The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  In brief moments he had before the liquid mist overcame him, Dagon thrashed around, both in his chair and inside his head, fighting the rush of fear he claimed not to feel. He searched for thoughts that he should somehow banish, but as soon as he found one that was embarrassing or questionable, another popped up like a bubble beside it. And then another. He got nowhere. There was so much to hide, the innocuous just as much as the substantial. He wondered how this was happening. He should have arrived here a hero. A man of action. One of decisive…

  B eing mind-probed by a chamber full of leaguemen, Dagon learned, was unequal parts horrifying, degrading, embarrassing, and enlightening. How much of each depended on the moment in question. Each moment of the examination blurred into spiraling circles, in which he could get no sense of time’s progression. He put together a sketchy narrative for himself of how the experience had gone afterward. Even this was putting order to a process that had in truth been like being explored by a swarm of scheming bees.

  Early on, his brothers had focused their attention on the Queen’s Council meeting that had so disturbed him, the one in which Aliver had appeared in the flesh. They moved forward through his visit to Grau, in which he suggested and then argued for the monarchs’ assassinations. An observer at his own dissection, Dagon knew that the memory as he reexperienced it did not match the memory as he recalled it, but he could find no way to voice this.

  His brothers watched the coronation through his eyes, turned over his emotions as the monarchs caressed their present, felt his fear as the Santoth changed everything. They looked through his eyes as he searched his library for some way to understand them, and they watched him write the letter that confessed the crime he had helped perpetrate only hours before. They followed him as he fled from Acacia aboard a pleasure yacht in the dead of night, chasing a messenger bird toward Alecia. The voyage surprised him in some particulars. Had fleeing Acacia really wrung him through with as much melancholia as it seemed to? No, not possible! He had not gotten teary at seeing the harbor lights recede in the wake of his boat. He had not been overcome with sadness for the lives of all those poor fools still rafted together, in shock and mourning and confusion now, instead of sharing the euphoria the day had begun with.

  Apparently-although he did not remember it this way-a barrage of random memories had assaulted him throughout the short voyage. He revisited old conversations with Leodan Akaran and Thaddeus Clegg, his treacherous, conflicted chancellor. Dagon had not liked either man, so why did it seem like he wished he could have them with him in his cabin, talking through the recent events while sharing a mist pipe? Why recall the time one of the white minks the concubines kept got loose in his quarters, unnerving him as it darted about with its long tail swishing behind it? What use was remembering the time he sat through some banquet with a sore tooth, struggling to hide his discomfort from those around him? What a strange, useless thing to recall. And yet there it was, as vivid in its own way as some of the most crucial moments of his tenure in Acacia.

  They lingered with him through the dream he had of the time Corinn arrived in his offices-so young then, beautiful in the newly ripened manner of youth. He had thought cruelly about the work he would have liked to put her mouth to when she caught him off guard. He had to retrace the half-heard words she had spoken, taking a moment to comprehend the audacity of the proposal she was making. She spoke her way into an empire right then and bound Hanish Mein’s hands with a few well-conceived words. Not her lover’s pawn after all, it turned out.

  And that took him to a view of Hanish’s face in profile as he stared at one of the palace’s golden monkeys. It was an image Dagon saw with such detail it might have been a painting hung on the wall before him. He had hated the man’s perfect features, his lover’s eyes, and the arrogant grace with which he occupied his body. But what he remembered was wondering if Hanish had any suspicion that the league had often used the monkeys as thieves and messengers. They were clever, easily trained, and seemed to take a certain amount of satisfaction from working covertly. Of course Hanish hadn’t known. Nobody on Acacia ever had. Dagon would miss those monkeys. Realizing this made him shake his head at his own mawkishness. He needed the steadying influence of his brothers.

  Irrelevant, he thought, and yet some of his brothers seemed fascinated by these things and by the fact that he buried all such thoughts deep when he met with his fellow leaguemen in Alecia. They had all been agitated, both by what had happened during the coronation and by the call for evacuation that Dagon arrived with. He had acted recklessly. There would be a reckoning about it. An investigation. Consequences. Despite the grumbling, they echoed Dagon’s orders to their own staff.

  See, Dagon thought, they did what I suggested because there was no other choice! I acted. I led. And why was there no mention of Grau’s part in all this?

  By dawn of the next day they had all fled aboard the largest vessels they could organize on short notice. They sailed south, bristling warning with the manned ballistae hanging from the sides of the ship. In their wake they left abandoned estates and billows of black smoke rising from their offices and libraries, storehouses and estates. Dagon rather liked the images it all left in his mind. It helped sweep away the troublesome memories. Here was something decisive. When the leaguemen abandon a place, they leave scorched earth behind them. Nothing for others to use. No apologies. No regrets.

  These portions were not so bad. Much of the probing vindicated him. If it had ended there-and it should have-he would have had no reason to complain. It did not end there, though. He would later wonder just which of his brothers had spent so much time on raking through his childhood like a gardener turning manure into the earth. And who circled around and around his early sexual encounters? What reason was there to tease out small, perverse moments, things at the edge of his life, things inconsequential?

  He knew the answer. It could be any of them. And they did it because it amused them. Those things were out of his hands. Only how he handled himself when the probe ended could matter now.

  R egaining consciousness took much longer than Dagon would have imagined. He slowly came back into his body. He felt the tubes as they were yanked out of his nose, and then the straps on his feet, and later wrists, being untied. Someone wiped spittle from his mouth and tugged at his nose with the same cloth. He heard one liten ask another if Dagon had soiled himself, and felt the cursory probing of his nether regions that prompted the response, “Not from the back end, at least.”

  Though his consciousness returned, it took some time before he could so much as open his eyes. He lay there listening to his brothers discuss him. The gurgling of their mist pipes sounded like laughter. If they had spent time discussing the serious matters, they were beyond it now. Sire Grindus joked about the childhood infatuation he had for one of his maids. Sire Pindar increased the mirth by mentioning that he still had the same infatuation, despite the fact the woman must surely be many years a corpse. If the queen knew the sort of things he had pictured her doing, another said, she would have his head. “She would have all our heads,” Grindus admitted, to a murmur of laughter that echoed around the chamber.

  “Odd the workings of the mind,” Sire Nathos said.

  “Ah…” Dagon said. “Ah, odd… indeed.”

  The others hushed a moment, until Revek said, “I believe he is back among us. Dagon, we have discussed your matter at length. Wake and hear our verdict.”

  Dagon drew out a handkerchief and dabbed at his face. He ran a hand up over the long cone of his skull, patting his hair into place. That was all the regaining of dignity he managed before Revek continued. Pulling his mouth away from his pipe, he spoke through an exhalation of green mist vapor. “We find you guilty of gross misconduct.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, we do. Why wouldn’t we? We know everything that happened. Without a doubt, you committed grave actions without the council’s consent. You compounded these with further actions, and then you compelled your fellow
leaguemen into actions they had no choice but to agree to. All these things are true. I suggest you close your mouth before letting any of the thoughts in your head slip out of it. Remember, Dagon, that all of us in this chamber have been inside you. We are still, to some degree. So hush. That is a command. For the rest of this council, you will not say a word, on pain of banishment.”

  Stirring a cloud of mist vapor from in front of his face, Revek peered through it. “So that is the verdict,” he said. “As for punishment… we are also agreed upon that. You are to forfeit your Rapture tithe. You will keep your rank, but if you ever hope to gain Rapture, you will need to earn a great deal in the coming years. Your tithe will be divided among the sires nearest to Rapture themselves.”

  This can’t be happening. I only did what you all would have. And I did not do it alone. He glanced across the close circle at Grau, but the man had attention only for the chairman.

  “Now, let us discuss the future,” Revek said. “I know the situation looks dire, but it may not be as bad as all that. We know the ill tidings well enough. Let us share the better news. I’ll start.” He glanced around, touching each of the faces of the men in the inner circles. “It appears Sires Faleen and Lethel have been doing fine work in Ushen Brae.”

  Dagon reclined, numb. He knew that what he thought had just happened had, in fact, just happened, but it was too enormous a reversal-and too unwarranted and cruel-for his mind to grasp the whole of it. Despite himself, he listened to Revek’s report on Ushen Brae.

  The nascent unification of the slaves into some collective state had been nipped. Instead, the slaves had fractured along the very lines of their enslavement. The strongest groups among them were loyal to the league. To aid in the continent’s pacification, Sire El had been dispatched with his army. They would ensure that the league secured its position there, should Ushen Brae need to become their base of operations.

  Of the fate of the Known World, Revek shrugged and said that what will be, will be. He did not subscribe to the sort of panic that had taken possession of Dagon’s senses. “To those who likewise despair I ask one thing,” Sire Revel said, “just one thing and then I will fall silent while the younger among you speak.” He let that sit a moment, as if to demonstrate that he was capable of falling silent. “Who is to say that we won’t be able to do business with the Santoth when all the confusion dies down? They are sorcerers like Tinhadin was, and we had no difficulty coming to a most agreeable arrangement with him. It could be the same with the Santoth. Better, even, for we now have years of experience on which to set our terms. That, Dagon, is where you erred. Not even a Santoth victory is as calamitous as you seemed to believe.”

  The phrase “too true” escaped more than one leagueman’s lips.

  “Bu-” Dagon began, but clipped the word before he completed it. All that he had done, the decisive action he had taken, and this was the thanks he got for it? He wanted to lash out at them all. He could not, though. He realized, listening to the murmuring affirmation and enthusiasm that greeted Revek’s “one thing” that, had someone else acted as he had, he would himself be speaking against him. He could not argue because Revek was right. The league had not been in the danger he feared. How could it be? They were the league. It was as simple as that. They rode atop the tides of other nations’ follies. They did not-or should not-fall into their traps themselves.

  Sire Nathos could not keep the enthusiasm from his voice when he said, “And don’t forget the vintage. Brothers, in the coming weeks the supplies of the stuff in the Known World will begin to run out. As our testing has shown, they will grow apathetic. They will lose any lust for life. They will sit down and… die. A great many of them will, at least. Imagine the Santoth newly in charge of the world discovering that their conquered subjects can’t be made to work, to eat, to fornicate, or do anything else. The same goes for the Auldek, should they emerge victorious. And the same is true for the Akarans, if by some miracle they hold on to power. All of them will face the same problem-a mass dying that they have no way to remedy.” He paused for effect. “Except by reaching out to us. Only we control the process. Only we can make more of the vintage. Sire Dagon was foolish for ordering the warehouse and distillery on Prios destroyed, but we can just rebuild, either here or…”

  “In Ushen Brae,” Grau finished. “I rather fancy one of those Lothan Aklun estates on the barrier isles myself.”

  “You will have one,” Nathos said. “We all will. It’s absolutely without risk of failure, brothers. If they balk, we simply let them die. If for any reason we want to prevent that, we can give them the release. Not even the queen ever figured out that we both made the addiction and the cure for it at the same time. It was the cure, really, that took us so long to perfect. Should we want to, we could even give the cure to some and not to others, as suits us.” He chuckled. “I’m sorry for showing my mirth, brothers, but we have been too somber up to now. The situation is not so dire, despite Dagon’s attempts to make it so.”

  “True enough,” Sire Grau said. “Let us sail through this as ever. When the dust settles, we can make our arrangements with whoever is left. Both the Known World and Ushen Brae will need to be rebuilt, repopulated, controlled. Labor will need to be managed, security provided, goods and services transported. The powerful will need the resources only we can provide them. The weak will again clamor for the illusions and trinkets only we know how to wave before their noses. I think, brothers, that we can look to the future with just as much optimism as ever.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Sire Grindus said. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ll be on your way to Rapture now. You and Revek.”

  “Fate has made that so,” Grau acknowledged. “Such is my burden. I may not see it all with you, but I know the future is wonderfully bright.”

  “Oh…” Dagon said. He caught himself before the exhalation became a word. He stretched it out, staring at Grau as he did so. And at Revek. What a fool I am.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Having so little time to live, with so much to do, Aliver worked without resting. He did not think about all the weeks he had lounged about the palace in Acacia. Bemoaning the past would do him no good. He had told Corinn not to. He wouldn’t either.

  Later that very day, he cut away from the other riders and swept down on Kidnaban. He caught Paddel, the head vintner, trying to make his escape on a pleasure yacht loaded to the brim with the riches of his estate. Landing Kohl on the boat’s elaborate prow, Aliver shouted over her shoulders and the black flare of her wings, “Paddel, I am Aliver Akaran! I come to you with questions. I will have answers; you will give them now. If not, you will be food for my mount.”

  Paddel-sweating and faint as he was, constantly touching his bald head and the tattooing meant to replicate hair on it-proved very forthcoming.

  That evening in Alecia, Aliver spoke before a late session of the Senate. The things he said were easy for him, the words there on his tongue without hesitation. They were truths as he knew them. He would himself lead the army of Acacia north, up over the Methalian Rim. Hopefully, they would meet Princess Mena quickly, but in any event they would face the Auldek on the Mein Plateau. “While I live, they will not come down from there,” he said. “I pledge you that.”

  He declared that the league had shown themselves to be traitorous scoundrels, enemies to everyone in the empire. “They’ve bled us all these years and sipped our blood as if it were wine. You see their abandoned palaces, their warehouses in ashes, and their ships all gone, fled to the Outer Isles? This is all proof that they’ve been found out. They’ve run from us, and they are now our enemy just as much as the Auldek are.”

  He announced to them what he had learned about the vintage. The nation was addicted to the mist once again. They did not even know it, for it came to them in the bottles of wine on every table in the empire and it affected them so mildly that they did not know how much they depended on it. They drank of it every night, an enemy right there in their homes. �
��It is vile and subtle,” he said, “but we cannot save our nation without our full and true minds.” He ordered all wine poured out, casks smashed, not one more drop of it consumed. “Friends, let us drink water until this war is concluded. I will do the same. You may find it hard, at first, but I will be with each and every one of you, helping you forward.”

  He told them that the Santoth had finally revealed their true nature. “They are an evil none of us here can stand against, and if they triumph, all the world will be enslaved to them.” He said that only one person could defeat them. Queen Corinn. “Only my sister has sorcery to match theirs. So pray for her. Put behind you now your hatred of her, your jealousy. Put behind you the schemes you have had for grasping power when this war ends. Put it all behind you, and pray to the Giver that she succeeds. If she does not, you have no future anyway.”

  He admitted that he had a daughter but said she was not to be a pawn in the war or after it. “The queen and I have agreed to the order of succession. Should anything happen to us, we want these instructions followed.” He produced the box, a small metal container that he had carried with him on Kohl. “I have them here, in a locked box that I will leave in the care of the Senate. In this box are my wishes. Corinn’s wishes. You need not fear them, for they are just. This box is not to be opened until instructions on succession are needed. The key will be kept in safety. You need not seek it. It will appear when it’s needed. Before I leave this in your care I must have something from you: your word that you will abide by our wishes. All of you. Each and every one of you must swear to abide by our wishes. I want your oath on the Senate records.” Aliver had smiled then, looking around the chamber at the rapt faces staring at him. “I understand that I am not giving you a say in this. But I am your king.”

  After saying all this, and after getting each senator’s oath to abide by the instructions in the locked box, Aliver left the senators in the chamber speechless. Yes, he spoke the truth, but he did not speak all of it. He had not mentioned that the league, in their treachery, had put numbers on his days of life. If he failed on the Mein Plateau, he would be dead before he had to see the Auldek coming down from it. He did not say that as the people came off the vintage they would lose the will to live, and die because of it. Though he told them Corinn fought on their behalf, he did not say that she had only as many days to succeed as he did, or that she no longer could use The Song to aid her, or that she did not intend to return from the mission at all. He knew that the senators who swore to obey the succession plan would not have done so readily if they did not fear him and Corinn and the coming war. And while he told them he would repel the Auldek, he did not say that to him success was no longer the same as what it was for them. Victory could be something else, he believed. No easier to attain-perhaps harder, in truth-but a new way. A better way.