The last few died within a howling circle of monsters dancing around them, gleefully cutting them down one after another. Until they were all gone. All dead. The Auldek held to that circle, drawing in closer over the bodies, their weapons finally lowered. The fréketes already looked bored. They rummaged through the debris of the houses. One began stoking a fire that had spread from a chimney. The others took up the task, caving in whole walls to watch them ignite.
Rialus hovered at the margin of the carnage. It was like he was standing too close to the fires. The blaze of shame scorched his face even as the raging winter froze his back. The people of Tavirith were not warriors. They had been whalers, hunters, traders, women and children, as poor and simple as any in the Known World. Why kill them? For what purpose? What sense did it make? Didn’t they see what they had done? He wanted to find Devoth and ask him, show him how vile this all was. The work of cowards. An act to be ashamed of for the rest of his eternal life.
That was why he stepped forward across the blood-splattered stones. That was why he approached the circle of Auldek backs. That was why he moved around them, searching for Devoth. That was why he was right in among them when he understood what they were doing. In a crack between the huddled bodies, Devoth worked over a slain villager. The furs and clothing had been cut from his body. Devoth slid the point of his short dagger up along the man’s thigh, slicing away a strip of flesh that he then held dangling from his fingers. He stared at it, the other Auldek silent around him. Their blood joy was gone. This was something else.
“Do it,” Calrach urged. “Believe me, and do it. This is not as in Ushen Brae. This is a new world for us. I tell you, do this thing. Your soul will rejoice.”
Devoth’s eyes moved from face to face. He had never looked so circumspect, so unsure of himself. But when he acted he did so decisively. He held up the strip of bloody flesh and bit it. He had to rip off a morsel gripped in his teeth, with a slice of the knife and a sideways jerk of his head. Immediately, he thrust the rest of the flesh up for someone else to take. Howlk was first. The others followed.
For a few minutes there was no sound but their chewing. That and the crackling of the fires and the screech of gulls that had suddenly materialized; the crash of the waves over the stones and the wind buffeting about Rialus’s head; and the strange calls the fréketes exchanged, like some language of cackling grunts. And the roar of something that was not quite sound but that felt like a storm building inside his skull. Somehow, a sort of silence contained all these things, broken only when Devoth began to laugh.
“Yes,” the Auldek said. “I think this is yes. Something is here.”
Howlk cupped his groin. “I can feel it here. I can feeeellllll it!” He stretched the word out and lifted it into a shout. The other Auldek responded in kind. One after another confirming that they felt it, too, whatever it was.
Calrach danced from one blood-splattered diner to another, clapping and patting them on the back. “I told you so! I know what you’re feeling now. I felt it, too. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t believe it. I thought, ‘What’s this I’m feeling? What’s come to life down there?’ But I learned. I learned and I brought you here to give you life back. Tell me you feel it!”
They did.
Rialus turned and ran. He got only a few steps before he lurched over and vomited. As he crouched there on all fours, his insides escaping him, he was more miserable than ever he had been in a life filled with misery. He would not have thought it before, but oh how he loved the people of the Known World. They were his people. His! Even these villagers were his people. He wanted to rise and run from body to body, kissing their faces and pouring his grief over them. But he couldn’t. He had failed them. It was his fault. These monsters were eating human flesh! They were vile, vile, vile. He was vile for even the brief moments he had taken pleasure in their company. Sabeer. She was eating this flesh, too. He had not seen her, but he knew she would. She would eat him if the desire took her.
And what now? After watching this slaughter was he to climb back on that winged beast, with Devoth again pressed against his back? Was he to sit with them as they told the tale to the others, stirred their blood, promised them more was coming for them all? Would he be beside them still when the bulk of the invasion arrived to destroy everything about the world that he had ever known?
No. Better to die. Right now. Here. All he had to do was attack them. He never had! In all his days with them he had never fought! The truth of it stunned and sickened him. All he had to do was grab one of their daggers and stab. They would kill him, but maybe he would even take one of them with him. Or just take one more life out of them. That would be something.
He straightened, got his balance on his bent knees, turned, and looked back toward the group.
Menteus Nemré watched him. The Lvin warrior sat outside the carnivore’s circle, not participating in the banquet but not perturbed by it. He stared at Rialus. No expression that Rialus could read on his thick, tattooed-white features. He stared, but he communicated nothing at all through the stare. And then he lifted his gaze over Rialus’s shoulder.
“I see you, leagueman,” a voice beside his head whispered. Rialus tried to spin, but a body pressed against his back and an arm clenched him immobile. “You think us wretched,” Devoth said, speaking close to his ear. “You think us animals. We make you sick. Isn’t that so, Rialus leagueman?” Devoth squeezed him, but did not wait for an answer. “This is no custom of ours. It was an abomination. A violation of our long laws. You understand? Numrek were banished for eating quota. We took away their totem and sent them into exile. We thought them just as wretched as you think us now. But that was before they came to your lands and returned to us with Allek, a child to prove they were fertile again. Everything is different now. This is why.”
Devoth’s other hand swung into view, a piece of human flesh squeezed in his fist. Blood seeped around his fingers and dripped to the ground. “Coming here, killing your people, eating this meat: these things will give us full lives again. You cannot blame us for wanting that. Are you any different? Don’t you want things, leagueman? Of course you do. If I said to you, ‘Here, eat this. Just one bite and you will have what you most want to have.’ ” He held the flesh close to Rialus’s face, near enough that he could smell the wet rawness of it. “Take a bite, and you can go home. Take a bite and you can have your woman beside you. You can fly in the air to your queen and tell her the secrets of how to defeat us. Take a bite, and I will drop dead just here. I’ll soil myself and shake with fear and collapse in pain and die, right here. And you would be a hero. What would you do if a bite of this meat offered you that?”
Rialus said, “You don’t … you don’t know that this will cure you.”
“It’s what the Numrek did. True, they were starving when they did so, but who is to say that the flesh of the fertile didn’t help them? Who is to say? Can you say? No. So if this deed will bring us what we most want … Well, what would you do? You would eat, that’s what. Tell me if I lie.”
Rialus said nothing.
“That’s right, my leagueman. That’s right. You would eat. I know you would.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Aliver has returned. Aliver has returned. Aliver has …
Since leaving Bocoum, Kelis kept forming the sentence in his mind, making it a chant. The three words made him light-headed with joy. If it was true, it was wonderful beyond anything he had ever dreamed possible. Aliver could pick up where he left off. He could take the crown from Corinn and shape the world back toward what he had always dreamed. Kelis could love him again in life, not just mourn him as a memory. He would deliver Shen, and Aliver would know that Kelis had cared for her from the moment he knew she lived. Even the Santoth would bow to him, a king who has walked the afterdeath and returned to the living.
But as he drew near the hiding place at which he had left the others, a knot of doubt like an enormous knuckle root took s
hape low in his abdomen. He paused atop a hillock not far from the ravine in which the others camped. Before him, the plains stretched under the dark of the night. Behind him, a copse of trees in whose star shadows he hesitated, trying to shape his thoughts and decide what to say or not when questioned. Some small creature moved in the trees, a ground bird, perhaps, stirring the leaves. He ignored it. He had been all euphoria at first, yet now he could not help but wonder why Corinn brought her brother back. She might love him in her crooked way, but she would never let go of power. What did she …
When he realized what the sound in the trees had become, it was too late. The man hit him at a run, smashing into his side with his shoulder. The attacker was fast. As they fell, he jabbed his fist repeatedly into Kelis’s abdomen. By the time Kelis hit the ground, scraping across the dirt with the other man’s weight on him, the man had Kelis knotted within the hard limbs of his body. They came to rest, panting, with the attacker’s chin pressed like a weapon against Kelis’s temple, pinning his head to the ground. All this in a few seconds.
“Fool!” another man said. He appeared suddenly, out of breath. “We could have followed him to her!”
“Shut up!” the first hissed. His chin ground Kelis’s skin as he spoke. “Gag him.”
The other punched Kelis in the jaw several times and then jammed a wad of cloth in. He secured it with a leather strap that tied behind Kelis’s head. The first man changed position. He squirmed across Kelis’s back, as intimate as a lover, except that his movements were all sharp pressure and corded muscle. For a moment Kelis felt one of his wrists slip free of the man’s pincer grip. He slipped his hand around and tried to get purchase on the ground with it.
The man pressed the flat of a knife to Kelis’s throat. The back-curved point cut into the skin to touch his lower jawbone. “No,” the man whispered. “Don’t do that.” The man pulled Kelis up to his knees, the knife at his neck the whole time. “Bind him.”
The second man did so. Once Kelis’s hands were tied, the two attackers changed positions. The second man slipped his own dagger into place, clamping his other hand on Kelis’s shoulder and driving one bony knee down on his calf. Kelis fought not to wince at the pain.
“Kelis of Umae, I’m assuming,” the first man said. He stood tall in the starlight, his black skin silvered in sharp highlights. His teeth flashed when he smiled. Kelis wanted to make out his features, but his vision blurred, his eyes clogged with dirt and tears. “I am not impressed. Was such an important one really put in your hands? Oh, but you can’t answer, can you?”
“We should have followed him,” the second said.
“They’re near. I could see it in the way he was moving—a daydreamer wasting time. That’s why I took him down. We won’t have to deal with him when we grab her. One less.”
“No!” Kelis screamed into his stuffed mouth. He raised his bound hands before him, a begging gesture.
“What?” the first man said. “Are you not Kelis of Umae? Do you not protect a girl called Shen? This may all be a mistake, yes? Just tell us so if it is.”
There was a trick in the question, Kelis knew. He tried to figure it out, but the possibilities of it seemed as knotted as the wrestling moves that had trapped him.
“Tell us that the girl is not hidden down in the ravine just there.”
Kelis writhed as much as he dared, gesturing with his eyes, touching his fingertips to the gag. Let me talk, he tried to say. Let me talk! He did not know what he would say, but he needed to try.
The man spat in his face. “Ioma said I was not to kill you, but I piss on that. You’ve kept me waiting here too long. This story is yours no longer. Bleed him for the jackals.” The man grinned.
He was still doing so the moment his teeth exploded from his mouth. They flew to the side in a wet spray, propelled by a black shaft that shot through his cheek and out of sight in an instant. The man dropped in a howl of pain, falling away down the slope of the hillock.
Kelis planted his two hands on the dirt and bucked up against the man who held him down. Getting his feet under him, he used the bunched strength of his bent legs and smashed his backside into the man’s torso. He collapsed his upper body into a roll as he did so. The man’s feet went flailing into the air, and he fell headfirst over Kelis to the ground. Kelis rolled, got onto his two hands, and popped up again. He came back on the man before he could rise. He shot out a low, thrusting kick. It caught the man’s head against his heel and snapped it to the side. Solid contact, but the man scrambled up, slashing the air between them with his knife. Kelis circled away, trying hard not to trip. His hands were still bound. Going down again could be the end of him.
The second man kept the blade between them. The whites of his eyes glowed in the moonlight. He looked frantically between Kelis and the first man, who was on the ground, scraping at the dirt as if he would crawl away but did not remember how to do so. “Jos?” the man yelled. “Jos, what is it?” The high pitch that cracked his voice gave away that he knew clearly enough what it was, as did the fact that he snapped around and ran. Two steps and a low branch of an acacia tree scratched his face. He stumbled back from the thorns, cursing.
Kelis reached him. He slammed his bound hands over the man’s head and then hauled back with the full weight of his body. He yanked the man from his feet, swung him around, and then twisted as the vertebrae in the man’s neck snapped apart. He fell in a tangle with the dead man’s body. He had to struggle to get free of the man’s sickening, lolling neck and scrabble to his feet. This took longer than the act of killing him had.
Upright, Kelis stood panting, his eyes darting between the two men. He whirled at a sound, his fists clenched. Ready to kill again.
“Kelis, brother, it’s me.” Naamen moved out of the shadow of a tree. He held a knife low in his strong hand, pinned in place with his thumb so that his fingers stretched open in a gesture that conveyed that he would drop the weapon instead of use it if attacked. Those fingers stilled Kelis, brought him back from the murderous rage coursing through him. “Are you all right?”
Kelis looked between the two attackers, one still living. After Naamen removed his gag, he said, “I heard only a bird.” The words just came out, without thought.
Naamen studied him a moment, and then he used his knife to cut the cords on Kelis’s wrists. “Two birds. Assassin birds, I think. They fly no more. We should, though. We should fly fast.”
“Did you do that?” Kelis pointed at the man still writhing on the ground.
Naamen shook his head. He did not need to explain further. Leeka stepped out of the shadows. He walked around the fallen man, picked up the spear that had shattered his jaw. With one swift movement, he slammed the point into the man’s back, aimed at his heart. He held it there a moment. The prone man did not move anymore. Leeka’s fingers loosened around the shaft, his fingertips light in their touch, as if he were measuring the effect of his strike through it. Then his hand clamped again. He yanked the weapon free and walked toward the two watching men. He held out a spear that Kelis realized belonged to Naamen.
“Let’s go,” the old man said.
Kelis and Naamen did so. It was only later that it occurred to Kelis that those two words were the most normal sounding he had heard from Leeka since the day he had vanished, years before, running in pursuit of the Santoth.
They roused Benabe and Shen just minutes after their encounter with Ou’s men. Their bodies would still have been warm as Kelis strapped Shen to his back and loped away into the last dark hours of the night, iron spear gripped in his fist this time. Benabe, after a few questions, was kind enough to leave the explanation of what had happened alone. She ran with them. She was stronger now, Kelis realized, than she had been at the beginning of their journey together. Or perhaps, like Kelis himself, she just wanted to see all this to a conclusion. Running took them there faster than walking. So they ran.
They pushed on into the morning, climbing into the rocky uplands. They passed throug
h the afternoon, into a land of sheep and goats. They rested only when they stopped for water at the wells the herders marked. Twice they drank from ponds frequented by the grazing animals themselves. Exhausted by the late afternoon, they shared Shen’s weight between them, first one and then the other carrying her. On like this into the merciful cool of the following evening, through which they ran until Naamen stumbled, spilling Shen into the dry grass beside him. After that they cut the pace. They waited through the next day inside a vault of granite boulders, and then took to moving only at night as much as possible.
Throughout all this the Santoth hung there behind them. Sometimes Kelis pushed their pace, unconsciously trying to outrun them. But nothing ever changed. The sorcerers never seemed to fall behind, even though their gait—an ambling rocking motion—stayed steady. They could not be outrun. That did not stop Kelis from trying.
Aliver, I know these are your chosen sorcerers, but lend me your faith in them. Lend it to me, for I have need of it.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Melio held his mouthful of water so long that at some point he lost the world. Probably only for a moment, for when his eyes opened again, his mouth was still filled with water. Geena’s body still touched his. Wet ribbons of her short auburn hair striped her round face. “That was fun,” she said. She planted a quick, salty kiss on his lips. “Great to be alive, isn’t it? Thanks for the grab.”
Melio realized his cheeks were ballooned out, his mouth still full of seawater. He spat, which unleashed a fit of coughing and retching. He crawled out of the compartment. The fish that had crowded the hull were all gone, as was anything that had not been secured. The boat pitched about at the mercy of the chop.
Geena was already checking the sail for damage. “All well?” she asked, looking unaccountably chipper. “Everyone have all their fingers and toes and wiggly bits?”
The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy Page 18