by Scott McKay
PERDITION
A Tale of Ardenia
By Scott McKay
To all those who have sacrificed life and limb to protect that which not enough of us hold dear:
Faith, family and community
Perdition is a work of fiction. All names, characters, terms, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously as devices of the story. Any resemblance to real persons either live or dead, events either current or historical, or locales is entirely by coincidence.
Copyright 2020 by Scott L. McKay.
All rights reserved.
See detailed, zoomable versions of this and all the other maps in this book at TalesofArdenia.com.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: Qor Udar, Eleventhmonth Ninth, 1842nd Year Supernal
ONE: Willow Falls, Eleventhmonth Tenth, 1842nd Year Supernal
TWO: Fort Walder, Ninthmonth Twenty-First, 1843rd Year Supernal
THREE: Fort Stuart, Tenthmonth Thirteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
FOUR: Fort Stuart, Tenthmonth Thirteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
FIVE: Barley Point, Tenthmonth Thirteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
SIX: Dunnansport, Tenthmonth Thirteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
SEVEN: Trenory, Tenthmonth Fourteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
EIGHT: Turnerston, Tenthmonth Fourteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
NINE: Barley Point, Tenthmonth Fourteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
TEN: West of Strongstead, Tenthmonth Fourteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
ELEVEN: Port William, Tenthmonth Fourteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
TWELVE: Fort Stuart, Tenthmonth Fourteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
THIRTEEN: Dunnan’s Claim, Tenthmonth Fourteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
FOURTEEN: Principia, Tenthmonth Fifteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
FIFTEEN: Strongstead, Tenthmonth Fifteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
SIXTEEN: Strongstead, Tenthmonth Fifteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
SEVENTEEN: Turnerston, Tenthmonth Sixteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
EIGHTEEN: Watkins Gulf, Tenthmonth Sixteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
NINETEEN: Trenory, Tenthmonth Sixteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
TWENTY: Dunnansport, Tenthmonth Seventeenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Baton Rouge, Fourthmonth Eighth, 2020th Year A.D.
PROLOGUE
Qor Udar, Eleventhmonth Ninth, 1842nd Year Supernal
The Ikotai, or Grand Hall, of the Evatuan Palace in the Udar capital of Qur Udar was not accessible to the general public.
Neither was the palace itself accessible. One entered the palace grounds only by invitation of the Algarem--five women designated as the Palace Keepers who held immense power in Uris Udar. The Algarem didn’t just control who was allowed in, they also determined who left, and even who lived and died on the grounds.
Evatuan Palace could be seen from the bottom of the Dineska Hill, the sacred place exactly twenty miles--a distance carrying great cultural weight among the Udar--from which the god Ur’akeen two millenia ago descended in a fiery column onto the shore of Iabos, carving for himself the bay bearing his name out of what had been a river delta. The fire of the newly arrived god, appearing on the water of the newly formed bay, burned brightly and smokily for years, bringing pilgrims from across the southern half of the Great Continent to witness what Ur’akeen had wrought.
One of those pilgrims, a young man from east of the area whose name was Aqor, was so entranced by Ur’akeen that he became the god’s very spirit embodied in the flesh, manifesting that power, legend had it, by absorbing Ur’akeen’s fire from the bay into himself. One night the pilgrims went to sleep with the bay on fire as it had been for six years, and the next morning the fire was out, with Aqor standing on the shore at the river’s mouth proclaiming himself the mortal vessel of the great god of the Udar.
Aqor then ruled the people represented by those pilgrims for the next fifty years.
It was Aqor who built the capital at Qor Udar, along the shore to the west of the newly formed bay, and renamed the river flowing into it for Ur’akeen. Nobody remembered what the river was previously called; Aqor had forbidden the word to be used and the faithful simply obeyed, as Aqor’s word was the word of Ur’akeen.
He erected a stone fortress atop the Dineska Hill and forbade anyone to enter that fortress without a sacred invitation. The fortress, ultimately converted to a palace, had been expanded and upgraded many times over the course of the two thousand years since Aqor had pronounced himself sa’halet, a title conferring not just the status of absolute ruler, but also high priest of the faith of Ur’akeen. During that time, however, none but the elect were permitted to enter.
It was a feature of the Udar that very, very few of them knew much about their great institutions and landmarks. What the average Udar knew was that the sa’halet was the embodiment of, and conduit to, Ur’akeen, and that the sa’halet was to be obeyed in all things.
This was often difficult to do, because the sa’halet reversed himself regularly. Were he not so imbued with the perfect spirit and divine revelations of Ur’akeen, a god known to test the obedience and resolve of his followers, it would not have been a surprise for the Udar to have lost confidence in their leadership over the course of the two thousand years the empire had survived.
There had been rebellions and small revolts, for certain, as well as separatist heretics attempting to carve out territory of their own. There were also, particularly in the beginning, villages and provinces who didn’t believe in the great fire-god and had to be brought to enlightenment by either word or sword. But always, with the help of Ur’akeen, be it from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, disease, forest fire or simply the military might of the faithful, those heretics and rebels had been squelched before offering any serious challenge to the ruling status quo.
And the current sa’halet, a long reed of a man whose name was Ubel’la, had much to live up to, because Aqor had left several volumes of prophecies behind and many involved Ubel’la. Aqor’s prophecies detailed the precise physical, intellectual, athletic and other characteristics by which each of his successors might be selected, and in each case, for very nearly two thousand years, there were rulers found who would fit his prescriptions. Ubel’la was the last of the prophesied sa’halets.
There was a prophecy surrounding that as well. Aqor had said the last in his line of successors would unify the entire Great Continent under his rule, and he would bring all people on it under the faith of Ur’akeen. Some thirty-two years ago when Ubel’la, at the time only eleven, was anointed by the sacred flame, he took on that burden.
During those thirty-two years, the man on the throne of Uris Udar had been determined, and often skillful, in pursuing cultural and social changes which would greatly benefit the Udar people. Through nearly nonstop military conflict, and most recently, intensive espionage operations, he had managed to bring the state of his nation’s technological advancement not quite to par with that of Ardenia, Uris Udar’s far more successful neighbor to the north. Instead, he closed what gaps he could in preparation for the Great Holy War he had been diligently preparing for over the past decade.
Today, there would be a positive outcome from those espionage efforts. Before him, as he sat upon his throne in the Ikotai, was a woman named La’ufa, who had trained as a child to be a javeen, or sexual companion to an Udar leader, within the walls of Evatuan Palace. Despite this upbringing, she had instead been chosen to pursue scientific and technological advances for the glory of Ur’akeen. She had asked for an audience with Ubel’la to demonstrate a great achievement of the scientific community in the secret city of Miero, some miles to the west of the capital. It was at Miero where the Ardenians brought to
Uris Udar worked to pursue technological advancements for the benefit of Ur’akeen’s followers which sometimes outstripped the achievements of Ardenia itself.
“Great Ubel’la, our dear sa’halet, I bring glorious tribute from your servants at Miero,” La’ufa said as he sat on his throne. “This marvel of technology will allow our people to communicate over long distances, and to allow you to further instruct our people in the advancing ways of Ur’akeen, whose name inspires our devotion and joyous sacrifice.”
“You may proceed,” Ubel’la’s replied, his nasal voice booming through the hall.
Two of La’ufa’s assistants, dressed in a style recognizable in Ardenia, wheeled in a machine about three cubic feet in size. One pulled a red cloth away from the machine, while the other rapidly turned a hand-crank on its side and then pulled a lever. A few lights on the machine turned on, which elicited a few oohs and ahhs from the members of Ubel’la’s court in attendance at the demonstration. One of the assistants turned a pair of dials on the instrument panel, and then both assistants stepped back.
La’ufa, dressed much as an Ardenian woman of business might be, rather than bare-breasted with leather pants and boots as Udar women were traditionally attired, then approached the machine and picked up a six-inch long instrument that looked like a thick wooden rod with a bulb on one end. It was attached by a thick cable to the top end of the machine. She then held it to her face and spoke into the bulb.
“Mr. Hays,” she said, “can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can,” came a response, in heavily accented Udar, from the machine. It was from Samuel Hays, an Ardenian inventor procured by the Udar spies six months prior. The courtiers and javeen in attendance went wild with applause and ululations.
“And where are you, Professor Hays?” La’ufa asked.
“I am at my laboratory in Miero,” he said, to even more applause.
Turning a lever which extinguished the lights on the machine, La’ufa then explained that this was the first prototype, and that its effective range was about seventy miles--the distance between Miero and the palace. She said the team was working on a second prototype that would have an effective range of half that distance but would be smaller and more portable. Such a machine, she declared, would be of significant military benefit.
“Indeed, it will,” Ubel’la said. “You have done well in the service of Ur’akeen. For this you may name your reward.”
“I need no reward,” La’ufa answered, as she knelt before him. “Service to Ur’akeen and my sa’halet is reward enough. Merely allow me to continue that service and I will count myself blessed beyond all imagination.”
Ubel’la laughed. “Sweet girl,” he said. “It was not so long ago that you were brought here, a little one too preoccupied with numbers and devices to learn the lessons of a javeen. You chose the path of science rather than serve Ur’akeen as a birther of warriors. Do you regret that choice?”
“No, Great One. I lacked the talent to please you in that way and found this as my calling.”
“You please me very much,” said Ubel’la. “Tonight, you will dine in my private quarters and sleep upon my pallet, and you will experience such delights as you have never partaken.”
“I am very grateful, my Lord,” she said, tears flowing down her cheeks. “I never would have expected such generosity. But what reward shall I present to Mr. Hays?”
“That depends upon his wish,” Ubel’la said. “What has he requested?”
“He has a wife in Principia,” she said. “He asks that she be brought to him.”
Ubel’la’s demeanor shifted. “A wife?” he asked, disapproval clouding his face. “Surely he cannot demand such barbaric practices be entertained under the protection of Ur’akeen. This is not possible.”
“I understand,” La’ufa said. “I will relay your answer.”
“Tell him to ask for something else,” Ubel’la said, his voice softening. “He has done well, and he deserves to gain.”
ONE
Willow Falls, Eleventhmonth Tenth, 1842nd Year Supernal
Mark Bradbury was born “country poor.” It was a term coined by people in the Upper Morgan Valley, the less-populated and considerably less-prosperous territory along the huge waterway west of the major cities of Principia, Belgarden, Perseverance, Greencastle and Dyery.
The Bradbury family, with almost nothing, came from a dirt farm some forty miles south of the city of Willow Falls. His mother made their clothes out of wool from a few sheep the neighboring farmer let his father shear, and their shoes were crafted from the hides of various animals Burk Bradbury was able to take down with an ancient longbow he’d inherited from Mark’s grandfather, Emmitt. Mostly they ate what they grew or fished out of the Morgan. The possession of currency on the Bradbury farm was nearly unheard of; what they could bring out of the ground was normally bartered for essentials, and so far as Mark knew, the farm never did turn a profit.
But despite that material poverty, the young man wasn’t without prospects. Burk and Abigail Bradbury made sure all five of their children had the best education and religious instruction possible in that remote and forlorn part of the valley, and Mark’s mother had drilled him and his siblings (James, Horace, Esther and Timothy, named for the six Saints of the Miracle--the sixth, Priscilla, died while still an infant) in the Faith Supernal’s Apostles of Comfort textbooks covering basic mathematics, literature, history, mechanical science and civics. By the age of seventeen Mark had scored in the eighty-seventh percentile in the standard Ardenian academic proficiency exam, which wasn’t quite good enough to earn him a merit scholarship to the mechanical college at Dyery, where he’d had his heart set on going. By then, though, he’d had other, and as it turned out more suitable, opportunities for advancement.
By that point Mark wasn’t “country poor” anymore. Burk Bradbury, who, despite being a terribly poor man, was a lay minister at the Supernal Chapel and a Peace Party county elder in the small village of Crackleigh, halfway between Willow Falls and Perseverance along the Morgan a few miles from Bradbury Farm; sadly, he drowned in the river while saving a neighbor’s daughter when Mark was just ten. The small community in and around the village was so moved by the tragic story that the village voted to raise a grant for the Bradbury family’s upkeep, which amounted to the first bit of good financial fortune the family had seen.
It wasn’t the last.
Abigail was very moved by the generosity of the local gentry, but she’d had enough of being a dirt farmer’s wife, having to constantly tend to goats and chickens and struggle to barely sustain wheat crops. She took the grant money and then unloaded Bradbury Farm at a slight discount to Mr. Adam Brace, the largest landholder in the area, piled her five children and what meager belongings they had into their rickety wagon, and put their two ornery, diminutive mules to work heading north to Willow Falls. The journey took four days, with the Bradburys sleeping outdoors in the bitter cold with only a weak campfire and their shared body heat to stave off the elements. But the Bradburys arrived in the city of one hundred thousand, bedraggled, hungry and alive, with just enough money for six months’ expenses.
She found a drafty, but relatively spacious, five-room house in the worst part of town and rented it on the spot. While the house lacked “city” amenities like electricity or running water, there was a well and an outhouse in the backyard, it had a fireplace in the living room and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. And with floors made of pine planks rather than straw-covered dirt as it was back on the farm, the kids thought they’d hit the jackpot.
Abigail told the kids they weren’t on the farm anymore, and that “their childhoods had ended. “This household’s a business,” she said, “and you’re all employees while I’m the boss. You’ll earn your salary around here.”
Then, within five days of moving to Willow Falls, she put on her best frock and her mother’s hand-me-down dress shoes, hit the streets and found work for four of them.
James, at f
ifteen and the oldest of the children, knew the most about animal husbandry. So, Abigail marched him down to the Fair Point Stables and sweet-talked the manager into taking him on as a stable-boy.
Horace was thirteen. He was a wizard with numbers. Abigail found a local accountancy and got him an apprenticeship that did pay a little. In addition, Horace found some work with the Foster gang helping to run their numbers racket; he was always carrying around a journal with lines of dates, names, numbers and initials to keep the ledgers straight.
At twelve, Esther was the gardener of the family. So, Abigail got her a job as an apprentice at a florist in the upscale Underwood district of town. Esther was quite attractive, naturally graceful and presented well; within six months she would no longer have a trace of “country poor” about her and was clearly marriage material in the eyes of the better young men in the district. Nobody was worried about Esther’s future.
Timothy was eleven, and of all the siblings, he’d taken to religion the most. Abigail had marched him to St. Caroline Temple in downtown Willow Falls and announced to the vicar that the Lord of All had told her in a vision her son was destined for sainthood and a high place in the ministry. The vicar, not sure what exactly he had on his hands, took Timothy into the rectory and gave a detailed examination to his knowledge of Scripture. He pronounced himself impressed with the boy’s command of the Faith Supernal and told Abigail that Timothy would be welcome to attend the St. Caroline Academy on a scholarship when the next year’s term began. Further, he said, in the meantime the Temple would find Timothy odd jobs to do around the property as he received private instruction to catch him up in his academics.
Abigail, who prided herself on being a better instructor than any school could produce, kept a straight face and humbly thanked the vicar for taking such pains to secure Timothy’s tutelage.