The other lands

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Mor had not seen this vessel messenger before. That made her nervous, no matter how often she told herself it did not matter. It was not him she would be speaking to about the important matters. He was but the vessel, and of course vessels were interchangeable. Only the contents within mattered. But still, she had first to look into a stranger's eyes and search for a loved one. This was not something she had ever grown accustomed to.

They sat across from each other on a hillock in the barren stretch between two walls. Once, the area had been a park, but that was long ago. Now it was abandoned and overgrown with briars, home to rats and other scurrying things. They were alone save for the few guards who stood at a distance, on the lookout for the unlikely patrol of the divine children. They had planned the meeting to avoid this.

"Hello, Mor Avenger," the man said. "It honors me to meet you, as it honors me to carry an elder within and his message from the Free People." He bowed his head as he spoke, showing her the short bristle of a few weeks' hair growth across his crown, the skin visible beneath it and dotted with the heart-shaped imprints of the sky bear. Unusual, for the Fru Nithexek was not a numerous clan.

Mor answered him formally. "The honor is mine. May this vessel never crack."

The man looked up. His wide-spaced eyes were large, brown, and intense. He smiled. "I have not cracked yet, Mor Avenger. I won't today. You can rest assured of that. Before I begin, tell me, is it true? Do we hold a prince of the Akarans?"

Mor nodded.

"Could he be the Rhuin Fa?"

"Anything could be," she answered, feeling suddenly testy in addition to uneasy. It was inappropriate for him to waste time feeding his own curiosity. "Whether he is or not isn't for me to say."

Pursing his lips, the messenger said, "Nor for me to ask, judging by your tone. Forgive me. For us in the Westlands, though, we are hungry for hope. We hear rumors, but we've heard rumors for hundreds of years. Nothing yet has come of them."

"I didn't take you as that old."

The man smiled again. "You are anxious to begin. I understand. Shall we?"

Despite her impatience, Mor scanned the overgrown walls before answering. She made eye contact with Tunnel, who stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the arch through which they would exit. He acknowledged her with a lift of his chin. Like everything about him, it was a gruff gesture, but it was comforting as well.

"Yes," she said, "do begin."

The messenger cleared his throat. His gaze flicked to Mor, amused just a moment longer, and then his arms went limp in his lap and he seemed to focus his entire consciousness on his breathing. Eyes closed, he inhaled and exhaled. Every so often he let out a low moan. For a time his head dropped forward as if he were asleep. And then it seemed he really was asleep, his moaning nothing but faint snoring. That was how it always was. Mor waited, watching him, curious, as ever, about what was about to happen.

Then, the moaning ceased. The man's breathing stopped. For an uncomfortably long few moments it was as if the sleeping man had passed into death. And then he looked up. He gasped and blinked his eyes open. His now blue eyes-the whites veined with a crimson lacework of age, yellowed and tired-were not the messenger's eyes anymore. Nor was his voice the same.

"Dearest," his mouth said. The voice coming out did not fit the shape or the movement of his lips. A dry voice, slow and patient and heavy with melancholy and love, it was a voice she knew well from her girlhood but had not heard from the actual man in some years. "You are not my little girl, are you?"

Her first impulse was to refute that. Yes! Yes, she was his little girl. Of course she was. That's all she ever would be. It was cruel for him to say otherwise. But she had said that on other occasions, and it did no good. Instead, she swallowed and said, "No, but I am the one who was that little girl. Now I am the woman who remembers that girl and remembers you. Hello, Yoen."

The messenger smiled. His eyes closed for a moment. Opened. Yoen's voice said, "Hello, dearest. I wish my eyes could truly see you, at least once more before I fly. That would do my heart good."

"Let it be so. Let us make it so." A tear welled from Mor's left eye and raced down her cheek. She had not known there was a danger of this. She wiped at it, embarrassed, flooded with memories she rarely allowed to surface. Yoen, the nearest thing to a father she had ever known-more than that, he was father and mother both, and a balm for the loss of a brother. Life was cruel and cruel again, to take everything from her as a child and make her relearn herself under this man's care. And then, later, to ask her to be whole unto herself when he escaped to join the elders in the Westlands, on the Sky Isle. It was too much to bear.

The thing was, she knew that the eyes looking at her, though they appeared to be Yoen's, were not his. They were the messenger's, and it was he who was seeing enough to be able to take part in this conversation. Yoen himself did not see her. He had instilled himself and his words inside this man at least a fortnight ago. They had lived in him, and now the vessel let them out. More than that, he shaped them. He spoke and reacted with Yoen's voice and mind, even though Yoen himself was not part of it. Mor had never understood the process. And she had never liked it.

"What do the elders wish of me?" Mor asked.

"Tell me of the Akaran."

She could tell him things, but whatever responses he made to what she said had to have been embedded in the vessel weeks ago. It made little sense, but few of the things the People had learned from the Lothan Aklun did. She answered as fully as she could, telling Yoen everything that seemed important. She did leave out how she had reacted during her first encounter with Dariel, but that was a detail, not the substance he needed.

"Do you believe he speaks truly?"

With more bitterness than she intended, Mor said, "I don't know what truth means to Acacians."

Yoen's eyes stared at her. Waited.

"He seems to believe himself. He is earnest, but that doesn't mean he's truthful. He may just be foolish."

"We must be careful with him," Yoen's voice said, after considering this for a long moment. "If he is the living prophecy, he must be allowed to find it himself. We cannot thrust it upon him. We can, however, take certain steps. This is what you will do: test him further. Find a true test."

Mor's eyes widened. A true test meant a task to be accomplished in the real world, with real danger. "And if he dies?"

"Then he is not the Rhuin Fa. Mor, my dearest, go with the-"

"Wait," Mor interrupted what she knew to be the beginning of a farewell. "Yoen, how do we know that we don't err by forcing a role upon him? You yourself once told me that the prophecy of the Rhuin Fa might be nothing more than a tale to keep our hopes alive. Perhaps we are giving this Akaran an importance he shouldn't have, putting our faith in someone who may not deserve it."

Though he only had his eyes to express emotion, Mor was sure she could see the look of fatigued love Yoen had so often showered upon her. "Dearest, how do you know that's not how prophecy works?"

That question was still circling through Mor's mind half an hour later, after she had parted with Yoen, bade the vessel farewell, and worked her way back down under Avina. Tunnel led the way. Dariel's cell was changed so often, and she was so distracted with managing the People's myriad concerns, that it was comforting having Tunnel's broad gray back to follow. They arrived at Dariel's new room before she knew it. Tunnel turned and studied her, concern on his face. She had hardly said a word to him as they walked. She realized he had no idea what Yoen had said to her. Considering his obvious affection for Dariel, it was insensitive to hold to her silence.

"It's all right," she said, reaching out and touching the brawny bulk of his forearm. "I have no orders to harm him. He will just be tested further."

Tunnel lifted his chin, a gesture that seemed to have a variety of meanings for him. This time, she thought it indicated relief, acknowledgment of reason, and a slight hint of "See, I told you."

"Yes, Tunnel knows." She touched her palm to his muscled chest, pulled it back quickly. "Go in. Let Skylene know she may proceed as we discussed. She can answer his questions. I will listen from here for a time."

Once she was alone in the cramped passageway, Mor leaned against the stone wall next to the door. As in all these abandoned regions, the door was old and half rotten. It sat slightly ajar, tugging at hinges that probably would not hold much longer. There was enough space that Mor could listen, knowing she was hidden from the speakers inside.

Tunnel's entry stopped whatever they had been talking about. He greeted the prince merrily, like an old friend. He even audibly slapped him on the back. They spoke foolishness for a few minutes, although within it Mor recognized that Tunnel was conveying her permission to finally educate the Akaran. It was time, as she had already discussed with Skylene, to tell him the truth of things.

Mor noted that Skylene and Dariel spoke with an alarming level of familiarity. She did not like it. Were they all so infatuated with the Akaran? Even Skylene, her lover? The thought of it almost drove her into the room, but she was not ready yet, and did not want to enter until she knew what she would say and could do it without hesitation. Anyway, she had agreed that Skylene would be kind to him in ways that she was not willing to be. Perhaps that was all she was doing-playing a role a little too well.

Dariel spoke easily enough. The topic now-his naval battles with the league during the war with Hanish Mein-seemed to fire his oratory. He wants us to think him a hero, Mor thought, and because of it she wanted to doubt his version of events. Still, it was easy to listen to him, easy to forget her skepticism as he told of ships smashing together, of nighttime raids, hidden raider camps, and the great work of sabotage that destroyed much of the league's platforms. Mor remembered that place well, and it was stunning to imagine the scene he described. Flames roaring up into the sky…

"Why did you hate them so?" Skylene asked, the scratch of a scribe's stylus right behind her words. "Your family did-and does-partner with them. You came here with them-"

"It was personal back then. There I was, a prince of an overthrown empire, hiding among brigands, fighting the league because they made life hard for the criminals who were my new family… Yet I came here, allied with them, more aware than ever of their crimes, but was then betrayed by them to the people who enslave you. And now I'm in your hands. All very amusing." He laughed. "How can I live day after day, trying to make decisions, and yet feel that I've not had one moment of control of any of it?"

"At least you laugh," Tunnel said.

"At some point, what else can I do?"

"You control more than you acknowledge," Skylene's voice said. "I would have loved to have seen the platforms destroyed."

"That didn't come without a price."

"What was the price?"

Dariel took a moment to respond. "I lost a person dear to me, the man who was my second father."

A second father. Mor recalled Yoen's eyes embedded in the vessel's face, but then pushed the image away. It was not the same. Whatever the Akaran had experienced, his loss was nothing compared to what each of the People suffered.

Dariel continued, "And I came to understand later that my actions killed many quota children. I wish that weren't so. It was children like you who died there."

Mor felt like clearing her throat and spitting, or bursting into the room and slapping him again. What right did he have to make those deaths a weight on his conscience? It was an indulgence he didn't deserve. She was pleased by what Skylene said in reply.

"You Akarans dwell on past failures too much. I'm beginning to think that's what made your line so tyrannical: guilt, and hiding it."

"Yes," Dariel said, no indication in his voice that he took offense. Mor imagined him grinning as he propped a leg up on a stool. "But enough of me talking. You give me something now. You said you would."

This was met with a moment of silence, then Skylene cleared her throat. Mor imagined the tight face she was making, the way she would dip her head and sweep her left hand from her forehead up lightly across her plumage. "What do you want to know?" she asked.

"Everything."

"That's a bit too much to tell at one sitting."

"Tell me about the Auldek, then."

And she did. Mor pressed her ear even closer to the gap, for Skylene began speaking softly. Good, she thought. Yes, do give the Akaran truth. Let it be a punishment to that weak side of him that embraces guilt.

Skylene spoke with her usual conciseness, laying out the details in a dispassionate manner that Mor herself could not have pulled off. It was hard to know truth from myth, but some among the divine children had been entrusted with keeping the Auldek's oral history. They passed on what they had learned to the People. The clans of Ushen Brae had once been much more numerous. Theirs had been a warrior culture, rooted for millennia in intertribal strife, a culture in which men lived to die in battle, risking everything to earn a place in the warrior halls of the afterworld. They worshipped a god of war, Bahine, and a pantheon of lesser animal deities, warriors all.

"If they had stayed such," Skylene said, "there would never have been a quota trade."

But things did not stay that way. Though the tribes were rich in fertile land and resources, the constant warring made for feast or famine, triumph or destruction. They might have been strong with swords and axes; when the Lothan Aklun arrived, they thought them hounds fighting over scraps.

"Arrived?" Dariel interrupted. "From where?"

Skylene admitted that she did not know. But they came and, soon after, the league did as well. "It was so long ago that the truth is hard to know for certain, but some believe that the Lothan Aklun and the league were in partnership right from the start, as if the Lothan Aklun discovered Ushen Brae, saw the potential for trade, and called on the league to sail the seas for them.

"The thing is, Dariel," Skylene said, "the Lothan Aklun did not want to trade in ore or spices or oils. Even the mist was important only because the Known World wanted it so. For some reason, they wanted to base their trade of slaves on quota, on souls. They created the soul catcher. It's not a thing. Not a device or tool, exactly. It's the place where the life force is taken from one and given to another. We don't know how it works, or why. There are words written on the floor, they say. Perhaps the spells are written there, or perhaps in some way it focuses the Lothan Aklun's power. With it, they can take the life force from one body and place it into another, on reserve for when it's needed. This is the reason why Devoth didn't die when that arrow burst his heart. He has many lives within his skin. Killing one is anguish, but goes away."

Dariel said, "This is making my head spin. For weeks you tell me nothing. Now, suddenly-"

"Yes, well, your respite is over. Don't faint on me just yet, though. The result of all this is the Ushen Brae of today. The Lothan Aklun traded mist for quota children, and they took them and sold them to the Auldek, who paid great sums for them. The Auldek, in turn, used the slaves to run their world, to build their grand cities and produce a greater flow of wealth than they and the Lothan Aklun could ever have produced themselves. See how it all works?"

"Not really. I mean, I do, but what kind of men would think up such a system?"

And you thought your people were devious, Mor thought. You're children by comparison.

"Everybody in it is exploited," Dariel continued, "except the Lothan Aklun themselves."

"Ah, yes," Skylene cut in. "And now, with them dead, we have a host of new problems to face. Perhaps you should have a drink of water. I have a few more things to say that may make you dizzy."