“You loved life and feared death and that is what living is! Life is given to us only as a temporary thing. All of us who can think know we live on borrowed time. That’s the beauty of it. We have to live now, for it will soon be gone. You lost that, and then you forgot that you lost it. We have given it back to you. It’s a gift from us to you. I know that you intended to die back to your true soul here in the Known World. That’s part of what you came for. You would have killed or enslaved us first, but I cannot allow that. So take the gifts we have given you. Leave the rest. Leave the old crimes. Leave the new ones you would have committed. Leave it and go home. Take with you a future in which you can live true again. Your mission here will not be a failure. This is not defeat, Devoth. You came to find a way to live again. You came to become fertile. You came to end your life as slavers and become your true selves again. All that you can have. Let me show you what that future can look like.”
Aliver turned before they could respond. He shouted something back to his army, and a moment later several soldiers moved aside. The Numrek children walked through the gap left open for them. The seven figures proceeded forward cautiously. Aliver beckoned to them. “Come! Let your uncles and aunts see you. Come!”
When the children reached them, they stood awkwardly, out from the Acacians, and yet reluctant to go any nearer the Auldek. Sabeer said something to the children in Auldek. Several of them responded. She motioned them forward with her fingers. A man to one side of her squatted down and beckoned them with his arms. The children drifted closer, until near enough that the adults touched them. They began speaking rapidly to them, different adults asking different children questions. They squeezed them on the shoulders and pulled them into embraces and cupped their faces in their palms.
Allek, the Numrek who had come in his father’s place, pushed his way through his elders and called to one of the younger girls. Seeing him, she broke from the woman who was stroking her hair and ran to him. She jumped into his embrace and the young man turned away, trying to hide the heaving sobs that wracked his chest.
Aliver gave them a few moments, and then said, “I told you I would provide these children to you. Here they are. Take them. Take them home to your lands and teach them how to be Auldek. I believe that will give both you and them great joy.”
“We have not said we accept your terms,” Devoth said. He had been gazing, enraptured, in a young man’s face. He straightened, hardening his expression.
“No, but that’s because I have not told you the last aspect of my terms. I told you I would reveal it now, so I will.” Aliver lifted his chin and indicated the vast array of troops that made up Devoth’s army. “Those soldiers and slaves who fight for you-I want you to let them decide their lives from now on. They may return to Ushen Brae with you, or they are welcome among us. There will be no punishment for the fighting that came before today. You’ll tell them this. If you don’t, we will tell them that all of you Auldek are mortal.” He paused, letting the significance of that grow inside them. “You may think they love you and are loyal to you, but I think it’s more that they fear you. They think you’re invincible. That’s what keeps them standing behind you. If they knew that you were just as mortal as they, they would not look at you with slave eyes anymore. That one there. What is his name?”
Aliver picked out a Lvin slave, one who stood out before a contingent of the divine children. He stared, his chin raised almost as if he were sniffing the air. His face was white as snow, framed by the thick locks of white hair that made him seem truly half snow lion, just as regal, even more deadly.
Rialus answered, “Menteus Nemre.”
“What do you think that one would do if he knew one blow of his sword could end you? I suspect I know the answer, but should we ask him? We could call him over and hear what he thinks.”
“We gave him a good life,” Devoth said. The old certainty, which had already slipped out of him along with his souls, had escaped him now entirely. He spoke, but he did not even seem to believe himself. “You don’t know how much we gave him.”
“You did not give him freedom,” Aliver said. He stared at Menteus Nemre. The man had noticed. He stared back. “You did not give him the respect an equal deserves. I suspect he would like that more than anything else. I suspect they would all want that. I may be wrong, Devoth, but I believe that if I shouted the truth of your mortality to them right now, you would not have one army facing you. You would find two surrounding you. I suspect that your own army would slaughter you with more relish than anyone standing behind me.”
Aliver brought his eyes back to Devoth and asked, “Should I ask them?”
L ater that day, after Devoth said no, he did not want Aliver to ask Menteus Nemre or any of the divine children that question, after he had conferred with the rest of the Auldek and brought back the answer Aliver had longed to hear, after he had listened to all the oaths to peace that he could and when he believed it had really, truly been achieved, with protection for any Acacians remaining in Ushen Brae as well, Aliver asked if Mena would accept the rest. There was still a long line of Auldek waiting to accept the peace. It would take some time.
She said she would complete the work. She took his hand as he rose and held it a time, as if she were rehearsing the words she would say to him. In the end, she only repeated, “I will complete this.”
Aliver parted with her casually, as if he just wished to go outside and walk among the troops. He did that. There was much rejoicing among them, and he wanted to feel some of it. But when he felt the fingers of death brush his shoulder, he did not run from them. They had been near for a long time, and he could not possibly begrudge them their due now, not after the day they had just allowed him to complete. His time had come. He hoped that Mena would not be angry with him for not saying a more formal good-bye, but he thought she would know that he had been doing that with every action he took since being freed from Corinn’s spell. Better that she take over from him, as that was what the future held for her anyway.
He walked for as long as he could, greeting soldiers and touching hands, until he managed to slip down a quiet lane of tents. He lay down on a cot under a shelter. And then, on second thought, he rose and pulled the cot out underneath the sky. He watched the heavy blanket of clouds, so near to them in the darkening sky. When the first snowflakes began to fall, he closed his eyes and felt their cold, delicate kisses on his cheeks. On his eyelids and lips.
He opened his eyes once more, stirred by a commotion near at hand. He heard Po’s roar come down from up above. He saw the dragon’s dark shadow pass above, and then heard the answering calls from his siblings. His eyes almost fluttered closed, but then a man yelled. There came the crash of something being knocked over, and then a series of snaps, the clink of metal rings and grunts of agitation.
Aliver understood what was happening before he knew why he understood. Po flew riderless above, calling on his kin to join him. The other three were tearing off their harnesses. He heard their wings unfurl, that loud concussion of clicking that was like nothing else in the world, and then swoosh as those great wings grabbed the air and lifted them upward. He heard the panic in people’s voices, but he did not feel it. Corinn had written, As long as I live they will be true to us. After that, she said, they would be different. Listening to them chatter to one another as they rose into the snow-heavy night, Aliver knew that change had begun, and he knew that his sister had gone before him to the afterdeath.
“Corinn…” He had been so consumed by his own work, that he had almost forgotten her battle with the Santoth. He remembered it now, and knew that she had been triumphant.
Eyes closed again, he lay there a long time, feeling the snow build a blanket atop him, thanking his sister. It was not just her saving the world from the Santoth that he was grateful for. He thanked her for himself, for allowing him to know, in the end, that she was wonderful, that he loved her completely, without reservation. As a brother should.
A little later he stopped feeling the snow. He stopped feeling anything. He had a thought that would have made him laugh, except he no longer had the lips to laugh with. Aliver Akaran, he thought, look what you’ve done. You’ve made it so that they’re going to start calling you the Snow King again. He did not really mind. He had always liked the ring of the name. Before, he just had not deserved it. Now, perhaps he had earned it.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
The flutes played the noon hour. They started high in Acacia, at the top of the palace, and then the tune cascaded down toward the lower town. Beautiful. A sound that Mena had never really believed she would hear again. She stood on the balcony of Corinn’s offices, amazed at the view of the island in the brilliance of the spring light. How was it even possible that a sound so wonderful lived in this world, in the same one that had just been filled with the din of war, with arctic winds howling and men and women crying in pain and rage? It did not seem
