Beneath Ceaseless Skies #114

by James L. Sutter

  She found her father in the audience chamber again, but this time the figures with him were not his advisers. The two men who stood close to the throne wore the close-cropped hair and bulky metal armor of legionaries. With a shock, Alana realized that the soldiers’ armor was dirty and dented, stained the ruddy brown of dried blood.

  Her father looked up and saw her in the doorway.

  “Leave us,” he told the legionaries.

  Both men bowed formally, fists over hearts, then turned and left the chamber. The king instructed Alana to close the door and beckoned her close.

  If it had unnerved her to see the normally spotless legionaries so battered, it was nothing compared to the way her father looked now. Alana didn’t think she’d seen him look so tired—so old—since her mother’s funeral. He let out a long breath.

  “It’s the beastmen,” he said simply. “I thought they were putting on a show, maybe looking to annex a few more miles of scrubland.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I was wrong. They broke through the line due east of Bethlehem, in numbers not seen since the last push. The legions are in full rout. Reading will burn by nightfall.”

  “Reading!” Alana had never been to the eastern holding but knew it to be a populous region, filled with farmers and salvage-men who quarried steel and stone from the pre-Breaking ruins, selling any relics with obvious uses and taking the rest to the mystics and engineers at the Foundry.

  It was also many miles behind the front lines. Or had been.

  “With any luck, they’ll lose days looting the holding, giving us time to position ourselves. I’ve called forth what fighting men the city can spare, and we’ll meet them at Harrisburg.”

  She looked up sharply. He nodded.

  “The Foundry cannot be allowed to fall. I’ll be leading its defense personally. Tyrus will remain with an honor guard to help you hold the city in my place.”

  Alana didn’t like the way he said it. She was suddenly furious with him for daring to look so tired, so resigned. “You’ll beat them,” she said fiercely. “You have before, and you will again.”

  Lord Erick Young-Allen of the Dying put a hand on her shoulder. “Alana, there’s something you need to see.”

  With his other hand, he reached into an inner fold of his vest and brought out a thin slip of white paper, crumpled and worn with age. Alana had never seen it before, yet the moment he produced it, she knew exactly what it was.

  “No!” She jerked away, as if he were offering her a venomous snake. “I won’t!”

  The king’s voice was calm. “It’s the way of things, Alana. The oracle never lies.”

  He held the paper out to her. Against her will, Alana took it, unfolding it with trembling fingers. One end held the royal seal, identical to the one behind the throne. Printed next to it, in neat block letters too perfect for any scribe’s pen, were three words:

  DEFENDING THE FOUNDRY

  “This is how I will die,” the king said. “It has been foretold.”

  Alana shook her head violently, hair whipping around her shoulders, and threw the paper back at him. “It’s wrong.”

  Her father’s features shifted from sad to stern. “You know otherwise, Alana. You’ll be of the Dying yourself soon. This is no time for foolishness.”

  “But why?” Alana heard the petulant whine in her own voice, hating it. “Why does it have to be right? Why can’t you just stay here and send the soldiers without you? Why did you go to the stupid oracle in the first place?”

  Sighing, her father sat—not on his throne, but on the low stone lip of the dais. He drew her down with him and put his arm around her, pulling her close.

  “It’s the burden of royalty, girl. No one is fit to rule until they’ve seen the oracle. A man who knows his death can go fearlessly into any battle, yet is reminded every day that his own life is temporary. It’s too easy for a king to rule as if he will live forever, to think himself a little god. Knowing death keeps us humble. Your mother—”

  He broke off, and Alana felt the shift in his ribs as his breath caught.

  “Your mother knew that better than I. She knew from the week before our wedding that the fever would take her, and yet she lived every day with kindness and humor. She stared down her death and won long before it ever claimed her.”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “We are the Dying, Alana. And it’s that which gives us the right to rule over the living.”

  “But you don’t know when,” Alana pressed. “You could die fifty years from now.”

  Her father chuckled. “That’s very old to die on the battlefield. Perhaps I could have the legionaries carry me out in an armored palanquin.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think so. This feels... right.”

  He half-turned, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Which is why you must be ready. When I fall, you will become queen. And for that, you must first go to the oracle.”

  Alana ducked out from under his arm. “But I don’t want to rule.”

  “And you think I did?” Her father laughed sharply. “Nobility is a privilege and a burden, but rarely a choice. Your blood demands it. You are a daughter of kings.”

  “But why do we have to rule at all?” Alana realized she was almost shouting. “Why all this pageantry, and oracles, and royal lines? We’re no different from the sharecroppers of the holdings, save that we never go cold and hungry. Who are we to decide their lives? Let them elect their own leaders.”

  “Like Tyrus?” The king arched an eyebrow. Alana felt herself flush, betrayed once again by her royal blood, but her father didn’t pursue it.

  “You know your history. The Old Ones who lived before the Breaking were a democracy, and you can see what they wrought. A democracy can never stand against the solidarity and efficiency of a worthy monarchy. Ask yourself: when was the last time any of your revolutionary friends agreed on anything? Not ideals, but practical matters.”

  Alana stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her father’s laugh was bigger now, more honest. “I know all about your meetings, Alana. And I approve—it’s important to know your enemies, to understand how they think and to see them for the people they are. That way you’ll never fall into the trap of thinking yourself innately superior. Those who put too much stock in their own noble birth grow complacent and careless. Yet that rag-tag bunch would never be able to protect our lands from the beastmen, or keep the Virginians from resuming their bloody feud. They’re children who resent their parents’ authority, never understanding that it’s that same authority which keeps them safe.”

  He took both her hands and held them in his own callused paws.

  “The people need the monarchy, girl. It grieves me to put this burden on you, but there’s nothing for it. When I die, you must go to the oracle and accept the queenship. And you must not give it away.”

  Alana started to protest, but her father gripped her hard. She was surprised to see tears rolling down his cheeks, running into his beard.

  “Please, Lana,” he said, and the childhood nickname cut her deeper than his weeping. “You must promise. For your mother. And for me.”

  Alana’s head spun. The room was too warm, and her stomach was caught somewhere in her throat. Her hands hurt where her father held them, yet he did not loosen his grip.

  “Promise me,” he said again.

  Alana looked at him, at those eyes so filled with love and pain, and knew she had no choice.

  “I promise.”

  Her father’s smile exploded into being again. He released Alana’s hands and reached out, gathering her to him. Numb, she leaned against his chest and allowed his huge arms to encircle her. She felt his chin come to rest in her hair.

  “You will be a good queen,” he whispered.

  * * *

  They buried him in the palace cemetery a week later, with all the ceremony due a wartime king. The undertakers had done their work well, and he almost looked asleep inside the great suit of armor that the castle smit
hs had returned to its original shape and shine. He lay in the stone sarcophagus with hands folded over the hilt of his sword, covered by the enormous metal shield with its painted royal crest.

  Alana leaned down and tucked a flower—a daffodil—into the gap between breastplate and gardbrace. Then she stood and nodded to the bearers to replace the stone lid. She left the cemetery to the metallic hiss of shovels biting into soft dirt.

  Tyrus was waiting by the gate with the rest of the caravan. His eyes were haggard—it clearly pained him to see her grieving and be unable to go to her, but there were too many observers present. She nodded to him imperiously.

  “All is in readiness?”

  “Yes, m’lady. We await only your order.”

  “Then you have it.” She waved for her horse. A groom appeared at once, her favorite gray mare in tow. Alana mounted in one graceful movement and called, “We ride for the Grove of the Oracle!”

  It was a two-day ride north, stretched into four by the wagons. The first day was through lands familiar to Alana, the beaten dirt cart track cutting through waving yellow fields that fed the capital, peasants kneeling as the royal procession passed. Then the road diverged, and they found themselves on the wide, flat path of the High Way, twisting and weaving between the rolling hills and low crags. The wagons had an easier time on the old road, and in places the dirt and grass had been scoured away by wind and water to reveal the ancient stone of the pre-Breaking roadbed. Alana marveled at the thought of a people so powerful that they could make a perfect sheet of stone stretch off to infinity.

  Throughout the journey, Tyrus prudently kept his distance except for curt reports. As much as Alana longed to run to him, she was happy for the distance. She had not yet spoken to him of her last conversation with the king.

  At one point, on the pretense of showing her the map of their route, Tyrus brought his horse close enough to touch her hand.

  “Soon,” he whispered. “Soon all of this will be behind us.”

  That night, after the caravan made camp, Alana lay in bed and stared up at the canvas roof of her tent.

  Everyone expected her to take the throne. That much was a given, and the point of this whole ridiculous processional. By agreeing to her father’s final wish and promising not to abdicate, however, she had betrayed Tyrus and the rest of the revolutionaries. Yet even if Tyrus and all the others had been there watching, she could not have denied her father that final comfort.

  Worse yet was the fact that both were right. She’d meant everything she’d said to the rebels—blood-right was a terrible way to choose a ruler, and the monarchy was a thankless, terrifying job, one that she wanted no part of. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t deny her father’s point: the squabbling rebels would almost certainly do worse than she would. Without powerful, organized leadership from the palace, who would keep the neighboring nations from descending on the new democracy like vultures? The weight of her conflicting vows ached like a stone in her chest.

  On the morning of the last day, the road turned a final bend and the towers came into view. Even from a distance, they dominated the skyline. By late afternoon the wagons were among them, rolling through the shadows of the giants. Square-sided like mirrored obelisks, each with a footprint the size of the palace grounds, the towers were larger than anything Alana had ever seen. Ivy wound around their feet, while above them were only flat, gleaming expanses of stone and glass. Many of the buildings were broken, ending abruptly in jagged wounds, and through these scars Alana could see the interior structure of hundreds of different floors and compartments, like a termite-rotted log with the bark stripped away.

  Then they were beyond the towers and into the vast central clearing that held the Grove of the Oracle. Riding at the head of the line, Alana looked toward the distant trees—and pulled up so short that her horse whinnied in protest.

  Waving above the tents at the grove’s edge was a standard she knew only from her father’s stories: a blood-red sun on a black field.

  “Beastmen.” Tyrus appeared at her side. “They got here quick.”

  “But we beat them at Harrisburg!” Alana clamped down hard on the reins and tried to keep her voice calm. “The reports called it a full rout. We chased the survivors all the way to the border.”

  Tyrus nodded. “They’re likely here for the same reason we are. This is sacred ground—they will not challenge us. And if they do....” Tyrus loosened his sword in its scabbard.

  They rode across the clearing in a long line, their own white and blue banners snapping behind them in the light breeze. Alana rode in front, as befit one who would be queen, with Tyrus a respectful horse-length behind. At the grove’s edge, a knot of dark figures gathered beneath the Banner of the Burning Sun.

  Alana had never seen a beastman in the flesh. Her childhood had been full of stories of the twisted creatures, but none of those tales had adequately prepared her for the reality.

  They were huge. Despite their hunched frames, weighed down by the massive muscles of their overlong arms, the beastmen were all taller than Tyrus by several hands. Their skin was the boiled angry red of a burn, shot through with lumpy white lines of tumorous scar tissue and freckled with sores that wept clear pus. Their faces were cadaverous, flesh drawn tight over misshapen skulls, and blistered lips failed to completely cover yellow teeth filed to points.

  Alana had always imagined the beastmen as amalgamated monsters, full of wolf parts and snake scales and other recognizable horrors. These were nothing like that. These were corpses.

  As Alana approached, a single beastman detached himself from the crowd and came forward. He was larger than the others and wore only a long, red tabard that left his huge arms bare. His lower jaw protruded far beyond his upper, giving him an especially pugnacious look, yet his black hair was meticulously combed, shot through with braids ending in red beads. A three-fingered hand rested on the hilt of an oversized longsword.

  Alana motioned for Tyrus to hold the caravan’s position, then rode on a few more yards and dismounted. The beastman watched her with interest. When she was safely on the ground, he dropped into a surprisingly elegant bow, one leg behind the other and free hand sweeping outward.

  “The Allied Kingdoms of York greet Your Highness.”

  These creatures had killed her father. The knowledge roared through Alana’s mind like a grass fire, yet she had spent too many years at court to forget her manners. She curtsied. “And the Appalachian Empire returns your greeting.”

  The beastman straightened. His voice was the deep rumble of a falling tree. “You come to seek the oracle’s blessing.”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “As did I. My name is Hamal—my own father fell at Harrisburg. I will take his seat on the council.”

  “Congratulations.” It was hardly polite, yet Alana couldn’t quite think of anything more appropriate.

  Hamal didn’t bristle. “Your father was a great warrior,” he said, inclining his head. “As was mine. Our battle hymns will sing of both their deeds for a thousand years.”

  Such pleasantries from a monster. The whole situation was surreal. “Thank you,” Alana said.

  “Of course, it would have been better if their sacrifice could have been avoided. To die in battle is valiant, but to do so in unnecessary conflict is wasteful.”

  That brought Alana around in a hurry. Her face grew hot, and not with embarrassment. “A conflict you started!”

  Hamal nodded, uncowed. “A regretful necessity. We have no love of war, yet the people of York must have access to the Foundry. Our lands are poor—they starve us and mark our flesh. In the end, they claim us all. Yet with properly machined tools—”

  Alana’s patience snapped. Summoning every ounce of her training, she let her voice ring with royal disdain. “I hardly think it’s appropriate to discuss policy so soon after my father’s funeral.”

  Hamal bowed low again, inclining his head with respect. “My apologies, Highness. I had forgotten that your peop
le make such distinctions.” His gaze rose, and cold eyes locked on hers. “In York, every day is a funeral.”

  The beastman straightened and turned back to his people. At his order, they began to dismantle their tents and pack them away. Sensing that the strange audience was at an end, Alana led her own caravan a sensible distance beyond them along the edge of the grove, then gave the order for the bearers to begin setting up the pavilions.

  It was past midnight, with all but the sentries long asleep, when Tyrus came to her in her tent. One moment she was alone, sitting in front of the mirror and brushing mindlessly at her hair for the dozenth time, and then he was behind her in the entryway, the tent flap falling silently closed.

  “Tyrus.”

  “Alana—” he began, but got no farther before she came into his arms and stopped his mouth with hers.

  They made love in the mound of blankets the wagons had brought for her. In the soft light of her tent’s single lantern, Tyrus’s face was illuminated in intervals—now light, now shadow—as they moved together, fingers on each other’s lips to keep from crying out and giving themselves away.

  Afterward they lay curled together, her head in the hollow of his shoulder and breasts pressed tight against the side of his broad, scarred chest. Yet even as the glow of their lovemaking lingered, Alana felt her confliction rising in a dark wave to sweep it away.

  Tyrus sensed her tension. “Are you scared?”

  “No,” Alana answered. Except of losing you. But Tyrus still didn’t know about her promise. She changed the subject. “Would you do it, if you could? Know your death, I mean.”

  Tyrus chuckled. “Not a chance. A soldier needs to be ready to die for his beliefs, and a revolutionary doubly so. The oracle would either make me lazy, knowing I’d survive any battle, or cost me my edge by making me constantly expect defeat.”

  Alana propped herself up on one elbow so she could see his face. “Would you really die for the revolution?”