Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  But he had survived. He had crawled back towards his bed, the guards finally finding him in a panic and calling for help to lift him up.

  And all the while, through everything, he’d been busy in his Grove.

  Many failed pieces of armor lay scattered and discarded around his forge. He started with metal plates surrounded by corrugated ring, all in theory resting over leather padding. He shaped it knowing fear and intimidation mattered, angling and sculpting the pieces to be animalistic, the helm open and spiked at his face to look like the head of a bear. He inscribed it with runes like the legends of old.

  The dead collected everything he needed, bringing ore and water and tools; they hunted and skinned animals in the forest, salting, watering, and oiling the hide. They chopped wood, mined coal and iron from the caves for smelting, expanding the clearing to begin new buildings.

  Now that Ruka had brought the worlds of the living and the dead together, the possibilities were endless. Could he bring something larger? A wagon? A ship? What were the rules? What were the limits?

  In the real world, the young boy fed Ruka fruit and white-grain and then chicken with trembling hands and wide eyes as Ruka gestured for more and more. When he left, Ruka slept.

  It went on for three days. Three days of rice and wound checking, bandage changes and water. Then at last came the men with spears.

  The little islanders shoes slapped on stone in a pack from the hall, and the door opened with a jerk.

  Bukayag fully intended to seize a sword and hack his way to freedom, but Ruka held him. They would not have treated us or fed us if all they wanted was death, brother. Be calm.

  Spear-servants stepped inside, and behind them another old man in fine silk robes. Behind him, the king himself.

  “Loa, King Farahee.”

  Ruka bowed as best he could from his bed, and the square-headed monarch smiled thinly.

  “Loa, Ruka.”

  In one hand the king held a wide, flat disc that looked like clay, in the other a small, smooth white rock. Neither looked like weapons.

  Farahee smiled politely and sat in a chair placed by his guards, holding the clay tablet on his lap. He rubbed the white rock across the front, which left a mark or some kind of symbol that was not a rune. He leaned forward and made a sound, like ‘Ah,’ and waited.

  Ruka looked at the warriors, then the old man, all who stared with blank faces. He shrugged, and made the sound back.

  The king nodded as if pleased, then drew another.

  ‘Eh’, he said this time, and Ruka repeated it. The king nodded and drew another.

  And so they went. When the tablet was filled the king wiped it with a cloth dabbed in water, and started again.

  In total he drew seventy-two symbols, seventy-two different sounds, all ending in one of five ‘base’ sounds. Farahee then re-drew the first symbol, and waited.

  Ruka thought it best to display some value, and also—he was rather bored. He reached for the tablet, and though the men with spears grunted and thrust their weapons, the king seemed to understand and slid it onto the bed.

  Ruka took the white rock and drew his name with the right sounds, then spoke them. He drew the correct spelling of Fa-ra-hi and Ki-kay and Ah-rune, which he corrected to spell more like ‘Ah-Ru-Neh’ with three symbols because ‘n’ was apparently its own sound.

  Then he spelled Lo-ah, and thi-sah-kah, and a dozen other words and sounds he’d stored as certain in his Grove, and now had symbols for.

  And as he did he began to forget, at least for a moment, that he sat wounded before a king in this strange land drawing alien symbols. In his mind he returned to the land of ash where he learned runes by firelight.

  He was wrapped in old thin furs, hungry and shivering. His mother sat before him, blue-lipped and reading from the Book of Galdra. She clapped her white hands in wonder.

  “I’m so proud of you, Ruka.” Her words and look filled him with warmth even now. “You’re a very special boy. Do you know that? You must know and remember how special you are.”

  Oh yes, he thought, very special. Deformed, and cursed. Marked and single-born. All the others in the world to remind him.

  Farahi was smiling and nodding at Ruka’s efforts, his wide eyes and warmth a pale reflection of Beyla’s.

  This king wanted something, just like the first. No doubt he’d play his own games and twist Ruka’s invisible chain as Bukayag feared he would. But he seemed patient, and clever, and willing to teach.

  And if he would teach his words then perhaps he would bring books, too. Ruka had seen many placed in large, wooden boxes, standing in rows like livestock. Perhaps here, despite being a man, and single-born, and cursed and an outcast, he could learn their contents. It was only a goddess of laws which prevented it in the Ascom, and here she did not exist.

  He knew he should focus on the task at hand, but he couldn’t seem to hold his thoughts steady even as he drew Northern runes. The floodgates of his memory had opened—the endless images of youth flowing through unwanted.

  First came the memory of a father, mysterious to the eyes of a child, now plain, pathetic, and disgusting. He remembered the half-looks, the silence and shame—the clear image of a man who knew what was right in his heart and yet lacked the courage to make it so.

  Ruka blinked back the tears. As a boy he had thought himself to blame. He had believed his mother’s pain and loneliness were the result of his curse. But as a man, Ruka knew no priestess, no law, no power on earth save death could stop him from doing what he thought was right. He had no sympathy for his father.

  And how could a man forgive, he wondered, if the memory of his wounds were as fresh as the day they spawned?

  He thought perhaps this was his true curse—to remember. Other people never truly forgave, he thought—they only ever forgot the details, the feelings, the failures. But this was not a path open to him.

  In the real world, Farahi had introduced the old man, who bowed and began speaking what must have been questions in a series of words and sounds. Ruka did his best to listen.

  He realized, amazed, that many of the words were different entirely from the others—that the sounds were not any of those Farahi had taught him, and that they must be from some other tongue. He realized, with some excitement, they were trying to find sounds he would understand.

  If a collector of such words existed, then there must be many different peoples, many different ways to speak. The world must be even more vast than he believed.

  Ruka understood none of it, of course. Some sounds he recognized as from the pirates, which meant even on an island near-by they had different words. He shook his head at the fruitless attempts, and when the old man had exhausted his words, he unfurled a flat parchment covered in shapes and symbols. Ruka understood what it was at once.

  He had begun something very similar in his Grove—a map of the Ascom with the coasts, mountains and forests drawn. Compared to this wonder of colored dyes and intricate detail, though, his own work was crude, and childish.

  The king pointed to a small series of what must have been islands and said ‘Pie-yew’, or ‘Pyu’. Then he pointed at the largest and said ‘Sree-con’, which was perhaps spelled ‘Sri Ko-N’. Then he waved a hand over the parchment, and waited.

  Ruka understood this, too.

  ‘Point at the map,’ the king meant, ‘tell us where you are from.’

  For one of the few moments in his life, Ruka hesitated. It was not that his mind had not told him of the possibilities, of the dangers, and opportunities, for already it began a list. It was that he could not decide on a very simple question: Do I owe my people any loyalty?

  The king looked at Ruka’s eyes and seemed impatient. To buy time, Ruka looked at the old man, then the door, before meeting the king’s stare.

  Farahi’s calm face cracked slightly as if amused, but he nodded and spoke, and the old man bowed and left, and even the spearmen stood further away.

  Ruka decided, whatever his feel
ings, whatever his reservations or loyalties, he must trust this king. He could see no reason for these people to venture South, no true threat to a land of frozen tundra and hard men from the soft sons of paradise.

  So he pointed to the edge of their world. He dragged his finger off the Southern sea, beyond all the islands until his hand moved off the leathery map to the bed. He couldn’t judge the distance, but he made his best guess.

  “Ascomi,” he said, wishing he had the words to say more.

  The king blinked and sat back in his chair. His face grew very still as he looked away, staring at the wall as if trying to rip some answer from the stone. To Ruka’s eyes he seemed worn, or perhaps, resigned. At last, he nodded.

  “Ascomi,” the king repeated as he let out a breath.

  Ruka watched him closely, fascinated at the strange reaction. It was as if he knew, or at least suspected. They looked at each other, and the king seemed fascinated, too.

  Finally he rose and gestured at the bed, saying words that might have meant ‘eat, and rest’.

  Ruka did not know how to thank him and so said nothing. The king left him with the marking stones and servants, and before night fell they brought him paper and ink, books and blank scrolls and clothes.

  He marveled at it all, bewildered as his world spun and grew and re-formed with islands and new seas and a great continent so vast it dwarfed the Ascom several times over.

  In the morning, the old man returned, and Ruka sharpened his mind, turning it to words and trinkets and books, all thought of the past or revenge or hatred gone, replaced for the moment by a thing he had lacked since Kunla died: a new purpose.

  Ruka had finally found a cause worthy of his talents. He would learn this world and everything ever understood by men, because only then could he decide what to do with it. He would show these terrified and unworthy lesser things what a man could do, then take their world by the throat. What he would do then, he did not yet know, wishing only he had Beyla to advise him.

  But on his fourteenth day in paradise, after a long and restless night of heat, Ruka’s education truly began.

  Chapter 17

  Ruka learned the island tongue in a week, but he pretended two. He did not know how long it took other men, but by the reactions of his tutors, he assumed considerably longer.

  He pronounced the sounds terribly, of course. And he did not yet know a great many words, nor understand the strange formulation of many rules and exceptions. But it was enough, and the rest would come.

  The eyes of his chief tutor, ‘Master’ Aleki, grew more narrow as the days passed. Many times as Ruka understood or formed words he would almost spit and raise his voice as he demanded ‘where did you learn this?’. By his expression he did not believe the answers.

  Such was the way with mediocre minds, Ruka decided. His questions, too, began to wear at the man’s patience.

  “How big is world?” he asked, and Aleki stared.

  “Our sailors say the known world stretches from Samna to Naran, mountains to mountains in the West and North.”

  “And beyond?”

  “Nothing. Only the sea.”

  ‘And across sea? Is world ring? Sphere?”

  “Perhaps it is flat,” snapped the older man, though without conviction

  Ruka dismissed this. He had seen the curve plainly, mountains slowly falling beneath the horizon as the distance grew. The world was rounded, that was obvious, either a ring or a sphere. Sphere seemed more likely, or else men would have found a way off the edge.

  “What created world? Gods? What is sun, moon, and stars? Why does sea move and how? What is disease and what makes seasons?”

  At first Aleki tried to answer such questions, but he soon discovered Ruka expected exact detail. He wouldn’t settle for metaphor or approximation or assumption, he wanted answers, explanations.

  For all their wealth and knowledge, Ruka soon understood these ‘Pyu’ lacked them just as the men of ash did. The old man spouted gibberish about gods and spirits and legends which in some ways interested Ruka, but this too would be mostly nonsense—more ancient wisdom for curious or perhaps fearful minds, but mostly without merit.

  At night they left him books on Pyu history and myth, though what he truly wanted was to understand their buildings, their ships, and their cities. He knew he must be patient. He read what words he could and stored the rest to ask his tutor, providing a list each morning to the wide-eyed old man.

  “Night is for sleeping,” he scolded as if with a child. “You are the king’s guest. You are expected to rest and maintain your health, or he will be displeased.”

  Ruka only shrugged, and carried on. He did even more than it seemed, for he worked in his Grove even as he studied, expanding the clearing for the many new buildings he expected to begin.

  Sometimes he walked at night, too, because the days were suffocatingly hot, and the sun scorched his skin. His guards followed but never stopped him, and he toured the palace grounds, especially the gardens.

  Servants here kept bushes and flowers, vines and trees—so vast and intricate they were the size of fields in the Ascom. It seemed in Sri Kon there were men whose sole task in life was to maintain beauty. Ruka thought it a most honorable profession.

  Indulgent, perhaps, in a world where others starved, but still—had he found an animal that sacrificed for beauty, he would have been overjoyed. It seemed a reason for mankind to survive.

  There were others like this, too—men and women who devoted their lives to music or art, much like the skalds of the Ascom. Here they seemed far less rare, which he supposed was a sign of wealth. Most of the islanders did not think of life as a struggle. They did not act as if starvation and suffering were a single season away.

  In the veneer of immortality that seemed to encompass everything here, Ruka saw how a man could lose himself in the show—how he could forget the drought and snakes and disease that lurked, always waiting, and turn his eyes from the death all around him.

  Every day he wished to see how those outside the palace lived, but he couldn’t leave, and always returned to his room.

  After the first huge moon passed, Ruka was invited to sit with the king.

  His wounds had begun to heal, and he wore mostly the soft, smooth ‘silk’ of the islanders now in a loose wrap as shown by the servants. It helped with the heat, but not much.

  Ruka had largely memorized the palace grounds, but the king’s retainers did not take him to the main hall. Instead he was led up several flight of stairs, up to an outer wall and a tower rising above it.

  “Loa, Ruka. Come and sit with me.”

  The king sat in one of two chairs set out facing East above the city. He was dressed in rich, blue silks that almost matched the color of the sea on the horizon. Rays from the un-risen sun lit a thin, cool fog.

  Ruka bowed as the islanders did and sat. The king inspected him.

  “I’m told you are learning our language very quickly, and that you’re a very good student.”

  “Thank you. Yes. Good teacher. Many books.”

  Farahi smiled.

  “You can already read books?”

  “Yes, king, a little.”

  “Do you have many books in Ascomi?”

  “No. Some. Few.” Ruka shrugged, unsure how to explain the book of Galdra, and that if other books existed he did not know of them.

  Farahi smiled politely, and gestured at the table. “I thought we would play a game, and watch the sun rise. This is a test of mathematics, mostly. Do you know that word?”

  Ruka shrugged because he had read it but did not completely understand. He could count and manipulate numbers in his mind very well, but this seemed simple enough and not requiring many books.

  The king explained though that mathematics could be very complex, and Ruka’s curiosity piqued at once. The king’s smile broadened as he leaned closer to the table.

  He explained the rules of the game with gestures, motioning how the pieces would be set around th
e board, explaining patiently how the rules changed as more pieces entered, and different shapes on the board added complication.

  “They multiply, you see? And they are worth more along the edges. They get more important very quickly. Pieces here are worth two of these, and these two of those. The pieces placed at the very end are what truly matter.”

  Ruka believed he understood. He counted the squares, and the pieces, and the ‘barrier’ squares which would surely require strategy. To him it felt like a battlefield.

  The king placed a piece first, and when Ruka followed Farahi watched his four-fingered hand.

  “Sorry, for your finger.” He moved another piece. “It wasn’t my intention. And I’m not angry about the…dead servant. Understand?”

  ‘The dead servant’.

  These kings had little regard for their followers, Ruka knew. For a moment he again wrestled with the butcher in the pit, wounded and slick with blood, pain lancing up his arm. He nodded, and took his turn.

  “You have many calluses,” said the king. “What was your profession in your homeland? Were you a sailor? Farmer? You have rough hands. Understand?”

  Ruka flexed his fingers, then relaxed them. In truth he did not know what to say. His hands and even his body did not reflect reality as they should.

  Over the years, he had slowly begun to accept his body shaped little by little from the toil in his Grove. It made him stronger, body hardened and roughened by toil. He didn’t think he had the words to describe ‘shaman’, or ‘outcast’.

  “Hunter,” he said, and shrugged. “Warrior.”

  The king nodded, then looked at his own hands.

  “Mine are soft,” he sighed. “Rich hands. Perhaps I should be proud of this. But a man should be rough, eh?”

  Ruka did not catch every word, but understood the meaning.

  “Man learns with books, or hands. With books, he keeps fingers.”

  Farahi met Ruka’s eyes, a broad grin stretching across his face. He placed another piece. “And what would you like to learn, Ruka? What interests you?”

  “Everything, king. All things men can know.”