The Sacred Band (60 page)

And if Mór had not clasped her hand over Anira’s and raised the horn high, the place might have descended into chaos. “Calm! Show calm!” Mór shouted. “Do you really want to learn of life and respond with chaos? Free People, step away! Back!”

It took her some time, but the crowd did draw slowly back. Mór’s voice grew calmer as she gained more control of them. “See? The leaguemen want to sell us something that can be freely given. There is nothing more to it than joining with Dariel’s people. We have a future! A free future. All we need do is embrace it.”

Hearing the buzz of enthusiasm this met with, Dukish shouted to be heard. “No! No, no, no! He is the one who sold us. His people. Now the league has freed us, and he wants us to be slaves again. I can prove it.” He lifted his chin and projected his voice over the crowd. “Bring the prisoners!”

For a moment there was confusion, shouted words and questions, a murmuring throughout the entire chamber. Mór demanded to know what was happening, but Dukish, looking smug, ignored her and repeated his order.

People turned as a group of Antoks strode down one of the open corridors. They shoved and cursed as they did, making room. There in the center of them, four figures, weighted by chains. In all the commotion Dariel could not make out their faces until their escorts deposited them in the center of the lighted square. The brawny guards drained away, leaving the four prisoners standing, dejected, frightened, in the center of the gathering.

Dariel recognized them. He blinked, unsure if he could trust his eyes, still stunned by Anira’s revelation. “Melio. Clytus. Geena …”

As he said their names, their eyes found him. They stared, each of them looking at him and none of them recognizing him. How different he must look! One of the quota slaves among others like him. He tried to move toward them, but Dukish’s men blocked him.

“These prisoners were caught trying to enter Avina,” Dukish said. “My brothers the Antoks captured them, and together we got the truth from them. They came looking for Dariel Akaran. They came as spies planning to take over this land.”

“No,” Dariel said.

“They want to make us slaves again. They don’t like that the league is willing to partner with us. That’s why this man is here trying to trick you. I don’t know how he does it. Some trick of the Lothan Aklun. All to keep us passive as they tighten their chains around us again.”

“No,” Dariel said.

“No?” Dukish asked. “I have their written confessions—signed by them!”

Dariel tried to shove his way toward the prisoners, but Dukish’s men beat him back. “They would never confess to that because it isn’t true. Clytus, tell them the truth.”

The man stared all the harder at the mention of his name, but he did not respond. Dariel realized he had been speaking Auldek. He switched to Acacian. “Clytus, it’s me, Dariel.”

“Spratling?”

“Yes, it’s me! Don’t worry. You’ll be free in a moment. I promise it.”

Dukish ignored him. He droned on, building his case on a foundation of lies. Dariel grasped for the horn. Mór released it and Dariel held it high. He jumped with it, shouting until people acknowledged him and Dukish began to lose their attention.

“These people are my friends,” Dariel admitted. “But if they came here, it was to find me, not to harm you in any way. Don’t let Dukish speak for them. He cannot be trusted. Nothing he has said here today has been true.”

Dukish cursed him.

“You know in your heart that’s not true. You told me so. You told me the truth of yourself.”

“Never.”

“You told me of the way you coveted your master’s wealth.”

Dukish moved nearer. People cleared away from in front of him. “I never did!”

“I don’t want to have to say this, but I need you to speak truthfully. I spoke with Dukish as I spoke with all of you. You all know that’s true. As you told me secrets, so did he. I know your hearts, and I do not judge you by what’s in them.”

“Liar!”

Dariel said, “Dukish has secrets from you all.”

“No!”

“Of course he does. There were things done to him that—”

“No!”

Dariel punched the air with the hand that held the curl of iron. “I hold the horn,” he snapped at Dukish. “Be quiet while I speak! Things were done to him that should not have been. You know of what I speak, don’t you?”

Dukish started to say something, but Tunnel moved on him as if he would hit him if he spoke. Other Anets shouldered closer. They jostled Dukish and in the confusion he almost lost his footing.

Dariel continued. “Think, Dukish, about the things you confessed to me.” He looked the Anet leader in the eyes. He really did not want to say what he was about to. It was cruel. It would hurt. It did not seem fair to break the man’s confidence so publicly.

He could say that Dukish’s master had raped him since his earliest days in Avina. He used him on a balcony overlooking the skyline of Avina. He set his head and shoulders out over the railing, and took pleasure in Dukish’s fear that he might thrust him over the edge to his death at any moment. He could say just what Dukish had—that it was there, looking out over the city as his master used him that he learned fear and hate and that he first dreamed of the things he would do to others if only he had the power.
He was not born an evil man
, Dariel could say.
He was born weak, petty, scared. That is why he’s done the things he has here. Not because he is strong, but because he is weak. I’m sorry, Dukish, to say that about you. I take no joy in it
.

He could say all those things and everyone would know that they were true. But he could not be that cruel. Instead, he said, “Admit to me that you know I hold your truth within me. Just do that and I will say no more about it, now or ever.”

“You can say whatever you want,” Dukish said. He pushed closer to Dariel. He stood just before him now. “Nobody will remember. I’ll make sure of it.”

His hand suddenly clenched a knife. He was so close and people packed so tightly around them that Dukish had only to thrust the knife forward. It sank into Dariel’s gut before he could say or do anything. He could only manage a gasp, so overwhelming was the pain. Dukish held him on his knife blade, his face a rictus of hatred that Dariel stared into for a moment. Then the world turned black.

This time, Dariel barely dropped out of life before he was thrust back up into it. When he could see again, he saw a chamber in chaos. Hands held him up, dragging him back from the center of the confusion. The pain at his center was incredible. The knife was still inside him. The hilt of it jutted out, the point jolting him with continued shocks of misery. He wanted nothing more than to curl over it, to wrap himself around it completely, and ignore everything else. Instead he looked up at what was happening. No … Dariel thought. No.

Dukish and his Anets fought like mad with Tunnel and Mór and many others. They pounded one another with fists and elbows, punching and clawing. Tunnel bashed his way toward the Anet leader, using his forehead to smash the faces of any who opposed him. Dukish fought like a trapped animal, his face crazed, shouting something again and again. The Lvin converged on them. Than raked an Anet’s eyes with the claws at his fingertips. Mór managed to sink hers into Dukish’s cheek before getting pushed back on a surge. She seemed as desperate to tear him apart as he was to survive.

With all his strength, Dariel threw both his arms up. It hurt so much his vision blurred and rippled. He held his arms high, stiff and trembling, palms flat for all to see. “Don’t!”

It was not a loud scream, but some heard it. First just those holding him. Anira’s face came into view beside his. And then those around him turned to look, and then others as word began to pass. More and more faces turned toward him. The knot of fighting went on a little longer, but even Dukish sensed the growing hush. He froze, his arm cocked back to punch Tunnel, who had finally reached him. He followed the others’ gazes and found Dariel. He stared openmouthed.

All of them did. All of them watched as Dariel shook off the hands holding him and stood on his own. I’m all right, he thought. He was not really. Part of him had just died. Part of his and Nâ Gâmen’s soul was oozing out of him even as he stood there. He reached down and took the hilt of the knife with both hands. He held for a few breaths, and then pulled on it. It felt like he was ripping out a link in his spine, like it was part of him and would not come. And then it did. He screamed it out of him with a surge of blood. The knife clattered to the floor. He let his hands drop and stood there, swaying on his feet, trembling.

I’m all right, he thought. Then he remembered he needed to say it out loud.

“I’m all right.”

To prove it, he stripped off his blood-soaked shirt. He wadded it and wiped at his torso, turning as he did so. He did not get all the blood off, but it was clear that the gash that should have killed him was already just a welt of inflamed skin.

Everyone stared at him. The silence hummed and vibrated in the air for a long time, until Tunnel called out his name. Not Dariel Akaran, though. His new name. The one only they could truly bestow on him. Tunnel’s voice said it and then another repeated it. And then many more took it up.

Dariel stood, shirtless and bloody at the center of the chamber filled with the freed slaves of Ushen Brae, as they named him the Rhuin Fá.

One day, after Aliver told his sister about what Sire Dagon had written, they both agreed that they would permit themselves one day. For Corinn the news of what she had done with the vintage had a breadth of atrocity that she could fathom no more than learning of her own pending death, or Aliver’s. It was all too huge. She wanted to collapse beneath the weight of it in utter misery. She wanted to take up that knife again and end herself.

It was only at Aliver’s urging and Hanish’s quiet whisper that she agreed to put the enormity of the world aside for just one day, the last they would spend with the ones they loved. From the middle hours of one morning, through an afternoon and evening, still further through the dark hours of the night and into the next sunrise. That was the span of time that Corinn and Aliver let the world wait for them. They spent it together with their children. For Corinn, it was a lifetime.

In the short span of time she had left to live, Corinn would cherish many moments from that single day. When she lowered the cowl from her chin was one such moment. She hated doing so and acquiesced only after Aaden had asked her to quite firmly. She searched his face for any sign of disgust. There was a tenseness in his jaw and a quiver on his left cheek and a sudden moistness that brimmed his eyes. But there was no disgust. He said, “Mother, look at that. Now why did they do that?” He sounded like an old woman, full of empathy. His fingers extended toward her, asking permission. She gave it with a nod and he touched her damaged face. To her surprise, she felt the warmth of the life within him, his skin soft, gentle. For a few seconds, she almost thought his touch had healed her. Then she raised the cowl into place.

A few days ago she would not have been content to sit with Benabe across the table from her. She would not have been able to look at Shen and acknowledge the loveliness of her round, brown face without fearing that it threatened her son’s legacy. She would not even have allowed her brother to be fully himself. As she sat with them, listening to the tale they had to tell, the things that had once seemed logical reactions to a predatory world now seemed like rules composed in a foreign language. She did not understand herself anymore. The woman she had been stood unmasked. She felt that she, in her own way, had been a puppet to base parts of her nature that should never have been allowed to rule her.

“Leave that for now,” Hanish said. She tried to.

They climbed up to the Terrace of First Light later in the morning. Elya’s children were there, almost too large now to all crowd into the space. They seemed to sense that something was wrong from the moment Corinn entered. They greeted her half-covered face with suspicion, sniffing her and scenting the air with their slim tongues. Corinn calmed them by sending soothing, yet somber thoughts to them.

“I don’t like them as much as Elya,” Aaden said. He turned apologetically to her. “I’m sorry to say that. They are incredible, Mother, but Elya is special. I don’t think that any of these would have saved me the same way she did. Do you?”

Corinn ran her palm over his head, all the answer she wished to give.

Still, when Aliver and Shen shot up into the air on Kohl’s back, Aaden clawed at her, begging to follow. Po, competitive as always, was eager to oblige. The four of them swept down from the palace, over the terraced layers of the city. They swept over the lower town and then beat their way higher. Corinn thought of the day when all four Akaran children had ridden horseback with their father. They had galloped out from the town and along the winding road over the island’s hills, down to that beach, the one she saw hundreds of feet below her now. That had been a memorable day. Perhaps, for these children, this was another such day. She hoped so.

They flew out to Haven’s Rock, where they stood in the wind and listened to Aliver eulogize his former tutor, Jason, and Leeka Alain of the Northern Guard, the first to slay a Numrek and the only one to ever run down fleeing sorcerers. He thanked the tutor for being the first to draw the map of the world in Aliver’s mind, for being such a lover of knowledge and a keeper of history. “It was he who first challenged my princely arrogance. I should have thanked him more for that before this.” About Leeka, he said, “And here, after years of service, his last deed. He returned to us and said the words that saved us for the now.” Looking at Corinn, he added, “In the end, he did what mattered. For that, he will not be forgotten.”

After that, they returned to joy. They dove down from heights like seabirds. They skimmed out over the water, the waves growing more and more pronounced as the sea grew deeper. Aaden shouted above the rushing air, “It’s wonderful, Mother. Let’s go faster. This is like Mena said!” Corinn did not know quite what he meant and she could not ask. She could go faster, though. She urged Po to do so.