Schisms
The Scribe Cycle #2
by James Wolanyk
Pub
Date: 7/10/2018
Three
long years have passed since Anna, First of Tomas, survived the purge
in Malijad after being forced to use her scribe sigils to create an
army of immortals. Safely ensconced in the shelter of the Nest, a
sanctuary woven by one of her young allies, Anna spends her days
tutoring the gifted yet traumatized scribe, Ramyi—and coming to
terms with her growing attachment to an expatriate soldier in her
company.
Away
from her refuge, war drums continue to beat. Thwarted in her efforts
to locate the elusive tracker and bring him to justice, Anna turns to
the state of Nahora and its network of spies for help. But Nahoran
assistance comes with a price: Anna must agree to weaponize her magic
for the all-out military confrontation to come.
Dispatched
to the front lines with Ramyi in tow, Anna will find her new
alliances put to the test, her old tormentors lying in wait, and the
fate of a city placed in her hands. To protect the innocent, she must
be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. For even in this season of
retribution, the gift of healing may be the most powerful weapon of
all.
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The
lodge’s main hall was quiet and hazy with a pall of pipe smoke. Most of those
lying on the earthen floor were Hazani, their tunics and wraps hanging from the
rafters to dry the day’s sweat. A pair of Huuri, gleaming translucently in
candlelight, lay huddled together near the door with their packs clutched to
their chests. But the stillness was deeper than an absence of guests; the
lodge’s ornate silk carpets and silver kettle sets were gone, likely converted
to a few stalks or iron bars by a crafty peddler.
Déjà
vu crept over Anna, thick and threatening.
Yatrin
and Baqir headed for the latrine dugout behind a partition, while Khara slumped
down beside the door. The woman fished a cylinder of aspen and a blade from her
pack, whittling with rhythmic scrapes, eyeing Ramyi as she wandered aimlessly
between cushions and hookahs. When Anna was certain of everybody’s routines,
she jogged up the spiral stairwell in darkness.
The
muffled cries of babes leaked through locked doors on the second and third
levels, but the fourth was silent. Anna wondered if that was conspicuous, or if
it might lure unwanted attention from those who searched for that kind of
thing, but she trusted in Tensic’s judgment: Many of the veterans in Anna’s
company, living or dead, had arranged things through him. Sharp minds and tight
lips were rare things in the north.
Anna
crossed the corridor and its patches of moonlight, halting at the sixth door.
She gave a soft tap with her knuckles and waited.
Silence.
She
recalled her infiltrator’s instructions, the exact exchange of one knock for
one cough. If she hadn’t been so headstrong, she might’ve fetched Yatrin. But
she was. With heartbeats trickling through her core, Anna reached into the
folds of her shawl, unlatched a shortened ruj from the clasp on a
ceramic-plated vest, and cradled it against her hip. It was the length of her
forearm, strangely cumbersome despite her having trained with it nearly as long
as it had existed as a prototype among Hazani cartels. Two stubby barrels
housed in a cedar frame, a fully-wound cog on its side, payload sacs of iron
shavings waiting beside spring plungers. Most of her fighters had taken to
calling it by northern
name:
yuzel, thorn. Crude, inaccurate, unpredictable—but that had become the nature
of this war.
Anna
pressed her back to the wall and took hold of the door handle.
Cycles
of training coalesced in her stilled lungs, in the hare-twitch muscles of her
wrists, inviting peace in the face of unease. Clarity gave form to violence,
after all. In a single breath she shoved the door inward, dropped to one knee,
swept her yuzel’s dual barrels across the room.
The
mirrorman’s body was sprawled out in a wash of candlelight and ceramic
fragments, flesh glimmering with slick red. Stale air and sweat wafted out to
meet her.
“Shes’tir.” Her curse was a whisper, a surge of hot blood.
Anna
stood, keeping the yuzel aimed at the shadows around the corpse. Piece by
piece, the room revealed the scope of their work, starting with blood-spattered
mud-and-straw walls. A dented copper kettle, an overturned table, a tapestry
shredded by errant blade slashes. Then she saw it, gleaming
like
a spiderweb or silk strand: a trip wire was suspended across the doorway, just
above ankle-level, set with enough precision to rival some of Malijad’s best
killers.
But
subtlety had never been the way of southerners.
After
edging to the left and right, examining the chamber’s hidden corners for
assailants she suspected were long gone, Anna stepped over the trip wire and
approached the body carefully.
His
face was distorted, bulging out and cracked inward with oozing welts, both eyes
swollen shut. A garrote’s deep purple traces ringed his neck. With some
difficulty, Anna discerned that he’d also been a southerner, not a local
conscript or hired hand from Hazan; he’d had naturally pale skin, now darkened
by years beneath a withering sun. A mercenary. But his role—passing information
through a mirror’s glints—had made him their best chance for information on the
tracker’s whereabouts.
Their
only chance, after three years of frayed leads and compromised operations.
Anna
bent down and turned the man’s head from side to side, noting its coldness, its
turgid and leathery texture as a result of beatings. His lips were dark, and—
Ink.
A
dark, narrow stripe of ink ended at the crest of his lower lip, originating
somewhere far deeper in his mouth. The application had been hasty, forceful
even. Using her middle finger, Anna peeled the mirrorman’s lip forward. A
triangular pattern had been needled into the soft tissue, still inflamed
with
networks of red capillaries but recognizable all the same: It was an old
Nahoran system, more a product of surveyors than soldiers, aiming to meld
coordinates with time.
Here,
now, her only chance.
Anna
reattached her yuzel to its hook, slipped her pack off, fished out a brass
scroll tube and charcoal stick. With a moment of silence to listen, to observe
the empty doorway and the night market’s routine din, she copied the symbol
onto the blank scroll. She then furled the parchment
and
slipped it back into its tube.
Its
weight was eerie in her pack, crushing with importance she understood both
intensely yet not at all.
She
hurried out of the chamber and toward the stairwell, but before she’d cleared
the corridor she glanced outside, where she noticed a dark yellow cloth waving
atop a post near the paddock. It hadn’t been there when they arrived. Her
breath seized in the back of her mouth and—
A
door squealed on its hinges.
Anna
pivoted around, yuzel unclasped and drawn in both hands, eyes focused to the
slender ruj barrel emerging from the seventh doorway. A dark hand followed,
swathed in leather strips far too thick for northern fighters. She slid to the
left and squeezed the trigger.
It
was a hollow whisper in the corridor, perhaps a handful of sand pelting mud, a
rattle down her wrists. Iron shavings collided as the magnetic coils
accelerated them, sparking in brilliant whites and blues and oranges. The wall
behind the shooter exploded in a burst of dust and dried grass, sending
metal
shards ricocheting and skittering across the floor. A scream ceased in a single
gust, as bone and cloth and flesh scattered just as quickly.
The
shooter staggered forward in the haze, howling as he stared at the stump of his
wrist.
Anna
fired again.
When
the dark cloud vanished, the shooter’s upper half was strewn down the corridor
and dripping from the ceiling.
She
spun away, sensing the tremors in her hands and the hard knot in her throat,
and started down the stairwell. Three years of violence hadn’t made killing any
more pleasurable, nor even easier, but decidedly more common. In fact, time had
only made her more aware of how warriors were shaped: The nausea and terror
remained, but everything was so perfunctory, done as habitually as breathing or
chewing. Not that she had the luxury of being revolted by that fact. As she
descended she unscrewed the weapon’s empty shaving pouches and replaced
them with fresh bulbs.
Scribes
The
Scribe Cycle #1
Pawns
in an endless war, scribes are feared and worshipped, valued and
exploited, prized and hunted. But there is only one whose powers can
determine the fate of the world . . .
Born
into the ruins of Rzolka’s brutal civil unrest, Anna has never
known peace. Here, in her remote village—a wasteland smoldering in
the shadows of outlying foreign armies—being imbued with the magic
of the scribes has made her future all the more uncertain.
Through
intricate carvings of the flesh, scribes can grant temporary
invulnerability against enemies to those seeking protection. In an
embattled world where child scribes are sold and traded to corrupt
leaders, Anna is invaluable. Her scars never fade. The immunity she
grants lasts forever.
Taken
to a desert metropolis, Anna is promised a life of reverence, wealth,
and fame—in exchange for her gifts. She believes she is helping to
restore her homeland, creating gods and kings for an immortal
army—until she witnesses the hordes slaughtering without reproach,
sacking cities, and threatening everything she holds dear. Now, with
the help of an enigmatic assassin, Anna must reclaim the power of her
scars—before she becomes the unwitting architect of an apocalyptic
war.
Their
baying rose from the southern bogs, low and tortured, warning fieldmen to
gather roaming sows and bleary eyed mothers to bolt their shutters. Then came
the screeching that told caravan drivers to seek refuge behind earthworks and
palisades.
But
the targets of their hunt had no time to think of shelter. Anna, First of
Tomas, was too busy thinking of death. She wondered if it would be sudden and
painless, numbing her exhaustion like bathing in winter streams. Perhaps death
was agonizing, which explained the sobs of feverish men who—
Just two leagues, she reminded
herself, even as her steps faltered among the oaks and saplings and
lichen-choked stone, all looming monstrously in the fog. Even as her pulse
drummed in her temples. The lake is two
leagues away. But the air was humid and foul, too thick to breathe.
Everything smelled of carcasses reclaimed by the mud.
Her
predictions had placed the trackers at five leagues by dawn, yet beyond the
latticework of branches, the skies were still a murky wash. Darkness hadn’t yet
been flushed from the horizon. No, it was impossible
for
them to make up this much ground before sunrise. They’d come earlier every
year, ever since the village started to learn their tactics, but this was
calculated.
Somebody
told.
“What
is it?” Julek winced. “You’re hurting me.”
Anna
glanced down. She’d absently clamped onto her brother’s wrist, turning his
fingers a pallid blue. Her grip eased as she focused on the predawn stillness.
Mother often told her that she had their kin’s sharpest ears, but now she hated
the honor. She heard the rustling of shrubs, the startled flight of a thousand
birds, the slap of paws on damp reeds as
huntsmen
cut across the floodplains.
“Nothing,”
she said, hoping the boy was too young to understand. She was hardly an elder,
but old enough to tell convincing lies. Old enough to make an eight-year-old
feel that he wasn’t being hunted, and that they’d spend their morning with toes
dipped in crisp water, staring out at the dark pines across the lake. Weaving
her fingers into the links of her silver necklace, Anna pulled Julek toward the
ferns. “If we don’t hurry, we’ll spend all day out here.”
“It
isn’t even sunup yet,” Julek said. He frowned at the beasts’ cries.
“Anna,
what’s that?”
“Elk,”
she whispered.
Ahead
lay the gloom of deeper woods, and behind them, a sprawl of waterlogged fields.
She’d been forced to carry Julek through the bogs, and all the while she’d made
him laugh by pretending she was his warhorse. Her new boots were ruined, and
her linen leggings were soaked to the knee, but it hardly mattered. She
wouldn’t be returning.
“Come
on, little bear,” she said, waving a gnat away from her face.
“Here,
come on. I’ve got you.”
He
scrunched his brow, clenched his tongue between crooked teeth, and swung his right
boot out. Pitching forward, he caught Anna’s arm for balance. His left leg was
more deformed, but the momentum pulled him into an awkward gait. “Anna, it
isn’t making me fast. Whatever you rubbed on my arm.”
Anna
stole a sniff of her free wrist, breathing deep for the twistroot’s sap-like
odor. In its place, she smelled only sweat and ancient wool, and realized the
beasts hadn’t latched onto a false scent. She’d mixed the salves incorrectly,
perhaps forgetting the tallow to waterproof it on their skin. It was too late
now, of course. They were closing in.
“Anna,
please,” Julek whined. “I need to sit down. That’s all.”
“When
we reach the lake, we can sit down. Is that fair?”
“No,”
Julek said. “The lake is an hour away.”
“Less
than that, if we hurry. Isn’t that right?”
“I
can’t hurry.”
There
was pain in his voice, and worse yet, sincerity. Back home, he could barely
pace around the field or crawl onto his cot by himself, and he’d been excited
by the idea of a secret trip to the lake without his riding pony. For once,
he’d been trusted to keep pace on his own two feet. Now it was an exercise in
cruelty.
“Anna!”
“I
know,” she said softly. She blinked away prickling tears, wondering if they
came from desperation or pity. When she saw another cluster of crows scatter
from the treetops, she realized it was both. “Julek, we can’t disturb these
men. I need you to be quiet.”
“Why?”
he whimpered. “You’re hurting me.”
Anna
bit into her lower lip, threatening to draw blood. She tried to soften her grip
on him, but couldn’t. Letting go meant death.
The
boy jerked his arm back, twisting free of Anna’s hold.
She
rounded on him with clenched fists. “Julek!”
But
he was already crumpled among ferns and overhanging thistle, his breathing hard
and broken between whimpers. Thorns fixed his tunic in place, leaving his legs
sprawled limply behind him.
“Julek,
please,” Anna whispered. She knelt beside him and reached out, but he recoiled,
pinning his arm to his chest. His tunic sleeve ended above the elbow, exposing
the lashes from the briar patches. Beneath the blood, mirrored across his face
and neck and fragile ankles, his rounded sigil shifted in luminous white. The
symbol was cryptic yet familiar in Anna’s mind: the boy’s essence, unique to
him alone. To glimpse such a thing was a gift and burden known only to scribes.
“I’m sorry.”
Julek
glanced away, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Just take me home,
Anna. I don’t like this. I want to go back.”
“Fine,”
she said. Again she heard the trackers crashing through the underbrush. Panic
put a burning flush in her cheeks. “Come on, Julek, we can go.”
The
boy looked up at her, tears streaking his freckles and trailing down his dusty
cheeks. “You’re lying to me.”
Branches
snapped, perhaps in the grove a pence-league away.
“Never,”
Anna said. She offered a hand to coax her brother’s arm out of hiding.
He
shook his head. “Something’s wrong.”
“No,”
she said in a broken whisper.
“You’re
crying,” he said. “Anna, who are they? What’s wrong?”
Out
of sight, the beasts growled.
Anna
snapped her focus to the expanse of dead brush behind them, scanning for any
sign of disturbance among the thorns. But the morning was still a filthy gray,
staining the forest in monochrome, and she couldn’t discern anything beyond the
dark slashes of trees and creeping fog. The scene only grew blurrier as her
eyes watered.
She
glanced back at Julek. “We’re fine. I just cut myself.” Anna held up her right
hand and fought to ease the shaking. There was a smear of blood beneath her
ring finger. “See? Just a small cut. I’ll bandage it at home.”
“You
never cry.” His next teardrop rolled until Anna wicked it away with a trembling
thumb. “Are you scared?”
No, little bear, she wanted to say,
even as the teardrop stung her skin, everything is all
right. She
opened her mouth, but the words vanished.
Cracking
twigs burned away her breaths.
It
all seemed so foolish now. Even if she reached the raft, she didn’t know where
to go. The tanner’s son never specified which direction she had to travel to
reach Lojka, nor how far. And what good were her salt clusters if she conflated
pinches and grabs, and had never asked how much to pay for anything? Some of
the local boys even said that the northern cities didn’t take salt as payment.
Was she even going north? How far could they go without food?
The
longer she stared into Julek’s eyes, the less such things mattered.
“Give
me your arm,” she commanded. Julek obeyed with hesitation, and Anna took hold
of his wrist with one hand and seized a wad of his tunic with the other,
dragging the thin boy to his feet and bracing his body against hers. “Just like
the fields, okay?” She dropped into a narrow squat and allowed him to lean
forward, bearing his full weight across her back and meshing his hands beneath
her chin. “I’ll keep you safe, little bear.”
On
any other day, Julek would’ve been considered light. Most of his muscles were
atrophied from years of housework and bed rest, and unlike the other
boys—indeed, unlike Anna—his daily meal was a mug of boiled kasha. Their father
could still lift him with a single arm. But today it was all wrong.
Anna
had been too nervous to eat for days. She’d traveled a league in total
darkness, and another two in marshlands. Her feet were waterlogged and
bleeding, her legs threatening to buckle with every step.
Lukewarm
sweat beaded along her brow and stung her eyes. When she stopped listening to
the wet pulse of her own heartbeats, she heard boots stomping through the brush
behind her, quickening as they drew closer. With every exhale, her ribcage
constricted. Stagnant air burned in her lungs as she emerged from withered
grass and into the mire, hemmed in by drowning trees.
Her
boots sank into the muck, squelching as she fought to move on. Flickers of
memory, rusted trapper’s teeth and bloody bear flesh and desperate animal
thoughts, exploded into her awareness. Escape. But every
step pulled her deeper, swallowed her boots to the ankle. Julek’s weight damned
them. Anna worked to free her boot, her legs cramping with the effort, but it
remained trapped. “Julek,” she said, still pulling, “if I let you down now,
could you walk?”
He
made no response.
She
repeated the question, tugging at the boy’s trouser leg. “It’s very important.”
The calm of her voice died with the crunching of nearby branches. She knew they
were within sight, but she couldn’t afford to look, especially with Julek
clutching her. The boy’s muffled prayers fed the dread in her gut. “Julek,” she
whispered to the shuffle of unbearably
close
steps. “I want you to stay beside me, no matter what. I know you can do that.”
Anna bent at the left knee, struggling to remain upright as Julek swung himself
around and dangled freely. She reached down to pull his limp legs from the
water, but the boy clutched her tighter. “Don’t worry. Just hold onto me.”
Her
knees gave way, and she toppled to the left. But before she could feel the
lukewarm water she collided with moss and termite-ravaged wood. Her pale arm
slid into the notch between branches and exposed her own cuts, much deeper and
brighter, running down leaf-littered skin from elbow to palm. But her flesh was
bare, devoid of the sigils she saw
on
everybody else. A scribe carried no essence, they said. No protection against
the bloodshed from which they spared others.
“It’s
okay,” Anna whispered. Boots thumped nearby.
Julek
stared up at her with wide, swollen eyes, his grip tightening around her neck.
He was trying not to cry, trying to be like her. “Home, Anna. We need to go
home.”
Behind
her the screeching that once seemed so distant was now deafening. It was a
guttural moaning, no doubt muffled in some way, communicating starvation that
only trackers could put into their beasts.
Flesh
wasn’t enough to satisfy it now. It needed violence.
In
spite of the blood, Anna’s mouth went dry. She stared at Julek as her vision
blurred, and the tips of her ears turned cold. Before long the crackle of
leaves overtook her ragged breaths.
“You’re
quick,” said a passionless voice, no more than ten paces away.
“You
must be exhausted. Set him down, rest against the tree. There’s no need to
hurry.”
In
Anna’s mind it was a simple thing to retrieve the hunting blade tucked into her
belt. But it seemed impossible to move her hands. When the beast growled behind
her, close enough to rustle her trouser leggings with its hot breath, she
lost her nerve.
James
Wolanyk is the author of the Scribe Cycle and a teacher from
Boston. He holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of
Massachusetts, where his writing has appeared in its quarterly
publication and The Electric Pulp. After studying fiction, he pursued
educational work in the Czech Republic, Taiwan, and Latvia. Outside
of writing, he enjoys history, philosophy, and boxing. His
post-apocalyptic novel, Grid, was released in 2015. He currently
resides in Riga, Latvia as an English teacher.
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