The Sacred Band

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

Dariel did his best to explain that he had reconsidered how to proceed. Now that he was about to set off, he worried about taking others into danger on a fool’s errand. He should go alone. He could handle a small skiff himself. He knew the way to Lithram Len already. If he succeeded at what he had planned, it would not be because he fought his way in. If a league clipper spotted him, it would not matter how many friends he had sitting on the seat beside him. Stealth was what mattered. That he could best achieve alone. This was his mission, after all. If he was wrong or failed at it, they would need each and every able body perched on the walls of Avina.

He might as well have been a youngest child arguing for something before a unified front of older, skeptical siblings. He had felt this way before. They would have none of it. They had discussed Dariel’s plan only within a small circle, but Mor still insisted they be cautious. Considering the magnitude of what hinged on Dariel’s success, they could not chance some malicious clansman of Dukish’s alerting the league somehow.

“Tunnel is with you, Rhuin Fa,” the big man said. He tugged on a golden tusk. “That’s the way it is. Stop scratching at it.”

“And us,” Geena said. “You’re not going alone in some skiff. Not when we have a right lovely, sleek, fast clipper with your name on it.”

“Face it, Dariel,” Clytus added. “We’re brigands. You can’t expect us to stand on a city wall flashing our asses and such. I mean, that’s all right for Melio, being Marah and all that, but us? No, not when there’s a bit of piracy to get up to.”

Even Skylene asked him to see sense. The very fact that she could ask him was miraculous. She woke the evening he breathed life into her. Sometime that night her fever broke, and the next morning she sat up, her skin cool and filled with color. The first thing she did was ask for lentils. Red lentils in a creamy cheese sauce, with long strips of fried onion in it. She ate and ate, and laughed, and asked a thousand questions about the things that she had missed. And here she was, just a couple of days from the edge of death, standing, thin but vibrant, in the late light of the day, holding Mor’s arm and asking Dariel to see sense. He had not told her what he had done, and figured he never would. He told no one.

When Birke showed his canines and shrugged, as if to say that he, surely, would not try to say no to Skylene, Dariel did not. He acquiesced without a word more of protest. Tunnel had hefted up his mallets. Clytus tied back his long hair with a band across his forehead, set his hands on his hips, and danced for a few merry moments, preternaturally light on his feet. Kartholome patted the throwing stars flat against his waist. Geena smiled and batted her eyelashes.

Dariel, loving the buoyancy of the moment, prayed that he knew what he was doing, that he was not leading his friends to certain death and placing the Free People at the mercy of the league.

I think it’s safe to say the invasion has begun,” Clytus said.

None of the soul vessels churning the waters from the barrier isles toward Avina paid the slightest attention to the single, now terribly old-fashioned clipper moving the other way, propelled only by the power of a favorable breeze. The league had been won over by the wonders that were the soul vessels. And why not? Those vessels cut right into that wind, sleek and glistening, unerringly aimed at their target. Dariel remembered the intoxicating power of having his hands on the steering wheel of one of those ships. It was a hard wheel to let go of. He had counted on that being the case for the leaguemen.

We’re right about that, at least, Dariel thought. Of course, if he was wrong about the rest of it, that would be a moot point.

While most of the barge transports would be coming down from Eigg, where the newly arrived army had landed, two of them had sailed for Lithram Len. All on board the Slipfin gathered by the bridge to stare at them.

Each transport was its own squat, rectangular island of dull gray, smooth as stone, flat, and largely featureless. Dariel thought them ghostly, dead-looking things, unnatural in the way they shoved through the chop. Both barges thronged with Ishtat soldiers. Thousands of them, from one edge of the structure to another, stood shoulder to shoulder. Here and there towers jutted up. The structures were not the same material as the vessel but were simple wood and stone and leather, obviously recent additions. Other military hardware cluttered them as well. The distance made them hard to discern. The transports may never have been used for warfare before, but the quick outfitting for Sire Lethel’s siege of Avina had transformed them most convincingly.

“They moved us on those,” Tunnel said, “when we were small. Those took us across to Ushen Brae.” He stared a moment longer. “They don’t know. Them soldiers, they don’t know they’re slaves, too.”

“Don’t start feeling sorry for them,” Kartholome said. He fingered the new earrings that hung in long curves from his lobes. “They’d spit and roast you in a Bocoum minute. Though you wouldn’t really taste like pork, would you?”

The large man looked at the brigand, perplexed. He tugged on a tusk.

The harbor of Lithram Len proved a floating labyrinth. Though largely deserted in the wake of the invasion force’s departure, it was crowded with the league ships that had been left behind. Dariel and the others tethered the Slipfin to a brig well away from the docks. They crammed into the skiff and rowed the rest of the way, navigating a meandering course through the maze of anchored ships. They pulled in below the bow of a large brig. In its shadow, they tied the skiff to the pier and clambered up an old, barnacle-encrusted ladder.

Standing on the long, high pier as the others climbed, Clytus scanned the distant piers, ships, and even the town itself. “We still don’t have a plan, do we?”

Dariel said, “If it were just me, I would’ve worn a disguise. Tried to blend-”

“With that face?” Clytus asked. “I haven’t seen too many Ishtat wearing full facial tattoos.”

“True enough. They’ve no fashion sense.”

The others continued to bunch around them, nervously looking about. Tunnel came up last. He had looped a strap of leather around his neck and hung his mallets from it. They dangled behind him as he climbed. Gaining the pier, he let the mallets drop, heavy things that dented the wood and stuck to it, pressed down by their weight. A moment later, as everyone watched, he hefted both up and straightened. He stood, surprised to find all eyes on him, holding the mallets out to either side as the muscles of his arms and chest and ridged compartments of his abdomen flexed. “What?”

“I’ve got the plan,” Kartholome said. He pulled his hand away from the oiled tip of his beard and pointed at Tunnel. “We follow him.”

They did. Weapons drawn-bare-chested like Tunnel, open shirted like Clytus and Kartholome, smiling with unaccountable good humor, like Geena-Dariel and his brigands marched down the pier and into the Lothan Aklun port city of Lithram. Dariel took the vanguard, unsure where his destination was. I’ll feel it, he thought. I’ll feel it when I’m close.

He thought of Bashar and Cashen, wishing they were with him to help sniff out the place he intended to find. They would not have actually helped, however. The place he searched for was not to be found by scent. Part of him already knew his destination. It was that part of him that had proposed this, vague as it was, to the others. He had not even detailed what he hoped to accomplish here. He had just said that Na Gamen was urging him to go to Lithram. There was something he needed to face there, something important.

They met no one along the waterfront. In the distance several people went about their work, but none was near enough to notice the new arrivals. “Any idea where we’re headed?” Clytus asked.

“We could ask that fellow,” Geena said, indicating a figure passing between two buildings without noticing them.

Quietly, so the man would not actually hear him, Kartholome said, “Hey, you know where to find the thing we’re looking for? Not sure what it is, but…”

“Up there,” Dariel said, indicating a narrow structure, the roof of which was just visible rising above the nearer row buildings. “It’s over there.”

Joking aside, nobody asked him how he knew that. They found a stairway between two of the larger buildings and ascended it, taking the steps a few at a time. Reaching the higher street, they stepped cautiously onto it. Tunnel pointed out that the architecture of the town was nothing like the Lothan Aklun estates he had seen on some of the barrier isles. Though childhood memories, the images were strong in his mind, as they were in Dariel’s. Here the smooth granite stones and the spires atop some buildings looked like the work of laborers, not sorcerers. They did not have long to ponder the differences.

Kartholome saw them first. He cursed.

A hundred or so paces down the street, a contingent of six Ishtat dashed into view. Judging by their well-armed look of determination, they had been alerted to the group’s presence. They pulled up, spotting the intruders. They conferred for a moment. Swords drawn, they fanned out, evenly spaced, clearly disciplined.

“We can handle them,” Clytus said to Dariel, drawing his sword. “They can’t be the best of the lot. Else they wouldn’t be here. They’d be with the invasion.”

Kartholome cursed again. Another group of Ishtat appeared on the far side of them, about the same distance away. The two groups converged, with Dariel’s group in the middle.

“We’re not so good at sneaking, huh?” Tunnel asked. “Oh well…” He stepped toward the first, nearer contingent of soldiers. He paused. “Dariel, I see a passage. What do I do? Go around and over? Or through?”

“Through it,” Dariel answered.

Tunnel grinned. “That’s the way.” He walked at first, but as he came nearer the soldiers he fell into a jog, and then a run. His mallets came up. The careful array of soldiers burst like an explosion had just hit their center. Tunnel had to swing around and come back at them, pressing several up against a building wall. He went to work, mallets hissing savage arcs around him, smashing stone, knocking swords away, and then, when he got serious, smashing bones.

“Go,” Clytus said grimly. “Do what you have to. We will, too.” He led the charge toward the other group, with Kartholome just behind him, already snapping his throwing stars into hissing motion.

Geena pulled her knife free. “Go, Dariel!” she said, pointing to the narrow structure Dariel had indicated earlier.

It took great effort for the prince to pull himself away. He hated doing so. He had never left his companions in danger. Hand on the hilt of the Ishtat sword he bore, he almost could not go.

“There’s your goal. We’ll sort out these ones. Go!” She rushed to join Tunnel. “Go!”

Dariel turned and ran. The entrance of the narrow building stood open. He dashed into it and kept going, stumbling over a low table, reaching out for the wall for support. He kept moving down a long corridor, past adjoining hallways and rooms, not really thinking about where he was going. He just got himself farther and farther from his friends, committing himself to leaving them behind.

Once he was deep enough inside and the clash and shouts of fighting had faded, Dariel paused. All right. Let me do this quickly. He closed his eyes and waited, hoping direction would come to him. When it did, he wasted a few precious seconds realizing it. As ever, Na Gamen did not speak to him as a separate being. He spoke as part of Dariel himself. So the vague feeling that he had to walk down the corridor to the second opening, through it, and down the stairs was not just an idle thought. Remembering this, he opened his eyes and dashed for the opening.

The next several minutes passed in the same manner. Dariel had to keep reminding himself that his instincts were more than instincts. He was not guessing. He was following a path he already knew, though it only came to him piece by piece. It felt like his knowledge stretched only as far as the light of a candle. As he moved, the illumination did as well. He kept going.

Until he stopped. At some point, just an empty stretch of corridor, he lost the drive to move forward. For a moment the fear that he was lost knifed through him. He breathed. Tried to trust. He leaned his hands against the wall and pushed his weight into it. As before, he thought the action was meaningless until the section of wall turned soft. He pushed right through and emerged into another room.

A small chamber. Four walls and seemingly sealed tight. Just before him, a lean, curving pedestal rose up to waist height. The room was not exactly dark and not exactly light, but he could see what he needed to. The dust was inches thick on the floor. Beneath his feet, it was as soft as carpet, undisturbed until this moment. The league has not found this place yet. They must have scoured the city already and the island after that and farther still, searching without knowing what they were searching for. Here, though, was a relic right here, undiscovered.

I wouldn’t have found it either, Dariel thought. Not without help.

Having found it, he stared, hoping Na Gamen was not done helping, for he had no idea what to do now. A framed area on the wall before him glowed with a low luminescence. The frame held no painting or window, and yet it was the center-the purpose-of the chamber. Staring, Dariel saw. Deep inside the wall, which was translucent, lights pulsed and wavered, much like the glowing aquatic life he had seen on special nights at sea. The energy in there was different, though. It changed shape before his eyes. At times it looked like a constellation of stars blooming into life all at once. But then that wasn’t right. The lights moved in swirls, tossed and shaped by layers of different currents. In other moments the light came in pulses, like so many heartbeats.

Looking closely at the pedestal’s top, he saw a single shape on the flat surface. It looked strangely familiar, but it took him a moment to realize it was an engraving of the same symbol protruding from his forehead.

His fingers tingled.

He had thought the chamber was completely silent, but that was not quite right. He heard something. He craned his head this way and that, sure that there were sounds just out of reach. The sound did not come from inside the room. It did not come from the pedestal. It was not even inside the living wall.

Stepping back, he took in the whole frame. As if in response, the constellation bloomed again. So many lights, all of them pulsing, pulsing. In time with one another. He pressed up close against it. And then he understood. The lights were not within the frame. The lights were not even lights. The wall was simply a way of seeing what they represented. He knew then what this place was and why he had come here. Most important, he knew what he was supposed to do.

He did not question the impulse that came to him. He moved around to the pedestal. He bent forward like a peasant before a king, like the faithful before evidence of his god. He bent forward in reverence and humility, and he touched his forehead to the altar. He placed the rune he wore into the imprint that matched it.