Another figure joined Pythos on the balcony. Hooded and robed, dressed it seemed in funereal rags and the armor of forgotten wars. The tall man turned his face to the sky and beheld her. Though he wore a mask of ruin and despair, Sulema through the dragon knew him. She knew those broad shoulders, those narrow hips, she knew the face that lay behind that bleak mask. He raised both hands to her in greeting, in warning, in adoration.
Sajani Earth Dragon seized Sulema in her claws and fled in terror.
THIRTY - SIX
Maika strode with her head high, hiding her horror at the thought of the ashes of women and men who had died on the shadowed road clinging to the soles of her feet.
The Web of Illindra burned inside-out upon her skin, gleaming in the torchlight, and the gems which emerged at every meeting of webs shone brilliant as stars. From her bond with the shadowmancers she experienced the surge of emotion as they worked their magic in her name. Fierce joy alloyed with sorrow as shadows were shifted into snakes, spiders, monsters—even into the great sabre-tusked cats of the Zeera. These they set upon the doomed Edgelanders in order to clear them from the queen’s path. Doubtless minstrels would receive ale and lodging for generations to come in exchange for the least retelling of this day. I wonder, Maika thought as she walked, stiff-faced and straight-backed beside the beautiful queen of dragons, if they will sing about how badly my butt itches. For as the Web of Illindra revealed itself upon her skin, no quarter of her flesh was spared, and everything itched. Scratching any part of it only made things worse.
Sulema eyed her sideways, and Maika thought she bit back a smile.
“You know,” the Ja’Akari murmured, “when they shaved and oiled our heads”—here she ran a hand along the smooth skin at her temples—“I felt as if I had fallen into a nest of fire ants. It itched for weeks.”
“Very helpful,” Maika replied. Then she added, “How did you deal with it?”
“Oh, I busied myself with thoughts of—” Sulema broke off, and the golden eyes behind the dragon’s mask shifted to the mute Zeerani girl at her other side. “Other things. Food and games, mostly. My horse.”
Whatever she had intended to say was lost, buried in the pit of sorrow that had been dug between Sulema and Hannei. Maika did not need the eyes of Pelang to see the bonds that time and love and fate had woven between these two formidable youths. They reflected each other endlessly and were made more beautiful for the revelation.
“I have never ridden a horse,” she confessed to Sulema. “I have only ever seen pictures, in books… They are very beautiful. Especially your… asil?”
“Well,” the fire-haired woman replied, “it is forbidden for outsiders to ride the asil. And even before you rode a lesser horse, you would want to learn how… and you would probably want your ass to heal first.” She laughed outright as Maika shot her a foul look, and then resumed the low, beautiful chant which channeled the power of a sleeping dragon into stuff Maika’s shadowmancers could use.
Though Maika could see the magic—the bonds and bindings Na’eth had woven over and around the mask, the shimmering of the blue-gold-green dragon magic—she was not sure how it worked. Only that it did, and that with its aid her handful of sorcerers were able to effect the escape of the Quarabalese people.
There would be a price to pay for it all. There always was. In every story from every world in the Web of Illindra was spun an immutable truth: for every action, there would be an equal reaction. For every gift, a price.
For every promise, a betrayal.
None of this, however, made her skin itch less fiercely.
Maika reminded herself that her own physical discomforts were as nothing when compared to the suffering of others. Akamaia, for one, though she was old and frail, and walked with assistance, did so without complaint. A queen could do no less. So she ignored the itching and the burning—just as she ignored the chafing of the threefold loom that she wore strapped to her back and the guilt as the Edgelanders displaced by her shadowmancers’ magic fled wailing before them—and walked ever upward, leading her people toward the dawn of a new day.
Today, the scouts had told her, they would leave the scant protection of the Edge to walk upon the very surface of the Seared Lands. Today, for the first time in generations, she and her people would gaze upon the face of Akari.
She was terrified.
“How did you do it?” she asked Sulema, eyeing the tops of the canyon walls with growing trepidation. Here the walls rose scarcely a woman’s height above their heads. What if Na’eth was wrong—what if she was lying? What if, despite all their preparations, the alliance of queens and magics, this was just a horde of fools following a stupid girl to their deaths?
Sulema let the song trail off again.
“As I said, thoughts of food and game, and fine wardens—”
“No, not the itch.” Maika rolled her eyes. “I mean, how did you do this?” She gestured to the sky above, still dark but heavy with the promise of a killing dawn. “How did you travel from the Jehannim to the Edge, with only one shadowmancer to help?”
“Oh, well…” Sulema laughed a little. “We ran like rabbits, of course, but mostly we were lucky. That Arachnist and his swarm of reavers would have had us for breakfast had it not been for your warriors.” She glanced at Tamimeha, and there was naked admiration in her gaze. “Ehuani, I am ever in their debt.”
“‘Ehuani’? I have heard you say this word before. What does it mean?”
“It means… beauty in truth,” Sulema explained. “That all things a woman might do in her life are better in the open, in the full light of Akari.” She frowned and shook her head. “The word does not translate well to common tongue, and I am not good at explaining such things.”
“I think you explained it very well,” Maika demurred. Despite her best efforts, shame weighed her heart as once again the young Dragon Queen took up her endless singing, spending her own strength, endangering her own life so that people she had never met, and who would never thank her, might live.
All because she had made a vow.
There was no word for beauty in truth anywhere in any book in the Seared Lands. Indeed, in a land that survived upon shadows and secrets, such beauty was an unimaginable luxury.
* * *
Buoyed by the magic of two queens, the shadowmancers sang and danced the night and the miles into the web of was. Keoki led them with his lute. He was now first of all her shadowbound. The ritual had not, however, been entirely voluntary.
“A necessary evil,” Akamaia had said as she stood over his senseless and twitching form, and Tamimeha agreed.
Sulema had been puzzled at Keoki’s newly muted demeanor. The Dragon Queen had asked about the jewel of Illindra that appeared on his forehead, and was told it was a “mark of high honor.” Keoki himself did not dispute this or seem to care one way or another what she thought of it. His eyes were clear and farseeing now, no longer blinded by the flame-haired queen’s exotic beauty.
Though the binding of shadowmancers dampened their passions, it had the opposite effect upon their magic. Magic such as they wielded now had not been seen since the time of Akamaia’s mother’s grandmother. The shade they wove was thick as fabric, a tent of dusk-dark spidersilk that whispered and sang overhead, shielding them from the terrible heat. Predators and Edgelanders were routed and killed by the nightmare visions made solid.
Even with the advancement of every apprentice old enough to bear the physical strain of shifting, the ranks of the shadowmancers had barely swollen to a score. Nevertheless, the work of these shadowbound—augmented by their queen’s blood oath and the song of Sajani—was a display of might and magic grand enough for a bard’s tale. It was a thing of beauty.
And of lies. Grand as it was, it would not be enough.
* * *
Finally the leading edge of the travelers reached the surface of the Seared Lands, and a palpable tremor of terror and fierce joy shivered through every woman, man, and child of Quarabal
a. Then the gaze of Akari found and smote them. Before their queen’s foot graced the land above, before she could behold her first sunrise, their shadowed veil began to smoke, to steam…
To fail.
“What is happening?” Maika cried, standing on the tips of her toes and straining to see. She tried to push Tamimeha aside, but the frontrunner stood her ground, hammer to the fore as if she expected some threat.
Even the Zeerani girl was taller than she. Sulema squinted her sun-gold eyes against the unaccustomed glare and frowned.
“Smoke,” she said, “though I cannot see the source of it. I fear it is the shadowmancers’ veil. Some of the people seem to be—”
She did not finish the sentence, as the veil of shadows above them trembled and grew thin. The people ahead of them began to scream. There was a surge as those at the front of the exodus tried to double back, a growing panic as the line of moving bodies became a knot of confusion and fright, and then the great black snake turned back upon itself. Warriors’ spears bristled thick and wicked around Maika and Sulema.
Another tremor shimmied through the veil, this one stronger than the last, and a ray of sunlight broke through a fissure in the magic. It struck the ground like a spear of flame not ten strides from where Maika stood surrounded by her warriors. An elder woman, gap-toothed and gaunt, stood bathed in the glorious light. In that moment the woman was beautiful. Surely, she had longed for and prayed for this from the moment her newborn eyes opened to darkness. To lift her face, to feel the sun!
“How glorious it must be, to walk beneath the sun,” mothers sang to their babes as they gave birth. “How we wish we might have seen it,” sang the crones on their death-beds. From birth to death, every woman and man of Quarabala longed to walk beneath the sun, and this one old woman had achieved her dream.
In the next moment she was gone, vanished with a scream that was half a sigh of delight, leaving a small mound of ashes left to crumble in the light of a sun she had prayed all her life to see.
Maika’s hands flew to her mouth. I have done this, she thought. I brought her here—I and no one else.
Sulema’s mute sword-sister—Hannei, her name was— shouldered her way through the bristling spears. Her hands were moving rapidly. To Maika’s surprise, she found that this sign language was enough like that of the Iponui that she could make some sense of it.
You must, Hannei waved under Sulema’s nose. You must—lead or go first, something like that—something-something something lands.
“I am not my mother,” Sulema responded, golden eyes glowing dangerously behind the dragon’s mask. “I cannot simply—”
Hannei made a very rude gesture which needed no translation in any language. You must, she insisted. Something-something time.
“Sulema?” Maika asked. “What is she talking about?”
Sulema’s eyes narrowed. “Shehannam,” she replied. “My mother would have opened a portal into the Dreaming Lands, and led the people through to—”
“Shehannam?” Akamaia’s voice broke through like the ray of sunlight, sharp and deadly. “Heresy. You speak heresy. To set forth upon the Huntress’s grounds is—”
“It is the way,” Maika said. Her dreams, the o’oraid’s web, the whisperings of Na’eth, all came together in that moment to form a complete picture. Maika closed her eyes, the better to see the perfect beauty of this truth.
Ehuani, she realized. Now I understand that word. Ehuani.
“Your Magnificence,” Akamaia said, “with all respect, I must—”
Without opening her eyes, Maika raised both hands. It seemed to her that the people, the wind, the whole world fell silent and hung suspended upon the web. Then she opened her eyes, and spoke, and their world began to spin again, its fate in this time and this reality having been decided by a girl still fresh with the flush of her first moons-blood.
“I have seen it,” she said, and even to herself her voice sounded… different. “Our savior, come to lead us to the green lands, to peace and prosperity and safety. I have seen it.” She smiled upon Sulema, willing the foreign woman to agree. “You will save us,” she insisted.
Sulema took a deep breath and nodded, jeweled mask flashing.
“I have come to know the magic of your people,” she agreed. “If you say you have seen me leading your people through Shehannam, then I must try.” Her eyes crinkled as if she smiled. “I will succeed, of course. Ja’Akari never merely try, ehuani.”
Maika bit her lower lip and stared at the fire-haired woman.
“Ehuani,” she breathed. “Beauty in truth. I have seen it, now. I understand.” She thought fiercely, I have seen beauty in truth, indeed. A pity I must lie to get it. Aloud she asked, “What can I do to help?”
“Guard my body,” Sulema replied. She sat upon the ground, laying her fox-head staff across her knees, and her folded hands upon the pale wood. “I will seem to be asleep, or dead, but I am neither. Guard my body while I am gone. Keoki should play his lute near me, if he will. Music will give me a way back, and then I will be able to gather my strength and open a doorway to Shehannam. I think.”
“You think?”
Sulema shrugged. “I have never done this thing, but I will succeed, or I will die trying. You are the one who dreamt this; you tell me.” She chuckled and closed her eyes.
Nothing happened.
Maika sent a runner to fetch Keoki. He stood beside the Dragon Queen and with scarred fingers played his lute. Maika could see the magic, the Web of Illindra spun thick as wishes to wrap Sulema tight and call her to sleep, to sleep, to sleep…
Nothing happened.
“Ugh,” Sulema said, and she groaned, scrunching her eyes closed behind the mask. “I cannot relax. I—”
Hannei touched her shoulder, and then folded her legs to sit on the ground next to Sulema. She tugged the fire-haired girl into a gentle embrace, pulling Sulema’s head down into her lap and playing with the other woman’s short red wizard locks as she hummed a gnarled, tuneless lullaby. It was neither beautiful, as Keoki’s lute was beautiful, or soft as the whispering of spiders was soft. But it was a thing so pure, so right, that tears sprang up into Maika’s eyes and flowed freely down her cheeks.
I thought I understood ehuani. I thought I knew love. I thought I saw beauty in the truth of my chosen path, but I understood nothing. I was blind.
And she was shamed.
Still, a dragon was a dragon, and a spider was a spider, and a queen was a queen. She would do what needed to be done, beauty or no. Shame or no.
Even as Hannei hummed Sulema into a trance state, Maika drew Akamaia to one side.
“Help me work this thing,” she said, unstrapping the threefold loom she carried upon her back. As always, she breathed a sigh of relief to find Lailith alive and well. The o’oraid crawled nimbly into her hand, bobbing in anticipation. “It is time.”
“Time for what?” The Illindrist looked at her askance. Maika did not know whether her old friend was angered at her decisions, or afraid. It saddened her, but in the end it did not matter.
“Help me call our savior,” she said, “the one who will lead us to safety.”
Akamaia frowned. “But…” She gestured to Sulema.
Maika shook her head. “That one is not our savior. In truth she is the Dragon Queen—and our dearest enemy.”
The oracle stared at Maika as if seeing her, truly seeing her, for the first time. Finally she bowed, a simple gesture filled with worlds of conflicting emotion.
“Your will,” she said. “My queen.”
The threefold loom beckoned to Maika with its promises of was, is, and will be. The girl who had spent most of her waking days searching for secrets and lost treasures in the Queens’ Library found the treasure of secrets now in the brilliance of a spider’s web, the elegance of simple design, and the comfort of knowing that whatever she did here, no matter how badly she might muck things up, the worlds would spin on. The dragons would sing their mating songs, Illindra would bi
nd them all in her great web, and love her forever.
Maika hardly flinched when Lailith sank envenomed fangs into the meaty palm of her hand, hardly made a sound as she sank down, down, down to float among the stars.
* * *
Forever she had drifted, formless, nameless, in blissful ignorance, content to bathe in darkness and gaze upon the brilliance of Illindra’s web. Each world, every spark of life that dared shimmer across its surface was perfect in its imperfection.
One world in particular attracted her attention and she allowed herself to drift closer, to fix her attention upon a tiny bright point of brilliance flaring defiance in the face of the void. She swam down through the dark, the too-thick air overstuffed with ambitions and desires and life, and as she drew closer to this particularly interesting spark a ripple of surprise breathed across her soul, rousing the entity within.
On the ground beneath her were a scattering of lives, and in the middle of it lay prone the body of a young girl, nearly a woman. Her pale eyes were open, and Maika was nearly jolted out of her ensorcellment by the shock of recognition.
It is me, she thought.
“Beautiful, is she not?” The voice came from behind her. Maika would have cried out, but she had no voice here. Would have turned, but for her lack of feet. She panicked like a bug caught in a web, and her struggles threatened to tear the whole of it apart.
“Ssssss, little one, I did not mean to frighten you. Hush now, stop now, you will tear yourself loose, and you really do not want to do that. Here, let me help you.”
As if someone had laid a hand on her shoulder, she was turned so that she was facing the source of the voice. A blinding figure stood before her in robes the color of fresh bone. He wore rings upon his fingers, worlds on a chain about his neck, and his smile was sweet enough to break her heart. He held a delicate instrument made of bone and secrets, and Maika would have screamed with excitement.
It is he!
Am I? he laughed in her mind. Then he opened his mouth and spoke. “No need to shout, little one. Imagine yourself whole—yes, just so.”
The Seared Lands Page 32