Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

Aliver returned to the world of the living. He parted with the Santoth, promises made on both sides, and he walked himself gradually back to an understanding of his corporeal body. At first, his limbs swung unwieldy about him, heavy as if flowing with molten metal. His legs were a chore to lift. Each time he set a foot down he felt guilt for placing the burden of himself onto the earth. Why had he never noticed that before? The flow of time, the progression of the sun, the brutal heat of day, and the sharp cold of night: so many things to remember. It seemed the world’s volume was out of all order. What should have been the tiniest of sounds-wind stirring sand grains to tumbling, a grumble of thunder in the far distance, the blast from his chest as he coughed-rocked him right to the center. Again and again he had to stop in his tracks, hold his head, breathe low and shallow. With each step he considered turning around. But this was never really an option. It was like the hunger of a mist smoker for the green cloud. He had no intention of giving in to it. In fact, he had never felt more resolved to face his fate back in the Known World.

He met Kelis just where the man promised he would be. Something about being with another person broke down the last barriers between Aliver and the world. He heard another human voice for the first time in what seemed like ages. He opened his own mouth in response and was relieved to find his speech no longer the discordant clatter it had been. By the time they reached Umae, he and Kelis were running again, the pair of them looking much as they had when they left weeks before.

Umae, however, was not the same as it had been. It had doubled in size, lapping out of the gentle bowl that housed it and reaching out in all directions. Makeshift tents clustered around the main village, satellite settlements that had a fledgling look of permanence to them. As he and Kelis approached, calls went up announcing them. People thronged the lanes between the fields, perched in acacia trees, squatted on every area of available ground. Walking through them, Aliver heard inflections that marked the dialects of neighboring tribes. He saw Balbara headdresses made of ostrich feathers and seashell necklaces from the eastern shore and the skintight leather trousers worn by the hill people of the Teheen Hills. A cluster of high-cheekboned warriors greeted him with a timed shout. He had no idea what people they were. He answered them with a nervous nod, which-judging by their grins in response-sufficed quite nicely.

Thaddeus and Sangae awaited them at the center of the village. Both of them wore similar expressions of fatherly relief, pride, awe. Sequestered safely inside the chieftain’s compound, Aliver did the best he could to answer their rapid barrage of questions. It must have been unsatisfying for them. He was vague on every detail. He knew it. His sentences dribbled away half finished. He paused for long intervals, stumped at how to possibly explain his experiences among the Santoth. He could not really. Most of it had happened in a place without words. Some of it-now that he was firmly back amid the tumult of humanity-seemed as hazy as the dreamworld.

Both of the older men seemed to understand this. They were thrilled that he had made contact with the Santoth, delighted that the sorcerers recognized Aliver, and overjoyed that he had returned safely. They explained that from the day he left rumor of his mission had escaped the village and flown across the plains. Aliver Akaran was among them! He was a man who had killed a laryx! The prince had gone in search of the banished sorcerers! Neither Thaddeus nor Sangae had planned for the news to escape. It happened spontaneously. People who had kept his identity secret every day for nine years could not hold it any longer. The world, it seemed, was hungry for word of him. In no time at all the pilgrims began arriving.

“The ones gathered here are just the first to join you,” Thaddeus said. “We can move north from here at any time, gathering our army as we go. We’ll pull together a host like the world has never seen, so grand an army, of so many nations, that Hanish Mein will have to face us.” The former chancellor paused, seeming to realize he was getting ahead of himself. “Prince, does this plan please you?”

“We cannot simply amass numbers,” Aliver heard himself say. “We have to train them as well. Without discipline and coordination our host will be but a flock for the Mein and the Numrek to slaughter.”

Thaddeus glanced at Sangae. He sent him some message with a slight motion of his eyebrows, as if marking a point earned, and then returned his gaze to Aliver. He was glad to hear the prince thought on such scale and looked for details within it. He explained that he had been doing the same thing for some time. He had been in contact with several former Acacian generals over the years. They had all nurtured support among intimate groups. They had sworn themselves to secrecy and waited for his call to arms. One of them, Leeka Alain, formerly of the Northern Guard, had found Aliver’s younger brother.

Aliver interrupted. “He found Dariel?”

Thaddeus nodded. “I received correspondence to that effect while you were gone. They should be on the way to us soon. And they’re not the only ones. There are people in every corner of the empire who remain loyal to the Akarans.”

His brother was alive! The news that one of his siblings had actually been found and won over to this effort filled Aliver with relief, followed fast by a flare of worry. Little Dariel! How could he survive amid the coming turmoil? He almost said that Dariel should stay in hiding, but he caught himself. He was picturing the small boy Dariel had been. That child was no more. The years would have changed him as much as they had changed Aliver. Even more, for he was so young when the exile began. He wanted to grasp the old chancellor and ask him question after question. Where was his brother? What sort of life had he lived? What had he become?

He would pose all the queries later, he decided. Before that he had to ask something else. “You say people in every corner of the empire remain loyal to my family. Are you sure of this? We did so little for them.”

“Because they remember your family’s nobility,” Sangae answered. He said this solemnly, his wrinkled chin jutting forward. No doubt he believed it completely, somehow feeling some ownership of that nobility himself.

“They believe in you, Aliver,” Thaddeus said, “just as they loved your father. They likely love your father in death more so than they did when he lived.”

Neither answer surprised Aliver, but neither seemed satisfactory either. He turned to Kelis. “How do you see it?”

The Talayan cleared his throat and answered with complete honesty, as Aliver knew he would. “Because the entire world suffered from Hanish’s war. Life is worse for them now, under the Mein’s new tyranny. But you…you’re a symbol of a lesser evil. That’s about all people can believe in and hope for. So it feels right to them.”

“That’s not good enough,” Aliver said. The answer came crisply. Hearing the words he felt a confidence in them that surprised him. It wasn’t good enough to be a lesser evil. If he was going to do this at all, he had to aim higher. “I don’t want them to fight just to return to the old position of bondage. If I win this war, Thaddeus, it must be with the promise of changing everything for the better. Tell people that if they fight with me, they fight for themselves so that they and their children will always be free. This is a promise I make them.”

Thaddeus gazed at him for a long moment, his face unreadable. So unreadable, in fact, that he must have worked hard to render it so. Eventually he asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Aliver said.

“You speak an ideal that may prove hard to put into practice. The world is corrupt from top to bottom. Perhaps more than you know.”

The prince looked hard at Thaddeus. “I’m more sure about this than anything else. This war must be a fight for a better world. Anything less is failure.”

“I understand,” Thaddeus said. “I will make sure that message is known. Your father would be proud to hear you speak.”

Aliver stood and moved over to one of the windows. He lifted the shutter and, squinting against the sliver of brilliant light on his face, studied the scene outside. “All these people,” he said, “they came of their own accord? They’ve been told the truth. Nothing more?”

“Yes,” Sangae said. “We’ve heard from all the southern tribes, Prince. They know the mission you’re set on. Most want to aid you. That’s why they’ve sent emissaries here, to attest to their faith in you. They may spin tales of their own about your greatness, about how you found the Santoth. They may even pass stories of feats you accomplished in your childhood. The kind of prodigious feats, Aliver, that may surprise you to hear of. But Thaddeus and I, all we did was admit that you lived and that you were ready to retake the throne of Acacia. That was all they needed to hear to flock to you.”

“You say most want to aid me. Not all?”

Sangae shook his head regretfully. The Halaly, he explained, were the only powerful tribe not to respond enthusiastically. They had sent not a single soldier or pilgrim or representative bearing gifts and praise. They did send a messenger saying that they were aware of the claims being made in the Akaran name. They would, they said, hold council on them. With the Halalys’ haughty nature it seemed unlikely they would move without prompting of some sort. They were but one tribe out of many, but after the Talayans they were the second most numerous.

“We would do well to win them to our side,” Kelis said. “They are good fighters. Not as good as they think, but still…”

“Fine, then,” Aliver said, once again surprised at how quickly the decision came to him. “I’ll call on them.”

The kingdom of Halaly lay rimmed on three sides by hills. It centered around one great basin out of which a river flowed. The shallow lake there so teemed with aquatic and avian life that Halaly people never went hungry, even during periods of consistent drought. It was this bounty that made them the powerful nation that they were. They depended on the tiny silver fish that thrived in the lake-a protein source that was fried or put in soups, dried or pickled or crushed into a paste and fermented in earthen jars buried in the ground. As their totem, however, they picked an animal more in keeping with what they believed their nature to be. It was a less than original choice.

“Does every man in this land believe he was fathered by a lion?” Aliver asked, as he and Kelis approached the mud walls of Halaly. The stronghold stood three times a man’s height, lined across the top with twisting barbs of sharpened iron. It was formidable in appearance, but the wall served mostly to impress visitors, to seal the inhabitants safely away from the creatures that hunted in the night, and it stood as a backdrop upon which lion hides were pinned.

“Not all,” Kelis said, studying the skins. “On occasion a leopard did the deed.”

They had left Umae secretly, just the two of them. Aliver wanted to catch Oubadal by surprise, to honor him with a visit, and to hear whatever he had to say privately. He had been warned the Halaly chieftain would expect some sort of reward in return for his support. Just what he might want Aliver was not sure.

Since little surprised the chieftain of the Halaly, he was waiting for Aliver under a large shelter, a cone-shaped structure supported by a weave of gnarled shrub wood trunks, opened at the sides and thatched up above. Oubadal sat at the center, flanked by a few attendants. A group of aged men sat at the edge of the enclosure, just inside the line cut by the shadow. They followed Aliver’s approach with yellowed eyes and a belligerence at odds with their twisted, aged bodies, as if each of them were capable of leaping to his feet and throttling the newcomers should they pose any threat or cause any insult to their monarch.

Oubadal wore his royal status with a composure modeled on his totem, with the wide swell of a bare chest and a thick neck. His gestures were slow, eyes heavy and languid in their movements, his features rounded and prominent. Oubadal wore a gold nose ring on the flare of his nostril, brilliant against the charred blackness of his skin. The chieftain studied Aliver’s features with undisguised interest, intrigued by the thin blade of the Acacian’s nose and slight lips and by the dilute color of his skin.

“I wondered when you would come to me,” the chieftain said. “I heard of your triumph over the laryx. Congratulations. You should be proud; I was in my time. I am too rich now to chase after animals. Others do this for me. Nor have I ever spoken with the fabled Santoth. You are a prodigy, Prince Aliver.” He bared an impressive set of teeth, not exactly a smile but with some measure of mirth in it.

“I see there is not much Oubadal does not know,” Aliver said. “Then you will know why I have come to council with you also?”

The chieftain thrummed his thick fingers on his thighs a few times, a sign that Aliver was being too hasty. He moved the conversation back to pleasantries, asking about the health of the Talay, testing Aliver’s knowledge of that nation’s aristocratic families. Aliver answered as best he could, while silently chastising himself for launching into the point of his visit too quickly. As comfortable as he was in this country, he still too often forgot the traditional formalities in his haste.

When Oubadal fell silent a half an hour later the two men passed a few moments listening to the whir of insects outside and the calls of children in the distance. They each sipped a palm beverage, cool and refreshing in the languid heat. Aliver glanced at Kelis, who confirmed that the moment had come.

“Noble Oubadal,” Aliver began, “you may know already what I wish to speak with you about. Soon the world will be thrown into another great war, a struggle that will set right the wrong done when Hanish Mein led his people and a foreign army against Acacia. It may seem that the Mein prevailed, but in truth my nation was caught by surprise and only temporarily vanquished. My father had already begun a plan to unite the great powers of the world against the Mein. I am before you to ask for your support in this struggle. In return for your wisdom and for the strong arms of your fighting men Acacia will reward you greatly.”

Oubadal held a fetish stick in his left hand, a cross-shaped staff dipped in gold, wrapped in leather bands, and adorned with certain bird feathers. Before he answered he used the butt of it to scratch his neck. “Why should my people shed blood for you? You are a prince without a nation, whereas Hanish Mein has both fists clenched around a sword and each capable of slaughter.”

“I am not without an army,” Aliver said. “Have you not heard how soldiers flock to me? And this fight is not just for my benefit. Does not Hanish Mein reach his arm down here and grasp at your wealth, taking this and that as he wishes? They steal the very children of your land and sell them to some unknown master on the other side of the world. That sounds to me like the work of your enemy. You don’t call them friends, do you?”

“No, of course not.” The chieftain looked around him as if he would spit at the thought of this. “But why should I care which race of pale men robs us? These Mein are no different from the Acacians who came before them. Don’t look insulted, Prince! There can be no offense taken at the truth. The Mein have doubled the quota in slaves, true, but they don’t ask where we get slaves from, you see? This is a difference that robs our enemies more than ourselves. You understand me?”

Aliver felt keenly the insult of being classed as pale, but he let it pass without comment. “My father had no wish to rob anyone; neither do I.”

“Many in his name crept down into our lands and stole from us. You are either a skilled deceiver or you are ignorant of the workings of the world. You lived in a beautiful palace, did you not? An entire island you called your own. Horses and jewels and fine food, servants to attend you. How do you think all that was paid for? I will tell you something. Come close.”

Oubadal beckoned with his staff. Aliver leaned forward and supported himself, somewhat awkwardly, on his hands and knees. The chieftain slanted toward him, fragrant with sandalwood and the sharp tang of sweat. “Men such as you and I are not blessed by the Giver. This is the lie the people eat. In truth, we rule because we know better than our people that the Giver has left us. There is no world but the one we make, and the world your father presided over was one that made a few very rich and kept many very poor.”

A few of the old men along the periphery murmured their approval. One smacked his tongue from the roof to the floor of his mouth, making a popping sound.

The chieftain continued. “It was not just gold your people took from us, not just slaves. Your people grasped hold of my younger brother, of my sister, and my father’s second wife, to hold them captive. My people, understand? My very own blood. Leodan kept them locked away with one hand and grasped my father’s heart in the other and made him know that if ever the Halaly spurned him, my father’s children would suffer for it. I’ve never seen them since. Even now I don’t know if they are alive. Can you give my siblings back to me? Can you promise that?”

Aliver blinked before he spoke, held his eyes closed for a long moment, and then opened them slowly. “I don’t know. A thing like that might have been handled from Alecia. My father may not have known…”

“What king can claim ignorance?”

“A wiser one than claims all knowledge,” Aliver snapped. “Acacia was an enormous nation. Much of its running was in the hands of the governors. If you knew my father, you would understand that he valued family above all else. He would not have harmed yours in such a way had he known about it.”

Oubadal shook his head at this. “With complete power comes complete responsibility. Our people give us a gift when they hail us; the price we pay is that our souls bear the wounds of their sins. If you cannot accept this, you do not deserve the crown you seek. Crawl back and be a child; seek your mother’s teat.”

A sparrow darted under the enclosure and flitted around inside, landing on one beam and then another. Aliver looked up and watched it. This was not going as he had planned. He felt like a fool, just like that child the chieftain alluded to.

“Now, enough of this,” Oubadal eventually said. He changed the pitch of his voice and stepped down from the high oratory of a moment before. “No man can go back to his mother’s teat; let us move on. There is a way for you to get what you want. You know of my enemies, the Balbara? They’ve plagued my people since the first days of the earth. The Halaly have been their masters for some time now, but in recent years they’ve grown bold. They thumb their chins at us and encroach upon our lands and sometimes raid our outlying villages. I have had enough of it. I wish to destroy them.”

“Destroy them?”

“Yes. I’ll kill all their warriors, castrate their boy children, and sell their women as concubines to bear Halaly children. If you help us to wipe them from the earth and recognize my people as equal to Talay and promise us the right to collect tribute in your name-”

“I want no tribute.”

“Hah! When your people were in power, Acacia drank tribute like a thirsty man wine. It will be the same again, I’m sure. When we are made equal to Talay, you will agree that our lands should be renamed Halaly: not just on our maps but on yours. Why should the land from one horizon to another all be called Talay? And if they still live, you will return my family to me and take no further captives from our people. Grant me what I ask you, and the Halaly will help you in your war. You will find no stronger fighting men than mine. I can bring ten thousand warriors to your cause in a week’s time. You have never seen fighters like mine, Prince. I don’t know much about these people who fight for the Mein-the Noom-reek-but we will drive them before us like laughing dogs, their tails between their legs.” He flashed his grin again. “I can guarantee that the Bethuni will stay loyal to you as well. If you like, we can exchange a blood drink to bind us, so that the agreement cannot be broken, even if you or I perish.”

Aliver stared at Oubadal for a long moment. He no longer felt frightened by the man’s heavy eyes and calm air of superiority, nor humbled by his own ignorance, not when this man’s version of leadership was so vile. He would just have to find another way. “I will not help you destroy an entire nation. If you are so mighty, why not do it yourself? Why not ask the Bethuni, if you control them also?”

“The Bethuni are bound by older loyalties,” Oubadal said. “They have a blood bond with the Balbara. They cannot fight them, but neither do they love them. I won’t speak from the side of my mouth to you, Prince. Without your help, the war between us and the Balbara would be uncertain. They aren’t without bravery.”

Aliver said, “Perhaps I should be speaking to the Balbara. I’ve come to speak to the wrong nation.”

Oubadal seemed amused by this observation. “If, Prince, you were friends to our enemy and came against us, you would find yourself cursed in many ways. Who would be your army? The Balbara and Talayans? We would fight them. And while we did, the Bethuni would attack Talay. The coast tribes would not fight us, as they are bound to us by blood. If the Balbara did not come against us but marched away with you, we would pounce on their women and children or the old ones. And because they know this, they would never do it. And so you would gain nothing, except the defeat of your cause before you had yet begun.”

“When I am king of Acacia you will no longer talk to me thus,” Aliver said. “You will remember respect.”

“If you were the king of Acacia, Prince, I would bow before you and suck your big toe.” Oubadal glanced around at his companions, who fell into laughter, the old men especially so. “But you are king of nothing right now. Is that not the truth?”

Aliver barely managed to get through the formal courtesies of leave-taking, so anxious was he to run out into the open air, away from the scent of sandalwood and the lazy, simmering intensity of Oubadal’s eyes.

Kelis stopped him a little distance outside the village gates. He grabbed him by the elbow and slowed him to a halt. “Oubadal can bring us ten thousand fighting men. You cannot walk away yet.”

“I will not slaughter a blameless people,” Aliver said. “This is not what my father intended.”

“This is the way things have been done since the beginning, by all races of men,” Kelis said. “Do you want to achieve your goal or not? I know what you believe. You have noble intentions, but rarely do noble men shape the world. They talk about it, while men such as Oubadal act. Do not leave here without making this moment yours. It is not yours yet, Aliver. So do not leave.”

Aliver sat down on the parched gray earth and cradled his head in his hands. Thaddeus had said that the world was corrupt from top to bottom. Here was his first proof of it. He tried to still his mind and see good in this somewhere, but there was no good in it. He could not begin this war in such a foul way, not if he was to maintain any grip on his humanity. He tried to think of some other terms the chieftain might accept, but the convolutions of tribal alliances were so frustrating that he kicked out at the dirt. It was stupid! It was petty! Too coarse and small. It was one small example of all the practices he wanted to wipe the world clean of. Thinking this, he had an idea.

He said, “What if I told Oubadal that I’m demanding his help, not asking for it? What if I said that I am Prince Aliver Akaran now, but I will be King Aliver Akaran come the fall. What if I remind him that I’m a lion, and say I will not concern myself with the squabbles of the cubs at my feet. What if I tell him the Santoth sorcerers answer to me now and that with them I’ll wipe my enemies from the earth. He can join me and be of aid-on my terms-or he can suffer the wrath of powers he cannot imagine.”

“You could try that, I suppose,” Kelis said. “You will have to look him in the eye as you say it, though, to make sure he doesn’t bite your lip. If you call him a cub you’ll be insulting him…unless, of course, you are a lion. There’s no insult in the truth.”

Aliver rose and looked his friend in the eye. “I am still hesitating, aren’t I? You don’t think I should.”

“I believe that if you speak from your heart each time you open your mouth, you cannot go wrong.”

Aliver turned and looked back at the stronghold. From this distance the hides pinned to it looked like tiny things. Like the pelts of alley cats. He started walking. When he heard his friend’s footfalls beside his, he asked, “Tell me something, Kelis. All these people who claim they are descended from lions-what proof do they offer?”

Kelis smiled. “There is no proof. They just say it and try to sound convincing.”