Dustfall, Book Five - What Lies Beneath

by J. Thorn

  “I will pass this on.” Seren bowed and turned to leave.

  “One last thing,” said the old man. “I have a grandson. One day he will be leader of my clan. His father passed in battle, so he is my direct heir. I think he is a couple of years older than you.” The old man’s previous grim expression now changed to a smile. “If ever you were considering a husband, maybe you would come and visit my clan. I would guarantee safe passage. He is a handsome boy, and I’m sure he would be very pleased to meet you.”

  Seren blushed. “I will consider that, if ever that time comes.”

  The old man nodded.

  Seren left the camp. She noticed how the Cygoa warriors kept their distance. Some were eyeing the weapons that the guards carried, but none were fool enough to approach. Even though she had been promised safe passage, she still breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the outskirts of the camp and saw the edge of the city in the distance.

  “I would have gone with you,” said Declan, who stood waiting for her at the edge of the woods.

  “I know.”

  “I should have. That was pretty risky going in there alone.”

  “I wasn’t alone.” Seren’s eyes found Sorcha and she grinned.

  Declan shrugged and walked beside her. “Jonah’s awake. He’s feeling a bit groggy at the moment, so you may not get much out of him.”

  “I have to try,” said Seren.

  Chapter 47

  Jonah called from the bed. “Just let her in.”

  His head was thumping, and he could barely feel anything in his legs. He wasn’t sure whether he even had the strength to talk to anyone else, but an endless line of visitors since he’d woken that morning had brought him around.

  Two days, he thought. Two days unconscious. How much had he missed in that time? His friends tried to keep him up—to—date. Rav, Ghafir, Solomon, Sasha, even Keana and Gideon, had all visited several times. Sasha had barely left his side until she was ordered to by the base doctors.

  He glanced over at Morlan’s still form on a bed on the other side of the room, still finding it strange that they had put them both in the same chamber. He shrugged. He doubted that Morlan would be able to stand, let alone harm him.

  Morlan still hadn’t woken, but then again, the man had been far more gone with the poison, according to the doctors. But he would live and that gave Jonah a strange sort of hope. Up until a few days ago Morlan had been his enemy. Now he had a different battle to fight — one that made him Cygoa and TY’un at the same time. That he was the only living blood relative to their leader, making him heir, was a ridiculous thought.

  But the Cygoa, it seemed, and from what he had been told, were taking that very seriously. More than twenty invitations had been sent to him by Cygoa messengers, invitations to honor their clan with a visit when he was well again. They would have killed him without a second thought a week ago, and now he was being sent guest invitations.

  Damn it, he thought. He’d hoped that with the end of the war, the council would step up and take over leadership once more so that he could go back to being just a council member and lead his own clan. But, no. Now it seemed possible that he would need to lead both sides.

  Seren stepped through the door. “They said I shouldn’t bother you.”

  “I know, but I’m only gonna get bored lying here, staring at the ceiling.” Jonah waved her into the room. “And it isn’t like I can sleep. I still feel dizzy every time I close my eyes. Damned poison.”

  “Yes,” said Seren. “I don’t know what it was that Gaston used. Abernathy says it was pretty potent. You two might have been one step from a Dustfall.”

  “A bright thought. Thanks.”

  Seren grinned. “Sorry. At least you aren’t at the pyre yet.”

  “It makes me wonder,” said Jonah. “Back before we left the village the last time. Both my father and Nera became sick, and so close together. Just about the time when Gaston turned up.”

  “You think he...” she stopped.

  “Yes, I do,” said Jonah. “I think that was Gaston, too.”

  “I don’t know what his plans really were, but it seems poison was his way of achieving them.” Seren handed Jonah a glass of water.

  “And it just doesn’t make any sense. That whole trip to White Citadel. Why? Why leave and then come back?”

  “I don’t know,” said Seren. “Maybe he really did want to find something there. Maybe he found it. I only know the cost was far too high.”

  “Sorry,” Jonah said as he took a sip of water and set the glass down, thinking of her brother, Roke. “He was a good lad and didn’t deserve to go that way.”

  “Do any that have died?” Seren shook her head. “It may be over but it’s still such a mess.”

  It was then that Jonah saw she was staring at the chain on the table next to his bed. She frowned and stepped forward. Jonah had to crane his neck to see what she was doing.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “That’s the thing that ended the war. It’s half of a locket my mother wore. Her younger brother gave it to her before the Cygoa were forced to flee to the north.”

  “I never met your mother.”

  “No, you were born after she passed. It turns out that Morlan is that younger brother.”

  Seren looked between the two of them. “How on earth are you going to sort this out? I don’t know. You’re Cygoa and you’re of the clans, and yet they’ve been in a war. The Cygoa hate the clans for what they did in the past and the clans hate the Cygoa for what they’ve done now.”

  “Yes, a mess” said Jonah. “I only hope that he survives, and we can come to some arrangement that not everybody hates.”

  “I am awake,” said Morlan, eyes still closed. “You can stop talking about me as though I’m already dead.”

  Seren jumped and instinctively reached to her belt.

  “Hold there, child. I won’t harm you. Couldn’t if I wanted to,” he said.

  “I’m not a child. I wish people would stop calling me that.”

  “Ha! This is a feisty one you’ve got here.” Morlan finally opened his eyes and looked at Jonah. “Your daughter?”

  “Not by blood,” said Jonah. “But she is.”

  Morlan tried to sit up and then lay back down. “Damn. I feel like somebody’s hammered me in the head.”

  “I nearly did,” said Jonah.

  “You tried,” said Morlan.

  “I’d offer a rematch. But I don’t think either of us can even stand up.”

  Morlan chuckled. “I could try. No, I couldn’t. She’s right you know, this is a mess, and it will not go smoothly. I can guarantee you that. We hold all of your lands, and some of them have already been settled. Getting them to move off even some of the land and getting some of your clans to agree to give up ground? I don’t know. We can tell them what is happening. We can order them, but there will be disputes.”

  Jonah looked to Seren. She was still staring at the locket on the table.

  “I recognize that,” Seren said, pointing at the locket.

  Jonah noticed that Morlan was now looking as well.

  “The locket I gave my sister,” Morlan said. “It was placed in burial with your previous leader. Maybe he wore it and you saw it?”

  “No. I’ve seen it before.” She paused. “Of course!” she said, reaching down to pat the pouch her waist. “No, it wasn’t there...where did I put it?” Then the girl hauled a travel bag from her back and knelt down to open it.

  Seren rummaged to the bottom of her back, then pulled out a small wrap of silk cloth and unraveled it. Another silver trinket fell into her palm.

  “I found this in the forest many months ago—on the day that Gaston arrived. I meant to trade it at Eliz, but I never got there, and I guess I forgot about it.”

  Jonah watched as she reached forward and snatched up the locket laying on the table and placed the two of them together. The curves fit perfectly.

  “It’s two halves of one
locket.”

  “What?” asked Jonah. “Show me.”

  “That’s the other half,” exclaimed Morlan aloud. “Where did you get it?”

  “I found it in the forest behind the village,” said Seren. “It was buried on the path, stuck in the mud. I only saw it because of the sun shining off it. I dug it out and cleaned it up.”

  “Give it here,” said Jonah.

  She handed him both parts. Jonah held them up so that Morlan could see. The man smiled and laid back.

  “I had wondered if I’d ever see both parts again,” he said. “We were meant to wear one half, me and my sister. That one was the one that I wore, and I lost it when we fled to the north. It must have got tangled on a branch as I ran.”

  “Well,” said Jonah. “Maybe now you can wear it again.”

  “For a price, of course,” said Seren, grinning.

  Chapter 48

  Three months later...

  It was almost dusk by the time the two figures had finished, the area now cleared. The bushes had been cut away and weeds pulled until the ground was flat. A large stone was dug in place, standing four feet tall, rising from its hole in the ground to tower over the other stones and look out over the gently rippling waters down the slope.

  Other stones had been piled around it for support, and the two figures had labored to place flowers and wild berries surrounding the shine. Finally, a wooden plaque, carved from the tree stump that they had cut to the ground earlier in the day, hung by a rope around the top of the stone.

  A single name had been carved into the plaque, the name of the one whom the place would be dedicated to, now, and for all time.

  These two figures, enemies once and now brought together for one purpose, stood and watched the sunset. Neither spoke as the last of the daylight crept away. Then the taller of the two nodded and turned back down the path to the village, leaving just the one.

  This one would never know where his mother was buried, and the other would not know where his sister’s remains lie. None who could tell them was alive to say that her bones were just yards away, below a foot of earth, near a tree at the edge of the clearing. This same person, loved and lost by both.

  But this place. They had decided this was where she had spent so much time, and had dearly loved, overlooking the almost still water of the reservoir above the village she had called home for most of her life. It would have to suffice as a place to remember her at last.

  Sometime later, the lone figure crouched down, touched the stone, nodded once, and then turned to follow the other back toward the village.

  He would come here often in the years that followed, and occasionally the other would come to, and so it would continue until they were too old to come. Both of them had instructed that they were to be buried next to the shrine, but not too close as to disturb it.

  Others visited the place over the years. Many came, for it would become a place of pilgrimage, a place where visitors could contemplate the times when all the clans were separated by war, and be thankful to those that gave their lives to bring an end to the conflict.

  Over the months that followed the founding of the shrine, bright purple flowers would grow around it, spreading across the grass, and these flowers would come to be called by the name of the one the shrine was made to remember.

  Epilogue

  Years later...

  It was calm and quiet in the dark chamber. The only sounds were the dripping of water from above as it fell into pools on the ground, a light dripping that was barely audible. The darkness hid what lay in the shadowed corners and crevices of the ancient underground place, just the odd flicker from a single lantern in the distance.

  A lone figure sat upon a pile of furs, staring into the void, almost motionless and deep in thought. She had been this way for hours, just staring at the darkness until a distant sound made her glance up. She frowned as a door at the far end of the vast space creaked open, slowly admitting brighter light into the chamber.

  A figure entered, head bowed low. The tall warrior was imposing in his armor, but in this chamber, his eyes were kept to the floor in submission as he made his way across the floor.

  “Do you have news?” asked the woman seated on the furs.

  “I do mistress,” said the warrior, still staring at the ground. “And it is as you thought, my mistress.”

  “The one,” said the woman. “The female who wields thunder and walks with the wolves has risen to lead all the clans.”

  “Yes, my mistress,” said the warrior. “The word has come to us that it is so. The warriors Jonah and Morlan have stepped down and conceded leadership to the current head of the clan high council.”

  “You are sure?” asked the woman.

  “We are positive. We have captured several who swear to this change. They say there are no known clans outside of the council’s rule and that the one who wields the thunder now heads the council in a new way but with timeless wisdom. The way from the ancient world.”

  “Democracy,” said the woman. “It must not be allowed.”

  “No, my mistress.”

  The woman shifted and stood up. She moved to stand in front of the warrior who dwarfed her. Yet, he still stared at the floor.

  “The time has come to raise my army once more and to finally end what was begun.”

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  About J. Thorn

  J. THORN IS A TOP 100 Most Popular Author in Horror, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure and Fantasy (Amazon Author Rank). He has published over one million words and has sold more than 170,000 books worldwide. In March of 2014 Thorn held the #5 position in Horror alongside his childhood idols Dean Koontz and Stephen King (at #4 and #2 respectively). He is an official, active member of the Horror Writers Association and a member of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers.

  Thorn earned a B.A. in American History from the University of Pittsburgh and a M.A. from Duquesne University. He is a full-time writer, adjunct university professor, co-owner of Molten Universe Media, podcaster, musician, and a certified Story Grid nerd.

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  About Glynn James

  GLYNN JAMES, born in Wellingborough, England in 1972, is a bestselling author of dark sci-fi novels. He has an obsession with anything to do with zombies, Cthulhu mythos, and post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction and films, all of which began when he started reading HP Lovecraft and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend back when he was eight years old. In addition to co-authoring the bestselling ARISEN books (over 250,000 copies sold), he is the author of the bestselling DIARY OF THE DISPLACED series and the THROWN AWAY series. More info on his writing and projects can be found at www.glynnjames.co.uk.

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