Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  He broke his gaze at last and turned to Egil, glad for the pain in his eyes for at least it would mask the wetness of joy, and discovery. With all his effort, and the great gift and curse of his memory, he had mapped the stars above Kormet.

  Now he took the memory of each moment and strung them together, reliving it at as the light shone and spun across the darkness in a great dance of divinity. It was like learning mathematics in Pyu—a thing that had always existed and yet Ruka had not understood, seen but not observed.

  “They’re so beautiful, Egil,” he said as he watched the memories—a great ring circling a single, fixed point. “It’s Tegrin,” he said, and nearly sobbed. “Tegrin is the center. He is the key.” Ruka blinked and turned to the skald, wishing someone could understand. “They knew, don’t you see? Our ancestors. They…they followed Tegrin South. He is fixed, Egil. He is the guide.”

  Egil’s eyes watched him, uncomprehending, perhaps afraid some further madness had seized the already mad prophet.

  “They left him in our memories, in our stories—a star-king held in trust for thousands of years. And now…now the men of ash will follow him home.”

  “As you say, lord,” said the singer, his tone cautious. Ruka laughed in the cool breeze of the autumn night.

  No matter, he thought. One day he would understand. One day every man and woman of ash would know the history of their ancestors, and honor them—these brave survivors, these people of the sea, who crossed the waves to save their future.

  Ruka walked on stiff legs to his men and put a hand to Aiden’s shoulder. “The gods have spoken, great chief. We are ready.”

  The big man grinned, and nodded. The ships were complete, and supplied—five kingmakers loaded with enough food and water to make the crossing twice, and two-hundred warriors of ash.

  Ruka went to his rest, then with the dawn stood on his flagship, now manned by Arun and Kwal, Tahar and Birmun and their men. Eshen took Sula to stow safely on board. Ruka watched the men as they prepared for their first voyage to paradise, feeling part of a grand story now as he looked to the clear sky. They deserved some encouragement.

  “Are you ready to conquer paradise?” he shouted once on board. The men cried out and stomped their pleasure, then pushed out behind him into the Northern sea.

  Chapter 54

  Farahi woke from another nightmare, or perhaps a vision, and like many it ended in drowning. As usual he was maybe fifteen years older and still a king. His remaining sons and grandsons knelt beside him with their hands bound, their faces bloody.

  The Emperor of Naran stood before them all, dark hair touched with white, making his victory speech at Sulu Bay to a defeated people.

  At last the emperor waved his hand, and smiled, and his sailors dropped Farahi into the sea. This time they’d bound him in rope and weighted him down with a stone, and since he could never end such dreams by choice, he sunk to the bottom, and drowned.

  He had died in other worse ways. Sometimes it was a strange, foreign illness, or in battle, captured and tortured, burned on his ship. He never felt the pain of these deaths, but he did feel the fear, the helplessness and despair. Sometimes white-skinned giants on warships were the cause, invading the isles in their thousands. But usually, it was the emperor.

  Farahi saw the fate of his sons, or grandsons, or great-grandsons, too. Even if somehow he managed to prolong his rule and protect the isles from outside threat, his descendants always failed. Such was the way of his visions, though he had learned over the years the future was never certain.

  With a sigh he slid his legs from his simple bed and dressed for the day. He had never liked the layered silks of his station. The heat bothered him, and as a young man he wore little more than a short covering even in the dry season. But I must look the part, he sighed, especially today.

  He had summoned a special meeting of the small-court—ten or so of the most powerful Sri Konese Orang-Kaya, or land-owners. He had also summoned the kin of his remaining wives, whom he had never once asked for anything. Today he would tell them Sri Kon was going to war.

  Kikay despised the notion, of course. The announcement, that is, not the war.

  “If it’s war you want, brother, than send every ship and soldier at Trung in the night. Destroy him. Utterly. Him and all his warriors. And then call a meeting, and ‘negotiate’ with the other two of these so-called ‘three-kings’.”

  Farahi had considered this, of course, and nearly obliged. It was the most logical action for a short-term victory, and no doubt with enough effort would succeed. But Farahi’s visions taught him patience.

  For many nights he closed his eyes and thought on his lessons with Ando, looking out at the tangled future, at the different threads all coiled and bound together. He imagined Trung destroyed, then imagined past it. He destroyed the Molbog, too, then made peace with Kapule, and held the isles for many years in an iron fist. But when he did, in each and every vision, in every thread no matter what else he did after, Pyu was destroyed.

  So he waited. He would be patient and not act like his father or his brothers, and watch for opportunity.

  He knew every great mistake might put the isles further and further down a path of destruction, every action placing him on a path with less choice. The true enemy was the future and the enemies of the isles, and to defeat both the Pyu had to stand united, and strong. And even then…

  Farahi needed allies, not enemies. He had to somehow control his disjointed and unruly people, and bind the coastal powers to his safety, because only a union of kings and city-states could resist Naran.

  To do this would require marriages and pacts, treaties and laws, trade and exchanges and a hundred other things. It would take a new generation of islanders who thought of themselves as one people, who trusted and worked with their neighbors and did not see themselves as above them. It would take Farahi all his life, he expected, and all his family’s wealth. He could not afford a prolonged, damaging war in Pyu creating new hatreds, because even to win would be to lose.

  He stepped from his room and took a moment to remember which wing he’d slept in, nodding to his bodyguards. The sun’s rays had barely slipped over the palace walls, but the orange glow lit the stone and murals. As a younger man, Farahi would have admired the view, the scents of the morning, the moisture in the air. But Hali was dead, and she had taken beauty with her.

  He dropped his gaze and tried to pull at the future, walking quite oblivious towards his study. He’d hardly crossed the first courtyard when a messenger hailed him.

  “My lord!” The young man descended from the battlements, then raced to the steps with sweat gleaming on his forehead. He looked very fit, yet arrived panting. “My lord. A ship. From the South. It’s Master Eka, lord. He said to wake you, he said you’re expecting him.”

  Farahi breathed and let his mind roam. This was a rare thread. There was only one chance in fifty Arun returned alive with Ruka so soon.

  He closed his eyes and tried to remember the series of threads sprouting from this possibility—trying to remember the many times he’d seen it clearer in his dreams. He felt his breathing quicken with his pulse because in the short-term the threads were few, and he knew the answer.

  If Ruka returned so soon, it meant he maybe came in friendship. It meant maybe peace and alliance and a great and dangerous mind could be turned to saving Farahi’s people—then to changing the world. But not always. No, not even by half.

  Still, the possibility existed, the chances improved. Though Hali was dead and Farahi no longer hoped, he knew he must try. In his lifetime, such a chance would not come again.

  He banished every trace of interest, curiosity, or expectation, and turned his face to stone to protect the future. He walked without hurry, as if nothing in the world had changed.

  “Bring him to my study, if he wishes. Tell him I shall meet him there.”

  * * *

  When Arun arrived on the shores of Sri Kon, he dropped to his knees, and kisse
d the sand.

  “Oh, great mother Haumia. I, your wayward son, will eat all your bounty, and make sweet love to all your daughters, and never leave you again.” He looked up and saw Kwal tying their catamaran to the docks, face sour and dull as ever.

  “Stop your babble and hurry to the king. I’ll wait because I expect he’ll send us back.”

  Arun spit a few grains of sand, and sighed. He desperately wanted a proper meal, a proper drink, and—if he was very lucky—a wild, desperate night with Kikay. But he knew Kwal was right.

  He rose up and crept along the sandbar, briefly attempting first to wash what little silk he had left. It still stunk like sea and sweat, and his heavier barbarian cloth pants smelled even worse than they looked. They itched, too, and before he stepped out into plain view along the Southern road to Sri Kon, he scratched with abandon.

  “God-cursed filthy, ignorant savages! Spirit-buggering, lice infested animals!” He staggered as he gave up and tore them off, kicking them into a bush. Then without shame or concern, he marched in his small-clothes towards the palace.

  The idea of facing Farahi again made him sweat, though for a time he lied to himself and pretended it was just the heat. The man’s far-away eyes unnerved him—as if he were looking straight through you, beyond you, like you were just some pawn in a larger game you didn’t understand. Of course Ruka’s eyes were even worse.

  The barbarian leader did not look beyond, but straight inside, as if examining every flaw in your spirit, as if with a glance he’d seen your darkest deeds and greatest triumphs, your secret whisperings in the night. Whatever he saw, his thick lips always curled just so, his wild, demonic eyes gleaming like a prophet or a madman.

  At least with Farahi maybe you could know his mind. He could tell you why and what and like equals you might speak and understand. With Ruka, Arun felt inadequate—as if it might take so long for Ruka to tell him all he saw, that when he was finished Arun would have forgotten the beginning.

  He put away the thought and thanked the spirits again he stood on dry land.

  The same Alaku killers and guards were waiting outside the palace and pretending otherwise. They eyed Arun’s half-nakedness and some smirked. He glared at them and marched without pause because the king expected him, and anyway to hell with all spies and servants.

  They made him wait at the gate regardless and sent a messenger ahead. The Alaku elite pointed at his nakedness and cracked jokes, and for a moment he considered breaking a nose or three before he just smiled and gripped his manhood and said ‘your mother’, which made the guards laugh.

  He tried to find calm but failed, as usual. Action had been the only thing that ever made him calm, and he knew rewards and riches were close now—perhaps closer than they’d ever been. Doom felt just as likely. He felt trapped between great forces, a small ship in a storm of roiling skies and brutal waves—the Savage and the Sorcerer-King.

  The messenger returned, and guards soon took him inside, quickly wiping off their mocking smirks as they stood at attention. He passed through the outer courtyard and palace and outer fortress in a blur, trying to ready himself to face the shrewd king with his wits about him and some semblance of a plan in place.

  Then he was at the study, and the messenger draped a cloak over him and gestured inside. Arun half-bowed as he entered to find the king at his desk scribbling, calm as a Bato breeze.

  I wonder how you’ll feel once you know several boat-loads of barbarian murderers are anchored not far from your shore, waiting to unleash mayhem.

  “So.” Farahi finally looked up as he placed down his quill. Arun cleared his throat.

  “Your plan is very successful, lord. Ruka and two hundred warriors have returned. They’ve dropped anchor South of Halin, and I believe intend to attack at your command.”

  Farahi nodded but said nothing. He seemed different than Arun remembered him—paler, perhaps, as if he rarely saw the sun, his eyes duller and less interested. Arun felt uncomfortable in the silence but wasn’t sure what else to say. The king returned to his scribbling before he spoke.

  “Tell me, what has Ruka promised you to betray me? My sister, I assume, and riches. Or perhaps an island throne?”

  Arun blinked and said nothing as he listened to the scratches of the quill and his tongue went dry. Farahi eventually stood and moved to a painting of his ancestors.

  “Nevermind,” he said absently. “I’m going to tell you something, Arun, something I have only ever told one person in this world.” He turned, and smiled faintly. “You may not believe it, but I think you will. I think you have seen Ruka’s gifts now and know such things are possible. Well, I too have a gift, like the ancient king, or the hero Rupi out of some sebu play. I can see the future.”

  He smiled and nodded when Arun said nothing.

  “Sometimes I see it very far away, more than a lifetime, other times only days, or even moments. It isn’t perfect. It comes mostly in images, though sometimes I hear and feel and know things I should not know. I see only possibilities, not truths—choices twisted together so that each can be separated like the fibers of cloth, then followed to their inevitable ends.”

  Arun still stared at the man in silence. He didn’t know where this was headed, and of the many men he had met he would describe Farahi as mostly practical—not partial to fancy or delusion. He assumed this was all some kind of ploy, leading to a threat or bargain. The Alaku king turned, his eyes sharpened and fierce as if now the gaze itself might impale.

  “Would you like me to tell you your future, pirate?”

  Arun stepped away without thinking. He shifted awkwardly in the cloak covering his body, telling himself it was just intimidation. Now would come the offer and the threat if he did not obey. That’s all this was.

  “I have thought long and hard on your future and seen many threads,” said the king. “All of them now end the same. I think that is the reason I tell you this. In a way, I trust you more than any other man.” Here he smiled, but not unkindly. “Not in a single thread have you ever once betrayed me, Arun. I cannot know why.” He shrugged. “Perhaps because you love my sister. Perhaps because you know she loves me more than she’ll love you, and to betray me is to lose that love. I don’t know. Perhaps you simply realize, no man will ever give you as much of the things you want as I.”

  The strangeness of it all kept Arun paralyzed, and he found himself unwilling to interrupt, though a small piece of him rejected this and wanted only to take the knife strapped to his thigh and plunge it straight through Farahi’s heart.

  “Oh, you could kill me,” said the king, as if he’d read Arun’s mind. “Some other monarch might reward you when the chaos is over. Or you could tie yourself to Ruka, but you have seen his people now, and you know Kikay despises him.” The king met Arun’s eyes, and again he spoke intensely, but not unkindly. “Unlike Ruka, I know the truth—you don’t want to be a king, because to be a king is to be a slave, and the opposite of free. In your heart you know this. Therefore I will give you what you truly want. I will make you powerful and more dangerous than you’ve ever been, so that even whispering your name will make men of the isles tremble in fear. I will let you visit Bato as a man of respect and power, whenever you wish. And one day you will shed the mask of the scorpion and become an honorable man, and perhaps a happy one, whose great talents are put to dark use. That is the future I see for you, pirate, if you take my hand.”

  With this the king returned to his seat, and Arun stood stunned. He had felt himself rise and fall throughout the speech, wishing to disagree, to protest, to explain his own vision of the future. But he knew every word the king said was true.

  “I have no guards in this room,” Farahi added as he took up his quill. “You could kill me now and take my sister. I could be wrong. A king must take risks. You respect Ruka, I understand, and perhaps you fear him. I do too. More than any man I’ve ever known. It is my intention to make an alliance with his people, and to bind them to me. I want your help Arun.
I want you to help him see a great future, and to be our friend, and to stay alive. So. Now you must choose.”

  Arun felt his hand move absently to his face. He felt a tingle in the air, like the moisture before a great wave. He had no urge to strike this man down. In truth he feared it would be somehow impossible, or the greatest mistake of his life.

  Ruka was perhaps more man than monster, and had offered a path in good faith. Arun trusted him but feared him more. With Farahi, at least, it might be the opposite.

  “What are you asking me,” he said quietly.

  “To be my right-hand in the shadows,” said the king, “to be given all authority my sister once possessed. You will work through her when it suits us, but in truth do my will. I believe she loves you, in her way, or will grow to do so. It will soften the blow as she realizes the truth. What I am offering, Master Eka, is to make you the second most powerful man in Pyu. Not Arun the failed monk, or ‘Noose’ the pirate—but a new man. I offer this quietly, slowly, but with all my support and coin. And in the dark corners of these islands, you will rise.”

  Arun shivered and drew his cloak tighter at the king’s words. It was as if they’d been plucked from the depths of his mind and spirit and laid bare before him. He knew instantly he would accept, and that the king knew, and perhaps had always known. The thought terrified him, but brought him comfort, too. It was as if he were finally trapped, saved from himself, the dangerous game at last over. He sat heavily in the chair laid out before the desk, and lifted the cup of water set out to his dry mouth.

  “I accept,” he said, and drank, and the king seemed ready to re-fill it, giving no indication of pleasure, or anything else.

  “Go back to Ruka,” Farahi said. “Tell him to attack on the third day. When he’s finished in Halin, give him this letter.” He curled the scroll and slid it across the desk. “And Eka—your first task in my employ is what I asked you when we met. It has always been thus. You will bring me back Trung’s head.”