The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  ‘I have allowed you to speak quite freely in here, but you will not call me a liar.’ The First Queen’s hands tightened around her mug. The strength with which she did it revealed her bones. ‘Aela Ren will be here soon. I will not live to see it. Already I feel the touch of the dead around me. But there is life in me yet, and I will see that man hunted for what he has done to Ooila. I will see him broken for the casual cruelty he inflicted upon my nation. I will not abide a single man treating my people as if they were the husk of a butterfly to be crushed.’

  ‘My Queen,’ Safeen said, reaching for her. ‘You must remain calm.’

  ‘No, I will not hide from this man before me,’ she said, her gaze boring into Heast. ‘He must know exactly what I want. Let my desire take what remains of my strength. I have hidden for too long in this forsaken city. I have tried to play the politics of the Faaishan Lords but I do not have the time and I do not have the coldness for it. I cannot steer them towards the threat that approaches their shore, though I have tried to convince them of it. I have told them they need kill this Leeran general who so vexes them now. That he must be gone so they can prepare for a far worse danger. But they will not listen. The only way forward is the man who sits before me. The only option for me is Refuge.’ She took a breath, long and deep. ‘The Lords of Faaisha believe they made a mistake when they requested you, Captain,’ she said, her anger still present in her voice. ‘They claim that they did not know the symbol for Refuge. That the soldier who drew it was playing his own game. That may be true, but what they do not understand is the gift that has been given to them, and if they will not take it, then I will.’

  Heast was silent. He believed that Tuael knew exactly what had been drawn. He did not believe that Baeh Lok would have agreed to it, otherwise. The old soldier had survived Illate, and he had not, in any of the years after, drawn the symbol once. When it arrived in Yeflam, it had arrived with his approval, a message to his captain, an acknowledgement that the situation was much worse than what could be dealt with by the Faaishan marshals.

  But Lok, unlike Tuael, would have known that the Captain of Refuge would not have arrived alone.

  ‘Others have died fighting the Innocent,’ Heast said, finally. ‘Other captains of Refuge, that is. Four have died in Sooia and they died with more seasoned soldiers than I currently have.’

  ‘You will have mine,’ Zeala Fe said. ‘All the soldiers here will be yours after today. They will not go home. They will be the spine of your new Refuge.’

  He shook his head. ‘The Queen’s Guard does not leave the Queen. Even I know that.’

  ‘But I am dying.’ She took another deep breath and laughed a little as she exhaled. ‘You sit at my death bed and you listen to my final wishes.’

  ‘The mug, Captain,’ Anemone said.

  ‘He already knows, child.’ The Queen grasped her bitter mug and sipped from it. ‘You can see it in his cold eyes.’

  ‘How long did you have before tonight?’ Heast asked.

  ‘Very little. Safeen has said a week, perhaps two, but I think less. I am in constant pain and my body fails in ways that I have long feared. I can no longer lift myself from this bed. To even be in the position I am now, I had to be helped. But worse is happening with my memory. I need drugs just to remember whose shift it is to stand guard outside my door. What would another week bring me?’

  ‘Death can rob us of our dignity,’ he said. ‘Better we take it within our own hands.’

  ‘I am glad you understand.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And of what I ask?’

  ‘The Captain of Refuge agrees,’ he said.

  ‘The witch of Refuge does as well,’ Anemone said.

  ‘And the soldier.’ Lehana’s voice was heavy with emotion. ‘The soldier of Refuge agrees.’

  8.

  It was a day before Bueralan met Onaedo. He was summoned to her quarters by a well-dressed girl, no more than a child, really.

  The girl led him onto the deck of the ship, but left him at the door to the captain’s cabin. After Bueralan knocked, he was invited into a large room. Inside, the walls held beautiful, elaborate tapestries of wars that Bueralan could not properly identify. They were separated by swords, axes, spears, and half a dozen other weapons, some of them broken, but all of them used. Beneath the weapons and tapestries were wooden stands that held pieces of armour. Across them was a range of strips of cloth from sashes, vests, shirts and cloaks. Some, Bueralan saw, were stained with blood, or torn, some so old that the fabric was naught but fragile strands over an equally old chain vest, or around the waist of a suit of dented armour. At the base of some of the wooden stands books and scrolls lay, and they, like the armour and the cloth, were also old – until Onaedo’s desk, where a small collection of new, slim books were stacked on the floor by the right corner.

  ‘Fictions,’ said the woman behind the table. ‘The latest attempt by men and women who live by the sword to try to immortalize their deeds.’

  She was a tall, muscular woman, one who left the large table she sat behind looking as if it were but modestly oversized. There was, in her face, a certain roundness that Bueralan identified with people born at the southern end of Ooila, but her skin, a solid, dark brown, was not the darker colour of those who were born there. Her hair was short and tied in small knots across her head. The knots had been dyed a pale blonde, the colour a contrast to the dark red of the shirt she wore, and the black of her pants. He saw the latter when she rose from her chair to shake his hand, before inviting him to sit.

  ‘They’re no different from the tapestries on your walls,’ Bueralan said, after he had taken the chair. ‘What is it that we’re taught? All art is propaganda.’

  ‘I don’t imagine any of us are taught that,’ Onaedo said easily. ‘Maybe it is just what barons say, before they are exiled.’

  ‘Mostly they don’t say anything.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  He held up his little finger. ‘Pinky swear.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ She smiled, but very little humour reached her dark eyes. ‘In the case of these particular tapestries, they do not tell the story of a battle, however. They are designs from before the War of the Gods, from what I understand. They’re not originals, naturally. They are reproductions of tapestries that were kept in the temples of Baar, the God of War. It was said they were made by the god’s most favoured disciple.’ She shrugged, as if it did not matter what ‘they’ said. ‘The tapestries detail a set of rules for soldiers. A code of conduct for the battlefield.’

  Bueralan looked again at the ones closest to him. Able to take a long, hard look, he could see the workmanship, the intricacy of the hand-sewing. His gaze lingered on the closest one, the field of faded red drawing him to it. On that background, a genderless shadowed soldier stood before a series of cages filled with corpses. In a sequence across the red of the tapestry, the featureless soldier moved through the bodies, until, at the end, it slumped to its knees.

  ‘Simple rules, really,’ Onaedo said, while he gazed at it. ‘Do not kill innocents. Do not destroy the villages that have nothing to do with your fight. Treat those you take as prisoner humanely. Do not maim them, do not torture them. In short, do not rob the living of their dignity because you can.’

  He turned back to her. ‘Simple rules,’ he agreed. ‘But I have heard of all of them broken.’

  ‘You will see them broken, as well. War is a terrible thing and it inspires in us deeds that are terrible. But if you wish to be protected by Leviathan’s End, you will do your best to abide by these rules.’ As she spoke, Bueralan began to hear a history emerge in her voice, one that echoed her experience. It was clear that she had seen things he could only imagine. ‘If you break these rules, the books here that hold your deeds will be held against you. Reach a certain point, and your book will be closed, and you will be considered an enemy of Leviathan’s End. It is important that you fully understand what that means if you are to work in C
aptain Milai’s Water. Saboteurs are asked to do things that no simple soldier will be asked.’

  ‘But not for the same price.’ His wit fell flat and he half shrugged. ‘I have been told,’ he said. ‘The captain has told us the good and the bad.’

  ‘There is a balance in war that must be kept,’ she said, using words that the Innocent would echo, years later, on the deck of Glafanr. ‘A mercenary’s life is not an honourable one in itself. Few professions are, of course, but unlike bakers, or blacksmiths, ours can so easily become one from which all honour is drained. After all, we are the many faces of many masters. A cruel lord can pay us to raid a village, while a kind diplomat can pay us to protect a road. Neither reflects who we are.’

  ‘Does Leviathan’s End keep that balance, then?’

  ‘Partly. Mostly, I want those without masters to keep their respect. Let the lord and lady use their soldiers to burn villages. Let them torture and burn their citizens. Let their horrors be their own.’

  Bueralan indicated the tapestries around him. ‘They all say this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is strange that I have never heard of this before.’

  ‘Few people ask about the tapestries,’ Onaedo said. ‘Few remember the gods and what they said. But in your particular case, I would say only that you have led a very different life to the one that you will be part of now. You have had a much fuller education than a child born to a mercenary has.’

  He nodded. ‘One last question, if we are done?’

  ‘One last, then.’

  ‘I have heard you’re very old.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Is this code of yours about respect for the gods?’

  The ruler of Leviathan’s End laughed. It was a short laugh, without humour. ‘I have no respect for the gods,’ she said harshly. ‘You would do well to put such a concept far from your mind, young man. The gods created this world we live in. I am not so old that I saw that, but I am old enough that I saw them betray us and break our world. All they deserve is oblivion.’

  At the time, Bueralan had thought Onaedo’s words evidence of a borderline madness, a fact that he mentioned to Zean, after his blood brother had had his meeting. Zean laughed when he said it. Of course she was mad, he said. You only have to look at this town to know that. The newly minted saboteur could not argue with that. He would not argue when he returned, years later, to register Dark, and when he returned with new mercenaries to have them enter their names in the books. But it was not until now, as Glafanr made its way through Leviathan’s Blood, as it closed in on the shoreline of Leera, that Bueralan recalled that first meeting and understood the cause of that controlled madness.

  But more than that: he understood, finally, the anger that had allowed Onaedo to build a town inside the skull of a god.

  9.

  When Eilona woke, the afternoon’s sun was down, and the night surrounded her. Against the fabric of the tent she lay in, the campfires left a series of strange, undefined silhouettes against the walls. In the first moments of being awake, she saw the gods in their various forms, stretched out in long lines, only to be compacted suddenly, then broken apart, as if the war that had raged for so long still played itself out around her.

  But there was only one god now, she knew.

  Se’Saera: the new god, the undefined god, the god who announced herself to Eilona with gentleness, and with such violence to Olcea.

  In Pitak, the University of Zanebien would be busy trying to find out what they could about Se’Saera. Her arrival was momentous. Eilona was in no doubt that the university would send people to all the major capitals, to catalogue the reactions of citizens from around the world and to begin studying what the new god was. A god, they would argue, was not only defined by what it did and what it said, but by the reaction of people to it. A woman with a background in the study of divinity could, Eilona knew, make her career at this moment . . . but that woman was not her.

  Earlier, when Eilona had left her mother’s tent, she had realized her mistake in coming to Yeflam. It was nothing Muriel Wagan said, or did, that led her daughter to believe that. In fact, her mother had greeted her warmly, even as Eilona struggled to hide her shock at the age that had etched itself across her since she had last seen her. No, it was the men and women who greeted her mother in the camp that met Eilona differently.

  She had recognized a number of them immediately. Ila, a dark-skinned girl who had been a childhood acquaintance, was the first. She stood before a tent holding a child. When she saw Eilona, her lean face turned hard and she went inside. A short while later, her mother stopped a white man who had worked in the Mireean market and asked him how his eye was. A wide strip of black cloth covered the left side of his face, but his uncovered right looked past her mother to find her while he answered. Eilona didn’t know his name, but she knew what he thought of her. Another white woman came up behind him while her mother talked. Her name was Togo. She had once been a tutor of Eilona. She had three children with her – two brown, one white – each holding supplies and, after she had greeted the Lady of the Ghosts, she greeted Eilona. The chill in the former tutor’s voice lingered in the air long after she had disappeared into the tents.

  Her mother made no mention of it, though she must have noticed.

  ‘This third woman you arrived with,’ she said, instead, as they walked through the camp. ‘Was her name Tinh Tu?’

  ‘Yes.’ Eilona was not sure what she should say out in the open. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘I am not.’ A large tent began to take shape in the camp. At the edges of it stood soldiers in red cloaks. ‘She has family here.’

  Eilona recalled the inn and the dead in it. ‘She mentioned a brother who died. Was his name Qian, by any chance?’

  ‘He was known as Zaifyr.’ Muriel stopped and turned to her. ‘What happened on the way here?’

  ‘She took my voice away.’ She could not hide the emotion when she spoke, could not hide the mix of fear and powerlessness that defined her journey to the shore of Yeflam. ‘It was shortly after we left Zalhan. When she said her name, I knew who she was. Olcea had known before me. I think she had met her before. I wanted to ask her about the Five Kingdoms, about Se’Saera, but she told me not to ask. She told me not to speak. Those were her exact words.’

  ‘And you couldn’t?’

  ‘No matter how much I tried, I could not.’

  Her mother grunted. ‘She sounds like Jae’le. I had hoped that she would be more like her sister. For all her faults, I understood Aelyn Meah.’

  The head of the Keepers of the Divine, the absent ruler of Yeflam. Eilona said, ‘I’ve heard—’

  ‘You’ve heard right.’ Her mother turned away and began walking down the path to the tent. ‘No one knows where Aelyn is now, nor any of the other Keepers. At least it is a small blessing for us. You cannot imagine what it looked like when she fought her brother. What it will look like when her family find her. If it is revisited here, we won’t survive an hour.’

  ‘Surely you have little say in whether they come back or not. The Enclave are not as powerful as the five siblings, but they are more powerful than you.’

  ‘I know. It is one of the reasons we need to be part of the Saan’s push across the mountain. We need to take the battle to Leera. Se’Saera’s attention is elsewhere for the moment, and that makes it the best time – the only time. If we push into Leera while she is spread across so many fronts we can take the eyes of the Keepers, the monsters and all the soldiers away from Yeflam. If we do it quickly enough, we may even be able to destroy her.’

  ‘The new god?’ It was, Eilona would think later, entirely fitting of her mother that she would decide to go to war with a god. ‘We don’t even know what she stands for.’

  ‘She is a god of horror. Of violence and death.’ As Muriel spoke, Eilona saw the weight that sat on her shoulders, the weight that was slowly dripping through her entire body. ‘If we bow to her, she will take all tha
t we have. If you do not believe me, give it time. You will see it soon enough.’ The tent was close now, and her mother stopped, and turned to her again. ‘I will speak with you later. I have to convince a selfish man that he has to send our forces into Leera. I have to make it clear to him that Miat Dvir and the Saan will not help him remake the cities of Yeflam. They will not help him rebuild a fleet. I have to show him the obvious. But after – after that, I will send for you and we will talk properly.’

  She nodded and said that she understood.

  Her mother touched her arm, gently. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘Caeli will find you a tent. It won’t be pretty, but you’ll be able to clean up and sleep in it.’

  The Lady of the Ghosts left with Captain Mills at her side. Once the two entered the tent, Caeli turned to her, and it was there, in the company of her mother’s guard, that Eilona realized she had made a mistake in coming to Yeflam.

  Eilona had been young, confused about herself and about her place in the world when she had grown up in Mireea. She could offer no more of an excuse for what she had done than that. In the years since she had left, Eilona had often thought that, if she had not been the child of the Lady of the Spine, her actions would not have been worse than those of any other confused, angry child. But she was. The power she had was more than most saw in their entire lives. When she lashed out, she did it without understanding what would happen. Who would listen to her. Who would do what she said out of an attempt to earn favour, or to simply use her as an excuse to do something they wished. It was a knowledge that Eilona would never forget.

  Caeli, she knew, would never forget, either.

  10.

  Jae’le laid the body of his brother gently on the ground, his movements echoing how he would place him a thousand years later on the shore of Leviathan’s Blood.

  Ayae had listened to Zaifyr retell the story of his fall in Asila only once. He had not spoken of it again. Yet, when he had described this moment to her – the moment not of his death, but his defeat – Zaifyr had believed that his brothers and sisters had stood over him with an air of satisfaction. In Tinh Tu’s memory, however, there was only grief. The difference lay in the narrators: Zaifyr had never hesitated in admitting the horrors he was responsible for in Asila, but while he had acknowledged the necessity of what his family had done, he did not agree with their imprisonment of him. In that act, Ayae knew, Zaifyr believed that his family had betrayed the bond that existed between them. It was not so much the prison itself that caused this feeling, but the one thousand years of his incarceration that had followed. Zaifyr had never been able to forgive them that length of time, nor the authority over him they had assumed. For Tinh Tu, Zaifyr’s defeat was cause only for grief, for him, and for the responsibility all four had been forced to accept. It was a responsibility that Ayae knew still existed and one that, she realized with a sudden clarity, had guided the actions of Zaifyr’s brothers and sisters since his release from their prison.