The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  With her mother’s guard beside her, Eilona walked out to where the small dinghy was tied. The two women did not speak to each other. When the dinghy touched The Frozen Shackle, Eilona said, ‘I’m sorry. I should have have listened to you.’

  ‘You should have.’ Caeli rose and slung the sword over her shoulder. ‘But I expected it.’

  ‘You expected?’ she repeated. ‘Did you know what they would show me? How they had gouged the eyes out of people? What they would offer my mother? Did you know that as well?’

  ‘No.’ The guard began to climb the rope ladder. ‘But you were safe, I promise.’

  Eilona refused to let the topic go once she reached the deck. Beneath the darkening sky, she followed the guard. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How could you protect me there? You were not there. I left you.’

  ‘But not me.’ Olcea stood at the wheel, her solid bag resting against it. ‘Caeli is right, you were never in danger.’

  The guard sat on the stairs before the witch. ‘I know my job, Eilona. I know when someone is not going to listen to me.’ She sounded tired. ‘Like it’s any surprise that you didn’t, right?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she began.

  ‘Hien was with you.’ Olcea started to unwind the cloth around her left hand. ‘He has been with you since you left here.’

  She made an oh sound, suppressed a shudder. ‘I didn’t – I mean, you should have told me.’

  ‘He was meant to protect both of you.’ She pulled out a knife and made a quick cut along her palm, then ran the blood across the wheel. ‘But when you left Caeli, he went with you,’ Olcea said, cleaning the knife and wrapping her hand. ‘We decided on that earlier.’

  The Frozen Shackle jolted in movement as oars fell into the water. ‘I wasn’t trying to be difficult,’ she said, a sense of exhausted frustration creeping into her. ‘I just know that neither of you want to be here. And neither of you need to be here.’

  ‘But we’re here,’ Caeli said. ‘Besides, in the end, that little trip you made told us a lot.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s no negotiation to be had with Nymar, or anyone who had power in Yeflam, not now. There’s only the Faithful, and the Faithful, no matter how many of the hungry they feed, will not welcome your mother, not as she is. She has to submit to them first.’

  They all knew what Muriel Wagan’s response to that would be.

  9.

  Campfires dotted the shoreline of the Black Lake, but Ayae walked in the opposite direction, to the skeletal crop of trees behind it. There, in the arm of the largest, sat a man sharpening a sword.

  ‘Silence is an awful thing to behold,’ Jae’le said to her, as she approached. ‘Tinh Tu’s is one of the worst.’

  ‘Why do you let her do it?’

  ‘I do not let her do anything. My sister does what she wants because she can. She always has.’

  Ayae grabbed one of the thick, empty branches opposite him. She had been unable to remain in the camp the Saan had made, the silence of it becoming more and more oppressive, until she had felt suffocated by it. It was different to the silence in the Mountains of Ger, the nothingness that had been the prelude to an event that Ayae relived when she closed her eyes. Not that she would forget the camp: it would linger in her memory, like the camp of her youth, the one behind scarred walls and heavily fortified gates. In that camp, the Innocent had stripped away the freedom and the lives of the people who lived in it, and the silence of the soldiers who had come to ask for help was much the same. Ayae had twice begun to approach Tinh Tu to tell her that, but she had stopped well before she reached the other woman. She had seen Ayae twice from the stump she sat on, overlooking the camp, and on both times, the old woman had watched her intently. She did not try to wave Ayae away, but instead seemed to invite her protest. But what would she would say to Tinh Tu? Let these people speak? Let them draw their swords on you? Don’t be like Aela Ren? She wouldn’t say that. Tinh Tu had done nothing like the Innocent’s deeds, and Ayae knew, if the roles were reversed, Miat Dvir would exert his power over Tinh Tu and the others no differently.

  ‘My sister was not subtle,’ Jae’le said, as Ayae climbed slowly up to the elbow of the branch. ‘But it was necessary, I suspect. Dvir will be under no illusions about his position in the world now.’

  With only the slightest twinge from her back, she took a seat. ‘Any one of you could have made that point.’

  ‘Tinh Tu is the most powerful of us,’ he said. ‘It was hers to make.’

  ‘That is why you let her do it?’

  ‘Again that word.’ He ran the stone along his blade. ‘The relationship of my brothers and my sisters is defined by power, Ayae.’

  ‘They look to you for guidance. All of them do that.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he admitted. ‘I think it is because of my age. Because I am the oldest. But it is a strange concept for the five of us. What is a hundred years or so if you have lived so long already?’

  ‘You don’t think it is as simple as that, do you?’ Ayae said. ‘You, of all people.’

  ‘I have known my family for a long time.’

  ‘I know I haven’t, but when I first met you, you were trying to protect Zaifyr. At the same time, you were trying to help Aelyn. When you heard Eidan was with Se – with her, you tried to help him.’ She turned to him, twisted so she could look up into the shadows of the tree that hid all but his shape and the blade of his new sword. ‘You talk about power, but you gave up part of yours for Zaifyr. That’s why they look to you now. Maybe they didn’t always, but you have sacrificed and protected each of them because—’

  ‘Of love?’ Above him, a shadow shifted, revealing a swamp crow. It was unconcerned by the closeness of the two, by the sound of the whetstone along the blade. ‘You sound like Zaifyr,’ Jae’le finished.

  ‘He does not talk of love. That’s you putting words in his mouth. But you could learn from him.’

  ‘The man he is now, or the man he was before? I do not think you would have liked the lessons the man before gave.’

  ‘He is not that man any more.’ Ayae shrugged. ‘Truthfully, none of you are who you once were.’

  ‘It is within us all to return to it.’

  ‘Are you trying to convince yourself? I don’t know if it has occurred to you yet, Jae’le, but we may not survive this. We probably will not. How are we to defeat the Innocent when they could not? When no one has?’

  ‘We may die,’ he said, a strange calmness in his voice. ‘We may not. We are all part of much larger events and we can be certain of little, now. We are pieces the gods have moved in their ancient war. It is oddly fitting, really. It is how life with the gods was when I was a child. You would be ignored for so long that you could forget that they existed. You would begin to argue that they had no influence upon you. That you were free of them. Then, one day, they would disrupt your life. They would react to something you had done, an event that a god had planned. An act you had been destined to do. Then, everything would be in turmoil. The gods would respond. They would move their pieces. They would fight for control over fate, for the right to define the world that we lived in.’

  ‘Perhaps we should not go to Ranan.’

  ‘We would abandon Zaifyr, if we did not,’ he said, the stone running along the blade in a second, inhuman voice. ‘Would you truly do that?’

  She thought of the Innocent, of the painting on Ger’s leg, of her fear in it. ‘If that was the cost of ending the war,’ Ayae said, exploring the idea despite herself, feeling a revulsion for it even as she said it. ‘What if it led to something better?’

  ‘Who is to define what will be better for the world?’

  ‘Zaifyr would say the price is fair.’

  ‘But I would not pay it,’ he said, ‘and neither would you. Not even in your fear.’

  A tremor ran through the broken mountains, the sound not of a new quake, but of rock and stone settling into a new position. On her br
anch, Ayae wondered just what fate had been lost, and what fate had been written.

  10.

  The shoreline welcomed the dinghy that carried Eilona, Caeli and Olcea with indifference. Beneath a faint moon’s light, Hien’s invisible grip pulled the boat onto the shore and the three women, once out of it, did the rest.

  At a distance, an air of disquiet surrounded the camp: fewer fires dotted the landscape and, as they drew closer, the camp began to look ragged, as if it was the carcass of a giant beast that had begun to decay, its ruined skin flapping like torn tents and its bones exposed tents poles. If not for the shadows of people, at times no more than a piece of smoke, Eilona might have thought that the camp had been abandoned. As it was, it became clear that the tents at the top end of the camp had been pulled down. At the dirty stables, Eilona asked the man what had happened.

  ‘There was an earthquake in the mountains,’ he said. ‘A huge cloud of dust enveloped us. We were lucky it wasn’t mud slides.’

  It was a sobering thought.

  ‘Do you know where Muriel Wagan’s tent has been moved?’ Caeli asked.

  He gave them directions that led further up the shoreline of the camp. None of the people they passed on the muddy streets greeted them verbally, but a few exhausted, grimy nods were given. The sight of them forced Eilona to reconsider her mother’s response to the Faithful offer. If another series of quakes hit the mountain, could she really stay here, on the shore? Surely she would have to move on to Neela. With each step she took along the muddy veins of the camp, Eilona asked herself more and more questions. Did Faje know about the quake? None of them had felt it, that was for sure. Beside her, Caeli and Olcea were silent, and Eilona wondered, as they approached her mother’s tent, if they thought the same.

  A guard Eilona did not recognize stood outside her mother’s tent. Caeli knew him, however, and he wordlessly lifted the flap for them.

  Inside, the Lady of the Ghosts was lighting more candles, brightening the room. She had pushed her hair roughly back, and she wore a pair of linen pants and a heavy black shirt, neither of the pieces clothes her mother would wear in public. She wore them, Eilona knew, when she was working late, when she expected to fall asleep at her table. The table before her held a stack of papers and spoke volumes to the state of the camp.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Muriel Wagan said, setting the last candle down. ‘A lot has happened.’

  ‘We heard there was a quake,’ Eilona said.

  ‘A quake?’ She laughed without humour. ‘The Mountains of Ger have broken apart. We don’t know what has happened up there, but’ – she waved at the papers – ‘we are moving everyone on to Neela. Not a single person thinks the shore is safe any more.’

  ‘What about Mireea?’ It surprised her that she asked. ‘Is that gone as well?’

  Her mother’s second laugh was more a huff of frustration. ‘I don’t know. No one knows what has happened. But what about you?’ she asked, changing the topic. ‘You’re back much earlier than I thought. Did it go about as well as that suggests?’

  ‘We were expected,’ Caeli said. ‘They had quite the show for us. Well, for Eilona.’

  Her mother glanced at her in query and Eilona pulled out her two letters. ‘I fear you will be disappointed.’

  Muriel Wagan took the two letters and set aside on the table the one that was addressed to Lian Alahn, as if she expected him soon. The other she slit open. ‘It’s a list of names,’ she said and, before either of the others could speak, added, ‘I see. Names of people who have been touched by a god’s power. Who are “cursed”.’ She placed the letter before her and reached beneath the table. A moment later, a bottle of laq and four glasses appeared. ‘Tell me,’ the Lady of the Ghosts said, while she poured the clear liquid into the glasses.

  Eilona did: she spoke of their arrival, of the refugees, of the Faithful, of Nymar Alahn, and of Faje. She mentioned her mistake, took blame for it and was surprised her mother did not berate her. Perhaps she had expected it as well. Occasionally, Caeli would break in, or add something, and once, Olcea spoke, but for the most part, the two other women let Eilona tell the story of what they had seen, and what they thought. When she finished, Muriel Wagan pushed a glass to her, the guard and the witch.

  ‘If I had known you were going to give me this,’ Olcea said, eyeing the glass, ‘I would have asked for gold.’

  Her mother picked up her glass. ‘What did you teach all those girls from the orphanage in Mireea if you did not teach them how to drink properly?’

  ‘Taste.’

  ‘You had them drink wine, didn’t you?’

  ‘It is what civilized women do, Muriel.’ Eilona almost choked to hear the witch so casually refer to her mother, while Caeli laughed. ‘That I will even drink this speaks to the desperation we are in.’

  The two women joined her mother and Olcea in the toast. ‘We weren’t shown the rest of Yeflam,’ Eilona said, after she lowered the glass. ‘It is entirely possible that other lords are not so well aligned with Faje and his Faithful.’

  ‘I am sure they are not,’ her mother said. She said something else, but outside the tent, a loud male voice broke over her. Before any of the women could raise themselves, the tent flap was thrust back angrily by Lian Alahn, and he pushed himself inside. A step behind him was a white-haired woman, whose arm was heavily bandaged. Oake, Eilona remembered. Captain Oake. She met the soldier’s gaze but found it unresponsive.

  ‘Why was I not told of their return?’ Lian Alahn demanded, striding towards the table. Caeli, Eilona saw, rose quietly to her feet. ‘Lady Wagan, we have an alliance here. I will not be treated like a second in that. You cannot keep things from me.’

  ‘I had faith in your spies, Lord Alahn,’ Muriel Wagan replied drily. ‘But if it makes you feel better, I was caught off-guard by their return as well. Now, please, sit down. You too, Captain.’

  ‘Thank you, but I am fine,’ Oake replied politely while Alahn cleared himself a space at an end of the table where no one sat on, rather like a father at the head.

  With a flick of her hand, Eilona’s mother slid his son’s letter to him. While they waited for him to slit the envelope and read it, Olcea poured herself a new glass of laq, and made a motion to Eilona, to see if she wanted another. She shook her head. She could see through the sheet of paper Alahn held and, though she could not make out the words, she saw that it was no more than a single paragraph long.

  ‘What has happened to my son?’ Lord Alahn lowered the letter. ‘If this is a joke, I do not find it funny.’

  ‘What did he say?’ the Lady of the Ghosts asked.

  ‘Well?’ he asked, looking at Eilona. ‘Is this yours? Did you write it to cover your failure to speak to people in Yeflam?’

  ‘Your son has found faith,’ Caeli said coolly. ‘I assume that is what you hold. Did he tell you that he would not speak to you until you have embraced our new god, either?’

  ‘My son,’ he replied, ‘is responsible for managing my estates and is in control of the family’s finances. I find this highly unbelievable.’

  The guard shrugged. ‘It is in his hand.’

  ‘Lady Wagan,’ he began, turning to her, before he stopped.

  She held her letter, flames running along it. Eilona had watched her pick it up from the table while Alahn argued with Caeli and dip it into the nearest candle. ‘We were both given letters,’ she said. ‘I find mine equally as offensive as yours, but I believe mine was written by a former steward of Aelyn Meah, Faje Metura.’ She dropped the burning paper into her empty glass. ‘You are wasting your time suggesting that anyone but your son wrote the letter you hold.’

  Lian Alahn’s anger, when he entered the tent, had been theatrical. He had planned to use it in the way that a bully uses his size, or her strength, to force people to obey his wishes. Even Eilona had recognized that in him. But when he rose from the table, his son’s letter in his hand, there was a coldness about him that spoke of real fury, an emotion that she was sure
very few people saw.

  After he had left, Muriel Wagan grunted sourly. She picked up a new glass and pushed it over to Olcea. ‘I have never met a more exhausting man,’ she said as the witch filled it.

  11.

  Dural lived for five days. On the sixth, Heast buried him. He dug the grave with the help of Kye Taaira, a dozen steps away from where they had buried the dead of Refuge.

  For the first two days, Dural had talked, each time a little bit, and after that he had fallen into a coma. Three of Refuge’s soldiers were in the same state, but Dural was the last to die. While they waited, the fires in Celp turned to cinders and warm ash. Lehana led a small group through the ruins, to see what could be salvaged. Nothing, was the answer. The only thing the fire did not touch was the body of the Leeran general, Ekar Waalstan. He lay in the middle of the ruined square where he had fallen, with no hint of decay on his body. His split skull, Lehana reported, was still bleeding. She tried to move him, but found it impossible to do so, alone or with thirteen others. The body was cold and heavy. Heast heard the news with Dural’s words in the back of his head. Heard again the insistence that his god must hate her faithful soldiers. Anemone made a journey into Celp alone on the third day and reported that she could not move the body, either. More, she said, the coldness Lehana had reported had seeped out of Waalstan and into the square around him. After that, Heast sent no one and put it from his mind: he had other concerns. Birds from the Lord of Faaisha had begun to settle in the camp with messages tied to their legs. The Leerans had, it seemed, left Faaisha, and Lord Tuael and his marshals were pushing into Leera, to the capital, where they hoped to meet the combined force of Mireea, Yeflam and the Saan. Heast sent him a short letter in reply. It said that General Waalstan was dead, nothing more.

  He did not know why it was important to bury Dural, but he worked quietly at it, before the tribesman joined him. Heast supposed that it was one soldier’s gift to another. There would be no one else to do it, no family, no comrades, no friends. He briefly considered burning him, a practice he preferred – a practice Dural might have as well, before Celp – but he could not.