Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (ebook audio reader .txt) 📖

Looking out over the city they were building on the tops of the Wede Mountains, General Gailert Winstrong drew in a breath letting his eyes fall on the ruined Kitai tower that stood out on a high peak. The city of Roan they were building on a lower peak would someday outshine it. But until then, Gailert contented himself with his dream and ambition of laying stone by stone with water systems and electricity—one city at a time.

“General Winstrong.” A corporal entered the room, standing in the doorway. “The car you ordered is ready.”

Gailert turned, regarding the young blue-eyed Sky Child that was as ambitious as he was when he had been young though he himself had been born without the gift. He admired ambition. It was an assurance that the nation would thrive long after he was gone. “I’ll get my travel coat. Fetch my bag.”

Clicking his heels together, the corporal bowed. “Yes, Sir.”

The corporal leading, Gailert exited his office, lifting his umbrella off of the hook. It was likely to rain. Unfortunately, that would halt construction for the day. The stones did not set well in rain, and humans were difficult to motivate when they were shivering in the wet.

Walking down the steps under the cover of the overhang, Gailert peered over the open square at the head of the city. The sky was gray and looming darker. Beyond it, the clouds were gloomy, and he could see some of the moisture pulling down to the ground with distant lightening. He was glad they put in lightening rods to prevent electrocution on their mountaintop, something the ignorant peasants did not understand. Those humans looked up at him, even from the rocks they were placing, fitting them so that they would last for centuries to come under the direction of their overseers with just as dark eyes—though their peasant brown was nothing to his own island earth color. The humans’ rusty brown eyes were as savage as their glares. They knew him. They hated him.

“Step to it,” Gailert said, gesturing to the newly constructed automobile parked on the curb. Its improved engine, just like their ancestors used to make, would take him and his men quicker on the roads than the peasant carts and horses they had to rely at the start of the war. He also liked how it gave him more freedom than relying just on the railroad.

He felt his side holster for his pistol, just in case. Lately the peasants had begun to understand that the pistol at his hip was not a magic stick but a weapon much more accurate and deadly than their crossbows, and they could be counted to attempt to steal one. They really were unscrupulous.

The corporal immediately opened the back door for the general, holding it at attention as Gailert climbed inside. Sighing to himself, Gailert felt only regret as he sat down, reaching for his seat belts. Because he did not have the gift like all the other blue-eyed Sky Children, he also did not have the memory of ancient luxuries as they did. This would be his fourth time inside this vehicle, and it took a great deal of strength not to reveal how the engine’s rumbling and bounce of the wheels startled him. The blue-eyes were always watching to see if he would reveal his weakness as an ungifted Sky Child. They seemed to be waiting for it at every turn. That was why he always had to keep a strong face. Never would he allow them to know they had the advantage. He would never let them think he was weak.

It had been once said that his birth was a bad omen. They said it was a sign that age of progress was near the end. He was first of his generation to be born with brown eyes after all his progenitors before him had demon blue. And after him others with brown eyes were born. And like him, they were born without the gift.

Every Sky Child with blue eyes had the gift. The gift of touch, the gift of absorption, the gift of disguise, and the gift of quick learning. When his parents were unable to pass on to him the knowledge of their ancestors by touch, they knew they had to do something to protect their child, or he would die like a human in the world they ruled. But Gailert Winstrong was not one to be coddled. Tough at an early age, he knew he was at a disadvantage to his blue-eyed brothers so he stepped up to the challenge and made every other Sky Child step back and take notice that he was no weak human.

With a stiff neck, Gailert nodded to the corporal to close the door and go around to the driver’s side. The corporal obeyed, his blue eyes flickering as if he had a million questions he wanted to ask the general, but he dared not touch him to take the answers. The general always wore gloves anyway. To steal his thoughts one would have to outright touch his face, and that was considered insubordination. Gailert wanted to remain a mystery to them as much as they were a mystery to him.

As soon as the corporal had loaded the general’s bag and closed his door, Gailert ordered him to drive to the guardhouse at the city wall. There they would pick up the military support required for their journey. They had business in the north. 

*

In the north it was also raining. The children of Summi Village usually played in the waters of Bekir Lake in the hours they were not learning their future trades, but on that rainy day when the lightening struck the mountaintops and the water, Kemdin Smith and the other boys around their seventh year of life ran under the cover of their wooden walkways and looked up at the downpour.

“Do you think a magician conjured it?” Kemdin’s friend Loid Fisher asked, peering at the crows that also scattered into the trees for shelter.

Telerd Roper, the tallest of the four friends that looked nearly alike in that Bekir Lake reddishness to their skin and hair, shook his head glancing at the water rippling as the wind blew hard. “Nah. A conjured lightening storm has more lightening. And look at the wind.”

“It won’t let up,” Kemdin murmured with a nod. He was the wiriest of the bunch. “That means we can’t play.”

“My dad will have my hat if I don’t return home,” Loid said, nodding in agreement with him. “He’ll think I drowned.”

Telerd exhaled aloud. “Well, at least the roads will be cleared. No one will want to travel in this rain.”

“You d-don’t think the b-blue-eyes w-would use magic to d-dry the roads, do you?” their younger, softer mannered playmate Soin Fisherson asked.

Kemdin bit his lip, closed his eyes then shook his head. “I hope not. Dad’s counting on the rain to keep them away. He’s got a tall order. And I gotta get back to help out.”

“You don’t know enough yet to help him with smithing, Kemdin,” Telerd said, looking at him sideways.

Shrugging, Kemdin said, “I do a lot of the cooling. I also get to pour in the molds.”

Loid looked up at the sky dreamily, a small smile crossing his face. “Arrowheads. Sky’s above, I’d love to meet those warriors and hold one of those swords your dad makes.”

Pulling his jacket over his head to keep off the rain, Kemdin called back to Loid as he started to head home. “Dad won’t even let me know where he hides them, and it is always night when they come around.”

“But they take the lake, don’t they?” Loid hopped after him followed closely by Telerd and Soin.

Kemdin nodded. “The roads are too dangerous. The blue-eyes got these iron carriages that move without horses. And they go faster than horses, rolling on an iron road, making noise like dragons. They’re like these big black rolling kilns, blowing smoke behind them.”

“Y-you saw one?” Soin’s eyes grew wide.

Nodding more vigorously, Kemdin rushed over to the next covered walkway keeping his wet hands away from the paper windows. He glanced at the demon wards and the dangling charms that warded off Goles and other demons that would torment them. Several of them had been mended. The last time the blue-eyed demons had been around they used their magic iron sticks and destroyed the demon wards. They didn’t seem to be afraid of anything.

“I saw one when my dad and I were delivering steel fish hooks to a village on Holm Lake. They had slaves hammering down the iron road so that no one could move it.” Kemdin shuddered. “Dad hid me from them because they’ve been taking boys and making them go with them.”

“Th-they’re t-t-taking slaves still?” Soin pulled his arms to himself.

Kemdin nodded. “Dad says they like them younger too. He say’s they beat the will out of you. And if you still fight, they just set their hands on you and suck the life out of you.”

“You’re lying. I don’t know a demon that can do that.” Telerd scrunched up his face showing he didn’t want to believe it, but he really did.

“I-I’ve seen it,” Soin said.

The three boys stopped and turned, staring at him.

“You saw it?” Kemdin drew in a breath.

“When? Where did you see it?” Loid asked, his heart pounding hard.

Soin glanced at Telerd who swallowed hard as he listened. “I-I w-w-was with m-m-my f-f-father, b-b-bringing in a haul. W-w-we were in the w-water. Y-you know, safe. B-but it w-was after that blue-eye b-busted up the d-d-demon wards on the town hall r-r-roof. I s-s-saw Ton Farmer g-go at one with a hoe…”

Loid drew in a sharp breath.

Nodding to him, Soin said, “…a-a-and the d-d-demon took a hit at the head. B-but there was another one w-with him and he g-grabbed Ton’s face. I-I watched him s-suck every b-bit of life out of him, and w-when the d-d-demon turned, he had Ton’s face and b-brown eyes. B-but because my dad and I saw it, he sh-shook it off as if Ton’s f-face was nothing b-but dirt, and the d-demon laughed.”

Kemdin felt sick. Telerd and Loid both looked it too.

“I heard…I heard stories about demons stealing lives,” Loid said. “I heard about a blue-eye that…that…that took a village chief’s life and pretended to be him, until one day his eyes turned blue and everyone knew he was demon. But by then the blue-eye knew everything about the village and they killed all the strong men and took the rest as slaves.”

“I keep thinking that they’d do that to us,” Kemdin said, and he hurried further towards his home.

Kemdin’s home was near the shore, but unlike the other village homes it was part stone. A smith’s shop had to be mostly stone and dirt rather than comfortable wood on flood stilts. The boys had to take the cross bridges to get to the smithy where smoke was already billowing up. Soin waved to Kemdin, rushing off to his fishing house where his father would be waiting for him. Loid parted just a few yards after to his home. Telerd ran with Kemdin to their porch hopping into the muddy sopped road where he would have to cross in the rain and get scolded for tracking mud on the planks when he got to the other side. Kemdin hastened to the walkway then jogged down the steps towards the smithy where he knew his father was waiting for him.

Trying to lift the latch and open the door as quietly as possible, Kemdin listened to the wood creak as the iron hinges of the door turned.

“Son? Is that you?”

Hanging his arms, knowing he was unable to sneak in now, Kemdin answered, “Yes, Dad. I’m here.”

“Hurry it up!