The Chosen (The Compendium of Raath, Book 1) (5 page)

He said I was
beautiful
.

I
nnnnnnnnnn Nonnnnnnnn

The voice grated and churned. The words were
distorted and sometimes made her teeth hurt. The noise was
sometimes infuriating, but it was part of her world.

Domma knelt in a darkened section of the
Sunburst Temple. Night had fallen and it had been several hours
since she had been with Ormon Stipson. Ormon. Ormon. Ormon.
Something. Something.

Grazzzzzzzzz Nonnnnnnnn

She had built up some power during her
Healing of Ormon. Devotees could do that sometimes: if they used
their power to do something good they could build it at the same
time that they spent it. Domma chose now to put that power towards
Communicating with God, but it was little better than trying to
talk to a stone wall. People often believed that the powers of a
Devotee put them in direct contact with the Lord, but it couldn’t
have been much further from the truth. Domma sometimes felt no
better off than anyone else who was trying to make God talk to
them. The sounds she heard as answers were creepy sometimes,
actually making her skin crawl as she prayed alone.

Isssssssssssss Nonnnnnnnn Korrrrrrrrrr

That was Him. Her. It. She concentrated
harder, the power she had built ebbing away in the effort of
contact. Sometimes she could glean tiny things out of the astral
babble, and sometimes she couldn't. Today, like most other days,
was one of the latter times.

Ormondomindominormonon

Domma looked up at the high ceiling of her
room. “His name is Ormon Stipson, Lord. I am praying for him and
for myself. I visited a few other patients today, but none that
touched me as he did. Why . . . why do I put myself through this?”
Domma wasn't nervous in the presence of the ill anymore, but she
still felt a powerful sadness. She began to weep as her power
dwindled to almost nothing.

Helping others meant you had to see their
pain, and that could be hard, especially when you had so much of
your own to cover up.

Fivvvvvvvvvvvvve
Sunnnnnnnnnnnnnzzz

“Five suns?!” she shouted. “Five suns?!
That's all you have for me today? Instead of babbling nonsense how
about you heal those who are sick! Save all the orphans! Help me
feel the comfort I seem to be able to instill in others! Help me
remember who I was!”

Her voice echoed, bouncing five times off
the walls, and God was silent.

The story she had told Ormon today – about
her baldness and her scar and the bandit's poisoned bolt – was a
lie. Domma couldn't remember for the life of her why she was broken
and lost.

K
rothair Mallurin moved like lightning, his sword twirling in
front of him.

The Foglin danced left and right, firing
flames from its mouth at Krothair. The wind of it whipped his hair
back and forth and the heat from it dried the sweat on his face the
instant it formed. Krothair held his sword, Battlestir, in his hand
and a large silver shield in his other. The crest on the shield was
a raging boar, and Krothair felt every bit the animal.

He charged in close, whirled around a gout
of flame, and stuck his sword into the Foglin's guts up to the
hilt. Then he slashed upwards, severing the thing in half.

His heart dropped, for as the creature fell
to the ground he saw what was behind it. It was an entire army of
Foglins; all different types. Every grotesque iteration he had ever
imagined was standing before him, waiting for him and Battlestir to
fell them all. He hadn't known Foglins could make it past the
Vaporgaard, but here they were a thousand strong in the royal
palace of Hardeen Kingdom. It was up to Krothair to defend his
King. He was the only one left!

The Foglins let out a battle cry that shook
the walls of the castle and Krothair set his feet, preparing to
meet them head on. The first of them reached him and then-

C
lank!

The practice sword whistled
towards Krothair's head, but he deflected it easily. The clanking
sound of metal on metal had snapped him from his daydream. There
were no Foglins here, there was only the boy he was fighting
against today. The kid wasn't very good and Krothair had no trouble
forcing him to yield, bashing his shield and weapon away through a
series of fast cuts and slices. Well, his practice sword couldn't
really
slice
, per
se, but it could leave lasting bruises with its dull
edge.

The boy he had been fighting was on the
ground now. Krothair hadn't even learned his name.

“Enough!” Germon shouted from the side. He
ran up, laughing a little. “Let the poor guy up, Krothair.”

“Fuck!” screamed the boy on the ground. His
face was beet red. He had recovered his sword and was repeatedly
slamming it into the hard-packed dirt.

“I told you, Irving,” said Germon.
“Krothair's our best. Don't get pissy now, just get up off the
ground and shake his hand.”

Irving looked as if that was the last thing
in the world he wanted to do, but he did it anyway. You listened to
Germon when he told you to do something. He was jovial until you
didn't follow his orders. Krothair said not a word as Irving shook
his hand, then the kid ran off to the guardhouse probably to
complain to the others how Krothair had cheated somehow.

“He hates me,” Krothair said.

“Skill has that effect on people,
sometimes,” Germon replied. “Better get used to it.” He turned to
leave the field. “We're done out here for today, Krothair,” he said
over his shoulder. “But there's something I want to talk to you
about. We'll talk in my office.” Germon motioned.

Krothair raised an eyebrow.
He had almost opened his mouth to say
he
wanted to talk to Germon. He'd
had something on his mind as well.

Krothair sheathed the practice sword which
at this point, after being used numerous times, was basically just
a beat-up piece of metal with a handle. The Western Watch had never
been privy to the kingdom's best equipment, but these swords were
getting pretty pitiful.

The shabby equipment never seemed to affect
Krothair, though. He could beat almost anyone with any weapon,
quality or no. He had been able to do that ever since he'd turned
twelve, five years ago. The first time he had fought had been with
the handle of a broken hoe on a farm he had been working on. The
wood had spun and sung in his hands as he bashed a loud-mouth
farmhand in the head, ending that fight quickly and getting himself
expelled from that job in the process.

He walked across the dirt towards what
Germon referred to as his office which was really just a hut, more
or less. The Western Watch was grand in title, but low on style. A
few buildings squatted here and there on this border of Hardeen
Kingdom, and they made up the infrastructure of the Watch. There
was the guardhouse which was also the bunkhouse. Then there was
Germon's office, which Krothair was pretty sure used to be a large
outhouse. There was a small fence and barricade that the men here
had built, and there was sort of a kitchen-slash-dining room where
the men ate.

Krothair never complained.
Perhaps that's why he had ended up out here. He had wandered his
whole life, roaming wherever work and food had taken him. When he
had come to Hardeen Kingdom he had run into the Western Watch,
proven his skill, and joined on the spot. Krothair knew that it
wasn't as glorious a job since the war had ended, but still
someone
had to watch the
border, and the free, wide-open lifestyle had fit him at the
time.

The whole encampment was situated on top of
a large hill with a fantastic view of the surrounding area. An
attack from any direction could be spotted. Any pesky trees that
had tried to grow and block the view were cut down and used for
firewood or lumber to patch the dilapidated buildings.

Krothair took a quick scan of the area.
Nothing out of the ordinary.

He knocked on Germon's door.

“Come in,” Germon said.

K
rothair reached nervously into his shirt pocket as he shut
the door behind him. His hand grasped clumsily for the small scrap
of paper he kept within the pocket. Paper wasn't necessarily a
rarity out here, but this scrap had actually blown onto the hill
last fall. Krothair couldn't read fantastically well, but he knew
enough to be able to decipher the blurry word that was written on
it: Kingsguard.

The paper wasn't meant for Krothair, of
course, but even so he had taken it as a sign. This scrap, clearly
separated from a larger sheet, had somehow made its way here. His
sharp eyes had noticed the tattered thing amongst the leaves on the
ground and when he had held it in his hand he'd felt that it had
belonged to him his whole life. Of all his possessions it was his
most dear. He thought maybe that was kind of sad.

But he knew that all young
boys dreamed of being on the Kingsguard – that elite group of
warriors, the men of legends. They said that Kelin Lightbearer had
killed thirty mounted men using a dinner fork. They said that Telin
Lightbearer – Kelin's twin brother - had barely survived a fifty
foot jump from the ramparts of Haroma castle only to pop right up
and behead the Shailand general. And Krothair wasn't sure whether
or not to even believe all the things he had heard about Trance
Raynman.
Did the man really rise from the
dead?

A spot in the Kingsguard didn't open up very
often. You had to die to relinquish it, and the men in that service
didn't fall easily.

“What you got there, Krothair?” Germon
asked. He was seated behind a makeshift desk which had a few
scattered papers and a candle on it. Scant things, and even so they
were unorganized. Germon had heart and could inspire and teach men,
but Krothair had learned that the man couldn't keep any other part
of his life under control.

Krothair laughed nervously. He felt that it
was now or never. “Well, sir,” he started, trying frantically to
remember what he had wanted to say. He licked his lips which were
still chapped from the winter that had just recently departed. He
drew out the paper. “This is going to sound stupid but this paper .
. . this paper blew into camp last year.”

Germon sat passively with an impartial face.
“Paper?”

“It's only a little scrap,” said Krothair,
starting to sweat worse than he did during his most vigorous
workouts. “It says . . . it says 'Kingsguard' on it. It got me to
thinking. I'm as skilled as anyone here. I need a recommendation.
Something. Anything. I don't know how it works exactly. I'm meant
for more than this.” He blurted the whole end out, feeling the
words burst forth.

Germon slowly steepled his hands, elbows on
his desk. “More than the Western Watch?” he asked, his expression
impossible to read.

“I don't mean that it's bad,” Krothair said
quickly. “It's noble work, this watch is. But the boy I just beat,
Irving . . . well, he knows it as well as I do. I don't belong
here. I don't . . . fit in.”

“Seems you don't fit in anywhere, Krothair.
A wanderer you are. Farm work, orphanages, a bit of small-time
thievery, and then the Western Watch.”

“I have wandered,” Krothair said. “My whole
life, I've wandered. Some of my tasks were . . . less noble than
others. But I have seen much of the world.”

“You seen the Vapor?” Germon asked.

Krothair's heart lurched. “Not with my own
eyes. Heard enough stories, though.”

“Stories don't do it justice,” Germon said.
“They're recruiting down there again. Hard. They need men there and
they need them quickly.”

Krothair scrunched his
forehead in thought, eyes on the floor.
The Vapor needs men? Since when? Did I overstep my bounds by
bringing up the Kingsguard? What was I thinking?
Krothair had always been an orphan.
Don't you have to be born to a family that means
something to become a Kingsguardian?
A
family. That was something he'd never really had.

Germon stood up. “Not many here know this,”
he said. “Don't even think most of the men here have guessed it.
I'm old, Krothair. I've been around the world fifty times if you've
been around it once. I've been to the Vapor.” He lifted his shirt
to reveal a scar across his ribs. The thing was jagged like a
lightning bolt and the hair that seemed to grow everywhere on
Germon's chest pulled back from the scar as if it were poison.

Krothair's eyes widened.

“Rumors would have you believe that this
gash from a Foglin claw gives me magical powers. That's horseshit.
What it's given me is pain every day for the last forty years.”

“Why are you showing this
to me?” asked Krothair. For a moment he completely forgot about his
Kingsguard paper.
Germon has been to
the
Vapor
?

“I'm showing you the
consequences of what happens when lesser men try their hand at the
Vaporgaard.” Germon sighed. “You're a better fighter than I ever
was Krothair and that's hard for me to admit, especially
considering your age. A position in the Kingsguard is admirable.
Shit, you won't find anyone more revered than those twelve. But
they don't need you, Krothair, and I say that with as much respect
as I can. Yorn Darmon once took eight arrows to the chest and
laughed about it the next day, showing them off like
trophies
still stuck in his
flesh.
”