Thrones of Ash (Kingdoms of Sand Book 3)

by Daniel Arenson

  But I will fight nonetheless.

  He nodded and drew his dagger. "It's time to hunt eagles."

  Olive rose to her feet and drew her own dagger. "I fight with you. I kill wall-pissers." She spat on the floor. "I fuck those cunts with iron."

  Epher had never taught her those words, and he didn't know if he was proud or horrified. The other rebels rose too, their daggers strapped across their torsos and legs, the light of fury and God and vengeance in their eyes.

  They entered the trapdoor one by one, disappearing underground.

  They traveled through the shadows, hooded and cloaked, silent. The tunnel was so low Epher had to walk hunched over. Olive walked at his side, dagger held before her. Only their clay lanterns lit their way, the wicks flickering in the oil. The tunnel kept twisting, falling, rising, snaking under the city.

  "Scarves on," said Kahan, and the bladesmen hid their faces behind cloth, leaving only the eyes bare.

  The tunnel rose steeply, and soon Epher heard the sounds of the city above. Thumping feet. Clattering armor. The yips of dogs and the chants of legionaries.

  "The procession of the Robigalia," Epher whispered. "They're right above us."

  Sudden fury flooded Epher. All his earlier caution drowned. There above him marched the men who had slaughtered his father, who had butchered thousands of his people, who had outlawed his religion. There above marched men he would slay.

  The tunnel split in two. Epher headed left, along with Olive and five men. Kahan turned right, leading several rebels of his own. Epher reached a shaft, found grooves in the wall, and climbed. Olive and the others climbed behind him. He pushed aside a rug and emerged into a dusty chamber. An old man waited here and held out three fingers—symbol of Zohar's Blades, symbolizing liberty, God, and Luminosity.

  Epher crept across the floor and approached the doorway. Olive and the others followed. Through the window, Epher saw them heading down the street—the legionaries. Dozens marched there, tugging dogs on chains. They sang as they marched, songs of Aelar, songs praising their gods.

  "Praise Camulus!" said an Aelarian rider, leading the procession.

  "Fuck Eloh!" cried the legionaries who followed, yanking the chains. The dogs yipped in pain. "We butcher the dogs in the temple of rats."

  Epher clutched his daggers, one in each hand. Around him, his fellow rebels drew their own blades. Olive bared her teeth, eyes narrowing.

  Across the street, the cry rose.

  "For liberty! For light! For Zohar!"

  With roars, the bladesmen charged out from the houses.

  The legionaries halted in the street, spinning toward them. The dogs wailed. Epher did not hesitate. He leaped forward, daggers flashing, and drove the blades down.

  "Zohar still fights!" Epher cried, terror and rage pounding through him. One of his daggers scraped across a legionary's armor, doing him no harm, but the other plunged into the man's neck. Blood gushed.

  "Fuck you with iron!" Olive screamed, her right blade lashing a man's face, cutting off his nose and cheek, her left blade sinking into a man's thigh.

  The legionaries shouted and drew their swords.

  A blade swung toward Epher. He stepped back and raised his twin daggers, blocking the blow. He kicked, and his foot slammed into the legionary's armor, knocking the man back. The blade swung down, and Epher sidestepped. He tossed his dagger, and the blade hit the man's shoulder, denting his armor. The legionary charged toward him. Epher ran to meet him, heart thudding, and lashed another dagger. Iron hit iron. Sparks flew. The legionary raised his gladius overhead, prepared to swing down the sword. Epher drew another dagger and thrust up the blade, driving it under the legionary's pteruges, into his crotch, and deeper still, digging into the abdomen.

  The legionary screamed and Epher thrust his second dagger, burying it into the man's throat.

  Epher stepped back, blades dripping, letting the legionary slump to the ground. Around him, the battle raged. More bladesmen emerged from homes, tossing daggers. More legionaries fell. One bladesman screamed as a gladius cleaved his torso, cutting from shoulder halfway down the chest, slicing ribs, scattering blood and organs. Olive shrieked as she fought, tossing dagger after dagger. A dog lay dead and trampled. Other animals fled.

  "Zohar rises!" cried Kahan, grabbing a sword and thrusting it at a legionary. "Zohar's light shines!"

  Armor clanked and cries rose as more legionaries raced onto the road. Hooves thundered. On a nearby hill, ten or more legionaries charged on horses.

  "Back!" Epher cried. "Fall back! Into the shadows."

  He grabbed Olive, tugging her away from a corpse she was stabbing. Two legionaries rushed toward them. A gladius swung at Olive. She parried with a dagger. Another blade cut Epher's shoulder, slicing through skin, hitting the bone. He screamed and slashed the man's face, destroying an eye. Twenty legionaries or more now lay dead, but hundreds were racing toward them. Epher kept retreating, pulling Olive with him.

  He leaped into the house, tossed aside the rug, and plunged into the tunnel.

  They ran through the darkness. Epher's shoulder blazed, but he ignored the pain. He kept running. The sound of pursuit rose behind him—legionaries cursing, clanking forward in their armor. Olive panted at his side. More bladesmen ran with them through the twisting darkness.

  "Here!" Epher said, reaching for a ladder that climbed a shaft. He herded Olive upward, and other rebels followed, climbing toward another hideout. The legionaries followed behind in the tunnel.

  "Time to burn the rats!" rose a legionary's cry.

  "Come here, Zoharites!" shouted another. "The eagles are hungry."

  Epher spun back toward the tunnel. He saw them there in the shadows, racing forward in the darkness. Epher drew another dagger from his belt, tossed the weapon, and heard a man curse.

  "Come here, friends!" Epher said, eyes burning, blood dripping. "You murdered my father. You enslaved my siblings. Come here and fight me! I am Epheriah Sela, son of Zohar. Come to me! Come face the lions."

  The legionaries ran toward him.

  Epher grabbed the ladder and climbed.

  As he raced up the shaft, he grabbed a rope that dangled from the wall. He yanked it.

  Stones creaked. The shaft shook. Dust rained. As the legionaries pursued below, the tunnel collapsed.

  Bricks rained. Boulders tumbled. Legionaries shouted below, crushed by the avalanche. The world shook, dust filled his eyes, and Epher kept climbing. Rocks buffeted him. Dust blinded him. He fell, reached out, grabbed a rung, and kept climbing. A stone slammed into his wounded shoulder, shooting white pain across him.

  "Epher!" Olive cried above. She reached down, and her hand clasped his. "Epher, come!"

  She tugged him. He kept climbing as the shaft collapsed, coughing, finally scrambling into a room above. He was in another humble house, one among thousands in the city.

  He fell to his knees, breathing raggedly. Dust flew from below, and when Epher gazed down into the shaft, he saw a pile of stones settling. The screams from below died.

  Olive knelt beside him and hugged him.

  "You hurt," she whispered.

  In the chamber stood other rebels, some wounded, but pride lit their eyes.

  "We struck them hard today," Kahan said, panting and clutching a wound. "We slew many. What we did today will rally the people of Zohar. More will join us. And soon we will strike the enemy again." Kahan stared out a window. Upon the distant Mount of Cedars rose the Temple, brilliant in the sunlight, capped in gold. "Soon we will reclaim our Temple and smash the idol the heathens placed there."

  Across the city, the legionaries shouted and ran, and trumpets blared. A man screamed. Epher's heart clenched, and his fists shook.

  "They will strike back," he said. "Kahan, they will strike back with all their might."

  His cousin's eyes shone with bloodlust. "Then every Zoharite they slay will inspire ten more to rise up. As you were inspired." Kahan's mouth twisted into something halfway be
tween sneer and smile. "Soon war will engulf this land, and this will be a war Zohar will win."

  Epher stared at his cousin, and something cold and hard filled his belly.

  He's a madman, Epher thought. He doesn't want Zohar to thrive. He craves blood and fire. He would sooner see this land burn than live chained.

  The horror was too great, the realization that Epher had been wrong, that his mother had been right. He turned away from his cousin. He walked toward the doorway.

  "Stay with us, son of Zohar!" Kahan said. "We will pray and rejoice over this victory. The streets swarm with the carrion vultures of Aelar."

  Epher ignored his cousin, ignored the wound on his shoulder. He stepped outside onto the street, and Olive raced after him. They found themselves in a winding alleyway between brick walls. Ahead, legionaries ran down a main road, and dust still filled the air. Part of the road ahead had collapsed, falling into the tunnel below, burying legionaries.

  Epher had to get away from this place, from the rebels of Zohar's Blade. He and Olive walked, holding hands, wrapped in cloaks and hoods. They emerged onto the wider road. The legionaries had run by, and many people clogged the streets—elders in turbans, young women in pale dresses, a peddler on a donkey, a boy on a camel, women returning from the market, peering children. Epher walked through the crowd, silent, holding Olive's hand, until he found a small cemetery between pines and cypress trees.

  Cemeteries in Beth Eloh were as crowded as the rest of the city. There was no grass here, no bare earth, just tombstones pressed together so closely Epher could barely squeeze between them. Finally he reached a cobbled courtyard, a place the size of his old bedroom on Pine Hill, and here Epher fell to his knees and lowered his head. A single palm tree grew between the cobblestones, shading him, and the shouting still rose from across the city.

  Olive knelt at his side and embraced him. "You hurt." She kissed him. "Let me help wound."

  She poured water onto the cut on his shoulder. He winced. She bandaged the wound with her scarf, then caressed his cheek and kissed his lips.

  "You hurt," she whispered and placed her palm over his heart.

  He looked around him. Thousands of tombstones crowded here together, and beyond rose the countless homes of the city, and they too seemed to Epher like tombstones, a great city of the dead.

  "What have we done?" he whispered.

  "We fight," said Olive. "We lions."

  Epher looked at her. A young face. Eager. Green eyes alight, red hair—a color so rare here in Zohar—falling across her freckled brow.

  "Master Malaci, a wise man in Gefen, once told me that years ago, many lions roamed the deserts of Zohar," Epher said. "They would snatch babes from cradles and slay even mighty warriors. But men hunted them. I've only seen a lion once in my life—a dead cub borne by an eagle. Now no more lions live in Zohar, and we know these animals only from our amulets and shields. Olive, we children of Zohar are mighty as lions, and we roar with pride. But will we too vanish into the sand?"

  Olive leaned against the palm tree. "Lions still live. I see lion once."

  Epher leaned against the tree with her. "Where?"

  She pointed. "There. In . . . away." Suddenly her eyes dampened. "Away."

  "In the wilderness?" Epher asked.

  She tilted her head. "Wilderness?"

  "That's what we call the places outside the cities."

  Olive leaned against him and closed her eyes. A tear trailed down her cheek. "Wilderness my home once. I was like lion. Lost. Lost away. In wilderness. I hunt. I saw real lion once. Like cats in Beth Eloh but big, big almost like horse. It was night. Stars high. I see stars for long time, and lion come, stand beside me, look at stars too. We look together. Two lions in wilderness."

  Epher placed one hand on her thigh, and his other hand lifted a tear off her cheek. "Where are you from, Olive? How did you end up alone in the wild for so long?"

  "I not know." She bit her lip. "I have mother and father once, I think. I remember . . . place with houses. City but . . . small."

  "A village?" Epher asked.

  Olive nodded. "Bad men come. Bring fire and swords. Cut and burn. My parents . . . they die." She lowered her head. "I small. Like this." She held out her hands. "Like baby. I run. Run from fire. Go into wilderness. Eat fruit and fish. Humans scare me. I live with animals."

  Epher looked over the cemetery and city beyond. "Animals are better to live with than humans."

  Olive kissed him. "You human. You good."

  Across the city, the din still rose. Legionaries shouting. Zoharites crying out in fear, in pain, or in pride.

  "The lions rise!" cried a distant man. "Rise, lions, against the eagles!"

  Epher closed his eyes and held Olive close. The wrath of Aelar would be swift, he knew, its punishment brutal. Blood would soak this city, and Epher did not know if peace would ever dwell here again.

  OFEER

  "Eighteen denarii," she said. "Eighteen denarii and you saw it off. And no questions."

  The burly, shirtless man stared at her across the table. A single ray of light fell through the window, thick with dust, illuminating a room full of rusty tools, crooked wooden shelves, and mice droppings. The man stared at Ofeer, eyes narrowed. He sucked his teeth and spat into a tin plate.

  "Get the fuck out of here." He drank from a cup of ale, sloshed it in his mouth, spat again. "I don't take a shit for eighteen denarii."

  Ofeer sat before him, clad in rags, her hair bedraggled, a wretched animal, but she stared at him steadily. She slammed the coins onto the tabletop, rattling the man's mug, his saw, and a host of metal tools.

  "I begged on the street for a week for these coins. You will take them. And you will do what you did to a thousand other slaves. You will saw off my collar."

  The hairy man snorted and scratched his stubble. "I don't care if you sucked lepers' cocks for a week. Cost is a hundred denarii, or I turn you in." He reached across the table, surprisingly fast, and grabbed her wrist. With his other hand, he grabbed the tag that hung from her collar, and his eyes widened. "Well, fuck me. A palace slave! A thousand denarii reward."

  The man's eyes widened, and saliva dripped from his grin. Ofeer wrenched herself free.

  "Go ahead then," she said. "Bring me right to the Acropolis from which I escaped. Hand me over to Porcia Octavius. I'm sure she'd be delighted when I tell her about the little business you've been running here." She glanced pointedly at a pile of sawed-off collars in a barrel at the back.

  The man released her tag, grunted, and sat back. He scrutinized her, nodding slowly.

  "All right." He nodded. "All right, I'll tell you what. You pay me eighteen denarii, and I'll saw off your collar . . . and then your goddamn fucking head, you whore."

  He rose to his feet, reaching for his saw.

  Ofeer sneered and swung her arm. She hit the mug of ale, tossing it onto his chest, spilling its booze. The man sputtered and stumbled. Ofeer reached out, grabbed the saw from the table, and ran. As the man roared behind her, Ofeer burst out the door, carrying the saw—a small tool, no larger than a dagger. She ran down the sun-drenched street, and the burly man lolloped in pursuit.

  Go ahead, Ofeer thought. Call for help. Let's see if a slave smuggler dares request aid from the Magisterian Guard.

  As she ran down the street, whipping through a crowd of hundreds, she glanced behind her to see the brute following, shoving people aside . . . but remaining silent.

  "No robber speaks of robbery," Ofeer muttered in Zoharite, an ancient saying from the Book of Eloh.

  She vanished into the crowd, stepped into a spice shop, exited through the back door, and ran down the alleyway until she emerged onto another street. A procession of oxen walked here, leading carts heavy with amphorae full of olive oil. Ofeer ran around the beasts and continued up a narrow road, her pursuer now too far to ever find her. Aelar, this single city, had as many people as all of Zohar, from its northern forests to its southern desert. Ofeer could easil
y vanish here.

  Ahead rose a triumphal arch, built a century ago to celebrate the defeat of Kalintia, the once-great civilization that was now a mere province of the Aelarian Empire. Past the towering archway, the city streets sloped down toward the distant Aelaria Maritima, the Empire's largest port, where thousands of ships sailed. Ofeer walked under the archway, stepped aside into an alleyway, and made her way down a narrow road where soothsayers gutted hens and sought the future in the entrails. Here Ofeer found a little hollow between the arches of an aqueduct and a rustling oak tree. She knelt between wood and stone, hefted her pilfered saw, and got to work.

  It was slow work. Slower than she had thought. It was two hours, maybe three before she had finally sawed through the iron collar and pulled the wretched thing off.

  She stared at it. The collar Seneca had placed around her neck, buying her from the slave market for twenty thousand denarii, the price of a good horse. Again she read the letters engraved onto the tag.

  I have escaped! If you find me, return me to the Acropolis, to Seneca Octavius, for a thousand denarius reward.

  Ofeer scoffed. She was free now, and it was Seneca—wretched, pathetic Seneca—who had escaped, fleeing his sister's wrath across the sea.

  "You will never more enslave me," Ofeer whispered, voice shaking. "And you will never know your child."

  She buried the collar by the oak tree, rose to her feet, and walked.

  She wandered the streets of Aelar, her sandals full of holes, her tunic torn, her neck raw where the collar had chafed her. The city bustled around her. A cart trundled down the road, so wide it scraped the walls of buildings at its sides. A wool merchant drove the cart, shouting at the crowd to move aside, forcing several elders into a gutter. Naked children splashed in a public fountain, cavorting around a statue of Aelia, goddess of music and namesake of the Empire. A philosopher stood at a street corner, a Kalinitian with a long white beard, speaking in flawless Aelarian of the movements of stars. A priest led a procession of the ill, moving toward a temple on a hill. Behind him shuffled the hopeless, covered in sores, one man armless. A group of young women in stolas recoiled from the ill, then continued down the road, carrying baskets full of colored fabrics and gleaming trifles. Thousands of others moved here, priests and paupers, legionaries and lepers, wealthy lords in palanquins and scrawny poor in loincloths. All of humanity, people from nations around the Encircled Sea—they all crowded in this hive, a million lives, a million stories within these walls.