A Draw of Kings

23

THE CITY OF FIRE





ERROL’S LUNGS HEAVED as they strove to make the distance that would grant them safety from the spawn. Leaves as large as his torso whipped across his face as he struggled to keep the pace the holy man, Adayo, and the chieftain, Phamba, demanded.

Tek’s weight, shared with Merodach, added no more than perhaps ten pounds to Errol’s burden. The sailing captain remained fit, despite his years of land-locked exile, so he was still able to do his part, but the speed the Ongolese required threatened to undo them all. A few paces behind, Rale ran with the determination of one who had decided his heart would burst before he quit.

Tek tripped, then fell, taking Errol down with him. Phamba growled and pulled his sword, advancing on the gasping figure of the ship’s captain.

Tek stared up at the broad gleam of the blade, panting. Waiting. “Tell Brandy I loved her as much as the sea.”

Errol scrambled to put himself between Phamba and Amos Tek.

“Move, lad,” Tek said. “I can’t make the run. I’ve turned my ankle. It won’t bear my weight.”

“Then we’ll carry you,” Errol said without looking back. “Get up on your good leg so you can wrap your arms around Merodach’s shoulders and mine.”

Adayo drew his sword, mirroring Phamba, the tip coming within inches of Errol’s chest. “Stupid pale one, would you die for him?”

“We won’t die.”

The holy man turned his head and spat. “The ancients will devour you if you do not cross the river before sunset. At night, this jungle belongs to them. He will not make it.” He gestured with the blade. “Move, pale one. Better I kill your comrade quickly with the sword than leave him for the twisted ones. They keep their prey alive as long as possible while they devour it. Would you wish that for him?”

The holy man’s simple description sent pulses of fear down Errol’s spine. “Then leave us. We will make the crossing or not, but I won’t leave him.”

Adayo shook his head. “You do not have that choice, Errol Stone. You have given me your name, your complete name. By the law of our land, you are mine to command.” The holy man’s gaze bored into him, and the blade neared his throat. “I ask you again, would you die for him?”

Movement at the corner of his eye pulled his gaze. Guards held Merodach and Rale, a blade at each man’s throat and a point at their belly. Errol tried not to shrink from Adayo’s threat. Rale and Merodach offered no help, their eyes, one pair blue like the sky and the other gray, were resigned. He swallowed. Were either of those captains in charge, Tek would be dead already. They were men of the watch, accustomed to sacrifice—theirs or someone else’s.

He couldn’t do it. They might all die for the sake of a gimpy sea captain, but he would not be the means of a friend’s death.

Fury contorted Adayo’s face. “Move, northlander. Move if you would live.”

“No.”

Adayo raised his sword.

“Enough,” Phamba said.

Adayo whipped toward Phamba. “He has not said.”

Phamba shrugged. “It does not matter, holy one. He has chosen. Would you strike him down because the words do not follow our tradition? He is not Ongolese.”

Adayo pulled a breath that would have burst the lungs of a normal-sized man and nodded. Phamba signaled a pair of warriors who came forward to lift Tek and support his weight. Errol darted looks at Tek, then Phamba, then Adayo.

“A test?”

Phamba stepped forward. “Yes, little one.” The wave of his arm took in the warriors surrounding them. “We have lost many to the Merakhi that have come in the guise of friends.”

Errol goggled. He had a difficult time imagining anyone foolish enough to attack these giant men of the south.

Phamba shook his head. “Do not be deceived. The sand dwellers carry a strength that is more than human, and they are growing. Already some of their speakers, those you call ghostwalkers, match us in size as the spirit corrupts their fleshly vessel.”

Errol squinted. “But how did you know we weren’t Merakhi?”

Adayo sheathed his giant sword. “The ghostwalkers have the means to appear as men of the north, but they would never hesitate to kill one of their own if it meant survival for the remainder. You refused to abandon your comrade.”

“The people of the river would have killed him themselves,” Phamba added.

Errol adjusted his estimation of the Ongolese chieftain. There were layers there. “So you understood everything we said?”

Phamba’s grin warmed him like an unexpected burst of sun on a cloudy day. “People speak more freely when they think they cannot be understood.”

“The ancients?” Errol asked.

Grins slid from the faces of the Ongolese. “Real enough,” Adayo said. “But the river that denies them passage is just over the next hill. The offspring of evil do not care for the water.”

“And Hadari?” Errol asked.

“I told you the truth, pale one. He lives in the city of fire just beyond the river. Now, we must hurry. The threat of the ancients is a truth, and I’m no longer young and foolish enough to tempt their jungle after dark.”

They continued at a walk. Merodach and Rale closed in next to Errol as they followed the Ongolese who carried Tek to the river.

“Well done, Errol,” Rale said. He kept his face forward as he spoke, but Errol could see the gleam of pride in his eyes. “The outcome would have been different had I made the decision. The Ongolese were looking for a different type of sacrifice than the one I would have offered.”

Merodach nodded. “Or I. We swore never to outlive the king again.”

“But Tek’s not a watchman,” Errol protested.

“When he joined our mission, he accepted the same responsibility,” Merodach said. “You are to be kept alive at all costs.”

Merodach didn’t elaborate, and Errol didn’t require it, but inside, so deep in his chest he could pretend it didn’t exist, burned the hope that somehow he might live through whatever lay ahead.

They crested a hill and descended toward a broad sluggish river that flowed to the southeast, separating the jungle from a broad plain. In the dying moments of the sun, orange light flared and shimmered in reflections from a hundred domes beyond the water.

Errol stopped to stare in admiration.

“It is not so large as Guerir,” Phamba said. “And I am told that Erinon is larger still, but I have never heard of a city that is more beautiful than Gomibe.”

They crossed the water on large flat-bottomed boats as the sun set, washing the plain in crimson. By the time their crafts bumped the pier on the opposite side of the river, they needed torchlight to guide them into the city.

The streets of Gomibe proved to be wide and well lit, its denizens wearing loose-fitting clothes dyed in bright colors, with blue, green, and red predominant. Yet the men and women Errol saw hurried about tasks wearing expressions that seemed at odds with the cheerful aspect of their city.

“A city preparing for war,” Rale said.


“Truly,” Adayo said. “In truth, we cannot—”

“Do not,” Phamba interrupted. “That is for the mfalme.”

They ushered them deeper into a city designed in a series of concentric arcs with roads radiating from the nexus like rays of the sun. As they drew near to their destination, one of the men ran ahead. At the center of Gomibe, they came within sight of a large low-domed building that could have held the entire village of Callowford. An entryway jutted out from the side, and a quartet of guards bearing grievous scars stood watch. Phamba and Adayo stepped forward side by side and bowed.

“We bring one who speaks for his country, Captain.”

The man they addressed, a heavy-set mountain with a brooding countenance, eyed Errol and the rest of the party with disapproval. “He is poorly dressed for an emissary. And his manners are lacking if he comes to the city of fire without the speech of his host on his tongue.”

Errol stepped forward and bent at the waist until his torso was parallel to the ground. “Your pardon, Captain. I only met Hadari a few months ago, and there was scant opportunity to learn your language.”

The captain raised an eyebrow at him. “He comes to us with names of power on his tongue. How do you know Hadari, northlander?”

“He was chief of the guard while I was imprisoned in Guerir.”

The captain shifted his attention to Adayo and Phamba. “He is plain spoken for a pale one. Usually their answers shift and slide like a serpent in the water. Did they pass the test?”

Phamba stiffened at the question. “They would not be here else.”

The captain ignored Phamba’s reaction. “The mfalme will see them.” He wrinkled his nose. “But not while they have the smell of tar and salt water on them.” He raised his hand, and a pair of Ongolese women, tall and sloe-eyed, came forward to take charge of them. “See that they are bathed and dress them in something more appropriate.”



An hour later, Errol tugged at the fabric again. The loose-fitting clothes of the Ongolese rested against his skin in unfamiliar ways, and he squirmed, trying to adapt. His face still held the fire of embarrassment at being washed by the women of the mfalme’s staff, his consternation a source of much amusement.

He stood next to Rale and Merodach, who were likewise attired. The two men looked comfortable in the strange clothes. Perhaps their training within the watch had given them the ability to ignore such external distractions. The mfalme’s chamber lay at the center of the low-domed building. Errol entered into a throne room unlike any other.

The Ongolese ruler held court in the middle of a garden; an opening in the dome’s center revealing the star-filled sky. Palms reached upward, flanked by ferns, and the air carried the heavy scents of a myriad of flowers. Blooms in a riot of color were visible in the yellow torchlight.

They followed their escort along a path that wound toward the center of the garden, where the mfalme sat in a high-backed throne made of wood so dark it was almost black. Ongol’s ruler sat unmoving beneath a large covering made from the skin of some animal that had carried white and orange stripes in life.

The man on the throne loomed tall as all the Ongolese, yet he carried enough bulk to appear squat. Torchlight gleamed off a scalp that held no hint of hair, but his eyebrows were full and thick above eyes as dark as obsidian. Though much of the mfalme was hidden, his body showed evidence of horrific conflict. His left arm ended just below the elbow, and his right foot, poking from beneath the coverlet, was nothing more than a stump of puckered scar tissue. Ongol’s king was severely crippled. Errol tried without success not to stare.

The mfalme leaned to his right to speak in a voice as deep as the earth, spasms of pain twisting his scarred face as he addressed one whose unscarred body stood in sharp contrast to his own.

Hadari.

Errol’s heart pounded at the sight of his friend, but Hadari deferred acknowledgment. “The mfalme says you have noted his medallions.” The king’s mouth stretched the memory of a wound that laced his jawline. Hadari continued. “Speak. Should the Ongolese not fight the ancients?”

Errol bowed. “Forgive me, mfalme, but the ones you fight are kept from you by water on all sides. Why do you fight?”

The mfalme nodded and answered Errol’s question directly.

“You are wise, northlander. Few of my own men would ask, since we have always fought. Many do not think to question what has always been done. The ancients occupy the verdant in the center of our land, but though they are numerous and do not die from their years, they cannot breed. So we fight them. Already their numbers are half what they were ten generations ago.” The Ongolese ruler’s face stretched in a parody of a smile.

“We are patient,” Hadari said. “The women informed the mfalme you bear medallions of your own on your skin. Surely you understand this.”

Errol grasped for a way to explain the scars Antil had given him. Hadari leaned over to whisper to the mfalme, pointing toward Errol. At a nod from the ruler, the big man came forward to lift him as easily as a child and pull him close.

His voice, deep as the waters of the ocean, rumbled in Errol’s hearing. “I have hoped for your safety, brother. In Merakh I learned you are wise, and now I find you are fortunate as well.” Hadari placed him again on the interlocking sandstones of the floor. “Allow me to present the ruler of Ongol, Mfalme Mulu Robel.” He turned back to Errol. “That you have dared the journey speaks of great need.”

Hadari did not ask the purpose of their journey, but the question lay between them, and within the moment, Errol’s discomfort grew. He pitched his voice so that it would carry to the throne.

“The church of Illustra has asked me to bring the book of Magis home.” The book held the sacred history of the church. In its absence the church had depended on an exclusively oral tradition since Magis’s death hundreds of years ago, a tradition that had slowly departed from the truth. The benefices of the church wanted the book—thought for generations to have been destroyed—with a desire so deep and desperate, they were willing to hamper the war effort to secure it.

Hadari stepped back, and for the first time his face became closed, unreadable.

Bring him forward, my friend,” the mfalme said, his voice so slurred by the scars and pain, the words were almost unintelligible. “Dire messages dampen the heart.” He sighed, his chest expanding and deflating like a bellows. “Let us welcome our guests with food and drink as we speak to their need.”

Hadari bowed and clapped hands twice the size of Errol’s, and serving men and women materialized a moment later with dishes of meat and fruit. At Hadari’s direction, Errol, Rale, and Merodach arrayed themselves around Ongol’s king on deep cushions.

A servant fed the king a cluster of grapes as he spoke again. “My trusted one has told me of your experience in the prisons of the ilhotep.” He nodded toward Rale and Merodach. “Your companions wear the look of men accustomed to command. Does your kingdom have so many such as these that they can afford to send them away?”

Errol looked to Hadari, unsure of how to answer.

Hadari wore a reassuring smile. “Speak freely, my friend. This is not the court of the ilhotep.”

“The truth, Your Majesty, is that many of my countrymen do not think we will survive the war. I’m told the Merakhi outnumber us three to one.”


The king nodded. “The sand people are uncountable.”

“And they have the spawn of the malus to aid them,” Errol added. “Adayo called them the ancients.” Mulu Robel nodded for him to continue. “The leaders of the church of Illustra sent us to bring the book of Magis home.”

“You would serve them, Errol Stone?” the king asked. “Hadari told me these men bound you with compulsion.”

A stab of bitterness twisted in his side, and he closed his eyes, concentrating on letting it go. “No, Your Majesty, I do not serve them, but I would like for the book to survive.”

“Are you a servant of Deas, then, my brother?” Hadari asked.

Silence stretched across the moments as he looked into Hadari’s eyes, searching for an answer. In his peripheral vision, he could see Rale and Merodach where they sat, not watching him but wearing the stillness of men possessed by singular focus. Hadari’s eyes held him, showing neither judgment nor expectation but refusing to let him go.

Did he serve Deas? Yes. He couldn’t deny it. His actions had been guided as surely as if he’d been nothing more than a sheep sent for slaughter. But Errol sensed Hadari searched for a different answer. He wanted to know if Errol was a willing servant.

Fatigue and despair so deep he thought he might crumple beneath their weight enveloped him as if the burden of the kingdom had become a physical thing that rested on his shoulders.

“I am His servant, but I am so tired.” A cry tore its way from his chest, and his vision blurred as tears smeared the torchlight. Hands lifted him, and he found himself enfolded in Hadari’s embrace. Sobs wracked him as he clung to the Ongolese warrior, his misery blowing through him like a gale. When his grief had run its course, Hadari set him back on his feet, his eyes fierce, proud.

Mulu Robel regarded Errol from within his scarred visage, his expression unreadable. “I am sorry. I cannot send the book back with you.”

Errol jerked his gaze from the floor. The king’s tone and expression carried many things—sympathy, sadness, regret, but also resolution. The mfalme would not change his mind.

Mulu Robel’s face shuddered, and he jerked his good hand up to summon four broad-backed warriors who appeared to shoulder the burden of the king and his throne by means of rods threaded through holes in his chair. “You and your countrymen deserve an explanation, Errol Stone.” His voice became increasingly formal. “Such discussions must wait until morning to be better understood. Relax and enjoy the peace of the gardens of Ongol.”

Errol thought he heard a catch in Mulu Robel’s voice, but the mfalme’s tortured speech was still unfamiliar to him. Despite the king’s blessing to enjoy the gardens’ peace, he sought his bed soon after.



A hand shook him, and he rolled, panicked, into a fighter’s crouch, his eyes searching for his staff. A voice murmured in his ear. “Quiet, brother,” Hadari said. “I have much to show you if you would understand.”

Errol released the breath he held, then nodded to show he understood. The night outside the arched opening of his window lay black and still. “What time is it?” he whispered.

Hadari stepped back, his feet bare and soundless. “Four hours until dawn. Come. As the mfalme’s aide, I am given authority to move at will through the palace, but the privilege does not extend to you. I have arranged the guards to allow us passage, but we will still have to be cunning.”

“What is it you want me to see?”

Hadari’s eyes grew somber in the torchlight. “The mfalme’s courage and Ongol’s weakness.”

The undertone of caution in Hadari’s voice brought gooseflesh, and Errol darted a look outside. “Will we have time?”

Hadari put a hand on his shoulder. “They are one and the same. Follow and be silent.”

They threaded their way through the palace, pausing often until the sound of the guards’ footsteps receded beyond hearing. After nearly an hour they ascended a set of broad stone steps that led to a circular balcony decked with planters of broad-leafed ferns and blossoms. Hadari stopped and pointed to the chamber beneath them, leaning close to whisper. “This is where the mfalme sleeps when such comfort is not denied to him.”

Errol searched the cavernous room, but aside from obvious luxury of the deep cushions, the fountains, and the plants, the king’s sleeping quarters were empty. “Where is he?”

The skin around Hadari’s eyes pinched as if the Ongol guard fought to keep some obscure pain at bay. “He will come. We need only be patient.”

Moments passed, and Errol found himself swaying on his feet, his eyes aching for slumber. Then, so softly he might have imagined it, came the whimpering of an animal in pain. Hadari’s hand closed on Errol’s shoulder.

Four women, tall and lithe, carried the mfalme toward his cushions, their motions as gentle as if the Ongolese ruler had been fashioned from spun glass. Despite their care, Mulu Robel jerked and moaned with each movement. Errol stared, his face burning at the tapestry before him. The mfalme wore only a loin cloth, the horrific extent of his wounds laid bare to see. Besides the missing hand and foot, the Ongol ruler wore deep trenches of scars that ran the length of his torso and limbs. The skin next to the half-healed wounds pulsed with the mfalme’s heartbeat, and each pulse tore whimpers from his lips.

The women laid him on the cushions as they would a babe, and proceeded to wash him with cloths that filled the room with the heavy scent of belladon.

Hadari led Errol away and back to his room. Once there, he secured the lock and leaned out of the window to check for unwanted ears before speaking.

“Now you know our greatest weakness, my brother. The mfalme is trapped, his body a prison of unrelenting pain. Slowly, like the ocean eating away the stone of seaside cliffs, the mfalme’s agony diminishes his mind. The belladon gives him some relief, but in order to rule he must forego the drug during the day.”

“How does he stand it?” Errol asked.

Hadari shook his head. “The rule of the mfalme is absolute until he dies. He has no choice, or so it would seem.”

The truth of the king’s pain sickened Errol, as if he’d seen the mfalme tortured and locked in stocks from which he could never escape. He shook his head in confusion. “How is this a threat to Ongol?”

The sound of footsteps outside cut off Hadari’s answer. Errol leaned out of the archway to see a pair of guards patrolling the grounds nearby. Without answering, Hadari left the room.



Errol woke the next morning after a series of startled jerks thrust him from sleep. The early-morning air, cool compared to the sultry heat of the previous day, brought him to awareness.

As he stepped from his quarters still wearing the brightly colored robe the mfalme’s servants had given him the previous day, one of the king’s guards stepped into place beside him. Errol didn’t recognize him, but the calm assurance and the impressive array of weaponry he carried proclaimed him a palace soldier.

“I am instructed to bring you to the mfalme upon your rising,” he said.

Errol gestured acquiescence. “Is it permissible to bring my countrymen as well?”

The guard nodded. “Indeed. They are already with him.”

They turned toward the exterior of the palace, the side facing to the north, where steps carved into the thick rocks of the dome spiraled upward toward the cerulean sky. Minutes later they approached the summit, where the king sat on his portable chair surrounded by four huge guards. Errol concentrated on keeping his gaze from the colorful blanket that hid the worst of the mfalme’s injuries.


Tek stood to one side, his ankle heavily bandaged. Merodach’s face glistened with sweat in the early-morning sun, testimony to the means of the ship captain’s arrival. Each man, from king to sailor, nodded a somber greeting to Errol and turned back to the north. Hadari, standing on Robel’s right, stepped to the side to allow Errol to stand between them.

The mfalme nodded greeting, then pointed north. Rich green cropland extended north from the king’s city for a distance of some three leagues before the jungle asserted its claim on the foothills beyond.

Errol blinked. Then he shielded his eyes with one hand as he scrubbed sleep away with the other. A line of black, like a splash of dried blood, stretched across the jungle in the distance. Beyond the line lay nothing but dead rock and barren earth that continued until the haze of distance obscured it.

“You see it?” Robel asked.

Errol nodded.

“The withering started a few months ago.” His huge shoulders shrugged beneath the brilliant colors of his blanket. “The lore of our kingdom is different than that of Illustra or Merakh. In Ongol, the akanwe—those born with the talent to be readers in your kingdom or ghostwalkers in Merakh—strive to understand the land. It is given to them to understand how to keep the plants and animals of Ongol in health.” Mulu Robel turned to him. “Have you not wondered how we are able to flourish outside the protective influence Magis bought for your kingdom? Our akanwe have strengthened our kingdom against the death the fallen ones sought to send against us.”

“But now you’re losing,” Errol said.

Robel Mulu shook his head as if casting away his pain. “The death of your king tipped the scales in favor of the malus. The time approached when I would have had to surrender or watch the entire width and breadth of Ongol die, lost for all time. . . .”

He breathed deeply and stared into Errol’s eyes, as if willing him to understand. “But no longer. When Hadari came to us with the book of Magis, the advance of the withering halted.”

Now Errol understood. “You think it’s the book.”

The mfalme nodded. “To surrender the book to you, Earl Stone, I must be willing to surrender my kingdom along with every living thing within it.”