Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale

by Alex Oakchest

  Lacking any freedom of movement, I decided the best thing would be to study these guys. The more you know, the more powerful you are. Any knowledge I could glean might help me.

  They looked like they all enjoyed each other’s company. As they ate their strips of meat they spoke with each other in their strange language, some laughing and joking, others locked in more serious discussion.

  Given that they slept outside and had a pack of bison, I guessed they were travelers. Either that, or they did have a home someplace but were in the middle of a journey.

  That begged the question of where they found me, and why I couldn’t remember it, but I knew those answers wouldn’t come right now.

  There wasn’t much else to gleam. They didn’t carry many weapons, but I doubted they needed them anyway.

  The most interesting thing was the stares that kept coming my way. Almost all the campers stared at me at various points, which meant something; this was an uncommon event. They weren’t accustomed to finding guys like me and tying them up.

  It made me think that they hadn’t gouged the circle on my forehead. For one thing, how could they have done it, and then made it heal so quickly? It had already scarred over.

  Oh, yeah. Magic. They could have used magic to heal it. Magic is a pretty convenient way of saying F-you to logic. Impossible and rational were stupid words when you were dealing with guys who shot magic out of their palms.

  Kaleb was standing by Pendras. I had watched Pendras more than the rest, and one thing was clear; he was in charge of the clan. He had an intensity to him, as though everything he did had a clear purpose. What was that purpose? Looking after his people, I guessed. Ensuring their survival above anything else.

  Pendras spent the morning giving orders, and now he seemed to be giving one to Kaleb.

  “Gou Dipak, Kaleb. War lave knar lunch.”

  Kaleb nodded. “Yap, Pendras.”

  Kaleb walked to where the clan had piled lots of rucksacks of different sizes and made from different materials. One rucksack was black but with a fluorescent yellow cover and a brand name tag sewn onto it. It was the kind you’d see in outdoor hobbyist stores.

  This was Earth. It had to be. I doubted even the biggest rucksack companies had penetrated the intergalactic market yet. Man, what the hell was going on?

  Kaleb took three glass jars and a gardening trowel from a bag. He used the trowel to loosen mud in the ground, and then he scooped it into a jar.

  After that, he filled one more jar with soil from a different spot nearby, and then he combed through the camp. He stared at the ground intensely, stopping every so often to pick something up and put it in the jar.

  By the end, he had two jars filled with soil, another with various bugs including worms, beetles, and ants.

  The only thing I could think was that they were testing for something. Maybe if Kaleb had filled all three jars with just bugs, I’d have said it was for food. Bugs were a protein source, after all. But the soil? No, they had to be checking for something.

  When he’d put the jars back in the rucksack, Kaleb collected the pile of unused fire logs and laid them out on the ground in a rectangle shape, as though making a strange diagram out of them.

  “Hrr-arte,” he said.

  Nothing happened at first, and a flicker of anger crossed his face. “Hrr-arte,” he said, more forcefully this time, putting emphasis on each syllable.

  In the same way as when he’d crumbled the log last night, and similar to the female mage freeing her bison, Kaleb’s medallion began to glow.

  The firewood transformed, melding together and rising until, seconds later, it had turned into a wooden cart with wheels.

  I felt my blood run cold and my face go pale. I still wasn’t used to seeing such impossible things. It made me wonder if I was still dreaming. Or drunk. Or dreaming whilst drunk.

  Now, a glimmer of a memory of myself came back. The word drunk echoed in my head again and again, leading to me learning a deep truth about myself, about who I was.

  Drunk. Drink. Beer.

  I liked beer. I really, really liked beer.

  Yeah, it wasn’t the deepest of self-discoveries, but I remembered that I loved beer.

  But I wasn’t drunk now, and as much as a few beers might help me get more comfortable around this insanity, I didn’t have any. So, I needed to stay calm and to think rationally.

  After watching Kaleb, something had occurred to me. I had seen three spells be cast now; one to shatter a log, another to scythe a tangle of weeds, another to create a cart from logs.

  Each spell had been composed of two words, and the first words had always been hrr. Did hrr mean cast, or something similar?

  Maybe. At least I was getting somewhere. I could say my name, yes, no, and I maybe knew the word for cast or spell. Small steps. If only I had a language dictionary.

  Then again, why worry about that?

  I realized now that hardly anyone was paying attention to me, maybe after deciding I wasn’t much of a threat in my current state. This was a chance to hit the road, but first I needed to untie my legs. Otherwise, I’d hit the road with my face the minute I tried to run.

  So, how would I do that?

  I lifted my hands and looked at the ropes. They were an inch thick and looked like they were made from thousands of strands of hair woven together.

  Is that how people make rope? Maybe they use hemp.

  Not important right now.

  The most disconcerting thing was how rough and shoddy the ropes were. It made me certain they had been used before, and that maybe the clan had taken prisoners before now.

  It was a worrying thought, and I was going back and forth on that. I just didn’t know much of a threat these people were.

  Glancing around to make sure I wasn’t being watched, I lifted my hands and bit the rope and tried to tear it with my teeth.

  Nope; it was tougher than Grandma’s chicken. I wouldn’t be able to bite through it.

  Next, I looked around for a stone or something like that, but there was nothing. Lacking anything to cut with, I put my hands on the ground and rubbed the rope back and forth along it, hoping it would start to wear away.

  Nah, not going to happen.

  Damn it. What else could I try?

  Maybe I should just try asking. “Hey, could you cut the ropes, please?”

  Then again, the quest said I had to free myself before the clan cut me loose. Something about testing my initiative.

  Think, Isaac, I said, growing more and more certain that really was my name. And that thinking the word think was an act of thinking in itself, and thus a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  It was then that I spotted the fire. The flames were gone, but the base layer of charred wood was still glowing hot. Hmm. Maybe that was the answer.

  I just needed to get over to it, but the fact I couldn’t get to my feet, much less walk, was a bit of a problem.

  “Kaleb,” I said.

  The young boy had finished stacking furs and leather rucksacks onto the cart now. It looked like he was the dog’s body of the clan.

  He walked over to me. “Okiya, Isaac?” he said.

  I mimed being cold. I wracked my brain for something Kaleb had said to me last night. What was the word, the one Kaleb had said before he had put wood on the fire?

  Ah, yeah.

  “Isaac caild,” I said, aware that with my bare minimum of vocabulary I must have sounded like an idiot.

  “Caild?”

  I pretended to shiver. “Very, very caild.”

  Kaleb patted me on the shoulder and said something, but I didn’t pick out a single word.

  He held his hand out to me. I reached out, and he pulled me to my feet and then steadied me. He led me shuffling along, to the fire, and then gently pushed me down beside it.

  “Okiya?”

  That must mean okay. “Yap,” I said.

  He smiled and then left me. Alone and next to the fire, I waited a while to choose my moment
carefully.

  When I was satisfied that none of the mages were watching, I carefully stretched out my arms and then lowered my wrists to the glowing wood. The rope began to burn, and the smell was so pungent I was sure someone would notice soon.

  No going back now. I pressed the rope harder against the wood and soon enough burned away that I could strain against the bonds and free my hands.

  Ah, that felt good!

  Wasting no time, I untied the rope around my ankles.

  And there I was. A free man once again. A free man surrounded by mages in a place he’d never visited before.

  Weaponless, and dressed in a wafer-thin shirt and trousers.

  My situation hadn’t improved so much, really.

  Whatever. It was time to go.

  “Pendras!” shouted a mage from across the camp. I realized he was pointing at me now. “Pyrizonip cutte elyrope!”

  More and more of them turned to face me now, and I wished that I was a mage so I could cast a spell that would let me sink into the ground. Pendras fixed me one of his soul-boring stares.

  He pointed at me.

  I gulped.

  And then, he curled a finger. “Caim hoore, Isaac.”

  So, they knew I had freed my arms and legs, but they hadn’t murdered me on the spot. That had to be a good thing. Still, it meant I couldn’t take off now. No sense provoking them.

  Every green-skinned man and woman in the camp gawped at me as I walked over to Pendras. The woman leading the bison had returned from the stream, and all four bison had pails of water attached to rods balanced over their backs.

  Kaleb had finished piling most of the camp’s inventory bags in the cart he had created using his magic, and the other mages had eaten their breakfast and packed away their furs.

  In short, they had nothing to do but watch me.

  Nobody spoke, at least not out loud. I saw one mage nudge another and whisper to him. I wondered if I should make a break for it. I quickly saw how little sense there was in an unarmed man in a strange land trying to run from a bunch of mages.

  When you’re in a situation like this, one where you don’t have much going for you, you have two options. Either act meek or strut it out.

  “Isaac,” said Pendras. He curled his finger again. His eyes narrowed, and his eyeballs were pure blue like spheres of ice.

  Sunlight glinted off the bald domes of the gathered mages. You could have heard an ant cough, it was so quiet. The strange, strange places in the distance never looked so inviting to me. If only I had shoes.

  I straightened my shoulders. I lifted my head and I walked like a guy who didn’t have a single care. Inside, my brain was shouting to me to run, that this wasn’t good. My brain handed my worries off to my heart like it was a relay race, and my pulse started thudding.

  Pendras pointed at the ground by his feet. There was a dead rat the size of my hand, fingertip to wrist. It looked like Pendras had snapped its neck.

  “Hrr-chare,” said Pendras.

  Hrr-chare. Hrr meant to cast a spell, I thought I had guessed, but chare? Whatever that meant, whatever its magic result, the rat was its intended recipient.

  “Hrr-chare,” he said again.

  At first, I thought Pendras was struggling to cast his spell. That he was having a spot of magic dysfunction. I thought better of mentioning it because a man could get sensitive about that kind of thing.

  “Isaac,” he said. “Hrr-chare.”

  Ah.

  I should have known better. Pendras was the chief around here, and he was the only mage with a golden circle on his forehead. Kaleb’s was only green and I’d seen him have to try a few times to cast a spell, but Pendras wouldn’t have struggled.

  The hrr command was for me. He wanted me to cast chare, whatever the hell that was, on the rat.

  And every single mage in camp was watching me and expecting the same thing. Even Kaleb, who caught my stare and smiled and nodded.

  “Yap, Isaac. Gae un. Hrr-chare,” he said, his tone much friendlier than Pendras’s.

  “I wish I could chare the hrr out of it, buddy,” I said. “But I don’t know how. I don’t even know what chare means.”

  “Bud-dy?” said Kaleb.

  Pendras poked me in the chest.

  “Hrr-chare,” he said, this time at almost a growl.

  It seemed this wasn’t a request, but an expectation. I guessed I could maybe figure out what chare meant. After all, there was only so much you do with a dead rat.

  Chare could mean to resurrect it. Or it might mean to burn it. Chare sounded like char, I supposed. Maybe the mages’ language had developed from English so that certain words sounded similar.

  That didn’t help me much now. Chare might as well have meant turn this dead rat into a dancing polar bear, and the result would be the same.

  I might have a circle on my head, but I wasn’t a mage.

  “Isaac,” growled Pendras. “Hrr-chare.”

  I had to do something. Maybe I could try it?

  It might work. After all, I had a circle on my forehead now.

  Pointing my finger at the rat, I pictured a spell building in my palm. I didn’t know what that actually felt like, but I imagined it was hot, like sunlight but on the inside, and that magic would build up in me as energy getting stronger and stronger and then the only thing left to do was…

  “Hrr-chare!” I boomed.

  Nothing happened.

  Some of the mages tittered. Others watched, absorbed in the scene. Kaleb rubbed his hand over his face, groaning and shaking his head.

  Pendras approached me now. Although he was tall and skinny like the rest of them, he had this weight to him as he moved. Kind of like his shadow doubling his size and giving him stature.

  He poked my chest and then pointed behind me.

  “Gae!” he said.

  I turned around. There was nothing behind me. Just the same plains of weeds and dirt.

  I shrugged.

  “Gae!”

  I looked around, hoping for understanding to come, hoping that one of the mages had suddenly remembered he or she could speak English.

  None of them would meet my eyes now. One by one, they started to walk off. Kaleb and two other mages his age grabbed the reins of the bison and guided them to the cart, where they tied them up and started them walking onwards.

  Led by Pendras, the mages began to walk off in a group. I hurried on to Kaleb.

  “Kaleb,” I said.

  He wouldn’t look at me.

  “Kaleb?”

  Pendras turned around. “Isaac, gae!” he shouted.

  I was beginning to get the feeling I wasn’t wanted around here.

  As much as I hadn’t much enjoyed waking up here with my wrists and ankles tied, I was still a stranger in a strange land. I had no money, no weapons, no friends. These people, as weird as they were, represented a modicum of safety to me.

  But out there, in the distance Pendras was ordering me to walk into, there could be anything.

  “Isaac na gae,” I said, pleased I’d remembered that tiny bit of vocabulary.

  The last time I’d used their language to tell Pendras my name, he’d smiled. It seemed to have won him over a little.

  This time, he raised his hands above his head.

  “Hrr-chare!” he shouted.

  He shot a fireball at me, but he missed, and his sphere of burning energy smashed into the ground near my feet and charred the weeds, stripping them back to the dirt.

  So that’s what chare meant.

  I got the sense that Pendras hadn’t missed but rather had given me a firm but polite warning. It was his way of saying “Isaac, I’d love to have you around, but this is where we part ways. I wish you all the best for the future, and I want you to know that I think you’re a great guy.”

  I focused on the rat now. For the first time in my life, I hoped it was the first time anyway but I couldn’t remember, a dead rat represented salvation for me.

  “Hrr-chare,”
I said.

  Nothing happened. The mages didn’t even titter now. The last of them walked past me.

  Mindfulness, I said to myself. Calm. Focus.

  I pointed my finger.

  “Hrr-chare.”

  Nothing.

  Damn it. Desperate, I rubbed the circular gouge on my forehead. Maybe that would stir some magic into me or something.

  “Hrr-chare!”

  The rat, stubborn thing, refused to set on fire. It wouldn’t have been so big a deal for it to just help me out a little by spontaneously combusting, would it?

  “Hrr chare,” I said. “Chare, chare, chare!”

  It just wasn’t happening. I didn’t have any magic, and the rat wasn’t going to set alight, and now the mages were walking away. It wouldn’t be long until they were out of sight, and I’d be alone.

  I could try joining them, but I got the sense that Pendras wouldn’t miss with his next fireball. I was just going to have to set off in a direction and try to find someone.

  I wouldn’t let them see me looking scared. It was important to me that they see me walking away confidently. That their last impression of me was that I hadn’t given in to fear.

  Then I remembered something.

  The patch of road markings that I’d seen. If I followed the road in either direction, I’d have to hit civilization, wouldn’t I? After all, every road has to lead somewhere.

  First, though, I needed a drink. I started to walk toward the stream where the lady mage had led the bison that morning when I heard a voice.

  “Isaac!” it said.

  “Kaleb?”

  He was out of breath. He must have sprinted away from the teenagers he was walking with. Even though he couldn’t have run more than thirty feet, he was doubled over and panting.

  Soon, he started wheezing. Deep, chesty wheezes that actually worried me. I started patting his back, and I felt how bony his spine was.

  “You okay?” I said, gently slapping his back. I didn’t know if I was doing any good here.

  Kaleb straightened up. He opened two buttons on his robe to reveal the left side of his chest. He had a wicked four-inch scar running down it. “Kaff,” he said. “Ner, ner kaff.”