The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  ‘She’s afraid,’ the Innocent said to Bueralan.

  ‘Of course she is afraid.’ He held his sheathed sword and belt in his hand and, as he spoke, began to wind it around his waist. ‘She has been raped, she is pregnant with—’ he stopped himself before he said my friend. ‘She has every right to be afraid,’ he said, pulling the belt tight. ‘We’ve all that right.’

  ‘I did not mean Zi Taela.’ Ren stared ahead, at the glinting of sunlight on armour and swords, at the bustle of a camp in the distance. ‘I meant her.’

  ‘Her?’ The saboteur was caught off-guard but did his best to hide it. ‘Are we having private conversations now?’

  ‘It may pain you to admit it, Bueralan, but you are one us. You are the servant of a god who no longer speaks. You may think of those around you poorly, you may think of them as madmen and killers, but no matter what you think, we are loyal to each other. We are a unique nation.’ Aela Ren paused and drank from his cup. ‘Before we left, she called Zilt’s soldiers to her. You saw them as I did when we rode out of Ranan. You saw them run across across the roofs like dogs to her. What you did not see was her cut the strings that held them in their mortal bodies. You did not see her return them to death.’

  Bueralan did not ask how Ren knew. The Innocent had led them from Ranan, had ridden first into the tunnels, and into the fissures. He could not have seen what he described, but Bueralan did not doubt him.

  ‘Glafanr’s disappearance unnerved her,’ the Innocent continued, his tone still matter-of-fact. ‘She did not foresee it. She said this to me before we left. She said that she needed an army in Heüala, that she could not allow Zaifyr and his companions to pass beyond the gate. Only Zilt and the soldier she sent with the boy will remain in this world. She has seen Zilt standing beside her in the future. The other is sometimes there, sometimes not. But Zilt is necessary, she said.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked.

  ‘We take our meaning from the gods. Be it many, or one, we are defined by what they do, and we in turn define that for those around us.’

  ‘But she acted out of fear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does that mean we won’t attack them?’ He nodded towards the sharp flashes in the distance. ‘Are we going to turn back to Ranan, or are you going to return to Sooia?’

  ‘We will not turn,’ Aela Ren said. ‘We have been given a task and we will complete it.’

  Bueralan made a frustrated noise. ‘Then what does it matter if she acted in fear?’

  ‘A god moves us like pieces to enact the events that that he or she sees. Before the war, when there were many, the fates a god made were often built from alliances, or from singular desires. They would use us to build that existence. They would sacrifice people, nations, and even servants like you and me, to build that. They did it because they saw an end that we could not. Our new god, our singular god, like us, cannot see an end, and that is why she has responded in fear.’

  ‘Would you have been given pause if she responded differently?’ Bueralan asked. ‘If she had responded in anger, would we even be talking?’

  ‘I would have still paused.’ He turned the tin cup over and emptied the water. ‘The question we must all ask ourselves is if her fear over Heüala highlights another’s design? If her arrival is the signal that we have collapsed into one fate, one future, then have any seen its end? We know she hasn’t, but what of the old gods, our gods? What if they have seen the world as it is? What if they are the designers of the world that we now stand in?’

  ‘What if they are?’ Bueralan asked.

  ‘I have no answer.’ Ren began to walk into the camp. ‘If the old gods saw the fate that we head towards, then why did they not speak to us, and empower us to act for them?’ Before him, the god-touched men and women had begun to assemble. They stood there, a collection of soldiers in armour and weapons that did not match, bound by something much larger, much fuller, than any soldier who fought them could imagine. ‘For thousands of years, we have lived in a world without a god’s definition. We have lived in a world without truth. We have watched as mortals create lies to stave off chaos. We have watched them insist on falsehood as if it were truth. But why? Why would the gods allow that? Why would they do that, if they saw a single fate that they would set themselves against?’

  Bueralan did not respond. He could see, in the man beside him, the depths of his need, the depths of his servitude, and he could see how, without it, he had sought his own violent definition of the War of the Gods. In that way, Ren was a stark contrast to Samuel Orlan and Onaedo, who had abandoned their servitude. Orlan – the first Orlan, the one whose name had become a tool for a god – had killed himself rather than serve, but for Onaedo, the rejection of her role had occurred later, when the gods had failed her. Having stood beside Aela Ren and the other god-touched men and women, Bueralan understood that clearly, now. He could see the scars that the gods had left on both Orlan and Onaedo, just as the absence of the gods left similar marks on the Innocent and those who had joined him.

  In another time, the saboteur in Bueralan – the part of him that searched for chinks in armour – might have thought he could pick at the edges of Aela Ren’s needs. Bueralan would have thought he could build a path that would allow him to turn him, to flip him. But Aela Ren would not betray Se’Saera. Bueralan knew that. The god gave Ren meaning. She brought an end to the emptiness that had driven him into Sooia. There he had taken the last visions of the gods, the sight of their destruction, of their war, and focused it into his life. It was madness, of course, but Aela Ren’s existence without gods was madness.

  Samuel Orlan had known that, Bueralan realized. He had tried to tell him that when he came to the room he shared with Taela. He had tried to tell him that it was not just Ren who saw the world like that, but all the god-touched men and women. Orlan had tried to tell him that what Bueralan saw in Kaze – what he saw in her desire to help Taela – was not a break he could exploit, but simply who she was when her god stood beside her. It was the same part of her that saw her take part in the genocide that had gripped Sooia and the same part that saw her stand beside Se’Saera. She needed the definition – that sense of purpose, that meaning to her long, long life – that Se’Saera gave her, just as Ren and Sela and all the others who had once been the servants of gods needed their deities.

  ‘They are out there,’ the Innocent said to Samuel Orlan as the latter approached. ‘They will be upon us before the day is over.’

  ‘We don’t have to do this,’ the cartographer said. ‘We needn’t be part of this war. We can make a choice here.’

  ‘It has already been made,’ Ren replied and began to issue orders.

  11.

  Heast’s blade caught a blow and he shrugged it aside as his horse galloped down the street. He rode into a skirmish between four smoke-stained Leerans and two soldiers of Refuge. Upon seeing the two riders charge into their enemies, the latter pair took advantage of the diversion and ran through a burning house, using it as a dangerous, unstable gateway to the next street. He thought that one of them was the runner, Ralen, but in the smoke, in the frantic fight against the unmounted Leerans, Heast could not be sure.

  Oya held to his left. The four Faithful fell quickly, and he was pleased to see that they were not alight with flames, but rather stained by smoke and ash. When the last of the four fell, Heast heard a loud crack from Oya after that caught his attention and he turned to see her pulling her axe out of the burning door frame. Her blow had taken off half the Leeran’s head on the ground but slammed into the wood after. The frame, though, was so weak that when she ripped it out, it began to crumple in thick pieces of black wood, bringing the house with it. With a kick, Heast urged his mount down the street, towards the burning buildings ahead. He would have to turn, left or right at the end, and he pulled to the right, in the direction that the two Refuge soldiers had run. There was a good chance, he knew, that the two of them had not known who had thundered do
wn the street, and whether they were friend or foe.

  ‘Refuge!’ His shout drew the burning air into his lungs. ‘Refuge!’

  He wanted to make sure that they knew who it was who came towards them.

  ‘Refuge!’

  Beside him, Oya echoed his shout.

  Then they turned left and rode straight into half a dozen riders.

  They were as startled as he and Oya, but Heast’s blade caught the first Leeran in the face. She fell back while his and Oya’s mounts shouldered through the horses before them. Heast blocked a slash and backhanded another Leeran. Nothing fancy, he knew, but he and Oya emerged on the other side of the riders within moments. Heast took another burning breath and shouted ‘Refuge!’ again, and heard the cry returned. It came from ahead of him, but he could not tell if it was from one of the Queen’s First Guard or from one of the Faaishan members of Refuge. It could even come from a Leeran, Heast knew. He was not concerned if it did, however. The cry would force the Leerans to stop what they were doing, would give him time to pull those he could to relative safety, while also peeling off bits of the Faithful in quick, running attacks. He glanced behind him at the thought: sure enough, the riders he and Oya had burst through were behind them, riding hard.

  Beside him, he heard a startling thud, and for a moment, thought that Oya had fallen. Instead, he saw that she had moved her axe to her left arm, and as they rode along the street, was slamming it into the blackened frames. She did it with as much strength as she could muster and, after the third strike, a crack sounded. At the fourth, it grew, and by the time she swung a fifth time, the burning wall on her left had begun to crumble. Stones and wood and flame began to tumble onto the street in a thundering mix. Heast and Oya urged their mounts ahead and, instead of turning, they galloped through the damaged remains of a house from Celp’s earlier destruction.

  Once they cleared it, however, they rode straight into another group of mounted Leerans.

  These were not as unprepared as the previous group. Fortunately, they numbered only three.

  Heast leant back in his saddle as the first of the riders rode past him, his slashing blade passing harmlessly. He came back up in time to block a second blade, even as Oya’s shielded arm smashed into the face of the last Leeran. But it was the third that was the problem, for he rounded expertly in the burning street and came charging back at Heast before he could turn, or gain the speed to outrun him. It was Oya who saved him: she was half-turned in her saddle from her attack, and she spun back, her axe crunching into the man’s face.

  They urged their mounts forwards, cutting to the right, then the left. In the distance, Heast could see the burning roof of Celp’s town hall. It had been left mostly intact after its first siege and it now burned in high, terrible flames. Heast had no intention of going towards it, but as he and Oya skirted it, riding past two roads that led to the hall, he saw a pair of Leerans run out of each street. His heart sank at the sight: they were unmounted, and their clothes were alight, to such an extent that the flames had turned them into genderless figures of flame. Madness was his first thought. No soldier would willing douse him or herself in flames . . . but even as he thought that, the Captain of Refuge knew it was not entirely true. He had seen the bodies earlier. He had been told what the ghost of Anemone’s grandmother saw. Coupled with the sensation of being watched, he was left with the very clear knowledge that all of this had been organized, had been planned, and all happened because another wanted it to.

  Heast and Oya burst out onto the main road with nearly two dozen Leerans behind them. Not one of these was alight, but as the two entered the road, another six of the First Queen’s Guard appeared too. Behind them were their own Faithful, and two of those were covered in flames, running in complete silence.

  Heast and the others rode hard for the broken, blackened buildings littered with cinders. Behind them, the firelit sky filled the horizon, as if it were a terrible, violent finishing line and, as Heast and his soldiers burst through the broken buildings, arrows flew into the pursuing Leerans.

  ‘Refuge!’ he cried out with burning lungs as he turned his horse around. ‘Fall in for your captain!’

  With a kick, he drove his mount back down the road, over dead soldiers and horses.

  The whole battle angered him. Whoever – whatever – watched him did not care about the Leerans in the city. They were being wasted unnecessarily. It was grounds for rebellion, for executing your captain. Even though the soldiers that were being betrayed in this way were not his own – were in fact his enemies – it left the Captain of Refuge furious. Worse, the tactics invited him to do the same, as if he were a fool.

  But Heast knew that neither the horses, nor his soldiers, could keep up this pace through the burning city. He knew that they could not remain in Celp much longer. He was drenched in sweat and his lungs burned with each breath he took. He could only imagine how his horse felt. He could not—

  A figure suddenly appeared before him, an axe in its hand. At the last moment, Heast pulled back his blow: a smoke-stained, grey-haired Sergeant Qiyala stared at him with startled eyes. She lowered her axe and indicated behind her. There, half a dozen soldiers followed. One of them was being carried by two others. But it was beyond them that Qiyala was pointing.

  Thundering down the street was a score of mixed and mounted Leeran soldiers.

  Heast and Oya charged. He blocked a slash with his sword, parried another and deflected at least two or three more blows, even as he felt two hits against his armour. Adrenalin kept the pain away, but he would feel it later. Oya remained beside him, but she took the harder route through the line, using her shield as a battering ram. In the centre of the line, he heard her swear, and turned to see her using her black-armoured arm to block a blow, her shield shattered.

  Their charge had stuttered and was in danger of stalling in the middle of the Leerans. Heast, swinging his blade, turned towards Oya and, allowing his horse to lash out with its hooves to drive back her attacker, he rode into one of the burning houses.

  The smoke choked him, obscured his vision. There was a splintering sound as he thrust his hilt into the wall of the building, and he heard another as, behind him, Oya followed him in, smashing at the frame of the door as she did. The horse, for all its discipline, reared and snorted, wanting to be free, and Heast drove it forwards. A sudden flame rose before him, but his mount didn’t slow. He heard a cracking behind him—

  And then he was in the street, the house crumbling behind him.

  A moment later Oya’s mount struggled free without her.

  He saw her arm reaching through the smoke in confusion as the house began to cave in. Reaching out, he grabbed her hand and pulled.

  She crashed against his mount as the house collapsed in flames and ash, a narrow gash down her forehead. Her dark eyes met his and, with a nod, thanks she did not need to speak, she turned and grabbed the reins of her horse. It stood trembling, its instincts telling it to run while its training said to wait.

  Heast could not keep riding through the streets. He could hear no more shouts for Refuge, and he could hear frantic riding, but mostly, he could hear the riding of larger groups who were closing in on him. For some reason, he did not think that whatever watched him had given any indication of where he was to Waalstan, or to any of the other Leerans. He could not explain it, but he was sure of it. It was simply the Faithful’s numbers. They were filtering down the burning streets, and if he and the First Queen’s Guard remained split, they would soon be overwhelmed by the Leerans.

  Grabbing the horn, he lifted the cloth from his mouth, and took a deep, painful breath before he blew a long, hard note.

  Then, with Oya beside him, Heast turned back to where Lehana and Anemone waited in the burned remains of the buildings. To where he would gather them and begin his push to the town hall, to finish it, for better or worse.

  Heüala

  What Aelyn did not know, what she could not have known then, was the price of repair
ing the world.

  I do not speak of her personal loss. Not her lover, her family, her friends, not even her own dreams. No, I speak of the panic that gripped the world when the three suns were merged. I can still remember the absolute darkness that engulfed that day.

  Panic gripped Leviathan’s End. We were a microcosm for what happened elsewhere in the world. We burned all the fires inside the skull of the old god, but outside, we could see nothing, not even the shape of our own home. Around us the ocean was still, and we quickly realized that, unless the tides returned, we would be able to leave only by our own strength. It grew cold on the second day and on the third we heard cracking. The ocean around us began to freeze.

  After two weeks the sun returned. It came with famine and disease.

  We continued to suffer when the Leviathan’s blood was drawn from the ocean. Great black waterspouts ran from horizon to horizon. They passed over us, cracking the skull of the old god, flooding us within and threatening to break apart our home. After they finished, corpses of the sealife began to rise – sharks and whales and everything larger and smaller. The stench of rotting flesh was inescapable. We lit fires to burn the dead for nearly a year.

  It went on and on, but nothing rivalled the birth of Se’Saera’s Children. Nothing had such long fingers of dread as those pregnancies.

  —Onaedo, Histories, Year 1029

  1.

  Heast and Oya were the first to return to the burned-out buildings where Anemone, Lehana and the First Queen’s Guard waited. Beyond them, in tired, blackened clumps, were two dozen members of Refuge who had reached safety. It was there that Heast found Qiyala.

  His sergeant was exhausted. Her face was a mask of soot and sweat and she stared ahead with a numb expression, as if she did not see him. She had fallen into a crouch, a canteen in her hand and an axe at her feet. A little behind her lay Sergeant Bliq. She, Heast realized, had been the soldier he had helped out of the burning streets. Her leg was wrapped tightly in a dirty, bloodstained cloth and Anemone was beside her, examining the wound. Heast expected that the sergeant would be hobbling to her feet soon enough, and though he would prefer to send her away, to send her and the other members of Refuge out of the smoke, he knew that he would need her to ride into the centre of the town with him.