The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  But there had to be a way in. Why else was all this here, why had it been cleared if not for this?

  Back at the battlement wall he climbed the fallen blocks to an unbroken section of rampart and strode along it, scanning the city's dusty roads all the way to the crater's edge, where the world ended in rock. He shouted the Spider's name in every direction, but no answer came. Then he turned back, and saw the figure picked out in the courtyard's mosaic, and a chill ran through him.

  It was Avia.

  The same Avia from the Gloam Hallows window. She held her wounded child in her arms as the mouth of the Rot descended, and the faint outline of the volcano erupted behind her. It took him a moment to register how impossible that was. When this citadel had been alive, when this mosaic could have been laid, those events had not yet happened.

  The Rot hadn't struck. Avia hadn't fled. It made it a prophecy predating even the Fates of Aradabar. A shudder ran through him, and he descended from the battlements to study the mosaic's tiles more closely. It didn't take long to find the secret they held. At the center, the scars on the baby's face were picked out in reflective red metal. On a sunny day they would surely shine like they the Sunsmelters pools ablaze on the city's eastern wall.

  Sen circled the boy's face, itself as big as the whole of the millinery, looking for something more. Set into the polished metal of one scar on the boy's left cheek there was a low handle. Too tired for caution, Sen strode over, gripped it and heaved. A seamless circular casement rose up with it, smooth as if oiled, like a sealed sewer cover. He heaved again, the cover grated noisily away, and a blast of cold wind blew up into his face.

  Beneath it a narrow chute descended into darkness like a narrow, dry well, fixed with metal ladder rungs along one side. He peered down into the darkness, trying to resolve the bottom or some sign of movement.

  "Sharachus," he called downward. His voice echoed once then faded, swallowed by the dark. He looked around the courtyard a final time, but still saw no sign of the Spider or anyone else. If anyone were watching, he'd be at their mercy the moment he went down, but the city remained quiet.

  He tried to think in Sharachus' position. If he were still searching for Dreychak, it would make sense he would go down. So Sen prepared to go down.

  He sparked a torch from his pack with fresh naphtha and his flint striker, then swung his legs in, and started down the rungs. Shadows flickered from his torch, illuminating the sheer side walls, formed of perfectly molded limestone blocks with barely distinguishable mortar.

  He counted the rungs as he went, hand over hand, equating the distance between them in his mind to lengths, in turn to fathoms, but after a hundred rungs he found his concentration wandering, already deeper than the drop to the Willoughby underground bi-rail, deeper than the Abbey cathedral tower was tall.

  Soon the air grew cold, and his breath steamed damply. The only sound was the shuffle of his pack against the wall behind him, and the metallic sound when his feet clanked on the rungs. The air smelled of burning oil and mildew. He continued down until the cold made a mask of his face and it became difficult to blink. His movements became exaggerated and jerky. He shouted Sharachus' name to warm himself, and the calls rattled down the chute like a bi-rail train, echoing all the way down.

  Then he reached the bottom.

  It was solid stone and no wider than the chute, like the base of a dried-out well. He stood there for a moment and shivered, studying the floor and lower walls. There were a few shards of broken rock about his feet, but nothing else. There was a low patch of deeper darkness facing the ladder, a kind of tunnel or perhaps drainage chute, so he dropped to his knees and held the torch into the darkness. The tunnel stretched on to the extent of the light.

  It was too low to go on hands and knees. Instead he carefully fed his feet into it first, slowly dropping and twisting until he lay down on his chest. He then pushed off the ladder rungs and slid in, feet first. Nothing sprang out to bite him, and he shuffled further in, pulling his pack and the torch after him, until he left the well shaft behind and was surrounded on all sides by the narrow, low passage.

  As he shuffled deeper, it grew tighter, so snug his back barely fit and he had to suck in his breath to get through, inching deeper by wriggling with his whole body.

  Time and distance passed slowly like that. His torch began to gutter, and after what felt like half a fathom it went out, leaving him coughing over its last stale curls of smoke. Still he kept on shuffling backward, until at last his feet opened on empty air; up, down and to either side. He pushed further out, so that his belly rested on the tunnel edge, stretching his feet downward for purchase. At his fullest extension, at last they found a floor, and he pushed the rest of his body through and out.

  He turned to see an immense and cavernous rock hall stretched away and upward into the dark, lit by a rippling green and purple glow emanating from the walls. For a long moment he knelt there and stared. He'd never seen anything so large in his life.

  And he wasn't alone. He could feel something alive nearby, waking from a long deep sleep. It was simple like an animal, but unfamiliar. He looked around the space, but saw no sign of anything alive.

  He was standing on a small squarish stone island at the narrow edge of the cavern, beyond which ran a flat black skein of water. An underground lake. At either side the walls rose smooth and sheer like the inside of the Abbey cathedral, their faint glow illuminating more small islands, dotted down either side of the hall at twenty-yard intervals for as far as he could see. Above each island hung black tunnel-mouths just like the one at his back.

  Drains? And this a vast underground sewer system?

  He gazed on the scene entranced. The glow in the walls seemed to shift hue, and he watched his shadow on the water change color. He touched the glowing rock of the wall behind him. It was glossy smooth, as though polished with oil, though beneath the surface lights followed his touch.

  He unsheathed one of his spikes and pushed the sharp tip against the wall. It sank in as if into flesh, and a dark liquid oozed out. The lights around it died away.

  "By the Heart," he murmured.

  As if in answer, something moved out on the lake.

  Sen turned and saw the shape of it on the water. It was a low lump, mounded like an egg-yolk, too dark for him to make out clearly, though ripples in the lake's flat sheen showed it was drawing closer. He backed quietly against the wall, holding his breath, watching as the thing glided in. In moments it was before him, as big around as the stone island he stood upon. At its center was a hole that pinched open and closed, bringing the low rasp of breath.

  Seconds passed as it sniffed the air. Carefully Sen drew his second spike. The metal scraped lightly on its holster, and the thing in the water jerked abruptly, rolling back to reveal a lurid yellow underbelly. Twin splashes burst through the water to either side, followed an instant later by two black and yellow rope-like arms lashing like whips down from above.

  Sen sprang to the side and the arms just barely missed him, slapping loudly off the stone floor, where they writhed up the wall like the boneless tendrils of a jellyfish. Up close Sen could see that each long arm chittered with hundreds of thorn-like yellow hooks that snapped back and forth with a wet clicking sound, gouging deep furrows into the wall's meat and extinguishing more of the lights.

  They began to coil back in, and without thinking Sen stabbed at the one closest as it gouged a path out. He impaled it with both spikes and drove it down onto the stone. The yellow lump let out a high screech and yanked the arm back violently, nearly tugging the spikes from Sen's hands. At the same time the second arm whipped sideways and Sen just managed to turn, so the impact crunched into his pack and tossed him flailing into the air.

  He thumped down five feet away, his lower body on the island and his upper in the lake. His hip cracked hard on the stone edge, forcing out a cry that let the icy cold water flood into his mouth as his head sank beneath the surface.

  He caught a b
rief dizzy glimpse of the lake's depths, lit by glowing walls with immense statues stretching down the sides, the tops of their heads forming the islands that lined the walls, their lower bodies receding down into darkness. Then he was scrabbling for the surface, and the water broke before him with a flat smack as one of the arms hit right where his head had been a second earlier. The other arm snaked point first toward him, and now he gave up the struggle for balance and let the freezing water pull him in.

  The cold engulfed him, and he spun in time to see the arm skip across the surface just inches above. He kicked out, his lungs already hungry for breath, and now saw the body of the beast he was facing.

  It was spherical and huge, like a giant glob of tar hanging in the water, entirely black but for the vivid yellow frill at its underside and arced along the trails of hooks down its arms. It squeezed and pumped at the water like a heart. The sense of it was old, and hungry, and full of bile. He looked into what might have been a single black eye, then another tendril came slapping down toward him. It broke the surface of the water with ease and drove down toward him, its hooks clicking like clockwork, and Sen pushed his spikes up to meet it.

  The arm impaled itself blindly, and the scream of the beast underwater nearly made him black out. The blow drove him deeper into the water, black blood spraying in his face like ink, then the tendril lashed away. Sen kicked sideways and swam desperately for the surface, hardly able to gain purchase with his hands fisted around the spikes. Finally he broke through to air, sucked in a breath, and saw another tendril shoot up from the water and skip across the surface toward him. He heaved and rolled roughly onto the island just in time to jump raggedly over the sweep of its arm.

  For a moment the black hump of its back lay open before him in the water, both arms spread to either side, and Sen took his chance without thinking; one step and a leap with both spikes bared.

  His feet hit the lump's slick rubbery surface and he let them buckle, dropping him to his knees as the creature lurched. Before it could toss him free, he used the last of his impetus to stab his spikes directly into the thing's blowhole.

  It screamed and flipped, ripping the misericordes free with a burp of thick yellow liquid. Sen was flung free and hit the water awkwardly as its own arms lashed back in to strike where he'd been kneeling. Under its own clicking hooks the lump's skin split like a rotten peach, splurging out a spongy red substance that fizzed and spat in the water. Its scream redoubled and its arms flailed madly. Sen swam away as fast as he could. Its hooks raked the wall nearby in a fury, but by the time he reached the next island over its throes were fading.

  Looking back over the dark water, he could just make it out in the dim light of the heavily scored walls. It slowly tipped upside down, revealing its yellow fronded underside again, sucking noisily at the air. Its arms stilled on the water's surface and stopped clicking. It let out a final bellow, burped a plume of curdled yellow liquid into the air, and sank slowly out of sight.

  Sen pulled himself up onto the new island and caught his breath, panting, trembling and dripping cold water. What he'd just seen was impossible. It had to be a Scranth, a beast even more extinct than Spiders. He'd read of them in the book of Saint Ignifer, ancient monsters that once roamed the oceans and preyed on raft-farers, until King Seem hunted them to extinction.

  King Seem. The name sent a shiver down his spine. If this thing were here, in some kind of long hibernation in the sewers of Aradabar, then perhaps the King really would be here too.

  He stood up and checked himself for fresh injuries. He was unhurt but for a twinge where his hip had struck the edge. His pack lay in tatters on the far island. He wiped his spikes on his leathers, sheathed them, then dropped back into the water. Strangely it wasn't that cold, on reflection. Back at the first island he picked through the remains of his pack; only one of the pewter flasks was intact, the others were ripped into jagged halves. They had saved his life. On a whim he thanked them quietly, then set them in a neat line at the edge of the island like graves to fallen heroes.

  All of this was crazy. He laughed a few times, as the enormity of what he'd just done dawned. He'd killed a Scranth, perhaps the last of its kind in the world, beneath the buried ruins of Aradabar.

  "Sharachus!" he shouted into the glowing dark. No reply came. He wondered if the Spider had even come this way. Perhaps the Scranth had got him, and he was even now sinking in the belly of the beast.

  If so, there was nothing he could do. He gathered the few bits of food and equipment he could salvage and wrapped them in what rags remained of the backpack, which he tied again around his back, then looked back out over the lake. Something nagged at his mind, and he remembered what he'd seen in the middle of the fight, with his head ducked beneath the water.

  The squarish islands arrayed around the hall weren't only islands, but statues stretching far, far down. He slid back into the water and ducked his head beneath the surface once more. The statues' feet were so far down he could not make them out, but their upper bodies and faces were clear. He almost sucked in a mouthful of water as recognition set in.

  Here was Mare. Here was Feyon. Here were Gellick, and Daveron, and Alam too.

  THE CHILDREN II

  Sen's stomach ran cold. There was the sunken skull of a Deadhead Induran, trussed over with thick ropey hair. There was a Moleman, his long snout bristled with whiskers, his sharp little teeth showing beneath thin lips. There was a long thin Spindle, a gearsmith's ratchet in his hand, there a thick-browed Balast with eyes of actual glinting emerald, and finally a Blue girl with little carved bells in her hair and ruffs around her graceful neck.

  Back on the surface he grasped at the island edge, breathing heavily, feeling dizzy. He lay back on the rock island and the cavern spun around him. Without a doubt these carvings were ancient, as old as Aradabar, and without a doubt they depicted the children from his Abbey. Some similarities could be explained away, but a Blue dressed just as Feyon had been? A Moleman in the company of a Balast? A Spindle carrying a ratchet?

  His mind felt numb. There seemed only one possibility, the very one that he'd decried in the Gloam Hallows, and had been teetering on the edge of ever since.

  The prophecy was real.

  Perhaps it meant the Book of Airs was real too. Perhaps the Saint had all along been just an invention of Avia's.

  A new thought came to him. He set his trembling hand on the stone island's edge, laid on the grooved lines of hair, and he peered into the water, down the front of his island. There was another face carved there too. He slid into the water, swam a few yards away, and ducked his head under the water to see properly.

  It had all his scars, in all the right places. Of course, it was his face. It was him.

  * * *

  He lay on the island and watched the steam of his breath steadily rise. He couldn't argue or deny it anymore. The Butterfly was right. The child in the Gloam Hallows glass was him.

  Born in Aradabar.

  All the things he'd considered fantasy for so long came into focus. Aradabar was here, the children she'd chosen were here, and if the book of Avia's Revels was right, then so was King Seem. Three thousand years had passed since Aradabar fell, but now Sen felt sure he would be here waiting.

  He wouldn't have to wait much longer.

  Sen slipped into the water and began to swim.

  The hall passed by in a long expanse of stone islands and glowing walls. Sometimes he'd bob his head underwater and peer at the giant faces around him. The children didn't appear again, but instead there were others he knew. One was Sharachus, another the mad Butterfly. Here was Sister Henderson, then the Abbess. He swam on.

  Soon the hallway began to change, and the heads of the statues gradually emerged from the water. At first he wondered if the water level was sinking, if some flue had opened and he would be flushed out in a raging torrent, but the statues showed no signs of a waterline. That left only one conclusion, and he came to it gratefully. The hallway was rising.


  He swam on, surrounded by the faces of the Sisters. Looking down into the water he could now make out the murky outlines of their huge feet. He sped on, ignoring the burn in his shoulders, and the water level sank faster. Necklaces and clasped arms were revealed, then midriffs and skirts, thighs, calves, and finally feet, until at last he was striding along in a few feet of water, then on dry and dusty stone flags.

  The ceiling was dizzyingly high now, lined either side with statues whose faces he could barely see. He had once lain on their heads, and now he stood only as tall as their toes.

  He started running. Dust kicked up around him, and he wondered how long it had remained there, untouched. There were no tracks of Sharachus in it, but that didn't mean anything. Sharachus was a Spider and could have webbed his way from statue to statue. He called out as he went, but got no response.

  Finally, the cavern came to an end at the most imposing statue yet. It would have soared over the Grammaton two or three times, and Avia must have known the impact it would have on him.

  It was Saint Ignifer.

  Sen couldn't make out his face, but his posture, the spikes in his hands and his armor, matched exactly what he'd always imagined. A thrill ran through him and he felt as though he ought to drop to his knees. This was the Saint whose sacrifice saved the world; who wasn't even real.

  There was no clear way through though, no entrance or dark tunnel beckoning on, so he put his hands on the ridge of the Saint's toe and began to climb. It was easy enough going, even simpler than the cathedral tower. The creases in the Saint's armor functioned like angled chutes he could work his way up, zigzagging from one to the next. On the Saint's shoulder he rested for a time, then took hold of one of the thick pillars of hair and climbed to his head.