It might also be that the chamber contained a solemn air he had not expected. Everyone gazed at him: the elders near at hand; Mor and Skylene, Tunnel and Birke and all the People he had become so close to here in Ushen Brae. A little farther back stood Melio and Clytus, Geena, and the others who had come so far to find him. All of them safe and well, largely unscarred by the skirmishes they had fought so that he could complete his part in this story. They stared at him, too. He got the feeling everyone knew something that he did not.
“I have a story to tell you,” Yoen said. He spoke to Dariel, but he lifted his voice for everyone to hear. “It’s a true story. True stories do not always make the best ones, but this one is pretty good. Many, many years ago, hundreds of years, during the early days of the Free People’s settlement at the Sky Lake-” He cut in on himself to say, “This was before my time, in case you are wondering.”
He waited as the polite laughter faded. He was just as frail looking as before, his hair still disheveled, in contrast to the care taken with his long robe. His limp had increased, the product, no doubt, of the journey. He leaned heavily on his cane.
“One day, a Lothan Aklun found the settlement,” he continued. “The People were shocked, because no Lothan Aklun had ever come searching for them before. Not even the Auldek had ranged that far. They need not have been alarmed, though. The Lothan Aklun was not hunting them. He was on a mission. He told them that he had come to hate his people’s ways. He was taking his quota children-both those inside him and those living through their years beside him-up into seclusion in Rath Batatt. You know this man. It was Na Gamen.
“Before he went, he gave the villagers something. He took from his wrist a bracelet made of pure, precious gold. He said that it was not actually a bracelet. It was an armband that had been worn by the first quota child he had come to love as his own. I called it a tuvey band, though in truth it was just a child’s trinket. He gave it to us, and he also gave us a sapling from a tree of your lands, Dariel. An acacia tree. He planted the tree, and slipped the band around it. He told those Free People that one day the quota trade would end. One day, a person would come to us who had the power to change everything. A good person. A kingly person. A man or a woman with a pure heart and noble intent. This person would have the power to release our trapped spirits. He said that on that day- when we knew this person had arrived-we should build a great fire around that tree. A beacon to announce the freeing of the world. When it died down, we were to retrieve the band from the ashes and see if it still held its shape.
“We did as he asked us to. We left the band around the trunk of that small tree, waiting for the day we could build that fire. A lovely idea, but it did not go as anyone wished. The wait was to be longer than we could have known. Not a lifetime or two. Many more than that. That sapling became a tree. Generations lived and died. The tree got thicker, stretched taller. Years passed. The ring grew tight around the trunk, and then the tree lifted the ring into the air. Still longer it took, so long that the tree swallowed the band and grew around it. The band went hidden for generations. The world turned so long that I was born, and you were as well, Dariel, and everyone else in this room and out in the courtyard there.”
The old man pointed to the great balcony that opened above the gathered crowd. He had been strolling in circles as he talked, his eyes drifting, gentle everywhere they touched. They came back to Dariel now. “Do you know the tree I’m speaking of?”
Remembering the sacred acacia he had seen from the hillside above the village by the Sky Lake, Dariel nodded.
“Before we came here, we burned it. We believed in you, Dariel Akaran. It appears that we were right to. And look what we found in the ashes…”
Yoen had paused behind a small table, atop which a simple box sat. Dariel had not noticed it before. Yoen opened it, reached in, and lifted out a thin circlet of twisted gold. He walked toward Dariel, holding it high for all to see. “It began as a child’s armband,” he said. “Now it looks rather more like a crown.”
He paused before Dariel. The band was but a simple circlet. No stones set in it. No engravings. The only feature enhancing the gold beauty of it was the waves that years inside the tree must have bent into it.
“It’s beautiful,” the prince said.
Yoen agreed. “None here dispute it. You are our savior, Dariel. You are the one who came to free us. The Rhuin Fa. This band is yours to do with as you wish. I hope that you do something wise with it.” He pushed the band from his fingers into Dariel’s.
“This is not for me. It’s too precious.”
“We believe it is yours. It was always yours. You may even slip it atop your head, if you wish, and ask the people to accept your leadership. I believe they would.”
Holding the warped and stretched band-a child’s bracelet that had grown inside an acacia tree-Dariel absorbed what was being offered. It was there in the curves of the band. It was in Yoen’s eyes. Looking around the circle of elders and beyond them to his companions-both the new ones and the old-they all waited for him. It was up to him to say whether he wanted to ask the People to make him king of Ushen Brae. The headiness of this dizzied him. He stood with his mind racing out across the great continent he had only seen a portion of. He thought about the glowing ruins of Amratseer and the jagged peaks of Rath Batatt and the wild rapids of the Sheeven Lek. He remembered names of places he had heard of but had never seen. By the Giver, he might rebuild the ancient city of Lvinreth. He had never seen it, but the notion of a white-rocked city carved into the far north, a place where snow lions roamed the streets beside people… It took his breath away. He could be king, and he could create a culture different from anything in the Known World. Better. Fairer. A dream of a nation like one Aliver might have imagined. Perhaps one day he and Birke would climb into Rath Batatt. With Bashar and Cashen they would go hunting, wandering until they found whatever wonders lay beyond that range of mountains.
It would be a magnificent life.
Only… He searched out Melio’s face, saw him watching, concern on his features. Clytus as well. Geena. Even Kartholome. If they had not come for him he might have answered Yoen differently. He might have grasped for a magnificent life in Ushen Brae. But they had come, and that life could not be. They had come to take him home, to Acacia, to Wren. If she lived and he could get back to her, he would never let her go again. Never. He had to go back. He had to sail with Melio beside him, hoping that the future included him being uncle to the child Melio wanted to have with Mena.
“No, I can’t accept this.” He looked around at the silent people watching him. “I love the Free People,” he said. “I have learned to love Ushen Brae, and I could not be more thankful for the gifts you’ve given me. But”-his gaze settled on Mor-“I must go home.” He walked to Mor and pushed the crown into her hands. “If this is mine to do with what I wish, I give it to Mor. Why not a queen instead of a king? A mother for the nation. Go ask the crowd what they think of that.”
When Mor looked down, stunned by the treasure in her hands, Dariel turned and walked away. In the hush, his steps sounded loud on the marble slabs. He did not look back, though he badly wanted to. He wanted to see Mor stepping into the light of day, crown in hand, to ask the People to name their future. He pictured it in his mind. He saw it that way, and walked with the vision in his mind’s eye, knowing it was a fine vision, a truly fine vision.
He was into the hallway and down it some ways before his steps slowed. He wanted to go back. What was he doing? He loved this place! If he had come here under different terms, he might have stayed forever. But he had been away from home too long. He did not want to forget the ones he loved over there. No, he had to go. He had to go home.
He got a few steps farther before he heard the eruption of cheers from the square. He kept walking, embarrassed lest anybody see the tears suddenly washing his face. A good effort, but he did not get far. He stopped again. He leaned against a wall and watched the world go liquid. He was not even sure why he was crying, whether it was for this place or the other, whether from sadness or joy. He listened to the hush and burst of cheers, to the gaps during which one or another person spoke. He could not hear what they were saying, but he was happy for them. The Free People were becoming a nation. The children who had been stolen had finally-
“Dariel!”
He began to walk again, but with blurred vision he was not sure which columned passage would take him out.
Anira caught up to him as he hesitated. He tried to turn his face from view. She caught his chin. “Has anyone told you what Rhuin Fa means?” she asked. “They did not say so before because it might have affected your decisions. You had to be pure, and to do what you would of your own accord.”
The moment she said this, Dariel realized that he did know what the title meant. He just had not thought about it since Na Gamen gifted him with the Lothan Aklun language. He knew, though. He knew before Anira even
