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

They fell silent again, knowing soon enough they’d need to build a litter to drag the body home. There’d be a note in Devin’s pocket. There was always a note. It would speak of apology. Of regret. Of the inability to suffer the Scar another day. There’d be no blame laid on Grant. Actually, he’d be thanked for caring for them, for trying to teach them to survive in the world. But mostly, the note would be about what wasn’t written on the paper. It would be about how the Scar somehow amplified the abandonment that had brought a ward to the Forgotten Cradle in the first place.

The notes were all the same, and were always addressed to Grant, anyway.

Patrols usually didn’t bother looking for them.

Alemdra went slowly to Devin’s side and knelt. Hunched over the body, she brushed tenderly at Devin’s hair, speaking in a soothing tone—the kind one uses with a child, or the very sick. Her shoulders began to rise and fall again with sobs she could no longer hold back.

Tahn stepped forward and put an arm around her, trying this time to be strong.

“It gets inside.” Alemdra tapped her chest. “You can’t ever really get out of the Scar, can you? Even if you leave.” She looked up at Tahn. Her expression said she wanted to be argued with, convinced otherwise.

Tahn could only stare back. He’d gotten out of the Scar—a little bit, anyway—during his time in Aubade Grove. Maybe.

This time, Alemdra did look for the note. It wasn’t hard to find. But when she unfolded the square of parchment, it was different. No words at all. A drawing of a woman, maybe forty or so, beautifully rendered with deep laugh lines around her eyes and mouth, and a biggish nose. Devin had talent that way. Drawing without making everything dreamlike.

The likeness brought fresh sobs from Alemdra. “It’s how she imagined her mother.”

That tore at Tahn’s fragile bravery. He could see in the drawing hints of Devin as an older woman. Simple thing to want to know a parent’s face. Dead gods, Devin, I’m sorry.

CHAPTER ONE

THE RIGHT DRAW

“Mercy has many faces. One of them looks like cruelty.”

—Reconciliationist defense of the gods’ placement

of the Quiet inside the Bourne

TAHN JUNELL RACED north across the Soliel plain, and his past raced with him. He ran in the dark and cold of predawn. A canopy of bright stars shone in clear skies above. And underfoot, his boots pounded an urgent rhythm against the shale. In his left hand, he clenched his bow. In his mind, growing dread pushed away the crush of his recently returned memory. Ahead, still out of sight, marching on the city of Naltus Far . . . came the Quiet.

Abandoning gods. The Quiet. Just a few moon cycles ago, these storied races had been to Tahn just that. Stories. Stories he’d believed, but only in that distant way that death concerned the living. Their story told of being herded and sealed deep in the far west and north—distant lands known as the Bourne, a place created by the gods before they’d abandoned the world as lost.

One of his Far companions tapped his shoulder and pointed. “Over there.” Ahead on the left stood a dolmen risen from great slabs of shale.

Tahn concentrated, taking care where he put his feet, trying to move without drawing any attention. The three Far from the city guard ran close, their flight over the stones quiet as a whisper on the plain. They’d insisted on bearing him company. There’d been no time to argue.

Through light winds that carried the scent of shale and sage, they ran. A hundred strides on, they ducked into a shallow depression beside the dolmen. In the lee side of the tomb, Tahn drew quick breaths, the Far hardly winded.

“I’m Daen,” the Far captain said softly. He showed Tahn a wry smile—acquaintances coming here, now—and put out his hand.

“Tahn.” He clasped the Far’s hand in the grip of friendship.

“I know. This is Jarron and Aelos.” Daen gestured toward the two behind him. Each nodded a greeting. “Now, do you want to tell us why we’ve rushed headlong toward several colloughs of Bar’dyn?” Daen’s smile turned inquiring.

Tahn looked in the direction of the advancing army. It was still a long way off. But he pictured it in his head. Just one collough was a thousand strong. So, several of them . . . deafened gods! And the Bar’dyn: a Quiet race two heads taller than most men and twice as broad; their hide like elm bark, but tougher, more pliable.

He listened. Only the sound of heavy feet on shale. Distant. The Bar’dyn beat no drum, blew no horn. The absence of sound got inside him like the still of a late-autumn morning before the slaughter of winter stock.

Tahn looked back at Daen. They had a little while to wait, and the Far captain deserved an answer. “Seems reckless, doesn’t it.” He showed them each a humorless smile. “The truth? I couldn’t help myself.”

None of the Far replied. It wasn’t condescension. More like disarming patience. Which struck Tahn odd, since the Far possessed an almost unnatural speed and grace. A godsgift. And their lives were spent in rehearsal for war. Endless training and vigilance to protect an old language.

“I wouldn’t even be in Naltus if it weren’t for the Quiet.” Tahn looked down at the bow in his lap, suddenly not sure what he meant to do. His bow—any bow—was a very dear, very old friend. He’d been firing one since he could hold a deep draw. But his bow against an army? I might finally have waded too far into the cesspit.

“We guessed that much,” said Daen.

Tahn locked eyes with the Far captain, who returned a searching stare. “Two cycles ago, I was living a happy, unremarkable life. Small town called the Hollows. Only interesting thing about me was a nagging lack of memory. Had no recollection of anything before my twelfth year. Then, not long