Light Dawning Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication 2

  Dramatis Personae 3

  Light Dawning 5

  1 (Western Ward, Old Market District, High Sun) 5

  2 (Eastern Ward, Border District, Eventide) 11

  3 (Eastern Ward, Warehouse District, Early Eventide) 15

  4 (The Deep Fell, Early Dimmet) 19

  5 (Western Ward, Old Market District, Late Dimmet) 21

  6 (Eastern Ward, Border District, Late Dimmet) 28

  7 (High Ward, Entrance Checkpoint, Early Dimmet) 33

  8 (Western Ward, Late Gloaming) 38

  9 (Brimstone Briar, Twilight) 40

  10 (Western Ward, Twilight) 43

  11 (Western Ward, Early True Night) 45

  12 (Western Ward, Early True Night) 49

  13 (Western Ward, Early True Night) 54

  14 (Western Ward, Outer Gate Bulwark, True Night) 58

  15 (High Ward, The Black Cathedral, Early True Night) 67

  16 (Western Ward / High Ward Border, True Night) 69

  17 (High Ward, Late True Night) 75

  18 (High Ward, Market Outskirts, Late True Night) 80

  19 (High Ward, Market Outskirts, Early Light Dawning) 84

  20 (High Ward, Early Light Dawning) 87

  21 (High Ward, Early Light Dawning) 91

  22 (High Ward, Market Square, Early Light Dawning) 94

  23 (Cestian Foothills, Light Dawning) 96

  24 (Cestian Foothills, Light Dawning) 98

  25 (Cestian Foothills, Late Light Dawning) 99

  26 (The Deep Fell, Late Aurora) 102

  27 (The Deep Fell, Late Morningtide) 105

  28 (The Lambent Chapel, High Sun) 111

  29 (The Infinite Expanse of Light) 114

  30 (The Lambent Chapel, Eventide) 116

  31 (The Lambent Chapel, Eventide) 118

  32 (Military Camp Outside The Grave City, Twilight) 120

  33 (The Grave City, Aurora) 123

  34 (The Shattered Tower, Aurora) 124

  35 (The Lambent Chapel, True Night) 128

  The Trade 129

  Part 1 - Searching 129

  Part 2 - Discovery 132

  Part 3 - Arrival 135

  Afterward 140

  About the Author 141

  Acknowledgments 142

  Dedication

  The two stories you are about to read – one quite long and the other a much shorter tale - are dedicated to Merisiel and Peanut. Many thanks to all the presses, publishers, reviewers, fellow authors, fans, and detractors for pushing me forward on this journey of the written word.

  Like its predecessors, the writing sessions for “Light Dawning” were driven by the power of music, which transcends all language and tells stories just as well as any book.

  If you'd like to experience this tale as it was written, a complete playlist of the tracks that kept me writing late into many nights is available at http://goo.gl/dYxaVq. Special thanks in particular are due to U.K. avant-garde black metal group Code and Chilean prog rock group Bauda for guiding me through the darkness.

  Dramatis Personae

  Cestia (sehs-ti-uh) – Once known by many names such as The Walled City on the Hill and the Gateway of the South, Cestia served as a bustling trade point between a variety of kingdoms both petty and grand. Self-governed and lacking in a strong military, Cestia was overthrown in a single night by a surprise attack from a burgeoning southern empire and now endures a brutal occupation that has dragged on for three years.

  Knights Of The Black Gauntlet – Both a religious and a military order, the specific practices and beliefs of the knights have not been made widely known to the subjugated people of Cestia, other than a fanatical devotion to their Empress and a willingness to commit any act while searching for a missing relic holy to their order.

  Myrr (mere) – A citizen of Cestia concerned more with survival than grand schemes of liberation, Myrr has run afoul of the knighthood and currently resides in an underground safe house.

  Tala – Traveling from her monastery home, this quiet and mysterious woman was trapped in Cestia just as the occupation began.

  Erret – A missionary seeking to spread his northern religion that worships the light and focuses on reaching the limits of human potential, Erret sees the occupation not as something to fear, but rather as an opportunity to turn the city towards his god's faith.

  Otta – Once a wealthy merchant, Otta's fortune has crumbled since the occupation and he now houses rebels and fugitives working to undermine the knighthood.

  Overlord Brant – Tasked with governing Cestia until the Empress' far flung armies arrive in force to push further northward, Brant has issued a series of increasingly savage and barbaric crackdowns to quell the growing tide of rebellion.

  Casterly (kasterly) – Hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father and take the life of a simple craftsman, Casterly has felt the flame of rebellion burn within since his family was broken apart by the knighthood.

  Tammin – Now deceased, Tammin's widow and children are currently in hiding after resisting the knights.

  Shan – Youngest son of Tammin and Casterly's younger brother.

  Kina – Youngest daughter of Tammin and Casterly's younger sister.

  Ara – Casterly's shattered sister, whose body remains alive while her mind has fled after her treatment by the knights that ransacked the family home and murdered Tammin.

  Fenton – A spear recruit in the Empress' vast army, this untested soldier seeks to prove himself and become a full member of the knighthood.

  Vim – It is unknown if “Vim” is this curious creature's name or the title of its species. Nothing else like this sinuous, fear-inducing beast has ever been seen in Cestia, and the Vim is never sighted without its druid rider.

  The Druid – An enigma to the people of Cestia, the druid is clearly aligned in some way with the knighthood but seems to be outside its chain of command. He rarely interacts with the populace directly and instead goes about business unknown in the high ward's sinister black obelisk.

  The Empress – A near mythical figure for the occupying soldiers, who rarely utter her name but rather invoke her title. All that is known to the occupied Cestians is that the Empress conquered numerous disparate kingdoms far to the south and forged them into a cohesive whole before founding the Knights of the Black Gauntlet and beginning her merciless campaign north.

  Light Dawning

  1 (Western Ward, Old Market District, High Sun)

  He knew, deep in his bones and even further beneath to a place newly discovered, that calamity was quickly approaching. Some fundamental change was coming, even though on the surface it all seemed the same. Whether from the deadly thing lurking within that new place or the violence-hungry soldiers stationed not far outside, Myrr was certain his own demise was at hand.

  The distinction between what lay within and what occurred without was becoming less defined. The whole city teetered on the edge of annihilation, a hairsbreadth away from being consumed in a massive pogrom that would wipe out both sides of the ongoing conflict. It was hard to say whether the soldiers or the rebels would provide the final push, but there was no doubt it would come soon.

  A handful of those ragged insurgents, dubbing themselves freedom fighters, huddled together in a corner of the underground safe house, both to stave off the cold and to whisper grand, doomed plans to re-take the city and be named heroes. Most of them would be dead by week's end. Sooner if they actually enacted any of their hopeless schemes to drive out the occupying force from their beloved home. Certain their names would be remembered for all time as the city's saviors, they remained blind to the hopelessness of the cause made obvious by the bleak surroundings they shared with Myrr.

  He considered a
pproaching the insurgents and warning them against rash action, but knew such council would fall on deaf ears, or worse yet, provoke a violent response. The occupation had dragged on for three long years, and the crackdowns were becoming more brutal with each passing day. The empire that sent the invasion force was clearly displeased with the lack of progress and had taken to applying more pressure on the local authorities, spurring them on to greater acts of violence. Oblivious to the spiraling cycle leading to one inevitable conclusion, the patrol ambushes organized by numerous resistance cells across the city only made it worse.

  Myrr shuddered thinking of how every soldier killed resulted in dozens of retaliations, which in a cyclical and never-ending turn led to more of the downtrodden deciding to take up the mantle of freedom fighter. Cestia was about to burn, and no one who called it home or tried to bring it to heel seemed to be interested in changing that fate. Both sides were darkness-bent on destroying the other, not realizing or not caring that each was certain to lose the ultimate prize. It was only a matter of time before there was no city left to either hold or liberate. Cestia would be a city of corpses, with only carrion birds to rule over the dead.

  Spread out across the far end of the hidden cellar Myrr had come to call home, re-purposed to hide away those who had run afoul of the authorities, the remnants of a shattered family attempted to keep their children quiet. He shook his head as the surviving adults also pointlessly tried to convince themselves all would be well. Like the resistance fighters unknowingly bound towards the mass graves just outside the walls of the city, this sad collection of dirty and hungry Cestian citizens was unlikely to survive for any appreciable length of time.

  Mouth clenched firmly shut, he wished for the courage to whisper some reasoned plea for peace over the violence that would only see this destitute family killed. Five of them huddled miserably on the other end of the perpetually damp ground, only visible as silhouettes in the darkness. A mother tended to two young ones displeased by their current lodgings, urgently aiming to keep them from making noise, while two other distinct shapes could be seen just to the side; one hulking and brooding, another tiny by comparison and rocking back and forth.

  Whether the occupiers discovered this latest bolt hole and burned them all alive or they only remained hidden until hunger forced them into the streets and a waiting patrol, Myrr felt an ironclad certainty in his gut that this would be the last residence of these beleaguered people. He was equally certain their suffering would only get worse before it finally ended.

  Myrr knew all too well that the soldiers, having the gall to call themselves knights, continued their day-to-day ritual of intruding into homes and tearing apart the contents in fruitless searches. They claimed to seek out members of the constantly growing resistance and those who housed them, but it was the worst kept secret in the city that the Knights of the Black Gauntlet sought some artifact sacred to their order. Something they were certain was being hidden away by the populace.

  Ending every intrusion empty-handed hadn't seemed to dissuade them from breaking down the next door. After years of increasingly brutal tactics, he wondered if perhaps they had just simply acquired a taste for it. They were just as likely to bring their spiked maces to bear and cave in the skulls of those who resisted as to those who stood by and silently allowed their homes to be ripped apart, board by board. Myrr stifled a moan of despair while realizing those people still openly walking the streets were likely in just as much danger as those hiding in cellars like these across the city. No one was truly safe anymore.

  The slowly rocking figure in the corner reminded Myrr that the daughters of Cestia received the worst treatment. The number of fathers who objected had dwindled early on when it became clear the punishment for interference was bleeding to death in the street. There was nothing clean or quick about the way the knights went about their duties, as he could see by their handiwork spread across the bruised faces and broken bones of everyone crowded into the dirty hole. The cellar was illuminated only dimly – a small blessing for which Myrr was grateful considering the state of the hideout's occupants – with thin shafts of light piercing down at irregular intervals from the floor of the building above.

  Remaining out of sight until joining a doomed resistance cell engaged in a latest act of guerrilla warfare, or even more pointlessly attempting to escape the city, necessitated that no torches or cook fires be lit. Not that any such actions would have been useful, as the smoke from either would have rapidly filled the cramped cellar and choked out the inhabitants anyway. Between the damp cold and the growing hunger, the need to remain hidden and alive was starting to war with the need to return to the world above. Someone would give in eventually, and Myrr knew that person was unlikely to ever return. For a moment the mad thought to rush into the city above and meet his fate before waiting any longer flashed through his mind.

  Myrr searched the faces he could make out in the focused beams of pallid blue light and was overtaken by a growing trembling as he recalled the sight of the last resistance hideout that the knights had discovered. He'd almost been sitting in that one and died along with all the rest, but the deadly thing inside him had sent him doubling over with phantom pain just before approaching that particular bolt hole one night not long past. The wretched existence he now called life was saved when moments later the soldiers appeared from nowhere. The stink of burning flesh still clung to the remnants of his tattered cloak, once a dull brown but now stained black with soot and filth. Waiting for the memory to pass as they always did, the animalistic shrieks of the dying vied for dominance with less dreadful thoughts dancing through his mind.

  For a moment he gave in and let the scene replay across his mind's canvas, allowing the screams and the crackling sound of cooking bodies to fully take over. Morbidly glad for the diversion, he knew the overwhelming emotion of the memory would keep those other thoughts away – the one's that weren't his own. Ever since they'd arrived, he'd been on the run like a common criminal or suicidal freedom fighter.

  Watching impotently as friends burned alive was no longer the worst Cestia had to offer, as Myrr had learned only a handful of nights past. He tried to force his thoughts elsewhere, anywhere at all, but the battle was lost immediately as that flickering afterglow of green fire shimmered on his mental stage, just barely outlining the utterly black thing he'd stumbled upon. It had lain in wait for him, of that he was becoming more certain, biding its time for just the right moment when the latest riot erupted with Myrr caught in the chaos.

  The knights had their fill of slaughter that night when the inhabitants of the eastern ward were pushed past the breaking point. A huge crowd had gathered at the site of some atrocity or other before an unlucky mounted patrol could send word for reinforcements. Rising up as one, the sea of desperate and dying citizens had dragged the knights off their horses and returned back tenfold the violence they lived under every day. What he witnessed that night was even worse than anything he'd ever seen the city's occupiers do to their victims.

  With few weapons at hand, the downtrodden Cestians improvised at their sudden chance for revenge, using ropes and brute force to pull one screaming soldier apart limb from limb. That one died with a string of hoarse curses on his lips as his appendages slipped from their sockets and the tendons tore free. Loose bricks at the base of a nearby building ended another soldier's life as they were smashed down, again and again, until nothing remained but pulverized skull fragments and a red paste staining the ground.

  A mania set in then, as thoughts of freedom or retribution were replaced by an insane lust for violence. Something that had been simmering for far too long finally boiled over, and no one in the crowd escaped the relentless flood. Flush with their sudden success and the realization that they had superior numbers over their captors, the crowd became a mob and went on the lookout for more oppressors to bring to justice.

  The response from the ward's garrison saw fifty knights moving in formation from street to street. They put d
own anyone unlucky enough to be caught outside, whether or not they had been involved in the killing. The first volley of arrows from the archers behind the forward position and lining the ward's walls miraculously didn't deter the sea of indignant citizens, refusing to be downtrodden that night.

  It wasn't until later, after he'd gained his new secret place deep inside, that those previously brave men went running in all directions only to be hunted down and stabbed with the superior reach of spears. Hatred and bloodlust couldn't stand before the overwhelming force of a highly trained militia forever.

  Realizing that being caught in a mob killing knights was tantamount to a death sentence, Myrr saw himself clambering up the side of a nearby building and breaking a window to hide in the top floor as the memory continued its relentless push forward. He felt no guilt while watching the slaughter below from just inside the shadowed building, and no desire to try to intervene. When the march of death finally passed below to move into another street, he turned around and had seen it resting there on the floor.

  As though it wanted to be found. As though it knew someone would be arriving that night.

  He hated to focus on the details of its form, trying to turn his remembrances away, but the thing within forced his thoughts along its outline and then mercilessly deeper within, recalling how it had been more a shallow spot within the light than an actual physical object. A stark blackness beyond that of a night without torch or candle, limned by a flickering green aura reminiscent of flames. It was there one moment and gone the next, only to return with a blink. The shape reminded him of a fist clenched in anger, but thinking back on it he could only describe it as a hole – something that dropped out of the world of light into somewhere deeper. Somewhere he had no desire to go.