The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy

by David Anthony Durham

  The other Santoth moved to form a ring around Nualo. They began to sing. They built their garbled version of the song and let it loose in the air around them. Barad could not understand a word of it, but it was horrible. He hated it, and he pushed into it with his eyes. It was pain and suffering. It was hunger and rage and spite. It was venom and fire, the breath of monsters and the claws of demons, disease and rot. And there was something else. Something he could almost taste with his eyes. Something he could almost grasp. It was something in the disparity between what they claimed and what was in their sorcery. Their song was corrupted, yes. Even Barad could tell that. He did not need to understand the language to know how wrong it was, how warped and cancerous.

  “If you send the song against us, we will throw it like seeds atop your people. Corrupted seeds. Are you such fools? We would give you the entire world, but you scorn us! You want us to return to exile? Why should we do that?” Nualo’s voice slowed. His words gnawed their way through the spell-thick air. “We only ever did what Tinhadin asked of us.”

  No, Barad thought. He was certain the answer should be no. He wanted to shout it, but he had no language.…

  “We were only ever faithful. For that we were exiled? Not again! I say it one last time. After this we will not ask again.”

  And then Barad had it. Language. That was what was different between Corinn’s song and the Santoth’s. They were not speaking the same language. Their sorcery was the night to Corinn’s day. It was not a corrupted version of the same. It was fundamentally different. They spoke a different sorcerers’ language, one that was by its very nature warped and horrible. They had power, yes, but nothing like what they would have if they studied the true Song.

  “Will you give us The Song of Elenet?”

  Another one of them said, “If you will not, we will ask the same question of your son. We will ask it of Aliver. Of Shen. We will ask until we get our answer.”

  She is defeated, Barad thought.

  “I can’t give it to you,” she whispered. “It’s not here.”

  “Where is it?”

  Don’t tell them! Barad shouted, but only inside himself. He could not move his tongue. Not open his mouth or push forward toward her. He desperately tried to make his body do this, but he could not.

  “In Senival,” she answered.

  Noooo! Barad wailed. Silently. Motionless.

  “At Calfa Ven.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Delivegu had never been a soldier. He considered himself a dangerous individual, good in a brawl, quick with a knife, capable of staring down the most belligerent of drunken louts, with a sharp enough mind to outwit even an Alecian senatorial whore. He was his own man, and he rather liked things that way. What use was the discipline of the military? Taking orders; chain of command; subservience to officers; blind, meaningless courage in the face of danger? None of that suited him.

  But standing near the Santoth sorcerers throughout their exchange with Corinn, jostled by the nobles around him who were bolting for the exit, he would happily have folded himself under the wing of a commanding officer. He would have run away himself, but his scrotum packed up and climbed inside him when Nualo swept Corinn’s spell out across the crowd, ripping people’s skin from them. And when they stood in that terrible circle, Nualo at the center demanding that Corinn give them some book, Delivegu had wanted to shout at the queen to hand it over. Whatever it was, give them the damn thing! He knew there must be some reason not to, but he just wanted them gone.

  Relief, then, when she named the place. Calfa Ven. Having been there so recently, he remembered it well. He thought for a moment of Bralyn, but only for a moment.

  Nualo stared hard at the queen. “Calfa Ven?”

  “You know the place, surely,” Corinn responded, derision twisting around her words.

  “We do.”

  “Then go! Leave my sight!”

  Delivegu had to acknowledge it. If she had looked at him with such complete scorn, he would have withered and skulked away.

  The sorcerers did not even notice. Instead, they flashed glances at one another. Nualo scowled and others scowled back, more like animals that communicated through growls and bared teeth than like men. Whatever they had said with those grimaces, they reached consensus quickly.

  “No!” The voice boomed up from at the entry causeway. The place was in turmoil, people still trying to flee, trampling one another, but few of them actually getting anywhere.

  The one who spoke worked against this. For a moment Delivegu thought he was another Santoth. He dressed similarly, and he moved with inhuman speed. He seemed to run on top of people’s shoulders and heads, light and nimble, his robes flapping behind him. “Noooo! Nualo, hear me! I can get you what you want.”

  Nualo just barely held in whatever foulness he was prepared to scream down on the man, letting him come, until the man stood on one of the torch pillars, near enough to be seen clearly. His features were normal, battered and aged, those of a man who had seen most of his living days already.

  And who, exactly, are you, old man? Delivegu wondered.

  “What, Leeka?” Nualo asked. “What knowledge have you? Speak quickly!”

  “Leeka?” It was Aliver, looking more stunned than ever.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, bowing low. “I have been with these ones all these years. I know them well, even if they hid the truth from me. They did do that. They hid—”

  “What?” Nualo roared. “Speak only to me!”

  Leeka held out a moment longer. He did not speak, but he kept his eyes on the two monarchs, looking grave and mournful and strong all at once. Then he turned to the sorcerers. “My knowledge is this: you cannot kill any of Tinhadin’s line. They have only to know that they are safe from death at your hands for it to be true. And now they know.” He looked back at Aliver. “And they cannot—”

  Whatever he was going to add he did not get to finish. The sorcerers spat fury at him. When the spell hit, it tore his body to pieces and sprayed him in chunks and splatters across a great swath of people.

  “You people!” Nualo yelled. “You see what you make us do!”

  Nualo swung back toward Corinn. His hand rose behind him and hurtled over his head, as if he were a hunter wielding a throwing stick. He roared as he did so, a sound that was simultaneously earsplitting and indistinct. Sharp but muffled by the echoes of time and space. Delivegu was certain that the rapidity of Nualo’s throw altered as he released whatever he snapped from the ends of his fingers. Blinding speed one moment; a blurred, slow, tortured syrup of a long moment just after. Corinn’s head reared back, her mouth open and speaking. And then something happened around her mouth. She turned away and fell back into her soldiers too quickly for Delivegu to see. He knew that something had been done to her. He just could not say what.

  “Stupid woman,” Nualo said, his features jagged and cruel and—for the first time—mirthful. “It’s true that I can’t kill you now that you know it, but I have not killed you, have I? I’ve done something better.”

  The next instant, Delivegu watched the Santoth bound up the staircase, driven with sudden purpose. They passed near the royal dais, bunched as it was with warriors with weapons drawn. The sorcerers took four and five steps at a time, leaped over railings, and scaled one section of wall that blocked their way. They shoved through any people trapped or fool enough not to get out of their way. Right up into the highest ranks, they went. They mounted the Carmelia’s barrier wall. One by one, their cloaks flapping behind them in a manner that for some reason made Delivegu think of rats’ tails, they leaped out of sight.

  Delivegu did not rush to the edge to stare after them. He did not need to see them. What he imagined was vivid enough. In his mind he saw them careening down the cliffs toward the rocky beach. From there they roared through the revelers on the sand and jumped first onto skiffs pulled up on the beach, and then from them to other ships, across barges and transports and o
nward, using the collection of ships as one enormous bridge, hurrying them toward the mainland. Toward Calfa Ven and whatever prize awaited them there. They were gone. A brief wave of relief washed over him. He turned to catch sight of the queen, but the shove and tumult all around him was too confusing. He could not find her.

  The exodus through the one open gate was a full flood now. The entire stadium drained toward it. They were mad, frenzied, and clawing over one another. Delivegu jumped away just in time as a man rolled head over heels down the stairs past him. “What, you fools? They’re gone! Find your senses!” No one around him seemed willing to do that. He shouted that the sorcerers were gone and that, with calm, they could open the other exits as well. Nobody listened. Instead they shoved and cursed and scratched him as they rushed past. He got a hand on his dagger and kept it there, ready to slash out with it. He began pushing back toward the royal dais.

  He reached it, but the royal party was gone. The priestess and her entourage took flight as he arrived, carrying what they could of the ceremony’s accoutrements. Corinn and Aliver were down in the mass of people, although heading for a different passageway from the mob. Marah were tight around them, forming a protective human rectangle that moved with a mind of its own, following some evacuation plan, no doubt. Some plan devised just in case. Just in case what? In case some ancient sorcerers stepped out of the centuries in time to disrupt the coronation of a new king?

  “They say the Marah consider all possibilities,” Delivegu muttered. “Did you ever imagine this one? I think not, friends. I think not.”

  He watched the wedge of soldiers disappear through the exit opened for them, then slammed closed behind them. Well, he had to admit the exit was efficiently done. He wished he was with them. If he could rush there now, he might just get inside before the palace slammed shut. Within minutes the place would be locked down, bristling and stupid with fear. He stood on the deserted platform, considering diving in with the mob. But just look at them! People were being trampled and suffocated, needlessly. The thought of joining them rankled his sense of scoundrel’s dignity. No, he would not be one of them, resolving himself to a long delay before he could gain his quarters again.

  His eyes drew themselves to a person moving against the mob’s crazed men. He was only one person in the mass of bodies. He did run above them, as Leeka had, but still stood out because he was moving against the outflow. The black man’s arms lashed forward, as if he were trying to swim through the torrent of fleeing people. As frantically as he struggled, he made no progress. Indeed, as the exodus gained momentum he began to be dragged back by the surge of them.

  Delivegu muttered about their sanity, but then caught himself. Insanity was driving people out of the stadium. That man was fighting against the madness. The Talayan, he thought, looked more and more familiar. Whatever the man was thinking, he had purpose the others did not.

  Grabbing a passing soldier by the shoulder, Delivegu yanked him close. The young man wore a glazed expression. “Soldier? Soldier!” Delivegu smacked him and stared in his face, waiting for eye contact from him, as he used to do with his dogs as a boy. Only when he had his full attention did he continue. “Recognize me? I’m Delivegu Lemardine. I’m the queen’s man. Listen to me.”

  The soldier could hardly have done otherwise. Delivegu was roaring in his face.

  “That man. See him? The Talayan there.” He stabbed the air with his finger, trying to shoot a straight line between the guard’s eyes and the man’s chest. “Get him. Bring him to me. He knows something. Get him, and bring him to me alive.”

  The soldier began sputtering excuses, but Delivegu sent him on his way with a kick to his backside. The young man went wobbly legged down the steps for a while, then carried on like a good soldier. They like their orders, don’t they? Delivegu smiled and sat down to wait right there on the dais, letting his legs dangle over the edge. All right. He was feeling a bit better. Sorcerers made him queasy. Regular folk he could handle just fine. Chaotic situations … he preferred to think of them as opportunities.

  One of the dragons, Kohl, he thought it was, flapped up over the far stadium wall, black as tar and just as glistening under the now bright sun. Another one slid along the rim for a moment before catching an updraft and lifting into full view. Thaïs, the brown one with yellow stripes. She was rather plain looking, but Delivegu always got a thrill saying her name. Thaïs. It would be forever a sexy name to him, recalling the face of a young woman in Alecia who simply would not succumb to him throughout a long night of cunning and chivalrous advances. Why was it always the ones who eluded him that he remembered the most vividly? For that matter, why was he capable of thinking of a brown-eyed beauty from a decade ago right after meeting mad wizards who were likely going to plunge the world into chaos and darkness?

  He shrugged. Anyway …

  Two other dragons hove into view as well, long necked and angry looking.

  “A bit late,” Delivegu said. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “They went that way, if you care.” They could not, of course, hear him.

  By the time the soldier returned to him, with the Talayan man in tow, the confusion had mostly passed. Soldiers were establishing some rough semblance of order. A few people, good-hearted or desperate for their loved ones, had even begun to trickle back into the Carmelia to help the injured and deal with the dead. The soldier handed the man off awkwardly, looking around at his fellows and only then seeming to question why he had taken orders from someone so obviously not an officer. Delivegu dismissed him with a shooing motion of his fingers. He turned his attention to the man.

  He had seen less bedraggled men laboring as life prisoners in the Kidnaban mines. The Talayan’s tunic was a thin, tattered garment hung across a wiry frame, muscles lean and taut beneath his skin. His thigh-length skirt looked to have been dragged across the ground all the way from central Talay, leaving a tattered fringe. He was coated in a layer of dust lighter in tone than his skin, with a crackly film of salt around his hairline. Most bizarrely, his right hand and wrist were completely encased in a metal cage. Delivegu considered the possibility that he had escaped imprisonment, but he had never seen anything like that gauntlet. Besides that, he knew who the man was. No criminal, he.

  “You’ve seen some miles, Kelis of Umae,” Delivegu said. “The hard way, by the looks of it.”

  The man looked surprised, but whether the surprise was at Delivegu knowing his name or at the fact that he was that person, Delivegu was not sure.

  Kelis said, “I must see the queen.”

  “You’ll not get near her looking as you do.”

  Kelis, agitated, scanned the stadium. “The queen. I thought she was here.”

  Delivegu caught him by the elbow as he tried to move away. “Listen! I’ve got sense enough to recognize you, but I doubt any Marah would see anything but a cushion to pin an arrow in.” Realizing he had grabbed the arm with the steel fist of a hand, he let it go. “What happened to your hand?”

  “The queen,” Kelis repeated. “And Aliver, if he truly lives. And where is Leeka? He came this way before me.”

  “Ah, he was with you, huh?” Delivegu asked. “He’s … around here. All over the place, really.” He gestured vaguely. “Anyway, what’s your message for the monarchs?”

  “I’ll tell the queen,” the Talayan snapped.

  “You’ll tell me first,” Delivegu said. “And then, maybe, if I say so, you’ll tell the queen. You’ll not get near her without me, and you’ll not find anyone else to help you. You’re lucky to have found me.” He stopped and studied him again. “I shouldn’t even waste my time with you, but I’m thinking you’ve had a part in all this?”

  Kelis looked down.

  “And that you have things to tell the queen. Things she really ought to hear?”

  The Talayan nodded.

  “I can probably arrange that. You’ll have to start by telling me, though. Have a seat. Let’s do this like reasonable men. I, by the way, am Delivegu
Lemardine. The best friend you have at this moment.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  By the time Sire Dagon reached his compound in the league quarters, his clothes were so disheveled he could barely walk without tripping over portions of his flowing garments. The sole of one of his shoes flapped maddeningly, and he had lost his ceremonial skullcap. His lip was fat from having been punched by a commoner, and dark liquid soiled his front. His own vomit. Several layers of it had been squeezed out of him by more than one sight, but mostly by the glimpse he caught of the things that had writhed in and around and over Queen Corinn’s face. What were they? He asked, but he did not want to know. There could be nothing good in knowing the name of such things.

  He plowed through the servants waiting to greet him and went straight to his office, ignoring their exclamations of concern. He could think of nothing save the horror of what he had seen and the dread at what he had done. Never before had his timing been so disastrous. Absurdly, fantastically disastrous.

  “What have we done?” he asked himself, once seated and panting in his office chair. He really was not sure. He knew what he had done. Yes, but not what the effects of it would be now. Nor what the Santoth had done to Corinn. Nor what they would do to the world. He could not get his mind around it, but the terror squeezing every fiber of his body told him he had to, and quickly.

  “Sire?” His secretary peeked in the open door. “You’re upset, I see. Should I send for Teeneth? She would want to—”

  “No! This is no time for concubines, you—you …” No insult came readily enough, so Dagon let the sentence hang, unfinished.

  “Of course, sire,” the man began again, his voice simpering from the first word. “Do you need—”