24:01 One Minute After

by Eric Diehl

  “Lymeera, it is done. You played your role… eh, adequately. I—”

  He abruptly thrust her back, and he scrabbled to raise his tunic. A sharp prick burned at his back, as though he’d been stung by a wasp. He rubbed the skin there, and raised his hand to peer at his fingertips. There was a slight smear of blood there—very little, really. His gaze rose to Lymeera. She stepped further out of his reach, a knowing smile on her face.

  “Lymeera?”

  “Do you think you are the only member of this family who plays at duplicity? Surely not, Tel.”

  He took a faltering step toward her, and she moved easily away.

  “Would you truly have released me from my betrothal, dear brother? Your greatest concern would seem to be wealth, and we have little enough left of that, while family Galador has plenty and more.” Tel stumbled to his knees. He tried to speak, but the words would not come.

  “A simple poison prick Tel.” She held up a small needle for him to see. “I collected it in the apothecary while you assembled father’s potion.”

  Tel again tried to speak, but his voice came out as a gurgling choke.

  “You are dieing in a stew of your own coagulating juices, Tel. But have no fear; it will be blessedly over in short moments.”

  He could make no coherent sound, but the painful question was obvious in his eyes.

  “What has happened here? Can you not guess? The King is dead, killed by his own son. But poor, inept Tel did not survive the attempt.” She wiped the needle clean and turned to toss it close to the silent hulk of Argon. “No, there was some justice today,” she said, “as the father also killed his betraying son. How tragic. Two generations of Royalty lost in one exchange! You do remember that father was once known to carry a poisoned asp, do you not?”

  Tel’s eyes went even wider as he fought to inhale air into his closing lungs.

  “You mentioned a certain young merchant, I think?” Lymeera’s spoke brightly, her voice a musical lilt. “Perhaps he will be my choice, but I am no longer so certain. Perhaps I’ll instead find a suitable prince? I will be able to make whatever choice I wish, you see, for I am now Queen of Balara.”

  Tel half-gasped, half-choked, his hateful glare turning to panic, and he abruptly pitched forward, his head impacting the stone tile with a dull thud.

  “Goodbye forevermore, dear brother,” she said softly.

  A slow, deliberate clapping resonated from behind, and Lymeera whirled around. She gasped at the sight of Argon climbing ponderously to his feet, his face a grim smile. “Very well done, daughter of mine—a clever ruse. But not clever enough, I fear.”

  “Father?”

  “Your daughterly concern has now been restored? How very touching.”

  “How?…”

  “How did I survive the poison that you and your dear brother attempted to kill me with? It’s rather simple, really—I never drank it.” He pulled the flask from his pocket and eyed it sadly. “Such as shame, to ruin a potion such as this. I’ll see if my alchemists can strip the poison—a gamble worth the risk of a single taster, I would say.”

  Lymeera cast a panicked glance to either side, her eyes searching for the escape she knew was not there.

  “It is not a new ploy that you have attempted, you know.” Argon made his observations in a melancholy, matter-of-fact tone. “It has been played out time and again—alas; the dangers attendant to a King with an impatient heir. But…” He shook his head. “But I truly did not expect it of Tel, and certainly not of you.”

  “Father, I can explain—”

  Argon held up his hand. “You can explain nothing I do not already know, good daughter. Now it is my turn to explain to you. To begin…” Argon faltered. “To… to begi..” His eyes went wide as he clutched at his chest. His accusing eyes darted to Lymeera, and she shook her head. Argon sagged to his knees, and yet another voice came from behind.

  “And so… finally it has come to this.”

  Lymeera started at the intrusion and spun to scan the dim room. She cocked her head to one side. That voice… so familiar?

  “m... mother?”

  “No, Lymeera.” Queen Illanor stepped out from the draperies near the rear entry to the throne room, and she walked to stand before her failing husband. Argon’s eyes rose to lock with hers.

  “How…?” He choked out the word.

  Queen Illanor cast a cloyingly sweet smile. “It is simple, Argon. I am the Queen. I can tell whoever I wish to be gone from my presence, at my whim.” She put her fingers gently on his forehead. “That would include even your tasters, if I am insistent enough.” She nodded at the cask of wine at the side of the throne room. “It is a slower poison than that which your son prescribed, I would guess, and so you have some moments still.” Queen Illanor looked to Lymeera with an odd smile. “I have waited so long for this opportunity, Lymeera.” Illanor turned to peer expectantly back into the shadowy darkness.

  “The façade is finally finished, then, dear mother?”

  Lymeera’s eyes widened at yet another familiar voice. But something was different—changed. The crisp enunciation; the choice of words.

  “Yes, son.”

  Lymeera caught her breath as he stepped from the darkness. She looked into his eyes, and she saw no dullness there. She turned back to Illanor.

  “M… Mother?”

  “I have already told you, Lymeera. No.”

  The Princess looked at Illanor in blank confusion, and the Queen looked down upon King Argon, who lay slouched against the wall at an awkward angle. The King slowly shook his head from side to side.

  “Shall I tell her, then, Argon?”

  The King croaked unintelligible, and slowly slid from his slump against the wall to lay prostrate on the floor, gurgling.

  “As you wish, then.” Illanor lifted her gaze to Lymeera.

  “It is the common rumor, as you know, that Slovan is the illegitimate offspring of King Argon, sired prior to his marriage into my family. Then later, so the story goes, after Argon had assumed the throne, the mother of Slovan died, or in some manner became indisposed. The King then took his bastard son in as ward—out of, perhaps, misdirected pity.”

  Lymeera nodded slowly at Illanor. “Yes,” she said softly. “I knew all of that, mother.”

  The Queen shook her head. “Ah, dear Lymeera. You say that you know, but what you have accepted as truth is only partially so. It is true that Slovan, whose real name is Andar, was a bastard child of the King, born out of wedlock. What is not true is that he was brought in as a ward after his mother died.”

  Lymeera looked blankly at her mother, and then a possible realization began to color her face.

  “Good, my dear, I see that you are not so slow as you thought your half-brother to be.” Illanor smiled beatifically at Lymeera, and she continued. “The reality is deeply ironic. Slovan, or Andar, was a bastard because he was born out of wedlock. But he was born to me, Lymeera, of your father’s seed.”

  Lymeera looked at her mother in shock. “But..”

  “Yes indeed—but. Why then did Andar remain a bastard, when he was truly born of the King and Queen?” She smiled thinly. “It is because he was not born of the King and Queen, he was born of a brash, handsome prince and an impressionable princess, not yet of age. Such was an entirely unacceptable circumstance; it would have derailed the important joining of Houses Kessant and Delon, and it would have dangerously smeared the prospect of Prince Argon’s rise to the throne.”

  Illanor smiled grimly. “And so Andar was simply never acknowledged. Princess Illanor traveled abroad, anonymous, to wait out her pregnancy, and when Andar was born he was secretly farmed out to foster care. I was very bitter over that, but I gradually came to forgive your father for abiding by a credo forced upon the both of us. I forgave him, that is, until the birthing of you and Tel.”

  Lymeera had no words. She had thought she had come to understand, but what now?

  “Lymeera, you called me ‘mother’,
and I said no. That is because you are of Argon’s seed, but not of my womb. You, Lymeera, and Tel, are the true bastards. Andar is the true-born of Argon and Illanor; you are born of Argon’s whore.”

  Lymeera looked in shock toward her father; he gave one last wheeze and lay still.

  “Mine was a devious plan, Lymeera; to bring Andar back into the family that had rejected him. I visited my young son when he was in the orphanage—discreetly, of course, and I coached him to appear always non-threatening. To pretend that he was slow, stupid. I was later able to use the outrage of having a whore’s children brought into the family as leverage to force Argon to take in his legitimate son, even if he accepted him as nothing but a ward. That was made much easier since no one, not even Argon, suspected that poor Slovan was anything but a simple idiot.”

  Illanor walked over and knelt to feel for Argon’s pulse. She shook her head and rose. “And so there you have it, Lymeera. I had expected neither you nor Tel to survive this exchange.” She drew an asp from beneath her robe. “And I fear that I must still make that so.”

  Andar stepped forward. “Mother—please, no. At times Lymeera has shown a kindness toward me. I would have her live.” He looked to his half-sister with a mixture of pity and sadness, and he turned to face Illanor. “Lymeera cannot remain here, of course; the true bloodlines must be divulged. But the family of Lord Galador would prove a very useful ally now, and their wealth would bolster the crown. I doubt Galador would yet blanch at the prospect of marriage to fair Lymeera, especially if we assure his family privileged access to the royal court.”

  Illanor let the asp drop from her hand. “Let the King’s will prevail.”

  Lymeera looked dumbly from her half-brother Andar, risen from cretin to King at a moment’s notice, to Illanor, the woman she had thought her mother but who had plotted her death, and she sank to the floor, her arms crossed over her bosom and her hands tightly clenched to either shoulder. She began to rock to and fro on the cold stone tile, sobbed quietly.

  The End

  A Darkness of Spirit

  A’qil sa’n Alar strode to the central court of his walled fortress and raised the horn to his lips. It was an ornate instrument; looping coils of polished brass flaring into a gleaming bell. The sounding began as a deep bass rumble, rattling the windowpanes in their frames, and when A’qil pressed a valve the note rose to a piercing bay. He sounded it six times, and between each soaring trumpet the echo reverberated throughout the mountains. The armies that floundered nearly broken before the walls of House Alar blanched with new fear—they’d heard the stories, they knew what would follow.

  The sounding of the Great Horn was a grim augury; a call to the slaughter.

  Dal had just finished a long climb to crest a high ridgeline when the keening wail reached her ears, and a white fury flashed in her heart. But just as fast as the anger emerged she snatched it back, thrusting it into the far corner of her soul where she kept it sequestered and held down. Dal edged down to steepen her dive, hastening her descent to the Shii’e’tu caverns—home to her collective. Her thoughts ran with the shadows.

  The two-legged one, A’qil—he calls the Drakaa forth once more. I must forestall Zax and his coterie, lest they further darken the spirit.

  Old Riven waited as she approached, and he spoke before she came in visual range. “Dal, it is too late. Zax and a dozen others are already away.”

  Dal growled low in her throat and huffed a thin cloud. “So soon? They’ve taken the underground passage?”

  “Yes. As before, they will meet the two-leggeds in the caverns below their stronghold, and there they will allow themselves to be rigged for this monstrous desecration.” Even as he tried to repress emotion, Riven’s tone quaked. Dal remained silent as she glided in, and then, spotting him on the rough terrain near the cavern’s entrance, she landed. This was even worse than she had expected.

  “You say that a dozen others have joined with Zax?” She settled back on her haunches and gazed slightly down upon Riven—in his ancient years he’d shrunk away from his prime.

  “Yes. Four others have gone over to his ethic, including Kestar.”

  Dal hissed softly. “Kestar, even?” She could scarcely believe it; Kestar had been so adamant in his opposition to Zax’s incitement.

  Riven loosed a rumbling growl. The crown of armor between his widely spaced eyes glistened dully and he bared his front row of teeth. “It is so. I argued with them, but the reverts have lost their identities—they’re now little but reflections of Zax. They loftily claim their actions are the true way of the Drakaa—a way falsely repressed—and that to vent their desire in this manner is only natural. They claim that this sates their bloodlust… for a time. They insist that it involves joining in a savagery already underway, and that it is thereby an atrocity not of their making.”

  Riven snorted and a cloud of grey smoke puffed from his flared nostrils. “I assured them that theirs was a foolish and dangerous argument. Zax countered, rather darkly, that the alternative would be a pent need—ultimately erupting into violence among our own.”

  Dal hissed again—that was new. Never before had the betrayers hinted of violence in the collective. It was true, then—what she suspected. The spirit grew ever darker, claiming more reverts to the ways of old.

  “I must follow them, then—intercede before they act.”

  Riven shook his massive head. “If they scoff openly at Riven, Elder of the Elders, I cannot believe that they’d heed any other—not even you, Dal. And even were you to hasten now, you’d not catch them in the caverns—they’ve too much a lead. They’ve got the blood frenzy, I tell you, I remember it from my youth. You would do well to stay away, it would be dangerous to cross them now. Their vision has narrowed and a curtain drawn, shutting out all light of reason.”

  But she had to try. Dal left Riven, still protesting, at the convergence of the two ranges and she pumped her wings steadily, climbing through thinning air toward the pass between the Guardian Brothers. She was a minute speck in a cold blue sky as she passed between the towering triplet of alps, and once through she canted her wings to begin a soaring descent, her heavy respiration gradually calming back to normal. The temperatures were very cold, up so high—her breath fogged in white clouds and a sheen of ice clad the stony landscape all around. She angled out from the peaks to gaze down upon the fortress of the two-leggeds, so very far below. The striped black-on-orange pupils of her almond-shaped eyes narrowed as her vision focused, and she studied the mayhem.

  The chalky soil beyond the fortress walls lay dark and soaked-through with blood. Broken bodies and equipment lay as a still blanket across the broad mesa-top, and a trail of wounded straggled behind the army that limped away. Dal strove to see through the thick smoke; so much of the scene was shrouded by the black plumes that roiled upward, dispersing as a broad, grimy smudge between her high vantage and the groundscape.

  She hissed softly—even so far removed, there was the feeling of raw evil here.

  Dal rode the updrafts, floating above a scene of carnage mostly silent from this height, and suddenly the gates of the fortress were flung open and thirteen Great Drakaa moved out in a wedge pattern. She focused grimly on the leader.

  Yes… it is Zax. And there is Kestar, immediately behind.

  She shook her head in frustration. Zax had carried little sway before the reversions had begun, but Kestar—normally so equable—he had rivaled Riven and herself in collective influence. And in wonder she looked down upon sober Kestar—now rearing on hind legs and raking extended talons; roaring and snarling incoherent on a bloodied field of death. Her glands warmed at the faint sounds of violence; she spat dark bile and a growl rumbled low in her throat. She extended her mind to the spear of Drakaa that bore down on the fleeing two-leggeds. Riven had been correct, the curtain was drawn. She picked up no structured thought, just a raging frenzy—pulsing hot and livid.

  She watched Zax plunge through the straggling clusters of wo
unded, the V-shaped ridge of his tail sweeping a wide path, decimating those he hadn’t trampled directly overtop. The two-leggeds simply dropped their weapons and turned to run. She could hear their faint screams, vocal, not of the mind, and she watched with growing fascination.

  Zax is headed for the able warriors. He desires the whole blood of those not already fallen…

  Kestar dropped behind and fell upon the wounded, snatching them up in his jaws and shaking his head—flinging separated body pieces and bright gouts of blood. He tilted his head back and Dal watched his neck pulse and bulge as he swallowed—she could not avert her eyes, she was possessed. Her second heart kicked in, doubling her pulse and flooding her mind with a coursing warmth. She flew a circling pattern high above the carnage, her structured thought dissolving into a haze of wanton, unremitting desire.

  Zax now came upon the mass of the able-bodied two-leggeds. Surprisingly enough, some turned to form a thin line facing him. They thrust and jabbed their tiny lances and swords at Zax, and he thrust his neck forward as two streams of viscous fluid jetted from glands beneath his extended tongue. He doused the line of two-leggeds with venom, and they howled and fell to the ground. The writhing bodies erupted in blue flame as Zax swept through the broken line.

  Dal’s eyes shifted to the two-leggeds riding atop the raging Drakaa. Perched in elaborate saddles they were suited in full battle armor, lustrous black, and they wore polished red helms styled as the head of a Montar. The lust was on the two-leggeds also; they brandished their lances and loosed flights of arrows into the seething mass. The mounted warriors howled in animalistic glee, and Dal felt a deep hunger building, irrepressible.

  Another of the fleeing two-leggeds, uninjured and larger than the others, turned with a huge battleaxe to face Zax, and Zax’s head snapped down like a striking serpent. His jaws closed over the two-legged’s torso and he snatched the creature off the ground. Dal’s senses were so sharp now, she heard the steel breastplate crumple like an eggshell, transforming the piercing scream into a choking gurgle, and she abruptly reared back to spray a dark mist of poison into the open sky.