The Sacred Band

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The summoned group awaited Aliver and Corinn in the assembly kitchen that the servants used to keep food warm and drinks chilled on banquet nights. Corinn chose it, she had explained, because its exterior door opened onto the Terrace of First Light, a semienclosed space near Edifus’s original hold. With the door to it closed, none of those milling around in the room likely even knew of it. Aliver knew little more about what awaited them on the terrace than any of the others, but Corinn had thought it best that he see her work revealed at the same time as the others.

The members of the Queen’s Council jockeyed for position just inside the room. Balneaves Sharratt greeted her first, with Baddel beside him. Talinbeck and General Andeson bowed their heads, and Sigh Saden received them with a thin smile meant to demonstrate the patience he was showing for her benefit. No doubt they all wanted to know why she had gathered them.

The two Akarans acknowledged the other senators and nobles in attendance. They kept their exchanges clipped until they reached the cluster of men standing with Jason. Aliver had met them for the first time only a couple of nights before: Ilabo, a slim Bethuni man wearing the long, intricately stitched robe of his people, and a Candovian called Dram, who looked more Meinish with his pale skin and high cheekbones and gray eyes than he did like the sloe-eyed people he claimed.

Corinn faced the crowd. “You may have guessed that you were not summoned here just to enjoy my company.”

Baddel piped that that was enough of an enticement by itself. Polite murmurs of assent.

“There’s more to it than that,” Aliver said, remembering the lines Corinn had given him. He grinned and lifted his slim glass of wine. “These two are the best horsemen to be found in the empire, or so we’ve been told. Is it true?” Neither of them boasted, but Dram’s involuntary chin lift could have spoken for both of them. “Dram of Candovia is so skilled he rides without reins! He talks to his horse through his legs, while above he launches arrows with a master’s speed and accuracy. And we have Ilabo of the Bethuni.” Aliver released the imaginary bow he had used to demonstrate Dram’s prowess. He set a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I’m sure everyone here knows that the Bethuni have kept up a horseback riding tradition that faded in most of Talay. Ilabo has, since his early teens, been his nation’s champion at the games. Those games, mind you, can be deadly.”

Having named them both, Aliver stood smiling. Corinn brushed past a servant offering her a drink from a silver tray heavy with wineglasses. She asked the two men, “Do you know why you’re here?”

“To ride,” Dram said.

“You’re correct,” Corinn said. “You will ride. I’m offering a way for you to carve a place in history for yourselves. I want for you to be the arms and legs and wings of the empire, as Aliver is the heart and I the head. Do you wish to know what I’m inviting you to ride?”

She walked briskly out the door. A servant opened it just in time. The others followed, looking at one another, and then squinting as they emerged into the bright afternoon light. They came through singly or in pairs, so it took some time for the entire party to emerge, especially as some paused in the doorway, stunned by what they saw. They had to be pushed forward by the weight of curiosity behind them.

Aliver felt it as much as any of them.

There they stood, Elya’s children, preening within the high walls that hemmed in most of the terrace. The young were not as they had been only days ago. All four of them lifted heads bigger than river crocodiles’, with snouts as long as those reptiles’, frightening in their length. Their eyes were each the size of a man’s fist. Po’s golden orbs studied the group with cold indifference. What had once been soft-feathered plumage now looked more like spiny plates. They still held the shape of feathers, but when Tij’s crests flared, they rose like blue sword blades. Thais stretched her head up high and chirruped a greeting to Corinn. It was no longer the high, light sound it had been. Now it thrummed out with bass notes that Aliver felt as vibrations tossed through the air.

He nearly rushed forward to pull his sister away and shout the beasts back, but he knew that Corinn would not want that. His mouth only opened enough to inhale. His legs only moved forward a few steps.

“Behold my winged children,” Corinn said. She descended the stone stairway that brought her down to their level. “Mine. Not Elya’s. Not Mena’s. These children belong to me and to the empire. Mena may have been the first to ride a flying mount, but these are not feathered lizards, as you can see.”

She reached Tij. The dragon lowered her head toward Corinn, causing gasps from watchers. Po growled in response, his crest plumes spread. Corinn rubbed Tij under her snout. “They are war mounts, fit for the bravest men the empire has to offer. They will be your mounts, if you are men enough to strap yourselves on them and fly. Doesn’t that sound enticing?”

“Your Majesty,” Dram said. “They have no… wings.”

“Of course they do,” Corinn said. “Po, show them your wings!”

As if knowing that he was to make the most impressive show he could, the dragon stretched its neck toward the sky and roared. He shook his black, scaled torso furiously. His shoulders gyrated for a few awful seconds, until the protrusions on his back audibly cracked open. Wings erupted out of either side. Each section snapped into place with concussions of sound like tree trunks breaking. Kohl followed Po’s lead, with Tij and Thais just behind her. In jolting, sinuous waves of motion, each dragon bellowed wings into existence. Where there had been nothing moments before, mighty frameworks of bone suddenly blocked out the sky. They hung, glistening, moist from their creation, with flaps of skin the same various hues as their bristly plumage.

“Now, you may have noticed that there are two of you and four mounts,” Corinn shouted above the dragon cries and the peoples’ gasps and confused babbling. “Two of these mounts-Tij and Thais-are for you. The other two are for Aliver and me, so that we may join Mena in the skies. Perhaps one day Dariel will fly with us as well. I pray that will be so. But now, if you are ready to be legends, I offer you the reins to ride into them.”

She grasped for the leather cord attached to Tij’s harness. The slim length of hide hung from her fingers, swaying, waiting for someone to step forward and take it.

Aliver felt tremors ripple across his cheeks, the precursors to an expression that could not manage to form itself. He was not sure what the expression would be. He could not make up his mind. This was wrong . For a moment he knew it. Whatever Corinn had done to Elya’s children was a mistake. A crime. Whatever goodness there had been in them-and there had been much-had been twisted. That could not be good. Just like Elenet, Corinn was creating things that should not be created. He knew this with a burning intensity that he almost pushed past his lips into words.

But when Corinn turned to him and smiled and dipped her eyes toward Kohl, Aliver felt his chest swell. Yes, he thought, why not fly above the world? It seemed a wonderful idea.