Chapter 1 – The Calm Before
Seven Days Before…
The library was becoming a morgue for its own kin.
Books were being thrown from the shelves. High from atop ladders, men were grabbing the literature by its spine with gruesome hands and tossing them over their shoulders to the various piles below.
Their eyes would scan the titles, hoping desperately to find the leather-bound book that could end this siege, but to no avail. The piles below became mounds which were transforming into mountains.
The piles of saggy leather and crackled paper were producing a smell that could equally remind one person of a quiet night beside a fireplace, and remind another of the cold and placid passing of a close death.
The voice entered the room in front of the brown beard and discolored garbs. “Anything?” It whimpered as it pleaded.
Various answers returned, but there was no good news.
The man nodded, trying to hide his frustration, so he masked it with fear instead. “Then keep searching! It cannot be anywhere else!”
“Sir,” a familiar voice treaded carefully behind him, “His Grace asks for you again. He requests an answer from you, Hove.”
Hove sighed. He watched his library become further torn apart and crumble, and his youth came to him in a memory that was now clouded by liquors. He ran a hand through his short hair. Still freshly cut from this morning, little strands of clipped hair came off in his fingertips.
“His Grace doesn’t request anything.” Hove stood and faced his friend, Goran, placing a hand upon his shoulder as they walked back down the hall away from the library. “He demands an answer, and I will give him one. Although, I don’t think he will enjoy this very much.”
“Surely you won’t—”
“Oh, I will!”
Goran rolled his eyes, and gulped back a newfound fear. Only minutes ago, he was fearing the edge of a foreign army’s blade, now… Now, he welcomed it happily.
---
“HOW DARE YOU!”
“But it is the truth.” Hove barely gave any bow, nor any gesture of homage as he had approached the royalty of Belle’s Hold, yet this is not what had upset the old king so violently.
Goran closed his eyes as the king belched out his anger. Standing alongside Hove in these moments tested their friendship more than the days of when they both realized they had been pursuing the same woman. How he missed those days…
The king pulverized his fingernails into the golden throne atop his sanctuary as he added, “YOU suggest that I have misplaced this?”
Hove stood apathetic, “Then where else could it be, Pavo?”
“And where is the titles of respect, Councilman?”
“It has been left on your doorstep, which will be overrun within a week if you cannot remember what you have done!” Hove approached the throne and was met by two guards, clasping the hilts of their royal swords, but Hove waved them away without care. He knelt at the throne, “My old friend—”
King Pavo waved him away, not too dissimilar to how Hove had waved off the guards. “Do not patronize me. We are not friends!”
“You may be right, but we are out of options, time, and we have no one else, so we must become friends. If there were any other friends, they would be at our gate helping us defend ourselves.” Silence filled the space for a moment before Hove added, “Yet, nobody is here.” Hove stood and motioned toward the empty hall, which should have been packed with the High Cabinet of Belle’s Hold for such a conversation, yet there was nobody. Not even the rats had stayed behind as most of the kingdom fled. “We can be spared! Pavo, my King! The Heir to the Blood,” Hove’s body ran cold thinking about that wretched militia, “they have offered us a lifeline. If we can give them the book, then this will all be washed away.”
The king closed his eyes with age clawing at the corners, “That book was nothing! I’m not even sure it ever came through these walls!”
“Except that we have a transcript! The librarian from forty years ago noted its arrival!” The king’s eyes shifted as Hove spoke, and he knew Pavo was within reason. “The entry noted how the book matched a description for an artifact that YOU were requesting. His hands took the book to you yourself. He noted that you would handle it with care… And that was all we could find.”
“Well, er, maybe he forgot to note that it came back to him at some point. Perhaps that old librarian’s diary was incomplete.”
And now Pavo was without reason. Defeated, Hove sighed, “Perhaps…”
Deflecting the conversation before Hove could add anything else, King Pavo said, “And did anybody answer the call? Are any Sparks here?”
Goran answered, “We sent out couriers to any nearby villages, but nothing ever turned up. Our reports from the North were promising, but if anybody were to respond, they would be behind the Heir to the Blood.”
“So, nobody is coming,” King Pavo announced.
Hove adjusted his weight to slump upon the steps descending the throne. The guards exchanged a quick glance of a life well-wasted. Goran nodded with deflated agreement.
Five Days Before…
Hove woke up to distant thunder.
As a city upon the eastern shores of Korema, Belle’s Hold regularly opened its front door to raging sea storms that spit upon the cliffsides. Sitting nearly three hundred feet above the water, Belle’s Hold acted as a spectacularly unambiguous forecaster of impending weather. Nestled into the easter corners of the continent, Belle’s Hold was practically floating over the cliff, which allowed for breathtakingly beautiful views of the ocean below and the horizon afar. Equally, its supreme spot above the sea meant that incoming invasions from the west left no escape options, except for a deadly dive onto the beaches far below.
The pale embroidered curtains dashed around playfully in the breeze of Hove’s bedroom window, unaware of what terrors approached in the west.
Hove shrugged off his sleep, although the liquor from last night was proving to keep his vision blurred. His eyes moved down to his desk. Ledgers, receipts, diaries, catalogues, confidential transcripts… They all painted the same picture:
Some time ago, a book was requested by King Pavo in his younger days. An extremely high bounty was placed upon its retrieval. A decade later, the book arrived at the castle. It made its way to King Pavo through one entry log from the librarian, and then…
“Nothing,” Hove said alone. “Where are you! Everything is at stake unless we find you! And I don’t even understand why YOU are so important!”
You. It. The book. Hove had found himself avoiding its name, as if calling it by anything would add more power to something he had never even heard of before this month. Never had the name even left his lips.
Thunder boomed on the horizon again, yet this time it seemed angry.
Four Days Before…
Rain had begun to pour during the early morning, and by noon, Belle’s Hold was drowning. Its structures submerged in rainwater, and its citizens submerged in ale and wine. With no hope in sight, all reserves had been brought out to be finished in a fit of drunken fury.
“Do it again!” King Pavo brought a chipped chalice to his lips as he pointed to Goran, both of which were nearly collapsing with laughter.
Hove, Goran, and Pavo had taken up residence in the main hall. The royal guards were dismissed to the walls to patrol, but with only one hundred men and women, there was little for them to do beside drink alongside the wasted royalty.
“I’m your king dammit! When I say, ‘Do it again!’ I command you to do it again!”
Goran put his hands to protest. “It doesn’t quite work like that!”
“So how does it work then? You’re Spark is that you are smart, so just predict it again!”
“Not quite. My Spark is Forecast. I can just make incredibly solid predictions based on the evidence—”
“By the gods…” The king pushed himself up straight and mustered up sobriety. “Then how about this: I flip a coin three times. You tell me what the fourth one shall be.” The king didn’t pretend to look for a coin before motioning to Hove, “Hand me some coin, Master Hove.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“It won’t work,” Goran protested, but the king didn’t care.
With a quick flip, a golden coin flickered in the air and came down as heads up.
Despite his protest, Hove could see Goran grow with intrigue as he steadied the scene.
A second flip, and the coin showed heads again.
And the third! Heads again.
“So?” King Pavo looked at Goran with a child-like interest, but Goran was perplexed.
After a moment, Goran spoke, “Well, we are met with two obvious paths: Heads or tails.”
“Obviously,” Hove said, but was brushed away by a hand from Goran.
“Consider it like this: You would have every right to say that when Pavo flips this coin again, it should be tails. But that’s the interesting part. It shouldn’t be anything. It’s just as ordinary if it were to be heads or tails. Only because we just had three heads in a row, we think it can’t possibly be a fourth.”
“So, you predict tails!” Pavo prepared himself for another flip before Goran stopped him.
“No, actually… I think it’s going to be heads again. And the time after that, and so on. Maybe it’s not really a bunch of “heads in a row,” but instead… Maybe it just keeps being heads each time. I’m not sure if that made sense. I’ve been drinking wine since the sun woke me up this morning.”
Hove had always enjoyed Goran’s nonsensical explanation for his Spark. Having god-like powers never needed to be explained, but Goran rambled on anyway.
King Pavo nodded and flipped the coin, but he hid the result.
“Well?” Hove could hardly wait for the reveal, but Goran knew it already.
“It’s heads!” Pavo showed it for the men to see before flicking it back to Hove.
Hove asked, “Don’t you want to keep flipping to see if its heads forever?”
The king waved the idea away and then reached for his drink. After a heavy swig, he looked at Goran and said, “You know, you aren’t the first Spark I’ve met. Maybe only ten in my life, if that many… When we would have our bigger celebrations, some Spark would come out of the woodworks, unafraid to out themselves as one of your special chosen. Well, anyway, they would offer service or pledge loyalty in exchange for haven. But Sparks have their own will in this realm. In fact, Goran, you’ve stayed here far longer than I had ever expected you would.”
“My place is here. Why would I abandon everything I built for myself here?”
“It seems everyone else has,” Pavo said motioning to the barren hall.
Rain pattered on the ground outside, and it echoed through the keep.
Hove asked, “One more request, Goran. Take into consideration everything we have here. How do you forecast our end?”
“The Heir to the Blood are known to keep their word. Should we find the book, I believe they would spare us entirely. Without it, they will believe we are withholding it, and…” He shook the idea away. “We still have 89 members of the royal guard, and with the remaining 22 citizens that have stayed, all of which are crippled or elderly… Our position is remarkably strong, and it would take an army quite large to purge us completely if we were at full strength… Considering they might have Sparks within their armies as well…”
“Spit it out, boy!” Pavo finished his chalice and began refilling it.
“Putting it bluntly, we might last an hour if we are smart. Without the book, we won’t last past that hour.”
“And nobody answered our calls? Nobody is coming to help defend us?”
Goran shook his head as the city continued to drown.
Two Days Before…
Thunderstorms were thinning, yet darkness was growing.
There were no savory scents fluttering from kitchen windows. The local bards and travelling musical troops were only silent echoes. Only occasional heavy drops of rain slapping the cobblestone roads or hooves of the freed animals could be disguised as the sounds of life, but one would lie to themselves if they claimed to find comfort in it.
Livestock roamed freely. Chickens squawked alongside those recombing the library. Sheep bleated down the barren streets. Cows used their tails to swat at flies that had arrived in droves, perhaps early to feast upon the incoming viscera.
Pavo had locked himself away. Nobody had spoken to him since his night of drinks with Goran and Hove. The light from his room could be seen from afar, and his shadow would come and go along the high walls. Some said they could hear him arguing with a person, yet the guards outside his room assured the remaining souls within Belle’s Hold, that nobody had gained entrance to his room in days.
Goran and Hove had spent the last two nights deep in conversation. At first, they conjured scenarios in which the Heir to the Blood might spare them. Perhaps if the army believed the noblemen of the book’s true absence, then Hove and Goran’s heads could remain comfortably connected to the rest of their bodies. Later, they recounted younger days of training for the King’s Guard, and then failing miserably. Goran for his intellect: “a better mind than a brute,” his father had told him; Hove for his disassociation, rarely consuming the danger of the situations they were presented with. Both eventually worked their way back into the Guard, and they laughed at the memories. Finally, the two began concocting conspiracies about the book as they walked the city among animals and occasional pockets of rain.
“And you really don’t know anything about it?” Hove asked with a secret hope that Goran might produce it from a back pocket and save the day.
“No… Nobody does! Nobody else even knows anything about the book besides our royalty and the dreaded monsters coming to kill him!”
“There is still plenty of time to flee south. That could give us a few extra days to breathe in the countryside.”
Goran shook his head, “Maybe a day or two at most. The Heir is quick, and their scouts will spot this city empty from a league away. I know they have eyes on us already, perhaps they have even been watching us for a week now.”
“You never do stop analyzing everything, do you,” Hove asked?
“A blessing and a curse, you could say.”
The two stopped as they entered the mighty main pavilion of the kingdom.
Belle’s Hold was a circular city, with its center pavilion holding its namesake. Its original intent was lost with the years, but a large bell was produced in the center of the city. Belle’s Hold was founded upon a massive mining configuration, and its veins were flushed with the brown metal. The sides were wondrously carved or chiseled with stories of the city. Originally, the bottom layer showcased the founding of the city, and the coronation of the first king. Precision painting and wonderous chisels had narrated those days as if they weren’t four hundred years ago. As the years went on, the bell had become an almanac of year-to-year events. Heavy rainstorms were illustrated alongside a year of plenty, which would predate the upcoming famine. A royal birth was highlighted with booming fireworks. Up like a coil, these decorations ran from its wide base to nearly twenty-five feet into the air. Christened as The Grand Bell, the ornamental monument stood as a storybook with the world as its author.
“Breathtaking, isn’t it?” Hove awed, “Even after all of these years. It is still beautiful to see.”
“Remember Tamara Yelin from our primary days?”
Hove laughed, “How could I forget her? She was half of our class’s first crush.”
Goran nodded toward the bell.
“When we were seventeen, she and I snuck up to the top and spent the night up there.”
“I do not need to know where you lost your—”
“Nothing like that!” Goran smiled through a set of eyes in love with the past. “We just talked through the night looking at the stars.”
“Oh, I completely believe you! You know, I’ve actually never been to the top of that thing myself!”
“You liar! Everyone has snuck up there at some point! It’s a staple of growing up here!”
Hove kicked at loose rocks on the street. “I guess you could say I never had the chance. Anytime I thought I was with the right person, or that it was time to make a move… Time just passed us by with age. It’s like I blinked. We were kids, chasing the same women, yet suddenly you and I woke up as civil servants, and now another decade has slipped by.” Hove sighed as a trail of water swam around the stones on the road. “I look old, but I don’t feel it anymore. We don’t have very much time left. Why waste it?”
Goran smiled through his sneer, and made a dash to the service door. There wasn’t anyone around to tell the two where they could or couldn’t go. They were well past their teenage years of pushing boundaries and bounding over hurdles. In fact, their own career meant they had security access to the Grand Bell, yet there was something exhilarating for Hove as he marched up the steps toward a missed moment from his younger years.
In some quiet place in his heart, Hove wished there was a danger of him being caught.
---
“There has to be some forgotten drinks around here!”
Goran was frantically searching in the cabinets and drawers of the office atop The Grand Bell. “The guards would have gone mad out of their mind with how many hours they were ordered to stand from up here. There has to be a stash somewhere!”
Hove was outside on the railing. The sun was setting in the western skies, and the cool air of a post-rainy day swam through his senses. The clouds were filled with vibrant pinks and oranges as the sky behind it began to sink deeper into the tidal wave of blues and indigos. “Gods I’ll miss this place,” Hove said to himself. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Flashes of yesteryears skipped and danced through his mind. His father taught him how to fish outside of the city walls in the swamps to the south. His mother, rest her soul, had left behind journals of poetry meant for her, but Hove had read them in his dorm during his years studying in Korema Former. The frozen norths, shopping and trading his way back across Korema to come back home to Belle’s Hold.
Goran appeared alongside him, and the sounds of liquid splashing accompanied him. “I’m assuming it’s a wine, but the smell is something stronger. I’ll let you do the honors,” he said.
Hove took the bottle and let his nose introduce himself. “Strong” wasn’t strong enough of a word to do the drink justice. Hove coughed violently and laughed before giving Goran one last look as if to say, “See you on the other side!” A large swig and then immediately handing the bottle over was the only move Hove could make before another cough jumped out of his chest.
“Goran, are you poisoning me?!”
Goran began to cough as well following his gulp. He couldn’t respond.
The coughing ended, and the two men eyed the drink again. Sweet, earthy, and packing a punch. How could anyone stop themselves from stealing another drink? Then another, followed by the rest of the bottle.
Hove’s eyes were spinning. Goran’s words were no longer coherent.
Drunk was putting it mildly.
The two sat upon the walkway as they watched the sun sink lower and lower.
“Goran,” Hove slurred, “I’ll always say you were my brother, should anyone find us alive and ask.”
“Brother,” Goran said, “I’ll make sure I die far away from you! I wouldn’t be caught dead next to you!”
The two exploded with laughter.
Hove tried to remember this moment, knowing the alcohol would damage the memory forever, but it seemed to be years since he and Goran had spent a night together as friends and not as colleagues.
With one last look at the horizon, Hove tried to paint the image as clearly as he could. His vision must have been broken beyond repair, because as he tried to find the words to describe the setting sun, two black dots appeared on the horizon in front of the sun.
Hove blinked away an attempt at sobriety, but the drink was too strong.
He stood, fighting his way upright. Hove cupped his hands around his eyes and tried with one last drunken might to see past what his eyes were made to see.
There was no mistaking the sight. Two silhouettes were walking toward them.
“Damn it all,” Hove said, “the Heir is here!”
The desire to fight, to defend his city was consuming him! Hove felt rage, and fury fill his veins, but his body was slumping. The drink had claimed victor.
Thus, Hove was destined to die, asleep in a drunken slumber, while his home burned around him.