Jovan's Gaze. Aaron Ph.D. Dov
The stink is all over you, and it is not the sort of thing you can wash out of your cloths by dipping them in the river. I might not be able to smell it, but those things obviously can!" He pointed back toward the way we had come.
"That is," I started.
"What?" he barked. "It is what? Absurd? Ridiculous?" He paused, looked around. "Is it, really? This is what I am talking about," he repeated his damning accusation, obviously too upset to say much more. "This is what I am talking about."
He pushed past me, shaking his head as much in disappointment as in anger. The grass seemed to pull away from him, as though his anger was more than they wished to encounter. I stood in silence for a moment, ignoring the grasses which tried to goad me eastward. The anger coming from Erik, which seemed worse now than the howling fire-storms of Skyreach, cried its own doom. I swiped my hand at the wavering grass, and followed in Erik's wake.
Our village was still a two day walk southward.
CHAPTER 2
By the end of that day, with the wolves long since turned away from us, Erik's anger had settled into a quiet burn, like a fire hidden from view. I knew he was still angry. I could almost feel his thoughts, as though they battered me about, stabbed at me, and carved me up. From the outside, to a stranger seeing him from afar, he might have seemed at peace. He might have looked as though he was taking a quiet walk through friendly fields, daydreaming. His face showed no anger. Not even his eyes, on those rare occasion when he turned about to look my way, betrayed annoyance. No, none of that.
He was angry, though. I could feel it. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps he... no. Absurd. It was absurd. I was no more drawn to that place, that terrible keep, than any other place on Theris. Why would it be so? What draw could it have? There was no power to be taken, no riches, no great knowledge to arm myself with. I had no material reason to go there, nothing to gain.
Sure, there were spy reports. Kronan power, so alluring, drew far too many to betray our fair land. Spies sent in reports from all over our kingdom and theirs. Indeed, Kronan spies spent as much time watching their own people as they did us. The spy reports, so very detailed, so very plentiful, spelled out the very essence of life across two kingdoms and a thousand years. I read those reports, sometimes for days on end, absorbing the minutiae of Krona's shadow-army of spies and murderers. Even Erik, one of the great soldiers of our age, was watched and noted by the Kronan spies. I set those notes aside, somehow sensing it an intrusion to look into the life of a man I knew and respected. The others, though, those who were dead or had fled into the doom of the eastern desert, the reports of their lives were mine for the reading. What harm was it to read those papers?
Reading those reports made me feel as though I were the center of some great whirlwind of forbidden knowledge. It was fascinating to wonder what had been done with that information. Did the great generals, and the Lords they served, use it all, or did it merely sit and gather dust? Was the possession of knowledge power in and of itself, or was it merely another tool, along with the doom-wrought blades and cruel armor of the keep?
To me, contemplating such things was fascinating. A mental exercise. I could gain nothing from it. No power, nor knowledge that matter anymore.
No, Erik was reading far more into my excursions to Skyreach Keep than he should.
***
We walked through the day, and well into the night. The moon was full and bright in the cloudless sky, occluded by nothing more than a flock of bats racing skyward in search of their evening meals. The winged creatures cast terrible profiles as they swarmed about the sky in search of field mice and such. Their shrieks were a strain to the ear, but ultimately harmless. These were not the bats of the far west, thankfully.
When the moon began to find its way downward, Erik and I stopped in a small clearing, far from anything that might act as a hide. Still not speaking to me, he settled down on the soft ground and slept. His sword in his hand, he simply lay his head down on the ground, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. Thus was the habit of a trained soldier, even one as far removed from service as Erik. I was not so fortunate. I tossed and turned. I was not uncomfortable, having long since learned to sleep in such fields. That was not the issue.
No, I was tormented by dreams.
The eyes of a Dark Lord, this one different than the others, seemed to glare at me as soon as I began to sleep. I recognized the eyes from the statues that lined a courtyard at the keep, though I could not place them, nor give them a name. What did it matter, really? Evil was evil, regardless of the name it used, or the title it carried. Perhaps it was the nature of that particular statue that made its image stick in my mind. The long line of Dark Lords stretched back for centuries, and each one was remembered by the statue carved in their likeness, silent sentinels which seemed to glare down on those who saw them. Each statue was arrayed in fierce armor, with cruelly-wrought swords or axes, war hammers or other such weapons. Each was carved to seem more terrible than the last, as each successive Dark Lord sought to establish themselves as the most feared, the most powerful. Even in death, the Dark Lords of Skyreach Keep sought to exert control through fear.
Yet there was that one statue, just the one, different than the rest. The dates of that particular Lord's reign had been scratched away, the stone chipped and gouged, along with his name. It was as if someone sought to erase his place in history, yet feared removing the statue itself. One could not simply read the other dates and deduce his place along the black road of Krona's history, since the script on the statues was not Esian, but the darker Kronan tongue. In my early days, I could not read that language, and only barely spoke it. It was only after many years of visiting the keep that I came to understand it.
This unknown Lord, who's eyes glared at me in my dreams, was not as the others were. No armor, nor a cruel weapon at his side. This statue-Lord wore a simple tunic and pants, simple shoes, and covered his face with a swath of cloth which hid all but the eyes. At first, I had thought him not a Lord at all; perhaps some memorable adviser or other such minion who had earned the right to stand eternally beside his master. Yet his statue was not with the others, but off to one side, close to nothing. Indeed, the statue even faced away from them. Any doubt that it was a Dark Lord was swept aside when I closed my eyes. I knew it, I felt it. I sensed fear. The other statues, stone though they were, feared this statue. This was a Dark Lord, one whose crimes and horrors had been swept aside by history. The statue itself was old, weathered, and worn down from centuries. Still, it was his eyes which found me now.
It seemed so tempting to turn back toward the keep and investigate the mystery of those eyes. Veined red, wide open, with brilliant whites and terrible blackened centers. It was so very tempting to go back and figure it all out, but I did not. I knew that to turn back was to walk away from Erik and Jeannine, and the village which barely tolerated my presence as it was.
In my sleepless night, I came to understand that Erik was right. I had to leave the keep be. The dreams would soon be gone. The eyes would soon leave my dreams. They had to, surely. Surely.
***
Clearlake was a small village. Even before the war, before the magic plagues, it was a small place. A small hamlet, it was off the main roads, away from the trade routes traveled by merchants, and the grand roads paraded by soldiers and nobles. The locals had always been happy about that. The owner of the local tavern, Gern, sometimes told stories of the people who settled there; quiet fishers who sought a simple life.
Clearlake took its name from a small pond sitting on its western edge. The water was so clear, one could see the fish swimming about. Other than that, Clearlake was a collection of small houses and shops, circled around a central square of cobblestones, just like the single road which looped about it. At its height, in the days before the war, Clearlake had boasted a population of perhaps two hundred. The war has swelled that number to thousands. The exodus across the mountains and the desert had reduced it to perhaps one hundred, most of which were refugees who could not, or would not, flee eastward. Jeannine had been among those who stayed, not because she had