Shower of Stones Read online

  PRAISE FOR ZACHARY JERNIGAN’S NOVELS OF JEROUN

  “To call Zachary Jernigan a fearless writer is an understatement. His universe is one of gods who make worlds only to torture the inhabitants, demigods who turn on their father, nations exterminated, wars in which the dead take sides. But what floors me is the ease with which he travels this strangest of landscapes. We pass from the mythic to the mundane and back again in the space of a paragraph. We come to know his characters with unsettling intimacy, even as their identities come under magical siege. We sense the solid ground beneath our feet and the presence of forces that could (and do) blow it back into atoms. Jernigan is part of a wave of authors breathing new life into the epic fantasy tradition we love.”

  —Robert V. S. Redick, author of The Red Wolf Conspiracy

  “A science-fantasy epic that’s as of a much perverse hybrid as it is an homage to an earlier era when those genres weren’t so strictly segregated, No Return is set on a world that bears wizards and astronauts equally. It also pulls no punches in its rich, visceral depictions of sexuality, martial arts, punk energy, and the philosophical quandaries of power and identity that speculative fiction uniquely exploits—and that few up-and-coming speculative writers outside Jernigan tackle with such guts.”

  —Jason Heller, The A.V. Club (The Onion)

  “Vivid, varied, and violent. At once beautiful and terrible to behold.”

  —Nickolas Sharps, SF Signal

  “No Return needs to be noticed. There is so much more to it than the accoutrements would imply. Populated with a fair amount of face punching, as coded by the visceral cover, it contains a tenderness and at times overt eroticism that’s often ignored in science fiction and fantasy. Zachary Jernigan has something unique to say, a voice we’re not hearing from anywhere else. I dearly hope more readers, and award aficionados, take an opportunity to listen to him.”

  —Tor.com

  “A visionary, violent, sexually charged, mystical novel—No Return challenges classification. Clearly, Zachary Jernigan has no respect for genre confines. His tale of gods hanging in the sky and a “constructed man” with glowing blue coals for his eyes and a motley band of fighters navigating a harsh landscape peopled by savage creatures and religious zealots … Well, it’s pure genius. Here’s hoping it’s just the first of many such works from this guy.”

  —David Anthony Durham, Campbell Award-winning author of the Acacia Trilogy

  “Be careful picking this one up, because once you join with the adventurers in this strange and stunning debut novel, there will be no going back to familiar precincts of heroic fantasy. Zachary Jernigan starts at the very edge of the map and plunges deep into uncharted territory. Mages in space, do-it-yourself gods, merciless killers in love and a mechanical warrior with a heart of bronze await your reading pleasure. For thinking readers who like swashbuckling with an edge, No Return delivers.”

  —James Patrick Kelly, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards

  “No Return asks the kinds of questions speculative fiction should ask, and provides the kinds of answers that literary fiction thinks it owns…. It is, in fact, the most daring debut novel of 2013 …”

  —Justin Landon, Staffer’s Book Review

  “No Return is a rich, diverse, inventive fantasy, in a style that reminds me in some ways of Tanith Lee’s Tales from the Flat Earth books. Zachary Jernigan has created a stunningly original world and I can’t wait to see where he takes it next.”

  —Martha Wells, author of The Books of the Raksura

  “Zachary Jernigan’s genre-defying epic raises the bar for literary speculative fiction. It has the sweep of Frank Herbert’s Dune and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, with a decadent, beautifully rendered vision all its own. One of the most impressive debuts of recent years.”

  —Elizabeth Hand, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author of Available Dark and Radiant Days

  “[A] fascinating exploration of how atheism might function in a world where everyone knows that God (or at least, a god) exists.”

  —Amy Goldschlager, Locus

  “[A] hypnotic sort of read the evokes a lot of the same awe and wonder I felt reading Gene Wolfe’s stuff; the Elizabeth Hand blurb tells you all you need to know. If you love the shock and awe of science-fantasy and don’t care much for paint-by-numbers plots, pick this up.”

  —Kameron Hurley, author of God’s War

  “Jernigan’s first novel, the opening gambit in a saga of religious war, magical science, and martial combat, is a mixture of epic and sword-and-sorcery fantasy. The author’s style, with its sensuality and, often, erotic ambiance, calls to mind the novels of Tanith Lee’s Flat Earth series as well as the eclectic imaginings of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion novels. A promising voice.”

  —Library Journal

  “[A] fascinating world, nicely-executed plot … and a wonderfully squishy and twisted aesthetic. No Return is an excellent fit for readers of Mark Charan Newton’s Legend of the Red Sun series or those who enjoy the fantasies of M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, or Jack Vance.”

  —Pornokitsch

  “Jernigan’s debut is full of wonder: a smart adventure, with measures of philosophy and violence and lust. For all its strangeness and far-flung setting, No Return is a very human novel. Like Samuel Delany and Gene Wolfe, Jernigan can write a rousing, literary genre story that pushes boundaries and transgresses categorization.”

  —Brent Hayward, author of Filaria and The Fecund’s Melancholy Daughter

  “The greatest pleasure a reader can have is for their expectations to be confounded, to find their eye drawn word by word down a different path to the one anticipated. Genre fiction is too often comfort food, and the palate can grow complacent. No Return is not a complacent book and it took me somewhere unexpected and new.”

  —Martin Lewis, Strange Horizons

  “Jernigan has really unleashed something unique on the world with No Return. It doesn’t fit nicely into any boxes or cookie cutters. It’s quick moving, subtle yet bold, and absolutely R-Rated and raw. … It’s bold and vivid and it will probably make you uncomfortable, but that’s not a bad thing. Jernigan takes you on a one-of-a-kind journey and he leaves you breathless, gasping, and full of new thoughts.”

  —Sarah Chorn, Bookworm Blues

  “No Return displays the kind of prose, worldbuilding, and depth of characterization that place Zachary Jernigan securely within the top tier of Fantasy authors. The prose pulls you in like a piece of art, forcing you to slow down and observe. The world-building makes you imagine maps, bar room brawls over differences in customs, kids praying to the god who lives on the moon, women making sex spells, warriors becoming one with their self-controlled, mutating body suits … all in a way that separates the world in No Return from generic fantasy—this world is alive!”

  —Timothy C. Ward, Adventures in SciFi Publishing

  “Zachary Jernigan writes with a flair for the weird and makes it endearing enough for readers to feel familiar with it. No Return is a magnificent debut that straddles fantasy and SF genres seamlessly and makes itself into a jewel faceting both fields.”

  —Mihir Wanchoo, Fantasy Book Critic

  Also by Zachary Jernigan

  No Return: A Novel of Jeroun

  SHOWER

  OF STONES

  A NOVEL OF JEROUN

  ZACHARY JERNIGAN

  NIGHT SHADE BOOKS

  AN IMPRINT OF START PUBLISHING

  NEW YORK

  Copyright © 2015 by Zachary Jernigan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in criti
cal reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Night Shade Books, 375 Hudson Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10014.

  Night Shade Books is an imprint of Start Publishing LLC.

  Visit our website at www.start-publishing.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jernigan, Zachary, 1980-

  Shower of Stones : A Novel of Jeroun / Zachary Jernigan.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-59780-817-0 (hardback)

  1. Imaginary wars and battles—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3610.E738S58 2015

  813’.6—dc23

  2015006849

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-577-3

  Edited by Jeremy Lassen

  Jacket illustration by Alvin Epps

  Cover design by Claudia Noble

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my mother, Betty Jernigan.

  THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR

  Month of Ascetics

  Month of Alchemists

  Month of Mages

  Month of Sectarians

  Month of Fishers

  Month of Surgeons

  Month of Sawyers

  Month of Smiths

  Month of Drowsers

  Month of Financiers

  Month of Bakers

  Month of Finnakers

  Month of Soldiers

  Month of Clergymen

  Month of Pilots

  Month of Royalty

  PREVIOUSLY, IN NO RETURN

  Unlikely allies Vedas Tezul, the constructed man Berun, and Churli “Churls” Casta Jons journey to fight in the tournament at Danoor. Doubt, violence, and guilt follow the companions, and the seeds of this doubt prompt Vedas to consider speaking out against the God Adrash if he wins the tournament.

  While Vedas and his companions are on the road to Danoor, the mages Ebn bon Mari and Pol Tanz et Som are engaged in a war of wills and resources. Pol sees an opportunity to gain the upper hand, and allies with the prophetic dragon-tamer Shavrim Coranid. This alliance eventually results in Ebn’s death and Pol’s transformation into an ascendant god.

  Heady with this newly gained power, Pol attacks Adrash, not only wounding the god and stealing secrets from his mind, but knocking the Needle—a collection of iron spheres large enough to affect the tides on the planet below: a weapon of incalculable power—out of alignment. The attack drains him, however, and he must flee before the god can summon the energy to kill him.

  In Danoor, the travelers split up. Churls is forced to flee. Vedas enters the tournament and prevails despite grave injuries, while Berun follows him in secret. Vedas’s victory speech starts a riot, which erupts into even greater violence when the broken Needle rises into view. Berun takes Vedas to a secluded valley outside the city and then retrieves Churls from her hiding place, bringing with her a rumor that a man with a dragon is in control of part of the city.

  Far above the planet’s surface, Adrash recovers from his battle with Pol and stabilizes the spheres of the Needle that most threaten the planet. He relives his millennia-long life, recalling the prophets he has encountered and the distinct ways each coveted his power. Realizing finally that it is not one prophet, but several—Pol, Vedas, Churls, and Berun—he readies himself for the battle he assumes is coming …

  SHOWER

  OF STONES

  PROLOQUE

  THE 4TH OF EVERPLAIN WATCH SENNEN, BOWL OF HEAVEN, NATION OF ZOROL

  They labored on a vast concave plain, under the bluegreen sun. Side by side, the four of them: she, her mate, and the two men they both knew but had never met before the previous day. They pulled sweetroot from the earth in silence, depositing their vegetables in the long furrows that ran poleward to poleward for nearly forty leagues. It was repetitive, backbreaking work, but they were content.

  How did she know her companions were content?

  She sensed it, just as she sensed the coming and going of her own thoughts.

  She and her mate never looked up from their work. Now and then, she would delay for a second after picking her sweetroot, or he would finish his task a moment too quickly, and use the opportunity to touch one another’s arm or leg. She would smile, and know that he too smiled.

  Newly arrived and unused to the plain, the newly arrived men would occasionally rise, stretch the kinks from their backs, and turn in slow circles, peering with shaded eyes at the world around them—for no practical reason, surely. The sun arced overhead so slowly as to be still in the sky. The breeze came consistently out of the bottom pole, bending the sea of golden grass with nary a ripple.

  The only objects surrounding the plain were the tall, thin wind-gatherers clustered to the right-up-poleward, a series of low purple hills to the left-bottom-poleward, and next to the hills the bleached skeleton of the abandoned tensii warren.

  The wind-gatherers were simply wind-gatherers. Mindless, immobile beasts stretched to the task of collecting energy, they could be found anywhere. The hills, too, were not special. They folded upon themselves without so much as a rocky outcrop, only subtly changing color as the sunlight crawled in glacial inches over them.

  The warren, she supposed, was a unique thing, looming over the near horizon like a massive wooden cage, like the trap for some immense crustacean. The world possessed only five such structures, monuments to an unknown race. People had once devoted their lives to its study.

  But it too never changed. It never had in anyone’s memory.

  In her younger days, she had done as all local adolescents did, and climbed the warren’s latticed interior, ascending broad bone avenues to its three-thousand foot height. Like everyone else who completed the trip, she was disappointed to find the structure just as it appeared to be—a massive skeleton, picked clean of any sign of its ancient inhabitants. It was beautiful in its way, but no more beautiful than any natural feature. She had seen the ocean from its summit, and this had occupied her attention far more fixedly.

  Still, she could not begrudge her new companions their interest. Prior to moving back home in her thirtieth month, many places had compelled her. The world had much appeal. As one grew older, however, one’s focus shifted. She had become content to harvest and recall the violence of her youths—to listen to the breeze, take joy in the touch of her mate, and anticipate the arrival of two strangers she had known in a thousand lands, a hundred bodies.

  ‡

  The day grew no hotter or colder, the shadows of their bodies no shorter or longer. The protracted cycle of the day aroused no urges (here, women and men ate and slept whenever they felt the need), yet hunger hit the four of them at the same moment. This was no coincidence. She and her mate stood as one, their new companions following a heartbeat later. They stretched, eliciting a few pops from their spines, and once more shaded their eyes to peer around the circumference of the shallow depression.

  She winked at her mate and spoke his name, the fondness clear in her voice. He grinned, pulled her off her feet as though she weighed nothing, squeezing her tightly to his massive chest as she wrapped her pale, corded arms around his thick neck and breathed in his brassy scent. Over his shoulder, she grinned at the two new men, whose faces she had known for generations upon generations.

  A slight smile pulled at the corners of the lighter-skinned one’s mouth, but he said nothing.

  The darker one simply stared.

  They sat in the dirt and grass. From their packs came salted beef, vinegared seaweed, and raw slices of the ever-present sweetroot. It was delicious, as was nearly all food after working in the outdoors, under the sun. Under any sun, really.

  Finished but still hungry, the darker of the the two strangers lifted one of the sweetroots he had picked. He fished a knife from the pocket of his rough cotton pants and deftly sliced the vegetable into four sections. They shared it in companionable silence.

  She examined the men she knew but had not yet spoken with. Both looked much like she remembered, much a
s they had for uncounted ages.

  The shorter and heavier of the two, the quicker to smile and laugh, had skin the color of creamed chicory broth. He stood like a man forever bent forward into the wind, with meaty shoulders hunched and chin tucked into his collar. She had never known him as a child—no, not in all the lives they had shared—but she imagined him muddling through, fighting and winning battles he had never intended to fight, simply wanting peace, a place to belong.

  The second man … she could not help thinking of him as father to the first, though she knew this was wrong. Tall, black skinned and muscular, he held himself with a straight spine, broad shoulders thrown back, chin high. A position of habit, not true disposition. As with the other, she had only known him as a grown man. Regardless, she knew that as a child he had lorded over his peers, only with the onset of adulthood learning how not to be a tyrant, to be strong without recourse to coercion.

  She liked the first immediately. In time, she knew she would grow to love the second. Just as she always had. She regretted that they chose to be alone for so much of their existence. She and her mate could stand to be apart for such a short period: they found one another readily, falling into one another as fate dictated. Even through the occasionally cloudy haze of her memory, during moments when she could not seem to differentiate one life from the next, their longing for each other was clear.

  But these two?

  They only came together where the need presented itself, typically in an engagement of war, of revolution. When the violence exhausted itself, when death became too much to bear, they came to her, to where she and her mate had built a small life. They carried their pain with them, bearing it on their own, remaining silent until there was something to say.

  What the dark one said first never varied.