The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  She was leaner than ever, her face gaunt, curls of skin peeling away from her nose and cheeks. Painful-looking crevices lined her lips. She was not the girl he had known in childhood. Nor was she the woman he had later known on the fields of Teh. How very strange their lives had been. How much he loved her, even though fate had kept them apart more years than it had let them be together.

  Ilabo and Dram had flown their mounts to meet the tattered remains of Mena’s army, to chase back the freketes and to protect those battered troops as they continued south. They numbered only a fraction of the souls the princess had set out with. By the time they arrived, they would be even fewer than they had been the day before. Mena, delirious with pain and fatigue, battered by the sight of Elya’s horrible wounds and the shock of Aliver’s appearance, had stilled only after Ilabo had sworn to guide her army to safety.

  “You’re not alone out here anymore,” Aliver had said.

  There, with the sleeping mother and daughter sheltering them, they worked through many things of import. When they did begin to talk, everything came out in a rush: all the events on Acacia, the truth of things Corinn had done, the arrival of Shen and the Santoth, the events at the Carmelia, the curse on Corinn’s mouth, and the changes they all went through in the days just afterward. So much. Aliver confessed the death sentence that he and Corinn were under. He thought it best to reveal this right away, before Mena grew too accustomed to him being among the living again.

  The many things Mena told him in return were troubling. Her hatred of the Auldek blazed in her eyes. The hardest of the things Aliver had to explain was that he wanted to make peace with them. But that was the truth, so he said it.

  “You can’t be serious,” Mena repeated. “They nearly killed Elya. They would have, if you hadn’t arrived. If they had… if they had, I would have gone mad. I would have killed every one of them, each and every soul I’d have-”

  “Mena, I did arrive. Elya is not dead. I don’t want you dead either. I don’t want thousands upon thousands more dead-which will happen if we keep fighting.”

  The look she gave him was a glare, but he thought the lamplight exaggerated her anger. He hoped so, for the wildness in her eyes was nothing he had seen in her before. She said, “I hate them. There is no way to make peace with them.”

  “What if I find a way? Would you consider it?”

  “They ate the villagers of Tavirith. That can’t be undone. It can’t be forgiven.”

  “I know,” Aliver said, “but perhaps the way to move forward is to find peace without forgiveness. Or to find forgiveness in peace. Not to forget anything but to put first the lives of those still living. Mena, you’re arguing with me, but everything you’ve done up here was for the same cause. In all your decisions I see you trying to keep your soldiers alive. That’s what I’m proposing. If we ask the thousands who are still climbing up the Methalian Rim to run to their deaths, they’ll do it. If we do that, they’ll understand it. It will be the same as what our family has asked of them for generations. Maybe their sheer numbers will tire the Auldek’s arms or dull their blades. But what then? Won’t that be defeat? What world will there be for any of them afterward?”

  Mena closed her eyes. “They won’t let you.”

  “You may be right, but I have to try.”

  “They want us all enslaved.”

  Aliver reached over the lamp and set a hand on her blanketed knee. “That they cannot have. I’m not talking about giving in to them. No concessions. No defeat. I’m talking about finding a peace that doesn’t destroy us all. Help me do that. Tell me everything you know about them. Help me find their souls. It’s that I’ll have to speak to.”

  “How can you even think that’s possible?”

  “I am Aliver,” he said. He lifted his hand to her chin, nudging her head up so that she looked at the thin smile he offered her. “I’ve been given a second chance. I can’t fail this time. I won’t.”

  T hat resolve was what drove his soul up out of his body two nights later. After hours upon hours of talking with his sister, after caring for Mena and seeing Elya’s wounds miraculously heal as the creature slept, after seeing the first of his troops arriving in force, after flying out to greet Mena’s battered forces, even after speaking for a time to Rialus Neptos, the traitor who had proved a treasure trove of information about the invaders… After all that, when it was time to sleep, Aliver lay down for the busy night’s work he had ahead of him.

  He had seen Devoth flying atop his mount when he saved Mena. She had identified him. Aliver used those images to pull his spirit out of his body and to send it after the Auldek. His version of dream travel may or may not have been akin to what Corinn had attempted, or to what Hanish Mein had used to commune both with his undead ancestors and with others among the living. Likely, it came to Aliver easily because of the years he had spent as a spirit dispersed throughout the world, floating. Separating his soul from his body proved not difficult. Perhaps his body had already begun the dying that would soon make his release complete.

  He had barely fallen into the rhythm of sleep before he rose above his growing war camp. He surveyed the tents and supplies and animals, the slumbering forms and the many campfires for a time, but only until he got his bearings. Then he set his mind on Devoth. Aliver’s spirit floated north. Slowly at first, then gaining speed until the dark, cold world of the plateau rushed by beneath him, gray-white under the moon’s light.

  He reached the Auldek camp, coming upon its steaming masses, bodies and beasts and fires. The towers seemed like mountains on the undulating landscape. Their numbers might have daunted him, but he had not the time to consider them. Before he knew it, his soul found the station it needed and punched, soundless and without force of impact, through the structure’s wall. Inside, a large, sumptuous room, the walls hung with swords and axes, with tapestries depicting cityscapes and mountain ranges and vistas not of the Known World. A lamp burned low on a table, but even without it he would have been able to see. Light was within him. It illumined the room around him and also flowed through his vision. He came to stillness at the foot of a bed. Standing there for a while, Aliver’s glow built in the room until he could see the shape beneath the covers.

  “Devoth,” Aliver called. “You are Devoth, aren’t you? Chieftain of the Lvin. Get up. I know you speak my tongue.”

  The shape in the bed went from lying down to sitting up in one flash of motion. His reaction was so immediate he might have been lying in wait for the moment. His eyes found Aliver’s wavering form, and his face expressed the depths of his confusion and fear. He sprang from the bed. He snatched for a battle-ax racked on the wall and whirled around with a savage swing that would have cut a man in half at the waist.

  Or it would have if he had managed this same motion as a physical body and if Aliver had been there in the flesh also. Instead, the Auldek’s body lay still beneath the blankets, just as motionless as before. The ax that Devoth had grasped for hung as it had, not disturbed at all. Devoth’s spirit swung around after the blow he had tried to make.

  “You can’t defeat me that way,” Aliver said, once Devoth had looked back at him, still now, and even more terrified. “I’m a ghost, you see. I’m one who went to the afterdeath and returned. I’ve pulled you out of your body so that we may speak.”

  “Who are you?” Devoth rasped, his accent thick on the Acacian words.

  “Aliver Akaran.”

  “No, that one has gone. Do not lie to me!”

  Aliver crossed his glowing arms. “Look at me, Devoth. Do I look like any man you have ever known? I am vapor and light. I am one who is dead and who also lives. Look at me and decide for yourself.”

  He stood, letting the warrior take him in. At the same time, he studied Devoth. There was something about his spirit that confused Aliver. He could see the Auldek’s features, versions of his body made of glowing light. But his form held more than just his features. There were others beneath that outer skin of spirit lig
ht. The longer Devoth held still, the more Aliver could see the others move.

  Quota children.

  “What?” Devoth asked. He circled around the bed, trying to pull several weapons down, clearly hating it each time his hands passed like vapor through the wood and steel. “What have you done to me?”

  “Nothing yet,” Aliver said. “We are just talking. When I release you, you can return to your body.”

  Devoth shook his head. He tried to climb back onto the bed, but he was terrified at how he sank into the blankets, both having purchase and yet passing through them. Part of the world but not.

  “Look at me,” Aliver said. The Auldek did. All the other spirits within him did as well. How many incorporeal faces were layered there? Aliver could not tell, but he could see them. And they could see and hear him. “I have come with an army that dwarfs yours. All the people of the Known World are united against you. They pour onto this plateau like a river running uphill. We will overrun you. I have come to tell you to turn back now. Go back to your own lands, and we will not pursue you.”

  For the first time, Devoth’s spirit seemed to regain some composure. He said slowly, drawing the word out, “Nooo.”

  “You’ve made a mistake in coming here, one that will destroy your people if you don’t return to your own lands. Think about this: you forget the past. I know this about you. You forget the past, which is why you brought that collection of records with you. What will you do now that it’s gone? You have lost so much already. So much cannot be regained, but if you continue with this war, you will lose yourselves completely. What will you tell your grandchildren? Nothing, because you’ll have forgotten. Your grandchildren won’t know the truth of where you came from. They won’t see your cities in their minds or know the view over Avina or understand the beauty of Ushen Brae. They won’t see Lvinreth or Amratseer. You say you want to die back into your true souls and age and die again. Good. Do so. That’s the natural order. But if you do it here, your grandchildren’s children will know nothing of what it means to be Auldek. Do you hear what I’m saying? You are already a defeated people. It’s up to you, now, to decide the depths of that defeat. Stay and war with us-and you will destroy yourselves.”

  “Your sister is an evil one,” Devoth said. “That much is true. To burn our records…” His spirit form spat, though nothing came of the gesture. “But it is not as you say. We can have Acacia, and we can journey back to Ushen Brae. We know the way now. We can have both places. Why not? The future is an Auldek future. The entire world Auldek. When you are defeated, nobody will be able to stop us, so why not an Auldek world?”

  Behind the clear words that Devoth spoke, Aliver could hear other voices. They were soundless, like screams on the other side of thick glass. They had substance, but he had to learn how to hear them.

  Aliver answered, “Because we can make a peace between us that will honor us both.”

  Devoth’s smile showed a glimmer of confidence. “That’s what you want? Only that? Now I know this is a trick. No, no, no,” Devoth said, chuckling. “You have no terms for me. Your world is ours. You may send your army against us, but they will die. We are a great host. There are as many divine children fighting for us as there are Acacians in your army. And we have sublime motion. We could send only our slaves and they could harvest your army for us.”

  “But they are slaves, Devoth.”

  The spirits trapped inside him clamored about the truth of this. They so clearly heard him. Aliver tried harder to hear them as well. He pressed his consciousness up against that unseen and intangible barrier, listening from a place that had nothing to do with sound.

  “They are loyal. Your speech is a trick, and I am not afraid of it.”

  “You have not heard my terms.”

  “There are none that I need hear.”

  Aliver closed his spirit eyes and stilled himself completely. He heard. The words and thoughts and emotions bloomed inside him. They were children’s thoughts. Raw and youthful, filled with life and scared, trapped, begging for him. They spoke their names to him. There was a boy called Nik, and another named Dru. A girl, Hanna, cried out to him, so beseechingly it was hard for Aliver not to open his eyes and let it show. Erin and Allis, Ravi… So many names. Each of them belonging not to Devoth but to an individual who should have lived a true life.

  I’m so sorry, Aliver thought. They could not hear this, but he thought it more than once.

  “I present my terms anyway,” Aliver said, opening his eyes. He spoke slowly, doing his best to ensure that the Auldek would understand him. “You and all the other Auldek with you will release your quota slaves from bondage. You will tell them they are free to do as they please. You will send them all across to our camp, so that my people can speak to them and make sure they are acting on their free will, whatever they choose. You Auldek will abandon this war. You will turn your stations around and go home, shedding no more blood in the Known World. You will make a solemn oath that when you return to Ushen Brae you will not punish the people living there. Every Auldek will make this oath, calling on your totem deities as witnesses. Such an oath would be unbreakable, right?”

  “If it were made, yes.”

  “We may send ships to retrieve the people in your lands, but they are free. If they choose to live in Ushen Brae, you will have to find a way to live with them. We will have your oath on that.”

  At first, Devoth had listened with incredulity. As Aliver talked, he craned his head to hear better. By the time he finished, Devoth’s spirit had begun to smile. “Is that all? And what will you give us in return?”

  There was nothing like sincerity in the question, but Aliver answered it as if there had been. The entrapped children had begun to name where they were born. They seemed to fear he did not believe them. They threw memories at him, emotions, images of what home was to them. Under the bombardment, Aliver could barely keep track of his interaction with Devoth. It took all his concentration to do so.

  “We will do four things for you,” he said. “First, we will give you peace without fear of retribution. Our past will be our past. Though we will not forget your crimes, we will not hold them hard in our hearts.” The children screamed for him not to forget their crimes. They were not past, they said. They were entrapped now!

  “Very kind of you.”

  “Yes. Second, we will allow you to leave without interference. Nobody will hunt your backs. I will not haunt you anymore. Third, we will put into your hands the Numrek children.”

  “Numrek children?”

  “Yes, those who still live. My sister captured them but did not kill them. There are not many, but they could be the start of your future, of the generations to come. We will give you that gift.”

  “Is that it?”

  “There is a fourth thing.”

  “Yes? Is it the best thing?”

  “It may be.”

  “Tell it, then.”

  “I will, but not tonight. I will tell it to you in person, on the field south of here when our forces meet. Talk to me then, Devoth. You and all the other Auldek. Come to me in front of your army, with all your great host behind you. Then I will tell the fourth thing. But now, go back to your slumber. Wake in the morning and remember what I said. Go, sleep, Devoth.”

  For a second it seemed the Auldek would fight the order, that he had something else to say, but the command was strong. His spirit slid back toward the body beneath the blankets. Aliver saw the trapped souls being pulled back with him. He heard them, shouting without sound, pleading with him. The sight of their anguished faces was heartbreaking, but he waited until the final moment to do what he had planned. He felt there was only one moment that he could achieve what he wanted to.

  Just as Devoth’s spirit began to sink back into the skin of his body, Aliver rushed forward. He swept through the Auldek with his arms outstretched, filled with love and shame and grief and hope, asking forgiveness for those who came before him. He grabbed for the children’s’ sou
ls.

  And he pulled them all free.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  A cave on an outcropping of rock at the very edge of the Outer Isles, out beyond Thrain and Palishdock. The dark of a cloud-heavy night. The air and sea in furious struggle. Not a place many would choose to rest, and yet that was what Corinn and Hanish knew they had to do. Atop Po, they had ranged over hundreds of miles, gathering sorcerers all along the way. They had pushed Po to great speed over the sea, leaving the Santoth far behind, but not so far that they would not catch up with them soon. Though he showed not the slightest indication of needing it, Po had earned a rest, such as it was. Having furled his wings, the dragon perched sentinel above them, still as the wet stone and just as black. Corinn hoped that his wounds were healing. She thought so. The turmoil in his mind had grown calm. Damaged, yes, but resolved.

  She did her best to always keep a part of her mind speaking to him, and to the other dragons. They were each of them faithful to her, but she could feel their desire for freedom. When she was gone, no other would be able to keep them tamed.

  He will warn us, Corinn said, if they come faster than we expect .

  Hanish stood at the mouth of the cave, gazing out into the night as if he were keeping his own watch. “I know he will,” he responded. “I’m not doubting him. Just looking is all. Just looking.”

  The leaning rock walls around them provided the only shelter from the heaving of waves and the wind. A small fire cast their only light. Corinn fed it with things her servants had packed into her saddlebags: a tent and its bamboo poles; thick, hard crackers that burned as well as wood and that she could not eat anyway; rolls of parchment she would never now need; the leather bags themselves. My servants: what would they think to see me now? Though she took warmth from the fire, she knew she could have sat in the damp chill and not been affected by it. Just as she had gone days now with no food or drink. She was as empty as she had ever been, and yet she went on, feeding on the goal she had set herself.