The scene swirled, and now Ion found himself
in a larger, more lavish room. Curtains hung over the large windows
by both sides of the wall, all of them painted in an exquisite
green colour. The walls and floor, along with the high raised
ceiling with a chandelier sparkling atop them, were all dressed
with a polished, maroon glow. A large table stood at the centre of
the room. A table that bore the emblem of the Nyon. The very same
one which Ion had witnessed with his eyes some time back in the
present. Two cloaked men were lingering at the back of the room,
both of them looking deeply engrossed in a serious conversation.
One of them looked young, while the other was significantly older.
The older man was a Brownling, with short brown hair all over his
body. The two of them came strolling closer to end of the room
where Ion, Qyro and Vestra stood, and their voices slowly grew
audible.
“I was there myself, as he made this
speech.” Mantra was saying to the other cloaked man. Like all other
Nyon, the master was tall and thin. He gazed ahead of him as Mantra
spoke, absorbed in thought. “I fear this may turn into a threat … a
grave one, if not attended to, master.” Mantra frowned and looked
ahead of him, and Ion sensed a brewing fear in his eyes as he
searched for the words to go on.
The two of them came to a stop as they
reached the end of the large corridor. They turned, now facing each
other fully.
“He is not the kind of person that you see
in him, master Tesmor.” Mantra’s voice carried a sense of
foreboding, along with a silent plea to hear it. “I know Redgarn.
We grew up together. Here, in this very temple. I know him, and
that is why this scares me. Deep down, he is something other than
what you and the other masters view him to be. Deep down, Redgarn
is the kind of man that obeys no boundaries. The kind of man that
will stop at nothing to achieve something that he envisions for
himself. Anything. He is to be kept in wares, or else he may turn
into something of an enemy. To our brotherhood … and to the empire
itself.”
Tesmor, the Nyon master, gazed at the young
disciple before him. He nodded slowly, coming out of his thoughtful
reverie.
“Thank you for bringing this to my
attention, my young disciple.” he said. “But I guarantee you, such
trivial issues are no cause for your anxiety and concern.”
Mantra’s jaw hung open, with no words coming
out. He was clearly expecting a more serious take on this
issue.
“Redgarn is a young, and quite honestly, a
very
accomplished member of our brotherhood.” said Tesmor.
“These are nothing but youthful ponderings of his and they will
pass. They shall be no cause for worries…”
“But master,” said Mantra softly. “Surely
you don’t believe this is of no -”
Tesmor held up his hand, shaking his head
gently. “I appreciate your concern and your alertedness for the
welfare of the pillars that keep our world together. Your heart is
in the right place. But do not let irrational anxieties cloud your
mind, Mantra.”
“Irrational?” asked Mantra, the note of
alarm in his voice now growing louder. “Master Tesmor, I -” He
stopped, as if the words choked in his throat. Something daunting …
something terrifying seemed to brew deep within those familiar,
hazy eyes. “I don’t know how to explain this, but…” He looked away,
his eyes fluttering, as if in remembrance of a bad dream. “I fear …
dark stirrings around us, master. I can sense them. I can hear
whisperings of a breeding evil … waiting…” He stopped and pulled
himself together with a deep breath. “I can pick up the bodings of
a great darkness ahead. And that’s why this alarms me.” He turned
back to Tesmor, who was watching him with concern. “For it aligns
with this turbulence that I can sense, master.”
“The brotherhood has endured for ages,
Mantra.” said Tesmor, with the tiniest hint of complacence in his
kindly voice. “Do you really believe that something can catch us so
unaware?”
Mantra looked at Tesmor uncertainly, clearly
half in a mind to answer, ‘yes’
“You fear that the Nyon, and the ancient
empire, both of which have stood across millennia, are now about to
face an imminent threat from the childish meanderings of one of our
own?” Tesmor shook his head and gave an airy chuckle. “The empire
cannot be de stabilised. And neither can the Nyon. We have both
stood the test of time. And if you believe that there some sort of
inner conspiracy brewing amidst us … and that too led by Redgarn,
the foremost and most admired of our new graduates,” He held up a
forefinger, wagging it in a nanny sort of way. “I know Redgarn as
well, Mantra. And he is one of the greatest prides of our
brotherhood. And great minds are meant to wander into thought,
bound to explore unopened territories of thought. They are meant to
test and try to build ideologies of their own. They are bound to
explore and reinvent old thought patterns.”
“Master Tesmor,” Mantra shook his head, his
voice now growing heavy with desperacy. “This is not re invention,
this is madness! I was there, when he made this speech. He
declared, in front of a whole circle of our age group that the Nyon
were meant to rule, and that the empire was meant to serve us! That
the Kings of the empire had deluded us, and that we needed to rebel
against -”
“Mantra, calm down.” said Tesmor, holding up
his hand. “Whatever he said to you, I believe is nothing of value.
And nothing worth worrying over. The group of you have just entered
full fledged Nyon-hood, and the stress of the new life must be
taking its toll on him. Give him time, and he will come back to
realise things himself.” He patted Mantra on the shoulder. “Redgarn
is the greatest of our students, and the gem of the new generation.
And want me to believe that he will turn against, and backstab us?”
He gave a firm shake of his head. “No. not Redgarn. Never. If
anything, he will make us proud.”
And with that, master Tesmor turned around
and strode down the room, leaving Mantra standing where he was, a
heaviness in his eyes as he watched his hopes of reaching a warning
to his elders vanish in that instant.
The vision swum, and now Ion, Qyro and
Vestra were in a large room. Lurking in the corner, along with a
bunch of other cloaked men his age, was a slightly older Mantra. He
looked to have aged a year or two since the last vision, now twenty
or so.
The room they were in was large, expanding
over a giant empty space. Its walls were all metallic, adorned with
rich crimson curtains over the windows. Through the windows, Ion
saw a magnificent city outside, its structures rising to dwarf any
city Ion had ever been to. A steady stream of air vehicles and
occasional ships glided over through the air. The room they were
now in was apparently in one of the towers, rising high over the
ground so that the first, faint cloud strewn layer of the upper sky
was seen outside the window.
Ion thought the room was empty, until his
eyes fell on a large semi circular bench of seats at the centre,
with a table ahead of them. The seats and the table were raised
higher than a metre over the ground. A group of cloaked men, some
of them middle aged and others elderly, sat over the bench. Sitting
in the middle of the bench was the master Tesmor, the lines on his
face tenser, tighter than the last time. There seemed to be a quiet
distress in his gaze, which was fixed on the large double doored
entrance opposite to him.
Mantra was among a small cluster of young
students standing at the corner of the room. They were chattering
in low, nervous voices, looking slightly tense. Mantra was standing
at the edge of the group of young men, his hands folded before him.
He was silently watching the proceedings before him, while the rest
of his friends chatted among themselves. Ion couldn’t help noticing
how Mantra’s eyes darted between the bench of masters and the
doorway opposite to them.
And then, after what felt to Ion like a few
years, the doorway opposite opened. All chatter, murmurings
instantly fell still within the courtroom…
Dragged into the room by mechanical robots
tougher in appearance than the Rash-cons of the present day, were a
group of cloaked men bound in thick iron shackles. There were nine
of them, and one of them was being pulled far before the rest. He
was being dragged by two guards on either side, his feet scraping
over the ground, his long, ravaged looking hair hanging in front to
cover his face.
Mantra and the other initiates had their
wide eyes fixed upon the foremost of the men as he was dragged to
the centre of the room. The mechanical guards stalled before the
bench of masters and shoved the group of men forward roughly. The
foremost of them, the one with the ravaged long hair, tossed his
head upward so that his hair was thrown back. Redgarn’s face was
robbed of the youthly radiance it held in the previous scene. His
eyes seemed to carry a scarlet gleam, and his face had gone sunken,
the lines stretched tightly over it. There was a sickened reddish
tinge over his skin. It looked as though he had locked himself up
in years of intense study in some secluded room devoid of light.
And warmth.
But he stood glaring at the bench of masters
before him with a furied defiance burning in his eyes.
The group of them stood facing the masters,
who stared back at them with something inscrutable in their faces.
The silence in the room seemed to constrict the air, pressing in on
them all.
The masters sent their gazes wandering over
the entire bunch of men who stood before them in iron shackles.
But Tesmor’s stare, gaunt and disbelieving,
was latched upon the man standing right before him. Redgarn. He
stared at Redgarn as though seeing him plainly for the first time,
and unable to believe his eyes.
Then, as the seconds crawled by, Tesmor
cleared his throat and stood. He tapped a spot on the table before
him, and a small holo screen formed before him in the air, over the
table. His eyes flowed down the holo screen slowly, before moving
back to Redgarn and the cluster of other young men around him.
“You have called before this court,” he
said, his voice ringing loud and clear over the entire hall. “the
court of the Nyon, servants of the empire, Gralin, Aztok, Syros,
Variad, Crystic, Daleqog, Mardor, Tylon, Vornag…” His voice sank
softer, “… and Redgarn.”
His eyes found Redgarn, with something hard
and cold within them. And yet, Ion thought he saw the ghost of a
long lost affection flicker within them as he stared at his
favourite student.
He read on:
“You have called before this court to answer
for crimes against the code of the Nyon … and against the great
empire. For conspiring, and spreading enmity against the empire,
and against its King.” He paused, his eyes sturdily perched on
Redgarn.
Redgarn stared back, unflinching.
“And on this date,” continued Tesmor, and
something hardened in his voice. “You were found guilty of planning
and attempting a group of
assassinations
on the government
of the great empire … one of which was the King himself.”
As one, as silence landed after his words.
The air in the room had gone rigid and tense…
“All in all, seventeen assassination
planned, and attempted,” went on Tesmor, his eyes moving back to
the holo screen ahead. “of which nine which went astray, one of
which was, fortunately, our King. But eight were successful. And
you have been called before this council to answer for these
heinous crimes.”
Ion and the other two turned as one to look
at Mantra, who stood silently at the end of the room. Mantra had
his attention fixed on Redgarn. The rest of the crowd stirred
behind him, clearly shaken by what these nine of their fellow Nyon
had turned into.
The real Mantra’s voice came over the
scene:
“Redgarn and a small group of his followers,
in time, came to form a company of conspirators within the Nyon,
aiming to overthrow the established ways of the brotherhood. As
time passed, this secret company bred secretly within the
brotherhood. In time, they carried out their plans to bring down
the empire. They planned and executed a series of assassinations,
one of which was the King himself. But when they were later caught
and brought before the council of elders, to answer for these
crimes … there was a diluting of reason in the court. The empire’s
well guarded prison, Taurandor, was the rightful place for such
heinous crimes. The crimes that Redgarn and the others committed
deserved nothing less than a life sentence in Taurandor. And if
justice had been served that fine day … then things would have gone
very differently for the entire spectrum. But sadly, fate has its
own ways of twisting men’s judgements. Even the finest of them
all.”
As they watched the scene, Ion felt himself
engrossed in the sheer tenseness of what was at play … After
reading out the crimes of Redgarn and his eight supporters, the
masters were making their interpretation of the Nyon code to hand
them their punishment.
Ion could feel Mantra growing stiff as the
proceedings rolled on. Something in the depths of those hazy white
eyes seemed to kindle with an unseen foreboding.
And at last, master Tesmor reached a
conclusion, swaying the council to his belief that the rightful
punishment for these atrocities, which clearly deserved a grander
punishment, deserved nothing more than …