The Brotherhood: Blood

by Kody Boye

  Horrified, angry beyond belief and unsure what to think in the aftermath of such a horrible crime, Nova remained steadfast, unsure whether to step forward or let the man be. “You do not talk to my father in that way,” he said, somehow able to keep his voice low and calm. “My father was the best man I ever knew.”

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into, boy. You’d leave your wife, just like that, all because something tells you to?”

  “It didn’t say I had to!” Nova roared, unable to contain his shakes.

  The sound of his own voice forced him in but a short time to realize just how angry he was starting to become. Taking a deep breath, Nova closed his eyes, chastised himself for such behavior, then thought back on what his father had once said as a child—when, during an emotional fit, he’d said that he expressed a temper far beyond himself and should learn to control it, less it destroy himself and those around him.

  “I’m sorry,” Nova sighed, stepping forward. “I’ve had problems with my temper since I was a boy, but that’s no excuse to hit you.”

  “And I’m sorry for making you angry. But Nova—do you really believe this thing you saw was real? Or your visions?”

  “They haven’t been wrong before.”

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Nova stayed silent. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “I need to talk to Katarina,” he said, “before I leave in the morning.”

  “You really think this is important enough to make you leave?”

  “Yes,” Nova sighed. “I do.”

  “Do you even know where the young man is?”

  “No.”

  “Then how are you going to find him?”

  “Look,” Nova said, turning to walk up the stairs. “That’s all I can do.”

  He held Katarina for most of the night or paced the room and watched her sleep. Uneasy, afraid, and all the more unsure of the very decision that was racketing his mind, he tried his best to figure out just how he would tell his wife about the figure and how it told him he needed to help someone should he want to be helped, but to no avail. Always, it seemed, he would stop in midstride, or mid-thought, then slowly the pendulum would fall back into place, where it would only fall halfway before permanently resetting itself before it could actually do any real swinging.

  I don’t know how to I’m going to do this, he thought, heart halfway open and the blood spilling out through his arms.

  Eyes bleary, bloodshot, aching, Nova looked out at the slowly-rising sun and tried to discern just how much time had passed between his initial confrontation with his father-in-law and the moment in which he’d tried to return to bed. Bleeding across the horizon, lighting the world with its warring rays over the mountains of a group of creatures he knew naught about, he tried to imagine just how and why the sun did what it truly did. Why, of all reasons, would such an entity rise, just to light their land? One would say that it was forced to by the laws of nature, as even though a great distance away the sun operated on the same fundamental level, but were it given a choice of its own, would it really rise every day, or once every other day?

  He wished, at that moment, that it would just stay down—that the world, as dark as it was, would remain perpetually-black. Maybe then he would never have a reason to leave; and maybe, just maybe, Katarina would never wake and ask him why his eyes had lines running through them.

  I’ve got to tell her, he thought. She needs to know what’s going on.

  If anything, it wouldn’t be too hard to find the boy. He could judge, just by the visions alone, that he had to be somewhere high—in a location where structures were built well-above the ground and where towers were more than prevalent. Or, he questioned, he would just be leading himself into a wild adventure that had no answer. Maybe the boy didn’t exist at all, nor his plight or the very thing that Nova had seen.

  Maybe… maybe…

  Movement stirred him from thought.

  Pushing herself forward, Katarina rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands. She didn’t take notice of him until he turned his head on the base of his neck and looked her directly in the eyes. “Nova?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  With a deep breath and an even more unsure fault of consciousness, Nova walked to the bed and settled down beside her. He took her hand in his, offered a slight smile, then began to recount the events of last night. He explained how, after he’d woken from what he considered to be a dream, he’d seen the form of light and just how it had spoken to him. He explained of the young man’s plight, of the danger there was were he not to find and help him, and how that, were he to find this young boy named Odin, their future would likely be secured for the both of them.

  Shortly after he said he needed to leave to see what the whole thing meant, she started crying.

  “I won’t be gone that long,” he said, reaching out to stroke the hair out of her eyes.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I just need to go where the towers are, that’s all. Who knows? I might only be gone for—”

  “You don’t know how long you’ll be gone!” she cried, slapping his cheek as hard as her frail form allowed. “You don’t know!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not bothering to reach up and touch his face. “I don’t want to put you or your father in any danger.”

  “Danger? Nova, why would you—”

  “The voice said that it would be there in my time of need if I went and helped the boy, Katarina. I don’t know when my time of need will be, because it never mentioned if my ‘time of need’ would be something I would go through or something that would happen to you or your father.”

  “But how—”

  “Look,” he said. He took his face in her hands and stroked the tears away from her laugh-lines. “I don’t know why I have to help this young man, but for whatever reason it is, I need to go. He’s locked in a tower, Katarina. He’s all alone in the world.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Please, understand I’m doing this because I don’t want you hurt.”

  “You wouldn’t. You—”

  Katarina trailed off. The tears that streamed down her face was enough to tear holes in Nova’s heart—to render his soul unconquerable and therefor diminish the fact that he was, like anyone else in this world, a man, one who loved his wife so much that it pained him so to leave her stranded like this.

  He needs help, he thought, kissing Katarina’s tears, and only I can offer it.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I love you so much, Katarina.”

  “I love you too.”

  He took her in his arms.

  Her touch was enough to remind him just how much he had to lose.

  Cold wind battered him. Harsh feelings destroyed him.

  Dressed in his thick winter coat and his long, insulated pants, Nova prepared one of Ketrak’s horses in preparation for his journey and tried his hardest not to falter in the face of such horrors. The scythe, tied near the end of the saddlebag, could be easily accessed should the need arise, while his clothes and rations lay in the bags at the side, threatening to overflow just by bearing one’s eyes down upon them. The old horse, stubborn in its own right, whinnied under the waning winter chill, just as it allowed itself to shake its head and cast its mane to the side.

  “It’s all right,” Nova said, stroking the stallion’s neck. “We’re just going on a little trip, that’s all.”

  The horse snorted, nudging Nova’s shoulder.

  In that moment, it seemed like everything either wanted him to go somewhere or nowhere at all.

  Looking up, Nova trained his eyes on the window that opened up to their room and saw Katarina sitting in the windowsill. He didn’t look at her for long for fear that, should he intrude on her privacy, she might leave the windowsill and miss his departure entirely.

  I’ll be back eventually. It’s not like I’m leaving her for good.

  Before he could return h
is attention to the horse, Ketrak walked the brief distance of the field and to the stables. Almost immediately, the right side of the man’s face came into view, revealing a darkened jaw.

  “Before you go,” Ketrak said, sliding his hand into his pocket. “I want you to have this.”

  The mayor pushed a black sack into Nova’s hand. When Nova lifted it to examine it closer, the contents inside clinked together. “Is this—”

  “Money?” Ketrak nodded. “I don’t want my son-in-law running around without any coin.”

  “I can’t take this, sir.”

  “Take it, Nova. You’ll need money to bribe someone if you decide to sleep in their barn, and you know that a bed at an inn isn’t cheap.”

  “I know.” He looked down at the sack of gold, then to the man before sliding it into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said, reaching out to shake Ketrak’s hand. “You don’t know how much it means to me.”

  “I think I do.”

  Nova mounted his horse.

  His eyes strayed to the window.

  Katarina remained in the windowsill, watching him.

  “Goodbye,” Nova said, turning his eyes on Ketrak. “I’ll be back. Tell Katarina that I love her, please.”

  “I will.”

  Raising his hand, Nova waved at Katarina, desperately fighting to keep his emotions in check.

  As though grasping part of her and pulling her with him, he captured her form in the palm of his hand, then closed it into a fist and brought it to his chest.

  In his heart, an ache began.

  He tried to console himself with thoughts of home as he pushed his horse into a trot and to the distant fence—where, near its borders, the house hands stood, shivering in full winter attire and waiting for him to continue forward.

  Sometimes, things came crashing down, while at others things apart. Often than not, however, something broke into the cycle of life and disrupted it. Life, death, salvation, imprisonment, destiny, fate, fortitude, honor, security, a man’s life and a woman’s sadness—no matter the cause, no matter the significance, there was always something to break the chain and begin it anew.

  Now, as Nova led his horse down a road to a place he did not know, he took one last look back at his home, closed his eyes, then began to whistle under his breath, if only to reassure himself that everything would be just fine.

  Chapter 3

  “Good. Very good. Now, hold it there for a little while longer.”

  Watch it burn, the man could have said. Watch it burn.

  Suspended in midair by little more than absolute concentration and pure thought, a white ball of flame hovered between a young man and his teacher who sat idly by watching the feat before him with kind eyes and an even more rational expression. Smiling, ecstatic, and quite contrary to the emotions that his student was currently placating, the teacher gestured for the boy to raise the flame first into the air, then to his left and right before asking for it to be trailed into a figure-eight. This thing—this grand infinity symbol—seemed even to burn within the air after the ball of flame fell back into place and offered what many could have considered an affinity of knowledge and strength that many in the common world did not possess, for it was not taught within the normal confines outside the royal walls. It was for this reason that when the teacher told the young man to release the flame that the boy curled his hand into a fist.

  Much like a piece of paper crumbling under pressure, the flame shrunk, hissed as fire does when fuel is added to it, then pulsed and burped a plume of white before disappearing altogether.

  The teacher, now in hysterics more than ever, thrust himself to his feet and clapped.

  “Very good, very good!” the man said, clapping so hard that for a moment the boy wondered just whether or not the man’s wrists would disengage from his arms entirely. “Very good, Odin.”

  Professor Daughtry’s face lit up in a smile. Odin barely nodded.

  “Hey,” the man said, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Cheer up. You’re doing great.”

  Instantly, Odin’s muscle tensed under the pressure of touch, as if he’d just been struck far greater than he really had been, and reacted as if he were a shelled animal bearing its defenses when touched by outside stimuli.

  In response to this sudden, almost-unnerving recognition, one of the few high mages of the kingdom of Ornala pulled his head back and offered a frown. “Does it hurt when I touch you?” he asked.

  “No,” Odin said.

  Yes, he thought.

  As though sensing something was wrong, the professor pulled his hand back and allowed it to fall slack at his side.

  “I’m sorry for your conditions, Odin.”

  “Don’t be.”

  Because you’re not. You don’t care because it doesn’t affect you at all.

  Living, alone, with his daughter, in the Outer District, in a place where normality seemed all the more peaceful and separated from such a thing as royal imprisonment—this man, this high mage, had not a thing in the world to worry about, for his life was just as simple as any common man’s would be. But here he was—Odin Karussa, of Felnon descent, and sixteen-years-old—imprisoned in a tower for a crime and penance he had yet to ever commit. To think that Daughtry, though kind, actually cared for him, would have been idiotic, and for that Odin bowed his head and stared at the floor—that same, dirty floor in which he had spent the last two years of his life in.

  Daughtry, in response to this enlightened accusation, began to gather his things up—first the sack he routinely carried to the tower every other day, then the leather-bound book that had become a staple in each of their lessons. He stared at this for several long moments, as if judging its form, before pushing it out to Odin, who merely raised his head.

  “Here you go,” the magic man said.

  “Sir?”

  “It’ll help,” Daughtry smiled, pressing the tome into Odin’s hands. “I know you like to read, but textbooks can get a little boring after a while, especially considering that you’ve probably read most, if not everything about the kingdom. At least this will keep you entertained and learning.”

  “Are you sure you want me to have this? What if I—”

  “I’d prefer if you wait for me to be present before you attempt any of the magic, but I won’t stop you. You’ve got a better grasp on your powers than most boys your age to.”

  “That’s because you’ve been helping me.”

  “Yes, but it takes talent and skill to use magic, as well as hard work.”

  “Thank you.”

  Before turning to leave, his pack in hand and the book just passed to Odin, the high mage attempted to reach forward, but stopped halfway.

  “Have a good day,” the man nodded, pulling the hood of his long robes over his head.

  With a simple knock, the guards in the outside world opened the door and let Daughtry out of the tower.

  It was with this exit that Odin began to come to terms with something.

  His shoulder stung.

  Maybe being touched did hurt after all.

  Nightmares haunted his sleep. A baby shrouded in a cloak; a storm brewing overhead; a purple-pink fire flowing from long, delicate fingers and into an infant’s chest—all this, but for what? A memory, a thought, a manifestation of something he had heard or read—what, he wondered, could this possibly be, if not a message from some outside source wishing him to remember something he could not possibly have experienced?

  Just rising from his sleep in a fit of unease and mental torment, Odin sat up and pushed his hair out of his eyes, where soon after they sought out the window. A faint, yellow-gold light washed through the window, signifying the rise of the sun on the opposite side of the world. The sight alone was enough to make him consider just how good it would feel to go out and bask beneath its rays.

  No.

  He pushed the idea from his head. Such fantasies existed only in his mind and nowhere else. Should he allow such things to brew—fester, culminate
, coagulate within his head—they would only morph into a knot separated from the rest of his body, and from there he would drift, unable to tell just what lay before him and what existed just outside the window.

  When a knock came out the door, Odin settled back down onto the mattress and closed his eyes, not in the least wanting to deal with a guard bringing in breakfast. It was always cold and undercooked anyway—what use was there to play sympathy for someone who cared not for his condition?

  When the door opened and the figure stepped closer into the room, the door behind him or her hitting the stone against the wall created a loud, disjointed echo that reverberated off the stones and threatened to swallow him whole.

  Open your eyes, a voice said.

  Odin fought to keep them shut.

  What reason did he have to show anyone who entered the respect they so rightfully didn’t deserve?

  When he heard from the opposite side of the room the sound of the door closing and locking behind him or her, Odin opened his eyes to find a tray of food splayed out before him—arranged, purposely, on the single stool reserved for those from the outside world to seat themselves upon.

  A single note was attached to the platter.

  Odin reached forward, but stopped before he could touch it.

  Who, of all people, would leave him a note?

  Daughtry? he thought. The king?

  No. Despite the loyalty he served to the man under which he knew he would one day serve, he knew his attentions were set elsewhere—toward, he knew, the distant world, the lands beyond the border; especially Germa, where war seemed so ready to burst forth and swallow their kingdom whole. This would not have been a message from the king, but who could it possibly be?