The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  It became a kind of game played between them, one he wasn't really sure was actually happening, but where the scores were measured in opportunities missed. They acted civilly, but there was no warmth. It didn't stop Gellick from growing closer to her, or even Alam from spending time in her company, walking down by the wall.

  One night in late summer they started having late night, campfire-style conversations in their room. At first it was only the boys, Alam, Sen, Gellick and Daveron, telling scary stories and jokes and sometimes bits and pieces from their lives, but after a few nights, and after Gellick had raved about it to her for days, she joined them too.

  It was awkward at first, but Gellick pushed through with a funny tale of Prince Coxswold cooking a frog pie. Next Alam talked about his dream of owning his own gear manufactory one day, to pick up his father's mission to make gearsmithing a decent trade for Spindles to pursue. Daveron shared the pleasure to be gained from cleaning his father's tools well, while Sen told them about the time Sister Henderson had played a day-long prank on him, after she'd spent a long night hiding everything from his room round the Abbey, claiming a rogue band of shellaby bugs were responsible.

  Mare told them a little about the hardships of Indura. On the third night she told them about the Molemen mogrifers who had taken her brain. They all listened rapt, and when she finished there were tears in their eyes.

  So the change in her accelerated, and Sen watched it. She became more comfortable in their presence, starting to trust that none of them were going to take anything from her, nobody was going to hurt her. He felt it as her thoughts shifted from vague ways she might manipulate him or steal from the Sisters, to thinking about their next evening session, or the contents of one of their classes. At times she led them in long discussions of ancient heroes like Saint Ignifer and King Seem, pricking holes in their stories as only a girl who'd grown up in the gutters could.

  He felt it as she began to feel safe, and at home. In that way summer turned to autumn, and autumn began to grow cold.

  * * *

  One day Mare woke and felt no more anger and no fear. It was strange, and she lay there in her white room for a long moment trying to understand what had happened, but there was nothing to understand. She simply wasn't angry or afraid.

  Every day of her earlier life had begun and ended with one or both of those two feelings. It was how she'd survived so long, living off her wits, taking what she could from those weaker than her, keeping what she had safe from those who were stronger, and now it was gone.

  She rose from her bed expecting the feeling of comfort to fade, but it didn't. She went to the window where she saw Sen, as ever, bundled in his winter cassock and working in the vegetable patches by a watery gray dawn light, breaking the soil's crust of white frost. Seeing him there only made her feel it more.

  Safe.

  The night before she'd almost told them all about how she'd been saved. They knew everything else, all her shames, all the hard things she'd done to survive. And still they welcomed her.

  Now it was time. She dressed and went down to meet him. He was cutting sprigs of brunifer from the bushes by the pond, to make into hearth wreaths for the habitry. Their breath frosted the air.

  She squatted down before him.

  He looked up at her and smiled.

  "You're going to tell me now," he said. "Aren't you?"

  He knew. He'd waited longer, and now she'd come to him, so in a way, he'd won. But she didn't care, because she'd won more.

  * * *

  He'd felt it coming for weeks. Now he sat back on his haunches and waited. Mare was a different person from the bitter girl he'd met on the first day in the grounds.

  "It's about your mother," she said.

  He set down his trowel. From the cathedral came the sound of the Sisters' voices at chorister. "Go on."

  "It wasn't a lie."

  He listened. Perhaps he believed her. She wasn't lying, he could feel that, knew her well enough to be sure. It didn't match with the truth as he knew it, but she was telling the truth as it seemed to her.

  "I was trying to manipulate you before," Mare went on, "to control you, but it wasn't a lie. I met your mother. She's the one who saved me after the Molemen took my brain. At least that's what she claimed."

  Sen slumped back to sit flat on the cold grass. A chill wind blew between them, rustling the pile of sprigs he'd cut. He'd thought about this possibility on and off for months. What it might mean. How it could have happened.

  "How do you know it was her?" he asked numbly.

  "Because she told me your name. She told me about this place." She gestured to the grounds around them. "Even your scars. And she told me to remember. She was very kind, I remember that. It was seven years ago, right after the mogrifers stole my brain, and that whole time is very confused for me. But I remember her."

  Sen looked at his hands. Clouds of vapor puffed over them with each breath.

  "She told you my name," he said, knowing it sounded feeble, clutching to the version of events he knew, "and about me, but how do you know it was her?"

  Mare nodded, then reached out her hand. Sen looked at it. She'd never offered to share with him like that before. He took her hand and let the images roll in.

  He saw glimpses of Mare after the first fit, fresh from the Moleman lair and dying in the russet Induran mud. He saw a woman lean down and pluck her up from the mud. He saw her face leaning in and her hand spooning up soup, her lips moving and soundless noises coming out. He saw the same dark eyes that he remembered so well.

  He pulled his hand back.

  "I-" he said, but no more words came. The world spun around him, and a black hole opened up underfoot like the mouth of the Rot in the sky. He'd just seen his mother in Indura, but that was impossible. "I don't…"

  Mare reached out and took his hand again, clutching it hard. Her skin was hot, and through it he saw more.

  Avia kneeling there as Mare woke, bringing food and water, sitting with Mare in that same abandoned room in the Slumswelters. Avia teaching Mare how to walk again, how to eat, how to talk. Months of memories flashed by, and in all of them was Avia.

  Sen jerked away once more and the connection broke. He couldn't breathe. His lungs sucked in cold air but he felt like he was drowning. He had to do something, but he didn't know what.

  "I have to-" he mumbled, and lurched to his feet. Mare called after him, but he didn't hear. He staggered away, moving though the grounds as the Sisters' chorister swelled even louder from the cathedral, and the air thickened with a fresh fall of snow.

  * * *

  In the graveyard he stood before his mother's grave. Mare's memories echoed through him, blunt images that led nowhere but left so many holes in their wake.

  The silence felt oppressive, dampened further by the thick drifts of snow. The Sisters' chorister was finished, had been finished for an hour or so while he'd wandered half-blind round the grounds. Alam had come and he'd waved him off. Sister Henderson had come but he'd only walked away.

  Back to here.

  He held up a hand to look at his scars. This was her plan too. In the swirls and patterns of a forgotten tongue he read pieces of the stories she'd taught him: Saint Ignifer's fall, Saint Ignifer's rise.

  He picked up the shovel, already collected from the shack by the vegetables, and began to dig.

  The ground was cold and hard with frost, so the shovel bit shallow. He stabbed at it, cutting through the tangle of flower roots and chipping divots free. He tossed them to the side, and slowly the pile began to heap up as the grave surface peeled away. Snow fell on everything, a white frosting like icing on one of Sister Henderson's rock cakes.

  At times the blade clattered off the headstone, striking sparks into the dirt and snow. The noise rang out but he didn't care. He sank the blade into the earth and slowly the hole grew deeper.

  Some time around the faint midday chimes of the cathedral bell, he heard the crunching sound of footsteps approaching.
He turned, and saw Alam emerge through the curtains of white. In his hand was a shovel. For a long moment Sen looked at him.

  "Let me help," Alam said.

  Sen said nothing.

  "You dug a grave for me, let me dig one for you."

  Sen thought of the single scoop of his hand, eight months ago. Now this. The two were not the same, but he did nothing to stop Alam as he stepped up beside him, set his shovel down and began to dig.

  A time later Mare appeared from the white, flanked by Gellick and Daveron.

  "Let me," said Gellick. Alam handed him the shovel and stepped aside. Gellick's great stone muscles drove the blade in deep, scooping out a chunk far bigger than any Sen had been able to. Sen looked at the Balast, at the others.

  "Thank you," he said.

  They continued to dig in silence, no jokes or stories, alternating when one of them tired. When the gasp of a Sister came, followed by words meant to stop him, he didn't look.

  "He's doing what he has to," Mare told them. "What you should have done for him."

  "That is his mother's grave, child," answered a Sister, outraged.

  "It's a headstone and some flowers," Mare replied. "Nothing more."

  More Sisters came, but stopped where Mare told them to, a tide of black cassocks held at bay like a dam.

  "Don't do this, Sen," came the Abbess' voice at last. "It cannot be undone."

  He ignored her. It hurt to do so, but he had to know. Along with Gellick his shovel rose and fell, and the hole deepened like the mouth of the Rot, narrowing until Gellick had to climb out and Sen continued alone. His arms and back burned, and still he went deeper, past the line where his eyes met the grass, throwing the dirt into piles around the grave.

  At each stroke he tensed for the thud of metal on wood, for a coffin's resistance to jar up through his bones. When it finally came his heart skipped a beat. He dropped the shovel and sank to his knees, scooping away the cold peat with his bare hands, outlining the coffin's surface, the edges, the corners.

  "Enough Sen," rang the Abbess' voice. She was above him, leaning over the open grave, but he couldn't stop now. He wedged the shovel-blade into the crack between the lid and the box and pressed his weight against it. The wood cracked, splintered, and nails tore free. The sound of the Abbess overhead faded beneath the thumping of his heart, as he pried the lid off.

  On his knees, looking at the back of his hand, he watched a single trickle of blood run down the trail of his scars, and drop. A chip of wood or a nail had caught him as the rotten box split apart.

  The blood sank into the bare wooden base of the coffin. It was empty.

  * * *

  He wandered in the snow once more, round and round the Abbey.

  Avia was gone. Avia wasn't dead.

  He found himself at the wall, his hands on the cold stone. His hands were so pale he could scarcely see his scars.

  There was no reason to stay. He couldn't take the lies anymore, the constant risk. It was time to take responsibility for what he was, what his mother had done to him. He put his foot to the wall and began to climb.

  "Wait, Sen."

  It was Sister Henderson. He recognized her voice, the sense of her mind at his back. It only made him feel worse. She'd been lied to as well. His mother had lied to them all, endangered them all, and he felt it as a bitter shame.

  "Wait for what, Sister?" he asked without turning. "What now? Does the Abbess want to speak to me again?"

  He heard her shuffle forward, draping a thick woolen jacket over his shoulders. Her hand touching the back of his neck reminded him of long years playing at her side, laughing, all of it overshadowed now by his mother's empty grave.

  "Wait until tomorrow," she answered. "You're not fit for the city tonight, Sen, not like this. You're not ready."

  "When will I be ready?"

  "When this fog has cleared. You're angry that your mother lied, and I can't imagine how that feels, but you can't go into the city carrying that anger. The Adjunc will find you. You need an answer. You need to know why."

  He exhaled, watching his breath puff away in steam, the heat quickly dissipating. He'd thought of little else for the past few hours. He'd thought about Avia abandoning him in the Slumswelters, so she could fake her own death. He'd thought about her going to Mare years later, building up the phases of her prophecy.

  Five children. Now she'd made her own prophecy real. She'd brought it into being through her own actions, then left him alone, all so the prophecy wasn't broken. It made him sick. So where was she now? He shouldn't even care.

  But he did.

  "How?" he turned to her. A thick covering of snow rested on her shoulders like a mantle. Her nose was red and her cheeks pale white. "She left, Sister Hen. How can I find her?"

  A tear ran down the Sister's cheek. Her misery at his misery was almost too much to take. "There is a chance," she said hurriedly, "a way we might be able to find your mother. Feyon has invited you."

  He held there for a long moment, with his foot still raised to the wall.

  "Invited me to what?"

  "To her home. You'll pass through the Haversham under the protection of the family Gravaile. Her father's a Duke, with prodigious resources, and a man of the greatest faith. If anyone can help you track her down, it will be him. He's agreed to your visit."

  Sen studied her face. He felt so tired. Perhaps she was right, and Feyon's father the Duke could help. He let his hands sag at his sides. There wasn't any choice.

  "Tomorrow," he said. "I leave after that."

  "Of course," Sister Hen said quickly. "Tomorrow, I'll send a messenger now. And I will see you out of the gates myself."

  He nodded. He let her put her arm round his shoulder and lead him back into the Abbey.

  FEYON I

  Sen was finally coming, and Feyon exulted in it.

  For so long in the Abbey she had curried for his attention, fascinated ever since she'd first seen his scars, enlivened by the time he let her touch them. They stirred memories long buried that woke and excited her. She hungered after them in a way unbefitting a daughter of the house Gravaile, so that when he spoke she hung attentive on his every word, watching them ripple about his face and neck.

  She had tried to awaken the same passion in him, flaunting her finest dresses, curling tiny bells into her hair so it chimed with each toss of her head, but he rarely looked her way. She'd begged her parents to extend him the invite from the very first day, and finally they'd agreed.

  Joy filled her up when the Abbess told her that Sen had accepted. Finally, he would see how very alike they were.

  She barely slept that night, she was so excited. For hours in the morning she teased her already blue skin to a glowing ruddiness, she slathered her light blue lips with berry-bloods, she doused her ankles and ears with perfume, and then she got in her brougham to go meet him on the Haversham, and wait for her new life as his wife to begin.

  * * *

  It was Sen's first time to step outside the Abbey's walls in years.

  The Sisters masked every inch of him, with gloves for his hands, a kerchief about his face and a deep hood over his head. Sister Henderson and the Abbess flanked him tightly either side at the Abbey gates.

  "It's just like you did before with your mother," Sister Henderson said, kneeling so her head was at his height. "Except you were a lot smaller then."

  He didn't have the energy to laugh.

  The Abbess led him on, through the gates that had been the boundary of his world for so long. Sister Henderson remained behind.

  Peering through the slit above his kerchief and below his hood, he watched the road ahead which led to the Haversham. It was empty and quiet, as much of the residential Seasham district was. He'd seen it every day through the gates, but only held dim memories of the city beyond.

  Tall redstone houses lined the stone-flagged street, their bland shells offset by trimmings of veiny marble. Gutter drains in rough bronze refracted the pale afternoon ligh
t. At windows fine lace curtains hung drawn, in gardens oriole rose petals bloomed.

  They walked side by side to the crossing with Aspelair street in silence. The Abbess stopped and pointed across the street to the revenant, nestled in beside two townhouses. "Do you remember that?"

  He did, faintly. It was a decorative archway in Hasp stone, nearly two floors tall, carved on the inside with the story of Saint Ignifer. The night his mother had abandoned him in the city, she'd led him into it and pointed up at the carvings of the Saint at the apex, with all his army and heroes spread below him.

  "That's King Seem, and that's Awa Babo, and there's Lord Quill," she'd whispered in his ear, pointing their figures out one by one. "All the strength the Saint could ever need is carved right here."

  The Abbess was looking at him, waiting perhaps for some key memory to surface.

  "Let's go on," he said.

  She seemed hurt, but he didn't care. They went on, toward the Haversham.

  The tradeway's atmosphere gathered them in like flotsam on a tidal flow long before they actually stepped on its cobbles. Its thick band of riotous, colorful noise spilled out onto Aspelair, and the growing chaos of so many disparate castes jostling by jolted him roughly from his reverie.

  As they folded into the tradeway's outer reach, moving amongst densely pressed bodies and squeezing past rickety shacks while hawkers yelled out their varied wares, the sounds, colors and minds became an overwhelming cacophony that Sen couldn't shut out.

  His step faltered and the Abbess caught him, holding him up. He saw a Gralit's long eyestalks twist and track him as he stumbled by, then they were pushing past an array of strange star-shaped fruits, then there were purple cuts of meat hung on spikes, vermillion fish laid out on beds of melting ice.

  "Get your daily Soul 'ere!" A hawker roared across the crush of bodies, waving a newspaper, while another yelled out for the Bridgeling, and another called prices for walnut cream, the shouts merging into an irrepressible noise that forced its way inside his thoughts. He stumbled again, catching his feet on a stepping stone in the cobbled street, and bounced off an Ogric cart as it rumbled by.