The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy

by David Anthony Durham

  “I have already had a dream,” Kelis heard himself say, “while I slept here.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Some things.”

  “Are they things you could tell me?”

  Kelis had to think about that for a while. He knew his answer, but what he had to be slow with was the feeling of hope that rose with it. Could he really be blessed? Could it really be that—after all the things that had come before, and after all the ways his life was and wasn’t what he thought it should be—he would still be permitted to return to where he began? To be a dreamer, and find in the sleeping world things that could help the ones he loved in the waking one?

  He said, “I dreamed that the queen rode a sea beast into the depths. It gave her no fear, Aliver. It was what she wished.”

  Aliver sat down on the stool and set a hand on his arm. The two men sat in silence for a long time. Kelis began to fear that he had given the prince ill tidings. He should explain more of the dream, he thought, but that was filled with images that might further seem ill.

  “If … if the queen is near I could tell her.”

  “She’s not,” Aliver said. “Is that all? Did you dream anything else?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell it to me.”

  “I dreamed that you had seven children.”

  “Did I?” Aliver said. He smiled sadly. “I don’t believe that will happen.”

  “You had seven children other than Shen. I could not see their faces. You walked with them away from me. I could not see your face either. But it was you, and there were seven children with you.”

  “I’ll have to think about that,” Aliver said. And then, putting it aside and lifting his voice into a kingly register, “Kelis of Umae, will you march to war with me? I don’t need you as a warrior. Not this time. Not ever again. Come with me as a dreamer if you like. Or just come as my friend. Speak to me, as you used to. Puzzle through that dream of seven children with me. Will you do that—be a friend to me? A brother?”

  Kelis closed his eyes. He wanted to nod. He wanted to say, Nothing would mean more to me, but he still doubted he could be that blessed. Part of him feared that reaching for a future would be just the thing to pull it away from him. He wanted to …

  “Good,” Aliver said, not waiting for his response. “We leave tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-TWO

  Chafing from the sabotage and accidents, the Auldek halted forward progress for a time. Work crews hewed a thoroughfare through the slabs. The crews labored nonstop, through the short day and long night, lit by pitch lanterns that glowed in the howling white dark. They cut and sawed and melted the ice, creating one wide track, smooth and safe enough for the entire army, the animals, and the slaves to walk on. It took several days, and during the first few the Scav managed to set traps in the ice or pick off lone laborers and scouts. When Menteus Nemré and the sublime motion took up protecting the workers, things progressed more steadily.

  A full week after the opening battle, the bulk of the Auldek force slipped through the cleared passage. Rialus watched his own station begin the journey, standing on the ice beside Sabeer one gusty, overcast day. The blizzard had cleared, but it seemed even colder for it. Rialus could not keep from shivering. He had woken several times from nightmares of being trapped within his room as his station broke through the ice and water rushed in a torrent on top of him. He had no wish to see this dream realized during the day.

  Menteus Nemré stood a little distance away, legs set wide, arms crossed, surveying the progress as if he were a king and not a slave. He wore no hood. The wind tugged at his long, knotted mane of white hair, making him look every bit the leonine merging of man and beast that so perfectly embodied his totem.

  “Oh, look at that,” Sabeer said. “You beauty. You’ve caught another one.”

  Thinking she meant Menteus himself in some way, Rialus did not notice at first that a real snow lioness trotted toward him. She skimmed along the thoroughfare at the edge of the enormous wagon and station wheels, oblivious to the rotating danger of them. She carried a corpse in her jaws, held high to keep it from tripping her. Behind her, more feline shapes ran to keep up.

  The cat went directly to Menteus. She dropped the body at his feet and circled away as he bent to inspect it. The other lions joined her, milling around, looking expectantly at the warrior. Without going any nearer, Rialus knew the corpse was a Scav. It was clothed just like the other one; bloodstained just like the other one.

  Menteus took only a moment. He stood, pressed one of his booted feet against the corpse’s side, and kicked it toward the waiting animals. He coughed some command to them, and they pounced on the corpse. They tore into it, clawing at it, growling and snapping at one another.

  Rialus looked away, trembling still more.

  “My poor chilly boy,” Sabeer said, moving in close to blow a plume of warm air in his face. She had not been so near him in days. She slipped her hands inside his hood and rubbed his cheeks. “Rialus silver tongue, what happened to your skin?”

  “Frostbite.”

  “Frostbite? I thought you only stayed in your bed with your slave.”

  Rialus had explained to her several times before that they did not have carnal relations. He did not go down that road again. “Still, it—it happened.”

  Sabeer peered at him a moment, and then touched his cheek with her fingertip. He jerked back. “You’re a foolish man, Rialus. You must take better care of yourself. If you don’t, we’ll have to feed you to the cats. They would like that, considering that you killed one of their number.” She smiled and steered him with an arm over his shoulder. “Come, let’s go before they seek vengeance on you.”

  Their walk was short. They stopped at a station that was lined up to enter the ice field. Rialus had seen it before, but had never had reason to visit it or inquire about it. Just one station out of many. A bit smaller than most, its only distinguishing features were the conical gold cap at its pinnacle and the geometry of glass panes that sectioned its roof and sides.

  Sabeer entered. Rialus followed. For a moment Rialus did not know why the inside of the place seemed odd. When they reached the top of the winding staircase and came into a dim, dank room, his breath clouding the air in front of him, he realized the station was unheated, unlit except by the dull light that came through the glass panes. Sabeer did nothing about the cold, but she did strike up a spark to get a lamp burning. When she had a flame, she covered it and lengthened it. The room came into highlight and shadow.

  Row upon row of shelves lined the walls around them. Tall bookcases crammed with the spines of numerous volumes, or with drawers or doors that folded open. The shelves climbed all the way to the high ceiling of the station, making it one great library, with ladders and narrow walkways scaffolding each level.

  “Do you know what’s housed here?” Sabeer asked.

  “No.”

  “My heart. My people’s history. This collection includes our most sacred records.” She set the lamp down on the table and walked along a shelf, perusing the spines. “Individual clans have some of their own collections, but these are the volumes that we hold in trust together. Remember that I told you we can’t remember the distant past? This is where we come to be reminded of it. I come, at least. Others can’t be bothered. They even let it go unheated since our stores of pitch were depleted. I argued that this should be kept warm, but I lost. They all know how important these records are, but … we’re preoccupied with other things. As you know. This damp cannot be good for the parchment, don’t you think?”

  Tossing her long hair out, she looked over her shoulder at him. The lamplight accented the auburn tones of it, and caught in her eyes in an alluring manner. Sometimes, Sabeer was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Sometimes, he forgot that she was a different race than he. Sometimes, he wanted her with a hunger made more violent for the ways in which she played with him. She knew as much. Smiling, she said, �
��Rialus silver tongue, you say things without even speaking. I hear you, though. I hear you.”

  At her side, he looked through the volumes she found most interesting. Some of them were truly ancient, enough so that Rialus gingerly turned the brittle pages. He read accounts of battles lost to memory, preserved only here, in ink on parchment. In some ways it was no different from looking at old Acacian records, except that he knew the individuals named in these long-past events. Howlk was on the page, and Jàfith with her famed attack on the Wrathic stronghold in Rath Batatt, and Devoth presiding over the terms of the Numreks’ exile.

  He read of events in Sabeer’s life that she knew only from the images and thoughts the words returned to her. She guided him to passages that mentioned her. Shivering and laughing that now she was cold, she had them take off their coats. She pulled her stool behind his, scooted up close behind him, and draped the coats over them like blankets. Her inner thighs wrapped snug around him. Leaning forward to point at things on pages, her breasts pressed against his back.

  “Not all the records are our own, though. Some of them, Rialus, were written by the Lothan Aklun. The most ancient ones. They gave them to us but would not translate them. At least, they did not offer and we did not ask.” She pulled another volume nearer, opened it, and ran her finger over the script. “Perhaps we once could read what they said. We might not have known then that we would forget. I can’t say, because I have forgotten. But, Rialus, part of our history is in these Lothan Aklun volumes. Perhaps important things. We can’t read them, but you can read their writing, can’t you? They were from your nation, I think. Would you translate them for us?”

  “Me?” Rialus peered more closely at the pages she had opened to. The letters were looping and antiquated, formal in a way that Acacian no longer was, but it was Acacian. He could read it.

  “Who better than you?” Sabeer slid one of her hands across Rialus’s thigh. He was aroused already, but the touch of her fingers sent his blood surging. “You know things about us that no other Acacian does. The writing is too complicated for the divine children to translate. It doesn’t seem right for them to read things about us that we can’t read ourselves. You understand how that could be undesirable. And if you find anything in there that speaks unfavorably about me … you’ll correct it. Hmmm? It would mean a lot to us if you did this—if you became our chronicler. It would make you an important man, Rialus. Once we have conquered your lands, this will make you a rich man, a man all Auldek will have to respect. Also, it will mean a lot to me.”

  Rialus tried to stand again.

  With her free hand, she turned his face toward hers. She covered his mouth with a kiss. Her lips were softer than he would have imagined. They were unbelievably lush. They were a world, and her tongue, when she slid it through his teeth, was too much for him to bear. She pulled away. “Tell me you’ll be our chronicler, Rialus. Tell me and you won’t regret it.”

  That night, he deserted the Auldek army for the second time.

  He realized he could as he lay still as death on his bed. He knew what he needed to do in order to face Mena again. Considering the placement of his station near the back of the encampment, there might not be another night as favorable as this one. He could not get the taste of Sabeer out of his mouth. I can still taste her. Stop it. Stop thinking of her. She is a bitch who would kill you in a heartbeat. He couldn’t stop thinking of her, though, and he hated that he wanted more of her. He would never be able to defy her to her face. He would never be her equal.

  So he fled.

  When he gauged the hour late enough, he climbed out from under his covers and carefully slipped into his many layers. He tried not to wake Fingel, but it would not matter if he did. She would say nothing. Do nothing. Care not at all about his activities. When he opened his door and felt the rush of frigid air on his face, he glanced back at her cot. Her back was turned to him, as it always had been.

  The night was dark, moonless. The wind came and went in savage gusts as he climbed down to the ground. Between the gusts were long, quiet lulls. It was frigidly cold. Despite the temperature, Rialus kept his hood thrown back. He wanted all his senses, and he had them. Every touch of his feet on the ground crunched absurdly loud. It was real earth, frozen just as completely as the ice had been. He kept stopping, thinking the entire camp must have heard him. In the silence he heard motion. Was it the sound of steps or just the play of the wind on the frozen earth?

  It doesn’t matter, he thought. Just go, fool!

  Crouched low, he ran through the shadows of several stations. He looped away from where he knew the rhinos were penned, and soon after he was at the far edge of the encampment, the end farthest away from the Acacians and least guarded. He stopped and looked back. No movement. The stations squatted on the ice, steaming. An antok bellowed. Something groaned on the far side of the camp. He stood long enough that he imagined he could hear Nawth’s laments floating across from the ice. That got him moving again.

  He had made it away from the camp and down into a dip that ran south. He shuffled fast now, his hood up. Perhaps that was why he did not hear the lioness approach. He just saw her. She crept down the slope in front of him with a feline grace that stopped Rialus in his tracks. The cat froze. She crouched. She moved forward, low to the ground, and then froze again.

  Rialus closed his eyes. The thought came to him almost coolly, Kill me fast, you bitch.

  When he heard the sound of movement behind him, his eyes snapped open. Another cat? He turned. A heavily furred person rushed toward him. The person raised an arm. Rialus ducked. The person collided with him, throwing something over him at the same time. Rialus saw what happened from his back, sprawled on the ground.

  The object—no bigger than a child’s ball—bounced once on the ground. It ignited as it sailed up toward the crouched cat. The lioness leaped to one side but not fast enough. The ball exploded in a wide spray of liquid flame. The cat ran writhing and screaming away, a living torch. For a few moments more, at least.

  The person grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up. He could not see the person’s face, hidden behind a visor, with a hood pulled snug around it. But he recognized the voice.

  “Let’s go,” Fingel said. She tugged him into motion. “Fast.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-THREE

  Melio sat on the bench, squashed between Clytus and Kartholomé, with Geena just on the pilot’s other side. The bench was too short for all four of them, but it was where a wolf of a man dragging around two hounds had deposited them after the strange events of the clan gathering. Unwashed, bruised, scratched, smeared with dried blood around their wrists and ankles, with staring eyes and faces limp with perplexity, they looked like children rammed together by a callous tutor, being punished for a game that had gotten violently out of control.

  “I don’t understand anything,” Kartholomé said. He had found a comb somewhere. He dragged it through his beard, causing it to frizz in a manner that he would not have liked at all if he’d had a mirror to see it.

  The others grunted.

  “Not a damn thing.” And then, indicating the curving metal slivers that a passing man wore as earrings, Kartholomé asked, “How do you think I’d look with some of those? I feel less myself with only a single hook in. This lobe has healed up, you know?” He caressed the earlobe from which the bone earring had been ripped back when the league ship tried to run them down near the Outer Isles.

  Nobody answered him.

  “Is that really Dariel?” Melio asked, watching the prince from a distance.

  “Of course it is,” Geena said.

  As ever, Melio could not fathom where she got her certainty. The man they watched in heated discussion with a tight circle of strangely tattooed and accoutred foreigners spoke fluently in a guttural language that sounded like Numrek. His face was spotted like a running cat’s from the Talayan plains, and he seemed to have some sort of mark embossed on his forehead. He was one of them. At home amid t
he strangeness of them. Had Melio no known the man was Dariel—if he had not heard his voice and met his eyes—he would have had no clue to his identity. And that barely helped, for that same man had harangued a chamber filled with the weirdest-looking people Melio had ever seen. Dariel had then been stabbed in the abdomen, a killing slice if ever there was one. Instead of dying, he had shouted out, ripped off his shirt, and displayed himself, bloody and yet unscathed. How could that person be Prince Dariel Akaran? If that was him, what had happened to him? Was he still, somehow, the man Melio had been sent to find?

  “How do you know?” Melio whispered.

  “His chest,” Geena said. “He’s got Dariel’s physique. And his backside.”

  Whatever this second, smaller meeting was, it ended abruptly. All the seated participants rose and bowed to one another. The man who might be Dariel spoke a few last words with a woman whose black hair jutted up from her head in featherlike plumes. As she turned away, Dariel seemed to remember the waiting Acacians. He cast about until he spotted them, then rushed over.

  Embracing them one by one, he probed their faces, as they did the same to his. Up close it was obvious that he was the prince. The open lips of his smile revealed the spacing of his teeth, a trait Melio never knew he would recognize as Dariel’s. And yet there it was. And there was the distinctive ridge of bone high on his nose. The prince named each of them reverently, as if their names held sacred power. “Melio. Clytus. Geena … By the Giver, what are you doing here? How are you here? I can’t imagine it. Tell me. Tell me!”