The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  "I'm sorry, Alam. We had word that your father's mogrification was completed this morning. He passed away a few hours ago."

  He nodded. She went on to tell him the body would be incinerated in the Drazi smokestacks that night. There would be no shred of him left but dust.

  There were no more tears. Now there was only a long nothingness stretching out before him, with no family, no home, no career and no hope. Lying in his cot listening to the dull mutter of the Balast reciting his nightly Hax in the next room, he understood what he had to do. Long days of grief had kept him blurry, pointless anger had confused him, but those things had burned away now, leaving only clear crystals of purpose behind.

  He would kill the boy with the scars.

  THE CATHEDRAL I

  Sen listened to the low drone of Gellick's Hax in the dark, as the rock man recited the key events of his past like a song, writing them down in his Hax sand to keep the memories alive and ward off calcification. There was something incredibly sad about it, but also reassuring.

  No matter what happened with Alam, Gellick would still be here, doing this, a solid presence reasserting his existence so he wouldn't forget.

  Over and above that low drone, Sen felt Alam's thoughts rising to a crescendo in the room nearby. Soon he would come; a decision that was already made, a sharpening of the sensation that had been rising off Alam for days, matched by feelings rising in him too.

  Excitement, and fear.

  Sen rose to his feet at the same time as Alam, handling the solid metal gardening trowel and shrugging on the pack with the box in it. He'd been carving it for days, all for this. A box and a trowel. He wondered if he could kill Alam if he had to.

  "He's bigger than you, stronger than you, you should be the one sitting by the pond, not him," Mare had said late on the second day. "Why is that?"

  She'd been trying to antagonize him again. She seemed to delight in his misery, but he just ignored her. When she gave one of her secret smiles, as Feyon gushed over him, lauding him as a hero for stripping Alam off the fence so easily, he just ignored them both, and whittled at the wood. Feyon kept on prattling, but she was like the high sweet sound of birds; easy to ignore.

  Only Gellick was a comfort to be around. The rock man enjoyed sitting in silence, and when he broke that silence, it was often with a simple observation, the sound of which itself seemed to please him immensely.

  "It's a cold day today," he might say, and smile. Sen only had to grunt agreement for Gellick to glow inside.

  "There's a red butterfly on the grass. Look."

  If Sen looked, he was happy.

  The Moleman by contrast kept quiet, always watching, silently noting everything down. That was how their first week passed.

  Now Sen padded quietly across the room, passing Gellick, who was hunched like a boulder in his tray of Hax sand, tracing patterns out of memory. Every detail of the lines he'd laid out seemed to crystallize in Sen's mind, taking on meanings more important than he could fully grasp.

  Daveron was asleep by the wall, as he always was moments after lying down, perfectly straight like a shuttle in the Abbey's loom, a tool put away for the night. Feyon was back at her mansion in the Roy, while they'd put Mare in a room down the hall. Alam slept alone too, with a lock and bar on his door, and Sisters watching for him in the grounds.

  The sound of Alam picking the lock came like a mouse rustling, quietly, expertly through the walls. Sen had felt the moment, three days earlier, when he'd worked a second nail loose from the bench by the pond. He hadn't told the Sisters, because he'd been waiting for this moment.

  He waited a little longer, while Alam struggled with the bar. Standing by his own door, he took the box from the pack on his back, running his fingers over the carvings in the lid. All week he'd been working on it, setting the hinges, transcribing decorative swirls into the wood. It was important that it meant something. It had to mean something, or...

  The bar on Alam's door slid up, was lowered carefully to the ground on a piece of string, then the door creaked open. Sen opened his own door at the same time, stepping out into the moonlit corridor to see Alam standing there with a knife in his hand.

  He hadn't felt him take the knife. Still.

  For a long moment they looked at each other. Sen felt the tension in Alam unfurling, the anger coiling through his confusion and getting ready to leap out. Into that uncertain moment he added a new note, and held out the box.

  "This is for you," he said.

  Alam looked at it, and surprise briefly stymied his anger. "What's that, some kind of joke?"

  "It's a grave," Sen said. "For your father."

  Alam's face reddened. Sen felt the boy's muscles tighten, felt him ready to burst forward with the knife, and went on quickly.

  "We'll bury it in the best place in the Abbey, the best in the city. If you still want to kill me then, you can, it'll be easy. One push and I'll be gone."

  Confusion mixed with Alam's rage until he reached a conclusion, and new confidence spread through him. Sen felt it like a hot bloom of blood in water. "Or I can do it now."

  Sen lifted the trowel, his only weapon. "You can try. Or you can have both." He held out the box. "What have you got to lose?"

  Alam's certainty faded again.

  Sen held out the box. "Take it."

  "No."

  "Then I'll bury him alone. Why wouldn't you wait for that? You know I'm not going to run. You can kill me when I come back down."

  Alam's face twisted, torn in two directions at once. "What do you mean, come back down?"

  Sen pointed up through the window. "From the top of the cathedral. That's where I'm going to bury him, the holiest place we have, closest to the Heart. Will you come?"

  Alam said nothing more, and Sen's heart hammered in his chest. He waited a moment longer, but Alam didn't budge.

  "I'm going then," he said, and started toward the stairs alone.

  The hallway was warm, and the dark old wood paneling was lit by swathes of silvery moonlight coming in through the open windows. The sweet scent of hawkenberries rode on the breeze. His pulse thumped. Behind him he could feel the Spindle deciding. It all came down to this.

  Walking down the corridor, each step was an eternity, and he understood that Mare had been right; he'd been lucky before. Alam had surely fought every day of his life on the low streets of Carroway; a caste out of place. He was taller, heavier, stronger and more skilled than Sen. He had a knife and a foot more reach. If they fought, Sen would die.

  The floorboards creaked and Sen's heart thumped, but he did not stop, as the Spindle closed the distance.

  "Wait," Alam said.

  Sen turned. The Spindle was standing behind him now, though the knife had fallen slack in his long hand. His face was different somehow, the anger held in check, letting the grief shine through. He was looking at the ornately carved box in Sen's hand.

  "They burned my father," he said. "There's nothing to bury."

  "I know that. It's for his ashes."

  Alam's thin face creased in a frown, and Sen wondered if he might be about to cry. "I don't understand."

  "Ash carries on the wind," Sen said. "From all across the city, even as far away as Afric and the Manticore. It gathers on the Abbey and takes root. The roof is covered in grass and wildflowers, all blown by the wind, so much that the Sisters have to go up and scrape it clean regularly, or the weight would cave in the roof. They burned your father tonight, so his dust will be on the wind too. We can catch it."

  Dim understanding glowed in Alam's eyes. "You want to catch my father's dust, and bury it in a box on top of your cathedral?"

  "Yes. Are you coming or not?"

  Alam gave a weak snort. "It's a stupid idea."

  "So don't come. Stay down here while I do the work, and kill me when I come down."

  The Spindle didn't move, just gazed down into Sen's eyes. "You said I could push you off the top. How do you know I'm not going to?"

  Sen cock
ed his head to the side. "How do you know I won't push you first?"

  Another long moment passed, filled with Alam's indecision.

  "So show me the box."

  Sen passed it to him. Alam's long fingers scooped it in easily, then handled it with the expert touch of a gearsmith, turning it over and examining the carvings and joins. He tapped it in places with a long finger. "You've screwed the hinges too tight," he remarked quietly. "The wood may crack. The pattern's nice though." A new look was in his eyes. "You really made this for my father?"

  "I did."

  "And to save yourself, and your Sisters."

  Sen shrugged. "It's a gamble, isn't it? You were right about me. I've got all of this, an Abbey full of people who care about me, and countless graves too. You haven't even got one. It only seemed fair."

  Alam turned the box a final time, then handed it back. "Loosen the hinges next time."

  Sen made a solemn show of looking at the hinges. "I will. Now, the wind is blowing. We should go." He tucked the box carefully into the bag, and started away down the hall.

  A moment later, the Spindle followed.

  Sen led him down the stairs and out of the habitry, onto the ethereal moonlit grounds. One of the Sisters was walking the grass, on a patrol for Alam perhaps, but Sen just smiled at her, waved, and she watched them pass. He could feel her uncertainty, trying to decide if she should alert the Abbess or raise the alarm, but she did neither.

  They trusted him.

  Together Sen and Alam weaved a path between buzzing shellaby bugs that hovered in strange fairy circles, their glowing bodies wafting gently in the breeze. The grass seemed to spring tightly under Sen's feet, as though with every step it was pushing him forward.

  The cathedral rose up ahead of them, shadowy gray and huge against the shimmering field of stars, eclipsing the Rot. Sen pointed to the top.

  "We'll bury him up there."

  Alam looked. "You're serious."

  "At the very top."

  "It must be a fathom high."

  "Highest and best in all the city," Sen said, "except of course for the Grammaton clock tower, and the King's Aigle palace." Then he stepped into the deep shadow of the graveyard, running down the side of the cathedral.

  The gravel path crunched underfoot. They passed the black forms of large stone tombs Sen knew well, sheltered from moonlight by the branches of leafy oft trees. Everywhere was the mossed-over statuary of Saint Ignifer, sunken tombs circled by rusted iron-spike fences. If he wanted, he could close his eyes and still know the exact path to his mother's grave, he'd come this way so many times.

  Soon the cathedral's northern buttress coalesced before them, a giant leg flung out from the cathedral's insectile body, ending in a great stone foot as thick around as the milling wheels in the refectory kitchen.

  "First we climb this," Sen said.

  Alam halted an arms-length away. "You really want to climb this thing?"

  Sen shrugged. "I've done it before. Why else would we come out here?"

  "I don't know. I thought you might try to trick me."

  "I still might. But now we're here to climb. It should be easy for you, since you're so tall."

  Alam snorted. "I'm not that tall. And I've never climbed anything before."

  "It's easy. Just like walking, really, only you go up, and you use your hands too."

  Alam frowned. "Then it's nothing like walking. That's a stupid comparison."

  "You're a stupid comparison," said Sen, and laid his hands on the pillar's surface. It was cold and rough, but not so tall that he wouldn't be able to reach its lip with a slight jump. The last time he'd used a stepladder, as Sister Henderson had teased him from behind. Back then he'd wanted to see the city again, like that first time with his mother, when she'd taken him out into the dark side to view HellWest harbor from a hilltop.

  But even with the ladder, he'd only reached the top of the first column. There hadn't been much of a view from there, and Sister Henderson had had a merry time asking him about how all the major landmarks of the city had looked. But he wasn't going to say that to Alam.

  "How old is this place?" Alam asked, reaching out to touch the stone.

  "Old," said Sen, "at least three hundred years. Perhaps even as far back as Lord Quill and the Drazi invasion."

  Alam shuddered. Sen bent his legs, then jumped. His fingers caught the pillar's top, and he kicked and scuffled up. Once over the top, a fresh wind caught his face and nearly tipped him backward, but he pulled against it and hauled himself over, to sit straddling the pillar.

  Before him the narrow stone buttress stretched out and up on a shallow incline toward the flank of the cathedral, like a thin bridge to the sky. There was barely room to maneuver, but he shuffled forward until he could turn around and lean back over the edge, looking down at Alam's serious pale face.

  "Come on," he said.

  Alam just stared up at him.

  "That bit there is loose," Sen added, pointing at a crumbly corner. "Be careful."

  "It's a thousand years old," mumbled Alam.

  "No one's going to miss that bit."

  Sen pulled away from the edge to give Alam room. Now either side of him was a drop to graveyard railing spikes and blocky stone, but he didn't worry. Instead, he felt alive. He sat cross-legged with his knees bowed out over the drop and waited. He could feel Alam's mind whirring below.

  There was a long pause, then Alam's gangly fingers appeared over the edge, and moments later his long face followed, puffing and jerking as he kicked for purchase.

  Sen chuckled as the boy breasted the pillar top. "Not so hard, was it? And I could have cracked in your head on the way up, but I didn't."

  Alam frowned. "Is that supposed to make me trust you?"

  "Doesn't it?" He didn't wait for a reply, only turned himself around to point up the incline. "Now we just go along here, up to the roof, and then we climb the tower." He looked back at Alam. The boy was pale and rigid, his hands clasped white to the stone ridge. "Easy."

  "This is mad," said Alam, peering down at the dark graves below. "We could fall and die."

  "So don't fall," said Sen, and shuffled forward without waiting. Soon he heard Alam shuffling along behind.

  They covered the distance quietly, but for the rasp of their clothes on dry old stone. The graveyard with all its rusted spikes gradually receded below, until it seemed a very long way down. In the face of the growing height some of Sen's bravado faded.

  Halfway up, he had to work his way round the jutting top of another supporting pillar. Beyond that the incline sharpened. "Hug it," he called back to Alam, and leaned close over the stone, inching forward. Alam muttered something inaudible behind, which might have been, "Idiot."

  Long white-knuckled moments passed as Sen inched forward along the final thin stretch, upward above the trees, far above the wall, so high he could look out over the nearby streets.

  Then he was at the edge of the cathedral roof, holding to the feet of a statue bleached white by the sun, its features no longer recognizable. He climbed off the buttress, patted the statue's head gently, and stepped out onto the sloping slate-roof.

  It was barren and bright with moonlight, the wind a little stronger, all rain-dark stone and sheet lead interspersed in places with clumps of wind-blown dirt and weeds. Looking down there was a view stretching across the grounds and out over the nearby streets beyond. They were silent now, faintly lit with orange revelatory gas lamplights.

  He looked back to the buttress and watched for Alam, laughing a little at the boy's intent and huffing face as he scrabbled up the incline. "You look like a landed fish," Sen said.

  Alam stared daggers at him, but soon was grasping at the statue. A moment later he lurched ungainly to the roof, where he doubled over and panted for a while.

  "It's not that bad," Sen chided. "Come on, we've got to climb the tower yet."

  He started padding up the lead-lined slope to the tower base, and Alam followed. At one point
the lanky Spindle slipped in a patch of mossy soil.

  "See," said Sen. "That's from dust, carried on the wind. It gathers everywhere."

  Alam grunted, and they reached the tower base. It was much wider than the buttress pillar, and its outer stonework was layered in a series of large interwoven blocks, with lots of vertices that could easily be used for hand and footholds. In places there were projecting heads of strange animals to perch on and rest.

  "You're crazy," said Alam. "We can't climb this."

  Sen just started up. It wasn't so different from climbing trees in the Abbey grounds, only more methodical. The hand and footholds were always in the same places, and he progressed steadily, picking out a straight route in silence. The wind changed, growing stronger and carrying the ashy scent of distant fires. As he neared the top, he felt a burning sensation growing in his muscles. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, more like a warning. As the flat top of the tower neared, he reveled in it. He was nearing his limits, but not at them. He could climb higher if needed.

  Then his hand slapped the tower's roof apron, found purchase, and he pulled himself over the edge. The roof was scarcely bigger than two trestle tables, but coated in a thick layer of grass, through which tiny white hawkenberry buds bloomed. Overhead and all around there were so many stars that it felt like he'd climbed right up into the sky.

  Alam flopped down on the grass beside him, panting heavily. "Heart's balls," he gasped, staring at the grass, "there is a lot."

  Sen chuckled. "Balls? And I told you, it's all blown by the wind." He ran his fingers through the dry green blades. "No one comes up here, so it's probably been gathering since they built the cathedral."

  "And look at that," said Alam, his voice low and awestruck. Sen turned, and saw the city.