Compendium Page 5

  Cedar must have caught her staring at the ladder and mistaken her interest for that of the books. “That’s just the basic collection for acolyte study,” he said. “The Order has quite a large archive, greater than even this room. It’s only one level up. I’ll take you to see on the morrow.”

  As it was, Mia had never seen so many books in one place in her entire life and had trouble picturing the archive Cedar had described. Although she was a voracious reader, her access to reading material had always been limited by her circumstances; living in the rural hammock of Hackberry, she hadn’t been exposed to a great many books. Over the cycles, however, she had built up a small collection, mostly by trading for them, whether for repair services, manual labor, or whatever she could forage in the wild.

  There were also a few books that had traveled with her and

  Father over the cycles. Father used to read them to her when she was a child. He wasn’t overly interested in reading—he was much more concerned with ranging, hunting, and building—but he had taught Mia to read and made sure she had access to books whenever they crossed their path.

  She suddenly thought of the time she had come running home one afternoon, waving a heavy volume triumphantly in both hands. Father had squinted skeptically at her acquisition, as if she were brandishing some sort of incendiary or other potentially harmful device.

  “Look,” Mia had said, opening the book to its center and beaming. “I traded ten gourds for this huge book!”

  Father shrugged and peered at the open page, his skepticism holding strong. “What’s it about?”

  “That’s the best part,” she replied. “It’s filled with words and all their meanings. Every word I’ve ever read or heard is in here and many more that I’ve never heard of at all!” Her excitement overflowed, making her bounce on the balls of her feet.

  “Well, what use is that?” Father said crossly. “You traded ten gourds for a book about nothing?”

  Mia rolled her eyes at him. The traveling merchant had failed to see the value in the book as well. Although he’d hemmed and hawed at her offer of ten gourds, Mia was certain he felt he’d gotten the much better end of the bargain.

  She had spent considerable time after that holed up in her secret hiding place, reading through that book, studying all the words and saying them out loud to herself and any fauna that happened to wander past.

  Father never understood, but he always supported her. The pain that seared her chest when Dominus Nikola first announced the contents of Father’s letter flared up again, and she suddenly felt as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs and there was none to draw from the void surrounding her.

  “I’ll think on it,” Mia said to Cedar as her mind snapped back to the shelves that loomed over her bunk. The archive would definitely interest her. Right now she just wanted to be alone but doubted she’d ever be alone again. “I think I ought to settle in now. Many thanks for the assistance.”

  She turned away from him and barely heard his retreating footsteps. She set down her pack and bag in the empty stone box that was now her home and sat on the lumpy and simultaneously thin pallet mattress.

  What is this thing stuffed with, rocks? She swung her feet, still in their boots, up onto the bare mattress and laid her head down on the equally lumpy pillow. Even as Mia’s aching body protested, her consciousness slipped away.

  Some time later, she awoke and rolled onto her side. The mattress was still horribly uncomfortable. A deep darkness enveloped the silent barracks. An occasional cough or soft snore emerged from the shapeless lumps settled into their bunks. The air was breezeless, with no rustling of trees and no sounds of nature to calm her nerves.

  Just twenty-four hours earlier, she’d been a free woman, camping under the rolling colors of the daily spectacle in the night sky and listening to the soft hum of the forest and its residents. Now she was trapped in the stagnant air of the Order’s cavernous Compound.

  How in the blazes can they survive with their trees burrowed in the earth like this? In her daze-like state following SainClair through the underground compound, she hadn’t seen the elder hardwoods required to power the Order’s facilities. It was beyond the scope of any home she’d ever seen. This place must consume more power than the entirety of Willowslip, she thought. Where does it all come from?

  That wasn’t the most pressing question, though. Really, how could anyone be happy locked up in a stone box instead of surrounded by the warm, soothing buzz of the forest? In the suffocating darkness and stillness, Mia berated herself for not reading that stupid letter before the Dominus ever saw it. He must be lying. There was no way Father would have promised the clerics her service in exchange for some crazy treatment. And yet his behavior had been odd. Perhaps he had been telling her good-bye. With that thought in her head, she fell back into an uneasy sleep.

  7 The Oath

  Lumin Cycle 9515

  Melia Kannon sat at a small table, back stiff, eyes fierce. She circled her arms protectively around her chest. The small room was an alcove deep in the Compound, dank and moist with the life-giving detritus that nourished the Crater Grove. It filled the air with its earthy fragrance and their lungs with tiny particles. Hans sat across from her, his face a mask of calm. Melia wasn’t deceived. She saw the slight twitch in his right eye. They sat there a long time. The room was like a tomb—neither one shifted or breathed audibly. The air was completely still. Finally Melia coughed, breaking the silence.

  “It’s for the good of Lumin,” Hans said at last. “We must protect the key and our records at all cost.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Melia snapped. “For almost twenty cycles, we’ve been under constant assault by those…Druids, as they’ve taken to calling themselves. They’re convinced that the Counsel erred and that the only way back to civilization is to restore the Network. Long-term consequences be damned.”

  Gerard’s face flashed into her mind, and she had to blink it away and fight back tears. Rosewater’s people had finally finished her dear friend just this cycle while they were on a mission to the South. The Order already had sent a death notice to the SainClair estate, but it would be months before they heard anything back. The more lives the Druids took, the less inclined the Order was to try for a truce with them.

  “I know that as well as you do,” said Hans, rubbing a hand through his spiky hair.

  The brown of his hair was threaded with silver, his eyes severe, his brow low on his forehead. In that moment he very much reminded Melia of his uncle, Minister Draca, another dear friend lost to this madness. The list grew longer every cycle.

  “It’s a burden you’ve borne with dignity. You’ve done a service to us all. But these attacks have been increasing in recent cycles. It’s no longer safe to keep the key and book on your person. They must be secured.”

  “I made a sacred vow to Aris SainClair when she entrusted these items to me. Besides, the Druids only know about the key.”

  “That may be true, but you know better than I that they’ll need both the key and records if they hope to restore the Network. Our only advantage is that they don’t know this, an advantage that could easily disappear if either object fell into the wrong hands. We all have a stake in the protection of the records, especially those of us who’ve sealed them.”

  “A stake, yes, but these relics of Lumin’s past aren’t our birthright. They belong to Gerard’s family.”

  “He’s gone,” Hans said softly.

  “They’ll send someone to take his place,” Melia said, her voice also soft. “I know it.”

  “That’s irrelevant frankly,” Hans said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his robed chest. “Aris SainClair and my uncle set Gamma Protocol in motion. It did what they envisioned. It shut down the Network, and we’ve been living off individual hearthroots and groves for twenty cycles now. The worst of the chaos is behind us. Would you really jeopardize the ministers’ sacrifice? Would you risk reversing Gamma Protocol?�
��

  Melia sat silently, the book clutched against her chest. Its subtle warmth permeated through her robes, reassuring her that it was only sleeping and not dead.

  “Individually the key and the records are powerful, but together they can reverse all the work we’ve done in Lumin’s name,” said Hans, his eyes pleading with her now.

  “Even with them, they wouldn’t get into the Core. They don’t have the families on their side.”

  “You don’t think Rosewater’s murderous brood wouldn’t take by force what we won’t give willingly? Gerard should be evidence enough of that.”

  Melia winced and breathed deeply. “What do you propose?”

  Hans gestured around them. “This Compound has depths like no other structure I’ve known. We hide them—separate them and hide them.”

  “And how will the rest of the Order find them when they need them, when we’re gone?”

  “Preservation, research, restoration. This is our mission. We’ll pass on knowledge of the relics only to the leaders.”

  “And who decides who the leaders are?” Melia asked. “I myself wasn’t even a minister. Who gets to name the great families?”

  “It is done,” said Hans. “Gamma Protocol has chosen our leaders for us.”

  Melia closed her eyes, willing time to rewind back before the anguish of the past twenty cycles, back before Gamma Protocol, back to her island home of Senegast, to her happy son and daughter smiling up at her. Yet it persisted in its solemn forward march, dragging her unwillingly into decrepitude. Her children would be grown now. Perhaps they didn’t even remember her face. She thrust her arms out and placed the book in Hans’s hands.

  “Here, take it. Before I change my mind.”

  “And the key?”

  Melia pulled the key from her robes, lifting the long chain that held it over her head and placing it solemnly on top of the book.

  “Shall I hide them?” Hans asked.

  “No,” she said. “Let’s do it together.”

  8 The Barracks

  Lumin Cycle 10152

  Mia Jayne woke with the crinkly feel of Father’s letter in her hands and a terrible crick in her neck. In the dream she had opened the letter, and it was blank. The letter was a dream, but the crick was real. The dream lifted from her mind, leaving behind both relief and desolation. She wasn’t at home in her bed. She was in the Compound of the Order of Vis Firmitas on the most uncomfortable mattress she’d ever had the displeasure meeting. The lack of sunlight was disorienting. Accustomed to glancing out a window or up into the sky to determine the time, she was at a disadvantage here. The gourds along the walls and the overhead lanterns dimly lit the large room. She sat up on the mattress, her joints screaming. They apparently had just gotten used to the hard lumps of the pallet, and now it was asking too much to require movement so quickly. Mia was also parched. How long did I sleep? she wondered.

  It must still have been morning. The others were busily attending to miscellany in and about their bunks. A tall blond boy, about fifteen or so, was straightening his belt. His gawky hands brushed the robes into place. One of the younger girls was meticulously plaiting her thick brown hair into a neat braid while an older acolyte stood over her, guiding her hand and nodding, her plump cheeks pursed in concentration. An older man, maybe in his thirties, was seated at the center table with a large tome open in front of him. He frowned as he rubbed his temple absently, his hazel eyes narrowing as he studied the volume then flipped farther along in the book.

  Mia was surprised that no one had shaken her awake and commanded that she ready herself for the day. However, she was still a complete stranger here, and the other acolytes had their own business. They each wore a variation of the same general uniform, a taupe robe almost colorless in the dim light, blending into the drab stone background. The robe, wrapped in front of the body and belted at the waist, fell almost to the floor. Beneath that was a pair of flowing pants in the same brown-gray color and cinched at the ankles. Over the robe each acolyte wore a wide swath of fabric that circled the body and was pinned at the shoulder. For most acolytes this sash was nearly the same shade as the robe and pants, although some of them looked orangey in the light of the gourds. A gray metal pin sat at the shoulder atop the sash that held it into place. The designs of the pins varied.

  Mia felt out of place in her white gauzy pants, undershirt, sheer tunic, wide blue-green belt, and cream-colored overshirt, the entire ensemble somewhat grungy from travel and rumpled from sleep. Her clothes provided inadequate warmth in the cold, dank Compound.

  She rubbed her forehead and sighed. She was woefully unprepared for pretty much everything about her current situation. Her stone cubby would remain barren for some time. As she stretched her back gingerly, the fantastically uncomfortable mattress creaked under her legs. Blast it! What she wouldn’t give for one—who was she kidding?—all of those damnable furs they had at home. Father could have at least warned her of the cold.

  She stood and stretched her back and arms again. Almost instantaneously, Cedar appeared at the entrance of the cubby.

  “Good morn,” he said, and smiled cheerfully.

  She returned his friendly demeanor with what she hoped was one of her better scowls. “What’s in these mattresses?” she asked, rubbing her neck. “I feel like I slept on rocks.”

  “Escule beans,” Cedar replied.

  She raised an eyebrow in his direction and squinted.

  “I suppose they’re essentially small rocks,” he continued. “You’ll either acclimate, or you’ll procure an alternate mattress from somewhere. Many acolytes come prepared, and some even have custom-made robes.”

  She shouldn’t have been surprised but was regardless. It was naïve to assume that all acolytes came into service of the Order by indenture, but why would anyone willingly forsake the sun and trees for this cave?

  “Haven’t you been paying attention?” Mia asked, her voice laced with sarcasm. “In case you failed to notice, my presence here was entirely unplanned.”

  “What happened with the Dominus?” Cedar asked.

  She huffed and stretched her neck again.

  “Well,” he continued, ignoring her unpleasant mood, “the Order provides bedding, obviously, for acolytes, as well as meager but clean robes, basic toiletries, and facilities. It’s actually not a bad arrangement.” He shrugged.

  She sighed but decided against commenting. Complaining to Cedar wouldn’t change her circumstances.

  “I will say,” he said, then paused, as if considering his words. “Brother SainClair definitely has it in for you. I’ve never seen him look at any acolyte the way he was looking at you last night.” He squinted at her appraisingly.

  What are you looking at? “Well, that makes me feel loads better.”

  He laughed and clapped her on the back. She lost her balance and stumbled forward, muttering a curse as she fell. The older acolyte studying at the table turned to glare at them. If Cedar registered the attention, he didn’t react. Mia righted herself to a standing position and brushed the dust from her hands.

  “Well, as Brother SainClair obviously has no intention of properly settling you in, we should at least make sure you don’t stick out like a sore thumb,” Cedar said, and gestured to her belt.

  She doubted it was just her clothing that made her stick out, but perhaps she’d blend in better if dressed head to toe in drab. Making its own demands known, her stomach growled audibly.

  “Ah,” he added, “you missed the morning meal. I’m sure we can scavenge something, given the circumstances.”

  “That’s quite all right,” she said. She reached down to her lapin bag and snagged a rollie. “I still have some of these with me.” She took a big bite of the fruit and chewed contentedly.

  Cedar looked at the fruit and smiled. At least there would be some remnants of home for the short time she had until she ate them all. Cedar gestured for her to follow him toward the door of the barracks.

  “I’ll never
be able to find my way around this place,” Mia muttered half to herself, as they walked.

  “Oh, you’ll quickly pick it up. I don’t suppose you know the first thing about being an acolyte of the Order?”

  She detected the slightest pleading tone in his voice. Once they were through the large carved dormitory doors, they made their way to the right down a long, dimly lit corridor.

  Grimacing, Mia shook her head. “My attention…wandered last night while Brother SainClair was speaking, but I doubt he said anything useful.”

  “Well, we aren’t allowed to leave the Compound except with permission, so you’ll be spending a lot of time in these caverns.”

  “What! We aren’t allowed to leave?” Mia stopped dead, her legs feeling suddenly leaden even as her heart raced. She was trapped here. It never occurred to her that they would lock her in. “But you were outside when I met you.”

  He cracked a wide grin. “I had permission. I told you it was special business.” At that, he noticed she was no longer next to him and turned back. He frowned. “Are you okay? You look kind of pale. Pale for you, I mean,” he added hastily, frowning. He grasped her fluttering hand. “Your hands are like ice.”

  His hand felt warm and brown against Mia’s bone-white skin. This contrast barely registered in her mind. She was still too alarmed to resist this small intimacy, and before she could think longer on it, he released her hand.

  She breathed deeply, trying to slow her heartbeat. “How long does acolyte service last?” She raised her eyebrows expectantly when Cedar didn’t immediately answer.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to get you some proper robes before you freeze.”

  They continued to walk down the long corridor.

  “Service varies depending on the acolyte. We’re promoted when the clerics feel we’ve contributed enough to the mission or if we have some special skills. Some may spend as long as five cycles or even more in service before taking their vows. Others might ascend in a cycle or even two quarter cycles.”