The Korellian Odyssey: Requiem Read Free Page A

rim of the world, pausing to hold its breath as Korel walked to the end of all wastes.
    As he neared the first foot of the mountain, Korel saw a small church just to his left lit by the ashes of the setting sun. The church seemed plain enough, made from whitewashed wood and surrounded by a white picket fence. The roof was made with wooden shingles, and upon this rested a small green bell tower with a green steeple that ended in a gold-crested tip. Each wall of the chapel had small but beautiful stained glass windows that reflected the light from the fire setting in the west, breaking into warm colors and spilling them upon the ground within and without the chapel confines.
    The chapel, as quaint and beautiful as it was, seemed out of place, a forlorn counterpoint to the barren terrain extending for miles, broken only by the rugged mountains and their razor-sharp passes, the brutal landscape all but uninhabitable. But as Korel pondered, the chapel bell rang out once, emitting a lonely, shrill note that was quickly swallowed in the dead quiet of the plain. At the sound of the bell, people began to emerge from the chapel, men, women, and children, all of whom were plainly dressed in cotton shirts, pants, and skirts in browns and whites—but they had a regal baring, faces of old nobility, and many appeared strong with a lightness of foot that suggested experience molded in the forge of battle. Many gave dark looks of pride and noble position, lending an impression of long-established power and the entitlement of generations.
    Then the children ran to Korel and bid him follow them into the chapel, taking his hands and gently drawing him forth as the thongs of leaf-covered meat swung gently over his shoulder. Voices of a divine choir rose inside the chapel, swelling inside his mind. Men and women gave welcoming smiles, a few bestowing expressions of mild forbearance. Gradually, he came to float on a current of urging, ethereal music and mind-numbing need. There was something here, something important up ahead, something inside that he needed to see, needed to do . . . needed to have? He couldn't remember. He couldn't think. Who were these people? But as he entered the picket fence and climbed the short steps to the threshold, he realized he didn't care.
    As he passed through the white double doors of the chapel, the choir music swelled as a host of singers in white stood facing the congregation, standing on either side of the room near the main dais. The chapel was simple but enormous on the inside, with stained glass mounted in every wall, their alabaster surfaces reaching toward the ceiling for what seemed twenty feet. Light flooded through the windows, erupting up through the choir. The music rose ever higher, compelling Korel forward. Ahead lay an alter heaped with gold, jewels, crowns of dominion, goblets, and pearls, the wealth from all the ages of man and his rulers, all those things that adorn regal might, all that makes a king a king. And still the music rose ever higher as he walked past the polished wooden pews filled with a noble congregation composed of men, women, and children, all possessed of a great heritage, who, with tears in their eyes, looked to him as he passed.
    As he neared the holy alter, Korel looked up and saw the priest, resplendent in white robes, blessing the treasures placed thereon, power and splendor surrounding him and a crown upon his brow. Korel stood before the alter and saw the scepter of power, the staff of authority among the living, placed at the highest point atop the gifts of kings; this scepter was taken up by the priest and proffered Korel, whiteness and light streaming from it. The music seemed to enter his mind as he reached to take this holy gift, rising and bursting through his skull, urgency, need, and hunger driving his outstretched hand, choir and congregation surrounding and crowding ever nearer.
    But the urgency was too great, the need too desperate, the hunger too empty, and as