A Short Story by: A.B. Timothy

And behold, Elyon spoke, saying, “Thus, when you ask for my mercy, leave none of your disgrace hidden. I am perfect in mercy, but only to those who are true in repentance.” Publo Magister looked from his copy of the holy text to the children who sat in a semicircle around him, listening intently to the story of the repentant killer. Ocis felt his heart swell. Publo continued to read the scripture. He fell to the ground, lying flat upon his stomach, and cried for forgiveness. Lying before Elyon all that he had ever done from childhood. “Please, Lord, I am unworthy to be seen by you, for now you know all my heart.” “Child,” Elyon said, “I have always known your heart, from the beginning. Now you know all your heart and the true, profound wickedness thereof. Arise, go and confess all this that you have to me, to the man of the Temple at Craginth, he has heard from me and will instruct you further.” Ocis arose and did as he was told, pursuing the Lord even until his last days.

One of the children threw up his hand as Publo finished reading. “Yes, James?”

“Bard Magister, is that something everyone must do? Sister Elvera said that we must be ready, and to be ready, we must do what the scripture says. Do we all need to go to Craginth and find the man whom Elyon has spoken to?” James asked.

“Well, James, Craginth was lost many years ago, during the last Burning War,” Publo said.

“Well, maybe I can find it again, so everyone can do what Elyon said to do, again,” James said.

“Perhaps you can,” Publo said.

The man’s back was weighed down with cuts and bruises from a hail of arrows. He and his two brothers had been the only ones to wade through the hail alive. The man still saw, before his eyes, the fading light of his lover’s eyes. Her mouth was frozen agape, eyes wide, and blood trickling from both eyes and mouth. He shook his head to throw away the image. He turned to his shrinking brother on his right and asked, “Brother Burn, how much further?”

“Brother Man,” the shrinking Burron turned to his smaller brother whilst ripping his ax free from the neck of a Burron who had stood in their way, “the star-line says we are only a few hours away.” The Burron aged backward, beginning as a giant and shrinking as they aged.

“Shouldn’t…” The two brothers turned to their lanky third, an elf, and saw the tears running down his face. He pulled his spear from the ineffective shield of a Burron. His tears nearly broke his otherwise stoic speech pattern. “Shouldn’t we rest for the evening? Finish our trek in the morning?”

The man slowly shook his head and looked up at dark clouds that shadowed the valley of the great twin rivers that flowed down toward the faraway ocean. The castle of men that once stood perched next to the rivers along an ocean-side cliff was now half crumbled and smoke, from feed-fires, billowed up, feeding the clouds, along its once great wall. The man looked back to the field of battle and saw again his lover’s eyes now dim. Hadn’t he given enough? Had he not suffered enough for a lifetime, let alone his short twenty years? Apparently, he had not, because the Guide of Elyon knocked on his heart’s door even now; he knew what needed to be done.

“Have you both heard the story of Ocis?” The man asked. He looked from brother to brother, and they both nodded in understanding. “If we truly are approaching the city of darkness… our fathers prepared us well, I think.” The man looked back towards this half-crumbled tower of darkness and felt the weight of the metal plates that hung on his back and chest. Loosening the straps, the plates fell away. The gauntlets soon followed. His hair, matted and muddy with dirt and blood not his own, stuck to his helmet as it was lifted from his ears. He set all these things aside and lowered his head as deeply as he could manage. He still felt the Guide’s knock. He stood and removed his sword, his leg guards, and sabatons, laying them all aside with the rest of his armor. He heard his brothers doing the same. As his, now cloth-covered, legs touched the ground, he felt the knocking stop, and the guide approached him. He felt an overwhelming presence before him just beyond his eyelids. “Open your eyes, child, as you have opened your heart.”

The man opened his eyes and everything was gone, the mountains to either side of the battlefield, the bodies, and the dark castle, were all erased in favor of a void. Not black, no, the presence before the man was too great to call the emptiness black. Speech did not avail our hero, as the presence spoke again, “You come before me, child, seeking what?”

“Mercy, Your Grace, I seek only mercy for me and my brothers as we accomplish your will in this next day of battle.” The man said.

“Henry, my child, have you forgotten your own name?” The presence pulsated and moved with the voice.

“My name, Lord?” Henry said.

“Yes, for when you think of yourself, you have become merely ‘the man.’”

“That is the name the prophets gave, ‘the man.’” Henry said.

“My prophets were not told the name of my chosen, because it was not theirs to give. But they gave you other names, did they not?”

“Yes, L’ordi, Jerki, and Ot’undi,” Henry said.

“But I have called you Henry, since the day you first saw me, have I not?”

“You have.”

“So what is your name?”

“My name is Henry, my lord.”

“Thus, when you ask for my mercy, leave none of your disgrace hidden. I am perfect in mercy, but only to those who are true in repentance…” The whole scene, as if his father was reading it to him out of the holy text. He felt his heart swell, he fell to his stomach, he cried, he confessed, and he was commanded. Henry arose and did as he was told, pursuing the Lord even until his last days.

An Excerpt From: The Shards of Arthur’s Shield

By: A.B. Timothy

Thomas’s boots ran over cold, slick, and muddy turf as it changed from urban foot paths to the more wild floor of the woods. The sky disappeared overhead as he raced into the trees. Just before he crossed the treeline, he spotted the pale woman again. It was certainly dark enough for her to be out, but it still seemed early. The timeliness of her appearance did not faze Thomas; however, instead, he called out to her, “Run, Miss! Get out of here!” He only spared her a glance and a swiping hand of warning. He hoped she would get out of there, but she just stood her ground and watched him approach the treeline. Thomas gave up on her and turned his focus back on the path before him. She began to sing: “Arthurus, rex occidentis.” Thomas gave her another glance, and her mouth was still not moving, even this close, but that was the same voice he heard every night.

The way wound before him as he jumped over branches, slid under foliage, and pushed through weeds. After a minute of brushing, Thomas was shocked to hear his foe still pursuing him. Thomas questioned how that man had even managed to slip through some of the spots he had. It did not matter; what mattered was escape. “Arthurus, rex sepultus,” the siren kept singing.

Thomas slipped and fell face-first into the brush and only managed to turn over in time to see his foe breach the bush with a swipe of a sword. “There you are, you little rat, no one likes a rat in their backyard!” He brought his sword down, but it sank into the mud as Thomas had rolled away. The young man stood quickly, gathering a fistful of mud as he did.

“Can a rat do this?” Thomas threw the mud in the man’s face and took off into the brush again. He heard the man curse and roar in rage, and he knew his mud had made its target.

Thomas hopped over another fallen tree and pushed deeper into the woods. He could not remember ever being this deep before. He did not recognize the trees and only knew what general direction he was heading. He had passed his last established landmark a few strides ago. “Surge, Domine Matutinae,” the voice sang.

How had she been keeping up with him, and if she could keep up with him with enough breath to sing so sweetly, why hadn’t she come to his aid yet? Would she? Thomas decided he would not count on this clearly ethereal being. The thought crossed his mind to circle back, maybe try to get the jump on the bandit, but something called him deeper into the woods.

“Surge, Mundus Vocat.” The words swam through Thomas’s mind, confusing him and dragging him further into the forest. The young man feared for his life. The armed bandit behind him, an unknown world in front of him.

Thomas stopped only long enough to catch his breath in a clearing. The moonlight shone down from above and painted the scene in a silver glow. The young man’s breath caught in his lungs. The grass, only moments ago green, was now coated in the moon’s silver; the trees, which had been changing color, now shone; and the little stream that ran nearby had pricks of light jumping into Thomas’s eyes. This place was strange, almost holy. It was as if God cut a hole in the trees just for this small meadow. To emphasize the thought, a head appeared to rise from the water, and if Thomas had not recognized it, he may have screamed and run for his life towards the bandit. The head in the water rose further, just enough to imply an entire woman underneath the surface; it was the pale woman, the siren. She opened her mouth and raised a hand from the water. The hand pointed at a small hill in the center of the clearing. She sang the words, but he knew them. Not what they meant in whatever language she was singing, but the words fell into the depths of his soul, and he knew them, “Tua ferrum manet.” That’s what she said, but in his heart, Thomas heard her sing, “Your sword awaits.”

Cold, muddy, bruised from his fall, and bleeding from a few different places, Thomas limped forward. A breeze rushed through the clearing, and from the hill several dozen leaves were blown. This revealed a rod of iron, clad in leather. The rod had a puck of wood on the bottom, and a first-quarter moon’s shape of wood on the top. He recognized the grip; this was the same grip he had been training with for the last half-month. Ideas of what this sword meant or why it was there came only much later, when Thomas was back at home, dry and safe. In the moment, however, all he knew was he had access to a weapon and his assailant drew closer. He wrapped his fingers around the blackened-with-age leather and gave it a tug, but it did not move.

The hilt was as rigid as a dead man, and the ground did not even shift. Thomas could hear the man who wanted to kill him draw closer, so he tried again. This time, he gripped the hilt with two hands and pulled with all of his strength, but nothing happened. The sword remained buried and unwilling to move. Thomas looked at the woman in the stream with panic in his eyes. The woman sang again, but this was a new line he had not heard before. The tempo was wrong, the notes were different, a new song? Why would she start singing something unfamiliar now? Then he noticed that her arm was still raised. She was pointing at him, but when he stepped to the side, her finger did not move; she was pointing at the sword, singing a new song.

“I don’t know those words,” Thomas pleaded. “I only knew that other line because you’ve been singing it to me since I was a child. Can you,” he struggled with the sword again, “can you even understand me?”

She sang the words again, and Thomas remembered his training. Before even lifting his sword, he needed to empty himself. He breathed in deep and as he exhaled, fear, doubt, pain, cold, sound, sight, language, and self left. He worried for a brief moment that he had gone too deep; what if he couldn’t recover himself this time? But then that worry was gone in the next breath.

The next time the lady in the stream sang her song, Thomas listened, free of even his own language. These words, this language, felt ancient, like something he should know as easily as he knew how to breathe. “Memento palmae meae, gladii potestatis, et esto liber.” The words meant nothing to Thomas, but being so empty, they filled his whole being. He tried once more to pull the sword free in his own strength, but still, nothing happened.

The words came to him once again, and Thomas breathed them out, allowing the memory of the pronunciation to vibrate through his vocal cords. He was never a singer, but if he could do that again, he might have become a bard later in life. The words sung from his lungs into the air and vibrated the sword. “Memento palmae meae, gladii potestatis, et esto liber.”

The ground shook and almost threw Thomas to the ground, but his grip on the hilt steadied him. He pulled again. This time, at the end of his effort, when he gave all of his strength, the sword was released, and it slid free of the earth below. Lightning cracked across the otherwise clear night sky, blinding Thomas for a moment. The man raised the sword high into the sky and smiled. As the blindness cleared, he saw the sharp blade shining. The sight filled him with a warmth he had never felt before. Like someone was holding a torch to his stomach. His face was split by a smile that would not end. The silence of the moment was broken by Thomas’s hearty laugh. This was the best thing that could have happened to him. A sword given to him when he needed it most.