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The Exalting
Future House Publishing
Cover image copyright: Shutterstock.com. Used under license.
Text © 2019 Dan Allen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Future House Publishing at [email protected].
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-944452-93-3 (paperback)
Developmental editing by Emma Hoggan
Substantive editing by Sara Anstead
Copy editing by Emma Snow and Erin Searle
Proofreading by Ahnasariah Larsen
Interior design by Ahnasariah Larsen
For Bryce, Nicole, Micah, Clara and Cyrus, who always challenge me to dream bigger
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Table of Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
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Acknowledgements
About the Author
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Chapter 1
The purple-needled pine trees grew denser, and Dana knew she was close. She looked back. Norr was seven miles away, eclipsed by the trees, but she could still make out the black smoke rising from its workshops against a backdrop of white dust clouds from the sayathenite polishing yards. She turned to continue up the slope toward her grandfather’s cabin with one thought in mind.
It’s time I found out.
This time her parents wouldn’t be there to steer the conversation away. She would have her grandfather all to herself. It was high time somebody told her the truth. Every other city in Aesica practiced blood-binding. Only Norr forbade it.
Why?
After a few more paces, Dana realized she was limping.
Oh, here we go again.
She was no stranger to pain. But this was not like sore muscles from hiking. The ache ran deep into the bones of her lower leg.
Dana’s hands curled into fists.
Trappers.
With every step she took, the pain grew sharper until it bit and stabbed at her flesh.
Dana had never been caught in trap, or shot with an arrow, yet she could describe in exquisite detail exactly how it felt to have a tibia crushed or punctured lungs fill with blood.
For her it was impossible not to take the killings personally.
Leave it. You’re almost there.
But Dana turned aside, angry determination coursing through her.
This would only take a minute. Trappers only checked an area every few days.
But there would be consequences if she were caught. Freeing a trapped animal was the same as theft.
And what about the murder of an animal?
Dana ran. The pain grew with every step until she was nearly in tears. Looking up, she spied a young nox. The bloody jaws of a hanging snap-trap held the sloth by its leg. Its lavender autumn fur was perfectly grizzled with the beginnings of its white winter coat—a rare catch.
Dana quickly climbed the nearest tree. When the nox was within arm’s length, Dana wedged her foot in the fork of a branch and shook stray strands of black hair out of her view. She closed her eyes and tried to quell her nausea.
Pull the pin. Get out.
Dana opened her eyes and leaned toward the trapped animal.
The nox jerked its leg in desperation.
“Ow!” Dana’s leg gave way under a stab of pain, as if her own muscles were convulsing around shattered bone. A branch struck the side of her face, stopping her fall.
“Stop it, will you? That really hurts.”
The nox suddenly gave up trying to pull its leg free, and the throbbing pains waned. It wasn’t her words, but her will that had made it stop.
Having passed a good chunk of her own volition to the nox, Dana was left without any desire to climb farther out on the branch.
Come on! You can do this.
A pall of apathy hung over her. Saving the nox just didn’t seem to matter anymore.
You have to do this.
If only to reduce the pain radiating from her leg, Dana drew out of her jacket a hook-tipped iron rod. She reached out with the tool to pull the ring on the linchpin of the trap’s axle. The spring-loaded mechanism was designed to be easily released, though not by a nox’s wide fingers.
Suddenly, the nox’s sifa flared. The three spine-like tufts of twined hair rose at the back of its neck, fanning into a feathery headdress. The sifa were not as long or colorful as the sifa of the marmar monkeys or as articulated as those Xahnans like Dana possessed. But the meaning was clear.
Danger.
Crunching leaves and breaking twigs sounded from below, and the nox twisted to look down. The trap swung out of reach.
Dana’s heart skipped into a panic at the sounds of footsteps—two sets coming from opposite directions, and headed right for her.
Trappers.
The young nox’s eyes shone with fear and desperation.
Dana was out of time.
I was so close! In utter frustration Dana dropped from the tree and landed in a crouch.
Two men emerged from the trees, one on her left and the other on her right. Neither carried a game bag or a long-hooked pole for releasing a trap.
“There’s the druid.” The man to her left pointed at her. His red-brown hair was so matted his sifa were barely visible. “Told you she’d come.”
It wasn’t a trap for the nox. It was a trap for me!
I should have listened for them.
T
here were plenty of birds and scampers in the wood that might have noticed the trappers. But she had only been focused on the nox.
As a druid adept, Dana felt things that only the Creator should. There were thousands like her on Xahna, from each of the four classes of adepts. They were revered and recruited for their abilities.
In blood-bound cities, some were even exalted.
But in Norr, they were a nuisance. Some, like her friend Forz, kept it a secret. Others tried to starve it into submission.
There was no cure. She would always feel pain that was not her own.
The other man closed in from her right, tramping through a tarberry bush. “Look who’s clever now.” He had a full beard, and all three pairs of his black sifa were tucked down against his neck.
This was no friendly greeting.
“Caught you in the act.”
Dana forced her inferior sifa to lift from off her neck, where they had lain tucked under her hair. It made her all the more conscious of the fact the three pairs of twined hair weren’t fully developed, still half-bound in tight bundles. “Hello,” she said, forcing the words out. “What brings you out here?”
“Ha. Very funny. It’s prison for you this time,” said the trapper on her right. “The magistrate won’t stand for this.” He held up two dirt-crusted fingers. “And we’ve got two witnesses.”
There was nothing to say. Still, she dug for an excuse. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” Yet.
“Liar. What’s that hooked bar for—scratching your bottom?”
Dana twirled it deftly and mimed the motion. “Yes.”
“And what do you think you were doing in the tree?”
“Scratching my bottom.”
“With a nox in a trap!” laughed the second trapper. “What a load of—”
Dana made a break for it. She feinted downhill, then jumped back the other direction and raced into the trees. If she could lead the men far enough, she might be able to loop back and free the poor nox.
She ran across the trade road that cut through the forest, clearing both steam-wagon ruts in a leap, and headed for a cluster of trees where she could hide in the mass of dense purple boughs.
But the men were faster than her. They closed quickly from both sides and seized her arms.
Dana thrashed, but their hands held her like vises.
“You try to call one of your little friends,” said the bearded trapper holding her right arm up away from her body, “and we’ll just kill you.”
“Is that so?” called another voice from nearby. Its wavering tone hinted at advanced age, and it was laced with curious interest.
Dana recognized the voice. Togath!
Togath, her grandfather, stepped around a large tree trunk. He was tall and thin, as if he’d been stretched out. His inferior sifa flared politely in greeting. “If you mean to kill her,” he continued. “I can help.”
“What?” Dana gasped.
“She is a troublemaker—the worst kind.”
“I am not!”
The warning glance from Togath told her that she wasn’t helping. “Shall I cut out her tongue first, so she doesn’t scream?”
“I can still scream without a tongue. How does a tongue help you scream? It’s more of a throat thing.”
“Dana!” he snapped. “Will you shut up, please? We’re discussing your imminent demise. It’s not a matter of debate.” There was a familiar twinkle in his eye.
“Fine, cut out my tongue first.”
“Yes.” Togath stepped forward. “And then the fun begins. We’ll probably have to dismember her, so they don’t find any body parts—best if we eat them.” He looked from one trapper to the other. “Have you ever eaten a Xahnan?”
The two men looked at him in complete horror.
“Come to my cabin. I’ve got plenty left over from the last trespasser.”
The trappers exchanged a horrified glance.
“Well, if you haven’t the stomach for this sort of thing.” In a flash he drew a short knife and brandished it in the face one trapper and then other. “You best leave her to me and get off my property.”
The trappers let go of her like she was a live rhynoid vine and beat a quick retreat.
“Honestly,” Dana said. “Cut out my tongue?”
Her grandfather laughed until his wheezes ended in a cough. “Alright. Let’s get you away from the scene of the crime.”
Dana gave a grudging look back in the direction of the nox. It would be dead before she got back. That hurt even more than the phantom pains in her leg. “Fine.”
* * *
Dana sat across from her grandfather in his small cabin, ignoring her bowl of bitter broth, and contemplating doing something else completely forbidden.
I can ask him now. My parents will never know.
There were certain things that were forbidden to even discuss in the free city of Norr.
But I’m not in Norr—well not in the city proper. She was still in the jurisdiction of its rangers.
Close enough.
Dana sipped the herbal tea that tasted like scorched dirt with overtones of overripe fruit and smiled at her grandfather, swallowing back the question that beat at her from inside.
Nobody in Norr, including Dana, was blood-bound to a ka. But every other city she had heard of allegedly practiced blood-binding. Some even required it.
Perhaps what made it all the worse was the one thing she knew about the making of a ka.
A ka was chosen from among a city’s adepts, people with abilities like hers.
The fact that her city was the only one without a ka seemed a bit off, like vegetables that were just starting to get a little slimy. You could stomach it, but only if you closed your eyes and plugged your nose.
Dana had heard every good reason that the city of Norr had banned blood-binding. Inequality. Too much power concentrated in one person. The obvious potential for corruption. Blasphemy before the Creator. But that only her made her more curious why the other cities all practiced it.
Dana ran her hands along her sturdy calf-length trousers, considering how to broach the subject. It was like asking how babies were made—there was no way to bring it up without Togath wondering why she was asking.
If she didn’t ask now, she would have a long walk home to nurse her regret.
It’s now or never. She raised her voice. “Togath?”
“Hmm?” Without looking up, her grandfather put a spoon of steaming soup into his mouth. Wearing his usual gray waistcoat and long-sleeved shirt, he looked like a simple woodsman. But he knew things—forbidden things.
“If blood-binding is so wrong,” Dana began, speaking quickly to avoid being interrupted, “why is it done in other cities?”
Togath’s spoon clinked against the tin platter under his bowl. He looked up. The small distance between them seemed to open like a spreading ice crevasse.
Dana bit her lip, hoping that this would be her first glimpse into the dominant culture on Xahna—the world in which she lived like an exile in the unbound city of Norr.
Togath opened his mouth to speak but stopped. He absently twisted the key on the winding spring on the watch around his neck, his pause belying a deeper struggle. “Dana, you know discussion of bloodstones and the exalting are forbidden in Norr.” His lips pressed together, forming wrinkles on his narrow face. He kneaded his hands as if trying to quell a nagging ache. “And besides, what would I know?”
Far more than he’s letting on.
Dana glanced out the window. The pale blue sky was already fading.
Twilight. I’m running out of time.
At least at this altitude, there weren’t any predatory rhynoid vines along the trail. She could risk staying a little longer.
“You lived in Shoul Falls. It’s a blood-bound city,” Dana said. “You must know more about the making of a ka than anyone else in Norr, including the cleric.” Dana couldn’t hide her irritation on that point. “Why do we even need a cleric?”
“Anyway, it’s ridiculous going to meditation when we don’t even have a ka to pray to.”
“It builds strength of spirit,” Togath said. “As does the fast.”
“I’d rather endure public humiliation.” Dana’s sifa shook at the very thought of foregoing food.
“Yes, I recall you’ve made that decision before. But you should fast, Dana. It will make your will stronger.” His superior sifa lifted upward and to the sides, punctuating the edict. Then her grandfather stood, lifted his half-eaten bowl of soup, and set it in a brick-lined sink, seeming to have lost his appetite.
Stronger. It wasn’t strength the Norrians wanted from her, it was self-denial.
Dana crossed her arms. “I don’t need to fast just to prove I can not do something. I’m strong enough.”
“Strong enough to be a teenage girl in a mining town without any responsibilities except skinning her father’s game and appraising animals for auction.” Togath turned his head and gave her a wry smile.
“I hate skinning game.” Dana shuddered. “I can see how they died when I touch them—why do I have to see that?”
“I wish I knew.” Togath rubbed the back of his neck. “The Torsican scholars claim the veil between this world and the Creator’s realm is thin. Perhaps it is not so in other places.”
“Other worlds.” Dana had heard all the tales of farseeing ka who gazed into the heavens and felt other beings—creatures like Xahnans, walking upright with two legs and arms and familiar faces. Children of the Creator. Of course, she hadn’t seen any of that. Her senses hit their limit at well less than a mile.
She huffed a breath of frustration. “If there are so many places to live, why did the Creator curse me to live in Norr?”
In guarded conversations with sayathenite traders and steam-wagon drivers, Dana had learned that young adepts in other cities were invited to live in a sanctum, trained as acolytes by senior adepts, and eventually given positions of power under the keeper of the city’s bloodstone—the ka.
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