The Shattered Sun

by Rachel Dunne

  Vatri reached out, her flesh rippled and warped, her fingers like claws, and filled her hand with the preacher’s hair. Pulled, so the man’s head raised and the puckered pits of his eyes met hers. Tears to fury. Scal raised his weapon with the movement, and Deslan’s grip shifted on her ready arrow.

  Vatri, with her voice like lightning, twisted the preacher’s hair and demanded, “Where are they?”

  The preacher tilted his chin higher. “They’ll come for you,” he said, and his voice was steady. There was hard iron in him.

  “Where are they?” Vatri asked again. At her side, her other hand curled to a fist. Released. Curled again.

  “They will come, and they will bring their judgment.” The words seemed to give him strength. To make him more brave. His back straightening, his breath coming faster. “The unworthy shall fall—”

  Vatri’s hand cut the preacher’s words short. A sharp sound, flesh to flesh, and in the moonlight the preacher’s cheek shone red. “Where are the Twins?”

  There was defiance on the preacher’s face, and his hand lifted. Scal pressed the blade harder against his neck. The ice and the steel drew blood, and the preacher flinched, but it didn’t stop his finger. Pointing, at the body of the man between himself and Vatri. The swordsman Scal had killed first. “Maybe he would have told you,” the preacher said, and he would say no more.

  The young man with the long braid spit onto the ground before the preacher. “Useless,” he said, and put his boot into the preacher’s gut. The preacher doubled in half, the sudden movement scraping his neck against the sword and its icy spines. Not enough to slice, but enough to draw blood. Edro was thoughtless like that.

  Scal put his sword away. Shards of ice chipping away against his scabbard, falling across his back. He left them—the gasping preacher, and Deslan, who drew her arrow to point at his eye, and Edro with his face set in fury, and Vatri glaring hatred. Scal began to collect the bodies. Five of them, the swordsman last. A sturdy rope to tie around their ankles, and the rope over his shoulder. A brace of preachers. They were heavy, hard to drag, but not so hard that he could not manage. Vatri prodded the remaining preacher to his feet, and there was less defiance in his face now. More fear, on top of the bravery. He marched behind Scal, behind the dragging bodies leaving a trail upon the ground. The blind preachers saw more than they should have, but if he saw that he walked upon the blood of his comrades, he did not mind it.

  Vatri had chosen the place earlier. The perfect place, she had called it. An old oak, tall and broad and greedy. It had choked away all the other trees, making a wide clearing around itself. Wood sat in a neat pile nearby. The ends of each log fire-charred. Any weapon Scal held sprang with fire or with ice, even a simple woodsman’s ax. It had an edge, and could be used easily for killing. That was all that mattered to the magic of the Parents. That was all that mattered when Vatri was watching.

  The preacher and the archer and the man and the merra waited. Silent, sullen. Scal pulled the bodies to the spreading oak, and he piled them around the trunk of the tree, and he piled the cut logs upon the bodies, and kindling atop the logs. And then he took the rope, fraying and bloodstained but sturdy, and he walked toward the preacher.

  He saw Scal coming, in the strange way the blind preachers saw things. There was little bravery left on his face. Scal thought he would run. Readied himself to chase the preacher, so Deslan would not put an arrow through his leg.

  The preacher swayed, but did not run. When he stood before the man, Scal bowed his head briefly. The most respect he could show. The most he was allowed. With the rope in one hand, he put his other around the preacher’s hand. The man’s fingers were cold, clammy, shaking. But he let himself be pulled. Forward, forward to the tree and the bodies and the piled wood. He let Scal guide his steps, let Scal lift him atop the pile. His back against the tree, his feet upon one black-clad body. It was the swordsman, Scal realized. The man whom the preacher had cried over. Scal had not intended that. Too late, now. He wound the rope, around the preacher, around the tree. Sturdy and steadfast, unshaking. The preacher’s face was pale, but it was as brave as could be.

  Winter held hard to the northern part of Fiatera, keeping the air and the ground cold well after the rest of the country would have begun to see warm weather and grass and kind skies. Scal did not know if the weather to the south was as normal, or if it had been changed by the sun’s absence. But here, against the Highlands, close to the frozen North, it had stayed cold. There was little risk of a fire spreading.

  Vatri stood before the tree, and her scarred face was as unyielding as a mountain. “I ask you once more,” she said. “One final time. Where are the Twins?”

  The preacher turned his pucker-eyed gaze to Vatri. His voice shook, but the words came hard and ringing. “They will find you. They see into all shadows. Soon enough, they’ll come for you.”

  “I look forward to it,” Vatri said. Iron in her voice, in her spine, in her face. Her hand motioned, and Scal drew his sword once more. The right hand, so that flame danced along the blade.

  Followers of the Parents burned their dead. It had always been so. It was a small thing, that the ones Vatri gave to the flames were not yet dead. Enough time would make them so. A small thing, to cut the wick of their candle short. To let them burn, and sputter, and fade.

  All things die, Vatri had told him, with flames bright on her flame-scarred skin. There’s no stopping death.

  Scal touched the blade to a pile of kindling. Far to the south, he had walked through a sea of grass with the fire-blade drawn, and the flames had brushed against the grass without burning. His hands, one holding ice and the other fire, had touched others without freezing, without burning. He was not only death. There was more in him than that.

  But he had been named Nightbreaker. There was not space for anything else in this world. Not while the sun was gone.

  Fire, he thought. His name and his will, and the sword-fire ate eagerly at the kindling. Jumped to the wood, and flames danced along its edges. Swallowed the dead things they were given, and reached for more.

  For as long as he could, the preacher stayed silent. But he was human, and pain could rob all bravery. Scal turned his back, so that he would not have to watch. So that he would not see the way the fire danced in Vatri’s eyes.

  Edro’s boots crunched loud upon the ground. Heedless of deadfall, heedless of lingering snow. The man’s voice was louder still, and Scal did not know why Edro had been brought. No—that was not true. He knew. He had seen the way Vatri looked at him, when they bent over a map and Edro thumped his fist against the folding table so hard its legs threatened to give while he proclaimed bold strategies, described the fierce battles he would lead. Scal had seen the way Edro’s eyes shone back at her.

  Little lordling, the others called Edro, but only when he did not stand before them. Fourth son of a nobleman, and little enough use to his family. “I have come to help restore the sun to its rightful place,” he had said when the scouts brought him in. One hand on his hip, the other pressed to his forehead, and the Parents’ fire emblem was carved into his breastplate. Scal had thought him foolish, had seen Deslan and some of the others making faces behind the little lordling’s back.

  Vatri had smiled wider, though, and said help like his would be needed. Invaluable. Scal had not forgotten that word. It rang in his mind, when he saw Edro’s tilted smiles, when he saw the man brushing out his long hair where all the women could be sure to admire it. He thought of it each time Vatri called Edro to her side.

  Little lordling, they called him to his back. But when Edro stood before them, they all smiled and bowed. He was a lord, and he was handsome, and he had a temper that flared like the Mother’s own fire.

  “We must flush them out,” Edro said, punching his mailed fist into his palm. “Wherever the rats nest, we must burn them from their homes, and follow them where they flee. They’ll lead us to their masters, never doubt it. And once we’ve found their lair . . .
” Another mailed punch.

  Deslan, walking silent at Scal’s side, raised her bow. She held no arrow, but she drew the string back and aimed her lead hand at the back of Edro’s head. Twisted her face into a grimace, tongue thrust between her teeth. Scal turned his startled laugh to a cough, and when Vatri looked over her shoulder, he was smooth-faced once more and both of Deslan’s arms hung at her sides.

  Their camp appeared sudden from the trees, well hidden by nature and by design. The tents were low as bushes or as thin as tree trunks, and painted with whites and browns. There were no visible fires to give them away—only thin threads of smoke, leaking from the pointed tips of some tents. Those moving within the camp were quiet, moving on skilled feet, speaking in low voices. Scal knew the scouts had marked their passage, would have alerted them if anything was wrong, would have stopped them if they were not familiar faces. Might have stopped them anyway to talk, if Edro was not already filling the night with his words. He was not the only reason, but certainly a large one, why there were always so many volunteers to take scout duty. That was, at least, what Scal told himself.

  Deslan slipped away, her work for the night done. Went to find the others from her village, most likely—she was not so much older than them, and she was not a mother, but she acted as though she were theirs. They let her, with gentle teases and fond head shakes. There was a deeper bond among all of them than Scal could understand.

  “We should move camp at moon-set,” Edro announced, squinting up through the overlapping tree branches. “We’ve stayed here long enough. That’s the third group we’ve caught from here. If anyone realizes how many preachers have gone missing on this stretch of road, they’ll start using a different road—or worse, come looking for what’s been disappearing their friends.”

  Vatri nodded, and then she looked to Scal. There was still that, at least. You’re not alone, she had told him, far away in the waving-grass Plains. We’re together in this. Scal looked only to her, and not to Edro, when he said, “We should move.” Edro was right. They had been still too long.

  Vatri nodded again, and smiled, and walked away. Edro smiled, too, and followed her.

  Scal turned instead to face the camp. Almost five dozen tents, scattered among the snow and the trees, and they held all those who, in all the villages Scal and Vatri and their first followers had passed through, had heard Vatri’s heartful prayers. Had seen Scal with the ice-and-fire-sword held tight in his hands, and cheered, “Nightbreaker! Nightbreaker!” All those who had dug through cellars and barns for anything sharp or heavy to use as a weapon, had left behind their homes and their families to do what little they could in helping to end the Long Night. They all bowed to Vatri, pressing their fists to their brows, called her merrena, the highest title of honor given to any priestess. For Scal, they murmured when he passed, and he had not ever tried to hear the words they said.

  “We’ll need as many as we can get,” Vatri had told him as they stared down at the map one of the villagers had given her, as though giving it into her hands was the greatest honor. It had been before Edro, when Vatri and Scal alone would look at the map, when Vatri alone would mutter plans and options and finally decisions. “Not knowing what the Fallen are up to, we’ll need to be prepared for anything when they do make their strike, and the two of us alone can’t possibly cover everything. And until we know what they’re doing,” and she had smiled at him, with no humor in her eyes, “we’ll continue making it harder for them to have a plan.” She never said the word “kill,” never talked of murder. Spoke only of balance, and how to return it to the world.

  Soft unspoken truths made the doing easier. Scal was the will of the Parents, Vatri had made him so, and he would do what they asked of him. He was only what he had been made. What he had let himself become. Nightbreaker.

  Others had come—those who followed them from the villages, and those, too, who heard whispered tales and went stumbling through the wilderness until Scal’s scouts found them, brought them to kneel before himself and Vatri. And they always stared, the new ones, stared at Vatri like a walking goddess, her deep-carved scars like a badge of the Parents’ attention. Stared at Scal like a man stepped from legend, like the hero of a tale they had been told since childhood. Stared at him like they already knew he would save them all.

  Scal liked it better when they murmured. Liked it better still when he could walk among the trees, his hands hanging empty at his sides, and not think of worshiping eyes or preachers’ screams or the word “Nightbreaker” thrumming through his bones.

  Scal went to his tent, to avoid the eyes, to avoid the murmurs. It was tall and small, only enough room to lie curled on his side. He could not count how many had offered him a bigger tent. Each time he refused, it put a glow in their eyes he did not intend. Once, when he had not closed his ears fast enough to the murmurs, he had heard, “. . . thinks he’s not any better than us,” and it had been said in a wondering tone.

  There was a brass bowl at the center of his tent, and a small fire burning in it. It was not an everflame, for it was doused each time they moved camp, but it was close enough to one. Close enough to be comfort. Scal knelt before it, one hand wrapping around the two pendants, the fire and the ice.

  The fire is always talking, Vatri had said, and she always told him to see its words. Told him, lately, with pride, to see how Edro stared deeply into the flames and proclaimed how he had seen their victory, had seen the sun rising once more and the Twins forever banished.

  Scal stared at the flames, but he did not see anything. Only flames reaching fingerlike to brush the stars, grasping, and closing on nothing.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The cellar was starting to reek bad as a place Rora’d found in the Canals once, a place where a few different streams met and swirled and didn’t have anywhere to go. Wouldn’t’ve mattered most of the time, there were plenty of places like it all through the Canals, only in this specific place, one of the streams happened to be the one that, farther back, Whitedog Pack used for dumping corpses of the other packs. The place’d been close to clogged up with bodies when Rora’d found it, bloated and rotting and reeking, and she’d just stood staring in horror till vomit had burst out of her, and then she’d gone running far away and not ever gone anywhere near the place again.

  The cellar wasn’t quite so bad, but the smells of refuse were getting stronger every day. Rora knew a good portion of that was from her, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. The part that wasn’t her was from too many bodies stuffed into a place that was made to store things instead of people, and adding all the pups into the reeking mix didn’t do a thing to help.

  The pups were doing their best to be quiet, and the biggers were doing their best to hush the pups when they got too loud, but the problem was none of ’em were scared anymore. They’d been sent down to the cellar for safety close to a dozen times by now, and every time that nothing bad happened during the fighting up above, they got less scared and more stupid. They’d started a new game the last time, and kept it going this time: seeing how big a thing they could throw at Rora before she got angry and snapped at them. They were up to splinters from a broken old barrel, and they had damned good aim—her face was peppered with little cuts and pokes, but she’d promised herself she wouldn’t let them get to her this time. She didn’t want to let them win, even for a thing that didn’t matter. With everything that’d been taken from her, losing anything more was like . . . well, was like getting a shower of stones and splinters chucked at you.

  They were little terrors, all the pups, and Rora would’ve swore she hadn’t been anywhere near so foolish and awful when she’d been that young. But there wasn’t much for them to do, and even Rora—grown as she was, even if she didn’t have the height to show it—was getting plenty bored. Still, she wasn’t ever bored or stupid enough to annoy the witches, which put the pups pretty high on the ladder of stupidity.

  The witches couldn’t do much, sealed up behind their not-wa
ll, and they were mostly well behaved and careful when the pups were around . . . but Rora’d seen them when they weren’t so well behaved, when they couldn’t be careful. She’d seen fire race along the ground, cracks walk up the walls and make showers of stone-dust, seen one witch just scream and scream until he threw up blood, and seen others fight each other like they were cornered animals, tearing and biting and wide-eyed with desperate fear.

  But the pups hadn’t seen any of that, didn’t know how much they were risking just by making funny faces at the witches through the solid air, and they sure as shit didn’t listen to Rora when she told ’em to stop it.

  A piece of wood about the size of her palm thunked against Rora’s shoulder, and she ground her teeth together, ignoring the pups’ giggles.

  The ceiling opened up on firelight and stars, and the pups fled for fresh air like they’d been kicked. Used to be, Rora’d tried to follow them, just a stupid instinct to stick with pack, but the shame of clanking chains and smirks had taught her quick enough to stay put.

  Her belly was knotted up with nerves—the last time they’d brought down a new witch, her brother’d looked half dead with tired, and then after the not-wall had fallen down and Anddyr had attacked him, Aro’d gone to looking most of the rest of the way dead. Rora hadn’t had the time or the brain to do anything besides shout his name after him as the fists helped him up the ladder, and if he’d heard, he hadn’t said anything back.

  They hadn’t said a word to each other since they’d got to this damned place.