Chapter 1
It had been a measure of seconds since The Old Traveler had started to watch this man, who was once a youthful, happy child, to hear it told by village residents. Now the Traveler’s eyes beheld a different sort of stature; a character who was covered by two guards, half dragging him along in chains, beating him with the flats of their swords if they thought he was trying to resist. They towered over the man easily; a feat not so difficult to imagine, knowing that their prisoner was very, very short. Whereas most of the men in town were at least over six feet tall, this one was at least five inches shorter than six feet. He was too thin for his own good, and the guards also knew he wasn’t half as strong as they were, for the lugged him around like a sickened dog through the streets, towards their master’s hall. The Old Traveler observed the procession through the small village from his view on the second floor of the inn, peering out the window.
The prisoner stumbled along, doing his best to fight the hold his flanking captors had on him. Every few steps he would stop abruptly and arch his back and plant his feet, gritting his teeth with the effort. The sudden shift in his momentum would cause the guards to jerk forward, still clamping down on his arms, which were already bound behind his back, straining them visibly. If he was in pain, the prisoner seemed to care very little as he attempted to kick at one of the guards’ knee, trying to make him stagger. The other guard raised his sword and struck the man on the back of the skull with the hilt, and the prisoner sagged towards the ground, stunned. The other guard spit on him, and they now dragged the barely-conscious prisoner with more ease than moments before. The village had eyes everywhere; children playing on doorsteps watched silently, one or two dirty from playing in the mud left from a rainy night. The blacksmith leaned against a post holding up the roof of his building, a look of concern on his face as blood had started to run down the neck of the prisoner, starting somewhere higher up on the scalp. The guards drove through the market, grim-face and concentrated on their task.
Those in the market all stared wordlessly. The prisoner’s eyes were half-closed, and he could barely keep his head up. Soon, the prisoner and his captors passed out of view from the inn, and the Old Traveler pursued his lips and turned away from the window then, feeling his age. “What did he do?” the Traveler asked the owner of the inn, as the gentleman finished giving the tour of the room to the Old Traveler’s young companion and friend, Sylvanna. She wandered about the room, oblivious of the current event which was big news in this small fishing village. A great offense had been done, and the innkeeper knew all about these sorts of things. Being one of the most successful businessmen in the village, he was well-liked, and well-informed to boot.
The bald, mustached innkeeper stepped to the window, trying to see where the prisoner had gone. “Arson.” he said it as if it was a pain. The Old Traveler noticed. Meanwhile, Sylvanna, a bright and wonderful creature for sixteen years of age, was busy eating the food that the innkeeper had presented to her, digging in hastily as if she’d been starving for weeks. Her crystal-blue eyes studied the room still, and glowed with pleasure as she marveled at the beauty of the carven furniture. The Old Traveler sat down in the chair at the table, and thanked the innkeeper for his service. The innkeeper left them, shutting the door quietly.
For a few minutes, he sat there, deep in thought, stroking his whitened beard. Sylvanna said nothing, but made sure to push his plate of food closer to him. The Older Traveler smiled at her, his eyes filled with warmth. She was hesitant, but finally said aloud, “What will they do to him?”
“For Arson? I don’t know.” The Old Traveler said, leaning in his chair slightly. “They may fine him and throw him in a pit for several days. That is what the innkeeper says is the local custom around here.”
“A pit? What for? Why would they throw him in a pit?” she said. “Why not just throw him in a cell?”
“It is the way of life around here. You must remember that the people here are fiercer in the mountains than they are in the south.” The Old Traveler answered briefly before taking a crust of bread and dipping it in his soup bowl. He bit into it gingerly, closing his eyes in sheer enjoyment of the wonderful-tasting bread. “Here, punishments are less concerned with divine justice, and focus more of setting an example that helps every man to remember that his crimes will be harshly dealt with. The men of the mountains are more violent and criminal, and they do not fear the law. So often, villages such as this one must fight fire with fire and show that any crime that happens on their soil will not be tolerated.”
Sylvanna nodded to show that she understood, but the Old Traveler could see it in her eyes that she was still puzzled. He allowed her to keep her thoughts, knowing that she was too young to know much about the wars that had occurred on the borders between the mountains and the distant islands of the Skippi, cannibals through and through. They often came in large raiding parties, determined to wreck and kill any man or woman they could get their hands on. And of course, there was also the chance that mercenaries in need of gold would set their sights on small towns and do their utmost to steal what they could.
The Old Traveler himself had witnessed battles of desperate mercenaries who would set entire towns on fire to aid their escape. He had also seen a cannibal remove a man’s heart and gnaw on it while it was still warm to the touch. The world contained much suffering, and the Old Traveler, a historian, an old warrior, and something even greater perhaps, had seen it all. In his thousand years of life, he had seen kings rise and fall, empires shrivel into the dust without as much as a whisper, and one death could mean the changing of the course of history. All of the events he had witnessed firsthand, jotted down in the lines of his mind forever, a symbol of the fearful ways that man had created for himself. These were bad days, and it had been so for many years.
He glanced at Sylvanna, his apprentice. She knew only that she was being raised as a learned master of the arts, destined one day to be the advisor to a great king, if luck permitted it. The Old Traveler wished silently that he did not have to bring her on the path that he was bound, and though he prayed nightly for a change of fate, he knew his prayers would not stir the ear of Justice. Sylvanna was going to be given a task before her life was finished, and it would alter her entirely, and transform her into more than just a mere court-girl, or wise scholar. What form she would take, the Old Traveler hadn’t a guess, but he feared it regardless.
“What is it, old man?” She was aware of his staring, and the Old Traveler smiled to put her at ease.
“It is nothing,” He said. “We will stay here tonight, and then we must journey home. Your father will be interested to hear of our exploits. He will want to hear from you everything that you have done since you’ve left home these last ten months.”
“And what will you do when we get home, Methuselah?” Sylvanna inquired, her liquid blue eyes unearthing deep emotions within the Old Traveler Methuselah, as he recalled his own daughter, now deceased, and how blue her eyes had been as well.
Sylvanna had almost become a second-daughter to him, during their trips. His lectures had been absorbed with a passion that pleased the old man greatly. There was nothing she didn’t want to understand, or to know well. Much like Methuselah’s daughter, she was curious about everything. It brought back memories of the old days, when Methuselah had been a good father, and all had been well. Those days had vanished into the smog of history, though, and like all memories, lay in a deep grave in Methuselah’s mind, pushed into the back where he didn’t need to reflect on them too often. He answered Sylvanna slowly, betraying a small bit of his sadness, though not enough that Sylvanna could guess that he was deeply hurt.
“That will depend on what your father requires of me,” He said. “And nothing more. Until then, I suggest you return to your studies. I shall be here if you need answers to anything you read in the books, but I will only answer a handful of your questions this time. You need to learn to pursue answers on your own.”
Sylvanna nodded again, and finished her meal, sitting promptly on the bed to begin studying over the old, antique texts that she had been carrying on her back for months. She read silently, while Methuselah sat next to the window again, draining what was left of his cup. He stared out into the village, his heart going into dark corners which his soul could not follow, and his mind wracked with a silent grief that allowed only his eyes to mist over slightly as he wondered how long it would be before he would finally be able to return home. To his true home.
