“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…”

CHAPTER FIVE

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

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