The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

  Annu no longer, she told her kima’a. I am Hafsa Azeina, and that is all.

  Ahhhhh, Basta purred. But will that be enough?

  It has always been enough, Hafsa Azeina answered even as she turned to face the hounds. It was enough when I bound the Dragon King to my will, using only the natural magic of young girls. It was enough when I took his fire into my belly and used it to create a daughter who will be more powerful than either one of us. It was enough when I used fear, and love, and the magic in my bones to defy his will and escape Atukos.

  Before ever I was the Queen Consort, before I was Dreamshifter, Dream Eater, Annubasta… it was enough. I was enough. I was just too foolish to see it.

  Too foolish and, I think, too deeply in love with death.

  Hafsa Azeina did not answer, but brought the golden shofar to her lips and blew. The first sounding of the shofar akibra was the tookiah—three long, low notes which were meant to stir the human heart to thoughts of music and beauty, poetry and dreaming. When the dreamshifter sounded this call she felt a stirring, as those in the Dreaming Lands woke and those in the waking lands were drawn forcefully into their own, deepest dreams.

  The hounds bayed, white-toothed and red-mouthed, eyes gleaming in the underbrush as they swept round the place she had chosen for her last stand.

  The second sounding of the shofar akibra was the neshamsha—two sharp, trilling notes that trailed off in an upward curve, meant to waken the human soul to its own beauty. It was a call to duty, to higher power, to the realization of her own place in the Web of Illindra. The dreamshifter sounded this call, and those who had ears to hear were stirred in their hearts to be better than they had been, before. Or worse, depending on the color of their dreams. Beauty would be created, and murder committed.

  The hounds ran faster, closer, a storm of death and bloodlust, whining in their eagerness to devour her dreaming soul.

  The third sounding of the shofar akibra was the sut ah’sud, and to play this note was khutlani to all people in all worlds, for this was the voice of the golden ram—a call to judgment, a call to the final battle, and this note was meant for the gods alone.

  The hounds fell still and silent, a black fog full of mad red eyes, and faded deeper into the strange woods, away from the one who dared fling such a challenge at their Mistress’s feet. Basta leapt up, back arched, hair standing stiff, and hissed her displeasure.

  I cannot believe you would have the temerity, she spat, furious beyond words. Even you. Even now.

  All roads lead to death for me now, Hafsa Azeina responded as she lowered the horn. I might as well choose the swiftest way.

  Death, certainly, but this… this! Basta faded away, leaving only her lovely emerald eyes. You will rue this day long after your death, Dreamshifter.

  So be it. Hafsa Azeina’s hands shook even as she stuffed the shofar back into its bag at her hip. To save my daughter, I will pay any price.

  The price will be high, Basta said as her eyes winked out. Too high, perhaps. Would you sacrifice the world to save your daughter?

  If Basta’s words had been meant to urge her to despair, or to sanity, they missed their mark. Hafsa Azeina smiled. Despite the hour of the day, despite the hounds and the hunt and the horror of this never-ending twilight, she saw clearly now the path her own heart had set, long years ago.

  Would I sacrifice my daughter to save the world? she countered. I think… not.

  One of the hounds, a hulking beast three times as big as most, threw his head back and screamed. Hafsa Azeina, who had once disemboweled a lover and strung her lyre with his guts as he hung dying, thought that she had never heard anything so horrible. Her flesh prickled with a painful chill.

  So it is true, she thought, that some hounds are fashioned from men. For such a scream as that could never come from the throat of a true beast.

  The hound fastened his tortured eyes upon her, pleading for—something—but before she could react, he flew apart in a bloody mist, leaving his final shriek to hang in the dreaming air, forever unfinished. The ground where he had stood was rent open, revealing a doorway to some twilit hell from which rose a dark and fulsome smoke. The hounds cowered and quailed, wailing upon the ground. Then with a flash of blood and fire a dark horse surged through, and into the clearing. It was a fell beast, wild-eyed, gape-mouthed, nostrils flaring red, and upon its broad back it bore the Dark Lady, the Whisperer of All Souls, whose arrows had tasted the heart’s blood of countless victims. The Huntress.

  Tall and slender as the supple willow, pale as a new dawn, deadly as life the Huntress sat laughing astride the great black mare. In one hand she held a bow fashioned like a rearing lionsnake, and in the other a blood-red shamsi, its hilt fashioned from the jaw of a horse. She was dressed crown to ankle in a black-and-gray touar fashioned from burned funereal rags said to have belonged to dead heroes. Hung at her waist was the horn of a ram, a shofar akibra, twin to Hafsa Azeina’s own. A brace of ravens flew in her wake, screaming with rough glee.

  “Effective,” Hafsa Azeina said, “if a bit melodramatic.”

  The Huntress pulled up her mount at the very edge of the clearing. Bright, even teeth gleamed from beneath the charred touar.

  “Do you call me to dance at last, Annu?”

  “No,” Hafsa Azeina replied. “I come to make a bargain.”

  “A bargain?” Had she a heart left for mirth, Hafsa Azeina might have laughed outright as she imagined the look on the Huntress’s face. “Do you think to mock me, human?”

  “I would not dream of it,” Hafsa Azeina answered. She opened the pouch at her waist and drew forth the traditional small loaf of flat bread, flask of sweet water, and tablet of red salt. “Shall we begin?”

  The Huntress swung one leg over her horse’s back and leapt to the ground, landing easily, and then crossed the clearing in quick, fluid strides. Sheathing her blade, she put away her bow and reached up with both hands to push the cowl back from her face as she reached the dreamshifter’s last stand. She smiled a wide, predatory smile as their eyes met—golden eyes set in faces as alike as moonstones.

  It is like looking into a mere, the dreamshifter thought in shock, and seeing my own dark sister.

  “The trap is sprung,” the Huntress intoned in a voice much like Hafsa Azeina’s own. “Now let us see which of us is the prey.”

  * * *

  “So,” the Huntress said at last. She sat almost knee-to-knee with the dreamshifter, smoking a long-handled pipe made from the rib of someone who had been—perhaps—less fortunate than herself.

  Hafsa Azeina stared, bemused, as Breama—such was the name she had given—blew perfect rings of blue-gray smoke into the air, one after another. The hounds stood watch, the dark mare cropped the strange grass, and the two deadliest hunters ever to set foot in the Dreaming Lands chatted as amiably as old friends over a game of bones and stones. Yet a promise of death hung in the air between them.

  “We have shared bread, and salt, and water, as allowed by the new laws. Now let us to bargaining. I can guess what desire coils within your sweet human heart—long have you hunted the golden wyvern, and long has he mocked your efforts. A candle against a great roaring flame, ta? Those were your words, ta?”

  “Yes,” Hafsa Azeina agreed. “Those were my words.”

  “You seek my aid in hunting this… great roaring flame of yours, so you can singe him with your little candle.” She grinned, and smoke poured between her pointed teeth. “I am right, ta?”

  “Yes,” Hafsa Azeina said, “and no. May I?” She held out her hand. Surprised, Breama handed over her pipe, and doubled over with mirth as Hafsa Azeina attempted a smoke ring of her own, with no success whatsoever. “I always wanted to try blowing smoke rings,” she admitted. “And this is probably my last chance.”

  Still chuckling, the Huntress took her pipe back. “If you do not need my help in finding your husband”—she emphasized the word cruelly—“then what do you wish, and what do you have to offer that you think
I might possibly want? Besides your own sweet heart, of course.” She licked her lips. “Certainly you do not think to offer me this… abomination.” She pointed at the dragonglass dagger hanging at Hafsa Azeina’s waist.

  “Of course not,” Hafsa Azeina replied. “I would not offer insult in such a way.”

  The Huntress grunted, satisfied. “What, then?” She tossed the heel of her bread to the ravens, who clacked and gabbled in delight as they stabbed it to death with their sharp bills. “What do you have to offer that I might possibly want? Besides your own pretty skin, of course.” She licked her lips.

  “Oh,” Hafsa Azeina said. “Well, I had thought to offer you this.” She pulled the golden shofar from its bag. The Dreaming Lands went still and silent at the Huntress’s wordless wrath.

  “You!” she said at last, in a voice hard enough to shatter rock. “You. You did this. You killed him. You!” She leapt to her feet, eyes blazing, teeth bared in a feral snarl. “I will—” But she froze in the middle of her lunge, prevented from murder by laws that held much more sway in the Dreaming Lands than ever they would in the world of men. Her hounds threw themselves flat upon the ground, wailing, as the air about their mistress shimmered red with her impotent rage.

  The trap snapped shut.

  “Yes,” Hafsa Azeina said, “I killed the golden ram, I took his horn. From it I fashioned this, my first instrument of death, and now I offer to return it to you… for a price, of course.”

  The Huntress trembled, wide-eyed and taut, fists clenched so that her knuckles shone white. Her face, in those few moments, had grown markedly less human. If possible, this made her look even more like the dreamshifter than she had before.

  “You know full well that I cannot refuse you,” she said bitterly. “Not for this. Name your boon, human. If it is mine to give, you will receive it. But be warned—”

  Hafsa Azeina held up the horn. It glittered in the strange light of Shehannam, and the Huntress stared at it hungrily, longingly.

  “My price is not high,” she assured Breama. “Neither is it low, for to ask such would be an insult. I ask only that you give to me a weapon powerful enough to kill… to kill…” Much to her own shock, Hafsa Azeina choked on the words. Idiot girl, she fumed, still in love with a dream.

  “You wish a weapon fit for a queen,” the Huntress said. “More than that, a weapon fit to slay her king.”

  “I do.”

  “He is the father of your child.” The Huntress’s rage shifted itself into something more malevolent and a slow smile, wry and wicked, stole across her face. “The only man you have ever truly loved.”

  Hafsa Azeina inclined her head. “It is true.”

  “Such a murder will make you a monster in the eyes of those you love.” The smile burst as the Huntress threw back her head and laughed. “All in vain, as by killing the Dragon King you doom your world—and your daughter with it. I love it. Such drama. Such tragedy! Ah, Dreamshifter, such a gift you have given me. I could just kiss you.” She winked. “But doing so would kill you, and so, alas! I am forbidden.” Her eyes fixed on Hafsa Azeina’s, and her smile hardened as she went on, “Long have I sought the missing piece, the lost horn of Guruvred. And now at last it comes to me. You come to my lands—my lands—and offer it to me freely. I cannot deny that my heart has longed for this day, and yet…”

  Hafsa Azeina drew a shallow breath as the hounds, still on their bellies, inched closer. A low growl rose about the two women like a dirge, a warning.

  “Yes?”

  “Your offer, while tempting, lacks substance. His horn is nothing to you. A trinket.” Though the Huntress’s face remained still and cold, the ground beneath them trembled. “It costs you nothing to part with this… this thing. You cannot buy the death of a king with nothing, Dream Eater. Pain may only be bought with pain.” She held both hands palm-up and shrugged. “It is law.”

  No, Basta’s voice whispered, far away and flat as an old dream. No. Hafsa Azeina closed her heart and took a deep breath.

  “Name your price,” she said.

  The Huntress gestured to her sorry, mad beasts. “Your soul, of course. Hafsa Azeina, Princess of the Seven Isles, I offer you a weapon powerful enough to slay your greatest enemy. In return, you will give to me the horn of the golden ram, and your eternal soul. When you die, you will hunt with me till the end of time.” She licked her lips again and smiled, a real smile this time that lit her eyes and stopped the wind. “Do you swear it?”

  The hounds wailed, a sound like the death of all hope.

  “I swear it,” Hafsa Azeina said, “I swear.”

  Three times, making it true

  “I swear.”

  Breama took an arrow from her quiver and, quick as lightning, drew the flint head across the palm of her own hand. A line of blood, ruby-red, glistened in its wake. She handed the arrow to Hafsa Azeina. The dreamshifter repeated the ritual, wordlessly, and they clasped hands, mingling salt and water in an oath of blood.

  Dark lightning hissed and burned through Hafsa Azeina’s veins. Her hand clenched, her back arched, and her mouth opened in a wordless scream as agony engulfed her from scalp to sole. When at last the Huntress released her grip, the dreamshifter staggered back panting and shaking her head as the world spun around her. The arrow she had been gripping fell to the ground between them, blackened and smoking.

  “I may not be able to kill you here,” the Huntress grinned, “but I never promised not to hurt you. Now…” She held her hand out, and all trace of mirth vanished. “Give him to me.”

  Hafsa Azeina did not hesitate. She thrust the golden horn into the Huntress’s eager hands, then she sat down, hard, all of her strength gone.

  “Ah,” the Huntress said, staring at the horn as if she expected it to disappear. “Ah.” She clasped it to her breast, and closed her eyes. “At last, oh my dearling, at last.”

  She went to the dark mare and took a thick leather bag from her saddle. Hands trembling, she unfastened the laces which held it closed, and placed both horns—the one she had gotten from Hafsa Azeina, and the one she had worn at her own waist—into the bag. There was a rattling, as of old dry bones, when she closed the bag fast again and shook it hard. Once, rattle-rattle, twice, rattle, rattle, three times she shook the bag. The third time there came a crack, the ground shuddered, and Breama dropped the bag at her feet.

  The bag fell open and a golden ram leapt free, shaking his great horns and bellowing with fury. The Huntress screamed and fell to her knees, throwing her arms around his throat and sobbing so hard it seemed as if her ribs might burst. Hafsa Azeina stared. She had always heard that the Huntress was fond of her ram, but this—

  A light bright and angry as a fallen star burst from the animal, enveloping them both. Crying out in surprise, Hafsa Azeina shielded her eyes against the glare. The light winked out as suddenly as it had burst forth and she blinked away the tears to see—

  Oh.

  Oh.

  For the Huntress stood weeping with her arms draped across the shoulders of a beautiful, if somewhat sullen youth. She stroked his downy cheek, though hers were the ones wet with tears, and buried her face in his golden hair. The young man stared angrily at Hafsa Azeina for a long moment.

  “You killed me,” he accused.

  “I did,” she admitted. “I thought you were a ram.”

  “Stupid human.” He turned to his mother, and Hafsa Azeina saw that he was younger than she had first assumed. “Mother,” he said, “let us go home. I am so tired.” He swayed where he stood.

  “See?” Breama’s eyes were hot as coals as she turned to face the dreamshifter. “See what you have done. My boy has been gone so long he is nearly grown. My only boy!”

  “I am sorry,” Hafsa Azeina snapped, trying to sound sincere. “If I had known he was your son, I would not have killed him in the first place. I thought he was a ram.”

  “It does not matter,” the Huntress replied. “I will kill you, in this life or the next, I vow it.
Come, Guruvred, let us go—”

  “What of our—” Hafsa Azeina began.

  The Huntress howled, her hounds howled with her, and with a clap of dark thunder and a smell as of cinnamon and sulfur, they were gone.

  “—bargain?”

  But the Twilight Lady was gone.

  Hafsa Azeina staggered forward angrily, determined to chase them to the Twilight Lands if need be, and tripped over the arrow she had dropped.

  Ah, she thought, I should have known. It was not in the nature of the Huntress, after all, to go back on her word. She stooped and retrieved the arrow. Its shaft was black, black as the hounds.

  The hounds… but her mind shied away from that load of horse shit. First let me destroy the Dragon King—and the world with him, like as not—and then I will worry about whatever is left of my soul.

  The fletching was black, but the flint arrowhead had been stained a deep, rich, heartsblood red that glowed in the dim light and whispered of death, and the nock was pure, soft gold. It was heavy, heavy as a soul full of guilt, born as it was from a promise of murder.

  She clutched the arrow to her breast much as the Huntress had clutched the golden shofar. It was a fell thing, filled with a single dark purpose, but it was her last, best hope. She reached into her pocket and drew forth a trinket, a treasure, the last possession of a happy childhood.

  For a moment Hafsa Azeina, long ago a moons-haired princess of the Seven Isles, looked upon the miniature portrait of her long-lost love. With one finger she traced the curve of his cheek, and her heart ached at the laughter in his eyes. Then she took up the worn blue ribbon that had been fastened around her neck for those many years, and tied it around the shaft of the black arrow.

  “Find him,” she told the arrow. “Find him, find my love and take me to him.” She kissed the miniature one final time, and tears washed the cut on her palm. “Find him,” she said a third time, making it true. Sealing her fate.

  Sealing all their fates.

  The black arrow heard. It understood, and in its wicked dark heart it wanted nothing more than to do as it had been asked. It glowed with a fell, dark light, then it twitched in her hand, and pulled.