The Tale of Onora: The Boy and the Peddler of Death (4 page)

“But what if I excel?” the boy asked. “What if I exceed their expectations?

The man cracked a depraved smile. “The M’elzar magi faithfully appeased the last king in the same manner. Look at where it got them.
I’dome en’i An Keryms
.”

“The Night of the Long Swords,” the boy responded.

“It pleases me to know that your mother taught you real history,” the man replied. “Understand me well, child. Those who abet evil may eventually become its greatest ally, but the greatest ally of evil is always the greatest threat to its power. The greatest threat to power is always the one that gets disposed of first.”

The boy was nervous. He wanted to be able to use equipoise, but he was scared of the consequences and more so, he was scared of his father.

The boy’s voice quaked. “Are there other societies besides the Order of M’elzar that can help me to master equipoise?”

The man slowly but definitively shook his head. “Not unless you would like to find yourself on the path of slavery. It’s even worse if you’re talented.”

“If I’m talented?” the boy asked.

The man thought of an analogy. “Do you kill your own food?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied.

“Good lad,” the man said. “Have you tasted the difference in meat, between an animal that knew it was going to die and an animal that didn’t?”

The boy soberly nodded. “I’ve missed my mark before. I tracked an elk for six hours before it died. The adrenaline ruined the meat.”

The man gestured in agreement. “The best-groomed animals provide the best tasting meat. When it comes time for me to harvest one of my domesticated animals, I lure the animal away from its herd with an exquisite meal. A farmer does the same as he lures his sheep to the slaughter. The ruling class does the same as it frightens its population with staged bloodshed, and then corals them towards tranquility by offering a solution that tricks them into exchanging freedom for security. The Knights Lerretheur does the same with their paladins, who think they’re scouring the earth on a witch hunt, destroying evil abroad, but all they’re really doing is destroying the freethinkers and the people whose ideas disrupt the ruling class’ status quo. The Order of M’elzar does the same with its magi. To kill something when it least expects it yields the best bounty.”

The boy tried to figure out how the man was relating this to the practice of magic. “So then, to learn equipoise, I must avoid those who try to harvest my potential?”

The man was impressed. “To become a master of equipoise, you must avoid anyone who tries to lead you altogether, including me. We’ve recently come out of an age of division where, for centuries, they have broken us down so that we wouldn’t know how to be in balance with each other or with nature.”

The boy tried to conceal his judgment.

“Don’t confuse me with some flower-picking wood elf,” the man responded. However abrasive he came across, he was extremely intuitive, and there was always a purpose behind the way he did things. “Hold your hand out like this.”

The boy emulated the man and held his hand out to the flames. He could feel the fire starting to burn his skin. He took his hand away.

“Command it not to burn you,” the man said.

“I don’t speak Shadean,” the boy responded.

“The name of the fire is
Chath,
” the man continued. “Call it.”

The boy looked at the hearth fire as though it were another person he was meeting for the first time. “
Chath
.”

“Good,” the man said. “Now, when you speak these words, do not merely utter them aloud. Address the fire. Unite with it so that it won’t burn you. Say it like you mean it. ‘
Xun naut flamgra ussa’
.”

“
Chath,” the boy said. “Xun naut flamgra ussa.
”

The man remained silent. He watched to see what the boy would do next. The boy ran his hand through the flames. After a few painless swipes, he let his hand remain in the fire. He was bewildered at how the flame gracefully danced around his hand, respectfully avoiding his flesh. He looked at his smiling father. He grabbed the empty silver chalice and held it to the man.

“Pour it yourself,” the man said.

“What’s its name?” the boy asked. After the man told him what to say, the boy took his hand out of the fire and aimed it towards the bottle. “
Ujool. Doer ulu ussa.
”

The bottle gracefully floated into the boy’s grasp. He started to get the hang of it, like a child learning how to walk. He poured the brandy into his chalice and set the bottle down. He put his hand back into the fire and waited patiently for the brandy in his chalice to heat up. Nothing happened. He turned to his father.

“How did you heat the brandy?” he asked.

“Harmony,” the man replied. “You must unite with it. Command the fire to lend you its heat. ‘
Tlu’og ussa dosst morn’lo’
.”

“Very well,” the boy said. “
Chath. Tlu’og ussa dosst morn’lo.
”

“Good,” the man responded. “Envision the flame’s heat as your own, transferring into the chalice.”

The boy felt himself gaining sympathy from the hearth fire. He felt the exciting, tingly sensation flooding his body as he acquired its energy. He looked at the chalice and felt the silver warming up.

“Now,” the man continued. “Focus on the brandy. You do not want the chalice to burn you.”

The boy stared into the brandy as though it were a wishing well.

“Think of the temperature that you’d want it to be in your mouth,” the man said.

The boy thought of the jasmine tea with cardamom and thistle that his mother made for him. He imagined how its body felt as the liquid caressed his tongue and the way its spirit soothed his soul at just the right temperature. The brandy heated itself up to match that.

The boy took his hand out of the fire and turned to his father. The man raised his cup to welcome his son’s new gift, to toast that equipoise was the business of a man.

“
Faer zhah lil chaon del nesst.
” He clinked his ivory chalice with the boy’s silver one and took a swig of his warm brandy. “Ah, I surprise myself sometimes.”

The boy grew frightened as he watched his father’s eyes ignite with shadowlight. The silver-purple glow of his irises looked as though a spectral entity had just possessed his body.

“Your turn,” the man said. “Take your place amongst us and bid farewell to the eye of light, along with its illusory gods of slavery.”

The boy was scared to trust his father. The man projected omnipotence and his answers were eloquently laden with rhetorical labyrinths. But the boy had come too far to turn back. He was physically and spiritually closer to the other side. He raised the chalice to his lips and paused for a moment to see if his father would react. The man’s expression gave away nothing. The wavelengths of his energetic signature were impenetrable.

The boy tilted the cup towards his mouth and took in the warm brandy. It tasted like rich coffee, maple sugar and chocolate, all on fire. As it gushed down his throat and into his stomach, a prickly sensation flooded through every vein in his body. As the drink flowed its way into his brain, the boy felt lightheaded. His surroundings grew static.

The unseen orbs of aether that make up all matter appeared in their visible form and stood still. The boy wasn’t ready to die. He felt so hollow, so incomplete. He couldn’t even call the existence that he was parting with a life.

He was paralyzed by the concoction but emotions ran wildly through his mind, and he felt cheated that the journey of his life would end in an empty room with an enigmatic and disengaged man that he knew to be his father, but by blood only.

As the boy neared death, the static orbs of ether excited and ran amok wilder than the snowflakes outside. The orbs formed in the shapes of men. They were faceless, dark purple entities. Some appeared like warriors and others like priests and magi. They stood guard around the man and calmly observed the boy experiencing his descent into umbra. The boy felt himself losing his balance and slowly drifting into the weightlessness of falling backwards.

Without hesitation, the man swooped in and cradled the boy by the back of his neck. With his free hand, the man grasped the silver chalice and protected its contents. He looked deep into his son’s open eyes as they emanated the silver-purple glow of shadowlight.

“Take in the darkness, son,” the man said. “Don’t fight it. Breathe it. Allow it to flourish within you. Allow yourself to become darker than the blackest night, for that is what shall make you good. That is what makes you a R
ökkr.
”

The boy felt his soul traveling elsewhere. He knew his life here was over. He heard his father utter something.

“
Mir pholor
,” the man said. “
Udos kyorl tu’fyr tresk’ris.
”

Though he didn’t speak Shadean, the boy could understand what his father said perfectly, as though it were Caliphian tongue.

“Hold on,” the man said. “We wait between worlds.”

CHAPTER 2

The Morning of a War

T
O THE UNTRAINED EYE, it was a grand spectacle. The air ignited and shot off in different directions like wayward fireworks. The aether sparkled around her and chimed in the wind. The shimmers of light defied common knowledge and then returned to the caster. To the disciplined eye, it was nothing more than a failed spell.

Olwyn fell to her knees. She trembled with fatigue. Her despair evoked a soundless cry that stole her breath away. She was named after the goddess of flowers and the season of spring, but her body felt like winter’s wilt. Hot tears of misfortune cooled like glacier melt as they flowed from the summit of her celestial blue eyes to the valleys of her rosy cheeks. She looked back to the north one last time at the kingdom from which she fled.

Burning torches illuminated the distant city walls of Maebelfry, the nation’s capital. Olwyn wondered how something that bred such oppression and inequality could look so beautiful from afar. Perhaps everything looked beautiful when blanketed by the deep dark of night.

Crownspire, the kingdom’s eastern neighbor, unashamedly displayed its vibrant glory to compete for the night’s affection. Further north, the Grimridge Mountains ascended to the heavens. Their snowy caps glinted in the moonlight.

The wind captured Olwyn’s strong blonde hair and danced with it, revealing her strikingly attractive Nordic Elfin features. Strands of it stuck to her sweaty forehead and teary face.

As she stared vacantly out at the horizon, her temple throbbed to the drumbeat of her heart. A soft murmur came from the bundle of flesh that she carried near her bosom.

Olwyn lifted the wrapping to uncover the face of a baby boy, still stained with the blood of his birth. His demeanor was calm. He raised his bitty hand, not even half the size of his mother’s index finger, and took hold of it. His touch melted her worries away. Olwyn tucked the baby’s hand back beneath the wrapping. A warm sensation flooded her body. Joy painted a fresh coat of warm, soothing tears over the cold streams on her cheeks. She fled the city shortly after she gave birth. She pressed her shaky fingers to her lips and kneeled back in relief. Her breaths were deep and gratifying.

“No son of mine shall ever know Drudgekreath,” she said. “You shall grow up far away from the Royal Family and their prison promises.”

Olwyn studied the baby’s hypnotic gaze. His irises were phantom in color. At first glance, Olwyn thought they were a translucent reddish-brown, similar to his father’s red irises. But as she looked closer, she discovered that their pigments were the color of sunsets.

“Your eyes burn brighter than all of Crownspire,” she said. “I shall name you Aithein.
Shadowlight. Do you like it?
”

A noise of approval escaped from the depths of Aithein’s belly. His little hand beckoned her the best it could.

Olwyn gently pressed her lips upon his forehead. “I agree.”

______________________________

H
OURS PASSED. THE WIND chased twilight westward across the great territory of the Caliphian Steppe. Olwyn knew about the different kingdoms that existed at its far reaches. Most of the races that inhabited Caliphweald shared a mutual interest in preserving the steppe and the sovereignty of each culture, but the Western World had grown so corrupt with greed and consumption that it was forced to do what every empire does before it wastes, exhausts, and finally murders itself. It had to divide and conquer everything it could.

The bitter irony is that the Western World was molded by the tyranny from the Old World. Had it not been for the black deeds of Woden Caliph, the Western World wouldn’t have been driven to such a ruthless way of life. If one were curious as to who died and made Woden king, the answer was simple. Everyone.

Olwyn empathized with the Oussaneans. King Woden destroyed her Nordic ancestors and established the Knights Lerretheur, a secret order of paladins and magi to police and restrict the practice of equipoise. With so much of the population out of harmony with itself, Olwyn understood that if the westerners didn’t engage in imperialism, they would cannibalize themselves. But she was not foolish. She understood well that the Oussaneans would not spare her just because she shared a common enemy with them. In a foreign land with only vengeance to sustain them, the Oussaneans would see every creature that moved as an enemy.

The most punishable offense in Caliphweald was the practice of blood magic, a type of equipoise in which casters used power inherent in their blood to fuel their spells. Blood magic is often the most effective type of equipoise for stealing the health of others and using it to regenerate the health of the caster and his allies. It is the prerequisite necessary to engage in necromancy.

Necromancers originally used blood magic to summon the deceased for the purpose of foretelling future events or discovering hidden knowledge. It originated when adept magi learned how to summon the spirits of the dead as apparitions. It was initially used conservatively, only in times of necessity, whether it was during droughts, famine, or plagues.