Dariel lost track of time the moment he stepped through that doorway. He answered the slim man’s beckoning. He went first, and the others followed. He could not now remember the words they had spoken, or how introductions were made, or any of the things customary to a meeting. None of that mattered, for nothing inside the Sky Mount was the same as outside. It did not so much cling to the mountains as belong to them, a part of them, smooth and organic, as if the rock had once been living tissue. It was sparse, clean, with none of the everyday items of life: no tables or chairs, no beds or hearths or cupboards. Dariel had the feeling that all these things had once been here, but now there was nothing but a long sweep of corridors that led to empty rooms.
The whole time he was there, he knew that the others were also somewhere within the dizzying sprawl of the place. He could feel them. He could even hear faint indications of their thoughts, like voices heard at a distance. His hound pups were inside as well, somewhere in the maze of rooms and passages. All cared for. All safe. This was not about them, though. From what felt like the first moments his time in the Sky Mount was spent with only one person. Na Gamen.
That was why he seemed to pass all his time-immeasurable as it was-by the Lothan Aklun’s side. They walked from room to room, sharing thoughts, conversing without opening their mouths. This, too, was a thing Dariel did not remember beginning, but it soon seemed natural enough. Shape a thought. Send it. Hear the answer within his head. Never a sound except the wind that whipped through the passages and the scuffing of his feet across the smooth gray stone. Aliver had said he spoke to the Santoth in a similar manner. Now Dariel understood.
Na Gamen was slender in the extreme, famine faced, with copper skin that lay thinly across the bones of his bald skull. He stood a little distance away, gazing through an opening in the wall of his sky-top sanctuary, looking at the dizzying drop to the valleys far below. He looked so lost in thought that Dariel feared he was about to fall forward through the opening and plummet from the heights. Why Dariel should care what happened to this man he could not have said yet. But he did care. He already believed that Na Gamen, the Watcher of the Sky Mount, was entwined with his destiny.
You are an Akaran, Na Gamen said. I can smell it in the oils on your skin. It’s in your breath when you exhale. I hear it when your heart beats. I see it in the vibrations of the air around you. Do you know, Dariel Akaran, that you trail your ancestors behind you on a silver string? I see them waving in the air. All the living trail behind them those who came before. A portion of each soul grasps the string and stays with you always. I didn’t always see them, but I have for a long, long time. Do you know how I know this?
How? Dariel asked.
Because the same is true of me. I trail many strings. Thousands. Tens of thousands. And each of these touches a million souls. Sometimes I feel very heavy, pulling them behind me. Sometimes lifting my arm is like moving a mountain. As it should be for one like me. An accursed one like me.
The notion of weight was hard to equate with the tall, slight man who placed the words in Dariel’s head.
How do you know me? Dariel asked. The smell of my skin. My breath. How?
Because you are of Tinhadin’s line. I see him in you.
You knew Tinhadin? You are truly from my lands?
Na Gamen turned and set his green eyes on him. They were larger than normal, jewels in his gaunt face. His earlobes spread out in large curves shaped like butterfly wings. They moved when he did. When he stilled, they swayed as if rocked by a gentle tide. We are children of the same land, yes. And I did know Tinhadin. I know him still. One does not forget the man who tried to murder him. That man who helped, in his way, to make this accursed life.
You have said that before. How are you accursed?
You would know it all?
Yes.
It will come at a price, Dariel. A gift, but a dear one. One that will be hard to live with. Do you want it?
Whether I want it or not, I’m here, he thought. Sharing, he answered, Yes.
Na Gamen gestured that they should continue walking. Dariel fell in step beside him. Again, the sound of his feet stood out strangely compared to the silence with which the Watcher moved. If the man’s feet-hidden beneath long gray robes-touched the stone at all, they gave no indication of it. Not even the fabric of his robes swished audibly. Beside him, Dariel felt awkward and loud. Every motion he made was too large and cumbersome when compared to the silent grace with which Na Gamen floated beside him.
Listen. See. I will feed it to you.
Dariel did not get a chance to ask what that meant. Before the words had faded from his head, images began to scroll across his vision, scenes through which he could barely see the real world behind. Mixed with this, thoughts and emotions came to him, delivered not with words, not explained, just given to him. He felt them as if they were his emotions. His thoughts. And through that Na Gamen’s voice came and went, moving him forward, answering questions as he thought them.
The name Lothan Aklun, he claimed, was the Auldek translation of their name, given to them in this land. Before that they were called the Dwellers in Song. They were a religious sect in the Known World. It was they who had preserved the Giver’s tongue through the eons. They long lived in cloistered seclusion, respected by all the tribal powers. They kept The Song of Elenet safe, the actual book itself, written in that thief’s crimped hand.
Back then, they still believed the Giver would return. They believed they could make amends for Elenet’s arrogance, for his crime of stealing the language of a god and using it in folly. They did not use the god’s song for themselves-as Elenet had-but sang it for the pure beauty of it. They did not create things. Instead they formed the song into a hymn in praise of creation. They sang it so that the Giver, wherever he was, would hear it ring with purity and would know they were worthy of his attention. That was all they wished to do. Make amends for Elenet’s crime and bring the god back into the world.
Also, they worked to purify the song. There were, even in Elenet’s own hand, errors and impurities in the song, evil or hateful flourishes. The Dwellers worked to find them and remove them, so that the book would be pure. It was an ongoing task that gave their lives meaning.
When new devotees were ready, they journeyed across the land, in small groups or singly. Dariel saw all this as much as heard it through Na Gamen’s words. Cloaked figures greeted the dawn with their heads raised and voices flowing out over the hilly Talayan landscape. A single man walked a mountain pass, keeping time with the tapping of his walking stick on the stones. Women knee-deep in the tranquil waters of a blue ocean praised the sun as it burned its way into the rim of the world. A circle of singers around a campfire, wrapped in cloaks against the frigid wind, eyes gazing at the millions of stars as their lips moved, asking the Giver to come back and bring harmony to the world again.
As he listened, Dariel understood the word-notes that were that strange language, so filled with longing, so true and perfect. Somehow, they carried the solidity of the substance of the world rendered in living sound.
For hundreds of years we lived and died and worked at this mission , Na Gamen said. He held Dariel by the wrist now. They walked along a narrow shelf of rock that dropped off down a steep slope on one side. Before them, a stone staircase curved up toward the peak of the mountain. They carried on toward it. The world was in chaos through all that time. See it.
And Dariel did. Warring factions. Uprisings. Tribal betrayals. Atrocities. The Known World as it had once been flashed before Dariel’s eyes in a torrent of images. He saw things real and surreal, things that made sense and things that did not. An army of mail-clad warriors smashed against howling tribesmen in furs and leather. Creatures with the lower bodies of horses and with human torsos above pounded across dry plains. Black skinned as Balbarans, they screamed war. A queen bearing a narrow, simple crown spoke before a gathered host of snarling monsters, crammed together inside a huge chamber. She showed no fear of them. She just spoke on, her freckled face serene before the madness.
Na Gamen explained that Edifus left the Dwellers alone as his conquest took shape. He even visited them on occasion, learning the song himself and adding his voice to theirs. Perhaps he still respected the god. Perhaps he believed as they did. For a time it seemed so. He convinced them that the world they were building-once the warfare was over-would have a beauty in the god’s eyes. In that way, he would aid in luring the Giver back to the Known World.
We came to trust him. We freely gave him The Song of Elenet. Who better than a king to protect it? His sons,
