As fast as he could blink, torches blazed to life all around them. “To me!” Heinrich shouted, his men automatically closing ranks around him until they were back to back like a human fist. The drums started again, but with greater urgency now.
THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM!
Something whistled from the darkness, a slash of silver. There was a gargling sound and Carver fell, a spear protruding from his neck. Three more slashes zipped at them, and three more men died. “Down!” Heinrich shouted, and they flattened themselves on the ground.
Just in time, too, as a dozen more spears flashed past, overhead.
Heinrich could feel the fear, a knot ballooning in his stomach, but he pushed it down to a place of clarity, where his senses heightened. He said, “Anyone seen the enemy?”
Grunts of no all around. “They’re faster than us and have the advantage of knowing these lands. They’ll expect us to keep running. But that’s not what we’re going to do. We’re going to fight back. On my mark, we charge toward that line of torches.” He pointed so it was clear the direction he meant. “Ready?”
“Aye!” the men said as one.
“Now!”
They sprang to their feet together, some stumbling, but all finding purchase and charging for the hidden enemy. Spears spun at them and men died. Heinrich didn’t know how many, but it wasn’t the time to count. He charged as hard as the rest of them, at the very front, until one of the torches was a mere stride away. He leapt forward, tackling the shadow that held the torch. It was skinny and hard and—
A thick branch, planted in the ground. Something snarled and he looked up. The creature was unlike anything he’d ever seen, with four enormous paws and a snarling wolf-like snout. It was white from head to toe, its fur thick and magnificent. That’s where things got strange. Something was on its back, a humanoid creature with hairy exposed arms and a broad chest bristling with spiked armor. Its bone-hard face was the shape of an upside-down triangle, and its eyes seemed too far apart. Wispy strands of long black hair fell to its shoulders. Strapped to its back were half a dozen spears, their silver tips rising over its head.
All around Heinrich, he heard cries of death, snarls, and loud roars.
“Uz kar nath kahlia,” the creature in front of him said from the back of the giant wolf.
“I—I don’t understand,” Heinrich said. “Please. Please spare my men. I am the leader. If you have to kill anyone, kill me.”
The creature shook his head. “Filth language. Been so long I almost forget. I speak you man to man.”
“Yes. Please. But first, stop the killing.”
“I cannot,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“We have no leader. We choose what we choose.”
Heinrich was desperate now, though he sensed it was already too late, the cries of his men getting softer and less frequent. “We mean you no harm. We were leaving your lands.”
“Too late. You broke our pact. You hunted great matho. We kill to show you can be done.”
“What pact?” Heinrich wished he could stop asking questions, but his intellectual curiosity wouldn’t allow it. And he knew if he stopped he would hear only silence around him. All dead. All dead. My fault. I did this. Me.
“Southern filth shall not cross ice lake, shall not swim warm waters, shall not hunt great matho.”
“We didn’t know. We are explorers.”
The man or creature made a sound that might’ve been a laugh, though it made Heinrich cringe, like glass being crunched underfoot while a bird screeched. “You explore death now.”
Heinrich nodded. This was it. He wasn’t afraid of death, only of not living. He had lived, that was more than many men could say when staring death in the face. He stood, unwilling to die on his knees.
The wolf snarled and snapped. Its rider calmly reached back and slid a long spear from its scabbard. Rested it on his shoulder. Lifted it.
Shouts burst through the gloom.
Heinrich’s foe flinched at the sound, which rose up the moment he threw the spear. Heinrich lunged out of the way, an explosion of pain radiating from his shoulder. He looked up at the creature, who had dismounted and was standing over him. Where had the shouts come from? Are my men still fighting? Are they winning?
“You have friend who come,” the creature explained. “Tell them leave north. Tell them never return. Rest of men dead.”
Feeling ill, Heinrich watched the creature stride away, leaping atop his wolf and turning to leave. Shadowy figures flew past, wolves and riders, following. The very last one shoved a spear deep into Heinrich’s abdomen, causing his mouth to fly open as he spat blood across the snow. “Haz jor bak,” the thing snarled. “Southern filth.”
And then they were gone.
Heinrich lay there, in darkness, his face wet with melting snowflakes, tears, and blood. He watched a light approach, bobbing through the storm. The end comes for me. He tried to get up to meet his fate head on, the way he’d handled everything else in his life, but found he couldn’t move.
The light approached.
A dream, he thought, as a face came into focus.
A strong, dimpled chin. Dark long hair. Piercing brown eyes, unlit coals next to the torchlight.
My son, he tried to say. Tomas. But it came out as naught but a wheeze.
“Shh, don’t try to speak, Father,” Tomas said, kneeling over him, inspecting his wounds. In Heinrich’s peripheral vision he could see other familiar faces picking across the snowy landscape, searching for survivors.
He knew they would find none.
He swallowed the coppery taste from his mouth. “You came back.”
“Always.” He was putting pressure on the gut wound, using the heel of his hand to stem the blood flow. Delaying the inevitable.
“Stubborn,” Heinrich grunted.
“I get that from you,” Tomas said. He smiled, but Heinrich could instantly see the pain behind it. The fear.
“It’s my time, son. Do better than I have done.”
“Impossible.”
“I made too many mistakes.”
“You are the bravest man I know.”
Heinrich squeezed tears from his eyes, feeling them harden to ice on his cheeks. “Make me a promise, son.”
“Anything.”
“Leave this place. Never come back.” He coughed, blood filling his mouth. He spat it out, the world spinning, his son’s face rotating around his head. He felt so weak, so weak, so…
No! He refused to die without finishing, refused to leave his son without guidance. “Return to Knight’s End. Don’t fight the crown. The crown will destroy everything we have built.”
“Father…”
“Promise me.” He could feel the life escaping him now, his vision darkening around the edges.
“I—”
“Promise me!” he hissed, the closest thing to a shout he could muster.
Fading, fading, darkness…the cold departing…warmth…so warm…so
“I promise, Father.”
black.
4: Shanti Parthena Laude
Teragon- Circa 321
Absence is dead.
That’s what the people were saying, murmuring behind hands, whispering behind huts. A general air of solemnity had fallen over the city, replacing the usual peacefulness Shanti felt.
But how can a god die? Shanti wondered. She might only be nine years old, but she’d been to temple enough times to know that their god was infinite, with no end and no beginning. Absence was and wasn’t, a void that none could fill. And yet people were saying Absence had been filled.
Shanti wanted to see for herself.
So when her mother was busy preparing supper with her sister, and her father had not yet returned from working the fields, Shanti slipped out of their mud-floored hut and into the murky twilight, which seemed to wrap around her shoulders like a gray cloak.
She lived in the capital of Teragon, Shi, a sprawling city of conical huts and
long rectangular open-air marketplaces with thatched roofs.
Shanti took off at a run. Not because she was particularly in a hurry, but because that was what she did. She loved the coolness of the wind washing over her face, the blur of her surroundings as they flashed by, the feeling that no one could catch her even if they tri—
A hand shot out, grabbing her arm, and a voice said, “Hold on there, my Sha-flower!”
She jerked to a halt, her mind racing to catch up to her heart, which was still running. “Father?”
Her father was a large man, with thick arms and a broad chest, his hands calloused from days spent working the fields. In the typical Teran manner, his coppery hair was long, tied into three distinct ropes that were secured to his belt to keep them out of his way while working the fields. His nose, chin, cheeks and forehead were blunt, unlike the sharper features Shanti and her sister had inherited from their mother. His large crystalline blue eyes looked darker than usual in the fading daylight. “Does your mother know you are out?” he asked.
Shanti wasn’t one to lie, especially not to her father, who could smell an untruth like a day-old stench. She shook her head, studying her feet, which were bare, her reddish skin visible beneath the hem of her pale blue dress.
“Where are you going at such an hour?”
She looked up and met his eyes, which weren’t angry, but curious. “To see it,” she said.
“Absence?”
“Everyone is saying Absence is dead.”
Her father ran a hand over the crown of his head and his lips curled into a small smile, though she didn’t see any reason to be happy, not if the rumors were true. He touched one of his hands to her chest, right over where her heart was still beating too fast, on account of her sprint. “What do you feel?” he asked.
“Nothing. I feel noth—” She paused before she continued, because she did feel something. A warmth, radiating from her chest—her heart—outwards, to her arms, her legs, her head. “Warm,” she said. “I feel warm.” The evening was cool, the wind washing over her. “But I was just running. That’s why I’m warm.”
“If you say so,” her father said.
She frowned, something her mother said she did too much, especially when she was thinking. She was always thinking. “No one ever said Absence brings warmth,” Shanti said.
“You’re right, they don’t. Let’s go for a walk.”
It wasn’t what she expected him to say, but he’d already roped his arm around her shoulders and steered her in the same direction she was already heading. Away from their hut. Toward temple.
Walking rather than running, Shanti noticed that dozens of other Terans were heading in the same direction, slowly, like fish swimming upstream. Others peeked from hut doorways and windows, watching their neighbors pass by, seeming to consider whether they should join them.
“Everyone is curious,” her father said. “Everyone is scared.”
Shanti said nothing, wondering what they would find when they reached their destination. Would they all laugh at the false rumors, wondering how such lies could’ve spread so fast? Or would their mouths open in shock, in horror, their fear doubling when they saw the truth?
She listened to her heart beating in her chest, felt the warmth that filled her. Absence, is that you? Are you alive?
They reached a circle of small huts, seven in total. Temple. Each hut contained a different characteristic of Absence. Purity. Selflessness. Faith. Patience. Generosity. Courage. Perseverance. The Seven Virtues of their god. Once a week, all Terans would attend temple and focus on one of these virtues, attempting to achieve but a sliver of the righteousness of their deity. Once one achieved all seven, they could apply to become a temple priest or priestess, if they chose. Shanti had only achieved Perseverance so far—“You were born with that virtue,” her mother always said—though her sister, Aliyah, had achieved Purity, Faith, and Selflessness.
They walked between two of the huts—the ones for Selflessness and Generosity—and stopped, the crowd too thick to pass. Shanti craned her neck, trying to see over the mob, past the long-haired men and short-haired women. “Patience,” her father said. Shanti had not been born with the virtue of Patience, and suspected she would never achieve that one, even if she had a hundred lifetimes to do so.
Slowly, the crowd pushed forward as those at the front departed temple on the opposite side. Once there was only a single row of people in front of them, Shanti slipped away from her father and squeezed between two people, nearly tripping as she skidded to a halt in front of…
She’d been to temple a thousand times, and every time the last stop was the center, to gaze upon Absence, to pray, to fathom the fathomless, an infinite hole with no end…
It’s gone.
A shiver trembled through her at the sight. Where there was once a hole—Absence’s haven on the earth—there was now only dirt, packed down hard, a slightly different color than the ground around it.
Absence is dead. Shanti felt like crying, but no one else was, and she wondered why. Aren’t they sad? Don’t they feel the loss? It was just like when someone they knew died. No one cried then either. Terans mourned in a different way, by eating and drinking and dancing, celebrating the life they’d lost rather than the fact they’d lost it. But this was different, wasn’t it? This wasn’t just some person who’d passed into the Void. This was Absence. This was God!
Shanti wanted to scream, to yell at these people, who walked silently away from temple, not showing any emotion at all.
And then her father was there, his arm around her, and she looked up at him…
He was smiling.
Something about his smile made her angry, so angry she balled her fists and wanted to hit him. “It’s cold,” she said instead.
“Is it?” her father asked, raising his thin copper eyebrows.
“Yes. No. I feel empty.”
“Like Absence?”
She didn’t know what to feel, and when she looked around, she found they were the last ones there, save for a priest, who watched them from afar. “You should go home,” the holy man said. “There is nothing left for anyone here.”
“We’ll leave soon,” her father answered. The priest nodded, and slipped away.
“I still feel warm,” Shanti admitted when they were alone.
Her father nodded. “That’s the truth. Listen to what’s in your heart, not what’s before your eyes.”
She tried, she really did, but as Shanti stared at dirt where a hole should be, she couldn’t. “I don’t know how.”
“This is the seventh virtue,” he said. “The hardest one to achieve. Faith. Even those who think they’ve achieved it usually haven’t.”
Shanti remembered the lost look in the priest’s eyes. He was supposed to have achieved all seven virtues, but her father had basically just accused him of being one short. “How many have you achieved?” she asked him. She was surprised to realize that she didn’t know how many of the virtues either of her parents had achieved.
“All of them,” he said.
The truth startled her. Her father was a Seven? “Then why aren’t you a priest?”
“Because it’s a choice. And I chose a different path.”
“You’re a farmer.”
“I love farming, growing things, providing for our people.”
“But—”
“One day you will understand. One day you will find your true calling.”
She hoped he was right, because she knew she would never be a Seven. “What now? If Absence isn’t dead, then where has our god gone?”
“Nowhere,” her father said. “Absence is in our hearts, always. And Absence is here, in front of us. Absence can’t be killed any more than the wind can be killed.”
She frowned again. “I don’t understand.”
He smiled. “That’s because you don’t have Faith. Not yet. Let me show you.” He kneeled down, and began to dig.
After a few moments just watching him, wonde
ring if her father had gone mad, Shanti knelt down and started helping him. She scooped handfuls of dirt, pushing them aside, tossing them behind her. Soon they had made a wide depression in the ground, right where the hole used to be. Is he planning to re-dig the entire hole? she wondered. The thought almost made her laugh. If so, they’d be digging for the rest of their lives!
Still, there was something satisfying about watching the hole get deeper and deeper, the mounds of soil around the edges getting taller and taller. When they got too deep to climb out, they carved steps into the walls.
They toiled until well after dark, the crisscrossing moonbeams splashing on the walls of the hole.
Exhausted, Shanti stopped to catch her breath. They were really deep now, almost twice as deep as her father was tall. Her father, several locks of his long hair having broken free, sticking with sweat to his body, kept working, however, using a stick to dig out rocks that got in the way. Shanti was just about to get back to work when his stick thudded against something hard. Not a rock.
He glanced at her, a grin creasing his sweat-sheened face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“An answer,” he said. “A truth.”
She crawled over to him and helped him dig away the thin layer of soil that covered whatever he had struck.
“It’s wood,” Shanti said when they broke through. It was true, a long wooden beam ran across the hole, jammed firmly into each wall. Next to it was another. And another. Like a platform. The dirt that had filled in the hole had been piled atop the wood.
“I feel air!” Shanti exclaimed. Though the boards were tightly packed together, there was still room for a cool breeze to waft up from the empty space beneath. She smiled—really smiled—for the first time since they’d seen the patch of dirt in the center of temple.
“Now does your mind believe what your heart always knew?” her father asked.
“I just needed to see it,” she said. “I needed proof.”
“Faith is knowing without seeing.”
“Why didn’t you tell the others? You let them walk away.”