Children of a Broken Sky (Redemption Chronicle Book 1)

by Adam J Nicolai

  The Pulse deadened, the grey deepening. Syntal was chanting.

  This was a trap, something gibbered in his mind. It was her, the spell responded to her, she led us here! She tricked us! She—

  "Hush." Syntal stared into the trees, the fingers of one hand outstretched. "Iggy's right. There is a spell." Her eyes, green and vibrant in the dusk, searched the air as if reading invisible script. "Marlin, can you see it?"

  "I know which chant you're using," he said, "but you didn't share it with me. Remember?"

  She ignored him. Dead leaves crunched beneath her as she pivoted, her gaze locked on the trees. "It's everywhere," she breathed. Was there a trace of admiration in her voice? "It's... in the trees, floating—" She cut off. Her eyes widened.

  "There's something out there."

  Iggy followed her stare, but saw nothing.

  "A light." She squinted into the dark. "I think it's... I don't know."

  He glanced at her again, then back into the trees. He tried to hear the Pulse, and found only rushing grey.

  "By Akir," Syntal whispered. "It's beautiful. Can't you see that?" She took a step forward.

  "Syn." Helix took her shoulder. "Just wait. M'sai? What's out there?"

  "A light. It's a light. You can barely see it through the trees, but..." She peered, her head bobbing. "I can get us there."

  "There's no light out there," Seth said flatly.

  "I used a chant. I never knew what it did before. But when Iggy said there was a spell, I tried it... I can see it now." She lifted a hand, staring at her fingers. "I can see it now." She flicked her gaze to Iggy, marveling. "It's all over you. No wonder you got lost. It doesn't want you to find it."

  "Syn," Helix said. "You're not making any sense."

  "You can't see it, Helix. But I can."

  Helix ran a hand over his mouth. His eyes searched Iggy out, their meaning plain.

  Has she lost her mind?

  "We have to go there," Syntal said. The others exchanged glances.

  "No." Marlin scoffed. "No, this wood is cursed, and you have no idea what you're dealing with." He turned. "You're fools. All of you. I'm going back."

  "You aren't," Syntal said. "You'll get lost."

  "I know how we came in. I'm not a fool."

  Her head drifted when she shook it, like she was trapped underwater. "The spell will take you."

  She sounds mad, Iggy thought, and another thought chased it: She sounds just like I would, if I told them what happened in Keldale.

  "M'sai," he said, his heart galloping. "Syntal, I'm with you."

  "Iggy—" Seth began.

  "No. I tried, Seth. There is something in this wood. You can't just hike it. I believe her."

  "Just because she's seeing something with her magic, doesn't mean we should chase it down," Seth pressed. "What is it? Does she even know?"

  "It doesn't matter." Syntal looked at him. "There's no other choice."

  "Can you... walk away from it?" Harth asked. "Just... instead of taking us toward it, put it behind you? That would get us out, wouldn't it?"

  She turned around, then shook her head. "The spell's on me, too. If I'm not looking at the beacon, I'll get lost."

  "It's a beacon now?" Seth said, his eyes dark.

  Syntal glared. "If you don't believe me," she said coldly, "try to get out on your own."

  "All right," Angbar said. "Enough. It's dark, it's getting cold. We're not traveling any more tonight. And hey, at least we know this is a good camp site." The joke fell flat. "I'm starving. Let's eat. We can decide in the morning."

  ~ ~

  Dinner was tense and quiet. Iggy took first watch. When the others were asleep, he crept around the fire and woke Syntal.

  "Iggy?" she said, peering at him. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing." He sat on a log. "I need to talk to you."

  She sat up, shivering, and pulled her blanket around her neck. "Aren't you cold?"

  He realized he wasn't. His breath bloomed from his mouth in clouds, but he didn't even have a coat. "I'll get a blanket later. I want you to tell me what's going on."

  She shook her head. "What do you mean?"

  He hesitated. "I know you know more than you're telling us."

  She drew back. "Oh?" she said, defensive. "And how do you know that?"

  "Too many coincidences."

  "You're the one who brought us to Wolfwood."

  He said nothing. She watched him, her face flickering with shadows.

  "You saw the spell," she finally said. "At the road, with the wolves. Didn't you?"

  He swallowed and raised a hand. "I..."

  "I saw you drop. I thought I'd hit you with it, at first. But I didn't. You saw what happened. It must have knocked you over."

  "What did happen?" he pressed.

  "I was right, back at the inn. You can feel it."

  "What happened at the road?"

  "Why haven't you told anyone?"

  He rubbed his temple. This wasn't what he'd wanted.

  "Iggy? Tell me. I sit here everyday with Seth's eyes burning into my back. You can hear it too, and you say nothing?"

  "I don't," he snapped. "I don't say nothing. I try to help... when I can. I stood up for you last night. Remember?"

  She stared at him, her eyes cold.

  "It's... it's different for me." What you do makes me sick. "I don't have to chant. I don't have to say mantras. It just comes to me. I can hear it when it wants me to hear it. But I don't have to tell anyone. I don't have..." He groped for the words, gave a weak chuckle. "I don't have light shooting out of my hands. I can keep it a secret."

  "Must be nice."

  He flinched, then recovered. "It is. It is nice. I would like to keep it this way. I don't..."

  I don't know what it means. I don't know what it makes me.

  He met her eyes. "Please."

  She sighed. "M'sai. You want to know what happened at the road?" She shook her head. "I have no idea."

  She must have read the disbelief in his eyes. "I tried to put a few of them to sleep, and something happened to the spell. It transformed. I don't know how. I've been trying to figure it out."

  "You didn't... do it on purpose?"

  She scoffed. "If I could've done it on purpose, I would've done it on the way up."

  He believed her. But she was hiding something.

  "You know more than that," he said. "This light you saw in the trees... what is it?"

  "I don't know."

  He peered at her. "You have a guess."

  "Maybe. But I've got my own secrets, Iggy." She rolled away, burrowing back into her blanket. "And I'm much better at keeping them."

  Chapter 19

  Before the Storm

  i. Syntal

  The book became everything.

  Her parents were dead, haunting her dreams like specters, and the once-familiar walls of her aunt and uncle's home had transformed to prison cells. But under the porch was a secret, an impregnable mystery, and it consumed her.

  She sneaked beneath the porch—always quiet, always unseen—whenever she could to look at it. She found a mark on its metal band, a sort of stylized h that she thought she recognized, though she couldn't remember from where. Sometimes Helix came with her, and he tried everything to get the book open, straining at the cover until his freckles blared like trumpets. He even snatched Uncle's smithing shears. When they failed to break the clasp, he got her permission to try cutting the cover itself. It was brittle leather, faded with age, but the shears couldn't even scratch it.

  "It's some kind of magic," Helix panted after one of these sessions, his hair awry with sweat. "I bet you a hundred crowns. It has to be."

  He sounded frightened, though he tried to mask it. The prospect frightened her, too. Everyone knew the story of Iis-alac and the witch's book.

  But every night, the book glowed like a beacon in her dreams. Her mother sat with her secret smile, watching.

  Summer came to an end, borne away by drifting go
lden leaves. Autumn brought rain and cold, and Auntie's increasing insistence that Syntal stay indoors. She was forced to think on the book instead of touching it, and finally, she remembered something about the symbol—something critical.

  It was in First Tongue, the language of scripture.

  ~ ~

  Abbot Forthin was old and dour. He scared her. On Dawndays, he always looked like he hated everyone; like he could see what they were really like inside, and it disgusted him.

  But he was the only one in the village who might know what the symbol was.

  She wrestled with this problem until the answer found her. The Night of Rev'naas was coming. The temple Keeper always gave a sermon that day, and at the end, everyone had to go up, one by one, for censure. She wouldn't need an excuse to talk to him. She would just have to remember to ask about the symbol while she was up there.

  When the day came, service was the same as always. The temple Keeper—Father Samuel at her old church, Father Forthin here—came up and spoke with all the temerity of a wash rag. She fought to stay awake, speak when she was supposed to speak, and sing when she was supposed to sing.

  She stared out the window, watching the sun hover when it should have been pushing toward noon. Her right hand idly twisted the black ring she'd found. It was still a little big, but she kept it on her thumb, and it usually stayed on when she put it there. Maybe the ring has something to do with it, she mused for the thousandth time. It was in the cave, too. But she'd inspected the ring inside and out, and there were no marks on it—it was just a plain, black ring. She and Helix had both tried to find some place on the book or its band where the ring might fit as a key. There was nothing there.

  Father Forthin was telling the story of the demons, the same story Father Samuel always told on the Night. It was from the Chronicle, somewhere. An army of devils had come to Or'agaard, and the Fatherlord had cast them out. It was an exciting story, and scary if she thought too hard on it. Luckily, Father Forthin shared her old Keeper's knack for making everything boring.

  "But the greatest of the devils," Forthin droned, reciting from a huge book laid open in front of him, "whose name shall not be penned, resisted him, saying: 'Art thou mad, great one? Truly, the Father of Heaven and Earth has given you this power to rebuke us, and we cannot resist it.'"

  Syntal stifled a yawn.

  "'But while your threat may frighten me, the evils of men grant me infinite courage. While your words may wound me, the black souls of mortals invigorate me without cease. While your rebuke may destroy me, the sins of your followers shall birth me forty times again.'"

  Sins, Syntal thought. She'd complained to her father, once, about how boring Dawnday sermons were. Keep listening, he'd told her. One day, they'll make sense.

  Abbot Forthin closed the great book and circled his heart. The congregation did the same, then rose. She found herself alone in a sudden forest of legs and pews, staring at the floor. The old cleric's voice, disembodied and grey, sought her out.

  "For forty winters I've given the Night sermon, and you all know what to do. Keep your young ones inside. Keep the lights low. Await the dawn. Pretend you don't hear your kids, telling each other scary stories." A quiet chuckle murmured through the crowd. "But it's not just rote, or it shouldn't be. It means something, my children. Tonight is a night to reflect on our sins."

  If her book had a mark from the First Tongue on it, she suddenly realized, it was probably just an old book of scripture.

  The thought made her sag. She couldn't believe she hadn't thought of that earlier.

  It can't just be a book of scripture. It had been in the water for a long time—years, maybe—and it never got damaged. The cover couldn't even be cut.

  Just more proof that it's scripture. The voice in her head was Lyseira's, grating and smug. There's a miracle on it, keeping it safe.

  She wished she could show it to Angbar. He'd have some good ideas.

  "All of us experience hardship, and all are eager to lay the blame for it on Akir. But the lesson of the Night of Rev'naas is simple: we are to blame for our own hardships."

  The words trickled past her musings and snagged in her mind. Something about them made her look up.

  "Our rev'naas creates evil, just as the Unnamed Devil said. And what creates rev'naas?"

  Sin, Syntal thought again. This time the word felt like a thorn.

  "Our sins. Every lie, every skipped tithe, every lustful thought. People ask, 'Does Akir hate us? Why does He bring illness? Why does He bring floods?' But the story of the Unnamed Devil answers these questions. Akir doesn't bring us calamity. We bring it on ourselves."

  Floods?

  Why does He bring floods?

  A black horror stirred in her chest, flicking its tongue like a serpent.

  She had skipped censure. She had told lies.

  Once, she had found a silver shell—a whole shell—and hadn't asked her parents to break it into heels so she could tithe from it. She always told herself she'd forgotten, but that wasn't true.

  She'd chosen to keep it.

  Why does He bring floods?

  That beautiful image of her mother sitting at the table, smiling her secret smile, dissolved into a memory of her casket.

  "Oh," she murmured. Her eyes were burning.

  "It's easy—so easy—to think, 'This one won't matter.' 'I'm only human.' But when we hurt others, we hurt ourselves."

  When we hurt others.

  She saw the rock she'd hurled at Ellic Baler, that day at the tree house. She saw the blood burst from his head, heard Helix demanding, What'd you do that for?

  Auntie had tried to send her to censure for that. Syntal had refused. I'll go when I get home, she'd said, but even that had been a lie.

  A month later, her parents had drowned.

  "Let us recite the Seven Sacred Principles," Father Forthin said. The people around her answered in one voice.

  "Obey the word of the Fatherlord, for He is Akir in the flesh.

  "Slay not thy fellow man.

  "Seek not the power of your Creator, save with His blessing and through the hand of His Church.

  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

  "In all things, seek the righteous path.

  "Carry the scripture of your God into all the lands and hearts of men.

  "Mind your brother's sin as you would your own."

  She should be speaking, reciting the Principles with the others, but her tongue lay dead in her mouth. It was just another sin, heaped atop the others.

  The recitation ended, and the Father prayed.

  "Al'Akir above, who is Father and Guardian, Savior and Punisher, bringer of all things righteous, I beseech thee to hear my mortal voice.

  "The Night of Rev'naas comes soon, and your wayward children need guidance. Some are being punished even now, Father. They know their sins. They suffer with their guilt, with their misery and pain. Their rev'naas weighs on them.

  "Find their hearts. Work in them, that they might seek censure and lay bare their faults. Let them be washed clean of rev'naas."

  Washed clean. The words were an impossible promise. If she had sought censure sooner, before the flood, then maybe...

  Her heart twisted. Why had she been so wicked? Why hadn't she listened?

  But Akir is God, she pled with herself. If He can cleanse me, maybe they'll come back.

  The body they'd buried was unrecognizable. Maybe it hadn't been her mother. Maybe the whole thing was a trial from Akir, meant to show her how wicked she was and force her to repent.

  She had learned her lesson. Maybe He could spare her now.

  The prayer ended. The villagers started talking or filing toward the exit. Only a few trickled forward to the altar, where Abbot Forthin stood waiting.

  "Where is everyone going?" she said, grabbing her aunt's hand. "It's the Night! Everyone has to go up!"

  Auntie glanced down. She looked pained, like an adult who knew she was breaking the rules, and had t
o try to explain it. "Not everyone always goes, honey," she said. "The Abbot doesn't..." She touched Syntal's cheek. "Are you crying?" Her faced melted with concern. "Oh, honey—"

  "I have to go up!" She shouldered past her and pushed into the aisle. "I have to!"

  "Syn?" Helix asked, but she ignored him and kept her eyes nailed to the floor. Her cheeks burned. Censure was supposed to be private, between priest and sinner, on every day of the year but this one. That's why we all go, Dad had told her more than once, so no one is singled out. But here they didn't all go. Here, she had to go alone.

  If she had killed her parents, maybe she deserved it.

  She was the last in line. Every eye in the temple bore into the back of her head as she waited.

  "Syntal Smith," the Father finally said. Her new family name left her ears ringing. "Speak to me," he said, beckoning.

  "I..." Her tongue betrayed her. It wouldn't move.

  "Tell me," he said again. His hand cupped her chin, tilted her eyes to his. The compassion she saw there jolted her.

  "It's just my parents." She couldn't trust her own voice. It was a writhing snake, trying to escape. "I hurt Ellic Baler real bad, but I didn't mean to. I really didn't."

  She searched his eyes, desperate for some sign that her appeal would matter. They didn't change.

  "But I think... I heard what you said, and I... I mean, what if I...?"

  Something—some final brace against her horror—gave way. She felt it disappear, swallowed by the dark as surely as a bridge falling into the river, and an anguish she had never known thundered through the gap.

  "It was my rev'naas, Father! I should've gotten censure! I did all these bad things, and I never got censure! I want... is it too late? I want it! Please! I would've been better if I knew! I just didn't know! I swear, but I just... it's too late, because they're dead, and I can't... I can't...!"

  He knelt, shushing. "Child, no. No, no, no. Here." He pulled her close. "Hear me. No censure today. You lost your parents. That's censure enough for one childhood."

  He put a hand on her forehead, clammy and trembling.