The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  ‘Aela Ren brought him here.’ Jae’le left the altar and walked towards the stairs on the left, the stairs that led higher into the heart. ‘I didn’t realize it at the time. I saw Ren return, but the figure he carried was covered in a cloth and I could not see his face. I thought that he carried a dead man, for the cloth was soaked with blood. But as you said, it has only just begun to dry.’

  Ayae hurried after him. ‘Is the Innocent in here?’ She did not ask about Se’Saera. She could feel the sensation of teeth against her skin, but it was faint, as if the god was a distance away.

  At the entrance to the stairs, he turned to her. ‘You leave him to me. You leave our new god to me, as well. Take Zaifyr and get him to safety. We don’t have much time here. Even now the catapults in Ranan are being turned against the cathedral. Tinh Tu’s orders to the Faaishans to destroy them – orders that contain the catapults’ locations – have only just been received.’ Ayae saw the white raven flying into the sky, papers held in its beak.

  ‘No matter what happens when we reach the top of the cathedral,’ Jae’le continued, ‘you take my brother to safety, please.’

  She nodded, not trusting herself to tell him that no, she would not leave him. Not trusting either her conviction or ability.

  The stairs twisted up and around four floors, but Jae’le did not enter any of the hallways. He moved up the stairs quickly, smoothly, not once doubting the path he was on. On the second floor, huge windows revealed the battle of Ranan to Ayae. The nightmare that she had seen spilling from the head of the stone giant before the cathedral was much more complete here. She could see the landscape riddled with pools of fire, siege towers, ballistas, catapults, broken streets, ruined buildings, and thousands of men and women fighting in numbers Ayae had never seen before.

  On the fourth floor, the doorway was empty, and the room it led to held a waiting light. Ayae took a breath as she followed Jae’le inside.

  Four people waited in the middle of the room. Two of them stood, the first a monster like the ones she had seen in Yeflam, the second a handsome blond man in strange leather armour made from strips that wound around his body. But it was not to them that Ayae’s gaze was drawn. No. She stared at the scarred man who knelt in the middle of the floor beside a beautiful blonde young woman.

  Beside Se’Saera.

  The god was still, as if she was a statue, and the sensation of being devoured that Ayae had come to associate with her was as faint as it had been at the entrance of the cathedral. More startling was that Se’Saera’s face was fractured, the skin broken like porcelain that had been dropped. Through the lines in her skin, Ayae could see movement, and she had the sudden, awful realization that a living entity was there, trying to emerge, to break through the god’s body. Gazing at it, Ayae felt herself drawn to something other than this world, an existence different to her own, one with an endless amount of possibilities. But, when she blinked, it was no longer there. She saw only darkness beneath the god’s skin, and it was a darkness of nothing.

  Beside her, the Innocent rose.

  ‘She is not dead, not yet.’ He spoke calmly, as if the two who had entered were his friends. ‘Fate unfolds around us.’

  ‘We are not above it, Aela.’ Jae’le held his sword pointed to the ground. ‘You cannot pretend that you are.’

  ‘I know the part I play.’ He stepped in front of Se’Saera. ‘It is the part I have always played. I am the creator of myth and reason. You are that as well, Jae’le. You are one of the immortals who has strode the earth in the absence of the gods. In thirty thousand years, when these moments are rewritten, we will be seen as villains and heroes, myths and parables. Who we are will not matter.’

  He took another step towards the Innocent. ‘I have come for my brother.’

  ‘He lies in the corner.’ Behind Ren, the blond man spoke. He pointed to where Zaifyr lay on his side. ‘I will not give him to you. You are the intruder here and you will be dealt with appropriately.’

  Jae’le said nothing.

  ‘Zilt will not die easily,’ the Innocent said, his hand falling to his weapons. ‘But then, who of us will?’

  It was then that siege fire smashed into the cathedral.

  The Last Designs

  ‘I wish that we had killed him.’ The silence of Leviathan’s End was like a shroud around Aelyn Meah. ‘Is that not awful?’ she asked me. ‘To wish that you had killed a child?’

  —Onaedo, Histories, Year 1029

  1.

  It was not the first volley of stones from the catapults that ripped through the wall of the cathedral, but the third. The first series of stones hit low on the building, enough to make it shudder, for cracks to run through the walls. The second struck high, almost at the same time, high enough to shatter the tall windows Ayae had passed on the stairwell, and to rip parts of the roof away. The cathedral rocked as both volleys hit and, inside, Ayae struggled for balance. Ahead of her, Jae’le did not move, nor did Aela Ren. The two behind them, however, had spread out. Not one of them showed concern at the attacks on the cathedral. As if to challenge their disregard, a third volley came, and it was this one, the largest of the three attacks, that tore open the cathedral.

  The roof shattered inwards, stones the size of her body breaking through the wood and metal on the roof, splintering the windows and smashing into the floor.

  Ayae turned instinctively, shielding her eyes as the room burst apart. When she removed her hand from her eyes, she found herself staring at the staircase she had come up. For a moment, it did not register to her that it was no longer there, that the stairwell led to a long drop into spiked wood and shards of glass, but then her stomach lurched, and the sight of Ranan alight with battle came to her in a dizzying, unframed openness.

  She turned, but in doing so, found that the broken edge of the cathedral revealed even more of Ranan. A thin half-moon of the room’s floor extended out over the sight, with buttresses of glass and wood offering a symbolic protection from the elements and arrows. Ayae heard a creak as she gazed at it, and when she turned, she saw the hulking creature running from the broken, shadowed part of the middle of the room. She grabbed the hilt of her sword, but Jae’le’s hand pulled her back and he stepped into the creature’s path, his sword drawn.

  Jae’le’s sword ripped through the armour and skin of the creature, but as it did, the creature dropped to the ground and revealed the slim figure of the strangely armoured Zilt behind it. He led with his knife and barrelled straight into Jae’le, catching him off balance. He lost his sword, but trapped the soldier’s arm against his side and smashed his palm into Zilt’s face. The other man wrapped his spare arm around him just as the creature Jae’le had slashed rose.

  With a roar, she charged, and with her arms spread, picked up both men. With them in her grasp, the creature went over the broken edge of the cathedral, into the wood and debris below.

  Ayae threw herself after Jae’le, but she was not close enough, not fast enough to grab part of him, not even the edge of his green-feathered cloak, before he fell.

  Gripping the edge of the broken floor, Ayae looked over, but she could see nothing.

  Behind her, she heard a step.

  She was on her feet, both swords drawn, before she realized that there was only one other person in the room with her.

  The Innocent stood in front of her, his weapons still sheathed. Behind him, the smoke-filled moon and firelit sky shone through the broken room, highlighting the scars that mapped his body. There was not a part of him that was untouched: the lines, both jagged and straight, thin and thick, ran across his neck, his face, and beneath the black shorn stubble of his hair. It left him with the appearance of a man who was not so much born, but built. A monster made from an old world. ‘I doubt that any of them are dead.’ He spoke in a voice that was mild, even polite. ‘At least, not yet.’

  ‘Feel free to chase them.’ What was it that Jae’le had said about the Innocent? What did he say was important? ‘I’ll ev
en step aside for you.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’ He regarded her intently. ‘You are from Sooia, are you not?’

  Hide who you are from him. ‘Mireea. I was born in Sooia.’ The distinction was important to make, even as she heard Jae’le’s voice.

  ‘I was born in Sooia, as well,’ Aela Ren replied. ‘It was in the southern part of the country, in a village that no longer exists, near a mountain long gone.’ He offered her a faint smile. ‘It was there that my god found me. I was a loyal servant to Wehwe for thousands and thousands of years, but I never forgot my home. It was why I returned there after the War of the Gods.’ The Innocent responded to the horror on her face with a twist in his smile, a deepening of the scars around his face, an acknowledgement of what she felt. ‘A god is alien, child. It is not like you or me. Not in substance, not in thought. You cannot explain it in your own words. You must use the language it created. When that is all that remains of the gods, you have only echoes of what once defined the world.’

  ‘Is that how you justify what you have done?’ Ayae felt her voice catch. She took a breath and tried to calm herself. ‘You sought to kill an entire race of people – your own people!’

  ‘I thought to spare them the emptiness that is the endless silence of their soul. In my despair, it was all that I was capable of.’ His scarred hands fell lightly to the hilt of his sword and dagger. ‘It was not until recently that I realized I was doing what my master and his kin wished. The fate that we stand in is their creation. It is also the creation of Se’Saera. In both these creations I have been used to define the world without gods.’

  ‘You could have said—’

  He was upon her before finished speaking, his sword and dagger drawn.

  He moved with such speed, such deadly accuracy, that had Ayae’s swords not been drawn, he would have cut through her defences, and into her.

  But her swords were drawn. She turned away his first thrust, blocked his stab, parried a third attack, and stepped to her right for the fourth, conscious that each move was a retreat, an attempt to buy time to calm herself, to find the centre she needed within herself, and without. She needed time to position herself, to push aside her fear, to find the divinity that was within her. In her head, she could hear Jae’le’s voice, urging her to hold a part of herself back, to hide it, but she could not find a part of herself to present to him, yet.

  Her turn to the right, towards the mostly entire wall, presented the Innocent to the night sky, to the world defined by war. A gap appeared in his defence and, without thinking, Ayae pushed it, her hands cold and heavy, her blades not as fast as she needed them to be. He ducked and weaved and continued her turn, so that it was her back, not his, that was against Se’Saera and Zaifyr.

  He pressed her, then. He came forwards and she caught his dagger, turned it away, blocked his sword, stepped away from the stomp of his boot. Ayae cut down, was blocked, weaved back. She thrust forwards, parried his sword, and as her left-handed sword came up, felt his dagger punch into her right hip, felt it bite deep into her armour, through to her skin. Panicked, she slashed downwards and pedalled back. As she did, Ren ripped the knife out of her, tearing it through the leather armour as he did.

  She dropped her hand to the wound, to staunch the blood, pressing through cloth and leather to find that what was lodged in her was a piece of steel.

  ‘How interesting,’ Aela Ren said, examining the broken blade of his knife as she pulled the end out and dropped it, bloodily, to the floor. ‘It felt as if I was stabbing stone.’ He lowered the blade, met her gaze. ‘Still, unless you have other tricks, child, it won’t be enough.’

  Fire burst along the blade of her sword suddenly. Hide who you are. ‘I’ve a few,’ she said, ignoring Jae’le’s voice.

  2.

  The stones and pitch hurled by the catapults broke open the crown of the cathedral, crashed into the walls to reveal an empty library and small rooms. Some fires burned in the building, but most were further down, littered across the stairs to the cathedral. The stones and pitch also fell across the flat-roofed buildings below, just as they tore into the streets and soldiers friendly and not, and left the battle beneath the cathedral one of chaos.

  Heast’s first instinct was to find cover behind him, back in the ruins of Ranan. With one exit, he was confident that he could drain the Leerans from their position around the cathedral. The lines of command in the opposition were, if not broken, then damaged and able to be exploited. But the presence of the single bridge was exactly why he ordered Refuge and the Brotherhood towards the cathedral and did not retreat. He didn’t hold the bridge. He couldn’t hold it. It was not even a bridge, technically. It was the remains of a fallen giant, an animated figure Heast had no control over. If the giant fell into the crevasse, it fell, no matter what he said. If it rose up, it rose. If it did either, it would leave Heast with no immediate path to return to the centre of Ranan. He would be forced to make a new bridge and, in doing that, he would lose the momentum he had gained from both the fire lances and the Leerans’ indiscriminate use of catapults.

  He had to press forwards.

  He had to spend the soldiers to take the ground.

  To his left, Sergeant Qiyala and a squad of six were dragging the bodies of the god-touched behind the battle lines. The fire lances had brought down most of Aela Ren’s force and, though they had not risen, some were not dead, and Heast was taking no chances. When the bodies were dragged far enough from the fighting, Qiyala swung a heavy axe over the heads of each of them, while others dropped stakes into their bodies.

  The loss of the Innocent’s soldiers had blunted the Leeran counter-attack. The silent, ear-blocked soldiers still controlled the centre of Ranan, especially to the left, where Refuge fought in a long line over debris, but Heast did not believe they would take back what they had lost. Before the siege bombardment started, he had not been sure, but after, neither Refuge, the Brotherhood, nor the Saan would give up their hold. Still, Heast had seen Bliq and three others fall two houses up. It had been a combination of bolts and swords. Leerans had swarmed around the corner. Part of the Brotherhood had swung towards Bliq, Essa at its head, and the attack had broken against his wicked mace, but it highlighted what a small part of the Leerans was broken. To his right, a block over from Essa and his soldiers, the Saan fought. A pair of Ren’s soldiers had cut through a handful of Heast’s soldiers when the bombardment started, heading towards him, and the bridge, but the Saan had flooded into the breach that the god-touched made and pulled down Ren’s soldiers. The old woman who led them ordered them into the streets with her strange, compelling voice. When she passed Heast after the barrage of siege fire that damaged the cathedral, she offered him the faintest nod, before she was lost behind some houses. Beside her walked Miat Dvir and his wife. There was something about the Lord of the Saan’s stance that bothered Heast, but whatever it was, it would have to wait. The battle line on his left that Refuge and the Brotherhood made drew his attention. The fighting there was dense hand-to-hand combat and, through a broken buildings, Heast could see Lehana and Oya holding the centre. He could hear Lehana’s voice ringing out, again and again, with the command to hold the line. At the end of that line, towards the cathedral, Kye Taaira and a small squad held the flank.

  They would need reinforcing.

  The question was from where, however. Essa was still fighting further up. The line to his right had no fat in it. Qiyala was still dealing with the god-touched. In the bloodstained ruins around him, Anemone and a pair of soldiers tended to the wounded carried out of combat by a dozen soldiers led by Corporal Isaap.

  Heast would not send Anemone. He was not sure how much the witch had left in her since the bridge, and if he wanted those soldiers to be of any use again, he had to keep her with them.

  That left the Corporal.

  ‘Isaap,’ he cried out, then stopped.

  Beneath him, the ground began to shake. In the damaged cathedral, a piece of a window fell
out, twisting and turning until it splintered on the ground.

  Setting his steel leg to hold his balance, Heast at first thought that an earthquake had begun, but to his surprise, he felt the ground rise, much like a wave on a boat. Ahead of him, he saw his soldiers and the Leerans stumble and struggle to regain their footing as the ground rose again. As Heast caught his balance, he heard a loud crack and turned, just in time to see the bridge break, and the giant’s body slide with a loud crash into the chasm.

  Beyond it, Ranan disappeared.

  Awkwardly, Heast made his way stiff-legged towards the edge of the crevasse, unable to believe what he was seeing, unable to believe what was happening.

  The centre of Ranan was rising.

  Below him now, he could see the ruins Refuge and the Brotherhood had fought through, but on a much smaller scale, as if he were looking at a theatre set, shrunk to half the actual size for the actors to loom over. From his height, he could see the sprawling frames of the catapults throughout the city. They fired as the city rose, but the stones hit the pillar of earth beneath him: a pillar, Heast realized, that had taken the shape of a face.

  He stood over one of its eyes – an eye that was opening – and could clearly see in profile the hugeness of it, the massiveness that led to the rest of its features being mashed together. The ugly face was repeated to his left, and again to his right, revealing three identical faces, three faces defined by eyes of stone and dirt, a thick nose of darkest soil, and lips made from clay.

  ‘LEERANS,’ it said in a grinding voice. ‘YOUR GOD IS DEAD.’

  A dirty hand reached over the edge as it spoke. It was human and it reached onto the broken ground near Heast, bloodied and lined with black scars. A second hand covered in mud followed it. When the man’s filthy and bloody head came into view, Heast released the hilt of his sword, and stepped forwards to help the man who had made the bridge to his feet.