The other lands

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

It was a delicate instrument, thin and artful, a slight curve in the handle, with one end weighted and shaped into a handgrip. The tip ended in a blackened needle point. Dariel knew what it was from the moment he laid eyes on it. He had spent the last few days studying crude maps of Ushen Brae's coastline, in exercising his body and explaining nautical concepts and terms to Tunnel and Skylene and the others who were to be his crew, but this last thing marked the final stage of preparation. After this, his mission began.

"So… you're serious about this? You want to tattoo me?"

Looking over the device, Mor narrowed her eyes. "Without markings you stand out like a freak among the People."

Dariel, head cocked, prepared to take exception to this.

Mor looked at him straight-faced, no trace of humor on her feline features. "Like a freak, I say. Or a degenerate. Others who see you will think you a child who has done nothing in his life. Unworthy. Without signs of belonging, nothing you say would change their opinion. Besides, that plain face of yours will forever announce your Akaran blood. It could be the death of you among the People."

"How about just drawing some spots or something? Stylus and ink. That sort of thing."

"It's been explained to you already, I'm sure. Should the divine children question you, any 'stylus and ink' work would be readily discovered. No, your fate has brought you here-just as mine brought me here. The tattoos must be real."

"Why do I think you'll enjoy doing it?" Dariel asked, smiling wryly.

"Because it hurts, you mean?" she asked, playfully innocent in a way Dariel had never seen before. "Dariel Akaran, when I wish to cause you pain, it won't be with this. I'll find a real tool for it. Believe me."

I don't doubt you, Dariel thought. I don't doubt you at all. I still have the marks from our first meeting, remember? As she spoke on, he had to tell himself to lower the edges of his grin. He should not be so pleased about this. The tattooing was going to hurt, and it was going to be permanent. What would Corinn think when she saw him again? If she ever saw him again… She would never understand or approve of something like this. It would seem an act of surrender, of lessening himself and his stature as an Acacian prince. She would expect him to command them all to do his bidding. The thought nearly made him laugh. He had, of course, commanded many people in various roles-both as an Akaran and as a Sea Isle raider-but this was different, perhaps in a way that Corinn would never understand.

Increasingly, the Known World seemed far, far away, not just in leagues but in its hold on his thoughts. Sitting and talking with Tunnel and Skylene and some of the others, caught up in the horror and largeness that was Ushen Brae, Dariel had to wrest his focus back to his homeland again and again. It was in danger, he knew, of attack from the Auldek. He remained vague on how great that threat was, but he tried to remember it and to think of Corinn and Mena and Wren and all his companions from his raiding days and the common people he had come to know and care for while working on his rebuilding projects. They mattered. And he had to get back to them.

"It will be your temporary pass," Mor said, "although the mark itself will not be temporary. You may still fail us, Prince Dariel, but I've been told to give you the time and freedom to be among us. It's a chance not to fail." After a pause, she added, "I hope you don't."

Dariel nodded. Never a skilled liar, it was the best he could do to express his resolve. In truth, he had accepted the mission Mor offered him for reasons of his own. Yes, he would be part of a small team sent to steal a Lothan Aklun boat, a soul vessel. One had been found tied up at the southern end of the warehouse district. The league had not yet noticed it, probably because a series of skerries-small, rocky islands-blocked the area from the open ocean. Dariel would prove he was the raider he claimed to have been. He would captain the vessel. He would pilot it south to a marsh area called Sumerled, where they would ground the boat and set fire to it, thereby denying it to the league and-even more important-freeing the souls that had been bound to power it.

Dariel had agreed to all of this readily enough. To himself, he swore that if he got the chance, he would flee in the cutter. He had no idea if he could really make the Lothan Aklun ship work, and he realized the People themselves knew so little about the sea that they assumed things about his knowledge that they shouldn't have. But so be it. He would try. He would pilot across the Gray Slopes in it if he had to or follow the coastline north and pick his way through the Ice Fields. He would work out the details later, but this might be his best chance at getting home. He had to grasp it if he could.

"What totem would you take?" Mor asked, sorting through the instruments on a small table.

"I will take what you feel I deserve," he said.

"I don't know what you deserve."

"If it was my choice I would wear the face of the Shivith. Spots, like yours."

"You jest," she said, glancing up at him.

"No." Dariel said. He knew it sounded strange, and he knew people would stare at him back in the Known World, but this he could answer truthfully. "I find the effect quite pleasing. I'm not ready for whiskers just yet, thanks. Some spots, though-if they look similar to yours-might be interesting. But, as I said, if that offends you, choose another totem. Or… someone else could do this."

Instead of looking at him, Mor closed her eyes and absorbed his choice within herself. "As you wish. And, no, I'll do it." She lifted the tattooing needle like a stylus in one hand and turned to face him, a tiny bowl of black ash ink pinched in the fingers of her other hand. "This will hurt, but pain is transitory. Only our legacy endures. Come, sit here before me. This will take a while."

Dariel did as she asked. She was right, of course. It did hurt. And it did take a long time. But every painful moment of it was tempered by the nearness of Mor's body, by the scent of her and the fleeting moments when her elbow or wrist, hip or breast brushed against him. He tried to remember Wren, but it was hard. When he pictured Wren's face, he saw it overlaid with tattoos, indistinguishable from Mor's. They were both from northern Candovia, after all. By the Giver, he could not tell them apart anymore.

"I'm sorry," he whispered as she worked, "about… the People not being able to have children. I didn't know. We should have asked. I'm so sorry we didn't. If we had, I swear to you things would have been different."

By the way she paused it was clear to Dariel that Mor was considering what he said. Her only answer, though, was to continue piercing his flesh.

"There," she eventually said. She picked up the bloodstained towel she had used throughout the procedure, wet it in some liquid, and used it to clean his face. Despite himself, Dariel flinched at each touch: the liquid stung. She stepped back from him, setting down the needle of torture and contemplating her work. She smiled.

"So you're amused?" he asked.

She laughed into the back of her hand, trying to squelch it. Holding up a mirror, she said, "Perhaps you should see yourself. See how you look, now and forever."

Dariel reached out and accepted the mirror. He turned it toward his face. He expected to see a stranger staring back at him. A beast, perhaps. Something strange and perhaps frightening. He expected-despite the curious anticipation he felt-to be frightened by what he saw and sickened by the permanence of it. He was not. In fact…

"What are you thinking, Akaran?" Mor asked.

"That I make a fine Shivith," he said, speaking his thought aloud.

Mor made a sound low in her throat. "We'll see."

Late the next afternoon, he moved as one of a group of ten. Unbound completely now, he followed Skylene's slim form through the maze of subterranean passageways that had been his home for weeks. This time he was not being shifted to another cell. This time they came to a door, opened it, and stepped outside.

At first his eyes shot across the field beside them. It had been a long time since he had taken in the open world from ground level. The sky hung ominously huge above them. Rows of strange vegetables-bushes about a man's height that bristled with long arms, each ending in a fist-sized bud of some sort-seemed to be marching toward him in military lines. Blinking, it took him a moment to confirm that they were, in fact, stationary, but a moment after that he detected movement coming from another quadrant.

The wall above him was alive with a sickening, slithering, unnatural motion. The first sight of it made Dariel's skin crawl. He stopped and stared up at-Well, it was hard for him to say at what. The entirety of the long, high structure seethed with limbs. They were thorny tentacles, many ten or fifteen feet long, looking like the underbellies of a thousand giant octopuses, reaching out with arms lit greenish orange by the dying day's light. For a breathless moment Dariel thought them creatures that might rush down toward him, snatch him up, and tear him to pieces.

"What are those?" Dariel asked.

Tunnel followed his eyes and took in the wall, unimpressed. "Plants," he said. "You don't have plants over there?"

"Not like those," Dariel said.

"Don't worry." Tunnel nudged him on the shoulder. "They won't eat you. Plants in the inland… they may eat you, but not these ones. Come."

They moved on along the wall, undisturbed by the writhing limbs. Dariel stayed close, trying to match the other's composure. Failing at it.

They cut around buildings and ran through fields and climbed, for a time, over rooftops. Dariel had to keep his focus on his progress, on the placement of his feet and hands and on keeping up with the others, but he took in the panorama that was Avina in quick glimpses. Enormous. Never ending, it seemed. Buildings jutting up into the distance.

Tunnel had sworn to him that Ushen Brae was a land of mountains that rose up straight out of great lakes, of jungles that stretched from horizon to horizon, with insects the size of antoks and flightless birds that hunted the Free People in packs like wolves, of arctic regions thronging with snow lions and white bears. There were creatures out there so fierce that the Auldek feared them, beasts with massive jaws or stinging parts that could drain life after life out of them. These animals, he claimed, were the reason that the Auldek built coastal cities even though they turned their back to the sea. Tunnel admitted he had never seen any of these wonders or horrors himself, but he hoped to one day.

Dariel thought it sounded exciting, dangerous in all the ways that set his boy's fancy tingling.

Twice, the group had to split up to navigate crowded streets. Dariel walked beside Tunnel on one occasion; behind a young Wrathic named Birke on the other. Birke had no tattoo work that Dariel could see, but he did demonstrate the wolflike qualities of his clan totem with thick facial hair that covered his cheeks and forehead. He also sported canine teeth so large they showed in bulges against his lips even when his mouth was closed. They looked completely natural, in a strange, unnatural way. When he smiled-which he did first on seeing Dariel's new facial tattoos and then again after they had walked through a crowded thoroughfare and rejoined the group in the shadows of an alley-he was simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. Dariel thought he might quite like the young man as a friend, should he be provided the leisure of friendship again.

The sun had fully set and the sky had settled in to early evening dark by the time the group gathered in the corner of a warehouse. Dariel could smell the sea. It was so near, just a wall away, he thought. It smelled like freedom to him. Skylene sent Birke and another man to check the last bit of the route to the destination. The rest waited. Dariel found himself standing beside Skylene. She pressed closed to him, closer than seemed necessary. He knew why. She was staring at his freshly tattooed face.

"I can't get used to seeing you like that," Skylene said. "You look like one of us, but I sat talking to you so long I know you're not one of-"

"Perhaps I'm becoming one of you," Dariel cut in. His face was still sore, and he could not help but feel the touch of her eyes as a physical pain. "Give me the chance at it, at least."

Skylene kept looking at him. "Mor must have enjoyed doing that work. Did she make it hurt?"

"What do you mean? Of course it hurt."

Smiling, Skylene said, "It doesn't if you chew kenvu root. It deadens the sensations on the skin." She touched a spot on his face with a fingertip. "Makes the markings painless. She didn't mention that?"

"No, she didn't mention it," Dariel snapped. "What's wrong with her, anyway? Does she just enjoy hurting me? Slapping me. Sticking me with needles. Insulting me every chance she gets. Is she like that always? With others?"

"Mor has been one of the Free People for many years," Skylene said. "Her problem is not cruelty. It's that she loves too much, cares too much. She's missing half her-" Skylene stopped, shook away whatever she was going to say. Instead, she lightened her tone. "Anyway, she doesn't enjoy hurting anyone. I think she likes you, actually."

"Tell him," Tunnel said, staying her. "Give it."

Skylene looked at him sharply. "We'll talk later."

"Please," Dariel said, "tell me. What don't I know about her?"

"Ah… Mor wants nothing for herself, except one thing." Though she had committed, it still took Skylene a moment to continue. "She had a brother. A twin named Ravi. They were taken together but were separated when they arrived in Ushen Brae."

"So, what… she's looking for him?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. He didn't become a slave. He was eaten. His soul was taken from him and given to an Auldek. Mor wants to find him. I don't know what she thinks she can do. I don't think she even knows. But they were twins. Understand? They were in the womb together. They are two halves of a whole. She can feel that he goes on somewhere. Even though he lives in an Auldek's body, she wants to face him… perhaps to release him. Now, let's stop wasting time. Let's go. There's Birke. Let's be quick."

She pointed at the shadowy figure who had just reappeared at the far side of the warehouse. He waved, indicating that the area was free, at least temporarily, of divine children. Dariel asked no more questions. He fell in step behind Skylene, with Tunnel and the others behind him. The rest of the journey was brief. They walked for a time through a dark corridor, then wove through another jumbled warehouse, and finally stepped out onto a seaside dock. The salt air off the water was wonderful. Dariel sucked it in, loving the moist touch of the sea breeze on his face. It instantly reminded him of Val, the man he met as a feeder of the palace furnace, who later saved him from death in a lonely hovel and raised him to be a raider, to love the sea. His second father.

Out beyond the edge of concrete pier, the sea moved, black and shimmering. He caught the hulking, jagged shapes of outcroppings of rock near shore through which water sieved. Jets of white foam burst up at regular intervals, ghostly in the darkness, frightening and full of danger. Perfect, Dariel told himself. Just as I like it. Just as Val would like it. Wild.

"Dariel!" Tunnel called to him from the edge of the pier. "Come. See it."

He jogged forward and looked down, for the water was well below the level of the pier. There, tethered to a lower platform at water level, was the boat. A very peculiar boat, similar to the sailless craft he saw slicing the water beside the Ambergris out in the barrier islands. Walking down the ramp toward it, his eyes took in every line and shape of it. It was so sleek, low to the water, covered all over with that white coating particular to league ships. It ran more than a hundred feet long, but was narrower than any seagoing vessel he had seen before. A water arrow. The steering wheel was in a raised, semi-enclosed structure near the back.

The others waited for him, standing uneasily beside the rocking vessel, seemingly at a loss. This, after all, was where Dariel's expertise was supposed to take command. As yet, he had no idea how to make the thing work, but that was a small detail, certainly. Spratling could sail any vessel, even one, he hoped, without a sail.

Dariel inhaled a deep breath, filled his chest with it, and leaped across the narrow gap. What began as a graceful move, however, did not conclude as one. The slick surface of the deck shed the leather soles of his sandals so completely that he spent a few frantic seconds dancing as if unexpectedly thrown onto ice, his arms wheeling. He just managed to get down to his hands and knees, where he paused, breathing heavily.

The others watched him, perplexed and more than a bit concerned.

"It's slippery," he explained.

Skylene squinted one eye, raising the brow of the other.

Dariel had felt the slippery surfaces of league ships before, on Sire Fen's league warship, the Rayfin, and most recently the Ambergris. This one felt even slicker. It may not have been so, but he needed to keep his feet under him now more than ever. Remembering that some of the sailors on the Ambergris had worked barefoot, he sat and unlaced his sandals. Barefoot, he rose to stand again. It helped. His skin clung to the coating in a way leather did not. He almost felt he could squeeze the deck with his toes.

Looking at the Free People watching him, he said, as if impatient, "Come on. Take 'em off and climb aboard."

Inside the steering cabin a few moments later, Dariel gripped the wheel and said, "What powers this?"

Birke stood next to him, wolflike, waiting, and then confused. "What do you mean?"

"What-With the boats I know, we use the sails and the wind to push the vessel across the water. Or we use oars at times. Understand? There has to be something to provide the power, but here is nothing but-but the wheel." He stared at it, as if his explanation made him even more confused about the situation.

"Wind?" Birke asked. His lip curled back, exposing his canines. He seemed to find the idea barbaric. He waved until he got Tunnel's attention. "You use wind? The power is in the boat. Just think it to do what you wish."

"Think it? Be serious!"

"What?" Tunnel appeared, fresh from organizing the others, positioning them to best cast the boat off. Birke answered him, speaking in Auldek, gesturing toward Dariel. Tunnel brushed past him and grabbed Dariel by the wrists. He slammed his hands onto the wheel. "You brigand, yes? Act like it! Hold the wheel. Drive the boat." Dariel began a sputtering protest, but Tunnel spoke over him. "I know you'll do it." He added the last sentence casually. As he turned away, he pulled Birke with him.

Alone, seeing the motion on the deck below him, feeling the rocking of the boat, Dariel realized that the prow had already been cast off. It floated free of the dock. These people know nothing of boats! They think a boat moves because the pilot thinks it into motion? This is a fool's mission, and I'm captain of it.

"How about waiting for captain's orders?" he shouted.

A few of the crew looked up, perplexed. Dariel waved them away. This, apparently, was read as a sign to cast off the other lines. Before he could stop them, the entire vessel was loose and pulled by the outgoing tide. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the jagged teeth of the nearby skerries, no longer exciting. Terrifying instead. He cursed to himself and then out loud to everyone. They were about to be dashed against stone, end of the mission and end of his hopes. How had that happened so quickly?

"I never said to cast off!" he yelled, though it was a futile. The "crew" had all they could handle keeping themselves from sliding off the deck, especially as it began to roll more in the growing chop.

Just think! Drive the boat by thinking? He still gripped the wheel, tugging it as if he would rip it off. And then he realized how strange his hands felt on the wheel. The material, whatever it was, hummed against his palms. He half pulled back, but his hands did not want to leave the thing. It held him. He could have jerked them away. He knew that. It was a gentle pull, filled with energy. It was waiting for him.

"By the Giver," he mumbled. The ship was waiting for him! Whatever was going to drive it was not in the motion of the air, nor in the pull of oars against water. It was in the vessel itself! He felt it so clearly it was almost as if the boat spoke as much to him.

Tunnel, standing on the heaving deck, drenched by the waves sending spray high into the air, his arms outstretched for balance or in threat or both, roared, "Daarrriiiieeeeellllll! Drive it!"

It was the prod the prince needed. Without loosening his grip on the wheel, he craned his head around. They were nearly upon the rocks. They rode on the pull of water being sucked out to sea so forcefully that within a few seconds the stern would crash against the rocks with shattering force. Dariel imagined the prow of the ship slicing through the water. His head flew back, pulled by the force of the vessel being wrenched forward. For a split second he believed it was the force of impact, but in the next moment he realized there had been no impact. The boat flew away from the rocks with a speed that amazed him.

He yanked his body back into position just in time to wrench the wheel to starboard so that the boat would not slam back into the pier. The crew tumbled and slid about the deck, grasping for holds; all except Tunnel, who still managed to stand upright, grinning and laughing and roaring with glee, "Daarrriiiieeeeellllll! Rhuin Fa! Rhuin Fa!"

The next few minutes of his life were as hair-raising as any he had yet lived. The boat was a wonder, yes, but he had so little control of it. It responded to his thoughts, but it was hard to remember to think constantly. He would let his attention wander for a moment, only to realize they were about to smash up against some rocks. He would start to shout commands before realizing he had all the command he needed in his hands. It should have been easy, but he brought the vessel near to destruction a dozen times before they slipped out of the fingers of reaching stones and found deeper, open water.

There he pressed the vessel forward. They sped through the night, the prow of the boat slapping down each time they came to a wave crest, sending up spray. Had he ever sailed as fast as this? He was not sure, could not truly tell with the night so dark around them. He did believe he could go even faster, and longed to do so in the light of day, with no fear of crashing into some outcropping of rock.

By the Giver this is a ship! This is a ship!

How could they destroy it? It seemed a mad idea. The power of it! The things he could do with a vessel like this! He could be Spratling again, but a Spratling like the world had never seen before. He would run rings around the league, around anyone!

"Don't enjoy it too much," Skylene said. He had not noticed her come up beside him. "Remember why we're here."

"You can't still want to destroy this," Dariel said. "Feel it. This is a wonder. Do you know what I could-"

"We must destroy it."

"Why?" Dariel asked.

"Because it is evil." She leaned near him, brushing his shoulder, and spoke loud enough for only him to hear. "You believe it's so wonderful because of the power within it. But it's what makes the power in it that is so horrible. Ships like this one… they run on souls, Dariel. The essence of children. Quota children. That's what's trapped within them. They burn souls. Think of a child sent into slavery. Think of that child tossed into the furnace of this boat, firing it from the inside. That's what this is. I know it's enticing. Evil often is." She paused and then said, "You might want to slow."

He had been watching her profile as she looked forward. He swung his head around and eased back. As the prow dropped and some of the exhilaration of speed left him, he saw what had prompted her. For some time the long shadow of an island to the east had crept closer as they sped along it toward the south. Now, from an inlet of the island, came a blaze of light and motion. It must have had a deep anchorage, for a league brig nestled close to the shore, lit up with blazing pitch lanterns. Small vessels ferried supplies and people ashore. Men worked on the docks, unloading supplies. Even as they watched, new lights flared in windows of buildings all along the shore. The league, it appeared, was taking the place over.

"What island is this?" Dariel asked.

"Lithram Len," Skylene said. "They must have just found it."

"Where the soul catcher is?"

She nodded. "Go slowly and pull us back nearer the mainland coast. We should not be seen, especially now. The People need to know the league has found the island."

Dariel sailed as she instructed. He managed to cut behind a slim barrier reef that hid them for some time. Beyond it, he increased speed as the glow receded behind them. It was only then, when he thought about something other than piloting the boat, that he chewed over what he had just seen. The league were on Lithram Len. The soul catcher was on Lithram Len. No, he had never seen the thing himself, but he had seen Devoth shake off one death-pull an arrow from his heart and live on. That was enough to make him believe in the device.

If they find the soul catcher chamber itself, he thought, and learn how to use it…

Dariel drew up, his face glazed by a thought so sudden that he forgot to see through his eyes or animate his features for a moment. The vessel, sensing the waning of his focus, lost forward momentum. The bow drooped and the stern rose and the rocking of the waves took them in its rhythm.

"What is it?" Skylene asked.

"Wait a minute," Dariel managed to say. But that was as far as he got. He had to think through the idea that had just gripped him. It was a mad idea. Dangerous. An idea that would have him dealing with forces he did not yet understand. Neither Mor nor the elders had asked it of him, and if he proposed it, he would be asking the crew-these friends so new to him-to risk their lives as well. He should just drive his energy down into the boat and feel it surge forward, continue this escape, find a way to get the others ashore, and then sail away without them. Go home.

Tunnel bounded up from belowdecks. "Why have we stopped?"

Why even think what you're thinking? Dariel asked himself. When did their fight become yours? He tightened his grip on the wheel and intended to answer Tunnel by pushing the boat back into motion. Though he thought that, his will was not behind it. The boat continued to rock, dead in the water. Others gathered near, talking among themselves as they approached, and then joining the hush of those waiting for him.

It had been so long since he had thought of a venture like this. He could not help but think of Val. What had he said, one of the last things he told Dariel before sacrificing himself to destroy the league platforms? "I've been waiting to understand how best to say good-bye to the world. Now I've found it." That's exactly it. Dariel felt something similar now. Not that he needed to say good-bye. It was not death he felt near him, but life. Real life! A purpose that began here and might lead who knows where?

"What if…," he began. "What if we don't take this boat to Sumerled? Not just yet, I mean. What if instead we go to Lithram Len? What if we destroy the soul catcher ourselves, even if we have to fight the league to do it?"

"Dariel," Skylene said, "there are only ten of us."

"A perfect number. Who would expect it? We'll catch them unaware."

"You want war with the league," a voice-he could not pinpoint whose-said.

"Haven't you known that was happening all along?" Dariel asked. "They've never done anything but make war on us, on both sides of the ocean-we've just been too dull to see it. War with the league! That's exactly what I want. I fought them before, but I didn't finish it." With this acknowledgment, he felt a sudden need to laugh. Mirth spilled out of him, unexpected, all consuming, wonderful. "Let's strike them first." That seemed such a wonderful notion, so very right. It felt like the challenge he had been waiting for. It was business unfinished, and, he was sure, it was the start of the path to his fate. He had never, ever, felt that so clearly.

"What do you think? Let's fight them, starting here and now. We'll find a way. I didn't plan this, but we've seen what we've seen. We have to do something about it."

The crew remained quiet, all of them looking at one another, considering. Dariel could not read them. Their altered, tattooed, and adorned faces seemed as expressionless as he had ever seen them. Even Skylene gave him nothing. Tunnel did, though.

He slapped one of his thick arms down on Dariel's shoulders. Pointing at Skylene, he said, "What did I tell you? Rhuin Fa. That's what Tunnel said. Dariel Rhuin Fa!"