The Seared Lands

by Deborah A. Wolf

  Tsali’gei nodded solemnly, and Jian grunted his approval. The girl had given Tsali’gei’s family name, as was proper, and she was right. It was good. It was, perhaps, the only good thing about this night. And then the words Tsali’gei had been speaking all came together, and Jian peered at her.

  “You are not going with them?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” Tsali’gei said. Her voice was calm and sure, but all the pain in the world was in her eyes as she bent to kiss her infant son goodbye. “We are going to war.”

  * * *

  As the sun rose in the sky, the comfort house became a staging ground. This was to be war, not some skirmish led by a handful of malcontents ill prepared and quickly crushed beneath the emperor’s heel.

  The White Nightingale, it seemed, had been singing a song for discontent for some years, and enough people had listened to her tune that a formidable force was ready to come dancing to her tune. Blacksmiths she had, women and men who worked by day to make swords for the emperor and by night to forge swords which might be used to bring an emperor down. Stockpiles of weapons and armor had been building, waiting for a day that might never come, a day when the citizen-slaves of Sindan and those of the Daechen who longed to break free might unite under one banner and throw off the shackles of tyranny.

  Or die trying, Jian thought, which seemed a much likelier outcome. He had seen the emperor’s forces, and his luminists, and truth be told he did not believe with all his heart that they could do this mad thing. Certainly, it is a thing worth fighting for, worth dying for. But Tsali’gei—

  “Stop,” she growled at him as one of the serving-girls helped lace up her lacquered armor. “For the third time, stop thinking that I should run to safety with Tiungren. If you so much as hint at it again, I will bite your ear off.”

  Jian risked his ear. “I am thinking it,” he grumbled. “And where did you get that armor, anyway?” It fit her as perfectly as any lady’s gown.

  “Your mother made it for me.”

  Jian gaped. “She did not.”

  “She did. It was my bride-gift.” Then she huffed. “Are you going to stand there and say Tiungpei did not know what she was doing?”

  “But—”

  “Jian,” she said, placing her hand against his cheek, “let us not fight, today of all days. My place is here, with you, fighting this fight. Let us not take the risk that our last words to each other will be said in anger.” Jian’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest, but he bowed his head to her.

  “As you wish.”

  “That is better.” She laughed a little, patted his cheek, and pulled a helmet on over her hair. “Just remember to end all of our arguments with those words, Tsun-ju Jian, and you may yet survive to a ripe old age.”

  Jian smiled as the maidservants giggled, wishing he could preserve this moment like an insect in amber, safe from the marches of time. He glanced up and caught Giella’s eye. She was staring at him, at him and Tsali’gei, with a look on her face that said this is all I’ve ever wanted.

  Do not envy us, Jian wished at her silently. Not until the sun has set on this day, at any rate. It might seem to the White Nightingale that Jian and Tsali’gei had found great good fortune in their love for each other—and they had—but it felt to Jian that they had far too much to lose.

  FORTY - SIX

  Genzhou Field had been many things over the course of its history. Orchards and crops had been planted and harvested here, according to the whim of the day’s rulers. Peach trees had spread their arms wide to the summer sky, fields of grain had covered the ground, and for a while there had been a mill with a wheel-house and a colorfully painted wheel which combined all the magics of earth and air, fire and water so that priests could bake rice-cakes for the emperor’s feasts.

  Had they known the place’s deeper secrets, its darker magics, men might not have been so eager to eat the fruits which grew in this rich soil. Great battles had been fought here, in the days of the first empire. The bodies of the dead, too numerous to bury, had been left to find their own way back to the earth. Those farmers who tilled too deep, who spent too much time looking at the round stones and long bones unearthed by their labors, knew well that the sweet fruit of their harvest held a dark and bitter truth.

  That the best things in Sindan grew from the remains of the fallen.

  It was in this place that Jian met his army. Not his entire army, but a select few of those who had pledged to fight and die for him. There were bands of wild daeborn whose parents or villages had hidden them from the emperor’s clutches, or who had escaped on their own. These were represented by the girl Awitsu and her strange dark-skinned, moon-haired companion Kanati.

  Others came from the sea tribes and forest peoples, the plains folk and even members of the raptor clans, strange mountain folk who so rarely came down from their jagged peaks. These had elected as their champion another girl who seemed too young to be a warrior of any kind, but whose eyes were filled with ancient pain. This was the eight-fingered girl with the raptor hide armor who had come with Giella to bring Jian up from the emperor’s dungeons. Jian had seen her before—he was certain of it— but could not for the life of him remember when, or how, they had met. The confusion must have been written upon his face for, when presented to him, she burst out laughing, startling the chinmong at her side so that it raised its crest and hissed menacingly.

  “I am Holuikhan,” she said, staring into his eyes. “You do not remember me.”

  An image came to him then of a young one, face streaked with dirt and tears…

  “The girl in the field!” he exclaimed. “The one who saw the yellow Daechen training—I remember you, now.”

  “Yes,” she said, “the girl you did not kill.” She brought both fists to her chest, mountain-style, bowed low from the waist and held it, indicating deep respect. The raptor at her side, however, drew the scaled lips back from its sharp teeth and issued a series of whistles.

  “Jijao!” the girl hissed. She straightened, and Jian could see that her face had gone as red as sunrise. “Do not be rude!”

  Jian laughed, causing the raptor to cock her head and give him a skeptical side-eyed look.

  “Fortunately, I do not speak raptor-tongue,” he said, “but no doubt she is right in her assessment of me.”

  Near the end of the line stood a man, young and proud in stance, wearing armor unlike any Jian had previously seen. Boiled leather lacquered in blue and studded with white steel, it shone like silver and sapphires. The hairs at the nape of Jian’s neck prickled as the man came near, and the scent of bullhide filled his nostrils. The bull was sacred to Emperor Tiachu, the use of its hide an offense punishable by death. To fashion armor from the hide of a bull was to declare war not upon Sindan, but upon the emperor himself.

  When the crowd between them parted, and Jian got his first full look at the armor, the full impact of what they were doing hit him like a massive wave, destroying the villages and cities of the world in his heart. Upon his chest, this man wore the image of a blue sea-bear, Jian’s own sigil.

  I have declared war upon the emperor, he realized. It was a thing he had known, of course, but seeing his own blue bear made it real, somehow. The young man strode up to the little knoll where Jian stood and gave a shallow, stiff bow as from one general to another.

  “Daechen Jian.”

  Jian gasped when he recognized the voice which echoed from behind the lacquered helm.

  “Chei!”

  “Your Illumination.” The boy who had once befriended Jian, and once tried to kill him, held his bow a moment longer than was necessary. “The blue Daechen have come. We stand ready.” A rumble, then a low roar rose from the assembled crowd. Human and Dae alike, fierce-eyed and proud, raised fists to the sky as this Daechen prince spoke aloud those words which had grown up in all their hearts like the fruits of a bitter harvest.

  “We stand ready.”

  As first Tsali’gei and then Giella climbed the hill to stan
d beside him, Jian turned in a slow circle, trying to see every face, every banner. If he was to send these people to war, if they were all going to die for him—the likeliest outcome of this morning’s events, no matter which way he looked at it—Jian owed them this much, at least. That he had looked upon their faces.

  He had studied the words of the great generals, had read the stirring accounts of heroes as they rose up from the dust of old parchments. Many times he had sat in his father’s study, bent over scrolls and books and stacks of loose paper, dreaming of the day he would wage war upon Khanbul. Of the fine words with which he would stir his troops’ hearts to bloodlust and victory. Looking at these people before him, Jian found that his dreams, his words, were too small to have captured this moment.

  Nothing he could say now, or do, would ever repay the blood debt he was about to incur. He closed his eyes and bowed deeply to them all, letting the tears fall from his eyes, to better express his gratitude.

  Giella, the White Nightingale, unfurled a banner which she carried in her arms, and raised it high for them all to see. It swam upon the wind like an Issuq in stormy waters—the blue bear on a field of pearl, calling them home. Jian held up one hand for silence, only then knowing the words he would say.

  Ehuani, he thought, savoring the desert word in his mind. It suited the moment. I give them the truth.

  “We ride to Khanbul,” he said so that his voice would carry. “We ride to war. It is likely, my friends, that we ride to our deaths.” He thought of his mother, windblown and ruddy-cheeked, in love with the sea. Of his own son, who would grow up an orphan, if fate allowed him to grow up at all. And he thought of Perri, his friend, who like so many Daechen before him had been killed for no reason at all.

  “Whether we live today or we die,” he told them, and realized that he had at last found the heart of the matter. “Whether the emperor and his palace fall to our swords, or whether he rises tomorrow morning as if none of this had ever happened, we are planting a seed here today. A seed which, soon or late, will grow to a tree whose roots will tear down the walls of those who live in the Forbidden City. Let our blood sweeten the soil of this planting, that the tree of new life may rise from our bones and spread to give shade to our children.

  “Yesterday the Daechen emperor in his palace of flowers sat upon his powdered arse, content in the knowledge that he could do with our lives as he wished, forever. Today is the day we break him free of that dream, my friends. Today we take the first steps along the long road to our peoples’ freedom. Today we ride to Khanbul, and to war!”

  “To war!” Chei bellowed, and he went to his knees before Jian. The movement spread like ripples upon a pond as those assembled also fell to their knees and raised their voices as one.

  “To Khanbul!” they shouted. “To freedom! To war!”

  To death, Jian thought, raising his hands to the sky.

  He smiled.

  * * *

  Three times Jian had come to the shining wall that surrounded the Forbidden City. Once as a prince, once as an ambassador.

  Now he came to conquer the shining Wall of Swords, or to die upon it.

  The army had swelled in size as they moved toward the city. Peasants and soldiers, raptor hunters and wild daeborn, they came singly, or by the tens, or hundreds. Teams of ghella lowed as they pulled carts laden with the engines of war. Soon the ground trembled at the news of their coming.

  A pair of figures broke from the trees and dashed toward them. Jian, recognizing them as Holuikhan and her chinmong, held up a hand. Shouts of “Halt, halt!” rang up and down the line, and slowly the great machine of war ground to a stop. The ground, however, did not stop trembling. Rather, it grew in power and volume, louder and louder. Wind howled through the trees with the sound of a thousand trumpets of war, and through it all Jian heard, or thought he heard, the laughing whisper of the witching well.

  Vengeance best served hot,

  Vengeance best served cold.

  Serve it up with meat and wine,

  One day old.

  “Your Illumination!” the raptor hunter gasped. “Forgive me, but—the Dae—” Face red with the effort it had taken her to run to him she bent double, hands on her knees.

  “The Dae?” Giella said, voice sharp and hard. “What about the Dae?”

  “They have set foot upon the shores of Sindan, my—my lady! The veil is no more! The twilight lords have come to the world of man!”

  A cry went up from those near enough to hear.

  “The Dae! The Dae! The Dae are come!”

  “Is this true?” Jian demanded. Surely with his father beside him, victory was assured.

  “It is true!” the girl cried. “I have seen this with my own eyes.”

  Several among them cried out in fear. If Jian did not do something, and quickly, he might lose his army to panic. He held up a hand for silence.

  “My father has come to our aid!” he roared. “The Sea King rides to war!” A murmur ran through the crowd nearest him; not acceptance or jubilation, but a permutation of panic into something watchful, waitful.

  It would do.

  Giella leaned in, her mouth close to Jian’s ear. “The darkest wish of your heart might yet come true, Tsun-ju Jian de Allyr,” she whispered. “I hope you wished that some of us might survive this day.”

  Jian’s heart went cold. Had he? What had he wished for… exactly?

  Deep in the back of his mind, the witching well laughed.

  The land around the Forbidden City was empty and dead as if the war had already been fought there, and every living thing slain. Not so much as a rat or stray dog scurried across the red-stone road. The merchants’ stalls were closed or gone, and the sound of marching feet rang like the brass bells of priests in a funeral procession.

  The sounds and smells of industry rang out as Jian’s followers built a siege camp bigger than the village in which he had grown up. Towers and ballistas were assembled, tents struck, fires lit, units organized. Jian nodded at a lean raptor handler running with her clutch of chinmong, and sighed to himself as she passed him by, glancing wide-eyed over her shoulder. Was I ever so young? he wondered. And in the next moment, I hope she survives this day.

  He and a chosen few of his generals walked a short distance from the organized confusion toward the city proper and stood close enough that they might see and be seen, not so close that a lucky arrow might find their flesh. Still the ground groaned and shook as if it wished to shake them off.

  The shining walls of Khanbul seemed higher, wider, and more ominous even than he remembered from just days before. And the stone giants—the hairs on Jian’s arms stood stiff. It felt as if the hair on his head did, too.

  “Do you see that?” Tsali’gei asked, voice echoing oddly from the warrior’s helm that covered most of her face. “Jian, look! The giants… they have moved!”

  It was true. The red giant had gained his feet and stood facing the golden giant, hands balled into defiant fists. The smile on the golden giant’s face was gone, replaced with a grimace of anger. Or was it fear?

  “How can this be?” he asked Giella.

  “Old magic,” she told him, eyes huge and bright in the light of an early day. “Stone magic. Magic as old and deep as mountains.”

  “Dae magic,” the girl Awitsu said, appearing out of nowhere. “Dark magic and deep. Can you hear it, Kanati?” She turned to her dark-skinned, moon-haired companion. “A well. A witching well. Can you hear it?”

  “Yes,” he said. Silvery eyes glittered oddly as he regarded Jian. “Someone has made a wish, I think.” His teeth, when he smiled, were fox-sharp and impossibly white.

  “The giants!” someone cried nearby, breaking the tension that had sprung up between Jian and this daeborn boy. “The giants have moved!”

  As Jian stared at them, he realized that both the red and golden giants were staring not at each other, but at him. Though he did not detect a shadow of movement, if he so much as glanced away or blinked it seem
ed as if they had moved lightning-quick, in a heartbeat’s time. Was it enmity he saw in those stone faces? When he drew abreast of them, would those enormous stone fists smash down upon him?

  The trembling in the earth grew louder, nearer, as if an invisible army would trample them at any moment. Skulls shook loose from the red stone road and rolled away, mouths gaping in silent laughter. Swords tumbled like rain into the waters of the emperor’s moat which boiled like an angry sea. As Jian stared, trapped like an insect in amber, the rumble grew to a crashing shriek, as if Sajani had succeeded in waking from her long slumber to tear the world asunder.

  Behold, the witching well whispered. Behold, son of the eastern winds, child of the shimmering seas. I grant you the darkest wish of your heart. Then it laughed deep in his bones, a sound that made the ground shake and his soul tremble.

  A few paces from them the ground buckled and split. Deep fissures shot toward Khanbul, growing in number and in depth, laughing in crackling stone voices as they raced one another to the city walls. The ground sank, and rose, and sank again, and a sulfurous stench rose to engulf them.

  There was a series of deafening explosions, and a wall of dust rose to obscure their view. When it settled, Tsali’gei gasped and pointed.

  “Jian!”

  He looked where she was pointing and cried out in amazement. Both giants were kneeling, heads bowed—to him.

  Where the gates of Khanbul had been there was only a low mountain of rubble. Beyond that, rising from the dust like rocks rising from the ocean mist, the emperor’s army could be seen picking itself up off the ground. Banners whipped about like sapling trees in a storm. There was the black three-headed serpent of Saimonju, the silver dogfish of Hoen, the red and orange sabre-tusked tiger of Shimendo. Over them all rose the shimmering white bull of Daeshen Tiachu.

  Where is the white stag? Jian wondered, squinting to peer through the dust. Where is Mardoni? He did not want to hesitate and lose this advantage, but neither did he wish to launch headlong into a trap.