“Forced to make?”
“Surely you do not believe that any child would choose such a life willingly? The Baidun Daiel are chosen. It used to be a great honor. When a child was selected for service, their family would be paid thrice their worth in salt. Mothers would hire tutors in painting, in music, in poetry as soon as the darling child showed the slightest artistic talent. These children, you know, are the ones most often selected by the Baidun Daiel. Artists, leaders, geniuses, the best and brightest. So, too, those whose minds are not quite… usual, are set aside. The ones who never learn to talk, but who count pebbles, or clouds, or who have imaginary friends. Those gifted ones are nearest and dearest to the heart of the dragon, and so to the Dragon King, who ever lusts for power. They are most beautiful.
“No child, once selected, may refuse the call of duty. No parent, no matter how powerful, may withhold an exceptional child from the Sleepless Ones.”
“No child?” Ismai asked. He was thinking of Char’s face, and of Sulema. “No parent?”
“No parent,” Char said, and she patted his hands. “Though the Dragon King controls the Baidun Daiel, even he is bound by their vows. It is a bitter magic, Ismai, bitter and without end.” She lapsed into silence.
“That is horse shit,” Ismai said at last. He pulled his hands away from Char’s touch and would have wept, had his eyes not been burned away. “This is all horse shit. You, me, the Mah’zula, the Baidun Daiel…” His voice broke, and he slapped his hand weakly against his bedding. “Horse shit.”
“Yes,” Char said. “That is true. It is horse shit.”
“And there is nothing you or I can do about any of it.”
“Ah,” she said, and her voice became urgent, “this is not true. Ismai, there is something we can do. You and I, together. A power we might wield—”
Kithren! Ruh’ayya’s thoughts clawed at his mind. Kithren, ’ware! She is not— Her voice cut off abruptly, or was cut off.
“Ruh’ayya!” Ismai tried to sit up. Tried, and failed. Char’s fingers pressed lightly against his chest, and Ismai found that he could not move.
“Your Ruh’ayya is unharmed. I would never hurt her, Ismai, for in doing so I would hurt you… but I do not like being interrupted, and I am telling you a story.”
“Go on, then.”
“Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She had a mama who loved her, a mama as fierce and beautiful as the red winds.” Impossibly, a gust blew through the Valley of Death, moaning like a woman. “She had a papa who loved her, too, and he was as powerful and terrible as the earth itself.” The ground beneath Ismai trembled and bucked, and he heard a smattering of rocks fall from the high walls, their voices hard and angry. “She was taken from them, taken from everything, and when she tried to run away…”
Yet again her voice broke, and Ismai groped toward the sound.
“Oh, Char. I am so sorry.” Her hands caught his, squeezed. Such power in her little bird-bones, such heat.
She squeezed back, and then pulled her fingers gently from his grasp. “It was long ago, Ismai, and I am a child no longer. That child died, long and long and long ago, and the world she loved died with her, but her father lived on,” she continued.
“In his rage and loss he did terrible things, terrible things that he came to regret and in the end he was betrayed. Led to a dark place by those he loved best and trusted most. They told him that there was a chance for peace with the Quarabalese, with the Sindanese, and he leapt at the chance to put an end to the bloodshed—an end to the need for the Baidun Daiel. But it was a lie, Ismai.
“Those whose houses are built upon war will never agree to peace. Kal ne Mur knew that, he saw that, but so desperate was he for an end to the endless wars that were destroying his world that he ran where he should have trodden with caution. On a dark road, under the dark moons, Kal ne Mur was ambushed and stabbed in the back by a man he had called ‘friend.’ One who has no heart, himself, who can neither sleep nor die.”
“Ahruman,” Ismai whispered.
“He was called so, then. In this time he is known by another name, one I will not utter so close to the dead who hate him. You know him only as the one who can neither sleep nor die—”
“Nightmare Man,” Ismai said, and shuddered.
“Nightmare Man,” Char agreed, and spat into the river of death.
“Those who witnessed the murder of Kal ne Mur turned blind eyes, and deaf ears, and dumb mouths. They shuttered their windows and turned their faces, and left their king—their foreign, hated king—to die alone in a puddle of piss and blood. And that, they thought, was that. The Baidun Daiel would wield atulfah as best they could, for such was their bond with Sa Atu that some remnant of his magic flowed through them. In time a new echovete king or queen would be found, a proper Atualonian with the proper bloodlines, not some antlered interloper from the bitter lands.”
“Did this happen in Min Yaarif?” Ismai guessed. “In Bayyid Eidtein? I have heard—”
“Oh, Ismai, you silly. No, the place where it occurred no longer exists. Do you think I—do you think the girl would let a city survive, that had stood by and watched and done nothing while her father was murdered? No, no. That place is gone, long ago gone, burned to ashes and dust and the laughter of shadows.”
“I thought they had killed the girl?”
“They thought so, too, Ismai, but they were mistaken, and it killed them. It killed them all. The girl’s father had found her, much as she found him, later. Beaten and burned and… and mutilated beyond all hope of healing. When he found her he wept over her body as it cooled and stiffened. He did not allow her flesh to be burned, or preserved, or eaten by wyverns. He did not allow her bones to be sung. He did not allow any of those things we do to the dead to make sure their journey into darkness is comfortable and swift and, most importantly, that it is a one-way trip. It would not do, you understand, to have the dead realize they can step off the Lonely Road and retrace their steps.”
Char laughed, and in her laugh Ismai heard that which had sent the bonelord Arushdemma fleeing into the desert.
“The Dragon King wrapped his daughter’s poor little body in his own golden robes, and he laid his own golden mask upon her breast. He carried her in his own arms, all the way to the Valley of Death, where for generations of generations people of all lands had interred their best, their brightest, their most beloved. He sang as he rode, and as that sad procession neared the Zeera, the girl’s mother joined them and added her fine, soft, sad voice to his. They dug a tomb deep in the valley, and there they sent their beloved child off to sleep as they had made her. With love.
“But their song did not soothe the girl’s sleepless spirit. It did not quench her thirst for vengeance, and when later she tasted the salt of her father’s blood upon the red winds she rose, and gathered his body up in her arms, and she carried him home. And here they wait, as they have waited since the Sundering.”
“For me,” Ismai whispered.
“Well, not for you in particular.” Char laughed a little. “But we will make do.”
It stung. “So I am not… uh…”
“The Chosen One? The Boy of Prophecy? No,” she told him. “Those are silly stories, told by silly people, but you are here, and I am here, and we are friends, are we not?”
“We are.” Of that much he was certain. Ismai relaxed, and shushed Ruh’ayya as she scrabbled at the edge of his mind. Not now, he told her. I am fine. It will be fine.
“And friends help one another, do they not?” She stroked back his hair, exposing his ruined face to the bitter air.
“Yes. They do.”
“I can help you, Ismai. You say that we are powerless to change the things we do not like about our worlds. Your world, seized as it has been by the Mah’zula. My life, my not-life which has for so long been confined to this tiny place, this tiny piece of time. We could be free, Ismai, you and I. We could be free to go wherever we wish, to do whatever we wish to do. None could deny
us, withstand us. I could go and see the sea, if I wished. I have heard it is glorious. You could free your people. We could—”
“How?”
“You are willing?” Char sounded, he thought, surprised. Ismai did not hesitate.
“Yes,” he said. “Whatever you wish of me, if by doing so I might free my people…” And keep Sulema from sharing your fate, he thought without saying it. “I am willing.”
“Ah,” she sighed. “Ah, walk with me, Ismai.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but Char took his hands in hers and drew him to his feet.
“Oh,” he said instead.
“Mind your feet,” she told him. “You do not want to bathe them in this river, Ismai, not while you are living.”
“River?” Ismai was puzzled. “There is no—” Then he heard it. The rushing water. It called to him, and he swayed toward that sweet, cool song.
“Ah-ah!” Char warned sharply. “None of that, not for you! There, step up into the boat. Yes, just there, very good.” Ismai let himself be led, felt wooden planks beneath his feet, the sway and lurch of a boat as it was pushed into deep waters.
“There was no river, was there?”
“Of course there was a river,” she chided. “It was always here, it has always been here, though it cannot be seen with living eyes.”
“My eyes are dead.”
“They are.”
“And if I open them?” The very idea of peeling his burned lids back caused a spasm of pain, but Ismai was curious.
Kithren, Ruh’ayya wailed from far, far away. Kithren, no no no no… But Ruh’ayya, beloved as she was, had not been able to save him. Had not been able to help him. Char offered him another way.
“If you open them?” she said. “Open your dead eyes, and look upon the Valley of Death? What is seen cannot be unseen, Ismai. I do not think you are ready for this, not yet.”
“I am,” Ismai insisted. He knew it was a bad idea, but that had never before stopped him from tumbling head-first into disaster. He took a deep breath, steeling himself against the pain, and forced his burned lids to open wide, wider. He would have shed tears of pain, but of course that was impossible.
At first there was nothing. Not the thick blood red of light through closed eyelids, nor even the soft of darkness. It was like trying to see with his fingers or toes. There was nothing.
Then there was something.
Then there was… everything.
Ismai cried out in terror and fell back. He could see the boat now, the sickly green-black of decaying wood. He could see the river, red and pale as watered blood, and he could see Charon, the Guardian of Eid Kalmut, as she used a long pole made of white, white bones to push their boat down this river of the damned. He turned his face from the sight of hers, and wept in terror.
“I told you that you were not ready,” she said, in a voice edged with hurt and anger. “I told you.”
“I am sorry,” he wept. “I had no idea. You are so—so—”
“Hideous,” she spat, thrusting her pole into the water so that the bloody water sloshed against the side of their vessel. “Ruined.”
“Beautiful,” Ismai told her. He wanted to cover his eyes, to shield himself from her terrible bright face, but she was right. What had been seen could not be unseen.
“Beautiful?” She laughed, and the water rippled outward, away from the boat. “Beautiful. You are silly, Ismai.” She smiled, and it killed him. She laughed, and it tore his soul to pieces. “Come on, then, help me. He has been waiting for far too long, and we should hurry.”
Ismai frowned to find himself standing upright, a pole grasped in his hands, twin to the one Char was using. He shrugged the confusion away and pushed. Their little boat skimmed across the turgid waters, and a lively breeze played upon his skin.
“Hurry where? Who has been waiting?”
“You are such a silly boy.” Char turned her face away from Ismai, casting its light instead upon the waters before them, and his heart ached. “We are going to see the Lich King, of course. It is time for you to meet my father.”
SIXTY
Easy meat, the slave raider thought. It is almost as if she does not know she is being hunted.
For three days they had tracked their prey, as the sword-tusked cats to the east might stalk a wounded tarbok—leisurely, laughingly, making no effort to conceal their presence or their purpose. A young woman on an old horse—stolen, no doubt, since the stallion had the look of the Zeera about him. Friendless and alone.
She was a dark stranger, lost in a golden land under a golden sky. Easy prey, worth a bag of salt or two at least. It had been a pleasurable hunt, and their prey had made it easy for them, fleeing down the very roads they would be taking after she was theirs. Why feed another mouth one day too soon? If the silly little hare would run straight into the cooking pit, it would be folly to stop her.
But their water was stale to the point of bitterness, and the shit-tasting dried flesh and berries they had taken from some dead barbarians were little more than dust in the bottom of a bag. At last they raised their weapons and their voices, and the five of them rode their prey down.
Or would have, had she had the sense to flee.
The girl halted her old horse at the bottom of a ridge of dunes, lacking even the sense to choose high ground for her final stand. As they drew close, Farak the bandit leader could see that she rode with her body curled protectively around some small object.
A babe, he thought. That explains a great deal.
“Two for the price of one, lads!” he shouted, laughing. “Red salt to the one who brings me that brat, alive and unharmed. Fetch a pretty price, it will.”
Then they were upon her. They made a loose ring about the girl, hooting and shouting, calling out obscene suggestions to frighten her. Strangely, she sat there wrapped head to toe in robes as bright and gaudy as a merchant’s stall, hands curled around the babe at her breast. She acted as if they were not there at all. Her stupid old horse was just as bad, letting its head droop and cocking a hind leg to doze in the sunlight.
It pissed Farak off.
“Girl,” he shouted to her, “hand over the babe and come easy with us, and you have my promise that I will let you live.”
“You will let me live?” A laugh, low and throaty, made him want to tear those veils away and see the face behind them.
Her form was nice enough. Was her face as comely?
Laugh at him, would she? I will tear those veils away, and make her scream. He kicked his horse closer. “I will let you live,” he said through gritted teeth. If he overpowered her now, the babe might be hurt or killed, and a brat would bring thrice its weight in salt. “My word on it.”
“The word of a slave raider.” Her shoulders shook beneath the colorful robes. “Worth nearly as much as a handful of goat shit. And I suppose you promise not to touch me.”
He laughed at that. They all did. “Girl,” he said finally, wiping tears from his cheeks. “Do you have any idea what your life is about to become? This road leads to Min Yaarif.”
“All roads lead to Min Yaarif,” she said, “or so I have heard.” She shifted in the saddle. “Are you certain you want this babe? It is no easy burden to bear, I can tell you that. You might do better to turn and ride back to whatever shit-hole spawned you.”
“Mock me one more time, whore,” Farak spat, “and we will see who is still laughing when the sun goes down.”
She threw her head back and laughed. She laughed, pulling her veils aside with one hand as she did so, raising the other before her face, revealing the treasure that she had been cradling close to her heart. The marrow of Farak’s bones turned to ice as he beheld a skull, a child’s skull, crusted in gemstones and gold and salt, winking at them in the dying light.
“Bonesinger,” he shouted, his voice as thin and high as that of a frightened boy. “Bonesinger!” He yanked his horse’s head around, ready to flee, but the gelding screamed and reared, throwing him to the
sand. Its hind hooves flashed beside his head, so close he could feel the wind of death against his cheeks, then the damn beast was gone.
From the ridge above them came a series of deep roars. Farak nearly wept to see three of the great desert cats—vash’ai, the barbarians called them—cresting the ridge. They were enormous, big as horses it seemed to him. The broken-tusked bastard in the middle stared him straight in the eye and roared again.
“Easy meat,” the woman said, and he gaped. “It is almost as if you did not even know you were being hunted.”
“Please,” Farak begged. “I have a woman… a child. Please. I want to live.”
“It is a good day to live,” she agreed, and smiled. “It is an even better day to die.”
With those words, she brought the child’s skull to her mouth, and pursed her lips over a small hole drilled into the top.
Then she blew.
SIXTY-ONE
Long they poled down Ghana Kalmut, the river whose name meant “Songs of the Dead.” In the long ago, Char had explained to him, this river filled the whole valley and gave life to the surrounding lands, and was called Eid Kalnassa, the River of All Peoples. Then when Davvus fled the wrath of Zula Din, journeying across the wide and lusty waters, so many of his people died in the attempt that it became known as Eid Kalmut, the River of the Dead.
When Zula Din in her fury smote the waters that had let her enemy escape, the very river shrank back from her, dwindling and dying so that the land around it dwindled and died, as well, until only the song was left—this shadow, pale and sullen, red as the baneful flowers that crowded its bank. No living eyes had looked upon Ghana Kalmut in so long that it had passed from memory to legend, and from legend into shadow. People eventually came to call the valley itself Eid Kalmut, and avoided it when they could.
“It is my belief,” she told him, “that the river can no longer be seen by living eyes, at all.”
“Certainly not with you as its guardian,” Ismai said. Instantly the pain made him regret speaking.
The Forbidden City (The Dragon's Legacy Book 2) Page 47