The First Kaiaru

by David Alastair Hayden

  A Kaiaru with green-tinted skin and a pale topaz kavaru strolled by, accompanied by two bodyguards and a dozen servants. In the street, people stepped aside to allow him passage.

  “You say this place is twelve thousand years old,” Turesobei said, “but I thought the Kaiaru, like Chonda Lu, were only three thousand years old or so. That is what our histories say, and that is what Lu Bei and Aikonshi told me.”

  “Your companions did not lie to you, and Chonda Lu did not intentionally mislead them. His memories only went back three thousand years, yet Chonda Lu is here in Korooka. You would know him by his kavaru, but you would not recognize the man.”

  Turesobei had always felt connected to something ancient while wearing the stone, but only three thousand years ancient, not fifteen or more.

  His eyes wide, Gyoroe spun around, taking in the city’s glamor. “None of my kavaru have memories of this place, and yet they were all here, at the height of the Kaia civilization, belonging to members of the ruling Kaiaru Senate. Here, white steel and dark steel were forged daily. Spells were inscribed upon bronze plates, and magics of incredible power were common.”

  Lord Gyoroe sighed. “But it was too much power in one place. All that magic weakened this land, leading to the earthquakes and volcanoes that wiped it from history.”

  “If being reborn is what damages a Kaiaru’s memory, then how come Chonda Lu, who had never been reborn, could only remember three thousand years back?”

  “Chonda Lu most likely had many rebirths over the last fifteen thousand years,” Lord Gyoroe said. “But even if he had not, his memory would not stretch any farther back than the Dawning.”

  “The what?”

  “The Dawning. An astronomical event that elevated then disrupted energy patterns all across our planet. That is when spirits and demons and monsters first arose, created by the minds of mere humans, born of their dreams and nightmares. For some reason, this disruption erased the memories of all the Kaiaru.”

  Turesobei's mind reeled at the idea that ordinary people had created spirits and monsters unintentionally.

  “My first foray into the past took me three thousand years back, to a time I thought would be close to our origin point. What I discovered instead was the Dawning. You can imagine how disappointed I was. I had not even come close to our true beginnings.”

  Turesobei admired the gleaming metropolis. “So this—all of this—is the golden age of the Kaiaru that you wish to recreate?”

  Lord Gyoroe nodded. “You see now how important my work is.”

  Turesobei dared to ask a fundamental question that had long been burning in his mind. “What if seeing the origin doesn’t unlock the secrets you need to recreate the Kaiaru race?”

  Gyoroe’s gray eyes locked onto Turesobei, and he stared uncomprehendingly at him for some time. Then, he began to talk again, as if he had never heard Turesobei’s question. Apparently, this was another one of those points where the Blood King’s madness kicked in.

  “Even the Kaiaru of this age have only vague memories of their first century. I have observed their scholars pouring over their oldest texts and debating our origins.”

  As Turesobei examined the throngs of people walking along the busy street beside the river, he spotted a dozen Kaiaru. “How many Kaiaru were there?”

  “According to the scholars of this day, ten thousand two hundred and twenty-three. But they have a legend that there were two more, of much greater power than all the others, but who had been forgotten.”

  Over ten thousand…. Until he had seen the kavaru vault, Turesobei had always thought that maybe only a thousand Kaiaru had ever lived. The idea of bringing that many of them back to life sickened him.

  “It is time to move on,” Lord Gyoroe said. “I have rested long enough. We have at least three thousand years to go, and I have only ever made it nine hundred years past this point. When I tell you to access your storm energy, do so immediately.”

  Turesobei nodded with a sigh. He would have preferred to spend a few days exploring Korooka.

  As they ghosted backward, the city shrank around them. When their progress stalled a few centuries later, Korooka was a smaller city.

  “Now!” Lord Gyoroe ordered.

  Having already expended much of his internal kenja, Turesobei tapped into the Mark of the Storm Dragon and opened the channel as wide as he could without risking losing control. For a short while, they zoomed back several more centuries, but then their progress slowed again.

  Turesobei strained to put more into it. “I'm doing…all…that…I can.”

  Lord Gyoroe nodded. “It is enough for now. Do not push any further. If you pass out, you will put the whole endeavor at risk.”

  “What now?” Turesobei panted. “How do we move farther forward…I mean backward?”

  “So far, I have primarily drawn power from you, the heart stones, and Hannya. Now it is time for me to invest my own power.”

  Gyoroe spoke a word, and they raced back several more centuries, but then came suddenly to a standstill. He hunched over, breathing deep, with sweat pouring off his brow.

  The city was gone. In its place stood what resembled a frontier outpost composed of crude timber houses with thatched roofs. Dressed in primitive clothes, the people here appeared to come from a wide array of different races. It was strange to see so many different eye and hair colors among so few people. All of them bore lineage birthmarks, and some had as many as six different marks at once.

  Nearly a quarter of the people were Kaiaru, but there was something wrong with them. With distant expressions, they ambled about as if they were sleepwalking, or perhaps under a spell of confusion.

  “Why do the Kaiaru all appear drugged?”

  “This is the confusion the scholars of Korooka spoke of. The haze of years none of them could remember. We are close now. If I can just manage to invest a little more kenja, I think we can make it. When we start moving, give it everything you can without passing out.”

  Gyoroe focused his energies, and again they moved backward a few more years, perhaps nearly a decade. Turesobei had recovered enough that he could give a significant boost.

  For a moment, he considered holding back. If Gyoroe failed to achieve this objective, then maybe he would give up…maybe he would let them go. Then Turesobei thought better of it. More than likely, Gyoroe would keep trying until the stones ran out of power, and along the way, Turesobei would probably be punished for the failure. The Blood King did not seem like the kind of person to accept blame.

  Turesobei again gave all that he could give. They accelerated for a few more moments, then stopped completely. They stood in the midst of a crude village, much smaller than the outpost, and the Kaiaru who wandered about seemed even more confused than before. Their children with their many birthmarks led them about as if they were mentally damaged. They seemed entirely unable to take care of themselves.

  Exhausted, Gyoroe fell to his knees and cried out. “No!” He held his head in his hands and sobbed. “I came so far, only to be tormented with the truth just out of reach.”

  Turesobei shifted uncomfortably beside the despondent Gyoroe, unsure of what he should do.

  Lord Gyoroe took a deep breath. “I will have to rethink the ritual.” Then he added, darkly, “And find some way to gather more energy.”

  Turesobei didn’t like the sound of that. The Blood King’s chief method of gaining power had always been through some form of sacrifice.

  Steeling his nerves, Turesobei started to declare that he would never allow any of his friends to be sacrificed, when suddenly, a surge of tremendous power flowed into them. Power not from Gyoroe nor Turesobei nor Hannya nor even the heart stones. Where this power came from, Turesobei didn’t have the slightest clue. And judging by the surprised look on Gyoroe’s face, neither did he.

  Backward they sped…decades racing by…then, though Turesobei sensed that they had power enough to keep going, they stopped once more.

  Chapter Sixty-F
ive

  If a sea monster were to fling a ship loaded with barrels of oil inland, so that it crashed and exploded, burning the forest and scattering wreckage for miles around, Turesobei figured it would probably create a scene much like the one surrounding him. Except instead of shattered planks of charred wood, this debris field consisted of torn and twisted sheets of metal. Some of the blackened fragments were as large as a fisherman’s hut.

  He struggled to imagine a vessel constructed of metal, much less one that could crash to the earth. The very idea was absurd. On the other hand, he had no better explanation for what he saw around him.

  Also strewn amongst the wreckage, still visible beneath the twilit sky, were the charred remains of hundreds of people. Those who weren't completely burned to a crisp wore strange clothing made out of a cloth he didn't recognize.

  The sight of so many bodies didn’t disturb him nearly as much as he thought it should, but maybe it was hard to be horrified by deaths that had taken place nearly fifteen thousand years before he was born.

  Amazingly, the wreckage wasn’t the only strange thing here.

  Across the landscape flowed multicolored clouds of kenja, like streams of fog driven by strong winds, all of it visible to the naked eye, without any need for kenja-sight. And then there was the buzzing, loud and insistent, as if he had bumblebees stuck in his ears. The sound was composed of dozens of repeating tones, all strung together, and it was oddly familiar, though he certainly couldn’t remember having ever heard anything like it before. He shook his head, trying and failing to clear away the sound.

  If this moment was supposed to be the birth of the Kaiaru, then it was an odd origin indeed.

  “The buzzing…” Lord Gyoroe said enthralled “…do you hear it?”

  Turesobei nodded. “Do you know what it is?”

  Gyoroe stared at him incredulously. “You do not recognize it?”

  Turesobei shook his head.

  “But you have heard it all your life!”

  “I don’t think I have, master.”

  Over the buzzing, Turesobei picked up voices, coming from behind a large section of metal nearby.

  “Master, I think there may be survivors.”

  Turesobei stepped around what was essentially a metal box with the back ripped off. Gyoroe followed along behind him.

  Two people, a man and a woman, were sheltered inside the remains of the box-shaped structure. Both wore the same odd, silvery clothes Gyoroe did. Suddenly, Turesobei realized the clothing on the bodies amongst the wreckage matched as well, and the odd amulet Gyoroe wore appeared to be a small fragment from this same wreckage. How could it be that a man from a few centuries before Turesobei’s time was wearing, in his ghostly form, clothing identical to that worn by people from fifteen millennia ago?

  The woman had dark hair and deep brown skin. She was leaning over the man, with her back turned to Turesobei, so that he couldn’t see her face. She also blocked his view of the man, who must have been injured, because he was trembling and uttering nonsense.

  “Brother,” the woman said, soothingly, “there’s hope for us. Look what I found.” She held something out in her hand. “The buzzing had nearly driven me mad, but then something called out to me. I followed that…voice…that feeling…and it led me to this stone. When I picked it up, my mind cleared. And as long as I keep it with me, I can think straight.”

  Turesobei stepped around to get a better view. The woman, who had a heart-shaped face and exceedingly pale green eyes, held in her hand a red-orange gemstone. Turesobei would have thought it a kavaru, except for its odd, diamond shape. Every kavaru he’d ever seen or heard about was rounded. Embedded into flesh, this one would appear almost triangular.

  “Look how the weird energy flows connect with the stone.” She held the gem up. Crimson kenja streamed into the stone, and out of it came a pink-hued trail. “Holding this stone, I feel deeply and intimately connected to the energy fields. As if, through the stone, I have become a part of them.”

  Turesobei’s jaw dropped. It was a kavaru! And this woman, whoever she might be, was apparently the first Kaiaru. Except she wasn’t fully a Kaiaru…not yet. Right now she was a human holding onto a kavaru at a time when kenja flows were visible. Lord Gyoroe’s answer was definitely close at hand, waiting to be uncovered, because somehow this woman was soon going to find a way to unite herself with this kavaru.

  “I found hundreds of these stones, brother. I don’t have a functioning slate, so I can’t do an analysis, but whatever they are, I’m certain they’re unique to this world.”

  With his eyes locked onto the stone, Gyoroe knelt beside the woman. “The first kavaru,” he whispered reverently. Then his eyes moved to the woman’s face and lit up. “Oh! I know you. I remember you…Na–Na–Na….” He stuttered unintelligibly as he tried, and repeatedly failed, to say her name.

  As Gyoroe groaned in frustration, Turesobei turned to the man on the ground—then staggered backward in shock.

  The man, the woman’s brother, was the gray-eyed Gyoroe!

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Except for a bandage wrapped around his head and another on his shoulder, the man lying on the ground was identical to the ghostly Gyoroe who knelt beside Turesobei.

  “It’s you!” Turesobei said.

  The ghostly version of Gyoroe didn’t look at the real version of himself in the past. He remained utterly fascinated by his sister, whose name he could not remember.

  Turesobei gestured to the man on the ground. “Master, that’s you lying there!”

  Again Lord Gyoroe ignored him.

  “I can’t explain how this one gemstone out of hundreds called to me, and over a distance, anymore than I can explain how it works,” the woman said. “When I hold it, instead of buzzing I hear a range of notes, sweeping melodies layered one atop another.”

  Of course! That’s where Turesobei knew the buzzing sound from. All the different types of kenja possessed tones, like musical notes, tones so subtle they were normally felt far more than they were heard. And it was only recently that he learned those tones were chords consisting of three notes each. This buzzing was like hearing all the notes being played loudly and at once.

  The sister continued, her eyes alight with wonder. “Peppered in amongst the melodies, I can hear a chorus of sibilant voices, and I know it’s absurd, but I think the energies might possess some rudimentary sentience.”

  She drew a familiar yellow stone from a pocket. It was oval-shaped and definitely a kavaru. “I picked up others, as many as I could carry, hoping I could find one that would help you.”

  The eyes of the Gyoroe lying injured on the ground held the same dazed look the Kaiaru they’d seen decades later had possessed. Drooling and shaking, he couldn’t manage to focus on his sister, much less take the stone she offered him. Either the buzzing of the kenja or the wound to his head—or both—was driving him mad.

  She placed the yellow stone in his hand and curled his fingers around it. No energy flowed into the kavaru during the few moments it rested in his hand.

  “Let’s try another,” she said, giving him a scarlet stone, which also seemed familiar.

  But that didn’t get a response, and neither did the seven other kavaru she had brought back with her.

  “If I can’t find a way to take you there safely, then I’ll just have to keep bringing stones here, until we find one that works.”

  Lord Gyoroe, the Blood King, looked at the nine kavaru lying on the ground, then back to the woman. He still hadn’t looked at himself on the ground.

  “You do realize that’s you on the ground that she’s talking to, right?” Turesobei asked, but Gyoroe continued to ignore him. “Hey, Blood King! That’s you on the ground—right there!”

  Enraged, Lord Gyoroe snapped at Turesobei. “Stop bothering me! I do not know what your attempt at deception is supposed to accomplish, but I am not an idiot. That is not me on the ground. How could it be? That is nothing more than a common man of li
ttle importance.”

  He returned to staring, only now he alternated between his sister and the nine kavaru on the ground. For whatever reason, Lord Gyoroe just could not see himself. Was this a side effect of ghosting into the past?

  Turesobei gasped as realization struck him. All nine of the kavaru the woman had brought him were exceedingly familiar! He knelt to examine them, just to be sure: light blue, emerald, scarlet, yellow, blue-white, vermillion, violet, orange, pale green…. Yes, these were, in fact, the exact same kavaru the Blood King had bound to himself in the future.

  That couldn’t be a coincidence. None of this could.

  A pattern was emerging that could explain a lot of the Blood King’s obsessions and madness. He might claim he wanted to restore the Kaiaru race, and maybe he did, but deep down, it had to be this connection that made him so desperate to return to this moment.

  Just as Turesobei started to ask the Blood King if he at least recognized the stones, the wounded Gyoroe pointed up toward the sky, and with the voice of a child said, “Nal, look at the pretty lights!”

  In the dark sky flashed twelve lights: stars Turesobei had never seen before.

  “Why haven’t they changed course?!” Nal yelled. “I sent the signal.” She glanced at the bodies amongst the wreckage. “No…please, no…you have to turn back.”

  The injured Gyoroe, now with a clear, intelligent voice said, “They can’t change course. There’s not enough fuel to reach the next star.”

  “It’s enough to get them close.”

  “They saw what happened to us. They understand the risk.” He giggled, then he spoke again as a child. “The lights are very pretty, Nal. Are they for me? Is it my birthday? I would love to have a party.”

  The Blood King stood, as he too gazed now at the twelve new stars. “The Kaiaru,” he said reverently. “The Kaiaru are coming.”

  With a determined nod, Nal stood. “I’ve got to get to work. I only have a few days to figure out how the gemstones interact with these crazy energy fields. Assuming any of them survive the landing, with all the interference this planet has, they will then need help to survive the buzzing. Otherwise, it will drive them all mad.”