She drew her sun-bright blade.
“Ehuani,” the rest of the Mah’zula breathed with one voice. “Shu’ah kha’ani, bas Akari ehuani.”
“Mercy.” Mariza spat. Her face was a mad mask of hatred, her eyes fever-bright. “Your father sits far away on a golden throne, knowing nothing of the world, nothing of us, yet he expects us to bow at his feet. He steals our magic, he drains the Zeera of sa and ka, he breaks the bond that holds us Zeeravashani, leaving us to the greater predators… and his son cries to us for leniency. Do you call your father’s reign merciful, King’s Son? Where is your father’s mercy, when his magic tricks kill our people? When the slavers steal our children to fill the ever-empty belly of Atukos?”
Leviathus blinked. “My father… he… he keeps the world safe from the dragon’s waking.” It sounded weak, even to his own ears—a pitcher too full of holes to ever hold mead. “Only he can—”
“Lies,” Mariza hissed. “Lies, lies. There is no dragon sleeping beneath Atukos, no magic in your king save that which he has stolen from us, and with our thanks. That ends now, that ends here. He has stolen his power from us and we will take it back from him.”
“Ehuani,” the Mah’zula muttered in unison. There is beauty in truth.
Leviathus opened his mouth, but no argument came forth. Too much of what was said here held the ring of truth.
“We will take our power back from him, our songs, our strength,” Mariza said. She no longer looked at Leviathus. Her eyes stared blindly into a future that held no place for him. “We will return the Zeeranim to our former glory, and once more will the world tremble at the thunder of our passing. We will strip the Dragon King of his stolen power… but first we will strip him of his son.”
Leviathus drew a deep and shuddering breath. “There is some truth in what you say—”
“Shut your hole, boy.” Mariza’s words, pure venom, were delivered with the sweetest of smiles. “The only truth you need concern yourself with now, King’s Son, is this. All men die.” She stabbed her sunblade straight up as if she meant to pierce the soft underbelly of the blue, blue sky.
I should run, Leviathus thought, but his feet seemed less resolute about living than did his mind. They remained firmly in place. It is not meet that a king’s son should die so, in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing. Should not my life make a difference? Even a small difference?
The blade arced down, but it met a lesser blade, and screamed to a halt.
“Eh-la, Mariza, lest hayam.” Ani stood still and calm, holding her knife with no more effort than one might hold a writing quill. The tension that had been building in the youthmistress’s body had bled away and she smiled, an easy smile that reached her eyes and lit up her face from within.
Oh, Leviathus thought stupidly. I see now why Askander loves her.
“A blade that seeks this boy’s flesh will have to go through mine first—and I am no easy meat, ehuani.”
Mariza’s mouth went slack with shock before spreading into a sly grin, and she lowered her shamsi.
“Will you die for him, then, Dzirani? Will the bonesinger’s daughter give her life for the son of a false king? I had thought you were wise.” She laughed, and the Mah’zula laughed with her.
“If I choose to do so it is my right,” Ani replied. “How do you hope to restore the old ways, if you break our laws now?”
“‘Our’ laws, Dzirani? ‘Our’ laws? Would you keep pretending to be one of us? Or do you champion this das’anas, this son of the enemy? It is time for you to choose sides, bonesinger scum.”
Ani glanced at Leviathus and sighed dramatically, though the gleam in her eyes spoke of nothing but mirthful anticipation.
“It is a good day to die, ehuani.” The smile on her face never faltered. “It is a better day to live.”
“Indeed it is,” Mariza agreed. “It is a very good day for you to die.”
Ani threw her head back, and laughed.
When the Ja’Akari, wild women of the desert, ride into battle, it is a glorious and fearsome sight. They shave the sides of their heads and fasten all manner of bones, beads and feathers into their tight braids.
Their faces are painted in feline snarls, and those who have managed to tame one of the giant desert cats—vash’ai, they name them—may also tattoo their limbs and torsos with lines and spots, in an attempt to make themselves appear even less human.
As they join in the fray, the barbarian females eschew all decorum, going so far as to bare their breasts as they howl and snarl for the blood of their enemies. These wanton displays, perhaps meant to encourage lust in the barbarian male, cannot help but freeze the blood of a civilized man…
—Pedantus ap Geoppus, Loremaster to the king, in the twelfth year of the reign of Azhi Dahaka
* * *
Mariza was right about one thing, Leviathus mused. All the king’s bards and all of his fools could scarce begin to describe the utter strangeness of the Zeeranim.
He had suffered at their hands, and had he a tenth of his father’s magic he would slay them all as they stood, and yet he found them fascinating in their strangeness. Much as one might find a viper fascinating, he thought, even beautiful.
A circle was prepared for the fight, laid out in fragments of stone colored red with chalk. Ani and Mariza stood facing each other. Feathers and beads of bone had been woven into Mariza’s stiffened mane and Ani’s graying braids, and their faces had been painted so that it seemed they were a pair of snarling vash’ai. Laid bare, Mariza’s body proved to be mottled and striped as a cat’s—as was Ani’s, he realized with some surprise. When had the Shahaydrim youthmistress received the barbarian tattoos? For surely she had possessed none when their journey began. The patterns, though very faint, nevertheless marked her as Zeeravashani for all eyes to see.
She said that she and the wild vash’ai were not bonded, he remembered.
So much for beauty in truth.
The other Mah’zula sat in a wide ring outside the battle-circle. Two of them held small skin drums, and these they tapped with long, strong fingers, thrum-thrum-shushhhh, thrum-throb-shushhhh. Four of them sat so close behind Leviathus that he could feel the heat of their excitement.
Thrum-thrum-THROB-shushhhh.
The two women threw back their heads as one, and in unison they yelled their war cries, yowling shrieks that recalled the death songs of hunting cats, high and growling and wild, slashing the still air like claws and sending a chill down his spine. Together they yanked the laces of their beaded vests, baring their breasts in the ancient sign of contempt for an enemy.
The drums fell silent, and two sunblades flashed beneath the hot eyes of Akari.
When his sister Sulema fought her friend, the dark-eyed Hannei, Leviathus had considered it a breathtaking display of warriors’ skill. Now as the older women spun into battle, a mad storm of growls and blades and dark, flashing eyes, he quickly realized that the earlier contest had been little more than the tussling of half-grown cubs.
This, he could not help but think, this is art. This is beauty. This is what my father’s poets try—and fail—to capture in their weak dribbles of ink.
Lithe brown bodies slashed and dodged, thrust and parried. At first the younger, shorter woman seemed to hold the advantage. Her steps were a shade faster, her leaps higher, her battle cries ringing out across the sands with the heedless vigor of youth. The older woman, graying and sinewy, favored the left knee and seemed to tire quickly, mopping a forearm across her brow even as she narrowly avoided a vicious slash to the midsection.
And yet…
…though Ani’s movements seemed hesitant, tentative, though she shielded her weak leg and seemed to flinch from contact with her younger opponent, her eyes betrayed nothing but cold, hard calculation. She was a queen, stalking prey much hardier and stronger than herself, never doubting but that she would be licking blood from her whiskers as the dust settled.
Ani faltered, nearly going to one knee. Mariza leapt, sc
reaming, feet churning the air and sunblade sweeping out and down in a vicious arc. Her fellow riders cheered her on. At the last possible moment Ani regained her feet, staggering back just out of reach as Mariza landed—
—a little too hard, having overshot her center of gravity. Her guard dropped low as she fought to regain her balance.
Her eyes, Leviathus thought. You should have been watching Ani’s eyes.
Even as his thoughts betrayed him, even as his heart was caught up in the ferocious grace of the contest before him, the blade of Ani licked out like a tongue of flame. A spray of Mariza’s life fell in drops upon the sand, a poem written in blood. The leader of the Mah’zula clamped her left arm tight to her side, and her snarl-painted face contorted in pain and fury.
“Dzirani scum,” she panted, “you…”
“Oh, shut up,” Ani replied. Her blade flashed again, and again, opening toothless red smiles across Mariza’s throat and across her ribs. Red froth poured upon the sand, thick and hot as mulled wine.
Mariza’s mouth dropped open in a soundless shriek.
Her blade dropped to the sand, and she dropped to her knees, eyes going wide and blank as she realized that she was dead.
* * *
Silence fell once more upon the Zeera. The singing dunes went mute, and the warriors’ drums tumbled to the sand. Akari Sun Dragon seemed to stoop in mid-flight, casting a curious eye upon the tableau so far below him. The world held its breath beneath that hungry regard.
But dragons, being dragons, never pause for long to consider the matters of men and women. He flew on, the world turned, and the Zeera once more took up its low, slow song.
Or so it seemed to Leviathus.
As life rushed once more into the world, fury rushed back into the Mah’zula. They leapt to their feet, screaming at the sight of their dead leader. Mariza had toppled to lie upon her back, knees up, one arm behind her in what would have been a terribly uncomfortable position had she not been dead.
Dead, he thought, and he smiled.
It is a good day to die, he remembered the youthmistress saying, but it is an even better day to live. He looked with new respect upon the old warrior, who had cleaned her sword and sheathed it, and who now stood lacing her vest as if nothing else in the world could possibly concern her. She had taken wounds in the battle—blood trickled from a cut across her forehead and two cuts on her off arm, washed down her leg from one high on her right thigh—but she paid them no mind.
Askander is a lucky man.
“You killed her!” one of the youngest warriors screamed. Oufa, her name was, and Leviathus knew her to be less cruel than her sword sisters. “You killed her!”
“As one does,” Ani agreed. She considered the deeper cut on her arm, licked the blood away, and shrugged. “What did you think swords are for, little one? Cutting your meat into pieces small enough to chew?” And she laughed.
“Dzirani scum.” Ghaleta spat. “Now you will die.”
At that Ani looked up, blood still on her mouth, and again Leviathus was reminded of a wild vash’ai queen. “Khutlani,” she said, voice as soft as a purr. “The laws of the proxy fight are older than the bones of the Zeera, and they are clear. No hand may touch the warrior who emerges victorious.”
“As you are no warrior, the laws do not apply.” Ghaleta spat again, twisting her mouth into an ugly mask. The other warriors drew in close till they stood in a tight circle, just outside the battle ring where Mariza lay dead.
Leviathus stood as he realized that the warriors who had guarded him had joined their sisters. For the first time in two moons, he was unattended and ignored. The spotted churra he had been riding was but a short sprint away. I could escape, he thought, heart pounding. With enough of a lead, I might escape.
“You would break the ancient laws, then?” Ani drew her sunblade and faced them, defiant. Her face was a mask of dark disdain, and still her eyes showed no fear. “Truly, you are Kha’Akari.”
Was he the kind of man who could abandon a woman, after all she had sacrificed for him? No, he decided. I am not. I am more than a king’s son. Though my name die here, it should have meant something. He looked around for a weapon, that he might stand and defend the older warrior, but he saw none.
“You misunderstand me, shara’haram.” Ghaleta smiled an ugly smile. She unslung the bow from across her shoulders, nocked an arrow and drew in a single, smooth motion. “No hand will touch you, this day.” With those words, her arrow flew. Ani dodged, but not quickly enough. The arrow took her high in one thigh, and she let out a deep grunt of pain as that leg threatened to buckle.
Several warriors dropped their swords and bows upon the sand as they stared aghast at Ani, then at Ghaleta. Two or three others, laughing, took up their bows and drew.
Ani drew herself up to her full height, grimacing as she took a warrior’s stance. For a moment, she locked eyes with Leviathus, and her lips quirked in a hard little smile.
Go, she mouthed. Go. Run.
Against the urging of his heart, the Dragon King’s son did a thing that would haunt him to the end of his days. He turned and sprinted for the spotted churra. He grabbed up the churra’s lead—it would serve as reins, he hoped—clambered onto its back, and kicked the squealing, protesting beast into a flat-footed sprint. Away from the warriors, away from the battle, away from his courage and pride and everything that he had thought made him a man. Away from Ani, whose final battle might buy him enough of a head start to survive this day.
Behind him, Leviathus heard the final battle cry of a brave warrior, he heard the soft twang as arrows were released. He heard the scream of an enraged stallion, ringing through the air, more powerful and pure than any ancient law, more broken than any human heart.
He did not look back.
ELEVEN
Hannei drank deep of the sweet, sweet water, and smiled at Tammas over the rim of the loving cup. She could see her forever in his eyes.
“My man,” she told him. “Mine.”
He looked at her, and his eyes widened with puzzlement.
“If I am yours,” he asked her, “why did you kill me?” The words spilled from his lips like blood, poisoning the love she held between them.
“I never did,” she protested. “It was Sareta.”
“Liar.” Tammas drew his lips back, baring teeth in a rictus snarl. “You lie.”
And the moons drew a shadow over his face.
* * *
Someone slapped her, hard. Again. Then again.
Hannei jerked upright and would have broken the hands that struck her, but all she managed to do was jerk ineffectively against her rough bonds and blink as she was hauled into the harsh light. Rough hands grabbed her arms, dug into her ribs. Fingers twisted into her warrior’s locks and dragged her from one nightmare only to toss her into another.
How long had she been in that pit, bound and left to lie in her own stinking misery?
A skin of water was smashed against her lips and Hannei opened her mouth. At first she had refused water, and food, and all that had gotten her was a missing tooth. It was not worth the effort.
After so long in the dark, the hot stare of Akari blinded her. After so long in silence, the roar of voices was deafening. Hannei swallowed the tepid water, muddied with her own blood and bile, then chewed the bread they stuffed between her teeth, and swallowed the anger of her people as they called her murderer. None of it mattered. She would be dead soon enough.
As the shadows pulled back from her eyes, Hannei could see that the day was still young. It was not yet midsun. The warriors would have tended the horses, and perhaps gone hunting. The kitchen mothers would be pounding out bread, young girls laughing in disgust as they cleaned the churra pens and pretended not to notice the boys who just happened to veer close as they fetched water for the wardens. Another day rolling by under the sun, shiny and bright with the promise of beauty.
Not for me, she thought, poking the tip of her tongue into the space where a to
oth had been. Never again. The world rolled on as if Tammas had never been. She wanted no part of it.
They marched her past the smithy, where small children poured water into urns, there to be salted and oiled for the quenching of shamsi. Past the churra pits and the eyes of young girls who paused in their chores to watch the small, silent group. Sareta walked in front of her, sandals kicking up puffs of angry dust to coat the hem of Hannei’s tattered and too-big prisoner robe.
Lirya and Isara walked to either side. These were warriors she had laughed with, trained with, warriors whose backs she had guarded—and who now turned their backs on her, when the hour was dark.
Behind her, Hannei knew, the people were setting aside their chores. They would brush wood chips from their aprons and flour from their hands, set aside fishing pole and pestle and sword, and those same hands would pick up stones as they followed her, stones with which to weigh her guilt.
Three times in her life had Hannei watched a criminal be tried. One of them, an accused thief, had survived the ordeal—though by no means intact. Never in her life could Hannei have imagined that hers would be the feet to walk this road. Never in her darkest dreams had she looked into the eyes of her people to see… this.
All because Sareta sought to destroy Tammas’s entire family. What was it she had said? “The line of Zula Din has grown soft and wicked, and so must be ended.” Thus Hannei’s one great love was dead, and she had become just another victim of the First Warrior’s schemes.
Her dreams were much darker now.
The path was not well worn, nor was it long. It led them a little to the east of Aish Kalumm, past the groves and the pastures where the mares Hannei had owned and loved ran with the herds, under the watchful eyes of young girls who did not know that one day they, too, might wear the robes of the accused, the yoke of the condemned.
Lirya bumped into her so that Hannei tripped. Bound and unable to save herself Hannei fell, hard, upon her knees and then her face. She struggled for a moment to right herself, with no more hope than a turtle upended on the butcher’s block. Then a hand twisted into her warrior’s braids and dragged her upright, panting and moaning at the pain despite her best efforts.
The Forbidden City (The Dragon's Legacy Book 2) Page 10