The Dying Flame

by R L Sanderson

  The Dying Flame

  R.L. Sanderson

  DARKFALL BOOK ONE

  The Dying Flame

  Copyright © R.L. Sanderson 2017

  Creator: Sanderson, R.L., 2017 – author

  Cover design by Ampersand Book Covers 2017

  Edited by Jemimah Halbert, Oddfeather Creative

  Subjects: Young adult fantasy

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording scanning or by an information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published 2017 by R.L. Sanderson

  Chapter one

  The dream wasn’t hers. Orla could tell because it continued for a few moments after she woke. Someone was standing over her. She was bound, struggling. She could hardly breathe. She was going to die, she knew she was –

  She pulled her bedclothes off and forced herself to sit up. Ghost images shadowed the real, familiar shapes of the room. She focused on the objects she knew were there. Table. Basin. Window. Then, as the vision receded, Orla looked across to where her sister lay. In sleep, Merryn’s usual expression of bright curiosity was dropped. She looked younger than her eleven years, and so defenceless. But she slept peacefully.

  Not Merryn’s dream then. Their mother’s, most likely. The herbs she took to help her rest never lasted the full span of the night. Orla sat for a moment, her senses adjusting to the silence, unsure whether to wake her. Then she crossed the room, the dirt floor cold on her bare feet, and knelt beside where her mother lay.

  ‘Mama,’ she whispered into the dimness. ‘You’re dreaming.’

  Her mother stirred then settled, and in a few moments the feeling of the dream faded from Orla’s mind.

  She dressed quickly, tying back her hair, splashing her face with cold water from the basin in the corner. She skipped the morning meal that was just leftover rice and beans from the night before. Joseph would have something for her, he always did. Fresh baked bread that tasted of wood smoke, and soft cheese he made himself, from the milk of his own goats. Her stomach growled with anticipation.

  Before she left, she leant down and brushed back her sister’s hair, which covered the sleeping mat in a chaos of copper curls, then kissed her on the forehead.

  ✤

  They lived in the heart of the Metkaran, a slum district that hugged the Metkara River. Their house was one of dozens of tiny dwellings crammed together either side of a narrow path that turned quickly to mud whenever it rained. When their neighbours sneezed, they caught cold, as Merryn would say. Even this early the Metkaran thrummed. Today, though, something made Orla pause. She looked up.

  A scattering of stars still shone in the blue. The sky was clear, but it felt as though a thundercloud were lowering: something big and dark and dangerous was coming.

  Then she saw. Down past the clusters of houses where washing hung from windows and over posts to dry before the afternoon rains, past the piles of refuse where stray dogs sniffed, past the corner where the brinseller was setting up his stall, piling salted fish high. Down by the bank of the river a crowd was gathering.

  Nothing good ever drew a crowd that close to those waters.

  Orla told herself she’d just walk past, get the sense of whatever it was. She felt it before she’d taken two steps: it lodged like an arrow in her gut. Repulsion, horror, fear. And something else. A kind of eagerness.

  She spotted Ariana, a girl her sister’s age whose family lived a few doors down from them, skipping from one foot to the other at the back of the crowd. Usually Orla took pains to avoid her neighbours; conversation left her with a pounding headache. But the Confessors had been paying an interest in the Metkaran in recent weeks and she worried leaving Merryn on her own. If something had happened that had caught her neighbours’ attention, she needed to know.

  Pain sparked across her forehead as she approached the gathered group. Orla kept her gaze on Ariana even as she strained to hear. She was getting snatches, random thoughts, but they didn’t make sense. There were too many people, everything was jumbled.

  ‘It’s Din. The Dryuk boy. Do you know him?’ Ariana said.

  It took a moment for the words to register, then Orla felt an icy cold tighten her chest.

  No, she thought. Not Din. No. She pulled her cloak around her.

  ‘He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?’ Ariana asked, her eyes all innocent curiosity.

  Orla shook her head, then felt sick for it.

  For a moment, the crowd parted. She stepped into the press of bodies. A pull like the river’s current sucked her forward. She took another step.

  When she saw him her stomach lurched. Din was lying on the ground. A pool of dark glossy blood was spreading on the dirt beside him. Although his head was turned away she could see that his face was swollen, one eye twice the size of the other and purple. His lip was torn, his nose bent strangely to one side and streaming red. There was a patch of blood in his hair, a larger stain growing on his chest. Flies buzzed circles around him. Orla hugged her arms around herself as if for protection. She was shivering. For a moment all she could think was that she was meant to be meeting Din that afternoon. Joseph had promised him a pair of new-hatched chicks and Orla was going to surprise him with them. And now this?

  She felt as though she was going to throw up.

  Din’s eyes flickered open. He turned his head slowly. He saw her.

  Orla –

  For a moment, even through the tumult of pain, she sensed his relief at her presence, and then, in almost the same moment, it was gone, replaced with panic.

  It’s not safe. Don’t let them see you with me –

  She hesitated. She’d spent so much of her life hiding. Hiding who she was and what she could do for fear of what might happen. Hiding her friendship with Din because of the accident of his birth. She took a breath, clenched her fists tightly, stepped forward and knelt beside him. She paused, then took his hand. It was sticky with blood. She swallowed as Din’s pain and fear tore through her. She forced herself to look at him, to meet his gaze. There was so much blood.

  ‘You shouldn’t touch him,’ someone called. ‘Don’t forget what he is.’

  Like he, her dearest friend, was some illness she could catch. Orla felt anger build in her chest. The Confessors had done this to him. And he’d never done anything to deserve it, nothing.

  Din opened his mouth, made a wet sound, and blood trickled out. Then she saw him focus. He was looking up at her, one eye a mangled swollen squint, the other its usual deep brown with the long dark lashes, but widened with pain. Love and fear and horror knotted together.

  Please, Orla. Just go –

  Her heart was racing. She wasn’t sure if it was his terror or her own. She felt sick, dizzy, like the earth was about to give way beneath her feet. Her head was spinning and her heart was beating too fast, too hard. And then she felt it, a familiar sensation from her work with Joseph, but one she’d never sensed from a person before. A last panicked fight that came just before the giving in to darkness.

  Din was dying. She had to get away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  Orla let go of his hand, feeling the shuddering disconnect as her awareness of his mind was broken. She stood, turned, and pushed her way through the crowd, ignoring the people watching her, the muttered words. She broke free and began to walk. She didn’t stop until she was sure no one could see, then she leaned against a wall, each breath a broken sob.

  She reached back, felt desperately for the familiar contact of
Din’s mind, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. Tears filled her eyes, the whole world awash with them. Don’t think, don’t think. Don’t think what it means.

  But she couldn’t help it. She didn’t have to think. She knew.

  Din was dead.

  Chapter two

  Joseph was waiting for her. She felt a moment of relief at the sight of him – the familiar white mop of his hair, the slight tremble in his hands, the old, patched clothes he wore. Everything about him showed the wear of many years’ hard work.

  ‘Something the matter, young one?’ he watched her carefully.

  ‘Bad dreams,’ she said and saw Din before her again. It could be true. She had nightmares almost every night.

  Joseph clicked his tongue and nodded.

  He unhitched the lock, an elaborate mechanism made of welded metal tied with pieces of string. The gate swung open. ‘Well, come in if you’re coming,’ he took a drag on the scrag-end he was smoking and exhaled a cloud of rank blue-grey.

  Orla knew she reminded him of his granddaughter, who’d been taken in the sickness a few summers ago – not the first but the latest in a long string of tragedies that had darkened his life. Reason for both his gruffness and his kindness, she guessed.

  Everybody had lost someone, these past years. She fingered the chain around her neck. Din. She felt as though he were right there next to her, waiting for her to turn and see him.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ she asked, pushing the feeling away.

  ‘Just a few sheep today.’

  Good, Orla thought guiltily. Sheep were easier than goats or cows or pigs. Goats fought back, would try and try to get away, never gave up even as their throats were cut. Cows got scared,

  really scared, and they missed their young so terribly it broke Orla’s heart. And pigs just knew, and that was the worst. They screamed before the knife was out, a sound so piercing, so accusing, it echoed for miles.

  She followed Joseph through the grassy field to the shed. The whole process took a few hours and mostly they didn’t speak. Orla knew what needed to be done and Joseph preferred silence. When the time came, Orla took each animal’s fear and softened it with her memories of being happy and being safe. Strange that she could do this even now, even with the turmoil she felt inside herself, but still she found she could. She held the animals with her and they became calm, stood close, leaning against one another, heads lowered, tails twitching from time to time. They didn’t fight. It took some concentration, particularly as Joseph prepared the knife and separated the animals ready for the killing. Particularly when the blood began to flow.

  Orla remembered her Amma, the smell of things baking, the rhythm of her kneading bread. She remembered the way Amma would hum. She remembered the sunshine slanting through a window, warming her where she sat, and Merryn leaning up against her, fidgeting and chattering like she always did.

  Orla wondered whether perhaps each time she did this she lost a little of the feeling of the memory. Maybe one day she’d return to it and it would have faded, so the shape would still be there but the comfort it gave would be all gone.

  She could have done it for Din, she realised suddenly. He’d been frightened. He’d been in pain. She’d left him to die alone, surrounded by people who would watch but not help.

  What sort of coward was she that she’d do this for a sheep, but not for her own friend?

  And then, as each animal bled out, she felt it. This part she’d never told anybody. Not even Din, who knew almost all her secrets.

  When they died, the instant they blinked from something to nothing, there was a feeling inside her that she didn’t have at any other time. A sudden spark of energy, a flame that left her breathless. The first time it had happened had been on a hillside not far from here. She shivered to remember it – the impossible creature that she’d seen born and die. The energy that had thrummed through her at its passing. It was as though something had shifted in her that day, something had woken… She’d tried to put it from her mind.

  She didn’t know why it happened. It wasn’t that she wanted any creature to die; she didn’t. She’d rather they go on living and pass away from old age under a tree one fine summer afternoon. She could never eat the meat of the animals Joseph slaughtered, not after touching their minds like this. But still, there it was, this thing moving inside her as they passed from life to death.

  What the Confessors say is true, Orla thought. I am a sickness. There is something very wrong with me. Something worse than wrong.

  Chapter three

  Usually the walk home along the river each afternoon was the best part of Orla’s day because it was when she’d see Din.

  He spent his days on a boat that was really just a conglomeration of floating debris that he rowed from one bank of the river to the other, as he trawled the water with a long stick. He collected garbage, though he called it treasure. By the time she’d find him in the late afternoon he’d be almost done for the day. He’d drag himself up onto the bank and bury his stick in the dark mud so it stood up straight as a reed and he’d show her what he’d found. They’d sit side by side on the riverbank, his legs bare and his skin glistening with river-water. He never seemed to feel the cold.

  He’d been so happy when she’d seen him the day before. He’d salvaged a hammer, some fine Dryuk pottery, a bleached jawbone of enormous size, and a scattering of coins that he’d had to dive for, some of them very old by the look. Sometimes, if he found something of real value, the good people of the Metkaran would become outraged, as though he were stealing things from their houses or purses rather than dragging refuse out of the stinking mud at the bottom of a sickly river.

  Din had no choice, Orla knew. His mother was a Dryuk, and even though she was a convert and more religious than many Ekenshi-born, the terms of the Treaty meant most occupations were closed to her children.

  As Orla approached the bend where she’d usually start listening for Din’s unmelodious whistle, the pain became almost unbearable. She saw him as she’d seen him that morning: bleeding and broken. She tasted his fear. She felt herself letting go of his hand, standing, walking away. She tried to push the images away but couldn’t. She couldn’t unsee them.

  So many had died, she kept telling herself. Between war and sickness and hunger, everybody had lost somebody. But Din’s death had been violent, and needless, and wrong. He had been her friend.

  She quickened her step. She had to get home and check on Merryn.

  ✤

  Orla pushed the front door open and stepped inside. Blessed warmth, she thought, relief flooding her. She felt exhausted, hollowed out. She wanted to cry. But at least she was home.

  Then she heard him. ‘But of course people are concerned. You’re here alone with two young girls. You’re vulnerable…’

  She tensed up immediately, brushed herself down, re-tied her tangled hair, not that it would help much.

  Her mother’s voice was uncharacteristically tart. ‘You think someone’s going to break in and attack us in our own home, Kendrid?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. Spiritually vulnerable. It would be so easy for your girls to fall onto the wrong path…’

  Orla pushed the door open and stepped into the kitchen.

  He was sitting at the table, his long pale fingers resting on the table-top, a steaming mug of bitter-wort tea beside him and another in front of her mother.

  Merryn was sitting at the other end of the table. The hopefulness was pouring off her in waves. Merryn was so excited to see this man she barely knew, other than to know he was her father.

  ‘Orla. Good to see you home before curfew,’ he said, turning his gaze on her, his narrow lips curving in a suggestion of a smile. ‘You know it’s not safe in these parts, after dark, for a young woman such as yourself…’

  Orla had forgotten just how much she loathed the man. He’d lived with them on and off after Orla’s own father had been killed in the Dryuk war. Then, when the war had ended and the Trea
ty been drawn up, Kendrid had heard the calling of the Brethren or, as Orla guessed, of three meals a day and the relative comfort of the Sanctuary. He’d left before Merryn had even said her first word, their mother unable to stop him. You do not argue with the God.

  These days he had some responsibility for the people of the Metkaran. Orla saw him sometimes, striding through the tangle of alleyways and stepping over piles of trash to knock on doors, black robes flapping. She managed to avoid him for the most part.

  Despite the robes and the newly made criss-cross of scars on his cheeks, Kendrid was the same as he always had been. He still had a way of taking up space, of making her feel like she was in the way, like she was doing something wrong, even when it was her house.

  Orla was tired. Exhausted. Dead heavy in the core of her bones.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asked, and her mother and Merryn both said ‘Orla!’ simultaneously like she’d just questioned him about that second head he’d grown or why he wasn’t wearing pants or some other obvious fact which politeness required her to ignore.

  ‘Well now, that’s a good question, a fair question…’ He’d developed the sing-song tone to his voice that many of the Brethren seemed to cultivate. It put Orla’s teeth on edge. She’d long ago discovered how often a sweet voice hid something ugly.

  ‘You could say that I have come to make amends.’

  ‘Make amends?’ she asked evenly.

  ‘By being what I should always have been to you girls. A father-figure.’

  ‘We’ve managed without one,’ Orla said, and pointedly dropped the bag she was carrying onto the table in front of him. Joseph had sent her home with a week’s supply of meat – mostly offcuts and bones for broth of course, but still, better than most houses in the neighbourhood would see in a month – as well as a quart of fresh milk and a loaf of bread.