Generation (Part 1 of 2)

The farmer pitched hay from the bed of his farm cart up through the loft door in a steady rhythm.  His son Dale forked it left and right, filling the loft with summer’s golden bounty.  The twelve-year-old boy loved his father and their farm, but chafed silently at the slow pace.  Though the sun was still high, the Bakene brothers might already be fishing at the irrigation dams, mostly thanks to the hired wizard their father kept.
 
The problem was that his father would have nothing to do with wizards or magic, no matter that their farm was the least productive in the county.  Dale had hinted, asked, and even begged, to no avail.  Magic was the only thing his father was completely unreasonable about.  The boy knew there was nothing else to do but continue and hope they’d get done early enough for him to join his friends without too much teasing.  In distraction Dale sang a play-time rhyme he’d learned at the monastery school.


Old Man lies, Black Man rides.
Round and round, Vengeance bound.
Good Man dies, Little Boy cries.
Round and Round, All fall down.


The boy looked up when a wildcat screamed in the distance.


 “Papa!”  Dale dropped his pitchfork and pointed west.  “Two riders!”  Sudden, howling wind threatened to buffet the boy from the hayloft in a whirl of straw.  When he recovered, he saw something unexpected – fear on his father’s face.


 “Dale, go inside.”   Ray pointed back into the barn.


“But, Papa--” Further words failed the boy, choked back by fear and excitement.


“Hide, now!”  He glared until Dale reluctantly retreated into the shadowed loft.  Ray then jumped down from the cart and faced west as boiling clouds rose to swallow the sun.  Unable to resist curiosity, Dale edged back until he could see his father standing in the muddy farmyard. 


“I’m sorry, son.”  The man’s voice was almost too low for Dale to hear, as if speaking to himself.  “I should have told you.”


The boy watched as the riders swept into the yard, dark cloaks beating in the now gusty wind.  One rider threw back his hood, revealing a youthful face filled with old hate.


 “You are Ray, the murderer.”  He pointed at the farmer.  “You should have hidden in the Faded Lands.  I’ve come for revenge!”


 Full panic clutched Dale.  He wanted to cry out a warning or go to his father’s side, but could not seem to speak or move.


 “Have at it,” Ray yelled back, shaking his pitchfork at the riders, “for what good it does!”


 In response the cloaked man shouted words that shook the earth.  Dale watched in dumb horror as his father was gruesomely crushed into the yard by invisible violence that cracked the ground and rattled the barn.


 The sight of the broken, partly buried corpse freed the boy’s tongue.


 “I’ll kill you!”  Dale’s voice cracked.  “You hear me?”  Grief drove the boy into uncontrolled sobs, fear forgotten.


 The stranger looked up, surprised to see Dale in the loft.  Emotions raced over the man’s angular face – shock, regret, and resignation.


   “Gyles,” he said, and wheeled his horse.  “My name is Gyles.  Remember it.”  He rode into the growing storm without another word.  The other rider raised a hand and drew luminous symbols in the wind, symbols that fluttered to circle the bawling child.  Satisfied to see them spin and fade around Dale, the mysterious second man rode away.  Rain sheeted then as lightning flashed and thunder rumbled.


 Grief had no time to pass before the rest of Dale’s life tumbled away.  Foreclosure took the farm, and helpful neighbors moved him to the monastery when they could locate no other family.  The boy threw himself into lessons at the school, but try as he might he could not bury his pain under books.  Magic sparked his interest for a time.  The idea of bending the elements to his will intrigued him, though magic also reminded him of what was lost.  It seemed magic might lead the boy out of his grief, yet nothing could banish the recurring image of his father’s crushed body. 


  Instead, simmering anger turned deliverance to downfall.  Young Dale came to realize that he hated magic, hated the people who used magic – people like the man who murdered his father.  Soon the gentle Brothers were forced to foster him out.  In a last ditch effort to save the boy, they sent him to a family far outside the borders of magic, to the Faded Lands.


At first Dale was almost happy, back on a farm with people who cared for him.  Here in the Faded Lands there were no wizards, no magic at all.  Without magic the farm work was as hard as he remembered, but that was fine.  For a year Dale was almost happy thinking he’d never have to see magic again.  He was almost happy, but something held him back from true happiness.


That something increasingly kept after him, pulling at the grief, tugging at painful memories.  Strange dreams plagued his nights and tainted his days with weariness.  Some of the dreams were about a familiar tower he’d never seen.  Others were violent, in which Dale fought strangers to the death or killed whole families he somehow knew were evil.  In all the dreams a great mystical wheel spun above.  He worried about his sanity.
 
Then one night he dreamed in gruesome detail of hacking up his foster family, only to wake up in the kitchen holding a butcher’s knife.  Dale left the next day over tearful objections, fearing too much for their safety to stay.  Moving seemed to help, and for a time the dreams stopped as Dale wandered from village to village.  He began to hope normalcy might return, but the dreams redoubled on his seventeenth birthday.


Like the moth to a lantern, he was drawn back to the land of his father’s death and the magic he hated.  There anger finished the destruction of Dale’s youth.  For Dale, desperation and petty crime on the streets of the big city just seemed to be part of his unalterable downfall.  He gave up hope of changing his luck.


 Change found Dale flat on his back.  Tonight was his initiation into a street gang, his first robbery.  He’d chosen an old man as his victim – a skinny, bearded oldster leaning heavily on a cane as he limped along the ill-lit street.  Dale’s demand for money had been met with laughter, and a threat with his knife had abruptly landed him in this reeking sewage ditch.


 Dale struggled against the magical force that pinned him.  It held him down like a stream of water; invisible, relentless pressure slowly choked the boy. 


 “Now what, punk?”  The old man cackled, his clawed hand over the boy.  “Picked the wrong fella, eh?”


 The situation was too frighteningly similar to his father’s death.  Rage boiled over in Dale, anger and despair held back for years.  He thrashed wildly, but could not get free.


“Go ahead little fish, wiggle and flop.”  The old man leaned over close to Dale’s face.  “You’re weak and useless, punk, like a fish out of water.”  He shook his head.  “A wasted life, you are.  Think your family is proud of you, punk?”


The memories of the murder came clear; Dale even recalled the murderer’s voice.  He raised a hand against the pressure and uttered the best mimicry he could muster of the murderer’s spell.  The old man was shoved back a few steps and the pressure broke, letting Dale gasp a deep breath. 


 “Well,” said the old wizard, rubbing his thin beard as he moved back to stand over the panting Dale.  “Well.  A vagabond wizard boy?”  He poked the glaring Dale with his cane.  “Punk, ya got a choice to make.  You can pursue your oh-so-successful career of crime.”  The old man cackled until he coughed to a stop.  “Or I show you a path that’ll let you cash in on all that bile.”  He dropped a card on Dale’s chest.  “You want to make your family proud, right?  Go see this man.” 


The old man hurried away, only to stop under a shadowed awning and intently watch the miserable boy crawl from the filth.   Satisfied, he drew phosphorescent symbols in the air and blew them toward Dale before striding away.


 Anger prompted Dale to throw down the card, but curiosity led him to pick it back up.  The card guided him to a man at the local Duelist Arena, an independent duelist manager named Brint.  The boy was soon squinting under harsh witchlights while the scarred man inspected him like an auction-house mule.  Dale felt he should protest the indignities, felt he should be irate, but something about this place stirred other emotions.


Beyond the locker room smells, damp stone walls, and junk yard décor, Dale heard the intoxicating voice of the crowd.  He also felt the prickle and snap of magic as Duelists battled on the Arena floor above.  Although he wanted to hate it, a part of him found it fascinating.


“So, yer the kid, eh?”  Brint swiped blunt fingers through thinning hair.  “Look, I gotta tell ya straight, kid.  I’m not seein’ much here.”


“My name is Dale.”  His decision came suddenly.  “I want to be a duelist.”


“Lotta folks ‘want to’ but it takes more’n that, kid.”  Brint moved to a large leather bag hanging from a rafter.  “Show me whatcha got, kid,” he said then braced his shoulder behind the bag and slapped the leather.  “Right here.”


Dale spoke the words as best he could while he held his hands like the old wizard had earlier  The force drove Brint back a couple of steps.


“My name is Dale, not kid.”


Brint signed the ragged boy into a Junior Duelist Tournament event that very night.  Dale smashed his way to first place, and his new life as a wizard duelist began. 


 For twelve years Dale ruthlessly sought out and learned the most dangerous secrets of magic.  He just as ruthlessly applied his knowledge in the Arena, the most popular entertainment in both the Faded Lands and Central Kingdoms.  Fame, riches, and a beautiful girlfriend followed his success as a wizard duelist.  Dale also earned the respect and fear of peers in the business.  They called him Ice Man, partly for his affinity to elemental cold, partly for his disdainful anger in battle.


For those twelve years he also searched for his father’s murderer.  After a considerable fortune spent on investigators, months of his own searches, Dale was no closer to finding Gyles.  The years failed to blunt Dale’s anger, the vain search simply adding to his bitterness.  In the twelfth year, change came again.