Prelude (The Songs of Aarda Book 1) Read online

  The melodious voice lit the darkness, breaking the silence, and its power revived him. “Warn the people. This battle will occur, and the land will blacken unless they turn and follow me as they did before the Sundering of Brothers. Tell them about me and unite them with their brothers again. You have sought me and found me, and you are not alone.”

  The Sundering of Brothers...why does that sound familiar?

  Rehaak became aware of hands rifling through his clothes. “Hey! Get your hands off me.” He sat up in the twilight and cuffed the filthy street urchin going through the pockets of his robe. He struggled to his feet and launched a kick at the little beggar, who scampered out of reach behind a column. No one will believe me unless I find the Aetheriad...and quickly. Without it, my people face their doom.

  Rehaak Preaches

  Rehaak didn’t comprehend everything in the Creator’s message, but incomplete knowledge did not absolve him of the responsibility to share his vision. He suspected the nightmare creatures who followed the Abrhaani troops were the Nethera. The writings of the sage, Ziade of Tensel, contained stories about them. But hadn’t those ancient evil entities disappeared at the Battle of Three Kings on Baradon’s battle plain millennia ago?

  Rehaak stood in the market square atop the central fountain with his placard that read, “The end is near!” He shouted to the crowd, “The Nethera have awakened! You must seek the one true God. Only the Creator can save us from the carnage.”

  People passed with only a curious glance in his direction while they trooped around the busy marketplace from vendor to vendor. They had lives to live, errands to run, deals to make, and that left no time to waste on a madman with a sign ranting about a new god and the end of the world.

  An old couple stopped, listened for a moment, and the wife asked, “Who’s this Creator? There are plenty of gods to worship. What’s so special about this one? Why do we need another god?”

  Rehaak exulted in the opportunity to explain himself. “He created you, me, Aarda, and everything in it. The false gods you worship cannot save you. The Creator is the supreme being, and only His power can save us from the Nethera. Unless we call on the Creator, we face a war unlike any other in history. The Creator showed me a vision; a vast expanse of lands turned black and sterile by the Nethera’s touch.”

  The old man shook his head. “I sprang from my parents’ sexual union. They created me.”

  “But who created your parents, or further back in time, who created the first of our species, my friend?” Rehaak countered. “The Creator, that’s who. The first of our kind did not step from the ocean fully formed by some accident. They were made.”

  “Stop spouting nonsense, Rehaak. What were you drinking before you saw this vision? Tell me so I can avoid similar hallucinations.”

  Rehaak recognized the voice of Bajan Lanier, a fellow scholar. He and Bajan had confronted each other in many heated debates. “I saw it as clearly as I see you standing there. The Creator transported me to the battlefield and dropped me in the center of the battle. Abrhaani and Eniila fought while the Nethera destroyed the land around them.”

  “Enough of your babbling, the Nethera live on only in tales to frighten disobedient youngsters into compliance. Even the children no longer believe in the Nethera,” Bajan jeered, pointing a contemptuous finger in Rehaak’s direction. “The Nethera will get you if you don’t eat your vegetables, Rehaak. Unfortunately, you now use the same fanciful threat on adults and expect us to tremble in fear. Where have the Nethera been all these centuries?”

  “I don’t know,” Rehaak said. “I know they still exist. The Nethera are as real as you or me.”

  The shouting match between the intellectual rivals changed the atmosphere. Bajan and Rehaak’s shouted exchange drew a crowd and galvanized the people surrounding the fountain.

  “Where is your proof? Where are the writings that prove your assertions? Where is the Aetheriad you have babbled about? Show it to us.”

  “I can’t.” Rehaak shook his head, and laughter erupted from the crowd.

  “I thought not. You offer us nothing but your drink-addled dreams. You cannot frighten sensible people with your talk of darkness, death, and Nethera invaders. The Whites fear the ocean. They will never cross it and invade us, and our people are not stupid enough to rekindle a conflict settled a decade ago.”

  Another voice shouted, “What about our people enslaved in Baradon? You may have forgotten them, Bajan, but we haven’t. They are slaves of the Whites. They toil in the mines and the fields, they starve, and they die while our enemies grow rich from their labor. Should we ignore their bondage and allow their continued misery in Eniila hands, or should we set them free?”

  Laughter became murmurs of assent; nearly everyone in the crowd had a missing relative or knew someone whose family member’s had not returned in the exodus from Baradon. Heads turned toward the speaker, but whoever had spoken had fallen silent and moved on. Someone pushed Bajan, and he stumbled. His friends pushed back, shouting threats. Angry shouts erupted from several areas of the throng.

  The voices became a jumble of raucous shouts and cries of pain, as people pushed and pummeled each other. That went well. Rehaak abandoned his sign, climbed down from his perch on the fountain, and slipped through the mob.

  The exchange with Bajan had fanned a longstanding disagreement into flame, so it wasn’t him they were after. On the way to his room at The Gilded Swan, he met city guardsmen rushing toward the unruly mob behind him. Rehaak grimaced and shook his head at the irony. Addressing a crowd...not the rousing success I hoped for. Unite the species, ha...more like start a riot in the capital. Perhaps a more personal approach is needed.

  Strange Dream

  Along the sharp spine of the ridge, the tree trunks leaned into the wind and braced against its force. Their branches bore coats of leaves that streamed behind them in the moonlight, giving the appearance that the foliage struggled to keep up. It was a trick of the light and the wind, but the trees seemed to race toward a destination on the valley floor.

  There was real movement as well; a lone individual stumbled through the forest at the base of the ridge. The person alone in the dark had a name and a destiny. His name was Laakea, which meant “light” in the ancient tongue. Rehaak, powerless to intervene, watched the young warrior as he collapsed in the cold dark forest.

  Rehaak jolted awake with a horrific headache above his right eye. He sensed he had already forgotten vital information from this dream. The morning sun outlined the roofs of Narragan in gold and shredded the remains of the night, which lingered as long, shrinking shadows. Tatters of darkness clung in isolated patches, where it still hid from the light. It may have been an omen, but he was too tired to care.

  Rehaak threw his blankets to the floor, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood. He stretched and tried to relieve the knots in his neck and shoulders. I spent more time awake than asleep last night.

  He stared out the window of his room and watched the colorful fishing boats sail away from the harbor outside the inn. Many of the craft, mere specks on the glistening waves of the inlet, already had their nets in the water, while others were still casting off from the dock.

  Enough. I am sick of this life. I am enmeshed as securely as any fish caught in a net strung in Narragan’s harbor. The Creator caught me and left me flopping and gasping to survive. I do not know who I am angrier at, the people of this city, or the God who tasked me with this mission. I faced rejection and derision without His support. How dare He hope for success against the odds stacked against me?

  Though the day was fine and fair, Rehaak felt rough and foul, dissolute despite working for the Creator’s cause again. His first attempt at warning the people in the marketplace of the danger had resulted in a near-riot, to which the city guard had responded. His later attempts to convince people of their vulnerability in smaller settings and even one-on-one had also failed.

  Despite many tendays of effort, he had still fai
led to convince his people to change their beliefs. Perhaps I have sunk too far into rebellion and broken too many of the Creator’s laws. Maybe He has forsaken me. Rehaak’s conscience plagued him this morning, and hope lay stillborn in the darkness of his heart, despite the bright new day being born around him.

  Rehaak had sought the Aetheriad since childhood. The Scriptorium, the center of knowledge in Khel Braah, was the logical place to search for the object of his quest. Rehaak arrived in Narragan seven years ago, full of optimism that he could find the book that proved his theories and change the world.

  After those seven fruitless years, a mixture of boredom and depression surrounded him like the fog that often shrouded Narragan’s harbor. The hope he bore when he crossed the causeway into Narragan long ago had drained away. Its loss left him as dry as the sunlit dust on his windowsill.

  Over the years, the volume of material in the Scriptorium overwhelmed Rehaak, and he lost the will to continue his search through the mountain of parchments and scrolls. In the last two years, he anesthetized his failure and spent his time and money on pleasure, using and abusing others at his whim. He disobeyed the laws of decency, and depression overtook him once those analgesics became ineffective.

  Rehaak’s dedication and devotion to his lengthy studies had earned him a reputation for his scholarship and intelligence. No one understood more of what lay in the most ancient texts. No one deciphered the arcane writings better. None of the Ecclesiarches matched his wit in a debate, but his knowledge did not bring him any closer to the legendary volume.

  Rehaak found clues and hints among the writings of long-dead scholars, prophets, and priests, but the evidence was cryptic and contradictory. In his frustration and hopelessness, he had succumbed to the diversions and perversions the city offered.

  Rehaak’s transformation began innocently. One person of influence sought his advice, and soon others followed; then dozens came to him for counsel and prophetic insight. People asked for his prophecies and paid him well for his opinion. At first, he told people what he believed the Creator wanted his people, the Abrhaani, to hear, but Rehaak soon found better commerce saying what pleased them. Rehaak squandered his credibility when he filled their ears and their hearts with words devoid of real insight or value.

  Business had been good even if Rehaak’s morals weren’t. The rich and bored paid well, although his customers now considered him a charlatan. Rehaak’s words were creative, even poetic on good days when his head didn’t feel like it was about to explode. He entertained, charmed, and gave his customers what they wanted, and they paid Rehaak for his efforts, the same way people rewarded a performing animal. He drew a crowd just like the dancing bears in the marketplace.

  I miss the power I once held, especially since no one will listen to my warnings. The temporary relief courtesans used to provide, and the drinking that numbed the pain of my failure isn’t worth what I now see in the mirror. I hate myself for my weakness. It caused my loss of credibility. How can I expect people to heed my warnings?

  Before the city claimed his integrity, he survived on very little, without a home, funds, or friends, and lived a monkish life of self-denial. Rehaak tried to justify his recent actions by persuading himself that his words hurt no one. Rehaak almost convinced himself his efforts deserved a reward, but his talents did not extend to self-deception.

  My words hurt someone. The old lies still eat at my soul like acid, and their bitter taste remains in my mouth. Can I ever cleanse myself of feeling cheap, dirty, and defiled? After so much falsehood, why would the Creator choose me to speak the truth to the Abrhaani people?

  Until the moment of his theophany, he had only an intellectual knowledge of the Creator’s existence, but when the Creator’s presence overcame him, his life changed forever. Once the Faithful One spoke, Rehaak’s convictions were no longer intellectual. He now had a hard, although subjective experience of the Creator’s existence, and soon discovered knowledge and experience mattered little without honor.

  When the Creator gave him the message for Narragan, He mentioned the Sundering of Brothers. Rehaak thought it might refer to the Rending, an event recorded by Radomir, the historian, in his scroll, The Rending of the Clans of Men.

  Until that event, the three species of mankind lived in a degree of harmony. The Abrhaani, the Eniila, and the Sokai held opposing philosophies, but they had gotten along until that point in history.

  There may be a clue in Radomir’s writings. I will renew my search for the Aetheriad. For Aarda’s sake, I hope the information in it can rouse my people from their apathy before it is too late.

  Dilemma

  Rehaak had prayed that the Creator would guide his hands to the Aetheriad, but now, inside the Scriptorium’s echoey main chamber, information about the book still eluded him. He rerolled The Rending of the Clans of Men and threw it back in the heap of parchments on the table but resisted the urge to shred it and set it afire.

  Instead, Rehaak paced the room and wore an oblong loop in the dust, while his thoughts circled back on themselves like a snake trying to eat its tail. He cursed, threw up his arms, and stomped away from the Scriptorium.

  Radomir’s writings described a thousand years of warfare between the Eniila and the Abrhaani in a cold scholarly treatise. The Rending preserved remnants of humankind. If the species hadn’t agreed to live apart from each other, nothing would exist today except windblown dust, ancient ruins, and crumbled monuments.

  By the time the Eniila and the Abrhaani overcame their centuries-long rampage, the Sokai had abandoned their only city, Berossus, and no one had seen them for centuries. The Sokai were legends and myths, much like the Nethera and their bright counterparts, the Aethera. Mankind paid the price for centuries of conflict with millions of lives and millennia of knowledge lost. Dust and ash blew down streets that once echoed with the sounds of voices and laughter. Shattered hulks of buildings and machinery provided nesting places for crows, rats, and other more dangerous vermin.

  Abrhaani trading cities on the coast of Baradon sixty years ago precipitated another war, which ended when the Abrhaani withdrew to Khel Braah. The Eniila were warlike and combative, even among themselves. The Abrhaani summed up centuries of painful experience in a proverb, “They are as likely to get along as two Eniila in a small room.”

  Rehaak stopped ruminating, shook his head, and focused on his present dilemma. No one trusted his message of doom, and no one believed in the Faithful One, so he stood alone and unheeded in a city of tens of thousands. Without the Aetheriad to confirm his words, he had become an object of derision.

  The Abrhaani were religious at heart, but those who showed slight interest in the Creator made no distinction between Him and the multitudinous deities, demigods, and nature spirits they worshipped. Animism had held sway for centuries. They had placated the spirits of plants, animals, and other things with elaborate rituals for so long, any other belief appeared peculiar or outright deviant to them. They wanted no other gods.

  People’s opinions wavered while they engaged in a three-sided debate over Rehaak’s ideas. One side said he was crazy, dangerous, and should be silenced; another group said he was insane but harmless. The final group was sure Rehaak was mad, but they did not care. The Creator had told him to unite his brothers, and he had succeeded after a fashion. They all thought he was crazy. They merely disagreed on the response to his insanity.

  Rehaak stomped down the street toward home, cursing under his breath. Maybe I am as irrational as everyone thinks. I am insane to continue expecting to change anything. I can’t go forward and save my people, nor can I return to my old life because I know the truth. I’m doomed to misery, trapped like a bug in a jar or a fish in a net. If they ignore my message, the Creator can’t blame me if they perish.

  Then a surge of unexpected and unwelcome honesty overcame Rehaak’s rationalizations and rent his guts. I am still guilty of my people’s destruction. The city will die, and I will die with it because I was incapable
of recovering my ruined credibility and regaining my people’s trust.

  Rehaak entered The Gilded Swan and nodded to Rogan, the innkeeper. “Are there any messages for me?”

  Rogan shook his head.

  The prophetic vision had cost Rehaak his livelihood as a seer. His regular customers had stopped seeking his advice. Their absence and my dwindling funds are a direct result of my dire warnings. I should abandon the city and its citizens to their fate like they have forsaken me. He gritted his teeth, opened the door to his room, and flopped onto the bed, hoping to sleep off the headache that had plagued him all day. I wish I could unravel my past like an old woman’s knitting, but wishing changes nothing.

  A loud knock interrupted his ruminations.

  “Rehaak! Open in the name of the king!”

  What now? His predicament disgusted him more than the interruption. Rehaak sprang from his bed and threw open the door.

  Two of the king’s guardsmen, carrying short pikes and shields, stood outside his door in the inn’s hallway. A herald, who held a parchment in his hand, accompanied them.

  “You are Rehaak, the scholar,” the herald said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, I am he. What do you want?”