THE ARTIFACTS OF EXISTENCE E-Book

Michael Kanitz

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 239

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

To see the truth you have to fight the illusion... Whether it was chance or faith didn't matter to Laerodah; he knew something was wrong with the world. Following his heart he found a way out of the illusion surrounding Statheraé. On his dangerous path he follows the story until he knows what needs to be done...

Leseprobe

Chapters

1. Looking for answers

2. The room of the Keepers

3. Laerodah’s tale

4. Captivity

5. The truth

6. Master Areth

7. Raelia’s plan

Part 1

„Looking for answers“

The library laid still like a fortress of silence. The old walls, blackened by time, and the boards full of books without end seemed to swallow every little sound.

Had there been a quietly listening visitor on one of the strong wooden beams so high above that they couldn’t be seen from the ground, he would have heard not the smallest of sounds…

Except…

Hushed, hectic footsteps and…

„Quick, this way!“

The chief librarian whispered anxiously and made fierce gestures in Laerodah’s direction as soon as he saw him.

Laerodah knew the seemingly breathless, panicking disturber. It was Master Areth, one of his employers.

Laerodah couldn’t understand the excitement, but followed the demand without a moment of hesitation. He stepped out of the shadow of the door, that led to the working spaces behind the library, ran down the hallway as quiet as he could and went through the huge entrance door to where Master Areth led him with his gestures. For a quick moment he flinched as the thick door, that seemed to be older than time itself, closed behind him with a unfittingly banging sound.

Both Master Areth and him held their breath in the twilight until the sound finally faded away. Then… silence in the great hall of the library as well as in the corridor behind the door, that opened to the chambers of the Tutors.

Laerodah suddenly felt strangely relieved without knowing why. What had happened? Why this interruption of the rather usually dull working day? He breathed deeply and looked at the shape of his boss, hardly visible in this dim half-light.

Master Areth, of all people! He, who always valued the rules of this temple of science beyond anything else! He who scolded Laerodah in every moment possible, who sometimes even yelled at him and who gave him the work nobody else wanted to do. This very man now made him lay down his duties; this screamed for an explanation.

The young apprentice wanted nothing more than to release every question inside his head at once. But his heart danced in his chest so he wasn’t able to think straight for one single moment.

Master Areth could not possibly have seen his gaze in the twilight of the small room, but he seemed to sense what Laerodah wanted to say, so he grabbed the young man‘s shoulders and said: „I’ll give you as much time as I can. But until the last day of this week you have to be gone from here. Got it?“

His touch and the little speech brought Laerodah instantly back to earth. He took a deep breath, gathered his thoughts and replied: „Three days, Master Areth. If everything works out as planned, you’ll see me again in three days and then you have to tell me your story.“

The tension in the dusty air was almost touchable, but the few spoken words seemed to loosen the atmosphere. Master Areth smiled in the dark, grabbed Laerodah’s hand and said with a glimpse of hope in his voice: „Once people used to call me Glenar. If you succeed, my name and the names of all the others will be heard once again in the world. Then, friend, I will gladly tell you everything.“

They parted without words and Laerodah snuck quietly to the library’s back door, while Master Areth went to the main hall, turned off the lights and shut the great entrance with a metallic clanging of his huge keyring.

Laerodah sat down on the bottom oft he stairway next to the door and waited in the unmoving shadows until he was sure there were no more footsteps to be heard. Soon the only sounds in the room were the ones of him breathing. Quick, he thought, you can’t wait here forever.

He had to make an effort to overcome the stiffness of his limbs as he opened his bag. Out of it he took an role of parchment, a small metallic device used to punch holes in paper and a small wooden box with a filigranely decorated handle on it’s right side.

Laerodah put the box on the lowermost staircase so carefully as if it could turn to dust in the blink of an eye; then he took about an arm’s length off the parchment and searched in his pockets for that little piece of paper, that had filled his mind for the last days…

Finally he found it inside of his jacket, which seemed to become way too warm and tight despite the coolness of these old walls. Relieved he unfolded the little sheet and tried to decipher the written lines in the weak light of the room.

After doing so he closed his eyes and sorted his thoughts. Still everything in his head raged around, all those pictures, impressions, emotions and words that completely turned his life around, a life which until then he liked to think of as determined and peaceful.

And now, question after question popped up in his mind.

Nevertheless he managed to gather himself and to focus on the words of the old man, down there in the dusty and strangely unreal caves of Cliffdale. Now, in review, his voice was so soothing, like a beacon of hope in the chaos of the last few days; he spoke so well-thought and easy to remember and what he seemed so unbelieveably wise.

Without a sound Laerodah moved his lips, as he imagined the old man behind closed eyes:

„Listen to your own sound. You will feel what was deemed lost, without having learned. Let the small part of yourself make a sound and it will show you how to defeat the illusion.“

There was a melody in those words, Laerodah felt not for the first time.

He then realised that he hadn’t remained silent, instead he had whispered the words without noticing; their echo faded into the stones surrounding him like small trickles of water… without moving or breathing he remained still, until the last tones of his words faded away.

Listen to your own sound… he tried to wrap his mind around that remark. You don’t „sound“, he thought, that doesn’t make sense. What sounds do humans make? Words? Laughter? No, it had to be something else. He would figure it out, if only he had time to think…

After what felt like an eternity, the sourrounding silence was whole again. Laerodah slowly opened his eyes, opened the lid of the little box, took the little stripe of parchment and began to punch holes into it. It looked like there was no pattern to the holes, and little pieces of parchment rained onto the floor; shortly after the big piece seemed to consist mainly of holes. Seeming to be satisfied with the result, he put the punching device back down.

Every unknowing eye would have overlooked the narrow slit on the lower end of the box’s front, where Laerodah now carefully inserted the parchment while turning the handle. After only a few rotations a sound appeared, which despite it’s faintness seemed to throw a huge echo to the walls. Finally the parchment fit into the device like into a little music box.

But this was no music box, at least no ordinary one. Laerodah had tried to understand the concept, but he was no expert. Either it was a magic long forgotten or a very highly developed machinery, he didn’t remember, but nevertheless, no matter from which side you put the parchment into the device, it could play a melody according to the pattern of holes. Laerodah just knew, that this thing was ancient, made in a time long forgotten… so old, that all the tales of the world it came from were either forgotten or so overburdened with lies, fairytales and ignorance of later generations, that nobody would or could believe them anymore…but so far Laerodah found at least one little grain of truth: in the old times sounds and melodies bore much more magic and power than nowadays…

He closed his eyes again and slowly started to turn the fragile handle, anxiously trying to be as careful as possible; who knew what this little instrument could still bare after not being used all these years… but without even the smallest disturbance the music box created sounds, clear like glass, that wove a melody which filled the whole library. It was so intense, yet so soothing, that Laerodah thought he could feel how every new tone let his heart beat slower and all his anxiety flew away like grains of sand in the wind… everything that felt so burdening got swept away.

Carried by the melody he opened his eyes and looked at the little box without stopping the turning of the handle. He felt like he didn’t do this out of free will but because the device kept controlling his motions.

Could this be?, he thought. What does this do to me? Where does that come from? But compared to the questions that earlier tormented his mind and his heart, this now felt so light, so meaningless he wanted to laugh.

But what was that?

At first he thought, his eyes betrayed him. But the more he looked, the clearer he saw, that the edge oft he uppermost stair suddenly began to glow very weakly. At first Laerodah didn’t believe his eyes; it could have been the stress or his fatigue. But the longer he listened and imagined a fog covering everything around him, the brighter the stair shone in the darkness until after a long moment it radiated a spheric light.

And step after step the whole stairway, worn down by countless boots, illuminated, until a waterfall of light cascaded down and stopped at the feet of a slightly moved and speechless Laerodah.

After a well-needed moment of thought about the wonder he just had witnessed, Laerodah noticed that next to the music box he had put on the stone, small lines showed up, uniting to a symbol as the light from within the stairway began to fade and finally went away. At last only the symbol was visible.

The seal of the Keepers…

He was prepared for this. He knew the look of the symbol and he had hoped to find them exactly where they appeared, but still he was struck by surprise and sheer joy: „It’s true! The seal! There it is!“, he almost shouted in the twilight.

Slow, as if every movement could destroy the magic of the moment, Laerodah moved his right hand towards the seal, until he almost touched it. And it was as if the seal somehow could sense his presence, because suddenly it seemed to emerge a pulse and changed it’s color. Through his fingers Laerodah could see the lines that were silver at first, now shone in deep blue.

And what then happened was… nothing…

Laerodah began to feel insecure; what had he missed? Didn’t he think of everything? Just a little light and colour, this couldn’t be it, not after all he’d been through… he tried to focus but couldn’t think of anything. Sweat began to run down his forehead and his back…his mind was blank, no idea, why this…except…

Wait… was it that simple?

He slowly lowered his hand down and touched the symbol with his fingertips.

That did it! The smallest touch was enough. The seal started pulsating once more, turned dark and bright again and again, just to then fade away completely in the next blink of an eye.

All this happened in fractions of a second, but to Laerodah it seemed as if hours passed between every changing of light…in which he always heard this little voice in the back of his head: „Turn around! Go! This is bigger than you, not your concern! You don’t belong here! Who knows, what will happen, just take back your old life!“

To scare away his demons, he whispered to himself: „No“, then he redrew his hand from the seal. The stairway was now again as dark as the surrounding room.

And then… nothing… just the everlasting silence that always seems louder when one is expecting noises instead. After some seconds of waiting disappointment took hold of Laerodah. What did he do all that for? Could it be…? Was the old man wrong after all? Maybe this was a test?

Suddenly he snapped out of his brooding; there! Just left of the door… a sound! There in the corner, covered almost completely by the shadows, he noticed clearly a metallic rattling, as if old locks snapped open and iron bars were moved aside.

Laerodah stepped back from the stairs and looked in the direction the noises came from. At first he couldn’t barely see anything, but once his eyes got used to what little light they found he could see that a part of the wall had moved.

A secret passage! Here, in this old building, where he had gone in and out all those dull days that felt wasted. The same building he roamed countless times in his mall free hours, looking for books he hadn’t yet encountered, where he thought he knew every passage, this very house suddenly offered such a stunning surprise…

Behind the moved wall Laerodah found another staircase.

He shortly considered whether to move on but then thought: to hell with it! This is what I came for after all.

He packed his bearings into his bag and stepped behind the revealed door.

The first thing he noticed was the air around him: thick and unmoved for a very long time, possibly no living creature had breathed or moved here for years.

Looking around, he noticed a pale light without a noticeable origin. It illuminated the stairs that led down to an end he could not see from where he stood. The only thing he could tell was, that these stairs hadn’t been used for an eternity.

You can still turn around, he thought. It’s not too late to leave this unknown excitement behind, who knows, there might be worse things down there than dust and old air…

But all these doubts vanished like clouds in the midday sun, when Laerodah noticed that something was carved into the uppermost step. He looked closer, read the words he had been hoping so much to find here. He knew these words without reading. And despite the thick layer of dust he could see the words that nulled his last doubts:

„To see the future, you now have to understand the past.“

Part 2

„The room of the Keepers“

Cobwebs of long past generations of spiders covered the ancient door and made it look heavy and indestructible. But despite not being used for countless years it opened silently at the slightest touch of Laerodahs‘ fingers. Without any noise it slid into the black room beyond.

Laerodah almost expected to meet someone in there, but all he found was a ghostly silence and the smell of used air.

The room of the Keepers! He had to tell himself again and again, as his body relaxed by sheer relief. He really found it! Unbelieveable. All those things burdening him throughout the last weeks, stretching the boundaries of his mind to the limit… it all became real in the blink of an eye.

To reveal the past… the TRUE past, not the tale that he and all the others were meant to believe… Laerodah felt as if he could touch it, right here in the dark. He saw the possibilities in front of him… the knowledge to be gained, all those stories, all those eyes clinging onto his lips, drinking his words once he deciphered the secrets…

And the dangers it brought onto him… and the world he lived in… his life… no, not only his, but the lives of all those people who would listen to him, believe him… because others would listen, too… others who dedicated their lives to defending another truth, their truth. If those people would be told that they lived in a lie, they wouldn’t accept… they’d fight… on all five continents of Statheraé, everywhere words could be weapons… or a reason for people to use weapons. Just because something was said it wouldn’t automatically reach everybody’s heart. And those, whose heart would remain closed because they objected to listen or refused to believe… unbelieveable, what could happen… or, no, he thought… it wasn’t unbelieveable at all.

Nothing less than the history of the world was at stake. The history that was woven through Statheraé, growing and growing since it‘s first inhabitant started to breathe, wandering through the air like a soft melody, singing and floating until all days would end...

All this roamed in Laerodah’s head within seconds as he stood motionless in a room he couldn’t see more than what the pale light from the staircase behind him revealed. His face wore an expression of fear, but his eyes showed the will to go on.

He reached into his bag and took out a flashlight which enlightened the room. Seeing his surroundings clearly, Laerodah realized that this wasn’t the room he was looking for, but the beginning of another staircase leading so far down he couldn’t see the end.

Not beeing able to see further, Laerodah doubted for a second whether to move on. But he had come this far…

He barely had made the first step when he froze. As soon as he had begun to move, he heard a scratching sound behind him, like wood scraping over stone. He quickly turned around, just soon enough so that the flashlight could show him that the door to the staircase shut itself…

Panic filled his mind. Laerodah jumped and fell against the door with all his weight, but all he could move were a few flakes of dust…

Clutching his hurting shoulder he held still. Trapped? No. Don’t give up, go! Step by step he almost ran down to what he hoped would finally be the desired room. There, deep inside, he felt it again: this anger, this wholesome rage without any possible explanation he knew all too well…

This feeling first overcame him when he had learned about the Keepers and the true history of the world.

Why would humans spread lies about the past? On what purpose? When he first had started thinking about this, he felt hot... enraged… he got more and more upset then, because he couldn’t imagine why anyone had an interest to hide the truth from people, whole generations of human beings.

Why?

This question since then burned deep itself deep into his heart, heating the anger everytime he thought about it. And now, having gone so far, all it took to stop him was a dark corridor? No!

He soon realised that rage wasn’t any help at all. He needed to focus; anger would lead to mistakes.

Laerodah repeated this sentence in his head several times until he felt his heartbeat go down.

Hadn’t he learned that all the treasured knowledge he got from books was obtained best once he read them slowly, without haste? And if this was possible with books, why shouldn’t he try to answer questions in reality the same way?

So: calm yourself--- and Laerodah went on with a clear head, into the darkness, deeper down… step by step he descended, and the staircase seemed to be endless, his flashlight only showed more and more stairs for what felt like an eternity. Laerodah lost track of the time as he continued to walk, not knowing how long the flashlight might still support him…

But then, finally, an end came in sight. Laerodah fastenend his pace, his calmness long gone. Couriosity and impatience took over his mind, as he reached for the knob on the door that rose in front of him, looking exactly like the first one he opened shortly before; also old, dusty, covered with thick layers of cobwebs. But there was something underneath: a symbol! Laerodah had no doubt: it was the seal he was searching for… the seal of the Keepers…

He opened the door…

The room beyond was completely dark; even the flashlight could not reveal anything. In the dim twilight it made Laerodah looked for another lightsource. Somebody had once used this room, right? So if the sun had no power down here there should be candles at least, he thought, a torch, anything…

He felt the despair creeping up on him. This couldn’t be over just because there was no light!

But… wait, Laerodah thought… could it be that simple?

He again directed the beam of the flashlight at the door and looked at the half-covered symbol. He moved his fingers several times across it until he had removed most oft he ancient cobwebs.

The symbol was the same as the one at the bottom of the stairs in the library. Would it light up too if he played the melody again? It was worth a try…

Laerodah rummaged through his pocket. Searching for the little music box which still held the piece of parchment he had put in earlier. His fingers got tangled up in the paper so bad he was afraid he would destroy it; creating a new pattern would be very difficult in this darkness. But maybe he wouldn’t need the paper anyway…

He had heard the melody only once. But hadn’t forgotten it… no; couldn’t forget it. It was complex, yet simple like a lullaby, always there in the back of your head after all those years, spreading warm memories everytime it is remembered.

Maybe he just had to repeat the melody and the same thing like back at the stairs would happen again?

Carefully Laerodah touched the symbol with his fingertips. He began humming the melody, like he had heard it moments before.

Even years later he wasn’t able to describe it, but there, in that very moment, humming gently with his eyes closed in a totally unfamiliar room, everything felt absolutely normal, as if he had been there hundreds of times, doing something as normal as drinking water…

And it worked! Just the first few sounds from his lips made the sign pulsate under his fingers.

Laerodah took all the courage he found inside he put his whole hand on the sign and hummed louder. This made the pulsating light go faster and lightened up the room.

When the light was bright enough, he stopped humming and let go of the rune, which turned dark again in an instant. Then Laerodah opened his eyes and was not able to wrap his mind around the things he saw…

The walls of the room were completely covered with huge maps of the continents of Statheraé, drawn with lines so thin it seemed they could be blown away with the slightest movement of the air.

Each corner of the room contained large, round bookcases that reached all the way to the ceiling. These cases held massive amounts of old parchments, already yellowed with age.

Laerodah looked closer at the bookcase next to him. The wood it was made of showed filigrane patterns; such thin, elegant lines weren’t made anywhere these days, he knew. Maybe it got out of style, maybe it just had got forgotten like so many things…

Next to each case stood a solid wooden desk with a small chair in front. The desks were all covered with a mess of dry inkbottles, quills, unused parchments and devices to hold paper in while writing.

The room’s center was occupied by a large, white oval table, presumably of granite. Like the rest of the furniture it was thickly covered with dust.

Laerodah continued to look around the room until his eyes got hold of the ceiling. Like on the walls there were thin lines, woven together not to a map, but… a spiral, drawn all across the ceiling, it’s circle centering exactly in the middle of the ceiling.

The longer he stared at the spiral, the more it occurred to him that the lines were moving, dancing above him, floating over the rocks like the melody he had listened to before.

This doesn’t help, he finally thought, as reality struck him. So he started to decipher the writings on the maps around him. Maps that old couldn’t possibly contain today’s names and borders, he thought, there must have been other cities, countries, names for everything.

But none of the words on the maps made any sense to him. Not a single book he had seen in all his years at the library was written like this or explained any letter like those.

A thought came up from deep within: could this be the „First Language“?

But suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a loud growling of his stomach. He tried to remember how long he had been down there; it seemed like hours had passed since he had said goodbye to Master Areth. He assumed that outside it should be dawn by now, but down here in the dark he couldn’t tell for sure.

Laerodah sat down at the huge granite table and began to unpack. On the table he put the music box with the little piece of parchment inside, the punch plier, a little notebook packed with reading marks and with additional pages he had glued in. Besides that he laid half a loaf of bread, some fruits and two big bottles of water. He knew from the start that this trip would take some time, so he had prepared himself. At last he took a clock out of his bag; it showed two hours after midnight.

That calmed Laerodah and surprised him at the same time. He had thought that he had spent more time down there.

But the relaxed mood did not last; soon all those well-known questions once again filled his head, awoken by the discovery of this room and all those informations from the past few days. Laerodah wanted nothing but answers, all his longing was focused onto this dimly lit room.

But… where to begin? Which script should be read first, how should he recognize the language, how was the system of filing, if there ever had been one? Maybe this wasn’t THE room at all, but just an anteroom of some sort?

His stomach growled again, causing Laerodah to smile. Under his breath he said to himself: „Right. First thing’s first.“ And he ate a big piece of bread.

After having finished half the loaf an half a bottle of water he felt an urge he couldn’t explain. He still had no idea where to start reading, but he felt it was necessary to write down his own story. He couldn’t tell why this suddenly seemed like a reasonable idea, but it just felt like the right thing to do.

After a moment of searching he found an empty parchment, an unused inkwell and a quill. Now fully equipped he sat down at one of the desks and looked once again at the bookcases. Now that he sat nearer to one of them he could see that there weren’t just parchments but also many little notebooks stacked in between. Laerodah was certain that he wouldn’t have been able to read those as well. But maybe this meant that he wasn’t the first person to enter here and write down his story. Maybe this room was meant to be a collection of individual stories. And maybe the Keepers themselves wrote down parts of their lives in here, whoever they might have been?

The thought of sitting inbetween ancient stories, thoughts and long forgotten knowledge made him feel… what? Maybe… sublime if he had to give it a name…

After a few tries he managed to put a piece of parchment in one of the devices to hold it tight, took a moment to collect his thoughts, and dipped the quill into the ink…

Part 3

Laerodah’s tale

„To see the future, you now have to understand the past.

But what if a truth is hidden in the past, unseen in the present? What if people try to shape the future, people who are carefully trying to conceal the truth, erasing old stories and knowledge and hunting down the collectors of both?

What if the present was built on lies? If people who just didn’t know better were manipulated to march into a predestined future designed by few?

What can a single person do?

My name is Laerodah.

After countless years my words could very well be the first written down in this room; written on parchment so old it must have belonged to the Keepers themselves. For I have found a part of the past.

Our world is screaming. Not many people are able to hear, though. Or wanting to…