Do you see that? Khurra’an asked.
Yes.
What is it? It smells… foul. He drew his black lips back from his tusks in disgust.
Reaver venom.
Can you heal it?
I will try.
I will try, her apprentice had said, when she had set him to a deadly task. She could ask no less of herself. She closed her eyes.
Deep in Shehannam, the Dreaming Lands, Hafsa Azeina dreamshifted. Merged with the form of her own murdered soul to become a thing of twisted hunger and bloodlust, she became a monster, a beast, a thing of nightmares.
When she opened her eyes again, she was Annubasta.
Deep away, far away, the Huntress brought to her lips a golden shofar, twin to the dreamshifter’s own, and blew.
Annubasta drew her lips back in a silent snarl, but she remained seated at her daughter’s side, claws scraping and gouging at her enemy’s guts, playing a lively tune. His heart had been firm and ripe as a plum, and its juices had burst upon her tongue.
The humans gathered in the room were dim shapes to her dreaming eyes, hardly there, mostly asleep even as they thought themselves aware. Their souls shied away from her, though their dull eyes saw nothing but a human dreamshifter playing a gut-strung lyre. The shadows burned with dark flame, hungry and cowardly and cruel. The vash’ai were as glass statues full of dark smoke and vibrant life, their eyes jewel-bright. But the shadowmancer…
If the shadows were a dark flame, he was the heart of darkness, and he burned like the night. His eyes were young suns in an old and angry sky. He stood before her, clad in a cloak of living stars, and he saw her. He saw her, and his smile was the dawn that comes after a night of death.
“Shall we dance?” he asked.
If danced is a word that describes what he did next, if music is a word that describes the sounds that Annubasta drew forth from her lyre, then life is nothing more than a fistful of sand thrown about by the wind.
* * *
“Dreamshifter?”
A damp cloth, blessedly cool, dabbed at her face. She reached up to press it to her fevered skin.
Sleeping Beauty wakes at last, Khurra’an laughed. I wonder— will you eat the world, like the princess in your old stories? Or will you decide to spare us at the last?
“Coffee,” Hafsa Azeina groaned, sitting up and opening her eyes. It hurt every bit as much as she had feared.
Daru pressed a clay mug into her hands and helped bring it to her lips. Across the room, she could see the shadowmancer’s apprentice ministering to her master in much the same way.
The things we do for this world, she thought, and washed the bitter thought down with bitter drink.
“Sulema?” she asked.
Daru hesitated. “She is better.”
“How much better?”
“The healers say she will live, but…”
“But?”
“There is something wrong with her, Dreamshifter. She woke once, briefly, and her eyes were full of nightmares. There is a darkness…” He touched his shoulder, in much the same place Sulema’s wound had been.
“She is bitten.” The shadowmancer’s voice was a croak. His girl offered a mug of steaming coffee even as Daru had done, but he waved it away with a grimace. “Reaver venom. I have slowed its spread… forgive me, Meissati, we have slowed its spread… but this is not a cure. It will seep through her blood.” He spread his fingers and stroked along his shoulder, up the side of his neck, and patted his head. “It will grow stronger in her and fill her mind with nightmares, and then they will have her.”
“Who will have her?” Daru whispered, his eyes round with horror. Hafsa Azeina took the mug from his shaking hands and took a long swallow of scalding coffee, ignoring the pain.
“Araids,” the shadowmancer replied. His apprentice shuddered.
“They will not have her.” Hafsa Azeina handed the cup back to her own apprentice and stood, though her legs shook like a newborn filly’s. She looked at the battered, troubled face of her sleeping daughter, beautiful as the dawn. More precious than life. “Bring me Leviathus, and Istaza Ani if you can find her.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Daru bowed low and spun away.
Sulema, she thought, and her dead heart woke just long enough to break.
“You will go to Atualon after all, then?” The shadowmancer’s color was terrible, and his eyes bloodshot. He finally took the mug of coffee and choked it down. Hafsa Azeina thought his apprentice was laughing at him, behind those strange eyes of hers.
“We will go. Ka Atu…” She stooped to retrieve Basta’s Lyre with her free hand, and shook her head against a wash of dizziness. “Her father will be able to heal her. I have seen him heal people who had one foot already on the Lonely Road.” She had seen him heal people who had taken more than a few steps down the Lonely Road, truth be told, but she saw no value in telling the truth.
“As have I.” The shadowmancer’s star-studded skin glittered, and his smile was as odd as his eyes. “I would travel with you.”
She stared at him, and splayed her fingers across the guts of the last man who had lied to her. The shadowmancer’s apprentice glared at her, offended, but he just smiled.
“Trust me or not as you will, Dreamshifter. But we of Quarabala have been fighting the Araids for time out of mind. I can help keep the poison back, with my not-so-humble skills. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, would you not agree?”
Shall I trust this man? she asked Khurra’an.
Never. He tried to bribe me with a pig. But you might make use of him, for now. He licked his chops. The pig was delicious.
Hafsa Azeina met the shadowmancer’s eyes and gave him her brightest smile, the one that sent young children scurrying for their mothers. She raised her coffee mug in salute.
“To enemies,” she offered.
“To friends,” he agreed.
They drank.
TWELVE
“It is better to dance with the enemy than dance to the enemy’s tune.”
Somewhere out in the vast expanse of sand and savagery, a great cat roared. The sound hung in the air like a promise of blood and death and was answered, first to the east and then to the south.
Leviathus ne Atu, last surviving son of Ka Atu, looked up from the map he had been squinting at and frowned. Something about the way the vash’ai had been calling out to each other felt like the hunt. It stripped away silk and stone and civilization and made a man feel as if he were naked and alone, fleeing an enemy that could end his life with less effort than it would cost him to blow out a candle.
When a fourth cat roared, closer than the others and loud enough to set his ears ringing, Leviathus sighed and moved the lead weights that had been keeping the map from curling at the edges, rolled the parchment, and with gentle care slid it back into its leather tube. He hesitated over the candle in its delicate porcelain lotus. It was not his to take, but the hour was late and he was loath to leave a fire burning amid such precious scrolls and books. At last he shrugged and scooped it up with his free hand. He could always return it later.
He stood and stretched, rolling his neck to ease the stiffness. The woven seat was made for a smaller person with shorter legs, and he had spent the past ten days either sitting in this room or sitting in the sickroom at his sister’s side, eating when food was in front of him, fasting when it was not, and entirely shut away from wind and sun. The urge to move was starting to nag at him like one of his father’s councilors.
He tucked the leather roll under his arm and crossed the room, careful not to allow wax to drip upon the thick wool rug that muffled his footsteps. The weavings here were as fine as any in Atualon, he thought, and the bright balanced patterns pleased the eye. He made a mental note to have a word with his father about expanding trade with the Zeeranim. For too long they had only relied upon the east for trade goods, and overlooked the barbarian south. If they could figure out a way around the river serpents, perhaps increase the king’s protect
ions along the road to Min Yaarif…
The boy who had been sent to guide him to the library was seated at the door, crouched back on his heels and still as a stone carving. He stood as Leviathus appeared, dark eyes flashing in the candle’s light, his face as impossible to read as those scrolls written in ancient script. Leviathus smiled and touched the leather roll.
“I would like to take this for the night, and return it later. Would that be allowed?”
The boy studied him for a long moment, and then shrugged. Leviathus motioned for him to lead the way, biting the inside of his cheek as his guide tried to stare him down and, failing that, turned away with a sigh of long suffering. He was used to people all but killing themselves for his favor, and found it both disconcerting and refreshing to be so dismissed by a barefoot slip of a boy.
He followed his irreverent guide through a twisting warren of hallways, and was just beginning to wonder whether the boy was trying to lose him when they stepped through a pair of wide doors and into the mercifully cool evening air. He had spent hours in the library, then… no wonder his back ached and his belly rumbled. The boy disappeared in a flash of white linen and brown feet, and Leviathus shook his head ruefully. He could find his way to his own quarters from here, but not to the kitchens. Another hungry night. Well, perhaps he had some dried meat or something in his rooms somewhere.
The evening sky was beautiful—orange and purple on the horizon arching into a deep, deep blue freckled with the first stars. The larger moon, Delpha, hung low and full in the sky, little sister Didi peeking shyly over her head. The constellations Eth and Illindra were just winking into existence, taking up weapons in their endless war for dominion over the heavens. Leviathus smiled and breathed deep. The air was sweet and smelled of the river, and small frogs sang a charming chorus. Aside from the river-beasts and land-beasts and young boys who abandoned their guests without first making sure they had been fed, the Zeera was not half as hostile as he had imagined.
The wind shifted, carrying the tantalizing smells of bread and cinnamon, the less appealing stink of some musky animal, and a voice he knew only too well. Mattu Halfmask, son of one of the deposed king’s former concubines, a man Leviathus did not trust as far as he could throw the moons.
“The girl is a weakling bastard. No trueborn daughter of Ka Atu would be brought down by such wounds as that. I say she should get on with dying, and let us return home. This has been a madman’s quest from the beginning. Do you not agree?”
“They say she was poisoned…”
“They say. They say.” Always mocking. “I say no daughter of Ka Atu would be so stupid as to sneak away and get herself killed by one of the kin.”
Leviathus stepped around the corner of the building and confronted them. “Lionsnakes are not kin.”
Mattu turned his head fractionally, showing the curve of his cheek and sardonic line of his mouth—the only parts of his face Leviathus had ever seen. Tonight he wore the face of a bull, beautifully carved of leather chased with silver. Its sweeping horns almost hid the mischief glittering in that pale blue eye.
“What do you say?”
“Lionsnakes are not kin. They are beasts. Big beasts, to be sure, but nothing more than that.” He smiled, a hard smile. “No more than my sister is a weakling bastard. You would do well to keep your tongue in your head, my dear Mattu. And you… Rheodus, is it?”
“Yes, ne Atu.” The young Draiksguard had stiffened to attention, and his eyes rolled like a panicked horse’s.
“Good, Rheodus, you seem to remember who I am, at least. You should keep in mind that I am my father’s voice in this, and I say this girl is my sister.” He regarded the two men. “Do you say otherwise?”
“No, ne Atu. M-my apologies.” The soldier was stumbling over his own tongue. “I was just… we were only…”
Leviathus waved a dismissal. “Go.”
Rheodus left at a half-run, peering over his shoulder at least twice. Well he might. Leviathus would not wish to be in that man’s boots when Ka Atu learned that words had been spoken against his daughter. Bastard weakling, indeed… lesser men would hang for such words. But his father had always been blind to Mattu’s true nature, and overly permissive with the son of his deposed enemy.
Mattu turned to face him fully. “You are so sure of the girl, are you?”
“What is your game, Halfmask? I know you better than to think you are foolish enough to deny my father’s stamp, or impugn Hafsa Azeina’s honor. What are you really playing at, here?”
“Perhaps I seek to find discord before it can take root. Does it matter?”
“The words you speak do matter. They matter to me, and they will matter to my father. Do not make the mistake of speaking against my sister again.”
“My apologies, ne Atu.” Mattu folded his arms over his chest and smiled, mouth tight and angry. “I would not have you carry harsh words of me back to my liege.”
“Oh, no need to worry about that, Halfmask.” Leviathus smiled easily, as if they had been discussing last year’s wines. “I will not carry word of this to my father. If you soil my sister’s name with your tongue again, I will carve it from your filthy mouth myself.”
Mattu Halfmask sketched a mocking bow, turned on his heel, and stalked away into the night.
Does Mattu truly seek to expose the source of this rumor? Or does he seek to further it for his own ends? Not for the first time, Leviathus wondered whether his father’s soft heart would be their ruin. Would he have made the same choice, and spared the lives of his enemies’ children? Or would he have allowed the soldiers to slay mere babes, as they had slain the older son?
He watched as the shadows swallowed the half-masked man, and shook his head. Shadowmancer Aasah had warned him against allowing Mattu to accompany them on this quest, but Leviathus had allowed it.
Better to dance with the enemy, he reasoned, than dance to the enemy’s tune.
The rest of his walk was not as unpleasant. Small stones crunched underfoot and the air was crisp with the scents of lemon blossoms and chocolate mint. Since the day his father had divulged Sulema’s whereabouts to him, Leviathus had indulged in fanciful waking dreams of rescuing his sister from a life of privation and danger, but for all of his dreaming, he had never imagined that the barbarians’ city might be beautiful. If not for the enormous man-eating and venomous reptiles, the Zeera might be a nice place to live. Yes, it was past time the Dragon King turned his gaze south. Much could be gained through an alliance with the desert barbarians.
Perhaps this land could be tamed and put to good use.
A scrawny form burst from the shrubbery to his right and dashed across the path like a frightened hare. Leviathus snagged the youngster’s arm and brought it to a spinning halt. Brown skin, brown eyes wide as moons, long braids and a longer tunic with stick-skinny legs poking out beneath. Girl or boy, he could not say. The child regarded him warily but without any real fear, and without the slightest hint of respect or deference. Leviathus smiled, but the urchin just blinked at him and scowled.
“Do you know where the visitors are being housed?”
A wary nod.
“Would you bring us some food? Please? Whatever is lying about the kitchens unguarded.” He reached for the pouch at his waist, and sorted out a few copper slags. “I am happy to pay you.”
The child stared at the small coins in his outstretched palm, and gave him a look of pity and disgust before slipping free and dashing off in a completely different direction than the one he had been taking. Or she had been taking. Leviathus sighed. He never would have thought that he would miss the elaborate protocols that surrounded a host’s duties in Atualon. Certes, they had never lost a guest to starvation.
Leviathus continued on his way. He ducked through the enameled entry and through a low, wide tunnel, finally emerging into the full light of the moons. The courtyard of the guest’s quarters featured a ring of carved stone pillars, each of them graced by a tiny potted tree that had been cl
ipped and trained into a living work of art.
So could we shape and grow this land, he thought, certain the notion would appeal to his father.
Aasah and Yaela were seated in the very middle of the courtyard, in a swirl of tiny night-blooming white flowers. The shadowmancer and his apprentice sat with their legs folded lotus-style, backs straight as saplings, arms folded loosely in front of their chests and eyes closed. They might have been there since the beginning of time, so still were they in the night. Aasah wore a wrap of deepest indigo and his star-studded skin, Yaela a dress of moonsilk and jewels in her hair.
“Statuary fit to grace Illindra’s gardens.” He joined them without asking, laying the map in its leather sheath to one side, closing his eyes and settling easily into the rhythm of their breath. Let the mind become a pool free of disturbance, he thought, let it reflect the true self.
Still ponds. Starless skies. Leviathus let his mind drift…
His stomach growled.
His nose itched.
Something tickled at the inside of his thigh and he cracked his eye open. In a land of giant cats and snakes big enough to swallow a chariot, it would not do to let the wildlife creep too close to the family jewels.
Aasah had opened his eyes and was watching him with undisguised amusement.
“You made it to five heartbeats. I am impressed, ne Atu.”
Leviathus grinned. “I have been practicing.”
Aasah was nothing if not a man of the night sky. His eyes, pale as a moon-crocus, were dilated to their fullest, drinking in the thin light and glowing like a cat’s. The web of gems that flashed and glowed with their own little fires furthered the impression that the man had stepped down from heavens. As a child, Leviathus had spent long hours staring up into the night, half certain he would find a dark and empty space in the shape of his father’s shadowmancer.
If Aasah was a starlit sky, Yaela was his moon. She was Didi, Little Sister, shadowed and round and beautiful, mysterious as a faded dream. Like the moon, she was tantalizingly out of reach, always there, hanging before the eyes like a sweet fruit ripe for the tasting, but as distant and untouchable as the stars.
The Dragon's Legacy Page 14