The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  The apprentice rapped on a white-painted door, which swung inward to reveal a thickly bandaged woman reclining on a healer’s cot. Her limbs were long and thin, her glow-painted skin raw and blistered, her head wrapped in layers of fine gauze soaked in ointments and herbs so that everything above her nose was covered. They had said that she was fortunate not to have lost her eyes. Maika winced in sympathy. What burden could be so important, she wondered, that this woman would give her eyes to bear it?

  The runner lay with one arm protectively curled about a bundle as large as her own head, wrapped in blue-green spidersilk as fine as the robes of state. Maika ignored Counselorwoman Haoki’s hissed warning and hurried forward as the stricken warrior tried and failed to raise a mug to her cracked and bleeding lips.

  “Here,” she said as she steadied the woman’s hands. The mug was cool and the water smelled strongly of herbs. “Let me help you.”

  “My thanks,” the runner whispered in a voice as cracked and blistered as her skin. She drank but a little, and then pushed the mug away, settling back into the pillows with an exhausted sigh. “Are you another healer? I do not recognize your voice.”

  “No…” Maika began a bit awkwardly.

  “You have the honor of addressing your queen, Kentakuyan a’o Maika i Kaka’ahuana li’i,” Counselorwoman Lehaila informed the runner.

  The runner attempted to rise. Precious water sloshed over the mug’s rim, wetting her hands and Maika’s. “Your Magnificence!” she gasped. “Forgive me—”

  “Nonsense,” Maika protested, trying to press the woman back down again without causing further pain. Despite the splendor of her new robes of state, she did not feel particularly magnificent. Next to this heroic runner, she felt positively dull. “Nonsense. Lie back now, at your ease, and tell me why you have come.”

  Awkward, she thought, and she scolded herself, but the runner lay back with a sigh.

  “Magnificence,” the runner said. “Forgive me.”

  “Forgive you?”

  “Forgive me,” she repeated, “for I come bearing terrible news, and a heavy burden. Our outer strongholds and settlements have fallen. The Araids have mounted an attack, and we could not… we could not withstand them.” Red-tinged tears slipped from beneath the gauze, leaving tracks in the runner’s streaked glow paint. “I ran as fast as I could, but I—” Her voice broke, and her breathing became ragged. “I fear I have come too late. You must flee, sweet queen, you and all our people must leave the Seared Lands. We must go now. I will show you the way. I know the way, I have seen it—”

  The runner would have attempted to rise again, but a healer stepped forward and pressed her back, scowling at the queen.

  “She needs rest,” the healer snapped.

  “I need to tell you—” the runner gasped. “I need to give you—” She groped for the bundle at her side, fretting and pushing at it until Maika reached across her body to pick it up. Whatever it was, it was heavy.

  “Who sent you?” Counselorman Kekeo asked. “Who sends us these words?”

  “My mother,” the runner replied in a broken voice. Now that she had passed her burden on to the queen, she seemed to shrink in upon herself, to grow weak and thin before their eyes. “My mother, First Runner Etana, and Illindrist Paleha of Mawai. You must leave now,” she insisted, as another wash of tears streamed down her face. “There is no time for talk. I know the way; I will lead you—”

  “Nonsense.” The counselorman frowned, staring at the runner’s bound face as if he sought the truth in her eyes. “We cannot just cease our daily lives and run, as greenlanders might. Even if we were to convince all our people to leave the Seared Lands, and ushered them all to the Edge, what then? It is a three-day run from Min Yahtamu at the very edge of the Edge to Min Yaarif in the green lands, and that is assuming a strong young runner with a shadowmancer to assist. What of our children, our infirm, our elders? How could we possibly cross the shadowed road? There are not enough shadowmancers to shield our people from the dreadful heat of Akari’s wrath; many of the people would die at first sunrise. Would you sacrifice many, many lives in an attempt to save a few, based on the words of one sun-sick Iponui? It is impossible. Impossible.”

  Once again Maika’s counselors talked over her head as if she were a child, playing with her dolls while they made decisions for her. She only half listened, however, as she tugged loose the cords that held the bundle together and began to unwind the silk. The wrappings fell away to reveal a magnificence of gemstones and precious metals, and she choked on an indrawn breath that was nearly a sob. She held, in her too-young and insufficiently powerful hands, the dreaded treasure of her people—the Mask of Sajani. If they had sent this to her, it could mean only one thing.

  The Araids had breached their outer defenses. The spiders and their horrid priests would be moving upon Saodan— Quarabala would fall.

  Maika’s heart sank.

  “Impossible,” Kekeo said. “Even if what this runner says is true, and even if she has been shown the way, none can expect our people to simply abandon our cities and take to this unknown path. Few runners, even with the aid of shadowmancers, are strong enough to reach Min Yaarif, and that is the closest greenlander city. What of the elders, the children?”

  “Nevertheless…” Lehaila stroked her face, and her eyes were troubled. “First Runner Etana is known to many of us here, and she would not send such news lightly. If, indeed, this is the counsel of Illindrist Paleha, as well, we must consider taking some action to defend ourselves. We should gather the council and take these matters into serious deliberation.”

  Kekeo nodded. “Yes, yes, we must convene—”

  Maika stepped forward, and held up the mask, letting the light play upon the faceted gems. Instantly, the counselors fell silent.

  She took a deep breath and held it, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, when she breathed the dry hot air, she had set the last of her childhood aside.

  “First Runner Etana and Illindrist Paleha have sent us the Mask of Sajani,” she said. “The Mask of Sajani. They send word that the outer defenses are failing, that we need to leave or we will all die, and this is exactly what we are going to do.” She kept her voice steady, and the heavy mask in her hands, though her heart fluttered wildly as if it wished to fly away without her.

  “Your Magnificence,” Kekeo protested, “we cannot simply—”

  “Mana’ule o ka enna i ka pau,” Maika snapped. Aasah himself had taught her how to speak with force, and it worked. The small crowd fell silent. “I invoke my authority as queen.” Her heart pounded. Would they listen to her? Could one turn overnight from girl to queen merely by bleeding between her legs? It seemed utterly ridiculous.

  The counselors and chiefs went to their knees, though some moved less quickly than others. Kekeo was slowest of them all.

  “What is your will, Magnificence?” he asked, as if the words tasted bitter.

  “The people of Saodan—of all the Quarabala,” she amended, “must leave immediately. It is time for us to abandon the Seared Lands and seek a new home for our people.” Even as she said the words, Maika felt the enormity of them falling from her lips. “We must work quickly, and save as many people as we can.” As many people as we can—but not all. The unspoken words hung heavy in the air between them.

  Please stop me, she wanted to beg the assembled leaders. Tell me I am wrong, send me to bed with a story, let me wake up to find this has all been a terrible dream.

  The mask in her hands seemed to mock her. What kind of queen leads her people into certain death? it might have asked.

  “Leave our homes?” someone said harshly. “Leave our homes and go where? How are we to cross the Seared Lands, and the Jehannim, as well? There are not enough shadowmancers to protect us, and we are not all runners. We do not know the way!”

  Maika closed her eyes. She knew the way by heart, though never in her worst dreams had she imagined that she, herself, might one day take it. The trader
s’ road ran, like the blood vessels in a human body, from the life-giving red salt mines deep in the heart of Quarabala, up through the tunnels and rifts which had shielded the people from Akari’s wrath for a millennia, across the deadly shadowed roads and the equally hazardous Jehannim, and finally into the hostile city of Min Yaarif. A trained runner or salt merchant might take this road once in a lifetime, with only the dream of wealth and a life in the green lands urging her feet to fly. For an entire people to attempt such a journey was utter madness.

  And their only hope.

  “There is only one choice open to us. We must take the traders’ route to the Edge, and from there over the Jehannim and into Min Yaarif. The ancestors will show us the way,” Maika answered, with more assurance than she felt. It was the right thing to say. “Our Iponui will guide us to the green lands, and they in turn will be guided by the ancestors.”

  Lehaila nodded slowly, glancing at her fellow counselors from the corners of her eyes as if gauging their reactions. “The ancestors will show us the way to a new home.”

  “A new home.” Maika smiled and nodded, holding up the Mask of Sajani for all to see. “A better home. We will see the sun rise upon our people at last.”

  A murmur of assent rose among those assembled, though no few of her counselors exchanged doubtful looks. Maika, clutching the dreadful mask so tightly her knuckles had gone pale, took a deep breath, looking at each face, trying to commit them all to memory.

  These are my people, she thought, more precious to me than my own life. I pray to the ancestors that I have not just condemned them all to death.

  TWO

  Akari Sun Dragon soared high above Atualon, bathing the city in golden splendor so that the walls of the meanest hovel sparkled like salt, and colored windows winked like jewels. Children laughed as they chased one another in the narrow alleys between buildings, heedless of the shadows that nipped at their heels; bakers piled high their rounds of soft white bread, never guessing at the source of heat for their ovens. Sunlight poured as sticky sweet as spilled mead across the land and people laughed as they lapped it up, bawling and dumb as golden calves fattened for the slaughter.

  Yet Atukos rose frowning above the city. The Dragon King’s fortress, named for the living mountain from which it had been carved, crouched brooding and cold. Call as he might, the sun dragon in all his glory could not warm the walls as Atukos mourned her dead king.

  Neither could he reach the king’s daughter.

  She who had once been a Ja’Akari warrior, who had ridden and fought and loved beneath the gold-scaled belly, lay stiff as a corpse on the cold dead stone even as her father the king had lain, broken and defeated. Her fox-head staff had been broken and burned, her sword fed to the forge; even her warrior’s braids had been shorn away. Sulema lingered in the dark, sinking into the bed of lies her elders had laid down, and waited to die as voices rolled over her like thunder.

  “Is there nothing more you can do?”

  “She will not eat. She will not drink. She will not wake— if, indeed, she is truly asleep. No, Meissati, there is nothing more I can do for her.”

  “Just as well, I suppose. If she cannot properly wield atulfah, and if she is no virgin—”

  “She is known to have bedded Mattu Halfmask.” This last was whispered, as if the speaker did not wish to be overheard.

  “Then she is of no use to us.”

  “Shall I…?”

  “No!” The reply was quick. “No, she is bound to the fortress. Spilling her blood here would be… unfortunate. No, if the girl is willing herself to die, let her do so. There is another who can take her place. A bit young, but—”

  An indrawn breath. “Abomination!”

  “For you and me, perhaps. For a king, who can say? The powerful are not bound by the same rules as lesser folks. Would you tell Pythos Ka Atu that he cannot do as he wishes?”

  “No, not I.”

  “Nor I.” There was a long pause. “Pythos wishes to be rid of this one, quietly and without bloodshed. So. Have this cell bricked up and forget about her. Go back to your family and die in bed as a physician should, with a skin of wine in one hand and a woman in the other.”

  “It is a pity. Such a beautiful girl.”

  “Fire is beautiful, too,” the first voice reminded. “Let us snuff this one out before it burns us all.”

  “As you say,” the physician said, his voice becoming softer as they departed. “Oh, speaking of the false king’s get, do you know whether they have found Leviathus, or…” Sandals scuffed against the stone floor, shuffled away, and left her in silence.

  A rat or some other poor creature skittered across the floor. Closer it crept, closer, till its whiskers brushed Sulema’s calf. The little beast let out a thin squeak and fled.

  Some time later, the stonemasons came.

  The harsh light of torches and scrape of stone against stone, the smells of men and smoke and mortar, assaulted the outer shell of she who had been a warrior, but even these things could not reach her spirit. What little of the world as was left to her—torchlight and lantern light, the sighs and cries of other prisoners, the faint redolence of bread and old water and urine—retreated from her senses as a stone wall was raised into place.

  Eventually the rough voices and noise of work ceased, and she was left finally, blessedly, alone.

  In the dark.

  To die.

  After an age had come and gone, long after Akari had abandoned his attempts to rouse his love, after dinners were eaten and dishes washed, after lullabies and lovemaking and the last oil lamp burned low, Sulema opened her eyes and regarded the long, slow night. Though her eyes could not pierce the gloom, she knew that her stare was met and answered by the cold golden eyes of the portrait her father had commissioned, the one that showed her as a princess of Atualon, lovely and serene.

  Those painted eyes had watched impassive as her mother and father had been slaughtered, and as she had been forced to confess to their murders. Beneath the painting’s surface, concealed by the artist’s magic, lay another image, this one truer to its subject. That hidden Sulema was a warrior, a true daughter of the Zeera.

  “Life is pain,” her mother had said. “Only death comes easy.”

  “But I am Ja’Akari, am I not?” Sulema asked, though it was now and forever too late to seek her mother’s advice. “A warrior is no easy meat. They expect me to die here, quiet and neat, and make their lives easier.”

  She smiled in the dark.

  “Fuck that,” she said.

  THREE

  The wind was born of a long-dead king, singing forgotten songs. His name, which once had rolled across these lands as thunder, was lost to memory, robes and jewels and fine horses long gone to dust and bone and the tattered pages of history books.

  He sang, and the song was still the same, however, pouring down from the heart of Akari Sun Dragon as a blessing, welling up from the dreams of Sajani Earth Dragon, sweet as well water.

  The song swirled deep in his heart, this beating borrowed heart of a Zeerani youth. It swept around and through him, rousing him to life. Through him also rose the hordes of living dead, those who in life had foolishly loved their liege more than they loved their souls, and who had pledged to him fealty beyond the Lonely Road. They stirred now in his mind: loyal monsters, doom’s companions, his to command. All he had to do was stretch forth his hand and whisper words of command and intent.

  And yet…

  Long he had lingered in the dark of the moonsless cavern, presiding over an endless feast of souls, ever hungering and thirsting and lusting for life. This life was his, now—this flesh, these desires, the hot blood racing through the veins of one willingly come. A vessel filled and overwhelmed by the dark passions of the dark lord. A new life, a new world to command, his for the taking, ripe and sweet as a low-hanging fig.

  And yet…

  The Lich King sat cross-legged by the banks of Ghana Kalmut, wearing the body of Ismai, son of Nurat
i. The river’s song accompanied his own, and in it he heard the slow, sweet refrain of death, of ease, songs of hope’s end and a surcease of sorrow. For an age, and an age after that, he had bidden his time—

  Life was his once again.

  He was not sure he wanted it.

  Perhaps, he thought, my time has passed. Might he not, after all, choose instead to slip free of this human body as one might shed a robe, to leave it crumpled and abandoned at the river’s edge and decide instead to set foot upon the Lonely Road? For surely the road had been singing to him, too, of passings-on and passings-over and adventure in strange new worlds. This world was dying, and all the dead knew it. Sajani Earth Dragon stirred in her sleep even now, restless with the need to wake, to fly, to break free and seek solace in her mate’s embrace.

  The world would not survive the dragon’s ascendance any more than this broken body would survive his abandonment. Why choose this—this dying earth, this dying body—when he, king of kings, could instead elect to master death? Surely that was the only realm he had yet to conquer.

  His blood boiled at the thought.

  Even as he sang, as he called the wind and the rain and the sand, as he called death to life, the song mocked him. He had journeyed across the face of the world, had stretched forth his bare hands and bade Atukos rise from the living stone, had soothed Sajani to sleep and roused Akari to smite his enemies. He had bound the warrior mages of the Baidun Daiel and thrown back the fell sorceries of his enemies. He had known the world and every living thing in it by name, and in knowing, he had owned it.

  Now, sitting at his ease beside the untroubled waters, he heard the strains of a strange new song, smelled the dust of an unfamiliar road—