The other lands a-2

by David Anthony Durham

  Elya-apparently at a signal from the prince-leaped into the air. Her wings rolled out and beat hard enough to keep her aloft a moment. Aaden lifted his bow, nocked an arrow, and drew. For a moment, it looked as if he planned to shoot her. But then he snapped around and loosed the arrow toward the sea. Elya snapped her wings down hard and bolted after it. A game of fetch, then. Watching them, Mena dropped back into a walk again.

  She approached the boys from one side as four Numrek came down the stairs and approached them from the other side, and as two others closed the gap behind her. The guard in the front beckoned Aaden toward him with a hand. "Prince," he said, his Acacian thickly accented, "your mother wishes for you to come to her. Please come. I will escort you." He kept moving forward as he spoke, the others close behind him.

  "Wait!" Mena called, but she was not sure why the word shot from her mouth. She was only twenty or so strides away. She had only to hurry forward and she could leave with them. Something was wrong. The guard had just done something Numrek never did. Her hand automatically went to where her sword hilt would have been. There was still no real reason to feel threatened by the prince's guards. And yet threatened was exactly what she did feel. She asked, "What are you doing? I will take them. Draw back and-"

  "Please, Princess, the queen wants me to-"

  That was as much as she heard. Two things happened at the same time. She realized it was that "please" that had sent her pulse racing. Numrek never were polite like that, even when serving the queen. Then a shout turned all their heads. Looking up into the heights of the stadium, a figure she recognized as Melio dashed up from one of the tunnels, armed and followed by a river of Marah, their swords unsheathed. They ran along the landing and hit the stairs at a tumbling run, leaping four and five at a time.

  Mena grabbed for her sword again, and again clutched only the air. She looked back at her nephew, who was standing beside Devlyn, perplexed, his hands on his hips as if in grown-up disapproval of the Marah's strange urgency. Mena cried, "Aaden!"

  He turned his head.

  The chief Numrek turned back to the prince. He stepped toward him, grim faced but unhurried, a dagger slithering from his sleeve and into his hand. The motion was so muted, so in line with the matter-of-fact manner that the Numrek usually kept up around the prince, that Mena did not believe what her eyes told her. Casually, the Numrek reached down and drove the blade into Aaden's belly. He twisted it, studying the boy's face as he did, and then yanked the blade out and jabbed it into Devlyn's abdomen. The Numrek twisted the blade, then ripped it down. Devlyn's intestines tumbled onto the grass, the boy collapsing at almost the same instant.

  Mena had started to run forward the moment she saw Aaden stabbed. Her strides ate up the remaining distance so that when she vaulted over Aaden and toward the Numrek she was in full sprint. The Numrek, surprised and still stooped forward with his dagger blade spilling Devlyn's insides, snapped his eyes up. The muscles in his back and shoulders and arms tensed, and had Mena been any slower, he would have caught her with an upswing of the dagger.

  But such abrupt, complete Maeben fury drove her actions that she was a blur of deliberate motion. As she flew forward, she kicked her legs out to one side. She caught the Numrek's head to her chest, clamped her talons around it, and held tight as the momentum in her legs swung her around, horizontal to the ground. She felt two moments of resistance. First, the muscle of the Numrek's late reaction, and then the catch as the vertebrae in his neck reached the limit to which they could turn. They snapped.

  His body was so heavy, legs planted so firmly, that Mena swung all the way around with the now dead head clutched to her chest. She let go and landed on her feet. She caught the dagger that was just then falling from the Numrek's suddenly limp grip. With her left arm she shoved him in the chest, needing to use all her force to make sure his body, with the wobbling head still attached, fell backward away from Aaden, who was now a knot on the ground, unconscious.

  The others were upon her now, two with swords drawn, another swinging an ax before him, intent on killing her quickly. Mena moved faster than thought. She ducked beneath the hissing arc of the ax that was swept around by the first of them to reach her. She stooped under him and sliced the tendons at the back of his knee. The man fell roaring to one side, knocking one of his companions down and entangling another in his writhing agony. The few seconds this allowed was enough for her to scoop Aaden up with one arm, half dragging, half carrying him as she scrambled backward. He was warm and slick with blood, heavy and so very fragile at the same time. He said something, a moan or single word or a hope that Mena could not make out, but that was all.

  The two Numrek shoved the wounded man away and came at her, their massive strides eating up the distance quicker than she fed it out. The one approaching from nearest the oncoming Marah said something to the others, but they stayed fixed on her. Mena changed the direction of her retreat to keep him in view as well. She did not look, but in the periphery of her vision she registered that Melio and the others were about to reach the field level. Near, but not near enough.

  She feared she would have to put the boy down again to fight, but then something behind her caused the Numrek to slow. They hesitated, weapons raised defensively. Their eyes widened. One of them pointed, as if the others might not be seeing what he saw.

  Then Mena understood. And she knew what to do. She dropped one shoulder and twisted her body around, throwing all her weight behind the other shoulder, which came up and around, lifting Aaden off the ground. She swung him in the crook of her arm, which she snapped taut at the exact moment to hurl him into the air. It was an awkward move, her force not entirely controlled. The boy somersaulted in the air. Only then did Mena see Elya.

  She had landed at a run and was closing the last few strides with her head low to the ground. She moved with a frightening, reptilian rapidity, all sinewy snapping and writhing, her feather plumes erect and trembling, her mouth open in a rasping hiss. Her head stretched out, neck reached to receive the tumbling boy. He slid down her length and his torso smacked against her back, cradled between the nubs Mena used as a saddle. And then Elya leaped over Mena, wings snapping out and smashing down, shooting her and the prince up into the waiting sky.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  This place is eating itself," Skylene said. "That's what's wrong with the Auldek. They thought they had bargained for a blessing; instead they got an everlasting curse. They live on, bodies the same, souls more and more twisted. That's the curse of the soul catcher."

  She poured water from a small stone pitcher into two beakers of the same marbled material. One she pushed across the table to Dariel, the other she held up for Tunnel, who shook his head. She sipped from it herself. "Think of it. On one hand you live on year after year. You die every now and then, only to rise again. Wonderful, yes?"

  Dariel rolled the stone beaker between his palms, enjoying the smooth texture of it, the coolness against his skin. His wrists had been unbound only a few days before. He was still relearning mobility. A short length of chain still hobbled his legs and chafed his ankles, but he was making progress, earning their trust. That was what this sudden discourse was about, wasn't it? Something had changed. He could hear it in Skylene's voice and see a hint of something tickling the edges of Tunnel's bizarre features. He said, "I don't think that immortality is so great a gift, not if it keeps you forever separated from loved ones who have died before you."

  "True. And what if you can never have children? You cannot see yourself in generations that will continue after you. For some, this doesn't matter; for others, it drives them crazy."

  "Is that why they started to"-Dariel hesitated, glancing between the two of them, one looking like a bird woman, the other like some muscle-sculpted boar man-"make these changes to you?"

  "That's not what I mean," Skylene said. "What they do to us, we call 'belonging.' They did it as a way to maintain a connection with the animal deities, so that they did not give them up en
tirely. It is painful at times, but pain passes. We grow used to the changes. Sometimes proud of them."

  "How is it even possible?"

  Skylene smiled. "Tattoos are tattoos. We do much of that ourselves. There were some chosen by the Auldek to make other changes to, but anything truly difficult was done by the Lothan Aklun. Tunnel's tusks. They are metal, but they are also part of him, fused right into the bones of his skull. The Lothan Aklun can-or could-do many strange things.

  "No, what I referred to were greater corruptions. There have been two clans punished for unpardonable perversions. The first, the white-eyed snake clan, is called the Fumel. Their crime? Guess it."

  Dariel stared at her, his face blank. He had no idea, and it seemed a waste of time to even try to guess.

  "The Fumel broke the first restriction. They started to raise the humans as their own children. They pretended they were their own blood. Some among them tried to make their slaves look like Fumel! Imagine that. They had these slaves in Fumel guise subjugate the other slaves.

  "When the other Auldek heard of it, they punished the Fumel, demanding that they turn over all the altered children to be exterminated. They would not. The other clans united to attack them, but the Fumel fought. By the time it was over too few of them were left, and upon those, the crimes done against the other clans were too great. The Fumel were wiped out. If you journey to the south to what used to be their lands you may someday see the Bleeding Road. It's where the Fumel corpses still adorn the stakes they were impaled upon. They once had a city built on a hill surrounded by a network of shallow canals. When the other clans were done there, the hill was a hole in the earth, filled with water. The Bleeding Road leads for miles across their lands and ends at that lake. It's symbolic, you see?"

  I imagine so, Dariel thought. It sounded like the kind of punishment Tinhadin might have meted out.

  "That was three hundred years ago. Since then, Auldek have not killed one another. There was another clan more recently that did another forbidden thing." She paused. She glanced at Tunnel, then at the silent scribe who sat listening.

  "What did they do?" Dariel asked.

  As if she needed the prompting, Skylene sighed and said, "They ate them. It may have been a madness that took hold of them. It may have been because they believed it was the easiest way to acquire their souls. It may have been, as some argue, that they believed by eating young flesh they would become fertile again. They may have done other things as well. We don't know all of it. We know that it was disgusting. The other Auldek took all this clan's slaves and put them to death."

  "The slaves?"

  "There is no prohibition on killing the People, just on eating them or adopting them. This time, the Auldek didn't kill the clan as well. After the Fumel, they vowed they would not do that again. Their lives-even if they were tainted by crimes-were too valuable to waste now that there were so few Auldek left. Instead, the clan was banished. Sent from Ushen Brae and cursed never to return."

  "The Numrek," Dariel whispered.

  "Exactly right," Skylene said. "Your traveling companions. The other Auldek killed the souls within them, so that they had but their one mortal life, and then drove them into the north. During that time they were not heard from. Exile meant death in all likelihood, but not as a certainty. That distinction was enough for the Auldek to accept it as just punishment."

  "The Numrek ate people in the Known World, too," he said. "Mostly when they had just arrived, but at other times as well. Corinn forbade it when she took them into her service. I've not heard that they ate human flesh since then."

  "They would not," Skylene said, "not if they had their sights set on returning to Ushen Brae."

  Dariel's head swam with questions. "What does it mean… that they've come back? It's all with a purpose?"

  "A purpose, yes." Skylene hooked her foot around a stool and pulled it out from under the table. She sat and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Not for the first time, Dariel noticed how slimly athletic she was, feminine, but in a way that had a coiled physical danger to it. She said, "Think about what's happened. The Auldek didn't punish them when they returned. By their own decree, they should cut off Calrach's head and set it beside that leagueman's. They didn't. And they haven't banished them again. To put it plainly, they've been talking with them. Your friend Calrach returned with an offer. They have been discussing it ever since. They haven't been this excited for centuries."

  "What offer?"

  "That I don't have permission to tell you."

  "You'll tell me half a thing?"

  Skylene smiled. "When does anybody tell all of a thing? I've told you what I can."

  Her words had finality, but her posture-leaning toward him, knees apart, face close to his-sent different signals. He wasn't sure how to read them.

  "Ask me something else," she said.

  Heat rushed across Dariel's cheeks. He very much wished that Tunnel and the scribe weren't in the room. He felt a sudden urge to reach across and touch her sky-blue skin. It was not an entirely new desire. Alone so often, his thoughts of Wren had grown increasingly blurred, intermingled with Skylene's sharp avian features and Mor's feline grace. More than once, he had woken from dreams of coupling in ways he had never imagined in life. But such thoughts had no place here. He pushed them away.

  "Why don't you revolt?" Dariel asked. "The People. With their skills and their numbers they could slaughter the Auldek."

  Skylene mulled the question over, something that was both a smile and an expression of grief residing on her features. "The league, the Lothan Aklun, and the Auldek have had hundreds of years to perfect their institutions. They know our minds. When we first arrived, the Lothan Aklun kept us on an isle called Lithram Len. They tested us there, asked us things, watched us; and for a time they let us struggle among ourselves. They observed who shared; who fought; who showed compassion; and who was cold inside, calculating, greedy, savage. They learned our individual weaknesses and strengths, though they saw both as traits to be exploited. Eventually, they sent us to the role that suited each best. The meek went to their work. The savage to theirs. The devious to theirs. Those with the most rebellion in them become spirit children."

  "The ones who get eaten?"

  Skylene nodded.

  "But still, you all know where you came from. You're more the same than different. Obviously, you haven't forgotten-"

  "Dariel, our lives here have many faces." She placed one of her fine-boned hands on his knee, her fingers light. "There are many who work in the fields to harvest mist. The generous seeds they are called. They labor. They don't know they're laboring, because the oil from the leaves of the plants numbs their minds. They walk dazed, seeing a world different from ours. They're only in this world enough to be sent to work, to follow instructions."

  Dariel asked, "Mist comes from a plant? Harvested in a field?"

  "Yes. The very thing that helps buy the children from your land is worked by slaves in this one. That is the system the Lothan Aklun and the Auldek set up. It perpetuates itself while they live mostly at ease." She let this sit with him a moment. "But not everyone is drugged like that. We can't all be. There are many who work the myriad tasks that sustain the Auldek. Every job imaginable is done, somewhere, by the People, but not necessarily by Free People. Some hate us. Ones called the golden eyes handle commerce. They trade and live lives of some plenty, though they are not free. Others, like the divine children… kill. They are warriors almost to match the Auldek. They thrive in palaces, with slaves of their own. They live like nobles until the moment the Auldek call for them to fight, and then they do that with joy as well. Some even forget that they are not free, forget that their individual desires could be any different from the orders given to them. That Lvin you saw in the arena a few days back-he was chosen because the Lothan Aklun knew what he might become. I don't know how, but they see things in us that we don't see ourselves."

  The Lvin in the arena. Dariel wished he had dreame
d that as well. It had been the only time since his captivity began that he had seen the light of day. Tunnel, who had watch duty over him that day, explained that he had something he wished to show him. Dariel had followed him through the passageways, stumbling on legs stiff from disuse. Tunnel had taken off his ankle chains for the walk. Hobbling along behind the man, it was obvious to both of them that Dariel was no flight risk.

  They met several other slaves in a cramped bend in a corridor, a few Dariel recognized, a few he did not. Together, they crowded around slots in the wall that looked out upon some sort of exhibition ground. Dariel's view was partly cut off by beams, but it was enough. He soon understood-by the sights of carnage he witnessed and by the roars of adulation and by the tremors driven down into the stone around him-that he was somewhere within the foundations of a massive structure, a stadium of some sort.

  On the field below him, a mass of warriors butchered one another with a speed and furious precision Dariel had never witnessed before. The figures-lightly armored or not armored at all-were clearly human. At least, they were the human-animal merging that he knew marked the People. Tattooed in the various totem patterns, adorned with tusks or feathered plumes or what looked like scaly protrusions enhancing their backbones. They fought in clan groups, each group standing against all the rest. They leaped and spun, slashed and ducked and kicked and even snapped out somersaults. It could have been some mad, frenzied acrobatics exhibition, except that they worked with weapons: swords and axes, long spears and jointed staffs that whirled about at bone-breaking velocity. Death blows were announced by gouts of blood. Limbs wheeled through the air. Heads were sliced from shoulders and kicked beneath the churning legs.