David Durham - The Sacred Band

“Give it to me.” Nualo extended his hand. “Give it to me!”

Looking at his cracked, aged hand, Corinn realized what the last thing Leeka had tried to say to her and Aliver was. They cannot take it from me. I have to give it to them. They stood there, ranked in front of her, like starving men before a feast she held in her hands… and they could do nothing.

For a sliver of a moment Corinn rejoiced. If they could not take it from her, she could keep it! They did not have the power over her that they claimed. She could…

And then that brief madness was gone. She could not keep it. She had not the life to use it anymore, and, even now, surrounded by the threads of beauty that still swam around her, she knew the song should not be sung by any human mouth. Never again.

You cannot have it, she said. None of us can. This ends now. Here .

Nualo’s face bunched with rage. He raked up a curse from deep within him, but before he could utter it, the worm arrived. As when she had envisioned it swallowing the whole of the isle of Acacia, the creature’s mouth was enormous. It emerged under a great swell of seawater, a wide ring that took in everything: the sea wolves, the people standing on them, the sea around them. The mouth rose around them all. It stretched upward, stories upon stories tall, a wall so dripping with water and encrusted with barnacles and hanging with tendrils of seaweed that Corinn could only take in the vastness of it with no greater understanding of exactly what it was. The strong, aquatic smell of it drenched the air. And still it rose.

The Santoth tried to leap away. They roared their anger and slashed out with their foul sorcery. Nualo clawed for the book, begging Corinn to give it to him. She yanked it from his grasp when the sea wolves beneath him fell away. He splashed down among them, bellowing curses. The sea wolves loosed their tight weave and sent the sorcerers down to thrash among their tentacles and the great rolling heave of their bodies. Only the sea wolves directly beneath Corinn stayed together.

The queen pressed the book to her chest and looked at Hanish. He stared back. He reached out and took one of her hands. The two of them stood like that, the only stillness in all that great commotion. His mouth opened as if to say something. But instead of speaking he smiled. Of all the things he could have said and done, that smile was perfect. It was sad, resigned, and yet also confident. Somehow, it conveyed that this was as it had to be, the best of all possible outcomes. It said that what they went to now was nothing to fear.

Then the creature’s mouth closed around them all. It stopped its upward thrust and slowly, heavily, fell back into the sea. Above the churning froth into which it sank, the dragon Po circled for a time, crying out his distress. Circling, as the sea went calm beneath him, as the waves rolled on, and the wind, until there was nothing but the sea.

Standing alone in the dressing room he had been provided, Dariel listened to the murmur of the gathering crowd. He could not help but remember the multitude of voices he had sensed inside that glowing wall on Lithram Len. It was the same sound in so many ways, except that here, out in the main courtyard of Avina, the masses gathered in exuberant joy. They had mouths to speak with, hands to clap, free will to move themselves through the world. They had life to rejoice in, now more than ever.

Such had not been the case with the spirits trapped through the sorcery that encased them in that wall and somehow connected them to all the accursed soul vessels. Dariel did not expect to ever understand it entirely. He hoped he wouldn’t. Understanding the sorcery was the very thing that drove the Lothan Aklun to acts of revenge that had enslaved the entire world-themselves along with it-for generations. Better just to know that his bow of reverence had placed the raised rune on his forehead into the engraving meant to receive it. His living tissue touched that strange, glowing matter. A key. That was what Na Gamen had given him. A key that unlocked that cage of souls, freeing all the spirits that the Lothan Aklun had used to power their vessels. The moment it was done, the glowing wall had gone dark. Silent. Motionless. He had felt a concussion of energy, but it had come from elsewhere. In that small chamber, the cage of souls simply ceased to be, and the enslaved vanished into freedom.

“I freed them,” Dariel said. “Or… you freed them.” That was another thing that he was going to have to learn to live with: that he and Na Gamen would share his soul for as long as they both lived on inside Dariel’s mortal body. Acknowledging that, Dariel said, “We freed them.”

Bashar brushed his leg. He stroked the hound. Still a pup, but tall enough already that Dariel did not need to bend to reach him. All lean muscle and bone. Hunters. The ridge running against the grain up his back bristled stronger than ever. He looked at Cashen, who lay watching them. The pup thumped his tail. Considering the massive pads of their paws, Dariel had finally come to believe Birke had not exaggerated. The hounds would be enormous, and they would be there soon. Dariel repeated, “We freed them.”

“Yes,” a voice said, “we did.” Mor stood in the open doorway, in silhouette against the light behind her. Dariel could not see her face, but he knew her form and her voice. She walked in, more beautiful now as the lamplight illuminated her. “You look good in these clothes.” She reached for the collar of his new linen cloak, tugged it around a bit, seemed to like it even better. “Are you ready?”

Dariel said he was, but Mor did not move to lead him to the meeting being held in his honor. She stared at his face, tattooed just like hers. She stared at his forehead, which no longer had the rune embossed on it. His skin was as smooth as it had been before the Sky Watcher took the stylus to it. The key, once used, vanished along with the soul vessels.

“At least you’ll always have these Shivith markings,” Mor said.

“And I’ll never forget who drew them under my skin,” Dariel responded. “Rather painful, as I recall.”

Mor ducked her head a moment, laughed. “We’ve come a long way, Dariel Akaran. I’ll tell you something.” She leaned in a little closer and whispered. “I am a woman who finds beauty first in other women. That is just the way I am. But if I did like men… I might come to you to explore it.”

Dariel was glad she pulled back. His face had flushed, and he feared if she kept studying him so closely his cheek might start to twitch.

“I never told you what Na Gamen told me at the Sky Mount,” Mor said, strolling away and running her finger across a nearby desk. “I didn’t doubt him, but I didn’t want to accept it, either. First, he said you had a destiny here. He said your story, whether it ended well or ill, would be the story of our nation as well. I told him I despised the blood in your veins. Do you know what he told me?”

“What?”

“That it was your Akaran blood that made greatness in you possible. I thought that was foolishness, but the more I’ve thought about the many things he showed me, the more I believe he could not complete his work without an Akaran’s blessing. Does that sound right?”

Dariel nodded.

Mor did as well. “The second thing… was that he confirmed that my brother’s spirit force was still inside Devoth. Buried deep, he said. It was close to his true self. I had always thought my memory of that was true, and it was.” She picked up a stylus and felt the grain of the wooden handle. “He said that if I went in search of him-to kill him-I might succeed, but that I might not get back to Ushen Brae. He said I could have revenge or a future among the People. He did not think that I could have both.”