As his torso narrowed, the color of his skin changed from powder white to rich, dark brown from his abdomen down—his natural color. A shade of Talay. He paused on the landing and studied the lounging Auldek group.
Strange to think of this man as a slave, for not an inch of him betrayed the slightest subservience. Rialus had never been this close to him before. He could not think of him without seeing images of the damage he had done during the games back in Avina. The speed of his attack. The way limbs and blood flew from his blade work. The death he inflicted for no other purpose than to determine the order in which the clans would march away on this campaign.
Realizing the man was staring at Sabeer, Rialus looked back at her. She smiled and dipped her head in greeting. Her gaze ascended as Menteus Nemré continued his climb. “You shouldn’t ask such things,” Sabeer said, returning to Rialus’s question. She leaned a bit closer. “You embarrass us. You see, we’ve forgotten.”
“Forgotten?”
She shrugged, waved him away with her hand, and then pointed at the musicians. “Sing.”
Howlk asked, “So what do you believe, Rialus? I’ve heard the quota speak of few gods. There is one that gives, yes?”
“The god of presents,” Allek quipped.
“Yes, that one. Can you get him to give me something? I want a great many things.”
They all looked at Rialus with playfully serious faces, expressions that grew more amused as he tried to convey the essential details surrounding the Giver. Before he had gotten far at all, Jàfith said, “What nonsense! Did you just make that up, Leagueman?”
“No, I’ve heard others speak the same many times,” Allek said. “Theirs is a feeble faith. Don’t look offended, Rialus. What sense does it make that one god would create all? Why would he create … rabbits. Soft and cuddly, yes? And then create foxes that hunt them down and tear them to shreds? Why do that? That god is no god to the rabbits. He is a demon that favors their enemies. But nor does that god honor the fox, for he creates other animals bigger than it. Creates wolves. Creates you Acacians. Even you, Rialus, could kill a fox if you were lucky and had the right weapon.”
“And if the creature was lame or old,” Jàfith added.
“It simply makes no sense. It’s an addled god who creates hunted and hunter both, killer and those to be killed. Health and disease at the same—”
“No, the Giver did not create disease,” Rialus said. “Elenet did that!”
“Elenet?” Sabeer asked. “Who is Elenet?”
“One of the first humans. He followed the Giver and learned his language and tried to use it, but when he did he released disease, illness, death. Things like …”
Rialus’s voice faded as the triumphant expression on Howlk’s face grew. “Listen to yourself. You’re telling us that a human stole the words of creation from a god? All he had to do was talk like a god and he became a god?”
“That’s like saying if you stole Devoth’s armor and wore it you would become as he,” Allek said. “Do you think that, Rialus?”
“No, I—”
“But that’s what this Elenet did,” Howlk said. Rialus tried to say more, but Howlk talked over him. “Foolishness from start to finish. You know how the world really works? Life is war. It’s the struggle between forces that defines it. Hunger gnaws your belly until it is defeated by consumption. But then just when consumption lies down to sleep, hunger rises and grabs it around the neck and starves it. The night overcomes the day; the day burns away the night. Back and forth. Back and forth. War, Rialus, but not chaos. That’s the difference between us. In conflict you and your people see confusion, see something to be lived through in waiting for peace. We, though, see conflict as what the gods intended.”
“I think this is good news for us, yes?” Allek asked. The others agreed that it was.
Sabeer rose to her feet. “Rialus, pay these fools no mind. Come, let’s entertain ourselves privately.”
“Me?” Rialus said.
She smiled suggestively. “Yes, you, none of these others interest me tonight.”
A howling protest answered this, mixed with invitations and suggestive encouragements for Rialus. The humorous remarks followed them to the edge of the chamber, where Sabeer slipped on boots of white fox fur and a coat of some other hide that she wrapped around herself loosely. Rialus, unsure what he was heading to but trying to be relieved to get away from the others, fumbled himself into his outer garments. He dreaded that Sabeer would expect him to perform in intimate ways. Dreaded it, and yet it was not only his stomach that tingled with anticipation.
Another drummer played in Sabeer’s chamber. Still other servants hovered near, but Rialus forgot about them as Sabeer lay down with him. She pressed her strong body against his frail one. She spooned around him, breasts pressing against his back, her long legs entwined with his spindly ones.
So positioned, she stroked her finger up and down his arm. “Do you understand what the two lovers did wrong in Howlk’s song? They were old. You know yourself that none of us Auldek are old in body. We all took our first soul at an age of vanity. You understand? If we were to be immortal, we wanted to be forever strong, young, good for fighting and lovemaking, no sign either of our beginnings or of our ends. That’s why there are none of us in child bodies, no immortal children. That would be very disturbing, I think. That’s why I chose to look forever as I do now. I made a good choice, yes?”
Rialus blushed. “You are … very well formed.”
“Such a silver tongue you have.” Sabeer chuckled, and then grew serious. “What those two lovers did wrong was that they disdained immortality. They gave up on it and died back into their true souls. And then those true souls let their bodies age. That itself made them … I don’t know what to call them. Outcasts. Not exactly. A holy couple. Perhaps they would have been. But then, nearing death, they asked for life again. They wanted souls from the soul catcher then. You understand that they could not have this. Can you imagine? Them old forever? In love and old forever. No, we could not allow that. I do wish I remembered them, though. Truly remembered them.”
“Do you not?”
Sabeer slid her leg over Rialus. Her skin was soft and hot, and he was glad he faced away from her, curved around the arousal in his groin.
“No, I haven’t for many years. None of us do. I’m making a confession to you, Rialus. We know what’s written. We know things because we keep the knowledge alive. In records. In songs. We can only hold the memories of eighty years or so. The length of a long normal life. As we grew past that age our childhoods disappeared, and then our youth, and even the day we ate our first soul and gained lasting life. Rialus, I once lived in the interior, in a palace in the Westlands. I loved a man name Merwyn. We lived seventy-five years together but could have no children. The sadness of this became too much for him and he let free his lives and died a final death. At least, that’s what the written histories say of him. Myself, I remember none of it. We claim we abandoned the cities because of ancient wars and slaughter. Perhaps that’s true, but that’s not why we fear to return to them. I think what scares us is not remembering, not knowing our own lives, being strangers to ourselves.”
“I—I understand,” Rialus said. “That must be like—like when the old in my land lose their minds and memories. Not just like it, of course, because they forget yesterday and remember fifty years ago, but the same sort of thing. Sabeer, you are like us. Your immortality hasn’t made you different at all. You’re just like—”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. She propped herself up on her elbow and pressed her finger to his lips to silence him. “Rialus Silver Tongue. That’s what we should call you. Always trying to save your people.” She smiled and leaned close enough to kiss him. “I like you, Rialus Silver Tongue, but when we reach your lands, I’ll take to the field of battle with my kinsmen just as we’ve planned. You can’t change that.”
She pulled her finger away, but Rialus felt it still, as if it had left a brand on his lips, an old, bitter wound already scarred over. What was he doing in bed with this creature? Listening to her. Talking to her. Aroused by her and, for a moment, understanding her. Fool, Rialus! He tried to remember Gurta instead. She had wrapped around him like this also, but she had done it with true love for him. She had said so many times. Gurta, I won’t let them have you.
“You know, Rialus, I can see the beauty in your race. I’ve had quota lovers, you know. There’s no shame in it.” She circled her finger on the soft skin of his inner elbow, smiling at some revelry this line of conversation brought back to her. “No shame at all. I even like you, Rialus, though that’s strange. You’re not … well, a specimen considered attractive by your race, are you? No one ever called you handsome, did they?”
She was a vile, barbarian woman. He could have found a hundred ways to insult her. Instead, he heard himself say, “No, no one ever called me handsome.”
“Rialus,” Sabeer said, “my poor leagueman. I don’t think you’re handsome either, but I like you. You’ll always have a place with me. After all this is over and your world is ours, you should come stay with me in some palace somewhere. You can bring your woman, too. Where do you think I should take a palace?”
You never will, Rialus thought. You and all your kind will die first. I’ll make sure of it.
“Tell me about the best of them,” she prompted, nudging him. “Tell me things you’ve not told Devoth.”
And, despite the thoughts that played inside his mind, he began, “You should see Calfa Ven, in the Senival Mountains. It’s a hunting lodge.…”
“Oh, hunting. That sounds good.”
If we go there together, I’ll use you for target practice, he swore. Out loud he said, “Or the cliff palaces of Manil …”
“Palaces on cliffs? Wonderful.”
I’ll push you from them and watch you fall into the sea.
Sabeer squirmed against him. “Tell me more.”
And he did. He could not help himself. “Of course,” he said, “there’s the isle of Acacia itself.…”
Aliver Akaran reached out and touched the statue’s chin. He traced the Talayan’s jawline. He brushed his fingertips over the full lips and caressed the clean-shaven crown of its head. All so very lifelike down to the finest details—the texture of the skin and eyelashes, the expression of focused engagement, the collarbones and lean runner’s chest, and the muscled compartments of its legs. It stood frozen in a posture of motion, iron spear high in the fingers of one hand. The other arm was wrapped above the bicep by an arm ring. A tuvey band, Aliver recalled.
“I know you,” the prince said. “We once ran together.”
He said this and knew it to be true. It warmed him, but he also understood that this figure was only a work of wood and iron and fabric. The others spaced out along the lamplit hallway were as well. The Senivalian wore scaled armor and hefted a curved sword with a brawny arm. The Vumu warrior’s eagle feathers flared from a band around his head. The various Acacians in different military garb, their faces like Aliver’s—light brown, even featured, with a haughty lift to their chins and sagely dark eyes. There was even a Meinish soldier, blond and gray eyed, his nose and cheekbones sharp. A tuft of gold bristled on his chin.
“I know you,” Aliver said. “We once fought each other.” Again it was true and not true. So many things were true and not true.
Looking back down the corridor that led to his boyhood room, Aliver saw not just the scene before him, dimly lit and quiet with the dead of night, but also a thousand other views of this same place. He saw it in the morning light and by the afternoon glare from the skylights, muted by gray skies and crimson when the setting sun shone through the western windows. He saw it with the eyes of the child who ran down the corridor, light on his feet and full of play. He saw it as the youth he was on the day his father died, striding straight-backed and very foolish in his pride. He saw it filled with the people who had once moved through life with him.
“I know you all.”
The same sensation surrounded him as he sat in his old room. He ran his hand over his silken bedspread. He picked up the statue of Telamathon—he who had defeated the god Reelos and his five disciples—and felt the man’s face with fingers. He studied the tapestries on the wall and the busts of the early kings, facing east to greet the morning sun. His room had remained furnished as he remembered, almost as if it had been preserved for his return. He knew it had not been. Nobody had expected his return, least of all him. But he was here, body and mind; and with each passing hour he became more and more himself. Less and less whatever he had been.
It felt almost like his flesh and skin were shrinking to fit his form, just now growing snug around him. Whatever Corinn had done to bring him back to life should not have been attempted. He knew that as surely as he had ever known anything. But it was done, and he could only live with it. Just
how
to live he was not sure. Wandering about the palace seemed to be helping, though. He rose and continued.
He could not have explained how he knew where to find the boy. He simply rose and looked. And looking, he knew. He entered the room as a servant came out of it. Surprised by his presence, she slammed herself against the doorjamb and stood straight as a board as he approached. Much the same reaction the other servants gave him when he encountered them. He studied her soft-featured face a moment, not recognizing it but finding it pleasant, and then he nodded as he passed by her into the bedroom.
Aaden, a child of eight, lay on his bedspread. Dressed in silken green bedclothes, he curled to one side, his knees pulled up and his hands clasped together. Something about the posture looked choreographed, too precise to be natural. Perhaps the servant had just repositioned him. Yes, that was it. They were caring for him as he slept.
Aliver sat beside him. He felt as if he already knew the boy, as if he could sit without fear that the boy would think it a trespass, as if he had spent time with him already. He had not. Corinn had always delayed their meeting, but she was gone for the time being. A good thing, too. He was coming to know himself and the present world faster without the tightly wound energy swirling about her to contend with.