The Korellian Odyssey: Requiem (6 page)

He stood upon a small ridge, its natural mouth running down into a vale that in turn made its way to the base of a flat, brown plain of baked earth riddled with small fissures, as though all the moisture had been wrung from its soil a millennia before. Distant mountains ringed the plain on three sides with the vale running down to the forth. Dark clouds hung low with intermittent vision-scarring flashes of angry lightning brilliantly illuminating the landscape for brief moments, only to have the earth plunge back into near-complete obscurity, the darkness tempered by a pearly phosphorescence that seemed to come from nowhere. In the middle of the plain, an enormous charcoal-black obelisk rose like a spike toward the clouds. Although he could not see the horizon, Korel felt that there was nothing more beyond the plain and mountains, that literally nothing existed beyond this place. He began to make his way down through the vale toward the plain.

As he started his journey across the baked flatness reaching out before him, gouts of lightning erupted from the highest tip of the obelisk up through the clouds, illuminating the sky beyond. He had been walking for nearly an hour before he finally came to the base of the obelisk, which was made of circular steps curving around the entire structure. As he climbed the steps he realized the obelisk was circular, a narrow black cone inverted and rising several hundred feet to its tip. The black surface was polished and impossibly smooth, without blemish, crack, or defect, like the surface of a pool of liquid glass—perfect.

Korel could see his narrowed reflection moving across the surface in parallel with his own movements. But as he looked more intently at its surface, he began to see other objects within its depths . . . a broken writing instrument, a small crinkled paper heart like those given on the Day of Passion, dried flowers with some of the stems and blossoms missing, unfinished poetry with teardrops on their pages, fragments of music manuscript, broken bones, pieces of flesh, a kidney and a heart, skulls of various sizes. Then he saw them—white bodies with black, vacant eyes staring out from inside the obelisk, hundreds of them, each rubbing the inside surface. Some used their fingers, some their hands, some the hems of their garments, some even various objects found within the obelisk, but all polishing the surface, polishing, polishing, polishing, smoothing the surface from the inside out, polishing as though they had never done anything else. None seemed to see Korel and he started to scream . . .

Korel started as if coming out of a deep sleep, sweat pouring off his body. He did not know how long he had been in the keeping of the priest, but he estimated it had been several weeks. He was sitting on the floor of a small stone room deep within the monastery with Hurnix sleeping nearby. His bow and purse lay neatly piled in a corner. He was not bound and there were no locks on his door, as apparently none were needed. During the last several weeks he had been conscious only a few times, and then only briefly until the priest returned, plunging his mind back into an unbreakable sleep. He had the same recurring dream of the obelisk every time he slept, and he had the feeling that his forced sleeping episodes were growing longer. But as Korel felt time stretch, he realized something was different. The priest was late in coming and he himself was waking up.

As he stood and began to stretch muscles he hadn't used in weeks, Korel remembered a door near to his own chamber where the priest had entered on several occasions. Exactly how he knew this he could not say, but he felt the other's presence further down in the bowels of the earth, beyond the door he saw in his mind. Hurnix continued to sleep peacefully.

Korel crept from his chamber and saw the tall, sharply arched door on the right side of the passage. A second door on the left opened into a massive library with row upon row of stacks piled high, reaching toward the vaulted stone ceiling. Despite the urgency that compelled him to follow the door to the right, a greater urgency seemed to guide Korel through the door to the left, then toward a massive shelf on the right, and directly to a tome recently touched and, as compared to the other books in the library, recently bound:
Of the Fall of Valyrea and the Madness of Thoren.

He slipped the book into his purse, and as he did so a pang of pleading despair rose within his mind, prodding him to hurry back to the corridor and through the door he had seen in his mind's eye. He crept to the door and found it slightly ajar. The heavy but delicately scrolled door swung wide to his touch, without sound. Beyond he beheld a high-ceilinged passage, hewn from the rock, with torches lighting the way at regular intervals. The left wall was smooth, curving slowly to the right until in the distance the passage ran on out of sight. The right wall was lined with narrow stone shelves, each supporting the figure of a man in the magnificent robes and crowns of the High Priest, but all formed of gray stone as if made by a master sculptor. These figures were laid head to foot and continued the full length of the passage, running on to round the corner in the distance. Some of the figures appeared very old, with fragments of nose or raiment having broken and fallen to the floor as a thick coating of dust draped everything.

Korel cautiously made his way down the corridor for what seemed the better part of half an hour when he heard a murmuring voice beyond the curve ahead. After mustering all the stealth he possessed, Korel silently approached the curving threshold from whence the murmurs rose. The voice of the High Priest resonated quietly but powerfully, ". . . yet life continues thus, as long and enduring as the earth itself . . ."

Another voice, older, more powerful, more resonant, but ever softer, replied, "But the heart itself beats ever more slowly, with dust exulting over all its cares, dust becoming the sinew and sign of the soul, as solid and unwavering but just as cold . . ."

Pleading mixed with a harrowing fear laced through the words of the second voice. But as if to counter, the first voice was ever more emotionless, pitiless, and cold. Korel pressed forward and beheld the High Priest standing above the shelf where lay the last of the figures of the High Priests of old, vacant shelves continuing on into the gloom of the corridor beyond the edge of sight where all became lost in shadow. The figure lay on the stone shelf, feet, arms, torso, and raiment all made of living rock. But as Korel looked more carefully, he saw the lips and face slowly moving as it spoke to the High Priest standing over. Flakes of dust and chalk collected in the recesses of the eyes and nose as small pieces of flesh-stone fell from the face as it spoke. A faint and sickly-sweet smell of decay touched the air as the pleading eyes of the supine form slowly rolled to suddenly focus sharply on Korel. Although the eyes were silent, they radiated an almost telepathic plea:
Help me!

The High Priest spun to see Korel standing directly behind him. Surprise and anger briefly touched the High Priest's features only to disappear just as suddenly, replaced by a mask of cold serenity. Instantly a horizontal column of ice-blue flame sprang from the priest's eyes and traveled toward Korel as impressions of choral voices touched his mind with the familiar irresistible whisper of sleep . . . only to suddenly vanish away as a figure flew past him and leaped upon the High Priest. In the resulting dust cloud of chaos, cries of fear and anger mixed with snarling bites culminated in a guttural yell of triumph as Hurnix tore at the High Priest's face. The old familiar burning blazed in Korel's gut as he ran back along the corridor the way he had come. Hurnix continued a relentless attack of pure fury as Korel fled, emerging from the corridor and running up the steps leading to the main floor of the monastery. As Korel flew through the entryway and pushed the impossibly large doors aside to emerge upon the outside, Hurnix somehow emerged with him. A low, throaty cry of pain and bitterness rose from within the monastery as the deep portions of the ancient corridor collapsed, issuing sounds of repetitive grinding cracks as if the bones of the Earth were breaking asunder. The monastery's upper levels stood proud and erect but also forlorn as old and tired dust slowly issued from its mouth­like entrance, its bowels obliterated in the crush.

Korel watched for a time as the last dusty exhalation of the monastery drifted down the side of the mountain, touching the scree with a dusting of brownish rouge, like the color of a fallen despot or the tainted mercy of euthanasia. Finally he turned toward the mountain face, leaving the wind to its final preparations as small dust particles drifted down like the remnants of some kind of cremation lingering in the air.

The path continued, faint, broken and rough, as though Korel's was the first foot to tread upon it in an age, traveling up along dust-strewn, broken ways scattered with shale. The climb was gradual as in the near distance a ridge marking the backbone of the mountain arched its spine skyward, the final assault before the descent upon the other side. Korel made his way along the meandering path, winding through rock slides, around boulders, across defiles, past areas of scarring and scorched rock that bore the only reminders of a forgotten, violent past. Eventually a large tree, gray-white, leafless, and dead, appeared at the edge of a clearing where flat earth and smooth stone underfoot held sway against the clutter of scattered rock fragments.

A table grew in the center of the clearing upon a small mound, a piece of the living rock, dead gray in color, with four thick, square, squat legs and a top, flat and even as to nearly reflect the dull ambient light. A column of stone rose at the head of the table, thick and rectangular, fourteen feet tall, spattered with the blood and dust of men lost in the weathers of history; a stern, mute, and sometimes arbitrary witness, a judge of those who passed before its alter. A peace reigned over the site suggesting a sacredness, but whether a sacredness of virtue or of callousness born of a repetitious witness to horrific brutality, Korel could not say.

Korel sat down on the far edge of the clearing under the dead tree and prepared for nightfall. His index finger had begun to ooze again. Hurnix came up beside him and sat, bending on his haunches like a loyal hound. Evening fell quietly over the clearing as bright stars rode up over the horizon. The peace deepened as sleep gently stole over Korel.

H
e walked the halls of the palace with ever-growing confidence. His gift had grown strong and he could bend many a great man to his will, and indeed had done so many times under Syrilla's strict instruction. Despite his military successes and slow but steady rise in standing before the royal court, an emptiness grew within him. Subtle injustices, and some not so subtle, became common among the nobility as if the very air were rank with the ambience of hurt pride and humid with the sorrow of dishonor. But now and again, the shouts of lusts fulfilled or the grins of quiet satisfaction, weaved from the disgrace of victims caught in webs of deceit, emanated from the throats and lips of those who traveled the byways and halls of the palace.

But she still graced the courtly halls and at times bid him good fortune, merry morning, gentle eve, and a hundred other common niceties abundant among the truly civil but rarely bestowed by the gentry; Korel found them sweet. They would talk often of daily occurrences, of the mundane, yet he looked forward to these encounters with great anticipation. He knew nothing more could come of their relationship, as he was a commoner and she of royal blood. As time passed, both knew that the casual word, the occasional brush of elbows, the myriad common interactions that took place daily among the courtesans became the correspondence of friendship, and more. She became a sweetness to him that permeated his heart and head and lent all the world a warmness he had never known before. Her name was Arinnea.

Arinnea's father, Soren, was of a noble family and counseled in the highest circles, giving legal advice but also helping to make legal the will of the king. King Toresten seemed to have no real interest in the law or the legality of his actions, using the sword to author and establish rule. But this did not mean that all those under his rule had no love for the law, and Soren had worked to create a small foundation upon which the rule of law could be built.

Upon his ascension to the throne, the first law decreed by the king was to banish the Necor, those with the curse of holding malleable portions of mortality, as well as all relics or reminders of their kind. The penalty for keeping Necor relics depended upon their kind: the keeping of rings punished with digital amputation, books with enucleations, and the harboring of Necor fugitives with death.

Soon after the first law, others followed, including a type of prima nocta, a right highly prized by many of the nobility. These abuses expanded with the growth of the power of the nobles, resulting in some lands being seized and occasionally whole families slaughtered and feasted upon at banquet to atone for perceived or pretended slights of honor. Soren had been trying for some time to have these laws stricken, or at the very least modified, so as to give the commoners recourse but had little to show for his stout efforts.

Such was the mood of the court when Soren began a discourse before the king, persuasive yet gentle and seductive so as to avoid the appearance of insurrection or any nuance of treason; for although the king held a mild countenance and gave a passable performance at beneficence, his wrath was well known and had grown to the stature of legend.

"In short, I stand before you in the hope that I may shed a small light upon the minds of the people. Should they at the least be given the ear of a judiciary chosen by your wisdom, it would, I believe, plant the seed of a greater love of your chosen judgment in their regard and be better revered and they better accepting of your reason. This should deepen your persuasion within their hearts and give a more willing—"

"I have heard this weak droning before, Lord Soren. But you and I both know the corruption that is the Necor and the ills brought upon all by those who sympathize with them. There are even silent beds of treachery that grow within my own walls. Korel, stand before me."