The Seedbearing Prince: Part I (10 page)

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 terrifying 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 hm.

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.

***

Joam stopped to wait for Dayn at the bottom
of the trail in the redbranch thickets, and then again at Laman's
farm. Once it became clear he would not follow, Joam bounded
crossly back to his own home, despite the lateness of the hour and
how far he must go.

“I've stuck my neck out for him plenty
enough,” Joam muttered to himself. He cut quietly through the Wustl
Square while the village slumbered, padding along empty streets
with his lantern shuttered. With Elders doing backflips to please
the visiting Misthaveners, it seemed wise to stay out of sight.

Dayn and his stubborn foolishness. Joam could
not possibly fathom the appeal of coursing, not from how Dayn
described it. Especially after looking into that monstrous hole,
eyes searching vainly for the bottom, for any bottom...

Joam shivered.
I will never go to the
Dreadfall again,
he promised himself.
Not for a city full of
Falena’s sisters. Not for a Victor’s Sash from the Cycle!

He emerged on the other side of Wia Wells
without incident, absorbed in his musings as he bounded home on
weary feet. Although the truth would crush him, Dayn’s chances of
getting to the Course of Blades were about as good as old
Nerlin’s.

Laman’s reasonable, and fair with a staff
besides, when he's not playing at Elder,
he thought.
I could
speak to him.
One season as an Applicant would have Dayn
begging for anything that spared him from the fields. What would
Laman do then? Laman had heavy ties with the Village Council, after
all. Joam recalled the man's face when Elder Buril named Dayn an
Attendant. An odd blend of pride, envy, and regret. That last
puzzled him, regret―but maybe that meant a chance for Montollos
with Joam.

“I shouldn't even bother,” Joam muttered,
although he knew the words to be false the moment he uttered them.
He would do anything for Dayn. Well, anything within reason. He
shivered again, and pushed the Dreadfall firmly from his mind.

Finally he turned off the road to his home,
and crept soundlessly through his bedroom window, a skill honed
through many nights of pulling pranks. Joam listened for creaking
floorboards, but his parents and visiting brothers did not
stir.

He placed his staff in the corner beside his
door, and peeled his boots from miserably sore feet, giddy at the
prospect of slumber. Joam groggily wondered how long it would take
Dayn to give up.
That surely wasn’t sunlight. Why don’t the
Elders teach us about the Dreadfall? Is it because they don’t know
what made cliffs so deep?
Joam gave one last shudder before
exhaustion forced his eyelids shut. He would find some excuse for
being home in the morning.

Panicked shouts jolted him awake just before
he began to snore. He leaped from bed, but the ground lurched under
his feet and tossed him back into his blankets.

“Boys, outside!” He heard Milchamah shouting.
“Get out of the house!”

Joam looked around in shock. His room looked
windswept. Dresser drawers hung crookedly, wooden shelves slipped
from their hangings, their contents scattered. His bed now slanted
askew, inexplicably shifted away from the wall. Shouting continued
throughout the house, and Joam opened his mouth to join in.

The cry died in his throat, cut short by an
impossible sight. His darkwood staff no longer leaned in the
corner. It floated slowly toward the ceiling as he watched, held in
the thrall of some unnatural freedom. More objects began to rise.
The broken shelves. His boots and whittling knives. The sight made
Joam's hair stand straight up. He clung to his bed, fearful it
would stir next. Surprise mingled into his family's screams.

“Peace protect us, the ground has died!” His
mother’s voice rang with terror, but Joam refused to believe her
cries.

The ground trembled again, forcefully enough
to rattle his teeth. For some reason, the memory of the Dreadfall
brushed his mind, and somehow Joam knew.

“Dayn, whatever mess you’ve gotten into,
peace send you’re safe!”

***

Dayn glimpsed only a fleeting impression of
rock hurtling toward him, wreathed in fire and dark smoke. Searing
wind slammed into his body. The force flung him end over end,
pelting him with shattered pieces of the cliff. The fragments
glanced harmlessly from his seal-protected limbs in blinding
flashes of light. He curled behind his forearms and shins as best
he could while gouts of rock from the cliff wall mushroomed in
every direction. The explosion propelled him away from the
heartrock in a wave of boulders and choking dust.

Something cracked Dayn’s head and silver
discs speckled his vision. Pain lanced his upper arms and chest,
tearing sleeves and skin alike. Another blow glanced off his
collarbone just shy of a snapped bone. The tiny fragments needling
his body made him painfully aware of every inch of skin not covered
in sealer. After whatever the men did to Shard’s heart, the
explosions pushed him away from the heartrock with dizzying
speed.

A firm mass thudded into Dayn’s back,
stunning him. He twisted around to discover a slab of smoking rock
wider around than he could reach. Instinctively, Dayn kicked
against it. His momentum shifted immediately, and he angled on a
new path through the rock. For the first time since losing his
rope, Dayn could control where he moved.

Up,
he thought.
I need to go
up!

Dayn began to hurdle clumsily, twisting and
pushing to direct himself. He leaped and pushed through the debris,
like a frog crossing a flooded river. The air cooled. Stars―blessed
stars―were visible above! He was closer to the surface than he
could hope for, but feared the rock would carry him past it, maybe
even off his world completely and into the void.

He focused on the stars, and finding the
cliffside. He kicked off a nearby boulder as big as a house as it
sailed past him. The angle put him crossways to the main flow of
rock. Fresh explosions thundered out of the Dreadfall’s maw below
him.

Dayn slammed into a mass that did not budge.
He clung to it with all of his strength, feeling the cold rock of a
cliff wall scrape his face.

“I did it,” he breathed. “I did it.” Shadow
raced toward him, retaking the cliff walls as the sun below passed
away from the Dreadfall. Cold swept in as the light vanished. The
world reeled, and a terrible thundering made him lift his head in
time to see broken stone and debris crashing its way back down the
Dreadfall. Shard no longer let it float free, he could feel the
difference in her ground. Blood and sweat covered his body, and
pain gouged him from every direction.

Dayn knew he should begin climbing, but
exhaustion kept his legs from moving. He heard water flowing
swiftly from somewhere behind the cliff wall. He knew that meant
something urgent, but the ringing in his ears refused to let him
ferret out why. Another thought soon replaced it.

“So that’s what coursing feels like.” His
voice sounded mangled to his own ears. A sickly pungent odor was
the last thing Dayn remembered before darkness took him.

Strangers

No one believes it, but the Preceptors are prouder
than Defenders and shrewder than Consorts. Of all the Ringmen, they
are convinced that they alone keep the Belt from flying apart. They
may be right.

-journal entry from the Highest Jusee of Ara

P
ain burned through
Dayn's shoulder and back, and a horrible throbbing threatened to
cleave his head apart. He opened his eyes with a groan and squinted
at the sunlight blistering through his bedroom window.

“I'm home,” he rasped aloud. He could not
remember how he came to be there. His mouth tasted of old blood and
his throat felt caked with dust. Bandages engulfed his shoulder and
chest where the wreathweaver's teeth had left their mark. More
scrapes and cuts made him groan when he shifted slightly under his
covers. His skull pounded so fiercely he did not realize he was not
alone until Laman cleared his throat.