First it was his ears that picked up the roaring of massive waves of the sea. Then the trickle of heavy raindrops falling on his face awakened his skin. Then K'rar opened his eyes. As soon as he opened them fully and caught sight of what was levitating above his face, he let out an almighty scream that nobody heard. K'rar didn't even care that he was in the middle of the vast sea at first, nor did he look around to study his surroundings. He just wanted to get away from the hideously ugly creature, and in doing so, almost recoiled and dropped off the makeshift raft he was on. It felt as though he was in a pocket or a box on the sea, without any dry weather or a drop of sun. It was dark as ebony all around him. Huge dark clouds were following the raft except the rainclouds in the heavens. The creature seemed to be controlling the events. The creature was a most enigmatic organism. It looked like a spirit, bearing a feminine upper body and no lower body or legs. It had a certain greyish glow, translucent at best, and seemed to be clad in some kind of ornamented collar with a ruby in its center, which was also as translucent as the rest of its body. But its face was what had frightened the living daylights out of K'rar. Its whole face seemed to be scarred so badly, and its right eye was askew, slanting to the right. K'rar made out no nose on its face, and the only other orifice was placed where the mouth would be.
'What the hell? Where am I? What are you?' he yelled. The creature glided through the storm and circled him about three times, before it descended right in front of him. K'rar was now sitting up with his hands on the floor of the raft of logs. He still had the leather bag with his book in it, and that was all.
'Do you not remember? You came of your own volition on a boat. You are in Godsrealm,' it spoke to him in the sweetest of feminine voices, 'my name is Klaadia, and I am the naiad of Godsrealm.'
'Is this a bad dream?'
'Hardly, K'rar of Korazin.'
'How the hell do you know my name?'
'I am a spirit. I know the names of all the thousands of men that have trespassed the Godsrealm and died.'
'Then,' K'rar thought about this question before he asked, frightened, 'why am I not dead?'
'Because I am forbidden from bringing you any harm. I am to preserve your life, as I have for eighteen days and nights.'
'What? What did you say, I have been on the sea for 18 days? Who forbade you from harming me?'
'He who is higher than me. The one who has allowed you to live and fulfil your destiny.'
'Who?'
'You shall answer that question by yourself.'
'What do you mean?'
'I must now put you to sleep. We are almost there.'
'You haven't answered my questions! And what do you mean we are almost there? Are you taking me back to Korazin?'
'I only wanted you to remember that I kept you alive, K'rar of Korazin. I, Klaadia, the naiad of Godsrealm, spared your life.'
Before he could protest any longer, the water spirit glided right through him, putting him to sleep immediately. This time, though, he was not out cold completely. He couldn't open his eyes or move any part of his body, but he could tell that the rain had almost suddenly stopped, and that he was being propelled through the sea at very high speed, as if he was soaring in air. The movement was smooth, without any bumps from the waves. But this was short-lived. He couldn't keep his mind conscious, and he soon drifted back into a comma.
But not for very long, because the naiad woke him up again soon, and this time K'rar couldn't say he wasn't pleased with where they were. He was still on the raft, and the naiad was levitating in the space in front of him. The raft was stationary, and the water was very calm. He was in the middle of nowhere on a vast sea, but he managed to spot far behind him what was undoubtedly the "Godsrealm" the naiad had spoken about.
'Did anyone ever tell you that you look hideous?' K'rar said as soon as he finished studying his whereabouts, 'how far am I from my land? Which direction am I going?'
'You still have many questions,' said Klaadia. Suddenly, she began to flicker as a light, and her form developed ghastly holes that made K'rar cringe from her. But then the holes began to repair themselves, and then those on her face too. When the process was all done, she had transformed from the dead body she was into a stunning beauty with a full human form, although she was still a grey translucent being, a spirit, not flesh and blood.
'Now I have more questions,' said K'rar, 'why didn't you do that when we had just met?'
'This is not my true form. And I cannot change my form in Godsrealm. And you said I looked hideous.'
'You looked worse than that. Now will you answer my questions?'
'The humans who fish in these waters call it the Bovidian Sea. You are far from your land. The land where I will take you will be your new home. It is what the higher power has decided.'
K'rar wasn't sure which questions he should leave out and which he should ask. He figured that if he was to find out more about this higher power, it wasn't from this water spirit. But he did ask her,
'Klaadia, do you work for this higher power, or were you compelled to do this?'
'I was compelled. If I wasn't you would be dead, because it is my duty.'
'Where I come from they call that boundary the Meridian. It is mostly a myth, but it turns out that it is true. You want to tell me why it exists?'
'That is not my place. Perhaps the higher power will reveal why it exists.'
'What about you? Why do you exist, and why are you stuck in Godsrealm? You seem too friendly for someone whose duty is to kill.'
'As I said, your life was spared. No human has ever escaped me in all my imprisonment in Godsrealm.'
'Imprisonment? Let me guess, the higher power is the one who imprisoned you?'
'That is correct.'
K'rar fell back on his back to lie down and look at the sky. It was not dark now, but as bright as a harvest day with clear skies and white clouds.
'I wanted to die, you know,' he said, 'I lost everything from my family to my inheritance to my people. Now somehow I am the only person to ever survive crossing the Meridian, stuck with a water spirit who will not say what the hell is going on. So much for sacrificing myself.'
'I woke you up because I must ask something of you. In two days you will be in the waters where men ride wooden creatures to catch fish.'
'You mean fishing vessels. Heaven's sake how old are you?'
'I do not know. But I have been imprisoned for 640 years.'
'Shit.'
'K'rar of Korazin. On your adventures, you might find my offspring and their offspring. They have made enemies with humans, but I ask you, be kind to them, as I have been to you. And tell them, I am truly sorry for putting them through this.'
'What the hell are you talking about? You have children?' he sat up again.
'Yes.'
'Well how will I find them? What are their names?'
'When you meet them, you'll know,' the naiad looked around her, and added, 'I must leave you now, and you must sleep because you have no food. Will you remember me?'
'I can forget many things, Klaadia. This is not one of them.'
'Then, goodbye, my friend. The higher power allowed me to speak with a human again. That is why you, K'rar of Korazin, are not just a regular human.' Before he could breathe in and out, the naiad was gone in a split-second, and K'rar was feeling dizzy. For a third time, K'rar's ambiences darkened, and he went down and out on the raft.
As before, K'rar's senses turned on gradually, and this time it was his skin first, and then his ears. There was a searing pain in his left leg, and his left arm was being bandaged by what was definitely a human hand. K'rar was injured. Even with his eyes closed he knew it was a bad injury. And he knew that there was more than one human looking at him where he was. That was a huge relief despite the bad leg and the broken arm. When his ears opened up, someone was saying,
'Is he alive?'
'He's breathing,' the answer came from the man who was tendering him. There was a constant murmur of a crowd, and the smashing of waves against rocks, which K'rar figured were responsible for his injury. K'rar slowly opened his eyes, and about that time his stomach revealed that he was extremely hungry. There was a man and a woman kneeling down next to him. While the man was dressing his leg wound, the woman was holding his good hand, and looking at his face worriedly. She was the first to see them open, just as she was saying that K'rar was a strange boy. K'rar could tell why she said this. She was also very strange, as the rest of the crowd. Their hair alone, all of them, was made of a dark red hue, auburn from the tip down. K'rar had never seen anything like them. All the people he knew had black hair on their heads. These people also seemed a lot more light-skinned than Moabians, tending to a pale coloration. The man tendering his wound was rough-handed, perhaps in the business of heavy labor. K'rar moved his eyes to scrutinize him. He had a bushy dark beard the same color as his hair. He was at least 50 years old, and the woman was a bit younger than that. K'rar could tell they were related. The woman was excited when he opened his eyes, and she announced it to all those around,
'He's alive, look! He opened his eyes!' K'rar couldn't look directly at the woman's own eyes. They were as colored as her hair. A shade of grey, rather than brown. People have brown or black eyes, and black hair, K'rar knew. Thus, he was nowhere near the Moabian promontory, and he did not like to imagine how far away he was.
The crowd, which had been standing a distance away, swarmed around him, many of them young children. They instantly bombarded him with constant queries. The bearded man hopped across K'rar's body to get on his left side and look down at his face, and then berate the sixteen or so people,
'Leave him alone. You'll ask him when he's healthy. Bring me that water.' Water was brought in a beaker and fed to him in large gulps, 'put him on the stretcher.' Two lads brought the stretcher, and put him on it. The bearded man asked him, 'how bad is the pain?'
'Bad,' said K'rar between gritted teeth.
'You're a lucky duck. Those rocks should have killed you,' he directed the last words to the crowd, 'where are the blankets? Cover him up.' So they covered him in cotton blankets, and the young men carried him away. Almost all of them followed him. Two funny-looking small boys' faces were hovering directly over him. Their grey eyes made K'rar's own eyes teary from looking at them for long, and he turned his face away.
K'rar was carried for some distance from the sandy beach. They took him up a high rise and into a narrow road between high bamboos. He could tell from the sound of their feet that the ground was wet. In a few moments they were out in the open again, rising again on a gravel-laden road. K'rar saw a building of stone moments later, with a flat roof, and a staircase rising diagonally on its side to the roof. It was the first house, the first building K'rar had seen in more than two months, if that was the only time K'rar spent on the sea. Not long after that, K'rar was hassled into a house which those carrying him said belonged to an "apothecary" they called Old Sahar. The compound reminded him of the inn that he last slept in back home in Korazin. From the corner of his eye he saw a nurse fidgeting to get inside of the home, wherein she prepared a sick bed for him. When K'rar said the pain in his arm was bad, the nurse scooped up some herbs in the cabinet in the room, while the bearded man and the young men watched, and fed them to him raw.
'This will reduce the pain and put you to sleep,' the nurse said to him and to the bearded man, then proceeded to examine K'rar's bandaged arm, 'you did good on his arm. Appears to be a minor strain. He will be okay.'
The bearded man drew closer and took a look at K'rar on the bed, and said,
'We will be checking on him until he can walk, then we'll take him.'
'Okay. Who is he, if I may ask? He looks…strange.'
'Found him lying on the beach. He appears to have been on a raft. He is indeed strange, but I thought he needs to be healthy to tell us.'
'Of course, of course,' said the nurse, 'oh, did you give him something to eat?'
'Nothing.'
The nurse fidgeted again, and ran out of the room, and returned moments later with a plateful. K'rar breathed a sigh of relief. He had not found an opportunity to say how famished he was. The bearded man paid up some coins, and left the inn. The nurse sat down next to K'rar,
'Okay, strange boy. Sit up and eat.'
K'rar sat up painfully.
'Thank you,' he said.
'Here, you have to eat all of this.' The plate contained food that K'rar had never seen, including sour-looking red leaves that had turned the cabbage soup red too. He didn't dare ask what it was, but he knew that sooner or later he would be part of a long inquisition in which he would ask questions as well as answer them. The nurse said,
'I'm nurse Darbe. I will take care of you. If you need anything, I'll be right out, okay?' she was speaking to him as if she was soothing a small boy. K'rar didn't know the last time someone treated him as the boy he was. The tonic she had given him took its toll soon after his meal, and K'rar went to sleep.
He had a long, peaceful sleep. The room was cozy, he was satisfied, and he was sleeping in a real bed set up by real people. When he opened his eyes several hours later, it was dark, but he could tell that the morning was not far off. At first he stayed put in bed, with his eyes affixed onto the ceiling. The pain in his leg wound was mostly gone, having been just a bad cut, but his arm was still painful because he had broken a bone or tore a ligament. It occurred to K'rar that it would do no harm if he just checked out his environment. He was in all respects more confused than all his new friends. According to the water-spirit Klaadia, no man had ever crossed the meridian, which no doubt was a line across the entire expanse of the waters. That would mean that K'rar was the only person in this strange land who knew of the existence of another land. K'rar wondered if there were many other lands that nobody knew about. That would have some massive implications.
K'rar struggled out of the spring bed that curved inwards like a hammock, and threw the blankets away from his body. His bad arm was cast in bandages and strapped up around his neck. The witch's evil brew of a tonic from earlier was resting on the bed next to the oil lamp, which had obviously been put there very recently. His little bag was also there on the small table, but his book was on top of it and not in it. Someone had tried to check through it. There had been some coins in his bag too, his signet ring and his crown, but these were all still untouched in a small pouch in the side of the interior of the bag. Of course, nothing about him had been found by whoever had checked his bag, as they probably thought the drawings in it were just a little boy's small paint book. K'rar stood up and limped to the cupboard against the wall across, so he, too, could find something that told him anything about his whereabouts. Apart from small vials and dry herbs and ugly potions, K'rar disinterred from the midrib of the cupboard an old book with pale yellow pages, and returned to his bed to read its contents in the light of the oil lamp. He found only what he expected; names of a few sick people who had been at the inn, and mostly the names of what he knew would be herbs and medicines. This bored him, so he restored the book and the other things to their original positions, and then proceeded to exit the room. The moment he pushed the door, a gust of extremely frigid wind collided with him, so he rushed back in for a moment, braced himself, and stepped back into the corridor. To his right the corridor led to about four other sickrooms, and to his left the exit. He took his left. As soon as he stepped down the first stair, he saw the nurse, Darbe, with another older lady sitting on the bench outside. He stayed put in his position and listened to their quiet conversation, which was about Darbe's marriage prospects. When he took another step, the ladies heard him and swerved around.
'Hey,' Darbe said, rising, 'you are not well enough to move. Let's get you back inside.'
'My leg is fine. Just my arm is still broke.'
'Okay, but you should still finish your sleep.'
'Believe me,' K'rar said, 'I have slept a very long time I might not even sleep again.' Darbe smiled, and held his cheeks,
'Okay, then. But you aren't ready to be discharged. What will you do for the rest of the dawn?'
The other woman had stood up and was thoroughly examining K'rar, especially his hair.
'You are going to explain to me where I am.'
'My, do you not know where you are?' Darbe said blankly, and helped K'rar to the bench where she had been sitting. The women sat either side of him, and Darbe said, 'you're in Iscalan.' She saw that he hadn't understood a thing, so she widened the location from just Iscalan village and said, 'you're in Iscalan. Iscalan, south division, Alhanan tribe?'
K'rar was even more confused.
'Alhanan tribe?'
The nurse and her companion stared blankly at each other.
'What is your name, son?' the older woman asked.
'K'rar von Caspar,' he said. The ladies stared at each other again.
'What kind of name is that? Are you playing with us?'
'No, I saw something like that in your book, I didn't know it was a name. Sorry for intruding, but I just wanted to add to the records,' said a nurse.
'I have never been in this place,' K'rar said, 'I was on the sea for 22 days, in…er…Godsrealm.' The number of days was just conjecture based on what Klaadia had said the first time it awoke him.
'What?' said Darbe, 'Godsrealm? You came from the Godsrealm?'
'You know what it is?' K'rar's face lit up that someone finally picked something from his words.
'This kid is either crazy or he's concussed.'
Before the conversation progressed, the older bitter lady, lined up her bellbottom dress and stood up,
'I'll go get Maher something for the morning. You take care of this kid, he might be delusional.'
'Okay,' said Darbe, 'see you soon.'
K'rar was unhappy that none of his words made any sense, so he stole away back into the sickroom, where Darbe followed him and administered another dose of tonic that put him to sleep. These were not the last people to declare him crazy. He remembered the naiad had said he was three days away from land when she awoke him the last time, and he knew that somehow his raft had not been propelled by the natural waves of the sea. So for sure the so-called Godsrealm was much farther away from this land that it was from the northern coast of Korazin. Perhaps only a handful of vessels had strayed as far and told the story, which overtime had become a fisherman's tale rather than a real thing, especially among women like these. As he slept off a second round, K'rar knew that the first order of business was to find out about this place quickly.