Child of Light Read online

  Child of Light is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Terry Brooks

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Circle colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Brooks, Terry, author.

  Title: Child of light / Terry Brooks.

  Description: New York: Del Rey, [2021]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020057074 (print) | LCCN 2020057075 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593357385 (hardback; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593357392 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3552.R6596 C48 2021 (print) | LCC PS3552.R6596 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020057074

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020057075

  Ebook ISBN 9780593357392

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Edwin Vazquez, adapted for ebook

  Cover design and illustration: Leo Nickolls

  ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Dedication

  By Terry Brooks

  About the Author

  We break out at midnight, just as we agreed. Like ghosts risen from our graves to reclaim the lives that were stolen from us, we flee.

  We are quick and we are fast, one following the other, staying in order the way Tommy has taught us, pretending it’s just a drill, knowing it isn’t. No one speaks, no one whispers; no one makes any sound they can avoid. There are no mistakes because there can be no mistakes. Others who have tried to escape this facility before have all made at least one mistake. And all are dead.

  Courage, I tell myself. I am desperate to get free. We all are. Don’t think. Just go!

  There are fifteen of us—too many for what we are attempting. But once someone is in, it is impossible to decide later that they are out—unless of course you are willing to kill them to keep them from talking. I couldn’t do that. None of us could. We’re just kids. Ordinary kids in other circumstances; something else now. But still, just kids, not killers. Not yet, anyway. None of us has killed anyone—except maybe JoJo. He says he has, but we can’t be sure about what he has or hasn’t done. He’s big on talk, but you can usually tell when someone is padding the truth, making himself appear to be something he isn’t. We all thought that was what he was doing.

  But still we wonder.

  We started out as a group of eight: Tommy, Malik, Barris and Breck, Wince, JoJo, Khoury, and me. That would have been enough if together we possessed the skills and knowledge that are needed. But we need more to make this escape happen, as we find out quickly enough once we begin to talk our way through the plan. So we are forced to bring in other kids. It is easy enough to choose the ones we are looking for. All we have to do is keep our eyes and ears open until we discover the handful we need. There are only about 330 of us in the camp. I don’t know if other camps exist.

  Still, I assume there must be more. Given this one’s purpose, there pretty much have to be. It’s simple mathematics. Our captors number in the hundreds. We call them Goblins—though in truth we have no idea who or what they really are, save not Human. Piggish faces, warped and twisted limbs, bodies much larger than those of Humans, skin hanging loose in gray mottled folds, voices that communicate as often with grunts and snorts as with words. They are despicable creatures that transcend our worst nightmares. The kids in the prison are here to serve them. We are brought here from all over and raised in captivity. Our lives are predetermined. Someone is needed to maintain and operate the hydroponic farms and weapons factories. But the Goblins require something else from us in payment for their services as our jailers. Goblins are carnivores and require fresh meat, so prisoners offer a ready source of both food and labor.

  Our fates as prisoners are fixed. From the moment we arrive, all of us must work to maintain or repair the prison and grounds or be eaten. The disabled, weak, and injured kids are dispatched early. Those who remain healthy and able-bodied are allowed to grow until they are deemed adults and then sent to the reproductive pens, the work farms, and the factories. Unless, as sometimes happens, overpopulation of the prison requires a culling. Then the healthy are eaten, too. Our numbers are never allowed to fluctuate far. If too many die, new kids take their place. Where do the Goblins find them? Where did they find any of us? How are we chosen? No one knows. I don’t know what I am doing here, and this seems to be true for the others as well.

  The one common denominator we all share is that no one seems to miss us. Some of us are orphans. Others had families—gone now? I wonder if it is the same in the other camps, the ones we never see. Is it different for them? I don’t know; I have no way of knowing. I just hope it isn’t something worse.

  All of us are between the ages of ten and twenty. Adults and little kids are kept elsewhere; we don’t know where. Kids like us are designated as worker bees until we are determined to be old enough for transport to the reproductive pens. There we are paired off and forced to make babies. Once you spend enough time in the pens to renew the population, you are shipped out to work the farms and factories. If you are unable to reproduce or work, you are retired. That’s what it is called—retired. A euphemism for executed. Put down because you no longer serve any useful purpose. Disposed of because, if you can’t work and you can’t reproduce, you are just taking up space. Sometimes they keep you for other reasons—but not often and not for long. And not for pets. Goblins don’t have pets. Just those monstrous things they call Ronks, and those are used primarily for hunting. You can imagine what sort of hunting, right?

  I am nineteen years of age, as best as I can tell, but the Goblins don’t know it. I look very young for my age. Luck of the draw. Because in another year, maybe less, they’ll quit caring how I look. They will send me to the pens anyway. I have already made myself a promise. I won’t make babies for them. I will die first.

  The fifteen of us trying to break free have agreed about what is going to ha
ppen. There are only two possibilities. All of us will get out or none of us will. If it is the latter, there is no point in wondering about our future. If it’s the former, we will be hunted like animals—because, like I say, that is how the Goblins see us.

  We go out of our cellblock in two groups—one of seven, one of eight—using lockpicks fashioned during the weeks of planning, opening all the doors we can to allow others to do what they want so long as they understand they are not to follow us. Some try anyway because they see it as their only chance, but JoJo discourages them as only JoJo can. What happens to them after that, I don’t know. I can’t stop to think about it because when you are on the run you don’t have time to think about anything but what’s going to happen if you are caught.

  Once clear of the cells we take out the night guards who patrol the walkways—a process carried out by Tommy and Malik using makeshift knives one of our group has fashioned from stolen pieces of shop metal. Their efforts are quick and silent, and the blood on their clothes marks a rite of passage. We race down the stairs to the cellars and through the storage areas. The Goblins don’t see us; they don’t hear us. Guards standing watch outside the doors of the compounds have no idea yet what is happening inside. Why would they even think about it? You don’t think much about your animals once they are safely penned in for the night. You just lock them in and come back for them in the morning. Escape? To what end? Even if we get out, where will we go? We will be missed quickly enough during the morning count; we will be hunted down and brought back. Most will be made an example of. I have seen what that means; they assemble everyone to watch. It isn’t something you are likely to forget. It takes a long time to die when you are systematically dismembered. It serves as a useful deterrent to further escape attempts.

  Except that sometimes even that isn’t enough. When survival means you live in a cage and are reduced to the life of an imprisoned animal, a chance at freedom is worth any risk.

  The tunnel we crawl through is actually an old drainage pipe. It is only used during the flooding periods, and we aren’t in one now. Finding the pipe was a rare piece of luck. At first we figured we’d have to climb over or tunnel under the prison walls, using rope ladders for the former or endless digging for the latter. But Wince found the opening to the pipe by accident one day while mopping the cellar floors. It lay behind an iron lid fastened to the stone block wall, but he could tell the lid was meant to open and close and he figured out how to do it. Next time he was sent down he carried lockpicks concealed in the soles of his shoes. It took him only minutes to release the seal on the lid. Once he got that far he wriggled his way inside (being every bit as supple and stretchy as a desert cat) and found a hatch that opened into the pipe. Not long after that, he was moved from mopping floors to organizing storerooms, but he still risked everything to slip away and unseal the hatch, crawl inside, and follow it both ways, discovering that one direction took you to what appeared to be a very deep spill pit and the other to beyond the walls and a way out onto the wastelands.

  It was Tommy who decided this is how we would escape. A grate seals the far end, but that is hardly enough to stop us if we can make a substance that will melt and break the lock. A big problem without access to chemical corrosives, but then Khoury surprised me by saying she could provide what we needed from the dissolvent she works with in the labs. What was left was to figure out when we would go and how we would survive once we were outside the walls. How big are the wastelands? How many miles would we have to walk to cross them? We were all either born in prison or brought here from other places, and we don’t know where anything is. But Tommy found a way onto the roof one day on the pretense of checking for damage after a storm, and his report was deeply troubling. There is nothing but open ground and scrub brush for as far as the eye can see.

  No one knows for sure what is out there. How are we supposed to stay alive knowing so little?

  But Tommy had an answer for this just as he did for everything. He is the son of survivalists after all, and he knows how to stay alive in any environment. He knows where to find food and water. He knows how to hunt and camp and hide so we can’t be found—how to create a false trail and conceal his tracks. You can’t learn how to do all that unless you’ve done it, and he has. Unlike the rest save for me, he lived free until he was in his teens, when a Goblin patrol caught his family in the open and took them prisoner. Tommy was brought here. He doesn’t know what happened to his parents—he never saw them again—but Tommy is a survivor; we all know that. We designated him as our leader because he is our best chance for staying alive.

  Tommy chose me first for his escape plan because I know something of the larger world—although not as much as I pretend—and because I have made it clear that I am determined not to be left behind. We are attracted to each other, and we share confidences. Together—to the extent such things are possible behind prison walls—we make a good team.

  Others were added to our little team as time passed. Carefully added. We are a diverse group, united by a common goal but fully aware of the risk we are running.

  Girls and boys are housed together in indiscriminate fashion save for one rule: Opposite sexes are never allowed to share the same cell. Reproduction is tightly controlled, and forbidden altogether where we are. Tommy’s cellmate is Malik; mine is Khoury—which is one of the reasons she ended up coming with us. But twin sisters are housed on one side of JoJo’s cell, and he got to know them pretty well. It was his suggestion we bring them along. Barris and Breck are twins, even though they don’t look very much alike. Breck is a chameleon, Barris unchanging. Breck knows how to make things out of scraps and leavings others would never think to bother with. She can fashion clothes, boots, gloves, and hats to protect against the sun, because exposure poses a definite risk if you are caught out in it for too long. Barris is wise and centered and a good source of advice. She always knows what needs to be asked and answered, and someone like that can do a lot of good when you are on the run.

  Malik is big and strong, and there was never any question about including him. He is able to lift and haul like a machine. Nothing seems to be beyond him. Incongruously, he is one of the more docile and obedient of us. He is quiet most of the time, seldom chooses to speak—just sits there listening. He latched on to Tommy early, follows him about like a pet dog, and does whatever Tommy asks of him. This can prove to be a problem if Tommy isn’t smart about the influence he wields over Malik, but he is careful never to abuse it. After all, it is important to have someone who possesses that size and strength on your side. Still, if Malik ever switches his allegiance or decides Tommy has betrayed him in some way, there will be problems.

  We crawl through the drainage pipe in single file, Tommy in the lead, Khoury right behind so she can use the substance she has stolen from the camp labs to break down the metal of the locks and allow us to get out once we reach the grate. We go in single file, same as before, no talking, and no sounds at all. We crawl in darkness, eyes as adjusted to the black as they can be, everyone keeping their heads down. It seems to take much longer to reach the grate than is actually possible, and the feeling of being trapped is pervasive. But no one loses heart or breaks down. Everyone stays in control.

  On reaching the drain cover, Khoury moves to the forefront and uncaps the melting substance and pours it on the locks. Steam, a hissing sound, and a sharp, pungent stench ensue. It takes three applications, but finally the locks fall apart and the grate comes free. Malik is there to grab it so it doesn’t make any sound when it starts to tumble away, gripping it with both hands as he leans out to lower it into the scrub-choked ditch outside. He goes out after it, then reaches back to help the other kids climb down the steep, slippery sides of the ditch.

  In moments we are all in the clear. We stand as a group at the bottom of the ditch and say our goodbyes. Our core group of eight will go one way. The second group of add-ons will go the other. There is no par
ticular reason for the choices of direction. But Tommy’s thinking is that we will stand a better chance if we split up and reduce our numbers. Common sense. It is easier to track larger groups. Once we are far enough away from the prison, we will all split up again. If we are lucky, most of us will make it out. We will have our chances, each one of us. But I know it won’t be enough. Because each of us fully believes that he or she will survive, while common sense says that some of us won’t.

  I go with Tommy, Malik, JoJo, Barris and Breck, Wince, and Khoury. We go left; the others go right. None of us has the slightest idea in what direction we are traveling or what lies ahead. It doesn’t matter, so long as it takes us as far away from the prison as possible before we have to surface onto the flats. The night is cloudless, and moon- and starlight brighten the terrain. Once we crawl out of the ditch we will be exposed. It is bad enough that we will be tracked by the Ronks; worse still if natural light reveals us clearly enough that the Goblins’ long-range weapons can bring us down. The Goblins have carriers, too. They will use them to try to find us quickly, crisscrossing the flats until they stumble over us. Luck will prove valuable, if fickle. But foot pursuit using the Ronks doesn’t require luck, only patience.

  A sudden terrible thought presses in on me, driving straight past my determination. This is suicidal. I don’t want to think it, but I do. It is a wicked whisper inside my head, a dark promise that foretells my future with sly certainty. I have been fooling myself into thinking escape is possible. It is not. I am going to die.

  As if in response to this invasive conviction, everything goes to hell a minute later. Shouts rise up from the other direction—from the direction in which the other group went—sharp and clear, deep-throated and guttural. Goblins. Screams follow and weapons fire reverberates. Spitfires: the nickname given to the long-barreled automatic weapons used by the Goblins, spewing projectiles in sustained or single bursts. There are growls and snarls from the Ronks, and the screams increase. Frantic activity. Desperate pleas rise out of the madness. Our friends, begging. A few final, awful sounds of dying and then silence once more.