The War with the Mein

by David Anthony Durham

  Corinn had been about to express shock and confusion at the strange news of her sister. She had pursed her lips, about to ask for a chair to sit in. She might even have looked to Sire Dagon for guidance, for help. But all these possibilities vanished the moment he expressed pity for her. She did not want pity. She would not accept pity. Nor would she allow the suggestion that her life added up to nothing of interest or worth to stand.

  “You are mistaken,” she said. She stepped around his desk and drew close to him. She felt the invisible barrier between them, the point that marked the perimeter of what Sire Dagon considered to be his private domain. She pressed against it and felt it resist, felt it bow back against her. The leagueman’s face showed no outward sign of consternation, and yet she could tell that he was fighting the desire to step back. Something about this pleased her, gave her confidence. “You, as a member of the league, know that appearances are one thing. The substance beneath is another. Isn’t that right?”

  “You have already answered your own question.”

  “So it may be that you don’t know yet what lies beneath this façade. You think nothing does, but you should know better. The league, after all, claims to have no hidden interests. But that’s absurd. It’s not just wealth you want, is it?”

  “We want only to continue as we have,” Sire Dagon said. “We serve the world’s powers. We bring nations together to nurture trade and mutual prosperity—”

  “Please, Dagon,” Corinn said. “Don’t insult me. You have a different objective. I can feel it behind your mask.”

  “I wear no mask, lady.”

  “Of course you do.” She moved a half step closer, cocked her head as if she were searching for something minute along his hairline. “As a child they sewed it to your face with hair-thin thread. Perhaps you have gotten so used to it that even you don’t recognize your own deceit. But the stitch is still visible, Sire Dagon. It is right here….” She lifted a hand, fingers pinched as if to tweeze the thread in question.

  The leagueman batted at her hand. He twirled away, the fabric of his gown brushing her hip, stiff, heavy fabric that felt almost like a plate of pliable armor. “Your arrogance knows no bounds.”

  “I hope not, but I don’t as yet know. I have only just discovered arrogance and taken it to heart. You, however, thrive on it. You want to control the workings of the world. You want to know that you are godlike, that you pull the strings that make nations dance. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “As I said, we want only to preserve what we already have.”

  “And what is it that you have?”

  Standing at a distance again, Sire Dagon regained his composure. He grinned. The question pleased him. “Now you ask something of substance. What do we have already? What do we want to preserve? Consider this…If we don’t transport water to the Kidnaban mines, the workers die of thirst. There is little water on the island, and they cannot get off because we control the seas. So if we say that they die by drought, they die by drought. Consider that only the league makes pitch now. Even the Numrek cannot be bothered to produce it. Why should they when we do the work and give it to them? So we—the league—hold the secret of how to toss down flaming meteors from the heavens. Only we do business with the Lothan Aklun. Only we know the full extent of the power they serve. We are the ones that keep the Other Lands at bay so that the Known World can continue to believe itself a complete world. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Add these things up and add more things than I can even begin to detail to you, and what is the result? I will tell you. We don’t want to become like gods. We already are gods. We don’t want to pull the strings attached to every soul in the Known World. We already do. Had you the eyes to see them, you would realize a million tiny threads stretch out from each of my fingers. This is the truth. The Giver left the world to us, and the Known World has felt the hand of no deity but us ever since. Not Akarans. Not Meins.”

  “Not the Lothan Aklun?”

  “They are a separate matter.”

  “I know they are,” Corinn said, again drawing nearer to him as she spoke. “They are not the power you have always led people to believe, are they? Hanish told me what you told him. You do business with them because doing so is a lesser evil than being without the trade they facilitate. They are rich. Richer than you, and you covet their wealth, don’t you? You call them a great power because of their riches, because that is all that matters to you. But you hate it that you must share the trade with them, as an unequal partner. Sometimes at night you dream of having their palaces as your own. That is what arouses you more than anything else in the world. Am I right?”

  Sire Dagon backed away, his face soured. “First I lecture you; then you attempt to lecture me. I’ve no time for this. I’ll give you one last opportunity to tell me what brought you here.”

  Corinn, feeling strangely at ease with being prompted and with the lie she was about to utter, said, “I come with a message from my brother. He wants you to stop aiding Hanish. If you do, he’ll make it greatly worth your while.”

  “He wants us to stop aiding Hanish?” he repeated, his eyebrows wrinkled and dismissive. “Did I not just explain that neither Meins nor Akarans control the world?”

  “But neither do you, not alone, at least. Not without winning the consent of the masses. That’s what my brother can bring you, even more completely than Hanish.”

  “Your brother! He angers me as much as he amuses me. Do you know that he’s somehow convinced people to come off mist? It’s most disruptive.”

  Corinn had not known anything about people coming off mist, but she took it in without showing surprise on her face. “That is exactly why you should wish him victory. He frees them to help him win this war. Once won, however, the situation afterward will be very different. We can make it one that will please us both. Aliver isn’t my father, nor am I. Tell me that in truth you don’t think a new Akaran dynasty would benefit us both. Think of all we accomplished together before. Hanish Mein was but a necessary awakening for us. But, believe me, we are now fully alert.”

  Sire Dagon focused his narrow-set eyes on her and stared with an intensity that would have withered Corinn only a few days ago. Even now, it was hard to meet. “Let us say that I take you at your word,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing that would merit such a change of policy. Your brother is not going to win this contest, Corinn. Trust me. I have access to information you do not. As that is so, why would I align myself with a losing cause, especially one that espouses a desire to hurt my interests? Answer that question convincingly and we will talk further. Fail to, and I will take my leave, Princess.”

  Struggling not to look away, Corinn tried to prepare the entirety of what she had to say. There was a great deal to sort through, and it all swirled in her head as she met the leagueman’s gaze. Part of her wanted to release a whole litany of confessions, to lay it all before him and be judged, understood, sentenced. But she was not here for that. She would not tell him how she had loved Hanish and how it twisted her with misery to find their relationship all false. She was not going to admit that she hated her own weaknesses, that she realized she had been a fool all her life, a lamb being led to slaughter. Nor did she intend to tell him how much pain she carried within her; that she still ached from longing for the life she might have had with her siblings; that she sometimes thought of Igguldan, the prince who had fallen to his knees loving her; and that she still raged against having her father taken from her and against losing her mother while she was but a girl. She held all these things eddying in her mind, but she plucked her message from among them.

  Soon the words she would speak fell into place. She would repeat that the league must—for their own preservation—distance themselves from Hanish. They must pull back the navy supporting Maeander, disregard that fleet of Vumuan ships. They must wait. That was all they need do, for now. Not act against Hanish—just not act for him either. Just as they had not aided or hindered either side in the first war. If
Hanish prevailed, the league’s inactions would not have caused him that much harm. They would be chided but forgiven. What else could Hanish do? Really, they would lose nothing by drawing back. But if the league continued to aid the Meins and they lost…then Aliver would be without mercy upon them. He would abolish the trade completely. He would turn the rage of the world squarely on them and fight with all his power to destroy them. And if none of that convinced him, she had yet another promise to make, one that she doubted he would easily ignore.

  It was a lot to ask, but on the tenth flare of the leagueman’s nostrils she opened her mouth. “Sire Dagon, I can tell you on my brother’s behalf that he has no desire to hurt your interests. Just the opposite, he—and I—believe that a partnership between the league and the Akarans can be even more profitable than ever before.”

  With this opening, she had the leagueman’s interest. Sire Dagon nodded that she should continue, that his attention was hers, for one last time, at least.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTY-ONE

  There was nothing of the familiar, natural order of the world to be heard in the dawning day. None of his usual awareness that creatures of the night were bedding down as the day laborers took their place. No morning birdsongs. No cockerels with their heads lifted to announce their ownership of the brightening world. No barking of village dogs. He heard no children with their instant enthusiasm, their shouts and laughter. Nowhere did he hear the lilting of women’s voices as they greeted each other in ways and with words that were themselves ancient Talayan customs. Nor was the air brushed with the sound of threshing, that rhythm that over the years had become a gentle enticement to awake, as constant as the rising sun and just as welcome.

  On the morning that his contest with Maeander Mein was to resume, Aliver lay awake on his pallet in his war tent, missing all these things. Such moments felt as far gone now as memories from his childhood. They were glimpses of an innocent world that he could scarcely believe in anymore. Back then, he had thought of himself as suffering through an exile, but now every day of his years in Talay seemed idyllic. Remembering that he had once lived like any other person in a normal world pained him physically, a bodily ache that had plagued him through the night, even during his short bouts of sleep. All the troubles and worries and fears that had seemed to matter back then were inconsequential compared to what he now faced.

  He rolled himself upright and pressed the fatigue from his eyes with the knuckles of his fists. A few minutes later he pushed through his tent flap. Around him spread the throng of humanity that had rallied to his cause. Hundreds of tents and shelters, thousands of men, women, and children rising for another day of his war. The Halaly guards, who by their own initiative shadowed his every motion, nodded greetings to him. He saw faces all around lift toward him, smiling and hopeful. They all believed that this war was as good as won. They trusted him completely now, felt he was like Edifus returned, like Tinhadin. Though he explained that it was not so, they seemed to think he was the power protecting them, not the unseen Santoth.

  He kept his eyes moving, afraid lest his gaze rest too long on any one of his faithful followers. He could show them no uncertainty. You can feel it, Thaddeus had said shortly before he disappeared, but never show it. Aliver had not realized how he had come to lean on the old chancellor until he departed. In a way it felt like his father had spoken through his betrayer’s mouth, strange as that seemed. He had said that all people were fumblers at life, even kings. But an effective king moves as if he were a hero of old. Such heroes never doubted themselves. Not as far as the world could tell, at least. Aliver missed the man greatly. Thaddeus had not said a word of parting, but the prince knew what he searched for. He prayed him speed in finding it.

  He found Mena and Dariel conversing over breakfast. They sat side by side, touching at the knee, both of them cupping their wooden bowls in one hand and spooning porridge with the other. Mena so petite, yet honed to a keen-edged strength her scant clothing did not hide, dangerous even though she presented to the world a kind, wise face, sword at her side within easy grasping range; Dariel with his ready smile and energy, a devious twinkle always close behind his eyes, his shirt open right down to his flat abdomen. They leaned in close together and spoke as they ate. They looked like…well, like two unlikely siblings at ease with each other. The years they had spent apart seemed to have faded into insignificance.

  A seizure of emotion racked Aliver. He wanted to leap the space between them and tackle them both in an embrace. If he did so, he’d end up rolling on the ground with them. He’d pour tears all over them. He’d blubber and cry, and he was not sure that he’d be able to rise from such an embrace and do the things he had to do. He, or they, might die in the hours to come. He knew it. Part of him wanted to say a whole host of things to them in preparation. He should crack open whatever part of him was most fragile and share it with them, so that they would understand and remember him. He yearned to spend days and days with them, learning everything about the lives they had lived, probing them to help him understand the life he had lived, seeking in their memories a more complete picture of everything they’d each been through.

  He had opened up some of his vision of the future to them. When they prevailed, he had said, he would not rule over them. He would not be a tyrant who left them no say in the running of the empire. They would share all decisions among the four of them. They would reach decisions by consensus, by compromise. They would find within long conversations with one another a wisdom greater than what they could come up with singly. They would take greater responsibility for the workings of the empire at the same time as they provided for increased representation from its diverse regions. Everyone would have more say in shaping the future.

  All of this he meant and believed, but it was the prince, Aliver Akaran, speaking, not the brother. The brother still had a great many things he hungered to share with his siblings. As he proceeded to walk toward them he acknowledged that nothing in his life had ever fallen in line with his imaginings; whatever was to happen, that fact would stay a constant. The very fact of the day awaiting them made it impossible for him to launch that embrace or let flow those tears. Such emotion was for later, for quiet times when thousands of lives did not hang in the balance. Instead, he spoke wryly, as any older brother to his younger siblings.

  “How is it that you two are always up before me?” he asked.

  Mena rose, smiling, and squeezed his elbow.

  Dariel said, “The question is how you manage to sleep at all.”

  “Lightly, brother,” Aliver said, using an old Talayan saying. “I sleep lightly and tread to keep my head out of the sea of dreams.”

  Within the hour the three of them were armed and dressed for their roles. Previously, they had each headed portions of the army. Mena and Dariel were new to massed warfare, but they were quick and seemed to see with far-reaching eyes. Mena had fought in the front lines of the battle, amazing everyone with her skills as a swordswoman and with her ability to kill without remorse and yet maintain a humble, human character. Dariel had a flair about him that inspired almost comical glee among the troops. The tales his raiders had spun about him had the masses believing he was impervious to injury, untouchable, blessed. They were symbols the people were keen to rally around. Aliver’s instructions—passed through them and voiced to the masses—had an uplifting effect that not even veteran generals like Leeka Alain could duplicate.

  That was part of what the towers had been for. From them the three siblings sent messages to one another with mirrors and by raising different colored flags. They also allowed Aliver to communicate with the Santoth, the elevation making it easier for his consciousness to reach out to theirs. But after the last day of battle, when Maeander had focused his catapults on them systematically, the towers had to be abandoned. They had turned into deadly targets. The second day Mena had just escaped being trapped in one by chance. She had been held up as she approached the tower. Instead of being up in i
t, she watched it being destroyed from just outside the catapult’s explosive range.

  Aliver himself had been in the last one hit on the third day. He had only just climbed to the top and opened his mind to the Santoth and felt the connection between them uncoil and snap fast. The next moment the soldiers about him all dove for the floor. And then it felt as if the sun had fallen to earth. The roof buckled and slammed down upon him. Flames hurtled in from each opening, buffeting him about like plumes of molten liquid. The world viewed through his eyes went from golden flame to charred blackness and past that to nothing. For a few elongated seconds he swam in the baffling pain of his flesh being scorched from his body. He remembered that he had had a dying thought, but as with something that happens in a dream, he could not recall what it had been. Perhaps he had not even completed the thought before the change happened.

  It was quick, the recovery. One moment he was in an incinerator; the next the flames peeled back from his body and seemed to evaporate. The structure, which had been twisting to the ground beneath the weight of impact, found legs. The wood flexed like muscle just awakened. The whole tower groaned with exertion. A second later it was upright. The heat vanished. Aliver’s flesh was intact. The men and women all around him rose back to their feet, bewildered.

  He had answered their silent questions with what he knew to be the truth. As surprised as he was himself, he projected his words with confidence, as if he was stating something any tutored child would know. Theirs was a blessed cause, he’d said. The Santoth, though they were unseen, protected them. He had already given a speech arguing that they were all part of a mythic present. He reminded them of this and asked them to imagine the song future generations would sing about this army. They been drawn from all the reaches of the Known World and were protected by ancient sorcerers who wanted nothing more than to return to the world of the living and right old wrongs. This was too magnificent an endeavor to fail, he said.