Begglar’s Burden – Chapter 7

*Scene 01* 4:25 (Daybreak)

It is early out, but the sun’s promise is lighting the distant peaks.  The persistent fog that covered the grounds last night had fled at the rising of the sun. It is still a few minutes before dawn. The night passed without further incident, though I was restless, reacting at every nocturnal sound.  The hayloft was chilly, but finally settling and burrowing into the straw, I was warm enough.  The fecund smell of earth, dead straw, just a hint of manure and general musty smells of the barn and its miserable four-legged occupants permeated the air and my traveling cloak and knapsack.  Whoever walks next to me, may want to do so upwind.

There is some activity in the inn as my fellow travelers awake to the smell of pan-fried bacon, sausages and a large skillet of scrambled eggs.  I see the Inn door open as Begglar tosses out a pan of sudsy wash water.  I am shocked to see him up this early.  After how he ended the evening I figured him to be in no condition for it.  His wife is there with him, and his boy.  Looks like they are getting ready for a big breakfast.  Despite the dealings of yesterday, Begglar seems different.  Almost like his old self again.

The bells are being rung.  Breakfast is ready.  Time to find out what is to become of this day.

We joined together over a hot, lavish and bountiful breakfast in the Inn’s dining hall. The air inside the dining hall is redolent with the mouth-watering flavors of smoked meat, the dry pinch and tang of pepper, the buttery-smell of warm bread. 

Grateful for the hospitality of Begglar and his small family, I offered to pay him as much as I could spare from my leather satchel.  But he refused the money, saying we might need whatever coinage we could spare for what lay ahead.  Besides the very imprint of the coins I offered would most likely get us killed.  The metal needed to be melted down into slag that could be recast into Xarmnian currency.  The old coins were evidence of prior loyalties, and they had been confiscated in the prior purge.

“You need ta understand somethin’, O’Brian.  The days of welcoming travelers, the fellowship of sharing tales from abroad, and general goodwill among men are over here.  Hope only comes here ta die.”

I am reminded by his words of my request and his comments from yesterday.

“Hope has not died yet,” I indicated the others still enjoying their breakfast and sharing and passing pewter plates of crisp bacon, and scraping hungrily at an amalgam of eggs fried and scrambled, with a light cream gravy, and crisp dark rye bread, “Take us to The Marker as you promised.”

Begglar clenched and unclenched his fists and finally, wiped them on his server’s apron.  He leaned in and further lowered his voice, “About that now.  I’ve been needing to speak to you in private.  Something has happened to the marker.”  Before I could protest, he hushed me and looked around himself, covering my arm before I could lift it and make any gesture that might cause unnecessary attention to be drawn our way.

He pursed his lips and then stood, giving me a nod to follow him to a more private place where we could speak without being overheard.

When I learned the truth of his shameful secret I was amazed, shocked, and angered.

*Scene 02* 3:05 (Xarmnian Dawn)

The first light was bloodshot within the great stone City of Xarmni.  The black stone and crenelated tops of the city walls rose upward like the bottom of a massive eyelid against the jaundiced sclera of the glaring sky.

Silhouetted against the forbidding dawn, thirty slacken shapes of various lengths, drooped and swayed in the wet chill of the morning from ropes dangling from the high ramparts.  Bodies. Ominous examples made to assuage the unchecked wrath and suspicions of a vengeful and paranoid monarch.

Some had been randomly selected by the soldiers from among people. Others specifically targeted by those seeking to avail themselves of certain privileges afforded by their untimely demise under the cover of following the king’s command.

The Son of Xarm had wanted all traitors dead–all who held any potential loyalty or secret hope in the prophecies concerning the Ancient Marker Stone to be cut off from the land of the living.

And the Xarmnian monarch’s orders were not to be denied.

The city walls were no longer protection from the threat of outside invaders but now served as the formidable boundaries of a prison wherein dwelt the insane and brutal regime that fed on the power derived from its captive subjects.

From a balcony above the paved parade ground, the Son of Xarm glared out at the striated pallor of the yellowing dawn.

He had dispatched a troop of men to move towards the eastern lands to see what had become of the invaders from the sea.

He brooded over disquieting thoughts that had kept him awake throughout the misty night.

He had presided over the hanging of those of his subjects who had been identified as traitors, but their deaths did little to set his mind at ease.

Some of those dangling from the ramparts had been those he would have sworn were loyal to him.  Others had been unknowns. Young and old, middle-aged, and of no distinction.  Blood for blood.

Still, there was no way of knowing what secrets had been held in each of their hearts.  Better to be safe than sorry.  Problem was…he still did not feel safe from that accursed Stone, high in the eastern hills towards the sea, so very far away.

*Scene 03* 3:14 (Creatures of the Night)

“The body is gone,” I told Begglar when we stepped outside.  “I checked the hillside early this morning.”

Begglar stopped and looked off in the distance.  I could see him scanning the horizon and the hillside warily.

“I heard voices on the hill last night. Before you came back. I think they took the body, but am not sure how they found it in the fog.”

Begglar grumbled and muttered, “Trolls almost never travel alone.”

Begglar strode ahead, moving up the hillside behind the inn.  I followed, trying to keep up with him, scrambling upward over loose gravel.

“You think they were Trolls also? How could they be? It was dark.”

Begglar harrumphed, “What does that matter?”

“Aren’t they diurnal? I thought they all slept at night?”

Begglar squatted where the burnt body had been.  There were scraping marks and bits of ash and flecks of charred cloth here and there, showing definite signs that the body had been partially dragged, partially hefted, and conveyed up the hill.

“You’ve been gone a long time. We’ve learned a lot more about Trolls since then.”

Begglar pointed to twisted rocks and partial knuckle prints.

“Aye,” he said raising off his haunches and dusting his hands from pawing at the ground, “They be two or perhaps three that were here. We’ll have to move soon, but there is still more to do before we go and much more to say.”

“What do you mean?!”

“Bagging and binding them used to work, but we didn’t realize what was happening before. I had wondered why you bagged this one, but I forgot you have been gone for twenty years.”

“Twenty-one.”

“Aye, but Trolls are much more prevalent now.  Darkness is when the infected ones hibernate.  Nightfall was a trigger altering them physically into what they will become during their sleep.  Body processes slow to use all their energy for the turning. This is why we were able to subdue them in the past. Turn out the lights and they hibernated into their becoming.”

“But now?”

“The older ones who have completed the change always keep to the shadows during daylight and are then fully creatures of the night. If it’s only Trolls, they’ll not be back till this evening. And we’d all better be long gone by then.”

*Scene 04* 2:45 (Cold)

Miray had followed Nell throughout the breakfast preparations and was now carefully carrying dishes into the kitchen, close behind her.

The words that the child had spoken in her restless dreams troubled Nell, and she allowed Miray to keep close to her during the morning’s chores, keeping her occupied and feeling useful.  In a roundabout way, she needed to ask the girl somethings about her dreams, and the name the girl had spoken with such dread and trembling.  A name the girl did not remember after waking.  The name spoken aloud seemed to create a resonant chill in the air, of both sound and temperature, and move outward like an ominously rolling ripple across the surface of a still water pond.  Nell realized that this perceptive sensation might be due to the attuning of her gifted sight.

When Nell and Miray were alone in the kitchen, she set some of the dishes down and took the plates from Miray.

“You’re such a big help, little one,” Nell smiled, gently patting the girl’s head. “Can I ask you something?”

“You betcha,” Miray grinned.

“You told us last night that you didn’t want to sleep in the same bed with the other little girl because she was cold.  What did you mean by that?”

Miray pursed her lips and shrugged.

“Well, she was cold and kept putting her hands on me. I asked her to stop, but she wouldn’t.”

“Perhaps she wanted to get warm,” Nell offered.

“She wasn’t warm. She never got warm. She only wanted me to get cold.”

“But how do you know?” Nell pressed.

“Her skin stays cold.  Her legs and arms are all cold. You an Sheryl didnent feel her. Sheryl got mad at me ’cause she thought I was being selfish, but I’m not!”

The level of distress from the prior night was returning, and Nell realized that if she pressed further, the little girl would withdraw trust from her as well.  Trust had to be earned. And the task of earning it would take time.

*Scene 05* 4:52 (Secret Defiance)

“Walk the perimeter with me,” Begglar said.  “There are some hard things you need to hear.”

I followed him as we carefully made our way up the rocky brow of the crescent hillside overlooking the back of the inn.  We tracked the scrabbled marks where the two prowlers had carried the body of their comrade over the summit and circled the grassy down-slope into the forest glade that ran along the roadside leading down into the township of Crowe.

We lost their trail sign as soon as it led into the woodland for the night winds had stirred the leafy detritus of the forest floor masking the transit of the two and their gruesome cargo.

We had barely made conversation as we move further from the inn, and I wondered how long it might take before Begglar’s reluctance to tell me the “hard things” he had alluded, gave way to the need for it.

When the sign petered out, Begglar crossed through the brush to an obscured animal pathway winding through the trees. We walked along the hoof-beaten path, lined with a series of half-buried stones.

“What is this?” I asked, curious as to why an animal path might have a stone border running along its edge.

“Moon path,” Begglar said simply.

“What’s a moon path?”

“We use it when we have to go out at night. It’s a smugglers’ trail.  Especially helpful on nights like the last, when the sea-fogs reach the highlands.”

“What do you mean?”

“The rocks glow when the mists come in.”

“How does that happen?” 

“They’re covered in road dust during the day. When they get wet, in rain or fog, the dust washes off and the minerals in them give off a soft light. You can ride close to them on horseback and make time.  This one runs from the wagon yard off the back of the inn to a branch of trails skirting the village.  We buried the stones low in the ground and keep the path in the thick of the woods, so they can’t be seen unless one is close enough or stumbles on them cutting across the forest trails.”

Begglar looked around, seeming to satisfy himself that we were far enough away from listening ears.

“But these are not all that’s been buried…”

“What do you mean?”

“Shortly after you left, Xarmni began its ‘Purge’ campaign. Villages were ransacked and pillaged. Brutal marauders from the north were brought in. Violent men.

“Xarmni has a new monarch–one of the bastard sons of Xarm–bent on avenging the death of his father and brothers.  He has no name.  Or rather, he has abandoned his given name and refers to himself merely by his title, and requires his subjects to address him as such, as if that will, somehow, give him legitimacy to the cruel throne upon which he sits as successor.” 

Begglar sighed as he began to tell me of terrors that followed and how The Marker had been buried under a hill of death, stone, and earthworks.

The name of that hill, I was told by Begglar, had come to be known as Blaosc Cnoc /‘Blee-isk knuk/.  A Gaelic phrase.

In English, it was translated, “The Hill of Skulls”.

“The name given to the place where the Marker resides is not merely a title…but more of a description.”  He let that sink in, then continued.

The location, he said, was just over the rise, at the top of a descending hill.  It used to be visible to all villages and cities occupying the valley beyond it.

“The place is a living graveyard. A great mound of earth and bones.  The Xarmnians could not touch The Marker Stone, so terrified they were of it.  So its burial fell to us.  We were forced to entomb it with the slain from the battlefields of their conquest.  And much to our shame, we did so.  Though not in the way they expected.  And that has been our secret defiance.  A secret that I must now share with you.”

*Scene 06* 30:38 (Begglar’s Burden)

It took a moment for me to realize what exactly he was saying.

“Buried?! You buried The Marker Stone?! How are we to get to it now?  To renew the Stone Quests that it called us here for?!  What had you done?”

Begglar steadied me with a hand on my shoulder as I swooned with the implications of what he was telling me.

Without access to the Marker Stone, all was lost. There was no point in being called back into the Mid-World.

“If you will but listen to me a moment, this is what I’ve been trying to tell you. How we defied the Xarmnian orders to bury the stone entirely. There’s still a way to access The Marker, though they believe it to be buried.”

“How?!” I said, folding my arms and shaking my head in despair.

“There are tunnels under Blaosc Cnoc.  Narrow corridors that form concentric rings leading to the inner room where The Marker still stands–like a central pillar to the man-made hill that surrounds it. There is but one model that comes from the Ancient Text, whereby a house can be built for such as this.”

“What are you saying?”

“We built a great ring of stones around The Marker. Like an outer courtyard, it was.  Comes from the design of the Tent of Meeting–and later Solomon’s Temple.”

“How?”

“There is…one builder stone unaccounted for.”

I eyed Begglar, at last comprehending what he was saying.

“It is still no excuse for what we did, but it was something we could do, for the Xarmnians still do not know what The Marker Stone is, and what it truly represents, or the nature of its mysteries.”

Begglar wrung his weathered hands, a profound and deep sadness in his downcast eyes.  He looked back towards the inn, yearning for the libation he had intended to guzzle down before retiring the previous night.  He visibly trembled, and I feared he might collapse, so I steadied him while he told me more of the truths.

“At first, I dinna know what it was all about.  The soldiers, the Protectorate, came in line after line, seeking to destroy the Marker.  They cleaved at it with swords and thrust countless spears at its words, but they could not chip its dark basalt surface, nor scar one tiniest mark of the lettering there.  Hours upon hours, the violent noises of the clanging and clashing of sword and spear, hammer and chisel went on and on into the night, under the angry glow firelight.  The soldiers and townsmen, craftsmen, and women tried and tried again to chip away at the prophecy, to mar even a single letter, but none could do it.  When those vandalous efforts were finally exhausted, they painted over the letters with tar and pitch, tinctures, and vinegar-like concoctions, but nothing could fade or entirely cover the letters. Exhaustion finally stilled the raging of the night assaults.  But in the morn, the golden letters still shone through as if nothing had soiled The Marker Stone’s surface.”

He eyed me quietly, and solemnly, and almost choked on the words he began to say next.

“Then they…,” tears, unwanted and unbidden formed in his eyes and began to spill quietly down his cheeks.  He swallowed, tried to continue, faltered, then began again.

“Then they began to pour blood on it.  So angry they were.”

“Night after night, we heard the screams–saw the long line of torches, as people were dragged and let up the valley slope in companies of soldiers.

“I hid Nell and my boy, in the stables under the straw in the hayloft.”

His eye pleaded, that I relieve him of continuing with this misery tale, but I quietly urged him to continue.

“There are more stables, just within a half hour’s walk from here.  There they keep their supply of horses.  The soldiers’ horses.  Warhorses.  The kinds that bear armor and are broken, built back up, and ridden in battle.  There is also the travelers’ stock.  Horses bred for speed and long distances over rough terrain.  These breeds were once shared with the postal service messengers.  But when the messengers quit running from the hinterlands, these horses were commandeered by the mounted armies of Xarmni.  Capitalia used to keep a herd of running stock there before the hostilities grew out of hand, but no more.  The Xarmnians took those over too,” he sighed trailing off in thought.

I waited.

Directly, he continued.

“Well, it was my job to see to the stock, and to see to it the hirelings did their job minding the duties of keeping these herds watered, sheltered against the night winds, and well-fed.”

He eyed me for a moment.

“The folks I brought into that service were starving.”

He cleared his throat, “They had once been good men.  But I had some trouble with them.  Stealing was what it amounted to.”

His gaze was distant again.

“They were given wages by the Xarmnians.  Precious little to survive on themselves, much less to feed a family with.  But the horses, on the other hand.  Well…”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sleeve and stared at it for a moment.

“The horses were treated ever so much better than the Xarmnian subjects were or those of the conquered peoples.  Sacks upon sacks of good dried corn and horse meal, milled and ground in the granaries of the valley below were sent upwards in wagons to fill the feed larders and troughs of these herds.  Grains and kernels of corn, golden and plenteous.  Stored in bag after bag in towering mounds within the locked barns adjacent to the stables and separating corrals.  Cows were kept in fields nearby to graze and were also stabled near the horses.  It was only natural to those men, to desire just a little of the wheat, barley, and corn to plant small gardens for their families in their off-hours.  Only the Xarmnian Protectorate Guards did not see it that way.  Examples were made of these thieves.  They were taken to open fields where the soldiers…”

He stopped, bringing a trembling hand to his mouth, staunching a cry of misery at the flood of memories.  He found a kerchief and dabbed at his eyes, taking in a shuddering breath.

“We were made to watch.  The soldiers making sport of them, practicing their valor and skill on mere subsistence farmers.  Nell and my boy, were made to stand there and watch it… as a lesson…to what could happen, if there were any more thefts from the grain barns.”

His eyes returned to me and he spoke quietly in a chilling distant whisper, “I never had trouble with the workers after that.  But of course, the Xarmnian leaders were not through teaching the subjects further lessons, now were they?  And that is where they came to the site of the Marker and their night schools, didn’t they?”

Begglar leaned against the gatepost of the stable and looked away into the pasture and to the horizon over the sloping rocky grade where the Troll had met its fiery demise.

“I have hidden my family for as long as I could.  When Nell and the boy were not present, I had almost made excuses for their absence, but I began running out of them and the soldiers were beginning to suspect.

“One night, I was roused and called to watch over the horses, as a woman was led before the stone marker many years ago.  Xarmnian leadership suspected her of sedition, so she was handed over to the guards and taken outside of the town, up the rise to the stone marker.  She was forced to kneel before it and told to spit at it and renounce the message she could read there on the Marker, flickering in the light of several torches.  She refused and was callously dispatch with a spear thrown through her back as she knelt and wept.

“Meanwhile, I later learned from Nell that some of the guards stayed back near the inn and were searching the rooms and came into the stables and were about to discover them hidden in the hayloft when the other guards returned from the execution.  Thankfully they abandoned the search but stayed just outside of the Inn for a while being sure before they rode off into the night, and I was allowed to return.

“Countless nights followed and I was not molested further or charged with keeping vigil over the horses until much later.  I am my family kept our distance and did not go over the rise to see the Marker again until much, much later.  Every night we could hear the screams and cries of war tearing through the country below, echoing in the mountains and hills beyond it.  Terrible sounds of great wooden war machines rumbling over the unsteady ground, siege engines and catapults hurling great boulders through arrayed lines of men and boys defending their cities against the arrayed attacks of their neighboring country.  The strike and clang of swords on shields made of pounded iron and think leather hides, great striking clangs of hammers both to build and to tear down.  The low distant buzzing of the fallen on the fields of battle crying out in their agony, moaning in their misery are scavengers and carrion birds picked from among them the choicest morsels of flesh.  And the flies.  Dark clouds of them creating false twisting shadows over the lands below.  The stench riding upon shifting winds was unbearable and we stayed in as much as we could manage it.

“Carrion birds circled the sky by the thousands, riding the mountain thermals with great outstretched black wings, just over the summit where beyond the basalt Marker lay.  From a distance, we couldn’t help but watch as Xarmnian wagon-load after wagon-load rocked and creaked up the rising grade to the area where the Marker stood, just out of our field of vision.

“Finally, the day came when the soldiers of the Protectorate returned to my house,–my inn–and bid me go with them to the Ancient site of the Marker. 

“When I hesitated, they looked over at my boy.  He had grown taller since they saw him last.  A worker’s build already turning his for from boy to man.  I was asked how old he was, to which I replied he was only thirteen seasons.  To my horror, it was clear they were considering him for a place in their army.  To their eyes, I flung away my reluctance and hesitancy and quickly prepared to go with them.  In my thoughts, however, I knew that I had trusted in a fool’s bargain and that once my Dominic came of age, these soldiers would be back to claim him for their ranks.  I had lied to them.  Dominic was fourteen.  Two years shy of being old enough to be forced into their conflict.  How stupid I was to ever believe that they might allow him to stay here and take my place in the care and upkeep of the Inn.  Dominic had seen me bow and scrape before them on countless occasions in fear.  He had never once seen me stand up to them, resist or defy them for the vile evil creatures they were.  I knew then that, in some way, that day would be different,…and because of that…it may be my last.”

Begglar looked at me more directly now.  His eyes clear and green as emeralds and focused on me.

“First, they took me to the southwest to gather the workmen and their stable wagons we had there for hauling grain and had us all get as many spades and digging tools as we could manage to find.  Then, they were loaded up once more and carried north around the rise where the Marker lay.  The area was much changed as you will soon see.  Two kinds of wagon groups were there and from the expanse, I could see the flickering light of much too many cook fires scattered up and down the rise.  Only they weren’t cook-fires, per se.  The Marker was still there standing solid and defiant in the hollow center a rapidly growing and encircling mound of…human skulls, boiled and dried clear of most of the flesh that would have identified the person they once had been in life.  As we were forced closer we could see that the jaw bone of each skull had been broken off and removed from the skulls making them symbolically mute in death in defiance of what they may have been in life.  The wagons closest to the Marker mounds were filled with mounds of dark earth.  So much that the ruts of their wheels cut deep furrows in the ground until it almost reached the bottom of their creaking axles.  Thousands of Xarmnians were hard at work, hammering loose those few skulls that still bore the unfortunate’s jaw bone.  These were collected in another wagon, hauled away, dumped in a pit and burned to ash.  Vultures and black scavenge birds swooped in great gyres over the sloping fields, hungrily surveying the cook fires and wagons full of human heads in various stages of decay.

“A guard grabbed me and shoved me to a large man, standing on the hillside with arms folded, in over watch duty.

“You there!” he said, “Procurator wants to speak with you.”

“I was taken before the man who stood with massive forearms bound with leather and steel bracer plates.  His body bore the scars of war.  Wounds healed and wounds that took a long time doing so.

“He pointed to the wagons of dirt just outside of the growing pile of skulls encircling The Marker.

“Our men are and women are needed in other duties.  We tire of boiling the heads clean, but cannot risk the possibility of sickness.  You and your men will cover the skulls with dirt which we will expect your men to unload and build up around the Rock.  They will deliver the boiled skulls first, then the rotting ones after.  Your job, until it is complete, is to bury that Rock in skulls and dirt until you have formed a great mound over it.  Xarmnians will not go near it, but you and your men most certainly will.  First, though, I need to know–that you have no interest or allegiance to what is written on the stone.  Follow me.  Those were his very words.”

“A soldier grabbed me by the cuff and shoulder, pressing his hard grip into the scar I bore underneath.  I was taken down before the stone’s inner circle and made to curse and spit on the stone three times.  I remember, vividly.  It was early morning, and in the distance a cock crowed as soon as I have denied any sympathy or attachment to the stone for the third time, swearing upon my life that I bore it or its message no confidence or allegiance.

Begglar trembled at the memory.

“The Overseer said it was enough and set us to the job of burying the Marker in dirt and gore.  For months we worked, in stench and filth beyond imagining.  The mound of skulls and wormy earth build up around the Rock in a semi-circle that eventually shadowed it away from the sky.  Both me and my men were still afraid to touch the stone, however, and the Xarmnians understood this for they shied away from it as well, both man and boy.  The hill built up over time, forming a hollowed-out center around the stone.  Just as I said. A walkway had been kept open, between the outer ring and the center stone, for despite the task, soldiers at night still brought people into the area and executed them if they would not dishonor The Stone and its message of a once hopeful prophecy.  Clearly, these were terrible times, and there has been no evidence that the words might ever be fulfilled in my lifetime or the next.  Still, it seemed such a terrible betrayal of the last vestige of hope, and in secret, I have wept over that more than I can bear repeat.  I remember so long ago when The Stone’s message was a curiosity that we before would regale visitors to the inn with, showing that there is still some unexplained mysteries let in this world and in these lands.  I once wholeheartedly believed that…

“Still do, actually.  There is something mysterious and wonderful about the Stone.  So ,quietly, my few trusted men and did something within the mound before we completely covered it up.  We left an opening.  A tunnel, beneath the weight of the earth and bones covering it.  A passage to the center where The Stone sits unmarked and entombed.  Despite the danger to ourselves, I am still very glad I did this one small act of resistance.  For it makes a very unlikely hiding place for my family when the soldiers come.

“And come they will.  My son is now eighteen.  Clearly past the age where boys are inducted and conscripted into the Xarmnian armies.  They will try to take him from me and my Nell.  But when they come, he has a place to hide now.  And I will lie to them as they lie to me, and say a fever took him from me.  An illness I infected him with as he and my most trusted men built the passage into the burial mound.  An ancient sort of cairn it is.  Like the ones in the country, I left long ago.  That illness that took my boy…well…let’s just call it ‘Courage.’  It was what made him see something in me that I had long forgotten and failed to practice.  It is what made by boy turn from being just a boy into the man he now is today.”

As Begglar finished speaking, I notice a change in him.  Something like finding again a piece of himself that he’d long since forgotten, and feeling that delight as fond memories flooded back into his mind while holding, once again, that newly recovered talisman of Hope.

*Scene 07* 4:12 (The Walker)

Three hundred and sixty-five days. The amount of ordered time it took for the eretz, The Earth, The Surface World to travel one complete circuit around the Greater Light once called Sol. That was the amount of years given for the man known as ‘The Walker’ to live upon that Ancient World.

The Walker was an enigma. A living riddle, shrouded in mystery and held in intimacy with it.

His son was the oldest man to have ever lived upon the Surface World–an incredible lifespan of nine hundred sixty-nine years of solar revolutions, yet his son had died BEFORE him.

The Walker’s oldest grandfather, seven generations earlier had been born without a mother.

But here–in the Mysterious Between Land, known as The Mid-World–that same man had walked for centuries.  Ever watching over the tragic decline of mankind and their inability to read the myriad symbols and signs of the coming and revealing…of The One of whom all prophecies foretold.

He had once been a great teacher.  His very name, in the first language ever spoke by human tongue, had that very meaning–Teacher.

From a young age, as far back as he could remember, he had wanted to learn and share his discoveries with him kindred. He felt it impressed upon his very soul to discover the meaning behind all things.  And in this, at the age of sixty-five of his total three hundred and sixty-five days, he was shown his Purpose by The One who had called him to be the first in an ancient line of Prophets.

A prophet who would be given the visions of what was to ultimately become of the races of men.

Both from within the future and from a perspective from outside of it.

For he was the first to be taken outside of Time–the fourth dimensional element of mankind’s binding realm–and see its serpentine coil stretching downward.

Time was not linear, but a spiral descent called forth out of chaos into the final refining judgement of The Holy Fire. A brazen, coiled serpent, lifted up on a crossbeam and central pole of redemption.

The broad shouldered, massive man stood silently in the forest shadows, watching as the two trolls slowly lifted themselves out of leafy graves, dragging a charred corpse behind them.

They moved frog-like, in rustling spurts, dragging and jerking the burnt remains across the crackling leaves with a “slush-slush” sound, until the lead troll halted and raised its eyes.

“What is it, Grum?” the smaller of them whispered.

The larger only gestured towards the shadowed figure standing tall and solid in the filtered light seeming to block out all sunlight behind.

A voice, deep and resonant, broke the silence, coming from the towering man, as if arising out of a deep well.

“You’ve drank from the waters of the vision pools,” he said quietly, though its effect on the two was as if the words had fallen on them from a thundering sky.

It was an observation. Not a question.

Terror filled the two quaking body bearers.  To their dark, little fiendish minds, there was nothing more frightening than a righteous man who had walked within the heart of The Marker Stone.