The Redemption, Volume 1

by Clyde B Northrup

  Myron frowned, turning from the altar to look around the glade. He felt nothing out of place; no hint that anything wrong had ever occurred, or, for that matter, would ever occur. “I’m puzzled by all that has happened over the past few days, Avril,” he said, putting one hand firmly on the other’s shoulder. “Part of me shouts that it is wrong, that none of this should have happened, and yet, deep within me, I feel that it is right.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Avril noted.

  “No,” Myron admitted, “I have not.”

  “Why not?” the Master Healer pressed.

  “The question, for some reason I cannot fathom, seems irrelevant,” the Headmaster replied.

  “Irrelevant?” Avril laughed. “How can it be irrelevant? Our reason for being here was to find any mitigating circumstances or evidence that might sway the council to acquit Klaybear.”

  “You are right, my friend,” Myron answered. “But ever since my apprentice, two days ago, announced he was going to the glade, I’ve felt rushed forward by a will not my own.”

  “That could only be the influence of Gar,” Avril noted, “for he it is, who, since the beginning, has tried to force people to follow his way and will.”

  Myron shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’ve misspoken, or you’ve misunderstood, or maybe both at once.” The Headmaster stopped and thought for a moment. “Do you recall how, as children, we would slide down snowy hills on smooth, flat boards?”

  Avril smiled. “How could I forget?” he asked, rubbing his forearm. “My arm still hurts from when you broke it, sliding where we were told not to.”

  “As I recall,” Myron replied, “it was your idea to try that particular hill, but that is precisely my point: once we had decided to disobey, once we had climbed the hill, lined up the board, and finally, jumped on, we had very little control over where we went.”

  “My memory has always been better than yours,” Avril protested, “it was your idea, but I think I see your point. It is like the master-apprentice relationship: once the master has taught the apprentice all he knows, and has given her opportunities to practice under the master’s supervision, there comes the point when the apprentice must, as it were, strike out on her own. The master must then step back and allow the apprentice room to succeed and fail.”

  Myron nodded. “The board is set, and we have jumped on,” he went on, “now we are left to the mercies of the hill. It was your idea,” he added, “that is why you got the broken arm.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” Avril protested again, “that is the injustice of the world: I got the broken arm when it was your idea. . . .”

  Just after midday, a white-robed novice entered the room with a large tray of food. The novice left after bowing to them, quietly closing the door. Blakstar smelled the roast beef, felt the internal rumble of hunger, then carried his chair to the table. Thal still sat on the floor, hearing and seeing nothing. The kortexi removed the cover from the tray and inhaled deeply, smelling the well-seasoned beef and the freshly baked loaf.

  “Thal,” he said, “lunch is here.” He sliced off a chunk of bread and scooped some beef dripping with gravy onto his piece of bread. After chewing and swallowing, he tried again. “It’s quite good,” he said to Thal, “you should try some, but you better hurry, since I’m feeling quite hungry and might eat it all.” Blakstar smiled at the maghi, but there was no response from Thal. The kortexi ate the rest of his slice of bread, adding more beef and gravy. He cut a second chunk from the loaf and ate it with another slice of roast and gravy.

  After a third chunk, he turned to Thal again. “You sure you don’t want any lunch?” he asked.

  “He won’t hear you,” said a new voice, “not for a while yet, depending on how deeply he feels the grief.”

  Blakstar looked to the bed where Delgart lay. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen it happen many times,” Delgart said, “every time the pirates raided another village and returned with new captives.”

  “You’ve been with pirates?” the kortexi asked, surprised.

  “I was once a new captive,” Delgart said, “when my village was raided and I was captured, so I also went through the silence, when I knew I would not be rescued and that my father had died. One of the older slaves took pity on me, gave me the will to go on, even fed me when I could not, for grief, feed myself. You might try giving him a little to eat, just small, bite-sized pieces, and see if that helps,” Delgart suggested.

  The kortexi nodded and cut a small piece of bread, added a small amount of roast, and took it to Thal. He held it up to the young mage’s lips until Thal opened his mouth and took it, chewing automatically.

  “Where am I?” Delgart asked.

  “In the infirmary of the school of the kailum,” Blakstar replied, getting another small bite for Thal.

  “Shigmar? I remember being rescued from ghelem by a young, red-haired maghi, who said he would take me to his master’s tower.”

  “He is here,” Blakstar said as he stooped to give Thal another bite.

  Delgart sat up and saw Thal sitting on the floor. “Yes, he was the one.” He sank back onto his pillow with a sigh. “Who are you?”

  “I am Blakstar, a kortexi of Karble.” He moved back to the table for another bite.

  “What are you and the maghi, Thal, I think you called him, doing here?” Delgart asked.

  “Yesterday,” Blakstar said, preparing another bite for Thal, “I ascended the Mountain of Vision, where the servant of the One gave me the armor and weapons of Sir Karble, told me the sword was the first of three keys, and said I and my companions to be should find the other two and use them to end Gar’s rule. He sent me to Kalamar’s tower, where I met Thal, then his father sent us here to meet others of our companions, and begin to search for the other keys.”

  “So it was you,” a voice spoke from the other bed, “who we were supposed to be protecting.”

  Blakstar looked up from Thal, at Marilee, who was sitting up in bed. “What do you mean, protecting?” Blakstar asked.

  Marilee fell back onto her pillow. “I knew it must’ve been some kind of ruse that we followed!” she exclaimed. “I tried to convince the others, but none would listen, especially not Rokwolf.”

  “Rokwolf?” Delgart said. “I had a younger brother named Rokwolf.”

  “Yes,” Blakstar said, “Klaybear mentioned him.”

  “Klaybear?” Delgart said, “my younger, twin brothers were named Rokwolf and Klaybear; how do you know them?” he asked the kortexi.

  Marilee went on, not noticing the others. “It didn’t feel right to me,” she said, then looked at the kortexi. “Did you make it to the Mountain without harm?” she asked.

  The kortexi had just returned to the table; he sat down heavily in his chair, eyes upon Marilee. “I . . . uh, I don’t know,” he said softly after a pause, “there is a gap in my memory. . . .”

  “I knew it!” she snapped, jumping to a conclusion for which there was little evidence. “Xythrax led us on a merry goose chase away from the Mountain so he could catch you without escort, and we were warned that something big was happening.”

  Delgart turned to Marilee and saw the damaged state of the right side of her face. His hands lifted to his own face. “What has happened to us?” he asked.

  “Us?” Marilee said, then turn to look at the person in the bed beside her, who said he was Rokwolf’s older brother, missing for many years. Her hands went to her own face. “What has happened?” she cried out in shock.

  Blakstar shook off the pain inside, whose source he could not identify, and looked at the two of them side by side, and suddenly understood; he vividly recalled the moment with the figure in white and the girl pointing at him and accusing him of selling out to Gar, and he had first noticed the symbols burned into and marking his flesh. He lifted up his chain shirt and touched the neck of his special suit beneath his throat, ran his finger down the center of his chest, as he had been shown, and an ope
ning appeared. Pulling the halves open, he looked down at the thin red lines inscribed on his chest, and saw the same mark inscribed on the damaged faces in front of him: half on the right side of Marilee’s face, half on the left side of Delgart’s face, such that if they put their damaged cheeks together, the mark of evil would be plainly visible.

  Marilee’s hand, that had been touching the right side of her face, went to her mouth. “What happened?” she asked.

  “Half of this mark is inscribed on each of your faces,” Blakstar said, “so that if you stood side by side, as you are now sitting, it would be completed in your two faces.”

  “How?” Delgart asked.

  Blakstar ran his finger up his chest, closing the fabric, then dropped his chain shirt back over his chest. “When Thal and I arrived here,” he began, “we were brought to this room where we found Headmaster Myron with his apprentice, Klaybear.”

  “Klaybear is here?” Delgart said. “When can I see him?”

  “That may be difficult,” the kortexi continued, “as he was arrested this morning.”

  “Arrested?” Delgart said. “Why?”

  “Because he has this same mark,” Blakstar went on, “branded on his forehead and his right palm. The other kailu master claimed he had desecrated their sacred glade and marked its altar with the same sign.”

  Delgart and Marilee sat silent for a time, staring at the kortexi. Blakstar went on.

  “As I started to say before, when we were brought to this room, where Headmaster Myron and Klaybear were waiting, you two were dying from some disease that none of the kailum could cure. When the Headmaster saw the devices I bear, the devices of Sir Karble, and I used the Waters of Life on his apprentice, he asked me to heal the two of you with the Waters. I gave you both some of the Waters, which should have healed you both completely, but something happened: the darkness could not be entirely driven out before it left your faces as they now are, damaged and inscribed with the mark you saw on my chest.” Blakstar looked down at Thal, hoping he would jump in but seeing that he was still withdrawn into himself. He looked up at the others, then pointed to Thal. “He also has the mark, but it is somehow written within the patterns of his mind. If not for the grief of losing his parents, he could probably make some sense of all this, for he has great powers of mind.”

  “He’s lost his parents? How?” Delgart asked.

  “I’m not sure how the Headmaster knows,” Blakstar said, “the teka explanation is beyond me. Shortly after Hierarch Kalamar sent us to Shigmar this morning, the tower was attacked by purem, including a trio of ponkolum, who killed both his parents.”

  “How did he get the mark?” Marilee asked.

  “They do not know,” Blakstar said. “Headmaster Myron wanted to ask Hierarch Kalamar about it, which is how he discovered they had been killed.”

  “How did my brother, Klaybear, get marked?” Delgart asked.

  “I only know that he went to the sacred glade of the kailum yesterday,” Blakstar said, “where the Headmaster said that Gar branded him, destroyed and marked the altar, and did something to Klaybear that caused his inner vision to become . . . jumbled,” he finished, after pausing to search for the right word. “When Thal and I entered the room earlier, he was knocked from his feet and hurled into his vision, replaying, so we were told, the parts that included us. The same thing happened when he saw the awemi he rescued last night, when he saw his wife, and when he saw the two of you.”

  “Wife?” Delgart said, sounding shocked. “My brother is married?”

  “So we were told, although she left here before we came in, on an errand of the headmaster,” Blakstar said, “but did not return when she should have. There was some concern over where she had gone. They thought she might have gone to check on the awemi, who was at their home, to see if he was marked similarly to Thal.”

  Blakstar stopped speaking, and since no one else spoke, took another bite of lunch and gave it to Thal.

  “Sir Blakstar,” Marilee asked hesitantly, “how were you marked?”

  The kortexi’s face went white. “I don’t know,” he said finally, “the keeper on the Mountain called my loss of memory a gift of the One; I fear something terrible has been done to me, but beyond the marks, I do not know,” he finished, turned, and went back to the table, fumbling with the bread, trying to get another bite for Thal.

  “No,” Marilee sobbed. “I knew we should have stayed in our assigned area, and not chased Xythrax’s phantoms!” she exclaimed in anger.

  Blakstar shook his head; something about the name Xythrax stirred his memory and filled him with foreboding: he glimpsed a black-robed figure with bony hands gripping an ornately carved rod. He looked back at Delgart and Marilee, trying to avoid the feeling in his mind and heart of empty guilt. “I . . . can’t . . . remember,” he stuttered, trying to see past the shadows that cloaked his memory.

  “Don’t try,” Delgart said, simply. “We know that you were marked, as we have been, and that is sufficient; you need not tell us any more.”

  Blakstar nodded once, then took another bite to Thal. The maghi took it, chewing automatically.

  “Can you tell us anything else about what has happened,” Delgart began, “anything that might help my brother?”

  Blakstar went back to the table and sat down, then looked at the others and shrugged. “We need him,” he said, pointing at Thal, “he is the one who could put things together; he could help Klaybear.”

  “Couldn’t we try to force him to wake?” Marilee asked.

  Delgart shook his head. “That happened to some of the captives I saw; the pirates became impatient, shaking and slapping them, but it more often harmed than helped, usually sending them deeper into themselves, so that they wasted away and died. It is better to let them come out of it on their own, rather than try and shock them awake.”

  They lapsed into silence, Blakstar withdrawing into his own thoughts. After a time, something roused Blakstar from his brooding–the sound of soft weeping. He looked up, first looking at Delgart, then both turned to look at Marilee, who held her face in both hands.

  “What is wrong?” Delgart asked.

  Marilee looked up, her eyes red and wet, but her face wide with surprise. “What’s wrong? I’m hideous! That’s what’s wrong! I know I wasn’t the prettiest girl before, but I wasn’t unattractive. Now . . . ,” she started to say but instead, hid her face in her hands and sobbed.

  Blakstar was at a loss for words, unable to speak; Delgart spoke. “I do not think you are hideous,” he said truthfully, “one side of your face is damaged, but the other is as pretty as any I have seen. You are still beautiful.”

  Marilee sniffed and looked up at Delgart. “I thank you for the compliment, but I think you must be half-blind.”

  The kortexi tried to recall again what had happened to him, and the words of the blonde girl–his future wife–echoed through his mind. “Let me see him!” He realized that what had been done to each of them went beyond the mark of evil they all now wore. “Each of us has not only been marked, but damaged in some way,” he said quietly. “Klaybear is hurled into his vision if he thinks of it too closely, becoming completely unaware of what is going on around him–in battle, that could be tragic. Me . . . ,” he faltered, then shook his head. “I have been marked . . . somehow, on the chest and loins,” he went on, pointing to himself with one hand, “for what reason we have been marked . . . I don’t know,” Blakstar finished and fell silent.

  “What do you remember?” Delgart asked. “Anything, any detail, might help us figure out what happened, and how you were marked.”

  Blakstar thought a moment. “I remember leaving the main road south to follow the trail leading to the Mountain,” he answered, his eyes closed in concentration. “I rode along the trail throughout the morning, stopping once and beginning to feel as if there was someone watching me. I stopped for lunch . . . , and then everything is blank until I woke up in a burned-out clearing on the north side of the Mountai
n, although I dreamed, at least I think it was a dream, but is it a real dream when one is awake?” he asked, then shook his head. “In this dream there was a figure in white who told me not to be afraid, and then a pretty girl with golden hair and blue eyes appeared in the dream, and the figure told me she would someday be my wife, but when I tried to approach her, she was afraid of me, afraid I would kill her. Then we both felt lines of fire burning on our chests, and she accused me of selling out to Gar and taking her along, but then another symbol, a rune, was burned into us both–low on the front of my belly, and in the same place on her, and again on her . . . ,” he hesitated and felt his neck and ears begin to burn, “lower back. The figure then showed us a clearing next to the Mountain of Vision, told us we should meet there in our dreams, then we were both drawn away; I woke up in the same clearing, burned and blackened, surrounded by twisted trees. I felt . . . pain and soreness–there was a lump on my head,” he noted, touching the back of his head, “and my clothes had been torn open. . . .”

  “Torn open?” Delgart interrupted. “Sliced or ripped?”

  Blakstar opened his eyes and looked at Delgart. “I don’t really know,” he admitted, “I never considered it important, but the edges were smooth, so I’d guess cut.” He saw a slight tightening around Delgart’s eyes, but he said nothing, so Blakstar closed his eyes and concentrated again on what he remembered. “There was a . . . face,” he hesitated, “a huge, kindly face with deep blue eyes, looking at me out of the side of the Mountain; he spoke to me, told me he waited for me and to climb the Mountain. I asked about my lost memories, told him I felt filthy, and he told me not to be concerned, that I would be cleansed of his son’s violation–I do not understand the words he spoke, but I think it must have been . . . ,” he hesitated again, fearing to say what he was thinking–that the face was the face of the One, “. . . I don’t know,” he finished, opening his eyes to look at the others and saw them exchanging a look with each other.