by Ben Peek
The second warrior fell moments later, an ugly parry turning into a thrust that slammed deep into his chest. The third followed in a graceless tumble as he turned, as he finally broke in fear and began to run to the tables, but instead sprawled across the ground, Ren’s dagger buried in his throat.
Slowly, the scarred man gathered the weapon. He did not wipe it, did not clean it, and with it still wet, he turned to Usa Dvir.
The other man’s sword rose.
‘No.’ The Innocent dropped both his blades on the floor, where they landed in a hard pair of noises. He began to walk forward. ‘You do not get that.’
‘I will kill you,’ Dvir spat. ‘I will run you through like a pig.’
Aela Ren did not reply.
Usa Dvir, the war scout of the Saan, the man who had watched the deaths of his men in such a short, brutal time, the man who had stood beside the melting ice sculpture of the most famous of swordsmen of the Saan, the man who had stood there and done nothing to help those who had come to Ooila under him to take power from a sick Queen . . . that man let out a scream of raw frustration and anger and charged. He levelled the sword as he would a spear and the hard blade did not pause as it plunged into the chest of Aela Ren.
And neither did he.
Silently, the Innocent pushed himself along the blade, each hard step succeeding in plunging the steel deeper and deeper into his chest, until it pressed against the skin of his back and burst through, continuing for a forearm’s length before his hands closed around Dvir’s head.
The sickening crunch of bone giving way, of a head losing shape and collapsing, sounded a moment later.
3.
Aela Ren’s scarred fingers curled around the leather-bound grip of the war scout’s sword. Slowly, he began to withdraw it from his chest. Bueralan watched in horror as the small man pulled the blade out of himself inch by inch, the steel slippery with his blood, but not enough that, when his hands could no longer reach the pommel, Ren hesitated to grip the slick blade. When he had drawn the last of it from himself, he let it fall to the floor, where the sound of the sword hitting the ground was shallow, as if it were nothing but a toy, its very composition material that would not harm a child.
‘Once—’ Aela Ren’s voice was rough, bestial, and he stopped, as if the nature of his voice was a truth he did not wish to hear. ‘Once,’ he began again, his voice returned to its normality, ‘I thought the gods had returned. It was towards the end of the war. The sea level had not yet risen. Churches still existed. I had not yet grieved for all that I had lost, and neither had those I knew. The war was terrible to men and women like myself and we suffered more than any other. For each god-touched man or woman, the death of a god, the death of their god in particular, was a pain that transcended flesh and consciousness. It was of such pain that words are inadequate to describe it. Death was denied us. We had to live through it all. Many would eventually live in Glafanr, but not all. For some, anger and resentment drove them out into the world.’
The Innocent’s right hand came up to his chest, to where the sword had pierced his skin, to where blood now seeped.
‘I believed that only the return of the gods could alleviate our pain. To discover that one did exist, one that was born while they still killed themselves, was a cause of celebration.’ His hand curled into a fist. ‘It was not to be, of course. In their demise the divine nature of the gods had spilled out into our world. It changed ordinary men and women, made them something new. It would take years for me to understand that, but one thing was true: when I found the first of these men and women, I knew immediately that he was not a god.’
Aela Ren turned to Bueralan and the saboteur saw in his gaze a dark fury.
‘He had called himself the Animal Lord,’ the scarred man continued. ‘He would have many titles throughout the years, but to me, Jae’le would always be the Animal Lord. The title had been given to him because he kept beasts by his side, but it revealed a more intimate awareness of the man, for he would hunt other men and women. He believed in strength and cunning. He believed that only the strongest deserved life. When I found him first, he was a crude deity to the small tribe on the island of Tuia. He had been born there, but had not thrived until a god’s power had worked itself into his being. Now, he had all that he wished, and like a beast, he was sated with domination over his small part of the world.
‘He kept his home on the side of a mountain. It sat on the horizon with a dark finality, and I walked through silent camps of men and women before it to reach him. In each, I was forced to fight a warrior. In the seven camps, four were women and three men, and in each camp no one else sought to attack me once I had defeated their first warrior. Their skill increased as I drew closer to the cave where he lived and it became clear to me that there was a ranking in the men and women I passed. I was able simply to disarm the first two warriors who opposed me, but I was forced to kill the remaining five. Once the last of them had fallen, I followed a narrow path that wound up around the mountain, and at the end, I found the Animal Lord living in a shallow cave.
‘He was a frightening figure to behold with a calm eye. Lean and dark-skinned, he rested on his haunches in tattered furs on the lip of his cave. He gave every impression that he would soon leap down upon me, even though he held no weapons. But his teeth had been filed down to points and, later, I would learn, he used them to rip the flesh off the men and women he had killed. He would only eat that flesh, he told me from his perch, though he did not offer a reason for it. I almost wept in despair to hear him speak, but instead, I allowed something much worse to take place. I allowed myself to believe in a lie.’
Bueralan felt a shiver pass through him, the scene clear in his mind’s eye. He could see the Animal Lord looming above him, the darkness blending into his skin, obscuring his face, leaving only his burning, dark eyes, the hint of his teeth, and the hints of fur that he wore. When he rose, he was tall. His body was twisted, lean muscle and ended in fingers long and hard. He left his perch suddenly and without a word, landing on the ground at the opening of his cave in such a swift fluidity that it was startling to behold.
‘Jae’le believed himself to be a god and I allowed myself to believe that he might one day become one.’ Aela Ren’s fist fell away from his chest and revealed the wound, which had begun to heal. ‘For two decades, I was his companion. I taught him languages he had never heard. I introduced him to the world beyond Tuia. I educated him about the gods. In my need to have divinity returned to me, I believed that I saw strands of fate gather around him, and thought that it would only be a matter of time until he could reach for them. But it was an illusion on my part. The paths of fate that the gods navigated were created by their own desires and fears and were divine in their nature. Their very existence was a reaction to the gods. A touch spawned another, and another, and the result was that an equilibrium was reached among all the gods. But with no gods, no new strands of fate could be made. Without them, we were truly without truth. As my years with Jae’le drew to an end, I began to realize that our world was one of emptiness. We lived now in a world where the only meanings that could be given were our own, and where, without any real truth, those words and actions could be used to make legitimate our most base desires. It soon became true that we were now living in an existence of deceit and that Jae’le was the centre of it.’
‘But you could not kill him.’ The image that Ren had built crumbled beneath Samuel Orlan’s voice. The old cartographer had pushed himself to his feet and stood before the weeping statue of the Saan Blade Prince, the melted figures around it indistinguishable from each other. ‘For all that you have said about him, Aela, you were unable to kill him. Jae’le and his brothers and sisters would make the Five Kingdoms – and you did not challenge one of them.’
‘You and your kin were too quick to be their friend, Samuel.’ The Innocent did not turn from Bueralan. ‘But he is correct. I could not kill the Animal Lord.’
‘You were not stronger
than him?’ the saboteur asked, his voice cracking as he spoke.
‘No, I was not.’ He extended his arms. ‘These scars you see were made by him. He had not displayed such power in the years we stood together – he had hidden it for all that time, waiting for when I would betray him. Can you imagine the mind that it takes to do that? To purposely hold yourself back for two decades and more? I will not pretend that I had the better of him, then. I had underestimated him greatly, and on the day I drew my sword against him, I was defeated within no more time than it takes for a heart to beat. In the depths of Faer, Jae’le strung me across a great tree and impaled me on its branches. It moved, like you or I would, and it drew me against its trunk, where it held me as branches burst through my skin. In places, it was like a series of pins driven into me, in others, thick blades. If that was not enough, Jae’le then drove nails and spikes into me. It would be thousands of years before I could remove myself from that tree, but the wounds would never heal completely. In my darkest days, I despaired that I was being punished by my master, that he had seen this fate for me and bound me to the strand of it – but I had no reason to be punished, and the meaning was one I gave myself. I have lived with that realization for many, many years. It was not until I heard of you, Bueralan Le, that I began to think differently.’
‘You believe there is another god,’ the First Queen said, her frail voice gaining strength, a hope it had not previously had. ‘That is why you are here?’
‘It would change everything,’ he said simply.
‘She is not a god yet,’ Orlan said, a certainty in his voice that Bueralan did not share. ‘And if she has thought to take on Jae’le, she might never be.’
‘He is not what he once was,’ the Innocent said. ‘You know that as well as I do, Samuel. Yet, nonetheless, I will show caution where I once did not. I will wait to hear her name spoken and I will remain here in the house of your daughter, Zeala Fe, until it is spoken. Both these men will keep me company, and so will your Voice, until it is that you and I need to speak again.’
A Gravedigger’s Name
‘During the meal, the Faithful stopped speaking to us,’ Jiqana said. Around her face she wore a black bandage, and as she talked, she would scratch beneath the cloth. ‘A terrible silence fell over the camp. In the last week, nothing made a sound, not even the animals. They would answer the silent call of the soldiers, just as the soldiers responded to each other without words. On the second day of that silence, the soldiers began to read from a book entitled The Eternal Kingdom. It was the only noise you heard for the entire week.
‘At the end of the second week, you were asked a third and final time if you embraced their god. I was asked by General Waalstan himself. He entered the camp that I was in on the last day and took each of us to his tent, one by one. We never saw anyone emerge. By the time I entered his tent, I was terrified that I would find the others dead on the floor, but instead, I found it filled with diaries, with maps, and with a small golden dish from which smoke rose. He sat on a chair in the middle and beckoned me to the one opposite him. I remember that he spoke in such a gentle voice that when he asked me if I would embrace his god, I could not lie to him. I wanted to tell him yes, but I could not. I told him that the book had made no sense to me. That it sounded silly. I remember that I began to weep as I spoke, but he reached for me, and hugged me. For a moment, I felt safe, and then another hand touched me, and I felt my head pulled back. The last thing I saw was the smoke in the ceiling of the tent, twisted into the form of a strange creature, as if it followed the definition of something real in the shadows.’
—Tinh Tu, Private Diary
1.
Beneath the morning’s sun, Bueralan dug the fifth of twenty-four single, unmarked graves.
He had begun in the last of the night’s darkness, the emptiness of it stretching around him, its fading depth a voiceless articulation of the situation he was in and the mortality he felt so keenly. Earlier, he had ridden beneath the sky at its darkest as he drove the carriage to Cynama, the long road revealed in scraps of light, the path poorly illuminated for both him and horse. The two beasts had made their exit from Yoala Fe’s grounds as if the very wood of the carriage held the heavy weight of the night’s violence. On the road, he had passed men and women from the party, each of them still in their fine clothes, each of them the debris of a much larger wreckage, but Bueralan did not stop for any. He entered the quiet roads of Cynama alone, the canals giant shadowed wounds in the distance, and it was not until the firm and unpleasant grip of Captain Lehana took his arm that the reality of the night returned to his stomach in a sick rush.
‘Where is the—’
‘Unhand him, Lehana.’ The First Queen interrupted the soldier’s question from the door of the carriage. Her voice was still frail, and she emerged from the dark with the shadows entwined around her, but she did so under the strength she had shown in her daughter’s home. ‘He must return before the night is over, though he would be wise not to do so.’ Slowly, she stepped onto the ground. ‘He should unhitch a horse and ride from this city, ride from this country. But you will not do that, will you, Bueralan Le?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not.’
The First Queen waved away Captain Lehana’s offer of her arm. ‘You will bury my daughter with her soul around her neck, won’t you?’
He nodded, but did not trust himself to reply.
‘She would have killed me, or I would have killed her.’ She released her hold upon the door and began to walk to the palace gate. At his side, she paused. ‘But she was still my daughter and my fury is a mother’s. You will not forget that, will you?’
‘No.’
When he returned to Yoala Fe’s estate, the lamps to the mansion lit a half-extinguished trail for him to follow.
The Innocent’s silhouette stood on the balcony, but Aela Ren made no move to acknowledge him. Beneath his gaze, Bueralan unhooked the horses and led them into the stables. Once inside, he rubbed them down, fed and watered them, and then did the same for all fifteen horses in the stables. When he finally emerged, an empty, dark space greeted him on the balcony and Bueralan, his body unable to stop, unable to rest, walked into the mansion and began to move the corpses outside.
The butterflies rose with the morning’s sun, pulling themselves from the broken dirt beneath Bueralan’s feet. They rose with the warm humidity and drifted around him, landing on the bare skin of his back and the tattoos on his arms; they touched the cold pouch around his neck; they settled on the knife he had thrown on the ground and on the shirt next to it; they flocked to the handle of the shovel when he paused in his actions; but mostly, they drifted around the bodies that lay in front of him, where many would settle between moments of flight to obscure the dry wounds.
Samuel Orlan joined him before the first of the butterflies began to die. He had with him a pair of shovels, both of which he laid on the ground before he took off the jacket he wore, rolled up the paint-splotched sleeves beneath, and began to dig wordlessly.
It was not until the Queen’s Voice said, ‘Is this to be our morning ritual, then?’ that someone finally spoke.
She stepped out of the mansion without her gold chains, or her beautiful, bloodstained dress. Stripped of her finery, she had changed into brown leather trousers and a dark-orange shirt, though the latter, Bueralan saw, was a size too big, and cut for a man with square shoulders. On her feet, she wore a pair of old boots, the type that folded over at the top, the type that, he knew, held a sheath that you could slide a dagger into without it slicing against the side of your foot.
‘There’s a third shovel,’ he said.
She did not move to pick it up. ‘So it is, then?’
He turned from her and thrust his shovel into the ground. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I told you—’
‘The Queen is not here.’ Bueralan bit the words off harshly. ‘It’s just the three of us, waiting to see if I know a name.’
She
was silent as he dug and he half expected to hear her turn, for her to return inside, where the Innocent sat in one of the many rooms.
‘Zi Taela,’ she said, finally.
It was not the name, but then, how could it be? A god’s name would not announce itself with its family name first, would not follow with its first name, would not allow such a simple act to ensure that it was distinguished from the wealthy noble families in Ooila. A god would know better than to begin fighting for two letters that it could claim as its own.
‘It is a lovely name,’ Samuel Orlan said when the saboteur’s shovel bit back into the ground. ‘Any one of the women who wanted to marry me would have been lucky to have such a name.’
‘Is that a proposal?’ she asked archly.
‘I fear the grave I stand in is much too morbid a place.’
‘If the two of you are done,’ Bueralan said, his voice kinder than it had been before, ‘there is still a third shovel.’
She picked it up, but did not approach either of the two graves that were being dug. Instead, she said, ‘Samuel, why did he not die?’
The Innocent. She did not have to say his name and the cartographer did not need to ask it. ‘He is god-touched,’ he said.
‘He said that both of you were.’
‘He was wrong.’ Bueralan turned to Orlan as he spoke, surprised by his answer. The old man stood in his shallow grave, stained in sweat and dirt, neither of which hid the red marks of the chain that the Innocent had wrapped around his neck. ‘I am just a fat old fool who has forgotten that the task of cartographers is not to define history, merely bear witness to it. My name is worth more than I am, worth more to all the lords and ladies and gods than myself. But you cannot test a name, you cannot measure its moral quality. But you can tie it to a strand of fate, just as the God of Truth did to Aela Ren. You can make it mean something. You can make the people who take it mean something. That is how immortality is given. A god locks your death in a moment of time that may have already taken place, or will never take place. It locks you there with all you may have once been, or once become. It takes away all the freedom you were born with.’