INBORN (The Sagas of Di'Ghon) (2 page)

So, last night, he did the next best thing. He stuck the little crimson blossom on her pillow where she was sure to find it.

“The kitchen girls were up all night baking redcake.” Jorel didn’t quit there.  “She was probably too tired to notice the scraggly little thing.”

“What do you mean scraggly? It was the biggest one on the tower!”

Thaniel stumbled over a heaving plank he had stepped over a thousand times before. Frantically, he tried to get his feet back beneath him and would have landed face first in a frozen pile of what might have once been rotten turnips if Jorel, with the quickest hands of anyone he knew, hadn’t caught him up by the cloak at the last instant.

“You are hopeless.” Jorel laughed, enjoying his anguish a bit too much for Thaniel’s taste as his feet found purchase on the slippery muck.

“Just shut up.”

“Girl
head.” Jorel giggled infectiously.

The Book

Lisella Ontar ran her fingers along the spine of the old book, feeling the raised letters of the title
,
Prophecies of the Code
.

She stared at the design
that was so long ago worked into the leather. The spiraling dra, with a body covered in symbols no one understood for millennia, sent a childish shiver sliding down her neck.

Every year, before the Festival of the Caller, she read the book again and couldn’t help but imagine the dra being real. She let out a nervous chuckle… as if the monsters from all the mountain folk
lore were real.

Lisella
opened the cover and stared at a colorful drawing of an armored warrior with his hands on a carving of what was depicted on the cover. The next page depicted the stone dra coming to blazing life, naming the brave warrior as the Caller.

Something in her chambers moved. Lisella snapped the book shut as farina glided into her quarters. She garbed in her usual fashion. The crimson robe and yellow sash signified her as a personal servant of the Ontar.

“My Mistress, did I startle you?” Farina asked as she set down a blanket and a cup of hot spiced wine.

“This damned book.” Lisella endured Farina’s rolling eyes.

The book had her on edge in just two pages. Farina didn’t miss much. Although she hadn’t noticed her even glancing at the book, Lisella was sure that the woman had already read it.

“He will ask you if you read it.”
Farina was talking about Irkhir. She was right, as usual. He would ask. The man stuck to tradition and custom as though it were law.

Irritated, Lisella scanned her chambers. The hearth was already lit with a warming fire that Farina would insist on her sitting in front of once she came in from the deathly cold balcony.
Sometimes the woman was so efficient that Lisella wanted to slap her.

“So, I hear someone gave you a blossom.” Lisella asked and was rewarded with a crimson blush on Farina’s cheeks that was so dark that it complimented her robes.

“Is there anything else, My Mistress?” The woman had her eyes conspicuously glued to her slippers.

“Yes, see to it that I am not disturbed.” Lisella smiled as she added, “That will be all for today. Enjoy the festival.”
She dismissed her with a wave, waiting for her to close the door to her chambers before she opened the book again.

She knew every picture. Every detail. She knew exactly what the book would say. Every Ontar had the damned thing drilled into their head from birth.
Like bed time stories from the hells. She had always thought it to be just that, a story, no matter how her tutors had insisted that it would someday happen again. As a child she had nightmares of the dreaded book.

Her tutors had always insisted that every Ontar before her had hoped and prayed for untold centuries to be the one to serve the people when the Caller returned.
They also said that the Prophecies of the Code was a manual that would instruct the next Ontar, the one for whom the code sang, in all the things necessary to usher glory back to their clan.

She glanced through the familiar pictures. It was bad enough that someone of her lineage dreamed this book up. That many of them actually believed it was laughable in a sick twisted sort of way.

She stared at the page that had given her nightmares as a child and doubted very seriously she could go through with half of it. With a resigned sigh of thankfulness that none of it was real, Lisella Ontar laid the book down on the reading table, drew herself up, chin high, eyes level, and prepared herself to address her people.

Trouble

Jorel and Thaniel were still laughing when the ways spilled out into the street just outside of the Ontar gate.

Jorel waved a hello to Norrig, the leather merchant, a stick of a man with a sharp chin and an even pointier nose. His dog, Ghost, was a gray scraggly beast. He spotted them immediately and bounded in their direction, tail wagging furiously. Jorel pulled out a sliver of dried meat and held the treat up. Once the dog barked for it Jorel tossed it high in the air. Ghost glanced at Thaniel and seeing he wasn’t going for it, leaped straight up. Just before the dog could catch it Thaniel reach out and snagged it. The gray hound went nuts. Thaniel raised the treat as the dog spun in circles with anticipation. Then as Ghost watched, Thaniel made believe he ate it. The big gray hound raised its head and howled.  It was a game they’d played a thousand times, and yet the four of them never tired of it. Thaniel reached down, patted the bellowing dog’s side, and slipped him the meat.

“Works every time
!” Norrig shook his head at the ridiculously happy mutt. He watched as Ghost, content as always, padded back to his spot beside the wooden cart and started worrying away at the tough strip of meat. “Enjoy the festival boys.” He said as he turned to his next customer.

The hold had been buzzing about the festival for weeks. Now, most of the hold’s servants, mixed with a few of Ontar’s soldiers dressed in their traditional crimson garb, filled the streets and made their way through the heavy iron gate that separated the village from the Ontar castle. 

“Same as every year… Listen to the Ontar prattle on about how glory awaits the clan.” Jorel raised his nose in the air and waved his hands around in imitation of haughty nobility.

“I’ll take her yapping over the line.” Thaniel interjected. The line was what everyone called a processional of children through the many halls of Ontar keep, culminating with every young person in the hold touching a carving of a spiraling
dra. It wasn’t so much the waiting in the line that bothered Thaniel as it was the way his stomach fluttered at just the sight of that dra carving. 

“I’d touch a thousand ugly statues for just one redcake.” Jorel licked his lips.

“Another stupid Ontar custom.” Thaniel said under his breath, trying not to think about the thing. The last thing he needed was something else to throw him off right now.

The entire village was giddy. Most people visited the Ontar Castle only once a year, during the Festival of the Caller, living out their lives in the walled mountain village that seemed to have been poured out of the high towers above it. Thaniel and Jorel were messengers and were called to
the castle daily. Between the two of them they probably knew the hold better than the Ontars themselves. Thaniel had long ago memorized every shortcut that might get his messages delivered a bit faster.  It was often enough that the structure ceased to impress like it once had.

Thaniel craned his neck, trying to see above the shoulders of the wide eyed village people around him. He didn’t see Elycia, or any of the kitchen girls for that matter. He kicked a pebble on ahead of him and sighed. Had she already found the ice blossom? He wondered if she would wear it
, or if it was one of the few that always ended up ground into the cobblestone somewhere along the way to the castle. After all, not every girl that got a flower decided to wear it, no matter how much trouble they were to pick. He grimaced at the thought of his first two bumbled attempts to ask her. How could he blame her?

T
he street ahead bottlenecked into a stone path cut into the mountain’s flank. It was so narrow that only three people could walk abreast on it, or one horse. Above the procession of servants, slaves, and soldiers, long red banners rippled down the castle walls. From where he was standing, it almost made the castle look as if it was bleeding.  Hard faced guards in shiny regalia stood on either side of the entrance, scrutinizing every one that entered as though they weren’t all forced to attend the annual festival. Behind them, the real gate sentries, two massive stone towers, rose into the sky. 

Coming in such a skinny line it would take a while for everyone to make it through the gate and into the courtyard.
Thaniel clamped his mouth shut to keep his teeth from chattering. He was thankful for the warmth of his heavy messenger’s cloak, but couldn’t help but be a little envious of those that had already coupled up for the Festival of the Caller. Everywhere he looked people were snuggled together, waiting for the Ontar to give her speech. After what seemed like a chilled eternity, high above the courtyard, Lisella Ontar appeared on her balcony. People pointed. Children yelled and clapped hands.

Lisella Ontar looked down across the crowd, letting her gaze fall on her subjects, as if her mere
ly looking at them was some imparted blessing. Her hair was bright blonde and tied in a crown of crimson ribbons. She was dressed in ruby red silk that, against the backdrop of the frozen over stone of Ontar Keep, reminded him of a living ice blossom. Finally, she raised her arms. The crowd hushed.

“Do you see her?” Jorel elbowed Thaniel in the ribs, nodding up ahead.

“The Ontar?” Thaniel looked up ahead to Lisella Ontar’s balcony.

“No. Everyone can see her idiot.” Jorel pointed to one of
the stairs that ran up the side of the wall.

Thaniel’s breath caught. Elycia was half way up,
in a perfect spot to see everything. Some of the girls were pointing at the two of them, their heads leaning in the way girls do when they’re talking about boys. She was wearing blue, her blonde curls catching in the breeze. Yet it was the red blossom fixed in one side of her hair that made Thaniel want to set a jig. She was smiling at him.

“Wow, she looks good.” Jorel said. “Maybe I will tell her I left the flower after all.”

Thaniel did what any man would do under the circumstances. He cuffed his best friend on the back of the head. Jorel good-naturedly punched him in the arm, using the knuckle that time. Thaniel winced and rubbed at his shoulder with a smile that surely made him look like a beaming idiot.

“Take it back.” Thaniel whispered through the side of his mouth.

“No.” Jorel shot Elycia a dashing grin, which was ruined when he grunted and doubled over after Thaniel punched him in the gut. Served him right. Although he wasn’t sure what hurt more, Jorel’s stomach or his hand.

“What am I going to do with you two?” Tristan, Captain of the Tower Guard whispered, shaking his head and looking around at the quieted crowd. He stood above them in full crimson regalia. Armor plate shone bright silver even in the gray light of day. He didn’t require either of the two axes at his hips. All he needed was to wave a finger to freeze both of them solid. Tristan knew them both well. As messengers, they were constantly running back and forth from the main gate. “Get up and show the Ontar the respect she deserves or I’ll let you cool your heels on the wall.”

Thaniel helped Jorel up just as Lisella Ontar began her prattle. It was all lost on Thaniel’s ears. The moment Tristan looked away he snuck a peak in Elycia’s direction. Her friends were all standing in the same spot, arms folded, and faces stern, but Elycia was gone. He motioned to her friends but all they did, after a few seconds of glaring at him, was to turn away with their noses in the air. Girls... How could a man ever understand even one of them? Every time you think you are getting somewhere… BAM… they hit you in the head with a shovel out of nowhere. 

Tristan glared at him with eyes that could out-stare a statue, motioning for him to keep his head straight. Why would she move? She wouldn’t have walked away because of their little scuffle… would she? Girls could be prickly about fighting. She was a girl. It might be all it was. Yet, something didn’t feel right. That bad sense of foreboding was creeping up from his stomach and choking his breath away. Mother always said he had a vivid imagination, always dreaming up adventures and stories of monsters…

But then it had all come true hadn’t it mother? You’re dead and I’m stuck in this frozen hell as a slave.

The crowd tensed. The Ontar, thank the Creator, was finishing her speech. He wasn’t the only one that thought it was way too cold to be standing around listening to speeches.

“… to the dra’s door, and may glory return to the halls of Ontar!” Lisella lowered her arms, letting the flowing silk slide back over her milky white skin.

At the base of her tower the heavy doors of the keep creaked wide, and two lines of crimson clad warriors filed out. They stepped to the side of the entrance
. Like a flood, a wave of children, all eager for their redcakes, surged for the door.

“Stay out of trouble you two.” Tristan glowered at them and sent them on ahead with the crowd.