Chapter 25 #2
The air in Torver’s lungs is thick like tar. The next few moments are spent remembering how to breathe as thoughts race through his head.
His lack of magic had a reason after all.
The gods never turned their backs on him. He would have been their chosen one, fated to bond with their Beast. His dreams of wings and red scales make sense to him now.
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Dunmail laughs yet again, unable to contain his amusement.
“I take it you thought you were simply broken? Cursed?” he chuckles. “They always do. Every time the rider appears. Before I decide what to do with them. Or, rather, before I decide what to tell my Meddera to do with them.”
Torver hears a small growl at his shoulder and turns to find it is coming from Bassen.
“So the Meddera elections are a sham,” she says, shaking her head. “No gods, no kings, indeed. Was anything about the People’s Kingdom real?”
“Self-rule and self-determination are illusions.” He smirks. “Nobody questions power if they think it is in their own hands.”
Torver feels sick. How many people have hung? How many people were brutally punished because obedience keeps the Beast asleep? How many lives have King Dunmail’s lies devoured?
He backs away. One step, then two. He takes Lavellin’s hand, reaches for Bassen and Winander on his other side.
Dunmail tuts.
“Ah ah ah.” He waggles his regal finger at them. “I said that I wouldn’t kill you, Torver. Not that I was done with you.”
The Forever King turns his head and calls over his shoulder.
“Conise, could you come in here for a moment?” His voice echoes throughout the chamber. “And bring the boys.”
Torver didn’t think his heart could beat faster when Conise the Enforcer steps through the door of an antechamber on the other side of the Beast’s skull.
She wears not her usual clanking armour, but a thick, padded tunic, belted by a silver scabbard. Adrenaline makes Torver jolt, his hands gently tremble.
And behind her—the four faces that have scowled down on him from every banner in the Wen. The Meddera. The four most powerful men in the People’s Kingdom, and they stand meekly in a line, hands behind the backs of their deep purple cloaks, in deference to Dunmail.
Torver remembers Bassen’s lesson about them. He didn’t think he’d paid it much attention, but now, terror pushes it to the forefront of his mind.
There is Thwaite, the watermancer, the tallest one.
Thin and pale and in charge of the Courts of Work and Public Life.
Lineth the smokemancer, bald with skin the colour of an uncooked gammon, in charge of the Court of Learning.
Eskett the strong, who wears golden armour on the Meddera banners to show that as the overseer of the Court of Punishments, he’s the leader of the Enforcers.
And finally, Irton the conjuror, the well-groomed man with the thick moustache who oversees the Court of Registrations.
“My Meddera,” Dunmail declares proudly. “Hand-selected every five years to be my eyes and ears, while I rule from the shadows. And they’re keen to meet you.”
A familiar heat burns Torver’s wrists, and to his horror, he looks down to see that while he was staring, Conise has shackled him in smoke once more. Along with Bassen, Lavellin, and Winander.
“Bet you thought you’d gotten away from me, didn’t you?” Conise snarls.
But Torver doesn’t wither, doesn’t beg. He takes the ice-hot fear in his veins, the pounding in his chest, and snarls straight back at her.
“You,” he hisses, straining against the hard smoke around his wrists. “You knew this whole time! Complicit in these lies. Why? Why would you betray the people you’re meant to protect?”
Conise shakes her head, as if she can’t believe his naivety. Another tendril of smoke picks their yarn tether from the ground and begins to ball it back up, removing their path back to the surface.
“I’m going to be the first lowborn Enforcer to become one of the Meddera,” Conise declares.
She mances the smoke around his wrists so hard that his fingers pulse red.
“Next Meddera cycle, I’ll be up there. I’ll be the first one to show that you don’t have to be a highborn Official to become a ruler, because that’s what the Meddera are.
Even if no one wants to say it. Rulers in the stead of the Forever King. ”
“But…no gods, no kings…” Winander sounds thin and shaken when he speaks, like he’s forgotten how to use his voice. “How many times have you said those words? And they meant nothing to you?”
“Don’t spout that motto at me.” Conise spits. “There is a King and he’s so powerful that we don’t need the gods. We never did.”
Winander starts to protest but she cuts him off, uses smoke to fill his mouth so he can’t talk. Torver can hear his splutters on the other side of Bassen.
“Stay out of this, old man,” Concise barks. “There’s always been a King in the People’s Kingdom—power doesn’t dissipate, it just shifts like smoke! And in return for my loyalty, I will earn a taste of it.”
She looks again to her King, and drops to one knee before him. Dunmail’s head tilts to the side for a moment, his expression utterly blank. He raises a hand and rests it on the crown of his acolyte’s head.
Torver inhales at the blessing, this world that he thought he understood.
Until fire bursts from Dunmail’s hand in a white-hot gush.
Flames engulf Conise instantly, devouring every thread she wears, the strands of her hair, igniting her skin so that it bubbles, so that her fat melts and drips as she screams. She collapses to the floor, rolling and bucking, but Dunmail’s flames are ferocious and they don’t relent even when Conise’s screams do.
They continue to burn until her sword glows red, her flesh sears and fills the air with its acrid stench.
Conise chars into coal and Torver blanches, scrunching his eyes shut as tight as they will go.
He falls backward onto the ground, cold mud filling his palms. But the scream still rings in his ears, the horrifying scent of burnt flesh fills his nostrils.
When he unclenches and his eyes creak open, Conise’s body is just a pile of black, smoking flesh and bone.
Their smoke shackles have disappeared, but in the scuffle to get away from the heat of the flames, all four have fallen into the mud.
The four men of the Meddera stand in their line, unflinching.
“Getting very uppity, that one.” King Dunmail examines his nails, as if touching her had been unsavoury. “Expecting a place in my Meddera just for serving me. Power isn’t an exchange to be bought with obedience. It just is. I just am. Irton gets it, don’t you, Irton?”
The man with the neatly groomed moustache dips his head reverently. “Of course, my liege.”
Torver’s fists clench in the mud. “You didn’t have to kill her!” His voice is hoarse, the sight of Conise burning alive seared into his eyelids.
“I don’t have to do anything!” Dunmail roars. “I do what I want, because I am the King. And when you’ve been King for as long as I have… I’ve already told you. You grow bored.”
Torver stands slowly, scowling at the Forever King with every muscle in his body. The seething hate rolls off him in waves.
“So,” Dunmail admits. “I was intrigued when the Meddera sent word that the suspected dragon rider and his strange and wonderful companions were heading to my tomb. I even left the cairn unguarded for you, did you notice that?”
The King turns to Lavellin where it sits, frozen in horror in the mud. He leans down, hinging at his jewelled hips, and offers it his hand.
“Though I must admit, King Eveling, I wasn’t expecting you to be with them.”