“‘Of course not,’ he says,” mocked the Keeper. “Then what was it you were doing out here, eh?”
“Just had to get out–” started Draysky.
“Out? You were thinking of making a run for it? Fancied your chances in the wilderness? No wonder you had the ritebald hungry.”
“No, not like that–” Draysky began, then he saw a flash as the butt of the spear leapt upward like a club, smashing into his nose. He felt the bone break and cried out, holding his hand to the blood which even seemed cold, his eyes welling up with tears that froze before they reached the ground. The Keeper kicked him, sending him sprawling into the shale, scattering it underneath him.
“I ain’t about to lose my life due to some knotted ridger boy, not for a second,” said the Keeper, as Draysky pushed against the ground to rise back to his feet. But a boot came down on his tricep, pinning it to the shale, splaying his forearm out as his fingers scrabbled against the side of the workbench, searching for the lighter he knew was close by. Instead he grasped at shale, the burning sensation leaping up his arm once more as he bit back a scream. Then it was all around him—the gnashing filling his ears, the shale like laying upon a raging fire. Instinctually, he called to the cold once more, pleading with it for relief.
“Ridgers have such short memories,” the Keeper spat. “We’re charged to protect you, you hear? And you’re charged to work. You never forget that, because the moment you do, you’re dead. You understand?”
Draysky nodded, gritting his teeth into the shale as the cold entered him once again, pushing back against the heat. The nightmares fleeing beyond an icy shell that permeated Draysky to his bone.
“Then here’s something to remind you, in case you have trouble in the future,” the Keeper growled, and he dug the dark tip of his spear into Draysky’s forearm.
Draysky had cut himself before. Once, while preparing lighters, he’d nearly sawed through his own finger, taking his mother an hour of stitch work to reconnect the flesh. Another time, he’d stepped on a loose nail that slashed through the sole of his foot, giving him a cut that took a month to heal, alternating between infection and scab.
But this cut was unlike any he had ever received.
The blade burned into his skin, and he screamed, shrieking into the shale. It was as if it had been dipped in poison or acid, the cut driving through his muscle to emerge on the other side. He thrashed, but the Keeper pushed his weight down further, completing the cut all the way from wrist to elbow, searing the memory into Draysky’s consciousness. Beneath him, the shale screamed back, the heat welling up once more in response to the cut as if it were drawn to it, brothers with the pain.
“That’s enough, Lionel,” said the first Keeper, pulling the second away as Draysky panted, the lighter rolling from his grip.
“Stupid, and with no guts at all,” said Lionel. “You’d think I’d have cut off his leg.”
“He’s scared half to death,” said the first. “You’ve made your point. Besides, screaming like that on a night like tonight—only one thing that might bring.”
“Aye. And I ain’t going to be here to see it. Think I’m catching a whiff of it once more,” said Lionel, then he took Draysky by the belt loop and collar. Kicking open the door, he threw him inside, and Draysky rolled twice on the cold floor before coming to a halt. The two Keepers crunched away, the shale calling out to him.
Gnash, gnash, gnash.
Above, his grandmother’s eyes stared down at him, and her palm slapped hard against his cheek.
“What were you thinking?” she hissed in the darkness. “Trying to summon both the Keepers and the ritebald? Insanity, absolute insanity.”
“I was trying to get away from the nightmares,” he said, still shaking from the cold.
“Nightmares happen up in your head,” she responded, and tapped his forehead. “And stay up in your head. But what you did tonight is how you lose your head.”
She left then and was quickly replaced by his mother and sister. His mother tutted when she saw the gash in his arm, and he flinched as he looked at it, afraid at what he might see. But the cut had barely broken through the skin. As cuts went, it registered barely more than a scratch.
“Draysky, whatever were you doing? You must keep safe, you can’t be leaving the house at night. Imagine if they had done worse. I don’t think it needs stitches, but your sister needs to practice. We will take the cautious route,” said his mother, pulling out a bone needle and thread. Small runes dotted over the needle, which had been passed down to her by Draysky’s grandmother in a case the size of his palm. Three had occupied the five slots, and his mother cried for two days when one of them snapped after a patient jerked away. Now, she placed it into his sister’s hand after tying thread onto the end. Then she cleaned the wound, scraping out any shale dust that had entered and wiping away any welling blood.
“As we practiced with fruit peels,” his mother said, guiding his sister’s wrist, and the needle pricked into Draysky’s skin. He grimaced, but held still, as his mother spoke. “And the numbing agent, so he doesn’t move.”
But from the other room, Draysky’s grandmother spoke up. “If he were a Keeper, or if a patient endangers themselves, then you would numb the wound first. We don’t numb for idiocy!”
Draysky’s mother sighed and turned to his sister. “Two herbs suffice for numbing, but we would only want to use one here. Which is it?”
“Frostroot,” recited Aila, her eyes squinting in the darkness as she threaded the needle. “It’s weaker and wears off quickly, but it has less of a chance of putting the patient to sleep.”
“Correct. And for you, Draysky, it is sometimes best to feel pain. When we silence it, our bodies lie to us; they claim there is no damage. Remember that trade, keep your body truthful. Pain always has a meaning.”
The last sentence, she spoke with weight, and he sensed what she meant. As the Keeper had said, something to remind you. So too, was she leaving him with pain for him to remember.
After ten stitches over the deepest part, his sister tied the string off, returning the needle to the case. For three days after, Draysky laid sick and feverish in bed, the cut on his arm burning hot and requiring fresh bandages often. His mother drained it and washed it, questioning his sister about the techniques she had used and inspecting the knots and thread. From the doorway to his room, his grandmother’s brow knitted together, and she retrieved the needle case, mumbling and staring at the tiny grooves in the bone surface. She cleaned each needle, using the other tips to scratch the runes fresh, working deep into the night while Draysky tossed and turned.
But on the third day, he rose shakily to his feet, as the sickness left him with nothing but memories and a scar.
Chapter 5: Draysky
The Skiltons wept when the Keepers took their eldest away. But they were tears of joy.
Draysky had known Sune, because his grandmother had known Sune. Few escaped her watchful eye, and when she noticed another that could produce lighters nearly as fine as her own, she’d taken immediate interest. The skill had secured Sune respect among the ridgers far beyond his age as well, and when the spring came to drive away the bitterest of the winds, the outpost held its breath as the Silver Keeper rode into the square.
His horse’s shoes announced his arrival, the iron clanging on the shale. When it was dark enough, the sparks from their strikes would be visible, like golden coins falling about his royal presence. The Silver Keeper always brought gifts with him—letters, sweets for the children, fresh fabric for clothes, and spices. When he smiled, his teeth were as white as the snowbanks, and his golden hair fell in waves about his shoulders that reminded Draysky of sunshine. Never did he come quietly, and his shouting voice accompanied by sparks flying above his head drew in the attention of any in the streets.
To him, the Keepers would bow, their eyes upon the silver lock that clasped on the chain around his neck. That day no ridgers worked the shale, the town shops closed, and even
the most basic work was forbidden. The cooking would be completed the night before, the firewood already cut and stacked, and no one swept the excess shale that coated the maintained stone paths throughout the outpost. A day of rest, the Keepers called it.
A day without pay, as the ridgers knew it.
“Who here knows the most important resource of the kingdom?” the Silver Keeper asked, as every soul in the outpost gathered in the square. Under order of the lower Keepers, the ridgers had scrubbed as much of the shale dust from themselves as possible, though their forearms and fingers still bore the brown stains that lingered past even the most thorough washings. Women and children wore their best clothes, which for many simply meant fresh patches were sewn on earlier that week, and my grandmother had passed around a bottle of polish for shoes she had made from crushed bark, acting more as a thick paint to hide holes than an embellishment.
The ridgers looked on in silence, turning toward the mountain as a shale slide started in the distance, a plume of dust puffing up the ridge. One or two times a day a slide large enough to be heard from the outpost occurred, the type that was supposed to be read and avoided by the Keepers. Slides this large meant a crushing death for anyone in its wake, and only four years before a particularly large slide had wiped out an entire shift of workers. Their bones had never been found, the shale stacking atop them, the mountain consuming them, the rocks grinding them to pulp as they were sucked under.
The ridgers’ eyes were as stony as the shale when they turned back to the Silver Keeper, the lower Keepers at the edges of the crowd shifting to place their hands on their weapons. None of the ridgers were permitted steel weapons, and their pickaxes had been left at home, but the shale at their feet provided an unlimited source of projectiles.
“I said, who here knows the most important resource in the kingdom?” repeated the Silver Keeper, placing a hand on his belt, the already strained pin hole threatening to rip. A ring glinted on his index finger, and he ran his thumb along its side, where a series of runes glowed for a brief second. The air warmed then, changing from frigid to merely cold, as if the sun had peeked out from a bank of clouds. Just enough that the ridgers no longer had to cluster together, and the thoughts of their home hearths left from the forefront of their mind.
“You,” continued the Silver Keeper, pointing at a man at the edge of the crowd, one whose dust stains were darker than nearly all the others while being a foot shorter. “What do you think?”
The man chewed and spit, a clump of vaporweed staining the snow, and Draysky stiffened from his place alongside Aila at the other end of the square. Smoking vaporweed had mild calming effects, but chewing produced recklessness, a disregard for caution. A ridger that chewed vaporweed brought home more crystal than anyone else, because he was willing to seek the deepest shale on the most unstable days. The outpost called ridgers that chewed raporweed moonlighters—because rarely would they make it through a few lunar cycles.
The man grunted, then stood. While he had appeared a foot shorter than the others before, he was now two feet taller, and the Silver Keeper’s eyes widened as the ridger walked forward. No shoes were on his feet, his soles worn far tougher than any leather, and his toenails were black. His pickaxe dangled from his left hand, one that was specially made for his size, and his name was carved into the handle, though it was unlikely that anyone could forget its owner.
Rasmeth.
“Crystal,” growled Rasmeth as he reached the front of the group, his steps slow and deliberate, standing just five feet in front of the Silver Keeper. Voice as low as a shale slide, his figure dwarfed the mountain behind him.
Ahem. “No,” corrected the Silver Keeper, his voice less confident than it had been a minute before. He checked the positions of the lesser Keepers at his left and right. Rasmeth stood unblinking before him, the shale scars on the back of his head glinting. “To the kingdom, the greatest resource is our people. It is you! That is why we send you the Keepers to protect you, and the supplies for your general store, and care–”
Rasmeth raised a hand, only three fingers remaining, the stumps of his pinky and ring finger particularly stained by the dust. He’d lost those to a shale slide, one that had killed three members of his shift and maimed the others badly enough to put them to bed for two weeks. Rasmeth had returned to the mountain the very next day.
The Silver Keeper’s voice died away as Rasmeth spoke, cutting him off.
“Our lives are traded for the crystal. The crystal is sent to the kingdom,” he jerked his head back towards the mountain, then spit a wad of vaporweed again, this time dangerously close to the Silver Keeper’s feet. “If we are so valuable, why do they not send us instead of crystal?”
Behind him, the ridgers murmured, the warmer air stirring them as the Silver Keeper spoke, his voice coming weakly, almost squeakily, compared to Rasmeth’s.
“The kingdom invests in you! It awaits the day for paid off debts, for when you will be welcomed with open arms! We train you in mining to help you with this. We send you firewood and supplies in the winters, we–”
“You lie,” Rasmeth said as one of the lesser Keepers stepped forward, unsheathing a sword as the crowd’s murmuring turned to shouting. Quicker than Draysky’s eyes could follow, Rasmeth’s grip tightened on his pickaxe, and he raised it above his shoulder, as if the Keeper were simply more shale to split. Then, where a pleasant heat had existed before, a blaze roared up between the two men, throwing Rasmeth back into the ridgers, his pickaxe flying far overhead and crunching into the shale mounds at the edge of the outpost. Smoke rose off his charred shirt, now more of a vest with the sleeves burned away. He roared from where he lay on the ground, his leg still, pushing himself up on one arm while the other jutted at an odd angle, bits of white and red breaking the skin near the elbow. But a shrieking voice overcame him, one that was so loud it dropped several of the children to their knees, and echoed back from the mountain.
“None shall raise their arms against a Keeper!” The Silver Keeper stepped forward, his eyes blazing as much from fear as from anger, as the ring on his finger split and crumbled to dust. “To do so is death! Down, down, and back away, or I shall raise the very fires of hell against you! Dare you test me, knotted ones? I will level you to ash, then scatter your remains into the wind.”
Two Keepers now shielded him from the front, and Rasmeth roared again, this time in pain. The Silver Keeper ran his thumb across another ring, the runes glowing, and Rasmeth’s voice quieted. His mouth still opened and shut, but no longer did it produce a roar. Now it seemed as if it traveled a great ways, no louder than thunder in the far distance.
“I came to you with good tidings, and this is how you receive them? Perhaps I should turn back and bring word to the kingdom of your disobedience and insolence! So much we have done for you, to be received as thus. But no, no! I am a merciful Keeper, and I offer not punishment, but the raising of one of your own to higher status. The chance to move from a mere knotted citizen to an owner of a lock. The forgiveness of a debt, an open-armed welcome. Do you not thank me for this opportunity? Would you strike the hand that feeds you?”
A baby cried, and a child too old for tears tried to hide his sobbing as the crowd collectively stepped back. Then Aleman stepped forward, dropping into a deep bow before the Silver Keeper, keeping his eyes low.
“We thank you, mighty Keeper!” he said to him, then turned back to the still stunned crowd, raising his hands for them to join him. And so the voices did, disjointed, without gusto or harmony.
“What is that?” asked the Silver Keeper, cupping his hand to his ear. His thumb strayed back to the rings, and the crowd reacted, shouting a thank you that was as much in defiance as defense. A smile crept across the Silver Keeper’s face, and he nodded.
“As you should. As I was saying, before our most rude interruption, the kingdom values its people, even the knotted who have not advanced to wield magic. And today, I recognize one among you. Sune Skilton, will you come fo
rward?”
The crowd turned in on itself, rippling out from the center like a stone dropped into a pond, looking to where one boy with barely stained hands froze, a chisel on a rope slanted across his shoulders. At his belt was the handle of a pickax, but no head yet attached—he’d still need to chisel his way through two more months of rocks to earn that, and had already spent two months chiseling to earn the shaft. A decade back, six months had been required to earn each, the apprenticeship lasting a full year for the fresh ridger to learn the personality of the mountain before climbing into its depths. But short numbers of ridgers meant higher production demands each, and less time spent chiseling, which produced only half the yield of a full ridger.
“Don’t be shy, boy, don’t be shy!” cried the Silver Keeper, his voice carrying over the still subdued shouts of Rasmeth. “Word has traveled of your deeds, all the way back to the royal palace! A finer runemaker, they say, cannot be found on the north side of the Alsi River!”
Draysky’s grandmother snorted, not bothering to hide the sound, though Aila coughed to cover it up.
“That’s because no one else dares live north of the Alsi,” his grandmother croaked, the muttering crowd obscuring her as they pushed Sune forward. “I’ve seen his work. Not terrible, but neither is he a strong student.”
When Sune reached the front, the Silver Keeper took his right hand, pulling it forward and holding tight. Then he raised his voice in triumph, a beaming smile across his face, and pride infusing his words.
“The Keepers always seek more to join their order! Today, I declare you, Sune, an apprentice of the Keepers. Your family will receive a stipend until your return, though when you are finished, I suspect you will wish to continue service. One does not simply brush the edge of heaven and dive back into the dirt, no he does not. A great future awaits you, Sune, and may your family be proud!”
He dragged Sune’s hand through the air, forming the same rune that Draysky used on his rudimentary lighters, this time scaled to the size of a large book. A trail of red light followed his index finger, a dull glow that hovered in the air, shimmering as the rune completed. A small burst of fire flared outward a few inches from the rune, maintaining its shape before dissipating into the air, the flash of heat just enough to warm Draysky’s face.
Heaven Fall Page 3