by Renard, Loki
“Kazriel will not allow this!”
Vengar threw back his head and laughed. “Is that so? The guardian who abandoned you? Who lets his city burn? Who will do nothing while you are imprisoned and while I do this... bring me two big men with hammers.”
Aya had no idea what Vengar intended to do, but he looked far too pleased about it for her to be at ease.
As ordered, the two men reappeared with heavy stone hammers.
The old man pointed at the statue behind the new throne. “Bring that thing down,” he ordered.
“No!” Aya shrieked. It was no statue. It was Kazriel himself. If that was destroyed—well, she did not know what would happen, but she knew she did not want to see it happen. On her shadow days, the ones where she missed him so much it felt as though a part of her very flesh was gone, she took comfort in touching him, and in feeling him looking over her in matters of royal law. Without the statue, she would be truly lost.
“If this rock truly is the guardian, it will resist the hammers. The guardian will return and avenge my acts of evil, will he not?” Vengar gestured toward the statue. “Swing your hammers, men, we shall see what powers this stone has!”
“No!” Aya cried out again, but it was too late. The men were doing Vengar’s bidding. All the freedom and love and care she had tried to instill in her short reign had disappeared in the smoke and flame. People were scared, ready to bow to tyranny of any kind, ready to tear down their idols if it saved them from pain and death. They would turn against the guardian himself, and so their hammers swung at the statue’s head, crushing the finely formed face Aya so loved, and sending it rolling off stone shoulders and onto the floor, crumbling.
She shrieked in horror, but it did nothing to stop the destruction of Kazriel. In blow after blow, the hammers tore through the stone, turning the once great stone pieces into dust and pebbles.
The guardian was not merely desecrated, he was destroyed. She did not know what it meant, but she knew it was like watching the man she loved be murdered before her very eyes. Her shrieks and cries were blended with Vengar’s laughter as the statue was pounded into the finest dust, none of it remaining.
“There, you see?” Vengar turned toward her, his face lit with cruelty. “Your guardian has very limited power. He once defended the people, but now the people must defend themselves. Even you, Aya, must make decisions of self-preservation. You have a bastard on board, after all.”
She hated Vengar so very much in that moment, her entire body was consumed with rage. It was as if her flesh itself burned with anger. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to take the knife from his belt and thrust it deep into his throat, make his black blood spill. But something stilled her and gave her enough sense to refrain from an attack that would destroy her as much as it destroyed Vengar.
“What will you do, Aya? Will you turn the crown over to me? Or shall we see what spectacle can be made of you before the crowds? I have heard your guardian made a few shows of you, I am sure I can surpass his displays...”
Aya reached up and plucked the crown from her head. It was merely metal, it meant nothing to her. She surrendered it with as much grace as was possible while simmering with pure hatred. She had never wanted the crown. She had never wanted the throne. All she had wanted was a peaceful, loving life. That could never happen while Vengar ruled the land, but some small part of her knew that his return was her fault. She should have hunted him down and made sure he was dead.
“Smart girl,” Vengar smiled. “I will have this melted down and made into earrings and a necklace for your wedding to the lucky noble who will claim you as his wife.”
Staring at the rubble, Aya willed Kazriel to return, to crush this evil, to destroy Vengar, but she could feel that was not going to happen. The moment Kazriel spent himself inside her, he had withdrawn from the human realm, leaving a small spark in her belly. It was that little piece of divinity she now had to protect. Vengar was partially right. Kazriel had once been the guardian of people, but now it was a human’s job to safeguard the divine.
“To your chambers, Princess. You will be called upon when I have a suitable husband for you.”
Aya inclined her head and slipped away without so much a word of rebellion. Every minute, every movement, every breath now mattered. She knew very well Vengar had no intention of allowing her to live. No noble would risk Kazriel’s ire by taking her. She was tainted, her womb was full, and there was only one possible outcome—death.
Chapter Thirteen
Under cover of darkness, Aya abandoned the castle and fled into the countryside with nothing more than a horse from the stables, a few coins from the treasury, and the babe in her belly.
The first night she slept alone in some bushes. Tears took her to sleep, which was dreamless and did not last long. In the morning, she rode on again. She did not know where she was heading. She only knew that she could not be in the royal city, could not allow herself to become one with Vengar’s regime again. She had to resist, to fight for her people, and for the baby who was beginning to stir inside her.
The second night she took refuge in a small rural village. She wore a veil and was not recognized, at least, not as far as she was aware.
The third night, she joined up with a small band of travelers and rode with them for the next three days, before once more parting ways. Rumors of her whereabouts abounded and sightings were frequent, but they came from such disparate places, both sides of the kingdom, sometimes at the same time, that none could be verified.
* * *
One week later...
“...and that is all we know, Your Majesty. The princess has disappeared.” The royal spy finished his report. “There has not been a sighting, or a report, even with promise of reward.”
“Either she is dead, or people are lying.”
“Or Kazriel has returned to save her and taken her to the land of the deities...”
“If Kazriel had returned, would I still be here, upon this throne? No. We can safely assume that creature will slumber many more years. He spent himself just as he was meant to, used her as she was intended to be used. We must find her and put an end to her before that bastard in her belly is born. Eight months. If she is not found by then, I will execute every guard who fails to find her. I will put every town to the sword and flame. I will tear this land apart until she is given up. Do you understand me?” Vengar shook with fury. “I will stop at nothing to have her in my possession. Now go! And know that failure is not an option anymore. I will show no mercy to those who fail me. Now be gone!”
Everybody fled the chamber, leaving the king alone. Vengar let out a sigh. He had imagined his triumphant return to be more satisfying than this. Aya’s disappearance should have been a thrilling opportunity to root out the last vestiges of rebellion.
Instead it was turning out to be, well, a shit show. When he had been king, she would have been caught within hours. Wait. He was king. Wasn’t he? Well, he was, of course, but it certainly didn’t feel like it
“Advisor! What is that heinous sound?”
“That is singing, sire.”
“Why are they singing?”
“I wouldn’t like to say, sire.”
“Do say. Do not lie to me, advisor. I pay you to advise, do I not?”
“It will anger you, sire.”
“It will anger me if you don’t tell me doubly so.”
The advisor gathered his courage. “The people have known freedom, and having known it, they are reluctant to relinquish it. They sing for the queen they have lost, and for the babe who grows inside her.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” Vengar squinted, his gray brows like two furious caterpillars dueling across his forehead.
“Well, Your Highness,” the advisor stammered, twisting his fingers. “It would seem that the peasants are rebelling.”
“Rebelling? Rebelling!” Vengar spluttered as if he had never heard the word before. “Execute them all! The city will run with the
blood of traitors.”
The advisor nodded heartily, as if he would very much like to see that outcome too.
“Unfortunately, Your Highness, we have no guards to execute the peasants. After your initial incursion, the guards who resisted you in defending Aya were executed.”
“Who executed them? Get them to execute the peasants!”
“You had the executioners execute your rebel forces, Your Highness. You said you didn’t want people capable of that level of treachery around you anymore.”
“Well, get the bloody executioners...”
“I would, Your Highness, but they appear to have, er... defected.”
“Defective executioners and rebellious peasants! That girl did more damage in a matter of weeks than the raiders at the western border managed to do in decades,” Vengar sighed and waved his hand. “Go and recruit more soldiers and executioners. Don’t mention what happened to the other ones.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. At once, Your Majesty.”
Deprived of the ability to have peasants executed, and with the limited number of soldiers still available out on patrol, Vengar found himself very much at a loss. He wanted his nice grim wall hangings back, but he hadn’t been able to find them anywhere, and the nuns who used to weave them under threat of beheading were now singing hymns in the market and couldn’t be persuaded to return to their looms for another month.
Even the nobles hadn’t fully come on board with the return of his iron-fisted regime. After a promising start, none of them would wear their masks at official ceremonies. The ambiance was completely wrong with their gormless faces staring at him. He’d much preferred it when they all had the one face. Though not Kazriel. He’d seen enough of that face to last a lifetime. Maybe Karve. It had been easier to coopt the guardian as authority figure, but now that half the city had seen the bloody bastard, maybe it was time to go a little darker.
“Before you go,” Vengar said, his voice arresting the advisor before he could scurry from the chambers. “Where is the mask maker?”
“The mask maker decided to change his career, Your Highness. He arranges flowers in the theater.”
“Since when do we have a theater?”
“The chamber of justice was adapted, Your Majesty. They put plays on there now.”
This would not do. Vengar drew himself up to his full height and put on his voice of decree. “I want somebody executed in the main square every single day this week. Pick someone at random and have them beheaded.”
“I would love to, sire, but that’s not in my jurisdiction. If you’d like to have somebody executed, you can apply through the house of justice. The judges will...”
“And what the bloody hell is the house of justice?”
“Queen Aya instituted a legal system based on law, sire...”
It was at that point Vengar lost his temper completely, took the sword from his side and ran the advisor through the gizzard. It was very satisfying in the immediate moment, especially the way he gargled his last breaths, but it soon occurred to Vengar that he was now down an advisor, in addition to executioners, guards, and peasants who cowered appropriately at the very mention of his name.
“What’s the bloody point?”
Truly, he was wondering. He had hoped that reclaiming the throne would reconnect him to the source, the power that preserved the royal family of Norvangir and allowed them to live, potentially, forever. But that had not happened either. That bloody guardian Kazriel had ruined everything when he stamped his oversized feet into the chamber of judgement all those months ago.
He sighed, casting the sword aside. It clattered uselessly onto the flagstone floor, casting a trail of blood behind it. Used to be someone cleaned that sort of thing up, but ever since the evisceration of the cleaners, the castle had become increasingly flesh filled. It was almost too much, even for him.
“Somebody get a fucking mop!”
Chapter Fourteen
Aya found refuge in sleep. She slept as often as she could these days, finding a corner to curl up in and hide. Every moment brought with it the fear of capture, but when she slumbered she had the respite of unconsciousness—and the hope that she might see Kazriel in her dreams.
Night after night she slumbered in hope, and day after day she awoke to find herself just as desperately alone as she had been the night before.
Vengar had offered a reward for her capture, and so she had to ensure that her face remained covered and she never stayed in the same place for more than a few nights. She could make no friends, had no true companions. She was a ghost in the land she briefly ruled, and what she saw did not please her. There was poverty everywhere she looked, people subsisting on meager crops, most of which were carted away by soldiers in the employ of nobles.
She may have touched the corruption in the city for a brief time, but she had never made any difference in the lives of the people who lived in the regions. They wore scraps of fabric and were covered in sores and scabs from disease.
Before long, Aya was no different than them. Her knees and feet and elbows all bore the repetitious marks of crawling into bushes and under buildings. Crawl spaces were her favored places in which to hide.
Kazriel was dead. There could be no other conclusion. If he were not dead, then all she was suffering was at his allowance. He could stop this if he wanted. He could return. He was the guardian of Norvangir. Every part of the world was intimately connected to him. But something prevented him. Had he been toying with her? Had she meant nothing to him? Or was it truly as he said, that the world could only contain so much divinity at one time?
Divinity meant nothing when she was alone. She had never been outside the city. She had no alliances. There was nobody to turn to. All she could do was try to blend in with the peasants, but that was difficult, because she was being hunted. The reward for her capture was a thousand pieces of pure gold, more wealth than a peasant family would see in generations. Added to that, the fact that women did not often travel alone, especially not pregnant ones, and she was barely able to hide herself from anyone. The only way to hide was to stay out of sight completely. Once she was seen, she had to move on.
Aya had plenty of time to think while stuffed in her hidey holes, desperately trying to come up with some strategy that might bring her redemption. She could think of nothing, and every day she hid and thought was another day the king’s riders drew closer, putting villages to sword and fire, burning a trail of chaos in their wake—and in hers.
She knew that a time was coming when she would be able to hide no longer. The more she tried to escape her fate, the more pain was visited on the innocents who did not know her, and did not deserve to be put to death on her account.
The tales traveled along with her. She heard people talking about the king’s brigands, how he had no soldiers anymore, but he paid the criminals of the land to do his bidding instead. They had no trace of honor. They were corrupt, and they were cruel, and more than once Aya heard her name cursed by someone who regretted her very birth. It was a sentiment she often echoed herself.
She was hiding in the crawl space beneath a tavern on the day it all came to a head. Heavy footsteps announced the arrival of the king’s mercenaries, a scream of pain as somebody was senselessly hurt. Then she smelled smoke. They were burning thatch, destroying the village. The chaos reminded her starkly of that in the city on the day Vengar attacked, and then it became obvious. Whenever she fled, she brought more pain with her.
“Take me!” She pushed her way up from the loose floorboard. She couldn’t get all the way out, she could only yell from the small aperture created by pushing up against the weakest board, but it was enough.
“‘Ere’s someone under ‘ere!”
In short order, rough hands were reaching for her, pulling her from the hole in which she had taken refuge. There was nowhere to hide, and there was no one to help her. She was dragged and groped, thrown into a cage on a cart and wheeled through the town for the wide-eyed benefit of th
e simple folk who blamed her for the ill-fortunes that had befallen them.
“The traitor princess will be taken to the true king!”
“Bitch!” A small boy threw a rotten egg at her. It was followed by more rancid produce.
All the way back across the country, people looked and jeered and laughed. Aya was not permitted to leave the cage. She had to relieve herself through the bars when they stopped for the evening, and survived on the water thrown at her, and the food that seemed edible when it was smashed through the cage.
This was truly the lowest point of all her existence. She could not help but feel she deserved it.
Chapter Fifteen
Usually the slumber of the guardian was peaceful. The cries of humanity were distant, their pain a faint prickle at the very edges of his senses. For a hundred years, Kazriel had felt nothing from the human realm over which he watched.
Now he was in agony. From the moment he had withdrawn from the world, he had found himself not free to travel all existence at the speed of thought. Instead he was shackled in bindings of pure pain. They wrapped around his limbs and they stopped him from navigating the realms as he once had. Like great snakes, they rippled and hissed and only became tighter when he struggled.
Never before had he so cared about the fate of a human. In the distant past, when his seed had begun the line, he had pulled away into the ethereal realms with a sense of satisfaction that he had begun something good. This time, there was no such feeling. This time he was so intimately connected with the very core of Aya that her every emotion tore at him like wild beasts.
“I love you. I want to come to you. You are not alone,” he whispered across the veil. She could not hear him. She could not sense him. She was lost, alone, and abandoned, made all the more vulnerable by that oh so human act of copulation that had sparked a new life inside her.
The light danced and giggled, separate from the pain and the anguish, still above it all. Kazriel remembered when he had been so innocent and so removed, when his spark had yet to anchor itself in the world of the flesh.
