A thrill of hot fear licked Leviathus’s bones as the thing in the back of the cave unfurled itself. Scaled hide scraped audibly against stone as it loomed above them, and a carrion stench filled the air as it flared its nostrils and sucked in their scent.
“Hass ish lurren hir?” it hissed, head weaving back and forth even as behind them their pursuers laughed and scrabbled at the cave entrance.
Then he realized that the wyvern had spoken.
And that he could understand it.
“Lurren hir,” he hissed back, the dragonkin words strange and uncomfortable in his soft human mouth. “Lurraith ish. Felsithoth ish kharrahen.” Humans are here. Two of us. We are being hunted by mymyc.
The wyvern thrust its head toward him, paying no mind to the fire. Its tongue flicked out again, licking the air between them, and a curious cinnamon-musk scent filled the tight space.
“Drach-alar,” it named him. Friend to dragonkin.
Drach-alar, Azhorus agreed in the back of his mind. The king of leviathans was far away and concerned with other matters—eating, sleeping, and showing off for a beguiling young female—but the warmth of his affection washed over Leviathus like the ocean’s caress.
The sound of falling rocks came from the cave’s mouth. Leviathus spun, grabbing Yaela and thrusting her behind him—toward the wyvern, whether that was a good idea or not. A mymyc thrust its head and shoulders through the entrance. It screamed in victory, and then screamed again in an entirely different pitch as it saw the wyvern behind its intended prey. The beast’s forward push became a desperate backward scramble as it sought to escape.
The wyvern narrowed its great luminous eyes and hummed low in its throat.
“Kharnoch essa,” it growled. “Shukos, drach-alar.” Good hunting. My thanks, friend. With that it pushed Leviathus and Yaela out of its way, sending them tumbling, and dragged itself across the cave floor, extinguishing their infant fire. Leviathus would not have believed that such an enormous creature would have been able to fit through that small passageway, but fit it did, squeezing and pushing like a snake through a too-small hole, scrabbling with wing and claw, its barbed tail thrashing at the last so that the humans had to dance out of the way.
Then it was gone hunting, bugling its delight at the prospect of mymyc for its dinner.
Something touched his leg in the darkness. Leviathus yelped, and then gave a shaky laugh when he realized it was just Yaela. He allowed her to help him to his feet and they stood shoulder to shoulder, pressed together against the shadow world.
“Well, king’s son,” she said at last, “that was a surprise. Have I died and gotten lost in the Dreaming Lands, or did you just speak to a wyvern and command it to go chase the mymyc?”
“I spoke with the wyvern in its own tongue,” Leviathus admitted in an awed voice. “I suppose it has something to do with my bond to Azhorus. I assure you, however, that I commanded it to do nothing. Well is it said, ‘Do not cast your fishing net at a dragon.’ I would say the same of dragonkin. Their minds are… vast.”
Far away, in the darkling sea, Azhorus laughed.
Yaela’s hand found his in the dark and squeezed. “I will build another fire,” she announced, “and then you are going to explain to me how it is that Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu, magic-deaf son of the late king, just happens to be able to speak to wyverns.”
* * *
Yaela’s fire danced, sending shadows flickering about their cave, which did not seem so small now that it was not filled with wyvern. The smoke twisted itself into braids and curled lazily up to swirl and eddy about the roof.
They certainly did not need it for its warmth. Whereas night in the Zeera brought cool winds and relief, in the Jehannim there was no respite from the heat. The rocks themselves seemed to radiate, and bent their will to suck moisture and life from the air, as if the land were a forge and Akari meant to temper them within it.
It galled Leviathus not knowing what had happened to their companions, his sister. Yet there was nothing to do as long as the mymyc stalked the night. They would have to wait.
Yaela sat on her heels beside the fire, so close to Leviathus that he could feel the dark energy of her body shivering across his skin like the rhythm of an intoxicating song. She stared into the fire, never meeting his eyes. Still he could not help but feel that she was peering into his soul.
“So,” she said, “you can speak to dragonkin.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Some of them, at least. I was not able to speak to the mymyc—that I could tell—though they are kin. Others I have not tried, save the leviathans.”
“The… leviathans? You mean serpents?”
“They prefer the name ‘leviathan.’” The echo in his name had not escaped Leviathus’s notice. His mother, like Hafsa Azeina, had come from the Seven Isles. When this current strife was ended—if he survived, and if Sajani did not destroy them all—he thought that he would like to seek out his mother’s kin.
We prefer another term entirely, Azhorus informed him through their link, but your ridiculous little human mouths are insufficient for pronouncing our words.
Forgive me, o prince, for my inadequacies, Leviathus responded.
You are forgiven, the prince of serpents allowed magnanimously. I like you. With that, he was gone again. Leviathus shook his head. Whenever Azhorus spoke with him, it felt as if bubbles were creeping through his brain.
“Do you speak with them now?” Yaela cut her eyes at him. They were not slit as usual, but wide and glowing with their soft warm green.
“Just with Azhorus,” he told her. “My… friend. We are bonded, he and I.” Though “two made one” would have been more accurate. His link with the prince of deep waters had changed Leviathus on the inside every bit as much as Hafsa Azeina’s link with Khurra’an had changed her, he supposed. His senses had sharpened, for one thing.
Yaela shifted, reaching out to the fire, and he was enveloped in a cloud of feminine musk. She turned to look at him over one shoulder, eyes both enormous and amused.
“Did you just growl at me?”
“I am so sorry—” he began, but Yaela turned to face him, and whatever he had been going to say dried to ash on his tongue. Backlit by the fire she was shadow and flame, moonslight and starslight and dawn. She was all things beautiful and unreachable. She was—
“Beautiful,” she said, reaching out to touch his face. Strong fingers brushed the hair from his eyes, and her gaze was solemn. “I have always thought so.”
“You what?” Leviathus stared. “But you… but I… I thought I was invisible to you.”
“Of course you did.” She laughed, and the shadows fled in terror. “You are male.”
She is correct, Azhorus agreed, as far as I can tell. Though you humans have such tiny—
Leviathus shook his head again to clear it, with little success.
“I am so confused.”
Yaela leaned forward, so that her weight was on her knees, and rested both hands on Leviathus’s shoulders. They were small, and strong, and hot.
“It is a good start,” she murmured, so close to his lips that the skin tingled. Then Yaela wrapped her arms around Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu, surdus son of the Dragon King of Atualon, king of pirates, friend to dragonkin, and kissed him.
She was all he had ever wanted.
Beautiful as the dawn, strong as a mountain’s roots. He was not sure when he had known, exactly, only that the shadow she cast made all other women seem pale and insignificant. Leviathus leaned into that kiss and was lost as he had never been in the desert or upon the sea. Her tongue found his and they danced. Her arms wrapped about him and pulled him tight—
—tight, too tight, he could not breathe—
Heart pounding in his ears, Leviathus pushed Yaela away and fell to his hands on the cave floor, sucking air in jagged, gasping breaths. He could not stop shaking, and his mouth filled with the taste of Mariza and memories of her teeth, her tongue, her body. Leviathus hung his hea
d, let his hair fall as a curtain about his shame, and wept.
After long moments he heard Yaela move, felt the dark energy of her closeness, but she did not touch him, for which he was pathetically grateful.
“Leviathus,” she said at last, and her voice was soft sorrow.
“I am sorry.” He wept, and could say no more.
“Fffft,” she hissed. “Sorry does not belong on your tongue or in your heart. There is no sorry between us.” She touched his shoulder, and he was comforted.
“I am broken,” he whispered.
“You have suffered a great wound,” she said, words falling like gentle rain, “and you will never be the same again. But you will heal, with time, and you will become stronger. It gets better.”
His heart clenched so painfully that he almost cried out. Leviathus sat up, balancing in a hunter’s crouch so that they faced each other, knees nearly touching. Yaela’s face shone with tears, wet as his own, and he thought they must be as mirrors unto each other.
“You, too?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered simply. “I was… very young.”
“I will find that man and kill him.”
Yaela threw back her head and laughed. “Silly boy. Silly boy! Do you think that I would allow one such as he to live and gloat over his victory? No, no. I fed him to a bintshi.” She wiped the tears from her face with the palm of her hand, still snorting with laughter. “But I thank you for the sweet thought.”
Leviathus reached out, tentatively, and she met him halfway. Their hands clasped, fingers twined, and they remained like that for a long while. Finally he spoke.
“We should go before the wyvern returns. Friend to dragonkin or no, I do not wish to tempt his palate. We need to find Sulema and the others.”
“What if we do not find them? I have braved the shadowed roads thrice already; I cannot set foot upon the Seared Lands, and do not mean to go further than the far foothills that lead toward Quarabala. Sulema and the others are meant to travel that road without me; if the others are lost to us, will you do the same?”
“No,” he said without hesitation. “I will not travel to your people’s lands without you, whether we find our companions or not.” His fingers tightened on hers, and he felt the truth in his own words. Ehuani, his sister would have said. “I have no mind to travel anywhere without you, ever again.”
“It is good,” she said softly. “King’s son, it is very good.”
Hand in hand they squeezed through the narrow passage. The mountains were still blanketed with long shadows, though the moons had rolled far overhead, and the sky grew pale about the eastern edge. It was quiet. They began retracing their steps as best they could. In the moonslight Yaela could see nearly as well as during the day, so he followed her lead. They had not gone far before they heard voices calling, calling his name.
“Leviathus!”
“Here!” he answered, and again. “We are here!”
They were joined in short order by a small group of his river pirates, two of whom were limping and looked ragged about the edges, though none seemed seriously hurt.
“Well met!” they called, and laughed upon finding him alive. “We thought you had been eaten by the mymyc, or by that wyvern. That was a bit of luck, to be sure—though whether good luck or bad remains to be seen. Still, we are not dead yet, and neither are you, it seems!” They did not comment on Yaela’s presence, or that the two were still holding hands.
“You were supposed to await my return in Min Yaarif,” Leviathus scolded halfheartedly. “Mamouteh had agreed to this.”
“We are pirates, and pirates are notorious for being disobedient scoundrels,” answered a young man by the name of Orunio. “Besides, we did not ask her permission. We simply went for a hike in the mountains and found you here. So fortuitous!” The others laughed.
“I cannot say that I am displeased to see you, at any rate. Where are the others of our party?” Leviathus asked, and braced himself for the answer.
“Alive, last we saw,” Orunio answered. “They had used a rope to cross a chasm, and the mymyc chewed through it before we could cross.” He shrugged. “The mymyc climbed down into the rift to escape a wyvern that came out of nowhere and began hunting them. We could see no other way to get across, so decided not to tempt fate any further and make our way back to Min Yaarif.
“Thank the Divines we have found you,” he added, brightening. “None of us can remember the way back out of these mountains, and you are as good as a walking map.” They all laughed.
Leviathus sighed. “Even if we could find another way across the chasm, we will never locate the others in this forsaken wasteland. And I will not leave Yaela. Indeed, our best path is back to Min Yaarif.” His heart ached to say it, though. He had failed Hafsa Azeina, and her apprentice Daru, and now he was failing his sister, as well. Unless…
“If anyone can pull off this mad scheme,” he said slowly as the thought occurred to him, “it is Sulema. The shadowmancer Keoki is with her, but he can only shield so many from the burning sun; our presence would be more hindrance to her than help.”
“It is true,” agreed Yaela.
“If she is successful in finding the Mask of Sajani,” Leviathus continued, warming to the idea, “well, then she will return with the Quarabalese queen—not an insignificant ally—and the ability to wield atulfah using the mask. All she will need is an army, and a way to get them across the sea.”
“She will, at that,” Orunio agreed.
“We have little salt, less manners, and no common sense,” Leviathus said, giving voice to an old pirate’s joke. “What we do have are bodies, and…”
“Ships!” the pirates shouted in unison.
I have faith in you, sister, Leviathus thought fiercely, certain she was still alive. And when you return, we will be prepared. We will see to it that your destiny is fulfilled. You will be the Dragon Queen of Atualon. Feeling lighter of heart than he had for many moons, Leviathus brought Yaela’s hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles as he looked deep into her wide jade eyes.
“Let us make ready to receive your people,” he said to her, “and then we will cross the wide sea and dethrone a king.”
“Yes,” she said, her face a mask of determination. “Let us do exactly that.”
TWENTY - EIGHT
Deep silence rolled down upon them from the cruel peaks of the Jehannim, enshrouding Sulema and her three remaining companions in despair much as the song of the Zeera had once enfolded her in joy.
Hannei, Keoki, and Rehaza Entanye lay sleeping near the remains of a fire, leaving Sulema on guard. She listened to the voices of silence and shadow, the hollow echoes of starslight and cold rock, and let grief take her. She wished for her mother, her father, her friend Hannei whole and unbroken. She rubbed the cold and throbbing wound at her shoulder, trying to ignore the painful tingling numbness that radiated out from the center of it, trying harder not to think about what it meant that Yaela and her medicines were beyond her reach now.
If the venom reached her heart, her brain, what would become of her? Would she simply die, or would she become as the reavers, bound to wickedness? Would she turn upon her companions and attack them, like a mindless beast? She did not think Hannei would shy from duty, if it came to that.
I wish I had never left the Zeera, she thought, or that this was all a terrible dream, and I would wake and tell my sisters all about it over coffee.
The memory of coffee brought tears to her eyes.
Sulema did not wake Hannei at the appointed hour, but watched through the night, letting the hot wind dry her tears and the mute dirge of the moons lull her heart to a semblance of peace.
They woke well before dawn and shared a mean breakfast of salted fish and precious sweet water. Afterward Keoki sat on his heels, fussing with the strings of a lute, the sounds and sight of which were beautiful—painfully so in that wretched land. Finally having tuned the instrument to his satisfaction, at last the young shadowmancer st
ood and faced the warriors, though he did not meet their eyes.
“It is time,” he told them. “Dawn grows near, and I would be well down the road and into my trance before Akari shows us his true face.”
He shed his cloak and trousers as the warriors packed what little they had planned to take with them upon the shadowed road—mostly weapons, water, and dried meat— and Sulema tried not to stare at his exposed flesh. Though she had seen Aasah striding about the fortress in his scraps of red spidersilk, she was not accustomed to men flaunting their bodies so openly, and she was certainly not yet used to skin that was studded in bright and glittering gemstones.
“Did it hurt?” she asked at last, curiosity overcoming both good manners and the dread of what lay ahead of them. Keoki glanced at her, surprised, and then down at his own scarred and bejeweled hide.
“Yes,” he told her. “It is supposed to hurt. The pain… binds you to the Web of Illindra.” He shrugged, sparkling in the growing light of dawn. “I would gladly suffer it again, for my people.”
That much she understood. “Why is Yaela’s skin not marked, then? Is it because she is still an apprentice?”
Keoki hesitated. When he answered, it was with obvious reluctance.
“No. Yaela—” His mouth worked for a moment, as if he tasted the words before choosing which ones to swallow and which to spit out. “Yaela has suffered in other ways.” He stroked his glittering scars. “This I survived. The pain she has had to bear… I am not so certain I could endure that.”
If you do not want an answer, Istaza Ani had told her more than once, do not ask the question. Sulema nodded and pressed no further. Keoki seemed relieved.
Night was dying, morning not yet born, when the three of them left the Jehannim behind and set foot upon the shadowed road. They did not run, as Keoki could not play while doing so, but jogged along at a pace meant to eat the miles. They would make camp the first night in the ruins of Min Yahtamu, which had once been the heart of commerce for the whole world and was not the final resting place for any foolish or desperate enough to brave the shadowed road. After that they would run. If they did not falter they would make the journey from Min Yahtamu to the Edge of Quarabala—and there find shelter from the killing heat—in three days.
The Seared Lands Page 23