Earthborn (Homecoming) Read Free

by
my
father’s choice,” he said.
    That gave Akma pause. No one had ever bothered to explain to the seven-year-old boy how his father had come to have so many enemies. It had never occurred to Akma that it might be his father’s fault. But he was suspicious: How could he believe the son of his father’s enemy? And yet . . . “You stopped the taskmaster from hitting me,” said Akma.
    The boy looked at the taskmaster, whose face was inscrutable. “From now on,” he said, “you are not topunish this one or his sister without my consent. My father says.”
    The taskmaster bowed his head. But Akma thought he didn’t look happy about taking orders like this from a human boy.
    “My father is Pabulog,” said the boy, “and my name is Didul.”
    “I’m Akma. My father is Akmaro.”
    “Ro-Akma? Akma the
teacher
?” Didul smiled. “What does
ro
have to teach, that he didn’t learn from
og
?”
    Akma wasn’t sure what
og
meant.
    Didul seemed to know why he was confused. “
Og
is the daykeeper, the chief of the priests. After the
ak
, the king, no one is wiser than
og
.”
    “King
just means you have the power to kill anybody you don’t like, unless they have an army, like the Elemaki.” Akma had heard his father say this many times.
    “And yet now my father rules over the Elemaki of this land,” said Didul. “While Nuak is dead. They burned him up, you know.”
    “Did you see it?” asked Akma.
    “Walk with me. You’re done with work for today.” Didul looked at the taskmaster. The digger, drawn up to his full height, was barely the same size as Didul; when Didul grew to manhood, he would tower over the digger like a mountain over a hill. But in the case of Didul and the taskmaster, height had nothing to do with their silent confrontation. The digger wilted under his gaze.
    Akma was in awe. As Didul took his hand and led him away, Akma asked him, “How do you do it?”
    “Do what?” asked Didul.
    “Make the taskmaster look so . . .”
    “So useless?” asked Didul. “So helpless and stupid and low?”
    Did the humans who were friends of the diggers hate them, too?
    “It’s simple,” said Didul. “He knows that if hedoesn’t obey me, I’ll tell my father and he’ll lose his easy job here and go back to working on fortifications and tunnels, or going out on raids. And if he ever raised a hand against me, then of course my father would have him torn apart.”
    It gave Akma great satisfaction to imagine the taskmaster—all the taskmasters—being torn apart.
    “I saw them burn Nuak, yes. He was king, of course, so he led our soldiers in war. But he’d gotten old and soft and stupid and fearful. Everybody knew it. Father tried to compensate for it, but
og
can only do so much when
ak
is weak. One of the great soldiers, Teonig, vowed to kill him so a real king could be put in his place—probably his second son, Ilihi—but you don’t know any of these people, do you? You must have been—what, three years old? How old are you now?”
    “Seven.”
    “Three, then, when your father committed treason and ran away like a coward into the wilderness and started plotting and conspiring against the pure human Nafari, trying to get humans and diggers and skymeat to live together as
equals
.”
    Akma said nothing. That
was
what his father taught. But he had never thought of it as treason against the purely human kingdom where Akma had been born.
    “So what did you know? I bet you don’t even remember being in court, do you? But you were there. I saw you, holding your father’s hand. He presented you to the king.”
    Akma shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
    “It was family day. We were all there. But you were just little. I remember you, though, because you weren’t shy or scared or anything. Bold as you please. The king commented on it. ‘This one’s going to be a great man, if he’s already so brave.’ My father remembered. That’s why he sent me to look for you.”
    Akma felt a thrill