Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Maps
Chapter 1: Kirin
Chapter 2: Terrell
Chapter 3: Chisaad
Chapter 4: Kirin
Chapter 5: Chisaad
Chapter 6: Terrell
Chapter 7: Kirin
Chapter 8: Terrell
Chapter 9: Kirin
Chapter 10: Terrell
Chapter 11: Kirin
Chapter 12: Chisaad
Chapter 13: Terrell
Chapter 14: Kirin And Terrell
Chapter 15: Chisaad And Terrell
Chapter 16: Chisaad And Terrell
Chapter 17: Terrell, Chisaad, And Ymera
Chapter 18: Ymera And Kirin
Chapter 19: Kirin And Ymera
Chapter 20: Kirin And Ymera
Chapter 21: Terrell
Chapter 22: Chisaad
Chapter 23: Kirin And Chisaad
Chapter 24: Kirin
Chapter 25: Chisaad
Chapter 26: Terrell And Kirin
Chapter 27: Terrell And Chisaad
Chapter 28: Kirin And Terrell
Chapter 29: Kirin And Terrell
Chapter 30: Kirin And Terrell
Chapter 31: Maia And Kirin
Chapter 32: Darnaud
Chapter 33: Kirin
Chapter 34: Zella
Chapter 35: Kirin
Chapter 36: Chisaad
Chapter 37: Terrell
Chapter 38: Kirin
Chapter 39: Terrell
Chapter 40: Kirin
Chapter 41: Terrell
Chapter 42: Kirin
Chapter 43: Kirin And Terrell
Chapter 44: Chisaad
Chapter 45: Kirin
Chapter 46: Terrell And Kirin
Chapter 47: Kirin
Chapter 48: Terrell
Chapter 49: Kirin
Chapter 50: Terrell
Chapter 51: Chisaad
Chapter 52: Kirin And Terrell
Chapter 53: Terrell And Kirin
Chapter 54: Pieter And Pen
Chapter 55: Terrell And Kirin
Chapter 56: Chisaad, Terrell And Kirin
Other Works
SHADOW AND LIGHT
Coming of Age
This is a work of fiction, All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2018 by Peter Sartucci
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
ISBN: 978-1-7335745-0-1
Edited by Kier Salmon
Cover Art copyright by Claire Peacey, used by permission.
Book design by Kate Morin
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
No writer works in a vacuum. I want to thank some of the many people who helped me with the long process of creating this book.
First, to my wife Elizabeth, for the support and love that made it even possible.
To my workout buddies Brandon Slaten and Bill Cowern, who gave me much useful feedback in between sets. We might have exercised a little harder if I hadn’t kept telling you snippets of stories, but we wouldn’t have had as much fun.
To the members of the Northern Colorado Writers Workshop, especially Marie Desjardin, Rob Chansky, Vivian Cathe, Eneasz Brodski, Rick Friesen, Ronnie Seagren, Pat Smythe, Ron Hosler, and our beloved mentor the late Ed Bryant, who were with me on critiquing the book all the way through. I learned so much from you all!
To Kier Salmon, my copy editor and good friend, who made many good suggestions and caught several embarrassing goofs. (If I managed to sneak any others past her, that’s my own nefarious fault.)
To Steven Michael Stirling, for encouragement when I really needed it. Nothing is more encouraging to a newbie author than having an expereinced old-timer tell him to get back up on that horse and try again!
To Claire Peacey, for a gorgeous cover that went so far above and beyond my expectation that I am still in awe.
To Kate Morin, for assembling it all into this volume that you are reading now.
And to the reading public, on which I and every other author depend; this one’s for all of you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
What do you do when your world turns upside down? When the foundations on which you built your life melt like ice and flow like water? When you lose—but find that you won, and the prize is entirely different from the one you thought you wanted?
This is the beginning of a set of tales that stretches across several novels. Each tries to be self-contained, but if you really want to know these characters and their world, here is where it starts. Welcome to the land of silver and sulfur, wealth and dearth, love and hate. Welcome to Silbar.
MAPS
CHAPTER 1: KIRIN
“May I tell your fortune?”
Startled, Kirin DiUmbra let the outhouse door bang shut. The woman’s voice had an odd lilt that should have sounded happy but came out solemn. She blocked his way out from the narrow space between the theater wall and the troupe’s wagons. A wool hood covered her hair and a coarse veil concealed the lower half of her face. The lively gray eyes that stared into his black ones from barely an arm’s length away were set in a copper skinned face under a single joined eyebrow. The combination marked her as a Duermu tribeswoman from the eastern deserts. Her exotic scent hit his nose, desert incense and goats and sweat.
He recoiled in embarrassment at being taken so completely by surprise. How had she gotten inside the rear courtyard of this tiny rural theater? The wall rose a yard taller than he and its only gate stood high, massive, and closed.
Kirin breathed the scents of horses, goats, and the fetid outhouse behind him, and wished for more distance between himself and this unwelcome intruder. He put his hands on his hips and stared challengingly at her in the warm spring sunshine. In his most discouraging voice he told her, “I don’t have any money on me.”
Which should have been obvious. He wore nothing but the patched tightknit hose he used for the DiUmbra Acrobatic Troupe’s rehearsals. In the midday heat of Silbar’s vast central valley he’d even left off a shirt. Perspiration trickled down the pale golden skin of his bare chest and stuck bits of his curly black hair to his forehead.
“You didn’t hear me ask for money, did you?” she answered in that same odd lilted accent. “I only ask to be allowed to tell your fortune, young sir. Surely a peerless star among acrobats can allow a desert woman that.” She held out a preemptory hand, thankfully clean, and waited.
She stood several fingerwidths shorter than Kirin but blocked his path back to the theater as immovably as a tree. He couldn’t bring himself to push her aside, though outcastes like her were even lower in social rank than a halfbreed acrobat. He’d seen Duermus tell fortunes in the bazaars and market places of Silbar. Grandfather DiUmbra claimed they were all frauds with no real powers of prophecy. Kirin’s adoptive father Pieter wasn’t so sure.
Agreeing might make her go away. He gave her his right hand.
She took it firmly, turned his palm up toward the doubled light of the Two Suns, and traced the lines with a surprisingly delicate touch. Her hands were as seamed with work as any peasant woman’s but still youthful. She couldn’t be much older than his seventeen-plus years. Without thinking he used his magesight to see if she had cast a spell on him. He had heard tales of Duermu witches doing such things. No swirl of power poured out of her fingers, though he could see she had plenty of magic in her. She might not be a complete fraud.
She gave him an ironic glance. “Have no fear, young sir. I cast no spel
l without consent. A courtesy that I hope you will return.”
He flushed, hating the way it heated his face. The skin that marked his half-Silbari-half-Gwythlo ancestry always betrayed his feelings. Under his heart his Shadow stirred, and he hastily quelled it. Rural towns were bad places to be suspected of illicit sorcery or, far worse, demon summoning. He had no wish to be burned at a stake in the public square.
“A strong life line,” she commented as she stared at his palm, oblivious to his brief internal struggle. An absorbed expression had taken over what he could see of her face. “Healthy. You will sire children, perhaps more than a few.”
“Only not yet,” Kirin muttered, pleased and worried at the same time. His wife Maia starred in the show that the DiUmbra Troupe had taken on the road for fame and profit. The family couldn’t afford to lose her to motherhood right now. Her mother had bought her a pregnancy protection spell and they had been careful, but the thought still worried him.
“Strength and dexterity will be yours for many years, more so than most mortals,” she continued. “So long as you do not make utterly foolish choices in the risks you take. Your wisdom line is less strong; you will need guidance.”
Since every adult in the family shared that opinion, and said so frequently and with embellishment, Kirin snorted derision and rolled his eyes.
“One such moment is approaching, with several more following it like wolves.” She frowned. “Beware. You shall be tested with fear and loss. Powerful people will help you, if you allow them, while others will endanger you. Remember always who you are, even as you discover what you are. That grounding can serve you well.”
Those obscure remarks sounded like the kind of drivel he’d expected. He took back his hand and rubbed it as she bowed to him in an oddly flattering gesture.
“Are you done?’ he barked, trying to summon a righteous outrage. “Will you get out of my way now?”
“No and yes, young sir,” she answered. “We will meet again.” She turned and darted away.
Maia called his name.
“Coming!” Kirin answered and hurried to the theater’s back door.
“Who was that?” she asked, gazing at the rear gate in the courtyard’s high adobe wall.
“Some Duermu fortune teller. Wouldn’t get out of my way until I let her read my palm.”
Maia frowned. “I hope you didn’t give her money. That only makes them pester you more.”
“She didn’t ask for any, and besides,” he gestured at his barely clothed state. “I’ve got nothing on me.”
“And you sure look good that way.” Maia smiled at him, which made his face heat again. “Hopefully she won’t bother you again.”
Kirin said nothing as he uneasily remembered the woman’s parting words. I asked her if she was done with me, and she said ‘No.’
* * *
Hours later he peeked through a knothole in the back wall of the crude stage. “That’s a rough-looking crowd. You suppose they’ll throw things?”
“Let’s hope they throw money,” his brother-in-law Sevan the Younger answered while Maia made a last-minute adjustment to his costume.
“There’s a priestess out there,” Maia noted when she finished and let her brother take his position. “Nobody would dare behave badly in front of her.”
Kirin thought but did not say aloud, unless she behaves badly first. The fortune teller’s words about ‘powerful people’ stirred his unease. Priestesses wielded power over life and death. He swallowed his worry as Maia kissed him, careful of his makeup, and said, “It’ll all go fine, love. See you in Act Two!”
At that moment Grandfather signaled for the DiUmbra Troupe’s presentation of Malik and Mercia to begin and Kirin had no time to worry.
* * *
At the end of the show when Maia’s Mercia led Kirin’s Malik out of the Tormentor’s Hell, the audience rose as one and cheered.
“I’d say that went better than fine,” Maia said to Kirin over the crowd’s roar as the troupe gathered behind the stage wall.
“You’re the reason why, love,” he answered, hugging her.
Pieter Ille DiUmbra, Kirin’s adoptive father and Maia and Sevan’s uncle, smiled at the couple while the crowd’s cheers continued. “You infants had better go take another bow before they riot.”
“Everybody with us!” Kirin called, and the whole DiUmbra troupe lined up. They paraded back onto the stage amidst doubled roars. Maia flicked a long white scarf into the air and levitated it above them. Kirin sent his Shadow out to dance with it as they had done during the play. The audience, thinking they saw the clever stage illusions that accompanied the family’s fame, roared even louder. Kirin gripped her hand and raised it between them, then he and Maia waved their free hands at the assembled troupe—Pieter still dressed as Salim the Tormentor, Sevan as his lackey Fear, all the rest of the extended DiUmbra family as the other roles. They bowed to the audience as one. A rain of coins hit the stage and the family’s little kids scampered to gather them up. At a signal from Grandfather, Kirin and Maia blew kisses to the crowd and lead the others offstage as even more metal clattered onto the boards. Kirin glanced back in time to see a bulging pouch nearly thump one of the kids. The lad scooped it up and ran it backstage to Kirin, who triumphantly pressed it into the old man’s hands.
“Feels like a profit,” Maia’s grandfather, Grigor Ille DiUmbra, murmured as he weighed the pouch in one hand and listened to the slowly fading cheers.
“Told you it would be, Father,” Pieter said.
Grandfather only grunted. Kirin failed to hide his satisfaction at that grunt.
The old man glanced at him and narrowed his eyes. He waved to two of the teenage cousins. “Go out and help the little ones gather it up. Don’t miss a single coin.”
The cousins nodded and ran. The cheers were fading, and the rain of coins had stopped. Pieter, his face proud, clapped Kirin on the shoulder before the older men of the troupe went around to the front of the stage to discourage anyone tempted to raid the family’s pay.
“Good work, Maia,” her grandfather said. “As for you, Kirin, put that damned thing away!” He pointed at the lingering Shadow and glared.
Kirin wiped the grin off his face and mentally slapped himself for forgetting. He knew perfectly well that Maia’s grandfather still suspected him of being an imp, possibly even a demon, not merely playing one on stage. He drew his Shadow back inside him and pushed it down under his heart, locking it away where the troupe’s leader could forget about it for a while. The audience thought it a clever stage illusion; the family knew better.
Maia lost her smile and gave her grandfather a cool look. She let the white silk scarf fall into her hands and pointedly took Kirin’s arm.
He let her lead him away, her silence a rebuke to her grandfather.
Not that the old man seemed to notice. “Get out of your costumes and get to work,” he bellowed after them. “Maia, I want the backstage packed up before the next bell rings! And Kirin, get back in trousers and help my grandsons pull down the ropes and the traps. Make sure it’s all packed correctly!”
“Yes, Grandfather,” Kirin called back over his shoulder. He knew he packed the trapeze set as flawlessly as he performed on it, but the cranky old bastard would never admit it—or call him grandson.
“Ignore Grandfather; he’s just in a mood,” Maia whispered as they wended their way through the cramped backstage area.
“Hard to do,” Kirin muttered back. “He’s like a thunderstorm.”
In the even-more-cramped dressing room, other family members congratulated the two stars while the troupe peeled off costumes and wiped paint off each other. Kirin untied his hair and shook his head. That let his black curls bush out again to cover his pale pointed ears. He hated the way they set him apart from the rest of his round-eared, brown-skinned family.
Carmella told Maia and Kirin to turn their backs to each other before he stripped out of his fancy black silk tights.
“Mo
th-er,” Maia grumbled, disobeying while she peeled off her white costume, “Kirin and I have been married for half a season! I know what he has under his tights!”
This time Kirin blushed like a beet root. Maia giggled. She loved to embarrass him in little ways. He got her back by swiftly kissing her, which made her face shift from teak to mahogany even as her eyes grew misty.
“Show some modesty, both of you,” her mother scolded. “You two can pillow like rabbits when you’re alone, but we have a reputation to maintain and there are Purist priestesses about. I’ll not have one accuse the DiUmbra clan of lascivious behavior!”
“Yes, Mama Carmella,” Kirin answered in pretend meekness as he pulled on a battered pair of canvas trousers, ragged shirt and rope sandals. Even the prospect of facing down some terrifying old priestess couldn’t spoil his elation as he got to work.
Grandfather had designed the DiUmbra troupe’s travelling set for Malik and Mercia so that it both went up and came down quickly. Sevan and Maia’s younger brother Attir pitched in for the takedown, and Pieter joined them as soon as he got his own makeup off.
“Grandpa says our take topped a hundred dohba again!” Sevan said triumphantly. “And it’s because of you and Maia, Kirin.”
“More because of Maia,” Kirin corrected, grinning fondly at his wife as she carried a sack of costumes to the wagons. She blew him a kiss as she passed her father, Sevan the elder, and her grandfather. The two leaders of the troupe had paid off the stage owner from the day’s take while the man quarreled over details.
People still milled around the audience space. Kirin paid them no mind until he glimpsed the yellow robes of a priestess in the severe, simple cut favored by the Purist sect. He retreated behind the stage wall where the woman wouldn’t see him. He never knew how any of the Temple Hierarchy would react to him, an obvious halfblood. Most of the ordinary priestesses of the Orthodox sect, like Dona Zella at home, were sympathetic, seeing the flesh and blood man under the pale skin. The Dissenting sect, less so, and the Purist sect didn’t see anyone with pale skin as human at all.
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