Run Toward Ruin – Chapter 1
Seventeen-year-old Darius is handed an impossible gift: the power to travel back in time and undo the injury that crippled his grandfather. It should have fixed everything. Instead, it breaks the present for everyone else. Still bound to the old man’s ruthless ambition, Darius must unravel a fractured timeline and a sinister plot—before the broken past hardens into a horrible present.
The Slow Road
The sun baked from above, the air dry, the road hot. Flickering shadows of tall trees passed over the car; too fast to give any relief. Slower than needed, Darius steered the car down the gently curving country lane.
His grandfather tapped his cane against the dashboard. Past seventy, wiry and with only a fringe of white hair, and a perpetual scowl. “Do I have to tell you to slow down again, boy?”
Darius squashed his sigh with a clenched jaw and geared down, nearly stalling the car. It was the first time he had taken a long drive and he had looked forward to it. But then they had left home hours later than he wanted. The trip was thoroughly spoiled by the grumbling old man in the passenger seat.
“Yes, I’m driving so fast we’ll have a deathly smash if we spin off the road and into a… thing.”
The old man clicked his tongue. “Eyes on the road. You can’t talk and drive.”
They drove a stretch in silence. The car wound through a valley with green pastures on the left. Seisin fields dotted with sheep.
On the next straight, Darius pulled at the collar of his shirt sticking to his neck. He tried to talk again.
“I thought you were eager to get there. This conclave… you were looking forward more than me… any of the rest of us.”
Another clicking of the tongue.
“You don’t know my mind, boy.”
Darius did not. But he knew everything else. The sweat clinging to underwear, the waxy texture of old skin and the pungent ointment rubbed in every night.
“I stand beside you enough to know what keeps it busy. You have stacks of star charts prepared. What to predict I still don’t get.”
“I am ever hopeful that someone will halt the Principality’s crawl to ruination.”
“You mean that someone must be you, right?”
He said that as a jab. His grandfather would come back with a sharper one. Oswin’s voice was level though.
“This year’s conclave will be like no other. When the last greetings are given all will be at a different standing.”
“That does not make any sense to me. It seemed as if… because you don’t…”
“Because of what? Out with it, then.”
“Nothing, I don’t get why it is so hard.”
“The conclave is not just play like it is for you children.”
Darius shook his head. It would not be any play for him. Not like a couple of years ago when they all were younger and tore around the gardens, swam in the lake, got into trouble. Not since he got lumped with being Oswin’s help. Now he was always that first, his own self second.
The road was easy enough to keep worrying at the old man.
“It is just talking about business. You lay out the optimal dates for the year ahead and everybody says when they will do what and then somebody writes it all down. I don’t get why it takes so long, or has to be so serious.”
“There is more to it than that. The stars only point to auspicious opportunities. Putting together the parts that turn an opportunity the right way, that needs to be managed.”
“Everybody knows what they are doing. They have been doing it all their lives.”
“They still must be reminded of the reasons why.”
“It’s all for the Prince, right? The reason we do anything.”
“You understand so little. It is a softness in the head that has developed in the family. I hope to correct that. Not yet. It must wait for its proper time.”
“Wait for what? What is supposed to happen?”
“What do your parents say?”
Why would his grandfather ask, as if he did not direct conversations?
“Mother will do her best. But father is not keen. He seems to be dreading most of it. Only Sabina wants to be there but that’s because of…”
“Say it.”
Sabina had her relationship going on for the last three years. It was an open secret, not a topic for discussion. If they owned up to it they’d have to face the scrutiny of Oswin drawing up a celestial chart of compatibility. Nobody wanted that.
Darius only shook his head. He had already said too much. At some point grandfather would let it slip, and then Sabina would chew his head off.
“It’s that Warchen boy still,” Oswin said, his voice flat and mean.
“I have to concentrate on the road.”
“You won’t make an accident. You’d first have to develop the will to go your own way.”
Darius kept one part of his mind on the road and the rest on the slow burn in his chest. In three years he had never once walked into the conclave like a normal person. He always arrived attached to his grandfather’s pace, his grandfather’s mood. Sabina had never been asked to do any of this. She always wriggled out the worst jobs.
Then Oswin laughed. Short, to himself—satisfied and a little cold. Not at anything.
Darius had said nothing. He kept his eyes on the road and his hands tight on the wheel.
“You want us to get there late, don’t you? Don’t you want to go do your thing?”
“My thing gets done whether I am there or not.” He tapped one finger on the stem of his cane. “Slow down up the hill.”
“We are going to get there after everybody else.”
“Yes, we are. Nothing starts until I arrive and they know it.”
Like last year, when the Steward had prepared to start the conclave with an elaborate tea on the terrace. The old man ignored them all and took the moment to pull apart a Seisin property sale. Thinking of all the tears made Darius flinch.
“Yeah,” Darius said. He understood the logic—his grandfather’s presence had a gravity to it—but it didn’t make arriving last any easier. Everyone would see them driving up. Everyone would see him helping the old man out.
“I can almost walk faster than the car by now.”
“I want you to stop at the top.”
“Again? We wouldn’t have had to stop again if only you allowed me to drive all the way there and be done with it. You could be all comfortable and in privacy. Not doing it next to the road all the time.”
“How and where I do it is none of your concern, boy.”
“It is kind of is my concern, isn’t it. I’m the one who has to stand and wait, and get you in and out of the car.”
Sabina didn’t have to do this. She got to be there already, at the estate by now, settling in comfortably.
“Don’t presume I cannot do this without you. You should cherish the privilege to have my counsel.”
“Much help that is. I don’t know if you talk to me or if you just mumble… I never…”
“What was that?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering what everybody will think if we arrive so late.”
Darius stopped the car and climbed down and went around to his grandfather’s side. Oswin Pochron had to wait, his right foot twisted cripple.
The old man took his arm with a grip Darius had learnt to brace for. Getting out was not quick. Darius planted his feet and took the weight and felt, for a terrible moment again, not sure the angle was right—the fear that if Oswin shifted wrong he would not be able to hold him.
Darius stood him up next to a scrubby bush and walked back to wait at the car.
The country road stretched empty in both directions. Lined with old trees that arched overhead in places, letting the light through in gold shards. The air was warm with an edge of coolness in the shade.
He kept his eyes on the middle distance—not too far, not too close. Just a careful, blank stare down the road while behind him his grandfather did his thing.
“Stand that way.”
“I’m standing where I need to stand.”
The smell still reached him.
“And stop stamping the ground. You’re not a prisoner in chains.”
“I’m standing still.”
Then, blessed silence while the old man took care of business with grunting effort. Darius breathed through his mouth.
“I’m done. You can turn around now,” his grandfather said, as if Darius had already failed by waiting too long.
He turned. Oswin Pochron was straightening his suit with jerky snatches.
He poked at the ground with his cane and held out his right arm. “Your hand,” the old man said.
“I know.”
Darius steadied Oswin and took his weight to haul him out of the ditch and back onto the road. It was awkward to manage with the cane and the foot over the uneven ground.
Next to the car Oswin stopped with one hand on the roof to steady himself. He looked up through a gap between the trees at the sky.
“We are two nights from the Pitcher’s zenith,” he announced to the air. “This lunar mansion is ripe for victory.”
The moon was only visible in his mind’s eye. But its influence was always present and Oswin would draw on its authority to move others out of his way. Darius did not know how but he knew for one that this conclave was moved up a week only because it suited him.
The summer sky above was a clear blue. But the sun was setting. There would be no time for greeting old friends. Only getting there and getting busy with conclave things.
“We should get moving now,” said Darius.
“You’re rushing,” his grandfather muttered as he fished his watch from his waistcoat pocket.
“We’ll be last to arrive.”
“You already said that. Let them all stand there waiting. And let them think what they will. They only think they have their own minds to think with.”
“Can’t everybody think only with their own mind?”
“Not if you can plant an idea attached to a chain outside of them. Then you can tie them in knots, or pull them wherever you want them to go.”
Oswin’s smile was thin and cold. With a shift in his seat Darius caught a glimpse of his own mouth. He had the same lips. He didn’t want that same smile.
“You will still be exactly where you are, of course. But the rest of them?” He gave a low chuckle. “They have no idea how completely the order of things is about to shift.”
They would have an idea if anybody could get a chance to rifle through the thick leather briefcase his grandfather always had near. Darius got to carry it, but never open it, only ever smelling papers that had to be decades old.
Darius said nothing. His chest felt tight with all the time they were losing, but he kept his hands steady and his face blank when he opened the door. Showing impatience only made Oswin slower.
Seated, his grandfather arranged his bad leg and leaned back.
Darius walked round to the driver’s seat and started the car. He listened to the engine idling. Suddenly not ready to drive on and arrive. To get close to everybody.
The old man tapped his shoulder with the end of the cane.
“You’re sulking.”
He shifted into gear and pulled back on the road.
“I’m driving.”
“You have that vacant look about you.”
Darius kept his eyes on the road and his hands steady on the wheel. This was not a moment to look Oswin in the eye. He’d find a thought to reel out. Like Oswin, he had his own plans. Nothing clear, but something that could get him to a different standing. Perhaps his mother could again try and find a suitable nurse to at least do the old man’s ointment.
“I just want to have some time with the others. Will you let me get any of that?”
“Those people are not your friends, boy, they are enemies in abeyance.”
Around a curve the trees thinned out. The road sloped downward, and the valley opened up ahead. When Darius shifted down a gear the clutch slipped and the car roared mournfully. A pheasant burst from a hedge and flew across the way.
Then they could see the pale stone walls, dark acacia trees, and the faint shimmer of the lake to the right. The Labanti estate looked as eternal and serene as always.
© Gerhi Janse van Vuuren