The Sacred Band

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Kelis had not dreamed so vividly in years. He had not slept so long either, so deeply. Unlike other people, he had always been fully aware when he was dreaming. He knew the difference between the functioning of the waking world and the fluid shifting of dream logic. He knew, even while asleep, that in the waking world he was a miserable man with an iron club of a hand, an unwitting traitor who had led enemies to the very heart of his nation. Because of this-and because of the depths of the fatigue that had plunged him back into the dream world-he let himself swim from vision to vision, out of time.

That was why he felt no fear standing on a leviathan’s back as it pushed through a furious ocean. He felt no strangeness in the fact that he was not himself, that he was a woman instead. He knew that what separated man from woman was a thin membrane, permeable in ways people’s waking minds were afraid of. But he was not. When the beast dove and the waters rushed up over her he did not flinch. She did not claw for the surface or for the light of day. She stayed standing, as if her feet were cemented to the creature. They plunged into the black depths. Luminous shapes swirled around her in the water. Far away first, they came closer and closer until she and the diving whale became the center of a vortex of glowing giants, sliding around one another as fast and numerous as anchovies schooling. It was beautiful.

So was the sight of a sun setting from a sky like none he had seen before, purple hued and hung with floating objects, each of which looked like a child’s ball but which was, he knew, a world of its own. He lived through things fantastical and mundane, taking both extremes in with the same equanimity. He walked and loved and lived as himself, as men other than himself, as women, as a version of a child who was he but different than anyone he ever had been. For a time he forgot human shape and ran on four legs and experienced the world through scents that exploded in his mind like bursts of color.

Many of the things he saw he forgot. He did remember that ride on the leviathan’s back. He knew even while experiencing it that it would stay with him. There was another thing he would not forget either, for he knew it to have been the purpose of his dreaming, a vision of something that was not yet, but could be. Might be. Having found it, he had no choice but to awake.

He opened his eyes. He lay on his back, the ceiling above him white plaster cut into long rectangles by wooden beams. He stared at them long enough to see the movement of the air against old spiderwebs, to note the cracks in the dry wood. There were shapes there in the grain, elongated faces and eyes contained in knots.

He was in a guest room of the palace. He knew, for he had stayed in such a room before. Whatever had happened while he slept could not be avoided much longer. It waited for him just outside the door, down the corridor. He did not want to move. He did not even want to sit up, for he knew that doing so would mean moving his malformed limb. But he had to. He would rise and dress and walk from here to face what he had to face. He wanted his punishment just as much as he wanted to know the fate of the people important to him.

Only… there was the shame of his mangled hand. He did not look at it, but he felt the weight of it there beside him, pressing upon the sheets. He imagined cutting the limb off above the wrist. Then he would be rid of it. He would be one armed, crippled forever, but he was that already. At least he would not have to carry the foulness of the Santoth curse for everyone to see. If there was a knife in the room, he would do it now, right here. If it killed him, no matter. That would be for the best.

He heard a noise. It was just a small sound of a foot pressing against the floor, but hearing it he realized somebody was in the room with him. He turned his head.

Aliver stood, leaning against the wall near the door, staring at nothing at all, lost in thought. Just the sight of him made Kelis’s pulse quicken. He wants to be here when I wake, to tell me to my face. He would tell him that none of the kind things he had said back in the room with the queen and the man with the stone eyes and the charlatan and the children had been true. Not the things he said about Kelis, at least. Those had been lies for the others’ benefit. Kelis began to close his eyes, knowing it would not help, but wanting his dreams back again.

“Do you remember my laryx hunt?” Aliver asked.

The second the words faded, Kelis doubted that he had heard them. Perhaps he was still asleep.

The prince turned to him. “Do you, Kelis, remember it? I’ve been thinking about it as you slept. I realized that I’d never spoken to you about it, not truly, I mean. We celebrated together. I accepted the rewards thrown at me. I danced. You did as well. We both danced, didn’t we? Younger then, and beautiful. You were, at least. I was too pale to be a handsome Talayan.”

He smiled and pushed off the wall. He walked forward a bit, turned on his heel, stopped. And then, as if the thought just occurred to him, he squatted in the center of the room and bounced on the balls of his feet. He looked to be preparing for a run, building energy in his bunched leg muscles. He tented his fingers together and touched them to his nose.

“And then Thaddeus appeared and my life changed. I thought the laryx hunt marked the change, but that was because by then I thought myself a Talayan. I wanted nothing more than the approval of Talayan men and the love of Talayan women. Thaddeus changed all that. I never made the time to speak to you about what happened. When I could have later, I didn’t. And then nothing went as I planned. I want to speak of it now, though, if you’ll let me.”

Kelis did not know what to make of his energy, his revelry, his tone. Nothing. He remained silent.

Aliver seemed to expect that. He spoke for the both of them. He led Kelis through what he remembered of the hunt. The two of them were in the wild for three weeks before they found the nest of a lone laryx. Only young males ever were alone, those that had left their family group but not found a mate yet. As Kelis stood watch, Aliver fouled the nest. He spat on it and pulled it apart, peed and defecated on it. He left his scent all over the area.

When Kelis saw the beast returning they both moved away a distance to watch. By the cackling yelps it responded with, it felt the insults keenly. The creature snarled and yipped. It was ugly, as all laryx are; misshapenly thick in the chest, stout necked, with small, powerful hind legs. It ran in circles, snout down on the ground and then up in the air, tracking already.

Aliver came in close a few times and twice pricked it with arrows. Neither was enough to truly injure it. Its hide was too thick for arrows. It got its mouth around the shafts and yanked them out. No damage done. But the second one riled it enough to charge, just as Aliver had wished. As he ran before it, Kelis dropped away to the side. His part in the hunt was over.

“Or it was supposed to be,” Aliver said. “You were to let me run the thing down alone. But you didn’t.”

No, Kelis thought, I didn’t. And I’m glad I didn’t.

Instead of leaving Aliver to his fate, Kelis ran behind the hunted and hunter, following them both across the plains, keeping them at the edge of his capacity to track, just barely in view. During the day he watched the dust kicked up by the laryx’s paws. At night Kelis kept track of them by their movement beneath the moonlight. One day into the next, and then on and over again. Three days in motion. Aliver kept the beast on his scent, kept it running, let it see or smell him when its attention wavered, as it grew fatigued. For that was what the run was about: to make the beast so tired it would collapse, exhausted, and receive the spear that would kill it without protest.

“I almost did it right,” Aliver said.

Almost, yes. But with a laryx almost is not good enough.

Kelis hid in an outcropping of stones when the laryx first gave up its pursuit and lay down, panting in the shade of a lone acacia tree. Kelis watched, thinking, No, not yet, as Aliver circled back on the beast. No, don’t approach from behind it. Make it rise and chase you more. A laryx was never fully exhausted the first time it gave up. It had more in it and was dangerous still. He knew these things, and he knew that Aliver should, too. That’s why he held his tongue and stayed hidden.

Aliver glanced at Kelis, and then went back to contemplating the images sheltered beneath the spread of his fingers. “But I was too tired. I let it cloud my judgment, and I let the beast trick me. You know what happened. When I approached to sink my spear in it, thinking it had fallen asleep, the thing opened its eyes and laughed at me. It ran at me and came close to ripping me apart right there. I was just lucky to avoid that first charge. I ran for the tree, jumped into it. I dropped my spear. You remember that, don’t you? I dropped my spear to cling to the branches of a tree almost too small to support me.”

It had been as Aliver described. Kelis remembered everything. He had seen it with his own eyes, of course, from a different viewpoint. He saw it with fear beating in his heart, more afraid of the prospect of Aliver’s death than his own. If he had wished to, he could have admitted that when he ran at the laryx it was not just to distract the beast. It was in the full willingness to offer it his flesh instead of the prince’s. The fact that the beast turned toward him without fully charging was just a stroke of good fortune.

It was the moment Aliver needed to come back to himself. He had dropped to the earth, grasped his spear, and sunk it into the beast’s side. The laryx spun with all the force of its massive frame, lifting Aliver into the air and tossing him away. This time, though, Aliver kept a grip on his spear, and it ripped out of the beast’s hide with a spray of blood. He still had it ready when the laryx lunged at him. This time he sank it in the monster’s shoulder. He stood holding it steady, the laryx’s mouth bristling with a carnivore’s teeth, lips and nose twitching. It even pawed the earth, pushing forward and driving Aliver back. But not enough. The wound in its side was too deep. The hole in its shoulder had severed an artery and cut through enough tendons to weaken it. The laryx died there, so close to Aliver’s face that he had only to lean forward to touch his nose to its snout.

“The kill was yours,” Kelis said. His first words since he had awoken.

“But it would not have been mine without you.”

Kelis fixed his lips in a sour expression, not sure how to deny that.

“Let me tell a few more things. First, you should know that I didn’t forget what you did. I didn’t fail to understand that you’d saved me. I think, now that I look back on it, that I felt… a failure, as if the kill wasn’t really mine. I think that’s why I agreed to fight Maeander Mein. I’m not saying I knew that it was because of the hunt. I didn’t, but how often do we do things without knowing our own reasons? I wanted to make sure I was worthy of all the things given to me-and being asked of me. Foolish, yes? It got me killed.”

Kelis started to protest, but Aliver stopped him.

“But here I am again, alive again. I would be a fool twice over not to learn from it. So here’s what I think. I think that the laryx was my kill.” He let this sit a moment, and then said, “But I needed your help to make it. You watched over me when I needed it. You put your life in danger to save mine. That’s what got me out of that tree so fast. I didn’t want your death on my hands. See what we have here? We succeeded because we care for each other and risked our lives for each other. It should never have been about doing it alone. When I fought Maeander, I forgot that. I will never do so again. I have you to thank for that. And I have you to thank for bringing Shen to me. Don’t make that face.”

Kelis did not know what face he was making, but he must have frowned.

“Don’t! I know what you are thinking and I don’t want to hear a single word of it. Don’t tell me anything about your responsibility for bringing the Santoth to Acacia. Don’t act like that’s your fault. It’s bigger than you, Kelis, so don’t be so vain. You think the Santoth wouldn’t have found a way here without you? They are a sickness that attached itself to something pure-to you and to Shen and to all the labors you and others went through to bring her to me. That is not-and never can or will be-your fault. So don’t be the person who wallows in self-pity that way. It’s not you, and I couldn’t bear it. Such a waste. I need you to march to war with me, not to be sitting here feeling sorry for yourself.”

“To war?” Kelis rasped, lifting his metal-flesh hand. “I cannot be a warrior for you. Not with this.”

Aliver stepped nearer. His voice dropped, tone softened. “You have a choice. This thing”-he placed his hand over Kelis’s metal one-“has become part of your destiny. It doesn’t end it; it changes it. Perhaps this is a gift. How can you know? It may be a gift to urge you to return to your destiny. Do you remember the boy you told me you were? The dreamer. You were born with that in your heart. You told me that in dreams you read the future, and that you spoke languages you could not speak when awake and that this gave you joy. So return to it. Don’t bemoan the loss of a spear arm. What is that compared to the gifts of a dreamer?”

“I have already had a dream,” Kelis heard himself say, “while I slept here.”

“Do you remember it?”

“Some things.”

“Are they things you could tell me?”

Kelis had to think about that for a while. He knew his answer, but what he had to be slow with was the feeling of hope that rose with it. Could he really be blessed? Could it really be that-after all the things that had come before, and after all the ways his life was and wasn’t what he thought it should be-he would still be permitted to return to where he began? To be a dreamer, and find in the sleeping world things that could help the ones he loved in the waking one?

He said, “I dreamed that the queen rode a sea beast into the depths. It gave her no fear, Aliver. It was what she wished.”

Aliver sat down on the stool and set a hand on his arm. The two men sat in silence for a long time. Kelis began to fear that he had given the prince ill tidings. He should explain more of the dream, he thought, but that was filled with images that might further seem ill.

“If… if the queen is near I could tell her.”

“She’s not,” Aliver said. “Is that all? Did you dream anything else?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell it to me.”

“I dreamed that you had seven children.”

“Did I?” Aliver said. He smiled sadly. “I don’t believe that will happen.”

“You had seven children other than Shen. I could not see their faces. You walked with them away from me. I could not see your face either. But it was you, and there were seven children with you.”

“I’ll have to think about that,” Aliver said. And then, putting it aside and lifting his voice into a kingly register, “Kelis of Umae, will you march to war with me? I don’t need you as a warrior. Not this time. Not ever again. Come with me as a dreamer if you like. Or just come as my friend. Speak to me, as you used to. Puzzle through that dream of seven children with me. Will you do that-be a friend to me? A brother?”

Kelis closed his eyes. He wanted to nod. He wanted to say, Nothing would mean more to me, but he still doubted he could be that blessed. Part of him feared that reaching for a future would be just the thing to pull it away from him. He wanted to…

“Good,” Aliver said, not waiting for his response. “We leave tomorrow.”