The Sacred Band

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

When asked to describe it, Dariel said he did not remember anything. In truth, he remembered his return from death with a clarity not of an experience passed but of one yet to come. It went something like this. For a time, he was not a man at all. He was a single bubble-one of infinite millions that pressed softly against him-dislodged from the depths of an abyssal floor and rising through the black fathoms in which nothing at all lived. He knew the entire time that he might pop at any moment, might cease to be or be swallowed by some unliving mouth driven by unliving hunger, suddenly roaring out of the black. He would not have been able to explain that he became more and more terrified the closer he got to life. Nor would he ever try to describe that passing into life did not feel like surfacing or birth or waking. It felt like smashing against a ceiling of black obsidian and vanishing.

And then he was a man. He moaned the air out of his lungs, lay empty for a moment, and remembered to suck air back inside himself.

“Dariel,” a voice said.

He had a name.

He opened his eyes. Anira’s brown visage looked down on him. She ran her hands over his face and neck and chest. “Dariel, by Anet and her young… I thought you were dead. They said you would come back, but I feared…” She leaned over him and kissed him, and then, as if sensing that her relief may have been premature, she grasped him by the shoulders. “Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

He was not ready to commit just yet. His eyes darted about the small, tidy room. They were alone. He lay on a cot; Anira sat on a stool beside it. An intricate openwork band ran around the wall at eye level. Through it came the sounds of the village: people talking, a dog barking, chickens clucking their singsong rumination on the world. He could have stepped to the screen and looked through, but the sound made him hesitate. It was too mundane to be trusted.

“What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.” But saying it, he did. He had come to meet the elders. He had gone to embrace Yoen and…

He propped himself on one elbow and clawed his tunic up with his other hand. He ran a palm over his abdomen, searching for the wound he knew should be there. His skin was smooth, ridged with his muscles and curled with light hairs.

“There was a knife,” he said, but there was no knife. Not anymore. Not sticking out of his belly, nor leaving any trace that one ever had. “He tried to kill me. You saw it.”

“No, he didn’t,” Anira said.

“He stabbed me.” He clutched his abdomen for proof, but again his body denied him. “I mean… he tried to. What happened?”

“He’ll explain.” Anira stood and stepped back from him, looking him up and down. “First, get ahold of yourself. We’re on the Sky Isle, in Elder Yoen’s village. You’re not dead. Not even hurt. Tell me you don’t feel stronger than ever before. You look it. And you have this.”

She reached for his forehead. Her touch felt strange. He felt the pressure of her fingers but not the sensation of her skin against his. Pulling back, she indicated that he should feel for himself. Reluctantly, he did so. A section of his flesh was rough beneath his fingertips, raised and hard like a scab.

“Is there a mirror?”

Anira looked around a moment, twisted away, and came back, rubbing the curve of a metal saucer. The image Dariel saw reflected in it was distorted and blurry. He squinted one eye and studied what he saw there for a long time. A rune of some sort. A character in a language he could not read, drawn in short, assured swipes as if by an ink brush, black against his beige skin, a black so solid that the Shivith spots underneath the symbol did not show through it.

“What in the Giver’s Name is that?” he demanded, feeling curiosity more than rage, but letting anger drive his words anyway.

“Your destiny. Your name. Come, meet Yoen again. He’ll explain everything to you. Yoen said to-”

“Not him!” Dariel sat up. He swung his legs over the cot and drove his feet down against the floor. Standing upright so quickly made his head swim. “Not…” Though his eyes did not close, the world went black.

T he second time Dariel awoke, he took care to sit up slowly. This time, there was more than one face to take in. Anira perched on the edge of the cot down near his knees, her hands clasped around one of his. Tam and Birke stood against the wall. The latter flashed his canine smile when Dariel’s eyes passed over him. Mor was saying something to a white-haired matron with Shivith clan spots on her face, like Mor’s. Like his, he remembered. Even as his gaze moved he knew that they had yet to settle on the person they must. He felt the presence beside him, sitting where Anira had sat before. He wished for anger as he shifted his gaze to the old man. Wished for anger and prepared for fear and… felt neither.

Yoen’s expression of sad joy was etched in every crevice of his features. His eyelids drooped at the outer edges, giving his face an almost puppylike softness. He said something, his voice kind as he leaned forward. Dariel did not understand it, and the old man realized as much. “Forgive me,” he said. “When I forget myself I speak Auldek. Mor teases me for it. Don’t you, dearest? What she doesn’t know is that it embarrasses me that the language of my enslavers comes faster to my mouth than the one of my native land. But we’re not here to speak about me. I should explain to you what happened. Do you want to hear it now, or should we wait until you feel stronger?”

Lying there, feeling weak and yet refreshed at the same time, with the memory of death so near him still, Dariel knew there were a variety of things he could say in response. Angry things. Defiant and accusatory and indignant ones. He just could not remember what they might be. Instead, he said, “I want to know now.”

“Of course you do.” Yoen smiled, a quick grin full of large teeth so healthy that they seemed mismatched with his elderly face. “All right. I’ll tell you a brief version of it. We can talk more later, but you should understand this much. You died.” He did not smile again, though the pronouncement had the ring of a joke’s revelation. “And then again you didn’t.”

Dariel just stared at him.

“The Sky Watcher Na Gamen did something to you, didn’t he? He told you things and showed you things, and he did something else. What was it?”

“You mean… the blessing?”

“Is that how you think of it?” The old man said something else, which at first Dariel did not catch. And then he did. Yes, tell me of the blessing, Yoen had said.

“He…” Dariel stopped, realizing that he wanted to know where the sentence was going before he began it. What was the blessing? A small thing compared to the wonders that Na Gamen had showed him: yet it was this that came to mind. He could think of nothing else in answer to the question. “He…” And he had to pause again. The thing on his forehead. The rune raised out of his skin. He felt like he should understand before he spoke, but it was not working that way. It was hard to get his tongue around the words. “He… wrote upon my forehead with a stylus of sorts. A Lothan Aklun thing.”

“Yes, he did,” Yoen said.

Dariel reached as if to touch it again, but let his fingers just hover near it. “It wasn’t like this. He wrote but there was nothing. No ink, or…”

“He was not writing with ink, Dariel Akaran. He was writing with his life soul. He wrote with the energy that was his true being, his first, the soul he was born with. He put that into you through that stylus. He asked something very precious of you, Dariel. He asked that you carry him here to be killed, so that in dying he might join with you. That’s what he did. It was something different from what they did with the soul catcher. This time, it wasn’t really you who died. And it wasn’t really Na Gamen. It was a little bit of both of you. You are now both yourself and him. He gave you the knowledge that you will need to fulfill the destiny written in this character. I imagine his soul is very strong, older and larger than a normal person’s. You have more than a normal measure of life within you.” The old man reached out and touched the raised symbol. “This will be hard to understand, so don’t try to. There is more to it, I believe, but that’s for you to figure out in time. Right now… Well, you already know more than you realize. Listen to the words I am speaking. Do you hear them? You do, yes?”

Dariel nodded.

Without breaking eye contact with him, Yoen asked, “Mor, what language have I been speaking since I began explaining the ‘blessing’?”

“Auldek.”

“And what language did he speak in response?”

“Auldek.”

Dariel looked at her. She stood straight and beautiful, her face as astonished as he had ever seen it. The others’ as well. They all stared at him with gravity enough that he almost believed them. “But I don’t know Auldek,” he said.

“Considering that you are speaking it,” Yoen said, “I think you do. I think you will come to realize you know many things that you did not before. Now”-he looked around, squint-eyed as if he had forgotten his spectacles someplace and was looking for them-“I should show you the village, and show the village you. Come, walk with me.”

As improbable as it seemed, even as it happened, Dariel rose. He set his feet more carefully this time, and stood with Anira’s aid. She led him past the others and out into a humid, overcast morning.

It looked just as it had sounded from inside the small room: a village among the trees, with the peak of the volcano rising to the west. Small cabins, simply made from the slim, purple-skinned trees of the area. Hard-packed dirt lanes running through them. As they stepped into the light, a gaggle of hens scattered from the cluster they had formed at the door. Eavesdroppers.

The people in the street stopped what they were doing, as if their labors had been but an excuse to position themselves to see Dariel step out among them. They wore peasant clothes, brighter hued than what he would have expected in the Known World, but similar in their simple, functional construction. Two old men, a woman with gray hair tied back, another who wore Lvin whiskers tattooed on her cheeks, several others of middle age, with varying clan markings. A boy of twelve or so stood entrapped within the wooden framework of some tool. He had been carrying it, but he froze and just stood gaping. Just like the rest. Just like Dariel himself.

Cashen came bounding into view, his nose held high and his tail whirling in circles. He caught sight of Dariel, dropped the stick he was carrying, and sprinted toward him. Bashar was not far behind.

T hat was, what? Four, five days ago? Dariel was not sure. He was not yet free of the vision of death he had awoken with, so that each time he burst back into consciousness he was unsure for a time whether he was truly alive. He knew he had slept and woken several times, but the waking hours of each day were something of a blur. A strange blur, quiet instead of noisy. A blur of faces seeking out his face, touching his forehead, and speaking their names to him. A blur of conversations, questions asked and answered, which led to new questions to be asked and answered. The days passed as if disconnected from normal time. Dariel knew that was not really so. It was wishful thinking. He was not with Na Gamen anymore. Behind the peaceful workings of his days in the village he knew the world went on. This reprieve was to be brief.

So, on whatever day this was-the fourth or fifth among the Free People hidden on the Sky Isle deep within Ushen Brae-Dariel stood, sharing a long silence with Yoen. They had climbed out of the village and were taking in the settlement from a bend on the path that led up to the pear and apple orchards.

“Do you see that tree there, in the center of that clearing?” Yoen asked.

Dariel saw it. Not as tall as the trees that grew around the base of the volcano’s rich slopes, it had a gnarled, aged quality to its twisting limbs, which stretched wider than it was tall. “It looks like an acacia tree, except that they don’t grow that large.”

“Here they do,” Yoen said. “It’s a very ancient tree. It’s sacred to us. Na Gamen himself planted it there from a cutting taken from the original. It is, as you say, an acacia tree. Another transplant to this land, yes?” He lifted his cane. He speared the ground ahead of him and began his slow ascent again.

Dariel knew him well enough to know that was all he had to say on the subject of the tree. He walked, taking in the view. The village was such a small part of it, dwarfed by the trees that hung over it and the volcano and the rolling landscape that hulked off to the west. The peaks of Rath Batatt were hazy shapes in the distance.

“I’d expected there to be more of you,” Dariel said. He spoke Auldek. He believed it now. He could switch between it and Acacian with complete fluency. The word structures and grammatical rules were vastly different, but both languages were equally clear to him, neither one more or less foreign than the other. “Mor made it seem like… like I’d find a paradise of Free People thriving out here.”

“Is that not what you see?”

“In a manner of speaking, I guess.”

“Mor sees not just what is but what she hopes will be. The two live in her at once. Give her purpose. You must consider this when you speak with her; but, no, we are not numerous, Dariel. If we were, the Auldek might have had cause to destroy us. That was why we split into smaller villages, spread out along the rim of the mountains.”

“Did they attack you often?”

“Years ago they hunted us for sport, but they grew tired of that over the centuries. Many of us were unwanted anyway. To beings enslaved by their immortality, the aged are no welcome sight. We make them uneasy. We remind them of themselves. You saw all the gray hairs in the company and fewer teeth than our numbers might suggest.” In contradiction to this, Yoen smiled. “What immortally young person would want us around?”

“You’re not all old.”

“Oh, not all. No, no. Some of the young ones the Auldek deemed defective for some reason. Not many, but occasionally the Aklun missed a frailty of mind or body. And some suffered injuries not easily healed. Ones like that the Auldek did not concern themselves with if they disappeared. I’ve lived these many years not sure what the Auldek think of us.”

“Look at these here!” the elder exclaimed. He careened off the path at what seemed a dangerous burst of speed, into an orchard of manicured trees that hung heavy with fruit. “The size of these! Aren’t they beauties?”

Dariel admitted to never having seen pears so large. He had to cup one in a two-handed grip to tug it free. Yoen was more selective. Dariel watched him sort through the branches, testing different fruit beneath the pressure of his thumb. “The season is perfect for them. Mor will like these, I think.”

“She could have walked with us,” Dariel said, “except that she can’t stand to be around me. I thought she had softened after I helped destroy the soul catcher. She seems to have forgotten all about that.”

Yoen looked at him for a long moment. “It’s not a matter of hatred. She fears you. She wants desperately to believe you are the Rhuin Fa. She wants you to help us make this nation of ours, and she hates it that she wants that so much. She has waited all her life for this, never knowing if change would come in her lifetime. Now it has, and part of it arrives bearing the name Akaran, a prince of the very family that enslaved us. You can see her point, I trust. It would have been easier for many of us to recognize the Rhuin Fa if he arrived with Akaran blood on his hands.”

Finding a pear that suited him, Yoen grasped it in his palms and gave a quick tug. The fruit held on stubbornly, but the shaking of the branch dropped another one softly into the grass. Yoen smiled down at it. “This one doesn’t want me; that one does. I can take a hint.” Dariel moved as he began to bend, retrieving the fallen fruit for him. “Thank you,” Yoen said, taking it.

A little farther up the hill, the two men moved off the trail and sat down on simple stools, with a tree-stump table between them. Yoen sliced the fruit with agile motions of a slim knife. The skin of the fruit was brilliant yellow, smooth to the touch; and the flesh inside had a pinkish hue.

“Dariel, it’s a miracle that any of the People remain whole. They were taken as children. You know that, of course, but can you imagine what it means for an entire nation to share a common trauma? All of us. Whether we are now young or old, all of us were made orphans. All of us were taught we were slaves to the whims of the world. It may be that all people are that, but most don’t learn it at seven, eight years old.”

Birke and Anira came up the trail. Dariel nodded to them. They saw him but did not return the gesture. They stayed near the path.

Yoen went on. “So, what would happen to a nation of people deprived of the love of their parents? If nobody taught them morality, what sort of adults would they become? What if their captors told them time and again that they deserved their slavery-that they caused it somehow, or that their parents sold them or simply gave them away? A child can believe great lies, especially the ones that hurt him. You see the problem.”

“Yes,” Dariel conceded. He felt sick to his stomach, unable to eat the fruit Yoen had sectioned for him. “Yes.”

Tam and several of the elders also came into view. Behind them, Mor walked by herself, her head averted as if she did not want to make eye contact with anyone. Dariel almost said something, but from the determined way Yoen managed not to acknowledge them, he knew he should not. As the elder talked on, several more of the villagers and a few elders just arrived from farther-flung settlements joined the procession.

“Each of us had to reckon with the fate the Giver abandoned us to. So I-and many generations before me-did what we could to remain whole. We had to invent a semblance of a nurturing culture by trial and error. We treat one another with compassion. We teach the young that they are loved, that the world has done them a great wrong, but they own no fault for it. We tell them stories, dream with them of a better world. We ask them to believe in the possibility of a hero, a champion. Mor and the others think that the elders have organized resistance and prepared them for the fight facing us. We have helped with that, yes, but the young own that more than we. No, our true work for many generations has been in teaching the young how to grow into human beings. It hasn’t been easy. We haven’t always succeeded. We can only do so much from here, but we’ve done our best. I want you to understand that. Do you?”

Dariel nodded. Following Yoen’s example, he did not watch as the others moved from the path and proceeded toward them. “I think so. I… in my own way, I was an orphan, too. I had to learn how to be a man from people other than my family or siblings. I understand the gift that is.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so. I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to explain it, even if I needed to. The other elders think I’ve taken too long with you already. Has anyone spoken to you about the news from Avina? The last messenger brought much news, none of it good. Confusion. The People breaking into factions. The league crawling over Lothan Aklun sites like scavengers. The unity that kept us tight around a single cause broke apart when the Auldek left. We out here are not powerful enough to control the People in Avina. We need them united with us, not as enemies. But you knew that already, didn’t you? We are walking on the sand when the tide has drawn out. The moment won’t last. The wave will come crashing in soon. Don’t you agree?”

He did. Even though he had not spent as much time thinking of Avina as he should, he did agree. He had seen enough of war and of power struggles to know that the paradise Mor so wanted would not come easily. He could not help glancing at her. She stood a little distance away, one of the loose circle that surrounded Yoen and him. Her gaze was on him, frank and at the same time unreadable. “Yes,” he said, answering Yoen’s question.

“Good,” Yoen said. “Then you will understand that we must move swiftly now. Dariel, had I my way, you and I would spend many more days talking and walking in these orchards. Seeing as how I killed you, I feel some obligation to explain more about what you’ve become after that death. I cannot have my way on that. I can’t explain more because I don’t know any more. What you are to be to yourself-and to us-you must figure out yourself. And, as time is short, I must put all other things aside to ask you a question. More than just a question, really.”

Ask it, Dariel thought. Ask it. He had his answer ready.

Yoen straightened and looked around at the gathered company, finally taking them all in. “I don’t just ask for me, of course. It’s for all of us.”

“Yes,” Dariel said.

“But I have not asked it yet.”

“My answer is yes.” Dariel looked from face to face around the circle, at friends he felt he knew well and others he had only just met. It didn’t matter that he had not known any of them a few months ago, or that he didn’t know exactly what Yoen was going to ask. It didn’t even matter that Yoen had thrust a knife into his belly. If anything, that act had just brought Dariel closer to them. He had already decided. For each of them he had the same answer.

“Yes.”

And then a question of his own. “When do we start?”