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This week’s chapter:
Title: The Conjurer
Author: Nick Oliveri
Genre: Fantasy
Chapter 1
Power is a dance of shadows. Mikalla was the shadow puppeteer. In a way, Mikalla was the shadow himself.
The whole kingdom of Idaza gathered under the sacred light of the ceremonial flame, beneath the leather sandals of Mikalla, who looked down on the whole of the city from his platform with his crew. He was out of the audience’s sight, high above and behind them. Mikalla, as the Conjurer, stood in front of the ceremonial flame, projecting his silhouette and his every movement for the masses to drink in. It was his shadow and his voice that permeated the eyes and ears of the audience. His body was the colossal shadow puppet projected onto Mount Chuxat, the giant rock formation that acted as the glowing orange screen for the countless commoners.
The commoners of Idaza were bound not by each other, but rather by their belief in the stories told to them. They were united in the blessed arcs Mikalla created with the flame and used to entrance them, week after week. Subconsciously, commoners needed a tether, a fabric—a careful, mythical lace that bound the legends of Idaza. The nobles had an answer for that, and it came in the form of the state-appointed Conjurer. The Conjurer’s job was to make them believe. Belief kept the gears turning. The Conjurer projected the stories with shadows, and it was these legends that ruled the many hearts and minds of the kingdom. Mikalla’s stories motivated every harvesting hand and inspired every nursing mother whose babies would grow up and swing hammers and swords for their kingdom with those same stories embedded in their blood and memory forever. In short, it was the stories and paintings in Mikalla’s heart that kept the great kingdom running in beautiful unison—smoothly, peacefully, collectively.
At the end of every week, the Kingdom of Idaza gathered in the largest arena in the city for a ceremonial showing from the Conjurer and his crew. The forum was situated before Mount Chuxat in colossal, stadium-style benches, using the mountain’s flat face as the projection rock. Giant shadows were cast onto the stone, depicting whatever the Conjurer dreamt up and created that week. Whatever tools the Conjurer needed were provided by the kingdom at a moment’s notice. This included the symphony of instrumentalists Mikalla had at every ceremony, the props for the shadows, and whatever else was necessary to enrapture the hearts and minds of the kingdom.
The state saw the commoners as herded sheep. Mikalla, he was their shepherd. But Mikalla did not see it that way. In fact, Mikalla painted the pictures—of his heart, of his soul—in his most authentic way. That was all the nobles needed from him.
Mikalla created stories about the nation’s gods (and the heroes, the lovers, the titanic villains), fantastic beings passed down to him through Idaza’s mythos and the Conjurers before him. In turn, the government used their holy images—Mikalla’s images—to collect harvest from the farmers, swords from the metalworkers, and so many more things that kept the kingdom turning. As a farmer produced food from the earth and the sun, Mikalla manufactured belief from stories and figures. Belief kept the kingdom turning; belief was like the sun in Idaza, energizing everything it touched.
It was a thin, delicate line that provided the mythical heart- tether to all things in Idaza: the unquestioned divinity of the position of the Conjurer—or the chief storyteller of the kingdom—coupled with Mikalla’s primal, childlike need to create and portray stories.
The masses in the stadium seating below formed a sea of flickering, washed-out faces. Silence wafted through the air like a heavy fog as the shuffling feet on the benches and soft murmurs of the city’s people waned to a hush. The cymbals blared and the gong boomed, signaling the start of the show. Mikalla gazed across the stadium from his elevated platform at the projection rock and saw his colossal shadow stare back at him—the same shadow the audience was glued to. He looked down at the sea of them like a god looked at his many creations. As he slowly and steadily waved his hand back and forth across his body, he saw their countless heads follow along with the rhythm of the shadow. Mikalla now had the delicious attention of Idaza in his grasp, and he intended to keep a tight grip.
He could tell the audience was transfixed when they swayed with him, unblinking and unwavering. It was then that he knew their wills were removed and replaced with his. The hundreds of thousands of souls within the arena were now united because they wanted to believe, and Mikalla made them.
After the cymbals clanged, he licked his lips and fixed his gaze on the eager audience. Every long second was silent. His arms spread wide, and his palms faced the black night sky. An exuberant grin crawled across Mikalla’s face as he clutched the captivated audience with talons of iron. Although he walked on two legs and ate food like the rest, tonight, he was the sole enchanter who stood above the whole of it all. He was the caster of narrative whimsy, the creator of the gods.
Idaza’s royal arena sat tens of thousands comfortably and could cram in the whole city when called upon, with the audience facing the flat slab of stone, the size of twelve elephants. Mikalla’s crew were like extensions of his body as they painted their stories in shadow upon the projection rock. He and his crew worked tirelessly in front of the giant flame, shaping the shadow marionettes that danced on the rock to the whole kingdom below. Cymbals and drums collided to simulate pattering rain and clapping thunder. Despite the clear night sky and the dry desert air, the audience could nearly feel the drops wash over them and taste the mist. What looked like a comet blazed on the projection rock ahead. The voices of the kingdom’s people bellowed all at once like an opera.
“Ahh oohhmm aahhhh ooouuhhh...”
Mikalla flicked and contorted his hands furiously in front of the flame and bit his lip. He had two crew members on either side of him fling chunks of dirt and debris into the air on his cue. One look at the platform, and it may have seemed like Mikalla and his crew were spasming. The projection rock told a different story. The flickering shadows on Mount Chuxat showed a blistering comet hit a rocky planet, followed by a crash and a deafening explosion. The audience let out one collective gasp. Mikalla closed his eyes at the audience’s reaction and breathed in through his nose, as if to crystallize and inhale their excitement. He felt electricity flow through his veins, his arms, his eyes. Mikalla picked up a life-sized figure of a baby made of straw, cloth, and rocks and held it up in front of the light. Cast on the projection rock was the shadow of a perfectly alive infant—wiggling arms, grabbing fingers, and kicking feet. The cries of a newborn echoed and bounced all around the arena.
Mikalla filled his lungs with air and proceeded to speak. The words boomed out of his mouth, accompanied and propelled by the wind itself. “And Popoti was born. Behold! The bringer of vitality and harvest for all Idaza. The rewarder of sweat and strife!”
In the same fashion and with the same precision, Mikalla continued to animate the life of Popoti, the God of Bountiful Harvest. The myth of Popoti was that he saved farmers and families alike from famine and rode giant eagles to survey the land. But that was not what solidified Popoti in the hearts and minds of the commoners. That was not enough to truly connect his feelings and his image. Mikalla’s take was to show Popoti— though a sacred deity in Idazan lore—had flaws, too.
Mikalla was the chief storyteller, the Conjurer, for the entire kingdom. It was not enough for him to simply captivate the watchers—Mikalla had to leave them both changed and enchanted.
He entrenched his audience in the characters’ lives. He swept them up in the torrent of the plot. And then, awash in the rapids of the story, he spat the audience out of the cyclone and left them transformed. They took away a vital piece of a larger existence from his stories—a portion of a greater consciousness. What Mikalla painted and played out all over the projection rock were the most human things told in the most grandiose of ways. Splayed out at every ceremony and coordinated with his acting crew was a giant, seductive reflection of all the people. When they watched the gods, the destroyers, the many warriors, and countless other characters during the ceremonies on the screen, they felt they were watching themselves. Pain, heartache, triumph—it was all there, thought up by Mikalla and amplified intimately in the hearts of the many.
That was the storytelling magic of Mikalla—it was his own bleeding heart that allowed for such a deep connection with the many watchers. He was simply the best to do it, the smoothest storyteller, and the greatest artist. He was meant to be the Conjurer.
Idaza was forged through war and bound by conflict. It stood as a commerce powerhouse in the middle of the Mesoas Valley, replete with renowned artisans, expansive agriculture, and strategic trade routes. Its primary export, though, was death at the tip of a spear. The hum of the seemingly balanced, prosperous city was supported by the graves of its enemies and dissidents. In Idaza, it was the indifferent gears of war that cultivated the city, and it was the hundreds of thousands of commoners that kept the gears turning.
But Mikalla, as perceptive as he was, didn’t know the extent to which he was both needed and used by the government. His position and status in the kingdom were profound, and his influence was far-reaching; however, he always thought his ceremonies were for entertainment—not state control.
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