An education in the Underbelly was worth only as much as you could get to topside. The closer you could see the sun, the more you had to understand the world above. The school that Edus attended was ordained by the Conclave. People needed to know how to farm, understand the basic laws topside, and follow the order of things.
Edus understood that you were either born topside as a citizen, or underground as a denizen. He wasn’t born so lucky. The school accepted denizens from any age. So long as you showed up, you were taught the common curriculum. Edus didn’t know how old he was. In the Underbelly you were small, then big, and if you were lucky you didn’t catch the glooms then, but you eventually did until you died sooner than later.
They sat in a cave large enough for a dozen of them to gather around theologist Benance. He was a short man with reedy proportions, always licking his lips as if ready to eat a meal, of which he did after class when the students would pay him back with their meager offerings.
The theologist scribbled on the cave wall with white chalk, a UV light bathing them in its sharp blue glow.
“For countless ages,” Benance recited, a line Edus had heard countless times before, “the Shield has protected us from daemonkind.” He drew an oblong dome over lines of what was supposed to be a city. Edus didn’t know what a city looked like, but he didn’t like it, it looked the opposite of the Underbelly, everything outward instead of inwards. “The city of Haven rests topside, within the Shield, home to the Conclave. The Conclave is headed by Sword-Saint Justinth, who maintains the order of things between topside and underground.”
The teacher began a ranting speech on how integral the order of things was to maintain the Shield, and Edus’ mind began to drift away, his head slumping down before Reina’s elbow jabbed his side, who sat beside him.
Edus was awake and alert at that point, Benance’s words jarring through his sleepy haze, “Today is a grand day for you all. Please welcome brother Allan, a member of the Conclave.”
A shadow lurking in the shade of the cave stood and walked in the UV light. All was quiet, except for the constant drip drip of water running down the cave. The figure was a cloaked man, covered in its dark cloth. He took off his hood. The man’s gaze scanned between them, a glint of steel to his cold, gray eyes. Damp locks of silvery-brown hair hung over his blocky forehead. His skin was swarthy, tanned, a mark of the sun, something undeniable of a topsider. Edus focused on the sheathed sword peeking from the fringe of his cloak, granted only to those who served the Conclave.
The tan man grimaced. “I’m Allan, indeed a brother of the Conclave. We are all kindred in the order of things, and it is my duty to test you lot for perchance entering the Academy. Should you pass the test, you will come with me, back up to topside.”
He waved a lazy hand. “Please, form a line.”
The students shuffled into a line, Edus at the back. He waited at the end because he knew what was coming. Would he pass the test? If he did, would he ever see his mother again? His heart drummed in his chest, blood racing to his head, his mind splitting at the possibilities.
Brother Allan took the hand of each person, putting his forefingers to their pulse, then flicking their hand away. He asked them each a question, something odd like a number he was thinking, or what color the sky was today.
“Next. Next. Next.”
He paused when it was Reina’s turn. “What number am I thinking?”
The people waited for her answer, silent.
“I don’t know what number that is.”
Allan smiled. “It’s ten of a thousand, which is ten of a hundred. Stand behind me. Next.”
Soon it was Edus’ turn.
The man took Edus’ wrist, his grip ironstrong.
“Relax,” Allan said, checking Edus’ pulse. “I can’t measure your heart rate if you’re scared to death. Close your eyes. Breathe.”
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Edus inhaled, then exhaled.
“Good,” the man said. “What color is the sky today?”
He didn’t know what the sky was, yet he saw something, felt a coolness, a crisp fresh air that poured water, an endless amount of it, the drip drip of so much water falling from dark, wispish masses, so far up it would hurt his neck to see them.
“The sky is dark,” Edus said. “A dark gray.”
“What is happening to the sky?”
“Water. So much water. Falling. Falling from the sky.”
Edus opened his eyes. Everyone in the cave was quiet, only the dripping water following his words.
Allan bared a triumphant grin. “What’s your name, son?”
“Edus. Edus Aldin.”
“Well, Edus Aldin, Reina Thiej, you two are coming with me.”
Brother Allan strode up the undertower with an unchallenged authority, Reina and Edus following him. Edus had never been so high up the underlevels, only having gone to the luminmarkets. Years ago, he’d witnessed a thief’s justice, a hawker holding a whimpering young boy’s hand close to his age, and the man raising his butcher’s cleaver. Edus had not gone back since then.
The markets were lit with more UV lights, blue cold beams that washed over the strong aromas of foods Edus had never smelled before, frying oils and soups and steaming stalls where vendors yammered their produce or goods.
There were other lights as well, firelit braziers from one shanty to the next illuminating polished metal signs that Edus recognized as a tankard, a clothier, a woman’s legs, of which he wasn’t sure why it was shown.
The crowd broke before Allan’s path like an unyielding stone in a flowing stream. Reina and Edus followed closely behind, Reina eyeing their surroundings, watchful as she always was.
Noise was not something Edus was used to hearing, not a cacophony of it, raucous and unneeded. In the lower underlevels sound gave away your position, where you were, showing yourself to whoever waited in the dark. Silence was a nonexistence, a stillness that comforted him in the absence of any light.
There was too much, it was all too much. Edus winced, walking faster, stumbling. Reina held him up, and kept holding his hand tight.
They reached a metal door leading to a suspended cage. Six guards, cloaked and hooded like Allan, held onto the hilts of their sheathed swords. Swords were ordained to members of the Conclave, those who lived topside. One hooded man opened the door to the metal cage.
Brother Allan entered the suspended box of metal bars, gesturing for them to follow. Edus saw that the cage was held by thick metal chains thicker than he was wide, all the way up. They entered the prison. Allan closed the barred door shut, and with an echoing jangle the chains began to move, raising the cage upwards.
For the first time since he could remember, Edus looked up, his neck craning to see the glimpse of light revealed as they ascended. Water began to fall on their rusted metal cage, a light patter, then a steady muted tapping. The light brightened, a grayish glow that stung Edus’ eyes. Droplets fell over them, damping their clothes, then a cool downpour that made Edus and Reina shiver.
The downpour continued, and Edus saw above, a crack in the cavern, light from all around, a dull brightness that cast out the dark. The crack grew wider as they rose closer, the hefty chains dragging them up, slowing down as they reached a metal platform connecting to stone steps. Allan fiddled with the door, cursing, and after a time it opened.
Four men had pulled them up from above, turning a giant wheel that held the chains together in a pulley system. Edus had seen such things used by the mining guild, though he never had much interest in shiny rocks and metals. Beneath their dark cloaks, the men were armored in clouded steel plate. They too had swords, along with pointed shields shoulder strapped to their backs.
“Knights,” Reina whispered beside me.
“Brother Allan,” a man called out. “I see you brought two strays.”
“Strays no more,” Allan said.
“We’ll see how long they last,” the knight said.
“They have the blood, same as you,” Allan said. “They’ll last.”
Allan led them up a stone staircase, blocks of perfectly cut flat steps. Past the craggy outcropping was a sight that made Edus pause. It was a completely different world.
A field, a sweeping land of tall green plants and crops Edus didn’t know what to call sprouted from the soft, wet earth. People, pale-skinned denizens worked and harvested the fields. They were farmers. Edus’ mother had worked as a farmer, once. The farmers labored with bovine, four-legged creatures. Edus remembered theologist Benance called the horned animals oxen, and the tall, slender ones horses.
Beyond the ring of farms and fields were blocky stone buildings in the distance, built atop one another, growing taller near their core, perfectly shaped gray geometric pillars and spires that rose up to the sky. The sky itself was as vast as mother had mentioned to Edus, dark yet bright, stray shafts of powerful light piercing through the gloom. And covering it all like a colossal cocoon, a concave dome of blue shimmering energy reaching miles skyward, similar to the UV lights in the underlevels, only countless times more powerful.
Allan said, interrupting their awe, “Welcome to Haven.”