Earthborn (Homecoming) Read online

  “Deadly!”

  “But they were as harmless as earthworms,” said Ilihiak. “That’s how my men knew that the Keeper really meant them to get these. And now here they are. The Elemaki would melt them down in a moment and make them into ornaments. But I was hoping that Motiak . . .”

  Monush nodded. “Motiak has the Index.” He looked Ilihiak in the eye. “That, too, is a secret. Not that people don’t suppose that he has it. But it’s better if people are unsure, so they don’t bother trying to find it and see it or, worse, steal it. The Index knows all languages. Motiak can translate these records if any man on Earth can do it.”

  “Then I’ll give them to him,” said Ilihiak, already rewrapping the leaves of gold. “I didn’t dare ask you if the Index was still had among the kings of the Nafari.”

  “It is,” said Monush. “And while the Index sat silent for many generations, it awoke in the days of Motiak’s grandfather, Motiab, and told him to get down to Darakemba.”

  “Yes,” said Ilihiak. “And my grandfather rejected that decision.”

  “It’s never good to argue with the Index,” said Monush.

  “All messengers of the Keeper are scared,” said Ilihiak, and shuddered.

  “The blood of Binaro is not on your head,” said Monush.

  “It’s on the heads of my people, and therefore it is on my head. You weren’t here, Monush. The mob gave full approval and cheered when Binadi cried out in agony. Those who hated what we did—they’re with Akmaro wherever he is.”

  “Then it’s time, isn’t it, for us to teach them what the convenant will mean and let them decide whether they want to go to Darakemba.”

  Ilihiak pulled his bed back over the hidden trove. “Though how we’re going to win our freedom from the place without bloody war I have no idea.”

  Monush helped him arrange the bed just as it had been. “When they’ve agreed to take the covenant, Ilihiak, then the Keeper will show us how to escape.”

  Ilihiak smiled. “Just so I don’t have to think of a way, I’m content.”

  Monush looked at him intently. Did he mean that?

  “I never wanted to be king,” said Ilihiak. “I’ll gladly give up all thrones and privileges, when I can set aside the burdens of office as well.”

  “A man who would willingly set aside the throne? I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Monush.

  “If you knew all the pain that reigning here had brought me,” said Ilihiak, “you’d call me a fool for staying in the job so long.”

  “Ilihiak, sir,” said Monush, “I would never call you a fool, or permit another man to call you that in my presence.”

  Ilihiak smiled. “Then may I hope, Monush, that when I am no longer king, I might still have the honor of being your friend?”

  Monush took Ilihiak’s hands and placed them flat on his own cheeks. “My life is between your hands forever, my friend,” said Monush.

  Ilihiak took Monush’s hands and repeated the gesture. “My life was worthless until the Keeper brought you to me. You were the awakening of all my hope. I know you came here only to do your duty to your king. But a man may see the worth of another man, regardless of rank or mission. My life is between your hands forever.”

  They embraced and touched lips in a kiss of friendship. Then, smiling, tears shamelessly on his cheeks, Ilihiak unbarred the door and returned to the tiny world where he was friend of no man, because he had to be king of all.

  When Mon missed his target for the third time, Husu flew to him and stopped him. Others—most of them young angels in the earliest stages of training for Husu’s flying army of spies—continued their practicing, filling their mouths with darts, the points protruding, then rapidly firing them one-handed through their blowtubes, trying to get them somewhere near the targets. Someday they would learn to shoot accurately while they beat their wings in flight, one foot holding the blowtube, the other foot holding a burden. For now, though, they practiced while standing on one foot. Mon was usually furious with himself when he missed—after all, he could hold the tube with two hands, could aim while standing on two feet. But today he could hardly bring himself to care.

  “Mon, my young friend, you’re tired, I think,” said Husu.

  Mon shrugged.

  “Haven’t slept well?”

  Mon shook his head. He hated having to explain himself. He was usually a better shot than this, he took pride in it.

  “You’re a better shot than this,” said Husu. “If you had wings, I would already have promoted you.”

  Husu could not have said words more likely to sting, but of course he couldn’t know that. “I knew the shot wasn’t right when I blew,” said Mon.

  “And yet you blew.”

  Mon shrugged again.

  “Children shrug,” said Husu. “Soldiers analyze.”

  “I blew the dart because I didn’t care,” said Mon.

  “Ah,” said Husu. “If the target had been an Elemaki soldier, intent on cutting the throats of young angels standing in their roost, would you have cared?”

  “I wake up in the night, again and again,” said Mon. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Such precision,” said Husu. “And when you aim your darts, do you aim them at ‘something’? Why, then, you’re sure to hit your target every time. Because you’ll always hit ‘something.’ ”

  “Something with Monush’s expedition.”

  Husu looked concerned at once. “Have they been harmed?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s it. I don’t get this feeling when bad things happen or I’d never sleep at all, would I, because something bad is happening all the time. It only happens from bad choices. Mistakes. Monush has made a mistake.”

  Husu chuckled. “And you don’t get that feeling all the time?”

  “A mistake about something that matters to me.”

  “I should think, then, that all mistakes that harm your father’s kingdom would keep you awake, and believe me, there are plenty of those.”

  Mon turned to Husu and looked him in the eye. “I knew my explanation wouldn’t please you, sir, but you wouldn’t accept my shrug.”

  Husu stopped chuckling. “No, I want the truth.”

  “If I were heir to the king, then the whole kingdom would matter to me. As it stands, what matters to me is a very small thing indeed. Monush’s expedition matters to me because . . .”

  “Because you sent them.”

  “Father sent them.”

  “They went because of your word.”

  “They’ve made a mistake,” said Mon.

  Husu nodded. “But you can’t do anything about it, can you? They aren’t within your reach, are they? No one can fly into Elemaki territory—they hunt down angels and shoot them out of the sky, and at those elevations the air is too thin for us to fly long distances, or very high, either. So—all you could possibly do about this feeling you have is tell your superior officer.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Mon.

  “And now I’ve been told,” said Husu. “So—back to training. I’ll let you take a nap when you hit the target in the heart three times in a row.”

  Which Mon did with his next three shots.

  “Apparently you feel better,” said Husu. “Now go and take a nap.”

  “You’ll tell my father?”

  “I’ll tell your father that Monush has made a mistake. We’ll have to wait and see what that mistake might be.”

  * * *

  Monush sat in council with Ilihiak and several of his military advisers. Ilihiak’s wife, Wissedwa, sat behind him. This was quite unusual, but Monush said nothing about having a woman present in a council of war. The Zenifi had their own customs, their own reasons for doing things. Monush knew enough—had learned well enough from Motiak—that you don’t take offense at the strange customs of other nations, you seek to learn from them. Still, was he wrong to think that some of the men studiously avoided looking at Wissedwa?

 
; It took no time at all for the council to conclude that there was no point in trying to win their freedom through open rebellion. “Before you ever came here, Monush,” said Ilihiak sadly, “we fought too many times and lost too many men. We can win a victory in the battlefield, and the underking we defeated merely comes back with armies of his brotherkings.”

  “Besides,” said one of the old men, “the diggers breed like the maggots they are.”

  Ilihiak winced slightly. The people had agreed that they would take the covenant—that didn’t mean their opinion of nonhumans was going to change. And when it came to diggers, it wouldn’t much matter, anyway. Most diggers in Darakemba were slaves—captives of war or their descendants to the third generation. The Zenifi could hate diggers and not much bother their fellow citizens in Darakemba. It was their loathing for sky people that would cause problems.

  During the early part of the meeting, Monush quickly learned that of all Ilihiak’s advisers, it was Khideo who had the king’s ear, and rightly so, because he spoke with calm wisdom and without passion. So it was a surprise that he had not been named Ush-Khideo by Ilihiak—that he had no title of honor at all. Now Khideo raised a hand slightly from his lap, and the others fell silent.

  “O king,” he said, “you have listened to my words many times when we went to war against the Elemaki. Now, O king, if my counsel has ever been of service to you, I beg you to listen to me now and I will be your true servant and deliver this nation out of bondage.”

  Monush wondered at the formality of Khideo’s speech—hadn’t he already spoken up several times, just like any of the other men?

  Ilihiak touched his hand to his own lips, then opened his palm toward Khideo. “I give my voice to Khideo now.”

  Ah, so that was it. Khideo wasn’t just giving casual counsel. He was asserting a privilege, and Ilihiak had granted it. More was at stake here than just advising the king. If Khideo’s plan was accepted, apparently he would be the one to lead the exodus. No doubt Khideo feared that Monush would try to lead the Zenifi out of captivity; Khideo was forestalling any such possibility. Monush would have to be their guide back to Darakemba, and it would be Monush who would introduce them to the great Motiak. But Khideo had no intention of letting Monush supplant him—or Ilihiak—as leader of the nation until the last possible moment. How needless this maneuvering was; Monush was not a man who cared who was in command, as long as the plan they followed was a wise one.

  “The great Motiak sent so few men to find us because any larger group would surely have been caught and destroyed by the Elemaki,” said Khideo.

  Of course Khideo would remind everyone of how few men Monush had brought with him. But Monush took no offense. Instead, he raised his hand from his lap and Khideo nodded, giving him the privilege of speech. “As it was, if the enemy had not been made stupid by the power of the Keeper, we would have been caught.” Even as he said the formulaic words, he wondered if perhaps they might not be true, at least in this case. Why hadn’t any of the Elemaki looked up at one of the many times when Monush’s men would have been visible moving across the face of the mountains?

  “Now we propose to win the freedom of our whole people,” said Khideo. “You know at this table that I do not shrink from battle. You know that I don’t think even assassination is beneath my honor.”

  The others nodded gravely, and now Monush began to suppose that he knew why Khideo had no honorific. It could not have been Ilihiak that he once tried to assassinate—but Nuab must have had some enemies when he was still alive as a truly terrible king. Ilihiak could accept Khideo’s counsel and even let him lead his armies, but he could never give an honorific to a man who tried to kill a king—especially his father, as unworthy as the old king might have been.

  “Our only hope is to flee from this place,” said Khideo. “But to do it, we have to take at least enough of our herds with us to feed us on our journey. Has anyone ever tried to keep turkeys quiet? Will our pigs move as swiftly as a fleeing army needs to move? Not to mention our women and children—the nursing babies, the toddlers—will we take them along the faces of cliffs? March them for half a day or more at top speed?”

  “At least the Elemaki know how impossible it is for you to escape as a people,” said Monush. “Therefore they post only a few guards here.”

  “Exactly,” said Khideo.

  “So we kill them and go!” cried one of the other men.

  Khideo did not answer, but waited instead for Ilihiak to gently chide the man and return the voice to Khideo.

  “I read again in the record we keep of the history of the Nafari,” said Khideo. “When Nafai led his people away from the traitorous lying murderer Elemak and the foul diggers who served him, he had the help of the Keeper of Earth, who made all the Elemaki sleep so soundly that they didn’t wake up.”

  “Nafai was a hero,” said an old man. “The Keeper says nothing to us.”

  “The Keeper spoke to Binaro,” said Ilihiak mildly.

  “Binadi,” muttered another man.

  Khideo shook his head. “The Keeper also sent the dream that brought Monush to us. We will trust that after we have done all we can do, the Keeper must do the rest to keep us safe. But my plan does not require us to pray to the Keeper and then hope our prayer is granted. You all know that we are forbidden to ferment any of our barley, even though it makes the water safer from disease. Why is that?”

  “Because the beer makes the diggers crazy,” said an old man.

  “It makes them stupid,” said Khideo. “It makes them drunk. Rowdy, noisy, happy, stupid—and then they pass out. This is why we’re forbidden to make it—because the dirt-eaters don’t have any self-control.”

  “If we offer them beer,” said Ilihiak, “even presuming we can find any—”

  Several of the men laughed. Apparently clandestine brewing was not unheard of.

  “—what’s to stop them from arresting and imprisoning whoever offers it to them?”

  Khideo only nodded at the king.

  No, not at the king at all. At the king’s wife, Wissedwa. She turned her face away, so she didn’t look directly at any of the men, but she spoke boldly so all could hear her. “We know that to the diggers all women are sacred. Even if they refuse the beer they will not lay hands on us. So we will offer it to them as the last share of the harvest. They’ll know they can’t legally turn it in to their superiors without also turning in the criminals who gave it to them; they’ll have no choice but to drink it.”

  “The queen speaks my plan from her own lips,” said Khideo.

  Monush thought that Khideo bore the shame of deferring to a woman in council with great dignity. He would have to ask, later, why the voice of the woman was heard. In the meantime, though, it was obvious that she was no fool and had followed the discussion completely. Monush tried to imagine a woman at one of Motiak’s councils. Who would it be? Not Dudagu, that was certain—had she ever uttered an intelligent word? And Toeledwa, before she died, had always been quiet, refusing even to ask about matters outside the rearing of her children and the affairs of the king’s house. But Edhadeya, now—Monush could imagine her speaking boldly in council. There’d be no silencing her if once she was given the right to speak. This was definitely an idea that should never be suggested to Motiak. He doted on Edhadeya enough that he might just decide to grant her the privilege of speech, and that would be the end of all dignity for the king’s council. I have not the humility of this Khideo, thought Monush.

  “Now we must know,” said Khideo, “whether Monush knows another way back to Darakemba that won’t take us through the heart of the land of Nafai.”

  Monush spoke immediately. “Motiak and I looked at all the maps before my men and I set out. We had no choice but to come up the Tsidorek in search of you, because that was the route of your great king Zenifab when your ancestor left. But for the return, if you know the way to the river Mebberek—”

  “It’s called Mebbereg in this country,” said an old man, �
��if it’s the same river.”

  “Does it have a tributary with a pure source?” asked Monush.

  “Mebbereg’s largest tributary is the Ureg. It begins in a lake called Uprod, which is a pure source,” said the old man.

  “That’s the one,” said Monush. “There’s an ancient pass above Uprod leading into the land northward. I know how to find it, I think, if the land hasn’t changed too much since our maps were made. It comes out not far from a bend in the Padurek, which is the great pure-source tributary of the Tsidorek. From the moment we emerge from that pass, we will be in lands ruled by Motiak.”

  Khideo nodded. “Then we will leave through the back of the city, away from the river. And we’ll only need to give the beer to the Elemaki guards who are stationed here in the city. The guards downriver and upriver will never hear us, nor will the ones crossriver know anything is going on. And when the guards discover us gone, they won’t dare go to their king to report their failure, because they know that they’ll all be slaughtered. Instead they’ll flee into the forest themselves and become outlaws and vagabonds, and it will be many days before the king of the Elemaki knows what we’ve done. That is my plan, O king, and now I return your voice to you.”

  “I receive back my voice,” said Ilihiak. “And I declare that it truly was my voice, and Khideo is now my hands and my feet in leading this nation to freedom. He will set the day, and all will obey him as if he were king until we are at the shores of the Mebbereg.”

  Monush watched as all the other men in the council immediately knelt and touched their palms to the floor, doing obeisance to Khideo. Monush nodded toward him, as befitted the dignity of the emissary of Motiak. Khideo looked at him under a raised eyebrow. Monush didn’t let his benign expression waver. After a moment, Khideo must have decided that Monush’s nod was enough, for he raised his hands to release the others, and then knelt himself before the king, putting his face between the king’s knees and his hands flat on the king’s feet. “All I do in your name will bring you honor, O king, until the day I give you back your hands and feet.”

  Monush found it interesting that these rituals could have emerged so quickly, after only three generations of separation from Darakemba. Then it dawned on him that these rituals might be much older—but they had been learned from the Elemaki in the years since the Zenifi came to this place. How ironic if the Zenifi came here to be the purest Nafari, only to be the ones who adapted themselves to the ways of the Elemaki.