And then came a night-long dream of a real evening from years before: the womanhood ceremony he and Aliver had participated in just after earning manhood rights themselves. He relived the entire evening in slow detail. As one of the newly established males, he danced with the other young warriors from all the central villages-Aliver among them-in the slow procession that wound them around and around the circle of admiring young women. The drums beat a steady rhythm, into which darted the plucked metallic bursts of thumb instruments. It was a long ceremony, and it was here again in his dream. He relived each step, each jump, each clap and smile and toss of his head, all done at the same time as the other men. They glistened with sweat, each lean from running and training, all chiseled to the perfection the Giver first sang into being.
Aliver may have been lighter hued, but in the contours of his body and his movements he was the same as any of the Talayans. Kelis knew where he was each moment of the dance. He took pleasure in it, at times feeling like he and Aliver danced for each other. Their eyes met often, both flashing smiles when they did so. He knew that Aliver's joy was in the ceremony itself, in anticipation of what was to come and in joy at so completely belonging, but to Kelis there was more to it. Part of the joy for him was in the awareness that-should Aliver wish it-anything could happen between them. No intimacy would be too much, no pleasure one Kelis would turn away from. It was an attraction he felt for no other man, and yet something about it felt right, full and complete and sublime in a manner different from his attraction to women. It could lead to anything.
But not that night. Nor on any night thereafter. That evening progressed on a tide propelled by the collective will of the village. At some point the music changed tempo, announcing the time of choosing had come. In an instant the new women swarmed in on the men, grabbing them by the wrist, shouting out their choices with voices and laughter. Aliver became the center of a swirling chaos of young beauties. Kelis himself was pulled in two different directions for a time, until one girl won the tugging match by grasping his tuvey band and swirling away with him. Benabe won Aliver, perhaps with the aid of his acquiescence. What a beauty she was then! Kelis could see it as clearly as any man. Aliver was as eager as she was, eager enough that he left the group at her urging, without so much as a glance of leave-taking to Kelis.
Perhaps that was the night Benabe conceived. Perhaps, while he made love to one woman, thinking of a man, that man planted the seed that would be Shen in another woman. Perhaps-if Thaddeus Clegg had not arrived soon after to recall Aliver to the fight that would eventually take his life-Kelis might have watched Aliver and Benabe wed and would have been near them as Shen entered the world and grew. He awoke with this thought, and during the few quiet minutes left before the others stirred he tried to believe he could have lived satisfied with that. And then he had a different thought.
Perhaps Shen is my daughter as well. That would explain why she scared him so, and why he already loved her more than his own life. For that was the truth. What he had said to Benabe was neither a comfort nor a vain boast. Though he had only known the girl a few weeks, it already seemed that protecting her was the single task of meaning in his life.
And then, with an abruptness that meant it took but a few minutes to descend to the plains again, the mountains ended one morning. The four travelers wove through the foothills and trod once more across a flat landscape, one devoid of shade, unpeopled, and as barren as the far south Kelis had first approached with Aliver years before. Even the hardy acacia trees were but stunted, infrequent versions of their normal grandeur. It was there that they came upon the man. Naamen saw him first and indicated it with a grunt. The group of four stopped and stared.
The man stood as still as a statue, garbed in a robe the same sand color as the land around him. He clasped his hands together at his waist and seemed to carry nothing, no supplies, no weapons or staff, not even a skin of water. He was hooded, but the sun reflecting off the sand lit his face from beneath. He stared straight at them, as if he had been waiting for them to arrive at just that spot on the world. Kelis raked his eyes across the landscape, searching for others, for signs that would explain the man. Featureless desolation stretched out in all directions. He focused on the figure again. Was he a mirage they were all seeing, a sign they had journeyed away from sanity?
Shen walked forward. Benabe whispered her name. Kelis half formed a protest himself, but he held it behind his teeth. He strode to keep pace with the girl. As she neared him, the man finally moved. He fell forward onto his knees and into a bow that pressed his forehead to the ground. Once there, with his arms stretched out to either side and his palms flat against the parched earth, the man did nothing more.
Shen glanced back at the others, her expression one of amused perplexity. She knelt and touched her fingertips to the man's shoulder. She intoned the traditional words of Talayan greeting. "Old friend, the sun shines on you, but the water is sweet."
"The water is cool, Your Majesty, and clear to look upon," the man answered, speaking his words to the earth. "You are loved."
In those few words Kelis recognized the speaker's voice.
"I know," Shen said, as if she heard such greetings regularly. "Did the stones send you to tell me so?"
"The stones?" The prostrate man sounded confused for a moment, but then his voice picked up with the rhythms of practiced formality. "The Santoth called you, and you came. That is a blessing. Come with me, Princess. I will take you to them. They have much to tell you."
Before he knew it, the man's name whispered through Kelis's lips. "Leeka Alain?"
The man raised his head, turned, and looked at Kelis. For a moment Kelis thought himself mistaken. The man's face was nothing like the craggy one he remembered on the general. And then it was. And a moment later it was not. His features appeared as fixed and solid as anybody else's, but his face contained more than a single man's features. It was ancient and cracked and eroded with the wear of ages, and yet it was also a face of clear green eyes and a once-broken nose and lips that glistened with moisture when his tongue wet them.
"They don't call me that here," the man said, "but that was my name before."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The breakneck speed at which the league clipper careened into Acacia's main harbor would have been reckless even in the light of day. At night, it was madness. But league pilots were nothing if not adept at all things nautical, and the officer at the helm of the Rayfin carved a wild course through the anchored vessels, passed the trading floats. He hooked the vessel around the inner watchtower and dropped sails only when momentum alone was more than enough to place it skimming along a fortunately unoccupied section of league-owned pier. He shouted for the messenger to disembark before they had even halted. The man did not need the encouragement. He leaped from a height and ran with all the haste he had been ordered to show.
A scant ten minutes later, Sire Dagon sat bleary eyed, wearing a robe loosely wrapped about his gaunt frame. Mist so clouded his head that his servants had to carry him-against his muted protests-and prop him up in his chair. Even sitting there, with the bay windows thrown open to a chill breeze and lamps on high, he as yet floated on the chorus of angelic voices he conducted during his mist dreams. His head swirled with song, his body light as a silken puppet and able to dance in midair, only now being tugged back down to earth. Blinking, he asked the messenger what could possibly merit the interruption at such a delicate hour.
"I came in haste," the man said.
"So I gather," Sire Dagon said, cocking his head back in a manner that for some reason helped him see middle-distance objects more clearly. The man spoke with clipped Ishtat Inspectorate tones, a fact that registered a spike in the leagueman's attention. Ishtats were so highly trained that rarely were they charged with tasks as menial as delivering a message. "What I don't yet know is why, but I trust you are about to tell me. Who sent you?"
"The League Council."
"Why did they not send a
messenger bird from Thrain?"
"The news I carry was deemed too grave to be put in care of a pigeon."
"In care of a pigeon?" Sire Dagon found that amusing. Images of officer pigeons with military bearing, cooing orders to a small legion of birds, dancing up from the ground with the aid of the music yet pulsing in his veins…
"Sire, you need to listen."
Quite impertinently, the messenger shouted for Sire Dagon's servants. He demanded they bring a sobering concoction to match the leagueman's mist distillation. He needed him back completely, and immediately, he said. He must have said a few other very convincing things as well, because before Dagon could stop it his manservant stuffed an invigorating pill up one of his nostrils. Not pleasant but effective. Within a minute he was more awake than he wished, the burning itch in his nose and at the back of his throat making sure of it.
"Forgive me, Sire," the messenger said, bowing to him now that his orders had been heeded. "I was commanded that I waste not a minute in delivering my message. But you have to be able to hear it and understand it, too. This message is from the Council, without dissent. I wear on my neck this collar, secured with a truth knot that confirms my words are truth."
The man stepped forward, bent, and opened his shirt collar so that Dagon could study the thin rope tied about his neck. Sire Dagon yanked at it, pulling it close. To an untrained eye the knot that closed the circle looked like the confusion a child might create, but in its loops and bunches was an intricacy that was very practiced, indeed. And there could be no mistaking its authenticity. The messenger had been sent by the League Council.
Sire Dagon motioned for the man to step away. Regaining his dignity, he said, "I am listening."
And so he sat hearing about the horror that had emerged from Sire Neen's mistakes. In the space of few moments everything changed. All their hopes, their plans, all of it would have to wait. Instead, he would have to compose lies faster than ever before. He would have to win the queen's trust, for they would need her armies in the war that was coming.
A few hours later Sire Dagon traversed the terraces and stairways that would lead him to the queen, a messenger himself now. She would not be easy to gain an audience with. Sire Dagon knew the things she had recently occupied herself with. Apparently, she had managed to capture Barad the Lesser. What a stir this had caused among the nobles! All the work of some agent of hers, one Delivegu, a lucky man, and now one officially acknowledged at court. Word of the capture had spread among the common folk, so that whatever benefit there was in it was not immediately obvious. Indeed, a rumor spread that she had mutilated Barad. Cut out his eyes and shoved stones in their places. Still others said she cursed him through sorcery. It was the sort of mad talk that might have sparked the man's rebellion into life, but Corinn had finally ordered the distribution of a new wine. In so doing, she belatedly fulfilled the league's wishes, but that was so often the case. She had also politely but firmly sent King Grae back to his homeland. The leaguemen were not entirely sure what to make of that, but there was something of interest beneath the surface of it surely. With all this happening, Corinn had every right to consider herself tied up in a web of complications. How very simple such things would seem to her by the end of this day!
Just outside the queen's quarters, Sire Dagon stood with his arms outstretched as a Marah searched him for hidden daggers. He tried to keep his gaze forward, his face wrinkled with annoyed tolerance. The last thing he wanted to do was look at any of the Numrek, two of whom stood watching. But his eyes had wills of their own. They flicked over long enough to confirm-damn it-that the guards on either side of the door were looking at him. Was there anything to be read in their craggy features? He was not sure. Stupid! Control yourself, he thought. Without showing it, he breathed deep and slow, steadying himself. Leaguemen controlled their emotions, not the other way around. Before he was waved through, he even resorted to the silent counting regime he had been taught as a boy, arithmetic exercises that he conducted in the back of his mind and that helped render his face expressionless.
"All right," the Marah said, "you may enter. Forgive the formality, sire." He stood to the side and motioned toward the corridor.
Sire Dagon gave him a look meant to indicate that he knew very well where he was going. It is what he would have done in normal circumstances. Again, though, his eyes chose to disobey him. Tremulous, they slid to the side as he passed and, yes, the Numrek to his left was watching him! No mistaking it. The beast had been observing him with more than casual interest.
Once in the corridor, the leagueman quickened his step, trying to walk quietly and listen for any indication that the Numrek was following. He had to pass another two Numrek milling about the anteroom, but he managed it without mishap. Once in the front office proper, he swept in on Rhrenna, tripping on the edge of the carpet and banging his leg against a divan.
The secretary frowned at him. "Sire Dagon…"
He did not slacken his strides. Reaching out with one hand, he clamped his claw around the woman's elbow, wrenching her into motion. She called out in protest, but he shushed her savagely. "Be silent! Your life depends on this!"
The piper sitting in the corner near the queen's actual door did not pay enough attention to look perplexed. He just glanced at the two rushing forward and lifted his flute to announce their presence. He had sounded but a few notes before Sire Dagon opened the queen's door. He swirled in and shoved it closed again a moment later, releasing Rhrenna as he did. It was all an unaccustomed amount of physical activity for the man, enough to leave him panting.
Corinn had been on her balcony. She stepped back into the dimmer light inside, studying the two with an unreadable but certainly not welcoming expression.
"Your Majesty!" Dagon bowed quickly, sucking a few breaths as he did so. "I am here to tell you everything. Everything, without the slightest deception. First, though, have you a secret room? A safe room?"
"What-"
Moving toward her, he said, "You do, of course! I know you do. A room that you can enter from these chambers, that only you have the key to and that you can lock. Where is it?"
"Sire Dagon, I-"
"No!" he said. "Not now. In a safe place. Get us there. Then we talk. Please, Corinn. Your very life is in danger. Please!"
The queen crossed her arms. "I'm in my chambers, with my guards but a shout away. From whom am I in danger? I see only one madman at the moment."
"Oh, you stubborn thing! Fine."
As she watched-now visibly shocked by his outbursts-Sire Dagon brushed past her. He inspected one corner of the room quickly, looking high and low. He measured a few steps to the side, and then grasped the tapestry he found there along its bottom edge. With a flourish, he flung it to the side, sending the needlework depiction of a sunset behind the Senival mountains rippling toward the floor tiles. And there it was! As he knew it would be. Nothing more than two depressions at waist height in the stone, each about the size of the heel of a child's hand. He pressed his against both and pushed. For a moment the wall was as immobile as it looked. He cursed. He heard one of the women whisper something. He cursed again. And then remembered. He pressed harder on the right hand than the left. Of course. A door-sized portion of the wall gave way, suddenly smooth and light before his hands.
"There," he said, turning, panting. "Now you know that we know of this. Would I betray that information without cause? Please, come in with me. I'll tell you everything once we are inside."
The queen glanced at Rhrenna. Sire Dagon knew some message passed between them, but he was too fatigued to riddle it out. Not that he needed to. By the Giver, he had just revealed a secret hundreds of years old, one that by itself changed everything about the trust between the Akarans and the league. He hoped it worked. Of course, if it did not, the queen would likely be dead within the hour.
Without speaking a word or looking him in the face, Corinn moved past him, through the opening. Rhrenna followed, her blue eyes hard on his. Dagon
slipped in behind them. He made sure the wall fit snugly back into place, and then he stepped away from it. From this side, the roughhewn stone, which appeared to be lit from above by an opening to the sky, betrayed no sign of the door. Only at his feet, where a fan of thick dust had been swept aside, was there a sign to confirm he had just passed through the wall. How strange to finally be here. He had known of this place since his early days in his office, but never knew that he would see it himself.
He turned to face the two women. Before he was fully around, Rhrenna had slammed her shoulder into his thin chest, pushing him back against the wall. He felt the prick of a tiny, undoubtedly razor-sharp, blade at his neck. The Meinish woman pressed it skillfully, with enough of the flat of the blade that he could feel the pulse of his artery beneath it, and with enough of the edge that he felt his skin on the verge of bursting open around it. Her small face was close to his chin, her teeth bared as if she would bite him as well as cut him. He had expected this, too, but it was savage enough an action to take his breath away again.
"Explain yourself now, Dagon," Corinn said. She stood only a step away, for the chamber was small, more like a fissure in a cave than a man-made room. Lit from above, she was frightening, all highlight or shadow. He had no problem believing her capable of sorcery. She said, "Rhrenna never liked you. She'd slit your throat and bathe in the shower of blood that would bring. Considering that you have shoved us into a secret room-a room that you should know nothing about-I'll happily pardon her and curse the leagueman who challenges me."
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