Three Acts of Penance [01] Attrition: The First Act of Penance Read online

  ATTRITION

  The First Act of Penance

  SG Night

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 SG Night, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1482712957

  ISBN-13: 1482712954

  PROLOGUE

  Ice, Ink, and Ember

  The Night has fallen. The Cold awakens.

  It is the bitter sort of Cold. The kind that follows with the sour grip of winter. The penetrating kind that pierces your skin like an icy knife, sinking deep into your bones. The pervading kind that steals the heat from your breath and pulls at the lungs in your chest — a rope around your neck.

  This house is defenseless, exposed to the Cold. Its protectors — tepid things that once stood vigil against the winter — are gone. Vanished, with the fall of Night. Their absence terrifies me.

  Normally, a gathering would have congregated in this house. Friends, flush with the warmth of common memories and conversation. Were they still gathered here, the heat of their collective presence would have held the Cold at arm’s length until the break of dawn.

  But there is no gathering tonight.

  Normally, there would have been laughter. Chiming chuckles and sweltering smiles amidst the clamor of those once gathered here. Together, they would have boiled the Cold away like a meager memory of steam.

  But there is no laughter tonight.

  Normally, there would have been the kisses of two lovers. Two happy sweethearts wrapped in the blanket of a shared embrace. The simple sound of their brushing lips would have stopped the Cold like an arrow of fire. Would have forced it to recede. Would have convinced the Cold that it could find no victory in a place guarded by such honest kisses.

  But there are no kisses tonight.

  Indeed, no warm sentinels protect this house. Not tonight. The holes they leave behind are gaping, frightening, like naked skin in battle. The Cold knows this, and so it slithers in through those unguarded gaps. It stretches itself into every corner of every room, unfettered, unchallenged. Its companions are the silence, and the Night.

  The Cold leaves no place untouched. It infests the heavy iron hinges on the heavy wooden door. It casts crackling shackles of ice upon the grey, granite mantle. It incrusts the pair of steely swords crossed above the fireplace, coating them like frigid rust. The luster of their blades begins to wilt and atrophy — decaying. The Cold seizes the very air within this house; the atmosphere becomes boreal, sinks, leaving only a breathless vacuum in the space above the floor.

  Nowhere is safe. The Cold diffuses into every niche of shadow. Fills every nook and hollow cranny. Nests atop the dusty window drapes. Tarries in the shallow kitchen cupboards. Roosts in the creaking attic rafters. It invades every inch, merciless, and soon there is no space left to conquer.

  Its dominion established, the icy potentate reaches out and — like a Demon’s crushing fist — suffocates anything that might challenge its reign. It slits open the dull coals in the belly of the hearth, spilling the heat within like frothing blood. It chokes the smoking wicks of the oil lamps, staunching the fading light from their vanished flames. Second by freezing second, the warmth bleeds out of the house, like an artery’s been cut. Bleeding out, until there is only the Cold.

  My once-warm pen becomes brittle between my fingers. The expectant Ink it bears begins to crackle with rime. My leather-bound ream of paper lies on the table before me; the first, virgin page stiffens with the ague. The paper is white and friable in the Cold, like a breath of ice across a moonlit pool.

  On the table, a single, lonely candle bears a single, lonely flame. The candle is dark and straight, the table flat and expansive — a black tower crowned by fire, rising from an empty battlefield.

  The flame is tall, graceful, and slender. But no heat seems to burn within its core. While its halo bathes my parchment in a quiet swath of white, the fire is dim as a tired star. It does not dance. It does not flicker. It is afraid to disturb the frozen silence.

  A man sits opposite me, across the table’s plane. Solitary, he gazes into the heart of that tired, single star.

  If you were to look on him fleetingly, to spare him only a passing glance, you would see only a man. If you looked a moment longer, you might get the feeling that there was something about him, something distinctly different. You might notice something peculiar about his eyes, might spot something strange about the tattoos running the length of his arms. Something out of place, something you cannot quite put your finger on….But to you, he still would be just a man.

  But a clever eye…a clever eye could see him for what he truly is.

  A clever eye would notice how his pupils taper at their tops and bottoms. A clever eye would see that his irises are no natural color. A clever eye would see that the patterns coiled on his arms, like blackened tongues of roiling flame, are not sunken into his skin like a tattoo’s Ink, but gently beveled at their edges — a part of his flesh. A clever eye could tell that, no, he is not just a man. Not just a Human.

  He is a Majiski — one of my people.

  I know him well. I know his name. His story. I know his face. I know the old scar that jumps across his eye, reflected alabaster in the candlelight. I know the snarl of the ebony hair that falls around his face, casting handsome, familiar features in a stark, unfamiliar shadow. A shadow as alien to me as the Cold itself.

  Through that shadow, I can see his eyes. They stare unseeingly at the candle that stands between us. His eyes are striking, colored vibrant: waves of roiling amber overlapped by ochre ripples and subtle crimson flares. Like twin circles of fire. Fire, in his eyes.

  A latent warmth flickers behind those golden, burning rings. The Cold struggles to squelch it, shrouding it with the frigid Night. It almost smothers it entirely.

  Almost.

  But I know it is still there. It is like the heat of an unassuming coal beneath a blanket of graying ash. It is hidden, but not extinguished.

  I can feel it. I can feel its gentle breath against my skin, like distant sunlight during newborn spring.

  I can hear it. I can hear it reaching to divide the curtains of shadow on his face, like the whispers of blossoms unfolding.

  I can see it. I can see it behind his fiery eyes, flickering like a starlight-dappled pool, dancing in and out of view.

  It is buried. Buried, but burning nonetheless. Buried but burning, like one last hope in my heart. One last Ember in the dark.

  But he is not just any Majiski. He has a story. A story worth more than my own beating heart. He has a name. A name that — if it were only uttered aloud, breathed out in the meekest, softest whisper — would shake the Cold to its arctic foundations. Cut it in half like an ignited sword. Tear it asunder, and cast it broken and crippled from this place. His is the name of fire. The name that rides the whisper of the candlelight.

  Once, he had radiated heat like a storming furnace. Proud, vitalizing warmth that could stir your blood. Once, Ember had ensconced him like a sheaf of roaring sparks, invigorating: a summer sun in zenith.

  But tonight…tonight, he is Cold.

  His old Ember is gone — vanished, like the gathering, and the laughter, and the kisses. Gone, save for the final spark hidden in his eyes. Now the Cold flows from his body in ravenous waves. He sits at its center, wearing it like armor. He wraps it around himself like a suit of rigid iron, sealing h
is lips into a bone-white crease.

  It is his story that brings me here. He refuses to tell it, and so the burden falls to me. His story is my salvation. My penance. My deliverance from this wicked ice — my baptism by Ink and Ember.

  He does not look at me, not even as I stab my pen to the first, eager page. But the Cold claws at me, biting my fingers in rage and desperation, fighting to stop my hand. I hesitate. A dark pool of Ink bleeds outward where the polished pen pierces the paper.

  I clench my teeth and push forward. My pen grinds out the first and eldest word: an Ink-borne lance of black fire, scratched into a sheet of ice.

  The word burns there, smoldering. A tiny newborn Ember, kindling in spite of the terrible winter. Slowly, glacially, the ice beneath the Ink seems thaw and turn to steam.

  The man’s eyes flicker, glancing at the first word of the story. I see his Cold armor falter, just for an instant — a weakness in the iron.

  A smile finds my lips. It will be a battle, then. A siege. A hundred-thousand Ink-borne arrows, flying forth from my flaming pen to assault the walls of tyrannical Cold that hold this man in awful rapture.

  It will be campaign for my friend’s very soul. A war of Ice, Ink, and Ember.

  So be it.

  My pen scratches the icy parchment once more. A second Ember joins the first.

  The War begins.

  ♦♦♦

  PART I

  Out of the Dark

  20th Day of Tamur

  Summer of the 107th Year of the Fourth Age

  The Dominion of Io

  ONE

  Thanjel

  This is not my story.

  I shouldn’t be the one to tell it. I don’t have the means to do it justice. But I have to try. This story is my salvation. My penance. It is my burden to bear — to tell the story of another man that I might know his pain. Feel his agony. Understand the inner turnings of his soul. A heavy price, perhaps, but I’ll gladly pay it. I would pay it ten thousand times, if I had to.

  Whose story, then? Well, you already know the answer, don’t you? This is his story. The story that the new Commonwealth of Io has waited to hear for half a decade.

  You know him. You’ve heard the legends of how he rallied the last free people in our land and led the war against the Demons. You remember when his armies broke down the gates of Litoras, wrapped in shadow, steel and fire. You know how he challenged false gods atop Castle Io. And you’ve seen his statue in the capital: a sculpted figure with an empty space beneath its hood. His faceless monument.

  Faceless, because, once all the dust had settled, he was gone. The great Savior of Io just...vanished. Gone into thin air before the people could thank him, or even ask his name.

  Of course, the rebels knew exactly who he was. The Genshwin were his friends, his people — the last of his Majiski kin. But they didn’t exactly stay to soak in the limelight either, did they? Most of them went back underground not long after.

  Everyone has their own idea of what became of him, their own version of the story. Some say he perished when Castle Io’s highest tower exploded. Others say he escaped into the chaos of the Final Day of Fire, departed into shadow, and has been protecting our rebuilt Commonwealth in secret ever since. And still others believe that God Himself plucked him from the earth and made him an exalted prince among the clouds of Iyasheim.

  Wild guesses and speculation. There is some truth to each story, I suppose. But no one could possibly imagine what really happened to him. No one, that is, except for me.

  I was there, you see. I fought beside him during the Seven Days of Fire. I knew him then, and I know him still. His name and his face — the face that belongs on that statue. And I know exactly what happened to him after the war.

  That, surely, has you on the edge of your seat. The notion that I might divulge the untold fate of Io’s greatest hero. Knowledge that has years eluded a grateful people. You really want to know what happened to the Savior of Io? Very well.

  He settled down. He hung up his sword, blended into the crowd, and faded into a gray background. That was all he wanted: a normal life. That was his heroes’ reward.

  A reasonable request, if you think about it. After everything that he sacrificed for us, I think he deserves a lifetime’s respite. He has a home now. A family too. Things that the Demons denied him for the first twenty years of his life.

  Good for him. He’s earned it. I understand.

  But I cannot fathom why he hides! He liberated the Humans of this country, brought the Elves out of exile, and saved his dying race from certain extinction. He defeated Hell itself out of a selfless love for his countrymen. And yet he actively hides himself from the praise he deserves. For years now, he has let his story go untold. And he has allowed that statue to remain faceless.

  And why? God…if only I knew. He refuses to tell anyone — not me, not his family, not his friends. Some secret heartache prevents him from facing his past. Some thorn that festers in his heart. It’s brought a chill around him, freezing him. He will not tell his story.

  Well. If he won’t tell it, then I will. I give to you, the people of Io, his story, and in doing so, I hope to find the thorn that plagues him. Maybe I can remove it before its infection spreads.

  ——

  Where to start? There are so many beginnings….

  For Io — and for me as well — it began at the end of the Third Age. When a dark army of Arkûl and Goblins appeared in the southern wasteland, led by an enclave of vile, enigmatic monsters. The Demons. In some ways, it began when they arrived. When they conquered Io.

  Grim times and not ones I wish to dwell on. Were they not so essential to the story, I’d skip over them entirely. So let’s make this quick, before the heartache grows too strong.

  Many long years have passed since the night they arrived. Not many people remember it — very few people are even old enough to recall it. But I was there. I remember.

  The moon was red, reflecting the blood in the rivers. Stars fell from their hangings, tearing crimson scars across the sky. And while the night was cloudless, warm rain fell like blood from the sky.

  They came by night. We couldn’t stop them. Io burned.

  I remember the Occupation. The Demons twisted the Commonwealth of Io into their own image. The Human gentry were quick to bow to them, offering surrender if they could only keep some of their power. The Demons accepted their terms, and their race was bound and shackled.

  The Elves — our brightest scholars and wisest judges — were exiled into the mountains, where they vanished into the mists. And the Majiski battle-mages were gathered together and butchered by the thousands, driven to extinction’s edge by a merciless enemy.

  I remember when they burned the precious High Library. When they torched every book and paper they could find. When they stamped out the Jedan Church and imposed their own pantheon of gods upon the Humans. When they erected the Grey Wall in the north and fashioned impassible magic storms off the coasts, sealing us away from the rest of the world.

  We were a Commonwealth no more. It was then, at the beginning of the Fourth Age, that we became the Demonic Dominion of Io — subjects to the monsters that conquered us.

  I remember when the Demons, their work complete, took up refuge inside Io’s great bastions, ruling over their Human slaves from afar, leaving their Arkûl minions to enforce their laws. I remember when they began to unleash the Goblin packs upon the countryside. And I remember when then the rain started — the unceasing clouds that hung over Io for a hundred years. The Demons’ rain…the Demons’ clouds…

  But enough of that for now. We still have a beginning to find.

  In other, more specific ways, it did not begin until much later. In those ways, it began on the sixteenth day of the month of Adur, in the 88th year of the Fourth Age. The day our hero was born.

  By that time, most of the Majiski were dead. The years had dulled the memories of the Humans: they knew nothing of the places beyond the Wall, knew no
thing of God or the shape of the world. To them, the Majiski were just a myth, a bedtime story. As for the Elves…well, they might as well have been a faerie tale.

  Those Majiski who survived were few. Some had taken refuge in the forests. Others (who will become important later) hid beneath the earth. And the rest found shelter within the embrace of the mountains. His parents, Seth and Sarah, were of the latter category.

  He was the product of their third heat (their first child Emma having been born in their second heat forty years earlier). He lived in the mountains with his family until he was nine…until the Demons eventually found them.

  He survived that, though. Orphaned and alone, he ended up inside the city walls of Oblakgrad. He lived off the streets, just another urchin begging for scraps. And for a time, he went unnoticed.

  But he was a Majiski to the bone, and that’s not something you can hide for very long. Soon, he began to grow strong, fast. Too strong and too fast for a starving street-rat. He could conceal the unique shape of his Majiski eyes at a distance, but his markara — the Majiski birthright, the key to unlocking the flow of magic — was starting to develop on his arms in dark blotches.

  Fortunately, the Genshwin found him about that time. Of course, the Genshwin are almost as enigmatic as our hero himself: they were some of the last Majiski, those who had managed to survive by taking up refuge in an underground fortress beneath Oblakgrad. Most of them were young, the children of those who had perished in the purges, too young to remember the times before the Wall. They were a secret, hidden from the Demons’ sight. They were assassins and spies, thieves and mercenaries — masters of shadow and steel. From the shadows, they struggled to topple the Dominion.

  And so, barely eleven years old, our savior found himself among their ranks, safe within their underground stronghold.

  That’s where he became the man we all tell stories about. In the following years he learned the Genshwin arts of the taj Shaeyul’Dirik — the Black Path. He learned to kill with his hands, with blades, and with poisons. And, while limited by the void of knowledge the Demons had created, he learned how to shape and wield magic. At least, to an extent. His markara grew full and dark on his arms, twisting black tangles on his skin. He devoured any knowledge he could find with a vengeance, consuming every book in the Genshwin’s treasured library (one of Io’s last repositories of written works).