Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  Haviva glanced up at the stranger and cast her eyes down again. She had combed her hair, I saw, and washed her face as well. I tried not to resent her for clinging to hope.

  Teeth flashed shocking white, so quick I might have imagined it. “I will take this one today. I like her eyes.”

  I had not imagined it . . . he winked at me.

  So strange, to have my sister dressing my hair for a change. I fussed and fidgeted till Haviva yanked at my head in frustration.

  “Hold still, you! Oh, this is impossible.” She yanked again and I resisted the urge to pinch her. Barely.

  “Leave some—ow!—on my head. Ow! You did that on purpose.”

  She rubbed her fingers in the little pot that had once held oil, a futile gesture, and sighed. “When is the last time you combed your hair? Oh, this is impossible. I think you have ghat nesting in there. Yes, see? A nest of pups. How sweet.”

  “And why should I—ow!—why should I bother? You are the pretty one.”

  “I am the fat one. And you are prettier than I, except . . .” Her voice faltered. We never spoke of my curse. “Well, I suppose he can hardly complain about your eyes, can he? His are much worse than yours.” She shuddered dramatically.

  “Thank you.” I snorted.

  “You are welcome.” There was a smile in her voice. I imagined that we were girls again.

  Hadl shocked us both by allowing us girls to make a tent of sorts with our bedding and build up the fire, so that we might heat rocks and squeeze a bit of sabra pulp for a steam bath. I am sure he hoped that the stranger would buy one of us—or fall asleep so that we might slit his throat and take his fine cloak. It would not be the first time Hadl had ordered such a thing done, guest-laws or no.

  I thought of the man—Aasah—the way he moved, the calm stone of his face, and shook my head. This man would not fall prey to the likes of us.

  “Sister.” Haviva left off scraping the grime from my back and pressed against me. Her arms wrapped around my neck and her belly pressed against my spine, thumping and insistent. “Sister, you would never leave me, would you? Not even for a handsome stranger?”

  “Not for ten handsome strangers.” I gripped her hands and leaned back to press my cheek against hers. “Not for a hundred.”

  “What would you do with a hundred handsome strangers?”

  “I would take them all as my husbands, and they would wait on me as a queen.”

  “A nag of husbands?” She giggled.

  “Husbands are not a nag,” I informed her with the lofty air of eldest sister. “They are a headache. I would have a headache of a hundred husbands.”

  This memory I have kept, for all these years, though I have scoured so many others from my cold dead heart.

  Our guest had selected for himself a sheltered and private corner and now he sat, cross-legged on his cloak, and waited for me. He wore a sharat, the traditional men’s loincloth of red spidersilk, and over that a very finely woven robe in the most beautiful shade of blue I had ever seen, dark as the evening sky.

  I sat as far from him as I might without seeming rude, and my heart ran like a frightened animal. The small sounds of morning were magnified a hundredfold, and I was too aware of them. Hadl was watching us through half-closed eyes, and I scolded myself for daring to feel shame; surely anything I might have been shy about had been ripped from me long ago.

  Aasah reached and held my jaw lightly in his long, strong hand, turning my face this way and that, as if I were a milk-goat for trade. He thumbed my mouth open and looked at my teeth, and stared long at my eyes. I stared back, daring him to call me cursed.

  “You see well in the dark. Your eyes are meant for seeing the hearts of shadows, little one. They are beautiful.”

  I shrugged and pulled away, unimpressed. Hadl had already given me to this man; why did he feel the need to compliment me at all?

  His eyes were wide, wide as mine, and the shocking blue irises all but hid the whites. He had cat’s pupils, same as mine, and already they had narrowed to near slits in the growing light.

  “Who were your people, little one? Etudumayloh?”

  “Kentakuyan. We are the last, my sister and I.”

  “Kentakuyan.” A long pause, and then, “The other one is your sister?”

  I nodded, but he waited for me to speak. “Yes.”

  “Ahhh.” A long exhalation of breath. He is sad, I thought, and wondered that he would waste his sorrow on such as us.

  Aasah did not speak again, or move, for a very long time. He stared into my eyes and I tried very hard not to squirm, wondering what he wanted of me, and whether I offended, and what I was supposed to do next.

  “Do you want to . . .” I shrugged, and made the gesture with my hands.

  He surprised me by laughing; a big, fearless sound. “Yes, I do. But not with you, little one. Not today. I am a man, and a man does not hunger for the flesh of a child.”

  I blinked at him, astounded, and his laugh faded, to be replaced by a look of profound sadness.

  “Come here, little sister, come to me and I will sing you a song. And you will sleep.”

  He stretched out, and I curled against his chest, and he began to sing.

  Shall I describe his voice to you, or name the things it made me feel? Would that I could. A simple babe’s song, a lullaby and nothing more; but as my ear pressed against his chest I felt his music unfurling, and within it I saw every color of love and tenderness one might feel for a child, even for a child that is not your own. His song was everything I had ever lost, and it cried me to sleep.

  The next night I saw magic, as I had not seen since I was small, and bright, and the world was good.

  Aasah hunted with me. Or rather, I should say that he hunted, and allowed me to follow him. He sang as he walked, a low sound, a slow sound and bold, and as he sang the manted shadows swirled about our feed like sand-dae. Drawn to the shadowmancer’s music against their will, they thickened about our bodies, rising up to cover us. The chillflesh rose along my arms at the shadows’ touch, cool and soothing, not at all as I had expected death to feel. For bound as they were to the shadowmancer’s song, these shadows were spun of death and silence and the long, cold nothing between stars.

  I—who had survived the Night of Sorrows, the slave pits, and the fighting pits, who danced every night on the edge of the Edge of the Seared Lands—I wept in fear and was ashamed.

  “Hush, sweet princess,” the shadowmancer scolded. “These shadows are mine to command; they will not harm you, not while you are with me.”

  Hidden from the sun in such a manner might we travel across the burning lands, I knew, all the way from the Edge and over the fell Jehannim to Min Yaarif, and beyond that to the lands of free peoples. But the price of shadowmancy was far beyond the reach of my wishes.

  Aasah sang on as we walked shadow-cloaked in darkness deeper than night, invisible to man or beast or Illindra herself, and from the heart of obscurity his curved knife flashed out swifter and more deadly than my shia. The night was not half done and I staggered under the weight of his kills; a fat dhurga-ewe dripping with milk, two of the swift and flightless makkim, and the real prize, a young surcat, the small dark version of its dappled cousin. The meat of the last was rank-tasting, but its fur was valuable, and the long dagger teeth could be used as pegs for a climbing rope.

  The moment we returned, Hadl’s eyes lit greedily upon the cat; Aasah gave it to him freely. “To repay you for your hospitality.” Hadl grinned and nodded, as a king receiving just gifts.

  I had never felt such a beggar.

  We feasted that night as I had not in years. The dhurga was fat and her dugs full of milk, and bird’s meat is rare enough to be a delicacy in the Seared Lands. Hadl could hardly begrudge us girls a share of the feast with his guest looking on. His eyes measured every mouthful we took, and we would pay for it later, but I figured the cost well worth it and ate till I could barely move.

  Aasah pulled a flask from the folds o
f his wonderful robe and offered the first drink to Hadl. At the time I had no idea what was in the drink. It smelled of overripe fruit of some sort and bitter herbs. Hadl spluttered and coughed, and his eyes watered, and then he pounded Aasah on the arm.

  “Ah, my brother! Such a fine thing! So fine!” He showed all his teeth and most of his gums and took another long pull. “A pity we did not meet when I was still a warrior, with two good legs. We would have owned Quarabala.”

  A queer look passed over the stranger’s face. “For how long has this wound plagued you, my brother?”

  “For a two-moon at least, my brother! Yes! My brother!” Hadl slapped a hand against his bad leg and grimaced. “I was a warrior, like you, but I got an arrow in the knee.”

  “Have you seen a healer?”

  “Healer, hah.” Hadl spit. “No good healers here at the Edge, all they want is to rob you.”

  That much, at least, was true.

  “I have some knowledge of healing, and of herbs.” Another odd little smile. “I could take a look at it, if you would like. There may be something I could do.”

  Hadl beetled his brows suspiciously. “What do you want for it?”

  Aasah smiled wide, pale eyes flashing like the moons. “Nothing more than you have given me already . . . brother. Shelter from the sun. Your fire to keep away the predators. The company of your little Yaela for another day, perhaps two, before I travel on. An ear for my stories . . . I do love to tell stories.”

  Haviva clutched at my hand, and her eyes shone. He was a storyteller too! I felt a little sour; was there nothing this man could not do?

  Hadl grunted his assent, and Aasah turned to me. His eyes were very wide and strange, pupils dilated so that only a thin ring of blue glowed about the edges.

  “Yaela, my dear,” he purred, “do you have a small bit of water? Real water, not sabra?” He turned to Hadl. “For purification. You have a powerful enemy.”

  “Oh, yes.” Hadl nodded, eyes flashing hatred for this imagined enemy. “Most powerful.”

  Aasah nodded soberly as he stripped the rags back from my husband’s flabby, hairy leg. The rot was not as bad as I had imagined—for a pity, it did not look as if it would kill him—and in fact the edges of his wound showed a healthy flesh color beneath the grime. Apparently most of the stink was Hadl himself.

  “Ah, yes, see here, where the flesh is still hot?” He poked a reddened area just above the cut; Hadl cursed roundly. “This is full of ill-wishes and poisonous energies. You are lucky that it has not gotten into your blood, yet. You would lose the leg for sure, and likely die. Become impotent, even.”

  “Impotent, hah! Not me! I—”

  “This is from an arrow wound, you said?” inquired Aasah, politely but pointedly.

  I said nothing, but thought of doe-eyed Samilah with her little knife. Arrow, indeed.

  “Yes. An arrow.” Hadl glared as if he read my thoughts. I looked away and said nothing.

  “And the man who gave you this wound, does he yet live?”

  Hadl smirked. “No. I fed that heart to my wives.”

  Haviva made a small sound and pressed her lips together as if she might vomit.

  Aasah smiled, wide and cruel. “Ah, I see you are a true warrior. Hold still, this is going to hurt.”

  Hadl did scream, long and long, the notes of it rolling across the Seared Lands, and my heart sang to hear it.

  When he had finished, Aasah washed his hands and face, and called me to his side. I brought him sabra water and cold meat. When he lay down to rest I curled up at his side, shivering at the warmth of him, and tried hard not to wish that I might always feel so safe.

  Hadl’s harsh breaths and sporadic moans were all the lullaby I needed. Still, my heart leapt when Aasah pulled me close, and I felt his breath on my ear. I thought he would sing, that I might feel his magic again, but he only whispered to me.

  “Your husband,” he confided, “is a quss.”

  I had to bite my hand hard to keep from laughing.

  “Will you dance for me, girl?”

  We had run far, under cover of Aasah’s shifted shadows. He had caught a tiny half-fledged dae owl unawares and had given it to me. I had eaten half of it raw before I realized he had meant for me to keep it as a pet. As if Hadl would ever have allowed that. Ah well, meat was meat.

  I shrugged, crunching the tiny bones of one wing between my teeth and spitting feathers off to the side, and stood as seductively as one might when covered in bits of owl-fluff. I let my robe slip, showing a hand’s width of filthy skin, and hid my pain and disappointment behind flirty, cursed eyes. He had said that I might go untouched, that a man does not hunger for the flesh of a child.

  Ah well, I mocked myself, meat is meat. I struck a provocative pose, ready to slip into the slave’s dance that had convinced Hadl to buy me and my sister in the first place.

  “No, no, little one,” he held up a hand to stop me, and his eyes were deep as night with heart’s sorrow. “No. I mean dance for me. As I sing for you. Dance the sky, dance the red salt earth.” He patted the ground beside him, raising a little puff of dust. “Dance the shadows, child. Do you know how?”

  “I do know,” I admitted, “but only a very little. Enough to help cloak myself on the hunt, enough to give myself a few seconds more to run from the sun if I stay out too late. But I am weak, untaught.” I gestured to my filthy, pathetic self, so ready to lay with a stranger, bitter and wicked to the core of my heart. “And I am broken.”

  Shadowmancy, the ability to shift shadows into physical form and bid them obey me, had always run in my veins. None could deny this, not since I was pushed screaming from the safety of my mother’s womb and stared upon the world with my eyes of Pelang. The Listeners had informed her that I was to be a dancer, and so it was; my first steps, they told me time and again, were graceful as a true wish. Before I learned to walk properly I had been taught to move with poise and purpose to the song in my heart.

  “Never dance with anger,” a tutor had lectured me once. “To do so is to call not upon Illindra, the Mother of All, but upon Eth the Unmaker. Never allow his shadows to enter your dance, little one, because once they have made a home in your heart, they will never leave.”

  I closed my eyes upon the memory, shattering it. Those words had been uttered long ago, when the song in my heart was good, and I had value. My world had been broken on the Night of Sorrows, and I along with it.

  “The Sindanese have an art form they call jinxiuli,” he said. “Have you ever heard of it?”

  I shook my head. No.

  “If a fine piece of pottery is broken, they do not throw it away. Their artisans use gold to join the shattered pieces together, making a new piece of art, more beautiful and more valuable than the original.”

  “You are saying that I am not broken?”

  “You are broken, little one. I am saying that the choice to remain broken is yours. You can remain as you are—or you can make yourself into something more. Something stronger than you would have been, safe in your mother’s arms.”

  The shards of broken dreams pierced my eyes, and tears ran down my cheeks.

  “Will you dance?” he asked again. “Will you dance with the shadows of death? Will you dance for me, little princess?”

  He knew who I was, then. Likely he had known all along.

  When I opened my eyes and looked upon the shadowmancer, they were hot and dry as the seared earth, hard as my seared heart.

  “Yes,” I said, “I will dance.”

  I was a girl living on the Edge, and that is the most miserable creature one might imagine in this world or any other. I owned nothing, not the sharpened stick I pretended was a weapon, not the food I brought home, not the filthy rags that covered my bruised skin—even that skin was another’s to do with as he pleased. I owned nothing, I was nothing, worth less than a handful of red salt dust—

  Until I closed my eyes and danced. In those moments I fell from the sticky, immutable Web of Il
lindra and into a world of my own making. When I danced, I was Yaela, and it was enough.

  This time, for this dance, I tried to be more. As my feet pressed against the hard red flesh of the Quarabala and my hands pressed up toward the moons, I imagined that I was part of everything, and that it was good. I was made of salt dust and star dust, hot sunlight and cool shadow, and the blood rushing through my veins was a river coursing across the parched earth, bringing life. As the soles of my feet slid through the dirt, as my hands sang a beautiful descant to the stars, I exulted. I was the bud of a blackthorn rose, opened just enough to reveal a soul born of dance and fire, hot and dangerous and beautiful as Sajani Earth Dragon herself. I danced, and Illindra danced with me along her shining web—

  But then the shadows came. A voice once broken will never sing so sweet, and a spirit as crippled as mine can never truly dance.

  My toes in the dirt sang of running, running in fear, my skin whispering against the wind sang of pain. The tangled knots of my hair as they fell down my back sang of violation, and my closed eyes of shame; it was to this song the shadows responded, and they rose in fury like the night, death made flesh, bent on silencing all song and all dance for all time. One outflung arm brushed against something cold and hard and prickly as a sabra pear. Startled, I faltered between one movement and the next, dropping the silken threads of magic I had so shyly begun to weave. My eyes, my cursed eyes, flew open of their own accord, and stared straight into my face, reflected back at me by the shadows. I looked into my own heart, and for the first time I faced what I truly was, what I had become—

  I screamed and buried my face in both hands, but it was too late.

  The shadowmancer Aasah stepped back from the sight of me, hands held before him in a symbol I had seen far too often in my life, a circle bisected by a line—a gesture meant to protect one’s soul from evil.

  Far below us, safe in her world shell as a chick is safe in its egg, Sajani Earth Dragon saw me in her dreams and turned away in fear.

  Only the shadows of death, seeing me as I truly was, loved me. And so they came to me that first night, my children—the only children I will ever know—they rose about me and the shadowmancer like a wave of corruption, drowning the stars and the moon and all things good. They swept me up in their arms, strong and sweet, dancing along to the bitter-ash song of my heart.