Out of Atlas: Book 1 of the Hearthmark Chronicles Read online

  Out of Atlas

  Book 1 of the Hearthmark Chronicles

  Damien Hine

  For Amber, the love of my life. I could not have done this without you.

  Contents

  Act I

  1. The Walls of Atlas

  2. What Lay Beyond

  3. Dials and Glasses

  4. Lightsparks

  5. A Difficult Departure

  6. Matriarch of the Wolves

  7. Over the Edge

  8. Encounters in Lost Forest

  9. Many Hunters

  10. Glint on the Horizon

  11. Treasure in the Darkness

  12. Fire in the Desert

  Act II

  1. An Islatarian Welcome

  2. Rats and Black Holes

  3. The Ancient King

  4. An Ancient Saying

  5. Ranfar’s Burden

  6. House of the Ages

  7. The Other Southerner

  8. ‘Whatever, wherever, forever.’

  9. A King’s Generosity

  Act III

  1. An Easier Departure

  2. Riddles in Winter

  3. The Kynchrai of Astawood

  4. Trial of the Wolf Warrior

  5. Ascent

  6. City on a Hill

  7. ‘The trial…’

  8. …tests...

  9. …the spirit.’

  10. A New Image

  11. Spark of the South

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Keep in touch with Monolith Books

  Also from Monolith Books

  ‘It has long been said in these things, “The journey makes the character, the trial tests the spirit.”’

  – King Ondor

  Act I

  The Seeker

  One

  The Walls of Atlas

  Fred Banks straightened his waistcoat and jacket, flung open the front door and was at once confronted with a grim view of the walls of Atlas. It was a short walk to his school, St. Rulphian’s, and nowadays he took to spending the majority of it with his hands deep in his pockets, to guard against pickpockets, and staring up at the walls.

  ‘We didn’t always have them,’ his uncle once told him. ‘Once we were peaceful, happy, free…’

  ‘Until—?’

  ‘—yes, the marauders.’

  The marauders. He’d heard enough whispers of them through his childhood. Before knowing the meaning of the word, he knew to shiver at its mentioning.

  ‘No one knows where they came from, nor why, just that they came carrying swords, burning and pillaging wherever they went. One by one, the free cities fell and Atlas would have followed suit had we not had the wherewithal to build walls to hide behind.’

  Fred couldn’t count the times Uncle Paul had told the story, nor fathom why with such frequency. Once was enough, right? The effect was a deep shudder whenever he saw the walls. They towered to block out the sky, no thought of artistry given them save the legion of gargoyles which pocked both sides, long spears in their hands and mouths wide enough to swallow the world.

  ‘They terrify the marauders,’ Uncle Paul loved to say. ‘Those stone scarecrows project visions into their wild minds.’

  And thank goodness they’re just stone, Fred thought, pulling his blazer tighter at the sight of one.

  ‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ yelled a man in a top hat, snapping the reins of a horse-drawn carriage.

  Fred ripped his eyes from the walls. He’d wandered into the middle of a cobbled street.

  ‘Oh, sorry. I—’

  Too late. With a, ‘Hyah!’ the horses were charging off again.

  ‘Papers, get your papers!’

  On the corner of Herald’s Way, a boy in a flat cap and drab cotton shirt was forcing newspapers on passers-by with such a fever Fred wondered if they might be burning his own hands. Meanwhile, a tide of bowler hats and petticoats were passing him by. Fred frowned. The boy, probably just a few years older, had been born here and, if he was anything like the rest of Atlas, would die here too. This smoky city was a beehive of markets and dusty streets, a scrum of hectic people living hectic lives and none of them, to his knowledge, had ever questioned the walls about them.

  Taking the last turn, he reached the black, wrought iron gates of St. Rulphian’s, a gas-lit lantern adorning the head of each post. Damn. Why did parents have to be seeing their kids off today? He locked his gaze on a gap in the crowd and elbowed his way through. Not today. He wouldn’t think of them today.

  Ruth met him on the other side with a cheery, ‘Hello!’

  ‘Morning,’ he mumbled.

  She glanced at the crowd behind him and her eyebrows folded in understanding. He loved her for that.

  ‘Ready for a bit of history?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Moments later Mr. Beverins clapped his hands together and strode before the class. He was a slim figure in a brown tweed suit, scarlet tie and polished burgundy shoes. Spindly little glasses sat on the end of his nose while a centimeter of white hair covered his head with a thin strip curving round his jaw.

  ‘You have twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Three centuries past, Ducard-Martre theorized that “Emptiness is the natural human state.” To what extent do you agree or disagree?’

  Pens rummaged their way out of bags, dove into inkwells and zoomed across pages.

  Mr. Beverins, the old chestnut, had been teaching history at St. Rulphian’s for well over thirty-five years and, as far as Fred could work out, had always been old. The two exchanged a smile and Fred returned to his paper. His first, lonely paragraph was staring up at him, begging for company. Blah…

  Two rows down, Ruth’s pen was running relays from left to right. He put down his pen and gazed around the room. Ah, Mr. Beverins’ classroom. Most professors jammed their rooms with the full encyclopedia of trinkets confiscated from students, shelves of large tomes set to fall apart under the weight of their collective dust. Not so with Mr. Beverins. His room breathed and dreamt history. It smelt of the stuff. Paintings and tapestries arrayed the walls, even a full-length sword hung above his desk.

  One particular painting drew his gaze. Hmm, why had he never noticed it before? In its center was a gigantic man in a golden suit of armor. Roaring out of the chest plate was an enormous lion and hair seemed to be erupting from every part of him, each strand the same fiery color as his hazel-gold eyes. So shone this figure that all about seemed dim save the golden sword which struck at the burnt sky above his head.

  Fred’s lips parted. Was it him or was there more than brushwork there? It was the eyes that did it. He sensed they were taking him in, reading him to a trembling depth. He struggled to find the word. Profound? Majestic? He knew the right one as soon as it passed through his mind. Kingly.

  But who was he? He’d never seen anyone in Atlas like that. Could he be one of the marauders? No, Mr. Beverins would never celebrate one of them. Yet, if he wasn’t from Atlas or beyond the walls then where could he be from? Who was he?

  So captivated was he, so engrossed, that he never noticed what Mr. Beverins’ was doing. The professor’s aqua blue eyes were watching him in turn. That look, what was it? Not judgement. More of a… probing attentiveness. The wrinkles along his cheeks stretched tight at the presence of a smile. Then he clapped his hands once more and brought the class back to attention.

  Fred didn’t glance at the walls for the rest of the day. The kingly warrior was emblazoned on the back of his eyelids. Who was he? Where did he come from? And the question which bugged him most of all, how had Mr. Beverins come by a picture of him?

  Back h
ome, he speared seasoned mutton onto his fork, smeared it with some mashed potato and shoved it into his mouth. Down the table, his uncle was sat in silence. Dull, grey eyes followed a pipe up to his mouth.

  ‘There’s some jobs coming up at the bank,’ Paul said with a cough. ‘Mrs. Mary Higgs is looking for fresh blood.’

  ‘That’s, um…’ He had to pluck himself from his thoughts. ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘Jobs, son. I’m trying to help your future, unless you would prefer sweeping the chimneys or burrowing down in the mines?’

  Fred sneered, raising his eyebrows. Son? Don’t kid yourself. ‘Yeah, good. Since we’re talking, I have a question. Been thinking about it all day.’

  ‘Oh?’ Something about work, banking, finally becoming normal and fitting in perhaps.

  ‘Is there anyone beyond the wall other than the marauders?’

  ‘Well, not really. Any survivors from the free cities would have been wiped out centuries ago.’

  ‘Then have you ever seen one of the marauders?’

  ‘What?’ Uncle Paul choked on his potato and banged his chest hard. ‘Why would you ask me that? Fearsome beasts bent on violence to their last breath. Bloody monsters, the lot of them.’

  ‘Yeah, but have you actually ever seen one?’

  ‘I can happily say I have not.’

  ‘D’you know anyone who has?’

  ‘No, of cour—! These are strange questions, Fred. We are safe here, in Atlas. Our walls protect us. Why I would want to see one of those dogs is quite beyond me. What’s gotten into you?’

  ‘I’m just… thinking. Never mind.’

  ‘Yes, well quite enough of that. I was trying to tell you about Mrs. Higgs. Please do try to pay attention.’

  Fred smirked and then mmmed and nodded through the rest of the conversation. Something wasn’t adding add up. The very reason the walls existed was to protect them from the marauders yet his uncle had never seen one. No one he knew had. He saw Mr. Beverins’ aqua blue eyes, so old. Could he have seen them? What if no one alive had seen a marauder?

  Try as he did to find some sleep, he kept seeing the walls and the kingly warrior of Mr. Beverins’ painting. Perhaps, not being a marauder, he’d led strikes to beat them back. But a whisper in his heart told him the man wasn’t from Atlas or the free cities at all. So what then? He followed the whispering thread to its source and another image emerged. The kingly warrior hailed from a place without walls or boundaries and, from his hazel-gold eyes to his roaring chest plate, his life pulsed with a freedom that denied the desire for them.

  Before it could seek confirmation, his heart cried, ‘Yes!’ and his bones ached to know that place. He shivered at its power. Where was this coming from? It made no sense. Yet the more he tossed and turned, the more it plagued him and out of that image span a wild idea, a daring plan.

  No way, he thought, but heck, I just might.

  In the middle of the night, once Uncle Paul’s thundering snores reverberated throughout the house, he leapt out of bed and flung open the front door.

  ‘Oh Fred,’ he muttered, ‘what on earth’re you doing?’

  Yep, he nodded and was sure of it. He was going to sneak out, climb the walls and see for himself what lay beyond.

  Two

  What Lay Beyond

  Atlas changed at night. Under a pale sliver of moonlight, the cobbled streets were dotted with lamps lit by gas distilled from coal. It wasn’t hard keeping out of the few feet of light they threw. Still, far-off sounds felt as close as his skin: a cat hissing and scrambling away, the last drunk laugh leaving The Whippersnapper.

  With each step, the gargoyles loomed closer. Shadows exaggerated their features, casting them as ghastly watchers and he half-expected one to crank its stone head round, freeze him with its dead eyes and unleash a blood-curdling cry.

  A mocking tremor ran down his spine. “Oooh, Fred, what’re you doing?” it said.

  Finding the truth, he replied.

  After twenty-five minutes, he found himself at the foot of the north wall. He lowered his hood and squinted about. The moon cast a glow over the ropes and ladders soldiers once used to reach the top. He tracked one of them up, thirty feet to a wooden platform where another ladder waited. Ladder, platform, ladder, platform, all the way to the top.

  ‘Seems easy enough,’ he muttered. Hmph, bet it won’t be.

  He approached, slid a finger along one of the rungs and it came away carrying dust. His brow creased.

  ‘Not used in some time, makes sense. Better test it.’

  Seizing the rails on either side, he put his full weight on the lowest rung. Immediately it sagged with a low moan. Doesn’t sound good. The next moment it cracked and wood chips sprayed up in his face.

  ‘Damn.’

  If someone heard that… He whipped round. The dusty streets zipped south, zigzagging in and out of each other, yet nothing stirred and no one came calling after him.

  ‘Right then, back to it.’

  The question though was how, how on earth could he do it? The wall leapt a hundred and fifty feet up to the moon. If the other ladders proved as reliable as this one, he’d be better off using a glass pickaxe.

  He peered east across the wall and grinned. ‘Hah-ha! Oh yeah.’

  When the mines came within the city limits, they constructed a mechanism for hoisting teams of men and rocks in bulk to the top. A pair of timber rafts counterbalanced each other to form a lift controlled from the bottom. Thus, as one ascended the other descended. By conventional means, it took a small crew to run safely. Well, conventional means…

  He snatched an axe from the base of the wall, along with a pair of dusty, discarded rawhide gloves, and stomped off.

  The nearest raft sat flat against the earth. Ropes rose from each corner and melded into one strand as thick as his arm that climbed to a colossal pulley at the top. A night wind sang against the rope and billowed down on him, lifting his coat high. He froze in his tracks. The fibers of his shirt stuck to the chilled sweat sliding down his back.

  ‘This is crazy,’ he muttered, ‘totally crazy.’

  It was also this or the ladders. Fat lot of use, they were.

  Clinging to the axe, he mounted the raft, shimmied up one of the ropes and steadied himself against the master rope. The rawhide gloves gave him tremendous grip. He leant back and gazed up. A cold drop of sweat dripped from his chin. Man, it was far. Am I really doing this? People in Atlas talked about prayer sometimes and, looking up, he wished there was someone to pray to.

  ‘Here goes.’

  Ensuring he had a good grip, he leant back and struck the rope with the axe. The collision sent ripples to the moon and a bunch of threads split. Again. More threads split and another ripple to the moon. Once more. That did it. The rest of the threads started snapping, great fissures rocketing up.

  His eyes bulged. ‘Oh cra—!’

  The word was ripped from his lips as the rope shot up like a firework. He clung for dear life, begging his arms to not be ripped clean off.

  Ladders and platforms scorched past. The other raft came plunging down like a guillotine, missing him by inches and taking his breath with it.

  Then the top was rushing to meet him. His throat clamped tight. The pulley looked even more immense from here. Just before the rope mangled him into it, he let go and went coursing into the air.

  For an instant he sailed above the wall. He slowed and it was him and the stars, no wind, no movement. This is no time to relax. What came next was vital.

  Landing.

  The nudge of gravity hooked into him, the wind reversed and he swiveled his gaze to the head of the wall with his axe poised to strike.

  ‘Three… two… NOW!’

  He lunged with both hands and the axe caught a bed of rocks.

  Hold! For goodness sake, hold!

  The axe head snagged, held true and his whole body slammed into the wall. The impact was a sledgehammer to the chest. Blinding pain rolled through him.


  ‘Argh!’

  Before his arms gave way, he wrenched himself up and collapsed flat on his back.

  ‘Hah-ha! Woah.’

  It was like the rope had ripped the lungs from his chest and proceeded to bury them beneath the wall. He scrunched his eyes tight and laughed with a delirious cocktail of terror and adrenaline.

  ‘L-let’s never do that again.’

  Inch by inch, sanity started returning to his body. Now for the prize. His knuckles were white, trembling. Planting them either side, he wrenched himself into a sitting position. The world lurched and he wobbled dangerously close to the edge.

  ‘Ooph, ok. Not too fast.’

  When the horizon steadied itself into an appropriate, non-lurching angle he let himself gaze around. A quiet smile crept up his cheeks.

  No fires, no burning, the world was green and beautiful. By the stars and the moon he could make out hills and valleys, flowing waters. He could smell the rich aroma of fresh grass. Owls were soaring and in the crystal silence he could even hear foxes barking and howling.

  Yet that wasn’t the strangest thing. That wouldn’t be the thing to ignite his imagination like wildfire.

  On the north horizon he saw something that beggared belief. Where the earth met the sky there lay a silver glint of beaming light, like a new-born star rising for the first time. Were it not midnight he would have put it down to the first glimmer of a rising sun. Yet unlike the sun, it was staying quite put.