Matthew Barash Science Fiction / Fantasy

email the author at: mbarash at lookatusgo.com

PROLOGUE—THE PRAYER

From the heathen Druidess Mehowen,

As she lay upon her deathbed,

Did I receive the hidden key to their power.

Now I must foreswear this country I love,

And sail to the barren isle named Iona

In the land of the Scots and Picts.

That I may seize,

In the name of the One God,

A maze, buried deep beneath the stone and wind.

Part I – VIGILS

The Nightwatch – time of learning to trust the darkness.
7 March, 2252

CHAPTER ONE

Brother Colin Clark’s handlight slipped from his chilled fingers. It bounced once, twice, a third time, clattering loudly off the rocks in the quiet of the night, then went out.

He lunged for it and clipped his shin hard against a boulder.

“Blasted St. Nicholas.” Tumbling forward, he landed on the ground. Hard.

His hands wrapped about his shin were filed with a sticky warmth. The only thing that wasn’t freezing on this stupid planet. Why of all people had he been the one sent back to Earth? Many of the other brothers had been eager for the adventure.

“Let them,” he’d wanted to shout when Brother David chose him as the Order’s emissary.

“Let them be the ones sent to lie in the dark.” But no, it was quiet, unassuming Brother Col who had to lie on the rough rock of this remote island with the pain rocketing up his nerve endings. Blinking his eyes did nothing to reveal even the vaguest of shapes in the overcast, moonless night.

“So don’t lie in the dark.” Brother David’s cracked old voice was as clear as if he were right beside him rather than a memory that he’d left a dozen light years behind on New Kells circling a friendly orange star.

“Okay, turn on the light switch.” He gasped when he realized he was talking back to the old man. He ducked the scowl more fierce than a slap could be. A year in transit aboard ship and he still feared the old monk.

Besides, as far as he could tell, there weren’t any light switches on Iona, or on the planet for that matter. Every observation he could make from orbit revealed no use of any broadcast media. No powered vehicles even.

“Find the handlight.” Brother David was always full of orders, but he did have a point even if he was just a memory.

Colin rose to his good knee and addressed the darkness.

“I would greatly appreciate it if any crawlies or other nasties this planet has, would please move aside this night.” His voice fell flat and was ripped away by the wind into the vast darkness.

He reached out with hands that retained little feeling and began to probe the cold, wet grasses and rough, rocky crevices. He poked about in a slowly widening circle.

His arm plunged elbow deep into a freezing puddle before he realized what was happening. He jerked back and caught his elbow on another blasted rock, rose to his knees only to put weight on his abused shin, and collapsed once more to the ground.

“Bloody hell!” He was in too much pain to bother being shocked by his own language. Flopping sideways in the grass he wrapped his good leg over his throbbing shin and a hand about the twinges shooting up his arm. He’d never found that particular bone to be the least bit funny. Though all the other brother’s certainly delighted in how often he rapped it.

He needed shelter. Now. He needed to be back on the deorbiter, which was hidden in an old barn a kilometer away over rough ground. He needed a building, but he was completely lost in the darkness even before he’d dropped the stupid handlight. He’d take a stone wall right about now and be happy. Well, happier.

A drop of rain splashed on the bridge of his nose and spattered into both of his eyes.

“Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost!”

# # #

Meghan Taylor had been staring out the window when the light appeared. Appeared where no light should be. None could be.

For a minute, perhaps two, it had wandered about the ruins of the abbey on Iona. Then, as she’d reached for the binoculars, it spun about and disappeared.

A minute passed.

Five.

Fifteen.

No light returned. No light on Iona.

Please, no light on Iona.

Had she been asleep?

No, it was sleeplessness that had brought her to the window in the night.

And her feet were far too cold against the chill stone floor of the Watcher’s hut for it to be a dream.

She inspected the alarm panel. Fascinated even after a year by the glow of the steady lights that held no heat. There were no alarms from the abbey doors. None for the chapel. None for the bishop’s house or even the abandoned village. Every light was green.

Her hand hovered over the red button. The one that would call the Guardians. That would bring to Iona the only authorized users of technology.

But what could she tell them?

“I’m, ah, fairly sure twas a light I saw.”

“No. I dinna know what happened to it.”

“It was late and I was na sleeping well.” Too many thoughts of the fast-approaching end of her exile. Too anxious to head home in just five days.

“No. The wee light did na come back, but I dinna think I imagined it.”

She moved her hand away from the red button and stared out at the darkness. She knew the view even on nights like this when there was none to be seen. A short grassy slope dropped from the front of her hut down to the rough waters of the Sound of Iona. Less than a kilometer away, across the dark water, Iona. The height of Dun I, the hundred-meter high mountain of the island, towering above the north end. Grassy meadows sprawling from shore to slope dotted with ancient stone buildings.

And the abbey. The abandoned home of the thrice-curst Order of Iona.

For a year, well, three hundred and sixty days of it so far, she had watched the abbey until it loomed large even in her nightmares. And now, with just five days to go, there was a light where none should be.

But with nothing to focus on, her eyes shifted to her own, dim reflection in the window. She contemplated the disjointed collection of shapes lit by the ever-burning green lights of the panel.

Her face, thin and white, made gaunt and ill in the dim glow. Black hair lost in darkness. Not reflected at all.

Crossed arms. Over an invisibly dark nightshirt.

Two dim trunks of legs. Shivering in the chill that was as much inside her as against the bottoms of her feet.

Was she truly coming apart? Losing her mind as Mad Erin had half a decade before? A girl gone mad with the Watching of the most evil place on Earth. In the end speaking only to the gulls who cried forever above the rocky shores of Eilean nam Ban. The Isle of Women.

The curst isle.

Her prison.

She closed her eyes.

Five days. Just five more days.

The madness circled about her on silent wings, swooping ever nearer.

Please let there have been a light.