Death and Resurrection (The Ballad of Broken Song Book 1)

by Simon Birks

  The boy gritted his teeth.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” he said.

  Markings

  Am I the monster?

  Ka Yeta woke up. There was a tightness in her right leg, her right calf, to be precise. She didn’t understand why. This isn’t my house, she thought. A flash of memory, of feeling frightened.

  You shouldn’t be here.

  A monster. A monster in the medical building. Chasing her. No, it was a healer. Ka Yeta stopped her breathing, and waited. Was the healer in this room with her now? It didn’t seem likely, yet…

  She heard nothing. She was alone.

  Still alone.

  Ka Yeta pushed herself up, resting on her elbows. She couldn’t see much. A stone floor was just about it. But there was something on the floor. Markings. Deliberate markings. The Ka sat up, pulling her legs up. There was that tightness again. Her right leg resisted the movement.

  Ka Yeta didn’t want to look at the wound, scared by what she might see, yet she had little choice. She reached out, carefully touching her leather trousers. She could feel the rips, and count the strips of fabric that now clung to her leg. Four. Like the claw of a monster, she thought, as she started to peel them back. They were stuck to her, congealed in the blood that had flowed, yet there was no pain when she pulled them free.

  How long have I been here?

  Once the leather had been removed, Ka Yeta touched her skin. It was rough and hot. Not just warm, but hot. Infected, Ka Yeta thought. Poisoned. Had the monster got its kill after all?

  It wasn’t a monster, it was the healer.

  Had - whatever it had been - swapped the swift pain of an instant death for the lingering hell of a slow creeping poison?

  The wounds were now closed, sealed tight, and her skin hard. It was a miracle, a healing like no other she’d seen or read about, one which meant she hadn’t bled to death.

  It’s unnatural.

  Ka Yeta got to her feet. Her leg might have stopped bleeding, but it was going to be some time before it would support her weight.

  The Ka inspected the walls. To her surprise, she saw there were shutters high up; shutters to the outside world and the light it would give. Ka Yeta stretched her arms up, moving her hands over the wood until she found a clasp, and undid it. The shutters were stiff. They had not been opened in a while. She dug her fingertips underneath and pulled inwards. With creaks and cracks they opened far enough to let the light pour in. It was good to feel the warmth of the sun.

  There was little to view beyond, nothing more than another wall with another window, no more than a couple of feet away. Ka Yeta turned and looked back into the room.

  The markings on the floor.

  They formed a symbol. A symbol of a God, she thought, though it was not a symbol she recognised. A circular border, on fire, with six lines, tapering like arrowheads towards the centre, where they met a hexagonal shape, filled with a criss-cross pattern. What was this doing here? Gods were… not real. Her prayer to Chana was little more than a mantra she had said automatically.

  There was a noise outside. She heard it clearly. Before thinking, Ka Yeta spun round, and her leg buckled. She couldn’t help but cry out in pain. Realising her mistake, she pushed herself up and faced the door, listening as the footsteps grew closer in the corridor beyond. Ka Yeta moved carefully over to the shutters, hoisted herself up, and pushed them shut. The room returned to near-darkness again.

  The footsteps stopped outside the door. Ka Yeta gripped her knife.

  “Hello?” came a voice.

  A man’s voice. She wasn’t sure if it was the healer. The healer who was also a monster.

  Ka Yeta kept still.

  “Hello, is anyone here?” the voice asked.

  It was Nayt, she realised. She felt relief, and almost called out to him, but stopped herself. If the healer was bad, then Nayt could also be bad. She could no longer trust anyone.

  Ka Yeta waited.

  The footsteps resumed, travelling up the hallway, towards the living quarters.

  Before she had a chance to do anything, Nayt came back down the hallway and passed the door again. He was returning to the main building.

  Ka Yeta waited a few moments, before standing tentatively on her one good leg. She wanted to get out of Broken Song just as soon as she could, and there was still one more place she had to visit first.

  Out of Hand

  The healer was dead, and whatever had lived inside it - had been placed inside it - must be dead too.

  Nayt didn’t know whether to raise the alarm or whoop for joy. He had come to help Ka Yeta, but hadn’t expected to find the healer. What did that mean to the base? He needed to find out. He didn’t want this getting out of hand.

  It’s already out of hand.

  It was frightening, yet what could he do? He was just one guard, he couldn’t fight the whole system. Nayt ran from the medical building, through the courtyard, and towards the food store. He tried the door. It wouldn’t budge.

  Stupid trainee Ka, he thought.

  Nayt banged on the door. Banged hard.

  Cat and Mouse

  Gideon hardly noticed the knocking on the food store door; he had more pressing things to worry about, like not getting skewered by the living rope creature. He had parried its searching tendrils several times already, but his sword seemed unable to pierce its skin, if that was indeed what it was. The one thing in his favour was the creature’s lack of speed. He was able to out-manoeuvre it each time, which was fine as long as the other tendrils didn’t join in the fight.

  Which raised other questions. For such a slow creature to get this far, it would have needed help. Not only that, but the whole room seemed set up for it to exist. Who’d been helping it? What was the creature? And why hadn’t he or anyone else ever seen it, or heard mention of it?

  Live now, worry about that later.

  He looked back from where he’d entered and saw tendrils blocking his path. That left one exit, on the other side of the room, and beyond that, the door to the outside world. If he was bolder, braver, he might care about defeating this monstrosity, but Gideon wasn’t concerned whether this creature lived or died. He only cared for himself.

  What’s that banging sound?

  Parry. Side step.

  He edged, his way closer to the opposite door. The rope rose again. High. Higher than it had done previously, perhaps hoping to make the steeper angle of descent more problematic for him. Gideon watched it closely.

  Why was it so high?

  Gideon realised a moment too late. He didn’t even have time to look down before his feet were swept away from him. He hit the floor hard.

  Gideon sat up and pushed himself backwards as fast as he could. He needed distance. The rope that had taken his feet away slithered along the floor towards him. This one was faster, and shining. It must have detached itself from one of the children. If one could, they all could. Gideon glanced behind him. At least one rope from every child was coming free of flesh. He wouldn’t stand a chance against so many.

  His back hit the wall, sandwiched in a small alcove, between two beds. He was stuck. He knew he shouldn’t, but Gideon marvelled at the sight in front of him; at the many lit ropes curled and hung in the air, pointing, looking, at him. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  Beautiful, and deadly. His sword would be no use against this many.

  The ropes stopped, poised high in the air, motionless.

  This is it, then.

  Gideon watched, held his breath. The ropes swooped towards him. Gideon didn’t want to close his eyes, he wanted to see it all, but it was a reflex reaction.

  It all went dark.

  The Carriage

  Ma Poppun and Visenai crouched over Hossip, who lay unconscious on the ground. The cook had checked for a pulse, finding a weak one on the second attempt. There was something else, too. On his forearm were three punctures marks; protruding from them were three spines, each with a small pulsing sack o
f fluid at the top. She put a cloth around her hand and plucked them out.

  “What are they?” Visenai asked.

  “Poison of some kind.”

  “Is he going to die?”

  Ma Poppun sighed. It was no time to lie.

  “He well might.”

  “Then what should we do?”

  The cook stared across to the forest.

  “I think we should try and get out of here before that man comes back.”

  “But there are only two horses,” the girl said.

  Ma Poppun crossed to the barn and looked inside. She turned to Visenai and beckoned her over.

  “Come look,” she said.

  The girl looked into the barn. Her mouth fell open.

  “The carriage!”

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Now Ma Poppun saw it, it was as if the intervening years had melted away. It was if she was seeing the mistress off on her last journey again. Somehow, the carriage hadn’t aged a day. In fact, it looked better than ever. She went closer, reached out a shaking hand, and touched the painted side.

  “Why has he kept it out here?” the girl wondered out loud.

  The Ma shook her head. “I’m not sure.” She put her hand on the axle, felt the grease there. Looked at the dirt on the wheels. “It’s been used recently, though. Do you think you can hook the horses up?”

  Visenai looked at the fittings on the front of the carriage, and then crossed to the horses.

  “I should be able to work it out.”

  “Excellent,” the older lady said. “I’ll get Hossip inside.”

  Visenai watched as the cook opened the carriage door and placed her bags inside. “That’s better,” she said. She cracked her knuckles and went to where Hossip lay. She lifted him under the shoulders, dragging him backwards. When she got to the carriage door, he suddenly became lighter, and Ma Poppun looked up to see Visenai straining under the effort of lifting his legs. “Thank you,” she said, and together they hoisted him onto the floor of the carriage. “I’ll make him comfortable.”

  Visenai smiled, and walked over to the horses.

  The older lady looked on; she might not know where the pair of them were heading, but at least they were doing something, and sometimes that was good enough.

  Whate

  In the sky of Ka Pinto’s world there had always been two Orbs; Dilar, the larger, was predominantly blue-grey, and Ossed, at about half the size, was green. There were other colours present in each, of course. Dilar had many areas of reddish-brown dotted over its blue vastness. Ossed’s green was marked with large areas of complete black.

  Early in the civilisation’s history, these Orbs were Gods in the majority of faiths, though their temperaments differed widely between religions. In some, Dilar was the God of Anger, whilst in others the blue represented peace. Ossed’s green lent itself to being thought of as the God of Flora, yet there were places where regular sacrifices would be made to appease its alternative status as a God of Fair Weather.

  Ka Pinto knew a lot about the Orbs. He’d always been interested in them. They were ever-present in his life, hanging over his shoulder like a protective parent. If ever he had a prayer to say, he would more than likely direct it to one or the other.

  Yet Ka Pinto never looked on them as Gods. That would be an ancient way of thinking. He thought of them, instead, as beautiful, ominous objects, that proved something larger than all of them existed.

  As a child he would throw a ball up in the air, towards where Dilar and Ossed idled in the sky, and then catch it again on its way down, wondering how the Orbs themselves did not drop as his ball did.

  He remembered one of his Kas, an old man whose name was lost to time, coming over to him. He remembered him cupping his frail hands around Dilar.

  “I’ve got it,” he’d said. “Now let’s see whether the tree of life lets me pluck its fruit.”

  Ka Pinto had laughed as the older Ka strained and pulled.

  “You’d better help,” the older man said.

  So he’d put his hands over the Ka’s, and they’d tried to take Dilar out of the sky together.

  It was a strange moment, yet one he remembered vividly. The Ka had not normally been so friendly, and to his knowledge, had never been again. Still, Dilar had remained his favourite for the rest of his life.

  Ka Pinto smiled. For the rest of his life was an odd thing to say, when you’ve come back from the dead twice. But that was how it was. He’d lived and he’d died, and now he lived for a third time. He thought he’d seen it all, didn’t believe he could be any more surprised than he had already been.

  The first thing Ka Pinto saw when he opened his eyes was Dilar, the blue-grey Orb. Resplendent, magisterial, familiar. He couldn’t move his head, or any other part of him. Still, he found he was comfortable. How strange to be Resurrected for a second time, although he was sure something about it had been different.

  Perhaps I wasn’t killed, after all. Perhaps I’ve woken up outside my house, paralysed but alive.

  It was possible. Had this feeling of a second Resurrection just been a silly dream his near-death state had created?

  Ka Pinto took deep breaths. I can’t have been Resurrected. I was not on a plinth, he thought.

  Truth hides from no one, replied the voice in his mind.

  Ka Pinto hoped he was near his house. Then, he would be found soon, and everything could return to normal. If he was further from his house, if he was in the desert… no, he didn’t like that idea. He didn’t want to be stuck like this; paralysed, an easy meal for hungry desert predators.

  If he could just lift his head, or even turn it. But it was locked. Staring on Dilar.

  Something occurred to Ka Pinto. It hadn’t at first, but now he was more awake, it became clearer.

  Dilar looks smaller.

  He thought back to the Ka encircling the planet with his hands. He pictured the size in relation to the adult hands. Yes, it was definitely looking smaller. The Orb was out of proportion.

  Something in his neck gave way and loosened. He didn’t like the cracking sound it made, but at least he was able to move his head slightly to the right. He could feel the sun on his face. It was comfortable. In fact, he felt comfortable, too. Against his skin was not the normal grittiness of sand, or the cold slab of the plinth. There were plants, by the feel of them. And they ran the length of his body.

  Ka Pinto moved his neck, trying to loosen it some more. It was a painful process, but after a few attempts, there came another crack, and he was able to see a bit further to the left.

  What he saw there made him cry, instantly and uncontrollably. He wept, and wept, and didn’t care who or what might hear him, or what might be foraging nearby.

  Off to the left, in Ka Pinto’s full vision was a new Orb. A greenish-yellow Orb, with sweeps of blue. This Orb was larger than Ossed, smaller than Dilar. And he knew what it was.

  This was the place they called Whate, the place he called home. He felt stupid he had not realised it before. Whate was not flat. It wasn’t some endless place, as the scholars would have you believe. Whate was just another Orb, a beautiful Orb where he used to live, now no longer under his feet, but raised up into the air for everyone on Ossed to see.

  Kindness

  Death seemed far less painful than Resurrection. At least that was what Gideon thought.

  “Keep still,” whispered a voice beside him.

  Gideon opened his eyes. The ropes were gone. Everything was gone. He reached his hand forward slowly, and felt rough wood.

  “Where am I?” he whispered to himself.

  “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

  Gideon turned to his right. He couldn’t see anything, but he could smell dampness and sweat.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “I’m Jin Hoep,” Hoep said automatically.

  “Telar-Val?” Gideon asked.

  His hand found his sword.

  “Ha!” Hoep snorted. “N
o more. I’m wanted for murder, somehow. Or at least, as an accomplice. You?”

  “I am…”

  Careful…

  “One of the healers.”

  “You seem well-armed for a healer,” Hoep said.

  “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been travelling under the Complex using a tunnel. It came up here.”

  “I need to see the tunnel.”

  “It’s not safe,” Hoep warned.

  “Can’t be any less safe than here,” Gideon told the Jin.

  The boy heard another door open, and the light of a flickering torch relieved the darkness a little. He saw the man who had - saved your life - walking in front of him. He was not what he’d expected. Shorter, and round in his physique.

  “Why do they think you were an accomplice to murder?” Gideon asked.

  “The body I was guarding. It disappeared.”

  “Someone took it?” Gideon asked.

  Hoep stopped, and looked over his shoulder.

  “No,” he said. “The body actually disappeared. Before my eyes.”

  “And they blamed you?”

  “The Telar-Val are very… complicated. And paranoid. Here we are.”

  Gideon looked to where Hoep was gesturing. In the floor was a square entrance with roughly cut steps leading down. He felt an urge to reach out and push the man down them and be done with him. He felt it so strongly, he gripped his fists and put them behind his back.

  “What about that way?” Gideon asked, nodding his head in the direction they were facing.

  The corridor they were in continued around, past the entrance to the stairs.

  “I don’t know. I was in such a rush to get out of here, I didn’t realise it went that way. I’m not… I wasn’t the best officer they ever had.”

  “Let us look,” Gideon said, and stepped through beside Hoep so he could take the lead.