Nine
As the light from the fire played across Joktan’s features, Aram was startled to realize that the face was familiar to him – it was very similar to the face he’d seen reflected back at him on those occasions when he had peered into calm pools of water, but older. The hair was black like his own, though there was gray along the king’s temples and his short beard was entirely gray. His nose was prominent and straight.
Joktan’s face was lined and a bit gaunt with high cheekbones and an impressive forehead. There was a look of weariness about him, yet his graygreen eyes were sharp and alert. To Aram, his ancient ancestor seemed like an aged predator – worn, wounded, and weary, but still dangerous.
He met the gaze of the fierce eyes. “How –?”
Joktan reached down and touched the soil beside him with the palm of his right hand. “This is where I died, Aram, right here. My blood is in this ground, my bones beneath this soil. It is the only place on earth where I can still take shape. Although I can travel a good portion of the world – I have been as far as Manon’s tower on several occasions – the farther I get away from this spot the harder it is to show myself, even as a hooded specter. After a certain distance I can appear only as a shadow, and beyond that point, not at all. Nor is there any real purpose in wandering too far – my sight and my senses fade with distance as well.
“That is why I could only show myself to you for a few moments while you were in the field. I’m afraid I caused you some grief on that occasion, distracting you and bringing the lasher’s attentions upon you.”
Aram shook his head, still astonished. “Do not let it trouble you, my lord. Was that the first time that you saw me?”
“Oh, no.” Joktan laughed. “I have watched you for the whole of your life Aram, since the moment of your birth.”
Aram felt his eyes go wide. “Since my birth? Out on the plains?”
“Oh, yes, I was there the day your mother brought you into the world. I cannot see well so far from this place but I heard your mother’s exclamations of joy and knew that you were a man child. As much as I could I watched you as you grew into manhood – I wanted to know if you, at last, were the man for whom I have waited so long.” His eyes traveled upward to the hilt of the sword rising above Aram’s shoulder. “I have suspected that you were the one for a long time now, and now I know that you are he.”
Aram stared. “How – when did you first suspect that I – that I was the man in the riddle? Did you think this even when I was a child?”
“I didn’t. Not at first.” Joktan hesitated and stared down into the flames for a long moment, frowning as if troubled by some secret thought. Then he looked up. “When you resisted the overseers that took your sister, I suspected. Later when you escaped, found the city, and fought the wolves for possession of the valley, I knew that it had to be you. I spoke of you to Kelven and he agreed. And when Florm –” Here he stopped for a moment and considered the fire again, as if he found instruction in its flames. After a moment, he continued.
“Then you renewed the alliance with the horses through the virtue of your own strength and character.” He indicated the hilt of the sword sticking up above Aram’s back. “And now you possess the sword of heaven. There is no further proof needed. You are the man.”
He looked away and glanced out into the darkness as the shadow of a troubled thought again crossed his countenance. Aram could not read his expression and he remained silent. Finally, Joktan expelled the breath he’d been holding in and looked back at Aram.
“There is a long, dark road ahead of you, my son, and a dangerous road. And many battles. You will need to raise up and train a great army.” He looked again at the hilt of the sword. “An army strong enough to destroy his legions so that you can get close to Manon and put that weapon to its intended use.”
Aram nodded. “I know, my lord. Building an army will be my first order of business.”
Joktan fixed him with his steel-colored eyes. “All of your fighting experience is that of a lone warrior, Aram. You know nothing of moving large forces upon the field.”
“Yes,” Aram agreed, “this is so. But before I gained the experience of fighting alone I had none at all. Yet I won the war with the wolves.”
Joktan shook his head. “It’s not that I’m not impressed by that fact. But engagements between two great armies is a different thing altogether. I watched you train with the horses last summer. You have talent and instinct but you need instruction in basic generalship.”
Aram gazed at him and understanding came. He looked around at the dark, tormented landscape. “And that is why –”
“– you are here.” Joktan finished for him. “We will do what we can to remedy your lack of education here and now. The passes to your valley are still closed and will be for some time – a week or two at least. They are piled with snow. I checked this morning. So there is time to teach you the basics. You’re a quick learner – I’ve seen that. We should make good progress in the time that we have.”
Aram bowed his head for a moment. “I am very grateful, my lord.”
“Yes, well, we will begin in the morning.” Joktan sat back and gazed up into the star-filled sky and then glanced to his right and his left each way down the long, flat-topped ridge. After a moment, he leaned toward the fire and looked across its crackling flames at Aram.
“It wasn’t pride, you know, or rashness.”
“My lord?”
“The reason I challenged Manon. It didn’t arise out of pride or rashness.”
Aram frowned and spoke carefully. “I have no opinion on such matters, my lord.”
“No, but others do.” Joktan smiled slightly. “I know Sera’s opinion of me – that which she divulged to you. Of course, she did not know at the time that you are my descendent.”
Aram placed more wood on the fire and looked across at him. “Am I truly a son of your line, my lord?”
“Oh, yes. As were your fathers before you.”
“Pardon me, my lord, I do not wish to offend. But how do you know?”
Joktan gazed at him and his features were set, his eyes hard. “What do you think I have been doing for ten thousand years, Aram?”
Aram had no answer and remained silent.
Then Joktan sighed and his expression softened. “I have been watching for you. Nothing else has engaged me as much as this one task. I have been watching for you, not knowing if you would ever come.”
Aram stared down into the flames and tried to imagine the immense loneliness of such a pursuit, the unceasing devotion to an uncertain cause, magnified by the passing of a hundred centuries. He found that he could not fathom it. He looked back at his ancestor.
“If I may ask it, sir, why did you challenge Manon?”
“It was desperation, Aram, desperation alone. Our people were being slaughtered, our army destroyed. There was nothing else to do.”
The old king turned his attention outward into the darkness and was silent for a time as if he were seeing again those things that had so violently come to pass along the top of that ridge so long ago. After a while he looked back at Aram and there was a deep shadow of ancient pain on his countenance. He waved his hand, indicating the ridge that ran away from the fire, left and right.
“My people, our people, Aram, were dying all along this line. Horses, too. It was slaughter. Something had to be done. I knew that it was a hopeless thing, challenging a god, but I was desperate. And I knew that killing Manon – if by some miracle I could do it – would not immediately stop the carnage. There were thousands of lashers and tens of thousands of gray men; they would continue to wreak havoc upon my people; maybe more so if they saw the death of their master. But cut off the head of a serpent and the body will eventually die.”
He leaned forward and held his hands out to the fire for a moment. A strange, wistful expression crossed his face and then he pulled his hands away and gazed back out into the night.
“There had been a great storm; it
lasted for days. The clouds lowered down over the mountains and it rained. We thought that Kelven was protecting us, hiding our city from the eyes of the enemy. We did not know that Manon had managed to manipulate the weather out of Kelven’s hands and was using it as cover to marshal his forces. When the clouds lifted, he was here.”
He met Aram’s eyes for a moment. “We were not caught completely off guard, Aram. We had built outlying fortresses and watchtowers around the city. When the storm stopped, we knew he was upon the plains and we came out to meet him. But there was no time to send word to Seneca or Wallensia. It was up to us to stop him.”
As he continued his narrative, an undercurrent of fury and outrage entered his voice. “It was not a battle for conquest, Aram. Manon intended to kill us all. It was annihilation that was in his evil mind. He meant for the descendents of Peleg to be wiped from the earth.”
He paused for a moment, staring into the fire, and his right hand gripped his left and twisted as if it meant to remove that appendage from his body. But if it caused him pain, it didn’t show on his features. His eyes were hard and bitter and his face set in ancient and unrequited anger.
“I told you that it was desperation that caused me to challenge Manon to single combat. It was, but there was also fury. How dare he commit such an atrocity upon my people – creations of the Maker? How dare he break all the laws of the universe with impunity? I tell you Aram, I could not abide the thought. I ran through the battle – straight at him – ignoring everything around but him, and struck at him with my might.”
He lifted his gaze and looked around him at the tortured earth illuminated by the firelight. “Thaniel thinks this is evil ground. It’s not; it’s not the fault of the earth that evil was perpetrated here. But evil was perpetrated here upon our people. It is here that the descendents of the line of kings was very nearly destroyed.”
Joktan glanced at Aram and then looked back out into the darkness beyond the fire.
“I ran at the enemy with my might, Aram. Armon, my mount, and my great friend, lay dying back there.” He pointed behind him down the ridge without looking but the moisture that sprang into his eyes reflected the flames of the fire. “I ran at Manon on foot and swung my sword with my might. He laughed and cut me down like I was nothing more than an inexperienced recruit. I cursed him in that moment and then swore that I would not leave this world until vengeance was wrought upon him.”
He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe. “Because I stayed I had to watch helplessly as his beasts destroyed our army to the last man. Then they went into the city and completed the slaughter. It was horror.”
He fell silent, still gazing into the blackness and it was evident to Aram that his thoughts and remembrances were darker than the night into which he stared. Aram dropped his gaze into the fire and waited, not wanting to invade his ancestor’s distress. Finally, as the silence lengthened out and Joktan did not speak again, Aram looked up.
“My lord, if all our people were slain – then how am I here?”
Joktan gazed at him without comprehension for a few moments, his mind still filled with the noise and tumult of the ancient battle. Then his eyes cleared and he smiled slightly. “Ah. Did young Florm ever tell you of the part that he played on that day?”
Aram thought for a moment. “No. All he said was that he did not participate in the battle because there weren’t enough men to ride the available horses and that you had another duty for him to fulfill.”
“He did not tell you what that duty was?”
“He did not.”
“Well, that is like him.” He smiled then, but his posture remained solemn. “When word came in from the watchtowers of the might that was arrayed against us and already marching on the city, I knew that it was likely that our end was upon us and that it would be impossible to run from it as well. There was no time to evacuate the city.”
His face grew sad. “My own wife had passed on six years earlier – she it is that is buried inside the pyramid.” Aram thought of the mysterious bier inside the deep room of that structure and nodded with understanding. Joktan glanced up at the night sky and drew in a deep breath. “She was also a victim of Manon’s malice. He manufactured a plague and sent it upon us with the complicity of vultures. She succumbed six years before the great battle and has waited for me all this time.” He said this last quietly, almost to himself, and he went silent for a long moment before continuing his narrative.
“I told the men to prepare and to do as they would with their families. Some fled with their wives and children, though most stayed to fight, and many of their families simply took refuge in the city and prayed. Some of the wives actually accompanied their husbands onto the field and took up arms against the enemy of the world.” He glanced around. “Their bones lie here now, alongside those of the rest of our people.”
He was quiet for a moment, gazing into the fire, and the lines of his face softened. “There was a child, my great-grandson, who was just five years old. His father, my grandson, came to me and told me that it was his intention to fight but that he wanted his wife and child taken away, beyond Manon’s reach, if possible.
“I asked Armon if he could spare one of his people to take the woman and child away. He recommended his youngest son for the duty – young Florm. Florm took the pair and went into the south, beyond the mountains toward the southern ocean with others of the city who had fled the fires of that war. He left the two of them in the care of an older man and woman that were without child and returned to fight alongside his father and older brothers.
“But by the time Florm returned to the high plains, it was over. All had perished and Manon had gone back to the north and then eastward, through Vallenvale toward Kelven’s mountain. Florm’s father and brothers had all died – indeed, most of his people were gone, as were ours.
“Later, when the battle of the mountain occurred and the firmament rent with fire and fury, Florm and those that remained of his people waited to see the outcome. But the world went quiet. Kelven’s voice went silent for a long time and he never again walked across the face of the world. But neither did Manon return, nor did his army.
“When it seemed apparent that neither Manon nor Kelven had survived their confrontation, Florm mourned the loss of his elders and then went back into the south to check on his charge. With the passing of war, the old man and woman had taken the mother and child and gone westward onto the plains.”
He looked up and smiled at Aram. “That boy was your ancestor, Aram. When he grew up, he became a farmer.” He held up a hand as he saw the expression that crossed Aram’s face. “I know – such an occupation does not suit men like us. But it suited him. It suited him very well. You see, his mother never told him – or anyone, for that matter – of his lineage. She was paralyzed with fear that Manon would return, discover who he was, and kill him. It was a wise, almost prescient fear; eventually, when he’d regained his strength, Manon would have found that descendents of Peleg still lived and killed them all. You would not sit here today, Aram. Her ancient fear protected your anonymity and saved your life.
“She died young of overwhelming grief because of the loss of her husband and her people; the boy grew up, married, and had children and there, out on the plains, my family – and yours – has remained until this day. I have watched them all in turn. You are the first to come back east to the land of your fathers.”
Aram frowned. “But they – our people – did not resist when Manon arose again. They were enslaved.”
“Yes.” Joktan admitted. “And they were among the first to be enslaved, after those people that lived farther north in the land of Bracken. But they lived free for several thousand years and prospered. Manon, when he regained his strength, had grown wiser. He did not move upon them until he was fully ready and before that time, he took great pains to hide his existence.”
The old king’s face hardened again. “I knew, but I could not warn them. The great plains are too far from this
spot. At that distance I can barely hear and I cannot be heard at all. I had begun to suspect that Manon had not perished on the mountain, and finally I went to his tower. It was dark and deserted, guarded by strange power, very hard to penetrate, even harder for me to see, but at last I discovered that the vile worm of his existence still wriggled in a secret place in its depths, slowly regaining potency year by year, century by century.”
He met Aram’s gaze and clenched his fists. “If I could have choked the life from him then, I would have done it. Indeed, for centuries, I sought a means of accomplishing his death, but to no avail. Those that would have helped me, like Kelven, could not; and those like Ferros that could, would not.”
After a long moment, his features softened, he sighed and relaxed his hands. “So, when Manon regained enough of his strength and rebuilt a rudimentary army, he moved upon the people of the plains, catching them completely unaware. He needed their resources of food and labor to feed his machinery of conquest.” He watched Aram closely as he went on. “And he needed their young women and girls to expand the ranks of his armies of gray men and lashers.”
Aram stiffened. “The girls? My sister –?”
Joktan nodded slowly, watching him. “Yes.”
Aram thought that he understood Joktan’s meaning and the idea sickened and horrified him but he needed clarity. “How does Manon use them to expand his armies?”
“It is a dreadful and terrible thing, Aram.” Joktan said quietly. “Are you certain that you want to know it?”
Aram met his gaze. “I have killed overseers and lashers without hesitation because of the loss of my sister. Those deaths do not require justification – they were all of them deserved on other levels – but I would like to know that I have not compromised my own soul by justifying violence on the basis of a false premise.”
Kelven's Riddle Book Two Page 14