Ashes of Man (Sun Eater, #5)

by Christopher Ruocchio

The ugliness of the world does not fade, nor are fear and grief made less by time, nor is any suffering forgotten. We are only made stronger by its blows.

suffering is not quantified or measured. It only is.

“The world’s changed,” I allowed, and glanced back to where Prince Rafael Hatim sat with Garan Peake and the others. “But men have not. Nor will.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “We keep making the same choices. The same mistakes. So the same wisdom will ever serve us.”

God’s Emperor. I stood a little straighter, ears pricking. Not God Emperor.

Writing this, I have no way of knowing who you are, Reader—or in what age you are reading these words. I do not know what you must think of me, or of all us sad Sollans. Nor do I truly care. Wherever you are, whenever you may be, you have not faced the Pale in battle, you have not seen the ashes of war covering world after world, or witnessed the horrors of Dharan-Tun. You have been spared. We have spared you. Whatever you may think of me, know this: seldom has man known a ruler like William Caesar. They say it was in me that the likeness and power of the God Emperor returned. There are those who write or whisper now that I was the conclusion of the High College’s dream, the culmination of all their careful breeding, their delicate gene sequencing. I tell you I am not. Whatever I am, whatever power I have obtained—however briefly I ruled—I say it was in William the Great, the Sun of the Millennium, that the likeness and greatness of the God Emperor returned.

All life is tragedy, for all life must end

“ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE myself properly,” Prince Kaim—Olorin—said, “I am Kaim Sanchez Cyaxares Nazir-Vincente Olorin ban Osroes ban Aldia du Otranto.”

Ashes lay in drifts about the ruined splendor of the sanctum, mounded against the altar and about the feet of my divine ancestor, triumphant beneath the oculus far above. I wore no helmet then, and heard with my naked ears the roar of engines approaching. I felt the dead wind in my hair, and smelled the foul burning of the ashes of man.

“If you were any different, you wouldn’t be what you are.” But could I fault him in his thinking? Had I not thought much the same of myself, a hundred hundred times? Do we not all think this way sometimes—whatever our condition—and in a sense is it not true? Evil occurs because we are insufficient to challenge it. Too weak to stop it at the gates, too blind to see it bubbling within. Were we all angels in our virtue and heroes in our capacity, we might hold all chaos at bay, might stop even the unkindling of the stars. Yet we are but men. Even me.

“Fight well, seek beauty, and speak Truth, is that it?” “Just so.”

“Once, there was nothing, if the magi are to be believed. All of this—all creation—was hard won. By God, and by us. Besides!” The great prince again placed a hand upon my shoulder. “There is much light you cannot see.”