So I posted the prologue to this recently, which was something I had found in an old writing folder of mine. I have begun developing the story and this is chapter one in its first draft form.
I am looking for critique and advice. Thank you all so much. (to read the prologue thread:
http://www.writingforums.com/critiqu...165-words.html)
Chapter 1: The Library
The town was abandoned, though peasants squatted in houses and inn’s trying to salvage what they could. Tæra urged the brown spotted gelding through the wooden archway where great gates once hung. The horse, Toby, wasn’t hers but it was available to her, a workhorse from the palace stables. Toby stopped just inside and stamped his feet, whickering softly. Tæra rubbed is nose and patted his snout, he always felt uncomfortable here.
Onward Toby cantered, he knew where to take her. Through the town square, layered with dust and sand. Many of the paving stones were broken, but Toby was sure footed, having worked in the rough stoney fields of the quarry. The fountain was a broken pile of marble, once a flock of great birds arching upwards. Many buildings surrounding the square had sustained varying degrees of damage. One building was a pile of rubble, broken columns and splintered wood buried amidst stone pulverized to fine dust, spilling out into the square. The connecting building was undamaged.
A young boy peered his head out the door of an inn. Every window was broken and the roof was missing. The sign hung off of one hinge, perfectly still, and read The Eagle’s Nest. He saw Tæra and gasped ducking back inside. It was the first person she had seen in several trips.
“Hello,” she said, stopping at the doorway. She saw the boy cowering back near the edge of darkness. He wore ripped clothes smeared with black soot. “Its okay,” Tæra continued, “I’m your friend.”
The boy stuttered a greeting, then a young man appeared next to him and placed a comforting hand upon the boy’s head. His other hand held a knife. The young man said, “What do you want?”
“Are you okay?” said Tæra, “I can--”
“Unless you have food,” the young man cut her off, “we don’t need your help.”
His eyes shown determinedly, a reflection of his knife blade. Tæra smiled and opened her mouth, but he spoke, “I see your clothes, and jewels. I know where you are from. You are the reason we are here,” his knife raised slightly, “stay away.”
For a moment she was silent, taken aback at such an accusation. Refugees? she thought. A rat suddenly scurried across the floor and the young man lurched after it, calling for the boy to follow
.
“Wait!” Tæra said as she frantically dug in a leather sack. The boy reluctantly obliged as she produced an apple and held it out to him. The boy gasped softly. “Its okay,” Tæra said, “Here, for you.”
Slowly the boy approached, and snatched it as if prodding a snake. Stepping back he promptly bit into it. Tæra unfastened the sack and held it out. The boy shook his head, wide eyed, apple juice running down his chin. The young man appeared with a dead rat in his hand, blood dripping from its wounded head. He glared at Tæra. Slowly, she bent over and carefully dropped the sack to the floor.
“Be safe,” she said, and left them.
Tæra arrived at the library as the first clap of thunder rolled across the darkening sky. It was a wide, squat building made entirely of stone. Flocks of birds were interwoven into great archways that swept across the face of the building, columns reaching down into dried up pools. Chunks of stonework had been beaten out of the building, but only one column was completely destroyed. She dismounted Toby, shouldered her remaining bag, and headed up the wide stairway stopping to look back at the approaching storm.
Inside she tied Toby to a statue of a man reading a book as the thick patter of rain echoed behind her. Just beyond the heavy oak clerk, the low roof gave way to double high ceilings and row after row of dusty bookshelves. She found the way to her chair, big enough for three, nestled between religions and a short, plain table. A stream of dust settled into a cloud as she plopped down.
A pile of books sat atop the table, and a large volume lay open, the map on its pages clouded by a thick layer of dust three days had produced. The Complete Geography of the World: New and Old filled her lap, a map of the continent sprawled across both pages. It was strange not seeing her country as she knew it--like the great Jaehran Rift spanning just east of New Jaehra (which was Coldane on this map) north to the Fallen Lands. Or the Jaehran Ruin north of the River Lox which on this map was speckled with cities, roads, a dense forest and a lake called Panus Drink. She wondered what the country was like before her people invaded and conquered the land on this map. She longed to know what great cataclysmic events could have brought about such geographic change. Somehow what she learned in school seemed to be superficial and fatuitous, by the fact that this atlas was published only fifty years ago.
She found a small dot, north of the River Lox and just south of Dirkwood, that represented the town in which she sat. Her saddened imagination created a thriving and joyous time. It was market day in the square. The heavy babble of water from the fountain and the tangled chatter of a thick crowd was musical amidst the rhythm of stamping hooves and creaking wagons. Merchants from the great city of Coldane came from just across the river, farmers came with their harvests, and traders brought imports from nations across the continent. The square was a sea of tents, most white, but some green, blue, yellow and red. They spilled into the boulevards until they became streets too narrow to hold a tent. Banners from every nation and multicolored streamers adorned the sky. Men filled the pubs at night. The roar of laughter and stories spilling into the streets along with music and entertainment. In the library one day, a frantic stock boy weaved between crowded aisles with carts of new books, under the surveying eyes of the librarian, scrambling to make room. At the table next to where Tæra sat two old men played a game of stones, reminiscing of old times. Across the main aisle a group of students crowded another table studying, and in every aisle people stood thumbing pages or craning their necks. The murmur of quiet conversation permeated the huge room, rising and swelling in tides.
Suddenly it was quiet. The bustling library was nothing but dusty bookshelves, disheveled and connected by cobwebs. The image still echoed in her mind, though. She remembered Toby and went to check on him, but the fluttering sound of tumbling books stopped her. To her right, across the room, a fallen bookshelf had leaned against the wall with a pile of books under it. That pile now lay flat, exposing a heavy wood door behind. The books settled again as a rat escaped from beneath, chittering away. She thought of the young man at the inn and shuddered. She could see Toby was fine, and headed towards the newly exposed door.
Knee deep in books, she stood turning the iron knob again and again as if it would unlock itself. She stopped, gritting her teeth, then an idea occurred to her and she bounded to the clerk. Toby whickered as she went behind the long oak desk. A ring of keys hung on a peg under the counter top. The third key tried opened the door to a staircase that disappeared down into a dark grey basement. Cold, stale air wafted up and chilled her. Tæra stopped at the top step, nervously fingering the green gem that hung around her neck. It felt warm.
The old steps creaked. She tried each one as if it might snap under her weight. A cold breeze was drawn up the stairs through the door that stood open behind her, rustling through her short dark hair. The room at the bottom reeked of damp wood and old leather, its low stone ceiling felt oppressive. Tæra straightened realizing that she hunched unnecessarily. The thick musty air stirred in her presence. A stone wall stood not ten paces from the base of the stairs. To her left old carts, shelves and chairs were crammed amongst upturned tables and barrels stacked to the ceiling, pressed against another nearby wall. The junk continued back around beneath the stairs.
To her right to room opened, engulfed in twilight grey. the square outlines of bookshelves rose to the ceiling and disappeared into darkness. Along the wall, now to her left, behind a bookshelf that stood perpendicular to it, she saw the soft glow of faint light. She made her way towards it. She stared off towards where the center of the library would be, wondering how big the room was. What else is in here? The thought sent a shudder down her spine. Suddenly the light ahead felt safe and she hurried her pace. There was another bookshelf behind the first, and she could now see the light was too steady to be from a candle. The room came to a corner, the perpendicular wall was made of brick. She stood before an archway that led to a room flooded with hazy light. Inside the ceiling sloped upward and to the left, this room was deeper by several paces. Reddening daylight spilled in from the dirty window at the top, just at ground level. The room had been some kind of office. There was a heavy writing desk against the wall beneath the high window, and to each side bookshelves with books and folders struggling to fill the shelves. Behind her chests of drawers lined the wall, cluttered with trinkets, tins, a tea kettle and a cracked wash basin. Dust was thick everywhere. The far end of the room narrowed to a hall, a brick archway stood at the end leading to a thick wall of darkness beyond.
The desk was smeared with papers, yellowed and brittle. Inventory lists, purchase orders, customer accounts, and notes. Finding nothing of interest, Tæra tried the drawers. The upper right was the only one locked. The others only held more papers and writing tools. On the bookshelf she found a volume called Delivering Peace to Mankind. Cleaning the dusty cover revealed a subtitle: How the Third Order will usher in a New Era of Unity. She choked on her breath. She had seen this book before, in the palace library, but she remembered it simply being titled A New Era of Unity. A quick look into its contents verified her recognition. It was propaganda. Published in conjunction with the Third Order’s victory over Jaehra intended to reinforce their ideas and make them righteous in a bloody and merciless invasion. It was required reading in her latter years of school. Tæra found the publication date, and was surprised to see this version of the book was published well after the town was abandoned. So how did it get here? she thought, and spent some time thumbing its pages. Finally she set it on the desk and rubbed her eyes, struggling to see in the fading daylight. Her stomach rumbled reminding her of the lunch she gave to the two boys. It was time to start the two hour journey back.
Toby was eager to leave, stamping and blowing anxiously as Tæra led him outside and mounted. The clap of hooves on pavement reverberated between wet buildings as the sun hung just above the horizon, and disappeared all together as the last rays faded leaving the hilly country in twilight. They made it across the River Lox and to the north gate of New Jaehra after full dark, light from the moon throwing its reflection across the quiet water. Tæra smiled at the gate guard.
“The hour is late for a beautiful lady to be out alone,” the guard said smiling back beneath a gleaming helmet.
“Alas, but I’m not alone,” Tæra said dismounting Toby, “Toby is as good a partner as any.”
“You’re forgetting about me,” the guard said.
“Of course,” Tæra laughed. “Tomin, you are sweet.” She touched his shoulder.
Tomin blushed, cleared his throat, and called for a stableboy to take Toby. Tæra thanked him, and nodded to several “m’ladies” as she headed across the gate yard. She took the path behind the garden and up the torch lit stone stairway that wound around the bath house to the women’s quarters beyond. She went around the back of the great building, the fountain bubbling softly in the courtyard around front. Allowing her eyes to adjust to the sudden absence of torchlight, she found the narrow stairway that snuck her into the third floor where her private quarters were.
Quietly she found her bed and peeled off her clothes, giving a look across the moonlit river towards her town as she opened the window to the night. Cool air hardened her nipples and gave her goose-flesh. She sat before the window with a goblet of wine, her soft pale skin almost glowing from the moon. Finally she slipped into bed, silky sheets relaxing her tired skin. Shortly she found herself amidst a bustling crowd, enjoying coffee at an outside cafe with a beautiful young man. It was market day in the square.
Aliens exist. Look in the mirror!(I saw two of 'em today).They looked just like me.
