Aliver stared at Oubadal for a long moment. He no longer felt frightened by the man’s heavy eyes and calm air of superiority, nor humbled by his own ignorance, not when this man’s version of leadership was so vile. He would just have to find another way. “I will not help you destroy an entire nation. If you are so mighty, why not do it yourself? Why not ask the Bethuni, if you control them also?”
“The Bethuni are bound by older loyalties,” Oubadal said. “They have a blood bond with the Balbara. They cannot fight them, but neither do they love them. I won’t speak from the side of my mouth to you, Prince. Without your help, the war between us and the Balbara would be uncertain. They aren’t without bravery.”
Aliver said, “Perhaps I should be speaking to the Balbara. I’ve come to speak to the wrong nation.”
Oubadal seemed amused by this observation. “If, Prince, you were friends to our enemy and came against us, you would find yourself cursed in many ways. Who would be your army? The Balbara and Talayans? We would fight them. And while we did, the Bethuni would attack Talay. The coast tribes would not fight us, as they are bound to us by blood. If the Balbara did not come against us but marched away with you, we would pounce on their women and children or the old ones. And because they know this, they would never do it. And so you would gain nothing, except the defeat of your cause before you had yet begun.”
“When I am king of Acacia you will no longer talk to me thus,” Aliver said. “You will remember respect.”
“If you were the king of Acacia, Prince, I would bow before you and suck your big toe.” Oubadal glanced around at his companions, who fell into laughter, the old men especially so. “But you are king of nothing right now. Is that not the truth?”
Aliver barely managed to get through the formal courtesies of leave-taking, so anxious was he to run out into the open air, away from the scent of sandalwood and the lazy, simmering intensity of Oubadal’s eyes.
Kelis stopped him a little distance outside the village gates. He grabbed him by the elbow and slowed him to a halt. “Oubadal can bring us ten thousand fighting men. You cannot walk away yet.”
“I will not slaughter a blameless people,” Aliver said. “This is not what my father intended.”
“This is the way things have been done since the beginning, by all races of men,” Kelis said. “Do you want to achieve your goal or not? I know what you believe. You have noble intentions, but rarely do noble men shape the world. They talk about it, while men such as Oubadal act. Do not leave here without making this moment yours. It is not yours yet, Aliver. So do not leave.”
Aliver sat down on the parched gray earth and cradled his head in his hands. Thaddeus had said that the world was corrupt from top to bottom. Here was his first proof of it. He tried to still his mind and see good in this somewhere, but there was no good in it. He could not begin this war in such a foul way, not if he was to maintain any grip on his humanity. He tried to think of some other terms the chieftain might accept, but the convolutions of tribal alliances were so frustrating that he kicked out at the dirt. It was stupid! It was petty! Too coarse and small. It was one small example of all the practices he wanted to wipe the world clean of. Thinking this, he had an idea.
He said, “What if I told Oubadal that I’m demanding his help, not asking for it? What if I said that I am Prince Aliver Akaran now, but I will be King Aliver Akaran come the fall. What if I remind him that I’m a lion, and say I will not concern myself with the squabbles of the cubs at my feet. What if I tell him the Santoth sorcerers answer to me now and that with them I’ll wipe my enemies from the earth. He can join me and be of aid-on my terms-or he can suffer the wrath of powers he cannot imagine.”
“You could try that, I suppose,” Kelis said. “You will have to look him in the eye as you say it, though, to make sure he doesn’t bite your lip. If you call him a cub you’ll be insulting him…unless, of course, you are a lion. There’s no insult in the truth.”
Aliver rose and looked his friend in the eye. “I am still hesitating, aren’t I? You don’t think I should.”
“I believe that if you speak from your heart each time you open your mouth, you cannot go wrong.”
Aliver turned and looked back at the stronghold. From this distance the hides pinned to it looked like tiny things. Like the pelts of alley cats. He started walking. When he heard his friend’s footfalls beside his, he asked, “Tell me something, Kelis. All these people who claim they are descended from lions-what proof do they offer?”
Kelis smiled. “There is no proof. They just say it and try to sound convincing.”
CHAPTER
Mena told no one what she intended, not even Melio, who had inadvertently helped her to form the plan. She took only the Marah sword and the few things that she could carry in a shoulder sack. She crept out of her compound and through the still streets, grayed with the coming day. Part of her was afraid of being discovered. Another part moved with quiet confidence. She could walk silently when she wanted to. Years before, as a girl, she had crept past the Marah guards to discover the horrors of the Kidnaban mines. If she had accomplished that, no Ruinat villager or slumbering priest would wake to question her now. Of course, it was the foreigners that had prompted this, made it urgent. They were Meins, Melio had said, disappointment in his voice. It was only a matter of days before they left Galat and came for her. They must do something, he’d said. So she was doing something. It was not the thing Melio had proposed, but it was something.
She chose a skiff from among those beached on the shore, tossed her sack inside, and shoved the craft into the water. An hour later she swung around the far tip of Vumair and caught sight of Uvumal. The island broke jagged and green out of the sea, like upright shards of broken glass poorly disguised beneath a covering of plant life. It was a short sail away, but she had never made the journey before. Nobody ever did. The island was considered sacred to the goddess. It was her home and sanctuary. Since the rise of Maeben worship it had been left wild. It had not been forested or hunted, no hillside plots cleared for tilling. It seethed with feral density. The undergrowth was a tangle of plant life. Here and there massive trees broke up out of the canopy. They were lopsided giants, with long stretches of trunk that erupted in knots of branches. They were twisted by age, torn at by the weather, each of them a totem to savage antiquity. Such was Mena’s destination.
The beach she dragged the skiff onto was a sublime stretch of bone-white sand, untouched by human feet. Palms secured to the higher sand leaned toward the water. Natural debris littered the beach-driftwood, coconuts and their husks. Crabs skittered sidelong through fallen fronds and…Something caught her eye, a surprising enough object that it snagged her attention and took her a moment to believe. The weathered head and upraised arm and upper portion of the torso of a child’s doll jutted up from the sand. It was a creepy, eyeless form, its arm frozen in what looked like a frantic gesture of greeting.
Nor was it the only man-made object. A length of rope and a fishing buoy lay a short distance away. Farther on, a piece of fabric draped a stone like laundry set out to dry. Mena’s eyes darted around for a few frantic seconds, until she was assured that she was alone. How strange. People may not have journeyed here, but their rubbish did. She walked a few steps toward the items, nervous lest the goddess spot the insults before she could snatch them up. If the priests knew of this, they would forbid the custom of dumping refuse into the current off the southern harbor point. She began to form the words with which she would broach the subject to Vaminee. There are a thousand ways to defile the goddess, she would begin. One must remember that a thing dropped in one place does not simply vanish…