“As you wish, Mother.” Amalua bowed, deeply and with no hint of her usual teasing, and then she was gone, a streak of blue and green, leaving gold-dust footprints for those who would follow.
Etana shook her head, smiling inside her heart. “Come,” she whispered to her charges. It was as loud as a shout after the long, slow silence of their journey. “Come quick. We are nearly there. Food waits for us, and baths, and bed.”
“And profits!” one of the healers shot back, eliciting a chorus of soft chuckles.
“And warm bodies!”
“Your bodies will be warming the bellies of a bintshi if you do not hurry your soft asses along,” she scolded, though her heart was not in it. For she was at the end of the road—this road, at any rate—and Etana dearly longed for the delights of the flesh that would be her reward. Bath, and food, and bed…
Paleha.
* * *
“Sweet as manna wine, bitter as black salt.”
These were the words the poet Saouda had used to define love, and described perfectly this final meeting between old friends. Etana stepped down the cool and shallow steps and onto the red sand floor, smiling in delight and irony at the grandeur of Paleha’s rooms.
“You have done well for yourself.”
The stout figure in the middle of the room turned slowly, slowly, absorbing the shock of this unexpected visitor so that by the time she faced Etana only the whites of her eyes showed her surprise. Tiny bare feet peeked from beneath robes as red as the sand floor, and a large seer’s bag hung at her waist. Dragon’s-eye lanterns hung all about the room. Tiny hands stretched toward her in greeting and supplication.
“Etana,” she whispered, as if horrified. Eyes round and pale as golden moons glistened with unshed tears. “On this day, of all days, why did you have to come to Mawai?”
It stung. “Our new queen sent us with her greetings, and to see whether those of you in the far settlements needed Saodan’s assistance after the recent earthquakes. But if our presence is unwelcome…” She turned to leave. After all they had been through together, this was the greeting she had earned?
“No, no, you do not understand. How could you?” Paleha drew nearer, so near that the warrior could smell book dust and salt dust and the woman’s own musk. “How could you know?” she continued. “But it is cruel, too cruel even for this world.”
“You still speak in riddles.” Etana snorted but allowed her hand to be taken. Paleha’s grip was not as strong or as sure as she remembered. She pulled away, frowning. “Are you not the least bit happy to see me?”
Tears spilled down Paleha’s round cheeks, like stars fallen from grace.
“A moon ago, I would have been happy to see you. Had you arrived yesterday, I would have fallen at your feet and kissed them. But today?” She shook her head as tears welled and flowed, welled and flowed. “Today it breaks my heart. Come, I will show you.”
She turned and Etana followed. Silence and dread stretched between them like the darkness between candles.
* * *
Paleha had a shrine to Illindra, as was usual and proper for those who had answered the call to priesthood. Hers was set in an alcove nearly large enough to be considered a room, floored with soft red sand denoting her high caste, tiled in red salt and black glass and beaten gold. The room was bare save for a pedestal of black glass lit from within, and upon this pedestal rested an Illindrist’s threefold loom.
Etana shuddered at the sight of it. She had never understood the seer’s craft and, like many warriors, feared magic more than she feared death. Death she understood— predators, raiders, monsters, these things she knew how to fight—but how, she had wondered before, could she fight that which she could not see, or smell, or touch?
The Illindrist reached toward the closest petal of the loom. Gems set like stars in her dark skin glittered in the dim light.
“This is was,” she said, which explained nothing. “You see how the web is full and shining? This is our path, this is Quarabala in the long ago, when we were young and strong, and the world was good.” Indeed, the web was shining and full, a breathtaking tapestry spun of silver and starslight. Tiny beads of magic hung suspended here and there, constellations which spoke volumes to one such as Paleha, though to Etana they were just a pretty design.
“I remember being young and strong,” she tried to joke, “but I do not remember a time when the world was good.”
“Do you not?” A quick smile, quickly hidden, and Etana felt her face heat with a girlish blush.
Ah, she thought, she does remember.
“This world was before your lifetime, or mine, or even that of our grandmothers’ grandmothers,” she explained. “By ‘we’ I mean ‘we the people,’ the Quarabalese. Before the—the Night of Sorrows—” here her voice faltered, “—before the Sundering, even. In the long ago.”
“I… see.” Etana shrugged. “But what does this have to do with us, now? The past is the past, dead and gone. It is dust.” She slapped her thigh, raising a small cloud of red salt dust for emphasis. “The past cannot touch us now.”
“Can it not?” Paleha shook her head. “You know better. See this? This strand right here.” She reached out and pointed at a single strand of the web, which glowed silverish in response. “This strand is is—”
“Your hand,” Etana whispered in horror. Only now did she see that the fingers which had once been so deft and strong were gnarled as manna roots, thickened at the joints, twisting back upon themselves. Her own hand twitched in sympathy. “What happened?”
“What happened?” Paleha smiled wryly. “What happened is that against all odds I survived my foolish youth. As have you. I notice that you, yourself, favor the left knee.”
Etana stared for a moment and then stuck out her tongue. They shared a girls’ laugh, which echoed oddly beautiful among the golden tiles and spider’s web. For a moment in time the world was, indeed, good.
Paleha looked at her with eyes of sorrow, of regret.
“There is no time,” she whispered.
“Did you not once tell me that now is all time?” Etana said. “If now is all time, we have all the time in the world.”
“Still the impertinent brat,” Paleha said, and Etana smiled at the words. “You are right, of course, but even so we are bound to the web. For us, in the here and now, the road has come to an end.” Paleha gestured to the middle petal of the threefold loom. This web was a sad shadow of the first, a very few irresolute strands clinging to the edge of the wooden structure. It was still lovely, but where the first web was lively and bright and strong, this one held the translucent beauty of a dying child.
“You asked how then affects now, which is—forgive me—a stupid question. Then is now, in more ways than one. See here…” She pointed a knotted finger, and yet again one strand was illuminated.
Etana pursed her lips. “That is the same strand as in the first web.”
“Yes, and no,” Paleha said. “Same, not same, then, now— it is all one. And look—”
Etana gasped as Paleha rotated the loom’s third petal to the fore. This web was tattered and dead, as if some monstrous thing had torn through it with malicious intent.
At the bottom of the tray, curled upon herself like a skeletal brown fist, lay the spider who had been Paleha’s companion since she was a child. O’oraids were known to live exactly as long as their human seers, and Etana’s heart stopped cold at the sight.
“Is this…” Her voice trailed off.
“This is will be.”
Etana’s breath caught in her throat. “Did the quakes…”
“She died before the quakes,” Paleha said in a rough voice. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “Just before. I fear that Sajani’s stirrings—you know this is the cause of these disturbances, do not pretend as if it is not so—have rent the defenses we have spent so long building. That Araids are coming with their foul priests and their hungry reavers. It is over, for us.”
Silence h
ung between them, dull as the dead magic in this third web. Somewhere in that silence, Etana came to understand that they had no moments left to waste.
She was pleased to note that her hand did not shake. After all, she reminded herself, Death is a warrior’s only true lover.
“There are no tomorrows,” Paleha continued, “not for us, at any rate. This is why I wish—” Her voice broke.
Etana turned to Paleha and gathered the small, warm, soft woman into a tight hug.
“I am glad I have come,” she whispered into the fluff of graying hair. “I am glad.”
Soft arms crept around her waist and squeezed back. “Well, you are a warrior,” Paleha said finally, voice muffled in Etana’s robes. “And warriors are known to be mad.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” Etana asked.
“There is one thing we can do. One thing we must do. Though I wished you would not come, I dreamed that you would, and so I made ready.” She reached into the seer’s bag and drew forth a package wrapped in precious spidersilk, blue as the daytime sky, green as the grass in stories.
“Paleha!” Etana gasped, shocked by the sight of the heavy bundle.
“It is necessary, and it is time.” Paleha thrust the bundle at Etana, who took it unwillingly, and turned back to her trifold loom. “See here—” She rotated the three petals so they lined up perfectly, one behind the other—is, was, and will be. The strand she had caused to illuminate in each web shone like a beacon, and Etana imagined she could hear, very far away, the first notes of a travelers’ song.
She knew a map when she saw one. “This is us, here in Mawai!” she exclaimed, pointing to a tiny globe of magesilver. Her finger traveled further down the illuminated strand, not quite touching it. “This is the Huanoha settlement, which was our last stop before this one. Here is Epaha, and A’apela, and…” She described the path with a wave. “There, that big one, that can be none other than—”
“Saodan,” Paleha agreed. “The City of Queens.”
“I have never been,” Etana said in a hushed voice.
“Nor I.” Paleha sounded as wistful. “We should have gone. It would have been—”
“—glorious.” Etana shook her head, clearing away the cobwebs of regret. “You mean for us to take this…” She clutched the bundle to her breast as if it were a girl child. “…to Saodan, and then to the lands beyond?” The shining path continued past the City of Queens, to some mysterious destination beyond the limits of her imagination.
“No,” Paleha said. “Not us. I am old, and fat, and slow.” She held up a hand to forestall an argument. “Ah, now, it is true,” she scolded. “You are, well, you are not so old as I, but you are still slow.”
Etana grimaced, and a twinge in her knee seemed to mock her.
“For you and me, beloved, there are no tomorrows.” Paleha tapped the edge of the third loom, and the dead web trembled. “But your daughter—”
“Our daughter,” Etana whispered, and was rewarded with a smile so brilliant that Akari Sun Dragon himself might have fallen in love.
“Our daughter,” the Illindrist allowed, “if she succeeds at this, if she lives, might weave a new web of tomorrows for our people.”
“The last road.” Etana stared at the web, at the fragile illuminated path, scarce daring to breathe lest she shatter the delicate strands.
“Our last hope.”
* * *
Amalua fidgeted irritably as Etana again checked the straps that bound the precious bundle to her back.
“They are fine, First Runner. You fuss so much one would think I had a child strapped to my body. I am good! Ow!” She shrugged the lingering hands away, laughing good-naturedly.
“You have water enough?” Paleha fretted.
“Illindrist,” Amalua replied. “I have one mother, thank you, and she is quite enough. I hardly need two of you fussing at me.” She smiled to take the sting from her words. “This is not my first run, you know.”
Paleha ignored this. “You remember the map? You know the way?”
Amalua rolled her eyes. “What is in this pack, anyway?” She shrugged at the straps that ran across her shoulders, across her back and chest, and beneath her breasts. “Salt bricks? It is so heavy.”
“Not so heavy that my daughter cannot carry it.” Etana’s voice was thick with hidden emotion, and with pride. Amalua peered at her, suspicious at last.
“Why am I leaving before the caravan… and before you?” she asked. “What is so important that you would have me run all the way to Saodan, by myself, and without stopping?” She stopped her fidgeting and stared straight into her mother’s eyes. “Answer me true, First Runner. What is this burden I carry?”
Paleha smiled. “It is—”
“The Mask of Sajani.” Etana ignored the Illindrist’s angry gasp. “She carries the hope of our people, Paleha. She has the right to know.”
Amalua’s eyes went round as the moons. Etana took advantage of her daughter’s shock to grab her by the shoulders and kiss her soundly on each cheek. “Run well, my sweet. A mother’s blessings upon you.”
“And a daughter’s upon you,” Amalua answered. Her mouth trembled, but her voice remained steady. “Will I never see you again?”
Etana would not end this day with a lie.
“We are runners. Swift as the sunlight.”
“Silent as the night,” Amalua answered. She dropped to the ground, kneeling, and kissed her mother’s feet. Tears fell fat and warm upon her skin; a powerful magic. Then she leapt to her feet and was gone, the gold dust on her soles and the blue-green glow of her runner’s camouflage painting a mural of courage against the night.
“Run well!” Etana called, breaking tradition and drawing a few disapproving stares from those few passers-by who had risen before the sun was fully down.
At her side Paleha sighed heavily. “I wish—”
The still air was rent by a shriek of despair.
“Reavers!” a man screamed, somewhere high above them. “Reav—” The scream cut short, horribly so. Etana gripped her spear and set her jaw.
“There is no more time,” Paleha mourned. “There is no hope. We cannot stop them.”
More screams, nearer, as people woke to death and horror.
“We cannot stop them,” Etana answered, voice grim. “But we can slow them down.”
Paleha clutched at her robes. “I am glad you are here,” she said. Etana turned and looked down, surprised to see her friend smiling through the tears. “Despite everything, I am glad.”
Etana loosed a breath that she had been holding in for a lifetime. “How long has it been,” she said by way of reply, “since we have faced an enemy together?” With that she smiled, and that smile lifted her spirit up, up through the city, through the webs of rope and magic and dreams that for so long had held this place safe, up over the seared flesh of the world and into the sky, where it startled a late-hunting nighthawk.
“Too long,” Paleha answered. Gnarled fingers tightened on her Illindrist’s staff. “Shall we join the dance, my love?”
“Yes,” Etana breathed, “but first—” She drew Paleha close and bent her face down. Their mouths met, light as a hummingbird kissing a flower.
Was was gone, and will be would never come, not for them.
But they had now, and it was beautiful.
ONE
“The ancestors will show us the way.”
Night fell sweet and mild. A cool breeze, carrying the faint notes of jasmine and dragonmint, caressed Maika’s upturned face. The wind had been wild once, a howling, killing thing. Quarabalese engineers had caught it in their wind-traps, caressed and beat it into submission with their tunnels and cunning blades until it was a lesser, gentler version of its true self.
It was not, she thought, unlike the process by which an unruly girl might be bent to the will of her people and molded to serve their needs.
Maika hesitated at the bottom step, savoring the moment, and let the tamed breeze la
ve the nervous sweat from her brow. She urged her features to solemnity as befit the serious nature of this outing—a young runner had nearly died to bring her a message from the outer bastions—but the yet-untamed girl at her core wanted to run and shout with delight. Surrounded as she was by an entourage of counselors, guards and wise women, still she walked at their head rather than in their midst. As princess and heir to the Kentakuyan throne, she had spent her waking hours trapped in a prison of well-meaning shoulders and backs. On this day, having experienced her first moons-blood and having been deemed ready by the oracles, she walked at their fore as queen.
It seemed a silly and arbitrary measure to Maika—as if a woman’s blood had anything to do with governance!—but this thought she kept to herself. It would not do to give the counselors any reason to stuff her back into the protective cocoon, just as she might break free.
It was a short trek across a wide road, between the brightly painted doors and sculpture gardens of Saodan’s elite families, and the worst danger—that Maika might stub a slippered toe upon a cobblestone—did not come to pass, but it felt like an adventure all the same. She wished that they had timed this visit during the morning or evening hours, so that she might have seen more citizens going about their mysterious daily lives, but chided herself for this selfish thought. It was not as if the Iponui had chosen to arrive at midday, after all.
Midday. Maika paused at the wide red gates before the healers’ tunnels and shuddered at the thought of her own skin exposed to raw sunlight. Her life—and the lives of her people as far back as the history books remembered—had been lived far underground, safe from the wrath of Akari Sun Dragon. This runner must have been driven insane by the sun, as the rumors said, to risk death by immolation. Maika hoped it was sun-sickness. Because if the messenger was not mad, the message she bore must be dreadful.
The gates were hauled open, and Maika stepped through them. A healer’s apprentice in a red and white apron bowed low, eyes cast down and away from her magnificence, then spun on her heels and led them along a narrow corridor that smelled of bitter herbs and sorrow.
The runner they had come to see had first been taken to the priests for emergency healing. She had been “burnt to salt,” as the saying went, so lost to exhaustion and dehydration that she had not been expected to survive the night. Yet the Iponui were known to be as tough as manna roots, and this one seemed to be no exception. She had lived and was aware enough to insist on delivering her message to the queen.
The Seared Lands Page 2