The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian (fun to read .txt) 📗

face showed quiet appreciation. Only when she’d begun to repeat her song did he finally speak. And then in a low tone, like a counterpoint.

“Very well, Palamon.” Dossolum continued to watch the woman grieve. “Write it all down. Everything we tried to do. Our failure. The Bourne and those we sent there. The war to do so.” He grew quiet. “A story of desolation.”

Tentatively, Palamon asked, “And do what with it?”

The woman’s song turned low and throaty and bare.

Dossolum gave a sad smile. “To some we’ll give a gift of song. They’ll sing the story you write. And so long as they do, the Veil will be added to. Strengthened.”

He nodded, seeming satisfied. “But it will be a suffering to sing it. Leaving them diminished.”

“Thank you, Dossolum.” Palamon then silently thanked the woman who mourned in front of them. Her mortal sorrow had touched his friend’s eternal heart.

“Don’t thank me.” Dossolum’s eyes showed their first hint of regret. “Like every good intention, a song can fade.”

Palamon looked up at the same evening stars Dossolum had watched a moment ago. “Or it might be sung even after the light of the stars has fled the heavens.”

“I hope you’re right, my friend. I hope you’re right.”

BOOK ONE

THE UNREMEMBERED

PROLOGUE

STILLBORN

“The Church of Reconciliation—Reconciliationists, so called—preach that the Framers left behind protections. And these protections were given proper names. Names we’ve forgotten. Would these protections cease, then, to serve? Or would we have to question the origins of the doctrine?”

—Excerpt from Rational Suppositions,

a street tract disseminated by the League of Civility

AN OPEN DOOR . . .

Tahn Junell drew his bow, and kicked his mount into a dead run. They descended the shallow dale in a rush toward that open door. Toward home.

The road was muddy. Hooves threw sludge. Lightning arced in the sky. A peal of thunder shattered the silence and pushed through the small vale in waves. It echoed outward through the woods in diminishing tolls.

The whispering sound of rain on trees floated toward him. The soft smells of earth and pollen hung on the air, charged with the coming of another storm. Cold perspiration beaded on his forehead and neck.

An open door . . .

His sister, Wendra, wouldn’t leave the door open to the chill.

Passing the stable, another bolt of white fire erupted from the sky, this time striking the ground. It hit at the near end of the vale. Thunder exploded around him. A moment later, a scream rose from inside his home. His mount reared, tugging at his reins and throwing Tahn to the ground before racing for the safety of the stable. Tahn lost his bow and began frantically searching the mud for the dropped weapon. The sizzle of falling rain rose, a lulling counterpoint to the screams that continued from inside. Something crashed to the floor of the cabin. Then a wail rose up. It sounded at once deep in the throat, like the thunder, and high in the nose like a child’s mirth.

Tahn’s heart drummed in his ears and neck and chest. His throat throbbed with it. Wendra was in there! He found his bow. Shaking the mud and water from the bowstring and quickly cleaning the arrow’s fletching on his coat, he sprinted for the door. He nocked the arrow and leapt to the stoop.

The home had grown suddenly still and quiet.

He burst in, holding his aim high and loose.

An undisturbed fire burned in the hearth, but everything else in his home lay strewn or broken. The table had been toppled on its side, earthen plates broken into shards across the floor. Food was splattered against one wall and puddled near a cooking pot in the far corner. Wendra’s few books sat partially burned near the fire, their thrower’s aim not quite sure.

Tahn saw it all in a glance as he swung his bow to the left where Wendra had tucked her bed up under the loft.

She lay atop her quilts, knees up and legs spread.

Absent gods, no!

Then, within the shadows beneath the loft, Tahn saw it, a hulking mass standing at the foot of Wendra’s bed. It hunched over, too tall to remain upright in the nook beneath the upper room. Its hands cradled something in a blanket of horsehair. The smell of sweat and blood and new birth commingled with the aroma of the cooking pot.

The figure slowly turned its massive head toward him. Wendra looked too, her eyes weary but alive with fright. She weakly reached one arm toward him, mouthing something, but unable to speak.

In a low, guttural voice the creature spoke, “Quillescent all around.” It rasped words in thick, glottal tones.

Then it stepped from beneath the loft, its girth massive. The fire lit the creature’s fibrous skin, which moved independent of the muscle and bone beneath. Ridges and rills marked its hide, which looked like elm bark. But pliable. It uncoiled its left arm from the blanket it held to its chest, letting its hand hang nearly to its knees. From a leather sheath strapped to its leg, the figure drew a long knife. Around the hilt it curled its hand—three talonlike fingers with a thumb on each side, its palm as large as Tahn’s face. Then it pointed the blade at him.

Tahn’s legs began to quiver. Revulsion and fear pounded in his chest. This was a nightmare come to life. This was Bar’dyn, a race out of the Bourne. One of those given to Quietus, the dissenting god.

“We go,” the Quietgiven said evenly. It spoke deep in its throat. Its speech belied a sharp intelligence in its eyes. When it spoke, only its lips moved. The skin on its face remained thick and still, draped loosely over protruding cheekbones that jutted like shelves beneath its eyes. Tahn glimpsed a mouthful of sharp teeth.

“Tahn,” Wendra managed, her voice hoarse and afraid.

Blood spots marked her white bed-dress, and her body seemed frozen in a position that prevented her from straightening her legs. Tahn’s heart stopped.

Against its barklike skin, the Bar’dyn held cradled in