"How?"
The serving boy's half uttered question flopped out of his puffy mouth.
The oldman, squinted his eyes lazily at the boy's visage.
The serving boy was tall for his age, and stood eye to eye to where the oldman sat. The boy couldn't be more than two hands old.
"I once knew someone. He almost died reaching this mountain that I speak of. It was a boy... No older than you are now."
The oldman looked up, wistfully, "Indeed. It is the meek such as you. That find inner strength to do what ought to be improbable."
The boy tried to believe what the oldman was saying was true. He wondered if the oldman really knew God's Finger. The oldman retracted into himself, the flamelight made it seem he had disappeared into his robes. The oldman spoke, and the serving boy could hear sorrow and regret in his voice:
"I was his teacher."
next: The Spire
2007-08-10
2007-08-06
The Tale of the Oldman
On a slow Tuesday night in one of any of the many places where man gather, to eat, drink, sleep and exchange lies, a wizened old man told a serving boy the following tall-tale:
Beyond the desert of the cursed, beyond the sea of sorrows, beyond the places where man does not thread, beyond the wild where beasts fear no man, far beyond the lands that gods once claimed for themselves.
There is a mountain.
It is not the biggest mountain, nor the smallest. It isn't the most dangerous or the most difficult to find. It is only the hardest mountain to reach in the known world. A mountain that only a person with a purpose can get to. Indeed, it is said that only a person consumed with rage may find it. Only a person completely devoid of any desire except one may return from it.
That desire... Revenge it is called.
On that mountain, it is said, an old man lives. A man as old as any man can be old. And then, older still. Some people say that this old man will die the day someone sets foot on the mountain. Others say the old man will die after presenting his visitor with a one-of-a-kind gift. Some people say the man will utter a few words before dying:
''I should have wished for death...''
With the oldman gone, the gift is given! It is a gift few would be worthy of. It is the finger of a god, cut by a god. Resized, reshaped...
As a sword!
Next: The Serving Boy Asks A Question
Beyond the desert of the cursed, beyond the sea of sorrows, beyond the places where man does not thread, beyond the wild where beasts fear no man, far beyond the lands that gods once claimed for themselves.
There is a mountain.
It is not the biggest mountain, nor the smallest. It isn't the most dangerous or the most difficult to find. It is only the hardest mountain to reach in the known world. A mountain that only a person with a purpose can get to. Indeed, it is said that only a person consumed with rage may find it. Only a person completely devoid of any desire except one may return from it.
That desire... Revenge it is called.
On that mountain, it is said, an old man lives. A man as old as any man can be old. And then, older still. Some people say that this old man will die the day someone sets foot on the mountain. Others say the old man will die after presenting his visitor with a one-of-a-kind gift. Some people say the man will utter a few words before dying:
''I should have wished for death...''
With the oldman gone, the gift is given! It is a gift few would be worthy of. It is the finger of a god, cut by a god. Resized, reshaped...
As a sword!
Next: The Serving Boy Asks A Question
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