Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  “Ha. Now that I believe. But then it won’t stop them, either, and I’ll feel much better.”

  He waved a hand, and guards took the seer’s arms and escorted him away, his rich leather shoes squishing on the tile.

  Kale watched, and weighed.

  He flew down through the floor looking for dogs chewing on human bones, or prison cells filled with filthy seers. But the palace was large and he found neither, so he returned and watched some more.

  King Kapule dealt with a dozen visitors discussing trade. He handled them deftly, apologetically, giving each little more than promises and charm. After, he would look out his windows and sigh, and when he’d summoned the strength he’d wave at his guards and bring in another.

  Kale knew Kapule was at least fifty. He wore the years badly. His eyes bulged with red veins, his skin puffed and bruised beneath them, his babyish face lined with worry.

  On a whim, Kale whispered with his body, trying to project it over the vast distance and make the king hear. The older man didn’t even flinch.

  He’d never tried to truly speak with his spirit, but he did so now. It felt strange, and heavy, like wearing shoes after a season of sandals. But it worked.

  “I’ll bring your rain, Farmer-King,” he croaked, “because your people suffer. I will be there soon.”

  The man jerked in surprise, a knife appearing in his pudgy hand from a fold in his robe.

  “Are you alright, sir?”

  A bodyguard formed as if from nothing from beside the door. He moved like a viper guarding its young.

  “Yes. Yes…I’m fine.” The king shook his head and pat the servant’s shoulder as if he did it often. “But I’d be better if it rained.”

  “Yes sir.” The guard didn’t smile, then he strode around the room barking orders at hidden guardsmen to sweep the palace for danger. “Disarm everyone,” he hissed.

  Kapule raised a hand as if to protest, then seemed to change his mind and settled back down in his mountain of pillows. “Don’t kill anyone,” he sighed, resigned, as if it didn’t really matter.

  Kale pulled back to his senses, uncertain how he felt.

  * * *

  The army marched. The men’s water ran low then out before the week was done, though they stopped at every well along the way. Lips went from dry to cracked and bleeding, tongues bulged, and what little the soldiers pissed came out the color of sunlight. None complained, except Asna.

  “What good is gold if I die in hell-hole?”

  Kale rather agreed with the sentiment, but there was nothing to do but go onward.

  At first locals feared their small army as it passed, but when the men kept good order and their hands to themselves, half-naked children soon came tugging at legs. Some begged, some stared, others just followed in silence, dirty faces cast down in misery, twig-like legs good only for a mile.

  They traveled a road Kale had seen from the sky. From his height he hadn’t seen it clearly, but now discovered it flanked on both sides by men in wood collars staked to red dirt. Hundreds, maybe thousands of such men hung over empty barrels or slumped against the ground.

  Most looked dead, probably just from dehydration and the sun, others moaned, cried, or wailed. Guards sat near-by under tents drinking water. Some held back families that came too close to their dying sons, husbands and fathers.

  “Who are these men?”

  Kale stepped to the guards with his soldiers behind him feeling a sudden rage. He could speak Tong, but not particularly well.

  “Thieves,” said a glassy-eyed spearmen in an officer’s cap. He looked on the clustering group of Mesanites with entirely less fear than seemed prudent, and shrugged. “They all stole food.”

  Kale felt the pull of violence at the man’s casual tone. The urge to burn his thoughts and float free, pull at the sky and rend these men limb from limb felt as strong as his thirst.

  But he tried to remember patience. He stood staring, feeling Osco’s hand on his arm as if trying to calm him, and he felt the truth and horror of it all. He had seen the countryside, the drought. There were simply too many mouths to feed, and people would starve and fight and nothing anyone could do would stop any of it. He could give no justice or answers in that stark reality.

  He felt as he had when his navy brothers couldn’t read, or as a great wave drowned Sri Kon’s coast—noblemen drinking as the fishermen died.

  But at least his father hadn’t. Farahi the evil sorcerer had never sat idle while his people suffered. He had tried to save those he could, even on the fateful night when Kale slept with Lani, and ensured his own banishment.

  Kale turned from the scene of horror and walked on, passing the dead and dying with his eyes turned to the road. He was being watched, and followed by an army—his first act in Tong couldn’t be killing his ally’s soldiers.

  Before the sun fell they entered Ketsra on the main road that ran to the palace. Humanity clogged it from tip to hilt, spilling off to side streets and jamming these too.

  Osco looked down into the city and sighed, sharp eyes no doubt seeing details and options and plans Kale couldn’t begin to form.

  “If we take the men down that madness, there will be many injured locals,” the Mesanite said without tone.

  Kale sighed, knowing the warrior was not suggesting they avoid it. He was simply stating a fact.

  “We leave them here,” Kale said, and started down the gentle slope to the main entrance.

  In his mind Kale saw the staked and dying men, the doomed ‘seers’, the viper-guard at the king’s side.

  He swallowed and felt poison coursing through his veins, burning his gut again in Osco’s hall. He began to understand his father’s fears, his paranoia, his terror of the game of kings.

  “We leave them here,” he said again, more forcefully, as he stepped towards his father’s ‘ally’. It occurred to him then that he had taken Kapule’s daughter without his consent, and perhaps the man had already heard this rumor. He took a deep breath.

  “Asna, stay close to me inside.”

  The mercenary grinned and stepped forward, checking straps holding knives around his body, and the looseness of the swords at his waist. Kale pictured his singing and his sword chopping men in a deadly rhythm of violence, and he tried not to feel ashamed.

  Chapter 25

  “Ruka, I’d like you to meet someone.”

  The old monk had knocked for the first time, and no longer tried to surprise him in the mornings. Ruka blinked in the dim light and returned from his mind, putting away his Grove-work to focus.

  After the test, he had been given all the food he wished but otherwise ignored by the monks. He wasn’t sure why or what they intended, but he sensed little enough danger.

  “Yes, Master.”

  Lo nodded and led him down the stone steps and corridors, across the green temple grass and dustless pathways, until they stood beneath palm trees by lake lancona.

  “Wait here,” he said, and slunk away, leaving Ruka to watch steam rise and smell the salt.

  The heat still bothered him, and the moisture in the air felt oppressive, but the beauty was almost overwhelming.

  “Stolen beauty,” Bukayag growled

  Ruka knew in a way this was true, but also false. Did such a thing belong to men at all?

  Questions like this were beyond Ruka’s brother, though. They stood together on the sand and felt the breeze, waiting a long time in silence. The sun crested the volcanoes, and soon cleared the small mountains to bathe the view in the fading colors of what ashmen called fall, but these islanders called ‘dry season’.

  Ruka worked in his Grove while he waited. He wondered sometimes what other men did to occupy themselves during the banalities of life, but he supposed they had their fantasies, or their escapes, or perhaps for them memory was a tool requiring constant maintenance.

  He’d almost finished a dry-dock now on what would one day be a river. The dead were fastening oak boards, curved and overlapping, joggled, c
aulked and bolted down with steel rivets. He would build new and better ships mixed and matched from Pyu and Ascomi styles. Their sleek but sizable hulls would cut through the sea, reverse if needed, and run shallow enough to beach, all while holding a hundred men.

  “You’re very patient,” spoke a boy’s voice. It disturbed the sounds of the animals and the water against the beach. It seemed unsure, and on the edge of manhood.

  Ruka turned to find a tall, skinny teen in robes with acne on his pale brown face.

  “No,” he said, “not truly. I was busy.”

  His lips felt strange as he spoke, and he winced and licked them. He had not intended to say this out loud.

  The boy smiled, then gestured down a path around the lake. “Will you walk with me? My name is Ando. What is yours?”

  Again Ruka found his tongue moving before his mind could decide. “My name is Ruka, son of Beyla.”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed. “That is a strange name, at least to these islands. Tell me, how did you pass the wall-test, Ruka?”

  The boy’s eyes seemed somehow brighter now, and menacing. Ruka felt little hairs on his neck raise, as if he were watched by some hungry pack of predators. He felt his mouth moving and tried to stop it.

  “I…” he coughed, and growled, but failed. “I memorized the symbols.”

  The air seemed to shimmer in Ruka’s vision, and with every step he felt heavier. The boy seemed to swell in size beside him, all his shyness vanishing as if only an illusion.

  “That’s quite a gift,” his voice was louder now, and deeper. “Where are you from, Ruka, son of Beyla?”

  The question felt snapped like the end of a whip. The air was thick and viscous and Ruka felt his body sweating.

  He ran towards his mother’s house in his Grove, wanting only someplace safe to hide. He slammed the door and put his forehead to the wood, summoning a Pyu map of the world to his mind. He relaxed his control.

  Speak for us, brother, there’s something very wrong. There is power here or from this boy, something that controls me. I can’t fight it.

  Bukayag woke, and blinked.

  “An island,” he almost spit, as if unbothered by the boy’s power. “Far to the North. Beyond Naran.”

  Ando’s eyes narrowed, then flared. His body shimmered as heat rising from a fire, his voice growing deeper and echoing even in Ruka’s grove, scattering the birds as the dead men looked up from their toil.

  “Where are you from?” the ‘boy’ repeated.

  Ruka fell to his knees on the wooden floor. The Ascom! He wailed. The land of ash, from across the sea! The words felt pulled from his churning gut as if expelled.

  “The North,” said Bukayag, “a small place called Tinay. I left because I didn’t want to fish.”

  The boy who wasn’t a boy stared and stared as if ready to draw a blade and drive it deep into Ruka’s gut. At last he smiled, calm again. Bukayag did the same.

  “I’m curious because you remind me of someone,” he said, as if this explained everything. “But the world is very large.”

  Bukayag nodded, and they walked together along the lake until Ando spoke again.

  “Tell me, Ruka, why have you come seeking Enlightenment?”

  Ruka sat trembling in his Grove, but the boy’s voice at least no longer felt like a crushing weight.

  “I didn’t,” answered Bukayag. “I came to see a friend, but once I saw Bato I wished to stay longer.”

  Ando’s smile didn’t touch his eyes. “It is a very beautiful island, I don’t blame you. Well. It was very nice to meet you, Ruka, son of Beyla, of Tinay. Perhaps you’ll visit me again.”

  “Yes, perhaps.”

  Bukayag returned the boy’s bow with the faintest movement and turned away. Sweat trickled down their armpits and beaded on their neck, and they nearly fled, not stopping or looking back until they reached the far side of the lake.

  When Ruka felt sure they were alone, close to the rocky outer beach and the cliff-like drops to the water, he finally relaxed.

  “By the mountain what was that, brother?”

  Even Bukayag’s voice was tight with earnest fear. Ruka had no answer. Was Ando a man with powers like Ruka? Was he a God?

  His people claimed that ’beyond the world-ring is a realm beyond mortal ken.’ They believed in gods and half-gods and star-kings, but Ruka had never seen any proof. Except the land of the dead, and my own strange powers.

  Perhaps Ando was proof otherwise. The thought filled him with doubt, and fear, reminding him of his own ignorance. The feeling eased slightly as he walked.

  He couldn’t make you speak, at least. Together, perhaps, we were stronger.

  Bukayag gripped a stone and threw it into the water. “Barely.”

  They sat on the lake’s edge together seeking calm. Ruka knew his brother was right about his Grove. More than ever he knew he needed to test the rules and push himself further. Perhaps there were other Ando’s. Perhaps there were other men or Gods with great powers, and one day they might come with more than curiosity.

  He left his mother’s house and returned to the drydock, putting a hand on the prow of his first war-ship’s hull. It was held upright with clamps and wedges but soon would float in water drawn from wells.

  He allowed himself a moment of exhaustion and weariness. He had so very much to do.

  In his mind’s eye, a hundred war-ships already circled the Ascom. These would be both fighters and transports, ships with hulls shallow enough to sail down Bray’s river, but large enough to hold his retainers and supplies and horses. With enough warriors, he would be able to control the fertile ring, all the way to the valley of law.

  Farahi ruled his world with sea power, and Ruka could do the same. All it required was the materials, and the manpower—both of which he had in his Grove. Why couldn’t he bring something larger than a sword, or armor? Why couldn’t he wield an endless war chest, and buy the loyalty of every coastal chief? Why couldn’t he build an armada of ash?

  “Ruka!”

  Arun’s voice echoed over the water. Ruka spotted the pirate or maybe monk holding his robes as he ran, skirting over rocks and footpaths in a straight line towards the coast. Sweat glistened on his brow. His eyes were wide, veins thick and clear as he came closer.

  “The palace…” he straightened his robe as he arrived, and swallowed. “A messenger came. There’s rebellion. Farahi…the king’s palace is under siege. We must go to him.”

  Ruka stared and said nothing because in truth he didn’t understand. He knew much now of architecture and ships, and many other things, but he did not know the games of kings. Were such things common?

  “Did you not hear me? We must go, right now, nevermind the monks. The king is our future.”

  Ruka stilled and considered this. His mind went out beyond the death of Farahi, circling, looking for paths back home without his help. It would be harder, much harder. And perhaps with Farahi’s help, with the wealth and knowledge of Sri Kon, the men of ash could reclaim their birthright without war.

  And, he is my friend.

  This last thought came slower, colder, and quieter. It felt different than before—at a distance behind runes on an ancient wall, a bitter history of conquest, and by a sea between paradise and misery.

  ‘What can we do?’ he said with a shrug, knowing in truth they could likely do a great deal, but curious what the man would say.

  Arun seemed to sense the deception.

  “Think of the reward,” he said, his eyes shining like Egil’s at the chance of wealth those years ago.

  Ruka smiled, knowing what the man really wanted. Or rather, whom.

  “I care nothing for wealth, pirate. But I will come, if you ask. You will owe me. Far more than a finger. Swear it on your god.”

  The monk’s eyes narrowed and Ruka thought of Chief Caro in Husavik’s hall. Swear to help my mother, Ruka’d told him, his knife to their precious priestess. Though Arun was a murderer and a thief, if he promised, Ruka would
believe.

  “I swear,” said the monk. “Another life, that’s what I’ll owe you.”

  Ruka extended his arm in the Ascomi fashion. The smaller man raised a brow, but seized it vaguely correctly.

  “A man’s word is his honor, pirate. It is all he has in this life.”

  Ruka began walking to the armory in his Grove. When he arrived he slipped quilted leather over his arms and torso, standing with hands extended while the dead sealed him in chain and rune-etched plates. He eased his helm down, looking out through a visored steel mask made to resemble a cave-bear, its ‘teeth’ crossed with thin, jagged bars.

  “Hold it up,” he said to the Boy-from-the-stables-in-Alverel, who raised a replica of shoddy Pyu-forged iron.

  Ruka hacked down with his own latest sword, made lighter because islanders wore no metal armor. Even with less weight, the enemy’s crude metal bent and soon snapped, and the Boy grinned with his eyes. Next he lashed a steel rune-shield, made broad and thin, to Ruka’s wrist and elbow.

  “Do you need a weapon?” The pirate asked. He was already pushing their boat out onto the beach, unfurling shoddy knives and spears from a roll of dirty tarp. Ruka answered with a stare and prolonged silence, and Arun cleared his throat.“Well, let me know if you do.”

  Ruka stepped over the lip and sat as the boat swayed from his weight. There was little wind, so he lifted two oars, pushing them through the tide as Arun fiddled with the sail. The handles felt good in his hands—solid, like sword-hilts freshly molded, and with every stroke he hacked through Northern iron in his Grove, leaving scrap and ruin in his wake just as Bukayag left the waves.

  “Are you supposed to be leaving again, monk? Is it not against the rules?”

  The man who could be a shadow smiled, though he looked sad. “Rules can be broken.”

  Ruka nodded, thinking how very true. It prompted memories of a dead priestess, birds soaring into an endless sea, men sleeping like plants and moving rivers and a hundred other ‘impossible’ things.

  I’ll help you, Farahi, he thought, then you’ll send me home. And perhaps together, we’ll see how many rules can shatter.