Next week, the review campaign for Absent All Light will open up on Booksprout! If you haven’t been keeping watch, here’s the cover and blurb:

And with that, let’s get to what you really care about: the first chapter of the book!

“Cerie Korviridi, turn back now or be forever bound. Will you take the vow?”

Shivering beside the fireplace in a battered stone farmhouse, Cerie’s chest tightened at those much-awaited words. The drafty structure seemed to twist in frustration at her hesitation; the rug she knelt upon did not kill the cold.

Firelight turned her teacher’s blue hair into wisps of purple flame and dragged long shadows across the small room. Ever-present wind worked its way through the mortar, grinding down the stone.

The High Poets had chosen this decrepit building in the tiny town of Cachaille, ensured it was ominous yet comfortable. All so that failed initiates would not see their meronym’s grand cathedral as they left the community for a final time.

Cerie gritted her teeth and reminded herself of the successful students who departed triumphant after this same procedure. Such distraction did not help.

Green eyes wet and bones shaking in expectation, Cerie investigated the kind face of her mentor. Irith had not pushed her to answer the challenge yet, only moved toward the glowering fireplace and rested a hand on a cedar chest. Therein were the iron brands that would soon become her torture. The very thing she’d come to seek. 

Even before Irith opened the chest, Cerie ducked her head and sucked a long breath. Her short mint bangs hid her grimace, though her pale face betrayed every fear.

The days to come would hurt more than anything Cerie had experienced. Given that she cried any time she got a splinter, she would suffer worse than most.

But she could not turn back now. The High Poets had kept and clothed her since age seven, had taught her how to read. This was the only way to repay those kindnesses and prove she was useful in at least one way.

So much effort without the reward she so wanted. Inculcated Poets got only one chance.

Irith stopped and turned back toward the shivering student, a stern look in her eyes that always beget a lecture. She knelt beside Cerie, then held out her hands in offering. Automatically Cerie took them, her gaze fixating on Irith’s sigil-drenched nails.

These, the promises of Poesy. The stargates that offered literary power, drawing up the spirits and bending words to will. Exactly what she hoped would soon be replicated on her own body as permanent votives.

“Poesy does not brook coercion,” Irith reminded her, squeezing Cerie’s fingers. “The Sigillum must be taken of your own accord, or it will not take at all. None can demand your obedience except your own heart.”

Same as she had been warned of for over a decade now. Always the High Poets had echoed this maxim, even before they hammered earrings in a trainee’s earlobes to signify their tutelage.

During that mutilation, she had screamed for her older brother, who almost decked one of the teachers before being restrained. She wished he could have been here, too.

“Do you wish power for power’s sake?” Irith asked, and Cerie shook her head.

“Is it to satisfy a debt?”

Perhaps, but she refused to admit that. Cerie again shook ‘no.’

“Then tell me, dear one, what makes you accept these marks.” Rubbing her sigil-adorned thumb across Cerie’s knuckle, Irith waited. Her blue eyes seemed vacuous pools in the fire-shade, too hard to regard for more than a few seconds.

Cerie lowered her gaze to the slab floor. The answer burned in her chest: acrid smoke. Razed fields throwing up their ghostly alarm calls, long after the farmers had been killed. Glazed eyes of her dead parents staring sightless at the sun. Murdered by marauding Sinans drunk on victory.

“Because this is how we win the war,” she said, her low voice rough and slow. “Because High Poetry prevents others from losing their parents, too.”

Irith patted her hand again before letting go. Keeping her head down, Cerie listened to the shuffling in the cedar chest, the clink of different implements.

The first, she presumed, would be the pliers, to rip her fingernails out. She sniffled and wiped her face, acutely aware of smooth keratin and a wriggling hangnail.

“It is true that High Poetry has kept Breme from being overcome,” Irith said as she continued sorting. “The goddess Poesy has blessed us with this power in thanks for our devotion, a gift she has not offered to our enemies in their arrogance.”

Nothing but the cacophonous metal, which Cerie didn’t bother regarding: she’d seen these tools before. Irith presented them to her cohort shortly before they scheduled their Sigillum times, explained each in depth. Some girls had gagged at the vicious descriptions; others dissociated, their eyes blank in fear.

Several whimpering women had surrendered to their panic and canceled the ritual. Those, Cerie knew, were quietly hustled out of their society’s grand abode, the greatest meronym in Breme. Becoming teachers, accountants, scribes. Nothing like what they could have been.

She ground her teeth and clenched her fists to avoid looking at her fingernails, matte in the firelight. Losing some skin was worth it, she silently assured herself. Surely it would be.

Done arranging, Irith drew out the first of her tools before looking back to Cerie. “Tell me now: do you seek destruction or defense?”

“You always said I was going to do martial poetry.”

Cerie hated her mumble—hated that Irith wouldn’t get on with it already. Her body had become a conduit of pure adrenaline; expectation was worse than reality, she was sure.

This interrogation was a ploy to draw out the moment, testing the supplicant’s patience. If she relented to the pressure, Irith would take her home unmarked and unwanted.

“If you succeed in the Sigillum, then I believe martial poetry will be your path,” Irith agreed cagily. “But do you seek destruction or defense?”

Cerie blinked and bit her cheek. The heat of the fire, the palsy of her nerves: all made her head swirl until she couldn’t fathom what Irith wanted her to say.

“Destruction is a cruel thing which births its own death. But defense ….” Irith paused, her eyes softening even as she held up a pair of wicked-looking pliers.

“Defense is a kind thing which offers a world anew. It is that which brings hope, and promise, and a good future, where all Bremish are safe.”

The answer came like a sea swell, filled with faces she knew well. Uileac, her older brother, with his kind emerald eyes and boyish mop of green hair. His delicate whistle, much sweeter than her own, a background melody that rankled her when she was trying to work.

Orrinir, her brother-in-law, and his boisterous laugh that made his gray eyes shine like stars. The delicious scent of cinnamon bread that seemed to envelop him after a few days on leave. Flour that dusted his crimson sweep of hair, which Uileac tousled while standing on tiptoes.

Their little home, made by High Poetry as a wedding present to the men. The ample pasture where their two horses played; the hours where she watched Uileac training them while lazily paging through her books.

Something fierce lit in her, sluicing away the fear. This slice of Breme belonged to the three of them, and no one could take it away.

“Defense,” she rasped.

Irith nodded. The cedar chest snapped close with a decisive clunk, but the teacher was smiling.

“Then I ask again, Cerie Korviridi. Turn back now or be forever bound. Will you take the vow?”

Tears hot and flowing fast, Cerie cleared her clogged throat.

“Yes, teacher. I will.”

Irith wasted no time then. As she came closer with shining pliers, she recited the same poem every new poet heard before their inculcation started. Their last chance to run.

“Fate is a fruit,
many-branched, ever-blooming.
Her skin is sweet, her body bitter,
sugar scarce yet poison full.

Many orchards made of misery,
pulping juice that leaves one thirsty.
None can deny the sprouting;
always more arise.

Pick the ripest lime—
all are sour, none satisfying—
bite your tongue to keep from screaming
lest you lose the seeds you need.

Future-farmer, tender gardener:
Accept your destiny.”

Before Cerie could blink, Irith was upon her. The pliers gripped her left pinkie fingernail and pulled back with an audible rip. She screamed, but Irith did not relent.

Mutilating her, as she had always wanted. Painting her with blood.

Cerie’s vision grew hazy, her skin blazing and freezing in turn. She clutched her mouth with her right hand: a futile attempt not to curse.

Then, all plunged into hallucinatory darkness filled with flash-scenes. Her brother Uileac stood before her, his husband Orrinir at his side; they took her hands and chanted poetry in one woman’s voice.

Her dream-sight moved to the elfin form of Uileac, then the muscular hulk of Orrinir. They invoked Poesy together, Irith as their channeler. She responded in an iron-heavy drone.

“Amen, amen, amen.”

Far off in the fields she remembered from childhood, her dead parents beckoned her closer, whispering that they were proud. She tried to thank them, but words stuck in her throat.

This was her first blessing from Poesy, the unknowable goddess of their profession, who she would serve for all her life. To not feel every fingernail torn away.

Cool cloth dripping with herbal salves. Cerie opened her eyes to stare at Irith, who had bound her bleeding hands in medicated fabric. She refused to regard the spreading red splotches, forced herself to ignore the stinging warmth.

“It’s alright,” Irith assured her, gripping harder. “Many girls faint during this part. I imagine it must hurt.”

An understatement she was too queasy to protest. Bestowed Poets like Irith were born with the sigils embedded in their fingernails; Poesy offered them the ancient marks of Saint Luridalr, the first poet. Only those who were not divinely graced underwent this ritual. Those who wanted to escape a life of poverty and worship their goddess in the most primal way.

Seeing she was near collapse, Irith brought a goatskin bag to Cerie’s lips, and she guzzled strong wine laced with medication. The pain receded somewhat; she lay down on the richly embroidered futon, eyes half-closed.

Irith knelt over her, still clutching her hands to staunch the blood flow. “Rest while you can, dear one. Let me check on the brands.”

These, ten thin bars of iron shaped into intricate sigils, would sear her denuded skin. They had to be burned in a specific order, from right pinky to left, and perfectly aligned to create portals that brought the spirits in. Her mentor was an expert, meticulous and fast. All this would be over before she knew it, but never fast enough.

Then hours drowsing on the ritual futon, embroidered with images of their patron saint’s life. She, as many others had, would lay there in half-moments of wakefulness, tracing her eyes along the stories of Saint Luridalr. If a simple Bremish tribeswoman could save their people from sure disaster, then all things were possible when touched by Poesy.  

And, at last, tiny needles smeared with black pigment to make the permanent tattoo. With that, she would achieve this rare status: the ability to turn poems into power.

Together with the other High Poets who resided in their meronym, she could protect her fellows from Sina, the land across the Rimuk Mountains. For centuries, Sina had tried to destroy Breme based on an ancient grudge. Her fellow women were the final bastion against disaster; she had to heed the call.

Helpless in the face of the coming torment, she closed her eyes and whined. “I want Ulie.”

“Uileac can’t be here,” Irith reminded her. “The Sigillum is a private ritual.”

She knew that—she’d always known that. But this did not stop her from crying for her big brother as the first brand touched her finger. He, and poetry, was all she had left.