The Sacred Band

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

One day, after Aliver told his sister about what Sire Dagon had written, they both agreed that they would permit themselves one day. For Corinn the news of what she had done with the vintage had a breadth of atrocity that she could fathom no more than learning of her own pending death, or Aliver’s. It was all too huge. She wanted to collapse beneath the weight of it in utter misery. She wanted to take up that knife again and end herself.

It was only at Aliver’s urging and Hanish’s quiet whisper that she agreed to put the enormity of the world aside for just one day, the last they would spend with the ones they loved. From the middle hours of one morning, through an afternoon and evening, still further through the dark hours of the night and into the next sunrise. That was the span of time that Corinn and Aliver let the world wait for them. They spent it together with their children. For Corinn, it was a lifetime.

In the short span of time she had left to live, Corinn would cherish many moments from that single day. When she lowered the cowl from her chin was one such moment. She hated doing so and acquiesced only after Aaden had asked her to quite firmly. She searched his face for any sign of disgust. There was a tenseness in his jaw and a quiver on his left cheek and a sudden moistness that brimmed his eyes. But there was no disgust. He said, “Mother, look at that. Now why did they do that?” He sounded like an old woman, full of empathy. His fingers extended toward her, asking permission. She gave it with a nod and he touched her damaged face. To her surprise, she felt the warmth of the life within him, his skin soft, gentle. For a few seconds, she almost thought his touch had healed her. Then she raised the cowl into place.

A few days ago she would not have been content to sit with Benabe across the table from her. She would not have been able to look at Shen and acknowledge the loveliness of her round, brown face without fearing that it threatened her son’s legacy. She would not even have allowed her brother to be fully himself. As she sat with them, listening to the tale they had to tell, the things that had once seemed logical reactions to a predatory world now seemed like rules composed in a foreign language. She did not understand herself anymore. The woman she had been stood unmasked. She felt that she, in her own way, had been a puppet to base parts of her nature that should never have been allowed to rule her.

“Leave that for now,” Hanish said. She tried to.

They climbed up to the Terrace of First Light later in the morning. Elya’s children were there, almost too large now to all crowd into the space. They seemed to sense that something was wrong from the moment Corinn entered. They greeted her half-covered face with suspicion, sniffing her and scenting the air with their slim tongues. Corinn calmed them by sending soothing, yet somber thoughts to them.

“I don’t like them as much as Elya,” Aaden said. He turned apologetically to her. “I’m sorry to say that. They are incredible, Mother, but Elya is special. I don’t think that any of these would have saved me the same way she did. Do you?”

Corinn ran her palm over his head, all the answer she wished to give.

Still, when Aliver and Shen shot up into the air on Kohl’s back, Aaden clawed at her, begging to follow. Po, competitive as always, was eager to oblige. The four of them swept down from the palace, over the terraced layers of the city. They swept over the lower town and then beat their way higher. Corinn thought of the day when all four Akaran children had ridden horseback with their father. They had galloped out from the town and along the winding road over the island’s hills, down to that beach, the one she saw hundreds of feet below her now. That had been a memorable day. Perhaps, for these children, this was another such day. She hoped so.

They flew out to Haven’s Rock, where they stood in the wind and listened to Aliver eulogize his former tutor, Jason, and Leeka Alain of the Northern Guard, the first to slay a Numrek and the only one to ever run down fleeing sorcerers. He thanked the tutor for being the first to draw the map of the world in Aliver’s mind, for being such a lover of knowledge and a keeper of history. “It was he who first challenged my princely arrogance. I should have thanked him more for that before this.” About Leeka, he said, “And here, after years of service, his last deed. He returned to us and said the words that saved us for the now.” Looking at Corinn, he added, “In the end, he did what mattered. For that, he will not be forgotten.”

After that, they returned to joy. They dove down from heights like seabirds. They skimmed out over the water, the waves growing more and more pronounced as the sea grew deeper. Aaden shouted above the rushing air, “It’s wonderful, Mother. Let’s go faster. This is like Mena said!” Corinn did not know quite what he meant and she could not ask. She could go faster, though. She urged Po to do so.

A nd then all too quickly it was night. How tired they all were, or should be but were not really. The notion of sleeping hours away seemed so wasteful. When Aaden proposed that they stay together throughout the entire night, Corinn was amazed at how easily that problem was solved. Of course. Why sleep? There were not enough hours left to sleep! Listening to the two children’s cheers, Corinn could not help but think of that day long ago when her father promised them a late-night snowball fight. That night never came to be. This one would.

They had the servants stoke the fire in the center of a small amphitheater on Aliver’s terrace. Night sky clear and chilly above them, they curled up among the blankets and cushions and furs. So many things to remember: the shape of Shen’s teeth when her head was thrown back in laughter. The way Benabe could make any sentence into a song just by putting music in her voice. The stories Barad told, the tree trunk of a man, stone eyed, holding the children rapt with his deep voice.

Corinn would always remember the comfort she took when she slipped Aaden’s head from her lap, thinking he was asleep. She tried to move away, but he said, “Mother, it’s not over, is it?” She could not speak and his eyes were closed, but he did not need to hear or see her answer. “You’ll fix it. I know you will.”

A little later, after sleep finally overpowered both children beside the fire pit, the two monarchs sat beside each other on the stone bench that looked out over the harbor. They had both read yet another message, this one from Mena, describing what she intended to do. Corinn tried to reach out to her across the distance. She was tired enough that it almost worked. She did shoot up out of her body and above the palace. She flew, wingless, toward the north. But as with that time she had searched in vain for Dariel, she eventually came to a halt, hanging in the air, no feeling for where to go or how to reach her.

“Mena is a warrior. If anyone can hold back the Auldek, she can,” Aliver said. Then he asked her more about dream travel, about what it felt like to separate a soul from a body, and about what she knew of how the Auldek could hold spare life forces inside themselves. She had Rhrenna bring her documents the league had provided, and together the siblings talked through the fantastical horror of it. “What greater form of slavery could there be?” Aliver asked. “Enslaving not bodies but souls.”

Corinn did not answer, for she could think of none.

As Corinn had wanted to speak with her brother without other men’s voices, she had asked Barad and Hanish to stay among the others. Instead, she spoke with a quill and parchment. It made her choose her words carefully. She wrote, I know. I just wish I could have seen her again, and Dariel. I sent them both so far away. Now I can’t understand why I didn’t want them near me and Aaden. Don’t make Mena wait long. Go as fast as you can. Reach her. Fight beside her. If I could, I would go with you.

“I’ll get to her. I’ll do everything I can to end this before I end myself.”

I’ll do the same.

Aliver slid a hand over hers, held it there a moment. She did not like the quiet hopelessness of the gesture. She pulled her hand away, wrote, and turned the page so he could see.

I know what to do. I have the book.

It took a moment for this to fully sink in. When it did, his eyes came back to hers, not so hopeless anymore. “You have it?”

Corinn nodded, and then playfully nudged him on the shoulder.

He understood. “Of course, you have it,” he said. “You didn’t send the Santoth to it. You sent them away from it. My clever sister.”

The way lines formed at the edge of her eyes was the only way she could indicate that she was smiling. She saw that Aliver saw it, and was glad.

“What will you do with the book? Can you destroy it?”

She shook her head and wrote, It’s not mine to destroy.

Aliver thought about that for a time. “All right, it’s not yours to destroy. It was here before us and it might be wrong to take it from the world completely. That could be another mistake. I understand that. What, then?”

Return it.

“Return it to whom?”

To the worm.

“I don’t understand.”

Corinn looked at him, and then at where Barad slept. She seemed to consider waking him, but then shook the thought away. Pulling the tablet onto her lap, she leaned to write her response. With her posture, she told Aliver not to begin reading until she was done. She wrote for a long time, and then slid the tablet back into his hands. She moved away to the railing as he bent to read.

She had written: From the day I began to study The Song, I felt a living force protest. In my mind it was a great worm. I sometimes imagined it rising from the floor of the sea, its jaws so large they could close around all of the isle of Acacia. I knew it to be angry with me, and I thought it a foulthing.

I know now that’s not right. That creature was always telling me to return the book to it. That creature is its protector. It was of the world before Elenet. Edifus called on it to devour the book, to eat it and hold it inside its body. That’s what it did. Tinhadin should have left it there.

“How do you know all this?”

She pressed her fingers to her chest, indicating that she felt it in her heart. I know it, she wrote.

“How do you take the book to this worm?”

I find it. I don’t think it will be hard. It is somewhere beneath the Gray Slopes. Po will fly me there.

The two siblings sat in stillness for a while. She thought of Leeka Alain in the moment just before his death. What do you think Leeka was trying to tell us?

Aliver shook his head. That was all the answer he had. Eventually, Corinn asked the question Aaden would have wanted her to. She wrote, Might it be untrue?

Aliver did not have to ask what she was referring to. “I know I should wonder that myself, but I don’t. I feel the truth of it. I feel nearer to returning to where I should be. I feel no fear of it. Sadness, yes, but… I don’t doubt that Dagon wrote the truth.”

She wrote, Nor do I. I wish the first time he was truthful wasn’t this. So much conspiring. He and I-we’ve conspired our lives away. That’s the only part of this that feels right. I couldn’t live with this guilt. The Santoth. The vintage. Jason and Kelis and Barad. The things I did to everyone. I couldn’t live with it, but knowing of my approaching death helps. We have little time and much to do.

Seek Paddel, the vintner on Prios. Make him tell you everything about the vintage. It’s mist by another name, Aliver, another of my crimes. Make him tell you.

Aliver nodded. “I will. What of Elya’s children? They’re monsters, Corinn. I know you didn’t intend that, but-”

She stopped him by beginning to write. I did intend it. They are monsters, but they are our monsters. Use them. As long as I live they will be true to us. I sang that into them before they were even born.

“After that?”

I cannot say. After I die it will be different, but trust them until that. She paused a moment, and then wrote, I don’t deserve this day. The fullness of it. The time to talk with you, even like this. I don’t deserve it

“Of course you do.”

Corinn exhaled through her nose. I’ve planted nothing but evil seeds. Now they have sprung to life, none of them as I imagined.

Aliver’s hand stopped hers. He had been reading as she wrote. “Don’t. That’s the past. I look at you and I see so much to admire. It means a great deal to me that you treat my daughter with love, and that you are kind to Benabe. I barely knew her, yet… still, it matters. And I know that the sister I had but a few days ago would have seen only challenge in them. Only foes and dangers to be clipped and controlled. You don’t have to explain that to me. That’s what it means to be siblings. I do know the worst of you, whether you like it or not.” He smiled. “But I also know that you would not be here as you are today, with them sleeping over there after such a wonderful day, if the love that you are showing wasn’t in you always. That’s why I cannot be angry with you. Anger would be a waste of the moments we have, and it would make us weak in the face of the things we have yet to do.”

It sounded so good when he said it. She sat with that a while, hoping it was true.

After a while, she wrote, Did you love her? She pointed her chin toward Benabe, who slept with her arm over Shen.

“I might have. I was too young to know.” He thought a moment. “She was very beautiful. Still is, really.”

If we had more time.

“Yes, if we had more time.”

Still later in the night Corinn sat at a table not far from the others, quills, paper, and ink at hand. She had a note to compose.

Hanish stood with a hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t tell him about the hard part,” Hanish said. “About the fact that you’re planning to lure the Santoth into the worm’s mouth as well. That will not be ‘easy.’ ”

She thought, No need to worry him. That’s for me to deal with. Now, be quiet. I have only a few hours to write everything I can for Aaden. You can watch over my shoulder but don’t say anything.

When she had confirmation that he would not, she lifted the quill and considered what she wished most to say. She knew how she would begin and how she would end it. The same phrase. The truth. It was all the things in between that would take some sorting.

She wrote his name, and then, I love you. In all the long life that you have before you, I hope that you find love in all its complicated variations. And each time it confounds you and surprises you, hurts you and heals you-remember me, for the love I mean includes all those things.

Pausing, she wondered how much she should say, what she should withhold. It pained her to think of some of the lessons she had given the boy, things she did not believe now and doubted she ever had, not completely. Hopefully, some of that would fall away from him. Hopefully, he would be better than she had taught him, less afraid, more trusting. It was dangerous to be all those things, but it was even more dangerous to be as she had been. One cannot be whole unto themselves. She knew that now. She would tell him as much. She would tell him everything she could, so that this letter spoke to him in the years to come.

She dipped the quill, and continued writing.

T he next morning she and Aliver met as the sun rose. They laid out the future as they agreed it should be, had it put in writing, sealed and official, and then locked away. The business of it took every moment up until the expiration of the single day.

Corinn kept her parting brief. Private. It was not vanity that stopped her from addressing the populace. She would proudly enough have stood before them. She was still herself in Aaden’s eyes, so no one else could hurt or embarrass her. Nor did she mind asking Barad to be her voice to the world. He had a good voice. She had always liked it, and the fact that he gave it to her of his own free will did much to comfort her.

The reason she said good-bye to her family in private was that she wanted no pomp on her departure. She did not wish to speak grandiose words, to instill either hope or worry. Aliver would stay after her to speak with the people in ways that brought the best out of them. What she needed to do, she had to do alone, so that’s how she set out.

Or… almost alone.

“You’re finally going to let me ride on your blessed mount?” Hanish asked. He stood beside her as she made last-minute checks to her straps, harness, and supply satchels.

I never stopped you. You were just nervous. You don’t like it that he can see you.

It was true. Po’s eyes did follow Hanish. He was not a particularly curious creature, but he seemed to recognize something unusual in Hanish’s presence. He squinted one eye and then the other when looking at him, as if testing something about his vision. There was no aggression in it, though. Corinn sensed that the dragon recognized that Hanish was somehow a part of her, that they were related to him through the magic that had shaped them.

She hugged everyone. She held Shen’s face in her palms and stared at it a long time, and she had Hanish and Barad explain to her that there was absolutely no blame on her for bringing the Santoth to Acacia. That was Corinn’s responsibility. Shen should never feel another moment of guilt for it.

In parting with Aaden, she slipped the folded and sealed note into his hands. She told him not to rush to open it. Read when he was ready. Wait as long as he wished.

She pressed Aliver’s hand in hers and asked him to speak the truth of her to Mena when he reached her. Let her know that in the end, at least, she tried to be somebody Maeben on earth would be proud of. And then, before emotion could get the better of her, she mounted Po and they leaped into the air. She did not look back until she was some distance away.

“So what do we do first?” Hanish asked.

First, we find the Santoth. Who knows what they’ve gotten up to, or how cross they’ll be now that they know Calfa Ven does not contain what they seek.

“And then?”

And then we destroy them. If it’s possible, we destroy them. We make things right again.

Hanish, with his arms around her waist and lips close to her ear, said, “All right. Let’s do that.”