“But they are slaves, Devoth.”
The spirits trapped inside him clamored about the truth of this. They so clearly heard him. Aliver tried harder to hear them as well. He pressed his consciousness up against that unseen and intangible barrier, listening from a place that had nothing to do with sound.
“They are loyal. Your speech is a trick, and I am not afraid of it.”
“You have not heard my terms.”
“There are none that I need hear.”
Aliver closed his spirit eyes and stilled himself completely. He heard. The words and thoughts and emotions bloomed inside him. They were children’s thoughts. Raw and youthful, filled with life and scared, trapped, begging for him. They spoke their names to him. There was a boy called Nik, and another named Drü. A girl, Hanna, cried out to him, so beseechingly it was hard for Aliver not to open his eyes and let it show. Erin and Allis, Ravi … So many names. Each of them belonging not to Devoth but to an individual who should have lived a true life.
I’m so sorry, Aliver thought. They could not hear this, but he thought it more than once.
“I present my terms anyway,” Aliver said, opening his eyes. He spoke slowly, doing his best to ensure that the Auldek would understand him. “You and all the other Auldek with you will release your quota slaves from bondage. You will tell them they are free to do as they please. You will send them all across to our camp, so that my people can speak to them and make sure they are acting on their free will, whatever they choose. You Auldek will abandon this war. You will turn your stations around and go home, shedding no more blood in the Known World. You will make a solemn oath that when you return to Ushen Brae you will not punish the people living there. Every Auldek will make this oath, calling on your totem deities as witnesses. Such an oath would be unbreakable, right?”
“If it were made, yes.”
“We may send ships to retrieve the people in your lands, but they are free. If they choose to live in Ushen Brae, you will have to find a way to live with them. We will have your oath on that.”
At first, Devoth had listened with incredulity. As Aliver talked, he craned his head to hear better. By the time he finished, Devoth’s spirit had begun to smile. “Is that all? And what will you give us in return?”
There was nothing like sincerity in the question, but Aliver answered it as if there had been. The entrapped children had begun to name where they were born. They seemed to fear he did not believe them. They threw memories at him, emotions, images of what home was to them. Under the bombardment, Aliver could barely keep track of his interaction with Devoth. It took all his concentration to do so.
“We will do four things for you,” he said. “First, we will give you peace without fear of retribution. Our past will be our past. Though we will not forget your crimes, we will not hold them hard in our hearts.” The children screamed for him not to forget their crimes. They were not past, they said. They were entrapped now!
“Very kind of you.”
“Yes. Second, we will allow you to leave without interference. Nobody will hunt your backs. I will not haunt you anymore. Third, we will put into your hands the Numrek children.”
“Numrek children?”
“Yes, those who still live. My sister captured them but did not kill them. There are not many, but they could be the start of your future, of the generations to come. We will give you that gift.”
“Is that it?”
“There is a fourth thing.”
“Yes? Is it the best thing?”
“It may be.”
“Tell it, then.”
“I will, but not tonight. I will tell it to you in person, on the field south of here when our forces meet. Talk to me then, Devoth. You and all the other Auldek. Come to me in front of your army, with all your great host behind you. Then I will tell the fourth thing. But now, go back to your slumber. Wake in the morning and remember what I said. Go, sleep, Devoth.”
For a second it seemed the Auldek would fight the order, that he had something else to say, but the command was strong. His spirit slid back toward the body beneath the blankets. Aliver saw the trapped souls being pulled back with him. He heard them, shouting without sound, pleading with him. The sight of their anguished faces was heartbreaking, but he waited until the final moment to do what he had planned. He felt there was only one moment that he could achieve what he wanted to.
Just as Devoth’s spirit began to sink back into the skin of his body, Aliver rushed forward. He swept through the Auldek with his arms outstretched, filled with love and shame and grief and hope, asking forgiveness for those who came before him. He grabbed for the children’s’ souls.
And he pulled them all free.
CHAPTER
SIXTY-SEVEN
A cave on an outcropping of rock at the very edge of the Outer Isles, out beyond Thrain and Palishdock. The dark of a cloud-heavy night. The air and sea in furious struggle. Not a place many would choose to rest, and yet that was what Corinn and Hanish knew they had to do. Atop Po, they had ranged over hundreds of miles, gathering sorcerers all along the way. They had pushed Po to great speed over the sea, leaving the Santoth far behind, but not so far that they would not catch up with them soon. Though he showed not the slightest indication of needing it, Po had earned a rest, such as it was. Having furled his wings, the dragon perched sentinel above them, still as the wet stone and just as black. Corinn hoped that his wounds were healing. She thought so. The turmoil in his mind had grown calm. Damaged, yes, but resolved.
She did her best to always keep a part of her mind speaking to him, and to the other dragons. They were each of them faithful to her, but she could feel their desire for freedom. When she was gone, no other would be able to keep them tamed.
He will warn us, Corinn said, if they come faster than we expect.
Hanish stood at the mouth of the cave, gazing out into the night as if he were keeping his own watch. “I know he will,” he responded. “I’m not doubting him. Just looking is all. Just looking.”
The leaning rock walls around them provided the only shelter from the heaving of waves and the wind. A small fire cast their only light. Corinn fed it with things her servants had packed into her saddlebags: a tent and its bamboo poles; thick, hard crackers that burned as well as wood and that she could not eat anyway; rolls of parchment she would never now need; the leather bags themselves. My servants: what would they think to see me now? Though she took warmth from the fire, she knew she could have sat in the damp chill and not been affected by it. Just as she had gone days now with no food or drink. She was as empty as she had ever been, and yet she went on, feeding on the goal she had set herself.
To Hanish, she sent the thought, We have them all behind us.
“You’re sure of it?”
Yes. I can’t tell you how many they are. Their number never sets in my mind, but I can feel that they’re all together. They have a different energy. It hums at the same tune now, with only one purpose.
“Catching us?”
Exactly.
“We have the scoundrels just where we want them, then,” Hanish said, turning back toward Corinn and the fire. “Ha-ha! Take that!” He swiped at the air with an exaggerated flourish that made Corinn smile. Or that made her know she would have smiled, had it been possible. He came away from the cave mouth and settled himself beside the fire. He rubbed his hands together and held them, palm out, toward the flames.
Old habits, Corinn thought to herself, are hard to break.
Hanish said, “I guess that’s it, then. We have a few hours. Until dawn, perhaps. Then it’s nothing but the Gray Slopes for us. Have you any way of calling this worm of yours?”
I won’t need to. It can hear the song even more clearly than the Santoth. It has been telling me as much for years. I just didn’t listen. I suspect it already knows we’re coming.
“Ah. So the worm is expecting us,” Hanish said. “I guess it’s not the first time either of us has had dealings with worms.�
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No, but this one I like better than senators and leaguemen. It’s not like anything else. It doesn’t really talk to me. That’s not quite right. It’s more like the way I communicate with Po. It thinks to me. It’s very old, Hanish. I think it’s something the Giver made when the world was still new, before Elenet, before any of the creatures of the land. It has a quiet mind. It’s gentle, except that it knows the Giver’s tongue is not for us to speak. That’s one thing that matters to it.
“And what, exactly, happens when we find this creature? You’ve not filled me in on the specifics yet.”
I don’t know, Corinn said. This was not entirely the truth. She did know. The worm itself had shown her what was to happen in images that she had once thought of as nightmares. Now, those same images were the exact fate she sought. They were not, however, things she could say. Not even to Hanish. I think we just have to find it, she said. The rest will come with that.
“All right, love,” Hanish said, “the rest will come with that. You should sleep now if you can. Even just a little. This next flight will be long. Come.”
He indicated that she could rest her head on his lap. She did so, and, without prompting, he began to talk. Corinn lay, watching the play of the firelight on the cave wall, marveling that even now—with everything that had happened and was happening—she was still learning more about how to love this man. How was it possible that she could rest her head on a ghost’s lap and learn of things he had never told her while he lived? How could she feel the warmth of him, the texture of his tunic against her cheek, the weight of his hand where it rested on her shoulder? She tried to listen to his tales, but after a while what she truly did was listen to the sound of his voice. How she liked his voice. It managed to be truthful but at the same denied that life was anything less than a grand amusement. Corinn breathed him in, wishing she had some of his equanimity herself, wondering if this was how she gained it, by having him complete her.
Later, after Hanish had fallen silent, thinking her asleep, Corinn remembered another dream. It had nothing to do with the worm. She had only had it once, on the morning that she had worked three acts of magic, including bringing Aliver back from the dead. In the dream, she had been riding in a carriage down from Calfa Ven. When Aaden became unwell, she stepped out and walked the path to avoid smelling his stink. Aliver and then Hanish had walked beside her for a time, and then both of them had rolled into somersaults and become leaves that blew away on the breeze. For some reason, she had whistled a tune for them.
She asked, Are you real?
He still sat as before, stroked her hair slowly, as if counting the strands one by one. “Yes, of course.”
Are you sure you love me?
“Corinn, you’re the single woman who has ever had all my heart. You did in life and you still did in death, and you will do forever.”
Why? Asking it, she was not seeking praise, not looking for false comfort. She really meant the question. At times, thinking of all the mistakes she had made, she thought herself unlovable. Unworthy of anybody’s trust. She had proven herself that so many times, in so many ways.
“Who knows why anybody loves anybody? I love you for the things I love about you. I love you for the things I hate about you. I think, Corinn, that you love me as well; me, the one who would’ve killed you. Don’t ask me to make sense of it, and I won’t ask you. My heart is yours for as long as you want it. Do you want it?”
Yes.
“Then it’s yours. In life and in the afterdeath. Glad that’s decided.”
He leaned forward and kissed the damaged skin where her mouth should have been. Though she knew he was but a ghost, a vapor that no other eyes except Barad’s could see, she still loved his touch. There in that small cave at the edge of the Gray Slopes, with her eyes closed, it seemed each of his kisses glowed with golden warmth, each of them a pulse of light in the midst of an ocean of darkness.
As the sun broke over the eastern horizon later that morning and cast crimson highlights over the gray waves, Po spread his wings and lifted the couple into the sky again. Gaining height, they saw their pursuers. They still ran atop the surface of the water, rising and falling with the swells. Unrelenting.
Po turned and headed west. Before them stretched nothing at all except moving mountains of water, and the rest of their lives.
CHAPTER
SIXTY-EIGHT
As soon as the vessel cleared the quay, Lethel called to his pilot, “Let’s go.” He sat on a seat he had ordered specially constructed. It perched high on the sleek ship’s deck, the perfect vantage from which to watch the Lothan Aklun vessel devour whatever distance he set it toward. “Make it fast,” he shouted as he pulled tight the straps across his waist.
The pilot backed out, as silently as if by sail power, and yet without any sails or oars or poles. The boat moved with a power infused into every portion of the craft. It spun atop the water and surged forward, into a curving arc that bore them away from the estate Lethel had claimed on one of the craggier barrier isles. It moved north around the island, then turned west.
When the open stretch of the Inner Sea came into view, the vessel raced, smacking and leaping across the waves with a speed like nothing Lethel had ever experienced. He clung to his chair, roaring with laughter each time the spray fanned over him. He liked speed very much. In no time at all, the leagueman’s hair was a disheveled bird’s nest blown back behind his pointed cranium. He clutched his skullcap in his hands, riding high on the exhilaration of the journey.
When they joined the invasion fleet, the great mass of soul vessels plowed toward Avina. Lethel had his pilot zip among the barges and larger ships at breathtaking speeds. He could not help himself. He laughed idiotically. Every spray of water that fell over him, or any expected turn that yanked his body one way or another, caused him to throw back his head in uncontrolled hilarity. To think that the league had avoided military campaigns all these years! What a waste.
As far as Lethel was concerned, this invasion was a lark. They could not lose. The outcome was obvious. They had the troops. Ishtat by the thousands. Sire El’s trained army of quota slaves. They had the means to deposit these troops anywhere they wished. Everything just as he had told Dariel Akaran and Mór of the Free People. The only thing for him to do, really, was to enjoy it.
The pilot pushed them through a narrow, choppy gap between two barges. Their ship squeezed past them and shot out ahead of the armada. The coastline of Avina stretched before him. It shone bright in the morning light. The city’s drab seawall crawled with life.
The Free People out to defend themselves, Lethel thought. How charming.
They raced toward the shoreline. The pilot pressed the speed so unrelentingly that Lethel let go of his cap and gripped the seat beneath him. His cap flew away in the wind. The pilot wrenched the boat to the left at what must have been the last possible moment. Water sprayed up from the side of the boat, drenching the breakwater and washing well up onto the quay that ran along the base of the city’s walls. The flat stone ledge would make a wonderful platform on which to deposit their soldiers. The boat sped along it, sending up a spray of water the whole way. The speed was such that Lethel’s eyes watered in the wind. He still managed to look up at the figures on the wall beside them. A few of the figures threw stones at him, but none of them gauged the speed right.
In response, Lethel waved a chastising finger at them.
A little later, back out toward the rear of the fleet now, he sat watching from a safe distance. He spotted the large schooner that Sires Faleen and El had chosen for the occasion. At least, he thought he should call it a schooner. It hardly looked like one in his understanding of the term, but for pure size and carrying capacity he thought the term fit. Multistoried, outfitted for pleasure, the ship crawled with Ishtat guards, staffers, hangers-on, and concubines. El, when he arrived with his army, had done the leaguemen the service of bringing a great number of these with him. Most of them, it seemed, hung abou
t the upper decks of the schooner.
“They’re hardly even paying attention,” Lethel muttered. He waved a hand, trying to catch someone’s attention so that he could point at the attack, which had commenced. He did not try for long. The proceedings proved too interesting to be distracted from them.
The barges approached the shore first. Though massive, packed with soldiers and ballistae, battering rams and movable towers, their draft was so shallow they could press right up to the quay, with the water beneath them only on the height of three or four men. It would be as if the barges had simply added a wide extension to the shoreline, one filled to the brim with soldiers.
The barges halted a little distance from the quay. The large ballistae, with their mortar-punching missiles, cranked back. When they shot, the barbed bolts flew with blurred speed. They slammed into the stone walls with explosive thuds, sinking deep and sending shards of rubble into the air. Each bolt was attached to a length of rope trailing back toward the barges. More and more of the missiles struck home. Soldiers fastened the trailing end to anchors jutting from the barges. Then they reloaded and shot still more missiles.
The fools on the wall hunkered down. They cowered each time a missile sent up clouds of debris. “Do you know nothing?” Lethel asked. Having been briefed just the previous day on how the attack would proceed, he knew that it was not the impact of weapons they had to fear. It was what they did next.
Once enough of the bolts were set, the ballistae stopped firing. Normally, Lethel had learned, winches would crank back on those ropes. The lines, going taut, would pull the missiles, which in turn would cause the barbed points of them to expand inside the stone, pulling down sections of the wall for the invaders to clamor over into the city. Normally, this winching was a slow process, dangerous for the attackers because of the tension in the ropes and the possibility of mechanical failure. But these were not normal circumstances.
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