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| The Watchtower - chapter 1 | |
| By Keller | ||
| 23 September 2007 | ||
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I actually started writing this about 6 years ago and never got that much further. Maybe one day it will be finished. Not so much of a prose writer and certainly not a novel writer, so any comments would be great. It's aimed at teenagers. Thanks!
Dark clouds paved the sterile sky like tightly laid
flagstones, stretching mundanely from one horizon to the other, spitting out
rain that lazily marched across the raw and lifeless earth. The town square slept silently, a mere
shadow of the place it once was. The
markets had long since packed up and left, the smells, the sounds and the
bustle of any busy settlement had vanished; no entertainers, no children, no
life. Around its perimeter, tall greyed
buildings crowded together, their windows blank and empty, their secrets kept
private. Trees hunched their skeletal
shoulders against the merciless rain and relentless wind which seemed to have
swept across the land every day for eternity.
Alenia sat still in the crisp, early morning air, oblivious to the rain
that drenched her; lost in a fantasy that everyone else had long since erased
from their souls. Sighing, she slowly
stood, crossed the emptied street and knocked hard on a heavy, oak door. After a moment, it opened, just a crack,
and, after checking the street around her, Alenia slipped silently through.
Inside, dusty light seeped through a small, barred window, dripping onto the cold floor. The room was empty, the walls bare, every bit the image of a cell, but it was a room that neither scared nor intimidated Alenia, it was a room that offered salvation from the burden she carried. A dirty, ragged curtain was carelessly draped over an open archway from which wafted scents of perfume and intoxicating incenses, things that had long since disappeared into such rarity that only the wealthiest men or the cleverest thieves could find them. A tall figure stepped from a shadowy corner, looking her carefully up and down. She knew the man well, though they had never spoken and she knew neither his name nor saw any more of his face than his chin. From under her thick cloak she pulled a small, highly polished, wooden tube. Opening it, she slid out a tightly rolled sheet of paper. It slid out from the velvet-lined tube so smoothly, but the secrets inscribed on the parchment were heavy in her hand, almost burning her very flesh. The man extended a hand and Alenia placed the message into his grasp. In return, three grubby, oily coins were pressed firmly into her palm, and she gripped them so tightly that their rounded edges pressed harshly into her soft skin. Before exiting back on to the street, Alenia carefully concealed the wooden tube beneath her clothes, her fingers brushing over the deeply carved crest of the Shorehaven family. As the cold rain hit her upturned face once more, she finally exhaled a breath that she felt she had been holding for days. This was a world torn apart by civil war. For countless years the territory boundaries of Shorehaven had been gradually compromised and invaded by the ever advancing urbanisation and developments of the Dordale provinces. The Shorehaven and Dordale populace had always lived in peace, but the large cities Dordale began to build demanded the flat, agricultural plains across the border. So they had begun to take that land. At first, the farmers and miners of Shorehaven had simply resigned to their urbanising neighbours; they were neither educated in the ways of political argument, nor equipped for war. But as Dordale advanced without consideration or morals, Shorehaven was beginning to fight back. Savage wars had been raging for eight long years now: wars that had seen Shorehaven nobles and knights slain in their hundreds and the people who populated the rural villages and market towns slip from self-sufficiency into extreme poverty and, eventually, into starvation and disease. No one lived free from fear, and people did whatever they had to just to survive: brothers killed brothers, fathers killed sons and men raped their neighbours’ wives. Women became prostitutes, preachers raided their Holy-Houses, Mothers sold their own children and people stole from their dead as money became scarce and honest work became even scarcer. And, above all, people were beginning to lose their faith. The faith that had been the very backbone of Shorehaven for so many centuries was falling from people’s hearts and along with it, any sense of hope or loyalty.With her head bowed and her cloak pulled tightly around her, Alenia skipped through the shadowed puddles and across the dripping cobbles of the town square, disappearing quickly down the narrow and gloomy Exchange Passage, flanked by empty shop windows and faded trade signs. Alenia turned her head away from the drab windows of an empty bakery. Her brow furrowed, forcing away memories of happy childhood days watching her father pull steaming loaves from the enormous oven, as if drawing them from the inside of a dragon’s mouth. The smell of the fresh bread, the sticky dough between her tiny hands, the sweet raisins secretly pushed into her mouth when her father’s back was turned. But Alenia had shed her tears for her lost past, and, pulling her hood further over her eyes, hurried on past and forced her heart back to its usual rhythm. From here she turned into Bride Passage, the tree-lined approach to the town’s Holy-Temple. One of the grandest temples in the whole of Shorehaven, and the very reason that Alenia’s faith remained strong in a time when everyone else was losing theirs. The temple was built like a foreboding fortress, but with white stone which had once glistened in the sunlight, inspiring and lighting the faces of the devoted as they entered its holy sanctum. But the once great walls dripped with green and the once glorious coloured glass windows were nothing more than empty holes now. Alenia sadly turned from its demise and towards a small tavern: The Mug and Wand. Entering the low-ceilinged inn, she quickly absorbed the familiar smell of ales and beers and pipe smoke, the smells of sanctuary, the smells of friends. She smiled broadly as she reached the dark, oak bar, her hands smoothing over the ancient wood and finding as much solace in its solid structure as a child finds in the arms of its mother. ‘Alenia!’ A stubby hand reached across the bar and gripped both of her hands tightly. ‘It’s good to see you again. We haven’t seen you for a while, and with the way things are…’ Vinic broke off his sentence, such things as knowledge of ones own mortality were so prevalent on the minds of everyone in Shorehaven, they were never spoken of in the taverns and bars which served as the only rest from thoughts of the civil war. Certainly since the Holy-Houses now lay empty and plundered. Alenia smiled at her dear friend. Vinic had owned the Mug and Wand since she could remember, and he had served her father well. Time had shrunken his body considerably, and it seemed dwarfed further by the huge and wiry beard he had grown. ‘I’ve just been busy, Vinic. I’m sorry I don’t get as much time to spend here anymore, but if there’s money to be made, I have little choice in the matter.’ ‘Of course, my love, but I promised your father I would take care of you.’ ‘Then get me a drink.’ Vinic smiled broadly and Alenia found her way into a quiet seat next to the blazing fire. She slipped her cloak from her shoulders and hung it on the hooks next to the vast, stone chimneybreast. She stretched out her weary feet and felt her eyes grow heavy. Vinic and her father had been close friends and she had grown up in this tavern, by this very fire. Although many of the regular drinkers had either moved on or met their end through war or hunger or disease, the familiarity of the tavern would always lull Alenia into a feeling of peace that she had found nowhere else since the war began. She was roused from her thoughts by a heavy glass being thumped onto the table. She thanked Vinic and took a large gulp of the vile liquid. Everything was rationed now, and ales had become steadily more stale, but the strange comfort of the heady liquor had not been lost. Vinic lowered himself into the chair opposite Alenia, glancing around nervously. Keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the pirouettes of the flames in the hearth, Alenia grabbed the roll of paper that was pushed into her lap under the canopy of the table. ‘Take care, my love.’ Vinic whispered sincerely. ‘You’re so important to me.’ ‘Thank you, Vinic.’ Alenia pushed the message into the velvet lined wooden tube and concealed it once more. Sighing, she reached for her still dripping cloak and pulled the scratchy, sodden cloth around her shoulders. A shiver ran down her spine, and not only because of the cold. ‘Vinic. I’ll see you again soon, I hope.’ She gently placed her empty glass on the ancient bar. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’ ‘Never.’ He placed a hand over hers. Gripping her for a moment, silently warning her of the severity of the message she now carried. ‘Better move with swift feet now, I don’t like the look of what’s coming.’ The cold rain shocked the warm tears that stung her eyes and she gulped them back down. Slipping her hand under her cloak, she pressed her finger against the sheathed blade of her knife, feeling secure at the touch of the sharp edge. Lowering her head, she pushed on into the rain. But her thoughts drifted uncontrollably towards her father. The sweet, soothing smells of the Mug and Wand still clung to her clothes, and lulled her thoughts to happier times. And even as her feet found themselves on the wide steps of the Holy Temple, even as her hand reached out and pushed the ornately carved doors open she still couldn’t say how she had come to find herself here again. Drifting through the empty expanse of the pillared hallway, she turned her eyes up to the dulled paintings and decorations that adorned the walls and ceilings, all depicting images from the stories she knew by heart. Stories of saints and spirits, the guides and the Guardian. It was he that Alenia turned her desperate eyes to. In the image he sat in a stunning tower of crystal glass, the once-vivid red cloak wrapped around his kindly face. He held out his hands to his humble followers. Followers like Alenia. She stared hard into his soft eyes, but felt nothing of the protection he was supposed to offer. For always, in the metal tube at her hip, the secrets hung so heavy. Tales of battles and secret plans, plans that determined who would live and who would die. Plans that she could be killed for. Alenia looked sadly around the emptied building: emptied of gold, emptied of silver, emptied of faith. She knelt by the ransacked altar, underneath the blind gaze of the spirits frozen in cold, unfeeling marble. She dropped her exhausted head into her hands, begging him for salvation, begging him for an answer, begging him for any sort of sign that he still watched over his people. Lost in prayer, she never heard them approaching, their bare feet silent against the tiled floor. A dirty hand was clamped over her mouth as a million others held her to the floor. She kicked and pulled, her hand never able to free itself to take hold of her knife. ‘Better hold still if you want to survive this’ a coarse voice spat into her ear. So many hands, fingers ripped through her clothes and tugged through her hair and she screamed now, her voice echoing around the vast hall, tormenting the corridors, horrifying the vestries and prayer rooms. But in this desolate temple, there were no ears to hear her. Satisfied hands retreated but malevolent feet found their way into her ribs, her stomach, her chest. The first kick sent shots of pain throughout her body, blinding her eyes and dumbing her mind, but pain soon faded to numbness and finally sleep. She lay, so still and peaceful on the Holy-Temple floor, delicate strands of moonlight brushing her face, illuminating her hair. The temple gently sheltered her from the torrents of rain outside as her blood ran in streams of guilty tears across the faces of the mosaiced saints and guides.
*****
Far away, in another world, another time, the Guardian
watched Alenia with dismay. He peered
with such love into the depths of the glowing sphere that hovered between his
open hands. Pushing the red hood from
his head, the Guardian lay, sighing, against the straight back of his
chair. He carelessly let the globe fall
from his hands and, as it hit the stone floor, it shattered into a delicate
mist that hung around his feet. As the
stories said, the Guardian did, indeed, live in a tall tower, but it was a tower
of stone; strong, protecting, formidable.
The Guardian turned as a squire
dressed in royal blue entered. He bowed
low, removing his feathered cap in a practised sweep as he did so.
‘Sir,’ he said, straightening up, ‘the
King is requesting your presence.’ The
Guardian nodded and followed the squire from the room.
In the Great Hall, a meeting of the
most highly powered, highly honoured and highly paid men was already well under
way. In the centre of the immense,
gilded room was an equally immense table in deep mahogany and carved with dragons
and horses and mermaids and the constellations of the night sky. At the head of this table sat the King,
Mannel, and to either side was a gathering of men puffed up like birds in
winter, shrouded in furs and drowned in jewellery. Each and every one was proud beyond measure of their elected
position, and this pride was focused in a plaque that hung high up on the north
wall of the assembly room: a stone plaque flanked by beautiful mermaids and
carved deep in it were the words ‘The Honourable and Independent Plutocracy of
Territories’. But the ceremony of such
greatness was buried every fourth Monday by the clamour of conversation and the
din of debate.
‘I must protest’ Sir Lanel cried, ‘the
Guardian is irreplaceable!’
‘And uncontrollable’ screamed General
Balor, ‘what’s the use in creating rules when he thinks he is above them?’
‘He’s young,’ put in Lord Kanray ‘he
lacks the wisdom of age.’
‘And the respect for authority.’ General Balor grumbled in reply, ‘He has to
learn; this is not a game.’
‘No, it is indeed not a game’ agreed
Sir Mardan, ‘but I agree with Sir Lanel; experienced Guardians are hard to
find, and it would be impossible to train someone else to such a standard. He has been trained for this since his
birth.’
‘He must be disciplined!’ raged
General Balor, rising to his feet. But
his outburst was interrupted by the hall doors slamming open and the Guardian
charging into the room. ‘Don’t you ever
knock?’
‘Gentlemen’ sung the Guardian,
sweeping low in an exaggerated bow, ‘I am honoured to be invited to your
gracious, if somewhat noisy, assembly.’
‘See what I mean?’ said General Balor,
throwing his arms up in resignation.
Mannel motioned for the Guardian to take the empty chair at the other
end of the table. General Balor slowly,
and reluctantly, returned to sitting.
‘There have been…concerns,’ Mannel
said slowly, ‘about your discipline and general behaviour. As the Guardian, and my son, you have an
important duty to adhere to. You are not
above the rules, Sarlem, and the rules are there for very good reasons. You have been called before this assembly
before, and these rules must be followed, Guardian, discipline received and
lessons learned. Otherwise, I fear,
banishment from the watchtower may be the only resort.’ The Guardian widened his eyes in the air of seriousness. He slowly rose to his feet. 'I see, Sire.'
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