The other lands a-2

by David Anthony Durham

  The creature was more resilient than she knew, however. The undulating hills of Talay passed far below her, scrolling beneath them as they flew and flew on. Acacia trees became tiny blooms, rivers like lines on a map, her view that of an eagle looking down on a world laid out beneath it. She was not sure how much time passed like that. Hours, perhaps. A few times she believed it was Maeben above her. She thought she heard that great goddess's angry screech. It didn't make sense, not unless she had fallen into a dream. But how could she have done that when she was clinging for her life? Unless the beast really was holding on to her.

  The last moments of the flight had brought them into this high country. She thought they were getting lower, but in fact the plateau and the hills upon it rose to meet them. She saw what she took to be the gray bulk of the sea in the distance, and then focused on the hills, the rocks, the pinnacles that grew closer and closer. The creature, it seemed, did not have the strength to rise higher. Its flight grew even more erratic, frantic one moment and slow the next, making them rise and fall. She thought she was going to smash into one rock face, only to be saved when the beast surged above it. Passing over it, Mena touched her feet to the stone in a quick scamper across its surface. She loosened her hand, considering letting go of the tail. Before she did she was airborne again.

  The beast had dipped into the next ravine, and as it rose to fight its way over the coming slope, Mena felt her hand slide. Of course she could not hold on forever. Perhaps the beast was letting go of her. The sleek muscles of the tail grew limp in her hand. This time, as the creature just managed to clear the knuckle of rock that topped the ridge, Mena touched her feet to the vertical wall of stone but did not have the strength to hold on. The tail slipped from her grip. For a moment she was held there, her two feet on the stone, her body horizontal to the world, suspended in brief defiance of the earth's pull. Her last sight of the foulthing was from beneath it, as its shadow skimmed across the outcrop of stones and vanished, its tail snapping as it disappeared. She heard Maeben's shrill cry again, and then the earth remembered her. It pulled on her and all was the painful battering of her tumbling fall down the slope. Had she not been so exhausted-her body as limp as a doll's-she might not have survived it.

  As she took the last steps up to the summit, a thought rose in her. Perhaps she had been the one crying out, Maeben's fury leaping from her mouth. She did not consider this long, however. She crested the peak and took in a panorama of similar hills stretching out all around her, until her eyes tilted downward and found it. It was there, where she suspected it would be. The beast lay sprawled in the next ravine, its wings flung wide and stained bloody from the many bolt piercings and tears, its body twisted and its tail in looping disarray, tangled among the ropes and weights still knotted around it. It looked broken, dead. Mena felt a knot draw tight in her abdomen. She started down toward it, approaching slowly, trying not to kick stones loose.

  As she neared it, she drew her long sword. She wasn't truly afraid; the action was instinctive. In truth, the creature seemed much smaller than she remembered. It was less bulky when contrasted to some of the foulthings she had fought, but it was not a creature whose strength should be measured by its bulk. With its lithe torso and the slim, extended proportions of its tail and the confusion of finger-thin bones and membranes that were its wings, it was hard for her to compare it to anything she had seen before. Such an awkward position it lay in, bent around the stones. Its head was upside down, the soft part of its neck exposed. There was so much to it. It hurt Mena just looking at the wounds, the tears, the places where blood had smeared or pooled. The last of the foulthings. Dead.

  "They told me you were a dragon," she said, "but you're no dragon. You're a foulthing… but you're not. I'm not sure what you are, but you're no monster."

  She had spoken softly, without realizing she was doing so. In the silence afterward she looked around, embarrassed lest she was heard talking to a dead beast. But there was nobody around, not for miles. She thought, for the first time, of Melio and the soldiers who would be frantically searching for her. She knew she should do something to help them: walk back toward the east perhaps, find a settlement or build a signal fire somehow. But looking at the lizard bird, she did not want to. They would find her no matter what she did. She had that faith in them.

  Instead, she let her eyes drift over every inch of the creature. It must have been female, she thought. The curves of her neck were sensual, dramatic in her death posture. Mena stepped close and ran her fingers over her. She was soft to the touch, warmed by the heat of the sun. Her coat was close to the skin, something like feathered scales, hued in soft, creamy tones. There was a pattern woven across them, an intricate interlacing that Mena could not get her eyes to fully focus on. It seemed to change even as she studied it.

  "My sister would have envied this coat," she said. Thinking that, she was saddened that she was the one who would deliver it to her.

  Corinn would not have envied the damage done to the creature, though. Each wound turned Mena's stomach. She couldn't stand the sight of them, and suddenly she couldn't stand the thought that the others would see the creature like this, her beauty so fouled by the weapons that Mena herself had called into play. Without really deciding to, Mena began to do what she could to hide the damage. She pulled free the crossbow bolts and flung them away. She untangled the ropes and dragged the stone weights down the ravine. She cradled the creature's tail and let it flow out to its full length.

  In particular, she worked to gently arrange the wondrous wings. She remembered them as they had been when they first unfurled, so shocking, amazing in their breadth and their deceptively delicate power. It was hard to twin those images with the ragged things she worked to sort out. The bones that framed the wings hardly seemed capable of what she had witnessed. They were as limp as a thousand broken finger bones slipped inside a thin tube of skin. Mena could pick the wings up and arrange them like tattered sheets. The membrane of the wings was just as diaphanous as it appeared, leathery and supple both. It had an oily resin on it. The stuff felt funny on her fingers. It tingled, seemed to course through her fingertips. It smelled faintly of… She wasn't sure what it smelled of, but there was something familiar in it, something comforting. It made it slightly easier to stick together the ripped fabric of the membrane and to feel it might just mend, or at least look like it had.

  Mena was at this for some time, working one-armed, stumbling because of her own injuries and fatigue. She could not help but speak to the creature. She kept apologizing, commenting on her features, talking as if she were a nurse and the patient simply holding to silence. Perhaps, she said, not all changed creatures should die. Perhaps she should have taken the time to see this one first. She wished she had.

  Eventually, she had dealt with everything but the creature's head. Before she turned to it, she thought she would touch it with care. Lift and twist it over, set it right. She could do that. She would. She owed it that. So thinking, she turned and froze at what she saw.

  The creature's head-which had been upside down-was now right side up. Her eyes were open. She was watching her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Dariel's eyes snapped open. He went from the nothingness of dreamless sleep to complete alertness. His heart, in its first seconds of wakefulness, banged against the cage of his chest like an animal trying to escape. Where was he? He was sitting upright, held in position by a band wrapped around his chest, hands still bound but his mouth free. He had no memory. He knew, though-as if pierced physically with the knowledge-that the things he had forgotten were huge. His gaze flew about the room, taking in individual things one by one: a water stain on the rough stone of the ceiling, iron rings bolted into the wall, a hanging lantern that cast a peculiarly constant light, the bare back of a heavily muscled, completely gray man sitting on a stool several paces away.

  On this his eyes stopped. The man appeared to be eating. He made slight huffing sounds, interspersed with wet noises
and an occasional crack, like twigs or bones being broken. He was a giant of a man. He was-Of course! It all came back. He was the one Dariel had seen on the docks of the Other Lands, the one who had lifted him bodily and carried him tucked beneath his arm. He was proof that it had all actually happened: the Lothan Aklun killed, the sea dotted with bodies, the strangeness of the city's inhabitants, Devoth of the Auldek stirred to anger, Sire Neen beheaded.

  "Giver return," escaped Dariel's lips, a pious entreaty for aid unusual to him.

  The gray man must have heard it. He stopped eating, head cocked, and then slowly eased his bulk around to face Dariel. He let out a low rumble of sound, sinister, bestial. It was hard not hear it that way, for the man's appearance could not have been more frightening. He was preposterously muscled, with two thick legs, a thin waist, and a torso ridged with neat compartments. His bulk flared up and out from there, chest muscles bulging beneath his gray skin, shoulder joints like two round stones, neck as thick as a boar's. And a boar was what he was. A swine in near-human form.

  He approached Dariel, who bucked away from him, straining against the strap that held him fast. He kicked out with his feet, but could neither touch the man nor find purchase enough to move on the slick stone. The man brushed the locks of wavy black hair from his face with the wedge of his hand. He was just as tusked and horrific as Dariel remembered. The golden curves punched straight through his cheeks, just below the corners of his lips. "Ahhh, you awake. Good to see it! Thought you was dead on fright." He followed this with that same low rumble of sound. It took Dariel a moment to identify it: a chuckle. He was laughing. "You got tan skin," the man said in his deep timbre, "but you looking white just now. What, you think I going to eat you?" He reached out and tapped the ball of a large thumb on Dariel's cheek. "Truth is, I more like you than you know just yet."

  Hearing Acacian coming from this man's mouth was both welcoming and alarming. His accent was strange. The words were spoken clearly enough, but the inflections he used were kin to no one region of the Known World. Still, Dariel could not help but find some hope. They spoke the same language. That was something to cling to.

  The man stepped away, tugged his stool nearer, and returned. He sat down facing Dariel, leaning forward with elbows on his knees and fingers interlaced. "Name Tunnel. Hear it? Tun-nel."

  Just when Dariel was getting over the surprise of the man's speaking to him in Acacian, he was shoved back into confusion. Name a tunnel? What tunnel? That couldn't be what he'd said. "What?"

  The man smacked a palm against his pectoral muscle. "Tunnel. Name Tunnel." He bared his teeth, seemingly pleased. "Tunnel."

  "You mean," Dariel sputtered, "your name is Tunnel?"

  "He speak proper words! Good to hear it!"

  Dariel shook his head. He closed his eyes and opened them and found everything exactly as it had been a moment before. Tunnel stood grinning at him; that, he realized, was what that ferocious-looking baring of teeth actually was. He was smiling. He had gold tusks and wire whiskers, gray skin and muscles that would have put a bull to shame. His name was Tunnel. Simple, really. What was he acting so perplexed about?

  With all the feigned calm he could muster, Dariel said, "Hello, Tunnel. Very glad to make your acquaintance. Since you're not going to eat me, would you consider loosening these chains?"

  This amused the giant more than anything yet. "Listen that. How pretty you speak! I told her we should keep your tongue in your mouth. Good we did."

  Dariel creased his forehead. "I wouldn't disagree with you."

  "No, you wouldn't. You be agreeable for sure. Best that way." He inched his stool closer. "Tell me, you really a prince? Akaran for true?"

  Had he anything to go on, Dariel would have weighed the pros and cons of answering this question. But he knew nothing about what had happened, what was happening, where he was, or in whose power. Without anything to shape his answer, he shrugged and chose the truth. "Yes."

  "What's your name, then?"

  "I'm Dariel Akaran. Son of Leodan and Aleera Akaran." Saying the names, Dariel felt a tide of indignation sweep up from his guts. "In Leodan's name I demand you loosen these chains this minute! I'm a prince of Acacia! You cannot-"

  "Dariel," the man said, rolling it around his mouth as he pronounced it. "Dariel Akaran. Son of Leodan and Aleera. I know them names, you know? We all know them names, and the ones before. Gridulan, yes?"

  "My grandfather."

  "That's the one. Tinhadin and them old devils, too. We know them all. Edifus."

  Dariel shifted, trying to ease the pressure of the strap around his chest. He already felt his indignation slipping away, though he could not have said why. "You know much of my family, I see. I don't know anything of you or of here, of where I am or-"

  "You don't know anything!" Tunnel said this with considerable joy. Clearly, he had suspected as much already, but he appeared pleased that Dariel confirmed it. "Don't know a knuckle's worth and, look, you a prince! Could be you more than that. Could be you Rhuin Fa."

  "Rune Fay?"

  Tunnel scowled, an expression only slightly more unnerving than his smile. "That's wrong way to say it. Rhuin Fa," he repeated, enunciating with exaggerated lip and tongue motions. "For a long time-I mean a long time-we been waiting for Rhuin Fa."

  "Rhuin Fa… is a person?"

  "It's you, maybe. Is the one who will come from the Old Land and flip the world. That's what they say. 'Flip the world.' Can you do that?" Tunnel broke into his horrifying smile again. "Rhuin Fa supposed to come for his children. Take them home. Tell how much he love them. Understand? We been waiting a long time. Generations, you know. Pass, pass, pass." He waved his thick fingers impatiently, indicating these passing generations. "All the time hoping for Rhuin Fa. All the time thinking he coming, knowing he can't go on doing that way forever." He drew back, pursed his lips, and squinted one eye nearly closed. "You know it's wrong, don't you? What they done to all us children. That's why you need to flip it."

  Somehow, scattered and vague and incomplete as this was, Dariel knew what crime Tunnel was referring to. "I know it's wrong," he acknowledged. He felt further words running up his throat and out onto his tongue. Explanations. Qualifications. He had been ignorant for so long. He had inherited the quota trade. He had been a child, too. The crime was not his doing, but it had been thrust on him. He could have said a lot of things. It was not as if he hadn't talked it all through with Aliver and Mena and Wren, with everyone close to him except Corinn. With her the subject seemed more dangerous than he had felt ready for. He could have said a great deal. Instead, he bit the words back, aware that he did not know enough yet of this world to say anything with certainty.

  "Am I your prisoner? What will you do with me? And the others. What's happened-"

  "You not my prisoner. Mor the one. She come talk to you real soon." He answered that much but did not seem interested in opening himself to further questioning. Instead, he said, "I should ask you something. I ask; you answer. Tale says it's that way. Tale says when Rhuin Fa come, you ask him this question. Then you know if he is who he is. So let me ask you. Here's the bridge; you go under it or over it? Which one?"

  "A bridge? What kind of bridge?"

  Tunnel shrugged. Waited.

  Dariel stared blankly for a moment. "Over it. I go over."

  "That could be right."

  "Could be? Don't you know which answer is right?"

  "You know," Tunnel said, wrapping his fingers around the curve of one of his tusks and tugging, "tale don't tell. Believe that? Tale don't tell. You may have answered true. I guess we gonna see, soon, too."

  Seeing that tusk in his fingers, watching the way Tunnel pulled on it and the manner with which it seemed to be embedded directly into his lower jaw, Dariel closed his eyes. He had a million questions to ask. Where to start? And could he really ask them of this strange man? What was he, anyway?

  Dariel opened his eyes. Tunnel was watching him. For the first time Dariel noted the col
or of the other man's eyes. Brown. Simple brown. He asked, "You think I am… Rhuin Fa?"

  "Could be you are. I tell you what, though. Don't matter what I believe." He nodded his head toward the door, from which came the sound of a key sliding home. "She going to be hard to convince." Tunnel rose but paused and turned back. "You know Senival?"

  "Yes."

  Tunnel studied him a moment, his eyes looking at Dariel but seeing something else. "I-" He hooked a stout finger to his chest. "I Senival. You understand?"

  Dariel did. He nodded. The door began to swing open. For some reason, it seemed important that whoever walked in see him already on good terms with the giant. "Tunnel, how did you get your name? Is it just a name, or is it Tunnel as in, ah, tunnel. You know…"

  "I like tunnels," Tunnel said, "always did. Since I was tiny. I like to go through, see? Better than go over. For me that's so." It looked like he might have had more to say, but he shrugged it off, flashed his frightening grin, and left the room.

  Since he was tiny? Dariel found that hard to imagine. What had the tiny Tunnel looked like? Was he gray? With baby tusks?

  Alone with his chains, Dariel stoked the embers within him back into a blaze. By the Giver, what was the meaning of all this! Each portion of it-the league betrayal, the Lothan Aklun slaughter, being led a prisoner to the Auldek, watching Sire Neen beheaded, being abducted and jailed by a tusked man named Tunnel-was a different coal that burned where it touched him. The fact that it was all confounding and unexplained only made him angrier. When he met this Mor he would spit in her face coolly and make her know the depths of her mistake in treating him so. He would say his name slowly, so that she would hear and realize it and understand that these chains did nothing to change who he was or lessen the wrath he could throw down upon her.