Athanor

By Catherine Griffin

After twenty years in exile, Earth Adept Simon is going home — to Athanor, the burning city built on a volcano, city of magic and alchemy, angels and demons.

 

Four powerful families rule the city. Once Simon was one of them, but now he and his children are just another poor family trying to survive.

 

As a hard winter brings poverty and famine, Athanor teems with refugees seeking a better life. Monsters stalk the streets. Simmering tensions boil over into violence. Long-buried secrets ignite a ruthless struggle for power.

 

The city is primed to explode. But the greatest danger may be the one Simon and his family carry with them: Power beyond human understanding or control, Power to destroy the city — or the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Griffin
• Release date: Apr 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201956837

Book preview

ATHANOR

Catherine Griffin

© Copyright Catherine Griffin 2020. All rights reserved.

NOTE TO READERS

This novel is made up of seven parts. The first part, titled The Road to Athanor, you may already have read — in which case, you may prefer to skip to part 2, City of Light.

CONTENTS

Part One: The Road to Athanor

Part Two: City of Light

Part Three: Return to Sark

Part Four: The Undercity

Part Five: Snakes and Steel

Part Six: Refuge

Part Seven: Gnosis

Part One

The Road to Athanor

FRESH SNOW HAD covered the body.

Andra dug with her gloved hands and her knife. Her breath hung in the still morning air. As the body slowly emerged, the blood-scent which had drawn her grew stronger. She dug until her gloves scraped the stiff folds of a parka.

She cleared the face. It was not her sister, but a young man, his ice-crusted eyes staring. A tattoo of a stylised bird soared on his cheek. There were no other bodies. He was alone.

For six days, she had tracked her sister south. Three days ago her tracks had joined with another. Now one was dead, and it was not her sister.

The digging had warmed her. Sweat was clammy beneath her clothes. She stood and walked a wide circle, scanning the fresh snow, then returned to look at the body again.

She cleared more snow.

The dead man was lasker, like her, his clothing sealskin. Blood had frozen on the front of his parka, centred on a black hole. He smelled of blood and burning. She had seen death many times, but never a wound like this. Unease stirred in her gut. She pressed her face close to the corpse and sniffed, drawing air deep into her nose.

Though the scent was faint, she was certain now. Her sister had been with him.

So her sister, travelling south, had met this man. From the style of parka and his face tattoo, he came from the Sea Eagle Clan. Her sister had joined him. Perhaps she had hoped to find a new family. As if she could forget what she had done. As if she could walk away, and live, and be happy.

Acid stung the back of Andra’s throat. She stood and breathed deeply until the anger stilled, and she could return to considering the man and his death.

His parka was decorated with beads and he wore a bear-tooth amulet round his neck, underneath the outer garment. She turned the body over, and found his spear. Only one spear, so he had not intended to hunt or fish, and he had been travelling south before he had met with Cara. Most likely he had carried furs to trade with the humans — but if so, that pack was gone.

He had been killed then, not by any beast, nor by other lasker. If lasker had killed him, they would have taken the flesh-and-blood price and his knife, if nothing else. But all his gear had been left with him, as if it were of no value. If he had not been killed by animals or by lasker, that left only humans. There must have been more than one. Humans were slow and cowardly — they only attacked lasker with the advantage of numbers. They had killed him with a weapon new to her, something that struck without warning, bringing death like lightning. He had no opportunity to strike his murderers or dodge the fatal blow.

But then, what of her sister? The humans hadn’t killed her, so either she had fled, or the humans had taken her with them. The night’s snow had covered the scene and hidden the tracks that would tell the full story. If her sister had fled alone, there was little chance of picking up her trail, but the humans had trampled a wide, deep path, which the fresh snow had covered but not obliterated. They had approached from the south and returned the same way.

The south was no place for lasker. Andra had never been there, rarely even seen a human, and what she had seen she didn’t like.

The north wind smelled clean. It would be no dishonour to abandon her hunt and return home. Home to the life she knew, to simple choices and familiar things. Home to face grief and bitterness, alone among kin who were no kin.

The dead man stared at the sky, his startled expression frozen in death, and she thought how young he was — not many summers older than Cara — and then she remembered that other body in the snow, so tiny and so frail, and her anger stirred.

She crouched beside the dead man and took his knife, which was human-made steel with a handle carved of whale ivory. The blade had been sharpened over many years until it was thin and curved like the dying moon. It felt good in her hand — a fine weapon for a hunter.

She wasn’t hungry. Even the heavy smell of blood was no temptation, and she bore no responsibility to this stranger. Still, she felt the need to show respect, so she sliced his face and tasted his blood. It was sweet on her tongue, cold and metallic, death and life.

If she found the humans who had killed him, if she had the chance, perhaps she would avenge him. For now, there was nothing more she could do. His clan might find him, or scavenging animals would do him honour.

Her path lay south.

SIMON CROUCHED TO examine the cavern floor. The cold-lamp shed its light over red granite underfoot and overhead, flat planes of rock stretching into the black distance. Pale lines of quartz threaded the stone. Not a speck of crystalline tin ore, no sign of a seam.

He drew his battered leather tool case from his pocket and selected a stylus. The tool was an old one, his first, the engraved initials worn faint, but the hardened steel point was sharp as ever.

The forces he required were those of seeking wide and fast, of information returned, and metal, specifically tin, was what he sought. The required glyphs lined up in his mind, ordered and neat. As he scratched the sigil into the rock, each glyph flowed from his stylus in smooth curves, one combining harmoniously with the next in a balanced whole.

With the sigil complete, he sat back on his heels. Pain pulsed in his bad leg. He ignored the ache and focused on the sigil, on the fierce concentration necessary to jam the complex form into the back of his mind. The summoning built and grew, a subtle pressure like a forewarning of summer thunder.

And then, with that curiously hard to describe mental flick, he released it into the world.

‘Adept, you’re wanted.’

Simon glared at the intrusive voice.

The young miner brushed back a fringe of over-long dirty blond hair. ‘Afsen wants you.’

Already, Simon’s mind echoed with distance, with rock strata and planes of force. No tin. With an effort he dragged his attention back to the smallness of human scale and the slovenly young man grinning at him. ‘Now? What for?’

‘Wants you to see summat.’

The young fool’s name was Cal, Simon recalled. ‘To see what?’

Cal chuckled. ‘Reckon you better see for yourself.’

It was Afsen who had insisted on him searching for tin, and now, as usual, he expected Simon to drop everything and come running on a whim. With half a mountain inside his head, he was inclined to refuse, but his concentration was already shattered. Besides, it was just possible Afsen needed his expertise. He better had.

‘All right. I’ll come.’ Simon struggled to his feet, wincing. His bad leg had stiffened in the few minutes of crouching. He picked up the cold-lamp and scuffed the scratched sigil with his hob-nailed boot: mere habit, really—no one was likely to see it—but it didn’t do to leave such things lying around.

Cal bounced ahead, sure-footed on the jagged rock. Simon trudged after him. His Search was still working, giving him a strange double awareness. The fissure they stood in was a mere breath of air between vast sheets of granite. Walking required concentration, to focus on moving feet instead of miles. Miles upon miles of granite. No tin.

The ceiling lowered from twenty feet, to ten, to six.

Cal paused for him to catch up. He gestured to the endless dark beyond the light of the cold-lamp. ‘One of the men said he heard a noise, the other day, like a beast moving about. Some real big animal.’

Simon stopped beside him. ‘There’s no animals down here. What would they eat?’

‘I dunno. Someone said, that’s all.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t repeat stupid rumours.’

Cal shrugged and set off again. ‘This way. Mind your head.’

The Search was fading now, spread and lost in the vastness of the earth, leaving Simon fragile and small. It was all too easy to imagine monsters breathing in the darkness, claws scraping on rock, but it was only the echo of their own breathing, their own shuffling footfalls multiplied and returned to them four-fold, sounding like someone following.

Simon glanced behind. The candle glow of a miner’s lamp bobbed toward them. The echo had tricked him after all: someone was following. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Father?’

‘Lorie? What are you doing here?’

Caught in the stark white glare of the cold-lamp, she looked frailer than a girl of sixteen should, thin and pale. She blinked and shielded her eyes. Sam stood beside her, clutching the miner’s lamp to his chest. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead.

‘What are you doing down here?’ Simon said. ‘You shouldn’t be in the mine. Haven’t I told you enough times? It’s dangerous and the air is bad for your lungs.’

Lorie looked pointedly at Sam.

‘It’s my fault,’ Sam said. ‘Nana sent me to find you. She didn’t trust me to tell the truth on my own, so Lorie said she’d come too.’

‘I wanted to see the cave anyway,’ Lorie said.

Simon glared at his son. ‘Sam? What have you done now?’

‘He fell through the chapel roof,’ Lorie said.

‘Only a bit,’ Sam added. ‘It was an accident. I din’t mean to.’

‘Didn’t mean to,’ Simon corrected reflexively. ‘But what in Light’s name were you doing on the chapel roof?’

Sam hung his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘What’s the damage?’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds,’ Lorie said. ‘The priest was upset, and Nana smashed a jar of pickles. Then she said Sam had a demon in him and she’d nail him to the floor if she had her way.’

‘I might let her,’ Simon said. ‘I don’t know what do with you anymore. You’re fourteen, Sam, nearly a man, and you can’t go a day without getting into trouble. Light knows what will become of you if you go on this way. You’ll end up working in the mine for the rest of your life—’ He stopped himself saying: ‘like Cal here.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Fine. Can I go now?’

‘No. Since I can’t trust you out of my sight, you’ll stay where I can keep an eye on you.’

‘Can I stay too?’ Lorie said.

‘No, you can go home.’

‘That’s not fair. I’ve done nothing wrong and you said you’d show me the cave someday, if it was safe.’

‘All right, all right.’ He took a breath. The cave was safe, as much as any part of the mine was. ‘But both of you, stay near me. No wandering off, understand? And if I tell you do something, you do it, no arguments—’

‘Because it’s dangerous underground.’ Lorie smiled. ‘We know.’

Simon frowned at the two of them. He never used to have trouble with his children. Lorie had always been well-behaved, and Sam, well, Sam’s heart was in the right place. He just had more energy than forethought. Though really, it had been Rane who dealt with them day to day, while Simon was at work. He’d just tucked them into bed at night and laid down the law when it was needed, and that had seemed to be enough.

Since his wife’s death, being a father was so much more complicated and difficult. Lorie was quiet, but she was growing up. She was already eying the town’s young men and he knew what that meant. Children grew up fast in Sark, and married young. And Sam… he really didn’t know what to do with Sam. No punishment got through to the boy.

From the corner of his eye, Simon noticed Cal smirking. He turned. ‘Let’s not keep Afsen waiting, shall we?’

Sam’s punishment for this latest escapade would have to wait until later. Simon hoped he’d think of something more appropriate than nailing him to the floor.

Cal led the way and Simon followed, keeping an eye on Lorie and Sam. The ceiling gradually lowered until he was forced to crouch. Ahead it sloped down sharply to almost meet the floor, leaving only a dark crack less than two feet high.

Cal stopped. ‘It’s through there.’

‘It looks tight.’ Simon assessed the gap. He would fit, but he didn’t enjoy crawling into holes, especially when he didn’t know what lay beyond.

‘Opens up in a bit, no problem. I’ll go first if you like.’

Simon eased his shoulders. He’d been Cal’s age when the mine tried to kill him. Twenty years, a marriage, two children, and uncounted days of work underground had passed since then. The fear remained, though he’d learned to live with it, to accept it as part of himself even as he hid it from others.

Crouching, he sidled forward crab-wise. Pain pulsed in his bad leg. Even the bright light of the cold-lamp couldn’t penetrate far into the gap. He went down on his hands and knees.

Sam crawled past him.

‘Stop,’ Simon said.

‘I’m through.’ Sam’s voice echoed strangely. ‘Oh, wow.’

Simon wriggled forward, dragging the cold-lamp with him, knees and elbows scraping over the rock. A tight spot squeezed the breath from his lungs. The glare of the cold-lamp blinded him: all he saw was light and dark.

Abruptly, the space opened out. Simon struggled to his feet. Sam stood ahead of him, staring open-mouthed at an arched entranceway flanked by fluted columns.

Cal crawled out to join them, followed by Lorie. He grinned. ‘It’s something, ain’t it.’

‘Amazing,’ Lorie said.

Simon swallowed. The doorway was twice his height, the columns twice as tall again. A whole temple-like building had been carved into a sheer cliff of red granite, over a mile underground. It was unbelievable, yet undeniably real.

‘There’s stuff inside too.’ Cal gestured to the doorway. ‘Afsen’s gone down.’

‘Sam, Lorie, you wait here.’

‘But, Dad—’

‘Do as I say. It could be dangerous.’

‘Cal,’ Lorie said. ‘Is it dangerous?’

Cal straightened from his usual slouch. ‘Don’t reckon so. Afsen’s down there. But if your old man’s worried, I can stop here and keep an eye on you.’

Simon didn’t like the way Cal eyed Lorie, or the way she smiled back. ‘All right. You can come look. Just mind me and be careful. Cal, you wait for us here.’

‘Suits me,’ Cal said. ‘I seen it already anyhow.’

Simon turned to survey the building again. The lines of the columns and lintel were crisply defined, perfectly straight and true. The rock hadn’t shifted so much as an inch since the builders had put down their chisels. He suspected that was a very long time ago—quite possibly thousands of years—and if it had lasted all that time, it wasn’t likely to collapse now.

He climbed the short flight of shallow steps up to the entrance. The interior was smaller than he’d expected, just a bare chamber a few yards across, the floor broken by the mouth of a downward sloping passage. He descended a few steps.

In the white glare of the cold-lamp, the passageway stretched ahead. Like the carved facade, every line was straight and true, the walls smooth and flat, without a tool mark to show how they were made.

Hair rose on the back of Simon’s neck. He had seen something like this, long ago, when he was just a child. He pressed his palm to the wall with a sort of reverence. ‘Some of the tunnels beneath Athanor are like this.’

‘Athanor,’ Lorie sighed.

The wistful awe in her voice set Simon’s teeth on edge. To the miners of Sark, Athanor was almost a legend, the golden city most of them had never seen and never would, but for his own children, it shouldn’t be like that. Even if he never returned there, Athanor was still his home. It should be more to them than a story.

‘According to scholars, Athanor was built by the Forerunners. How do you think this was made, Sam?’

‘Digging,’ Sam said, without much interest.

‘I think,’ Lorie said, ‘it was shaped by an Earth Master.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It looks too… perfect, and the Forerunners were great arcanists, weren’t they?’

‘You’re right.’ The wall beneath Simon’s hand was smooth as sothron silk. Certainly a work of magic, though he doubted any human Earth Master could replicate it.

He walked on. After fifty yards or so, the steeply sloping passage became even steeper, and turned into a stairway, the risers slightly too tall for human comfort. Simon kept one hand on the wall to steady himself, grimacing at the ache in his bad leg.

At the bottom of the stair, the passage ended in a doorway. On either side, monstrous creatures emerged from the stone in a tangle of powerful limbs, curved claws, and jagged teeth.

‘Stone-wyrms,’ Simon said. He reached out to touch the one on the left; the carving was so lifelike, he could easily believe it was about to move, but the stone was cold and still. ‘Guardian figures.’

The lamplight flooded through the doorway into a room only a few yards square, empty and bare except for a matching doorway on the opposite side. He stepped across the threshold.

A chill ran down his spine and he paused, lifting the light high, but there was nothing, not even a carving—only bare stone walls and shadowed corners. He crossed the room in a few steps, Lorie and Sam following.

In the next room stood a monumental stone sarcophagus, and on its far side, the mine manager Afsen, holding up his lamp to examine walls decorated with painted plants and birds in a riot of greens and reds and blues.

The unexpected beauty of it drew Simon forward. He’d reached the sarcophagus before he realised what he was doing, and stopped.

‘So, Simon vai Oryche, what do you think of this?’ Afsen liked to use Simon’s full name, rolling the syllables in his slow norther accent as if it were his own precious possession.

‘A Forerunner tomb,’ Simon said. ‘Amazing.’

He lifted the cold-lamp. The rich colour and detail of the painting was truly remarkable, considering how old it must be. Even Athanor’s Labyrinth contained nothing like this, though it might have originally, before his Oryche ancestors dug out everything of value.

Along the top of the wall ran an intricate frieze, a dense tangle of symbols. At first glance, meaningless decoration, but a pattern snagged Simon’s eye. Some of the symbols were recognisable glyphs, familiar to him as his children’s faces.

As instinctively as he would have jerked his hand from a hot stove, Simon unfocused his eyes and forced what he’d seen from his mind. ‘Get out.’ He pushed his children bodily before him. ‘Out, now.’

Afsen ambled after them into the antechamber. ‘What’s the matter?’

Lorie and Sam stared at Simon, wide-eyed. He’d alarmed them, he realised—though not without reason. His own heart pounded and his palms sweated. ‘What did you see?’

‘Pictures.’ Lorie frowned. ‘It was pretty. What’s wrong?’

Simon locked eyes with Sam. ‘And you?’

The boy shook his head. ‘Nothing. I mean, just the pictures.’

‘What’s this about, Adept?’ Afsen asked.

Simon took a breath to steady himself. He had seen only a fraction of the frieze, and that for an instant, before becoming aware of the danger. And then he’d pushed it from his mind, rejected it from sight and memory as thoroughly as he could. As far he could tell, his mental integrity had not been compromised.

He’d seen enough, though. The frieze was an arcane scriving, intended to invoke a Power. What manner of Power, he couldn’t guess, but he doubted it was a trivial summoning.

The training that had saved him was also what put him at risk. Lorie and Sam could both read, and Sam had perhaps learned a handful of glyphs from the Prime Grammar. Neither of them knew enough to be in real danger, not from a brief glance.

Afsen had looked for longer. But then, considering the sturdy, blunt-featured norther, whose education barely stretched to writing a letter and keeping accounts, Simon couldn’t imagine a more unlikely target for possession.

‘Who else has seen this?’ Simon asked.

Afsen shrugged. ‘A few of the miners, I suppose. Does it matter?’

‘No one else can come down here. The whole area should be sealed off.’

‘Sealed?’ Afsen shook his shaggy head. ‘But we’ve yet to find the seam. Surely we can—’

Simon could have shaken him. ‘Listen and try to understand. Have you ever seen someone demon possessed?’

‘I’ve heard of such things.’

‘Demons are not the only Powers. Aside from the elemental forces, there are angels, gods, stranger things than you can begin to imagine. There are glyphs in that room I don’t recognise. Anyone who looks too long and deep could open themselves to a Power far, far beyond human comprehension. It would snuff their mind like a candle. If we’re lucky.’

‘Sammael preserve us.’ Afsen’s eyes were very wide. He wrung his hands together. ‘Am I all right? I swear, I only looked at the picture. I felt nothing.’

His panic was almost comical.

‘You seem no different to me,’ Simon said. ‘Don’t be unduly alarmed. The danger is real, yes, but it takes more than a passing glance, especially for one who has never studied the arcane arts.’

‘All right. It will be done as you say. Should I have the men bring blasting powder?’

‘No! Light, no. There’s no danger if it’s sealed, and this sort of thing is too valuable to destroy. Scholars will come from Athanor, experts with proper preparation, to record it for study.’

‘Valuable? How valuable?’

So quickly could fear turn to avarice. Simon shook his head. Someone like Afsen couldn’t begin to understand the value of scholarship. Even a single new glyph had a worth far beyond gold, and if it were an entire new invocation sequence… Though in truth, there were men who would pay a good deal for exclusive access to such a thing.

‘Thousands of forints,’ he said. ‘At the very least.’

Afsen’s frown deepened. ‘Simon vai Oryche, you know the state of things here as well as anyone. If we can’t find the seam—’

‘You won’t in this direction. I did the Search before coming down here. There was nothing.’

‘If that’s so, it’s over here. Every winter is worse than the last, and now no more ore, no mine, no work. Sark is dead. And what will we do then, all of us?’

It wasn’t news to Simon. The mine had been in decline for years. Some miners, like Afsen, hoped for a reprieve, a new seam of ore to extend the mine’s life. Many couldn’t imagine any life beyond Sark. Most lived from one month’s pay to the next, sinking ever deeper in debt to House Oryche, who owned the mine. If the mine closed, would the Oryche abandon the miners and their families, or move them to work elsewhere?

Simon’s own fate, and his family’s, was just as uncertain.

The Forerunner tomb could be the lifeline they needed. Enough money to make a new start, somewhere further south where the winters were mild and there was work for honest men. The only question was how.

‘I want you to go to Athanor,’ Afsen said.

Simon started. ‘Me? Why?’

‘You are Oryche. You are clever. I trust you to make a deal for us. Sell this—’ He gestured to the tomb behind him. ‘You say it’s worth money. Enough to make a difference for Sark.’

‘I can’t,’ Simon said. ‘My family disowned me. I’ve had nothing to do with them for twenty years.’

Afsen grimaced. ‘Pfft. What of it? You are still Oryche. You know how they talk, how they think. No one can do this better than you.’

That was probably true. Certainly the miners of Sark were ill-equipped to negotiate with the mine owners. Viewed objectively, Simon was the logical person to go.

Lorie and Sam were staring at him, transfixed. It was them he had to think of, their future, not his past. They deserved a chance in life. They deserved better than Sark.

‘You’re right,’ Simon said. His mouth was dry. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll go to Athanor.’

SARK’S CHAPEL WAS a grey stone box with a slate roof, only distinguished from the surrounding houses by the dark granite pillars guarding the door. A ladder leaned against the wall, ready for them.

Simon squinted at the roof. ‘So where’s this hole?’

Sam pointed to a spot near the ridge, where a few tiles had slipped.

‘How in Light’s name did you get up there?’

‘I got on the rain barrel at Ma Hagger’s, then jumped and grabbed the drainpipe. From there it’s easy.’

‘For you, perhaps.’ Simon considered the route, and had to conclude it was possible—at least, for someone agile and fearless. Sam was braver than he’d thought. Or stupider. ‘This time, you can use the ladder.’

He steadied the ladder. Once Sam reached a secure seat on the ridge and set the tool bag beside him, Simon followed, taking his time. His stiff leg didn’t appreciate the exercise and he didn’t want to slip and damage the roof, or himself.

Though the chapel was only a little taller than the surrounding houses, the ridge felt dizzyingly high. From here, Simon could see over the wall that encircled the town and trace the straight line of the Athanor road as it crossed the plain into the grey distance.

Sam banged his heels on the slates. ‘Are you really going to Athanor?’

‘I think I must.’ Simon took a deep breath. The north wind blew straight off the ice wastes, clean and bitingly cold without the shelter of walls around him.

He’d dreamed last night—a nightmare, though not the usual one. The details had faded, but the oppressive sense of dread remained like a warning. Was it right, to go to Athanor? It felt wrong, somehow, a transgression against limits set for him by powers beyond his understanding or control, like the sins the priest preached of in the chapel every Holy day.

And that was strange, for Simon had been raised in the Gnostic faith, which had nothing to say of sin or punishment. When he’d first arrived in Sark, he’d been shocked to find the miners and their families were Sammael-worshippers. To think, in this day and age, people prayed to an actual god and feared his judgement on their petty misdemeanours! Later he’d understood their beliefs, crude as they were, offered a necessary comfort to lives that were hard and too often cut short by accidents and illness. The abstract tenets of Gnosticism weren’t for Sark. The miners didn’t want to transcend the human condition, just survive it.

His own wife had been a Sammael-worshipper and Simon had never argued religion with her. His own Gnostic beliefs were more formality than fervour; his mother’s affliction had soured his interest in religion.

The cold dampness of the slates seeped through his trousers. He shivered, realising his mind had drifted. ‘Where’s this hole then, Sam?’

Tiles had slipped, exposing wooden beams rotten with age and damp, which Sam had put his foot through. Not as large a hole as Simon had feared and not difficult to repair. Simon got Sam started then sat back to supervise.

Sam, engrossed in his carpentry, smiled as he worked. Simon felt a pang of guilt. He so rarely spent time with Sam, or even talked to him, and perhaps that was the root of the boy’s wildness. That and Rane’s death, which couldn’t be helped, but he should try harder with Sam.

In his own childhood, there had been tutors, teachers, nursemaids, constant attention. His father had been a distant figure and his mother—well, she’d been there, sometimes. Yet his father had always been central to his life, someone to respect and admire, and fear too. He would have obeyed him in anything without question.

It came to him then, sitting chilled and stiff on the chapel roof, that he’d been wrong about his religion. He had been taught to worship a god, and that god was House Oryche. The House and the Lord of the House were the Power he feared to offend. And the House was many things—power, wealth, family, home—but not a god, never any sort of god. He had nothing to fear from them. He owed them nothing. They had exiled him, not for any crime of his, but for his father’s sins.

He gazed east, toward Athanor, and the north wind filled him with icy clarity. Sark was dying, that was unavoidable. The town held no future for him or his family. It was time to go. He would take his family to Athanor, and they would make a new life there, with or without the approval of House Oryche.

The last wagon train of the season was late that year. For four long days, Sark’s urchins perched half-frozen on the town wall, vying for the first glimpse of the thirty mammut-hauled wagons snaking along the road.

But finally it had come, carrying grain, dried fish, and root vegetables to keep Sark alive through the winter. Other long-awaited essentials too: news and post from Athanor, cloth to make clothes, coin to pay wages, pots and pans, boots and nails.

Three days later, the train was preparing to leave with its Athanor-bound cargo of tin ore.

Simon stood with his family, watching the miners load the last ore onto the wagons. Even in those few minutes, his hands grew cold. He clapped his mittens together and wriggled his fingers against the fur lining, for all the good it did. His breath froze in the still morning air. The fur-swaddled men shovelling ore each carried their own cloud and the humped backs of the mammut loomed like brown islands in a sea of fog.

And this was only the start of winter.

Twenty years ago, a wagon train like this one had brought Simon to Sark: a twelve day journey through bleak wilderness, yet he remembered none of it—only cold and misery too deep to bear. At journey’s end, he had stood here, surrounded by the same stench of mammut and mammut dung, shivering in his too-fine city clothes. Mourning clothes for his father’s death, for even in disgrace, the Oryche family must observe propriety.

He couldn’t recapture now what he had thought of Sark then. Familiarity had washed away those first impressions of dirt and poverty, leaving only the dull, freezing horror as he had realised this was his new home. He had nothing: no family, no roof to call his own, no belongings but what he carried, no future but what he might make.

Yet he’d been certain, even then, his family would not abandon him forever. After all, he was Simon vai Oryche. In a month, or six months, or a year, they would recall him to Athanor, his father’s crime would be forgiven and he could resume his life.

It had taken nearly dying for him to see the truth: House Oryche did not care if he lived or died. He was already dead to them.

He glanced at his waiting family, huddled in their new winter coats. ‘If you’re ready, you can board and get out of the cold. I have to speak to Afsen.’

‘Ready.’ Nana sighed and shook her head. ‘A whole side of salt cod given away, and the pickles. I don’t see why we couldn’t have waited to the spring. Such a hurry to pack, and I’m sure I forgot a great deal.’

‘In Athanor,’ Simon said, ‘you can have all the cod and pickles you want.’

She sniffed. ‘Not half as good, I doubt. What do I want with Athanor at my time of life? This is my home. Why can’t I stay? The neighbours said they’d help, not that I need help, I’ve always looked after meself.’

‘We discussed this.’ Simon did his best to swallow his irritation. The old woman was scared to leave Sark, though she’d never admit it. ‘You want to be with your grandchildren, don’t you?’

‘We couldn’t manage without you, Nana.’ Lorie smiled. ‘Or your pickles. Shall I carry your bag?’

Nana gazed back at the house where she’d lived most of her life. Tears shone in her eyes, and Lorie and Sam, who had been so excited for the last week, seemed hardly more cheerful. Their faces, framed by the hoods of their new fur-lined winter coats, were pale and miserable.

They ought to be delighted. What was there in Sark, for any of them? To escape before the winter too, to be out of the freezing dreariness of Sark, to have light and warmth and the wonders of civilisation to look forward to—they ought to be happy.

‘I must have a word with Afsen,’ Simon said. ‘I won’t be long.’

He walked round two sides of the square, skirting the wagons and mammut and workers with their barrows.

Afsen saw him approach. ‘There you are, Simon vai Oryche. You are ready?’

‘Almost.’

‘I’m glad for you. You’ll do what you can for us, I know, but Sark is dying. In a few years, there’ll be nothing here. Nothing but ice and a hole in the ground.’

Sark never had been much more than that. ‘Afsen, I need the draft against House Oryche, my savings.’

‘Of course. You won’t forget us, will you, in Athanor? We rely on you.’

‘I’ll do my best. Beyond that, I can make no promises.’

Two men shouldered their way through the workers, heading for Afsen. Both were bearded and wrapped in layers of furs, carrying large packs. The shorter of the pair had a vacant look, his two eyes staring in different directions, and he limped badly on his left leg. He dragged along with him a shorter, slimmer figure, similarly dressed, their face covered by a leather mask. A large grey mastiff dog trailed behind them.

Simon guessed they were hunters or fur-traders: they had that feral look, bloodshot eyes squinting from seamed, wind-tanned faces.

They approached and stopped. The taller man eyed Afsen. ‘You’re the mine-manager?’

‘For my sins. You are?’

The man grinned, showing black-stained teeth. ‘Chase. My brother Nyl. Fur- traders. Hoping to hitch a ride to Athanor with your wagon train. We can pay.’

‘And this?’ Afsen nodded toward the masked captive.

‘Our cousin,’ Chase said. ‘Poor kid’s demon-spelled. We’re taking her to Athanor for the cure.’

The masked figure didn’t move when she was mentioned. She stood quiet in the grip of the man Nyl, head hanging. Her hands were bound at the wrist.

Simon doubted she was truly demon-possessed. The unfortunate girl was likely insane, as were most claimed cases of possession. Better for her, if so: exorcisms as often killed as cured, or worse, left the victim an empty, gibbering shell.

Afsen shrugged. ‘If the drivers will have you, it’s no business of mine. Come, I’ll introduce you.’

‘Hold on.’ Simon grabbed Afsen’s arm. ‘The draft. You told me you’d written it.’ Twenty years of savings and it was little enough, but it might be all they had to live on in Athanor.

Afsen stopped. He patted his pockets. ‘Yes, yes, I have it. Patience.’

The fur-traders loitered. Their dog stared at Simon, dark eyes fixed on him with un-animal-like intensity. It was a huge muscle-heavy beast, big enough to take on a dire wolf or bear, its face criss-crossed by old scars. It snarled.

‘Maul,’ said the man named Chase. ‘Quiet.’

The dog flinched and subsided.

‘Here it is.’ Afsen dragged a bundle of papers from his pocket. ‘Good luck to you, my friend.’

They walked away, leaving Simon to scan the document Afsen had drawn up. It seemed in order, so he tucked it into the inside pocket of his coat.

‘Nasty looking beast, that dog.’

Simon started at the unexpected voice behind him, but it was only Cal. ‘What do you want?’

‘Lorie asked me to find you. The wagon drivers want the passengers to board.’

Simon glared at him. He’d caught Cal loitering near the house last night. ‘Just passing,’ he’d said, as if that was likely. He didn’t think there was anything between the boy and Lorie—surely not, at least not on Lorie’s part—but it made him uncomfortable all the same. ‘Thank you,’ he said grudgingly.

He strode back across the square to rejoin his family. ‘Lorie, have you been talking to Cal? I told you I don’t like him around.’

‘What’s wrong with Cal? He’s brighter than you think. He can read and write.’

Practically an intellectual, in Sark. A good thing they were leaving before the girl got it into her head to marry the lout. ‘Is the luggage loaded?’

Sam nodded. ‘I saw to it. Who were those men you were talking to?’

‘They were talking to Afsen, not me. Just fur-traders. They may be on the train.’

‘I hope not,’ Nana said. ‘Rough looking lot. What are they up to? Nothing good, I should think.’

The ore-loaders had finished their work and now the two drivers strolled from wagon to wagon, patting each mammut on the trunk. The five-ton beasts rumbled bass complaints. The chains that harnessed them between the wagons rattled.

‘I don’t know,’ Simon said. ‘It’s not our business anyway.’

He took a last look around, a last glance at where he’d met his wife, the home they’d made, the graveyard where she was buried. Twenty years separated him from the young man who had stepped from the wagon train into the frozen mud of Sark. Years of love, marriage, children, work—work he was proud of, for because of him, men lived who might otherwise have died. In this small place he had been important, and valued.

He ought to feel sad to leave, but in his heart he found only emptiness tinged with irrational guilt.

‘Sark has been your home,’ he said. ‘Of course, you’ll miss it, and you’ll miss the friends you leave behind, but you must think of the future. Soon we’ll be in Athanor, and you’ll see this was the right choice.’

They didn’t look convinced.

Simon sighed. He really hoped he wasn’t lying to them, for all their sakes.

SAM LAY IN his bunk bed, listening to the morning quiet. In the bunk below his father snored, as did Nana on the other side of the cabin, each with their own note and rhythm. Lorie’s breathing was soft and slightly wheezy. Outside the cabin, a mammut moaned. Chains grated on wood. The wind sighed.

He had never known Sark was noisy, until now. The wagon train, when moving, was noisy too, yet not in the same way. Here each sound stood out, distinct and purposeful against a background of vast and empty silence.

Layers of blankets hugged him in warmth. Soon Nana would wake and rouse the little stove to boil water for tea. Then the drivers would walk the length of the train with much rattling of chains, and the mammut would groan and huff over their hay. A last chance then to stretch legs and lungs in the cold air before the train trundled onward, on the track of the rising sun.

Five days into the journey, the routine was familiar and settled. But this morning, Sam had another plan. He wriggled from his blankets and peered down at his father, sleeping peacefully. The women’s bunks were screened from him by a hanging blanket, behind which Nana’s regular snore continued.

He clambered down past his father and dropped softly to the wooden floor. He’d worn a layer of clothes to bed—they all did, for the nights were freezing—so now he need only pull on his outer garments and boots, and he was ready.

Ice had formed on the window shutters. Cold struck through his gloves as he eased the shutter open. He stuck his head into the open air and took a deep breath.

The plains were a white sheet, stretching to soft blue hills crowned with dark clouds. The Drumhead range, Dad named them: rounded stubs of mountains raised by colliding continents in ancient times. In all the wide, frozen land, nothing moved.

Sam sniffed. All his life he’d been told the land outside Sark teemed with danger, yet so far he hadn’t seen a single dire-wolf or bear. Yesterday brown lumps had moved in the distance, perhaps wild mammut, but he wasn’t sure.

Still no one stirred in their bunks. He leaned out of the window and looked up. Yes, as he’d thought, if he sat in the window and stretched, he could grasp the lip of the roof.

The cabin roof was icy, but his gloves had a good grip. He hauled himself out and up, heaved himself onto the rounded roof on his stomach, and rolled onto his back. The sky over him loomed huge, a dome of mottled grey cloud moving steadily with the wind.

Carefully, he stood. The view was the same as from inside but bigger, somehow, and a lot, lot colder. He turned to face the front of the train, his boots sliding on the thick ice coating the roof.

Two cautious steps took him to the front of their wagon. The humped back of the mammut rose before him, shaggy with brown hair. Icicles hung from its flanks. The great beast dozed, swaying from one foot to the other, trunk lodged on one tusk-stump.

The next wagon was home to the two fur-traders with their dog and woman prisoner. Then at the very front of the train was the driver’s cabin, hauled by the lead mammut—a huge old matriarch with curving tusks.

Sam measured the distance to the roof of the next wagon. Just a hop, skip, and jump away, if the mammut didn’t mind him landing on its back. The beast seemed placid enough; it might hardly notice his small weight scrambling about, no more than it minded the birds that perched to peck at its hairy hide.

If it were done, it were best done quickly. The worst thing would be to hesitate halfway. Without further