Primeval Origins : Paths of Anguish - Award Winning, New Epic Fantasy / Science Fiction (The Primeval Origins Saga Book 1)

by Brett Vonsik

  “Fight and you’ll fall in favor, Rogaan.” Kantus smirked and wagged his finger.

  “A fight started by your hand, Kantus,” Rogaan growled in cold anger. Frustrated and angry at Kantus’ ever-present nits and jabs, Rogaan wanted badly to strike out, but instead resisted the powerful urge, convincing himself that he had more important things to tend – mostly not failing in the hunt and losing his chance with the Kiuri’Ner…and not dishonoring his family name. Kantus had made a life of irritating Rogaan with petty insults and pranks. It seemed at times that was all he and his Band had a taste and want for. Now, he and Kantus stood nose-to-nose, staring unblinkingly and sparing little hatred between them as the crowd pressed and pushed them toward the door, despite their best attempts to hold their ground.

  “Get on!” Kantus provoked while struggling to keep his feet. “Swing your best, Rogaan. You’re a coward and unwanted half-breed in town. My town. Go back to that rock of a place where you and your father crawled from.”

  Anger grew in Rogaan until it became almost blinding. His fists reflexively balled tight as his arms and chest shook with the lust to strike smug Kantus where he stood, to smash his teeth. Unexpectedly, the crisp and pungent odors of the slaughterhouse filled his nose, staggering him momentarily, while all about him colors and details sharpened and everyone around seemed to slow. Rogaan’s heart beat loudly in his ears…strong and paced, not racing. Swirling air currents prickled his neck almost painfully as his blood ran hot – hotter than he ever remembered -- and he grew deeply aware of everyone and everything around him. Again he suffered a growing confusion, dizziness, and the need to sick-up. Wanting to pounce, but feeling not in the condition to do so, Rogaan weighed the scales, balancing satisfying his blood lust, his long desire for revenge for everything Kantus had ever done to him against losing consideration by the Kiuri’Ner and bringing dishonor to his father’s name and his mother’s family. Satisfaction…oh, Rogaan wanted it so. He battled his rage and repressed lust for a fight through his dulled wits and dizziness. Struggling within himself, he regained his reason and considered…duty…duty to his family. Reluctantly, he forced himself calm, cooling his emotions.

  Almost immediately, the world became less…less vibrant, less alive, less familiar than a moment before. The dizziness and sick feeling were gone, replaced by hunger. Oh, Rogaan hated this thing that was gripping him. It frightened him that he did not know what was happening or why it was happening. He wanted it never to return. A distant voice caught Rogaan’s attention and he looked up, finding Kantus with a set jaw staring him down. Dismissing all else, he focused on his nemesis, Kantus. The insufferable Kantus…was... “a pebble.” Only a pebble, he told himself. “I will not scuffle, Kantus. Not here. Not now.”

  “Coward!” Kantus pushed back at the crowd until only Rogaan could hear his words. “Soon enough you will be nothing but a memory.”

  “What?” Rogaan asked, confused. He grabbed Kantus’ chest plate at the sides to ensure he could not get away. He wanted answers. A memory? A powerful hand grabbed Rogaan’s left arm, pulling him from Kantus more easily than he thought possible. Rogaan fought being dragged, stalemating mostly, but lost his footing and found himself outside the Meat House doorway before he was able to find his feet. Digging in hard with his boots, he slowed to a halt. Frustrated and angered at the boldness, Rogaan twisted to see who dared to handle him. He found the deeply gouged chest plates of red-brown tanniyn hide eur armor staring back at him. The strong odor of sweat and old blood filled his nose, causing it to wrinkle. Looking up, Rogaan found the brown, clean-shaven, stony face of Kardul.

  “What trouble are you making?” Kardul demanded in a deep, mocking voice, hinted with anger.

  The Kiuri’Ner’s grip held him firm as Rogaan attempted to stammer a response, with few words intelligent or recognizable rolling off his tongue. This was not how Rogaan imagined his first meeting with the leader of the group he so much aspired to join. In fact, this could not have been further from any of Rogaan’s expectations. Realizing everything he hoped for was unraveling in the moment, Rogaan stopped struggling against the giant’s iron grip and looked squarely into the man’s hazel eyes, which were filled with what Rogaan could describe only as deadly intent. Rogaan thought of speaking truthfully, telling the Kiuri’Ner that Kantus was a spoiled and privileged youngling, arrogant, full of himself, and more than a trouble, but he reconsidered when the Kiuri’Ner’s stony face changed to a building thunderhead. Thinking fast and hoping not to deepen his troubles, Rogaan spoke. “I am not making trouble, Kiuri’Ner. Kantus and I were...making a wager.”

  “A wager?” Kardul repeated skeptically while eyeing both Rogaan and Kantus. “A wager on my Hunt better not cause trouble, or you two will be striped and worse.”

  “No trouble, Master Kiuri’Ner,” Kantus broke in with a smile that made the hairs on Rogaan’s neck bristle. Kantus was up to something. Rogaan saw it in his eyes and heard it in his voice. “We...were wagering who will take down the largest and most dangerous beast.”

  The Kiuri’Ner kept silent while continuing to scrutinize them with his intense gaze. Rogaan felt the man’s grip lessen, then fall away from his arm. The Kiuri’Ner looked back at Rogaan with an amused smile of slightly yellow teeth. “Then a wager it is. You’re that half-tellen youngling the Wall Guards have spoken of? I look forward to seeing your ‘famed’ skills with the bow. You’ll be with me on the Hunt. Don’t show late to the wagons.”

  Without further discussion, Kardul turned in the direction of Hunter’s Gate. Rogaan stood stunned. He knew of me. This was the opportunity he had been hoping for. Rogaan’s thoughts raced as he struggled to keep his emotions under control. He needed success.

  “What about me?” Kantus asked after the Kiuri’Ner.

  “What about you?” Kardul replied flatly, without looking back or breaking stride.

  Rogaan looked to Kantus, who stood next to him with mouth agape and an inner fire blazing. Rogaan smiled. A pebble. Kantus narrowed his eyes and set his jaw full of clenched teeth.

  “Remember my words, Rogaan,” Kantus grumbled coldly while watching the Kiuri’Ner walk away. “You’ll be a memory soon enough.” Without allowing Rogaan to get a word out, Kantus bolted in the direction of his Band.

  “What be happenin’?” Pax asked, joining Rogaan as quickly as Kantus left. “I thought ya goin’ ta put Kantus in da stones. Wished ya had. Then da master giant grabbed ya and now we have ta hunt with da brute. Ya know how ta make a day bad.”

  “No, Pax,” Rogaan answered, hopeful. “Not bad. A change of fortune…finally. I will meet you at the wagons. First, I need to get something.”

  Chapter 3

  Shunir’ra

  Filled with hope and excitement, Rogaan bounded to take what he believed his best chance at gaining acceptance of the Kiuri’Ner. His father’s words nagged at him for reason, responsibility, caution, obedience...they went unheeded. This was his chance. With hope springing in each stride, Rogaan sprinted past the old cedar guardian at the north side of his house and bounded through the flower-filled courtyard at the back, not stopping until he stood before the smithy’s steel-bound heavy wooden door at the south side of the building. He produced a key he carried around his neck and quickly opened the door, then slipped into darkness. He sighed heavily with relief that his mother did not spy his passing then suffered a terrible shudder…darkness.

  The scent of old burnt charcoal mixed with sulfur struck his wrinkling nose as he trembled. He closed his eyes for a long moment to regain himself, but the smell of the darkness invoked images in his head. Fond memories of him working with his father were replaced with images of his burning arm and shirt and hands reaching for him from the shadows. Rogaan’s heart raced and his skin prickled. Fearing unseen things, he snapped open his eyes to deep shadows…no longer total darkness. He fought to get control of his breathing. His heart would follow. The urge to sneeze built quickly and he fought it back, as it always happened when he enter
ed the smithy, giving him a sense of comfort at the regular rhythm of things. A few more moments passed, allowing his eyes to better adjust to the darkness. Rogaan’s heart slowed. He was mastering himself. His father’s voice then rang in his head, again, demanding his obedience and to leave without it. Rogaan fought with himself for a long moment with an overwhelming feeling of guilt. What to do? This might be my only chance! No, he would not leave without it.

  Putting his weight on the door at his back saw a sliver of light come from the doorway allowing Rogaan to make out the familiar interior of the smithy. Some seven strides wide and seventeen long, the neatly organized smithy was as he remembered, with an oven and forge set against the right wall, and tools along both. His father demanded order, and he always got what he wanted where the smithy was concerned. Hammers, tongs, files, and other tools hung on the wall closest to the forge, with a fan bellows attached to the oven, all in place to serve their purposes. A long wood cooling trough filled with water, stacks of wood, and several large barrels of black rock used to fire raw iron and other metals sat on the floor to Rogaan’s right. The left wall was lined with shelves full of copper and iron ores, and worked ingots of metal. The shelves on the right wall beyond the forge were sparsely populated with finished works of cooking pots and tools of different kinds, and several weapons, including a short sword and long spear that Rogaan had a hand in making. Pride swelled within him at the thought of having made the blades of both weapons. His father had insisted he make them despite Rogaan’s insistence that the buyer would refuse the workmanship because it was not of his father. After some of his father’s usual rough talk, and some arguing that seemed to come more easily as Rogaan got older, he made the blades. His father seemed satisfied enough with his work, despite it taking him longer to finish than his father had expected.

  Rogaan shook off the past and tried to focus on the present. This was his chance. The Kiuri’Ner. “Do not fail,” he told himself. He looked to the shelf of finished items beyond the forge, where he left what he had come for. His cased shunir’ra was gone. “Where…?” Panic seized him, surged through him. Then after a few moments of wild-eyed searching in the unnerving shadows and finding things as they should be…all except his shunir’ra, he regained control of himself well enough to start thinking. Almost frantic in his search, and forgetting stealth, Rogaan searched the shelves, crates, boxes, corners…nothing. The search left him frustrated and the smithy in disorder. Rogaan wondered if his father had taken his shunir’ra on his travels or had secreted it away to remove any temptation on his part.

  Determined, Rogaan pressed on, looking to the floor next to the forge where his father sometimes stored valuable items and works. He hastily lifted the heavy flagstone and peered inside. Darkness. The unknown. Uneasy of it, he groped deep into the storage area, hoping to find it. He grabbed on to something, but disappointingly, it did not feel like his shunir’ra. He pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle…too small to be it. Curious, Rogaan unwrapped the object, finding his father’s rod-shaped tellen talisman, the imur’gisa. The talisman had been in the family, his father claimed, since the dawn of the Fourth Age, and had a history that Rogaan could not recall. In the gloom, the gold and platinum rod shone almost as if by its own light, and the encrusted gems sparkled as if light came from within them. It was beautiful and mesmerizing, more so the longer Rogaan looked upon it.

  Rogaan had caught a glimpse of the talisman once, many years before, when those of his father’s Turil Clan visited. It was a strange gathering with talk and ceremonies Rogaan failed to understand then or since, and his father never offered more about it all. They left the rod in his father’s care. Since then, the talisman had been forgotten and never spoken of in the house. The imur’gisa was of the finest craftsmanship, superior to his father’s own, if that was possible, with metal that seemed to flow around the encrusted gems with the largest and most impressive gem, a black one, at the top of the talisman. Inscriptions and symbols covered its surface, all unfamiliar to Rogaan. With a start, Rogaan cursed himself for wasting valuable time. The wagons…. “Cannot be late.” He had to find his shunir’ra and get to the wagons before they left for the Wilds. He quickly rewrapped the talisman and stuffed it back in its hiding place with a hollow clunk when it struck the bottom stone. Curious, Rogaan lifted the bottom stone, revealing a second hiding place he never knew existed. In it he found an elongated black and tan hide case he was familiar with. Retrieving the half-stride-long object, he sighed loudly in relief…his shunir’ra. Rogaan quickly checked to make sure everything was as he had left it in the case. All was as he remembered. Replacing the stones, imur’gisa, and hastily returning most of everything he ransacked back in its place, he ran for Hunter’s Gate.

  Rogaan took the quickest path to the gathering he knew. He ran south past the Hall of Council with its column-shaped trees fencing in a groomed courtyard and winding flowerbeds of reds, yellows, and more colors surrounding a central fountain. Low, flat roofed buildings made of cut stone dominated the center of the courtyard. The Town Council decided the affairs of Brigum within those walls.

  Rogaan turned sharply left onto well-worn paving stones of the East Road now thick with the morning’s cart traffic of traders and merchants preparing for their daily ritual of selling and buying and town caretakers cleaning the streets. Two and three-story buildings of mortared stone and brick lined both sides of the street, with some plastered over in tans. Merchant stands stood in front of many, with goods being readied for anyone with coin. A few heavily burdened canvas-covered wagons were pulled by squat, four-legged, tanniyn niisku, beasts sporting stubbed horns and frills of blue and yellow, and with bony-plated backs and stubby plated tails. They made their way toward the town’s center market, south of the Hall of Council. Running in the opposite direction, Rogaan weaved through patches of people dressed in all manner of styles and colors, hurrying this way and that and around beasts, wagons, carts, and stands of foods and wares, most topped with awnings of reds, greens, and browns to shade away the coming day’s sun.

  “Cannot be late.” The crush of people and beasts slowed him. He grew frustrated. Pushing and shoving, Rogaan broke free of throng after throng, finally able to launch into a full sprint toward the stables nearest Hunter’s Gate. “Cannot be late.” The pungent odor of dung grew stronger with each step as he came to fenced yards. Animal handlers within the timber fences worked stout two-horned niisku and leaner, longer-legged one-horn sarigs, and more stout kydas. Sarigs were the favored steeds of the Kiuri’Ner. Kydas, stouter forms of sarigs, were the steeds of choice for those with coin, and troupe commanders. They were sturdy animals, bred for endurance more than the speed sarigs were known for. The handlers somehow seemed unaffected by the stench, as Rogaan did his best not to breathe. Despite his best efforts, his guts turned as he passed the stables lining both sides of the road and several heavily laden carts of animal dung that were being prepared for travel by several unhappy workers. Rogaan hurried on.

  At the east end of the stables, Rogaan entered the courtyard of Hunter’s Gate. He did so with a sense of hope and relief, as he slowed to a brisk walk while looking for Pax. The courtyard was some thirty strides square, framed by an eight-stride-high stone and mortar wall of gray on his left, and a line of evenly spaced cedar trees to his right, separating the south-running Waterside Road from the cliff and river beyond. In between, a stone gatehouse stood with twin watchtowers topped by red-tiled coned roofs. The watchtowers stood some ten strides apart with massive cut-timber gate-doors, bound together by thick iron bands and stout bolts. The gate stood open allowing the last of the hunting party through to the stone bridge separating the main town of Brigum from Coiner Quarter, the well-to-do side of town.

  A sense of foreboding taunted Rogaan. He dismissed it as his leeriness of the deep shadows hiding the mountain foothills ahead, beyond the safety of Brigum’s walls. Looking for Pax, Rogaan quickly made his way across the stone courtyard with a sharp eye on the Tusaa’Ner, W
atchers of Brigum, standing the walls and watchtowers dressed in their soft hide uniforms dyed sky-blue, and belt sashes of red with yellow stripes. All held spears grounded with shining blades pointing skyward. They watched all who passed, and made Rogaan feel uneasy when they turned their stares on him.

  Rogaan sighed with relief when wagons and milling hunters came into view beyond the bridge ahead. He was not too late. Now, all he needed was Pax. Scanning the crowd, he found his friend shuffling slowly through the gate at the rear of a line of hunters, looking over this shoulder. Rogaan gave a quick wave then broke into a run to him. The Tusaa’Ner gave Rogaan only the slightest glance as he ran through the stone pillars of the gate. Rogaan came to a stop next to a grinning Pax in the middle of the gray stone bridge of Hunter’s Gate.

  Pax’s grin widened as he bobbed his head about, looking at the hide case slung over Rogaan’s pack. Without saying a word, Pax returned to his shuffling in line toward a rabble of hunters at the other end of the bridge, all awaiting the issue of weapons and equipment from baraan standing in an open-top wagon. Rogaan followed Pax. He was eager to get on with the Hunt, and he now had all he needed. As he shuffled to the wagon he lost himself in visions of success and glory on the Hunt, with a massive beast felled by his bow…and the Kiuri’Ner, cheering and exalting him as the greatest sharur ever, and Kantus cast out of the Hunt in disgrace.

  “Ouch!” Rogaan barked through gritted teeth at the sharp pain in his side. He snapped a look to find what or who hit him. He found Pax stepping back wide-eyed, not expecting Rogaan’s reaction to an attention-getting jab. Surprising to Rogaan, they now stood much closer to the wagon than he expected. Rogaan opened his mouth to snarl unkind words at his friend, but was abruptly cut off.

  “Well....” Kardul spoke while standing next to the wagon holding a wood bow, a quiver of arrows, and a curved long knife. He looked agitated. A dark-haired youngling in the wagon above continued to hand weapons to the other Kiuri’Ners who, in turn, issued them to the last of the Hunters. “Are you going to hunt or aren’t you, stoner?”