A Poisoned Land (Book 1: Faith, Lies and Blue Eyes)

by Craig P Roberts

  His friend stepped into the ring with the staff also tucked behind his right shoulder. Owin spun the staff out from his ready position and started spinning a complicated pattern all around his body. It must have looked impressive. He must have looked invincible. Before Owin knew what was happening, Baskie threw his staff up in the air, caught it at the very end, dropped to a squat and swiped Owin’s legs from underneath him. With one move, the young brother was in the dust. Both staffs went flying in opposite directions.

  “Fuck!” Owin cursed. Frazer came running.

  “You lifted your eyes to look at your staff when you went overhead,” Baskie said, in a dull voice. “You didn’t need to take it overhead anyway. I was in front of you. I think you spin too much. You just—”

  “Okay, fine! I’ll spin less… Fuck!” Owin rubbed the back of his leg where Baskie’s staff had smashed into it.

  “It looked good though,” Frazer chirped in. “It was so fast. You could hardly see the staff. It might intimidate people.” He crouched over Owin. “Here…” Frazer tucked his arm under Owin’s, lifting him to his feet.

  Sand was engrained on his face and one side of his blue top had the light orange dust on it, which Frazer quickly brushed off.

  “Fuck the staffs, let’s just spar normally,” Owin said, wiping snot from his nose. He staggered his feet wide and bent his knees, bringing his fists level with his belt.

  Baskie didn’t say anything, he just stood upright with his skinny arms by his side. Owin ran at him, throwing a roundhouse kick high to Baskie’s head who just swayed to avoid it, quickly planting a kick in exactly the same place his staff had hit moments ago. Owin was on the ground again, looking back up at the skinny silhouette of his opponent framed by the glaring sun.

  Frazer helped him up again. Rising, Owin ran at Baskie and shot a jab to his face—parried. A cross to the face—slapped away. A hook to the ear, which Baskie grabbed and joint-locked behind Owin’s back and twisted him to his knees.

  “Ahhhh okay!” Owin submitted, tapping his chest. “When the fuck did you get so good?!” Owin blurted as he stood up, brushing the sand off his trousers.

  “It didn’t just happen. You learn to protect yourself when you have to.” Baskie’s eyes narrowed and his face tightened. “When a man comes at you to take your food, or worse, you can’t just spin a staff! You throw sand in the fuckwit’s eyes and kick him in the balls and run.”

  Frazer stared, wide-eyed and asked, “Where do you go where these things happen?”

  “He’s been everywhere,” Owin said, studying Baskie as he stood in front of them—not looking in any way shaken or tired by what had just happened.

  “And everywhere is the same, if people want something, they take it. If you’re not ready to stop them, then you’re fucked. Strong and powerful people out there take what they want,” Baskie said, walking away to pick up his staff.

  “It’s different here though. Nobody takes anything from anybody,” Frazer piped up.

  Baskie smiled. “Not by force. But everybody takes something. We use each other for whatever we want. I’ve seen it everywhere I go. You’re being controlled and you don’t even know it. I’m the only free person in the world.”

  I’m free, Owin wanted to say but saw Baskie was being deadly serious and he didn’t want another blow to his already tender left leg. “Well, can you teach me to kick people in the balls then?”

  Baskie cracked a smile, and this time his eyes smiled too. He laughed.

  So he does actually laugh.

  They started walking back to Owin’s pod. He waited for Frazer to separate away from them to go back to his own pod before speaking to Baskie again. “So did Saul teach you all that?”

  “No, he taught me a bit last time I was here but you can’t just get taught that. I learned the hard way.”

  “What’s the hard way?”

  Baskie grabbed him, threw him to the ground and flipped him onto his stomach. An arm closed around his neck.

  “Stop me…” Baskie said, calmly. “I’m going to take the only food you’ve had all day and then fuck you up the arse. So stop me…”

  Owin couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. Every part of him just wanted to get rid of the horrible bruising, invading arm bone crushing his throat. Fuck! Please! Owin’s thoughts drifted away from him.

  Then, air! Baskie dropped him, face down to the ground. He sucked in and filled his chest.

  After a few minutes Baskie spoke. “Sorry.”

  Owin was still busy filling his chest with the best air he’d ever tasted. As he gathered himself, he didn’t feel any anger towards the person who nearly choked the life out of him. He understood him now. “You had to fight or you’d die.”

  Baskie nodded and pressed his lips tight together, blowing air through them.

  “Then just stay here. You’d be safe here. Everybody’s free and you don’t have to worry about people attacking you and steeling your shit.”

  Owin couldn’t imagine the world his friend came from.

  There was never crime of any kind on the Mother’s Island. The outposts protected them from any outsiders and every brother on the island followed the rules, never harming one another. It was freedom and it was all Owin had ever known.

  “I’ve told you already. You’re not free! People are attacking you all the time and are taking things from each other. You just don’t know it.” The boy who’d just choked him spoke with such certainty that Owin struggled to disbelieve anything he said.

  “Okay,” Baskie went on, “so let’s say I stay. But I wanted my friend, a woman called Kiko, to stay with me in my bedchambers. She works hard and would follow all the rules and never harm anyone. Would the Mister let me?”

  “A woman?” Owin asked. “You mean a false goddess?” Baskie’s words sometimes confused him. People that were not part of the Mother’s Island would strangely call false goddesses (and even real ones) girls or women. “The Mister protects us! Why would he let you take somebody onto the Island that would harm us?”

  “She wouldn’t harm you,” Baskie snapped back. “She makes nice soup and she stitches your clothes when they rip. She’s a great fighter and would help protect everybody. She taught me how to protect myself. She’s blind but can sense everything around her better than anybody. That’s why they call her the Blind-Seer. She’s amazing!”

  “Yes, and she’ll try to take your seed and then infect you.” He couldn’t believe that Baskie didn’t know all of this.

  “One, she’s never tried to take my seed and two, she’s not diseased. I come here to be safe for a while but when I’m here, I’m not truly free. And neither are you! Look what happened when Leon said that he didn’t believe what the Mister teaches. That’s why you shot him, wasn’t it?”

  Owin felt a throbbing in his chest when he heard his deceased brother’s name. How does he know about Leon? Who told him? The memory came flooding back. His eyes darted from side to side.

  Before words would come out, Baskie spoke again. “Or did you kill him just because the Mister said to? So either you were free and decided to fire, or Leon was free and you were controlled into letting that arrow go.”

  Owin punched the ground. He watched the long grass blowing gently in the wind, thinking back to the moment when he spun around with his bow, instantly drew and then fired. “I wasn’t the only one that shot him. Saul did too.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything? I’m talking about you, Owin. I’m trying to make you see the truth.”

  I just thought it might make you shut the fuck up for a moment.

  But it didn’t. Baskie continued, “Saul’s free…or at least the most free one on this island.”

  “But Saul shot him too!”

  Baskie looked him right in the eyes, this time sounding more like a friend again. “Owin, have you ever spoken to Saul about what happened that night?”

  The air felt so fresh and the sun was warm. The world around him felt calm but inside his head was a
violent storm of arrows, Leon, Baskie, a red glow and a deathly boom. He shook his head.

  Baskie’s blue eyes widened as he spoke. “Maybe you should…”

  To spill blood with a blade, even blood of one’s enemies, is folly. For the Great Poison still remains, trapped within the bodies of all mortals.

  New Scripture, Meltane 3.1 The Maran

  Stewart

  Wit in a Rotting Vessel

  His fat bloated hands were starting to wrinkle. Not from age, but from the bath water he had been stuck in for the last hour. King Stewart of the Wetlands had seen thirty-eight years but was less able than a crippled old man. The water was now tepid and beginning to give him a chill. He had sent his servants away earlier to give himself some privacy and now required their help to get his rotund body out of the bath. Using a slippery hand, he grasped at the side of the smooth wooden edge, trying one last time to haul himself out.

  “So’Chor’s Cock,” he cursed under his breath. “Lorne, your mighty king is finished!” Come see his flabbiness as he wobbles to bed, he amused himself with self-loathing. Lying back, looking at the high stone ceiling of his wash chambers, he tried to remember what his own cock looked like. It had been years since he had seen it on account of his ever-growing belly.

  A knock at the door snapped him out of his self-pity. “Come.”

  Lorne walked in along with another of his horde, Shell. “Do you require assistance, Your Grace?”

  “Yes I do, my sweet Shell. What does my cock look like? Please remind me,” he said for fun.

  He was met with silence.

  “My wonderful kingly cock…What does it look like again?”

  “Your Grace, I—” Shell’s eyes darted around the room as she rubbed her hands together with a shake.

  You would have thought she would be used to my hilarious self-pitying by now. It was his only way of getting past the horrible and cruel joke the gods were playing on him. King of the Wetlands…a horde of women…a beautiful wife…the man with the responsibility (as one of the ten kings) to lead the spread of life—yet they make his muscles fail slowly and his body grow fat. Perhaps they were punishing him for taking a brown-eyed woman as his wife. And Stewart’s transgressions didn’t stop there: years later he elevated a woman with brown eyes to the status of queen to serve in his court and aid in ruling his kingdom. However these things were becoming more acceptable in most of the kingdoms. Maybe the High-Ten aren’t so accepting of my actions and that is why I am slowly being disallowed the dignity of being able to wipe my own arse.

  “I would like to get out now.” Stewart forced a smile that was meant to comfort the two doting women.

  Splashing, slopping and heaviness followed. Along with lots of sharp grasping nails, splashing and grunting. All of this just to get out of a bath. I’m looking forward to seeing them haul me up hills and roll me down the other side, he jested in his head, thinking forward to their long journey starting at dawn the next day.

  They had him standing up, one under each arm, with his legs still half submerged in the bath water. Now all that was left was to get the oversized, hairy, dripping mess over the edge of the bath and into its chair. With all the will in the world, King Stewart looked at his right leg and yearned for it to lift, up and over. It took its time but the leg did indeed raise then landed on the cold slate floor. Aren’t I clever? Lorne worked her way around the bath to join Shell, ready for the next perilous lifting of the left leg.

  “Well ladies, here goes nothing.”

  They smiled politely at his attempt to lighten the situation. The two women shook, faces straining under King Stewart’s immense body. Both shaking legs had made it over the edge of the bath and he now stood on the slate floor. At last, his women put him out of his misery and covered his grotesque body with a robe large enough to be a tent.

  As he tied the front together to hide his dripping wobbly man-breasts, he jested, “Sorry, my beauties, the wonderful show is over.” With their help, he shuffled over to his wooden chair, made with wheels to allow him to be rolled to wherever need be…as long as there were no stairs of course. Stairs would usually bring another wonderful display of wobbling, grabbing and flopping. Lorne stood behind King Stewart and eased the chair towards the door. The wooden contraption creaked and swayed.

  Later that night, he lay in bed with his wife on his right, and his queen on his left. He listened to himself breathing. The wheezy short breaths were like a cage. He looked at Tanya, his queen. She was fiercely intelligent but not pleasant to look at. The brown-eyed Queen Tanya was the only person who could outwit King Stewart…and the only one with enough balls to make a fool of him too.

  Then there was Pauline, his beautiful wife. She had twenty-seven years and Stewart was quite sure she was the most stunning creature he had ever seen—even her brown eyes appeared almost magical to him. Most mortals would see weakness in those hazel-colored pools but Stewart saw the beauty within. The gods have been good to her, blessing her with such a specimen of a king to jiggle underneath her as he plants his seed, he mocked himself, feeling guilty that she felt she must stay with him.

  The words of the rider, who arrived just over one moon-turn ago, still ran through his head. The message was sent from the Still City of Mor. It spoke of a growing danger, which they tried to bring up with the High Council of the Ten Kingdoms. However, the ambassadors they had sent to the Beast’s Eye—where the High Council is located—were attacked. They were warned by Prince Luxáran not to return and not to meddle in the affairs of the kingdoms.

  The Still Cities rejected the teachings of the Ten and their leaders had no gods to speak of. Most of the kingdoms respected their way of life, but the First, Peak and Gate—known as the most extreme of the Ten Kingdoms—would attack any of their citizens who strayed into their lands. Attack them even if they were trying to help them it would seem. These three kingdoms were renowned for imprisonment of both outsiders and their own citizens. Thank all Ten that the magisters of Mor aren’t thinking of us all in the same boat, King Stewart thought as he felt the embarrassment of the possibility of being associated with those corrupt and selfish kingdoms.

  The more he tried to sleep, the more he thought about the way this could end. The journey they would begin in the morning was also playing on his mind to a lesser extent. They were to travel to the Watch King, Servin. There he would also meet with King Romarus of Last Kingdom and King Kalon of Long Kingdom. Then their four parties would journey by boat to Hardol, the King of the Bay and then to the Still Cities. There, they would be joined by the King of the Broken Arm and the King of the Dead Cities. For the first time in two centuries, seven of the ten kings would be in the same place at the same time.

  Troubling his mind most of all, were the last few sentences in the Rider’s message:

  We ask that you come with an open mind as we have discovered a truth which threatens us all. It is a truth, which could see a danger far outweighing even that of the Great Poison. It threatens your very way of life, and ours in the Still Cities. This is our reason for asking for your attendance.

  The words churned through his mind. Although the Great Poison divested the Mortal Realm near one thousand years ago, many in the Ten Kingdoms recognize it as the birth of their way of life. King Stewart grew up with the teachings of the Ten from his father and also the stories of the Ten Kingdoms. They had thrived for over nine hundred years, growing strong after the Great Poison. In what is now First Kingdom, ten great men—the only men retaining the power to give life—set out across the land to spread their seed and rebuild. One to the peaks, one to the wetlands, one to the long island in the north, one to guard the last gate of the Veil, one to the broken arm in the south, one to the island in the bay and one to keep watch. Another was sent to the desert before the foothills of the Land of the Old Ways to guard the gap and form Last Kingdom. And one remained in First Kingdom, eventually raised to High-King to rule over the others.

  At this time (the Lost Age), many forgot o
r rejected the gods that lived among them during the Gods’ Age, before the Great Poison. That was until High-King Maran of First Kingdom saw ten black spots on his fingers and ten on his toes: a sign from the gods. They came to him, telling him to pass on the ways. There were tens of thousands of lower-gods but the Ten High-Gods (depicted on the standing stones along the former line of the Veil) spoke through him…the Prophet Maran.

  As a child, Stewart learned of the Ten High-Gods that His Highness Maran first spoke of, nearly one millennia ago. The Ten created and continued to sustain everything: land, sea, sky, air, beast, fish, bird, crawling creature, the lower-gods (who they created in their own image) and every mortal living, dead or yet to be. Ideas, wisdom, health, comfort, happiness, thunder, rain, battle, war, peace, lust, love, loyalty and honor—all influenced and guided by the Ten. Thousands of lower-gods were granted powers in minor roles by the Ten but few mortals worshiped them. Instead, sprites (as the lower-gods are often referred to) received passing mention, but rarely did a mortal bend their knee or sacrifice to them.

  High-King Maran summoned the other nine kings to the Beast’s Eye, an island in the middle of a lake, in the heart of First Kingdom. He talked of the Ten High-Gods. He spoke that each king will choose a queen to act as council. Even after that king’s reign comes to an end, the queen he chooses continues to serve the next king. Only when she steps down, or in the event of her death, would a king select a new queen. Each king will join with a wife of pure blue-sight that he will maintain the line of kings with. And he will have a horde of women to grow his kingdom.

  The Beast’s Eye (where the kings were first summoned), was where the Ten Kingdoms’ laws were made and where their taxes were counted and divided. It was also where the First, Peak and Gate Kingdoms were favored, while the other seven kingdoms were practically forgotten about. They called it the High Council of the Ten Kingdoms. To Stewart, it was more like a secret gathering of arse lickers for the three dominant kingdoms surrounding it. Those nameless arse-licking avatars, chosen by the High-King of First Kingdom himself—supposedly through the will of the gods—had the true power in the Ten Kingdoms. That is the reason it was the first place the magisters of the Still Cities tried to warn of this danger they had discovered. But as usual the numskulls of the First, Peak and Gate would rather attack somebody who aims to help them, rather than listen!