The Night's Embrace (26)
The call of the night bird woke me.
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The call of the night bird woke me.
Ku-ku-ku-ku-broo.
My dream had already fled, but the sense of calm remained. As I had many times already, I made use of the sensation, and, in my stillness, the night embraced me.
The night whispered of recent rain and looming storms. A bat swooped through my awareness, focused entirely on the food falling into its maw, and not at all on my gentle intrusion.
And the night bird called again as she left her nest high in the almond tree and began her nocturnal hunt for small furry creatures to satiate the gnawing emptiness inside her.
x
I recognized the Agalin mage captain the instant he stepped into view. He radiated rage and confusion in equal amounts. A boy followed in his wake, with the same dark Agalin complexion. The boy seemed too old to be beardless. He stole a glance at me, and I saw many things communicated in that brief moment: fear foremost among them, but also a bright anticipation.
They stood before me in the bare stone chamber, and a third Agalin, another mage by the looks of him, indicated I should get to my feet. He removed the wooden stool I'd been perched on for these hours and left the chamber with it.
There was no Interdiction that I could feel. I surmised they were giving me every opportunity to make things worse for myself. And that wasn't why I had returned.
As soon as the three of us were alone, the Agalin mage spoke.
The boy gazed at me intently and repeated the mage's words in a form I could understand: Courtly Abrilian. The boy's voice was oddly high pitched. "Apologies for the long wait."
For a people who had so perfunctorily locked me away, this level of politeness and formality might have seemed out of character, if not for the careful attention I'd been given all afternoon.
I told him my name and reaffirmed my intention to submit to my rightful Agalin punishment.
The boy translated my words, and then the mage's. "I have a number of questions about your escape AND your accomplice. Things will go much better for you if you comply."
x
And comply I did. They seemed very eager to learn how Zhalghumi had escaped, presumably so that next time they captured a Faerie he would not be able to escape so readily.
I told them some of what I knew, and these things were revelation enough that my interrogators were satisfied, and they contained enough truth that the boy believed me. The boy-eunuch (as I believed him to be) had such an intensity of gaze that I suspected he had the talent of truthsense. I spoke as precisely and truthfully as I could — while withholding the parts that would incriminate me
They even stopped referring to the Faerie as my "accomplice" and instead as "the escapee".
In the end, they put aside any additional sentence I might have been liable for and informed me I'd only need to serve out my initial time — a little over nine months to go, with a conclusion slightly delayed by the uncertain amount of time I'd been in Zhalghumi's cocoon and then lost on the mountain.
x
I'd hoped to be allowed to keep the book with me, but that was strictly forbidden. It didn't matter. I had plenty to occupy me. The monsoon came and went. The night bird's hatchlings flew the nest before it, and one of them returned as an adult after the rains finally ended.
And so my old train of thought, the one that Zhalghumi had so well disrupted, returned to me. I reviewed every lesson I'd ever learned, and examined how each of them fit with the lessons Zhalghumi had unwittingly taught.
The experience was enlightening.
x
I suppose you're wondering why I did it, why I turned myself in to face Agalin justice?
I had to. It was the only way.
The reasoning was simple and came down to this: Father knew I would go to Agali. He knew I would be imprisoned for the way I arrived. He planned for that. He had counted on it. It was his plan all along.
But he wasn't punishing me, for being alive, for being who I am, as he had always done, and as I had assumed he would always do. Father lured me into his trap for selfish reasons. He wanted me to go through the punishment so that afterwards I would be able to walk more freely through Agali and therefore be able to find out what had happened to him. He wanted to teach me that duty came first, and that Azillan was my first duty.
That was his motivation, not mine.
My motivation was to find out his secrets. The rest of them. All of them. And the only way I would do that is by following Father's plan.
I intended to use Father's plan to my own ends as well as him. And now I knew in the depths of my being that my first duty was not to Azillan, not to Kinona, not even to humanity, but to myself.