The Burned One

By Clint Westgard

The tale of the Burned One, a mad noble who demanded children's lives as tribute and sought eternal life, is told in a forgotten corner of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

An amateur folklorist hears it while wandering the Balkans following the end of the Great War and tries to trace its origins. She is driven, by a compulsion beyond reason and explanation, to find what truth, if any, lies behind this unbelievable story.

She will find it in a ruined palace, secluded deep in a forgotten part of that lost empire. What else she finds there is beyond all belief. It will change her, forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lost Quarter Books
• Release date: Aug 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781928035299

Clint Westgard

Clint Westgard is the author of The Shadow Men Trilogy and the science fiction epic The Sojourner Cycle, the first volume of which, The Forgotten, was published in 2015. In addition, he has published a work of historical fantasy set in colonial Peru, The Masks of Honor, and a retelling of the Minotaur legend, The Trials of the Minotaur. Clint Westgard lives in Calgary, Alberta.

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THE BURNED ONE

CLINT WESTGARD

The Burned One

Published by Lost Quarter Books

August 2017

The Burned One by Clint Westgard is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.  

ISBN: 978-1-928035-29-9

Cover image: © Dvmsimages | Dreamstime.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE BURNED ONE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY CLINT WESTGARD

1

It was in a tiny corner of what was once the Austro-Hungarian Empire, near its southern extremities where conflict with its Ottoman neighbor was a constant, and where all the many blessings of modernity brought by the nineteenth century had yet to make their way, that the stories of the Burned One became a part of the local folklore. The origins of the tales are obscure. Few in these, even more modern times, can be found who can recall having heard them. In time, they will be available (if at all) only in the archives of the folklorists and anthropologists, who happened to find themselves in one of the five or six villages in the valley south of the Rudenka Mountains, two days journey north of the Danube.

I am here to record that I was one, though more an amateur than a true scholar. Not only that, I met the man himself in those mountains. Such a thing seems impossible as I write it now, but it is true. My memory has not failed. I have not gone mad or surrendered to hysteria. I am of sound mind and body, and the events that I recount here did, in fact, actually take place.

How strange a thing to be writing again after such an interval of years. I was a different person then than the one who puts pen to paper now. What compels me to return to it, after so long, I cannot say. So many things have changed, and so much has been lost in my lifetime, but perhaps I can save this small piece.

It was between the two terrible wars that consumed so many lives—my own included, though that was later—that I found myself in the remnants of that once vast empire. How I came to be there is a tale of its own. After the