The Pen and the Sword

Here's a selection from the short story collection "Enchanted Realms II: The Vampires of Tinandrial".

We wrote this under the influence of "It's Just the Rain" by Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain of the legendary rock band Journey.

The lyrics to It's Just the Rain:

http://www.journey-tribute.com/journey/discography/trial_by_fire/its_just_the_rain.html

Once in your life you love
Once in your life you try
The one you're holdin'
Is the one that tears you... apart

Deep in her arms you lie
Deep in the night her eyes
Tell your secrets
To the one you try to deny

Touch me, touch me crazy
How your kiss betrays me
It's not the love, it's just the rain
Two broken hearts
But not in vain...
It's not the love, it's just the rain

Inside you keep on lyin'
Inside your soul is dyin'
You still can't hold back
Still you can't say good-bye
Touch me, touch me crazy
How your kiss betrays me
It's not the love, it's just the rain

Two broken hearts
But not in vain...
No reasons why, no one's to blame
It's not the love, it's just the rain
It's just the rain, It's just the rain,
It's just the rain, It's just the rain
Falling, falling, falling
It's just the rain

Now, the short story:

The Pen and the Sword

The rain in tropic Magadan is never harsh, but it can rain for weeks.

I have a secret place. A place I built with my own hands. It is little more than a bamboo frame with a grass roof and mud walls. But it is hidden; it is where I go when I don't want anyone to find me.

The sorrow is upon me, again. I see a legless patriot in the street, a warrior who fought against the Children now reduced to begging for coins. I pass a young girl, only 12, selling her body to brutal and heartless men. A man who was once my friend does not recognize me, a brutal man made brutal by circumstances beyond his control. A cleric, overwhelmed by the crushing misery, weeps and flees his responsibilities. A woman cries for the dead baby she cradles in her arms.

Like the cleric, I run. The hopelessness clings to me like a wet blanket. It can be ran from, but it always finds me. But running is at least doing something.

Once, we were an enlightened people. We were a city, set on a hill, for all the world to admire and marvel at. We turned our swords into plows, and our spears we made into pruning hooks. We were proud that no one of us lived in fear or want. We wrote operas, plays, symphonies, and poetry of great sophistication and beauty. We invented marvelous things, we dreamed dreams that soared to the heavens. Now, we are sheep, culled for our blood; cattle, harvested for our bodies.

I go to my secret place. Down a hill, through a holler, between the giant palm trees, then I scramble up a rocky hillside. I am on a cliff. It looks out from this accursed island. It looks over the green sea. Today, the sea is tranquil. It is almost loving in the way it gently laps against the rocky beach below. And my hut is here.

My poetry is in my secret place. Books by men long dead, books that I saved for, stole for, then bought on the black market. Once, we wrote books! Books that we printed, bound, and made available to those who wanted them. Now, our masters have forbidden the books. I hide in the poetry; I wear it like armor. But the armor always fails.

Once we lived fruitful and abundant lives. Then the Bloodslave Lords came, and they found our people easy prey. How odd it is, that we are lorded over by those who are themselves slaves. The Children of Vordith, foul and immortal creatures of the night, are the masters of all of us. And the Bloodslave Lords, as mortal as are we of Magadan, carry out the will of the Children of Vordith. They are traitors and betrayers of their own kind.

We are a raped people. We are bred like cattle, so that our blood may feed the Children, so that our bodies may swell their numbers. We live in squalor and despair, in the midst of our ancient glories.

It is whispered that the Children have cast their lusting and inhuman eyes at a fair land across the sea. They say the land is named Tinandrial, a land lush with vibrant life. In our taverns and in our streets, men whisper tales of this land where no vampires, no Children of Vordith, may be found. I pity the people over there, for they will soon share our fate. None will stand against the Children. None.

The rain comes. It always comes, it is as much a part of Magadan as is the giant rock this island is built on. I find a dry place on the dirt floor. And again I pick the book up.

The poet is telling me:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,

"And with strange eons even death may die."

Then she, a stranger too me, was at the doorway of my hut. In my astonishment I drop the book; the poet's voice fades from my mind. Dressed in a slave's filmy robe, and with the one-piece steel collar around her neck, I know instantly she is a runner.

Her long blond hair is soaked through, and matted to her head. The sheer silk of her wet robe clings to her young, slim body like a second skin. Her body is revealed to me as though she was wearing nothing at all. Her white skin is perfect, it is without blemish. Her breasts are full and firm, as perfect as though they had been sculpted. I have never seen such big blue eyes. And then I feel her fear, a force more potent than despair, if not as durable.

She is a creature of physical perfection. The likes of her never walk amid the squalor of the slums. She is a toy, the property of a Bloodslave Lord. When she no longer amuses her lord, she will be given to the Children for her blood, or for her body.

She has chosen to flee, to escape. She must have known it was impossible to escape our masters, yet she ran anyway. She left her pampered, if degrading, existence for a brief moment of freedom. I cannot decide if she is courageous or foolish. And I know that she is both.

It is death for me to harbor her. The Bloodslave Lords will soon trace her here to my secret place. They must be nearby even now. We will both be punished. I, with death. The runner, with torture, then death or maiming.

She steps into the shelter of my hut. Her eyes are bigger than ever. I can't move. My despair and her fear fill the hut like a thing alive. I notice that the water under her eyes is not all rain.

I hear the sound of a harsh voices coming from the beach below. Orders are being shouted. The Bloodslave Lords and their hunters are near. Escaped slaves are always made an example of. And I, an orphan from the slums, I will be an example as well.

I bow my head. My despair is now complete. Unlike the slave, I have no tears. I have used them up, long ago. Then her soft hand is on my chin. She lifts my face to hers. Her blue eyes are deeper than a well.

Somehow, she is nude, her robe pushed away. She gently pulls me to the dirt floor with her. A wave of passion bursts over me, and all else is forgotten.

Is this how the Bloodslave Lords feel? Coitus with woman who are collared, and cannot say no? I curse myself for enjoying it so much. Then all thought is swept away as I possess her, and we are one.

She is passionate, uninhibited. She is making love as though she will never have the chance again. I reach new heights of ecstasy, highs that I never have reached in my fumblings with street whores.

A harsh voice is shouting. Mailed hands pull us roughly apart. Men in black uniforms with a single red flame over the breast drag us out into the rain. We are forced to kneel. Something sharp and cold is pressed to the base of my neck.

There is a terrible sound, the sound of an axe cutting through meat. I cannot help but flinch as the blow lands. Beside me, the slave is laying face down in the wet grass, her head nearly severed from her body.

I am numb. If it were possible, I would go insane, just to escape this ruthless reality. I wait for the whistle of the axe cutting through air to end my suffering. I welcome it.

A man removes his helmet. He has a captain's pin on his sleeves. He is a Bloodslave, and his eyes are arrogant. He stares at me, and I cower. He expects to see a submissive cow, and I am a submissive cow.

Then with a gesture, he and his men file away. They turn away from me without bothering to speak to me. The Bloodslave Lord wants me to live. He wants it known in the slums that the lords brook no interference of any sort. They leave the slave girl's corpse where it fell.

The men of the flame are gone. With rocks and sticks, and my bare hands, I dig a shallow grave in the soft, wet dirt of my secret place. I place the slave girl in the grave.

I realize I am sobbing as I cover her mutilated form with dirt and pile rocks over her to make a cairn. I collapse as my body is racked with convulsions of sorrow and shame.

Even at night, even when wet, Magadan is warm. I don't move from her grave for hours. It is beginning to appear as though I cannot move. There is simply no will to drive my body. I have seen one too many atrocities.

Then, from a corner of my mind, the poet speaks to me again:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,

"And with strange eons even death may die."

I hear it again and again. The sound of it grows louder and louder.

Somewhere, a spark of hope is lit in my soul. I rise on legs that are numb. A new passion arises in my soul, and it threatens to consume me. I am bursting with hope.

And with hate.

The two are strange bedfellows, to be sure. But I am now evenly yoked to both of them. I scream my hate. I savor my hope. I swear to the heavens and to any gods there may be.

There is a certain captain of the Bloodslave Lords who is going to die. His face is in my memory like a hot burn on virgin flesh. How or when I will kill him, I cannot say. But he and his entire accursed race of oppressors, are going to fall. Someday. By my hands.

I leave my secret place. I will never go to it again.

The rain in tropic Magadan is never harsh, but it can rain for weeks.