Lumen, p.1
Lumen, page 1
Acclaim for
The Nightingale Trilogy
Realm Award: Fantasy & Book of the Year
Calor
“A fascinating magic system and a captivating dystopian backdrop.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Amid adventures, battles, and healings, Sephone shows her many gifts in . . . The Nightingale Trilogy.”
—Booklist
“[The Nightingale Trilogy] explores the value of hope and love in this expansive fallen world, where complex cultures and emotional backstories sing haunting refrains.”
—Lorehaven
“A feast of mystery, magic, adventure . . . Fischer is a great writer, storyteller, and world-builder.”
—Andrew Moody, former editor of The Gospel Coalition Australia
“Captivating and imaginative, Lumen dives deeper into the characters we already love and takes the world of Caldera to a whole new level. It’s the perfect sequel, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next!”
—S.D. Grimm, author of A Dragon by Any Other Name
Books by J. J. Fischer
The Darcentaria Duology
The Sword in His Hand
The Secret of Fire
The Nightingale Trilogy
Calor
Lumen
The Soul Mark Duology
The Soul Mark
Lumen
Copyright © 2024 by J. J. Fischer
Published by Enclave Publishing, an imprint of Oasis Family Media, LLC.
Carol Stream, Illinois, USA.
www.enclavepublishing.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, digitally stored, or transmitted in any form without written permission from Oasis Family Media, LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 979-8-88605-082-0 (hardback)
ISBN: 979-8-88605-083-7 (printed softcover)
ISBN: 979-8-88605-085-1 (ebook)
Cover design by Kirk DouPonce, www.FictionArtist.com
Typesetting by Jamie Foley, www.JamieFoley.com
Printed in the United States of America.
For all those who’ve been a light to me in dark places,
and for the Light that endures when all other lights go out.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Acclaim for The Nightingale Trilogy
Half-Title
Books by J. J. Fischer
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Map of Caldera
1. Sephone
2. Dorian
3. An Unexpected Foe
4. Sephone
5. Dorian
6. Sephone
7. Dorian
8. Sephone
9. Dorian
10. Sephone
11. Sephone
12. Dorian
13. An Unexpected Foe
14. Dorian
15. Sephone
16. Sephone
17. Dorian
18. Sephone
19. Sephone
20. Dorian
21. Sephone
22. Dorian
23. Sephone
24. An Unexpected Foe
25. Dorian
26. Sephone
27. Sephone
28. Dorian
29. Dorian
30. Dorian
31. Sephone
32. Dorian
33. Dorian
34. An Unexpected Foe
Acknowledgments
About the Author
lumen
A Latin word meaning light.
“They all said ‘Oh!’ and held up
their forefingers and nodded,
but a poor fisherman,
who had heard the real nightingale,
said, ‘it sounds prettily enough,
and the melodies are all alike;
yet there seems something wanting,
I cannot exactly tell what.’”
—The Nightingale
by Hans Christian Andersen (1843)
It was early morning, and I stood on a beach of broken glass.
If you could call it glass. The steady, rhythmic pulse of the waves had, over time, filed the sharp edges of each fragment away, creating thousands upon thousands of pebbles in every color and shape imaginable.
I knelt and reached for a turquoise stone, small enough to fit through the hole formed by my joined thumb and index finger. I ran the pad of my thumb over the glossy surface as though examining a memory. But there were no splinters to be had here, no pits or bubbles or protruding edges; each pebble was smooth, untarnished, and exquisitely beautiful. If only time were as generous to human memories.
“Sephone!”
At the urgency in the call, I dropped the pebble and looked up. Dorian sprinted toward me, his eyes bloodshot and his chest heaving. Cass was close behind, followed by the Mardell brothers and Jewel. And behind them . . .
A razor-sharp knife worked expertly beneath my skin, slicing my nerves to ribbons. Cutter and Lord Draven—Rufus Karthick—led a small army of alters along the beach toward us. Flaming spheres of as many different colors as the pebbles hurtled through the air, some of them sizzling as the wind helpfully deflected them into the waves. A crossbow bolt landed wide of Cass, while another narrowly avoided puncturing Bear’s throat. Jewel yelped as a burning yellow sphere strayed too close to her tail.
I gained my feet just as Dorian grabbed me by the shoulders. “Run, Sephone!” he gasped.
I felt the familiar embrace of his gift: currents of liquid warmth eddying and swirling around me. Fear rose like a morning mist and was swiftly burnt away by the heat. And then the lord’s body went slack.
“Lida . . .”
We sank together to the ground, the glassy pebbles clinking a barely audible toast as they shifted beneath our boots. Dorian sagged against me, his mouth agape, his hands still loosely clutching my arms. A drop of ruby-red liquid eased from the corner of his mouth, and I saw the silver-hilted knife between his shoulder blades—a knife I instinctively knew belonged to Lord Draven.
An anguished scream tore from my throat. “Dorian!”
His eyes turned sightless, and his head lolled against the hollow of my neck and shoulder. I grabbed him around the waist and shook him violently. “Dorian, wake up! Stay with me.”
A fireball shot past my ear, singeing the hair that had only recently grown past my shoulders. In the corner of my eye, I saw Bas stumble and fall. Bear halted, turned, and lunged at our pursuers, just as a violet inferno enveloped Cass—
I jerked awake, gasping. The darkness felt oppressively thick as I rolled onto my forearms and counted out my shuddering breaths.
One, two, three, four. Only a dream, Sephone. Only a dream.
Or was it? It had felt so real. I searched out the prone forms of the others, strewn like driftwood around the dying fire. The lady wolf, Jewel, her head balanced gracefully on her front paws. Bear, still sleeping off the effects of the mind-bleeding, sprawled on his back with a hand curled protectively over his wounded shoulder. His twin brother, Bas, lying as close as Bear’s pride would allow, his eyebrows knotted together suspiciously even in repose. Cass, stretched out like a cat in the sun, a smile on his full lips that likely had something to do with the empty flask lying beside him. And Dorian, facing the opposite wall with his back to me, but still awake, judging by the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
I blew out another breath, pulling my knees to my chest and resting my head on them, then winced as I accidentally brushed against the gash on my temple. That, at least, was real.
It was the part of the night I hated the most: The still, bottomless silence when a person was finally alone with their thoughts, forced to gaze into the abyss of the human soul for what feels like an eternity until the sun rises again. The very abyss that the mind-bleeding was conceived to avoid.
But there was no relief to be had for someone like me. The best way—the only way—to survive was to rehearse the things I knew for certain.
My name is Sephone Winter. I am a slave, but one day, I will be free. I walk the line between day and night, light and shadow. I am alone but alive.
But everything had changed since the last time I’d faced myself in the lonely dark, and the number of truths I could reliably depend on had dwindled. There were exactly three things I knew for certain, and comfort could be squeezed from only one of them. Curling into a ball beside Jewel, I repeated them to myself in the gloom of the cavern.
I was in love with a man who loved a ghost.
My parents and brother were quite possibly alive.
And I was dying.
I was still awake an hour later when Jewel lifted her head and began to growl. I sat up as Dorian sprang to his feet. Iron-tipped quarterstaff in hand, he crossed the cavern to the wolf’s side with barely a glance in my direction.
“What is it, lady?” he murmured, stroking her flattened ears. “What do you sense?” When the growl deepened, he straightened and looked at me. “I’m afraid we must prepare for company, Sephone.”
“But Bear—” I started, my gritty eyes straying to the giant’s form. He hadn’t stirred yet—and likely wouldn’t for hours, thanks to the effects of my gift.
“We must manage without him.”
“How much time do we have?” I glanced at Jewel, who was now pacing f
“Minutes, possibly seconds,” Dorian replied. “It will be difficult for Jewel to sense anything in this storm. Its magic will interfere with hers.”
I looked toward the shadowy, far reaches of the cavern, from which Bas had returned earlier with armfuls of firewood. “What about the tunnels? Might we escape that way?”
Dorian shook his head. “Nay, there’s only one way out of this cave, and that’s the way we came in. But we can’t leave, not before the storm is over. We’ll have to make our stand here.”
He was right, of course. Though the cavern muffled most of the sound, I could still hear the thunder rumbling outside. If we braved the open, none of us might live to see another sunrise—feeble as sunrises were in this part of the world.
“Seph could hide in the tunnels,” Cass said as he joined us, but he was looking at Dorian. “There are enough twists and turns to confuse them for a while.”
Dorian nodded. “Aye, that’s an idea. Our pursuers need not know you were ever here, Sephone.”
No green or black ribbons coiled between him and Cass. Since I’d grown used to Cass’s gift, the lack of light was oddly disconcerting.
I leveled my chin. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Consider it a command, Sephone,” he said more sternly.
“Consider it a command disobeyed,” I retorted.
“I would have you survive this,” he replied, more gently. Hearing the note of apology in his voice, I stilled and met his gaze. My nightmare had been so real, I could still feel his hands on my shoulders, his weakening grip and the sorrow in his wife’s whispered name. Lida . . . My heart stuttered as I recalled the fading warmth of his forehead against my neck.
Never mind that it was only a dream.
The regret in his eyes had been real enough. “I want you to survive this, too,” I said at last and forced myself to look at Cass. “Both of you.”
“My lord,” Bas interjected, and the three of us turned to him. “I need your help.” He indicated his brother.
Bear was awake, but his eyes were shuttered with pain, and he was yet to gain his feet. I watched as Dorian and Bas lifted him and half dragged, half carried him to the far corner of the cavern, behind the hobbled horses. If he survived this, he would remember very little. If he didn’t, the end result would be the same.
I whispered a silent prayer—to the old gods of the world-that-was, or whoever was listening—that the bodyguard would survive both his wound and whatever enemy now approached. When I’d numbed his memories earlier, I’d kept to the rim of his consciousness, mindful of his privacy and not wanting to invite censure from Bas. It was like reaching out to comfort a child with your eyes still closed. But I’d seen flashes, enough to know that the giant’s amicable manner was not born from a life of ease.
“Loyal to the end, Seph,” Cass murmured into my ear. I flinched at the tickle of his warm, alcohol-scented breath. “If only the thane knew the true reason for your devotion.”
I pulled away with a scowl, keeping my gaze fixed on the cavern opening, where Jewel now stood like a sentry, her black lips drawn back in a snarl. “It’s none of your business.”
“Aye, you’re right, Seph. Still, you might want to reconsider. In this world, loyal folk don’t live very long. Think of poor Mistress Toria.”
I cringed at the reminder. According to Cutter, the former nursemaid of Dorian’s daughter had been murdered by Lord Draven for sheltering us in Calliope. Yet another reason why the man had to die.
Dorian and Bas returned, Bas now armed with his brother’s crossbow. Jewel positioned herself beside us, the rumble in her chest louder than the storm outside. As Dorian gripped his quarterstaff, Cass drew twin blades from his boots.
“Attack first, ask questions later?” The lumen’s blue-green eyes glinted.
“Aye,” agreed Dorian. “Jewel would not growl if a friend approached.”
Had Cutter found us? Or Lord Draven himself? I relaxed as Dorian’s gift soothed the onslaught of fear. The weary expression on Bas’s face vanished, replaced by grim determination. But by the look of Cass’s rigid jaw, the lord’s gift was not universally welcome.
The cavern entranceway glowed red, then blue. I resisted Dorian’s attempts to maneuver me behind him.
“You’re sure there’s no other way out?” whispered Cass.
“Aye,” replied Dorian. “I’m sure.”
“Very well. But don’t forget about that pay-raise discussion, Thane. I’m not doing this for posterity.” He winked at me.
A burning sphere of emerald rolled across the cave floor, no larger than the size of an orange. The bedroll where Bear had been lying ignited as if it were made from chaff, summoning lurid images of Cass burning alive and screaming in agony. A gasp escaped my lips. Dorian reached out and squeezed my elbow.
“Courage, Sephone. Whatever happens, Draven wants you alive.”
It was poor consolation when I considered the implications of his statement—that Lord Draven would not extend the same courtesy to Dorian, and that being captured by Draven would likely mean a fate far worse than death. But I allowed myself to respond to his reassurances, relishing the warmth of his hand through my glove. A second ball rolled into the cavern, this one fiery red. Cass’s bedroll exploded in crimson flames.
“Well,” remarked Cass, “now we need to talk about reimbursement of material goods lost in the line of duty.”
A cloaked figure strolled into the cave, the sharp planes of his face eerie in the red-and-green light emanating from the floor. Jewel bared her teeth but hung back, as if instinctively understanding the folly of a direct assault. Bas released the bolt on his brother’s crossbow, but the man seemed to have anticipated the attack, for he leaned to the side, and the bolt skittered harmlessly against the rock wall behind him. Bas hurried to reload the weapon as the horses hobbled behind us whinnied and tossed their heads.
“Wait,” said the alter, holding up his black-gloved hands. “I’d advise against it.” He clapped his hands twice, and a violet sphere appeared out of nothing, hovering between his fingers.
“In the time it takes you to reload that contraption, guard, I will have summoned four of these.” He extended his right hand, the flaming sphere balancing in the center of his palm as he counted us off with the other hand. “One, two, three, four. Five, if you count the wolf, which I don’t.” He frowned. “I thought there were five of you. Three alters and two bodyguards.” He tilted his head as he examined us, then shrugged. “Nevertheless, you’ll all soon be dead.”
Bas finished reloading and aimed the weapon. “I won’t miss this time.”
“Hold, Bas,” Dorian said, raising his hand.
“My lord, I can—”
“I said hold.” Dorian stepped forward, shielding me with his body. He motioned for Jewel to remain. “What is your name, alter?”
The man’s white teeth flashed as he smiled. “Stalling, Lord Adamo?”
“Perhaps.”
His chin jutted forward. “I am Ignis. That is what I am, and that is what I am called.”
An ignis. I had never met an alter like him; it was a fearsome gift he possessed. What did Dorian hope to achieve by engaging him? The man was right: he could kill us all where we stood. The spheres at his feet continued to burn, possibly drawing on some kind of magical energy, for they didn’t appear to require fuel. Would they keep burning until they sucked up all the available oxygen in the cave?
“How did you find us, Ignis?” Dorian continued. Feet shoulder-width apart, he stood as calmly as if he’d asked the alter what he’d had for breakfast. Not for the first time, I caught a glimpse of the confident politician.
“I admit I nearly didn’t. An ordinary man would have missed your fading trail, but I”—he smiled again, looking past Dorian to me—“am no ordinary man.”
“Then you are alone.”
Ignis’s mouth twitched. “What makes you think that, Lord Adamo?”
Dorian glanced at Cass, and I thought I could guess the nature of his thoughts: Now would be a good time for you to be sober. “You entered the cavern alone, Ignis. An unwise decision, considering three alters lay in wait for you.”
The violet sphere bobbed like an apple in a bucket of water. “I am more than a match for you all.”
