Prologue

Its always watching you

PROLOGUE

 

They say if you live a long life you end up gathering up many regrets along the way. In your old age you will either choose not to remember them or you can remember them and live the rest of your life miserably. Some prefer forgetting while others prefer remembering.

Why, you may ask?

Perhaps they feel the need to feel punished. A masochist desire to feel pain and anguish over something they hadn't meant to do or let happen. In that way maybe they think they might be forgiven in life by those they have wronged and in death. It is a sad existence. A sad but necessary existence. For without regret one cannot fully desire the need to atone themselves. One cannot fully understand the need to right what has been done wrong.

On a quiet night like this it is easy to forget that the world is in chaos. It almost feels like time has stopped and allowed me a few precious moments of peace. Even the ghosts around me have stopped screaming in anguish for a moment to glance up at the night sky where many suns hovered in the black expanse. There are so many universes out there; it sometimes makes me wonder what people in those universes are up to. Do they know we exist or do they live in ignorance of us? Is their world as chaotic as mine?

 I hope not. No one should be subjected to my world, even as a punishment. It would be beyond cruel.

As I lay on my back on the roof with my fellow spirits of the dead, though my eyes watch the stars my ears hear the shuffling of a man below me in his room as he quickly grabs something from his table and slides a sword into is belt. Another noise follows, this one more desperate and hurried. He is coming for him; he knows what his brother has and wants it gone. He bangs on the door but his brother will not open it.

'For the love of Ashaie! Open this damn door Belus!' He shouts angrily.*

Belus pays little head to his brother and opens one of the windows in his chamber. The window is wide enough for a grown man to jump out off.

'Belus!' He bangs on the door harder . There is a loud crack as he kicks the door open only to see his brother as he jumps out of the window.

'Belus no! Wait!'

From above I watch the boy as he runs down the path of the manors garden. The guards are so surprised to see their young master running out like this that they don't have the Witt's to stop him before it is too late and he is already lost inside the city of demons.

A pretty young girl with grey eyes giggles near me. 'He couldn't stop him. What will he do now?' She is a lost spirit this child. She has been hunting this manor for years and watching over a family who barely remembers her now. She knows every secret. Every story. Every whisper.

'He will find Belus.' I tell the child.

'And then?'

 I gave the child a vicious grin. 'And soon you won’t be so alone anymore.'

 

 

 

 

The bird had dark fine feathers on it body, a long sharp beak and coal black beady eyes. From a distance people would have mistaken it for a crow but a crow is a unruly savage bird with no manners where as a Raven is a fine bird that demands respect. They are messengers. Travelers of worlds beyond our reach.

Someone once told Marcos to be wary of Ravens. They are not as innocent as they seem form the outside. They are more than that; more than simple messenger birds:They are the carriers of death. If a man finds himself noticing Ravens around him then it is a sign that his death is fast approaching. Death rides on the wings of the Ravens and falls on the shoulders of the condemned. There is no escaping it then. No matter how far he runs. No matter how much he tries to escape. In the end Death will claim him as its own.

Marcos had never believed in farie tails. He was too old and too practicle to be intimidated by a flock lore and yet, right at this moment, he couldn’t make himself relax with the knowledge that that one black bird, sitting on top of that ruined building behind him, was watching him. He felt an irrational fear of it and felt irrattated by the fact.

So much so that he snapped at his apprentice without reason causing the boy to retreat into a wounded scilence which only served to annoy Marcos even more.

‘Is it him?’ Marcos asked distractedly. The Raven was still watching him.

‘According to the DNA scan, yeah.’ Van answered. He wiped his brow with the back of his arm and tried to loosen his collar. The heat in this part of the country was intense  and with all the trees and vegetation surrounding the ghost city it was terribly humid. Summers in Ashaie  are never kind and to make matters worse, he was wearing black which sucked up the heat of the sun like a sponge on water. He made a serious mental note to take up the matter of changing the colour of their uniform with the Knight Commander. All though while Van looked like he would drown in his own sweat, the heat didn't seem to affect Marcos at all. The man could walk through a battle field and still look neat and orderly. With not a single hair out of place. Van grudgingly envied his master. ‘We’ve found our painter.’

 

A few days ago, the Pavos family, had reported the absence of their young artist Belus Pavos, third son of the head of the Pavos family, to the city Watch. Since the family has close ties with the Lord, the matter was shifted over to the Black Knights. And since no one within the organization wanted to deal with this matter, the work was forced on to Van, who was still considered as new recruit, who dragged Marcos along with him.

The only reason Marcos even agreed to help his apprentice on his work was because he wanted to escape from the gaze of the Ravens which kept appearing outside his windows and balcony. In truth he was trying to get away from madness but madness had followed him to this desolate ruined city.

‘I wander why anyone would want to murder him. He was an eccentric but the man  didn’t have any enemies.’ Van thought out loud. ‘According to his family, he kept to himself and barely ever spoke. Even to his wife.’

‘Everyone has enemies.’ Marcos told him coldly.

‘Not me.’ Van answered, earning him a withering look of contempt from his master. Van decided not to stretch the matter.

Marcos gravely disapproved his apprentice’s cheery innocent nature. He was more of a boy than a man which only made Marcos want to be more mad at him. He saw the world through the eyes of a common civilian and not a Knight who knew better than to think that everything in the world was balanced. Its because he’s still young that Marcos didn’t not stretch the matter. He grudgingly resigned himself to the hope that one day Van will realize that the Lords enemies were his enemies whether he likes it or not.

‘Pack him up and get him to the boat. I’ve spent enough time breathing in dead mans ashes.’ Marcos grumbled darkly at him before he turned his back to him and began walking off in the opposite direction of the docks and towards the inner part of the ghost city.

‘Where are you going?’ Van asked curiously after him.

‘Just get a move on!’ Marcos snapped at him without looking behind and in a blink of an eye he was gone.

The Raven was where he thought he it would be when he arrived at the spot. Marcos could almost believe that it was fate and not a coincidence that the Raven would be sitting in the exact spot where Cain had died. There was no grave, nor markings but Marcos knew this was the very same spot. He had only been here once ten years ago but he still remembered it.

When he saw the Raven he didn’t dare go close. He was frozen in unexplainable fear that if he came near, he would die. Around him he could hear voices warning him to leave. They were always warning him but he could never understand why. They screamed at the top of their lungs, they cried and sobbed and begged him to go away but Marcos ignored them. The day he starts to listen to the voices inside his head is the day he’ll give his knighthood and take a gun to his head in an honorable dismissal. Marcos had no desire to die yet; although he couldn’t clearly think up a reason as to why he kept on being alive for so long. What exactly was he waiting for? Everyone he knew was dead. He had nothing to live for and yet he presistantly continued to do so.

If I take three more steps, Marcos thought as he watched the Raven as closely as it watched him, will I finally die?

 

'Alright, I'm packed. Lets get out of this graveyard before I have a heatstroke.' Van shouted loudly hoping somewhere in the ghost city Marcos would hear him and come back. He had finished packing the corpse inside bag which was the size of a medium sized women’s purse. It was one of those one size fits all bags which were mass produced after some of the techs in Recos corps managed to figure out the mechanism behind the mage bags which were once rare items in the black markets of Ashaie.

'Marcos.' Van called for his master once more since it seemed likely that Marcos either hadn’t heard him or had simply chosen to ignore him. When ten minutes of futile yelling had gone by, Van picked up the body bag and went to the docks to dump it into their small two man boat before heading back into the ghost city to search for his lost master.

It didn’t take Van much long to find him since every Knight had a tracker imbedded in them so other that other knights could find one another if they happen to get lost or separated. Van tracked his master down to the centre of the ghost city where the bomb explosion had hit the hardest. The place was the sight of a large disc shaped crater with fallen debries form the surrounding buildings scattered around it. Some distance away from what seemed to have been the other half of a white pillar of an elevated bridge stood Marcos with his hands deep inside his black coat. His stance and the way he stood with his shoulders and body tence like a wire, Van knew that he was going to shoot someone or maybe something. He was glaring at something above him on top of broken building. A small black bird which could have been a crow.

'Marcos!' Van dropped the body bag and began walking over to the older demon. As he drew closer he heard Marcos whisper under his breath :'what do you want from me?'

Overhead a Raven cawed and the sound of wings beating the air filled the silence of the dead city. Van actually had goose bumps crawling up the back of his neck before both Marcos and he had to duck as the raven flew right over their heads.

'S**t! What is up with that bird?' Van swore loudly as he watched the Raven disappear into the city. When he turned towards Marcos he was surprised to find the usually calm as a rock man looking ashen and his clear blue eyes wide with what Van could only translate as fear. But the moment of weakness only lasted for a second as Marcos quickly schooled his feature back to a stern expression and barked snappily at Van to get to the boat.

 

 

He was disturbed. I could tell. He was scared; running away as fast as he could so he wouldn't have to consider the impossible.

A small smirk tug at my lips as I watch his little boat speed away from the island.

'What is so amusing?' The spirits ask me. They haunted these plains, this dead city, this island which had been home to thousands of people. A civilization. And now it harbors the souls of those who have been burned here.

'What have you done? Tell us immortal.' The spirits urge me. They’re worried and scarred and frightened at the same time.

A raven flew over to me and perched on my shoulder. Fondly I stroked its fine soft feathers.

'I have left a trail of bread crumbs for my raven to follow.' I tell them.

'Follow where immortal?.' The spirits asked. Their voices barely a whisper in the wind.

I smiled genuinely this time. 'To me.'

 

Author's Note

This is the edited version of my old book