Chains of the earth, p.1
Chains of the Earth, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by David Mealing
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover illustrations by Arcangel and Shutterstock
Cover copyright © 2023 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Map by Tim Paul
Author photograph by Vakker Portraits
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mealing, David, 1982– author.
Title: Chains of the Earth / David Mealing.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Orbit, 2023. | Series: The Ascension Cycle ; book 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2023000579 | ISBN 9780316552370 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780316552387 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3613.E157 C53 2023 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20230109
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000579
ISBNs: 9780316552370 (trade paperback), 9780316552387 (ebook)
E3-20231026-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Part 1: Spring: The Sister’s Stolen Grace 1: Sarine
2: Yuli
3: Arak’jur
4: Sarine
5: Tigai
6: Sarine
7: Sarine
8: Erris
9: Reyne
10: Sarine
11: Arak’jur
12: Yuli
13: Tigai
14: Sarine
15: Arak’jur
16: Erris
17: Tigai
18: Reyne
19: Sarine
20: Arak’jur
21: Sarine
22: Reyne
Elsewhere Interlude: Koa
Interlude: Victoire
Interlude: Amanishiakne
Part 2: Summer: The Sister’s Fading Light 23: Sarine
24: Erris
25: Omera
26: Yuli
27: Tigai
28: Arak’jur
29: Yuli
30: Erris
31: Omera
32: Erris
33: Arak’jur
34: Sarine
35: Tigai
36: Omera
37: Erris
38: Tigai
39: Omera
40: Sarine
41: Sarine
42: Sarine
Before Prelude: Evelynn
Prelude: Li
Part 3: Ruin: The Sister’s Dying Breath 43: Erris
44: Arak’jur
45: Tigai
46: Erris
47: Sarine
48: Arak’jur
49: Omera
50: Tigai
51: Sarine
52: Yuli
53: Omera
54: Erris
55: Tigai
56: Yuli
57: Sarine
58: Tigai
59: Arak’jur
60: Erris
Elsewhere Interlude: Daphène
Interlude: The Regnant
Part 4: Rebirth: The Sister’s Parting Gift 61: Yuli
62: Arak’jur
63: Omera
64: Erris
65: Sarine
66: Sarine
67: Arak’jur
68: Erris
69: Omera
70: Sarine
71: Tigai
72: Arak’jur
73: Yuli
74: Tigai
75: Sarine
76: Erris
77: Anati
78: Yuli
79: Omera
80: Sarine
81: Sarine
82: Sarine
83: Anati
84: Erris
85: Tigai
86: Yuli
87: Erris
88: Sarine
89: Omera
90: Tigai
91: Erris
92: Yuli
93: Sarine
94: Omera
95: Tigai
96: Erris
97: Sarine
98: Yuli
99: Omera
100: Sarine
101: Erris
102: Tigai
103: Erris
104: Yuli
105: Sarine
After Epilogue: Kar’doren
Epilogue: Yuli
Epilogue: Zi
Acknowledgments
Discover More
Meet the Author
Also by David Mealing
For Jamie and Evangeline
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PART 1: SPRING
THE SISTER’S STOLEN GRACE
1
SARINE
Library
The Gods’ Seat
The air shimmered in front of her, and the pages of the book in her lap turned without being touched.
She sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor. Shelves of books lined the walls, tomes more ancient than the oldest, most decrepit scrolls in the best-preserved libraries in the world. She’d chosen a stack that lay piled beside her, books written in long-dead languages covering metaphysics, strategy, religion; anything that might touch, however obliquely, on the coming war between her and her enemy, between Regnant and Veil. The selections had been hers, but today’s reading was prompted by the shimmering man-shape rippling the air in front of her. She sat, waiting, as the pages turned, seemingly of their own accord, while the Watcher thumbed through the volume, seeking whatever it was he wanted her to see.
He’s frustrated, Anati thought to her. Her kaas lay perched atop another stack of books, the ones she’d pulled aside yesterday that had yet to be reshelved. Anati’s scales seemed to shine, as though reflecting an unseen light of purple and soft blue. He’s looking for something he can’t find.
“I thought this was his library,” she said. “And he’s been here for what, tens of thousands of years? You’d think he’d know it all by now.”
“The ghost giving you trouble today, sister?” Yuli asked. The Natarii clanswoman sat on the opposite side of the chamber, in a chair that seemed designed to match the tattoos on her face, hides stretched over sharply pointed bone. A massive tome of Jun Imperial history lay open on her lap, each of its pages illustrated in rich color.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “This is the third book he’s had me stare at while he flicks the pages. Anati says he’s looking for something.”
“That’s positive, then, isn’t it?” Yuli said. “You’re close to something he considers important.”
“Maybe,” she said. “How about you? Learning anything about our enemies?”
“Not really,” Yuli said. “Except did you know Tigai was born under the sign of the Rooster, according to their sky-scholars? Supposedly it means he is hardworking and industrious, though that fits him about as well as gloves on a falcon.”
“Well, if it says anything about their armies, or weaknesses in their strategic thinking,” she said. “Let me know so we can add it to Erris’s lists.”
Yuli folded the tome delicately closed atop her lap. “Armies?” she said. “I thought this was going to be decided by champions, ours against theirs, once the Divide comes down.”
“It is,” she said. “Or, it should be. I don’t know. Some of the Watcher’s reading is making me ask questions. All of the more recent books only talk about champions, but some of the earliest ones go on and on about armies and battles, wars that cover every continent. He seems to want me to read those especially. I’m not sure why.”
There, Anati thought. He’s found it.
She turned her attention back to the book lying open in her lap. Suddenly the pages had stopped turning, and the left page was depressed, as the Watcher pushed an invisible finger into the second paragraph.
; The script was one of the ancient ones; the characters blurred and became readable in her mind without her needing to think or study them too closely. One of many benefits to her bond with Anati, and an especially useful one in a library as old as this. She started reading where the Watcher’s finger dented the page.
“See, this is another one,” she said. “It says here they ‘could devise a game to control for the chaos of war, where a champion might’… wait.”
“A champion might wait?” Yuli said. “What does that mean?”
“No, I mean… wait,” she said. She read the passage again. “Anati, who wrote this?”
Doesn’t it say on the spine? Anati thought to her. Or inside the cover? That’s how your books are usually made, isn’t it?
“Yes,” she said, inserting a finger to hold the place. “This book is Meditations on Light and Shadow, written by a man who calls himself Dominus. But people have other names. I’ve read three books I’m sure were written by Axerian now, using three different names, and this is in a similar style… only it’s older. I’m sure of it. The way this writer talks, it’s as though all of this, all of the champions and the war between Regnant and Veil… it’s as though…”
“As though what?” Yuli said. “What does it say?”
She scanned it again, starting from the place where the Watcher’s finger had indented the page.
“It’s as though it hadn’t happened yet, when this was written,” she said. “Listen to this: ‘We could divide the world in two in the regenerative stages, isolating the systems bound to her, and to him. Using champions as proxies, a game structure for power transitions minimizes risk of interference from the apex lines of emergent strains not bound to either master.’ It sounds like whoever is writing this is talking about instituting the whole thing. The champions, control over the Soul, all of it.”
“That sounds like a stretch,” Yuli said. “Are you sure it couldn’t mean something else?”
“No,” she said. “Here, it actually calls them by name: ‘Absent direct interference by Regnant or Veil, the proposed Divide-based game structure ensures retention of control by isolating powers that might theoretically contest the champions at the fulcrum point of each transition.’ Anati, where did this book come from?”
What? Anati thought. You plucked it from the shelf, over there.
“No, I mean, ask him,” she said. “Who wrote this, and how did it get into this library?”
The Watcher sat still and unmoving, an unseen finger still firmly planted in the page. Then slowly the air rippled in the shape of a head nodding.
He says it was written by who it says on the spine. “Dominus.” “The Master.”
“The Master,” she said. “One who came before the Regnant and Veil?”
The air rippled again.
She slid the book out from under his finger, closing it gingerly and saving the place.
“Erris has to see this,” she said, rising to her feet. “I have to study this. This could change everything. It talks about the whole thing, the champions, the Divide, the struggle for control of the bloody world, as though it were a game. Something they devised to keep outsiders from interfering.”
Yuli joined her on her feet, falling into step with her as they left the library behind.
“How could they devise anything together?” Yuli asked as they walked. The cold stone from the library floor extended through the passages, spiraling outward toward where the Gods’ Seat had made rooms for her, and each of her champions. They’d been here since the last ascensions, her and Yuli, Erris and Arak’Jur and Reyne and Tigai. Trapped, or at least in stasis, with only the map room and Erris’s Need bindings for contact with the outside world. “Aren’t the Regnant and Veil mortal enemies?”
“As far as I know,” she said. “Maybe they were, and this ‘Master’ devised his game to keep their conflicts in check? I don’t know. I’ve only read a few pages. We need to study it to know for sure.”
“But why would it be printed and published?” Yuli said. “Did this ‘Master’ have an audience for his thoughts on how to devise systems to control the world?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “You’re right, though: It’s not like the Veil’s journals. This was printed and bound.”
“I’m only asking because I want to be sure we’re not misinterpreting,” Yuli said. “Maybe this was fiction, and it only sounds like it does because that’s what you want to find.”
“I agree, we need to be cautious, but it referred to them by name,” she said. “It sounds clear to me. We’ll see what Erris thinks.”
“It mentioned ‘others,’ too,” Yuli said. “Others… peers of the Regnant and Veil? I wonder who it might mean.”
She left that part unanswered, ignoring the chill she felt at Yuli’s words. It was only a few paragraphs, but already the book threatened to shake her understanding of where they were, and why. A game? If the Regnant and Veil were playing a game, she was entirely ignorant of the rules. And rules could be broken. Games could be set aside. Too many had died already; how many more might die with them if all of it up to now had been a game?
She and Yuli took familiar passages spiraling outward from the Soul. The library room was one of the closest to the burning light at this place’s heart. Their private chambers lined the halls leading outward, toward the map room and a handful of other, emptier chambers whose purposes she hadn’t yet been able to discern. The strange art and sculpture here was slowly being replaced by the familiar, the longer they stayed: Sarresant paintings had begun to appear on the walls in place of the smeared inks and wrought iron, at least near her, Erris’s, and Reyne’s chambers, whereas Tigai’s hall had murals of Jun soldiers, and Yuli’s had plinths with limestone sculptures of fearsome warrior-women as marked and tattooed as she was. None of them, so far as she knew, had asked the Watcher to change the décor, yet it had changed all the same. More mysteries of this place, and always too many for her to unravel.
A rap on the carved white door was met by silence from within. She opened it anyway, and stepped inside.
Erris’s desk was covered with papers. Loose parchments and three separate inkwells had been pushed to the edges, while maps spread out across most of its surface. More maps and parchments scrawled with notes lay on the low table between two of her couches, marked with blue bars and lines to denote the current disposition of the Imperial armies of New Sarresant, Thellan, and Gand. The Empress herself sat behind her desk, slumped against her ornately carved chair, both eyes rolled up into her head so only the whites gazed out over her papers and maps. For anyone else she might have panicked, rushed to offer aid in the form of Life and Body. For Erris, it meant her consciousness was elsewhere, sent to attend meetings or deliberations through one of her vessels, through the power of Need.
“May as well sit comfortably while we wait,” Yuli said. “I wonder if the Watcher will have anticipated us coming… mmm, and there it is.”
A tray of tea sat atop one of Erris’s cabinets, piping hot, with a plate divided between Sarresant biscuits and what Yuli had called Natarii dipping cakes. Yuli fetched the tray, carefully folding one of Erris’s maps to clear space on the low table.
“There are some parts of this place I’m going to miss,” Yuli said. “Hot tea ready and waiting before you even know you want it. Like having an army of Jun palace servants watching over you, and not one of them inclined to sell your secrets to your enemies.”
She sat across from Yuli, tucking both legs under her atop the cushions and reopening the Watcher’s book to where she’d saved the place. Erris would return from her Need connections soon enough. Until then, she might as well make good use of the time.
The virtues of a game-structure would be twofold in principle: First, to ensure a regulated transition with minimal oversight between the Regnant and Veil while inuring their systems from influence from the outside; second, to select for refined genetic stock to be bred among survivors into each of the program’s next phases.
Most of the words made sense as she read them, though the broader picture eluded her. Yuli was right to be cautious. But this was describing the Regnant and Veil, it said so in specific terms. And something else, these “outsiders” and “others” the text made mention of. She thumbed ahead looking for the word, and found it again three paragraphs down:
