Ashlan’s scent drifts by, like a Yasmin cloud untouched by the jagged world. But Khan knows that cloud is about to get struck by lightning - the pull in his gut is the voice of warning. Unwinding his tail from the bolster, prince Khan takes a deep breath willing his monstrous self to drawback. He crawls down the wall to land in the doorway of the Well-room, carefully setting down one paw after the other in hopes his nails don’t make a noise like before. With a painful shiver and a tick in the neck, he feels his claws pull back into his paws, and the long talons on his hands retract into sharp pointing finger looking things. The chill of the corridor tingles over his back as the thick of his fur-covered body thins out. But that is the extent his transformed-self is willing to leave him exposed. He still has a gray pelt covering, with patches of his pale human flesh coming though, something resembling forearms and onyx colored stained hands are still tipped with charcoaled tinted elongated fingernails.
Slinking into the passageway, he moves under the glow of the flickering golden torch, catching a glimpse of his shadow. With horns jutting out from the tip of his head, the shape resembling that of a goat’s horns spirals with ridged rings toward the heavens. With a heavy heart, Khan wonders if Ashlan would even want to go with him in this unrecognizable form. What did the watchmen call it - griffin? His thoughts burrowed into the darkness even more; Erik might not even be the man he thought he is, recent events have left Khan in deep denial. There is no way Erik did not know of the trap his father had set out for him, he heard Erik instruct the watchmen to chop off the beast’s head – the beast being him!
He’d have to fight Erik, and with Erik being the man who trained him in combat, what chance did he really have against a Viking warrior who had the markings of nearly forty weapons mastered, tattooed all over his skin. But worse than that, if Khan’s beastly side took over and he did win the fight, he’d become something Ashlan didn’t deserve. He’d be no better than the thing he was trying so hard to get her away from.
Their steps reverberated down the corridor when Khan picks up the unusual beating of Erik’s heart – as if he dreads something. Erik has never been afraid of anything, but the stink of his fear wafts down the passageways, bringing about the wickedness in Khan’s beastly desires. When the prince moves this time, his steps are mute. His senses seemed to be working in his favor, giving rise to the hope that perhaps instead of fighting Erik, he could distract him and grab Ashlan without incident. He’d use his supernatural powers of speed and agility like he had in the woods. Ashlan wouldn’t even know what has transpired until it was too late, and she would be safe, away from the sordid life his father had in store for her.
Khan reaches out to the nearest torch on the wall, blowing out the flame. He does so with each torch following until he hears the voice of his enemy. He stops dead in his tracks - the anger, hurt and frustrations raking through his body, weakening his mind. Khan backtracks to the Well-room and hides.
The brusque voice of his father calls to Erik, “I see you, Erik. You cannot elude me all night.”
But Erik and Ashlan keep going, Khan smells her Jasmin scent dispel into the dusky darkness of the stairwell.
The rough voice of Birger bounces off the cold stone walls, “My king, no one is there.”
“Kahn.” The king spits out. “I can smell him.”
“My lord, your son, he was killed by the beast just hours ago. It is not possible my lord.”
“Don’t be absurd you stupid brute.”
The voice of one of the watchmen came to earshot, “He speaks the truth my king, you gave orders to find what remains of his body after the funeral for Audun come dawn.”
King Ivor snarls, mumbling nasty words Khan didn’t care for, lashing out and striking his Watch. Flashes of disturbing memories hit him like a gale-force wind to the gut - leaving him winded. The prince recalls similar words spoken to his mother many a night before her death. From a young age, Khan was under the impression that was how a king was supposed to act. His father had told him that type of behavior was the sort of thing a king had to do to keep his kingdom safe. To keep everyone alert and in line. Cruelty and violence is a necessary evil to protect the people of the kingdom.
A slapping then a thumping sound stuns Khan from his horrid reveries. His golden gleaming eyes narrow as he focuses his sight down the corridor, almost seeing through the pillar the king and his Watch stand behind. A mournful moan escapes the watchman’s beaten mouth. Khan clutches at his furry chest, gasping for air as another onslaught of memories of his father’s thrashings blind his vision. A fire inside him drives Khan from the Well-room; crawling on all fours along the ceiling. Like a spider honing in on his target. His thoughts are consumed by one thing - saving the watchman. He never wants any human to feel the brutal and degrading beating he’d suffered his entire childhood.
The king’s fist descends again and again. Prince Khan smells the tang of blood burst from the watchman’s skin from beneath his father’s heavily jewel and jagged rings – he knows the hurt those bulky rings could cause. Splitting skin and breaking bone. Khan gets into a defensive crouch about to spring down, but luckily Birger impedes the next blow by catching the’ king’s fist before another strike could leave his Watcher’s nose shattered. When Khan draws back, he underestimated his own power, and the bulk above him creaks and almost snaps under the force of his twisting tail.
Birger looks up, Kahn closes his eyes, his dark wings extending to wrap around him like a bat cocooned in the ceiling, mimicking the shadows.
“It’s the storm you fools.” King Ivor grunts, hiccups and almost fall over as he extends a thick finger waving in front of Birger’s face.
“How dare you stop your king, Birger?” Ivor says through another hiccup.
“Sire, you cannot beat on your watchmen” Birger boldly states. “Should the rumors about the offspring of the beast being upon us be true. We need all of our men to keep you safe, my lord.”
Ivor blows out through his nose as he tries to unsheathe his weapon, spittle, and snot spraying from his orifices as he loses control over his being. Khan observes from his perch on the ceiling beam with disgust and equal glee. This tanked-up, his father would never see him coming, or be able to stop him from taking Ashlan.
The king unsuccessfully lifts his sword to the sky, “Take me to my maidens.” The sword falling from his grimy grip with a loud clatter and clang as the king loses his balance. King Ivor then clutches his groin, licking at his food encrusted lips. Khan could positively taste the meat entangled in his father’s dark beard.
With another hiccup Ivor mumbles, “I believe I have three redheads to take care of tonight, they will indeed be stricken with grief,” Ivor snorts, holding onto the wall to keep him up. “I know just the thing to make them forget that weakling Audun ever existed.”
Birger bellows out in laughter.
“That’s right Bigersh.” The king’s gaze shifts down to the bleeding watchman with a grin “They’d even thanken me after I had my way with thim.”
So tanked up is the king by now he can’t even talk, let alone stand. King Ivor attempts to bend down to snatch up his sword and almost topples over, but Birger catches him before he can fall. Then with a soft grunt, Birger throws him over his broad shoulder and carries king Ivor up the stairs. The watchman wipes the blood dripping from his chin; his nose wheezing from the swelling as he tries to breathe. But like Viking go, he gets up going about his duty to escort the king to his chambers, regardless of his injuries.
Khan keeps to the shadows, feeling like a spineless dog, a useless fool that is still afraid of his father’s fist. He should have reacted, he knows he has the power now to teach his father a lesson, but his courage is trapped behind a hardened wall of fears.
Satisfied his father and his Watch are well out of earshot, Khan exits the Well-room and proceeds down the corridor blowing out the torches until Ashalan’s scent and the racing heartbeat of Erik grabs his attention - something isn’t sitting right with h
im. The pull in his gut confirms it, but if he’s this close to Ashlan he needs to control the beastly pull, and desperately so.
Inhaling deep and steady, as Erik had taught him, Khan draws back his manic pulse. With the brief calmness comes clarity to his newfound supernatural powers. He senses Erik leading Ashlan away from the servant’s stairwell. Hastily they turn down the corridor leading past the Grand Hall where the festivities are now in full bloom. The sound of breaking plates, giggling woman, metal goblets hitting stone floors and shouting Viking’s meet the cacophony of tuneless goat horns and lyrical lyre’s. Khan muses to himself that the guest must be well past tanked up to find any kind of musical rhythm to any of it.
To pass the Grand Hall, Khan has to scale the walls to go unseen above the wide arched doorway. Using his sharp claws as grip, and his tail to pulley him into the arched ceiling. He manages to find a vantage point, allowing him to see over the stacked crates lining the walls. The stench of ale, wine, food and lust bite at his nostrils as he passes by, following in Erik’s trail. Keeping his distance as Erik and Ashlan run down the passageway. A glimpse of blue velvet and white lace as they round the corner heading toward the dungeons with guarded haste.
The passageway narrows, becoming darker, the air stale and stifling. Khan has to stay even farther behind as the threat of his glowing eyes might give away his position in the dimness.
No Watch guard the first entrance to the dungeons, and Khan finds it highly unusual. As a inger ver Khan would often try his luck at visiting the cells. Before the death of his mother, he was a normal Viking boy, always in pursuit of danger, mystery and tempting the forbidden. But the dungeons were always well guarded. Khan has never even made it near the first entrance. For the first time, the prince enters gate one, it’s nothing he had expected. The smallest of torches flicker against rock walls, the smell and the stench of urine, mold and something rotten leaves him winded.
Continuing down the next passageway, it narrows becoming increasingly darker, the darkness appearing almost solid in matter. The air stale and stifling. Unusually no Watch guard the second entrance either, giving a tighter pull in Khan’s gut.
He’s learning ‘the pull’ could perhaps be a foreseeing power, but not the kind he has learned to use in his favor as yet. All he knows is that the pull warns him of wicked events to come. The thought has barely left him when Ashlan’s panicked yell bleeds through the tunnels.
“No. Sir Erik! “Halt. What are you doing?” the words and the sound of her fear tear through Khan’s restraint.
The pull is too strong, and he welcomes it. For he knows his beastly side is the only thing he can count on to save her from the danger she faces. With discomfort and some agony, the talons extend from Khan’s paws, and his half-human hands burst into hardened marble claws. His tail becomes rigid, and he uses it like a tightly coiled spring to shoot him across the arched ceiling and onto the landing of the tunnel stairs leading to the darkest part of the dungeons. The forbidden section of the dungeon. Here the stench of rot and suffering cling to his lungs like toxic waste eating away at his airwaves.
“Erik, no, I am too young. No please I beg of you, you cannot do this to me. The king will…”
Ashlan shrieks again, the fear and desperation of her plea clinging to the walls, meeting with the gust outside and rebounds inside Khan’s head - like the collisions of storms, it leaves nothing behind but a path of furious destruction.
Before making himself known, he catches Erik saying, “Please stop screaming you will alert the watch…”
With the same force as what Khan had used to propel him through the trees in the forest, Khan moves like a typhoon, violently shifting air and stirring up dust and debris in his wake. In the beat of a heart he is on that stairwell; eyes two fevering glowing torches, the blaze highlighting the scene before him. Ashlan lay on the musty, dirty, dusty, stinking ground, he arms extended over her for protection. Ashlan’s favorite beautiful dress torn along the lacy bosom. Ashlan’s face ashen, except for a massive blotch on her cheek blooming crimson. Tears taint her piercing blue eyes, tracing down her porcelain skin, and pooling on the ridge of her rosy upper lip.
Khan has a moment of hesitation when he sees Erik glancing over to him. But his hesitancy fades quickly when Ashlan’s voice breaks the silence with a soft croak of a hoarse voice, “Please stop him from hurting me, Khan. I don’t deserve this.”
Erik opens his mouth, then closes it again as he glances back at Ashlan with a strange look crossing over his face as he catches Khan advancing on him. The pull in prince Khan’s gut no longer reveals warning, it’s past that now. As Erik lifts his arm, his bow-staff at the ready, coming to stand between him and Ashlan; Khan’s transformation explodes with shivers of rage. Disgust lashing out with the sting of betrayal in the sharp slicing of his talons.
There are no words exchanged and no begging for mercy. Just the color of blood, the flashing sparks of metal of Erik’s gauntlet as claws come down. The clash of flesh and pelt meeting with the dull clang of claws against Erik’s timber fighting-bow. Khan takes an impeded blow after blow, then in a furious roar, Khan strikes down shattering the bow in three pieces. Erik advances, his eyes the color of the northern lights flash in frigid fright as Khan’s body rams him against the wall. Erik’s weaponed arm, silver, and bronze meets the side of Khan’s head. Erik is fast, dodging claws and kicking out quicker than Khan can react. As a strike to the jaw leaves shooting stars across his vision the beast inside him beacons, and Khan slips away unknowing of his actions.
Ashlans’ voice pulls him from the abyss, when Khan’s vision returns to something resembling his new normal, what he sees is Erik being pulled from his feet by the shaft of his tail. The end piece of Khan’s tail lashing out like a striking cobra; the barb at the tip penetrates Erik’s chest like a dagger to the heart. Khan’s tail holds Erik upside down. He’s covered in blood, bruises and gaping wounds exposing white flesh across his neck, arms and the hole in his chest.
His world suddenly comes crashing around Khan, the dark narrow stairs closing in around him - taking him to ground and shatters every last human emotion into oblivion. All that is left is the zing resounding in his ears, his heated breath searing the air around him. He shivers even though it’s not cold in the stairwell of the dungeon. In the bowls of the castle, it is the warmest place to be. Khan lays Erik down on the bottom landing, taking a step back and trips over the step. But he cannot even do that properly - his tail acts as a second part of him, preventing his collapse.
The darkness bleeds to white, and he is sure the gods have decided to take his wretchedness from this plane. With a dry mouth, Khan opens it to speak, but no words can ever make up for what he had just done.
“Khan?” Ashlan’s shaky voice draws him back from the brink of despair.
He presses himself into the shadows, feeling like he could bury himself in the rock of the wall. As he leaps onto the wall, she calls to him “Please,” she whimpers, “Do not abandon me here.”
Still, he does not reveal himself.
“You won’t leave me like this, will you?” Ashlan’s voice thick with uncertainty, almost shattering what is left of his heart.
“Scared and injured.” Her words physically hurt him.
Her voice and her scent causing his heart to swell, drawing what he wishes could be his last breath.
“I killed my friend.” He answers, still not coming forth.
“You are not that man you accuse yourself of.” Her voice holds conviction, but he senses the little quiver in it too.
He can’t resist her now.
“I am no man.” He finally says what he’s been trying to process for all of his life. But now he can finally admit that there is no trace of human left in him. It’s not just the way he appears anymore - the act of murder has twisted him into the very thing his father accused him of.
“Monster.” he breathes out, his eyes glued to the mutilated body of his guarding and friend.
“You saved me, Khan.” She wipes at a tear, swallows hard and repeats. “You saved me.” sobs raking over her fragile and petite body. He so desperately wants to go to her, but all he can think is, “I killed my friend.” His voice comes from the darkness, unrecognizable even to himself.
With the smallest of sobs Ashlan gets to her knees saying, “If you had not, he would surely have had his way with me against my wishes. I would rather have been under the blade than lose my virtue over and over again to a man maddened by demonic lust, Khan.”
She picks herself up, pulling at the torn fabric of her dress to cover her bosom, and calls to him to come forth.
He refused to show himself, “You can’t see me like this.” The echo of his voice thick and raw with emotion.
Ashlan takes a shaky step forward, “I know what you are prince Khan. I’ve known since my arrival at this castle. She took another step toward him, “Do you recall I used to sneak up to your tower in those first days and I never found you there. I always found you in the library. “You think I don’t know how you were able to pick that lock with no tools?” Her voice the sound of sunshine as she continues, “You told me your secrets Khan, how you had inhuman qualities and that was why you had to stay in the tower. Not because you suffered some strange disease your father claimed you inherited from your mother. I stated he was a liar. That he was the disease with his lies and cruelty.”
With her next step, climbing the stairs toward him, her shaky legs give way and he catches her with his claws and furry arms. She gasps at his full-blown transformation but pulls his arms of fur tighter around her. Until she’s safe and warm and stops shivering in the circle of arms.
Ashlan’s hand reaches up to embrace his animal-like face, her fingers tracing with a shiver over his lips. Her sharp sapphire gaze meets his golden irises as she says, “You have the kindest eyes and the purest heart of any man I had ever met Prince Khan. You never ever made unwanted advances on me, you were my equal, always. You treat me with the uttermost reverence and give me the strength to stomach the remarks The Watch and the chevalier make.
Playing With Fire Page 14
