The Shattered Sun

by Rachel Dunne

  It was so very tempting . . . “You won’t know when they’re close any better than I will. I’m fine. I can manage. I’ll have to.” He could not let himself slip, not even for a moment.

  A rustling made Keiro twist, and another mravigi slunk forward through the grass—belly low to the ground, as though trying to move through the knee-high grass the same way they’d moved through grass that was taller than a man. Another followed, and more, and more—

  “We will watch,” one of them said. The pattern of the star-bright scales was unique to each mravigi, would identify who had spoken, but they blurred before Keiro’s eye, the stars on the ground and the stars in the sky. Twins’ bones, he was tired . . . “Sleep. We will wake you before they arrive.”

  It was easy to argue with Cazi—he was young, still, and his steadily growing vocabulary left him ill-equipped for any real persuasion. More importantly, he was only one, and loyal as optimistic as he was, Cazi couldn’t do everything. But all the Starborn—the hundreds of them that had lived beneath the ground and watched over the sleeping Twins, that had followed the Twins on their circuitous journey from the hills to Fiatera, that had remained unshakingly loyal—Keiro could trust them with his life. They were, perhaps, the only ones who knew the stakes as well as he.

  And he wanted so badly to sleep.

  When he leaned back, Cazi was there, as he always was. The Starborn curled around Keiro, a solid pillow of flesh and scale, and the soft glow of his star-speckled scales lulled Keiro quickly to sleep. He got so little of it that he could sleep almost anywhere.

  He dreamed of fire, and of Sororra’s eyes.

  Entirely too soon, Cazi woke him. “Be here soon,” he said, and Keiro sat up, back sore, head sore, heart sore. He checked the position of the stars—it had been little more than two hours since Derra had left. They hadn’t gone so far ahead of the group, and that likely meant they’d stopped in one or more of the villages. That very possibility was why Keiro had chosen to wait.

  Keiro stood, twisting his back to feel his spine pop, stretching his arms. He felt more tired on waking than he had when he’d fallen asleep, but that was nothing new. Whatever sleep he did get was fitful, exhausting, plagued by dreams—nightmares, he supposed. Could it be called a nightmare when the night never ended?

  The other mravigi were nowhere in sight, away in the grass or the fields or the trees, away wherever it was they spent their time. Perhaps they were still nearby—Keiro had long suspected they could dim their scattered glowing scales at will, but he’d never seen them do it, and if it was a trick Cazi had learned, he kept it a secret as well.

  A snout bumped against Keiro’s hand, and he looked down into Cazi’s red eyes. The ember-glow of them was always comforting. “Strong now,” Cazi said. Like a child, the mravigi was still learning to speak, but he didn’t need a large vocabulary to make himself understood. Keiro rubbed the small flap of Cazi’s ear in thanks, and turned to face the direction from which they would approach. He waited, back straight, single eye fearless. His mask was firmly back in place.

  And they came. Gods among men, and their loyal retinue.

  Sororra and Fratarro led their followers, as they always had. Though they wore the bodies of children, there could be no mistaking them: as they approached, Keiro could feel the waves of their power radiating off them, pounding like a second heartbeat. He wondered, sometimes, how anyone could be near them and not be driven mad. He wondered why anyone would want to stay.

  But those wonderings did not come often. Keiro had grown expert at quashing those sorts of thoughts.

  “A fine place you’ve found for us!” Sororra called out. She was practically overflowing with joy, almost childlike in her glee, but that was a dangerous comparison to make.

  Keiro bowed as they approached. “I thought it might suit your needs.”

  In the crowd of followers, Derra shifted but said nothing. Everyone knew she had found the place, but it had been Keiro who sent her looking, and so Keiro would get the acclaim. Such was the way of the world.

  There were some new faces in the crowd of followers. Not very many, not many at all, but some. They must have stopped in two of the villages, then.

  “Does it meet all your requirements?” he asked. As Sororra gazed happily around the chosen spot, Keiro tried to catch and hold Fratarro’s eyes. If the god wished to speak against this place, or have Keiro speak against it, as he had the last likely spot, their time was running quickly by. Finally Fratarro gave him a glance, and a small shake of his head in the negative. Keiro felt his shoulders relax in relief—this leg, finally done!—but the feeling was short-lived. The tension he’d been carrying between his shoulder blades spread to suffuse his entire body. Fratarro would not meet his eyes again to answer Keiro’s silent, desperate question: Are you really ready?

  “Yes,” Fratarro said, which made his sister crow with joy, “this will do.”

  They all cleared space for their gods, backing away until the Twins were little more than darker shadows in the night. Keiro couldn’t hear what Sororra murmured in her brother’s ear, and he couldn’t see clearly the line of Fratarro’s back to know if the words helped or hurt. But at length Sororra left his side, and came to join her followers, all watching with expectant eyes. She bounced on the balls of her feet, fidgeting with her hands before her. A feral grin covered her face, but didn’t quite touch her eyes.

  He can do it, Keiro thought fiercely, and he knew the thought was not entirely his own.

  Fratarro spread his arms, and the ground beneath Keiro’s feet began to tremble.

  For a long while, nothing happened save the trembling, the earth growling a low warning like a threatened dog. When things did begin to change, it was so imperceptibly at first that Keiro didn’t notice until he closed his eye against the pounding in his skull. When he opened it again, he startled to see that the ground before Fratarro had bulged upward, swollen, swelling, as though something were trying to break free—

  Sororra crowed again, her laughter ringing bright, and the boil surged higher. A hill, burst forth from the earth below, pulled from nothingness, shaped by Fratarro’s hands and his powers.

  Keiro’s heart swelled with pride as the hill grew taller, wider, a Mount Raturo in miniature and growing rapidly. He really could do it. Even with his useless hand, and the lacking powers it represented, Fratarro could still shape the earth to his will. He had made minor shapings well enough, but this, this showed his true power, the power he had wielded centuries ago when he had pulled a mountain from the earth, when he had made a paradise and a race to populate it, the power of creation itself. It proved to Keiro and Sororra and to Fratarro himself that he was not useless, that it hadn’t all been for nothing. It proved that there was hope, yet.

  The mound grew quickly to a hill, to a small mountain, and then its growth slowed, until it stopped entirely. It was a mountain, there was no denying that, but it was nothing close to the size of Mount Raturo, and wouldn’t even challenge some of the Highlands mountains. Keiro’s heart sank as he watched Fratarro lower his arms, shoulders curving forward, spent. In their whispered conversations, Sororra had declared their new home would be far bigger than Raturo, a lance to touch the moon itself, tall enough they could see beyond every edge of the world. Fratarro, with a tight smile, had always agreed. And they had both looked to Keiro: Sororra’s gaze daring him to challenge her, and Fratarro’s alternating between begging him not to and hoping that he would.

  Sororra was no longer crowing, and the smile had fallen from her face.

  Keiro turned quickly to face their followers and raised up his arms. “Look!” he cried. “Look at the glorious new home Fratarro has made for us. We will fill its halls—” Gods, he prayed Fratarro had shaped halls into the place, it would be his head if he lied to them now. “And people shall flock to beg entrance, and the citizens of Mercetta will quake with fear to see us looming over them.” The followers sent up a raucous cheer—they didn’t know the mountain was m
eant to have been bigger; didn’t have desperate hopes that were so easy to dash; didn’t need to wear a mask so crushingly tight.

  Sororra forced a smile at them all and then turned her back, striding quickly toward her brother.

  “Wait a moment,” Keiro told the followers when they’d stopped cheering. “We must make sure everything is in order.” He moved more slowly as he went to join the Twins where they stood together in the shadow of the new-made mountain.

  As he approached them, he could hear Sororra saying, “—did perfectly fine.” She had her arm around her brother’s hunched shoulders, the sides of their heads pressed together. Keiro felt an intruder, but why did they keep him if not for moments like this? “You pulled a mountain from the earth! You made us a new home.”

  “It’s not what we wanted,” Fratarro said. Keiro heard the incrimination in his voice; heard you where he said we. But as usual, any anger Fratarro felt was twisted to point only at himself. His good hand was wrapped around the bad one, squeezing and rubbing as though it had only gone numb and would work again if he could just get his blood flowing through it. “If it wasn’t for—”

  “You knew this was a possibility,” Keiro interrupted. He’d learned to redirect Fratarro before he could spiral down too deeply. “You knew it was a possibility, too, that nothing would happen. This is a success, by all counts.”

  Both Twins looked at him, and neither had anything friendly or particularly charitable in their eyes. But Fratarro sighed, and shrugged off his sister’s arm. “We’ll practice more,” he told Keiro. “It’s as you said. ‘Practice will make all the difference.’” He forced a smile at his sister, brittle and already half broken. “One day, I’ll be strong enough.”

  Fratarro turned to the mountain, and gestured expansively back toward their followers. The Fallen cheered and raced forward, eagerly going to the hidden entrances Fratarro showed them, learning the trick to opening the doors, exclaiming over the brilliance and the beauty of the home Fratarro had built them. It would be good for Fratarro, to receive praise unbidden. Keiro hoped it would take some of the brittleness from his smile.

  At his side, Sororra murmured, “Do you have your doubts still, Keiro?”

  “No,” Keiro said instantly. “Never.” Sororra would take her reassurances in any form, and didn’t mind the lie beneath the spoken words—she knew the lie was there, and he knew she knew, and that was the kind of power she valued most.

  “Good,” she said, smiling the same brittle smile. “Then let’s go see what my brother has made.”

  Part Three

  If a twin is born, it is surely curs’d, and should better be drowned than suffered to live.

  —from Parro Etani’s Thoughts of the Fall, written 4 Years After the Fall

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  It felt strange, to be going south once more. The last time Scal had gone south, it had changed him—he had gone seeking Vatri, to show him his place in the world, and she had done that and more. The last time he had gone south, he had not stopped regretting it.

  The forests that ringed the Highlands were not the snowy wastes of his early lives, but they had felt enough like it. Secluded, solitary, where a man could walk a straight line for hours and never see another living creature. In the forests, he was a man. Only a man.

  There is danger in being alone. Someone had said that to him, but he could not remember who.

  But now he had left behind the forests and the Highlands. The distant mountains were disappearing over his shoulder, seen only when the moon was bright enough as it rose. He could not see the forests at all, even when he turned and stared, even when the moon was full.

  There were flat roads, and there were fields, and there were people all around him, and it felt nothing like a home.

  He was their leader, he was the Nightbreaker, and so he walked at the front. Vatri was beside him, and Edro was beside her, always. Joros had taken to Scal’s other side, and pulled Aro with him, always. The others scattered behind them, loose ranks, a rough march. Deslan was wise enough to guard their rear, to send her people ahead and aside, scouts for any signs of danger.

  “A group this big,” Joros said, “traveling through the Long Night? We won’t find any trouble.”

  “Better to be prepared,” Edro said agreeably. Scal was not surprised that the two had found common ground to walk. He was surprised that Vatri allowed it. She glared, but said nothing to halt their talking.

  And all the while they moved south, along roads that could have held their number five times, and they saw no one.

  The first town they found sealed its doors to them. Even when Vatri nudged Scal to draw his blade, and its flame lit up the center of their town, they did not open their doors. He might have thought them dead, save for the moving and whispering they could hear within the houses. They slept in the town center, hoping to put its residents at ease, but when they woke they were still alone.

  They moved on, and Vatri was more upset than Scal had yet seen her.

  “The Fallen have no doubt passed through here,” Joros said grimly. “We saw it on our way north: small bands of them corrupting villages. We did what we could to put an end to it, but the longer the Long Night goes on, the more people start to question, and to doubt . . .”

  “They’re not only making them question,” Edro said. His face was stone-hard. “They’re killing the people they corrupt. Entire villages, dead. We’ve seen it.”

  Joros frowned, and said nothing.

  Scal spent his time watching Aro.

  Vatri had said he was a witch. Dangerous. That he had killed a dozen people with witchfire. Scal had not wanted to believe it, but he watched Aro. And his shaking and muttering and flickers of madness made Scal think of Anddyr, the mad witch. It was hard not to.

  He dropped back to talk to Deslan, soft-voiced. The ones who had come with Joros and Aro, the ones they called “the pack,” had fallen in with those who followed Scal. They fit as though they had chosen to follow, too, or as though they had lived among the others all their lives. Scal had asked Deslan and her people to ask them careful questions, and she told him with certainty, “He’s a mage. They say he’s sick, just like all the other mages they’ve seen.” She paused, frowned. “I’ve seen sick mages, too. Not many, but . . . it’s not something you forget. It sounds like our new friends have seen a fair number of sick mages. Many more than I’ve seen. Many more than I would have expected.” She did not look at him as she kept talking, did not look to the front of their column, did not look at anything but the stars above. “The only sick mages I’ve seen, and the only ones I’ve heard of, have all been with the Fallen. Seems a little strange to me, our new friends knowing so many.”

  Scal could see the shape of the question in her words. Is it safe? He had seen Deslan sharing a tent with Joros. Had seen her mothering heart stretch out toward Aro. Had seen her companionably comparing daggers with the woman called Harin. Are they safe to love?

  And Scal did not have an answer for the silent question. “It is strange,” he said. With Deslan’s eyes hard on his back, he returned to the head of the column, where Joros and Vatri were bickering.

  It felt like the old times, his old life, only it was nothing like it at all.

  When they stopped, Scal asked Aro if he would like to help find wood for a fire. In that old life, when Scal had traveled north, all the way North, with Aro and Joros and Vatri and Rora and the witch, Aro had been eager to be useful. Offering to help when it was not needed. Scal had refused at first, but the younger man had often pushed past his refusals to help anyway, and he had been useful enough. Had been a good companion, even when he was not useful. They were memories from an old life, the bonds of a man who no longer was, but Scal had not forgotten.

  No. He had forgotten. He had not thought of Aro since his end in the snows, since he had left the group Joros had assembled. But seeing Aro again had opened a gate to the memories of that old Scal. And he saw weak, sick, pale Aro next to the Aro
of his memories, who was bright and laughful and eager, and there was something wrong there that Scal would not let himself forget again. The reborn Scal had no ties to Aro, but for his old self, the man he had been once, he would try to help.

  And so he asked Aro if he would like to help find wood for a fire. In truth they had more than enough wood, but it was never a poor idea to find more when they could. It was a task Aro had liked to help with, before. And it would give Scal the chance to see him alone.

  Aro did not answer right away—or his answer was to look to Joros. Request glistening in his eyes. Joros did not even notice it, absorbed in his conversation with Deslan. She did notice, and when she nudged him, he faced Aro with an impatient look. “What?”

  “I . . .” Aro’s mind had slipped—he made small noises that were not words. “Go—”

  “I would take him with me,” Scal said. “To collect wood for a fire.”

  Joros snorted, and turned away. “Why should I care?”

  Aro looked back to Scal, uncertainty in his face. Scal made a motion for him to follow, and after a pause of a few heartbeats, he did.

  In the grasslands and farmlands they traveled through, there were few trees to be found. Little enough wood to be picked or cut. It did not matter—it was not the point. Scal walked beside Aro, both searching, though Scal was also waiting. Waiting for his friend of an old life to begin chattering, as he always had when they had done tasks, constant talking and questions and laughter.

  But Aro remained silent, his eyes fixed to the ground, scanning for stray pieces of firewood.

  Finally Scal could not stand the silence. “Aro,” he said, and the younger man’s head swung up to face him. “What is wrong?”

  Aro frowned. Forehead wrinkling as though in deep thought. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “You have changed. Been changed.”

  One shoulder shrugged. “Things happen, and people change. You’ve changed, too, you know.”