Knight of Endrell Book One: The Red Empire

Chapter Eleven

Chapter 11

Word went out from the emperor that every street going soldier must find the hiding place of the rebels and surround them. In their search, they saw neither tracks in the ground, nor marks upon the walls, or any sign of life. There was not even a scent in the air. They scoped out the sewers beneath the empire and came up empty just as on the surface. When they reported their failure to the emperor, the messengers were suffocated under the poison of his hot breath, drawing out the life within them so that their dark skin turned pale and scaly, and they fell dead before him. Sidonin then summoned a tiny bacterial organism into his hands; an orange wormlike creature that grasped his palm with limbs as vein-like roots. He let it down to the floor and it spread its roots, descending the steps of the throne. Out of the end of each root, hundreds more of its kind grew and repeated the actions of the first, until they seeped out of the door of the throne room and onto the streets of the empire to do the emperor's will.

Fortunately the soldiers neglected to search one last location. There was a condemned haven, an old temple, nestled in piles of rubble towards the front gate of the empire with only one wall left standing arched over the rest of its remains that were shattered upon the floor, covering any and every hiding spot possible. This temple was deemed uninhabitable by the emperor because he could not step inside of it without decomposing, and so had it torn down along with all the surrounding houses, to sequester it. However, it was in this very haven that the rebels took up temporary residence, without once stepping foot into the temple court.

In the undercroft of the temple haven, Torgan the Thurskin looked at the people, peering into their minds with a piercing gaze. He saw battered men, mournful women, and children with hearts engorged with hate; their memories alight with the images of years of extensive torment and neglect by those who cast them into the prison. Their minds fumed and burned with unending resentment towards the emperor, treasuring with gladness, the thought of thousands of ways to kill him, and all who loved him in the empire. Yet beyond their hatred, man, woman, and child, imagined all the more their hope filled fascination with the glorious call of their souls to a home they've never known; a home that transcends death, and the unbridled wrath of the wicked.

Torgan saw their thunderous imaginations; feeling their hate, hearing the cries of their souls' distress and thought, "Auana (Oh-oo-na), what will you have me do? How can I speak to them, and what shall I say?" In that moment the people began to rock and hum a soothing melody, of longing and of a distant hope – a yearning of the heart. Among them a young boy raised his head, looking aimlessly with wandering eyes, and began to sing,

Yir Evereon, (Yeer, Ever-rey-on)

Yirah vore vou. (Yeer-ah, vor-rey, vooh)

Jor leou yonro enus soram-durkin, (Shjor, ley-ooh, yun-roh, en-nus, soram-dur-ken)

Se rena yicorah basa yane te-weh (Say, ren-ah, yee-korah, bah-sah, yah-ney, teh-wey)

Yir ke aveth se ahcleste. (Yeer, kay, ah-veth, say, ah-clee-stay)

After the boy sang it once through, the people followed in concert and sang it again together. When they were finished, Torgan smiled and stood up ready to speak to them at last:

Children of the Source, of Auana, of SAH...You are not indebted to any king. You are not submitted to the hosts of the wicked, the fat, who hunger endlessly, needlessly, for flesh of the filled and healthy for to give their bones meat. You are not beneath the sick and diseased who thirst after the blood of the pure, for to make their filth clean. You are not lesser than the rich who devour gold as the heat of the sun devours water to make the ground dry. And when their gods yield not gold to make for them wealth, they take for their own the lot of those for whom the earth yields freely of its wealth, and leave them who are saturated with abundance of life as dry as the ground when the sun devours the waters.