The Hall of Heroes

12. - Sworn enemies

The hillside graveyard behind the village of Jalka was small - proportionate to the size and age of the village that had not stood there for more than sixty years. The gravestones were also proportionate to the wealth of the village's inhabitants - very few of them were stone, most of them were wooden symbols of some of the local deities or simple nicely carved wooden animals. It was no surprise everything in the graveyard was made of wood since the undertaking business was run by the local carpenter Standa - Fanda's employer.

It was late in the evening and nobody was supposed to be here - the superstition and legends of old warlocks that raised the dead from their graves in ages long gone led the villagers to believe no one should stay in the graveyard after dark. But Fanda knew better now.

He was lying down, near one of the smallish trees that stood there, overlooking the place reserved for the dead. Fanda didn't feel uncomfortable close to the dead at all. In fact, he felt safe here. He learned to trust the dead in the time his mind was one with Horden's.

It was not that his mind would simply disappear during the time Horden inhabited his body. He felt, saw and heard everything, and he knew all the thoughts that went through Horden's mind during the time. And just like Horden gained access to all of Fanda's memories, so did Fanda gain access to Horden's.

In his lifetime, Horden lived in an age greater than Fanda's. In this age, the land was governed by a superior kingdom, which united the lesser baronies and strongholds under one banner and kept law and order throughout the land. In Fanda's days, the law and order were kept only in the big cities and everywhere in the countryside, the villages were on their own. Fanda remembered how Horden walked the great halls of the dead in some metropolis of this ancient world. It was a grand and beautiful temple of the dead that in Fanda's own day surely lay long forgotten under years of dust and soil. In the light of those faded memories, this graveyard seemed like a little beacon of that power and magic these places once held.

And there he was, lying in the company of the dead - the source of Horden's magical powers. He lifted his arm and looked into his palm. He tried to duplicate what he had watched Horden do while he was in his body - to call upon the spirits of the ancestors. He held his palm over a grave and called the name of the ancestor that laid buried there. But it didn't work. No power rose from the grave and no spirit answered Fanda's prayer. So he let his hand sink into his lap.

"I will find it again!" he swore to himself. "One day, I will find it again!"

At about the same time, Marie was closing up the bar. It was unusually crowded all that evening and everybody kept talking about the return of the messengers. Marie was particularly eager to see her husband, especially after she had heard from the people that he had come back changed. That an alien soul was residing within him. 

She saw any change in Alois as both a concern and an opportunity for herself. But surprisingly, he didn't show up at the pub all evening.

So she was surprised, when she found his clothes thrown down on the floor in front of the door to the cellar workroom. She put her ear to the door and listened for a while. She heard a splash of water and a voice saying, "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! You got what you wanted, old man. You're gonna see the world." She knew that the voice belonged to her husband, but she didn't recognize it at all. The tone and the mood of it were so alien to her it seemed as though an entirely different person was speaking.

She opened the door. Alois, or whoever he was now, was in the washtub, his hairy knees and chest sticking out of the water.

"Oh, Marie. It's you." he said, turning his face towards her.