NOVEL WEB Chapter 39 : Detonation
Arc IV : The Angkorian Occupation
Chapter XXXIX : Detonation
Lateday of Diapente, Sixth Day of Autumnmoon
Józef Brandt choked on the billows of smoke. He crawled on hands and knees, injured and disoriented, amid dust, debris, and searing flames. Something tugged at his waist, but he wrenched himself free. He coughed as blackened ash stung his lungs. He retched, throat raw, body weak, legs limp. Yet something still held him back.
A voice pleaded. “Please, my prince. We must escape!”
“Get your hands off of me!” he demanded, clawing his way forward. His bloodshot eyes, crusted with soot, were useless to him. He groped, blindly, hoping to find his companion.
He screamed. “Find her! I command you!”
Deep inside the wreckage, perhaps beneath a fallen column or pile of rubble, she lay helpless. He had to act fast, before she was burned alive. He was terrified, singularly focused, desperate to find her, except for the blasted hands that kept pulling! Angry and frustrated, he wriggled free, fought to move forward, until the mortar fell. He felt pain, and the back of his head felt warm and wet. He collapsed, arms and legs unresponsive ….
Moments earlier, things were peaceful and tranquil. He was casually strumming a lute, his favorite instrument. Shoulder length brown hair, fair blue eyes, skinny frame … he was a dashing young man, just months ahead of his fifteenth birthday. Soft whiskers grew along his chin and upper lip, and he wore them proudly.
He lay atop a comfortable velvet pillow, while she rested at his side. His soothing music flowed through The Garden, a room that Józef found to be the most idyllic place in the castle. It had plants and flowers in abundance, growing out of colorful pottery. A window made of rose quartz diffused a sunbeam into decadent hues of ginger and peach.
The girl beside him gazed at a mural on the ceiling, a botanical scene of twining vines and teeming vegetation that stretched from end to end and down the walls. Water splashed from a marble fountain in the room’s center, a fluid accompaniment to the strings of his lute. She said it made her feel like home, which Józef found amusing. Away for only a few weeks and already homesick.
Józef had helped her to leave. She must have told him a dozen times in her letters how much she yearned to see the world beyond her small Vinetan village. Her main obstacle was an unwilling and overprotective father. The man, an accomplished scholar who eyed her every move. Józef understood her needs better than most. His father made him a prisoner, too. The castle was merely a different kind of prison.
As heir to the Kitezhian throne, Józef could never escape the watchful eyes of his wardens. They restricted what he could do, where he could go, and whom he could see. As Henrich’s son, he ought to have the power to come and go as he pleased. Otherwise, he ought to have the right to relinquish his inheritance and demand independence. Unfortunately, he was allowed neither. Power wasn’t worth much, when he had less autonomy than the servant’s children.
As soon as he was old enough to take matters into his own hands, Józef fled the country. He stowed away on a Koban sea vessel with nothing more than his lute and the clothes on his back. Making coin was easy. Folks kept on giving him coppers every time he played. No one questioned his attire, either. At least, not at first. It seemed professional performers often dressed with grandeur and pomp, so his clothes fit right in. Of course, it made it easy for his guardians to catch up and identify him. He needed to be smarter, next time.
It turned out that next time was with a traveling circus enroute to Vineta. Before stowing away, he stole a set of old clothes from a peddler who wasn’t paying attention. A small demonstration of his skills to the ringmaster was all it took to join their posse. He spent a whole month traveling to small woodland villages, sharing music and mirth.
The night before his caretakers caught up, he met a young girl with tight red curls and a playful smile. Her beauty and free spirit captivated him. He watched her dance as his fingers sent rapturous notes to the audience.
After the show, he found her, and they talked for hours. He told her of the places he’d been, watching as her eyes sparkled with envy. She begged him to take her with him, and in the heat of the moment, he felt as if fortune moved him to act. He held her hand and promised to show her places so wondrous that bards would tell tales of their adventures. They sealed the promise with a kiss; his first, which he savored like none other.
That was when her father interrupted. With the eyes of a beast and the magic of a witch, he caged Józef inside invisible bars. Against his daughter’s angry protests, the scholar whisked her away, leaving Josef out in the open for his guardians to find. He was back on a Kitezhian bound ship the very next morn.
For almost a year, he obsessed with the idea of seeing her again and spent months planning his next escape. He found an ally among the castle’s work staff, who had a brother still living in Vineta. For the meager payment of a ruby pendant, which he found among the heaps of jewels in his father’s treasury, the servant agreed to be a messenger for Józef’s secret correspondence. They were in the form of letters, which the servant sent to his brother, who then delivered them to the young lady in the woodland village.
When the day finally came, Józef stowed away on a westbound vessel to the Vinetan capital. From there, he played on the streets for copper pennies, hoping to purchase a guide that would lead him to his destination. As chance would have it, the guide wasn’t necessary. Among his audience was the young lady, who had grown ever more beautiful. Their eyes locked, and he was in love.
She told him that she had managed to escape her father, and luck had brought them together. It seemed like an autobiographical ballad he was destined to write. Hand in hand, he brought her to where he knew his guardians were waiting—and convinced them that he wouldn’t return without the girl at his side. Indifferent to one more passenger, his guardians took them both.
That had been just a few weeks earlier, and neither counted the days. Józef cherished his time with her, as if each moment lasted a lifetime. She was his Freedom, his Muse, the Love of his Life. He wrote dozens of songs in her name, which he played in The Garden, thinking of everything and of nothing. The sunlight through the rose quartz window warmed his face, and he smiled.
He had just completed the second verse of his sonata when the floor shook, jarring him from his pleasant interlude. He ceased playing and approached the window. Through the thin translucent quartz, he saw a clear and tranquil sky, with nothing but particles of dust drifting lazily between sunrays.
“Wha’ d’ya think it was?” she asked.
“I see nothing,” he responded.
She stood up and joined him at the window. Pointing to an object flying overhead, she cried out. Józef remembered reversing direction, leading her away by the arm, when a flash of light nearly blinded him. The window blew inward, along with the adjoining wall. Thousands of rocky fragments scattered across the room. Somewhere inside a cloud of dust and debris, his beloved companion disappeared. He cried out, when a second explosion threw him against the opposite wall, taking the wind right out of him. Fire seeped through corners of the room, and the air darkened.
Shortly after, the first set of arms grabbed hold of his waist. Debris landed on his head, and he lost consciousness. By the time his head cleared, he was surrounded by dark shapes. One of them grabbed hold and flung him over their shoulders. He hollered.
“Help! She’s in there. Help her, please!”
The shapes didn’t care. They were ordered to save him, not her. They ignored his protests and removed him from the burning room. He begged them to stop, as the halls of the castle rumbled and shook. He forced his eyes open, but they stung. All he could see were motes of ash, floating through the air like newly hatched fireflies. They buzzed in his ears, along with a dull ringing. Explosions reverberated throughout the castle, but they all sounded the same. A chronic, never-ending ring.
He reached out, repeating her name through tearful pleas.
“Angela, Angela ….”