Bane of a Nation Read online

  Bane of a Nation

  Addison Joseph Burns

  Copyright © 2019 by Addison Joseph Burns

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This novel is dedicated to my mother.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Auron Helore

  2. Kron Vyktaur

  3. Susyn Helore

  4. Tefvon Vyktaur

  5. Evoru Hempson

  6. Mauro Orynaur

  7. Eryek Elynaur

  Interlude

  8. Fryne Hempson

  9. Ritek Elynaur

  10. Emowyn Vyktaur

  11. Sworgh Sworfaur

  12. Brenton Epson

  13. Gevon Vyktaur

  14. Gregh Tekotaur

  15. Desoru Bostel

  16. Wynore Kolsetta

  17. Maisi Caluso

  18. Enk Arqua

  19. Bivek Ambore

  20. Byson Thorne

  21. Osynek Velore

  22. Merek Slochan

  23. Devos Scotol

  24. Vessi Caluso

  25. Ketewyn Sworfaur

  26. Admon Barason

  27. Surkin Asmod

  28. Theos Fotol

  29. Otysoru Hytaur

  30. Len Caselo

  31. Antin Arqua

  32. Enos Alinam

  33. Kraos Praveli

  34. Selath Alighieri

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  A Historian

  The Grofvaurian chief stared at the pale faces of his enemies, resigned to the inevitability of the guillotine above him.

  The guillotine would surely perform its function, unlike him and all the other chiefs of this once-great nation.

  He and his followers had perished or gone corrupt, and here he sat corrupted in the capital of his province, having forsaken his oaths for the fleeting promise of safety, a promise that the pale men were now making a mockery of here in the streets.

  He had provided them with the weapons they would use to kill his cousins, and he opened his granaries to them when they had arrived in his province; he bowed before them when they marched into his palace, and he bowed before them now in anticipation of his death.

  “Heretic!” they screamed; they always loved to scream that.

  He curled inwards to protect himself from flung feces, the world a blur around him, the rising stench of death and decay now drifting up to his nostrils and triggering a burst of nausea that drew laughter from the crowd.

  “He’s puking!” The crowd found humor in that statement.

  Hundreds of faces peered at him as he tried to rise and then fell comfortably beneath the range of the blade. Two heads rested in the basket in front of him, one having belonged to his son and the other to his nephew.

  The pale men were too strong and influential to be stopped by the remnants of Raurian society, and they had made a promise to rid the entire continent of heretics, one hanging, beheading, and drowning at a time.

  The chief wept into his linen, praying simultaneously for the release of death and for his final moment to never arrive. He wept, knowing he would die for a nonsensical word, an ill-defined concept.

  “Heretic! Heretic!”

  “Kill ’em already, the fucking heretic!”

  He tried to squirm as the executioner ensnared him with the palm of his hand and forced his neck onto the groove of the guillotine; he was yelling to a merciless crowd, pleading for a life that they would not spare, begging his gods that didn’t exist, giving one last, pathetic attempt at becoming free from his fate.

  The blade severed his spine, his head rolled into the basket, and then there was peace. A couple of minutes later, his sister would discover peace, and three minutes after that, her daughter would discover peace. After that was her brother and then his associate and then that associate’s former lover. By midday, one hundred and forty-four heads had rolled into that basket, all of them cheered on by the same, old mantra.

  “Heretic! Heretic!”

  That day ended much like its tomorrow began.

  Sometimes murder was justified and fraud pardoned, but heresy, or even the accusation of, was not amendable. The word had a vague definition, yet its connotation was capable of halting entire movements. Men were silenced and thrones abdicated. Scholars wrote novellas about it. Soldiers fought and died for it. Within a few decades, a regime had been established upon this meaningless, six-letter word.

  Heretics didn’t necessarily oppose a myth or religion. Instead they opposed something supported by, influenced by, related to, or, in any way associated with, the congregation.

  This congregation had no name. It had adjectives, all superlative, all benign, because that is what it allowed to endure. What it supported and didn’t support was very ambiguous, and its legal system was wrought with convolution.

  Technically, fornication was only illegal for women, but any man who participated in such was charged with being an accomplice. Homosexuality was also a crime. So, an unmarried man could have sex, legally, just not with another man or a woman (or himself, because masturbation was punishable by flagellation).

  All slaves, or “citizens” as they preferred to be called, were required to bathe every day of the week, but they were not allowed to bathe on the first day of the week without written consent.

  Gentlemen could duel to the death, but if both survived, they were both arrested for assault.

  There was always a way for an innocent man to be guilty but also enough loopholes for any guilty man to be innocent. One lawyer, who had spent his entire life studying these laws, killed himself because of the madness they inflicted upon him. The congregation then charged his family a disposal fee.

  Ridicule stayed most dissent, but when a protest did arise, the participants vanished. They were often said to never have existed, and most citizens wondered whether this congregation even existed. It had no manifest rituals or beliefs that differed from the myriad other creeds. These same citizens would curse whoever dared make questions of congregational doctrine. They had been told they were forever under attack by the “demon worshipping” Raurs: the native ethnic-group to which most of these citizens belonged.

  “The Raurs had inhabited the island of Vehymen since time immemorial,” wrote one historian. “With each year, winter became shorter and summer more prominent. The inhabitants shifted from hunting to farming, from bivouacs to towns, and eventually from stone to bronze.”

  This was very impressive to those who thought the world was only three-hundred years old (except for a decade ago when they thought it was one-thousand years old). For a moment last autumn, it was “six-hundred years old.” Nonetheless, it was impressive.

  “All trade in antiquity passed through the Vehymen capital. With reserves came gluttony, with luxury sloth, and with prosperity a sense of superiority both warranted and not. The townsfolk had forsaken the strife of their forefathers. Mesallian hordes sacked the city and burnt it to the ground. Within one generation, the Raurs had rebuilt their city and subdued their aggressors. Twice was Vehymen the most envied country of the world. Then there was the modern Vehymen.”

  The pale men, the Noconyx, approached Vehymen eighty-nine years ago, bringing with them three burdens. With their first arrival, they brought war and bloodshed. With their second arrival they brought a harsh, wretched pestilence: incurable and inescapable. With their third arrival, they brought famine and poverty.

  Each burden on its own was a tribulation. Together they were the downfall of a nation. Men of stre
ngth and valor perished. Once-beautiful women conceived children putrid and sick. These children, weaker than their grandparents, less pure than their mothers, fell swiftly when the famine came upon them.

  These burden bringers had escaped to here from the eastern continent and spun tales of woe. “Our families were impaled on stakes,” one said. “Vultures tore at our flesh. All the while, the barbarians laughed and mocked. They burned our bodies so that our souls might never find peace.”

  “They unleashed demons and whores and every horror of the abyss,” said another. The stories continued: confirming, elaborating, and contradicting those told before them until all forms of torture and hatred had been encompassed; and many new heroes were created and old villains destroyed; and a whole culture-worth of tales had been told.

  Senators gathered from every province in Vehymen. These men, kind and emphatic, thought war justified. They sent twelve brigades overseas; with them, the first burden was completed. With the Raurian army massacred, the Noconyx demanded another.

  “Have you forgotten the horror?” asked Surkin, addressing the senate. “Surely you have not. No, there is no need to mention again all those thousands dead—all the tortures of the flesh. No, there mustn’t be a need for that…. My people are displaced—entire bloodlines gone to history! And you fret over but a dozen brigades?” Again, the senate launched an offensive campaign. When it showed signs of faltering, Surkin demanded reinforcements. “You invited us into your homes, but now you ignore our pleas? Have your people no sense of hospitality?”

  Stevon Helore spoke. “Like parasites you came, and still we took you in…, but you’ve mistaken our generosity for weakness. I bid you farewell! I will no more be insulted by a man of your stature.”

  The scribes did not further record whatever dialog had occurred.

  Stevon went to his villa for recess where he enjoyed dinner with his family, having poured libations to the gods and blest his fields. He sent his eldest son into town for wine. While Stevon was changing into his nightwear, soldiers kicked down his door and slew his family: mother, father, daughters, and brother. They forced Stevon onto his knees and ended his life with a shot from a harquebus.

  The sole-surviving Helore returned to the villa hours later. He dropped to his knees and wept, not knowing what else to do. As a firstborn son, he had been exempted from conscription. His siblings were the warriors, and they were gone, possibly dead in foreign lands. Nestyvon fled to western Vehymen and married a parmosi woman who bore him two sons.

  When the pestilence ravaged the country, it first took his youngest son and then him. It spread throughout the countryside, killing the cowherds and hunters, and then to the cities where it killed the poor. Aristocrats were scarcely infected, but the Chief Monarch succumbed to the plague, and it was his mind that faltered most. He set plans that would bring about the third burden.

  1

  Auron Helore

  Raurian Commoner

  Auron meandered through the streets of Grofven, his arms dangling and wrists twisting with every step.

  Parmosi children played a bat-and-ball game in the alleyway. Rocks ricocheted between the buildings, thumping against brick and falling into gloves below, being pitched and struck until they smashed through windowpanes as they were wont to do.

  Beyond the game, Auron could see light shimmering below; and as he began his descent, Grofven seemed to shine more brightly than the sun.

  Across roofs and support-beams hung a garden that stretched to the city’s center where it left a circle from which the zenith was visible.

  This city had been constructed around a graveyard. Near the center existed the most important and expensive structures. The mausoleums were adorned with diamonds, emeralds, and jade; and the gravestones had been cast in bronze.

  The statue of Matheral stood outside the courthouse, fifty-feet tall and green from tarnish. She was the goddess of justice, “able to see and hear everything: events that happened or would happen and actions that never happened but had been contemplated.”

  Barristers and lawmen ignored Auron as they passed him. He worked for the provincial court, doing a job of much importance and of little fortune.

  He belonged to a non-existent caste, between the parmos and the verlot. The parmos were laborers: factory-workers and farmhands mainly. The verlot were artisans and merchants. Unlike the former, his caste was lucky enough to have received education; but in practice, their only difference was their utilization.

  Society had invented a multitude of ways to define and label a person.

  Caste was the determining economic-factor. Voyids lived on the outskirts of whatever province they belonged to, and all other castes considered them untouchable. They were dirty and unkempt, turning Auron sick at the mere sight of them.

  Above these social dregs was the common tier to which Auron belonged. The upper castes scoffed at them in the same way his people scoffed at the voyids, and this upset him because he had spent his entire life preaching that discrimination “was bad.”

  Two days ago, Auron processed the paperwork responsible for the death of two parmosi parents who had killed a trespasser inside their own house. Auron felt no sympathy for these parents, nor did he feel much empathy for the orphan that resulted from it. “Stay away from trouble, and trouble will stay away from you,” he would say.

  According to his associates, he was “self-standing”; but he lacked wit and wisdom: traits he cared only slightly about. These were traits most people cared only slightly about.

  Auron was a socialite and a successful one by his standards, having hosted festivities of a special grandeur. “You can hardly tell he’s a Raur,” was said of him. This was the most complimentary of compliments.

  The treatment of ethnicity followed a separate paradigm. The law favored Mesals more than Raurs, regardless of caste. Although their tenets differed from those of the congregation and often opposed it, their beliefs were nonetheless protected by it.

  One day ago, Auron deemed a man worthy of imprisonment for distressing a Mesal about her beliefs. He sentenced him to three years because he suspected the man had done so purposely.

  As Auron walked into the courthouse, he sniffed a leaf of the syra: his favorite plant. It mimicked the sounds of birds, singing melodies outside the vocal range of any soprano.

  He had arrived to work early, though not for him, and he began his morning routine of doing nothing for half of an hour until Aossi entered. He thought her the prettiest woman in the world.

  She had all the typical Mesallian features: blue eyes, ash-colored skin, and short stature. He adored the way she spoke to him and about him and the absence of sound when she ignored him. He adored everything except the birthmark on her right arm: nigh repulsive; but even that, he had convinced himself, was to be desired. She acknowledged he existed.

  “You hear about my case yesterday?” asked Auron. “Hard to imagine someone could be so ignorant.” He had chosen his grayish-green pants for today, which helped to accent his dark-green shirt, having decided against his normal combination of greenish-gray pants and somewhat-dark-green shirt.

  Aossi chuckled. “If I could will it, they’d all be dropped on some deserted island and forced to fend for themselves.”

  They sat athwart, reading reports and transcribing them. A special crime came to their attention this day. A teacher had assigned a ten-year-old girl to a group of Mesals; but the girl did not understand their language, and when she asked to be reassigned, the teacher claimed heresy. “Dissension—this is dissension! We will have none of this in a place of learning,” shouted the teacher as she flogged the student. “The officers are gonna get you good, missy.”

  “Auron…,” Aossi said, handing him a piece of paper. “It’s Susyn.”

  “What?” He reached for the report and saw his daughter’s name emboldened at the bottom. “This has to be some sort of mistake.”

  “‘Parent unable to be reached,’” she said, turning over another pag
e of the report.

  “This has to be some sort of a mistake….”

  “What are you waiting around for? Go!”

  He rushed to the jail where there existed one cell. There was no need for more; the oracles decided promptly, and there were never repeat offenders.

  Noconyx guardsmen stared at Auron as he walked. They were quiet and aloof, not like a recluse, deep in thought, but like a slave counting the years until his release.

  “Daddy!” yelled Susyn. She dropped to her knees as Auron ran towards her, she sobbing against the metal bars of her cage. “Take me home,” she pleaded.

  “It’ll be alright,” he said, unsure of whether he meant it.

  He laid his hand over hers, kissing her forehead and raising her to full posture. They talked for a few minutes before the guardsmen escorted him into another chamber. He could barely remember anything that had been said; every expression, every nuance of her behavior replayed again in his mind, but her voice was quiescent.

  “It’s written here that your neighbors think you one of the good ones,” said a eunuch, his voice brittle and nasally. He and Auron sat at opposite ends of a small, circular table in the middle of a large, square room. “‘Oh, but that kid of his,’ they said. ‘Whatever her name might be. She is the most ignorant child I have ever met, ever. She goes on about how the kids bully her and call her names.’ Have you heard anything about this?”