Steadfast
Page 1
Dedication
For my biggest fans:
my dad and stepdad,
both gone too soon.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Fifteen Years Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Ten Years Ago
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Five Years Ago
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Michelle Hauck
Copyright
About the Publisher
Fifteen Years Ago
Fifteen Years Ago
Santabe had long ceased to marvel at the way the stones of the small room had been cut so square and matched together so perfectly. She had never been in a place built of anything but wood until entering the Great Palace of Dal this morning with her mother and aunts, and she hadn’t expected to stay more than the few minutes it took to read her augury.
The priest who put her in this bare room of naught but stone after her reading had instructed she remain on her knees and ruminate on her fate until fetched. She’d dutifully remained on her knees, but, after what seemed like hours of suffering, had allowed herself to lean backward on her toes. Her lower limbs went numb and dead, but she spared her knees the same agony.
“Obey,” had been the last word spoken by her mother before she stepped into line for the augury to be cast.
“Obey in measure,” had been the wiser advice from her favorite aunt.
The latch on the door—the only piece of wood in the room—clicked, and Santabe shot up onto her knees so quickly, she lost her balance and toppled onto her side.
“Is this how you show your respects to Dal?” an angry voice demanded. “Lying at your ease?”
Santabe ducked her head to avoid the strap aimed for her temple, and the blow landed on her bent neck with a snap. Pain radiated down her back. She struggled to surge upright, but her numb legs failed her, sending her crashing to the stone again. The strap hit her hip on its second strike. She sobbed.
“Forbear,” a new voice said. “I have seen this before. The body failed; that doesn’t mean the heart yielded.”
The younger priest in his plain white robe—similar to the one Santabe wore—drew back, taking his leather strap with him.
A man with white hair so thin his bald pate shone through in spots limped forward. His priest’s robe was of white silk—sheer and fine—and it clung to every lump of his portly form. He leaned upon a cane of a white material like bone tipped with gold. “You know who I am?” he asked.
The cane crafted from the horn of the einhorn—the same material used to create Diviners, the slim weapons in the shape of a short staff most priests carried—told her the answer. Only one man was entrusted with such a priceless treasure—at over three cubits in length and over a tenth of a cubit in diameter, the horn of his cane could have made a half dozen Diviners.
Santabe swallowed hard to dislodge the lump in her throat. “Master Jemkinbu,” she said dutifully, finally taking in the gold earrings in the shape of the sun in each of his ears, proclaiming him of the highest priesthood.
So very few priests earned two earrings. Jemkinbu and a few others she could count on one hand. She knew why Jemkinbu had earned his second: his skill with einhorn. The Master had been carving Diviners from horn since he was an acolyte. His skill was legendary. It was said he could produce the most Diviners from every piece of einhorn. He could see combinations and patterns no other priest could discern, as if Dal entered his dreams and guided his hand. With Diviners classified as the most important and rarest instruments of Dal, his skill was valued more than kingship.
Though a Diviner couldn’t kill until it was soaked in sacrificial blood, nothing of the horns was wasted. Even the tiny slivers of einhorn were sold to the very rich to place in the mouths of the recently dead, to ease their passing to the next life.
Her eyes leaked tears as Santabe grabbed for support from a belt she no longer wore. Chosen of Dal wore no bindings on their bodies. All her clothes would have been burned. When the augury landed favorably at her feet, she hadn’t even been allowed a final good-bye with her mother before being whisked away to this room. Now, her legs throbbed in such agony as blood returned that she could barely think.
The lesser priest deposited a stool on the floor and before he left, Santabe noticed that, unlike an Enforcer, who sought blasphemy among the populace, this priest was likely a clerk of some kind, and thus not important enough to wear a Diviner, let alone an earring. He departed, closing the door behind him.
Master Jemkinbu sat, the hem of his robe lifting to show a fine network of ropey veins about his ankles. “Do you know why you are here?”
Santabe gasped, forming her hands into fists so as not to clutch at her burning feet and shins. Master Jemkinbu leaned his cane against his knee and waited.
She stared at the cane, seeking inspiration.
Men braved the wilds to the far north to live at the fishing village on the edge of the sea to hunt for einhorn, despite the fact that every few years, Kolifell village was wiped out by famine, disease, wolves, or the arrows of the tiny tree-loving natives who occupied that land. To find a horn was to add your name to the list of those honored by Dal and ensure your passage into the next life—no one would take money for such treasure.
Through the swirl of pain, she put aside such random thoughts and fought back to earlier today in bits and flashes. The blue of the sky as she’d walked with her family to the Great Palace of Dal. The long line of others who’d celebrated their eleventh naming day of this life along with her and stood before the greatest altar of Dal. The priest casting the contents of bags of feathers, herbs, and pieces of bones on the stone at each child’s feet. How the auguries had all looked the same to her as each child before her was dismissed. How at her turn a single piece of bone had landed on her left foot.
She looked up at Jemkinbu. “Because the augury touched me, Honored One.” Right after that moment, she’d been stripped of her old clothing and redressed in front of an entire room of watching clerics of Dal. A shame she still felt in her soul.
“Very good, child. And do you know our main mission?”
“To ensure the light of Dal is instilled in every heart, fills every mind, flows from every tongue, and to root out any who fail Him with blasphemy,” she recited from rote memory. The unbearable tingling in her feet and legs eased enough that she could clamber ungracefully to her knees.
Swifter than she could have believed, the cane cracked across her shoulder. She cried out before she could stop herself.
“Incomplete. That is our mission to the Children of Dal. What about our mission to
Dal?”
She grit her teeth and said, “To stand ready when His eyes turn to this world again. To accept the joy of His presence unto ourselves. To provide the blood of the unworthy to Him?” She tacked on the last in case the Master was expecting it. All knew blood drew Dal’s attention. Despite doing her best, she flinched, expecting another blow. But he just sat quietly, the cane resting in his hand.
“Yes. That is correct, child. Every twenty-five hundred years, Dal’s immaculate eye rests upon this world again, and He purges us of the Glorious ones fit to travel to the next life . . . and also purges us of the Disgraced, sending them to the prior world with blood and pain. We stand in readiness of His coming, to ensure He finds the best of us. But there are deeper mysteries than this that you will learn as priestess to Dal.
“The mysteries of Diviners—white and red. Our hidden precepts that go deeper than what is shared with the Children of Dal. Why we keep Dal to ourselves and spare the world. Secrets that are told only to initiates. You are very favored, child.”
She pondered his words dutifully, but had never seen a red Diviner—though the stories told that they returned life even as the white rods stole it—but right now her shoulder burned, as did the spot on her neck and hip. She couldn’t care for talk of mysteries with this pain. Her mother had struck her but rarely since her ninth year in this life, and now Santabe feared this was just the beginning of the trial of her new life.
If Master Jemkinbu could see her lack of interest, he said nothing, only leaning the priceless cane against his knee again. “This is a favored day for you, child. Today, you take your vows to Dal. Are you ready?”
Santabe’s eyes darted, finding no help. The deepest wish of her heart had always been to be a merchant like her mother. Her memory conjured up the wind in her hair as she rode on a wagon full of goods to the next city. Her joy of seeing someplace new and different. The feel of a bag of gemstones well earned by honest toil. Joining a fight to push off bandits determined to steal their goods.
All of that was lost to her now and replaced with blocks of stone and walls.
Yet if she said no, her life in this world would end, her blood would fuel new Diviners, and she’d return to the prior world to try again.
Master Jemkinbu traced a line in the stone with the gold tip of the cane. “Your teachers say you were an average student at best—nothing to recommend you to serve Dal. But I disagree. I see now why He called you: You are stubborn. No other acolyte has kept me waiting this long. Stubbornness is a virtue much needed in weeding out the blasphemous from the Children of Dal’s ranks by the Enforcers. Perhaps your calling is there. But I warn you—my patience will only last so long. Your answer?”
To take the vows was to become one of the ruling class of the Children of Dal. To have power well beyond what a merchant could manage in a lifetime. She would judge others, including her family. She could judge everyone. While delving deeper into Dal’s mysteries did not tempt her, the image of an Enforcer did. She would lose the freedom of the road.
But she would gain so much more.
“I’m ready.”
Chapter 1
Claire stood surrounded by the bodies of Northern soldiers she’d killed with her magic and next to the body of her grandmother, murdered by the hand of one of those same soldiers. The rage and anger that sustained her moments ago drained away. No longer did she feel the power to wield a Death Song, which killed without a touch. But she had no doubt that should another Northerner appear, the desire to stop the soldier’s heart with her voice would rekindle. For now, disbelief at her own use of the magic beat at her, keeping even grief at bay.
Dimly, Claire noticed the villagers snatching their belongings as the fight with the Northerners ended. They moved in cringing silence—women, children, even the hunters all too eager to avoid catching her eye as they took their supplies and slunk away from the dangerous witch, leaving her with the dead. Did they think her magic would slip loose and harm them, after they’d tended to Jorga’s arrow wound? Did it not matter that she had saved them? Could they believe she was that sort of monster?
Yet, she had no kinship or blood connection to ask them to stay, and no way to make them less afraid.
Distrusted. Feared by these simple villagers, the same as she’d been by Ramiro’s people.
She was alone again. No Ramiro to stand at her side as a friend and refuse to shun her. No prickly grandmother to give her gruff lessons in magic. Only a fifteen-year-old uncle who might as well have been an infant for all the support he could give. It was she who would have to support Errol as he sobbed over Jorga’s body.
Without knowing why she did it, Claire held her hands in front of her, unable to make out much detail in the darkness. The gloom kept her from seeing the dirt under her fingernails from their travels through the swamp or the new calluses from having helped maneuver Jorga’s stretcher. They’d succeeded in saving Jorga’s life yesterday, only for it to be snatched away today. All she could tell by the dim firelight was that her hands held steady, refusing to shake. A wonder considering Jorga was dead because of her—because she hadn’t acted until it was too late. Afraid of her own magic.
Her fault.
Now the tears came. The guilt, the loneliness, the horror—
She jumped as Errol grabbed at her arm. “Help Momma,” he demanded.
“I can’t. It’s too late. She’s dead. I was too slow.” Claire reached for his hand—strange as he was, the boy was her responsibility now, her only kin—but he pulled on her. Confused, she resisted. He only tugged harder, drawing Claire away from Jorga and to the pile of supplies Ramiro had left near her horse. Supplies the villagers had been too frightened to steal—frightened of her.
“Help Momma,” Errol insisted, bending to roll a saddle bag at her. His eyes focused on her shoulder, demanding, hopeful.
“I don’t understand. She’s dead.”
He pulled at the leather straps holding the bag shut and upended it, giving it a flick to send the contents spilling across the ground. “Help Momma!” The red Diviner lay in the midst of shirts and coils of rope. A slender staff about as thick as a man’s thumb and the length of a forearm. “Hurry!” Errol said, pointing to the weapon.
Claire’s stomach revolted and she stepped back. By the Song! What was she to do with that? It was a Northern weapon for killing, usually carried by their priests and found by Ramiro.
Her uncle was at her side in an instant, seizing her arm again and dragging her down, closer to the weapon. Errol was bigger, stronger, for all his child-like mind. Trying to pull away got her nowhere.
“Help Momma!” For the first time since they met, his eyes landed squarely on hers—not over her shoulder, not directed at her torso or chin, but making contact. They expressed utter confidence and belief in her ability to help.
This killing device could help her grandmother?
Errol nodded as if he saw into her mind. The muddled blue of his eyes was the same color as Claire’s mother’s had been.
She didn’t understand—and she didn’t understand how Errol was so confident—but by the Song, she had to try. She closed her eyes and held her breath and reached out, taking the deadly weapon gingerly in her hand. She stood slowly—the terrible thing stretched out from her body as if distance could keep something bad from occurring.
Nothing happened.
Errol danced ahead of her, back to Jorga, watching her expectantly. Reluctantly, she followed as he pointed to Jorga’s prone body. “Help Momma now. Hurry.” His gestures made it plain what he expected her to do.
Claire gathered her courage and touched the blood-red stick to her grandmother’s cooling flesh. The moment of contact felt like a lightning bolt went off in her hand. Electric shock traveled up her arm and down her legs. Her hair stood on end, lifting from her head. Her fingers, instead of loosening, clamped tighter on the Diviner, beyond her control. She screamed at the pain curling her muscles and cooking her flesh.
The red co
lor drained from the staff, running down the length as if it was alive, and into Jorga. For a heartbeat, her grandmother’s flesh turned equally red. Then her body jolted, bouncing from the ground as if blasted. A stench of burning hair and spent lightning filled the air.
It ended. The Diviner rolled from her nerveless fingers. No more a frightening red, it had returned to its normal yellowish old-bone color. Sickened by what she’d witnessed, Claire collapsed onto ground still wet with Jorga’s blood. Pain ran up and down her body in spasms, reluctant to let her go and leaving her body numb and unable to respond, paralyzed but tingling with a sense of life returning. Claire sobbed, partly in relief, partly in agony.
Never again.
The experience had almost killed her. She wasn’t touching a Diviner again.
But then a gasp sounded inches away. Jorga opened her eyes, found Claire, and scowled. “Why are we lying in a puddle of blood? Who died?”
“You,” Claire said in astonishment.
Chapter 2
Ramiro patted his clothing as he dropped from Sancha, sending puffs of dust flying. Sand and grit coated him from hair to toes, along with the mare, as the summer rains had still failed to materialize. Each breath of wind sent swirls into the air, and they’d encountered several true sandstorms on their way to Aveston that had forced them to take shelter until the winds died. Ramiro twisted his neck to work out kinks from the long ride. Two of the three springs he could locate around Aveston had been dry, one not even muddy any longer. He felt as withered and thin as the curled leaves hanging from the olive trees around them.
Sancha shook, sending more dust into the air, except where the foamy sweat coating on her flanks and chest kept the dirt anchored. Her eyes looked at him dully. He might have pushed the pace too hard over the last twenty-four hours, but the emptiness around Colina Hermosa had been enough of a goad. All he found there were the remnants of a camp and the echoes of his voice. By the saints, not a soul remained around the burnt ruins of his home city, and that’s when his indecision hit.