The other lands

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

This place is eating itself," Skylene said. "That's what's wrong with the Auldek. They thought they had bargained for a blessing; instead they got an everlasting curse. They live on, bodies the same, souls more and more twisted. That's the curse of the soul catcher."

She poured water from a small stone pitcher into two beakers of the same marbled material. One she pushed across the table to Dariel, the other she held up for Tunnel, who shook his head. She sipped from it herself. "Think of it. On one hand you live on year after year. You die every now and then, only to rise again. Wonderful, yes?"

Dariel rolled the stone beaker between his palms, enjoying the smooth texture of it, the coolness against his skin. His wrists had been unbound only a few days before. He was still relearning mobility. A short length of chain still hobbled his legs and chafed his ankles, but he was making progress, earning their trust. That was what this sudden discourse was about, wasn't it? Something had changed. He could hear it in Skylene's voice and see a hint of something tickling the edges of Tunnel's bizarre features. He said, "I don't think that immortality is so great a gift, not if it keeps you forever separated from loved ones who have died before you."

"True. And what if you can never have children? You cannot see yourself in generations that will continue after you. For some, this doesn't matter; for others, it drives them crazy."

"Is that why they started to"-Dariel hesitated, glancing between the two of them, one looking like a bird woman, the other like some muscle-sculpted boar man-"make these changes to you?"

"That's not what I mean," Skylene said. "What they do to us, we call 'belonging.' They did it as a way to maintain a connection with the animal deities, so that they did not give them up entirely. It is painful at times, but pain passes. We grow used to the changes. Sometimes proud of them."

"How is it even possible?"

Skylene smiled. "Tattoos are tattoos. We do much of that ourselves. There were some chosen by the Auldek to make other changes to, but anything truly difficult was done by the Lothan Aklun. Tunnel's tusks. They are metal, but they are also part of him, fused right into the bones of his skull. The Lothan Aklun can-or could-do many strange things.

"No, what I referred to were greater corruptions. There have been two clans punished for unpardonable perversions. The first, the white-eyed snake clan, is called the Fumel. Their crime? Guess it."

Dariel stared at her, his face blank. He had no idea, and it seemed a waste of time to even try to guess.

"The Fumel broke the first restriction. They started to raise the humans as their own children. They pretended they were their own blood. Some among them tried to make their slaves look like Fumel! Imagine that. They had these slaves in Fumel guise subjugate the other slaves.

"When the other Auldek heard of it, they punished the Fumel, demanding that they turn over all the altered children to be exterminated. They would not. The other clans united to attack them, but the Fumel fought. By the time it was over too few of them were left, and upon those, the crimes done against the other clans were too great. The Fumel were wiped out. If you journey to the south to what used to be their lands you may someday see the Bleeding Road. It's where the Fumel corpses still adorn the stakes they were impaled upon. They once had a city built on a hill surrounded by a network of shallow canals. When the other clans were done there, the hill was a hole in the earth, filled with water. The Bleeding Road leads for miles across their lands and ends at that lake. It's symbolic, you see?"

I imagine so, Dariel thought. It sounded like the kind of punishment Tinhadin might have meted out.

"That was three hundred years ago. Since then, Auldek have not killed one another. There was another clan more recently that did another forbidden thing." She paused. She glanced at Tunnel, then at the silent scribe who sat listening.

"What did they do?" Dariel asked.

As if she needed the prompting, Skylene sighed and said, "They ate them. It may have been a madness that took hold of them. It may have been because they believed it was the easiest way to acquire their souls. It may have been, as some argue, that they believed by eating young flesh they would become fertile again. They may have done other things as well. We don't know all of it. We know that it was disgusting. The other Auldek took all this clan's slaves and put them to death."

"The slaves?"

"There is no prohibition on killing the People, just on eating them or adopting them. This time, the Auldek didn't kill the clan as well. After the Fumel, they vowed they would not do that again. Their lives-even if they were tainted by crimes-were too valuable to waste now that there were so few Auldek left. Instead, the clan was banished. Sent from Ushen Brae and cursed never to return."

"The Numrek," Dariel whispered.

"Exactly right," Skylene said. "Your traveling companions. The other Auldek killed the souls within them, so that they had but their one mortal life, and then drove them into the north. During that time they were not heard from. Exile meant death in all likelihood, but not as a certainty. That distinction was enough for the Auldek to accept it as just punishment."

"The Numrek ate people in the Known World, too," he said. "Mostly when they had just arrived, but at other times as well. Corinn forbade it when she took them into her service. I've not heard that they ate human flesh since then."

"They would not," Skylene said, "not if they had their sights set on returning to Ushen Brae."

Dariel's head swam with questions. "What does it mean… that they've come back? It's all with a purpose?"

"A purpose, yes." Skylene hooked her foot around a stool and pulled it out from under the table. She sat and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Not for the first time, Dariel noticed how slimly athletic she was, feminine, but in a way that had a coiled physical danger to it. She said, "Think about what's happened. The Auldek didn't punish them when they returned. By their own decree, they should cut off Calrach's head and set it beside that leagueman's. They didn't. And they haven't banished them again. To put it plainly, they've been talking with them. Your friend Calrach returned with an offer. They have been discussing it ever since. They haven't been this excited for centuries."

"What offer?"

"That I don't have permission to tell you."

"You'll tell me half a thing?"

Skylene smiled. "When does anybody tell all of a thing? I've told you what I can."

Her words had finality, but her posture-leaning toward him, knees apart, face close to his-sent different signals. He wasn't sure how to read them.

"Ask me something else," she said.

Heat rushed across Dariel's cheeks. He very much wished that Tunnel and the scribe weren't in the room. He felt a sudden urge to reach across and touch her sky-blue skin. It was not an entirely new desire. Alone so often, his thoughts of Wren had grown increasingly blurred, intermingled with Skylene's sharp avian features and Mor's feline grace. More than once, he had woken from dreams of coupling in ways he had never imagined in life. But such thoughts had no place here. He pushed them away.

"Why don't you revolt?" Dariel asked. "The People. With their skills and their numbers they could slaughter the Auldek."

Skylene mulled the question over, something that was both a smile and an expression of grief residing on her features. "The league, the Lothan Aklun, and the Auldek have had hundreds of years to perfect their institutions. They know our minds. When we first arrived, the Lothan Aklun kept us on an isle called Lithram Len. They tested us there, asked us things, watched us; and for a time they let us struggle among ourselves. They observed who shared; who fought; who showed compassion; and who was cold inside, calculating, greedy, savage. They learned our individual weaknesses and strengths, though they saw both as traits to be exploited. Eventually, they sent us to the role that suited each best. The meek went to their work. The savage to theirs. The devious to theirs. Those with the most rebellion in them become spirit children."

"The ones who get eaten?"

Skylene nodded.

"But still, you all know where you came from. You're more the same than different. Obviously, you haven't forgotten-"

"Dariel, our lives here have many faces." She placed one of her fine-boned hands on his knee, her fingers light. "There are many who work in the fields to harvest mist. The generous seeds they are called. They labor. They don't know they're laboring, because the oil from the leaves of the plants numbs their minds. They walk dazed, seeing a world different from ours. They're only in this world enough to be sent to work, to follow instructions."

Dariel asked, "Mist comes from a plant? Harvested in a field?"

"Yes. The very thing that helps buy the children from your land is worked by slaves in this one. That is the system the Lothan Aklun and the Auldek set up. It perpetuates itself while they live mostly at ease." She let this sit with him a moment. "But not everyone is drugged like that. We can't all be. There are many who work the myriad tasks that sustain the Auldek. Every job imaginable is done, somewhere, by the People, but not necessarily by Free People. Some hate us. Ones called the golden eyes handle commerce. They trade and live lives of some plenty, though they are not free. Others, like the divine children… kill. They are warriors almost to match the Auldek. They thrive in palaces, with slaves of their own. They live like nobles until the moment the Auldek call for them to fight, and then they do that with joy as well. Some even forget that they are not free, forget that their individual desires could be any different from the orders given to them. That Lvin you saw in the arena a few days back-he was chosen because the Lothan Aklun knew what he might become. I don't know how, but they see things in us that we don't see ourselves."

The Lvin in the arena. Dariel wished he had dreamed that as well. It had been the only time since his captivity began that he had seen the light of day. Tunnel, who had watch duty over him that day, explained that he had something he wished to show him. Dariel had followed him through the passageways, stumbling on legs stiff from disuse. Tunnel had taken off his ankle chains for the walk. Hobbling along behind the man, it was obvious to both of them that Dariel was no flight risk.

They met several other slaves in a cramped bend in a corridor, a few Dariel recognized, a few he did not. Together, they crowded around slots in the wall that looked out upon some sort of exhibition ground. Dariel's view was partly cut off by beams, but it was enough. He soon understood-by the sights of carnage he witnessed and by the roars of adulation and by the tremors driven down into the stone around him-that he was somewhere within the foundations of a massive structure, a stadium of some sort.

On the field below him, a mass of warriors butchered one another with a speed and furious precision Dariel had never witnessed before. The figures-lightly armored or not armored at all-were clearly human. At least, they were the human-animal merging that he knew marked the People. Tattooed in the various totem patterns, adorned with tusks or feathered plumes or what looked like scaly protrusions enhancing their backbones. They fought in clan groups, each group standing against all the rest. They leaped and spun, slashed and ducked and kicked and even snapped out somersaults. It could have been some mad, frenzied acrobatics exhibition, except that they worked with weapons: swords and axes, long spears and jointed staffs that whirled about at bone-breaking velocity. Death blows were announced by gouts of blood. Limbs wheeled through the air. Heads were sliced from shoulders and kicked beneath the churning legs.

The battle was short-lived. By the time Dariel understood that one band of warriors-marked by white tattoos and dangling hair locks-had gained the advantage, the fighting was all but over. The soldiers of the prevailing group relaxed, straightened, and let the blood and bits of tissue drip from their bodies. There were several opponents left before them, survivors from among the other clan groups. The chanting in the crowd and the thrum of what must have been thousands of feet on the stone indicated that the action was not concluded yet.

Still, it was a moment before one of the winning band stepped out before the others. The lone warrior was massive. A man muscled like Tunnel but as tall as a Numrek. He carried wide-bladed axes in both hands. His skin was white from midway up his torso, over his shoulders and arms and face. As grand as any lion's, his mane framed his head with a bulk of knotted hair and swaying locks, nearly white but with a slightly gold tint. Dariel would have stared at him for a long time, but he was still only long enough for his remaining opponents to line up across from him. Once they did, he stepped toward them.

"You see him? The chief warrior among the Lvin?"

Dariel whispered, "Yeah, I see him. How could I not see him?"

Tunnel said, "Good. Good that you see. He is sublime motion, the most honored class of divine children."

As if to demonstrate the definition of this, the Lvin chief unleashed a long-limbed choreography of slaughter that had touched each of the four opponents before the first one had even dropped to the ground, falling from the height of his severed legs. It was like a single movement that they did not even try to fight. The last Dariel saw of the Lvin was when he threw his arms out and yanked back his head, mouth open. He might have roared. Surely he roared, but if so it was drowned out by the booming applause of the unseen crowd.

Saw," Dariel said, correcting Skylene's last statement. "The Lothan Aklun saw your traits. They don't see anything anymore."

Skylene brushed this aside. "That Lvin-Menteus Nemre is his name-lives in a palace with his own slaves, his own women, whatever he wants. He has all of that as long as he fights when the Auldek tell him to. You see? We're not so different here from your people over there. One man-one child, even-will sell out another just so quick." She snapped her fingers. "Considering all these things, the fact that the People have survived so long in defiance is a wonder."

"Whom do you mean when you say 'the People'? Those in rebellion, or all the slaves?"

"Both. It depends on the context in which it's used. We fight for all the quota slaves, even those who harm us, and especially those too numb and beaten down to understand their plight. Privileged or shackled, it doesn't matter. We are all the People, and none of us are free. 'Divine children' is an Auldek title. When we are free, we will put that name away and just be people instead.

"But you see, Prince of the Akarans, the People can't gather an Acacian army by issuing a summons. The Auldek are not easily killed. You saw Devoth take that arrow through his heart. He pulled it out and chopped off the leagueman's head. They could have shot him full of arrows. He would have risen again and again. You've never seen the Auldek fight."

"I've seen Numrek."

Skylene conceded that was something by cocking her head, then righting it. "The Numrek were always lesser fighters among the Auldek. Some say acknowledgment of that is what drove them to their crime in the first place."

"But with the Lothan Aklun gone," Dariel said, "the Auldek can't steal more souls. They have only so many lives, right? So if they are attacked they'll be weakened. They could be beaten eventually."

"Those slaying those spirit souls would suffer. Would you volunteer to die so that the twentieth warrior behind you might finally slay the Auldek you died killing?" She let the question sit just long enough for Dariel to think he would have to answer it, and then she went on. "And even that is only assuming the soul catcher will not be used again. It's out there you, know, still on Lithram Len."

"You think it's a thing? A thing to be used?"

"It is a tool of their sorcery. I do not say it would be easy for anyone to master it, but neither can I say it's impossible."

"Who would use it? Would the Auldek?"

"They know where it is. The Lothan Aklun made them travel to the island to get their souls. It's a short trip, but it was punishment of sorts, since the Auldek hate to be at sea."

"Just like the Numrek," Dariel said. "Why is that? They are fearless about so many things. Why this terror of water?"

"Because," a different voice said. They all started, surprised, as the wooden door swung open and Mor swept in, suddenly changing the atmosphere, crowding the room with her presence. "Because the Auldek, no matter how strong, cannot swim. They've tried, but the same density of muscle and bone that makes them warriors also makes them dead weight in the water. They sink." She folded her arms and stood, defiant, as if expecting to be refuted.

Dariel was not about to. "Ah, all right-"

"That's why they never voyage across the Gray Slopes themselves," Skylene added. "And it's why the Auldek were so shocked that the Numrek did. It could only mean they had something important to tell them." The last words came out hesitantly, her eyes on Mor the entire time.

"You've said that before," Dariel said. He let the statement hang, inflected at the end like a question, one obviously meant for Mor.

She did not answer it, but she did say, "Here is something we haven't told you. It's not just the Auldek who cannot bear young. The same is true of the People. We live and die, but we do not continue ourselves. That's another curse you Akarans arranged for us."

Mor's eyes cut toward Skylene, but then snapped back. "You've learned enough for just now. I have a task for you. Accomplish it, and we will hold nothing back from you."

Dariel was still facing the enormity of the revelation Mor had just made. It explained so much, and seemed awful in a way that he could not take in all at once. He wanted to. It felt important to do so, but Mor had asked him a question. She likely thought he was hesitating because he was considering the answer. In truth, he did not need to consider it at all. He had been waiting, listening, hiding long enough.

Dariel said, "Tell me."