The Sacred Band

by David Anthony Durham

  The seven shells were to carry the party of five back toward the coast from which they had so recently come and to take with them the young and hardy from the nearby villages, any who could help in the fight they all knew awaited them. Each boat went captained by a rower skilled at handling it. Perched on the thwart, the rowers moved the crafts with a quiet efficiency of effort. In the quiet pools of still water—of which there were many the first day—they drove the vessels forward by leaning their backs into timed pulls on the oars. When the current picked up, when pressed through rocks or down steeper sections, they turned the boats with a touch of an oar on the green water or spun them like tops with a cross-cross pull. There was an elegance to it that Dariel admired from where he lay among the bundles of supplies.

  In the afternoon he took a turn at the oars. He had rowed skiffs on enough occasions to be confident, and he figured the study he had made of it from a few hours’ watching had taught him what he needed to know. Wrong. He spent all his efforts on just moving the absurdly long oars. Just landing the blades in the water the right way proved difficult, and the right way never stayed right for long because the vessel was always in motion. When he lifted one oar to reposition it, he invariably pulled against the other, swinging the boat one direction or another. When he tried to correct on the other side, he found the water as immovable as setting concrete. If he managed to press down on an oar—thereby lifting its other end out of the water—the freed end flailed in the air with a life of its own.

  “Anticipate, Dariel,” Birké called. “Anticipate. Feel the momentum starting to—”

  “Would you shut up?” Dariel shouted, jerking his oars in frustration.

  Listening to the jibes the others tossed around him, Dariel wondered if he needed to harden his demeanor. He imagined returning the taunts with fierce expressions of disapproval. Or sharp reprimands. Invocations of his name. No, not his name. Of his status as the Rhuin Fá! That’s what mattered here. Just look at his forehead! Of course, he got that status because of who he was in the Known World, not in this one. He had not done much worthy of a title yet. He still had no idea just how he would lead the People.

  Other than that he could speak languages he had never learned, he could not say he felt any different having part of Nâ Gâmen’s true soul in him. He knew that he was heading toward a clan gathering in which he would be presented to all the people of Avina, but nobody asked him what he would say or told him what he should say. Perhaps because of that, he had dreams each night in which he held long conversations with different people. In them, he listened to them, learned about their fears and worries. In them, he argued against the league’s vision for Ushen Brae. He encouraged the People to unite, to find strength together, and to reject the league’s enticements. Maybe, if he dreamed about it long enough, he would find the right words.

  By the time he gave up on rowing, his face was wet with sweat and his shirt plastered to his chest. The other shells were far ahead, a few out of sight around a distant river bend. He nearly voiced a suspicion that the basic dynamics covering rowing were somehow reversed in Ushen Brae, but he knew a lame excuse when he heard one. He kept it to himself. He handed the oars back to Harlen, the captain of his shell, who had watched the entire show while chewing on a twig of sweet branch. He took the oars without comment and made up the time Dariel had lost in a few minutes, humming as he rowed.

  When this brought new bursts of taunts from the distant shells, Dariel flipped his frustration over and gave in to it himself. Why not? He could not change who he was to them, even if he was mostly a walking invitation for mirth. He did not even want to, when it came down to it. If he was to be the hero these people needed, it could not be shaped by pretense. It had to flow from who he was, who they were, and what they could do together. As odd as it was to feel himself a constant source of humor, there was something he actually liked about it. A playfulness. A camaraderie that felt close to what he had experienced as an Outer Isle brigand.

  “That can’t be a bad thing,” he said. He decided to build on it, to let it grow.

  The rowing. The dou worms and tales of frékete nightmares, gagging on plee-berry juice, tripping in the whirling chaos that was Bashar and Cashen at play on the riverbank each evening: these were not the only things that kept the group laughing at the Rhuin Fá’s expense during the trip downstream.

  On the first day they confronted whitewater, he fell out of the boat at the very top of a long rapid. He had stood to take in the view, and a sudden rocking of the vessel threw him off balance. The minute he hit the water, he knew he was going to swim the entire long tumult of the rapid. He did. Had there not been a calm pool at the end of it, he might have drowned. Instead, he was able to crawl up on a rock in the slack current, panting, exhausted, fearful to the last moment that some creature was going to clamp its jaws down on his ankle and pull him back in.

  He was the butt of jokes for the rest of that day. Did he really dislike the shells that much? Would he swim all the rapids, or was it only the largest ones that tempted him? Just what was it that he had dropped that made him so keen to go river diving? By the time he reached camp that evening, he was sure he had heard every variation of the earnest, perplexed questions his companions could possibly think of. He hadn’t. They were still at it the next morning. Was it true that the little people with gills lived in tiny houses along the river bottom …?

  One section of the canyon was so narrow and the gradient so steep that the shells ran a gauntlet of whitewater rapids. Dariel sprawled atop the supplies and clung to the web of ropes that secured them as Harlen made the shell do things that defied reason.

  Near the end of the torrent, a flume of water collided with a solid stone wall at a sudden turn in the river. It created a raging maw of a whirlpool that Dariel was certain would gnaw them to death and then spit them out in pieces. He screamed the madness of it when Harlen steered the shell right down the flume, catching the water feeding into the upstream edge of the whirlpool. The shell rode upon the pillow of water, plastered vertically along the stone. Instead of dropping down into the whitewater just below them and being devoured, the craft rode the pillow of frothing water. It skimmed along above the growling mouth of the whirlpool, to be deposited on the other side of it, downstream. The maneuver seemed so improbable that Dariel turned to share his amazement with Harlen. But the other man just smiled and stuffed a mint leaf in his mouth, as if there had been nothing remotely dramatic about the moment.

  At least he could say he had not squealed at any point during the rapids. The same could not be said of the first time he saw the slick side of a scale-leech. He did not actually notice when it happened, for the writhing in the water all around the shells drew all his attention. Long, thick eel-like things slithered beneath them, bumping against the shell and almost tipping Dariel in. Their heads, when he saw one gnawing along the rim of the shell, were entirely mouth, teeth, and sucking lips that were instantly the most horrible sight Dariel ever recalled having seen.

  The others jumped into motion. The rowers took up oars and went to work. Passengers stayed low. Harlen shouted for Dariel to draw the river knife sheathed on the wooden rowing frame. Dariel twisted one wrist painfully in the rigging ropes. He had no intention of falling into the water now. Clutching the weapon with his free hand, the prince snapped his head from side to side each time one of the creatures appeared. Awkwardly off balance because of the rhythmic surging of the rowing, he fought to see past Bashar and Cashen, who darted around him, barking madly. He stabbed several of the leeches. They squirmed away all the faster when cut.

  “That’s … the only problem … with the shells,” Harlen said, panting hard as he pulled. “The scale leeches … remember how tasty … their old owners … were.”

  When the creatures finally left off their thrashing, Harlen explained that they lived in territorial groups. They had only to row through their territory to gain a reprieve before they passed into another group’s region, and then the
same again. Despite the real danger of them, after that first encounter it was his squeal that the group most focused on, not the creatures themselves. He was not at all sure he had made any alarmed sound at all, and would not accept Birké’s effeminate imitation as accurate, but it was no use protesting.

  Nor could he get any traction out of pointing out that Tam and Anira both took unintentional underwater excursions. Nor that two shells flipped over during the voyage. Nor that one of the young men passed too close to a flowering plant that made him break out in hives that, with his wolfish shivith spots, made him look truly bizarre. Nor that a couple, unfortunate in the spot they chose for their clandestine lovemaking, sprouted full-body rashes caused by the weeds they had bedded down in. None of that carried the humor of the frightened squeal Dariel doubted had ever escaped him.

  Through it all Dariel came to laugh more easily at himself, with others, at the bizarreness of the world, and with a joy of discovery that shoved aside the burden of responsibility every now and then. He knew even as the days passed that the things he saw along the river would be lasting memories in his mind ever after. And he knew that the time spent with that small company would, someday, be just as precious to him as his days at Palishdock and sailing the Outer Isles.

  So he laughed his way down the Sheeven Lek to the coast. He kept it up right until the river split into myriad channels of its delta. They floated through water growing brackish, patrolled by armored crabs, and leaping with prawns. They landed at a point not far from where he had watched the soul vessel go up in flames. They pulled the shells well up the bank, and stripped down their supplies for overland travel, and flipped them over. They hiked into the undulating ridgeline of sand dunes that hid the ocean. Reaching one of the heights, Birké, who was in the lead, stopped and crouched down. He motioned that there was something to see. Dariel sprinted with the others. He dropped flat on the sand as the wind coming over the peak mussed his hair and smacked blood into his cheeks. He saw then what Birké had seen.

  Out there past the breakers, which curled in long, massive waves, stretched a rough sea dotted with vessels. League brigs, fast clippers, several of the sleek soul vessels. There went his enemy. Against them, his war was about to resume.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-THREE

  Corinn stared. Eaters, she thought. That’s what they were. Flesh eaters. Little monsters with teeth ringed around a circular mouth. They had flown as fast as angry hornets when they attacked her, propelled on an inundation of song. A malignant spell cast from Nualo’s mouth to hers. They ate through Corinn’s flesh for as long as the curse that gave them life rang in the air. Several frantic moments in which they swarmed her lower face. Their chewing and writhing had been such a loud garble, frantic and horrible, that for those moments they were her entire world.

  By the time she wrapped her face in her shawl to hide it from others in the Carmelia, the eaters had already completed their work. They died inside her flesh. There they remained. She could feel them. She ran her fingers over the segmented ridges of their bodies. They were part of her, dead husks that she could feel half submerged in her tissue, their corpses hued the same chestnut brown as her skin.

  Staring at her reflection in her dressing table mirror, she could see them. She sat there, straight-backed on the stool, looking into the glass as she had a hundred thousand times before. The room was still. True silence. Empty. She had made everyone leave, even the servants who would normally have plastered themselves invisible and forgotten against the walls and behind drapes. She was alone. The long, thin sliver of a knife rested within arm’s reach on the dresser, but she only had eyes for the mirror.

  What looked back at her this time was impossible to look at. And yet she did. If she could have screamed she would have. She would have given in to panic and ripped her fear into the world with shrieks. But she couldn’t. One thing she would never again be able to do was scream. The fact of it was more horrible still, enough so that she could only stare, stunned to a place on the other side of terror.

  The eaters had not consumed her flesh. They had processed it. They had curdled its substance. They swallowed it in from one end and expelled it out the other, turning her flesh into a thick paste that congealed in such a manner that where her mouth had been there was no mouth. Tough, doughy-looking flesh covered her lips, making her lower face a stretch of mottled skin. All this in a few frantic seconds. And there it was.

  She would never be able to eat or drink again. She knew this, but she also knew that it did not matter. She would not die from hunger or thirst. She could feel it. Hunger was something she would not face again. She would waste away, yes, but it would happen very slowly. The Santoth wanted her alive until they got what they wanted. It would be an unbearable wait.

  She ran her fingers over her damaged flesh. There. That was it. She could not speak. She could not say a word of explanation to anyone. She could not even hide behind a veil and issue orders. She could not use the song. It was in her head, just as before. It hummed and thrummed and banged against the sides of consciousness, but she could do nothing about it. Without a mouth to speak it, all her knowledge was useless. It raged like a cyclone confined to the dimensions of her skull. Just like that, with one malignant spell, Nualo had trapped all her weapons inside her.

  You are hideous, she thought. There was something freeing in acknowledging it. It was a proclamation she could almost wrap around herself and be encased within, her funereal shawl. It was a tempting notion. Silent death. Leaving all this. You are hideous, best to turn inward and cease to be. How could you have been so stupid? You stupid bitch. Stupid, ugly, fool of a—

  “Don’t say those things.” Hanish appeared behind her. He stood at her shoulder, studying her reflection. Corinn’s eyes snapped to him. He was so close. Solid. Just there behind her, looking too much like a living man. “They’re not true.”

  She felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder. This ghost version of him had never touched her. She had thought he could not, but she felt the weight of his four fingers, his thumb moving in a circle. For a moment she was glad of him, didn’t hate him, didn’t want him gone. The moment did not last. What could he offer her that was more soothing than death?

  Leave me, she ordered.

  “No, I won’t,” Hanish said.

  Leave me.

  Hanish shook his head. “I can’t. Banish me if you can, but I don’t think you can do that. You are stuck with me. And I with you.” Leave me.

  After a time, Hanish said, “Corinn, have you forgotten that you imagined this before? In your dreams you did. You knew this would happen. You just didn’t understand your own vision. Do you remember?”

  She had not until he asked, and then she did. It came back as a set of images leering at her through a haze of forgotten dreams. For a time she had lived through the same nightmare over and over again. It began with Aliver returning to life. Just as she wanted. Just as she later sang him into reality. With joy at all the fine things this meant, she had dashed through the halls of the palace. That was how she came to find him, the figure with his back turned to her. All the joy vanished. The man turned …

  “And it was I,” Hanish said.

  Yes, it had been he. The same beautiful man, lean and golden haired, with his dreamer’s eyes. He had worn a black thalba, snug around the torso that she had so loved to wrap herself around. He wore the same now. But then, in the dream, his mouth had been sewn shut on her orders. Needle and dark thread through the lips she had kissed, pinching the soft tissue. She had placed a mass of jagged fishhooks in his mouth before sewing it shut, so that he would swallow them and be shredded from the inside.

  “You wanted me to suffer. I remember it now. It’s your dream, but I remember it. And the worst part …” He stopped, pulling back from it.

  The worst part, Corinn acknowledged, was that I changed my mind. I tried to run to you to undo it, but then you were not you. You were our son.

  “I became Aaden.” H
e smiled. “Dreams are frustrating devils, aren’t they?”

  How could she have forgotten that? It was not even so long ago that this dream had tormented her. Just a few months back. Did she forget because she had set in motion the things that would make this version of that dream a reality? She had woken Aliver. And Aaden, he had slept and been awoken as well. And before all that, she had killed her lover’s Tunishnevre ancestors with blood from her palm, and then she had ordered him killed as well.

  Corinn placed her hand over the dagger.

  “No, not that,” Hanish said, reaching forward and pinning her hand down on top of the weapon. “You don’t get off as easily as that. You killed me, and I’m still here with you. Death is not the balm it seems right now. I swear it.”

  What do you want? Are you here to gloat?

  “No.”

  To relish this?

  “No.”

  You want to humiliate me. Look at me, then! Stare. Get your eyes full of me and then leave!

  “I’m here because I love you,” Hanish said. “No one has ever been more beautiful. This thing that was done to you does not change that. It just makes it even more obvious.”

  Corinn yanked her hand from his grip. She spun around on him, blade out before her in threat, hating him, wanting to cut him down again, for real this time.

  “You can’t cut me, Corinn,” Hanish said, so sadly it looked like he wished she could.

  No, she thought, but I can do this … She lifted the knife and raked the blade across the mutated flesh that had been her mouth, screaming as she did so. Silently, inside her mind, she screamed. And cut.