The Shattering of the Spirit-Sword Brackish 1

by Sam Farren

  “Funny, isn’t it? There are so many people here, so many boats coming and going at the port; you can see how important the gods are to what I thought were my people. Yet I never knew anything of them. Not in the way these people do. I know who they are and what they did for us, but I do not understand the pull of this place. Even when Layla’s eyes lit up, I didn’t understand her effortless devotion.”

  “It’s a strange thing to have to learn,” Eos said. “I always thought it innate.”

  “How do the—how do you approach the gods? I’ve never once seen you pray.”

  Eos grew invested in eating again.

  “The gods are in all things. To them, there is no difference between thoughts, prayers, and actions. They understand my intent, even if I do not.”

  “See! That’s the part I don’t understand. It’s all so fatalistic. Leaving your fate in the hands of others we cannot even see.”

  “There is no such thing as fate,” Eos said. “And there is no harm in relying on others.”

  Castelle hummed, slumping in her seat.

  Her mother had said—oh, her mother had said so many things, none of them bitter, all of them bright, uplifted, illuminating a world where there was so much darkness. Where rebels roamed the streets and people thought the gods better fit to lead the country than those who sweat and bled for it.

  It always came back to that. Lies told with an air of unquestioned authority, sown from a young age.

  “We shouldn’t stay here for long,” Eos said, plate suddenly clear. “Are you done?”

  “Mm.”

  Grabbing the fruit from her plate to eat as they walked, Castelle followed Eos, eyes on her bags. There was a single island between them and Yarrin, larger than Fél by more than a few miles. The ships on the far side of the port travelled there and back a handful of times a day. Eos glanced over her shoulder as she walked, scanning the crowd for Svir and her ilk, but only found Castelle falling behind, slowing to a stop.

  “I want to go to the caves,” Castelle said.

  “I thought you wanted to see Layla.”

  “Yes. I do, I really do. But I want to go to the caves, while we’re here.”

  “This is not a vacation,” Eos said. “There are still people following us, and I believe one in particular is here. We need to move on as quickly as possible.”

  “If someone’s followed us here, they’re going to follow us to the next island, too. At the moment, I’m very busy balancing the sensations of believing I’m the centre of the universe and becoming gradually more convinced I’m completely invisible,” Castelle said. “Look. It won’t take long, and there are likely hundreds of people down there right now. Where better to hide than a crowd?”

  “Did Reed teach you that?” Eos said, frowning. “We do not have time.”

  “I want to go. I need to have something to talk about with Layla.”

  “You’ll have plenty to discuss with Layla,” Eos said, heading towards the docks.

  Holding her ground got her nowhere. Eos had somewhere to be, knew where the pretence of safety rested, and marched along the wet flagstones.

  Running after her, Castelle caught her arm and said, “What? Am I to sit there and tell her Well, I continued to believe everything my fathers told me, long after you were gone, and never placed two significant pieces together? I want to have done something. To have been somewhere.”

  Eos stared at Castelle’s hand until she let go.

  “We have been to many places,” she said.

  “Of your choosing! I was dragged to all of them,” Castelle said. “I want to do this, Eos. For myself. For a few hours. Please. We’ve wasted longer in one spot, waiting for boats.”

  Eos shifted the bags on her back. Castelle gripped a lamppost for balance, leg flaring up again. Getting on a boat was the wisest course of action, for her and her leg. She couldn’t afford to stop moving, and the boat provided the sanctuary of sitting. Castelle had already twisted Eos’ arm into stopping for breakfast.

  She still didn’t know what to say to Layla. How she’d apologise, how she’d explain that she wished beyond wishing that she’d left with her, so many years ago. Layla had been in the same position as her, but she’d seen the world with clear eyes. She’d understood that right and wrong had been obfuscated by truth and lies, and she’d done something about it. She hadn’t sat in the temple and waited and waited, expecting her Kingdom to fall at her feet because of the blood in her veins.

  Layla should despise her. Castelle was just another Greyser, eager to let the nobles think the Kingdom was theirs, all the wheat in all the fields had been harvested for them, and the sheep dotting the hills had been happily herded into Caelfal.

  She didn’t know what to say to Layla.

  Only the gods had an answer.

  “We will go,” Eos said. “Briefly.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. But if you see a Fenronian man around my age, white-skinned, around six feet tall, paying particular attention to you, alert me at once,” Eos said.

  Nothing in Castelle’s words had swayed Eos, so she nodded and said nothing more. She followed Eos deeper into the town, leg not such an obstacle when her heartbeat overwhelmed the pain.

  Beyond the taverns and inns, hundreds of people dressed exactly like them were gathered. The rain demanded thick cloaks and billowing hoods, and most bowed their heads in a reverence they were determined to feel.

  If the bounty hunter causing Eos more concern than Svir was there, Castelle would never catch a glimpse of him.

  Castelle’s arm pressed to the side of Eos’ as they followed the path out of town. The road gave way to natural rock, hardened millennia ago, worn smooth and shiny by the thousands of feet that shuffled along it every week. People buzzed with excitement, having never been there before, returning as they did every year, eager to show their friends the caves for the first time, and wasn’t it wonderful that it was raining?

  The ocean waves must’ve fallen upon the land like clouds purging themselves, when the gods pulled the archipelago from the sea.

  “Is this it?” Castelle whispered.

  Eos didn’t respond.

  The path led to an unimpressive tumult of arched rocks escaping the earth. People wandered through the supposed sacred grounds, hands pressed to the rocks, poking their heads into openings, more alcoves than caves. Castelle got closer, but there was nothing more to it. There were no timeless inscriptions on the rocks, and she could not feel Fenroe’s first heartbeat beneath her fingertips when she touched the basalt.

  There was nothing to it, and so it was with all things. Temples, castles, cities, Kingdoms; they were all built from stone, shaped into being by flashes in the mind, incomparable to what rose in the light of day. Fél meant something because those who visited gave it meaning. It lured them back year after year, showing them what they wanted to see.

  There was no divine wisdom. If the gods had touched this island, they had touched them all. The air smelled of salt, the wind rippled Castelle’s cloak, and gulls cried overhead, godless and hungry.

  “This really is it, isn’t it?” Castelle said. “I hope Layla wasn’t too disappointed when she finally visited.”

  “It is just rock. You can only expect so much from rock. It is the stories that make a place what it is,” Eos said.

  “Is that so? And what stories do they tell of Fél in Nor?”

  “The same stories they tell everywhere,” Eos said, making for a cave.

  The cave would’ve been respectable in size, had dozens of others not crowded in with Eos. Castelle pushed her way through, careful not to step on any toes or draw attention by being overly polite, and found Eos at the back of the low cave. Lanterns hung from the wall, casting pale orange light on the black rock.

  The ceiling hadn’t been worn away as the ground had. It rose above them like a wave, creases layering the surface, irregular and roiling. For the first time, Castelle paused. Were she to move, the rock would remember wh
at it’d once been and collapse upon them, lava spewed across the land once more.

  Castelle shook her head.

  It was only a moment, only rock.

  “Nor was once nothing but ocean, too,” Eos said. “The land you call Nor, that is. The mountains along its southern border were the centre of the world, to the Yricians. The land rose from the waves, pushed up as the ocean floor worked against itself, desperate for air.

  “All the silt gathered at the bottom of the ocean was brought up with it. The gods carved the mountains we now see by casting this silt aside, throwing it into the ocean as dirt, until it rose above the waves, stretching out to form the entire continent.

  “And here, the gods sat upon Fél and pulled the other islands from the ocean. It is the same. Wherever you go, it is always the same.”

  “Does that mean one version of the story is true? Or truer?” Castelle asked.

  “It does not matter if none of them are,” Eos said. “The world shaped itself as it saw fit, and it does not matter which stories we tell to make sense of that.”

  Castelle led Eos from the cave. The heavy clouds gave Castelle little for her eyes to adjust to, and she ran her fingers across the rocks, peering into the smaller caves, searching for something she could share with Layla.

  Gods. Who was she fooling? Layla wouldn’t care for any of this. Layla would want to know what’d happened throughout those last eight years, alone in the temple.

  “You were right. We ought to have headed straight for the boats,” Castelle said. “Let’s go. I’m done, Eos.”

  “The next boat does not leave for an hour, and we are not yet done,” Eos said.

  “Oh?”

  “There is still the statue,” she said, taking the winding path between the caves.

  Castelle had seen dozens of statues in her lifetime. Hundreds. Her parents begrudgingly allowed states of the gods to line the streets of the capital, and their own likeness stood in the centre of the city, standing in judgement over the courts. There were statues of them inside the castle, too, and each park had at least one of Castelle’s ancestors residing over it. Father Damir had a statue of Marigold commissioned to celebrate her wedding, and there was one of Castelle as a young child, reaching up to grasp her mother’s hand.

  They had been destroyed a long, long time ago, but this one had lasted. The statue of The Preserver had sat upon the rocks of Fél for longer than Brackish had been in the royal family’s hands, out in the open, safe from the ocean spray by a matter of inches.

  Some said the statue of was such a likeness to The Preserver that the stone itself could never be worn away. Others said the priests of Fél’s only temple covered it in thick cloth every night, keeping it safe from the elements.

  Eos led Castelle to the edge of the island, where the statue sat cross-legged upon a throne of black rock. There was nothing impressive about it in stature or skill, but behind it, islands marred the horizon, and the ocean rose and fell in mismatched waves, waiting for the moon to return and tame it.

  The Preserver was no larger than a human, and the rock had been carved in a circle around them, keeping the crowds at bay. People knelt, hands on the edge of the circle, but neither Castelle’s leg nor heart would let her do the same.

  Eos sat cross-legged, mirroring The Preserver.

  Their arms spread out to the sides, palms facing the sky, right slightly higher than the left. A part of the story that’d never made sense slotted into place: The Creator had pulled the islands from the ocean, as she had pulled all things from nothing, but Fél could never be a shrine to her.

  It was The Preserver who was burdened with holding the archipelago above the grey water, squared shoulders keeping Fenroe in an immutable balance.

  Castelle’s fingertips pressed to her palms.

  The gods had watched over the islands long before the Greysers rose through the ranks. The gods would be remembered, long after the name Greyser was but a footnote in the annals of history. People would mull over tomes and wonder how people had survived under such a relentless reign, and here was the answer: people had survived because they had to, because they believed the gods had pulled Fenroe from the ocean for a reason.

  The people had survived because life under Greyser reign was all they’d known, but a few had dared to whisper of a better life, and those whispers had become a rebellion, a resistance.

  This was the land the gods had created, but it wasn’t theirs. They held it in balance and let the seas crash against rocks, reshaping the lands; they let forests burn to bring life anew, and cared nothing for the borders drawn on maps, dividing the land.

  A gull cried overhead. Castelle looked away from the statue and the spell was broken.

  She understood nothing more about the gods, but her family’s place upon the archipelago was a little clearer, when compared to the continuity of waves crashing, winds howling, rocks crumbling.

  “We don’t want to miss that boat,” Castelle said, turning to Eos. “Thank you. Thank you for bringing me here.”

  Pushing herself to feet, Eos said, “Do you have something to discuss with Layla, now?”

  “I have more questions to ask, if nothing else,” Castelle said, pulling her cloak tighter around herself.

  “I came with Layla, when first she visited. You have that in common,” Eos offered.

  “Really? You are that close to my cousin?” Castelle asked, still having difficulty parsing their relationship as anything but a professional one.

  “There are few people who know me better,” Eos said. “Layla speaks little of her past, but I consider myself lucky to be part of her present.”

  All eyes were fixed on The Preserver. The crowd parted without any particular person being aware their feet were moving. With their heads down, Castelle and Eos wound away from the plateau of molten heat made safe and solid, and headed through the anthill of caves.

  “What in the name of the gods?” someone called.

  Fél was far from an island of silence, but all the voices had blended together in a swirl of excitement and respect. This one rose above the others, tearing people’s attention from the rocks that held no ancient secrets, no matter how they squinted at faint fissures.

  Castelle faltered, broken gait more telling than the limp she walked with. Eos took her arm and guided her along the path, but there was no escaping it.

  One by one, everyone’s eyes turned to them.

  Finally, those who caught sight of Eos’ scars behind the rain and her hood’s shadow did something other than clear their throats and avert their gazes. Fél was an island of tourists from all over Fenroe. Rumours from every corner of the archipelago reached its sacred shores.

  How foolish they’d been to believe they could make it to Yarrin without being recognised.

  Someone grabbed Castelle’s shoulder, wrenching her away from Eos.

  Castelle lashed out, batting their arms away, but it wasn’t the man Eos had warned her of.

  A woman drew her close, saying, “It’s alright, it’s alright. You’re safe.”

  Castelle froze. Blue light washed over the woman’s face, answering all her questions.

  Of course. Of course! Now was the time Brackish chose to burn bright, spirit shining in a crowd of hundreds. People had gathered in a circle, none daring to get too close to Eos, none wanting to be the first to back away. Brackish sang with the rising waves, reaching out to all those around her.

  She couldn’t claw her way into the back of so many minds, but the blue light was enough to bring fear to anyone’s heart. Castelle didn’t understand the gods, the sanctity of Fél, but Brackish knew enough to loathe them.

  “It is fine,” Eos said, lifting her hands. “I understand what I am doing.”

  “You knew it was in your bag?” a man called out. “You knew it was in your bag and you brought it here?”

  Eos had become the inverse of The Preserver, holding the islands together. There she was, made of stone, threatening to pull their ver
y foundations apart.

  “I am transporting her. She cannot harm me,” Eos said, turning in a slow circle, facing all those surrounding her. “She is of no danger to anyone.”

  “You need to turn it over!” someone else yelled. “There are priests here. Dozens of them. They’ll know what to do.”

  Free of the woman’s grasp, Castelle inched away from the crowd. She needed to be by Eos’ side, close to Brackish, that the blue flames might die down. Brackish was screaming for something, but Castelle was the only one who wasn’t panicking, who hadn’t given themselves over to fear. All she had to do was listen, to get closer, and Brackish’s light would fade.

  “She’s Yrician,” the woman who’d grabbed Castelle grunted. “She probably doesn’t understand what she’s got.”

  The world cleared for long enough for Castelle’s narrowed gaze to fall upon the woman. No one was staring at her, anymore. People were daring to close in, hoping the person next to them would know what to do with the spirit.

  It couldn’t be destroyed. Couldn’t be doused in the ocean or turned to ash in a forge. Spirits had no link to the land of the living, other than some awful truth that would not leave them. The Embracer herself could not drag spirits into the afterlife, so what hope did mortals have where gods had failed?

  Eos took a step towards the town. The crowd flinched, doubled in size since Castelle looked.

  “Please,” a young woman said. “We only want to help you. It’s the spirit doing this, the spirit making you think you owe it something. Put it down. It’ll have to loosen its grasp on you.”

  Castelle’s stomach twisted. These people were hypocrites in the truest sense. They’d come to Fél, to its caves and its statue, to feel something of the gods swimming in their veins, yet they burnt with contempt at the sight of a spirit. At the sight of one who had been forsaken by the gods, who had suffered through life and not been allowed the embrace of eternity, free of the earth and its troubles.