I spent seven months in Russia during my Junior year of college, back in 2000. One morning in early April I awoke after having a particularly intense dream. I immediately sat down and wrote the dream out in story form, then, for some reason, I folded my tale up, stuffed the pages into an envelope, and mailed them off to my mom. Over the years I had completely forgotten what the story was about, and all I remembered of it was the ending - and the fact that I'd sent away my only copy.
Yesterday, as I was unpacking a box full of items of mine which had been at my mom's house, I stumbled upon my story! It was eerie reading it, as I knew the last few sentences, but could recall nothing more of the tale - yet there it was, penned in my handwriting from seven and a half years ago. I decided to type it up so that I could share it with you.
I'm sure that at the time I felt I was being quite clever, incorporating Russian words into the names of people and places, although looking back, perhaps I overdid it a bit on that score. And I named the bad guy Zloiman. Jeez, Jane. Those of you who know Russian might notice how that's hardly clever. Sigh. Nonetheless, here is my tale:
Blanket the Dawn
War raged through the tiny republic of Vorobstan, and the tiny, once pristine land was devastated. While the impressive, snow capped mountains still glimmered in the chilly spring sun on the western border, while their melting ices fed the brisk waters of the River Dawn, and while the Dawn flowed eastward into the sun and into the sea, oblivious to the war, the land remained saddened, rent and torn by the fierceness of the constant fighting.
The war had raged across this once peaceful land for over a century. No one really remembered how, or even why, it had begun. Some said it had begun as a question of kingship; others maintained the root cause was the mutual love of two brothers. No one remembered for certain; the origins of the struggle were shrouded in Time’s veil, lost behind the impenetrable memories of blood and death.
The future of the Vorobstan Vale, that once incomparable paradise between the mountains and the sea, looked bleak; the Svobodnayans and the Chortans had reached a stalemate. All battles boiled down to one-on-one combat, Master Fighter to Master Fighter. Equal in skill and equal in strength, the one could never defeat the other, and so the conflict stagnated.
Helena Chistaya stumbled across the barren, rocky ground toward her makeshift tent. Her bare feet and legs were covered in a layer of mud; she has not bathed since before the last major campaign had forced the few civilian Svobodnayans to flee from yet another temporary home. Helena wiped a tear from her cheek with a dirty finger and smoothed her threadbare dress. The constant fighting didn’t sadden Helena, nor did the threat that at any moment she might be forced to flee, or even to face death. Helena was nineteen, and she had lived this life for nineteen years. Yet tears continued slowly etching an estuary of brackish lines down her cheeks, and she stumbled, weary from grief.
As Helena walked to her tent, she left behind her a crowd of Svobodnayans, gathered about a funeral Pyre. She had never cried at a Pyre before, but never before had the fire’s warm tongues licked the faces of those so dear. Warren Umnato, Chieftain of the Svobodnayans, Wise Leader and Master Fighter, brought down by Ernstlan Bezcovest, Master Fighter of the Chortans, was foremost atop the Pyre. It was he for whom nearly all of the Svobodnayans wept. Yet hidden, engulfed within the mass of flame lay the dwindling remains of the two people whom Helena had held most dear: her brother Thomas and her sister Elspeth.
A raid on the fleeing civilians, a rarity during a pitched battle, had separated Helena from her siblings. Helena had fallen into a rocky gully, where she had lain hidden, camouflaged under a bracket of thorny briars. She had seen her brother and sister, snatched from the fleeing crowd and forced by two Chortan soldiers to kneel in front of another Chortan of seemingly higher rank. This soldier had closed his eyes and placed a hand each on the heads of Thomas and Elspeth. His long red hair had swirled about his head, and the muscles of his face had twitched as his jaw clenched. Elspeth had screamed and fallen prostrate on the ground, only to be forced back into her former position by one of the soldiers.
Soon after, Thomas and Elspeth began shrieking with such pain and terror, that Helena shook uncontrollably from the sound. The rocks below her ground into her flesh, and the thorns above her stabbed and pulled, but all she could see, hear, feel, live was the dreadful spectacle in front of her. She had not noticed the moment when the sword of Ernstlan Bezcovest pierced the heart of Warren Umnato, for at that very moment the bodies of her two siblings had collapsed to the ground, lifeless.
Helena watched the strange Chortan soldier look down upon her motionless kin, and knew in her soul that they were dead. She watched his face, memorized his face, hated his face, hated his soul. From the distance at which she had lain, she had not seen the single tear which had fallen as he turned away.
The Svobodnayans entered a new time of uncertainty. Warren Umnato had been succeeded by his only son and heir, Warson, a newly anointed Master Fighter. But could such a novice withstand the strength of the Chortan beast who had felled his father and teacher? Morale was low. Listlessly Helena roamed the Svobodnayan camp, surrounded by grieving thousands, yet utterly alone.
Samuel Zloiman had a gift – a rarity among Chortans. It wasn’t that he could read minds, not exactly. He had the ability to focus his thoughts through the minds of others, and in doing so, he could cause them to view his outward appearance in any shape he so chose. With direct physical contact, he could mentally channel his desires into the minds of others, thus changing the outcomes of otherwise predetermined events. The memories of those he so touched would be embedded upon his memory forever after.
Samuel Zloiman was twenty-eight. Twenty years ago he had killed his only friend. For the next eighteen years he had done his best to keep to himself, and he had kept his gift – his curse – a secret. He practiced his magic seldom, always in solitude, never forgetting the moment he placed his hand on his eight year old twin and so lost him forever.
Samuel was an excellent warrior; even without use of his curse he was a true gift to the Chortan cause. But such a powerful secret could not remain hidden forever and eventually, in the heat of battle, his curse saved his life. Samuel had caught the left arm of a Svobodnayan soldier, seconds before his opponent’s arm should have completed the task of skewering him. Instead, the bewildered Svobodnayan had turned his sword on himself. This event went unremarked by all, save Samuel and Ernstlan Bezcovest.
For two years, out of loyalty to his people, and under direct orders from the Chortan Master Fighter himself, Samuel searched the minds of his enemies from afar, looking for one through whom he could channel in order to weaken the Master Fighters of the Svobodnayans. Eventually, Samuel had found three.
He had not expected their deaths to be so slow and painful. Whether it was the type of channeling – the second-hand weakening of a Master Fighter – their Svobodnayan blood, or simply a further punishment of his curse, Samuel did not know. But as he had touched them, the young man and woman who knelt in front of him screaming in pain and terror, he had felt their pain, their thoughts, their lives course through him. And he had seen his brother. His pain mingled with theirs as they collapsed, as Warren Umnato collapsed, as the mirage of his mirror image collapsed. He waved away the guards who had held the two unfortunate victims of his power, and gazed down at their bodies, hoping that Ernstlan Bezcovest would be strong enough to defeat Warson Umnato without having to call upon his curse a second time.
Samuel let fall a silent tear for the victims of his gift – these two strangers, his brother – how they intermingled in his mind. As he turned and walked away, Samuel did not see the solitary figure of a thin girl in a tattered brown dress rise from the ground. He had done his best to push his mental powers aside, otherwise the force of her hatred would have overwhelmed him completely.
Several weeks passed following the deaths of Helena’s kin. Life continued its pathetic struggle: day after day – fight, flee, hide, kill, die – the habits of a war-torn nation. Warson Umnato proved to be as valiant and capable a leader as his father, and the stagnation, Master opposing Master, continued.
Unknown to Helena, an investigation into the death of Warren Umnato had uncovered a strange truth. Koralnik Tan, a member of the elite Svobodnayan Guard known to have a touch of telepathy, had, at the instant of Umnato’s death, been overwhelmed by the influx into his soul of the emotions of two Svobodnayans whom he barely knew. The force of their emotions – pure, raw terror – combined with an onslaught of unfamiliar memories had caused him to fall, powerless and confused, to his knees. Those who witnessed the fall of Warren Umnato claimed to have seen a similar spasm of bewilderment and fear flit across his face, as though he were remembering something distant, painful and wholly unexpected, the moment before his heart was stopped forever by the blade of Bezcovest.
Due to the confusion and grief brought about by the Chieftain’s death, the investigation did not establish a connection with Koralnik Tan for several weeks. But eventually, the connection was made: psychic tampering, channeled through the innocent minds of the Chistayas. It was confirmed that the strange raid on the civilian encampment during the heat of battle had been directed at the location of the Chistaya family. Warson, Koralnik and the Svobodnayan Guard did not know why the Chistayas had been selected; however, they knew that Helena, the only surviving member of the Chistaya clan, must be protected at all costs. The life of Master Fighter Warson depended on it.
Helena had taken the news calmly, and resigned herself to a life even more constantly surrounded by soldiery than it had been before. She was to be protected by the members of the Svobodnayan Guard at all times, and Koralnik Tan was to remain always in her vicinity, on the chance that he could predict the advance of the psychic Chortan warrior.
Koralnik Tan and those other Svobodnayans known to have small psychic abilities worked together to devise a technique to protect both Helena and Warson: they crafted a mental shield, such that Chortan warrior could only channel through her if she touched him willingly. All felt safer.
As weeks passed, young Helena began to grow quite fond of Koralnik Tan. Koralnik, having witnessed in his soul for a few brief seconds what had taken Thomas and Elspeth their lives to live, had much to tell their grieving sister. Every day they walked together, every day they talked, and every day their walks took them farther from the center of the Svobodnayan encampment. Sometimes other members of the Svobodnayan Guard would accompany them, but more often than not, the wandered unchaperoned. Helena would never willingly touch her enemy, and Koralnik was an experienced member of the elite Guard, what harm could come?
So it happened that Helena and Koralnik strolled together, with only each other for company, amongst the bramble and stunted trees near the Dawn. Added to the weight of her grief over the loss of her siblings, Helena’s heart suffered under a new load. Despite the fact that day upon day she and Koralnik revealed their innermost thoughts to one another, his behavior towards Helen remained merely that of a Svobodnayan Guard performing his duties. Yet day by day, Helena began to know that what she felt for this man was not the mere gratitude she might feel towards a protector. So there it was, on the blighted landscape along the Dawn that Helena looked up at Koralnik and asked, “Are you certain that I am protected from this evil psychic Chortan?”
“You know you’re safe while the Guard is near,” he replied. “Besides, I know you would never willingly touch someone so vile as he.”
For once, something in his eyes spurred her on. She smiled coquettishly, and snaked her hand through his arm, saying “What? Like this?”
All notions of reality rocked to a standstill. The face of trusted Koralnik melted, twisted and suddenly Helena was face to face with the only individual for whom she had ever harbored hatred. Her mind barely had time to register the fact that she had willingly grasped the forbidden arm of the psychic Chortan warrior before her body was enveloped by an indescribable pain. It was greater than anything she, in her nineteen years of hardship, had ever known. Consciousness faded. Reality was encased in a cold, black mist of pain.
She didn’t feel him lift her off the ground. She didn’t realize how far he carried her. All she knew was the pain. She begged him to stop. Please. She would do anything, anything, only let it end. After what could have been hours, seconds, days or minutes, the pain changed. It intensified in strength, and suddenly, with an explosive force, her entire soul was flooded with the lifetime memories of Samuel Zloiman.
The pain ceased. She lay in a corner of a strange green tent, a dazed and huddled mass. Samuel knelt over her and touched her cheek. She said nothing, didn’t move. Samuel spoke softly. “I will take care of you, I promise. I must do this, I have no choice, but I will take care of you. Can I get you anything? Anything at all?”
They stared at each other, their eyes locked. They had exchanged a lifetime of memories, expressed to each other the inexpressible. Theirs was an intimacy beyond description, and they were beyond words.
Helena trembled violently. “A blanket please. Just a blanket.”
If you believe in god, pray that the inner workings of another’s soul are never laid bare within your own.
Imagine Helena, first faced with the one for whom she harbored the most enmity, then – after barely enough time to register that fact – had the flood of his memories, experiences, emotions, joys, and sorrows of this individual forced through to the core of her soul. Suddenly she understood why he had done everything which he had done, why he had fought so long against her people, why he must continue to use his power, why his power haunted him though his life, terrifying and saddening him.
Imagine Samuel, faced with a complete stranger who, through psychic manipulations, he had tricked into betraying her people. A complete stranger, who, for the service of his people and his Master, he must inevitably kill with his power. Samuel, after a lifetime of friendlessness had suddenly become privy to the deepest secrets of this stranger, engendering a bond between them such as he had never before known with anyone.
And Samuel knew that the next time he channeled his power through her, she would die. And Helena knew. And Samuel knew that she knew.
Helena, wrapped in a blanket, her knees pulled up to her chest, shivered in a corner of the tent. Opposite her, attempting to appear calm, sat Samuel. They awaited the news: what was the outcome of the battle? Had Samuel’s channeling been enough to sufficiently weaken young Warson? Or would his services again be needed? They didn’t speak; it wasn’t necessary. And when the news came, they both knew how it would end.
Hand in hand they walked from the tent. With her free hand, Helena grasped tightly the blanket which still wound about her body. The estuarine tracks on her face matched those on his.
Hand to hand, sword to sword, skilled move to skilled move, Warson met Bezcovest under the waning moonlight.
Hand in hand, Samuel and Helena approached the Dawn, approached the battle, approached the end. He kissed her once, lightly, released her hand, and pressed both his palms to his temples. It was over within seconds.
Helena stood on the bank of the Dawn, watching its icy waters, blood red from the battle, course past Samuel’s lifeless body, prone on the shoreline. She unwound the blanket from about her body, spread it over his figure and waded out into the swift, tumultuous water. The icy chill of the mountain-fed Dawn numbed her arms and legs, and she allowed the current to carry her eastward to the sea, where Dawn met dawn, and she was free.
Meanwhile war, in stagnation, raged behind.
Jane E. Keeler
06 April 2000
