The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  But in his dreams, Bueralan dreamed of darkness. He could see nothing, not even himself. He was not alone. He could feel another presence around him, almost as if it was smothering him, but he could not name it. It felt familiar, however. His thoughts drifted. He thought that he was in prison. He had been captured. He had been locked in a cell. He had been buried in the ground in that cell. He could reach out and touch both bars and stone, only to find that neither existed. Instead, there waited for him a huge expanse, an existence he had not previously considered, one without definitions or limits. The prison, he realized then, was not a real one but a philosophical one, one of imagination. Its walls were his failings. Were himself. He was trapped in them because he wanted to trapped. Yet, even as he began to explore this idea, the darkness began to define itself. It was taking on a shape, having a beginning and an end. But there was more beyond it, a second creation. When he reached out, he felt the first world contract around him, lock around his hands, hold him tightly. At first, he wanted to draw his hand back, but when he could not, he pushed forwards, to try and break the barrier, to escape the world that was now suffocating him, making him scream again and again as the borders and shapes emerged around him and sought to stop him from gaining freedom.

  Bueralan awoke to the sound of fading screams.

  He pushed himself from the bed, two steps taking him to the door, into the hall, a third and fourth to the door of Taela’s room, and the destruction within it.

  He saw Orlan first. The old man lay against the doorframe, his body pointed outwards, as if he had been trying to get into the hallway, to call for help. As Bueralan turned into the room, he saw the blood that soaked Orlan’s lower half, the broken shape of his back, snapped as if he were a toy. It had not happened at the door, however. Orlan had crawled to the door after he had been struck down, after his spine was broken, after flesh was dug out of his back.

  After he had risen to help Taela.

  She had gone into labour. Bueralan took her hand, still warm, and wet with blood. She had screamed, he knew. Her face showed that. She had screamed, but not in the voice he had heard in his dreams. No. Bueralan had heard another scream, the scream of a child being born, of the soul of his blood brother ripping at Taela’s stomach, tearing into her flesh, desperate to be free. He could think of nothing else but the words Taela had said when they had been on Glafanr, how she had told him of a clawing inside her, as if the child was trying to escape, to break her open, like a chick in an egg. He could see that, even through the blood, through the mess, through the tears he knew were running down his face.

  Behind him, Bueralan heard steps.

  ‘Poor old fool.’ Aelyn Meah. He did not turn to her. Instead, he held on to Taela’s hand, held on to it, though she could not hold on to him. ‘Poor child,’ Aelyn said, coming up to the bed. She did not reach out to Bueralan. ‘She said this would happen. It was one of the few conversations we had. She said this child . . .’ She did not finish her sentence. After a moment, she said, ‘I do not see Kaze here.’

  ‘I don’t think she was here,’ he said.

  ‘No, I think – I think she knew what was going to happen.’ It surprised him to hear her repeat her words. ‘Did you see the child?’

  ‘No.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Is it with . . . ?’

  ‘It is not in the cathedral.’ Aelyn indicated to her right. ‘It went out of the window.’

  The frame was broken, the glass shattered. There was blood, and the blood was smeared in small, sharp hand prints.

  He laid Taela’s hand down and went to the window. The midday’s sun was on the rise, but the morning’s sun had not yet set, and the two broken shards sat at opposite ends of the horizon. Bueralan could see crowds of Leerans, the shapes of catapults, with a smattering of swamp crows perched along the arms, and he could see the small shadow that was running further and further away.

  ‘I would have thought it would have stayed here,’ Aelyn said. ‘I would have thought that the child would want to meet its mother.’

  She did not mean Taela. ‘No,’ Bueralan said.

  ‘How can you be sure? This is nothing we have seen before.’

  ‘The soul she used to make his child was once my blood brother.’ He turned back to Taela, to Orlan, to the violence of their deaths. ‘He will be horrified by what he has done. If he knows. If he is there.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Aelyn said, a note of sympathy in her voice that surprised him. ‘He could be mad. Her creation could have nothing to do with your brother.’

  ‘I know.’ Bueralan reached down and closed Taela’s eyes, closed them to the horror of the child she had given birth to, closed them even though he knew she would still be looking down at herself, at the flesh she no longer had. ‘But he is still my responsibility.’

  11.

  Celp smouldered.

  At the entrance to the town, at the broken wall Refuge had ridden through nearly a week ago, Heast and Aela Ren dismounted. Both horses baulked at entering the ruins. At first, Heast thought it was because of the warmth that lingered in the ground, the heat that was kept alive by the dull orange that threaded through the ruins like worn veins. But after he stepped through the break in the stone, he realized he was mistaken: the two horses had not responded to the warmth, but to the coldness that caused his skin prickle.

  There was no wind, but yet it felt as if the cold was swirling around him. His good leg could feel it most strongly, the chill biting through his boot.

  ‘How strange,’ the Innocent said from beside him. ‘I half expect it to snow.’

  He had never seen it snow in this part of the world. ‘Is this your god?’ Heast asked. He began to walk forwards, leading the other man towards the centre of town. ‘Is she watching you?’

  ‘No.’ Ren did not hesitate in his reply. ‘But this is her doing.’

  Ahead, the remains of Celp’s buildings lay in broken arrangements on either side of the road: the roofs of houses had fallen in and exposed splintered, blackened framework. The houses built from brick were the ones that remained standing, pieces of the walls like strange maps that threaded up from the ground to the roof. In other buildings, the black framework rose from ruins and ended in sudden, snapped pieces.

  The chill increased with each step Heast took and, halfway along the road to the centre of the town, he passed a wide open space of rubble. It was close to where he and Oya had charged through a building, to emerge on the other side. Around the ruins lay blackened bodies and, though they had been dead for nearly a week, Heast could not smell any hint of decay. Yet, gazing at their remains, the Captain of Refuge could not believe how he and Oya had survived the fires and destruction around them. He could not believe any of them had, in truth, and the thought reminded him briefly of the cold haunts in Mireea, the white-lined figures of the dead who had stood around him and the others after the Leeran siege.

  ‘My soldiers have been in here twice since we fought,’ he said, pushing the thought from his mind. ‘They said the cold was only around Waalstan’s body. They said that no decay touched his body and that he still bled from the wound that killed him.’

  ‘Could they lift him?’ Aela Ren asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He has been made a saint, then.’

  ‘A saint?’ Heast could not remember when he had last heard the word. ‘Why would a god make a dead man a saint?’

  ‘You look for reason where there may well be none.’ The street narrowed: the ruined, burned buildings closed around them. The still-smouldering stone and wood appeared stronger here, but the coldness was more pronounced. ‘The gods had saints before the war. They were, by and large, servants such as priests and soldiers. After they died, the gods would trap their souls in the body. In a fashion, they were still alive, though the men and women had no control over their bodies. They could not move, could not speak, could not partake in any of life’s joy. I do not know if they could see out of their eyes, or hear, or smell, but the soul being so t
rapped ensured that the body did not decay. Their bodies could only be moved by the gods’ faithful.’

  The centre of Celp opened before them, suddenly. The huge square was surrounded by black rubble and dominated by bodies in various states of stalled decay. The cold had stopped that, just as it had stopped the smell of rot. In addition to that, it gave a sheen to the dirty, silver armour that encased Ekar Waalstan’s body.

  On his chest a faint circle glowed, as if a part of the sun was trying to burst from him.

  ‘Does it bother you that a god would do this to a loyal servant?’ Heast asked.

  ‘Ask me instead if I am surprised.’ The Innocent walked around Waalstan’s body, stopping at the broken shape of his skull. ‘The blood still runs free, here.’

  ‘What has she done to win your loyalty?’ Heast asked. ‘I would not accept this in any man or woman I served.’

  ‘I have done worse, have I not?’ When Heast did not reply, Ren shrugged. ‘The answer is not a complex one, Captain. She is a god. She will redefine this world. She will take away our anarchy.’

  ‘Our freedom?’

  ‘If you had been alive when the gods had walked this world, you would not compare the two. A god does not take away your freedom, I assure you.’

  ‘What would happen if your gods returned?’ The cold had begun to numb Heast’s good leg, but he did not move away from Waalstan’s body. ‘Would you be loyal to your master again?’

  ‘Look around you, Captain. Not just at this city, but at the world. How in this world can any of the old gods return? Their bodies are broken, their divinity scattered, their creation scarred like I am.’ The Innocent held out his hands, palm up, to emphasize his point. ‘They will not return. They cannot. Time draws to an end for all of them. Ger’s tomb has crumbled. The mountains are in ruin. More gods will follow him into nothing. You and I stand in the final acts of their divine existence. We stand in their destruction.’

  He bent down, then, and lifted Ekar Waalstan from the ground. Heast was prepared for him to stand again, for him to be unable to lift the body, but Ren raised the General as if he weighed nothing. The coldness that had spread through the square, through all of Celp, broke as he did. A light spread from Waalstan. It poured from his head, from the wound that had been bleeding but a moment ago. It was light, now, a whiteness, and purity, that filtered over Aela Ren, highlighting his scars, the violence that his body embodied.

  The Innocent did not say another word to Heast. Quietly, he carried Se’Saera’s saint down the street, the light a nimbus surrounded him until he reached his horse.

  Refuge waited there. They waited at the edge of Celp, mounted on their horses as if they, like the two horses Heast and Ren rode, had baulked at the entrance of the town. Lieutenant Lehana sat at the head, her bastard sword unsheathed and held across her lap. Heast did not believe that she would attack Ren. He did not know why he thought that: he had no sign from her, or from Taaira, or Anemone, who sat beside her, but he knew that Lehana would not. Instead, she allowed Refuge to part, to create a path for the Innocent to leave.

  Aela Ren did not take it immediately. Instead, he laid the saint’s body over the saddle of his horse, and took the reins in his scarred hand. For a dozen heartbeats, he met the gazes of Lehana and the soldiers around him, as if he was gauging them, as if he was committing their faces to memory. Then, after a brief nod, Aela Ren walked down the aisle they had made for him.

  Heast did not give the order for any to follow the Innocent. He did not need to. He knew where the scarred man was going, knew that he and Refuge would be there, soon enough. He pulled himself onto his horse and, in the silent company of Refuge, rode back to their camp.

  He was halfway to the camp when Kal Essa’s scouts found him.

  Brother Mother Sister Father

  ‘After.’ Aelyn Meah paused. I was surprised to see how much she grieved for a woman she barely knew. ‘After, Bueralan and I went in search of the child.

  ‘I knew my family was closing in on Ranan. In a way, that made it easier for me to leave. I think, even then, I knew what was to come.

  ‘Bueralan Le hunted the child. He was not so dissimilar to the god-touched, not really. A lot has been said of him in recent years but, for all that people have spoken about him being so different, so unique, he was a man defined by loss. I think the great difference between Bueralan and the others such as Aela Ren, was that Bueralan could process his loss. Given enough time, he would grieve like us, and move on, after.

  ‘Given enough time.’

  —Onaedo, Histories, Year 1029

  1.

  Beneath the midday’s sun, the streets beyond the cathedral of Ranan were full. Bueralan would find himself at the end of a bridge, or at a corner, or walking along a street, and his internal map would be broken not by the barricades, or deviations to the streets, but by the sheer number of men and women around him. They spilled out of flat-roofed houses into the streets. They sat on piles of stone for the catapults, missiles ranging from the size of his head to the size of his torso. They sat on the wooden frames of barricades, stood by huge ballistas, and on top of towers that had been pulled into the city, all of them deep in conversation. ‘—Faaisha—’ ‘Se’Saera has said within the week—’ ‘She has seen—’ ‘More than one force?’ ‘—victory.’ Their voices threaded around him, a mix of the traders’ tongue, of Leeran, none of it hidden by silence, or code, as Bueralan passed. That did not surprise him, but the awareness the Faithful had of him did. He had seen it before, in the attention they paid to the god-touched, but he had not thought that it would extend to him. He was continually caught off-guard by men and women who gave him short nods of greeting, stepped out of his way, and even went as far as to greet him by name, referring to him as ‘Lord Bueralan’. Aelyn Meah, who walked beside him, was not once greeted by name, despite the fact that many of the Faithful would have known her by sight and by reputation. It was how the Faithful treated her that made it clear to Bueralan that he was expected to walk down the streets of Ranan. That not only was he was meant to be walking here, but that he was meant to do so with Aelyn Meah beside him. The Faithful’s greetings were Se’Saera’s way of letting him know that. Aelyn must have noticed, just as he did, but her face was still, and he could not read the emotions on it. He had been unable to do so since they had left the cathedral.

  ‘My brother is upstairs,’ she had said, before they left. ‘He is on the top floor. Our new god has him laid out on the ground. She is trying to bring him back to life.’

  Bueralan had put sheets over Orlan and Taela. Bloodstains had begun to leave an outline of their bodies, of their wounds, through it. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Zilt and the last of his monsters are with her, but they say nothing the wind can repeat to me.’

  Bueralan remembered the shifting breezes in her room before he left Ranan and did not ask her what she meant by the last.

  ‘When my brother died,’ Aelyn continued, ‘when he came back, he did not know who he was, then. In that state, he can perform great horrors. I assume our new god knows this.’

  He began to walk to the door. ‘There are enough atrocities already. Maybe you ought to try and stop this one.’

  ‘You think I want this to happen?’ Her words stopped him, but before he could speak, she continued. ‘I would be careful with my words, if I were you, Bueralan. Responsibility for this does not fall onto many. It falls to one. Just one. She is creating everything that is happening here. She may not be fully aware of how she does it, but this is her creation we are standing in. It speaks to us of pain and suffering and I am not immune to that. Do you think your blood brother is anything but the face of this new world she is making?’

  ‘New world?’ His laugh was a half a huff of disbelief. ‘She isn’t making anything new. You are wrong when you say it is just her. Mother, father, son, daughter. It’s the same poisonous dynasty around us.’

  Aelyn did not disagree, did not say much
until Bueralan picked up his sword, and strapped it around his waist. There, she offered to take him out of Ranan, and as she did, the wind shifted on either side of her feet into shapes, hints of beasts. ‘I’m getting my horse,’ he said. There was no give in his voice and, as the room receded behind him, the stairs to the cathedral passed and the door opened to reveal the warm, midday’s sun, Bueralan felt his resolve harden. He would not leave the grey here. He would not return, after he found Zean. He would not come back to Se’Saera, to Aela Ren, to the god-touched, the immortals, the Keepers of the Divine, the Faithful and, more importantly, he would not return to the dead girl whom he had failed to help.

  The door to the stables shuddered open beneath the palm of his hand. Inside, shafts of light ran through gaps high in the wall, but darkness defined the space between the stalls. The grey was towards the end, Bueralan knew. The other horses, watered, and brushed, stood in their stalls and watched him pass, the light falling over half their bodies, giving them a strange radiance that, at the end of the stables, fell over Kaze in faint, golden light.

  She sat on a wooden stool, her head leant back against the wall, and a bucket and brush beside her. ‘It is over, is it not?’ Her glasses sat on her knee, faint silver glints. ‘Se’Saera’s child is born.’

  ‘You knew.’ It wasn’t an accusation. ‘You knew when you saw me.’

  Kaze’s long fingers picked up her glasses, put them on. ‘You got to see Taela before,’ she said. ‘She spent her final moments with someone she cared about. How many mortals in the service of a god can claim that?’