The Girl and the Guardian

by Peter Harris

CHAPTER 12. These are those who have been caught by the Kiraglim and put into the Death Wagon. They are taken to the Dark Labyrinth of the Travellers, and fed the Apples of Peace, then those with potential to be servants of the Dark, with the Second Sight, are taken on as apprentices of deception, being offered positions of power and authority, though with painful disciplines. The others are taken to be slaves in the apple orchards and the crystal mines and the dark weapon factories and the Cloning fields.

  Some of the cleverest children, who were most advanced in the sciences of Edartha, were put to work by the Travellers to build for them the devices of war and destruction we know so well. But the children often misled them by their half-knowledge and so far little had come of it but the smelting of iron and some swords of steel, some suits of armour, bows and arrows – and the Deathwagon, a steel-plated dungeon on wheels, drawn by horses, and having on it an arm with pincers for grabbing its victims. But these were bad enough. Fearsome was the sight of a Dark Knight, in full body armour upon one of the dark steeds, or the Deathwagon as it made its rounds of the land of Aeden. And the clever children were kept imprisoned in the Nered factories, as they were called. -Ennead of Aeden, ‘Of the Enslaved Children,’ and ‘Of the Trial Technologies of the Travellers’

  OF THE LAWS OF THE AGHMAATH REGIME. None shall smile or be heard to laugh, on pain of being enthorned in the Avenue of Despair. No trees shall be planted or tended save those which the Lords of the Aghmaath shall decree. No wells or ditches shall be dug for water. Diamonds and diamond knives are forbidden. The accursed witch, the so-called Lady of the Lake, shall not be invoked or named, on pain of instant death. The black stones shall be your only objects of worship, and you shall bow down to them every evening, at the sound of the black gong, on pain of death. Every Person of Aeden shall report to their nearest worship centre every full moon for the Thorn worship ceremony, on pain of death. All strangers coming into the land shall be handed over to the Authorities immediately, on pain of the living death in the thorns. OF THE DARK LABYRINTH OF THE TRAVELLERS In imitation of the Labyrinth of the Makers (or so some say; others say it was originally one of the Labyrinths of the Makers), the Aghmaath built a Labyrinth under a hill (called the Hill of the Skull) for the indoctrination and conversion of captives. It is a place feared by all, and it was said that a Dark entity dwelt there. Its entrance was in the shape of a skull, and it was lit only by the phosphorescence from rotting fish hung on the walls. -Ennead of Aeden.