The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  From Faaisha to Leera, Heast had drilled the order into Refuge and the Brotherhood. He had made sure that all the soldiers knew not to engage them singly. He had told them that, while the Innocent and his soldiers could not die, they could be hacked apart, chained, and otherwise immobilized.

  None of them, he knew, liked the order.

  ‘You leave Refuge by sword, by fire, by will,’ he said. ‘In the Brotherhood, you leave on your back.’

  A loud shudder ran through the ground, followed by screams.

  ‘When dawn breaks over Ranan,’ Heast continued, not acknowledging the sound, ‘you will either be standing or you will not. That is the battle we ride into.’ He tapped his saddlebag, where the battered copy of The Eternal Kingdom was kept. ‘You have all seen me read a book over the last few days. You all know this is the book of our new god. A book in which she promises us that she will fix the world. That we will want for nothing. All we have to do for this is give ourselves to her. All we have to do is watch our friends and turn on them if they don’t believe what we do. She tells us to cut the eyes out of those who do not see the truth.’

  Behind him, stone cracked loudly, as if one of the giants had been split open.

  ‘We are not here to accept that.’ Heast drew his sword. ‘I will not betray the soldiers I stand by. I will not watch my friends from the shadows. I will not report on them to a god who cuts their eyes out because she does not like what they see.

  ‘But more than that, I will not serve the child of the parents who tore apart our world. Who left us to rot in life and rot in death. Who have poisoned our oceans, broken suns and left us with the burdens of their war.

  ‘What lies before us may well be the end for you and me. If so, I go towards it with my sword drawn and I go towards it as the man I am before you, with the values I hold. If I am to die here, then so be it!’ Heast raised his sword with his voice. ‘Let the gods see how we defy them! How we reject them! How we rise up to tell them that we do not want them! Let them see our judgement of their actions!’

  The Captain of Refuge wheeled his horse around and, with his sword slicing down to signal the charge, began to ride towards Ranan.

  His soldiers followed him.

  10.

  Zaifyr was in a room, not a field, when he took a painful, shuddering watery breath.

  ‘He’s here.’ Se’Saera knelt above him. He could see her beautiful face, her green eyes, and he could feel sharp edges, like teeth against his skin. At the same time, he could see her in Heüala, her massive, multi-headed form engaged in a battle with Queila Meina and Steel. Around her were the colourless souls of ancient killers. And he could see her in the fields of paradise, a young girl with dark wings unfolding from her back. ‘Don’t suffer for nothing,’ the girl in the field said. ‘He cannot return to Heüala,’ the young woman in the room said. ‘All is lost if he does.’

  ‘The battle has begun.’ The blond man appeared behind the god. ‘Are you sure it is wise to stay here with him? There are stone giants attacking the edges of Ranan. They will be able to reach us here if we do not ride out to them.’

  ‘My Faithful have been warned. They know what to expect in the streets.’ Gently, she rolled Zaifyr onto his side. ‘But in the end, what happens in the streets of Ranan is a consequence of what happens here, of whether he lives or dies.’

  ‘It is not how I am used to fighting a war.’

  Behind them, a door opened.

  ‘General Waalstan has been returned,’ a man’s voice said. ‘He lies below us, before the altar. Do you wish for me to take the field?’

  ‘No, Aela,’ Se’Saera said. ‘Have your soldiers protect the cathedral. If our enemies reach the centre of Ranan, they will try to take the cathedral, and you will be needed here.’

  ‘Will they reach us?’

  ‘I see that they do and that they do not. Everything rests on these moments.’

  In the field, Zaifyr felt a cold hand on his shoulder. He could see Se’Saera’s wings spread and could see her mouth move, but he could not hear what she said.

  Then, everything was still.

  It was as if the world took a breath, held it, and then released it.

  Zaifyr felt himself being helped from the floor. His body was weak, his limbs without strength. It was a debilitation he expected after being dead, but his weakness went further, to such an extent that he felt as if he had been hollowed. Around him, the morning’s sun lit the room brightly, and along the face of the man who held him, scars burned like hot wires. Aela Ren, Zaifyr realized, wanting to pull away, but unable.

  Around him, the world took shape with every step the Innocent took. Damaged walls let the sun in fully to shine through the broken floor. In one of the rooms below, amidst shattered furniture, lay the still form of his brother, Jae’le.

  ‘He fought well,’ Ren said, a strange note of sadness in his voice. ‘But the years had changed him too much.’

  A broken sword lay near him, but it was the countless wounds across his thin body that drew Zaifyr’s eye. They were concentrated around his chest and his stomach, but they ran up his neck, to his face. No single wound had been fatal, Zaifyr knew. It was the combined wounds that killed him.

  Come,’ the Innocent said, moving towards to door. ‘You are wanted downstairs.’

  Darkness engulfed Zaifyr.

  It was just the hall. Just the loss of the sun. But he felt as if he was all of existence in the darkness, as if he had been stripped down to his grief. He knew the rest of his family would be revealed to him and he could not let their deaths grow inside him until they consumed him. He had to prepare himself. He took a step, but it was not a step taken with the aid of Aela Ren. It was a step that did not take him forwards. He felt icy water around him. The pain in his chest returned. Salt water spilled from his mouth. There was a pressure on his head. He wanted to swim upwards, but he could not. He could not move. He was on the verge of panic when a light appeared next to him and revealed that he was inside a sphere. It was not a small sphere and he was in the centre of it. Around him colours began to illuminate in vibrant reds, greens and blues. They were like giant waves suspended in the air above him. Within each of them were dozens of variations of colour, each of them a strand, and each of them cross-stitched, hatched and woven back and forth through the suspended waves, binding them together in a whole.

  Before his gaze, the waves began to move, to pulse and shift. From waves came canopies, as if he were in a forest, not an ocean. From canopies came twists, as if he was watching someone stitching. As if what he saw could be held. It was then that Zaifyr realized that he was not alone, but his company was not human, or conscious in any way he would have recognized. Instead, they were thoughts, ideas, concepts, each of them personified into a presence that shaped the light, that split it into strands and gave it movement, as if they were a breath. Slowly, Zaifyr drifted towards the colour, his broken boots finding a purchase that he could not see. When he touched the strands, he felt grief, his grief, and he realized how important it was to acknowledge life, to be part of a culture, a society. His grief was not just for him, but for others who had lost as well. Death was not singular, but communal. With that recognition, he saw the consciousness that he had first sensed when he entered the sphere, and he named it: the Wanderer, the God of Death. Beyond him, Zaifyr sensed others, others whose thoughts were kin to the strange and alien thoughts closest to him, the thoughts that belonged to gods who were dead, who were dying, and who were alive.

  He stepped out of the stairwell at the bottom of the broken cathedral, still in the grasp of Aela Ren.

  Ayae lay there. Her neck was bent at a strange angle, and the ground was black with soot, but it was her eyes, her brown eyes, that appeared to linger on him, to ask him why he hadn’t been there with her.

  Not far from her lay soldiers. There was no common uniform to suggest that a certain force had attacked, but Zaifyr saw the black-and-red armour of the First Queen of Ooila, and the mix of s
tyles and type, from leather, to plate, to chain, that typified mercenaries. Many he didn’t recognize, but the scarred-faced white man next to a black woman was familiar. Captain Kal Essa, of the Brotherhood. He had been at Mireea. His spiked mace was broken, and it appeared that the Ooilan soldier had tried to protect him after it shattered, but to no avail. Just beyond them lay Aned Heast, his head split open. Another man, a man in the clothes of a tribesman from the Plateau, lay dead behind him.

  Zaifyr’s numbness grew as Aela Ren led him through the carnage of dead soldiers. He carried Zaifyr to a gathering of men and women at the front of the cathedral, where the doors were broken. There, he could hear voices, but the words made little sense to him. He closed his eyes, expecting it to be the voices of the dead, of the people he knew, but he was startled to realized that it was not.

  He could no longer hear the dead.

  ‘Se’Saera,’ Ren said, as the two drew closer to her. ‘He is here.’

  Neither could he feel the god’s presence digging into his skin.

  ‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘The battle has been won and lost. There are a few loose ends. A witch, a few soldiers. Nothing important.’ Behind her, Zaifyr could see his sister, Aelyn. She had fallen to her knees beside Eidan’s body. ‘All my enemies are dead but for you, Qian. You are all that lives.’

  An old Saan warrior carried a body up the stairs and laid it out, next to Eidan. Tinh Tu. The Saan muttered to himself over her, then kicked her. The movement caught Aelyn’s attention and she rose, suddenly angry, but was stopped by another man Zaifyr knew, the saboteur Bueralan. His tattooed arm reached out and fell onto her shoulder. Behind him, crouched a tall, thin figure in a hooded cloak. ‘Get out of here, Dvir,’ Bueralan Le said. ‘Before she kills you.’

  Aelyn jerked out of his grasp and turned to Se’Saera. ‘What are you going do with my last brother?’ she asked.

  The god smiled. ‘I am going to return him to his prison.’

  11.

  The door did not so much as open as fall off its hinges. Sunlight lanced painfully into Zaifyr’s eyes as it did.

  He had experienced this before, over a thousand years ago. Jae’le had opened the door and stood in the doorway, but it was not his brother’s shadow who stood there now. Over the last five years, Zaifyr had been reacquainted with the crooked tower, the prison that Jae’le had made. The life his brother had given it had leached away, drawn out by Se’Saera. Each time a bird landed on the crude roof, or the scuttle of a lizard ran along the stones, he heard earth break, saw cracks emerge, and he would say his brother’s name. He had tried to stop himself. He was in the last of Jae’le’s life, trapped in the decay not of a body but of a soul, until the tower finally broke apart to let him stumble out, eyes weeping at the brightness of the sun he had not seen before, a new shadow standing in his path.

  Hard hands lifted him. ‘Brother,’ a woman’s voice said.

  ‘Aelyn.’ Through the streaks of his vision, he could only make out the shape of her. ‘Aelyn,’ he repeated.

  She led him out of the tower. His feet were bare – he had taken off his shoes years ago – and the rocks dug sharply into him. Soon, he was lowered into a chair. A table was near him and, as his vision took shape, he saw food and drink laid out on it.

  ‘How do you feel?’ his sister asked him.

  ‘Weak.’ He reached for the jug. ‘Is that water?’

  ‘Let me pour it.’ He saw the shapes move, felt a cup pressed into his hands. ‘Drink slowly. It will make you sick if you don’t.’

  Aelyn appeared before him as he took it. Her dark hair was cut close to her head, revealing her neck and the shape of her skull. She was pale, but not as pale as she had been when he last saw her. She had, he thought, a drawn look about her, one he was sure that he shared. ‘Before, I didn’t even feel hunger or thirst,’ he said as he sipped the cool water. ‘It came and went this time.’

  ‘Se’Saera left us our immortality but little else.’ Behind Aelyn, he could see a small farmhouse and a fenced yard. In it were two grey horses. ‘We can say her name as much as we wish, now. She took what she wanted.’

  Their power. Their divinity. Zaifyr had realized that when he was on a ship, chained in its hold, a prisoner on his way to Eakar, to the tower that lay behind him in a decayed, broken form.

  ‘Here.’ Aelyn pushed towards him half a loaf of brown bread. ‘Small bites.’

  He tore an edge off with his fingers. ‘Does no one come to visit you?’ he asked.

  ‘Not for years.’ She offered him half a smile. ‘Bueralan did, for a while. But what we had to share was only despair. In the end, his duty to Se’Saera’s children became more and more important to him. I did not mind when he stopped coming.’

  He chewed slowly, resisting the urge to devour the loaf. Aelyn had come to the tower shortly after he was delivered by Aela Ren. She had spoken to him through the walls, and they had argued, and fought. He had expected her to leave, but instead, she had built a farmhouse. The ground, she told him, was no longer poisoned, the river clean, and after a while, it stopped mattering what they had said to each other in anger, what they accused each other of. They had both made mistakes. They had both failed.

  They were the only family they had left.

  ‘Some news still finds its way to me,’ Aelyn said quietly. ‘Nothing ever good. Anemone, the Witch of Refuge, was killed a few months back, bringing to an end the Faithless Uprising. There are still pockets of resistance, of course. I don’t think Se’Saera will ever be free of it, truthfully, but this was the end of Muriel Wagan’s uprising. The last part of it, at any rate.’ The Lady of the Ghosts, Aelyn told Zaifyr, had died two years ago. ‘She was killed by General Zilt. He has surpassed Aela Ren in favour, of late.’

  ‘Maybe they will go to war.’ He tore another piece of bread apart, not believing his own words. ‘Have you seen her children?’

  ‘Look up and you will see them yourself.’

  The bright sunlight still stung his eyes, but it was not as bad as before. The whole, complete sun would take him time to get used to, but not as much as the dark, winged shapes that marked the sky before it. They were at a distance, and so Zaifyr could not see their faces clearly, but he could see their wings, and could imagine them descending from the sky, taking those that they wanted to feast upon, or those that Se’Saera wanted killed, or brought to her.

  The children were remade souls, Aelyn told him. Se’Saera took the souls that the gods had made originally and rebuilt them into her new flesh. The very first, the one he had seen crouched by Bueralan in Ranan, had not been subsumed in this way, however. He had been an old god’s soul, like Zaifyr and Aelyn, but those that had been born after, which had been seeded in the wombs of women by the god herself, had been different. They were remade souls and it was through these children that the god influenced fate. Humanity was but chattel, and each year, fewer and fewer natural births were recorded, to the point, Zaifyr was told, that a pregnant woman was now viewed as a tragic figure. In the sky, the dark shapes shifted and glided, a certain cruel elegance in their movements that reminded Zaifyr of Se’Saera in Heüala . . . and, as he thought that, he lost the sense of himself. He was dimly aware of Aelyn speaking, of her asking if he wanted more water, but he was not there.

  A chill ran through his body, through his very soul, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. Above him, the sky changed. It turned dark, and then formed into a sphere. Blue strands weaved around his fingers as if they were stems growing from his very soul.

  ‘They are not to be touched,’ a familiar voice said. ‘They are not real, except when they are, of course. Then they are real and lived in.’

  The Children of the Gods

  ‘We found the child on the coast just as the Battle of Ranan began,’ Aelyn said. ‘We found him on the day my family died.

  ‘I have relived that day so many times in my mind. I have seen myself listen to Bueralan as he talks to the child. I have asked myself why I agreed to take him
back to Ranan.’ She paused. I believe, had she been a different person, Aelyn Meah would have wept. But the woman before me was over ten thousand years old. She would not weep for her mistakes, no matter what had happened since. ‘I believe it came from a desire of hope,’ she said, surprising me. ‘Certainly, it is what I heard in Bueralan’s voice when he spoke. He wanted the child to be of such hope that it would make the suffering he had seen understandable. It would frame the world for him.

  ‘For a while, it did.

  ‘For a while, it did for me, as well. After the Battle of Ranan, Se’Saera gave a speech. I am sure you have heard it. She held up the heads of her enemies and proclaimed a new dawn. I was there. I watched her lift the heads of those I loved. The child made it easier that day. The child gave me hope that the sacrifices I had made were not in vain.’

  —Onaedo, Histories, Year 1029

  1.

  ‘They are possibilities,’ Soren said to Zaifyr. ‘They are fate. They are all of its potentials, its promises, and its fears.’

  ‘Why can I touch it?’ He turned to the man who had been Anguish, the man whose cold, white-skinned hand had brought him back to the sphere he floated in. ‘Tell me why if all of time exists together, if there is no past, present and future, why does it look like this?’

  ‘Because that is how you comprehend it.’ Soren released him. ‘This is your creation. You have made it.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I told you that I was a deceit when we first met,’ he said. ‘But I am not your deceit. I am just one small soul woven into fate by the Wanderer. He saw that I was born and ensured that Se’Saera would make me again. He left me a message to give to you, but it was not until I lay in the field of paradise that I could put aside Anguish and recall that.’