upper body swaying with the effort, as if he were putting all of himself into the pressure of his fingers. He tilted his stern features up, long hair flowing over his shoulders, and told a tale of epic love and tragedy that would have brought the entire Acacian senate to tears. Two lovers suffered the wrath of the Lvin for some crime Rialus could not quite pinpoint. Rialus had heard poems performed like this before, but Howlk had a particularly good voice for it. Despite himself, he was transfixed.
Rialus had ceased being surprised by the complex collage that was Auldek culture. At times they seemed as barbaric and prone to violence as the Numrek. But those moments did not define them entirely. Devoth with his dancing hummingbirds. The time Rialus watched them draw garden tapestries with colored pebbles, complex works of art that would blur and disintegrate under the first rain. They achieved a balance in their lives, but it was a balance of extremes. Here was a race who would howl for blood in the morning, and then tend beetle farms on their terraces in the afternoon. Here was a people who would abandon their land to march to war, but then bring with them strange artifacts of gentility.
He would never forget the makeshift banquet held on a black stone beach, waves crashing in the distance. The Auldek delicately plucked the violet leaves of some flowerlike vegetable. They dunked each leathery leaf in fragrant oils and scraped off the softer tissue with their upper teeth. The thing tasted fine, when you got used to it, but it was the spectacle of such rough creatures all silently attending leaf dipping that ranked as one of the strangest sights he had ever witnessed.
When Howlk finished his song and had shaken off the praise offered him, Rialus asked, “How old is that tale?”
“A couple hundred years,” Howlk said. “It’s a newer poem, really.”
“So as new as that? Then… did you know these ill-fated lovers? Personally, I mean.”
Howlk looked away without answering, opening an awkward silence.
Something over Rialus’s shoulder caught Sabeer’s attention. Several Lvin women climbed the circular staircase. Though they were human, Rialus knew them instantly. Their every movement shouted their status, not just with their clan affiliation but as simple sublime motion. Their bodies were lithe and sculpted, honed through torturous training that made them fighters almost on par with the Auldek themselves. They went about wearing only short skirts. They were bare breasted, with chiseled arms and long muscles taut in their legs as they climbed. Like their totem animal, they moved with feline grace, circling and climbing up toward the next level without pausing.
Behind the women came the white dreadlocks and the pale, leonine visage of Menteus Nemre. Like the women before him, he was nearly naked. The slave’s muscles bulged absurdly on his chest and arms, cut fine divisions on his abdomen, and stood out in thick bands running down his legs. He paused halfway up the stairs, taking in the room. For a moment, he seemed to stare so intently at him that Rialus wanted to squirm. Actually, he did squirm. Nothing about the attention of Menteus’s gaze changed, though.
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 Nemre 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, Jafith 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,” Jafith 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.
A nother 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.”
