said it.
“Dariel, it means ‘the one who closes the circle.’ ” She shook him gently. She moved her face close to his and kissed him. It was not a sensual gesture. It was just a gift between two friends. “Do you hear me? The one who closes the circle. Rhuin Fa, do you hear them? They’re calling for you. I think some of them want to go home with you. I think… many of them want to go home with you. They want a big, big league boat. They want you to captain it, and to take them home.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
They’re not bad young ones,” Delivegu said. “Didn’t talk much at first, but they loosened up as we traveled. Get them talking about warfare and they’ll chew your ear off. I mean that literally.” He mussed the unruly black hair of the boy beside him.
Aliver smiled at the gesture. There was a fatherly sincerity to it that he had to acknowledge. He had always thought Delivegu a swaggering braggart, though he had not managed to say so while still bound by Corinn’s magic. Delivegu still had a swagger, but he had done what Aliver requested. He had reached them last night, in time, perhaps, for his mission to make a difference in what happened today.
“Thank you, Delivegu,” Aliver said. “You have done well.”
The Numrek children stood in a nervous cluster around the Senivalian. The eldest was in his early teens, the youngest looked to be five or six. Aliver could not be sure if their ages matched their appearance, but he thought so. He saw in the older boys the flame of newfound rebelliousness, in the younger children, the staring eyes of ones so frightened by the world that they could not look away from it even for a moment. They were just children. His enemy’s children, but still just children.
He counted seven of them, just like the number in Kelis’s dream. He recalled that Kelis had called them his children. He had dreamed that Aliver had seven children. Here they were. He thought, What if Shen had been captured like this? Aaden? It was not a far-fetched thought. In a world in which the Auldek fought this war to victory, his own dear ones would be at the mercy of his enemies, as these were.
“I mean you no harm,” Aliver said. “I know harm was done to you. I think, perhaps, that you saw what my sister did to your parents back in Teh. I am sorry for that. I hope that you live long lives, and that the years as they pass blur that memory. I can’t undo it any more than you can undo the crimes that drove the queen to feel the wrath she did that day. Do you know why she was so angry? Because your parents conspired to kill her son. That, more than anything, drove her to the madness you watched. I understand that madness, but I want no part of it myself. I have a child, too.”
That last statement stopped him. Whatever he was going to follow it with flew out of his mind. He sat a moment looking from one child’s face to another’s, searching for what he had been about to say. He did not find it. “I have a child, too” was not the beginning of a thought. It was the conclusion of it.
“Would you like to see Ushen Brae?” Aliver asked.
It took some time to get them to respond, with Delivegu helping. All of them eventually said they did want to see Ushen Brae.
“It’s a foreign land to you, and it won’t be as it was when your parents left.” This they did not have any response to. Why should they? They did not know Ushen Brae. They did know Acacia, though, and this place had not been kind to them. “If the Auldek will have you, would you go to them?”
The answers came back faster this time. Yes, of course they would.
Rising, Aliver moved toward the tent flap. He paused at it, and said, “I will try to send you home. It’s not up to me, but I will try.”
T he mass of troops collected a few hundred paces behind them was an impressive force. Aliver only glanced at them, though. He had no desire to see the thousands of warriors and hundreds of beasts and machines of war arrayed against him. His own army had grown just as massive. The united humanity of the Known World stood rank upon rank behind him, people from all the provinces, with all their various languages and traits and characteristics. They would fight and die today, just as the Auldek forces would. For different reasons, but with the same ferocity. Corinn’s dragons would take to the air; the freketes would do the same. This day could become an unimaginable, bloody conflagration. The wood was all stacked. The torch had only to be touched to the fuel. Or not.
So he kept his attention on the delegation just in front of him. Devoth, Sabeer, and the other clan chieftains stood a few strides away. Aliver had only seen them as spirit people, glowing and transparent. Still, he knew the figures who stood before him now were not as they had been but a few days ago. The defiance in Devoth’s laugh just a few nights before, the confidence, the certainty of knowing that death was far removed from them: it was all gone. Their faces looked haggard, stunned. Their eyes drooped with fatigue.
Mena stared at them as if she did not even recognize them. Behind him and his sister, Aliver had brought a small contingent, the handful who had done the spirit work with him the night before. It fell to him to complete this, to succeed or fail, but it felt very good to have those trusted friends behind him. Both groups were unarmed, having set their weapons on the ground before drawing near each other. If the Auldek attacked them, he and his people would die. Again, if that happened, he would have failed, and there would be nothing more he could do about it.
Devoth spoke first. “What have you done to us?” he asked, speaking Acacian.
“Nothing unjust,” Aliver said. He spoke without a hint of bravado. Without derision or anger, managing to sound both firm and empathetic. It was not a tone of voice he had to work hard to master. It was simply how he felt. “You awoke the other morning feeling different, didn’t you? You didn’t speak of it to the others because you felt weak. You felt frightened in a way you never have before. Or, at least, a way you don’t remember ever having felt before.”
“No,” Devoth grumbled. Though his eyes were savage, his no came out strangely passive. He denied it. He also wanted to hear more. The others did as well.
“You were alone then,” Aliver continued, “but when all the Auldek woke this morning they felt the same as you. They might not have said as much. I know you are a proud people. And what could you say, when you could not explain why the world feels different to you today from yesterday? I can explain it, for I had a hand in it. Do you want to know what we’ve done to you?”
“We have already asked you to tell us,” Sabeer said.
“Has Devoth told you of the peace that I proposed?”
“Yes,” Sabeer answered.
“Have you also heard it in your dreams-from me or from one of these here behind me?” The silence they responded with was answer enough. “The peace I offered is still what I offer today. I swear to it before my god, the Giver, who I believe created this world. The visitors that you had in your dreams, they were also real. They took my message to you; they also took something from you. They took back what you never should have stolen. They took from you, and released into death, the souls you had eaten. That’s why the world feels different to you today. Today, you have all woken up mortal. You have only the life you were born with inside you. Only that single, transparent, fragile soul stands between you and the afterdeath.”
The other Auldek stared at him, their faces like masks. They looked, standing so still and vacant, like they were already dead. Aliver almost smiled. You would think I’d killed you already. I haven’t. I’m the one counting down his last breaths. Hurry, let’s complete this.
“You have stolen our lives from us?” Devoth whispered.
“No, you stole them from the children we sent you. Your sin was taking them inside yourself; ours was sending them to you in the first place. These last nights we worked to end both your sin and ours.”
“You stole from us,” Devoth said.
“We made you Auldek again!” Aliver said. “You don’t even remember what you used to be. Once, you were mortal. You don’t remember that, but back then-before you sold yourselves to the Lothan Aklun-you were truly Auldek. You lived and died. You married and had children. I know these things about you. Rialus Neptos told you of us; he also told us of you.”
Devoth did not glance at the thin Acacian. Sabeer did, though. She pinned him with her eyes. Without even turning, Aliver knew Rialus squirmed beneath the gaze.
