Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Read online

  The Fovean Chronicles

  Book One: Indomitus Est

  By Robert W. Brady, Jr.

  Reality pales in the light of common perception

  The Fovean Chronicles

  Book One: Indomitus Est

  © 2007 by Robert W. Brady, Jr.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical photocopying or through a retrieval system without the express permission in writing of the author, except by a reviewer who may publish excerpts as part of a review.

  ISBN: 978-0-9793679-0-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art: Boris Vallejo

  Third Printing

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedication:

  This book is dedicated to the memory of William H. Brady

  Singularly the greatest man I have ever known, not because of anything he did, but for the way he lived his life.

  Known Fovea

  Prologue

  Of Deals and Dead Gods

  My earliest memories as a child were of kneeling down in church next to my mom. We used to go to this old New England Congregationalist place – the pews were wooden with red crushed-velvet cushions on the seats and these pull-down things on the backs of the pews before us. When it came time to kneel you could drop the pull-down thing and it had a red velvet cushion on it, too, so you weren’t kneeling on the floor. I remember the musty, dusty smell of a building more than two hundred years old and wondering if the pastor would have what I’d think of as one of the ‘good sermons,’ where he’d tell these great stories of biblical times and what the characters in the Bible were thinking when they did the things they did, or the ‘bad sermons,’ where he’d rail on about anything from the news to the traffic, and how people were sinning and screwing up their eternal lives.

  The Congregationalists were called that because, if you looked at an overview of old New England towns, you’d invariably see a church and then some kind of village green or circular clearing in front of it, hundreds of yards long, and the old houses that would outline that green or circle. The houses congregated around the circle, the people who built them congregated at the church. Everything fun that I remember from that time had the church involved in it somewhere. Grainge fairs were organized in its basement and there were picnics on the green where we played baseball or Red Rover or whatever other thing the pastor arranged for us. On very good years we had our own ‘Shakespeare in the Park,’ and I’d watch the actors and try to decipher what they said.

  I was kneeling down in church, my tiny hands on the back of the pew before me when, for no particular reason, something that the pastor said just stuck with me:

  “Bad things happen to us all in life. Bad things happen to us as a nation, as a community, as families and as people. Sometimes you’re going to ask yourself, ‘Why does God allow this?’ Sometimes you’re going to question your faith.

  “Those are the times when it’s easiest to think that maybe God isn’t real when, in fact, it’s at those times that God’s presence is the clearest if you’re paying attention. When you’ve really got your mind around faith, you’re going to realize that there are some things you’re just not ready to know.”

  My dad was really mad about that statement. He was a ‘lay your cards on the table’ kind of guy, and unanswered questions really used to bother him. He got into a big fight with the pastor afterwards and pretty soon he stopped going to church.

  When I turned ten and got interested in football, I stopped going, too. I used to get wrapped up in the conflicts and the strategies and whose strengths overcame whose weaknesses. My friends and I would stretch out on the living room carpet and shout at the TV screen, argue the tactics and drive my mother crazy with the mess we left.

  It wasn’t that I forgot what I learned in church, it’s just that, if we weren’t supposed to really know what was going on, what was the point?

  As a young man asked himself the questions that a young man must ask, forces greater than his mind could have understood searched realities for the answer to a problem well within his comprehension:

  How can I get a better deal for me?

  The thing in question called itself a god. It isn’t that it wasn’t a god, because after a fashion it was, it simply wasn’t the kind of all-powerful entity that one thinks of as a god in the day and age in which the boy was raised.

  In the beginning, there were gods, and together and separately they sought dominion over one another by collecting power. There existed many ways in which they could do this, and the most effective of these was through the worship of followers. If seeking the adoration of followers is the preoccupation of most gods then certainly the conquest of competitors is the passion they all shared. Deities throughout millennia have risen and fallen not just in this reality but in all of them, and temples in the thousands marking entities in the millions testify that it’s a serious game that they play.

  One of these at one point went by the moniquer of Anubis. Half a man and half a jackal, Anubis had wanted nothing more than to rule the underworld as Lord of the Dead. For hundreds of years he’d tormented the unworthy and rewarded heroes, his will unquestioned beneath the sands of Egypt, and gloried in the monuments that had been raised to him by those hoping to buy themselves a cooler place in Hell.

  Anubis had deferred to Ra, the Sun God. Ra’s avarice had sent legions to the underworld and Anubis had been content to defer to Him. Ra had created all things on the world from a bowl of clay, and when he’d thought that he was done, he’d left the bowl and what scraps remained had come together and become Man. Ra had returned to the bowl and found Man looking up at him, and in reward for this temerity he had set Man down upon the Earth, his partner in this place.

  Wily man had found himself a better deal. Ra’s worship failed. Another God stepped in and replaced Ra, and Anubis had found himself in the dark place where forgotten gods go to waste away and die.

  The thing that called itself a god found Anubis here, barely more than an animal, a rat clinging to a piece of driftwood in an ocean of ambivalence.

  “Awake, supplicant,” it commanded the jackal-god.

  “I awake,” Anubis communicated without words, in the manner of those that call themselves gods. It arose from a void that existed between things, with no sense of touch or smell.

  “Would you return, or would you embrace the oblivion?” the thing asked.

  What remained of Anubis extended back to the realm of Earth from this dark place. Stumbling through the aether like a wounded dinosaur, it knew that Islam had replaced it among Ra’s followers.

  “I am naught, my memory banished, my name a heresy, my followers the property of the One God. If I am to return, then to what?” Anubis asked this thing.

  The thing that would call itself a god was a predator, and a predator knows how to bait a trap. It breathed life into the shards of Anubis, as only a god can do.

  “This is power,” it told Anubis, as if it had to.

  Not for thousands of years had Anubis felt so much alive. Since the Jews had walked from Egypt and the One God defeated it in Cairo and at the Red Sea, it had been in decline. Here now he felt the thing most important to a god.

  “This will not last. You would have more?” the thing asked.

  Anubis contemplated existence versus the oblivion for what man might have considered years. A lifetime measured in millennia is at once a difficult thing to continue, and a diffi
cult thing to end. To be a god meant a heavy burden, yet power after so long can be a very good feeling. Finally, Anubis decided.

  “More.”

  “Then I would have a boon,” the thing demanded.

  “Name it.”

  “Give me one of your converts; a warrior of heart and mind. I need one who is not susceptible to defeat.”

  “I have none – I am lost, forgotten,” Anubis complained. “There is nothing left of Ra’s nation.”

  “You do not have it in you to convert one? Even should I empower you to walk your Earth yourself?” the thing demanded.

  Anubis considered. It had walked the Earth. It had loped among the human sheep once and recruited them, before it had actually become a god.

  Once a god, a rule applied: the rule of no contact. Gods do not communicate directly to their supplicants. In all realities, in all worlds, this rule applied. There are realities not meant for mortals, truths that would destroy them, were they known. A god’s ambition might drive it, but its responsibility must guide it as well.

  In its present state, Anubis might easily travel among men.

  “And what would I receive, in return?” it asked.

  Anubis saw an artifact on the periphery of its existence, a chalice that would give it the power to ignite the African soil and reinstate faith in millions, were Anubis merely to possess it.

  “I will do… what can be done. How shall I know you, when I am successful?” Anubis asked.

  “You will call to Me,” the thing informed it, “for I am War.”

  On a plain in another reality a noble beast ran with his herd. To him wealth meant sweet, green blades of grass. Life meant warm sunshine and his hooves drumming the ground beneath him. Power was the muscle in his broad back and sturdy withers. God meant the wind in his hair.

  His mares adored him, the best of his kind. Rogue stallions feared him; any who came near his mares would die. His own foals would not rival him for years, but when his time came he understood that he would fall to one of them, as was the way of things.

  The wind named him Almadain, the biggest and far and away the brightest stallion on the Wild Horse Plains, north of Fovea. Once men had come south on lesser horses and tried to take him and his mares, and he himself had bloodied his hooves on them. Almadain, the true Son of Earth, and let the very ground shake when he ran! At three years old and eighteen hands tall, he represented the apex of equine evolution.

  A man appeared before him. He dressed in a simple white robe, his black and white beard as thick as sour grass. The skin around his eyes puckered in a look of perpetual despair. The sun had tanned him. Almadain had not seen him approach and reared in surprise to see him now. The mares crowded behind him. Almadain screamed his challenge and pawed the air, ready to kill.

  No man had ever sat the back of a horse from these plains. Most who came this close were trampled. This man did not fear. His salt-and-pepper hair shown in the bright sun and his eyes seemed to hold all of the sadness in the world. Almadain landed hard on the crushed grass, his proud nose inches from this man, his wild white mane tossed in the wind. He snuffed an angry snort once and stood still, waiting, looking into grieving brown eyes.

  The man reached up and, as no man ever had, laid his hand on the jowl of the noble stallion. Almadain to his own surprise tolerated that touch. Where most Men smelled of hate and greed, Almadain inhaled the odor of compassion from his one, the honey-sweet scent of a love not just for him, not just for his kind, but for all things, for every child of the goddess Life.

  “Go south, Almadain,” the man said, in a voice so low and soulful that the sky seemed to darken. “You are needed. Find him and bear him safe, where e’er he goes. In the end, you shall save us all.”

  The great stallion reared again and screamed his challenge. No! Not south, where the grass tasted sour. Not man, the enemy. Not now, in his prime, with a herd of mares. Not now, not ever!

  Sad eyes looked up at the rearing stallion with compassion. The man had a purpose here, no less than that of War. He knew the truth: that the job might be beyond this simple beast. One animal would stand between Man and God not simply on one world, but on two.

  All things are bound by free choice. The omniscient deity can be as surprised as the ignorant peasant by the turn of events. The universe can only exist because each creature in it is the master of its own destiny and evolves as opportunity allows. No one can be born to any task; the thing we call fate is assigned later as needs arise and history unfolds.

  Almadain had not been born to this task. No success could be foretold for him or guaranteed. He merely had the best chance.

  In his way, the man in the white robe and the salt-and-pepper hair met the stallion’s brown eyes with his own, and conveyed something of what he knew, through eyes so profoundly steeped in sorrow that they could break the proud beast’s heart.

  No happier, the beast accepted his mission and went south. In a few days the mares would find another stallion to replace him. His seed would live on, although he would never be welcome back to the herd. In their eyes he was worse than dead.

  And in the man’s eyes, he might be a savior.

  Chapter One:

  Never Again Volunteer Yourself

  When I was seven years old my grandpa bought me a GI Joe. I had to ‘be good’ for a month for it, and let’s be clear here: ‘be good’ kind of wasn’t my thing at seven years old. I was a Colchester, Connecticut farm kid and, at the time, ‘be good’ to me was more “don’t push your cousin out of the hay loft before warning him (or her)” than actually doing chores and, well, let’s face it: tricking my sister into eating worms.

  After thirty days with a clean face and ears, not bloodying up any cousins and my sister being on a diet of store-bought food, I was ready to bust and, when grandpa took me down to the department store and actually bought me that GI Joe, well, it was Christmas in July.

  It wasn’t even twenty-four hours later that the Barnesly boys down the road had come over, saw me with playing with a new toy, asked to see it and then decided that they needed it more than me.

  I could have called my mom, and she would have called their mom, and their mom would have beat those boys for stealing and made them give me back my toy, but I just knew that the moment I walked away they were going to beat the hell out of that GI Joe, and then it would be ruined and every time I saw it, all I’d think about was how they got over on me. All of my life, my father had told me, “Be a man, be strong, stand up for yourself. Don’t let the rest of the world push you around.” When those three boys took that toy, I could hear those words as plain as if my dad were standing right there, so I screwed up my courage and straightened my back, stood up to the biggest one of them (who was all of ten) and squared off on him.

  “Give it back,” I demanded. My voice wavered and my hands shook; I had wanted so bad to cry.

  “No,” the other boy said, confidently. As he spoke, one of the other boys knelt down behind me so that his brother could push him. The last of the three stood back and laughed.

  We were in my front yard – the house being one of those that crouched up close to the road so that as much acreage as possible was useful for the farm. Once in a while a pickup truck or an old car would rumble down our road, and it wasn’t uncommon to see someone on horseback, but you never saw a pedestrian because all of the kids knew all of the shortcuts between the properties and the adults were just too darn busy to do much walking, and so it really stuck in my mind that a dark-skinned man was watching us from across the street, standing in the shade of an old elm tree, dressed in a trench coat and a wide-brimmed hat.

  I even thought to call out to him, because when you’re seven all adults are omnipotent to you and they can fix any problem, but that’s when the oldest of the three boys pushed me.

  I distinctly remember the hands on my chest, the pressure of the boy behind me as the backs of my calves hit his mid-section, the fear, the humiliation and then the anger that this was
happening to me.

  And then something went click, and all I remembered was the color red. Where I should have fallen, I recovered and, in fact, had the peace of mind to drive my heel into the fingers of the boy behind me, breaking three of them. He screamed, I rolled, my back against his for a second, and I was on my feet again and facing off against the larger boy.

  That boy straight-up attacked. It should have been an easy victory but he fought one-handed, wanting to protect his prize. I went berserk – straight up, black-Irish crazy like a true son of Cu Chulain. I don’t know if it was an Irish thing where genes dormant for generations were awakened by the actions of an outsider, or if it was dad’s voice telling me to stand up for myself, or the pent of anger of taking crap off of my cousins, but I launched myself at the larger boy, all thought of toys forgotten, and I remember that it wasn’t going to be good enough to beat him, even to get the toy back – that boy needed to bleed, to have scars, to bear a mark for having put me in this situation.

  Fight for what is yours. Be a man!

  The next thing I knew, my mom was pulling me off of that boy and his mom was screaming. The one who’d been behind me stayed on the ground and the third had run. I had blood in my blonde hair, my face, my hands, and my clothes, very little of it mine.

  The general understanding was that one had stood against three and won.

  The figure from across the street was gone. I don’t know what he wanted – maybe he just got off on the fighting, or maybe it’s him who went for help, though the adults never mentioned it. It would be a long time before I saw him again.