The Shattered Sun

by Rachel Dunne

  The trees were right. He was scared.

  Anddyr took a deep breath. Waiting wouldn’t make it any easier. He closed his eyes, blocking out Sooty’s concerned face, and he thought of Find me . . .

  The skytower builds its structure around him, intangible and solid. Fratarro kneels there, and Anddyr can’t tell whose eyes stare up at him—the boy’s or the god’s.

  Fratarro raises both hands, and a bundle sits in his palms, wrapped in layers of cloth, knotted tight. Anddyr feels its call even from where he stands across the skytower room. It’s like a pulse, like a living thing with wants and needs, like a heart torn free and proffered.

  Anddyr knows, now, how this place works. It’s impossible, but it is. He walks across the room though he doesn’t have legs, kneels before Fratarro, and reaches with hands that don’t exist. He wraps his palms over the boy-god’s, and Fratarro smiles a sad, terrible smile, and says nothing.

  In the cave, Anddyr opened his eyes and stared down at the thing in his hands. As impossible as Sooty, but it was there nonetheless. Even wrapped up, he knew it for what it was, felt its summons like a pulse. Find me. Find me.

  The last time he had held the seekstone linked to Etarro-who-was-Fratarro, it had burned through his mind—burned like fire, and it might have killed him if Joros hadn’t knocked it from his hand. There was no one here now to save him. If the fire from the god’s mind burned through his own, he would simply die, alone and unmourned.

  Sooty stared at him with a hint of reproach in her button eyes—she’d always been so calm and self-assured. He envied her that.

  “If it kills me,” he said to her, reasonably, “then what will happen to you?”

  From outside his shelter, the trees hissed, Coward, coward, coward . . .

  Anddyr put his face in his hands. “I’m not!” he said into his palms. But they were all judging him now, Sooty and the trees and the bundle waiting in his lap. Still aloud, but only to himself, Anddyr said, “This is what I meant to do . . . I wouldn’t have taken it if I didn’t mean to use it. I will use it.” He straightened his back, and called to the trees, “I will! You’ll see.” Sooty still stared at him, though, and so he amended, “Just not yet. I’m not ready yet.”

  Before he left his shelter, he ripped one sleeve off his robe and draped it over his head to tie beneath his chin, making sure the sleeve wrapped snugly over his ears. It did block out some of the whispering when he started walking again—not all of it, but enough that what he could hear, he could pretend was the murmur of his heartbeat in his ears.

  “I will,” he muttered out loud. “When I’m ready.”

  And so he continued walking, not entirely sure what direction he was going. It didn’t matter—he needed to go the direction he hadn’t learned yet. Once he was ready, he could fix his feet.

  After a time, Anddyr pawed the sleeve from around his head, staring down at it, perplexed. His madness—leftover strains of the skura that had run rampant through his system—manifested in such strange ways. He usually had a hard time remembering, once he was clearheaded, why in the world he’d done something while mad. It felt, lately, like it was getting worse—the madness more mild overall, but deeper. More insidious.

  He stuffed the sleeve into a pocket and paused, his fingers brushing against a different lump of fabric. The seekstone. The fear of taking it out, of trying to use it . . . that he could remember. It had seemed such a good idea when he’d taken it . . .

  The ground and the trees sloped away suddenly, a rough incline down into a pocket of a valley where a perfect, idyllic village sat, rooftops lit by moonlight. Anddyr rocked to a halt at the edge of the basin, frozen by indecision. It had been so long since he’d been around other people, real people. It had been years since he’d been a free man, out among other free men, all doing as they pleased with no concern of losing control and sending a bolt of flame streaking out to kill anyone nearby. It would be so nice to feel normal again . . . but he wasn’t normal. The fact he’d thought it necessary to tie breeches around his head more than proved that.

  Still. He hadn’t brought any food, or any water. He would need both, sooner or later. A village of any size should have some of both to spare.

  Yes. He, a weary traveler, would go into the village and barter for supplies, and make small talk with people who didn’t know what he was, and when he was done he would leave. Nothing harmed, nothing broken.

  Anddyr started down the incline.

  It was steeper than he expected at points, knocking him down to his rear to avoid pitching onto his head, and forcing him to scuttle down like a crab. Halfway down the incline he noticed the switchback trail cutting down into the valley. He likely could have found its head easily from up on the ridge, but now it was far enough away from him that he’d need to spend just as much time walking sideways to reach it as he would slipping down to the valley floor. It might save him a broken neck, though, which—as a root grabbed his foot and sent him stumbling a few terrifying, headlong lengths down the incline—was rather appealing.

  He kept going down. He was almost to the valley anyway.

  Anddyr half expected there would be villagers waiting for him—waiting to laugh in the face of the man who’d come flailing down into their village—but there wasn’t anyone. Maybe they were all sleeping—he had no idea what time it was—did time mean anything anymore? Regardless, he managed to walk firm-footed into the village proper with what little dignity he had.

  He expected someone to stop him, with a greeting or a rebuke or a curious gaze, but no one did. No doors opened, no windows twitched, no feet sounded upon the ground.

  “—mentioned another village,” came a soft voice from what Anddyr guessed to be the center of the town. “To the east by a day or so. He said there were enough people willing to hear his words that it may be worth our visiting.”

  Anddyr’s steps slowed, and he moved deeper into the shadows against the houses as he continued forward. He couldn’t name why, but it all felt wrong . . .

  He came to the edge of a house, which let him peer into the village’s small square. And then Anddyr froze.

  Four people stood at the center of the village, and though they might have otherwise been unremarkable-looking people, they were remarkable in that they stood as the rest of the village, a few dozen people, lay prone along the ground before them. Even in the moonlight, Anddyr knew the look of black robes. Even in the moonlight, Anddyr knew the look of blood.

  “How many?” another of the four asked.

  “No more than this. But you know any are a help.”

  “A good hunter doesn’t take only the easy prey.”

  “A good hunter must eat, like anyone. And if the choice is between a lean rabbit and starvation, even the best hunter will choose the rabbit.”

  Anddyr slowly, carefully moved back away from the square. A group of preachers, and they had slaughtered a village, and they spoke of the next one. He might have tripped over his own heart, for as deeply as it had sunk.

  The need to flee burned in him, and as soon as he was out of sight of the square, he nearly did take off at a desperate sprint. But he stopped himself—if he went back the way he had come, even if he took the switchback trail up the incline, surely they would see him. It was a wonder that his near fall down the hill hadn’t gotten their attention, though judging by the fresh sheen of blood on cobblestones, they’d been rather occupied until very recently. From up on the ridge, he’d noticed that the village sat in a little bowl, and though the far incline had looked slighter, there was still no easy way to leave the place unseen. And Anddyr very, very badly wanted not to be seen.

  “We are safe,” Anddyr whispered to himself, squeezing his eyes shut, willing the words to be true. “We are secure.” He took a deep breath, which he could convince himself didn’t tremor at all. “We are strong.” He opened his eyes, and let the breath out, and reached for the door handle of the closest house. It was unlocked. Anddyr gave thanks to his god as he slipped i
nto the house, and shut the door behind him.

  The next stretch of time passed in a blur. Though Anddyr had felt at his sanest when he’d entered the village, his time in the cellar had taught him that stress could trigger the madness in his blood. He huddled in a swirling hell, hoping that the screaming was only in his head and not coming out of his mouth. Somewhere within the madness, a realization struck him, and so when he returned to himself—minutes or hours later, impossible to tell—he was cradling the bundle that held the seekstone, and the realization still burned sharply in his mind.

  He checked, first, to make sure the group of Fallen were gone. The village held only the dead, including one black-robed preacher among the neatly arranged corpses. Anddyr couldn’t look at any of them for too long. He returned to his commandeered house, arms still wrapped tightly around his bundle, and wondered idly which bodies this house had belonged to. It didn’t matter; with a little searching, he found the sharpest knife they’d owned.

  He laid the bundle out on their roughhewn table, carefully unwrapped the layers from around the seekstone heart until the blue stone was allowed to breathe once more, sitting like a blue star in an endless black sky.

  It was simple, really. He needed to find Etarro-who-was-Fratarro, and for that he needed to use the seekstone. But when he’d touched it, it had burned his eyes and mind quicker than he could parse any useful information. That was the part he’d been balking at: the pain. But he’d realized that the mind-burning was nothing to fear—his mind was already a burned and blackened husk. Damage to his mind was something he could handle. That left only his eyes to worry about . . . and seeing the preachers, with their eyeless faces, had given him the key.

  He’d seen the ritual hundreds of times inside Raturo. He knew precisely what to do. The knife wasn’t a spine of ice taken from the Icefall within the mountain’s depths, but it would do.

  “Guide me,” he whispered. The words didn’t matter; only the intent. “You keep asking me to find you. Let me.” He raised the knife and looked past its sharp, shimmering tip. He saw its descent as though the world had slowed around it—without really seeing it grow closer, larger, sharper.

  If the petitioner was faithful enough, and opened their heart to the judgment of the Twins, the sacrifice of one’s eyes would give a blessing from the gods. No one had ever talked about it openly, but everyone knew the blessing gave them a different kind of sight. To see without seeing, to see what no one else could . . . that was what he needed.

  An impulsive, instinctive blink fluttered his eyelashes against the knife’s tip. Its point loomed before him, filling his vision, blurring as he still looked past it. Lower still—

  Pain blossomed under the knife’s gentle kiss, and Anddyr could not help but see. There was a wet pop, and a flood of fluid down his cheek, and his other eye watched the knife leave—tried to watch it with both eyes, and the shifting of muscles beneath the damaged one sent sharp, stabbing tendrils of pain throughout his body.

  There was pain, but Anddyr knew pain. The pain didn’t scare him.

  He watched his hand raise the knife again. He could not help but see, and he could not stop what he had started. He had to find me . . .

  It hurt less, the second time. Perhaps it was only the blessing of not having to see, from the corner of his other eye, the knife as it went in. He only felt it, sharp edges leaving behind clean and perfect destruction. Only heard the knife as his fingers finally released it and it clattered to the floor.

  The darkness he found himself in was touched with red, like Sororra’s Eyes that had hung watching in the night sky before she had been freed, red bursts of pain and fear and anguish. Anddyr waited, whispering, “Please,” and “I am safe. I am strong,” and still there was only the red-tinged darkness.

  The bottom fell out of Anddyr’s stomach, and the world rushed around him, and he felt like vomiting.

  Pain had driven away any slow-lingering madness, leaving him feeling more clearheaded than he had in a very long time—leaving him to realize just how much of an utter idiot he was. Why, why had he thought the Twins would give him anything? He’d never been one of their followers, he didn’t want to help them beyond what it took to help trapped Etarro. Of course they wouldn’t grant him their blessing, and he’d been a fool to think they would—

  The darkness changed.

  Oh, it was still black, but now there were shades of black coming slowly into focus—a lighter black filling the walls of the house that surrounded him, a darker black for the knife upon the table. But the world, all the world that he could see again, was built from shifting smoke.

  The seekstone flickered with dull blue lights, like candleflames glimpsed and gone through a swirling mist. When Anddyr reached for it, tentatively, he stopped and screamed, terrified until he realized the shifting blue smoke was what made up his hand. His heartbeat thrummed as he stretched out his arm, turned it this way and that, raised the other one as well, and watched the blue smoke swirl through him.

  And then, before he had time to think better of it, because that had worked out fine already, Anddyr reached out to grab the blue of the seekstone with the blue of his hand.

  It was instant, and agonizing.

  Fire sparked behind his missing eyes and, when he didn’t let go of the seekstone, spread to fill his skull. It raged and flared, and the way it flickered in his mind promised, Let go, or it will be worse. Anddyr clenched his teeth around his spiraling screams, and clenched his hand around the seekstone. He knew pain; the pain didn’t scare him.

  The smoke in his eyes swirled furiously, growling faces emerging and retreating, gaping maws that rushed toward him and dissolved. And the house around him disappeared, replaced by gentle hills that nearly melded with the sky, the swirling line between the heavens and the earth even further blurred. In the distance, piercing the skyline, were the towers and walls of a city. Blue-smoke people dotted his sight, wreathed in black flame, their forms flickering and blazing like the fire in his mind. And ahead was a shining beacon, a form made of light itself, and she smiled as she beckoned to him. Her face was indistinct, too bright to make out features, but he knew her nonetheless: Sororra.

  And though his mind still burned, though the fire of it threatened to burst through his skull and pour from his mouth and nose and ears, through the searing pain, he still felt a tug. A beckoning, like Sororra’s outstretched hand. He could find them, a map scrawled behind his eyes, drawn in arrow-straight lines of fire, and the screaming in his mind sounded almost like, Find me . . .

  Anddyr’s fingers loosened, and the seekstone fell from his hand, and he fell to the ground beside it. There was darkness, and it was absolute.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “This is the place.”

  Keiro lifted his head slowly, exhaustion running through his veins. But he fixed his eyes on the preacher who had spoken, one of the informal scouts Sororra had requested. The woman was tall, and eyeless, and one of the most obstinately pious people Keiro had ever met. Sororra loved her. No—Sororra was thrilled by her. With Sororra, the distinction was important.

  Keiro looked around slowly. The place Derra had led him was flat and featureless, likely some farmer’s field at one point or another. He’d preferred the gentle, sprawling hills they’d passed through a few days ago—they’d reminded him of the hills near the Plains, where he’d been happy, before everything had changed.

  Derra had led him ahead of their group, claiming to have found a place that met Sororra’s exacting specifications. Looking around slowly—feeling almost too tired even to turn his head—Keiro suspected that this was, indeed, the place.

  Secluded, but near enough to a number of surrounding towns or villages—they’d passed through two within the hour, and Derra promised there were others within the same distance. Featureless, and untouched by humans, and enough space for growth. Most importantly, within a day’s walk of Mercetta, the capital city of Fiatera.

  “Go,” he said to Derra. “B
ring them all here.”

  “This is the place, isn’t it?” she asked excitedly. “It seems perfect, just the kind of place they—”

  “Derra,” he interrupted. “Go.”

  Still she hesitated. “You’re . . . you’re not coming back to tell them yourself?”

  Keiro turned to look at her, his one remaining eye to both her missing ones, but she knew, or felt, or saw his look. She quailed before it. With her missing eyes, she had seen what happened to those who opposed him. Derra left, picking her way back toward the road, until the darkness hid her from his sight.

  There was a mask he wore, shaped by all the things he needed to be. He allowed himself to take it off only when he was alone, only when there was no one to see him without his armor. He could not let anyone think of him as weak. As Derra walked away, Keiro let his mask fall, and the exhaustion hit him the same way it always did. He could keep his back straight and his head high for as long as he needed to, but as soon as he allowed himself a reprieve, the weight of it all came near to crushing him.

  Keiro sat down on the ground. The grass was short, but soft, and it tickled at his elbows. He wanted so badly to sleep, but that would be dangerous—though it would be some time before Derra returned with the others, there was no telling how long, and no guarantee he would wake in enough time. And if they found him sleeping . . .

  Keiro shook his head, half in denial and half to wake himself up.

  “You can sleep,” a soft voice said behind him. Keiro did not need to turn—that was a voice he would know anywhere. Cazi, who was always there, even if he was not always seen. The Starborn slunk to Keiro’s side and lay at his side, tail curling around Keiro in comfort or protection. “I will watch.”