LEMMATA Read online

  LEMMATA

  By Sam Peng

  Copyright @ 2011 by Sam Peng

  Cover Illustration by Sam Peng

  Cover design by CreateSpace

  Book design and production by Sam Peng

  Editing by Logan Kloepfer

  Author photograph by Duy Bui

  ISBN-13: 978-1468144239

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  http://twitter.com/#!/desariofan

  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sam-Peng/304091946296337

  For my coworker Logan, who nonchalantly edited this wild conception of mine.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Preview of The Redding Files: Part I Awakening of The Holy Guardian

  Preface

  Writing continues to be my best friend and even more so as an enemy. It really depends on another factor that determines which it will be for me on a particular day: My mood. When I feel like Blanche Devereaux, I’ll shamelessly procrastinate until there’s no more DOTA (should I even go there?) games to play online. If, by some luck when the time perfectly aligns with the given space that I am in, I’ll become Shakespeare and pen out perhaps twenty pages of words, lines, and stories in a single breath. And that happens perhaps once a year… So an enemy it becomes.

  I’ve been “working” on a particular book for the past five years, hoping that one day I’ll be able to complete it. With the content closely associates with romantic/humor genre, I put it on hold and began where my true passion in writing lies, which is thriller. It is about twenty percent completed. So as you can see, that book still has a long way to go. In the mean time, I contribute what little skills I might have in writing by submitting articles to a couple of magazines whenever the subject matter raises my interest. It was between writing those articles that I composed this short story you are about to read. The idea came when a local newspaper ran an ad for a fiction contest. The contest rule was to write a short three thousand word story that related to a certain word. What word you ask? That is for you to find out. The only thing about this copy that is different than what I submitted is that this is the original manuscript without cutting and editing to fit the three thousand word criterion. I enjoyed the uncut version better.

  At the end of this short story, I included the first chapter of my upcoming project: a detective thriller trilogy named The Redding Files. Part I is titled Awakening of The Holy Guardian.

  Lastly, in this historical short story, I think that in the end, writing was a friend to me.

  SAM PENG

  All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

  -- Socrates

  One

  The moon shifted brightly in this midsummer windy night. Its light glistened upon a tiny village under it and reflecting back to the sky was nothing but beams of black and red. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary outside the nine dwellings in this remote village situated in deep forest, except that the inhabitants of those dwellings now laid motionless inside in various forms of dead.

  Inside one dwelling, off northwest of the village, housed an older couple and their daughter. The daughter was asleep when she was stabbed in the upper left side of her chest right through the heart. The older couple was in the living room when their time came, bodies bundled together before they were brutally decapitated, leaving the area immersed in liquid of salty blood.

  The dwelling in the middle of the village lived a young man, who had some form of combat training, but even he suffered a similar fate as he was tied up to a now blood saturated wooden chair. His severed legs were found approximately thirty feet from his laden body.

  At the back of the village stood a dwelling that accommodated the village leader and his family of two sons and a wife. Perhaps the most atrocious form of death was bestowed upon them for their bodies were tied up against each other before being burned alive. Now all that was left of their bodies from the aftermath was nothing but charcoaled human bones and a strong scent of dead, filling up the entire household.

  At the end of the village, there appeared to have the only movements found around this area inside a dwelling. The plaque placed by the entrance of the dwelling carved House of Pythagoras.

  Deep beneath the blood soaked soil under this particular dwelling laid a perfect square of a wooden box. The sound of frantic oozing right above it, followed by hushes of low speaking tones filled with anxiety and excitement. The hands that searched the wooden box finally reached their destination and in a split second, it was shattered in pieces, revealing the content that the shadowy figures had been hunting for.

  Without fail, confusion and fear filled the faces of the shadowy figures. There was nothing inside the box. It was empty. After all that they had done to arrive at this juncture of their crusade, it seemed highly bizarre that what they were looking for was not at the place where it ultimately should have been.

  Outside of this cold, stoned dwelling bore an eerie quiet that seemed too settled given the countless fresh cadavers that laid throughout the village. The shadowy figures realized that they could not linger any longer and like the wind that blew in from the south and whisked away to the north, they banished into the night in the most silent and untraceable manner, leaving behind a tiny village massacred by their trained hands and sharp swords.

  Two

  The sun rose from the eastern hemisphere, surrounding it was a few clouds hurrying to make way for the dominant rays of light. Pitar awoke from his slumber and shifted his lean and toned body on the bed, his long dark hair loosen behind his back. Groggily sitting by the bedside, his brown eyes came upon the sacks and bags he packed the previous night and finally reminded himself that he was due to travel back to his homeland of Samos in Greece. It will be a three day travel, he wagered, from where he was situated, which was Egypt.

  Pitar had been a pupil in Egypt’s most prestigious School of Mysteries. The most thoughtful philosophers, intelligent mathematicians, and observant astronomers all congregated here to enlighten aspiring minds of various subjects. Pitar left Samos and his family in order to study and enhance the discovery of what he came to call as The God Number. What The God Number did, no one knew for certain, only a selected few had been told of this mighty work. His trusted professor, Kallisto, whose mentor was none other than the great Socrates, was the only one in Egypt who knew of Pitar’s secret, as he was the one who aided Pitar to gain the full realization and completion of The God Number.

  In actuality, the absolute manuscript of Pitar’s work had already been fully ascertained and written on a scroll, of which its location only his wife, Theano, knew. It had been hidden away back in Samos a year ago by her. But experimentations and trials and errors were Pitar’s forte. He was not fully satisfied of his finding unless it went through countless debates, arguments, and tests with Kallisto throughout the past year. As it turned out, the initial inception of The God Number was perfect. Pitar had discovered a source of power that would grant civilizations hundreds of years in constant supremacy and dominance.

  Outside Pitar’s study stood Kallisto, bittersweet written on his face as he came to bid farewell to his favorite student. “All ready to go, Pitar?” Kallisto greeted.

  “It would seem so. All I need to do is to garner the strength and carry those sacks onto the horse then I am all set,” a certain hint of sadness can be heard as Pitar replied.

  “As always, if you need anything, I will be there for you,” Kallisto reassured.

  “Yes, master. I am quite humbled by your teachings and care for the past three years. Your kindness will not be forgotten,” Pitar confidently said.

  Just then, a young courier barged into Pitar’s study, looking restless and pale. “What is the matter with you, lad?” Kallisto demanded. “Do you not have decorum and manner in front of my most honored student?” The young man took a moment, then immediately bowed to both Pitar and Kallisto, still white faced and clothes full of sweat. “What say you, my son?” Kallisto asked.

  Upon getting up but sheepishly looking down, the young man replied, “Master Pitar, I carry grave news to you this morning. It had been said and confirmed that your home village in Samos was brutally attacked and massacred. The villagers who lived among the dwellings were all found to be dead, some in state of unrecognizable conditions. The law officials did not find anyone alive within the village. They fear that your family was among the dead.” Stunned silence fell.

  “What blasphemy! Utter nonsense!” Kallisto countered. “How dare you spread rumor such as this, young man?” The young man produced an enclosed document and presented it to Pitar. It was a document with an official Greece House of the Decree seal attached to it. Pitar immediately opened the document and read the passages on it in horror, hands shaking. It was now his face that turned pale. Kallisto waved the young courier away. “There has to be a mistake, Pitar. It does not add up.” Kallisto tried to comfort.

  Without hesitation, Pitar picked up one bag out of the pile of sacks he compiled the night before an
d turned to Kallisto. “Forgive me, master. I bid farewell to you hastily. Please understand.” With that, Pitar sprinted out of the study. Outside his makeshift house, he jumped onto a grayish white muscular horse and dashed away into the sun toward the horizon, leaving a worried Kallisto looking on from a distance.

  Three

  The traveling had been gruesome and the pouring rain made it even more difficult. The one thing out of the countless on his mind that Pitar worried in this journey wasn’t himself but the horse he rode on. The powerful animal, however, still seemed full of life after a long one and a half day of nonstop running. They reached their destination of Tigani in Greece, a city right outside of Samos. The imperial guards at the city gate halted Pitar, demanding reasons of his visitation. Seeing that the story of what happened to his village would create too much stir, he searched around his soil tainted robe and found what he was looking for. Satisfied by the document that bare the Greece House of Decree seal presented to them, the imperial guards let Pitar in without any delay.

  After securing his horse near the city gate, Pitar walked among the city streets toward the one house he was looking for. A few passersby curiously eyed him when he finally reached a house near the west of the barricaded city. He proceeded to knock on the door. There was no answer. He knocked on it again. A few moments passed before Pitar felt a presence behind the door. The small rectangular hole opened on the wooden, brown colored door and a set of eyes met Pitar’s pair.

  The man behind the door finally spoke in an ominous, yet strong voice, “At night they come without being fetched, and by day they are lost without being stolen.”

  “Stars,” replied Pitar. Immediately, the door opened and Pitar was whisked right inside the house.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Pitar,” the man, named Callas, worriedly said. “I have…” Before Callas could finish what he was saying, Pitar roared abruptly.

  “Is she here? Please tell me she is here, Callas!”

  Callas stood silently, looked at Pitar and then led him through to the kitchen area. After lifting the curtain at the kitchen entrance, there stood Theano in the most troubled way. “Oh, Heavens!” bellowed out Theano. Pitar and Theano quickly embraced one another, then they sat right down by the kitchen table to go over what exactly transpired.

  “What happened, Theano? Tell me papa and mama are still alive,” demanded Pitar, even though the hope in his heart of what he wished for was slim at best. Theano simply looked at Pitar with tears streaming down her soft cheeks, tears that moistened the dark busy eye lashes she carried in front of her bright golden yellow eyes. “This can not be.” Seemingly in shock, Pitar merely fell silent. It was Callas who broke the quiet barrier in the air.

  “The Brotherhood did not anticipate the ambush. There was little we could do. The attack happened so deliberately that we weren’t able to recover the scroll in time,” Callas explained. “I ran into Theano in the forest while fleeing the village. We were able to escape and sought refuge here without being detected.”

  “Where are Onesiphoros and the others? Where is Theocritus? Please, tell me that they were able to get away as well,” Pitar pleaded.

  “I am sorry, my love,” Theano slowly answered without looking into Pitar’s eyes. “We fear that the only remaining survivors under the Brotherhood are the ones alive in this room.”

  Stillness and silence once again engulfed the gloomy room.

  ~~~

  Outside the house within the darkness loomed a towering figure. His strong hands caked with dry dirt and muscular body painted with sweat stains. Bion needed to complete his task. He was not pleased that he came away empty handed during his trip to that village in Samos. All the meticulous plans Bion and his master had orchestrated seemed to have come crushing down. Thankfully, Bion grinned, his master was smart in that they let one of the villagers escape, leaving a trace of which could be a possible clue for the search of the scroll that should have been inside the wooden box. He seemed to have finally found the way.

  As Bion peeked through the crack on the wall enclosing the kitchen of the house, he saw three figures. He knew the one standing over the two sitting down as he was the one that escaped. I will take him down first. He thought. He also was familiar with the couple sitting down by the kitchen table, for he was told that the man was the mathematician who devised the scroll and the woman was his wife. The man must know where the scroll is. Bion figured. The plan of action now sat firm in his head and in no time he will have the scroll in his hand and deliver it to his master.

  ~~~

  Like a water droplet freefalling into a pond of quiet water, Callas suddenly went head first onto the cement beneath him. And unlike the silence when the water droplet hit the pond, Callas’ skull created a monstrous bang of a crackling pottery against a wall. Without fail, he remained there motionless as his face stuck to the ground. Behind his head was an arrow that penetrated the whole of his brain. He was dead right away.

  Because of the instantaneous spectacle that transpired before their eyes, Pitar and Theano weren’t able to react quickly enough to dodge another set of darting arrows coming their way from outside the kitchen window. With no time for fear, Pitar turned the table and placed the table top toward the window to protect both him and Theano. It was no use. Theano was hit on her forehead and had also fallen onto the ground without much resistance. In disbelieve, Pitar bellowed in suffering and in disobedience to his humanistic instinct to survive, he pushed the protective table away and stood stark defenseless as if to invite yet another death upon himself.

  Nothing happened, at least for the next few moments, then the wooden panels guarding the kitchen window shattered and in jumped the powerful assassin Bion.

  Standing one whole foot taller than Pitar, Bion menacingly circled around a man who was now in total shock.

  “So, you are Pitar? The mind who devised the scroll that my master wants so much he would massacre a whole village over its possession?” Bion said, smirking. “Where is the scroll?” Bion ordered. Pitar simply stood there motionless and expressionless. His soul seemed to have escaped his body. “I do not have time for your insolence. Where is the scroll?” again, Bion demanded, but to no avail. “Death becomes you!”

  Raising his hardened fist, Bion directed his ruthless punch toward Pitar’s face, but before he could land it, a tiny knife swiftly materialized and accurately pierced through his left eye. In excruciating pain, Bion fell onto the ground, nursing the wound he had just abruptly acquired. “My eye! My eye!” Bion screamed in agony.

  Immediately, a masked woman ran in from the kitchen door and after securing Pitar on her shoulders, she took off with him just as fast as she made her appearance inside the room, leaving Bion enduring the fraction of pain he caused to those villagers he slaughtered.

  Four

  Awoken from sleep, Pitar gazed at the ceiling of a place he was a stranger of, in deep thought. Then a pair of mysterious eyes gazed back at him and they remained there for some time.

  “Who are you?” Pitar finally spoke.

  “Roxana. I was sent by Kallisto to fetch you. He was worried that you weren’t going to make it.”

  “No. Who are you exactly?” Pitar eyed her intently. Roxana stared with her glowing blue eyes. After flipping her curly strands of brunette hair, she looked right back at him.

  “I was once a Skythian archer from a unit of Greece Office of Decree enforcements. But now I serve under the Hub of Covert for Egypt’s School of Mysteries,” Roxana explained.

  “Hub of Covert?” a confused looking Pitar asked.

  “It’s an undercover society that protects the true beliefs and teachings of School of Mysteries. I can say no more.”

  After a long pause, Pitar whispered, “What is going to come of this?”