Yaela and Aasah, odd and beautiful. She was surrounded by warriors all clad in red spidersilk and blood-iron mail studded with jewels, brilliant for all that they bore the dust of hard travel. Foremost among these was a stout woman whose braided hair, piled atop her head, was nearly as tall as she herself. The lot of them stopped as the girl came to a halt, and the woman with glorious hair drew herself up to her impressive height and intoned:

“Hail the queen, all hail the queen; long is her shadow and longer still may she reign! The Queen of Quarabala is come to speak with Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu, Dragon Queen of Atualon. All hail the queen!”

The Quarabalese around Sulema pressed themselves flat upon the ground, so that they were nearly kissing it. Sulema pursed her lips, sheathed her sword, and folded her arms across her chest much as Hannei had done.

“I have told you,” she grumbled to Tamimeha, “I am no queen.”

“You are,” the beautiful child disagreed, “you are the Dragon Queen of Atualon. I have seen you in my dreams, and often. You have been sent by Illindra in our time of need to lead us to the green lands.” Those odd pale eyes, cat-slit as Yaela’s and Aasah’s were, danced with amusement.

Sulema realized she was gaping, and shut her mouth. Time of need? Lead them to the green lands? If this was a joke, it was not funny.

“I, ah, and who are you?” A dreadful suspicion had begun to form in her mind, and with it anger at the manner in which she had been tricked. Bring back my little niece, Yaela had said. Daughter of my dead sister. The only family I have left…

The girl regarded her with a sober intelligence well beyond her years. “I am spider to your dragon, and queen in these lands. Queen Maika su Palehaleha i ka Kentakuyan, first of my name, to be precise.” She bowed her head, and Sulema could see now—in the slump of her narrow shoulders, the shadows under her eyes that spoke of long weariness, and the wary hope that had these people all standing on a knife’s edge, that these people had traveled a road as hard as her own. “I welcome you to the Seared Lands.”

“You are Maika.” Sulema groaned and closed her eyes, conjuring for herself the image of the shadowmancer’s apprentice with her wide green eyes, her earnest face, and her solemn mouth dripping with lies. “You are Maika. The next time I see Yaela, I am going to kill her.”

THIRTY - FOUR

The chamber Tamimeha had found for them had only one entrance: a narrow rift in the wall scarcely wide enough to be considered a doorway. The counselors to whom Maika had sent a secret summons had to squeeze themselves through it awkwardly and one at a time, and then seat themselves upon the dirt and bone dust. They shifted for position, eyeing one another and their queen, wondering, she suspected, who knew what and which games were being played.

“These are not people who are used to being ordered about,” Akamaia whispered at her side. “They are wearied from the road, and sick with loss. They will not thank you for this.”

Let them be angry. Maika lifted two fingers from the arm of her tall manna-wood chair and Akamaia subsided, muttering under her breath. Let them learn to obey me now. They will thank me once we have reached the cool green lands. She herself was sweating like a wrestler, and her thin frame was all but crushed by the weight of expectations; those of her people and her ancestors, as well as her own.

Six of these seven were those surviving counselors whom she and Akamaia had deemed most powerful and least likely to betray them. The seventh was invited because he was the most easily manipulated. Once they were settled, she held up both hands for silence.

Lehaila’s robes of state, stiff with the slain woman’s blood, had been draped across Maika’s lap. The counselors to a one avoided glancing at it just as they avoided meeting their queen’s changed eyes.

Eyes of Pelang. The eyes of a seer, blessed—or cursed— depending on who was asked. Rare were the children born with such eyes, and to seek the Araids’ gift voluntarily was a thing done twice in recorded history. Each of those instances had been leaders seeking power in times of great need.

Each had led to utter disaster.

Let us hope, Maika thought fervently, that our need is enough to overcome ill fortune.

“Counselorwomen, counselormen,” she said aloud. “Trusted advisors.” This last with a nod toward Akamaia, and toward Tamimeha who stood guard at the doorway. “As you know, we have received an—irregular—visitor from Atualon. We find ourselves this night at a crossing of paths, a place at which a decision must be—”

“Decision? What decision?” The nasal tones of Counselorman Tanneu cut across her voice like a claw. “This Atualonian girl”—he hissed the word—“if she is who she claims to be, which I doubt, is nothing more than a political refugee come to us for help at a time when we must help ourselves first. What decision do we need to make, aside from the decision of whether to drive her to the surface to die, or leave her behind us for the reavers? A daughter of Akari is not to be trusted.

“It was a Dragon King who broke the magic and sundered the world,” he continued. “How can you even contemplate that this supposed daughter of a Dragon King will be our savior? Atualon is the source of all our misery. I say we lock this little buta up, her and her pet shadowmancer, as well. This—Keoki—has brought our enemy into our lands and endangered us all. I say his life and hers are forfeit.”

Maika firmed her mouth and stared straight over the heads of her counselors. She had anticipated this outburst. It was, in fact, the reason Tanneu’s name had been added to the list of invitees. He could be prodded into speaking words of dissent, and so allow Maika the opportunity to quell it. Still maintaining her unreadable expression, she nodded at Tamimeha.

The warrior hefted her spear, strode to the bench where Tanneu was seated, and rapped him smartly on the back of his skull with the ironbound butt of her spear. The counselorman’s eyes rolled back in his head and his corpulent form slid from the bench, and boneless as jelly.

“A crossing of paths,” Maika continued as Tamimeha resumed her post, “and I have seen that path which will take the people of Quarabala to safety. I have paid the price so that I might see the way—our only way—free from the danger that stalks us. Let there be no further discussion.” She stared hard at them, with her eyes of Pelang. She had seen the Web of Illindra, and her vision of truth could not, must not, be questioned. If they strayed but a little—

Death for us all. Death, and dishonor, and the cobwebbed embrace of a reaver’s grave.

“You tell us that you have the dragon’s daughter guiding us to safety, and I cannot doubt you.” Counselorwoman Nuha spoke in a low, clear voice. “Please consider this and forgive me—I do not mean to offend, merely to ask—they say that the dragonspawn has powers. How do we know that she has not used her fearful powers to mislead us, Resplendence? Atualonians are well known for being slippery as cave eels. How do we know that she is truly come to save us?”

Maika watched as a trickle of sweat ran down the woman’s temple. It grieved her that these people, most of whom had shown her nothing but kindness, had to be made to fear her now.

But a queen could not afford the luxury of a soft heart.

“I appreciate your concern, Counselorwoman, and your bravery.” Maika inclined her head fractionally. “But you misunderstand me. The dragon’s daughter is not the savior of Quarabala.”

She paused, let the soft gasp of their surprise settle like dust, and pinned each of them with her otherworldly stare. “This daughter of the dragon is not our savior, though she will lead us to the one who is. In this game of spiders and dragons, Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu, dreamshifter, Zeerani warrior, self-styled queen of Atualon… is little more than a pawn. As are all of you. As am I, truth be told, though I am a stronger pawn than most. Stronger than you knew, before this day. It is time that you learn.”

She lifted her hands from the arms of her chair and clasped them together in front of her. When she pulled them apart, a swirling darkness was revealed, a window into an infinite abyss brilliant with the sung bones of dead worlds. Binding them all, naming each world, its song, its doom, the Web of Illindra shimmered with light and life and hope.

Hiding the effort and pain which it caused her, Maika brought her hands together again and the vision winked out with a pop and the smell of sulphur.

“There is only one way to save my people, and we will take the path I have chosen,” she said, her words rich with the energy she had revealed. “What is more, I will kill anyone who seeks to deter us from it.” She touched Lehaila’s bloodstained robe. “As I have said, there will be no further discussion.”

There was shocked silence at her words, her tone. Maika held them all with the power of her eyes—her blessed, cursed, far-seeing eyes of Pelang.

The silence was broken by the sound of a manna-wood staff falling to the floor. Akamaia sank to her knees, and then to all fours, pressing her face to the dusted earth. When at last she lifted her face, her sunken cheeks were wet with tears.

“Oh, my queen,” she whispered in a voice hoarse with joy. “Oh, my queen, I swear loyalty to you, obedience to you, upon the song in my bones I swear it.”

One by one, the other counselors kneeled before her. Maika noted which of her counselors gazed upon her with adoration, and which of them cut their eyes at their fellows before kneeling, or grimaced, or narrowed their eyes in shrewd thought.

Their obedience was slow, and it was forced. But it would do… for now.

She gestured. One by one they regained their seats, and Maika motioned to Tamimeha. The tall warrior’s cheeks were also wet with tears, her eyes lit with a fanatic’s joy. Maika knew that the Iponui was hers, heart and soul; they would die for her.

This would do, as well.

“Tamimeha,” Maika said, “would you repeat your words to me from this morning, so that our loyal citizens may hear? Reveal to them the latest news from the road behind us… What word from the Iponui?”

“Only this, your Resplendence.” Tamimeha gestured, and warriors entered through the narrow doorway dragging a live reaver, bound with spidersilk and sun-iron. To a one the counselors gasped and recoiled. Maika did not, though her heart lurched in her chest. Tamimeha continued, “This reaver was once a woman I knew, a runner from Padua. Of all the runners sent to spy the road behind us, she—this— was the only one to return.”

One of the counselors moaned, a low, grieving sound that trailed off into muffled sobbing. Maika reached out with sa and ka, and with her sight of Pelang sought to look inside the reaver’s chitinous skin. She could feel nothing familiar, nothing which might tell her that this had once been a woman. The voice of Na’eth whispered hungrily in Maika’s ear, raising chillflesh along both arms.

Hisssst, hissssst. Give it to me, child.

Maika closed her eyes and let the sticky strands of Na’eth’s magic flow through her. The reaver arched its back and hissed, thrashing against her—its—restraints as the spider queen bound it to her web. Power surged through the young queen, making her skin itch, her eyes ache, and filling the audience chamber with iridescence so beautiful it was akin to pain.

The reaver screamed, a high thin wail that trailed off into the distance, and black smoke poured from its fanged mouth as the spirit of Eth was forced to vacate its unwilling host. Finally the monstrous thing collapsed, dead, emptied of the corrupted spirit that had held it in thrall, foul-smelling ichor flowing from its mouth to puddle on the floor.

The counselors were frozen in terror.

Now is the time to bind them to my will, as well, Maika thought.

“Our best and bravest warriors have failed,” she said as gently as she could. “Arachnists drive their reavers close on our heels, and as far as we know all of our settlements have been overrun. There will be no respite or rescue from the outer settlements. There will be no return to Saodan, nor to any city of Quarabala, now or ever. Ho’olau is no more. Mawai and Kaha’ai and Auhei—”

“Lehuahei?” Counselorwoman Puani interrupted, clutching her hands before her breasts. Maika, remembering that the woman kept husbands in that beautiful city, met her grieved eyes and shook her head.

“All gone. I am sorry, my friend. They are lost to us, every one. The City of Queens has doubtless been taken by the Arachnists by now, and Araids are close enough to be taking and turning our own scouts against us. The choice is clear. Remain here in the Edge and die—or worse, find ourselves caught in an Arachnist’s web and turned to reavers.” Silence fell over the chamber thick as grave dust. Again Maika paused for effect, stilling her hands and feet, her face, lest her body betray nervousness. “Or we can fight, fight like the warriors of old, to find a way into the green lands where we might someday, somehow, build a new home for ourselves and our children.”

Let them think I am stone, she thought, for stone is harder to break than flesh, and offers shelter to the besieged.

Finally Counselorman Moki stood and bowed his head. “Lead us, o queen. The Ho’olau stand with the Kentakuyan, as ever of old. Though I do not believe there is hope, still I will fight with you against this wickedness which pursues us.”

“And the Lehuaina,” Counselorwoman Puani agreed, her voice shaking but eyes fierce. “For my people. For vengeance.” One by one, the counselors stood and renewed their pledges of obedience.

Maika was not finished.

“Even the strongest heart might be swayed with fear,” she said. “Lehaila, too, pledged undying loyalty, and she was true—up until the minute of her betrayal. In dark and dangerous times, even the truest of hearts must be made stronger by… other means.”

Even as she spoke, warriors poured into the room like sand. Each of them had been painted in an Iponui’s glow paints, their braids, the palms of their hands, and the soles of their feet oiled and gilded. Each warrior had a gemstone set into the skin in the center of her forehead. The Eye of Illindra, a soul-binding that marked them as hers to the core of their singing bones. Each of these warriors would die a thousand deaths before allowing the least harm to befall their queen.

As well they would die when this binding was removed, or when their queen died. This was a bond entered into voluntarily, and only in the times of gravest need. Again the counselors fell to their knees in the dirt.

Still Maika was not finished.

She gave a signal and Tamimeha leaned to whisper into the ear of an exceedingly tall, thin warrior. That woman left the room and returned a few heartbeats later leading three prisoners, all robed and hooded in the sky-and-gold spidersilk of the condemned. These hoods were yanked off one by one to reveal the tear-stained and defeated faces of those shadowmancers who had agreed to escape with Lehaila.

A low moan rose from one of the counselors. To violate the person of a shadowmancer was unthinkable.

Let them moan, Maika thought. Lehaila’s plans of escape had to have been known, perhaps by a person or persons in this room, staring at me now with the taste of vows still upon their lips. Let them learn to fear me.

At the very least, I will teach them to fear the price of betrayal. The shadowmancers dropped to their knees in the sand. Maika firmed her heart as she looked upon their terrified faces.

“I have sentenced you to death,” she said.

One woman began to weep. “I have a son! I only meant—”

The warrior holding that woman’s collar gave it a brutal yank.

“The dead do not speak,” Maika said in a soft voice. A visible shudder ran through counselors and prisoners alike.

They see at last that the child is gone, Maika thought, and she had no time to feel sorrow for their loss. And that a queen has risen in her place.

On cue, Akamaia’s three young apprentices filed in and took their places beside the prisoners, bearing bowls of manna milk laced with herbs and reaver venom, and bound with spells of Maika’s own weaving.

“I have sentenced you to death,” Maika continued, “but am willing to commute this.” The prisoners stared wide-eyed and mute. “The life you had is over. The one you may yet live will belong to me. There is no betraying this vow. Will you pledge to me, in atonement to the people and the queen you betrayed? When you have come to the end of your path, Illindra may yet look upon you kindly.”

“Yes, my queen,” one prisoner said.

“I do so swear it.”

Maika took a deep breath. A refusal would have weakened her in the eyes of the council. “And you?” she asked the third shadowmancer, an older man from Kaha’ai.

“No,” he said shortly. “I will not do this. My people are gone, my wives, my husband. I will go to them with no stain upon my—”

Tamimeha’s blade ended his speech. The warrior cleaned it on the shadowmancer’s robes even as his feet drummed an uneven tattoo on the packed sand floor.

“When it is time to die,” she said, “it is best to die bravely, and without unnecessary talk.”

Maika bit her lip to keep herself from breaking into wholly inappropriate laughter. What kind of monster am I, she wondered, to laugh at jokes as a man dies at my feet? And that man’s death left her people with one less shadowmancer to shield them on their run from the Edge to the Jehannim.

The kind of monster that wields the power to lead her people to safety, whispered Na’eth in her mind. Remember what I taught you.

Maika stood at last, arms outstretched to either side, letting the robes fall back and exposing the flesh of her wrists. Na’eth had shown this to her in visions and dreams: the bloodbound oath. The Sindanese daemons called their bloodsworn troops dammati; Maika would call hers shadowsworn.

Tamimeha’s knife flashed red as it tasted a queen’s flesh. Strong brown fingers kneaded her forearm—it hurt— milking bright blood into the bowls as a gatherer might milk manna sap. These bowls were given to the two remaining shadowmancers, who drank the foul brew, and then were led from the chamber.

Best let them work through the pain in private, Na’eth had suggested, lest the screams of their agony dissuade others from taking similar vows. Through this magic, Maika meant to eventually bind every Quarabalese shadowmancer and Illindrist to her; through their magic all the people of Quarabala would be bound, as well.

The dead man—or nearly dead, his fingers still twitched occasionally—was picked up and carried out like a hunter’s kill, leaving a trail of blood as counterpoint to the warriors’ gold-dust footprints.

The medicines Maika had taken that morning began to wear off. Her skin began to tingle, then itch, then burn, quickly. Maika bit back the pain and faced the room.

Be strong, you little idiot, she chided herself. This is nearly finished. I cannot afford a show of weakness now. She cleared her throat, and the counselors looked at her, trepidation covering their features. Maika smiled down at them, attempting as she did so to appear as Queen Maika the Benevolent and Completely Unafraid.

I can do this.

I can.

Just imagine that they are all naked…

“Take your seats,” she urged, softening her voice so they would know she meant them no harm. “My faithful sisters, my good brothers, listen to what I have to say.

“Long ago, Quarabala was the heart and spirit of this world. Long ago, a Dragon King of Atualon, in his great arrogance, dealt us a crippling blow. He released the fire of Akari, who rained down wrath and caused us to flee to dark places, there to live out our days in hiding. He broke our hearts, our spirit—

“—but he did not break us.”

There was a murmur of assent, of anger. Good, she thought. It was as Na’eth had suggested—let them direct their disquiet toward a foreign king, and not the queen who they have learned to fear.

“Long, too long have our people kept to the dark, hiding our faces from the sun. Like parasites we live in the bones of the world and drink her blood. Long ago, the dragon and his brood forgot about us, their betters, whom they thought vanquished and gone.” Maika raised her hands, palms up, and her sleeves fell back. In doing so she displayed the fresh cuts which signified the shadow-bond, and the queen’s duty to her people. There, newly emerging from her skin, she revealed glittering gems and strands of the Web of Illindra in all its glory.

“My queen!” Tamimeha gasped, and then thrust her spear into the air, toward the sky beneath which they longed to walk. “My queen!”

The warriors began to pound their spears and chant as the hooded figures of three young girls—Maika’s own apprentices, now—bore a gold-chased threefold loom into the chamber. An immense and glorious o’oraid crouched atop this loom, pleased with herself and her creation. She had spun an oracular web, dark and gorgeous, and it shimmered with power.

The o’oraid was called Lailith. She was Maika’s, and Maika was hers. In the center of Lailith’s web, bound in shadows and magic, hung the Mask of Sajani. It glittered even in this low light and shone with a verdurous light of its own.

“The world has forgotten us, its true masters,” Maika said, her words clear and powerful. “It is time now for us to remind them. It is time for us to return to the world above and take what is rightfully ours.”

“And what is that, your Magnificence?” a counselorwoman asked in an awed voice.

Maika leaned back fractionally and smiled the brightest, most winsome smile in her arsenal.

“Whatever we wish, of course.”

THIRTY - FIVE

Sulema slept through an entire day and woke feeling nearly as tired as she had after attempting to sing Sajani to sleep.

It is this blasted wound, she thought, rubbing her shoulder and shaking her sword arm, trying to shake the feeling back into it. From shoulder to elbow it tingled and ached as if it had been thrust into cold water, and fingers of pain stroked downward toward her spine.

I need to return to Min Yaarif and find Yaela, if she is still alive, or get more medicines from that loremaster somehow. Rothfaust had hinted that a permanent cure was possible, but he was most likely dead. Sulema did not want to think what might happen if the venom’s cold fingers took hold of her heart. She did not wish to think of the reavers, their burnt-out bug eyes and shining hard skin. Neither did she wish to think of Yaela, whom she had begun to think of as a friend, and whose lies had led her to this impossible road—likely to her death.

“Is aught wrong, your Radiance?” Tamimeha asked solicitously. She shadowed Sulema’s heels, as she had done much of the time since their arrival, and though she was courteous and helpful, Sulema could not help but think she was as much guard as guide. Sulema was weary of being guarded. “You seem angry.”

“Tired,” she answered. “I am not used to being so far underground. It feels… odd.” This was truth, if not the whole truth, she told herself. She was tired, very tired of being lied to and used.

“Mmm.” Tamimeha gave her a considering look. “Perhaps you would do well to take another sweat bath.”

Sulema choked on her own spit. The Quarabalese were, if possible, less shy about bodily functions and bathing than even the Atualonians. The last time she had attempted to clean herself, Keoki had offered to wash her back… and then some.

“I am clean,” she insisted. “Bathing too often weakens the constitution.”

“Mmm.”

They walked along the cobbled path that wove in and out among the crumbling walls of the city and watched the sun set. Before they abandoned this place the ancient Quarabalese engineers had, through a series of shafts and mirrors that Sulema did not fully understand, brought a semblance of the sky down into the deep rifts of the earth so that the people might gaze upon the stars and moons, or even feel sunlight upon their faces. A soft rosy glow warmed the blanched bones of the city and glittered among the gemstones that crusted many of the walls and fallen tiles that littered the road. Sulema, who had never been much for gilt or flowers or shiny stones, found herself charmed.

“Pretty,” she murmured. “Even ruined like this, even after so long, it is pretty.”

“Would that you had seen Saodan,” Tamimeha told her. “It is—it was—glorious.”

Sulema glanced sideways at her companion, moved at the grief in her voice. Before she could formulate an answer that did not sound trite a series of horn blasts rang out, their lovely silvery voices reminding Sulema of the Dibris at springtime.

“Ah!” Tamimeha said, stopping so abruptly that Sulema almost trod on her heels. “That is the call to council. We must go.”

Sulema followed her guide-guard down and over and through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Sulema wondered how her guide knew the way, and whether—as she suspected—this was not Tamimeha’s first stay in this place.

Rehaza Entanye and Hannei joined them at one juncture, along with their own guards, and Keoki awaited them at the top of a flight of wide, shallow steps which had once been beautifully tiled in indigo and gold. The shadowmancer’s face was grave as he led them into an enormous chamber which had survived not only the years but the recent earthquake intact.

Maika was there, and the stout woman with fantastic hair, and other men and women whose intricately embroidered if travel-stained robes hinted to Sulema that she was—once again—in over her head. The faces that turned as they entered the room were grave.

“Well come and well met, your Radiance.” Maika, alone of all those gathered, looked entirely pleased to see her. She inclined her head slightly, and all those assembled fell to their knees. Sulema saw, or thought she saw, a shadow of uncertainty in the young queen’s pale eyes and felt a rush of affinity for the girl.

We are both in over our heads, she thought. Though she hides it well. Straightening her back she schooled her face into a stern expression such as her mother might have worn. If this child can pretend such a calm confidence in these uncertain times, by Atu, I can fake it as well.

“Here, my good people,” the young queen said, “is Sulema, daughter of Hafsa Azeina by the Dragon King of Atualon. Seldom have any made the journey from the golden Zeera to Quarabala, and never in such perilous times. Welcome, Sister Queen.” She held both hands out, smiling. Sulema could do nothing but go to her, accept the greeting, and take a place at her side. She took a deep breath as she turned to face the assemblage.

It was easier to face the lionsnake. Sulema suppressed the thought that that had not turned out so well.

“Perilous times indeed,” the stout woman agreed. “Why have you come, Dragon Queen of Atualon? If, indeed, that is who you are.”

Sulema opened her mouth to answer, though she had no idea what she might say next. A risk, considering what often came out of her mouth, but Maika jumped in.

“Counselorwoman Puani, you owe the Dragon Queen honor. She has come to save us.”

“I have come to bring—” Sulema stopped, registering Maika’s words, then turned to gape at the girl. “I… what?”

“You have.” The stubborn set of the girl’s mouth, a flash of defiance in those dark eyes, were strangely familiar. Where had she seen such an expression before?

Oh, yes, she thought wryly. In the mirror.

“You have come to save us,” the girl queen repeated firmly. “Though you did not know it. I have seen it in my dreams, and the oracle agrees—”

“The oracle agrees that it is a possibility,” a woman’s voice said, strong and clear as a bell, “and that is all. Do not put words in my mouth.”

Those already in the room rose quickly, preventing Sulema from seeing who it was that had spoken. When at last they were seated, and the speaker was brought forward, she was startled. Such a frail, old woman, to have spoken with such force. She was bent like an ancient tree twisted by powerful winds, and leaned on a staff of dark wood longer than she was tall. Her eyes were wide and pale as Yaela’s, a milky blue that was almost white and slit like a cat’s. Her robes were a swirl of color, and her hair hung in a multitude of grayed braids nearly down to her knees.

These women have impressive hair, Sulema thought, and resisted the urge to ruffle her own orange fuzz in shame.

The woman walked in a slow shuffle, moving with such deliberation that Sulema guessed she must have been in a great deal of pain. In the next moment two young men emerged from the doorway behind her, bearing between them what at first seemed a great wooden three-paneled loom, but on closer inspection was revealed to support a spider’s web like nothing Sulema had ever seen.

The strands of webbing, thick as spun wool, were hung with all manner of jewels and feathers and bits of bone. In the center there hung, head down, the most enormous spider Sulema had ever seen. Easily twice as large as a russet soldier, this paragon of spiders was as resplendent as any human queen and radiated as much pride.

She is magnificent, Sulema thought. Terrifying, but magnificent.

“Spiders,” Rehaza Entanye groaned behind her.

The stout woman offered her place of honor to the ancient woman, who waved her off impatiently.

“Maika,” she scolded, as if the girl were merely a troublesome child and not a queen at all, “you were supposed to wake me.”

“You were exhausted. I thought it best to let you sleep.”

The old woman’s skin had an unhealthy, ashen pallor, and her hands trembled even as she gripped the staff.

She is not long for this world, Sulema thought, and felt a moment’s pity for young Maika. The love between these two was as evident as the spider’s web, and as beautiful.

“I can sleep when I am dead,” the old woman grumbled. “This is important. Now, you…” She pointed her chin at Sulema. “Why are you here?”

Sulema was taken aback. “I made a vow,” she began.

“Of course you made a vow. Nobody crosses the Seared Lands for the food.”

Tamimeha coughed to cover a laugh.

“What was the nature of this vow?” the oracle persisted. “Have you come to lead us all from this place? To bring us forth into the land of water and sunlight, as our queen believes? Are you a hero? Or have you perhaps come for something… lesser?”

“Lead you all from Quarabala?” Sulema replied, shocked to her core. “No. I vowed to journey to Quarabala and bring one young girl named Maika back to her aunt,” who neglected to tell me that this girl is a dragonforsaken queen—“and nothing more. What makes you think I could do such a thing?” Or that I would want to? “For that matter, I do not understand why your people have left their cities for the Edge. To hear Yaela and Aasah tell it, Saodan is a place of unparalleled beauty, while the Edge is—” she coughed, and felt her face flush as she realized belatedly that her words may cause offense—“um, not.”

“Saodan is glorious,” Maika agreed, laying a hand on Sulema’s arm. That caused her to twitch. “Or it was, at least. But Quarabala is dying. Even as we speak, the Araids move against us. They have been breeding in the deep, dark places, the ancient cities long denied to us, and they are massing armies of Arachnists and reavers. They have already overrun Saodan, forcing us to flee. Some say…” Her voice trailed off, and then strengthened again. “Some say they have turned Illindrists and shadowmancers against us, creating sorcerers that work shadowmancy on the spiders’ behalf.”

“This is true,” Keoki said, pushing to the front of the audience. “One such abomination led the reavers from which we narrowly escaped. A shadowmancer turned Arachnist.” An angry murmur sprang up at that, but fell quiet when the young queen took one of Sulema’s hands in her own and raised it high.

“In your appearance, my prayers to Illindra have been answered,” she said. “There are too few shadowmancers left in all of Quarabala to protect my people from the wrath of Akari, as we attempt to escape this land… unless, as Akamaia tells me, their shadowshifting is enhanced by the song of atulfah which underlies all magic. Only the Dragon King of Atualon can wield this power… and see, his daughter has been led to us in our time of need. She has come to lead us from the Seared Lands and to freedom from the Araids.”

“Is this true?” the oracle asked, staring intently at Sulema’s face. “Is this why you have come?”

Sulema desperately wanted to agree that yes, this was why she had made the terrible journey to Quarabala—to save them all, like a hero in the old stories, like Zula Din leading her warriors forth in days of old. Desperately wished it was so, that she was the true daughter of a dreamshifter and a Dragon King, gifted with the powers of two lands. But truth is not born of desperation.

I barely made it here alive, she thought, and that was with help. Is it truly within my power to help these people?

No, she realized, it is not. If I try leading these people to Min Yaarif, I am more likely to get them all killed.

“No,” she said, voice heavy with regret. “I made a vow to Yaela that I would retrieve her niece Maika and return with her to Min Yaarif. That is all. She neglected to tell me that Maika is a queen.” And I would like to kick her ass to the Zeera and back for that bit of trickery, she thought.

To her surprise, Maika turned to the stout woman with a triumphant smile. “See?” she said to the oracle. “I told you she would tell the truth. Warriors of the Zeera always tell the truth, is that not so, Sulema?”

“Ehuani,” she agreed, slowly. “We find that there is beauty in truth. But I do not see how this changes anything. Four of us barely made it here alive. Without Keoki we would have died. He and Yaela have both told me that there are not enough shadowmancers to protect all of your people from the sunlight, should they attempt to leave the Seared Lands in any number. I am sorry, truly I am, but I am just one warrior…

“I do not have the power to help you.”

“She speaks truth,” the oracle agreed, staring oddly at the spider’s web. “She has chosen her path.”

“Akamaia?” Maika asked, following it with a command—a queen’s command to one she loved. “It is time.”

The old woman reached out a shaking finger and touched the spider’s web. The spider, Sulema was pleased to note, did not stir.

“You are right,” she agreed reluctantly. “It is time.”

“Time for what?” Sulema could not keep the cross note from her voice. She was tired, sore, well out of her depth— and weary of magic and magic-workers. They act as if my “no” was a “yes.”

“I cannot wield atulfah,” she explained again, trying for patience that she did not feel, “at least not enough to be of use to your people. I am barely trained. Even if I had the Mask of Akari here in my hands, it would not be enough… the sun dragon’s mask only resonates to men. I truly am sorry,” she continued. “I would help your people if I could, but I did not come here to save you all. I just came for one little girl. Nobody told me that she was a queen…”

That sounded plaintive to her own ears, and she stopped.

Maika patted her shoulder. “You think you have only come for me, but really you have come for all of us… and for this.” She fumbled at a large leather bag that hung at one hip, stained and worn and completely at odds with her raiment. “Ah! I tied this knot too tight.” Finally she reached into the bag with both hands, pink tongue sticking out one side of her mouth. “This is yours, you know. We have borne the burden of it for too long.”

“Wha—” Sulema began, then stopped mid-word, mid-thought, mid-breath, and the world stopped with her. Maika drew her hands from the bag, and in them she held an exquisitely wrought mask of lapis and tourmaline, agate and amethyst and jade. It caught the stars from the skies far above, caught the light of the fires that raged at the center of the earth, glowed with the illumination of endless dreaming.

Sulema, it sang to her. Daughter. It is time.

Sulema reached out, drawn as a moth to flame.

She took up the Mask of Sajani…

and the dragon stirred in her sleep.

Sulema ignored the Quarabalese counselors that vied for her attention, Hannei’s nudges and attempts at hunter-signs, paying scant heed to the aches of her own body or anything but the mask which she held cradled in her lap.

The Mask of Sajani. The moment she took it the ground had shaken again. She hoped it was not an omen. Yaela had told her about it, but Sulema had never really believed her and had all but forgotten the second reason behind her quest in the desperate days since. Yet now that she held it Sulema found that she could scarcely take her eyes from its beauty or imagine her life before the mask, and knew that it was precious to her.

Akamaia explained that it was a relic from the First Days, in the long ago of legend when men and women ruled Atualon from a dual throne. Before the Sundering, before the kings of Atualon broke the world into pieces, sa and ka were one. Sun magic and earth magic, dark and light, kith and kin were balanced and there was harmony.

“War came to the lands of men,” she finished, “and when the last true queen of Atualon saw in her heart that Kal ne Mur would never be dissuaded from his plan to wield atulfah in battle, she fled to her allies and kinsfolk in Quarabala. Our libraries were great, and we prided ourselves on being peaceful, an illuminated people of learning and lore, elevated above the concerns of more barbaric, warlike folk…” She shook her head and sighed at the folly of her ancestors, and she was not alone.

“Our pride was so bright it blinded us. When the war between nations could not be won with half a magic, Kal ne Mur laid blame at the foot of his queen, and of her people, and he smote our land with the wrath of Akari. Nine out of ten people died in that time of grief. Those few who survived did so by skulking in cellars and storerooms, underground places filled with shadow and spiders and despair. Yet survive they did, and they built our cities again, this time far below the ground. I allow that it is not the land of glory and wonder it was before the Sundering, but until the Arachnists came with their reavers…” Slowly she stroked her fine robe of spidersilk. “We were not so badly off.”

“Why leave such a place at all, then?” Rehaza Entanye asked. She stood some distance behind Sulema. “I cannot speak for the Zeeranim, for I have never visited their golden lands, nor for the Atualonians, who live in palaces of dragonglass, but to one who grew up on the streets of Min Yaarif—” Her voice faltered. “To one from Min Yaarif, Saodan is a place of stories and wonders. If I were blessed enough to call such a place home, I would die in her defense rather than let her be taken by monsters.”

“And yet the monsters have come, and we could raise no real defense against them,” Akamaia answered, biting the words off as a seamstress might bite thread. “Long have the spider queens dwelt in the dark and deep places from the time before the days of old. Seldom have they bothered us directly before now, though those who ventured into their lands rarely returned. Even that uneasy truce is over, I am afraid. Arachnists, those wicked sorcerers who worship Araids as gods, have woken those gods from their neutral slumber and have persuaded them to grow their armies of undead—”

“Reavers,” Sulema said, and a cold pain lanced through her wound.

“Reavers,” Akamaia agreed.

“They have been attacking our settlements all along the outskirts of Quarabala,” Maika added. “We do not know for how long. Just that runners we have sent out do not come back.”

“Or worse, they come back transformed, as reavers,” Akamaia said. “Our builders have erected walls and barricades, but those have not been sufficient. You have come to Quarabala in our final days. Soon even this forsaken place will be overrun and Arachnists will rule the Seared Lands from the furthest outposts, to Saodan, even to the very Edge.” She sighed and leaned heavily on her staff, as if this long speech had taxed the last of her strength.

“The Arachnists are seeking the mask,” Maika said.

“Perhaps,” the oracle allowed.

“They are,” the girl insisted. “I have seen it. Just as I dreamed that a savior would come.” She waved a hand at Sulema. “Come to lead us to the green lands.” All eyes turned toward Sulema—some hopeful, most as skeptical as the dark whispers in her own heart.

“I am no savior,” she said. “Ehuani, I am just… just Sulema Ja’Akari. I cannot do this thing. I cannot save you.”

Hannei’s grunt expressed more clearly than words what she thought of that, and every face in the room echoed the rebuke. Even the mask stared up at her accusingly.

“I cannot,” she insisted. “Atulfah broke the world once, in the hands of a Dragon King wearing a mask. It could break the world again.” Especially if I am the one wielding it, she thought, though shame held her tongue. Akamaia looked as if she had bitten into rotten meat.

“Do not think for one moment, Zeerani, that the Araids will stop at the Edge of the Seared Lands. Once they have annihilated our people, what is to stop them from coming after yours? The only things that have kept you uplanders safe are our walls, our warriors, and the gaze of Akari, which they cannot abide. If it is true that they have turned shadowmancers to their cause, and might travel upon the shadowed roads—” She broke off, shaking her head. “My people, your people are in danger, and you would refuse the only weapon available to us—to you. Why? Because it is the weapon of your enemy?” As the old woman gestured to the mask in Sulema’s hands, her voice rose almost to a shout.

“It is not that—”

“I understand.”

The room went silent as Maika spoke. Her high and gentle voice took on a strange resonance, and her eyes were unfocused as she laid a hand on Sulema’s arm.

“I understand, Sister Queen,” she went on. “You are afraid of what will happen if you try to wield atulfah and fail… but you are more afraid of what you might become if you succeed. You are afraid that through you, imperfect as you are and with the heritage of two terrible magics in your blood, the mask would work magic too terrible to imagine.”

“Yes,” Sulema whispered. Though Sulema had not thought of it in quite that way, her heart froze at the girl’s words.

I am the daughter of the dream eater and the dragon. What sort of monster might I become, if I am given power such as this? Her mother’s tent had contained the skin and sinew and bones of slain enemies, turned into instruments of dark magic. Were I queen of Atualon, in truth, I might sit upon a throne of their skulls.

The idea did not displease her.

That alarmed her even more.

“You say you are only a warrior,” Maika said, “and that you want none of the power in this world. But I think you are lying to yourself. I think this mask frightens you because you want it so badly.”

Something stirred in Sulema then; an ugly thing, dark and monstrous and lustful. The hunger for might with which to smash her enemies and remake the world in her own image. She met the young queen’s gaze, and in those brown eyes she saw an echo of her own desire, the darkest wishes of her heart. She thought of the reavers, the Arachnists, of Pythos and those men who had hurt her. She thought of the Nightmare Man laughing at her over the broken body of Azra’hael.

She thought of her enemies, all of them, lying dead and broken.

Her hands tightened on the Mask of Sajani.

I could defeat them with this, she knew. If I were to wear the Mask of Sajani, I could truly become Sa Atu, the Dragon Queen of Atualon, with the ability to remake the world—

Or destroy it.

And which path would you choose, O Queen? Jinchua’s voice mocked her from a place deep in the dreaming lands. Are you a hero, or are you a monster? Do you really want this knowledge, and all that comes with it? The pain? The power?

“Do you want it?” Maika asked again.

“Ehuani,” Sulema whispered. “I do want it.”

“Then take it.” And the queen of Quarabala bent her head to the Dragon Queen of Atualon. Sulema hesitated no further. She brought the Mask of Sajani up to her face, and looked upon the world through the eyes of the dragon.

* * *

The world was a song. That song was intoxicating.

After the greeting and feasting and endless talking of people who had made a grand plan and were now terrified of facing it, the Quarabalese assigned rooms to the weary travelers that they might rest peacefully before the next round of talk and planning. No sooner was she alone than Sulema retrieved the Mask of Sajani from its bag.

Such an ugly thing, she thought, irritated, in which to store a wonder. She held it cradled in her hands, turned it this way and that, admiring the weight of it, the smooth bronze surface where the mask was meant to touch skin, the many faceted jewels that caught the mirrored light and sent rainbows dancing along the pale walls. Gems of grass-green and leaf-green, blue as the Dibris, blue as the sky, mixed with stones the color of coffee and sunrise and amber. The colors and sizes of these gems, the way they had been set into the metal so seamlessly, recalled her father’s globe to mind.

Sulema retrieved that, as well, and admired the two treasures as she held them in her lap. She had never had much fascination for jewelry or trinkets, as her friend Neptara had, but she felt in that moment a fierce love of these beautiful things, so finely wrought, so precious.

On a whim, she took up the mask and pressed it once more onto her face. By some magic of its own it clung to her like a second skin, needing no strap or hood to bind it into place, and molded itself to the contours and planes of her features as if it had been made for her and no other.

It is mine, she thought. Mine. Though she had not sought this thing for herself, and would not have said she wanted it, now she claimed it for her own as greedily as a child clutching a handful of honey-cakes.

As Sulema looked through the eyes of the dragon it seemed to her that she saw this broken place as it once had been, as it could be again, and this also she coveted. The walls smooth and bright, tiled in vibrant colors. It would have a sand floor, dyed indigo like the sky at midsun, here a gaily painted doorway, there a pile of thick soft mattresses with linens folded and stacked just so. These things spoke to her of a beautiful world, of precious human lives, of songs and stories and art, and she wanted to hold it all and never share, never let go.

Mine.

As she shifted position to look around the room, the globe still in her lap rolled to one side. Sulema caught the heavy orb before it could fall and held it up to her dragon’s eyes, and saw—

Oh, she saw—

Everything.

Through the eyes of Sajani, the bauble she held cradled between her hands was more than an artist’s depiction of the world, magical or no. It was the living world itself. The sands of the Zeera shifted and sang as she watched and wondered, the seas writhed with serpents, a heavy mist ebbed and undulated along the shoreline of Sindan. She could see a crack of corruption where the restless dead had been interred in Eid Kalmut, and the tiny, glittering splendor of Atualon, the fortress Atukos at its heart.

Mine, she thought, and black anger rose in her heart. Mine. She brought the world closer to her face and breathed upon the city of her begetting, which was rightfully hers to rule and which had been stolen from her by Pythos.

That son of worms took my home from me, she thought. He rules over my people—likely he sleeps in the bed where my mother and father made me.

As her wrath rose, it seemed to Sulema that the city grew larger in her view, closer, as if she swept down from a great height. There were the fields and farms that lay around her city, little people leading their little lives, the great clean streets, the manses of the parens and craftmistresses. The walls and turrets of Atukos, which let in joyous welcome under her warm regard. It seemed to her that the fortress cried out to be relieved of its occupation, and for her to come home, come home, to oust the usurper.

There he was, the soulless maggot, standing on her father’s balcony with his thieved robes and golden crown, arms upraised as he regarded her city as his own. She hissed and drew nearer, wanting to claw and bite, to rend his flesh, to tear him from her rightful place.

Pythos looked up. He must have seen her, then, because his eyes widened and he gave a shout of fright. Sulema cried out in victory, her voice the high, pure ululation of Sajani, and reached out, meaning to strike him down.

Another figure joined Pythos on the balcony. Hooded and robed, dressed it seemed in funereal rags and the armor of forgotten wars. The tall man turned his face to the sky and beheld her. Though he wore a mask of ruin and despair, Sulema through the dragon knew him. She knew those broad shoulders, those narrow hips, she knew the face that lay behind that bleak mask. He raised both hands to her in greeting, in warning, in adoration.

Sajani Earth Dragon seized Sulema in her claws and fled in terror.

THIRTY - SIX

Maika strode with her head high, hiding her horror at the thought of the ashes of women and men who had died on the shadowed road clinging to the soles of her feet.

The Web of Illindra burned inside-out upon her skin, gleaming in the torchlight, and the gems which emerged at every meeting of webs shone brilliant as stars. From her bond with the shadowmancers she experienced the surge of emotion as they worked their magic in her name. Fierce joy alloyed with sorrow as shadows were shifted into snakes, spiders, monsters—even into the great sabre-tusked cats of the Zeera. These they set upon the doomed Edgelanders in order to clear them from the queen’s path. Doubtless minstrels would receive ale and lodging for generations to come in exchange for the least retelling of this day. I wonder, Maika thought as she walked, stiff-faced and straight-backed beside the beautiful queen of dragons, if they will sing about how badly my butt itches. For as the Web of Illindra revealed itself upon her skin, no quarter of her flesh was spared, and everything itched. Scratching any part of it only made things worse.

Sulema eyed her sideways, and Maika thought she bit back a smile.

“You know,” the Ja’Akari murmured, “when they shaved and oiled our heads”—here she ran a hand along the smooth skin at her temples—“I felt as if I had fallen into a nest of fire ants. It itched for weeks.”

“Very helpful,” Maika replied. Then she added, “How did you deal with it?”

“Oh, I busied myself with thoughts of—” Sulema broke off, and the golden eyes behind the dragon’s mask shifted to the mute Zeerani girl at her other side. “Other things. Food and games, mostly. My horse.”

Whatever she had intended to say was lost, buried in the pit of sorrow that had been dug between Sulema and Hannei. Maika did not need the eyes of Pelang to see the bonds that time and love and fate had woven between these two formidable youths. They reflected each other endlessly and were made more beautiful for the revelation.

“I have never ridden a horse,” she confessed to Sulema. “I have only ever seen pictures, in books… They are very beautiful. Especially your… asil?”

“Well,” the fire-haired woman replied, “it is forbidden for outsiders to ride the asil. And even before you rode a lesser horse, you would want to learn how… and you would probably want your ass to heal first.” She laughed outright as Maika shot her a foul look, and then resumed the low, beautiful chant which channeled the power of a sleeping dragon into stuff Maika’s shadowmancers could use.

Though Maika could see the magic—the bonds and bindings Na’eth had woven over and around the mask, the shimmering of the blue-gold-green dragon magic—she was not sure how it worked. Only that it did, and that with its aid her handful of sorcerers were able to effect the escape of the Quarabalese people.

There would be a price to pay for it all. There always was. In every story from every world in the Web of Illindra was spun an immutable truth: for every action, there would be an equal reaction. For every gift, a price.

For every promise, a betrayal.

None of this, however, made her skin itch less fiercely.

Maika reminded herself that her own physical discomforts were as nothing when compared to the suffering of others. Akamaia, for one, though she was old and frail, and walked with assistance, did so without complaint. A queen could do no less. So she ignored the itching and the burning—just as she ignored the chafing of the threefold loom that she wore strapped to her back and the guilt as the Edgelanders displaced by her shadowmancers’ magic fled wailing before them—and walked ever upward, leading her people toward the dawn of a new day.

Today, the scouts had told her, they would leave the scant protection of the Edge to walk upon the very surface of the Seared Lands. Today, for the first time in generations, she and her people would gaze upon the face of Akari.

She was terrified.

“How did you do it?” she asked Sulema, eyeing the tops of the canyon walls with growing trepidation. Here the walls rose scarcely a woman’s height above their heads. What if Na’eth was wrong—what if she was lying? What if, despite all their preparations, the alliance of queens and magics, this was just a horde of fools following a stupid girl to their deaths?

Sulema let the song trail off again.

“As I said, thoughts of food and game, and fine wardens—”

“No, not the itch.” Maika rolled her eyes. “I mean, how did you do this?” She gestured to the sky above, still dark but heavy with the promise of a killing dawn. “How did you travel from the Jehannim to the Edge, with only one shadowmancer to help?”

“Oh, well…” Sulema laughed a little. “We ran like rabbits, of course, but mostly we were lucky. That Arachnist and his swarm of reavers would have had us for breakfast had it not been for your warriors.” She glanced at Tamimeha, and there was naked admiration in her gaze. “Ehuani, I am ever in their debt.”

“‘Ehuani’? I have heard you say this word before. What does it mean?”

“It means… beauty in truth,” Sulema explained. “That all things a woman might do in her life are better in the open, in the full light of Akari.” She frowned and shook her head. “The word does not translate well to common tongue, and I am not good at explaining such things.”

“I think you explained it very well,” Maika demurred. Despite her best efforts, shame weighed her heart as once again the young Dragon Queen took up her endless singing, spending her own strength, endangering her own life so that people she had never met, and who would never thank her, might live.

All because she had made a vow.

There was no word for beauty in truth anywhere in any book in the Seared Lands. Indeed, in a land that survived upon shadows and secrets, such beauty was an unimaginable luxury.

* * *

Buoyed by the magic of two queens, the shadowmancers sang and danced the night and the miles into the web of was. Keoki led them with his lute. He was now first of all her shadowbound. The ritual had not, however, been entirely voluntary.

“A necessary evil,” Akamaia had said as she stood over his senseless and twitching form, and Tamimeha agreed.

Sulema had been puzzled at Keoki’s newly muted demeanor. The Dragon Queen had asked about the jewel of Illindra that appeared on his forehead, and was told it was a “mark of high honor.” Keoki himself did not dispute this or seem to care one way or another what she thought of it. His eyes were clear and farseeing now, no longer blinded by the flame-haired queen’s exotic beauty.

Though the binding of shadowmancers dampened their passions, it had the opposite effect upon their magic. Magic such as they wielded now had not been seen since the time of Akamaia’s mother’s grandmother. The shade they wove was thick as fabric, a tent of dusk-dark spidersilk that whispered and sang overhead, shielding them from the terrible heat. Predators and Edgelanders were routed and killed by the nightmare visions made solid.

Even with the advancement of every apprentice old enough to bear the physical strain of shifting, the ranks of the shadowmancers had barely swollen to a score. Nevertheless, the work of these shadowbound—augmented by their queen’s blood oath and the song of Sajani—was a display of might and magic grand enough for a bard’s tale. It was a thing of beauty.

And of lies. Grand as it was, it would not be enough.

* * *

Finally the leading edge of the travelers reached the surface of the Seared Lands, and a palpable tremor of terror and fierce joy shivered through every woman, man, and child of Quarabala. Then the gaze of Akari found and smote them. Before their queen’s foot graced the land above, before she could behold her first sunrise, their shadowed veil began to smoke, to steam…

To fail.

“What is happening?” Maika cried, standing on the tips of her toes and straining to see. She tried to push Tamimeha aside, but the frontrunner stood her ground, hammer to the fore as if she expected some threat.

Even the Zeerani girl was taller than she. Sulema squinted her sun-gold eyes against the unaccustomed glare and frowned.

“Smoke,” she said, “though I cannot see the source of it. I fear it is the shadowmancers’ veil. Some of the people seem to be—”

She did not finish the sentence, as the veil of shadows above them trembled and grew thin. The people ahead of them began to scream. There was a surge as those at the front of the exodus tried to double back, a growing panic as the line of moving bodies became a knot of confusion and fright, and then the great black snake turned back upon itself. Warriors’ spears bristled thick and wicked around Maika and Sulema.

Another tremor shimmied through the veil, this one stronger than the last, and a ray of sunlight broke through a fissure in the magic. It struck the ground like a spear of flame not ten strides from where Maika stood surrounded by her warriors. An elder woman, gap-toothed and gaunt, stood bathed in the glorious light. In that moment the woman was beautiful. Surely, she had longed for and prayed for this from the moment her newborn eyes opened to darkness. To lift her face, to feel the sun!

“How glorious it must be, to walk beneath the sun,” mothers sang to their babes as they gave birth. “How we wish we might have seen it,” sang the crones on their death-beds. From birth to death, every woman and man of Quarabala longed to walk beneath the sun, and this one old woman had achieved her dream.

In the next moment she was gone, vanished with a scream that was half a sigh of delight, leaving a small mound of ashes left to crumble in the light of a sun she had prayed all her life to see.

Maika’s hands flew to her mouth. I have done this, she thought. I brought her here—I and no one else.

Sulema’s mute sword-sister—Hannei, her name was— shouldered her way through the bristling spears. Her hands were moving rapidly. To Maika’s surprise, she found that this sign language was enough like that of the Iponui that she could make some sense of it.

You must, Hannei waved under Sulema’s nose. You must—lead or go first, something like that—something-something something lands.

“I am not my mother,” Sulema responded, golden eyes glowing dangerously behind the dragon’s mask. “I cannot simply—”

Hannei made a very rude gesture which needed no translation in any language. You must, she insisted. Something-something time.

“Sulema?” Maika asked. “What is she talking about?”

Sulema’s eyes narrowed. “Shehannam,” she replied. “My mother would have opened a portal into the Dreaming Lands, and led the people through to—”

“Shehannam?” Akamaia’s voice broke through like the ray of sunlight, sharp and deadly. “Heresy. You speak heresy. To set forth upon the Huntress’s grounds is—”

“It is the way,” Maika said. Her dreams, the o’oraid’s web, the whisperings of Na’eth, all came together in that moment to form a complete picture. Maika closed her eyes, the better to see the perfect beauty of this truth.

Ehuani, she realized. Now I understand that word. Ehuani.

“Your Magnificence,” Akamaia said, “with all respect, I must—”

Without opening her eyes, Maika raised both hands. It seemed to her that the people, the wind, the whole world fell silent and hung suspended upon the web. Then she opened her eyes, and spoke, and their world began to spin again, its fate in this time and this reality having been decided by a girl still fresh with the flush of her first moons-blood.

“I have seen it,” she said, and even to herself her voice sounded… different. “Our savior, come to lead us to the green lands, to peace and prosperity and safety. I have seen it.” She smiled upon Sulema, willing the foreign woman to agree. “You will save us,” she insisted.

Sulema took a deep breath and nodded, jeweled mask flashing.

“I have come to know the magic of your people,” she agreed. “If you say you have seen me leading your people through Shehannam, then I must try.” Her eyes crinkled as if she smiled. “I will succeed, of course. Ja’Akari never merely try, ehuani.”

Maika bit her lower lip and stared at the fire-haired woman.

“Ehuani,” she breathed. “Beauty in truth. I have seen it, now. I understand.” She thought fiercely, I have seen beauty in truth, indeed. A pity I must lie to get it. Aloud she asked, “What can I do to help?”

“Guard my body,” Sulema replied. She sat upon the ground, laying her fox-head staff across her knees, and her folded hands upon the pale wood. “I will seem to be asleep, or dead, but I am neither. Guard my body while I am gone. Keoki should play his lute near me, if he will. Music will give me a way back, and then I will be able to gather my strength and open a doorway to Shehannam. I think.”

“You think?”

Sulema shrugged. “I have never done this thing, but I will succeed, or I will die trying. You are the one who dreamt this; you tell me.” She chuckled and closed her eyes.

Nothing happened.

Maika sent a runner to fetch Keoki. He stood beside the Dragon Queen and with scarred fingers played his lute. Maika could see the magic, the Web of Illindra spun thick as wishes to wrap Sulema tight and call her to sleep, to sleep, to sleep…

Nothing happened.

“Ugh,” Sulema said, and she groaned, scrunching her eyes closed behind the mask. “I cannot relax. I—”

Hannei touched her shoulder, and then folded her legs to sit on the ground next to Sulema. She tugged the fire-haired girl into a gentle embrace, pulling Sulema’s head down into her lap and playing with the other woman’s short red wizard locks as she hummed a gnarled, tuneless lullaby. It was neither beautiful, as Keoki’s lute was beautiful, or soft as the whispering of spiders was soft. But it was a thing so pure, so right, that tears sprang up into Maika’s eyes and flowed freely down her cheeks.

I thought I understood ehuani. I thought I knew love. I thought I saw beauty in the truth of my chosen path, but I understood nothing. I was blind.

And she was shamed.

Still, a dragon was a dragon, and a spider was a spider, and a queen was a queen. She would do what needed to be done, beauty or no. Shame or no.

Even as Hannei hummed Sulema into a trance state, Maika drew Akamaia to one side.

“Help me work this thing,” she said, unstrapping the threefold loom she carried upon her back. As always, she breathed a sigh of relief to find Lailith alive and well. The o’oraid crawled nimbly into her hand, bobbing in anticipation. “It is time.”

“Time for what?” The Illindrist looked at her askance. Maika did not know whether her old friend was angered at her decisions, or afraid. It saddened her, but in the end it did not matter.

“Help me call our savior,” she said, “the one who will lead us to safety.”

Akamaia frowned. “But…” She gestured to Sulema.

Maika shook her head. “That one is not our savior. In truth she is the Dragon Queen—and our dearest enemy.”

The oracle stared at Maika as if seeing her, truly seeing her, for the first time. Finally she bowed, a simple gesture filled with worlds of conflicting emotion.

“Your will,” she said. “My queen.”

The threefold loom beckoned to Maika with its promises of was, is, and will be. The girl who had spent most of her waking days searching for secrets and lost treasures in the Queens’ Library found the treasure of secrets now in the brilliance of a spider’s web, the elegance of simple design, and the comfort of knowing that whatever she did here, no matter how badly she might muck things up, the worlds would spin on. The dragons would sing their mating songs, Illindra would bind them all in her great web, and love her forever.

Maika hardly flinched when Lailith sank envenomed fangs into the meaty palm of her hand, hardly made a sound as she sank down, down, down to float among the stars.

* * *

Forever she had drifted, formless, nameless, in blissful ignorance, content to bathe in darkness and gaze upon the brilliance of Illindra’s web. Each world, every spark of life that dared shimmer across its surface was perfect in its imperfection.

One world in particular attracted her attention and she allowed herself to drift closer, to fix her attention upon a tiny bright point of brilliance flaring defiance in the face of the void. She swam down through the dark, the too-thick air overstuffed with ambitions and desires and life, and as she drew closer to this particularly interesting spark a ripple of surprise breathed across her soul, rousing the entity within.

On the ground beneath her were a scattering of lives, and in the middle of it lay prone the body of a young girl, nearly a woman. Her pale eyes were open, and Maika was nearly jolted out of her ensorcellment by the shock of recognition.

It is me, she thought.

“Beautiful, is she not?” The voice came from behind her. Maika would have cried out, but she had no voice here. Would have turned, but for her lack of feet. She panicked like a bug caught in a web, and her struggles threatened to tear the whole of it apart.

“Ssssss, little one, I did not mean to frighten you. Hush now, stop now, you will tear yourself loose, and you really do not want to do that. Here, let me help you.”

As if someone had laid a hand on her shoulder, she was turned so that she was facing the source of the voice. A blinding figure stood before her in robes the color of fresh bone. He wore rings upon his fingers, worlds on a chain about his neck, and his smile was sweet enough to break her heart. He held a delicate instrument made of bone and secrets, and Maika would have screamed with excitement.

It is he!

Am I? he laughed in her mind. Then he opened his mouth and spoke. “No need to shout, little one. Imagine yourself whole—yes, just so.”

Maika found herself standing on…

Nothing…

“Best not think of that,” he told her, still smiling. “And best not to look down.”

Maika kept her gaze fixed upon the stranger’s laughing dark eyes. “It is you,” she insisted. “I have seen you in my dreams.”

“Have you?” He sounded so much like Akamaia that Maika could not help herself. She rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“Yes,” she told him. “In dreams and visions. Illindra has sent you to help us. You are meant to lead my people to safety.”

“Am I indeed?” His smile faded, and he stared into Maika’s eyes as if reading all the secrets she kept there. “How can you be so sure, little one? Prophets are false. Visions lie. The dreaming eye finds no beauty in truth.”

“I have seen it,” she insisted, frustration threatening to overwhelm her. “You are meant to lead us out of the Seared Lands.”

“Yes, but then what? How do you know that I am meant to lead you to safety, and not to some worse fate? Prophets lie. Visions are false. Your own heart will lie to you, if you let it.”

“Anywhere you choose to lead us is better than where we are,” she cried. “You cannot lead us into a worse fate than the one we are suffering. See for yourself.” She turned, looked down upon her own prone body.

He had been right. To look down nearly made her sick.

Still she looked at the tiny figures surrounding her. Beloved Akamaia, and Tamimeha, her tiny warriors like ants determined to sacrifice all for their queen. The shadowmancers, falling beneath the strain of Akari’s assault. The Dragon Queen, brilliant and doomed, and her mute friend—

“Oh.” The figure behind her breathed out a long, low sigh. “Oh. I did not know. I will come.”

“Praise Illindra,” she breathed, turning to face him again. “We are saved.”

“Perhaps,” he replied, eyes dark and unreadable. He lifted the bird-skull flute to his lips…

“Perhaps not.”

…and pip-pip peeeee, pip-pip peeeee-oh he played a tune that sent Maika dancing away, away…

THIRTY - SEVEN

She looks like a candle that has been blown out.

Even as she held Sulema’s head in her lap and brushed the short wizard locks back from her face, Hannei was certain they had failed. Her onetime sister’s face, more familiar to her than her own, was wan beneath the dirt and freckles and the gem-crusted Mask of Sajani. Her cheeks were pale and her long, muscular limbs shook as if the Nightmare Man of stories had seized her and would not let go.

Though Sulema gripped her fox-head staff till her knuckles went white, the air about them shimmered and swirled as the Dreaming Lands resisted her attempts to open a doorway and usher them to safety.

A hot wind blew down from on high as Akari tried to claw his way down, and the earth beneath them trembled as Sajani sought to wake. Hannei ignored them, as she ignored the frightened mutterings of the crowd and the whispers of that girl queen and her advisors—that they were up to something was painfully obvious. She ignored the pain in her tailbone and back and neck as she bent over Sulema and hummed, though the sound that came from her brought shame. It was a silly song, one known only to herself and the youth who had been her sister. They had made it up on the night they snuck into the stallion herds of Uthrak and braided breeding-rights beads into the manes of Zeitan Fleet-Foot and Ruhho the brave-hearted black.

Moons ago, years ago, lifetimes ago.

In those days she had been whole and hopeful. Neither of them had wanted anything more than their horses, their bows and swords, and the approval of the pride. Sareta had praised them, Ani had watched over them, Nurati had baked honey-cakes for them with her own hands. To steal a kiss from Tammas Ja’Sajani had been the greatest quest they could imagine, and being denied a place among the warriors of their pride the greatest fear. They played at aklashi, not this game of dragons and dreams and spiders…

Sudden realization took Hannei and stopped her song short.

Sulema never wanted this, she realized, no more than I did. She would have shunned the staff she clings to now, would have shunned the mask and the dragon’s legacy that goes with it. She wanted neither of those worlds, and now lies trapped between them, caught like a fly in two spiders’ webs.

For a moment she felt pity for Sulema, fear for the delicate bones beneath the thin freckled skin, sorrow for the warrior’s locks shorn away even as hers had been. They had wanted so little, asked so little from the world, and now found themselves crushed like millet between hard stones. Beneath the heavy dragon’s mask Sulema pressed her eyes shut, and her body shook with effort as she tried to force her will upon a magic she hated.

She would kill herself trying to save people she does not know, Hannei thought with a surge of fierce pride. Some of whom would see her dead. She is trying so hard…

Too hard. Hannei had watched Hafsa Azeina, more than once, as that dreamshifter had sloughed off her mortal cloak and slipped into the world of dreams and nightmares. She needs to relax and let it happen, lest it break her.

That thought was enough to make her laugh, almost. Sulema was fire and rocks and hasty arrows. She never simply relaxed and let things happen. The only time she could ever fully concentrate was when she was fighting.

Oh.

Of course!

Hannei eased herself out from beneath Sulema’s stiff and shaking form. Golden eyes flew open behind the jeweled mask, startled and bloodshot and desperate.

“What are you doing?” Sulema whispered hoarsely.

Hannei grunted and drew one of her swords. She pointed it first at Sulema, and then up at Akari, unfathomably high above them but still there. Then she used the point of her sword to draw a wide and careful circle in the dust. She wiped the blade clean and sheathed it, then clapped her hands together once, twice, three times before her heart, never once taking her eyes from her onetime sister.

“Ahhhh,” Sulema breathed. She removed the mask and set it aside, laid the staff beside it as well. Sitting up slowly she then stood, shrugging off the touch of those who would have helped her to her feet. She stepped slowly, deliberately, into the hoti which Hannei had drawn, drew back her arm, and slapped Hannei hard across the face once, twice, three times. Then she threw back her head and laughed.

The people of Quarabala stared at them.

“Challenge accepted, sister!” Sulema said. “Show me yours!” She laughed again as if there was not a care in the world, the very picture of saghaani, beauty in youth.

Hannei spat blood at Sulema’s feet, and grinned. Let the kings and queens and sorcerers play their games. Let the spiders weave their webs. She and Sulema had been warriors—were warriors, no matter what the world thrust upon them or stripped away. Hannei looked into Sulema’s eyes, hoping that her own bloody smile might convey the words that were in her heart.

If I die today, she thought, though I die in exile far from the singing sands, let me die as a warrior, shedding blood that the people may live. Let me die Ja’Akari, under the sun.

THIRTY - EIGHT

If I die at dawn, Jian implored silently, though I die far from the Twilight Lands, let me die as the son of Tsun-ju Tiungpei, facing the sword with such grace and honor as she has always shown.

Let me die as the son of Allyr, shedding no coward’s tears. Let the blood I shed spare the blood of my most beloved.

The men shoved Jian through a narrow doorway and into an ink-black room so that he stumbled and nearly fell. A heavy door slammed shut, sealing him off from the world, sealing his fate. His own breathing sounded harsh in his ears, a discordant final note in the song that had been his life. He stank of anger and despair. There came to his mind an image of three dead girls, bound to their thrones of prophecy by the same blackthorn vines which bound Sajani to her blood-soaked bed. He heard their rotting voices murmuring, as if they had lain in wait in the chambers of his heart.

“He thinks he knows fear,” the first sister had said, “but he has not yet heard the drums of war. He will.”

“He thinks he knows pain,” the second sister had answered, “but he has not yet seen the face of despair. He will. He will.”

“Aaaaaah,” the third sister rattled then and now. “Aaah aaah aaaahhhh.”

They were right, he thought. I knew nothing of fear or pain. The torments and terrors I had suffered then were mine alone. To fear for one’s own life, he realized, was as nothing compared to Tsali’gei’s. My mother. My son. My little son.

A cry of pain escaped his lips, as it had not then, waking echoes of mocking laughter from the shadows.

“Jian?”

The voice was weak, so weak it was almost lost in the shadows. Jian’s heart tripped and he fell to his knees in the darkness.

“Mother!” he cried, for surely it had been her voice. He shuffled forward in the darkness, widening his eyes as if by doing so he might drink in light by which to see. He found her soon enough by feel and by smell. The scent which had enveloped him in comfort and love now danced with a smell Jian knew only too well: the sharp tang of imminent death. “Mother,” he said again, softly this time as he bent to gather her to his chest. She hissed through her teeth a little as he pulled her close, as good as a scream of pain from any lesser woman.

“My boy,” she murmured against his shoulder as he sat on the cold stone floor, rocking her as once she had rocked him. “My sweet, handsome boy.”

“You will be okay, Mama,” he told her in a voice that cracked and wept.

“Do not lie to me,” she scolded, her voice faint as a shadow’s sigh. “Jian, listen to me. Listen…”

“Yes?” he asked, when she paused for breath.

And paused…

and paused…

for breath…

* * *

Long into the night Jian held Tiungpei close, cradling her body in his arms as her flesh cooled and stiffened, as the smell of death rose about them like the perfume of wicked flowers. He sang to her—songs he had learned from her in his childhood, songs he had learned from the other yellow Daechen, songs he had heard in the Twilight Lands. He sang with the voice of the sea, of the wind, he sang with the voice of a boy who was lost in the woods and trying to find his way home.

When his breath failed, he hummed to her.

When his heart failed he wept against her thin shoulder.

At last, at long last and far too soon, Jian removed his own outer robe and wrapped her body, doing so by feel, then laid her out as best he could with her hands folded over her chest. He wished for a silken shroud covered all in seed pearls. He wished for a red-robed priest with a shaven head, one who could pray to the sky for his mother’s peaceful journey to the Lonely Road and beyond. He wished to hear her voice just one… just one last time.

As he knelt beside his mother’s still body, Jian could hear a rushing as of distant thunder, feel the floor tremble beneath his fingertips as grief and fury rose up in a dark tide. Caught unawares he threw his head back, gasping for air as the storm found him, found its heart, and tore him all asunder. That part of him which had been human was ripped loose and flung screaming into the void. That greater portion of his soul—daeborn, fellborn—rose up and he rose with it, snarling his defiance.

The living rock screamed as he raked his claws across it, and the night’s face went pale with fear beneath the gaze of his daemon-spawn eyes. Jian had seen his father shift his shape many times, but had never been able to achieve the change himself.

Now I am truly an Issuq, he thought, and now I am truly alone. For surely they had killed Tsali’gei as well, and murdered their unborn babe.

“Motherrrr,” he cried, an animal’s howl, and gnashed his teeth with impatience. In allowing harm to befall Tiungpei, the emperor had broken their treaty, and unleashed the Sea King’s child.

* * *

Dawn broke over the land as it always would, dead mothers or no.

When they came for him, he was ready.

THIRTY - NINE

Dawn broke over the land like a new-forged sword. Sulema sat cross-legged across the hoti from Hannei Ja’Akari and allowed herself to be prepared for battle. Keoki the shadowmancer stood as her second. Rehaza Entanye stood for Hannei. As a horde of long-limbed and giggling children took turns beating the travel dust and sweat from her clothing, she sat still as a vash’ai at hunt and he sponged the stink from her body with perfumed manna water. He painted her face as best he could with colored dust and kohl so that her visage would resemble a cat’s snarl, kneaded her muscles until they were loose.

Neither she nor her opponent had a proper warrior’s braids, having been shorn of their pride by wicked outlanders. Keoki smiled slyly and insisted that he knew what to do with the orange hair that had now grown to a finger’s length along her scalp. Oils and combs were proffered up by Nanevi and the two of them had tugged and muttered at her head until she sported a short mane of wizard locks, not as crazed and untidy as her mother’s had been, but neat and fierce, adorned with precious beads of red salt clay.

Gazing into a polished brass mirror, Sulema thought it suited her better somehow than had the braids of a Ja’Akari. She made a face, and the warrior in the mirror snarled back at her. It would suffice.

The seconds pulled back, allowing the warriors time to meditate. Akamaia raised her voice to Illindra, beseeching guidance and deliverance for their people, and strength for their chosen savior. A handful of the refugees brought beaten metal hand drums and played them with intricate, repetitive tones that were soothing and arousing at the same time. Focusing on the way her heart beat in time to the drums, Sulema closed her waking eyes.

Focusing on her breathing, she matched it to the flow of the song as Aasah had taught her, letting sa and ka flow freely through her body and out into the world. Blood and bone, breath and heart, earth and sky, water and wind, she was one.

It was all, and it was enough.

Sulema opened her dreaming eyes, and beheld Shehannam. The Dreaming Lands, which before had seemed dim and strange, now felt cool and comforting and overfull of life. She did not miss the hard stare of Akari, but welcomed its absence, and sucked in a great lungful of misted air, grateful for this brief respite. Birds trilled from the otherworldly trees all around her and small animals scurried through the underbrush, unconcerned with her presence. She may have been the Dragon Queen of Atualon, but in this place she was nothing more than another two-legged interloper.

It was oddly reassuring.

In front of her, cutting through the dense woods, lay two distinct paths. Sulema took another deep breath and stilled her mind. Her mother had warned her about such tests.

One path was made of soft, golden sand and seemed to shine even in this drear land. At the beginning of it lay an elaborate headdress of lionsnake plumes, and a golden shamsi had been thrust into the loam. Sulema could see herself donning the headdress and drawing the shamsi, choosing the way of the warrior. It felt natural to her, and right. For the space of a breath she could not imagine choosing any other course.

Am I not Ja’Akari? she asked herself. A daughter of the dreamshifter, riding free under the sun? Ehuani, this is who I am. She took a step forward, but something fluttered and caught her eye.

The second path was straight and neat, cobbled with smooth dragonstone which glowed a warm welcome. The blue and gold robes of Sa Atu hung from a blackthorn bush, and the golden crown of a queen winked at her from among the midnight blooms. Sulema could feel herself slipping into the linen and cloth-of-gold and taking her rightful place on the golden throne of Atualon. This was her path, her legacy and birthright. For the space of a breath she could not imagine ever having considered any other course.

Am I not Sa Atu? she reasoned. Daughter of the dragon, champion of my people? Ehuani, this is who I am. And she took a step toward the second path…

Then stopped, shaking her head.

“There is more beauty in truth,” she said aloud, “than in the lies of the most beautiful dream.” Because the truth— and she knew it—was that the way of the warrior was no longer hers to take, any more than the robes of Sa Atu were hers to wear. “I am not a warrior of the Zeera, daughter of Hafsa Azeina,” she said again, addressing Shehannam itself. “Neither am I the Dragon Queen of Atualon, daughter of Wyvernus. I am myself, and nothing more.

“I am Sulema.”

A hunting horn sounded once, twice, three times through the darkling sky, and the paths to the left and right of her disappeared as a figure emerged from the woods. A magnificent beast of a woman clad in skins and furs, antlered and doe-eyed, with skin pale as sand and a wild tangle of hair that hung past her knees. Her smile was as sharp and predatory as those of the dark hounds that rose up from the shadows to surround her, and when she clapped her hands together the birds stopped singing.

“Maith-na thau,” she growled at Sulema, and the hounds growled with her. “Issa tir aulen.”

Thus saying, she drew her hands apart, and a third path sprang open through the trees, midway between where the other two had been. Before Sulema could blink, or say a word of thanks, the woman and her hounds disappeared.

A single, shaggy-haired white beast remained behind, a great hound with a bloody muzzle and one torn ear. It gazed upon her for a moment with sorrowful golden eyes before it, too, faded away.

“The Huntress,” Sulema breathed. Her mother had warned her away from the guardian of Shehannam, who did not suffer intruders to live. And yet, she had offered no harm.

Or had she?

Sulema walked forward, slowly, until she had reached the beginning of this new path. The fox-head staff of a dreamshifter lay upon the ground at her feet, and the Mask of Sajani nestled against it, winking up at her from a bed of soft grass.

“Neither Zeerani nor Atualonian, then,” she said, her voice a soft song in that hallowed place, “but both.” She took up the staff of a dreamshifter and it felt true, fitting her callused hand better than a warrior’s shamsi. She took up the Mask of Sajani and placed it against her face. It felt natural, settling more comfortably against her skin than a queen’s golden crown. A breeze sprang up, ruffling her fiery locks.

She raised her staff high, toward the woods from which she thought the Huntress was still watching. Recalling her mother’s words, she did not thank the forest guardian. Instead, she tugged a bead of red salt clay from her locked hair and let it fall to the ground.

“For you,” she called. “In payment of your… hospitality.”

She heard, or imagined that she did, peals of laughter from deep in the wood’s wild heart. All around her, louder and more lustily than they had before, the birds began to sing. She lifted a foot, set it firmly on the path before her—

—and stepped into the hoti.

Sulema looked down at herself. She was dressed as a warrior, and yet she was not. Her vest and leggings were white as river sand and embroidered all over with dragons of blue and gold. She wore a heavy headdress, and without looking knew it would be fashioned of gold, with the red and blue and ice-white plumes of a lionsnake matriarch.

In one hand she cradled the orb of the ne Atu. In the other she bore the fox-headed staff which proclaimed her a dreamshifter of the Zeerani prides. Upon her face, as before, she wore the Mask of Sajani.

As she peered through the eyes of the dragon, it seemed to Sulema that the opponent facing her across the ring was no longer Hannei. This was Kishah in truth, the blades of bloody vengeance. The shadows of death coursed eagerly about her feet as the hounds had followed the Huntress. Hannei Two-Blades was cloaked in death, muted and masked by it as well, her face a grim ruin of the laughing youth she once had been. There was no love for a sister in her eyes, no mirth, no forgiveness.

Sulema firmed her grip on the staff in her hands and took a warrior’s stance. Hannei drew her swords, crouched, and nodded at the Quarabalese oracle who stood just outside the circle. Akamaia thumped her staff down on the hard-packed earth once, twice, three times, as silence seized the Seared Lands.

“Begin.”

The drummers stroked and struck their metal drums, and the bong-pong-tangggg drew an echo from Sulema’s heart. From every heart among those gathered, she imagined, especially those whom an unkind fate had forced into opposition with a beloved. Bong-pong tanggggg. The dance was joined.

Sulema moved first, stepping cat-stance toward the woman who had been her sister, staff spinning before her in a blur of wood and feathers. A threat. Give ground before me, it warned, make way lest your skull be the first set into my throne.

Hannei’s blades answered in kind. Ware, they sang, lest your blood rain upon the ground at my feet, and you become nothing more than the latest of my enemies to die. Beware.

They were upon each other in a twirl, a whirl, a clash of souls, wood and steel, blood and bone. One of Hannei’s blades licked a shallow wound down Sulema’s left arm. Sulema’s staff connected with the back of Hannei’s knee, sending her staggering, face a mute snarl of pain and fury. Back and forth they stalked and spun, struck and countered, and all the while the drums sang, bong-bong-tanggggg, pong-pong tanggggg, bum-bum.

Then Sulema leapt back to avoid a vicious downswing from one of Hannei’s swords, and her opponent’s face wavered oddly before hers in the deadly heat until it seemed not to be the face of her former friend, not a Zeerani face at all, but the ruined mask and wrecked flesh of the Nightmare Man.

“Sulema,” he whispered to her as shadows sprang up all around them, hiding the combatants from view. “My daughter. My sister. My love… why do you fight me so?”

Sulema stopped, panting hard, hands gripping her staff so tightly the knuckles showed white.

“I know you,” she began.

“Yes,” he replied, waving her words away. “Why do you fight me so? There is no need for you to struggle, to die here on the shadowed road. These are not your people. Lay down your staff—give me the mask you wear, the burden you bear—and I swear to you, on Akari’s eyes I swear to you, I will allow you to return home to your people and live out your life as a Ja’Akari. A warrior riding free, under the sun. Is this not what you want, beloved? To be Ja’Akari once more?

“Is this not the darkest wish of your heart?”

He knew her well. Too well.

“It is,” she agreed. She would not lie, even to the Nightmare Man.

“Then give me the mask—”

“It is my wish,” she went on before he could finish, “but it is not my fate. I am no Ja’Akari.”

“Then you are nothing,” he snarled, raising his massive hammer high.

“I am not nothing,” she replied, and to her surprise she laughed in his face. “I am Sulema!”

Her words rang with a truth more powerful than any Sulema had ever known, and as the clarity of them sliced through her Sulema could feel bonds and bindings being sheared away. She laughed as a weight she had not known she carried was lifted from her, and she was filled, filled to bursting, with the knowledge of who and what she had always been.

“I am Sulema!”

With that she kicked a spray of sand and salt and bone into his face—the same dirty trick Hannei had used on her, back in the fighting pits of Min Yaarif—and before he could blink it away, she was upon him. Her staff arched high, swung round for a killing blow—

And stopped short, Jinchua’s laughing face carved atop her staff just touching his hideous mask.

“Begone,” she told him, and she blew into his face through the mouth of Sajani’s mask. “You have no power here.”

With a clap as of thunder the Nightmare Man disappeared, taking his shadows with him.

As the illusion faded Hannei swayed, stunned, and dropped her swords upon the ground. All around them people leapt to their feet, pointing and shouting. The air itself split, revealing a passage out of the Seared Lands, and into Shehannam.

It was a way out, but—

“I do not know the way,” Sulema whispered. She knew they had precious little time, but still Sulema hesitated. Though she had opened a doorway into the Dreaming Lands, she knew no more of that place than any child might. The realization struck her with the power of a physical blow. She clenched her teeth, air hissing out from behind the dragon’s mask as fresh pain stabbed through her shoulder. “Atu forgive me, I am no true dreamshifter. I do not know the way.”

The rent in the air shuddered and tore at her grasp as if she held a live lionsnake. As Sulema froze, caught between the fear of doing something and the terror of doing nothing, the ground began to heave beneath her feet. She cried out in alarm as she lost her footing, and then again in rising panic as the passage into Shehannam flickered, wavered—

And held. The light of Shehannam flared bright, silhouetting that dark figure that appeared now before her, cloaked and hooded in robes as silver as moonslight. Slender brown hands reached up to push the hood back, and a handsome young man grinned down at her as he stepped into the hoti, using a booted foot to break the circle.

He knows Zeerani ways, she thought, shocked. “Who are you?” she asked. Though he had about him the look of the Zeera, this stranger was dressed in clothes unlike any she had ever seen.

“Aaaaaah!” Hannei said, staring. “Aaaah!” and then in her broken voice whispered, “Aaaaru.”

The handsome man laughed, and an enormous glowing mantid peeked out from his mantle.

“Pip-pip peeee,” it fluted at her. “Pip-pip-peeee-oh!”

“Daru,” he agreed. “That was my name… I am Daru! I have come back at last.” He reached out both hands not to Sulema, but to Hannei. “I have come back to show you the way home.”

FORTY

The world was not as he remembered it.

For so long he had carried memory in his pocket like a talisman, and this felt like a small betrayal. The faces he thought should be familiar were sharper and more real than memory had painted them; uglier, meaner, more flawed. Colors were darker, duller. And Sulema—that was Sulema behind the Mask of Sajani, was it not?—was both less and greater than he remembered. Her hair was knotted in the short locks of a dreamshifter, and her golden eyes burned as hot as her mother’s. Everyone was shorter than they should have been. That made sense, he supposed with some amusement, as he had been much smaller the last time he had seen any of them.

And it stinks. He had become accustomed to living among people who bathed daily, to perfumes and lotions and unguents meant to mask the natural smells of human beings. This, he thought, will take some getting used to. He breathed through his mouth and tried not to be too obvious about it.

Among the faces that stared at him with varying degrees of suspicion, one was most changed and most familiar at once. Hannei. Had a thousand years separated them, instead of just a dozen, his heart would have known her anywhere. Hannei had been badly hurt, badly damaged, but their souls still sang the same sweet song. Their eyes met, and Daru smiled as gently as he was able, with dreams of murder clouding the edges of his vision a dark red.

I will find those who hurt you, he promised silently, every one of them, and I will lay their heads at your feet. Her eyes warmed as if she could hear his thought, and the corners of her mouth deepened just a little.

It was enough.

“Daru,” Sulema breathed, echoing her sword-sister’s whisper. Or were they sword-sisters still? Daru frowned at the hoti he had broken. Then he shrugged. It did not matter, and he had no time for riddles.

Time, he thought with fleeting amusement. A way-master who had run out of time. Doubtless Rothfaust would make a limerick of it, if the ways allowed their paths to cross again.

“Come,” he told them, “and hurry! You must hurry. I cannot hold this open forever, and—” He broke off. Best not tell them what was following, or how close it was, lest in a panic the people trample each other to death and bring his mission to a ruinous end.

Again.

“Just hurry,” he urged.

An ancient woman whose face was a mass of wrinkles peered most suspiciously up at him. Daru could not help but stare back. It had been so long since he had seen someone who had let their face age naturally that he had forgotten what it looked like.

Like parchment, he thought, with all the wisdom of a world written on it, then crumpled till the words are hidden. And so small!

“Who are you, young man,” she said sharply, “to tell your betters to hurry? Or think that we would follow you without—”

She stopped as a harsh wind picked up; a hot wind and dry. It smelled of sour musk and sweet rot and carried within it, faint but to those ears which have been trained to listen, the whispering voices of a thousand Araids. “Pip-pip PEEEEE!” Pakka shrieked, making him wince.

“If you do not come now,” Daru told the old woman in a voice meant to carry no farther than her ears, “you will all die, down to the last child.” He held the way open, held his breath, and prayed to Illindra that this time they would listen to him. He prayed to Ganuth and Chavelle and Beha’a, as well. They were not of this world, but they were gods, and as Rothfaust was fond of saying, it never hurt to hedge one’s bets.

The old woman opened her mouth to argue, but Hannei held up a hand for silence. The wind whispered again, and her eyes widened.

She hears it, Daru thought. She knows.

The Ja’Akari struck together the two dark swords she carried, drawing sparks, and pointed to the open door, scowling in such a way as to need no translation and brook no argument. Sulema glanced at her through the eyes of the dragon’s mask, hesitated for a moment, and then brought the butt end of a fox-head staff down on the ground, gently, as if she feared that in doing so she might cause the earth to shake again.

Oh, but you have, Daru thought, his heart heavy with grief for her pain. Oh, but you will.

“We will go now,” Sulema agreed. “Children and the elderly first, warriors and walkers bringing up the rear.”

“I will lead the way,” Daru insisted. “I can get you to Min Yaarif, but for the sake of all gods we must make haste.”

“I will go with you,” Sulema agreed, “and you will tell me everything.”

“Everything, Dreamshifter?” Daru could not help it; despite his growing sense of urgency, he laughed. “Perhaps not. But I will tell you what you need to know, if you can get these people you have found to move their blasted feet.” He laughed again. Tell you everything, indeed; how many lifetimes do you think we have? He was still chuckling as he entered the Way, leading them all from certain death and into deadly danger. Laughter was better than anger, after all, and they had no way of knowing how many times he had died for them already.

The Ways of Shehannam were more familiar to him now than the world which had birthed and nurtured and killed him a thousand times over. Lush and green, unnaturally so, filled with the songs of birds and the songs of things that pretended to be birds, and thick with webs of dreaming. A fennec fox white as starslight flitted just at the edge of his vision, allowing Daru to catch a glimpse of her but no more. It was Sulema’s kima’a, judging by the staff and furtive sideways glance the girl kept shooting him.

She does not know how foxlike she is becoming, he thought, or how like her mother. Daru did not need to ask after Hafsa Azeina, since the Web of Illindra had sung a dirge at her passing. Long ago Daru had mourned the loss of his mentor and almost-mother. The sight of her peering out from behind her daughter’s eyes brought him little more than a slight wistful pang.

“This way,” he said, taking the left-hand path just before a dying glade. He averted his eyes from the sight of old char, wrinkled his nose at the memory of death. His mission had failed here at least half a dozen times before he had learned the correct turning. “Keep to the path.”

“I have to pee,” an older woman muttered.

“Pee on the path, then,” Daru told her. “Or hold it. Or die. Your choice.”

She muttered darkly, but kept going.

“Are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?” Sulema asked finally. “You disappeared moons ago, not years. Yet now you step out of Shehannam like Zula Din in the stories, all grown up and acting as powerful as my mother.”

“Not as powerful as Dreamshifter,” he objected, old loyalties taking him by surprise. “Not in the same—”

“Daru,” she interrupted. “Guts and goatfuckery, stop prancing around like an oula-dancer and answer the damned question.”

Daru grinned. “You look like your mother and you sound like Istaza Ani. All of your worst nightmares have come true.”

Sulema’s face went white at that, so that her freckles stood out. Her eyes flashed and her mouth flattened in a hard line.

“Yes,” she said in a voice like flint and tinder, “my nightmares.” Hannei, who walked a little way behind them, made a soft and sorrowful sound.

Daru thought of all the times he had watched them die— and the few times he had killed either or both in an attempt to change the end of their story—then shook his head to dispel the images. “I am sorry,” he said at last. For everything, he added silently. I am so, so sorry.

“Pip pip,” Pakka chirruped, light flickering in sympathy.

“I was lost beneath Atukos, deep in the twisting little passageways,” he said. He could not tell them everything. To do so would doom this world. Still, he owed them what explanation he could give. “Khurra’an chased me into a hole as if I were a mouse, and I could not find my way out again.”

“Khurra’an?” Sulema asked, softly. “But why? He is gone,” she added, voice breaking on that last word. “Gone down the Lonely Road with my mother.”

“I am not sure why he chased me,” Daru answered. “At the time I thought he wanted me dead because I was weak. That is what he told me, but the ways of the vash’ai are stranger than we ever knew. They are an ancient race, much older than our own, with minds and magic I do not think we can ever understand.”

Hannei grunted at that.

“They have their own sorcerers,” Sulema said, nodding. “Kahanna. One of them has befriended Ani, though she claims they are not bonded.”

“Ani,” he breathed, but shook his head. “That is another path for another time.” He gathered himself and continued.

“I was lost for quite a long time. Days, I think, though I have no way of knowing. I found water here and there, and Pakka brought me rats.” He petted his little friend, who preened at the attention. “And bugs, which taste nasty no matter where you are. I found dungeons, and catacombs full of dead Baidun Daiel.”

“They were not dead,” Sulema said. “They—” but she shuddered and would say no more.

“Catacombs filled with sleeping Baidun Daiel, then, thousands of them. I hate to think what trouble they could be, if they might be roused, but I suppose we will have to deal with that later.”

“I suppose we will.” Sulema’s voice was dry.

“I was lost, and hurt, and probably would have died, but Loremaster Rothfaust found me. He took me… far away. For a long time.”

Hannei made a rude noise, and Sulema rolled her eyes at him. “‘He took me far away for a long time,’” she mocked gently. “Daru, that is not an explanation, nor even the sad shadow of one, and you know it.”

“I cannot tell you much,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “It is a long story, and I am… constrained.” Even now, the medallion at his chest burned in warning. “I can tell you that I have been, ah, an apprentice of sorts.”

“You are an apprentice? So Loremaster Rothfaust is… a dreamshifter?”

Daru kicked a rock from the path. It bounced into the underbrush, and he wished he had not done so. It was dangerous to change anything at all in the Ways. Even something so small and trivial as moving a stone from your path might prove the undoing of a thousand carefully laid plans.

“Not a dreamshifter,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “And I have not been an apprentice for a long time.” Many lifetimes, in fact.

“What are you, then? Are you a dreamshifter? You have no staff.”

“Not a dreamshifter. Yet I am stronger than you know.” He smiled at the daughter of his mentor and felt his heart break for her pain over and over again. He had spent three lifetimes of men trying to find a way back to her, to Hannei, to this moment, only to have their lives slip through his fingers time and again. Perhaps this time, this Way, he might succeed where so many times he had failed them. But she would understand none of this, even if he was allowed to tell her—and explaining the Ways to the inhabitants of a dragon-infested world was strictly forbidden. Not even Daru, who was somewhat infamous among the students of the Academ for rule-breaking, dared flout that law. So he said only, “I am a waymaster.”

And I hope I do not have to kill you again.

“I have no idea what that means.”

“No,” he agreed. “So you will just have to trust me for now. Ah!” They had come to another clearing, wider and more wholesome than the last. Birds sang there—real birds, not nightmares pretending to be birds—and the trees nearby were laden with sweet-smelling fruit. “Here—we should rest here.”

“Is it safe?” Sulema asked.

Daru shook his head. “You know better,” he chided as gently as he could. “Nowhen is safe for you, Sulema, or for those who love you. You bring trouble wherever you go.”

“It is only trouble if you get caught,” she insisted, and stuck out her tongue.

You have no idea, he thought wryly.

Then Hannei laughed, a terrible tortured sound, and Daru surprised himself by laughing with them. Just like that, though they were in a place and time that had never existed, could never exist, and though he had already come this way a handful of times, leading them all to a horrible end, Daru felt as if he had finally come home.