A Tale of Two Brothers

Authors note: I now this is very long, but bear with it. If you think I should separate this into chapters for easier reading, please e-mail me and say so.

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Many years ago, in an unknown land, a power struggle ensued between two great cities, Luridian and Shallipeg.

On a frigid winter’s night, deep within a mountain pass on the road between these two great cities, a lone traveler trudged through thick, heavy snow along a decadent path. The road had been covered by two feet of snow for at least a fortnight, allowing for the limited passage of large wagons and powerful horses. The raw night air burned the traveler’s nostrils whenever he sniffled. The coarse wind penetrated his thick cloak as though it were a slim sheet of tissue, and it pierced his every organ, vein, and bone. His teeth chattered; every breath taken between their gaps was a wheeze of pain, yet he did not stop. Snot froze to his nose and around his mouth. The drivel that he released to warm his lips slid down his rock-hard beard and froze to create icicles of mucus, yet he did not stop. His boots were soaked; water flooded them, making his toes and heels numb. His joints were stiff. He could not see three feet in front of him, yet he did not stop.

Every step taken by this dilapidated creature brought him a little closer to his goal, though he knew not what is was. The longer he remained in the cold, the sooner death would take him. The farther he traveled, the closer he came to some possible place of shelter. Either by the former of the latter, he sought to meet his destination with determination. Yet, nature and the ways of fate toy with the lives of conscious beings. When it would seem as though they were down and out, some divine will would deny them providence, for their task was not complete, nor their time come. The traveler moved on.

Within this mountain pass the traveler encountered several steep hills. The path was slippery; sheets of ice layered above the stone trodden road and below the heavy snow. When chance a foot or hoof sunk deep enough to hit it, the owner would lose control and slide all the way to his destination, or fall back to his starting point. At the head of each hill, two tall rocks, fashioned as pillars, marked the path before the traveler. The forest to either side, though cleared back, periodically extended its arm and a tree or two shadowed the road, dropping the occasional lump of snow into a traveler’s path. Deep into a winter’s month, no life could be found on the edges of this forest. The hills were deserted and quiet, save for the roar of the raging wind.

At the peak of one of these hills, the traveler stopped to momentarily rest. He rummaged through his cloak and retrieved a leather flask. He put it to his lips and downed the last swig of ale he owned. It seared his throat as it journeyed to the empty pit of his stomach below. The small drought did nothing for his body temperature, and his knees went numb as he stood there. At long last, his life had come to its end. After forty years of knowing nobody, speaking with few, and being addicted to the drink, his escape would come. His knees buckled and he fell.

The traveler felt his body tumble down the snowy dune. Faster and faster, he moved. For once he felt a sensation he had not felt since he set out on his journey; his head ached. The blood still flowed freely through his body. He was alive even as he rolled to an inevitable death. Strange, he thought, how time would stand still when he wanted it to pass so quickly. His fall from life seemed to last a lifetime. Images of his childhood flashed in his mind’s eye. How he could remember the feeling of silk, the love of his mother’s touch, and the companionship of a brother he never knew. At the height waist-high of a man, he raced through long, tall corridors of grandeur and laughed in an abandon only known to the innocent. He remembered the night he was stolen from this fairytale world and taken into bondage across a great water. His captives beat him and worked his fingers until they bled. The rest he refused to recall. Two weeks earlier to his present predicament, he remembered the veil being lifted and the shadow disappearing, or so he thought. For the first time in thirty-five years, he had awoken in a bed of silk and soft stuffing, only to be the butt and entertainment of a not-so-nobleman’s joke. These memories passed.

He felt his body abruptly thud against a heavy object and he thought, “This is finally the end.”

But it was not. Even as the traveler lay on the snow covered ground, with heavy wet flakes falling upon his pale cheeks and blue fingers, no release came to his aching body, where numbness suddenly abandoned him, and a searing fire of pain shot up his spine. Life lingered within this matchbox, unwilling to let go.

An hour passed before he felt a strange light upon his face, a luminescence without heat, yet bright enough to arouse his shielded eyes. He stirred to his back, but covered his face with his hands as the light pierced his lids. The wisp of the wind disappeared and the fall of the snow ceased. Upon one elbow he leaned as he attempted to clear his vision and to see the essence of the light source for which he prematurely judged to be a path to the kingdom of providence.

From the depths of his soul, he cried out in agony. For death took all when time was mature, yet had shortcoming on this lonely creature, denial was thought to be only a human instinct and not the practice of the universe. On one’s deathbed, one could reach out his arms and reunite with familiarity without pain and suffering in a world beyond the control of reality. Such hopeful faith gave all a purpose, a reason to live. But away from this cycle, the traveler had been thrown countless times. Whether falling on a sword, dying of thirst, or coming to a fork in the road after passing a ‘dead end’ sign, the moment to reach out and reunite never came. Now, with such a happening in the wake of reality, and yet beyond interception, the traveler could do nothing but moan.

“Why am I forsaken?” His pitiful cry escaped in a calm utterance. A lone tear slid down his face and around his lips. Its salty taste awoke a longing hunger from the tip of his tongue to the depths of his stomach.

“You are not forsaken,” a soothing voice called out from the light. Its softness would have made love to his ears had they not been frozen.

“Who is there,” the traveler started. His vision continued to fail him as he squinted toward the light. A shiver of fear permeated throughout his body.

“It matters not what light is at your feet,” the voice responded, “It is here to give solace, not to provide answers.” The light quivered in its place. It slowly approached him. “Forty years is a long time for a being to not know who he is. To never age, to never love, to never be loved, are painful abandons in the price of innocence. Yet, such is necessary for your purpose.”

“And what is that purpose,” he asked, “What being should endure this?”

“That is not of your concern now. You have been chosen, and the chosen have not a choice,” the voice said, its pitch raising and resonance becoming raspy, “You endure so that you will remember.”

“And what am I supposed to remember,” his curiosity replaced the anger in his voice. At long last, he might get an answer.

“I told you, answers are not mine to give.”

“Then how do I find them?”

“Patience, all in due time. I am here to serve notice. Your destiny now beckons fulfillment. You have a long journey ahead of you, and its perils will test your every skill. Though, do not fret. Death only becomes mortals.”

“What?” The traveler’s face appeared puzzled. His nostrils flared and his eyes widened.

“We shall speak again soon. Now, get up off that ground,” the voice commanded. The light ascended and began to fade as the traveler’s vision cleared.

“Wait,” he yelled as he sprang to his feet, “what am I supposed to do?” He flailed his arms in desperation as the light disappeared. For the first time since he could remember, he had felt some hope, and it disappeared as quickly as it had made its presence known. The icy snow returned and the wind howled once again. Alone, he stood, then aware that his body indeed was not broken.

When he lowered his head he noticed that he faced the main edifice of a tavern. Several outbuildings, a stable, a pantry, and an outhouse, flanked the building. The Germanic structure rose into several levels, each one overhanging the previous in succession. From left to right, a window, a large wooden door, and three more stained-glass windows lined the front of the building. A lit torch hung to the left of the door, blazing in the cold night. It illuminated the area around it. Above the door hung a rusty old sign that read:

...........................................THE MARE'S MAID.................................................
........................................DRINK-DINE-QUARTER..............................................

Candles glowed in the windows.

The seductive smell of roasted pork annihilated the traveler’s nostrils as he looked on. Remembering his hunger and desire to escape the elements, he brushed himself off as best he could and lifted the iron hatch on the door, opened it, and entered the tavern.

Stepping over the threshold, the traveler encountered a sticky warmth and unwelcome stench. Though glad to be out of the cold, brutal blizzard, he wished he had stumbled upon a much better inn. Tables and chairs cluttered the room he now stood in, some with lanterns or candles on them, others with mugs of ale. Greasy, sweat stained faces looked up and stared back at him as he entered.

This moment in a moment seemed to last an eternity. No one moved. No one spoke. All turned their attention to the new face, though concealed behind its hood. The sound of a boiling stew permeated the room. A coin dropped from a man’s pocket, rolled across the wooden planked floor and stopped as a boot stomped on it. Ale dripped from a man’s mouth, trickled through his beard, and dripped onto a table. All at once, all returned to their business. Flies buzzed around the traveler’s head as he examined the rest of the room.

To his left, a bar ran the length of the tavern. More mugs and dirty plates lined it with waning candles inserted between them. The bar itself was old, its wood finish chipped in many places, the corners worn to smooth, round surfaces. Behind the bar a rack of bottles lined the wall, where cobwebs and spiders formed a protective layer over the dust that had appeared to cover the bottles since the tavern’s construction. Centered above the bar, another sign bearing the tavern’s name hung. Below the name, carved in wood and burned in letters, was the following:

..........................................HALF-WAY HOME...................................................
.......................HASTEN TO LIVE or SEEK DEATH TRYING.................................

The bartender, an aged man with gray hair around the ears and a glare on his forehead, a stubby chin, crooked nose, and bushy hair covering each cheek bone, stood near the end of the bar, wiping several mugs clean with a dirty rag. His breast just cleared the bar top, his head level with the chins of his guests so that he would look up to speak to anyone. His apron hung from his neck, smeared in grease. Steam rose from the roast that boiled in a kettle on the fire behind him.

Directly across the room from the traveler, two women in billowing dresses with red circles on their pasty white faces, scarlet eyes, and fake wigs, caressed the face of a scruffy, unkempt rapscallion. At his every rough comment, they giggled and slowly moved their hands down from his face to his torso. His cheeks flushed red as he pulled two large gold coins from his pocket. The women’s faces narrowed in the slyness of serpents. The man looked on, his eyes slowly undressing them. He held out a third gold coin and one woman’s hand slipped below his torso. He swooned, and a devious smile, one of murderous intent, spread across his face. He retrieved a fourth coin from his purse and noticed the mood of the women to go from cunning to ecstatic, though to the traveler’s eye, they only flinched. The second woman leaned in close to the man’s face and locked her lips with his, signaling the end of a negotiation. As she released him, the first drew him up from his chair and led him toward the rickety stair behind them. The second woman pulled a flask from beneath her dress, a skull laboriously painted on its side. As the man turned to retrieve her, she silently concealed it and grabbed a bottle of ale to take up to the room with them. With both women in front of him as they ascended the steps, the man pulled a jackknife from his pocket and placed it behind his back as the first woman turned and sent him a final mouthed kiss with the movement of her lips. All three smiling, they reached the top step, turned a corner, and disappeared.

To the traveler’s far right, a group of men sat gathered around a roaring fire. Above the mantle a dirt speckled mirror hung; above it hung another sign:

.......................................IN SERENITY WE GATHER.........................................
............YE’ THERE BE NO DECEPTION IN THE SOUL’S REFLECTION................

The fire blazed hot. It illuminated the fair skin of the men; its heat scorched their pores, turning a darker shade of pink at the pass of each moment. Sweat trailed their faces as alcohol coursed through their veins, carrying a thick, intoxicated blood pumped from stomach to heart to brain. The powder on their faces caked; the threads intricately woven into the wigs upon their heads frayed. Those who continued to wear their decadent lace and dusty frocks sweltered in a prison of insulation. Those who shed them, contemptuously glanced from side to side, paranoid of their naked outward appearance yet relieved from the merciless blaze. With heads close together and an unlimited source of pints, they schemed. Of what, the traveler knew not, and never would. While most of the men remained stoic, their demeanor nonchalant, a few clustered together, nervous and superstitious. One sharply raised his voice and bolted up from his place at the table, and another subsequently seized his arm and forced him back into his chair. Two men presided at the heads of table. Neither quickened to move, nor even speak, except at intervals, at which points one would raise his arm, blink his eyes, or curve his fingers. No one present to the party made eye contact with them, and all shivered beneath their skin in recognition of catching their gaze. The others quietly bickered back and forth, taking a stance in turn, and remaining silent when an opposite man spoke.

Just as this cycle ended, and the next movement began with the elder head speaking, a fight broke loose between two drinkers in the center of the room. Blow by blow, they both took a beating. As one raised a chair to strike the other, the barkeep leaned forward, fury darkening his face. The elder head arose and nodded toward a window of the tavern. Two men, dressed in shabby servants garments, burst into the room from the outside, brushed past the traveler, seized the two ruffians, and violently hoisted them up two steps to where the traveler stood, quickly dispatching them out the door by a rough strike to each man’s backside. They disappeared as quickly as they entered. The room resumed its former self.

The traveler looked down. The rotting carcass of cat lay at his feet. Disgusted, he scuffed it aside, elevated his head, descended the two steps in front of him, and approached the bar.