Excerpt: Into the Light

Another harsh, painful breath rattled through Samuel’s chest. They were coming noticeably further apart now, each one seeming to drain a little more of the strength that kept the old man’s heart beating. Samuel was struggling to speak, his lips barely moving, and Jason dropped his ear to his master’s face, struggling to make out the words.

“The Day Light. Turn me into the Light.”

Samuel gasped as Jason shifted his weight, rotating so both master and student faced towards the brilliance of the eastern horizon. The city was almost behind them, dense shrubland now lying between Jason’s back and the depth of night, a wide plain opening up in front of them. Nothing marred their view of the Day ahead, and sending rays through breaks in the cloud and sparkling like a deadly, divine jewel, Jason caught a glimpse of the distant dawn sun.

Holding his master carefully still, Jason turned his back on that brilliance before he removed his veil, knowing that doing so was his choice, and not a choice he regretted. Perhaps one day he would come to the end of his work and look that sun full in its face, basking in its glory. Not today. Not while others needed him.

Samuel’s eyes were hooded, his body lacking the strength to keep them open. Another breath shook him, this time accompanied by a shudder and a break in the slow pulse. The old man didn’t have long left. He spent a little of it nonetheless, his eyes meeting Jason’s with pain and sorrow and regret. Jason showed him nothing but love and confidence, and Samuel’s expression cleared.

“I am ready, Master,” Jason assured him in a soft whisper. “Are you?”

He saw the gratitude and agreement in the cloudy blue-grey eyes. Now, at the last, there was fear there too, but Jason didn’t respond to it. He kept his expression calm and compassionate, humming the cadences of the Passage rite under his breath. The fear faded, Samuel’s body struggling to draw in one final, shallow breath as he prepared himself, and then going limp, abandoning the fight. Adjusting his hold, Jason raised Samuel’s head so his Master was gazing full and unflinching into the Light. Samuel’s pulse throbbed against Jason’s hand once… twice… faltered. The expression on the old man’s pale face changed subtly into one of wonder, and then into one of pure, undiluted joy. Samuel’s heart gave one more, throbbing pulse and stopped, falling still and silent.

Jason didn’t move for a long time. He completed the words of the Passage rite in the same calm, soothing tones, watching as Samuel’s wide-eyed gaze past him into the light became glazed and clouded over, holding the old man’s body as the last hints of tension drained from every muscle.

When he finally laid his master’s shell to the ground, he stood, gazing down at it, trying to find words for how he felt, trying to understand the peaceful expression on his master’s face and that last, unguarded glimpse of joy as the Guide finally accepted his fate and passed into the Light he’d spent a lifetime serving.

It took most of the day to dig Samuel’s grave, there on the road between Houses. Jason didn’t bathe the corpse, knowing his master would chide him for wasting the precious water. He combed his master’s hair with his fingers, straightening the old man’s ragged clothes before covering him with thick, brown earth, beating it down well and marking the grave with a circle of stones. He laid a single, long, flat slab on the top, mixing ink from Samuel’s pack with a trickle of blood squeezed from his own claw-marked arm to make a more permanent, vibrant mixture and using it to write the Guide’s name in shaky but recognisable letters on the marker.

He hefted the pack onto his back before looking down again at the marker.

“Thank you,” he said simply as he went on his way.