As I left, I realized that I had nowhere to go. I doubted that a "son of Karikhan" could just sleep in the barracks of regular soldiers. I still had to take my belongings from my barrack I suppose, but I did not know where I should take them to. I supposed that I could have gone back to the king and asked where I would be quartered from now on, but… for some reason, I didn't want to face him. Perhaps I was being childish, but it didn't change the fact that I didn't want to see him. I wandered throughout the ornate halls of the palace, searching for something to do. People turned to look at me, people I didn't recognize, people who didn't recognize me, only seeing the "Son of Karikhan", some divine hero, and not the soldier who didn't run, even though death should have been certain. I was beginning to get angry at those looks, they were reminding me of the great lie that I must tell, the burden of all the lives that will be lost if I fail. I started to walk faster, trying to channel the useless anger into something else, although I had no idea what. I strode up to a door, and opened it, acting as if this was where I had wanted to go the entire time, rather than just an excuse to get away from that damned admiration. I closed the door to the thankfully empty room, and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Ah, welcome to my own little world, so good of you to be here," said a voice. I supposed that means the room isn't empty. Resisting the urge to whirl, I turned around more slowly, making sure that I noticed everything in the room that could be used as a weapon. Examining the room, I found it to be lined with book shelves, and those bookshelves to be filled with books, seemingly more books than the shelves were meant to have. There was a desk in the centre of the room, covered with half-written papers, papers with lines crossed out of them, and words written in margins. And, tucked away in a corner of the room was a small but comfortable looking chair. Sitting on that chair was a sandy-haired man wearing fine clothing. He was smiling at me with an amused expression.
"I would ask you to introduce yourself, but for two things. The first, is that common decency would dictate that I should give my name before asking yours, and the second is that I already know who you are, my dear demigod," said the man.
I stiffened at the last part of what he said, in equal part due to how he already knew me, and the fact that he referred to me as a demigod.
"Well even if you know who I am, I don't know who you are," I growled, the words coming out angrier than I intended.
Luckily, the man didn't seem offended, as his facial expression didn't change in the slightest as he introduced himself with a self-important bow, "I am the Chief Poet of Kours, and my name is Mourastor. I say Chief Poet, but in truth, my duties are often more suited to someone with a title more like Chief Propagandist."
"Propagandist?" I asked, hesitantly.
With that same unchanging smile on his face, he says, "I tell stories. Stories that can make people trust our king, stories to make them despise his enemies. Stories to make people ready to fight to the last man, and stories to get them to accept peace."
"You tell lies," I said, my voice iron-hard with disdain, "You are the reason people think I am a demigod."
"I usually avoid lying," Mourastor said, his face still unchanging, but I could see the look in his eyes change, "Instead I take truths, very specific truths and I exaggerate, I romanticise. In the stories that I penned about you, the truth was that you were a single soldier, who single-handedly defeated a Magic Knight, in a situation where any other man would have either run or died. Instead of running, you fought and what's more, you won. I hardly needed to exaggerate or romanticise this story. What you did was undeniably heroic, and there is no lie at all in giving you great honour for what you did."
"Heroism doesn't make me a demigod. I am only human," I responded, my voice just as hard as before.
"Do you know what the term "Son of Karikhan" means? Or rather, what it originally meant? In the earliest documents we have, it simply seems to refer to a great warrior. We have lineages of skilled warrior princes that clearly show them having no deific parents, and yet those warriors are stilled called "Sons of Karikhan". However, the usage changed after Moulikol, the first regular man to ever slay a Magic Knight. It seemed wrong to put him on the same level as other "Sons of Karikhan", as what he had accomplished was so much greater than anything they had ever accomplished. So he became the Son of Karikhan, and now we used the term "great warrior" for all of those others. As time went on, and generations passed, people became confused. With the phrase "Son of Karikhan" no longer used as often as it once was, people began to forget its meaning. They began to believe that "Son of Karikhan" actually referred to a demigod, as opposed to a warrior of great skill. In the poems that I wrote, I used the term as it was meant to be used, to refer to a warrior that was more skilled than the phrase "great warrior" would imply. While I may have lead people to believe in a lie, I never lied myself," said Mourastor, "Nothing I say is untrue, and I take pride in that. It isn't easy to do this job while only telling the truth, and I have done the best at it that I can."
"If it isn't easy to do this job without telling lies, why do you do it that way?" I asked.
"Various reasons," he answered, "None of them noble. It is generally more effective to tell truth, because one can be discredited when telling a lie, and after you have been discredited, people will never listen to you again. If people don't listen to you, you have absolutely nothing. Also, pride. Doing it the more difficult way gives me an excuse to show off my skill."
I grunted in response to that. While I cannot find this man virtuous, I do admit that he is honest, but in a way that I am not entirely used to.
"I hope you are getting along well, since the three of us will be working closely together in the future," said a female voice.