The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  "This cathedral is closed," she said harshly, and drew her bright wings into a stack behind her, just as the Abbess always had. "You will have to come back another day."

  Even her voice was the same. Sen wasn't sure if what he saw was a dream or something real. He took a step closer, near enough to see what she'd been writing, and realize there was not even any paper on the desk, and no quill in her hand. She had been writing in air. The realization sent a cold thrill through him.

  "I'm looking for my mother, Avia," he said.

  The Butterfly frowned sharply. "Avia? Who seeks Avia?"

  "My name is Sen," he said, taking a step forward. "I was raised by the Sisters of Saint Ignifer in the city, by a Moth Abbess who looks exactly like you, and Avia was my mother. Is she here?"

  BUTTERFLY ABBESS

  The Butterfly pushed her wire-frame spectacles firmly against her solid Sectile eyes with a clinking sound. "Mother? I can't speak to that, but if it's Saint Ignifer you've come from, then it must be my sister who sent you. She'll have told you only lies about me then, I'm certain."

  Sen chewed that for a moment. "The Abbess is your sister?"

  "A haughty Moth, is she not?"

  "Well, she…"

  "My sister, doubtless, fool that she is for the privilege. Now, what lies has she sent you with?" She steepled her clawed hands, just as the Abbess always had.

  "I don't…" he began, then paused, not sure what to say. "She didn't send me. I heard of this place from another."

  "There are no others now. Come, who sent you?"

  "It was a Spider named Sharachus."

  "Ah, a Spider," she said, wagging one claw in the air. "I see. They are a crafty ilk. Here, look at this."

  She lifted her elbows from the desk and gestured to the air where she had been writing. A moment passed, as Sen studied the empty stone desk.

  "There's nothing there."

  The Butterfly laughed sharply. "You and your women of Ignifer! What do they know? They don't know because they don't see, and they don't see because they choose not to know. Do you understand?"

  Sen regarded her, her unfocused eyes, her nib-less pen, the wild sense of her thoughts, and steeled himself.

  "I wonder if you are mad," he said, in a steadier tone than he felt. "Do you understand what I mean? Would you know, if you were mad?"

  She waved her claw at him.

  "Straight to the point, I knew it. You are not as they are, the pretense is not enough for you, is it? No." Abruptly she spread one hypnotic wing out beside her, the sudden colors dazzlingly bright in the mist. "Would you examine my wings for spots of madness, child? Do you believe I cannot fly? Would you touch my antennae to know my mind?"

  She was mad, then. Sen glanced across the other objects strewn on her desk; a worn leather tome with an illegible title, a slew of un-inked quills and nibs in a disordered tangle, an empty ink pot, and a single dead hawkenberry bloom laid flat on its side, its petals wilted to the stone.

  "I'm looking for my mother," he said. "Her name is Avia. Do you know her?"

  The Butterfly blinked, and her tone shifted abruptly, suddenly becoming hungry. "Yes, yes, you seek Avia? Why didn't you say?"

  "I did say. Is she here?"

  "Of course she is here," said the Butterfly grandly, and rose sharply, hoisting her wing-stack up so it loomed twice as tall as Sen. "And I am her last warden, though she has not received visitors for such a long time. Once they would come by the cart and barrelful to pay their respects and tidings, leaving rich tithes for her upmost benediction! But no more, alas, no more." She retreated briefly into a private grief, then looked up again, as if just remembering his presence. "But yes, you are welcome here, and we are open to such a pilgrim as you. Come!"

  With that she turned and strode into the fog, bright wings flashing, and Sen followed. She led him down another long roofless cloister lined with tumbled statues, into a broad and open space, walled only by mist and laid out with long rows of stone pews. Once it must have been a grand cathedral, but there was no roof and no walls to either side anymore. Here the shifting lights in the fog strengthened as they advanced, and he wondered if he was finally walking toward his mother.

  Soon the source of the light became clear. They stopped at the ancient cathedral's only standing structure, a towering apse wall which held a stained glass window bigger than any Sen had seen before. The setting sun leaked color through it in a dazzling kaleidoscope, brilliant despite the puffing mists.

  "There she is," said the Butterfly proudly, "Avia. Is it your first time to look upon her?"

  Sen gazed up. It was a great painting in glass, showing a famous story from the stories of Saint Ignifer, the Fates of Aradabar. He'd seen pictures and graven carvings of it a hundred times in the Abbey, in books, on the Abbey revenant. It told the story of how the Saint first rose up to battle the Rot. The great city of Aradabar had been lost, and the Saint was martyred, but the Rot was defeated and banished far away.

  Yet this was not that same image. Of course Saint Ignifer was there, a star of blue fire in the sky, his army of a thousand castes trailing behind him like the haft of a silver spear, but that was in the background, along with the burning city of Aradabar and the column of fire rising from the mountain that fed into the Rot's open mouth in the sky.

  The stained glass focused instead on a dark-eyed woman in the foreground, holding a child with patterned red lines on its face. He stared for a long moment, trying to fathom what he was seeing. This woman was mentioned in none of the stories he'd read, and he'd read them all. There were no pictures anywhere in all the Abbey that looked like this.

  Her dark pupils were startling, set in bright white eyes. For a moment only he thought he saw a resemblance to his own mother, as she'd leaned down to instruct him on the stars, the castes, the city.

  But that wasn't possible. Still, he reached up unconsciously to touch his scars. That was the same, at least. Perhaps even some of the patterns were a match for his own. When he spoke, his mouth was dry and words came at a croak.

  "This is Avia?"

  The Butterfly frowned, turning her Sectile eyes on him. "You do not recognize her? How much has been forgotten, child? Many came, once, to look upon her. You are the first in years."

  Sen swallowed, a bitter taste in his mouth. He looked around the empty fog but there was nobody else, just him and the Butterfly. He felt weak, as though his legs might give out.

  The Butterfly chuckled. "You are overcome. I understand, she is beautiful is she not? Many have stood where you now stand, cowed by the depth of her sacrifice, to give her only son for the Saint." She smiled blissfully. "It is a wondrous thing."

  Sen shook his head, trying to clear the confusion of this shining image that looked just like his mother, the child that couldn't be him.

  "How old is this?" he asked.

  "This cathedral? Three thousand years, child, since before the fall of Aradabar. Did my sister teach you nothing?"

  Sen gulped, felt his mouth thickening up. "I didn't come for this," he said, waving at the glass. It was hard to take his eyes away, but he forced himself to look at the Butterfly. "I came for my mother, a real woman whose name was Avia too. She came here ten years ago. Do you know her?"

  The Butterfly peered at him through narrowed eyes. "An actual Avia? Well yes, of course, it is a very common name, at least it used to be, when the Book of Airs and Graces was more widely read. Did your mother teach you of the Book, child?"

  He shook his head weakly. "I never heard of it. Is it a religious book?"

  The Butterfly laughed. "Is it a religious book? It is the book, child. But I know, I know, you are from my sister's ilk, where the fantasy is taught as real. Ha! To think, one of her pupils should come to me for correction!"

  Sen felt ill at her jubilance. "I don't know what you're talking about. I never heard of it."

  "Then you have been misled, child. Do you believe the Saint is real, and formed of himself? Do you believe the stars named th
emselves, and all the legends are true?"

  He wanted to sit down. He looked around, but there were only the pews, and he didn't want to sit as if at worship to this. His legs trembled. "I don't understand."

  "Then listen. You know of the Heart, how it slew itself that the Corpse Worlds would be formed, and that new life sprang out even as the Rot did, to reform the world? Surely you know this?"

  Sen felt his body going limp, though he didn't understand why. It was hard to even stand. "No," he said numbly.

  "Not even that? But you must know of the Rot's churning through the world, bringing life even with death? It is the very basis of all things. Do you not know even that much?" She seemed taken aback. "Well, certainly you know of the Saint! You are from his Abbey, after all! But you do not know of Avia, do you?"

  Sen shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

  The Butterfly cackled again. "Written out! She wrote herself out of the history, so clever, such a noble woman, though there are some who still remember." She wagged a finger at him. "Because the Saint is not a real man, you understand that don't you, boy? The Saint is an idea built out of the dreams of the many. Yes, he was once a man, a kind and decent man, but that was only the beginning. Avia took his story and wrote it across the world, through her book and through the names of all the stars, through the stone revenants that she scattered across the world, and do you know why?"

  Sen worked for a breath. "No."

  The Butterfly leaned in toward him conspiratorially. "So he would become real! So that a thousand thousand minds believing would make him real." She looked around as though afraid some might be listening. "It is the greatest secret yet, that she wrote her own son with the key to it all," she flung one arm up toward the infant in the stained glass, "to build him into the legend and give him the power to raise the Saint, that he might save us all from the coming of the Rot!"

  Sen let out a slack breath. The Butterfly's triumphant tone was exhausting.

  She turned and grinned at him broadly. "So the stories are all lies, you see, written by Avia herself! She made them up and spread them for the people to believe, a hero to unite them against their common enemy. What brilliance, what wit, and will it work? That day is coming, child, I swear it. I feel it, even as I see the dark one in the sky growing near." She pointed a bony finger upwards. "He comes, and soon her dreams will come true, because she willed them into being! Can you fathom such a sacred dream, my child, such a holy wish as that, with greater faith in our common heritage despite our varied castes?"

  Sen could no longer control his trembling legs. He sagged to his knees on the stone flags.

  The Butterfly seemed to take it for confirmation. "Yes! It is indeed wondrous. Of course my sister would never accept the possibility the Saint was just a mad woman's fantasy, because which ugly truths do weak people like to see? The dichotomy demands too much of many, that the lie is a truth and the truth a lie at once. Only I and the lost Sisters of my order kept the contradiction. Only we can know the lie and still believe, and so our belief is purer still, for it is rooted in a true understanding of how hard the world might be."

  Sen felt himself wavering in the mist. If only she'd stop talking for a moment and he could breathe.

  "Does it answer your questions, child?" the Butterfly asked.

  "You're saying the Saint is a lie? I mean, he wasn't real?"

  "The best of lies! Only the boldest. For who would rally behind a hero who died, but would never come back? Who amongst us build the world, but those who choose to do so by dint of our own will? Avia merely wrote a better history, and a stronger legend."

  She seemed ecstatic now, the madness bubbling up in her, and something in Sen finally cracked. It was too much. Perhaps he wasn't one of the strong ones, who could hold the lie and the truth in his head at the same time. Something was either real or it wasn't. There was no middle ground between the two. Knowing that gave him strength.

  He slowly rose to his feet. It was time to put this madness away. This was what he'd come seeking and this was what he'd found.

  "My mother was called Avia," he said, his voice firm in the mists. He pulled back his cowl. "She wrote me with these scars, like the child in your story."

  The Butterfly's compound eyes flared wide as she saw his face. A second later she dropped to her knees with a hard clack. "Avia's son," she whispered reverently. "Dear Heart, the son of Avia, you have come for me!"

  He shook his head, more weary now than ever. "No, mother Abbess. Stand up. I wasn't born three thousand years ago. I am not this boy in your story."

  "What does three thousand years matter, to one such as Avia?" the Butterfly whispered. "What does space mean to her, who shaped the very world we live within? There is no end and beginning when the story continues, when the faith is there!"

  Sen snorted. "Time means a lot to me. Space matters."

  The Butterfly blinked. "But you seek her? Child, if you seek the truth of Avia, you must go to Aradabar. There you will find the remnant of the Saint, her lost love King Seem. There you will finally understand."

  "What does King Seem have to do with it?"

  "Child, if you only knew, if you only saw! I will rejoice all my days, for I have met the one who will raise the Saint again. Call him King Seem if you will, call him your mother's betrothed and beloved, call the two down from their very constellations in heaven and I will be no less blessed than I am this day."

  "Stop it! You've already said the Saint is a lie. It's enough, mother Abbess. How can any person make a hero out of scars and stories that aren't even true? If the Saint isn't real, let it be so, I'm not so young I need a hero to come down and save me. And if my mother was truly as mad as you, to believe these things, then I can accept that as well." A new thought came to him then, riding on the heels of the rest. It was dark, and uncomfortable, but he'd come this far already.

  "Only tell me the truth," he insisted. "Was my mother one of your Sisters here, Abbess? Did she believe in this twisted dogma so completely, that she somehow took it upon herself to make it true, in me?"

  The Butterfly's face soured. "How can you say this, child? You have been touched with grace."

  "I've been touched with a knife!" Sen snapped, his anger rising. "Perhaps my mother wanted your stories to be realized so much, she made them happen herself. Is that what I am, a madwoman's fantasy? Is that why Sister Henderson had to die? Then I'm as bad as the Saint, a lie and a joke, and all I can do is hide my face for the rest of my days."

  "No! It is real, all of it a beautiful construction wrought by Avia, the most wondrous of lies."

  It was enough. He'd heard all he needed or wanted to hear, and further debate would not help. "Then let Avia construct it herself," he spat, and turned sharply back into the mists, ignoring the keening of the Butterfly behind.

  At some point down the cloisters he began to sob. It came upon him fitfully, and he was unable to stem the flow. His vision blurred and he walked along slowly, one hand outstretched to ward off pillars in the mist, the other rubbing at his eyes.

  She wasn't here. Perhaps she wasn't anywhere, and there was no way to find her. The Butterfly was mad, and the Spider was mad, his mother was surely mad too, and the Abbey had suffered for nothing. There was no path forward and no way to take it back.

  He didn't notice as the Butterfly Abbess chased him down, not until her bright colors shone through the blurred mist before him.

  "Here," she said, pleading, holding out an old book. "Please, take it."

  He began to say no, to start away again, but she blocked his path. "I am the last," she said, "the last Abbess of Avia, the last who knows the truth of her wondrous lies. Take the book or I will die the last. Please, there is wisdom in it still, even if you don't believe, please!"

  She pressed it upon Sen, and he didn't have the strength to argue. He took the heavy old book and folded it into his pack.

  "Heart bless you," the Butterfly said, as she stepped back into the vapors, the mists
swallowing her whole. "Heart bless Avia's son!"

  BOOK 3. KING SEEM

  AIRS AND GRACES

  Sen walked without purpose, without thought. The jumbled streets of the Gloam Hallows glided by him, lost in the fog, until he roused some time with the wall cold and wet against his cheek. He didn't remember reaching it. It wasn't the same place he'd come in through; there was no tunnel gently breathing mist in and out.

  He thought of Sharachus waiting for him somewhere beyond, perhaps far away along the wall, but he didn't want to see him. There was nothing to say. Instead he lifted one hand and pushed the tips of his fingers into a crack in the stone. The wall was here, so he would climb it.

  On the other side he dropped to the ground and resumed his slow, steady trudge. In the mists he couldn't see the bi-rail and didn't care. After a time the mists faded and he was left with the steady salt crunch of the Fallowlands underfoot. It was night and the pitted hillocks of this strange barren land were dark. There were no streets here, no lights but the distant Drazi fires and the stars in the sky.

  He looked up at them as he walked, all those outlines of his heroes, vanishing briefly as they passed behind the ever-present mouth of the Rot, and wondered if his mother had truly made up the names for their constellations. Was Saint Ignifer a work of her fiction, or she a work of his?

  At some point, when exhaustion struck, he sank into the frozen lee of a mud-dune, reared up like a wave. He took the book the Butterfly had given him and held it up to the moonlight. It was heavy and worn, with the name Airs and Graces in faded gold lettering on the leather cover. He thought about ripping out its pages and tossing them to the cold wind. They would mean nothing more than the stories he'd read as a child, heroes and villains from invented fantasies.

  He woke lying beside a puddle, the pale light of a cloudy morning filtering down around him. He stared into his own reflection in the dirty water, saw gray eyes and scars, and wondered what was real. His reflection rippled across the skein of water as his breath disturbed it, the movements as muddled as his mind. He dashed the image with one splash of his hand, then climbed the black mud-rise to look out.