The Broken Are the Blessed (Unfated, Book Two)

By Edward Cowan

The serial epic continues!

Who plays god in a godless world? Man? Or Fate?

The Sons of Balthanon have failed to kidnap Sumei, Queen of the Jade Heavens. Instead, Harker Aldreth, Unfated rogue and digger after lost treasures, finds himself in possession of the greatest treasure in the world. Her ransom will make him rich beyond his wildest dreams . . . if only he can figure out how to smuggle Sumei back to the Fateless Lands.

Sumei has other plans, though. She doesn’t see Harker as her captor, but as a wretched soul in desperate need of her guidance. As they bicker over questions of Fate, freedom, and how to survive in a hellish, arid waste, they soon learn that neither knows the answers.

Meanwhile, Harker’s sister Sudden wrestles with a wild and capricious power that can not only nullify, but destroy, Fate itself. And Trantz Nurayanan, the warrior who killed her parents, suffers the consequences of Sudden’s revenge: he is now free—Unfated, like her—the last thing he ever wanted.

Their lives in tatters, these four souls struggle to find new faith as the Unfated and Blessed careen toward a conflict that threatens to sweep all humanity into an abyss of mutual destruction.

Sometimes faith is rewarded—and sometimes not.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Cowan
• Release date: Mar 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781945152016

Book preview

UNFATED

Book Two:

The Broken Are

the Blessed

•

Edward Cowan

Contents

Welcome Back to a Serial Epic

MAP: The Blessed Realms

MAP: The Fateless Lands

MAP: The Frontier

The Archivist’s Diatribe

1. Home

2. Blind Faith

3. The Midwife of Freedom

4. The Well

5. The Wormsight

6. The Architecture of Desire

7. The Talons of Memory

8. Rust and Stone

9. Ascension

10. The Final Element

The Story Continues . . .

Glossary and Pronunciation Guide

About Edward Cowan

Acknowledgements

Copyright

Welcome Back to a Serial Epic

If you’re reading this, you already know what you’ve got here: a serial novel by the name of Unfated. (Unless you accidentally picked up this book before reading the first one. In which case I say: Back! Back with you! You should be feasting your eyes on Fate Decrees, Man Defies.)

Firstly, thanks for reading!

Secondly, just a friendly reminder that Unfated is a quarterly concern, meaning you’ll be seeing four new installments every year until this beast is finished. For news about the release dates of future episodes and everything else Unfated, visit www.edwardcowan.com.

Now let’s turn this back over to our dear friend, the Archivist.

The Archivist’s Diatribe

Well, it’s quite a stew, isn’t it? Here I am, violating every protocol by interjecting myself into this narrative; an Archivist’s function is to record and report, not rant and rave. But I can’t help myself, not when you humans insist on acting so . . . human.

Every other quarrelsome species I’ve chronicled has had the good sense to break apart, eventually. To carve out separate niches, to inhabit different ecosystems—until, a few generations down the line, they’ve neatly calved into two entirely new and noncompetitive subspecies. But not humans. Oh, no: you insist on grinding out your grudges over years and centuries and millennia.

We began this tale in the one true temple of human thought: the outhouse. I now think it would have been more honest to open in a slaughterhouse.

Why do you parcel yourselves off by faith, philosophy, race? Because you crave the clarity of epic struggles. You seed conflict into every aspect of your lives. Wars of religion. Cultural wars. Wars between the sexes. And you can’t, you won’t, stop shoving your noses into each other’s affairs. Because you love it so. You truly do.

Take this story. Here we have Harker Aldreth—scoundrel, rake, or whatever dashingly roguish epithet you wish to bestow upon him—searching for his sister, Sudden. And here we have Sumei, Queen of the Jade Heavens, now fallen into his hands. Both are simply pawns in a greater struggle that has dragged on for a thousand years. Both of them know it. But, recognizing this, do they have the sense to walk away from each other, sidestepping their own farcical roles in this conflict? Of course not. Harker sees a prize captive; Sumei sees a soul in need of saving. So we dance—through the battlefields, among the corpses, for all time.

And let us not forget the bloodiest of all these bloodstained souls! What of Trantz Nurayanan, erstwhile Hand of Fate? When last we saw him, he had leaned into the business end of a spear. (There’s a human for you: if you can’t find another member of your benighted species to assault, you assault yourselves. The only constant is conflict.)

And now? Now he dreams of a battle long since ended yet never over.

. . . Though I could say the same for all your kind.

1. Home

Cowardice?

Fate?

That’s what you’re offering me?

You’ve got it wrong, there. It isn’t cowardice or Fate. Silence or lies, that’s what you mean. That’s the choice. And I’ll take silence every time.

—These were the last words ever uttered by the Defier who bit off Trantz’s left earlobe.

Few of Balthanon’s Ten Thousand survived their last battle, twelve years past; most gnashed and clawed and snarled like rabid dogs until put down. Trantz caught the Defier who took his earlobe as he attempted to slip from the field, crawling on his belly through a maze of the freshly dead. His commander offered the man a dagger and a question: Would he choose the cowardice of suicide or submit to the Fate of interrogation?

Silence or lies, the Defier spat back, lunging at Trantz’s commander. Trantz leapt between them, wrestling the Defier to the ground. From there Balthanon’s man proceeded to fight nasty, as the Unfated said. Off came Trantz’s earlobe, clenched in the man’s teeth; out came the Defier’s lifeblood, gushing from his yawning throat. Trantz scored that trade more than fair.

Heaving Trantz to his feet, his commander patted his shoulder and said: Here’s a man who will never choose cowardice.

•

Trantz awoke, dead. When a fallen soldier’s comrades bore him off for burial, they laid him on his back, head barely elevated, arms crossed over his chest. So did he awaken.

He saw a spoiled-milk sky drooling strings of mist. Nothing else, no guarantee that what he took for sky was anything more than the pall of death.

He reappraised his condition using more than his fool eyes. His nose told of stone and little else. His ears sang of slightly more: sky, wind, more sky. His tongue complained of parched days of sleep. His back echoed his nose: stone, and much of it.

His fingers inched down his torso. A blanket covered a mound of bandages piled atop his stomach. He felt . . . not cut, but empty, somehow, and not weak, but missing something. As though he would fall into two pieces if he dared sit up.

The wind shifted. His nose told him something new: he was not alone.

Lifting his head from a folded cloak or some such meager pillow, Trantz squinted his companions into focus. He goggled at the green, winged horror, its grotesquery almost comical. But the girl dragged his eyes from it. Such was her power over him.

Sudden Aldreth.

He mouthed a curse and let his head fall back, closing his eyes.

Footsteps drew them open. The girl leaned over him, looking neither curious nor concerned. She had discarded her collar. The streak in her hair, once gray, now shone stark white.

She brushed the bleached strands behind her ear. You gave them to me, she said, not quite petulantly, and walked away.

He sat up, remaining in one piece. His eyes bulged at the creature again. The girl stood in the shelter of its wings, arms crossed.

Trantz opened his mouth, hacked stale air. She tossed a skin at him. His feeble hands bungled it, water dribbling in his lap. When he drank, every drop exacted its toll of fire from his throat. Gave you what? he rasped.

She pulled the white locks before her eyes. These. They were gray, and you turned them white.

And how did I do that?

She pointed at his stomach. I took that, and you gave me these. I don’t think that’s fair.

He squeezed the skin, spraying his face. Frost flaked in his stubble. No one made you do it, did they? One of the benefits of defying Fate. She hugged herself and bit her lip.

Trantz pushed himself up, wobbling, fixing the girl as his point of balance. He tried a step forward. His legs took him quite a few back. He swung about, nearly plunging off a ledge.

Dropping to his knees, he studied the bounds of his prison. A limestone spar, several hundred tawny feet of it, impaled the leaden sky. But for this ledge it plummeted straight and true to the earth below. The ledge itself protruded like an outthrust tongue, perhaps ten paces long and five wide. A few other spars and crags penetrated the mists nearby, nothing else.

The girl tilted her head in a way that irritated him for no reason he could name. He stood again, wobbled more violently, and settled to one knee. Where are we?

Home. Her voice danced in a gust, the word whipping about the ledge as if nestling into every nook. She jabbed a thumb at the creature. Well, his home. She shrugged and sat. "And mine, too. It’s as home as home gets. You burned my home, remember?"

Trantz disliked kneeling eye-to-eye with her—even more, somehow, than staring up at her from his back. He lurched to his feet, forced his legs to stiffen. How did I get here? How did you?

Trench can fly, in case you haven’t noticed. He brought me here after those men attacked the Qusura Mal’s procession. I think this is his, what you call it, roost. And then he brought you to me. You were almost dead. She chewed her white hairs. You shouldn’t stand—you’re weak.

As if spurred by Fate’s command, his knees began to shake. I’m well enough.

No, you’re not. You’re stupid. You tried to kill yourself after the attack. Why? He opened his mouth but, as children will, she nattered on. And when you tried, you couldn’t even do that right, and Trench brought you to me alive so I had to heal you and get these ugly white hairs. I wish he had eaten you. I should have let him. The gruesome thing hooted.

You tell it—

"Him. I think."

What to do?

"I tell him things. Sometimes he listens. Sometimes he doesn’t. That’s how I know he’s a him. Otherwise he’d listen all the time."

"Guraida," Trantz muttered.

What?

Guraida. It’s an Old Hnatheen word. It means—

"I know what it means. ‘Tamer.’ But what does it mean?"

I was born on the island of Lythe. We have stories of those who become familiar with all manner of beasts. They’re called Guraida. Though you’re more familiar with a more monstrous beast than any I’ve heard of.

Careful, Trench can understand you. So I’m a Tamer. What are you? Again she tilted her head until he ached to twist it back—straighten her neck—and further—back and back, until—

I don’t know. How can I? You took what I was.

She snorted. "Not me. What were you? Some kind of bodyguard? Were you supposed to protect that monster when it came for me? Well, you didn’t. And what about the queen? Did you protect her? Where were you during the attack? What’s the word for failure? Wait, that’s it: Oufari. Well, Oufari, what are you going to do now?"

The girl stood, fists clenched at her sides. Are you going to try and finish the job you began when you killed my parents? He stepped toward her. The thing hooted, spreading its wings. Behind them Trantz saw piles of bones, not a few of them human. That will make Trench happy—he likes the taste of Oufari. There are so many on this side of the mountains.

Trantz tensed, waiting for the command, for Fate’s cool breath on the base of his skull.

Nothing touched him. He gripped his head, laying his fingers over the brands Fate once seared into his temples and squeezing.

There was nothing in there—and nothing was pain.

He saw the girl’s father fumbling for his axe. He saw his comrade seize her mother, looking to Fate for orders. He remembered listening for that voice, for that cold affirmative shiver, magnified a thousandfold in Fate’s presence. He saw his comrade gash her mother’s throat.

His knees gave out. What did you do to me?

I freed you, the girl spat. I took off that collar. His hands darted for his throat, brushing steel. "Not that collar, you idiot. The other one. I cut your leash. And now what? You killed my parents, and I freed you, and then I healed you. Is that fair? Is it?"

His skull refused to buckle, to be crushed. Still he squeezed it. I didn’t kill them, either one.

"No? Didn’t you command the ones who did? You didn’t stop them. Why did that thing come for me?