Legends of Gravenstone: The Secret Voyage Read online

  Legends of

  Gravenstone

  The Secret Voyage

  A Novel By:

  Alex Aguilar

  For us, the dreamers with no voice.

  Never stop fighting…

  A special thanks to

  Peter Crowley & Mattia Turzo.

  Neither one of you knows me.

  But your magnificent music saved me from

  Writer’s Block more times than I can count.

  Foreword

  My name’s Jack Barlowe.

  It is my name and mine alone.

  Nothing in the world has been more misunderstood than a troubled mind.

  Many are often quick to mark people as ‘mad’, ‘radical’, or ‘loose in the head’ simply because one’s opinion does not match with theirs.

  But the mind was destined to doubt, destined to wonder, destined to question every aspect of life. Of course, upon doing so, the mind tends to drift into troubled territory and a person may find themselves questioning the truth, seeking some form of meaning in a world where there is none to find.

  It is because of this that people often become lost…

  Whether they’re lost in their work, in their beliefs, or in a barrel of ale, people seek only a way to soothe their minds from the cruel reality that the world has no true significance. The world simply is. And we are but specks of dust drifting with it, always have been.

  It is because of this that, when the atrocities of the world burden the mind, I find it often helpful to remind yourself of your name. Simple as it may seem, it is the one thing that nobody can take from you. They can beat you down to nothing, take away your hope and pride, make you feel like you’re nothing but an utter waste of space on this earth…

  But you will always have your name. Always.

  It is a minor reminder that, while there may be millions of people out there, you will always be you. It is a reminder of your singularity. And it’s quite remarkable how something so trivial can often lift you when your spirit is drowning in despair.

  Trust me, I would know… I remind myself every miserable morning…

  My name’s Jack Barlowe, I say to myself. And I’m the world’s greatest storyteller.

  Or at least, I used to be… These days, hardly anyone outside of this village knows my name, and those that do haven’t many great things to say about it. For someone who was once acquainted with folk of great regard, many would say I have shit luck to end up in this piss-pot. And the rest, well… They figure I’m just some crazy old man with delusions of grandeur...

  But I know who I am… I know what I’ve lived through…

  I may not be in the same league as the Queen Savior or the Guardian Knight, but I was there when the whole mess happened. And that’s more than anyone in this wretched village can say for themselves.

  The world was a different place when I was a young lad. I can hardly recognize my own face when I look at my reflection some days. My eyes are about the only familiar image of the life I once had. The rest of me, sadly, has deteriorated along with my mind.

  Some mornings, in fact, it takes me a moment to remember my name.

  And it is a moment that terrifies me, truth be told…

  This morning’s by far the worst. I’m lying there face down on the floor of my humble little cottage, my eyelids shut and my body aching from head to toe. My throat feels hoarse and my wine-tainted lips are painfully dry. If it were up to me, I’d sleep the whole bloody day. But that damn market’s up and running and the chattering outside is growing by the minute.

  The throbbing in my head forces me awake, but I can’t bring myself to move just yet. I manage to open one eye; the other’s pressed against the wooden floorboards. The first thing I see is an empty glass bottle, just inches from my face, and the wiry legs of a black beetle crawling inside of it.

  I hear a sudden knock on my door; a gentle knock, like that of a nervous child.

  The only response I can muster is a soft groan as I lie there and hope my untimely visitor will give up and leave before I gather the energy to say ‘piss off’.

  But no such luck… Instead, the knock gets louder…

  “Mister Barlowe!” a girl calls from the outside.

  Damn it all to hells…

  Reluctantly, I rise to my knees. I feel last night’s dinner crawling up my throat for a moment, and so I take a few deep breaths to ease it back down.

  “Mister Barlowe!” the annoying little rat keeps calling for me.

  Does she not realize what time it is…?

  “He’s not in there, stupid!” says another voice, this one more muffled.

  “It’s 2 hours ‘til mid-day. Where else would he be?” the girl replies. Her gentle knocks turn into a persistent thumping. “MISTER BARLOWE!!”

  I stumble to the door and open it. The sun’s light burns my eyes like hells’ fire. And I can see the silhouette of the tiny redheaded thing standing there on my doorway. With a hand pressed against my forehead, I say the first thing that comes to my mind.

  “Quit that bloody knockin’ if you want to keep that hand of yours, girl…”

  My words are hardly coherent through my slurring, and what should have been intimidating instead comes across as laughable. I leave the door open and walk gently towards my armchair. As usual, the children allow themselves in.

  “Told you,” I hear the girl say as she closes the door behind her.

  As I sink into my chair, I can tell from their scowls that they hate the smell of incense and liquor in the room. And yet they keep coming back, gods know why. It’s as much a mystery to me as the reason behind those silly little hats the schoolhouse made them wear. The girl asks if she can open a window, but I harshly decline, telling her I very much like a dim atmosphere in my home. Instead, I allow her to light a few of my candles. Once I force myself back to my senses, I recognize my three visitors right away.

  A redheaded girl about ten years old, her freckled cousin that looks just like her except for his shorter wiry hair, and their close friend, an elf boy with sharp ears and blue skin the color of the sea.

  “Little rats!” I groan at them. “Don’t you know it’s ten years bad luck to wake a sleepin’ man?”

  “I’ve never heard such a thing,” the redheaded boy says. “Ten years?”

  “Aye,” I say to him. “Fifteen if he’s hungover.”

  The elf boy chuckles under his breath. “Which is, in your case, always?”

  “Shut it, lad…”

  While the boys laugh, the girl sets her rucksack down on my bedspread, which happens to be merely three feet from where I had passed out.

  “Shouldn’t you lot be at the schoolhouse?” I ask, pretending to be rude. Truly I hardly remember the last time I had a visitor that wasn’t one of these three. Isolation isn’t good for the mind… You start talking to the walls or pretending the mice in your kitchen are people…

  “The schoolhouse?” asks the elf boy, his silver eyebrows arched with confusion. “But it’s the seventh day.”

  “What?” I sit there slightly baffled. “No it’s not… it’s the fifth.”

  “It’s the seventh,” the girl says, and it is her word I take for granted. She’s always been, after all, the most honest of the three.

  “Piss off… is it really?” I lean forward and press my hands against my temples.

  “Are you feeling well?” the human boy asks. “You look a bit ill.”

  “He’s hungover again,” the elf boy says. “Fetch him some water.”

  “Never mind the water!” I say to the elf boy. “Fetch me that bottle over in that corner there…”

  He obeys. And I thank h
im silently for not forcing me to get up from my chair.

  “We came to hear about Queen Magdalena!” the girl says excitedly, as she settles a pillow on the wooden floor and sits near my chair.

  “Piss off!” her cousin says, taking a seat next to her. “No one cares about the bloody queen. I want to hear the one about the thief & the witch!”

  “To hells with the lot of you!” the elf boy says as he fumbles through a cluster of half-empty bottles. “Mister Barlowe promised he’d tell us about the Guardian this week!”

  “Fine,” the girl sighs. “But while you’re at it, will you at least tell us a bit about the first-ever Lady Knight?”

  “No one cares about the Lady Knight!” says her cousin.

  “I care!”

  “You would!”

  “Will the both of you shut your arses?!” I snap at them. It’s not that I hate them, but the pain in my head only gets worse with every one of their shouts.

  “Is this it?” asks the elf boy as he hands me a bottle of Roquefort liqueur.

  “No,” I reply, snatching the bottle from the boy’s hands. “But it’ll do…”

  I drink from it as if I were drinking apricot juice. A few specks dribble down my bushy grey beard and I hear the children giggle. The liqueur burns my throat, fuels me, gives me the energy that I need to continue. I set the bottle down and take a deep breath. Without looking at my reflection, I can guess that my eyes are a frightening red. But the children don’t seem to pay it any mind. Hells, they’ve been visiting me every seventh day for the better half of a year, they ought to be used to it by now.

  In a moment of reticence, I glance down and smell the inner side of my shirt.

  As I suspect, it reeks of sweat and ale… Not to mention, the clothes I’m wearing are so old and worn, I look like a beggar. I start to wonder why these kids look at me that way every time they come to visit. While the rest of the village looks at me like a madman, they look at me with nothing but wonder in their innocent little eyes.

  “I brought you a cantaloupe!” the girl suddenly says to me.

  “I didn’t ask for food…”

  “But me mum says you’ll die soon if you don’t eat! Besides, your cooking is rubbish.”

  “Watch your tongue there, ginger…”

  “Wynnifred!”

  “I don’t care,” I say to her as I take another gulp from my bottle.

  Truthfully, however, hers was the only name I did remember… If you asked me to name the other two, I’d die before I could tell you. The three of them are sitting about four feet in front of my chair, their attention fixed solely on me, begging me to fuel their imagination with my stories.

  “Now… where was I?”

  “You were going to tell us about the Guardian!” the elf boy says eagerly, brushing his shaggy silver hair out of his view.

  “Can’t you just give us a bit about the Lady Knight?” Wynnifred asks.

  “Oh will you shut it about the bloody Lady Knight already!?” her cousin shouts.

  “She once rode a fire-breathing dragon!” she says. “The Guardian never did that!”

  “Don’t be daft! Dragons are not real!”

  “Actually they are, I heard the Guardian was eaten by one!” the elf boy intervenes.

  “That’s a load of shite!” the redheaded boy says. “The Guardian was decapitated.”

  “No, he wasn’t!”

  “He was!”

  “Well which was it, Mister Barlowe?” the girl asks.

  “Bloody hells, can you lot just whisper for a bit?” I say, groaning as my head throbs something awful.

  “You’re daft!” says the boy to the elf. “But not dafter than my sister Wren… She thinks it was poison that killed ‘im…”

  “Bollocks, all of it!” I finally say as I take another sip, this time a smaller one. “Now… the lot of you can sit there and shout at each other all day or you can listen to me.”

  The look of bewilderment in their little eyes returns. They get comfortable in their places and listen attentively as I take my last gulp and begin.

  “What you fail to realize, children… is that it’s all the same story,” I say to them. “The Guardian wasn’t always the Guardian, y’see… Much like the Queen wasn’t always the Queen…”

  “And what about Blackwood?” asks the redheaded boy.

  “Oh that sneaky bastard was a thief since birth, I’m sure.”

  The children chuckle amongst one another, looking at me with anticipation and delight. Frankly, it’s moments like these that I truly live for… Moments when I ceased to be the drunken madman, the beggar, the laughingstock of the town… I wasn’t just that ‘poor old fool’ that peasants judged and guards frowned upon. I wasn’t a doomed halfwit that people were scared of someday becoming. I was the ever-knowing Jack Barlowe, a man that was once known as the greatest storyteller that ever lived.

  “So where exactly did the Guardian Knight come from?” asks the elf boy.

  “Patience, lad,” I reply with a grin. “You’ll find out in due time… For I know the perfect story for you all… A story filled with adventure and horror and wonders beyond your wildest dreams… The story of a ragtag group of misfits brought together by fate and roped into a voyage that would ultimately change the world, as they knew it… A group of misfits so different yet more alike than they cared to realize… A group of misfits that would one day become legends…”

  I

  The Humble Days

  In a world filled with magic and wonder, there was once a place called Gravenstone. Rich, verdant, and full of life, this wondrous nation was as replete with beauty as it was with myths and tales of grand adventure. Conflicts over power, unexpected allegiances between foes, voyages filled with peril and death, the rich history of Gravenstone had it all.

  For many centuries, it was the only land known to exist, until great voyagers sailed the Draeric Sea and discovered the nations of Qamroth, Ahari, and Noorgard. But Gravenstone was where it had all began. Every race to ever exist, in one way or another, could trace their roots right back to this mystifying land.

  The year was 1121, in the age of silver, when Gravenstone was home to a vast array of life. But with the beauty of diversity comes the inevitable tension and conflict, and over the years the inhabitants of this land succumbed into a pit of turmoil and disorder.

  It was said that, in the beginning of time, the Gods of Nayarith ruled the earth.

  It was said that they were the ones who created every race that lives today.

  The myth, should it be true, proclaimed that there had been nine gods to walk the land. And every one of them created their children in their own image. The god of humans created them all in different shades of brown, just as the dirt from which they came. The goddess of the elves drew specks from the great seas to create her children, and so their skin varied in tones of blue, some as pale as a chicory flower and others as dark as the midnight sky. The same went for the god of the green-skinned orcs, who created them from the leaves of the earth, as did the god of the goblins. And soon after, the gnomes were born, their goddess creating them to be smaller and more nimble than humans. And, of course, then came the minotauros, the pixies, the ogres, and the nymphs. The gods left their children to live in harmony, in the land they had themselves created, and drifted to the skies, where they could watch over them for all eternity.

  Truth or myth, it was a philosophy that, over the centuries, had influenced a great many humans in power, from ministers to historians, even kings. But the greed and vanity of humans and their inability to match the traits of their sibling races had become a burden.

  The strength of the orc, the agility and speed of the elf, the wings of the pixie…

  The idea of there existing a race more powerful was something that humans could not bear. It gave way for great unrest that ultimately led to an uprising. Humankind increased in numbers and power, thus leading to a clash among the races known as the Great War.

  After
a decade of mayhem and bloodspill, humankind won the war.

  They proclaimed that any creature whose race was anything but human was to be banished into the Woodlands, a land of darkness and peril, and prohibited from ever setting foot in human realms… The price for breaking this law was certain and inevitable death.

  Our story takes place approximately 250 years after the Great War, during a time in which life seemed simple and mundane. As with any other land, there were inevitable quarrels, yet never one as immeasurable and with as much loss of life as the Great War had been.

  Gravenstone was split into two kingdoms.

  To the east was the kingdom of Vallenghard, ruled by King Rowan of Val Havyn.

  To the west was the kingdom of Halghard, and it had been ruled by King Frederic of Morganna for many decades until his unexpected passing. They say the man had died in his sleep, though many whispers in the king’s court spoke of foul play.

  And lastly, in the center of the land, separating the two kingdoms was the vast green forest known as the Woodlands. It was a place that, after centuries of isolation from humankind, became a forbidden terrain through which not many souls would dare cross and the few that did were lucky to escape with every one of their limbs still attached, if they escaped at all.

  Our story begins, as most stories would, with a particular group that dared to question the ways of the world. A group of brave souls that would transform it all.

  Just beyond the blue hills, two miles south of the grand royal city of Val Havyn, there stood a humble village known as Elbon, which consisted of a strand of farms and rich fertile land that stretched for miles in every direction.

  It had always been customary for the villagers of Elbon to work and harvest for six days of the week and rest on the seventh. On this particular seventh day, there was an eerie silence as the cold, humid breeze of dawn filled the air. The sun was starting to show its first light, but unlike any sunrise in the previous six days, there was hardly any sign of life throughout the village.