The Sacred Band

by David Anthony Durham

  The Range, Corinn thought. Dariel saw this before I did.

  Amazing also how much the sea thronged with life. Yes, there were great lifeless and gray swaths of sea. But so, too, were there times when schools of fish rose to the surface in such massive numbers they became the world. She watched shoals of silverfish paint swirls and shimmers, dancing as predators cut through them. For the greater part of a morning, they flew over floating islands of sea fronds, so thick that creatures lived atop them, running from Po’s shadow like tiny antelopes. One night the glow of life under the sea outdid the shining of the stars. And once she watched the illuminated outlines of a pod of whales, large and ghostly, moving with a stately grace.

  At the back edge of all this wonder ran their hunters, pressing ever onward. Sometimes they, too, seemed like giants, striding ocean miles with each step. But other times they were only men, tiny men in an ocean that dwarfed them. Po stayed beyond the reach of their sorcery, but Corinn heard them speaking to her. For a time they tried to convince her to stop running. They must have the book, but once they did they claimed they would heal her, make her mouth right. They would study The Song with her.

  Though she knew better, there was something powerfully persuasive about them. Strange how narrow the line between their warm, soothing voices and their evil truth was. The intent behind both was the same, strong in a way that had a similar essence. She never let herself believe them. It helped that Hanish was there whispering warnings, keeping her true to her course.

  Eventually, they dropped the pretense and taunted her instead. They would never tire, they said. She had already failed. She had already led them back into the world. She could not stand against them. She was not Tinhadin. She had not his strength. She had not his mouth. They would chase her right around the world if they had to. She could not outfly them. They would catch her tomorrow, or the next day. But they would catch her.

  The Song is ours! It’s already ours. Your days are few.

  She did not know if they said that because they knew about the poison in her, or because they intended to make sure of that themselves. She gave them no response. Hanish did not even talk anymore. He just rested his chin on her shoulder and watched the same watery world that she did. That was all right. There was nothing more to say. They just flew.

  And then came the day they were searching for. The sea beneath them suddenly thronged with creatures. One moment it was empty. The next, white leviathans clamored at the surface. Hundreds of them. Enormous creatures that she had only seen in paintings, paintings that at the time she had assumed were touched by fancy.

  “Sea wolves,” Hanish said.

  Po did not like them. At first he roared at them, thinking them some new curse of the Santoths’. Corinn calmed him. Careful not to let him see the images she had of what was to come, she had him bank into a wide circle, looping around and around above the water.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  I dreamed it.

  “Ah.” She knew that Hanish had a quip to follow, but he held it in.

  I dreamed it. Since that was so, she did the only thing she could. She did what had been shown to her already in the dream. She flew that circle, taking Po lower and lower as she did. Each time she came around, she saw the Santoth on the horizon but closing on them. They had not been part of the dream, but they would be part of the reality.

  The sea wolves did something Hanish found very strange. “What in the Giver’s name?” he murmured. Corinn expected it, though. They copied Po’s circular motion. They drew tighter, going around and around beneath them. They swam with a strange pulsing motion, twisting over one another, ghostly white, tentacled, with eyes that watched the dragon fly above them. Hard to separate one from another. The tighter they got, the more that became the case.

  They are his searchers, Corinn said. That’s all they were ever doing, searching for The Song of Elenet anytime ships passed near them.

  By the time Po’s wingtip skimmed the surface they were so close together there was no water visible between them. And when Corinn asked Po to land on them, the bodies of the strange leviathans congealed together, forming a circular, flat surface on which to land. It took some convincing to get the dragon to do it. In the end, he did it only because she promised him he could fly away as soon as she and Hanish were down.

  Po’s feet danced across the surface. It was flat, and strangely smooth, but it was made of great, sea-crusted white bodies, entwined tentacles, and large eyes that stared up at them. Po only stayed touching them for the time it took for Corinn to gather The Song of Elenet from a saddlebag and climb down. Then he lifted into the air, barking as he did so. It was a strange noise, one she had not heard him make before. For some reason, she knew what it meant. He was telling her to be quick. He did not like this place and wanted to go.

  Hanish stood beside her. “What now, Corinn?”

  Now we call for the worm.

  She had wondered how he would respond to this. When he did, she knew he had done so perfectly. “All right. I hope it’s quick.” He dipped his head in the direction of the Santoth, who were tall figures now, slashing the air as they ran, sending sprays of water up from their feet.

  Corinn held the book out before her. She ran her palms over the aged leather of its cover. Her fingers caressed the frayed leaves of its pages. As she did so, she felt the creature wake. He was somewhere far below them, embedded in the depths of the ocean floor. Come, I’ve brought it. What it sent back to her was not an image or a clear thought, certainly not words. It was a feeling. It was the sensation of a massive body peeling away from the bottom, turning upward in the blackness and writhing in great sweeps of its gargantuan length.

  It’s coming. She opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was Hanish, standing just before her, his gray eyes there to meet her gaze. I could not have done this without you.

  “You could have,” he said, “but I’m glad you didn’t have to.”

  The Santoth were much nearer. They stood even taller, their elongated forms stretching far up into sky. Their churning arms cut through the clouds. She could hear them now, singing themselves faster and faster, hungrier than ever for the book that was so near.

  Corinn opened it and, pulling her gaze away from the sorcerers, she began to read. The song bloomed inside her. It twined and danced about her. It wrapped her and Hanish in ribbons of energy. It sped the Santoth on, and it snapped through the tail of the creature below them, driving it upward.

  When the Santoth reached them, it looked as if they would arrive in massive stature, stamping the strange platform down into the water. They held to that size until the last moment. Po had to pull back, roaring at them. Just as their feet touched the sea wolves, the Santoth shrank. The entire stretched length of their bodies pulled in, so that they stepped onto the platform the size of normal men. Cloaked, dull figures, old and ravaged by time and evil and desolation. Their eyes bulged and trembled with intensity.

  “Give it to me.” Nualo extended his hand. “Give it to me!”

  Looking at his cracked, aged hand, Corinn realized what the last thing Leeka had tried to say to her and Aliver was. They cannot take it from me. I have to give it to them. They stood there, ranked in front of her, like starving men before a feast she held in her hands … and they could do nothing.

  For a sliver of a moment Corinn rejoiced. If they could not take it from her, she could keep it! They did not have the power over her that they claimed. She could …

  And then that brief madness was gone. She could not keep it. She had not the life to use it anymore, and, even now, surrounded by the threads of beauty that still swam around her, she knew the song should not be sung by any human mouth. Never again.

  You cannot have it, she said. None of us can. This ends now. Here.

  Nualo’s face bunched with rage. He raked up a curse from deep within him, but before he could utter it, the worm arrived. As when she had envisioned it swallowing the whole of the isle of Acacia, th
e creature’s mouth was enormous. It emerged under a great swell of seawater, a wide ring that took in everything: the sea wolves, the people standing on them, the sea around them. The mouth rose around them all. It stretched upward, stories upon stories tall, a wall so dripping with water and encrusted with barnacles and hanging with tendrils of seaweed that Corinn could only take in the vastness of it with no greater understanding of exactly what it was. The strong, aquatic smell of it drenched the air. And still it rose.

  The Santoth tried to leap away. They roared their anger and slashed out with their foul sorcery. Nualo clawed for the book, begging Corinn to give it to him. She yanked it from his grasp when the sea wolves beneath him fell away. He splashed down among them, bellowing curses. The sea wolves loosed their tight weave and sent the sorcerers down to thrash among their tentacles and the great rolling heave of their bodies. Only the sea wolves directly beneath Corinn stayed together.

  The queen pressed the book to her chest and looked at Hanish. He stared back. He reached out and took one of her hands. The two of them stood like that, the only stillness in all that great commotion. His mouth opened as if to say something. But instead of speaking he smiled. Of all the things he could have said and done, that smile was perfect. It was sad, resigned, and yet also confident. Somehow, it conveyed that this was as it had to be, the best of all possible outcomes. It said that what they went to now was nothing to fear.

  Then the creature’s mouth closed around them all. It stopped its upward thrust and slowly, heavily, fell back into the sea. Above the churning froth into which it sank, the dragon Po circled for a time, crying out his distress. Circling, as the sea went calm beneath him, as the waves rolled on, and the wind, until there was nothing but the sea.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Standing alone in the dressing room he had been provided, Dariel listened to the murmur of the gathering crowd. He could not help but remember the multitude of voices he had sensed inside that glowing wall on Lithram Len. It was the same sound in so many ways, except that here, out in the main courtyard of Avina, the masses gathered in exuberant joy. They had mouths to speak with, hands to clap, free will to move themselves through the world. They had life to rejoice in, now more than ever.

  Such had not been the case with the spirits trapped through the sorcery that encased them in that wall and somehow connected them to all the accursed soul vessels. Dariel did not expect to ever understand it entirely. He hoped he wouldn’t. Understanding the sorcery was the very thing that drove the Lothan Aklun to acts of revenge that had enslaved the entire world—themselves along with it—for generations. Better just to know that his bow of reverence had placed the raised rune on his forehead into the engraving meant to receive it. His living tissue touched that strange, glowing matter. A key. That was what Nâ Gâmen had given him. A key that unlocked that cage of souls, freeing all the spirits that the Lothan Aklun had used to power their vessels. The moment it was done, the glowing wall had gone dark. Silent. Motionless. He had felt a concussion of energy, but it had come from elsewhere. In that small chamber, the cage of souls simply ceased to be, and the enslaved vanished into freedom.

  “I freed them,” Dariel said. “Or … you freed them.” That was another thing that he was going to have to learn to live with: that he and Nâ Gâmen would share his soul for as long as they both lived on inside Dariel’s mortal body. Acknowledging that, Dariel said, “We freed them.”

  Bashar brushed his leg. He stroked the hound. Still a pup, but tall enough already that Dariel did not need to bend to reach him. All lean muscle and bone. Hunters. The ridge running against the grain up his back bristled stronger than ever. He looked at Cashen, who lay watching them. The pup thumped his tail. Considering the massive pads of their paws, Dariel had finally come to believe Birké had not exaggerated. The hounds would be enormous, and they would be there soon. Dariel repeated, “We freed them.”

  “Yes,” a voice said, “we did.” Mór stood in the open doorway, in silhouette against the light behind her. Dariel could not see her face, but he knew her form and her voice. She walked in, more beautiful now as the lamplight illuminated her. “You look good in these clothes.” She reached for the collar of his new linen cloak, tugged it around a bit, seemed to like it even better. “Are you ready?”

  Dariel said he was, but Mór did not move to lead him to the meeting being held in his honor. She stared at his face, tattooed just like hers. She stared at his forehead, which no longer had the rune embossed on it. His skin was as smooth as it had been before the Sky Watcher took the stylus to it. The key, once used, vanished along with the soul vessels.

  “At least you’ll always have these Shivith markings,” Mór said.

  “And I’ll never forget who drew them under my skin,” Dariel responded. “Rather painful, as I recall.”

  Mór ducked her head a moment, laughed. “We’ve come a long way, Dariel Akaran. I’ll tell you something.” She leaned in a little closer and whispered. “I am a woman who finds beauty first in other women. That is just the way I am. But if I did like men … I might come to you to explore it.”

  Dariel was glad she pulled back. His face had flushed, and he feared if she kept studying him so closely his cheek might start to twitch.

  “I never told you what Nâ Gâmen told me at the Sky Mount,” Mór said, strolling away and running her finger across a nearby desk. “I didn’t doubt him, but I didn’t want to accept it, either. First, he said you had a destiny here. He said your story, whether it ended well or ill, would be the story of our nation as well. I told him I despised the blood in your veins. Do you know what he told me?”

  “What?”

  “That it was your Akaran blood that made greatness in you possible. I thought that was foolishness, but the more I’ve thought about the many things he showed me, the more I believe he could not complete his work without an Akaran’s blessing. Does that sound right?”

  Dariel nodded.

  Mór did as well. “The second thing … was that he confirmed that my brother’s spirit force was still inside Devoth. Buried deep, he said. It was close to his true self. I had always thought my memory of that was true, and it was.” She picked up a stylus and felt the grain of the wooden handle. “He said that if I went in search of him—to kill him—I might succeed, but that I might not get back to Ushen Brae. He said I could have revenge or a future among the People. He did not think that I could have both.”

  She hit the stylus against the palm of one hand for a time. Stopped. Glanced down and seemed surprised that she even held it.

  “Which do you want more?”

  “I wanted each more than the other, but I had sworn to fight for the Free People. I thought that once we had won I would track Devoth to the ends of the earth and cut each soul out of him until I found Ravi. I would have done it.”

  “I believe that.”

  “I would have, but now I don’t have to. Ravi’s been released.”

  “Released? How do you know?”

  “I felt it happen. I always felt his life force, Dariel. Every day since he was taken from me I’ve known that he still lived, trapped. You once called me cranky. You would be, too, if you had to live with that.” She tossed the stylus back onto the desk. “Anyway, I felt his soul go free. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know if Devoth is dead. I only know that it was a different thing from what you did with the soul vessels. Somehow, over there in your lands, Ravi found peace.”

  In the high hall a short time later, Mór led Dariel to the gathered Council of Elders. Yoen and the other elders stood waiting for him. They had arrived the day before, having trekked all the way from the Sky Isle on the news that Dariel had been accepted as the Rhuin Fá. Little did they know that as they journeyed, a short, crucial war would unfold. Little did they know they would arrive in a city rejoicing, with the league defeated at the moment that the soul vessels vanished. A great number of the invaders had drowned, but others were plucked from the water,
prisoners now locked away and awaiting their fate.

  Mór waved Dariel into the circle of elders. He stood, feeling awkward before them. He knew them all, if only from his brief time at the Sky Isle. Perhaps it was the new garments. It had been some time since he had worn clean clothes with sharp creases and fine stitching. Or maybe it was the crowd gathered in the squares just below them. He could hear them even better now, the sound drifting through the large, open balcony windows at the far end of the room. It was heady stuff to be a hero to so many people.

  Heady enough to make young Spratling nervous, Dariel thought.

  It might also be that the chamber contained a solemn air he had not expected. Everyone gazed at him: the elders near at hand; Mór and Skylene, Tunnel and Birké and all the People he had become so close to here in Ushen Brae. A little farther back stood Melio and Clytus, Geena, and the others who had come so far to find him. All of them safe and well, largely unscarred by the skirmishes they had fought so that he could complete his part in this story. They stared at him, too. He got the feeling everyone knew something that he did not.

  “I have a story to tell you,” Yoen said. He spoke to Dariel, but he lifted his voice for everyone to hear. “It’s a true story. True stories do not always make the best ones, but this one is pretty good. Many, many years ago, hundreds of years, during the early days of the Free People’s settlement at the Sky Lake—” He cut in on himself to say, “This was before my time, in case you are wondering.”

  He waited as the polite laughter faded. He was just as frail looking as before, his hair still disheveled, in contrast to the care taken with his long robe. His limp had increased, the product, no doubt, of the journey. He leaned heavily on his cane.

  “One day, a Lothan Aklun found the settlement,” he continued. “The People were shocked, because no Lothan Aklun had ever come searching for them before. Not even the Auldek had ranged that far. They need not have been alarmed, though. The Lothan Aklun was not hunting them. He was on a mission. He told them that he had come to hate his people’s ways. He was taking his quota children—both those inside him and those living through their years beside him—up into seclusion in Rath Batatt. You know this man. It was Nâ Gâmen.