The Sacred Band

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

B arad had thought that the presence of a ghost made physical was to be the most disturbing thing he would witness that day. From his box below the dais he watched the figure appear at Corinn’s shoulder. He nearly called out, but the fact that nobody else did stopped him. Or, not just that. Whatever sorcery Corinn had bound him with stopped him. He feared the man was an assassin, and then wondered why he feared that. Let the queen die. That would be a fine thing. Let his inability to warn her be the death of her. As ever in his life since the queen had captured him, his mind rocked like a boat atop choppy waters, first leaning one way and then the next, all the time making him sick to the stomach.

Because he could only watch, he did. Through watching, he saw. The queen could hear the words the dead man whispered in her ears. She fought not to show any sign that she acknowledged the phantom’s sudden appearance, but to Barad’s eyes it was obvious. Her jaw clenched when the man’s lips moved. She shifted away from the touch he gave her elbow. Her eyes darted around, checking to see if others saw the man at whom she would not herself look. Not an assassin, then. Barad stared harder.

The man’s hair was long and golden, with a few thin strips of colored leather woven into its braids. Meinish. His face looked odd beside Corinn’s. His features did not show the contrast of light and dark that hers did. No touch of the sun on them. He seemed to stand in the dull light of another place entirely. He did stand in another place, Barad realized. He was dead. As soon as he had the thought, he knew it to be true. A ghost was whispering in the queen’s ear. Why could he see the dead man when nobody else seemed to? His stone eyes, surely. They were works of sorcery, after all, and they were Corinn’s doing. Through them, he watched as the man moved around the dais unseen, talking much of the time. More than that, Barad knew every word the man spoke. Intimate. Playful. Teasing. Even his whispers reached him. He did not follow the intricacies of the ceremony at all, just watched the queen and the ghost, hearing his one-sided conversation, wondering what was going to happen.

He had no better understanding of it when the gates to the Carmelia crashed open. He rolled his stone eyes away from the dais and watched the figures march through the tunnel and into the crowded stadium. They were not ghosts, these ones. For a moment Barad thought them monsters with elongated heads like eaters of ants, but that image faded as the light touched them. They were men, larger than normal, but men. They cast shadows and had about them a solidity that was even more tangible than the crowd who drew back in horror from them. They must have been heavier than normal men, for their feet split the stones across which they trod. Even the tattered robes they wore swung with a martial weight, as if the fabric were woven of metal and as likely to cut as a blade. They drove a wedge through the people standing on the entry causeway. The crowd cringed away from them, some pressing back so hard that those along the inner railing went toppling over onto the lower benches.

The intruders took no notice of the people at all until the guards remembered their duty. With a lieutenant shouting them into motion, they snapped into ranks and began marching toward the intruders. The front rank thrust before them a treacherous bristle of halberds. The foremost of the intruders raised their arms in unison and roared out something. The soldiers’ flesh went liquid. Their clothes and armor dropped to the stones, sodden with blood. Their weapons clattered down among the filth, all of which was trodden over by the intruders’ feet a second later.

Sorcerers, Barad named them. They are sorcerers.

The sorcerers turned and ascended the stairs toward the dais. General Andeson barked a command. Archers-Barad had not even known there were archers-on the ledge up beyond the dais let loose a volley of arrows. They should have fallen a hundred or so right on top of the intruders, but the sorcerers tilted their heads and blew at them. The motion was like shooing away a bothersome fly. The arrows skidded away from them. They careened through the stadium, looking suddenly like sleek, black birds, erratic fliers that impacted randomly among the crowd, puncturing chests and throats and embedding in skulls. People sprang away from the injured, sending waves of panic through the tightly packed audience.

Andeson did not repeat the order to shoot. He stood with his mouth hanging open. Aliver asked something and in answer the Marah shifted around the dais. They bunched tightly together on the stairs below the royal party, swords drawn.

The intruders climbed one flight of stairs before slowing. They paused and looked around, taking in the view from the landing. The action was so casual that the Marah held their positions. No new orders came for them. The sorcerers’ gazes roamed over the assembled crowd, both the ranks above and below them, both the motion of those trying to flee and the awed stillness of most of the crowd.

Just like that, by stopping their raging forward progress, the men looked almost normal. Their faces, though mature and weatherworn, were not animal or massive or even particularly fierce. They contained two expressions at war with each other. On the surface they conveyed disdain, as if they owned all the people they surveyed and found them lacking. Beneath their condescension a terrible eagerness squirmed. That was the main thing Barad saw. Behind their features, and in their eyes, were passions at odds with the aged facades they occupied. There were twenty-two of them. Barad did the math on his lips. Twenty-two, the same number of generations as the prophecies had predicted would pass before a time of great change.

One by one they completed their survey, began slowly up the next set of stairs, and set their gazes on Corinn and Aliver.

Barad did the same. He had forgotten about her for those few moments of chaos. Corinn was there at the same spot on the dais. Prince Aaden was nowhere to be seen, but Marah were all around the queen and Aliver like living armor. Even the priestess had been bustled away as the guards closed in. She was pressed uncomfortably between a soldier and the stone pedestal behind her.

The ghost was still at Corinn’s elbow, even then whispering in her ear. “Friends of your brother’s or friends of yours? Late arrivals. I’m hoping it’s one or the other…”

Hanish. Of course it was Hanish Mein! Barad had never met him, but what other Meinish ghost would haunt the queen? Who else would say the things he was saying? Seeing that, knowing it, Barad knew as well that the number twenty-two was not random. They were still living within the same generation. Hanish had not been the change at all. This was. Whatever these had come for. That was what he was whispering in the queen’s ear. By the pallor of her face, she believed him.

The priestess of Vada, aghast at the interruption, began a babbling reprimand. Several officers and a senator added their ire. Sigh Saden’s wife screeched something about the ghastliness of it. Compared to them, the intruders seemed tranquil.

“Where is The Song of Elenet?” The voice that said this was almost too genteel to be believed. It carried to every corner of the Carmelia with a soft-spoken lilt, tinged with an accent Barad could not place. The crowd near and far fell silent. “Tell us where it is. Our time to have it is now.”

“More courtly than the Tunishnevre, that’s clear,” Hanish said. His eyes just happened to touch Barad’s. He paused, surprised to see the man staring at him. He nodded and, looking straight at him, he said, “Still, I don’t like their tone.”

Barad did not return his greeting, but even that was a form of communication between them. It was all he had time for.

“How does one speak to madmen?” Corinn asked. No one hearing it would have known she had just watched these men slaughter soldiers with a gesture of their arms or had turned falling arrows to flying dart birds. “I wish I knew, for surely you are madmen. You seem not to know that you are speaking to the queen of the Acacian Empire. You seem to not know that you’ve interrupted-”

“We know,” another of the sorcerers said. He stood at the second landing now, again having paused there. His voice dripped sickly sweetness, as if he were answering the question of a toddling child. “Give us The Song and we will bless your reign with wizardry you have not yet even imagined.”

Corinn’s mouth hardened. “Madman, what name do you claim?”

“I am Nualo,” the first man said. He gestured to the others. “We are the Santoth. We are Tinhadin’s chosen warriors. We are the exiled returned. We who have been imprisoned are free.” And then, proudly, “You both know us. We called to you, but you would not listen.”

“You can’t be. The Santoth are exiled.” Corinn snapped a quick glance at Aliver. “Do you know these intruders?”

The prince mouthed something-the name the man had given, Barad thought-but did not say it out loud. Turning to her, he said, “If-if this is them, they have changed.”

“Are they the Santoth?” Corinn pressed.

Aliver hesitated. Was what he wanted to say at odds with what Corinn wished him to say? Or was the hesitation something else? Barad could not tell. “They were not like this before. They were… wise men. Peaceful men.”

“We still are,” another Santoth said.

“Why did you kill?” Aliver asked. “Nobody here deserved death. The Santoth abhorred killing. They wouldn’t-”

“We defended ourselves,” Nualo said. “That is all. It is not our fault that the Giver’s tongue has curdled within us. We abhorred corruption in the song. We want it cleansed and sweet in us again.” As he spoke, he unfastened the clasp that secured his cloak. He shrugged it from his shoulders and let it drop in a heap on the stones. Beneath it, he wore a breastplate, snug trousers, and thick warrior’s boots. “We are just men, like you. But we have been in torment for so long. In exile. With corruption roiling in our heads. You cannot understand this.”

Another of them turned as he spoke, letting his words sweep across the crowd. “When the song is corrupt, there is no joy in it. Let us have it true again, and we will serve you.”

Shaking his head, Aliver said, “You are not the men I knew.”

“I don’t care what they were,” Corinn said. “Say it simply: Are these the Santoth?”

Though she looked focused on the exchange, Barad could sense something happening around her. He could partially see it-a blurring disturbance in the air around her. He could partially hear it-something like music almost too far in the distance for him to hear.

Staring at the one who had last spoken, Aliver said, “Yes. I see you, Dural. You are not the quiet one I met in Talay, but I can see you.” He glanced at another. “And you, Abernis. Tenith. All of you. I can see you all. Nualo, I see you most of all.”

“You have living eyes, then,” Nualo said. “It is good that we have come, if you see us true.”

Corinn gathered her answer around her like comfortable armor. She spoke impatiently, as if she would spare them only a few more words before returning to the interrupted ceremony. “No, it is not good. As Santoth you breathe by our leave. You should not be here without our permission. You were exiled. This is no place for you unless we ask for you. We do not. Go back to exile.”

At the same time as she said these Acacian words, something else came out with them, woven through them. The Giver’s tongue. That was what he could almost see and hear. A spell. Barad heard it writhing through the words. So, too, did the Santoth. For a moment the order seemed to have power over them. As a group, they were pushed back on their heels, off balance as if hit by a gust of wind that no one else felt. But they came back to flat on their feet fast enough.

Abernis smiled and said, “We are free from the curse. The girl released us. We will not go back.”

“What girl?”

“This one’s daughter.” He pointed at Aliver. “Shen. An Akaran. She released us.”

Barad heard Hanish make a sound low in his throat.

“Lies,” Corinn said. She might have been refuting either Abernis or Hanish. “He has no daughter. You wish to trick us into truly letting you free. I don’t acknowledge it. Go back to exile!”

This time, both the spoken words and the spell imbedded in them flew, propelled by anger. Barad watched it leap, not from Corinn’s mouth but from her shoulders, a coiled thing that struck like a snake secured around her neck.

The Santoth flicked it away, just as they had the arrows. The spell skimmed across the air above them, transformed from something nearly invisible into writhing, wormlike shadows that splattered across portions of the crowd. Where it touched, people died. The liquid shadow cut through them like molten steel thrown against bare flesh. Barad was not sure if the others saw it as he did, but they certainly saw the ghastly result.

Panic rose again. People near the shattered doors started pushing and shoving, rushing out even as they craned their heads back to see what other horrors might come. Some in the upper tiers climbed over the back wall, even though there was nothing there but cliffs and rocks and the sea below.

“Your song is pure, Corinn, but you are not powerful,” Nualo said, ignoring the confusion below him. “We are powerful, but our song is not pure. Where is The Song of Elenet? Tell us. Give it to us.”

“If you do, we will make the world beautiful for you. All of it, for you,” Tenith said.

Nualo nodded as if he had just been about to broach that topic. He hooked his thumbs through the cord at his waist. “That is so. We owe you much, Corinn. The girl released us, but you taught us much of the Giver’s tongue again.”

“I did not,” Corinn said. This time her words were tentative. A trace of doubt trailed them.

“You sang it, did you not?” Abernis asked.

“That is my right as Tinhadin’s heir.”

Nualo brushed that away. “By singing it, you released it into the world again. We had only to listen to hear. And we did listen. You are foolish, Queen Corinn. Foolish for reaching into death. Foolish for spinning trinkets for your child. Foolish for taking creatures already warped by unpure magic and making them all the greater. Foolish for taking from one place and giving to another, with no understanding of balance. You have no control over any of the things you’ve done. You see? Your world needs us to correct your errors. Give us The Song and we will help you.”

“No.”

“Give us The Song,” another Santoth said. Several others said the same. Then they all spoke at once. A bombardment of entreating voices, all asking for The Song, all promising to serve her. Swearing to do only her bidding, trying to explain the torment they lived in. It was too much all at once.

Corinn stopped it by asking, “What would you do with it if you had it?”

“Whatever you wish.”

Hanish said, “I don’t trust that answer. Make them be more specific. Will they destroy the world in flaming retribution? Enslave us as punishment for-”

“Shut up!” Corinn snapped, turning to spit in the man’s face. “Be gone you fool! Let me think.”

Hanish blinked his dreamy gray eyes closed. “As you wish, my love.” He bent his head and disappeared.

Those around Corinn looked at her with troubled eyes. The charlatan, Delivegu, wrinkled his face in a manner that made him look momentarily absurd. It was so hard for Barad to remember that only he saw and heard Hanish.

To the Santoth, Corinn said, “Would you destroy the Auldek in our name?”

“Of course,” the sorcerers answered. “In your name, we would.”

No, don’t believe them, Barad thought.

“Would you defend Tinhadin’s line and protect me and accept my heir?”

“Yes,” came back all twenty-two voices.

“I don’t have it,” Corinn said.

“You have it!” Nualo’s voice boomed. Nothing about his gestures or expression changed, but in the moments he spoke it was as if there were no other sound in the world. His voice was everything. Inside Barad’s ears. Inside his head. When Nualo spoke, it felt as if the beat of his heart hitched itself to the rhythm of his words. “We know it. We can feel it singing around you. We knew when you read it. We know!”

“It is not here,” Corinn said, “but if you return to the south I will retrieve it.”

“Do not anger me,” Nualo said.

“Aliver and I will consider your request. As king and queen we will. Not with you here in violation of exile. Not with you demanding what you have no right to demand. We will treat with you fairly, but not like this.”

“You lie.”

“I am the queen of Acacia. If I say a thing, it’s the truth. You see? I cannot lie. Now go back to exile!”

Again, the words flew tethered to magical commands.

This time, Nualo raked them out of the air with his hands, screaming as he did so. He took the stuff that was her spell and blew foulness into it and sent it ripping across the crowd. A swath of people went down, beginning not far from the queen herself. Jason, the scholar Barad had often seen tutoring Aaden, was among them. The curse splashed out in a crimson curve. The color splattered over the crowd, starting wide and thinning as it went, whipping all the way around and snapping out high on the bleachers above the royal dais. The people touched by it writhed. They clutched at themselves and reached out for others, most of whom pulled back in horror. It took Barad a moment for his eyes to understand what had happened. They had not been covered in something. The color had been revealed because they had been stripped of their skin. Flayed alive. Hundreds of them.

Nualo glared at the royal siblings with narrowed eyes. “You did that. Not I. You did that! You make us defend ourselves. You see that, don’t you? We will defend ourselves. Every time. Give us The Song and stop this!”

Queen Corinn stared at the raw corpse that was Jason, and let her eyes follow the bloody path away from him, her face pale, her expression bleak and naked. She and those directly around her were the only ones standing still. The rest of the crowd became a shrieking, maddened mob, clawing to escape, ripping and tearing at one another.

The other Santoth moved to form a ring around Nualo. They began to sing. They built their garbled version of the song and let it loose in the air around them. Barad could not understand a word of it, but it was horrible. He hated it, and he pushed into it with his eyes. It was pain and suffering. It was hunger and rage and spite. It was venom and fire, the breath of monsters and the claws of demons, disease and rot. And there was something else. Something he could almost taste with his eyes. Something he could almost grasp. It was something in the disparity between what they claimed and what was in their sorcery. Their song was corrupted, yes. Even Barad could tell that. He did not need to understand the language to know how wrong it was, how warped and cancerous.

“If you send the song against us, we will throw it like seeds atop your people. Corrupted seeds. Are you such fools? We would give you the entire world, but you scorn us! You want us to return to exile? Why should we do that?” Nualo’s voice slowed. His words gnawed their way through the spell-thick air. “We only ever did what Tinhadin asked of us.”

No, Barad thought. He was certain the answer should be no. He wanted to shout it, but he had no language…

“We were only ever faithful. For that we were exiled? Not again! I say it one last time. After this we will not ask again.”

And then Barad had it. Language. That was what was different between Corinn’s song and the Santoth’s. They were not speaking the same language. Their sorcery was the night to Corinn’s day. It was not a corrupted version of the same. It was fundamentally different. They spoke a different sorcerers’ language, one that was by its very nature warped and horrible. They had power, yes, but nothing like what they would have if they studied the true Song.

“Will you give us The Song of Elenet?”

Another one of them said, “If you will not, we will ask the same question of your son. We will ask it of Aliver. Of Shen. We will ask until we get our answer.”

She is defeated, Barad thought.

“I can’t give it to you,” she whispered. “It’s not here.”

“Where is it?”

Don’t tell them! Barad shouted, but only inside himself. He could not move his tongue. Not open his mouth or push forward toward her. He desperately tried to make his body do this, but he could not.

“In Senival,” she answered.

Noooo! Barad wailed. Silently. Motionless.

“At Calfa Ven.”