Fradel (Nevetsecnuac) at
present graciously handed the key to Zaur when the minister politely inquired
about it, seeing no reason at all, to why he should not enlist Zaur Stugr's
help in resolving this mystery.
 |
| 01- THE MYSTERIOUS KEY |
“Oh blessed, gracious Heaven! After all this time you've reached me from
beyond.” Zaur Stugr wanted to cry
out loud, holding back his tears.
"It's probably
nothing of consequence." Zaur had finally ejected as a matter-of-factly,
pressing (puckering, compressing) his lips and feigning mild interest, as he
held on to the key.
"It is a pretty
thing, though. Isn't it?” Zaur looked
directly at Fradel, and at the same time tried making light of the object. "I dare say it’s of unusual construction.”
“Unfortunately," Zaur
then shook his head, "I can't decipher these strange pictographs, these
antiquated, curvilinear indentations at the base of the stem." He reached over and pointed them out to Fradel
(Nevetsecnuac).
Zaur’s not altogether
convincing professed ignorance, after his brief scrutiny of the key, had again
peaked Nevetsecnuac's interest.
"Up to now, I confess, I've prided myself
on being quite an expert at finding the meanings of these sort symbols,
pictographs. I have a sizable collection
of similar curiosities at my disposal.
Naturally, they are kept out of harm's way for private viewing
only. Not everyone shares my interest,
you see.” Zaur was now being unusually talkative, which further apexed
Nevetsecnuac’s curiosity.
"My wife has
harangued me often enough to dispose of such antiquities, insisting that I stay
within the bounds of modern taste. If
you're interested, however, I would be delighted (most happy) to show them to you
when we are better disposed." Zaur Stugr rattled on, playing the eccentric
fool. Inwardly he was considering his
options, devising ways of procuring the key without raising the scholar's
curiosity.
 |
| 02-THE KEY AND THE BOX |
The fact that the pictographs were identical to the
ones on the box Zaur had in his secret possession (he’d kept in the secret
compartment) had confirmed what he had all along suspected.
Just then, mixed feelings
of apprehension, relief and dread washed over Zaur Stugr and gripped his
heart. Oddly enough, he was now afraid
of finding out the truth. He had long
since given up, never expecting to see this key again, much less holding it in
his palm. “I have spent most of my life
searching for this key, expecting it to resolve my lifelong, anguished
dilemma.” He solemnly ruminated
(mused).
As it happens, the key resting
on his palm had conjured up memories both pleasant and dreadful. All the hopeful waiting, the heartbreak, the
loneliness! Suddenly Zaur was most
anxious to get away from the inquisitive scrutiny of Fradel Rurik Korvald and
to get at the box.
“No!”
he checked his impatience. There was
still much that had to be learned and a few things he needed to make certain of
first. His eyes, leaving the key, looked
up sharply.
"Have you shown this
item to anyone else…Zunrogo, perhaps?" Zaur made a deliberate effort at
feigning a moderate interest.
 |
| 03-ZAUR STUGR JP 8 |
Going along with his
host's charade, Fradel (Nevetsecnuac) simply complacently smiled and shook his
head. "No, with everything that
has been happening lately, I'd actually forgotten its existence."
Curiously enough, Nevetsecnuac's answer seemed
to reassure Zaur Stugr and, a sure elated smile widened (in a curvature) his
host's lips.
“You
know full well, all about it, don't you?” Nevetsecnuac silently questioned
his host; but Zaur’s youthful age precluded him from (being directly involved)
having any direct involvement. Regardless,
the key certainly had some personal significance to Zaur. Suddenly the picture was much clearer to
Nevetsecnuac. Zaur Stugr had positively identified the key and knew exactly who it
had belonged to. He could therefore, if
properly coaxed, unravel the identity of at least one of those tortured
skeletons.
Zaur Stugr’s seemingly
placid face was fanned by the light breeze which carried on it the intoxicating
fragrance of the night air and he had remained distractedly quiet for some
time, his mind immersed in a serious recollection.
“What are you afraid of exposing after such an obvious
timespan? Why would you disclaim any
knowledge of its importance to you? Nevetsecnuac,
however, made no outward inquiry and, instead, waited patiently for Zaur's next
response.
Marshaling his thoughts,
Zaur Stugr suddenly turned to face Fradel and, with deliberate calm in his
voice asked, "It is indeed a rare antique.
How did you manage to obtain it?"
Fradel (Nevetsecnuac), in
those lapsed few moments had already anticipated Zaur’s next question; he could
not disclose the truth however, without revealing how he had ended up in the
burial pit and, furthermore, escaped the inescapable traps. And so, he quietly
reviewed his options of likely responses.
“I could claim I found it on the side of the
road. No that's too trite and would not
be believed. What I need is a lame, boring explanation suited to a scholar, yet
with enough of an angle to divert questions elsewhere. Better to go with a partial fabrication with
just enough fact to it to appear plausible.”
Responding as a
matter-of-factly now, Nevetsecnuac summed up in no uncertain terms his
experience that had led to finding the key.
.jpg) |
| 04-NEVETS ON HORSEBACK IN THE RAIN (2) |
“It had all transpired at
the time, while I was traveling on horseback alone on route to the Capital and,
wanting to be innocuous, was garbed (dressed) in ordinary travelling clothes.
This was a time well before my teaming up with Zunrogo Tugo and the
guards. That afternoon, caught in a
sudden torrential downpour, I had sought a refuge at the roadside Inn/ tea
house.
“I had been enjoying my
steamed tea and hot cakes when an old man, his tattered clothes soaked to the
skin, also sought refuge in the same tea house.
Despite the cash that the old man had held out in his hand, he was
rudely greeted by the proprietor, denied seating at any table, even though
there were few empty ones about, and told to leave the premises at once.”
"Can't you see we're
full up? Go down the road!" The
proprietor had rasped as he apprehensively looked around him, afraid that his
other customers might be offended by the likes of this tattered old man.
"This is a
respectable place. No solicitation is
allowed." Turning a deaf ear to the
old man's pleas, he signaled to his two hefty attendants (waiters) to at once
dispose of this unwanted nuisance (pest, bug).
In the ensuing seconds
hence, the old man was hastily hustled outside.” Fradel winced (cringed,
recoiled) at this point with obvious abhorrence (loathing) of the proprietor.
Zaur nodded and grimaced
wryly as he envisioned the typical scenario being played out repeatedly
throughout the land. “So, what's so odd about that? Cruelly he
was driven out into the cold, pelting rain, so what about it?" Fradel Rurik Korvald’s obvious
indignation just then baffled Zaur, and he riveted his keen, questioning gaze
on the other's face.
“Ah! Scholar
Fradel Rurik Korvald had lived in privileged seclusion all these years;
therefore, he had not been exposed to the sweeping changes, the new brutish
realities of the populace's everyday existence. Naturally, this would shock him.” The answer came to him quickly, Zaur
nodded.
"And no
doubt, being the gentleman you are, you stood up to defend that poor
wretch." Zaur’s downward gaze
concealed the smirk on his lips and the scorn in his eyes.
As Zaur Stugr had
expected, by his own account the scholar Fradel Rurik Korvald, unable to
swallow this injustice, had indeed rushed to the old man's rescue. Fradel had indignantly risen to his feet and
called out to the old man, walked over and next greeted the elder with
respectful familiarity.
Ignoring the snarls and
frowns of the manager and his staff, he had then guided the old man, named
Yakkasar back to his table.
(Of course, Yakkasar was a
made-up name which Nevetsecnuac on the spur had invented.)
"I could not stand by and let this
happen. The injustice of it all fired my
soul with seething rage." Fradel (Nevetsecnuac) abashedly explained.
At the outset Zaur
expressed a sympathetic view and urged Fradel Rurik Korvald to please
continue. Seeming to lend an attentive
ear, Zaur inwardly however, jeered with derision and tagged a few more items on
to the list he had been mentally compiling of the presumed characteristics of
his guest Fradel Rurik Korvald: “Fradel
is righteously soft and sentimental; sentimental enough to patronize (support)
the grave robbing scum of the earth.”
“And of course, you treated him to not just a tea but
a complete, hot, full-course meal.” Zaur (with his
prejudiced viewpoint) wearyingly continued to listen to Fradel, inwardly
filling in some details, to the old man Yakkasar's hard luck story.
Apparently, the old thief had been in hard straits and
had starved for the two days prior to this chance encounter with the perfect
stooge, Fradel Rurik Korvald. Though he
had flashed some money around, it had barely been enough for a cup of tea, as
the rest had to have been reserved for his night's lodgings. To one as destitute as him, Fradel Rurik
Korvald must have appeared as a godsend.
Sitting himself across from the scholar, he had
polished off several dishes in record time then, with a bloated stomach, sat
back to express his undying gratitude and praise his newfound friend to the
sky. Next, he had decisively recounted
how his wife had been lost to him in the great flood of yesteryear and how,
having escaped the disaster, he had settled in the foothills of town Huer where
he had been constrained to carve out a meager livelihood and single-handedly
raised his only surviving son, Toza, to adulthood. The other two children had
succumbed to fatal diseases, no surprise there: shortly after his wife's tragic
demise. For the hardships he had endured
he had been amply rewarded; while his son, the mighty hunter had lived,
Yakkasar had not known any hardship, hunger, or misery.
“No one would dare tackle the local ruffian.” Zaur scoffed, growing more impatient with Fradel now.
Disguising (veiling, masking) his irritation, however, he simply looked away, and
with an unreadable expression, watched the shadows for a time dancing in the
light breeze in the well-manicured (rimmed, shaped) garden.
 |
| 05-GARDEN IN TWILIGHT |
“Why was Fradel being so insistent in dragging this
out?” Zaur shifted into his
seat, having had already conceived of the only possible outcome to this story.
“This
purported hunter Yakkasar’s son Toza had no doubt recovered the key along with,
only the gods know what else, and had probably been murdered in some other town
trying to fence it. A fitting end for
his kind! The old geezer Yakkasar had survived long enough though, to span this
lengthy yarn to Fradel.” Zaur lowered his gaze and affixed it back on the key.
“But what would be the point of exposing this Yakkasar’s fraud and embarrassing
the gullible Fradel Rurik Korvald? What
did it matter what fabrication the old rogue had been feeding the unsuspecting
stranger like Fradel, as-long-as he, at least, had been truthful about the
location where he had recovered the key.”
Experience had taught Zaur
not to overlook the incidentals, the seemingly unrelated details that supported
the main report. Lacking in imagination,
men of Yakkasar's sort often built a bridge of lies on pillars of truth to make
their story more credible. In this case
even an approximation would be of some use.
With due patience therefore, Zaur had lent an uninterrupted, though a
semi-disinterested ear to, Fradel Rurik Korvald’s present redundancies to gauge
the true facts he really was after.
“Good!”
Nevetsecnuac was inwardly pleased with the apparent result. As he had surmised, a more elaborate story
would have made Zaur dubious. The
naiveté of the narrative had expectedly played Zaur right in Nevetsecnuac's
hands.
Nevetsecnuac at present
drawing this out, painstakingly related in detail all Yakkasar’s tedious
accounts about Toza’s great potential and his prospects. Yakkasar then unexpectedly leaning closer to
Fradel at one point, had supposedly whispered the pertinent details; how on one
such routine hunting trip Toza had traversed some unfamiliar ground near a
certain pass to get to an area where game could reportedly be had in abundance.
The specifics of the topography which, Yakkasar had professed at that moment,
had been rather hazy and bit hard for him to recollect.
This setback had inwardly
infuriated Zaur; nevertheless, yet again admirably suppressed his ire and
impatience.
Nevetsecnuac had of course
deliberately, contrived (manufactured) the old man's forgetfulness at this
point, as a means of excluding the credible detail Zaur expected or hoped to
hear; subtly testing therefore, Zaur 's true intent and measure of his commitment.
Nevetsecnuac knew that without specific information about the Cyprecox Pass, Zaur’s search for the pit would be rendered
fruitless. As it were, there were
several such strategic passes in and around the Capital province, most
concealing similar traps, pits, and mass graves that had been constructed at
the time to effectively repel the scores of foreign aggressions that had been
unleashed on Wenjenkun. This fact
Nevetsecnuac had learned from Zunrogo, during one of their intense political
discussions about ingenious historical military campaigns. Drawing from this,
Nevetsecnuac had made Toza’s find, one such historical undertaking (enterprise)
pit. Having served Zaur with a perfect lure (bait), Nevetsecnuac would now
wait, in the interim drawing out the tale, to see how long it would take Zaur
to make his anticipated inquiry.
The dullness of the
narrative up to this point had nearly put Zaur to sleep. He had just about run out of patience and was
about to hasten Fradel Rurik Korvald to get on with it and urge him to
recollect, to reveal the information Zaur sought most to gain, which was the
actual, if not an approximation (estimate) of location, of the grave. Fradel
Rurik Korvald’s next revelation however, shocked and halted his aim.
"Midway to Toza's
destination, the earth under his feet had suddenly given way and cast him into
a deep pit. The hunter, after barely
surviving the great fall, had discovered to his great horror that the place was
writhing with worms and snakes, and even some skeletal remains."
“A pit… What, skeletal remains?”
 |
| 06-SKELETAL REMAINS IN PIT |
Seemingly turning a blind
eye to Zaur’s agitation, Fradel (Nevetsecnuac) used the same impassive tone to
then recount how Toza, by great good fortune, had escaped serious injury and
had suffered only minor lacerations and bruises.
“Trapped as he’d been Toza
had faced certain death within that terrible pit but, opportunely some other
hunters were following the same trail as Toza’s and, hearing his desperate
cries for help, rushed to his aid. Expending ingenuity and, with concerted effort,
they eventually succeeded in hauling Toza up to safety; but not before he had
chanced upon the key hidden in the jaw of one of the skeletons, those selfsame
bones that lay huddled in a far corner opposite to all the rest. Presumably the impact of Toza's fall had
caused the brittle jawbone to snap and release the key; the key which now
became plainly visible in the dark cavity of the mouth, in due course giving
him quite a fright."
 |
| 07-KEY HIDDEN IN MOUTH |
From the corner of his eye Nevetsecnuac had
noted how Zaur had, for a fleeting second, flinched at the mere mention of the
solitary skeleton that held the key.
All color had completely drained from the good
minister's face as he (Zaur Stugr) clutched tightly at the key in his palm.
This confirmed
Nevetsecnuac's hypothesis. “No doubt about it, that singular skeleton had
been someone of great significance to Zaur. Likely,” throwing Zaur a
cursory glance Nevetsecnuac ventured a guess, “someone close to his person, an uncle, even a father, perhaps. But I don't suppose you'll ever confide in
the scholar Fradel Rurik Korvald, will you Minister Zaur Stugr?”
Smiling tightly, Fradel
(Nevetsecnuac) reached for his cup to relieve his parched throat. As he raised
the drink to his lips his thoughts drifted off to those wretched skeletal
remains and the curious circumstances under which he had gained possession of
the key.
He recalled most vividly
how, there in the pit, were scattered about the tell-tale signs of a lengthy
interrogation, torture, and murder of the solitary man. The stains on the broken shards of porcelain
indicated that the captives had been fed a rich diet for a time. The lack of any trace of cloth and personal
items other than the key disclosed the fact that they had been imprisoned in
their nakedness, no doubt to further conceal their identities, even from
posterity. This fact reinforced their
social prominence. Finally, there had
been the revelation of the ultimate treachery, the corroded bronze jug which,
upon Nevetsecnuac's closer scrutiny, had revealed that it had once contained
wine tainted with that particularly abhorrent poison that paralyzed its
unfortunate victim and brought about a lingering and most agonizing death.
Lord Asger Thuxur Marrog Zhon had indeed
taught Nevetsecnuac well, his well-rounded education had covered every
conceivable kind of potion and poison known to man. The symptoms of this specific toxin,
Nevetsecnuac knew, would only manifest themselves two days after ingesting it,
by which time it would be too late for any antidote, any salvation from its
curse.
Evidently the large group of prisoners had
been fed false hopes all along, right up to the time of their inevitable tragic
demise. There was no question that the
clustered group had been spared from the tortures inflicted on the solitary one
and that he had borne the brunt of their vicious barbarism. The one with the key had died of his injuries
and there had been no discoloration in his bones like that which, in the
others, plainly told of death by ingested poison.
The aromatic, semi-sweet
wine poured over Nevetsecnuac's tongue, nestled for a time in the hollow of his
cheek before it glided smoothly down his throat. As he savored the floral aftertaste,
particularly pleasing to the senses, he considered how a multitude of ills
could be concealed in a wine such as this.
Feeling rather flushed, he absentmindedly touched his cheek and forehead
with the back of his hand and then looked away once more.
What had necessitated these slow, painful
deaths and the added mutilation of the one who held the key? Both his legs had been sharply severed at the
ankles, as if with an ax, and his kneecaps had been brutally scythed. His ribcage had been shattered in several sections,
and the bones of his hands had been maliciously crushed. Curiously enough, though, the clasped jawbone
had been left intact, as if his captors had allowed him the power of speech,
which he had adamantly refused, to the bitter end.
Nevetsecnuac solemnly
(somberly) mused, “Wasn't it strange,
then, that it was only when I had considered the vague notion, if only the dead
could speak, that the clenched jaw had quite amazingly (unfastened and)
released this very key into my palm? And
again, this very evening fate intervening (interfering), this very key should
drop onto the terrazzo (tiles)?”
(END
OF SECTION 7)
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