The Seared Lands (The Dragon's Legacy Book 3) E-Book

Deborah A. Wolf

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The concluding novel in the Dragon's Legacy trilogy as the world descends into war and the conflicts may awaken the Earth Dragon - leading to total destruction.Sulema Ja'Akari, heir to the throne of the Dragon King, lies near death, imprisoned by her half brother Pythos. To survive, she must agree to rescue the one person who holds the key to unseating the usurper - a quest that will take Sulema across the vast, apocalyptic desert of the Seared Lands.Overwhelmed by the responsibility, Sulema seeks to flee, but is captured and cast into the arena. There she must fight to the death against Kishah, whose very name means "vengeance." Kishah, who is Sulama's closest friend and fellow warrior, Hannei.Across the world, vast forces gather. Fleeing a swarm of invaders, the child queen Maika seeks to lead her people across the wasteland to safety. Jian the half-breed prince musters an army from the Twilight Lands, while Ismai the Lich King gathers an undead horde, determined to reclaim the Dragon crown.Yet the greatest threat lies below. Sajani the earth dragon stirs. If she wakes, the world will be destroyed. Only the heir to the Dragon King may sing Sajani back to sleep... if there still is time.

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Deborah A. Wolf and Available from Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

Dedication

Map of The Dragon’s Legacy

Dramatis Personae

THE SEARED LANDS

Illindra’s Web

Bitter Sweet

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty - One

Twenty - Two

Twenty - Three

Twenty - Four

Twenty - Five

Twenty - Six

Twenty - Seven

Twenty - Eight

Twenty - Nine

Thirty

Thirty - One

Thirty - Two

Thirty - Three

Thirty - Four

Thirty - Five

Thirty - Six

Thirty - Seven

Thirty - Eight

Thirty - Nine

Forty

Forty - One

Forty - Two

Forty - Three

Forty - Four

Forty - Five

Forty - Six

Forty - Seven

Forty - Eight

Forty - Nine

Fifty

Fifty - One

Fifty - Two

Fifty - Three

Fifty - Four

Fifty - Five

Fifty - Six

Fifty - Seven

Fifty - Eight

Jehannim

APPENDICES

The Lands of the People

The People

Terms, Phrases, and Places of Interest

ALSO BY DEBORAH A. WOLF AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

The Dragon’s Legacy Saga

The Dragon’s Legacy

The Forbidden City

The Seared Lands

Daughter of the Midnight Sun

Split Feather

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THE SEARED LANDS

Paperback edition ISBN: 9781785651144

Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785651151

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: April 2020

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Deborah A. Wolf. All Rights Reserved.

Map illustration by Julia Lloyd.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This book is dedicated to

MY MOM

—who read me stories,

MY DAD

—who took me hunting.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Ani (Istaza Ani): Youthmistress of the Zeerani prides. Though she has no children of her own, she loves her young charges fiercely.

Daru: A young Zeerani orphan, apprenticed to Hafsa Azeina. Born a weakling, Daru is keenly aware of the thin line that separates life from death.

Hafsa Azeina: Former queen consort of Atualon, mother of Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu, and foremost dreamshifter of the Zeeranim.

Hannei: Expatriate Ja’Akari, Hannei Two-Blades is known in Min Yaarif as the esteemed pit fighting slave Kishah.

Ismai: A Zeerani youth who once wished to break tradition and become Ja’Akari, now held in unofficial thrall to the Mah’zula leader Ishtaset. Ismai is the last surviving son of Nurati, First Mother among the Zeeranim, of the line of Zula Din.

Jian: A Daechen prince and Sen-Baradam of Sindan.

Kal ne Mur: Lich King of Eid Kalmut, and a former Dragon King of Atualon.

Leviathus: Son of Ka Atu, the Dragon King, brother to Sulema Ja’Akari, Leviathus was born surdus, deaf to the magic of Atualon and thus unable to inherit his father’s throne.

Maika: Kentakuyan a’o Maika i Kaka’ahuana li’i, last of the Kentakuyan, traditional rulers of Quarabala, Yaela’s niece, and newly confirmed queen in Saodan.

Sulema Ja’Akari: Ja’Akari warrior, daughter of Zeerani dream-shifter Hafsa Azeina and Ka Atu, the Dragon King of Atualon. Considered by some to be the rightful Dragon Queen of Atualon, by others nothing more than the daughter of a usurper.

ILLINDRA’S WEB

Born of salt and laughter and love of the long, slow night, the wind danced down the streets of yesterday. It sang as it danced, painting pale stone with dried-blood dust. It was a small magic and sly, power enough to raise a little army of shadows best left dead and gone but not to keep them.

Shadows thus summoned, feckless and fell, found themselves caught in the sticky web of time and death and infinite thought. They faded away as they had come, weeping lullabies of apathy and rage.

Fainter than memory, pale as filtered sunlight from the world high above, the mistral capered and laughed between the shining strands of an Araid’s lair, hung with traps and songs and dreams of fresh blood. The spider slept, as the shadows slept, dreaming of the day it would rise and feast upon the bodies of men.

Soon, soon.

Not today.

Aasah the Illindrist’s apprentice lifted his face to feel the breeze, breathed deep its song of blood dust and salt dust and the sorrow of lost mates, and smiled in gratitude as it caressed his skin, drying the fear-sour sweat.

If I die today, I die, he thought, but the wind will live on.

It was a comfort.

The song in the wind beguiled his heart, fanning the embers of youth. The dust beneath his bare feet was cool, here in the belly of the world. The bone walls and ventricular halls of the long dead sea-thing into which his ancestors had carved this city were as cold and still as any forgotten thing, Yet the stirring air spoke to him of life, and hope, and a’a pua’a oneho—the heart of a dragon at the heart of the world.

He turned his face toward the dreamed-of surface, closed his eyes and smiled, imagining what must it be like to gaze upon a world of sunlight and rain, breath and bone and blood, in days before things were cursed? Thus dreaming, so blind, he let his feet choose his way in blessed darkness.

The breeze lifted its voice in prayer, and his heart beat tha-rum tha-rumble, and his bare feet shushhh-shushhhed along the pounded sand, and joy lifted him up. It cajoled his limbs to dance, raised the breath from his lungs and up, up through his chest, his throat, his singer’s mask, till he was a note in the song, a twirl in the dance of life. Thus did Aasah the Illindrist’s apprentice, on this day of his naming—this day of his death— dance blind down a road best left forgotten, down and out of the world of man, down and out of now and here.

Into the Web of Illindra.

He sang and danced, for he was a two-soul man. Male and female, sa and ka. Gifted and cursed, he sang and danced, laughing as the tears coursed down his dusted cheeks. Clothed in courage and terror he leapt, chanting an exaltation of life even as he left life behind. Aasah stepped once, twice, three times into the footprints of his own ancestor who had fled in terror from the very thing he sought—

Seeks, would seek, had sought, he thought, as his master had taught him. For every thing, every action exists in all times and all places at once.

Infinite and bold as a dragon, infinitesimal as dust he flew—

flies, would fly, had flown

—and in the end, as both dragon and dust are wont, he was—

is, would be, had been

—caught.

Long he hung in the spider’s web, a sacrifice come to the knife. He had been raised for this, trained and anointed and blessed for this. Every mouthful of food he had consumed, every breath sighed, every kiss denied, had been a step in the dance that had brought him here, a note in the long song of his people’s atonement. The sins of his ancestors had led him here, and he would accept with a grateful heart whatever may be.

Or so he thought, until the web began to tremble.

A great weight descended from above, a heaviness in time and space, mind and heart. The web that stung and held him to this time and place shivered, sending ripples of chillflesh along his bare and hairless skin. Aasah had dreamed of this since the night he first slept alone, had thought himself prepared.

I know, he thought—

knows, will know, had known

—nothing.

It took all the strength he had, heart, body and mind, to remain still and willing as the thing crept nearer. The web swayed and then shook till his bones rattled and his head whipped back and forth. Blood poured red and molten through the stone caverns of his heart, heat enough to burn himself free, should he so choose. The wind swept his arms, his legs, pulling at his hands and feet, promising to show him the way to escape, should he so choose. He could abandon this mad and futile quest, give his people over as sacrifice in his place, should he so choose.

The world went still and the thing stood over him, legs as long as three men laid head to foot stretching up to the stars. Clusters of eyes like wicked stars glittering with their own pale light all turned toward his pliant form, fangs like polished dragonglass curving out and down as it prepared to strike. He had seen this—in every dream he had seen this, and in every dream he had been faced with the choice. Live, or die?

Life, or death? sang a voice in his mind, his heart, his bones. Life, or death? sang his ancestors. Life, or death? sang the shadows. Choose, choose, choose.

He chose—

chooses, would choose, had chosen

—death.

—and life.

Aasah stared straight into the eyes of death and life and all things in between. He hung suspended from one ankle in the Araid’s web, a model of the Illindriverse so vast his mind could not conceive its scope, so small his soul could not find it. At each joining of this web hung a glistening, shimmering drop of atulfah—pure magic, dragon’s song manifest. In the act of falling into this web, Aasah saw, he had torn the fabric of time and space, had rent an ugly wound in the flesh of the everything.

Ah, he thought.

Thus seeing, thus knowing at the last, Aasah made his choice.

He flung his arms wide, so that they stuck fast to the strands. The web burned as it touched his skin, branded him traitor and sacrifice, betrayer and hope. Aasah flung his head back to scream, but a song came out instead as the Araid waved its vast forelegs over his human flesh. Once it passed over him, sending a cold chill through his blood. Twice again it passed over, and his soul quailed. Thrice, and Aasah let out his final breath in a long, slow hymn, begging and granting forgiveness for the pain he had caused—

causes, would cause, had caused

The spider’s myriad eyes flashed, its forelegs stilled, and drops of venom formed on the needle tips of its curved fangs. Though he had come as a willing sacrifice, though every step down the path of his life had led him to this meeting of webs, Aasah trembled beneath the enormity of his own death, and dread burned through him in a thrill akin to lust. Fear smote the self his training had not fully eradicated and brought with it the final revelation any man needs in order to survive his own death, and become wise.

Oh, he thought—

thinks, would think, had thought

Oh.

A drop of venom fell, as a star might fall through the midsummer sky, and as it fell it burned. Aasah opened his eyes wide, so as not to miss a moment of what was to come. Opened his arms wide, and his heart.

“Yes,” he whispered to the spider, “for my people. Yes.”

Swifter than grief the Araid struck, fangs sinking into his flesh. Aasah opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. There was no air, there was no time, there was—

is, would be, had been

Nothing.

BITTER SWEET

“Sssssst,” Etana held out a hand, blue and gold and glittering against the soft night sky. The small caravan behind her halted. Someone at the back of the line coughed—a youth, no doubt, unaccustomed to choking on the red salt dust of Quarabala’s hard-baked surface. “Sssst!” she hissed again, viperish and sharp. She had neither the time nor the patience for soft-footed fools new to the run.

Long ago the fires of Akari had destroyed the grand cities of Quarabala, so that the people had been forced to shelter far underground in the rifts and rents in the earth made by Sajani’s attempts to wake. When the days of the Sundering had passed, the Quarabalese had found themselves isolated from the rest of the world by a road made practically impassable by the deadly heat. As they recovered, the people had made a life for themselves far from Akari’s wrath. They fashioned cities from the bones of the world, far less grand than those they had lost, but not without grace and beauty, and mined the mineral-rich red salt which sustained all life and which could be found nowhere else in the world. Eventually they learned to travel overland in small groups, shielded from the sun by shadowmancer magic, though such travel was risky at best and only undertaken by small groups of individuals driven by need or greed.

As the population of Quarabala grew, their fertility rates buoyed by easy access to red salt and at a safe distance from the wars that ravaged the far green lands, settlements pushed farther and farther from the queen’s city of Saodan. These settlements served a noble purpose, as well; they served as a defense against the Araids, great spiders who had dwelt in caverns below the world’s surface and to whom the priests of Eth paid foul homage.

But Araids were not the only danger, here at the heart of the world.

Amalua’s fingers drummed against her arm in a quick tattoo, runner’s code for those times when silence meant life.

Hear something? the younger woman asked.

Etana reached out and made her reply against her companion’s taut flesh.

No. Feel something. Close. Close.

Run? Amalua asked, with two fingers pressed hard.

Proximity to any settlement meant predators, and the recent earthquakes which had brought them to check on the outer bastions would have roused some of the nastier ones from their deep homes. Etana had no desire to become a runner who had almost made it to her journey’s end.

No, she answered. Wait. Listen.

The travelers stood for a long while, quiet as deep shadows. Etana and her swift companion were beacons against the endless dark, painted as they were with whirls and sworls of glow paste in shades of green and blue. The palms of their hands and soles of their feet had been smeared with a thick paste of honey and gold dust—and other, less pleasant, things.

Such brilliance marked them out to one another as they made their way from city to settlement and back again. It warned lesser predators that they were dangerous—or at least unpleasant to taste—and gave greater predators easier targets than the salt caravans or settlers whose lives they were sworn to protect. They were the Iponui, swift-footed, stout-hearted warriors of the Quarabala, marked out as the lights that would one night guide their people home.

One night, but not this night.

On this night, Etana let her ka flow light as a mother’s song, searching for bright, hot life against the burned-out husk of their world. Prickly-sharp she could feel the bright souls of the small knot of salt guildsmen and healers who traveled in her wake, and sharper still the soul of the shadowmancer who trailed them, ready to give magical assistance if it were needed. Etana fervently hoped it would not be needed—a shadowmancer’s fees, were she required to perform, would be astronomical.

Beyond the shadowmancer, she felt nothing.

In the shallow crevasses that mocked the true path, nothing. But high above their heads, faint and fluttery as a new babe’s cry, she could feel a hundred tiny lives hungering, hungering. Etana let out her breath in a laugh, though she kept it silent. More than one of the greater predators knew how to mask their soul-scent from one such as she. Still, it was a relief to find that the disturbance she had felt posed no danger to them.

“It is nothing but a flock of hali’i,” Amalua whispered, and her voice was thick with suppressed mirth, as well. “Shall I tell the others that my mother is frightened of birds?”

“Impertinent brat,” she laughed. “Would you prefer to make the return trip by yourself?” Etana squeezed her arm affectionately and let her hand fall away.

“Shall I run on ahead?” Amalua said.

“You just wish an excuse to stretch those long legs of yours.”

“That I do.” White teeth flashed. The night was loosening her cool grip on the Seared Lands. “I hate crawling along with these soft-feet. Morning is near, and I have no wish to burst into flame.”

“Run then, and tell them we are coming. We will be there soon.”

“As you wish, Mother.” Amalua bowed, deeply and with no hint of her usual teasing, and then she was gone, a streak of blue and green, leaving gold-dust footprints for those who would follow.

Etana shook her head, smiling inside her heart. “Come,” she whispered to her charges. It was as loud as a shout after the long, slow silence of their journey. “Come quick. We are nearly there. Food waits for us, and baths, and bed.”

“And profits!” one of the healers shot back, eliciting a chorus of soft chuckles.

“And warm bodies!”

“Your bodies will be warming the bellies of a bintshi if you do not hurry your soft asses along,” she scolded, though her heart was not in it. For she was at the end of the road—this road, at any rate—and Etana dearly longed for the delights of the flesh that would be her reward. Bath, and food, and bed…

Paleha.

* * *

“Sweet as manna wine, bitter as black salt.”

These were the words the poet Saouda had used to define love, and described perfectly this final meeting between old friends. Etana stepped down the cool and shallow steps and onto the red sand floor, smiling in delight and irony at the grandeur of Paleha’s rooms.

“You have done well for yourself.”

The stout figure in the middle of the room turned slowly, slowly, absorbing the shock of this unexpected visitor so that by the time she faced Etana only the whites of her eyes showed her surprise. Tiny bare feet peeked from beneath robes as red as the sand floor, and a large seer’s bag hung at her waist. Dragon’s-eye lanterns hung all about the room. Tiny hands stretched toward her in greeting and supplication.

“Etana,” she whispered, as if horrified. Eyes round and pale as golden moons glistened with unshed tears. “On this day, of all days, why did you have to come to Mawai?”

It stung. “Our new queen sent us with her greetings, and to see whether those of you in the far settlements needed Saodan’s assistance after the recent earthquakes. But if our presence is unwelcome…” She turned to leave. After all they had been through together, this was the greeting she had earned?

“No, no, you do not understand. How could you?” Paleha drew nearer, so near that the warrior could smell book dust and salt dust and the woman’s own musk. “How could you know?” she continued. “But it is cruel, too cruel even for this world.”

“You still speak in riddles.” Etana snorted but allowed her hand to be taken. Paleha’s grip was not as strong or as sure as she remembered. She pulled away, frowning. “Are you not the least bit happy to see me?”

Tears spilled down Paleha’s round cheeks, like stars fallen from grace.

“A moon ago, I would have been happy to see you. Had you arrived yesterday, I would have fallen at your feet and kissed them. But today?” She shook her head as tears welled and flowed, welled and flowed. “Today it breaks my heart. Come, I will show you.”

She turned and Etana followed. Silence and dread stretched between them like the darkness between candles.

* * *

Paleha had a shrine to Illindra, as was usual and proper for those who had answered the call to priesthood. Hers was set in an alcove nearly large enough to be considered a room, floored with soft red sand denoting her high caste, tiled in red salt and black glass and beaten gold. The room was bare save for a pedestal of black glass lit from within, and upon this pedestal rested an Illindrist’s threefold loom.

Etana shuddered at the sight of it. She had never understood the seer’s craft and, like many warriors, feared magic more than she feared death. Death she understood— predators, raiders, monsters, these things she knew how to fight—but how, she had wondered before, could she fight that which she could not see, or smell, or touch?

The Illindrist reached toward the closest petal of the loom. Gems set like stars in her dark skin glittered in the dim light.

“This is was,” she said, which explained nothing. “You see how the web is full and shining? This is our path, this is Quarabala in the long ago, when we were young and strong, and the world was good.” Indeed, the web was shining and full, a breathtaking tapestry spun of silver and starslight. Tiny beads of magic hung suspended here and there, constellations which spoke volumes to one such as Paleha, though to Etana they were just a pretty design.

“I remember being young and strong,” she tried to joke, “but I do not remember a time when the world was good.”

“Do you not?” A quick smile, quickly hidden, and Etana felt her face heat with a girlish blush.

Ah, she thought, she does remember.

“This world was before your lifetime, or mine, or even that of our grandmothers’ grandmothers,” she explained. “By ‘we’ I mean ‘we the people,’ the Quarabalese. Before the—the Night of Sorrows—” here her voice faltered, “—before the Sundering, even. In the long ago.”

“I… see.” Etana shrugged. “But what does this have to do with us, now? The past is the past, dead and gone. It is dust.” She slapped her thigh, raising a small cloud of red salt dust for emphasis. “The past cannot touch us now.”

“Can it not?” Paleha shook her head. “You know better. See this? This strand right here.” She reached out and pointed at a single strand of the web, which glowed silverish in response. “This strand is is—”

“Your hand,” Etana whispered in horror. Only now did she see that the fingers which had once been so deft and strong were gnarled as manna roots, thickened at the joints, twisting back upon themselves. Her own hand twitched in sympathy. “What happened?”

“What happened?” Paleha smiled wryly. “What happened is that against all odds I survived my foolish youth. As have you. I notice that you, yourself, favor the left knee.”

Etana stared for a moment and then stuck out her tongue. They shared a girls’ laugh, which echoed oddly beautiful among the golden tiles and spider’s web. For a moment in time the world was, indeed, good.

Paleha looked at her with eyes of sorrow, of regret.

“There is no time,” she whispered.

“Did you not once tell me that now is all time?” Etana said. “If now is all time, we have all the time in the world.”

“Still the impertinent brat,” Paleha said, and Etana smiled at the words. “You are right, of course, but even so we are bound to the web. For us, in the here and now, the road has come to an end.” Paleha gestured to the middle petal of the threefold loom. This web was a sad shadow of the first, a very few irresolute strands clinging to the edge of the wooden structure. It was still lovely, but where the first web was lively and bright and strong, this one held the translucent beauty of a dying child.

“You asked how then affects now, which is—forgive me—a stupid question. Then is now, in more ways than one. See here…” She pointed a knotted finger, and yet again one strand was illuminated.

Etana pursed her lips. “That is the same strand as in the first web.”

“Yes, and no,” Paleha said. “Same, not same, then, now— it is all one. And look—”

Etana gasped as Paleha rotated the loom’s third petal to the fore. This web was tattered and dead, as if some monstrous thing had torn through it with malicious intent.

At the bottom of the tray, curled upon herself like a skeletal brown fist, lay the spider who had been Paleha’s companion since she was a child. O’oraids were known to live exactly as long as their human seers, and Etana’s heart stopped cold at the sight.

“Is this…” Her voice trailed off.

“This is will be.”

Etana’s breath caught in her throat. “Did the quakes…”

“She died before the quakes,” Paleha said in a rough voice. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “Just before. I fear that Sajani’s stirrings—you know this is the cause of these disturbances, do not pretend as if it is not so—have rent the defenses we have spent so long building. That Araids are coming with their foul priests and their hungry reavers. It is over, for us.”

Silence hung between them, dull as the dead magic in this third web. Somewhere in that silence, Etana came to understand that they had no moments left to waste.

She was pleased to note that her hand did not shake. After all, she reminded herself, Death is a warrior’s only true lover.

“There are no tomorrows,” Paleha continued, “not for us, at any rate. This is why I wish—” Her voice broke.

Etana turned to Paleha and gathered the small, warm, soft woman into a tight hug.

“I am glad I have come,” she whispered into the fluff of graying hair. “I am glad.”

Soft arms crept around her waist and squeezed back. “Well, you are a warrior,” Paleha said finally, voice muffled in Etana’s robes. “And warriors are known to be mad.”

“Is there nothing we can do?” Etana asked.

“There is one thing we can do. One thing we must do. Though I wished you would not come, I dreamed that you would, and so I made ready.” She reached into the seer’s bag and drew forth a package wrapped in precious spidersilk, blue as the daytime sky, green as the grass in stories.

“Paleha!” Etana gasped, shocked by the sight of the heavy bundle.

“It is necessary, and it is time.” Paleha thrust the bundle at Etana, who took it unwillingly, and turned back to her trifold loom. “See here—” She rotated the three petals so they lined up perfectly, one behind the other—is, was, and will be. The strand she had caused to illuminate in each web shone like a beacon, and Etana imagined she could hear, very far away, the first notes of a travelers’ song.

She knew a map when she saw one. “This is us, here in Mawai!” she exclaimed, pointing to a tiny globe of magesilver. Her finger traveled further down the illuminated strand, not quite touching it. “This is the Huanoha settlement, which was our last stop before this one. Here is Epaha, and A’apela, and…” She described the path with a wave. “There, that big one, that can be none other than—”

“Saodan,” Paleha agreed. “The City of Queens.”

“I have never been,” Etana said in a hushed voice.

“Nor I.” Paleha sounded as wistful. “We should have gone. It would have been—”

“—glorious.” Etana shook her head, clearing away the cobwebs of regret. “You mean for us to take this…” She clutched the bundle to her breast as if it were a girl child. “…to Saodan, and then to the lands beyond?” The shining path continued past the City of Queens, to some mysterious destination beyond the limits of her imagination.

“No,” Paleha said. “Not us. I am old, and fat, and slow.” She held up a hand to forestall an argument. “Ah, now, it is true,” she scolded. “You are, well, you are not so old as I, but you are still slow.”

Etana grimaced, and a twinge in her knee seemed to mock her.

“For you and me, beloved, there are no tomorrows.” Paleha tapped the edge of the third loom, and the dead web trembled. “But your daughter—”

“Our daughter,” Etana whispered, and was rewarded with a smile so brilliant that Akari Sun Dragon himself might have fallen in love.

“Our daughter,” the Illindrist allowed, “if she succeeds at this, if she lives, might weave a new web of tomorrows for our people.”

“The last road.” Etana stared at the web, at the fragile illuminated path, scarce daring to breathe lest she shatter the delicate strands.

“Our last hope.”

* * *

Amalua fidgeted irritably as Etana again checked the straps that bound the precious bundle to her back.

“They are fine, First Runner. You fuss so much one would think I had a child strapped to my body. I am good! Ow!” She shrugged the lingering hands away, laughing good-naturedly.

“You have water enough?” Paleha fretted.

“Illindrist,” Amalua replied. “I have one mother, thank you, and she is quite enough. I hardly need two of you fussing at me.” She smiled to take the sting from her words. “This is not my first run, you know.”

Paleha ignored this. “You remember the map? You know the way?”

Amalua rolled her eyes. “What is in this pack, anyway?” She shrugged at the straps that ran across her shoulders, across her back and chest, and beneath her breasts. “Salt bricks? It is so heavy.”

“Not so heavy that my daughter cannot carry it.” Etana’s voice was thick with hidden emotion, and with pride. Amalua peered at her, suspicious at last.

“Why am I leaving before the caravan… and before you?” she asked. “What is so important that you would have me run all the way to Saodan, by myself, and without stopping?” She stopped her fidgeting and stared straight into her mother’s eyes. “Answer me true, First Runner. What is this burden I carry?”

Paleha smiled. “It is—”

“The Mask of Sajani.” Etana ignored the Illindrist’s angry gasp. “She carries the hope of our people, Paleha. She has the right to know.”

Amalua’s eyes went round as the moons. Etana took advantage of her daughter’s shock to grab her by the shoulders and kiss her soundly on each cheek. “Run well, my sweet. A mother’s blessings upon you.”

“And a daughter’s upon you,” Amalua answered. Her mouth trembled, but her voice remained steady. “Will I never see you again?”

Etana would not end this day with a lie.

“We are runners. Swift as the sunlight.”

“Silent as the night,” Amalua answered. She dropped to the ground, kneeling, and kissed her mother’s feet. Tears fell fat and warm upon her skin; a powerful magic. Then she leapt to her feet and was gone, the gold dust on her soles and the blue-green glow of her runner’s camouflage painting a mural of courage against the night.

“Run well!” Etana called, breaking tradition and drawing a few disapproving stares from those few passers-by who had risen before the sun was fully down.

At her side Paleha sighed heavily. “I wish—”

The still air was rent by a shriek of despair.

“Reavers!” a man screamed, somewhere high above them. “Reav—” The scream cut short, horribly so. Etana gripped her spear and set her jaw.

“There is no more time,” Paleha mourned. “There is no hope. We cannot stop them.”

More screams, nearer, as people woke to death and horror.

“We cannot stop them,” Etana answered, voice grim. “But we can slow them down.”

Paleha clutched at her robes. “I am glad you are here,” she said. Etana turned and looked down, surprised to see her friend smiling through the tears. “Despite everything, I am glad.”

Etana loosed a breath that she had been holding in for a lifetime. “How long has it been,” she said by way of reply, “since we have faced an enemy together?” With that she smiled, and that smile lifted her spirit up, up through the city, through the webs of rope and magic and dreams that for so long had held this place safe, up over the seared flesh of the world and into the sky, where it startled a late-hunting nighthawk.

“Too long,” Paleha answered. Gnarled fingers tightened on her Illindrist’s staff. “Shall we join the dance, my love?”

“Yes,” Etana breathed, “but first—” She drew Paleha close and bent her face down. Their mouths met, light as a hummingbird kissing a flower.

Was was gone, and will be would never come, not for them.

But they had now, and it was beautiful.

ONE

“The ancestors will show us the way.”

Night fell sweet and mild. A cool breeze, carrying the faint notes of jasmine and dragonmint, caressed Maika’s upturned face. The wind had been wild once, a howling, killing thing. Quarabalese engineers had caught it in their wind-traps, caressed and beat it into submission with their tunnels and cunning blades until it was a lesser, gentler version of its true self.

It was not, she thought, unlike the process by which an unruly girl might be bent to the will of her people and molded to serve their needs.

Maika hesitated at the bottom step, savoring the moment, and let the tamed breeze lave the nervous sweat from her brow. She urged her features to solemnity as befit the serious nature of this outing—a young runner had nearly died to bring her a message from the outer bastions—but the yet-untamed girl at her core wanted to run and shout with delight. Surrounded as she was by an entourage of counselors, guards and wise women, still she walked at their head rather than in their midst. As princess and heir to the Kentakuyan throne, she had spent her waking hours trapped in a prison of well-meaning shoulders and backs. On this day, having experienced her first moons-blood and having been deemed ready by the oracles, she walked at their fore as queen.

It seemed a silly and arbitrary measure to Maika—as if a woman’s blood had anything to do with governance!—but this thought she kept to herself. It would not do to give the counselors any reason to stuff her back into the protective cocoon, just as she might break free.

It was a short trek across a wide road, between the brightly painted doors and sculpture gardens of Saodan’s elite families, and the worst danger—that Maika might stub a slippered toe upon a cobblestone—did not come to pass, but it felt like an adventure all the same. She wished that they had timed this visit during the morning or evening hours, so that she might have seen more citizens going about their mysterious daily lives, but chided herself for this selfish thought. It was not as if the Iponui had chosen to arrive at midday, after all.

Midday. Maika paused at the wide red gates before the healers’ tunnels and shuddered at the thought of her own skin exposed to raw sunlight. Her life—and the lives of her people as far back as the history books remembered—had been lived far underground, safe from the wrath of Akari Sun Dragon. This runner must have been driven insane by the sun, as the rumors said, to risk death by immolation. Maika hoped it was sun-sickness. Because if the messenger was not mad, the message she bore must be dreadful.

The gates were hauled open, and Maika stepped through them. A healer’s apprentice in a red and white apron bowed low, eyes cast down and away from her magnificence, then spun on her heels and led them along a narrow corridor that smelled of bitter herbs and sorrow.

The runner they had come to see had first been taken to the priests for emergency healing. She had been “burnt to salt,” as the saying went, so lost to exhaustion and dehydration that she had not been expected to survive the night. Yet the Iponui were known to be as tough as manna roots, and this one seemed to be no exception. She had lived and was aware enough to insist on delivering her message to the queen.

The apprentice rapped on a white-painted door, which swung inward to reveal a thickly bandaged woman reclining on a healer’s cot. Her limbs were long and thin, her glow-painted skin raw and blistered, her head wrapped in layers of fine gauze soaked in ointments and herbs so that everything above her nose was covered. They had said that she was fortunate not to have lost her eyes. Maika winced in sympathy. What burden could be so important, she wondered, that this woman would give her eyes to bear it?

The runner lay with one arm protectively curled about a bundle as large as her own head, wrapped in blue-green spidersilk as fine as the robes of state. Maika ignored Counselorwoman Haoki’s hissed warning and hurried forward as the stricken warrior tried and failed to raise a mug to her cracked and bleeding lips.

“Here,” she said as she steadied the woman’s hands. The mug was cool and the water smelled strongly of herbs. “Let me help you.”

“My thanks,” the runner whispered in a voice as cracked and blistered as her skin. She drank but a little, and then pushed the mug away, settling back into the pillows with an exhausted sigh. “Are you another healer? I do not recognize your voice.”

“No…” Maika began a bit awkwardly.

“You have the honor of addressing your queen, Kentakuyan a’o Maika i Kaka’ahuana li’i,” Counselorwoman Lehaila informed the runner.

The runner attempted to rise. Precious water sloshed over the mug’s rim, wetting her hands and Maika’s. “Your Magnificence!” she gasped. “Forgive me—”

“Nonsense,” Maika protested, trying to press the woman back down again without causing further pain. Despite the splendor of her new robes of state, she did not feel particularly magnificent. Next to this heroic runner, she felt positively dull. “Nonsense. Lie back now, at your ease, and tell me why you have come.”

Awkward, she thought, and she scolded herself, but the runner lay back with a sigh.

“Magnificence,” the runner said. “Forgive me.”

“Forgive you?”

“Forgive me,” she repeated, “for I come bearing terrible news, and a heavy burden. Our outer strongholds and settlements have fallen. The Araids have mounted an attack, and we could not… we could not withstand them.” Red-tinged tears slipped from beneath the gauze, leaving tracks in the runner’s streaked glow paint. “I ran as fast as I could, but I—” Her voice broke, and her breathing became ragged. “I fear I have come too late. You must flee, sweet queen, you and all our people must leave the Seared Lands. We must go now. I will show you the way. I know the way, I have seen it—”

The runner would have attempted to rise again, but a healer stepped forward and pressed her back, scowling at the queen.

“She needs rest,” the healer snapped.

“I need to tell you—” the runner gasped. “I need to give you—” She groped for the bundle at her side, fretting and pushing at it until Maika reached across her body to pick it up. Whatever it was, it was heavy.

“Who sent you?” Counselorman Kekeo asked. “Who sends us these words?”

“My mother,” the runner replied in a broken voice. Now that she had passed her burden on to the queen, she seemed to shrink in upon herself, to grow weak and thin before their eyes. “My mother, First Runner Etana, and Illindrist Paleha of Mawai. You must leave now,” she insisted, as another wash of tears streamed down her face. “There is no time for talk. I know the way; I will lead you—”

“Nonsense.” The counselorman frowned, staring at the runner’s bound face as if he sought the truth in her eyes. “We cannot just cease our daily lives and run, as greenlanders might. Even if we were to convince all our people to leave the Seared Lands, and ushered them all to the Edge, what then? It is a three-day run from Min Yahtamu at the very edge of the Edge to Min Yaarif in the green lands, and that is assuming a strong young runner with a shadowmancer to assist. What of our children, our infirm, our elders? How could we possibly cross the shadowed road? There are not enough shadowmancers to shield our people from the dreadful heat of Akari’s wrath; many of the people would die at first sunrise. Would you sacrifice many, many lives in an attempt to save a few, based on the words of one sun-sick Iponui? It is impossible. Impossible.”

Once again Maika’s counselors talked over her head as if she were a child, playing with her dolls while they made decisions for her. She only half listened, however, as she tugged loose the cords that held the bundle together and began to unwind the silk. The wrappings fell away to reveal a magnificence of gemstones and precious metals, and she choked on an indrawn breath that was nearly a sob. She held, in her too-young and insufficiently powerful hands, the dreaded treasure of her people—the Mask of Sajani. If they had sent this to her, it could mean only one thing.

The Araids had breached their outer defenses. The spiders and their horrid priests would be moving upon Saodan— Quarabala would fall.

Maika’s heart sank.

“Impossible,” Kekeo said. “Even if what this runner says is true, and even if she has been shown the way, none can expect our people to simply abandon our cities and take to this unknown path. Few runners, even with the aid of shadowmancers, are strong enough to reach Min Yaarif, and that is the closest greenlander city. What of the elders, the children?”

“Nevertheless…” Lehaila stroked her face, and her eyes were troubled. “First Runner Etana is known to many of us here, and she would not send such news lightly. If, indeed, this is the counsel of Illindrist Paleha, as well, we must consider taking some action to defend ourselves. We should gather the council and take these matters into serious deliberation.”

Kekeo nodded. “Yes, yes, we must convene—”

Maika stepped forward, and held up the mask, letting the light play upon the faceted gems. Instantly, the counselors fell silent.

She took a deep breath and held it, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, when she breathed the dry hot air, she had set the last of her childhood aside.

“First Runner Etana and Illindrist Paleha have sent us the Mask of Sajani,” she said. “The Mask of Sajani. They send word that the outer defenses are failing, that we need to leave or we will all die, and this is exactly what we are going to do.” She kept her voice steady, and the heavy mask in her hands, though her heart fluttered wildly as if it wished to fly away without her.

“Your Magnificence,” Kekeo protested, “we cannot simply—”

“Mana’ule o ka enna i ka pau,” Maika snapped. Aasah himself had taught her how to speak with force, and it worked. The small crowd fell silent. “I invoke my authority as queen.” Her heart pounded. Would they listen to her? Could one turn overnight from girl to queen merely by bleeding between her legs? It seemed utterly ridiculous.

The counselors and chiefs went to their knees, though some moved less quickly than others. Kekeo was slowest of them all.

“What is your will, Magnificence?” he asked, as if the words tasted bitter.

“The people of Saodan—of all the Quarabala,” she amended, “must leave immediately. It is time for us to abandon the Seared Lands and seek a new home for our people.” Even as she said the words, Maika felt the enormity of them falling from her lips. “We must work quickly, and save as many people as we can.” As many people as we can—but not all. The unspoken words hung heavy in the air between them.

Please stop me, she wanted to beg the assembled leaders. Tell me I am wrong, send me to bed with a story, let me wake up to find this has all been a terrible dream.

The mask in her hands seemed to mock her. What kind of queen leads her people into certain death? it might have asked.

“Leave our homes?” someone said harshly. “Leave our homes and go where? How are we to cross the Seared Lands, and the Jehannim, as well? There are not enough shadowmancers to protect us, and we are not all runners. We do not know the way!”

Maika closed her eyes. She knew the way by heart, though never in her worst dreams had she imagined that she, herself, might one day take it. The traders’ road ran, like the blood vessels in a human body, from the life-giving red salt mines deep in the heart of Quarabala, up through the tunnels and rifts which had shielded the people from Akari’s wrath for a millennia, across the deadly shadowed roads and the equally hazardous Jehannim, and finally into the hostile city of Min Yaarif. A trained runner or salt merchant might take this road once in a lifetime, with only the dream of wealth and a life in the green lands urging her feet to fly. For an entire people to attempt such a journey was utter madness.

And their only hope.

“There is only one choice open to us. We must take the traders’ route to the Edge, and from there over the Jehannim and into Min Yaarif. The ancestors will show us the way,” Maika answered, with more assurance than she felt. It was the right thing to say. “Our Iponui will guide us to the green lands, and they in turn will be guided by the ancestors.”

Lehaila nodded slowly, glancing at her fellow counselors from the corners of her eyes as if gauging their reactions. “The ancestors will show us the way to a new home.”

“A new home.” Maika smiled and nodded, holding up the Mask of Sajani for all to see. “A better home. We will see the sun rise upon our people at last.”

A murmur of assent rose among those assembled, though no few of her counselors exchanged doubtful looks. Maika, clutching the dreadful mask so tightly her knuckles had gone pale, took a deep breath, looking at each face, trying to commit them all to memory.

These are my people, she thought, more precious to me than my own life. I pray to the ancestors that I have not just condemned them all to death.

TWO

Akari Sun Dragon soared high above Atualon, bathing the city in golden splendor so that the walls of the meanest hovel sparkled like salt, and colored windows winked like jewels. Children laughed as they chased one another in the narrow alleys between buildings, heedless of the shadows that nipped at their heels; bakers piled high their rounds of soft white bread, never guessing at the source of heat for their ovens. Sunlight poured as sticky sweet as spilled mead across the land and people laughed as they lapped it up, bawling and dumb as golden calves fattened for the slaughter.

Yet Atukos rose frowning above the city. The Dragon King’s fortress, named for the living mountain from which it had been carved, crouched brooding and cold. Call as he might, the sun dragon in all his glory could not warm the walls as Atukos mourned her dead king.

Neither could he reach the king’s daughter.

She who had once been a Ja’Akari warrior, who had ridden and fought and loved beneath the gold-scaled belly, lay stiff as a corpse on the cold dead stone even as her father the king had lain, broken and defeated. Her fox-head staff had been broken and burned, her sword fed to the forge; even her warrior’s braids had been shorn away. Sulema lingered in the dark, sinking into the bed of lies her elders had laid down, and waited to die as voices rolled over her like thunder.

“Is there nothing more you can do?”

“She will not eat. She will not drink. She will not wake— if, indeed, she is truly asleep. No, Meissati, there is nothing more I can do for her.”

“Just as well, I suppose. If she cannot properly wield atulfah, and if she is no virgin—”

“She is known to have bedded Mattu Halfmask.” This last was whispered, as if the speaker did not wish to be overheard.

“Then she is of no use to us.”

“Shall I…?”

“No!” The reply was quick. “No, she is bound to the fortress. Spilling her blood here would be… unfortunate. No, if the girl is willing herself to die, let her do so. There is another who can take her place. A bit young, but—”

An indrawn breath. “Abomination!”

“For you and me, perhaps. For a king, who can say? The powerful are not bound by the same rules as lesser folks. Would you tell Pythos Ka Atu that he cannot do as he wishes?”

“No, not I.”

“Nor I.” There was a long pause. “Pythos wishes to be rid of this one, quietly and without bloodshed. So. Have this cell bricked up and forget about her. Go back to your family and die in bed as a physician should, with a skin of wine in one hand and a woman in the other.”

“It is a pity. Such a beautiful girl.”

“Fire is beautiful, too,” the first voice reminded. “Let us snuff this one out before it burns us all.”

“As you say,” the physician said, his voice becoming softer as they departed. “Oh, speaking of the false king’s get, do you know whether they have found Leviathus, or…” Sandals scuffed against the stone floor, shuffled away, and left her in silence.

A rat or some other poor creature skittered across the floor. Closer it crept, closer, till its whiskers brushed Sulema’s calf. The little beast let out a thin squeak and fled.

Some time later, the stonemasons came.

The harsh light of torches and scrape of stone against stone, the smells of men and smoke and mortar, assaulted the outer shell of she who had been a warrior, but even these things could not reach her spirit. What little of the world as was left to her—torchlight and lantern light, the sighs and cries of other prisoners, the faint redolence of bread and old water and urine—retreated from her senses as a stone wall was raised into place.

Eventually the rough voices and noise of work ceased, and she was left finally, blessedly, alone.

In the dark.

To die.

After an age had come and gone, long after Akari had abandoned his attempts to rouse his love, after dinners were eaten and dishes washed, after lullabies and lovemaking and the last oil lamp burned low, Sulema opened her eyes and regarded the long, slow night. Though her eyes could not pierce the gloom, she knew that her stare was met and answered by the cold golden eyes of the portrait her father had commissioned, the one that showed her as a princess of Atualon, lovely and serene.

Those painted eyes had watched impassive as her mother and father had been slaughtered, and as she had been forced to confess to their murders. Beneath the painting’s surface, concealed by the artist’s magic, lay another image, this one truer to its subject. That hidden Sulema was a warrior, a true daughter of the Zeera.

“Life is pain,” her mother had said. “Only death comes easy.”

“But I am Ja’Akari, am I not?” Sulema asked, though it was now and forever too late to seek her mother’s advice. “A warrior is no easy meat. They expect me to die here, quiet and neat, and make their lives easier.”

She smiled in the dark.

“Fuck that,” she said.

THREE

The wind was born of a long-dead king, singing forgotten songs. His name, which once had rolled across these lands as thunder, was lost to memory, robes and jewels and fine horses long gone to dust and bone and the tattered pages of history books.

He sang, and the song was still the same, however, pouring down from the heart of Akari Sun Dragon as a blessing, welling up from the dreams of Sajani Earth Dragon, sweet as well water.

The song swirled deep in his heart, this beating borrowed heart of a Zeerani youth. It swept around and through him, rousing him to life. Through him also rose the hordes of living dead, those who in life had foolishly loved their liege more than they loved their souls, and who had pledged to him fealty beyond the Lonely Road. They stirred now in his mind: loyal monsters, doom’s companions, his to command. All he had to do was stretch forth his hand and whisper words of command and intent.

And yet…

Long he had lingered in the dark of the moonsless cavern, presiding over an endless feast of souls, ever hungering and thirsting and lusting for life. This life was his, now—this flesh, these desires, the hot blood racing through the veins of one willingly come. A vessel filled and overwhelmed by the dark passions of the dark lord. A new life, a new world to command, his for the taking, ripe and sweet as a low-hanging fig.

And yet…

The Lich King sat cross-legged by the banks of Ghana Kalmut, wearing the body of Ismai, son of Nurati. The river’s song accompanied his own, and in it he heard the slow, sweet refrain of death, of ease, songs of hope’s end and a surcease of sorrow. For an age, and an age after that, he had bidden his time—

Life was his once again.

He was not sure he wanted it.

Perhaps, he thought, my time has passed. Might he not, after all, choose instead to slip free of this human body as one might shed a robe, to leave it crumpled and abandoned at the river’s edge and decide instead to set foot upon the Lonely Road? For surely the road had been singing to him, too, of passings-on and passings-over and adventure in strange new worlds. This world was dying, and all the dead knew it. Sajani Earth Dragon stirred in her sleep even now, restless with the need to wake, to fly, to break free and seek solace in her mate’s embrace.

The world would not survive the dragon’s ascendance any more than this broken body would survive his abandonment. Why choose this—this dying earth, this dying body—when he, king of kings, could instead elect to master death? Surely that was the only realm he had yet to conquer.

His blood boiled at the thought.

Even as he sang, as he called the wind and the rain and the sand, as he called death to life, the song mocked him. He had journeyed across the face of the world, had stretched forth his bare hands and bade Atukos rise from the living stone, had soothed Sajani to sleep and roused Akari to smite his enemies. He had bound the warrior mages of the Baidun Daiel and thrown back the fell sorceries of his enemies. He had known the world and every living thing in it by name, and in knowing, he had owned it.

Now, sitting at his ease beside the untroubled waters, he heard the strains of a strange new song, smelled the dust of an unfamiliar road—

The Lich King frowned.

“What troubles you, Father?”

She was a flash of sunlight on dark waters, his Naar-Ahnet, sweet and deadly as mad honey. The years had tainted her, the pain had poisoned her, he knew, but the fault was his, and she was his sweetest love.

“Death,” he answered honestly, and she laughed.

“Death?” she said. “After all this, you fear death?” She sat beside him, rested her head on his shoulder, and her small hand found its way to his. “You have mastered death. You are death’s king.” She squeezed his fingers. “And mine, Father.”

“I do not fear death,” he said, frowning again at the youthful sound of his voice. “But neither have I mastered it. Death is as yet unknown to me. It might be… peaceful…”

“And it might not,” she finished, guessing his mind.

“True. Why would death be any more peaceful than life?” he said. “Why would the dreams experienced in death be any less horrific than those of the living? Why should the roads be any easier, any less… lonely?”

“You miss her.”

“I miss her.”

“You loved her so.” Naara snuggled close. The story of her mother’s passion for her father, and his for her, had ever been a favorite.

“I love her still,” he said, wrapping an arm about her small form. “Ahsen-sa Ruh a’Zeera was the most maddening, the most skilled—”

“The most beautiful—” she urged.

“The most beautiful and the most beloved of all the Zeera’s daughters. ‘Spirit of the desert wind’ she was named, and from the moment I first laid eyes on her…” His voice trailed off. An image came to him, unbidden, of a flame-haired girl with skin too pale, too freckled to ever be his Ahsen-sa, a girl with eyes of gold and a wide, troublesome smile.

“When you first laid eyes on her?”

“You favor her, you know,” he said. Kal ne Mur turned his face and kissed the top of his daughter’s hair. She smelled of deathblooms and grave dust and other, less pleasant things.

“I do not, and you know it,” she said, “but I thank you.”

Sulema, he thought, her name is… Sulema. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind, and shoved the boy Ismai deeper into the shadows of their shared mind. “Your time is done,” he said irritably.

“Will you take it up?” Naara said, playing with his fingers. “Take up your crown, reclaim what is yours…”

“You would see me raise my faithful, and wage war upon whomever dares call himself Ka Atu now. To ride down the people of this land and seize that damned throne, but why? For a thousand years I have thought about how I might have lived my life differently. We all have,” he added, waving his free hand toward the caverns, the canyon, the thousands upon thousands of undead. “Never would one more war have made my life better, let alone the world. The people of Atualon do not wish for the return of a long-forgotten king… any more than that king wishes to return.”

“You do not wish to return?” Her fingers dug into his arm, and Naara’s voice grew very soft. “To claim what is yours?”

“Many asses have parked themselves on the Dragon Throne while mine sat here and grew dusty,” he answered. The wind played a short riff across the dead waves, causing the spirits trapped beneath the waters to moan. “Many men have called themselves Ka Atu and forgotten their own names, even as the world has forgotten mine. Shall the pages of the book turn backward, then? I have no wish to return to the land of the living, any more than I wish to join the trek of the dead. My faithful do not wish to be disturbed. They cry out against it, in their sleep.”

“You wish neither to live nor to die,” she said. “What, then, do you want, Father?” In Naara’s voice he could hear the dry fire that was Char, guardian of Eid Kalmut, and he smiled into her hair. She was very much his daughter, after all.

“I do not know,” he confessed.

“I know what I want.”

“What is that, beloved?”