Keys of Candor: The Red Deaths Read online

  “What is your first task?”

  Seam stared into the dark eyes of the Alephian monk that bore down into him. Wael’s face was streaked with the hot, white ash of war.

  Seam was uneasy, but forced himself to focus on the face of the solemn monk before him, doing the best he could to ignore the pain within his eyes. Deep remorse could be seen in the monk’s eyes, spilling out from behind his ghostly mask.

  Seam replied to the monk, projecting his voice for the crowd to hear, “To bear the dead up to their final resting place. To hold them in my heart and to carry on their lives through my own.”

  The Mastermonk continued the Questioning:

  “And what is your task for your people?”

  Seam did not miss a beat. “To submit my will for their betterment, thinking always of their welfare before my own.” Pride swelled within his heart as the people cried out in praise.

  The Mastermonk closed his eyes and nodded his head in agreement. The final question was coming, and soon Seam would be done with the dreadful ceremony.

  “Young Panderean, there is only one more question.” The monk paused and his eyes flew open.

  “What is your duty to Aleph?”

  The very name of the deity commanded the silence. Seam locked eyes with the intense Mastermonk. He did not waver in his gaze. He could feel the weight of the ceremony now. It was a charade of old traditions, traditions that would soon fall out of favor. But traditions still held power. Heat rushed to his face as he cleared his throat and dryly answered the final question.

  “To honor He, above all else.”

  The Mastermonk walked toward Seam, resting his hand on his forehead and began a long chant in the same ancient sing-song language with which he opened the ceremony. Raising his head, he looked up and out into the mass of spectators and stretched out his hands.

  “It is my prayer that Aleph’s peace will rest on you today. It is my prayer that this war, this war that has sent all of Candor into an uproar, will cease. So that we can remain in peace, which is the will of Aleph. Destruction and tyranny will not hold us in fear, for we know that we are always in his hands and always in his vision. It is my prayer that you may be blessed, that your lands may be blessed,” the monk looked down at Seam, “and that your new King may be blessed. Until the Keeper returns to lead us into Aleph’s loving restoration, I pray that you go now, spreading the peace of Aleph with you.”

  Once the prayer concluded, the Mastermonk lowered his hands and the ceremony was dismissed.

  Peace. The thought of the word caused a tempest of pain, sorrow, and anger to well up inside of Seam.

  How has it become custom to speak of peace and blessing when one loses all he has and all he has loved, thought Seam as he stared down at his feet. This nation has been burned and beaten and nearly every man and woman here has lost someone, and yet we still speak of peace.

  The priests and honorary guests of Elum and Preost made the final march into the king’s hall where Camden would be laid to rest in his catacomb. Seam walked into the darkness of the tomb beside his mother. She reached and squeezed his hand. Her cold hand cooled Seam’s irritation and rage and helped bring his mind back to the task at hand.

  “You did well, Seam. Your father would have been so proud.” Her sentence stung with oncoming grief. She remained silent, but gripped down on Seam’s hand hard. Seam winced at the words, but remained silent.

  The depths of the catacomb were dark, illuminated with only dim candlelight. Frosty portraits and marble effigies flickered in the dark, standing like a large troop of long forgotten ghosts. The hollow eyes of the earlier royal families stared down upon the living who dared to enter this hall of the dead.

  King Camden’s newly hewn vault lay open, ready to swallow the titanic casket. Seam helped lower the body into its final resting place. The casket landed with a heavy thud. His mother leaned down to kiss the top of the casket before it was sealed under the heavy marble slab. She wailed, filling the room with a new line of grief. It was a scream that echoed the long history of Lotte’s kings. Despite their glory and gains in reign, inevitably they all ended in the same dark place. Seam and the other guardsmen sealed the vault, dropping the heavy lid with a thunderclap of finality. The lid bore the inscription: “HERE LIES HE OF LINE DESCENT—CAMDEN PANDEREA—HIGH KING OF VALE AND LOTTE; SERVANT OF ALEPH.” Underneath the written inscription was the carved family insignia; a bull’s head, whose horns wore a crown of thistle blossoms.

  With this final act, the ceremony came to a hollow end. The foreign dignitaries shuffled from the room, eager to leave the dark dread behind them. The ambassadors sent by the Darian family and the others of royal lineage from Elum seemed nervous from the moment they arrived in Lotte, and it was obvious, despite their support, that they were eager to leave. Elum had not yet been engulfed in the war that flared between Lotte and The Groganlands. The Elumites had every desire to remain neutral.

  Seam had only one word for them. Cowards. Elum had a long history of avoiding conflict amidst its neighbors, even when those neighbors were tyrannical like the Grogan Sars. Right and wrong held no bearing with them. They sought only safety and profit.

  The Alephian monks lingered. They took time to speak with every individual from the procession. They eventually took their leave, leaving Seam alone with his mother in the depths of the mausoleum, alone with the earthly remains of his fallen father.

  “He was such a good man.”

  Seam had not expected his mother to break the silence. He pursed his lips as she spoke.

  “He was the one to think of your name first, you know? I argued with him for weeks, but your father was always a good negotiator. ‘Seam?’ I said. ‘Who had ever heard of such a name? Why?’ He said that you would be the one to stitch us all back together. You would be Lotte’s seam. Candor’s seam.”

  Seam’s mother wrapped her thin fingers around his upper arm and lightly squeezed as she pulled close to her son. “And I know now more than ever that he was right. You will bring us together.”

  Seam could feel his pulse beating beneath the weight of his mother’s grip and he gently took her hands into his own as he looked down into her teary eyes.

  “Strange. He never seemed that convinced in my ability. Did it require his death to learn what he really thought?”

  Seam turned and rested his hands on the cold marble slab that sealed his father in his final resting place. His head dropped as he tried to sort through the tempest of thoughts and emotions that spun inside his chest.

  Aleigha laid her hand back onto Seam’s shoulder and gently addressed him as she fought back tears.

  “You know he loved you, son. Very much. He was a busy man, maybe too busy at times, but he did believe in you. You were his only son and the most important piece of his heart.”

  To Seam, all he could remember of his father was the man he debated and argued with in recent years. His mother began to sob softly and Seam turned to embrace her and kiss the top of her head.

  “Thank you, Mother. I apologize; I just don’t know what to say. But you know I love you and I will do you proud.”

  Aleigha looked up at her son with a small smile and wiped her eyes. “You will make us both proud, son.”

  Seam bit the inside of his cheek, mustered what little smile he could find, and squeezed his mother’s hand as she slipped away. “I will be up in a bit, Mother. I just need some time to think.”

  As Aleigha disappeared into the thin sliver of light creeping through the open doors, the silence of the room fell over Seam’s shoulders.

  Silence. For years, silence made Seam wary and restless. Silence normally meant dreams, and dreams meant terror. Sitting in the catacombs, though, there was total silence, unavoidable and heavy. Candles danced in the dark, bouncing an eerie amber light off the marble stones. Shadows skipped and swayed across the cold empty floor making it sparkle like black glass.

  “There is no peace,” he whispered. “There will never be any peace.
Not for you, not for what you’ve done.”

  His words echoed in the dark halls, bouncing off the walls as if his thoughts were calling back to him. He loosened the golden ties that held his hair in place, and ran his hands through his long brown hair. He threw off his ceremonial cloak, and fell to his knees beside his father’s tomb. Seam pinched his eyes together and tried to force pleasant memories of his father to return to his mind. His mind had been preoccupied with the most lasting and most recent memories as he and his father fought over policy and ideology. However, after a few minutes several memories did return—early memories—of his father letting him sit on his lap in the throne room wearing his ceremonial crown. The old crown fell over his eyes and they laughed as he clumsily tried to perch it atop his childish head without any luck. Then his father’s words flooded back into his mind, “Son, one day you too will serve the Realm of Lotte as king, and that day this old crown will fit much better. I know you will be one of the greatest kings of this Realm’s history.” Seam lifted his chin from the cold marble slab and looked up into the eyes of the paintings above him. Kings, dozens of them, memorialized on the walls, glared down at their own caskets. None of them could avoid death. King or not, they had all come to an end. Death did not respect their crown; they were merely men, no different than their servants. In the dark catacombs, there were no kings. There were only men. Dry, brittle bones and men.

  As more memories rushed through his mind, Seam began to wail. He threw his fists down on the stone floor. His wail morphed into an unchained groan, and to his utter surprise he began to sob. Seam never expected losing his father to hurt so deeply. When he thought of the day he might lose Camden it had always gone differently in his mind. Pain and anguish were expected for the day he would lose his mother. However, the grief he felt for his father caught him off guard. He gasped for breath as pain tore through him, ripping his heart like a thin piece of fabric. In it all he heard the voice, the still small voice within him that began to question everything that brought him to this point.

  What did you think, you fool? Did you think you could ascend to the throne without any pain, without any loss? No, no Seam, you are far, far too weak for that. You longed for power to bring change. Did you truly convince yourself that you could rise so quickly without a cost? Now you will know the true weight that power brings. You dreamed of the day you would be King, but you did not think of what loss you would suffer to precede your gain. It is yours now, King Seam, yours alone. War is on your doorstep, and everything you’ve hoped for holds on by a single thread.

  “I can’t!” Seam screamed. “Oh, gods above, I can’t!”

  Panting, lying on the floor, Seam allowed the cool stones beneath him to calm his fretting. He realized what he needed to do. He stood up and laid his hand on his father’s grave.

  “Father,” he croaked hoarsely, rubbing his reddened eyes. “Forgive me, but I now know what must be done to bring about the peace you’ve longed for…that we’ve longed for. We will not be at war much longer now. I just wish I could have spared you this death, but you would not listen to me. Rest now and know that despite my shame, that I … I...”

  Unable to utter the words that he longed to say, Seam hoisted himself up and away from the Pandarean catacombs, swearing to himself never to enter them again. The grief that wracked his body and shuttered his spirit evaporated as he stepped into the light flowing throughout the main floor of the High Hall. He emerged from the tombs, and there waiting for him was the court of lords from the surrounding villages, waiting for an audience. Upon entering, they quieted themselves and bowed.

  Seam rebuffed their actions. “My lords, do not bow, for I am not yet your king. This time of mourning has just yet begun and we have much to speak about without the royal court pageantry. Do any of you have news from the front lines? Is there any news from Faylon?”

  Marcus Esslered, the spokesman of the eastern cities, was the first to answer. “My lord, I personally have received word from my scouts that Faylon was completely destroyed. The Grogan forces took no quarter, and they butchered our people.” The man paused as he looked into Seam’s eyes and quickly lowered his gaze to his feet as he kicked at the floor.

  “There were no survivors.”

  Seam threw out another question. “What about our Head Guardsman, Grift Shepherd? Is he counted among the dead as well?” Seam’s eyes burned behind the question.

  Marcus again spoke for the assembly as he muttered, “My lord, there has been no word about Grift or his forces. My report does not confirm his...”

  Seam cut him off, “Find out, Esslered! It is of great importance that Grift not be captured by those barbarians. He is one of the few men that truly dictate our kingdom’s security. As for the rest of you,” Seam paused, exhaling. “Candor has survived a millennia of wars and is no stranger to conflict. We, the remnant of mankind, can attest to struggles in the past that our world has endured. But I tell you now that we have never faced a time darker in our kingdom’s history. If the Grogans have their way, Lotte will be laid to waste just as the nation of Riht, and I will not allow that to happen. I need your full support and loyalty as we decipher the best strategy to run the Grogans out of our Realm. I assure you I will not rest until I have my revenge on the Groganlands for this treachery, even if I have to rekindle the fires in Riht and march our forces to the gates of Rhuddenhall.” He paused, his mind buzzing. “Meet me at dawn. We must plan our next move. In the meantime, communicate to your forces to form a perimeter around the borders of Lotte and to hold their positions. We cannot have these brutes advance any further.”

  Each of the men bowed and made their way out of the High Hall leaving Seam alone with only the guards who remained steadfast at their post. Making his way to his personal chamber, Seam felt the confidence he felt with his advisors peel away. A nagging ache of fear began to pool inside his gut.

  He barred his chamber door and paused at the room’s small mirror, taking account of his haggard countenance. He sunk into his desk chair and sighed as he reached into the dusty drawer of his desk. He laid a small, leather-bound tome on the desk and slid his fingers across its surface.

  The book’s presence eased his spirit and helped lift the anchor weighing on his chest. Seam pulled his hair back as he leaned over the book and opened its ancient pages. As he scanned through the pages he spoke is a hushed whisper, “Speak to me again.”

  He flipped to a familiar page that had held his eyes captive over the years. The faded scribbling stood out stronger than anything else in the room.

  We wait in time for our savior,

  The Keeper from beyond,

  Do not let your weary spirit waver,

  Answer and break our bond.

  Seam drew in another breath and exhaled the day’s stress and pain. He turned again to another familiar passage, his passage.

  We wait, Immortal, locked in glass.

  Until the Keeper comes.

  Descend, rise, and free our hands.

  Come soon, dear Keeper, come!

  Let out your life, release your gift,

  This world waits for thee,

  Through you, by you, we will come,

  Keeper of Candor’s Keys.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A tower of white grit and dust was pitched into the sky as a phalanx of black rooks ripped through the deserts of Riht. Their speed could not be matched, and in the ruined Realm of Riht, there were no limits to their acceleration. No obstacles, no boundaries; just a flat, open desert plain. Willyn Kara led the dreadful formation across the wasteland. She finally had her prized quarry, Grift Shepherd. She hammered down on the throttle and felt the engine throw her back into her seat, roaring like a raging lion, as she pushed it to its limits. A spot of radio chatter buzzed in her cockpit.

  “General Kara, the rooks cannot maintain this velocity for much longer. I have to advise you to slow down. The engine levels on your bird are becoming critical.”

  Willyn gunned the engine in defian
ce, and with another rocketing explosion the Rihtian desert smeared by her in a blur. She glanced down at her navigation screen. She was only an hour out from Rhuddenhall. She had to get back to the Red City. To Hagan.

  I just hope I’m not too late.

  ***

  Willyn sat silently by the bed that held her older brother’s brittle and twisted body. Her thin fingers were interlocked with the skin and bone that replaced his once powerful hands. Hagan’s commanding and confident aura shriveled into the pale, sunken skeleton that held his soul captive. He labored through the last moments of his life with little grace, hidden from the public’s view.

  The sound of the ventilator wheezing and clicking was enough to make Willyn sick to her stomach. She quietly waited, not knowing whether to hope for a miracle or to wish for her brother’s passing. Neither seemed realistic, as Hagan was caught in the delicate place between life and death. Her hope for any recovery had eroded since the first day her brother was connected to the terrible machines.