“The First Returned was born during this time,” Hoid said, sprinkling a handful of silver glitter into the air before him. “Aboard a ship that was sailing the coast. Returned can now be found in all parts of the world, but the first one—the man whom you call Vo, but we name only by his title—was born here, in the waters of this very bay. He declared the Five Visions. He died a week later.
“The men of his ship founded a kingdom upon these beaches, then called Hanald. Before their arrival, all that had existed in these jungles was the people of Pahn Kahl, more a mere collection of fishing villages than a true kingdom.”
The glitter ran out, and Hoid began to drop a powdery brown dirt from his other hand as he reached into another pocket. “Now, you may wonder why I must travel back so far. Should I not speak of the Manywar, of the shattering of kingdoms, of the Five Scholars, of Kalad the Usurper and his phantom army, which some say still hides in these jungles, waiting?
“Those are the events we focus upon, the ones men know the best. To speak only of them, however, is to ignore the history of three hundred years that led up to them. Would there have been a Manywar without knowledge of the Returned? It was a Returned, after all, who predicted the war and prompted Strifelover to attack the kingdoms across the mountains.”
“Strifelover?” Siri interrupted.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Hoid said, switching to a black dust. “Strifelover. Another name for Kalad the Usurper.”
“That sounds like the name of a Returned.”
Hoid nodded. “Indeed,” he said. “Kalad was Returned, as was Peacegiver, the man who overthrew him and founded Hallandren. We haven’t arrived at that part yet. We are still back in Hanald, the outpost-become-kingdom founded by the men of the First Returned’s crew. They were the ones who chose the First Returned’s wife as their queen, then used the Tears of Edgli to create fantastic dyes which sold for untold riches across the world. This soon became a bustling center of trade.”
He removed a handful of flower petals and began to let them fall before him. “The Tears of Edgli. The source of Hallandren wealth. Such small things, so easy to grow here. And yet, this is the only soil where they will live. In other parts of the world, dyes are very difficult to produce. Expensive. Some scholars say that the Manywar was fought over these flower petals, that the kingdoms of Kuth and Huth were destroyed by little drips of color.”
The petals fell to the floor.
“But only some of the scholars say that, storyteller?” Lightsong said. Siri turned, having almost forgotten that he was with her. “What do the rest say? Why was the Manywar fought in their opinions?”
The storyteller fell silent for a moment. And then he pulled out two handfuls and began to release dust of a half-dozen different colors. “Breath, Your Grace. Most agree that the Manywar was not only about petals squeezed dry, but a much greater prize. People squeezed dry.
“You know, perhaps, that the royal family was growing increasingly interested in the process by which Breath could be used to bring objects to life. Awakening, it was then first being called. It was a fresh and poorly understood art, then. It still is, in many ways. The workings of the souls of men—their power to animate ordinary objects and the dead to life—is something discovered barely four centuries ago. A short time, by the accounting of gods.”
“Unlike a court proceeding,” Lightsong mumbled, glancing over at the priests who were still talking about sanitation. “Those seem to last an eternity, according to the accounting of this god.”
The storyteller didn’t break stride at the interruption. “Breath,” he said. “The years leading up to the Manywar, those were the days of the Five Scholars and the discovery of new Commands. To some, this was a time of great enlightenment and learning. Others call them the darkest days of men, for it was then we learned to best exploit one another.”
He began to drop two handfuls of dust, one bright yellow, the other black. Siri watched, amused. He seemed to be slanting what he said toward her, careful not to offend her Idris sensibilities. What did she really know of Breath? She’d rarely even seen any Awakeners in the court. Even when she did, she didn’t really care. The monks had spoken against such things, but, well, she had paid about as much attention to them as she had to her tutors.
“One of the Five Scholars made a discovery,” Hoid continued, dropping a handful of white scraps, small torn pieces of paper with writing on them. “Commands. Methods. The means by which a Lifeless could be created from a single Breath.
“This, perhaps, seems a small thing to you. But you must look at the past of this kingdom and its founding. Hallandren began with the servants of a Returned and was developed by an expansive mercantile effort. It controlled a uniquely lucrative region which, through the discovery and maintenance of the northern passes—combined with increasingly skillful navigation—was becoming a jewel coveted by the rest of the world.”
He paused and his second hand came up, dropping little bits of metal, which fell to the stonework with a sound not unlike falling rain. “And so the war came,” he said. “The Five Scholars split, joining different sides. Some kingdoms gained the use of Lifeless while others did not. Some kingdoms had weapons others could only envy.
“To answer the god’s question, my story claims one other reason for the Manywar: the ability to create Lifeless so cheaply. Before the discovery of the single-Breath Command, Lifeless took fifty Breaths to make. Extra soldiers—even a Lifeless one—are of limited use if you can gain only one for every fifty men you already have. However, being able to create a Lifeless with a single Breath . . . one for one . . . that will double your troops. And half of them won’t need to eat.”
The metal stopped falling.
“Lifeless are no stronger than living men,” Hoid said. “They are the same. They are not more skilled than living men. They are the same. However, not having to eat like regular men? That advantage was enormous. Mix that with their ability to ignore pain and never feel fear . . . and suddenly you had an army that others could not stand against. It was taken even further by Kalad, who was said to have created a new and more powerful type of Lifeless, gaining an advantage even more frightening.”
“What kind of new Lifeless?” Siri asked, curious.
“Nobody remembers, Your Majesty,” Hoid explained. “The records of that time have been lost. Some say they were burned intentionally. Whatever the true nature of Kalad’s Phantoms, they were frightening and terrible—so much so that even though the details have been lost in time, the phantoms themselves live on in our lore. And our curses.”
“Do they really still exist out there?” Siri asked, shivering slightly, glancing toward the unseen jungles. “Like the stories say? An unseen army, waiting for Kalad to return and command them again?”
“Alas,” Hoid said, “I can tell only stories. As I said, so much from that time is lost to us now.”
“But we know of the royal family,” Siri said. “They broke away because they didn’t agree with what Kalad was doing, right? They saw moral problems with using Lifeless?”
The storyteller hesitated. “Why, yes,” he finally said, smiling through his beard. “Yes, they did, Your Majesty.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Psst,” Lightsong said, leaning in. “He’s lying to you.”
“Your Grace,” the storyteller said, bowing deeply. “I beg your pardon. There are diverging explanations! Why, I am a teller of stories—all stories.”
“And what do other stories say?” Siri asked.
“None of them agree, Your Majesty,” Hoid said. “Your people speak of religious indignation and of treachery by Kalad the Usurper. The Pahn Kahl people tell of the royal family working hard to gain powerful Lifeless and Awakeners, then being surprised when their tools turned against them. In Hallandren, they tell of the royal family aligning themselves with Kalad, making him their general and ignoring the will of the people by seeking war with bloodlust.”
He looked up, and then began to trail two handfuls of black, burned charcoal. “But time burns away behind us, leaving only ash and memory. That memory passes from mind to mind, then finally to my lips. When all is truth, and all are lies, does it matter if some say the royal family sought to create Lifeless? Your belief is your own.”
“Either way, the Returned took control of Hallandren,” she said.
“Yes,” Hoid said. “And they gave it a new name, a variation on the old one. And yet, some still speak regretfully of the royals who left, bearing the blood of the First Returned to their highlands.”
Siri frowned. “Blood of the First Returned?”
“Yes, of course,” Hoid said. “It was his wife, pregnant with his child, who became the first queen of this land. You are his descendant.”
She sat back.
Lightsong turned, curious. “You didn’t know this?” he asked, in a tone lacking his normal flippancy.
She shook her head. “If this fact is known to my people, we do not speak of it.”
Lightsong seemed to find that interesting. Down below, the priests were moving on to a different topic—something about security in the city and increasing patrols in the slums.
She smiled, sensing a subtle way to get to the questions she really wanted to ask. “That means that the God Kings of Hallandren carried on without the blood of the First Returned.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Hoid said, crumbling clay out into the air before him.
“And how many God Kings have there been?”
“Five, Your Majesty,” the man said. “Including His Immortal Majesty, Lord Susebron, but not including Peacegiver.”
“Five kings,” she said. “In three hundred years?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Hoid said, bringing out a handful of golden dust, letting it fall before him. “The dynasty of Hallandren was founded at the conclusion of the Manywar, the first one gaining his Breath and life from Peacegiver himself, who was revered for dispelling Kalad’s Phantoms and bringing a peaceful end to the Manywar. Since that day, each God King has fathered a stillborn son who then Returned and took his place.”
Siri leaned forward. “Wait. How did Peacegiver create a new God King?”
“Ah,” Hoid said, switching back to sand with his left hand. “Now there is a story lost in time. How indeed? Breath can be passed from one man to another, but Breath—no matter how much—does not make one a god. Legends say that Peacegiver died by granting his Breath to his successor. After all, can a god not give his life away to bless another?”
“Not exactly a sign of mental stability, in my opinion,” Lightsong said, waving for some more grapes. “You don’t encourage confidence in our predecessors, storyteller. Besides, even if a god gives away his Breath, it doesn’t make the recipient divine.”
“I only tell stories, Your Grace,” Hoid repeated. “They may be truths, they may be fictions. All I know is that the stories themselves exist and that I must tell them.”