Page 1 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Part I: Cities
Prologue
BROTHER
50 Years Ago
TWELVE WAS MUCH TOO YOUNG an age to have blood under one’s nails.
It was also much too young to be working in the Zuprium mines, but the boy didn’t have a choice.
He longed for fresh air, not the sort he breathed now…stale, like water left in the summer heat. The scent didn’t match the mines themselves. More experienced miners told him he’d get used to it, that it would cling to him like sweat soon enough. If they meant to reassure, they failed miserably.
Uneven, jagged scraps of rock bit through the soles of his secondhand boots. He had to wrap both hands around the handle of his pa’s old pickax so he could swing it hard enough toharvest the crystal in front of him. His fingertips barely touched one another.
The crystal sang to him in its ethereal way, the only beauty down in mountain depths. In the lantern light, it glittered and grinned like the summer sun.
It knew it was to be harvested. It knew the boy only did this to keep food on the table. It knew he wanted to be anywhere but covered in Zuprium dust and sweat.
He did not know how. It just did. Its song told him so.
But its music wasn’t the only thing hollering in this hole; pain raised its voice with every swing of his pickax, complaints lodged by the bruises on his arms.
They would take a few weeks to disappear. First red as a mountain hornet, then purple, then green, and yellow. They always faded that way. The only difference was the boy could now pretend the mines had made them.
Even with Ma’s poultices, Pa’s mind was going too fast…and with it, his restraint. None of the herbs in Ma’s garden could fix the brain. James Hale needed help only doctors in Kyvena could provide, but when your only lot in life was a pickax and a handful of Zuprium dust, you couldn’t afford to reach that help…or pay the hefty price for it.
Instead, you simply went insane.
The dust ate at your mind and body until it couldn’t no longer. It got into every mountain cottage nook and cranny. Most mountain folk died at the ripe old age of forty—if they were lucky.
The boy hated it all.
He hated the mountains. He despised the way the dirt floor of his family’s one-room cottage smelled when rain leaked through the roof. He loathed the haggard miners who traipsed through the door that wouldn’t stay shut, begging Ma forpoultices to ease the pain. It was the most they could hope for somewhere as far removed as Ravenhelm.
Their larger sister village, Stoneset, also boasted fruitful Zuprium mines. Maybe they had the ability to avoid what was known round those parts as the Fogs; maybe they didn’t. Maybe the capital ignored them all the same, so long as they met their Zuprium load for the month.
The pickax handle scraped his palms and fingertips, leaving splinters behind if he wasn’t careful. But careful wouldn’t carve these crystals out of the wall; swinging the pickax took nearly all his strength.
Most didn’t enter the mines sooner than sixteen, but with Pa getting worse by the month—the week—theday, the Hale family had no choice…they needed to eat, and most miners only had stale bread or nearly rotten potatoes to trade, no money. Not enough to pay Ma what her poultices were worth. At ten, the boy’s younger brother, Michael, had figured out what herbs he could collect from the garden and nearby forest to make the potatoes taste nearly edible. It wasn’t enough.
The thought of his brother’s bright blue eyes and blond hair that never laid flat tightened his hold on the pickax. He threw his whole weight behind the next strike.
The crystal was about the size of his fist and emitted a faint glow in the lantern light. To the untrained eye, it might look like gold, but it was something more valuable than any jewelry. Its veins ran deep within these mountains; it told the story of the planet itself. Some said it was magic. The boy said it was a way to live and a way to die.
The pickax struck true. A sharp cloud of dust floated out of the small crack left behind. Beautiful as it sparkled in the light, but a slow death to those breathing it in. A flashpistol bullet to the head would be quicker, but the boy would do anything tokeep his brother out of the mines, even if it meant the boy lost his own mind by the time he was thirty.
It was funny to think that three months before, he’d been playing groggon in the field behind the tiny schoolhouse with his brother and friends. He’d been faster and stronger than boys even three years his senior. He’d dreamed the sport was his way of leaving, his ticket to fame and the capital. On that particular day in June, he’d scored the winning goal and had basked in the light of victory. He’d gone home a champion.
Pa snapped that very same day.
Ten months later, the boy slammed the pickax again, his grunt echoing in the dim, roughly hewn corridor. The gas lantern above was a necessary evil so deep within the mountain. Hit the crystal wrong, and tatters of flesh would be all that was left when the miners dug you out.
It’d been six months since the last explosion. A record.
One he didn’t feel like breaking.
The boy wiped sweat off his forehead and coughed. He would get some herbs from Ma when he returned home. They slowed the process slightly, which was why his father was one of thelucky fewwho dodged the worst of the symptoms until they were older.
