The Sacred Band

CHAPTER NINE

It could have been worse. Mor had been angry, fuming and spitting venom, on the verge of using those stubby nails of hers to rip new tracks across Dariel’s face. She danced through an improvised tribute to her anger. One of her eyelids twitched out a rant of its own. By the time it all ended Dariel had admitted his fault and claimed to be chastened. He swore he would never do something as foolish as sneaking alone into Amratseer again. Eventually, Mor left her exasperation at Dariel’s feet. She ordered the others into motion and she told the prince to leave the pups behind. He didn’t. Chastened, yes, but not without some resolve.

It took them a full day to circumambulate Amratseer. By the second morning they cleared the semiorder of the agricultural region outside the city and plunged into Inafeld Forest. It extended all the way north as far as anyone had been, hemmed in at the west by the mountains of Rath Batatt. Tam claimed that they were following a route of sorts, but it was one of many that the People had developed over the years. Not wanting to leave a traceable path to the Sky Isle, they used a variety of trails, each of them trodden on rarely enough that they betrayed few signs of actually being trails.

They wormed over and beneath tree roots, along fallen old-growth trunks, and through dank waterways, stepping carefully on the moss-heavy stones. The forest grew thick enough that the sky was only a distant idea. The pups did not make it any easier. Fully half the terrain was unmanageable for them. Before long Dariel had given up on encouraging them forward and instead carried them in a sack slung over his back. When he complained about the weight of them one afternoon, Birke took one and walked with it cradled like a baby in his arm. “You’ll have to name them, you know?”

“Yes, I guess I will.”

“You must geld them. Not yet, but before too long.”

“Cut their balls off? No, I don’t think that’s-”

“Scoop it up, Dariel,” Birke cut in. “They’re cathounds. Male ones. The Anet used them to hunt lions. In six months they’ll be almost as tall as you are. At least they’ll be lighter without their balls.”

“Be sane! I saw their mother. She was-”

“Young. They birth children young. And the females are smaller anyway. No, Dariel, believe me, you’ve got more on your hands than you know. Snip them. I could do it for you if you like.” Birke made his fingers into shears and demonstrated the ease of the action. He smiled. What should have been fearsome-the thick hair that covered his entire face, the canine incisors that shone savagely through his grin-usually managed to cheer Dariel. Not so this time.

Dariel reached for the pup. “I don’t mind carrying him after all.”

He still carried them both an hour later when they stepped into a clearing in the woods created by an enormous fallen tree. A man stood atop it, arms crossed and still. Blinking in the unaccustomed bright light, it took Dariel a moment to believe that he was really there. Mor shouted something to him in Auldek; the man responded and pointed to a route up onto the tree. Without a word of explanation, Mor led them up.

The man was slight of build. His head was clean-shaven, with a splattering of tattoos across his scalp, patterning that Dariel had not seen before. “So this is him?” the man asked, switching to Acacian. “There is much talk of him in Avina. The destroyer of the soul catcher. The Rhuin Fa.” He studied the prince with a trader’s critical eye, as if he were considering a purchase. “Funny, he just looks like common Shivith clan, not even ranked. I hope he is what he promises.”

“I never promised anything,” Dariel said. The pups churned in the sack, trying to get a view of the stranger. Dariel tried to stand without flinching, but they really did have sharp claws. “And I’m standing right in front of you. You could address me directly.”

The man gave no sign that he heard him. “Last word from Avina was that the clans are squabbling and that league ships are patrolling the coastline. More each week. If this Dariel Akaran wishes to prove himself, he’ll have ample opportunity, and soon.”

Before Dariel could respond, Mor asked, “Tell me, messenger, why have you come?”

“With a message, of course.” He drew himself up and spoke more formally. “I carry an elder within, a voice meant for your ears.”

Mor said, “May the vessel never crack.”

As she and the messenger moved away together, Dariel unslung his sack. He poured the pups out onto the wide tree trunk, across which they surged with bumbling enthusiasm, greeting one person and then the next and then starting over again.

“What’s this about?” Dariel asked Birke, once the others had settled down to wait.

Birke stroked a puppy’s head. “The council sent him with a message.”

“About what?”

“We’ll see shortly,” Tam said, laying out a spread of hard crackers and cucumbers on the tree bark. He set out a wooden bowl. Above it, he used his knife to cut off the bottom of a plee-berry, a nondescript fruit, brown, slightly hairy, and oblong. The liquid inside it gushed out as he squeezed the length of it. The juice looked like a collection of frog eggs, blue tinted, slimy. The first time Dariel had seen it he had gagged and stared in horror as the others drank it with relish.

“Some of your favorite drink, Dariel?”

After having made a show of being disgusted by the frog-egg look of the fruit pulp, Dariel had to admit he had grown to rather like it. It was like drinking liquid sugar, and the strange texture of the seeds had actually become his favorite aspect of it. He took a slurp from the offered bowl, rolling the slick orbs around on his tongue.

Tam pulled his tiny instrument from his pack and began plucking it. Dariel watched Mor and the messenger, but could gather little from their distant exchange. He thought he saw stiffening in Mor’s spine, an indication of anger, but the next moment it melted into something softer as she gestured with her hands.

“What’s he mean he has an elder within him?”

“It’s quite a trick. Can’t say I understand it, really.” Birke pushed one of the pups into Dariel’s arms. “Here, take your pup. I shouldn’t handle them so much. I’ll end up liking them. Have you named them yet?”

The pup climbed happily enough into Dariel’s lap, churning in a circle around the geometry of his folded legs. Dariel stilled it with his hand, rubbed under its chin, and looked into its eyes. They were the same color as its fur, which was a reddish-brown, soft, short coat. Only the ridge along its back was different. There the hair bristled back against the grain, almost spiny. It was the only part of him not completely adorable. “I was thinking of this one as Scarlet.”

“Scarlet?” Birke asked. “That’s no name for a cathound!”

“No? What is, then?”

Birke did not hesitate. “Ripper. Killer. Punisher.”

“Jaws of Death,” Tam said.

“Devothri-grazik,” offered Anira. “It means ‘Devoth’s bane.’ ”

Tam said something in Auldek, pointing at the other pup, who had just tumbled over in an effort to lick his bottom. The others laughed. No one offered a translation.

A little later, they all stood as the two rejoined them. The messenger looked as pleased as ever, but Mor’s lips pressed a new measure of annoyance between them. She barely opened them when she said, “The council has spoken. We have new instructions. From here we go to Rath Batatt. We seek the Watcher in the Sky Mount.”

“Na Gamen?” Birke asked, a measure of awe in his voice.

“Yes,” Mor said. “Na Gamen. Let’s go. Time is more important now than ever.”

Dariel came close to asking who Na Gamen was, but the group was already in motion.

T he mountains that the People called Rath Batatt sprouted like bony crests along the backs of horrible, reptilian beasts. Rank upon rank of them, stretching off unending into the west.

“Beautiful, eh?” Birke asked.

“Not the description I had in mind.”

“They say the Sky Mount is not far in. We won’t hike more than a day or so in the mountains. Just along the edge of them.”

“The edge?” Dariel asked. “How far do these mountains go?”

“I don’t know. No one has been all the way through them. This was once Wrathic territory. My clan’s home. They lived at the edge of Rath Batatt but ranged into it, hunting. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“You never have?”

“How could I?” the young man asked. “The time that the Wrathic hunted in Rath Batatt is but legend now. Tales they tell the children to bind them to the clan. Wonderful tales of packs of wolves and how they hunted mighty beasts together. I never even thought I’d live to see these mountains with my own eyes.”

Dariel placed a hand atop his shoulder. “I imagine the hunting is good now. Shall we? We haven’t had fresh meat in a while. Even Mor would like that.”

That afternoon Dariel and Birke loped away before the others. They climbed a steep slope, navigated the pass at its peak, and dropped down into the alpine valley on the other side. They picked their way through massive boulders, some of which pressed together so that they had to squeeze through or beneath them. Beyond the boulders stretched a long descent to a crystal blue lake, rimmed by short grass, abloom with purple wildflowers. A herd of woolly-haired oxen grazed-stout creatures thickening to face the coming winter, with flat horns that spread across their foreheads like helmets welded to their scalps. At first they were unaware of the humans, and then unfazed, and then-when Birke sank an arrow into one’s shoulder-furious.

The insulted beast charged them. After a brief moment of consideration, Dariel and Birke turned and fled. They reached the relative safety of the boulders with the ox’s hooves pummeling the ground just behind them, grunting insults into air suddenly thick with its musk. The creature pursued them in. It rushed through the narrow crevices between the stones. Dariel, trapped in a dead-end corridor of granite, had to scramble up it.

“I don’t think it was quite like this before!” Birke shouted, laughing as he hopped from boulder to boulder. The creature snorted outraged breaths below him, following them farther into the maze, looking rather murderous for a thing that fed on grass and flowers.

“Not a Wrathic technique, then?” Dariel called back.

It was not the most heroic hunt ever-they made the creature a pincushion with arrows shot from safely above it-but the result was satisfying. That night they fed on thick steaks roasted over a fire and told stories surrounded by an amphitheater of stone. Birke recounted the great Wrathic hunts of old, and of the ancient times when young men were sent alone into the wilderness, to return only if they wore the jawbones of a slaughtered kwedeir draped over their necks. Listening to him, Dariel almost forgot Birke was talking about members of the Auldek clan who had enslaved him, not about young men like himself. He almost forgot that this was not just the hunting trip it briefly seemed. He almost accepted it as an evening spent in the company of friends, with no purpose save enjoyment. Almost.

“So, tomorrow we’ll see the Sky Mount. Why don’t you tell me what that is, and who the Watcher is?”

In the silence after his question Dariel realized how different the night was here from what it had been just days before in Inafeld Forest. Here, in the mountains, the main feature of the near silence was the scrape of wind over the jagged peaks. That and the sound of Mor honing the blade of her dagger on a stone propped on her knee.

“Well?” Dariel prompted.

Anira pulled another strip of meat from above the fire, set it on the small stone she was using as a table, and sliced it into bite-size pieces. When she had a few, she pinched them in her fingers and offered them to Dariel. “The Sky Mount is a palace built by a Lothan Aklun called Na Gamen. He built it long ago, back in the early years after they arrived. We should see it tomorrow, perched atop the highest peak in this area.”

“So what is it that Mor doesn’t believe?”

“That the very same Na Gamen who built it all those years ago still lives in it.”

“A Lothan Aklun lives?”

Anira shrugged. “He may. The elders among the People say that long ago he exiled himself there for his own reasons. He once came down from the Sky Isle and gave them-”

“Promises.” Mor looked up from her work. “He spoke promises and regrets hundreds of years ago, and has done nothing else since. But the elders, in their wisdom, believe that he still sits up there, waiting for something. For you, perhaps.”

“You don’t believe that?”

Mor bent forward and began the rhythmic drag of steel over stone again. “What I believe doesn’t matter. I’m taking you.”

B y noon of the next day Dariel had fixed his attention on a single peak in the distance, one that came in and out of view as they navigated the ridges preceding it. The high clouds that had obscured it in the morning cleared, revealing a ring of snow crusting its peak, the only mountain thus accoutred so far. Or so he thought.

Later in the afternoon, when they mounted a pass and began down the slope facing the great mountain, Dariel realized that the snow was not snow at all. It was cast around the heights in too peculiar a manner. It was actually a solid substance. Though the white draped across the stone like the cellophane nests of certain birds, there was an order to it, a geometric intention within the contours. He had seen such structures before. When he sailed through the barrier isle he had gaped at Lothan Aklun abodes similarly hung from stone. This one, however, was much larger, a fact that grew clearer as they climbed toward it through the lengthening shadows of the aging afternoon.

When they reached the gate, it did not seem they had reached much of anything except a dead end. The path had contoured along the steep precipice. It dropped off dizzyingly to one side. As they came around a corner, the path simply stopped, and a wall of smooth white stone faced them. Though it was obviously a man-made structure and a substance quite different from the rough granite of the mountain, it molded seamlessly into base stone. The mountain curved away out of sight to one side, while a buttress of rock hid any view upward. They could see nothing of the palace that had been so visible from a distance.

Tam asked, “Should we knock?”

Though the wall had no doorlike features, they did just that. Lightly at first, and then with fists and feet and harder objects. The material absorbed the beating, deadening the force of their blows. Anira tried to climb up over the buttress, but only fell crashing back down. Mor scraped the blade of a knife across the surface, searching for some crevice to pry open. Nothing. Not even a scratch left behind by her honed point.

Eventually, the group gave up. There they stood, Dariel with a sleeping pup in his pack and Birke with one in his arms. Tam massaged the knuckles of his hand and asked what they should do now. Anira stood with arms crossed, head cocked, her thoughts trapped in the pucker of her lips. The crimson light of the vanishing sun shone on Mor’s delicate features, somehow bringing out the Shivith tattoos with more vicious contrast than usual. Dariel kept expecting her to say something. She looked like she wanted to, and he wished she would.

Entertaining such thoughts, he was the last to notice that the wall did, in fact, have a door in it. The last to notice that the door not only existed, but was open, and that a figure within had leaned through and was intently studying them.