The King's Blood

by S. E. Zbasnik

  "My lady," Kynton bowed to Isa as she stalked forward, her mouth puckered and her nose curled.

  "Shove a flaming poker up your ass," she mumbled to the priest, stopping short of the group. The witch preferred to keep her distance, even if there was no one else about.

  Kynton grinned, "You bring a ray of sunshine everywhere you travel."

  Sparks flew; the kind that ended in priests with burnt livers and charred flesh. Isa's finger rose as she walked crisply towards Kynton, who took the magic in stride. Just as she was about to give him such a static shock his teeth would rattle, a noise reverberated around the empty street.

  "Did you..." Aldrin started, only to be answered by another clap of wooden thunder, this time a board off one of the windows teetered and slammed back in place.

  "It would seem we're not alone after all," Ciara said cautiously. Armies didn't tend to hide behind doors unless something went terribly wrong.

  One of the doors, painted an unassuming blue with gold trimming, shook on its hinges and popped free. A woman, hunched over as if the cares of an entire nation rested upon her shoulders, hustled through the black hole. Her greying hair was stringy and pushed back into place with a quickly tied bandage. What looked once to be a quaint country outfit that the freshly rising middle class flocked to, was covered in stains and obscured by an old apron that had seen better dynasties.

  She scuttled up towards the group, not pausing to look around the dead street, and came to rest at the foot of the ex-priest. Barely grazing Kynton's midsection, her eyes as baggy as burlap looked into the priest's face.

  "Are you a brother of the faith? Of Lady Hospar?" her voice was surprisingly crisp and quick, as her mind clung to sanity by the power of fervent hope.

  Kynton gulped, but put his convoluted backstory at the back of the file cabinet as he beatifically gazed down upon this nearly broken woman, "Yes, my child."

  His canned response seemed less ridiculous as she broke into tears at his confession, grabbing his soft hand and bringing it to her lips. "You have come," she cried, "I prayed and prayed for a savior, but I feared she'd turned her back upon us."

  The priest opened his mouth, but closed it as her platitudes and gratitude washed over him. He spent most of his time on the receiving end of grief, this rush of relief made his skin crawl. Ciara tried to intercede; the only one of the group used to women weeping openly, "Could you tell us what happened here?"

  The woman paused and looked at the girl, barely into womanhood, and shrieked. Her untended fingernails dug into the priest's hand, and Kynton shrieked in pain as he grabbed onto her wrist trying to free himself before he got some horrible peasant blood disease.

  "We only just arrived," Aldrin tried to intercede, but the woman would not be distracted as she rose up on her tip toes to face down Ciara.

  Kynton finally extracted his hand from her claw, white welts raising up in response, as she snarled at the dark one in the group, "Demon of the night, you are not welcome here anymore!" And with the assuredness of a knight raising his sword, the old woman folded her fingers into a sign of the eye of Scepticar at Ciara.

  For her part, the demon blinked back and slowly folded her arms. The woman shook her hands, inching the eye closer. When that had no affect, she waved her fingers and made 'Woo Woo' noises.

  "Why not try holy vinegar next," Isa suggested, enjoying the sight of someone else on the back end of superstitious idiocy.

  "Yes!" the old woman snapped her fingers, before digging into her pocket. But Kynton reached out and grabbed her frail wrist again.

  "Before we go dousing people in acid..." the old woman looked up into the eyes of her angel and slowly let the bottle slip back into the pocket next to her lucky snake's foot. Kynton released his grip and shifted back, "There. Now, you prayed for the Hospars?"

  "And you came!"

  "Yes, truly she works in mysterious ways," he mumbled quickly. "Who were your prayers for?"

  The old woman grabbed Kynton's hand like a starving python coiled around a rabbit and yanked him. Unbeknownst to him, his feet began to obey, pulling him after the crazy old bat as she descended back into her cave.

  The ex-priest glanced back at the three still gathered around the well, all of them feeling slightly excluded, before he vanished into the darkness within. Isa rolled her shoulders and looked to the sky, "It seems the only answer to your problem rests behind that blue door."

  Aldrin nodded and looked towards Ciara, who was still trying to shake off the burning hatred in that woman's eyes, "After you, night demon."

  Ciara playfully socked him in the shoulder, but tried to ignore a desperate scream inside her head that this was not a safe place. Fear, mistrust, bigotry she was used to. Being an other in a sea of bland was a Tuesday. But this was the first time she'd seen a fear so rabid it could drive normal people to do unspeakable acts. Gods, why'd she have to lose her dagger?

  Aldrin covered his nose as he ducked into the hovel, Ciara quick on his heels. It stank first of garlic so potent it'd wipe out an entire conclave of vampires before they put their box of dirt down to check the mail. Underneath the alum burned a mix of soot and ash with a piquant of incense; the same the priests would toss into their holy fires every morning to clear the air.

  But even the garlic and incense failed to hide the distinct haunt of death clinging to every air particle filling the room with dread and collapse. The failing walls of grey stone were coated with its pallor. A lone table, big enough to feed a growing family, housed only a smattering of dishes and piles of discarded rags, some coated in bile. Dried flowers, hung jovially before the coming winter, were crisped and crackling over the doorways, ready to burst to dust with a small breeze. But in the home of the dead, not a molecule of air stirred, letting the decay linger upon itself.

  "Kynton?" Aldrin called, trying to breathe through his mouth and talk at the same time. This only caused the smell to catch at the back of his throat.

  "In here," the priest responded, his tone more solemn than Aldrin expected from a man who seemed to only take his jokes seriously. Ciara gagged behind him and the prince felt a strange sense of relief, if it bothered her then it must be bad.

  Isa, always the last to the party, cracked open the door and poked her head in. "Have they set you aflame yet?" she asked Ciara.

  But she chose to ignore the witch, pointing her finger towards the only flickering light that wasn't a gentrified fire. Aldrin tried to square his shoulders up. He hadn't been looking forward to meeting with his family's most trusted advisors and having to tell them his father was dead. But with Tumbler's End in sight he tried to shake off the dread resting upon his brow and face his future head on.

  Instead, he walked face first into an ever-widening mystery. "Can anything ever go right?" he asked himself.

  "No, that would be too easy," Ciara responded honestly.

  "Remind me to never take up sewing, I'd probably prick myself in the finger and slip into a coma," he muttered as he crossed the threshold of the living room deeper into the narrow sleeping quarters.

  A pair of beds were pushed together on the far wall, empty and alone, but well worn with stains clinging to the deflated mattresses as if someone salvaged the stuffing before tossing the forgotten casings. To his right, he spotted Kynton's blue robe, bent over, as the old woman sat upon the edge of a bed, her hand still upon the priest to make certain he was real.

  The bed was huge, taking up most of the wall, with only a small table to accompany it. It was stocked high with bottles, plates, saucers, rags, and anything else a person might need to live their life frozen in that ancillary spot.

  As the prince shifted deeper into the room, a small figure appeared between the priest and the woman. Like a broken reed tossed beneath a kerchief, the tiny body was limp and twisted. Legs stuck out below the folds of the blanket at heart breaking angles as if the muscles took on a life of their own and twisted contrary to anatomy, cracking the bones with them.

  Kynton stepped
away from the bed with a spray of blonde hair, ashy and lifeless, spread out across a pillow. The face was so sunken the eyes were a pair of shuttered black holes, and the lips of the wasting child peeled back from protruding teeth as it struggled to breathe.

  A gasp caught in Aldrin's throat as he looked down upon the dying child, while the mother stroked the fine hair and sang softly under her breath an old lullaby. The priest turned his grey eyes, softer by the dancing lamp light, upon the prince and the night demon. He shook his head slowly.

  Isa poked her own head around the corner, a jaded eye taking in the deathbed scene. The witch recognized all the signs of the spasms sickness. It started simply enough with a strange twitch in the fingers or the toes, then entire legs were moving on their own. By the final stages, the muscles moved so violently bones shattered and ribs popped. Most suffocated as their own body punctured their lungs. Hard to stop spreading, near impossible to heal. Her head poked back out into the living room, away from the contagion shattering the child.

  A gurgle, so quiet it almost seemed imagined, broke from the child's vibrating jaw. The mother sobbed, and took the limp hand in hers. "Please," she begged, "please voice for her."

  Kynton's mouth fell slack, but he nodded and lowered slowly to his knees. Taking the dying child's hand in his own he closed his eyes. "To the Lady, come for this babe..."

  "Leeta," her mother cried, "her name is Leeta."

  Kynton barely paused, his voice strong in the dying room, "I beg of you to treat Leeta with all the care and love a mother would her child." The old woman choked, and for a moment Kynton looked as if he were about to falter.

  "Take her to your breast to hold her safe, until she is joined by her father's Father in the heart of Scepticar."

  The prayer finished, Kynton bowed his head and brought the dying girl's hand to his lips. Kissing it softly, he placed it upon her shattered chest and rose. His fingers drew a small symbol upon her forehead, and, as his hand moved away from her face, a tiny breeze brushed his skin. The final, strangled breath of her soul fled from the broken flesh.

  He guided his arms around the mother's shoulders and lifted her up, away from her final child to succumb to this poison. She didn't scream, she didn't rail, she didn't fight. She simply turned to the priest with tears rolling down her cheeks and whispered, "Thank you. She's with Scepticar, because of you."

  Silent streets erupted into the first bit of action they'd seen in weeks as the remaining villagers pulled out of their sick beds to glare upon the visitors. Ciara especially felt the heat of rage boiling in each bloodshot eye. But their mistrust shifted as a man in blue emerged from the Widow's house, a bundle across his arms. Only a pale hand was visible beneath the rolled bed sheets. Aldrin set down the last of the wood he scavenged from the Historian's stock and walked back from the pyre as Kynton placed the girl upon it. All of the ex-priest's humor seemed drawn from him as soft eyes inspected the corpse ready for cremation.

  A handful of feet, curious about the ceremony, scattered out of their thresholds. Heads peered out windows and withering hands clung to doorframes. The priest took a torch from the dark girl and, casting a glance back at the Widow's house to make certain she was still curled up on the floor out of exhaustion and a small sleeping draught, he said a simple prayer.

  "May the winds be fair," his voice caught, uncertain what was the proper phrase for burning the dead. The most his fellows ever intoned was "Hope them vultures peck your eyes out first so's you don't watch 'em eats your liver." But that seemed rather inappropriate. Doctor's humor didn't translate well. Bowing his head, Aldrin and Ciara joined him. The witch glared, her eyes judging the useless spectacle in front of her. Touching his forelock once, Kynton held the torch to the kindling and waited for the pyre to light.

  He stepped back towards the prince and stood with the torch still raised as a guard against death herself. Flames caught quickly to the bedclothes, enveloping the corpse in flickering orange until it vanished in the haze of smoke. Still Kynton watched, his eyes never wavering, afraid that if he lost sight of the girl she'd get off the pyre and start to walk around while still flaming.

  "Excuse me, sir," Kynton jumped straight into the air as a hand touched his elbow.

  He spun about, holding the torch dangerously close to an old man's face, as he tried to get his bearings back. "Yes? What is it?"

  The old man, even more withered than the woman who lost her child, rolled his small felt cap in his hands, "I was wondering, if...if..."

  "If what?" Kynton's priestly mask was cracking as foreign emotions burrowed into his brain.

  A cough, like the breaking of a mountain, pulled his head up to five more villagers each clustered behind the old man in various states of illness. "Are you a doctor?"

  The priest sighed, "Yes, yes I am."

  It was over eighteen hours before the ex-priest was able to find a bed he could pass out in. He didn't much care what it was as long as it didn't have one of his patients oozing to death in it. Isa spent the rest of the day toddling adorably beside him, playing the disagreeable nurse to his bumbling doctor. It worked rather well for most of the patrons who didn't look twice at a witch clearly mixing up potions in their own cooking pots. All superstitious eyes were on the man sent from god. It didn't matter which one as long as he got them better.

  Luckily for Kynton, most of the rest suffered from a mix of famine and a nasty stomach flu from spoiled grain. There were no more shattered bodies, only growling stomachs which were helped by the over generous portions of oatmeal the Historians piped out. The rest of the villagers the pair drugged up enough either so they'd sleep to let nature take its course, or enough to remove the pain, so they could then drug them to sleep.

  Things progressed rather nicely, until they came to the home with not one, but three statues of Scepticar, each facing the three directions. South was Argur's domain and should never be mentioned in polite company. The wife was a kind woman; harried as she raced about the groaning beds of her three children, but she paused and gave a small curtsey each time she passed a statue.

  The woman was barely out of hearing when Isa grumbled loudly, and mocked, "Why not call upon a flying piece of cheese to save you? It'll be as much help."

  "And here I thought you witches all worshiped the Underlord and danced naked under the full moon," Kynton whispered to her, trying to maintain the calm composure of a man people assumed knew everything.

  "And here I thought you doctor's actually used your brains," Isa spat back, "but you spew your worthless words while your patients spew on themselves."

  The priest shifted; he spent half of his life surrounded by the overtly religious. He wasn't used to facing an atheist head on, much less one armed with a paring knife and a lemon. "And what comfort would you bring to these people?"

  "Medicine, food, and strict instructions on how to tell when their stores have turned," she recited as if it were a test.

  "And when the medicine fails, the food runs out, then what?"

  Isa's pale eyes narrowed like a snakes as she looked up at Kynton, a long way for her, "Do not say it. Out of all the bullshit, narrow minded, ineffectual answers, 'hope' has to be the worst of them all."

  Despite himself, Kynton smiled at her, "Then I'm glad I didn't say it."

  The woman returned to them, her arms overloaded with laundry that Kynton helped her with to boil away any clinging demons from the illness. Isa fell silent, fuming, but with enough of a preservation instinct to keep her views quiet while the vacant marble eyes of a nonexistent god glared upon her.

  She held her tongue as they visited the home of a couple who'd succumb to the same lice and fever problem that graced most of the others. The men seemed hesitant at first about the priest in their midst, but Kynton only smiled demurely and helped to shave their heads and salve their wounds. Gods and goddesses knew he'd seen more than his far share of sexuality surrounded by men who were sworn to a life free of women, not of chastity. Not that a vow of chastity wou
ld have slowed some of them down.

  It was only after they passed the house of the local blacksmith, a rather homely woman who grunted at anyone that looked at her shoes wrong, that the witch picked back up their conversation. "What good has religion done to this world?"

  The priest laughed, "You ask that as I succor this ailing town?"

  "A witch could just as easily," Isa pointed out smugly, "If they weren't threatened to be put to the pyre for trying."

  "Yes," Kynton said, "and if the town had enough coin to pay for it."

  "So you're helping these people out of the kindness of your heart, and I'd only do it for the weight of my pocket?"

  "If the broom fits..." the priest trod a very thin sheet of ice.

  "But you wouldn't even be here were it not for your Bishop and his lust of gold."

  "And if it weren't for Hospar, I wouldn't have been with the Bishop either," Kynton smiled a moment and said simply, "I'd be some spoiled brat running swords through peasants for fun and pretending I'm noble to impress empty headed women."

  "At least your imaginary friends in the sky provide some perspective," Isa muttered, angry to have her tirade thrown off by a jab at himself.

  "Sometimes that is all they provide, when we're out of sacrificial wine."

  One of the more ambulatory of the locals waddled past the pair as they trekked back towards the other side of the town. He waved madly at Kynton, his freshly shorn head glinting in the setting sun. The priest returned the wave, running on the spare energy of youth.

  "Prove to me," Isa started again, "Prove to me that your god is more powerful than magic."

  As the girl extended her finger, Kynton sighed and wrapped his large hand over hers, getting a mild spark through his arm, "If you can see it, touch it, prove it, then it isn't faith."