Table of Contents
Rights
Dedication
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Rights
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ISBN: 978-84-697-5653-9
DEPÓSITO LEGAL: DL PM 1173-2017
COPYRIGHT AUTOR Y EDITOR @ GILLIAN ANDREWS 2017
PRIMERA IMPRESION 2017
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www.gillianandrews.com
Dedication
For Damian Rigo Serra,
in loving memory
1.
When I first see her, from my hiding place behind the curtain, Zivan is furious. She is projecting the sort of thinly restrained anger that could explode at any minute. I recognize her only as an outcast. Her skin is covered in mud and she is wearing filthy clothes. She looks dirty. She looks defiant.
“Why am I here?” She is staring at Quondam Azrial, her shoulders back. Flanked on either side by two burly miners to dissuade her from leaving, she is definitely not happy.
The wrinkles in the old face in front of her attempt to contort into a smile. “You are here because you are the toughest of the outcasts. The best thief in the karths.” The quondam exchanges a brief glance with the praetor, who is sitting beside her on the wooden bench. “And we are going to need the best.”
Zivan reaches toward her small son, who is standing nearby, as if touch could protect him. “Why should I help you?” She glares around her.
“Your child will soon be left alone. One day, you will be caught stealing by the Scoriats and executed. He will not survive without you.” The stately old lady is unmoved by this catastrophic future she envisions. Her voice is calm. “He is one of the shunned; he will be hunted down.”
A shadow passes across the girl’s face; I can see it clearly from my hiding place behind the thick curtain. Her fists clench and unclench by her sides. I think she would like to attack the quondam. However, she says nothing.
Quondam Azrial goes on: “If you agree, he shall be protected by the timeworn, for as long as both we and he exist.” She sighs. “That is why you will help us.”
The young, unlined face and the tired old one scrutinize each other. There is a long silence. Finally, the girl with the eyes of flint lifts her chin. “In return ...?”
Quondam Azrial inclines her regal head, pleased that the girl has understood. “In return, you must swear loyalty to the task, must swear by the blood to complete it.”
Zivan considers her options. Her son is making small noises of worry in his throat. Her eyes slide to him again. They soften. She takes in a large breath of air and then breathes it out slowly. She has decided. The outcast hands are held out, palms upward, in the age-old Inmuri sign of capitulation. She does not smile.
As Quondam Azrial takes the ceremonial knife to lightly pierce the girl’s thumb, I notice a shining circlet of metal around Zivan’s ankle. It has two words engraved on it: ‘NEVER AGAIN’. The words have been carved into the silver by hand. Zivan must have spent many hours chiseling them into the metal. They are important to her, I think.
The quondam moves the knife to her own wrist. She has to push harder to find blood in the dark raised veins, and hers moves more sluggishly. Finally some of the precious dark liquid seeps to the surface and she is able to mix the two by touching her wrist to that of Zivan. The pact is sealed.
“Can you move at any time?” The old woman stares steadily into the thief’s eyes.
“Of course.”
“Then you know what your first task will be?”
“I do.”
Quondam Azrial breathes in slowly, her relief showing. “I wasn’t sure it was possible.”
Zivan gives a faint smile. “Anything is possible.”
The quondam turns to my own mother, who has been standing quietly to one side the whole time.
“You were right to come to us, Irizana. As she will soon be the last of the orthomancers, it is now or never. I can see no other way, although many of the timeworn do not agree with me.”
I have no idea what she is talking about.
My mother bows her head. “I do not underestimate the difficulty.”
The quondam looks so utterly exhausted that I catch my breath. “It is set in motion.” Apart from being one of the timeworn, Azrial is an augur. People say she can foretell the future. If so, she doesn’t like what she is seeing.
“It must be before the Abaloss Rift erupts,” she says slowly. “The day after tomorrow the blue planet will be full.” By the blue planet she is referring to Leyvala. It is supposed to bring luck. “That will trigger an outsurge.”
“Thank you.” To my great surprise, as I peek unseen through the small rent in the curtain material, I see my mother dip onto one knee in front of the magnificent old lady in front of her. “I pray that she will reach the Rift of the Timeworn. That she will find Kelfor.”
Azrial bends to take both of my mother’s hands and pulls her gently to her feet, touching her dry lips to my mother’s brow. The old lady’s eyes close for a moment, full of pain. I don’t know why. “And may you play in the light between the stars, daughter.” Her eyes are anguished as they gaze out of the folds of the corrugated face.
My mother smiles, her own eyes filling with tears. “I will try, Azrial, Augur of the Future.” She moves to the praetor and embraces him tightly for a moment, speaking his name with respect. “Praetor Thurifer.”
He struggles to speak, moved. He, too, touches his lips to her forehead. She sighs, but gives them both a long, sweet smile.
As she gets to her feet, she pauses before the outcast girl, still standing nearby, now with the shunned boy’s hand in her own. My mother looks her in the eye.
“You have made a promise. Remember it is binding.”
The girl stares back unblinking, disdainful. “I will keep it.” Her tone is scornful.
My mother touches her arm lightly, surprising the girl. “Then I give you my blessing. You and your son.”
Zivan bows as my mother walks past and her small son copies his mother. They don’t seem very accustomed to bowing. I suppose, in their line of work, they don’t need to be.
Mother is cross to find me behind the curtain. She scolds.
“What did you hear? Remeny, you know you should never eavesdrop! A girl of your age! I am quite ashamed of you!”
I bristle. Nobody likes secrets. “Who was that? Why was one of the outcasts in the quondam’s cobb? The Stave forbids it!”
My mother bends down. Although I am now thirteen, she is still taller than I am. She takes me by the shoulders with her stiff fingers and gives me a faint shake. “Listen to me. She is Inmuri, like the rest of us. She is not r
esponsible for what happened to her. We do not judge. We are not Scoriats. And she ... she has a part to play in our future. You must trust her.”
I am confused. “Then I can speak to her? What if the Council hears of it? Won’t they punish me? Wasn’t that little boy one of the shunned?”
“Yes, he was one of the shunned. He is one of the shunned. Do you know what that means?”
“He was supposed to be a Scoriat, but it didn’t take. He came out wrong. He is a reject.”
My mother is angry with me. “He is a little boy. He offends no-one. His patterns are different, nothing more.” She is referring to the strange tattoo-like marks which covered the boy’s face. They are like flames, not the neat geometric patterns that the Raths expect of their Scoriats.
“In that case why do the Scoriats stone him? Why may I not speak to him? Why isn’t he allowed inside our cobbs?”
“Because our society is sick, Remy. The Raths have split the Inmuri. Those of us left who still believe in the old ways must try to change things. You must try to change things. Do you understand me?” Her hands, weakened from years of work in the dome, still pinch my shoulders, hurting me.
I twist away. “I will remember.”
My mother gets to her feet, not without suppressing a groan. “What do you say to a walk?”
“Outside?” This is unusual. Our family of two is not one of the privileged. We are not allowed to walk outside at night. I could count on my fingers the times my mother has walked under the stars with me. Usually she is too tired after the day’s work and can only manage a morsel to eat before falling asleep upright. Recently she has been tired all the time. The work in the dome is too much for her. She has been getting weaker because of the bacterial infection she caught there a few weeks ago.
However, tonight we walk outside. She leads the way to the ramparts of our compound in the city, near to the family’s prized adobe cobb with its thick walls. We check that nobody sees us as we hurry up the stone steps until we are overlooking the edge of the city, until we can see the stars to the south.
“See that star?” she asks me, pointing to a large point of light near the horizon.
I nod.
“That is the Southern Star. The shape the stars around it form is called the Arrow of the South. It points the way to Kelfor.”
“Kelfor? Is that not just another name for the South Pole?”
My mother smiles out into the dark night. “It is our past and, I hope, your future.”
That sounds mysterious. “K ... Kelfor? Why?”
She hugs me. “Because it is all going to be up to you, Remeny. But I am not going to tell you about it now. Tonight is for looking at the stars. They are a long, long way away.”
“Can the Raths reach them?”
She shakes her head. “No. They came from Maraz, the next planet to Hethor. It is in the same solar system. That was easy for them. Easy for the few who were rich enough to come here. They can travel short distances in their spacecraft, but they cannot travel to the stars. Not yet, anyway.”
“Good. That means the stars are free.”
“Yes. The stars are free. Not slaves like us. If you ... if you ever get the chance, Remy, you must try to reach the stars.”
“Me? But how can I do that?” She is being very strange.
“You must guard the amulet. Never, ever walk over the planet without taking the amulet of the orthomancers with you. Never let it be taken by the Scoriats or the Raths. Promise?”
I nod, and she hugs me again. She makes me repeat the names of all the stars we can see in the overhanging sky until I can tell her each.
She still has one last question: “And what does the Arrow of the South point to?”
I sigh, wanting to go inside, a little bored. “Kelfor.”
She is pleased with me. “That’s right. Kelfor.” She takes a deep, deep breath of the hot night air and repeats the word as if it were some kind of talisman. “Kelfor.”
She bustles me back to the relative safety of the cobb. “I love you, Remy. I always will. You have been the great happiness in my life. You and your father.”
I don’t remember my father. It surprises me that she does. The Raths killed him long ago. “I love you, too.”
I am tired as I clamber onto my pallet. I go to sleep immediately, the strange outcast girl and her son forgotten. I am not an augur. There is no foreknowledge of the future to tell me that I should stay awake longer, should spend those last, precious hours with her.
I am still sluggish the next morning, but my mother seems in good spirits. She holds my hand as we trudge toward the towering dome to start work. She knows I don’t like her to do this, but today she takes no notice of my glare. All the Inmuri are mobilized by dawn every day. Some go to the mines, some to the fields and some toward the domes. But we never actually go inside the domes. Only the Scoriats go inside the Rath domes. Only they are allowed to work in the cool. Only those born marked, those who have been genetically altered to serve the Rath families.
My mother and I are not privileged. Not since my father died. We are dome workers for Istak Dome. We have been a team since he became a dead hero and the Raths decided to punish us for it. We join the weary queue, taking our usual place. Nobody is keen to begin the shift. It is terrible, dirty work. Work which cripples your mind and your body.
Each immense Rath dome is covered in two skins, with about a three-yard gap between them. Inside that gap are the girders and beams which hold up the whole structure of the dome. And each girder and beam has to be kept clean. The space serves to keep the interior of the dome cool. Air heated by steam from the Nyka Rift is introduced into the gap. It evaporates there, taking all the heat out of the inside of the dome, leaving those within it safe from the heat of our two suns.
The Raths hate our hotter and lighter planet; they can’t cope with our life-giving warmth. It suffocates their larger lungs, attacks their heavier skin and bones. They need to be kept cool, isolated from the wonders of our planet Hethor. Their lives are lived almost entirely inside the domes.
So that is my job. Mine and my mother’s. We help to keep the gap and the skins clean. We spend all our days scrubbing slats and girders or scouring the nanographite sheeting which covers the dome. We keep the evaporative system healthy, removing the dangerous deposits. Working between the two skins is the nearest thing to hell I know. And I don’t remember ever witnessing much comfort.
The shift begins just like any other. By just after daybreak, we are already high up between the skins of the huge dome. It is hot; breathing is difficult. Mum’s hair droops wetly against her scalp as she toils up the framework toward the top of the building. I notice that she is coughing a lot this morning. Her weakness forces her to blink often to clear the sweat from her eyes. The Scoriats in charge of our team on the sixth level have already complained that she is too slow. I wish I could see one of them try to clean these enormous girders. They never would, of course. Menial duties like this have been left for centuries to our subjugated Inmuri tribe.
I slow my own pace so that it will seem that my mother is managing to keep up. We are now twenty-five yards above the ground. The slope of the dome is not so steep at this level. We will have to bend as we climb because the gap between the skins narrows the higher up you go. There is no room to stand straight after the first third of the climb. I glance over at the next Scoriat post of surveillance. The new guard is holding his face up to the cooling air which is continuously being pumped down from the ceiling vent in his guard station. I wish that I could divert some of that life-bringing coolness to my mother’s face. For a moment I daydream that I could somehow overcome the man in the guard post without any retribution.
But these Scoriat guards are chosen because they are the strongest and the largest of their kind. Usually that means the least graced with intelligence. They are twice my own body weight. I am still as thin as the spars between the massive girders; I could never overcome a Scoriat guard. And even if I
could, what would happen then? For a small respite, for a half hour of cooled air, both I and my mother would be put to death. There would be no trial for two Inmuri. The all-powerful Raths would never even contemplate such a thing. Troublemakers amongst the Inmuri are dealt with speedily, and publicly. The last was dangled from a sixth-level girder until his body stopped twitching. The younger Istak Raths found it very amusing. Some of them even ventured briefly out into the searing heat between the skins to place bets on how long he would last, on when his body fluids would void. It had been the high point of their day, a moment of lively rivalry.
That had been my second cousin once removed, Tilan, who had tried to stop the fifth-level guard from beating his father. The fifth-level guard had called in his colleagues from the two nearby levels first, then the Raths. They had finished killing his father before stringing the son up with the lashes from their whips. I will never forget the sight. Poor Tilan’s terror, followed by acceptance as he realized that no help would be coming. He had looked in my direction as if to say: “See? This is all there is. You will all be following me before long,” then his eyes had begun to bulge, and his neck had stretched into submission as all life was strangled out of it. I remember being sick. The Scoriat on my level was furious. He made me clean it up before the Raths noticed.
More than the usual amount of sweat seems to be running into my eyes this morning. I teeter as I stretch to clean the furthest point of the cross girder and am rewarded by a warning grunt of annoyance from the guard. I give my head a shake. It is no good thinking back to the past. There are still another fourteen levels to the top of this section, and five sections to complete before the middle of the day, when we will be allowed to break our fast and rest for an hour.
Already my mother’s lungs are rasping. Each day it has been harder for her to climb the ribs. One of the added risks in our job is the danger of infection. The damp, hot habitat between the skins is paradise for many types of bacteria. We are frequently ill. Though the most common affliction is in our bones. For years my mother has battled the inflamed joints that are typical of dome workers. Each day her hands clench less efficiently around the rafters. I rub heat into those bent fingers every night, but they still refuse to close as they should; the joints are stiff and swollen from all the years of bone-battering work between the skins.
Kelfor- the Orthomancers Page 1