After reflection, she would usually sweep the floors, help gather fruit from the forest, clear the graves of leaves, or feed the chickens. There were no servants on Feather Island, so the scholars shared the menial duties, with the young and strong-bodied taking the most. Strange that Elder Vara had asked her to come to the repository, where the most important documents were kept.
When she had arrived on Feather Island, she had taken to her room and lain there for days. She had not eaten a morsel or spoken a word. They had stripped her of her weapons in Ginura, so she had torn herself apart within. All she had wanted was to mourn her dream until she breathed no more.
It was Elder Vara who had shaken a semblance of life back into her. When she had grown weak with hunger, he had coaxed her into the sunshine. He had shown her flowers she had never seen. The next day, he had prepared a meal for her, and she had not wanted to disappoint him by leaving it untouched.
Now the other scholars called her the Ghost of Vane Hall. She could eat and work and read like the rest of them, but her gaze was always in a world where Susa still lived.
Tané stepped off the walkway and made for the repository. Only the elders were usually permitted to enter it. As she approached its steps, Feather Island rumbled. She dropped to the ground and covered her head. As the earthshake rattled the hermitage, she hissed through her teeth in sudden pain.
The knot in her side was a knifepoint. Cold pain—the bite of ice against bare skin, freezeburn in her innards. Tears jolted into her eyes as waves of agony pitched through her.
She must have dipped out of consciousness. A gentle voice called her back. “Tané.” Paper-dry hands took her arms. “Scholar Tané, can you speak?”
Yes, she tried to say, but nothing came out.
The earthshake had stopped. The pain had not. Elder Vara scooped her into his bony arms. It chagrined her to be lifted like a child, but the pain was more than she could stand.
He took her into the courtyard behind the repository and set her on a stone bench beside the fishpond. A kettle waited at its edge.
“I was going to take you for a walk on the cliffs today,” he said, “but I see now that you need to rest. Another time.” He poured tea for them both. “Are you in pain?”
Her rib cage felt packed with ice. “An old injury. It is nothing, Elder Vara.” Her voice was husky. “These earthshakes come so often now.”
“Yes. It is as if the world wants to change its shape, like the dragons of old.”
She thought of her conversations with the great Nayimathun. As she tried to steady her breathing, Elder Vara took a seat beside her.
“I am afraid of earthshakes,” he confessed. “When I still lived in Seiiki, my mother and I would huddle in our little house in Basai when the ground trembled, and we would tell each other stories to keep our minds off it.”
Tané tried to smile. “I do not remember if my mother did the same.”
As she spoke, the ground shook again.
“Well,” Elder Vara said, “perhaps I could tell you one instead. In keeping with tradition.”
“Of course.”
He handed her a steaming cup. Tané accepted it in silence.
“In the time before the Great Sorrow, a fire-breather flew to the Empire of the Twelve Lakes and ripped the pearl from the throat of the Spring Dragon, she who brings flowers and soft rains. The winged demons like nothing more than to greedily amass treasure, and no treasure is worth more than a dragon pearl. Though she was badly wounded, the Spring Dragon forbade anyone from pursuing the thief for fear they might also be hurt—but a girl decided she would go. She was twelve years old, small and quick, and so light on her feet that her brothers called her Little Shadow-girl.
“As the Spring Dragon mourned for her pearl, a most unnatural winter fell over the land. Though the cold burned her skin and she had no shoes, the Little Shadow-girl walked to the mountain where the fire-breather had buried its hoard. While the beast was away hunting, she stole into its cave and took back the pearl of the Spring Dragon.”
It would have been a heavy treasure to bear. The smallest dragon pearl was as big as a human skull.
“The fire-breather returned just as she had laid hands upon the pearl. Enraged, it snapped its jaws at the thief who had dared enter its lair and tore a piece of flesh from her thigh. The girl dived into the river, and the current whisked her away from the cave. She escaped with the pearl—but when she pulled herself out of the water, she could find nobody who would stitch her wound, for the blood made people fear that she had the red sickness.”
Tané watched Elder Vara through tendrils of steam. “What happened to her?”
“She died at the feet of the Spring Dragon. And as the flowers bloomed once more, and the sun thawed the snow, the Spring Dragon declared that the river the Little Shadow-girl had swum in would be named in her honor, for the child had reunited her with the pearl that was her heart. It is said that her ghost wanders its banks, protecting travelers.”
Never had Tané heard a tale of such bravery from an ordinary person.
“There are some who find the story sad. Others who find it to be a beautiful example of self-sacrifice,” Elder Vara said.
Another shock went through the ground, and inside Tané something called out in answer. She tried to keep the pain from her face, but Elder Vara was too sharp of eye.
“Tané,” he said, “may I see this old injury?”
Tané lifted her tunic just enough for him to see the scar. In the daylight, it looked more prominent than usual.
“May I?” Elder Vara asked. When she nodded, he touched it with one finger and frowned. “There is a swelling underneath.”
It was hard as a pebble. “My teacher said it happened when I was a child,” Tané said. “Before I came to the Houses of Learning.”
“You never saw a doctor, then, to see if something could be done?”
She shook her head and covered the scar.
“I think we should open your side, Tané,” Elder Vara said decisively. “Let me send for the Seiikinese doctor who attends us. Most growths of this sort are harmless, but occasionally they can eat away at the body from within. We would not want you to die needlessly, child, like the Little Shadow-girl.”
“She did not die needlessly,” Tané said, her gaze blank. “With her dying breath, she restored the joy of a dragon and, in doing so, restored the world. Is there a more honorable thing to do with a life?”
39
South
A caravan of forty souls was weaving through the desert. In the faint light of sundown, the sand glittered.
Bestriding a camel, Eadaz uq-Nāra watched the sky deepen to red. Her skin had tanned to a deep brown, and her hair, cut to the shoulders, was covered by a white pargh.
The caravan she had joined at the Place of Doves was now in the northern reaches of the Burlah—the stretch of desert that rolled toward Rumelabar. The Burlah was the domain of the Nuram tribes. The caravan had already crossed paths with some of their merchants, who had shared their supplies and warned that wyrms had been venturing beyond the mountains, doubtless emboldened by rumors that another High Western had been sighted in the East.
Ead had stopped at the Buried City on her way to Rauca. The Dreadmount, birthplace of wyrmkind, had been as terrible as she remembered it, jutting like a broken sword into the sky. Once or twice, as she walked between crumbled pillars, she had glimpsed the distant flicker of wings at its summit. Wyverns flocking to their cradle of life.
In the shadow of the mountain were the remains of the once-great city of Gulthaga. What little was left on the surface belied the structure beneath. Somewhere inside, Jannart utt Zeedeur had met his end in the pursuit of knowledge.
Ead had considered following him, to see if she could find out more about this Long-Haired Star, the comet that balanced the world. She had scoured the ruins for the route he had used to burrow under the petrified ash. After hours of searching, she had been close to giving up when she saw a
tunnel, barely wide enough to crawl in. It was choked by a rockfall.
There would be little point in exploring. After all, she knew no Gulthaganian—but Truyde’s prophecy was a worm in her ear.
She had thought her return to the South would breathe life back into her. Indeed, her first step into the Desert of the Unquiet Dream had felt like a rebirth. Having left Valour safe in the Harmur Pass, she trekked alone through the sands to Rauca. Seeing the city again restored her strength, but it was soon lashed away by the winds that blazed off the Burlah.
Her skin had forgotten the touch of the desert. All she was now was another dusty traveler, and her memory was a mirage. Some days she almost believed that she had never worn fine silks and jewels in the court of the Western queen. That she had never been Ead Duryan.
A scorpion made a dash past her camel. The other travelers were singing to pass the time. Ead listened in silence. It had been a lifetime since she had heard anyone sing in Ersyri.
A songbird perched in a cypress tree,
And, lonesome, called out for a mate to wed.
“Dance, dance,” it sang, “on the dunes tonight.
“Come, come, my love, and we’ll both take flight.”
Rumelabar was still so far away. It would take weeks for the caravan to conquer the Burlah in winter, when the bitter nights could kill as swiftly as the sun. She wondered whether Chassar had received word of her departure from Inys, which would have diplomatic ramifications for the Ersyr.
“We will make for the Nuram camp,” the caravan-master called. “A storm is coming.”
The message was passed down the line. Ead held the reins tighter in frustration. She had no time to waste while a storm blew out of the Burlah.
“Eadaz.”
She turned in her saddle. Another camel had fallen into step with hers. Ragab was a grizzled postrider, headed south with a bag of mail.
“A sandstorm,” he said, his deep voice weary. “I think this journey will never end.”
Ead enjoyed riding with Ragab, who was full of interesting stories from his travels and claimed to have made the crossing nearly a hundred times. He had survived an attack by a basilisk on his village, which had killed his family, blinded him in one eye, and scarred him all over. The other travelers looked at him with pity.
They looked at Ead with pity, too. She had heard them whisper that she was a wandering spirit in the body of a woman, trapped between worlds. Only Ragab had dared to come close.
“I had forgotten how harsh the Burlah is,” Ead said. “How desolate.”
“Have you crossed it before?”
“Twice.”
“When you have made the crossing as many times as I have, you will see beauty in that desolation. Though of all our deserts in the Ersyr,” he said, “the one I like best will always be the Desert of the Unquiet Dream. My favorite story, as a child, was how it received its name.”
“That is a very sad tale.”
“To me, it is beautiful. A tale of love.”
Ead reached for her saddle flask. “It has been a long time since I heard it.” She removed the stopper. “Perhaps you might tell it to me?”
“If you wish,” Ragab said. “We have some way to go.”
She let Ragab sip from her flask before she drank herself. He cleared his throat.
“Once there was a king, beloved by his people. He ruled from a blueglass palace in Rauca. His bride, the Butterfly Queen, who he had loved more than anything in the world, had died young, and he grieved for her pitifully. His officials ruled in his stead while he fell into a prison of his own making, surrounded by wealth he despised. No jewels or coins could buy him the woman he had lost. And so he became known as the Melancholy King.
“One night, he rose from his bed for the first time in a year to behold the red moon. When he looked down from his window—why, he could not believe his eyes. There was his queen, in the palace gardens, dressed in the same clothes she had worn on the day he wed her, calling to him to join her on the sands. Her eyes were laughing, and she held the rose he had given her when they first met. Thinking himself in a dream, the king walked from the palace, through the city, and into the desert—without food or water, without a robe, without even his shoes. He walked and walked, following the shadow in the distance. Even as the cold snaked over his skin, even as he grew weak with thirst and ghouls stalked his footsteps, he told himself, I am only dreaming. I am only dreaming. He walked after his love, knowing he would reach her, and that he would spend one more night with her—just one more, in his dream, at least—before he woke in his bed alone.”
Ead remembered the next part of the story. A shiver coursed through her.
“Of course,” Ragab said, “the Melancholy King was not dreaming at all, but following a mirage. The desert had played a trick on him. He died there, and his bones were lost to the sand. And the desert had its name.” He patted his camel when it snorted. “Love and fear do strange things to our souls. The dreams they bring, those dreams that leave us drenched in salt water and gasping for breath as if we might die—those, we call unquiet dreams. And only the scent of a rose can avert them.”
Gooseflesh freckled Ead as she remembered another rose, tucked behind a pillow.
The caravan arrived at the camp just as the sandstorm crested the horizon. The travelers were hurried into a central tent, where Ead sat down with Ragab on the cushions, and the Nuram, who were fond of guests, shared their cheese and salted bread. They also passed around a water-pipe, which Ead turned down. Ragab, however, was all too pleased to take it.
“None of us will sleep well tonight.” He blew out a scented plume. “Once the storm is over, we should reach Gaudaya Oasis in three days, by my reckoning. Then the long road lies ahead of us.”
Ead gazed at the moon.
“How long do these storms last?” she asked Ragab.
Ragab shook his head. “Hard to say. It could be minutes or an hour, or more.”
Ead halved a round of flatbread with her fingers as a Nuram woman poured a sweet pink tea for them both. Even the desert conspired against her. She burned to leave the caravan and ride for as long as it took to reach Chassar—but she was not the Melancholy King. Fear would not make her take leave of her senses. She was not proud enough to think she could cross the Burlah alone.
While the other travelers listened to the story of the Blueglass Thief of Drayasta, she beat the sand from her clothes and chewed on a soft twig to cleanse her teeth, then found a place to sleep behind a drape.
The Nuram would often sleep under the stars, but now, with a sandstorm roaring overhead, they shut themselves into their tents. Gradually, the nomads and their guests began to retire, and the oil lamps were doused.
Ead covered herself with a woven blanket. Darkness enwrapped her, and she dreamed herself back to Sabran, flesh aching in remembrance of her touch. Then the Mother had mercy, and she slipped into a dreamless sleep.
A thump woke her.
Her eyes snapped open. The tent shuddered around her, but beneath the tumult, she could hear something outside. Something sure-footed. She slid a dagger from her pack and stepped into the desert night.
Sand raged through the camp. Ead held her pargh over her mouth. When she saw the silhouette, she flicked her dagger up, sure it was a wyverling—but then it stepped, in all its glory, through the dust of the Burlah.
She smiled.
Parspa was the last known hawiz. White but for their bronze-tipped wings, the birds could grow as large as wyverns, which had bred with them to create the cockatrice. Chassar, who had a fondness for birds, had found Parspa when she was still in her egg and brought her to the Priory. Now she answered only to him. Ead collected her belongings and climbed onto the bird, and soon they left the camp behind.
They were fleeing from the rising sun. Ead knew they were getting closer when salt cedar fingered through the sand, and then, all at once, they were over the Domain of Lasia.
Her birthplace was a land of red deserts a
nd rugged peaks, of hidden caves and thundering waterfalls, of golden beaches foamed by surf from the Halassa Sea. For the most part, it was a dry country, like the Ersyr—but vast rivers flowed through Lasia, and greenery cleaved to them. Looking at the plains below her, Ead felt the homesickness fade at last. No matter how much of the world she saw, she would always believe this was its most beautiful place.
Soon Parspa was soaring over the ruins of Yikala. Ead and Jondu had gone scavenging there many times as children, eager for trinkets from the days of the Mother.
Parspa banked toward the Lasian Basin. It was this vast and ancient forest, blooded by the River Minara, that cloaked the Priory. By the time the sun had risen, Parspa was above its trees, her shadow coasting over the close-knit canopy.
The bird finally descended, touching down in one of the few clearings in the forest. Ead slid off her back.
“Thank you, my friend,” she said in Selinyi. “I know the way from here.”
Parspa took off without a sound.
Ead strode between the trees, feeling as small as one of their leaves. Strangler fig clambered up their trunks. Her exhausted feet recalled the way, even if her mind had mislaid it. The mouth of the cave was somewhere close, guarded by powerful wardings, hidden in the thickest foliage. It would take her deep into the ground, to the labyrinth of secret halls.
A whisper in her blood. She turned. A woman stood in a pool of sunlight, her belly great with child.
“Nairuj,” Ead said.
“Eadaz,” the woman answered. “Welcome home.”
Light splintered through arched lattice windows. Ead became aware that she was in bed, her head supported by silk cushions. The soles of her feet were on fire after so many days on the road.
A muffled roar made her sit up. Breathing hard, she groped for a weapon.
“Eadaz.” Callused hands cupped hers, startling her. “Eadaz, be still.”
She stared at the bearded face before her. Dark eyes that turned up at the corners, like hers.
“Chassar,” she whispered. “Chassar. Is this—?”
The Priory of the Orange Tree Page 42