Fable -Theresa E-Book

DAVID PETER

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Fable™ Heroes, available May 2, 2012, on Xbox Live Arcade, gathers a range of heroes and villains from across the epic videogame saga—and the Fable™ companion eBook series delves even deeper into their greatest triumphs, darkest secrets, and never-before-seen origins. In this first story, there are high stakes on the high seas as the always cunning Reaver takes on a ruthless pirate king.

Leseprobe

Titan Books

Fable: Theresa

E-book ISBN: 9781781165782

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St

London

SE1 0UP

Copyright © 2012 by Microsoft Corporation

Cover illustration courtesy Lionhead Studios. Copyright © Microsoft Corporation

Fable: Jack of Blades is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

This edition published by arrangement with Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Microsoft, Fable, Lionhead, the Lionhead logo, Xbox, and the Xbox logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries and are used under license from Microsoft.

Did you enjoy this book? We love to hear from our readers. Please e-mail us at: [email protected] or write to Reader Feedback at the above address.

To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website: www.titanbooks.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

First Page

Does anyone truly know each other?

The mother who answered the door was incredibly upset, her expression one of pure, undiluted dread. She was practically a woman in mourning, either faced with the worst or anticipating it. A blind person could have told as much.

What with my being blind, I know exactly what I’m talking about.

First of all, there was the smell that wafted from her. It has been my general experience that women are more concerned with matters of personal cleanliness than are men. They bathe themselves more often and tend to cover whatever bodily aroma may remain through scented soaps and fragrances. I do not know why it would be this way, but men seem to take pride in their individual stench. Actually, not just take pride: revel in it. They pass gas loudly. They seem to regard water as anathema, either for drinking (alcohol is preferred) or particularly for bathing. I don’t see this as being a concerted effort on their part; it’s just the way they are.

There are exceptions to this. Royalty, for one. Male royalty can smell as perfumed as any woman.

And then there are Heroes. You can always tell when you’re in the presence of Heroes. But the type of smell that comes from them depends entirely on their alignment.

Not all Heroes are the same. That’s a popular misconception, that all Heroes are alike. They are very much not. Yes, granted, Heroes as a group tend to try to act on behalf of the commonweal, but they go about it in very different ways. Ways that are sometimes diametrically opposed to each other.

There are Heroes who tend to lean toward a more positive means of tending to their business. When you’re in the presence of such an individual, the very air around you smells clean and fresh, even if you’re standing in the middle of a sewer. (Why you would be in the middle of a sewer, I couldn’t say. It’s simply for the sake of illustration.)

On the other hand, there are Heroes who view the ends as fully justifying the means. They have no scruples as to how they go about their business as long as they manage to accomplish whatever it is they set out to do. When you are in proximity to such as these, there seems to be a scent of brimstone in the air.

Actually, I’m generalizing when I say “you.” You, very likely, will perceive nothing. The reason I’m reasonably sure of this is that in the beginning, when my senses were first becoming honed and I was “seeing” the world in a different manner, a pungent scent would waft my way and I would say to someone near me, “Do you smell that? What a terrible aroma,” and they would say, “I smell nothing, and show some respect, woman; a Hero approaches.” Or, conversely, I would comment on how sweet the air was and receive a similar comment of confusion but learn that a Hero was nearby. It took me a while to understand why things were the way they were and how only I could discern them.

It was as if only having lost my sight was I truly able to see. There are times when I pity those around me. They rely on their vision, oftentimes to the exclusion of their other senses. I, on the other hand, depend upon the four that remain to me and cannot be distracted by those things that would appeal to those who depend on sight. As a result, in many ways I am more focused upon the world than the poor devils who have to depend on their eyes.

So, as I’ve made clear, my first clear indication of the woman’s distress was the aroma that wafted from her.

Second was what my ears told me. The sniffle in her nose and the hoarseness in her speaking voice when she managed to hold herself together enough to say, “May I help you?” told me that this was a woman who had been crying almost without letup. She had been fighting grief and losing badly.

I sensed the air currents that moved around her, heard the fluttering of her dress, determined where her voice was coming from. Once upon a time, I had had to put these different pieces together to assemble an image in my head. Now I simply “saw” that she was of medium height, about five and a half feet tall, and slender. Her hair was shoulder length from the way it rustled against the cheap homespun of her dress, although I could not determine its color. She had been working in the kitchen recently; the scent of freshly baked muffins clung to her. Perhaps it had been to take her mind off her recent troubles.

“Actually,” I said, “I think I might be able to help you. May I come in?”

“I’m sorry … do I know you?” The angle of her voice had changed; she was tilting her head slightly, no doubt trying to see beneath the hood I was wearing, which obscured my features.

“Does anyone truly ‘know’ each other?” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“No, I should beg your pardon. Sometimes I’m unnecessarily cryptic. It’s becoming a habit with me. I should watch that.” I eased back my hood, and she gasped when she saw my face, then immediately tried to take back that gasp because she doubtless thought it came across as impolite.

What had startled her so thoroughly was the revelation that I was sightless. I had a blindfold wrapped around my eyes, obscuring them. She might have found it a bit disconcerting, but I was actually doing her a service. People found my uncovered eyes far more shocking. My appearance was not in keeping with what was traditionally expected of the blind. Rather than twin disfocused orbs that stared lifelessly out at the world, I had nothing but two empty black sockets.

That’s what happens when someone cuts out your eyes.

I have lived hundreds of years, and yet even to this day, I can still remember every second of that ordeal. And the very last sight I had before it was taken from me forever was the expressionless mask of Jack of Blades, overseeing the punishment for what he saw as my lack of cooperation. I refused to give him any information about my brother, whom Jack was seeking, and Jack of Blades didn’t take well to being defied.

I screamed and kept screaming, and all the time—although it was impossible to see his expression—I’m reasonably sure that Jack enjoyed every moment.

Sometimes I dream about going back to that instant in time, finding my sobbing, newly blinded self, and assuring her that there are many ways to see the world. That there is sight beyond sight, and she will come to know that better than anyone living in Albion. That what she was seeing as effectively the end of her life was actually only the beginning.

Somehow I doubt my presence would have made much difference. With any luck, however, my presence would make a difference this time.

“I’m sorry,” said Elizabeth—that was the woman’s name, “Elizabeth,” though she doubtless didn’t know that I was aware of it—“I shouldn’t have reacted that … I mean, yes, of course, come in.” She had been simply peering out through a narrowly opened door, as was often the case when someone was encountering a stranger. Now she opened wide the door; the creak of the hinges and the repositioning of her voice told me so as she stepped back. Yet naturally she assumed I was unaware of it. “I’m opening the door,” she said loudly.

The first hundred years or so of my life, it was irksome to me that people automatically raised their voices when initially encountering me. Now I chose to find it amusing. “I’m blind, not deaf,” I said as I walked into the small house, barely a level or two above the status of hut.

“I’m sorry the place is such a mess,” she said reflexively, then moaned at what she saw as a miscue. “Of course, you can’t see it … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said you couldn’t see—”

“I was already aware of it, actually,” I said dryly. “So it’s not as if I’m going to take offense. The best thing you could do for me right now is stop apologizing.”