Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  “Loa, Ruka. Sit with me.”

  Ruka obeyed, settling in the larger chair. Farahi’s face held no indication of his mood, as usual. He gestured at the board as if Ruka should begin the game.

  “I’ve seen your iron,” he said, after several moves. “It’s very impressive. But Aleki tells me you can be very disrespectful.”

  Ruka shrugged because he was, and didn’t try to be otherwise.

  “I dislike arrogant men.”

  “Surely you mean other arrogant men,” said the king, and Ruka squinted.

  No doubt even a more honorable king like this one expected his servants cowed, and docile. Ruka supposed he should round his shoulders. He should bow his head in fear and submission and be a proper little retainer. He did not.

  “Competence is not the same as arrogance, King Farahi.”

  He moved another piece, and the king watched him. The skin around his eyes crinkled, and the stone face cracked.

  “Here on these islands, men like to exchange light pleasantries before they move on to meaningful things. I might, for example, ask after your health, or how you slept. Do yours do this?”

  “Yes.” Ruka placed another piece. “I dislike it.”

  The king smiled. “Me too.” He leaned back in his chair. “Very well. I’ll speak plain. I wish to know more about you now that you know my words. Tell me about your homeland. Tell me about this ‘Ascom’ beyond the sea.”

  Ruka looked out at the blue haze of the water, already tinged with a red rising sun. He pictured an endless field of white, and marveled that such places should exist in the same world.

  “Have you ever seen snow, King?”

  “Once,” the islander nodded. “In the mountains of Nong Ming Tong.”

  Ruka breathed out as he recalled winter in perfect detail, seeing again his time as an outlaw. His first season he’d been trapped between the forests near Hulbron, and the mountains near Alverel. He’d lived in fear of travelers, and wolves, afraid every meal would be his last unless he could steal or hunt and somehow escape the consequences.

  “Imagine this sea as white as a mountain peak, smothered beyond sight in all directions. Imagine a wind raging across it so cold, and part of storms so dangerous, a man might be lost and blinded, frozen not a hundred paces from his home.” Here he paused, feeling a shiver despite the warmth. “There is never enough food, nor fuel. Death is quiet, and everywhere. Children are not given names until they are two years, and poor mothers often focus their attention on the strongest. Men fight and die for glory, for dishonor, for insult or excitement or revenge or hate or curiosity because they do not much value their own lives. And why should they. They cannot feed their own children, they cannot change the cruel reality of their existence.” He felt a bitterness in his voice, and he looked at the king and saw something he did not expect. Pity, perhaps, or at least empathy. He did not know what to do with it, and stopped speaking.

  “And you, Ruka, how did you live in this place?”

  The king’s voice had become more gentle, as if he knew the answer. Ruka at once tasted the dead flesh of a boy he’d murdered. He again stabbed the farm-house boys to death, tore Kunla apart with his bare hands, strangled the lawspeaker, killed warriors near Alverel, and tortured Egil in a night of screams.

  “I was an outcast,” he said, struggling for words. “Then a shaman...a kind of priest, and warrior. My mother…I had only a mother, and she is dead. I am alone.”

  He wasn’t sure he should be so honest but felt no reason to lie. He glanced at the king, who sighed and moved another piece.

  “I too lost my parents. A king knows what it is to be alone.” He smiled politely. “Often I feel like an outcast.”

  They played for a time in silence, and Ruka felt the slow, impending feeling of being manoevered to inevitable loss. Often he felt as if the strange island king were only waiting for his turns—as if he knew already what would happen, though he showed no impatience. In all his life he had never felt another creature his equal in simple feats of mental strength. But in this complex game with this man, no matter what he did, he could not win.

  What does he want from me, Ruka wondered. What is he planning?

  The iron seemed to interest him, though perhaps not as much as it should have. Was their time together just curiosity? Was the king of paradise bored and looking for entertainment?

  “So,” Farahi said at last, “you fled your home to an unknown sea. You expected death. Instead you have found a new world. Now what do you want, Ruka? Do you wish to return?”

  The king’s keen eyes locked onto Ruka’s, as if he were truly interested—as if the answer mattered.

  Ruka blinked because his mind raced in a thousand directions. It was still spinning with the chaos of a world grown a hundred times in size, still reeling from so much newness and possibility.

  What did he want? He wanted everything. And sometimes nothing. He wanted to climb from the mounds of snow that had buried him. And yet it seemed with every piece of ground he covered, with every new hand-hold that wrenched him up from a frozen tundra, the horizon only grew. New problems and chaos arose in every direction.

  Be free, Beyla had told him, tell your own story. And not these unworthy men, nor these terrified women can stop you and your mind and your old gods.

  Back then, it had served him well. But it seemed insufficient. An animal was free, but no animal had ever built a city, or forged an iron claw. No animal could live in both ash and sand.

  Ruka did not know if he could forgive his people or be forgiven—if he could transcend his past when he could not forget a single moment.

  He stood in his Grove and watched the dead, and soon they abandoned their tasks and crowded together, watching him in return. He felt shame as he looked on their wounds. How could he ever be free of the them? And should he be?

  Redeem our suffering, he wished they’d ask. Redeem us, and redeem yourself.

  But the dead could not speak. Ruka wanted only to somehow justify all he’d done—to balance the scales of his darkness with greatness, and with deed. Perhaps the prophetess had the right of that. Perhaps only a man’s deeds truly mattered.

  “My people,” he said carefully, “their lives…are difficult. They are very poor. Each day and each season is a fight to survive. It is another world from this.” He waved a hand at the city and the great fortress of stone, not knowing how to truly explain. Farahi nodded.

  “We will speak more of your people, Ruka. I wish to learn, to understand, and perhaps even to help.” He waited a moment to emphasize this, then looked away as if deciding how to proceed. “Until this moment you have technically been my slave, my property. Do you understand this?”

  Ruka nodded, he had assumed as much without knowing the word. He read of Pyu slaves and bristled though he wasn’t surprised. As monstrous as the notion seemed, apparently all the world save for the Ascom had them.

  Farahi met Ruka’s eyes.

  “Now I release you.” He slid the paper he’d been scribbling across the table. “You are a freed man of the isles, and you may go anywhere you wish. But, I offer you a path, if you wish—to serve in my court, with my family. You will be paid and housed in the palace as my guest unless you wish to live elsewhere. You may read anything you wish, and all my son’s tutors will be available to you.” He smiled. “And you and I shall keep playing Chahen. Would that please you?”

  Ruka watched him, feeling speechless. He felt Bukayag’s distrust, and knew even wrapped within generosity and perhaps kindness lay manipulation and the desire to make Ruka his retainer.

  But he saw something else in the king’s eyes, too—a hope that this strange foreign man before him would say yes, and not because he had something to gain, or because of some master plan, but because he was lonely. Perhaps he did not play Chahen with others, or share the sunrise, because in a way he truly was an outcast. Ruka was moved by the thought.

  “That would please me. I accept.”

  The kin
g nodded as if unsurprised, and only mildly pleased. But Ruka caught the jerk in his shoulders, the almost tremble of his hand.

  Ruka knew fear when he saw it, even on this man of stone. He couldn’t understand it, for they were surrounded by guards, and in truth Ruka meant the man no harm.

  “Good. Now there is only the matter of what exactly you will do. Aleki tells me you had many practical questions about Pyu architecture and construction. If you do not object, perhaps for now I will send you to my Royal Chief Builder. He will teach you anything you wish to know, and give you some practical experience. Is that acceptable?”

  Ruka shook his head at the word. He did not have the tools to relay his gratitude.

  No doubt he was being manipulated, yes, of course that would be true. This king would have his demands like any other chief, and would do nothing out of generosity alone. But even in Trung’s pit of hell there was a man of honor. Perhaps so it was with kings. Maybe Farahi Alaku was a man improving his world—a worthy chief who saw truth and merit, and rewarded it. Perhaps even an outcast might serve him with pride.

  “It’s acceptable.” Ruka placed another piece on the board and looked away to hide his emotion. He would not forget Beyla, or Bukayag, or that the world ate weakness and spit it out. But the world had changed, and perhaps for the better. He thought with time, it may even give him cause to hope. He said nothing and blinked away the water threatening his eyes, because men of ash did not weep, and old customs died slow.

  Chapter 19

  1580 AE. Somewhere in Naran.

  Kale watched from above as a thousand jackals circled his lions. Despite everything—all of Osco’s tricks and the deaths of farmers and scouts and innocent travelers that crossed their path, the emperor had found them.

  They’d abandoned their wagons a week ago. They even butchered and ate their dying donkeys on the move, cooking with torches held under copper pots. Kale tried to keep up, tried to share the burden with the men who served his cause, but even if he wasn’t still weak from poison, and unable to eat much of anything but soup and rice, he’d have failed.

  Besides their packs and gear, Kale was the only thing the Mesanites still carried. It gave him time and energy to help in other ways, floating out over untamed, green trees that spread like fur over the backs of uncrossable mountain beasts. He flew over ground that always rose or fell, never laying flat and always leading to more.

  He saw huge, ancient trees next to sloped fields or lakes with murky, freezing water that the men said didn’t warm. He’d never seen snow until he left Pyu, but here it crowned the mountaintops even in summer, and he reached out to feel its coolness with his spirit as he soared above with the birds.

  He froze at the sight from one such peak, feeling both small and god-like, nothing and everything all at once. Naran held cities so vast they sheltered more people than all of Pyu, but it also had mountain country ruled by wolves and bears, plains ruled by lions, and jungles ruled by nothing. Even with his spirit stretched to its limit, and his view from the tallest peak, he saw only a tiny portion.

  “There’s so much,” he whispered, holding back tears. Too much. Perhaps a world so vast could never be ruled by one man, or one people, or even one God.

  Osco marched at his body’s side, and his eyebrows looked impatient. “Are there men blocking the bridge to the East?”

  Kale blinked, and flew closer. Yes, there certainly were. Every bridge in sight had become gathering points, with exhausted, rag-tag bands of scouts drawing like insects from every direction.

  Some had already attacked. Arrows flew at their camp from the darkness, others tried to grab supplies before running off, and maybe cut a throat on the way. The main body of Osco’s men never stopped or gave chase, but his lightly armored ‘skirmishers’ had murdered their way across the empire. And there were losses.

  It was hard to tell exactly since they were always gone or moving, and Osco didn’t bother giving reports. Kale thought at least thirty of his men were dead. Most were just ‘missing’, but these weren’t the sort of soldiers who ran off.

  Others had died in raids or random attacks, many others were wounded. These marched now with arrow-shaped wounds wrapped in cloth and not a sound of complaint. Others had become sick, perhaps from water sources poisoned by the Naranians, or perhaps just from bad luck. The hillmen called it ‘Flux’, but Kale’s people called it ‘brown fever’ because it meant shitting yourself until you recovered, or died.

  Osco asked Kale constantly about troop numbers, about river width and currents, or surrounding cover of trees or hills. Once he’d learned Kale could scout with his ‘mind’, his appetite for details turned voracious. He’d asked how long Kale could ‘roam’, how much time to rest, how far could he travel, how much could he see, and could he teach other men to do it now? He’d accepted ‘no’ as the answer to the last, but his asking and his eyebrows showed concern.

  “We are trapped,” the general’s son and maybe now general announced. He raised a hand and stopped the men. “We’ll rest here a moment to recover strength and plan, then we attack that bridge.” He stared back behind the army with a squint, then shrugged to himself. “If you need rest, islander, take it. What can you do to help us?”

  With his spirit Kale watched the few hundred Naranian soldiers preparing make-shift walls. It took little strength now to explore in this way, and despite the weakness in his body, his windows would be wide.

  “I can do a lot of things. What would you prefer?”

  Osco’s eyebrows raised. “I would prefer you wiped out all our enemies with flying icicles, or burned them to death with lightning.”

  Kale glanced at him and sighed, mostly to himself. He didn’t want to kill anyone.

  But then whether from swords or arrows or threads of force a man couldn’t see and probably didn’t believe in, dead was dead. There was no escape.

  “March across the bridge. Do what you have to, and then keep moving South. I’ll do what I can.”

  Osco didn’t look pleased by this, but nodded. Kale glanced at the sky.

  It held few clouds, and the air was dry and cool. The bodies of the men held power, as well as the trees, the earth itself, and the river. But compared to Nanzu, this place held only a fraction of the power Kale had once used.

  Rope-thick strands led to the mountains far away, humming with a force so vast and wild it terrified Kale just to feel it. But did he dare pull?

  Higher, on miles of wind-roads traveled by birds, he sensed something just as endless, just as world-shaping. But were men meant to even know such things? To change them?

  Am I meant to, God? Is that my path? Is that my Way?

  * * *

  The rest was over rather quickly.

  Kale picked apart his thoughts until all he could feel was beaded mat, the air in his lungs, and the slight breeze. Then Osco was saying “It’s time” and the men were forming shield-lines, unstrapping weapons, and telling jokes.

  Most of the Mesanites looked only a few years older than Kale’s navy recruits, which seemed impossible, and comparing them felt ridiculous. His people trained the teenage sons of merchants and fishermen to keep their heads and man ships in war—they trained civilians to follow orders, chase down pirates, and stay alive.

  Mesanites turned little boys into fearless killers. They dragged children from their mother’s skirts, threw them in a ring, and said ‘fight, or die’. And that was apparently just the start.

  None of these men were anything but soldiers. They were the sons and great-great grandsons of soldiers. Their ‘over-families’ provided them with wives and income, and their gods would honor them in death. Their only concerns were loyalty and glory, and Kale had heard them with his spirit as they marched—they expected heroic deaths at the side of the ‘sorcerer-prince’; they expected their names to go down in legend, sung by their children with tears of pride. They felt rare privilege killing strangers on foreign land, all for a cause not their own. It all turned Kale’s we
ak stomach.

  The march to the bridge was short, and the Naranian scouts were still poorly prepared. They’d cut down trees and laid them in bundles across the wide, stone crossing; they’d gathered and scattered rocks, though these were still thinly piled. Such men were used to setting traps and ambush, perhaps, but left the heavy fighting to others.

  Kale floated his mind out and across the bridge. The leaders of the few hundred men were arguing, no one quite sure who was in command.

  ‘We can’t hold them, there’s too few of us,’ whispered some; ‘the emperor commands us to protect the bridges!’ came the retort; finally: ‘those are Mesanites!’; ‘we should fall back and gather more warriors’.

  Every man had a bow, and seemed to at least agree they should use up their arrows. They’d built up deadwood at the foot of the bridge, but it wasn’t much of a wall.

  “Shields!” Osco shouted as his men entered bow range, and the same square blocks they’d demonstrated outside Malvey now formed on the bank. It took only moments, then the block was moving, shuffling forward with measured steps, breathing out with a sound like ‘hoo’ as their right feet landed.

  Kale had been squeezed inside, blinded by flesh and iron. He used his spirit to see. He watched the first wave of arrows, then cringed at the sound of hard rain on a tin roof. He knew he could reach out and snap the arrows, but didn’t think he needed to. Mesanites took the missiles without alarm, not a single man dropping or even losing pace as the arrows landed and bounced away from their shields.

  They took several volleys but soon made it to the bridge, pushing fallen trees into the water, stepping around or over rock piles, adjusting their formations easily. The scouts kept shooting, but now Osco’s men stepped out from their protection and returned it with their smaller bows.

  Kale protected these as he could from return shots, snapping the arrows or guiding them into the dirt.