“A boy who can stand up all by himself after taking a shit and then wipe his own arse!” Romarus yelled. “A boy who can bathe himself without needing two of his horde to drag his fat arse out of the water! And a boy who can make her cum in a way that you haven’t in fourteen fucking years!” His shouts strained out of his mouth. Romarus then lowered his tone and his voice shook as if he was close to tears. “A boy who listened to her, and held her in his arms and could actually protect her. A boy who could one day give her a child again.” He broke into tears, ironically, like a little boy, with his head hung in his own arms, using the folds of his hooded robe to cover his flustered wet face. “Where is she now? What have you done with her?” Romarus spat through tears.
King Stewart was taken aback. “I have not hurt her if that is what you mean.” He felt something for her, or pitied her or… “What did she feel for you?”
“I don’t know! Ask her!” Romarus lifted his screwed up, frustrated wet face. “She said she loved me. She said she loved you too though. I just want Londenia to talk to or to hold Bostonia again. I just want everybody to be happy—even you!” He was wailing almost like a baby now.
Stewart sighed. It was easy to hate him when I saw a selfish little rapist sitting hunched on the floor but now there’s just a confused mess. “The Ten will forgive you…” The words were out before King Stewart could stop them; anything to comfort the down-beaten creature curled up on the floor. Romarus took a deep breath as if to calm himself. Is it that simple to put a young man’s mind at rest? “Not that their forgiveness means much. I have never once crossed them, and look how they have rewarded me; a fat broken body and a wife that—”
“They are testing you,” the boy king chipped in, as if to make Stewart feel better.
“Oh are they fucking testing me, indeed?” King Stewart threw his arms into the moist stale air of the cell, shouting so that his voice rang off the hard moldy walls. “Well at least now I can soldier on through my wondrous test that has lasted for as long as you have lived. Perhaps that means you are part of their test too! If I choke you to death right now, does that mean I’ve passed or failed?”
The boy’s cold stare surprised Stewart. A selfish person would have begged for his life, but in their entire conversation in the dark dripping cell, Romarus had only asked for the well-being of another. The boy just doesn’t know himself yet. “I knew your father well, you know.” Stewart’s tone changed.
“I know you did…”
“When we were young boys we were raised in Long Kingdom by King Kalon, Londenia’s father. It was King Kalon who both of our fathers trusted out of all the other kings at that time and Long Kingdom was where they sent their sons who would one day be king.”
“I know about all that. All first princes are sent to other kingdoms. My brother was sent to Long Kingdom too and never came back!” Romarus snapped.
“Your brother’s disappearance was not King Kalon’s fault. A member of his own court betrayed him. But that is another matter. Let me tell you of your father.” Stewart chuckled. “Your father would fuck anything that had a hole.” Stewart’s belly-laugh sent him into fits of coughing again. “I was the same you know…back when it worked.” As he spoke, he could almost feel the strength of his youth back in his legs and filling his lungs.
“Why are you telling me this?” Romarus looked as if he had just sipped some curdled milk.
“Just listen and you might learn something. Your father would lie with brown women from Hal’s Forest, he’d fuck wenches from Narscape and there were even some particularly extreme stories involving a woman who also had the parts of a man…However, I digress.” He cleared his throat. “But never once did he lie with another king’s wife. He never broke the honor of a royal woman.”
“Why the fuck are you telling me this?”
Stewart sensed childish boredom and frustration in the boy king’s words. “I am trying to teach you a value that your father clearly did not get the chance to.”
“My father got himself killed and left me behind to rule his kingdom! I’ll follow the Ten like Londenia taught me. And I’ll do what I feel is right! And I’ve said I’m sorry for what I’ve done.” He tried to stand up again.
You really haven’t figured out that chain yet, have you? “You should have been sent to another kingdom after your brother was taken. It is not only to preserve the line of kings that this is done but also to educate and broaden a first prince’s mind. Your mother was a fool to keep you at her breast for so long! She was a fool thinking she had any chance of finding your father! Look where it got her! Dead!”
“Don’t you fucking talk about my mother!” Romarus’s voice cracked. “She’s not dead! I still know she’s out there! And look where your life has got you!” He nodded to the rolling chair and Stewart’s useless limbs. The King of the Wetlands had never felt such hurt from the words of a boy, but they confirmed a truth he had mulled over for years.
The sobbing that followed from Romarus made him regret his words about the Lady Brendina. She was a kindly young woman, with a loud mouth (much like Queen Tanya in some ways), who had lost one son and feared to lose another.
Could you blame her for wanting to keep him close, even if it meant breaking traditions? But it was a foolish act, thinking she could find her lover alone. It was a foolish act to think he was even still alive. The poor creature had clearly gone mad with grief, he thought, as he tried to picture the only memory of Romarus’s mother that he had from so long ago. His own wife, Pauline, chose the same course of action with their son, Prince Baskerville. She could not bear to let her only son be taken and raised by another. Generally, in the Ten Kingdoms the first prince would only be sent away after a second son was born anyway. And I could only give her one son, he thought, feeling the useless years of his failing body hanging over him.
He banged his fat hand on the bars twice and a guard came behind him to role him up the cold dark stairway. The twenty steps in front of him looked steeper than they had on the way down. It was a different guard that came for him. He realized that he must have been in this cell longer than he thought if his guards had changed duty. He didn’t recognize this one. Perhaps this is one of Romarus’s guards? I do not like the fact my staff have left me in the care of somebody serving that cretin…especially since I have him in chains.
He hated being tilted all the way back as he entrusted his life to some guard he did not even know the name of. “Where do you call home?” he asked, making conversation with the guard who had the unenviable task of pushing the blubbery mass up the stairs.
There was silence. Surely I am not such a task that he is straining to speak, Stewart thought. “Do you not have a tongue, my friend? Where do you come from?”
“I hail originally from Long Kingdom, Your Grathe,” the guard said, with a hissy-lisp as he struggled and strained to push the rolling chair up the stairs.
“I spent much of my younger…more able-bodied years there. Wonderful place. We should call for another guard to assist you,” King Stewart suggested, as the guard stopped pushing and tilted his chair forward to rest on the larger stair halfway up the set. “A sensible idea to stop, I think.” Stewart reassured the probably already exhausted guardsman.
The guard walked around to stand in front of the chair. Behind the guard’s black-cloaked body, at the top of the stone steps, a lifeless arm hung over the edge. Stewart’s eyes scanned up the guard to his long, drawn, pale face. The guard grimaced.
Stewart’s heart thumped as he saw a mouth full of pointed sharp teeth. “Who the fuck are you? Guards!” he called, hoping there was somebody alive up there who could help his useless body.
A hand slipped inside the man’s black cloak and drew out a shining sharp piece of metal.
Surely this madman will not use this as a weapon! Stewart panicked, remembering the tales of the pointed-toothed assassins that used bladed weapons. “ROMARUS! Romarus! Help!” he called, hoping the boy would come to his rescue. He’s
in chains, you fool, Stewart thought with despair. There were keys in his pocket. He fumbled around his fat thighs searching, hoping to be able to throw them behind him.
From the cell, Romarus shouted, “Why the fuck should I help you get up the fucking stairs—” But suddenly his tone changed, and he yelled, “Get away from him!” Iron chains rattled, banged and echoed up the stairs from the cell below as Romarus tried hopelessly to come to his rescue. “What the fuck?! Somebody help him!”
The knife plunged towards Stewart and suddenly it was as if he was watching from behind himself. There was little pain, just a feeling of numbness through his body and a sense of doom. His insides felt cold where the blade sliced into him. The black cloak flapped as the madman’s teeth flashed in front of his eyes with stab after stab of shining sharp blade.
The warmth of red blood splattered onto King Stewart’s arms and face as he helplessly watched his life being poked away piece by piece. A leg lifted. His rolling chair flew down the stairwell with him floating narrowly behind it.
One last pointed grimace and the guard ran away into the night.
King Stewart didn’t remember landing back in the cell, just the boy king sitting next to him, still in cuffs, cradling his head. “Don’t die, please. I want you to teach me now. I want you to tell me things my father should have.” Romarus’s tears dropped onto the dying king’s face.
Trying to speak was much more of an effort than previously, even by his standards. “My boy, I believe you are the most knowledgeable of all of us here. You follow your gut. Do not trouble yourself with the Ten.” He coughed and the pain caught up with him. His stomach twisted and no matter how he wriggled or breathed, it was still there, overpowering everything. His vision faded in and out. “Just promise me…you have my forgiveness, if you just promise me, you will find my son. And tell him…” he coughed again. “Tell him, he was right.”
“How will I find him? I will, I’ll do it. But tell him he was right about what?” Romarus spewed words and questions so fast it was hard to take in.
“Do what you do well. Follow your gut. Mine seems to be a bit broken now.” He laughed…although he didn’t know why he laughed.
“But what was he right about?” The boy’s flustered face darted around the room. “Help! I don’t know what to do!” he muttered to nobody as he broke into tears. His chest was filling and emptying rapidly under his cloak.
“Listen to me, tell my son…tell Baskerville that he was right. There is no Ten. How can there be? Look at what they have let happen to me. Somebody who has followed them all his life. There is so much more. So much more he used to say that makes sense to me now. He was so clever for one so young. He ran away because of—” He coughed. “Because of me and what I became.”
“There is a Ten and you’re going to be with them and you will have ten wives to look after you forever.” Romarus’s attempt at comfort didn’t convince Stewart to believe in the fairy stories any longer.
He found himself laughing uncontrollably again, followed by the gut-wrenching coughs. “My boy, I have been fading out of this world since that knife was plunged into me and I can tell you now, the Ten are not waiting for us.”
“What is waiting for us?” The boy looked wide-eyed as his crying instantly halted.
“Nothing.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Why should I be scared of nothing? Nothing, is just…nothing.” Even in death I can still be profound. Well done, Stewart, he amused himself.
“You’re saying we all become nothing? But what is the point in all this? You can’t just become nothing,” Romarus murmured.
Stewart felt sorry for the boy, even though he was the one who had just been cut like a juicy piece of meat. “When you were a child, you built houses with toy bricks, yes? When you knocked that down, what were you left with?”
“Nothing?” Romarus ventured.
“No, you fool.” He laughed and coughed. “You’re left with bricks! I’ll still be here, I’ll just be a little less…orderly.”
“What does orderly mean?”
Stewart couldn’t help but belly-laugh. “Oh, my dear boy.” His face turned serious as he pulled Romarus close to him by the iron cuffs. “Find my son. Do not say goodbye to the others, they will only force you to continue on this ridiculous journey. You must leave while you have the chance. You must go and not look back. I forgive you for what you have done and I believe you have a true heart. Go! You do not need the Ten to guide you. Go!”
Romarus’s eyes drifted down to his hands. Stewart had undone his cuffs. “Thank you. I’ll find him. I promise.” He stood and ran for the stairway.
Stewart felt the world slip away from him and soon he would be a pile of bricks. I wonder if somebody will make a nice house out of me, he mused.
As his eyes faded, he heard Romarus shout from up the stairwell, “You killed him! You fucking killed him!” Another set of footsteps came running down the stairs.
Alone, King Stewart thought of Pauline. “I forgive you,” he whispered.
His last thought turned to his son, Prince Baskerville. “Baskie…my dear sweet boy…you were right.”
And then…nothing.
For a king to spill his seed in the body of a woman of brown eyes, is folly. For him to spill his seed outside of the body of a woman all together is an abomination.
Prophecies 9, The Maran
Londenia
The Unexpected Sound of Evil
Her eyes were sore and dry from all the tears shed, and she couldn’t remember the last time she ate. Londenia mourned for King Stewart whom she had spent much of her childhood with. However, although it made her feel disgust in herself, it was the hurt Romarus had caused, that weighed heaviest on her heart.
Romarus, why did you feel you had to keep this from me? I would have helped you. I would have supported you like I always do, she said to the boy king in her head. You used to tell me every little problem you had. What’s changed now? She would have done anything to be able to talk to him for five minutes. She wondered if she would ever see him again or how long it would be before she could have the answers she needed.
They were unsure of the events that took place in the cells of Deca’Point. Two guards lay dead, along with King Stewart. Every possibility played out in Londenia’s head. Did Stewart’s killers also kidnap Romarus? Or was Romarus’s body lying somewhere, unfound? Was he responsible for the guards’ deaths and Stewart’s? Part of her couldn’t believe Romarus would be capable of such an act but she had seen his temper and strength, and if driven to it…
Did you do it, Romarus? Could you really be that vicious and betray me in such a cruel way?
The previous day they had held a grounding for the life of King Stewart, in a small country deca, in one of the unspoilt outlying villages near their camp. Stewart’s large body lay face down on a cocoon—a black square of cotton—in the center of the ten standing stones of the deca. Stewart’s final guests walked in a slow circle around the inside of the pillars of rock with his lifeless body in the middle. They all turned inward to face the dead king, my old friend. Queen Tanya stood next to Londenia, showing no sign of emotion on the outside. However when Londenia reached out to hold Tanya’s hand, she felt a storm inside the strong woman’s body.
Looking at the sun, feeling the warm air, it was hard to imagine the sorrow of that day. Londenia remembered thinking at the time, when she closed her eyes, it is as if everything is right in the world—as long as I don’t open my eyes and see Stewart’s empty body or walk one hundred footfalls south and see the devastation in Deca’Point.
Queen Tanya stepped forward along with Londenia and eight others for the covering. They each picked up a share of the black cocoon. Pauline stood opposite Londenia. I still do not know if it is right, or if Stewart would have wanted you to be one of us sending him into the next life. She stared at the sly wife who had abused Stewart’s trust. Sandunion and Celóndas looked visibly shaken as they held their p
inch of black material. Celóndas barely knew King Stewart but her caring nature made her hand shake and jaw quiver as she likely felt the same pain as everybody else who stood within the columns of the deca.
Queen Tanya recited the grounding words. “Hal, who sustained Stewart’s life, we now ask that you accept him into the next. To all Ten we pray that Stewart can now rest in your light. To all Ten we call.” She managed to hold back tears but the words squeezed out from behind quivering lips. Stewart’s final guests repeated, “To all Ten we call.”
They brought their pinches of black material together over Stewart’s body until all ten hands met above the small of his back. Pauline seemed reluctant to let go of her section. Queen Tanya bound it in a bunch using a thin white rap. Stewart’s body then embarked on one last journey as it was placed onto a wagon and escorted by two of his guard back to the Wetlands. There, he would be buried face down, as was tradition for a king.
A voice interrupted her thoughts and brought her back to the present as she sat on (what was) King Stewart’s bed in his royal tent. Celóndas addressed Londenia as she entered, saying, “My lady, there is still no sign of Romarus or his aide.” Bwick had also gone missing two nights ago. “But I feel I have at last brought some good news for you.”
What good news could ever outweigh the bad that has come of late? Londenia nodded, with her back still to the healer.
“Your father’s party has arrived.” Celóndas’s words made Londenia turn and her faithful friend’s smile confirmed it was true. She would soon have the comfort of King Kalon of Long Kingdom, once again.
Before Londenia had time to prepare for her father’s arrival, he was at the entrance to the large, royal tent. We’re safe, she thought, as she saw the sharp silhouette of King Kalon’s noble, clean-shaven face and bald head.
A Poisoned Land (Book 1: Faith, Lies and Blue Eyes) Page 19