Blessings and Trials (Exiles and Sojourners Book 1)

by Thomas Davidsmeier

  Even the superior intellects of Exiles become dull with sloth. The heat of battle knocked the rust from the Eater’s mind. It read words from the Ancient tongue written in the script of the long dead Numa, “If your right hand causes you to...”

  “NO!” roared the Exile. It suddenly jumped from a defensive retreat to a violent counterattack. Reaching out with its free hand, it tried to grasp at the shield of the Wildman and pull the metal disk aside. Swinging with all the violence it could muster, the Eater chopped down with its half-dissolved black blade.

  To the Eater’s horror and Dargar’s grim satisfaction, the black sword bit into the soft metal of the shield edge and firmly stuck.

  Instincts from childhood wrestling matches took over. Dargar swung his leg up and managed to plant his foot on the Eater’s hip bone. As the Wildman rolled backward, he yanked on his shield and pulled the Exile forward. His leg became a lever as Dargar tossed himself backward.

  The Eater of the Unwanted could not bring itself to let go of its sword, even as it was pulled up and over the rolling Wildman. Like a novice wrestler, the Exile was vaulted into the air. This wasn’t exactly like I planned it, but I am close enough. The Eater sent its flames snaking down the Wildman’s leg while it could.

  Well then, I should be able to twist around back into fighting position easily enough. Probably pull my sword free too. What in his giant bald old head made Abzu abandon these creatures? If I had… A burst of pain exploded through the Eater’s whole consciousness along with what sounded like a choir roaring in exclamation. Instead of pivoting around the entangled sword, it was suddenly freely tumbling through the air.

  The Eater of the Unwanted’s sword arm was no longer attached to the rest of its body. Even while his leg was burning, Dargar had swung the white blade and severed the Exile’s arm.

  For a moment, the Eater’s unearthly howl mingled with the Wildman’s very earthly one. The Eater tumbled on across the ground, greasy black smoke billowing from its missing arm. The Eater was much lighter than the Wildman had expected an eternal being to be, and so Dargar had thrown it farther than he thought possible.

  The Wildman’s howl was abruptly cut short with a loud splash and sizzle. The Eater of the Unwanted on the other hand simply went from a cry of pain and agony to a roar of hatred and anger. The Eater pushed itself up on the wooden bench that had stopped it. Balling its left hand into a fist, he smashed the bench, shattering it into splinters and shards. Sifting through the debris, it tried to find something it could make into a club. Out of the corner of its eye, the Eater noticed Kuruskos’s horn on the ground a few paces away. As it stooped to pick up the other Exile’s weapon, it looked toward Dargar hoping to see its opponent burning like a living candle. Instead, only the Eater’s rage still burned.

  Rather than writhing in agony, the Wildman was rolling over in an inexplicable giant puddle. Water was dripping from his short curly hair and muzzle. Dargar had let go of the shield and held his left arm close to his side. The Eater noted with some satisfaction a twisting trail of burnt flesh around Dargar’s leg. He was even having trouble putting weight on it. Perhaps the burns are deep enough to do serious damage, the Eater grinned to itself.

  “How did a creature like you come to have the Numaxiphus? How does that sword even still exist?” growled the Eater aloud through clenched teeth. To itself it thought, This must be some kind of joke. Go squash a little rebellious sect of heretics. No trouble at all. No, not until a Faithful, some sort of super man-bear, and the Numaxiphus from the first war all show up out of nowhere. Why did I leave my smokestone behind?

  “Story too long,” barked Dargar. The white blade shifted and changed in the Wildman’s hand, metal flowing from the pommel and crossguard out to the blade. The double-edged straight blade turned into a thick, one-sided cleaver of a sword. It was an executioner’s sword.

  Then with a grimace, Dargar kicked the shield, with the Eater’s black blade still wedged in the soft metal, back behind himself. It clattered toward the wing of the transept and the stone trough. The Eater’s severed arm had long since dissolved into the same black smoke slowly leaking from the Exile’s wound. Dargar had wanted to give this disgusting creature one more reason to be in the right place. Dargar felt something give in his burnt leg, and staggered, putting the sword tip down to the ground to hold himself up.

  “Dar...” a high, sharp cry was quickly muffled in the shadows by the altar. If the Eater had not already been launching itself toward the obviously weakened enemy, it might have remembered that the Wildman wasn’t the only other person in the room.

  The Eater’s flames were smaller now, but they were still deadly. A tendril of flickering, slithering flame crawled up over its ribs and out along its right shoulder as it charged. Its one remaining hand swung the ram’s horn trumpet like a war club.

  Dargar was stunned to see a flaming appendage growing on the Eater’s stump. Instead of taking the charge smoothly as he should have, perhaps even running the thing through on a set blade, Dargar tried to deflect the inevitable swing of the club with his blade.

  The Eater tried to whip his flame across the Wildman’s face. The serpentine flame had just reached its elbow. The resulting ‘lash’ was pitifully impotent. The following trumpet club was much more effective. It slammed into the Wildman’s blade, knocking it back hard enough that end of the trumpet clipped the Wildman’s forehead. The Eater’s momentum carried it past the Wildman a few steps. It spun and faced its opponent, its new flaming arm ready. The Eater of the Unwanted hissed through a yellow-toothed grin, “I am going to enjoy this.”

  “God help,” gasped Dargar through the pain, a trickle of blood running into his eye from the gash the trumpet had left on his sloped forehead. Roaring with what felt like all of his strength, he loped at the grinning Exile, favoring his weak leg. The charge went as well as he could have hoped. The Exile batted him to the side with a swift thump of the trumpet club, and Dagar went sprawling without even trying to land a blow. The white sword went clattering away toward the altar. He did manage to stumble and tumble a few extra steps before he landed heavily on the ground.

  Cackling repulsively, the Eater of the Unwanted stalked over to Dargar. “You had me going there for a little bit, big fella. That sword had me worried too. Guess I’ll get to use it to settle any scores I might have with my fellow Exiles now, won’t I? My, it was sharp too. But, I’ll get back to civilization and feast on an orphan or two and this hand will grow right back for me. Not to say that I don’t like this little improvised arm that I’m going to use to burn you slowly to death, but there’s nothing like being whole, the way you were intended to be.” The Eater drew back its flaming whip of an arm high overhead, pausing to savor the moment. It caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of its eye.

  The Wildman had come to rest only a handful of paces away from the corner it had been trying to force the Exile into at the beginning of the fight. There, next to the strange trough was crouched a terrified, but determined, golden-haired little girl. Her eyes seemed familiar to the Eater, but then it had looked in many people’s eyes in the last few hours. She had one of her hands stretched down inside the trough, touching what the Eater could now see was the surface of water. She seemed to be scooping up a handful and throwing it. Instead of a little handful, a huge fish-shaped mass of water flew from the tough, as if it were alive.

  The water fish looked impressively like a real fish, except transparent and a little rope of water lead back through the air to the trough. Somehow, the artistry was lost on the Exile as the water-fish swallowed the Eater’s whip arm mid-stroke. Then, angle and moment carried the oddly undulating mass of water on, to crash into the Eater’s belly fire as well. The sizzle and hiss of quenched flames was quickly followed by one last splash as what was left of the water fish landed on the floor around the Eater.

  Looking at the little girl for a stunned moment, the Eater spotted another movement near the altar. The boy he had seen hand the shield
to the Wildman earlier ran out of the shadows. He knelt down and put his hands on the stone floor as if he were grabbing onto a piece of cloth. He ripped his hands apart with a loud shout.

  Like distant thunder, a cracking sound followed by a grinding pop echoed through the huge open space. Suddenly the floor shattered between the boys hands. A finger-wide crack raced out from the spot before the altar and straight past the Eater of the Unwanted. For a moment, the Exile thought that whatever effect the boy had been trying for had missed. Then the Eater turned its head and followed the line as it sped across the floor. In barely a moment, the crack raced up a pillar that was holding up the vaulted ceiling.

  The pillar began to give way with a shuddering thunder like the moment after lightning. The Eater of the Unwanted turned back just in time to catch the Wildman’s attempted kick.

  “You weren’t going to shove me back under that cave-in, were you?” it asked in mock dismay.

  “Get your dirty hand off him!” came a piercing squeal as the smallest child, with the silver hair, came running out from beside the altar. She made what looked to the Eater like a ridiculous pantomime of shoving. It was about to laugh when the invisible wave of force slammed into its chest like an anvil dropped from a skyship. The little girl’s aetherial blast tossed the Exile back like a rag doll. The Eater landed under the collapsing wing of the sanctuary.

  It had only a moment to realize that the children were all Blesseds: the golden-haired girl was a waterwright, the boy a stonewright, and the littlest girl was an aetherial, and a powerful one at that. A huge section of the ceiling fell down beside the Eater of the Unwanted, and the floor broke up like ice on a pond. The Eater rode the collapsing floor out of view instantly, and the whole wing of the sanctuary filled with huge chunks of ceiling and wall.

  CHAPTER 5 - TWICE BLESSED

  16th of Pendana, 5th Year, 32nd Aion

  “The Father of Men, Enoch, possessed all five of the divine gifts. But, each of his sons received only one. Pendon received the aetherial gift, Sotu was a stonewright, Borea a waterwright, Ouro a windwright, and Zeffo a flamewright. Before the War with the Numa, there would occasionally be a child born to a couple who would have two gifts. These were rare but welcome happenstances. In the generations immediately after the war, the sons of Enoch began to have children born without any gifts at all. These first few were called the Cursed. Within five generations, more children were being born without gifts than with them. Soon, those who had any of the gifts were being called the Blessed, those extremely rare individuals with two gifts were called the Twice Blessed.”

  – Gianconi Alaba, A History of the Disposition of the Blessed Gifts and Their Bearers

  The young girl gasped and stood up straight. “It’s moving!” she whispered in stunned surprise looking up into the starry sky. Forgetting where she was, she took a step backward and tripped over her satchel. Arms wheeling around like little windmills in the night, she desperately tried to keep her balance. She failed. Anya fell backward over the edge screaming into the darkness.

  A few hours earlier and a few hundred feet below, Anya had huffed past the dust-covered rubble that filled one wing of the old underground sanctuary. As far as she was concerned, the piles of stone had always been there. To her, the destruction was the distant past. Of course for a twelve-year-old girl, the distant past could be sixty-nine years or last week just the same.

  Besides, who could be bothered with musty old underground things when the skies were waiting for you? Anya knew she was made to soar through the Heavens. I’ll just have to be happy with getting as high up off the ground as often as I can. She grinned. I can’t wait for this evening!

  One part of the ruined sanctuary could pull her thoughts away from the skies. There was a perfectly straight line running across the floor. On one side, the floor was scorched black. On the other side, the stone was untouched.

  Was it someone like me who made that? Anya wondered again to herself as she stepped over the line. Well, not someone exactly like me of course. Old Gilm would have me writing lines if he heard me say that.

  “Twice Blessed are given twice as much by God and so He expects twice as much from you.” Anya’s pipsqueeky imitation of her gruff-voiced adopted father echoed in the emptiness of the subterranean space. She thought it quite good, though no one except her brother would have known who she was mimicking.

  As she walked up the old stone steps in the back of the sanctuary, her way was lit by a dancing flame cupped in her bare hand. The fire was a little brighter than a candle and had no apparent fuel source. She huffed as she got to the top of the stairs. She was carrying a satchel full of supplies for her brother, scrolls and a book to return to the library, and her astronomy tome. It was quite a load for a little girl her age.

  As she adjusted the strap on her satchel, the flames in her right hand flickered for a moment. Her physical and mental energy burned to fuel those little flames. Despite her near-constant practice with both her Blessings, concentrating while walking the whole way up from the village was still challenging. Anya redoubled her efforts. She was rewarded with a bubbling up of flame from her palm. She held the flames away from her clothes and burdens. While her physical body was immune to fire, the paper and cloth on her certainly was not.

  Still thinking about whoever had caused the line across the sanctuary, she sighed, “At least they didn’t burn the library. That would have been a real tragedy.” The only rival the skies had for Anya’s heart was the written word. Flying or reading, that would be the life, giggled Anya to herself. Oh, what about reading while flying? No, that wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t be able to see everything if I was reading. Do skyships have librarians? Letting the flames in her palm settle down, she went through the open doorway. She made her way quickly and quietly through the rest of the passageways, musing about various professions and trying to find a way to fit everything together. Someone had scrubbed the meeting hall clean long before Anya had first seen it. To her, it was just a large room with four columns and many doorways. She had no inkling of the ancient carnage.

  Carefully, Anya deposited her satchel beside the large doorway from which, many years ago, a battered guard had whistled at a crowd of elderly Sojourners . With her free hand, she extracted a large tome and three scrolls. Carrying her load would take two hands, so she let her flames die away. In the nearly complete darkness, she crossed the room on almost the same path that Ingrid had once used to leave her grandfather. Her destination was the only source of illumination, a passage with a dim light coming out of it. As she entered the passageway, she passed the spot where the old woman had told Vanlig that the spideress had followed his granddaughter.

  As Anya shuffled along the passage, the light became brighter. A moment later she entered the square, two-story library still lit by a lantern hanging from the ceiling. The room had not changed since the attack, though the collection of books had sat neglected for a time. Eventually, the collection had started to grow again thanks in some part to Anya. The door opened high on the wall and still had no door knob or latch. The steps the spideress had crept down still ran down to the floor. Around the walls of the room were square holes for scrolls where Litharus, Ingrid, and Gwyndolyn had once hidden. There were also long shelves filled with various tomes and folios. To the left of the landing, a graceful if narrow stone walkway ran out at the height of the doorway and around the room. This walkway was to access the upper section of the shelves.

  In her short life, Anya had never physically traveled more than ten miles from this island of civilization. She had always been stuck between desolate hill country, abomination-infested forest, and Wildman-wandered plains. This library had let her travel over continents and back through history, even back through the history of this place itself.

  She went over to the table and dropped her armful of books, and proceeded to one of the shelves. Reaching behind the front row of books, Anya fished out a thin old leather sheath used to store loose papers. The front o
f the sheath had an abolfix, the image of the Sojourner Savior hanging on a tree, tooled into the leather. These were the meeting notes from “The Elder’s Council of the Sojourner Settlement at Arhaus.”

  Anya opened up the sheath and carefully took out a few particular vellum sheets covered in a beautiful curling script. These particular sheets were dated to almost seventy years ago, close to the end of the settlement as best as she could tell. She had a theory she wanted to check.

  “The Witness of Allona Tollonyn transcribed by Wyddol Tollonyn using the aetherial method.

  While I was in the village market to…”

  Gwyndolyn’s mother, Allona, looked up in surprise. The sounds of the tramping line of men made it obvious they were a troop of soldiers before they had even rounded the corner. Allona, thankful that Gwynny was not with her, looked around making eye contact with the other Sojourner women in the marketplace. Ingrid’s mother, Svena, grabbed her daughter and pulled her away from the bolt of woven wool she had been appreciating. Lythia, Litharus’s mother stopped her negotiations with a farmer to stoneshape a foundation and moved towards her friends. She, Allona and Svena had all lived as Sojourners in skyship cities during persecutions and pogroms. The sudden appearance of a group of armed men put the Sojourner women in the mood to find a clear path to the nearest exit.

  The leader of the soldiers was dressed in flamboyantly red leather armor with a high scarlet plume coming out of a circlet on his head. He raised his hand and barked the order to halt. His men snapped to a stop and pivoted toward the group of villagers meeting for a market day. The men each had an identical shield that was worked to look like a giant white skull on a black background.

  Lined up the way the shields were, it reminded Lythia of the rows of skulls from the catacombs under the imperial capital of Kaladar. She had first met her husband there during a secret Sojourner meeting. This meeting did not look like it would be nearly as pleasant.