by Rachel Dunne
Borghen stepped forward and swept his low bow. “Exalted Ventallo,” his voice boomed around the chamber, “I bring you Shadowseeker Joros, returned from his foray.”
The old man sitting at the apex of the table waved a wrinkled hand in dismissal, and Borghen bowed his way from the room. Joros dropped to one knee, fist to his forehead, and saw Verteira from the corner of his eye laboriously assume the same pose.
“Stand, stand,” the old man called querulously. Delcerro Uniro, first among the Fallen, was not a patient man. Joros rose, and Verteira glared up at him as though she expected some sort of help. He let her struggle to her own feet. “What have you brought us this time, Seeker Joros?”
“A woman, Reverence. A woman the world has turned its back on. A woman who has nowhere else to turn.” He pulled Verteira forward, was pleased at how she clutched at her stomach. “This is Verteira. She was cast out by her village, beaten, left for dead.”
“And why, Verteira,” Uniro asked, “is that?”
To her credit, she held her chin high and met his glare. “The midwife said I would bear twins.”
A rustle of clothing shivered around the table, a few murmurs, eyes brightening.
“Twins?” Uniro asked, and a slow smile stretched his wrinkled face. “You are welcome to stay here, Verteira, for as long as you may wish. This shall be your new home.” He made a discreet motion, and a servant hurried forward to touch Verteira gently on the arm. “Tomo will show you to a chamber where you may make yourself comfortable. A midwife will attend to you”—and he chuckled, the dry sound of rustling paper—“better than the previous one.” Verteira looked wide-eyed at Joros as the servant led her from the chamber, an expression almost like fear. Joros turned his eyes back to the Ventallo.
“You have done well, Seeker Joros,” crooned Ildra Setira, an ancient crone, seventh among the Fallen.
“Very well,” put in Dirrakara Quindeira, fifteenth among the Fallen. At thirty years of age, she was one of the few young members of the Vantallo, her skin glowing with health and a mane of red hair tumbling around her face.
Etengro Duero, second among the Fallen, creaked to his feet. “You may have noticed,” he said, walking slowly around the table, “we are short one member.” His bony tight-skinned hands rested on the back of the last chair on the left of the half circle, the empty chair.
“Poor Tisaro,” wailed Saval Septeiro, seventeenth among the Fallen, then winked at Joros.
“He was old,” Uniro snapped.
“We have been watching you, Joros,” Dirrakara Quindeira said, dark eyes fixed intently on Joros. “Very closely.”
“You have done great deeds,” said Shuro Noviro, ninth among the Fallen, bouncing with excitement. “Brought many new initiates, spread the old stories far and wide, and now . . . this!”
“Twins!” Setira said wonderingly. “You have been a shadowseeker, what, three years?”
“We are pleased with all we have seen,” said Valrik Trero, third among the Fallen, though he sounded less than pleased.
“Very pleased,” Dirrakara added.
“Oh, so very pleased,” Saval mimicked with a broad grin.
“The Ventallo need a new member,” Uniro said impatiently. Joros felt his mouth going dry, his hands beginning to shake. He clasped them quickly behind his back.
“And we are thinking,” said Deuro, pulling the empty chair scraping back, “that it should be you.”
Uniro didn’t smile, but his wasn’t a face for smiling. “What say you . . . Joros Ventiro?”
“Will you join us, Joros Ventiro?” Dirrakara purred.
“A mighty responsibility,” Valrik Trero cautioned, “and one not all are capable of taking.”
“We think you are, though,” Saval said. “Twentieth doesn’t do much anyway. Mostly cleaning chamber pots and the like.”
Uniro glared down the table. “Fraro Septeiro jests, of course. But we are wasting time. What is your answer, Joros?”
Joros swept a graceful genuflection—the one he’d practiced. He pressed his knuckles to his forehead, trying to suppress the grin that threatened to split his face.
It was about damned time.
“Exalted Ventallo,” he said formally, “I am honored by your offer. It has always been my greatest wish to serve the Fallen, and it would be my deepest pleasure to continue serving in a higher capacity.”
“That’s that, then,” Uniro said, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. “Who will stand for him?”
“I will,” Saval said quickly. Joros and Dirrakara Quindeira both gave him a faint glare, though he seemed oblivious to it.
“Very well,” Uniro said as he hurried around the table and toward the great archway. “We’re finished here,” he called over his shoulder as he left.
The rest of the Ventallo shuffled out, some pausing to offer congratulations. Quindeira gave him a look that promised they would see more of each other.
Saval Septeiro fidgeted impatiently until they were alone, then puffed out his cheeks in a mighty sigh. “As you can see, meetings are all terribly boring. But bureaucracy is what it is, eh? There are other things that keep us busy. Come on, then.”
There was a wooden door fitted into the wall behind Uniro’s chair, hidden in shadow. Saval pulled a dull metal key from the neck of his robe and inserted it into the lock. “Only the Ventallo are allowed in. You’ll have your own key, of course. Don’t let anyone else know about it, and don’t ever let it out of your sight. They’re so very serious about secrecy. That’s the hallmark of the Ventallo. Poroshen, newest brother. Secrecy. Though I’m sure you know enough about that, with all your shadow scouring.”
“Does the door actually open?” Joros snapped. “Or does that key just open your mouth?”
Saval laughed, a startling sound in its sincerity. Joros couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard a real laugh anywhere near Mount Raturo. “I knew I was going to like you,” Saval said, and swung the door open.
Joros could feel a headache building. Whoever had carved out the innards of the mountain had had an overreaching fondness for circular chambers. This one was low-ceilinged, lit by a single hanging brazier, the fire whispering in the quiet of the room. Below the brazier was an enormous, unadorned stone block, hip-high and at least as long as Joros was tall. Just visible within the brazier’s circle of light were a number of doors set into the wall. Twenty of them, Joros soon saw, each carved with an unnecessarily large numeral. The closest on the right, which Septeiro went to, was numbered 20.
“Yours,” Saval said.
“My, how complicated things are here.”
Smirking, Saval pulled a key from the hook set above the door. It was strung onto a dirty, fraying piece of rope, and Joros wrinkled his nose as Saval offered it. “Paryn, the former Ventiro, is a . . . very austere man, shall we say? All about simplicity. He has one robe he’s worn his entire life, and has never washed it once. You’ll want to make sure to stand upwind of him. Come on, take this, put it on a nice chain or something. It’s yours now, your most sacred possession. At least until one of those corpses decides to completely fall apart and you move up to Nodeiro. Then you get a slightly shinier key. They say Uniro’s key is made of solid gold, though I doubt old bird-neck could carry it around if it was.”
Grinding his teeth and doing his best to ignore the incessant babbling, Joros inserted his key into its lock. The heavy wooden door swung open on squeaking hinges to reveal a small room lit by a pale blue glow. A desk was the room’s only furnishing, not even a chair to sit in. There was a book on the desk, thick and dusty and older than death, and quill and ink. And there was the source of the strange light: a tall, translucent candle burning with a steady blue flame. This flame, too, seemed to whisper, a soft hissing sound that slowly grew louder, more insistent. The throbbing in his temples deepened, not quite pain but annoyingly close.
“The ice candle,” Saval said, walking to the desk. “Valrik made it when he was Quindeiro, years and
years ago, but it’s not ready yet for wider use. There are advantages to leading the Fallen—we get shiny things before any of the others. The light will help with all the reading you’ll be doing.” He patted the thick book, smirking. “This lists all the farmers and hunters and fishers who keep Raturo fed. You’ll be overseeing them all, making sure they send us enough food and in a timely matter. You’ll also send preachers out to remind the farmers of their duties, if they get lax. And they will—they always try to take advantage of the new Ventiro. Don’t show them any bend and they’ll straighten out.”
Joros could feel a cold disappointment creeping through his stomach. A decade of dedication to the Fallen, and this was his reward? He put a hand to his forehead, trying to press back the growing headache. “So I’m a clerk now?” he growled.
“Oh, nothing so banal as that. You’re an important cog in the machine, brother. That’s all anyone is. You’ve gone from a tiny cog to a slightly bigger one, take heart in that. You can only grow from here. And it’s only a matter of time until one of the Ventallo finds their dinner poisoned, or a knife to their neck. We’re a constantly squabbling little family. You have nothing to worry about right now, of course, but once you move up . . . well, you learn to place your trust carefully and keep your back to the wall. Anyway, you’ll rise faster than you think. Just scribble and count for a while, and know that it’s all toward the greater purpose.”
“The greater purpose,” he mocked, but the whispering was too distracting to formulate more of an insult.
Saval grinned, a feral gleam in his eyes. One had to be crazy, Joros supposed, to be able to laugh inside Mount Raturo. “Oh, goodness me, did I forget to mention that? Oh yes, littlest brother, there is a greater purpose. The greatest of purposes.” He flipped open the cover of the giant ledger, crooked a finger beckoningly at Joros. “It’s written here, a constant reminder so you know what you’re working toward. So you know what machine you’re propelling, little cog.” His finger tapped against the page, and Joros leaned over, squinting to read in the pale light.
The page was artfully illuminated, a colorful depiction of Sororra and Fratarro. In every other portrayal of the Twins, they were either falling, cast from the heavens by their holy Parents for the sin of wanting more to their lives than they had been given, or wrapped in chains, bound in a place deep beneath the earth. This, though, showed them free, broken chains dangling from their wrists and ankles, Sororra swallowing the Mother’s sun, Fratarro holding the Parents by their throats. And in bold, flowing letters across the top of the page was written Freeing the Bound Gods.
Joros looked up at Saval, frowning. “You act as though this is some great revelation. They’ve been chanting this at me since I got to the top of Mount Raturo. The Bound Gods are a . . . a symbol—” Gods, his head hurt, and that damned whispering. “Something you can shout about to keep the sheep in line. They’re not real.”
“Oh littlest brother, oh tiny cog, you have so much to learn.” Saval turned and walked from the room, back into the antechamber and straight to the stone slab; Joros remained in his new chamber, frowning down at the ice candle. It wasn’t the candle flame whispering, he could see that now, but try as he might, he couldn’t find the source. His attention was pulled away by a new sound, low and grating, and he turned to watch Septeiro in the antechamber.
The man had his hands pressed against the stone block, and Joros soon saw it wasn’t a solid mass of stone, but a box. The top slid effortlessly aside, seemed to lower itself gently to the floor, and the whispering grew louder, fiercer, a babbling of soft, desperate voices. Saval smiled, that crazy light in his eyes again. Joros’s head felt like it was about to split, and he thought, There really is no dealing with fanatics.
“Come, brother,” Saval murmured, his voice carrying under the whispers, eyes fixed on whatever was in the box. “Come see the glory entrusted to the Ventallo.”
“This is ridiculous,” Joros said, but the voices that were just beyond hearing were pulling at him, the throbbing in his skull pulsing in time with the incomprehensible words. His feet moved, and he stood next to Saval, and he looked down into the box.
Charred black and as long as the box, longer than a man, it was hard to recognize. But there was an ankle, there the smooth curve of muscle, there a toe the size of his hand. A leg. And the raw, rent flesh where it had been torn brutally away. The voices coalesced, crescendoed, broke over Joros in a single wave that commanded in a voice deep and desperate and lonely, Find me.
Into the silence that left Joros reeling, Saval whispered, “And thus did Fratarro shatter upon the bones of the earth . . .”
“. . . his limbs flung to the far horizons,” Joros finished, the words learned so long ago, a child’s parable.
“Not so far after all,” Saval said, smiling that mad smile, and impossibly, Joros felt his mouth matching shape.
CHAPTER 2
Apounding at his door awoke Kerrus, and his breath formed a heavy mist before his face as he let it out in a frustrated sigh. “Can’t sleep a whole night through, gods help me . . .” he muttered as he swung his scrawny legs over the edge of the bed, toes quickly finding his fur-lined boots. “Coming, coming!” he groused as the pounding continued. He pulled on his thickest coat and mittens before setting his hand to the door’s cold handle, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Grumbling more, he put his shoulder to it, and after a few hits that left his old bones feeling bruised, the snow that had been keeping the door shut gave up its hold. The winter air rushed in to swallow what little warmth had built up, and snow crept in to touch the toes of his boots. An eye peered at him from the darkness beyond the cracked door, and thin fingers helped Kerrus pull the door wider.
Mora, with her hair wild as the nest of a psychotic bird and her eyes almost as wild, said in her low voice, “You gotta come, Parro. There’s trouble.”
Kerrus sighed again. The Parents’ work was never fecking done. He took a bracing breath before joining Mora out in the snow that fell so pretty and in such a deadly way. Together they shoved his door closed again; Kerrus wasn’t going to let the winter get any tighter a hold inside his home.
They turned together down the line of orderly huts, and Mora clanked as she walked. She could still walk faster than Kerrus even with the iron chain stretched between her ankles. She was a runner, was Mora, foolish a thing as that was. The chains kept her to a quick walk.
“What’s the trouble?” Kerrus asked her, tucking in his chin against the cold.
“Patrol come back, yeah? Brought somethin’ with ’em they found in the snows.” She licked at her teeth, eyes fixed ahead, body straining forward faster than her feet could bear her.
Excitement was low in Aardanel, locked in by snow and high palisades; Kerrus couldn’t fault her her for relishing a little drama. “What did they find, Mora?” he pressed.
She looked at him, and her smile was made as much of fear as anything else. “A boy.”
Kerrus pushed his legs to go faster, the camp courtyard coming into view and shouting voices beginning to reach his ears.
A group of wardens stood gathered in a circle of torchlight, hands jabbing, voices raised in varying degrees of fury. Chief Warden Eddin stood silent among them, the torchlight casting shadows on his practiced mask of composure. He caught Kerrus’s eye and beckoned him closer, and the priest squeezed with relief into the warm press of bodies, leaving Mora to lurk behind in the shadows, too cautious of the wardens to get any nearer.
That was when he saw the boy.
No more than eight perhaps, he stood at the center of the group of wardens, thin-faced, wide-eyed, half naked. His clothes were little more than rags, and the exposed skin was, Mother help him, even dirtier than the rags themselves. The boy’s hands were tied before him, fingers tinged blue, and another rope wound tightly around his ankles. He was trussed up tighter than most of the prisoners who came to Aardanel, eyes wide as he watched the dozen wardens shout over his head.
Kerrus sucked
in a breath, feeling the cold burn in his lungs, and let it out in a bellow, “What in all the hells is this?”
The wardens fell silent, staring at their feet like chastised children, and Eddin nodded approval. One of the wardens finally spoke up. “My patrol found this Northman bastard wandering the snows. Brung him in for questioning.”
“And I say throw the brute back to the snows he come from!” another warden shouted, not to be outspoken.
Someone muttered, “Ill luck, to have a Northman about.”
Kerrus looked at the boy, and the boy looked back at him. Blue eyes like ice over a lake, and Kerrus supposed his lank hair might have been blond, given a few washings. Stocky, thick shoulders, skin tanned from the sun glaring off snow. Northern blood, no doubt of that. “He’s small enough,” Kerrus said. “I can’t imagine he’ll bring too much ill luck. Untie him.”
“He’s a bloody Northman!”
“He’s a bloody child!” Kerrus bellowed back, and reached out to snatch the ropes from the wardens’ hands. The priest knelt down in front of the little Northman and untied the ropes. “The Mother and the Father love all the world’s children,” he told the wardens sternly. “Northern and southern, young and old, highborn and low, everyone from the king right down to you dolts. This poor soul has clearly suffered enough to have earned the Father’s protection, and I’ll hear nothing more said about it. Do I make myself clear?” There was muttering and grumbling and shuffling feet, but no disagreement.
They drifted away, some with backward glares, until it was just the priest, the boy, and the chief warden. “You’ll care for him, then, Parro?” Eddin asked.
Kerrus sighed. “It seems I will. I’m bound to offer succor to all the Parents’ children. Or at least that’s what my old master made me swear.” Eddin clapped him on the shoulder, gave the boy a last, thoughtful look, and then went to join his men in the squat stone building that housed the wardens.