by Ken Scholes
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
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For Dr. Eugene Lipov
and
For Lizzy and Rae:
Thank you for turning my lamentation into a hymn
Prelude
The watchman, Cyril Thrall, waited beneath a moonless sky scattered with stars that he’d been able to name since childhood, though he’d not seen them until his twentieth year. He’d dreamed of them, of course, and when he’d reached adulthood, he’d stood beneath them for the first time here at Endicott Station, not far from where he now sat and in fact had sat for so many nights these past four decades. That canvas of space above him, until last week, had been more full of wonder than anything he’d ever seen. A million points of light that illuminated and enhanced the plain paper charts he’d studied on the ceiling of the observatory when he was a boy. He’d wept the first time he stood beneath them, his lungs full of the dry, dead air of the Barrens after spending the first two decades of his life hidden away.
And then last week, the dream had brought a new wonder to him.
Cyril had not fully understood the significance of it in the moment of the dream. But he had given himself to the experience, taking it all in, slack-jawed and rubbing his eyes. The massive tree white with seed, the multitudes stretched out across the plains and the loud voice of Winteria bat Mardic, a daughter of Shadrus, rising above the roaring wind to conclude two thousand years of dreaming with the proclamation that would allow the Firsthome Temple to be unsealed.
The path to the moon will now be open again, Cyril realized as he stood in that field and bore witness. It was the culmination of millennia spent waiting, watching and preparing carefully. It was the fulfillment of Frederico’s Bargain—an event that stretched back to the days of the Under-Exodus, before the Time of Tending and Gathering. And somehow, they had shared that dream together, every man, woman and child. He’d seen them for as far as his eye could see, all gathered together on the plain.
It stirred everyone’s sense of wonder, and launched a flurry of activity. Vessels to prepare, ambassadors to send out and now, most recently, guests to receive. His own two children, barely grown, had already been sent out in their service to the council for their part in the making of history.
Cyril watched as he always did, from a plain wooden chair facing south, just at the edge of the run-down stone buildings that made up Endicott Station. Most nights, all he saw were stars, or a field-worker returning home. Only once in forty years had there actually been an intruder at the station, and it had been dealt with quickly and efficiently. The grave wasn’t marked, but Cyril knew just where it was. He blinked away the memory of violence, grateful that it had been done by hands other than his own. Still, he felt remorse from having any part in it and had dug the grave himself.
Guests were another thing altogether. He couldn’t recall the last occurrence in their carefully recorded history. In the earliest years, they’d received a slow trickle of pilgrims and refugees seeking sanctuary, but that had evaporated over the course of a few hundred years. That trickle started again, according to historians, once the Y’Zirite blood cult sprang up. But eventually, that slow migration had stopped. Or, if people out there still attempted the journey, the harsh travel conditions—and the imperial Blood Scouts who hunted down any apostates that fled—prevented their arrival.
But now, guest cottages were being cleaned in the midst of everything else.
The hours slid by, and twice Cyril stood to take a slow stroll around the station. It was a quiet night with no wind, making it easy for him to hear the approach.
It was the softest hum at first, growing louder in the south. He stepped toward it, scanning the night sky as he reached into his pocket. He put his hand upon the stone there and focused his words through it.
“I have an approach from the south,” he said in a quiet voice.
A small patch of sky shimmered and Cyril focused his eyes there, watching as the shimmering grew along with the hum of the engines that propelled it toward him. They’d made them as quiet as they could, but the noise seemed deafening to him against the backdrop of the night’s stillness. It amazed him that these vessels could fly over cities and villages, unnoticed by the unsuspecting souls below. He felt it drawing near now—a fluctuation in the air that raised the hairs on his arm.
The reply came through, a tickle in his skull. Escort them to the translation point.
“Understood.”
He’d seen the ships a few times—well, not exactly seen. The vessels were coated with an extract that rendered them nearly invisible, and they were never anchored too close to any of the access points for longer than was necessary to disembark passengers.
Now the entire sky above him warbled and shifted, and suddenly, ropes began to drop. Even as they fell, shadowy figures descended. Cyril stepped back as they pulled the airship down. A doorway opened and a gangplank was lowered.
“Disembarking,” a voice said from the doorway.
Then, a stream of people exited. A large number of them—at least ten—were bound, with their faces hooded. Men and women in dark robes moved around them, guiding their sluggish steps. A woman wearing the uniform of a captain in the Council’s Expeditionary Force stepped off the gangplank briskly and approached Cyril. “I believe we are expected.”
He nodded, taking in the group. “I hadn’t been told it would be so many.”
Behind her, two more robed figures materialized. Each held a sleeping child—a boy and a girl. “There were complications,” the captain said.
Cyril knew better than to ask. Instead, he turned. “Come on then.”
Behind him, he heard the slightest whisper of the gangplank and ropes being pulled up.
He led the way, entering the first low building. In the back room, he moved the thick, ancient carpet to reveal the hatch and then spun it open. “You’ll have to untie them,” he said, pointing to their prisoners.
The captain nodded. “They’re still recovering from the salva root. I don’t expect they’ve much fight or flight left in them.”
Despite the root, at least two put up brief struggles when they were untied, but the rest were peaceable enough. Guards before and behind, they started down the metal ladder. Cyril waited until everyone had descended, then followed, sealing the hatch behind him.
Another hatch waited at the bottom of the shaft, and beyond it a silver pond stretched out, lit dimly by lichen that scattered its high ceiling. At the edge of the pond, a white tree stood, its limbs heavy with purple fruit.
Cyril touched the stone in his pocket again, his eyes moving over the group of people gathered by the edge of the pond. “Endicott Station preparing for translation.” Then he went to the tree and picked four large, purple globes.
They pulled off the hoods, revealing frightened but slack faces beneath, eyes rolled back from the power of the drugs they’d been given. All but one of the prisoners bore the cuttings of Y’Zir, though Cyril couldn’t read the runes carved into their flesh. The other was a young, bearded man—one of the strugglers—with fierce, dark eyes. The look on the man’s face was disconcerting enough that Cyril’s hands shook as he tore into one of the globes. “Bite into this,” he told each of them as he stood before them.
He watched as they chewed and swallowed the fruit; then he went to the children. He wasn’t sure who the others were or what complications had led to them being brought along, but these two he’d expected. The boy and the girl were just past two years old, and while Cyril wasn’t certain that they were the salvation of the world, they certainly were an important move in that direction. Important enough that the council was intervening in matters that it normally would not. Important enough that Grandmother had sent for them that she might give her blessing in the midst of everything else that transpired.
And that these two children might be safe from the insanity that produced them in the first place.
He sighed, then gently shook the little girl’s shoulder, pressing the fruit against her lips. “Eat this,” he whispered, though she certainly couldn’t understand the words he used. But she licked at the juice he dribbled into her open mouth and finally stirred to nibble at the fruit. When he was satisfied, he did the same with the boy, then stepped back and touched the stone in his pocket again. “Endicott Station translation commencing.”
Then, one by one, he watched as the men and women stepped into the pool, evaporating instantly with a flash of blue and green. The boy stirred and opened his mouth to cry out when the woman who carried him stepped into the pool. In that moment, his mouth and eyes open wide, Cyril saw terror. But the boy was gone before he could make a sound.
When the room was empty, Cyril left. He was halfway up the ladder when his scalp tickled again.
Translation complete.
He climbed out of the shaft and locked the metal hatch before moving the carpet back into place.
Then Cyril returned to the remainder of his watch, but the stars no longer held him. Instead, it was the look upon the boy’s face.
Perhaps, he thought as the stars winked out and the sky went slowly gray, we should all be frightened.
But even as he thought it, Cyril Thrall felt more wonder—not fear—stirring to life within him.
Chapter
1
Rudolfo
Lord Rudolfo of the Ninefold Forest Houses, General of the Wandering Army and Chancellor of the Named Lands, brought the glass of chilled peach wine to his lips to drink deeply.
Then watched his enemies do the same.
The effect was instantaneous and it caught him off guard, blinking for a moment before fastening his eyes onto Yazmeera’s. Hers were wide now even as she dropped her wineglass. He smiled and kept his eyes locked onto hers, his hand straying to the pouch of magicks tucked within the bandage that wrapped his chest. The wound ached with each beat of his pounding heart, and an exhilaration washed through him. The Y’Zirite general collapsed, wheezing and thrashing about on the floor.
She was not alone. Her officers and her Blood Guard joined her there—a room full of people dying together in puddles of spilled peach wine in the midst of a half-eaten banquet. This—the sight of them kicking their last upon the floor—was the very future he’d drank to when she’d suggested it as a toast just moments before.
Rudolfo wanted to stay and watch, sipping this victory like the finest of his wines. He wanted to crouch next to Yazmeera and watch her breathe her last, maybe stroke her iron-gray hair and whisper to her how happy the moment made him, but he forced that desire aside and pulled out the pouch.
He opened it and threw the powders at his forehead, shoulders and feet, then licked the remaining bitterness from the palm of his hand, bracing himself for the sudden lurch as they took hold. He moved for the door that led to the stairwell, picking his way across a floor of thrashing limbs already quieting as death took hold.
The speed and efficacy of it astonished him. According to Renard, this was the first test of the poison in the field. Rudolfo knew very little in the way of specifics, but he knew that Orius—the Androfrancine Gray Guard general—and his own General Lysias both had armies hidden in the Beneath Places with plans to use the poison on a bigger scale. A weapon like this, he realized, could turn the tide of the war.
Not that he would be present to see it. All of this—his taking the mark, the poisoning of Yazmeera and her staff—was for Jakob. Rudolfo had been lost, overwhelmed by circumstance and uncertain of his path until recently, but it had become clear to him. His son was in more danger in the Empire of Y’Zir as that blood cult’s Child of Promise than he could ever be in Rudolfo’s care, even in the midst of an invasion.
And so now he fled the rooftop garden, feeling the strength gathering in his legs as the scout magicks flooded him. The spiced food from the banquet churned in his stomach, and he gritted his teeth against the nausea and vertigo that seized him. The powders had that effect, and he knew it would grow worse before too long. When he reached the doorway, he felt hands upon him.
We must flee, Ire Li Tam pressed into the soft skin of his upper arm.
She slipped a loop of thread around his wrist and pulled it taut as she moved ahead of him. She went slowly and he followed, taking the stairs down from the rooftop garden where Yazmeera’s officers had dined. Behind him, he heard the first screams as the servants discovered his handiwork, and Rudolfo smiled again.
Twice, Ire pulled him aside as Blood Guard swept past, unmagicked but with knives held ready. When they reached the first floor, she led him out into a warm evening as the sounds of third alarm rose up around them.
Outside, soldiers assembled and Rudolfo saw the eddies of dust that betrayed magicked scouts as they moved in. It would take them time to determine exactly what had happened; and until they identified the dead, they wouldn’t know that he and Ire were missing. And certainly the loss of the majority of their officers was going to work to Rudolfo’s advantage, creating chaos in the Y’Zirite chain of command. Still, he could not afford to waste time. At some point, the enemy would find their footing, and by then Rudolfo needed to be at sea.
They ran for hours, and he was grateful for the running he’d come back to in recent weeks, though the little he’d managed had certainly not prepared him for this. Even with the magicks burning in him, he felt his legs growing heavy and his breath growing ragged as they put the leagues behind them. Still they ran, keeping to the fields and forests away from the roads. In the distance, Rudolfo saw the scattered farmhouses and villages of Merrique County slipping past, washed by the red-gold of evening.
The sun had set by the time they reached the small river that served as the border with neighboring Jessym County. There, Ire Li Tam turned them west to run downstream in the deepening shadows of cypress trees that lined the bank. She slowed them from a sprint to a jog, and Rudolfo felt gratitude for the change of pace in his ankles and knees.
They’d run alongside the river for perhaps five leagues when a low whistle brought them to a stop. A dark figure separated itself from the shadows.
“Hail, Rudolfo,” a quiet voice called.
“Hail, Renard,” he answered, settling into a crouch as he slipped his hand from Ire’s guide-thread.
The tall man took shape in the dim light of evening, the simple garb of a farmer looking out of place on his angular frame. “You’ve kicked up the hornets,” the Waste guide said with a grin.
Rudolfo smiled, though the magicks masked it. “I’ve set fire to their nest. Now you and Orius and Lysias will need to keep it burning.”
“Aye,” Renard said. “We will.” His eyes wandered the gray landscape around them. “They’ll likely realize it was you and be looking for you by morning, so keep moving. Stay magicked and off the roads.”
Rudolfo silently counted the leagues before answering. “Yes.” They were two days from the coast, and a quick sail to the mainland. There, he could get word to Philemus and arrange for a ship to bear him across the Ghosting Crests in search of Y’Zir.
To take back my son. He blinked, his memory suddenly flooded with the sight of the boy in the dream, calling to him and so real that Rudolfo could smell his hair. He pushed the memory away and turned his attention to Renard.
“There is a bridge house at the next crossing with fresh clothing, magicks and some supplies. Send what you’re wearing down the river before the magicks burn out. Our friend in Talcroft Landing is Simmons. Ask for him at the docks and he’ll see you to the mainland.”
“Thank you,” Rudolfo said. “And thank Orius for me as well.”
Renard’s face sobered at the mention of the Gray Guard general. “He bid me ask you reconsider, of course. I told him that if I had a son in the clutches of those bloodletters, nothing could keep me from taking him back. Still, with what’s coming, I can’t blame him. We’ll need every soldier in the field and every general on the hill.”
“Philemus and Lysias will serve well on my behalf,” he said. But he also wondered exactly what was coming. Rudolfo had seen the poison do its work in one room with the element of surprise in his favor. It remained to be seen how they would deliver that poison in such a way as to make a difference in a war they were losing. But he knew better than to ask. “My son will need a home to return to; I trust you all to give him that.”
Renard nodded. “We will do our utmost. You’ve given us a good start. Word of it will spread, and hope will spread with it.” The man extended a hand toward him and Rudolfo took it, squeezing it. “Hunt well, Rudolfo.”
“Aye,” Rudolfo said. “You also.”
The Waste guide paused, his face clouded as he looked around. “Your companion goes with you?”
Rudolfo hadn’t asked but had assumed, given that Ire Li Tam had sworn allegiance to him the night she’d found him in his tent. He said nothing, waiting for her to answer for herself.