"Stones!" Jerael cried, tugging another rope. Across the roofs, his men pulled ropes with him. Sacks opened, spilling heavy stones, each the size of a man's head. The boulders rolled into the courtyard and slammed into the burning legionaries.
"Oil, fire, stones!" Atalia shouted, waving her weapons on a rooftop. "The lions roar! Come on, you sons of whores, you dogs who piss on walls!" She roared, blood on her face, eyes red, body cut and bruised a hundred times. "Plenty more for all of you, so come on! Come in!"
And more entered the city. Century after century. They trampled the corpses of their dead. They marched across the wall, sling stones slamming against their shields. They swarmed into street after street. They shattered the gates from within, and a thousand more Aelarians entered. The arrows flew, and their spears lashed, and they stormed into house after house, slaying all those within, and blood spilled across the city of Gefen.
A night of blood, of death, of flame. A night of walls crashing down. A night lions roared and died.
Across the city, they fell, the last warriors of the coast. A young soldier, only fourteen years old, screamed at Jerael's side, a spear crashing through his chest. A woman—she looked so much like Atalia—crashed down, trampled beneath the sandals of legionaries, her skull crushed. A spear drove into a grizzled warrior who had survived many wars, then pulled back, tugging out entrails. Jerael swung his blade, trying to hold them back, unable to stop the tide, the thousands of legionaries flowing through the city. They fought on the streets, in homes, on roofs. A legionary grabbed a babe, laughed, and tossed it into the air for another legionary to spear. Two legionaries ripped a daughter from her mother's arms, tore off her clothes, shoved a spear between her legs and laughed, thrusting their hips as they drove the spear deeper until it crashed out from her chest.
Jerael and Atalia rose onto the roof of their old home, the little house on the narrow street, by the stump of the fig tree. They stood together, back to back, gazing at the legionaries that filled the streets of Gefen. Thousands of them, as relentless and eternal as the sea.
Dawn rose, and Jerael knew that it was over.
"We do not surrender," Atalia whispered. "We do not let them take us alive."
Jerael clutched his sword with a trembling hand, knowing he could not do this, knowing that he must.
I'll do it quickly. His teeth ground. My blade into my daughter's heart, then into my own. Forgive me, God. Forgive me, forgive me.
His blade caught the morning light, and Atalia turned toward him, chin raised, eyes closed, tears on her cheeks.
"Do it quickly," she whispered. "I love you, Father. I love you so much."
She had never been braver.
Jerael raised his blade.
Horns.
Horns blew from the north.
Not the brass horns of Aelar but rams' horns, keening horns, horns of light, of Zohar.
Jerael looked to the hills beyond the city, and there he saw them. They emerged from the dawn, marching together, blades bright in the sunrise. An army of light and hope. Jerael's tears fell.
"The lions of Zohar still fight. Our city still stands."
KOREN
Koren had never known more fear.
As he ran into the city of Gefen, his heart thrashed against his ribs. His breath shook. His skull seemed to constrict, and he could barely breathe. Two thousand warriors of the hills, men and women in boiled leather, faces covered in war paint, roared at his sides. Their swords, axes, and spears shone. And Koren ran with them, roaring more in terror than rage, his sword—his old sword from his youth, the one his father had given him—raised before him.
"Slay the heathens!" shouted a Zoharite warrior at his side, her face twisted with rage.
"Cast them back into the sea!" cried a bearded man, swinging an axe.
"Father!" Koren cried. "Atalia!"
They stormed through the gates and down Potter Road. The legionaries turned toward them, shields clattering together, forming a wall. Their spears drove forth. Koren swung his sword, knocking a spear aside. The blade scraped across his armor, showering sparks. The bearded man at his side drove down his axe, cleaving an Aelarian shield. Koren shoved his blade into the opening, hit flesh, drew blood. He thrust again. Again. He tore through armor and the legionary fell, but more advanced, and flames and death covered the city.
On a street where Koren had once dueled his brother with wooden swords, he drove his blade into a man's throat. In a courtyard where he would draw with chalk, he painted the cobblestones with blood. In a garden where he and Maya had once watched baby birds in a nest, he watched an Aelarian cling to his spilling organs, trying to tuck them back in, calling for his mother. And Koren knew that should he survive this night, these streets would never more hold memories of family and love, only memories of broken flesh, shattered bones, severed limbs, screams and burning bodies.
"Father!" he cried hoarsely. "Atalia!"
A Zoharite warrior fell before him, throat slit—a young woman, no older than Maya, her sword clattering down from her hand. Another warrior of the northern hills, a gruff man with a grizzled beard, stumbled through the streets, a hole in his belly, his eyes burnt away, an arrow in his chest. Koren found himself stepping over corpses. He stumbled forward, slew a legionary, and knocked over a charred cradle, spilling out a burnt baby. He was lost. Trapped in a labyrinth of death. He no longer knew these streets. They had become the arteries of a giant, gushing with blood.
I died, Koren thought. I died and my soul sank to Ashael, forever cursed.
A spear drove toward him, nicking his thigh. He fell to his knees. The spear thrust again, tearing through his armor, stinging his chest. The legionary stood in fire, a demon of smoke and brimstone. Koren tried to knock the spear aside, but it tore his armor open, and his sword fell from his hand.
He was a boy, swimming in the sea with his brother, seeking hidden coins from sunken ships.
He was a young man, receiving his first prayer shawl and sword.
He was a son, a brother, sitting at the dining table before a feast, his family around him, candles casting their light, a painting of elephants above him, laughter and joy filling his home.
He was a soldier, his family far, dying alone.
The spear lashed again.
"Koren!"
The voice rose from another world, perhaps the voice of God, calling him to the sky.
"Koren, you piece of pig shit, get up!"
Koren raised his eyes and saw her there, a shadow leaping from a rooftop, plunging down a spear. The blade crashed into the legionary before Koren, driving through the shoulder and out the belly. The man collapsed, and Atalia landed on the cobblestones, snarling and panting, covered in blood.
She reached down her hand, grabbed him, and yanked him to his feet. "Hullo, Koren."
"Hullo, Atalia. I'm here to, um . . . rescue you?"
A legionary raced toward them. Atalia swung her sword, barely bothering to turn around, cutting the man down. "Excellent work so far. Just try to do more rescuing while standing and killing enemies, less by resting on the ground."
An arrow sailed from above and slammed into Koren's shield. He spun his sling, fired a stone, and hit a legionary on a roof. "Where's Father?"
"Fighting by the boardwalk." Atalia ducked and lashed her blade at a legionary's knees, knocking him down, then plunged her sword into his face. "Where's our older brother? Where's Epher?"
Koren began moving down the street, heading west toward the shore. Bloodstained houses rose at his sides, people cowering within, while legionaries and Zoharites fought on side streets. "Chose to go to Beth Eloh," he said. "Turns out there's some fun there too."
Atalia spat, walking at his side. "He was probably just worried I'd kill more legionaries than him over here."
"That's what I told him!"
They made their way through the cobbled streets of Gefen, the brick walls close at their sides. The stumps of palm trees rose among the corpses. Every step t
hey took, another Zoharite died—warriors on roofs and in alleyways, mothers, children. The legionaries stormed everywhere, clogging the city, hunting them down.
Finally Koren saw a round, columned courtyard between brick shops. Beyond it, a road led to the boardwalk. The sea spread ahead, and the ships of the enemy still anchored there, lanterns swaying. Fig trees had once grown here, and peddlers had sold honey cakes and steaming mint tea. Koren remembered playing here as a child, the cobblestones so hot under his feet he could not stop bouncing around, then running toward the sea and swimming for hours. The trees were gone now, the shops empty, the cobblestones sticky with hot blood.
"Let's make our way to the water," Atalia said. "We'll drown some eagles."
They were crossing the courtyard when the towering general emerged from between two columns. Koren froze, sucked in breath, and raised his sword. The legionary was taller than any man Koren had ever seen, even taller than Father. He wore fine armor, the dark iron lined with gold. His pauldrons spread out, embossed with eagles, while a red crest flared from his helmet. His face seemed just as hard as the armor—lined, cruel, the eyes dark and heartless.
This could only be one man—the man they whispered about around the Encircled Sea. The Sea Demon. The giant of a general who had conquered countless lands, slain countless innocents.
"General Remus Marcellus," Koren muttered. He remembered the stories. The stories every child had heard. It was Remus who had crucified a hundred children in the land of Leer, driving the nails in himself, simply to strike fear into their fathers and brothers.
Atalia spat. "I like tall men." She hefted her sword. "It's fun cutting them down to size."
With a roar, Atalia charged. Koren joined her, hand trembling but blade still raised. Before they could cross the courtyard, a hundred legionaries or more emerged between the columns, forming a wall of iron around the siblings. The Aelarians' shields rose, painted with golden eagles on red fields. Heavy iron bolts—large as fists—bulged from the centers. Atalia's sword slammed into one shield, Koren's into another, barely even denting them.
"The Sela pups." Remus stared at them from behind his men. "The prince wants them alive. We will give him his gifts." A thin smile stretched across the general's stony face. "But break them first."
The soldiers dropped their spears and advanced in a ring, shields held before them.
"Coward!" Atalia shouted and spat toward Remus. "Draw your sword and face me like a man, you son of a dog."
Yet the general still stood between the columns, staring over the heads of his troops. The hundred legionaries advanced step by step, closing in around Koren and Atalia, hidden behind their red and gold shields. The siblings stood back to back, splashed in blood, their scale armor tattered, their curved swords chipped.
"They're not taking us alive," Atalia said. "Koren, if they get close to capturing us, we fall on our swords."
Koren's eyes widened. "To Ashael with that! I want to live. Fight with me!"
Arms trembling, he charged and swung his blade. The iron crashed into a shield, cutting through layers of leather and canvas and chipping the hard wood beneath. But the shield drove forward, and the iron stud in its center slammed into Koren with the force of a giant's fist. He grunted and fell back, swung his sword again, and hit the rim of the shield, but he could not crack the metal lining. Another legionary stepped forth, shoving his shield before him like a ram, slamming it into Koren. He cried out, stumbled backward, and hit Atalia. Another shield crashed into him, chipping his armor.
Atalia fought behind him, screaming, sword flying madly. She managed to shatter one shield, to tear into the legionary holding it, but another man slammed his shield against her head, and she cried and fell.
"Atalia!" Koren knelt beside her, holding his sword up with one hand, trying to grab her with the other. A shield slammed down onto his head, and the world spun, and stars floated before him. More legionaries kept pouring into the square, hundreds of them, moving between the columns, slamming their shields onto Koren and Atalia. Their blood flowed between the cobblestones.
"Remus!" Koren roared. "Father! Father!"
He tried to rise. A shield pounded him again. He fell. Atalia lay at his side, unconscious, maybe dead, bleeding from a gash on her head. The shields kept hitting him, the metal cracking his armor, cracking his body, and blood filled Koren's mouth. He could barely see anything, just those eagle shields swooping, biting at him, tearing him apart.
"Father!" he cried, as he had cried years ago, in his childhood, when neighborhood children would taunt and strike him. "Father, please!"
"Stand back!" rose a voice, deep like thunder. "Let me through."
The shields pulled back, and Koren pushed himself onto hands and knees, vomiting blood. Atalia still wouldn't move. Koren looked up, trembling, to see General Remus walking toward him across the bloodied cobblestones.
Koren managed to rise to his feet. He raised his sword.
The towering general, a good foot taller, knocked Koren's blade aside with his spear and drove forward his shield. The metal slammed into Koren, and all the sun and moon and stars went out, and he fell, fell, fell endlessly into a black sea.
MAYA
The palace had become a place of shouting and tears. A place where her mother scolded the king of Zohar. A place where fear seeped from the walls. A place that Maya kept seeing burning, crumbling, full of corpses. Finally she had been unable to bear it. And so she had fled the chamber they had given her, had raced through the halls, up the stairs, and had come here—here onto the roof of the palace, gazing out onto Beth Eloh and the world beyond.
A great dome rose here, a walkway around it, lined with columns, like a crown surrounding a bald head. As Maya walked along the columned path around the dome, she could see different views of the world, and she paused between each pair of columns, gazing.
She could see all of Beth Eloh from here, spreading around her across the mountain plateau, enclosed within the fortified walls. Countless domes, white roofs, and steeples rose from the city, a patchwork of stone, gold, copper, and light. Cypress trees grew among them, and many tombstones crowded in cemeteries, the fallen of millennia. Maya had visited this city as a child, and she remembered a bustling metropolis, its markets crowded with thousands, a city of silks, spices, jangling bells, so many sounds and colors. Today the people shuffled weakly down the cobbled streets. The camels lay in the sun, ribs pushing against matted fur. An ancient city, languishing like the dog Maya had found on the hills, perhaps an outcast from this hive.
She kept circling the dome, staring toward the landscape beyond the walls. In the west, the mountainsides were green and lush with spring. Cypresses, pines, and olive groves grew there, a verdant carpet rolling down toward farmlands. Beyond those farms—too far to see from here—her home of Gefen nestled along the coast. When Maya turned eastward, however, she beheld a different landscape. Here were no trees, no farms, no waiting sea. The eastern mountainside was barren, tan, rocky, sloping down to the desert. The dunes rolled into the horizon, gilded in the sunlight. Camels walked across a distant peak, soon vanishing from view. Beyond this dry wilderness, still several parsa'ot away, spread the kingdom of Sekadia, an ancient enemy.
Sandy wind blew from that desert, billowing Maya's hair, dusting her face with coppery sand. A storm was rising on the horizon, umber and burnished copper, clouds of sand moving toward the city. As Maya gazed upon the rising sandstorm, she imagined towers, temples, entire kingdoms in its clouds. What did the sand care for the works and wars of men? To that storm, even an ancient kingdom, even a frightened girl, were but sustenance to consume.
Finally Maya turned to look at the crest that rose in the south, only a short walking distance away. Here soared the Temple—a great complex, larger even than this palace, a city within a city. Maya stood on the roof of Zohar's palace, but the Temple was the true heart of the kingdom. Thousands of the city's people prayed in its courtyard, for today was the Day of Penit
ence, the holiest day of the Zoharite year, a day when all in this kingdom prayed for forgiveness from sin. Priests stood outside the Holy of Holies, a towering building, capped in gold, said to house God's spirit itself. The old men stood clad in splendor, jeweled breastplates on their chests, their beards long and white, their turbans embroidered with gold, and they blew curling kudu horns whose wails rolled across the city.
"Lord of Light, forgive my own sins this day," Maya whispered, tears in her eyes. "Forgive me that I could not save the dog you sent me on the hills. Forgive me that I always scorned Ofeer, that I failed to bring her into your light. Forgive us all, God. Forgive us this war between our princes, forgive us for building temples and palaces of gold while our people hunger. Please do not punish us with the scourge of Aelar. Please deliver us from their darkness."
A crinkly voice rose behind her. "There is no forgiveness for the sins of Zohar, child, no deliverance from shadow. Not in this world of iron and blood. All we can do is seek truth in the splendor of Luminosity."
Maya turned around to see Avinasi, the lumer bonded to King Shefael. In open daylight, the woman seemed more ancient than ever. Her skin hung like wet papyrus, and her fingers were knobby like olive tree roots. Yet her eyes still shone with wisdom. As the old woman stepped toward Maya, the coins sewn into her silken gown jangled.
A pendant gleamed on the lumer's chest. It drew Maya's eye, and she could not look away. The jewel was shaped as a candelabrum with four candles, each with a ruby flame—the ancient sigil of Luminosity. Four lights. Four Pillars of Luminosity. Healing. Muse. Sight. Foresight. The four cornerstones of magic.
"My mother says Zoharites are not to use Luminosity," Maya said, forcing her eyes away from the pendant. "She said that all lumers are bound in chains, sent to Aelar, forced to serve the Empire."
The old woman stepped closer. A scent of frankincense, myrrh, and olive oil clung to her. "Yet I am a lumer, and I remain in Zohar. How is that, my child?"
Kings of Ruin (Kingdoms of Sand Book 1) Page 23