Shepherds of Wraith: Book One

by Nyssa Renay

  A Beginner’s Guide on the Experience of Death;

  Crossing and Compassion: Helping the Dying Cope with Death;

  The Window to the Afterlife: A Guide to a Safe Transition; and,

  Understanding Your Duty to Protect Your Deceased.

  Although the titles seemed a bit morbid, they offered a greater insight into what my Tier II classes would be all about. Gone were the endless days of reading about the history of the universe, replaced by the curiosity of my new role within it.

  It took a little while to maneuver through the pain, but with very careful movements, I slowly managed to scoot myself upright in bed and sit back against the headboard. The cool metal bedframe felt good against my skin. I reached over and grabbed up the topmost book, sliding it gently onto my lap.

  I began to read, but within a few minutes, there was a Brio intern standing at the foot of my bed, waiting to get my attention. I let out a long, frustrated sigh, closing my book. “Let me guess…lights out, so I won’t be able to read? Or, did I not suffer enough when I reached for the book?” I growled.

  “No, I’m not here to torture you,” she said with a compassionate smile.

  “Really?” I scoffed. “And why’s that?”

  “Because I know why you attacked Shepherd Voronto,” she replied under her breath.

  “How? No one’s supposed to know.”

  “You have a visitor, but make it quick before the other girls get back,” the aide said and walked out of the room. A familiar figure crept inside my room. It was Eeliyah.

  “Hi, Vigil,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.

  “Eeliyah!” I cheered. “Wait! How did you get in here? You didn’t tell everyone what happened, did you?”

  “No…just Bekah,” Eeliyah nodded toward the doorway where the one humane intern was standing, keeping watch. “She said she could get me in to see you for a few moments so I could thank you for what you did.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said proudly. “Too bad I didn’t have a shovel handy, huh?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot about that.” Eeliyah laughed quietly, wiping away the tears that had slowly started to trickle down her cheeks. “I can’t believe what they’re doing to you. It’s barbaric.”

  I shrugged solemnly. “Yeah, well…they needed to set an example, and it seems to be working. No one wants anything to do with me now.”

  It wasn’t fair that the entire academy would only ever know of my attack at the royal dinner, but not the reasons for it. That information had been quickly swept under the rug and hidden away from the rest of the academy, never to be spoken of again. I’d been demonized in the process, just to serve as a deterrent to keep other potentials from rallying behind a common cause and rising up against the oppressive nature of the shepherds’ authority.

  “I’m so sorry, Vigil. It’s all my fault.”

  “No, it’s not! My uncle’s just an asshole and everybody knows it, yet no one will do a damn thing about him.”

  “What did they do to you?” she asked, tenderly caressing the top of my charred hand. It stung a little, but I didn’t care in that moment.

  “I had a bit of a hard time getting to my bed after lights out.”

  “That’s horrible! Why haven’t they healed you yet?”

  “Probably because it sends a better message if I suffer through it.”

  “It isn’t fair! We need to say something—”

  “No!” I interrupted. “It’s not going to help, and you know it. They’ll just make it worse if we try to fight it.”

  “I guess you’re right,” she answered, defeated.

  “Eeliyah, you need to leave!” Bekah blurted out as she walked back in the room and grabbed her by the arm. “I just saw Shepherd Levengio walk into his office. We need to go now!”

  “Bye, Vigil!” Eeliyah called out as they left the room, leaving me alone with my books once again.

  Unfortunately, my peaceful solitude didn’t last long before another intern walked into my room. She ripped the book out of my hand and tossed it on top of the others. She gave me a sly grin as she slowly scooped up all four books and shoved them in a cupboard on the opposite side of the room, knowing full well that I’d never be able to retrieve them without a significantly painful struggle. And then, with a self-gratifying smile, she turned out the light and burst into laughter as she dashed out of the room in triumph.

  “Thanks!” I called out sarcastically. “I wasn’t in the mood to read anyway!”

  -35-

  Even though seventeen days had passed before I was considered fit to return to the dorms, I was still in a lot of pain when Laureate Cerisen came to collect me at the medical ward. The skin on my hands and feet was still black in places, my face was red and raw from the burns, and I had painful blisters all down my left side that hadn’t fully healed yet.

  “So, what now?” I asked the laureate before we entered the dorm.

  “You’re going to hurry up and get ready for your morning classes. Then after lunch, you’ll report back to me for your first day of mining duty. I’ll escort you to Shepherd Graldo this afternoon. Oh, and wear your exercise clothes. You’re gonna need them,” Cerisen smirked.

  Mining duty was the lowest and least respected form of labor at the academy. It was difficult, dirty, and tiring. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I didn’t want to give Cerisen the satisfaction of seeing my displeasure.

  “Fair enough,” I stated flatly as I shifted the weight of my books from hand to hand, trying to alleviate some of the pressure on the raw skin of my palms and fingers.

  “Laureate on deck!” the door guard shouted as we entered the dorm and made our way across the scaffold. I glanced over my shoulder to see the boys running to the platform, all eyes fixed on me. Some looked appalled at the sight of my scarred, burned, and blistered skin, while others were amused, stifling their laughter as Laureate Cerisen and I came down the stairs.

  Cerisen escorted me to my area. He bypassed all the other boys, forcing them to stand at attention on the platform while I got my things back in order. Once I was settled back in, the laureate departed. “As you were!” he bellowed.

  I hadn’t expected the treatment I’d suffered in the medical ward to be different anywhere else, and I was right. Nobody said a word to me as they went back to their duties and avoided me entirely, but there were a few subtle nods in my direction to acknowledge their support for my return. My morning classes were pretty much the same scenario. When I sat down at my desk, anyone sitting near me quickly got up and found another spot. Even Shepherd Diabelle barely glanced my way.

  After lunch, I changed into my oldest set of exercise clothes and waited for Laureate Cerisen to take me to the Sanctified Mines. We hiked several miles away from the Shepherd Academy until we eventually reached our destination—a large mountain with jagged gray cliffs and a snowy white peak. I’d seen it in the distance from the running track, but being this close to it made me wonder what other places at the academy were unknown to me. The area was wild and dangerous, and it was hard for me to believe that anybody came out here for anything practical.

  Cerisen took me to the mouth of a dark cave that looked to be abandoned at first sight. However, as we neared, I could see potentials covered in black dust lugging buckets and picks in and out of the mine.

  One kid looked up and stopped when he saw us. He dropped his pail and pick and ran back into the mine, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Shepherd Graldo! Shepherd Graldo! They’re here!”

  “That don’t sound right!” A voice called out from deep within the shadows. “I haven’t finished my lunch yet, so they’re early! They can wait!”

  The Sanctified Mines were managed by the least respected shepherd in the entire realm of Ein, and after some waiting, I got my first look at Shepherd Graldo. He squished up his face and squinted as he stepped into the overcast day and hobbled toward us. At first, I thought he was walking with a cane, but
on closer inspection, I could see it was an ancient staff that had been worn down by both time and extensive use.

  Graldo was a frail, elderly man who looked like he’d once been tall, but his slumped-forward posture had robbed him of that height. The sleeves of his robe had been torn off at the seams, exposing his wilted, once-muscular arms. His skin was the color of river clay; reddish-black, rough, and very dry from years of exposure to the dust in the Sanctified Mines. His long scraggly beard of thick, wiry, whitish-gray hair covered most of his thin lips. Dirty white wavy hair grew in patches on his head.

  Graldo looked me up and down with wide black eyes that looked like dull marbles in the deep wrinkles of his leathery face. “This him?” he asked skeptically.

  “Yes, sir,” Cerisen replied.

  “He don’t look like much. You sure this is him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That can’t be right.” Graldo shook his head and put one hand on his hip, balancing against his staff and scowling at me. “What in the hell am I supposed to do with him? Ya’ll had me believing I was getting some kind of monster potential super kid or something! This is the kid that took down Vantaru? He don’t look like anything to me! That can’t be right!” He shook his head harder. “Nope.”

  “This is Vigil, sir. He’s your new laborer,” Cerisen stated.

  “No, he ain’t. That don’t sound right to me at all.” Graldo backed away from us, tuning us out.

  “Shepherd Graldo, sir, I can assure you this is Vigil Voronto, and he is the potential who was promised to you.” The laureate was frustrated.

  Graldo hobbled away, still keeping one eye on the laureate and me. “Hey, I ain’t saying you’re right…I ain’t saying you’re wrong. I was just expecting more than this kid.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Hey! You show me big bad Vigil, and then I’ll believe you!” Graldo disappeared back into the shadows of the cave.

  “You’re not really gonna leave me here with that guy, are you?” I cocked an eyebrow at the laureate. This wasn’t punishment anymore. This was just ridiculous.

  “Stay here until I retrieve you for supper,” Cerisen insisted.

  “But—”

  “Stay here!” Cerisen shouted and walked away.

  “Fine,” I sighed as the laureate left me there all by myself. Within moments, the sun came out from behind the clouds and the raw skin on my face began to feel uncomfortable in the heat. I quickly ran for cover in the shadows of the cave. “Shepherd Graldo?” I called out, not sure what to expect.

  “What?” his crotchety voice called back. The air was heavy with dust, and there was a glow of light coming from the tunnel in the distance that led deep into the Sanctified Mines. “You just gonna stand there, boy? Get yer butt down here!”

  -36-

  The slope of the tunnel was dark and difficult to navigate, and I slipped a couple times as I made my way down the long, steep path. But eventually, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I made it to the belly of the Sanctified Mines.

  “Took down Vantaru, my ass!” Graldo grumbled. “It took ya almost an hour just to get down here. Waste of my damn time, that’s all ya are! Now, follow me and try and keep up!” He walked away, muttering, “Vantaru? Bah! I’d kick his ass in a heartbeat, that no-good piece a’ shit!”

  I tried as hard as I could to keep pace with Shepherd Graldo, but the old man was surprisingly fast. He led me through a long tunnel that opened into a space so wide and high that it was hard to believe we were deep underground and not above in the nighttime dark. There were dozens of tunnel openings surrounding its perimeter, and I had no idea how deep the tunnels actually were. I figured it wouldn’t take me long to get lost down here.

  We reached the backside of the cave and came to a small, dilapidated cabin with mud-caked walls and a door barely hanging on its hinges. This was what Shepherd Graldo called his office. It sat in front of a large, clean, well-built, well-lit, empty white-walled office building that reminded me of a smaller version of the administrator’s building. It didn’t make sense to me why he would choose to stay in a rundown cabin instead of the larger, clean, sturdy facility the academy had provided for him.

  “What? That thing?” Shepherd Graldo blurted out, noticing my gaze going between the large building and his old shack. “Damn shepherds have been trying to get me to move in there for centuries.” He softly banged the palm of his hand against his front door, launching a small cloud of dust and debris. “This little place has been my home for the last thousand years! Why would I need to leave it? Huh? They’re always bugging me with their technology and modern machinery and shit. Y’all can keep ’em! This mine is run on heart and soul, just as it always has…and always will be.”

  I nodded politely, not sure if the rant was actually directed at me or not.

  He quickly went into his shack and returned with a blackbrass helmet. “Put it on and follow me,” he grumbled, tossing the helmet at me as he hobbled by.

  We walked over and climbed inside Graldo’s personal cart. It was a long, open-roofed vehicle with large wheels and deep treads that could climb over anything in its path. The cart barely managed to start without the help of an enormous amount of banging and cursing from its owner, but eventually it rumbled to life, and we were off toward one of the smaller tunnels.

  “Okay, now listen up!” he began as we drove into the mouth of the nearest tunnel. “There’s a shuttle cart like this one but longer that’ll pick everyone up at the entrance of the mine when you start your shift and take you back at the end of it. Don’t miss it! I don’t need to be wasting my time searching for your sorry ass. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” I nodded, nearly sending the oversized helmet tumbling off my head.

  “To start off with, I’ll need ya to work in the refinery ‘til we can grow some muscle on them bones. Ya know how to handle a shovel, right?”

  “Yes, sir.” I looked down at the sores on my hands, suddenly realizing why everyone had been smiling and laughing about my mining duty. It would be extremely painful to grip the tools until my hands were fully healed.

  “Good,” he grunted as we drove along. “I guess ya ain’t gonna be as useless as I thought.”

  As we traveled deeper into the mine, I saw different colored rays of light cast from several sections of the tunnel along our route. Soft greens, vibrant reds, and deep blues and yellows radiated from the crystallized veins snaking along the walls and ceiling, branching out like the roots of a tree. The colors reminded me of the stones in the necklaces that the sisters at the Home for Blessed Children wore and the shepherds’ rings and jewelry at the royal dinner. The only difference was that those stones were silent and perfect jewels, while these crystals were raw and uncut, seeming to pulse with a life force all their own.

  “Are these crystals alive?” I asked, mystified by my surroundings.

  “I’ll tell ya what, this here’s one of Ein’s greatest gifts,” he replied, his face lighting up. “It’s a miner’s dream…minerals that replenish themselves! They’re the most ancient and powerful tools given to the shepherds by the Children of Ein. Think of it like this…if the universe was a horse, the crystals in these walls are like the saddle and reins used to control it.” His wrinkled old face beamed. I could tell this was what mattered most in his life.

  “Do the gemstones the shepherds and sisters have come from this mine?” I asked.

  “Yup; here’s where we mine ’em, refine ’em, and mix ’em with melanite…and seeing as I’m stuck with ya for Ein knows how long, you’re gonna help us get all the melanite we can,” he answered gruffly.

  We drove to another open area and stopped in front of a dusty metal building built into the wall of the cave. Shepherd Graldo smiled and got out of the cart. “This is where you’ll be working off and on for the next few months. It’s the best place to start when you’re new.”

  Once we were inside the refinery, Graldo walked me over to where
a few other potentials were working. Some of them shoveled a mixture of crushed black sand and rocks from a large pile onto a slow-moving conveyor belt while others picked off the larger chunks that were too big to fit through the opening of the huge machine. I could feel the intense heat as we approached.

  “Here’s where we separate the melanite powder…that chalky black stuff…from the rest a’ the rock. Most of the week, you’ll be mining the raw melanite outta the tunnels in the east. It is crushed down and brought here to be purified. Once it’s ready to be mixed with the raw crystals, it’ll get made into all that other stuff you were askin’ about,” he explained proudly, waving his arms around, as if doing so would make any of this easier to understand. It didn’t.

  “So, what do you want me to do?” I asked, figuring it was better to just jump right in and get it over with.

  “Today you’ll shovel and tomorrow you’ll trade places with one’a the others to work on removing the chucks,” he said as he handed me a shovel, which I instantly dropped as the residue on the handle burned the wounds on the palms of my hands. “Oh, come on, now! Took down Vantaru, my ass! Ya can’t even hold onto a damn shovel.”

  “Sorry, sir. It just slipped,” I lied, and reached down to pick it up. The dusty powder stung as I grasped it tightly. Some of the other kids snickered as Shepherd Graldo got into his cart and drove away. I did my best to hide my pain and grabbed the middle of the shovel, plunging the spade end into the large pile of crushed ore, and tossing some onto the conveyor belt.

  It was going to be a long day.

  -37-

  By the end of the day, I could barely hold the shovel. The cracks in my hands became bloodier with every thrust, lift, and toss of the shovel. It only grew worse as I tried to keep up with the other potentials.

  The pain in my hands was excruciating and they constantly went numb. I dropped the shovel over and over, becoming a distraction to the other potentials as the work backed up.