The figures drew in. They seemed to slide toward Mena on rollers. One of them stepped forward. He managed to convey that he was Nualo, without overtly affirming it. Leeka just knew, and he knew that everyone nearby knew also. They were all part of this.

Why was it not the firstborn? Nualo asked.

Mena glanced at her brother, at Leeka. She swallowed. Aliver-the firstborn of us-has died…

Flushed, her lips trembling, Mena carried on. He was killed by our enemy. That’s why I called you. Before he died, he told me only you could-

The Santoth did not let her finish. They asked for proof of the firstborn’s death. Mena told them that his body was nearby. Instantly, the sorcerers drifted toward it. They knew how to find Aliver’s corpse without needing to be directed.

Unable to speak, not knowing how to begin, Leeka did not move. Nobody else did either, except to look into one another’s faces. Dariel eventually broke the silence, saying, with a strained hint of his usual humor, “I’ve asked this before, and I’ll try it again in this situation…Do we have a plan?”

Mena did not have time to answer. The Santoth were already returning, sliding into the same positions they had been in previously. Leeka barely managed to follow the exchange Mena fell into with them. So much passed between them, not just words but other thoughts that did not take verbal form. While Leeka got tangled in it, Mena managed to sort through the weight of information floating between them. The Santoth admitted that they had felt Aliver’s death when it happened. They had known the moment the connection between them was cut, but they had hoped it was not so. They had believed him when he promised to free them. Only he could do so because he was the first of his generation and a direct descendant from Tinhadin. They wanted to know how he could have allowed himself to die with his promise to them unfulfilled.

Mena could not answer that; it just was. She asked if he could not live again, though. Could they not bring him back to life? Did they not have the power to heal him? But Nualo, speaking now for the others, said no, no, no. They could not restore life. Elenet had never learned how to achieve that. The Giver had protected this knowledge above all else, and he had departed without ever having spoken the words. There may not even be words for restoring life, not to a person who was truly dead, with no sorcery involved.

Then do what you can do, Mena said. Help us defeat the Meins. They come for us even now. Look, if you don’t believe. They come.

Nualo and the others turned in the direction she pointed. It was true. The Meinish army approached, looking more numerous than the day before, marching in to finish what they had started. Looking at them, Leeka realized how completely they were defeated. He might have hoped the giant shapes in the sky would have unnerved them, but they marched forward as if they had not seen anything unusual. He felt the collective heart of the troops sink. The end trudged toward them. It was but minutes away.

We cannot, Nualo said. We would only cause harm.

“As if they are not planning on just that?” Dariel said, but there was no humor in it, especially as spoken words sounded so discordant in the company of the Santoth.

In one shared capsule of thought, Nualo explained that the Giver’s tongue was ever deceiving. Men were not meant to possess it. They should never have studied it. The power they wielded was a dangerous thing even at the best of times, even when they had The Song of Elenet to read from. No matter what good they tried to do, it always became corrupted somehow. Tinhadin had not banished them without reason. No Santoth wished to tempt the dangers of using their knowledge for violence now. If they began it, they could not say where it would end.

Nualo said, The prince knew that we could do nothing without first studying The Song of Elenet…

Dariel cut in. “Why are we having this discussion?” He lifted his gaze and took in the northern view, thronging now with Meins, loud with their singing and their taunts. Snapping back to the Santoth, he held his words with a clamped mouth and communicated with them as Mena was. Aliver is dead! That army is coming to destroy us. You see them, don’t you? Explain to me how you have any hope of coming in from banishment if we die? You’ve no hope at all, and you know it.

Nualo turned his complete attention on the younger Akaran. A crease formed on the Santoth’s forehead and slithered down across his eyeball and changed the shape of his nose and bent one corner of his lips before he swallowed it. Leeka knew that that crease was an expression of anger, of desperation, and a sign of how hard it was for these banished ones to inhabit this physical world. He heard Nualo say, You do not know what you are asking. Watching him, Leeka believed that to be a true statement.

Exasperated, Dariel turned and set off toward the Meins, calling for others to do the same. He gathered up his things when he passed his tent. A few answered him, but Mena stayed focused on Nualo. Maybe he doesn’t, she said, but you do. I called and you came. You didn’t come here to do nothing, did you? Do what you can now. Later, when the world is at peace, we’ll find The Song of Elenet. You’ll be able to speak pure again. Then you can undo any wrong.

Nualo and the others sat with this for some time. Their faces changing ever more quickly now-creasing, morphing, becoming pocked, peeling, and then healing, their features impermanent and shifting. They were agitated, angry, hungry. Yes, they were hungry, too. They spoke among themselves.

Leeka heard the clash of the battle just beginning. He felt the pull toward it. He could not let Dariel die without him. He had turned and begun to move away when he heard Nualo say, Others have made the mistake of believing that good comes from evil. It is not so. Nothing today will be any different.

Leeka kept walking. He put his hand on his sword and felt the contours of the grip in his hand. He knew there was more coming from the Santoth, though. He knew how to sense anger, knew how it drove people to action, and he felt it pulsing behind him with a growing intensity. They were going to do it. No matter their wisdom and wish for peace, beneath it all, they were human. They raged against their fate. They mourned their savior’s death. They wanted revenge. And they wanted to do the one thing that had been denied them for generations. They wanted to open their mouths and speak.

Whatever happens, Nualo said, stay behind us. Do not follow and do not look. It will be better for you if you do not look.

Leeka was still moving forward when the Santoth strode past him. One of them gestured with his hand in a way that pushed the old general back, almost knocking him from his feet. They did this to others also and to those in front of them. With motions of their fingers and hands they grabbed soldiers from right in the fray and yanked them back from the Meins. Leeka saw Dariel seemingly get pinched up by the head and moved across the ground, ending up dropped on his bottom beside where his sister stood. Mena helped him rise, and then she turned him away from the battle. She cried for others to do the same.

“Nualo said not to look!” she said. “Do as he said. Whatever happens, do not look.”

Leeka had to consider what he was about to do for only a few seconds. He did not truly weigh the decision. Nor did he intend even the slightest disrespect with his act of disobedience. But he had woken that morning intent on death, sure that he was stepping into the sunlight for the last time. Now, presented with what was to be a sight for the ages, he could not turn his back on it. Let it be the last thing he ever witnessed, if it had to be. He turned from Mena and Dariel and from the huddled back of the Acacian forces. He followed the sorcerers into battle.