But Sulema had grown up Ja’Akari, and knew a false thought when it came to her.
“Will your master Aasah be in danger?” she asked, more to take her mind off her own grief than out of real concern. She had studied under the man but had never really known him, and had not particularly liked what she knew.
Yaela’s mouth twisted as if she had bitten something bitter. “Aasah,” she said, “can take care of himself. As can your lover.”
I do not give a dead goat’s ass what happens to Mattu Halfmask, Sulema thought fiercely, but she knew that to be another lie. “My former lover,” she said aloud, “can go piss on an itch bush, for all I care.”
“Your former lover,” Yaela mocked, “is the one who told Aasah of Bashaba’s plans, and fortunately for both of us, my master saw fit to tell me.”
Sulema slumped, weary of it all. Her head hurt, her arm hurt, and her heart hurt most of all, but she would not admit any of this to a woman she hardly knew. Yaela had saved her life, but she was hardly a sword-sister. Sulema shook the weakness from her mind and body as a horse shed sand after a long roll.
“Men,” she declared, “whether they are lovers or liars, sorcerers or kings, are all a pain in the ass.” Then she asked, “Do you have water in that pack of yours? Or food?”
“Neither,” Yaela said with a shrug, “but I have salt to buy both for our journey, and there is a good watering hole not far from here.” She turned and walked away from the twisted stones, and Sulema followed.
The air smelled sweet, if Sulema herself did not. It had been long since she had bathed. Her skin itched, her scalp itched where the hair was growing back, and her teeth felt sticky and abominable.
“How big is this watering hole? Big enough to bathe in?”
Yaela glanced over her shoulder, a look that said idiot.
“Bathe in a watering hole? As if this were an Atualonian pleasure hunt in the spring sunshine.” She rolled her eyes. “What do you know of the Jehannim, Ja’Akari?”
“Not much,” Sulema admitted. “I know the winds blow so hot and dry it can be dangerous, and I know that wyverns nest in the heights. Other than that…” She shrugged. “We Zeeranim do not venture often into the mountains. There are too many slavers prowling between the pridelands and the peaks, and there is no desire in our hearts to travel through them, much less into Quarabala. The Seared Lands are not fit for woman or beast, so there is no reason for us to ride west at all.”
“No,” Yaela agreed after a long pause, “I suppose there is not.”
“I do not mean to offend.”
“You cannot offend. You speak in ignorance.”
Sulema opened her mouth to argue, but in that moment, she was too weary and heartsore to bother.
* * *
The watering hole was indeed big enough to bathe in—big enough for a fist of warriors to bathe in all at once. Sulema took her cue from Yaela’s alert stance—and her own senses, which sang in her blood like shofarot along the riverbanks—and kept her clothes on. She crouched on her heels at the water’s edge and scooped handfuls of sweet, cool water to her mouth.
It was good. Good beyond taste, or smell, or even the sensation of cold liquid in her parched mouth. It was good in that she was free, with the wide world about her, road dust on her feet, and a song in her heart. It was—
It was a song, she realized, a sweet slow canticle like the earth rousing to the rain after a long dry winter, or a warrior rousing from her sickbed long after she had been given up for dead. Water dribbled between Sulema’s fingers back into the still pond. She stared, fascinated by the ripples and whorls that disturbed the water’s surface, dancing to the aria that wound through her sa and ka, black-thorned tendrils delicate and deadly tearing her to pieces with its loveliness. The ripples spread from the heart of the pond outward and small pebbles capered at the water’s edge as the ground beneath her feet heaved and shuddered.
Earthquake, Sulema thought, and a cold frisson of terror dribbled between the song’s lovely notes to chill her heart. Sajani! Sajani stirs!
The song stopped abruptly, and with it the trembling of the earth, but not Sulema’s fear. All the little games of her life— the struggle between her desire to be Ja’Akari and her dread of dreamshifting, the tangled knot of anger and grief that was all she had left of her mother, love and lust, even her imprisonment and escape—were no more important than a game of aklashi in the face of this absolute threat. Sajani was waking; she could hear the dragon’s thoughts in the stillness of the earth, could feel Akari’s anticipation in the warmth of the air.
“Ja’Akari?” Yaela sounded breathless; as good as a shriek of terror from any other woman. “Was that—”
Nearby, a woman screamed.
Sulema froze, a new terror rising in her heart as she remembered every frightening story ever told to her about Jehannim.
“Yaela,” it was her turn to ask, “what was—”
“Ssst!” Yaela hissed. She stood poised on the balls of her feet. Her face was calm, but her slit pupils had gone wide, giving her a feral look that set Sulema’s nerves even more on edge. The scream was answered by another call to the north, and a third to the north-northwest. Neither of these sounded remotely human.
“Mymyc,” Yaela said calmly as if she had not just declared both of their lives forfeit. She pivoted with such grace and beauty that it took Sulema’s breath away, tucked her chin in to her chest, and ran.
“Escaped a dungeon to be eaten by mymyc,” she muttered bitterly, leaping awkwardly to her feet. “Unless the dragon wakes and kills us all first. Story of my life.”
Where there is life, there is yet hope, whispered a voice cold with the winds of the Lonely Road. Run, Kithren, Run!
The woman screamed again. Though Sulema knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was a greater predator’s mimicry, it still sounded like a woman, which made it somehow even more horrible. Sulema dropped her horror, the dragonsong enchantment, the sick-weak feeling of having been imprisoned away from the sun, and ran.
* * *
Yaela was a woman of Quarabala. Though Sulema had heard little of those Seared Lands, sun-cursed and deadly, she knew this: to be aboveground at first light was to die a horrible death. The Quarabalese people were known, therefore, for their ability to outrun even the dawn.
Knowing and knowing were two very different things.
Though less time passed than it took to drop a handful of sand, already Sulema caught only the barest glimpse of the shadowmancer’s apprentice as she ran down the hilly path. Swift as the wind she raced, seeming unhindered by the heavy bag slung over her shoulder or the pale sand that rose behind her in soft little puffs.
She does not have to outrun the mymyc, after all, Sulema thought. She just has to outrun me.
Even as she followed, Sulema could hear the predators calling behind her, yelping and cackling and screaming. Sometimes one of their voices would mimic a human’s scream, or a horse’s whinny, or the low fluting call of a wyvern. Mymyc, it was said, had no song of their own, and so had to steal the voices of those they killed.
And mymyc would kill anything. Not even wyverns or bintshi were safe from a pack of the creatures. Judging from the sounds closing in at her heels, they would soon be singing with the voice of a Ja’Akari who was too stupid to stay in the desert.
It is only trouble if you get caught… Sulema thought, as her legs screamed and her lungs burned …and it seems I am well and truly caught. If I get out of this alive, I am going to run all the way to Aish Kalumm, and never look back.
She had always wanted to see mymyc. It was said that, from a distance, they appeared as beautiful black horses. Only when a traveler was too close might she discover that they were fanged and clawed as any greater predator, and that they were covered in iridescent black scales. As if knowing her thoughts, claws scrabbled behind her, and a low coughing laugh spurred Sulema to even greater speed.
Guts and goatfuckery, she thought in a rising panic, I a
m about to see what a mymyc looks like on the inside.
The path took a steep dip and turn to the right and ended among twisted stones that reminded her of the Bones of Eth. Sulema dodged into the small circle as a hare might take cover under a tangle of blackthorn, knowing the shelter was insufficient but clinging desperately to hope. As she passed between the stones, shadows roiled up from the ground and engulfed her. She yelped, and the sound was swallowed by the darkness.
“Stop.”
It was Yaela’s voice, soft and low, and it seemed to come from every direction in the dark.
“Stop, little warrior. Stay still.”
Sulema skidded to a halt, arms windmilling, afraid that she was going to bash her head into one of the rocks before the mymyc could eat her. Or before she could catch fire and die screaming in the Seared Lands—or die in the mountains, or in the hold of a slaver’s ship, or—
Guts and goatfuckery, she thought again as she caught her balance. The entire world competes to see which horror can kill me first.
The shadows roiled into a sinuous solid shape that coiled itself protectively around her and the shadowmancer’s apprentice. Yaela was dancing, arms outflung and feet pounding the sand, a soft little tattoo that seduced the heart and ensnared the soul. Hips swiveling, feet pounding, head thrown back and face suffused in joy, she was lost in her magic in a way Sulema could only envy.
That, she thought, is the soul of ehuani.
The shadows heeded Yaela’s commands. They joined into a serpentine whole and reared over the women’s heads, hissing, red eyes glowing, smokelike plumes rising in a crest above a lionsnake made of shadows and fear. It was huge, impossibly so, many times bigger than the old grandmother bitch that had almost killed her, and Sulema found herself paralyzed with fear as it loomed above her.
The mymyc felt no such terror.
Sulema could see them through the shadow-snake. A pack of five or more, they were indeed horselike in appearance, but a second glance was all it took to dispel the illusion. Bigger than horses and more thickly muscled, their iridescent black hides shone in the sunlight. They moved with a quick, reptilian grace, fanged mouths open and tongues lolling as they called to one another in borrowed voices, and lizardlike tails whipped behind them as they swarmed down the path, intent on eating these humans who had dared invade their territory. No illusory snake, it seemed, would deny them their rightful prey.
Sulema grabbed a fist-sized rock and held it high. I am no easy meat, she reminded herself. It is a good day to die. She knew that the lionsnake, frightening though it looked, was shadow and illusion; it could not—
The lionsnake struck, snapping the lead mymyc up in its jaws. It thrashed its head back and forth like a vash’ai with a pig. The predator squealed, a terrible grating sound that made Sulema drop her rock and clap both hands over her ears, and then its neck broke with an audible snap and it went limp. The illusory reptile tossed its head back, unhinged its jaw, and swallowed the mymyc whole before whipping back around and striking at the rest of the pack.
The remaining mymyc spun about and fled, wailing, into the foothills.
The lionsnake twisted around and regarded the two women who were neatly trapped inside its coils. Shadow-claws curled into the sand, and its shadow-plume stood out in a stiff mane as it swayed in the air above them, preparing to strike.
The sight froze Sulema’s heart. It did not seem to her that the magical beast was under Yaela’s control, not by half.
“Enough,” Yaela said. She brought her dance to an end, one leg pointed before her in almost a fighter’s pose, arms raised above her head, wrists poised in the air so gracefully she looked to Sulema like a poem come to life.
The lionsnake opened its mouth, venom sacs bulging, and hissed.
“Enough!” Yaela cried, and her voice was a thunder that rolled across the low hills, echoing in the world of Shehannam, as well. The lionsnake bowed its head in submission and faded away like black mist.
I can hear echoes of the Dreaming Lands while I am awake, Sulema thought. That is interesting. Terrifying, but interesting. She did not mention this to the shadowmancer’s apprentice, however. To Yaela she said only, “I thought that your shadowmancy was illusion.”
“It is real if you believe it so,” Yaela said. She brought her arms down and swayed where she stood, as if exhausted beyond caring.
“But it—it ate that mymyc.”
“The mymyc believed it was real.” Yaela smiled, an unpleasant little smile that had Sulema taking half a step back. “Remember this, Ja’Akari, if you think to betray me, or break your vow.”
“Ja’Akari do not break their vows.” Sulema scowled so hard it hurt.
“Everyone breaks their vows, eventually,” Yaela said. “Even you. Even I—” And then those brilliant jade eyes went dull and blank and she fell to the ground, senseless.
Sulema regarded the still form at her feet for a long moment. She thought of earthquakes, and lionsnakes, of kings and consorts, of a world delicate as eggshell and a dragon singing herself awake. It is a good day to die, she thought, but let me not die here in these cursed mountains, or among the sung bones on the road to Quarabala. Let me die Ja’Akari, shoulder to shoulder with my sword-sisters, protecting my people until my last breath. I want to go home. I want to go home!
From the deepest well of dark wishes in her heart, Sajani’s voice whispered forth, I want to go home. Let me wake. Let me live. Let me go, Dreamsinger!
Sulema stamped the voice from her heart as she might stamp out a campfire that had grown too wild.
I want to go home. Her wish, or the dragon’s? Sulema decided that it did not matter. She had given her word to Yaela; but what beauty remained in honor, in ehuani, when all the beauty of the world was about to end?
“I wonder,” she said at last to the unconscious Yaela, “if you have any weapons in that bag of yours, sorcerer.” Her voice was strange in her ears, as if she, like the mymyc, had stolen it from another. It was, she thought, the voice of a woman who could lie, or steal, or break a vow. The voice of a woman who could murder another in cold blood, and run from the scene of her dishonor, run without stopping, without looking back.
All the way to the Zeera.
TEN
I want to go home.
Ismai froze as he was, crouched beside the river of the dead, cupped hands halfway to his mouth. It had happened again—one moment he had been trapped inside the Lich King, fighting to get out, and the next moment he was himself again.
More or less.
The earth had trembled, and then the river had spoken to him with Sulema’s voice, sure as he lived—
Well, perhaps lived was not the word he wanted. Ismai plunged both hands into the turgid waters, grasping, groping, as if his lost friend were a fish and he could pull her out alive. It seemed to him that if he could find her, she could in turn find him, and they might indeed go home.
Home. I want to go home.
“What are you doing?”
It was the warrior Sudduth, tall and lissome, she who had been so feared and celebrated in life that upon her death, he had bound her to him—
Not I, Ismai reminded himself. That was Kal ne Mur. I am Ismai, son of Nurati. I am Ismai!
“I thought I heard the voice of… a friend,” he said. “Singing.” He rose, feeling more than a little foolish, and tried to wipe his wet hands on his touar only to remember that he was wearing the Lich King’s armor. He grimaced and settled for shaking the drops from his fingertips. “It was only the river, I guess.”
“Perhaps not, your Arrogance. The Ghana Kalmut sometimes sings with the voices of the dead, and the nearly dead. Perhaps your—friend—is in mortal danger.” Sudduth did not look as if she particularly cared. She knelt in the black mud, cradling something carefully against her belly.
“What are you doing?” Ismai said, echoing her question of moments before. The woman narrowed her milk-dead eyes at him, pursed her lips, and shrugged.
�
�I found some cacao beans in my tomb. I thought to wash them and see if they were still edible.” She opened her hands, revealing five smallish, oddly shaped dark beans. Shriveled things they were, as dead as Sudduth herself had been just days before. “Not enough to make chocolate, but I thought perhaps a drink…”
“Chocolate? What is that?” Ismai wrinkled his nose at the sight of the dead things. “They do not look good to eat or drink. Maybe you should just throw them away.”
I am talking to a dead woman, he realized, and sighed. How strange his life had become that this was normal. His head itched and he raised a hand to scratch at it, wondering whether Kal ne Mur had ever had to deal with head lice.
Sudduth froze. Her dead eyes widened, and she stared upon him with horror.
“What is chocolate?” she asked, voice rising as if he had uttered blasphemy. “Chocolate is everything! Chocolate is life.” She turned and called out, “Naara!”
“Yes?” Naara—Charon—was there, flush and whole as any healthy young girl just risen from a long night’s sleep. Ismai resisted the urge to run. Daughter, he had called her, Naar-Ahnet, and so his heart named her. He had considered her a friend, and perhaps she was… but she was also a monster.
“You claim this… this boy… must be our king, and yet he does not know anything. The fool does not even know what chocolate is.” Scorn dripped from her words as the river water had dripped from Ismai’s hands. “Explain!”
“Oh.” Naara sighed. “There is no chocolate, not anymore.”
“What.” Sudduth’s milk eyes, Ismai noted with some alarm, began to glow red at the very center, where a pupil should be. “What did you say.” She cradled the seeds to her belly, as if to shield them from such blasphemy.
The Seared Lands Page 9