Standing there atop the mountain, Sen felt the sick pulse of its endless need thumping through the revenant arch, fating every world across the corpse to the same end. Because of it he had lived a life in hiding, alone and afraid, ashamed of his scars and all the things that would make him strong. Because of it a thousand worlds had died, with a thousand more to come, and because of it he understood the deepest truth Avia had carved into him, the same path she'd carved across every world of the Heart's corpse, preparing his way.
He would rise as the Saint for them all.
The last ember of the Saint swelled in him, blazing new spikes of blue fire in his fists. He looked at his mother and his father, and back toward the city where even now his friends were fighting for their lives, then he stepped through the revenant's glow into darkness, and beyond.
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Michael John Grist.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Saint's Rise was my first published book, after I spent six years working on it between 2008 and 2014. First titled Ignifer's Rise (and Saint Ignifer's Rise) and published in 2014, it never raised its head above the parapet of mainstream visibility, but still I owe thanks to all its earliest readers who offered advice, encouragement and suggestions. All of them helped me make the book better.
Thanks to Rob Nugen, stop-motion director and maze-artist extraordinaire, who tirelessly read the book in at least two (possibly three?) full incarnations over the book's whole span of existence (including this latest edition), and offered countless invaluable suggestions and encouragement. Its thanks to Rob that I now know the difference between it's and its (can you spot the error in that sentence? Rob will be gnashing his teeth!), that the continuity errors are minimal, and the torture scenes largely presented in narrative summary (rather than blood-curdling detail).
Thanks to Michael Lynch, supper of megaphone-shaped thermoses, for reading the whole thing in its earliest roughest draft and offering concrete suggestions about what to do with the five kids, how to hack back the densest swathes of my purple writing, as well as cheerleading the ambition of the project. He also came up with the term 'Balast', which is much better than the original 'Golem'. Hats off to you sir.
Thanks to Michael Beddall, who also read the whole thing in its earliest draft and, despite being somewhat horrified after I told him it was a rough draft I hadn’t even read back through myself (it no longer is!), offered more concrete suggestions on what to keep, what to cut, what to focus on.
Thanks also to Scott Tomilson and JC Imbeault, who received copies of the whole first draft, but couldn't swallow the whole. I took your point, and tried to make it much more chewable.
So followed the years of revisions. Thanks to my dad Tony Grist who viewed one version and offered support, and to my mom Rebecca Coakley who said the Hunt scenes with Sharachus were exhilarating. In one version or another it was read by Jason Bonitsky, who knows epic fantasy and advised me well over Belgian beer, thanks. In a latter version Bard Bloom gave invaluable tips on how to up the pace and crop back some needless repetition. In many versions it has been read by my wife SY, who counseled me to simplify what I could and make the work more accessible.
Fair enough, and thank you honey.
I started off thinking I would write a mongrel cross-breed of China Mieville and Orson Scott Card. Over time though the Mievillian density faded away a bit, to be replaced by (I hope) a new clarity.
I changed more things in the 2014 drafts. Sen changed his name to Sen from Dawn (a girl's name, many people said), and Saint Ignifer was renamed from (the ridiculous sounding) Saint Jabbler. Sen acquired his powers earlier, Alam became less weak, Feyon more driven, Mare more bad-ass, Gellick funnier (I hope).
In the most recent reworking of this tale, conducted at the end of 2017, I intended only to give the book a polish and shine before relaunching under the new title (The Saint's Rise) with a new cover. That polish quickly became a deep and substantial rewrite, with some major changes to the plot, a great deal more action, and a general smoothing of all the 2014 version's rough edges. In total I cut some 10,000 words and added another 50,000, bringing the total to 160,000, truly epic fantasy territory.
It's now the best book it has ever been.
In that endeavor a new bloom of generous advance readers helped out with a wide variety of issues, starting with Walter Scott who raised great issues about caste, continuity, and world backstory, Joe Zygnerski and Angelic Lane who helped with proofreading, and Katy Page who believed in Sen and his world even when my own faith flagged.
I want to thank my original cover artist, Alex McArdell, who labored tirelessly to produce two images (Sen's face and his city) that were just beautiful and still adorn old print copies of the original (see them in the back of the book extras). Also thanks to Bryan Fowler, who worked with me to create character images back when the ultimate fate of this book was far from certain. A final thanks to Clarissa Yeo, who produced the beautiful cover now adorning the book, which incorporates several of my own photographs, taken from my days exploring ruined places in Japan.
Most broadly of all, thanks to David Gemmell, Britain's King of heroic fantasy, whose work I ate up as a kid and who more than anyone else made me want to be a writer, and to my brother Joe and friend Tim with whom I shared that passion wholeheartedly. For Druss!
Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael John Grist is a British/American writer and ruins photographer who lived in Tokyo, Japan for 11 years, and now lives in London, England.
He writes thrilling science fiction and fantasy novels, and used to explore and photograph abandoned places around the world, such as ruined theme parks, military bases, underground bunkers, and ghost towns. These adventures have drawn millions of visitors to his website michaeljohngrist.com, and often provide inspiration for his fiction.
OTHER WORKS
Last Mayor (science fiction thriller)
1. The Last
2. The Lost
3. The Least
4. The Loss
5. The List
6. The Laws
7. The Lash
8. The Lies
Ruin War (science fiction thriller)
1. Mr. Ruin
2. King Ruin
3. God of Ruin
Ignifer Cycle (epic fantasy)
The Saint's Rise
The Rot's War (upcoming)
Short fiction
Cullsman #9 - 9 science fiction stories
Death of East - 9 weird tales
THE LAST (LAST MAYOR 1)
Everyone else is dead. Why are you still alive?
THE LAST (EXCERPT)
1. NEW MAN
I wake up a new man.
It's hard to describe the feeling, as I lie on the rumpled sheets with Lara the barista nestled against my side. Faint morning light is filtering in through the skylight blinds in my garret apartment, there's a tingling sensation all across my body, and the constant sense of pressure in the back of my mind is go
ne completely.
I can't believe it.
It feels like an extension of a dream into wakefulness. Ever since my coma a year ago, when I died and was revived multiple times by the finest doctors basic insurance can buy, I've had the twinges: crippling migraines that knock me out in the morning, in the night, in the middle of the day. Every time I have no choice but to crawl beneath the covers and ride them out for as long as they take.
Sometimes it's hours. Sometimes days. Now they seem to be gone.
I get up slowly, rolling my body forward, but no customary warning twinge comes in. I rub my eyes but no pain awakens there either. I feel, impossibly, good. It's a miracle.
"Avoid triggers," the doctor told me on discharge from the hospital. "Anything new or stimulating. Keep it clinical. No movies, no video games, no travel, and definitely no girls."
Keep it clinical, I think, and turn. In the fresh morning light Lara looks beautiful, with her coffee cream skin and curly dark hair spilled across the pillow. My memories of our date are cloudy, fogged by the constant pain of the twinges as they ramped up throughout the evening, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't clinical by the end.
Lara mumbles something and snuggles into the covers. I can't believe any of this. I sit on the side of the bed and run my hands through my short dark hair, probing, but there's nothing out of place; no brain-shaped chunks have come loose in the night.
I don't know what is going on. Has sex saved me when it should have damned me? At what point did the pain stop, and something else begin?
I pick up my pants, crumpled on the floor nearby, and fish out my phone. The charge is down, but there's a message topmost in the notifications from Cerulean, my best friend.
Are you even alive? Call me!!
I chuckle at that, because he's being dramatic, and eager for gossip. I texted him from the restaurant restroom in the middle of the date last night, while I was crumpled on the floor by the toilet bowl beneath the weight of an almighty twinge. He helped me get through the worst of it, as he so often has before.
Another half hour won't kill him.
I plug the phone into the charger and roll smoothly to my feet, then get dressed and pad quietly to the door.
Down through the tenement building's three floors and out the door, I emerge onto the street. It's quiet at this early hour, and there's a chill in the air; 143rd street in the South Bronx, overlooking the scrubby dry Willis playground, just a few streets over from the Mott Haven historic district. There are cars on the road but none of them are moving, stopped by traffic probably. I duck into my hoodie, tuck my hands in my pockets, and stroll down the sidewalk. My breath makes clouds of steam in the air.
At any minute I'll wake up. I can't stop thinking it. I focus on my feet. If my feet are still here, it has to be real. Surely the twinges will hit at any minute.
I round the corner onto Willis, crossing in front of the neighborhood bodega. The lights are on inside, with stacks of Bud Lite in crates in the window, but I don't see anyone come for their morning swig. The awnings are up so they're open, probably in the back getting stock.
I go by. A shorthaired terrier is shivering tied by the leash to a newspaper box. He looks at me plaintively as I pass. I figure I'll buy an extra croissant and hand it to him. Do dogs like croissants? All this is unreal.
I reach the coffee shop, a 24-hour Starbucks, and push through the glass door. It's not a patch on my favorite coffee shop in downtown Manhattan, called Sir Clowdesley; a cozy little indie spot rife with hispters and decked out in raw wood shelving and teal walls. Here there's no stacks of donated threadbare books, no warm feel of a weird little community; it's all so corporate.
I go to the register and scan the blackboard in back for prices. They usually put the decaffeinated somewhere tricky in the corner, surrounded by swirly chalk effects like they're trying to disguise it. Dare I go with a regular latte, or is that courting disaster?
I lean on the bar. The barista must be out back checking something too. Only the low whine of an air conditioning unit circulating hot air breaks the stillness. I survey the place; it's empty. Not a soul. I see a few haphazard coffees spread around on tables, the nearest one half-drunk.
This is getting weird.
"Hello?" I call.
No answer comes. I walk along the bar, looking for a bell, but there is none. I shout "Hello" again but nobody answers. Maybe they've all gone out for a bit, maybe a cigarette break, en masse, out the back?
My heart speeds up. One possibility leaps to mind.
I exit the coffee shop and jog out into the street. I see it now, where before I was too dizzy with the lack of twinges to really notice. The few cars have actually stopped, flat in the road and not at the traffic light, some lilted at weird angles like they were haphazardly pulled over. None of them are moving, and there's no one in them. Across the road a BMW with gold hubcaps has gone through the window of 'Billy Ray's' pawnshop. Its taillights flash on and off soullessly.
Normally this much would set me twingeing hard, but I'm still in the clear. I look all around, studying the unkempt bushes of Willis playground, the windows of studio apartments on the redbrick building's first floor, but there's no sign of anybody.
Nobody's here.
My mind races. Could I have slept through some kind of terrorist attack, and everybody has fled? Sweat prickles down my back, and through unconscious habit I start to count back from one hundred, a twinge-prevention tactic, but still no pain comes on. This has to be a dream, and I don't like it anymore.
I start to run.
"Hello!" I shout as I jog south down Willis toward the bridge. If there's one thing I've been able to do throughout this last miserable year of my life, it's jog. There is nothing interesting at all about running on a treadmill, staring at a wall, but the doctors said exercise might help, so…
"Anybody?" I call.
I think I see a glimmer of movement behind a curtain on a second story apartment, but it's gone. There may be figures in the park, but when I try to focus on them they blur away amongst the trees.
I blow into the intersection with 142nd panting, and see the wreckage of a car accident just round the corner. A blue Chevy saloon is resting at a crazy angle on its roof, its front all dented in, next to a yellow bulldozer in the middle of the road. I reconstruct the impact in my mind, following the sparkling pattern of smashed glass and black skid trails burnt onto the road.
Smoke gushes up through the car's chassis, and there's a strange scratching sound coming from inside. I look up and down 142nd, where normally there are people chatting and strolling, reading papers, checking their phones, but now it's empty but for more abandoned cars. They are scattered randomly across the four-lane blacktop, several crashed into each other, some nudged into walls, one punched through the window of the Halal meat place.
Smoke rises from them in near silence.
My mouth is dry. I can hear the click of the traffic light overhead, shifting in and out of sync with the scratching from the upturned Chevy. I notice I'm standing in the middle of the intersection, but no traffic is coming. The road is jammed with cars and trucks left like slaughtered buffalo on the plains.
"Somebody help," I shout, but nobody replies. I'm alone.
I run to the Chevy and round to the driver's side, waving through the thick black smoke that fogs around it. I lean closer and my eyes sting, but I can pick out a figure on the asphalt, trying to drag itself free from the driver's side window. There's broken glass on the ground and a dark puddle of what must be blood or oil spreading around him; a guy in a blue denim shirt with long brown hair. He's pulling to get out and the scratching sound must be the seatbelt tearing.
"Hang on," I call to him, "I'll get you out."
He looks up. His eyes are so pale through the smoke I think I'm looking into balls of ice. The pupil at the center is dark but the iris is drained of all color. It freaks me out. His jaw wags and blood spills down his chin.
"I'll get you out," I ca
ll again, though I can barely breathe in the smoke. I press my sleeve up to my face, squint my eyes tightly shut, and plunge closer. I get my hands on the guy's arms, in his hot wet armpits, and pull. I lean my weight all the way back and drag on him. His hands patter helplessly off my thighs but he doesn't come free. The scratching sound gets louder.
It must be the seatbelt. I contemplate ducking in and trying to clip him out, but he's so close already, and I don't like the way the car's starting to tick. We have to get clear. His head nuzzles against my knee. I put one foot up against the car body and tug with all my strength.
There's a sharp ripping sound, like Velcro unzipping, and he comes free. I stagger back with him trailing in my arms, so much lighter I can't regain my balance. I fall hard and smack my butt firmly on the concrete, dropping the guy at the outer reach of the smoke.
"Shit," I cry, rolling over. My whole butt's gone numb, I must've twanged my coccyx, and now my legs have gone trembly. I get onto my knees and shout to the guy.
"Are you OK?"
I see his weirdly white eyes emerge from the smoke first. There's blood running out from under his hairline and down his pale gray cheek and chin, staining his shirt. He's crawling to me on his chest, hand over hand, dragging himself near.
It comes to me as a cold flash that he's got no legs. I double-take, thinking maybe he's a veteran or a diabetic, maybe he never had legs, but now he's over halfway out of the smoke I can see the trail of black blood oozed out behind him like a slug trail. His legs were there but they're gone. I blanch, get to my shaky feet, and back up.
"What the hell…?" I mutter.
He keeps crawling. I back up more. He has no legs and no pelvis either. His lower body is wholly gone, ending at a ragged line across his middle, like torn chicken meat. A lump of flesh spits out of his open belly and straggles behind on a strand of purple gut like a sad little kite. I gag. I take another step back, but still he's crawling toward me.
The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1) Page 48