by D. P. Prior
SHADER
Book One
SWORD OF THE ARCHON
D.P. Prior
Third Edition, 2013
ISBN 978-1-61364-492-8
Copyright © 2011 D.P. Prior. All rights reserved.
The right of D.P. Prior to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be, by way of trade or otherwise, lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to thank my editor, Harry Dewulf for the excellent comments about language and his attention to the minutiae.
Paula Kautt has been invaluable for her suggestions, demanding clarification and pointing out inconsistencies, and also for proofreading the story.
I’m extremely grateful to Valmore Daniels for a crucial re-edit after the text was changed to US English, and for formatting, and cover design.
Theo Prior, as always, has been my sounding board and has listened patiently to each successive revision read aloud. He also provided the inspiration for a number of new characters and plot developments on those long walks to the comic store in Naperville. If that’s not enough, he also produced the map of Sahul—which is no mean feat at nine years of age.
Thanks are also due to Mike Nash for the iconic image of Shader on the cover, and for the map of The Nousian Theocracy.
Finally thanks must go to the people who read my stuff and take the time to feedback: John Jarrold, for his comments on the original story, Tony Prior, Ian Prior, David Dalglish, C.S. Marks, Moses Siregar III, Ray Nicholson, Dallas Dredske, and M.R. Mathias.
THE PHILOSOPHER’S EYES
Sunlight speared through the golden leaves, dappling the loamy earth that sucked at Deacon’s new boots. Scarcely out of their brown paper wrapping, they were already mud-spattered, like those of the troops returning from their clashes with the pirates on the coast. A sweet scent wafted lightly on the breeze, coming from the vining honeysuckle in the hedgerows that marked the bounds of home. Twenty yards from the garden, and you were beneath the roof of oak and alder; thirty and you were in another world. Friston Forest in the autumn was the only place he wanted to be on this day. It would have been perfect if Father hadn’t stayed on at Hallow in case the pirates came back. It was like he didn’t want to be at home. If it wasn’t the reavers, it was rustlers and highwaymen. Why was it everyone else’s dads were home all the time, and his couldn’t even make it back for his birthday?
Nub yipped and was off into the bracken with a waggle of his stumpy tail. Deacon cast a worried look back towards the garden gate and then scoffed. Mom wouldn’t know if he went a bit farther than he was allowed. It wasn’t like she was keeping watch, and anyhow, he was seven now. All the other kids his age went about the forest by themselves; he could hear them laughing and screaming from his bedroom window after they came back from the school house.
He touched the prayer cord dangling from his belt. That had been Mom’s gift to him on waking; that and the boots that she was going to scold him for now. He fingered one of the knots you were supposed to unpick when you prayed; best way to grow closer to the Lord Nous, she’d told him. The thought flooded him with warmth, quickly replaced by a tinge of guilt. His boots were rooted to the spot, and it wasn’t the mud doing it. He sighed, eyes flicking between the big hedge at the back of the house and the undergrowth the bulldog had disappeared into. It wasn’t just the rule about not wandering off that was worrying him; the tutor was coming today, just like they’d always known he’d come. Seven was the age they’d set, Mom and Father. It wasn’t fair. The other kids got to learn together down in Willingdon. Why did he have to have some old philos… He could never say the word. All he knew was that a man no one had seen for years was to teach him, and that was an end to the matter.
It was finally Nub’s growl that made the choice for him, and Deacon was off through the thicket, briars snagging at his jerkin, branches whipping back in his face. He ducked beneath an overhang and stepped onto a faded trail. Straight away, his heart lurched and his breaths started to come quick and whistly.
“Nub,” he wheezed, and then he sucked in a staggered gasp of cool autumn air and hollered, “Nub! Here, boy.”
The rustle of bracken told him the dog was in the thick of it, so Deacon broke himself off a dry branch and used it to beat a path after him. He felt like the explorers Father sometimes spoke about by the fire on those nights he was home, the ones who’d made their way to Sahul on the other side of the world. They’d gone to talk sense into the savages that lived there, the heretics who hated Nous. Not that Father was much for the faith of the Templum; he just put up with it for Mom’s sake.
Nub’s shabby butt poked above a grass clump. The tufted tail of a gray squirrel flashed past the dog and scurried up a tree. Nub waddled to the base of the trunk, barking like he did at dinnertime. Opening his jaws made him look such an ugly mutt, which Deacon supposed he was: squat and muscly, with a face that was all wrinkles and sags. Slobber sprayed from his mouth, and his hindquarters wagged furiously. Suddenly, he stopped and sniffed the air. He looked at Deacon with his watery eyes, gave a hesitant yap, and then he was off again, back the way he’d come.
Deacon followed him out onto the trail, and this time Nub stuck to it, scampering ahead and stopping in fits and starts to check Deacon was still behind him. The dog turned a circle, chasing his own tail, and then he cocked his head, whining insistently. When Deacon tried to calm him, Nub snarled and darted through the trees. He kept on running, faster and faster, and it was all Deacon could do to keep up. For a moment, he thought he heard voices—kids laughing and yelling—but it was so far off he could’ve imagined it.
Nub tore across a clearing and straight up the bank of a mound. Deacon balked at the base. The place gave him the shivers. It was one of those burial mounds Father spooked him about on the Night of the Spirits, he was sure of it. It was almost as high as a hut, sparsely covered in yellowish grass. Rabbits had made their burrows in the sides, and chunks of flint riddled it like the spines of some monstrous dragon.
Nub went over the top and let out a peal of barks. Forgetting his fear, Deacon scrambled up and spread his arms wide, like he’d conquered the world’s tallest mountain. But then he swooned, and the eggs he’d had for breakfast came back up his throat. He dropped to his haunches and touched the grass to steady himself. His eyes were all blurry, and waves of sickness surged up from his belly to his head. Keeping low, he scrabbled down the other side on his butt, until he got halfway and felt brave enough to stand and run. His foot found a burrow, and a jarring pain shot through his ankle. He flipped into the air, coming down hard on his shoulder and tumbling the rest of the way. He didn’t even have time to cry. He hit a slick patch of mud and went skidding into a tree trunk, bouncing off and ending up face down in the dirt. Everything hurt, his pounding head most of all, but he was now more worried about Nub. The dog had stopped barking, but he could hear a faint whimper deeper into the copse. He rubbed his aching shoulder, spat out a mouthful of dirt, and stumbled after the sound, wincing each time he put any weight on his bad leg. His britches clung to him, caked in mud. Mom was gonna kill him for that as well. Well, Mom wouldn’t. She was too soft; but she’d tell Father, if he ever came home.
He picked up another trail, this one
barely visible. It didn’t look like anyone had come down this way for a long time. Years, maybe. His ankle loosened with each step until the pain was little more than a dull throb.
The track snaked through the trees till it reached a steep bank. Nub slipped and slid to the bottom, but Deacon had to go more slowly, grabbing onto the thin trunks of saplings to stop from falling. At the bottom, a brook chattered and tinkled, and Nub ran up and down its length looking for a way across. Hard-packed earth formed a natural bridge a short way upstream, and they went over it together, the dog nuzzling Deacon’s leg.
“Maybe we should head back, Nub,” Deacon said, crouching to pet him behind the ear. His guts had that queasy feeling they got when Father told his ghost stories of the Ancients.
Nub licked his hand and went on ahead. Deacon let out a long sigh and listened for the children he thought he’d heard playing. Nothing. Everything was quiet. He couldn’t even hear the scurrying of squirrels in the branches, the chittering of birds. Somewhere, way off in the distance, came the muffled rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker. It made him feel a little better, but not a lot.
Nub had stopped at the edge of a broad clearing and was scratching away at the earth with his paws. As Deacon drew nearer, he could see a large mossy stone poking up from the ground. He bent beside it and helped Nub scrape away the soil. Bit by bit he uncovered the top of a weathered cross. The earth became too hard to dig it all the way out, but as he cleared some of the mud from its surface, he could just about make out numbers at the cross’s center and letters above them. His reading wasn’t good yet. They were saving that for the tutor, but he knew numbers well enough and sat down to squint at them: 1815-1837. They had to be dates from the time of the Ancients, because the Nousian calendar Mom taught him only went up to 878. So, this was what had got Nub all upset. He must’ve sensed there was evil here.
Deacon stepped away from the half-buried cross. Things like this were why he wasn’t allowed to wander far on his own. It wasn’t just the burial mounds he had to watch out for; there were reminders of the Ancients’ world poking up out of the ground all over the Downs, Father said. Mom said they were demons, the Ancients; that they never even knew Nous.
Something tickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He shot to his feet and spun round. Someone was watching him, he was sure of it. Back up the slope, a shadow moved between the trees, and a chill seeped under his skin. There was the flash of a masked face—piebald like a cow—and then nothing. He stood staring at the spot he’d seen the figure, scarcely daring to breathe. The coldness no longer unsettled him, though; it was like being plunged into a cool stream on a hot summer’s day. He found himself longing for another glimpse, but all he saw was trees, and all he heard was—
Nub barked and sped across the clearing. Deacon couldn’t help himself; he had to follow, if only to catch the dog and carry him home. He knew he was pressing his luck. Mom might be a soft touch, but if Father got to hear about him going off alone, there’d be the Abyss to pay.
Nub scampered towards what looked like a pile of rock, but as Deacon caught up, he realized it was the ruins of a flint building. The grass all around was littered with broken stone crosses that were so overgrown with weeds they seemed like fossilized bones poking through the skin of the earth.
A snigger cut through the stillness: the kids again, by the sounds of it. Nub grew excited and ran back to investigate, but Deacon was far too interested in the rubble to care.
He clambered over what was left of the foundations. The roof had collapsed and fallen off to one side. A flat metal bird caked in rust jutted from beams of rotted wood. It was perched atop an arrow. To the rear of the wreckage there were long stone boxes set within a sea of swaying grass. The lids of a few were cracked clean in half, and set among them were winged statues of robed men and women—all of them headless. The heads stuck out of pockets of wildflowers, covered with lichen and crawling with snails. He drew back when he caught one staring up at him with empty eyes—eyes that had probably not seen a living person in hundreds of years. And that was a thought: why did no one come here, not even the grown-ups? The track was so faint, it can’t have been trodden for ages, and yet the ruin was only a stone’s throw from the village with all its families and roving children. Someone must’ve known it was here.
Nub’s yipping caught his ear. It was shrill, mixed in with taunts and laughter.
“Nub?” he called.
He heard the dog rip out three or four sharp barks. There was a muted thud, and then Nub whimpered and went quiet.
“Nub!”
Mocking voices answered from where he’d last seen the dog headed: “Nub! Nub-Nub. Here, doggy, doggy.”
He recognized some of them: Brent Carvin and the Dolten girls. His heart sank like a stone and he clenched his fists, fighting back the dread. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? Every time Mom took him into the village, they’d start. She thought they were just playing, just being kids, but he knew better.
He started to run towards the laughter but froze when he came back round the ruin and saw a lump amidst the shrubs. Brown fur twitched, and he knew right away it was Nub. Tears spilled down his cheeks as he half-ran, half-staggered to his dog. Bright blood speckled the blades of grass Nub had fallen on, and there was a gushing hole between his eyes.
Brent Carvin stepped from the tree line brandishing a slingshot. The Doltens were following like the sheep they were, and behind them came Rob Marlin and his brother Mik.
“Aah, shog, mate,” Brent said. “Was that your dog?”
Deacon knelt by Nub, stroked him gently on the ear. A red-stained rock lay in the grass a few feet away. Nub shivered, and his breaths were coming in short rattles.
“Is,” Deacon muttered, wiping away a tear.
“What’s that?” Brent said, stepping towards him.
The girls giggled, and the Marlin boys sniggered as they followed behind Brent.
“Is my dog,” Deacon said, lifting his eyes to glare his hatred. He didn’t care that Brent was older and bigger. All he could think of was that he’d hurt Nub, that the other kids thought it was funny.
“Not for much longer, mate,” Brent said, smirking at the Marlins. “Not the way it’s breathing. Still, you have to admit, it is one ugly son of shog.”
“Yeah,” Lucy Dolten said. “You can’t blame Brent. We thought it was gonna bite.”
Her sister stuck out her pointy chin. “Yeah, it was gonna attack us, weren’t it Brent? Weren’t it Mik, Rob?”
“That’s right,” Rob said. “Macy’s right. You shouldn’t be letting that thing run wild out here.”
Nub moaned, and Deacon pressed his nose to the dog’s. Normally, Nub would have licked his face, but he just didn’t have the strength. He whimpered and shook, and then his sad brown eyes rolled up into his head.
Someone made a scoffing noise; Deacon didn’t see who. He rocked back on his heels, blurry gaze never leaving Nub’s still body. He clutched at the grass, made a fist around it and felt his arms shaking.
“Aw, don’t cry,” Lucy said. “It ain’t like it was Brent’s fault.”
Brent drew nearer, till he was looming over Deacon. “Yeah, it weren’t my fault, so shut up with the baby tears, right?”
Deacon flashed him a look, dried his eyes with his sleeve, and stood. Don’t back down from a bully, Father always said. Mom didn’t agree; she always said to walk away, pray for them. That’s what Deacon always did, ever since he could remember, but he didn’t see much good coming from it. Nub deserved better than that.
“He was a bulldog,” he said, glaring into Brent’s eyes as if he could burn them from their sockets. “Maybe the last.” Certainly one of the last, if Father was right. The Ancients had bred them that way, for some odd reason, but people these days needed real dogs: dogs that could hunt and fight.
“Shogging pig-dog, if you ask me,” Mik said, and Rob snorted out a laugh.
“So, what’s your point, Momma’s boy?” Brent said. “Don�
�t matter what kind of dog it was; it’s a dead dog now. Maybe you and your loony mom should light a candle and say some prayers to make everything better.”
Deacon’s fist came up, but his arm was rigid with tension, and it just stayed there, a threat no one was going to take seriously.
“Go on,” Brent said, sticking his chin out. “Put it right there, holy boy, or are you gonna piss your pants and go running to Mommy like last time?”
He hadn’t. That wasn’t true. He’d run, that’s for sure, but only so he didn’t have to fight. Better a coward than a sinner, Mom always said.
—So why does Father fight?
“Shut up,” he muttered under his breath. It was the Demiurgos trying to mess with him; trying to make him doubt.
“What’s that?” Brent said.
—Why’s he fight, if it’s a sin?
“Shut up,” he said more firmly. He meant it for the niggling voice of the Father of Lies, but Brent didn’t see it that way.
White exploded in Deacon’s head as Brent’s fist smashed into his nose. A second punch split his lip and he tasted blood. With a roar that seemed to come from afar, he grabbed Brent around the neck and drove him back. The other kids scattered out of the way as Brent’s feet skidded and his arms flailed about wildly. Fire flooded Deacon’s veins. He slammed Brent against a tree trunk and pressed tighter with his thumbs. The slingshot fell among the roots, and Brent’s eyes bulged as he grunted and choked. Deacon saw himself bashing the boy’s head against the trunk till the skull cracked like an egg and his brains splattered the bark. Saw himself punching and punching till Brent’s ribs snapped like dry twigs; saw himself snatching up a jagged rock and pounding it into Brent’s face, over and over and over… But instead, he let go, let his arms go slack and drop to his sides. Brent was on him in a flash, thumping, kicking, snarling. After the first few blows, Deacon didn’t feel much; he was dimly aware of each jolting strike; he knew he was on the ground with Brent on top, swinging and spitting. But the tears burning his eyes weren’t from the beating: they were for Nous—for the sin of rage that had so offended him.
