The Sacred Band

by David Anthony Durham

Geena reached across the table and patted Clytus’s hand with a solemnity that—on her—could only be in jest. “I’m sure the wolves have never seen the likes of how an Outer Isle brigand tacks. They’ll wet themselves.”

  This sat a moment in the room before the dubious humor of it got Melio wagging his head. Geena slid her chair toward his and leaned into his shoulder. Clytus began to explain that it was not just tacking he had in mind. There was … He stopped midsentence. Melio turned, ready to nudge him back into it and feeling it best he get Geena’s head off his shoulder. He caught sight of Kartholomé.

  The man stood framed in the door. The blood in his face had drained out of him right along with the good humor he had stepped out choking over. His eyes searched the room without actually focusing on anyone.

  Geena started to say something. Stopped. It was Clytus who asked, “What?”

  Kartholomé said, very softly, “Come outside.”

  Stepping from the dim passageway onto the deck, Melio thought a full moon must have risen, so bone-blue was the light. A pungent scent invaded his nose. It flared his nostrils as it pushed inside, a sea stink so heavy he could barely breathe it. As he stepped on the slick deck, he heard the sound. Not silence anymore but a hushed slithering, a moist friction of something all around the boat, a wet sound like an enormous tongue licking his ear: all of these at once. Then he saw what made the noise, and the light and the smell. The sea was in motion around them again. Only, it was not the water that was moving.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  When he learned what the task would entail, Tunnel chose his tools accordingly: two mallets, each of them rectangular blocks of solid steel, with thick hardwood shafts wrapped with black leather. Leaving Avina, he carried one of them in each hand, a feat that few could have managed and that strained even his brawny arms and shoulders. He did not care. He was in a bad mood and did not mind if it showed. He did not like being sent away from Skylene, sick as she was. Nor did he plan to be away from the worsening turmoil of the city any longer than he had to. But the Lothan Aklun relics were part of the dance of power at play in Ushen Brae now. The league wanted them; Dukish wanted them. They all wanted to use them to gain Lothan Aklun powers, all except the Free People, who knew better. If the messenger had found what he claimed to have found, it needed to be dealt with fast, before it fell into the wrong hands.

  Outside the gates of the southern end of the city, a small party waited for him: the vessel messenger himself, three youths true to the Free People, and a man who had recently left the Antok clan’s service. This latter was the only one of questionable loyalty, but he brought with him a prize that could not be ignored—one of this clan’s totem animals.

  The antok was young, half the size of an adult, but it still stood a hulking bulk of muscle and hide and tusks. The harness on its back was not the standard issue—as usually younger antoks were not ridden—but was a crosshatch of thick leather cords and even thicker lengths of rope. Tunnel was not at all sure just how to mount it. The antok’s tender, Potemp, convinced Tunnel to secure his mallets along the beast’s side. “So they don’t brain anybody,” he said. Then he had each of them climb into the weight arrangement he thought best. This put Tunnel right atop the beast’s shoulders.

  If he had not been in such ill humor, he might almost have enjoyed the vantage point it provided him as they set out at a canter. Tunnel—who was still a member of the Antok clan, even though he had broadened his allegiance to include all the Free People—had never ridden one of the beasts upon whose form his own gray skin and prominent tusks were fashioned. He rather liked the feel of it. Looking forward over the mount’s coarse hide, he watched the creature’s tusk jut into and out of view as his head swayed back and forth with his strides.

  He is strong like me, he thought, but young. Just a young one.

  They made good time the first day, seeing nobody on the road. What a land this is, Tunnel observed, so much of it empty of people. We should change that.

  It was not, however, empty of reminders of the civilization that had once thrived there. The second day, they traveled a section of old track called the Bleeding Road. On each side, erected at regular intervals, stood the decrepit remains of the stakes the Fumel clan had been impaled upon. All of them: every Auldek of that clan for the crime of altering their quota slaves to look like them. To be children instead of slaves. The crime was a hard one for Tunnel to wrap his mind around, and the sight of stout spikes and the small piles of bones still at the bases of some of them, half hidden among the weeds, did not help. Auldek bones lasted a very long time. Strong as iron.

  None of the small company chose to comment on the sights or the history behind them.

  They reached the bank of the Sheeven Lek on the third morning. A little farther downstream the river broke into the main channels of the delta, but here it stretched wide before them, at the full breadth of its single channel. They turned upstream, and reached the site by the middle of the day.

  It was a Lothan Aklun structure, all right. That much was clear from the strangely organic shape of it, the melding of the recognizable and the bizarre. The building stood near the bank of the river, shaded by trees but with a clear stretch of beach and a series of ramps leading from the water up to its riverfront side. The beams of the frame looked to be thick tree trunks, irregularly shaped and even knobbed at the base of chopped-off limbs. All this was clear on the framework, atop which the walls and roof of the place draped like a loose skin. Or so it looked from a distance, as they stood warily contemplating it.

  From up close, the skinlike material was as solid as stone, as smooth as glass. And inside … inside brought back memories that Tunnel had not turned over in his mind for some time. The white walls, the slick floors, the strange, unnatural scent in the air. The instrument panels, levers, and all manner of devices, many-limbed things that stood like spiders. Dead spiders, but ones that could spring to life at the touch of a Lothan Aklun hand. Tunnel tried to see only what was here, unused and abandoned and powerless. This was not a place he had ever been to. It was larger, with different instruments, but the memories came anyway, visions of that other place and of the things done to him with tools somehow kin to the ones here. Young Tunnel, having his tusks fused right into his skull, the pain of it, the utter calm in the face of the Lothan Aklun woman who worked over him … Nothing had ever frightened him more than that calm.

  Fortunately, he was not a child anymore. He slammed his two mallets down on their heads, their shafts standing upright. “This is it, then? Not so much to see.”

  The vessel messenger had wide-spaced eyes and the tattoos of the Fru Nithexek, the sky bear. He seemed nervous inside the building, looking around as if he feared the old inhabitants might return at any moment. “It wasn’t that I’d never heard of this place before. I had. You can see it from the river. Once I floated by in a shell from the Sky Isle, but that was at night and the Lothan Aklun still worked the place. With them around it was a place to avoid. When I saw it this time, though, I knew things were different. Can’t just leave it here for anybody to find.”

  “Anybody other than us, you mean,” Tunnel said. He studied the panels and levers closely, without touching them. “What does this place do?”

  As simple a question as it was, none had a ready answer.

  “You don’t know what it does?”

  The messenger walked in a nervous circle. “If you mean exactly what does it do, I can’t say, but over there”—he pointed toward the riverfront side of the structure—“are bays that open onto ramps that lead into the water, a deep cove. I think they built the soul vessels here. Or built them elsewhere and brought them here for servicing of some sort.”

  “Maybe they put the souls inside them here,” one of the youths said.

  The rest let that sit untouched. One of the other youths rubbed his nose. Potemp cleared his throat and looked at his feet.

  “Yeah,” Tunnel said, sniffing the air, “this place d
oesn’t smell good. Back up.” He bent his legs slightly, gripped the shafts of the upright mallets. His gray arms bulged as he raised them, the striations of his forearms twitching with the effort. “Back, back.” The others retreated, and he went to work.

  He swung the mallets in wild arcs, smashing the panels, snapping levers clean off. Bits of the stonelike material flew in all directions, twirling in the air and skittering across the floor like shards of glass. The two-armed attack was not easy, but he kept at it for a time, knowing the others were watching him in awe. Tunnel liked being strong. Might as well show it.

  When the strain started to pain his shoulders, he flung one of the mallets away. He took the remaining one up in a two-handed grip. Just as impressive, really, as each blow now carried double the force, the whole of his arms and massive back and stout legs combining to drive the steel where his mind willed it.

  Sometime later, he paused. He balanced the mallet upright and stood with his hand propped on the end of the shaft. Glistening with sweat, heaving in great breaths, he surveyed the damage he had done. Pretty good damage, he thought. To the watchers, he said, “Let’s have a fire.”

  Late the next day, a league vessel made its appearance. It slid silently atop the water, cutting the current with its sleek lines, effortless. Unnatural. Potemp had warning enough to move the antok well back into the woods, out of hearing and sight and smell. Tunnel and the others watched the ship from the woods behind the burned-out shell of the demolished structure. The ruins still smoked, hot with glowing coals.

  Ishtat soldiers came ashore, too many for them to confront. Staying hidden, Tunnel watched them kick through the ashes. Later, a leagueman—cone headed, robed, and unarmed—came across on a skiff and inspected the site. It was not the same one who had ordered Skylene shot. If it had been, nothing would have stopped Tunnel from rushing him, mallets swinging until he bashed the man to pulp. He almost did so anyway, but Skylene had not sent him out to die.

  He’s a lucky one today, that one, Tunnel thought.

  “We were just in time,” the messenger whispered. “Just in time.”

  They stayed in hiding throughout the day, watching. By the time the last skiff had returned to the anchored vessel, it was clear the leagueman had gained nothing. After sunset, Tunnel and the others came down into the ruins carrying armfuls of branches. They collected driftwood from the shore. Using a coal from the ruins they got a new fire going on the beach. They fed it until it blazed and then proceeded to dance around it. They shouted out toward the vessel, seeing its deck brimming with onlookers. They yelled taunts across the water at them, declaring that this ruin was the work of the Free People of Ushen Brae, saying that this was their land and would be forever more. The league would gain no footing here. The People would not allow it.

  And then, with a flash of inspiration, Tunnel turned around, shoved his thumbs inside the waist of his trousers and pulled them to his knees. He waggled his bare bottom in the torchlight, shouting over his shoulder instructions for what the leagueman could do with his ass. The others did the same, all of them offering their buttocks with rebellious glee.

  “Leagueman,” Tunnel yelled, “here’s my ass! Here’s Tunnel’s ass. I pinch it for you.” So saying, he did so.

  The others added their own takes on the theme. They all howled with laughter, so caught up in the moment that they retreated from the shore grudgingly and only after the rain of Ishtat arrows shot from the boat became too heavy to chance further.

  Tunnel arrived back at the Free People’s compound in the middle of the night. Without pausing to rest or even to wash the grime of his work and travel from his face, he went to Skylene. Her caretakers greeted him grimly at the door, then stepped aside to let him visit her in solitude.

  She lay as he had left her, propped up on pillows, with a blanket pulled up to her shoulders. Lowering himself softly to the edge of the bed, he could smell the sickness on her. It was there in the tang of her sweat, in the spoiled scent of her sheets, and in the fetid stench of the festering wound in her chest. The crossbow bolt that Sire Lethel had so casually set in motion had punched right through her left breast, ripping apart tissue, fracturing a rib, and leaving a dirty, oil-smeared puncture wound that quickly turned bad. He had looked upon it before he left; he did not want to do so again.

  Skylene opened her eyes. She smiled at him, warmly enough that Tunnel wondered if she was getting better. But when her lips released the curve, her face looked even more drawn, lined, and thin than before. She asked, “Did you destroy it?”

  Her voice sounded dry. Tunnel poured from a pitcher of mint water on the bedside table. He moved the glass toward her, saying, “Nah, nah,” when she tried to take hold of it. Big armed and shouldered as he was, with large-knuckled hands that made the glass seem a child’s toy, he touched the rim to her lips with delicacy. He did not answer her question until after she had taken a few sips.

  “We did. Smashed it up good. Built a fire. It was a fine show.” He detailed what they thought the relic was and told of their encounter with the league ship. By the end he was on his feet, his bottom pointed toward her as he repeated the taunts he had shouted over his shoulder.

  It hurt Skylene to laugh, but she did so anyway.

  “Are you getting better?” Tunnel asked, sitting beside her again.

  Skylene set a hand on top of his. Her touch was hot, dry. She meant it to be comforting, but it felt wrong. He felt the fever burning in her. He almost pulled his hand away. “The others are looking after me. They brought a healer from the Kern clan. She was very kind, but her poultice had fennel seeds in them. You know I can’t stand the smell of it. I wore it for a day, but then …” She lifted her hand and gestured, a vague motion that erased the very thing she was describing.

  “We should send a messenger to the elders,” he said. “To Mór. She would want …”

  “To rush here to my side.” Skylene shook her head. “No, Tunnel, send no message. None of them can help me either way. Why add to their distress? Mór left me—and you—to hold the city until she returned …”

  “With the Rhuin Fá,” Tunnel said, nodding in acknowledgment of the fact that he had finished her sentence, just as she had finished his a moment earlier.

  “But we have not done that here, have we?”

  “Not our fault.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Dukish, he is just a fool! Going to mess with everything that could be so simple and good. How we going to know that before he show us it? Stupid man. Should have squashed him the first time.”

  Skylene did not dispute it. “If you get another chance, do squash him. Do it for me. But otherwise … stay alive for Dariel. Be here when he arrives. That should be within a fortnight.”

  “What? You know this?”

  Nodding, Skylene said, “The vessel messenger who took you to the relic, he came here with a message for me, a message from Yoen.”

  “You didn’t tell Tunnel,” Tunnel said, managing to convey a depth of hurt in the short sentence.

  “No.” Skylene smiled. “If I had, you might not have taken those mallets to the relic. You might not have shown the good sire your backside. I needed you to act without distraction, without waiting for your Rhuin Fá. I was right, wasn’t I? Even a day’s delay would have—”

  “What’s the message, then?”

  “Mór and the others are returning via the Sheeven Lek. Dariel is with them.”

  Tunnel smiled. “This is news.”

  “There’s more. The journey has been a success in many ways. They all still live, for one. For another, they visited the Sky Watcher. Nâ Gâmen blessed them all, especially Dariel.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yoen said to expect Dariel to look different. He wears a sign on his forehead, a spirit mark that combines his name with Nâ Gâmen’s.”

  “He is the Rhuin Fá.” Tunnel leaned in close and whispered, with passion, “He is. I always told it, didn’t I?”

 
; Skylene started to laugh, but it pained her. She choked it down. “Of course you did, Tunnel. You are the smartest of all of us, the truest.”

  “Should we tell everyone?”

  “No, not yet.” Skylene closed her eyes a moment, her breathing shallow. “Not yet. He is not the Rhuin Fá until the People name him so. We have all to do it, understand? Not just Nâ Gâmen, the elders. Not just you and me. Everyone must do it. And none who don’t want to believe him are going to want to change, not without seeing him for themselves. We need to hold this news as long as we can, until they are nearly here, understand? We use it to call a gathering, but only at the last moment. We don’t want Dukish or any of the others to have time to work against him. All right?”

  “Yeah, that’s all right.”

  “Tunnel”—she softened her voice, rounded it and weighted it with import—“I’ve told no body else about this. If I …”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “But if it does, you …”

  Shaking his head, Tunnel stood up. “Nah, won’t happen. You love Mór too much to die. You’ll still be lying here, waiting for a kiss, when she comes. Tunnel knows.” He glanced around. “You hungry?”

  He asked it casually, tugging on a tusk as if he had nothing more on his mind than his stomach. It was not true, but he kept it up until he heard Skylene breathe out the rest of the things she thought she needed to say to him. Once she did, he pretended to wander away, foraging. In truth he stood at the far end of the room, leaning against the wall and watching, thinking, You’ll still be here. Tunnel knows, of course he does.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  When asked to describe it, Dariel said he did not remember anything. In truth, he remembered his return from death with a clarity not of an experience passed but of one yet to come. It went something like this. For a time, he was not a man at all. He was a single bubble—one of infinite millions that pressed softly against him—dislodged from the depths of an abyssal floor and rising through the black fathoms in which nothing at all lived. He knew the entire time that he might pop at any moment, might cease to be or be swallowed by some unliving mouth driven by unliving hunger, suddenly roaring out of the black. He would not have been able to explain that he became more and more terrified the closer he got to life. Nor would he ever try to describe that passing into life did not feel like surfacing or birth or waking. It felt like smashing against a ceiling of black obsidian and vanishing.