The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality

by Gahan Hanmer

I didn't have a clear objective in this miming. I felt so groggy and light-headed, I even had the fanciful notion that it was Albert himself speaking through that head on a stick.

  "Do you think I don't know who killed me?" said Albert's head, floating in the smoke of the torches. "In life I was fooled, but the dead see clearly, Lord Hawke!"

  The head turned suddenly to stare at the duke, who grimaced and turned pale. "It was a clever trick to dress your men as Picts, murderer," said Albert's head, "but now I know!"

  "Guards!" cried the duke, his face blanched white.

  "And I am going to come and sit on your chest every night for the rest of your miserable and guilty life!"

  "Guards!" screamed the duke, and I went down beneath them for the last time.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I became aware that I was back in the dungeon when I realized rats were crawling on me. It was all I could do to get to my feet and shake them off because my whole body felt broken and I was stiff with cold.

  The last time I had been in the dungeon I had been healthy and warmly dressed in leather with a lined cloak and good boots. I had done nothing worse than talk back to Albert, and I knew he would be letting me out soon enough. From minute to minute I had been sure of that. But with all that in my favor, it had still been a very bad experience, like a kind of true hell.

  This time I was dressed in one layer of patchwork with no cloak and no boots. I was a mess from the beatings I had received, and now my body was cold, as cold and damp as the stones I had been lying on.

  My jaw hurt horribly where I had lost the teeth, and the pain made my whole head ache and throb. My right hand was swollen to twice its normal size, and so laced with pain I didn't dare move a finger. My body was screaming for help, but my brain knew that things were only going to get worse. If I couldn't get warm, I was going to get sick. If I didn't care for my injuries, I was going to be crippled. And if the whole situation didn't improve in a lot of ways, and pretty soon too—well, I would probably die. That was where the fear began, fear as I had never experienced it before: that the unendurable could continue without reprieve.

  My mind searched madly for solutions. Maybe time would run backwards to that critical moment when I had sealed my fate. I would have a chance to reconsider, and I would know better than to attack the duke against all odds. Biding my time, I would get the opportunity I needed to slip a knife between his ribs.

  Of course I knew second chances didn't exist; not in that way. What I needed was a miracle if I was going to survive. At this very moment Sir Leo might have the duke in his sights, a long, cross-courtyard shot taking a light breeze into consideration, the arrow entering at the back of the duke's neck and coming out his Adam's apple. Or Gordon might be splashing his brains across the hall with an awesome, skull-splattering blow with his iron-tipped stick. Perhaps Marya was slipping a quick-acting poison into his goblet. Or Jenna, having seduced him onto the battlements, was pointing to the moon to distract him before giving him a shove over the edge. This very second he was screaming with his last breath as the stones of the courtyard rushed up toward him to snuff out his life.

  Someone would do something. I could never be left at the mercy of the rats and the cold and the pain. Surely in an hour, I assured myself, something will improve. My jaw will hurt less. Someone will bring me a blanket. For an hour I can endure all this suffering, and by then something will change, and it won't be quite as bad.

  Of course I had no way to tell an hour. But after what seemed vaguely like an hour had passed, I began again to tell myself that in an hour, something would improve. It was a con game that I played against fear and despair.

  The only change that occurred was the shifting of my attention. The cold would begin to plague me, and that would tie up my concentration for a time. I tried burrowing in the straw. I tried walking a measured number of steps in the pitch dark, turning, and walking back, to try to get my blood moving. But nothing I did made any difference. I was always cold, with a dangerous, unhealthy, fearful cold.

  Then the pain would take over, especially the pain from my jaw. Periodically there would be a crescendo of pain that began in my mouth and then savaged my skull until there was nothing left in the world but that pain. I went down on my knees, wrapped my arms around my head, and hung on for dear life until the pain peaked and subsided, leaving me exhausted and shaken.

  Sometimes I worried about my hand. Either it was numb or it ached, and there were sharp pains if I tried to flex my fingers. The quicker I could start taking care of it, the better chance it would have to heal properly. But there was nothing I could do for it now except to worry, and worrying about it was a kind of torture all by itself.

  Where were my friends? Gordon had disappeared into the woods; Leo had gone searching for him and hadn't returned. I had not seen Rudy Strapp since the coronation, and there were eight other members of our security squad who I hadn't seen since they'd left to look for Marya. Was it possible that all twelve of us had been targeted in the duke's plot? Could they all now be prisoners or dead men? The answer was that anything was possible; and all I really knew was that I didn't know anything.

  Marya could be counted on to do what she could. But what could she do? She was not very high on the duke's list. She had no power to sway him. How could she help me? And what about the Queen? The duke obviously didn't take her seriously.

  I suspected that the rest of the nobles would do what most people mostly did: try to hang on to what they had. The easiest way to do that was to go right along with the duke and reject me as an interloper and a false knight, a pet of Albert's who had neither paid for his place in the pecking order with gold nor done anything else to earn it. The terrifying truth was that no one had any real power except the duke himself. Rudy Strapp had put it plainly enough: What's gonna happen to you without King Albert?

  What mercy could I expect from the duke? Would it bother him that I might be crippled or die? Of course not. Clearly I was less of a threat without a sword hand, and if I was dead—well, then I was no threat at all. There seemed to be no good reason to expect to come out of this predicament healthy or even alive.

  Oddly enough the rats were no problem. When I was in the dungeon before they had annoyed me and bitten me and kept me feeling tense, and they were always on my mind. This time I just shooed them away, and their presense was nothing compared to the cold and the pain in my jaw and my injured hand and the overwhelming fear that had my mind whirling in hopeless circles.

  Stop it! I said to my mind. I was sure that if I didn't get control of it soon, I would go mad.

  Stop, I mean it! My mind was a terrified child. It wanted answers. It wanted comfort.

  I am not going to die, I said firmly. I am in a bad spot, but I am not going to die, and I am not going to be crippled!

  The cycle of pain in my jaw began, and I went to my knees and held my head in my arms while the universe filled up with red fire and burned until it burned itself out. I am going to be all right. I am not in a good place, but I am going to make it through this.

  Just then it occurred to me to stuff my clothes with straw. I could pack it tightly to make a defense against the cold. At last I had a plan and something to do.

  It was the work of many hours; and while I was working, I could measure time against the various tasks: so long to find the driest straw and to gather it around my bench; so long to stuff the right side of my body; so long to unstuff it after I realized I would never be able to bend over enough to stuff the legs if I stuffed the upper body first. Maybe it sounds easy to stuff your clothes with straw, but only one of my hands was fit to work with. By trial and error, by doing and undoing and starting over, I learned to do what I needed to do.

  I was comparatively happy while I was working because it stopped my mind from swirling and focused my thoughts on improving the situation. There was an unexpected dividend too: what padded me against the cold also protected me from the rats. I was grateful that the costume was very bag
gy; otherwise the idea would never have worked.

  What next? I sat on the plank and tried to think of another project, but nothing came to mind. There was nothing in the dungeon but straw and dirt and rats and darkness. What came to mind instead were the questions that had plagued me before. What had happened to my friends? What would happen to my hand? Was I ever going to get out of there alive? How could I have been so stupid, so blind? Around and around went those maddening thoughts.

  My time sense was also collapsing again, and instead of time to use, I had time to fear. Without water I would last several days, a week at most. If I found a water source, even moisture oozing through the rocks, I could last longer. Naturally I would do everything I could to stay alive as long as I could, even if life was painful and pointless and hope was reduced to shreds. That was the human way.

  I had read once about a prisoner in solitary confinement, literally for years, who was able to transport himself mentally out of his prison in flights of totally lifelike fantasy. He did it by walking and turning, walking back the other way and turning again, over and over, until the motion and the rhythm became hypnotic.

  I tried to imitate his method without success. The movement unsettled the straw and it rustled and itched and scratched until eventually it began to fall out. Repairing my insulation gave me something to do, but soon I was back where I had started. If anything, the failure of the experiment made me more afraid.

  "God," I said, "I am very, very afraid, and if you don't help me, I don't think I can get through this." And just like that, I had an idea. Marya Mage had given me a meditation technique that consisted of counting my breaths up to ten. One . . . Two . . . Three . . . I could feel right away that it was better than nothing. The fear, though still close, still hungry, was held just at bay. Nine . . . Ten . . . Begin again.

  How long did it take to count ten breaths? How many cycles in an hour? In a day? Best not to think about that. One breath at a time. Six. . . Seven . . . Eight . . . Keep the fear and the desperation at bay. I would have to settle for that. One . . . Two . . . Rats pestered me. Pain came and went. Lashings of fear burst my concentration. How long I could endure, I didn't know, but for the moment I was managing.

  There was a scraping sound, and the door opened wide enough to show me the gleam of a torch before slamming shut. Something had been set inside. Making my way over in the darkness, I found a wooden pot filled with some kind of soup, still warm. My fingers continued to search until they felt a wooden spoon lying on top of a folded blanket. No child at Christmas was ever so happy and excited as I was to find all that bounty. I took my treasure back to my plank, draped the blanket around my shoulders, and began to eat.

  One reads about prisons that serve all kinds of nauseating fare, but there was nothing wrong with that soup. It tasted like boiled grain with potatoes and salt and herbs, and it raised my spirits considerably. Eating food gave me something to do and it also made me feel less doomed.

  When I had eaten everything I could with the spoon, I tipped the pot up and drank what was left. I would have licked the inside if I had been able to get my face into it. Instead, I ran my fingers around the edges and licked them until the pot was dry. Afterwards, I sucked on the spoon, reluctant to let go of the experience.

  What to do with the pot and spoon? Some ancient, ancestral memory shared by all prisoners told me that I had better put it by the door, so that was what I did. Then I wrapped myself in my blanket, and enjoyed having something new to think about.

  Hélène had cooked that soup. Who else? There was no prison kitchen because there were usually no prisoners. The dungeon had been designed so people would want to spend as little time there as possible. All right, let's say Hélène did cook that soup. Knowing Hélène, she would have preferred to send me a leg of lamb, carrots and potatoes with gravy, mint jelly, and a first class bottle of wine. But she hadn't, and that meant she was following orders: warm gruel, period! Maybe she had taken a chance by adding the potatoes.

  Then I had a thought that made the darkness and the fear close in suddenly. Albert hadn't bothered to feed me because I was only in for twenty-four hours. Did the fact that I was getting fed now mean that I was in for a real stretch? He couldn't be thinking about keeping me in there for a week, could he? I'm not going to have you killed, because that would be too easy. Sure, he could.

  What about a month? I had to draw back from that idea very quickly. Whether or not it was a possibility, I had to stuff it way down where the most alarming thoughts were, the ones I couldn't begin to face. No way, I said to myself, could he possibly leave me in here for a month.

  Another day passed. I say another day, but what I mean is that after an interminable time, during which I endured my suffering and somehow managed to keep from going insane, I was fed again. The door scraped open and banged shut, and my pot had disappeared when I went to investigate, though I found the spoon on the ground. After a long interval the door opened and closed and there again was my pot with my portion of boiled grain and potatoes.

  This time when I sat to eat I was still grateful for the food and for having something to do, but it lacked the holiday happiness of the previous meal. It had been a very difficult day or night, whichever you like. Physically I was leaner, I believe, because there was a little more room to stuff straw inside my clothes. Mentally I was also leaner, as if another day in the dungeon had taken something from me that I was not capable of replacing. There were needs that were not being fulfilled, like the need for light and activity and freedom. Being shut up underground was starving me and draining me on a whole lot of levels.

  By repeating assurances to myself and by counting my breaths, I could keep myself from bashing my head against the stones, but I was weaker and more fragile, and that's what I was thinking about as I ate my soup. In order to let every bit of nourishment soak into my system, I ate very slowly; but I knew there were many things I needed that I could never get from soup.

  Another day passed between feedings. There were periods of something that was a little bit like sleep, but I was sleeping with one eye open, so to speak, for the rats. That, combined with my physical discomfort, prevented me from ever escaping completely into sleep, and that was also draining me. The acuteness of my physical pain seemed to have diminished slightly, but my whole body, it seemed, was stiffening up in a way that was almost as frightening as the pain. I felt like a man who had been made rather carelessly out of bits of wood.

  Sometime during the next interval, which I called a day because it lasted so long it couldn't have been any less than a day, I experienced a storm of hate that was incredibly intense and virulent. I had killed Guy Hawke already many times in my imagination, but now I went after the rest and no one escaped: Jenna, the Dugdales, all the rest of the nobility including Renny and the Bennett boys, Marsha Bennett: everyone. Then the rest of the valley went down: Marya, Gordon, Émile and Hélène, Mora and all the rest of the peasants. My plague of hate wiped them all out. When it was over I was standing in my imagination on a mountain peak overlooking the ruined, burned and obliterated valley where there were no survivors, human or otherwise. It was all gone. The animals, the birds; everything was dead.

  Horrible as it was, there was some aspect of recreation about the experience. It was something to do. It finally passed the way a storm in nature passes, gradually clearing up and then disappearing altogether. And when it was over it left me still weaker and more frightened than ever, because I seemed to be finally losing control of my mind.

  I slept for a long time after that storm. At least it seemed like a long time. It was a very deep sleep without dreams, without any awareness of rats or cold or pain. When I awoke I felt depressed and hopeless, but not so acutely afraid. Something had snapped. Something had given way. There was a blank, empty space in my mind that seemed well suited to just enduring. It was a half-alive, uncaring lack of feeling that was closer to death, but which was pleasant in a way for being less painful.

  When my
meal was delivered, I didn't go immediately to get it. I wasn't particularly hungry, and moving my body to the other side of the cell seemed like a lot of trouble. It was not until I heard the rats scrambling in it that I jerked myself up, yelling hoarsely at them, and clunked across the floor, stiff-legged in my straw padding, to fight them for what was mine.

  I'm not in very good shape, I said to myself as I ate mechanically, putting the food safely away in my belly. A person could die in this state just from not being interested enough to stay alive.

  Yes, I know, I replied, but I am past caring. If I live, I live; if I don't, I don't. I am tired of worrying about it. What difference does it make?

  Not much difference in here, I replied in turn, but there may be something outside that is worth holding on for.

  I am holding on. Some of my circuits are unplugged, that's all. It will not kill me. Leave me alone.

  Very well, but I am going to count my breaths for awhile. I think that is better than giving in totally to this death-ness.

  Do what you want. What difference does it make?

  So I counted my breaths as much as I could, and that was an affirmation of life for me, and a counterbalance against the bargain with dying and death that another part of me had made.

  Time fell apart. Intervals of so-called days lost their meaning. I suffered pain, but pain was not important either, and it held no more terror for me. I had already met death more than half way, and when you are more than half dead, going all the way doesn't seem like such a big deal. The part of me that wanted to stay alive ate the food that was left for me, kept the blanket secured around my shoulders, and shooed the rats away, but without energy or optimism. Life and death had merged and become almost the same thing.

  Then the door opened, two soldiers marched in, grabbed me, and hustled me upstairs. I couldn't possibly have walked as fast as they wanted me to go, so they held me roughly between them and whisked me along, while my feet did their best to do some of the walking. "Whew, does he ever stink!" said one to the other.