Ashes of Man (Sun Eater, #5)

by Christopher Ruocchio

“Three cripples! Well, two and a half—Marlowe got over it!”

You have heard how Hadrian Marlowe slew the Cielcin at Gododdin, how he tore the Pale King from its throne and set the heavens on fire. You have heard how he slew the demon princes Aranata and Ulurani; how he battled the iron devils of the White Hand; how he riddled with daimons from the ancient world, the bastard offspring of Felsenburgh’s thrice-damned daughters. You have heard how he loved his lady, his witch doctor of the Tavrosi clans—though they were forbid to wed and to conceive. You have heard also how he defied Death itself, and Time, and spoke with he who might be, who must be: the Hidden One who sits above all things at the ragged end of Time. You have heard tales of how he suffered—and of how he failed. How I failed.

I am old now, far older than any man who has lived and died a man. I will grow older, still.

Since the day I began this account, I knew I must endure many things anew. Vorgossos. Padmurak. Dharan-Tun. Perfugium. Whole drafts I have written and abandoned—or burned—before this point. So much easier to begin again than go on.

But there are endings, as you and I well know. Once more I find I wish to throw my work into the sea—so inadequate a document it seems! So feeble and blinkered by my merely human hand and eye, so poor a testament to the people I have known. To my people. I have no wish to continue, even alone. But I had no wish to answer the call then, either. Yet answer I did. And as I did then, I shall try now.

“It knows the power of a symbol. Killing your father will make a new Emperor, but humiliating him will destroy the idea of emperor . . .”

“You want the throne, and so you cannot imagine that any man might not want it.”

“They say I am the Earth’s Chosen, but I have never said that.”

He had reason for fear, and better reason than he knew. I had killed Augustin Bourbon, had seen Lorcan Breathnach sentenced to Belusha, had defied even the Empress when she turned her knives against me. What, then, did Alexander of the Aventine House fear Hadrian Halfmortal would do to him for no lesser evil than those of Bourbon and Breathnach?

There are two Emperors in the galaxy now. One red, one white.”

“The Prophet meant me to be the rock on which it built its new dominion. It means William to be the rod that breaks our own.”

The Empire is a belief! A commandment! What is Caesar if not a man who can command that he is Caesar? Who can prove it by the sword?

“The Emperor is a symbol,” I continued. “Kill him and you kill the man, yes. But capture him? Humiliate him—and more—let all know he is humiliated? You kill the symbol.

“Lorian isn’t going to like this.”

“I DON’T LIKE THIS,” Lorian said. “What happened to Lin needs you, Aristedes. You’re wasted on ground engagements? I ask you!”

“Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.”

“Keep your distance, sir. Your cowardice might be catching. I was at Berenike, too. I was the one who picked up your mess—or have you forgotten?”

“It’s a pity we can’t just stun him and haul him out to the Ascalon.” “Ah!” Lorian managed a weak smile. “Had I a hurasam for every time Corvo or the doctor said that about you, I could buy a palace on Jadd and the harem to go with it.” His smile faltered. “I could buy Jadd.”

“Don’t let Valka hear you say that.” “I don’t have a death wish.”

“They believe I am the only one of our commanders who constitutes any serious threat. Meaning no disrespect to Your Radiance or to the other worthies here, but they know me. They do not know you.”

“I have given my life already in your service. Can I do less now?”

“I want a child,” she said. “I think. Our child.”

The cosmos is not cold or indifferent because we are not indifferent, and we are a part of that cosmos, of that grand order which has dropped from the hand of He who created it. Every decision creates its ripples, every moment burns its mark on time, every action leads us ever nearer to that last day, that final last battle and the answer to that last question: Darkness? Or light?

Only the past is written. Time runs down, and what once was never comes again. Never, never, never, never. Never.

VALKA IS DEAD. The words hung in the air before me like the dead holograph, like the smoke of her murdered transport drifting in the gray-lit sky. I stared numbly at the display, a black panel dark and silent, a window opening . . . opening on nothing.

They had taken Valka from me, and the Emperor had taken Valka from me, and I had nothing. Nothing but a cold, clear rage unlike any I had ever known.

Rage is blindness. Gibson whispered in my ear, admonishing. Grief is deep water. But I was beyond rage. Past grief.

I looked upon the glass windows behind the Pale general’s throne, and—looking—chose.

Nothing endures, nor lasts forever. Not stone, not empires, not life itself. Even the stars will one day burn down—as I have seen and know perhaps better than any other man. Even the darkness that comes after all will one day pass away to new light. This record, too, and this warm scribe—my hand—perhaps, will fade. The stones here on Colchis shall fall into the sea, and the sea dissolve to foam. The stars shall burn the worlds to ash, and cool themselves to cinders. All things fade. Fall. Shatter.

I was already kneeling . . . But I would not bow.

“She would be alive,” I said, heedless of all consequence. “If you had but listened to me.”

I said once that a man is the sum of memories, and it is so. Thus, to discard those memories—however terrible—is to discard a part of ourselves. A part of me had died and so remained on Perfugium with Valka, will remain there until its sun swells and swallows that miserable world, but the scars left where she once dwelt are a part of me, too, and worth the price and privilege of knowing her. Of our life together. I would not cut them away.

How cold the phylactery seemed in my hand, its hard, defined edges biting the palm, sharp as truth. It was all that remained of her, a single drop of blood made crystal, preserved against the ravages of time. A half-moon. A broken circle. The pendant would never be whole again.

I knew . . . I knew when I started this account I must return to this, my blackest day. I thought I would be ready, thought that after all these years and centuries, after so many false starts, that I could write of her. Of her end. I thought that now, perhaps, I could say something of that bleak silence, that total silence in the Ascalon then. But there is nothing. Nothing. No words can enclose that silence, or capture the blackness on the holograph where she had been. I can write of that day only as a terrible emptiness, a void blacker than space. Mere words are insufficient, are too small to capture the chasm that had opened beneath my feet. I remember blood on the bedsheets from my wounded hands and side, and soot and cinder and the stink of wine. I would sooner relive every hour on the walls of the Dhar-Iagon, every night in the pit, blood dripping from my ear, would sooner stomach the blood and screaming of the Prophet’s coronation feast than endure that terrible silence. And yet it is ever by my side. I can hear it even now. It is with me always. If I but set down my pen and call her name . . . she will never answer me. Not ever again.

Long gone was the young athlete from the pits of Emesh, long vanished the proud knight of the Emperor’s own. A revenant stared at me, hollow-eyed and undead, his skin like old parchment. The mark of the surgeon and bite of the lash were everywhere in evidence upon his flesh, and the stripes of the Prophet’s claws glowed on his left cheek. His hair had gone white at temples and at forelock and ran along his crown like lightning—just like his father’s—and his eyes! His eyes were the bottoms of deep wells untouched by any light.

I lifted a hand—the hand Irshan had scarred, the hand the Quiet had granted me to save my life in the arena—and touched the half-moon pendant. The revenant’s hand moved with my own.

Grief is deep water, I told myself. Grief is deep water. No, I heard Gibson say, and almost I thought I felt his hand upon my shoulder. It is human. Have you forgotten? To be human is the greater thing . . .

You are a lever pulled by your genes, Brethren once had told me. I am a puppet pulled by some eldritch thing,

Though he slay me, I will trust in him. Have you forgotten?

“I have helped you,” I said, and did not bother to disguise the bitterness and the venom in me, “and lost all.”

“Only Tavrosi?” I said. Never had I known such a rage . . . or such a blindness, and never had I cared less. The boy from Emesh stepped forward—the proud knight stepping with him—and struck the Emperor full across the face.

“Kill me. Send me to Belusha like your son wants. I care not. I am your man no more.”

“Lorian!” I called, voice raw. The good commander turned, eyes raw as well. “Hadrian?” “How did you do it?” I asked. I’d always wanted to know, and now it seemed I’d never have another chance. “Rescue that lieutenant from the Chantry and reach the Council?” The door opened, and the big, bald gaoler appeared. “How did I save your ass, you mean? Was that the one time you meant?” and he grinned wolfishly despite the water in his eyes and tapped his nose with a finger. “I’ll tell you another time.”

“Why would you help me?” The great prince blinked. “Because God has sent you. How could I not? I have seen the Truth! Both in the eyes of your woman and again, on Perfugium. Your Emperor fears you, fears you mean to supplant him. He casts you aside because you are like highmatter with no handle, and he lacks the art or courage to understand. I lack only the art.”

There are endings, Reader, and this is one. Of all the wounds I have suffered, the marks of sword and lash and claw—the very worst left no scar. The greatest part of me, my very heart, will forever lie scattered with the ashes on the winds of Perfugium. With her. The empty silence where she used to be is with me still, even as I mark this parchment. It will never leave me, though I drive it back with a word. Always it returns. Valka is dead. You see, Dorayaica was right, and Gibson, too. Time runs down. The past is written. Perfugium was very long ago, and the ink not five lines above these words is itself already dry. Time runs down, and leaves no man unscarred . . . . . . leastways until the world is changed, and its god returns with new light. If what I have suffered, if what I have done disturbs you, Reader, I do not blame you. If you would read no further, I understand. You have the luxury of foresight. You know where this ends. I shall go on alone.