Maeander had no such problems. He was as cocky as ever, confident in his body. He had gained muscle bulk in the arms and chest, and he had taken a tan better than most men of the Mein. The peeling skin on his nose testified to his continued passion for outdoor pursuits.
“What?” Maeander asked, gazing at his brother. “You don’t look well, Hanish. Queasy, that’s the word. Do you feel as queasy as you look?”
“We need more power,” Hanish said.
“I’ve said that all along,” answered Maeander.
“I am pulled and pushed by a thousand hands, each with a finger in my pocket and the threat of a knife in the other hand.”
“I hear you, brother. Haven’t I always said, ‘We need more power.’ I have that thought every morning on waking. I heft myself up out of the tangle of nubile bodies and the first thing I think is, Power! I need more…”
“Be serious,” Haleeven snapped. “Hanish isn’t clowning.”
Maeander rolled his eyes. He sat down in the chair the leagueman had used and plucked up an orange. He inhaled, his nose touching the skin of the fruit. “We need to move the Tunishnevre and complete the ceremony.”
“You know we cannot do that yet,” Haleeven said.
“They are impatient. We have no choice in this matter, Hanish. They speak to me also, and they’ve made it very clear. They want to be moved. They want to journey here. They want to rest their bodies on the scene of the crime done to them, and then they want a few drops of living Akaran blood. They want to be free, brother, and you can offer them that. The chamber here is nearly ready for them. There is no reason not to begin.”
“What of the other three?” Haleeven asked.
“Exactly,” Hanish said. “Without them the Tunishnevre cannot rise. At least they are safe now, their condition constant. This climate could destroy them, put them beyond our power to release.”
Unmoved, Maeander said, “That is not necessarily true. One may be enough. Especially if the others are dead. If Corinn is the last of the royal line, then her blood is all they need. She can free them. Imagine, Hanish, how powerful we will be! All these petty problems that trouble you so: they’ll be gone like that.” He raised a hand, fingertips touching until the moment he snapped his hand open, releasing whatever was held there into the air, invisible, inconsequential. “This is what the ancestors placed in me. They put this truth in me.”
“They said nothing to me about needing only Corinn.”
“They fear you may be compromised somehow, led astray by this place. I swore to them that they were wrong. They accepted my word. You are their beloved, but they can only wait so long. They taste release, Hanish. They have scant patience when they feel they are being denied.” Speaking through a mouthful of orange pulp, he added, “By the gods, the fruit down here is wonderful!”
Hanish ignored the last comment, but he thought for a long moment about Maeander communing with the Tunishnevre. He had known his brother was doing this for some time. It was unprecedented for anyone but the chieftain and a few of the higher priests to interact with them. Hanish had allowed it because he owed Maeander so much. He had always been a perfect weapon, a hound ready to bite whomever he was directed toward. Hanish knew the ancestors adored him for the strength he walked so casually with. But for them to speak to Maeander about him, about Hanish himself…For them to express doubts about their living chieftain was a grave thing. There was message after message to read here, threat inside threat. And he could not acknowledge any of it until he understood it better.
“We are ahead of ourselves,” Haleeven said. “You have not told us what news the weird one brought you.”
So Hanish did tell them. He had never kept such things from these two, even if he held back certain things when meeting with the Board of Councillors, that new body of prominent Meins that resided, ironically, in Alecia. It disturbed Hanish to note how much of the Acacian way of being they had taken on already. If he could see a way to do it differently he would, but on one and then another topic he found the Acacian template the only reasonable, achievable answer.
Once Hanish had told them everything, Haleeven said, “I hate it that we must bow to the Lothan Aklun. I’ve never even set eyes on one of them. The league may have made them up, for all we know. I’ve said this before, but we should brush the league aside and deal with the Aklun directly, if they exist.”
“I feel the same,” Maeander said, “but it is not for us to argue with the ancestors. They blessed the arrangements we made, and it is they who want to be freed and freed now. Remember that your brother’s voice speaks through them, Haleeven, and our father’s, Hanish.”
Hanish hesitated a moment but evaded the thought that troubled him and kept his composure right through it, enough so that Maeander would not notice the pause for what it was. He said, “I’ll speak with the ancestors tonight. If they agree, we will send word to Tahalian. We will tell them it is time to begin the transport. Haleeven, you will initiate the move.”
“That’s not as we discussed,” Maeander said. “Hanish, come now, you know I should go. You have an empire to rule; I am but a tool to aid you. You cannot possibly expect me to mismanage such an important task! Haleeven will come with me, if that reassures you, but when have we ever failed you?”
“You never have. Not once. It is just that this must be done right, exactly right.”
Maeander put on a look of mock affront.
“What I mean,” Hanish said, “is that we have more than just the move to take care of. We must redouble our efforts to find the Akarans. If they live, we must have them. This is what I need you for, Maeander. You have no other assignment now-just that you find them and bring them here.” He said this with finality, consciously avoiding meeting his brother’s gaze, not wanting to see rebellion in his face. “I should have put you in charge of hunting for them in the first place. For my part, I will make sure that Corinn remains safe, close to me and guarded.”
He moved around his desk, dug a key from his breast pocket, and bent to unlock a drawer. “Uncle, read over these,” he said, hefting a leather case of documents and plopping them on the table. “You will have to see to this exactly. Exactly. Do everything word for word as the early ones tell us. The Tunishnevre has not been moved in twenty generations. If you make an error…”
Haleeven gathered the case and sat down with it. He ran his fingers over the reindeer leather, flipped the simple latch open, and seemed to sit a moment in awe, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled the dry scent of the sheaves. “I will make no errors,” he said. “Thank you for this. The plateau in summer…I have longed to see it again.”
“You will,” Hanish said, smiling, genuinely pleased for the older man. “Perhaps you will even find time for a hunt. The reindeer must be fat by now, lax because you have been away so long. Do the work well, and be revived by it also.” He might have said more, but he felt Maeander’s eyes on him, tugging at him. He turned and looked at him.
“I cannot argue with you, brother,” Maeander said. “If the Akarans live, I’ll find them and drag them to you by their hair. When I do, I trust you will give me the honor of cutting their throats myself.”
CHAPTER
The man who was to accompany the prince found him squatting outside his tent in the predawn darkness. Without speaking, Aliver gathered his few supplies in a goatskin sack and slung it over his back. He tugged the leather cord until the load settled as he liked it to. Other than that he wore only the short woven skirt of a hunter. This journey was to be a hunt of sorts, and he was dressed accordingly, exactly the same as he had been a few weeks ago when he ventured out to find a laryx. He had thought that earlier morning that he had never embarked on a task more dangerous, more important. Now it was almost forgotten.