The Other Lands (58 page)

She heard Mena call for the royal physicians and bark other orders. Reasonable things, things she should be saying herself. All she could do was hold Aaden in her arms and feel grief and fear opening around her like the maw of the toothed worm that lives in the center of the earth. She felt it rising, hungry, enraged. The worm was death.
Death!
It wanted to swallow Aaden. She had never known what death was, but now she did. It was a worm in the center of the earth. A hungry beast of a thing that wanted her son.

But she would not give him her son. Why should I have to? I’ve given so much already. Why can I not have this one thing—a son to love? Why? She realized she was talking to the beast inside her head, but it did not care. It began before her and would go on after her and never, never would care for words like that. If she held on to Aaden the worm would swallow her as well, gulp them both down into the fetid abyss that was its belly. She and Aaden, Mena and the servants. The entire palace. No, the island Acacia itself. If she held on to her son and denied the worm, its jaws would rise from the sea and clamp shut around them and drag everything into the deep, unless … unless she sang.

I have to sing!

Thinking it, she realized she had known it all along. The worm was ancient, and since she had first read from
The Song of Elenet
she had felt it stir. She had not admitted it, but she had felt it roll and flex beneath the earth. It had welcomed her song. It wanted it. It fed on it. Why had she not understood this until now?

Mena leaned over her, saying something, but Corinn ignored her and everyone around her. It did not even matter if they heard her. Nothing mattered except that she sing for Aaden before the worm ate them all. They knew nothing about it, the fools! Corinn had done nothing useful the entire day, but she would now.

With her lips brushing the soft flesh of Aaden’s neck, she opened her mouth and breathed out the song. It came to her willingly, those mysterious words and the notes they rode upon. She did not form it. She just released it, aware that if she did it would heal the damage inside Aaden. And that would appease the worm. It was a promise of some sort, a deal she was making with things unknown.

She sang.

In the seas surrounding the isle of Acacia, Corinn was certain that the jaws of the beast paused just below the surface, halting the great swell of momentum that had driven it. It paused because she sang. It listened. It heard, and then the worm sang with her, a great bass rumble that was beautiful, and horrible, to hear.

L
eeka Alain. It really was the old general. Several days after encountering the man, Kelis still found himself reliving his surprise. He watched him askance whenever he could, relearning his sun-browned features and trying to order the details of the man’s life in a way that might explain his presence here in the arid expanse of southern Talay. Here was the man who had commanded the Northern Guard in Hanish Mein’s time. He was the first to face the Numrek, the first to kill one of those giants. They had called him the rhino rider, for he had descended the Methalian Rim into the Mainland atop one of the Numrek’s woolly beasts. He had been too late with his news of the coming invaders. Though he fought hard and long on many fronts, he had not been able to repell Hanish’s multipronged attack. Leeka had been lost to the world after that, only to appear years later to rally Aliver’s troops against Maeander on the Taneh Plains of northern Talay. And then he had disappeared during the chaos unleashed by the Santoth.

Now it was nine years later and again the veteran general had rejoined the living. He was no longer simply a hard-bitten soldier. He was something else now, but just what that something was Kelis could not say. Leeka did not look a day older than when Kelis had last seen him. Yes, at first his features had seemed to shift and reshape themselves, but that had stopped after a few hours. His face took on a normal solidity, his jaw square, mouth wide, cheekbones high.

His eyes, Kelis remembered, had been penetrating, those of a commander of soldiers who dealt with the world with a hawklike sharpness. Now his eyes seemed to absorb the world, as if he were hungry for everything he saw.

“Walk with me,” Leeka had said, “and your questions will be answered.” That was all he had bidden them do. Benabe balked and Naamen questioned and Kelis felt the weight of that simple request like a stone in his gut. He felt he had no control over their fate, no leadership to offer except the authority to place them in the hands of forces he did not understand. Forces he had reason to fear.

Shen, though, smiled and asked, “Is it far?” Leeka assured her that it wasn’t, although they should travel slowly and, with patience.

And that was what they did. They trudged farther south, through a featureless landscape, no motion upon it save the rippling dance of heat, no living creatures save their group of five. With Leeka’s nod of assent, they sat out the hottest hours of the day huddled beneath small geometries of shade cast by sheets draped over thin stakes they drove into the ground. Leeka himself stood at a slight distance, hooded and so still that Kelis sometimes felt the old general had slipped out of this world and left a scarecrow in his place.

The four sipped their water sparingly, all of them aware of how little they had and how devoid of moisture the landscape was. They could not even find the tubers or cacti that years of training had taught them existed in even the deepest desert. Kelis felt himself going dry from the inside out. His flesh became a strange leather that shrank to wrap his muscles and tendons and thinning blood vessels. He sometimes pretended to drink from the waterskin, to spare the precious liquid for Shen. Though they never said anything about it, he suspected Benabe and Naamen were doing the same.

Leeka never drank. He did not sleep. He never showed fatigue or seemed to feel the heat.

As the sun slanted westward each evening, they rose and, with a few terse words of encouragement from Leeka, began their trek again. Shen walked beside the hooded man often. She was the only one who seemed at ease with him and also unaffected by fatigue or thirst. By the way he inclined his head toward her, and the way she tugged on his arm and looked up at him, one would have thought they were conversing—an uncle out with a favorite niece, perhaps.

But, as far as Kelis could ascertain, very few words passed between them. On several occasions when they seemed in animated discourse he crept up behind them, close enough to make out the intricate pattern of braids tight against Shen’s skull, close enough to hear the clicking of the beads fastened to the ends of them. But that and the scuffing of their feet and their slow breathing of the always hot air and Leeka swallowing were the only sounds he ever heard.

“He is insane,” Benabe said one evening, “and he is teaching my daughter the trick of it. I do not like that man.” She had made this clear from the first sighting of the hooded man standing alone in a desert expanse. During the passing days, she had not tired of reminding Kelis of her opinion. Several times she proposed that they break from Leeka and turn north or toward the coast to the east. They could return later, she said, with the help of others. Her lips were cracked, her skin dusty, her features gaunt. She had to speak slowly, between careful breaths, but she was no less the fiery, protective mother.

“You think a man who stands in the desert by himself is sane?” she asked. “You think he should lead us anywhere? He’s lost, and we’re following him. What’s that make us? I’ll tell you—bigger fools.”

“Shen says that—”

“Shen is a child! She may be something more as well, but she is a young girl first. She dreams. She trembles and hears voices.”

“Before, you said that—”

“I know what I said. But what did I know? Sitting in a mansion in Bocoum …” She shook the thought of it away. She was silent a moment, and then said, “I want to say that I will die if he harms her. But when people say that, they don’t really mean it. But I am simply stating the truth: I will die.” She jabbed him with an elbow. “You will too. I’ll see to it before I go.”

Though not as constant as Benabe, it was obvious Naamen, too, had his doubts. He approached Kelis after she drifted away. He walked silently beside him for some time, and then said, “After today we will have no water.”

“I know,” Kelis said.

“So you also know that we are walking dead. Benabe is right: we should not have come.”

“Do not let a coward wear your skin,” Kelis answered, all the more harshly because he was wrestling with the same thoughts. “When you are called to a quest, you go. You trust. We must trust Leeka.”

In an answer of sorts, Naamen had exhaled and took in the desolation around them. What more need he say when the entire curve of the world was nothing but sand cracked by the sun, so parched that the ground looked to have never known a drop of water?

Naamen said, “He may be a gatherer of the dead. He is taking us to—”

“Have faith! In Shen, if not in Leeka. She is the only one among us who matters. Aliver’s daughter, remember? He leads us through her.”

“I never knew the prince.”

“Know his daughter, then, and feel privileged.”

Kelis did not waste any more breath trying to convince him. Naamen and Benabe could base their thoughts only on the world they knew and the things they had seen. Neither had seen the Santoth. Kelis had. Neither had ever seen Leeka before. Kelis had, and because of it, he was sure that they had no choice but to follow him. Kelis did not truly feel the certainty he tried to project, yet what choice had he but to face with dignity whatever came?

They did not walk as late into the night as usual. They made camp on a plain dotted with oblong boulders, like slim eggs balanced upright, each taller than a man. Kelis had not seen the boulders until they were among them—strange, for his eyes had been searching for anything to break the monotony. But there they were. The group stood within a cluster of them, the others showing unease behind their fatigue.

Leeka kept moving. He scooped out a bowl shape in the sand and sparked a strange blue fire into it. He had not poured any substance into the bowl. Nor had he struck flint and tinder. Nevertheless, a flame roiled around the depression like a liquid, brightening to a greenish glow, then settling to a turquoise illumination that touched all the watching faces and made the world behind them fade.

With the fire burning but nothing being consumed, Leeka looked at the group. He bade them sit. Once they had, he said, “Touch the fire. It will not burn you.”

“Touch it?” Naamen asked.

“Yes.” Leeka demonstrated, drawing back a sleeve and pushing his outstretched hand into the substance. It rippled at his touch, licked up his forearm. He showed no discomfort, and when he withdrew his hand it was unharmed.

“Why?” Naamen asked. “Why should we touch it?”

“You should do as your friend suggests. Trust.”

Naamen glanced at Kelis, at Shen and Benabe. For a moment he looked like a child caught out by an elder, but then he pressed his lips together and looked at the liquid flame. He shot his fingers into it quickly, straight and close together, then drew them back, stared at them, and then eased them in again. Astonishment loosened his features. “It’s not hot,” he said. “It’s … like cool water.”

“Like water,” Leeka said, “it will refresh you. Touch and drink of it. It will sustain you until you return to your lands.”

Just like that, Kelis’s thirst—which had faded to so deep within him that he was no longer aware of it—returned. Nothing had ever seemed more enticing than that fiery liquid. His hand scooped into it and came up dripping flame. Naamen was right. It was cool to the touch. He brought his hand to his lips. It was delicious and like liquid life as it slid down his throat. He felt it reach the center of him and begin to slip out as if into the veins of his body. Just one handful, then he sat back on his haunches, head tilted to the sky, eyes closed, completely filled. For a time he forgot everything, understanding vaguely that the others had done the same.

“The Santoth are here,” Leeka said. “They thank you for bringing the heir to them. She is loved. They will answer your questions now.”

Remembering the sorcerers as he had seen them on the plains that day, Kelis opened his eyes and looked around. The five of them were alone. “They will?”

“My teachers will speak through me, yes.”

“Now you’ll answer our questions?” Benabe asked. The euphoria of having drunk the flame had filled her features, but her voice still had its edge. “Now that we walked through the desert with you for three days—now we can ask you questions?”

“Mother,” Shen said.

Leeka said, “Perhaps I should begin with what they think you should know. You should know that the Santoth are protecting you. They have been for some time already. They feel your fear and they understand, but you are safe here. When you leave, you will find your way safely back to the world of people. They promise you that.”

“What do they want with my daughter?”

“They want her to be safe.”

“Safe from what?”

Leeka was silent a moment, his eyes focused somewhere else. Eventually he said, “They wish me to explain. Shen knows these things. She and I have discussed them. Time that you know as well, mother of Shen. Understand without doubt that the Santoth have been in communion with the girl her entire life. We know you know this, and yet we feel the doubt in you. Don’t doubt.”

Benabe sat with her daughter at her side. The mother’s face wore an expression like hurt, as if the man had touched an old wound. Shen must have seen it, for she took Benabe’s hand and rubbed it.

“For many generations of the living world the Santoth knew no hope. They suffered their banishment, undying. They knew much of what transpired in the world, but they were not part of it. They remembered so much, and yet their grasp of the Giver’s tongue slipped from them. It eroded, grew tainted. It became a dreadful thing even to them. You cannot understand how they suffered.”

“You do?” Naamen asked.