Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

There was one particular Talayan acacia tree that was to haunt Thaddeus’s dreams afterward. It rose solitary out of the plain. It stood like an old, black-skinned man, leaning to one side as if gentling an infirmity. It was precariously thin, its limbs crooked and decrepit, its leaves so sparsely dispersed that Thaddeus was not sure until he stood under it that the thing still lived. It did. Acacia trees were hardy, slow growing, thorned against enemies, and stoic against the vagaries of weather. Perhaps there should have been something comforting in this, but, if so, Thaddeus could not find it. Nothing in this country comforted him. Never had the mute grandiosity of a landscape so pressed upon him as it did when he stood in the sparse shade beneath that tree. The curve of the earth seemed more gradual than elsewhere, distances greater, shapes of hills out there more massive. The vault of the sky seemed higher in Talay than it did anyplace else. It stretched up and up, shoved aloft by seething white clouds, stacked like pillars supporting some massive temple. Everywhere he looked-below and above him, at each point of the compass, near and far-creatures moved into and out of view. He could not number or name or categorize all of them, but he suspected each to be a spy intent on studying him.

Of the six provinces of the former Akaran Empire none was more complex, nor more important, than Talay. In breadth it was as wide a land mass as Candovia, Senival, the Mainland, and Aushenia combined. It stretched away to the south in sun-baked folds of land, unmapped regions vast enough that the Acacians never charted all of it in their twenty-two generations of rule. Much of it was so arid that no rain fell to the earth at all. While the name of one particular tribe was assumed by the entire territory, in truth Talayans were just the favored nation among many others. Some have argued that Edifus was an ethnic Talayan, but Edifus himself never claimed such ancestry.

What was indisputable is that the Talayans were the first people on the continent to align themselves with Edifus. In return, he granted them dominion over their neighbors and the responsibility of policing them. No small thing. The province was home to thirty-five other chiefdoms, with nearly the same number of languages and featuring four racial groups so distinct from one another that no generalities could apply to the people of the province as a whole. It was true that they all were dark skinned, but within this was considerable variety, not to mention greater physiological diversity than anywhere else in the Known World. Many of these nations were numerous enough to be military powers in their own right. The Halaly, the Balbara, the Bethuni: in the late Akaran age, each of these could field armies of ten thousand men. The Talayans themselves could call up nearly twenty-five thousand of their own, and, of course, they had the right to levy troops from the others. If their authority had held, the war with Hanish Mein might have taken a different course. It did not, however, for reasons rooted in the soil of antique history.

Old animus does not die, Thaddeus thought. It just awaits opportunity.

Such thoughts came to him unbidden, adding to his unease. Perhaps he had been too many years in hiding. Too long wormed into the cave systems of Candovia, in places dark and moist, with the earth close around him, hearing low grumbles like those deep in a fat man’s belly. But he had not felt so ill at ease when he first emerged and set about his work. He had felt confident enough in his abilities as he gathered information, as he pulled in his spies and learned all they could tell him. He had had no doubts about himself when he sought out the old general and set him on a new path. So why the dread clinging to him now?

Perhaps, he tried to believe, it was just that he was so very far from home, getting farther each day from the latitudes in which he had spent his life. These lands were quite different even from the lush country he had already passed through in northern Talay. Rolling farmland had stretched off as far as his fading eyes could see, dotted by tree lines dividing the fields, with occasional villages. It was nature manicured, hemmed in, and tamed by generations of human effort. And it was more abundantly populated. Their numbers, Thaddeus knew, had been thinned by the contagion. They had been ravished by it and by the war, as had most of the provinces. There were markedly few men of middle age, but the women seemed to have fared better. And there were many children. The place had thronged with them, which must have pleased Hanish Mein. He had made it law that all women who could bear children had to bear them. The Known World needed to be repopulated. They required numbers to thrive, new loved ones to replace those lost, new citizens to help the world turn. Thaddeus understood better than anyone exactly why this mattered so much to Hanish.

The former chancellor’s destination was farther south than he had ever been, well into the parched plains and rolling hills at the heart of Talay. It was a distance of several hundred miles, a long way for a man his age to trek. He chose to walk, however. Lone, rambling, and mind-addled madmen were no rarity in the world. He could have roamed indefinitely without drawing the slightest notice from the thinly spread soldiers of the Mein. Perhaps also there was an overture of penance in his march, though he did not define this even to himself.

He arrived dust-covered in the court of Sangae Uluvara. Tucked into the shallow bowl beneath two bulbous ridges of volcanic rock, the village of Umae was made up of fifty-odd huts; a handful of warehouses and storage pits; and a central structure built of wood and thatch that served like a great canopy above the market, offering shade from the sun and cover from the rain alike. Sangae’s people numbered a couple of hundred souls. As they were a herding culture, rarely was all the population gathered together. The village was in a remote spot in the world, unmarked on many maps, perhaps unknown to the Mein altogether. Indeed, they would have had to have searched very deeply to find the place or to discover a record of the bond of friendship the late king Leodan had once shared with Sangae, long ago, in their youth. No living person besides Thaddeus knew of the man’s importance to the Akaran legacy.

Summoned from inside his shady compound, Sangae stepped out into the sun with fluttering eyelids. He stared at Thaddeus with the trembling intensity he might have beheld an apparition with. A tumult of thoughts passed across his features, emotions that seemed to writhe just beneath his skin. Thaddeus knew that even this far south the man would have heard rumors that cast aspersions on his reputation. Sangae might still be unsure which chancellor was before him now: the traitor or the savior. And this would only be part of the noise within him. This man had been an adoptive father for nine years now. He could not but fear what Thaddeus’s arrival meant for his son.

But when Sangae spoke, he did so from a place of controlled formality. He said, “Old friend, the sun shines on you, but the water is sweet.”

“The water is cool, old friend, and clear to look upon,” Thaddeus answered.

It was a traditional greeting of southern Talay, and it pleased Sangae that the former chancellor responded to it so smoothly and in Talayan. But then he switched to Acacian. “It has been a long time,” he said. “Long enough that I wondered if you would come. Long enough that I hoped you might not.”

Thaddeus found this statement harder to respond to than the first. The chieftain held the former chancellor’s eyes with his. His nose and lips, the round forehead and the wide wings of his cheekbones: each of his features seemed more full of generosity than a single face should have been able to contain. His features had a fullness at odds with his slim torso, his thin shoulders, taut-skinned chest. His eyes were no whiter than Thaddeus’s, no less veined and yellowed, yet they stood out in contrast to the night black of his skin. For a moment Thaddeus felt a spike of fear rise up through him. How would a royal child of Acacia have fared alone among these people? He could not grasp even the edge of such a concept and hold on to it. It might have been a terrible mistake. He turned from the thought, for doubt had no place in how he meant to present himself. “In the king’s name, friend,” he said, “I thank you for what you have done.”

“I can see nothing,” Sangae said, another phrase particular to his people, a denial that he had done anything that merited thanks.

“You speak my tongue better than I do yours.”

“I’ve had one to practice with for some years now. How was your journey?”

The two talked for some time on this subject, an easy one, for it held nothing of the import of why he was here. Only details. But such amiable banter could last only for so long, and Thaddeus-despite his fear of the answer-finally asked, “Is the prince well?”

Sangae’s head dipped in something like a nod, although it was not quite an affirmation. He motioned for Thaddeus to enter his compound and sit across from him on a brightly colored woven mat. Between them, a girl set a gourd of water. A moment later she placed a bowl of dates beside it, and then she withdrew. The walls were open all around them. Even inside, the people of Umae wished for space, for open views and moving air. Thaddeus could see and hear people in each direction, but there was solitude in the quiet space the two men occupied. It was surprisingly cool, considering the blistering heat of the direct sunlight. This was good.

“Aliver hunts the laryx,” the chieftain eventually said. “He has been out two weeks. Billau willing, he will return any day now. But we should not talk of it. It would not be good to warn the spirit beasts of his intent. You, of course, are my guest until he returns.” The man plucked up a date in his fingers. Having done so, he seemed to have no interest in consuming the fruit. “Nine years. Nine years since the boy arrived here, long enough that I truly began to believe that you would not come and that Aliver was truly my son. I have no other, you know, which is my curse.”

Thaddeus considered responding to this apparent self-pity harshly. Better to have never had a child than to have lost one to treachery, he thought. But he had no wish to take the conversation in that direction. Instead, he said, “You’ve had no trouble from the Mein?”

“Never,” Sangae said. “I have heard of them, but they’ve not heard of me, it seems.” He grinned. “My fame is not as great as I might have wished. Take water, please.”

Thaddeus lifted the gourd, cradled it in his palms, and drank deeply. He offered it to the chieftain, who did the same. “It was good that we sent him here, then. Hanish has never ceased from hunting the Akaran children. At least one of Leodan’s children grew as the king wished.”

Sangae commented that he knew nothing, of course, about the other three Akarans. But, yes, Aliver’s course had been in keeping with the king’s plans. Aliver’s lone guardian had spirited him away efficiently from Kidnaban. They had sailed to Bocoum, disembarked, and joined the flow of refugees fleeing the war. They traveled on horseback for a time, then with a camel caravan, and then they simply walked the flat plains that brought them to Umae. With their need for secrecy, the journey took many weeks, and the prince arrived angry, confused, bitter. It took some effort on Sangae’s part to convince him that this exile was not defeat. The conflict was not decided yet. He was the most recent in a line of great leaders. He reminded him that the blood of ancient heroes coursed through his veins. He spoke of Edifus and Tinhadin, of the obstacles they had overcome to rise to power. Had not the difficulties facing them seemed insurmountable? And yet they had. And Aliver would do the same, Sangae promised, it was just he needed time to grow into the man he would have to be.

Sangae folded his large hands across one knee. “That is what I told him. He gave me the King’s Trust for safekeeping, and I have kept it hidden all these years. He has had a good life here, living like a Talayan. This is truth. And you should know that he is not a child anymore. Not by any means.”

“Tell me of his life here, then.”

In the nine years of his exile in Talay, Sangae said, Aliver had assumed a role identical to any son of a noble Talayan warrior family. He had trained in the martial arts of this nation, mastering spear work and the brawling form of wrestling Talayans practiced and even honing his body into that of a runner. It must have been terribly hard work at first. He might have been skilled enough in the Forms, but that had done little to prepare him for the training he received in Talay. Even spear practice was a different venture altogether. Unlike the Forms, Talayan warfare allowed no actions not entirely necessary. From the first day he held a Talayan spear, he had been taught that it was a weapon meant to kill. He had been shown the myriad ways that it could do so, each efficient and quick, with little wasted time or effort. He was challenged time and again, in the martial arts physically, by the harshness of the land, by language and culture, by the fact that he had no status here except what he could earn through his actions.

“And did he meet these challenges?” Thaddeus asked.

Sangae answered that he had. He had never shown himself wanting in discipline, desire, or bravery. He could not imagine what went on in the young man’s mind, as he shared so little of himself, but he was earnest in every act. Perhaps too earnest. He had yet to learn to laugh like a Talayan. He had received his first tuvey band-which meant he had taken part in a skirmish with a neighboring tribe-with the youngest men of his age group. He wore it above his bicep. That was why he had every right to hunt the laryx and to claim-should he be successful-his place as a man of this nation, one old enough to own property, to marry, to sit at council beside the elders.

“Belonging is important,” Sangae said, “and Aliver belongs among us. No one in this village would say otherwise. He has companions here, women who lie with him. No one notices his skin any longer. Such difference is no great thing among family. He belongs among us.”

Thaddeus heard a double meaning in this, a slight edge to the chieftain’s voice. Yes, he acknowledged silently, it was always hard to lose a son, even an adopted one. Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost-or might lose-defined him more than the things he yet possessed.

“I don’t know how he’ll receive you,” the chieftain continued, “but do know that he has not forgotten why he was sent here. In truth, I think he ever thinks only of what the future holds for him. This angers him, and yet…that is how he is.”

“What of the contagion?”

“The prince burned with it like most of my people. He weathered it, though, and is no worse for it now.” Sangae was quiet a moment. He turned his gaze away and watched a bird hop through the glare of a lane some distance away. “What will you ask of him?”

“I ask nothing. His father has, and it is for Aliver alone to answer it. This laryx, is it dangerous to hunt?”

Sangae turned to gaze at him. “Few men ever accomplish a test so great.”

When hunting a laryx, Sangae explained, one actually becomes the hunted for most of the contest. One first riles the beast by finding a nest it is currently using for bedding. The hunter fouls the area, kicking the matted grasses with his feet, urinating on it, spitting, squatting to defecate. After that, he waits nearby until the creature returns, catches his scent, and pursues him. That is when the hunt begins.

“You see, a laryx does not take insult well. Once on a scent, it will follow it until it either kills the offender or drops from exhaustion. The hunter must run before it, staying near enough that the beast does not lose the scent. But not too close. One twisted ankle, a bad route chosen, or if one overestimates his stamina…any of these things mean death. The only way to kill the beast is to run it to complete exhaustion and then to attack it with all you have left, hoping that is enough. If Aliver triumphs, he will have been through a physical and mental ordeal that cannot really be imagined. He will have lived with a demon panting at his back for hours, with death one misstep away. This is not a challenge he had to take. He chose it, and I have been praying ever since that he was ready for it. Men die at this effort, Thaddeus. It may be that you never get a chance to take him from me. If you are blessed to look into his living eyes, you can know for certain that he is strong. Strong in a way no Akaran has been for many generations.”

“Do you believe he was ready for this hunt?”

“We will see,” Sangae answered.

The unease this response filled Thaddeus with remained throughout the three days he waited for Aliver’s return. How cruel, he mused, would it be if the prince died now, just before I invite him to find his destiny?

But he need not have worried. When Aliver arrived, he did so amid a cacophony of jubilation that could announce only triumph. Thaddeus stood in the small room Sangae had offered him, watching the scene through a window propped open with a stick. The tumult of black bodies was tremendous. They thronged into the streets like a school of fish in frenzy, all of them learning of the hunter’s return at once, each of them dropping whatever activity he had been engaged in. They seemed more numerous than the village population. Where had they all come from? Thaddeus almost stepped out and joined them, but he felt a need to stay hidden as yet, to observe from the shadows inside his open-air window.

They swarmed around some sort of wheeled conveyance. It was a cart pulled by several men, a thing large enough that normally it would have been harnessed to one of the long-horned oxen the villagers used for larger loads. But instead the men had grasped its leading poles with their bare hands. Thaddeus could not make out exactly what it bore until it passed by his vantage point. It was still a distance away but near enough that he drew back a step. It was a beast, a dead creature so large that at first he wondered if several of the things were piled on top of one another. There was something wolflike in its long limbs, something of a laughing dog in the thickness of its neck, something boarlike in its snout, but it was none of these creatures. Beneath its scraggly coat the beast was purple skinned, a dry, pocked, and scarred surface, scaled by peeling patches. It was a horrible thing, a monster. How could Aliver have killed such a thing with only a spear? It scarcely seemed possible.

A young boy climbed up onto the wagon and tugged the creature’s ears. Several others grabbed it by the hair around its neck and yanked the head this way and that, to roars from the crowd. Still another leaned his weight onto the lower jaw, opening the mouth enough that he could feign sticking his head inside it. But he thought better of this and leaped away in exaggerated fear, stirring still greater mirth.

All this was nothing compared to the reception the hunter himself received. He was easy to pick out. He marched through the throng like an epic hero brought back to life, returning to universal adoration. Or like the ghost of this hero, a paler form of man than those around him. He shouldered his way through arms patting him, faces pushing close to his, each person with some comment to make, so many white teeth moving close to him. They looked, for a strange instant, like creatures thrusting forward to take bites from him, but Thaddeus knew this to be a corruption of his own eyes and not true to the scene before him.

Thaddeus was surprised by Aliver’s height. He was a full head taller than his father had been. Under the constant burn of the sun, his skin had ripened like oiled leather, though it was still pale compared to that of Talayans. He was bare chested. The striations of his muscles carved fine, well-proportioned lines. His wavy hair was tinged with yellow highlights, making it much lighter than it ever would have been back in Acacia. Because of this he might have seemed out of place in a far southern Talayan village. And yet, at the same time he had never looked more at home within himself. He was a sculpted, sun-burnished, hard- and lean-muscled man, strong in the exuberant, absurd manner of youth. He wore that gold ring-the tuvey band-above his left bicep as if it were a part of him and had always been there. He took the attention well, smiling and answering comments in kind, but with no air of superiority.

For a moment Thaddeus wondered if there was a hint of humility in his expression, if in fact he had not killed the beast as these folks imagined. Many an Acacian noble took credit for kills made by their servants. Watching a little longer, he decided that whatever Aliver held back he did so for reasons other than shame. He sent word to Sangae that he did not wish to disrupt Aliver’s homecoming. He asked that Aliver be sent to him later that afternoon, once the commotion had died down.

When they did meet, nothing went as Thaddeus had expected. Months before, when he had imagined this meeting, Thaddeus had thought to greet Aliver with an embrace. He would pull the lad in and squelch any distance between them, any recrimination. The bond would be instant. A touch would do it, and everything else would fall into place. But as Aliver closed the last few steps that separated them, Thaddeus knew that had been a fantasy.

“Hello, Aliver,” he said. He was relieved that he still had some control, spotty though it had become. “I come to you with a call to your destiny. And I arrive at the proper moment. I see you are a monster slayer today. Congratulations. Your father would have been proud.”

How strange, Thaddeus thought, that so much of the boy lived in this man’s features-in the set of his eyes and the crinkle of his upper lip and in the full shape of his head. Yet the face was that of a stranger as well. Staring at him was like listening to a discordant note woven into a familiar song. He had lost all of his soft edges, though this effect was as much a matter of his severe demeanor as it was his sharp features. Was that defiance flaring behind his eyes? Anger? Surprise or disappointment? Thaddeus could not tell, though he held on through the prince’s answering silence, trying to read him.

“Did you really kill that beast yourself?”

When Aliver finally spoke, there was a hint of a Talayan accent in his voice, a looseness of the tongue around the vowels, but he had lost no fluency in his native tongue. “I have learned to do many things. So you are not dead?”

Not the greeting Thaddeus had hoped for. “Sit down, please,” he said. The words came out before he thought them, but he was glad. He still looked calm. He knew that. He still had some command. He waited until Aliver lowered himself, his legs scissored together, cross-legged, his back as straight as a board.

Thaddeus lifted a letter from the low table before him. “Let us begin with this, Prince. Read it. It is important that you do.”

“You know what it says?”

Thaddeus nodded. “But I am the only one.”

“This is not my father’s hand,” Aliver said, after glancing at the words briefly.

“It is my hand, but his words. Read them and judge.”

The young man bent his head to the paper. His eyes slid down it, rose, and slid down it again. Thaddeus looked away. It is not right to watch as another reads. He knew the words by heart anyway. He knew all the ways Leodan had expressed his love for his firstborn. He tried not to think of them, to allow Aliver that privacy. He could not, however, fight back the memory of the words the letter ended with, for he would have to address them when the prince looked up at him.

“This cannot be serious,” Aliver said. He had stopped reading. His eyes were dead on the page, neither looking up nor moving over the words any longer.

“It is all serious. Which portion do you doubt?”

The young man flicked the paper, just enough to indicate that all of it was in question. “This talk of the Santoth, the God Talkers…that cannot be serious. My father, if he meant to tell me this, must have been close to death. He was not thinking clearly. Look what this says. Son,” he pretended to quote flippantly, “now that you are grown, it’s time you save the world…and he asks me to do it by seeking out some mythic mad magicians.”

“The Santoth may be as real as you and I.”

Aliver set his gaze on the man. “May be? Have you seen one? Have you worked magic or seen it done?”

“There are records,” Thaddeus began and then had to lift his voice above Aliver’s rebuttal. “There are records-of which you know nothing-that testify to the Santoth in great detail.”

“Myth!” Aliver spat the word, making it a curse.

“Myth lives, Aliver! That is a truth as undeniable as the sun or the moon. Do you see the moon at this moment? No, but you believe you will again. Your father tells you the Santoth can walk the Known World again. They can help us win back power as they did before. All they need is for you-an Akaran prince who will be king-to remove their banishment. This is part of why you were sent to Talay, to be nearest to the Santoth, so that you would know this land and have the skills to search them out, to hunt for them. Your brother and sisters went each to their different places as well, although little of that went as we wished. I will tell you about all of it, Aliver. You will know everything I know. Everything. I will tell you news of Hanish Mein as well. He is planning something for his ancestors, the Tunishnevre. They are another force that you might think were no more than myth, and yet it is they who gave Hanish the power-”

“Who is this ‘us’ you mentioned?”

“There are many who await your return. In a manner of speaking, the whole world awaits you. There are reasons only you can-”

“Why should I care about your world or believe a word you say? I have found another life, with people who speak only truth.”

Thaddeus felt his pulse hammer along his neck. He had a momentary impulse to slap his hand over it, but he controlled it. “There was a time when you called me uncle. You loved me. You said so with your child’s mouth, and I loved you in return. I am still that man. And I know that you care about the fate of the world. You always have. Nothing could beat that out of you. Aliver, this is what your father intended. The things you have learned here…the man you have become…” Aliver’s face was unreadable, utterly unreadable, and it caused Thaddeus to pause. “I see you want to be a mystery to me, but you are not.” With greater certainty he repeated, “You are not.”

“You say what I do is my choice?”

“Yes.”

Aliver said, “Then you have already spoken half-truths to me. You know I have no choice. Nor have you admitted that you betrayed my father. An honest man would have done so from the start. Yes, I know. How could I not? The world knows of Thaddeus Clegg’s treachery. Hanish Mein himself declared it, and I heard of it before I even arrived here, while still in the camel caravan. Men debated whether you were evil or just a fool. I did not add my voice to theirs, but I know the truth: you are both. You may not have put the blade in his chest, but-but you might as well have. If you were a true servant of my father, you would drop to your knees and beg for forgiveness.”

The prince pushed himself to his feet with one smooth exertion, rising straight up as his legs disentangled themselves. He was finished. He was turning to go. He lifted a foot and leaned to stride away behind it. Thaddeus had not been prepared for this moment. He had not planned for it, had not imagined Aliver would say what he just had or that he would respond to it as he was about to.

He lunged from his seated position. He wrapped one hand around Aliver’s leg. His other hand scraped him forward, and in a few moments he had the young man’s legs gripped in a two-armed embrace. This was not at all what he had intended, but he did not let go. He held tight, ready to feel the prince’s fists crashing down on his head. Only then did he understand completely what he had waited all these years to do, what he had feared and wanted most, what mattered with an urgency greater than the fate of nations. Forgiveness. He needed to be forgiven. To be so, he would have to tell the truth entirely. That was what he would do. For once, he would rely on the entire truth. And if Aliver was the prince the Known World needed, he would know how to face it all.