The Shattered Sun

by Rachel Dunne

  Vatri’s fingers curled tight around Scal’s arm. Squeezed. Released. And she stepped back.

  Scal drew his sword, fire-bright, and it lit the village around him. Made timber-sided houses stand bright and stark, the shadow of the village’s well stretching through the center of the road until it joined the darkness once more.

  “We bring peace,” Edro called out. “We bring the Parents’ hope, and the Parents’ flame. We bring an end to the Long Night. If you are there, if you have ears and hearts to hear, we only wish to speak with you.”

  Silence was his answer, for a very long time. Long enough that the group gathered behind Scal grew restless, nervous, twitchy. Clenching fingers. Glances over shoulders.

  And, finally, a door opened. A squinting man stepped out into the light. Face slack in the way of a man who had had meat on his bones that had faded quickly, and a jacket that hung off his frame. He stared at them, two steps from his doorway, with his hands deep into his pockets. Said, “We’ll thank you to be on your way.”

  It was not what Scal had expected. Nor Vatri—she stepped forward, the hard lines of her face drawn tight, a frown deeply in place. “I know these are trying times, and strangers are a frightening thing, but—”

  The man cut her words with a sharp chop of his hand. “Where was your kind when the sun fell? There’s a priest, used to spend his weeks between all the villages in the area, came here every three or four. We haven’t seen him since the Night begun, and Horem down Graston way said he saw the priest fleeing south with his tail tucked between his legs.”

  “These are trying times,” Vatri said again. “It can be hard to keep the faith in the face of—”

  “And Betha, she was burned up almost as bad as you, everyone always said she had the Parents’ favor. She died three days after the sun did. Just wasted away.”

  Vatri shifted her weight to one foot. To the other. Her hands drew shapes at her sides, as though plotting a course, as though trying to cast a witch’s spell. “I can speak only for myself and my companions, but I can assure you—”

  “Old Nelis watched our everflame all his life,” the man interrupted again, and Scal could feel the frustration begin to boil off of Vatri, “took the duty from his grandda when he passed, and Nelis tended it well. He was staring at it, he’d just fed it fresh herbs along with his prayers. He was staring right at it when it died. Smothered itself with no reason at all.”

  Heatedly, Vatri said, “Listen—”

  “No, you listen. We’ve been good and faithful folk all our lives. Kept our everflame burning, kept our prayers, kept to the old traditions as good folk should. We kept our faith bright even after the sun fell, because we thought the Parents would make things right again, that they’d protect us same way they always have. But they haven’t. They’ve forgotten about us, or didn’t care in the first place. Either way, we’re left on our own, and if that’s the way it’s to be, then that’s the way it’s to be. And so I say again: we’ll thank you to be on your way.”

  If Vatri had listened to half his words, it did not show. Her words came from her in a rush, as though she hoped to get out as many as possible before she was interrupted once more. “Everything is harder these days, and faith most of all. I know that well. I thought the Parents would stop the Twins before they rose, thought they would save us all.” She faltered slightly. Did not seem to have expected to be allowed to go on for so long, and longer still. But the man stared silent at her, his head cocked and squinting still. “I’ve had to look deep within myself for an answer to why they would let this happen, and I know now that it’s because we were given choice and agency and the will to be whatever we wished. The same thing that Sororra thinks makes us weak is what the Parents so cherish. They’re giving us the chance to choose the world we wish to live in, and we must all make that choice for ourselves. To live or to die is not a choice that can be made for us. We must fight for our world, and for our lives. The Parents cannot fight this fight for us, or it is no choice at all.”

  The man stared at her, and chewed a corner of his lip. Seemed to consider her words, to give them weight against the fear and the anger in his heart. He said, “When I was a boy, my da taught me to swim by tossing me into the river. I learned it well enough. He taught my brother the same way, and my brother didn’t learn so well. He drowned. Da couldn’t understand it. It was the same way his da had taught him, and his da before him, and all the way back to the beginning. My brother should’ve swum beside me, but they burned him instead. My next brother, Da tossed him into the river as well, and he learned to swim fine enough, and Da spent no more time thinking on his drowned boy. When I was young, it seemed the cruelest thing. Still does. I taught my boy to swim a kinder way.”

  Vatri stared at him. Wordless, unsure.

  “When I was a boy,” the man went on, “I thought my da was a god. But it’s harder to love a god once you’ve started thinking of them as cruel. My boy thinks I’m a god, too, but he’ll not think of me as a cruel one.”

  Edro called out, “Do you think it a kindness that the Twins pulled down the sun?”

  “It’s a fact, nothing more. They stole the sun. The Parents burned them and knocked them from the sky. These are just things that happened.”

  “Just a thing,” Vatri spluttered, “that happened?” She stepped forward, two steps in front of Scal, and her fists shook at her sides. “You speak of condemning the world—of condemning your boy—as though it were a spot of bad weather.”

  “Hardly condemned, are we?” The man raised one hand from his pocket, waved it to the houses, the forest, the star-dotted sky. “It’s been months and we’re all still alive. Or most of us, anyway. If the Twins wanted us all to die, they’ve done a poor job of it. And the Fallen have done more for us so far than your kind have.”

  Edro took a long stride to Vatri’s side. “You’ve had preachers come through?”

  “We have. And they were a kinder, more sensible lot than you.”

  “When were they here? Where did they go?”

  The man eyed Edro. Put his hand back into his pocket. “I’ll not be telling you that, I don’t think. Now I’ll ask you a third time, and it’ll be the last. Be on your way.”

  Edro put his hand to his sword’s hilt. Scal saw it, and the man saw it, and the man’s eyes narrowed. His hand moved, faintly, in his pocket.

  Scal grabbed Edro’s arm to pull him roughly back. “We will go,” Scal said. To the man, to Edro, to them all. The rest of their group turned back willingly enough. Vatri went with anger and confusion warring across her face. Scal did not release Edro’s arm, dragged the man with him. Walked backward, watching the man who watched them go.

  The village was silent, and still.

  They went a long way before they made camp. Made their own twisting path through the trees, and even Vatri was quiet, even Edro. Scal drew wide circles around the group, checking the scouts, checking their trail, standing still in the starlight to listen for sounds of following.

  They made camp, and they made a meal of hard bread and dry meat, and around a fire sheltered by the tight ring of their bodies, Edro was the first to speak. “They’ll still be nearby. We should hunt them down.”

  “The preachers?” Deslan asked. Her voice as hard and as dry as the food. “Or the villagers?”

  “The preachers, of course. If they’re so fresh in that fool’s mind, they can’t have passed through so long ago. And since they haven’t been to any of the villages we’ve been to, there are only a few places they could have gone. We should be able to find them easy enough, and keep them from poisoning any other villages. They’ll—”

  “Pardon, masters,” a voice interrupted. One of the scouts, Scal saw when he turned. “Seems we have a follower.” She held a boy by the arm, a boy who looked sheepish and scared and determined.

  The boy puffed out his chest and stepped forward, farther into the firelight. “The preachers were going on to Beston,” he said, the words wavering. The breath
it took to say the words snuffed his confidence. “Can I . . . can I stay with you?”

  Room was made around the fire, and the boy sat beside Deslan, who gently, calmly stroked his hair as he ate. She had a maternal streak, though she laughed whenever someone pointed it out, and said she could not stand children.

  Edro, too, proved good with the boy, and they slowly worked the story from him.

  Seven preachers had come to the village, and found the usual mistrust at first. But they found fear, too, and the Fallen had always known how to speak to fear. The village had listened. Listened to assertions of the Twins’ mercy, that one need only believe to be saved when their judgment came. Listened to the gentle assurance that, though the Twins had taken the sun, they would not allow the world to die. It was not what they wanted. Only those who did not pass their judgment need die. Listened to the tale of how King Cordano had been pulled down from his throne, not by the Fallen but by the citizens of Mercetta, a seething mob. (“That can’t be true,” Vatri whispered, but there was no certainty in her voice.) Listened, to their vision of the world made dark, of the world made fair. Listened and, for many, began to believe. Belief made in fear was no less strong.

  But not all came to believe. After five days of preaching, still some held their faith to the Parents, held their hope that the sun would return, that all would be made as it had been.

  And so the preachers had left. And life had gone on in the village. And, slowly, the village had begun to die.

  It began with crops and wildlife—apples withering, grains spoiling, rabbits dead by no hand, piles of birds fallen from the sky. And then it was the people. No rhyme to it, no reason. An old woman who had gone to sleep and not woken, whose faith in the Parents had never wavered. A young man who had been among the first to embrace the preachers, whose heart had burst in his chest as he stood talking in the village square. A child who had begun coughing blood and coughed himself to a grave.

  And the only thing they could think was that it was punishment for not listening to the truth, when they had been given the chance. Only some had refused the way of the Long Night, but all would suffer for their refusal. A single rotting apple to spoil the bushel. The world made fair.

  “They pray,” the boy said, soft, staring into the fire. “Near every hour, they gather and they pray to the Twins, and they pray for the preachers to come back and save them. My mum and my da, they go and pray, too, but it’s only because they’re scared for me. But I’m not scared.” His eyes lifted. Found Scal among the dancing shadows. “I had a dream about you, before you came. I saw your sword made out of fire, and how you lit up the night like the sun come back. And then you did come.”

  Around the fire and from the shadows the murmur came: “Nightbreaker.” A dozen mouths, a dozen voices. Scal, silent, looked from the boy to the fire. Could not hold the weight of his gaze.

  Vatri leaned forward, and the flames danced reflected in her eyes. She asked the boy, “Will you lead us to Beston?”

  They could not see Beston through the trees, but the boy swore the village was there. Half a mile farther down the road, no more, and the village would spread around the road, sprawling and stretching and fading until the road carried on lonely through the trees once more. Beston would be no different from all the villages scattered through this forest.

  Scal stood staring down the road, and he did not feel as though what he would find at the end of it would be a normal village.

  He said nothing. Edro had announced his plan, and Vatri’s eyes had burned, and he knew that neither would be swayed. There was little point in arguing. Not when all he had to argue was a growling pit in his stomach, and a bee-sting prickle at the base of his neck.

  So he waited as Edro murmured orders. Vatri and a handful of others staying with the boy. Deslan and the archers to scatter through the trees. Edro would lead a group of their fighters through the trees, to approach the town from the side, unseen. Scal would lead the rest down the road, a direct approach, a naked attack, a march of death. And Scal said nothing, though unease chewed him like a dog.

  With all the planning done, there was nothing else to do. Nothing left but to begin.

  Scal walked down the lonely road, his followers at his back with their weapons held in steady hands. They were not nervous, not anymore. Scal had given them the real weapons of dead preachers, and he had taught them as best he could to use them. Vatri had shown them the meaning of justice. They did not need to fear what they knew how to fight.

  Scal held his sword in his left hand, coated in shards of ice. No fire to give them away. Only the cold and hollow ice, and the pit of his stomach opening wider with each step. Wrong, his footsteps whispered. Wrong. Wrong. He walked on.

  The village, when they came to it, was silent and still.

  Twoscore houses, old and sturdy-built. Clustered at the edges of the road, ringing the village square, and growing sparser back from the road, like fading shadows. A rough stage was built in the village square, at the center of the houses, painted an uneven brown. Twoscore empty houses. And twice as many, or more, people laid out neatly before the stage.

  Even rows of them, lying like game pieces in a tray. Arms and shoulders and hips and legs pressed to the ones beside them, hands folded neatly on chests. They lay in curving rows, arches that grew broader, like the rise of the moon over a hill. Like the shades of color in a sunrise.

  Scal’s footsteps echoed loud as he drew slowly closer. He did not want to, the wrongness pounding in his stomach and his ears, but he had to. Drew even with the farthest row, where he could see they all stared unblinking up into the sky, all their mouths hanging slightly open. And beneath, a second smile, longer and wider and sharper: the mark of a knife, drawn deeply across each throat.

  He looked over the spread of bodies in their neat arches, to the stage. Painted an uneven brown, the center of it deeply colored while the sides looked to be raw wood.

  Scal closed his eyes. Wrong. Wrong. He did not know if any of the others had followed him into the village, but he said, “Bring Vatri.” In the silence, someone would hear, someone would go running, eager to be away from this place. He added, “Do not bring the boy.”

  The others came slowly from the trees. Edro and his group. Deslan and the archers. Those Scal had led. They stared, and the village was silent, and still.

  Scal, alone, walked slowly through the bodies. His sword sheathed over his shoulder once more, his steps careful around stretching legs and tilted heads and circles of dry and brown blood that had stained the village square. He walked among the men and the women and the children, all with their staring eyes and their two smiles. Among them, at the center of the first arch, directly before the stage, he found a dead preacher. Black-robed, and eyeless, with two thumbprints of blood pressed beneath his empty eyes.

  Scal pressed his hand to the stage. The wood had been cut recently, and quickly, the edges rough and uneven. At the center of the stage, where the wood was stained darkest, his hand came away sticky. In the light of the stars, the souls of all the watching dead, his fingers looked black.

  He heard Vatri’s choked prayers long before he could turn to face her. “Why have they done this?” she said, her faint words loud in the night. It was not a question any of them had an answer for. Not a question she expected to be answered. “Why did this happen?”

  “We should burn their bodies,” Scal said. It seemed the right thing to do. Seemed like the thing they would have wanted, in a world that had not gone wrong. Good and faithful folk.

  No one else spoke, and so it was done. They moved in pairs, carrying the bodies at ankles and at shoulders, making a careful and gentle pile upon the bloody stage. Still, it was like stacking cordwood. Ugly, and unkind. But there was nothing else better for them that could be done. Not now.

  There’s always hope, Vatri had said, in a time when her face had not been the mask it was so often now. When fires had not burned so brightly in her eyes. There has to be.

&nb
sp; When all the bodies had been moved and lay in new neat rows atop the stage and atop each other, Scal drew his sword. The right hand this time, so the flames lit the night. Making timber-sided houses stand bright and stark, their shadows stretching far and far down the lonely road until they became darkness once more. Scal touched his sword to one of the stage’s supports, and he said, “Fire.” His name and his word and his will. The stage burned, and the blood that coated it, and the bodies that lined it.

  They all watched, silent as the night came brighter for the growing flames, as the village grew emptier. Its people gone now, truly gone.

  “Why did this happen?” Vatri asked again.

  Staring at the flames, Scal could see how it had happened. He had spent time with preachers; they were men and women like any others, who held their beliefs as tightly as any others. He had traveled, for a time, with a group of preachers, and had almost gone with them into their mountain. He knew the things they offered. Acceptance. Openness. Surety of purpose. All offered easily and without question, an offer made that expected nothing in return. Their certainty was powerful, and could be powerfully appealing.

  He could see how it had happened, and in the dancing flames the bodies seemed to move. The single black-robed preacher, his body at the base of the pile, seemed to rise from among the others. Limbs bending, pressing, standing amid the flames and the death, and he stared out at Scal. And the fire-cast shadows seemed to fill the town square around him. The shades of the villagers who had lain stretched out upon the ground rose, too, their eyes lit with fervor, mouths open with prayer. Around the black-robe standing upon the stage, other bodies took on the shapes of more black-robes, six more of them rising through the corpses, through the flames. Mouths open wide in prayer, in entreaty, in certainty. Two of them held the first, his palms and face turned up to the sky. Embers sparked in the sky like prayers. And the fire, like a slash of the knife, flared across his throat. A second smile opened beneath the first.