An Elegy of Heroes Read online

  K.S. Villoso

  An Elegy of Heroes

  The Agartes Epilogues Trilogy

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogues, places, events, situations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  Liam’s Vigil Publishing Co.

  633-255 Newport Drive

  Port Moody, V3H 5H1

  BC, Canada

  Copyright © 2018 by K.S. Villoso

  Cover art by Mon Macairap

  ISBN: 978-1-7752356-4-4

  www.ksvilloso.com

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For more information, address Liam’s Vigil Publishing Co.

  Table of Contents

  JAETH’S EYE

  Prologue

  ACT ONE

  ACT TWO

  ACT THREE

  AINA’S BREATH

  Prologue

  ACT ONE

  ACT TWO

  ACT THREE

  SAPPHIRE’S FLIGHT

  Prologue

  ACT ONE

  ACT TWO

  ACT THREE

  Acknowledgements

  Characters At a Glance

  Main Cast

  KEFIER TAR’ELIAN

  SUME KAGGAWA

  ENOSH TAR’ELIAN

  In the Kag

  OJI KAGGAWA

  GAVEN

  HERTRA YLIR YN FERRAL

  GORRHEN YN GARR

  CAMDEN

  LILLAH

  JARCHE

  ARN

  CAISO

  ARLISA

  BAEDDAN

  THIAR

  ROK

  LADY ISOBEL

  KING ELREND

  ABEL

  ADEN

  In Jin-Sayeng

  HANA KAGGAWA

  DAI KAGGAWA

  ROSHA

  TETSUNG

  HIRONG SETHI

  NARANI

  YESHIN ORENAR

  ICHI ROK SAGAR

  RYSARAN IKESSAR

  RYIA IKESSAR

  In Gaspar

  AZCHAI

  REEMA

  MAKIN

  MHAGAZA

  SAPPHIRE

  MOON

  KASTOR ROG-BANNAL

  VILUM

  XYL

  FACI

  In Dageis

  IZO AS’ONDARO

  MAHE AMIREN

  CERES

  Preface

  The very notion of an epic tale revolves around epic stakes. A group of heroes band together, overcoming all odds in order to save the world.

  Like many young fantasy novelists, I wanted to write my own epic, using my own world. And so I crafted Agos-agan from scratch, pulling out important bits from Filipino myths and culture, and fashioning them into something substantial. A playground, a sounding board, a medium for more creations. But when the time came to sit down and write, I began to ask myself a few questions. How would real people react to a fantasy world, with epic things happening around them? More importantly, what would make someone want to overcome those odds in the first place? Because given the choice between facing certain death to save strangers or running away to be with the ones I love, I know what I’d do. I decided to tackle this project a different way.

  In The Agartes Epilogues, the heroes exist…but mostly in the background. Instead, the bulk of the narrative revolves around three “minor” characters—people who (at least in the very beginning) lack heroic traits and are simply trying to survive, and unwittingly find themselves intertwined with the epic plot. This approach allowed me to explore events through the lens of people who don’t really need to save the world, which then gave me the room to touch the same themes that arise in most epic fantasy novels.

  Writers, I think, don’t learn without taking great risks, and this one was bigger than most. It took me well over a decade to nail this story down, and even getting to the final version was a rough road. And yet I learned so much, and the whole endeavour has been worth it. The Agartes Epilogues was the beginning of a journey, of which so many others had taken and I am proud to continue to be a part of—a journey into the beating heart of humanity underneath the shroud of the fantastic.

  Kay Villoso

  September 2018

  Anmore, BC

  Items of Interest, Salvaged Over The Years

  JAETH’S EYE

  Prologue

  It is not recorded how Agartes knew it was his son’s head inside the box. Some speculate that even as far back as the Battle at Kiel Peak, he was already showing signs of being connected to the agan. That might indeed explain many of his heroic deeds and why he had always seemed to be in the right place at the right time—at least, until that day.

  What is written is how Agartes paused at the doorway for a long time. Creases lined his forehead, but his face remained impassive. He turned to his steward, the dark-bearded Urthen, and said, “There’s nothing here.”

  “Are you certain?” Urthen tried to peer through the doorway, but Agartes’ enormous frame was blocking his view.

  “I am always certain.” Agartes’ voice was calm and clear. “Go and check on the others. I will meet you outside.”

  Urthen tipped his head forward and disappeared around the path that led to the servants’ quarters, a few minutes’ walk from the main house. When they first married, Myrn had nightmares of dying in her bed in a fire and took the liberty of having a separate building constructed uphill. It had twelve rooms, a kitchen with an oven large enough for a roast pig, and a pantry three rooms big. And because Myrn was the kind of woman who took her fears and turned them into accomplishments, she commissioned the builder Sogar apn Tal for an enormous dining hall and garden. The parties she hosted had been the talk of Tilarthan for many years.

  Agartes sat down. Thinking about Myrn’s parties did nothing to stop his trembling hands. He looked at the box again, angled near the staircase. It was the wooden kind they shipped fruit in and the bottom of it was wet.

  He took a deep breath and convinced himself that it was probably one of his dogs, dismembered so as to frighten him. That got him out of the chair. He tipped the box over with his foot. The head rolled out and stopped by the pile of boots at the door. Myar’s eyes stared into space. It was difficult to tell if he died fighting, struggling, or unaware.

  Myar. The sturdy, bright, athletic one who liked horses and wanted so badly to be a blacksmith someday. Agartes always agreed half-heartedly, because he and Myrn had enough money to send him to school, and why should the boy be holding a hammer and tongs when he could be learning from books and making a name for himself? The last time they had talked about that, a month ago from today, Myar had been insistent. “But Da,” he’d said, his nose wrinkling the way it always had since he was a child, “Rusak is willing to apprentice me in Tilarthan. We’re not talking about horseshoes, Da. I don’t want to be a farrier. Think about it. I have a chance to learn about weapons and make real art!”

  Agartes removed his cloak and covered the head with it. His heart was fluttering, like an autumn leaf struggling against the wind. It took him a moment, but he managed to murmur Yohak’s prayer of peace before starting up the stairs.

  Aldeti was in the hall right next to the staircase, curled up in a ball so tight that at first, Agartes could’ve sworn he was just asleep. His viol
lay a few feet from him, ever faithful in death even as in life, shattered in several pieces. Agartes closed his eyes and uttered his second prayer that night. He added another prayer after that, that it would be the last. He tightened his jaw and pressed forward.

  A dead dog met him in the study. And also Jairon and Sera, the twins, their arms wrapped tight as if trying to shield each other from whatever it was that ended their lives. His face maintained its composure as he found a blanket for them. Even when he saw their mother, his wife Myrn, on the floor at the other end of the room, he didn’t weep.

  He got to his knees and sat next to her. He thought back to the day they met—how she wore a plain cotton dress, hair unbound. “Why are you staring at me?” she’d demanded of him. She didn’t care that he’d just been made general by the king of Hafod an hour ago. She was only fifteen years old, daughter of a minor lord, and to her he was nothing but a source of amusement—an older man hopelessly in love.

  She was twenty when they wed; he had waited, wooed her for that long. “Fine,” she’d said, the day she agreed. “I’ve had it with your pestering. You,” she’d added, pointing at her decrepit, toothless father who wanted the wedding even more than Agartes did, “Make sure my dowry’s big enough. I don’t want to run a household on a budget. We are having children, right?” She’d glanced at Agartes, her eyes burning. “You’re not one of those old fools who think children just get underfoot? I’ve always wanted a big family.”

  “We’ll have a big family,” he’d replied, laughing. “As big as you want. Anything that’s mine to give is yours, Myrn.”

  “It better be.”

  Agartes glanced at her body and tried to say another prayer, but this time the words stuck in his throat. He noticed her broken nails and the scratches on her face; she must have tried really hard to fight them off. But her ripped dress and her soiled undergarments, discarded in a corner, also told him she had failed. They’d ripped her throat, too, after they were done. Or before.

  He felt bile in his mouth and left the room. He nearly tripped on Gorrhen, his eldest. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed him on the way back. Gorrhen, too, had tried to fight—there was a sword in his hand and a grimace on his otherwise still face. His other arm was gone. Gorrhen was going to go with Myar to Tilarthan to get him settled in. He’d sworn, said he knew people. “Women, you mean,” Agartes had told him, laughing. Gorrhen had grinned back and Jonar, who was twelve and had been listening to the conversation, flushed a deep red.

  “Jonar!” he now said out loud, wanting to get it all over and done with. “Vayna! Can you hear me?” He thought that if he named them, they would come running to his open arms the way they always did. He thought if he heard their names it would snap him back to reality—that he would wake up and Myrn would hold him while the rest of this nightmare played out in his head, and only in his head. Only in his head, dear Yohak, please.

  Agartes found Jonar’s body downstairs, in the family dining hall, with two of the servants. As he stood there, he heard a faint noise, like a cat’s mewl, from upstairs. “Vayna,” he gasped, like it was his last breath. His hands began to shake.

  He found her in his own bedroom, hiding underneath the velvet covers. “Da,” she squeaked. Her face was white, but there was no mark on her body. He gathered her in his arms and cradled her head against his chest as if she was an infant all over again. Against her soft skin, he was distinctly aware of his callused hands.

  “It’s all right now, my sweet,” he murmured. Tears streaked past his wrinkled eyes and down his scarred face. He smoothed her beautiful, dark curls, remembering that she had been born with a full head and that they had never cut it. “Da’s here. I won’t let them harm you. You still have me, my little one.”

  When he woke up, he was in a room he couldn’t recognize. The ceiling was made of brick; his house had plaster on it. He saw Urthen standing over him. “Yohak curse you, Urth,” he grumbled. “We should have been on the road hours ago.”

  “Sir?”

  “The road. Myrn explicitly told me if I was late for her gathering I might as well not—” He got up and felt a burning pain along his chest. “What did you give me, Urthen? My arms feel like lead! Is that smell fox fern salve? Why—”

  Urthen placed a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t remember, sir?”

  The grave tone in Urthen’s voice jolted him. He tried to think. The memory that came to him, however, was several years old. Jonar had just been born. He was rubbing the infant’s thin hand with his finger and mentally tracing the lines on his lips, his tiny nose, and his dark eyes so that they would be etched in his memory forever. Born weeks too early, Jonar was so small he did not look like he would live another day. Gorrhen had come up to him tentatively.

  “You want to see the baby?” he remembered asking.

  The eight-year-old nodded. He leaned over the armrest. Gorrhen peered at his brother’s red face and was silent for a long time. “He’ll be okay,” he finally said, turning to his father. “When he’s strong enough, I can teach him how to ride on my pony. I’m getting too big for Prance, anyway.”

  The memory faded. He realized that Urthen was waiting for his response with bated breath. He struggled to regain control of his senses and said, “Have you sent men to find the ones that did this?”

  Urthen nodded. “Olfren of Dageis must have sent the orders. I am certain of this.”

  “He wants me unmanned. So that I cannot lead the king’s forces into battle against him.”

  “You’ll prove him wrong, won’t you?”

  Agartes’ mouth ran dry. He turned away from Urthen and glanced around the room. He noticed there were no other beds. “Where’s Vayna?” he demanded.

  “Sir?”

  “Vayna. Have you found a nurse to care for her? Send for Myrna’s sister. A woman kin will be better than a stranger in these times.”

  “Sir,” Urthen murmured. “You know she’s gone, just like the others.”

  Agartes shook his head. “No. She was alive when I found her. Rot your eyeballs, Urthen, is this your idea of a joke? Take me to her now!”

  “She died, sir. When we found you she was dead in your arms.” Urthen swallowed. “I don’t know how else to tell you this. She was stiff. She must have died hours before you”

  Agartes roared and stormed out of the room. His legs threatened to buckle under him, but he dragged himself out in the hall. Servants rushed in from all sides to hold him. He managed to reach the doorway before they pulled him down. In the distance, he saw the building that was once his home up in flames.

  “Leave him,” a female voice whispered. A hooded figure appeared from the garden. The servants hesitated for a moment before letting him free. He stepped outside and instinctively reached for the sword that wasn’t on his hip.

  “I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” the figure said. She pulled her hood down, revealing the smooth face and pointed ears of a ka-eng. “They had tainted the place. Dageian arts. It is probably why they got as close as they did.”

  “You burnt them, too?” he asked.

  She lifted a sunburnt arm, wrapped in different wooden bangles, and placed it on his. “We could not risk more lives. When your man went in after you, he nearly died. I was surprised that you still lived. You were there too long.”

  “You know these things? I was told the few ka-eng with the agan have fled to the mountains.” He swallowed, looking up again at his burning home. The smell made him want to vomit. “He said my daughter died, too. Did you see her?”

  The ka-eng nodded.

  “Because I saw her. She was alive,” he snarled. “I’ve got a traitor or two in my midst, and I’d like to know who that is. You—who are you and what are you doing here?”

  She dipped her head. “I was passing by.”

  “We’re in Hafod. Ka-eng and kusyani don’t just pass by. You came here for me.”

  She looked at him for a long time before nodding. “My master wanted to speak with you. Yo
u have met him before, I think. Goche is his name.”

  “Goche,” Agartes repeated. He smiled from the corner of his mouth. “I am done with speaking, I think. Today shows me that my path only leads to war and death.” He knelt, his hands tightened into fists. He closed his eyes. “Vayna,” he added. “She was alive. I saw her. I held her. Why are you telling me I will never hold her again?”

  The ka-eng took a deep breath. “Perhaps your mind—”

  “I am Agartes Allaicras. I do not let minor details escape me. I saw the rest of them, didn’t I? She called me, spoke to me. Yet Urthen told me she was dead hours before I got there. What did she die of, ka-eng? Tell me, if you know so much.”

  “She was cut down, like the others.”

  “She was whole. I saw.”

  “Perhaps.” The ka-eng paused. “Her soul may have hung back, waited for you. They are allowed to do that sometimes. You saw her spirit, threading through the stream of agan connected through you.”

  “I felt her in my arms.”

  “You must have held her before. You were remembering, but you had one foot stepping into the other plane. One does not forget the taste of water or the smell of air.”

  His eye stung. He stubbornly wiped it and looked up at the sky. “I hope you’re right,” he murmured.

  “My master Goche says that you possess a strong connection to the agan. Have you not had other such experiences in your youth? Seen things or manipulated elements you otherwise shouldn’t have?”

  “When I met Goche twenty-five years ago, at the ridge near Vildar, some things did happen. But I’ve always thought it was him all along. He wanted to make a hero out of me and got that. So forgive me if I am more suspicious of him than I normally am.”