Chosen of the One: Chapter 6, Part 1

2 January 2026

We continue with Klaybear, following his corrupted vision and encounter with a stranger who marked him as Gar’s; we also meet another of the chosen, the awemi, Tevvy, in the which Klaybear gets his first taste of the bitterness of being chosen. . . . (23 December 2013) We again remind our readers to right-click on the Glossary link, open in a new tab or window, thus enabling the reader to learn what each of these new terms mean.

Chapter 6, Part 1

Of all the symbols ever conceived, none strike as much terror in the hearts of those who behold it as the mark of Gar. . . .

Sheldu, Headmaster of Shigmar, 961-1013

Klaybear limped slowly out of the crack in the cliff face, his eyes red and swollen. His body ached as if he had been clubbed repeatedly; he leaned heavily upon his wooden staff as he walked slowly down the trail past the waterfall. The shadows of the trees were long, and the sun low in the west. His head ached, especially his forehead, where his wound throbbed in time to the heavy beating of his heart. He followed the trail down, back and forth across the steep hill before the cliff, and re-entered the forest he loved. He inhaled deeply, hoping to soothe the tattered edges of both mind and spirit, but the air only started a fit of coughing, which increased the discomfort of body and mind. Throughout the afternoon he had tried various forms of healing to repair the damage to his forehead and hand, and to ease the pain, but the damage went deeper than he was capable of repairing. He still had hope that one of his kailu masters, or all of them combined, could effect some repair. He had even tried one of the healing potions he carried, thinking that a orthek prepared by someone else might be effective, but the potion only hurled him back into the endless, chaotic gyre of his tortured visions, chaotic images compressed and piled one on top of the other. The only relief came when he tried one of the sleeping potions he carried, which sent him, for a time, into a deep sleep untroubled by his visions. However, when his mind began to rise from deep sleep to waking, late in the afternoon, he was thrust again into the nightmarish cycle of shattered images given to him by the messenger of evil. He moved slowly, carefully, along the trail.

Long after sunset, Klaybear shambled slowly down the last slope before the trail joined the main road into Shigmar. He stopped within the deeper shadow under the trees to listen for any sounds that might come from the road. He was close enough to the gates of Shigmar–within a mile–that brigands were generally not a problem. Yet the events of this day made him more wary and cautious than normal. He prepared a sleep orthek as he listened, but heard only the croaking of distant frogs, chirping of crickets, and the occasional soft sound of a bat flitting by. Satisfied that the road near him was empty, Klaybear stepped out of the trees and followed the trail down to the road. He stopped suddenly, hearing what he thought sounded like a light cough coming from the trees opposite the trail. The kailu threw himself off the road into the ditch on the trail’s side and waited, listening intently. He heard someone talking softly.

“Wretches,” the voice whispered, talking to himself, “trust a stranger with promises of ghelwum and see what you get: beaten, dragged through mud and leaves, and left for dead without even a scrap of food for your trouble. My grandmother warned me to be wary of their kind, but the hint of ghelwum trapped me again; will I ever learn? What’s that? Someone’s there; I’d better get further out of sight before they . . . too late. Please!” the voice grew suddenly loud, “have mercy on a poor abused traveler! I’m nearly dead! Hurt me no more!”

“Peace, my injured friend,” Klaybear said, rising carefully to his feet and moving toward the voice. “I am a kailu of Shigmar; I’m duty bound to help those in need.”

“Thank the One!” the voice sighed. “I feared my assailants had returned to finish the job. Robbing me wasn’t enough: they dragged me behind their horses for sport. Only this small dagger, hidden in my belt, saved me from certain death.”

Klaybear spoke a word and a small magluku flared above his head. The figure, as small as a child, huddled in the ditch at the side of the road. The red highlights in the figure’s curly, brown hair sparkled in the magluku. Klaybear took a clean cloth, wet it with water from his waterskin, and carefully wiped the dirt from the figure’s face. The small figure had a round, innocent face that made the kailu wonder what kind of person would harm anyone looking so innocent. In the magluku he could see the same curly brown hair with red highlights on the back of the figure’s small hands and the tops of his bare feet, an awemi, he thought. Now that he had cleaned most of the dirt from the awemi’s face, Klaybear saw him clearly for the first time. The kailu’s hand and forehead began to throb; images boiled to the surface of his thoughts, exploding from the chaos of his vision: eyes sunken vacant flesh rotting falling round face curly brown hair feet entangled webs shuddering struggling vainly voiceless shouts monstrous misshapen spider-shape puri face slicing skin limbs consuming eyes vacant staring empty falling webs slicing kortexi slaying face puri spider-shape misshapen raining ice swords curved brother older struggling awemi entangling webs entangling awemi struggling older brother curved swords raining ice monstrous spider shape puri face slaying kortexi slicing webs falling. . . . Klaybear fell back against the road, stunned by the forcefulness of his chaotic vision, which supplanted and overcame, for several moments, his conscious surroundings; the shock of striking the ground after falling jerked him back to the present. When his sight returned to the material world around him, he saw the wounded awemi cringing, inching away from him. He also saw that his white magluku was tainted with a pulsing red glow, reflecting garishly off of the awemi’s troubled face.

“What’s wrong?” Klaybear asked.

The awemi stared at him, face still lit by pulsing red light, and moved slowly away. “You just leave me a bottle of Shigmar’s miracle potion and I’ll slip into the woods, never to trouble y-uh . . . the kailum of Shigmar again.”

Klaybear looked down and saw the mark in his palm pulsing with angry red light. He guessed that his forehead must also be pulsing and glowing. He hung his head and heard, echoing as if from deep in his mind, the words of the cruel messenger: Awake, the sign will mark your separation from those you would save. . . . He sobbed, tasting the first bitter dregs of the cup thrust upon him by the messenger. He raised his head to the awemi and tried to cover his forehead with his hood.

“Fear not!” Klaybear said. “I am a kailu of Shigmar and will do everything in my power to aid you.”

“Why do you glow with angry light when you look upon my face?” asked the awemi, still looking like he was ready to crawl away into the woods. “Why do I see the sign of Gar burning in your forehead?” he added in a voice that quavered with fear.

“First, let me heal you, then I’ll try to explain, although I do not understand myself why it has happened, or what the red light means.” Klaybear drew energy from the air around them and focused it on his left hand, which he raised to the awemi. “See the green light of healing.” He reached toward the awemi and laid his hand upon the awemi’s head. Klaybear felt a pang as he saw the wounded, young awemi shy away from his healing touch but pressed his hand against the awemi’s head, releasing the orthek of healing. “Depending on the seriousness of your wounds, you may grow suddenly tired and fall into a healing sleep. I can take you to my home in Shigmar, where you will be able to rest until fully healed. Or, if you already have a place to stay. . . .” Klaybear left his sentence unfinished.

The awemi, the fear still plain on his face, eyes focused on the red light pulsing in Klaybear’s face, shaped like the mark of Gar, allowed Klaybear to touch him with the kailu’s orthek. Then the awemi gingerly touched where the scrapes on his arms had been and smiled weakly up at Klaybear. “The look you gave me,” he went on conversationally, “and the light that followed frightened me nearly to flight, but I feel the true power of your healing and believe that I can trust a kailu of Shigmar. Now tell me why you started . . . glowing,” he finished, searching for a word.

“I don’t know about the pulsing light,” Klaybear began, “but this morning I was given these signs by someone who I guess must have been an agent of evil. He burned them, somehow, into my palm and forehead and followed them with some kind of corrupted vision. I don’t know how else to describe it, but the vision I was given was jumbled, as if I showed you a bunch of pictures in rapid succession without giving you any clear connectors between them. The images were crunched together, piled one on top of the other, and they repeated, backward and forward, as long as I stayed in that state between asleep and awake, where dreams occur.”

“How does it relate to me?” the awemi asked, as Klaybear paused for a moment, trying to comprehend what had been done to him.

“Your face was one of many that I saw, repeated throughout the visions,” Klaybear continued, “with some variations. You I saw, trapped in the webs of a monstrous, misshapen spider-like creature, with a puri face, who first came and tore you to pieces, feasting on your flesh.” The awemi shuddered and groaned, flinching away. “Then later, I saw you caught in the same web with the same monstrosity, but I think a seklesi wielding a pair of curved swords that dripped ice came to fight the monster, along with a kortexi, who killed the bloated fiend, and sliced you free of the webs. But these differing visions of your plight were inserted between other images and repeated, forward and backward, throughout the whole vision. So I am not sure where the images that included you begin or end, or if I am actually interpreting them correctly.” Klaybear paused again, wondering how he could make sense out of the things he had seen, especially the fact that the seklesi he had seen come to rescue the awemi was his missing older brother, who they believed was dead.

The awemi yawned. “I’ll take the second one, if it’s all the same to you.”

Klaybear smiled. “Yes, being rescued would be preferable to being eaten.”

“I fear,” another yawn, “I’m slipping away.”

“Where shall I take you?” Klaybear asked.

“I trust you.” The awemi yawned again, reaching out to touch his arm.

“If you would hold me around the neck, I’ll carry you on my back.” He squatted down with his back to the awemi, who just managed to get his arms around Klaybear’s neck before sleep took him. Klaybear stood easily, in spite of his difficult day, for the awemi weighed little more than a child of the same size. He slipped his staff under his belt between his back and the awemi. With his left, uninjured hand, Klaybear held the awemi’s hands, clasped together under his chin, canceled his magluku with the single word, “neki,” and moved back onto the road, trudging toward the walls of Shigmar.

Klaybear was drenched in sweat by the time he neared the gates of Shigmar. Although the awemi weighed little, Klaybear’s day had not been easy, and he found himself drawing more and more energy from the air around him. He was tired and footsore when he turned from the road and entered a small grove of aspen trees that shielded a telepad, the only way of entering the city after the gates were closed. This particular pad, and the one inside the walls in the kailu ‘safe house’ to which it was connected, were connected by a specialized teka, such that passage was only possible between the two pads, placing them in a different category from typical teleportation ortheks: passage between these two was instantaneous, whereas normal teleportation took precisely one hour to travel between telepads. Shigmar, like all cities in the realm, was shielded against teleport ortheks, preventing enemies from simply appearing inside the walls by means of teleportation. The main telepad of Shigmar, known by members of the other orders of good, allowed entry into the city by using the telepad. The pad known only to kailum was specially tuned to the pad outside the walls, hidden in the grove of aspens. The novice kailu could pass from one pad to the other, simply by speaking the word, “entos,” while holding his or her symbol of Shigmar. Klaybear stepped onto the pad, inscribed with special symbols of teka, and held up his silver symbol. He spoke the word of command; the aspens faded and the room appeared, but he entered slightly off-balance. He staggered to one side, dropping his silver symbol so that it swung back and forth on its chain while he danced drunkenly across the floor, finally regaining his balance without losing his passenger. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Klaybear,” a voice began, “are you all right? You look rather flushed.”

He turned and saw Rebeth, a young kailu the same age as Klaybear, shorter, well-built, with dark curly hair and dark eyes. “Just a little tired,” Klaybear admitted, “I had a rough day.”

“Rough day in the grove?” Rebeth asked eyebrows raising.

“Yes,” he replied, “something is amiss. I found a wethi there, one who I did not recognize, garbed as a kailu; there was something familiar about him that I think I should recognize, but I cannot decide what it was. He somehow branded me,” he held up his hand and pointed to his forehead, “carved the same mark on the altar before destroying it, and turned my vision into some kind of never ending nightmare.”

Rebeth looked stunned. “Klaybear, this isn’t another one of your jokes?” he asked. “You’ve always been fond of playing pranks on me.” He smiled weakly.

Klaybear shook his head. “I wish it were, Rebeth,” he sighed. “I wish it were.”

“That might explain why the masters were restless and ate little at supper,” Rebeth said. “And some have been here several times looking for you.”

“Who’s been here?” Klaybear asked.

“Myron, three times,” Rebeth noted. “He was here an hour ago, checking for your arrival. He left me a message that you should see him as early as possible tomorrow.”

“Who else?”

“Your wife,” Rebeth grinned slyly, “although I lost count of the number of times she’s been here since I came on watch. Mirelle told me she had been visiting all afternoon. She was very agitated the last time she was here, about half an hour ago.”

Klaybear groaned. “Sorry, Rebeth,” he apologized. “I told her I would be home by supper time.”

“Who’s your small passenger?” Rebeth asked, pointing to the awemi on Klaybear’s back.

“An awemi I found lying in the ditch about a mile from the wall,” Klaybear replied. “Oddly enough, he was one of the faces I saw.”

“I’ll send a report to the masters,” Rebeth noted, “so they should know by morning. Meanwhile, you better get home before Klare comes again; I’ll be surprised if you get home without meeting her,” Rebeth smiled and gave Klaybear a pat on the shoulder. “See you later.”

“Goodbye, my friend.”. . .

Come back tomorrow for the rest of Chapter 6, and for those who cannot wait until next week, the entire novel is available from Smashwords for free!