The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  His power lashed out suddenly. One of the dead from the Plateau, the soldier Kilian – the name flashed through his mind, a collection of horrific images following it – did not have enough time to stop Zaifyr from taking his spirit. With an iron will, he forced the ancient dead to draw his white-lit blade and thrust it into Se’Saera’s back. It happened in less than a second, but even as the blade pierced her and her child’s body broke apart, Zaifyr screamed. It was a scream born out of thousands of years of frustration, of trying to find peace for the dead, to free them from the horror that they were trapped in, only to be told here that he did not have the power to do that, and that he never would.

  High above him, the three complete heads of Se’Saera answered his scream, the roar of all three together was deafening.

  She leapt from the roof.

  3.

  Bueralan took Jaerc into the swampland to the west to avoid the battle. He wanted to find Essa, find him quickly, but he did not want to do so with another god-touched soldier beside him, and so he skirted a wider path than necessary. He used the swamp crows to guide him. The black birds were crying out, flying out of the trees where they perched to scurry frantically through the canopies, and the saboteur took it as a sign that one of Ren’s soldiers was close. It would not be a soldier from the Saan, Mireea or Yeflam. No bird, no swamp crow, especially, would react like that to a mortal man—

  The terrifying sound of earth breaking apart stopped his thought. It came suddenly, as if a part of the world had broken away from another.

  Bueralan and Jaerc stopped, the latter taking hold of a long, slender tree branch next to him. Beneath their feet, the ground trembled, while around him, the sound of stone crashing into stone continued. The trees began to shake. Bueralan took hold of a branch. The young soldier said something, but Bueralan could not hear his voice. He raised his gaze to the thick canopy: there were no crows in it and it shook and shook as the sound of the breaking earth drew closer, as if the ground itself was about to open beneath his feet.

  Animals emerged in a panicked rush, tearing through trees, along the soggy edges of the swamp, through the water. A pack bore down on the two men with a fear that overcame any natural aversion to humans and Bueralan heaved himself onto the branch he held. As he did, another tremor shook the ground and Jaerc stumbled, but the saboteur grabbed the young soldier and lifted him, just as darkness fell over them.

  It was a darkness made from earth and stone, thick enough to choke away the air, to cut into the skin.

  Bueralan squeezed his eyes shut and, on instinct, turned to shield the young Mireean soldier.

  The force of the dirt storm rushed onwards, past them. Behind it, the air was left thick with dust, enough to make it difficult to breathe. The sound of stone crumbling, of the earth shaking, continued, and Bueralan released Jaerc. ‘You all right?’ he asked, after he dropped to the ground.

  ‘Yeah.’ Jaerc’s white skin and blond hair was gone, lost beneath the mud and dust. He had his hand over his mouth. ‘I – thanks.’

  The saboteur spat out dirt. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There have been earthquakes in the mountains since Mireea fell.’ He paused as the rumble of earth breaking apart consumed the air. ‘I guess that was the big one. I thought – well, we were told that they had stopped.’

  Bueralan thought of the Temple of Ger. He saw the splitting, breaking skin of the giant god Ger after he had killed Se’Saera’s priests. Surely, the same must have happened to the rest of his body, throughout the mountain range. ‘Come on,’ he said, more roughly than he intended. ‘We have to find Essa.’

  ‘The Saan.’ The young soldier coughed as he sucked in a mouthful of debris. ‘The Saan,’ he began again, ‘called him a coward. They said he had no stomach for battle.’

  ‘Kal Essa?’ The clouds of dust revealed a new, awful world of splintered trees, torn bushes and dead crows before him. ‘Who said that?’

  ‘The Saan – the Lord of the Saan.’

  Miat Dvir. ‘He should have known better.’

  There was little for Bueralan to take comfort in, but he could not hear any sound of battle. He could hear swamp crows and he could hear voices of men and women calling out. He resisted the urge to respond to any, made sure that Jaerc did not either. Ren and his soldiers would be as confused and shocked as anyone by what had happened, but they would reach an understanding of it quickly. He needed to find Essa before they made a choice about what to do, if they would keep killing or allow the others to fall back. Bueralan could already imagine them picking up their weapons, could see them stalking through the dust and the debris, towards the cries for help. He had to reach Essa before that began, before the Captain of the Brotherhood responded to the cries for help and began meeting the god-touched.

  Kal Essa was in the middle of a makeshift camp. He wore his old, dusty plate and chain, and held his ugly spiked mace in his hand as he barked out commands, turning every so often to turn and spit dirt onto the ground. It was in one such motion that he noticed Bueralan approach him, and offered him a sour smile. ‘The other trapped rat emerges,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think Orlan would be alone.’

  ‘You have to leave,’ Bueralan said. ‘You need—’

  ‘I have injured out there, Captain.’

  ‘I know, I’ve heard them. Pick up those you can on the way out, but leave the others. They’re dead soldiers.’

  In the distance, stone crashed. ‘I don’t leave no soldiers behind,’ Essa said. ‘Not on the word of a man who has been riding with the enemy.’

  Bueralan did not have time to argue. In his mind’s eye, he could see the Innocent, the scars on his face highlighted by grime, stalking through the swamp, following the sounds of life. He shifted suddenly, grabbed his sword . . . and then released it just before Essa’s spiked mace slammed into his side. The spikes hurt, but it was more the force of Essa’s strike, rather than the actual weapon itself. As it had with Jaerc’s sword, Bueralan’s flesh seemed to be ready for the blow, as if it had expected it, but what bothered him more was how his ribs seemed to shift, seemed to brace for the blow, and not crack beneath it. The force of the blow ensured that the saboteur took a step to his left, but he straightened more quickly than a normal man would. From the dust around him, a small crowd emerged. Before them, and before Essa, Bueralan lifted his shirt, bloody from the wound, and revealed the already healing flesh.

  ‘You can’t win here,’ he said. ‘You’ll be hunted if you stay here. You’ll be killed. You have to leave.’ He released his shirt. ‘You have to find Aned Heast.’

  4.

  The force with which Se’Saera landed caused the ground to shudder.

  Through the eyes of another, through the eyes of the long-dead Kilian, Zaifyr gazed at the huge form of the god. She appeared to have no centre but the unmade forms of her other heads, the heads of Se’Saera that would take form once she had gathered to her the remaining power of the gods. The three heads that had risen and gazed not just at him, but at Jix, Meina, Anguish and the soldiers of Steel, came from that unformed mass, leaving Zaifyr with the question of what would happen once she had gathered all the gods’ power. Would she break apart – was she no more than the first form the gods took when they made the world? He did not know. He could not know. He would never know: he was, for all his power, the spirit of a dead man.

  Gripping Kilian’s sword tightly, the sword that was an extension of himself, Zaifyr charged Se’Saera.

  Her first head snapped down.

  It happened quicker than he thought possible, quicker than he certainly realized, and her hard teeth tore into Kilian’s spirit.

  Zaifyr left the bite.

  He appeared behind Se’Saera, in the spirit of another of her ancient soldiers, Nsyan. He had been a hunter, a killer, and while the images of his life flipped past Zaifyr’s consciousness, he drew the dead man’s sword and thrust it forwards.

  It pierced the god’s unmade centre, but if the weapon hurt her, Zaifyr cou
ld not tell. Her third head roared and speared down towards him, but before it crashed through him, Zaifyr jumped into the spirit of a woman from Lor Jix’s crew, Uyr. He saw her on a giant boat, on the green blue ocean, even as he took a step back, even as he drew her sword.

  On the other side of Se’Saera, Meina gave the order for Steel to attack.

  Zaifyr wanted to shout out to her, to tell her to call her soldiers back, to order them not to attack, but before he could, a blade pierced through Uyr’s back. Instinctively, he shifted into the spirit of the attacker, and in doing so, he moved back into Kilian. New images assaulted him – Kilian over a fire, lifting an iron poker, a man tied to a rack – but a deep, profound sense of despair overcame that.

  The dead could not die.

  Attack a spirit, break it apart, crush it, spear it, stab it – it did not matter. It was already within the City of the Dead. A spirit could not be destroyed. It could be stripped of its identity, could be rendered without self, but it could not be destroyed. If it could be done, it could only be done by a god. With a sense of desperation, Zaifyr turned towards Steel, just as Se’Saera lashed out with her heads, and two of Meina’s soldiers disappeared in a burst of colour.

  When the god’s heads rose, however, the white outline of the spirits remained. They did not pause before they attacked their comrades.

  ‘You cannot stay here.’ Queila Meina’s voice brought him back to himself, to his own body. He stood in the gateway of Heüala. ‘You have to stop her.’

  Zaifyr did not know how he would do that. Before him, Steel was scattered, Se’Saera’s huge form and three heads were breaking them apart, pushing them towards her own soldiers. That they were not already broken was a testimony to their skill, but it was only a matter of time.

  ‘The tower,’ Lor Jix said beside him. ‘She was curled around that, as if she was protecting it. Surely within it we will find a way to defeat her.’

  Surely? ‘We can’t be sure about that,’ he said.

  ‘There are few certainties in death, Zaifyr.’ Meina lifted Anguish from her shoulder. ‘You,’ she said to the black-skinned creature, ‘you stay with them.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You can’t help here.’ She turned back to Zaifyr. ‘The three of you make for that tower. We will give you all the time we can to get there.’

  ‘Meina,’ he began.

  ‘Perhaps she is right,’ the Captain of Steel said, drawing her sword. ‘Maybe we were sent here to ensure that everything was kept the same. Maybe, but I only ever gave allegiance to those who could die like me.’

  She ignored Anguish’s protest. Instead, she shouted an order to her soldiers – ‘Fall into lines!’ – an order that grabbed the attention of the broken pieces of Steel and pulled them together. The soldiers began to retreat, to push away Se’Saera’s soldiers, to step back from the god herself. In response, Se’Saera’s massive foot rose and she brought it thundering down, the clawed toes like half a dozen sabres. Zaifyr expected the men and women falling back to be crushed, for the colour to be stripped out of them, but as the foot thundered downwards, heavy shields rose, and the blow was halted. Se’Saera roared, and her left head came spearing down, but she caught nothing as the soldiers broke away.

  ‘She cannot defeat her,’ Anguish whispered harshly. ‘Qian – Zaifyr, do something!’

  He ran to the left, down the inside of Heüala’s wall, Lor Jix behind him. On his shoulder, Anguish howled, but the charm-laced man did not stop. Behind him, he heard Meina shout again, but he did not turn around. A roar split the air, not just one, but three, and for reasons he could not identify, Zaifyr knew that Se’Saera’s roar came because she had noticed that he and Jix had left the battle, had sneaked down the side of the town, up a street, and begun running towards the tower.

  On either side of the street, simple buildings sat. They were the kind Zaifyr had seen in a number of towns throughout his life, built from wood and brick. They had the same lifeless quality as the buildings around the gate, but it was not until towers began to appear between them that he realized that there were no shadows.

  To his right, he heard a great rush of wind as Se’Saera lifted into the air.

  He turned suddenly and, in doing so, almost lost Anguish. The small figure gripped on to his shirt, while behind him, Zaifyr heard Jix call out, demanding to know what he was doing. ‘Godling!’ the Captain of Wayfair cried out before Zaifyr shouldered one of the doors open. He paused in the doorway, turned and grabbed the ancient dead. As he did, the huge, dark form of Se’Saera rose high above Heüala.

  ‘Run for the back, run for the next street,’ he hissed to Jix, thrusting him into the house and following him. ‘We can cut across the lanes.’

  He fell silent.

  Around him, as if it were a giant, grassy lake, was an empty field, while above him a single, solitary sun shone.

  5.

  Refuge left Celp in a line defined by smoke and exhaustion. It took a day to leave the burned land and return to where they had left the carts.

  After they made camp – picket lines for the horses, saddles removed, soot rubbed from their coats, food and water for each and for the soldiers, tents for the wounded – Heast set a small guard and let the rest of Refuge find patches of ground to sleep on. The soldiers from Maosa did so with rolls and blankets that they borrowed. They had left Celp with nothing. They slept in the smoke-stained clothes they wore beneath their armour and slept with their swords close. He didn’t blame them: a hundred and forty-three of Refuge’s soldiers had died in the burning ruins of Celp. Another half-dozen would die from their wounds, another dozen would not fight again. The numbers hurt Heast, but he did not deny it. He could not. He had lost just under half of his force in Celp: one hundred and fifty-three of the soldiers who had left Maosa walked out of the city. They did so beside soldiers who had been the First Queen’s Guard, who had been trained to hold a sword by some of the finest instructors, and who wore armour none of Refuge would have been able to afford, but they walked out as equals. Lehana ensured that. She demonstrated no favouritism, and any familiarity she showed with the soldiers she had known for years, she made sure to share with the soldiers from Maosa. When she told Heast of her own losses, she said that ‘three soldiers’ died in the battle and named them. She made no mention of the First Queen, of ethnicity, of anything that would begin to build a divide between the two groups.

  ‘Captain.’ Kye Taaira’s clothes were stained so heavily with soot that the hilt of his old sword appeared coloured by it as well, though Heast knew it was not. ‘The prisoner is awake,’ the other man said. ‘He asked to speak to you.’

  ‘Has Anemone seen him?’

  ‘Briefly,’ Taaira replied. ‘She doesn’t believe he will last until morning. I am surprised he survived the ride here.’

  ‘Gje Dural was born stubborn.’

  The Leeran soldier had been found at the edge of Celp. He had been crawling with his hands over the blackened stones, trying to make his way into the burned landscape that lay in front of him in an awful premonition. An arrow had pierced his right leg and shattered the bone, but it was the fire that had done most of the damage to him. Around the blackened arrow, his clothes had melted into his skin, up to his waist, as if he had been dipped into burning liquid, and then removed.

  He had not recognized the Captain of Refuge. Dural had been crawling mostly on instinct, and when one of the soldiers from Refuge bent down to lift him on Heast’s command, he thought her one of his own. He whispered thanks, whispered that their god hated them.

  Dural lay beneath the dark night sky, no tent roof above him, and no blanket beneath him. The arrow in his leg was broken against the wound and he had been cleaned, revealing the burns that ran up his chest and neck, breaking apart a tattoo of a whole sun before reaching his face. He had been a nondescript man before, a man whose face slid easily out of memory, who worked in the background of camps and kept order, a captain’s best asset.

  But no
more.

  ‘Has he said much?’ Heast asked Lehana as he approached.

  ‘No.’ She sat on a fallen log behind the burned man, her bastard sword laid against it. On her lap she held one of her shirts, a needle and a half-sewn insignia of Refuge. ‘He asked for water, and whose command I was under, nothing more.’

  ‘She told me Aned Heast.’ Dural’s voice was rough, filled with pain. ‘I half expected it to be Bueralan Le.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for a long time. He could very well be dead.’

  ‘I doubt it. Rats like him don’t die.’

  Heast came over to the man, looked down at him, and met his brown eyes. ‘I have seen a lot of things in my time, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Nothing like this.’ He grimaced. ‘Is the General dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She said he’d die.’

  ‘Your god?’

  ‘Se’Saera.’ His right hand spasmed, almost forming a fist. ‘What kind of god tortures a man with the knowledge he’ll die for years? Who tells him he’ll be glorious, until he – he fails. Until she orders his soldiers to douse themselves in oil to feed her flames.’

  ‘Why would your god give you that order?’ Across from him, Taaira asked the question, not with his customary tone of respect, but with a barely concealed anger Heast had not heard before.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ He coughed again, the force running through his pain-racked body. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated. ‘She pulled most of us back to Ranan. Gave the order to retreat a week or so after she pulled back those monsters she made. But the General – she told him to ride to Celp. She told him he would die there. But if she knew that, why send him?’ His rough voice broke. ‘You tell me, Captain, why you’d send a man you knew was going to die to the battle he’d die in.’