Most treacherous, however, were the places where the river flowed over obstructions usually above the water. Some of these were normally islands, now nothing but treetops reaching from the depths like the fingers of drowning giants. There were stone ledges that nearly ripped open the hull of one boat and massive boulders over which water fell into churning chaos. One of the leading vessels went over such a fall. It dug down into the froth and then rose, bow high in the air, poised a moment as if it might shoot into the sky. But then—sickeningly, despite the protesting groans of all those watching—it slid backward. The stern of the ship caught in the down-rushing torrent behind it. The whole thing somersaulted backward, sending men hurtling into the air out to all sides, then tumbling into the froth. The ship went end over end for a few seconds, then disappeared. When the hull of the vessel emerged, it was a living ship no longer. It broke the surface as a lifeless hulk, like the underbelly of some dead leviathan.
They were swept on. They rode on the back of a watery serpent. Hanish loved it. He had been too long cooped up! How wonderful to be free, even if that freedom led to death. He did not pity those he lost or mourn for them. This serpent just charged a heavy toll for the service it rendered. All that mattered was that he was getting close to his goal. Close enough that he prepared to try a thing he had previously experimented with only in the seclusion of Tahalian.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Aliver began to dream nightly of dueling with nameless, faceless foes. Unlike the whimsical imaginings of times past, when swordplay was a fanciful clash with mythic foes, these visions were of a dark nature, each moment humming with fear. They always began innocuously enough: with him walking the alleys of the lower town, talking with his companions over breakfast, searching in his room for a book he knew he had placed somewhere. But at some point events always pivoted to sudden violence. A soldier would appear at the end of a passageway with sword unsheathed, calling him by name; the dining table would overturn and when the bulk of it cleared his view, the scene behind became one of enemy warriors swarming into the room like a thousand spiders—in through the windows, clinging to the ceiling with swords clasped between their teeth in enormous, metallic grins. Often he simply sensed that behind him was a formless, seething malice he would have to confront.
In these dreams he fought well enough up until the moment he had to sink his weapon home. Then, with the realization that he was about to slice into a living creature just like him, the flow of time snagged. Motion slowed. His muscles lost their strength and became useless ribbons of tar beneath his skin. He never watched his blade cut into the flesh of these dream enemies. Instead he awoke, panting, body tensed and trembling as if the fight had just taken place in the real world. Only then did the slow stink of reality creep over him. He had not woken from an ill dream to a welcoming world; he had opened his eyes once more to a waking nightmare that daily shrugged off his efforts to deny it.
His father was dead. This meant a thousand things to Aliver, all of them confusing. Not even his ascendance to the throne was straightforward. The Akarans were strict monarchists, but the larger situation was so confused as to delay Aliver’s rise to fill his father’s place. The same reverence for ritual that allowed the people to accept a monarchy also demanded a rigid adherence to tradition. New kings were crowned only in autumn, at the same time as the deceased king’s ashes were released. It was on that day that Tinhadin had first ascended, and it was deemed necessary that all others follow his venerable example. On almost every occasion in the years thereafter there had been a pause between the ruling monarch’s death and the new one’s crowning. A wait of several months was not at all without precedent. The unprecedented action would have been to crown a king on a date other than the summer solstice and to do so without a full, sitting contingent of governors. The priestesses of Vada found the time inauspicious for a crowning and refused to bless any ceremony. And the machinery of government seemed to have no interest in thrusting an inexperienced adolescent into a role so fraught with import. Perhaps some other prince would have grasped power anyway. But not Aliver. Despite himself, he felt something like relief that a crown had not been set atop his head immediately, though he would not admit this. Thaddeus was better suited to serve as the royal voice for the time being.
Bad news flew at him. He could barely register one tragedy before another shouldered past it. Cathgergen was lost to some barbarian horde, the garrison there destroyed, the governor and his entourage thrown out into the cold, bearing a message of coming doom for the world. None of this was easily conceived of. For Cathgergen to fall it meant the defeat of—of how many? Two thousand soldiers? At least that many. And there was no word that any of these had escaped to tell their story or even that some were being held prisoner. And what of the many others who had lived in the fortress—craftsmen and traders, courtesans and laborers and their children, the varied people who made an isolated outpost like Cathgergen livable? They were all simply gone, and Aliver had yet to hear anyone explain how this was possible.
Several key Alecian officials had been slain in their beds. Many of them died along with their wives, husbands, children, servants, and slaves, their bodies hacked far beyond what was necessary to take their lives, as if each of them had been the victim of a crazed killer frenzied beyond reason. Two days later there was another attack on members of the royal family as they tried to leave Manil, the rocky cliffside town on which the most luxurious of the familial palaces perched. Leodan’s half sister, Katrina, along with fourteen others who bore the name Akaran by birth, and more beyond that by marriage, were caught at the docks on a bright morning. Men disguised as dockworkers sprang upon them once they boarded their ship and chopped them down with short swords they had concealed in their garments.
Nobody knew how such extensive plots could have been kept secret and launched with such deadly efficiency. The collective hum and murmur of rumor gave birth to the belief that many of the assassins in both attacks had been house servants, gardeners, and laborers employed by the aristocracy, many of them in service for years without betraying a single sign of deceit. Another tale asserted that a fleet of warships was sliding south out of the frozen Mein. They had been seen by fur trappers near the icy fingers of the River Ask, but how these simple people in so remote a place could have dispatched such a message was never explained, nor could much sense be made of the very idea they proposed. Some claimed that Rialus Neptos—who disappeared after the massacre of the Alecian officials—had a role in the uprising. And still others claimed that the entire entourage of league representatives had sailed away without a word.
Aliver wanted desperately to make sense of what was happening and to piece it together in a way that grappled the chaos back into manageable bounds, but moments of quiet thought were few and troublingly brief. The days of Marah training were behind him now. His officers spoke to those who had only days before been students as if they had suddenly risen in stature in their eyes. They had all, it seemed, been promoted in one mass movement. They spoke of the trials they now faced with an honesty Aliver had not expected and did not welcome. Men who had seemed so confident in their roles just a few days ago now seemed uneasy, tentative and jumpy when giving orders. The future before them, they explained, was fraught not simply with the physical pain of training or with humiliation of being defeated at exhibition matches or even with social disgrace, once the gravest possibility of a failure of character. These were all hazards they had navigated before. Now they were to fight with their actual lives at stake. He would soon be expected to kill. The very thought of it turned the way he viewed all of his training on its head. Did he have it in him to kill? It scarcely seemed possible. Could it be, he thought, that he would fail his nation at the first test? Never had he dreaded a thing as much as he did this possibility.
What made it worse was that he did not know what would really be expected of him. His position alongside his peers was more awkward than ever. On the one hand, he feared that he wou
ld be spared battle responsibility just as he had always been set apart from the others in training. On the other hand, the truth remained that the officers pointed again and again to the Forms for examples of battle valor, and in most of these it had been a royal personage wielding the sword or spear or ax. Was he expected to step into those legendary shoes and lead them to victory? He did not know, and nobody—not even Thaddeus—stepped in to inform him.
With only days left before the young soldiers learned of their deployments and set off to fill them, Thaddeus Clegg joined the officers to appraise the troops at assembly. The chosen site was the stadium named after the seventh king’s wife, the Carmelia. It sat on a flat wedge of land that pushed out into the ocean like a half-submerged foot, below the palace but slightly above the lower town. A great bowl carved into the stone, the Carmelia could seat thousands on benches hollowed to hold each spectator. The arena was a vast space, open to the air, with the packed soil of the floor nearly as hard as stone, mopped often in circular patterns that, when stared at, played tricks on the watcher’s eyes.
Before the officers’ and the chancellor’s still forms, the best young soldiers the island had to offer marched into the stadium, holding perfectly to the formation of an infantry battalion. They moved in answer to the calls of a battle flute, a strangely melancholy, whimsical instrument, but one that carried to all their ears. Over the next hour a few had the honor of fighting singly for the spectators. After that, the bulk of the five hundred of them took part in an elaborate staging of the Ninth Form, in which the Haden and the Woodsmen saved Tinhadin’s Bride from the Senivalian Treachery. After this they stood to listen to their leaders regale them with speeches as much about past glory as about the conflict facing them now.
Later, the chancellor addressed them. Thaddeus rubbed the stubble on his chin and thought for some time. Without the finery of his robes and the sash over his shoulders that marked his office he would barely have been recognized, so haggard and deep lined was his visage. “I have learned something this very day that I must share with you,” he said. “I prefer to do it this way, down among you, close enough so that we can see and touch each other.” He held up his hand, which Aliver only then noticed held a scroll. The chancellor turned it at angles to show it to all the soldiers, as if they could read its import from where they stood. “This is a declaration of war from Hanish Mein, son of Heberen. In it he states his hatred of us and proclaims himself the chieftain of the coming world. There is no guesswork any longer. We know whom we fight and why. We know that he wants our complete destruction. He believes he has the power to succeed, and because of that he has launched his cowardly attacks. Such is the struggle before us. Such is the foulness that can be contained in a thin document like this.”
Thaddeus looked as if he might fling the scroll to the breeze. The soldiers held to silence, as did the officers, all of them expecting that the man had something more to add. The chancellor stood, neither turning away nor proceeding, his gaze, despite the people surrounding him, meeting no one’s eyes. Aliver realized that he could hear the crash of the waves on the bulkhead below the stadium. He counted one and then a second and third impact, surprised that he had not noticed the sound before, struck by the intimacy with which the sea touched the land. He could feel it through his feet. It was in the air also, each reverberation transmitted to him as if some invisible, crystalline rain of spray fell over his face and shoulders. There was an entire world beyond his present view, and all of it threatened to arrive unannounced at any moment.
Thaddeus raised his head and seemed to bring the faces around him into focus. He swept his gaze across them, touching Aliver in passing. “My suggestion,” he said, “is that we all learn to love chaos this very day. Let us all think of turmoil as a feature of our lives. As there is a sun moving across the sky, as there is wind whistling over the earth, as the night follows the day and it cannot be otherwise…So will all among us suffer; this cannot be otherwise either. Embrace this today and you will be better prepared for tomorrow. Just a moment ago you demonstrated the Ninth Form. As you all know there are only ten of these. There is no reason, however, that there cannot one day be an Eleventh. Consider this also as you face the coming struggle.” He turned as if to go but thought better of it and said one last thing. “Also, prepare yourself to be surprised. The world is a different place than you know. It may be that you will believe we have failed to prepare you for it.”
On the morning they were to receive their final instructions in preparation for the war, Aliver met Melio and Hephron on the upper terraces. The prince nodded to them both, surprised to find himself welcoming Hephron’s company. There was something comforting in it. Just a few days ago he had disliked Hephron intensely. He had thought him an enemy. But none of this occurred to him now. Hephron had already suffered more than he had. He had lost two sisters at Manil, a cousin, and several servants that he had known since childhood. With the death of several other high-ranking Akarans he had leaped closer to the throne. In the past Aliver might have expected this to give Hephron joy, but such petty considerations no longer held any merit. Hephron’s face showed nothing save the creased fatigue of his losses and a resolve to face whatever was yet to come.
“I just received my assignment,” Hephron said. “They are sending me to Alecia. I asked to be sent to reinforce Aushenia. They are sure to meet the horde that has taken Cathgergen, and I wanted to be where I am needed most.” He hesitated a moment, walking on and mulling over his thoughts for a few strides. A shout echoed up from the terrace below, but they were some distance away from it and they carried on at the same pace. “But…it is not without honor of a sort. I am to second under General Rewlis.”
“You’re a second?” Aliver asked, stopping in his tracks.
“Don’t act so surprised.”
“I am—I am not surprised.”
“Everything has changed,” Hephron said. “Even the league has acknowledged it. They recalled all three of their transport ships and sailed them away without a word. We can still move troops but not as easily as we would like.”
“Are they part of this?” Melio asked. “The league, I mean. Do you know, Aliver?”
“Not for sure,” he said. “I doubt it, though. The league lives and breathes to profit from trade. They do not care with whom they do it. They are just cautious, self-interested.”
Hephron smiled. “They are not the only ones.”
“What does that mean?” Melio asked.
“This is no time to talk about it. Perhaps later.”
“Why later?” Aliver asked. “Because of me? There is something you dare not say in front of me?”
Hephron glanced at Aliver, then looked away. “I always hold my tongue in your company. Everybody does. Nobody wants to offend the future king.”
“You seem intent on trying,” Melio quipped.
“We should not have squabbled before. All this posturing between us is foolish, but I know some things the prince does not and I cannot help but think about them. My father did not wish me to be deceived. He told me the truth about things. Maybe this will be news to you too, Melio. He always said our crimes would one day return to us. All the things that are happening…if you knew the truth, none of it would surprise you. For example, how do you think we maintain our wealth? We are taught nothing of it. We are just supposed to believe that wealth endures. We won it before, so it is ours forever, right? We are a fine people who just deserve dominion over the world. Everyone is content with it. It is for the best, really.” He looked between the two, smirking. “Does that sound right to you? Think about it. Once you have come to recognize that the sums do not add up…seek me out. I will tell you all I know about the rotten heart of Acacia. Then you will wonder why no one attacked us before this.”
Aliver thought that he should smack him. Slap his face and challenge him to draw his sword. No one would expect any less a response to such a condemnation of the nation. Or he should report him. Let the officers inter
rogate him. Was this not his duty? What if Hephron was preparing to betray them?
“I apologize if I offend,” Hephron said without sounding the least bit apologetic. “It is not you I am angry with. You are a pawn in this as much as I am. But I am the one who is going to have to risk my neck for it. Me and Melio here, and others like us.” He began to move away, walking backward for a few steps before he turned. “Grown men, my father told me, must have the internal breadth to hold complexity within them. Only fools hold absolutes. You are not a fool, Aliver. You are just naïve.”
Aliver, walking again a half stride behind Hephron, repeated those words in his mind several times. He knew he should be angry, should curse him for weakness now that they were being threatened. But instead he walked on as if pulled in the other’s wake. He twinned the young man’s words with the chancellor’s cryptic confession. He was still thinking about the gravity of their implications when they reached the head of the stairs. Hephron, who had gained the vista just before him, froze. For a space of seconds, standing at the head of the stairs looking down, the scene before Aliver made absolutely no sense.
The square below, some hundred steps away, was in a state of utter confusion. People swarmed in all directions, shrieking. The first person he could recognize was General Rewlis. But just as he made out who he was, he watched him being cut from behind through his leg. He recognized the person wielding the blade and tried to name him but could not. Rewlis went down to one knee, head thrown back in a scream of pain, silenced a moment later as the same sword that had cut his leg split his neck in a diagonal blow aimed just below the ear. A second later the blade slipped free. The general crumpled, a fount of blood gushing from his neck, his legs smearing the stones as they churned with the last of his life.
“Hellel?” Melio whispered.
Acacia, The War with the Mein Page 20
