“They ate the villagers of Tavirith. That can’t be undone. It can’t be forgiven.”
“I know,” Aliver said, “but perhaps the way to move forward is to find peace without forgiveness. Or to find forgiveness in peace. Not to forget anything but to put first the lives of those still living. Mena, you’re arguing with me, but everything you’ve done up here was for the same cause. In all your decisions I see you trying to keep your soldiers alive. That’s what I’m proposing. If we ask the thousands who are still climbing up the Methalian Rim to run to their deaths, they’ll do it. If we do that, they’ll understand it. It will be the same as what our family has asked of them for generations. Maybe their sheer numbers will tire the Auldek’s arms or dull their blades. But what then? Won’t that be defeat? What world will there be for any of them afterward?”
Mena closed her eyes. “They won’t let you.”
“You may be right, but I have to try.”
“They want us all enslaved.”
Aliver reached over the lamp and set a hand on her blanketed knee. “That they cannot have. I’m not talking about giving in to them. No concessions. No defeat. I’m talking about finding a peace that doesn’t destroy us all. Help me do that. Tell me everything you know about them. Help me find their souls. It’s that I’ll have to speak to.”
“How can you even think that’s possible?”
“I am Aliver,” he said. He lifted his hand to her chin, nudging her head up so that she looked at the thin smile he offered her. “I’ve been given a second chance. I can’t fail this time. I won’t.”
T hat resolve was what drove his soul up out of his body two nights later. After hours upon hours of talking with his sister, after caring for Mena and seeing Elya’s wounds miraculously heal as the creature slept, after seeing the first of his troops arriving in force, after flying out to greet Mena’s battered forces, even after speaking for a time to Rialus Neptos, the traitor who had proved a treasure trove of information about the invaders… After all that, when it was time to sleep, Aliver lay down for the busy night’s work he had ahead of him.
He had seen Devoth flying atop his mount when he saved Mena. She had identified him. Aliver used those images to pull his spirit out of his body and to send it after the Auldek. His version of dream travel may or may not have been akin to what Corinn had attempted, or to what Hanish Mein had used to commune both with his undead ancestors and with others among the living. Likely, it came to Aliver easily because of the years he had spent as a spirit dispersed throughout the world, floating. Separating his soul from his body proved not difficult. Perhaps his body had already begun the dying that would soon make his release complete.
He had barely fallen into the rhythm of sleep before he rose above his growing war camp. He surveyed the tents and supplies and animals, the slumbering forms and the many campfires for a time, but only until he got his bearings. Then he set his mind on Devoth. Aliver’s spirit floated north. Slowly at first, then gaining speed until the dark, cold world of the plateau rushed by beneath him, gray-white under the moon’s light.
He reached the Auldek camp, coming upon its steaming masses, bodies and beasts and fires. The towers seemed like mountains on the undulating landscape. Their numbers might have daunted him, but he had not the time to consider them. Before he knew it, his soul found the station it needed and punched, soundless and without force of impact, through the structure’s wall. Inside, a large, sumptuous room, the walls hung with swords and axes, with tapestries depicting cityscapes and mountain ranges and vistas not of the Known World. A lamp burned low on a table, but even without it he would have been able to see. Light was within him. It illumined the room around him and also flowed through his vision. He came to stillness at the foot of a bed. Standing there for a while, Aliver’s glow built in the room until he could see the shape beneath the covers.
“Devoth,” Aliver called. “You are Devoth, aren’t you? Chieftain of the Lvin. Get up. I know you speak my tongue.”
The shape in the bed went from lying down to sitting up in one flash of motion. His reaction was so immediate he might have been lying in wait for the moment. His eyes found Aliver’s wavering form, and his face expressed the depths of his confusion and fear. He sprang from the bed. He snatched for a battle-ax racked on the wall and whirled around with a savage swing that would have cut a man in half at the waist.
Or it would have if he had managed this same motion as a physical body and if Aliver had been there in the flesh also. Instead, the Auldek’s body lay still beneath the blankets, just as motionless as before. The ax that Devoth had grasped for hung as it had, not disturbed at all. Devoth’s spirit swung around after the blow he had tried to make.
“You can’t defeat me that way,” Aliver said, once Devoth had looked back at him, still now, and even more terrified. “I’m a ghost, you see. I’m one who went to the afterdeath and returned. I’ve pulled you out of your body so that we may speak.”
“Who are you?” Devoth rasped, his accent thick on the Acacian words.
“Aliver Akaran.”
“No, that one has gone. Do not lie to me!”
Aliver crossed his glowing arms. “Look at me, Devoth. Do I look like any man you have ever known? I am vapor and light. I am one who is dead and who also lives. Look at me and decide for yourself.”
He stood, letting the warrior take him in. At the same time, he studied Devoth. There was something about his spirit that confused Aliver. He could see the Auldek’s features, versions of his body made of glowing light. But his form held more than just his features. There were others beneath that outer skin of spirit light. The longer Devoth held still, the more Aliver could see the others move.
Quota children.
“What?” Devoth asked. He circled around the bed, trying to pull several weapons down, clearly hating it each time his hands passed like vapor through the wood and steel. “What have you done to me?”
“Nothing yet,” Aliver said. “We are just talking. When I release you, you can return to your body.”
Devoth shook his head. He tried to climb back onto the bed, but he was terrified at how he sank into the blankets, both having purchase and yet passing through them. Part of the world but not.
“Look at me,” Aliver said. The Auldek did. All the other spirits within him did as well. How many incorporeal faces were layered there? Aliver could not tell, but he could see them. And they could see and hear him. “I have come with an army that dwarfs yours. All the people of the Known World are united against you. They pour onto this plateau like a river running uphill. We will overrun you. I have come to tell you to turn back now. Go back to your own lands, and we will not pursue you.”
For the first time, Devoth’s spirit seemed to regain some composure. He said slowly, drawing the word out, “Nooo.”
“You’ve made a mistake in coming here, one that will destroy your people if you don’t return to your own lands. Think about this: you forget the past. I know this about you. You forget the past, which is why you brought that collection of records with you. What will you do now that it’s gone? You have lost so much already. So much cannot be regained, but if you continue with this war, you will lose yourselves completely. What will you tell your grandchildren? Nothing, because you’ll have forgotten. Your grandchildren won’t know the truth of where you came from. They won’t see your cities in their minds or know the view over Avina or understand the beauty of Ushen Brae. They won’t see Lvinreth or Amratseer. You say you want to die back into your true souls and age and die again. Good. Do so. That’s the natural order. But if you do it here, your grandchildren’s children will know nothing of what it means to be Auldek. Do you hear what I’m saying? You are already a defeated people. It’s up to you, now, to decide the depths of that defeat. Stay and war with us-and you will destroy yourselves.”