Earthborn

The earth rumbled under them again; Akma was knocked to his knees, and Mon fell, his face striking the damp soil of the road.

"Can you claim any more that the Keeper has no power? Are you deaf to my voice? Blind to the light that shines from my body? Can't you feel the earth shake beneath you? Is there no Keeper?"

Mon cried out in fear, "Yes! There is! I knew it all along! Forgive me for my lies!" He could hear his brothers also crying out, pleading for mercy; only Akma remained silent.

"Akma, remember your captivity in the land of Chelem. Remember how the Keeper delivered you from bondage. Now you are the oppressor of the Kept, and the Keeper will deliver them from you. Go your way, Akma, and seek no more to destroy the Assembly of the Kept. Their pleas will be answered, whether you choose to destroy yourself or not."

With those words, the light coming from the messenger's body seemed to increase in brightness and intensity-something Mon would have thought impossible, since he was already nearly blinded when he looked at him. Yet he was able to see that the man of light extended his arm and a bolt of lightning crackled in the air between his finger and Akma's head. Akma seemed to dance in the air for a moment like an ash suspended over a fire; then he fell in a heap. The huge stone roared again, and again dust and smoke arose to blind them all. When it cleared, the stone was gone, the messenger also, and the earth was still.

Khimin was weeping. "Father!" he cried out. "Mother! I don't want to die!"

Mon might have scoffed, but the same feelings were coursing through his own heart.

"Akma," said Aronha.

Of course, thought Mon. It's my older brother who has the decency to remember our friend instead of thinking of himself. Mon was filled with new shame. He got up and staggered to where Akma lay unconscious.

"There is a Keeper," Ominer was intoning. "I know there's a Keeper, I know it now, I know it, I know it."

"Shut up, Ominer," said Mon. "Help us get Akma into the sunlight, onto the grass."

They carried him then, his body limp.

"He's dead," said Khimin.

"If the man of light meant to kill him," said Mon, "why would he tell him to stop interfering with the Kept? You don't have to give instructions to dead men."

"If he's alive," said Aronha, "then why isn't he breathing? Why can't I find a pulse or hear a heartbeat?"

"I tell you he is alive," said Mon.

"How can you know that?" demanded Ominer. "You haven't even checked him."

"Because my truthsense affirms it. Yes, he lives."

"Suddenly your truthsense is back again?" asked Aronha ironically.

"It never left. I denied it, I ignored it, I fought against it, but it never left." It hurt to say these words. And yet it was also a relief.

"This whole time your truthsense has been telling you that the things we taught were lies?" asked Aronha.

Aronha's tone was a slap in the face. "Akma told me that my truth-sense was a lie! Self-deception! I was ashamed to talk about it." He could see contempt on Aronha's face. "Are you going to blame this on me, Aronha? Is that the kind of man you are? It's all Mon's fault that you were doing this? The Keeper sends us a being of light to tell us that we were lying, destroying something that mattered, and you're going to point the finger at me?"

It was Aronha's turn to look ashamed. "I made my own choice, I know it. I kept thinking, if Mon says it's right, it must be right-only I knew it was wrong, and I was using my reliance on you as an excuse. The younger boys, now, they can hardly be held responsible. You and I and Akma put a lot of pressure on them and-"

"I made my own choices too!" Khimin shouted. "The messenger didn't come to stop you. He came to stop us all." Mon realized that Khimin was proud that he had been visited by a messenger from the Keeper. That had to be better than a true dream. Examining his own heart, Mon realized that he had such feelings, too.

"The messenger may have come to stop us all," Ominer said, "but he only spoke to Akma. Because the truth is that we were all following Akma from the begi

"Oh, aren't you the brave one, blaming it on him," said Khimin. "It's all the fault of the one who's lying there like a dead man."

"I'm not saying that to excuse us," said Ominer. "As far as I'm concerned, that should make us even more ashamed. We're the sons of the king! And we let someone talk us into defying and shaming our father and everything he had taught us."

"It was my fault," said Aronha. He managed to hold his voice steady, but he dared not look them in the eye. "I may have half-believed some of Akma's ideas, but when it came to starting our own religion, restoring the old order of the state-I knew it was wrong. I knew the people we were working with were contemptible opportunists. I knew that the diggers we were driving out of Darakemba were better people than our supposed friends. And I'm the one who was raised to be king. I don't deserve it. I forbid you to call me Ha-Aron anymore. I'm just Aron."

Mon couldn't contain his frustration any longer. "Don't you see what you're doing, even now? We followed Akma because he flattered us and fed our pride. We loved it while we were doing it, too. We loved being important and powerful. We loved making Father back down before us, we loved changing the world, we loved thinking we were smarter than everybody else and having people admire us and treat us like we were important. It was pride that kept us going. And now what are we doing? Khimin's wetting himself because we were so important that the Keeper sent a man of light to stop us-don't argue with me, Khimin, I was feeling the same thing myself. And Aronha here wants to take all the blame himself, because he's the one who should have known better and don't you see? It's still pride! It's still the same thing that got us into trouble in the first place!"

"I'm not proud," said Aronha, and now his voice was trembling. "I can't stand the thought of facing anybody."

"But we will," said Mon. "Because we have to let them see what a miserable bunch we are."

"Isn't that a kind of pride, too?" asked Ominer nastily.

"Maybe it is, Ominer! But you want to know the one thing I'm really proud of? The one thing that makes me glad that you're my brothers, that I'm one of you?"

"What?" said Aronha.

"That not one of you suggested that we go on fighting the Keeper," said Mon. "That it didn't cross your minds that maybe we could remain a part of the Assembly of tne Ancient Ways."

"That doesn't mean we're good, or anything," said Ominer. "It might just mean we're terrified."

"We could only rebel when we could fool ourselves into thinking that we believed there was no Keeper. Now we know better. We've seen things that we never imagined, things that happened only in the time of the Heroes. But remember those stories? Elemak and Meb-bekew saw things every bit as strong as this! And yet they kept rebelling, right to the end of their lives. Not us! Our rebellion is over."

Aronha nodded. "I still meant what I said about being Aron now."

Mon shot back at once, "You'll stay Aronha until Father tells you otherwise! He didn't take away the honorific the whole time you were shaming him."

Aronha nodded again.

"This will kill Mother," Khimin said, weeping.

Mon put his arm around his youngest brother and held him. "I don't know if we can decently ask Father to take us back. But we have to go to him, if only so he can have the victory of turning us away."

"Father will take us back," said Aronha. "That's the kind of man he is. The question is whether we can undo any of the harm we've caused."

"No," said Ominer. "The question is, will Akma live or not? We have to get him back to Darakemba. Do we keep him here and hope that he'll revive? Or search for help to carry him back?"