Marooned

by Travis Smith

  “You have lived without fear,” Bernard continued. “You all have lived without fear. And look what it’s brought you. Chaos and unruliness permeate this land. Your former king has spoiled you. He brought you all inside his very own castle walls, too close to his heart. He granted to each citizen the very spoils that were his birthright. He gave to you all such advantages that he could not care for his own family. And now you spin your cogs against the tides of change but never gain traction. You resist the inevitable, and you fall, weak, by the wayside, unable to perform, unable to support your fellow man, unable to support your Baron.”

  Fallon shook his head slowly but emphatically as The Baron spoke. The gravity of his new leader’s words grew heavier upon him with each syllable, and his despair grew until he could bear its weight no more. His shoulders slumped, and his head drooped. He remained in position on his knees, but his outstretched hands fell, and he hunched forward, supporting himself upon his palms. He heaved a heavy, shaky breath, holding back tears at what he feared may come.

  Bernard acknowledged at last his old friend who’d brought the captive hence. “That will be all, Antonio,” he said to the man’s immediate apparent chagrin. “You are dismissed.”

  “Excuse me?” Antonio began.

  “You may retire back to your quarters. There is some time yet left for slumber.”

  “Quite fit t’ be awake at this point,” Antonio said, his face contorting with unmasked frustration.

  “You may retire,” Bernard repeated. “Do not mistake my politeness as an offer. That is an order.”

  Antonio’s stout face grew red and looked fit to explode. His jaw worked side-to-side as he clenched his teeth. He looked from the prisoner to the little girl and then back to Bernard, clearly using every ounce of his willpower to forestall an outburst. He had done the heavy lifting. He had spread the orders through the land and dealt with wave after wave of rebellion over the past several days. He had put in the work to quell the outbreaks, and he had found the prisoner wandering the streets in the middle of the night. And how would he be rewarded for this hard work? By being shooed out the door just before the real fun began? By being shut out once again from his former partner’s master plans. “I’ll be damned to hell,” he muttered under his breath.

  “You very well may,” Bernard said darkly.

  Antonio bit his tongue against further remark. He was, after all, second in command for a reason. While there may be no others physically or mentally as equipped to handle such a position as he, he would not risk losing his post to some arse-licking sycophant.

  “As ye wish, Bernard,” he dropped, with a sardonic, servile tone that he knew would gnaw at The Baron’s nerves. He planted a heavy boot into his captive’s bottom, sending the poor man unceremoniously to his stomach.

  Fallon yelped and groaned as his body was thrust to the floor.

  With that, Antonio turned and vanished into the darkness, slamming the cabin door behind him on his way out.

  Bernard remained still in the quiet room for a moment more. His face hovered somewhere between a scowl and emotional disconnect. The rain trickled down from atop the roof outside. Anda’s soft whimpers echoed throughout the quiet.

  “Please,” Fallon croaked again, another futile plea from face down on the cabin floor.

  Bernard did not reply. Instead, the silence hung, and the tension mounted for the two prisoners in the room. Bernard, however, watched the shadow of his companion as it stormed back along the dark streets. At last, he broke his grip from Anda’s shoulder with a small but forceful shove and stormed to the window to look out directly. His pace was erratic and somewhat more frantic than his level voice would suggest.

  “You will not forget,” he said, seemingly to no one in particular.

  “Please,” Fallon moaned again from the floor. Tears streaked his desperate, dirty face.

  “You will remember how I delivered upon my promise, and you will spread word to your compatriots as readily as you’ve spread this sickness we hear in the distance.”

  Fallon slowly shook his head, still on his arms and knees, his eyes squinted shut tight. He heaved in an agonized breath and let out a blood-curdling sob.

  The sound finally sent Anda over the edge. Her faint whimpers turned to outright sobs. “Please, father!” she screamed, tears streaming down her wet face now.

  Bernard stormed back across the room, took the girl by her shoulder, and pushed open a bedroom door on an adjacent wall. The wooden door creaked to reveal a room, empty save for one high-backed chair facing away from the entry room. There were no torches or candles inside the room, and, as low thunder rumbled once again in the distance, the low, wispy clouds overhead slid out from beneath the moon, and a beam of bright moonlight shimmered in through the open window.

  Fallon lifted his head and opened his eyes at last. He could not see what—if anything—was in the chair as it faced the opposite wall, but his eyes locked once again with Bernard’s, and the story they told had changed. He felt a rush of emotion. His empathic mind channeled the tales that The Baron’s eyes told. His breath hitched as a wave of exaltation and excitement washed over him, followed by a sick knot of dread in his gut.

  Their eyes locked only for a moment before Bernard looked away. He shoved the girl into the adjoining room, and she stumbled onto her hands and knees in front of the chair, still sobbing.

  “Be strong, Anda!” Fallon exclaimed. “All will be well … I am here …” His repeated, empty platitudes were met by her own refrain:

  “Please!”

  As Fallon gazed on, time seemed to come to a halt. He felt the air stop moving through his chest. The rain upon the cabin roof became a dull, distant static that almost did not exist at all. A bolt of lightning tumbled lazily from the heavens and gave the world an unrealistic purple glow for far longer than one could reasonably expect.

  The Baron stood, motionless, outside the cabin’s room, his mouth slightly agape and his eyes wide. His arms were frozen in half flexion, too tense to drop casually to his side.

  Fallon saw one grey, knobby, long-fingered hand arise from the arm of the chair. The palm turned upward, open. One by one, in rhythmic sway, the fingers bent inward into a loose fist. A low whirring sound like approaching wind materialized out of thin air, and a flourish erupted in the dim room. Where Anda had knelt moments before, a black flash appeared—not a flash of light, but a flash of darkness. A darkness so complete that Fallon would have sworn it still could have been seen in the darkest of caverns. A dense, abrupt whooshing sound exploded within the cabin. In half a moment, it was all gone. The image burned into Fallon’s unblinking eyes and remained there long after the specter had vanished.

  Anda’s sobs were replaced by a palpable silence, masked by the soft drizzle of rain atop the roof. Where she had lain moments before, there was nothing, save for the empty cabin floor.

  15

  Bernard paced his quarters inside the castle for countless nights following the suppression of the uprisings. All unrests had been quelled save for those within his own mind. His terror at the sorcery he’d witnessed was masked by only one thought: a thrill at the prospect of what lay beyond the Throne Room door. Still, his obsessions over the castle’s vast, impenetrable door fell to the wayside and were replaced with flashes of darkness in his mind. Even thoughts of his brother, alive out there somewhere, rightful heir to the throne, were mere background noise.

  He turned with fleeting paranoia toward each sound of wind rushing through the parapets outside. As he lay in bed sleepless each night, ceaseless dark flashes permeated his vision. His eyelids snapped open spasmodically to reveal only his empty quarters.

  As nights passed, his frame grew thin, and his face grew sallow and gaunt. Antonio had stopped checking in on his sullen friend after a great number of fruitless visits. At last, after a significant stretch without interruption, a knock upon the castle door broke Bernard from his dazed pacing.

  “Aye, ye’ve seen better days, ol�
�� chum,” Antonio said as he looked up and down Bernard’s haggard frame with half interest.

  “There are no better days than this very one,” Bernard replied with a sardonic snarl.

  “Well ’at’s wot brought me ’ere. ’Eard some rumors wot might lift yer temper.”

  Bernard stepped aside and allowed Staig inside, closing the door behind him.

  “Rumors ’s all they is,” he reiterated, “’n’ the name o’ Skuttler come up more ’n once …”

  Bernard groaned. “Assuredly you didn’t come here to discuss that simpering weasel.”

  “No, now, ’ear me out,” Antonio replied. “E’rybody been scramblin’ t’ find yer rightful king since we know ’e’s alive …”

  The Baron suppressed an instantaneous urge to snatch his friend’s tongue out of his neck.

  “… ’n’ there’s word ’e’s locked up in Fanxel.”

  The Baron’s urge passed as quickly as it came on. For the first time in as many days as he could remember, the troubled clouds behind his eyes dissipated. A scheming light shone through.

  “Gather a crew,” he said with the faintest trace of a smile gracing the corner of his thin lips.

  Chapter 5:

  Nightmare Fanxel

  1

  A s the early morning sun rose over Lexen, Maldeive Dorn already sat awake in a chair. His eyes were closed, and his clean-shaven face wore a soft smile as he wrapped up his daily meditation. The cool dark of dawn was melting away into deep orange sunlight that shone through the window. Today was going to be a good day.

  Maldeive’s four-fingered hand worked compulsively atop his cane. A heavy child’s skull was perched atop the walking stick. It had been cast repeatedly with a molten clay to make it impossibly dense. His palm, missing the fourth digit, squeezed painfully against the leaden bones and then relaxed, only to repeat in rhythmic fashion. He breathed a long, slow, contented sigh.

  Today is gonna be a good day, he thought again.

  As if on cue, a chorus of voices approached outside.

  “Wakey-wakey, me scabbey’d mateys!” one voice called into Maldeive’s village.

  “What beshitted hole ’re we drainin’ today?” another asked impolitely.

  Maldeive stood and walked without concern to his cottage door. He lurched to the right with each step, putting half his weight on the heavy cane.

  “Mornin’,” he said with an air of great ease as he opened his door to a crowd of scraggly former pirates wielding strange metallic weapons.

  “Boss sends ’is regards,” the leader of the crew menaced. “You—”

  “Who is the boss?” Maldeive interrupted in a conversational tone.

  The gang shuffled in momentary silence before the man replied. “The boss. We jus’ call ’im Boss.”

  “And he is … ?” Maldeive asked.

  The pirate’s face contorted in frustrated confusion at the line of inquiry. “Aye? He’s the fuckin’ boss. Boss!”

  “I’m merely askin’—”

  The leader flung the rifle up from his side and pointed it at Maldeive, whose demeanor never faltered. He stormed the man’s porch and pressed the muzzle into his chest. “We ask the fuckin’ questions ’ere, mate! Now wot’s yer village contributin’ to the state? ’Cause I be seein’ a whole mess o’ huts me boys’d love t’ sit back ’n’ watch burn t’ ash!”

  Maldeive watched the man’s tantrum with an indifferent smile. He leaned upon his cane, small skull peering out from beneath his palm with an equally indifferent expression.

  “Contribute?” he drawled. “What is the state contributin’ to us?”

  The scowling pirate’s eyes widened as an audible gasp washed through his crew. He clicked a lever on the side of his weapon before pulling the trigger, but, before he could, he winced and nearly dropped to the ground as a rapid series of loud gunshots rang out from the crowd behind him. His mates began screaming at once, and the crowd dispersed erratically and erupted into scattered gunfire. From every bush and nook and shadow rushed a silent assailant. A seemingly endless horde of half-clad pygmy folk emerged and lay siege to the pirate’s crew. Many were slain with tattered holes ripped through their corpses from the flying bullets, but their numbers were too great. They brought the pirates to the ground in rapid succession, their long, dirty fingernails acting as talons to tear the throats out of the men and women who threatened their leader. The clamor of gunfire dissipated into dying screams of agony as the last of the crew were efficiently slain by the bare hands of the pygmies.

  It all happened in a matter of moments, and by the time the pirate leader had winced, crouched, and turned to face his crew, nearly every one of them was already dead. His own weapon had slouched and slipped from Maldeive’s chest.

  Dorn’s expression never changed, and he never took his eyes off his assailant’s own. His head cocked to one side as he looked down to address the flinching pirate. “You were sayin’?” His thick western drawl amplified the lackadaisical tone his demeanor embodied.

  The pirate looked back at last at the tall, clean-shaven man in horror as his cane crashed down against the side of his own head. The blow from the smooth scrap of wood was crippling. He heard his own skull crack, and the pain sharpened and crescendoed into a dull, deafening hum in his left ear. He fell to his side in a semi-conscious state, his eyes half-open, vision tunneling into blackness more and more with each heavy thump of his heart. Before he could black out, a small child’s skull lowered down to the ground and lay face-to-face with him.

  “Ellie sends ’er regards,” Maldeive said, nursing his left hip and kneeling beside the dying pirate. His usually well-kempt, black hair dangled in front of his forehead after the force of swinging his cane had jostled it off the top of his head. “Now,” he continued, using his good leg to roll the man onto his back to look into his own eyes, “who’s the boss, and where do I find him?”

  His lips spread into a genuine smile full of bright and healthy teeth.

  2

  A man screams out. One arm contracts upward across his chest, fingers twisted and contorted into a deformed claw; the other straightens out behind his back. His head and trunk turn as his cry tapers off, and he collapses to the ground as stiff as a tree falling in a forest. His cellmate has climbed the cell’s bars and shrieks like an ape in the Renskar Jungle while the man has a shaking-fit beneath him.

  Guards rush to the cell, their strange guns aimed at both prisoners.

  “Watch it, ye fuckin’ git!” one shouts as his comrade fires the weapon at the prisoner atop the cell bars. “Yer payin’ back Boss if ye kill ’is work-horses!”

  “I only winged ’im, ya knob! Stow yer gobbin’.”

  The man falls from the roof of his cell and lands beside his convulsing cellmate, wails of mortal terror piercing the watchful quiet that has befallen the prison.

  The guards retrieve their large steel key ring to open the cell door. As they enter, two of them kick the wailing inmate until his screams cease. The other three attend to the man who is still shaking beside them.

  “Get yer demon sticks, boys!” one calls as they each draw their short wooden clubs that hang from the waist of every guard at Fanxel.

  All manner of individuals employed by the prison come out of the shadows to spectate. Cheers and jeers rise among the quiet prison complex. While the prisoners sit in their cells, not daring to whimper or move, the guards and trustees and couriers and investors gather at the prison center and cheer on the assailing guards.

  “He’s havin’ ’imself a quakin’ spell! A right good ’n’ too!”

  “Shake them spirits off, lad!”

  “Got ye a bad batch o’ the ogras!”

  The men and women’s shouts grow into an incomprehensible cacophony as the guards club the shaking man until he grows limp, a growing pool of blood leaking from his cracked skull.

  3

  The atrocities that take place at Fanxel prison give the entire town an unreal, dreamlike quality. The
brightest of days without clouds to protect from the stifling desert sun incite delirium and despair, and the dreariest of days during monsoon season cast a nightmarish hue atop the prison. Day and night, tortured screams of the inmates echo across the desert sand. The sleep cycles of the already fragile inmates are utterly disrupted, throwing every mind present—save for the guards’—into its own personal hell.

  The prison’s center is comprised of two long, parallel rows of cells—cages erected in the cracked, dry sand. Between the rows of cells are various instruments of “healing”—or, rather, torture—to which the mentally impaired and physically incapable inmates are subjected. These are on public display and serve to motivate or deter the prisoners in the rows of cells that face one another. An old rail track runs between the cells for distant deliveries. Outside of the prison’s center are other, more sinister confinements, contraptions, and solitary rooms, reserved for the more troubled (or troubling) of inmates.

  4

  A woman opens her eyes to an unfamiliar room. Her stiff back twinges in protest as she attempts to sit up in her shoddy cot. She reaches across from her, but her husband isn’t there. An image of his dying face flashes across her mind. She closes her eyes in a futile act against the image. Her breath hitches as reality washes back over her, as it does every time she wakes again within this nightmare.

  While she may once have been a gardener’s wife in a small town near coastal Fordar, she now is but a mere prisoner. Her husband, defiant to the revolution, lay slain, and her home lay in ashes, along with the rest of her town. She reaches down and touches her thighs, where the memory of long-faded bruises still burns. She had been raped and traded and raped and sold and raped again, and when The Baron’s men discerned that her womb was too aged to bear impressionable youth, she was dumped into Fanxel.