The other lands

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

The night before she rose to attempt the greatest works of sorcery she had ever tried, Corinn had a dream. She awoke feeling it heavy with import, dripping with guilt. She had relived an afternoon earlier that spring, when she and Aaden had ridden together in a carriage bringing them down from Calfa Ven. The boy, as often happened, became sick from the jostling of the wheels over the rough stones. His face went pale and he sat for a time, percolating the stew that, as if on cue, erupted from him as they started down one particularly steep section of switchbacks.

Corinn hated the scent of vomit. It filled her nostrils like a taint of something poisonous. She had never been able to deal with this type of sickness, and she had not on the day she dreamed of. Instead, she got out of the carriage at the first opportunity, leaving maids to care for her son as she walked for a while in the mountain air, clearing her lungs.

That much of the dream was just a version of events that actually had happened, a small and inconsequential event one afternoon in the mountains. What happened next had not happened in actual life. It couldn't. The players had not all been alive on that day.

As she walked, taking in the mountain view-the green and blue of the peaks before her, slowly receding as they dropped in altitude-a man appeared on her left side and took in the landscape with her. Corinn looked over at him, knowing who he was before her eyes touched him: her brother, Aliver.

He said nothing, just smiled at her, shook his head, motioned back toward the carriage in which Aaden sat, likely still green with his illness. He was saying that he understood her and that he loved the boy. Such a good boy. He was saying that the boy would be the king he never got to be. He was saying that he understood Corinn's actions and she had no need to explain herself, even now, as she walked in the fresh air while maids swabbed the vomit from the corners of her son's mouth.

"I'm not a bad mother," Corinn had said, though Aliver had said nothing to suggest he thought she was. "You don't know how much I love him."

"No, of course not," a voice said. Not Aliver's but the man on her right side, walking with them as well. She turned toward him. Hanish Mein. His clean, crisp features. His blond hair shone around his face and draped his shoulders. His gray eyes glowed. She wanted to press her lips against them and pull in the gentle calm of them.

Before she could, Hanish dipped his head forward. He threw his body after it, jumping into a somersault. Before he had turned one circle, his body became one large, orange leaf. It danced on a sudden breeze. Aliver did the same, and the two men, who were now leaves, twirled and dipped and rose on currents in the air. Watching them, Corinn began to whistle.

Though there was joy in the final moments, she awoke with the memory of the dream-and of the actual day that began it-imbedded in her abdomen as a physical pain, a knot that remained within her even after she joined the flow of the living day. She swore to herself that if she ever, ever, got the chance to pull Aaden close and kiss and caress him in illness like that she would do it with all her heart, holding nothing back. But this was not something she could see to today. She set it aside and continued with the course she had decided on.

First, she surprised a guard by arriving outside the cell that housed the prisoner Barad the Lesser. The soldier stood nearly asleep on his feet and did not seem to register Corinn as a real person until she stood right before him. "Soldier," she said, "open the door."

The man shot fully awake at the sound of her voice. Suddenly terrified, he turned and fumbled a long time with the keys to the door, apologizing the entire time, dropping them twice and cursing himself and then apologizing more. His terror of her seemed out of all proportion to the circumstances, but on entering the cell Corinn recalled that any guard of this prisoner had reason to fear her.

Barad sat on a cot against the far wall, the bed tiny beneath him, like a child's. She wondered if he ever lay on it, for surely his legs and arms would have hung down to the stone floor. Thinner already than when last she had seen him, angles and joints measured his bulk. His legs rose unnaturally long, bent at knees on which he had set his crossed arms and rested his forehead. A single wrist chain attached him to an iron ring in the wall. On hearing her enter, Barad lifted his head and rolled his sightless stone eyes in her direction.

Yes, she thought, there is reason to fear me. She turned and gestured for the guard to leave them alone. He did so gladly.

"You don't smell like a Marah," the prisoner said, after a few moments of silence. His voice carried the same grave timbre she remembered from before. It held a weight and substance at odds with the lanky, emaciated form that produced it.

"Do they feed you?" Corinn asked.

The man squinted. She knew he could not see her, but a lifetime of habits still ruled his mannerisms. "The queen? So the queen pays a visit to a blind prisoner? And to ask after the quality of his meals? The world yet offers surprises. Yes, they bring me food. I have little appetite, though."

"You must regain it, then," Corinn said. "If I wished you dead I would have killed you. I do not wish you to starve."

Barad tilted his head back in a motion that became an openmouthed yawn, audible in the enclosed room. When he was finished with it, he rubbed his nose with his manacled hand. The chains clinked dully. "Kind of you."

"No, not really. I don't have much use for kindness anymore. Not for its own sake, at least." Corinn looked about the cell for a moment, though there was nothing in it to catch an eye. "Do you know that my son almost died?"

Barad crooked one eyebrow, another gesture made like a sighted man. "I heard something about that," he said. "I am sorry. Innocents should not be victims of our wicked dance."

"Traitors tried to kill him, Barad. Traitors who would kill you as well and enslave or butcher all the people you so love. Those traitors showed themselves by trying to kill my son and me. You see? This is something you haven't acknowledged. The Akarans represent the people you love to the world. When first an enemy aims to harm them, they aim at an Akaran heart. Think of my father."

The prisoner considered her words for a respectful length of time, and then said, "That's not quite how I see it."

"Yes," Corinn snapped, "but you don't see it any other way either. You don't see! You never did."

"And you've made sure I never will again." He said this sadly, inhaling as he did so. "I did like looking upon the world. I truly did. You don't know how it is not to see but to move your eyes and hear stone grinding inside your head."

"Before Aliver's war against Hanish, you claimed to have dreamed he would return. Back when nobody knew if he even lived, you boasted that he spoke to you in your dreams. Is that true, or was it a self-serving lie?"

"I was not boasting," Barad said, "and it was the truth as I understood it."

"How do you explain it, then?"

"I don't."

"Do you hear his voice now?"

Under a ridged, skeptical forehead, he said, "Aliver is dead, Your Majesty. I've never spoken with the dead."

No, but perhaps you will, she thought. Perhaps very soon. "Tell me, was my brother wise?"

"He was."

"And were you committed to him completely?"

"Of course. We all were. In the brief span that was Aliver's war, nobody-not one single person-betrayed him."

The thought of that almost took Corinn's words away. She wanted to spit that it could not be true. Somebody, somewhere said ill of him. Some soldier deserted camp at night. Some officer coveted his status. Somebody…

"Your Majesty, I think I understand you better now. What's wrong with you is that you feel you are alone. Isn't that it? You are alone, and it frightens you. But you don't have to-"

"I am not alone! Millions-millions-" She said the number, but was not sure how to complete the thought she began it with. Nor did it matter. A blind fool! "You will use all your gifts of oratory in my service."

"No," Barad said. "I will not."

"You will. You will bring to the people word that in my presence and through long conversation with me you have learned that you were wrong. You maligned me mistakenly. The truth-"

"Is not yours to create."

"— is that I am the last and only hope for the Known World."

"No."

"You know nothing! I have looked across the world and seen the coming enemy in my own mind. In my head!" She gestured savagely at her temple, as if she would jab her finger through it. "I've seen them, and they bring beasts and hunger and vengeance-"

"They will pay you back for the Akaran sins."

Corinn could not help but use her body to express herself. "No, that's where you're wrong. The Auldek will kill us all. They want to make our lands theirs. And-and the quota children returning with them hate all of us. Not just me. You, too. Will you explain to them that you are not the villain who sent them away? Do you really think they'll stop long enough to hear you? The difference between us is nothing-nothing! — if we're both dead. We will be, unless all the Known World unites behind me as fully as they did behind my brother."

"That cannot-"

Corinn held up a finger as he began to interrupt. Oddly, something stopped him. He himself did not seem to know what, and his stone eyes did not move at all. But he paused, and she continued. "You will tell everybody, and have them speak, so that my words are spoken by a million tongues. I don't trust many people. I have no allies who would not abandon me. The few who would be true to me-Mena, Dariel-doubt me. It pains me that this is true, but it is. I love them, though. They don't know it, but I even need them. I need them to be the people they are."

She had not thought to say that earlier, but now that she did, she knew it was true. It really was true. For a moment, the emotion of it choked her. And then she wanted to say more.

"Mena, the goddess of rage who is also so kind, with her sword and wings… how can I not love her and want her free to be who she is? And Dariel. I don't know what's become of him, but I love him, and I wouldn't want him to be anything other than what he is either. Even Aliver, if he were still among us, I'd welcome with all his ideals and plans. I might have to fight with him, but they are my family. My blood."

She thought of Hanish for a moment, but not in the way she wanted to. She pushed it back and calmed her voice and said, "You're not my blood. So I don't care what is in your heart. I care what comes out of your mouth, and I think only of how it will help me protect the Known World. You, Barad, are going to be one of my staunchest allies."

"Never."

Corinn launched herself at him. Big, gangly as he was, she smashed into him, grasping his head in her arms. "Your mind is mine!" The man fought against her for a moment. He drew back a mallet of a fist, cocked, and began to bring it forward, until she slipped her thumbs around and pressed them against his stone eyes. The fist froze. His body went limp, as if she held the center of him and he could do nothing.

"Your mind is mine," Corinn repeated. "Listen, and don't deny it."

Early that evening Corinn went to the gardens of Mena's region of the palace. Though she felt the fatigue of the song she had sung for Barad, Corinn knew there was more left in her. And there were two more things she had to do before she rested. Tonight was the night for it. She felt full of resolve, powered by a measure of certainty, and she planned to see it through.

She walked cautiously, her eyes often flicking up to the bluing sky. Elya was far away, flying behind Mena, and though she had many guards looking up at the sky to spot the creature's returning and pipe a warning, Corinn still moved fast. She wove her way through the tables and benches and chairs that seemed to absurdly crowd Mena's balcony.

Delivegu had given her no specific information on where the eggs might be. In the gardens, yes, but it was no small space. It could take hours to find them; and this assumed they were real, which was not something she could be sure of. The night was crisp, the moon lighting the stones and plants and furniture well enough. She had dismissed Mena's staff, but still, still she felt a tingling urgency to-

And there they were. Corinn realized she had expected something grander than what she found, but that suddenly seemed silly. This was no foul nest like Mena's stories of Maeben. It was not elaborate. It did not smell of death, nor was it gilded. Four eggs nestled in a curl of fabric. They were strangely shaped, oblong and flatish, with swirls of color set into a creamy base. Warm to the touch, they gave her a certain joy. It came right through her fingertips, a welcome.

Corinn looked around. She held still for a long moment, sure that she would hear and feel if anybody was observing her. Nobody was. She slipped her hands down into the basin, grasped the cloth in her hands; and pulled the entirety of it out, the eggs snug inside. She sat down on a stone bench a little distance away, cradling the bundle to her chest. She could feel the life pulsing within them. Wonderful, powerful, fierce: that's what they would be.

She whispered the notes of the song that had been building in her head. She would sing to these children. Sing to them in the Giver's tongue, so that when they emerged into the world they would do so in a form shaped to her needs. She could not have Elya, but she would have her children. Yes, they were lovely already. Full of goodness, but it was not goodness that she would need in future days. Before then, she would need weapons like none the Known World had ever seen. These babies would not be feathered, timorous protectors. They would be her warriors. She sang all this into them, and she knew they heard and liked what she was telling them. They shifted inside their eggs, shouldering and stretching the shells, already eager to hatch.

And then the final thing. Her last work for that night. Late now, in her room, the lights dim and all her servants sent away. The largest of the spells she had planned. It would exhaust her, she knew, but she did not want to wait for another day. There was strength in doing, she realized. There was power in using the song. There were voices happy to aid her. Voices who, in more and more tangible ways, urged her on.

What choice did she have? they asked. Everything was in danger. She had to be able to trust someone completely, someone whom the people would love and rally behind, someone who would take part of the burden from her and carry it with her, someone who had held the world in his hands already. Someone who loved her and would be truly by her side. Someone who would thank her for forgiving him.

Barad, the agitator from the mines of Kidnaban, a rebel, a seditious, treasonous, poisonous barb in her side-a blind fool-was right. She was alone. She had been for years. Maybe she had been since the day she saw herself in the fingers of her dying mother's hands so many years ago, when she was but a girl, when first she learned how callous the world was. That was then.

The things to come she could not do alone. She did not face the future for herself and she did not want to face it by herself. She did not have to. She just had to take from one place and give to another. In this case, she had to take from her family's blood. She understood that better now. The voices helped her. The song made more sense now. The worm had a beauty as it turned and it helped her gain control. She was not a child anymore: awkward with her motions, clumsy, seeing a blurred world. Her hands were her own now. Each digit, each contour and wrinkle and blemish. They were her hands!

Confident in this, reassured by whispers from far away, she opened her mouth and let out the song that would make for her what she wished. Death was not so great a barrier. She had spent her life thinking it was the final, the absolute, the end, the horrible curse. But that was only part of it. The voices helped her understand this.

As she sang it just seemed more and more obvious. She had found a truth that escaped those with no knowledge of the Giver's tongue. As she sang, she peeled back the barriers between life and death. As she sang, she searched among the vague forms on the other side of what she had believed to be life-though she knew the barrier was not the simple thing she had feared.

And there she found one of the ones she sought. At first he was as diffuse as a scent lofting on a breeze, spread thin and in communion with so much of the world. She drew the traces of him in. She sang, and the far-flung essence of him could not deny her invocation. For a time it was like her words were hands and the one she sought was sand draining through her fingers. But she sang the harder for it. She pulled him toward her, so forcefully that eventually…

He stood before her. He was there, upright, diaphanous, luminous at moments, but also tangibly physical. It was a he, and she knew him, though the details of his face moved and rippled and would not settle. Not yet.

"What have you done?" he rasped, like an aged man stirred from a dream of youth.

For a horrible moment, Corinn thought the figure was questioning every decision she had made since they had last seen each other. She could never explain it all! Life had placed before her a thousand challenges, each with a million barbed entanglements and dangers. Decisions had to be made and they fell upon nobody but her. She had made them as best she could. None could fault her. None could understand her. None could know what it meant to rule an empire. None, except perhaps the very one who had posed the question.

She realized time was passing and she had not answered. The man's eyes bored into her. He asked again, "What have you done?"

This time she heard the question differently, or chose to. "I have pulled you back to life."

"Why?"

How could she answer? She could say that she was afraid of the threat marching toward the Known World. She mistrusted herself now more than ever before and could no longer tell whether the things she did were for good or for ill. She could explain that all the power she had amassed was nothing if she was blind to those who would harm her son. She had so nearly lost Aaden! If that could happen, what other horrors might yet await her? She could have admitted that each weapon she held-her allies the league, who lied to her with every other word; the wine with which she would make a nation of obedient servants; the song that even now danced out over the world, stirring a worm deep in the bowels of the earth as it did so-was a two-faced treachery waiting to strike. She should swear that she hated sending Mena and Dariel out as unwilling agents, loathed that she seemed incapable of opening herself fully to them. She might declare that she wanted none of these things to be so. She needed him to help her remedy it all. It was all too much to carry on a single pair of shoulders; and if he would help her, perhaps together they could chart a surer course together than either of them could alone. She could have said that she doubted every high ideal that had ever escaped his lips but admitted that a part of her very much wanted to believe.

All this she might have said, but she did not. Though she meant it all, she also knew that she still clung to each writhing portion of the things she hated; she was herself the two-faced treachery that she feared and that she wished he might save her from. She was, even now, just a breath away from wishing she had summoned a different person altogether. So instead of confessing everything, she said, "Because the world needs you. Things are not complete. We need you in life, not darkness."

"Darkness?" the figure asked. He closed his eyes as if remembering the meaning of the word. "No, death is not darkness. Nor have I forgotten life. Each moment brings new souls into the afterdeath. They bring news of the living, though it fades from them fast. But I have not been dead to life." He opened his eyes again. "I know of you and the things you have done."

Corinn had not expected to say what she did then. She had not even known she thought it. But it was true, and it felt very important to say it now. "Then you know that only you can save me. Please."

As she waited for the answer, the figure before her became that much more tangible, just a little more solid, not quite so transparent, even though he remained vague and half formed. The man held up a hand. He nodded, not in affirmation but to indicate that he would answer her. It was an offer that deserved consideration, and he was not so at peace with death that he would fail to think it through. He just needed a few moments. Then he would answer her.

Queen Corinn Akaran folded her hands in her lap and sat as straight backed as she could in her fatigue, awaiting the spirit's answer, ready-if he should accept-to whisper his name and complete the spell and bring him truly back into the world. Aliver Akaran, she would say, and mean every word, life needs you still. I need you still. Come back. Fight the coming war at my side. Complete the work you left undone…