Knight: Tracks of Darkness Read online

as their army charged forward to secure the remainder of the dream city.

  Day 2

  How the spider was defeated and the King’s curse was lifted.

  On the eve of the King’s doom, the companions fell into the pit of unbeginning. The light of Nur’s skies above became smaller and smaller until it was like a ring on the king’s hand. They were overcome with darkness, with only the light of the spider’s many eyes as a guide. Her eyes appeared blinking from every direction; her laughter echoed against the oppressive walls. She taunted them with the word Justice. Kalaitos drew Swazinder and stabbed at the walls to slow his fall, but the blade was too sharp. The spider lunged in the darkness and bit Kalaitos on the neck.

  Horace drew his bow and loosed an arrow whenever he spotted an eye, and this he managed to accomplish twice before the spider wrapped him in a tight web and slammed his body against the sharp walls of her lair. Horace continued to fall, and his bow followed after. She roared at the others, and the place was filled with a wretched stench.

  Kalaitos called out to his friend, Master On Darai, He clutched the wound on his neck and called out to him, saying, “Virtuous men cannot defeat her without us, Master On Darai. For we would rather live for ourselves than die for others. Do you know what that means?” Master On Darai sighed and answered, saying, “If only we were good men, Kalaitos.” The villains laughed.

  Then, Kalaitos betrayed Master On Darai. With his sword he touched Master On Darai on the thigh. His body became filled with a white light; within moments he would be erased forever from the memory of existence. He would die, but at least the light of his death would give the companions an opportunity to prevail against the spider.

  “Now is your chance, Mav’ric!” Master On Darai cried out. “Finish it now!” Mav’ric saw the spider bathed in a pale white light, and he plunged the Riverblade into her gaping jaws. He held her fast with his left hand and thrust his sword into her again and again until she was dead.

  The nightmare was finally over, the curse was lifted, and both worlds lacked the strength to rejoice.

  Day 1

  How when they returned to Omeneir, they swore upon a book to tell the truth of their quest.

  The King looked at his hand and discovered, with a sigh of relief, that the numbers were gone. Dressed in his royal attire, his head fitted with the royal diadem, and a golden scepter in his right hand, the King stepped out upon a terrace overlooking the island of Omeneir in its entirety. The multitudes received him worshipfully, crying out his name, waving flags and banners, before the King finally motioned for them to be silent.

  The Vizier cast a spell on him that magnified his voice. He raised his hands and gave a rousing speech. He began, saying, “Alas, I am not the hero in this tale…that honor belongs to those among you who dreamed, and in-so-dreaming, a king was saved.”

  As the King spoke, the Vizier produced a book inlaid with gold and heavily ornamented. It was as big as a shield. The book was filled with many blank pages that turned in the breeze. He passed the book among the four companions and said, “You must swear upon this book that you will tell the truth of your quest.”

  Mav’ric the Riverblade said, “I swear.”

  Horace the Desert Arrow said, “I swear.”

  Kalaitos said, “I swear.”

  Master On Darai said, “I swear.”

  The four oaths seeped into the book, and all the pages became filled with wondrous paintings depicting the tale of the King who was bitten and cursed by a spider, and the heroes and villains who worked together to lift the curse and vanquish the spider forever, and all the great feats and deeds of arms that happened in between.

  When the King’s speech was finished, and all the roaring and clapping subsided, he called upon the companions to step forward and be praised by all the people of Omeneir. The men lifted their hands and waved to the crowd. The Vizier’s hands lit up with power and he fired many mystic arrows, and small missiles that exploded with a great clamor. The multitude was left in awe and wonder of his power. The King declared that the celebrations would last another twenty eight days as a symbolic way of regaining the days that were lost.

  Horace turned and noticed something peculiar: far across the distance, on a sheer cliff to the south, a great lion bore witness to the ceremony. He stood on two legs like a man; his face grim like a watchful sentinel. There were brief moments when Horace wished he did not have the far seeing eyes of an archer. That moment, when he saw that an agent of the dreaming world could enter the waking land, was one of them.

  The End

  Three Interpretations

  I. A Neverminded approach to Knight: Tracks of Darkness

  Prince Captain Charlemagne (PCC): So in order to defeat the spider, the heroes had to be bad and the villains had to be good, correct, Gregarious?

  Lord General Gregory Haggard (LGH): That’s the idea, Sir Chuckles.

  PCC: Don’t call me that!

  LGH: Holistic goodness did not stand a chance against her, and neither did absolute evil. Only a concerted effort from both ends of the morality spectrum could prevail. There were so many moments where the mission could have failed easily.

  PCC: Good thing Mav’ric was already destined to win.

  LGH: I don’t know about that, Charlemagne. Nobody can ever accomplish anything on his own strength. And most of the time, you have to accomplish things with people you’re not going to like. Do you understand why this sort of tale is important to share among young wizards?

  PCC: Not really. Why should we endeavor to understand the nigromancer?

  LGH: I won’t have you calling them that while I’m around. That derogatory term is equally as offensive as when they call us the neverminded. Besides, the wizards of the Aegean Isles were not all bad. I had many friends among the alchemists of Waylake, who brewed me a special beer that allayed the stiffness in my sword arm. I had friends among the enchanters from Azurea who made me a sword. I sparred with the war mages of Valeon and I even befriended some of the dreaded conjurers of Engodde.

  PCC: Hence your nickname, Gregarious. What does it mean to be neverminded anyway? I don’t understand why that should be so offensive to us.

  LGH: It’s a form of slander directed at the vast majority of us who cannot use magic. We are often viewed by wizards as a lesser, more inchoate form of man. We’re like a shadow to the true potential that they possess. But as I was saying, the wizards are not all bad. It was only after a peaceful ideological civil war that the criminal-wizards known as the Red Herring left the isles of Aegea and attacked us.

  PCC: Right. So anyway, in this book here, I think the villains became rightful fools, and were somehow weakened by trying to be good. Kalaitos became good by seeking forgiveness, and Master On Darai sacrificed himself in the end. Right? He allowed himself to be betrayed.

  LGH: Of course. There’s no way Kalaitos could have betrayed the man who invented treachery. Master On Darai knew that the real treachery was risking enough light for Mav’ric to locate and slay the spider. Ha! The spider never saw that coming.

  PCC: And what about the heroes? What did they do that was bad?

  LGH: I think Mav’ric was supposed to rescue Horace when the spider dragged him under the sand-sea. That’s abandonment and heroes don’t do that. He abandoned a friend. Horace, on the other hand…

  PCC: What about Horace?

  LHG: I think Horace’s sin is that he was too proud to be rescued. The story doesn’t suggest that, but I’ve been a soldier for a long time and I know his type. Horace was always my favorite character. He doesn’t talk as much as the others. He’s a man of action. He just fights and does what he has to do. He’s simple, laconic and tough.

  PCC: Reminds me of somebody I know. Ultimately, I don’t think the heroes did anything wrong. What is pride and abandonment compared to treachery, deceit and something like kin slaying?

  LGH: So you are sympathizing with the good guys, then, which also means you don’t mind trying to justi
fy their wrong-doing. On the other hand, you have fully condemned the villains, regardless of their attempts at making things right. You regard their attempts at good as a weakness. See? This is precisely how the wizards gauge their youth, through story telling. They can get a sense of where they stand on the morality spectrum.

  PCC: I get it, now. With the incredible powers a wizard can wield, it’s important to know whether or not he’s going to use it for the good and benefit of others, or if they’ll end up doing what the Red Herring did.

  LGH: That’s the moral of the story, Charlemagne: Goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, but knowledge without goodness is very dangerous.

  II. A Wizardly Interpretation of Knight: Tracks of Darkness

  Andre Aegea (AA): I want to know what school of magic the vizier used to transfer the heroes and villains into the dream world.

  Mad Glare (MG): Why, mysticism, of course! I knew you would be interested in that. However, the transfer would not have been possible if Nür did not exist as a real, tangible world. If it was just some imaginary place in the sub-conscious, then we would have required another form of magic.

  AA: Illusion.

  MG: (whispers) Precisely. The vizier would have had to conjure, in their minds, a magical lie involving a spider and a city surrounded by an ocean of sand. What’s even worse is that the Illusion has to be believable for the spell to work. And that