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EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE DARK OF WINTER...
King Fialsun moved at the front of the entourage. Elegant rich robe fanning out at the bottom, well made boots clinking on the marble floor hammering a beat that mirrored the pace of his heart. His son was dead, murdered, smothered by an unknown assailant.
Eight others eagerly hurried behind him, desperate to be seen at such a distraught time of their King’s reign. One was the head of palace security. Normally such a confident man, not so now. The rest were made up of torch wielding guards and members of the royal court, stragglers who had been close when the grim news had broken so late at night.
“Who found him?” Fialsun asked of those rushing to keep up. The King was a portly man, but fear and anger leant impetus to his normally pensive gait. Pella, his pet monkey, sat obediently upon his left shoulder. It too was not insensitive to the drama. She would draw no attention to herself. No pratfalls or begging for fruit today. The anxiety in the air was palpable.
“Talla, the guard outside his highnesses room. He sensed, my liege, he sensed an ominous presence and investigated. Poor soul, if you forgive the reference, the poor soul was face down on his cot, breath smothered from him.”
Fialsun wrenched a firebrand from a guard, held it aloft the opposite side Pella sat, and started up the spiral staircase. “I’ve had this tower built for one end and one end alone, Sturtle. Can you guess why that is?” an angry rhetorical question aimed at the head of palace security.
“Of course your majesty. I placed guards throughout the gardens and all around the tower—”
“Imbecile. All four of my sons have been killed systematically, one after the other, all within a year. I build a tower, one way in, same out again, and still some cunt sneaks in and kills my last heir apparent. My son!”
At the top of the stairs was a solitary door, thick, iron studded for extra protection. Talla was still at his post, undoubtedly apprehensive about his own future. He would not look towards his King, it was more than court etiquette at play, this was borne from fear of repercussion.
Fialsun gestured for the door to be opened and a nervous Talla obliged.
“Right, you can all fuck off now. And execute Talla.” Fialsun slammed the door shut. The very moment he was alone grief took his knees from under him and he buckled, reaching out for the door to catch himself. “I can’t bury another one,” he said amid a sharp intake of breath. He forced himself off of the door but screwed his eyes tight shut, loathe to see the truth, his dead boy. “I can’t bury another one. My bones should know the crypt before my sons do. What curse eradicates my legacy?”
Despair quickly turned to rage and he punched the door and oblivious to the pain he did it again then again and only when his knuckles split open did he finally stop. In the frenzied activity Pella scampered beneath the cot.
“Be comforted, Pella, I am not angry with you.” Fialsun panicked. Last thing he needed was to lose something else he loved. She was so small she could easily get lost around the palace at Vague or stolen. Opportunistic criminals plagued every city, especially Vague, the greatest of them all.
An inquisitive face could just be discerned peering out from the gloom. “Come to me,” the King cooed, teasing the monkey out with a bloody hand. Finally the pet relented and soon Fialsun held her. He stroked her soft hair awkwardly with the same hand that he held her with. It would be easy to kill her, so thin and frail was she. A dwarf genesis she could sit in the palm of his hand. But his beautiful Pella was all he had left.
Fialsun looked around the room. Dawns early light bled through the myriad windows to mix with the orange of his fire spitting torch. The room was hues of amber and black shadows but gradually getting lighter and in the soft indistinct glow of the firebrand he saw his son, lying face down on a bed.
“My poor Stomdun,” he gasped. “Last prince. Fialsun’s heir and hope for the future.” Fialsun dropped the torch and it rolled away. There were few decorations in the room, nothing to catch. The tower was built to keep his son safe as he slept. The windows were too narrow for an assassin to crawl through and there was no furniture to hide behind. All that occupied the room was a bed and at the far end a garderobe, a seated hole in the wall for the young prince to defecate down.
The hole was more than big enough to put Pella in, cram her down as far as he could reach. Again thoughts of killing his beloved Pella. What was with him? Was this how his grief manifested?
He made to touch his son. To connect physically one last time before he ordered him prepared for the funeral but he stopped suddenly and gasped. He noticed the fiend crouched down low the other side of the cot. A shadow darker than all the others of the room. At first he thought it a trick of the light for as the day strengthened hues and light saturation altered subtlety, but he turned away then looked back to test his vision and it was still there.
“I see you,” Fialsun said. “You are crouched down the side of the cot, next to the boy you murdered; my son, Stomdun.”
There was a vague disturbance of light shifting which Fialsun construed as the thing moving. Now it had been discovered it moved a little.
“Caught you haven’t I,” Fialsun persevered. “You thought to pass unnoticed, murdering devil. Thing from the underworld.”
The voice which replied surprised the King. It was deep and made the hard stone floor vibrate like the sound was rising from the ground up. Passing up through his legs, arms, chest then inside his head, bypassing his ears altogether.
“Finally you see me,” it said. “I have shadowed you for years and not a once have you taken the time to notice me.”
“Well notice you I do and you will pay for what you have done to me.”
The shadow stood up. It looked like it was made from leaves, damp curling dead leaves. Thousands of them. Black wet and rotting. An arm shaped appendage pointed towards the bed. “The child I forced into the cot until he could breathe no longer. Your other brood I dispatched also. I tried to reason with you but until now you never seen me. Kill the monkey.”
Fialsun checked his waist but it was as he thought, he had been roused so urgently he had neglected to arm himself. He could not explain why he had a sudden urge to kill Pella. Yet again he contemplated crushing her tiny body. “What manner of creature are you that kills children?” he asked, confusingly looking up from Pella. If only he had the presence of mind to bring his sword he could stick it in the monkey. He could kill the shadow fiend. It smelt of damp rot. It reeked of death. It had killed his children.
“I am formed from the earth. I have sisters and a wayward brother driven insane by millennia of hedonism. Your attitude informs me you wish me harm.”
“I will have you drawn and quartered. I will have you opened up and what constitutes your vitals will adorn the trees in the courtyard. You will be a banquet for the flies.”
“I know you are angry but you can’t harm me.”
Fialsun snorted defiantly, declaring, “Everything bleeds. Oh I’ll harm you alright. You will bleed, by the gods you will suffer an agonising end.”
“I can bleed, sort of, but I have been forever. I have spent eternity contemplating outcomes. I am almost impossible to defeat as I have every contingency considered. You cannot outwit me. Kill the monkey and prove your allegiance to me. Together we will rule this land. I tire of an existence without purpose. So prove I own you and kill the monkey.”
“I heard you that time. You keep telling me to kill the monkey.” Instinctively Fialsun pulled Pella in closer to shield her from the dangerous shadow. “You crawl inside my head. For years I’ve been haunted, nay, tormented with ideas to kill an innocent monkey and it’s you. All along it was you. I thought I was going mad. You talk to me in dreams and waking.”
“I have been talking to you for years but rarely you listen. Your meaningless vanities cocoon you in a world that even I have trouble breeching. So I take from you, a child at a time and during that spike you sit up and notice the purr of my voice. But like a flowing tide your cosseted lifestyle returns, dragging you under its somnambulant wave and I lose you again for a time. It has taken years of gentle persuasion but we have conquered our neighbours and secured our legitimate right to rule. But north, now we turn our attention to the far north.”
“Only simpletons and snow are to be found there,” Fialsun gibbered. He could feel Pella shaking in his hands with fear and realised that he too was shaking.
“There is a threat to me in the north, a skilled fighter who could end my days. Take your army north and kill them all, especially him. So kill the monkey now, Fialsun, and prove to me that you can do what I ask and then we stop any demon from the north potentially hurting us. We secure your dynasty. If I am safe then you will be too. Not many that walk this world could harm me but the man in the north could. It’s almost like he was fashioned from the old blood. Send your army north and kill them all.”
Fialsun took a blind step backwards and struck the wall. “I will not yield to you,” he blustered. “I will not hurt Pella. And I will be no ones pawn. This madness ends today, now. I will summon my army but they will do my bidding and not yours. They will obliterate you.”
The shadow moved closer. A light grey arm stretched out, fingertips extended to touch Fialsun’s face.
Fialsun made to recoil but he was already fast to the wall. “What devilry is this?” he demanded to know as the fiend magically took on the appearance of him. Before his grief stricken eyes the thing just turned into him.
Pella howled, jumping from Fialsun’s arms just as the shadow fiend rammed a fist inside the King’s mouth. The fiend hesitated before applying anymore pressure, relishing the King’s discomfort, loving the way Fialsun’s eyes widened with the disbelieve and agony. Then he forced more in and the King’s head cracked to accommodate. “I give pain because it pleases me to do so. I am violence and suffering. I am the knot of fear in your gut. I am the moment realisation dawns that your life is about to end. I am the hunted prey, the jet of blood from the killing wound, the crow of the bird with the morning light.” Suddenly he pulled his arm out amidst a shower of blood and mucus.
Fialsun immediately buckled in pain. He could feel his own warm blood everywhere, his garments, hands, the floor slick with it. He would scream but he was overwhelmed with horror and his face was broken.
“All you had to do was kill the monkey.” The shadow man picked up the King and forced him, bones snapping to fit, down inside the garderobe, deeper down, so far down no one would ever discover him. He would rot amongst the faeces lining the inside of the hole.
Shadow Fialsun raised a leg up then kicked the last part of obstruction down the hole. The old King’s head split apart as the last of him was forced midway down the chute.
Transformation complete, Fialsun tested his new appearance. Pella was cowering beneath the bed. He dangled a proffering hand to her and, cautiously at first, she came. Believing him to be her master she scampered up his arm to settle in her favourite place on his left shoulder.
“You think I am he, your master. If I can fool you the rest should be easy.” Fialsun picked her off his shoulder and nuzzled his nose to hers. Then with his right hand, he threw her out the window to her death. “Such an easy thing to do. Really don’t understand why he couldn’t do it,” he said, casting a venomous sideways glance towards the garderobe.
The fiend hesitated by the door. It was not comfortable in its new guise and it pulled at the excess of skin around its waist to give it the impression of being a fat man as indeed the real King had been.
With the confidence his new guise afforded him the new Fialsun flung open the door and started down the long and winding staircase, shouting, “To me household. We go to war. Summon my rigs. The demon of the north will be exterminated. Summon my rigs. Vaconius to me. Rig Vaconius to me.”
Outside Pella finally landed with a splat.
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BELOVED PELLA