“Again!”
“But, Your Majesty, it is far too heavy! It won’t budge!”
“Scribe Kobold, quit whining! I said, try again!”
Though he tried his best to hide it, seated on his high throne, scowling, growling and issuing commands by snapping his ring-bedecked fingers, King Fazen was scared out of his wits. For last night a terrible thing had happened.
He was returning from a lengthy tryst with one of his latest mistresses – a lady-in-waiting who couldn’t wait to give herself to him, even if it meant (for she was getting on thirty and showing signs of staleness) throwing her fifteen-year-old twin daughters into the bargain –, his legs weak as sticks, his loins hurting from the exertion, and his bladder bursting from the vats of wine he had drained. So, as he did when he was so blinded by drunkenness that pissing in his chamber pot would be as feasible as shooting an arrow through a needle’s eye, he merely unbuttoned his trousers and relieved himself right on the floor of his bedroom. The smell wouldn’t bother him – in a few moments he’d be dead to the world – and as for the maid, well, it was her duty (if not her privilege) to clean up after his royal messes.
Yet a little after daybreak King Fazen had awoken, parched with thirst, and having forgotten all about his filthy little feat, made to stagger to the commode where he kept a jug of water for his (rather infrequent) ablutions – and slipping on the wet marble floor, he found himself face-down in his own stinking piss, recthing and cursing and feebly calling for help that wouldn’t come. And after he’d finally managed to hoist himself up, while he was struggling to crawl out of his soaked underclothes, a pale ray of moonlight stole through the curtains, illuminating a scene of ineffable horror: the garments he held were drenched in bright red blood, while the floor looked as though the bedroom were a slaughterhouse. The sight of his own blood, so much of it, and the thought of bleeding profusely without even realizing it were too much, and the already lightheaded King collapsed once more onto the bloody pool.
Thereafter things had gone from bad to worse. First he was brutally wakened by the shrieks of the maid who had found him and thought he’d been stabbed, and her terror had stirred up his own, reminding him of the fact that he might quite possibly be dying. So he had had to yell for his guards, to help him up and slap the accursed wench around to stop her screaming – perhaps he should throw her in gaol just to be on the safe side; rumours of his imminent death was the last thing he needed – but the damned fools, seeing their lord covered in blood, drew their swords at once, and before King Fazen could explain that the maid hadn’t tried to assassinate him, they’d butchered the poor silly girl, inundating the floor with a fresh river of blood.
So then he’d been forced to bathe, scrupulously – and, to avoid further fuss – on his own, a thing he hadn’t done once in his entire life, and which left him exhausted and fragile and thoroughly vexed.
As for an explanation of what was happening to him (let alone a suggestion for a cure) every single person he had secretly consulted had proven utterly useless. The Head of the Order of the Scribe Healers, a bald, extremely fat man who seemed on the verge of death himself with every laboured breath he drew, was clearly at a loss about the nature of the King’s sudden illness, stammering fearful nonsense about kidneys and the need to replenish the lost blood by consuming great amounts of raw veal heart and cow’s afterbirth, till King Fazen grew so nauseous he chased him away with a cat-o’-nine-tails he sometimes used on his more adventurous courtesans. Then Veigh Treth had come rushing in, to assure him that he’d been ceaselessly mediating to the Spirits on His Majesty’s behalf, and claiming that perhaps losing all that blood was a good thing – for it might be bad blood, like the one sucked by leeches or let out by a healer’s blade – but his manner was so obviously shaken and unconvincing, the King promised to pray and sent him away before he lost his temper and had the deceiving little bastard hung from the spire of the Spirit Home. In his desperation, King Fazen had even summoned a midwife – under a veil of secrecy, to assumingly assist in a chambermaid’s labour – yet the old woman’s babbling was equally unhelpful, her sole suggestion being that His Majesty eat a hearty breakfast of liver and kidneys (which he detested, even if she, at least, allowed for them to be cooked).
Having no other recourse, and terrified of drinking a single sip of water despite his tormenting thirst – for the thought of pissing yet more blood was unbearable – King Fazen had even briefly considered sending for word from the Seers, but the trip would take hours and besides the Cave might be empty. And then an unexpected visitor had come knocking at his door, having been allowed entry into the Palace by claiming that he possessed firsthand knowledge of a prophecy regarding Royen the Eternal.
He was a stooping, bashful man with chalk-white skin, yellow hair and watery eyes, and like most Divinators, the more he said, the less sense he made. Barely suppressing his royal irritation, the King suffered through the man’s rambling about the Divine Language and how it could seem to speak of one thing while meaning another, and just as he was about to call for the guards and have them torture this dithering fool till he come to the point, the Scribe gave the name of the person he had reasons to suspect might be an incarnation of the fabled Royen. He was another Divinator by the name of Kobold, the son of a lowly Farmer (just like the folk hero himself) who possessed an uncanny fluency in the Language of the Spirits, and whose name, in one context or another, had been recently appearing in numerous prophetic scrolls and books that his fellow Scribes pored over.
Now King Fazen was a man whose beliefs were guided solely by his senses. If he couldn’t confirm the existence of something or someone – be they the Spirits or characters in legends – by his own sight, hearing or touch, he simply rejected it as the stuff that imbeciles and paupers fill their heads with to feel less miserable. Yet his potentially lethal haemorrhage, evident still in the blood caked under his fingernails and clotted in his hair, (for like many a royalty he’d never quite mastered the art of thoroughly washing himself) gave him pause to reconsider. After all, stranger things could happen; for instance, everyone was convinced that this blighted Shy Death business was a magical suspension of the natural laws; moreover, Royen the Eternal was supposed to turn up whenever the fate of Feerien was at stake. So, who knew? Perhaps all those invisible forces the King had never credited were real, and this was their way of restoring the balance: an all-powerful hero to beat an all-powerful foe.
Thus, since Royen the Eternal was also said to have been able to cure the sick by the mere touch of his hands, King Fazen ordered that this Kobold lad be brought to his chambers forthwith, to demonstrate what miracles he was truly capable of.
However, once he arrived – clearly panicked by being dragged to the Palace without knowing the nature of the King’s bidding – and was rapidly and aggressively interrogated about his past (had he ever fallen ill as a child? was he unusually strong? did wild beasts fear him and brutes twice his size flee at his sight?) the young Divinator began to passionately protest his being mistaken for the immortal champion. Sadly, yes, he’d been a frightfully sickly child, and so weak that he was unable to perform the easiest chores his father set him; no, he’d never so much as stood close to a fistfight, and as for his relationship with animals, he was terrified of most of them, cringing at the thought of even a bad-tempered rooster.
But the King would have none of it; he had already let his hopes carry him away, and no amount of prattle could dissuade him – he demanded to be healed, damn it, and without another moment’s loss! Thus, raising his hand to silence the young Scribe who had worked himself into a state, he ordered him to approach the throne and touch him.
“T-touch you, Your M-majesty?” the Scribe stuttered. “Whatever for?”
“You dare question your sovereign? Come here this instant!”
Bowing his head and wringing his hands to stop them from shaking, Yodren Kobold slowly made his way to the throne, and then fell to his knees.
br /> “Did I tell you to kneel?” King Fazen bellowed. “Stand up and touch me!”
Shaking even more, the Kobold lad obeyed, and then, his eyes fixed on his feet and his voice no louder than a whisper he asked, “W-where on Your Majesty’s p-person should I place my unworthy hands?”
The King felt his face flush with blood; he’d been so consumed by thinking of being instantly cured, that he’d forgotten where on his body the root of the evil lay. And no matter how madly he wished for his health to be restored – so that he’d finally be able to indulge himself, down a barrel of beer, and let a river of bright yellow piss rain from the Palace balcony on the heads of his subjects – he couldn’t allow another fellow to feel his private parts in front of his guard and the yellow-haired Divinator.
So instead he ordered Kobold to go over to the entrance of the throne hall, where stood a marble statue of his father, King Falcyen, regally astride his stallion, and try to move it – which was yet another disappointment, for despite the Scribe’s huffing and puffing and reddening and moaning it was painfully clear that he lacked Royen’s wondrous strength. His hopes had been pathetic and ridiculous, and in his renewed frustration he was tempted to have the Divinators’ heads, if only to ensure that they’d never reveal this morning’s audience to anyone, when suddenly the piercing blare of a trumpet burst through the air of the hall, making them all turn their heads at the rarely-heard sound.
And moments later there came a sound of frenzied footsteps, precipitating the sudden, unannounced dash into the hall of a diminutive sentry in a uniform so big and sagging it could accommodate three of him. He was such an odd little thing, the guards were at a loss as whether to arrest him or literally kick him outside like a ragball.
“Your Majesty!” he cried out in a thin, breathless voice, and kneeled in front of the throne so deeply that his head met his feet, and his big loose helmet rolled off his downy head and came to rest at the base of the throne, where he was far too mortified to reach out and retrieve it. “The Prince!” he muttered to the floor. “The Prince is nigh!”
“Stand up and speak up, you fool!” the King shouted.
The sentry did so at once, and then, his voice still reedy from fear and excitement, he repeated his glad tidings: that the sentinel stationed at the lookout tower had moments ago seen through his spyglass a horse approaching, a red gelding upon which sat a rider in full armour, with a scarlet tuft at the crest of his helmet and the royal insignia on the pennant he carried. There was no princely escort, a thing rather unusual, but then, as the horse came closer into view, the sentinel discerned the braided gold reins and the jewel-encrusted grip of the sword, and convinced the rider was Prince Fantyr, he sounded the trumpet.
For a while King Fazen’s mind felt empty like a sucked-out egg; he didn’t know quite how to greet this astonishing news; on the one hand, he was still too preoccupied with his blood-pissing to give a hoot about his son’s sudden return – for ever since he’d sent Fantyr away, his feelings for him had gone away as well: out of sight, out of mind. On the other hand, however, and although he’d never imagine it could happen to him, to a man strong and wise enough to be able to rule his heart as strictly as he did his kingdom, the thought of seeing again his son’s pretty face, of hearing his crystalline laughter and holding him in his arms as when he were a rosy, blue-eyed, sweet-smelling babe, filled him with such an unexpected swell of fatherly love, his old eyes filled with tears.
And once King Fazen allowed this surge of affection to make the tiniest crack in his heart, its coating of coldness instantly melted away, and he was overwhelmed by the loving worry and the crushing remorse of a father who’s been grossly, shamefully unfeeling towards his only child. Sure, he still loved himself immensely, but now, as if by the lifting of the veil, he could see that part of the self he so loved – perhaps the best part, and certainly the one that would live on after he was gone – was at this very moment trotting into the Castle. And suddenly everything that wasn’t Fantyr seemed utterly trivial; he must hasten to welcome his son the Prince, who all this time had been gallantly defending Feerien from the Scavengers. And the next thing he knew, he was rushing down the Palace stairs, oblivious to decorum, for the thought of the Scavengers had brought back the recent rumours of their planning a rebellion – and what if those heaps of human filth had hurt his son, injured him in an ambush? Could this be why he was riding alone? That every other soldier had been slain? Oh, blessed Spirits, no! He would fetch every healer in Feerien, flood the Spirit Home with gold, shed his own sick blood if need be – anything to keep his precious Fantyr safe from harm!
Then out into the midday glare he burst, breathless and giddy, and lo and behold there he was, shining like a moon atop his horse, the scarlet plumes and flag fluttering in the breeze. And all around him a thick carpet of people, men and women, young and old, face flat on the ground in deference to their Prince.
Hand on his chest to still his maddened heart, King Fazen stood before his son and shouted, “Welcome, most valiant son of Feerien and heir to its glorious crown!”
But Fantyr remained speechless and unmoving, his iron-gauntleted hands gripping the gelding’s reins and the eye-slits of his helmet staring blankly ahead.
For a moment the King was nonplussed; why didn’t his son reciprocate his warm greeting, why hadn’t he dismounted yet? Was his silence in response to long-harboured feelings of resentment? Did he expect his own father, the King, to bow before him and ask for forgiveness? Was this another of Fantyr’s old, spiteful tricks?
And then a raven that had been circling the Castle’s battlements swooped down and alighted on the Prince’s right shoulder, where it proceeded to snap its long black beak at the helmet’s plume as if it were a moulting chick. Tok, tok! went the beak, as it missed and struck upon the glimmering helmet.
What was the matter? Why didn’t he swat the damn bird away? Could it be – ? And all of a sudden King Fazen was seized by a dread so great and overpowering, he felt his face go numb as though from a gust of snow. “Kill that fucking raven!” he roared.
But before the archers could take aim, the raven gave another sharp peck at the helmet, and, horror of horrors, it came off and fell, striking the cobblestone heavily and cracking open to reveal Prince Fantyr’s pale, severed head.