The Chronicles of Ki
Book 1: In The Beginning
© Copyright 2024 Frank Walters Clark ~ All Rights Reserved
Tezra’s standard uniform of the day is soaked with sweat, he has dust up his nose, and his face is streaked with dirt. He crawls on all fours down a dark tunnel just barely wide enough for his shoulders, clumsily gripping a flashlight.
Save the unsteady beam of light, the blackness closes in on him and he wishes he had never started down this narrow passage. Tezra is the only one brave enough—or foolish enough—of the five qualified Shem—or Rocket—Academy’s third-class students to make this venture.
The bet consists of five royal talens and a week free of kitchen duty. The talens would disappear, spent on frivolities. The kitchen duty will always be there. Tezra’s real motivation is the resulting acclaim.
At the end of this dark tunnel is a tablature on a shelf; how it got there is still a mystery to Tezra. The tablature has a verse containing a secret word known only to a select few Shem philosophers of any rank. His spirit voice is whispering to him, he must become one of the select.
In the narrow cone of his flashlight, Tezra sees the mouth of a small cave. He wiggles through and half-stands, bumping his head against the cave’s roof, then pans the light around the dark interior.
The word he seeks is sacred, secretly passed down through the ages. The Shem academy’s ranking staff officers use it to mark a cadet’s personal record with a special crest. An honorific unavailable through any other means.
In the shadows at the rear of the cave he spies a small, four-legged bookcase. Stepping closer he sees four tablatures, not one, as he was led to believe.
He has no idea what the word is, much less how the verse reads. His superior officer and astrophysics instructor Shem Seven Algot revealed to him, at the right time he would know the exact verse and the exact word.
But they are not tablatures, they are ancient books. Identical, undistinguished looking, untouched for ages it seems. Tezra wonders why these four books alone were chosen.
Kneeling in front of the case he carefully slides a book out, twists to sit, and lays it across his legs. He angles the flashlight so he can examine the covers and the peculiar bindings.
These are ancient books, with hand-tooled letters on their fronts. Familiar looking, except these letters are curved and have curlicues at their tops and bottoms. The lettering is faded, but Tezra knows it is impressed gold.
Bound between two thin wood covers, the pages are held at their long edges with slim interwoven leather cording, tied through holes in the covers.
He gently opens the book’s front cover and is amazed. The pages of the book are as thin as onionskin and feel just as fragile.
The lettering is minuscule and cover both front and back of each page, with the first letter of the first word in each paragraph embellished in gold. Columns are adorned at each side with flowers and butterflies and small animals, all done in delicate and colorful flourishes and strokes.
Holding the pages close to his face under the light, he sees he can actually read the sentences. These are words he can understand.
He reads stories of lords and ladies from his ancestral past. Battles and wars between royals much like his own, life stories of his race.
He reads all the passages but doesn’t sense any one sentence in particular. At the last page he notices the lower right corner has a small, hand-painted, red-lettered notation.
Holding it up close to his eyes and clutching the flashlight above his head, he barely is able to make out its footnote: “The past.”
Tezra has seen this type of entry before. As part of his training, he was required to follow the philosophers’ techniques of composing new tablatures. They made small notations just like these in the bottom right corner on each page.
These just looked a little different. The colored lettering for one, and only the last page of each book has the entry.
He replaces the first book and removes the second. Reading through its writings, nothing captures his attention. This volume also has an entry on the last page: “Is the.”
Tezra reads each book a second time, then re-shelves it. Pulling his knees up to his chest he turns the flashlight off, and sits in complete darkness, thinking.
He tries to remember any sentences with special meanings. Any unusual words, but nothing stands out.
Except… the fragments on the last page of every book. When he joins the fragments together, they form a meaningless phrase: “The past, is the, the past, future is.”
Perhaps the volumes were out of order, he thinks. Some novice in the past, in the dark like he, may have re-shelved one of the books in the wrong place.
It really doesn’t matter, he realizes. Only one combination of the fragments makes any sense at all: “The past is the future is the past.”
Then he understands. It is the sacred verse.
Knowing the verse still leaves the matter: Which one is the sacred word?
Approaching the words through the process of elimination, Tezra recalls the eight words. Only one is repeated three times: the.
Two words repeat two times. Is and past. The last, future, is used once.
Only the words past and future have any sensible value. As a repeated word, past can be eliminated like the other two.
Leaving… only future.
Tezra jumps to his feet and bangs his head on the cave’s ceiling, then shoves out into the tunnel. Left behind, the flashlight lays at an angle on a rock lighting the four books, their pages newly dusted—and newly illuminating.