She said, "Lower your eyes." The man stared at her a moment longer and then obeyed. "How could you think the monarch of one kingdom would betray the monarch of another… for peasants? Don't you see how foolish that is? How impossible? And they told me you were bright. Devious. Cunning. Instead, you're none of these things."
Had she really gotten all that out without a hitch or quaver of emotion? She had. The man's steady attention confirmed it. He stared at her feet but said nothing.
"You may speak freely to me," Corinn said, trusting her voice a little more now. "I am not easy to offend. Nor do you frighten me. If your language is coarse, so be it. I have some rough about me as well."
One corner of the man's mouth crooked upward. It looked like a tic, a jerk of his cheek muscles, but the expression held. A lopsided smile.
"Well, speak. That's what you like to do, isn't it? Make up speeches. Exhort. Rant to the masses! Try it on an audience of one."
The man bowed his head, moving that smile out of her view. She watched him gather himself with a series of inhaled breaths. She could have him beaten, she thought. Mutilated. Killed. She could-right now, right here-order his tongue cut out. No more speeches then. And, she realized, part of what was jumbling her mind was the song. It was high in her, roiling about the curve of her skull like liquid flame mixed with sound, hungry to get out. She did not even need to order another to act for her. She could open her mouth and sing him into oblivion.
"You have betrayed your brother's dreams."
She saw the words on his lips, and then she heard them, and then put the two together and understood them.
"Have I? And did my brother detail his dreams to you?"
Barad took a few breaths before answering, but his voice was sure when he did, no hint of deceit or hesitation in it. "Yes. Many nights he spoke to me in dreams." He looked up. "I make up no speeches, Corinn Akaran. I simply recite what I remember, what Aliver wished me to say to the world. You would do well to listen yourself. It is not too late to save yourself from ruin."
Corinn was quicker even than the Marah in responding to this insult. She said nothing. She only opened her mouth slightly and let out the ribbon of song already waiting. It slipped through the air on a whisper, and the thing she had but thought was done. The eyes that had dared to look up at her were eyes no longer. They were stone replicas, frozen in place. Delivegu gasped. One of the guards whispered a curse of amazement. Barad himself did not move at all. His stone eyes stared at her, his expression otherwise unchanged.
She spun away.
In her offices an hour later she recalled the dream she had just that morning. In it, she had arranged to meet Grae in her chambers. She had not explained why, but when he arrived, the room was lit with low lamps, heavy with incense. A single musician in a hidden closet piped a faint tune on a bone whistle. And she stood in a thin shift, a diaphanous garment.
His eyes had widened into two blue saucers when he saw her.
She was naked beneath the dress. She could see by the nervous difficulty Grae had controlling his eyes that he had noticed this. The light from the candle beside her, she knew, would be languid around her curves, and the thought of the power she had just standing there pressed her nipples erect against the thin fabric. He noticed that as well.
"I am no virgin," she had said. "I am no blushing maiden. I have no desire to be in love again. Such things are of my past. I come to you as I am. A queen. A mother. A woman. Those three things may be too much for you to handle, but if you think yourself monarch enough for it, I will have you as a husband. This is me. Consider."
With that, Corinn had slipped loose the knot at her waist and shrugged the silken shift from her shoulders. Corinn let Grae take her in from head to toe. It pleased her to have his eyes adoring her-that prodded her to cut his examination short.
"I'll have your answer now, by the way."
His answer, in the dream, had been to rise and walk toward her, swaying oddly as he did, raising first one arm and then the other. It was a strange ballet that she understood as a custom of his people, a dance of the cranes or some such. She had thought it lovely, and began to return it.
But that was just a dream. In real life, she had not worn that shift. She had not made that offer. Sitting in her office after her encounter with Barad, she checked these facts several times to be sure of them. No, she had shown the Aushenian nothing but gracious hospitality. She had been more generous with her time than normal, perhaps had smiled too readily and spoke to him with unguarded familiarity. But nothing more than that. She was so grateful for this fact that she pressed the tips of her fingernails to her forehead and squeezed, thanking the Giver for her having had at least that much reserve.
When Rhrenna entered, her face as pale and distorted as beeswax grown soft in the sun, Corinn already knew what she would report. The secretary confirmed as much tersely. Grae had nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw Barad. Though Rhrenna spoke to him innocently about what was happening-betraying no suspicion of him-Grae had stammered and even trembled a bit. Sweat had appeared in instant droplets along his forehead, and his attempts at looking casual were clearly forced.
"I cannot believe it was all an act," Rhrenna said, "but there it is. He scorned you-"
"This is not about being scorned," Corinn cut in. The words came before she knew she was to say them, but they were true. Scorn was for lesser people than she. "It's about ruling an empire," she said, and then gave new orders.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
She can't climb these mountains," Naamen said. "There's no way."
"I can carry her," Kelis answered.
The younger man plucked the knuckle root he had been sucking on from the corner of his lips, indignant. "So can I! And I will! But still, when we drop from exhaustion she'll be no better off."
Kelis answered this with only a sharp grunt and walked on with his chin high. Inside he feared the same thing. They had trudged toward the peaks for several days, their scale growing as they approached, deceptive, massive in a way that surprised him each time he looked upon them. They seemed to swell when his eyes touched them, as if they inhaled breaths and puffed out their chests to seem larger. Nor did the play of the light as the sun progressed seem to follow the natural order. At times, the upper regions of the mountains were snow dusted. At others, they appeared to have thick vegetation right up to the peaks. On occasion, he stopped, convinced he faced geometries of sheer black rock, unclimbable.
Though he never showed it outwardly, he half hoped Benabe would plant her feet and declare she and Shen would go no farther. If she did, what could he do but acquiesce? In matters of a daughter's welfare a Talayan mother had the final say. Though Shen was a princess, she was also just a young girl. Even if Aliver had been alive Benabe would have been her foremost guardian.
But Benabe never did shout them to a halt. Her face, in its own way, was as changeable as the strange mountain range. She is strong, Kelis thought more than once. Stronger than she is frightened by the future.
On the evening before they were to enter the mountains, Benabe approached Kelis. She sat beside him and stared up at the range before them, just there, so close she could have thrown a stone and hit the first of the foothills. Her daughter had combed and braided her hair the evening before, and the rows were tight against her scalp, dusted by the dry soil and twinkling here and there with flecks of gold. "I hate these mountains," she said. "They are not right. They are not true."
Kelis prepared a response and then rejected it, thought of another but felt it poor. He cleared his throat but said nothing. Behind them, Naamen and Shen slapped palms together as they played a rhyming game. Occasionally, peals of Shen's laughter flew by them.
"When I was a girl I used to dream of mountains," Benabe said. "A strange thing, yes? I lived in a flat, hot place, but I dreamed of high, cold things. I wanted to see snow. Like the Snow King." She clicked her tongue. "Tell me you had some foolish notion like that yourself, Kelis. Tell me."
I loved a prince in ways different than he loved me, Kelis said, but only to himself. To her, he answered, "It's not foolish to want to see over the horizon. Don't the wise say, 'He who travels farthest best knows his home'?"
"The wise say many things, enough to confuse the rest of us. Ever since I saw these mountains I've felt like I created them. It's those old dreams come back to punish me. Shen says that's not it, though. She says the stones put them here to welcome us. To repel others, yes, but to welcome us. They will guide us through, she says, and on the other side welcome us to safety." She pulled her gaze in and fixed it on Kelis. "Do you believe that?"
"If your daughter believes it"-he paused, but then decided what he had begun to say was the truth-"then I am comforted. She is one of the wise."
"Yes, listen to her. She's wise enough to laugh." Benabe blew air through her nose. Smiled. And the moment of mirth faded as quickly as it had come. "The strange thing is that I'm taking my daughter to find sorcerers who scare me to death, and I'm doing it because the only thing that scares me more is not finding them. Do you know how Shen convinced me? It was after my first meeting with Sinper Ou. He calls Shen his cousin, but there is no kindness in him. He would make her his wife if he could, or marry her to one of his sons. And then he would declare to the world that she lived and as Aliver's daughter was rightful ruler of the Known World."
Kelis felt his pulse quicken. "You really believe he would challenge the queen?"
"If he thought her weakened, yes. But even if he did not, I think he would make a grab for all Talay. The Ous have long thought themselves better than the rest of us. Big lions. Why shouldn't they be kings and queens? I could see these thoughts surging every time Sinper's heart pumped. You see, he would challenge the queen if he could, but I think he would be just as happy breaking the world in two. Talay is rich enough, even for a man like him. All he needs is my daughter standing beside him. He has but to name her Aliver's heir and all Talay will bow to her. Sinper will accept on her behalf. I was sure of this, and sure that he already had a spiderweb around us. I had hidden her all these years because I wanted her safe, unknown. Better a living village girl than the target for wolves. That's what I believed. I still believe it, but secrets are hard to keep. Sangae knew about her long before he approached me. And then he had no choice but to tell the other elders. And what the elders know, the Ous soon learn."
"You could announce her as Aliver's daughter yourself. Take that from Sinper-"
"The minute the world knows of her, she'll have a million enemies, most of them disguised as friends."
"She will have true protectors, too. I would be one of them. I would die so she might live."
Benabe studied him, her large eyes softening with a kindness that made them look fatigued. "Thank you. Shen would not like that. Live for her; don't die. She thinks there is a better way. That's what she told me. She came to me, and she seemed to know all the doubts within me, even though I'd tried to hide them from her. She said that there were a few in the world who could truly protect her. The stones. They promised her that the love they had for Aliver they gave now to her. Only they were stronger than all others combined. Only they could guide her safely through what is to come. She believes them, and I believe they're powerful, but I fear they want more from her than they'll ever give to her. There are things they're not telling her. I know there are."
The woman leaned forward, got her weight over her feet, and pushed herself upright. She turned to walk back to their simple camp, the moment of confiding at an end. Kelis could not help but ask another question before she went. "You named Sinper Ou's ambitions," he said, "but what are yours? What do you want for your daughter?"
For a moment Benabe's face looked hard, and Kelis thought she might lash out as she had done in their first days of travel. "I want her to live. Live and be happy, and I hate the world for making that hard for her."
"Cousin, your daughter does seem happy. Listen to her laughter."
Benabe did, and then said, "That comforts you, doesn't it?" She did not wait for his answer but stepped away before he could respond.
The next day they began the ascent.
Or they intended to begin the ascent. They looked at the looming barricade before them and strode toward it. Kelis measured his strides, already trying to use his legs efficiently, knowing that he might soon have Shen's weight to bear. It was there, in the muscles of his thighs, that he first knew something very strange was happening. Though they entered the foothills and soon the mountains, though by midday they could look back and see the plains dropping away behind them, though all around them were inclines above and ravines below and though they went around boulders and over ridges and intentionally sought the easiest passes upward-despite all the physical signs…
"Does this feel strange to you?" Kelis whispered to Naamen, drawing him back as Benabe and Shen led the way.
The younger man stood a moment, taking in the terrain, rubbing the elbow of his small arm with the palm of his other. "We're not climbing," he pronounced.
And that was exactly what Kelis had been thinking. His legs, which knew well the burden of carrying his body, were not feeling the strain of ascending. From what they could see, they seemed to have ascended several thousand feet, and yet not even Shen breathed heavily as she skipped forward, chatting with her mother.
"We are looking for sorcerers," Naamen added, shrugging and walking again. "Perhaps finding sorcery is a good sign."
They camped that evening near a small stream beside a copse of acacia trees. Kelis would normally have worried about their dwindling supplies. They had little more than roots and dried fruits and a few twists of oryx meat. But there were more disturbing things to consider-details, small ones but as disturbing as these mountains. How had the air grown so cool and moist? How, in southern Talay, had they come across a shallow stream of clear water rippling over white stones? At first the thickness of the trees was strange enough. From a distance, they were lovely to behold, signs of life and abundance they had left behind miles and miles ago.
But as he sat studying them he noticed other things. The thorns were savagely long. Their leaves had a strange look to them, green on one side, a dull gray on the other, veinless and as blank as paper. Their limbs did not curve with the natural lines of most acacias. Instead they bent like the joints of age-twisted fingers, with bulbous knuckles. Though he had commented on the trees when he first saw them, the more he sat near them, the more he wished to be up and moving. Shen, he felt, should not look too closely at them.
The next day they dropped into a lush valley crowded with trees and long-grassed meadows. Marshy ponds spotted the flat areas, connected by a web of streams. It was an eerily silent place, just the burble of water in the air. That was it. No insects or animal calls, no sign of life at all. Unnatural.
Barely had he formed the thought when Shen called out, as if in direct refutation of it, "Look, birds!"
A flock appeared from behind them, thousands of them, a mass of black darts that cut into the air, rising straight into the sky. They turned as one and carved a rough circle in the air above. They moved faster than any birds Kelis had ever seen, their wings tight at their sides and not, as far as he could tell, flapping at all. They looked to be in a great rush. Soundless save their motion through the air, they cut away and dropped over the far edge of the valley.
"Come on!" Shen called, tugging her mother forward. "We should follow them."
As they walked through the valley and rose at the far end of it, Kelis had the most vivid sensation yet of feeling the mountains move around them. The rate of their strides did not match the speed with which even the distant peaks slipped away behind them. He even paused to look back and still felt the sensation of moving. Just the sensation, not actual evidence of something amiss. He darted his eyes from one area to another, as if he would catch the mountains in the act and shame them. He never quite managed it.
When he rejoined the others, he found
them studying something on the ground: a bird, black as a raven but with an insect catcher's small frame and beak, dead-its neck snapped, apparently from impact with the ground. Benabe warned Shen not to touch it, but the girl showed no sign she intended to. They all stood staring for a time. Not too long, for the more they looked, the less the bird seemed like a bird. Kelis was sure its wings had been fixed in position, stiff as the gliders he had carved from wood as a boy. Its eyes were blue, the exact color of sky and so striking against the dead black of its plumage.
It was just the first. As they walked on through that day and then another and then several more, the ground and rocks and slopes all around them grew more and more littered with broken bodies. New flocks rose up behind them every so often and charted their way forward. Each valley brought new displays of the dead, and each morning's flock seemed less numerous or vigorous than the first. They were not true birds, Kelis knew. They were sorcery, like everything in these mountains, beautiful yet malformed.
It may have been the strangeness of the mountain terrain, the fatigue of their daily marches, or the workings of the magic so obviously woven in the world around them, but Kelis found his dreams becoming more vivid, crystal clear in a manner they had not been in many years. Often he relived episodes from recent days, altered in some way. Thus, the walk that took up his days stretched into the sleeping hours. In one dream the crumpled bodies of those birds rose from the ground and tried to fly again, their heads swinging wildly from their broken necks, wings crooked and shattered. They danced, leaping again and again, only to twirl back to earth, tiny bones snapping and feathers littering the ground. Another night he started awake, thrashing his arms and legs as he fought to escape the trees that had suddenly reached out their warped limbs and grabbed him.
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