The other lands

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dariel's eyes snapped open. He went from the nothingness of dreamless sleep to complete alertness. His heart, in its first seconds of wakefulness, banged against the cage of his chest like an animal trying to escape. Where was he? He was sitting upright, held in position by a band wrapped around his chest, hands still bound but his mouth free. He had no memory. He knew, though-as if pierced physically with the knowledge-that the things he had forgotten were huge. His gaze flew about the room, taking in individual things one by one: a water stain on the rough stone of the ceiling, iron rings bolted into the wall, a hanging lantern that cast a peculiarly constant light, the bare back of a heavily muscled, completely gray man sitting on a stool several paces away.

On this his eyes stopped. The man appeared to be eating. He made slight huffing sounds, interspersed with wet noises and an occasional crack, like twigs or bones being broken. He was a giant of a man. He was-Of course! It all came back. He was the one Dariel had seen on the docks of the Other Lands, the one who had lifted him bodily and carried him tucked beneath his arm. He was proof that it had all actually happened: the Lothan Aklun killed, the sea dotted with bodies, the strangeness of the city's inhabitants, Devoth of the Auldek stirred to anger, Sire Neen beheaded.

"Giver return," escaped Dariel's lips, a pious entreaty for aid unusual to him.

The gray man must have heard it. He stopped eating, head cocked, and then slowly eased his bulk around to face Dariel. He let out a low rumble of sound, sinister, bestial. It was hard not hear it that way, for the man's appearance could not have been more frightening. He was preposterously muscled, with two thick legs, a thin waist, and a torso ridged with neat compartments. His bulk flared up and out from there, chest muscles bulging beneath his gray skin, shoulder joints like two round stones, neck as thick as a boar's. And a boar was what he was. A swine in near-human form.

He approached Dariel, who bucked away from him, straining against the strap that held him fast. He kicked out with his feet, but could neither touch the man nor find purchase enough to move on the slick stone. The man brushed the locks of wavy black hair from his face with the wedge of his hand. He was just as tusked and horrific as Dariel remembered. The golden curves punched straight through his cheeks, just below the corners of his lips. "Ahhh, you awake. Good to see it! Thought you was dead on fright." He followed this with that same low rumble of sound. It took Dariel a moment to identify it: a chuckle. He was laughing. "You got tan skin," the man said in his deep timbre, "but you looking white just now. What, you think I going to eat you?" He reached out and tapped the ball of a large thumb on Dariel's cheek. "Truth is, I more like you than you know just yet."

Hearing Acacian coming from this man's mouth was both welcoming and alarming. His accent was strange. The words were spoken clearly enough, but the inflections he used were kin to no one region of the Known World. Still, Dariel could not help but find some hope. They spoke the same language. That was something to cling to.

The man stepped away, tugged his stool nearer, and returned. He sat down facing Dariel, leaning forward with elbows on his knees and fingers interlaced. "Name Tunnel. Hear it? Tun-nel."

Just when Dariel was getting over the surprise of the man's speaking to him in Acacian, he was shoved back into confusion. Name a tunnel? What tunnel? That couldn't be what he'd said. "What?"

The man smacked a palm against his pectoral muscle. "Tunnel. Name Tunnel." He bared his teeth, seemingly pleased. "Tunnel."

"You mean," Dariel sputtered, "your name is Tunnel?"

"He speak proper words! Good to hear it!"

Dariel shook his head. He closed his eyes and opened them and found everything exactly as it had been a moment before. Tunnel stood grinning at him; that, he realized, was what that ferocious-looking baring of teeth actually was. He was smiling. He had gold tusks and wire whiskers, gray skin and muscles that would have put a bull to shame. His name was Tunnel. Simple, really. What was he acting so perplexed about?

With all the feigned calm he could muster, Dariel said, "Hello, Tunnel. Very glad to make your acquaintance. Since you're not going to eat me, would you consider loosening these chains?"

This amused the giant more than anything yet. "Listen that. How pretty you speak! I told her we should keep your tongue in your mouth. Good we did."

Dariel creased his forehead. "I wouldn't disagree with you."

"No, you wouldn't. You be agreeable for sure. Best that way." He inched his stool closer. "Tell me, you really a prince? Akaran for true?"

Had he anything to go on, Dariel would have weighed the pros and cons of answering this question. But he knew nothing about what had happened, what was happening, where he was, or in whose power. Without anything to shape his answer, he shrugged and chose the truth. "Yes."

"What's your name, then?"

"I'm Dariel Akaran. Son of Leodan and Aleera Akaran." Saying the names, Dariel felt a tide of indignation sweep up from his guts. "In Leodan's name I demand you loosen these chains this minute! I'm a prince of Acacia! You cannot-"

"Dariel," the man said, rolling it around his mouth as he pronounced it. "Dariel Akaran. Son of Leodan and Aleera. I know them names, you know? We all know them names, and the ones before. Gridulan, yes?"

"My grandfather."

"That's the one. Tinhadin and them old devils, too. We know them all. Edifus."

Dariel shifted, trying to ease the pressure of the strap around his chest. He already felt his indignation slipping away, though he could not have said why. "You know much of my family, I see. I don't know anything of you or of here, of where I am or-"

"You don't know anything!" Tunnel said this with considerable joy. Clearly, he had suspected as much already, but he appeared pleased that Dariel confirmed it. "Don't know a knuckle's worth and, look, you a prince! Could be you more than that. Could be you Rhuin Fa."

"Rune Fay?"

Tunnel scowled, an expression only slightly more unnerving than his smile. "That's wrong way to say it. Rhuin Fa," he repeated, enunciating with exaggerated lip and tongue motions. "For a long time-I mean a long time-we been waiting for Rhuin Fa."

"Rhuin Fa… is a person?"

"It's you, maybe. Is the one who will come from the Old Land and flip the world. That's what they say. 'Flip the world.' Can you do that?" Tunnel broke into his horrifying smile again. "Rhuin Fa supposed to come for his children. Take them home. Tell how much he love them. Understand? We been waiting a long time. Generations, you know. Pass, pass, pass." He waved his thick fingers impatiently, indicating these passing generations. "All the time hoping for Rhuin Fa. All the time thinking he coming, knowing he can't go on doing that way forever." He drew back, pursed his lips, and squinted one eye nearly closed. "You know it's wrong, don't you? What they done to all us children. That's why you need to flip it."

Somehow, scattered and vague and incomplete as this was, Dariel knew what crime Tunnel was referring to. "I know it's wrong," he acknowledged. He felt further words running up his throat and out onto his tongue. Explanations. Qualifications. He had been ignorant for so long. He had inherited the quota trade. He had been a child, too. The crime was not his doing, but it had been thrust on him. He could have said a lot of things. It was not as if he hadn't talked it all through with Aliver and Mena and Wren, with everyone close to him except Corinn. With her the subject seemed more dangerous than he had felt ready for. He could have said a great deal. Instead, he bit the words back, aware that he did not know enough yet of this world to say anything with certainty.

"Am I your prisoner? What will you do with me? And the others. What's happened-"

"You not my prisoner. Mor the one. She come talk to you real soon." He answered that much but did not seem interested in opening himself to further questioning. Instead, he said, "I should ask you something. I ask; you answer. Tale says it's that way. Tale says when Rhuin Fa come, you ask him this question. Then you know if he is who he is. So let me ask you. Here's the bridge; you go under it or over it? Which one?"

"A bridge? What kind of bridge?"

Tunnel shrugged. Waited.

Dariel stared blankly for a moment. "Over it. I go over."

"That could be right."

"Could be? Don't you know which answer is right?"

"You know," Tunnel said, wrapping his fingers around the curve of one of his tusks and tugging, "tale don't tell. Believe that? Tale don't tell. You may have answered true. I guess we gonna see, soon, too."

Seeing that tusk in his fingers, watching the way Tunnel pulled on it and the manner with which it seemed to be embedded directly into his lower jaw, Dariel closed his eyes. He had a million questions to ask. Where to start? And could he really ask them of this strange man? What was he, anyway?

Dariel opened his eyes. Tunnel was watching him. For the first time Dariel noted the color of the other man's eyes. Brown. Simple brown. He asked, "You think I am… Rhuin Fa?"

"Could be you are. I tell you what, though. Don't matter what I believe." He nodded his head toward the door, from which came the sound of a key sliding home. "She going to be hard to convince." Tunnel rose but paused and turned back. "You know Senival?"

"Yes."

Tunnel studied him a moment, his eyes looking at Dariel but seeing something else. "I-" He hooked a stout finger to his chest. "I Senival. You understand?"

Dariel did. He nodded. The door began to swing open. For some reason, it seemed important that whoever walked in see him already on good terms with the giant. "Tunnel, how did you get your name? Is it just a name, or is it Tunnel as in, ah, tunnel. You know…"

"I like tunnels," Tunnel said, "always did. Since I was tiny. I like to go through, see? Better than go over. For me that's so." It looked like he might have had more to say, but he shrugged it off, flashed his frightening grin, and left the room.

Since he was tiny? Dariel found that hard to imagine. What had the tiny Tunnel looked like? Was he gray? With baby tusks?

Alone with his chains, Dariel stoked the embers within him back into a blaze. By the Giver, what was the meaning of all this! Each portion of it-the league betrayal, the Lothan Aklun slaughter, being led a prisoner to the Auldek, watching Sire Neen beheaded, being abducted and jailed by a tusked man named Tunnel-was a different coal that burned where it touched him. The fact that it was all confounding and unexplained only made him angrier. When he met this Mor he would spit in her face coolly and make her know the depths of her mistake in treating him so. He would say his name slowly, so that she would hear and realize it and understand that these chains did nothing to change who he was or lessen the wrath he could throw down upon her.

He stirred from daydreams some time later, realizing two people had entered the room. Dariel exhaled a steadying breath. He would make a strong impression. He would be forceful, unafraid, confident. He would ask the questions and manage to do so without revealing his ignorance quite as he had to Tunnel. He told himself all these things, confident that he was already better prepared than he had been a few minutes earlier. He would greet Mor by name. So decided, he turned his head toward the two new arrivals.

One was the white-headed woman he had glimpsed earlier. She was dressed in loose-fitting trousers and a matching shirt, both of them in a sky blue that matched the shading around her eyes and the strange shocks of-well, hair, presumably-that screeched back from her forehead as if she were plummeting through the air at high speed. The skin of her face was eggshell white, and her nose was slightly elongated, pointed to a thin tip that looked almost dangerous.

The other figure was just as striking. More so, perhaps, for she was much more scantily clad, with a tight-fitting wrap around her chest and another around her hips. She was covered from the thighs all the way up with the spotted pattern of a leopard. A cat in human form, she strode toward him on two sinewy legs, as lithe and thin as that animal and looking just as delicately powerful.

Dariel had not known what to expect of his captor, but he would never have imagined this. Still, he recognized the air of command in her posture. He managed a resigned half smile. "You must be Mor."

She strode straight toward him. Without an alteration in her focus-as if the entire walk across the room and what was to follow were all part of a single motion-she drew one hand out, her fingers crooked in tense hooks. She smacked him across the face with all the force she could muster. Not only did she smack him, but she also dragged the stubby clawlike protrusions at her fingertips through his flesh. The sudden pain of the blow snapped his head around and sent him reeling. In the moments after, as he fought to get his breath back, he felt the gouges carved across his cheek and nose and lips bloom with blood.

From just outside the door, Tunnel said, "Oh, not the face!" He sounded more amused than shocked.

Dariel worked his jaw. Things were not going well. But pain is useful, he thought. I'm fully awake now, for example. "Is that what passes for a greeting here? Strange custom. If you'd be kind enough to loosen my wrist chains I'd be happy to return the greeting."

The bird woman said, "Mor, don't-"

But not soon enough. Mor slapped him with her other hand, harder, if that was possible, than the first time.

It took Dariel a moment longer to regain his breath than he would have liked. He kept his voice calm, though, when he said, "It's easy to hit a bound man. Punish me as much as you like, Mor. Get it over with. Then I'd like to-"

"Shut up!" The woman moved so quickly he could not respond at all. He was about to finish the sentence with "talk," but in the space between the two words, Mor smacked the heel of her palm against his head, driving it back against the stones of the wall. He did not even feel the impact as pain. He just blacked out. The woman's patterned face, from up close, wild with anger, was the last thing he saw.