DUALITY: The World of Lies (29 page)

It was the perfect time to vanish. The
intrepid Gahre set off to the wildlands in the north, the rolling
hills that were the domain of the wolf, with his body and fine gear
protected beneath a well-oiled weather poncho. It was all very
familiar territory in the beginning. A day in he made dry camp in a
cave he had explored years before. It was just the beginning of an
elaborate structure that wound its maze of corridors into the dark
Pangean underworld. How nice it would be if he knew of a route east
through the caverns below the tyrannical weather, but this
underworld was unmapped and could lead him anywhere, including dark
oblivion and death.

The hills gave way to jagged hinterlands he
had ever only seen from afar, but still abounding with all the
common fauna of his homeland. Several days into his journey the
weather cleared and sweet summer sun dried the land. The game was
so abundant here he was able to conserve his duck rations entirely
in favor of freshly roasted rabbit, crayfish, eel, and trout. He
wished at times he were an artist and carried a sketchpad with him
to capture the sublime and evocative expressions of nature he
passed by daily.

He was covering ground like a steed, 30 or
more kilometers a day through bush and over deer trails, stream and
field, lowland and high. The terrain mattered little. When he
encountered a massive ravine that the preceding landscape had in no
way foretold, Gahre did not let it deter him from his easterly
course, choosing instead to put his climbing skills and gear to
their test. The descent was met with a few miscalculations and very
worrying moments that had him hanging above a deadly fall, unsure
of how to proceed, but the way was found. He crossed the dark
valley below, a dank place filled with giant insects and twisted
dwarven versions of surface trees and all manner of things that
scurried and squealed. He executed the ascent up the other side
with full precision, boosting his confidence that he would in time
fully master the skill.

The compass led him to the ridge of a grand
caldera. He could see the full span of it that covered hundreds of
kilometers, coated in lush greenery, plains and herds of grazing
animals. In no time he was among them. At its center he came upon a
crystal lake teaming with fish so enormous, the meat of one alone
fed him for days. The predators did attempt to stalk him, wolf and
leopard, but perhaps he was just a curiosity for these creatures
who had never before seen man. He called out in warning when he
sensed them, and hearing his voice they dispersed and went on their
way and he on his. Gahre already had the peculiar habit of talking
to animals, and he found himself putting this rare skill to daily
use. What's more he seemed to understand their answers, in squawks
or squeaks, growls or snorts. He understood them clearly, because
he was himself close to nature and understood them in the context
of their natural habitat and as caring about the things animals
cared about, like food and safety.

The caldera rose to its rim and he saw the
first bare rocky ground of the badlands emerge under his feet
soonafter. It was a barren range but easy ground to cover. The
landscape had a painted feel, and the clear nights painted in
cosmic clouds above it imparted in him a deep spiritual
appreciation for this world of sparse grass prairies and jutting
rocky spires that grew into mountains as he wore on. Firewood was
in short supply and nights were cold. He could barely stomach the
dry salted duck at times and he craved green vegetables, but what
those rations failed to provide in satisfying his palette they made
up for by providing the raw energy it took to traverse this rugged
ground. Where the sands turned red, he imagined this was what the
terrain of the bloodmoon Oberion looked like, a pale dusty dead
world.

And the middle of these lifeless badlands, in
the a place he would least expect to find it, he made a splendid
discovery: an entire town, its folk long lost to the winds of time,
carved into the stony ledges along a lonely river that sprang a
swath of green along itself in defiance of the parched uncultivable
territory it wound through. There wasn't much left to the cliffside
civilization beyond the structures they’d left behind: old cracked
pottery, and the remains of idols carved into the sandstone and
withering back to dust. He remained here three days, his first
break in the journey. Foul and fish from the river revived his body
and spirit. He tried to imagine the place in the height its glory:
the children running, the lovers strolling, the fertile fields
irrigated by ancient canals. He wondered what became of these
people, how they spoke, how they dressed, what gods they worshiped,
what songs they sang?

He resumed his journey and some days more
bearing southeast the land returned to fields and he saw the first
signs of modern civilization. Gahre became weary when came along
the first road. The Order would not pursue him like a common
outlaw, posting his face from town to town. No. Their approach
would be far more subtle, dropping coin and buying information,
putting their agents’ ears to the ground in every realm of the
Pangea. He'd thought up a fake name for himself and claimed to be a
traveling journalist of sorts gathering research for a work on the
varied peoples and cultures of the world. There was no way he could
claim to be a local here even though it was the place of his birth.
His manner and dialect gave away his western heritage.

The Zenith Realms. He dared to enter an eerily
quiet agricultural town to buy a night at the inn. He spent an hour
in the lobby just waiting for someone to serve him. A young woman
eventually came through, who upon seeing him summarily ignored his
presence entirely and left. He chased her down and demanded a room,
and when he offered 3 coins for it she begrudgingly accepted and
handed him his key without another word. When he further demanded a
bath, she shrugged and set him one and was once again off. He
cleansed himself well with soap, and ate a meal so large it
staggered the restaurant owners to see a man consume it. They were
a bit friendlier there, but not by much. Communicating in their
dialect was problematic, to say the least. At good third of their
words were entirely different than his, and the rest they
invariably pronounced oddly.

The deeper into the Zenith realms he went the
more breathtaking the scenery became: scented crimson lakes with a
natural air of incense, registers of a hundred crystalline cascades
each beaming with rainbows, deep water fjords of turquoise blue,
and majestic limestone falls hiding amidst sleepy pine
forests.

In the next township he encountered he dropped
some coin to some impoverished vagabonds who in turn fed him and
helped him to buy gear and pointed him to those who could tell him
more of the lands that lay ahead and how best they could be
navigated. The folk here were tall and broad, like Gahre, and
looked upon him with the same vague familiarity as he looked upon
them. After all he shared their blood. In the next town he came
upon, things began to look eerily familiar: an old winery, a stone
bridge over a sandy river, a pastoral farm, a picturesque temple he
had seen perhaps before in a dream. And then he came upon a rustic
house with a sign over the doorway that bore his mother's maiden
name, and knocked at the door. Again the dialectic differences
befuddled communication with the old woman who answered, but she
summoned her son who was far more flexible in his speech and soon
enough determined that they were indeed kin! The boy was a second
cousin to Gahre. He was invited him in at once and others of the
family were called and a minor feast was pulled together that very
night. He was regaled with tales of his mother and shown a portrait
of her that nearly made him weep. Gahre regaled them right back
with tales of his own. His capture of Har Darox enthralled them, as
did his tales of the wild path he had followed here from Tulan, and
they were suitably impressed that he had managed the journey in a
mere seven weeks. He relayed a censored version of his experience
at the Great Oak. His life in Tulan fascinated them and they begged
more descriptions of his nation which to them was an exotic land a
world away.

On the following day an uncle and cousins
brought him by wagon to a neighboring village to the north to meet
his grandmother. She remembered him from his early boyhood. He had
been little more than four when his mother had left here to be with
his father in Tulan, and he held no strong memory of the people or
the place beyond that vaguest trace of familiarity. She was a
kindly woman, his grandmother, and she cared for him well during
his stay, washing his garb and making sure he was fed and bathed.
Two days turned to four and four into a week and one week into two.
Attachments whipped up out of the ground like vines that sought to
ensnare him there forever. His uncle had taken him to their
wheelmill and offered him work and even land for a cabin. The
females of his clan brought their maiden friends before him,
beautiful girls all, and told him he had his pick! As time wore on,
Gahre became increasingly concerned because he knew the various
family members would be talking of the interesting kinsman who had
come to them and The Order had a small presence in the city that
lay not twenty kilometers northeast of this village. What's more,
they knew he had kin in this region and exactly who they were, so
it wouldn't take much for them to put two and two together and come
a-knocking -or just sweep him away in the dead of night.

So, to his family's wailing discontent, he
abruptly told them he must return west and could delay no longer.
The lie was for his own protection should they be questioned. He
intended, of course, to continue east. After fond and tearful
farewells and final pleas for him to remain, Gahre set himself back
on the trail, east by east, trail by trail to the shores of the
vast and tumultuous Mercantile Sea.

The port city of Perth was a winding labyrinth
of alleys formed by tall wooden buildings and small industry, a hub
of travelers, merchants, fishers and the like where even a stranger
could blend into a low profile within the slums and dock districts.
Thieves were an ever present nuisance here, and Gahre had several
run-ins with pickpockets, muggers, and packsnatchers. Burglars were
even in the hotels, operating in collusion with the owners. The
place was a swamp of iniquity. Gahre's extrasensory awareness kept
him and his gear protected, but that did not stop their attempts to
part him from it. And on the one occasion it failed, he did chase
and beat a man who had in a flash slashed his pack and tore off
with a portion of its contents as Gahre was left to decide between
abandoning the rest of it on the ground where it would surely not
remain long or pursuing the criminal. He chose to pursue and did
catch the man and beat him lightly with a firm reprimand. If he had
not been a fugitive himself, he would have apprehended the offender
and delivered him unto the law himself. This incident drew the ire
of a local guild of which the cutpurse was a member, and Gahre
found himself being stalked in the streets by a thousand eyes
peering at him out of every crowd and window. In desperation he
made his way at night to the docks and roused a old seaman in his
vessel and bid him to make the crossing at once. The old fisher
balked until Gahre flashed before him a large and flawless emerald
that was a thousand coin or more in value. The old man at once set
to work procuring supplies for the voyage as Gahre hid himself in
the hold. By first light they were underway and full sail east by
southeast on calm waters under fair skies.

The old man had lived a tumultuous life. Born
to a prosperous and influential house, he had been raised in the
opulent trappings of nobility in the nation of Kirodomo, Gahre's
very destination. The wrinkled old man had risen in the ranks of
governance and lorded over a third of nation, when a civil uprising
gained traction in the masses. The rebellion rose nearly overnight
and terrorized the establishment, infecting even the ranks of the
legions. The war he described was brutal, fought street to street,
house to house, and brother against brother. There had been an
escalating game of kidnappings and mass executions on both sides,
brutal torture, and then a failing of the agricultural system and
the economy til their once fair lands had been transformed into an
unrecognizable and monstrous realm of torment, cruelty, and
perdition. Gahre was reminded of how it mirrored the history of the
Far West, and they discussed the causes at some length along their
journey.

When the duke's palace had been destroyed and
much of his family captured and killed at the hands of their
enemies, what remained of the man’s house fled with the mass exodus
of refugees and began their life anew in the nation state he'd just
passed through, Zenithia. During those times The Order had
mobilized a multinational army of the surrounding states, invaded
Kirodomo, and declared martial law. But he never returned, and when
his wife passed away two decades ago he took to this solitary life
at sea. He said he was more content now straining his tired bones
in honest trade then he had ever been at his height of wealth and
power.

The sea turned deadly with a sudden tempest,
so they dropped the sails and sealed themselves in the hold for two
dark days. When they emerged, Cearulei once again shone its
brightness, and they found themselves washed ashore on a sandy
atoll in sight of the virgin coast of the mainland. The old man
announced to him they had arrived in Kirodomo. Gahre helped him set
his vessel back to sea and paid him the agreed upon fare for the
passage.