The Sacred Band

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Corinn stared. Eaters, she thought. That’s what they were. Flesh eaters. Little monsters with teeth ringed around a circular mouth. They had flown as fast as angry hornets when they attacked her, propelled on an inundation of song. A malignant spell cast from Nualo’s mouth to hers. They ate through Corinn’s flesh for as long as the curse that gave them life rang in the air. Several frantic moments in which they swarmed her lower face. Their chewing and writhing had been such a loud garble, frantic and horrible, that for those moments they were her entire world.

By the time she wrapped her face in her shawl to hide it from others in the Carmelia, the eaters had already completed their work. They died inside her flesh. There they remained. She could feel them. She ran her fingers over the segmented ridges of their bodies. They were part of her, dead husks that she could feel half submerged in her tissue, their corpses hued the same chestnut brown as her skin.

Staring at her reflection in her dressing table mirror, she could see them. She sat there, straight-backed on the stool, looking into the glass as she had a hundred thousand times before. The room was still. True silence. Empty. She had made everyone leave, even the servants who would normally have plastered themselves invisible and forgotten against the walls and behind drapes. She was alone. The long, thin sliver of a knife rested within arm’s reach on the dresser, but she only had eyes for the mirror.

What looked back at her this time was impossible to look at. And yet she did. If she could have screamed she would have. She would have given in to panic and ripped her fear into the world with shrieks. But she couldn’t. One thing she would never again be able to do was scream. The fact of it was more horrible still, enough so that she could only stare, stunned to a place on the other side of terror.

The eaters had not consumed her flesh. They had processed it. They had curdled its substance. They swallowed it in from one end and expelled it out the other, turning her flesh into a thick paste that congealed in such a manner that where her mouth had been there was no mouth. Tough, doughy-looking flesh covered her lips, making her lower face a stretch of mottled skin. All this in a few frantic seconds. And there it was.

She would never be able to eat or drink again. She knew this, but she also knew that it did not matter. She would not die from hunger or thirst. She could feel it. Hunger was something she would not face again. She would waste away, yes, but it would happen very slowly. The Santoth wanted her alive until they got what they wanted. It would be an unbearable wait.

She ran her fingers over her damaged flesh. There. That was it. She could not speak. She could not say a word of explanation to anyone. She could not even hide behind a veil and issue orders. She could not use the song. It was in her head, just as before. It hummed and thrummed and banged against the sides of consciousness, but she could do nothing about it. Without a mouth to speak it, all her knowledge was useless. It raged like a cyclone confined to the dimensions of her skull. Just like that, with one malignant spell, Nualo had trapped all her weapons inside her.

You are hideous, she thought. There was something freeing in acknowledging it. It was a proclamation she could almost wrap around herself and be encased within, her funereal shawl. It was a tempting notion. Silent death. Leaving all this. You are hideous, best to turn inward and cease to be. How could you have been so stupid? You stupid bitch. Stupid, ugly, fool of a-

“Don’t say those things.” Hanish appeared behind her. He stood at her shoulder, studying her reflection. Corinn’s eyes snapped to him. He was so close. Solid. Just there behind her, looking too much like a living man. “They’re not true.”

She felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder. This ghost version of him had never touched her. She had thought he could not, but she felt the weight of his four fingers, his thumb moving in a circle. For a moment she was glad of him, didn’t hate him, didn’t want him gone. The moment did not last. What could he offer her that was more soothing than death?

Leave me, she ordered.

“No, I won’t,” Hanish said.

Leave me.

Hanish shook his head. “I can’t. Banish me if you can, but I don’t think you can do that. You are stuck with me. And I with you.” Leave me.

After a time, Hanish said, “Corinn, have you forgotten that you imagined this before? In your dreams you did. You knew this would happen. You just didn’t understand your own vision. Do you remember?”

She had not until he asked, and then she did. It came back as a set of images leering at her through a haze of forgotten dreams. For a time she had lived through the same nightmare over and over again. It began with Aliver returning to life. Just as she wanted. Just as she later sang him into reality. With joy at all the fine things this meant, she had dashed through the halls of the palace. That was how she came to find him, the figure with his back turned to her. All the joy vanished. The man turned…

“And it was I,” Hanish said.

Yes, it had been he. The same beautiful man, lean and golden haired, with his dreamer’s eyes. He had worn a black thalba, snug around the torso that she had so loved to wrap herself around. He wore the same now. But then, in the dream, his mouth had been sewn shut on her orders. Needle and dark thread through the lips she had kissed, pinching the soft tissue. She had placed a mass of jagged fishhooks in his mouth before sewing it shut, so that he would swallow them and be shredded from the inside.

“You wanted me to suffer. I remember it now. It’s your dream, but I remember it. And the worst part…” He stopped, pulling back from it.

The worst part, Corinn acknowledged, was that I changed my mind. I tried to run to you to undo it, but then you were not you. You were our son.

“I became Aaden.” He smiled. “Dreams are frustrating devils, aren’t they?”

How could she have forgotten that? It was not even so long ago that this dream had tormented her. Just a few months back. Did she forget because she had set in motion the things that would make this version of that dream a reality? She had woken Aliver. And Aaden, he had slept and been awoken as well. And before all that, she had killed her lover’s Tunishnevre ancestors with blood from her palm, and then she had ordered him killed as well.

Corinn placed her hand over the dagger.

“No, not that,” Hanish said, reaching forward and pinning her hand down on top of the weapon. “You don’t get off as easily as that. You killed me, and I’m still here with you. Death is not the balm it seems right now. I swear it.”

What do you want? Are you here to gloat?

“No.”

To relish this?

“No.”

You want to humiliate me. Look at me, then! Stare. Get your eyes full of me and then leave!

“I’m here because I love you,” Hanish said. “No one has ever been more beautiful. This thing that was done to you does not change that. It just makes it even more obvious.”

Corinn yanked her hand from his grip. She spun around on him, blade out before her in threat, hating him, wanting to cut him down again, for real this time.

“You can’t cut me, Corinn,” Hanish said, so sadly it looked like he wished she could.

No, she thought, but I can do this… She lifted the knife and raked the blade across the mutated flesh that had been her mouth, screaming as she did so. Silently, inside her mind, she screamed. And cut.

L ater. Some hour in the deep dark of the night, Corinn lay on the floor with her head in Hanish’s lap, her hand touching her mouth, hiding it. The knife was on the floor a little distance away, under the edge of her bed, where it had fallen when she did. Despite the force with which she cut, the blade had done nothing but slide across her skin. For a moment she thought she felt the dead worms writhe, but that was all. No searing pain. No bloody slit to yell through. No death. Nothing changed.

When she could not carve herself a new mouth, she had tried to turn the knife elsewhere, to cut her wrists or to find the artery in her neck or to sink the blade to the hilt in her abdomen. Hanish prevented each attempt. She fought against him, but he was stronger, faster. He toyed with her, even turning their whirling struggle into a playful Maseret, humming a tune that he kept time to, as if that dance of death had ever been performed to music. “What would a servant think if she saw Corinn at this crazy dance?” he asked. They would see only her, knife in hand, swirling in choreography they could not fathom.

That was before she gave up. She let the knife drop, and herself, and came to rest partially on the smooth, cool stones of her room, partially on the lap of her dead lover. Crying.

She wanted to move her head. The wetness from her tears pressed against her face, but so did the warmth of his skin. True, living warmth. She was sure of it, even though she doubted it each time she felt the pulse beat against her temple. Was that Hanish or herself? His life, or hers?

His voice measured the passing of time for her. He talked. She did not listen to everything he said. She faded in and out as other thoughts tried to carry her away. He kept on, and at some point she realized she had been listening to him talk his way through his life. That was good, to hear about him instead of her. He claimed to have loved his boyhood. It had been a time of such promise. His father and brothers alive, so much to do, what dreams they had. The future gleamed with righteous promise, everyone he loved intact around him. Back then, he had yet to come under the service of the Tunishnevre. “I was innocent, and hungry for war. I was a boy, like Aaden. That changed, though.”

He told of the time just before his manhood rites when he had danced a Maseret with Maeander. He was eleven, his brother just a little younger. It was the last time Hanish would ever perform the duel without it being to the death. They fought before the veterans in the Calathrock, a great honor accorded both of them, but mostly for him as his father’s firstborn and chosen. What he remembered about it was that he realized during the dance that Maeander was better than he-faster and stronger and more focused. He pressed Hanish to the edge of his ability and stopped there. He nicked Hanish’s nostril, yes, leaving a small scar for all the rest of his days, but he did not embarrass him, as he could have.

“I don’t think anyone knew,” Hanish said, “not even my father. I left there wondering why I had been born first. Maeander was more a Meinish warrior than I ever was. Thasren knew it. That’s why he did what he did, to secure his name in another way.”

He paused a moment and they both listened as someone moved about one of the adjoining rooms, making noise enough, Corinn knew, to remind her that the living world went on outside her room. She did not need to be reminded.

“Do you know what I did? That night I stole into his room and woke him from sleep with a knife to his back. I made him swear to never betray me. I made him swear on pain of death. He did swear, and he never betrayed me. In the years we had together, he was my strongest ally. Part of me always expected a knife in the back from him, but he stayed true. I wish I had thanked him for that. I couldn’t say it to him, though. I could not say, ‘Brother, I know that you consider killing me every day and taking over in my place. Thank you for not doing it.’ I wish I could have. Now, in death, honesty like that seems such an obvious good. In life it’s not as clear, but that’s only because in life you always think you have more time. You always believe that things that don’t matter do matter.”

He stroked Corinn’s hair, drew it back from her face with his fingers. “Another thing I wish is that I hadn’t put that blade to his back that night. What if I didn’t need to? What if he would never have betrayed me of his own accord? I can’t know, not after I’d told him I would rather kill him than have him best me. There,” Hanish said, raising his voice a little, “you’ve had my confession. More than one. I could go on, but my tales are of the dead. It’s the living that matter. Are you ready to discuss the living?”

Corinn thought of Jason. She had killed Jason. The spell that ripped the flesh from his body began in her mouth. Jason, who had never been anything but loyal. Jason, who had taught her to read, to know the map of the world. Jason, who had made her recite the names of Acacia’s monarchs from Edifus onward. Jason, whom she had set on the fool’s errand of creating a horse lore for a people who had never truly had such a lore. Jason, who was going to write the mythology of her winged riders… He was dead, as were so many others. All from a spell that began at her lips.

No, Corinn thought, tell me more things about the dead.

And so he did. He talked on.

T he light had changed enough to foretell the coming dawn when Hanish said, “It’s time.”

Corinn sat at her dressing table again, staring at herself.

Hanish stood behind her, both his hands resting on her shoulders now. “I know it’s not enough time, but it’s all we have. There are people waiting for you. People you love.”

Aaden, Corinn thought.

“Yes. He needs you to go to him.”

I can’t.

“Of course you can. You must. He’s your son. Think of it as if you were he. Would you rather see your mother alive-no matter the curse set upon her-than be kept from her?”

The knock on the door was gentle, as it had been every hour of the long night. As she had done on each previous occasion, Corinn ignored it. She did not even turn her head. Hanish did, though. “They want you,” he whispered.

She shook her head.

Whoever it was moved away after a moment.

“Aaden wants you.”

Look at what he’ll see. She drew her fingers across her not-mouth, elegant, gracefully for a few seconds, before she snapped her hand closed. I’m repellent.

“If this had happened to your mother, would you find her repellent? You saw your mother in death. You saw the bones of her dying hands and knew that they were yours. Remember that? Can you imagine not having that memory and not knowing that about yourself? What if she had forbidden you from sitting with her in her final days?”

That silenced her excuses. How did he know about that? Her mother’s hands; her hands. The same. The memory of that had always haunted her. No, she could not imagine having lived without that knowledge. As sad a memory as it was, nothing else had made it as clear to her who she was. Her mother’s daughter.

It’s not the same, Corinn thought. My mother fell ill. A sickness took her. She had no part in creating it. This, though… I brought on .

She paused there, waiting. For what? For Hanish to refute that statement. For him to say it was not her fault, that she was blameless. A victim. She wanted all those things, but Hanish did not offer them. She knew he would not, and that if he had, he would be lying. The curse that was her face and the horror that was the Santoth free in the world were part of the song she had been singing. The moment she felt Nualo’s spell burrow into her flesh she knew it. The spell itself. She recognized it. It was a part of the music that swirled inside her head. It was as akin to her as her hand had been to her mother’s.

I brought The Song back, and with it came evil.

Hanish leaned down, his gray eyes meeting her reflection’s gaze. “Tell him that. It is a bitter lesson, but it’s the one you have to tell. He will need to hear it, and only you can explain it. There is a way to speak to him. Corinn, there is. And not just to him. You have to speak to everyone, to Aliver and Mena, to the world.”

I can’t.

“You can. Listen, believe me on this. You have to be stronger now than you ever were before. And you were strong before, love. You were. I know that better than anyone.” He tried a smile, but it slipped away almost before it had started. “I would not have loved you so much if you hadn’t been. Nor would I have died as I did. Remember who you became when I betrayed you. You didn’t fold in on yourself. You fought. You struck. You outmaneuvered a world of ambitious men who wanted things from you. You can do that again. And even more. In the days that we have left, you must become the queen you were destined to be. Not the queen you envisioned, but the queen you are fated to become. The two things are never the same. Trust me on that as well. You won’t get another chance. That’s all there is to it.”

Her eyes brimmed with moisture. She twisted away and rose. Hanish moved with her toward the center of the room, where she stopped, unsure where she meant to go. I thought… I thought that I would meet the Auldek. Before my gathered army I would fly out to face them. My people would watch as I flew on Po, singing, hurling down spells that would destroy them all. I was going to save Acacia. It was to be legend. It would have been… magnificent.

“Yes, it would’ve been that,” Hanish said.

Now I’ve failed them.

“You’ll have to find some other way to be magnificent. You have a choice to make. You can take this curse that you’ve received and you can give it life. You can let it eat at you until it destroys you, and all you love and hate with you at the same time. That outcome is within your power. I hope you turn from it. There is another way, the way that acknowledges that you have a boy to be a mother to. You have siblings to be a sister to. You have a nation that needs leadership, and you have a band of sorcerers to deal with.”

Why are you doing this?

This time the smile formed and held. “I told you already,” Hanish said. “It’s the same as I said on the day you had me killed. I love you too much to ever leave you. I am a ghost, but I don’t haunt a place. I haunt a person. You, Corinn. You see, I also have a different destiny than I imagined. It wasn’t an accident that I came back. I didn’t just slip in randomly on the spell you brought Aliver back with. I had never left you, Corinn. I’d been haunting you, watching you, loving you. You didn’t know it, but from the day I died I’ve been with you.”