The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy

by David Anthony Durham

  For a long moment the gathered company stared at the queen, not at the ghost that stood with her. It was only when Corinn turned her back to them and withdrew toward the farthest alcove among the stacks that Aaden ran toward her. He dashed through tables, bounded up the steps to the higher landing, and cried for her with his arms outstretched. Corinn spun around. One hand kept the cowl in place and the other palm slammed out toward the others, freezing any movement in the room other than her son’s. Aaden impacted with her at full speed, knocking her back a few steps. His arms slammed around her and cinched tight. She bent over him, whether with pain or emotion Barad could not tell. Both, most likely.

  Hanish stood with a hand on Corinn’s back. With his other, he wrapped both mother and son into a protective embrace. Father, mother, and son. A triumvirate that only Barad could see. Hanish looked up and sought out Barad’s gaze. “You can hear me, can’t you?”

  Barad moved his stone eyes around the room. Everyone stared at Corinn and Aaden. None of them, he could tell, had any inkling of Hanish being there. They were all silent.

  “You can hear me, yes?”

  Barad nodded.

  “Good. We need your mouth, Barad the Lesser. The queen needs it. She cannot speak to anyone but me. And I cannot speak to anyone but you. That’s why you were summoned, to be the voice that speaks for we who cannot. First, you must know that you are freed. The queen releases you. Right now, as I speak, she is wishing for the ties that bind you to fall away. This is an easy spell for you to break. Simply understand that you are free and you will be. You can feel it, can’t you?”

  It was true. Barad did feel it. It might have just been because of the way Hanish described it, but invisible cords did loosen around his neck and jaw and the crown of his head. They had been there so long, unseen and unfelt, that his skin prickled as it remembered the true touch of the air.

  “I can see that you can feel it. Now, please … in your own words tell them that you can hear the queen’s voice, and that she will speak through you. You need not say anything about me. Please, speak now, Barad.”

  “But …” He gestured toward the others.

  “Just speak the truth. They’ll hear it in your voice.”

  Though he did know his mouth was his own again, it was very hard to make it shape sounds. He moved his lips and jaws, as if unsure of how to use them. “Ah …” No one even turned. It had been but an incomplete whisper. “Aliver.” Still a whisper. “Prince Aliver, I have something to tell you,” he said. “The queen wishes to speak through me. She asks me to be her voice, for … she cannot be her own.”

  Hanish said, “Tell them that the Santoth took her voice, but that she is still herself.”

  Barad did. The others were looking between him and the queen now, confused. They all noticed when she raised a hand and drew circles in the air with her fingers. The gesture conveyed agreement with Barad’s words. They all saw that, except Aaden, who was still clinging to her.

  “What are you saying, Barad?” Aliver asked. “Are you deceiving us?”

  Barad had no idea what to say. “No,” he tried, but it was not enough. He looked to Hanish, pleading through his stone eyes.

  Hanish turned his head slightly to the side, seemed to listen to something. He nodded. “Say this to Aliver. Tell him that you can hear his sister’s thoughts. That she is speaking through you. Ask him to remember the time that she and he and Mena and Dariel rode horseback with their father down to the beach, where he threw seashells into the waves and Mena walked holding Leodan’s hand and Dariel chased crabs and Corinn … Say that she stood on the trunk of a tree and imagined that she was a queen of an ocean empire. Say those things to him.”

  Barad did.

  “Tell him that he is free from any of Corinn’s control, just as you are.”

  Barad explained this and watched as the truth of it dawned on Aliver. He saw him become free beneath his skin. It was as if a ghost skin had covered him until that moment. As it vanished, the man beneath came into sharper view.

  “Now, come to us,” Hanish said.

  Moving through the others, Barad climbed up toward the threesome. When he reached them, Hanish said, “Speak quietly to the prince. After this we will speak of other things, but for now, tell Aaden what I tell you. Tell him his mother loves him more than anything else in the world.…”

  The old mine worker, the large man with a voice that had often boomed before throngs to whom he had preached both for and against the monarchy, was some time whispering closely into the young prince’s ear. The words he repeated were Hanish’s only for a few sentences. After that, he knew them to be the queen’s, intimate things that he spoke with reverence. These things were between a mother and a son. He let them slide from his memory, a vessel that, for once, served the queen with all his heart.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-SIX

  Where is he?” Naamen asked. “He said he would be back by now. How long must we wait?”

  Kelis did not answer. He had heard the query enough times already. He knew it was not a real question. It was a nervous tic, an expression of agitation. His answer—“I don’t know”—was the same. He saw no use in giving it again. He knew no more than Naamen himself did.

  Kelis stood pressed against a wall behind a tavern, his weight hard on the rough stones and his eyes heavy lidded with fatigue. Behind him, Naamen and Benabe and Shen sat against the wall, hidden behind debris and shadowed from the structures all around them. Rats moved through the rubbish, growing bolder the longer the humans remained in their territory. It was a foul place, but in the chaos that the lower town had become it was at least a safe one.

  When was the last time he had slept? Weeks, it seemed. He was functioning without sleep. He was, more than ever before, afraid of sleep. He did not want to take his eyes off the waking world for even a moment. Nor did he wish to dream, for he felt certain that his dreams would be horrible. Prophetic and horrible.

  It was days ago that he had left the Carmelia with Delivegu Lemardine, the man who had clamped his hand to Kelis’s elbow, half an escort, half a jailer. Moving through the opulent upper terraces of the city had been difficult. People rushed about, scared and confused and unkind because of it. Some wished to lock themselves away in their homes. Others were intent on fleeing the island. Marah and regular soldiers and private guards ran rough through the streets, calling for order and stirring turmoil in the process. It was hard to know what had happened. Kelis saw and heard enough to know that all his vague fears had just been shown to be real and worse than he had imagined.

  None of it fazed Delivegu. He walked with deliberate strides, cutting through the crowds as if he barely noticed them. In the quiet of his sitting room a little later, he made Kelis tell his tale. A servant brought them a pot of strong tea. Kelis did not touch it, but Delivegu sat sipping from a cup as he listened. The truth came out, the story as Kelis knew it, each step of just how he had brought destruction right to Acacia’s shores. If he was going to have to tell it to the queen, he had better practice first. That was part of his thinking. Another, which never got near the front of his mind, was that maybe he would never have to tell it. Maybe this man would somehow do that for him. If he died before he had to stand before her, it would be no bad thing.

  He blinked his eyes open without ever knowing he had shut them. Had he been sleeping? No, for the room was as before. He had only a second before stopped talking. That was all. A second of time lost, no more.

  “Look at you,” Delivegu said with a sigh, “played like a puppet dancing a jig. Because of you we have a great problem on our hands. How great I don’t know, but I’m thinking we may all be leaned over a barrel and magically shafted before this is all through. It gives me no joy to be the bird that conveys this to the queen, but to me it falls.”

  Kelis could not help thinking Delivegu did not look nearly as joyless as he claimed.

  “Now, this girl you say is with you, is she really Aliver’s daughter? You have no
doubt about this?” “No. There is no doubt.”

  “Well, that’s something, then. We can use that.” Kelis looked askance at him.

  “I’ll have food brought for you. Sleep here on the floor. I trust you won’t rob me. At sunrise, let’s go find them. I hope they come to where you told them to.”

  Delivegu did not trust quite so much as that, though. As Kelis lay flat on the woven rug in the center of the floor, he could hear the scuffling sounds of the servant left outside the door to guard him. The servant fell asleep before long but did so pressed up against the door. His snores slid under it and crawled across the floor to where Kelis lay. He wondered if he should leave, but he could not see a better way in to the queen. He sat up, thinking how strange it was that a man who had fought so much for the empire and been so close to the Akarans could feel so powerless before the palace’s gates. He thought about this all through the long night, unsleeping despite his exhaustion.

  In the faint light of the dawning day they found Naamen at the inner gate. He stood half hidden behind one of the lion statues, staring out like a frightened child. It only took a few minutes more walking to reach Benabe and Shen. They were hidden, tucked around a corner and in an alley that saw no light even in the day.

  Delivegu had to beg them to come forward into the weak light. “This is the girl? This is Aliver Akaran’s daughter?” He squatted closer as Benabe said that she was. Kelis hated the way he touched Shen on the chin and moved her face from side to side. He almost smacked his hand away. He saw that Benabe was on the verge of doing the same thing, so he did not. His inspection of Benabe was no less insulting. Delivegu studied her lascivious eyes, weighing whether she was or had been enough of a beauty to seduce an Akaran prince.

  He did not share his verdict with them, but he did say he would go and try to arrange a meeting with the monarchs. He told them to wait right there in the alley amid the debris. “Just stay hidden,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  And then days passed.

  Kelis, blinking more and more often, fought to stay awake. His body was so tired, but his mind still reeled. He was starting to hope that Delivegu would not come back. If he did not, they could flee. They could join the outflow of people escaping the island. Why not do that? Whatever the Santoth were doing was beyond them. They could do nothing to help. Worse, they would be blamed for releasing them. Why step up and show themselves to have been the evil sorcerers’ guides? It had all gone horribly wrong, but nobody would believe that they had acted innocently, not when they had walked beside the sorcerers every step of the way from the Far South. They were either traitors or fools, and neither freed him of responsibility. If it were only him, he would have cast himself on the stones of the Carmelia yesterday and called for the Marah to arrest him. He did not care about himself.

  He sought out Shen with his eyes and willed her into focus. She sat wrapped in her mother’s arms, face hidden against her breast. Shen was what mattered. This seemed no way for her to enter her father’s life. Not that he yet believed Aliver was truly alive and truly Aliver. More likely it was some sorcery of the queen’s, a walking and talking mirage of a man. This was one of the things he feared seeing in his dreams. He did not want to have it confirmed, or to have that confirmation make it true.

  More than likely, the queen still held power as firmly as ever. She would punish them for releasing the Santoth. And Shen she might punish for simply being who she was. A sudden intensity of fear gripped him. What if bringing Shen here was as enormous a mistake as bringing the Santoth?

  The desire to flee was so strong in him that Delivegu’s sudden return hit him like a kick in the abdomen. The man smiled as if he had just come from an amorous conquest and said, “Okay, my friends. True to my word, I’ve gotten you an audience with the king. Sorry for the delay. Follow me. And stay close. The streets are still wild.”

  Kelis did not remember the walk to the palace at all. Suddenly, they were there inside the grounds, soldiers escorting them. And then they were walking through a long hallway, and then they stood before a wooden door. When it opened, the scent of aged knowledge wafted out over them. Books, old papers.

  Delivegu ushered them inside. Rhrenna, Corinn’s secretary, stood on the other side of the door.

  For Kelis, the scene he watched for the next few minutes was as warped and unreal as a dream. He rubbed his eyes to clear his vision, but it did no good. He saw the people in the room as if through a gold-hued liquid that blurred their features and muffled their words. His eyes met Aliver’s. It was he. A single look was enough to prove that. He saw the queen with a cowl around her neck and Aaden at her side and a man with stone eyes. And the others. He saw their mouths move and he heard the sounds, but the words seemed to pass through him and vanish before he could get ahold of them. Though he did not like Delivegu, he saw that the man was speaking for him and he was glad. He did not know what he was saying, but whatever it was, Aliver listened to him, looking often to Kelis.

  For a long moment the scene went dark. And then the golden, muted room came back. He had closed and opened his eyes. He was so tired. He wanted this to be over. He wanted to remember the things he knew he needed to but could not anymore. He wanted to sleep. Benabe spoke for a time. Aliver embraced her and went on one knee before Shen. He asked her something and she answered.

  Darkness pressed down upon Kelis again. He realized that if he stayed in this dark place he would not dream after all. It was tempting to stay in the dark, enough so that he was not sure why he opened his eyes, despite himself.

  Aliver had turned from Benabe and was moving toward him. Kelis had no idea how to read the determination in his strides, nor the urgency that moved him so fast he upset a chair as he came forward. He thought the twisted expression on the prince’s face was anger. Anger for releasing the end of the world and for being too late in finding Shen. All the years of her life, and he had never once looked for her. Never knew she was alive. Never searched his dreams for her. Kelis began to close his eyes.

  Aliver grabbed him. He pulled him into an embrace, crushing Kelis’s head into his chest and wrapping his arms around him. Kelis stood, his arms limp at his sides. Aliver spoke to him. At first Kelis could not hear him. The world was too deadened and the blackness that was his fatigue wanted so badly to drop on him.

  Aliver seemed to understand this. He held Kelis’s face in his hands and mouthed his words. Still it took some time for Kelis to understand that Aliver was calling him by his name. He was naming him his brother and thanking him. He put his lips to his ears and said, “Listen to me, Kelis. Can you?” He could. “Do you understand what you have done? You’ve brought me the future. Thank you. Thank you for knowing it all along. Stand with me as I tell them what you’ve done.”

  With those words, the film before Kelis’s eyes vanished. The muffled sounds became sharp and the black wall withdrew. The prince propped him up and turned to face the queen with a formality that seemed at odds with the surroundings and the privacy of the chamber.

  “Sister,” Aliver said, “forget the other things for a moment and listen to me. This man has brought us a wonder, a ray of light to break through all this darkness. You see. Inside this misery are the seeds of the future. Aaden is one. This girl is one.”

  Corinn had watched it all from the higher landing. She said nothing, just stood there, straight-backed, with the cowl covering her neck and lower face. Kelis thought it must be there to hide her emotions, but then he decided that was not all there was to it.

  “The wonder is my daughter,” Aliver went on. “She was given the name Larashen before her birth, but she prefers just Shen. This is too bad, because it was Kelis who gave her this name.”

  Kelis started, turned to look in his face.

  “Yes, it’s true,” Aliver said to him, and then continued speaking to his sister. “Kelis, he who taught me to run in Talay. He who was at my side when we killed the laryx, when I became a man. He who is a brother to me. He may not even know this,
but I remember something now. One time, when he and I were alone in Talay, searching for the Santoth, I awoke to hear him speaking in his sleep. I listened and I heard him say a name. The name he said was Larashen. I did not know what it meant then. I do now. I know because he is a dreamer with the gift of prophecy. He tried to deny it, but it came up through him. And I know it because you are my sister, with a gift to restore life. Only with both of you is this possible. Do you hear me?”

  The queen nodded.

  “Then, Sister, come and meet your niece. Love her, as I already do. As I always have.” Aliver’s voice wavered, choked with emotion that he fought to contain. It escaped him, though, in sobs that made him hesitate before finishing. “Will you do that? Will you love her?”

  The queen’s head turned slightly.

  The man with the stone eyes said, “I don’t deserve to love her. If you knew all the things I’ve done, you would not ask for my love. I did not rule like you. I … am not the same as you.”

  Aliver kept his eyes on the queen. “I do know you. I ask you to love her now.… Love her now and earn that love with what you do from here. You can do that, Sister. I know you. You are the princess who dreamed of ruling an undersea kingdom. I’ve always known you.”

  After a moment, Barad said for her, “When I tell you the things you need to know, will you turn against me then?”

  “Never.”

  Corinn’s face went ugly for a moment, distorted with a sudden misery. Barad said, “You don’t know. You can’t say that.”

  Aliver inhaled a long breath. He lifted an arm and Shen moved under it. He looked back at the queen and said, “But I do say it. I have no anger in me, Corinn. There’s not room for it. I’m too filled with other emotions. Come meet my daughter. Aaden, come meet Shen. We have lost too much time already, and we have only a short time here. Let’s not waste it.”