The Korellian Odyssey: Requiem (3 page)

The western side of the Nonym range was covered in forest, mainly birch and fir. Korel picked his way along a faded trail amidst the trees, his thoughts wandering back to younger days . . .

After being placed in prison upon the false word of his brothers, he had lamented recent events, not fully understanding the sundering of his place within the family. His cell was cold and dank with dripping moisture, like the oozings of a plague that afflicted the very ground. After a few moments, Korel's fellow cellmate, a man of large muscular girth and a thick disposition, spoke, "So, I see the wardens have taken to locking up fair boys with fair attire. 'Tis truly a crime to have such fairness and not be sharin' it with us poor lowly brutes. Even the common man appreciates a taste of the fair." A plaintiveness touched his voice.

Korel returned, "Such brutishness is sometime chosen rather than bestowed, and it seems that such fairness as you have is hidden deep. But I see it in you yet."

"Be that as it may," answered the other, "I will have that fair robe of yers very soon . . . and perhaps a bit more." With that he lunged at Korel, who dodged the other's grasp and spun to face him again.

"I do not wish to harm you," Korel said. "This robe is yours if you will be content."

But the man, now fueled with rage, spat back, "Nay, I will have all I want, and no charity from brats will tame the heart of Gregor Kinson!"

With that he sprang again, anger fueling his speed and strength. Korel did not move, remaining perfectly still. But just as Gregor's fist closed on him, he shifted with lightning speed, took hold of Gregor's wrist, and began to squeeze. Still Gregor came, grabbing Korel's robe near the center of his chest and lifting him off the ground, pressing him against the cell bars. Korel adjusted his grip slightly as he held Gregor's wrist and continued to grip ever tighter. In response, Gregor groaned with an effort designed to literally press Korel into the bars, an attempt to fuse him with the living metal as a permanent fixture of the cell itself. But as Korel's grip became tighter, lines of strain appeared on Gregor's face and a slight grinding sound escaped his wrist. Then, as Gregor's wrist suddenly gave way with a sickening snap, he sagged to the floor cradling his new deformity.

A low-toned wail escaped Gregor's clenched teeth, bringing the prison guard to the door. But when the guard queried, neither Korel nor Gregor would speak. However, the story was soon revealed through a cursory interrogation of the adjacent prisoners. Incredulous, the guard asked, "How does a mere boy break a man's wrist, let alone the wrist of the strongest prisoner?"

Korel answered flatly, "I am a weaver from my earliest memories and my hands have learned dexterity at the loom, strength at the spindle—lessons they have not forgotten. As a child, my father taught me the arts of war and these arts serve me from time to time." Astounded, the guard passed the events on to the captain and soon Korel found himself summoned, standing formally before the captain of the royal guard . . .

Korel was startled from his musings by a subtle movement at the edge of sight, coming somewhere from behind him. Night was falling quickly now as a wane amber glow radiating at the horizon's edge caramelized the last rays of the dying day. He looked back down the mountain's contour as he neared a small highland valley and spied a figure slowly lumbering out of the plain and onto the first foothill, disappearing beneath the forest growth. There was something wrong with the way the figure moved, in a sort of lurching motion that was slow yet determined. Something else bothered Korel, too. He had meticulously watched all possible pursuit across the plain and there had been none for leagues in any direction. But now, despite his vigilance, someone was following only a mile or two behind and had somehow crept up outside his notice. As he pondered his options, Korel decided this valley would the best place to confront the follower . . .

Night was full now. With all his plans laid, Korel crouched, waiting for the follower in a black silence too complete to be natural. He could sense the other, its distance shortening as the forest seemed to contract upon itself. A fire blazed in the clearing, throwing shadows upon rocks, cliffs, and the looming scrub, phantoms growing upon the razor's edge between light and obscurity. An intense sulfuric heat grew within the fire, with all the forest swaying in illusion to the erratic tempo of the flickering light. The sky began to make slow spirographic patterns in the night, the stars pinwheeling upon their celestial axis, time and direction slowing, turning, melting into the valley's own essence. Korel began to drift, his mind caught in the slow current of his own life, carried back toward earlier days.

Korel stood mute before the captain of the guard, the confines of a small courtyard surrounding them. The captain's face held an amused smirk. "So you are a fighter. You don't look like a fighter—more like a pampered merchant to me. But if you would be a fighter, there are two important things to know: how well you fight and why you fight. Let us answer the first query." Without warning, the captain pulled a whip from his hip and lashed Korel across the left shoulder.

Korel grimaced in pain but did not cry out as blood began to well through his robe. Stone-still he stood as a second strike scored his right shoulder. But as the third strike arced through the air, Korel snatched the tip of the whip in his fist, nearly pulling it from the captain's hand. The captain then drew a second whip from his left hip and scored Korel across the chest. Twice more the captain drew blood before Korel grabbed the second whip tip, now holding a tip in either hand. The lieutenant, who had been watching from the side, picked up a scourge and began lashing Korel's legs. With a deft move, Korel dodged the scourge, let go of both whips, and sprinted toward the corner of the courtyard, where a sapling grew. As the captain and lieutenant gave chase, he gripped the sapling near its base and tore it from the ground. The sapling was nearly eight feet in length and Korel held it like a battle staff, small clods of dirt still falling from its roots. The captain and his lieutenant, career fighting men both, drew up in a calculated approach, their swords at the ready.

The captain raised his sword, and with a wicked thrust the real battle began. Blow after thrust after cut rained down upon Korel as he and his adversaries pirouetted about the courtyard in an almost choreographed dance of violence. Sweat poured from their bodies as the battle became a labor, swords thrusting with a workmanlike fatigue and Korel doing the heavy work of blocking the unending barrage of attacks. After several minutes, the swordsmen finally began to weary, and sensing his opportunity Korel countered with a series of top-heavy blows, first disarming the lieutenant and knocking him to the ground, then spinning into an overhead strike, which impacted the captain's wrist with a nerve-stinging crack, his sword clattering on the paving stones. Korel tossed the sapling aside and approached the captain. As he came within arm's length, the captain pulled a knife from his breast coat and dove at Korel, the dagger sweeping in a downward arc. He caught the captain's wrist and began to squeeze, the same as he had done in his cell only hours earlier. The captain dropped his knife but with a lunge broke free, spinning to a stop in front of Korel, the smallest trace of a smirk on his lips.

"Now that we know how well you fight, let's see why you fight," a mild, lecturing tone hanging on the captain's words. Then, with an abrupt about-face, he strode from the courtyard, locking the door behind him.

Another door opened along the opposite side of the courtyard, and a man bound by his wrists walked in across the far side accompanied by two soldiers. His bonds were cut and the soldiers left. The man, wizened by age, was close to six foot four, with many scars on his arms and chest, his white hair flowing from his head to his shoulders. One lock was tied at the center-top and lay back past the nape of his neck. His entire body rippled with cords of muscle. He was thin and gaunt but radiated a strength and power infused with the sinewiness of much suffering. His blue eyes blazed madly with a lethal intensity that seemed to bore into Korel's soul. The man held himself with a regality long-practiced but now fraying at the edges with insanity, a wild power radiating from him.

"What have you done with my son!" the old man shrieked, his body becoming instantaneous motion as he leaped toward Korel with terrible speed and grace. Although unarmed, the man emanated swift death with every quick and poetic movement, a ballet dancer showing his victim a glimpse of mortality's end. Korel blocked the first few blows, using every ounce of his speed and skill. But it was not enough. A blow to the chest took his breath and was quickly followed by a kick that sent Korel sprawling on his back. In that pain-filled moment, he knew he could not win against such manic fury and understood that if the other wished to take his life, he was powerless to stop it. Looking up through a befuddled fog, he saw the man crouching over him, mad blue eyes boring into his own. But then a rapid transformation came over the man's face, a soft tenderness born of love's recognition, a connection as though the mind of the other was reaching into his own thoughts and being.

"Are you my son?" the old man asked as he cupped Korel's face in his hands, searching its features. But even as he asked, he began to weep. A high-pitched wail escaped his throat and glissandoed down into a mournful sobbing as the old man turned to crouch in a fetal-like squat. With his back to the man, Korel could sense his vulnerability. The knife recently dropped by the captain of the guard lay only a few feet to one side. Korel could take it up and slay the man or simply choke him to death as he hunched. But even as these thoughts flitted across his mind he rejected them, sensing that the old man was a victim of tragedy's whim. Sadness for the openly weeping man melted any vengeful dust gathering at the edges of his own self­preservation. Yet the other seemed to sense his fleeting intent, his lamentation falling away in an instant. He abruptly stood to look directly over Korel, his prostrate form still lying sprawled on the courtyard stones.

Nothing moved for several minutes. Then the captain, who had been observing the scene from an upper balcony encircling the courtyard, began to clap in half-mocking, half-appreciative applause. "You have done well. For no man before you has survived single combat with Thoren. You see, Thoren was the greatest warrior of the Valyrean Realm and rode to victory during the greatest battles of the Duluvial Wars. But now he is the mad and broken wretch you see before you. His son rode into exile and died upon the plain before Mount Sorad, the home of the Prioria, keepers of the prison chambers of Mortun, where the many slave necromeans were made to bring death to prisoners piece by piece and part by part. With his son's death, a witless wandering found Thoren and he was lost for a season. He was found starved and lost near the Soraddan plain and brought back to Westoreth as the being you see now. Since the days of his wanderings, tidings of his son have been ever lost."

Guards entered the courtyard and led Thoren one way and Korel the other. As they separated, Korel looked back and saw Thoren staring at him. The two shared a look of understanding that only comes to those who have faced one another in mortal combat. And then Thoren was gone.

A Quenivorian sorceress stood behind the captain within the shadows of a recessed doorway of the courtyard balcony. "He has part of the gift. Thoren reached into his mind and they touched. Rudimentary, but the boy may already have the skill of the second precepture. Have him brought before me."

Korel suddenly found himself standing before the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was perfect in form, with sharp eyes that seemed to look through him. She wore a short, dark formfitting silk shirt with a small golden breastplate over it and a short dark skirt of the same silk material. Over all she wore a dark cape of lightweight material and a white gold necklace and bracelet marking her Quenivorian. Korel knew the Quenivorian were trusted servants to many kings and held great power and skills few others possessed. Quenivoria had arcane knowledge and arcane motives as well.

"You are a strange prisoner," said the sorceress. "Not yet a man, but certainly no boy." She studied him intently. "Do you know why the warrior Thoren was never beaten in battle? His mother was Quenivorian. He was a warrior of unequaled fighting skills, very true. But beyond this, he had the gift to bend the minds of others to his own. He did this without physical coercion, but with the gift. No one has ever survived battle with him until you." She took a step closer. "His is the gift of the second level of precepture, and seldom has any gift of the Quenivorian come to a male. Yet here you stand with the gift inside you." She began to walk around him slowly in an appraising fashion, as though she were buying a horse.

"The precepture contains twelve trials of the gift, and it is the life and devotion of each Quenivorian sorceress to walk the path of the precepture, passing as many trials as she is able. The trials are ancient and are contained within the relics of the council, each relic administering trial, wisdom, power, and the right to seek the trial of the following relic. Many years are spent seeking the knowledge and wisdom necessary to challenge a relic, and most are never challenged. Even those who are worthy often find their challenges broken by the relics. There is no living Quenivorian who has attained greater than the seventh relic, and the greatest in our known history only gained the ninth. A sorceress must gain the precepture step by step, but the gift is rare and unpredictable in men. You exhibit the power of will contained within the second relic, yet you have never endured the trial of the first. By law, any male with the gift must receive trial by relic or be put to death. Thoren is the only man living to have passed a trial by relic. All others have died or been executed."