The War with the Mein

by David Anthony Durham

  The Santoth had a slow, insatiable curiosity about everything he had seen and experienced, about history as he understood it, and about events of what to them was the most recent past. He felt how staggering it was for them to learn that Tinhadin had allowed himself to die within the normal span of a human lifetime. That was not the sorcerer they knew, not the ambitious one who stretched his arms with the hopes of encircling the entire world. Also hard for them to accept was the fact that the sorcerer’s direct ancestors knew nothing of the Giver’s tongue. How could Tinhadin’s descendants know nothing of The Song of Elenet? How could such knowledge have slipped from existence? Aliver sensed the dread pulsing behind these questions and could feel that they did not entirely believe all of it. The Santoth, although aged and wise, were tied like all creatures to life. They knew not what their own future might hold, and they feared the same as anyone faced with uncertainty.

  However, they offered Aliver more than they took from him. They may have known nothing about events in the world for the last several hundred years, but they were encyclopedic in their knowledge of the distant time that had shaped them and all that came before. They nourished Aliver with history and lore. They detailed the Retribution in a manner that rewrote his understanding of his dynasty’s founding entirely. They spoke of Edifus and Tinhadin and Hauchmeinish as if they had parted from them only the day before. They told of battles and duels not preserved in the Forms. They fed him a diet made up entirely of knowledge.

  Very little of what he learned of people’s actions began or ended with either the noble ideals or the fiendish wickedness he had been taught lay behind all great struggles. There was something comforting in this. For once, the nature of the world and the crimes of men in shaping it made complete sense to him. There was a truth, he realized. Things had happened in certain ways. It was possible to understand the events, although only from a place without judgment and only when one stared at them without the desire to shape the events to create certain meanings, to validate, to explain. The Santoth did not try to do any of this. They simply informed him and seemed to have no opinion whatsoever on the catalog of crimes and suffering they detailed.

  Most often his exchange was with a collective consciousness, into and out of which individual voices flowed at will. Occasionally he found himself sitting beside the Santoth who had first spoken to him. His name had been Nualo, although in his existence here there was no need to single him out by name. If a thought was meant for him he simply knew it; likewise, if a thought came from Nualo, Aliver knew from its cadence and shape and feel from whom it had originated.

  At some point—whether it was night or day, a week or a year after his arrival in the far south Aliver could not have said—Nualo said that he had just come to understand something, a flaw in Aliver’s conception of the world. It concerned the tale of Bashar and Cashen.

  The story, as any Acacian child knew, was that two kingly brothers who failed to share power equally became great enemies. They fought in the mountains and sometimes, during great storms, their anger rose again and you could hear the rumbling of their ongoing battle. It was a tale, Nualo said, that hid a truth Aliver should know.

  There was no Bashar, he said. There was no Cashen.

  There were, however, two peoples: one called Basharu and one called Cularashen. In the distant past they were two nations of Talayan people. They lived so long ago that there is no way to measure the years. They came from common ancestry, but they grew in separate ways and believed themselves to be different beings entirely. As both nations grew prosperous and swelled in numbers, they also learned pride. The Basharu believed themselves favored by the Giver. The Cularashen called this heresy; they were the beloved of the Giver. Both peoples found all manner of proofs to verify their view: in the blessing the Giver bestowed on them, in the bounty of their crops in a given year, in the disease cast upon the other, in the sun that favored one’s crops, in the floods that destroyed the other’s. Each year—each month or day or hour, for that matter—confirmed and challenged their assertions.

  Eventually, both races agreed to petition the Giver. Through prayers and sacrifices, offerings and ceremonies, they asked him to make known his preference. They wanted him to choose between the two peoples so that all would see and understand whom he favored most. The Giver, however, did not answer them. Not, at least, through a sign both sides could agree upon. So they fought to decide the matter themselves.

  Theirs was the first war between nations of men, but in it they learned all the degradations humans would ever need to practice it. The Basharu eventually gained the upper hand. The Cularashen fled Talay. They sailed to an island in the center of what was to them a vast sea. They took with them many things, including the seeds of acacia trees. They planted them all across this island so that it would feel like home to them. They have lived on this island ever since.

  This name, Cularashen, Nualo said, has been forgotten. As has Basharu. But those people—the defeated Cularashen—are the people you call Acacians. You, Prince, are one of them.

  How could that be? Aliver asked. We are so different from the people of Talay. In so many ways… He meant in terms of racial characteristics—skin color, features of the face and form. But he hesitated to project this thought. Something about it snagged inside him with embarrassing barbs.

  Nualo understood him well enough. He said that the Giver had been angry at the people’s folly. He abhorred the war and the foulness that so flared out of his own loved creation. If humans thought they were so different from each other, he would make them even more so. He twisted people’s tongues and made them speak differently, so that one nation’s words were meaningless babble to another’s ears. He roasted some in the sun and let others wither and go snow pale in the cold. He stretched noses or flattened them, made some people tall and others short, set eyes deep or pinched them at the edge and slanted them, twisted hair into curls or let it hang free. The Giver did this as a test for them to see through. But they did not. Before long, humans began to accept that they were different, and then discord between them became the norm. And this, in addition to Elenet’s betrayal, was another reason the Giver turned in disgust from the world. He has had nothing to do with it since.

  All races are one? Aliver asked.

  All the races of the Known World are one, Nualo said. Forgetting this was the second crime done by humans. We suffer for it still.

  Aliver would have to live with this new version of the world for some time for it to become real for him. The old pride in his character scoffed at the idea of Acacians being nothing more than a defeated, displaced tribe of Talay. He had lived an entire life with Acacian supremacy as a given. Certainly he had found himself struggling to best his Talayan peers in any contest over the last nine years, but he had taken that to be a fault in himself. He was not up to the standards of his people. It was what pushed him to work harder, to grow fit, and to fight like a warrior and kill a laryx.

  He was so sure of his own failings that he had sought to hide them every day of his life. None of this had shaken his belief that the differences observed on people’s outsides mirrored equally indisputable differences within. Nualo and the other Santoth slipped this belief from beneath his feet and left him drifting upon a sea of entirely unimagined possibility. For reasons he did not fully acknowledge, this troubled him more than any of the other revelations he received from the Santoth.

  It seemed he lived with them an eternity before they prompted him back to his purpose. They did so en masse. They gathered around him, circle outside circle, face after stony face after face, much like the audience held with him when he first arrived. Aliver only gradually recognized that they had a particular purpose. They had accepted him. They had waited. They had learned and shared with him. Now they wanted.

  Bring us back into the world, they said, speaking in the singular voice that was all of them at once. Free us.

  They assured him that he was the only one that could do so. Only he out
of all of his generation—that is, a firstborn son of the patriarchal line of Tinhadin—could lift the curse that kept them in a state apart from the rest of the world. That was how Tinhadin had woven the magic. It was strong magic, but Elenet himself had decreed that there must be a way out of any spell. He knew that men always erred in some way when they spoke the Giver’s tongue. The flaw might not be immediately obvious, the ramifications not clear for centuries, but eventually the faults showed. Tinhadin had no choice but to follow this edict, even when castigating others of his order.

  There is no spell, the Santoth said, that cannot be undone. There is always a door back that never closes. You are that door, and you have only to say the words.

  What words? Aliver asked.

  That, however, was not an answer the Santoth could provide. Only Aliver himself could figure that out. They could not even teach him, as their god speech was so corrupted by time that nothing they uttered came out as they intended.

  I know none of the Giver’s language, Aliver said, not for the first time. I’d never heard of Elenet’s book before you told me of it. I have never been taught one word of the language of creation. I’m sorry, but I’m powerless to aid you.

  They did not disguise their disappointment. Why, then, did you seek us out? Why did you stir us from slumber?

  Why indeed? He had almost forgotten the stretch of earthly years leading up to the present. It took some effort to wrench his attention back to what his purpose had been. But once he tried, it all came to him. He had come searching for them, full of import, with purpose hung about his neck like a punishment. There was a world of people—many of whom he loved—engaged in a titanic struggle. He had come here seeking aid, not for refuge, not for a home among the banished, not to forget the world. He had come to ask the Santoth what they could do to save a family—and a world—that had driven them away.

  He let all of this flow from him to the sorcerers. It spun into the breathing air between them, circled and twined through them in the silent, flowing exchange that now seemed so natural.

  You ask of us things that we cannot do, they said. We could help you from here, but there would be limits.

  With your powers you could do much. I am sure of it. I—I give you permission to leave here and return to the world.

  It took them some time to consider this. It would be good to venture north, they admitted. But without being properly freed from Tinhadin’s curse they would never function like normal people in the world. They would be walking ghosts haunting a world they were not completely a part of. What was more, they could not help him in the way he intended.

  You wish to make war.

  It was Aliver’s turn to hesitate. They put it so simply. Yet it was true—or mostly so. He did not want it, but a battle was coming. Now that he remembered it fully it was clear that his entire life had been leading toward war. A horrible war. A conflagration that would liberate or destroy him. He had no choice but to play his part in it. Soon, he would have to return to the world and…Yes, I will make war on my enemies. He almost added the word “noble” or “just” or “righteous,” for such was the type of war he wished to wage. He mulled them in his mind but did not release them. He knew what the Santoth would think of such notions.

  You may invite us back into the world, the Santoth said, but we will be form without substance.

  But if you were freed? Aliver asked. If I found Elenet’s book…If I learned how to free you…You could then fight for me?

  Having asked the question, he sat aware of his heart beating, watching the blurred faces all about him, feeling the gravity with which they considered their response. It was the first sensation of time he had felt since arriving here. Something had shifted. The world had begun to reclaim him, and it seemed urgent that he have the answer to this question. Would you fight for me?

  If you free us we will fight for you, the Santoth eventually said, answering with a rapidity that betrayed emotions they had thus far tried to control. Make us true sorcerers again, Lord Prince, and we will wipe the world clean for you to remake as you wish.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-SIX

  Spratling awoke. His eyes were open. He was free of the dream. It was not real. He tried to quell the fear that had shoved him out of slumber so forcefully, but it was not easy. The illumination of the lamp hung by the ramshackle door to his cabin did nothing to dispel the menace he felt pulsing from the walls. There was threat latent in the three-legged stool with the vest draped over it and ominous import in the half-empty bottle of wine on the wall shelf. From outside came a rasp of ocean’s breath. He knew that there was nothing to fear in these mundane objects or sounds. In a way there had not even been anything to fear in the dream. Nothing like the dangers he willingly faced in his daily work. Knowing this, however, did not help him through the moments between the dreaming and the conscious world.

  The nightmare he had fled was yet another variation on the visions that had plagued his sleep since Leeka Alain arrived in the Outer Isles, insisting on calling him by that half-forgotten name. Each dream began with an awareness of his smallness. He was a child, tiny, spindly legged, thin armed. He viewed the world from half height. He knew himself to be a target, hunted by a nameless, shapeless possibility. If this being found him, something terrible would happen. He did not know what, but he could not stay still to find out. He wandered through subterranean corridors, a dark and absurdly complex maze. The world existed only in front of him, and he existed only by moving forward through it. Behind him things vanished. He dashed through intersections, afraid of what they opened onto. Out of the stonework of the walls strange creatures stretched their talons, their beaks, and their horned heads, each of them trapped in expressions of rage. How easy it would be for any of them to rip him to pieces; how frightening that they all held so steadily to the pretense that they were only stone. They were not, of course. If he listened hard enough, he heard their hushed breathing.

  Though the corridors varied and his path was never the same twice, he always arrived at the same destination. He stepped into a brightly lit room. It was full of people, loud with laughter and music, a sound of tinkling glass that was almost like cascading beads of water. A hundred faces turned toward him, smiling. They had gathered to honor him. It was his birthday. That was what he’d been searching for all along! His tenth birthday celebration. They crowded forward, calling him by the same name Leeka had. That name, actually, was the only word they said: spoken in myriad pitches, strung together in sentences, lilting like questions, forceful like accusations. They spoke a language made up entirely of a single word. His name.

  One of them, the youngest girl, stretched a hand out toward him, her white palm upward, fingers crooked and beckoning. The gesture racked him with spasms of fear. She moved toward him, whispering, motioning that he need not be afraid. The more she indicated this, the more he believed it to be a lie. She had enormous brown eyes. They were too big for her face. He realized in a single, telescoped moment that she was not who he had thought her to be, even as he grasped that he had not even conceived an identity for her. This paradoxical realization was what hurtled him toward consciousness.

  As always, the experience left him shaken. Who had he thought the girl was? Who had he realized she actually was? Sometimes he spent a greater part of the day plagued by her image, haunted by her eyes. He knew that her identity was within him. It was as if he had a hundred-sided die with the truth written upon one side. No matter how relentlessly he rolled the die, he never found the answer.

  Wren stirred on the pallet beside him. She rolled from her back to one side, facing away from him. He felt as if he could hear her eyelids split open. They were not eyes at all like those of the girl in his dreams. Wren was from a coastal people north past Candovia. Her hair was brittle and straw silvered like a woman of the Mein, but her eyes were narrow, set flush with her face instead of recessed. They had about them a sleepy quality, although this belied her predatory sharpness of mind. �
�Dreams have no power beyond their realm,” she had told him before. “Only actions do.” Spratling felt sure that she was right but was not sure whether to read that statement as a comfort or as a challenge.

  Later, when he joined the crowd of raiders taking their morning meal, he walked among them, smiling and joking, teasing in the easy manner he had with his men. They sat on benches ranked around a cook stove that had come from the mess hall at Palishdock. It was a massive, cast-iron thing. Spratling himself had led a small party back to the settlement to rescue it from the ashes and destruction the league warship had inflicted on the place. Its appearance here—on the southern isle that had become their third hideaway in as many months—had raised morale.

  Standing in the sand before it, inhaling the bacon scent sizzling atop it, bent forward and preparing to pluck a strip up with his fingers, he did not take note of the general’s arrival until he spoke. Leeka stood some distance away, on the other side of the stove. He spoke for everyone to hear.

  “Why haven’t you told everyone about the key?” he demanded. “Why haven’t you told them what the prisoner has said?”

  Spratling’s appetite, his pleasant mood, his transitory sense of equilibrium all vanished in an instant. He had known this moment was coming, of course. It was eight days since his attack on the warship. He had sworn to silence the few who had heard just what the key was for, but secrets among raiders do not last, especially not with a league pilot held prisoner among them. Spratling cursed himself for bringing the prisoner with them. He should have killed him on the night, but he could not resist taking so valuable a prisoner, could not help but want to know what the man could tell him. He had made sure only those who had been with him in the pilot’s room took food and water to the man, and only Spratling and Dovian interrogated him. But his presence had been on everybody’s mind since their return.