THE REALM

Chapter Two

  "I ain't his father!"

  "What?" I stammered out, as my eyes went first to my father and then to my mother.

  She shrugged expressively, the torn dress falling off one shoulder with the action, "Why do you think I named you Rollan?"

  The last part of this nightmarish puzzle clicked into place. I was the bastard child of one of my mother's visitors!

  My mother went on talking, as if she has no clue as to how utterly she had just crushed my world into broken jagged pieces of useless flotsam now set adrift upon an unknown sea. "He only visited once, but he left his mark with you. You take after him a lot with your looks. He was from the Nicationer kingdom of Rollanic sp that's what I called you. Now, don't think I'm cruel for naming you so, but naming you after one of the Nicationer Nations helped me to separate from you and keep our relationship within the proper light. You may be my son, but you're also a half breed and thus not of the pure blood lineage of the seven Kingdomer Nations like Ralin and I are."

  I needed no further urging to leave. My feet made their way backward from the porch of the house to the horse of the man I had killed. Fumbling, my fingers managed to slip the reins of the horse free of the hitching post and then I swung up onto the saddle.

  I quickly turned the horse away from the place of my upbringing and dug my heels into its side as I urged him to carry me away, even as the wind consumed the tears from my face.

*****

  I stopped the horse and leaned forward in the saddle, breathing almost as hard as the horse. I'd stopped on a rise overlooking the barren hills that lay before me. It was said that this had once been good grazing land, but no more. The endless droughts and sandstorms coming in off the wastelands to the east had seen to that.

  I'd never seen the land looking lush and green, but then I was only fifteen. There were men well over a hundred who'd never seen these hills look as it had been fabled that they once had.

  All that was lost on me right now though. What was I going to do?

  I'd never been farther from the home place than the nearby settlements and once to the capital of Smirnaz. I knew that a far larger world lay out there than this small neglected backwater of a place, but where to go?

  To the west and south lay the other six Kingdomer Nations. All around them were the nations of the Nicationers.

  I was half Nicationer. Was that such a bad thing? Was I somehow cursed through no fault of my own because of who my father had been?

  I refused to believe such a thing. But what I believed would matter nothing to the greater world of the other Kingdomer Nations if they all looked upon me as nothing more than a lowly halfbreed. Did they all, like my mother, believe that their Kingdomer blood was of higher value than mine?

  I didn't really feel that I fit in with such people. If the soul of my existence was to consist of being looked down upon as something of lesser value then I wanted no part of a life spent with the people of my mother's lineage.

  What options did that leave me? Did I go and settle in the surrounding lands of the Nicationers and become as they were, not bound by any Kingdomer principles of faith in the one true God, El Elyon, in whom I had firmly believed since early childhood?

  There were other issues with the Nicationer nations that I wanted no part of. My love for my mother may have grown cold within the last few hours of time, but I could not condone the way the Nicationers subjugated their women into the status of being a slave, with no respect given to them.

  My mother was not a good woman, but that did not free me to join the ranks of my father's people in their abuse of their women. It was not so in the Kingdomer Nations, but as I'd already realized there were other problems to be had with that route.

  On the other hand, if the oppression of women wasn't enough to consider not settling in the lands of the Nicationers, their heathen practices of sacrificing their own children to their false gods was. I had no respect for people who would do such things.

  Something occurred to me then, which brightened my mood considerably. Here I was, contemplating the merits and fallacies of the two divergent people groups of my world, and I was finding myself to have quite a moral framework of thought for one of such mixed birth as I. Perhaps I wasn't so cursed after all.

  Did El Elyon care whether I was part Nicationer or not? I wasn't sure, but until I knew it would be best to assume that He would be willing to overlook the matter of my mixed heritage. If He didn't, I truly would be alone in the world. As it was, I still had my faith and this horse, which wasn't such a bad animal, even if it was of Nicationer birth or perhaps it had been stolen from a Kingdomer on one of the many raids by the surrounding nations into the Kingdom of Smirnaz.

  I looked off to the East. There, across the bordering Nicationer Nation of Roba and the great Masag River, were the Wastelands. The Wastelands were the location of the original kingdom of all Ayenathurim, the world on which I lived. That kingdom had been from the time before, but it was long since gone now.

  It was said that those of the old kingdom had been unable to keep the precepts of El Elyon. Not only had they not kept the holy commandments, but they had fallen into doing the perversities of all the lesser nations of Ayenathurim.

  There had reached a time when El Elyon had become so wrathful at their disobedience that He had driven them out from the good land beyond the river, which He had then turned into a wilderness of sand and hidden dangers.

  Over time the wilderness of the Wastelands had become a dwelling place for monsters and every mad beast, whether of human or animal origin. The Yesathurim, El Elyon's chosen people of the old kingdom, were driven out into the rest of the world for their rejection of El Elyon's covenant. Scattered, they now roamed over all the kingdoms of Ayenathurim, with no place to call their own.

  With the fall of the old kingdom El Elyon had ushered in a new covenant, which only a few of the Yesathurim accepted. The new covenant had not been one limited to just the Yesathurim as the old covenant had been. Out of this new covenant the seven Kingdomer Nations had been born.

  There had been dreams on the part of the early Kingdomer's to reconcile the Yesathurim into the new covenant, but those dreams of oneness with the Creator had dimmed over the years to the point that few still held out hope of it ever occurring. In many regards the opposite had occurred. The Yesathurim were looked down upon and scorned by both Kingdomer and Nicationer alike to the point that they were considered not worthy of life.

  I wasn't sure why, but I headed my horse down off the hill in the direction of the neighboring country of Roba. I would make my way through it and then I would go into the Wastelands of the old kingdom. There I would not be looked down upon for my birth, for to the monsters I would look as tasty a treat as either unbeliever or Kingdomer alike.

  It was both risky and crazy to contemplate heading in such a direction, but at least I would be free and maybe I would survive. Survive to do what, I wasn't sure, but something was urging me on towards the Wastelands in the distance and I bowed to its insistence, even as my youthful urges to discover and experience thrilling danger aided in the decision.