The throng they cut through grew as they progressed. More and more people crowded the streets, pushing in to get a look at him. They were quiet, eerily so. The signs of belonging stood out even more than usual because many gathered in clan groups. Whereas Dariel was used to seeing the People as a collage of individuals, some tusked and others tattooed, some with metal whiskers and others with pale flesh, here most seemed to have segregated themselves, making blocs of individuals sharing skin tone or altered features.
They strode past groups of wolflike Wrathics, all of them looking like Birke’s kin. A small clump of Fru Nithexek stared, their eyes somehow rounder than normal, seemingly unblinking. For a time several Shivith youths ran alongside them. They called to one another in amazed voices, shouting that the Rhuin Fa was one of their clan. The Rhuin Fa was Shivith! Their voices were harsh in the relative silence, and before long others cuffed them into silence and held them back to fade into the distance. On one section of street, Dariel and his group had to physically plow through a sea of light blue birdlike faces, all of them staring at Dariel. He could not read whether their expressions were kindly curious or hostile or something in between. He was glad that Mor kept the pace brisk.
When they passed down a thoroughfare lined with massive statues of strange creatures, Dariel knew they had arrived. They went through a colonnade of painted pillars, up a stone staircase, and stepped into the gaping mouth that cast them in darkness for a time. Just as before, Dariel thought. This is just as before. Except that it was not, and could not be as it had been. Before, he had no control over his fate. He had no voice. This time he had both, and he had the responsibility of using them for the good of everyone in this chamber, both those who supported him already and those who believed they hated him.
Though he still was not sure how he would manage it, he had never felt a clearer sense of purpose. He made sure that when he strode into the high-ceilinged chamber there was nothing but quiet confidence on his face. They came to rest at the edge of a large rectangle of light that fell from a skylight. Throngs of the People crowded the shadows, more than he could see or number. He did know that they were sectioned by clan affiliation. That had been a requirement of Dukish of the Anet clan. It was he who controlled this portion of the city, he who permitted this gathering and built his strength on keeping the People divided.
Dariel was trying to sort out who was who when a shape hulked up in front of him. A giant of a man converged on him, grinning madly, his tusks exaggerating his joy. “Rhuin Fa! There he is!” Tunnel crushed Dariel in an embrace, lifting him off the ground. He spun with him, making sure everyone heard and saw that the Rhuin Fa had arrived.
“Hello… Tunnel,” Dariel managed to gasp. “Good to see you, too.”
“Good that you are alive,” Tunnel said, once he had set Dariel down. “I like this. It’s good.” He touched a thick finger to Dariel’s forehead. “Yes, that’s good. But what are these? Cathounds!”
If Bashar and Cashen found anything odd about Tunnel’s appearance, they did not show it. They jumped into his arms, paws on his chest and knees, as he bent to greet them. He laughed as they slopped his face with their tongues.
“Hounds like me,” Tunnel explained. “They should fear me, but…” Back on his feet again, he wiped his face dry with a handkerchief before greeting the others. He hugged Anira at length and Mor briefly, seeming to know that she would not return the gesture as fully as he offered it. Birke took the hounds’ leashes and promised to keep them safe in the back of the chamber. Dariel let them go reluctantly.
Throughout all this exchange, Mor scanned the crowd. She nodded greetings to some, stared icily at others. “Where’s Skylene?”
Tunnel grew somber. “She was injured, Mor. Shot with an arrow in the chest.”
“No,” Dariel said. “Is she all right?”
“She is not well.”
“Where is she?” Mor asked.
“Safe for now. We’ll take you both to her, after this. She wants that, but she did not want you to know before. She did not want it to change anything, to rush you or… You know how she is. As stubborn as you, Mor, but quieter about it.”
Mor looked toward the contingent of Anets and Antoks that grouped beside them. She kept her emotions hidden, but Dariel saw the tightness in the way she moved her neck. “Who shot her?”
“Not them,” Tunnel said. “The league did it. They-”
The deep sound of a bell resonated through the chamber, cutting Tunnel off. The long tones called the meeting to order. Each of the clans sent a handful of representatives into the center of the lighted space. As they moved, Anira whispered a few names in Dariel’s ear. He knew who they were as she said them, and wondered how that was possible. Plez of the Kern. Randale of the Wrathic. Than, with his savage demeanor, of the Lvin… Each name he knew just before she uttered it. How could that be? He may have heard some of the names before, but he could place their faces now. He even knew things about them that he was sure he had never been told.
He did not have time to ponder it. Representing the Free People, Mor stepped forward, with Tunnel as a towering, muscled protector beside her. Anira brushed past Dariel. She reached back, took him by the wrist, and pulled him forward. More so than ever, he felt the touch of hundreds of eyes on him.
An Anet spoke first. He took a loop of metal that looked like a goat horn from the small table it rested on. Holding it high, he called the meeting to order. He was not Dukish, Dariel knew, but one of his secretaries. Dukish himself had a seat brought out for him. He sat while the others stood, legs crossed, head tilted, and his gaze on something in the chamber’s shadowy distance. He had not, as far as Dariel knew, even looked at him, and he did not seem to intend to. But looking at Dukish, Dariel realized he knew things about him. He knew too much about him.
Dukish’s man said that they were all gathered here due to the Anet clan’s generosity. He reminded them that weapons were not allowed. If any had weapons hidden on them, they should leave now or face disgrace and exile for violating that cardinal rule of the gathering. Someone from deep in the shadows shouted a curse at him, but he thrust the horn above his head, clenched tight in his fist. “The horn is the voice!” he shouted. “Only the holder of the horn speaks!”
Many grumbled, but nobody disputed the tradition. At least, not until the Anet had held on to it too long, doing nothing more than justifying the bloody actions they had taken to “secure” the city. Eventually, the man did let the horn be tugged from his hand, and another speaker stepped up to make his or her case.
The Free People, being removed from any particular clan, were to be the last to receive the horn. Dariel would have found the wait interminable if he was not experiencing so much each moment. His belief that he knew many of these people grew stronger all the time. He did not just read them based on the things they said and their demeanor as they said them. Dariel remembered other things about them. When Than spoke, he called Dukish a tyrant who should be put on trial for every murder he had incited. He roared his words with passion and a lion’s strength of bearing. But… he said nothing about his shame over not being asked to go with his Auldek masters on their war march. Dariel remembered the man making that confession to him, admitting how much that shamed him. He saw that emotion behind every gesture, but knew that nobody else did.
Randale of the Wrathic reminded them that Ushen Brae was vast and should be settled, that the clans could divide and live separately. They should first share out the resources and wealth of Avina equally. Dariel, watching one version of him, recalled another speaking quietly about how he wanted only to go to Rath Batatt himself and range across the mountains there like the wolf his long teeth were modeled after. Plez of the Kern did not say the thing that troubled her most: that with the Lothan Aklun dead they no longer had any way to make the belonging changes to any new people who arrived. What would happen, she wondered, when the next generation of Kern did not have blue skin or a beaked appendage that lengthened
their noses? Would there even be another generation of Kern? Nor did Maren, speaking for the Kulish Kra, admit that her mind was mostly on her lover, an Antok man who had been forced by his clan affiliation to leave her.
There was so much behind each speaker’s words, so many hidden fears and objectives, thoughts noble and sometimes wicked. It was almost too much for Dariel to sort through. A bombardment beyond anything he had experienced before. He held it all within himself behind a calm facade. With so many eyes on him he could not show uncertainty. Whatever was happening mattered. It was important. It was part of what he was here to do.
During their discourses, each of the clan leaders mentioned Dariel in some way or other. Some praised him. Randale wanted very much to hear what he had to say. Some expressed doubts about him. Than questioned why he wore Shivith markings if he was truly of the old lands. Some attacked him as a fraud. How convenient, the Antok contingent said, that the Rhuin Fa had been found just after the Auldek fled! If he was truly the Rhuin Fa, why had he not come in all the years that the Auldek had enslaved them?
A good question, Dariel acknowledged. Not sure how to answer that.
And what sense did it make that the Rhuin Fa should be the heir of the bloodline who had sold them for generations? the Anet speaker had asked. Why should any of them believe that he was not just lying to them, trying to use their own legend against them? And why, he asked, should they turn their backs on the league? It was the league, after all, that set in motion the chain of events that destroyed the Lothan Aklun and set the Auldek on the warpath.
None of that is a lie, Dariel thought, and yet neither does it equal the truth.
When the horn finally passed into Mor’s hand, the Anet who handed it to her made it clear it was an indulgence to even do so. How many did she truly represent? Who were the Free People now that everything had changed? The old and infirm, rejects living in the wilds of the country? “You have no voice here,” he said.
Mor wrenched the horn away. “Don’t I? What am I speaking with, then? This is my voice, and the Free People speak for all of you, whether you are wise enough to know it or not. Who but we kept the dream of freedom and unity alive all these years? You do us wrong to abandon us now. Yoen and elders-”
Than strode up to her. He grabbed the horn, ignoring the way Tunnel glared at him. He did not pull it away from her; he just held it with her for a moment. “We know what you think,” he said. “We have all heard your speeches enough times to spit them back at you. I want to hear what he says.” He thrust his index finger of his free hand at Dariel. Judging by the roar of voices that seconded him, the entire chamber awaited the same.
“Before you do,” Mor said, “you should know that”-Mor turned and met Dariel’s eyes-“that I did not want to trust him. I hated him when I first set eyes on him. I wanted him to fail and to be revealed as just another devious Akaran. But I was wrong. Dariel has fought for us. Without him, we would never have destroyed the soul catcher. The league would have it instead of the Lothan Aklun. The Sky Watcher, Na Gamen, knew him, took him in, and gave his soul into him. Listen to what I say and think what it means. I have come to believe that Dariel Akaran can help save us, from ourselves, from the league. Listen to him carefully.”
Mor tugged the horn from Than and extended it toward Dariel. He stepped forward and took it, staring into her eyes as he did so. By the Giver, she was beautiful! He had come to accept that she loved another woman and could never return his desire, but he would always find her features lovely. He had not known how much warmth would flood into him at hearing that she believed in him, but flood him it did, enough so that he looked away from her and took in the crowd. They stared at him, waiting.
The horn in his hand was heavy, solid metal, warm from the touch of the hands that had been holding it for the past few hours. All those hands, all the things they had argued for and secretly thought. He knew better than anyone that so far the meeting had been a vast confusion. They would never be able to vote on anything or to walk away from here with an agreement that would serve all.
Unless…
“You know my name,” he began, his voice not nearly loud enough. He raised it. “I should declare it with my own lips, though. I am Dariel Akaran, third child of Leodan Akaran, who was the twenty-first ruler of Acacia. I wear this mark that says Rhuin Fa, but I will answer to that name only if you decide it belongs to me. I want to explain-”
The Antok speaker interrupted him. “How do you speak Auldek? If you are from Akaran lands, you would not speak it as you do, like it was your first tongue.”
“I speak this way because I was meant to speak this way. Because I was destined to stand before you and say the things I’m saying. I spoke barely a word of this tongue when I arrived here, but I am not the same man as when I arrived here. I wear this face now. This mark. I speak this language, and the heart behind all these things has found the purpose it did not have before.”
Dukish whispered something under his breath to his secretary. The man came forward with a hand stretched out to take the horn back.
Dariel twisted away from him, holding the horn high and out of his reach. “You want to hear me speak? Then let me speak. Listen!”
When he was sure they all were listening, he began again. He admitted that he had been born in the palace of Acacia. He was raised in privilege, with maids about him, nannies and servants and guards, with a father he loved and siblings beside him. “Most of you had similar things, didn’t you? At least parents and siblings you loved,” he said, “and a place you knew as home. I know now that each one of you had those things taken from you. I know now that it was my family that sold you, and I know now how horrible a crime that was. I did not know it then. As you were children, so was I; as you learned what life held for you here, so did I learn hardship. I won’t say it’s equal to yours, but hear me.”
He knew he was already talking too much, losing some of them, but he wanted them to know him. What else did he have but words? The more they heard his voice, the more they would recognize it. He described the first invasion of his childhood, Hanish Mein coming out of the north, his Numrek allies with him. He explained the betrayal of his guardian and how a giant of a man named Val became a second father to him. He spoke of his life as a raider and his war with the league, and of later reuniting with his siblings and of seeing his brother killed and of feeling himself uncomfortable in the skin of royalty regained. He talked about the years he had tried to find a way to live meaningfully, and said he had never felt he had until the strange events that brought him to Ushen Brae and shoved him under Tunnel’s arm and earned him the scratches Mor’s Shivith claws made on his cheek, and which led, eventually, to the Sky Watcher Na Gamen showing him centuries of history and writing the rune he now wore on his forehead.
“That is who I am,” he said. “That’s the journey that brought me here, but none of it matters at all if I cannot help you build the best nation you can here in Ushen Brae. That is the calling I was looking for but did not know how to find. I had always wondered what sense it made to be born in luxury and to lose it. To have a family and to lose it. To have a nation but to be taken from it. Now I know. Those are the steps in the life that brought me here to you. Because of that, I know not one of them was mistaken. Not one of them would I change, not since they led me here to you.”
He let his gaze move around in silence. He looked not just at the clan representatives but at the crowds behind them. He touched on face after face, remembering things about them all as his eyes met theirs. That was when he understood why he knew them. He had dreamed them. Those dreams in which he had spoken to the people of Ushen Brae were not just dreams. They had really happened. He knew it, and he tried to make them know it as he gazed at them. Perhaps they already did, for they held their silence, waiting for him to go on.
“Now that I’m here, I have to do something or my life will not be worth anything. So here is what I argue for: unity among you. Now is no time to forget the d
ream you’ve shared of being Free People. It’s no time to see differences. It’s madness to think that the souls and hearts of the Kern are any different from the souls and hearts of the Wrathic. Do you know now just how mad it is? In my country-I mean in the Known World. In our country back there.” He pointed toward the sea. “Back there, we are divided. You know that, don’t you? We are not one nation that acts together, that sent you to this land in some mutual agreement. Back there, we fight among ourselves. We have for centuries. We see difference everywhere. We see excuses to exclude, to suppress, to exploit. We always have.
“I remember when I arrived in Falik for the first time. It wasn’t as if I had never seen the people of Balbara before, but being in among them hit me in the gut, in the eyes, in the ears. Everywhere. Black, black skin. Do you know it? Skin so dark that it looks, up close, like the only color skin could be. Compared to it, the weak brown that I am was embarrassing. And what, then, of the thin paper that is Meinish skin? What of the short stature of Vumu? The red hair and freckles of Aushenians? In the Known World we see all those differences. Seeing them, we’re afraid. When I was a child, I was told my people were the center of the world, and that all around, from white to black, were races who had not the right to rule that my people did. If I was not to be afraid of others, I had to rule them, suppress them. That was our mistake. Look now at yours.”
He pushed out of the representatives’ circle and walked along before the front rows of the spectators. Standing before the gray skin and tusks of the Antoks, he said, “Look at you. You’ve all forgotten the racial differences that mean so much in my country. Here, if I look hard enough, I see beneath the gray coloration of your skin. I see Balbara features in you, Nem.” He indicated an Antok man. The man looked stunned. Dariel stared at him and then looked around at those near him, seemingly verifying from their expressions that they heard him call him by name.
“And in you, Maris, I see Meinish blood. It’s there in the shape of your nose, in those light-colored eyes of yours.” Dariel moved on. He pointed out others, named them, and asked them to remember where they came from. They had been born in specific regions of the Known World, and yet here none of that mattered. The Auldek had not cared, and so the Lothan Aklun had ignored those differences as they sorted them into clan groups. The Lothan Aklun gave them different characteristics, ones shaped by Auldek fantasies.
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