Skyborn
Battle of the Horizon Trilogy Book I
Cameron Bolling
For Diana,
who gifted me the book that sparked a love for fantasy.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
About the Author
Chapter One
A thick-shafted arrow protruded from the boy’s chest. Dark blood pooled below him, picking up swirls of sand as it trickled through cracks in the rust-colored stone ground. The flint head punctured deep between his cracked ribs, and the feathered fletching cast a shadow over his glassy eyes. Stuck vertical in the boy’s body, the rough-hewn nock rose nearly five feet off the ground, and the wooden shaft rivaled the thickness of two fingers held side-by-side. No human could possibly shoot an arrow of such proportions; this arrow belonged to the eclipsers.
Oleja stood at a distance alongside the dozen or so others who gathered to behold the scene. None approached the boy, and she knew they wouldn’t dare to for a while yet. Finding people dead on the ground never came as much of a surprise, but this one stood apart from the others. The eclipsers killed those who attempted escape—never the innocent, rule-following miners. The boy on the ground fell into the latter category. Before finding an arrow in his back, he hadn’t done so much as look up to the strip of sky visible from the canyon floor. But now he lay dead.
Oleja looked up the cliffside to where the arrow came from. No figure stood there—not that it would’ve mattered if one did. The people of the village never saw more than a dark silhouette of their oppressors, backlit by the sun above. But even if she couldn’t see an eclipser looking down, she knew they were watching. They were always watching.
For generations as far back as anyone could remember, the eclipsers had held Oleja’s people in that canyon, forcing them to mine in exchange for their supper. The more they dragged up out of the mines, the more food they got in return, lowered down to the canyon floor with the same system of pulleys they used to send the products of the previous day’s labor up to the surface.
Living in the canyon under the eclipsers’ reign came with two rules: spend the days mining, and don’t try to escape. Breaking the first resulted in starvation. Breaking the second resulted in death. Given how few people in the village sought out starvation or death as their goals, they fell in line easily. As long as they followed those two simple rules, they were safe—at least from the eclipsers.
Until now.
Whispers drifted through the crowd. Fear ebbed out in ripples from the boy’s body. Oleja set her jaw as she let her eyes fall upon him once more. His death served as a grim reminder; things changed. Safety was never guaranteed. Though they believed that if they remained docile, the eclipsers would leave them be, it wasn’t like such a promise had been agreed upon and punctuated with the signing of a document and a firm handshake. Relations between the two groups could be called many things, but civil found no home among those ranks. Safety seemed to dwindle by the day, and if they didn’t do something, Oleja’s people could soon meet their end—picked off one at a time by an unseen force a thousand feet above their heads. Two rules, but they didn’t matter anymore. All bets were off.
Fortunately, Oleja had never been good at following rules—those two in particular.
She ducked her head and made her way out of the crowd. The bag across her shoulder bounced against her hip with each step, the contents rattling and clanking within. She held it with one hand to muffle the noises until more space lay between her and the somber gathering. Though she felt a pang of guilt doing so, she tried to push the image of the boy, dead on the ground, from her mind. Dwelling on hopelessness would lend her no boons. She hadn’t known him beyond merely in passing. Death found a comfortable home down in the canyon anyhow—with business as treacherous as mining, Oleja doubted she could count the number of her ancestors who lay buried in cave-ins deep below her feet. Luck shone bright upon those who lived more than fifty years in their conditions. Death had lost its sting long ago.
The ground sloped upwards beneath her feet as she hurried through the village, heading to the northern end of the canyon. She passed others as she went, people going about their morning routines as usual despite the commotion back behind her. They came and went from homes and workshops carrying baskets of goods or armfuls of tools.
Buildings receded into the face of the canyon walls, each only one or two rooms deep beyond the front door, though families or other groups often laid claim to more than one structure, acquiring dwellings that neighbored their own for their children when the previous inhabitants vacated the space. The rooms rose several stories high, set along ledges reached by staircases and ladders, but the people never built more than six or seven stories up. Climbing too high up the sides of the canyon served as the quickest way to find an arrow in one’s back, so none were willing to live any higher despite hundreds of feet remaining between their doorways and the surface.
Between the canyon walls stretched streets and meeting places. Open fire pits provided the people of the village with places to cook their supper, lining the central river like guiding lights in the night. Streets ran the length of either bank. Bridges spanned the distance across at intervals, though the flow was neither particularly wide nor deep. Smaller channels branched off from the river, cut with tools to direct the water flow into shallow basins for bathing or doing laundry.
Up ahead loomed the north wall—a great structure of grey stone rising all the way up from the canyon floor to stand flush with the ground. It was a fine, clean-cut thing that had stood as her people’s northern barrier for as long as any could remember. Who built it, no one knew, as it looked too fine a thing to be of eclipser make. Their captors were strong, and certainly cunning enough, but they did not seem to be of the fine-craftsman sort.
The south wall seemed more in the vein of what passed as fine eclipser handiwork. It too rose to the height of the ground above, though it was built from enormous boulders of orange-tinted stone to match that of the natural canyon. Piled high—and Oleja could only venture a guess as to how thick—it served its purpose well, keeping the people contained in their small stretch of land within the canyon.
Just before the north wall towered Oleja’s objective. Referred to as “The Heap” among the people of the village, it lived up to its name well, as it was, indisputably, a heap. Every morning at daybreak, the eclipsers carted their junk down a walkway of rusted metal supports that hung out over the edge of the canyon just south of the wall. From there, they dumped whatever scraps they had lying around, usually rife with things Oleja didn’t know the names for. It provided a supply of materials—wood, rusted bits of metal, and other odds and ends for the people to make use of in the mines. The junk swelled high in a hundred-foot-tall monument to the Old World—the world before the canyon, and before everything fell to ruin.
Oleja’s morning routine included stopping by The Heap to sift through it for anything useful hidden among the utterly useless. Most considered The Heap trash, and they were mostly right, but every so often, buried beneath the garbage, a real gem of a find waite
d to be unearthed. Some others collected metals to melt them down for new tools, while all wooden beams found new homes down in the mines as supports if they retained some strength, or as firewood if not. Oleja sought the other stuff—odds and ends, knickknacks of all sorts, and the strange pieces she could turn into something new. Her bag bulged with stuff of that nature, stuff to tinker with. She kept the bag within reach at all hours. Tinkering let her mind rest and gave her something to do with her hands. Plus, what problem couldn’t be solved with a few pieces of scrap? In Oleja’s experience, none.
As she passed through the crowds, she kept her ears alert, listening to the comments the other people of the village made to one another. Sometimes she picked up on just the right conversation—any mention of a broken cot or window shutter, rickety chair or other damaged item in need of repair. She liked to take note of who needed what, then find the pieces necessary to fix the problem at The Heap and return to do the work for them. She was skilled with her tools and wanted to use them to make living as slaves at the bottom of a canyon just a smidge more bearable. They were always thrilled to have her help, and she was more than happy to provide. Operating as an undercover repairwoman brought a tinge of excitement and purpose to an otherwise dull and cyclical life.
She followed along the river bank as she covered the final distance up to The Heap. The river came in through a heavy metal grate in the corner and ran along the left wall before settling into its path through the center of the canyon. This way it stayed clear of The Heap, as drinking water and old rusted metal made a bad combination.
Oleja’s boots slid in the wet clay as she stepped up to the base of the immense pile. She threw aside a long, bent strip of metal and then a larger square chunk with a hole in the center lodged below it. Shifting things in The Heap came with a heavy dose of danger given how easily things could start sliding, but Oleja had mastered it through years of practice. Determining which pieces bore the weight of countless items above and which moved without consequence came naturally now.
Beneath the pieces she threw aside, Oleja found a large spring, which might have been useful if not so badly crushed. She first thought to toss it aside but ultimately held onto it instead. If she found nothing better, perhaps she could mend it.
“Raseari!”
Oleja paused when she heard her name. She knew the voice. Feigning busyness, she held up the spring again and looked it over.
“Oleja!” the voice called again, louder this time as the owner drew nearer. With an exasperated sigh, Oleja turned to look over her shoulder.
The woman marching towards her stood taller by several inches, and bore muscular arms, though Oleja had her beat there. Otherwise, she and Oleja looked much alike, though most in the village did; same tanned brown skin, same dark hair—though the other woman’s was closer to brown and bound in a ponytail as opposed to Oleja’s black braid, rarely tended to which left messy strands flying loose around her face.
The woman came within a few paces of Oleja and stopped, thin eyebrows raised as if implying a question she had yet to voice.
“Hi Jisi,” said Oleja, waving the spring in halfhearted greeting. “Is there something you need?”
Jisi might have been considered the leader of the village, if anyone had claim to such a title. No one officially reigned over the people—save for the eclipsers. Instead, the people of the village tended to rally around whoever took charge in a way that seemed fair, or who was too strong or intimidating to question. Jisi sat somewhere in the middle.
“Yes, actually, there is something I need from you. A haul, Raseari. You haven’t come out of the mines with so much as a pebble’s-worth of copper—or anything—in a week. Just because food is divvied evenly doesn’t mean you don’t need to pull your weight around here. You’re young and strong, and I see you go down into the mines every day. So, where’s the haul?” Jisi looked down at Oleja with a cold and questioning glare. Her jaw clenched and muscles tensed. Behind her, a few people stopped and looked to see the cause of the disturbance.
“I’ll have one tonight, don’t worry about it,” said Oleja as she ducked her head and stepped around Jisi. Jisi grabbed Oleja’s arm and spun her around before she could run off.
“I will worry about it, because this isn’t only about you, or me, it’s about everyone else down here. Everyone has to eat, so everyone who can lift a pickaxe has to mine. Those are the rules. That’s how we survive. And I know you’ll have a haul tonight, because that’s how you play this game. You contribute nothing until someone takes notice, and then you show up toting a bag bursting with more than you could have possibly mined in a day. And then we have a food surplus for a few days, and everyone applauds you as a hero. But that’s not enough. You need to bring up a haul every day, and do it so that everyone gets to eat, not just to get me off your back.”
Oleja stood frozen to the spot as her heart beat faster. Jisi did not let go of her arm. More people overheard as Jisi’s voice grew in power. A crowd began to form around the two of them.
“Jisi is right!” said a man from somewhere in the group. “Oleja has been taking advantage of us. She thinks she’s better than everyone else.”
“The girl’s just lazy,” said a woman.
Oleja wrenched her arm free of Jisi’s grasp. She dropped the bent spring to the ground.
“These claims are false, I work just like everyone else,” she said, raising her eyes to scan the crowd. She did her best to keep her voice calm. If she didn’t diffuse the situation as quickly as possible, things could get bad fast.
“It’s because she has been hanging around with the old man, Ude. He’s Tor’s blood,” said a new voice. The words rippled through the crowd.
“Make her get double the haul or she gets executed!”
“Execute her now so she stops eating our food—we hardly have enough to go around as it is!”
Everything happened at once. Several people stepped forward and grabbed at Oleja. She yanked her arms away and backpedaled until her feet scrambled across the scrap at the base of The Heap. A voice in her head yelled for her to climb, but she wasn’t fast enough. Hands grabbed her and pulled her in different directions. Oleja lashed out with her feet until the mob grappled those as well and held fast. Someone ripped her bag away from her, snapping the single strap.
“Stop! Let me go! Jisi!” Oleja called. Her eyes met Jisi’s, but she found no sympathy there. She could expect no aid from her.
Despite her tugging and flailing, Oleja could not free any of her limbs. Each time she knocked a hand away, two more took its place, until they held her so tightly that she could hardly move at all. The mob pulled her down the street, shouting things she no longer paid attention to. Only the pounding of her own heart filled her ears as it drowned out the voices. Desperately, she ran through her options. They were few. Option one: get away. Option two: pacify the mob. Option three: die. Even if she got away from the mob, where would she go? The canyon walls and eclipsers above trapped her within. Losing her pursuers in the mines might work, but only until she needed to resurface for food and water. When she did, she’d be walking right back to her grave.
If she wanted to pacify them, she was on her own there as well. Certainly no one in the village held strong enough feelings to consider vouching for her and risking their own neck with this mob—save Ude perhaps, but the people of the village would be all too happy to execute him alongside her. They’d been looking for an excuse to off the old man for decades. She was alone in this.
And she wouldn’t die. Death was not an option. It never had been, and it never would be.
The mob threw Oleja to the ground, but before she managed to stand, they seized her wrists and ankles again and quickly bound them with rope. She lay in the center of a flat stone dais stained with dried blood. Four metal stakes poked up from the ground, their tips hammered deep into the rock. Her arms stretched out to either side and her legs splayed as the crowd tied each rope to a stake. The coarse rope burned her wri
sts and ankles as she tugged against the bonds. They didn’t budge.
A procession broke through one side of the crowd—a line of people carrying wide stone slabs. The first reached her and placed the slab atop her chest. Not an unbearable amount of weight, but the slab-bearers lugged plenty more.
By the time they laid the third slab on the stack, Oleja struggled to breathe, and with the fourth, the panic took over.
Her eyes flicked over the people around her. Some looked angry. Some, confused. Most filled out the crowd as merely passive bystanders, watching the morning’s spectacle before heading down into the mines and forgetting about it altogether. And then she met Jisi’s eyes again. She stood to the side, watching, her face devoid of any emotion.
A cold determined power swept through Oleja.
“Stop!” she shouted, forcing the air out despite the crushing weight on her chest. Pleading did not drive her voice, imbuing it not with the cry of someone desperate for life. It was a command. She looked to Jisi.
“Jisi. A word.” Jisi raised an eyebrow but did not move. The slab-bearers looked between the two of them, uncertainty plain on their faces.
“I’d come to you, but I’m afraid that’s not an option at the moment,” said Oleja. For a beat, no one moved. Then Jisi looked to the slab-bearers and waved a hand. She stepped away from the crowd and walked to Oleja, crouching by her head.
“What is it?”
Oleja’s words struggled to wriggle out from beneath the immense pressure on her chest, but after a labored inhale she managed. “You’re right—when you confront me about my lack of a haul, I show up with a big one soon after. So, what does that mean if I die right now?”
Skyborn Page 1