The Sacred Band

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Midmorning of the day on which he would first see the Sky Isle, Dariel dropped behind the others and stood ankle-deep in a narrow little brook, one of many that flowed toward the Sky Lake. He welcomed the cool touch of it on his feet. He was here. Those were stones beneath his feet. The water brought an icy chill, cleansing. Bashar and Cashen both crashed through the underbrush nearby, filled with exuberant energy. He was here, and in just a few minutes he would see the man he had come all this way to meet. Would their interaction be as profound as the days he spent with Na Gamen? That hardly seemed possible.

“Dariel?” Anira came toward him. “Are you ready? You can see it over the next rise. The others are waiting. Come. The Sky Isle awaits. Take my hand.”

She stretched out her hand. He grasped it without a second thought, content to feel the strength and gentleness of her grip. Here was another thing. They had not spoken of their intimacy beside the pool, but it was there between them. He was sure it would happen again, and he wanted it to. It felt right. He did not think too often of Wren, as he feared he might. He promised himself he would later, but really he felt no shame in what he had done with Anira. That had to mean something.

They joined the others on the grassy slope of a hill that tumbled down toward a horizon-wide lake. They all watched as he and Anira approached. They must know, Dariel thought. He could not tell if it mattered. By Birke’s smile and Tam’s indifferent expression and Mor’s impatience he surmised that it did not. Something about this disappointed him. Mor, at least, should have shown some emotion. Jealousy was too much to hope for. He would have settled for derision. It would only have been fair, considering the effort it took for him to turn his thoughts from her. And that made no sense either. He had done nothing with her. Never would. Why did his thoughts about Mor feel like betrayal of Wren while his actual intimacy with Anira did not? He would never understand matters of his heart. Best to stop trying.

Looking at the vista beyond them, he said, “I can see where the name came from.”

The Sky Isle appeared to hover above the earth. Its peak was the smooth, pointed cone of a volcano. Partway down, its slopes disappeared into a narrow circlet of clouds. Beneath them ran a hazy band, colorless and vague above the sparkling green waters of the lake. It looked as if they would be able to sail across the waters and pass beneath the mountain, gazing up into the clouds upon which it floated.

The hike down took an hour. As they dropped out of the heights Dariel lost sight of the lake. They picked up a path and wound through a forest of slim, silver-skinned trees. Their bark came away in delicate peels that crunched underfoot. The leaves of the trees formed triangular points, tiny kites that quivered when the breeze brushed their boughs. They had a touch of red mixed with the green. Dariel could not tell if this was their regular coloring, or if it was a sign of the winter season. It should be winter, but this land gave so little sign of it.

Behind them came a commotion of limbs snapping. Dariel spun to see the tree crowns near one side of the path behind them swaying and trembling. Something large pushed through them and stepped out onto the path with a sickening, lumbering grace. A kwedeir. A man stood attached to its back, high behind its wolfish head.

Bashar and Cashen bristled and growled. Dariel clawed for the dagger strapped to his leg, but before he got it loosened Mor had raised an arm in greeting. She called something to the rider in Auldek and snapped at Birke. Birke squatted between Bashar and Cashen, pulling them to his side and soothing them. The mount came forward. It walked on its wing limbs, all angles and joints, flaps of skin like oil-black leather. The rider answered, and then found Dariel with his eyes. Stared.

No more was said. Birke nudged Dariel back into motion by handing him Cashen to carry. He hefted Bashar himself. The kwedeir and rider followed them the rest of the way. Dariel would have looked back more if the hounds had not done so for him. Between them they passed their growling displeasure back and forth.

A little farther on they passed guards posted on either side of the path. Before long they had an escort flanking them: two older men with short swords sheathed at the thigh; a youth who walked with a limp; a tall, rangy woman with a bow and arrow pinched between the fingers of one hand.

A group of a dozen old men and women awaited them on the shore. Behind them a pier crooked out into the lake, a barge secured to it, motionless on the clear, mirrorlike water. In the distance the volcanic peak of the Sky Isle thrust up into view again, still growing from an island of cloud. The air was moist with the smell of the lake. It was strangely saltless. It’s not the sea, Dariel thought.

He glanced at Mor. She looked breathless with relief and joy. For a moment, her guise of control and detachment fell from her face. By following her gaze, Dariel picked out Yoen. That was who the look was for, the look of a daughter seeing a father. Yoen stood at the center of the elders. A short, frail-looking man, he favored one leg over the other, leaning on a cane of carved wood. His hair was disheveled, unruly like a child’s that had been tousled. His skin was Acacian brown, a complexion just like Dariel’s. He smiled, briefly, at Mor.

They stopped in front of the waiting elders. For a moment no one spoke. Dariel remembered the squirming burden in his arms. He set Cashen down. The pup stood, unsure of the moment’s protocol.

The woman to one side of Yoen wore a circlet woven of leaves. It looked like it could be dismantled by a light breeze. Her features had more solidity, and her voice was Talayan. Dariel could tell from the timbre of it, even though she first spoke Auldek. Mor answered her, bowing her head as she did so. The two spoke for a moment, and then the woman turned toward him.

“Are you the one they call Dariel Akaran?” she asked, speaking Acacian.

“I am.”

“Did you speak with Na Gamen, the Watcher of the Sky Mount?”

“Yes.”

The man whom Dariel already thought of as Yoen asked, “Did he tell you to come here?”

“Yes.” Dariel looked at him, realizing that he wore no signs of belonging, no tattoo or piercing or any other enhancement.

“What did he tell you of the circle?”

“That it could be closed,” Dariel said.

“It can be, though the way is hard.” The man lifted his left arm, crooked in an invitation to an embrace. “I am Yoen. Come to me.”

Dariel stepped forward. He raised his arms, thinking that he would set them lightly on the man’s thin shoulders so as not to harm him. He was completely unprepared for what happened next.

It was not that the old man was fast, but just that the action did not make sense until it was completed. Yoen’s lowered hand snatched the hilt of Dariel’s dagger. He slipped the blade free from the sheath and thrust it upward into Dariel’s gut with a force that should not have been possible from such a frail-looking arm. The impact doubled Dariel over on top of Yoen. The pain did not stop. It stayed, the moment of impact sustained and unrelenting. It was so great that the burning sensation on his forehead barely registered.

When Yoen pulled back, Dariel looked down at the shaft of the dagger, the blade deep in his abdomen. “I am sorry,” the old man said. “This had to be done. You had to be killed, so that…”

That was all Dariel heard before he toppled to the ground.