The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  ‘I have never seen anything like this, Captain,’ Qiyala said, drawing his attention back to her. She tightened the lid on her canteen and raised her dark, flat gaze to Heast. ‘I’ve seen a lot. I would have said that I had seen damn near anything that you could see, but that was before the Leerans began to set their own soldiers on fire. It was – they lit up the countryside like torches in the night. Not a single one of them screamed. They just ran towards Celp.’

  From behind the sergeant, two of the First Queen’s Guard returned. A third rode double with one. Lehana approached them, but Heast knew that one of his soldiers had fallen.

  ‘We saw the Leerans arrive,’ Qiyala continued, her fingers flicking the canteen in a sharp but broken beat. ‘It happened two nights ago. We watched them circle us. They had about five hundred, I guess, and our first response was to tighten our defences. We had the better ground and the Hollow told us that there weren’t any ancestors. I don’t know. It was strange, sir. At first it was strange. The Leerans had no siege machines. They had little in supplies. There was no clear way out for us, but it didn’t seem to matter, because we had the better field placement, and they didn’t have what it took to starve us out, or to come over our walls. We had time to wait for you. We had time to plan. When it turned dark tonight, we started to think that they might not even know that we were here. We never thought that they would set themselves on fire.’

  Anemone left Bliq’s side and went to one of the soldier who had ridden in. Jaela. That was her name, Heast remembered, now. ‘How many have we lost?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s hard to say. The burning, the . . . I don’t know what the Leerans want to call what they’ve done here, but it caught us off-guard.’ Qiyala rose, exchanging the canteen for the axe. ‘They didn’t set fire to everyone. They hammered barrels into trees and poured oil over men and women without mounts. They would stand there as if it was a shower and then step out be lit. The first died before they reached the city, but others . . . others got through. We had blocked the gate but that didn’t stop them. They died there. They broke the east first. Bliq had that side and she lost nearly everyone who was with her. About a hundred, I thought. I lost thirty. Maybe thirty-five.’

  ‘The Hollow is still alive.’ Bliq rose slowly and stiffly, her leg unable to take her full weight. ‘He had the centre of Celp, but he isn’t dead. I know that.’

  ‘The fire is worse there,’ Qiyala said. ‘You can’t be sure of that.’

  The other sergeant spat to her left. ‘Ain’t nobody killing that boy with plain old fire,’ she said after she had cleared her throat.

  Heast called Lehana over. ‘How many did not come back?’

  ‘Just the one, sir.’ She offered a brief nod to the two women, who nodded in return. ‘This is your new lieutenant,’ Heast said to his sergeants. ‘Anemone, is Taaira still alive?’

  ‘Grandmother said he was.’ Blood showed through the ash on the witch’s hands but she did not clean it away. ‘He is in the south with eighty soldiers. Many of them are wounded, but he is not.’

  ‘The rest?’

  ‘Spread throughout the area. Corporal Isaap is trying to gather them, but they are by and large pinned down.’

  ‘Have her help them.’ Heast grabbed the reins of his horse. It, like him, was surely longing to take a breath of cool air. ‘Everyone mount up. Double where you have to.’ He pulled himself up. ‘We’re going to break the back of this, get our soldiers, and get out of here.’

  ‘You’re going to charge the centre?’ Bliq was disbelieving. ‘Captain, that is where they have been trying to herd us.’

  ‘Would you prefer to leave?’

  She spat again. ‘I’m not leaving anyone behind, sir.’

  ‘Then mount up.’

  The charge began a short time later.

  Oya led it. She had gathered a new shield and rode between Saelo and Zvae, swords drawn. Before the charge began, Heast saw Qiyala grab a black-armoured hand and pull herself on the back of Fenna’s mount. Bliq and the other soldiers without mounts followed her lead. In the charge, Heast could see them spread out around him, the horses charging as if they carried one rider, their strength and speed born from their desire to leave the burning town. The main street split into smaller streets towards the centre of Celp. Before them, men and women who had been set on fire emerged. Not one of them got close to the charge: arrows dropped them before the charge divided, breaking evenly behind Saelo, Zvae and Oya as each took a street.

  Ahead, the fires grew in intensity, as if one of the broken shards of the sun had been dropped on the town hall.

  The town square burned as if exactly that had happened. The tallest of the fires belonged to the town hall, and the flames that lifted high over the blackened roof had a shape that was not yet complete, but it suggested something monstrous. But it was not that undefined horror that drew Heast’s attention, no.

  What drew the Captain of Refuge’s long experienced gaze was the sight of the Leeran soldiers who were entirely aflame.

  It was not just those who stood at the front of the line waiting for them, but those behind, and the silent mounts they sat upon. For each of them, it was as if the fires were not real, as if their flesh was not burning, and their bodies not a horror of shifting, moving flesh. It was as if, Heast realized, they were sitting under the gaze of a beloved leader, as if they were wearing their finest, and on parade.

  It was as if, he realized, they sat beneath the gaze of their god, Se’Saera. A gaze, Heast realized as Refuge charged forwards, that watched them intently.

  2.

  Refuge crashed into the Faithful.

  It was a battle unlike any Aned Heast had fought before: Refuge’s charge met was met by the Leerans in silence, and the first of the burning soldiers that Oya, Zvae and Saelo slammed into did not even raise their weapons. Instead, they tumbled, already dead, a wall of burning flesh for Refuge to ride through, for their mounts to stamp out, for their discipline to be tested.

  The fury that he had felt earlier returned to him, even as his own sword flashed out, crashing into the head of a Leeran soldier who struggled, half alive, towards him. From his left, he heard one of his soldiers shout that their arrows had been used up, but by then the Leerans had closed in, and combat had turned to swords and shields. Up close, the Faithful bore serene expressions on their burning faces, and although their eyes were open, Heast suspected that they were not truly awake.

  Even in the square, the Leerans had greater numbers than Refuge, and they pressed against front and left flank strongly. Heast’s biggest concern was that they would be able to swell around the flanks and surround them. Se’Saera’s Leerans – he would not refer to them as Waalstan’s, or ascribe any ownership of the soldiers to the general he had fought in Mireea – were kept from doing that by their own numbers, and by the discipline of Refuge. Yet the fear of being encircled was not one that Heast had alone, and when he turned to give the order to shore up the left, he found both Qiyala and Bliq, along with the other soldiers who had ridden double into the square, had already slid off their mounts and moved to strengthen the edge.

  A burning woman burst towards Heast while his attention was diverted. Dimly, he was aware that she had leapt from the back of a horse and onto one of the black-and-red-armoured soldiers of Refuge. The soldier she knocked off the horse had lost her weapon and had been forced to grab the Faithful’s burning arms to stop her from choking her. As she did that, the burning soldier surged forwards, charging him. Heast’s mount met the charge by rearing back on its legs and lashing out at the soldier. She fell, but it was the two who followed, the two who had come through the gap, that proved too much for the horse. Flames scalded its hair, and the sight of the flames and the smell of burning flesh overwhelmed the animal’s training. The horse reared back again, causing Heast to lose control, for him to slip from the saddle.

  He hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of him, his sword lost. The two burning Leerans rushed and Heast rolle
d to avoid the swords that came crashing down where he had fallen. The Captain of Refuge lurched painfully to his feet, grabbing the ugly dagger in his belt, aware that it would not do much against two soldiers – but there was no one who could turn to help him.

  He felt Se’Saera’s gaze intensify, as if this moment, this instance, was something that she had been waiting for, as if it was of importance to her. Heast saw his death, saw it in flashes of hard steel and burning limbs, his dagger grinding into the neck of the soldier on his left. On instinct, he turned to the one on the right, and as he did, the burning soldier’s chest burst open, as if an unseen hand had punched through him. Heast charged the other, his dagger plunged into the stomach of the soldier, the flames on the body threatening to grab him, threatening to leap to him. They forced him to take two steps back, to brush at his arms as he did.

  ‘Captain!’ Anemone’s bloodstained hand reached out for him, her wet grip with enough strength to help lift him onto the horse behind her. ‘My grandmother—’

  ‘Is laughing.’ Lehana had closed the gap that his attacker had come through, her bastard sword lashing out in devastating arcs. ‘She’s supposed to be helping Taaira and Isaap.’

  ‘She has.’ At the back of the square, as if on cue, sounds of battle began to emerge. ‘Kye Taaira is very angry, she says.’

  Heast understood that. ‘Where is Waalstan?’

  ‘In the very middle.’

  ‘On Lehana!’ It hurt to shout and he knew, soon, that his voice would soon be burned out. ‘On her and push!’

  The former guards of the First Queen of Ooila did not hesitate to shift into the formation he ordered.

  As they did, Se’Saera’s gaze fell away and screams filled the air.

  They did not emerge from Refuge. All the warriors were horrified to hear the sounds rise from the burning soldiers of Se’Saera.

  Their god had held their pain at bay. In leaving, she left them with only their torment, as if it was a punishment for failure, for being unable to stop Heast. The thought confused him, for she could still very well have killed him. But he had survived her attack and she had left. In her place, the agony of her Faithful announced itself. It destroyed the form that they had, caused mounts to throw their riders, for riders to drop their weapons, for them to lift their burning hands in horror, as if, for the first time, they became aware of what had happened.

  Only one was spared.

  He sat in the middle of the square, untouched by the flames that consumed the soldiers around him. His silver armour had disguised the fact by reflecting the human furnace around him.

  General Ekar Waalstan met the Captain of Refuge’s pale, furious gaze.

  He raised his sword and charged.

  He did it clumsily, as if he had only learned to ride recently and had never truly mastered the skills that a soldier needed.

  In his path stepped Lieutenant Lehana, who had not only been trained in all the skills the man before her lacked, but who had lived the life that Waalstan had not.

  The awareness dawned in Waalstan’s face as he rode towards her. He saw the soldier before him, saw the anger in her, saw that it was a response to the atrocity that he rode through, the violation of everything she had been trained in, everything she had been taught, and the rules that she lived by in her soldier’s life. General Ekar Waalstan saw in her the horror of what his orders had given rise to, the devastation he had wrought on men and women who had believed in him and his god, and had obeyed without question.

  He saw that and, in the moment before Lehana’s bastard sword crashed into him, he lowered his own weapon, to let her blow tear the life from him unimpeded.

  3.

  ‘I didn’t paint it,’ the old man said. From his seat at the fire, he twisted to the painting behind him, as if it was the first time he had seen it. ‘If you were going to ask, that is.’ In his hand, a broken stick twitched back and forth between Ayae, Jae’le, Eidan and Tinh Tu. ‘I can’t paint,’ he admitted, still staring at the painting. ‘I make, well, I can’t make.’

  Ayae was the first to draw her attention from the painting and turned to him. ‘Who did paint it?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no, you are not meant to ask that.’ He looked at her, but his stick continued to bounce between the four. ‘You are meant to ask, you are meant to say, “Where is my friend?” Where is your dead friend? That is what you ask. Then the two men beside you threaten and ask and threaten again until I tell them.’

  ‘No one is going to threaten you. We just want to know where Zaifyr is,’ Tinh Tu spoke with a strange gentleness in her voice. ‘Why don’t you help us find him?’

  ‘But he’s not here. He’s gone. Gone, gone, gone. I gave him to a blind child and a dead woman. They were here, waiting for me. I told them to do that. To wait for me, that is. I said, “I won’t be gone long. You won’t have to go into the city. You can trust me.” They both would have stuck out up there, you see. That’s why I had to do it. You will find, you will find . . . well, you won’t find either of them now, but you’re welcome to look down the passage to my right to see if the two are still there if you want.’

  ‘He isn’t there,’ Eidan said. ‘No one is there. The earth would tell me.’ With slow steps, he began to approach the old man. ‘But you know that. You know me. You’ve seen me before. You gave me Lor Jix’s name.’

  ‘You looked familiar but I didn’t want to assume.’ With a sly glance at the others, the man slipped from his seat and drew close. ‘You’ve changed a bit,’ he said, his whisper the kind that a stage actor might make of dramatic whisper in a comedy. ‘Just between you and me, of course. The scars make you stand out. Leviathan’s Blood made them, I know. She got into you, tried to change you, like she did those sharks and squids. But you’re smart. I can tell. No, no, don’t protest these things. I know you are. You know her blood can’t hurt you. Just like you know you can’t hurt me. But I’ll tell what I know. I’ll tell you that Zaifyr is in Ranan. Well, that he will be soon. He’ll be with her.’

  ‘With Se—?’

  The old man screamed and leapt forwards. He was so loud that Ayae blanched, and Eidan took a step backwards. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No! You can’t say her name, you can’t!’ Then, as quickly as his fury had risen, it left, and he held out his hands in apology, patting Eidan’s chest. ‘Sorry. Sorry, but she hears it. All the gods hear their names. Well, did. Some still do. They hear it spat on each day. But not Ger.’ He turned and spat into the fire and then grinned. ‘You can spit on Ger all day.’

  At the painted wall, Jae’le lowered his hand. While the others were speaking, he had gone to it, running his hand along it, his fingers lingering not on the images, but on the cracks and faults that ran through the bone. ‘What is your name?’ he asked, turning to the old man.

  ‘Irue Tq,’ he said.

  ‘That was the name of the Fifth Philosopher seventeen thousand years ago,’ Tinh Tu said. The gentleness in her voice had left, and her tone was hard and blunt. ‘What is your name?’

  The old man smiled blissfully. ‘Jiqana Felune.’

  ‘That is a slave in Gogair,’ Tinh Tu said coldly. ‘I ask you again: what is your name?’

  ‘High Priest Famendora of Met—’

  His voice broke off suddenly as Eidan lifted him into the air. ‘I have no time for your games. Not now.’ With an easy movement, he flung the old man towards the back of the cave, towards the elaborate painting on one of Ger’s bones. Yet, rather than hit the wall, rather than crumple to the ground at Jae’le’s feet, the old man controlled the toss and landed on his feet. When he was upright, he offered a small bow to his unreceptive audience. ‘A name is power,’ he said. ‘I am not so foolish as to give any of you a name. If one is needed today, then I am Irue, for Irue – Irue had handwriting to admire in a man. Or a woman.’

  An arm’s length from him, Jae’le made a disgusted noise. ‘God-touched,’ he said, the word an insult. ‘I should have struck you down in The Pale House.’

>   Irue offered a second bow of failed dignity. This time, he tilted in mid-dip and almost fell. ‘You know it would have done nothing,’ he said, after he had straightened. ‘You of all the people alive in this world know that.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Ayae said. ‘Surely this man is not the same as the Innocent?’

  ‘Poor Aela.’ The old man sighed. ‘You must realize that the War of the Gods drove him mad. I have – I know what it is to be mad. To be not a little mad, but to be truly, truly mad, and he is mad. The greatest tragedy of his madness is that it is coherent. It is a terrible combination for a man who was once quiet and honest. A man who might have been the best of us. Of course,’ he added, with a glance at Jae’le, ‘a man he trusted impaled him on a tree for thousands of years. That didn’t help, either.’

  ‘Are you Ger’s servant, then?’ Ayae asked and indicated the painting again. ‘Is that yours?’

  ‘I told you I did not paint that.’ Irue stood taller, filled with sudden importance. ‘Besides, Ger did not have a servant. Well,’ he added. ‘Not until recently. Though recently is really our invention. It is a view of the world that is unique to us. The gods saw time as a whole, until they didn’t see it. So, for Ger, his servant was always here, even if we could not see it. He was only available to us once our perceptions had defined the world adequately and straightened out time to such a point that he was born.’ The old man made pulling motions with his hands. ‘But still. Still. Ger didn’t always have a servant.’