The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  "Great King," she said.

  He stared back at her transfixed, scarcely daring to believe. She was not raving. He reached up with a hand that was not yet familiar, and stroked her cheek. The landshark in her mind did not lash out; instead he felt something so wonderful he could not name it, a gratitude that enveloped him, a love that made him believe nothing could ever hurt him again.

  When he let the touch go, she was smiling and there were tears in her eyes. "You have loved me so well, for so long."

  "I always will," he said, unthinking, "I will be here always."

  She kissed his fingers, dark with her own blood. "Great King, I fear it is so."

  SHARACHUS III

  Sen was drowning.

  Images from King Seem's life smothered him, emotions and memories that were not his own over-rode any sense of who he was. He kicked against them and tried to reach through to pieces of his own life, but could only graze their outermost edges, like bodies sunk beneath the Levi's flow.

  "Help," he tried to scream, but he had no voice in that darkness, and with every movement he made, the thing that was Seem slipped further into him, taking him over, swallowing him up.

  Until it stopped, as suddenly as it began.

  Air slapped again into Sen's lungs like freezing water, and he felt the rasp of rough stone beneath his skin. His eyes flicked open, and in the musty light he saw dim bodies battling. Sensation and memory flooded through him, disorienting him further. Where was he now?

  "Sen!"

  He recognized the call and stumbled to his feet, rubbing at his eyes. Darting through the beams of dusty light before him was a chaos of desperate black limbs, struggling back and forth.

  "Sharachus?" he mumbled.

  "Help me!"

  Now the Spider's face loomed large from the battle, his eyes entirely crusted over with scum and blood. Cuts and open weals ran down his purple-basted cheeks, down his neck and shoulders. He spun hooks in one limb while balancing on the other, with two of his limbs somehow sunk within the slick black lump.

  Sen stared, barely able to comprehend what he was seeing. It was as if the two were fusing together.

  "Help!" Sharachus cried again, and Sen lurched forward, tugging his spikes from their holsters. They flashed through a beam of light as he drew them up, then sank down into the lump.

  Something howled, Sharachus' mouth opened wide, and Sen yanked the spikes out. Purple liquid splashed up from the holes he'd made, but they quickly re-sealed even as Sharachus was yanked in deeper, up to his shoulders and thrashing frantically.

  Sen brought the spikes down again, using strikes from Delarante, but again the wounds resealed and the lump sucked the Spider in further, like a snake distending its jaws to swallow its prey. Its flanks pulsated, thudding from within with the desperate flailings of Sharachus, while Sen stabbed it again and again with Gilbroy, with Delarante, with Caract-era swipes.

  Blood and ichor slicked his grip and his footing. The Spider strained and Sen yelled, but the lump kept spreading, its black flesh creeping like mud around Sharachus' Sectile cheeks, up over his forehead, obscuring his eyes and pouring down his open mouth until…

  He fell silent as his head was swallowed down. The screaming and the thrashing stopped, and Sen was left standing there, arms swaying and burning, misericordes hanging slack, his pants the only sound in the turret. No sign of the Spider remained. The bulbous lump pulsated, and a tentative tendril slid out of it.

  Sen fell on the lump in a renewed frenzy. His blades sank in and out faster than it could heal, raking through soft black flesh and stabbing away its roving tendrils, trying to dig out his friend. Deeper and harder he dug, but found no sign of Sharachus, until the lump was more holes than substance and could no longer hold itself together. It burst open like the battered Scranth, disgorging a wash of thick black oil.

  Sen's last blows sparked off the stone floor with nothing left to strike, and he twitched on his knees as full control of his body and mind set in like a deepening bruise. The lump was gone. Sharachus was gone. He looked down at his body and the floor, slathered in black and purple slurry. It was difficult to see the border where one ended and the other began.

  "Sharachus?" he called.

  It couldn't be real. He lifted his heavy head and looked around the room, scanning the dark patches of settling viscera. He reached out into the bloody pulp, running his palms over the surface and searching for some sign of Sharachus, but nothing remained. There were no limbs, no body, no oversized head.

  Sharachus was gone.

  He dropped his head into his hands and wept.

  * * *

  A time later, he was calm. A thick beam of sunlight split the black-blooded chamber, cast through the arch. Outside lay the Gutrock, spreading lone and level above Aradabar.

  Now he recognized the room from Seem's memories. It was the tallest tower of his citadel, where Avia had lived. It alone had escaped the eruption's wrath.

  The lake of Seem was draining now, down through the tower, and he couldn't stop it. He scooped some of the black in his hands, but it oozed between his fingers. There was still the faintest sense of the King's mind within it, a cold echo that remained in his chest even after the slime fell away. He reached in and tried to push the sense of it out, but it burst beneath his touch like a ripe hawkenberry, spurting out a final memory.

  Seem lay beside Avia, stroking her swelling belly. They were working on a text together, words drawn from the scribe's records of Avia's madness, that Sen recognized as the opening page of the Book of Airs describing the first rise of Saint Ignifer.

  In the memory, Seem spoke. "How long must I wait?"

  "Too long, my King," Avia answered, smiling but sad. "Your mind will rot and crumble, like your empire. You will long for death a hundred times, and find no relief. Your despair will be total."

  Seem smiled. "Very long, then."

  "Millennia," she answered. "You will no longer be the man you are now. All you will know will be rage and hunger, bitter for what you have lost. Yet there can be no other way, for when he comes, you must be here. But when he comes, you will not know him. You will fling your hunger at him, and try to tear him down."

  "I will never do that," Seem said, resting one clawed black hand tenderly on her belly. "Never in three thousand years. I will not hurt my own son."

  "Great King," said Avia sadly, "I fear you will try."

  The memory released Sen, and he came back to himself in the oily slick, with Seem's final words taking root in his mind.

  King Seem was his father.

  He felt it even now, glowing through the memories of Seem that remained. The rage and the hunger were there still, but beneath them was something else, something that fused into him as he probed deeper, unfurling like the petals of a hawkenberry.

  He reached down and touched it; this warming sense of a father's love for a son he had not yet met. It shifted something inside him, spreading out and coloring each part of his life. They had done this for him, he saw. Seem and Avia. In all their efforts to spread the false story of the Saint, they had made him the seed for the whole world's hopes.

  Quietly, he watched the last dregs of his father the King and his friend the Spider dissipate into the stone. The world was changing now, to match the changes inside him. He could feel his father's touch moving beneath his skin, sensing the air in different ways. Through Seem he felt the sting of the Rot more keenly than ever; an insistent, splintery pressure that was drawing closer, always closer, and growing larger.

  Perhaps a year. Perhaps three.

  He walked to the turret arch and looked out over the Gutrock wastes, far above the great lost city of Aradabar, and felt the weight of millennia settle on his shoulders. He was part of the legend of Saint Ignifer now, no matter how it ended. There was no use denying the truth.

  For the world to live, his mother's imaginary hero had to rise.

  He bowed his head in a brief prayer to the Heart, for both Sharachus and Seem
, for their sacrifices and their madnesses. Then he dropped to the rock and started back across the wastes, toward the city that bore a false hero's name.

  BOOK 4. THE SAINT

  MILLINERY II

  The Slumswelters was unchanged by night, empty and quiet. In the park by the millinery fresh greenery had erupted, as the thickness of full summer descended. The world had moved on while he'd been lost in his study of the Gutrock. Now the cloying scent of sap wafted on the warm air, along with the high sweet twittering of fetchlings.

  On the millinery rooftop he looked out over the city and the stars. All his old heroes were still written across the sky, King Seem amongst them, as ever. Sen smiled to see it, that this was the memory his father had left behind. As one they slowly circled toward the burning black mouth of the Rot. It was now larger than the moon, and seemed to be growing every day.

  He placed a hand over his chest, where the cold fragment of Seem had melted in. Even now the King's knowledge and skills were spreading within him. He understood now why Avia had chosen five children of such disparate castes. Through them he would reach out and unify every caste in the city.

  Puffs of brunifer seed wafted across his skin, and he watched the drifting motes carry away on the breeze, glinting as they caught the moonlight. Each would drift blindly, buffeted by the wind, until they caught on soil and dug in, seeking purchase with a thousand tiny roots. So it was with the Saint. He was just an idea, but ideas had power.

  Sen climbed down from the roof and entered the shadows of the millinery. So much had changed since he'd lain through the long nights poring over the book, gripped by visions of the end. The walls still bore the graphite marks he'd made on whitewash, of the outline of Aradabar beneath the lava floes. This was where his mother had brought him.

  It seemed a fitting place to build a revolution.

  In the park he washed at the well, scrubbing away the layers of King Seem's waxy blood and Gutrock dust caking his ghasting leathers, scraping the filth from his matted hair as best he could. It felt like sloughing off an old skin and stepping into a new one.

  He was tired, his muscles worn with days of walking, but there was one thing still to do before he could sleep, a concrete step in the direction he would take.

  In Carroway the night-markets were bustling. He walked them with his ghasting balaclava pulled down, hiding his scars. The chaos of thoughts was louder than ever, accentuated by the sensitivity of Seem, but with Seem also came a new kind of control, allowing him to pass through without having to numb himself to all the detail.

  In the street for scriveners he stopped at a haberdashery stall run by a stocky grey-skinned Euphlact, with a ridge of horn spikes running up from its snout, over its skull and back down its spine, where they jutted through tailored holes cut into its cape. Reams of paper sat alongside metal print plates and troughfuls of block ink on the stall before it.

  "Do you have a press?" Sen asked.

  The Euphlact lowered its horned snout and studied Sen's eyes through the balaclava slit. "What do you want a press for?"

  "To print things." He held out three of the Abbess' gold coins, and the Euphlact eyed them hungrily.

  "Those are King's heads?" it asked. Sen could feel its mind more keenly than he'd felt any before, and knew its greed would tempt it toward foul play. He also knew that violence could be avoided if he presented his own strength. It was always the same, as it had been with Mare, as it had been with Sharachus.

  "They are. These for a working press and plates. Take it or I go to one of your competitors."

  The Euphlact frowned, and looked from side to side as if checking this barter wasn't being watched, then agreed with a show of hand wringing and squints.

  "But not here." It tossed a tarpaulin over its goods, then led Sen down several winding back-alleys to an old and grimy haberdashery warehouse, which it invited Sen to enter.

  Sen remained standing outside, hands on his spikes. The Euphlact wasn't even planning anything yet, but Sen could feel that once within, it would see the opportunity. Sen wasn't yet fifteen, and even with the spikes he didn't think he could safely fight the Euphlact's armored bulk off. "I'm not going in. Show me the press here or I leave."

  The Euphlact grumbled something about the state of the world, then shuffled into the darkness. Sen heard a lot of grinding and clanking sounds from within, until eventually the creature emerged pushing a large wooden barrow, within which was a large and intricate black metal machine.

  "Steam-press," said the Euphlact, its horns raised. "Very popular in the trades a decade ago. I keep it oiled, for the occasional circular. Not much call for them now. Of course, it doesn't have to be steam run. Probably better to wind it yourself, actually. They used to blow up."

  Sen surveyed the press, masking his interest. The levers and trays fascinated him; it would be a long few nights figuring out how all the pieces worked together, and he looked forward to it. It was perfect. "That, plus plates, ink, letters, and a thousand sheets of stiff paper." He held out the three gold coins.

  The Euphlact eyed them for a long appraising moment, recalculating, its thoughts bare for Sen to read. "A thousand sheets is it now, and ink, and letters too? I can't give you all that. Selling one of these, there's inherent risks. The Molemen find I sold you this, there'll be questions, and penalties. You pay your tithe to the King do you, young man?"

  Sen laughed again. "Of course not. Neither do you. I wager the Molemen have no idea you own this press."

  The Euphlact harrumphed, started to argue, then stopped as Sen turned to leave. "Wait. A thousand sheets, ink, the press and letters, but you've got to give me something more. Five silvers, at least."

  "Done, provided you wheel the barrow to Lord Quill Square."

  "I wheel it?"

  Sen nodded. The Euphlact sighed, then nodded. It took a good amount of more rummaging to produce plates and lettering to Sen's satisfaction, along with ink and papers. The goods mounded up in the barrow beautifully.

  The Euphlact got behind it and pushed. "Out of the way, then, young sir."

  The short journey went by without event, though at several points Sen felt insurrectionist thoughts float up in the Euphlact's mind, but they were never enough to act on, spiked with doubt at this young man's confidence, his bearing, the way he held things that might be weapons at his waist.

  Standing before Lord Quill, Sen set the coins down on the old hero's boot, then looked up. "An extra silver for the barrow. You can buy another for less."

  The Euphlact shrugged. Sen circled round cautiously, and the Euphlact laughed but mirrored him.

  "What are you going to print, anyway?" it asked.

  "Follow me and find out," Sen said.

  The Euphlact grinned, held up its fore-hoofs. "Fair enough. You need anything else, you come to me."

  Sen took up the barrow and set off into the warren of streets. For a time he held his focus on the Euphlact behind him, as it considered whether to follow, but soon that notion diminished and it went away.

  The sun was rising when Sen returned to the millinery. With leaden legs he pushed the press into the peaty ground floor, then left it there while he climbed the steps to the larder room. There he ate a handful of some kind of meaty bread he'd picked up on the way for a copper, and collapsed onto his bedroll.

  Things were changing already. Just before falling asleep, he wondered that the broken larder's backboard was now just shorter than him. Even a month earlier he could fit wholly within it. It made him smile.

  The next night he returned to the Abbey, to begin his search in earnest.

  MOTH ABBESS II

  Walking up Aspelair, the Abbey gates loomed ahead. He'd never really approached from this angle before, and it was strange. Through the wrought iron he picked out the sacristy, the cathedral tower he'd climbed with Alam a year earlier, the roofline where Sharachus would have watched down, webbed into the Abbey's clefts and juts.

  It all looked the same, only smaller. The gro
unds no longer stretched so far, the buildings themselves seemed shrunken. The climb up the cathedral tower couldn't compare to the depth of the Gutrock crater's cliff.

  Over the wall, he moved in shadows though the graves. The revelatory light in the Abbess' chancel was tuned, and he waited for the lone Sister on patrol to walk her route, then passed stealthily by.

  Inside, the sacristy was dark and cool. Seasons had passed, and now all sign of the Adjunc attack was gone. Up the stairs he remembered walking that same way as a child, bound to see the Abbess for some minor infraction he'd caused; perhaps spilling a soup pot in an over-eager game of chase with Sister Henderson. The thought made him smile.

  He knocked softly on the door then entered. She was sitting as always, at her desk, wings spread as though she had known he was coming. Her missing antennae were the only reminder of the tragedy they'd been through, only six months earlier.

  "Hello Abbess," he said.

  "Sen." A long moment passed. "Please, sit down."

  * * *

  They studied each other. They talked. Sen told her what he'd found in the Gloam Hallows; her Butterfly sister and the ruin of her Abbey, and what he'd found on the Gutrock; King Seem and the ruin of his city.

  The Abbess listened. At one point Sen thought she was near tears, as he described the Butterfly's madness, but there was a smile as well.

  "I'm glad her faith bore out. She was right all along."

  They sat quietly for a time, when Sen had told it all, taking in the changes.

  "Part of me still expects to see Alam or one of the others," he said, "come running around the corner any moment, chasing shellabies. Are any of them still here?"

  The Abbess' smile faded. "No. They have all moved on. Alam is studying to write the King's law in the Roy, training as a scrivener. I placed him myself, it's a good position, and a pathway to other things. Gellick is back in the Calk, where we found him. Feyon remains at her parents' home, though she is much reduced, Sen. She seems broken by what she did. Daveron took up his father's work, and I haven't heard anything of Mare."