Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕

“Then we teach them,” Gailert said.

The lieutenant snorted, walking towards the window to see what Gailert was looking at. “Teach them? Their minds are wrapped up in magic and darkness. You know, they had created some of those demons out there. These days I’m starting to agree with Governor Shillig. I think they prefer their ignorance.”

Gailert turned and nodded. “That, they do. But I am of the thought that we simply remove the cancer that spreads the darkness among them. Destroy any witch, magician, demon, or wizard we find—”

“That is already policy,” Lieutenant Deveden said, nodding.

“But we must also teach that such things are the way of death for them,” Gailert said and looked out the window again towards the lake. “That we are the bringers of light. Once they look to us, rely on us, they won’t want magic anymore.”

With a sigh, Lieutenant Deveden tapped his glass window. “There are times I think that view is so romantic, General. The unfortunate thing about having the gift is also remembering that this world is magic. You cannot entirely stamp out a thing when the environment around you is the very thing you want to get rid of.”

Gailert tilted his head. “I don’t entirely believe that this world is magic.”

“Trust me and the ancient memory,” the lieutenant said. “Our ancestor, the first Sky Lord, had been forbidden to come here for that very reason. This world is an unexplainable phenomenon. It should not exist.”

Lifting his eyebrows, Gailert said, “Are you telling me that the common belief that this world makes wizards from the very rocks is something you buy into?”

Laughing, the lieutenant shook his head. “No, sir. But I am telling you what I know to be so. Magic has a way of seeping back out even after its workers are eradicated. This world is said to be alive, and we—the Sky Children—are regarded as parasitic invaders.”

Gailert grunted then turned from the window. “With that philosophy, you are justifying the savages of this world the right to attack us.”

“Not right. I’d rather look at it that we are in fact the cure and they are the cancerous cells that canker the world.” The lieutenant lifted up the window and immediately stuck his head out, calling to the soldiers outside, gesturing towards the lake. “Hey! You go and see if those humans have a permit for fishing there. Take the steam boat to catch up with them.”

“What’s that?” Gailert walked to the window again. “Not local fishermen?”

The lieutenant shook his head. “They’re rowing too far out and too fast. That is suspicious.”

“Yes.” Gailert narrowed his eyes at the lake. It started to reflect the colors of the sky from the setting sun. “Suspicious.”

*

“I-I s-s-saw it! I-I’m t-telling you! I-it w-was one of those r-rail-less carriages. Like the o-one that b-brown-eye travels in,” Soin said, tugging on Loid’s arm. “D-dad and I were f-fishing at the river mouth and w-we saw him yesterday.”

“General Gole,” Loid murmured. “The brown-eye.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a Maldos—?” Telerd started to say but Loid lifted his hand to silence him. Loid saw Kemdin walking across the way on boardwalk.

Right away, Loid hurried to match Kemdin’s pace, following him until their eyes could meet. But Kemdin kept his eyes to the wood deck the same as he had since the day his father was killed. Kemdin’s hair grew odd with white tufts sticking out among his regular brown hair now, from what had been common neat. Even one of his eyebrows was half snow white. It was as if part of his life had been sucked from him.  

Loid decided to dare it and hopped from the wooden deck into the dirt road. His friends followed him, the threesome climbing up the other side to where Kemdin was now sliding the paper door to the miller’s shop aside. The boys hopped in after him. They slid the door closed behind them.

“Is it true? Is he in the village?” Loid practically shouted it, but he hushed up immediately as others in the shop glared at them.

Kemdin turned his head and lifted his eyes. “He? Who?”

Telerd slapped a hand on Loid’s mouth.

“Nothing. No one.” Telerd then pulled Lois aside to the door and hissed in his ear. “He obviously doesn’t know. And I don’t think his mother would want him to know. The guy that killed his father! I don’t about you, but if it were me—”

Kemdin blinked, staring at them then sighed and walked to the counter to finish his errand. “I need pound of rye flour, please. I also need two pounds of oats.”

“You’re a good boy,” the shopkeeper said. “Helping your mother. You keep out of trouble. All right? There’re blue-eyes lurking outside.”

But Kemdin blinked hard, suddenly clutching the top of the counter. “Blue-eyes?”

The shopkeeper nodded.

Turning, Kemdin marched back to the door and slid it open. He peered over the village looking at the smoke coming from the smith shop. “Grandpa.”

His friends followed him out, watching Kemdin shake.

Immediately Kemdin bolted across the wood deck and jumped into the road. At first his three pals watched him but then ran after him, racing not so much to stop him but to see where he was going.

Kemdin climbed up the opposite deck, and started down it to get to the smithy shop, but already the echo of a new yet now familiar cry of the pistol split the air. Even as his feet pounded the deck to reach the doors of his home, his eyes skimmed across the rail-less carriage of their recently appointed village Sky Child magistrate, the Sergeant Jemmes Lugan, outside his home. Another of those metal vehicles was parked right behind it.

He sped up.

Two Sky Child demons walked out from the smith shop, dusting their clean uniforms laughing as if they had just shared in a mild yet humorous joke.

“No!” Kemdin cried out, passing his home and running for the smithy. He tried to shove past the sergeant on the wood path. but the demon latched his hand on Kemdin’s arm, jerking him upward.

“Here’s the one!” Sergeant Lugan said, grinning wider. “See! I told you, strong and healthy, a bit scarred. But he’s got no use here now.”

Kemdin tried to kick at the sergeant’s shins but as he lifted his eyes in savage protest they fixed on a face that he had never forgotten. He froze.

“Ah! I remember him!” the brown-eyed demon known as General Gole said, grabbing hold of Kemdin’s hair and tugging on one of the white tufts, then pinching the boy’s shoulder as if to measure the thickness of his meat. “Plucky child. Yes. He might do well.”

Jerking back, Kemdin did kick the sergeant’s shins, anything to get away from the demon that had destroyed his father. However his bare foot against the tough leather had no affect.

“It’s not like he’s going to be a smithy now,” the sergeant added with a smile as he then stroked Kemdin across the face with his bare fingers.

All his fight still in his chest, Kemdin would have struck out again, but every drip of strength he had sucked up through his neck to the fingertips of the demon.

Kemdin collapsed, unable to even stand. He heard his friends cry out for him, but he could hardly move. In the back of his mind death reached out to him calling him over to the other side where the souls traveled into the shadows. But his eyes were open, and he hung by his arm in the demon sergeant’s grip, staring up, panting hard as the demon general stood over him with a satisfied smile.

“Yes, he is perfect,” the sergeant said, his voice sounding as if from a hollow wind. “He’s terrified of you. I can get chains from the office. If you pay me for the work, General, I’ll even get you a key.”

General Gole chuckled, looking back at the three other boys who dared not move any closer to him since he was famous for his man-slaughtering. “I don’t need a key. He won’t require one.”

“Ah!” The sergeant turned with smile gesturing to his subordinates to carry Kemdin for him so he could arrange the details of their business transaction. “A traditionalist. I like your style.”

They walked down the wood deck to their vehicles with the other blue-eyes behind them carried what was left of the last heir to their village smithy. The fishermen held back, shaking their heads as they shuddered. The farmers lowered their heads, unable to stand up to the blue-eyes. And the wail of the smith’s wife carried on from her doorway as the other women held her back as she cried, “Kemdin! My son!”

“Oh no.” Loid retreated to the walls of the house, staring as the Sky Children marched away with his friend. “Kemdin’s dead.”

“No,” Telerd replied, wishing to vanish into the shadows. “But he’s gonna be that demon’s his slave.”

“W-we’ll never s-see him again,” Soin murmured, rubbing his nose as if he smelled something rotted. 

Kemdin hardly could lift his head when the blue-eyed demons laid him on the floor of the military office and attached the shackles on his ankles and wrists. There was hardly room to pull out of them. His ankle cuffs were heavy with no way to open them without a particular key, but the wrist chains were obviously temporary, very loose, meaning he would be used for labor. All Kemdin could do was stare up at the brown-eyed demon ankles and loathe him. The village already echoed with weeping for his grandfather who had obviously been executed for continuing to smith arrowheads and swords despite the death of his son. Kemdin had helped him that past year, making not only arrow heads, but learning how to make knives, daggers and hoping to soon to graduate to swords. It was more than unfortunate that the demon general had come on that day. It was obvious that their night shipment would be ambushed, and the rebels from up river would have to find someone else to make weapons for them.

Unable to close off the pain he felt, knowing that his mother would be left alone with no one to care for her, Kemdin sobbed.

The blue-eyes smacked his head a number of times, muttering for him to be quiet. General Gole rested casually in a chair with one leg crossed over his knee chatting with the sergeant with only mild glances at his new acquisition.

“How long do you think it will take to train him?” the general asked the sergeant in the same tone Kemdin’s father would have asked his neighbor about training a dog to sit.

The sergeant examined Kemdin from a distance with one eye closed. “I’m not sure. The thoughts he has are very childish, so he may lash out for a while. But he is skilled for labor. That old man had been teaching him how to make knives lately.”

General Gole jerked up his head and peered more inspecting down at Kemdin. “This boy? What else did his thoughts tell you? Was he really being trained that young?”

Nodding, the sergeant said, “They start them young here. If you want to re-educate these ones, you have to start when they are infants.”

“Hmm.” General Gole frowned, stroking his chin. “I see.”

“That one has been making arrowheads on his own for a while, and he knows where his grandfather hides them,” the sergeant said, his smile widening.

Kemdin tried to kick out, but he could hardly raise his leg. Even after they chained him he could not move to struggle.

“So tonight when they come to collect…?” The general was also grinning.

“Don’t worry,” the sergeant said. “We’ll be ending their attacks soon enough. All we need is one of them and their hideout will be known.”

“Good.” The general rose. He gestured for one of the blue-eyes to lift Kemdin off the floor. “I’ll be taking my boy then, and be off.”

Waving over to Kemdin, the sergeant said, “You’ll want to get him cleaned up