A Poisoned Land (Book 1: Faith, Lies and Blue Eyes)

by Craig P Roberts

  I am not a child.

  “King Stewart was innocent. My king was also innocent.” The Queen of the Bay clearly did not fully understand King Anthony’s motives—although neither did Londenia, but she felt she was beginning to see the picture forming.

  Londenia tried to explain what she knew. “King Stewart lay with a woman of brown eyes. What color were King Hardol’s wife’s eyes?”

  “The Lady Ger’Sel had brown eyes.” The puzzle was slotting into place. Queen Se’Rel shrieked, “Ten Gods! No!” The mature queen’s face went loose and blank. “The royal children! They wouldn’t have…” She let out a carnal wail that Londenia was sure came from the very bowels of the world.

  She tried to shut off her mind to everything around her as she embraced the sobbing creature, but the swaying and lowering of the rowing boat down to the Bay of Blue made her jumpy.

  The water was calm on their short journey from the ship to the coast and their boat made a smooth slide onto the sandy shore. As Londenia stepped onto the beach, she saw a path where the sand turned to grass. That’s where they were led. The path ran in a perfect, straight line all the way to the strange shapes outlining the large city. The path was flawlessly flat and its edges as straight as a guard’s staff. Because of the perfect nature of the path, it was difficult to tell how long a walk they had ahead of them (if that city was their destination).

  Londenia stood still in the middle of the path staring at the buildings in the distance as the rest of the party brushed past her.

  A ghostly shadow put a thin hand on her shoulder. “Is this the first time you have seen one, my lady?” King Anthony enquired softly.

  “Seen what exactly?” she asked, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.

  “That,” he said, pointing to the tiny shapes, “is Raydem.”

  “You cannot take us there,” Londenia exclaimed. “It is forbidden!” Raydem was one of the Dead Cities and she had no desire to walk in such a cursed place.

  “Forbidden by whom?” King Anthony feigned confusion.

  “The gods!” she snapped, knocking the bony hand off her shoulder.

  “Perhaps once, they spoke of not entering for our own protection from the Poison, but look at me.” He twirled as if he was some wench trying to impress a king to join his horde. “I am perfectly well and so are my men.”

  “And has your visit to the Dead Cities given you new knowledge? New knowledge, giving you the right to use blade to kill those in power with brown eyes or those who befriend them?” Londenia felt it was time to throw a verbal punch.

  But Anthony forced a soft laugh. “Ten Gods, no! I have learned little in the way of knowledge from Raydem and the other Dead Cities. The gods chose to remove and destroy all information it would seem, but they have left many powerful gifts that we are taking full advantage of. I just find it hard to believe that no king from my line decided to enter them sooner.”

  “Perhaps because they weren’t mad. Perhaps they weren’t oath breakers, like you! The King of the Dead Cities is sworn to—”

  That won her a slap on the face.

  He finished her sentence, quoting, “‘—guard the cities where the High-Ten and lower-gods once sat. I swear by all Ten that I, King Anthony, will not let mortals pass the sacred borders, until such a time the gods give word to return’. I remember my words well. I do not need reminding. Now come. I believe you will find Raydem most interesting.” He walked on ahead, leaving her behind at the start of the path.

  Clearly you do need reminding! Londenia shouted to him, “You do realize when the other kingdoms find out it was you behind the killings, they will attack you until you are crushed.” This made the black shadow of a man stop in his tracks.

  King Anthony spun around sharply, his robes following as he glided towards her like a vicious storm. “I have no doubt they will attempt to take revenge, but with the gifts in the Dead Cities, my insurance,” he looked her up and down, “and my new…friends…they will not be of concern.”

  “Friends?! Even the First, Peak and Gate Kingdoms would not condone such actions as you have done. They would have removed King Stewart from his throne and likely imprisoned others but what you are doing is mass murder!”

  He shook his head. “Those savages are not my friends. My new friends are not of the Mortal Realm and they will help me build a new Ten Kingdoms as the High-Ten would have wanted them to be!” Before Londenia could question him further, King Anthony pushed his way to the front of the party. One of his pointed-toothed guards turned back to make sure she stayed with the group.

  His allies are not of the Mortal Realm? They are out with Beverine’s Shield? There is nothing outside of Beverine’s Shield except water around us, stars above us and rock underneath us, she thought as she was ushered along the straight path by the foul-smelling guard.

  Their walk was long. For most of it, the Dead City of Raydem was like some kind of giant painting that never seemed to get any closer. But as the sun passed midday, the structures drew close, reaching up and scratching the sky. Londenia felt dizzy looking up at the huge bronze-colored towers, some of which must have been hundreds of stories high. The tall structures twisted organically out of the ground as if some giant buzcore colony had weaved their massive hives up to the sky.

  There were no walls around the city, simply an ankle-high circle of stone that looked to arch out and stretch around the whole of Raydem. With nothing more than a normal step over the boundary, the straight path led directly into the heart of the towering masses. The city was indeed dead—dead of mortals at least—but nature encroached wherever she looked. Weeds and ivy grew on every wall and even halfway up the spiraling, giant, sand-colored towers. Londenia counted seven huge structures twisting up to touch the sky before she was pulled inside the largest of them.

  It opened up onto a cavernous entranceway. The room where she had talked with Tal Marith, in the temple of Hal Tal, was likely larger in length and breadth but the high ceiling of this immense, earthy space she stood in now would have drowned it in height. Its walls curved ever so slightly and reminded her somewhat of the mud dwellings in Last Kingdom. At the far side of the great room, was an arch leading to a stairway. It was there she was escorted by King Anthony alone, while the rest of her party and the king’s guards remained in the vast room.

  The stairwell was lit by a strange type of light. It did not flicker like the light from fire, but instead had a constant glow; more yellow than the redness of a flame. It shone from smooth raindrop shapes, the size of her head. One shone from the wall at each turn of the stairs.

  They climbed for what must have been six-hundred steps in the light of only the strange raindrop-shaped domes. When Londenia craned her neck up, she saw sunlight coming from a window above. Still climbing, the light began to strain her eyes, as she drew level with the bottom of the large round window and got her first glimpse of the outside world since starting the ascent. The sight took her breath away. As she looked across the desolate city and then down to the streets below she felt a tingling in her rear-end. A swaying sensation coursed through her body.

  She must have lingered longer than she realized because King Anthony stopped his climb and turned to say, “Queen Londenia, do you wish to rest here for a moment?”

  Don’t you dare act nicely to me. “No, let’s continue,” she said, even though her thighs were burning. There was a throbbing pulse in her gums and she felt sweat rolling down her sides from under her arms. Londenia wanted to know how much more climbing she would need to endure but didn’t want to give the king the satisfaction of knowing she was tired. So instead she asked, “Where are you taking me?”

  “To a safe place. Do not worry, you will not be harmed,” King Anthony said, with what she was sure was one of his hideous pointed-toothed smiles, but all she could see was the back of his climbing body as she trailed him on the seemingly never-ending staircase.

  After an hour since setting foot on the stairs, they reached the top. Londenia wa
s led into a long tunnel with rounded walls and a curving roof. They passed several doors on either side, but she assumed they were heading for the larger double door at the end of the narrow hallway. I could run and get lost in this place and he would never find me, she thought, as she imagined how many rooms must fill the structure that practically touched the sky.

  She was certain it was only her and the king currently standing in the heights of the bronze-colored tower. Another plan of action came into her head when she realized they had not seen another living mortal since their long climb. I could take him now but who knows what blade he might be hiding in that cloak. All of these plans were futile while her small party remained in the hands of King Anthony’s guards. They were trapped in the middle of a city that was likely teeming with his men.

  The sand color of the rounded corridor would have made the place feel warm if it were not for the rather solid, heartless feel of the raindrop-shaped lights illuminating the entire building. The skeleton-like king neared the double doors and threw them open. The light from the sun flooded the hallway.

  When she stepped into the room, she felt the same dizzying sensations as earlier, but now she likely stood at twice that height. Londenia walked towards the floor-to-ceiling window which nearly took up one whole wall of the room. She saw the other huge twisting towers, the narrow streets (that nature had reclaimed over the hundreds of years since the gods and old mortals left) and the wide open land beyond the dead city of Raydem. There was so much wonder to take in that she nearly forgot all of her troubles and the devastation she had witnessed. But a bony hand on her shoulder quickly brought everything flooding back. She looked at the king’s long, pale fingers on her arm and snapped herself away.

  He bared his pointed teeth and grabbed her with both hands. “I see you still require a cage,” he snapped, the words tumbling from his nasty sharp face.

  She spat on him. He hurled her across a writing desk that was sitting in the middle of the space. Londenia landed in a heap on the floor.

  “Stand up!” King Anthony demanded in his dull, empty voice.

  She did so and brushed herself off, standing as tall as she could to hide the throbbing in her left leg and backside. Trying to look proud and strong, all she could think about was how disgusting she felt and probably looked.

  Queen Londenia was placed in a cage, much like the one on the ship that brought them to this place. From behind the bars, she stared out of the window of wonders. She wasn’t sure how much time passed as she let her mind wander over the tall buildings and hills beyond, to a place where none of this was happening.

  Looking over at the king sitting at his writing desk, she finally broke the silence. “Why do you keep me with you when you have guards that could keep me? They keep the others.”

  “The others do not ensure that I keep my life.”

  She looked blankly back at him.

  “You are my safety fall to make sure that your father does not attempt to break my back before my allies get here. Therefore, I need you unharmed and un-bedded.”

  “So if I were to hurl myself through that window, you would no longer have a safety fall and my father could come and snap that skinny back of yours?” She threw him a smile. It was hard to hold such a fake gesture. Her cheeks twitched.

  “You are not about to do that.”

  He’s right, I’ve got a mission to complete and my people are relying on me…and, I’m in a cage, she thought as she maintained the cutting smile. “Does he know I am here?”

  “No. And I intend to keep it that way for the time being—”

  King Anthony was interrupted. The door to the high room swung open. An elderly pair bumbled through with smiles on their faces: a man and a woman.

  “Tony, we were so happy to hear of your arrival. Are you well?” the friendly-looking old woman asked as she threw her arms out to the King of the Dead Cities. They hadn’t spotted Londenia in her cage in the corner of the room. King Anthony’s eyes darted everywhere except the cage. He didn’t answer her, and finally stared at Londenia as if to say keep quiet.

  The squat, podgy, old man spoke, “We ought oo were not comin’ back.” The unfinished words made it sound as if he was talking with his mouth full.

  When King Anthony finally spoke he did so in a strange manner also: over-exaggerating his mouth movements and spacing out his words. “I … am … sorry … for … my … lateness,” he said to the man with a smile, then turned to the beaming woman. “I cannot speak at this moment, but I will of course visit you this evening, for dinner perhaps?” he said, with all the politeness of a well-trained child.

  He smiles with his mouth but not his eyes. Londenia looked on with suspicion from her cage.

  “Dinner it shall be,” the old woman announced as if speaking to a servant. The man shook the king’s hand, smiling again and the couple turned towards the door, looking as if they had just received the most wonderful news. Their eyes met Londenia’s. Without breaking stare, the old woman asked the king, “Tony, why is there a young lady in a cage?”

  Londenia thought she had nothing to lose, so she stretched a hand through the bars and introduced herself, saying, “Greetings. I am Queen Londenia of Last Kingdom, daughter of King Kalon of Long Kingdom.” My father’s name may carry some weight.

  “Ten Gods, Tony! Why do you keep Kalon’s daughter in a cage?” the old woman exclaimed.

  “I was wondering that as well…Tony…” Londenia took a dig at the king. The old man didn’t speak, his eyes shifted from face to face.

  King Anthony’s pathetic attempt at a smile was waning. “This does not concern you, Mother. It is of high importance and I assure you she has not, and will not, be harmed.”

  It’s his mother! Londenia racked her brains, trying to remember what the old woman’s name was but her lessons as a child failed her.

  “King Kalon helped your father when that wretched band from the Land of the Old Ways tried to enter Haven and this is how our kingdom repays him?” The king’s mother was already opening the lock to Londenia’s cage and he did little to stop her. “Now you feed this girl and we will see no more of her in that cage!” She turned to the old man. “Come, Rigard, we will make preparations for dinner.”

  King Rigard? It can’t be! He’s dead! Rigard, Anthony’s father, was the King of the Dead Cities before him but was thought to have been dead for many years.

  As the king’s mother neared the door, she turned to Londenia. “You will be joining us of course, my dear?”

  King Anthony’s face was that of a startled cat.

  Londenia spoke before he could. “I would be delighted.”

  The door closed and she was once again left alone with the King of the Dead Cities, who suddenly became more kingly again. “You will not speak of what you know to them. The task I have been given is my burden to carry, not theirs!” He slammed his hand on the table without raising his voice.

  “If it is such a burden then why have you chosen this path of killing kings and innocents?”

  She never received an answer. Londenia spent the next few hours sitting in the corner of the room, while King Anthony stared at his glowing panel and pieces of parchment strewn across the writing desk, which dominated the high room.

  Through the window the sun was dropping below the horizon, casting large shadows across the lifeless city of Raydem. In the glow of the reddening sky, the desolate place looked warm and inviting. When she closed her eyes, Londenia could picture the streets bustling with mortals, lower-gods and perhaps even the High-Ten, all those centuries ago, back in the Gods’ Age, before the Great Poison. What it must have been like to live in such a time.

  Dinner that night was a strange affair. She sat in a room with a long dining table in the center and a sizeable window. The glass in the other six large hive-like towers of Raydem, glowed with the same steady yellow light that brightened the halls of the one she sat in now.

  To the right of Londenia was King Anthony’s mother, Ilar, who
had her son to the right of her. Only the king’s father sat on the other side of the table, which Londenia found strange. You are no longer king and yet you sit in the place of highest standing. He did not seem to be the dominating type of person who would feel the need to have such privilege. From what she remembered her father telling her, apparently King Rigard was a humble person. So why are you sitting there, while we all sit on the lower side?

  Ilar lifted the lid on a homely oven dish and steam came rushing out to reveal an inviting, warming stew. She saw chopped onions and some kind of root vegetable through the brown meat that was moist with dark gravy. It reminded her of her mother’s cooking back home in Deca’Rise.

  The kindly old woman placed two ladles of the food onto Londenia’s dinner plate first. “Now you eat as much as you like, my dear. It looks as if you haven’t had a good meal in many moon-turns.”

  Londenia flashed a smile at King Anthony, past the shoulder of his caring mother. “There was little of eating on the ship, as there were so many to feed.” She chose her words carefully but the old couple seemed detached from reality anyway. She likely could have said anything and they would have simply smiled and carried on.

  “And my son has treated your people well, yes?” Ilar asked, fishing for compliments about her wonderful son.

  The abducted queen saw little to gain in blowing her cover yet. From what she could tell, the old couple had little power. I doubt any of those on the ground below know of their existence. “King Anthony, has outdone himself. In fact, he has done everything in his power to keep me from harm.” Her face was beginning to hurt from forcing smiles.

  Londenia became frightfully aware of stares from the former king, Rigard. She was used to men gaping at her breasts but the old man seemed to be staring at her lips. He stared in this same way at his son and wife—never looking at their eyes, only their mouths. She flashed him a quick smile, which was returned.

  Queen Londenia went to pick up her fork, still staring at the old man, who had now turned his attention to the stew. Mother and son were eating and talking. Londenia fumbled for her knife and in the process, dropped it onto the plate with a loud clatter, breaking the silence of the room. The two to her right jumped, as did she, but Rigard remained undisturbed. His ears don’t work, Londenia considered. A little test perhaps… “Your wife is a wonderful cook, Sir Rigard,” she said, while the old king’s eyes were still focused on the food in front of him.