by Andy Remic
The Tower of the Moon had been commissioned by King Yoon after a spate of drunken orgies and was, quite simply, the tallest tower ever built. From the flat summit, on which Yoon conducted weekly parties, one could see clear across the distant Pass of Splintered Bones, through the valleys of the Mountains of Skarandos, and deep into the lands of Zakora, the Three Deserts. The stone for the tower had been mined in the White Lion Mountains to the north of Vagandrak, and even more mined from the heart of the Mountains of Skarandos to the south. The tower had been the masterpiece, or folly, of Yoon’s Chief Engineer, Isvander, a tortured and troubled man, who during the build firmly believed he’d been given a poisoned chalice. After all, it was near impossible to please King Yoon who was, to all intents and purposes, insane. In private circles, in hushed whispers, the vast, glorious, impressive, gleaming white structure was not referred to as the Tower of the Moon. It was known simply as Isvander’s Tomb, or even just The Tomb. The structure which had led to Isvander’s eventual suicide.
Now, the evening sun painted the tower a glorious deep orange. The tower’s shadow fell like an accusatory finger that wound its way around across the city of Vagan, accusing the population of allowing a lunatic like Yoon to build such a monstrosity at, it was said, the cost of seventeen hundred lives. And that didn’t include the ex-lovers Yoon had hurled from the various stages of completed summit during intervals in the tower’s completion.
The summit was flat, paved white, with a deep, sunken bath which could accommodate forty with ease. Trays of sweet meats, brandy and Vagandrak red floated serenely across the pool, bobbing when somebody entered or left the water from the wide, curved white stone steps. The water was heated by a clever brass engine in the room below, so that a gentle curl of steam always seemed to hover across the surface, like a baby dragon’s smoke.
On this fine evening, Princess Emilia Ladine, niece to King Yoon, reclined naked amidst the steaming waters, her wrists and arms adorned with numerous priceless bangles and bracelets, her face filled with serenity as she watched a couple copulate a few feet before her, moaning and groaning, licking and kissing and rubbing, their faces twisted in pleasure which she found at once fascinating and humorous. Emilia began to giggle. And when Emilia giggled, so her fifty-or-so entourage of lackeys and sycophants also giggled, despite not really understanding what Emilia found so amusing. She flopped a hand outwards, as the two lovers paused, turning towards her, confused a little at her behaviour. They must have conveyed a question in their looks, because the princess wet her lips a little, fluttered her long, dark eyelashes, and said, “Oh, don’t let me stop you, please continue. It’s just that… you reminded me of my father.” She giggled again. Around her, splashing in the pool, and seated on loungers scattered across the white paving stones, fifty giggles echoed in a subtle parody.
“More wine,” said the princess.
A muscular, tanned man with a military-grade haircut and chiselled good looks fine enough to make any court lady swoon, swam across to Emilia, and reaching for the tray – which bobbed a scant six inches from her own bobbing breasts – lifted a silver goblet and deposited it in the princess’ flopping hand, pale and white and so reminiscent of a dying, panting fish.
“Oh, thank you, Geraldo, you are such a moonbeam.” She sipped delicately, spilling a few droplets, probably because this was her eighth goblet and the drinking of wine had taken up most of the day.
“A moonbeam, why, thank you, princess.”
“A pleashure,” she slurred, and fluttered her eyelashes again. Then she blinked and stared harder at Geraldo. “You have a very fine physique, Geraldo,” she said appreciatively, and gave a pout, a perfect pout, a perfect pink pout that had won the wallets, if not the hearts, of many a suitor.
“Why, thank you, Your Highness.”
She giggled again, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, removing a little froth of wine bubbles. “May one ask, my dear, where you managed to achieve such a mus… such a musc… such a good shape.”
“I was in the army, Highness. Five years in the infantry.” Geraldo spoke the words carefully, for he had told her on numerous occasions in the past, including once that very morning, but Princess Emilia Ladine was extremely adept at not retaining information, especially about anybody whom she didn’t consider more important than a chicken.
She seemed to look at him for the first time, and gave a little purr. “Really?” she said. “So, lots of running, and wrestling, and sword play?”
Geraldo nodded, distracted for a moment by a game of bat and ball occurring just a few feet away between two young men, both naked, their long dark oiled hair leaving rainbow trails in the water of the rooftop pool.
“Fabulous,” she said, and rested her chin on one fist. “Truly, fabulous.” She fluttered her eyelashes again, and sipped her wine. She seemed suddenly less drunk and more predatory. Then she frowned. “May I ask, Geraldo, how you went from being a soldier in my uncle’s army to being naked in my pool?”
Geraldo gave a strangled little cough. He glanced around. “One of your… lady friends spied me whilst I was on parade. She requested that I be dismissed from the king’s guard and re-employed here as your… as your…”
“Yes?”
“As your butler,” said Geraldo, voice perfectly even, eyes staring straight ahead with the same stare he’d used whilst being bellowed at by a staff sergeant. “I open your carriage door. I close your carriage door. I bring you trays of drinks. I feed you sweetmeats. Sometimes, I even cook your evening meals.” He lowered his gaze, so that he stared straight into the princess’ emerald eyes. “It’s a real challenge,” he said, without any hint of irony.
Emilia flipped her other hand, and tilted her head. Her long blonde curls bobbed across the water in what she imagined was a massively seductive posture. Nearby, a naked man on a stool deftly tuned a lyre, then started to croon a love ballad. The sun painted orange whorls across the lapping water. Distantly, the city buzzed, a muffled backdrop to the real business of royal hedonism.
Geraldo could sense what was coming. Married, with two young daughters, he wanted no part in this pantomime, and deeply resented this mindless goldfish of a woman who had, indirectly but by her royal edict, had him forcibly ejected from the military – the love of his life – and sentenced, sentenced, to an eternity of pointlessness. And yet he could not go against a direct order of King Yoon. It would not only cost him his own life, but that of his family.
And so he gritted his teeth.
“It’s funny,” crooned Emilia, and sat up a little, slopping wine into the water, “But I feel a little chill, and so I think I shall retire to the royal tent for a lie down. Geraldo, would you please accompany me with my goblet and a fresh flask of chilled wine.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” said Geraldo, and taking the proffered damp limp hand, helped Princess Emilia Ladine to stand, resplendent in her gold bangles and nothing else, and then to step daintily up the steps, emerging dripping and radiant from the pool whereupon a maid rushed forward and draped a luminous floating chiffon robe around her pale shoulders, hiding nothing of her sexuality. Then she linked arms with a dazed Geraldo, and guided him to the extravagant tent which had been erected to one side of the platform roof near the fancy, carved marble barriers.
The tent was perhaps twenty feet square, and contained a bed, silk blankets, a brazier, and a large, elaborate, carved-oak drinks cabinet which had taken ten men, a league of rope and nearly a week to haul to the top of the tower on an elaborate pulley system. The rich tent fabric was red and gold and glossy, and rich, with more gold, as befitted a princess, and especially a beautiful princess of King Yoon’s lineage. Incense was burning, and this incensed Geraldo who was, to all intents and purposes, an honourable outdoor man who would rather keep Emilia’s rancid stink and drugs from his system.
Oh no, he thought. I knew this day might come. That I might have to make choices. But how do I wriggle out of this donkey shit? How do I get away from the ins
ane bitch who’s suddenly taken a liking to me?
Emilia ducked through the tent flaps, practically dragging Geraldo with her. Once inside, she turned, and smiled at him, droopy, drug-infused eyelids fluttering, and started making slobbering kisses as Geraldo strained backwards.
“Come to your princess, there’s a good boy,” said Emilia, closing her eyes and tugging him towards the bed.
“Wait, wait, Your Highness!”
Finally recognising the panic in his voice, her eyes opened and she fixed him with a quizzical stare. “Yes, Geraldo? What is the matter? What could possibly be of urgency now, in this moment of our most intimate intimacy?”
Geraldo coughed. “Look. Princess. I’m sorry. I’m a married man. I have two beautiful young daughters. I’m employed here as a butler, and I respect you as a princess, I really do, but I am an honourable man. I was a military man, and I don’t think it’s right for me to come to your bed.”
Princess Emilia Ladine considered this, then slipped the chiffon robe from her shoulders, where it tumbled lazily, erotically, to the floor. She licked her lips. Her eyes were dreamy with drugs.
“I am royalty. You will do as I say.” She started to rub her hands up and down her body, swaying her hips, and moved backwards again, to recline naked and glistening on the silk sheets of the bed. “Come here, boy.”
“Please, Princess, I cannot do this…”
“Come here, or I will tell my uncle to have you beheaded. Publicly. And I will ensure your pretty little wife and pretty little daughters are there to witness the spectacle.”
Geraldo lowered his eyes, and shuffled forward to stand beside the bed. Oh no. It’s happened. She’s finally going to force me to entertain her sexually, like I’ve seen so many other poor bastards endure…
Emilia touched herself between her legs. She groaned.
“Come,” she said, face cracking into a sculpted smile, “I want to witness your succulent tongue, I want to be orally stimulated by you, I wish to feel your tongue, down here, tickling and tasting, licking and sucking and flicking; I want you to come here and make me come…” and she frowned suddenly, pointing to his limp penis, “and do something about that, make it hard, immediately, or I’ll…”
“I can’t just make it hard,” snapped Geraldo, anger suddenly getting the better of him. Five years of hardcore manoeuvres on mock battlefields, beaten by swords, skewered by capped spears, punched in the ribs during unarmed combat – to end up here. “I’m not a fucking machine!”
Emilia gasped. “Oh my. Oh by the gods! By the Seven Sisters! I cannot believe you feel no sexual attraction towards me, your little princess, for I am perfect in every way! I’ve had a hundred lovers, each one desperate to lick and suckle my perfect pert breasts, each one eager to kiss my sweet mouth, each one desperate to thrust his manhood inside me and bring me squealing to a pinnacle of perfect writhing pleasure… how dare you not get a hard cock and pleasure me…”
Geraldo coughed, looking down again. Now he was really fucked. Or not.
Emilia climbed onto her hands and knees, the dreamy drug state evaporating as righteous anger took hold. Her face changed, from sweet, pampered and powdered pooch, to a mask of anger which turned her into something ugly and horrific. Rage swam through her face like piranhas through blood-infested waters. Her eyes narrowed and an accusing finger lifted, pointing at Geraldo.
“You… you are going to fucking hang…” she said.
“But… Your Highness!”
“Guards! Guards!” she squealed.
There came a whump. Emilia’s hair streamed behind her and she blinked, ten times in rapid succession, simply not understanding what she was seeing, or indeed, what had happened. She could see the pool, shimmering with crimson sunlight. Her entourage of sycophants were running around, apparently, in circles, screaming and knocking over goblets of fine wine. But, but, but she suddenly realised the tent had gone. And so had Geraldo.
“Geraldo?” she said, voice tiny.
There came a distant crack, a pause, a sound like rainfall, and then the upper half of Geraldo’s torso slammed onto the white flags before Emilia. From the broken waist trailed streamers of tendon and tattered muscle, and from the layers of meat and fat poked a broken hip, sheared away, jagged, stark white, and twitching.
Emilia took a rapid succession of panting breaths, then screamed, screamed for help, screamed for guards, but everybody was running around in a panic like chickens in a hutch when a fox digs his way in.
Emilia lifted her hand to her head, touching her fingers to her forehead, and swooned, toppling back on the silk sheets, now speckled with Geraldo’s blood. She waited for some attendance. When none came, she opened her eyes to see a dark shadow flit across the sky, wheel, and dive. It approached so fast Emilia let out a gasp, and when it landed, the whole tower shook as claws gouged long grooves through the white stone flags, cracking some, breaking others, ripping up more so they exploded in a shower of shattered stone, which whirred across the tower top causing several bludgeoned injuries.
The dragon came to a halt, and its tail whipped out, connecting with ten of Emilia’s wailing entourage and sending them spinning away like skittles, where they bounced from the roof of the Tower of the Moon, and wailed a long way down into tumbling oblivion.
The dragon turned, lazily, with utter contempt, and dark eyes fixed on Emilia. Slowly, the head lowered. Lips curled back. And the dragon grinned.
“I am a princess!” squeaked Emilia, shuffling backwards, face a rictus of terror. “Princess Emilia. I have royal blood! I am the niece of King Yoon, you know. I have rights, you know.”
Flames curled around Volak’s lips, and her grin widened. Those dark eyes bore through Emilia’s soul.
“You are a princess, you say?” came Volak’s powerful, musical rumble. “I am impressed!”
“You are?” came the tiny squeak, as Emilia’s bladder suddenly weakened and urine stained the silk sheets.
“Yes! However.”
“However?”
“You are a princess. But I am the queen,” said Volak, eyes narrowing, “and this is my world now. Do you know what happens to enemy royalty when a royal throne is usurped?”
Emilia was shaking too much to reply.
Volak smiled, showing far too many fangs. “They burn,” she said, and gave a tiny exhalation of fire which ignited Emilia and the bed on which she trembled. For a moment there was no response as her hair went up in flames and her skin started to blacken, then she leapt off the bed, hands flapping, a wail erupting from flame-charred lips, and in a blind panic ran, slamming into the low barrier which surrounded the roof of the Tower of the Moon, to flip neatly over the side.
The slap of imploding flesh and compacting bones came much, much later.
Volak turned, to see possibly ten remaining sycophants, frozen in various naked poses, in what could possibly have been considered a comedy tableaux, if they hadn’t been about to burn.
Volak smiled at them.
A young man screamed.
Fire howled across the platform, as Volak sang…
Engineered
“It’s getting closer.”
Beetrax halted, and looked at Talon, then Lillith, and finally, Dake.
“It’s following us, ain’t it?”
Talon gave a single nod, and aimed down the tunnel. A cool breeze blew, chilling the group, and making Talon’s long hair drift gently in the airflow.
A wail spun out again, a long and lonely ululation, a sound of pain, and terror, and ultimately, despair.
“It sounds hurt,” said Lillith, slowly.
“I wish it’d hurry up and die, then,” snapped Beetrax.
“That’s beneath you, Trax.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
The wail went up again, closer. They heard several crunching sounds, and more thumps.
“We’re going to have to fight,” said Talon.
“Not here,” snapped Beetrax. “We need somewhere better to de
fend.”
“Come on.”
They started to jog, and the corridor sloped down, the rough, rocky floor spiralled with rainbow colours of spilled oil. The tunnel opened into a chamber filled with a myriad of engineering objects. There was a row of perhaps twenty mining carts, several on rails which then led off into adjoining tunnels, before disappearing in the darkness. There were two carts on their sides, with missing wheels and sections of undercarriage cut free. This was obviously some kind of repair shop.
A collection of oil-filled barrels stood next to one shed, together with piles of ropes and chains. There were racks of mining tools along one far wall, and a large well, its circular wall fashioned from stones cut from the chamber. Next to where they entered were various wooden scaffolds, which towered up to their right, perhaps twenty to thirty feet in height.
“A good place to fight?” said Talon.
Beetrax nodded. “You get up there on that scaffold, lad. I’ll stand here with Dake, and lure it into the open, and whatever it is emerges from that tunnel, you shower it with arrows, all right? And, er, you girls better go hide behind the shed. And take Jael with you, the spineless little fucker.”
“I can fight,” said Jael, quietly, but Beetrax ignored him.
“Hide behind the shed?” Sakora snarled at Beetrax. “What are you, some kind of idiot?” She pulled free two knives, and scowled at him. “I could kick your arse any time, fat man. Just name the place and time.”
Beetrax grinned. “That’s more like it,” he said, and moved to a space before the tunnel opening. He rolled his neck and shoulders, and readied his axe, then watched Talon climb the scaffold, taking precise care with each hand and foot hold.
“You climb that scaffold like old people fuck,” he said.
Talon stopped, turned, and frowned. “Feel free to climb up it yourself, you sarcastic old goat. I don’t like heights, all right?”
“Now, now, don’t be like that. I was simply observing that if you moved any fucking slower, the fight might be over before you even get the chance to loose off a single arrow.”