The Rise of the Clowns

Chapter 1

1

Csoda stood on the stage using all of his strength to pull the muscles along his spine and neck

together so he remained straight and tall. This simple effort to stand was difficult to maintain. His body was skeletal, his muscles weak. His effort made even harder by thick lacerations, both old and new, cut across his back, chest, legs and arms. The act of standing pulled apart the edges of the fresher wounds leaving them open to release slow trickles of blood.

He held back his gaunt features from wincing when his own thick sweat pooled in the open wounds, its salt stinging. He refused to wince, refused to slump over in pain, even though his body begged him to do so. He defied his body’s desire to collapse by focusing on the pain that tormented him. He recognized the pain, let its sting him through his frame and then, eventually, adapted to it so that it dissipated, at least from his attention.

This is how he chose to face his torment, with a straight spine and resolute expression. The starvation had made his eyes look bigger then normal, large globes sunken into the wide sockets of his skull, haloed by dark recessed shadows. Still his eyes had fire as he stared defiantly ahead, their gaze steady and strong despite his emaciation. His sharp edged jaw stayed set. His high cut cheekbones framed a thin lipped mouth and his nostrils flared as they took in deep breaths of the molten desert air.

Before him a crowd of strangers stretched out from the base of the stage to the edges of the stone walled arena. Their forms were both familiar and foreign to him. Their clothing, dyed in rich colors, was in sharp contrast to the raw and nearly naked humanity of Csoda’s tortured body. Their voices were a wall of sound that only occasionally released a trickle of words he could hear and understand. Their language was familiar, but it was not his native tongue.

A desert breeze had swept into the open arena as Csoda was forced onto the stage. Its intensity grew steadily as he stood there, but instead of being a blessing from the heat the wind was a furnace blast against his already sunburnt skin.

Small blisters bubbled up on his shoulders, along the tops of his bare feet, and around the edges of the fiery hot metal cuffs shackled to his wrists and ankles. The metal collar around his neck inflamed the blood pulsing through his jugular so that he felt the heat deeply circulating through his body and brain. His only protection from the midday sun was a dirty, bloodied and thread barren cloth they allowed him to wrap around his waist, its tattered hem stopping right above his bony knees.

With the hot wind came more than physical torture. The heat brought memories of blackening hissing smoke covering the skies and filling Csoda’s lungs. This memory tightened in his throat, filled his gut with a rock of anger and shame and, for a moment, Csoda’s body slowly swayed, rocking ever so slightly. The vision from his eyes blurred and the hot air burned his tears, unforgivingly drying them into white salt on his cheeks.

His steady gaze wavered with emotion as the memory created shadows before his drying eyes. Shadows of the ashen faces of the dead, his family, his people. His heart pulsed in his ears, drummed in an aching rhythm that he had never heard before, a deadening pulse of soul shattering pain. For a moment the memory held him, and it was the memory, not the torture or his weakness, that almost brought him to collapse.

Yet, before the memory destroyed his will the sounds of the crowd pulled him away from the horror of his past and back to his present hell. Little tendrils of conversations reached him from their ambient rumblings. Voices echoed, gasps and murmurs that he understood, “That is him?”…“My…he doesn’t even look afraid…” Their awe reached out on invisible threads and sent strength back into his form. The reasoning for his current efforts was justified by those statements. At least they would know that, despite everything, he still could stand.

With his will newly strengthened he dared to look out into the crowd and saw them as a mass of noisy, dusty color that moved as one shape before him. He could feel their energy. He could push his own energy mentally towards them and when he did he watched the shape react to his efforts. It rippled ever so slightly like a veil of color and noise that had been touched by a slight wind.

To the crowd, Csoda still looked tall and solid. This is what he put his energy into, his straight spine, his refusal to be lessened as a man. He pushed the dark memories aside and focused on all the strength that was left within him. He focused, even in this moment, on the collapse of the evil powers that had bound him and destroyed his people. He focused on righteous anger and with it he imagined the walls of this cursed stage he stood upon ripping to shreds.

For an instant he actually believed he could see the massive crowd surging towards the walls. He could hear the sound of rubble crashing to the floor. The roar of men and beasts reverberated against his chest as they pulled it all down around him in a storm of anger.

He felt the rumble of thunder deep within him and he imagined himself dancing as he used to, his body undulating behind a stretched leather drum that he would hold before him like a shield, his face hidden behind a veil of beaded cowrie shells. He danced to the thunder, to the storm, to the anger, his body new and strong again. He imagined his voice, thick and wet, singing out over and through the destruction and its sound relieved him from the dehydration and heat.

The crowd shape shifted to his imagined music, its form became more transparent with every hit he played on his unseen drum. The crowd’s sounds and colors muted, it whispered and hummed until its entire form became more like a curtain that waved quietly in front of an open window. The illusion gave him a moment of peace–a mirage–making him feel as if a cool breeze caressed his tortured skin.

All but one figure had fallen away into this faceless curtain. A young boy, surprisingly clean, dressed in a strange multicolored checkered tunic. A floppy leather three-pointed hat with the points facing down was c****d loosely at a tilted angle on his head. The boy stood in the front row staring right at Csoda with intense greenish blue eyes. He looked around nervously, as if he was unsure of where he stood and then he glanced worriedly down at something in his hands. When the boy looked up and met Csoda’s gaze, he still seemed confused, but compassionate.

“Csoda?” The boy said quietly, but his voice came as clear as if he was standing right next to Csoda’s side, as if they existed alone in a private room. “Father? The watch…it is not working…” The boy looked back down at his hands, tapping the object he held. Csoda heard a small dog bark in the distance as the boy’s voice began to drift away and he realized that this boy’s voice, so comforting, was speaking in his native tongue, “Csoda?….Father?”

The mass crowd shape came flooding back with a wailing roar and a wave of billowing color that overcame the image of the boy. Csoda’s thoughts rushed through his confused mind, “Did he say Father?”…”What is a ‘watch’?”

Then these questions were cut short from his concern. He felt a shearing pain across his neck as the chain on his collar was yanked backwards. Suddenly, there were hands grasping his wrists and legs. The growling crowd was deafening. His head was being pulled backwards, his mouth pried open, the hot air flooded into his dry throat and across his swollen tongue.

He heard the Emperor’s angry voice echoing from somewhere behind him, “HOW DO YOU LIKE THE REVOLUTIONARY POET NOW?!”

A flash of metal glinted in front of his eyes. His mouth filled with hot pain and blood, his scream came but was muted as his own parched throat filled. He was drowning in his own blood. His senses were engulfed with the smell of fire, his own burning flesh, the muscle tearing grip of the multiple hands on his arms and legs, the screams of the massive crowd–and then…finally…darkness.