Excerpt: Far Above the Stars

After two years of combat training only ninety-six of Taer’s year-mates remained. Just three had been taken by the Order, amongst them was Sehri. Their final parting had been brief, and tinged with sorrow. In the privacy of an unused study she had told him the news:
“Taer, the Deacon tested me yesterday.”
Taer had been tested himself months previously, long before the rest of his year-mates, under the assumption the Master Brentic had spoken to Deacon Glenin on his behalf.
“Sehri, that’s excellent. Do you know when you will be given your weapon?”
The girl bowed her head, and took his hand between her own. He allowed her to grip his fingers, and tried to meet her eyes.
“I’m not to be a citizen. The Deacon says that I will join the Order, that I will train with them as an Initiate.”
“But I don’t understand. You know all the rituals that we’ve been taught, I’ve seen you make lamps glow. How can they think you’re supposed to be in the Order?”
She didn’t answer, just held his hand.
“It’s not right,” he protested, “you shouldn’t have to go.”
From down the hallway, the faint sound of Deacon Glenin’s voice could be heard, calling her name.
“I have to go now, we’re leaving immediately.” She pulled herself towards him and kissed him, softly, on the lips. “That’s so you won’t forget me, Taer.”
And with that, she pulled her old worn satchel over her shoulder, and ran out into the hallway.
“I’m here, Deacon. I’m ready to leave now.”
Taer listened to her footsteps echo off down the corridor for the last time, and stood for a while, his fingers touching his lips.
“I won’t forget,” he whispered.

One night in the summer of their twelfth year, Taer and his year-mates learned a lesson that would stay with them forever. It was their first exposure to the enemy that they had trained to fight for the last two years, the enemy that they had lived their whole lives in fear of.
The cadets were taken into a grand courtyard that none of them except Taer had seen before that night. It was the centre of the guard barracks for the number four segment of the city, the segment that Taer lived in. In the courtyard, a guard captain approached them, a young female Deacon of perhaps twenty at his side.
“I am Captain Orich, this is Deacon Hara. If you want to be alive when the sun rises, listen well, for what we are about to tell you will save your lives should you find yourselves under attack by a ghoul.”
The woman stepped forwards, and placed an object on the ground, incanting a prayer over it. Taer did not recognise the object, but Plem clearly did.
“It’s an Oloram, my father has told me about these. The Deacons can use them to show something to each other over distances.”
Taer didn’t quite understand what Plem was telling him, but his confusion was lost in panic a moment later as dark, glowing cloud appeared where the Deacon had just been standing. As gasps and a stifled scream escaped the crowd of cadets, she stepped out of the smoke as it coalesced into something vaguely resembling a large man.
“Don’t worry,” the Captain called from behind the nebulous form, “if this were a real ghoul it would have killed most of you by now. However, I doubt any of you have seen one before, at least never this close, so step forwards and take a good look.”
Several of the braver amongst the group moved closed to the roiling dark mass, its form shifting constantly in the late afternoon light. Something akin to a head turned from side to side, as if searching, and then the creature lunged forwards, as if to attack them. As one they jumped backwards, and several blades flickered into life. The Deacon could barely contain her amusement.
“It’s an image, a conjuring that can no more harm you than you can it,” she swiped her hand through the smoke several times to illustrate her point, “so please, put your weapons away. There will be plenty of time for paranoia later when you’re on the other side of the wall.”
One by one the blades faded, and the crowd around the image grew. Taer could see that the Deacon was quite right, the creature was definitely not reacting to their presence, and every now and then it would start repeating its motions again, as if repeating the same few minutes over and over. Taer pushed his hand through the edge of the creature’s turbulent body, and was surprised to feel a slight resistance before his hand moved all the way through. He waved, and immediately a dozen more hands joined his. A quiet sigh of relief spread through the crowd.
“So this is what a ghoul really looks like?” Plem asked. “Doesn’t look so bad.”
“Well, yes and no. This is a ghoul we killed after a wall breach in the six segment, about a year ago. Pushing through the wall like that weakens them considerably, so on the outside of the wall they’re going to be a lot less transparent, and take on more coherent shapes. In the darkness a fully-formed ghoul looks just like the silhouette of your best friend, so it’s vital that you learn what to watch for.”
The Captain reached out his arm and pointed into the crowd: “You, what are three important signs of a ghoul’s presence?”
The girl who the Captain had singled out hesitated, then offered “a quiet breeze?”
“That’s one, what are the other two?”
“Um, a flickering blade, and, um…”
The Captain shook his head, and snapped: “You’ll need to think a lot more quickly than that. Come on!”
“Dread,” she managed to gasp, “we’ll feel dread in our soul when they get close.”
“Excellent. Now, I’m sure you all know how to tell when your blade is flickering just by looking at it, and you can probably all recognise a breeze, but I wonder who here actually knows what it’s like to be truly fearful. You,” he shot an arm out in Plem’s direction, “step forwards.”
Plem took two steps forwards, turning to show the gathered cadets his broad smile, then stopped in his tracks as the Deacon stretched out an arm and touched him lightly upon the shoulder. The smile vanished from his face, replaced by a look of utter terror. All colour faded from his face, and his arms and legs seemed frozen rigid. The Deacon released her grip - his knees sagged and buckled beneath him, and Plem fell to the floor. Taer and two others rushed forwards to help him up.
“Plem, are you okay?” Taer asked him. His friend nodded slowly, then found his feet and stood. Colour was already returning to his face.
“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever felt.”
The Deacon smiled, and called for another volunteer. Most of the cadets took a step backwards, but leaving Taer exposed next to Plem. The Deacon took a step towards him, reaching out to grab his shoulder.
“Well, you must be the young student that Master Brentic speaks so highly of. Let’s see if his faith is justified.”
Her touch was like ice, even through the layers of his tunic. Taer tried to get away from her, but it was pointless, there was nowhere to run to. His arms and legs wouldn’t respond, feeling as if they were weighted down with lead. He felt afraid, lonely, and tired. Just twelve years old and all he had ever really known was a lifetime of preparing for a war that could never be won, a war that he would likely die in without ever knowing peace. Just like every man and woman who had fought to defend their City before him. Just like his mother and father.
The thought of his parents raised anger within him. It was wrong, it was unfair that they had to lay down their lives to protect the City, and people sleeping within the comfort and safety of its walls. Why should the have to pay that price? Why should he have to live with it?
These thoughts threatened to boil over within him, and he realised suddenly that his fists were clenching, his arms not weighted down at all but free to move. He raised one hand to the Deacon’s wrist, and lifted it from his shoulder.
“Remarkable!” the Captain exclaimed. “So few cadets work out how to overcome the Dread touch on their first attempt. Perhaps you would explain to your year-mates how you did it?”
Taer looked up at the Deacon, whose shocked expression he found somewhat pitiful. She remembered herself just in time to snatch her wrist away from his grasp, flashing a warning look at the young cadet.
“I just got angry, and then I could move.”
“Angry? Excellent, most impressive. Really, any strong emotion will do, but anger is probably the most useful and the easiest to summon at will when you’re being overtaken by the paralysing terror if an approaching ghoul. Turn that fear into hatred, into hard, cold anger, and you’ll find that no ghoul can stand in your way.
“Now, Deacon Hara will be working with you all over the coming weeks and months to train you in handling the Dread, how best to overcome it, and how to avoid it weakening you when you most need to be able to fight. For my part, I will be teaching you combat tactics. I know that Master Brentic has taught you everything he knows about the form and mastery of your weapons, but it’s my job to teach you how to fight alongside each other, to rely upon your brothers and sisters at arms, and to work as a fluid and unstoppable fighting unit.
“Now, let’s see you pairing off and start sparring. I want to get a good idea of your level of ability before I decide who will be working with whom.”

Predictably, Captain Orich had paired Taer and Plem together. Although Plem was still the larger of the two by far Taer’s considerable skill with his glaive made him an equal match for the older boy’s speed and strength. Certainly no other cadet that the Captain had tried to pair either of the boys with had been able to match them in sparring. In the regular ladder tournaments that the Captain and Master Brentic organised, Taer and Plem won consistently, and even won an occasional match against one or other of their teachers, though never when fighting both at once.
The evenings of training passed happily for Taer. Where a year before a day’s running had left him tired and sore to the point that Master Brentic’s weapon classes had been painful, he had reached a level of fitness now that allowed him to train late into the night and spring out of bed ready to start again the next morning. When the cadets were given a rare evening to themselves, Taer would more often than not spend it in his Master’s company, further refining his skill, or sparring against the old man.
“Master, why did you become a teacher?”
The question had occurred to Taer many times in the past, but he had never had the courage to ask, feeling that the question was somehow insulting to his Master. The old man however, rather than answer immediately, parried a series of blows from his pupil, and spinning low swept his feet out from under him. By the time Taer’s backside hit the floor, Brentic had finished his manoeuvre with a flourish, and was holding out his hand to help Taer up.
“In the ten years you’ve been my student, is it only now that such a question has occurred to you?”
“No, Master. I mean, I wasn’t sure it was my place to ask.”
“And right you were not to.” Brentic saw the worried look on his pupil’s face. “Worry not. The time for secrets between us two is long past now. The truth is that I should have told you this story years ago, but I didn’t want you to think ill of your Master.”
“Master Brentic, I would never…”
The old man raised one finger: “Now Taer, what have I tried to teach you about rushing to judgement? Let me tell the story first.
“As you know, I was a full Captain of the Guard, promoted from the citizenry to command the defence of walls three and four. There are six Captains at any time: two for each wall, and one General. I was the most promising of the Captains, with an exemplary record for my command. In my first year I lost only a dozen citizens under my command, and in the following two years only a dozen more. There was talk of General Ulin retiring and that I might take his place, so that I could command the entire City’s defence in the same way.
“Well, as it turned out that, the Ghouls didn’t want me running the city’s defences. Half-way through my fourth year as Captain, they stepped up their attacks on my walls, and in a month I lost a score of citizens as the ghouls pushed us harder than I had ever seen. Then, one night at the end of the summer, we got hit by the biggest attack I had ever seen.
“By midnight my Company on wall three had killed at least a hundred ghouls, and wall four was not far behind. I had to dispatch runners to call for reinforcements from two and five, but they never showed up. One of my scouts found the cave they were streaming up from, and I ordered both companies to pull away from the wall and try to push the ghouls back to the cave mouth, hoping we could hold them there until help arrived, or maybe until the sun came up.
“We pushed them back to the cave, but at an incredible loss. I had to release fifteen personally before they could be taken, and another eight were released by their brothers or sisters at arms. We finally reached their cave, and at that point it became a slaughter. Nobody was willing to let a single ghoul survive long enough to retreat.
“Eventually, the sun came up, and the ghouls stopped emerging. We gathered the dead, and returned to the wall, but not before I took one long walk around the area. You see, we were a couple of miles out from the wall, far beyond where the Order says is safe. I guess we hadn’t realised how far out we’d pushed, but it was well into the wastelands, and I wanted to see it for myself in the light of day.”
Whilst he was talking, the Master had lead Taer over to a bench at the side of the courtyard where they had left their water skins and some fruit. Brentic lifted his skin and drank thirstily from it. Taer ignored his completely, so intent was he on hearing his Master’s tale.
“The sun had just risen, barely more than a pin-prick of light on horizon, but far off in the distance I could see something that I had never imagined in my lifetime. Far, far beyond the wastelands the horizon broken into a series of mountains. There, somewhere at the foot of those mountains, I saw a flash of light, as if the sun were reflecting off polished metal. I only saw it for the briefest moment, but I remember clearly even now, that what I saw was man-made.”
“But what could it be, Master? The City is all that there ever was, all that there will ever be.” Taer’s voice was filled with conviction. “Nothing exists beyond the wastelands except the ghouls, and they cannot create, they can only destroy.”
“I asked myself those very questions Taer, and resolved to ask Deacon Ersket as soon as I returned to the City. However, when I arrived back at the Wall, things had not gone as expected.
“The century that I had left at the wall to defend it whilst we pressed our attack never received their reinforcements from walls two and five. During the night they were hit by another ghoul assault, and driven back inside the walls. The ghouls managed to breach the wall several times, and only luck allowed the defenders to prevent anyone being taken.
“I was summoned before a judicial council of the Order to answer for my actions. Though General Ulin spoke for me, Ersket was making a play to succeed Jarnel as Abbot, and I was the sacrifice he intended to use to secure his position. I think he’d have tried to have me thrown out into the wastelands if he thought he could get away with it, but as it was Jarnel looked favourably on me, and reassigned me to the school. Ersket had Deacon Glenin stationed here to keep watch over me and to ensure that I followed the teachings of the Order without fail.”
Brentic sighed a deep, weary sigh. Taer realised, at that moment, that the school was his Master’s prison, that his two decades of service were a punishment meted out by the current Abbot in his rise to power within the Order.
“That’s ridiculous! There’s no way you could have known that reinforcements would not arrive! It’s not fair that Ersket could blame you for it.”
The Master raised a worn hand to stop his student.
“It was a very long time ago, and I learned my lesson the hard way. As much as the Order exists for the survival of our people, we must never forget that they are subject to the same weaknesses as we all are. Our City exists by their will; we serve at their pleasure. Remember that, it is perhaps the most valuable lesson I can ever teach you.”