David Durham - The Sacred Band

Corinn looked back to the shawl in her lap. “They’ve left me alone recently. I’m glad of it. My dreams are cluttered enough without them. We don’t need them. Tinhadin didn’t; I don’t.”

“But what if-”

“No, I am right,” she said. “Leave it at that.” Before the reverberation of her words had completely faded he believed she was right. It was a relief in a way. So much confused doubt replaced by her certainty. He was not even sure what he had been about to say.

“Oh, look at this!” Corinn plucked at something on the shawl. “A slipped stitch.” She tugged on the yarn pinched between her fingers. It slipped free easily. She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, a reprimand for whoever had knitted it. Then, after a studied pause, she continued ripping the stitches out.

S itting beside Aaden now, Aliver sighed. Thinking of his sister fatigued him and exhilarated him at the same time. He could make no sense of it yet. He reached out and stroked strands of wavy hair back from the child’s forehead. He was handsome. How could a child of Corinn’s not be?

“I do wish you would wake and speak to me, but you can’t. I should speak to you. How about a story? Would you like a story?” Aliver stretched out next to him. “Let’s see…”

And tell stories he did. Not just one. Several. He told of the girl Kira, who had one magical gift. She could fold bits of paper into winged shapes and toss them into the air, turning them into living birds. It was a simple talent that she thought largely useless until she learned better. He told of an adventure Bashar had while hunting his brother in Talay, how he fell into a deep pit and could escape only with the aid of a legless man who climbed on his back and described the way out for him. He told bits and pieces as he recalled them from his own childhood, and he told half the tale of Aliss, the Aushenian woman who killed the Madman of Caraven. Only half, though, for he realized at some point that the ending was a bloodier thing than he wished to describe to a sleeping boy.

He talked long enough that his voice grew hoarse and he fell into a long, ruminative silence, staring at the ceiling and listening to the boy’s quiet breathing. Eventually, when the pipers played the passing of a third hour, Aliver swung his legs to the floor and rose. “Sleep peacefully, my nephew. Wake soon.”

He had just started away when the boy’s eyes fluttered open. He looked at Aliver. His irises were Meinish gray, a startling contrast with the fullness of their Acacian shape. He worked his mouth a moment, licked his lips. “I-I had dreams.”

It did not occur to Aliver to be surprised by his awakening. He chose delight instead. Settling back on the edge of the bed, he asked, “Of what?”

“That I walked outside and the clouds were stones. Big stones floating.”

“Really? I don’t think stones can float.”

“These ones could. And I dreamed that the water floated out of the pools on the terraces and all the fish started swimming in the air. And I could swim, too, so long as I was touching drops of floating water. It was fun until I remembered about the hookfish. When I remembered them, I knew they were coming and fell down to the ground.”

“Your dreams have a lot of floating in them.”

“Not always. Once I was very thin.” Aaden lifted his arms and shook them slightly, demonstrating some aspect of his temporary thinness. “And one time I could eat anything. I mean anything. I could just bite the wall and chew it, and the bedspread, and the lamp oil. Anything. Nothing tasted like much, but I could still eat it.”

“That would be convenient in many ways.”

“Yes, it would. When you’re fighting a war. It would make it easier to supply the troops if they could just eat anything. Stones. Grass and stuff.”

Aliver grinned. “That would be an advantage, but only if the enemy could not do the same.”

“No, they couldn’t,” Aaden said, as if he had thought that through already. He looked up at the ceiling, clearly considering something else and weighing whether or not to voice it. “I dreamed that my friend Devlyn got killed.”

“Oh.” Aliver squeezed the boy’s wrist gently. “That was not a dream. Or… it was not only a dream.”

“I know. I hoped you would say it was, though. I wish you had. I would have believed it if you said it. Who are you?”

Aliver leaned closer. “I am your uncle.”

“You’re not Dariel,” Aaden said. “He’s gone across the Gray Slopes.”

“I don’t claim to be Dariel. I’m Aliver.”

Aaden let out an audible breath of affirmation. “Of course you are! Did Mother bring you back?”

Aliver nodded.

“Are you going to get them?”

“Who?”

“My guards. The ones who stabbed Devlyn. I saw them do it for no reason. They wanted to kill me, too. Is he really dead?”

“I believe so,” Aliver said. “I… know that he is, yes. I’m not sure how I know, but I do. I know a lot of things, Aaden, but they’re new to me. It’s like… I just discovered a new library of books. I have them. They’re mine, but I haven’t read all the books yet. It may take me some time.”

A gasp drew their attention. The maid stood inside the door, her mouth an oval around a question she could not manage to speak. She tried several times, then turned and darted out of the room.

“She’ll be back soon, I think,” Aliver said.

Aaden sighed. “Will she get Mother?”

“No, your mother has gone to Teh. She was angry at all the Numrek, not just the guards who hurt you and Devlyn. I believe she went to punish them.”

“Good. There’s no excuse for such behavior. What is she going to do to them?”

Aliver ran his hand over the boy’s hair. “What would you have her do to them?”

“I don’t know,” Aaden said. “They killed Devlyn. He was my friend.”

“That was wrong of them.”

Aaden pressed his lips together, nodded. “Why did they do that? He didn’t do anything except be my friend.” All of sudden, as if the grief of it had just exploded in him, Aaden crumpled forward, falling against Aliver. “He was my only friend.”

Aliver held the boy to his chest as he cried, stroking his hair. So Aaden had not inherited his great-grandfather’s gift of being loved by all his peers. Gridulan was the last Acacian monarch to have a band of brothers with him always, loyal and adoring if the stories of them were to be believed. Leodan had only his traitorous chancellor Thaddeus Clegg. Aliver himself might have had Melio as a close companion, but he had been too foolish to accept the youth’s overtures with the sincerity with which they were offered. At least Aaden knew to call a friend a friend.

“Your mother will take care of them,” he said. “She told me she would treat them fairly.”

“Good,” Aaden said, a bitter edge cutting through his grief. “She should kill them all.”

This drew Aliver up. Kill them all? Was that the boy’s idea of fairness? Or was it his mother’s? He knew the answer immediately, and with it came a greater understanding of the ruler his sister must have become. And the sort of mother as well. He could not decide how to respond, so he held the boy until his sorrow spent itself. As he did, his horror at the boy’s wish for vengeance lost its acute shape and blurred at the edges. He found it hard to grasp.

Eventually, Aaden pulled away from him, looking exhausted in addition to miserable. “I think I’m tired.” The boy lay down, resting his head on his pillow in the indentation already pressed into it. “When I get up, we have to go find Elya.”

“Elya?”

“You don’t know Elya? She saved me. She is a dragon. Well… of sorts. A dragon. A lizard. A bird. All of them together. I’m not sure what to call her other than a dragon, though. What do you think?”