The Legend of Broken

Rocking Effi, who has fallen into sad slumber, Keera replies, “We have, Yantek.”

Ashkatar nods. “Some thought that you would refuse it — but I felt certain that you would not. And I want you to know — about your boys.” Ashkatar pulls at his whip. “Don’t fear that they will be forgotten, while you’re gone. My men and I shall watch over them as if they were our own — and I shall keep your parents ever informed of how it goes with them.”

Keera’s eyes fill with tears, but she is determined to control her grief and her worry until the journey she is faced with is done. “Thank you, Yantek,” she says, with deep respect. Then she begins to walk slowly toward her parents’ home, just south of the village center, still rocking Effi from side to side.

“And Veloc—” Ashkatar points his whip. “You and Heldo-Bah take care of her, eh? Especially in the southwestern Wood. Take care of yourselves, too — it’s hellish country, and all our hopes go with you.”

Veloc nods. “Aye,” he says, and then turns to catch his sister.

Heldo-Bah pauses, still grinning. “And how would you know what the country’s like down there?” he asks. Ashkatar flushes with angry embarrassment, at which Heldo-Bah laughs once and says: “But it was a noble sentiment, Ashkatar. I’m deeply touched …”

Before the commander of the Bane army can reply, Heldo-Bah runs off; nevertheless, Ashkatar shouts after him: “Damn you, Heldo-Bah — It’s Yantek Ashka—!” But then, out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of the Elder still waiting, and murmurs to himself, “Ah, the blazes with it …” Straightening his tunic, he watches the foragers disappear into the crowds of weeping, shouting, desperate Bane as he starts up the path.

“The Moon go with you three,” he murmurs softly.

Then he hurries inside the Den of Stone, to propose the scheme he believes will allow the infant and drastically outnumbered army of the Bane — a force as yet no more than two hundred strong — to defend Davon Wood against the mightiest military machine north of Lumun-jan, at least until such time as the foragers return.

“And what happens after that,” Ashkatar murmurs to himself as he catches up to the Elder, “I can’t even begin to guess at …”

1:{xv:}

Sunset at the High Temple brings strange and

wondrous visitors …

On making the Kafran faith the state religion of Broken — and of himself, a deity — Thedric, the patricidal son of the Mad King Oxmontrot, speaking through the first of the Grand Layzins, pledged to create great works in the name his “true father”: the golden god. He quickly completed the High Temple of Kafra (in which Oxmontrot had never shown more than a passing interest), and greatly increased its beauty of design; and through rituals conducted therein, the banishments that Oxmontrot had instituted as a pragmatic method of forging a united people who would be capable of not only creating an impregnable city, but of defending themselves in the field from the conquering hordes that the Mad King had fought during his years of service to Lumun-jan, became the unshakable pillars of the new kingdom’s faith. Soon thereafter, the Sacristy had been built, above the ground between the Temple’s western and the Inner City’s eastern walls; so, too, had been the Stadium, where once had stood a second, smaller headquarters for the northern watch of the Broken army; and finally, adjoining the Sacristy, was erected the House of the Wives of Kafra, the second story of which became the Grand Layzin’s official residence. A spacious veranda off the Layzin’s splendid bedchamber offered an excellent view of the Inner City’s Lake of a Dying Moon, as well as the upper stories of the royal palace, while a new, underground passage beneath the House of the Wives of Kafra connected the Temple, the Layzin, and the priestesses directly to the palace and the royal family. But these additions were merely practical, designed to make the secret lives of Broken’s rulers and the business of Kafran clerics easier; only the veranda and balcony outside the Layzin’s bedchamber had been designed purely as an indulgence, one intended to give Broken’s senior priest a view of the Inner City, that he might watch as the setting sun was reflected off the black waters of the Lake.

For the long succession of Grand Layzins, who had neither claim nor pretense to godhood, life within the House of the Wives proved a welcome respite from the often overwhelming responsibilities of giving voice to (and more often than not, creating) the edicts of the various God-Kings, whose removal from the world made their views upon mundane secular matters of somewhat limited utility. The Layzins’ burdens were eased, early in the new life of Broken, by the elevation of the head of the city’s Merchants’ Council to the position of First Advisor of the realm. The most onerous of the Layzin’s chores could finally be handed off to a worldly man more suited to dealing with them, and none too soon; for the rise of the savage tribes on every side of Broken, during the first generations of the kingdom’s existence, required some very secular responses.

The successive Lords of the Merchants’ Council proved, thankfully, dedicated men. Indeed, they were so effective (especially when supported, as they usually were, by those peerlessly loyal men who attained the supreme rank of yantek in the Broken army) that the Layzins had time to focus the greater part of their energies on elaborating precise ways in which the sublime quests for physical perfection and the attainment of wealth should govern the daily lives of the people of the kingdom. And no single spot on Kafra’s own Earth, these men have ever believed, was or is more suited to such ruminations than the veranda above the House of the Wives of Kafra, where their lofty thoughts have ever been fed by views enveloped in the powerful scent of the wild roses that ascend the walls of the gardens that surround the building.

The man now called Grand Layzin has taken particular delight in the simple pleasures offered by the secluded veranda since first taking office; and this evening — as he reclines on a sofa of expertly worked calves’ leather that is scattered with down cushions covered in the very softest lamb’s wool and silk, and which is so positioned as to give him a wondrous view of both the Celestial Way to the south and the Inner City to the west — his thoughts turn to the gloriously serene early years of his service. They had been full of seemingly unlimited opportunities to guarantee the sustained youth and vitality — indeed, the immortality—of his beloved young God-King, Saylal; had been full, in fact, of the promise that not only his sacred beauty and strength but those same qualities among his priests and priestesses could be made safe forever from corruption and death, if the natures of all these qualities and processes could be but better understood and opposed. All this had seemed within reach—once …

But now, as the Layzin’s mind inevitably turns to thoughts of the departure, earlier, of five hundred of the city’s finest young men to attend to a problem that the Layzin himself knows to transcend that of the Bane, the exhausted high priest finds himself rising to close one set of the gossamer drapes that hang on the veranda; finds himself, strangely, obscuring his view of the Inner City and the Lake of a Dying Moon, and then taking his seat again, to stare at the long avenue down which those five hundred nearly perfect men — commanded by an officer of, if not perfect breeding, at least perfect loyalty — marched on their way out of the city.

And, thinking of all these things, the Layzin sighs …

He is still dressed in his ceremonial robes, which are of the softest white cotton available to Broken traders; and he sips the sweet white wine made from grapes native to the valley of the Meloderna. Below him, he can hear the frequent laughter of the Wives and the other priestesses, which should be a perfect accompaniment to the beautiful spring evening. But then, as he looks to the right of the Celestial Way and at the gates to the Inner City (the walls of which enclose no fewer than forty ackars†), he spies detachments of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard changing their watch; and the pleasure of the roses and the laughter fades. Yet all is being done that can be done, that is certain, he tries to tell himself; and then the nagging doubt: But will it prove enough …?

To his right, the gossamer drapes catch the sharpening golden light of the setting spring sun: that same light that entranced so many Layzins before him. The drapes diffuse the glare, in much the same way that the wine begins to calm the Layzin’s soul; and a light breeze buffets the fabric ever so slightly, then does the same to similar hangings that cover the arched doorway to his bedchamber. Suddenly, through these last drapes, the Layzin sees