He had just started away when the boy’s eyes fluttered open. He looked at Aliver. His irises were Meinish gray, a startling contrast with the fullness of their Acacian shape. He worked his mouth a moment, licked his lips. “I-I had dreams.”
It did not occur to Aliver to be surprised by his awakening. He chose delight instead. Settling back on the edge of the bed, he asked, “Of what?”
“That I walked outside and the clouds were stones. Big stones floating.”
“Really? I don’t think stones can float.”
“These ones could. And I dreamed that the water floated out of the pools on the terraces and all the fish started swimming in the air. And I could swim, too, so long as I was touching drops of floating water. It was fun until I remembered about the hookfish. When I remembered them, I knew they were coming and fell down to the ground.”
“Your dreams have a lot of floating in them.”
“Not always. Once I was very thin.” Aaden lifted his arms and shook them slightly, demonstrating some aspect of his temporary thinness. “And one time I could eat anything. I mean anything. I could just bite the wall and chew it, and the bedspread, and the lamp oil. Anything. Nothing tasted like much, but I could still eat it.”
“That would be convenient in many ways.”
“Yes, it would. When you’re fighting a war. It would make it easier to supply the troops if they could just eat anything. Stones. Grass and stuff.”
Aliver grinned. “That would be an advantage, but only if the enemy could not do the same.”
“No, they couldn’t,” Aaden said, as if he had thought that through already. He looked up at the ceiling, clearly considering something else and weighing whether or not to voice it. “I dreamed that my friend Devlyn got killed.”
“Oh.” Aliver squeezed the boy’s wrist gently. “That was not a dream. Or… it was not only a dream.”
“I know. I hoped you would say it was, though. I wish you had. I would have believed it if you said it. Who are you?”
Aliver leaned closer. “I am your uncle.”
“You’re not Dariel,” Aaden said. “He’s gone across the Gray Slopes.”
“I don’t claim to be Dariel. I’m Aliver.”
Aaden let out an audible breath of affirmation. “Of course you are! Did Mother bring you back?”
Aliver nodded.
“Are you going to get them?”
“Who?”
“My guards. The ones who stabbed Devlyn. I saw them do it for no reason. They wanted to kill me, too. Is he really dead?”
“I believe so,” Aliver said. “I… know that he is, yes. I’m not sure how I know, but I do. I know a lot of things, Aaden, but they’re new to me. It’s like… I just discovered a new library of books. I have them. They’re mine, but I haven’t read all the books yet. It may take me some time.”
A gasp drew their attention. The maid stood inside the door, her mouth an oval around a question she could not manage to speak. She tried several times, then turned and darted out of the room.
“She’ll be back soon, I think,” Aliver said.
Aaden sighed. “Will she get Mother?”
“No, your mother has gone to Teh. She was angry at all the Numrek, not just the guards who hurt you and Devlyn. I believe she went to punish them.”
“Good. There’s no excuse for such behavior. What is she going to do to them?”
Aliver ran his hand over the boy’s hair. “What would you have her do to them?”
“I don’t know,” Aaden said. “They killed Devlyn. He was my friend.”
“That was wrong of them.”
Aaden pressed his lips together, nodded. “Why did they do that? He didn’t do anything except be my friend.” All of sudden, as if the grief of it had just exploded in him, Aaden crumpled forward, falling against Aliver. “He was my only friend.”
Aliver held the boy to his chest as he cried, stroking his hair. So Aaden had not inherited his great-grandfather’s gift of being loved by all his peers. Gridulan was the last Acacian monarch to have a band of brothers with him always, loyal and adoring if the stories of them were to be believed. Leodan had only his traitorous chancellor Thaddeus Clegg. Aliver himself might have had Melio as a close companion, but he had been too foolish to accept the youth’s overtures with the sincerity with which they were offered. At least Aaden knew to call a friend a friend.
“Your mother will take care of them,” he said. “She told me she would treat them fairly.”
“Good,” Aaden said, a bitter edge cutting through his grief. “She should kill them all.”
This drew Aliver up. Kill them all? Was that the boy’s idea of fairness? Or was it his mother’s? He knew the answer immediately, and with it came a greater understanding of the ruler his sister must have become. And the sort of mother as well. He could not decide how to respond, so he held the boy until his sorrow spent itself. As he did, his horror at the boy’s wish for vengeance lost its acute shape and blurred at the edges. He found it hard to grasp.
Eventually, Aaden pulled away from him, looking exhausted in addition to miserable. “I think I’m tired.” The boy lay down, resting his head on his pillow in the indentation already pressed into it. “When I get up, we have to go find Elya.”
“Elya?”
“You don’t know Elya? She saved me. She is a dragon. Well… of sorts. A dragon. A lizard. A bird. All of them together. I’m not sure what to call her other than a dragon, though. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Aliver admitted. “I haven’t thought much about dragons. I heard an Aushenian tale about dragons before. I think it was a scaly creature that Kralith, their white crane god, fought against for some reason. I never thought there really was a white crane god, so I never gave much thought to dragons either.”
“You will. She’s wonderful. She flies. Mena found her and brought her here. Where is Mena?”
Where was Mena? Just framing the question did something inside him. He did not have the answer immediately, but having put the query in words he felt it leave him and hook into the fabric of the world. He did not know, but he felt he could know. He could if he waited for it. Just as he had learned his way around the palace simply by remembering it. Just as he had known where Aaden slept simply because he had wondered it and felt the answer as accessible as the air around. He could not touch it. Not grasp it. But he could inhale it. The answers to things were there for him if he breathed them in.
“She is north of here,” Aliver said, “in the cold. She’s gone to make war. She’s taken the King’s Trust.”
Aaden squinted at him. “You just said you didn’t know where she was. A few moments ago you said that. Now you know?”
“I’m not as I was before.”
“You were dead before.”
“Exactly.”
“And now you’re not.”
“Just so.”
Aaden pursed his lips, considered, decided. “I like you better alive.”
Aliver smiled.
“What else do you know?”
“I can hear the maid returning,” Aliver said, “with reinforcements.”
The next moment Rhrenna rushed into the room, followed by a jumble of others-servants and physicians and officials. The room fell instantly into chaos.
CHAPTER SIX
Kelis of Umae feared that the Santoth would be so conspicuous that they would announce their presence to all Talay. As he, Shen, Benabe, Naamen, and Leeka marched up from the Far South, the silent, hooded figures trailed behind them. They blurred when they moved and had faces only at a distance. Near at hand they became less distinct, not more. Though he spent days near them, Kelis was never sure how many there were. He tried counting them, but he got lost, found them blending together, realized he could not remember if he had counted that individual or not. Their silence was more unnerving than anything. It was not simply the absence of noise; it was as if they absorbed the sound around them. Because of this his head often snapped up, seeking them, feeling as if something had been stolen from the fullness of the world in the area they occupied.