The Crumbling Kingdom

by Jeffrey Hall

  He came to a realization in that mad scramble that he’d never outrun them like this. They were gaining on him. It’d only be a matter of time before he was caught or one of those devilish arrows struck his back.

  When he turned onto the next street, he found a storefront that sold exotic jewels gleaned from the Knotted Mountains. He pushed past the white rogus hide serving as its door and into the store. The store’s owner, a Boarling with jewels incrusting his tusks, and a Fossala customer startled in surprise as he burst in. Shelves full of sparkling stones lined the walls, casting strange lights in the store as if a rainbow shattered and its pieces were slowly twitching to come back together.

  “What is the meaning of this?” shouted the owner.

  But Wish ignored him, searching for some place to hide. There was none except for a doorway leading to some back room. He hurried towards it, but the owner stood in his way.

  “Are you looking for some—”

  Wish shoved past him, and the Boarling fell into one of the shelves, spilling his wares across the floor and causing the Chassa to scream.

  “I’ll get the guards! Thief! Thief!” The Boarling’s yells followed Wish into the back. On the other side of the door there were barrels of rocks, some nothing but plain river stones, others glittering miacrite. In the middle there was a worktable full of paints, hammers, and crushed-up rock. If it weren’t for his pursuers, Wish might have laughed at the owner’s scam, but instead he searched desperately for some new escape or place to hide.

  The barrels? Behind the table? The absurd thought of dousing himself in paint and blending in with the fake jewels even crossed his mind, but he knew none of them would conceal him completely.

  Feet shuffled into the front of the store. “Come out, little rodent,” said Rive above the store owner’s screams.

  Wish noticed the emblem on the bowls of paint. A fiery lizard with four eyes.

  It was made with a base of trogi oil...

  Wish grabbed the bowls and tossed them beneath the space in the doorway. Their contents splattered, flooding over the floor.

  One of the thugs laughed. “I didn’t know a critter could piss itself so colorfully.”

  Wish tossed the last of the bowls and kicked open the door. Rive’s and the others’ eyes sharpened. The archer raised his bow, but before he could fire Wish swiped down with his machete. The baboon totem flared, heating the blade as it engaged with the ground. Sparks flew and flames sputtered into life where the paint had fallen. The closest thug ignited, unaware of the paint speckling his boots.The others reared, shocked by the sudden appearance of the fire.

  Surrounded by fire himself, Wish grabbed the worktable, put it in front of him, and burst through the wall of flame he had created. He felt something land into the table as the fire slipped around him. A hole opened up in the wood where his head was, an arrow falling away to allow a view of the archer reloading his bow. With the fire at his back, he tossed the now burning table at the archer, causing the man to jump. Wish spun just as a thug’s axe came for his head. He grabbed the man’s wrist and pulled him forward, using the man’s momentum to send him tumbling into the fire. Another came rushing towards him, jumping across a small hurdle of flames, two machetes in hand. He slashed both downwards, and Wish brought up his, the totem flaring. His own machete cut through the thug’s poorly made weapons in one swipe, leaving him stunned, and Wish’s next swipe took the man’s throat.

  By this time the fire was roaring. The flames jumped to the shelves, rising to where some of the stones sat, and the jewels being the painted stones that they were, started to catch fire and pop, bursting off the shelves like bullets in some strange reaction just as Rive emerged from the flames. The lights from the stones dancing upon his fur made him look ethereal.

  “You truly are a djinn to bring forth such wonders,” said the Fangkind as he brandished the axe in his hand. “It’s no wonder the jungle favors you so. But now I will make sure you bleed just like I did your friend the lizard.”

  Wish bared his teeth. He’d been a fool to think it was someone else who had killed Boz.

  Rive smiled. “Come and burn with me.”

  He swung his axe into the ground, shooting a web down the plank of wood Wish stood upon.Wish danced off of it as a stone bullet shot past him and crashed through one of the storefront windows. Another thug charged, this one with a gasha, a fanged mace made from the teeth of a rip cat. Wish ducked beneath his swing. Rive’s axe fell. Webs overtook the plank of wood. Wish jumped, but the thug wasn’t as lucky. He tried to move forward, but with his boots stuck, he clumsily fell into the nearby flames, crying out as the fire overtook him.

  Rive almost charged, but three bullets blew out from the shelves, crossing the distance between them, smashing one of the corner pillars that kept the store’s ceiling in place. The pillar crumbled. The ceiling opened up, dumping boxes and dust and even a strange, caged bird from the floor above that maniacally called out like a creature finding hilarity in the situation. Rive was hidden in a cloud of smoke and junk. Wish needed no other opportunity. He rushed out of the store, a cloud of smoke trailing him.

  “My store! My jewels!” The Boarling was beside him, crying out in horror, his eyes watery. “Arrest him!”

  Boots crunched the ground behind him. Before Wish could turn he was forced to the ground, his hands pulled behind his back and bound. Wish glanced over his shoulder to see the helmet of a Fangmoran soldier looming over him.

  “Like starting fires, eh?” said the soldier, his hot fetid breath gusting into his face. “We’ll find a place for you to cool off.”

  The soldier brought him roughly to his feet. When he stood he saw other soldiers surrounding him. Four of them clenched spears as they watched the fire roar in the storefront. The one holding him pushed him forward and away, and as he did Wish saw Rive and two of the other thugs climb out the window and run as the other soldiers chased after them. But before Rive was completely out of sight, he turned, met eyes with Wish, and pointed with his claw as if to say they would finish their duel soon.

  “What was that all about, anyways? This box on your back?” said one of the soldiers, as he rifled through his packs, thankfully not taking any of his possessions. At least not yet.

  Wish didn’t say a word. He had had enough interactions with Fangmoran soldiers to know they were a prickly bunch and would freely look for excuses to brutalize prisoners and common citizens. Wish had a feeling that anything he said would be one of those excuses.

  “Perhaps a few days in the dungeons will loosen your tongue,” said the Lemura soldier. They crossed into a great shadow. The temple of Notha rose before them. Its feathery, moss-ridden garden hung over them like a cancer of the forest, maligned and out of place. They approached one of the many sets of steps leading out of the statue’s feet.Two other soldiers awaited them there.

  “Another one of the Green Men?” said one of the soldiers.

  “A jungle-diver from the looks of it. Lit some poor trit’s store on fire.”

  “Hmph, he reeks,” said the other soldier, looking Wish up and down with disgust. They pushed aside the great, barred doors with a creak. The insides of the temple were made of deep green stone, as if the walls themselves were hewn from the forest. The only lights that illuminated the place’s hallways were candles made of paka wax, a substance squeezed from the stalky plants that grew along the rivers that surrounded Fangmora, giving the halls a smell like sugar. The tiny lights cast strange shadows against the walls, making it look like spiders crawled along them. It didn’t take them long to reach the dungeons.

  It was a long corridor filled with barred rooms, the cages made from stained, totemic wood, each of the bars staring back at Wish as they passed with the eyes of beasts and bugs and men. At the far end of the hall sat an obese Lemura woman, her fur long and unkempt, a bucket of frogs croaking at her side.

  “Another one?” she said, her ears flattening at the sight of him.

  “He’s no G
reen Man from the looks of him.”

  “Oh? Just another piece of litter dancing along the streets?” The Lemura reached into the bucket and popped a silver frog into her mouth, breaking the thing’s back with her sharp fangs, stopping its legs from shivering.

  “Where do you want him?” said the soldier.

  She tapped on the cage beside her. “Right here. Right across from the other one.”

  “Why? So you don’t have to move to keep an eye on them?” The soldier laughed.

  “Why make life harder?” The Lemura pulled the frog’s bones from her teeth, stood up, and unlocked the cage. The soldiers pushed Wish inside.

  “Enjoy the company,” said the soldier.

  Wish scrambled to his feet and charged the cage, his hands still bound, but the Lemura was waiting on the other side, a new silver frog squirming in her hand. “No, no, no, my little pet. I wouldn’t tangle with these bars unless you don’t want to keep your clothes. They’ve been known to throw people straight out of them.”

  Wish eyed the strange totems. He couldn’t name a single one, nor could he determine what type of wood the bars were made out of. The gods only knew what they would do if he were to grab hold of them. He decided he’d rather not test to see if she was telling the truth.

  “So what now?” said Wish.

  “Now you wait until the king makes a decision on you.”

  “The king?”

  The Lemura bit into the frog, a speckle of its blood squirting onto Wish’s face. “That’s what I said.”

  “When will that be?”

  The Lemura jail-keep shrugged and went back to her seat. Waiting across from him in another cage was another human man. He wore a torn jerkin and had a ragged patch of hair down the middle of his head. He had a brown, crumpled leaf tucked behind his ear. “The king is never in a hurry. I’ve been in here for weeks without an audience.”

  “The king is busy,” said the Lemura.

  “Busy what? Watching his kingdom crumble beneath him?”

  The Lemura laughed. “Doesn’t look like it’s crumbling from here.”

  “Hard to see anything with your snout down a pond-bucket.”

  “What else do I need to see?” The Lemura laughed harder.

  Wish and the other man met eyes. “You a Green Man?” said Wish.

  The man nodded. “They took my leaf, but I found a replacement.”

  “I wouldn’t trust a replacement from the floor of a jail.”

  “I’d pull a half-digested petal from a pile of dung and place it there if it meant showing the world what I am.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Someone who will stand up to a king who treats the nation like a mat to wipe his feet upon.”

  Wish laughed.

  “What?” said the man.

  “You Green Men are all alike. You call the king a demon, yet you don’t see the horns growing from your own heads.”

  “Sometimes demons are needed to defeat evil.”

  It was the Lemura’s turn to laugh. “Demons aren’t real, you fools.”

  Wish and the other man ignored the jail-keep’s foolery. He shook his head. “Funny how the only bodies I’ve ever seen in Fangmora were put there from your hands.”

  “And there will be many more. As many as are needed to stack them up tall enough to cut off the king’s head and free this city from his coil.”

  Wish shook his head. He was dealing with a madman. There was no arguing with someone whose mind was lost.

  “Do not worry, jungle-diver. We are almost tall enough. After tonight we’ll be at eye’s level with that throat of his.”

  “What’s tonight?” said Wish.

  The man smiled.

  “What’s tonight?” Wish repeated.

  “Tonight is a night where the both of you will keep your mouths shut so Alanda can get some sleep.” The Lemura stretched out her legs and spat out bones onto the floor beneath her, but Wish didn’t look away from the man as he slunk back into his cage, still smiling.

  The hours went by and Wish paced his cell impatiently. The Lemura had fallen asleep a while back. A few of the remaining frogs in her bucket had escaped and now hopped along the dungeon floor, croaking loudly. The man across from him sat upon the floor, occasionally whistling or laughing to himself. Between the jail-keep’s snoring, the frogs’ croaking, and the man’s incessant noises, it wasn’t easy to think. The wait was infuriating. He kept wondering what was happening outside. About all that still needed him outside, about Moso and his debts.

  He kept wondering how long he would have to stay in this place. Every minute spent inside the cell felt like there was some new plot unfolding he could not see, could not stay ahead of. There were moments when he thought about trying his luck against the totemic bars, thought about attempting to pry them apart with the help of his anger, but a more rational part of him talked him out of it. That was the jungle in him speaking. The part that thought most solutions could be solved physically. Instead he resigned himself to sitting upon the floor, thinking about how he would get the box that was just taken from him back.

  Sneaking through some botamancers’ lair was one thing, but the idea of sneaking through the temple was laughable. Yet he could see no other way, unless he could beg and plead with the king when he met him. Whenever that would be.

  Eventually the sound of boots down the hallway snapped him from his thoughts.The Lemura snorted awake. The Green Man came back to the bars. Two soldiers came to stand in front of the cages.

  “Which one?” The Lemura yawned.

  To Wish’s surprise they nodded in his direction. “This one.”

  “Him? I’ve been here for days!” cried the Green Man, and as he did one of the soldiers reached through the bars and grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt, yanking him into the bars. The totems flared. The man was shot back into the wall, where he crumpled, dazed.

  The soldiers laughed. “Good distance this time,” one said.

  The Lemura stood, fumbled with her keys, and opened the door to Wish’s cage. “Good luck with your demons,” she said as he passed into the soldiers’ clutches. The reek of frog and swamp emanated from her mouth. Wish was happy to put her and the cells at his back.

  They led him through the corridor without a word. They turned down an adjacent hallway and ascended a set of spiraling stairs. Halfway up, the dark walls changed in favor of sprawling, colorful murals. Pictures of mountaintops and seas and twilights. It felt like they were emerging from beneath the ground to finally breathe in the fresh air of the outside world, yet still the dank haze of the candles and windowless temple filled his nostrils.

  The stairwell ended. They walked along corridors with doorways, some closed, some open. In the ones that were open, Wish saw assortments of collections. Some of plants like that of a botamancer’s study, others of skulls of creatures as if collected by hunters. All were testaments to the rumors of King Rasha’s opulent desires, but perhaps none more so than his appointment room.

  The soldiers pushed aside two heavy doors made of stained agassi wood, some of the rarest and hardest to find wood in all of Chilongua, its lumber as soft as the back of a young potto. Inside there were rows of trees outlining a cobbled walkway. The stones used for the path each had been individually carved to match the face of a king or queen that had once ruled the nation of Fanglara, a road of dead and tired faces forever captured in black, polished rock. The trees themselves were rogue roots and royal bendas, both plants renowned for their scents and succulent, refreshing berries that grew only for one week at a time throughout the year. Amongst them fluttered dozens of tiny, colorful birds, singing playfully as they chased one another across the treetops, occasionally dropping red speckles of defecation upon the ground, where a servant waiting along the wall would run forward and clean it up before returning back to his waiting spot. At the end of the row, flanked by four guards on each side, sitting in a chair made of jagrall bones, was King Rasha.

  The old Gib
bon sat proudly, his legs crossed, his long arms resting comfortably on the chair’s armrests. He wore a suit of sour mail, a near impenetrable set of yellow armor crafted by what must have been both woodsmiths and botamancers of the highest degree. Upon his black furred brow sat the berry crown, a name given to the circlet because of the purple jewels that looked so close to the fruits that dotted the many bushes dominating the underbrush of the Fangmoran forest. His throat bubble swelled impatiently as he waited for Wish to stand before him.

  As Wish approached he noticed the box and his other possessions in the hands of the guards.

  “The renowned Ati ‘Wish’ Bibango, finally standing before me. Bootless, battered, and reeking.” The king folded his long fingers across each other. “I must admit that I am surprised it has taken this long for our paths to cross, what with all the deeds you’ve done. I am surprised we have never required your services before.”

  Wish swallowed. “It is a pleasure, my king.”

  “Your king? My, isn’t that a welcome sound to my ears. Too many people from the part of the city you hail from say they have no king, say they want no king.” King Rasha’s black eyes squinted. “Turn your head.”

  Wish raised his eyebrows.

  “Do as he says.” One of the soldiers nudged him.

  Wish did as asked, looking to the left.

  “Now the other way.”

  He looked right.

  “There is no leaf tucked behind your ear.”

  “No,” said Wish, not knowing what else to say.

  “Why not?”

  “They do not serve the people as they say they do.”

  The king laughed, a throaty grunt that made his throat bubble pulsate. “Yet still people flock to them, begging to put a leaf upon their heads like a crown. Why is that do you think?”

  Wish teetered uneasily. Was he to be sentenced or interrogated about the Green Men? “Because they don’t have any other choice. Because there is safety in the numbers they’ve created. Because joining them means they no longer have to worry about the taxes from both sides.”