The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  ‘They burn the dead on the Plateau, don’t they?’ he asked, pausing outside the shallow hole he and Taaira had dug. ‘After they are bled?’

  ‘Yes.’ The tribesman stood across the grave from him, dirty and soot-stained. His sword lay on the ground to one side. ‘A family member makes a journey to the coast afterwards, to scatter the ashes in Leviathan’s Blood. But, like you, Captain, I would not have burned this man. I have seen a little too much fire of late.’

  ‘There is rarely such a thing as a clean death,’ Heast said, ‘but there are better ones than what we have witnessed.’

  ‘It has angered me.’ Taaira laid the shovel on the ground and pulled off his gloves, beginning not with the fingers, as he usually did, but with the wrist. He looked as if he was ripping his skin off. ‘I am not unfamiliar with anger. No person is, I believe. On the Plateau, you must learn not to deny your anger, but to understand it. It was no different for me, though I had more anger than others. You do not ask to be Hollow, Captain. You are taken by shamans at your birth, and the rituals that bleed you of your blood are done from a young age. There is pain in it, but you do not think that such an event is strange, not at first. Not until you meet others who grew up among the tribes. Until I met those, I thought that all of us were bled. I was angry when I realized that was not the case. I was young and I reacted to the difference, rather than the task I was being trained for. It is not an uncommon story. All children must learn to deal with their rage. It is something that I did learn to do over time. But this.’ He motioned to the grave, to Dural’s body, his gloves in his hands. ‘I am having difficulties with my anger over this.’

  ‘You are not alone with it. Many others share it.’

  ‘But you do not?’

  ‘I feel it,’ Heast admitted. ‘But for me, it is a coldness. A clarity.’

  ‘I wish for that,’ the tribesman said. ‘I have a task, Captain, but it is one that has changed the longer I am with you. I no longer feel as I once did. My anger, now, does not want me to hunt my ancestors. It wants me to ride to Ranan with you. It wants me to fight beside you and strike against Se’Saera. It tells me to complete my task afterwards. The strength of my anger concerns me. I have never felt its like before. I did not feel it when Se’Saera rode onto the Plateau and struck down my own people. My anger was tempered by my duty. But here it is not. Here, I feel naught but a desire to stop her. I close my eyes and I see her soldiers, burning without pain, their skin melting, and I find that I cannot find any justification for the abuse of authority that I have seen.’ He turned to Dural’s body and let out a frustrated sigh. ‘But my anger is further stoked by the fact that I do not know how to kill a god. I feel a futility at the idea. My sword is not made for that.’

  ‘What sword is?’

  Taaira had no answer, no more than Heast did.

  Gently, the two men lowered Dural into the grave they had dug, and filled it. A crow arrived before they finished. It perched on the arm of a tree and watched. Attached to its leg was a message. It was short, an instruction by Lord Tuael to begin riding towards Ranan. The Lord finished with a flourish, claiming that now was the time to seize the momentum, to end this war. Heast shifted the bird to his shoulder and returned to his camp without the energy that was in the letter. What sword could kill a god? The question returned. The answer did not present itself, not after he had met with Anemone, Lehana, Qiyala and Bliq. Not by the time he lay on his roll, after he had given the order to break camp in the morning, to begin moving towards Ranan.

  It was Lehana who woke him, a few hours later. She did it gently, but he knew immediately that something was wrong.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘He is here.’ Her voice was strained. ‘He surrendered to a guard. He has asked for you.’

  Heast did not ask who. He rose stiffly and walked to where a short, scarred man stood. He had brown weathered skin, much like the armour and clothes he wore. They were a collection of styles, of eras, the markings of a man who had lived much longer than his appearance suggested. He had no weapons on him: they had been collected by the guard who had brought him into the camp, by Corporal Isaap. The young man was terrified. The ring of black-and-red-armoured soldiers who stood around him with their weapons drawn did little to calm his fear.

  The Innocent did not share it. He stood next to Isaap with ease, as if it did not matter how many people stood around him, or how well-armed and armoured they were. ‘Ah, the Captain of Refuge,’ he said, offering a slight nod of his head to Heast. ‘It is a pleasure to be in your presence.’

  The Confessions of an Innocent Man

  ‘I tried to distance myself from Zilt,’ Aelyn Meah said. ‘I tried to distance myself from the Innocent as well, but it was difficult. When Se’Saera spoke to me, one or the other was present. But for the most part, I could put them from my mind. I could focus instead on the promise Se’Saera had made. I could focus on her.’

  She paused. I thought, at first, she was arranging her thoughts, as she was prone to do, but I realized shortly that she was involved in an internal debate, as if she was deciding what she should tell me next, or not.

  ‘There was one exception to my interactions with the god-touched,’ she said, finally. ‘I was asked to watch over a young, pregnant woman. Her name was Zi Taela. She carried the first of Se’Saera’s children.’

  I admit that I did not hide my surprise well.

  ‘No one knew, then,’ Aelyn said softly. ‘She was just a woman in need of help. Her only friends were Samuel Orlan and Bueralan Le. Both men were weighed down by remorse. Until the very end, they tried to find ways to save her, to protect her. I found myself very easily drawn into that. In Taela I saw a little of myself. Helping her was one of the few ways I could help myself. Perhaps all three of us thought that.’

  —Onaedo, Histories, Year 1029

  1.

  ‘I am not here to fight,’ Aela Ren said. ‘I have come under Onaedo’s Peace.’

  ‘You don’t think that applies to you, do you?’ Heast took the sword and dagger from Isaap, a short nod directing the Corporal backwards, away from the scarred man. ‘Her peace is for mercenaries. It lets them negotiate when their employers will not. Do you think Onaedo would hang any of us if we did not recognize her peace with you?’

  ‘No.’ The Innocent stood chin height to Heast. He was a man who was forever looking up at his enemies, but he did so calmly, and clear-eyed. ‘But you will honour it, regardless.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Heast turned the sword around and offered it to him hilt-first. ‘We’ll honour it.’

  ‘Captain,’ began Lehana, her shock, outrage, and confusion at what she saw contained in her single word. Around her, others joined in protest: Bliq repeated Lehana’s word, while Oya muttered an obscenity in Ooilan; Fenna swore in the traders’ tongue and the fuck was echoed by Qiyala at her side. Single words turned into doubles, then triples – Saelo, Zvae and Isaap, standing at the front of the line, called to him – and the conversation only increased when the Innocent slid his sword and dagger into their leather scabbards. Behind him, Kye Taaira appeared, his large sword in his hand, its sheath over the darkness of it. He gazed at Heast silently but made no move to attack, or attempt to speak. Beside the tribesman, Anemone emerged from the crowd. Lehana repeated, ‘Captain.’ There was a distraught note in her voice. ‘Captain, we cannot let him leave here.’

  Heast raised his hand for silence. ‘Four incarnations of Refuge have ridden into Sooia to fight Aela Ren and his soldiers.’ His gaze did not leave the small man as he spoke to the soldiers around him. ‘The first was led by Captain Da Xanan, over five hundred years ago. She rode into Sooia with three thousand soldiers. Her force was one of the largest Refuge has ever had, built from the fortune the Emperors of Sooia paid her. After three years of war, three years that saw over two-thirds of her force killed, she met with the man who stands before us. She met him in a small tent, one staked down
at the side of a lake. She said that she talked to him for a day. After, she wrote that Aela Ren was a man who would never betray his word, no matter if he spoke of peace or of war. She said that she had never met a more honest man.’

  ‘I have met every Captain of Refuge who has come to Sooia to fight me,’ the Innocent said. ‘You are the first I have met outside the country.’

  Heast lowered his hand. The silence around him was thick, confused. ‘Captain Xanan wrote that you cannot die.’

  ‘It is true.’ He paused, as if a part of him could pierce Heast’s skin, could find the centre of his soul. ‘But that does not give you pause, does it?’

  ‘You need not kill a man to win a war.’

  Aela Ren was silent, as if Heast’s words had struck inside him, as if they were the first time he had heard them spoken. ‘What is your name, Captain?’

  ‘Aned Heast.’

  ‘It is often said that a name is power.’

  ‘It is.’ Heast had, over his life, met powerful men and women. He had met them old, young, and every year between. He had learned quickly that no one was like another, not in the details of how they drew their power, or how they displayed it. But few of the people he had met were like the scarred man before him. Aela Ren did not express his power, or show it: if he was met on a road by a stranger, he would be seen as an unfortunate soldier. He would be penniless, scarred, broken, until he began to speak. Once he began to speak, the stranger would think differently, for Ren’s sense of self would emerge, and the stranger would see his confidence, his knowledge, and he would soon be of the opinion that of those who could stop the Innocent, he was not one. ‘But your name means something, as well. You define it by what you do and what you say. No matter what a warlock or a witch does with your name, you own it. I would imagine you know that as well as I do.’

  He nodded. ‘I have been sent to gather General Ekar Waalstan’s body and return it to Ranan. I have been told he is in Celp. I would appreciate your company with me.’

  ‘If I said no?’

  ‘It is your decision. As I said, I am not here to fight. Not unless I must.’

  ‘But if I said yes?’ The soldiers of Refuge murmured in protest. Heast held up his hand for silence again. ‘If I said yes,’ he repeated, ‘is it something your god would be party to?’

  ‘My god hears only what is said in her name.’ He paused, to let the importance of what he said settle into those around him. ‘In this case, no. It would be a private conversation between you and me.’

  ‘What would we have to talk about?’

  Again, the Innocent was silent. His silence, this time, stretched out into Refuge, as if he was reading their thoughts, their fears. ‘Do you know much about the God of War, Captain?’

  ‘A little,’ Heast replied. ‘What has survived time.’

  ‘I knew him. Long ago, I was a servant of a god. Baar was not my god, but he was a god, regardless, and at times I was in his company. He loved to create champions, men and women like you, and those around us.’ His scarred fingers flickered towards Lehana and the others. ‘War was Baar’s creation and he made it an intricate one. He did not create it from one moment in history, but rather thousands, each one a tiny spark. He commanded his servant, a woman like myself, to record these moments in the histories she kept. I have not seen her for years, and I do not know if she continues to write these histories, but if she did, our war would be a volume much larger than either of us was aware of in the start. I wish to discuss that with you, until I have the General’s body. I will take my leave from you, then.’

  The morning’s sun bled a thin line of light across the horizon. ‘I will ride with you to Celp,’ Heast said.

  ‘Thank you.’ For the first time, Aela Ren turned from Heast, turned to the men and women who stood around him, to the soldiers who regarded him grimly. ‘Refuge,’ he said quietly, as if he was drawing out a truth from all of those who met his gaze. ‘There is no history quite like the one you serve.’

  2.

  Light from the morning’s sun ran along the flat roofs of Ranan, leaving pools of shadow, much like rainwater, along the road Bueralan and the god-touched rode down.

  Over the last week, he had slept in snatches, grabbing what he could when the grey needed rest, when the dirt and debris forced them to stop. Se’Saera’s black-eyed slave did not like the stops: he wandered around the god-touched, around the mounts, murmuring to himself, talking about the god, about how she wanted them to return. Zilt’s horrific soldier sat at the far end of the camp, watching him, a foil to his restlessness in terms of stillness and silence. In the last week, Bueralan had come to view the creatures as female, though he could not attribute any one feature or act to her that made him sure of it. At her feet lay the body of Zaifyr, and when it came time to move, she would lean down and pick him up, as if he were a little boy. Yet, no matter how much the black-eyed slave tried to hurry them, the debris from the Mountains of Ger slowed them. More than once, they were forced to backtrack because of a piece of swamp that had opened up through a crack in the land, or because a trail had disappeared into mud.

  It eased only when Ranan appeared on the horizon. On the last day, as the clouds of dirt began to fade, Leeran soldiers appeared. The first ones Bueralan saw were thin, their teeth filed down, and on foot, but others began to emerge soon after. These figures were lean, but well fed. They rode strangely silent horses that the mounts of the god-touched did not like. More than once, Bueralan had to pull tightly on the grey’s reins to stop it kicking a Leeran horse. The soldiers who rode the strange horses were not nearly as silent. Many greeted the god-touched. Quite a few of them talked to the immortals: they spoke of Se’Saera’s order to return to Ranan, to prepare for a great battle. Not one of them was surprised by Zilt’s monster and, when she and the blind slave rushed off down the streets of Ranan when the god-touched emerged from the tunnels, none of the Leerans in the streets looked twice at either. Very few looked up from the barricades and walls they were making.

  Bueralan wanted to rush to Taela, but years of travel, of caring for mounts, of being aware of their cost, saw him stable the grey properly first. Only Orlan did the same. The cartographer stabled his horse next to Bueralan’s – the god-touched soldiers put their horses in stalls and removed their saddles, but did little else. After they had seen to water and food for their animals, Bueralan and Orlan entered the crowded streets. The bustle was such a stark contrast to how Ranan had been just over two weeks ago that, even allowing for the fortification the soldiers were involved in – the construction of ballistas, catapults, the positioning of siege towers for archers – the presence of so many people took away some of the city’s strangeness. It did not take away all: for that to happen, Bueralan knew, the people on the streets would have to hang up their swords, open markets, inns, forges and all the other businesses and professions that grounded a city both economically and socially.

  The crowds thinned at the bottom of the long steps to the cathedral and, by the time the two men reached the top, the only company they had were half a dozen swamp crows. There were hundreds throughout the city now, driven, no doubt, by the crumbling of the Mountains of Ger and their need for a new home. It was something that Bueralan could understand, but the companionship he felt towards the crows was short-lived: the door to the cathedral opened and Kaze stepped out, surprised to see him and Orlan before her.

  ‘How is Taela?’ Bueralan asked.

  ‘Tired.’ Kaze smiled wanly. Behind the god-touched woman’s glasses, her eyes were heavy and dark. ‘She – have you stabled your horses?’

  He frowned. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No. Well, yes.’ She took a breath, trying to calm her agitation. ‘We are going to have to cut the child out of her. Not tonight, but tomorrow, maybe. It is too big, Bueralan. She cannot give birth to a child of that size. It will kill her.’

  He had seen a child cut out of a woman before. It had been in a siege, and food and water had been scarce
, and she had died. It would be different here, he knew, especially with Kaze. ‘Have you told Taela?’ Orlan asked, when Bueralan did not speak.

  ‘She knows,’ Kaze said. ‘She can feel it inside her. If you place your hand on her stomach, you can feel it as well. It has a hardness to it that I have never felt in a child before.’

  ‘Is it a child?’ the cartographer asked.

  ‘It is Se’Saera’s child.’

  ‘Have you told Se’Saera?’ Bueralan asked, his voice cracking a little. ‘Have you asked her for help?’

  Kaze laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘Go and see Taela,’ she said, instead of answering. ‘She asks for you, all the time. Go and sit by her. We’ll tell her what we plan later.’ She paused and her grip tightened slightly. ‘I have done this before. I have cut a number of children out of their mother’s womb. I have never lost a child or a mother who was not lost before then.’

  Bueralan wanted to ask if Taela was already lost, but he did not. Kaze squeezed his shoulder again and then walked down the cathedral’s stairs, to the stables, to the horses she cared for. He turned to find Orlan at the door to the cathedral, the darkness inside waiting, and though he did not particularly wish to do so, he followed the cartographer inside. There, at the door, just as it closed, a tall, dark figure emerged. It was misshapen, as if it had a hump, but once Bueralan’s eyes adjusted to the stilled dark of the cathedral, he realized that the shadow belonged to Zilt.

  Over his shoulder, he carried the body of the black-eyed slave.

  ‘He died after he delivered Zaifyr.’ Zilt shouldered past, pushed open the door that had just closed. ‘He is free, as Se’Saera promised him.’

  ‘He was a child,’ Bueralan said, turning to him. ‘He should have—’