“Before he went, he gave the villagers something. He took from his wrist a bracelet made of pure, precious gold. He said that it was not actually a bracelet. It was an armband that had been worn by the first quota child he had come to love as his own. I called it a tuvey band, though in truth it was just a child’s trinket. He gave it to us, and he also gave us a sapling from a tree of your lands, Dariel. An acacia tree. He planted the tree, and slipped the band around it. He told those Free People that one day the quota trade would end. One day, a person would come to us who had the power to change everything. A good person. A kingly person. A man or a woman with a pure heart and noble intent. This person would have the power to release our trapped spirits. He said that on that day—when we knew this person had arrived—we should build a great fire around that tree. A beacon to announce the freeing of the world. When it died down, we were to retrieve the band from the ashes and see if it still held its shape.
“We did as he asked us to. We left the band around the trunk of that small tree, waiting for the day we could build that fire. A lovely idea, but it did not go as anyone wished. The wait was to be longer than we could have known. Not a lifetime or two. Many more than that. That sapling became a tree. Generations lived and died. The tree got thicker, stretched taller. Years passed. The ring grew tight around the trunk, and then the tree lifted the ring into the air. Still longer it took, so long that the tree swallowed the band and grew around it. The band went hidden for generations. The world turned so long that I was born, and you were as well, Dariel, and everyone else in this room and out in the courtyard there.”
The old man pointed to the great balcony that opened above the gathered crowd. He had been strolling in circles as he talked, his eyes drifting, gentle everywhere they touched. They came back to Dariel now. “Do you know the tree I’m speaking of?”
Remembering the sacred acacia he had seen from the hillside above the village by the Sky Lake, Dariel nodded.
“Before we came here, we burned it. We believed in you, Dariel Akaran. It appears that we were right to. And look what we found in the ashes …”
Yoen had paused behind a small table, atop which a simple box sat. Dariel had not noticed it before. Yoen opened it, reached in, and lifted out a thin circlet of twisted gold. He walked toward Dariel, holding it high for all to see. “It began as a child’s armband,” he said. “Now it looks rather more like a crown.”
He paused before Dariel. The band was but a simple circlet. No stones set in it. No engravings. The only feature enhancing the gold beauty of it was the waves that years inside the tree must have bent into it.
“It’s beautiful,” the prince said.
Yoen agreed. “None here dispute it. You are our savior, Dariel. You are the one who came to free us. The Rhuin Fá. This band is yours to do with as you wish. I hope that you do something wise with it.” He pushed the band from his fingers into Dariel’s.
“This is not for me. It’s too precious.”
“We believe it is yours. It was always yours. You may even slip it atop your head, if you wish, and ask the people to accept your leadership. I believe they would.”
Holding the warped and stretched band—a child’s bracelet that had grown inside an acacia tree—Dariel absorbed what was being offered. It was there in the curves of the band. It was in Yoen’s eyes. Looking around the circle of elders and beyond them to his companions—both the new ones and the old—they all waited for him. It was up to him to say whether he wanted to ask the People to make him king of Ushen Brae. The headiness of this dizzied him. He stood with his mind racing out across the great continent he had only seen a portion of. He thought about the glowing ruins of Amratseer and the jagged peaks of Rath Batatt and the wild rapids of the Sheeven Lek. He remembered names of places he had heard of but had never seen. By the Giver, he might rebuild the ancient city of Lvinreth. He had never seen it, but the notion of a white-rocked city carved into the far north, a place where snow lions roamed the streets beside people … It took his breath away. He could be king, and he could create a culture different from anything in the Known World. Better. Fairer. A dream of a nation like one Aliver might have imagined. Perhaps one day he and Birké would climb into Rath Batatt. With Bashar and Cashen they would go hunting, wandering until they found whatever wonders lay beyond that range of mountains.
It would be a magnificent life.
Only … He searched out Melio’s face, saw him watching, concern on his features. Clytus as well. Geena. Even Kartholomé. If they had not come for him he might have answered Yoen differently. He might have grasped for a magnificent life in Ushen Brae. But they had come, and that life could not be. They had come to take him home, to Acacia, to Wren. If she lived and he could get back to her, he would never let her go again. Never. He had to go back. He had to sail with Melio beside him, hoping that the future included him being uncle to the child Melio wanted to have with Mena.
“No, I can’t accept this.” He looked around at the silent people watching him. “I love the Free People,” he said. “I have learned to love Ushen Brae, and I could not be more thankful for the gifts you’ve given me. But”—his gaze settled on Mór—“I must go home.” He walked to Mór and pushed the crown into her hands. “If this is mine to do with what I wish, I give it to Mór. Why not a queen instead of a king? A mother for the nation. Go ask the crowd what they think of that.”
When Mór looked down, stunned by the treasure in her hands, Dariel turned and walked away. In the hush, his steps sounded loud on the marble slabs. He did not look back, though he badly wanted to. He wanted to see Mór stepping into the light of day, crown in hand, to ask the People to name their future. He pictured it in his mind. He saw it that way, and walked with the vision in his mind’s eye, knowing it was a fine vision, a truly fine vision.
He was into the hallway and down it some ways before his steps slowed. He wanted to go back. What was he doing? He loved this place! If he had come here under different terms, he might have stayed forever. But he had been away from home too long. He did not want to forget the ones he loved over there. No, he had to go. He had to go home.
He got a few steps farther before he heard the eruption of cheers from the square. He kept walking, embarrassed lest anybody see the tears suddenly washing his face. A good effort, but he did not get far. He stopped again. He leaned against a wall and watched the world go liquid. He was not even sure why he was crying, whether it was for this place or the other, whether from sadness or joy. He listened to the hush and burst of cheers, to the gaps during which one or another person spoke. He could not hear what they were saying, but he was happy for them. The Free People were becoming a nation. The children who had been stolen had finally—
“Dariel!”
He began to walk again, but with blurred vision he was not sure which columned passage would take him out.
Anira caught up to him as he hesitated. He tried to turn his face from view. She caught his chin. “Has anyone told you what Rhuin Fá means?” she asked. “They did not say so before because it might have affected your decisions. You had to be pure, and to do what you would of your own accord.”
The moment she said this, Dariel realized that he did know what the title meant. He just had not thought about it since Nâ Gâmen gifted him with the Lothan Aklun language. He knew, though. He knew before Anira even said it.
“Dariel, it means ‘the one who closes the circle.’ ” She shook him gently. She moved her face close to his and kissed him. It was not a sensual gesture. It was just a gift between two friends. “Do you hear me? The one who closes the circle. Rhuin Fá, do you hear them? They’re calling for you. I think some of them want to go home with you. I think … many of them want to go home with you. They want a big, big league boat. They want you to captain it, and to take them home.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTY-TWO
They’re not bad young ones,” Delivegu said. “Didn’t talk much at first, but they loosened up as we traveled
. Get them talking about warfare and they’ll chew your ear off. I mean that literally.” He mussed the unruly black hair of the boy beside him.
Aliver smiled at the gesture. There was a fatherly sincerity to it that he had to acknowledge. He had always thought Delivegu a swaggering braggart, though he had not managed to say so while still bound by Corinn’s magic. Delivegu still had a swagger, but he had done what Aliver requested. He had reached them last night, in time, perhaps, for his mission to make a difference in what happened today.
“Thank you, Delivegu,” Aliver said. “You have done well.”
The Numrek children stood in a nervous cluster around the Senivalian. The eldest was in his early teens, the youngest looked to be five or six. Aliver could not be sure if their ages matched their appearance, but he thought so. He saw in the older boys the flame of newfound rebelliousness, in the younger children, the staring eyes of ones so frightened by the world that they could not look away from it even for a moment. They were just children. His enemy’s children, but still just children.
He counted seven of them, just like the number in Kelis’s dream. He recalled that Kelis had called them his children. He had dreamed that Aliver had seven children. Here they were. He thought, What if Shen had been captured like this? Aaden? It was not a far-fetched thought. In a world in which the Auldek fought this war to victory, his own dear ones would be at the mercy of his enemies, as these were.
“I mean you no harm,” Aliver said. “I know harm was done to you. I think, perhaps, that you saw what my sister did to your parents back in Teh. I am sorry for that. I hope that you live long lives, and that the years as they pass blur that memory. I can’t undo it any more than you can undo the crimes that drove the queen to feel the wrath she did that day. Do you know why she was so angry? Because your parents conspired to kill her son. That, more than anything, drove her to the madness you watched. I understand that madness, but I want no part of it myself. I have a child, too.”
That last statement stopped him. Whatever he was going to follow it with flew out of his mind. He sat a moment looking from one child’s face to another’s, searching for what he had been about to say. He did not find it. “I have a child, too” was not the beginning of a thought. It was the conclusion of it.
“Would you like to see Ushen Brae?” Aliver asked.
It took some time to get them to respond, with Delivegu helping. All of them eventually said they did want to see Ushen Brae.
“It’s a foreign land to you, and it won’t be as it was when your parents left.” This they did not have any response to. Why should they? They did not know Ushen Brae. They did know Acacia, though, and this place had not been kind to them. “If the Auldek will have you, would you go to them?”
The answers came back faster this time. Yes, of course they would.
Rising, Aliver moved toward the tent flap. He paused at it, and said, “I will try to send you home. It’s not up to me, but I will try.”
The mass of troops collected a few hundred paces behind them was an impressive force. Aliver only glanced at them, though. He had no desire to see the thousands of warriors and hundreds of beasts and machines of war arrayed against him. His own army had grown just as massive. The united humanity of the Known World stood rank upon rank behind him, people from all the provinces, with all their various languages and traits and characteristics. They would fight and die today, just as the Auldek forces would. For different reasons, but with the same ferocity. Corinn’s dragons would take to the air; the fréketes would do the same. This day could become an unimaginable, bloody conflagration. The wood was all stacked. The torch had only to be touched to the fuel. Or not.
So he kept his attention on the delegation just in front of him. Devoth, Sabeer, and the other clan chieftains stood a few strides away. Aliver had only seen them as spirit people, glowing and transparent. Still, he knew the figures who stood before him now were not as they had been but a few days ago. The defiance in Devoth’s laugh just a few nights before, the confidence, the certainty of knowing that death was far removed from them: it was all gone. Their faces looked haggard, stunned. Their eyes drooped with fatigue.
Mena stared at them as if she did not even recognize them. Behind him and his sister, Aliver had brought a small contingent, the handful who had done the spirit work with him the night before. It fell to him to complete this, to succeed or fail, but it felt very good to have those trusted friends behind him. Both groups were unarmed, having set their weapons on the ground before drawing near each other. If the Auldek attacked them, he and his people would die. Again, if that happened, he would have failed, and there would be nothing more he could do about it.
Devoth spoke first. “What have you done to us?” he asked, speaking Acacian.
“Nothing unjust,” Aliver said. He spoke without a hint of bravado. Without derision or anger, managing to sound both firm and empathetic. It was not a tone of voice he had to work hard to master. It was simply how he felt. “You awoke the other morning feeling different, didn’t you? You didn’t speak of it to the others because you felt weak. You felt frightened in a way you never have before. Or, at least, a way you don’t remember ever having felt before.”
“No,” Devoth grumbled. Though his eyes were savage, his no came out strangely passive. He denied it. He also wanted to hear more. The others did as well.
“You were alone then,” Aliver continued, “but when all the Auldek woke this morning they felt the same as you. They might not have said as much. I know you are a proud people. And what could you say, when you could not explain why the world feels different to you today from yesterday? I can explain it, for I had a hand in it. Do you want to know what we’ve done to you?”
“We have already asked you to tell us,” Sabeer said.
“Has Devoth told you of the peace that I proposed?”
“Yes,” Sabeer answered.
“Have you also heard it in your dreams—from me or from one of these here behind me?” The silence they responded with was answer enough. “The peace I offered is still what I offer today. I swear to it before my god, the Giver, who I believe created this world. The visitors that you had in your dreams, they were also real. They took my message to you; they also took something from you. They took back what you never should have stolen. They took from you, and released into death, the souls you had eaten. That’s why the world feels different to you today. Today, you have all woken up mortal. You have only the life you were born with inside you. Only that single, transparent, fragile soul stands between you and the afterdeath.”
The other Auldek stared at him, their faces like masks. They looked, standing so still and vacant, like they were already dead. Aliver almost smiled. You would think I’d killed you already. I haven’t. I’m the one counting down his last breaths. Hurry, let’s complete this.
“You have stolen our lives from us?” Devoth whispered.
“No, you stole them from the children we sent you. Your sin was taking them inside yourself; ours was sending them to you in the first place. These last nights we worked to end both your sin and ours.”
“You stole from us,” Devoth said.
“We made you Auldek again!” Aliver said. “You don’t even remember what you used to be. Once, you were mortal. You don’t remember that, but back then—before you sold yourselves to the Lothan Aklun—you were truly Auldek. You lived and died. You married and had children. I know these things about you. Rialus Neptos told you of us; he also told us of you.”
Devoth did not glance at the thin Acacian. Sabeer did, though. She pinned him with her eyes. Without even turning, Aliver knew Rialus squirmed beneath the gaze.
“You loved life and feared death and that is what living is! Life is given to us only as a temporary thing. All of us who can think know we live on borrowed time. That’s the beauty of it. We have to live now, for it will soon be gone. You lost that, and then you forgot that you lost it. We have given it back to you. It’s a gift from us to you.
I know that you intended to die back to your true soul here in the Known World. That’s part of what you came for. You would have killed or enslaved us first, but I cannot allow that. So take the gifts we have given you. Leave the rest. Leave the old crimes. Leave the new ones you would have committed. Leave it and go home. Take with you a future in which you can live true again. Your mission here will not be a failure. This is not defeat, Devoth. You came to find a way to live again. You came to become fertile. You came to end your life as slavers and become your true selves again. All that you can have. Let me show you what that future can look like.”
Aliver turned before they could respond. He shouted something back to his army, and a moment later several soldiers moved aside. The Numrek children walked through the gap left open for them. The seven figures proceeded forward cautiously. Aliver beckoned to them. “Come! Let your uncles and aunts see you. Come!”
When the children reached them, they stood awkwardly, out from the Acacians, and yet reluctant to go any nearer the Auldek. Sabeer said something to the children in Auldek. Several of them responded. She motioned them forward with her fingers. A man to one side of her squatted down and beckoned them with his arms. The children drifted closer, until near enough that the adults touched them. They began speaking rapidly to them, different adults asking different children questions. They squeezed them on the shoulders and pulled them into embraces and cupped their faces in their palms.
Allek, the Numrek who had come in his father’s place, pushed his way through his elders and called to one of the younger girls. Seeing him, she broke from the woman who was stroking her hair and ran to him. She jumped into his embrace and the young man turned away, trying to hide the heaving sobs that wracked his chest.
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