Recently in Penumbra Category

Sorry, sorry, sorry to my two faithful readers for having to break my covenant with you.

I thought I could finish Penumbra before November 30th, but the problem is I am now in New Zealand until the end of the month, and my time here is limited, and I have a lot of family and friends to see in a small bracket of time, so I don't have a lot of spare time to devote to writing. The book will be finished when I get back (in December), and I have it all written in my head, I just don't have the time to get it out before the end of the month. I'm not so much bowing out because I don't think I can do it as bowing out due to other factors.

My apologies. In the meantime, if there are any problems, mysteries, misunderstandings or just plain bad bits I need to work on, please mention them here.

fish fish fish and so forth.

I wish I could say that when Kerron held his hand out to me, I took it. It is sad, but understandable, to report that I did not. While it seemed clear to me at the time that he did not wish me immediate harm, and my mind raced with both curiosity and hope that I had encountered something in this dark hell that was not inherently hostile, he was still one of the Enemy, and I was of course extremely suspicious. I did not see a distinct person before me at this time, but the Enemy, a single entity, one that had killed Atrius and possibly taken my entire family from me as well. My instinct, along with an entire lifetime of being told to fear the creatures of the night, forced my mind to reel away from the possibility of trusting him.

Kerron had always enjoyed watching the sun rise. This was in stark contrast to most of his people, who did not like bright light in general, and the light of the sun least of all. But Kerron had always been something of an outcast in his clan. Disliked by some, considered odd but amiable by most. They often found him sitting on some high perch, usually on a mountain they were passing nearby, looking out over the horizon, waiting for those first slender beams to peak over the horizon, staring silently, contemplatively. He was a very quiet person, known for his long silences. When he did say something, it was usually either smart enough to be impressive or smart to the point where it would confuse those about him. He was valued by the tribe for his intelligence, in a way they balanced out his eccentricities, but he was not widely trusted or befriended for either. Once he had to be dragged forcibly from the top of a tree, as he waited to see just a few more colours spreading across the sky. For the unfortunate truth of the sunrise was that it was synonymous with the passing of the umbra, and the penumbra was not a safe place for him or his people. They had been at war with the people from the sunrealm for some time.

It is worth considering at this time that, for the people of Alys' world, hell was not some abstract concept, or some faraway place. They did not follow the sun for no reason. Their hell chased them continuously, as they in turn chased it. It was the place where the criminal and infirm, those who could not stay on the great circle, were sent to be punished. The place where nightmares dwelt, when they were not visiting your sleep. The place where you awoke when you passed away. For the people of the Sun, the night was their hell. So it is not hyperbole to say that when Alys awoke, she seriously considered the possibility that she was dead, and that she was to spend an eternity in the dark place she found herself. For in her realm, true darkness, the absence of the sun, was not something often encountered. To be sure, they had caravans, rooms in the Cardinal City, and taking shelter in caves was not unknown, so darkness itself was not unknown to them. But the sun was always there, its light bleeding through, suffusing them. For it to not be there at all, no light from above, no visibility for more than a fewmetres, for Alys it was almost as if she had been struck blind, forever lost in the shadow of the world.

The heat from the burning tower seared one side of Alys' face, even as the other side stayed cold against the night. She looked about frantically, trying to think of a way out of her predicament. Below her and to her left the tower continued to burn, spreading across the now-shattered wood of the tower. Within minutes the fire would spread to the remains of the turret she clung to, if it already hadn't collapsed by then. Out across the plains, her brother's soldiers continued to fight a pitched battle against swarms of the Enemy.

With the exception of a few bowmen manning the windows, Alys was soon left alone in the mess, as each and every warrior had scrambled up or down the ladders, each according to his role in the line of battle. Rogan and her father had gone to the stable level, each barking orders at their men as they did. Before he had left, Rogan had grasped his sister by the shoulders.

Borin was hurled to the dewy grass of the penumbra, crying out as his knees and bound hands hit the ground roughly. He was weeping without shame, and had been stripped of his Frontiersman's uniform.

Keleth, Lord of Arms and fist of the King, stood over him. He was not dressed in armour any finer than all other warriors of the realm, but he had a presence and authority about him that hung like an ornate cloak. His son Rogan, a captain of the watch, stood beside him, as did a dozen of his personal retinue. They had found Borin running away from the darkness in a panic, having clearly deserted his unit. They had picked him up and bought him here, to the edge of night. The watchtower of the Frontier loomed behind them, trundling away at its slow place. For the moment, they stood on the enemy's side of the umbra.

When Alys came to, shaking nightmares of fingers and teeth out of her hair like cobwebs, she found that she was in a small, single bed, in a small room with a curtain for a door. The gentle rocking motion of the room told her immediately that she was in one of the watchtowers, and a quick glimpse at the terrainpassing by out of a small window by the bed confirmed this. Alys felt slightly queasy but at the same time was ravenously hungry, so, after washing her face and arms at a small basin, went through the red cloth curtain.

Traveling North along the line of the Frontier, the sun neither set nor raised, a burning orange sky burst through the trees and hills to Alys' left, while to her right lay the eerie void of the night. To Alys, it seemed as though a great cliff lay just beyond her view, dropping off the edge of the world to an endless fall. Or worse- that she was already sideways on the cliff itself and it was the darkness that lay below her. She tried not to look at it, for fear that darkness might possess its own gravity, and she might suddenly find herself dragged sideways, falling forever into that great dark night. Instead she focused all her attention on the topflame of the next watchtower, aiming her direction just to the left of it, as even though it was not moving quickly, the distance between each tower was not insignificant, at least several turns, and she knew that she would fall at least a little behind the line if she only traveled directly towards the towers.

The soft tolling of a bell and the heady scent of straw was the first thing Alys registered when she awoke in the tower for the third time. She had spent much longer there than she had first intended, but also realized that she had been travelling to the Frontier for well over two moons, and her body had been holding back much of its weariness from her- now that she had an opportunity to rest, all the aches and discontents of such sustained hardship came washing over her, sending her into many turns of dreamless slumber.