Earthborn Page 0,2

these thoughts, because the one time he did, Father grew silent and wouldn't speak to him for the rest of the night. That was unbearable. The silence during the days was bad enough. To have Father shut him out at night was the worst thing in the world. So Akma kept his hate for the diggers to himself, as well as his contempt for the Keeper, and at night he spoke in the barest whisper to his mother and father, and drank in their whispered words as if they were pure cold water from a mountain stream.

And then one day a new boy appeared in the village. He wasn't thin and sunbrowned like all the others, and his clothing was fine, bright-colored, and unpatched. His hair was clean and long, and the wind caught and tossed it when he stood on the brow of the low hill in the midst of the commons. After all that Father and Mother had said about the Keeper of Earth, Akma was still unprepared for this vision of a god, and he stopped working just to behold the sight.

The taskmaster shouted at Akma, but he didn't hear. All sound had been swallowed up in this vision, all sensation except sight. Only when the shadow of the taskmaster loomed over him, his arm upraised to strike him with the length of the prod, did Akma notice, and then he flinched and cowered and, almost by reflex, cried out to the boy who had the image of god on his face, "Don't let him hit me!"

"Hold!" cried the boy. His voice rang out confident and strong as he strode down the hill, and, incredibly, the taskmaster immediately obeyed him.

Father was far from Akma, but Mother was near enough to whisper to Akma's little sister Luet, and Luet took a few steps closer to Akma so she could call softly to him. "He's the son of Father's enemy," she said.

Akma heard her, and immediately became wary. But the beauty of the older boy did not diminish as he approached.

"What did she say to you?" asked the boy, his voice kind, his face smiling.

"That your father is my father's enemy."

"Ah, yes. But not 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 to punish 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 dk, the king, no one is wiser than <#-"

"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 he doesn't obey me, I'll tell my father and he'll lose his easy job here and go back to working