The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

  The leather fell away, revealing the wicked flensing knife.

  “—death.”

  “Zassa Arachni o.” Yaela bared her teeth, which stood out white against her midnight skin, and hissed like a nest full of angry snakes. “Where did you get this?” she demanded.

  “Death,” Aasah whispered. His hands twitched, but he did not reach for the knife.

  “Death,” Hafsa Azeina agreed. “This was found in the Zeera, deep within the Bones of Eth. It was left there by one who attacked my daughter and left her… damaged. By a man who has made himself my enemy.”

  “Then we do share an enemy.” Aasah tore his eyes from the gleaming knife and met hers. “This does not mean we share a bed.”

  “I should hope not,” she agreed. “The last man who shared my bed ended up being something of a… disappointment.”

  To her great surprise, Yaela laughed at that. It was a big laugh, from the belly, and Hafsa Azeina found her own lips tugged into a reluctant grin.

  “A disappointment,” the girl howled. “A… disappointment… ah.” She wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of one hand. “Ah. I do hope this lover of yours met an untimely end?”

  “I ate his heart,” she admitted.

  This sent the girl into another fit of laughter. The dreamshifter and the shadowmancer shared a bemused smile over the murderous blade. Finally the shadowmancer’s apprentice—or whatever she was—regained her composure. Her laughter faded away, to be replaced by a grin fit for a vash’ai queen, all gleaming eyes and the promise of sharp teeth.

  “We may not share her bed, Master,” Yaela said, “but to share such an enemy—that is no small matter.”

  “No small matter,” he agreed, “and no small gift you offer us, Dreamshifter. I could use this knife to find the one who wielded it.”

  “I am well aware.”

  “Of course, and what price would you ask for such a thing?” His eyes hooded, and the girl at his side stopped grinning. “I will not agree to bring harm to his Arrogance. The Dragon King and I have a pact… and I will not go back on my word.”

  “I would not dream of asking you to break your word.” It was her turn to smile, and to watch the Quarabalese sorcerers squirm at the sight of it. “I ask you for no more than I offer—the chance to find my enemy. As I have taught my own apprentice, if you want someone dead…”

  “Kill them yourself,” Yaela purred. She looked at Aasah, and there was nothing of an apprentice’s deference in her eyes. “We must do this,” she said.

  The shadowmancer sighed and dipped his chin to his chest.

  “As you wish,” he agreed.

  * * *

  Servants were called in to clear the food away. When they had gone, Yaela shut and barred the door behind them and doused all but a single candle.

  Darkness for a dark purpose, Hafsa Azeina thought. It seemed fitting. The shadowmancer and his apprentice took a loom from its place by the front door and set it in the middle of the table. This loom was nearly as tall as Hafsa Azeina herself. And if it is meant for the weaving of rugs and tapestries, she thought, Basta’s Lyre was made to play children’s songs.

  A web was stretched between the wooden loom’s beams, a simple spiral, and in the middle of this symmetrical beauty sat a spider as big across as Hafsa Azeina’s two hands splayed wide.

  “What a beauty,” she murmured, and Yaela favored her with a smile.

  “She belonged to my master,” Aasah said in a hushed voice, “and to his before him. She is a Mother of Mothers.”

  It is an honor to meet you, Grandmother, she thought, but if the spider heard her, she did not deign to answer. Her cluster of eyes, the largest of them like dark pearls set in a face of silvery fuzz, tilted this way and that as she considered the humans before her.

  Yaela gathered several wooden bowls, a trio of glass pipes, thin wooden sticks polished to a rich luster, and other oddments of their peculiar magic. Hafsa Azeina looked on, curious. She had witnessed the shadowmancers’ tricks before—everyone had—but the secrets of their true magic were as jealously guarded as her own.

  “You will tell no one of this, of course,” Aasah remarked as Yaela set a wooden mug before her.

  “Of course,” she answered, and she had to smile. Who would be fool enough to beg magical knowledge from her?

  Daru, she realized with a guilty start. Daru would wish to see this. The boy would have pestered the shadowmancers with questions till their heads ached, and likely they would have answered him, too. The boy had a way with people. She knew he was alive, and not in distress, and she had been busy… but this was no excuse. He was her responsibility.

  I wish you were strong enough to go find the boy.

  As do I, Khurra’an replied, though I doubt much he would be glad to see me.

  Yaela poured something into a cup, and Hafsa Azeina returned her attention to the here, the now, and the enemies in front of her. She picked up the cup and sniffed carefully, flaring her nostrils like a cat.

  “Winterweed,” she said, “and wyvern-mint. And… lamb’s blood?”

  “Yes.” Aasah nodded. “It is called so, here in the mountains. We know this as Ruh-jah, or ‘heart’s blood.’ In Sindan they call it ‘blood of the innocent.’”

  Hafsa Azeina blinked away her irritation. “There are other herbs in here with which I am not familiar.” She swirled the liquid around in her cup. “Dreaming herbs, I think. Calming herbs. And dried mushrooms?”

  “There is nothing in that brew that will harm you in the least, Dreamshifter, on that you have my word. I would offer to trade cups with you, but the potion Yaela made for me is a bit—stronger—than what she gave you. I am used to the effects of jinnamagi, and you are not.” Even as he said so, the shadowmancer emptied his cup in one long pull, and took a glass pipe that Yaela had prepared.

  Hafsa Azeina shrugged and drank the unappealing swill, which tasted as foul as it looked. “That is how you know it will work,” her own master might have said, long ago when the world was green and good, and she was a princess of the Seven Isles. She accepted the pipe as well and took a long pull, holding in the smoke as she had seen the shadowmancer and his apprentice do.

  The top of her head floated away.

  “Well,” she said, and stared as speaking the word created rippling waves of orange and purple that flowed from her mouth. “That is interesting.”

  Yaela giggled.

  “Pay attention, the both of you,” Aasah snapped.

  Hafsa Azeina brought all her years of discipline to the fore, and it worked well enough that she was able to sit up straight and watch, fascinated, as Aasah blew colored smoke into the swirling web, causing the spider to dance in the semidarkness.

  Round and round she went, up and down, up and down, weaving a web, every once in a while stopping to consider her own handiwork, nip a bit of thread here, then add a bit. As she worked, curls of the colored smoke from the shadowmancer’s pipe clung to the web, weaving in and out among the sticky silken strands, creating a dazzling display of shadows and light as beautiful as any sunrise. Tiny globes formed from this magic, perfect and shining as a jeweler’s beads, and the spider wove these in, as well.

  Eventually the spider stopped, trembling in the shadows at the far edge of the loom, shuddering with exertion so that the web shimmered in the thin candlelight.

  “It is done,” the shadowmancer announced. He held out one hand, finger extended so that it brushed the web near the spider’s resting place.

  Fast as thought, as light, the spider struck. She scuttled along the web and pounced on his hand. Hafsa Azeina watched as two fangs as long as the tip of her little fingers sank into Aasah’s exposed flesh. The spider leapt free then and scuttled back to the center of her web. She looked, if a spider can be said to have a look, exceedingly self-satisfied.

  Aasah slumped and fell to one side. His eyes rolled back in his head until only the whites showed. His body went stiff all over, arching so that only his shoulders
and heels touched the ground, and he began to drum at the floor with fists and heels.

  “What?” Hafsa Azeina cried out, though her voice was muffled, the words slow and sounding fuzzy. “Aasah—”

  She would have risen, but the apprentice’s fierce jade eyes held her back.

  “Hssssst! Be silent and listen!”

  “Impertinent little—” Hafsa Azeina broke off as the shadowmancer began to sing. His voice wrapped about her soul as strong and light and silken as the spider’s web, as beautiful as the river on a bright spring day. Like a hunting hawk it rose, hunting truth in the sunlight that it might carry it back down to its master in dark places. It seemed to the dreamshifter for a moment, all too brief, that her soul rose with it.

  After a time he stopped singing, and lay staring white-eyed and blind at the ceiling. When at long last his muscles relaxed, the length of his body sagging down onto the cold stone, his eyes rolled back to show a bloodshot blue before they fluttered and closed in sleep. The spider gave her web a little shake and started to groom herself.

  The top of Hafsa Azeina’s head seemed to settle into place once more, though she resisted the urge to reach up and touch it.

  “Is it done?” she whispered, the echo of a shadow of sound, not wanting to disturb the sorcerer’s sleep. She knew what that exhaustion felt like, she knew what it meant, and she knew the dangers of waking such a one.

  “Ssst.” Yaela closed her eyes, as if to remember better, and began to speak in a voice near song. “You may be the spider, you may be the fly; you cannot be both.

  “If you are to find that which you hunt, you must first find that which hunts you. The Huntress has what you need, and you have what she wants. Bring her the horn of the golden ram, and she will give you the weapon you need.

  “Or she will kill you.”

  She opened her eyes to fix that jade gaze firmly upon Hafsa Azeina’s face.

  “It does not matter, either way. For the dreamshifter, all roads lead to death.”

  Hafsa Azeina drew a deep, free breath, closing her own eyes, the better to see the path that had been laid before her.

  “So be it,” she said. “So be it.

  “So be it,” she said a third time, making it true.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Leviathus had visited the traders’ port of Min Yaarif in the past. He had often traveled as his father’s emissary, and took pride in the number of deals he had been able to negotiate. Always the city had seemed a charming place—a bit rough, to be sure, but that was part of its charm. Though it was rumored to be a den of criminals and pirates of the worst sort, the king’s son had thought those tales to be exaggerations and the imaginings of untraveled folk.

  This time he had a somewhat different view of the city.

  For one thing, his window was barred. The cell in which he was kept was not horrible, as it had been built for the express purpose of holding important people hostage while ransom prices were negotiated. It was a cell, nevertheless, and just a short walk past the hangman’s block.

  Negotiations, he had learned, did not always play out in the captive’s favor.

  So Leviathus sat, and he waited. Sometimes he walked and waited, or slept and waited. He wished for someone with whom to talk. When the slaves came in to bring him food and a fresh chamber pot thrice a day, they spoke no more than mice might have.

  Or books to read. He had asked once, and the woman who held the keys laughed till tears rolled down her face. Apparently, prisoners were not meant to enjoy their time in the cells.

  Then again, he thought, three days ago I wished for nothing more than water and food. Here I have water, and food, and I wish for books. If I had books, what might I wish for then?

  His head itched.

  I might wish for a bath, a long sleep in my own bed, and the company of a pretty girl afterward.

  Unbidden came the image of Yaela, the shadowmancer’s little apprentice, with her wide jade eyes and lush curves just hinted at beneath the layers of clothing she always wore. She was sharp-tongued, that one, but sharper-minded, and Leviathus had seen wit and kindness on those rare occasions when her mask slipped.

  Perhaps I shall wish for a kiss from the shadowmancer’s apprentice, then.

  As well wish to taste the stars, a voice laughed in his mind. As well wish to drink the moons, as wish for love from the shadow-souled.

  Leviathus startled at the voice. It was not the dark and angry whispering of his own soul, a cry for vengeance from those who had wronged him. Nor yet was it the dry, low growly voice of the vash’ai queen who had guarded his sleep along the road to Min Yaarif. This was different—a sibilant sound, a whisper of song, the susurrus of iridescent scales across the white sand beaches of home.

  Who are you? he asked.

  Who am I? The voice laughed, and that sound lifted Leviathus’s heart from a dark place. Who are you? Before you know who I am, you must learn who you are.

  Frowning, Leviathus walked to the window and pressed his face against the bars, but all he could see was a patch of hot blue sky and a bright sun above the gathering crowd as the auctioneer made ready to sell a fresh batch of slaves. Though the slave markets had always left a sick feeling in his stomach, today he spared those poor wretches scarcely a thought. A captive himself, he had concerns of his own to attend to.

  I am Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu. Last son of the Dragon King…

  I did not ask who your father was, the voice responded. I asked who you are. That laughter again, like a great bell ringing deep below the ocean’s surface. When you figure that out, perhaps we shall speak again, you and I.

  The voice was gone.

  It left a tintinnabulation in Leviathus’s ears and a taste like brine in his mouth.

  Well, I did wish for someone to talk to, he thought. That might not have been the smartest…

  Screaming erupted from the auction block as some poor soul objected to being sold as trade goods. Leviathus heard the thud, thud thud of heavy blows against flesh, followed by the unmistakable wet crunch of breaking bone—the slave was a fighter, then, or had been—and afterward more screaming, shrill and wounded. He thought that came from the auctioneer, and allowed himself a small smile. The man was odious, and if he lost his life at the hands of an outraged slave, the world likely would be a better place.

  He peered out curiously. The crowd rolled toward the auction block as crowds always do, drawn by misfortune, then pulled back again in response to something frightening. Perhaps one of the chinmong used by the security guards. Those raptors were enough to cool the ardor of the most blood-lusting crowd.

  As the crowd moved, a face stood out from that seething, screaming humanity. A small, brown face, wide-eyed and staring not at the bloody tableau, but at him. That face, a stranger in a sea of strangers, was hauntingly and impossibly familiar.

  “Who are you?” he called, knowing as he did that he risked a beating from his captors. The screaming crowd swallowed his words, so he tried again. “Who are you?”

  Who are you? the voice laughed in his head.

  The boy blinked, then smiled wide as the rising sun. He held up one hand in greeting. With his other he saluted Leviathus, fist to chest, in precisely the manner of his Draiksguard. Then the crowd swallowed the boy, and once more the king’s son was alone.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Hannei grunted as the fat man’s lash licked across her back, biting deep into her skin and tearing away chunks of flesh. Blood flowed freely down her back to be sucked up by greedy flies. Tears rolled freely down her face, to be sucked up by the greedy heat. Her shoulders burned, pulled nearly out of their sockets as she jerked against the rough bonds.

  For the second time in less than a moon she had been bound and beaten, and for the second time she opened sa and ka wide to death, begging to be allowed to set foot upon the Lonely Road.

  For the second time in less than a moon, death spurned her.

  At last the fat man got what he wanted. A flap of skin came
loose, falling aside as if she had yanked her warrior’s vest open. Hannei felt it, every bit of it, the blood and the flies and the flap of warm skin hanging down against her butt. She could smell it—blood and piss and fear sweat—and taste the sour vomit in her mouth. She could even hear the effects of her torture in the gasps and hushed applause it invoked in a growing throng of outlanders, and in her own strangled cries, caught deep in her throat with no hope of escape.

  Her body twitched and shuddered, struggling at the rough bonds even as she realized the blows had stopped falling, and the fat man’s shadow fell across her face. She could no more lift her eyes to meet his than she could sprout wings from her ruined back and fly away, or quiet the shuddering moans that wracked her body as it hung like meat left to ripen in the sun.

  The man gripped her jaw, hard, with the hand that still held the whip, and wrenched her head so that Hannei was forced to look at him through her swollen eyes. His nose was broken, his face smeared with blood—probably most of it hers—but he was assuredly a prettier sight to look upon than she.

  “Think you are a tough one now, you little shit?” He hawked and spat, the warm phlegm mixing with blood and worse on Hannei’s face. “Think you are beautiful, now? My dogs would not fuck you, looking like this. Think you are special, little barbarian warrior? I paid good salt for you, and you are worth less than the shit ’neath my foot. Fucking barbarians. At least I had a little fun before you died, hey?”

  He fumbled at his belt and drew a long dagger, no bigger around than one of Hannei’s broken fingers. “I will enjoy this, I will. Say goodbye to your Akari, little warrior.” He pressed the point into the soft flesh beneath Hannei’s jaw. She closed her eyes and shuddered in relief.

  It is over, she thought.

  “Hold!” a voice shouted.

  No! Hannei screamed silently.

  It was a voice no human throat could produce. It was the woman whose lizard-thing had stopped Hannei from killing the fat man. The man turned and frowned, dragging his knife across Hannei’s skin as he did so, but not deeply enough.