Near the beginning of the second millennium...
...a good man named Kalos arrived in the land of Navarre between modern-day Spain and France. He lived a simple and inconspicuous life in a small, but growing village. Kalos was old and walked with a large staff. He greeted people kindly when they crossed paths with him, but avoided conversation and company. As is typical of then (and now), a person’s reclusiveness created an aura of mystery and fear. But when it came to this particular person, people were wary because they somehow sensed a power that they could not see nor understand.
Little did the people in the village know that their instincts about this old man were correct, for Kalos was the last of the Great Wizards. Not much is known about this secretive and powerful group of men and women – when they first appeared and why they slowly disappeared. What is known is that they had helped bring Europe out of the Dark Ages and that their mission was to make the world better by supporting the common good. Lost to history and turned into myth was also the truth that the Great Wizards were able to create rings of power, a skill that had been passed down through the wizard lineage since the time of the Ring of Gyges.
As a Great Wizard, Kalos too had created rings of power and abided by the values of wizards before him. And true to his order, Kalos never used a ring of power for his own gain, but gave these rings to others, who promised to use the rings for good. When Kalos settled in the Navarre province, he had already stopped making rings and had decided to live out his days in peace interrupted only with the quietude of travel by horseback in the Pyrenees.
But Kalos harbored a sense of foreboding that dampened his spirit and made his days less peaceful. Just before his arrival to the village, Kalos had lost a ring of power. This ring made its wearer ten times stronger and twice as fast as the average human, and Kalos feared that its power would be abused if the wrong person found it. He hoped no one would find it and that the ring would be lost forever. Something else, though, weighed even heavier on Kalos’ mind. The losing of the ring seemed to presage a return of the darkness from centuries ago. The Great Wizards were gone and people seemed to be reembracing selfishness and demonstrating the lack of empathy that comes with it. Losing an understanding of the common good seemed to catalyze the growing darkness.
It wasn’t long before Kalos’ worse fears were realized. Returning from one of his trips in the mountain woods, he learned that a Ring of Power had indeed been found. The Ring was found on the road by a simple farmer named Zemo. Zemo used his newfound power to take over farms adjacent to his. As time passed, Zemo became greedier and more ruthless. He used his power to enslave people and eventually became the ruler of a large province.
When Kalos learned about Zemo and that the Ring had been used for ill and for self gain, he was beside himself and grief-stricken, knowing that he was partly responsible for the creation of a bad ruler.
To make up for Zemo’s unjust actions with his unwitting help, the Wizard decided to create the eight rings of power that his ancestors had learned to make in another time and place now forgotten by ordinary men. This time, though, Kalos limited the longevity of the rings’ power to seven years and determined that he would give the rings to only good people. These eight rings also encased different powers.
Like the ring Zemo found, the first ring gave its user incredible strength and speed. The second ring enabled its bearer to hear the faintest of sounds, from the quiet breathing of a cat to a normal human voice uttered two hundred yards away. Ring 3 bestowed the power of telekinesis, the ability to move objects with one’s mind. The fourth ring embodied the last of the “simple powers”, giving the ring bearer the power to illuminate dark places and dispel dark thoughts.
Rings five through eight commanded every bit of the wizard’s skill as they were the most powerful ever made. Kalos summoned the wisdom and magic of the twelve generations of wizards before him to create the remaining rings. And despite the rings’ greater power, they had limitations – not because Kalos designed them that way, but because no Wizard before him had been able to harness such great power without some constraint. For his part, Kalos appreciated the limitations of the rings of power, thinking it would be another, albeit minor, check on absolute power just in case a ring fell into the wrong hands again.
Ring 5 gave its owner the power to temporarily amplify the strengths and weaknesses of other people. With this ring, a person could make a strong person stronger, an intelligent person smarter, or a caring person even more kind. But the owner could also make a feeble person more weak, a dullard more ignorant, and a bully more cruel.
The sixth ring carried the power of future-sight. With the ring on, the owner would see glimpses of the future from a week to a month ahead. Given time and practice, the ring bearer could catch a glimpse of the future of a specific person. However, sometimes a glimpse of the future might be seen without context or without an understanding of when a future event took place.
Ring 7 bestowed the power to turn back time for approximately one hour. This power too had its limitations as it could only be used one time during each full moon.
Finally, the eighth ring gave the ring bearer the power of invisibility for several hours at a time.
Kalos designed and created the eight rings in just over two years. Once they were ready, he left his home in search of eight good people to whom he could bestow the rings. His travels took him as far south as the Mediterranean and as far east as Vienna. Over five years, he found eight people – a King, a Queen, a princess, two military leaders, a priest, an artist, and a commoner – whom he considered good. He got to know all of them and believed that all of them would continue to help people and do good works. All but one eagerly accepted his gift of a ring of power and promised to use their power and influence for good. Only one hesitated, fearing the possibility that such power might change him. To him, the Wizard gave Ring 6. “In this way,” Kalos explained, “you can see into the future and stop yourself should you see yourself turning in a way that is undesirable.”
And so the Wizard returned home to Navarre, knowing that he had played a role in expanding good in the world.
Months passed, and Kalos began to enjoy growing old. He no longer felt the growing shadow of a dark age. But the sense of calm he harbored would not last long for within a year of his return stories began to reach Navarre that there were rings of power across the continent and that the people who wielded these rings were acting in ways to grow even more powerful or wealthy. Instead of using the power of the rings to advance the common good and to help people, the ring bearers were advancing their own interests even if it meant harming or subjugating the common people. Only one of the eight people chosen by Kalos used his power for the good of others.
When Kalos heard the woeful tales of the rings of power, he ripped his clothes and tore out his hair – once again, he believed that it was his fault that the rings were adding to the darkness instead of enlightening the world. And he was responsible for the pain the rings had wrought on people. Heavy with sadness, Kalos abandoned the world of men and sought solace in the mountains of the Pyrenees. There he came upon a small cave where he decided to spend the rest of his life. But Kalos could not live with the knowledge that he had contributed to the suffering of so many people by creating rings of power that he had given to people by his own hand. The fact that the rings held their power for only seven years gave him little solace. He vowed to make things right.
For several years he worked on creating a ring of power that could only be used for good. It would force the bearer to use the power of the ring to help others; the bearer would not be able to use the ring to advance his own interests. Kalos was excited about this idea, but try as hard as he might, he was unable to create such a ring. He could imbue rings with great power, but he could not force people to use the rings for good.
Defeated, Kalos became slightly mad and began to lose hope that the darkness could ever be forestalled. As more years passed, he became old and feeble (for a ring of power to extend life was another ring he was unsuccessful in making).
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Then one late afternoon, the Wizard observed four blackbirds mobbing a hawk. The blackbirds worked together to defend their nests from the much larger and stronger hawk. Inspired and gathering the last bit of hope that he had, Kalos worked feverishly for three days straight, barely sleeping or eating.
At dawn on the fourth day, Kalos was done. He had created four rings of strength – Ring One. However, the power of any one of the four rings would only be revealed when the rings were used together. The bearer of one of these rings would not have any power if he used the ring by himself. But if four different people used the rings in concert, they would wield the power of the ring for as long as the rings were used together.
Kalos did not limit the life of these rings, and he vowed to give the rings to ordinary people. He hoped that the rings would be used for the common good. Since four people had to use the rings together in order for the power to be revealed, it was less likely that one person’s interests would be served over those of others. And as his belief in the goodness of people had not totally left him, he hoped that people would work together to do good.
Over the next year, Kalos created seven other sets of rings to add to the first set – one set for each power that he knew how to encase in a ring. These are the 32 rings of Navarré.
Unfortunately, before Kalos could distribute his rings across the lands, he died of old age. Nobody knows what happened to the rings. Most likely they were discovered by hikers or travelers and taken to towns and sold. Not knowing the rings’ real value or power, people probably traded them or gave them away as gifts, and the rings eventually wound up in jewelry boxes or pawn shops.
* * * * * *
In 2008 while I was wandering through the rare books area in the library in Mafra, Portugal, I came across a small manuscript entitled Navarre. It caught my eye because my wife and I named our oldest son Navarre (after the main character in a movie called Ladyhawk). How the manuscript got to Mafra is not known, but the small, fragile pages revealed the story of the Wizard and the Rings of Navarré (Kalos had placed the acute accent on the name of the region for some reason). It was written in first person and thus was probably written by Kalos himself.
“This can’t be true,” I mumbled to myself, giving a nod to unimaginative reality. But part of me drifted to the world beyond time and probability to one of hope and apocryphal events. Moved by the possibility of having stumbled upon one of the greatest historical finds the world has ever known, I reread the manuscript – this time looking for specific clues to its veracity and trying to determine whether Kalos was detailing actual events or simply writing an intriguing fable.
It wasn’t the believable chronology of events that matched Kalos’ travel or the specificity of his recounting that accounted for the growing excitement in me. In the end, I believe I was just taken by the author’s pure emotion around people’s frailty, but also an incredible sense of hope. Perhaps because of our own dark time, I wanted the story to be true – not so much because of the rings of power, but because of one man’s uncompromising belief in the power of the common good.
I resolved to research Kalos’ story. Not wanting anyone else to discover Kalos’ writing before I had had a chance to research it, I hid the manuscript within a larger tome in the rare books room.
After taking extensive notes about the Rings, I took a train to the city of Pamplona in present day Navarre Province. It became my basecamp. Over the next several summers, I visited dozens of smaller caves in the Pyrenees that I thought matched the description and location Kalos had outlined in the manuscript. It took me several summers before I found the actual cave. It was quite isolated, and there was no trace that humans had visited the cave.
I searched for clues in every inch of the small cave. I even stayed overnight in the cave. At dawn on the second day, perhaps at exactly the same time Kalos finished his first set of rings, the sun’s rays filled the cave, and for just a second I caught a glimpse of something that reflected the light. It was in a crack in the wall of the cave about ten feet above the floor of the cave. It took me a few minutes, and with the help of my walking stick, I pried out the reflective object. It fell to the floor with a hopeful, merry sound. It was a simple gold ring with the word “Navarré” engraved on it. On the inside of the ring was inscribed a single number: “6”. I took this to mean that it was a ring from the sixth set. A thorough search of the cave proffered no other rings or items of any sort.
It was enough. I had found a Ring of Power and the story of its origin and history. If the manuscript was true, and if the other rings were found, they would fulfill Kalos’ hope and had the potential of bringing a lot of good into this world at a time of our own darkness.
Since the publication of this account in 2015, five Rings of Navarré have been found, but a complete set has yet to be found. Three of us ring bearers wear our ring on a chain around our neck as a sign of hope that the other rings will be found. More important, we also wear our rings in this manner as a visible promise that we will use whatever power or influence we have for the common good.
