The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1) Read online

  THE SAINT'S RISE

  IGNIFER CYCLE 1

  Three thousand years ago the world fell into darkness, when the great black mouth of the Rot ravaged the land. Only a single child survived the devastation; an infant with a prophecy carved into his skin, promising the rise of a hero powerful enough to slay the Rot for good.

  Now that child is a young man, beginning to question the meaning of his many scars…

  Now those scars are hunted by a jealous King, ruler of a bizarre industrial city, where a thousand strange castes toil away like slaves…

  Now a dark beast is watching, an Unforgiven, seeking to fulfill a promise made long ago…

  And now the Rot has returned, its great black mouth growing large again in the sky, bringing chaos and fear to a world where no heroes endure…

  The first book in The Ignifer Cycle, a new fantasy saga.

  THE IGNIFER CYCLE

  The Saint's Rise

  The Rot's War (upcoming)

  These and all Michael John Grist's other books can be found here.

  To hear when his newest book is out, receive 2 free bestselling books, and get access to special deals and giveaways, join the free newsletter.

  Note – 'The Saint's Rise' is a thoroughly altered version of the book previously published as 'Ignifer's Rise' and 'Saint Ignifer's Rise'.

  For SY

  CONTENTS

  ARADABAR LOST

  BOOK 1. CASTES

  The Children I - Moth Abbess I - Alam I - The Cathedral I - Mare I - Daveron I - Recovery - Gellick I - Avia I - Feyon I - The Cathedral II

  BOOK 2. THE SPIDER

  Alam II - Mare II - Millinery I - Posting - Lord Quill - Hunt I - Hunt II - Sharachus I - Gloam Hallows - Butterfly Abbess

  BOOK 3. KING SEEM

  Airs and Graces - Sharachus II - Gutrock Wastes - Aradabar - The Children II - King Seem - Sharachus III

  BOOK 4. THE SAINT

  Millinery II - Moth Abbess II - Alam III - Gellick II - The Saint I - The Saint II - Molemen - Daveron II - Millinery III - Feyon II - The Saint III - Mare III - Daveron III - Millinery IV

  BOOK 5. THE ROT

  Alam IV - Treasonous Fare - Alam V - Raise the Saint - The Mountain - Gellick III - Feyon III - Daveron IV - Alam VI - Mare IV - Caldera

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Last (excerpt) - Character Art - Previous covers

  ARADABAR LOST

  Avia fled through the ash-smothered streets of Aradabar, and the Rot's fiery black tongue swept close behind. Moth and Butterfly-castes thudded to the ground around her, their long bodies bursting on cobbled stone, their broad wings seared away.

  Through breaks in the city's skyline of glass library towers, Avia glimpsed the column of flame rising on the horizon like a brilliant orange flower painted on the sky. The mountain was erupting and soon the great city of Aradabar would be gone. Screams rang out from behind her, but there was nothing she could do.

  They were all going to die.

  She sped down the narrow alleys of the outer bookyards, striding over bodies already half-buried in volcanic dust, holding her newborn son close. The wounds in his face were scabbing now, intricate red lines she had carved with her own hand that would save or damn them all.

  "Help us, please!" voices called from a burning hut.

  She glimpsed children trapped inside, with hay-stuffed pillows held over their heads to protect against falling rock. She ran on. At a canal she came upon a thronging exodus of carriages and barges, filled with frantic denizens shouting to one another through the scalding ash. She slipped between their carriage wheels and ran across their jumbled barge decks.

  "Queen Avia!" a Man of Quartz called out, recognizing her, but she only pulled her hood tighter about her head and continued on, leaving them behind.

  "Where is King Seem?" he called after her. "Where is our King?"

  Moments later his cries joined the eruption's cacophony, as the Rot found him.

  In feverish glances she saw it above, a yawning black mouth in the sky, opening across the city like a second heaven. Fat black tongues spat out of it like dark lightning, pummeling the grand city King Seem had built from the dust.

  It was coming for her, and for her son.

  The boy was paling in her arms now, barely breathing in the dust-thick air, drained by the last scars she'd carved, but she could not stop now. She held his wounded face close and sped on, into the Hallows quarter. One of the Rot's thick tongues arced overhead, exploding a bookyard at the quarter's edge. Avia fell into shelter behind an upturned straw hut, amongst the ragged few possessions of some scholar come to Aradabar, seeking knowledge.

  That era was over now.

  Rubble pattered off the hut's fragile shell and she started away again, picking her way along blackened streets littered with bodies. Through the winding Hallows she ran until at last the cathedral rose before her, tall and ghostly through the fog of falling ash.

  She raced in along a cloister lined with figures carved from her dreams. The earth bucked and a column nearby cracked, crashing a lintel to the flagstones ahead. She darted round it and barged through the heavy double door to the cathedral nave.

  Inside the air was cool and dry, but spidering cracks were spreading up the high walls and over the vaulted ceiling, dropping a fine rain of plaster dust. The stained-glass window high in the end wall cast a bloody orange light over the disheveled lines of pews.

  She ran down the aisle toward it, her footsteps clacking like panicked knocks on a far-off door. At the end wall, she pushed through a small postern and out again into the hot air.

  The revenant arch stood in blood-red shadow behind the cathedral, and she ran to it. This was the first of the arches she'd ordered carved, where so many lines of strength converged. Its inner side was wholly carved with all the stories of Saint Ignifer, and as she drew near it began to glow with the Saint's faint blue light. She held up her son and felt the Saint's fledgling power move within him too, lighting a blue fire across the wounds carved into his face.

  So the Saint would rise.

  The Rot felt the change too, and its roar shook the ground. Avia staggered closer to the arch even as a fat black tongue shot down and smashed through the cathedral roof like wet vellum, crushing the walls in a plume of swirling mortar-smoke. Slabs of cut stone shot outward like cannon fire, plowing furrows in the grave beds.

  Avia kissed her son's forehead as the Rot's tongue bounded near. She could feel its aching need like a sick pulse in her belly, with a thousand worlds churned to nothing and a thousand more to come. She stepped through the glowing revenant archway, into darkness.

  * * *

  A new world unfurled.

  Avia roused on a stone floor, swaying. Around her were the faint outlines of ruined structures, lapped by tides of frothy white mist.

  She rose, picking out the remnants of the cathedral wall she had passed through only moments ago, though it was different now. Its stained glass window was still resplendent, though the colors had faded with time. The jagged edges where the Rot's tongue had torn down the cathedral around it had been leveled smooth by rain, and the mounds of rubble to either side had become earthen lumps, crept over with brown vines.

  Three thousand years had passed, as the prophecy had predicted.

  Through gaps in the drifting fog she glimpsed the night sky, and the deep black hole that was the mouth of the Rot, growing larger again.

  The infant boy in her arms was breathing in faint pants now as the blue light faded from his scars. She tried not to think of the path that lay ahead of him, that she'd seen play out so many times. There was so much worse to com
e.

  She breathed warmth on his face then hurried over the cracked cathedral flags, holding him close. She circled round the end wall and entered the ruined cathedral through the open side where walls had once stood, leading into a misty clearing of mottled flagstones that had once been the nave. In the center of that barren space, she saw the Butterfly Abbess.

  She was knelt in prayer before the glowing stained glass, where the altar had once stood, beautiful in the window's colored light. Her long Sectile body swayed hypnotically, and her brilliant Butterfly wings twitched in time with whispered prayers.

  Avia had seen her in dreams so many times before, the lone Abbess of that sad, lost cathedral, a waypoint on her son's path. It was here that he would begin to see, and everything would change. The thought stung her, yet the future was built of single steps, and she could only take the step that lay before her.

  She strode out before the Butterfly and spoke clearly in the orator's tones King Seem had taught her.

  "I have returned."

  The Butterfly twitched at the sound. Her compound eyes widened and refocused, settling on the dark ash coating Avia's clothes, on the bloody face of her child. She looked from Avia to the figure shown in the window and back. Then she rose on long Sectile legs, beating her wings gently at the fog as though for purchase.

  "Queen Avia?" she whispered. "Can it really be?"

  "Of Aradabar," Avia answered, her voice ringing sharply through the chill white air, "and you must help my son."

  BOOK 1. CASTES

  THE CHILDREN I

  The children had come.

  Sen stood in the grass before his mother's grave, in the shadow of the Abbey, looking at the scars on his hands. He was supposed to be at the front of the grounds by now, welcoming the children as they came in, but he wasn't ready for that.

  Instead he held his hands up to the fading evening light and watched as shadows dappled the tight white scar-lines that covered every inch of his skin. In places they ran with the natural lines of his body, in others they broke free and cut fresh alignments, telling the stories of long-dead heroes and their grand exploits.

  He sighed. Interwoven amongst these tales, carved by his own mother's hand when he was just a baby and written in a language nobody had spoken for thousands of years, were the names of the children.

  Alam.

  Daveron.

  Mare.

  Feyon.

  Gellick.

  He waggled his fingers, and the scar lines danced. If he truly was special somehow, marked out for some heroic fate, he didn't feel it. He wasn't worth the risks the Sisters were taking, hiding him from the Adjunc. If the King only knew he was here…

  He let that thought guide his gaze to the dark undergrowth of trees and bushes screening the Abbey's wall. His pack was hidden there, waiting for him. In thirty seconds he could have it, be over the wall and away from the Abbey, and the threat he posed to the Sisters just by existing would be ended.

  But he didn't move.

  He wasn't sure if that was cowardice or curiosity. All his life he'd been hearing about the power of the secrets in his scars. Now five children really were here, and he could feel them already, the sense of their minds on the air. Different to the ever-steady calm of the Sisters, they felt chaotic and dangerous, like discordant voices calling out an alarm.

  He had to leave, but curiosity held him frozen, heart thumping painfully hard, until a tuneless whistle carried to him on the air, making the decision for him.

  He let his arms drop at his sides. That was Sister Henderson, whistling her way near. She was an upbeat Gawk, long-limbed and surprisingly nimble, and she'd certainly catch him if he ran now. Besides, he told himself, would it really hurt just to look at the children? He'd seen precious few castes in his time, and no children at all. Maybe he could spy on them without even showing himself. There was no special danger in that.

  He started walking back through the graves to meet the Sister, joining the chalk-white gravel path as it circled round the shady Abbey's side. To either side the graveyard stretched away in mottled headstones and uneven brown railings; the realm he'd grown up adventuring within. Every chip of stone and shard of rust was known to him, like a second skin atop his scars.

  He met Sister Henderson halfway to the Abbey front lawns. In the weak light she looked like a phantom scarecrow, so long and tall, her horse-thin Gawk's head standing high on her lanky neck.

  "In the graveyard, then," she said, arching one eyebrow dramatically. "How morose."

  Sen snorted. Sister Henderson always knew exactly what to say to poke a hole in his grander thoughts. "I was thinking."

  She nodded. "Of course you were. A lot to think about, I'm sure. Fate and destiny and such things."

  She took nothing seriously.

  "Don't tease me."

  "But Sen, you're so easy to tease. And look, you're a mess." She leaned in and picked some bits of dust from his tousled black hair. He tolerated it as she swept his hair first to one side, then the other. "What have you been doing, trying to dig up graves?"

  "I did my chores, then I took a walk in the yard."

  He wasn't going to tell her how close he'd come to climbing over the wall and fleeing, without even saying goodbye.

  "And you didn't wash again since?" Sister Henderson asked, plucking a miniscule grass seed off his shoulder and holding it up like evidence of a crime. "Honestly, you'd think I was your chambermaid. Now come on, destiny waits."

  She held out her hand, and resentfully he took it. He was too old for this, thirteen going on fourteen, but it was usually better not to argue with Sister Hen.

  They went together back through the graveyard, passing between jumbled ranks of ancient tombs, here and there studded with rain-worn statues of Saint Ignifer. Soon they rounded the corner of the Abbey's cathedral, and the grounds spread out before them; a broad expanse of grass stretching down to the pond and the black iron gates, bounded by tree-lined walls. Up the middle ran the white chalk path to the sacristy, beside the cathedral.

  Four of the children were sitting around a trestle table beneath the oft tree in the middle, being lectured by the Moth Abbess. Her large brown wings were spread open like she always held them at sermon, and her compound eyes glinted as though moved by the passion of the Heart. No doubt she was sharing with them the importance of the roles they would play.

  But it was easy not to think about that, now, because the children fascinated him. Their violent, clashing thoughts were stronger, hinting at histories Sen could only guess at. They were from castes and districts he'd only ever read about in books. He forgot to be careful and just stared.

  A Moleman, a Balast, a Blue and an Induran.

  The Moleman was short and compact, wearing the white-tubing suit of an unfealted usury butcher. Deep gray fur ran over his head, snout, paws, and tail snaking out from under the chair. At his waist hung a large round metal fob, which he turned steadily through his fingers. Sen knew that one day it would hold slivers of his debtor's flesh. The feeling rising off him was clinical and cold.

  This was Daveron. His name was written on Sen's left forearm.

  Beside him was the Balast, a hulking man of stone, with arms and legs as thick as oft-boles. The Moleman looked like a doll by comparison. He had a cragged, bald slate-gray head, atop a body that shone like rain-slicked dog-iron. Gellick.

  Sen watched him moving, miming the actions to some story with exaggerated sweeps and jerks, speaking in a deep and abrading voice. It reminded him of the refectory grindstones milling chaff. The sense of him was warm and simple, like the pond's sun-warmed shallows in summer.

  "Balasts are not supposed to live outside the Calk," Sen said to Sister Henderson quietly. "He'd be transported back if they found him. How did you get him here?"

  "Secret tunnels," said the Sister, and winked.

  Sen frowned.

  "All right, in a rickshaw with a blanket over him. Adjunc rarely stop them, because what low caste could afford o
ne?"

  Sen considered that. "And my mother chose him."

  "She chose them all," Henderson said and pointed. "The ladies too, Feyon and Mare."

  The two girls sat side by side at the table, though they were of very different castes. On the right was Feyon, a Blue-skinned girl from the Roy, unlike anything Sen had seen before. She wore an intricate white dress of puffs, ruffles, and silvered linings, making her look part winter frost, part chiseled pearl. Her red hair was turned in elaborate hanging curls, framing a face so beautiful it almost hurt to look at, matched with a sense of elegance and sweet refinement. She was leaning subtly away from the low-caste girl at her left.

  Sister Henderson chuckled. "Prettier than chopped potatoes, yes? You're blushing, Sen. The other one's spied you, though."

  The second girl was an Induran Deadhead, Mare, wearing one of the Abbey's black cassocks. She glared right back at him. The left side of her head was deflated inward like a rotten pumpkin, as though half her skull had been hacked out. Her face on that side looked melted, sagging over her left eye and dropping her lip slack, though it was hard to make out through her thicket of matted hair. She seemed like a snarl, something slithering in the dark.

  "Watch out for that one," Sister Henderson said. "She's as bitter as old bark."

  "What happened to her?"

  "Molemen took her brain. Now shall we?"

  Sen nodded. He'd been seen, and there was no point in trying to run now. They started across the grass.

  "There should be five," he said as they walked.

  "Very astute," said Sister Henderson. "There will be. The fifth is late, Alam. Now you can welcome them."

  As they drew near to the trestle table, the Abbess stopped her lecture, pulled in her wings, and gestured Sen to come forward.