“Now go.” Kyrr’s softly whispered words followed him out of the room with a small push down the correct hallway. The halls were dank, made of dark stone and even darker wood. They echoed with spectral sounds and eerie haunting whispers.

Rydan clutched the dagger, careful not to touch the tainted silver blade. His padded down the dark hall, quiet as a cat in his soft leather boots. Impatiently he brushed the golden hair out of his eyes and peered down an adjacent hallway, quickly scuttling down it to the king’s chambers.

Boom!

The noise reverberated throughout the halls. He paused, covering the dagger with an arm as he glanced behind him. No one was following, so where had the noise come from?

Boom!

It came again. His heart beat fast and hard as he glanced behind him again, and then heard a dull scraping noise from a near window. Discreetly he stole across the hallway to the window. Edging up to it, he cast his eyes down toward the castle gates as they burst open.

A flood of commoners pushed their way through, dropping the heavy ram they used to open the doors. They carried everything from torches, whose flames made butcher knives flash red, to pitchforks and clubs, and screaming cries of redemption and rebellion, they entered the castle.

Rydan swallowed, hard. Without another thought, he turned, sprinting back to the king’s chambers and slipping inside. He stopped as a voice came to his ears. It was a pitiful voice, broken and almost in tears.

“God help me, what’ve I done…”

He stood there for a minute, just watching the bent figure of the king. The drapery covering the four-poster was a deep green, and shut on all sides except one. Soft light came from a candle at the king’s side and another above the headboard. The king was on his knees, in a simple linen shirt and dark breeches. King Sheym didn’t look up as Rydan entered, and in the silence, Rydan could hear his prayers.

“Forgive me, I didn’t know, please, take it all away. Take it away…”

Slowly, Rydan shifted his grip on the dagger, biting his lip. Kyrr hadn’t told him of the punishment if he didn’t complete this task, but Rydan knew it would be great. The king was going crazy anyway; he was weak. Rydan had seen it with his own eyes.

“I just want them back; I want my family, my country. God, I wish these years had never happened...That choice was wrong…”

Rydan paused, biting his lip, unable to shut out the man’s pleas.

“I’m not crazy, I’m not…I wish it would end…”

He pulled his arm back. The man’s bowed shoulders shook, as if he was crying, but his voice died and there was silence. Kyrr deserved to be king – this man didn’t want to be. Rydan never thought he would be part of a plan to overthrow a king, but if any, this one he would want to. An old, insane man. The country deserved better. He, Rydan deserved better.

With these thoughts in his mind, he threw. There was no sound except a sharp exhalation and a wet thud. Shyem’s hand fell to his side as he pitched forward and knocked the candle aside, and sputtering, it went out. Rydan’s stomach suddenly plummeted to his feet and he retched, holding a hand up to his mouth. He looked away as he stepped toward the king’s fallen form, feeling sick. The king’s dark head was stark in relief on the white sheets, the stain on his back like an unresolved promise. Rydan retched again, closing his eyes, but unable to block out the blood. It burned the inside of his eyelids crimson.

His so-called honorable deed suddenly turned horrific in his mind. What had he done? He tried to swallow. It was like trying to swallow a rock – a large, dry rock – and he coughed, his eyes burning. I won’t break.

He stared again at the bright scarlet of the man’s blood. Was this what it felt like to kill someone - to be so full of determination one minute, and horror the next? To be filled with purpose and then, nothing but a cold dread that felt like even God had deserted him? He bit his lip so hard he began to taste blood.

His green eyes were sick as he clenched the hilt of the dagger and with a sharp tug pulled it from the spreading crimson stain across the man’s broad shoulders. Quickly he turned, wanting to leave the death chamber as soon as possible.

He almost didn’t catch the soft voice as it spoke, and quickly he turned, his golden hair settling around his shoulders with the motion.

Upon the bed, where he thought the king had simply been praying, rested the queen. Her face was slack and pale, and she was too weak to sit up. She touched the king’s fallen head with a fondness of more than love, twining his brown locks in her fragile fingers. Rydan hadn’t noted until then the small wisps of gray filtered throughout his deep brown hair.

She didn’t seem to notice the darkening crimson on his pale shirt. Her eyes were shut, but as Rydan drew near, they opened.

“What did you say?” He whispered, fearing that if he spoke any louder, she would crumble to dust with his breath. He still clenched the bloody dagger in a white-knuckled fist.

Her blue eyes were dull and pale, but her gaze held remorse as she turned her head to look upon him. “Let me tell you a story, I was always good at telling stories.” She whispered again.

Half in a daze, as if the riots outside the room didn’t matter, as if the burning outside the window weren’t there; as if the king wasn’t dead next to him; he knelt beside the king’s inert form bent over the bed. His own face – though he didn’t know it, was pale as hers. “Okay.” He whispered reverently, and he met her eyes.

She closed her eyes and began.

“Once, a long time ago, there was a man who bred horses for the king. Each year, he would send the highest quality stock up to the king. These horses were warhorses, not fine ladies’ mounts. He would not even let his wife near them.

This man had a son, and oh, how he loved his little boy. Every day, he would teach him what knowledge his young mind could understand, and then, one day, the man decided it was time for his son to learn to ride. The man took his most trusted mount, one of the great, well-trained warhorses, and saddled him. He brought his son and his wife to a small meadow within the forest. He didn’t wish for his wife to be there, but she insisted on seeing her son’s first ride.

“Laughing and smiling, he mounted his stallion, and pulled the boy up in front of him. The boy could not find a greater joy than the hour he spent with his father, learning how to pull the reins, and talk to the horse. His legs didn’t even reach halfway down the horse’s side, but determinedly, he hung on.

“The man finally decided it was time for the boy to ride alone. He got down, and with a father’s last minute concern, set the boy off on his own.”

Rydan stared, entranced by the queen’s words. Her voice induced that what she spoke was more than just a story. The hand clenching the dagger grew tighter and his other hand gripped the silken bed sheets. “What happened?” He whispered in fear.

“Nothing at first, the boy did as his father had said, and the stallion followed his commands. But then, the stallion realized that the young boy, though he held the reins, could not control him, and the man was not close enough to hold him. The woman, across the field could do nothing to the stallion - he was too powerful. So the stallion began to go his own way, and would not heed the boy’s pulls, or the man’s cries. He went from a walk to a trot, and then to a canter. Despite the boy’s good intentions, he could not hold on and he fell to the earth.

“The first person to the boy’s side was his mother. She reached out, trying to help him, but the stallion reared and his hooves knocked her dead to the earth.”

“What about his father?” Rydan filled the next space with his desperate question. His eyes begged the queen for a happy ending. The hand clenching the dagger shook with restrained tension.

The queen however, met his eyes solemnly. “Do you remember when the boy fell?” She asked him quietly. When he nodded, she continued. Her soft voice was the only sound in the chamber besides the distant crackle of flames, outside, it had grown still. “The boy had fallen upon his father as he tried to catch the stallion. When his father fell, his head struck a stone, and he too, died.”

Rydan’s green eyes were lost within themselves as he stared at her. “What happened to the boy?” He choked out, every muscle in his body tense. He suddenly dropped the bejeweled dagger on the bedside and jerked away from it as if stung. His green eyes fell upon it, the horror evident in their depths.

The queen abruptly sighed, as if every problem had gone, and her face was suddenly at ease. A brief smile flitted across her once beautiful, but now wasted face. The hand that had rested upon her king’s head went limp. She blinked quickly, looking at the dagger next to her. Slowly, as if every movement took momentous effort, she picked it up, and then shut her eyes.

Rydan caught up her hand squeezing it, trying to bring the life back into her. Frantically, he whispered, “What happened? How does it end? You have to tell me!” Desperately, he whispered prayer after prayer, bowing his head next to the fallen king’s and alongside the queens emaciated body. “Please…” He fumbled for the right words.

She stirred, her brow creasing with effort. Disbelievingly, he lifted his head to look into her eyes. Her lips ghosted into a smile. “That part is yet to be told, perhaps the stallion never left him alone, and perhaps the boy was alone for the rest of his life.”

“No,” his breath caught. “His parents loved him, he wouldn’t die unhappy, there had to be others who loved him as well, there had to be!” He whispered with conviction, closing his eyes tight against the burning tears.

He bent forward, feeling her breath on his cheek, to hear her last words. “Yes, perhaps he caught the stallion and mastered him, finish this story for me, will you…?”

His cheek grew cold with waiting for her next words, and after minutes, he looked at her, realizing she, like the king, was gone.

Rydan’s green eyes were wide in his pale face as he stumbled from the bedside. He couldn’t take his eyes off the queen, the king, together in death. Lurching, he spun around, sprinting from the room. I won’t break. His breath caught in his throat, but he pushed on through the maze of halls, darting past burning rooms and people, blind in his direction.

One man caught his arm, a gleeful smile on his face, but Rydan snarled in anger and despair, pulled out of his grasp and ran on. It seemed hours before he reached the outside, but he didn’t stop. With lungs that were afire, he pounded down the entry way and through the still-open front gates.

It was only when he reached the city walls did he stop, doubled-over, his breath coming in painful gasps. Finally, he was able to raise his head, pushing his sweaty hair out of his face. The night’s cool air chilled him and he felt goose-bumps rise on his arms. Rubbing his hands together, he made for the gate, and wasn’t surprised to find it open and waiting for any vagabond wanting to go through.

Sticking to the shadows, he shuffled through, unsure of where he was going, or how he was to get there.

He followed that same road for three days, like a man struck dumb. Not once did pause for food or water, and only once did he stray into a tree’s embrace for a few moments of fitful, unmerciful sleep. People stared at him, an eleven-year-old boy with a grown man’s look in his eyes, and a stony face that scared off thieves.

It wasn’t until the fourth night that his legs gave out on him. They refused to carry him any farther, and he had no idea where he was or how far he had actually gone. Nothing was even remotely familiar, and he stared up at the walls of whatever city it was emotionlessly. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stay here.

Promising his legs a seat if they would just carry him beyond this town, he forced himself through, pressing through the streets with only the purpose of getting to the other side. People here avoided him, with his dusty clothes, sweat and dust streaked hair, and flat green eyes.

His heart lay heavy, crushing his soul. He had unknowingly chewed his lip until it began to bleed as he worried over what he had done. Would he be tried for murder? He was now just another commoner, a homeless kid on the street. There was no way he could go back to the castle now.

Shivering, he scrubbed his hands down the sides of his pants as if to rid them of the feel of the dagger. The throw had been perfect, just as Kyrr had taught him, smooth and effortless. The motion seemed moments ago, though it had been over three days. He glanced up; the far walls of the city suddenly rose above him as he turned a corner.

Sighing with relief, he hurried through, sparing little more than a glance for the guard. He followed the road for a ways more, until the sun began to set and then collapsed in the roots of a great tree as his legs cried relief. He closed his eyes, the scene in the chamber playing over and over in his mind, the king’s prayers, the queen’s story, her final words, “Finish the story for me, will you?”

Slowly, he drifted into the dreamless sleep of a deprived body. He wouldn’t wake for a few days, the club to his temple made sure of that.

Copyright:
LaurenBlewett

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