The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  Lehana had the lead a street to his right, while two streets further along, Essa and the Brotherhood made their way forwards. Heast had been forced to push wider than he wanted since so much of the siege fire was concentrated on that first force, but he was still able to use the giants as a diversionary shield for his push.

  Heast’s half of Refuge stretched out ahead of him, divided into small, tight units along the road. Taaira led the point, his huge sword drawn, but Heast could not make him out clearly in the dark and smoke. He slipped in and out of view, the soldiers with him likewise, though they did not appear to be fighting. Four groups back, Anemone moved with Oya. The former First Queen’s Guard had her fire lance over her back and an axe and shield in her hand. She had half a dozen soldiers with fire lances: all of them, Heast was pleased to see, were slung over their backs, their shields held in front of them. Half a dozen had been fired when they came into the streets, but most of the resistance had been scattered by the giants and what formal resistance they had fought had required shields at the front.

  A whistle sounded behind Heast and he turned, along with his squad, to face the shadow that emerged.

  ‘Sir.’ Fenna stepped around the corner, a sword in her hand, a long shield over her other arm. ‘The Lieutenant says we will be at the end of the streets in ten, but we have a problem.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘The bridges have been collapsed.’

  Heast grunted sourly. ‘Just that one or all of them?’

  ‘Can’t tell yet, sir.’

  ‘Okay. Tell her to keep going forwards. Report what you just told me to Captain Essa as well. We won’t be far behind you.’

  After she had left, Heast and his unit pushed up another block, the delay lengthening their gap a fraction, but it was that fraction that saved their lives.

  The slight whistle and whine through the air from a stone falling towards them gave only enough time for Isaap to yell. Heast did not know what was said, but it was enough warning for the soldiers to turn back, to turn away from where the stone struck the broken building that they were moving to. Stone burst, rubble struck, and Heast felt his head swim from a piece of rubble that glanced off his head, but even through that ringing, he heard a second and third whistle and whine.

  ‘Move!’ He was the first on his feet. ‘Make them change their trajectory!’

  A series of netted rocks burst across the ground behind him as he and the others began to run. Another followed, this time a clay sphere of burning pitch which erupted over the ground in a giant smudge, washing over two of his soldiers. Heast, slower than the others, caught the man whose face was splashed, caught him as he screamed, and Isaap, who had been in the middle of the run, just ahead of the path of the pitch, took the second, whose clothes were on fire. He dropped him to the ground, rolled him, and cut the straps off his leather armour before Heast reached him. A third whine caused both to look up, and then, before Heast knew it, he was on his back, the building he had been standing next to a shower of dirt and rubble.

  ‘Sir!’ Isaap stood over him, shouting through his ringing head, blood streaking down from his hairline. ‘Sir!’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Heast pushed him away. The man he had been holding, the one whose face had been splashed by pitch, had caught the first hit of the stone and disappeared into the rubble behind it in a bloody smear. The other still lay on his back, alive. ‘Grab Meikle,’ he ordered Isaap, standing. ‘Grab him and move.’ A fourth whine could be heard. ‘Now!’

  The stone hit the ground behind them, but the three of them were moving ahead, and a part of his squad was coming back for them, so they soon outpaced the bombardment. Heast did not relax: he kept his hand on his sword as he jogged forwards, two of his squad slowing their pace to keep up with him, their own swords drawn, an eerie silence beginning to creep down the street that they ran along.

  It was broken when a volley of arrows filled the street, moments before Leeran soldiers began to charge.

  7.

  Meina crouched beside him. ‘I don’t think you’ll be staying here much longer,’ she said. ‘You look awful, coincidentally. Like someone has stripped you of all your skin.’

  Zaifyr could barely move. The pain in his chest had spread throughout him to such an extent that he no longer felt as if his lungs were struggling to breathe through water, but as if the contents of his veins were splintering their solid form and beginning to circulate again. He could feel the dirt beneath him turn to wood and he could hear voices that were not Meina’s, but the words were thin. They broke apart before he could understand them, but he knew that he was in the cathedral. Above him, the moving sky was being turned into a ceiling divided by wooden beams. It would not be long until he knew if Aela Ren would lift him to his feet or not.

  ‘What happened to Se’Saera?’ His voice was no more than a whisper, but he knew that it could be heard in both Heüala and in the cathedral. ‘Meina?’

  ‘The sky broke open.’ The mercenary glanced upwards. ‘I didn’t see how it began. She was beating me, Zaifyr. She was devouring my soldiers. Each one she took reappeared on her side to fight for her. It hurt to see, but I did not order a retreat. I was buying you time. But when there were about three dozen of us left and you hadn’t done anything, I had to give the order to scatter into Heüala. It was after I gave the order that the sky began to split open. I was running down a street when it happened, and I turned back to where Se’Saera was, and I found that the same cracks were appearing in her. It was almost as if she and the sky were made from the same material. She let out this tremendous roar. I thought she was going to begin destroying the city, but then a light burst from her. It was the brightest light I have ever seen.’ She turned back to Zaifyr. ‘I don’t remember much after that. I was pulled into something. I don’t remember what. I saw you there, though. You were falling.’

  Above him, the sky broke through the cathedral. It was Heüala’s sky, one of movement. He thought he could see colour in it now, streaks, but he was not sure.

  ‘After that, I awoke here,’ Meina continued. ‘Heüala looked like a town to me, the kind I used to ride through all the time. All of my soldiers were here with me. I found you and Jix shortly after. I haven’t found Anguish yet.’

  ‘You won’t,’ he said quietly in two worlds. He saw again the light falling over him, saw Soren push him away, saw him deny the gods that put him there, before his body disappeared. ‘He is gone.’

  ‘Is he . . .’ She paused. ‘Is he safe?’

  Could a soul die? ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know.’ Could a god die? The divinity of a god certainly did not, he knew, but the consciousness could. Was it the divinity or the consciousness that he saw above him? ‘Se’Saera could come back, Meina. Or one of the other gods. When the sky is still they will have returned.’

  ‘It is why I plan to stay in Heüala,’ she said. ‘I will be its guardian. I will ensure that the door is open for all of us to be reborn.’ Meina tapped her fingers on her legs, on the leather armour she wore. ‘My soldiers are going to stay with me. We would all like to go through that door. We would all like to be reborn. But we’ve seen souls in the fields. We have to make sure Heüala is safe from them, or whoever else might try to take it.’

  Above him, the roof of the cathedral returned. It left only the faintest echo of the moving sky, one that revealed itself only when he felt his body convulse with pain. ‘No one will know that you do this,’ he said and reached for her hand. ‘You will never be thanked.’

  ‘Eventually, another will replace me.’ Meina took his hand. Two of Zaifyr’s charms pressed against her fingers, but a third passed through her. ‘But when you return, can you do something for me?’

  ‘I don’t know what the world will be like,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘I don’t know what I will be able to do.’

  ‘But you’ll try?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Find my daughter,’ Meina said, holding his hand t
ightly, as if she was afraid he would slip away before she finished. ‘She will be in the care of my uncles in Kislolc. It is a town in Zoatia. I want you to find her and tell her what her mother did here. What she is doing here. She’s young. She won’t understand it all, but I want you to tell her I did this, that I held this city, and that I will see her again.’

  Zaifyr’s fingers were beginning to slip through hers. ‘What is her name?’ His voice sounded stronger in the cathedral. ‘What is her name?’ he repeated in Heüala.

  ‘Aino.’ Her voice was distant. ‘Aino Meina.’

  ‘I’ll find her,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Then she was gone.

  8.

  Bueralan and Aelyn split, him to the right, her to the left, a circle of two around Se’Saera’s child.

  His wings flicked in nervous anticipation, but he said nothing. He did not look as assured as his words might have suggested, and that gave Bueralan pause. Another man would be confident. After all, the child had the better of both him and Aelyn and they were both unarmed and injured now. But while he had taken that advantage through Zean’s skills, he did not have Zean’s experience. Perhaps there was a latent part of Bueralan’s blood brother deep inside the child that told him that and urged caution. Zean would have known that Bueralan’s attack had been opportunistic, but no matter what his wound meant – you cannot die, he repeated to himself, even as he felt his skin try to knit, as if it was trying to remember a skill it had, not until a god allows you – his blood brother would not have underestimated Bueralan. He would have expected the saboteur to readjust. Aelyn Meah was the same. She had fought in more battles than Bueralan could conceive, and she would not have survived ten thousand years of them if she had not learned to adapt.

  Zean would know that.

  But did Se’Saera’s child?

  ‘You were all talk before,’ Bueralan said. ‘Did we hurt your feelings?’

  ‘Mother made me strong.’ The child’s wings flickered and spread. If he could have flown, Bueralan thought, he would have. ‘She did not make me to run.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she?’ he replied. ‘She hides behind armies and followers.’

  ‘She lets them die for her,’ Aelyn said, on the other side of the child. ‘She doesn’t shed a single tear for them. Would she give one for you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t hold out for it,’ Bueralan added.

  Baited, the child roared and leapt at Bueralan, but even as he did, the child knew the mistake he had made.

  The sword in the sand swept up, grabbed by invisible hands.

  Like a spear, it pierced through the child’s left wing and twisted him around. He landed in a controlled tumble, but it was not enough to stop Bueralan charging forwards and grabbing the right wing before the child could straighten. Ignoring the pain in his side, he took the limb in both his hands and twisted as hard as he could. He heard cartilage pop and Se’Saera’s child let out an awful scream as he wrenched himself out of Bueralan’s grasp.

  Quickly, the saboteur took a handful of steps back, his heel tapping the hilt of the sword as he did. He bent to pick it up and when he came up, the child was rushing towards him, his torn wings spread out behind him.

  Bueralan came forwards, the blade slicing out. One of the child’s bloody arms came up, blocked the cut, and replied by lashing his talons out, only to be met with steel. Bueralan moved quickly, blocking, parrying, pushing the child backwards as if the blade he held weighed nothing, without the wound in his side slowing his attacks. It was only after he spared a glanced towards Aelyn that he saw why the blade weighed nothing and why the strain of his muscles did not bother his wound. He felt the air currents around him a second later: the pushes and pulls that aided his every movement and which built on his strength and speed. Soon, he found himself pressing the child back, chipping into his arms, causing black blood to run down the child’s limbs. He offered no room for a counter-attack and, as Bueralan’s blows forced the child to his knees, he brought the blade down on the child’s upraised arm so violently that the steel broke.

  The child’s taloned hand speared into Bueralan’s already wounded side, slicing further into the flesh.

  Bueralan didn’t flinch. He grabbed the child by the neck. His left hand encircled the narrow hardness easily, and with strength aided by Aelyn, jammed the toe of his boot into the other’s exposed genitals. That caused the child pain, and in that pain, the saboteur worked the hand that was around the child’s neck upwards, trapping in in the crook of his arm as he came around him from behind and attempted to choke him.

  The child struggled in his grasp, but he went still when he saw the broken parts of the blade rise from the ground, and hover in front of him.

  Behind them stood Aelyn Meah.

  The child croaked a word, but it was too late: the broken pieces of the blade flew into his deep-set eyes. The child roared in pain in response and Bueralan jammed his knee in the child’s back, the cut, bent wings flapping around him as the broken pieces came back out, and then speared back into the child’s skull. This time, fluid rushed out, a mix of blood and water from the eyes. The two pieces of blade did not withdraw, however. They pushed further and further into the child until, with a sudden crack, both shards sank deeply into the child’s head, leaving a jagged edge and a hilt protruding.

  Bueralan released Se’Saera’s child and stepped back. He raised his gaze to Aelyn, whose dark eyes met his, a look of resigned satisfaction on her face.

  ‘You’re still bleeding,’ she said.

  ‘I can feel it trying to heal, but it just can’t.’ He spat sand out of his mouth. The movement caused him to wince. ‘It’s like a skill it has forgotten. Something has happened to Se’Saera.’

  She nodded. ‘We should return to Ranan, then.’

  To the battle, to where her family was. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  She led him up to the edge of the sand, where the two greys stood. The taller of the two gave him a baleful look, a complaint, Bueralan thought, for being kept out of the battle. When the wind began to gather around their feet, and the saboteur took his reins, he could have sworn he saw the horse consider biting him. Instead, he stamped his hooves, while behind them, the swamp crows began to rustle and move and squawk.

  ‘We’re on our way, brother.’ Aelyn gave the birds a long-suffering look. ‘You mothered less when you were younger.’

  The crows offered no complaint, not even when the four of them began to rise into the air, and they were forced to hop and flutter away as one.

  9.

  Heavy stones hit the streets and buildings around Ayae, but she continued to fight across a flat roof, towards the unloaded ballista.

  She had lost her horse earlier, before she had to get onto the roof. When the bombardment from the catapults started in force, a series of heavy stones had torn across the broken road towards her and Jae’le. They had escaped the first, but the second series of attacks had caught them both. Ayae was thrown backwards heavily and her body hardened against the stone she crashed into. She was bruised, but she fared better than their mounts. When she stumbled back to them, Jae’le was slicing the neck of his to end the beast’s misery, and hers was already dead. The catapults continued to rain stones and pitch around them and, after a pair of huge boulders crashed near them, Ayae found herself on the top of a flat, undamaged roof without Jae’le. She did not know where he was, but the unloaded ballista was pointed at the streets to her right, aimed at the fighting between Leerans and Tinh Tu’s force taking place further up, in the shadow of a single unmoving stone giant.

  Ayae’s arrival interrupted three Leeran soldiers reloading the weapon. The first picked up a heavy crossbow, but the bolt flew wide, and as he dropped it, Ayae was there. With her free hand, she caught the crossbow, slammed it back up and into the soldier’s face. She came around the stunned man, using him as a shield while her sword sliced out in an arc, to catch the second Leeran beneath his chin. The blade b
it deep, caught on the bone, and she released it as she fell. She grabbed hard on the front end of the crossbow to turn it into a club, one she swung painfully into the head of the soldier who had shot at her. The man staggered to the side and Ayae swung it again to block the blow of the third soldier. The axe blade splintered the stock, but Ayae’s hand jammed into the chest of the third with force, stopping her short, giving her enough room so that she could draw her second blade and cut up, across the soldier’s chest, setting her staggering—

  A large stone smashed into the side of the building.

  Ayae stumbled, but it was the Leeran soldier who fared worse, for she fell backwards into Jae’le’s sharp blade.

  He pushed the soldier off his sword. ‘There are not many left.’

  ‘The catapults are more of a danger to the Leerans than we are.’ The ballista began to smoke. ‘Do they know that?’

  ‘Faith stops them thinking.’ Jae’le turned towards the distant cathedral, defined by the light of the fires around it. ‘We need to push forwards.’

  As he spoke, another stone crashed onto a roof near the motionless giant. Ayae saw it skid off and through soldiers fighting around them, before ploughing into the building ahead of them.

  She grabbed her first sword from the ground and followed Jae’le off the damaged roof, into the street. Ayae did not want to run into the siege fire, but she was committed. Moving quickly – more quickly than she would have normally, but not quick enough to overtake Jae’le – she ran past the remains of the buildings that had already been hit, careful of where her feet fell, aware that within the debris were spikes and holes. She listened for the whine and whistle of stones through the air, as well, and kept an eye out for any Leerans who might attack. It was a balance of the senses similar to the one she kept inside herself, the one to keep her powers from hardening or burning her skin, the one she was beginning to lose as she ran faster and faster.