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

by Craig P Roberts

  The Caatamoor in the Mister’s chair spoke to Machon in a soft and deep voice. Even though his words were slower, Owin still had no idea what he was saying. Machon replied in his usual barks and then pushed Owin further into the room. As the two brutes continued talking to each other in their strange tongue, Owin heard a familiar voice from behind him.

  “My dear Owin, is that you?” the Mister said, sounding frail and ill.

  Owin turned around to see the old man, naked and caged in his own chambers. It looked as if he had not eaten in days. “What have they done to you?” Owin ran over and knelt next to the metal bars of the Mister’s prison, which was no more than half of his own height.

  A malnourished hand reached through the bars and touched Owin’s face. “You have come back to me, my dear boy. You have come back.” He smiled as if he were sitting under the shade of a tree with birds tweeting around him—not surrounded by a bunch of drunken inky bastards.

  “Why is he in a cage?” Owin screamed at the thugs, still talking behind him.

  He received no answer.

  The Mister’s gaze looked cloudy and red as he stared into Owin’s eyes. “Owin, I am sorry for any hurt I have caused you. I only ever did it out of love. All on this island…I—”

  A bark from Machon was quickly followed by an ink pot crashing through the bars and hitting the Mister in the face. The black ink splattered on the wall and the old man continued his sobbing.

  “There is nothing to forgive,” Owin said, holding the Mister’s hand that was on his face. “You only ever did what was right for us and to guide us in the light of the Mother.”

  To those words the Mister shook his head and convulsed into a snot-filled wail. “My lies still flow through you.” He wept.

  “No, you led us away from the lies.”

  “I may have led you away from lies but only to lead you to more. You and every other young man on this damned island.” Saying the words damned island seemed to anger the Mister and he spat them out as he said them.

  The island is a beautiful, wonderful place though. That’s why the Mother chose it out of all Her other creations. Why is it damned? “You took care of us and taught us all we know of the Mother,” Owin said, gently squeezing his mentor’s cold, clammy hand.

  “I may have looked after you by providing shelter, food and water but I have done you all a great dishonesty by lying to you and…” He turned away and huddled in the corner of the cage, facing the wall.

  Owin looked at the shaking mess of the one who had been an image of strength and knowledge for as long as he could remember. “I’m going to get you out of here. I’m going to get all of the brothers out. I’m going to take that bastard with the stretched ears to the vision chamber and pray to the Mother to burn him in the flames. I will ask Her to send them to the abyss and—”

  The Mister suddenly swung around and was on both knees in front of Owin who was still crouching on the floor in front of the cage. “Boy, you mustn’t! The Mother will not help you. She will never help you! Don’t you understand?”

  Why does he keep calling me boy? “What have I done wrong for the Mother to abandon me?”

  “Nothing. You have followed my lies and deceit beyond all others. You willingly knelt on that floor in front of me and…” The Mister stopped and stared at the spot where Owin had performed his act of cleansing all that time ago before he left the island.

  “Then why will the Mother not help me? Why won’t She—”

  Owin felt an arm on his shoulder. It spun him round. Machon then picked him up and placed him in front of the one with the stretched ears.

  “Take,” the man with the stretched ears said in his bassy whisper of a voice. “Take.” Owin assumed that he was the leader of the Caatamoors.

  Owin was unsure what he meant but listened to the Mother’s guidance inside him. He grabbed the large inked wrist of the leader and guided him out of the room.

  The Mister suddenly sprung into life, pleading, “Owin, I beg of you, do not carry out what you have planned. The Mother will not help you. She cannot help you. It is I who controlled everything in the vision chamber. It was me all along. Owin!”

  How can he control what happens in there? Owin assumed that the Mister had been driven mad like Mior and Mattespin. He realized that if he himself had been held captive by these brutes for any length of time, he would also have gone mad.

  “The images of the goddesses, I control,” the Mister continued. “I send them to the room. The fire is simply a switch that I flick, there is even one inside the room. Look for it! It will show you that it is not controlled by some god. Owin, I am sorry for everything but please do not try to…”

  The Mister’s voice faded as they exited the room but his words played through Owin’s mind. He didn’t know what shocked him more: the vision of the island being overrun by horrible demons or his mentor, teacher and friend being caged in his own chambers.

  Protect me, Mother, he prayed. Mother, I take these abominations to your vision chamber and I ask that you help us. I ask that you use your power to rid us of them. See him and rid us of his evil.

  They came to the vision chamber but, unlike his usual visits, there was no air of excitement. The two walked into the warm darkened room and Owin led the inked giant to the soft black chair. The leader sat there with his gray leather covering around his waist.

  “The visions will begin soon,” Owin said, not really expecting to get a response. Minutes passed and neither a vision, nor an answer to Owin’s prayers came. The brute seemed to be getting restless. He stood. Owin found himself at eye level with the man’s chest. The leader stripped off Owin’s clothes, ripping his top and then pulling off everything else. His big inked hands went to Owin’s shoulders and turned him around. Owin was pushed and bent over the grid of the fire pit. The metal was a cold chill against his naked chest and stomach.

  The situation was hopeless, the Mother had failed him and the Mister’s words were echoing in his head: “The Mother will not help you. She will never help you!” Why would the Mother abandon me? Owin had served Her all his life and obeyed the rules and now he was being left to get fucked by this hairless thug.

  The switch, he remembered. For the first time in his life, he didn’t ask for strength nor did he pray for help. Now, pinned to the metal grid, where the fire normally burned, he groped down the side as far as he could stretch. The brute grabbed either side of his body, making him feel like a cottontail being pinned down by a bear. And then he felt the man push his member inside him. It kept going in further and the pain was unbearable.

  There was nobody to pray to anymore…there never had been. His hands shook and his chest twisted in pain as he breathed. Owin had to get out of this himself. His hand ran over something sticking out of the wood surrounding the fire pit. It felt smooth and cold compared to everything else.

  Thud thud thud. The grunting started behind him and he found himself getting thrust backwards and forwards across the metal grid of the fire pit. He slid his feet back so that they interlocked with the thrusting monster behind him. Remembering back to his first time in this chamber and when he first released his seed, Owin thought of how his legs went weak when the feeling happened. That’s when I’m going to get you, he plotted. With his hand on the switch, ready to light the fire, Owin gave the thug what he wanted. He begged him to stop and screamed.

  The typical laugh came but this time it made Owin laugh inside. You’re going to die soon, you laughing fuck. The pain didn’t bother him anymore as he knew it would be over soon. The thrusting was so fast he knew the end of it was coming. Then, he felt the warm seed inside him and the strength of the thrusts weakened.

  He flicked the switch. The warmth instantly grew under him. His eyes filled with the orange glow of the fire. Twisting his legs fast, he caught the man’s tree-like legs and locked its arms in tight to his own body and flipped it onto its back onto the flames that were building around them. Owin pushed himself higher on the man’s bo
dy then drove his head onto the leader’s face, forcing it back into the fire. Spit and screams hit him from below and a sizzling sound filled the room, similar to the sounds from the dining hall when they had grilled fish. Slamming his head back again, he heard the leader’s skull crack off the metal and his screams slowed. Owin’s heart skipped and lightened at the thought of possibly having just saved himself but his stomach turned at the smell: it was like cooking meat. The heat built underneath him. In a rage, he slammed the fucker’s head back again and again until the fighting stopped.

  He slid off the leader’s cooking body before it got too hot. His gut turned on him and he vomited on the floor. He walked across his own sick and sat in the chair facing the fire, trying to hold in another volley of vomit. The Mother didn’t save me…I saved myself, he realized, his stomach sore from retching. His own nakedness disgusted him. He desperately needed to wash. I have to cover myself. Standing up, he used his old clothing to wipe himself clean. He felt an anger swelling inside him. His jaw clenched and his skin crawled. Owin launched his soiled clothes onto the fire. With frantic hands he tried to wipe himself clean from the horrible feelings crawling over his naked body. He screamed and kicked the hard wooden surround of the fire pit that was still cooking the monster who had just fucked him. The cunt’s leather covering lay beside his bleeding and stubbed foot. He picked it up and wrapped it around his waist.

  Footsteps came to the door. Light filled the room as it swung open. Machon and another man walked in and glared at their leader, who was cooking on the fire behind Owin. Their ghostly sharp faces were blank until they both looked Owin in the eye. Gradually, their lips curled and widened to form an unnatural, menacing, stretched-smile. Their high cheekbones extended further, casting a darker shadow over their jawlines.

  “Ra-iy,” Machon shouted.

  The other repeated, “Ra-iy!”

  As they approached him, Owin expected to get killed or to get bent over and fucked again, but the two knelt and picked him up onto their shoulders. He ducked to avoid banging his head on the roof. They carried him out holding firmly on to his bare thighs. Owin was suddenly aware he was only wearing what was no more than a leather rag. They passed the main hall, and went outside to where a crowd of inked bodies, black eyes and pale bald heads gathered around them. Machon shouted nonsense words then thrust Owin higher and shouted, “Ra-iy!”

  The others chanted back in unison in deep loud voices Ra-iy! Ra-iy! Ra-iy!

  Owin was the smallest person by far but in that moment he felt like the biggest man in the world. He raised his hand and they all went silent. I control them. He forgot his old self and all he had been taught. “You are all mine now,” he boomed, “and you will do as I say! I will bring you goddesses…” He paused. “I will bring you women…Niena. But you must kneel!”

  Blank expressions were returned.

  Owin jumped down from Machon’s lift and pulled his new servant to his knees. “Kneel!” he commanded again.

  They knelt.

  Epilogue

  Grietum sat on the cold metal floor of the same room she had woken up in over two hundred years ago. The red light hurt her eyes and haunted her dreams. On the other side of the metal door that she leaned against, the only sounds now were the usual gentle hums from the bowels of the hive. The sounds of footsteps, brawling and dying had stopped.

  She was broken. Her blues had turned on her and escaped. Her rats attacked her and fought amongst themselves for their fix. And her many daughters, and daughters’ daughters, had either been killed or fled. She hadn’t drunk water in days and her nose was constantly bombarded with the smell of her own shit, for she had been forced to defecate in the corner of the same room that she had barricaded herself inside. It was here that she took refuge when the lights went dark and the rotten scrote Romarus turned on her, poisoning the minds of her thralls, taking her precious blues away.

  There had been no ‘hunt’ so to speak of with the young Blue Romarus. When he first walked into the throne room he was quite prepared to lie with her. Within minutes she had her blue-eyed king and that same evening, he had lain with three of her daughters. He was a fine prize but there was disappointment in not having a hunt in pursuit of it.

  Now Grietum was alone. She stared at the piece of parchment in her bloated hands. It was the last thing she had seen before her life crumbled around her. She laughed when she saw it first. It seemed like such a random and insignificant incident. It hit her on the head from above as she lounged on her throne, happily watching Blue Romarus fuck one of her brood for the second time that day. She opened the crumpled sheet and looked at the most ridiculous illustration of a feathered creature wearing an oversized hat on its head. “Why is there a picture of a bird in a hat in my throne room?” she bellowed with a guttural laugh.

  As her laughter echoed and faded, she remembered hearing a call from Blue Owin from his cell below. “I have come to my senses. I will lie with you,” he shouted from the depths of the hive. She remembered the excitement she felt having just been seeded by the wonderful King Romarus and to now be receiving the subject of one of her most lengthy hunts.

  Blue Owin stood in front of her and said his words and the hunt was about to come to completion when darkness took the rusty throne room. She remembered, as her eyes adjusted, seeing her brown-eyed rats fumbling around blind. Some of her daughters of blue-sight were trying to assist them, but those of brown blundered around like fools. Blue Owin ran for the pack that the king had brought with him and began clothing his body. The king was still occupied with his cock inside Gosha and looked as if he was not disturbed by the sudden darkness. The boy king’s strong hips continued to thrust uninterrupted.

  “Just stand still you fools until the lights come back. It will not take long.” She had not seen a blackout, like the one that day, in what must have been fifty years. She walked over to Blue Owin to stop him clothing his already pledged body.

  She remembered her face hitting the floor but after that, she had no memory until waking up to the usual lights of the hive, with two of her rats searching her.

  “The bloated bitch always has a stash on her. Just keep looking.” Grietum recalled the disloyal wretch saying the words as he groped her.

  She grabbed one of the probing wrists and threw the rat away. The man went flying backwards. She scrambled to her feet and kicked the other in the chest and then made a wobbling dash to her safe room, where she stayed for weeks.

  Grietum drank liquid from the tubes that had once entered her body from the time when she had lain on that metal bed for countless forgotten years before her awakening. The liquid sustained her body but her mind was beginning to grow tired of the loneliness and the horrid red light.

  This was the first day since the fall of her hive that it was silent in the tunnel outside of her safe room. It’s time to leave. She unlocked the door. It clunked and slid open onto the empty tunnel. Every one of her plodding steps echoed through the empty maze that was once her thriving hive.

  As she rounded the corner at the end of the tunnel, three figures were crouched by a door. She hid from their sight and slowed her breathing. The three figures were smaller than most mortals and had a blue tint to their skin, which was much like hers. Seeing them stirred something inside her like a forgotten dream. If she had her servants and things were the way they were before, she was sure she would have started a hunt with all three of them. From around the corner, their voices drifted. They spoke in a tongue that she didn’t understand but the sounds were like warm hands on her ears.

  She heard one say, “Niehata Beverine.”

  Without thinking she called, “I am here.” Why? Why would I shout that? She shrank to the floor and when she looked up, some of the most attractive and desirable faces she had ever seen stared back at her.

  Talking to her in their strange tongue, they looked on her as if she were some rare creature.

  “I do not understand what you are saying. Speak to me correctly or leave this
place! Who are you?!”

  One of the short blue-skinned blue-eyed men pointed a small black device at her face. She slapped it away. The other two restrained her arms with a strength she had never felt in a male before. The black device beeped and emitted a sharp red light that dazzled her eyes. They jabbered to each other in their strange, yet fantastical, tongue.

  “I demand to know who you are and what you are doing in my hive!” Images flooded through her head. Memories she had tried to remember for so long filled her mind. Guilt surged through every part of her being as she thought of the hurt she had caused all of those blue-eyed young men and her servants…how she had made them mutilate their own bodies. My daughters are dead or missing, she thought, as regret swelled.

  The man holding the device spoke and this time she understood the noises coming from his mouth, which was filled with the most wonderfully shaped teeth. They narrowed towards the tip and came to a splendid sharp point with no gaps in between. “Queen Beverine, can you hear and understand my words?”

  I am Queen Beverine, she remembered. But who was Grietum? Grietum is not my name. “I can understand you. But,” she hesitated, “I do not know who I am. I called myself Grietum but I know now this is not true.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded softer. It warmed her throat to speak in this fluid language.

  The blue man with the device turned to another. “I’ve managed to repair some of the cellular damage from stasis but I am limited with what I can do here. I would think it will take time for her to fully understand.” He looked back to her. “You are Queen Beverine and I understand this must be distressing for you, but please believe me, we are here to help. It appears you used the wrong stasis chamber and it is very old and we—”