The War With The Mein (27 page)

“That’s the tongue of the Gray Slopes,” Val said. “It is a boundless ocean. That’s where you’ll vanish from your father’s world and emerge into mine instead.”

Dariel had not said anything in response. For weeks now there had been a vague fear hanging over him, as ever present as the sky. Some portion of him had never believed he could carry on without his family. He would vanish without them. The world would swallow him. The Giver’s fingers would pluck him from the earth and flick him into nothingness. He feared he was of no more substance than a flame and just as easily extinguished. But here he was. The world carried on as it always had, and he still moved through it. He went on; he had something at his center just as solid and real as the rest of the world. He really could vanish from one world and emerge into another, he thought. Vanish and emerge anew…

That was exactly what he had done. Val gave him a new life, bestowed on him a new name even as he took one for himself. He taught him that the tales he had told of being a blood-soaked pirate in his youth were not just make-believe, as the boy had thought. Val—Dovian, in short for his native country—came from the long line of raiders he had claimed. On arriving back among the Outer Isles it did not take him long to reestablish himself and set about building a fleet of ships and getting sailors to man them. The world was ripe for plunder. The Known World was in near chaos, grudgingly coming to terms with Hanish Mein’s new rule. Many groups jostled to find a place in the redistribution of power this entailed. Val sailed with Dariel tucked under his wing; taught him everything he could about sailing and fighting, pirating, commanding men; about surviving this cruelest of existences.

That which came before—the palace of Acacia, his role as prince, his father’s empire, and three others born of him and his mother, Aleera Akaran—well, it seemed to be clearer in Val’s mind than in Dariel’s. Why try to hold on to people he would never see again? He had been so young that his memories had not stuck in his head with an ordered clarity. Yes, there were images. There were moments of emotion that seemed to take him by the neck and close off the air to his lungs. There were times when he awoke from dreams fearing that something was horribly wrong, but he grew to tolerate this as the years passed. Maybe such was just what it meant to be alive.

Spratling—yes, that was his name now and there was no reason to slip back to that scared child persona any more than he had to—flipped open the small latch of the chest and tipped the contents onto Dovian’s bed, a slithering tumble of gold coins. The man stared at them, ran his fingers over them, tested their feel on his palm. He whispered that this was it. This was just what they had needed. This would fund everything….

He plucked up an object between his fingers and held it up to a ribbon of sunlight. It was gold—gold colored at least, though the workmanship was almost too fine and sharp edged for such a soft metal. The shape of it was unusual. It was the thickness of a large coin, slightly square, ridged along one end, inscribed with markings that might have been writing but which bore no similarity to any language either of them had seen. There was a single hole at its center, just slightly oblong.

Spratling had not noticed it before. “What is it?”

Dovian thought on this for some time. Spratling could almost see him sorting through his memories, a lifetime’s catalog of labeled and priced treasures. “I’ve no idea,” he finally said. “It’s a fine thing, though.” He pressed it to the young man’s chest. “Here. Keep it there around your neck. If you ever get in trouble and need a fast fortune you can melt it down and make coins. It’s yours. The rest of this is more than we need for what we have planned. Bring me those charts and look them over.”

Spratling did so, spreading the familiar images across the cot and sitting on the edge of the bed. He loved moments like this, when Val seemed to forget his ailments and the two of them got lost in contemplation, like a father and a son, scheming, planning, dreaming a swashbuckling world into existence. In many ways Spratling was still the boy Dariel had been. He had no inkling yet of how much that was soon to change.

There was one particular Talayan acacia tree that was to haunt Thaddeus’s dreams afterward. It rose solitary out of the plain. It stood like an old, black-skinned man, leaning to one side as if gentling an infirmity. It was precariously thin, its limbs crooked and decrepit, its leaves so sparsely dispersed that Thaddeus was not sure until he stood under it that the thing still lived. It did. Acacia trees were hardy, slow growing, thorned against enemies, and stoic against the vagaries of weather. Perhaps there should have been something comforting in this, but, if so, Thaddeus could not find it. Nothing in this country comforted him. Never had the mute grandiosity of a landscape so pressed upon him as it did when he stood in the sparse shade beneath that tree. The curve of the earth seemed more gradual than elsewhere, distances greater, shapes of hills out there more massive. The vault of the sky seemed higher in Talay than it did anyplace else. It stretched up and up, shoved aloft by seething white clouds, stacked like pillars supporting some massive temple. Everywhere he looked—below and above him, at each point of the compass, near and far—creatures moved into and out of view. He could not number or name or categorize all of them, but he suspected each to be a spy intent on studying him.

Of the six provinces of the former Akaran Empire none was more complex, nor more important, than Talay. In breadth it was as wide a land mass as Candovia, Senival, the Mainland, and Aushenia combined. It stretched away to the south in sun-baked folds of land, unmapped regions vast enough that the Acacians never charted all of it in their twenty-two generations of rule. Much of it was so arid that no rain fell to the earth at all. While the name of one particular tribe was assumed by the entire territory, in truth Talayans were just the favored nation among many others. Some have argued that Edifus was an ethnic Talayan, but Edifus himself never claimed such ancestry.

What was indisputable is that the Talayans were the first people on the continent to align themselves with Edifus. In return, he granted them dominion over their neighbors and the responsibility of policing them. No small thing. The province was home to thirty-five other chiefdoms, with nearly the same number of languages and featuring four racial groups so distinct from one another that no generalities could apply to the people of the province as a whole. It was true that they all were dark skinned, but within this was considerable variety, not to mention greater physiological diversity than anywhere else in the Known World. Many of these nations were numerous enough to be military powers in their own right. The Halaly, the Balbara, the Bethuni: in the late Akaran age, each of these could field armies of ten thousand men. The Talayans themselves could call up nearly twenty-five thousand of their own, and, of course, they had the right to levy troops from the others. If their authority had held, the war with Hanish Mein might have taken a different course. It did not, however, for reasons rooted in the soil of antique history.

Old animus does not die, Thaddeus thought. It just awaits opportunity.

Such thoughts came to him unbidden, adding to his unease. Perhaps he had been too many years in hiding. Too long wormed into the cave systems of Candovia, in places dark and moist, with the earth close around him, hearing low grumbles like those deep in a fat man’s belly. But he had not felt so ill at ease when he first emerged and set about his work. He had felt confident enough in his abilities as he gathered information, as he pulled in his spies and learned all they could tell him. He had had no doubts about himself when he sought out the old general and set him on a new path. So why the dread clinging to him now?

Perhaps, he tried to believe, it was just that he was so very far from home, getting farther each day from the latitudes in which he had spent his life. These lands were quite different even from the lush country he had already passed through in northern Talay. Rolling farmland had stretched off as far as his fading eyes could see, dotted by tree lines dividing the fields, with occasional villages. It was nature manicured, hemmed in, and tamed by generations of human effort. And it was more abundantly populated. Their numbers, Thaddeus knew, had been thinned by the contagion. They had been ravished by it and by the war, as had most of the provinces. There were markedly few men of middle age, but the women seemed to have fared better. And there were many children. The place had thronged with them, which must have pleased Hanish Mein. He had made it law that all women who could bear children had to bear them. The Known World needed to be repopulated. They required numbers to thrive, new loved ones to replace those lost, new citizens to help the world turn. Thaddeus understood better than anyone exactly why this mattered so much to Hanish.

The former chancellor’s destination was farther south than he had ever been, well into the parched plains and rolling hills at the heart of Talay. It was a distance of several hundred miles, a long way for a man his age to trek. He chose to walk, however. Lone, rambling, and mind-addled madmen were no rarity in the world. He could have roamed indefinitely without drawing the slightest notice from the thinly spread soldiers of the Mein. Perhaps also there was an overture of penance in his march, though he did not define this even to himself.

He arrived dust-covered in the court of Sangae Uluvara. Tucked into the shallow bowl beneath two bulbous ridges of volcanic rock, the village of Umae was made up of fifty-odd huts; a handful of warehouses and storage pits; and a central structure built of wood and thatch that served like a great canopy above the market, offering shade from the sun and cover from the rain alike. Sangae’s people numbered a couple of hundred souls. As they were a herding culture, rarely was all the population gathered together. The village was in a remote spot in the world, unmarked on many maps, perhaps unknown to the Mein altogether. Indeed, they would have had to have searched very deeply to find the place or to discover a record of the bond of friendship the late king Leodan had once shared with Sangae, long ago, in their youth. No living person besides Thaddeus knew of the man’s importance to the Akaran legacy.

Summoned from inside his shady compound, Sangae stepped out into the sun with fluttering eyelids. He stared at Thaddeus with the trembling intensity he might have beheld an apparition with. A tumult of thoughts passed across his features, emotions that seemed to writhe just beneath his skin. Thaddeus knew that even this far south the man would have heard rumors that cast aspersions on his reputation. Sangae might still be unsure which chancellor was before him now: the traitor or the savior. And this would only be part of the noise within him. This man had been an adoptive father for nine years now. He could not but fear what Thaddeus’s arrival meant for his son.

But when Sangae spoke, he did so from a place of controlled formality. He said, “Old friend, the sun shines on you, but the water is sweet.”

“The water is cool, old friend, and clear to look upon,” Thaddeus answered.

It was a traditional greeting of southern Talay, and it pleased Sangae that the former chancellor responded to it so smoothly and in Talayan. But then he switched to Acacian. “It has been a long time,” he said. “Long enough that I wondered if you would come. Long enough that I hoped you might not.”

Thaddeus found this statement harder to respond to than the first. The chieftain held the former chancellor’s eyes with his. His nose and lips, the round forehead and the wide wings of his cheekbones: each of his features seemed more full of generosity than a single face should have been able to contain. His features had a fullness at odds with his slim torso, his thin shoulders, taut-skinned chest. His eyes were no whiter than Thaddeus’s, no less veined and yellowed, yet they stood out in contrast to the night black of his skin. For a moment Thaddeus felt a spike of fear rise up through him. How would a royal child of Acacia have fared alone among these people? He could not grasp even the edge of such a concept and hold on to it. It might have been a terrible mistake. He turned from the thought, for doubt had no place in how he meant to present himself. “In the king’s name, friend,” he said, “I thank you for what you have done.”

“I can see nothing,” Sangae said, another phrase particular to his people, a denial that he had done anything that merited thanks.

“You speak my tongue better than I do yours.”

“I’ve had one to practice with for some years now. How was your journey?”

The two talked for some time on this subject, an easy one, for it held nothing of the import of why he was here. Only details. But such amiable banter could last only for so long, and Thaddeus—despite his fear of the answer—finally asked, “Is the prince well?”

Sangae’s head dipped in something like a nod, although it was not quite an affirmation. He motioned for Thaddeus to enter his compound and sit across from him on a brightly colored woven mat. Between them, a girl set a gourd of water. A moment later she placed a bowl of dates beside it, and then she withdrew. The walls were open all around them. Even inside, the people of Umae wished for space, for open views and moving air. Thaddeus could see and hear people in each direction, but there was solitude in the quiet space the two men occupied. It was surprisingly cool, considering the blistering heat of the direct sunlight. This was good.

“Aliver hunts the laryx,” the chieftain eventually said. “He has been out two weeks. Billau willing, he will return any day now. But we should not talk of it. It would not be good to warn the spirit beasts of his intent. You, of course, are my guest until he returns.” The man plucked up a date in his fingers. Having done so, he seemed to have no interest in consuming the fruit. “Nine years. Nine years since the boy arrived here, long enough that I truly began to believe that you would not come and that Aliver was truly my son. I have no other, you know, which is my curse.”

Thaddeus considered responding to this apparent self-pity harshly. Better to have never had a child than to have lost one to treachery, he thought. But he had no wish to take the conversation in that direction. Instead, he said, “You’ve had no trouble from the Mein?”

“Never,” Sangae said. “I have heard of them, but they’ve not heard of me, it seems.” He grinned. “My fame is not as great as I might have wished. Take water, please.”

Thaddeus lifted the gourd, cradled it in his palms, and drank deeply. He offered it to the chieftain, who did the same. “It was good that we sent him here, then. Hanish has never ceased from hunting the Akaran children. At least one of Leodan’s children grew as the king wished.”

Sangae commented that he knew nothing, of course, about the other three Akarans. But, yes, Aliver’s course had been in keeping with the king’s plans. Aliver’s lone guardian had spirited him away efficiently from Kidnaban. They had sailed to Bocoum, disembarked, and joined the flow of refugees fleeing the war. They traveled on horseback for a time, then with a camel caravan, and then they simply walked the flat plains that brought them to Umae. With their need for secrecy, the journey took many weeks, and the prince arrived angry, confused, bitter. It took some effort on Sangae’s part to convince him that this exile was not defeat. The conflict was not decided yet. He was the most recent in a line of great leaders. He reminded him that the blood of ancient heroes coursed through his veins. He spoke of Edifus and Tinhadin, of the obstacles they had overcome to rise to power. Had not the difficulties facing them seemed insurmountable? And yet they had. And Aliver would do the same, Sangae promised, it was just he needed time to grow into the man he would have to be.

Sangae folded his large hands across one knee. “That is what I told him. He gave me the King’s Trust for safekeeping, and I have kept it hidden all these years. He has had a good life here, living like a Talayan. This is truth. And you should know that he is not a child anymore. Not by any means.”

“Tell me of his life here, then.”

In the nine years of his exile in Talay, Sangae said, Aliver had assumed a role identical to any son of a noble Talayan warrior family. He had trained in the martial arts of this nation, mastering spear work and the brawling form of wrestling Talayans practiced and even honing his body into that of a runner. It must have been terribly hard work at first. He might have been skilled enough in the Forms, but that had done little to prepare him for the training he received in Talay. Even spear practice was a different venture altogether. Unlike the Forms, Talayan warfare allowed no actions not entirely necessary. From the first day he held a Talayan spear, he had been taught that it was a weapon meant to kill. He had been shown the myriad ways that it could do so, each efficient and quick, with little wasted time or effort. He was challenged time and again, in the martial arts physically, by the harshness of the land, by language and culture, by the fact that he had no status here except what he could earn through his actions.

“And did he meet these challenges?” Thaddeus asked.

Sangae answered that he had. He had never shown himself wanting in discipline, desire, or bravery. He could not imagine what went on in the young man’s mind, as he shared so little of himself, but he was earnest in every act. Perhaps too earnest. He had yet to learn to laugh like a Talayan. He had received his first tuvey band—which meant he had taken part in a skirmish with a neighboring tribe—with the youngest men of his age group. He wore it above his bicep. That was why he had every right to hunt the laryx and to claim—should he be successful—his place as a man of this nation, one old enough to own property, to marry, to sit at council beside the elders.

“Belonging is important,” Sangae said, “and Aliver belongs among us. No one in this village would say otherwise. He has companions here, women who lie with him. No one notices his skin any longer. Such difference is no great thing among family. He belongs among us.”

Thaddeus heard a double meaning in this, a slight edge to the chieftain’s voice. Yes, he acknowledged silently, it was always hard to lose a son, even an adopted one. Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost—or might lose—defined him more than the things he yet possessed.