Man, I almost didn't get this one out there. I've been a bad WF member for the last week or so. Met this really nice lady and she can be distracting. Anyways, if I haven't reviewed you and you've reviewed me, be patient!
Chapter Nine
The lanterns are lit tonight, I said to myself from my perch. Overlooking Kinema from a tall oak’s branch, I could see a light on almost every street corner. Woodsman patrolled in thickening routes towards the town center. I didn’t need to be told that that was where my belongings had been taken.
After the Masked Man had burned my cabin, I had considered carefully his intent. The trap became obvious. Yet its simplicity did not rob it of potential. As much as I knew it was a trap, he knew I would eventually come. When a man takes everything from you, you have two choices. Run like a dog, living in the shadows as an itinerant wretch. Or take back what was stolen. Something about my reputation told him I would do the latter.
No amount of security, no number of guards will stop our meeting...I gritted me teeth. I didn’t even know the name of my enemy…or his face.
He is holding all the advantages. Despite myself the invisible curl of my lips became a grin; the dueling of our strategies had begun.
I may have to spring this trap eventually…but I don’t have to walk into it.
Gripping the tree limb, I rolled forward and dropped to the ground. Accustomed to the darkness, I took a winding path across the open to the village edge. I passed between the first two houses and their yellow, glaring panes. I came to a major intersection still undetected, I wanted this avenue because I knew the back alleys would be more easily guarded. The way on the right led within ten minutes to the town hall where the Masked Man would probably be waiting.
I went left.
***
Hiss, the clock vented again. It was not the hourly blast, which was turned down at night to something less disturbing, rather this was a mere puff that occurred once a minute. At first it had been so subtle that I had not noticed, but now, sitting on a box for almost six hours with only my thoughts for company…I could hear the aging building’s every groan, and every breath of its steam clock.
The windows of the main chamber had been sealed shut, not with tools of the hands, but with my own craft. Unless D had the strength of a raging bear, he would not be able to pry even the weakest hatch open. There were only three ways into the building, two into the room, and one to the mysterious box. Strings of beads were strung across each entrance.
If they are disturbed, I looked at five short strings hanging from a doweling rod suspended between two chairs—
I will know.
As for the centerpiece of the trap, I sat on it and was reasonably confident from what the villagers had told me that I would be more than a match for the resources available to D. Still, there was his cunning I had to consider.
And this box. I fingered its outsides. Figures of a family of three were carved into it. There were burn marks on one end; I couldn’t help noticing that the black scars reached out till they’re furthest reaches touched the ankle of a running child.
It was not just a chest, as the woodsman thought, it was a message. The embodied will of an earthscribe, the last words of D’s parents for their son. Underneath the attached lid were wooden grooves, slashed and carved in seeming meaninglessness. But it wasn’t so, it was an encryption. Using the knowledge passed to me by my teachers, I could cause certain lines to ripple with a blue, like ocean water, forming words. The markings were words written on top of each other, layers upon layers of meaning on a single canvas. Taken all at once they could not be understood. I estimated there were ten separate messages under the lid.
There was no way to know how many D could read simply by touching it, but an intruder had to work at it. So far I could only crack the first two messages. The first one read, “Beloved son, these words are written for you because we know we will not be there when you will need us most…”
The Council had told me what I had already suspected, that D had not killed his parents. It had been the village. And not D’s family only, but five others were killed. A roving caravan of earthscribes had made a settlement around where D’s cabin now stood. They lived in peace with the townsfolk for a time until a party of brigands came to the area. Kinema’s woodsman were ill prepared for the raids and soon called on the scribes for help. They were answered, but the scribes were not warriors and could only defend against the assaults, not effectively counterattack. Tensions rose as the village believed their neighbors were holding back the power to save them, and using the threat as extortion against Kinema. The threat itself became forgotten in a growing feud. Eventually, it escalated until a tragedy took the lives of three Kinemans. The village blamed their deaths on the scribes.
Who struck the first blow was unclear, but in the end the scribe settlement was desolate. Some probably escaped, most were killed. D’s parents had stayed, even though they had seen the end coming. Their son’s invisibility was not a curse, but a desperate blessing.
It could have gone so many other ways, but the village did nothing to right the wrongs. In stead it built a lie to conceal a tragedy.
It had probably been awhile before they knew he was actually still alive. A sole survivor of a massacre. At first someone else must have provided for him. Some kind soul of Kinema must have sheltered him. If the tale had ended there, I would not have taken the task, but it didn’t.
For whatever reason, the kindness stopped. D was old enough by then to survive alone, but the lie followed him. The village hated him, and it was from them that he learned his identity. His name was forgotten, replaced by a letter and a curse. He had become dangerous, a villain that they created. To what degree his legend now determined his choices, I could not tell. Whatever he had once been, he was now a threat. Especially if he had read the second message.
Hiss.
Where is he? I stood up at the sound. I shouted for Durat. Looking down at the doweling rod with the beaded strings, I watched as one of the first three trembled. Then one of the last two followed as the villager pushed through the veil to enter the hall.
“What is it, Master Scribe?”
“He should have been here. Are you sure that everything he had is here?” I waved my hand at the box and the bags near it.
“This is everything that was in the cabin, if there was anything left there it was burned.”
I paced around the goods staring at the open bags. “Are you sure that none of your men
helped themselves to anything? Especially from that box? It has some expensive trinkets in it. Maybe there were more?”
Durat’s face lit with indignation, but he controlled his tone. “My men would not do such a thing.”
“Of course not,” I dismissed the inquiry with a hand—though it was ironic to me considering what the village had already done.
“Maybe he finally left. Perhaps he found out he had to deal with a Master of the cosmetic laws.”
I waved again. The man impressed upon me more with each hour that he was devoid of intelligence. He was utterly unable to comprehend motives outside of his own. Finally I stopped in front of the chest. “No. What is it we’re missing here that he still wants?”
Drat, the rest will have to wait for chapter 10. MUHAHAHAHA! Sorry. Notes, always welcome!
