Read The Record of the Saints Caliber Online

Authors: M. David White

Tags: #Fantasy, #Dark Fantasy, #Fiction

The Record of the Saints Caliber (4 page)

BOOK: The Record of the Saints Caliber
11.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“Please! Please!” the woman begged, her eyes wet and raw. “Aeoria have mercy! They already took my husband. I’m all these children have. Please, have mercy!”

Nuriel sniffled and tucked her golden hair behind her ears. She tried not to make eye contact with her or her children. “Come on.” she said, her voice nothing but a soft croak. This work sickened her.

“Please,” the woman’s voice quivered with desperation. “Please, let my children go. They had nothing to do with any of this.”

“No mama!” cried the boy at her side. He wrapped himself to her leg and it didn’t look like even grim death could pry him off.

Nuriel’s hands went to her face. She sniffled. She couldn’t do this. She just couldn’t.

“Aeoria, have mercy!” begged the woman. “You’re a Saint, show us the Goddess’s mercy, please!”

Nuriel clutched the sides of her head. She turned and found her own, terrible reflection staring back at her from a dusty, cracked mirror that hung crookedly on the wall. Her eyes were as radiant as molten gold and her hair like threads of the same precious metal, but the dark circles beneath her eyes and the speckles of blood upon her narrow cheek somehow tarnished their brilliance. Like all of the Saints Caliber, she wore a white leather bodysuit beneath her Star-Armor. The bodysuit conformed well to her slender frame and made her arms and legs look long and sleek beneath the armor. The arms of her suit came up and over the top of her hand and formed something of a fingerless glove. Where her Star-Armor didn’t cover her bodysuit at her belly, collar and the joints of her arms and legs, it was red with spatters of blood.

Star-Armor was impossibly heavy, only able to be worn by Saints. It was made of a glassy, black metal that was as opaque as night’s shadows but held a depth to it, like staring into the ocean at night. Nuriel’s chest was encased by her unremoveable breastplate. It was smooth and rounded, with matching pauldrons that cupped her shoulders. She had star-metal bracers upon her upper arms and forearms, and a skirt of feather-shaped plates made of star-metal that hung upon her waist. Like the rest of her armor, the star-metal on her legs was smooth and round, encasing her upper and lower legs. Upon her feet were star-metal boots.

As black and glassy as the star-metal was, darker blots of wet blood clung to it like blights.

Nuriel pinched her eyes shut at the sight of herself.

“Please,”
begged the woman above the wailing infant in her arms and the sobs from her boy at her leg. “Please, let us go! You’re kind, I know it! Aeoria have mercy!”

Nuriel looked up at them. She sniffled and wiped a hand down her face, then reached up and grabbed the handle of the star-metal claymore upon her back. She looked at the woman. Her eyes were wide with fear; the baby was crying in her arms. The boy at her side looked up at her, bulbs of tears clinging to his eyes, and he released a bitter howl that chilled Nuriel to the core.

She released her grip on her sword.

She turned to leave and nearly bumped into one of King Gatima’s ramshackle knights. Behind him stood her mentor, Saint Isley.

“There you are, Saint Nuriel.” said the knight. Like all of Gatima’s knights, his armor was a set of mismatched steel that was dented, scuffed and beyond the help of any polish. He held a sword in his hand that had obviously seen better days. His eyes shifted, looking beyond her and into the hovel. “Take them.” he said, pointing into the darkness of the room. “Those ones burn with the other dissenters. Gatima’s orders.”

“No!” wailed the woman. “It was nothing but an axe he kept! What were we supposed to cut wood with? Please, it was but a rusty axe! Certainly the steel shortage was not so great that our glorious and exalted King would have needed it!”

“They burn.” said the knight. He turned and left.

Nuriel found Saint Isley looking at her with those tender, silver eyes of his. His lips pursed into a frown. “We must do our duty.” he said softly, his mild voice tinged with regret.

Nuriel turned back into the room. The woman was broken by her own sobs and fell to her knees, clutching her baby to her breast. At her side the young boy screamed out.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Nuriel was shaken from her haunted reverie by a rumble that consumed the volcanic cavern. She found that she had been staring into a deep fissure in the floor that radiated with fiery light from far below. She almost thought she caught a glimpse of the mother being consumed by flames, her infant’s cries being choked off by the heat as the boy reached a hand out through the pillar of fire that engulfed him.

“Come,” said Isley. He was smiling softly at her from across the small fissure, holding out his gauntleted hand to her. His molten silver eyes—the same color as his hair—had a sincerity and tenderness that Nuriel found comforting, but the fiery light that reflected in them caused them to gleam with that fanatical blind-devotion he held upon all his intentions.

Sweltering heat and a darkness consumed by a ruddy glow overtook Saint Nuriel as she shook herself out of the lingering memories playing in her mind. Her eyes caught her mentor’s again and Isley smiled. His star-metal breastplate was sharp and angled, as were his bracers and the armor upon his waist and legs. The glassy black facets of his Star-Armor caught the ruddy, volcanic light of the cavern and reflected it back upon him, making his leather bodysuit look more red than white. He looked upon her with that soft, youthful face that belied his thirty-six years of wisdom and smiled faintly at her. “Come, Nuriel.” he said.

Nuriel grimaced. She didn’t like being here. She hopped across the narrow fissure and followed Isley deeper into the cavern. They were in a massive tunnel that had been carved into the side of the volcano. The sulfurous air of molten rock stung her eyes and nose, but Nuriel paid it no mind. Isley was speaking to her—something about helping Celacia here in Dimethica—but Nuriel wasn’t really paying attention to him either. Her mind was still a thousand miles away, back in Jerusa.

Nuriel coughed and sniffled. She brushed her golden hair behind her ear and then wrapped her arms around her lithe body, the black, star-metal armor upon her arms chiming softly on her breastplate. She couldn’t shake the sound of that woman’s screams, and she felt her skin crawl with goose-pimples despite the heat of the cavern. She shuddered.

Nuriel rubbed at her runny nose and a tiny cough escaped her mouth. She looked up and about at the magnitude of the cavern she was in, trying to get her attention on something else. The perimeter was lit by the hellish glow of volcanic magma. Enormous stalactites, like the very fingers of the mountain, groped at her from the ceiling. An eerie turbulence engulfed the atmosphere, broken by an occasional blast that reverberated amongst the boulders. The jagged, rocky walls twinkled and sparkled in the ubiquitous ruddy glow that consumed the cavern, and a spray of molten rock leapt from a fissure that lined the far wall.

Nuriel sniffled and tucked her golden hair behind her ear as Isley led her ever deeper into the volcano. As much as she hated Jerusa—as much as she hated that impossibly fat King Gatima and his entire, wretched kingdom—she hated being here even more. She hated sneaking around Dimethica and betraying her duties—not that she liked her duties thus far in the Saints Caliber—but at least in Jerusa she hadn’t been betraying Sanctuary.

Nuriel wondered what Karinael would think. Right now her friend would be in her dorm room back at Sanctuary getting cleaned up for lunch. She wondered if Karinael was thinking about her right now, wondering what she was doing. If she was, she’d be wondering if she was off fighting the Unbound or Infernals; if she was fighting off the minions of Apollyon and searching for a way to awaken the sleeping goddess, Aeoria. Nuriel frowned. Her friend wouldn’t be thinking that she had been burning dissenters for King Gatima. She certainly wouldn’t be thinking that she had been coerced by her mentor into betraying Sanctuary and working for a strange woman named Celacia.

Nuriel bit her lip and sniffled. She didn’t know what to think anymore. Celacia was a strange Saint. In fact, Nuriel wasn’t even certain she was a Saint. She looked like a Saint…kind of. But she was not like any Saint Nuriel had ever known. Then again, Isley wasn’t exactly what she thought a seasoned Saints Caliber would be either. In fact, nothing she and Isley had done in the few months they had been together was really what she had thought she would be doing as one of the Saints Caliber.

Back at Sanctuary she and Karinael had sat up so many nights, dreaming of the day they could make the elite Saints Caliber and leave Sanctuary. They could get away from the bullies and their relentless torments. They could go out into the world and fight for the will of the sleeping goddess, Aeoria. It had never crossed their minds that if they ever made Saints Caliber they would be trading being bullied for doing the bullying.

Karinael was still back at Sanctuary. She hadn’t made Saints Caliber yet, and probably never would. She was too nice, too sweet and too caring. Additionally, every Saint possessed special power that gifted them with speed and strength and made them more than mortal men and women. This gift was known as Caliber, and the more brightly a Saint could shine their Caliber, the more powerful they were. And Karinael’s just wasn’t strong enough.

Nuriel wasn’t exactly the type to make Saints Caliber either. Back at Sanctuary the others had often teased her, saying she was too soft, too sympathetic to make it. Nuriel was beginning to think the others were right.

To make Saints Caliber, a Saint had to have a strong Caliber. They had to be powerful enough to withstand the impossibly heavy Star-Armor they wore and still be able to run with the wind and fight like a hurricane in battle. But more than that, to make Saints Caliber a Saint had to have a certain psychological profile. It was a profile that neither Nuriel nor her friend Karinael had.

Nuriel made Saints Caliber solely by the strength of her Caliber. She knew it.
Everybody
at Sanctuary knew it. It was something of a dirty little secret back at home. Having a Saint with such a powerful Caliber had apparently been too much of a temptation for the Bishops and they couldn’t resist putting her out into the field. So, against the Holy Few’s advice, they had given Nuriel her Call to Guard; her invitation to join the elite Order of the Saints Caliber.

At twenty-one, Nuriel was the youngest to ever make Saints Caliber. Most Saints did not receive their Call to Guard until they were twenty-five or twenty-six when their Calibers came to full power. But Nuriel knew that Karinael would never receive her Call to Guard. In fact, most Saints never would, but it didn’t prevent them from dreaming. Deep down, Nuriel knew that even Karinael had come to realize she would never make Saints Caliber. It was something they didn’t talk about. It was one of those sore subjects; an open wound that Karinael lived with. They both dreamed of making Saints Caliber, but they also both knew that one of them never would.

And maybe it was a good thing Karinael would never make it, thought Nuriel. It was only three months ago that she had gotten her Call to Guard. She was assigned to apprentice under Saint Isley and was given to Jerusa and King Gatima. In that short amount of time Nuriel had come to realize that being one of the Saints Caliber wasn’t all about fighting Infernals and Unbound demons. It wasn’t about fighting for a new age of hope or a means to awaken the sleeping goddess and return the stars to the sky. Instead, it had been about doing what Nuriel thought of as remedial tasks for King Gatima.

She and Isley had been quelling uprisings and policing villages, things Gatima’s knights should be doing as far as Nuriel was concerned. They had even been collecting taxes for King Gatima, and as far as Nuriel could tell, that basically amounted to looting the villagers of what few possessions most of them had. Last month when Gatima declared a steel shortage and ordered that the citizens of Jerusa give up their swords and weapons there were riots in the streets of Gatimaria. After she and Isley put a swift end to it, they were told to round up every dissenter and their children and put them to the torch.

Again that woman’s screams and her son’s hand reaching through the fires assaulted Nuriel’s mind and she shuddered. She sniffled and tucked her hair behind her ear. She coughed, but it was not from the sulfurous fumes of this volcano. She hadn’t felt herself since she left Sanctuary to apprentice with Isley and at this point she was fairly certain it was no longer just homesickness. She had never been sick before, but she really felt like she might be coming down with something. She had heard about the ills that often plagued Saints out in the field and supposedly homesickness was quite common with apprentices. Nuriel didn’t think it was homesickness though. She thought maybe it was all her Saintly duties that had been making her sick, but she had to dash that idea quickly from her mind.

“We shouldn’t be here.” said Nuriel softly as they approached the end of the long cavern where a handful of Jerusan knights in shabby armor stood sentry. Her voice was indignant, testing what was appropriate for an apprentice.

Saint Isley stopped and turned around to look at Nuriel. His face was soft with understanding and his eyes smiled along with his face. He looked at her with those tender, chrome eyes of his, and Nuriel couldn’t help but see something of Holy Father Admael in his features. She wondered if that was the reason she was so easily swayed by him. Even now Nuriel found herself wishing she could see Holy Father one last time. Meeting him at her Call to Guard Ceremony had been too brief and it left her craving more of his warmth and love.

BOOK: The Record of the Saints Caliber
11.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Ghostly Mystery by David A. Adler
November Sky by Marleen Reichenberg
Whiteout (Aurora Sky by Nikki Jefford
A Man Melting by Craig Cliff
Black Mirror by Gail Jones
A SEALed Fate by Nikki Winter