David Durham - The Sacred Band

If we go there together, I’ll use you for target practice, he swore. Out loud he said, “Or the cliff palaces of Manil…”

“Palaces on cliffs? Wonderful.”

I’ll push you from them and watch you fall into the sea.

Sabeer squirmed against him. “Tell me more.”

And he did. He could not help himself. “Of course,” he said, “there’s the isle of Acacia itself…”

Aliver Akaran reached out and touched the statue’s chin. He traced the Talayan’s jawline. He brushed his fingertips over the full lips and caressed the clean-shaven crown of its head. All so very lifelike down to the finest details-the texture of the skin and eyelashes, the expression of focused engagement, the collarbones and lean runner’s chest, and the muscled compartments of its legs. It stood frozen in a posture of motion, iron spear high in the fingers of one hand. The other arm was wrapped above the bicep by an arm ring. A tuvey band, Aliver recalled.

“I know you,” the prince said. “We once ran together.”

He said this and knew it to be true. It warmed him, but he also understood that this figure was only a work of wood and iron and fabric. The others spaced out along the lamplit hallway were as well. The Senivalian wore scaled armor and hefted a curved sword with a brawny arm. The Vumu warrior’s eagle feathers flared from a band around his head. The various Acacians in different military garb, their faces like Aliver’s-light brown, even featured, with a haughty lift to their chins and sagely dark eyes. There was even a Meinish soldier, blond and gray eyed, his nose and cheekbones sharp. A tuft of gold bristled on his chin.

“I know you,” Aliver said. “We once fought each other.” Again it was true and not true. So many things were true and not true.

Looking back down the corridor that led to his boyhood room, Aliver saw not just the scene before him, dimly lit and quiet with the dead of night, but also a thousand other views of this same place. He saw it in the morning light and by the afternoon glare from the skylights, muted by gray skies and crimson when the setting sun shone through the western windows. He saw it with the eyes of the child who ran down the corridor, light on his feet and full of play. He saw it as the youth he was on the day his father died, striding straight-backed and very foolish in his pride. He saw it filled with the people who had once moved through life with him.

“I know you all.”

The same sensation surrounded him as he sat in his old room. He ran his hand over his silken bedspread. He picked up the statue of Telamathon-he who had defeated the god Reelos and his five disciples-and felt the man’s face with fingers. He studied the tapestries on the wall and the busts of the early kings, facing east to greet the morning sun. His room had remained furnished as he remembered, almost as if it had been preserved for his return. He knew it had not been. Nobody had expected his return, least of all him. But he was here, body and mind; and with each passing hour he became more and more himself. Less and less whatever he had been.

It felt almost like his flesh and skin were shrinking to fit his form, just now growing snug around him. Whatever Corinn had done to bring him back to life should not have been attempted. He knew that as surely as he had ever known anything. But it was done, and he could only live with it. Just how to live he was not sure. Wandering about the palace seemed to be helping, though. He rose and continued.

He could not have explained how he knew where to find the boy. He simply rose and looked. And looking, he knew. He entered the room as a servant came out of it. Surprised by his presence, she slammed herself against the doorjamb and stood straight as a board as he approached. Much the same reaction the other servants gave him when he encountered them. He studied her soft-featured face a moment, not recognizing it but finding it pleasant, and then he nodded as he passed by her into the bedroom.

Aaden, a child of eight, lay on his bedspread. Dressed in silken green bedclothes, he curled to one side, his knees pulled up and his hands clasped together. Something about the posture looked choreographed, too precise to be natural. Perhaps the servant had just repositioned him. Yes, that was it. They were caring for him as he slept.

Aliver sat beside him. He felt as if he already knew the boy, as if he could sit without fear that the boy would think it a trespass, as if he had spent time with him already. He had not. Corinn had always delayed their meeting, but she was gone for the time being. A good thing, too. He was coming to know himself and the present world faster without the tightly wound energy swirling about her to contend with.

“When will you wake?” he asked. “I should like us to talk, just us for a time. I was a boy like you once. A prince promised the world. No doubt you’ve been lied to… for your own good, they’ll believe. But nothing good comes from lies, not even well-intentioned ones. One thing they don’t tell you is that the world is not truly yours. You are but a part of it. You have been born not to be served by it but to serve it. At least, that’s how it felt with me. Perhaps your birth into this family is no accident. You may be the greatest of us all.”

Greatest of them all? Was that his idea? Strange to feel it anchored in him, though he knew nothing of this boy beyond his parentage. Corinn had said something about Aaden’s greatness. She had said many things; and she had not said many things. Aliver was aware of both. Their conversations had created an unease that itched at the edge of his awareness. He could not find a way to draw it nearer or to pull it over himself and inhabit it as some part of him wanted to. Even when she had said things he did not agree with, he was powerless to truly object.

A few days ago, before she left for Teh, she had told him that she believed the Santoth had reached out to her. She claimed that they had spoken to her through people in her dreams. “Once I wouldn’t have thought that possible,” she had said. She sat sharing the late evening with him. The fire had burned to glowing coals and grown warmer for it. He watched her fingers as they kneaded a lacy shawl, squeezing and letting go, squeezing and letting go. “But now anything is possible. Anything at all.”

“What do they say?” Aliver asked.

“Promises. Entreaties.” She did not look at Aliver. She seemed almost to be carrying on both sides of their conversation herself. “They ask and ask and promise. It’s all quite jumbled really.”

“What do they ask?”

“They ask me to rescind their banishment, bring them back to Acacia, and give them The Song of Elenet. They act like it’s theirs! And what do they promise? They’re vague on that. To be my army of sorcerers. To protect me from forces I don’t understand. As if I need them for that.”

“Perhaps you do. They cared for me. Corinn, I went in search-”

“Of them. A foolish thing to do. They helped us win the war, so I don’t fault you too much for it, but it was the song itself we needed, not other singers of it.”

Perhaps she knew best. His thoughts were still cloudy on his past life. And yet… “In the end I didn’t find them; they found me.” That was exactly right. He had thought they were stones. He would have died just a few feet from them, had they not risen and saved him. “They wanted only to be released from banishment and to study the Giver’s tongue again.”

“I know that much,” Corinn said. “They’re desperate for my book. Too desperate.”

“Wouldn’t you be desperate, too?” This brought her gaze up. “Imagine if-” He could get no further. With Corinn’s eyes on him, intense and flashing warning, his words clipped off as if his throat had been squeezed shut. For a moment he did not breathe. Then he gasped and knew that he had breath. It was only words that could not pass his lips.