The Sacred Band

CHAPTER ONE

Corinn Akaran stepped into the brilliant morning light. She walked across the deck of her transport ship, descended the plank to the Teh docks, and strode through the military officials awaiting her as if all of it were one continuous movement. The men-including Melio Sharratt and General Andeson, Marah and Elite officers-parted around her, stunned even though they had stood in preparation for greeting her since the dawn. For a moment the group did nothing but stare.

The queen wore armor that melded influences from the empire’s provinces. Chain mail covered her arms; it was thin and light but made of fine links of steel, cuffed at the wrists with a hint of Senivalian style. A Meinish thalba wrapped her torso, snug against the contours of her hips and breasts. Her skirt, also of chain mail, was as short as any Talayan runner’s. Leather straps wrapped over her legs, completely covering them in a second skin that was tight around the calf, loose around the knee, and tight again around the upper thighs. Over all this she wore a light Acacian cape that flapped around her as she moved.

Baddel, the Talayan who had jockeyed to be the first to address her on his homeland’s soil, welcomed her with a barrage of enthusiastic praise. He poured forth condolences for the injury done to Prince Aaden. “Numrek treachery knows no bounds! I still can’t…” For a moment he got no further. The queen’s Elite guards swept down in her wake, jolting the advisers into motion. They scurried to keep up with her, all except Melio Sharratt, who seemed at ease and said as she passed, “Your Majesty, I’ve never seen you… dressed in armor.”

“We’re at war,” Corinn said. “In this I’m the same as any in the Known World. General Andeson, tell me.”

By which she meant update her on the most recent intelligence. The general did. The first wave of Marah had swept in upon the Numrek’s seaside villas, catching them at least somewhat unawares. They’d fought among the rambling estates, across the beaches and piers and gardens in which the Numrek had lived in sun-drenched splendor. Soon they had the coastline blockaded. Corps of the Elite pushed inland as the Numrek retreated.

“We pressed them back into the hillside fortress the locals call the Thumb,” the general said. “It’s an ancient structure. We’d thought nothing of it, but the Numrek must have reinforced the walls and stocked it with supplies. They’ve had time to prepare their treachery. We’ve offered battle daily, but they no longer engage.”

“They’ve suddenly gone coward,” a younger officer said.

“No, they’re toying with us,” Melio said. “They send their children onto the battlements to float paper birds on the air. They’re clever with such things.”

Andeson’s sideways glance at him was disapproving. Melio shrugged and mouthed, What? It’s true.

“It’s become something of a waiting game,” Andeson said. “The fortress is built atop a butte. There is but a single track that wraps its way up around it, too narrow and unprotected to march an army up. We’ve lobbed stones and explosives at them, but they’re well dug in. There are tunnels deep within the butte, accessed only from inside it. There’s a water source in there somewhere as well. It may be a matter of starving them to death.”

“An unheroic strategy,” Corinn said.

“I would choose honorable battle every time, Your Majesty, but at times one’s foes make that impossible. These Numrek are vile. They massacred their own servants, you know. Built a wall of their bodies at the base of the Thumb. If you had seen-”

“I’m sure our soldiers have performed well,” Corinn interrupted, “and I have every faith in your leadership. I’ve arrived now. I’ll finish this.”

They progressed out of the docks, through a makeshift storage area in the dusty open space beyond. The Teh coast was somewhat wetter than most of Talay, but this late in the season the grasses that covered the hills to the north were bleached golden by the sun. Corinn was glad to have arranged for horses ahead of time. The mounts awaited them, held by Talayan youths who looked nervous about their unaccustomed work.

“Queen Corinn,” Melio said. “Anything new from Mena?”

“Not since she sent a bird from Luana. I expect to hear from her again soon. Ride with me, Melio. When the Numrek have been dealt with I have an assignment for you. We’ll discuss it as we ride.”

Melio bowed his head, and they stood as the squire attending Corinn’s horse tried to swing it around into position for her.

“There’s a rumor among the soldiers,” Melio said. “It came across on the last few transports. About… Aliver.”

“A rumor? Have Andeson and the other generals heard this rumor?”

“I’m closer to the troops than they. That’s where I heard it, but the rumor is trickling up. It can’t possibly be true, though, right?”

“Between you and me, yes.”

Melio’s face lit up. All his disparate features aligned in a manner that was surprisingly handsome. “Truly? Where is he?”

Corinn stepped on the stool that had been set down for her. Preparing to swing onto the horse, she said, “He is safe in the palace. He needs seclusion just now. He remains fragile. Best not to fan the rumors yet.”

T he night ten days earlier that she had worked her spell had been long and beyond exhausting. She was drained already, what with the sorcery she had worked on Barad and the song she had sung to Elya’s children. She could have dropped into slumber before she even began her third spell, but she needed someone to help her carry the burden of rule. She needed her brother.

As soon as his body became fully corporeal, he slumped forward. He would have fallen had she not sprung up and guided him onto her bed. For a time she stared at the wonder of him. He was really there! Solid, warm to the touch. Breathing. He was naked, but she thought nothing of that. His eyes moved beneath his lids in dream. What does a man dream after returning from death? What was death anyway? Was it not the conqueror of all? No, it wasn’t, for she had just denied it at least one victim. She had so many questions, but even as they formed, her mind went sluggish. She knew that he would slumber long, and so she left Aliver and collapsed on a divan in an adjoining room.

Rhrenna and two maids woke her two days later. Rhrenna would not have disturbed her even then, she explained, save, “He is awake and asking for you.”

With those words Corinn sprang up and rushed back to the other room. Aliver Akaran stood on the balcony, his knuckles white, gripping the stone balustrade, his jaw loose with astonishment. He wore a morning robe, tied at the waist. Rhrenna must have ordered it brought for him.

Corinn turned to figure out what fascinated her brother so. The sky above was the color and texture of a blue eggshell. The morning sun, just free of the horizon, was cut in half by one long sliver of pink cloud. A flock of black neck divers folded their wings one after another and plummeted like darts, exploding into the water of the harbor in a feeding frenzy. Thin lines of smoke rose like flower stems from the lower town. It could have been any of these things.

Aliver set his gaze on her. His eyes were a darker brown than she remembered. His skin was no longer as pale as it had been the first night. It was a richer color, tanned to a light brown. Now that she saw him clearly, she realized she had combined his features with Hanish’s when she had pictured him. He was older than when she knew him last. Immeasurably older, though he gave that impression not so much in the details of his features as in the distance of the consciousness behind them.

He said, “I’d forgotten so much.”

“I as well,” Corinn answered.

“You were a girl,” he said.

Corinn shook her head. “I never was.”

Aliver tested an expression on his face. Disappointment. Or confusion. Disapproval. Some combination of these that his features could not spell out yet. “I am sure you were.”

Corinn brushed her hand down the curls of hair near his temple, wrapped her palm around the back of his head. She pulled him close and touched their foreheads together, something her father used to do with her. “I remember a smaller version of myself, but not a girl. No girl should be as afraid as I was.”

“You still are.”

Drawing back, she shook her head. “No. I have to explain many things to you.”

In the few days before she left for the Teh coast, Corinn tried to convey as much as possible to him. The world had not paused outside the palace to grant her a respite. It felt necessary that she have him to herself, that she bind him to the truth as she knew it.

She ordered Rhrenna and the two maids to complete silence about Aliver’s return. She had her quarters emptied of other staff and servants, stationed guards only outside her chambers. She wanted to be alone with her brother. She did not even try to find a reasoned approach to what she told him. She just spoke. She offered what information came to her, circling back to give context, jumping forward to the present and then realizing by the look of glazed distance on his features that she had lost him. His eyes sometimes went as stone-dead as Barad’s, vacant, sightless, and yet staring. Each time she stopped and breathed and began again. She reminded him who he was. She assured him that it was urgent that he return to life and complete the work he had left unfinished. Not only that, there were new complications and threats, and she needed someone she could trust completely at her side.

Aliver moved about the rooms, restless, studying things, lifting objects and turning them in his hands. She walked, following his lead as he explored the gardens, touching plants and watching birds and stopping to marvel at things-the pressure of the wind when it blew, the heat of the sun on his skin, the colors in the terrace tiles. Corinn sometimes thought he had forgotten her, but if she stopped speaking he shifted his attention to her.

They ate together as often as Corinn could manage. Simple meals, at first, without the sweet and sour spices common to Acacian cuisine. Watching him dip flatbread into olive oil, Corinn almost thought herself a new mother again. He shoved the bread into his mouth and worked his jaw, so focused on it that he ignored the oil dripping down his chin. He ate as a child does: the food had his attention completely.

She could not stay hidden in her rooms all day. There was no end to the work of the empire. She had to meet with advisers and senators. Emissaries still sailed in from around the Known World, both to offer condolences for the Numrek betrayal and to ask if the news of a pending invasion should be credited. She told them it could. It was real. She allowed no doubt about it, even though in other meetings she drilled Sire Dagon as if she did not believe, trying to rip more information out of him.

The world was in turmoil, and she alone had the responsibility of calming it. Good, then, that she did not feel as overpowered by it as she had before bringing Aliver back. In some ways things had quieted. He had a long way to go before he could emerge as the symbol of her power that she hoped he would, but for the time being it was good just being with him. He made her think of her father. He even made her feel closer to Mena and Dariel. She wished they were here to see what she had done. How pleased Dariel would be! Mena, too. Aliver’s return would make up for all the strife that had tainted their relationships. They would start anew.

F or two days the Numrek in the Thumb did not answer the messages Corinn sent them. It was only after she had stood in clear sight of the butte-top fortress and shouted up to them herself that they believed she had come to speak with them. With the chieftain Calrach gone to the Other Lands, and with Greduc and Codeth slain on that bloody day in the Carmelia, Corinn had not been entirely sure with whom she would parlay. Gathered within the shade of a gently billowing linen tent, she learned that Crannag, a relation of Calrach’s, now held power. He was older than the chieftain, more a warrior than a statesman. Good. That suited her.

Crannag sat alone. He set his hands on his knees, tossed his black hair, and grinned. This man had once stood at the door of her quarters, of Aaden’s. Now she could barely recognize the guard he had been in the smug lines of his face.

“All right, Queen. I’m here.” He held up his strong arms and made a show of searching his torso for weapons. He was shirtless, the muscles of his chest sectioned and defined. He was some thirty paces away, so he had to project his voice. “What do you want of me?”

“I want you to die,” Corinn said.

Crannag guffawed. “You could have that. Your Marah there… ah… together… me with no weapons, them fully armed… I think they might have me, if they wanted. Of course, I might just be able to get a hand around your neck first.” He reached out, pretending to suffer body blows as he grasped for her. The pantomime was too much for him. He bent forward around his laughter.

“It’s not just you that I want to die,” Corinn said. “I want all Numrek to pay for your treachery.”

Crannag’s leather-brown face went grave. “You want me to go back in there and get my people to come out and be slaughtered. We have other things planned now. A long plan, Queen. You didn’t know Numrek have patience, did you? You always thought us grumpy, grumpy Numreks. Ah…” He snapped his fingers, and his eyes rolled up as he searched for the right word, then found it. “Taciturn. You like that? You thought us ta-ci-turn. You thought we had nothing better to do than stand by your door as you slept and ate and thought yourself the queen of the world. It’s a tiny piece of turd island, but it’s the center of the world!”

Crannag leaned back in his seat. It was but a campstool with a slim backrest, but he managed to lounge in it. “We were acting, Queen. Just acting. Waiting. You promised us that you would help us return to Ushen Brae. You never meant to keep that promise. You lied. Now you pay for it.” He drew phlegm from his throat and spat toward Corinn. Considering the distance between them, the spittle landed surprisingly close to her feet. She felt her Marah tense. Someone drew his sword a few inches from its scabbard. “You came for nothing. We won’t fight. We can wait there”-he pointed up toward the plug of stone that rose out of the rolling landscape behind him-“for as long as we need. When the Auldek come, we will greet them as cousins and brothers and we will show them the bounty we’ve found for them.”

“You don’t know that the Auldek will come. For all you know they still scorn you.”

“You know nothing.” Crannag rose, and his shoulder swiped at the air as he turned away, almost like a blow.

“I know this!” Corinn said. “You are a coward!”

Crannag trudged away. He waved one arm, dismissing her accusation as if it were an insect.

“The Numrek hiding in that fortress are quivering,” Corinn continued. She stood and began to follow him. Her guards jumped to keep pace with her. “Your men are dogs, no braver than your children. Your women are whipped bitches. I will tell the world this is so. News of it will fly on every bird to every province. The Known World will scorn you, and if the Auldek ever arrive, they will learn of your cowardice. I would not wish to be you.” She spat toward him. “Not after I tell the world that I came here and offered you battle on these terms: an equal number of my force to fight yours. Equal numbers, Crannag! One Acacian for every Numrek. No more.”

The warrior paused but did not turn back to face her.

“How will you explain that?” She stood in the full sun now. The shade tent flapped behind her with a sudden gust of air. She waited a moment longer, then added more lightly, knowing that Crannag would turn to make sure he heard her correctly, “I will be one of them. I will take to the field myself.”

A few days earlier, on the evening before she was to leave for Teh, Corinn had been occupied with affairs of state all day. She did not join Aliver until after her late meetings. She found him, to her surprise, standing inside the door that would have led him out into the upper courtyard, into the view of the guards and general palace staff.

“What are you doing?”

He blinked rapidly for a moment. “I want to see my quarters. My own rooms, with my things… I should see them. I should stay in them.”

“You will.” Corinn gently turned him and led him away from the door, back into her own chambers. “Don’t rush, though. You have everything you need here. Stay here until I return from my trip.”

“Your trip. Why are you going? What trip is it?”

Having gotten Aliver seated in a side parlor, Corinn lowered herself to the plush chair opposite. She relaxed into it, truly fatigued, knowing that she should rest in preparation for the morrow. A small fire burned in the hearth, and she commented on the warmth of the room and the early chill in the air tonight. Aliver watched the fire, but not with the curiosity he had shown during the first few days. He was changing already. The world did not amaze him as it had before. He was more at ease in his body, quicker with words. In the new clothes Rhrenna had brought for him he looked very much a prince. At times his eyes still glazed over, but just as often he snapped out of it with a shake of his head.

“There are things I don’t understand,” Aliver said.

Corinn bent her head forward as she unwrapped the lace shawl from around her neck. “You have to relearn the world. It can’t happen overnight.”

“I’m already forgetting death.”

“Good, Aliver, good. Life is what matters. Even in death, spirits told you of the living. That’s what you said to me the first night we talked.”

“I thought that, but it doesn’t seem the way it was anymore. When I was dead, I was not a self. I was not a single mind. I was spread thinly across the world. I was part of everything. Like a very fine dust that gets into everything.” Aliver no longer had difficulty controlling his facial expressions. He frowned, and Corinn did not question whether he meant to or not. “When I was like that, the lives of humans did not register as of much import. I cared about the tree of Akaran about as much as a stone on the path in the gardens outside does.”

“But you said you knew things that had happened after your death.”

“I learned those things in the moments you were pulling me together. I did know things. I do, but they didn’t have meaning until I was becoming Aliver again.”

A piper announced the midnight hour then. Both siblings cocked their heads to listen as the tune passed from the palace down toward the lower town, a delicate cascade of sound.

It reminded Corinn of her fatigue. “I wish that we could stay locked away for days upon days. I would tell you everything. Absolutely everything. I’d have you understand me completely, so that you saw the world with my eyes.”

The rapidity with which his gaze snapped back to her caused her to pause. “I prefer my own eyes,” Aliver said.

“I mean only that I will help you, until you can see fully on your own. The world has changed, Aliver, as I’ve been explaining.”

He shook his head. “No, you haven’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“You told me you needed me. That I am here to help you.”

“You are,” Corinn said.

“But you’re not telling the things that matter! You’re going away tomorrow, but you haven’t told me why.”

For a moment Corinn was speechless. She stood up and moved behind her chair, running her hands over the backrest and then gripping it. “Of course I did.”

Aliver’s mouth puckered into a sour expression Corinn remembered from years ago. He said, “No, you didn’t. You brought me back from the dead, but you haven’t even explained how. You haven’t spoken of Mena or Dariel. From your lips-nothing about them.”

“That’s not true.” She must have! They spoke for hours. What else was more important?

“You talk and talk, but you tell me nothing. You haven’t even told me of your son.”

To that she had no response. It was an impossible statement. She thought of Aaden always; she visited him several times each day; she whispered to him all about Aliver’s return; she had come back to Aliver and…

I told him nothing of my son, she thought. Why? It took all her concentration to nod and say, “Aliver, I have a son. His name is Aaden. He is your nephew. He is to be heir. He will be the greatest Akaran monarch yet.” There! That’s what I meant to tell him.

“I would like to meet him.”

“You will. He is not well right now, though. When I return from Teh. Just rest here until then. When I return, you’ll meet Aaden and see the rest of the palace. You’ll see others and talk to them. We’ll send a bird to Mena and we’ll talk about Dariel, too.”

Aliver eyed her. “You are going to confront the Numrek in Teh?”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What I must,” she said. “What they brought upon themselves.”

“You can’t kill them all.”

“What do you know of it?” Corinn retorted. “You know so little of what’s happened. Let me explain it to you, but give me time.”

“As you have made such good use of the time we’ve had so far?”

Corinn rubbed the plush arms of her chair. She watched the way the passage of her hand changed the look of the velvet, from light to dark, dark to light. “I don’t like this side of you.”

“Which side is that? The one that thinks?”

“The one that blunders through the world with noble ideals based on nothing. Look at the fact that you died and I did not. That you failed and I did not.”

“If that’s what you believe, you should have left me with the dust. You’ve made a mistake.”

Was that a note of threat? Corinn wondered. It was, wasn’t it? Back among the living so briefly, and already we are at odds. If they fought here, now, what battles lay ahead? He would be a thorn in her side instead of an ally. She knew then that she had made a mistake. A small error. One that could be corrected.

The notes of the song swirled in her mind before she had even called for them. She would have him as that ally, a symbol and miracle to a world that needed symbols and miracles. She would also have his obedience. The song would make it so.

She spoke through the spell playing out in her mind. “When I return, Aliver, we will start to make plans for your coronation. Brother and sister, king and queen. No marriage, but a union unlike anything the world has ever known. Why not? Are we not unlike any that have come before? The old laws don’t apply to us. We will be stronger, and wiser together. Our strengths will bring the empire closer together than ever before. Can you see that?”

Aliver looked away from her, unwilling to answer. The song whispered through Corinn’s lips, quietly binding him. Binding him, so that when he did answer he gave her exactly the affirmation she wished for.

C orinn walked at the head of a contingent of one thousand, three hundred, and seventeen soldiers. With her included, their numbers matched the remaining Numrek adults, men and women both, all those of fighting age and some beyond it but still proud. The Numrek children lined the walls of the Thumb, watching from high above.

The two forces met on the field to the west of the fortress. The land was arid and flat, perfect for battle. The sky a light, cloudless blue. Beneath it, the Numrek gathered. They were tall, seven feet the norm among the men, the women shorter perhaps but just as stoutly built. Their hair hung as it always had, thick and black, oily. Most wore light armor, but many went bare armed; and some left their chests exposed. They were warriors. Their curved swords and battle-axes and the jagged slivers of knives at their belts attested to it.

Corinn heard her officers conferring. She turned and drew General Andeson’s eyes. “It remains as I told you last night,” she said. “No weapons are to be drawn. Understood? I will do this myself.”

She turned back to face the enemy. There was a sudden buzz of arguing behind her. She knew what they were saying. They thought her some fool version of Aliver, trying to re-create his mistake in fighting Maeander Mein on a field much like this one. If they had their way, she would be shunted to the rear of the army and encased within a wall of Marah, long-legged soldiers who would stand ready to lift her and sprint at the least sign of danger. That’s what they had said last night, at least-that her safety was paramount.

In truth they feared fighting the Numrek without a much superior force. Why offer the terms she had? They argued it was madness. They might have balked at her order, but they feared shame even more-just like the Numrek. They feared her, though they likely half wished she would perish. Die and yet somehow leave them alive afterward to fight among themselves for power. All this was true. No matter. Let them watch and learn yet more of who she truly was. What had she told Aliver she was going to do? She had said…

For a moment she could not remember. And then it came to her. She had said, Destroy them. I’ll destroy them.

With that thought behind her, she opened her mind to the song. At first she kept it within the curve of her skull, letting it build, searching for the rhythms within the dissonance. And what a cacophony it was! Had she not known better, she would have thought the noises in her head were the tumultuous ravings of a world exploding. Raw emotion and anger and beauty and longing and hunger screamed in a thousand ways at once, with the timbre of myriad voices and notes played on all manner of instruments at war with one another.

She could also hear order within the confusion. She could pinch with her mind’s fingers the song fragments she wished, each of them a living, moving line of codes and runes and words all held in fluid motion along ribbons slithering through the tumult. She could hold much more of it now than when she had first begun her study. She found meaning more easily than even a few weeks ago, before Aaden nearly died and before she worked her spells upon Barad’s eyes and Elya’s children and before gathering back the spirit that had been Aliver. Yes, she had much more mastery now.

She walked forward. She parted her lips and let the first notes of the song escape her mouth, barely louder than exhaled breaths. The Numrek, accepting her commencement of the battle, strode to meet her. As the distance between them closed, the song grew stronger and began to shift the substance of the air, creating currents around her that seethed and squirmed. She felt the heart of the spell gather in her chest, a stone of greater and greater density. Her mind seethed with hatred. That was what she would give them. She would hurl at them a roiling animus that could take no single shape but instead erupted in ever-changing forms. What she saw happen on the field before her reflected this. Had she not owned it so completely she would have been just as shocked by the horror of it as the soldiers behind her were.

Suddenly the stone inside her surged up out of her chest, scorched through her throat, and rushed from her mouth in a great torrent. The Numrek paused in their tracks. Some backstepped. Many fell as if shoved savagely. Corinn centered her gaze on Crannag. She knew as it happened that his face was going to blister with a heat from within, that his hair was going to burst into flame, and that a moment after his skull would burst.

The man beside him tried to flee, but his legs and arms moved stiffly. They folded and snapped. In seconds he was on the ground, writhing but incapable of action, his bones fracturing with each effort. Another Numrek stepped over him, coming forward, and Corinn knew the moment his skin would erupt with maggots that consumed his living flesh. His armor and weapons and even the sudden wig that was his hair fell to the earth along with the squirming mass that had been his body.

And so it was throughout the entire Numrek force. No two among them died the same way, but each one did die. A woman became a sack of flesh with nothing solid inside. A man thrust his hand into his breast and pulled out his own heart. Some panted and contorted with unknowable tortures. Some blistered with poxlike scars or went yellow or gangrenous. Things grew inside a few, protrusions and antlers that burst their skin as they screamed. Some danced as if they were being hacked by unseen weapons. One youth ran raging, his mouth red with blood. An old soldier lowered himself to the ground and-a single still point among the chaos-folded into himself, and turned to ash.

Through it all Corinn let her body be the song’s instrument. It gave her what she wished and went further, making it more terrible than she could have imagined. At some point the stream of sound slowed, slackened. And then ceased altogether.

The silence was gorgeous, even if it was not a complete silence. She heard her soldiers retching. At least one of the officers behind her spilled his breakfast in a splatter on the ground. A few mumbled prayers or expressed disbelief. And yet in the wake of the song such sounds were dwarfed by the magic that had come before. Homage, really, to the language of creation. And destruction. The reverence did not just come from the Numrek dead. Not just from her trembling soldiers. This silence was sung to her by the entire world. All creation had been awed speechless.

So it seemed for the stretch of many breaths. The army came up behind her. Realizing that her officers stood hushed and waiting, Corinn said, “Send soldiers to the fortress for the children. They are to live, for now, as our hostages.”

The queen turned around, the links of her chain mail clanking as she did so. General Andeson was staring at her, pale faced. Melio stood beside him, his eyes fixed on the carnage. They recoiled when the stench of burning flesh and offal hit them. The stink and gases of bodies turned inside out was almost too much to bear. Corinn breathed through her mouth. She took her strength from the awe and revulsion and fear in the men’s faces.

“But these that I’ve eliminated here,” she continued, “burn them all. Reduce what’s left of their corpses to ashes and have them brought back to Acacia. We will mix them with mortar and repave the streets of the lower town with them. From now on, even the humblest peasant will walk atop the remains of the Numrek. Thus it will be for any who oppose me.”

Andeson’s throat caught. Instead of speaking, he nodded.

Corinn turned on her heel, satisfied.

She almost reached the horses before she wavered, stumbled, then fell.