Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

To help her through the slow tedium of the morning tutorial Mena Akaran always sat in exactly the same spot, on a tuft of grass behind her siblings. She had just turned twelve and from this vantage point she could see through a missing tooth in the stone balustrade that hemmed in the courtyard. It framed a scene that began with the many-layered terraces of the palace. It dropped through a stretch of space beyond the town’s western wall, then gave way to the swelling ranks of the cultivated hills. The farthest rise of land was the highest: the far promontory known as Haven’s Rock. She had been there with her father and remembered the foul-smelling, cacophonous seabird life of the place, with head-dizzying views that dropped a craggy fifteen hundred feet straight into the foaming swells.

Sitting in the high, open-air classroom in which the king’s children met with their tutor, Mena’s thoughts would drift off. This morning she imagined herself a gull pushing free of the rock face. She hurtled down and shot out over the surface of the water. She darted between the sails of fishermen’s vessels and out over the trading barges that floated the sea on the circular currents that moved them from one place to another. She left these behind and the waves grew steeper. The turquoise water deepened to blue and then to seal-black. She flew past the shoals of sparkling anchovies and out over the backs of whales, seeking the unknown things that she knew would eventually emerge from the whitecapped edge of the horizon…

“Mena? Are you with us, Princess?” Jason, the royal tutor, and both her brothers and her sister were all staring at her. The children sat on the damp grass. Jason stood before them, poised with an old volume in one hand, his other one resting on his hip. “Did you hear the question?”

“Of course she did not hear the question,” Aliver said. At sixteen he was the eldest of the king’s children, the heir apparent to the throne. He had recently shot upward past his father’s height, and his voice had changed. His expression was one of interminable boredom, an illness that struck him about a year ago and had yet to release him. “She was thinking about fish again. Or about porpoises.”

“Neither fish nor porpoises have bearing on the topic we’re discussing,” Jason said. “So I’ll repeat: Whom did the founder of the Akaran dynasty unseat at Galaral?”

That was the question she missed? Anybody could answer that! Mena hated responding to simple questions. She found pleasure in knowledge only when she stood out from others. Dariel, her younger brother, knew who the first king was and what he had done, and he was only nine. She held out for as long as she could, but when Aliver opened his mouth with some jibe, she spoke quickly.

“Edifus was the founder. He was born into suffering and darkness in the Lakes, but he prevailed in a bloody war that engulfed the whole world. He met the Untrue King Tathe at Galaral and crushed his forces with the aid of Santoth Speakers. Edifus was the first in an unbroken line of twenty-one Akaran kings, of which my father is the most recent. Edifus’s sons, Thalaran, Tinhadin, and Praythos, set about securing and solidifying the empire through a series of campaigns called the Wars of Distribution-”

“All right,” Jason said. “More than I asked for…”

“A seagull.”

“What?”

“I was being a seagull, not a fish or a porpoise.” She scrunched up her face at Aliver and then turned to give Corinn the same.

Sometime later, after having tried unsuccessfully to resume her avian imaginings, Mena contented herself with following the conversation. The discussion had turned to geography. Corinn named the six provinces and managed to say something about their ruling families and forms of government: the Mainland to the near north, the satrapy of the Mein in the far north, the Candovian Confederacy to the northwest, Talay to their south, and the mountain tribes of Senival to the west. The linked islands collectively called the Vumu Archipelago made up the last province, though it did not have the centralized government of the others.

Jason rolled a map out on the grass and had the children tack the edges down with their knees. Dariel always took particular pleasure in maps. He leaned close to it and repeated anything the tutor said as if he were translating the information for another listener. Something about the slow way he did this spurred Mena to interrupt him.

“Why is Acacia always at the center of maps?” she asked. “If the world curves and has no end-as you taught us, Jason-how is one place the center and not another?”

Corinn found the question silly. She glanced at Jason with upraised eyebrows and a wrinkled pursing of her lips. At fifteen, she was attractive and knew it, with the olive complexion and rounded face that had come to epitomize Acacian beauty. Much of their dead mother, Aleera, lived on in her; at least, that was what everyone seemed to think. “It just is the center, Mena. Everyone knows that.”

“Succinctly put,” Jason said, “but Mena does make a point. All peoples think of themselves first. First, central, and foremost, yes? I should show you a map from Talay sometime. They draw the world quite differently. And why wouldn’t they think themselves the center of the world? They are a great nation also-”

Aliver guffawed. “Be serious! The men and women walk around half naked down there. They hunt with spears and worship gods that look like animals. They still use small tribal governments-chiefs and all that. They are no better than the squabbling Mein.”

“And it’s too hot there,” Corinn added. “They say the earth dries to powder for half the year. They have to drink from holes dug in the ground.”

Jason conceded that the Talayan climate was harsh, especially in the far south. And he knew they would always think of their ways as inferior to Acacian customs. There was a reason Acacia held sway over the entire Known World. He said, “We are a gifted people. But we are also a benevolent people. We should not disdain Talayans or any other-”

“I didn’t say I disdained them. They have their ways and when I am king I will try to respect them. Now, why is this map out? Do you have something to teach us or not?”

Jason, noting the flare of impatience in Aliver’s tone, nodded. He smiled his agreement and let the topic drop. He was a teacher, yes, but he never forgot that he was also a servant. Sometimes that seemed unfortunate to Mena. How were they to truly learn about the world if they could silence their tutors just by raising the pitch of their voices?

The lesson resumed, all of them listening to Jason without further interruption. But they were not at it long. A few minutes later their father, King Leodan, pushed through the doorway and breathed in the morning air. His face had the texture of tanned leather. A dusting of white hair spread around his temples, highlighting his otherwise dark hair, betraying both his age and his kingly burdens. He took in his children, nodded at the tutor, and then looked out across the panoramic view of his island. He said, “Jason, I am going to interrupt your teaching this morning. With the delegation from Aushenia arriving shortly I will not have all the time I would like for my children in the coming weeks. I awoke with a desire to run the horses. I’m inclined to indulge it. If my children wish to accompany me the matter would be decided…”

The children were so inclined, and within the hour they galloped out through one of the small side gates of the palace. All the children had ridden since their fourth or fifth year, and all were more than competent, even Dariel. A guard of ten horsemen followed them at a discreet distance. Nobody could imagine the king to be at risk while on Acacia, but as a monarch he was quite often made to bend to traditions from more perilous times.

They rode briskly out along the high road to the west. The narrow track at times traversed such thin ridges that one could look at a vista on either side that dropped down juniper-covered slopes, careening all the way to the sea. The thorny crowns of acacia trees occasionally broke through the thin-webbed canopy. It was these, of course, that gave the island its name and the Akaran dynasty its informal title. They were a distinguishing feature of the landscape, unique among the other islands of the Inner Sea, none of which had acacias.

Up close, the trees had frightened Mena when she was younger. They were gnarled and thorny, so still and yet always having about them the threat of latent life, an intelligence within that she suspected they chose to keep hidden for their own reasons. She had grown comfortable near them only lately. An aged, sanded, and tamed specimen had been transplanted to Dariel’s room as a frame to climb about on, a plaything. This had done much to ease her apprehensions. They could be cut and moved and shaped into toys for children; hardly things to fear.

The riders dropped down to the rugged beach of the southern coastline, a stretch of shore left in its natural state, with views across the bay at cliffs thriving with bird life. For a while they rode in a loose group, around and between great limbs of sun-bleached driftwood or out into the glass-green water, the horses kicking through the froth. Dismounted, Aliver tossed seashells out at the waves. Corinn stood on the decaying trunk of an enormous tree, her arms out to either side and her face pointed into the chilly breeze. Dariel chased fiddler crabs across the sand.

Mena chose to stand at her father’s right hand as he walked from one to the other of them, interested in all, laughing, for so many things seemed to amuse him when he was with his children. She held a twig of driftwood in her fingers, running her fingertips over the weathered grain of it. This was exactly the way life was supposed to be. She did not question whether such a thing-a king cavorting with his children-was unusual. It was simply the way it always had been. She could imagine no other possibility. She did wonder, though, if anyone but her saw the strain behind their father’s faзade. His joy was sincere, but it was not without effort. It was painful in some measure because of the one who was absent.

That evening, back once more in the warm hive of the palace, Mena and Dariel curled up on her bed to hear their father tell a story. Like all rooms in the palace, Mena’s was large, wide, and tall, with floors of polished white marble. It was not a room on which Mena had exerted any of her own influence, unlike Corinn in her lacy, brightly colored and variously cushioned nest. The furniture was uniformly ancient, pieces made of gnarled hardwood, with upholstery that tickled the skin. Tapestries depicting figures from Acacian history hung on the walls. She could name the deeds of only a few of them, but she felt their presence in the room as a protective force. They were watching over her. They were, after all, her father’s people. Her own.

Leodan sat on a stool beside them. “So,” he said, “I think we have reached the point where I must tell you the story of the Two Brothers and how the great friction began between them. It’s a shame that Corinn and Aliver are too old for stories; they once liked this one, even though it’s sad.”

The king explained that there was once a time in the far past when the two brothers, Bashar and Cashen, were so close they could not be separated. A knife blade could not be slipped between them, such was their love for each other and joy at being in each other’s company. At least this was true until the day that a delegation from a nearby village came to them and said that since the two of them were such good and noble brothers they prayed that one of them would become something called a “king.” They had been told by a dreamer prophet that if they had a king, they would find prosperity. This they sorely needed, for they had suffered famine and discord for years. None of them could decide who among them should be king, so they implored one of the brothers to step into the role.

The two brothers asked if they could both be kings, but the villagers said that was not possible. Only one man can be the king of a place, they said. That was what the prophet had told them. But still the brothers liked the idea of being royal. They said that the villagers could choose between them and that the unchosen one would abide by the decision. In secret they made a pact that after a hundred years they would switch roles, and he who had not been king would then become it.

Cashen was chosen and made king. For a hundred years he ruled without incident. The people thrived. Bashar was always at his side. But on the first day of the hundred and first year Bashar asked that Cashen hand over the crown. Cashen looked at him coldly. He had grown used to being king, fond of the power he wielded. Bashar reminded him of their agreement, but Cashen claimed that no such words had ever passed between them. Hearing this, Bashar was filled with anger. He grappled with his brother. Cashen threw him off and, feeling a sudden fear and shame, ran from the village up into the hills. He drained himself of all loving thought for his brother and filled himself with bitterness instead. Bashar chased him through the hills and into the mountains. Storm clouds gathered and bolts of lightning illumed the sky and rain poured down on them.

Dariel tapped his father on the wrist with a finger. “Is this true?”

Leaning toward him, Leodan whispered, “Every word of it.”

“They should’ve taken turns,” Dariel said, his voice edged with fatigue.

“When Bashar reached his brother, he cracked him over the head with his staff. Cashen went weak-kneed for a moment, but then he shook off the blow and came at Bashar again. This time Bashar swung his staff around and caught his brother at the knees, spilling him onto his back. He tossed his staff away and grabbed his brother, hefted him up, and walked with him above his head toward the precipice. The wind battered and howled at him, but still he managed to reach the edge, where he tossed his brother over into the void.

“But Cashen did not perish. He bounced and rolled and tumbled down the slope. He regained his footing and began to run. He bounded across the valley floor and came up on the other side. As he rose to the crest of the far mountain, a lightning bolt ripped through the sky. The light was blinding and Bashar had to cover his eyes against it. When he could see again, Bashar realized that Cashen had been struck. But instead of dropping to the ground dead, his body quivered and tingled with energy. Blue light fanned out across his skin and over his charred flesh. He did not perish, though. He began to run once more, and now he was swifter than before. He took enormous steps and climbed to the peak of the far mountain and jumped over it without so much as a backward glance at his brother.”

Mena let the silence after this linger for a moment, then asked, “Is that the end?”

Leodan shushed her and nodded toward Dariel, indicating that he had fallen asleep. “No,” he said, beginning to slide his arms under the boy, “that is not all, but it’s the end of this night’s story. Bashar realized that some god had reached down and blessed his brother. He knew then that they were to be foes in a long and difficult battle. Truth be known, they still are fighting.” Leodan pushed himself upright, Dariel draped over his arms, in the dead weight of slumber. “Sometimes, if you listen carefully, you can hear them throwing stones at each other in the mountains.”

Watching her father’s back as he passed through the open portal, turned toward the glare of yellow light from the hall lamp and stepped out of view, Mena fought back the sudden urge to call out. It came to her like a gasp for air, as if she had been holding her breath unwittingly. It was the sudden, dreadful certainty that her father would vanish into that corridor, never to be seen again. When she was younger she often called him back time and again, for comfort, stories, and promises, until his patience wore thin or until she dropped senseless from fatigue. But lately she had grown embarrassed by whatever emotion choked her at parting from him. It was her burden to bear, and bear it she did.

She realized that she had clenched her bedsheets tight in her two fists. She tried to loosen her fingers and spread calm up from them and through the rest of her. It was fear without substance, she told herself. Leodan had told her as much many times. He would never leave her. He promised it with complete, undeniable parental certainty. Why could she not just believe him? And why did the wish that she believed him feel like a slight to her dead mother? She knew that many children her age had never suffered the loss of a parent. Even sleeping Dariel could not remember their mother enough to miss her. He knew nothing of what had been lost. Such a kind thing, that ignorance. If only she had been born the youngest instead of Dariel. She was not sure if this was a mean thought, unkind to her brother, but she was a long time thinking about it.