rolling landscape that hulked off to the west. The peaks of Rath Batatt were hazy shapes in the distance.
“I’d expected there to be more of you,” Dariel said. He spoke Auldek. He believed it now. He could switch between it and Acacian with complete fluency. The word structures and grammatical rules were vastly different, but both languages were equally clear to him, neither one more or less foreign than the other. “Mor made it seem like… like I’d find a paradise of Free People thriving out here.”
“Is that not what you see?”
“In a manner of speaking, I guess.”
“Mor sees not just what is but what she hopes will be. The two live in her at once. Give her purpose. You must consider this when you speak with her; but, no, we are not numerous, Dariel. If we were, the Auldek might have had cause to destroy us. That was why we split into smaller villages, spread out along the rim of the mountains.”
“Did they attack you often?”
“Years ago they hunted us for sport, but they grew tired of that over the centuries. Many of us were unwanted anyway. To beings enslaved by their immortality, the aged are no welcome sight. We make them uneasy. We remind them of themselves. You saw all the gray hairs in the company and fewer teeth than our numbers might suggest.” In contradiction to this, Yoen smiled. “What immortally young person would want us around?”
“You’re not all old.”
“Oh, not all. No, no. Some of the young ones the Auldek deemed defective for some reason. Not many, but occasionally the Aklun missed a frailty of mind or body. And some suffered injuries not easily healed. Ones like that the Auldek did not concern themselves with if they disappeared. I’ve lived these many years not sure what the Auldek think of us.”
“Look at these here!” the elder exclaimed. He careened off the path at what seemed a dangerous burst of speed, into an orchard of manicured trees that hung heavy with fruit. “The size of these! Aren’t they beauties?”
Dariel admitted to never having seen pears so large. He had to cup one in a two-handed grip to tug it free. Yoen was more selective. Dariel watched him sort through the branches, testing different fruit beneath the pressure of his thumb. “The season is perfect for them. Mor will like these, I think.”
“She could have walked with us,” Dariel said, “except that she can’t stand to be around me. I thought she had softened after I helped destroy the soul catcher. She seems to have forgotten all about that.”
Yoen looked at him for a long moment. “It’s not a matter of hatred. She fears you. She wants desperately to believe you are the Rhuin Fa. She wants you to help us make this nation of ours, and she hates it that she wants that so much. She has waited all her life for this, never knowing if change would come in her lifetime. Now it has, and part of it arrives bearing the name Akaran, a prince of the very family that enslaved us. You can see her point, I trust. It would have been easier for many of us to recognize the Rhuin Fa if he arrived with Akaran blood on his hands.”
Finding a pear that suited him, Yoen grasped it in his palms and gave a quick tug. The fruit held on stubbornly, but the shaking of the branch dropped another one softly into the grass. Yoen smiled down at it. “This one doesn’t want me; that one does. I can take a hint.” Dariel moved as he began to bend, retrieving the fallen fruit for him. “Thank you,” Yoen said, taking it.
A little farther up the hill, the two men moved off the trail and sat down on simple stools, with a tree-stump table between them. Yoen sliced the fruit with agile motions of a slim knife. The skin of the fruit was brilliant yellow, smooth to the touch; and the flesh inside had a pinkish hue.
“Dariel, it’s a miracle that any of the People remain whole. They were taken as children. You know that, of course, but can you imagine what it means for an entire nation to share a common trauma? All of us. Whether we are now young or old, all of us were made orphans. All of us were taught we were slaves to the whims of the world. It may be that all people are that, but most don’t learn it at seven, eight years old.”
Birke and Anira came up the trail. Dariel nodded to them. They saw him but did not return the gesture. They stayed near the path.
Yoen went on. “So, what would happen to a nation of people deprived of the love of their parents? If nobody taught them morality, what sort of adults would they become? What if their captors told them time and again that they deserved their slavery-that they caused it somehow, or that their parents sold them or simply gave them away? A child can believe great lies, especially the ones that hurt him. You see the problem.”
“Yes,” Dariel conceded. He felt sick to his stomach, unable to eat the fruit Yoen had sectioned for him. “Yes.”
Tam and several of the elders also came into view. Behind them, Mor walked by herself, her head averted as if she did not want to make eye contact with anyone. Dariel almost said something, but from the determined way Yoen managed not to acknowledge them, he knew he should not. As the elder talked on, several more of the villagers and a few elders just arrived from farther-flung settlements joined the procession.
“Each of us had to reckon with the fate the Giver abandoned us to. So I-and many generations before me-did what we could to remain whole. We had to invent a semblance of a nurturing culture by trial and error. We treat one another with compassion. We teach the young that they are loved, that the world has done them a great wrong, but they own no fault for it. We tell them stories, dream with them of a better world. We ask them to believe in the possibility of a hero, a champion. Mor and the others think that the elders have organized resistance and prepared them for the fight facing us. We have helped with that, yes, but the young own that more than we. No, our true work for many generations has been in teaching the young how to grow into human beings. It hasn’t been easy. We haven’t always succeeded. We can only do so much from here, but we’ve done our best. I want you to understand that. Do you?”
Dariel nodded. Following Yoen’s example, he did not watch as the others moved from the path and proceeded toward them. “I think so. I… in my own way, I was an orphan, too. I had to learn how to be a man from people other than my family or siblings. I understand the gift that is.”
“I’m glad to hear you say so. I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to explain it, even if I needed to. The other elders think I’ve taken too long with you already. Has anyone spoken to you about the news from Avina? The last messenger brought much news, none of it good. Confusion. The People breaking into factions. The league crawling over Lothan Aklun sites like scavengers. The unity that kept us tight around a single cause broke apart when the Auldek left. We out here are not powerful enough to control the People in Avina. We need them united with us, not as enemies. But you knew that already, didn’t you? We are walking on the sand when the tide has drawn out. The moment won’t last. The wave will come crashing in soon. Don’t you agree?”
He did. Even though he had not spent as much time thinking of Avina as he should, he did agree. He had seen enough of war and of power struggles to know that the paradise Mor so wanted would not come easily. He could not help glancing at her. She stood a little distance away, one of the loose circle that surrounded Yoen and him. Her gaze was on him, frank and at the same time unreadable. “Yes,” he said, answering Yoen’s question.
“Good,” Yoen said. “Then you will understand that we must move swiftly now. Dariel, had I my way, you and I would spend many more days talking and walking in these orchards. Seeing as how I killed you, I feel some obligation to explain more about what you’ve become after that death. I cannot have my way on that. I can’t explain more because I don’t know any more. What you are to be to yourself-and to us-you must figure out yourself. And, as time is short, I must put all other things aside to ask you a question. More than just a question, really.”
Ask it, Dariel thought. Ask it. He had his answer ready.
Yoen straightened and looked around at the gathered company, finally taking them all in. “I don’t just ask for me, of course. It’s for all of us.”
“Yes,” Dariel said.
“But I have not asked it yet.”
“My answer is yes.” Dariel looked from face to face around the circle, at friends he felt he knew well and others he had only just met. It didn’t matter that he had not known any of them a few months ago, or that he didn’t know exactly what Yoen was going to ask. It didn’t even matter that Yoen had thrust a knife into his belly. If anything, that act had just brought Dariel closer to them. He had already decided. For each of them he had the same answer.
“Yes.”
And then a question of his own. “When do we start?”
