The Redemption, Volume 1

by Clyde B Northrup

  “Peace, my injured friend,” Klaybear said, rising carefully to his feet and moving toward the voice. “I am a kailu of Shigmar; I’m duty bound to help those in need.”

  “Thank the One!” the voice sighed. “I feared my assailants had returned to finish the job. Robbing me wasn’t enough: they dragged me behind their horses for sport. Only this small dagger, hidden in my belt, saved me from certain death.”

  Klaybear spoke a word and a small magluku flared above his head. The figure, as small as a child, huddled in the ditch at the side of the road. The red highlights in the figure’s curly, brown hair sparkled in the magluku. Klaybear took a clean cloth, wet it with water from his water skin, and carefully wiped the dirt from the figure’s face. The small figure had a round, innocent face that made the kailu wonder what kind of person would harm anyone looking so innocent. In the magluku he could see the same curly brown hair with red highlights on the back of the figure’s small hands and the tops of his bare feet, an awemi, he thought. Now that he had cleaned most of the dirt from the awemi’s face, Klaybear saw him clearly for the first time. The kailu’s hand and forehead began to throb; images boiled to the surface of his thoughts, exploding from the chaos of his vision: eyes sunken vacant flesh rotting falling round face curly brown hair feet entangled webs shuddering struggling vainly voiceless shouts monstrous misshapen spider-shape puri face slicing skin limbs consuming eyes vacant staring empty falling webs slicing kortexi slaying face puri spider-shape misshapen raining ice swords curved brother older struggling awemi entangling webs entangling awemi struggling older brother curved swords raining ice monstrous spider shape puri face slaying kortexi slicing webs falling. . . . Klaybear fell back against the road, stunned by the forcefulness of his chaotic vision, which supplanted and overcame, for several moments, his conscious surroundings; the shock of striking the ground after falling jerked him back to the present. When his sight returned to the material world around him, he saw the wounded awemi cringing, inching away from him. He also saw that his white magluku was tainted with a pulsing red glow, reflecting garishly off of the awemi’s troubled face.

  “What’s wrong?” Klaybear asked.

  The awemi stared at him, face still lit by pulsing red light, and moved slowly away. “You just leave me a bottle of Shigmar’s miracle potion and I’ll slip into the woods, never to trouble y-uh . . . the kailum of Shigmar again.”

  Klaybear looked down and saw the mark in his palm pulsing with angry red light. He guessed that his forehead must also be pulsing and glowing. He hung his head and heard, echoing as if from deep in his mind, the words of the cruel messenger: Awake, the sign will mark your separation from those you would save. . . . He sobbed, tasting the first bitter dregs of the cup thrust upon him by the messenger. He raised his head to the awemi and tried to cover his forehead with his hood.

  “Fear not!” Klaybear said. “I am a kailu of Shigmar and will do everything in my power to aid you.”

  “Why do you glow with angry light when you look upon my face?” asked the awemi, still looking like he was ready to crawl away into the woods. “Why do I see the sign of Gar burning in your forehead?” he added in a voice that quavered with fear.

  “First, let me heal you, then I’ll try to explain, although I do not understand myself why it has happened, or what the red light means.” Klaybear drew energy from the air around them and focused it on his left hand, which he raised to the awemi. “See the green light of healing.” He reached toward the awemi and laid his hand upon the awemi’s head. Klaybear felt a pang as he saw the wounded, young awemi shy away from his healing touch but pressed his hand against the awemi’s head, releasing the orthek of healing. “Depending on the seriousness of your wounds, you may grow suddenly tired and fall into a healing sleep. I can take you to my home in Shigmar, where you will be able to rest until fully healed. Or, if you already have a place to stay. . . .” Klaybear left his sentence unfinished.

  The awemi, the fear still plain on his face, eyes focused on the red light pulsing in Klaybear’s face, shaped like the mark of Gar, allowed Klaybear to touch him with the kailu’s orthek. Then the awemi gingerly touched where the scrapes on his arms had been and smiled weakly up at Klaybear. “The look you gave me,” he went on conversationally, “and the light that followed frightened me nearly to flight, but I feel the true power of your healing and believe that I can trust a kailu of Shigmar. Now tell me why you started . . . glowing,” he finished, searching for a word.

  “I don’t know about the pulsing light,” Klaybear began, “but this morning I was given these signs by someone who I guess must have been an agent of evil. He burned them, somehow, into my palm and forehead and followed them with some kind of corrupted vision. I don’t know how else to describe it, but the vision I was given was jumbled, as if I showed you a bunch of pictures in rapid succession without giving you any clear connectors between them. The images were crunched together, piled one on top of the other, and they repeated, backward and forward, as long as I stayed in that state between asleep and awake, where dreams occur.”

  “How does it relate to me?” the awemi asked, as Klaybear paused for a moment, trying to comprehend what had been done to him.

  “Your face was one of many that I saw, repeated throughout the visions,” Klaybear continued, “with some variations. You I saw, trapped in the webs of a monstrous, misshapen spider-like creature, with a puri face, who first came and tore you to pieces, feasting on your flesh.” The awemi shuddered and groaned, flinching away. “Then later, I saw you caught in the same web with the same monstrosity, but I think a seklesi wielding a pair of curved swords that dripped ice came to fight the monster, along with a kortexi, who killed the bloated fiend, and sliced you free of the webs. But these differing visions of your plight were inserted between other images and repeated, forward and backward, throughout the whole vision. So I am not sure where the images that included you begin or end, or if I am actually interpreting them correctly.” Klaybear paused again, wondering how he could make sense out of the things he had seen, especially the fact that the seklesi he had seen come to rescue the awemi was his missing older brother, who they believed was dead.

  The awemi yawned. “I’ll take the second one, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Klaybear smiled. “Yes, being rescued would be preferable to being eaten.”

  “I fear,” another yawn, “I’m slipping away.”

  “Where shall I take you?” Klaybear asked.

  “I trust you.” The awemi yawned again, reaching out to touch his arm.

  “If you would hold me around the neck, I’ll carry you on my back.” He squatted down with his back to the awemi, who just managed to get his arms around Klaybear’s neck before sleep took him. Klaybear stood easily, in spite of his difficult day, for the awemi weighed little more than a child of the same size. He slipped his staff under his belt between his back and the awemi. With his left, uninjured hand, Klaybear held the awemi’s hands, clasped together under his chin, canceled his magluku with the single word, “neki,” and moved back onto the road, trudging toward the walls of Shigmar.

  Klaybear was drenched in sweat by the time he neared the gates of Shigmar. Although the awemi weighed little, Klaybear’s day had not been easy, and he found himself drawing more and more energy from the air around him. He was tired and footsore when he turned from the road and entered a small grove of aspen trees that shielded a telepad, the only way of entering the city after the gates were closed. This particular pad, and the one inside the walls in the kailu ‘safe house’ to which it was connected, were connected by a specialized teka, such that passage was only possible between the two pads, placing them in a different category from typical teleportation ortheks: passage between these two was instantaneous, whereas normal teleportation took precisely one hour to travel between telepads. Shigmar, like all cities in the realm, was shielded against teleport ortheks, preventing enemies from simply appearing inside the walls by means of teleportation. T
he main telepad of Shigmar, known by members of the other orders of good, allowed entry into the city by using the telepad. The pad known only to kailum was specially tuned to the pad outside the walls, hidden in the grove of aspens. The novice kailu could pass from one pad to the other, simply by speaking the word, “entos,” while holding his or her symbol of Shigmar. Klaybear stepped onto the pad, inscribed with special symbols of teka, and held up his silver symbol. He spoke the word of command; the aspens faded and the room appeared, but he entered slightly off-balance. He staggered to one side, dropping his silver symbol so that it swung back and forth on its chain while he danced drunkenly across the floor, finally regaining his balance without losing his passenger. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Klaybear,” a voice began, “are you all right? You look rather flushed.”

  He turned and saw Rebeth, a young kailu the same age as Klaybear, shorter, well-built, with dark curly hair and dark eyes. “Just a little tired,” Klaybear admitted, “I had a rough day.”

  “Rough day in the grove?” Rebeth asked eyebrows raising.

  “Yes,” he replied, “something is amiss. I found a wethi there, one who I did not recognize, garbed as a kailu; there was something familiar about him that I think I should recognize, but I cannot decide what it was. He somehow branded me,” he held up his hand and pointed to his forehead, “carved the same mark on the altar before destroying it, and turned my vision into some kind of never ending nightmare.”

  Rebeth looked stunned. “Klaybear, this isn’t another one of your jokes?” he asked. “You’ve always been fond of playing pranks on me.” He smiled weakly.

  Klaybear shook his head. “I wish it were, Rebeth,” he sighed. “I wish it were.”

  “That might explain why the masters were restless and ate little at supper,” Rebeth said. “And some have been here several times looking for you.”

  “Who’s been here?” Klaybear asked.

  “Myron, three times,” Rebeth noted. “He was here an hour ago, checking for your arrival. He left me a message that you should see him as early as possible tomorrow.”

  “Who else?”

  “Your wife,” Rebeth grinned slyly, “although I lost count of the number of times she’s been here since I came on watch. Mirelle told me she had been visiting all afternoon. She was very agitated the last time she was here, about half an hour ago.”

  Klaybear groaned. “Sorry, Rebeth,” he apologized. “I told her I would be home by supper time.”

  “Who’s your small passenger?” Rebeth asked, pointing to the awemi on Klaybear’s back.

  “An awemi I found lying in the ditch about a mile from the wall,” Klaybear replied. “Oddly enough, he was one of the faces I saw.”

  “I’ll send a report to the masters,” Rebeth noted, “so they should know by morning. Meanwhile, you better get home before Klare comes again; I’ll be surprised if you get home without meeting her,” Rebeth smiled and gave Klaybear a pat on the shoulder. “See you later.”

  “Goodbye, my friend.”

  He left the small house in the northwest quarter and moved at his fastest speed, which was only a slow walk, toward his home near the school of the kailum. He prepared himself for a scolding, knowing his wife of less than a year would be very upset by his not coming home when he said he would. He mulled over in his mind possible responses to his wife’s wrath, thinking of how he might divert her from her anger. The awemi, although asleep, might be useful; her desire to help those in need would cool her anger. Eventually, after leaving the northwest quarter of the city, passing through the west quarter and entering the southwest quarter, he turned down his street and steered toward the only house still lit. He opened the door and went in.

  “Hello, dear,” Klaybear called, trying to make his voice light. “I’m home.”

  “Oooh! You!” Klare’s voice shouted from another room. “And about time! Leaving me here half the night wondering if you still lived or if you were lying wounded in the ditch somewhere, unconscious or worse. I’ve half a mind to send you to the backyard to sleep with the dog!”

  “But we don’t have a dog,” Klaybear mumbled to himself as he moved into the guest room and laid the awemi carefully on the bed. He turned back to the door, hearing his wife bustle in, and started to speak. “Look what I’ve. . . .” He stopped mid-sentence, interrupted when his eyes fell upon Klare’s face. As with the awemi, so also the face of his wife triggered another explosion of images from his vision. He staggered back onto the bed and felt his forehead and hand begin to pulse: eyes open ashes falling vacant crumpled body naked swollen lying lashed red hair honey sliced belly blood klare face hollow eyes “Klaybear?” blood vacant empty staring unchild empty vacant staring eyes green blood red vacant spilled staining green trampled grass laughter eyes open ashes falling vacant crumpled body naked swollen lying lashed red honey hair sliced belly blood klare face empty staring eyes hollow green staining staff rod sword flaring belly whole lashes green white gold fire smoothing searing flesh blood chest moving eyes filled voice calling smile calling voice “Klaybear!” filled eyes moving chest blood flesh searing smoothing fire gold white green lashes whole belly flaring sword rod staff staining green hollow eyes staring empty face klare blood belly sliced hair honey red lashed lying swollen naked body crumpled vacant falling ashes open echoeslaughterblood pain laughterstaringvacant eyeslaughterblood bloodblood laughterpainpainpainpainpain. . . . Klare’s face, wrinkled with concern and calling him, cut-off the explosion of images hurled into his consciousness.

  “Klaybear!” Klare shook him, her voice now sounding frightened. “Are you ill? Why does the wound on your forehead pulse with angry red light? I feared to touch you. . . .”

  Klaybear saw the tears forming in her green eyes and wrapped his arms tightly about her small, lithe body. He sobbed as he buried his face in her honey-flecked brown hair and smelled the scent of lilacs blooming. She held him as fiercely as he held her, waiting for his sobs to subside before releasing him and looking deeply into his brown eyes. She stroked his curly hair and, with the fingers of her mind, tried to soothe and smooth his troubled thoughts. He could feel her mental fingers smoothing the chaos in his mind, wishing all the time that he could share his troubles to ease the burden of his mind and help his heart settle down. When he relaxed, she kissed him once on the cheek and stood to examine the person he had brought home. Her hands glowed green, and she moved from head to toe and back again, pausing occasionally to heal the awemi’s cuts and bruises.

  “Where did you find him?” she asked as she let her hands fall to her sides, the green light winking out.

  “Lying in a ditch. He claimed to have been dragged there behind the horses of his assailants, escaping by means of a dagger hidden in his belt. But his wounds do not seem grievous.”

  “No, minor cuts and abrasions. No signs of internal injuries. How soon after you cast a healing orthek upon him did he go to sleep?”

  “Five minutes, maybe longer.”

  “Nothing serious then.” She held one hand out to her him. “Come on, I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

  He took her hand and pulled himself to his feet. “Not very, but I’m sure a bite of something would help. Sorry I’m so late,” he added, smiling weakly.

  She nodded and led him to the kitchen, seated him at the table, and moved to one of the counters. “Now tell me what happened while I make you a sandwich,” she said, taking a loaf of bread from one of the cupboards.

  Klaybear began to recount his day, from the time he left home early in the morning until he returned. Klare interrupted him at the point where the messenger first spoke.

  “You didn’t see him before, when you entered the glade?” Klare asked, turning from the counter and ceasing to slice the loaf of bread; she held the knife poised to slice down.

  “No, I didn’t see him until after he spoke,” Klaybear replied. “He could have been hiding behind one of the trees and stepped out when I released the energy.”

 
; “I thought you said he was sitting in Elos’s Chair?” Klare turned back to the counter and set the knife down, putting sliced beef and cheese along with a leaf of lettuce on the sandwich.

  “He was.”

  “It would be difficult for anyone to step from behind one of the trees and sit on Elos’s Chair without being seen; both altar and chair are in plain view from where you were standing.” Klare placed the sandwich she made on a plate and carried it to the table. “What will you drink, dear?”

  “Milk, to soothe my stomach.”

  Klare took a glass from another cupboard and took a bottle of milk from their tengle. “You didn’t notice any surges of power before you saw him?” She filled the glass and returned the bottle to their tengle.

  “No, and because of the excess of energy I had taken in, I would have felt even the smallest orthek. The fact that he sat in the Elos’s Chair put me slightly off-guard: only a servant of the One, I thought, would sit in his chair. Also, there was something about him that seemed familiar, but I cannot recall what.”

  “Something about his clothing,” Klare began, “or the way he talked, or maybe his appearance?” she suggested to try and spark his memory.

  Klaybear sat in thought for a time, but the details of the stranger were hazy and slipped away even as he tried to recall them; he let his breath escape slowly and shook his head. “The more I think about him,” he noted, “the less I can remember.”

  Klare frowned. “Let it go,” she said, “for now; continue with your story.”

  Klaybear went on to describe his encounter with the messenger, how he had been given the mark, and the visions he had seen. “That’s what troubles me the most,” he said when he finished.