When we saw what lay in store for us on Temcar’s route, we tried going through the huge, brambly hedges, only to find ourselves on the opposite edge of the graveyard. Avaelar reported from the sky that the hedges were the edge of the demi-plane; beyond them there was only distortion. Rath tried digging, and after he went down ten yards through the dirt he fell from two hundred feet – my sylph only just caught him in time. The arch-diviner was blind to our path, and so eventually we were forced to do what Tem had been suggesting all along. I wanted one bit of the enchanter’s certainty – his courage.
The only way in and out of the courtyard was the throne room.
In the middle of one of the courtyard’s four sides there were no hedges, the shortly-cropped grass letting onto a wide floor of flattened, fertile-looking soil. Pillars of the same silver stone held aloft the high ceiling, and silver-flaming torches guttered along the three walls.
Located in the very centre of the room was a raised dais of broken bones. Upon the bones, a throne of living thorns had grown, and the bush’s occupant was also its host – the vines grew through him, piercing him in thousands of places. Hundreds of beautiful red roses bloomed from his open stomach, his open left temple, the corner of his right eye…
Still, he lived. As he panted, taking shallow breaths, the thorns protruding through his breast sawed back and forth gently, releasing new scarlet offerings along the eternal rivulets coursing down his flesh.
What he actually looked like was difficult to discern. The remains of his clothing lay in tatters, snared into the mess; his skin was pallid, dripping with sweat and blood and tears.
”A tribute to Eldaleyn,” Avaelar said in a halting, hallowed voice when we first clapped eyes on the spectacle, his stern bronze face drawn in consternation.
“Who?” I whispered, not taking my eyes off the suffering creature.
“He is a legend amongst my people. Eldaleyn was once the pupil of Brother Avalyar, Key-Keeper, and for his sins was consigned to just such a chair.”
It was gibberish to me, though I thought it made a certain sense if you substituted ‘Eldaleyn’ for Illodin, ‘Avalyar’ for Joran… I’d heard of Illodin’s Chair of Woe, but never had the thing been described…
“You’re sure about this?” I asked Tem. “Just, approach him?”
He didn’t look back at me – he was staring at the guardian on the throne as he nodded.
I drew a deep breath.
“Everyone else?”
Rath was grinding his teeth – I wouldn’t get a response from him, but I received a chorus of more or less enthusiastic ‘Yes, Master’s from my eldritches.
“After you, then.” I once more locked my own eyes on the room’s sole inhabitant, preparing myself to see him rise up from his throne, start lashing us with his thorny whips –
But Temcar got ten paces in before he halted, turning back with a faint smile to wave us after him.
We followed.
Once we were within twenty feet of the horrible visage we stopped, and I was forced to avert my eyes. The punishment this creature was undergoing – did Etherium truly contain such horrors? In Infernum or Nethernum, sure, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But here, in the otherworld, the realm of dreams and fantasy? It sickened me to know that some part of this poor slave’s mind was being used in this way, to create this horrid plane of existence.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I clenched my fist. We stood there in silence, a solemn semi-circle about the front of the dais, and I could hear his pained breathing, hear the soft spatter of fluid against the bony altar. For which mighty being’s amusement was this torture being committed? I could remedy this situation, perhaps –
What’s a little more bloodshed, to end this torment?
A thorny whip came down from the figure atop the throne, slashing out faster than I could react, aimed right for me –
A tendril no thicker than my finger, and my shields erupted at its lightest touch like boils speared with a hot rod.
Rath caught the first whip, and yelped in agony as it tore through his flesh –
The second snagged my wrist, twisting my elbow and pulling me off my sylph leaning-post, making me stumble on my mashed foot –
Making me scream in a renewed torrent of agonies –
Gilaela brayed and reared back –
“No!” I cried, going down to one knee before the dais, throwing out my unconstricted hand to ward her off. “Wait!”
I looked up at the enthroned prisoner. The flagellant king.
I did my best not to growl.
“You can let me go.”
The gasp that returned from the figure was in Etheric and it was amplified, seeming to emanate from the very earth, but it lost none of its character: if I had thought myself agonised by the boneless fish I was carrying around on the end of my leg, this quiet, breathless trauma put me in my place.
“Might I? Let thee aside?” spoke the living amalgam of man and rose-bush. “By what token… might I trust thee and thine? Thou art… the demons of my wretchedness, come to barb me further.”
I licked my lips, and suddenly the thorny vine about my wrist tightened, releasing a bracelet of blood – I almost bit the end of my tongue off, grinding my teeth together.
I heard rather than saw Rath trying to reach my side, but we were within its mind. Our magic was here, but it was obsolete. We were more powerless than we’d been in Zyger. It wasn’t like this creature had any control, either, locked in its own mad world. For all I knew, this enthroned man was just one more part of the insanity, no more representative of the entity’s core than the disembodied voice Gilaela had dispelled in the caves.
I just had to hope it could be reasoned with.
“What cause, noble king,” I gnashed the words, “ha-hast thou to mistrust us? Canst thou not – ahhhhhh! – see that we are guests in thy home, and ought be – aff-ord-ed – such courtesies as are c-customary.”
“Thou wouldst eat the meat of my table?”
Only at the last second did I realise the trick in that – he almost caught me between the flood and the cliff.
“Th-that is an attempt at entrapment –“
“Quoth… the demon…”
“Noble king!” I was squealing now. “What token wouldst – wouldst thou ask of us? We are but poor travellers in thy domain -”
“What wouldst thou? I can see in thee… naught! Gnaw instead the cold earth, and know the rose’s branch… in heart and eye. Come, mortal, come unto my fate… and behold it in all its inconceivable languor!”
An unexpected voice arose behind me, in affront and challenge:
“Majesty!”
Aid, from the unlikeliest source – Avaelar strode forward. The sylph carried Zabalam clinging to his left leg, and it seemed to take the gremlin a couple of seconds to realise he was being brought closer to danger – then the little piggy guy sprang away, looking up at his winged colleague with concern on his mottled face.
Avaelar put out both his hands, and two lashes came streaming down from the rose-bush, binding him. He took a knee, but the expression on his perfect face was resolute, and wrathful.
“Majesty, might I entreat of thee the right to speak?”
“Thou… art no demon, my child… What of thee, then?”
“This man is my master.” The sylph spoke plainly, none of the pain he must’ve been feeling showing on his face – the vines cut through his dense flesh as easily as they had my own. “He is no demon. He is Feychilde, sorcerer, woe to demons, bane of undeath, scourge of eolastyr. Nentheleme herself came to heed his prayer.”
“And yet it doth… seem she hath forsaken him.”
“So thou seest it – or might it be that she doth linger upon the judgement of thine own merciful hand, Majesty? Wouldst thou bind a man as thou hast been bound, or free him? Thou didst strike awry in thy previous assessment. I tell thee Truth, and Truth alone, as the Brotherhood witnessed in the Evening Stars ere the Irradiant One’s birth, ere Nightfall – Feychilde is a champion of men. His cause is just. His quest cannot fail here, now. Had fate set him in thy place and thou alike in his, I know from great remove the quality of his own decision.”
I’d never really heard the sylph speak as though he – as though I…
I felt tears in my eyes, and not from the pain.
“… Very well, sylph. Let us… discuss terms.”
* * *