The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  Others still simply vanished, never to be heard of again.

  Sen had swallowed up tales of the Gutrock as a child. Only the bravest adventurers went there. Only the boldest brought anything worthwhile back, but those who succeeded often became rich, as the treasures of Aradabar were unlike anything else in existence; clockwork birds of filigree silver that sang autonomously and flew a dozen yards, maps of the realm of the dead burnt into ebony by means unknown, a chromatic moon dial that split the sky's light into sections, allowing for precise navigation on the Sheckledown Sea.

  At times miraculous ancient Mjolnir technologies were unearthed; a functioning Skyship sail that always caught the wind, the humming egg of a harvested Wyvern, a book detailing the means of forging a powerful new metal from saltwater and common clay. Along with such fantastic discoveries came a broad slathering of exquisitely crafted diamante torcs, golden statuettes inlaid with unknown blends of pearl, incised jade insignia and more.

  No known map of the Gutrock or the city of Aradabar beneath existed in completion. Every ghast merely worked from intuition and luck. Every panhandler sent there on commission by a prospecting city merchant followed their own scrap of a map from another time, hoping to make sense of it where others had failed.

  Into that world, Sen and Sharachus would descend. But first they would build a map of their own.

  After roughing out the outline of Aradabar from the map on the walls, Sen overlaid it with the edges of the Gutrock fringe, the mountain far to the north, and the dagger-like obtrusion that thrust into the city beside the Gloam Hallows.

  In the coming nights, Sharachus brought more maps. Over the course of weeks he delivered them as he found them, some on scrolls and some on threadbare faded cloth, at times showing himself to explain where they came from.

  "This is from a famed geologist in Jubilante," he said for one. "Quite a private cache."

  "Ghasting records in the Manticore carta," was another.

  Amongst the maps were paintings too, depicting scenes of Aradabar life, and memoirs from alleged survivors handed down and copied through the generations, and even some small sculptures of the King's palace in carefully preserved bone. Sen mapped everything he could find onto the walls, merging maps and accounts where he could, making best-fit choices where he couldn't, so that steadily a vision of Aradabar beneath the Gutrock formed.

  On the days when Sharachus didn't come, Sen waited, and thought, and trained. His fluency with the misericordes was improving rapidly, after he'd asked Sharachus to procure some books on their usage. He was raiding the best libraries in the city already, and it seemed like a natural opportunity.

  So Sen studied 'The Annals of Caract War', which at first didn't seem to be about martial fighting at all, and more focused on strategic placement of mercenary Caract forces. Yet after reading in more depth, Sen realized the unwritten assumption was that all Caracts, naturally heavily armored and thus impervious to most edged weapons, were armed and fought primarily with misericorde spikes. There were also some marvelous woodblock prints showing techniques he'd never thought of.

  He read Gilbroy's 'Misericordeist', which discussed in great detail the mind-set of the would-be assassin, essentially explaining in depth Mare's notion of 'get up close and fill them full of holes.' He pored over footwork patterns laid out in a kind of musical notation by Delarante, the greatest misericordeist of the Floating Age.

  He danced round the park, in the day and at night. He leapt from the roof and caught himself in the branches of the nearby oft trees. He swung from Slumswelter rooftops, and fought, and when he wasn't thinking about fighting, he was thinking about the Gutrock, and Aradabar, and the pattern of the past. Occasionally the Spider would stop by and they might eat together, or talk briefly, but Sharachus was never comfortable staying for long.

  Even so, it was a comfortable enough time for Sen. Since the Abbey he hadn't felt so settled in his routine, so focused on a clear goal that every day advanced a little closer, nor so far from loneliness. It was a pleasure to feel his skill with the spikes advancing, and to watch the map on the wall grow thick with possibilities, and to await the next brief conversation with his new friend.

  In that way spring lengthened, and shifted toward summer.

  * * *

  It was dusk of a hot, dry day when Sharachus returned for the final time, crawling in through the hole in the millinery hall. By then the map filled the ceiling and surrounding walls, in places spilling over to the floor. It had been whitewashed and rewritten numerous times, as fresh evidence had come in and shifted the contours again and again.

  "What do you think?" Sen asked, standing back. His arms were basted with whitewash and graphite, making him look as crusty as a Balast fresh from pounding lime in the Calk.

  The Spider looked round the room for a long time, taking in the level of detail, the way the ancient city meshed with the new through the Gloam Hallows. The question of alignment would be paramount, when they were out on the rock.

  "It looks like Avia's Revels," he said at last. "As mad as anything the Butterfly wrote."

  Sen laughed. "It's probably the best map of the Gutrock in existence, judging from what you could find." He gestured to the scattered maps, paintings, and sculptures dotting the floor. "Without them we'd have only hearsay."

  The Spider nudged an old map with one of his leg-limbs. "This is hearsay, Sen. Copies of copies at best, outright fabrications at worst. It's a lit candle in an enormous cave. Have you any idea how vast the Gutrock is?"

  "I have some. Now, I prepared ghasting equipment for you."

  Sharachus cocked his head to the side. "For me?"

  "Yes. The Gutrock is a harsh place; there's a whole warren of streets in Carroway for ghasting gear alone." He rustled in the shadows by his side, and came up with an oddly contoured outfit in tanned-white leather. "Do you think this will fit?"

  Sharachus studied the thing through narrowed eyes. "What is it?"

  "A ghasting suit, with balaclava attached. I'm not much at sewing, but I put it together from a few different ones. It'll protect you from the worst of the sun and glassy rock."

  Sharachus reached out and took the piece of clothing, spreading the odd shape before him. It looked like a child's sketch of a squashed white frog. "It's ridiculous."

  Sen shrugged. "Maybe, but on the Gutrock it could save your life, especially with those big eyes. I expect they're very good in the dark, but they were hardly designed for constant sun-glare, were they?"

  Sharachus grunted, turning the suit before him critically. "I had not expected such a gift. But you are right about my eyes."

  "Then it's decided. I've a pack for me, and one for you. Can you eat bread?"

  The Spider eyed him. "Of course I can eat bread."

  Sen held out the pack. "There's enough in there for a week. Water too."

  Sharachus took the pack like he'd hold a dead rat. At the end of his long spindly arm it seemed child-like. He studied it a long moment until Sen mimed slinging it over his back. "Like this."

  The Spider frowned, then opened up his long mocking coat, beneath which he wore a many-pocketed leather vest. He opened the pack and started pulling bits of food and odd essentials out of it, stuffing them into the pockets of the vest and the coat. A wooden whistle, two dried apples, a rough-sketched map, all things Sen had bought in the markets. When the front pockets were full he sloughed off the mocking coat and started packing flatbreads, a spare compass, a bottle of naphtha and tinder into the pockets at the back. Sen shuddered as his limbs rotated and distended strangely.

  When the pack was empty he tossed it on the floor. "It would impede my movements," he said, "as will this," he tossed the ghasting suit down to join the pack. "Though I appreciate the thought."

  "At least wear the balaclava," said Sen. "You'll be useless sun-blinded."

  "Then I'll travel by night. I'll cover much more ground that way. I can scout the routes you seek, then wait in the shade through the day."
<
br />   "That doesn't sound such a good idea. What if I walk past you in the day?"

  "Then I'll find you at night. I am very good at finding you, Sen."

  Sen smiled. "That's true. All the same, I'll leave some marks," he held up the can of whitewash. "They make this in red, too."

  "Then I suppose we leave," said Sharachus. "I do not need to tell you how careful we must be. We are both still abominations, hunted by the King, even on the Gutrock. There will be no help for us if we fail."

  "Then we won't fail."

  The Spider gave a lurid smile. "So said Saint Ignifer, and what became of him?"

  "He was turned into a story that half the world now believes. Or maybe he never existed in the first place. Either way, he did pretty well in the end."

  Sharachus nodded solemnly. "Indeed. I will see you at the Gutrock, Sen." He didn't wait for a reply, instead took three long steps and leaped out of the arch.

  Sen looked around the room a final time, up at the map that was now burned into his mind, then picked up his pack and followed.

  GUTROCK WASTES

  Sen rode the bi-rail from Afric again, dressed in the thick white tubing suit of a Gutrock ghast with the balaclava wrapped around his face, surrounded by weary, hard men.

  The train churned round the city's dark side loop, back through the smoke and the yellow mists, until near the Gutrock obtrusion the tracks inclined once more, and the carriage tilted backward for the ascent to Andesite station. Swaying from side to side, it chugged up the rickety softwood scaffolds moored to the steep slope of porous rock, spewing belches of black smoke.

  At the summit they halted with a jerk, and the carriage doors shunted open on the rusted Andesite berth, revealing a narrow wooden platform cantilevered off the craggy cliff's edge by metal struts. Either side of it was steep scree rock, pitted and scored with the rusted foundations of countless older station-mounts, each now twisted slag clinging to the rock like stale spider webs.

  The other ghasts shuffled out, and Sen went with them. They filed along an unchained metal trellis strung out over the wind-bitten rock, toward the Andesite wireway jetty, then stopped to wait in line.

  "What're you picking for?" a jumble-headed Scabritic behind Sen asked. He smelled of raw onions and coal-dust. His skin at every point was a mess of tangled scabs, his skin constantly peeling in crusty red layers. His caste would be ripe for the Adjunc, except there was no pattern to his scarring, and no permanence.

  Sen looked away, toward the Andesite wireway; a sagging line of copper stretching out over the rock, suspended on creaking iron pylons. It followed the obtrusion's rugged contours up the nearest rock-rise, then disappeared over the top, leading away to the Gutrock base camp, from which all ghasts set out.

  Beneath his feet was only the start of Gutrock waste, porous volcanic stone glaring white in the noon sun. Any remnant of Aradabar underfoot had already been mined dry. He thought he caught a glimpse of a dark shape leaping up the rock face, perhaps Sharachus, but couldn't be sure.

  "Me, I'm hunting bone," said the Scabritic, "whale bone, pig bone, ossified, of course, worth a fortune in scarab guts."

  Sen tried to pick out the Spider as he moved to the wireway mount ahead, but the shadows were too black. If he'd worn his ghasting whites, perhaps he would have been visible. He chuckled at the thought of Sharachus in white.

  "It's not funny, bone," objected the Scabritic.

  Time passed. The men in line slumped on the trellis, breaking out ivory dice and tossing for the pickings to come. Their thoughts felt much like the men under the bridge in Afric; living for their addictions, for their debts, for damask, every day the same. Their scarab smoke perfumed the air with its dry indigo scent, and slowly the stars overhead revolved behind the Rot's mouth.

  Sen woke a little later to the sound of feet shuffling on metal. The line was moving. He rose and moved with it, looking ahead to the wireway. Against a dawn sky as pink as amaranth liquor, a row of swaying gondolas came over the rock-rise. Slowly they docked, and ghasts dusty with chipped rock exited, some flashing coins to their fellows, greeted by cheers. Others walked by with their heads hung low.

  Sen entered the last gondola. The tracers jerked, and the line began to move. The gondola rose to swing freely a dozen feet above the Gutrock, tossed to and fro by its own jerky motion, pressing the white-suited ghasts against each other. Looking out through their pressed bodies, Sen saw endless fathoms of dirty white rock ahead, split by the single gondola line. To either side all trace of the city's touch faded into dry and dead stone. Ahead the bulk of Ignifer's mountain grew until it seemed to fill the sky.

  He watched the empty expanse of exhumed rock passing below. These were the exhausted areas, sections that had been drilled completely through with tunnels in centuries past, warrened like the scars on Sen's body. In places he saw caves that had collapsed, revealing the underlying city like striated muscle beneath the skin. Glimpses of pillaged mosaics rolled by, broken-down walls mined for ancient shells and pearl fragments, the crosshatched pattern of millennia-old streets.

  Aradabar. It was a thrill to see, and Sen watched with mounting excitement. This was a world three thousand years hidden, now rearing up into the light. It had been the same with the Gloam Hallows, but these sad wasted remains held a deeper romance than that misty half world. This was a purer version of Seem's Aradabar, completely destroyed by the Rot and only returned to the light by dint of enormous effort.

  He thought of the week's worth of food in his pack. Ghasts had been coming here for as long as Ignifer had stood, mining for treasure, and none of them had found any sign of King Seem alive. It could be a life's work, and more. What could he possibly achieve in just a week?

  An hour passed, and the gondola passed over old gondola stations, each now just a few metal housings within a rocky clearing, each once the furthermost limit of ghast exploration. The creaking of metal filled the air. The sun rose white and blazing, and along with the other ghasts in the carriage, Sen dropped the white slitted sun guard over the slit in his balaclava. The glare even this high was eye-watering.

  "First time, eh?" a feather-faced Induran asked, shucking him gently in the ribs. "Steer near the pitboss and you'll be fine. Don't get dust-drunk."

  Sen looked away, wiping his eyes.

  Another hour or so later, with the gondola heating up like a glasshouse and the stink of unwashed drunken bodies thick in the air, they drew in to the terminus.

  The gondola swayed into a jerky landing beside the pitboss' station, itself a hollowed out hillock of Gutrock, scaffolded with discarded gondola trains. In the shadows within Sen picked out the pitboss, an Exemious with all his innards splayed on the outside of his body, seated at a desk with a muddled heap of reclaimed items piled behind him. Several Dogsbody nifthinders clinked through it, seeking refuse of worth.

  The ghasts piled from the gondola in a barrage, like a flooded Levi tide desperate for the sea. Sen rode the flow, along the worn footpaths in the rock toward the pitboss. Approaching the Exemious, Sen smelt the noxious gas of his body.

  "New boy you, isn't it?" asked the pitboss. His voice gargled as he spoke. Within his throat Sen saw the hairs of a beard, growing inward. Sen held out a silver coin. The pitboss took it, handed him a flat gray stone with a number on it.

  "All the same; whatever you clink up, you get a flat rate by weight."

  Sen pocketed the stone and walked on. The rest of the ghasts were already scurrying forward, eager to stake out their mining grounds for the day. Stony hills and ridges rose on either side like the hollow buildings of the Slumswelters, wormed through with fresh ghast holes. Atop a shallow rise to his left a church spire burst through the volcanic shale in a gleam of light. He took a path beside a tunnel dug down into the belly of the church, climbed the spire to hang from the ancient icon of the Heart at the top, and looked out over the Gutrock.

  It spread endlessly in every direction, rising and falling in weird clotted hills like the swells of a
gray ocean. A whole city buried by lava. Here and there bits of masonry spiked through the rock-cover, like subterranean creatures coming up for air. He scanned the gray wastes, trying to match features to the map in his head, picking out a route to the great King's citadel. There was no sign of Sharachus. The thought oddly cheered him, that even here where all was white, the Spider found a place to hide.

  He climbed down from the tower and set out over the gray.

  * * *

  The first day he spent amongst ghasts, picking his way between their burrows, passing by as they hammered away at the rock. Half buried in their holes they watched silently as he went by, doubtless wondering what site he was headed for. None of them spoke, and as he passed deeper into the gray their ranks grew thinner, as did their holes. The hammering of their clag-hammers steadily faded, leaving only the whistle of the wind over serrated rock.

  As he walked he imagined ghasts tunneling beneath his feet, exhuming pathways through old corridors and alleyways, seeking the treasures trapped within when the lava hit. Scattered in places near tunnel-mouths he found their off-casts; the cheap copper bevels of a ring enclosure where once a diamante had been set, the inner pages of books flapping in the breeze, their hard leather and gold bindings stripped away, wooden painting frames lying split open, the canvases long pilfered. Here and there were the blackened ashes of fires, spattered about with blotches of dark purple and green where worthless metals had been smelted away. He knelt beside one spill and tried to lift it, but it was molded onto the ground-rock. He walked on.

  The silence deepened and grew, as did the heat. Soon there were no refuse sites, no tunnels, and the sound of digging became a haunting echo, the tapping of some shy ghost that he was never quite sure he could hear. The path ahead became indistinct in the hot glare of the evening sun, and his body sweltered within the ghasting suit. The balaclava eye slits cut most of the glare, but still his eyes burned. At times he pressed the heels of his palms tight against them and watched rainbow lights play across the darkness.