Memories of Orman filled Ah’Rhea’s mind, and tears fell from her eyes so freely that she didn’t know whether she was more racked with embarrassment or sadness. She had never admitted to anyone what she had seen in Orman. She had barely admitted it to herself. Yet as Sigrid said, it was plainly there. Orman Eil Dragaredd had succumbed to darkness deep within his bones, and it had ultimately taken his life. Ah’Rhea again reached forward for Sigrid Sif, and the two women shared in each other’s heartache.
Sigrid suffered another fit of coughing, and now blood lined her lips in a deep red. “I know what those butterflies are, because Gokul told me long ago,” she said after wiping the blood from her mouth. “I fear their presence means he has returned from his exile on Earth.”
Gildwyn and Endemall had watched this entire conversation in silence, but now, as Gildwyn noticed Sigrid’s frail voice beginning to falter and the blood she was coughing up, he dared to ask a question before losing the woman too soon.
“What are those butterflies, great Master?”
Sigrid’s voice was but a whisper now as she spoke, but her eyes remained wide, so wide it seemed almost as if she was possessed. “Gokul told me he was in pursuit of the most powerful jawhar that existed, a jawhar to rule over all, a dark jawhar.”
Again, Sigrid was afflicted by a fit of coughing, and now Minas flapped her wings, squawking loudly. Ah’Rhea bolted up from her chair as the great bird became as bright as fire and flew out of the cave like a blaze. Gildwyn and Endemall turned to each other in scared silence, and then they heard Ah’Rhea’s pleas.
“No, Sigrid, no.” She bent low, kneeling next to the old woman’s bed, and took Sigrid’s limp hands in her own. “Don’t leave,” Ah’Rhea pleaded. “Don’t leave.”
Alas, it was no use. Sigrid Sif had passed.
“The Exiled One?” Endemall whispered to Gildwyn. “Returned?”
Gildwyn Nye shook his head slowly in disbelief. What in the name of Ferren were they going to do?
XII
Tucked within the northeastern coastline of Whiteclaw tribe was the Bay of Little Sight. The bay was one of the most aptly named bodies of water in all Ferren, and the villagers of both Linden and Malloy, the villages north and south of the bay, deemed the waters unnavigable for a multitude of reasons.
Encompassed by a crescent of shoreline, the Bay of Little Sight might as well have been a complete void. Immense gray rocks littered the beach all along the crescent and rose intermittently from the shallow waters as well. The Bay of Little Sight stayed shallow much farther from shore than a traditional bay. In fact, local fishers took to wading into the bay with a net rather than using a rowboat. A person over six feet tall could walk two hundred yards into the bay before the waters were waist high. However, he fish were scarce and they tasted oily and foul after cooking.
No one ventured any farther out into the bay, where the waters grew in depth. A boat might find its hull damaged by any number of things, as the bottom of the bay was a graveyard containing the unfortunate vessels that had become lost in its waters. The impetus for such disorientation was what inevitably caused the bay to be dubbed Little Sight, as the sky in this region of Ferren was always gray, allowing neither the sun nor the moon nor the stars to light the bay. To make matters worse, fog hung perpetually in both cold weather and warm. No one in either village had an explanation for the strange phenomenon. They took it as a sign that the bay was damned.
Corbin also took the fog as a sign that the bay was damned. But because he thought of himself as a man damned, he felt a certain kinship with the waters. He enjoyed the malaise of the gray skies, and he welcomed the blanket of choking fog. He saw each individual rock that shot up from the sand and water as a friend, and the ghostly, wrecked vessels at the bottom of the bay as fallen ancestors. If Ferren saw the bay as something to be avoided, then that fact made the waters all the more attractive to Corbin. He was quite satisfied to call the bay his home.
As he rowed his small wooden boat past immense gray rock after immense gray rock, he felt the need to tout the bay’s qualities to his guest.
“You see, Chief Redcroft, I don’t think people give this bay enough credit.” The hood of Corbin’s large black cloak hung over his eyes, but his smile could be seen white below the shadow it cast. “It’s a peaceful place, and well protected from outsiders. It might not be as glamorous as a palace, but just look at it. It has its qualities.”
Whiteclaw tribe chief Fordrick Redcroft was at the opposite end of the boat from Corbin, who rowed steadily out into the bay. The chief’s eyes stared off into the fog, and he was silent, leaving Corbin to continue without adding comment.
“Sort of takes your breath away,” Corbin stated with a nod of affirmation. “I’d like to thank you for coming out here with me, Redcroft. I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you that you were going to be a big help. I said to myself, ‘That Chief Redcroft—now there’s a man with a good head on his shoulders.’ And you didn’t disappoint.
“It won’t be much longer before we reach my cabin. It’s not much. It’s quaint. You’ll make yourself right at home. Wait—what’s that you say?” Corbin looked at his guest.
The humidity of the bay had pressed Redcroft’s straight brown locks to his forehead in a way that made the man seem aloof. He continued to stare off into the bay, as if he were completely alone in the boat. Corbin knew the man hadn’t said anything, and had made his comment only to amuse himself. Corbin had spent many hours of his life alone. Dominating a conversation was something he was accustomed to. Making conversation with others, however, was always awkward.
“Man of little words,” Corbin proclaimed. “I like it.” Corbin laughed into the foggy air with a deep rumble and then sighed. “I don’t blame you for not having much to say. Because you’re a tribe chief, I suppose people end up knowing a lot about you before they even meet you. You’re the kind of man who has his history written down in books, after all. I wonder whether they’ll ever write anything about me in a book.” Corbin said this genuinely, taking momentary reprieve from his jesting demeanor. “I suppose they might. Anything is possible. I like to believe that.”
Corbin had taken the little rowboat out into the deeper waters now, and he and Chief Redcroft were surrounded by nothing by dull gray light and fog. It gave one the feeling of having left the world completely.
“It’ll be only a little while longer until we reach my island,” Corbin said. “It’s more of an islet, really.” He laughed again. “There’s only one tree taller than my cabin. I suppose I should feel lucky to be a man of little necessity. However, that doesn’t mean I’m a man of little want.” Corbin continued rowing. “Let me tell you a bit of my history before we reach my cabin. I feel I know so much about you it only seems fair you know a bit more about me.
“When I was in my eighth year, I lived in a much different place than this. You wouldn’t call my parents locals, but anyway. My family and I were vacationing around a lake surrounded by cabins and a forest. Each cabin was small and had its own small dock on the lake. The cabins were tightly packed, and so were the docks. I think the docks were more for aesthetics than for function. Behind the cabins was a fire pit where all the vacationers would gather to make a fire, sing songs, cook food, and generally enjoy one another’s company. It was the sort of place people visited to enjoy a week or two of vacation when the weather was nice.
“On one particular night, everyone was gathered around the fire pit for all the things I just mentioned, having a wonderful night with one another. However, I had other plans. I was an independent child, prone to wandering and creating games in my head for my own enjoyment. On this night, I had decided to make a game of jumping from one dock to the next. The goal was, obviously, to not fall in the water. I can’t remember what made me do this, whether there was some imaginary story I had concocted. I only remember my goal was to jump from one dock to the next. So I did that for…well, I don’t know how long, but I remember being quite content.
I remember seeing the light past the cabins from the fire and hearing the songs everyone was singing. I remember the feel of cool air, the smell of burning wood and cooking food. It’s a very happy memory for me.”
Corbin paused and looked at Redcroft. “Now I see you staring at me with that why-is-this-important look on your face. Don’t worry. I’m getting there. I’m getting there. I just think it’s such a strange and intriguing aspect of the story that I still have such fond memories of that night, because I’ll tell you, Redcroft, most people would have a hard time retelling this story. You see, that was the night I died.”
Corbin’s arms continued to row through the fog, and a slight breeze moved the brown locks on Redcroft’s head. Redcroft stared at Corbin with his jaw slightly agape.
“I know,” Corbin said. “I’m sitting right here, so obviously I didn’t die. But just listen. It’ll all make sense. There I was, jumping from one dock to the next, and wouldn’t you know, one of those docks was wet. Naturally, I slipped and fell into the water, but not before hitting the side of my head on the dock. Oh, I remember that pain as if it just happened,” Corbin said, wincing. “I’ve never been lit on fire, but I imagine it felt like fire bursting out across the side of my head. It was pain that made every part of my body ache and tense uncontrollably.”
Corbin shook his head. “But I didn’t pass out. Nope. I was a tough child. And it was a good thing I didn’t pass out, because then I wouldn’t have felt all of it. I wouldn’t have those memories of drowning, disoriented and in pain. You’ll think I’m crazy, but you have no idea the level of perspective you gain by really experiencing your own death. I consider myself lucky I didn’t pass out. I cherish those sixty seconds I spent fruitlessly fighting for air and life. They’re a part of me now, you know?”
Corbin looked off into the distance as he continued. “I couldn’t stop flailing my arms, but without any focus or direction. It was as when you step on an insect and it just starts writhing and twisting, caught in that torturous in-between-life-and-death moment. I opened my eyes a couple of times under the water, but it was so dark I couldn’t see anything. It didn’t really matter though, as I was constantly wincing from the pain.” Corbin chortled. “Oddly enough, despite all the thrashing my other limbs were doing, my legs never moved. I couldn’t kick them at all. Looking back, I assume I must have paralyzed the lower half of my body somehow when I fell. My own legs became useless weight, dragging me down to my death.
“But once I got past that first part, the exterior part, that’s when things really got interesting. Now came the point where I was beginning to need oxygen, and I knew that when I opened my mouth, there wouldn’t be any. I knew, very clearly, I would breathe in nothing but water and I would drown. I’ll tell you, Chief, it was the strangest moment of my entire life. Maybe it was only a second, but it felt like an hour. There’s no parallel or metaphor I can use to describe it, which makes it hard to explain, but basically, I came to want death. Of course, I didn’t want death in a please-take-this-all-away-from-me sort of way. My body wanted to breathe more than anything, and my mind wanted to breathe more than anything. Even though there was nothing to breathe, I still wanted it. I wanted to breathe that water more than I’ve ever wanted to breathe anything in my life.
“I remember it like yesterday, a moment of such clarity. I could feel the pain in my chest mounting, intensifying, asking me, begging me to open my mouth and gasp, yet knowing full well it was death, essentially, I would be opening my mouth to. I fought it as long as I could, but eventually I couldn’t fight it any longer, and the moment I gave up was so sweet. I took pull after pull of murky lake water, and gradually I became still, and gradually the darkness crept in. Not a living darkness, mind you. As I’ve already said, I was already immersed in the darkness of the lake. But if you can imagine something darker than the most bitter darkness you’ve ever experienced, if you can imagine something total and complete, that darkness took me and surrounded me until there was less than nothing, until I was less than nothing.”
Corbin shivered. “Now that’s a life-changing moment.” He looked at Redcroft. “Of course, there’s more to the story. How did I get from there to here? you’ll surely be wondering. Well, the next thing I can remember is being out of the lake, lying flat on my back, and looking up at two people, an older man with a bald head and a young boy that looked just like me. I remember wondering who those people were and why I wasn’t dead, because at that moment I knew I wasn’t dead.
“I sat up, and the older man spoke to the young boy that looked like me. My ears weren’t working perfectly, but I could tell they were having a conversation. The boy that looked like me kept looking at me with such sadness in his eyes. After they finished talking, the boy gave me one more fleeting glance and turned and walked toward everyone who was gathered at the fire. Then the older man gathered me up and carried me away, off into the dark forest.
“As the minutes passed and my faculties returned to me, the older man explained he had brought me back from the dead. I didn’t doubt he was telling me the truth. After all, I remembered every second of my ordeal. Then, as he carried me farther into the forest, I came to feel safe in his arms. I suppose when someone saves your life, you don’t really have reason to think the person would ever cause you harm afterward. It just seems impossible, right?
“Anyway, he told me as he walked onward that people who have been brought back from the dead were not allowed to stay where they had been. He said it was a rule. He said it upset nature. I was eight, so I didn’t doubt him. Part of me was in shock, and the other part was just so thankful to be alive again. I immediately took everything he said as truth. He explained to me that he told my brother about the rule and told my brother to explain the rule to my parents so they wouldn’t ask about me or wonder why I wasn’t around. My brother was the boy I saw when I awoke, the one I didn’t know. Truthfully, I didn’t even know my name when I woke up. If the older man hadn’t used my name while carrying me through the forest, who knows what name I might have ended up with?”
At this point Corbin stopped rowing, and out of the fog drifted a tall dock with a rope ladder down to the water’s surface. Once the little rowboat reached the dock, Corbin grabbed one of the posts and tethered the boat to it. He laid the oars down inside the boat and covered them with a heavy blanket.
“Now, I’m sure you can see where the story is going,” Corbin said to Chief Redcroft. “The older man set me down in the forest, and I saw there was a burlap sack waiting there. He removed different things from the sack that I didn’t recognize at the time. Then he told me how to use the items so I would be transported to a pathway. Once on the path, I was not to deviate from it but to continue to walk straight until I came to a swirling green light. He said once I walked through that green light, I would be in a world that was safe for me to live in. He said I would find myself in a beautiful temple and there would be people who would help me.
“Of course, I did what he said, and I ended up in the Temple of Origin. That’s right, Redcroft. I was born on Earth.” Corbin stood in the boat and looked down at the tribe chief. “And I’ll bet you can guess who resurrected me after I had drowned.”
Corbin paused, but no answer came from Redcroft.
“Before I left that man to come to Ferren, I asked him a simple question. It was a naïve question, but I was a child. I asked him, ‘Sir, are you God?’” Corbin smiled. “He laughed at my question, and I was foolish enough to follow it with another. I asked, ‘Are you the devil?’” Corbin shook his head as he remembered the foolishness of his youth. “That man looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘I’m worse than both of them. I’m Gokul Malhotra.’ It wasn’t until years later that I knew who Gokul Malhotra really was.”
Corbin bent down and grabbed Chief Redcroft by the hair, raising his severed head until they were eye to eye. Corbin laughed lowly and shook the head as it dripped with blood.
“Now you know more about me than anyone else in the wo
rld, Chief.” Corbin shook the head again. “You really don’t say much, do you?” Corbin laughed again and smiled. “Well, I suppose now that we’re revealing secrets, I should come clean with you about something else. My name isn’t Corbin.”
Corbin dropped Redcroft’s head into a black sack and tied the sack to his belt. He then climbed up the ladder onto the dock and walked toward the small islet and the dark cabin that awaited him.
“My name is Orman Eil Dragaredd,” he said plainly. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
Out of the fog came a single black butterfly. It landed softly on Orman’s shoulder and batted its wings. Orman turned toward it and smiled.
“I missed you too,” he said.
Orman’s cabin sat on a tiny islet that looked more like a great pile of seaworn rocks. The islet was less than fifty yards in diameter, and most of the rocks were covered in a thick padding of vivid green moss. Tall ferns grew sporadically, and one solitary pine tree stood twenty feet tall, directly beside the cabin. To call it a cabin was generous indeed. Orman’s home was more of a dilapidated shack, its wood eaten by the salt of the sea and discolored by years of damp air. There were no hinges on the black door of the shack. It merely leaned against an otherwise-open frame. Holes pocked the roof so frequently it seemed impossible anyone would live in such a place, even a man that had succumbed to madness as deeply as Orman Eil Dragaredd.
He set the sack down on his doorstep and grabbed the plank of wood that was masquerading as a door with both of his hands. He moved it to the side and leaned it back against the outer wall of his home. No light emanated from inside, but a faint sound like the crinkling of paper came forth softly. Orman stepped forward into the single-room hut and grunted lowly to no one.
The Hands of Ruin: Book One Page 20
