The Tale of Onora: The Boy and the Peddler of Death (2 page)

            She delicately walked over to a shelf and picked up what looked like a black leather casing fit for a book. The casing had engravings carved into it that had been suffused by melted silver.

            “
Tesso uns’aa dosst statha
,” she commanded.

            The engravings glowed as the leather case retracted enough to reveal the common shape of a leatherback book, eager to obey the woman’s command and tell her its story. The woman opened it. The pages did not have written words on them. Instead, beautifully scribed sigils were etched into each page.

            As she touched the first sigil, the ink sparkled with multi-colored light and painted her face with a rainbow glow. She heard her husband’s voice.

We have journeyed to infinite worlds, you and I. We have lost and found each other so many times that all the words in every civilization would not be enough to recount their tales. The majority of my life is over here and I am still without you. Perhaps I won’t find you in this realm again. Perhaps it’s not possible.

You wander the halls of my dreams and take me to our favorite places that I’ve not yet been to in this life, to remind me what it is I live for. The people I encounter have dreams of you as well, often side by side with me, your ethereal eyes burning ever so bright.

I decided to tell the story of one of our lives together, that if you’re still alive here you may read it one day and find me again, that my tale shall be my distress signal and you my deliverer.

I wrote this to help you remember what you are, what you stood for, and why you’ve come here. I wrote it selfishly, that if my Onora is never to be found again, I might at least bethink what it was like to have her while I drift towards oblivion. If my shot is never heard, or my signal never seen, I shall depart this world knowing I said all I mean.

______________________________

T
HE HEARTH FIRE CRACKLED in the dark room. A man sat tucked away in his plush chair. It was not quite a throne, but it was certainly fit for royalty. He wrapped himself in the pelt of a beast. His hair was long and his beard overgrown. His face was hardened from the steep and treacherous paths of his life.

The man’s eyes were the color of fountains mixed with dirt and blood. They chased the memories of his youth. He searched the great outdoors through a cloudy window that was large enough for any adult to walk upright through were there no glass to block him. It was embedded in a wall of granite bricks and engraved by dusty, golden latticework. He watched the snowflakes fall like angels from heaven, their broken wings causing them to drift wildly. The wind howled over the frozen tundra outside. It screamed at all those with shelter to remain, warning that Mother Nature would eradicate the god-written title of every person’s life that was exposed to her breath.

“I’m quite impressed you stood alone against the world up here, in the ruins of Che’el De’Trezen,” the man said. “Less than half the age of the man who destroyed it.”

His words were met by dead air.

The fire’s glow brought the trophies of the man’s conquests to life. There was a bearskin rug at his feet. Its soul still resonated from the dark hollows of its eyes and the gape in its mouth.

There were jewel-encrusted chalices on the mantle. Magic staves and swords hung from silver and mahogany racks on the walls, each one telling a tale of valor and heartbreak. There were effigies, talismans, and relics scattered about, the sort of items only acquired by staring death in the face and then defeating it.

Near the hearth, a boy at the end of his childhood sat on a stool. He stared into the flames. Stratagems raced through his mind. His pupils contracted, revealing the red center of his irises as they contrasted with their yellow-green outer parts. His wildfire hair broke through his dark skin.

The man studied the boy. “Enduring Che’el De’Trezen alone is not the only thing you share with Woden Caliph, you know.”

The boy’s attention was captured. “What could I possibly share with Woden Caliph?”

The man smirked. “Your siblings are made of his blood.”

“Siblings?” the boy asked.

“Two,” the man replied. “A sister of seven years and a brother your very age.”

The boy felt his stomach churn. A brother made of Woden’s blood meant only one thing. His dreams of becoming king were as dead as the city of Che’el De’Trezen.

The boy tried to mask the looks of his feelings being crushed. He glanced around the room. In the darkest corner, there lay a small heap of assorted equipment. There was a pair of boots with golden soles at the bottom. There was an unfamiliar dust on them that sparkled with each flare that erupted from the fire. On the heel of each boot, the gold soles rose up and formed wings. The man’s eyes fell on them. His thoughts travelled back in time to what it felt like traverse deep, dark chasms while walking through the air. He recalled looking down at oblivion on more than one occasion. The golden-winged boots allowed him to accomplish what the mind had previously determined to be impossible.

“What are those?” the boy asked.

“They came from Qu’ellar del lil Elghinyrr,” the man said.

The boy had studied geography relentlessly in preparation to become king. He knew every location in Caliphweald as though it were a part of his anatomy. He had never heard that name before. It wasn’t a major city or even a small town for that matter.

“I’m not familiar,” the boy responded. “What is it?”

The man’s expression flashed a brief glimpse into the unadulterated darkness of his soul. “Do not seek the sanctuary of evil, for I have tread in the heart of it.”

There was a stillness that drained the life out of the aether. The man’s eyes glistened ever brighter in lament as they showed signs of being human again.

“There are things in this world,” he continued. “Old things… that for reasons beyond my understanding have been allowed to prey upon us.”

The boy felt the tingly sensation of the hair on his body rising, but he could not resist the inquiry. “Such as?”

“Until you see them with your own eyes,” the man responded. “You cannot begin to understand, nay, you cannot begin to imagine that they exist. But they do. They flourish blamelessly and commit unutterable atrocities upon unsuspecting populations, especially upon defenseless children like you.”

Fear gripped the boy’s heart. “Like me?”

The man shot the boy a sideways look, his face wrought with warning. “Aye.”

The boy’s throat was so dry that he could barely swallow. “Why don’t people stop them?”

The man let out a cynical laugh. “Because people are the problem.”

The boy looked offended. “What?”

“Evil’s ability to survive is cultivated by the rapacious yearning within the minds of men. It drives them to avoid that which does not immediately affect them,” the man replied. “Show me a person willing to confront the truth and I’ll show you a person whose entire life has become a prolonged, lonely misadventure.”

The boy wondered if the man was referring to himself. It appeared that he fit the mold. He seemed incapable of being happy or of being kind. He came across as someone who rested comfortably on his laurels, completely content to proclaim everything wrong about the world and yet all the while doing nothing to change it. The boy didn’t associate with people like that. He refused. It made him lose interest in the boots along with their place of origin.

The man found the boy to be a snarky little shit, but that’s the whole reason for why he brought the boy to this room. When the boy arrived at the man’s estate by himself, it earned nothing but respect. Visitors were rare now, less there be some problem that needed solving. Most men couldn’t make that trek by themselves, let alone a boy. But after the respect, a deep pit of hatred burned in the man’s stomach. The boy looked too much like him. He looked too much like the woman from whence he came. Worst of all, the boy looked too much like the man who stole the world.

The challenge the boy faced was that the room was filled with trinkets and the sort of items that young men dream of possessing. Each new curio that he discovered peaked his curiosity even more than the previous.

Next to the boots was a device that attached to the forearm and to which a man’s hand fit into. It was made of silver and steel. It was decorated in plates of Nabian blue and it bore hieroglyphs of an ancient race. A barbed spike protected where the fist rested. At its base, a chain coiled itself. The spike could be fired as a projectile that would hook into the surface of its desired target.

“You may have that if you’d like,” the man offered. “It’s of no use to me anymore, just as it is of no use to you now.”

“Blackguard,” the boy muttered under his breath.

“What did you just say to me?” the man replied.

“You heard me,” the boy challenged. “Offering something useless to someone. What kind of miscreant does such a thing?”

“I like that,” the man said. “Miscreant. What do you know of miscreants?”

“More than you think, loafer,” the boy replied. “Have you any idea what it’s like to grow up a prince? Do you know what kind of people are attracted to me?”

The man gave a slow nod. “They’re all watching, you know. But none of them dare interfere. The ones that do are the good ones, for they have no idea who you are. Perhaps your mother raised you properly after all.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” the boy responded.

The man smirked. “I respect and love those who put their foot down and stand up to me, for they are principled. It’s the ones who remain silent; the ones who won’t dare confront you that you must guard most suspiciously. They are the ones who know. They are the ones who understand that regardless of what you do to them in this life, it is much more preferable that you remain trapped here in your flesh than to be set free in your true form.”

The boy felt like he was listening to the rant of a lunatic. “Why?”

“They know that everything comes back to you in death,” the man answered. “And that’s when you remember. And then that’s when you destroy.”

“Who are they?” the boy asked.

“The Keepers of Silence?” the man asked.

He held the clawheave up and examined it. The device was retractable. The sight of it invoked memories of what it was like to fire it into enemies. The man’s mind saved, through all these years, the images of having his sword drawn while the device hooked into the flesh of his foes and pulled their bodies towards him to be impaled by his blade.

“The Keepers of Silence are the ones who know what I really am,” the man continued. “And they had better keep me alive for as long as they can, because once I die, the game is over for them, just as I ended their game in this realm.”

The boy watched the man admire the device.

“This clawheave wasn’t a weapon,” the man said. “It was a tool. I used it to travel as much as I used it to kill.”

He reminisced about climbing the tallest trees with it. It elicited the wild freedom he felt while using it to pull himself from rooftop to rooftop over impossible distances.

“I outran authorities in every city,” the man continued. “I scaled heights that most people can only fantasize about. That’s the only way to deal with a world that breeds servility.”

“To become a ruffian?” the boy asked.

“To become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion,” the man replied. “I made every person in Caliphweald a roving garrison of freedom.”

The boy was more interested in the secrets of how the man manipulated the population’s perception rather than his bullshit fairytales. “How did you do it? How did you overthrow the government? How did you destroy the root of evil?”

The man saw right through the boy’s intentions, but it mattered not. He knew that with enough time he could influence the boy’s perception.

“The greatest way I destroyed evil was by showing everyone that it was there,” the man replied. “They called me mad when I warned them what was being done to them. They said I was a fool.”

“What changed?” the boy asked.

“The consequences of ignoring reality finally caught up with them,” the man responded. “It was the right major crisis. And then I was gone. For nearly a decade the people who knew me believed I was dead. Their loss healed to the point where the mention of my name barely stirred an emotion. When I returned, everything was different. The places I grew up in were destroyed, my favorite shops gone and replaced by a collective band of merchants whose only goal was to steal the wealth of a nation. Those that survived had fought to the point of complete spiritual, economic, and physical exhaustion. Nearly a decade of savagery and bloody turmoil left them with nothing. Never had I seen a populace so vacant, so entranced, so enslaved. I remember, as a child, reading about revolutions, studying them, as though I’d never be a part of one. How terribly wrong I was.”

“Is that why you’re so apathetic?” the boy asked.

The words stabbed the man to his very core. Not because of the content, but because of the sincerity and innocence in which they were spoken.

“There are a lot of things you cannot begin to understand about me,” the man replied. “But I want you to know them. It’s just that I don’t know how to explain myself to you.”

Progress. Finally.
The boy knew he was on the right path, but he had to tread lightly so as not to raise the man’s defenses. Leaning against the wall was an ebony bow fused with shards of gold. The boy was an expert marksman already. His mother had trained him well. This was the perfect opportunity to allow the man to relate to him.

“That bow is beautiful,” he said.

A tear fell down the man’s cheek as his mind summoned the event in which it was acquired.

“It belonged to the best man I ever knew,” he quietly responded. “He taught me everything that mattered.”

The boy tried to look sympathetic. “I’m quite good with those.”

The man had no doubt that his son was even better than he was in his prime, given that the boy’s mother was the best marksman in all of Caliphweald and helped the man achieve greatness in the craft of archery.