The Child Guard
Book 1
Lorcan E Montgomery
Copyright © 2020 Lorcan E Montgomery
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: David Enriquez
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
To Chris
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
1. Novice Kane
2. Warriors And Healers
3. Enlistment
4. Dire Emergency
5. Cahaya
6. Restless Spirits
7. A Confession
8. Woodedge
9. Eder
10. The Borderlands
11. Mysteries upon Mysteries
12. The Deal
13. Decisions, Decisions
14. Into the Flames
15. The Morning After
16. The Fiorella
17. Shaky Ground
18. Names
19. Auris
20. Terrell
21. Breakout
22. The Golden Palace
23. Just Rewards
Pronunciation Guide
Acknowledgements
About The Author
Prologue
It was hard to find space to be alone together. Privacy was a luxury in Ashden at the best of times, and the elders of the village seemed intent on preventing them taking a moment together. There was always some chore to be done, something which was cited as an urgency but had strangely been left until the moment they were about to skip out the door. So this afternoon, having been given the day off in recognition of St Sorley’s Day, they had left the snug cosiness of Ashden and its rough circle of houses behind and disappeared into the trees atop the hill, like two ghosts out of a story.
She had been afraid, at first, of the dreadful Sidhe and their hunting parties, but Piaras had laughed and slipped his warm hand into hers and reassured her the savage Sidhe never came this far west, not any more. She had clung to his warmth and smiled back, to hide the butterflies in her stomach.
They had walked and talked until the sun was low in the sky, a late summer breeze rustling the leaves around them and catching her hair as it slipped from beneath her headscarf. He turned the strand over in his big, blunt fingers before gently tucking it back behind her ear, and she felt her breath catch as he looked at her.
“I’ve been speaking with Elder Jarlath,” Piaras said, fiddling with something in the pocket of his jacket. “With you having no kin and all, I thought it was only right that I speak to someone who had the duty of your care, you know.”
She didn’t trust herself to speak, but her silence made him uncomfortable, and he shuffled from one foot to the other, his big ears reddening in the fading light. He drew whatever it was out of his pocket, and she saw it was a wooden pendant, on a cord, like the tokens she’d seen some of the other village girls wearing. As he flipped and turned it through his fingers she couldn’t make out the design, but the curves and knots she caught occasional flashes of were intricate and painstakingly wrought. Over the winter Piaras had been busily whittling away, but he had hidden his project from her every time she had walked by. Now she was about to find out what he had made her, what shape her love token would take, what he thought would suit her lonely orphan nature.
“I know we haven’t known each other all that long, and I know the others think me odd for it, but I… well, I find that I… what I mean to say is…” he trailed off, blew an overhanging hair from his forehead, and laughed in spite of the blush rising in his face. “I thought this would be easier but here you are staring at me with those eyes and I just can’t get the words out.”
He took her hands in his, and she felt the smooth wood of the token in her palm, all smooth curves and delicate points; a bird, perhaps.
Swish.
His hands slipped from hers, and his eyes widened with surprise as an arrow sank deep into his neck and emerged from the other side. His mouth opened, gasping for air, and he fell to his knees. She screamed, and the sound chimed discordantly against the new sound which penetrated the trees; an unearthly whine, like an out of tune fiddle being forced up the scale. The hunt-song of the Sidhe.
She knelt down with him, soaking her dress in the blood which spilled from his throat, but there was nothing she could do for him. As she saw the light leave his eyes, tears spilled from her own and she let out an anguished cry.
There was movement behind his fallen body, and she looked up to see a Sidhe, a wild half-naked creature with fierce eyes and pointed teeth, gazing down at her with a look of murderous hatred. The creature advanced, slowly, deliberately, its bare feet gripping the rocks like a mountain goat as she backed away, the token clutched in her hand like an amulet of the gods. It stepped over the fallen body all uncaring, leaving a footprint on his chest, and she let out a cry at seeing him treated so. She slipped, fell onto her back, and the creature sprang towards her. She screwed up her eyes, knowing she was going to die.
But die she didn’t.
When she dared to creak her eyelids open, the creature was nose to nose with her, the fire of hate in its eyes unabated. It bared its pointed teeth, and she whimpered. The creature grabbed a handful of her hair roughly, and hauled her to her feet.
To the accompaniment of the song, the strange wild storm-sound which grated against her teeth and bones like a rasping file, her assailant dragged her to a gap in the trees and as she felt the night air against her face she hesitantly opened her eyes.
At first she thought it was the sunset, red and glowing against the blue-black of the twilight sky above. Then the icy realisation trickled in as the screams carried up to where she stood helpless on the hill. Ashden, her village, was burning, and its good people, who had taken her in as a motherless waif and cared for her, her people were dying.
“Let this be your last sight,” her attacker whispered, and it was as if a curtain had descended over her eyes. There was only blackness, and the screams of the village below.
Then, a distant rhythm which gradually grew louder, a counterpoint to the Sidhe hunt song, like hooves on packed earth, like a heartbeat.
1. Novice Kane
“And the Brother did gather into his sight the righteous among men, and did say unto them, Arm thyself with iron, for the creatures of the darkness are many and cunning, and they will come to thee with tongues of silver to beg respite. Thou must be swift, and mighty, for truly they shall exploit thy weakness.”
The Tale of St Ronan the Builder
The Matins bell rang, loud and brash in the pre-dawn quiet, and Kane stared around, heart thumping in his chest, for a long, bleary-eyed moment, unable to process the grey-on-grey images which sleeted before his darting eyes. As a lit torch augmented the meagre light coming through the narrow slits that served for windows in the dormitory, the other boys in his dormitory began to stir, variously yawning, farting and grumbling. Kane exhaled the breath he didn’t realise he had been holding. He took this to be a good sign, as it meant he hadn’t been one of the ones who had screamed.
“All right you bunch of fainting violets, rouse yourselves or you’ll feel the switch!”
Kane gro
aned as the voice of Bevan, the Brother-Prefect of the dormitory, rang out over the quiet mumblings and creakings of the boys. Whoever had decided putting Bevan in charge of ten boys was a good idea needed his head examining, in Kane’s opinion. Bevan had always been a blustering bully, and elevating him to Brother-Prefect had given the official blessing of the Citadel on his behaviour. He had taken to the role with gusto, and enjoyed lording it over the young novices, in particular using his fists or his beloved switch on any lad he considered to be in need of discipline.
One of his more frequent targets had turned out to be Kane. Though Kane was the eldest in the dormitory, age meant nothing in the Child Guard, in fact it was considered somewhat of a personal failing to still remain a novice for as long as Kane had. He had applied since his sixteenth year to join the ranks of the Child Guard proper, and despite excellent references from every Brother-Captain he had trained with, had been rejected year on year for the past five years. He had all but given up hope of ever making it out of the dormitory.
After a few moments of inner debate, he swung his legs reluctantly out of bed, feeling the chill from the granite floor shoot up through the soles of his feet and up into his ankles and calves. Gingerly, on the balls of his feet, he made his way to the chest at the foot of his bed. The chill of morning always made Kane feel every one of his twenty-one years, even though they did not show on his face. As a member, a novice but a member nonetheless, of the Child Guard order, he was kept from ageing by a daily dose of the sacred concoction known as the Elixir Innocentiae, which saved the children who served from ever falling under the spell of their deadly enemies. As a result, even though Kane had lived for twenty-one years, at least fifteen of which had been served in the Citadel, from the outside he looked like a child barely on the cusp of adolescence, with skinny limbs that nonetheless held a wiry strength due to his extensive combat training. He was tall compared to his peers, but gawky and awkward with it, and with his pitch-dark haystack of hair and his pale skin which burned in the sun, he had long been teased for his resemblance to an underfed scarecrow.
Taking out from the chest a coarse, much-mended but nevertheless clean undershirt, he peeled his nightshirt, soaked with cold sweat, away from his body and felt the brisk morning air raise goosebumps on his skin. He quickly pulled the undershirt on over his head, feeling the rough cloth catch on what felt like every single goosebump. His drawers were damp at the base of his spine, but after a surreptitious check of the front he sighed with relief, and pulled a pair of brown breeches on over the top, belting them at the waist.
The swish of the switch coming down on the end of his narrow cot wasn’t a surprise to Kane, and he barely flinched as he reached into the clothing chest and drew out his clean but faded brown tunic. He carefully affixed a blank expression to his face as he raised his eyes to meet the supercilious gaze of Bevan.
“Novice Kane, still dawdling about after all these years?” Bevan smirked. “You’d think you’d have learned better by now. Or have they given up trying to get into your thick head?”
Kane knew he shouldn’t, but something in him made him shift his weight and uncurl, by miniscule degrees, to his full height, which was about half an inch taller than the Brother-Prefect. Bevan’s face reddened and his eyes grew flinty.
“Can I help you, Brother-Prefect?” Kane asked mildly, shrugging his tunic on without backing down or shrinking. “I’m trying to ready myself for the morning’s duties, promptly and properly as befits a Child Guard.”
Bevan’s lip curled.
“Like you’d know what’s befitting of a Child Guard,” he sneered. “I’m surprised they still let you wear that uniform and they haven’t put you out to pasture with the other rejects yet.”
“I obey the will of the Citadel,” Kane said, carefully fastening his tunic. He could barely manage to get his hands between the two of them, as Bevan leaned into his personal space. He smoothed the fawn cloth down primly, and tucked his hands behind his back. They tried to curl into fists, but he interlaced his fingers and gripped tightly. “Would you excuse me, Brother-Prefect, I should like to wash my face before dawn prayers.”
“I’ll bet you would,” Bevan said. His right arm abruptly shot out, and for a brief moment Kane’s nails dug into the backs of his hands, in anticipation of a blow that never came. Instead, Bevan had stopped one of the younger novices, still half-in and half-out of his uniform, bustling to the garderobe with a brimming chamber-pot. He dipped his hand into the stinking contents, unflinching, and slowly, deliberately, his eyes never leaving Kane’s, wiped his hand off on the front of Kane’s freshly-laundered uniform.
Kane felt the eyes of the younger novices burning into his skin. Nobody moved, nobody spoke, it seemed like nobody even breathed.
“Novice Kane,” Bevan’s voice was loud in the hushed, tense atmosphere of the dormitory. “You appear to have a stain on your uniform.”
Kane felt the skin break where his nails were digging in, a brief stab of pain that was a welcome distraction from the heat of the novices’ stares.
“A badly-kept uniform is a disgrace to the Child Guard,” Bevan continued, silkily. “But then, you should know all about disgrace by now. I hear your friend Eder has been teaching you.”
Kane could feel the fibres in his arms vibrating with the effort of staying still. His palms and fingers were slick with sweat, and he felt his hands slipping apart, and desperately clutched tighter with his fingers.
Any second now he was going to break, and wipe the smug look from Bevan’s face. But it would not last, and in the end, Bevan would have the satisfaction. For striking a superior, Kane would face dismissal, banishment, perhaps even excommunication, and the Child Guard was all he’d ever known.
The tension became too much for one of the young novices, and the half-full chamberpot he had been about to empty slipped from his fingers, striking the floor with a clang and a splash.
Bevan gave Kane a split second look which indicated he was far from finished with him, then was forced to turn his attention to more pressing matters.
“Gregor, you useless worm!” he bellowed, hauling off to castigate the hapless boy, and leaving Kane to slowly remove his fingernails from his knuckles. He wasn’t surprised to find himself bleeding, but the adrenaline fizzing in his bloodstream left him no room to consider the pain anything beyond an annoying itch. More pressing was the murky streak on the front of his tunic, which might go unnoticed at dawn prayers but would certainly be picked up on later, in sword practice, or at noon when the novices of the Ninth battalion took their turn on the parade ground.
He took a rag from a small novice who goggled at him, and filled a bowl from the bucket which had been brought from the well, chilly and fresh. As he stalked back to his bed he heard a nervous giggle from behind him, which was quickly cut off.
The icy water soothed the cuts on his hands, but leeched the last of the warmth of sleep from him. He stripped off his tunic, laid it out on the chest before him and set to work as best he could removing the filthy streak Bevan had left. His work was slowed by his shaking fingers, only partly from the cold. The dormitory returned to noise and busyness and hubbub, but he could barely hear anything over the blood ringing in his ears.
By the time he decided he had done all he could to make the tunic presentable, the rest of the novices were lining up to make their way to the temple for dawn prayers. He pulled his boots on and donned the tunic as fast as he could, but in his flustered state he fastened it up lopsided, and had to unfasten it and begin again from the bottom.
And so, he was still fumbling with buckles as Brother-Captain Aaron arrived, perfectly polished as usual, without so much as a hair out of place. His red surcoat seemed to glow, and the chainmail he wore underneath shone.
“Brother-Prefect Bevan,” he nodded, as his eyes swept over the two neat lines of novices. “I see that your dormitory is ready for dawn prayers... almost.”
Kane straightened up, heat rising in his cheeks, but
the Brother-Captain’s lofty gaze had already moved on. Bevan shot him a look of pure hatred, and led the ten novices out of the dormitory to the temple, with Kane bringing up the rear.
They walked briskly through the echoing, freezing hallways of the Citadel, carved out of solid red rock and worn by the tramp of a million boots. Occasional arrowslits lent growing daylight to their path, but mostly in the lower levels it was torchlight or darkness, especially in the centre of the enormous granite mesa.
Gradually, they were joined by novices from the other dormitories, all dressed in tan tunics of various shades of wear and led by their Brother- and Sister-Prefects in red. One of the girls from a neighbouring dormitory wrinkled her nose as Kane passed, and the girl beside her giggled, silenced only by a glare from their Sister-Prefect as they ascended the pitted stairs.
In the upper levels the air was fresher, and they trooped through airy cloisters to where the Temple of the Twin Gods stood, not hewn from the rock like the rest of the Citadel but painstakingly built from stone hauled up from the plains at the base of the mesa. It nestled in the heart of the Citadel, its spire visible over all the other buildings that made up the complex.
They filed into the vaulted chamber in silence, not so much out of reverence as out of fear of their immediate supervisors. Faded icons of saints glared down at them from the walls; Ronan the Builder, his pickaxe making an odd contrast with his clerical robes, Sorley the Exalted with a bouquet of indigo flowers spilling from his outstretched hands, and even Kyran the First and Wisest, with the sun on his right and the moon on his left, suggesting his revelation of the gods without explicitly painting them beside their mortal follower.
As his dormitory lined up and Kane found the place on the floor which he felt he had worn a groove in with his footsteps over the years, he allowed himself a glance around at the massed ranks of the Child Guard. At the front were the novices like himself, made to stand for the duration of the ceremony to teach them respect for the gods and the discipline to stand still for long periods. Behind them and the enlisted soldiers, on a raised dais, were the officers, arrayed in ranks so Brother-Captains like Aaron sat on hard benches, where the higher-ranking officers sat in gradually increasing comfort, from wooden chairs all the way back to padded chairs on the high balcony, where the five Generals sat and worshipped in luxury.
The Child Guard Page 1
