Hephron understood his meaning before Aliver. “You bastard. I could have killed you in your sleep so many times.”
The strangeness of this statement added nothing to Aliver’s understanding of the confusion below them. Hellel? He had been one of Hephron’s entourage, a pale shadow beside him always, the type who nearly finished his sentences for him.
Noticing that Aliver still stared, Hephron gestured with his arm, a motion that both pointed at the scene and swiped it away. “They are Meins! Look at them. Hellel, there by the railing. And Havaran. And Melish on the steps. They have betrayed us! We should have expected it.” He was in motion the next instant, careening down the steps at breakneck speed, his feet jolting against the stones in a barely controlled fall. He tried to wrench his sword free as he moved, but it was not until he had paused on the terrace that he managed to unsheath the steel. He was instantly engaged, two men coming at him at once from opposite sides. Melio danced in behind him a second later, his blade spinning with blurring speed.
Aliver would try later to be sure of just what happened next. He would remember that he drew his sword and gritted his teeth and had just begun to rage down the staircase and into battle…. That was exactly what he almost did. He wanted to have done so very badly. He would have, except that before he could move a hand clamped down on his forearm and spun him around.
It was Carver, the Marah captain. “Prince,” he said, “sheathe your sword. You must go to safety.” And to the flank of warriors behind, he gave orders for several of them to take Aliver away. The rest swarmed down the staircase behind Carver. That was all there was to it. Aliver, once pulled away, never saw how the skirmish ended. He went “to safety,” while Melio and Hephron became warriors.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thaddeus Clegg entered his inner chambers, tired from a long day wrestling with the confusion inside him while functioning for all the world to see as an efficient chancellor. His cat, Mesha, rose from her curled comfort on a chair, stretched one paw and then the other, called to him with a thrumming chirp. She was a breed native to southern Talay, sand colored, short-haired everywhere except along her belly and under her chin. She was larger than normal indoor cats by half, and, as was common to her breed, she had an extra toe on each paw, an advantage she took great pleasure in exploiting when she slapped mice against the tiles. It also helped her hold her own against the golden monkeys, which had long since decided to give her a wide berth.
As Thaddeus shrugged off his cloak and draped it over a chair, Mesha leaped down from the chair and closed the distance between them with nimble steps. He stretched out his hand and received the soft impact of her head against his fingers. Though he certainly never revealed it to others, Thaddeus placed the greater portion of his desire for sensuous interaction with others in the tips of his fingers and reserved his most intimate touch for Mesha. This was all he wanted or needed now of companionship. He was too proud and self-conscious a man to distract himself with attachments to others, and he would not risk any greater love again.
“Mesha, you are my darling girl. You know that, yes? There is madness outside this room, but you have no part in it. How fortunate you are.”
A short time later, Thaddeus sat with Mesha curled in his lap. He sipped a syrupy liqueur redolent of peaches and tried to create a calm inside that would match his outward appearance of peace. He failed completely. The turmoil of a land struck and struck again, and now scurrying to prepare for war would have been more than enough to keep his mind reeling. He had spent the day in council with the generals preparing to meet Hanish Mein’s forces near Alecia, the target they believed he would attack first. They had gone through all the details of mustering the largest army the Known World had seen since Tinhadin’s time. What a daunting task, all done in haste and without a true king to control the tenor of the undertaking. Yes, Aliver sat through the council meetings, adding what he could, holding up bravely in the face of it all. But it was Thaddeus to whom the generals really spoke. And it was the fulcrum at which this side of his life collided with his own desire for revenge that truly baffled him.
He had not overtly agreed to aid Hanish Mein, but when he had read the chieftain’s simple message, part of him wished to obey. Perhaps he had been too long the servant of a king to feel comfortable as his own master. Or perhaps it was a sign of Hanish’s power, his ability to reach out over distances and turn other men’s hearts to his will. What to do about Hanish’s demand? He had ordered him to capture the Akaran children. Simple as that. Do this thing for him, and Thaddeus would be revenged against the Akarans. Do this thing and he would be rewarded for it in other ways as well. Thaddeus wondered if he could remake himself as a servant of the Meins. What might they give him in payment? A governorship maybe. Talay would suit him, that grand expanse, endless miles and miles of grasslands. It was a large enough province for him to get lost in. This seemed an attractive notion.
Or maybe he was not thinking large enough. Had he still contained the ambition Gridulan had sensed in him years ago, he would have found a way to seize the throne. He had effective control of affairs on the island. Considering those already dead, with the confusion on the Mainland and bloody clashes right here in the courtyards of Acacia, nobody else held the reins of power as surely as he did. The royal children trusted him, and he had had access to each of them even in their private chambers. He could have gone from one to the other and poisoned them: a cup of warm milk offered by a beloved uncle, a cake with a special icing, a salve on his thumb that he dabbed around their eyes, as if wiping away tears…. He knew so many methods by which to deliver poison. He could have placed a pillow over their sleeping mouths, bled them from a wound in the neck, stopped their hearts with the flat-handed blow he had learned to deliver at just the right angle and force to stun the organ to stillness. He could end them and thereby repay Gridulan for his treachery.
“How pathetic it all is, Mesha,” he said, running his hand down the cat’s back. The feline looked up at him, slant eyed and bored. “I have made a mess of everything! I should think of the surest route and follow it. Nothing can stop the coming change; I see that as clearly as anyone. And these children are not the innocents they seem. Does not the young of a jackal grow into a jackal? Will it not someday bite the hand that feeds it? It can be no other way. It is foolishness to act as if either they or I could be other than we are. See, I can state all clearly. But I love them. That’s the trouble.”
Mesha had just begun to drift off again when Thaddeus rose and deposited her on the floor. He was annoyed with himself for speaking at all, even if it was only to a cat. He went to a cupboard built into the wall near his bed. From it he pulled the mist pipe that had once been the king’s. Strange that he was so late coming to this vice. Strange that he had lived a lifetime already before understanding the true craving for oblivion. He knew that on the morrow he would have to face again decisions made or not made, but between then and now he wished only to forget everything, or at least to reach that stage at which none of it mattered.
Later, he was awoken from black nothingness, a dreamless, thoughtless existence that was deeper than sleep ever could be. The force that pulled him out of this chosen place was frustratingly strong. It seemed an iron grip had fastened on some portion of his being and pulled him toward consciousness. He rolled over onto his back, thinking that such a change in his posture might ease him back to sleep, for the day had not yet come to demand his wakefulness. He felt a pressure at the foot of his bed and thought that Mesha was to blame. She sometimes fastened herself to his leg and sank her claws into the flesh of some imagined quarry.
But then a voice said, “Rise up and face me.”
Thaddeus started to shout for his guards, but before he could will his mouth to do so, the rest of his being obeyed the command. He tilted upright, the view before him rising to meet his changed posture. Except…except his actual body did not move. His chest and arms and head had not followed him. He tilted, but somehow he
left his corporeal shell lying on the bed. It was as if he had slipped out of his skin with a gentle tug. He felt his organs, his muscles, and bones relinquish his spirit. His body released him, and there he was, sitting upright, the lower portion of him still contained within his hips and groin and legs, the upper portion an obedient spirit called to attention.
Before him, at the foot of his bed, hung a vague outline of a man. It had about it the shape of a body, but Thaddeus could see through the man into the dimly lit room behind him. The being produced his own illumination. His gray eyes flared into pinpoints of brilliance. They were the most visible portion of him, the two glowing orbs around which the rest of the being gathered. They were the only part of him that seemed solid enough to touch, and yet the energy that illumed them flickered behind them in waves. It dimmed for periods and then emerged again, as if inside them was the light of the moon interrupted by a cloud-dotted sky. They etched the features of his face and gave some solidity to his shoulders and arms, though his lower body faded into nothingness.
The form spoke again. His voice seemed weakened by distance, hollow like words spoken through a tube. For all the unearthly tone of them they were frank in a way that slapped Thaddeus like an open hand. “Thaddeus Clegg, you dog, I have words for you.”
Thaddeus stared at him, stunned. How was this possible? He tried to show with the ridged scorn of his lips his disdain for the man’s intrusion, no matter the sorcery by which it was achieved. It was an instinctive reaction, but the expression was hard to hold because the glow of the man’s eyes was most mesmerizing. Why did he not shout for the guards? He knew it would be easy to do so, yet something held him back, trapped him within the spell of those eyes. He had first to identify this being. That was the key, he thought. He sensed a name was poised at the back of his throat, already known to him. It just needed to be spoken to become real.
“Hanish?” he asked. The other man smiled, seemingly pleased to have been named. The expression was enough to confirm that the guess had hit its mark. “How is this possible?”
“Through dream travel,” the form said. “You are asleep and not asleep; I am awake in spirit and far distant from my sleeping body. I can feel the pull of it even now, trying to wrest me back inside the familiar. Our spirits do not like to leave our bodies, Thaddeus. It is ironic considering that from their cursed undeath my people want only to escape these burdens of flesh, but it is true. I am as surprised as you that we are speaking. We have never been near enough before, nor did I know if you had the gift. Not everyone does, you know. Between my brothers and me there was always silence. It is not possible to understand the order of the things…”
Hanish faded into darkness and then flickered back into view a moment later, burning more brightly. “I am glad that you know me so quickly, but I have not come to you for casual conversation.”
Something in the tone of Hanish’s voice struck Thaddeus as strange, enough so that he focused not just on his words but also on how he said them. It was difficult to read the man through the distortions of distance, but there was a man at the other end of this discourse and Thaddeus had ever been a reader of men.
“Are the children safe?” Hanish asked. “The children? You need not fear the children. They are no real threat to—” “You have not harmed them, have you?” Hanish asked, a note of concern in his voice.
As the chieftain dimmed and flickered for a moment, Thaddeus had a few moments to think. From looking in Hanish’s eyes, he could see that the chieftain was hiding something. He was not lying exactly, but there was desperate import behind his words that he did not want Thaddeus to grasp.
“Of course not,” he answered, once Hanish was bright before him again. “I have kept them here, close to me, safe in every—”
“It is important that they live. Understand? Their lives mean a great deal to me. I am here to tell you once again that when you deliver them to me, you will be rewarded. We will talk about it in quieter times, and I will do right by you. Believe me about that. I am no silver-tongued Akaran. I speak the truth. My people always have.”
Thaddeus felt the sharp impact of a realization pierce through his thoughts. He understood what Hanish was hiding. It was there behind his claim that his people had always spoken the truth. This was not a boast. It was a declaration of national pride. The Meins had always claimed they had been banished to the north because of speaking out truthfully against Akaran crimes. And, they believed, not only had they been banished but also they had been cursed. The Tunishnevre…That was what Thaddeus had not yet considered. It was but a legend to Acacians, but perhaps it was more than that to the Meins themselves.
Previously, he had thought only of the Meins’ ancient hatred of Acacia, of how much they coveted these gentle lands, how rich they would be in ruling them, and how gratified they would be to finally win against their centuries-old enemies. But he had not reached far enough back into Hanish’s desires. He had not understood until now that this was not just a war for earthly things. The Known World was the battleground, but the cause for which Hanish fought crossed into other planes of existence. He must believe his ancestors were trapped in unending purgatory. He wished to break the curse placed on them during the Retribution and free the Tunishnevre. This feat, legend said, could be accomplished only in one way. Remembering it, Thaddeus thought that either Hanish was a madman or the world was a place of greater mystery than he had acknowledged.
These thoughts passed through the chancellor quickly, and Hanish did not seem to notice the change in him. “Gather them together,” he said. “Keep them for me. If anything happens to them, I will make your existence one of unending suffering. This is a gift I can give you. Do not doubt either my generosity or my wrath.”
“I doubt neither,” Thaddeus said. “Be assured that I await you here, the children with me.”
The light in Hanish’s eyes dimmed. His form shifted and dispersed like vapor stirred by a gust of wind. Thaddeus felt himself dropping back toward his body. He came to rest inside his shell, slipping into his skin and feeling it around him again. He had not, he told himself, decided to obey. He was not a servant. He was free to act as he wished….
He said this again and again as he felt the pull of earthly slumber settling into him, afraid that he would remember one portion of the night and not another, afraid lest he wake and err in his actions. He demanded of himself that he wake and remember his revelation, for it changed everything and it was this: Hanish believed he could end the curse on the Tunishnevre by killing an heir to the Akaran dynasty. Only drops of the purest Akaran blood could awaken the life inside his cursed ancestors. If Hanish had his way, the children that Thaddeus loved—the four he had coveted all his life, that he wished were his own and upon whom he had showered the affection he would have given to his own offspring—would be splayed out across a sacrificial altar, cut open, and bled to slow deaths. If it turned out that Tinhadin’s curse was a real thing instead of a myth and if it could be reversed, twenty-two generations of Mein warriors would be pulled back from death. They would walk the earth again and their retribution would turn the world upside down.
This realization made up Thaddeus’s mind for him. He could not grasp power as the ogre inside him imagined. Nor could he allow Hanish to unleash a new hell on earth. There was, however, one whose entreaty he would follow. He should have done so all along. This much he knew with a certainty more complete than any other belief within his conflicting and crosshatched allegiances. He had already determined the children must be sent away. Now he would put into place the plan Leodan Akaran had dreamed up for his children if calamity befell him before they were grown to maturity. Thaddeus knew the plan and had the power to initiate it. Only he in all the living world could do this. Not even the children dreamed of it. Nor could they be told the truth of it in preparation. Aliver would hate him for it. He would likely dread it as the worst of possible fates and think him their betrayer.
Fitting, Thaddeus thought. Horrible and
fitting: a truth and a lie.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hanish awoke from his dream conversation with the chancellor with a host of plans to see to. His fleet rode the River Ask until it spat them out into the Inner Sea. Though he longed to turn toward Acacia itself, he knew he must wait for that, take it only in due course. He gathered his remaining vessels near the river’s mouth. They drifted together as they took stock, waiting for stragglers and giving one another what aid they could. He found his army to be in no worse state than he had imagined—even better, perhaps, because his men were champing at the bit, wanting nothing more than to get to land and commence the slaughter. They were a devout people and yearned to prove it by the sword.
Hanish kept them afloat as news flew in to him. There he learned that the first great battle in the war between Hanish Mein and the Akarans involved neither Meinish nor Acacian troops. The Aushenian prince, Igguldan, commanded an army that met the Numrek at Aushenguk Fell. Warriors, farmers, merchants, and priests from every corner of the kingdom gathered on the rocky field to defend their nation. Igguldan fielded an army of nearly thirteen thousand souls. The enemy, on the other hand, did not number more than six thousand.
But in every aspect of their appearance the Numrek were frightening. They were a shouting, raucous horde reminiscent of humanity but grotesquely different as well, utterly baffling to the Aushenians who watched them approach. Their infamous mounts had been shaved of their woolly fur to suit the weather. Patches of fur clung to them in portions; scars from the shears marred their gray flesh in other areas. They looked like diseased creatures, and yet for all the motley look of them they trod with a haughty air, so completely muscled that they seemed to bounce with the spring and pull of their strength.
Beyond this the Numrek put into use a weapon they had thus far not revealed: catapults. They were awkward contraptions that tossed flaming balls half a man’s height tall. When the arms snapped forward the spheres shot out just above the ground, bouncing in great arcs, gouging divots with each impact. The force of them was such that they cut swathes through the Aushenian troops. They flattened men hit head-on, broke apart bodies struck partially, tore heads from shoulders. All of this caught the young prince off guard, as did the flaming orb that carried his torso away, wrapped around the sphere in a fiery embrace. With him flew his nation’s effort at resistance, ended in one mere afternoon. Tragic for him, yes, but music sweet and perfectly timed to Hanish’s ears.
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