To more fully enjoy this story in living, breathing HTML,
please visit our website at:
/~vivian
Now offering over 140,000 words of pure prurience!
--------------------------------------------------------
Sangrelysia
by Vivian Darkbloom
Departure
Long colorful banners unfurled and crackled in the cold sharpness
of fresh daylight, as the sun strove to bring warmth to the land,
penetrating the misty white haze which clung lustily to the
golden-green meadows and blue-grey hillsides. Impatiently we
awaited the start of a journey, the excitement and promise of the
first steps.
These preparations always seemed to take forever. Mentally, I
rechecked the list, that I had everything I needed for the
journey, and had done everything correctly to secure the tower.
Anyone who came looking for the entrance would find only a blank
wall.
Anyone, that is, except Gwendolyn and the cat. Gwen said she
would feed my orange ball of fluffiness, and keep the spiderwebs
and dust at bay, but I think she mostly wanted to snoop through
my drawers. Scanning the crowd, I did not see her face anywhere,
but given her aversion to large groups, that was hardly
surprising. Most likely she was concealed in the woods nearby,
watching from safely out of sight with her elfin friends.
I had set up the cat door, so Rumple could get in and out. Added
entertainment if the random passerby might be alarmed to see a
cat appear from, or vanish into, a solid wall.
Vianne, my chocolate mare, paced and snorted across the dewy
golden-green meadow, while porters languorously checked and
re-checked that luggage was loaded and fastened properly.
Choruses of birds chattered gleefully, calling, answering,
bickering from high in surrounding branches.
The princess would ride in the carriage, with all of her stuff,
and the girls-in-waiting. The rest of us would revel in the
breeze, or suffer the elements, depending. The autumnal weather
nowadays was generally balmy when the sun was out, though in a
month or so the chill at night would make camping out difficult.
"We can't go around the other way. It would take an extra week,"
Roderick was telling me in his thick Scottish brogue.
I frowned, leaning on my staff, studying the map that lay spread
out on one of the luggage trunks. Reaching into one of the many
pockets of my coat, I felt the cold smooth roundness of the
crystalline globe.
The pockets of this particular coat were quite convenient, as
they never ever lost anything, and always rearranged themselves
so that whichever object I sought would be right at my
fingertips.
In fact, I had have never been exactly clear on how many pockets
it has, nor am I entirely certain of how many objects it might
contain which have spent years unaccounted for simply because it
hasn't occurred to me to search for them in this coat.
I reached into another pocket, and extracted an amber vial. I
pulled it out and undid the stopper, extracting a pinch, and
dusted the map with a sprinkling trace of powder. For a brief
moment, the powder glittered and settled, then the map seemingly
came to life, animated energies and colors swirling faintly for
the eyes that could discern them.
"See that?" I opened my palm over the slithering shadows that
spread over the forest. A shiver ran down my spine, and not from
the bracing morning chill that lifted even as we spoke.
He cocked his head this way and that. "Fancy shadows on the map,
eh?"
"Vision occluded by magic. Something's afoot in there, and it
can't be good. What foulness is somebody hiding?"
"Well." With a clatter, he released and unsheathed his heavy,
razor-edged sword, to set the air whistling with lightning speed
on all sides in dazzling slashes, before he restored it to his
scabbard. "Don't worry, sir. That's what I'm about here, to keep
ye all safe."
Silently, I remained unconvinced.
Roderick sighed. "It's a three day journey through the woods, or
a week and a half the round-about way. I can't justify goin' the
long way, just from some shadows on the map. Don't worry lad,
whatever or whoever it is, we'll rout `em out and send `em
scurrying on their way!"
I wasn't so sure, but there wasn't much to be done about it. It
was as if we were being deliberately set up, to fall into a trap.
The murmur of conversation picked up as King George arrived,
surrounded by a small crowd of followers, only a few of whom I
recall ever seeing before the King was so erroneously crowned.
The cocksure King posed pompously as usual, flashing his standard
idiotic grin at the group of surrounding sycophants. One of them
held a flagpole, atop of which waved the dreadful defacement of
the Sangrelysian flag that George was so proud of.
Widely suspected it was, that his tiny clique of trusted
followers had all either been blackmailed or bribed with
unaccounted-for gold that had gone missing from the Royal
Treasury, poisoned by magic and potions, or brainwashed and
battered by "training sessions" that robbed them of sleep and
reasoning ability.
Ridiculous empty smiles pasted onto their faces, they walked like
zombies, parroting mindless slogans and platitudes, like a harsh,
hollow echo chamber, a blitz of cheering at the king's every
mangled, bungled word. A klatch of drooling dumbells that
surrounded the King with fawning flattery.
Apart from the King's clique, all ages from the town and castle
were represented in the sendoff, old and young, women and men
strolling together, boys and girls running and chasing each other
in playful laughter, grandmothers and grandfathers with canes.
A trio of bugles went off. "Hear ye, hear ye," proclaimed the
uniformed page. "The King will now speak a pronouncement." The
king had mounted a stage high above the people, festooned with
banners in the green, purple and crimson of Sangrelysia, with
once again the rectangular mock flag crowning it all.
I spotted one of the King's young suck-ups crouching in the crowd
as inconspicuously as possible before His Majesty, holding the
gigantic Royal speech-prompter scroll.
The braindead fanatics cheered wildly as the King waved, and the
rest of the crowd listlessly followed suit.
"Fair people of our wondrous land, we gather today celebrate the
beginning of a voyage. . ." blah, blah, blah. Next to the king
high up on the platform, I spotted evil nephew Karl, whom the
king wanted to see succeed him to the throne.
"I wonder how the King's dog is getting on," I wondered aloud, to
nobody in particular.
Nearby, a man heard me and laughed. "Kicked the bucket, 'e did.
The king promised a complete and thorough investigation. Can't
imagine why, though. Thing was a bloody yapping pest, y'ask me."
The nephew seemed charming enough, but behind the the disarmingly
vacant smile lurked a cold and cruel heart of pitiless selfish
shrewdness. I speculated that the attempted poisoning of the
princess had been motivated by the desire to secure for Karl the
position of next-in-line, that perhaps it was Karl himself who
had administered the fatal drops.
I chuckled grimly. Fatal, that is, but not quite in the manner
intended.
Shortly I heard a scattering of applause, and the king descended
to cross the sea of people towards us, surrounded by grim
expressionless brawny knights in chainmail and grey uniforms.
I leaned over and rapped on the ornate door of the carriage,
wherein I could hear muffled gaiety as Sylvia and her girls
bounced around, giggling. "Fair warning, the King's about to come
over to see you off," I called out.
The crimson curtain flew back with a jerk in the little side
window, and Sylvia's head popped out with a particular grin.
Carriage or seraglio? I wondered. Her cute little face
disappeared again, but the crowd had seen it, and now was
stirring, moving to gather, encircling us.
A woman approached clad from head to foot in cream-colored white.
Wrapped about her head, she wore a plain white shawl that
concealed all of her hair. She bore straight in my direction, not
swiftly, but with solemn determination.
She arrived and stood before me. Enormous steel-grey eyes,
clear-thinking and calm, gazed deep into my soul. "My son died in
battle, in the Clymerian war."
"I'm so sorry," I replied.
We stood in apparent stillness, but my heartbeat surged, my mind
raced. The thick, humid air of the valley pressed down, stifling,
suffocating.
"Where is my Queen?" demanded the grieving mother, voice barely
above a whisper. "Where are King Hieronymus and Queen Megan? We
never used to have these senseless battles, all the dreadful
wounds and suffering, the pointless killing."
Staring into her enormous eyes, I could see reflections of the
shadows that grew long across the land, evil spreading its inky
tendrils through pure water, smothering clarity until all was
polluted with opaqueness of submission, greed and suffering, the
tail-chasing affliction of fear-driven power-lust.
I reached out cautiously and placed my hand her shoulder.
"Believe me, I feel exactly the same," I replied quietly.
"Then why? . . ."
An unpleasantly familiar voice rasped its unwelcome way into the
conversation: "Send her back to the kitchen, with a broom. Where
she belongs." King George had arrived. "How could a mere woman
possibly understand the intrifacations of war?"
The Royal Obsequious Followers chortled and guffawed. Neither I
nor the woman in white acknowledged the King and his minions. In
our silence, facing eye to eye, I could see that she had begun to
understand my sorrow, had fathomed our shared sense of loss.
Why indeed, the newfound delight in killing, across the land?
From a people who had known no wars in remembered history?
Perhaps it was a repressed shadow that had lurked unseen and
ignored below the surface?
What had gone wrong with the established ways and wisdom? It was
a question that deserved an answer.
Perhaps it was, simply, the invasion of intoxicating poison from
the mundane world, like a virus in the bloodstream, a cancer
spreading over a healthy body, the impulses of greed and fear.
Perhaps it was because the red dragon had been subdued -- how had
that happened, anyway? -- because our mighty guardian against the
forces of unimaginativeness had been crippled, making way for the
slime to ooze across the border from the lands without magic,
polluting our lands with their dull and plodding ways.
More importantly, what could be done now, to eradicate it, to
send the gruesome affliction into permanent remission? To cleanse
the land such an awful stain?
Nothing matches war, for turning morality on its head; for
reversing the position of right and wrong, for lauding harm and
death, cursing life and healing. So where was the way out? Now
the cycle had begun, how to break a vicious endless loop of
vengeance and returned wrongs?
As George puffed and posed at the center of it, I felt a sense of
loathing and dread in my core. It was so wrong for this
disgusting petty tyrant to wear the colors of my peaceful land.
There he was, like an awful dream, the filthy giant cockroach
rallying his followers.
I raised my voice: "I think it's time for the princess to come
out and bid the crowd farewell."
The crowd exchanged glances, then started up chanting. "Princess,
princess. . ." Quietly at first, then gaining in volume and
boisterousness: "Princess, princess, princess. . ." The king's
bootlickers alone were silent, vastly outnumbered by the
townspeople of all ages, whose clamor increased.
My princess, being of regal blood, raised in a family of royalty,
and just generally being a glutton for public attention, knew her
dramatic timing. Precisely when the energy of the crowd had
peaked and had begun to level off, the door to the carriage
opened, and she emerged to perch proudly on the top step.
The chant turned to: "Speech, speech, speech!" and finally, I
helped to hoist her up to stand on the driver's seat, where she
could be seen.
With endearing cuteness, but yet a calm confidence that belied
suave certainty, with even perhaps a touch of wisdom beyond her
years, she raised her hand in the air to silence the crowd. I
knew that, whatever she did, they would love her, the remaining
symbol of the years of past prosperity that seemed to be now
sinking gradually in the stinking swampy mire of lies and
power-lust.
Absolute silence reigned. I heard the gentle flapping of the
banners, the birdcalls, the faint sound of air gently flowing in
and out through my nostrils.
"People of Sangrelysia," she began. She spoke with command and
clarity, with a voice instinctively polished for public speaking.
"Little people with great spirit, I know what it feels like to be
little. I may be just a little girl, but I can see the suffering
of the land, our land, under the shadows of wars and battles. And
I miss my mom and dad, Queen Megan and King Hieronymus. I know in
my heart they're still alive, and I really hope someday they'll
return. Until then, I promise I'll do my best to continue with
the things they way they would have wanted, to put back peace and
harmony and loving for all. So long everyone, and I love you
all!"
A collective moment of silence hit like a brick wall, broken only
by faint cheerily twittering birdcalls and fluttering of flags.
Than a shared exhalation -- everyone had been holding their
breath -- and a deafening roar of applause and shouts and shrieks
and whistles from all around, smiles and exchanged glances,
reclaimed hopefulness.
This was what they had come for, the moment that made it worth
dragging themselves out of bed and making it down here so early.
The noise and cheering continued as I helped Sylvia back down
into the carriage, then mounted Vianne, my chocolate mare, and
with a thunderous peat- and dust-raising clopping and clattering,
the entourage set forth on our journey.
Glancing back, in the middle of the enthusiastic banner-waving
crowd, I saw the King smirking unpleasantly at us, an expression
dripping with shadows similar to the ones I had seen slithering
across the map.
He disappeared into the crowd, which in turn receded into the
misty haze of the distance as we followed the road, underneath
the ever-traveling sun that followed its own path across the sky.
Chapter 10
_______________________________________________________
For more stories, please visit our site:
/~vivian