CHAPTER FOUR
The Midnight Sun
The world beneath my feet is not the world my fathers knew,
my Belt's glory is their sorrow and their tears are mine, anew.
My studies are fraught with grief. I long to be blind and dumb.
For I have learned the truth of the Breach, I have seen the midnight sun.
-last known work of Lakhil Grabin, Shardian poet believed to have thrown himself in the Dreadfall
So let me get this straight.” Joam's voice echoed through the surrounding rock formations that heaved into the night, weathered and arthritic. “You didn’t steal one kiss from her? Not one?”
“Not one,” Dayn replied patiently, surely for the tenth time. He razored his way along the painfully narrow trail. His coursing gear hung between them, dangling on the bundle of poles and the two old sparring staffs held upon their shoulders. Stones dislodged by their feet clattered down slopes fit to splinter limbs.
“Well, why not?” Joam persisted, struggling to keep his voice light. “She was the finest maiden wearing blue, and had eyes for no one else.”
“She danced about as fine as a sick goat,” Dayn muttered. He welcomed Joam's chatter, it kept him from squinting after imagined stirrings along the path. He feels it too, Dayn thought. Something is wrong with the night. Their lantern light faltered before the shadows, which stalked around them like hungry ridgecats.
“Can’t say I noticed.”
“I should have worn a white garland. She was so busy making sure everyone saw us together, we nearly tripped three times.”
“More reason for a kiss,” Joam swept his lantern about in sputtering, fitful arcs, as he balanced the poles on his shoulder.” Who else passes by so much good fortune, all in the same day? There's something wrong with you.”
“Good fortune? Every Elder on the Village Council means for me to become a mayor, the way they act over this Applicant business. Our grandparents would howl in their graves.”
“Not with one look at that beauty by your side. You know it's exactly what everyone wants, a fresh union between Wia Wells and Misthaven.”
Dayn grunted. “I'm sure Falena would agree.”
“A plumb fool would agree.”
Dayn offered no reply. Joam fell silent as the trail switchbacked sharply upward to the right, passing through outcrops that looked like broken potshards from some giant's workshop. After an hour of plodding through the dark, they were finally nearing the Dreadfall.
“Peace, but I want my bed,” Joam groaned. “Did we really need to do this tonight?”
“Applicant training begins with First Mist, so my father gave me all freedays until then. I won't have a minute alone after that.”
“So you'll practice coursing every day until then,” Joam said thoughtfully. “I'd do the same thing if it were a lost summer of staff work. I hope the mist is late in rising for you.”
“I do, too. Joam...thank you for this,” Dayn blurted out. A hopeless feeling that greater forces would forever shape his dreams had finally started to lift, like a loaded wagon rolling off of his chest. “I couldn’t do it myself.”
“You better make good as a courser, or I'll have you working my land until we’re both gray-haired.” Joam chuckled.
“You better hope I do course, for your sake!” Dayn said with a snort. “If the Elders stay worked up over this Attendant business, I'll end up as some high and mighty councilor. Like a mayor for all of Shard.”
Joam snickered. “Well you never dream small, I'll give you that. We'll find you a big purple cape, like a Montollos Regent.”
“The first thing I'll do is banish you to a world with the worst soil in the Belt, for all the lip you'll give me. I'll send Falena, too, to dance with you.”
“Just keep my rows plowed straight, Grand Councilor.” Their laughter echoed in the ravine below.
Dayn stretched his lantern out to see ahead. The rock formations here towered over them, contorted spires or jumbled piles that rested in the merciful peace of collapse. Most disturbing of all were the caves. They perforated every surface the two shuffled past, refusing to allow his lantern's light inside. The smaller openings worried Dayn most, they were likely places for wreathweaver dens.
“Sand and ash, but this place makes my skin crawl,” Joam muttered. “I’m glad we’re not carrying this junk back with us. How much farther now?”
“Just a hundred spans from the top of this ridge.”
The sloping trail abruptly ended on a windswept plateau that reminded Dayn of a raised scar. Life of a sort festered within the Fall's steep cliffs, but not even hardy redbranch grew on this barren ground.
They stopped fifty spans shy of the edge to rest. Dayn wiped sweat from his face, and Joam took a grateful swig from their waterskin, casting furtive glances ahead.
“So what are we supposed to do with these?” Joam motioned to the four poles they brought, fashioned from the straightest redbranch limbs Dayn could find. Three spans long and thicker than a man's leg, they could each bear Dayn's weight without bending.
“We’ll wedge them into the cliff face, so they stick out like a bird's perch. I’ll use them to practice my flips. Climbing down will be the hardest part.”
“Fair enough. Is the path worse than that goat trail you found to get us here?” Joam asked.
Dayn gave him a level look. “There are no paths into the Dreadfall, Joam. It's all straight down. I'll show you what to do. It's easy.”
“If you say so,” Joam said, peering at the poles doubtfully. Dayn could tell he would need prodding to do the actual work. “What does a courser need to flip for, anyway? I thought you just roped a boulder and let it pull you through the torrent.”
“That’s true, but think of it more like swimming in the Silk River,” Dayn said. “Only the current is rock instead of water. You need to flip your way through it or be crushed. Every story I've read says so. I may have no torrent, but here I'll be free to swing around just like I was born in it.”
“You were born in it,” said Joam, full of mock sympathy. “Your parents never had the heart to tell you the truth. One day you just dropped right out of the sky...”
Dayn cuffed him on the shoulder. “Would you stop? We're wasting light.”
“Don't be a glumtongue. These lanterns will last hours yet.”
“I wasn't talking about the lanterns. We'll need those for the walk back.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“Never mind. I need to show you how everything works.” Dayn spilled out the contents of their pack, hoping to distract Joam from the unanswered question. It would be better to look over the tools here instead of right next to the edge. The growing doubt on his friend's face worried him.
“I got this at last year's harvest,” Dayn said. The Misthaven trader likely thought to sell the frayed wingline as a curiosity from beyond Shard, never guessing Dayn intended to use it. The finely braided fiber glinted silver in the lantern light. Dayn pulled on a span with all of his strength. The wingline stretched reluctantly, then snapped back to its original length once he relaxed. The pack held normal rope, too, but wingline was fifty times stronger.
He passed the entire coil to Joam, who gave it a thoughtful tug. “So thin. Like gravespinner silk.”
Next Dayn held up one of the talons, a courser’s grappling hook. “This is what you use to catch a rock that will pull you through the torrent,” he explained.
“Without getting flattened by a boulder along the way. Did you manage to trade for a Defender's suit of armor, too?”
In response, Dayn opened a small wooden cask. Joam gave a surprised grunt of recognition at the clear, pasty substance within. “By the mist, how did you get this?”
“Last year at the Sealing,” Dayn said. “I saw two Misthaven kids chase a rat down with slingshots. They hit it at least ten times and it still got away. They showed me the alley where they first saw it. I found a harvest barrel there that wasn't sealed, and figured the rat got inside
.”
For the Festival of Sealing, special barrels were used to store the World Belt’s portion of the harvest. Preceptors, men of great wisdom from the Ring, used a coating to seal the barrels and preserve crops for transport between worlds. Rumor said a sealed harvest would keep for decades.
“You think this goop will save you in case you swing face first into the cliff?”
“I do. Put it on like this.”
“Nasty.” Joam wrinkled his nose, backing away before Dayn could explain. “You aren't going to smear that on?hey!” Dayn spread a handful of the sealer on Joam's arm just below the shoulder. He barely held back a laugh as Joam's eyebrows climbed his forehead in disbelief. The mixture did smell rather foul.
Before Joam could wipe the sealer away, Dayn swung his staff in a ferocious, bone-snapping strike that cracked against Joam's arm. Blinding light flashed from the blow, and Joam went sprawling.
He scrambled to his feet with a roar. “You have some nerve! I'm going to...” He stopped short, clutching his arm in wonder. “Hey it...it doesn't even hurt.”
“It’ll keep us from breaking anything. I'll bet this stuff could stop a much stronger strike. Maybe even turn steel.”
“Maybe. You know, I've heard old Nerlin say if you ever fell down the cliffs, you’ll starve to death before you hit bottom.” Joam glanced toward the Dreadfall's edge with a look like he had just swallowed a handful of rotten fervorberries. “Why won't we need the lanterns? You never said before.”
“Come and see.” Dayn meant to ease Joam's nerves by showing him the tools, but he could do nothing more. Together they approached the edge.
“Where's the other side? And the bottom...” Joam’s eyes slid downward, and widened further than Dayn thought possible. A whimper escaped his throat.
Jagged, crumbling cliffs curled out of sight to the north and south, joining together over ten leagues away to the east. The Dreadfall stretched countless leagues deeper into Shard's heartrock, a refuge of purest shadow.
Dayn shuddered in spite of himself even though he had stood in this very spot dozens of times. Sometimes he imagined he felt the ground here cracking underfoot. The Dreadfall seemed to fester, a wound that expanded slowly as seasons and shadows and burrowing things vainly tried to lick it clean.
“Dayn, what is that?” Joam's voice came too calmly, as though he struggled not to squeak. A pinpoint of light flickered to life deep within the Dreadfall, shining mournfully like the last star in a graven sky. Fear shone in Joam’s eyes as he stared into the depths of the Dreadfall, watching the light grow steadily brighter.
“That’s the only thing right about the stories,” Dayn said. He took a deep breath. “There is no bottom. That light is the midnight sun.”
“Peace,” Joam said faintly. He recognized the familiar light, seeing the sun below with new eyes, guttering like a candle at the bottom of a mine shaft. He stared at Dayn with a stranger's gaze, then backed away from the cliff edge on leaden feet, mumbling to himself. “I never thought...there’s a hole in our world. There’s a hole in Shard, and you want to play courser in it!”
Joam grabbed the nearest lantern and his staff, then turned wordlessly back to the trail leading west.
“Wait...don't leave!” Dayn called out in alarm, hurrying after him. Joam rounded suddenly and shook his staff so forcefully that Dayn stopped in his tracks.
“This is mad!” Joam cried. The lantern cast jagged shadows on his face. His eyes burned with fear. “We could...we could really fall.”
“We won’t,” Dayn insisted. “There's a ledge just beneath the cliff where we’ll hang the poles. You'll be able to see it when the sun is...brighter. I brought enough rope, I promise you that?”
“No.” Joam looked at the ground, then back west.
Dayn felt paralyzed. “Do you want me to beg on my knees? I’ll do all your chores for the summer?for two summers!”
“No, Dayn. I'll see if my father can get you in sparring camp, somehow. I promise. I know you ache for this, brother.” The pity in Joam’s voice stung. “But coursing will never get you to Montollos.”
“I just need a few hours—don't leave, Joam!” Dayn pleaded. He hated how desperate the words sounded. Joam started walking again. “Peace, we’re so close. There's nothing to fear so long as we're careful. Besides, you barely know the way back!”
“I'm doing you a favor,” Joam said roughly. He easily found their trailhead, to Dayn's dismay. “I'll wait for you back at your farm. Forget coursing, Dayn. We are Shardian. Peace, you’re an Applicant, now! You're better off throwing all of that junk right into the Dreadfall.”
Joam set off down the slope, and the light from his lantern soon succumbed to the shadows. “That's why there won't be any Ro'Gems in the stories!” Dayn shouted. Empty silence answered. He moped back to his gear, slicing his staff through the air in frustration. “Should have readied him, instead of talking about that Misthaven girl the whole way,” he muttered.
Dayn returned to the Dreadfall edge, leaning on his staff while he contemplated what to do next. His gear and the cumbersome poles were here, at least. He could still build his training perches, it would just take more than a night without Joam’s help.
“I will be a courser. I will go to the Cycle,” Dayn said to himself. The words did little to strengthen him, but he repeated them anyway. “I will be a courser. I?”
The Dreadfall shimmered, interrupting Dayn's litany. He looked expectantly to the cliffs. A burst of light blazed from the depths, unmasking the distant walls of the far rim and bathing the rock in yellow, orange and gold. The column of light marched skyward, escorted by a rising wind that tugged at Dayn's clothes. Flashes far overhead, like a flock of ravens caught on fire, marked where the sun illuminated the ever-moving torrent. Dayn marveled at the beauty of the sight.
He shook himself from his reverie and set to his task, newly encouraged. He needed every precious second granted by the false daylight.
Dayn donned his leather harness, inhaling deeply to make sure the straps around his waist and shoulders did not hinder his breathing. He knotted his plain rope through a stake already hammered into the ground on his last trip, then secured the opposite end to the ring on his harness. Next he carefully spread a coating of the pungent seal on his forearms, and after a moment's thought, on his shins, boots and chest. He stopped after spreading some on his forehead, though, before he gagged over the smell. The stuff stifled the wind’s coolness as it seeped into his clothes and tingled against his skin. Small bursts of light shone briefly as the seal settled in, which he took for a good sign.
He decided to doff his lucky red cloak, and tied it to the stake, it would only get in his way if the wind picked up. The cloak whipped about in the upward breeze as if to agree. Lastly, he lashed two of the redbranch poles to his back, along with his staff and the mattock Joam had filched for him.
“Montollos, here I come,” he whispered. Holding the rope at his chest and waist in either hand, Dayn slowly rappelled over the edge and into the waiting maw of the Dreadfall.
The added weight strapped to his back made it hard to let out his rope. The upward light showed footfalls and handholds just as if the sun stood overhead, which felt quite strange. Redbeak swallows chirped and swooped around him, plucking insects from the night air for their young. Dayn picked his way gingerly through their nests. The birdsong is what led him to explore this area of the cliffs in the first place. It would be poor thanks to crush them.
A quarter-mile section of cliff had split away here, leaving behind a uniform gap twenty spans wide, and perhaps thirty spans straight down. Deep cracks riddled the stone, making it perfect for the swallow nests?and an ideal purchase for wedging his poles. This natural alcove ensured a single mistake would not result in a death drop, and there were plenty of handholds for climbing should anything happen to his rope.
Dayn halted his descent next to the spot he had marked in white chalk several weeks ago. He cinched off his rope with a quick kn
ot. After a few moments of awkward grasping, he jammed his first redbranch pole into a split in the rock. He braced his feet against the cliffside for leverage, and then began to wedge the pole in place with his mattock. Swallows fluttered away from hidden perches as his strikes echoed.
Dayn tested his handiwork, hanging from the pole with his full weight. It held him without so much as a creak. He let go and swung away gently, allowing the rope to assume his weight once more. He could not help but grin over his progress.
It took even less time than he expected. I should have brought more down. He dealt the completed pole one last victorious whack. The second pole, along with Dayn's sparring staff, tumbled free of their binding on his back.
“Oh, blind me.”
He groaned in dismay as they clattered to the ledge ten spans below. Sunlight still shone from the other side of the Dreadfall, perhaps an hour left. There was time to hammer another pole into the cliff side, but not if he wanted to get that staff back.
Strapping the mattock to his back?securely, this time?Dayn descended, losing himself in the rhythm of push and catch as he rappelled down the cliff.
Despite his blunder, he felt exhilarated. These new perches would allow him to practice leaping and roping at the same time, something he could never do on the ground above. Honing this skill brought him a big step closer to coursing. Soon enough, his feet touched mossy rock. This marked the deepest he had explored yet.
“Hello!” he called. The space swallowed his echo. He shouted louder, insistent that the cliffs acknowledge his presence. “Dayn Ro'Halan, the greatest courser in the World Belt!”
As Dayn retrieved his staff, a sudden flash caught his eye, near the ground beyond his fallen pole. He picked his way over to investigate. This looked a poor place to find gems, but anything Dayn found would be a welcome prize after Joam’s flight.
The ground began to squelch sickeningly under his feet. Dayn gagged at the sudden, pungent odor in his nostrils. He looked up. The swallow nests were directly above him, bird droppings and dead, fallen nestlings covered the ground. The flash pulled Dayn's eye again, it was coming from a triangle-shaped recess deeper in the cliff. Dampness slicked everything near the opening. He heard a steady dripping beyond the rock.
Something odd tugged at Dayn's gut, a sense of wrongness about this place. Sunlight did not penetrate the recess at all, which made the light emanating from it even more curious. The opening reeked of offal, and Dayn refused to crawl inside, so he held his breath and reached. Slick beetles and the creeping things feeding upon them scurried from his hand. His stomach heaved in protest. Dozens of bulbous mushrooms brushed his grasp, forming an odd cradle around the object he could barely make out. Dayn's hand closed around a smooth, cool surface and he pulled it from the grime in triumph.
He held a strange little orb that fit easily in his palm. Dayn had never seen anything quite like it before. It appeared to be a perfect sphere, despite the feathers and insect shells caked upon it. In the few spots where Dayn could actually see the surface the orb shone with a mysterious red glow. He turned away from the cave to better examine his find in the upward sunlight. Joam's abandonment did not sting so badly now.
“This is better than all of my gems put together. Wait until I show Joam!” Dayn laughed, turning the orb about in his grime-covered fist. It glowed stronger for a moment, close to the dangerous crimson of dewshade berries. He did not hear the stirring behind him in the shadowed recess.
Pain tore into his shoulder, sudden and sharp. Dayn screamed, flailing wildly with his staff. He staggered for balance, but agony forced him to his knees. A sinuous shape unraveled lazily from the opening. Dayn's eyes followed the variegated black scales and bone ridges stretching over powerful coils of muscle. A blunt, wedge-shaped head fastened to his shoulder, full of the teeth that were buried in his flesh. A wreathweaver.
He thrust his staff at the closest eye and missed. His shoulder caught fire with the movement. The wreathweaver's jaws did not budge as it rippled from the recess. It moved laboriously, and looked as long as his house.
Warm blood mixed with the cool dampness on his shirt. Dayn fought panic. He whipped his staff around for another awkward thrust and missed again. A threatening hiss sounded, and the monstrous snake flared its claw-like hood.
Dayn screamed in pain as the bony protrusions dug into his skin, gripping him in place. The wreathweaver shook him like a child’s caperdoll. Dayn kept hold of his staff, but the curious orb dropped into the swallow boneyard.
The wreathweaver coiled around Dayn's torso, securing the meal that had skipped into its den. If he did not escape now, his bones would join the doomed fliers at his feet.
Positioning its jaws to swallow him head first, the wreathweaver loosened its hold for the briefest instant. Dayn twisted his body away, ignoring the teeth rending his shoulder. For one sickening moment, the Dreadfall depths filled his entire field of vision.
He tumbled off the ledge. The creature uncoiled fluidly, refusing to completely release Dayn's shoulder, but too weak to pull him up. The leather harness sawed roughly into his chest as his rope snapped taut. He slammed back into the cliff face, crying out as his body sank into the wreathweaver’s upper jaw. The creature released him and, retreated back to the ledge above. Dayn’s gambit worked, he was free.
The wreathweaver slithered back and forth, its bony hood flared open like the leaves of a flysnare vine. The snake’s movement pelted him with a rain of crusted beetles and muck from the ledge floor.
The red orb suddenly dropped down from the ledge. Dayn lunged and caught it.
“Thanks for that!” he crowed. Reclaiming the artifact nearly made him forget the pain of his mangled shoulder. The wreathweaver's cold gaze studied Dayn, and its forked tongue lifted his scent from the air. “Now, how to get past you?”
He stowed the orb in his pocket, then sidestepped horizontally, rappelling back to where he first descended. The wreathweaver trailed him, barring the way up.
“Not as slow as you look,” Dayn said, frowning. He swung like a pendulum from his rope, for a moment, but he could not wait the wreathweaver out. The midnight sun would soon pass from the Dreadfall. With no lantern and no moonlight, the darkness would be absolute.
The wreathweaver's tongue flicked out again, deliberate and searching. It followed his rope, matching the rhythm of his sway. Dayn’s puzzlement quickly faded to alarm.
“No, no, no...”
It lashed out with primal speed. The rope snapped in its jaws.
Dayn screamed in terror. The Dreadfall blurred around him, the air whipping his clothes. The tattered rope flapped uselessly from his harness like a kite's severed string. A sick numbness spread through his body as he plummeted toward the heart of Shard.
Dayn fell faster than he ever thought possible The cliffs poured past him like water, no matter how he flailed. He lost consciousness, regained it again. Still he fell. Despair settled into his bones, cold and deep.
A sudden thrumming impression saturated Dayn's being, yet seemed to escape his ears. The pit of his stomach quivered, and his teeth began to ache. The very air seemed to vibrate. He twisted his head against the howling wind, looking for the source of sound that was not sound.
Great ripples and folds scored the Dreadfall’s unending vertical stone, as though the cliffs here were once molten waves, now frozen in place.
That’s heartrock! He had fallen countless miles from the surface. The air began to warm considerably. Dayn found himself clutching for the filthy orb, surprised he still held it in his pocket.
His freefall began to slow. At first Dayn thought he imagined it, but the wind no longer tore at his clothes, and he could make out features in the near cliffs. If I want to be a courser, I better start thinking like one! He stopped flailing and arched his back, allowing the remaining wind to flip him so he no longer fell head first. He held his back rigid as he continued to slow, angling himself at the cliffs.
The Dreadfall shook, a terrifyi
ng sound like a thousand cities grinding to dust. A great cloud of steam and dust issued from the nearest cliffs, and massive fissures raced up the sides of the Dreadfall, with molten red light at their depths. Dayn felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach, and his ears popped painfully. He still floated toward the cliffs, but with even less speed than when he first fell, as though Shard’s grasp on him were fading away. He glanced into the cliff face, skidding and tumbling until he came to a jarring stop in a flash of white light.
“Peace protect me,” Dayn whispered. He ran his hands over his body, incredulous to find no broken bones. The substance from the barrels had done its work. He lay balanced precariously on a jagged pile of scree on a jutting section of cliff, five spans beneath where the Dreadfall was breaking apart. “What’s happening?”
He began to pick his way through the mishmash of rubble, but every step felt wrong, as if the ground were only half as strong. He stopped and gaped. Shattered boulders floated through the expanse of the Dreadfall like leaves on a bitter wind, slowly expanding into the larger expanse. More than just rock floated in the air—there were men, still and lifeless. Same as from the well, at least six of them. What are they doing down here?
Dayn crept higher, toward the smoke above him. He clung to the cliff face like a beetle, afraid he would float away if he lost his grip. He pulled himself over another ledge, and gasped.
Seven gray men lay still before the mouth of a tunnel made of a metal that Dayn had never seen before. It glowed like an immense furnace. Several hulking silhouettes stood in that light, fists raised. Voices stabbed through Dayn’s shock.
“Their own worldheart will shake them to dust!”
“Victory!”
Cheers sounded until a new voice cut in, harsher than the rest. “I am not here to frighten them with trembling ground. I want this world torn from their accursed Belt! Finish your task!”
Dayn needed to hear no more. He immediately turned to flee, but his first bound took him floating into the air as though he were stuck in honey. Soon he would be swept into the floating rubble of the Dreadfall, and silently prayed they did not see him.
Warmth touched his outer thigh as he floated even higher. He reached instinctively for the strange orb and drew it from his pocket. The red pulsing shone through the muck that covered it. What in peace’s reach?
“Raaluwos, look there.” Dayn hastily stuffed the orb back in his pocket, too late.
“What?” The cruel voice again. One of the silhouettes shifted, pointing at Dayn.
“A boy in the air, watching us.”
The voices all went abruptly silent. No doubt staring at Dayn as he floated in place.
“Raaluwos!” The biggest of the shadows turned at a shout from deeper within the blinding tunnel. “Something is wrong. The worldheart is resisting us. We must—”
The Dreadfall groaned ominously. More smoke filled the expanse, darkening the midnight sun. The cliffs where the gray men stood exploded, and a swath of burning heartrock three miles wide rushed toward Dayn.