“I’m still me. I’m still the man who loves you.”
She stared at him so long that he began to be afraid that even his words held the power to kill. Then she bit her lip.
“No,” she said. “You’ve not been that for a long time.”
He stared at her, his grey-feeling face losing all life. He saw tears begin to streak the dirt on her cheeks. He would have let his match hers, then, but he had no ability to do so. “You’re dead, Marius. The King of the Dead.”
“I’ve just killed off my kingdom.”
“It doesn’t matter. There will be more. You know that.” She turned her exquisite, alive hand towards the city behind them. “Even now there are people out there on their knees, thanking God or gods for saving them. What do you think will happen when they die, Marius? Where do you think they’ll go?”
“I–”
“You might be right, my love. There might not be a God. But that won’t stop people believing.” The hand retreated, the arm curled back around her chest. “You’ll still have a kingdom. And you’ll still be King.”
“But…” His hands were shaking. He shook them at her. “Come with me, please. I can’t do it by myself.”
“Be your Queen?”
“Yes!”
She inhaled, then, a gesture made of equal measures love and pity.
“A living, breathing Queen of the Dead, Marius?”
“I…” And he paused. He remembered that later, and tried to give himself credit. He at least paused, before he gave words to the thought that sprang unbidden. “You could always…”
“No.” She held up her hand, and her smile dissolved into grim denial. “You won’t ask that of me.”
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “I know you are.” She turned from him and looked back up towards the Radican, sprawled along the mountain like a lazy whore. “When we took Billinor to see his father, I went into the other Hall.”
“The Hall of Queens.”
“Yes,” She looked him in the eye. “The smaller, darker, less important one. Scorbus’ Queen is interred there. Do you know her name?”
“What? Uh…” He frowned in concentration. “Ulik… Uliksh.”
“Uliksh, yes. Tell me: when you released Scorbus, why didn’t you take her as well?”
“The Queen?”
“Yes.”
“Well…” He frowned. “We were struggling. We only had time for Scorbus. And besides…”
“Besides?”
“The dead…”
She smiled, and it was the saddest thing Marius had ever seen. “They didn’t ask you to. They wanted a king, not a queen. A queen wasn’t necessary.”
After an age, Marius nodded. Just once. Just enough. Keth raised her hand to his face, cupped his jaw for a fleeting moment, then let it drop.
“I want to live, Marius. I want a full, happy life. I want to smell flowers and wash in the river and eat food I grew in my garden. I want a baby, Marius. I want to bring up a child and watch her grow into someone who might change the world. I want to grow old and see my hair turn grey and my teeth fall out.” She shook her head. “I won’t die for you. Not now. I won’t kill myself for you.”
“What then?”
She flicked her gaze towards the hole. “I don’t know. But I can’t do it with you. I love you, Marius. But I don’t forgive you anymore.”
“I love you.”
“I know. Despite everything. Despite all the betrayals. Despite her…” Another flick of the eyes, towards Fellipan, waiting in the dark. “Despite all the others, and everything else. I know.”
“I–”
“Go now. Go and be King.”
“I–”
“I’ll see you one day, Marius. One day.”
“Keth…”
She turned, and walked away from him. Marius watched her back, until her golden hair disappeared beneath the stone lip of the battlement.
“Marius.”
Gerd stood above the hole, waiting. Marius nodded to nobody in particular.
“I’m coming.”
Leaving the sounds of the living world behind, Marius the King descended into his kingdom.
Acknowledgments
As always, my undying gratitude and love to Luscious Lyn and the kids for giving me the time and space to bash my fists on the keyboard without wondering aloud just how much better their life would be if it included a husband or a dad. Actually, I've just realised that there might be another reason why they weren't wondering…
Big thanks to the Corpse-Rat King beta crew for letting me kill them off in various unpleasant and downright unsanitary ways this time out. And to everyone who read the acknowledgments of my last book and dropped into the Battersblog to leave me a dirty joke I can only ask:
What’s worse than having sex with your Granny?
Licking the sweat off her back.
To battersblog.blogspot.com, people – you never know, there might be a third one…
About the author
Lee Battersby was born in Nottingham, UK, in 1970, departing from a snow-covered city in 1975 directly to a town on the edge of Australia’s largest desert. In November. He’s only just now beginning to recover from the culture shock.
He is the author of over seventy stories in Australia, the US and Europe, with appearances in the likes of Year’s Best Fantasy Horror, Year’s Best Australian SF F, and Writers of the Future. He’s taught at Clarion South, and won a number of awards including the Aurealis, Australian Shadows and the Ditmar.
He lives in Mandurah, Western Australia, with his wife, the writer Lyn Battersby, and an increasingly weird mob of kids. He is sadly obsessed with Lego, Nottingham Forest football club, dinosaurs, and Daleks. All in all, life is pretty good.
battersblog.blogspot.com
The Marching Dead Page 32
