The Sacred Band

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

They’re not bad young ones,” Delivegu said. “Didn’t talk much at first, but they loosened up as we traveled. Get them talking about warfare and they’ll chew your ear off. I mean that literally.” He mussed the unruly black hair of the boy beside him.

Aliver smiled at the gesture. There was a fatherly sincerity to it that he had to acknowledge. He had always thought Delivegu a swaggering braggart, though he had not managed to say so while still bound by Corinn’s magic. Delivegu still had a swagger, but he had done what Aliver requested. He had reached them last night, in time, perhaps, for his mission to make a difference in what happened today.

“Thank you, Delivegu,” Aliver said. “You have done well.”

The Numrek children stood in a nervous cluster around the Senivalian. The eldest was in his early teens, the youngest looked to be five or six. Aliver could not be sure if their ages matched their appearance, but he thought so. He saw in the older boys the flame of newfound rebelliousness, in the younger children, the staring eyes of ones so frightened by the world that they could not look away from it even for a moment. They were just children. His enemy’s children, but still just children.

He counted seven of them, just like the number in Kelis’s dream. He recalled that Kelis had called them his children. He had dreamed that Aliver had seven children. Here they were. He thought, What if Shen had been captured like this? Aaden? It was not a far-fetched thought. In a world in which the Auldek fought this war to victory, his own dear ones would be at the mercy of his enemies, as these were.

“I mean you no harm,” Aliver said. “I know harm was done to you. I think, perhaps, that you saw what my sister did to your parents back in Teh. I am sorry for that. I hope that you live long lives, and that the years as they pass blur that memory. I can’t undo it any more than you can undo the crimes that drove the queen to feel the wrath she did that day. Do you know why she was so angry? Because your parents conspired to kill her son. That, more than anything, drove her to the madness you watched. I understand that madness, but I want no part of it myself. I have a child, too.”

That last statement stopped him. Whatever he was going to follow it with flew out of his mind. He sat a moment looking from one child’s face to another’s, searching for what he had been about to say. He did not find it. “I have a child, too” was not the beginning of a thought. It was the conclusion of it.

“Would you like to see Ushen Brae?” Aliver asked.

It took some time to get them to respond, with Delivegu helping. All of them eventually said they did want to see Ushen Brae.

“It’s a foreign land to you, and it won’t be as it was when your parents left.” This they did not have any response to. Why should they? They did not know Ushen Brae. They did know Acacia, though, and this place had not been kind to them. “If the Auldek will have you, would you go to them?”

The answers came back faster this time. Yes, of course they would.

Rising, Aliver moved toward the tent flap. He paused at it, and said, “I will try to send you home. It’s not up to me, but I will try.”

T he mass of troops collected a few hundred paces behind them was an impressive force. Aliver only glanced at them, though. He had no desire to see the thousands of warriors and hundreds of beasts and machines of war arrayed against him. His own army had grown just as massive. The united humanity of the Known World stood rank upon rank behind him, people from all the provinces, with all their various languages and traits and characteristics. They would fight and die today, just as the Auldek forces would. For different reasons, but with the same ferocity. Corinn’s dragons would take to the air; the freketes would do the same. This day could become an unimaginable, bloody conflagration. The wood was all stacked. The torch had only to be touched to the fuel. Or not.

So he kept his attention on the delegation just in front of him. Devoth, Sabeer, and the other clan chieftains stood a few strides away. Aliver had only seen them as spirit people, glowing and transparent. Still, he knew the figures who stood before him now were not as they had been but a few days ago. The defiance in Devoth’s laugh just a few nights before, the confidence, the certainty of knowing that death was far removed from them: it was all gone. Their faces looked haggard, stunned. Their eyes drooped with fatigue.

Mena stared at them as if she did not even recognize them. Behind him and his sister, Aliver had brought a small contingent, the handful who had done the spirit work with him the night before. It fell to him to complete this, to succeed or fail, but it felt very good to have those trusted friends behind him. Both groups were unarmed, having set their weapons on the ground before drawing near each other. If the Auldek attacked them, he and his people would die. Again, if that happened, he would have failed, and there would be nothing more he could do about it.

Devoth spoke first. “What have you done to us?” he asked, speaking Acacian.

“Nothing unjust,” Aliver said. He spoke without a hint of bravado. Without derision or anger, managing to sound both firm and empathetic. It was not a tone of voice he had to work hard to master. It was simply how he felt. “You awoke the other morning feeling different, didn’t you? You didn’t speak of it to the others because you felt weak. You felt frightened in a way you never have before. Or, at least, a way you don’t remember ever having felt before.”

“No,” Devoth grumbled. Though his eyes were savage, his no came out strangely passive. He denied it. He also wanted to hear more. The others did as well.

“You were alone then,” Aliver continued, “but when all the Auldek woke this morning they felt the same as you. They might not have said as much. I know you are a proud people. And what could you say, when you could not explain why the world feels different to you today from yesterday? I can explain it, for I had a hand in it. Do you want to know what we’ve done to you?”

“We have already asked you to tell us,” Sabeer said.

“Has Devoth told you of the peace that I proposed?”

“Yes,” Sabeer answered.

“Have you also heard it in your dreams-from me or from one of these here behind me?” The silence they responded with was answer enough. “The peace I offered is still what I offer today. I swear to it before my god, the Giver, who I believe created this world. The visitors that you had in your dreams, they were also real. They took my message to you; they also took something from you. They took back what you never should have stolen. They took from you, and released into death, the souls you had eaten. That’s why the world feels different to you today. Today, you have all woken up mortal. You have only the life you were born with inside you. Only that single, transparent, fragile soul stands between you and the afterdeath.”

The other Auldek stared at him, their faces like masks. They looked, standing so still and vacant, like they were already dead. Aliver almost smiled. You would think I’d killed you already. I haven’t. I’m the one counting down his last breaths. Hurry, let’s complete this.

“You have stolen our lives from us?” Devoth whispered.

“No, you stole them from the children we sent you. Your sin was taking them inside yourself; ours was sending them to you in the first place. These last nights we worked to end both your sin and ours.”

“You stole from us,” Devoth said.

“We made you Auldek again!” Aliver said. “You don’t even remember what you used to be. Once, you were mortal. You don’t remember that, but back then-before you sold yourselves to the Lothan Aklun-you were truly Auldek. You lived and died. You married and had children. I know these things about you. Rialus Neptos told you of us; he also told us of you.”

Devoth did not glance at the thin Acacian. Sabeer did, though. She pinned him with her eyes. Without even turning, Aliver knew Rialus squirmed beneath the gaze.

“You loved life and feared death and that is what living is! Life is given to us only as a temporary thing. All of us who can think know we live on borrowed time. That’s the beauty of it. We have to live now, for it will soon be gone. You lost that, and then you forgot that you lost it. We have given it back to you. It’s a gift from us to you. I know that you intended to die back to your true soul here in the Known World. That’s part of what you came for. You would have killed or enslaved us first, but I cannot allow that. So take the gifts we have given you. Leave the rest. Leave the old crimes. Leave the new ones you would have committed. Leave it and go home. Take with you a future in which you can live true again. Your mission here will not be a failure. This is not defeat, Devoth. You came to find a way to live again. You came to become fertile. You came to end your life as slavers and become your true selves again. All that you can have. Let me show you what that future can look like.”

Aliver turned before they could respond. He shouted something back to his army, and a moment later several soldiers moved aside. The Numrek children walked through the gap left open for them. The seven figures proceeded forward cautiously. Aliver beckoned to them. “Come! Let your uncles and aunts see you. Come!”

When the children reached them, they stood awkwardly, out from the Acacians, and yet reluctant to go any nearer the Auldek. Sabeer said something to the children in Auldek. Several of them responded. She motioned them forward with her fingers. A man to one side of her squatted down and beckoned them with his arms. The children drifted closer, until near enough that the adults touched them. They began speaking rapidly to them, different adults asking different children questions. They squeezed them on the shoulders and pulled them into embraces and cupped their faces in their palms.

Allek, the Numrek who had come in his father’s place, pushed his way through his elders and called to one of the younger girls. Seeing him, she broke from the woman who was stroking her hair and ran to him. She jumped into his embrace and the young man turned away, trying to hide the heaving sobs that wracked his chest.

Aliver gave them a few moments, and then said, “I told you I would provide these children to you. Here they are. Take them. Take them home to your lands and teach them how to be Auldek. I believe that will give both you and them great joy.”

“We have not said we accept your terms,” Devoth said. He had been gazing, enraptured, in a young man’s face. He straightened, hardening his expression.

“No, but that’s because I have not told you the last aspect of my terms. I told you I would reveal it now, so I will.” Aliver lifted his chin and indicated the vast array of troops that made up Devoth’s army. “Those soldiers and slaves who fight for you-I want you to let them decide their lives from now on. They may return to Ushen Brae with you, or they are welcome among us. There will be no punishment for the fighting that came before today. You’ll tell them this. If you don’t, we will tell them that all of you Auldek are mortal.” He paused, letting the significance of that grow inside them. “You may think they love you and are loyal to you, but I think it’s more that they fear you. They think you’re invincible. That’s what keeps them standing behind you. If they knew that you were just as mortal as they, they would not look at you with slave eyes anymore. That one there. What is his name?”

Aliver picked out a Lvin slave, one who stood out before a contingent of the divine children. He stared, his chin raised almost as if he were sniffing the air. His face was white as snow, framed by the thick locks of white hair that made him seem truly half snow lion, just as regal, even more deadly.

Rialus answered, “Menteus Nemre.”

“What do you think that one would do if he knew one blow of his sword could end you? I suspect I know the answer, but should we ask him? We could call him over and hear what he thinks.”

“We gave him a good life,” Devoth said. The old certainty, which had already slipped out of him along with his souls, had escaped him now entirely. He spoke, but he did not even seem to believe himself. “You don’t know how much we gave him.”

“You did not give him freedom,” Aliver said. He stared at Menteus Nemre. The man had noticed. He stared back. “You did not give him the respect an equal deserves. I suspect he would like that more than anything else. I suspect they would all want that. I may be wrong, Devoth, but I believe that if I shouted the truth of your mortality to them right now, you would not have one army facing you. You would find two surrounding you. I suspect that your own army would slaughter you with more relish than anyone standing behind me.”

Aliver brought his eyes back to Devoth and asked, “Should I ask them?”

L ater that day, after Devoth said no, he did not want Aliver to ask Menteus Nemre or any of the divine children that question, after he had conferred with the rest of the Auldek and brought back the answer Aliver had longed to hear, after he had listened to all the oaths to peace that he could and when he believed it had really, truly been achieved, with protection for any Acacians remaining in Ushen Brae as well, Aliver asked if Mena would accept the rest. There was still a long line of Auldek waiting to accept the peace. It would take some time.

She said she would complete the work. She took his hand as he rose and held it a time, as if she were rehearsing the words she would say to him. In the end, she only repeated, “I will complete this.”

Aliver parted with her casually, as if he just wished to go outside and walk among the troops. He did that. There was much rejoicing among them, and he wanted to feel some of it. But when he felt the fingers of death brush his shoulder, he did not run from them. They had been near for a long time, and he could not possibly begrudge them their due now, not after the day they had just allowed him to complete. His time had come. He hoped that Mena would not be angry with him for not saying a more formal good-bye, but he thought she would know that he had been doing that with every action he took since being freed from Corinn’s spell. Better that she take over from him, as that was what the future held for her anyway.

He walked for as long as he could, greeting soldiers and touching hands, until he managed to slip down a quiet lane of tents. He lay down on a cot under a shelter. And then, on second thought, he rose and pulled the cot out underneath the sky. He watched the heavy blanket of clouds, so near to them in the darkening sky. When the first snowflakes began to fall, he closed his eyes and felt their cold, delicate kisses on his cheeks. On his eyelids and lips.

He opened his eyes once more, stirred by a commotion near at hand. He heard Po’s roar come down from up above. He saw the dragon’s dark shadow pass above, and then heard the answering calls from his siblings. His eyes almost fluttered closed, but then a man yelled. There came the crash of something being knocked over, and then a series of snaps, the clink of metal rings and grunts of agitation.

Aliver understood what was happening before he knew why he understood. Po flew riderless above, calling on his kin to join him. The other three were tearing off their harnesses. He heard their wings unfurl, that loud concussion of clicking that was like nothing else in the world, and then swoosh as those great wings grabbed the air and lifted them upward. He heard the panic in people’s voices, but he did not feel it. Corinn had written, As long as I live they will be true to us. After that, she said, they would be different. Listening to them chatter to one another as they rose into the snow-heavy night, Aliver knew that change had begun, and he knew that his sister had gone before him to the afterdeath.

“Corinn…” He had been so consumed by his own work, that he had almost forgotten her battle with the Santoth. He remembered it now, and knew that she had been triumphant.

Eyes closed again, he lay there a long time, feeling the snow build a blanket atop him, thanking his sister. It was not just her saving the world from the Santoth that he was grateful for. He thanked her for himself, for allowing him to know, in the end, that she was wonderful, that he loved her completely, without reservation. As a brother should.

A little later he stopped feeling the snow. He stopped feeling anything. He had a thought that would have made him laugh, except he no longer had the lips to laugh with. Aliver Akaran, he thought, look what you’ve done. You’ve made it so that they’re going to start calling you the Snow King again. He did not really mind. He had always liked the ring of the name. Before, he just had not deserved it. Now, perhaps he had earned it.