Warbreaker (Warbreaker #1)(125)
“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.”