Chapter Two
The Amulet of Transition
Surviving a certain death is a miracle and a miracle is what this world is waiting for
Aden.
1st Azair Year 5L 21/15 (5th Loop, 21st Cycle, 15th Year.)
Moses was locked inside a wooden cage with his hands and legs bound in iron chains. With eleven other prisoners, he was about to be thrown into the Eye of Tenebra, the giant whirlpool which would transport them to the dark world.
Moses was still trying to figure out how he had got stuck in such a drastic situation. Even now he couldn't come to terms with the fact that he was sentenced to the biggest possible punishment in this world. In this righteous society of Aden, built on the foundations of moral values and high principles, every accused was given a fair trial. Even the biggest of criminals were given a proper chance to seek justice, and even the smallest of the sentence was entitled to an appeal. Yet no such protocol was followed in his case.
He was picked up from his house a week ago and was charged with the murder of a government officer. His case was fast-tracked and the trial was completed hastily behind closed doors. He wasn't even allowed to speak a word in his defense and the judges, based on a couple of false testimonies, promptly sentenced him to Banishment.
Although taking an innocent life was considered an unforgivable sin in the virtuous society of Aden, capital punishment in this world was still non-existent. Murder and treason, the severest of all the crimes, attracted the harshest punishment. The person convicted of any one of these would be lashed, imprisoned, and then banished to the dark world during the next Crossing.
Although Moses was convicted of murder, he escaped the lashing. As his trial had concluded just a day before the Crossing, the authorities decided to swiftly banish him at the first available opportunity.
One of the most baffling aspects of his sentence was that he wasn't even an adult during the trial. Today was his fourteenth birthday. However, in a clear violation of the laws of Aden, he was treated as an adult during the trial. Every facet of his Banishment was filled with irregularities. From his sudden arrest to a hasty trial and then an extremely harsh sentence with no room for appeal, everything reeked of some deep conspiracy. Nonetheless, all these theories just didn't make any sense. There was no logical reason for an all-powerful establishment to hold a grudge against a normal middle-class boy.
From the confines of his wooden cage, Moses saw companies of soldiers align on the Deck of the Nineteen Martyrs. Every seventh year new troops were sent to Elisium to fill in for the returning soldiers. Moses saw with admiration as companies after companies, of hundred soldiers each, came forward on the leaping deck. Then at the blast of a canon, they saluted the flag of Aden and simultaneously jumped into the Eye of Tenebra in a perfectly choreographed manner. The moment their bodies touched the water, they were sucked in by the whirlpool and disappeared.
Amidst a decent amount of fanfare, fifty companies of soldiers leaped into the giant whirlpool. That marked the end of an elaborate farewell ceremony known as the Celebration of Freedom. Every seventh year, thousands of brave soldiers departed for Elisium, the dangerous twin sister of Aden. Their mission was to guard this world's entry point in that dark world and protect Aden from the invasion of its allegedly dangerous inhabitants.
Thousands of people flocked to the riverfront, braving thunderstorms and torrential rains, to cheer these brave men. The King, all the nobles, and every minister attended this ceremony.
However, in the last few cycles, an air of dissent had clouded these Celebrations. Crowds had increasingly thinned as more and more people had started to believe that Elisium must be freed from the clutches of Aden.
The reason for the spreading dissent was that after every Crossing, soldiers returning from Elisium brought new stories with them. Gruesome tales about how Aden was crushing the helpless people of that world. When these stories spread amongst Adeners, they began to understand the reality of Elisium. Many Adeners started to correlate it with their own plight and sympathy for those exploited people started to grow amongst them. The call to stop exploitation in that world was in actuality a shout out for the regime to first look into the matters of their own world. As a sign of defiance, many Adeners had stopped calling that world Tenebra the dark world and had instead started using its real name, Elisium.
At the riverfront, once the celebrations were over and the crowd had dispersed, hundreds of large iron containers filled with essential items, military weapons, and army vehicles were dropped into the giant swirl. The whirlpool instantly gulped them like a hungry beast.
Finally, after the sunset, the wooden cage with Moses and eleven other convicts was lowered into the Eye of Tenebra. As the cage touched the water, Moses tightly clutched onto the amulet. His mother had quietly put this locket around his neck when the soldiers had come to abduct him. She told him that it was a lucky charm and it protected its bearer from every kind of evil. This precious amulet had been inherited in his family generations after generations. Moses didn't know what kind of luck it brought, but he was surprised by the fact that his family, who struggled to make their ends meet, owned such an extravagant piece of jewelry. Moses tightly held on to the amulet, not because he believed in its charms, but because it was the parting gift from his mother and his only memento from this world.
When the cage was half-submerged into the water, the ropes holding it were cut loose. The bottom of the cage was tied with weights, to make it quickly sink beneath the water's surface. All the people inside the cage twisted wildly as the whirlpool swallowed them. After a few seconds, the whirling stopped. Apparently, they had emerged out of the whirlpool, into the other world.
Before being dropped into the water they were informed that once they emerge on the other side, soldiers present there will cut away the weights bound to the cage and will help it to the surface. Everyone held onto their breaths and waited for soldiers to pull them out of the water. But no one came to their rescue. As their lungs began to fill with water, their hearts started to fill with dread. The Banishment was turning into a Drowning.
As Moses saw angels of death dancing in front of his eyes. he began to lose his grip on the amulet. While his soul was trying to escape his body, he saw the amulet shooting out jets of fire. The flames instantly melted the iron chains, as if they were made up of wax. Along with him, everyone else was also freed from the bounds.
However, there was another problem. The cage was locked from outside. They were all out of their breaths. Some of the prisoners frantically tried to shake the gate, but it didn't budge. That gate was locked to seal their fate. Moses kicked the gate out of desperation. The heavy gate, which none of the other prisoners were even able to shake, broke from its hinges and flew away into the water. At last, they were free. Everyone quickly rose to the surface and breathed the fresh air.
The survivors swam to the nearby shore. The moment they reached the bank all of them fell to the ground, exhausted. Some of them were coughing violently. A couple of them had fallen unconscious and had to be rescued by others.
Moses slowly got onto his feet and looked around. No one was there. The soldiers, the containers, everything was gone. It was evident that no one was supposed to pull them out of the water.
Moses looked up at the night sky. Aden, their beloved home, shone brightly above their heads. He looked around him. The landscape looked pretty similar to their world. He had imagined Tenebra to be a barren deserted land, but here he was standing on lush green marshes. Were they really in Tenebra, or had they somehow come back to Aden?
Moses was startled when a man, who may have been in the early years of his third cycle, came forward and hugged him.
"What is your name young man?" he asked.
"Moses David."
"You mean Moses Solomon."
"No, Moses David."
"That was your name in that world," he pointed towards Aden in the sky. "I was also known there as Joseph Daniels. Our families adopted these last names to hide our true identity. But that doesn't help. They always keep a track of us wherever we hide and we ultimately get banished to this world. Your real name is Moses Solomon, just like my real name is Joseph Solomon. And we are the descendants of Solomon, the Conqueror."
"I have heard many such stories but I don't believe in them." Moses wasn't convinced by Joseph's theory.
"It is strange that you don't believe in these stories, even after wearing that amulet." Joseph pointed to the locket dangling out of Moses' shirt. "That locket in your neck, which saved our lives today, do you know what that is?" asked Joseph.
Moses shook his head.
"That is the Amulet of Transition," Joseph remarked. "The very amulet which helped Solomon forge the empire of Aden. The most powerful artifact in the two worlds. And since you are wearing it you must be the real heir of Solomon. Tell me how that amulet is still in your neck? King Julian and his predecessors have been looking for it for the last seven cycles. Weren't you searched when you were arrested?"
"Yes, I was. But the guy who searched me just didn't notice the amulet. I thought I was allowed to keep this locket."
Joseph smiled. "The charms of locket might have blinded his sight and he might have not seen it at all. That might be one of the ways that amulet has survived the clutches of those despots for seven cycles. Now keep that amulet away from the eyes of others. Not all here might be our friends. There is a chance that someone might be a real criminal. Don't tell them anything about it till we ascertain who is who."
"Someone might be a criminal?" Moses asked, looking puzzled. "You mean to say not all the people banished are criminals?"
"Of course not," replied Joseph, "most of the people banished are the descendants of Solomon, just like you and me. The regime just keeps looking for us. Whenever they find someone or even suspect someone of having roots in the Solomon family they put them on trial under some false case and imprison them. The ones they feel might be a danger to the regime are banished. The others spend their lives in prison. They do this to make sure that nobody incites a rebellion against them. There is a good chance that most of the people with us might be our distant cousins."
By that time most of the other survivors had also got on their feet. Moses quietly tucked the amulet under his shirt. Everyone gathered around Moses and thanked him for saving their lives, but no one mentioned the amulet. Either they didn't see it or maybe they just chose not to mention it.
"It looks like the Banishment was a death sentence for all of us," Joseph said to the survivors. "And our captors were so confident about the drowning that no one even stayed behind to ascertain that did we actually drown or not."
"They had solid reasons for that confidence," said a voice behind them. They all looked in the direction of the voice. A group of men emerged from behind the rocks. An elderly man, who must have been in the final years of his third cycle and looked like their leader, was doing the talking, "No one has survived the Drowning in the last two cycles. That cage is a sure-shot death trap. And that is what makes me curious. Tell me how did you people escape that? Surviving a certain death is a miracle and a miracle is what this world is waiting for."
"We are curious as well," said Joseph "but before we tell you anything, you tell us, who are you?"
"Oh my God!" exclaimed the man ignoring Joseph's question and looking at one of the survivors. "Alex come here. This time we have got your duplicate from Inferna."
A young man stepped forward and to everyone's utter surprise, he was an exact copy of one of the survivors. They both looked like identical twins.
"See I told you, people of Inferna are copies of us. But as there haven't been any survivors in the last two cycles, you young people haven't met any folks from Inferna. Now see this for yourself."
"What the hell is Inferna?" asked Joseph.
The leader pointed towards Aden. "Just like your people love calling our world Tenebra, we refer to your world as Inferna, the Hell."
Moses decided it was time for him to intervene. He stepped forward and asked the leader, "Now will you please tell us, where exactly are we? And who are you all?"
The leader hadn't notice Moses before. He took a close look at his face and his eyes lit up in excitement. "Solomon. Solomon the Conqueror. Solomon the Lost."