“We go through this every time,” Patrick insisted. “Yes, it’s awful. But as you said, you can’t coddle your children any longer. It’s time for us to grow up and make our own decisions, and from what I saw in Haven, growing up is almost always painful. Take solace in the fact that those who come with us will be protected once we reach Mordeina. That is all we can ask for, is it not? And besides, those who stay behind will fulfill their purpose…”
“That is my hope,” the deity said with a nod. He looked odd in that moment, more guilty than a deity should ever appear to be.
“Sometimes hope is all we have,” Patrick said. “For example, I hope my mother’s making progress on that wall you wanted, and I hope the king they crowned is up to the task of leading these people once we arrive, since I assume your attentions will be focused…elsewhere.”
That seemed to snap Ashhur back to his old self. “Yes, it is my hope as well. Your mother is strong. Perhaps not strong in the same way Bessus was, but she has her talents. She is the only survivor of my first creations, and she’s more than capable. I believe she will teach Ben Maryll well, just as she taught you.”
Patrick scoffed inwardly at the notion. He had come to realize that his mother and father had very little to do with the man he’d become. He didn’t correct his god, however, for Ashhur knew far more than he did. If Isabel DuTaureau’s harsh and distant parenting could make this new King Benjamin anywhere near as strong as Patrick was now, there was a chance Paradise might be saved.
Patrick lifted his waterskin to his lips in a toast.
“To Paradise, to your ever loving grace, and to pounding Karak’s ass when he finally arrives,” he said.
“As good a toast as any,” Ashhur replied, a somber smile lifting his lips.
CHAPTER 4
“Heave! You, stop that dawdling. There will be time for water when we set this stone. Stop worrying about slicing your hand open. I’ll heal it if you do. You-the man with the torn breeches-don’t stand there! If that rope snaps, you will be crushed. Is that what you desire? No, no, no! Stop jumping on those boulders. Do you think this a game, you fool?”
Ahaesarus took a step backward, throwing his hands up in frustration. Those who should have been working were laughing and cajoling instead. At the rate the stones were being put in place, they would never have the wall built before Ashhur’s arrival.
After taking a deep breath to calm his nerves and tugging on his scarred ear, he allowed himself a moment to put things into perspective. It was early morning, the sun barely up long enough to take the haze from the sky, and there were already two hundred people working. The citizens of Mordeina stood among acres of mud, lifting granite blocks-each as wide as a small hut-from the nearby mountains with pulleys made from ropes and felled tree, attempting to swing them into place atop the uncompleted wall. Others stood atop the completed portions, pouring mortar into the gaps before the blocks were nestled into place. The progress they’d made over many months of labor was extensive, yet laughable considering how much still remained to be done. The main entrance was finished, a stone arch that had taken a full week to perfect. The wall in general was fifty feet high and went on in a semicircle for a span of six miles. It would take more than fifteen miles of wall to completely encircle the settlement.
We will never finish in time.
They had received Ashhur’s letter describing the events in Haven in painstaking detail just as autumn took hold of the land. Along with that message came a warning of Karak’s planned assault on Paradise. The final instructions were to begin construction of the protective wall around Mordeina, the planning of which had fallen to the Wardens. None of the humans knew anything of woodwork or masonry, never mind architecture. Each of the great structures that had been erected in Paradise-Manse DuTaureau, the Wooden Bridge, and the seven buildings in Lerder-had been conceived of and built by Ahaesarus’s brethren. Even considering that fact, the designer of these edifices had been a single Warden, Boral, who still resided and worked his craft in Lerder, on the banks of the Rigon, hundreds of miles away. Most of the Wardens had been minor tradesmen in their past lives on their obliterated, faraway world. Ahaesarus, in fact, had been a farmer and a priest. He had risen in stature after his people were brought to Dezrel to become nursemaids, and he’d learned to appreciate his second chance. He had become a strict adherent of Ashhur’s laws of love and forgiveness, a teacher whose loud voice served him well in gaining the attention of the juvenile beings under his care. His size and integrity had made him the most prominent of all the Wardens, climbing so high in the eyes of Ashhur that he had been named Master Warden and given the responsibility of tutoring one of the three youngsters who had been tabbed as potential kings of Paradise. He took pride in his duties and excelled at them.
But building a gigantic, fifteen-mile-long wall? He felt out of his league. He and his fellow Warden, Karitas, had painstakingly mapped out the giant oval that would surround the settlement, reconciling which areas of the surrounding forest would need to be cleared, how many massive stones they would require, and from where the stones would be harvested. He was often still anxious when he fell into bed at night, and sleep had become a rarity. The proposition was simply so huge. If not for the fact that they had Mordeina’s thirty thousand residents at their disposal, they would have been lucky to raise even one section of wall.
Eveningstar would have been better suited for this work, he thought, and then shook his head in disgust. Jacob Eveningstar was a traitor who had turned on them all. It appalled him that he had not seen that betrayal coming. Ahaesarus had always considered himself a stickler for detail, yet he’d ignored all the signs. The fact that Benjamin Maryll, the boy who now was king, had been a chronic underachiever under Jacob’s tutelage, only to flourish under the Warden Judarius’s watchful eye, should have been sign enough that something was amiss.
He shrugged aside his guilt and threw back his shoulders.
“Get moving, you idle ingrates!” he shouted. “This wall is not going to build itself!”
He received countless groans and complaints in reply.
“What seems to be the problem, Master Warden?”
Ahaesarus looked to his right. Isabel, the matriarch of House DuTaureau and Ashhur’s second creation, stood beside him. She had appeared from out of nowhere, and her intense green eyes were observing all the commotion before her. She was a tiny creature, but the confidence with which she carried herself made her seem larger. Her clothes were a study of contrasts: her tight-fitting, emerald-green gown, colored to match her eyes, made her look like a goddess of the sea, whereas the bundle of furs draped over her shoulders were more reminiscent of a barbarian. Some commonfolk whispered that her cold stare could turn men to stone, and others said that the bright red of her hair was a sign that the fires of the underworld burned in her veins. She was aloof and unflinching, a woman who guided the simple people of Mordeina with a heavy hand. Though she had never been nice to him, Ahaesarus admired her greatly.
“I apologize, Isabel. I did not hear you approach,” he said.
“You should pay better attention,” she said coldly.
“Perhaps you are correct.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Master Warden. What is the problem here?”
Ahaesarus cleared his throat. “I am simply trying to motivate the workers. They are easily distracted.”
“They are. As well you would be too if you had only known a life of comfort.”
“I have been in this world as long as you, Isabel.”
As the woman gazed up at him, her steely gaze narrowed.
“Yet you also lived through war and hardship none here could imagine,” she said to him. Her tone wasn’t necessarily cruel, but there was an accusation there that made him feel like a child, even though he had outlived her by nearly a hundred years. “You cannot treat these people like they are your fellow Wardens. They are naïve, simple folk. They cannot wrap their heads around the concept of losing the safety they’ve always known. They don’t understand it, and I fear they won’t until Karak’s Army stands before them.”