Aliver realized he had not asked a question like that in some time. It felt familiar, though. The melancholia of it. The leaning toward doubt. Yes, his mind felt more his own than it had since he had awoken to life again. There was a burden in this, but truth as well. For the first time a thought rose in him. He could not grasp it yet. He just knew it was there. He could smell it. Could hunt it.
His thoughts turned to the Santoth again. The others had wanted to know why he had never warned them of their evil. He had lived with them, hadn’t he? Didn’t he know them better than anyone living? There was accusation in the questions, an edge that grew as the night’s hours curled toward dawn. He could not answer them. What they said was true. Deep in the desert south, he had shared a strange half-stone existence with them. Thoughts had flown silently between them, messages floated on a spectral tide that ebbed and flowed with a rhythm outside the world’s turning time. He had been so sure that the Santoth were what they said they were. That they held themselves in exile for the good of the world. They had helped so much, in so many ways, during his war with Hanish Mein. They had destroyed Maeander’s forces in one afternoon. Could that all really have been in service to a goal of greater evil?
Of course it was. He understood it now. The thinness of the lies they had told were so transparent now. He had always felt it but just not known he felt it. He had wanted to believe them, so he had. Their language may have been corrupted by time, but that was not what made it foul. It had always been foul. Time had just eaten away at it further.
He grew up believing Tinhadin was a noble man. Tinhadin, he who built a mighty empire and then banished the sorcerers who would, in their greed, have destroyed it. He who gave up sorcery himself, because he knew it was too chaotic a tool for humans to wield. That, in Aliver’s youth, had been the truth of the past.
And then it wasn’t. The Santoth said the truth was something else. Tinhadin had banished them not as an act of good for the world, but because he wanted the world all to himself. He was like an eagle chick, the strongest of the brood, that kicked his siblings out of the nest so that only he could live and thrive and grow. The Santoth, faithful servants, had been betrayed. That’s what they told him, speaking right into his mind, making the thought his. If brought back into the world, they would again be his faithful servants. How badly Aliver had wanted to believe that.
How clever of them to discover that he wanted to believe it. For that’s what they had done. In his communion with them they had explored every memory of his life, every desire and ambition and fear. He knew that at the time but thought it a good thing. He wanted them to know him. How good it felt to be completely understood, without judgment, he had thought. Now, he was certain that they had used what they learned to shape the lies they told him.
Something else troubled him, though as yet he only nibbled the edges of it. In defeating Maeander on the plains of Teh, the Santoth had saved the Acacian Empire. They had kept the Akaran line in power. What if the true reason they did that was so that they might have still other chances of a future generation of Akarans freeing them? That’s what they had said: a child of his freed them, and freed them into a world still ruled by Akarans, a world in which The Song of Elenet had not been entirely forgotten. A child of his? A child of his… Somehow, he knew that to be right. There was a child of his, but where in the world was this child?
“Your Majesty?” A Marah guard approached nervously. He snapped to attention as soon as Aliver turned to look at him.
“What is it?”
“We received a message from Sire Dagon. His messenger said a Marah should bring it to you and that you had to read it without delay.”
“Is that what he said?” It was more a statement than a question. Aliver raised a hand and the soldier slipped the folded square of paper into it. He unfolded the paper beneath the light of one of the oil torches set atop a pillar. The note was written in brown ink, the letters a little tremulous, like those shaped by the hand of an elderly person.
Prince Aliver,
This is quite awkward to write. I hope you’ll forgive my lack of grace. I have to inform you that you and the people of the empire have been killed.
He stopped, exhaled through his nose, and then read over the lines again to make sure he had not misread.
I have to inform you that you and the people of the empire have been killed. Poisoned. I need not explain to you how I know this, but it is a certainty. I am, in part, responsible for it. Both you and the queen are quite dead. It’s only a matter of weeks until your bodies realize it.
As for the people of empire, they have been addicted once again to a distillation of the mist that will kill them when they are denied it. It’s in the wine, you see. The very vintage they have been toasting you with. This was the queen’s doing, though she did not know the deadliness of it. If ever you hated and despised the league and thought us treacherous villains, well, then let that ire rise in you again now. Accept that what I say is the truth.
Why do I tell you this? I thought it important that you know, and I’ve come to believe that your death is unfortunately timed. I believe that you are a decent man, and that you and the queen want, in your peculiar way, what is best for the empire. I acknowledge that it may only be the queen who can save the Known World from destruction. That is why I’ve made this admission.
Aliver, please encourage Corinn to be quick in finding a way to defeat the Santoth. Neither of you have much time. If you love your nation, be quick. If you are, it’s possible the league will continue to supply the vintage, thereby keeping the empire alive.
Yours fondly,
Sire Dagon of the League of Vessels
A liver still sat there on the balcony some time later. The coming day was clearly visible in the east now. The oil in the torch beside him had burned low. The flame wavered now, sending up more black smoke than before. He had been watching the changing appearance of the ships in the harbor. As the light increased, the patchwork of vessels looked more and more like a ragged scab on the skin of the ocean. It was smaller than it had been the day before, fraying around the edges.
People are leaving, he thought. I cannot blame them for that.
He opened the note again. Thinking he had it backward, he flipped the page over. There was nothing there. He held it to the uncertain light of the torch. He could just make out the tracing of the words that had once been there. Even as he watched, they faded further. Right before his eyes, they vanished completely.
For a long moment Aliver entertained the possibility that the paper had always been blank. He had imagined the words he read. Wouldn’t that make more sense than that they were true? As soon as he raised his eyes and saw the sun had just broken from the horizon, he let that idea go. Fading ink. That’s all it was. The words may have disappeared, but they had been chiseled in his consciousness and remained with him.
“Uncle?”
Turning, he saw Aaden. The boy had stopped some distance away, near a torch that lit him in rippling orange waves. Shadows-his maids, guards-hung behind him. “Is it all destroyed?” His voice edged away from its usual calm. He captured the pitch of it, but it was tremulous, ready to turn.
“No, Aaden,” Aliver began, but he could not find the words to continue.
The boy moved forward, slowly. “I had a dream once. I told Mother. I said, ‘I had a dream that the world ended.’ She said that was silly. That it could never happen. But I knew it could. Do you know why? Because in the dream she died. She died, and the moment she did, the world did as well. I was left, but the world had ended. That’s what I meant, but she didn’t ask me. She never asked me about it. Maybe she never will now. Is that the truth?”