Authors: Usman Ijaz
Adrian nodded as he scanned the common room. It
was nearly deserted in the afternoon, only a few patrons sitting at a few
tables and conversing over drinks. His eyes returned to Tarrak and Connor.
“Have you two spoken with any of them since the
day of the festival?” Tarrak asked.
“No, not really,” Adrian said. “Only a few words
in passing but nothing more. Even Alexis has been acting distant towards us.”
“Hmm. Well, best not to think too much on it.
They will be leaving soon anyway; no one stays for long.”
“That’s true,” said Adrian. He glanced around
the common room and his eyes came to rest on the stairway as Hamar, Owain, and
Alexis descended together. They were dressed as plainly as ever, but there
seemed to be a resolute air to them, a determination in their step as they
headed towards his uncle.
Adrian nudged Connor and guided his attention
towards the three men conversing with his father. Hamar talked quietly with Jon
Moor, and then the four of them headed for the private dining room, Uncle Jon
looking like a cornered deer among three wolves. The door closed behind the
four of them.
“What do you suppose that’s all about?” Connor
asked, his voice on the edge of worry.
“Likely nothing,” Tarrak said, and Adrian could
tell he was trying to alleviate their apprehension. “Like I was saying, they’re
probably leaving and want to settle their bill.”
Adrian nodded absently. But if they wanted to
settle their bill, why not do it in the open, as many others did. Then again,
it wasn’t
that
odd for them to do their business in private, was it? But
why the look of worry on his uncle’s face then? Thoughts ran rampant through
his mind, , trying to make sense of all this. Deep down he felt certain that
the three men meant no good to his uncle.
Are they trying to blackmail him?
Cheat him in some way?
He didn’t know, but the certainty in him only
firmed. He pulled Connor out of the inn, not hearing Tarrak’s words behind them,
telling them not to worry and that he was there if anything should happen.
Outside, the despondent sky hung low, heavy with gray clouds that promised rain.
Adrian led Connor to the side of the inn. “What
do you think they want with your father?”
“I don’t know. I ... I don’t like it, though.”
“Neither do I,” Adrian said. “They said
something to your father; whatever it was it really worried him.”
“I didn’t like the looks on their faces,
either,” Connor said, his mouth tight.
The private room where Alexis and his companions
had taken Jon Moor was near the back of the common room, beside the stairs that
led to the upper floors of the inn. Adrian and Connor walked around the
building and into the alley at the back. Cut into the wall at the approximate
height of a man was a glass window meant to air out the room and let some light
in. The window was open, held up by a wooden rod. Adrian and Connor looked up at
it, but neither was tall enough to reach it.
“What--” Adrian began, but Connor turned away
and began to pull some empty crates from across the alley.
They aligned the small crates beneath the
window. Adrian, the lighter of the two, stepped onto the boxes. The crates
began to creak, warning him that they could collapse at any moment.
“Would you hurry up?” Connor hissed. “I don’t
want to be caught sneaking into my own father’s inn.”
Adrian waved at Connor to be quiet, and then
peeked into the dim light of the room. His blood was racing. He fully expected
them to get caught at any moment.. Silently, he gestured Connor onto the crates
beside him. Connor joined him, seemingly ignorant of the creaks and squeaks of
their wooden platforms. Adrian motioned him to silence as they crouched beneath
the window.
Adrian turned to whisper into his cousin’s ear.
“I think this is far enough. We can make out what they are saying.” Connor
nodded absently. From the other side of the wall came the voices.
2
“What is this all about?” Jon asked again. He
sat on one side of a table, while the three men were seated across from him,
watching him closely.
“My name is Hamar Ronan,” said the blunt man
sitting in the middle. “These are my companions, Owain Lannit and Alexis
Marshall. We are here on orders of King Aeiron.”
“King Aeiron?” Jon asked, baffled. “Why?”
“You will learn soon enough ,” said the man with
the flame-orange hair who Hamar had introduced as Owain.
Questions whirled in Jon’s head, but these men
only gave him bits of information at a time, and then watched to see how he
digested those bits. A surging anger began to well inside him. He didn’t want
to be the center of these men’s games. “You are going to have to be clearer. I
still don’t know what this is all about.”
“Very well,” said Hamar. He began to strip his
left glove. “We are men of the Legion --”
“Legionnaires?” asked Jon, bewildered. He
wondered why he should be so surprised; who else would the King send but men of
his Legion. If the King had indeed sent them.
“Yes--”
“Even him?” asked Jon, nodding towards the
youth.
“Even him,” answered Hamar tightly, holding up
the back of his left hand so that Jon could clearly see the mark of the Legion
tattooed there, a maroon eagle in a the middle of a complicated ring of vines.
“As to why we are here; we were sent here to find an Ascillian child.”
A silence filled the room as Hamar’s words
settled. Jon gaped at the three men across from him. His breathing stilled,
though his heart beat faster, and he sat motionless. Darkness crept along the
edges of his vision, and he welcomed the possibility of losing consciousness,
if only to escape this conversation. But the faintness passed and he was forced
to confront the men before him. This had started as good a day as any other,
but he was suddenly certain that it would end being one of the worst of his
life. “There ... there is no Ascillian child here.”
“We believe otherwise,” said Owain.
Jon’s eyes darted to each man. The young one
kept his gaze averted, as if he didn’t particularly like doing this, but the
other two might as well have been made of stone. For Jon the rest of the world
ceased to exist; he no longer heard the sounds from the common room or the
outside world. He was not even sure anymore what time of day it was outside.
For him there were only the three men across from him, and a dire need to
convince them that what they sought was not to be found here. He spoke in the
voice of a man whose pride has been severely wounded. “Where does King Aeiron
get the gall to say such a thing? I’m an honest, loyal citizen! I pay my taxes
and have committed no crime!”
The faces watching him remained impassive, stone
eyes trained onto his, as though picking apart his thoughts. “I think he has
known for a long time, him and his seer,” Hamar answered. “But only now, when
the need is the greatest, did he trust the information unto others.”
“That’s preposterous!” Jon bellowed. “The
Ascillians, they’re all dead! Everyone knows that!”
“Perhaps,” Owain said in an even tone that
infuriated Jon. “But there
is
one here.”
Silence descended upon the room once more. Jon’s
eyes searched the faces of all three men helplessly.
After all that, this is
what it comes down to?
“There are no Ascillians here,” he said, but it was
an empty statement, for his voice had lost all its earlier conviction.
Hamar stared back with dark eyes. Jon knew that
those eyes had been witness to more than he would ever see. “The boy, how long
has he been in your care for?”
Jon looked to the closed door, but in his heart
he knew there was no escape from these men. He took a deep breath, and when he
let it out all his resolve went with it, replaced with an odd sense that this
was all inevitable. “Adrian? He’s been with us since he was a babe.”
“What of his birth parents?” Owain asked.
“They’re dead, suffered the same fate as all
Ascillians,” Jon whispered. He stared at his cradled hands in his lap, feeling
helpless.
This cannot be happening.
“We need him,” Hamar said after a time. “That
is, I believe we may all need him.”
“What do you mean?” Jon asked. He was barely
able to hold his tears back and fought to suppress the hopelessness he felt.
After
all that, Jared, this is what it comes to?
3
Connor stared at his cousin as if seeing him for
the first time. Adrian stared up at the window. When at last he turned to look
at Connor his eyes were wide and stunned. And filled with something else, as
well. Understanding, thought Connor.
Connor’s mouth hung open and felt as dry as sand
as he tried to get out words, but the frightening realization of what they had
just heard proved to be more than he could handle. Thoughts coalesced and broke
in his mind, and he suddenly felt nervous.
He can’t be an Ascillian. I’ve
... I’ve known him all my life. We’ve grown up together. It ... it’s not true.
He can’t be one!
The look in Adrian’s eyes told him that the same
thoughts were racing through his mind. Connor opened his mouth to say
something, to perhaps ask him if he was truly a filthy Ascillian, but Adrian
turned his face away. Connor could only look at him, already seeing him as
someone other than the boy he had grown up with.
“You ... you ....”
You’re an Ascillian?
He
wanted to ask, to demand it, but found his voice choked and heavy.
In miserable silence they listened as the voices
continued in the other room.
4
“Why?” Jon asked. “Why would the King want him?
He’s a good boy, he’s never done anybody any harm. Not once!”
Hamar met his gaze, and Jon thought he caught a
hint of sympathy in the other man’s face. “It is odd,” said Hamar with a sigh,
“how a few people can decide the fate of an entire people. The Ascillians, as
you may know, were a race of odd wonders. No one quite knows what the extent of
their powers was, but all deemed it unnatural. Perhaps that is why it was so
easy for the Mad Emperor to gain numbers to his cause.
“The Mad Emperor Nero’s war on the Ascillians
began the massacre that would result in the near extinction of an entire
people. By the end of it, when the free countries rose against Nero and
overthrew him and put an end to his war, a great number of Ascillians had
already died.
“Even after the Mad Emperor was overthrown, and
his empire disbanded into the countries we now know, the persecution and fear
against the Ascillians remained. The race of the Old People was reduced to a
rabble people scattered throughout the land, hunted and killed sometimes for no
more reason than that their neighbors thought they meant them harm. Throughout
the years their numbers dwindled, until it was believed that their existence
was at an end.
"It is now believed that a small group of
Ascillians living in a backwater village killed some dozen years ago were the
last alive. From what started during the Mad Emperor’s reign only forty-three
years ago, a reign that destroyed much of an entire race and changed the lands
of Cahrad as we know it, we can only be sure of one that escaped alive, into a
world that fears and distrusts his kind. That lone child is your nephew.”
“I know what happened,” Jon said fiercely, and
wiped tears away from his eyes. “I experienced too much loss not to know!”
“Yes, but the boy is only half Ascillian is he
not?” Hamar asked. “Who were his parents?”
“What does it matter?” Jon demanded.
Oh,
Jared, look what you’ve put me in now
. The memories of his brother were heart-wrenching
on their own, but added to the fact that he now stood loosing Jared’s only son,
the whole of it threatened to rip him apart inside. The memories brought on a
fresh inception of tears.
Hamar frowned. “I don’t suppose it does. But the
tale of the Ascillians is not yet done. Not for our purpose. There was a druid
once, named Cathanin, who spent several years among the Ascillians, learning
their religions and their myths and their histories. In one of his commentaries
he talks of something called the Source of Light, and mentions how the
Ascillians believed they were in charge of maintaining it. Cathanin wrote that
the Ascillians believed the Source is what represents the light of the world,
almost as a single heart beating for all life. Without it, the world as we know
it would shrivel and be swallowed in darkness.”
“What do these stories have to do with Adrian?”
Jon demanded.
“Stories,” mused Hamar. “Cathanin believed them
to be stories as well, never realizing that it could be the very truth. I spoke
earlier about the King and his seer. The King has in his possession in Grandal
a Krillen, a device that allows him glimpses into what may be. His seer, Nemar
Bahnin, claims to have seen the fate of this world in the Krillen. The King
believes him, which tells me that he must have seen part of it as well. The
seer says that he witnessed our world beneath an everlasting darkness, as
though the Ruins had consumed and tainted everything. And within the Ruins he
saw a single glow of pulsating light, growing smaller with every pulse. He said
it was dying.”