Archons: The Foundling

By S. R. Herman

Having been caught stealing back into the garden, Nod thought his days on this earth had come to an end. He and his people had sought eternal life and boundless wisdom by eating the fruit beyond the walls. Now, standing guilty before God, the best they could hope for was a quick and painless death. But what happened next came as complete surprise.

As a punishment, God gave Nod and his people what they had attempted to steal; Immortality and power. Trouble was, it came with a price. Now they were locked into a war with the immortal enemies of mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514468272

S. R. Herman

S.R. Herman lives in southwest Missouri with his wife and two kids. He enjoys recreational target shooting and researching historical events.He is currently working on the third book in the Archons series, and hopes to have it in the hands of the readers by the end of next year.

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Copyright © 2016 by S.R. Herman.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2016902884

ISBN:       Hardcover       978-1-5144-6829-6

       Softcover       978-1-5144-6828-9

       eBook       978-1-5144-6827-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 03/30/2016

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CONTENTS

Prologue

I Orphaned

II Happy Birthday

III Watcher in the Woods

IV The Holmgrens

V Half-Truths Uncovered

VI The Balance of Power Tips

VII Bloody Loopholes

VIII Hot and Cold

IX Exchange Rates

Afterward

This book is

dedicated to my wife, Melissa.

Without her there would be no Sable, no Simmie,

and most importantly no Jasmine, which that character

is based on. I love you Crickets.

Also to Mrs. Stephanie Obert, my high school English Lit

teacher. For awakening the spirit of the Bard within me, I thank you.

This book, for good or for bad, would not exist without you.

‘THE bell has rung.’ (wink, wink)

PROLOGUE

Deep in the heart of the Ozark Mountains, nestled in the dense woods of the Mark Twain national forest, sat Shade Keep, a 185,000 square foot mansion that was home to the Master Shade, Sable. Not only was the resident of this mansion a Master Shade for the Keepers of Bentwater, but he was the Master Shade, or ‘Epitoxum’ to use the ancient language, of all Shades in North America. And that title carried no small amount of authority and renowned for its owner.

This particular Epitoxum was so renowned in fact that every Keeper everywhere knew his name. Parents the world over put their child’s name onto a waiting list over a hundred winters long just to have the chance of sending their children to Sable’s training academy.

Shade Keep itself was home to over 150 promising Apprentice Shades, ranging in age from as young as 5 beads old, all the way up to 24 beads. Here the children lived and learned the art of Shadecraft, as well as a host of other subjects, such as mathematics, science, history, languages, and theology to name but a few. Along with its students, the Keep housed instructors, classrooms, dormitories, kitchens, an armory, and anything else the Epitoxum deemed necessary for his training regimen. In fact, there was absolutely nothing a student or instructor could wish for that he or she could not find here at Shade Keep. Which was why he had instructed the Master craftsmen that it be built so large, over 400 winters earlier.

From the first day a student entered the gates, which happened immediately after the placement of their fifth bead, Shade Keep became that student’s new home. They lived there, attended classes and seminars there, and even stayed there for the minor holidays, where they were allowed free use of the school’s huge 20,000-acre campus as their personal playground. The students could hunt, fish, canoe, swim, or play at anything else they desired. There were hundreds of caves to explore, and a completely stocked marina that accessed nearby Bull Shoals and Table Rock lakes. They could ski, race power boats and jet skis, or take one of the many house boats out and have a day party and swim in the countless coves, and then stargaze that night. Nothing was off limits to the students during a three- or four-day weekend. They had the run of the estate, provided they followed the rules. The only thing they were never allowed to do was leave the campus. At least not without an instructor and a very good reason, like a family emergency or serious injury. Even then, the Epitoxum had to be personally notified and approve of the journey beyond the walls. And contact with a family member outside the walls was NOT considered a valid reason.

Only during winter, spring, and summer breaks, six weeks total out of the year, were the students allowed off campus to visit their parents. They were permitted to write and, in their later years, call their parents from time to time. But that was it. The rest of the calendar year, students were to remain secluded from the outside world, as per the orders of the Epitoxum.

On the other side of Shade Keep’s massive ivy-covered iron gates, parents also had rules they must follow. They were not allowed to visit or send packages to their children once training began, nor were they allowed to contact the Epitoxum for any reason. If contact of their child was required, then the parent must petition the Council of Elders in Bentwater and state their case. If the Council agreed a meeting was merited, then an emissary of the Council’s choosing would be sent to Shade Keep to plead their case. After that, the Epitoxum himself would decide if circumstances merited a visit between parent and child. And most of the time, barring a death in the immediate family, the answer was always no.

It may seem harsh to the outsider looking in, but this was the life of an Apprentice Shade. They lived, ate, and slept Shadecraft. And this lifestyle would not change until either their death, or their graduation, which coincided with the placement of their twenty-fifth bead in their braid. Besides, what were 25 beads to a race of people that never died? Time had no real meaning to the immortal, and 25 beads seemed as short a time to them as the passing of high school does to human parents.

What’s a bead, you ask? A bead is an age marker worn in a small braid that hangs from the right side of a Keeper’s head. All Keepers wear such a braid, and each bead in it represented the passing of five winters on this earth. Since Keepers are an immortal race that does not die of natural causes, an accurate measure of one’s age, and therefore their abilities, naturally arose over time.

The Winter’s Braid, as it has come to be called, serves as a way to separate the younger and more inexperienced among their numbers from a veteran of elite status. This may seem unnecessary to the mortal human, but to the immortal Keepers, the idea has been a Godsend.

In a mortal community, a device such as a Winter’s Braid would find no support among the people. One simply had to look at the outward appearance of another human and they could judge each other’s age by several distinguishing traits, more or less. Gray hair and wrinkled skin usually indicated a well-seasoned and experienced individual with a vast wellspring of knowledge to draw from. While smooth, unwrinkled skin and silky vibrant hair indicated youthful inexperience.

‘Time marches on’, humans like to say, and each new year brings with it a few more scars and a little more knowledge about the world. And it is these scars that aid the mortals in identifying the more mature among their numbers.

But a Keeper community is different. It takes five winters, or years in human speak, for an immortal’s body to show the same signs of aging that a human body would acquire over a single year. Therefore, a Keeper child that appeared to be no older than 5, or ‘a 5 beader’ in Keeper lingo, would in actuality have been alive for 25 years.

After 125 winters, or 25 beads, a Keeper would stop showing any outward signs of aging at all. This resulted in a community that more closely resembled a college campus in appearance rather than a small town or village. Every person in a Keeper settlement, save for the very young, would appear to be in their mid-twenties. A select few would appear to be pushing thirty, and fewer still would look in their late teens after maturity, but for the most part everyone looked roughly the same age.

This was fine in so far as it went, everyone stayed young and vital and full of life. But it presented problems too. Small problems when compared to the difficulties of living in a constant state of war, but problems nonetheless.

One of the larger difficulties was peer bonding, believe it or not. When one Keeper encountered another, they had no way of knowing the true age of the individual they were conversing with. One could easily find themselves attempting to bond with an individual that looked to be the same age as another, but when it came to maturity and life experience, you could never tell just how young or old a person really was simply by looking at them. And this posed no end no problems in the immortal community.

In one particular case, back when mortals were still trying to figure out how to forge bronze, a village of Keepers came under attack in the middle of the night by superior Gadiael forces. In the confusion, a Master Warrior grabbed a pair of what he thought to be mature warriors rushing past him and ordered them to help reinforce the point of breech in the northern walls. His forces there were outnumbered 3-1 and needed all the help they could get. The two warriors tried to explain that they were still in their last year of apprenticeship and had been ordered to defend the rear of the village where the fighting was lightest.

But the senior Warrior didn’t believe them, and berated them for being cowards.

Not wanting to disobey orders (and in truth, not wanting to miss the excitement), they hurried off to fulfill their ‘orders’.

After the battle had been won, the Master Warrior went to look for the two ‘Warriors’ he had sent to reinforce the frontlines. He wanted to apologize to them for naming them cowards in the heat of battle and to commend them for following orders in the face of numerically superior forces. When he found them however, they were lying in a medical tent suffering from venom burn.

After talking with the two of them for a moment, he quickly discovered how young they actually were and immediately fell into a state of depression over having sent a couple of children into the face of a faltering frontline. Shortly after his discovery the two young boys died, and the Master Warrior was left reeling over what he had done.

The entire situation presented an awkward and depressing atmosphere for months in the village. The Master Warrior never fully recovered from the mental scarring of the two boys’ death, and both sets of parents died of grief the next day. The results of that one hasty decision in the heat of battle was six funerals and the loss of a Master Warrior who would never be fit for duty again. After the funerals, the Supreme Council of Elders in Jerusalem decided something must be done and implemented the Winter’s Braid as a solution.

Today whenever one Keeper meets with another, all they need to do is look at the number of beads in the other’s braid, and they both know the age of the other.

Sable, the Epitoxum of Shades, had no less than 174 beads in his Winter’s Braid, signifying the passing of 870 winters on this earth. They ranged in size from that of a very small pea to the size of a grape, and were made of a variety of materials including gold, silver, ivory, gemstones, and of course the most valuable materials to a Keeper, horn and wood.

Sable’s braid hung all the way down to his waist, and when he walked, it set a rainbow of colors to twinkling as the sun sparkled off the facets of the beads. Any Keeper who saw this braid knew immediately they were in the presence of someone who held vast sums of knowledge. And his was an opinion not to be taken lightly. At Shade Keep, whenever Sable spoke in the seminar hall, the entire auditorium fell as quiet as a church. The entire room recognized him as the supreme fount of knowledge in the art of Shadecraft, and they hung on his every word.

Yet tonight, Sable was not holding a seminar at Shade Keep. Nor was he teaching a class, or observing one of his instructors to appraise their ability to teach. In fact, he was all alone in his sprawling mansion. Well, almost alone. His top Apprentice was still here with him. Having been orphaned from a very young age, she had no family to visit beyond the gates, and she always spent her free time on campus.

Her name was Simmie, and she was the greatest apprentice Sable had ever instructed. She was also his unofficial foster daughter, and he loved her very much. She had been his secret foster daughter or several years, and it was a relationship that was hidden from everyone, including the Council. It had to be, because if anyone ever found out that the Master had assumed the role of father to one of his apprentices, the Council would take her away from his academy and secure her lessons from another, less-qualified Master. It was an ancient rule, and Sable understood the need to keep family from instructing family. But this time it concerned him, and he was not about to allow the Council to take her away from Shade Keep. Simmie was his responsibility, and no one was going to take her away from him, not ever. It meant they had to be on constant guard of letting their affection for one another show through, but it was worth it. He remained her Master and she his Apprentice in public, and the father/daughter relationship was reserved for private occasions.

And today was one of those special occasions. It was Christmas, they were all alone, and therefore there was no one to be on guard against. Today they could just be themselves and relax, enjoying each other’s company.

Also, since Simmie knew very well how old her father was, he didn’t feel the need to let his Winter’s Braid hang free today. This morning when he awoke, he had cinched up his braid into a triple loop and fastened it to the side of his head with a small ivory hair pin.

Looking in the mirror, Sable thought the braid looked foolish pinned in a loop that encircled his ear, but he hated wearing his braid down worse than he hated looking silly. It was a dreadful heavy thing, and it brushed against his legs as he walked. If he could, he would wear it up all the time and the consequences could be damned. He was Epitoxum of Shades after all, and rank had its privilege. But the Council of Elders would have conniption fits if he tried it. And it was always better to keep that particular group of people as happy as possible, especially since one never knew when a political favor might be needed at some point in the future.

As it was, he would have to be content to only wear it up on the holidays. It wasn’t a complete solution, the braid was still heavy and pulled at the side of his head. But it was better than nothing. Besides, there was nothing he could do about the weight—174 beads were just heavy, no matter how you pinned them up.

Simmie’s own braid contained 14 beads and hung down in a thick woven shock of red hair the color of ripe apples. The beads, while of regulation size and spacing along the braid’s length, were made of plastic and glass instead of the precious materials her contemporaries favored, and they came in a rainbow of gaudy neon’s. Hot pink, electric blue, and fuchsia were her favorites, and interspersed in between each bead, she had tied tiny little hummingbird feathers, each one being a showcase of color all itself.

The braid’s length, while not as long as her father’s, was still respectable. It hung down past her chin, just barely touching the top of her shoulder. And while it wasn’t quite long enough to merit tying it up the way her father had, she had done so nonetheless. It was an unconscious attempt to be like the man she loved, and Sable had been flattered when she had come down the stairs that morning for breakfast with her braid tied up in a single circlet at the side of her head, held there with an ivory pin, just like his.

Sable smiled at her when he saw it, and then marveled at just how proud of her he was, and at how fast she was growing up. It wouldn’t be long now until she would start catching the eyes of pubescent boys, and then an entirely new phase of parenting would begin. One that he had no idea how to handle when it arrived. He supposed he would have to do like the human fathers and invest in a good shotgun. The thought had made him chuckle that morning and had set the pace for what turned out to be a wonderful and memorable Christmas day.

But that had been this morning, and this was tonight. Right now he was not amused at all. Right now he was a little annoyed with the way recent events had turned on him. He was not angry with Simmie though. Quite the contrary in fact. He was worried about her. And it had nothing to do with hormone-ridden boys and their roaming hands.

A few moments earlier, while sitting next to her by the fireplace and quietly sipping tea, he had made her a promise. He told her that as a belated Christmas gift, he would answer any question she posed to him providing he knew the answer. His knowledge on a great many subjects was vast, as she well knew, and he would like it if she availed herself of his knowledge.

Simmie’s emerald green eyes had lit up at his offer, and after only a second of contemplation, she chose and asked her question. And it was a question about a topic that had left him reeling.

What he had hoped she would ask were questions more in line with those of a normal teenage girl. How to handle teen gossip, or odd behavior from boys, maybe she would even ask about adolescent puppy love or the facts of life. Even if she had asked about the change of life all young girls must inevitably go through, he would have been glad to help her find the answers she sought. It would have meant going to Cypress, the Head Elder of the Council, for help on the subject, but he would have done it gladly.

Instead, what she had asked was a question Keepers the world over wished they had never learned the answer to: ‘Where do the Gadiael come from, and why do they hate us so much?’

Sable felt his countenance fall as her words registered in his mind. As soon as Simmie saw his crestfallen look, her face mirrored his, and concern crept into her expression. Sable noticed this and immediately replaced the concerned look on his face with a gentle smile. He then reached over to the side table by his chair, retrieved his cup of tea, and sipped. He had hoped this would buy him a moment of time to think before having to answer his daughter’s question.

Simmie sat patiently waiting for him to finish with his tea so that he could answer. But Sable continued to hold his teacup in front of his face with both hands, seeming to hang on the edge of sipping the steamy hot brew, but never actually doing so. As he held the cup next to his lips, the steam from the tea rose gently out of the cup and into his face. The silence between them grew longer and more uncomfortable, and he averted his gaze from her and looked outside the window. The snow outside had started falling heavier than before, and as he watched it pile up outside, he was reminded of big downy goose feathers floating softly to the ground.

Simmie’s eyes followed his as they turned toward the window, and she began to watch it snow as well, marveling at how fast it was piling up. As time passed uncomfortably between the two of them, Sable decided that there was no polite way to renege. He took a sip of his tea, removed the cup from in front of his face, and placed it back on its saucer with a soft chink of china touching china. He then made a steeple of his fingers as he placed them under his chin and sighed before speaking.

‘Because it is in their nature to hate, to be evil. That’s why they hate us,’ he said flatly, hoping this would suffice and at the same time knowing it would not.

‘I already know that, Dad,’ she said amiably, thinking he was playing with her. ‘That’s the answer in the first year’s textbook.’

But he had not been playing with her, and the stern look in his eyes conveyed that clearly to Simmie. And a momentary jolt of fear began to grow her heart. Her father’s expression did not soften over time, and the look in his eyes had grown deadly serious. Simmie’s breath caught in her throat as she braced herself for a scolding because she had not taken what he had said seriously.

Sable was a strict Master, and he brooked no challenge to his teaching when instructing a student. What he said was law, and no mere Apprentice was going to question his word. She knew this of course, but was working under the assumption that because they were on holiday, he would be laxer with his rules. Clearly she as wrong and braced herself to be lectured about her relaxed attitude.

But the scolding she was waiting for never came. Instead, what happened next shocked her. Her father’s eyes began to swim with color as he fought to hold back his emotions. The normal dark blue color of his irises began to shift and swirl in a broken kaleidoscope of colors. Cobalts, sky blues, ice, and then to the color of the Caribbean Sea. All of these colors and more could be found in her father’s eyes as they shifted and danced in what appeared to be patterns in broken glass.

Simmie knew this was normal behavior for a Keeper when they became sad or angry. Her eyes had done the same countless times, and she had seen it in the eyes of others as well. What she had not seen before was this phenomenon in the eyes of her father, and it disturbed her greatly. Sable had always been a bastion of strength. A pillar propping up values and morals that made an insane world sane. But for her to see her father and Master upset sent an otherwise sane world scrambling for cover, and it frightened her deeply.

Simmie stared hard into her father’s eyes, trying to gauge what she was seeing there. Was it anger, sadness, excitement, or something else? And then a cold wave of panic washed over her as she recognized something hidden in her father’s eyes she had never seen there before. She shuddered as someone walked over her grave and forced herself to admit that, for the briefest of moments, she had seen a hint of fear in the depths of his swirling blue eyes. And that scared her more than anything else could have.

Sable saw fear spread across his daughters face and forced himself to erect a façade of calmness over his exposed emotions.

‘I know you are aware of the textbook answer,’ he said in a calm tone that was not at all in line with the look in his eyes. ‘And I am sure you are aware of the lessons we teach all Apprentices your age about the Gadiael. But that is just the slightest fraction of who they really are. When I say that they are evil, I mean that they are evil incarnate. Evil in the flesh, walking upon the earth in tangible form, seeking to destroy all good. The only thing more evil than a Gadiael are demons,’ he said softly, trying to lead her gently to the truth of who their enemy really was.

Simmie sat there in silence as the weight of what her father had said sank in. ‘Evil in the flesh’, he had said. Was he serious, or was he just looking for a very scary adjective to drive home a point? Simmie hoped it was the latter.

After taking a moment to compose herself, she asked, ‘Are they demons?’

‘No, they are not,’ Sable answered immediately, not wanting her to get confused. ‘But they are the closest thing to a real demon most of us are likely to ever encounter, I hope,’ he said, adding a smile to his expression in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Her face lightened a little at his smile, and then a second question entered her mind. Sable could see in her eyes what she was going to ask next and shuttered as she began to speak.

‘Were they created that way, like dragons and unicorns, or were they turned into what they are, like vampires and werewolves?’ she asked.

There it was; the question all Keepers wished they had never learned the answer to. Sable closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

As she finished speaking, he felt as though her words had struck him a physical blow in the gut, and all the air in his body had been forced out of his lungs in a sudden rush. Suddenly he found himself wishing he could go back in time and stop himself from making his offer of knowledge. Or at the very least, amend it so that he only had to avail himself of certain things. Simmie was not ready for this, she was too young, too innocent, she was …

And then he thought about the humans and their refusal to answer certain question their children asked. All because they didn’t like to stray out of their comfort zone. That, in turn, made him think of naive fumbling in the backseats of cars. And that to thoughts of teen pregnancy. Which naturally led him to think of a certain baby tossed into a dumpster over sixty winters earlier. A baby that had been sold as any calf would have been. All because some mother had decided the topic of sex was too awkward to discuss with her daughter, and that daughter had become pregnant.

He didn’t like remembering that frightened human teenager. Nor did he like to recall what had happened to her. But her unwanted baby had grown into a fine young woman and now called him father. And she was sitting next to him at this very moment, asking him questions about the world. Simmie trusted him implicitly. How could he betray that trust by not helping her understand the world a little bit better?

Sable made up his mind and that strengthened his resolve. Simmie was ready for this, or at least she thought she was ready. And if she was already thinking such things, as evidently she was, then perhaps she was ready for the answer. Sable knew this now, and he was not about to let her down. She had had quite enough disappointment in her young life without him adding to it. Besides, he was not only her father, but he was her teacher as well. If she couldn’t come to him with her questions, then where could she go? To her friends, or even worse, to Cricket, that mischievous upperclassman that liked to think she knew everything? Sable shuddered at the thought of Cricket giving his daughter advice. He then determined to give her the answers she asked for before Cricket could mislead her in an attempt to be funny.

But he must proceed carefully. This was not the sort of thing one simply brushed over casually and then hoped for the best. Things like this required tact and diplomacy. If he rushed over this topic, if he wasn’t careful to answer everything she wanted to know, he could scar her for life, or worse, leave her confused. That was how ignorance turned into assumption. And assumption bread death in matters such as these.

Taking a moment to gather his thoughts on just how best to proceed, Sable grabbed the teapot and warmed their cups. Setting the pot back in its cozy, he took up his cup, sipped, and then began by asking a question of his own.

‘Simmie, are you sure you want to know the answer to this question right now? There is no shame in waiting a few more winters until you are ready for such knowledge.’

‘Of course I’m ready,’ she said, giving him a puzzled grin. ‘Besides, aren’t you the one who always says ignorance of your foe is deadlier than any weapon they can wield against you? Given that, why wouldn’t I want to learn about my enemy?’

‘Because, once you learn something, it can never be un-learned. And if you’re not truly ready to accept the truth of the question you’ve asked, then you shouldn’t be asking it at all.’

Simmie sipped her own tea, taking a moment to process what he had said, and then sat her cup down. Did she want to know the answer? She had thought she did. Up until a few seconds ago she had been downright positive of it. But now, sitting here looking into her father’s eyes, seeing the concern beginning to grow there, she was not so sure.

When she had asked her question, she had expected a simple answer. Something no more complicated than the answer to any other question she had asked him over the years, like, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ Or, ‘Why can I jump higher and run faster than humans can?’

But instead of a simple answer, she seemed to have awakened a sleeping beast that had, up until now, lain dormant deep inside her father’s memories. A beast that had been condemned by her father to spend untold winters in exile because of the memories it held tightly clasped within its jaws.

Now, with her query of ‘Where do the Gadiael come from?’, she had awakened said beast from its slumber. She had caused her father’s mental demon to begin clawing its way to the front of Sable’s thoughts, with the bloody truth writhing in its jaws trying to escape.

Simmie looked up from her thoughts and stared deeply into her father’s eyes. For a moment, everything seemed normal. Then, she saw something that scared her more than anything she had ever encountered before; fear. Not for himself, but for her.

She could see Sable didn’t want to answer her question, and he was giving her the opportunity to beg off before his memories could hurt her. He was not trying to back out on his promise, of that she was sure. Her father would never back out on his word. He was simply trying to protect his little girl from something dangerous: the secret knowledge the beast held between its yellowing teeth.

Simmie admired him for that, she really did. If nothing else, it showed how much he really cared for her. But there was no turning back now. If she didn’t get an answer from her father, she wouldn’t be at peace until she found out from somewhere else.

Of course, there was always the possibility that the answer itself would be worse than the ignorance her father would have her wrapped in, but she had to know.

‘I think it’s best that I know the truth. You said yourself that I am far ahead of my age group in physical development, so I guess I should be ahead of the curve in knowledge too,’ she said, hoping she had not just made a mistake that would haunt her dreams for winters to come.

Sable smiled. He had told her that, many times in fact. And it was true; she was far ahead of the curve for an apprentice her age. She always had been, mainly because of an innate talent given to her from birth. But there was also the fact that she hated being behind her classmates in anything. She always had to be the best in everything she did. And he admired her for that. It was a trait that would make her an outstanding Shade in the future, possibly even better than he himself.

Sighing softly, wishing that in this one instance, his little girl could remain content with being normal, he proceeded.

‘Very well,’ he began solemnly. ‘I will tell you everything I know on this subject. But I feel the need to warn you that I may not have all the answers you seek. In this particular area of history, my knowledge of the subject matter is not as vast as you might think.’

Simmie was taken aback at his words. Her father had just admitted to not knowing something, and that had never happened before. Not because he wouldn’t admit to being ignorant on a subject, he was not an arrogant or prideful person. It was because there simply weren’t many things he didn’t know. He was after all over 800 winters old. And most of the things humans could only learn about from history books, Sable had actually lived through. And the history of things previous to his birth were taught to him by Keepers who themselves had lived the stories they were teaching. So if this was a topic in which her father didn’t know everything there was to know about it, then the answer to her question was bound to be good.

Simmie’s interest was now piqued. She readjusted herself in her chair and leaned in closer to Sable. She propped her weight up on her elbow where it rested on the arm of the chair and became quiet, waiting for her father, her Master, to instruct her.

Smiling fondly at his daughter’s resoluteness, Sable began pouring them both a fresh cup of tea. He then leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and cleared his throat.

‘Very well’, he began, stirring his tea as he talked, ‘the story of where the Gadiael came from. After the fall on man from the Garden—’ he said, but she cut him off.

‘Whoa, wait right there just a knee-slapping minute! Are you talking about the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve? Is that the fall you’re talking about?’ she said, hardly believing what she was hearing.

‘Yes, that is the fall I am talking about,’ he said with a smile.

Sable always loved this part of the story, because no matter what student he told it to, they always stopped him right here and asked him the same question. Only, the student had never been this young before, and the look of disbelief never as cute as the one on his daughter’s dimpled face right now. Heaven help me, he mused silently, but I am powerless against this child’s charms. I would give her the world if she asked it of me.

‘I thought you were going to explain about the Gadiael, not give me a Bible lesson,’ she said with a crooked smile, thinking he was joking and half afraid that he wasn’t.

‘Well, I guess you could say I’m doing both. You said you wanted to know all I knew about the Gadiael. Well for that we have to go back to the beginning,’ he said.

‘But do we really have to go back that far? Can’t you just give me the abridged version in the interest of saving time?’ she said, making ‘air quotes’ with her fingers.

Giving a little chuckle, he said, ‘No, we can’t. If you want to understand the Gadiael, then you have to hear their entire sordid history. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it has to be.’

Simmie sighed deeply, disappointed that this was going to be a long drawn-out affair, and motioned with her hand for him to continue by twirling her finger in the air.

‘All right, go ahead and tell your story. I won’t interrupt again,’ she said with a sigh, disappointed that there wasn’t a faster way to get through this.

‘You can stop me to ask questions if you like, that’s how you learn,’ he said, and after waiting to make sure she didn’t have any more questions for him at the moment, he continued.

‘After the fall of man from the Garden, Adam and Eve began to have children. And while Cain and Abel were the first of their children to be mentioned by name in the Bible, they were not the only children the two of them had had. There were many, many others after these two brothers came along.’

All of their children grew up normally and moved away from their parents, just as El Shaddai had commanded them to do. They took spouses for themselves and formed families of their own. These first families moved to new lands and formed settlements miles away from their mother and father. The leader of one of the larger settlements was named ‘Nod’, and he named his settlement after himself, calling it ‘The Land of Nod’.

Unfortunately, the land in which he had chosen to live was extremely close to the Garden of Eden, which troubled his mother and father deeply. They had both been warned by El Shaddai to never return to the Garden. And neither Adam nor his wife Eve knew just how El Shaddai would react to Nod’s decision to settle that close to the Garden. So one day, Adam traveled to where his son had decided to live and told Nod his decision was a poor one. Adam argued that it was not good to place his people so close to where El Shaddai had commanded them never to return.

However, Nod would not listen. He insisted that his family had better self-control than to insult God as Adam and his wife had done. Nod claimed that no one in his family would dare to insult El Shaddai by returning to the Garden.

But Adam feared that was exactly what Nod intended to do. From Adams earliest memories of his son, Nod had hated being doomed to a mortal life because of the mistake his parents had made. It was an injustice in his eyes to punish the children for the sins of the father.

Yet Adam, as all fathers are wont to do, gave his son the benefit of the doubt. He smiled, hugged his son, and returned to tell Eve she had nothing to fear. Her son Nod would not give her heart reason to mourn by disobeying God.

But that was just what Nod planned to do. He had formed a plan in which he and a select few of his brothers would sneak back into the Garden and steal fruit from the Tree of Life. This would guarantee that they would never die as their father and mother would eventually do. And Nod spent many weeks planning and plotting the break-in. Supplies were gathered, resolves were strengthened, and soon every person in Nod’s camp believed they could not fail.

Finally, the day came when Nod decided there had been enough planning, and the time of action was at hand. He set the date and told his people to be prepared to leave for the Garden on the morrow.

But on the eve of the day they were to attempt their break-in, Cain showed up in their camp, bearing a strange mark on his forehead. What that mark was has since been lost to the oceans of time. But it is told that the mark had been burned into Cain’s very flesh.

Seeing a figure walking toward his camp on the horizon, Nod went out to meet him. After questioning Cain as to why he had come, Nod discovered a horrible truth. His brother had come to him because El Shaddai had sent Cain to Nod for his protection.

When asked why he needed protection, Cain informed Nod that it was because he had killed his brother Abel. And that El Shaddai had sent him away so that he would not be in danger of those wishing to collect a blood debt for this killing.

Nod became furious. The man who had murdered his younger brother, whom Nod just happened to love dearly, had been sent here to live among Nod’s own family. And with El Shaddai’s seal upon his head as well, preventing anyone from taking revenge on this murderer.

The whole situation was unfair in Nod’s eyes. He and his family had done no wrong, so why should they be the ones to harbor his brother’s murderer?

Nod ranted and railed against the in-justness of it all and became wrought. He turned to Cain in a fit of rage and said, ‘Brother, you claimed that you were not Abel’s keeper when El Shaddai demanded of you our brother’s location. Therefore, I give the same answer back to you. We are not your keeper. You may stay in the land because El Shaddai has commanded it of us. But we shall have nothing to do with you. The food you eat shall be gathered by your own hands, and the people you meet shall shun you as though you were dead. El Shaddai may be merciful to murderers, but I am not. This will be your life among us, my ex-brother. You will live as a ghost, walking unseen and unheard by any of my people. This is my sentence to you. May you die suffering over many weeks because of what you have done to my beloved brother Abel.’

And with that, Nod spat upon Cain’s feet, then turned and walked away from him, leaving him to fend for himself.

Nod was so furious he stormed off to his tent and closed the flap behind him, not allowing anyone to enter for days. He turned down food and drink, and would not even allow his wife entrance into his tent to comfort him.

While in his self-imposed seclusion, Nod raged against El Shaddai for hours on end. He argued that it wasn’t fair the way he and his family were being treated. Every time he turned around, El Shaddai was asking him to suffer another humility for the transgressions of others. He then demanded that El Shaddai remove Cain from among his people and allow Nod and his people passage back into the Garden.

El Shaddai refused of course. He then went out from Nod’s presence and would speak to him no more, regardless of how fervently Nod protested.

That was the last straw for Nod. He had had enough of El Shaddai and His judgments. From now on, things were going to be done his way. With his mind in a steaming rage, Nod decided that his earlier plans to steal into the Garden had been spot on. The appearance of Cain among them may move his schedule back a bit, but his plan to steal from the Garden was by no means finished. He was tired of being put upon by El Shaddai, and it was time things were set right.

So Nod postponed his plans. He decided that his strategy before had been good, but it was not perfect, and a little extra planning could only help. Besides, he needed to give El Shaddai time to stop watching him so closely.

As for his murdering ex-brother Cain, why not allow the wretch to stay? The alternative was to kill the man for what he had done, and that would mean he himself would need to become a murderer, and that was not going to happen. If Cain died, it would not be by Nod’s hand, nor by any member of his own family. They may be intended thieves, but they were not killers.

And as for his family aiding Cain, Nod would order them to lift not so much as a finger to help the exile. All of Cain’s food, clothing, and anything else he may need to survive would have to come from the labor of his own hands. Nod’s people would do nothing to help him. In Nod’s opinion, the fact that they had allowed him to stay at all should be gift enough for the murderer.

With that settled, Nod exited his tent and rejoined his people.

Several months passed, and as always seems to be the case, the everyday labors of survival soon erased the memories of the day Cain came into their midst. In fact, Nod and his family had nearly forgotten him altogether. They were only reminded of him when Cain entered their camp months later to ask for a wife. After being turned away with a hail of insults as well as stones, Cain fled the area never to be seen again.

Six months later, Nod decided that enough time had passed, and it was now safe for them to act. The following evening would be the new moon of harvest, he told them, and the darkness of a moonless sky would be ideal for concealing their little raid. The people agreed and hid their supplies in the hollow trunk of a monstrous tree that grew beside the Garden.

The next night the moon was absent from the night sky, just as predicted, and Nod and his people headed to the Garden. Once there, the people saw that the situation was just as their leader had said it would be. There was only one Cherub present, and he was guarding the only gate in and out of the Garden. The rest of Eden was protected by a vast wall erected by El Shaddai, with no angels patrolling the ramparts at all. Why should there be, Nod had reasoned. El Shaddai obviously felt there was no need to place Angels atop a wall He believed unassailable.

Shortly after climbing over the ‘unassailable’ wall that surrounded the Garden, Nod and his people came across El Shaddai taking a walk in His garden during the cool of the evening. When Nod saw Him, he turned his people around and ran for the wall. But they had been too slow in their escape, and El Shaddai caught them.

Freezing Nod and his people in place, El Shaddai gathered them all up and whisked them back to the other side of the wall, where He displayed great wrath toward Nod and his brothers.

‘You have displayed a total disregard for me and my word tonight,’ El Shaddai said. ‘You placed your own desires above of obedience to God and led the people I placed in your care to sin against their Father.’

‘You have also neglected my command to look after your brother Cain, which is worse than your attempt to steal from me. For what does it profit a man to live forever if he has not love for his brother?’ El Shaddai asked. ‘The treatment Cain has received, or rather not received, from your hands has upset me greatly.’

But Nod and his people said nothing. They were too afraid to speak, let alone attempt a defense of their actions. Instead, they stood silently with heads bowed, waiting for the hammer of El Shaddai’s judgment to fall.

And fall it did. That day, El Shaddai punished Nod and his family for their crimes by giving them exactly what they professed to want, eternal life. He gave each person fruits from the Tree of Life, and from the Tree of Knowledge, and then bid them eat. The fruit from the Tree of Life performed just as Nod had suspected that it would, it gave them life unending. But it also had a side effect Nod had not counted on; it hardened their bodies to physical assault and bestowed immunity to all disease. It also made them incredibly strong and fleet of foot. Their reflexes became like lightning, and their strength was like an avalanche. They were set apart from anything else in creation when it came to a speedy, stout attack. Compared to them, a striking cobra moved like a slug, and an angry gorilla a swatting kitten.

Plus, on top of all this, the fruit gave their bodies incredible healing abilities. Deep cuts would heal in minutes instead of days, and bone breaks would set themselves and then heal in hours. They had been, in effect, transformed from mortal to immortal.

On the mental side of things, the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge made them highly intelligent. It granted them control over certain mental functions of the brain that mortal humans could never attain. The result of this was that they could speak with each other using only their minds. Thought became like sound to them, and they were able to communicate what they were thinking and feeling at a much higher level than mortals. Also, their control of the brain allowed them to manipulate all aspects of their bodies as easily as