“You are ready?” Kelis asked. His features were sharp edged in a manner that Aliver had long thought was constant judgment, although lately he had not been as sure that the man’s visage betrayed anything of the thoughts behind it.
“Of course,” Aliver answered.
The other man nodded and moved off. Aliver fell in beside him. He matched his stride and kept tempo with him. They progressed from a walk into an easy jog and then to the light-footed run these southern people were famous for. They moved out of the village, past the last of the shadow mounds of the huts. They rose up to the crest of an incline that, had it been lighter, would have shown before them a rolling stretch of tree-dotted pastureland, roasted to gold by the dry season. They would need to cover more than a hundred miles just to get into territory to begin the hunt. The entirety of this day and more thereafter stretched before Aliver as one of continuous motion. But he had been trained for such feats. Each breath of air brought strength into him. He felt the slap of the earth beneath his bare feet and knew he was suited to this life, this place in the world.
How different he had been when he arrived in Talay. His flight from Kidnaban had been harrowing, but at least he had made it to his goal. He had been dragged by a guardian all the way to the court of Sangae Umae, such as it was. What had he thought was happening to him back then? He barely remembered. He had been angry and scared-he knew that. But mostly he remembered random things, like finding a sand-colored snake in his boot his first morning in the village, back when he still wore boots. It was poisonous, he had learned, deadly. It was one of the reasons Talayans did not wear shoes. He thought about this often, mulling over the fact that he did not wear shoes anymore either, hadn’t in years and could barely imagine doing so again.
He remembered how hard it had been to balance himself above the hole the villagers shat in. Such a simple thing, squatting to release his bowels, but he had hated doing it, hated that he could not seem to wipe himself properly with leaves or stones, as everyone else here did. He remembered watching the boys of the village playing a game that he could make no sense of. There was nothing to it other than that each of them took turns getting smacked with a stout stick. They hit each other hard, their bodies cringing from the blows in obvious pain. But they laughed, taunted one another, and tilted their so-white teeth to the sky in mirth that seemed to have no end.
He remembered the menace he had seen in the lean, black-bodied youths he had trained with. He had been weak compared to them. He lost his breath before they did. They were all hard edges, knobs of thrusting knees and elbows as they wrestled, chins like knives wedged in his back. He remembered the girls of the village, round eyed as they watched him, whispering among themselves, sometimes breaking into peals of laughter more painful to his pride than anything the boys inflicted on him. He remembered how hard it was to pronounce Talayan words correctly. Again and again he had repeated exactly what he believed the other to have said, only to be answered by needling ridicule. There was something feminine in the way he rolled his r’s, something childish in his hard g’s, something of the imbecile in the way he could not master the timing of silences that gave identical phrases vastly different meanings. He remembered how he hated the sand blown on the evening breeze. It dusted his face and tracked his tears, no matter how he tried to wipe and wipe and wipe all traces of them away.
But all of that was years ago. Why even think about it now? Now he was a hunter, a man, a Talayan. He ran beside a warrior whom he cherished as a brother. He breathed steadily and flowed along, mile after mile, a film of sweat coming on to him as the sun rose. Those menacing boys were his companions now; those large-eyed girls were now women who looked upon him favorably, lovers who danced for him, a few who vied to be the first to bear him a child. He spoke the people’s tongue like a native. He did not entirely remember how he had worked this transformation. The fact that he had killed a laryx marked his maturation in the eyes of his community. True enough, he had never been more alive than during that hunt, never more aware of his mortality and his undeniable hunger to survive. And not just to survive, to win glory. But even this was only one episode, with many, many smaller ones to consider also. Who can explain just how he became the person he is? It does not happen this day or that one. It is a gradual evolution that happens largely unheralded. He simply was who he now was.
Except that this was not entirely true. He thought of those early days because of Thaddeus and all the things he had brought with him. Thaddeus, whom he loved and loathed in equal measure. The people of the village called him the Acacian. Aliver, when speaking to them in Talayan, used that name as well. It did not seem to occur to any of them that this was odd. Nor did it seem strange to him that he should feel so at home with-and challenged by-a people he had been raised to believe were inferior. But each afternoon that he sat down across from Thaddeus and spoke the language of his birth he knew he was not one of these people, not entirely, not as he wished he was. He was also the Acacian. And more, if Thaddeus was to be believed, he was a pivot on which the fate of the world was to turn.
Aliver and Kelis kept moving for the greater portion of the day, pausing only to drink and eat lightly, letting the food settle and then starting up again. They rested in the shade of an acacia tree through the afternoon’s burning hours, napped briefly, but then kicked dust right through twilight and for some time into the early evening. There were moments when Aliver, in a trancelike state, forgot the purpose of this journey and just ran, floating on the strength of his legs, aware of nothing but movement and of the visual panorama of the living world around him.
When they stopped to camp late that evening, however, he felt the weight of the responsibilities Thaddeus had pushed upon him. The two men made a small fire, just enough to remind the beasts that they were humans and better left alone. They carried nothing in the way of bedding with them. They dug two hollow spaces into the sand, side by side with their heads near the fire. The night could be chilly, but the ground retained enough heat to warm them through until morning. They ate a paste made from mixing their precious water with the pounded sedi grain they carried. It tasted like nothing at all, but it was nourishing. Aliver used a strip of dried beef as a utensil and ate it afterward. Kelis found the tuber the Talayans called knuckle root because of its shape. He sliced it clean at the joint, and the two of them sat sucking on their portions, the liquid inside it sweet and sharp, cleansing.
“Sometimes I feel like this is all madness,” Aliver said. “This cannot be real, what we are doing, what I am supposed to do. It’s a tale meant for children, a myth like those told to me as a boy.”
Kelis took the root from his mouth to say, “This is your story now. You are the myth.”
“So I’ve been told. Do you think us foolish,” he asked, “we Acacians? Hunting for banished magicians and all that? Are we a joke to you?”
“A joke?” The features of the man’s face were hard to read in the dim firelight, but his voice suggested no possibility of humor.
“Kelis, I have been sent to find five-hundred-year-old magicians and to convince them to help me regain the empire my father lost. Do you understand such a loss? There is nothing here, around us, which could possibly show you how much my father lost. He was the monarch who forfeited the world’s greatest empire. And now he speaks from the grave to ask me to win it all back. Is that not something to laugh at?”