The Sacred Band

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Aliver has returned. Aliver has returned. Aliver has…

Since leaving Bocoum, Kelis kept forming the sentence in his mind, making it a chant. The three words made him light-headed with joy. If it was true, it was wonderful beyond anything he had ever dreamed possible. Aliver could pick up where he left off. He could take the crown from Corinn and shape the world back toward what he had always dreamed. Kelis could love him again in life, not just mourn him as a memory. He would deliver Shen, and Aliver would know that Kelis had cared for her from the moment he knew she lived. Even the Santoth would bow to him, a king who has walked the afterdeath and returned to the living.

But as he drew near the hiding place at which he had left the others, a knot of doubt like an enormous knuckle root took shape low in his abdomen. He paused atop a hillock not far from the ravine in which the others camped. Before him, the plains stretched under the dark of the night. Behind him, a copse of trees in whose star shadows he hesitated, trying to shape his thoughts and decide what to say or not when questioned. Some small creature moved in the trees, a ground bird, perhaps, stirring the leaves. He ignored it. He had been all euphoria at first, yet now he could not help but wonder why Corinn brought her brother back. She might love him in her crooked way, but she would never let go of power. What did she…

When he realized what the sound in the trees had become, it was too late. The man hit him at a run, smashing into his side with his shoulder. The attacker was fast. As they fell, he jabbed his fist repeatedly into Kelis’s abdomen. By the time Kelis hit the ground, scraping across the dirt with the other man’s weight on him, the man had Kelis knotted within the hard limbs of his body. They came to rest, panting, with the attacker’s chin pressed like a weapon against Kelis’s temple, pinning his head to the ground. All this in a few seconds.

“Fool!” another man said. He appeared suddenly, out of breath. “We could have followed him to her!”

“Shut up!” the first hissed. His chin ground Kelis’s skin as he spoke. “Gag him.”

The other punched Kelis in the jaw several times and then jammed a wad of cloth in. He secured it with a leather strap that tied behind Kelis’s head. The first man changed position. He squirmed across Kelis’s back, as intimate as a lover, except that his movements were all sharp pressure and corded muscle. For a moment Kelis felt one of his wrists slip free of the man’s pincer grip. He slipped his hand around and tried to get purchase on the ground with it.

The man pressed the flat of a knife to Kelis’s throat. The back-curved point cut into the skin to touch his lower jawbone. “No,” the man whispered. “Don’t do that.” The man pulled Kelis up to his knees, the knife at his neck the whole time. “Bind him.”

The second man did so. Once Kelis’s hands were tied, the two attackers changed positions. The second man slipped his own dagger into place, clamping his other hand on Kelis’s shoulder and driving one bony knee down on his calf. Kelis fought not to wince at the pain.

“Kelis of Umae, I’m assuming,” the first man said. He stood tall in the starlight, his black skin silvered in sharp highlights. His teeth flashed when he smiled. Kelis wanted to make out his features, but his vision blurred, his eyes clogged with dirt and tears. “I am not impressed. Was such an important one really put in your hands? Oh, but you can’t answer, can you?”

“We should have followed him,” the second said.

“They’re near. I could see it in the way he was moving-a daydreamer wasting time. That’s why I took him down. We won’t have to deal with him when we grab her. One less.”

“No!” Kelis screamed into his stuffed mouth. He raised his bound hands before him, a begging gesture.

“What?” the first man said. “Are you not Kelis of Umae? Do you not protect a girl called Shen? This may all be a mistake, yes? Just tell us so if it is.”

There was a trick in the question, Kelis knew. He tried to figure it out, but the possibilities of it seemed as knotted as the wrestling moves that had trapped him.

“Tell us that the girl is not hidden down in the ravine just there.”

Kelis writhed as much as he dared, gesturing with his eyes, touching his fingertips to the gag. Let me talk, he tried to say. Let me talk! He did not know what he would say, but he needed to try.

The man spat in his face. “Ioma said I was not to kill you, but I piss on that. You’ve kept me waiting here too long. This story is yours no longer. Bleed him for the jackals.” The man grinned.

He was still doing so the moment his teeth exploded from his mouth. They flew to the side in a wet spray, propelled by a black shaft that shot through his cheek and out of sight in an instant. The man dropped in a howl of pain, falling away down the slope of the hillock.

Kelis planted his two hands on the dirt and bucked up against the man who held him down. Getting his feet under him, he used the bunched strength of his bent legs and smashed his backside into the man’s torso. He collapsed his upper body into a roll as he did so. The man’s feet went flailing into the air, and he fell headfirst over Kelis to the ground. Kelis rolled, got onto his two hands, and popped up again. He came back on the man before he could rise. He shot out a low, thrusting kick. It caught the man’s head against his heel and snapped it to the side. Solid contact, but the man scrambled up, slashing the air between them with his knife. Kelis circled away, trying hard not to trip. His hands were still bound. Going down again could be the end of him.

The second man kept the blade between them. The whites of his eyes glowed in the moonlight. He looked frantically between Kelis and the first man, who was on the ground, scraping at the dirt as if he would crawl away but did not remember how to do so. “Jos?” the man yelled. “Jos, what is it?” The high pitch that cracked his voice gave away that he knew clearly enough what it was, as did the fact that he snapped around and ran. Two steps and a low branch of an acacia tree scratched his face. He stumbled back from the thorns, cursing.

Kelis reached him. He slammed his bound hands over the man’s head and then hauled back with the full weight of his body. He yanked the man from his feet, swung him around, and then twisted as the vertebrae in the man’s neck snapped apart. He fell in a tangle with the dead man’s body. He had to struggle to get free of the man’s sickening, lolling neck and scrabble to his feet. This took longer than the act of killing him had.

Upright, Kelis stood panting, his eyes darting between the two men. He whirled at a sound, his fists clenched. Ready to kill again.

“Kelis, brother, it’s me.” Naamen moved out of the shadow of a tree. He held a knife low in his strong hand, pinned in place with his thumb so that his fingers stretched open in a gesture that conveyed that he would drop the weapon instead of use it if attacked. Those fingers stilled Kelis, brought him back from the murderous rage coursing through him. “Are you all right?”

Kelis looked between the two attackers, one still living. After Naamen removed his gag, he said, “I heard only a bird.” The words just came out, without thought.

Naamen studied him a moment, and then he used his knife to cut the cords on Kelis’s wrists. “Two birds. Assassin birds, I think. They fly no more. We should, though. We should fly fast.”

“Did you do that?” Kelis pointed at the man still writhing on the ground.

Naamen shook his head. He did not need to explain further. Leeka stepped out of the shadows. He walked around the fallen man, picked up the spear that had shattered his jaw. With one swift movement, he slammed the point into the man’s back, aimed at his heart. He held it there a moment. The prone man did not move anymore. Leeka’s fingers loosened around the shaft, his fingertips light in their touch, as if he were measuring the effect of his strike through it. Then his hand clamped again. He yanked the weapon free and walked toward the two watching men. He held out a spear that Kelis realized belonged to Naamen.

“Let’s go,” the old man said.

Kelis and Naamen did so. It was only later that it occurred to Kelis that those two words were the most normal sounding he had heard from Leeka since the day he had vanished, years before, running in pursuit of the Santoth.

They roused Benabe and Shen just minutes after their encounter with Ou’s men. Their bodies would still have been warm as Kelis strapped Shen to his back and loped away into the last dark hours of the night, iron spear gripped in his fist this time. Benabe, after a few questions, was kind enough to leave the explanation of what had happened alone. She ran with them. She was stronger now, Kelis realized, than she had been at the beginning of their journey together. Or perhaps, like Kelis himself, she just wanted to see all this to a conclusion. Running took them there faster than walking. So they ran.

They pushed on into the morning, climbing into the rocky uplands. They passed through the afternoon, into a land of sheep and goats. They rested only when they stopped for water at the wells the herders marked. Twice they drank from ponds frequented by the grazing animals themselves. Exhausted by the late afternoon, they shared Shen’s weight between them, first one and then the other carrying her. On like this into the merciful cool of the following evening, through which they ran until Naamen stumbled, spilling Shen into the dry grass beside him. After that they cut the pace. They waited through the next day inside a vault of granite boulders, and then took to moving only at night as much as possible.

Throughout all this the Santoth hung there behind them. Sometimes Kelis pushed their pace, unconsciously trying to outrun them. But nothing ever changed. The sorcerers never seemed to fall behind, even though their gait-an ambling rocking motion-stayed steady. They could not be outrun. That did not stop Kelis from trying.

Aliver, I know these are your chosen sorcerers, but lend me your faith in them. Lend it to me, for I have need of it.