The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  ‘Yet Lor Jix did,’ she said. ‘But it does not matter. I see now that my parents could not exist as I did. I see that they could not accept that. As you said, I am them. With enough time, I believe Eidan will understand this as well. Before he dies, he will ask for forgiveness from me.’

  If Aela Ren replied, Bueralan did not hear it.

  6.

  Xrie stood casually on the stairs behind her, his right shoulder against the sagging wall. A slim man only slightly taller than Ayae, he was a combination of elegance and steeled resolve that lent him an air of command. He stood before her in dark leather and a dark red silk belt, both immaculately kept, demonstrating a certain fastidiousness in his personality that emerged more strongly in his organization of the Yeflam Guard. Before Xrie arrived in the Floating Cities, before he left his family and descended through the twisting mountain passes to the world outside his homeland, he had been known as the Blade Prince of the Saan, but in Yeflam, where Ayae had first met him, he had simply been called the Soldier. He had been a Keeper of the Enclave and the Captain of the Yeflam Guard and, in both, he had been loyal to Aelyn Meah. In those days he had dyed the ends of his brown hair blue and let the colour run through the silk that he wore; but now the dark red of the silk belt also streaked his hair in a violent denial of the people who had betrayed him months ago.

  ‘Don’t clap,’ she said drily, responding to his earlier praise. ‘The floor might give way.’

  ‘I try not to talk too loudly in here.’ He spoke softly as he walked up the stairs towards her. ‘We’ve closed off a lot of the buildings to stop people moving into them, but factories like this are difficult. And dangerous.’

  Xrie and the Yeflam Guard had organized the evacuation of the northern side of Yeflam the night Zaifyr died. If you spoke to any soldier who served under him at that time – any soldier who stood beneath the sheeting rain and struggled to erect tents and organize people and help loved ones find each other – you would hear only pride in their voices. They would speak of how Xrie had been selfless, how he had done what the other Keepers had not, and worked for them, for Yeflam. If you spoke to the people Xrie had saved, opinion was more divided. Some agreed with his soldiers, but there were others who still believed him to be Aelyn Meah’s servant.

  ‘This building is part of our regular sweep through Neela.’ He glanced at the two unconscious men. ‘I know them,’ he said. ‘Tan and Casa. They were some of the first to work on the bridge into Neela. I have not seen either for over two months.’

  ‘Now you have,’ she said.

  ‘Not the way I wished.’

  Ayae knelt beside the white man – Tan – and rolled him onto his back. His face might once have been handsome, but it was now drawn and pinched with hunger. As she grabbed the front of his shirt to begin lifting him, however, the thin fabric that he wore gave way and revealed the edge of a tattoo on his chest. She heard Xrie grunt in recognition as she pushed the filthy clothes aside to reveal the tattoo of a whole sun on his chest. The centre of it held smaller versions of the complete sun, flames within flames.

  ‘Se’Saera’s mark,’ Xrie said. ‘Over the heart, as always.’

  She turned to Casa. ‘Let’s see if his friend also has it.’

  ‘They never travel alone, Ayae.’

  She knew that, but she reached for the shirt, regardless.

  Shortly after, the two stood outside the factory. They had carried the unconscious men past where Eidan still sat, his eyes closed, and lowered them onto the back of the cart. As they did that, Xrie’s soldiers emerged silently from the surrounding streets. They numbered ten, no more than a scouting unit, but each of them wore the dark red of their commander.

  ‘They are better off dead than returning to the camp,’ Xrie told her as he stared down at the two men. ‘There will be no mercy for them.’

  ‘There is little mercy for anyone,’ she said.

  ‘But it is worse for those with Se’Saera’s mark.’

  Ayae did not disagree. The first sightings of the tattoo had appeared after the storm had broken and when the camp had begun to take shape. Ayae had seen a young man dragged out into the dirt streets and lynched by his friends one morning, his body stripped to reveal the tattoo.

  Similar stories arrived from across Leviathan’s Blood. Without the Enclave, the Floating Cities of Yeflam had fallen under the control of individual governors. The correspondence that came – most of it through Lian Alahn’s contacts – revealed a fractured nation. Barricades lined the bridges, new laws were enforced, and anyone not born in the ‘new’ nations of Yeflam was looked upon with suspicion. Ayae was not surprised that the camp had received no aid since it had been established on the shoreline.

  Before her, Xrie motioned to one of his soldiers for some rope. With it in his hand, he took a step to the cart, but as his boot touched the edge, Casa sat up slowly, but with a strangeness that was immediately noticeable.

  ‘Yeflam,’ he said in the voice of a young woman. ‘It saddens me to see it like this.’

  Xrie took a step back, drawing his sword as he did. ‘You are not welcome here, Se’Saera.’

  ‘I am welcome everywhere in my world.’ Casa’s head tilted as he gazed at the soldiers, who had also unsheathed their weapons. A lopsided smile crossed his face, as if the sight amused him, but he said nothing to them. Instead, he turned to Ayae. ‘Surely you welcome me here? You who have seen so much of this suffering world.’

  She did not reach for her sword, though she wanted to do so. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ the possessed man echoed. ‘You have spent much too much time with Eidan and his family.’

  ‘What is it that you want, Se’Saera?’ Eidan emerged from behind the cart, the lamp in his hand. He spoke casually, as if he alone had been unsurprised by her appearance. ‘I have no time for your sermons.’

  ‘I came to speak to you. I stand on the deck of Glafanr and I talk to another just as I talk to you. I am different, now that I am named. I have expanded. I am no longer the small figure you once knew.’ Casa’s arm rose awkwardly to hold a hand out to him. ‘I have come to extend an offer in exchange for your return. To you, my betrayer. You, whom I swore to destroy. I offer you a chance for redemption.’

  ‘I have no desire to die.’

  ‘To give yourself to me before death is to save your soul.’

  Eidan grunted. ‘I have seen how you hoard souls to use their power.’

  ‘So you deny me a second time?’

  ‘And a third, if I need.’

  Casa’s arm did not lower and his nod of acceptance was awkward, as if the muscles of his neck had weakened. ‘I will see your love soon.’

  ‘Bid her good day for me,’ Eidan said, placing the lamp on the ground.

  ‘I will be in the company of Aela Ren when I meet her.’ Se’Saera paused as a tremor passed through Casa’s body, but at the mention of the Innocent’s name, Ayae’s hand fell to her sword. ‘He and his god-touched soldiers serve me now. You will not be able to stand before them.’

  ‘I do not fear the Innocent or his soldiers.’

  Ayae, her hand tight around the hilt of her sword, did not share the sentiment.

  A gurgling laugh escaped the possessed man. ‘Why do you defy me, Eidan? I can remake this world once I am complete. I accept that my parents did not break themselves apart for love. It pained me to hear it in Yeflam, but I will preserve this nation for that reason. It was here that the failure of my parents became clear. Here that their messenger, Lor Jix, told the world that they tore themselves apart so I could not be whole.’ The words began to sound from Casa’s throat strangely, as if he could not properly carry the emotion that the god had. ‘I will repair what they have done, Eidan. Do you not want to see that?’

  ‘You forget.’ He reached out with his good hand and curled Casa’s finger backwards, snapping the bone. ‘I have seen what you create.’

  A snarl emerged from the possessed man’s throat, but as it did, the skin there began t
o bubble and fold and then, suddenly, split in a gush of blood. A gagging sound followed, as Casa began to choke on his own blood. Before anyone could react, his head fell backwards as the bone in his neck let out a rotten crack. Eidan, still holding Casa’s hand, found himself holding the limb alone as a similar sound announced its departure from the whole.

  ‘These bodies are so weak.’ Se’Saera’s voice came from Tan, who rose from the back of the cart awkwardly, wet with the blood of his friend. ‘I will fix that.’

  ‘Your creations are flawed,’ Eidan said, still holding the other man’s hand. ‘You make only pain and suffering.’

  ‘You speak of those who failed me.’

  ‘No, I speak of you,’ he said. ‘As I have lain in my tent healing, I have wondered what convinced me to serve you and then so easily break away. I have thought about what I have seen and what I have been shown. I have begun to believe that others have made it so that I have seen you for yourself.’

  The tension that coiled through Tan’s body suddenly left and he laughed a young woman’s laugh: carefree and innocent. ‘You cannot see the world as I can, Eidan. My thoughts are not what they once were. They are more complete. I dream of fate now. It is the most beautiful and complex sight to behold. I see how futures and pasts and presents overlap and cross. How they hide one another and then they reveal each other. It is amazing. Fate twists around us so much that every conversation is an echo of another. Even this moment has echoes. I see you reach for me. I see the Soldier cut deep into this man’s head. In both, the little flame stands terrified by the mere mention of the Innocent. This is divinity. This is truth unfolding before me.

  ‘But Eidan,’ she said, ‘I assure you, I promise you, that in all those fates you die.’

  7.

  When the heavy rain slowed to a slick drizzle, the Captain of Refuge readied his soldiers.

  Heast had spent much of the night next to a thick tree, watching the Faaishan bushland and cleaning water and condensation from the spyglass he used. A lean, grey-haired man closer to sixty than to fifty, he was fit enough to climb the tree beside him for a better view of the Leeran soldiers he was watching, but he did not attempted it. His left leg, covered by worn leather pants, was a heavy, steel appendage bonded at his thigh. It bent and moved awkwardly and, in the dry, it made climbing a tree difficult; in the rain, it made it impossible. Because of that, Heast stood in the shadows of the tree and, with the moon hidden behind a grey slate of clouds, counted what he could of the sentries in the blurred mix of dark that was slick across the glass eye. Fortunately, not one of them had altered his established routine.

  After a week of watching the camp, Heast knew the location of each of the fifty-three tents inside it. He had memorized the distance between the seven fire pits that made a line through the middle and counted the number of steps from the last fire to the roughly built stables at each end of the camp by watching dozens of trips made by soldiers he did not command. And he knew that there were a hundred and twenty-two horses packed tightly inside the two buildings that bookended the camp, eleven more than the number of Leeran soldiers in the camp. But he also knew that twelve beasts had been allocated into pairs to pull the six wagons that lay on their sides as makeshift walls – and he knew also that the one lone Leeran who had arrived without a horse had done so because he did not ride.

  It was a sizeable force, but more importantly, it was the Leeran command post for the western conquest of the Kingdoms of Faaisha.

  Quietly, he gave the order to prepare to his runner, Ralen, a young, olive-skinned boy of fourteen. As Heast began to fold up the spyglass, the boy melted into the bush.

  A pair of scouts had found the camp after a Leeran raiding party had come to the empty town of Maosa. Heast had left the two women there just for that purpose and they had waited three months before the Leerans arrived. By the time the force arrived in Maosa, Heast had left, not just with the soldiers from the town, but also with all the men and women who had been bartenders and seamstresses and everything between. He had taken them into the dirty scrubland and set about forging them into a small army.

  Into Refuge.

  ‘They’ve begun to move, Captain.’ Ralen spoke softly as he emerged from the dense bush. ‘Corporal Isaap asked if the witch would be making fires so that they could see.’

  ‘He knows there will be no fires.’ Isaap was a soldier who had been, before Heast arrived in Maosa, a First Talon – a rank translated roughly to that of a captain. ‘I will speak to him after.’

  ‘I don’t mean to get him into trouble,’ the boy replied. ‘He meant no disrespect, I am sure. He is just nervous. None of us have ever fought—’

  ‘I have.’ Heast’s pale blue gaze met his. ‘Trust in me, boy, and you will live.’

  Ralen swallowed his words and nodded.

  But they were not Refuge.

  Not yet.

  In all the incarnations of Refuge that had come before, in the one that Heast had first served in, and in the one he had led, the soldiers of Refuge had been defined by a certain assurance that the soldiers around him now did not have. For the most part, it was not their fault: the majority of them had not been soldiers professionally, and those who had, had been poorly trained, and their ranks defined by wealth and favours. Most of them, Heast knew, would never be anything like the soldiers who had served in Refuge before, and many would not have the chance to become that. How many would fall tonight, though, depended on one Leeran, Kilian.

  He was one of Kye Taaira’s ancestors: a long-dead soldier whose soul had been drawn out of the soil of the Plateau by the new god, Se’Saera, and placed inside a Leeran soldier. Taaira told him how Kilian had been imprisoned in the land thousands of years ago by the shamans of the Plateau and, upon his release, had been bonded to the body of a Leeran soldier. The tribesman – a large white man with brown and red hair and a thick beard – had sensed Kilian first, before Heast had seen him lumbering through the camp. The Ancestor, as he was known, was a tall figure, taller than most men and women had the right to be. If Heast had taken it upon himself to describe the warrior to another on paper, he would have written that he stretched outwards, as if the soul of the Leeran he had been bonded with had tried desperately to push the dead man from him at the last minute, but had succeeded only in smearing him further through his body. Because of that, Kilian could not wear armour properly and had taken to strapping bits and pieces about him, giving him the appearance of a teenager playing with a child’s costume.

  ‘Do not underestimate him.’ Taaira had spoken to the soldiers after Heast had requested he did so. They viewed the tribesman with trepidation and repeated among themselves the belief that he did not have any blood in his body, that he was a man the shamans of the Plateau had rendered Hollow, both in fact and name. For his part, Kye Taaira, believing that he understood the nature of their fear of him, would speak to them with a certain briskness, as if he had experienced it before. ‘When he was alive, Kilian was known as the Iron Soldier. It was said that he would not break under any circumstances: be it starvation, be it injury, be it loss or torture, he could endure it. It was said that when you joined the warlord, you were given a trial by Kilian to measure your worth. The trial was one of torture. It was designed to see at what point you would break. But rather than administer it, Kilian would endure it beside you. He would suffer every burn, every break, every humiliation, until either you broke or you came as close to death as he would allow.’ Across his back, Taaira carried an old two-handed sword, a weapon that all the soldiers who stood before him had been ordered not to touch. ‘Only the best of the soldiers did not break. Only those that Se’Saera has returned to life now passed his test. Only they hung near death on the racks and in the chains beside him. It was beside him that the worst of Zilt’s army were made.’

  The men and women listening to the tribesman had shuddered at his words.

  For Heast, the real problem with the Ancestor was that he did not sleep. Each evening, he
would retire to a tent that was too small for him and stare out from the pinned back flap, watching every movement the Leeran soldiers made. On the first night, Heast had thought that Kilian was watching for Taaira, or for him, but as the nights drew on, and the Leeran soldiers avoided his gaze, Heast began to put aside the thought.

  To his left, a slight trill ran through the bush. Beside him, Ralen repeated the sound. He then heard it repeated to his right.

  The sentries had been marked.

  Heast took a deep breath and let out a short, sharp sound, different to the others.

  He began moving immediately. Ahead of him, he could hear the rustle of bush, the sound of men and women – the sound of his soldiers, of Refuge – rising and rushing into the camp.

  Heast knew that he would not be able to match their pace. His steel leg sank into the muddy ground with each step, and he was forced to drag it a little each time he pulled it out. But he did not allow himself to be concerned by that. If he had had two legs, he would still not have kept up with the youngest of his soldiers, not at his age. As he stalked towards the camp he listened for changes in sounds around him, for the first clang of a sword against another, for the first sound of a voice that was not one he recognized.

  It was the latter that he heard before the other.

  The cry of ‘Soldiers!’ sounded from his right. A second word began, but Heast could not make it out before it was cut off abruptly.

  ‘Ralen,’ he said without turning. ‘That will be Sergeant Bliq’s unit. Spot them and report the situation to me. Quick now.’