War of the Princes 03: Monarch

by A. R. Ivanovich

  I passed the wilted tapestries, and slipped between the two doors that were thicker than my entire body. My heart rate doubled as we trespassed within. Keenly aware of Kyle's feeling of defenselessness, I ignited both of my arms for protection as much as light.

  Please, no ghosts.

  The pure brightness of my electricity was as much an intruder as we were, and as it lanced over the hill of marble stairs in the room before us, the very steps began to writhe like snakes.

  Chapter 34: The Old Throne

  “Gravity!” Kyle cried out, jumping back against the door.

  My breath abandoned me as my light poured into an octagonal room, smaller in length, but no shorter in height than the grand hall outside. Dozens of shallow steps swept upward in a crescent formation, leading to a flattened dais, twenty feet high. A spired marble throne burst upward, crowning the polished stone hill. I could see the vague shape of a person seated upon the throne, but little other detail.

  The stair began to twist and move, recoiling from my light. It seemed impossible, until my eyes adjusted. The scene before us painted a macabre picture worthy of legend. Bodies, emaciated and withered, cowered from us where they lay prostrate along the floor. Their flowing gray robes were a perfect match to the monochrome marbling. Shrouds hung down from their heads, covering their eyes, but their mouths were left exposed, and I could see them open and close in moaning. They were frightened of us.

  In reaction to our sudden entrance, the decrepit dwellers peeled themselves up from where they'd lain on the stairs, and gathered protectively around the throne. Soon, a cluster of thirty gray-robed bodies blocked it from view entirely.

  Gathering my courage, I spoke. “We've come from the dry water pool. Don't harm us and we won't harm you.”

  “Kat,” Kyle whispered. “I don't know that we should be talking to them.”

  “What else are we going to do?” I hissed back at him.

  “Please,” an old woman begged, crawling down the stairs as all others fled from us. “The light. Please.”

  I pulled back the Spark, confining it to a small, dim ball in the palm of my right hand. If I'd put it out completely, we'd be in total darkness. I was reluctant to relent so much ground to the shadows. At this point, I might distrust them for a lifetime.

  “Oh, thank you,” she rasped, rattling her frail, vein-knotted hands. Her voice was as thin as her liver-spotted skin. Unlike the others, she wore a belt of keys that jangled upon her shapeless waist. I wished that I could see her eyes and attempt to judge her character by them, but her cotton veil concealed them effectively. “It has been twelve years since we've last been given candle or lantern, and the daylight comes in through the stained glass so softly. Thank you, thank you.”

  I looked up, squinting past the burn of the light in my hand. The high dome ceiling above and the multitude of tall, needle windows were all mottled in stained glass, just as she'd said. My gaze drifted back down to the woman hobbling to meet us, and I prickled with uncertainty. These people may have been thin and weak, and most of them appeared to be very old, but a strong Ability could swing the odds against us, and we were greatly outnumbered.

  Hobbling down the last of the steps, she rocked to a halt midway between us and the dais. Her head was tipped down, and the sides of her veil hung like a pair of pale curtains. She held her shaking hands up, palms out toward us, at level with her bowed head. “Peace, strangers. Peace.”

  “Peace,” I repeated, ill at ease.

  “Yes,” the woman said, bobbing. She let her arms rest at her sides, but her head remained bowed.

  I frowned, reminding myself that these people were flesh and blood, and not the gathered spirits of the worst haunting in history.

  “Who are you?” I asked. It seemed the most logical question, at the time.

  “We shed our names long ago,” the woman replied. “Now we are simply the exalted servants of the first throne.”

  “Is there a way to get out of this place?”

  “No,” her voice lilted, sadly. “If you have been brought here, then surely the world wishes to forget you. But do not lament. If one of us should die, we may have the food and cloth to initiate you. Many of our number are so very old, so very tired. Even I anticipate the great sleep shall be upon me soon.”

  Kyle crept out from the doorway to stand beside me. “And if one of you doesn't die?”

  “Why, you will starve, my child.” She said it so fairly, as though it was an answer that we could understand and be content with.

  Alarm screamed through me. She was filled with such certainty, such honesty, like there were no other possibilities.

  “If you are healthy, your body will first consume its fat, then it will consume your muscle, and finally, it will consume itself. Make yourself comfortable here upon our noble floor. We have no beds or blankets. Come to peace with your life's passing. Twenty or forty days will be your lease. Twenty or forty days, until you fade into the great beyond. Modest rations are delivered us once every fifty days. If one of us dies, you may have some. We are not unkind.”

  We stood, stunned into silence.

  “Water, we have in plenty,” she added like it was an amenity at a well-established inn. “Would you like to learn the rights of our service? We could begin now, before your minds become weak from the hunger.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said, feeling wildly crowded. The sky... I needed to see the sky.

  “Why don't you show your faces?” Kyle asked.

  The woman swayed gently from side to side as she spoke. “Since the day of our choosing, we have looked upon the face of our King, the savior of all humanity, and none other.”

  Was she immortal too then? The king had been dead for seven hundred years at the very least. She looked at his face, and then draped a veil over her eyes? No, that would be ridiculous.

  But someone is sitting on that throne.

  “The... King?” I choked. “That's the king up there? The father of Varion and Raserion?”

  “Yes.”

  “But... I thought the King was dead.”

  She stared mutely at the floor. My stomach turned in revulsion.

  “Can we see him?” Kyle blurted.

  I shot him a wide-eyed stare. “Kyle, no! The man was killed more than seven hundred years ago. Can you imagine what he looks like, sitting up there?” Even as I said it, I knew I'd have to see it for myself. This king may have been the source of all our histories and if Raserion hadn't lied, he'd been the one responsible for keeping humanity alive. I'd never seen a human skeleton before, and I never wanted to, but it might be foolish to pass up the chance to see the remains of the most important person in history. Had his bones been polished and preserved? Had they been dipped in gold or set with jewels, or swathed in fine silks? Did his spirit remain near enough to haunt his elevated throne? Once the questions populated in my mind, there was no end to them. I wouldn't be able to sleep with such rampant curiosity alive within me.

  “You have twenty or forty days to initiate as one of us. You may look upon him now, if that is your desire, for you will see him before long. If you plan to deceive we trusting folk with malicious intent, know that we defend his body with our lives.”

  “We promise,” Kyle said before I could get a word in. It was just as well. I wasn't sure I could talk myself out of it now.

  “You may ascend,” the old woman swept back her arm and stepped aside.

  Fear of the unknown had a very particular flavor. Hesitation would couple with caution, and avoidance would wrestle them both for supremacy. Then would come the nudge of curiosity, alongside tickling trills of excitement. Most people allied their choices with the safest course of action. I was not one of them.

  I caught my breath in my throat, holding it back as though it would betray me and display the swift percussion of my heartbeat. I passed the old woman and climbed the center of the stairs. Again, Kyle was behind, not beside me. I didn't blame him. As we climbed the gentle hill of sta
irs, I looked to the summit. The protectors of the king's body still formed a human wall between us and the throne. Like the old woman, un-dyed cotton veils hung straight to their noses, and longer on the sides. Their heads were bent down or away from us so that our eyes could never meet. Each one of them, despite their age or gender, was tragically thin. They may as well have been a collection of leafless branches, draped in mottled gray cloth.

  “I can't believe this is happening,” I whispered to Kyle. He didn't respond and I bit my bottom lip. I shouldn't have said anything either. This was a sacred place to these people. Every word the old woman used had been rich with reverence, like it was an honor to be condemned to a slow, cold death here. The hairs on my arms prickled, and goose bumps covered my skin. I'd rather die than be trapped here, shining the skull of a dead king for the rest of my life.

  We stepped upon the platform, and despite knowing that these people were peaceful, I tensed. Little over an hour ago we'd been overwhelmed by Northerners who we'd hoped to trust. What was to stop these people from descending upon us like a pack of starving dogs?

  Okay, that's enough. Not going there.

  Were they hungry enough to eat us?

  And it happened anyway.

  Not for the first time, I found myself silently cursing my imagination. Pursing my lips, I aimed for the center of the group and strode purposefully ahead. If anyone tried to eat me, they'd get a mouthful of electrocution. Gray robes, as marbled as the floor, brushed over the feet of the king's protectors. Perhaps they were forbidden to look at us, but that wouldn't stop me from looking at them. Whether their skin was pale or dark, smooth or wrinkled, all were pallid and sallow. As we drew near to them, they began to chant quietly, and though it was a song of our shared language, the heavy pull of their accented voices made their words indiscernible to me. One after the other, they moved in their ranks, folding away from us to create a perfectly symmetrical path to the throne.

  The final robed figure was a woman, neither young nor old, and her high voice soared above the others in an eerie tune. Drooping like a bride of a forgotten time, she wrapped her flowing robes into her arms, and stepped slowly into the ranks of her fellows. All went silent as we beheld...

  “What is this?” I demanded. Lightning flashing brightly in my right hand and I blocked Kyle from any potential danger with my left. The protectors flinched, ducking away from the bright burst I'd created. They had lied to us. Like everyone else, they had lied.

  What we saw before us was not the withered corpse of the king.

  Chapter 35: King Argent

  Lightning cracked from my hand, and silver bolts swirled up in an arc, illuminating the marble throne as brightly as day. I ignored the wailing complaints of the liars around us. A single masterful carving swept seamlessly up from the stone tiles. Veins of gray and silver swirled through the curving tumble of smooth, white rock. Near enough to see it clearly, the throne was carved in the oversized likeness of bird's wings. A dozen pairs of them folded to make up the seat, and even more unfurled skyward, forming a high-reaching backrest that looked as though it could burst into flight.

  My birth mother, Kendra, had shaped the likenesses of birds in clay as a hobby. When she'd left her creations behind, along with my dad and me, I eventually took up the craft. Though most of my small sculptures were characterizations of the actual animals, I'd still learned that wing shape could differ dramatically from one species to the next. From that little experience, I knew that the marble throne boasted masterful craftsmanship that illustrated more than thirty different types of wings. Long and sharp, broad and smooth, short and round, they were chiseled in such detail that the insinuation of every feather was accurate. I'd seen this throne before. It had been a silhouette, the very seat that Prince Raserion had taken in Shadows within Shadows.

  More important than the throne itself was who, or what, sat upon it.

  He was tall. Even seated on the throne amidst wings that would dwarf my slight stature, I could tell that he would be formidable in height. His wide forearms were wrapped in white doeskin, layers of snowy cloth looped down over his chest and arms. Beneath it, he wore white-stained leather armor, etched from end to end in twisting filigree. The same decorated leather covered his legs, and again, the gentle suede doeskin was wrapped around his ankles. He wore no shoes on his feet, no gloves on his hands, and no veil over his eyes.

  If the lines on his face were any indication, I would have guessed he had lived through sixty years of troubles. His ashen hair was trimmed short, and his long face was clean-shaven. His nose was narrow and hooked, but not unsightly. Gray eyes stared past me, unseeing. His thin lips were parted, and his chest moved with the ebb and flow of breath. I didn't need to see the scar on his chest to know what he was. All of his skin was colorless.

  “He's Empty!” I warned Kyle.

  Recovering from the piercing brightness of my light, the protectors swarmed around the drained man on the throne.

  “You gave us your oath!” the old woman's voice rang out. “You swore peace.”

  “And I still do,” I called back to her. “You lied to us! You said he was dead!”

  “I did not say anything,” she answered, meeting us on the platform.

  “He is an Empty soldier, he could be dangerous!”

  “No,” the old woman called to us. “No. This is King Deverend Argent. Creator of the Kingdom of Lastland, father to humanity's second chance. He is no soldier. He cannot take orders from any General. He can scarcely stand when we clean and dress him. You will find no danger here. Not in our King.”

  My arm lowered, and I let my light dim again. I believed her. King Argent stared through me and I stared back. It was wrong to look into the eyes of a vacant shell. “How long has he been like this?”

  “Since the day he died,” she answered, her keys rattling as she shuffled closer.

  “Seven hundred years ago?” My words came out as shallow as my breath. Not in my wildest dreams did I think that this was possible. “His body has been like this, all this time?”

  “Yes,” she said, bobbing her bowed head.

  There were laugh wrinkles around his eyes. A stark line creased his brow. The pattern of worry was set around his lips. Though he was here, breathing, I knew that it was the mechanical workings of an empty body. But on his face, I could still see the shape of his life. He wasn't a simple abomination– an ancient living corpse forced to plod on in a cruel state of half-existence. Long ago, he'd been someone great.

  My view of the protectors changed too. When I relaxed and lowered my defenses, they loosened their ring around him. One stopped to take the time to remove a single speck of dust from his shoulder. Another ran a comb through his gray hair. Someone patted at his feet with a rag. The king's body was not withered from hunger. These people were not flesh-hungry zombies. They fed him and cared for him better than they cared for themselves.

  I felt a surge of pity for them all: the protectors and the king. Unsettling as it was, I found myself more sad for them than afraid.

  It began to sink in.

  This is the King. It really is him.

  King Argent was a man, not a monster like his sons. What had they turned themselves into during the course of this war? I wondered if Prince Raserion knew about this place. How would he feel if he saw his beloved father this way, so many years after his death? Was this yet another reason for his desire for vengeance? And Varion... it was his general who threw us in here, presumably locking us away forever. It must have been on his order.

  “I'm sorry for frightening you,” I told the protectors. “I didn't expect to see this.”

  “None do,” the old woman said, her head wobbling beneath her veil.

  Standing at the foot of the throne, facing the king of the divided kingdoms, my head spun with more questions than I could bear. “Why send us here?” I asked, turning to Kyle.

  A vacant space, cold and empty, replaced him. I paced the rim of the throne platform, but he was gone.
Away in the bluish darkness, down at the foot of the stairs, I could see him walking away.

  * * *

  I followed Kyle's trail through the downy dust of the great hall to the foot of the statue with the grimacing face. He was sitting on the shelf of the stone base with his lean shoulders hunched in, and his curly hair bowed over his lap.

  “Why did you wander off into the dark?”

  “What does it matter?” He crossed his arms and rested them atop a knee. “Light, no light, we're stuck in here with those people and that... I couldn't even look at him. You were right about this place. It is a tomb. Ours.”

  “What are you talking about?” Stubborn was like him, but defeatist wasn't.

  His frown deepened. “I'm just being realistic.”

  “You're not acting like yourself,” I told him, feeling my frustration build.

  “Well, maybe I've never been this scared before!” he snapped at me. An echo of his words bounced through the high ceiling.

  I closed my mouth. It wasn't easy for Kyle to admit such a crippling weakness. He'd always been bright, fun, and strong-willed. When he'd been caught following me to Breakwater, he'd been smiling. That was Kyle. But lately, his virtues had begun slipping.

  “I'm afraid.” Emotion tightened his throat, and a dry, bitter laugh slipped through. “And you know what? It's not irrational. Look around us. Two kids from Haven, here, in this.”

  “We're not kids anymore,” I said quietly.

  “And there you go, belittling my perspective. Okay, fine, maybe I'm the kid. Ever since that day, it's been gnawing at the back of my mind. Sterling was right about me. I'm a coward.”

  “I didn't mean to belittle... or... Kyle, this is dumb. You aren't a coward. You're the smartest person I know. If you think that we should be scared, and I don't, I'm the one who needs to get my head checked.”