The Blight of House Alar

  ***

  The wooden mallet thokked, once, twice, and yet again; gradually calling quiet the bedlam of the Council chamber. The magistrate waved the Advisors down into their seats, and he turned his eyes to the Council Executors.

  Cronon stood before the bench, watching helpless, feeling his wits spin like water down a drain. He tugged listlessly at the cable that bound his wrists, knowing too well that there was no point to it.

  The magistrate extended a finger toward him, and Cronon watched it bob, hypnotically, like a viper priming to strike. He disjointedly pondered how odd that it was—the resemblance between himself and the magistrate; long white hair, thin bony stature, sallow complexion.

  Would that our positions were reversed…

  Still holding the attention of the Executors, the magistrate placed an open palm to his chest and swept his hand downward. The deputies nodded and moved in. Cronon felt himself gripped and manhandled in a brusque, purposeful manner, and he cringed at the sound of tearing and shredding as the Executors stripped away his raiment.

  The magistrate spoke. “The evidence is undeniable. Cronon sa’n Ka’eltan, you are found to have committed a particularly heinous act of treason against the House Alliance. The defense argues that your purpose was humane; the prevention of massive bloodshed among the colonies and the provision of time for development of the Rejen project.” He nodded grimly. “It is an oddly appealing defense, and though it has no basis in jurisprudence, there may be some perverse truth to it.” He shook his head. “But it is equally plausible that the Council would have voted against military intercession, and in whichever case you could not have known the outcome that would ultimately derive from your action.” He smiled a thin, cold, line. “Other than, of course, the death of the Zemplar.”

  Cronon shivered, both from the chill draft on his prickly bare skin and from the panicked surety of what was to follow. The magistrate straightened to full height and raised his voice to make his officious pronouncement.

  “Cronon sa’n Ka’eltan. You are herewith stripped of all rank, privilege, and endowment, and you are banished, with no means beyond what you might fashion with your wits and bare hands, to fare as you will on the blighted Flat of Galtar.” The magistrate’s gaze strayed away, and he spoke softly. “In spite of myself, I pity you.”

  The magistrate nodded curtly to the executors, and calloused hands gripped Cronon’s arms. He was brusquely turned to face the air-lock that opened onto the murk beyond, and his legs turned to water. As he was drug away, limp and unresisting, Cronon fought to fashion words of protest; to beg for penance, or for mercy.

  But only gibberish burbled from his lips.

  A Thousand Years Hence

  With his legs splayed outward and his fingers laced behind his head, Cairn shifted one way and squirmed another, seeking out the familiar curvature of his old acquaintance. But try as he might he could not find a proper fit against the weathered profile of the rocky crag, and soon enough his puzzled frown turned up in a rueful smile. A decade past he might have hunkered low in this hollow at the outcropping’s base—commander of his bastion, hidden and secure but still daring and adventurous. He chuckled softly. The landscape remained virtually unchanged, yet everything felt so very different. The matter of it was—he had since grown up. Cairn sa’n Alar leaned forward, arching his back, stretching his arms and rolling his head side to side. Tight muscles grudgingly relaxed, and he let his gaze wander absently.

  Abruptly he caught his breath, pursing his lips as he squinted a distance out...

  The Blight of House Alar is the prologue of the SFF novel ‘Water Harvest’, available from most ebook distributors

  About the Author

  Eric is a tinkerer; he likes to make things. Perhaps it began with a custom van built in the long-haired days of the seventies—an old school bus with an engine salvaged from the junk yard. Or with the dozens of motorcycles ridden, broken, repaired and ridden again. Eric has built furniture and guitars; he’s screen-printed t-shirts in his garage and he’s created package-design. As a teen he created a basic billing system for a huge newspaper route (because he didn’t like knocking on doors), and he currently writes software for corporate clients—for a time working out of the traveling RV he and Sue called home. He built and flew a gyrocopter over the cane-fields and beaches of south Florida, and he’s done website design.

  But of all the avocations and pass-times in which he has dabbled, Eric is most captured by one. Consider that most elusive of creations—the story, imaginings passed from one mind to another. Ink on paper, black on white—a collection of simple symbols woven into a complex journey bounded only by the imagination.

  After more than three decades in south Florida, Eric and lovely wife Susan moved to the Upstate region of South Carolina. Motorcycling remains a life-long passion (he enjoys teaching the occasional weekend safety class to bright-eyed newbies, both young and old), and he forever persists in being confounded by the acoustic guitar.

  He was likely a cat in a previous life, as there’s a definite affinity. He might look odd to some as he walks by with a pair of walking sticks, a rear-view mirror clipped to his bill-cap. A little girl runs alongside to wave her hand and call out “Hi Mister ski-man!”

  Shhh! Don’t say that I told you so, but Eric still wonders what it is that he’ll do, should he ever grow up….