Kings of Ash Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Map of the Ascom

  Map of Pyu

  Summary

  Part I - The Past

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Part II - Ask the Trung

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Part III - Kings of Ash

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Want More?

  Kings of Ash

  Ash and Sand, Book Two

  Author: Richard Nell

  Email: [email protected]

  Website:http://www.richardnell.com

  All material contained within copyright Richard Nell, 2019. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.

  The following is a book of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination, or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Note from the Author

  For those who’ve been waiting a year or more for this sequel, below is a (very) brief summary of the important plot points and happenings of book 1, Kings of Paradise. With such a large book, many things will of course be left out, but hopefully this remains useful.

  (Arranged by the three main characters: Kale, Dala, and Ruka.)

  Kale

  1. In the islands of Sri Kon, Kale (the fourth and youngest son of the king of Sri Kon) is forced by his father into marine training to toughen him up. He does very well, winning ‘Head of the Bay’ and defeating the belligerent Sergeant Kwal (eventually executed by the king), as well as winning the affection of his childhood friend Lani (a ward from the neighboring kingdom of Nong Ming Tong).

  2. Kale is then sent against his will to a ‘coming of age’ ritual at the near-by Batonian temple. He meets a strange, young monk (Ando) who teaches him to meditate and discover his ‘Way’ - the path of ‘they who stay’, which begins his journey into an almost limitless, spirit-based magic.

  3. After completing the monk’s tests, returning and consummating his love with Lani (who is secretly the crown prince’s betrothed), Kale is banished to the Naranian academy to spare him from castration or execution.

  4. At the academy, Kale survives imperial and temple intrigue with the help of his friends (Asna - a Condotian mercenary, and Osco - a Mesanite warrior), though his mentor Amit (actually the Emperor’s uncle) does not. He vastly increases his spiritual powers, learns that a foreign army (Ruka) has invaded his homeland, and decides to return home to do what he can.

  Dala

  1. Dala (a Noss-touched, low-born Southern farm girl) has her adopted family killed in revenge by Ruka after they attack and rob him in the night. She decides to devote her life to the Galdric Order, cutting off her small facial deformity.

  2. To succeed in her apprenticeship, Dala allies herself with the nightmen of Orhus, particularly their leader Birmun (the fallen son of a chief), whom she seduces. She builds their resolve with hatred and murder, and uses them to intimidate the other girls into making her a priestess. She chooses High Priestess Kunla as a mentor.

  3. Dala accompanies Kunla to defend from allegations by ‘Bukayag’ (Ruka’s runeshaman alter-ego) at the valley of law. The valley erupts in violence, Ruka catches and kills Kunla, and Dala (believing Ruka is a servant of god like her), saves him in his moment of weakness, promising one day he will see why.

  Ruka

  1. Ruka (the single-born, Noss-touched son of a rich, Vishan woman) grows up in the frozen steppes of the Ascom, isolated on the outskirts of a Southern town called Hulbron with his mother Beyla. They are eventually persecuted by a priestess named Kunla, and forced to journey to the valley of law for justice. Beyla dies before they reach it.

  2. Ruka is made an outlaw at the valley. He is forced into the wild, becoming a murderer, thief and cannibal to survive, until he meets and saves a traveling skald named Egil.

  3. Egil offers an ill-fated, get-rich-quick scheme to become a ‘rune-shaman’, which Ruka transforms into a plan of rebellion and revenge. He tortures Egil into submission, and begins gathering like-minded chiefless warriors with rune-weapons and words of prophecy.

  4. At the valley of law, Ruka at last takes his bloody, savage revenge on High Priestess Kunla, then flees to the coast and sails into the ‘endless’ sea to face the gods, or just to die.

  5. Years later, Ruka returns. He finds Egil and tells him he has found a new world, and that together they must again rally an army of bandits to seize it. After an undetermined amount of time, they do just that, with Ruka swearing to keep his word to an ‘island king’.

  Part I - The Past

  Chapter 1

  An ‘endless’ sea. 425 GE (Galdric Era). The Past.

  Ruka knew his death rose with the sun. His skin had peeled and burned, dried and cracked now with lines of blood. His small, square-sailed ship floated listlessly for the seventh day, and he saw nothing but sea on the horizon. The wind, and even the birds, had abandoned him.

  Water seeped through the deck. Ruka bailed it numbly as he’d done since it began. Or, at least, his body did.

  In Ruka’s mind he was far away, and surrounded by dead men—men he’d killed, and who now lived in a special place with him he called his Grove. Ruka’s Grove was a dark, deep forest much like those he had lived in as a boy—somewhere between imagination and reality, a secret world where Ruka could be safe from the cruelty and terror of his homeland, the Ascom, the land of ash.

  At least that is how it started. Now his Grove was filled with walking corpses—the men, women and children Ruka had killed, still bearing the wounds he’d given them in life. None ever spoke, though they toiled in silent tasks, and they watched him. They watche
d him now. Their eyes said ‘you will join us, murderer. You will join us soon’.

  Maybe if you came out and rowed, or helped bail water, he thought bitterly, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.

  The dead never looked ashamed. They looked like vultures preening next to a graveyard.

  And maybe if you left me alone, he added, I could think of a way out of this.

  But in truth he knew this wasn’t true.

  Long ago he’d thrown the other man sailing with him—the previous ‘captain’, whom he’d abducted—into the sea to conserve water. He had not intended for the man to die, but sharing their meager drink would have meant death, as would drinking the growing briny pool beneath his feet, or any attempt to swim, or to break away on a smaller raft to paddle. The sea had many storms, and just as many nights full of huge waves. Ruka would survive neither.

  “At least we killed Priestess Kunla,” his body mumbled with cracked lips. His body could speak on its own without his mind, and they sometimes disagreed, but not this time.

  Priestess Kunla had been the High Priestess of the South, a powerful woman of the Galdric Order who had killed his father, persecuted his mother, and made him an outlaw those many years ago. Yes, Ruka had killed her. But her death didn’t bring him comfort, nor bring his mother back. It didn’t put an end to the misery and cruelty of the world which created her.

  “I’m too tired to bail, we have to abandon ship.”

  His body dropped their bucket, shuffling to the starboard side to untie their ‘life raft’—a small, pitiful collection of planks, with a box of dried pork, some rope, a tarp to block the sun, and a paddle. It won’t save us, he thought, but he didn’t bother stopping it.

  “We will last slightly longer,” it muttered, mostly to itself.

  Stubborn to the end, he thought with a sigh, but in truth felt admiration. Ruka respected the will to live.

  With shaking limbs, they pushed the raft into the water and eased themselves over to land on top. His body secured the few possessions and itself beneath the tarp, and tied it all down with rope. “I must rest,” it said out loud, “and then I’ll row us where you say.”

  Some of the dead men smiled now in his Grove—or at least those without ruined jaws.

  Think this is funny? Ruka rose up with a metal sword and hacked at a few, then broke their gravestones out of spite.

  He had always thought a free death would be easier—dying on his own terms, by his own will. But it was too soon. The world was vast and mysterious, and he knew so little. What makes the waves? What is the sun? How big is the sea and what is beyond it?

  He found now he did not wish to die without these answers. He found it as compelling as the promise of a little boy to his mother that he’d change the world and be free.

  Will I ever see you again, Beyla? And will you approve of what I’ve done? Are there truly gods and is there an afterlife? Or when I die will my bloated corpse feed the fish, and then nothing more?

  As he floated out and rose and fell over the currently peaceful waves, Ruka thought on his mother. He could remember everything he had ever seen or heard, touched or smelled or tasted. So he closed his eyes and breathed Beyla’s scent, and heard her voice, and touched her hair. He thought on her lessons, the tests of memory that he’d always passed, learning to snare rabbits and find water and firewood and how to cross the snows. He remembered the genius of things that grow.

  How do they sleep for the winter, Mother? Ruka the child had asked this of the grass and the trees, wishing he too could sleep until the sun warmed the frozen plain. And how do they drink when they sleep?

  He walked to the huge, dark cave in his Grove that he’d hoped one day would attract a bear, but never did. Why can men not sleep for the winter, like plants and beasts?

  Was it from lack of trying, he wondered, like crossing the sea?

  He picked his way around the rocks, into the gloom beyond the widened mouth. Darkness had never bothered Ruka, and he could still make out the shapes of the walls, the teeth-like pillars attached to the floor and ceiling. He found a snug, protected nook in a corner, hidden by a large lip of hanging stone, and settled in.

  They are nearly dead, the sleepers. Ruka calmed his breathing. They awake grey and thin, starving, to hunt for food.

  He didn’t sleep much anymore. He had to concentrate on a single thing—or play with numbers and symbols to distract his mind. You will sleep now for days, or weeks—until I tell you to wake.

  He felt his body resisting, fighting for control, its fear of sleep like the fear of death—as if all acts of letting go led to some unpleasant end.

  Death is not truly death, he coaxed.

  “Not for you, maybe,” it mumbled.

  I will wake you before the end, no matter what. I promise.

  He felt his muscles slacken. Soon the breathing from his body matched the breathing in his Grove. And though the lunacy of this did register in his mind, he ignored it. Things were always madness until they were true. If men can sleep like bears, I, Ruka, will be the one to do it.

  Even if he did he knew the waves could kill him. The sea could be vast beyond all mortal understanding. Or there could be no other land. Or the world could be a ring after all.

  He smiled because it made no difference. He could do no more. He willed his body to slow its breath further, to grow cool and quiet, still and calm. I do not fear the cold, my body is nothing but flesh and bone.

  Alone beneath a bright blue sky, Ruka floated helpless amongst gentle waves. In his Grove, the darkness of his cave spread further—stilling the dead, and even quieting the birds. The warmth in the air fled from an icy breeze as winter came to paradise. His fake sun drooped and fell, the skies above his forest of trees clouded with a long night, and in that moment, Ruka knew purpose transcended death. It was bigger than him. And it certainly didn’t need his body.

  But best kill me now, and be sure, he thought to the gods, if they existed. Because I haven’t forgotten you, or my promise. And I’m still coming for my mother, and your children, in this world, or the next.

  * * *

  When he opened his eyes his tarp was being ripped away, his raft dragged onto white sand by strange, near naked, brown-skinned men. The sky shone clear and shimmered like the air above a fire, the sun prickled hot on his skin. Clucks and jabbered nonsense filled his ears, and men bound his hands and feet with rope.

  I’m alive. He meant to shout it, but his body was still cool and helpless. It opened its eyes so he could see, but didn’t truly wake.

  In this helpless state he was carried across a long, empty, sweltering, beach. He was stuffed into a kind of wagon, and rolled by the strange little men along a bumpy road.

  Is it the land of the gods?

  He paced in his Grove and did his best to see through cloudy eyes—to turn his head to see white crabs and colored flies and a hundred unknown things. But I will know them soon, he beamed and laughed at the sullen dead who stopped staring and walked off to other things.

  The warmth of the air renewed him, though his lungs struggled, and his body quickened and deepened its breaths. By the time the wagon stopped, and the group of brown-skins were heaving him off onto a thin sheet of soft fabric, he could move.

  They startled as he sat up. They babbled and pointed and fret like children as if they didn’t know what to do. Their fear curled his lip.

  If these are gods, or the sons of gods, I’ll eat my raft.

  Then one had a spear and thrust it down at Ruka’s face, pointing at the sheet and motioning to lie down.

  “Water,” his body said through cracked, bleeding lips.

  Hands pushed him back, and after feeling the weakness in his limbs, he decided not to resist. Not yet, he warned his body. Let me watch, and learn, and get you food and water.

  He noticed the men darted their eyes round as if concerned who might be watching, so he tucked that knowledge away.

  They lifted him up in the sheet with groans, and carried
him inside a greenish wooden house on a hill surrounded by huge trees with wide, drooping foliage. He’d never imagined such healthy plants, as if when squeezed they’d drip out water and sap like rain. Oh mother if you could only see such things!

  He set some dead boys to work in his Grove expanding the garden, hoping to examine it all more closely later. He would perhaps need to clear more trees for space, and in the real world such different plants would fight for sunlight and moisture and exchange disease, so perhaps in his Grove he should separate them.

  While he worked they dragged and tied his body up more thoroughly in a room without windows. Only metal grates on the door and walls let in some light from elsewhere in the house. There was no bed, just a mat on the floor, and it reeked like sweat. Before they closed and locked him in they left a large pail full of water, and a bowl of white grain-like food. He had to kneel on red, swollen skin and eat and drink without his hands like an animal.

  The grain was near tasteless and the water clean, incredibly clean, which suited Ruka fine. He finished it all at once, stopping rarely to breathe and swallow, not caring at the loss of dignity but careful not to spill.

  When he sat up, he saw broken fingernails on the door and froze. He noticed old blood stains on the wood beneath him, then what looked like ants but bigger swarming over flecks of maybe skin in a corner.

  He heard sobbing and peered through the obscured gloom of the grate. Beyond were three girls—he wasn’t sure how old, but it seemed young—and despite their misery and filth, their perfect brown skin made them beautiful. Their round, smooth features and dark hair to him were all marks of fine breeding. He felt his eyes roam their mostly exposed bodies in ways they shouldn’t, felt his body stirring. He let it bear the full weight of his disgust and judgment.

  “I must rest,” it said, and tried to lie down on the mat. But Ruka kept it up and its eyes roaming, senses sharp, letting his mind race out and around the mystery of this new world. How is it ruled, then, to allow such places? And how large is it? How much food do they grow? How do I learn their language quickly? And do they know my people are across the sea?

  He heard cruel laughter in the house, then moaning and the fleshy thuds of violence. He smelled human filth and urine and wet floors wafting in from every hole in his shoddily crafted cell. His body twitched, preparing to chew at the ropes, or to work at loosening them. Not yet, he soothed. They’ve given us food and water, and for now that’s enough.