The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  Ahead, stones burst across the street in a new volley from the catapults. As before, Ayae saw them skid off the roofs of houses near where the last giant stood. Its body, she saw, was cracked and splintered from attacks and she was surprised that it was still whole, and not broken apart like the other two.

  Around the buildings near it were soldiers. It pleased Ayae to see that the dominant force was that of the Saan and that they held a defensive line around the handful of houses that shook off the catapults’ attacks with minimal damage. The fighting was slow, carried out between shots from the catapults, and as the Leerans were pushed back by both their own soldiers and Tinh Tu’s force, Ayae and Jae’le jogged through the defensive line. To reach it, they had passed bodies of men, women and horses, the flesh mingled into the stone, the blood soaking into the earth.

  Past the line, they went through the open door of the first building. Inside, Eidan sat in the centre of the room, his eyes open, his hands flat against the floor. He nodded to Jae’le and Ayae as they entered, but said nothing. Behind him, Vyla Dvir, Vune and a soldier from Yeflam Ayae did not know moved among the two dozen wounded that were lying down or propped against the wall.

  ‘The bridges are down, the Leerans knew I would be here, their siege engines are focused on us, and we have a mercenary company to our right fighting for us.’ Tinh Tu sat at a table to the left of the wounded. Her white raven stood across from her and watched her write with an old quill as she spoke. ‘But you knew that, didn’t you, brother?’

  ‘The mercenaries are two groups, actually. As for the bridges,’ Jae’le said, ‘I thought Eidan planned to cross the gap with one of his giants?’

  ‘It is partly why I made them.’ There was a strain in the stout man’s voice as he spoke. ‘I just need Ayae to take over here for a moment.’

  ‘Here?’ she asked. ‘You mean the building?’

  ‘Keep the roofs strong so that we have some cover. Sil’s servant is out there and it means I need to focus completely on the bridge I make. If it is imperfect, she will exploit that.’

  Despite herself, she was surprised and hesitant. ‘I’ve never done anything to a building.’

  ‘Just feel for the structure of it. Let yourself strengthen what is there.’ Rocks hit the roof in a loud, vicious series of smacks and skids. ‘I only need a minute or two to make the bridge.’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’

  He offered her a faint smile. ‘It is not something anyone else could do.’

  That did not reassure Ayae, but she turned and approached the front wall, regardless. Through the doorway, she could see Leeran soldiers approaching through the rubble, armed with swords and axes. They would reach the Saan line soon, and even as Ayae felt a part of herself reaching out for the stone around her, another part of her thought that she should be out there, fighting. She could make a difference out there, unlike in here. The earth had already been dug up and reshaped and rebuilt. It felt strange to her, though it did not feel unnatural. She could feel the life in the building, a strange presence without sentience, created from the connections of the rock and the soil. It was Eidan’s influence, she knew. He had made Ranan. He had made it with honesty, for he made all his buildings with that. He told the earth about where it would go, what it would be used for. He recognized the importance of the relationship between the earth and the creations of humans and he honoured that in his work. He did not seek to dominate, but rather to foster coexistence, to be part of a network that connected the living and the artificial together. In gentle hints and nudges, Ayae felt her awareness sweep through those connections, as if she was being led by Eidan himself, into the body of the building, and those next to it.

  ‘Do not lose yourself, Ayae.’ He rose to his feet and walked to the door. He paused there and turned to her. ‘Hold it for a minute. I won’t be long.’

  10.

  The collapsed bridges left a wide, dark ring around the centre of Ranan like a moat. It was a comparison the Captain of Refuge did not enjoy.

  Once he and the others had secured the ruined end of the street, Heast ordered Lehana and Essa to his position. He pulled in Refuge and the Brotherhood so that they sat on the edge of the Saan defensive line. Both soldiers approached him with a question about the order – it bunched up their force, kept them closer to the concentration of siege fire and allowed the archers at the cathedral to have better luck with their pot shots – but as Lehana and Essa reached him, a collection of heavy rocks ricocheted off the roof and over the Saan position. Though the three of them could not see where they landed, they heard the stones hit other buildings and heard the cries of Leeran soldiers caught in it.

  ‘Miat Dvir didn’t organize that.’ Essa crouched in front of Heast, beside Lehana. The remains of a shattered wall ran beside him, revealing a street covered in broken stone, boulders and soldiers. Archers from Refuge and the Brotherhood lay spread out like a spray of stones to catch any Leeran who tried to come across. There hadn’t been any, however, since Kye Taaira tore through their main charge. ‘But it looks like he got his wish,’ the Captain of the Brotherhood continued. ‘He found the cursed he wanted in Yeflam and got them to help him.’

  ‘I don’t know if they’re helping,’ Heast said, ‘or leading.’

  ‘I hope they have a plan to cross over the divide, because if they don’t, we need one, and I don’t like the idea of running back for the first bridges.’ Lehana had a long scrape across her chest plate from a sword that had got too close. ‘But we can’t sit here. Those catapults will be readjusted to hit around the buildings soon enough.’

  Sergeant Qiyala’s voice barked out, ‘Incoming!’ as a stone rose into the sky and came down long and loud a block away from where Heast and the others crouched.

  The ruins of a building burst apart.

  ‘Well,’ Essa said. ‘Now you’ve done it.’

  Lehana grimaced. ‘I hate siege weapons.’

  ‘The Faaishans have got to be reaching them. If not, it won’t matter if we’re here or over the other side at the cathedral. Those catapults’ll get us eventually.’

  ‘Leave it to me.’ Heast pushed himself up and made his way towards the far wall, where the injured had been placed. All things considered, the Captain of Refuge considered the push up to this point successful. He had lost thirty-three soldiers and had another half-dozen injured. Only one of them, Heast believed, would not return to this battle. The former First Queen’s Guard Jaela had been among the four soldiers caught in one of the catapult bombardments and while she had, miraculously, survived where her companions had not, debris from a building had struck her, broken her collarbone and sword arm, and smashed her head into the ground. She had been unconscious since.

  ‘Anemone.’ He interrupted the witch, who was bent over a soldier, mending a leg. ‘How’re you holding up?’

  ‘We’re doing okay.’ She lifted her bloody hands from the leg, revealing a jagged wound. ‘I can do nothing for Jaela here, but she’s the worst. Being unconscious is the best thing for her.’ She rose into a crouch and came near him. ‘My grandmother says you have a look as if you’re going to give me an order I won’t like.’

  He grunted in acknowledgement. ‘Do you see the stone giant?’

  ‘I do—’

  A shout went up through Refuge, a cry that there was a man out there, a man approaching the giant.

  Heast moved to the broken wall. There, he could see the solid white man in loose and ragged clothes walking calmly to the still giant. As if awakened by the man’s presence, the stone began to move, the limbs of the giant grinding together with a sound both raw and horrific, as if parts of the earth had been given bones and muscle. It raised its face and, lit by the fires that burned throughout Ranan, Heast saw that the giant had no facial features. Its smooth head suggested not just a blindness, but rather an emptiness, as if it was nothing more than a construction made by the man who strode beneath its feet.

  ‘Incoming!’ Essa yelled. ‘Soldiers an
d siege!’

  Heast turned to see Leeran soldiers clearing the broken buildings to his right. The first man, wearing tattered leather armour, dropped suddenly, a bolt in his head, but there were more behind him. ‘Essa, hold them back!’ The ground shuddered as the giant took its first step. ‘Lehana! Ready the lances! We go over once the bridge is made!’

  A series of loud cracks and the sound of breaking earth followed Heast’s orders. The Leeran attack wasn’t huge – there was a bigger force surrounding the cathedral – but they were swarming over the rubble, unconcerned by arrow and bolt. Essa, shouting orders, had his spiked mace out, his soldiers falling in around him. Trusting in the man, Heast turned to the stone giant in time to watch both it and the man beneath it begin to fall as a dozen missiles of rock and boulder and pitch from catapults rained down. They hit the ground so hard that it split and began to give way into the darkness beneath Ranan.

  Taking both the man and the giant with it.

  He called out to Anemone, but she had already climbed over the broken wall she had been standing behind with him. Heast didn’t hesitate: he pushed himself up the uneven ground, his sword drawn, acting as a human shield for the witch. Within seconds, he was joined by Oya, Bliq, Fenna and Taaira, each of them carrying shields to link around Anemone as she exposed herself to the Leerans around the cathedral. Behind him, he heard sword and shield hit, heard Essa’s voice, but not his command. He heard Lehana as well, but Heast’s attention was on what was before him, on the breaking edge of the city, on darkness that had already swallowed the man and had latched onto part of the stone giant.

  But before it did, flickering white light filled the cracks along its body. Heast was reminded of the ghosts he had seen in Mireea, of the white outlines of men and women he had known, and he thought that he had been wrong about the giant, that it had not been a simple creation to be moved, but had instead been a living creature. The light surged through the giant’s frame, but as more and more of it appeared through the giant’s broken body, it became clear to Heast that the light was not part of it, but rather holding it, ensuring that its fall was not stopped, but controlled. Beside him, he heard Oya swear, and when he turned from the giant, he saw Anemone with blood running from her hands.

  The sound of splitting stone drew his attention back to the giant. He was just in time to see it topple across the empty expanse to the cathedral, the white light guiding it as it did, the old souls of the witches of Refuge ensuring that it came down to bridge the two parts of Ranan.

  ‘Refuge!’ Heast shouted. ‘Brotherhood!’ He pulled the horn from his belt and blew into it, long and hard. ‘We are crossing!’

  11.

  Ayae did not see Eidan’s fall, but she felt it. It was as if the awareness she had of the building was a series of connections that ran into the darkness where he fell. To her growing horror, she felt herself drawn with him, the body giving way, crumbling into the emptiness, her awareness stretching from where she stood . . . ‘Ayae.’ A voice. A hand. ‘Ayae.’ She heard her name, again. She saw her hand pressed against the wall of a building, a black-skinned hand on her arm. ‘Ayae,’ Jae’le repeated. ‘We have to go, now. We cannot stay here.’

  ‘Eidan,’ she began.

  ‘I know. I saw.’ He tightened his hand around her arm but she barely felt it. ‘There is nothing we can do.’

  ‘He isn’t dead,’ she said. ‘He’s still alive. Jae’le, we can help him.’

  ‘He must help himself.’ As if her hand was attached to the house, he prised her loose. ‘You and I must cross the bridge before the catapults are realigned.’

  He dragged her out onto the road. Pulling her hand free of his grasp, Ayae stumbled down the broken road after him, her mind still filled with the sensation of breaking and falling. She twisted past Tinh Tu, heard her orders to the Saan – ‘Let the mercenaries lead across the bridge, let them use their bodies’ – and she saw the white raven rise into the sky. In its mouth and claws were the pieces of paper that Tinh Tu had been writing on. Yet, as she thought how much of a target it made, how easy it would be for an arrow to fly through the sky, black swamp crows circled down and she lost sight of the raven as they made a defensive screen around it. Arrows caught a few, but not the white raven, and Ayae’s attention returned to the road as she stumbled over a rock. She felt groggy, unlike herself, her attention still on the darkness beneath Ranan where Eidan had fallen. She wanted to climb down there. She wanted to reach for Eidan. He lay at the bottom, alive but hurt. She passed Vune and Vyla Dvir, pushed past Miat and the Saan, and joined the mercenaries who swarmed across an uneven bridge. Beneath it, the darkness called to her, and the figure she knew was down there—

  A sudden roar of noise jolted her back to full awareness.

  The sound was unlike any she had heard before. It came from the mercenaries, from the lances they held. It was a portent, a promise of what was to come after printing presses, papers, alchemical flasks and magnifiers. A promise of wars that would be fought without swords, without curses, and without witches.

  It devastated the front line of the Leerans like no other weapon Ayae had ever seen. Soldiers lay on their backs and sides, their faces and chests torn open with small pellets of lead, stone and glass. Whatever force the black smoke had created when it exploded, it flung the pieces forwards at such a speed that the armour the Leerans worn had proven useless. The pellets had sunk through the gaps, ripped into the leather and sprayed into the soldiers’ faces.

  Where others came to a halt in the tremendous noise, Jae’le continued onwards. He moved with such an ease through the soldiers of Refuge and the Brotherhood that Ayae found herself struggling to keep up with him. Just when she thought she had lost him, he stopped suddenly and she nearly crashed into his back.

  Black smoke filled her nostrils, obscured her vision, but after a moment, she saw what Jae’le was looking at.

  The doors to the cathedral had opened.

  Men and women were emerging in a solemn procession. There was no sense of urgency, or fear, or eagerness about them. Even at this distance, Ayae knew that the mismatched soldiers had no concern about what was before them.

  ‘The Innocent’s army,’ Jae’le said quietly.

  Ayae went still. ‘Is the Innocent there?’

  ‘No. Joqan is at the head.’ He turned to her. ‘Let them come down. Let them attack. Let the soldiers of Refuge and the Brotherhood deal with them. Let them try their new weapons of war on the god-touched. What we want is inside.’

  At the top of the stairs, the immortal soldiers let out a roar and ran down the cathedral stairs. The sound they made contained such raw emotion that Ayae found herself momentarily stunned. She could only watch as they drew closer.

  ‘Refuge!’ Captain Heast’s voice barked out from her left. ‘Second wave of lances. Third be ready, fourth after. Hold your line off the bridge, not on it! Brotherhood! Secure those streets to our left and right. Don’t let them dig in!’

  Ayae saw him when she turned: the weighted stance forced by his steel leg singled him out to her, his close-cropped hair and face covered in dirt, a sword in his hand. At the sight of him, Ayae took a strange confidence, an odd reassurance, as if his presence here, in the middle of this battle, in a city that held the soldiers who had invaded Mireea a year ago, was right. Ayae could not elaborate on the feeling. She could not understand it in terms of the events unfolding around her. She could not explain how some of the weight in her lessened. As Jae’le began to move, she followed, her body not yet moving at its natural speed, but closer to it.

  Ahead, the Leerans parted and allowed the Innocent’s soldiers a path to Refuge.

  On their faces, Ayae saw the anger she had heard, the primal, inhuman emotion, built from such hate that she could not help but think of Sooia.

  Explosions burst out from the front line of Refuge. Black smoke billowed in the air. The god-touched soldiers staggered, but continued their advance. The soldiers of Refuge dropped to their knees and lift
ed their shields. A second line stepped forwards, lances raised, a burning cord at the end carrying a flame up to the base of a small container, up and up and—

  The god-touched soldiers went down in the roar of smoke.

  Ayae saw the man in the lead – Joqan? – fall, his body ripped open, like the Leeran soldiers before. A dozen others fell with him, and the speed with which they went down broke the charge of the god-touched.

  Ayae and Jae’le burst through a gap on their right and came upon flat-roofed buildings and a chaotic street filled with Leerans. Jae’le boosted Ayae up, onto the first roof, and she grabbed his arm and hauled him up, the two above the street’s chaos within a heartbeat. Ahead of them, swamp crows dropped down and dived and pecked at soldiers. The two ran along the roofs filled with the crows, jumping gaps, bursting through small clumps of soldiers around ballistas, avoiding the Leerans below them, running above a force that had, until moments ago, been unified. They would be again, Ayae knew. From her height, she could see officers bringing order to the soldiers around them. They did it in silence, not in words, but they were unquestionable. By the time Ayae and Jae’le reached the cathedral’s steps, order had been returned. On the stairs, she turned around and saw the battle spilling across the prone form of the stone giant, pouring from its broken head as if the violence around it was a series of dreams that it was having.

  Then she was in the cathedral.

  Inside, the sound of the battle became a dull echo around her, as if she was inside the beating of a giant heart.

  Jae’le walked ahead of her, his sword drawn. On either side of him were empty wooden pews, but it was the altar at the front of them that he was drawn to.

  A single body lay there.

  Ayae could tell only that it was male and white. She could see nothing of his features, for his head had been split open with a sword.

  ‘Waalstan,’ Jae’le said softly. ‘Ekar Waalstan.’

  ‘He died only recently,’ she said. ‘The blood from his wound is not dry yet. Can you imagine the pain he was in?’