Seraphina's Lament (The Bloodlands Book 1)

by Sarah Chorn

  Seraphina’s Lament

  Copyright © 2019 Sarah Chorn

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Original Cover Art: Pen Astridge

  Editors: Alicia Wanstall-Burke; Graham Austin-King

  Copy Editor: Bethan Hindmarch

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorised duplication is prohibited.

  Table of contents

  The Ascended

  Taub

  Seraphina

  Premier Eyad

  Neryan

  Mouse

  Vadden

  Amiti

  Interlude

  The Ascended

  Taub

  Neryan

  Mouse

  Premier Eyad

  Seraphina

  Vadden

  Premier Eyad

  Seraphina

  Amiti

  Interlude

  The Ascended

  The Bone Lord

  Mouse

  Neryan

  Seraphina

  Premier Eyad

  Vadden

  Amiti

  Interlude

  The Ascended

  Vadden

  Hunger

  The Bone Lord

  Neryan

  The Ascended

  Seraphina

  Premier Eyad

  Interlude

  Neryan

  Eyad

  Mouse

  Vadden

  Seraphina

  Taub

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  For Erik,

  Who never let me give up.

  And in honor of all those

  stories never told.

  Holodomor, 1932-1933, Ukraine

  The Ascended

  Waking

  His barrow was cold and dark, like his soul. Empty, save for the art that adorned the walls; the pathetic drawings that he had scrawled there while he waited for sleep to take him. It was a record of his life, the tale of his sins laid bare for any unfortunate enough to come after.

  He lay in the darkness while he came back to himself, and listened to the story of his heart:

  I am.

  I am.

  I am.

  “Son of a bitch,” was the first thing he said. Not very glamorous after an eon of sleep, not the first words a waking god should say, but those were his. He felt like scrawling them on the wall next to the catalogue of his crimes. Why not.

  Everything had gone so wrong. The four of them had separated right when the world was burning up. Not one of them thought they’d see another day. None of them had wanted to. He’d crawled into his barrow, curled up on that big stone slab in the middle of it, and closed his eyes; hoping against hope that the ceiling would cave in and one of those stalactites would impale him.

  He should have known better. There was no way he’d get that lucky.

  This was the curse of immortality. He’d have to wake up and face what he’d done. Everything, absolutely everything, had gone wrong, and it had all been his fault. He and his fucking heart, that obstinately beating muscle, had destroyed everything that had ever mattered.

  He felt like crying. Instead, a sick, insane laugh flew past his lips like an escaped prisoner and beat against the walls of his barrow, just as trapped as he was.

  It took him years before he was more than a mind traveling the paths of the half-awake, mostly-asleep. Longer, before he was settled enough to be able to stand up and move around.

  Even longer before he realized he should be wondering why he had woken up in the first place.

  There had to be a reason. There was always a reason.

  He tugged at the connections he had with the others. The relief he felt when he realized they were all still alive drove him to his knees. He wasn’t alone. Whatever was happening, he wouldn’t face it by himself.

  His barrow came to life as he did, lighting slowly, giving his eyes time to adjust. The walls were white, the drawings on them rainbows of color. He still had piles of clothes littered around the edges of the cavern. After kicking them around, he realized that most of them were useless, destroyed by time and the damp; but some had been preserved. He put them on. It felt odd to be clothed again, but necessary.

  He surveyed his space, felt the magic of his barrow fill him up, energize him, strengthen him. Barrows were important, sacred spaces. Only his power worked here. Nothing could harm him while he was within these walls. This was his haven, and his curse. He’d always go back to it. Always find it again, and it would always keep him alive. Unfortunately.

  The earth tugged at his senses. The soil under his feet begged for his touch. Something was happening. Something low was stirring, and it needed his attention. Him, because he commanded the loam and upon his waking, he’d taken all of that latent power into himself. He was the only one alive who could speak to the soil, and direct it. He felt sick. He didn’t want to do this again. He didn’t want to face whatever was brewing, or wade through the tragedy that always came after. So much hope, just for all this loss. Was it worth it?

  He sank down on his haunches and pressed his arms up to the elbows in the soil, closed his eyes, and sent his senses out along the paths of the earth that only he could tread.

  Dark. So much darkness, and down deep in the middle of it all, the heart of the world was dying.

  Good. Let it die.

  He’d woken up before. He’d put the call out in times gone by, watched as other groups of potentials tried, then failed, to Become; but the heart of the world had never been dying before, it was never just a husk, barely beating, more dead than alive. It frightened him. In all his long, long life, it had never once occurred to him that the world could actually die.

  He felt good about that for a while, for a few months, maybe, before his consciousness kicked in. There were alternatives. There was a way to revitalize the heart. It would be hard. It would cost so much in time and effort, and it had very little chance of succeeding. However, up there, far, far above him, walking around on the skin of the earth were a handful of people with more potential than he’d ever felt before. He could sense them, like stars in the darkness, so bright, empty, and ready to be filled. There were enough to form a whole host when combined with himself and the three other ancients sleeping in their barrows. A whole host combined could infuse the heart with life, and heal it. A whole host could do anything; start a new, promising era, bury all this tragedy.

  New beginnings.

  There was power in a fresh start. It was the kind of power he craved. The kind of power he’d do absolutely anything for.

  The more he thought about it, the more excited he got. Yes. This was it. He’d have to manipulate events. Once he began, there would be no going back. No turning around. He’d start this, and he’d have to end it, one way or another. This would be his way to atone. This could make everything right.

  They would hate him, those people above that he would snare in his web. They would hate him, but no more than he already hated himself.

  He sank against the wall of his barrow, illuminated by directionless white light now, and settled into his plan. He pushed his hands into the soil again, all the way up to his shoulders now, until his heartbeat throbbed against the dirt beneath him, and gave everything he had to the heart, pushed it until it cracked. Magic flowed out. Pure, absolute magic. It filled him, and it filled all those others, those vessels who were capab
le of handling it. It would be too much for anyone else to use.

  His potentials would start changing, now.

  He hoped they were strong enough, because that wound he just gave the heart of the world was mortal, and it would die now, faster than it had been dying before. A whole host could heal it, but without them, nothing would survive. Absolutely nothing. Not even the Ascended.

  With the last of his flagging energy, he pushed his call into the soil. Come to me. Come to me. I need you. Come to me.

  Those who needed to hear, would hear.

  He had to believe that.

  Taub

  Hunger was the worst kind of pain. It was a churning in the gut, a constant gnawing emptiness that he’d do absolutely anything to fill. He’d run out of grain, save for a small sack he’d hidden in his outhouse, just in case. He’d eaten his last horse, its bones stripped and shining like gems in the harsh sunlight. Nothing but hollow ribs and skull left to stare at the barren sky.

  It had been his favorite horse. He let it live until he couldn’t stand its baleful, accusing eyes, or the gaunt look of it. One day it just fell over, and Taub knew it was time. He slit its throat with his knife, sharpened the night before as if he’d been anticipating this event, and caught all the blood he could in a bowl, drinking it before it cooled. Then he’d gone about the business of cutting it up, unmaking the horse that spent so much of its life making his farm plentiful, and easier to work.

  Life, in bite-size pieces.

  He’d watched the land turn from fertile and green, to wasted and brown. There was no rain on the horizon, no storms in the sky, no hint of clouds. And Premier Eyad and his men were taxing him to death. Literally.

  It had started with small erosions of liberties years ago. First, the Premier had imprisoned all the land owners, and sent them off to labor camps. He was ‘liberating the peasants,’ he’d said, and how Taub had rejoiced! Then he forced the peasants, farmers like him, to move onto communal farm plots where the government owned everything; from the grain they grew, to the tools they used, the cows they milked, and the houses they lived in. They were given one small row of dirt to grow their own food on, and everything else went to the state, to be divided as the Premier saw fit. Ration cards were supposed to keep everything fair, but that didn’t last long either.

  When the drought struck Eyad determined that the grain should be moved to Lord’s Reach, where he could manage its distribution, for the benefit of the people. In the countryside, peasants like Taub suffered; rations growing smaller and smaller until they had ceased arriving altogether. Long after money had lost all value, soldiers still roamed the villages and farmland, demanding taxes for the Premier in the form of what goods and foodstuffs were left.

  The system had been designed that way. Taub could see it now. Keep the peasants hungry enough so they were too weak to revolt, and the wealthy fat so they did not rise up.

  The only good thing that came out of any of this was his new family, the others who had been forced to farm the land along with him. They’d raised their children as a group, lived as a group, and loved as a group. His wives and husband saw the writing on the wall, however. They left their land, taking their children with them, to look for a better life elsewhere. Taub had stayed behind, doggedly determined to protect his plot against anyone who might try to take it out from under him during the famine.

  It had to end, right? Everything ended, eventually.

  He knew now that staying had been a horrible decision. He wasn’t sure what he was protecting anymore. There was nothing left.

  The days blurred until they all merged together into one homogeneous mass of events relentlessly stretching into an endless span of misery. It was worse than torture. Reality became frayed around the edges. He was changing. First, his stomach bulged out like he was with child, then it caved in until he could see the ridges of his spine poking through his belly like the weathered teeth of an ancient dragon.

  It hurt to sit, his bones jutting out too far, so he lay down in the dirt and listlessly watched the days drift past him. Occasionally he’d muster up enough energy to look for sustenance. Once, a passing family went through his cabin in search for food and supplies. They poked him with a stick, thinking he was dead. For a moment, they stood around his body, wondering if they should cut him up and eat him; but they decided that he didn’t have enough meat to make it worth the effort, and so moved on. He hadn’t had the strength to tell them he was alive, so he’d listened to them discussing whether or not he’d make a good dinner, their voices humming like mosquitoes, while his unblinking eyes watched the dust swirl into little eddies and dance across his farm in a macabre celebration of death.

  After a while, his instinct kicked him, and he knew it was time to get up and try to live. He was far too wasted to leave his land now. He’d made his choice, and looking around his dry, barren farm, populated by nothing but memories of a fertile past, he knew this would be his grave. He would die here. One day he would lay down, and just never get up again. Like his favorite horse. He’d either waste away, or someone would eat him. Eat or be eaten.

  If he didn’t at least try to live, he’d be on the losing end of that particular situation. He was glad his family wasn’t around to see him like this, now that he was nothing but a skeleton wrapped in brittle parchment skin, one breath away from an eternity of nothing, an hour from someone picking their teeth with his ribs.

  His eyes were yellow. His teeth were falling out. His skin was sloughing off in chunks. And right when he was dazed, out of his mind with hunger and eating everything he could see, moving in that shuffle-shuffle way of the almost-dead, the soldiers from Lord’s Reach came to him.

  They had orders, they’d said, to get the additional taxes required by Premier Eyad. He was too sick to argue, so far gone their words meant less than nothing to him, seeing as how he couldn’t eat them. So he watched the men, young and puffed up with health, impassively. Watched as they combed through his life and searched his land for whatever they could find. They dug through everything he had and took it, loading it onto their wagon, or strapping it to their fine, fit, beautifully meaty horses.

  For taxes.

  For their beloved Premier, so far away, living in his castle, surrounded by wealth and a city full of the well-fed rich, with no idea how Taub was suffering.

  It was always for Eyad. He was the excuse, the equalizer, the murderer. Death by starvation. Annihilation by want. Eyad had greedily chewed up Taub’s life, and left him with a bitter pulpy residue, some warm memories, and a spit of dead land full of nothing but dried up, almost-forgotten yesterdays.

  The soldiers took the beds and the blankets. They took the small sack of grain Taub had hidden in the outhouse and subsequently forgotten about. They even took the boards he’d used to make the new doors to his cabin. He’d been so proud of them, but the soldiers tore them apart and burned them for firewood while they camped on his land, not twenty feet from the house he was dying in. Cooking their gruel over flames while he starved, his ribs moving like strings on a lute each time he breathed out a rattling breath.

  That was the first time he killed.

  He didn’t know what he was doing. He smelled their food, and an animal rose up within him. It didn’t matter that they were armed and healthy. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t remember his last good meal, or that he was nothing more than skin stretched over bones that stuck out like knives. These men, these soldiers, couldn’t stand against him in his fury, and their food smelled so incredibly good.

  It happened in a sudden rush. His survival instinct kicked in in a sudden rush, filling him with a strength he’d thought had long since wasted away. He ran to the fire, grabbed a burning branch, and before he knew what happened, two of them were lit up like candles. The one that was left grabbed a knife and slashed at him, but Taub had fire, and he threw his flaming stick, hitting his mark with a precision that surprised him.

  Sometime during the fight their gruel had spilled ac
ross the ground. On his hands and knees, he licked it off the dirt while the soldiers’ bodies cooled around him like sentinels, their unblinking, melted eyes staring listlessly at the night-dark sky.

  The scent of charred flesh hung in the air like a perfume, and he spent the next few hours using the soldiers’ own knives to chop up their bodies, cutting their meat into steaks, feeling their fat and gristle slide between his bony fingers like the promise of tomorrow, the dream of next year. He found a bag of salt in one of their packs, and would have wept with gratitude if he could still produce tears. As it was, his mind was already lost in plans, figuring out the best ways to preserve this much meat, eventually deciding to split it evenly between salting, smoking, and drying.

  He was in the middle of salting steaks when someone happened past and stole the soldiers’ horses, along with the wagon and the remnants of Taub’s previous life; the happy, healthy life he’d lived in the time before. He let the thief go. He had three bodies to prepare, no energy left for the chase, and the extra meat the thief and horses could provide would only rot.

  It was odd, on reflection, how his life had divided itself into neat, if conflicting, categories. Happiness and misery. Dreams and destitution. Before and after.

  Soon, another family moved onto his land, and he welcomed them. He had enough meat to go around. They shared some dried root vegetables that they’d been saving for an occasion just like this one. They made a big, watery stew that tasted like heaven, like divinity in a bowl, and he felt full for the first time in weeks. Months. Years. Lifetimes. He ate until he was sick with it, and then lay back and watched the stars dance overhead, a midnight ballet just for him. When his visitors were satisfied and sleeping, he used the edge of his knife to draw dripping red smiles across their necks.

  After that, he ate on a regular basis. Someone was always coming along, asking to sleep a night on his land. Desperate souls, each more wasted than the last, leaving somewhere horrible in the hope of something better, surviving on a diet of blind faith and scraps. They stopped at Taub’s farm, without realizing it would be the last place they’d ever rest their weary heads.