by Joe Ducie
Distant
Star
The Reminiscent Exile: Book One
JOE DUCIE
Copyright © 2012 Joe Ducie
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. One chapter or ten percent of this book, whichever is greater, may be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any references to real people or real locales are used fictitiously.
Cedar Sky Publishing was founded in Perth, Western Australia.
This book also available as an e-book for Kindle.
First printed in the United States of America, 2012.
Written by Joe Ducie: www.joeducie.net
Cover artwork by Vincent Chong: www.vincentchong-art.co.uk
ISBN-13: 978-0-9873294-2-4
Also by Joe Ducie
The Gunslinger of Mars:
Red vs. Blue
Tales of the Knights Infernal:
Upon Crystal Shores
For FINOLA
First. Last.
Always.
Dark and getting darker, sweet thing, but you are my light.
Here we are as penguins (I’m the fat one):
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the people who helped shape this story along the way – you are too many to name. But I’m going to try anyway, in no particular order.
To Irene Quinlan – my eternal thanks and friendship. You were right on every point, save for the wild berry cider. Strawberry & lime is far superior.
To Imogen Rice – you, your pens, and an awesome soundtrack.
To Andrew Ireland – Trail? Trail. You carry the Guinness.
To Scott Eadie – you’re missing some good steak nights, bro.
To Chris and Val Ducie – for reading, for encouragement, for keeping the beer fridge well-stocked.
To Hamish and Rachel Cotton – for catching one or two corrections that almost made it into the final copy.
To Elisha Rooney – who taught me how to use a vacuum cleaner…
To David O’Boyle – you’re not missing some good steak nights, bro.
To the bastards and bastardettes at DLP – no greater hive of scum and villainy.
Last but not least, to my editors at Red Adept, Becky Eaton and Lynn O’Dell – you humbled me good.
OPENING SALVO: PART I
Yet lost to time, that dusty trail.
A hangman’s noose – a rusty nail!
The Never-Was King will command:
Degradation’s demise at hand?
~The Historian of Future Prospect
After Madness, 2007
Regret for the things we did can be
tempered by time; it is regret for the
things we did not that is inconsolable.
~Sydney J. Harris
Islands of pure thought
Cannot compare Truth
Ah! Seen from aside
Naught but clouded cries.
Treasonous thought left behind.
~King Morrow’s Lost Journal (Vol. VII)
CHAPTER ONE
Back in Black
“Why’s it say ‘ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK’ on your door?”
I rang up the sale and placed the book in a brown paper bag. “Dangerous places, bookshops.”
“No, really?”
“Really.”
“What could be dangerous about a bookshop?”
The guy’s smile didn’t touch his eyes. Something wasn’t right. I could taste strangeness on the air like burnt rubber, or smoldering pages. Two wars and a whole world of trouble while growing up had fine-tuned my survival instinct.
“Well,” I said, reaching into my waistcoat. “There’s a power in words, my friend.”
His smile faded, and he made his move, tearing the brown paper bag apart to get at the book inside. He was sloppy and slow. I knew first-year Knights quicker on the draw than Smiler here. His ineptness was almost insulting.
I drew the novel from my inside pocket and slipped it open as the force of his Will slammed into me like a freight train. Ah, such strength! I hadn’t felt the like in years, not since the final days of the Tome Wars. He was young, too, his cheeks covered in a scraggly beard. I was nearly impressed.
Still, he did not know with whom he was dueling.
My book became an argent shield that obliterated the solid burst of Will, a pure power sent against me. I was the train and he, a Coke can. His fingers slipped across the pages, and he faltered, caught in an invisible net. Someone had taught him how to throwdown, but not how to focus his strength. Just enough to be dangerous. No matter.
His mind crumpled.
Blood ran down his face in rivulets from his eyes, and I snapped his limbs together, pinning him to the spot. He made a low, awful sound somewhere between a scream and a groan.
“Your name?” I asked.
The boy’s Will had shattered. His copy of Figley’s Assassin dropped to the floor, useless, just a book.
“Tell me, mate,” I urged. “You must know who I am. What I can do.”
I sent a wave of compulsion drawn within a thin network of suggestion and persuasion through the pages in my hand and across the boy’s mind. Such subtle strands of Will were invisible to the naked eye, but they settled on his thoughts and dug the hook of my coercion in that much deeper.
“I am… the Pagemaster.”
I snorted. “Really? We gave up those ridiculous codenames long before the war’s end. Come now, tell me the name your mother gave you.” The words on my book began to shine with a dark light. A not-light. Void light. “Or Lord Oblivion itself will be kinder than I will be.”
The capillaries in his eyes had burst, staining the whites dark red. Through the crimson mess, I watched his small spark of defiance blur into fear, which was satisfying to see. I’d broken not only his Will but also his will.
“Je-Jeffrey,” he said. “Jeffrey Brade.”
“Jeffrey.” I nodded. “A pleasure to meet you.” I drew back a bit of my Will to give the kid a chance to explain. No one had been brazen enough to attack me for years. In a time not so long ago, I would have cast his soul beyond perdition without even blinking. “Why did you try to kill me today?”
He shook his head. “Can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Jeffrey took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Won’t.”
“Listen to me carefully, Jeff. Can I call you Jeff? You made a choice today. You made a choice to enter my shop, to cast your Will against mine. I must say, you have one helluva talent. If I were anyone else, you would have had me.” My tone hardened. “But I am not anyone else. I am Declan Hale, the Shadowless Arbiter. My Will is tempered steel, as dense as the heart of a distant star. Whoever sent you, Jeff, sent you to die. You owe them nothing.”
“Fuck,” Jeff whispered. “Fuck you. Atlantis is ours. You can’t stop what’s coming, Hale.”
“So be it.” The book in my hand was Roper Hartley’s third adventure, a fine tale and as strong a cord as any in the Story Thread. The Dread Lord Astaroth casts Roper and the gang into the Blasted Pits of Na’ar—a place of eternal torment, of fire and lost souls. Call it Hell. “Goodbye, Jeff.” The words leapt from the page, and dark light became a burning rope in the air.
Jeff’s eyes bulged. “No, wait—”
Patience was not one of my virtues. The words wrapped around his neck like a demonic noose and yanked him forward off his feet. A tremendous burst of heat and energy obliterated his last scream. Like water
sucked down a drain, Jeffrey Brade was absorbed into the words on the page. His form was scattered to the far reaches of darkest Forget.
I snapped the book closed and sighed. Five years had passed since I’d had need of that particular bit of power. Flecks of ash from another world swirled in the space so briefly occupied by Jeff, amidst the stink of burning stone and rotten eggs. Sulphur, fire, and smoke—I’d just sent a kid to Hell.
Holstering my novel, I stood for a long moment in contemplation before picking up the phone on the counter. I dialed the number from memory. The tone rang a single time, followed by a small click and then dull static.
“This is Declan Hale. A Renegade Forgetful just tried to punch me in the sack.” What else was there to say? “Jeffrey Brade. Calling himself the Pagemaster. Obviously fancied himself some sort of wizard. He was trained in Will, but was sloppy.” I paused. “Send only one, if you must.”
A single exhalation of breath down the line preceded a dry click as the listener hung up.
*~*~*~*
I called Sophie and Marcus to make sure I was the only one who had been attacked and to summon them to the shop. They arrived a little before six o’clock with a third man in tow—a kid, in truth—who couldn’t have been much older than Sophie. I’d put him at about twenty, given his wiry stubble.
“Who’s this?” I cast my Will against the tall, lanky chap and sensed a wild talent in his heart. He was Infernal—Forgotten and Unfound—neither Knight nor Renegade, if I was any judge after all this time.
“This is Ethan,” Sophie said, linking her hand in his. “I met him at uni. He has—”
“Some talent,” Marcus grumbled. He stood brooding and impressive in the shadows against the True Crime shelves. His notable weight made the bulging cases groan. “And don’t look at me like that, Hale. This is the first time I’ve met Sophie’s apprentice.”
“He’s not my—”
“An apprentice can’t have an apprentice,” I said. “That’s just silly. Ethan who?”
The boy cleared his throat and shoved his dark fringe back from his eyes. “Reilly. Ethan Reilly. It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Hale.”
I smiled wryly at Reilly. “Sophie’s told you all about me, has she?” The sweet thing had grace enough to blush. “Give me your hand, Ethan.”
Ethan looked at Sophie, who nodded, and then he extended his hand toward me. I grasped it between both of mine.
“You should have brought him here sooner, ‘Phie.”
“We didn’t think you’d approve.”
“I don’t, but here we are anyway…” I could sense Ethan’s apprehension and anxiety. His Will was a thousand burning fireflies, blinking in and out of existence, swirling through his mind and soul. Wild and wilder. He had no professional instruction, which didn’t mean he could be trusted, but it was a step towards that trust. “You have some talent, yes. A Will enough to navigate the Forget, even. But please tell me you haven’t been doing that.”
“The Forget?” Ethan snatched his hand back.
“Sophie not so forthcoming on that?” I laughed. “You’re meddling with the power that burns at the heart of the universe, and you have no idea what you’re doing. Sound about par for the course, Marc? Just swinging Roseblades in the dark, hmm.”
Marcus grunted and took a sip from his hipflask.
“‘Phie, you had to know this was foolish.”
“Who I spend my time with outside of this dark and stuffy shop is no—”
I raised my hands for peace. “You’re an adult now. Of course it’s not my business. He, however, is my business. Untrained Will burns like a flare to others, like the Knights, or perhaps worse, the Renegades, who know what they’re seeking. He has to learn to douse the flames. You know that, kid. If Tal taught you any—”
Sophie slammed her palm down on a mountain of leather-bound Austen’s. “Don’t you talk about her! Don’t you dare!”
A tense silence clung to the heart of our little group, under the flickering light afforded to us by the dull chandeliers. For a moment there, in my arrogance—always in your arrogance, Hale, Jon Faraday whispered across time—I had forgotten Sophie’s one rule. Never talk about her sister. Ever. I had no right even to her memory.
Ethan, for his part, put his arm around Sophie and pulled her close. She rested her head on his shoulder, fought back tears, and stared at me with more defiance than an army of Renegades. I loved her for that—for looking like her sister again. Loyalty to Tal had kept Sophie nearby since my exile. Just like Marcus, she had turned her back on the Knights and the Renegades—on Ascension City—for a shadowless traitor. I intended to see her loyalty rewarded one day, when I was no longer exiled.
“Well, I don’t know what Sophie has told you, Ethan. But we’re a merry band of misfits here. If you want to learn, we’ll teach you. But it’s not a game, that’s for damn sure. Whatever Sophie’s taught you, we’ll probably have to start from scratch.” I looked at Sophie. “I take it that’s why you brought him?”
Sophie nodded. “Also because of the trouble you talked about on the phone. I know he has to learn to mask his Will, which we’ve been working on, but if there are Renegades in town… I’m not a fool, Declan.”
“No, you’re not. I apologize.”
Somewhat mollified, Sophie shrugged out of Ethan’s arms and sat on the front counter. She swung her legs back and forth. “So what happened today?”
“The past, I think, is about to catch up to me, though why now, after five quiet years, I’ve no idea.” That was a lie. I had some idea. If anything, the Pagemaster’s attack was long overdue. But some secrets had to be kept, even from this close circle.
And from Ethan, whose current status was New Guy: trust pending.
CHAPTER TWO
The Scotch is Callin’ the Shots
“It begins, ‘Tessa sat laughing by the rose bushes. A drop of starlight pooled in the cusp of the flower—’”
“Hold on,” Marcus said. He was drinking red wine from a champagne flute. Sophie and Ethan had left after a quick sip, in search of their preferred pre-mixed children’s booze down the road at Paddy’s Pub. Marcus and I were alone in the shop. “Rose bushes? Rose… bushes. I don’t like that.”
I pushed my reading glasses up the bridge of my nose. “The first line, and you already hate it?”
“You think with all these books you could find a better way of saying rose bushes. It sounds…” He waved his giant hand in slow circles. “Common. Too simple.”
“You’re being a touch persnickety.”
“Persnickety? Really? Is that your word of the day?”
“Less is usually more when it comes to writing.”
“Got anymore of the Merlot?”
I handed him the bottle. “The rose bush is important. The different colors of the roses lead to different worlds, where Tessa can live in her memories. Red for passion, white for love, yellow for friendship… and so on.”
“You should avoid the white, buddy. How long is this novel?”
I shrugged. “Half a million words, give or take.”
“Less is more, huh? A Voidling would need a year to eat that thing.”
“Shut up and drink your wine.”
I saw Marcus out just before eight o’clock and wandered under an overcast sky into Riverwood Plaza for dinner. My shoes clicked softly against the cobblestones as I circled the large ornate fountain in the heart of the square. I studied the new addition to the cadre of businesses surrounding my shop in Perth’s outer suburbs. An old man stood behind a small ice cream stand, set up out front of Christo’s Kebabs, in the gunmetal light.
Thin letters scrawled in black paint were splashed across the side of a gently humming freezer trolley:
Frozen Banana - $2
“Warm enough night for it,” I said to the proprietor. Three crystal vases adorned the top of his trolley, each containing a single, solitary flower: one red rose, one yellow daffodil, and one white lily.
The old ma
n frowned and stared at me. His lips moved as if tasting my words. “You trade, boy?”
“Excuse me?”
“Banana for book.” He pointed across the plaza at the dark and dreary storefront of my bookshop. “For book. With almond.”
His grasp of English was poor, but his smile was honest. I shrugged. “Banana for book?”
He nodded, tapping a pair of tongs rather vigorously against the metal rim of his cart.
“Sure, I guess. Any particular requests? Chaucer, Tolstoy, Dickens? Which book, mate?”
“Which book… which book…” he muttered. “Storybook.” His laughter boomed across the quiet courtyard. “Yar. A storybook.”
Okay, a storybook. Or a book of stories. I nipped back into the shop and grabbed one of the ten thousand copies of Grimm’s Fairy Tales I’d been hoarding for years. That book was like a bad penny—it never stopped turning up.
The old man handed me an icy banana dipped in caramel and coated in almonds. I gave him his tales and offered my hand.
“Declan.”
“Mathias.”
His grip was like iron, and his fingers were rough with calluses. You didn’t get those from freezing fruit. Still, the banana treat was delicious, and I told him as much.
“Family recipe.”
I nodded. My family, the few still alive, were scattered to and even beyond the four corners of all creation. Last I heard, my grandfather, the custodian of the largest library in existence, had been discredited because of my sins. Good for him.
“Why the flowers, Mathias?” I gestured to the three crystal vases resting on his trolley. The glass was pristine, flawless.