#1
I,
Ahrimaz Kenaçyen, Emperor of the Owned Lands of Inné, Wielder of the Flamen
that burns the world, the destroyer of the Cylak, Subjugator of the Yhom,
Master of Innéthel, Creator of the House of Gold, now abject prisoner of the
Kenaçyen family, do set my pen to paper and record my memories and my life, to
assist the healer Limyé Ianmen, an Imaryan, in his understanding of mental
illness and how monsters are made as well as born.
I
submit my horrors and failings and gory history, the history of one of the
bloodiest monsters of Empire, capable of raping his wife and beating her and
his children, to the pitiless judgment of my Imaryan healer.
*
I
watch the funeral flames wreath around what was left, the skull bursting with a
steamy pop that signals the old monster is finally gone. He’s gone. My crazy brothers are gone. Mother droops artistically under her widow’s
weeds, all ostentatious Dowager Empress in mourning for her beloved husband. He
beat and abused her as he did us. The
feckless, indulged, drunken young sot who is my idiot brother stands, blinking
at the flames as if he cannot believe that he’s free. The old man is dead, Arnziel.
I am
not free. Even with the old man dead, he
lives in my mind. He lives behind my
eyes. I will never be free of him. In
the years that he tortured me, he gouged out a space, gathered all my evil
together as a most comfortable nest for himself. I gave up my soul to him and his whip and his
pain and his rape years ago and he made me a pimp for Scorching to the deepest
pits of hell.
The
fire hisses as I turn away, releasing everyone to scuttle into their gilt
apartments in what is now my court. At
least after the official period of mourning.
Vipers. Scum in high, red heels and silk and brocade. I’ll make them
remember the old man. Oh, yes. They’ll compare our reigns, they'd pick apart
every moment, every breath. They are all
dogs that roll onto their backs and widdle in fear to power.
I
will be in mourning on the battlefield.
The enemies of my Empire will see me wreak my mourning for my father out
on them. So funny. I killed the old man and I will pretend to
have loved him all these years. Behind
my eyes I can feel his glee, my glee, at the lie. Who am I trying to fool? My glee.
I am become the old monster.
**
I wake in the cool darkness of this dungeon where my captors have me
incarcerated. The nightmare of the
funeral fades slowly. It was better than
the never ending nightmares of searching for my mother, searching for safety,
hearing someone weeping for me. I
thought I’d buried those dreams under the scars in my mind years ago.
But
these people. These vile, petty people who don’t have the guts the God gave a
woman, they locked me up here in the lamplight in the basement where I can’t
see any natural thing, any true light, not a ray of the God’s own divine
Sun. I am dying here. These stones press into me, closer and
darker, hammering spikes of despair and the Demon’s darkness into my spirit.
Help me, Burning One, Tiger Master
save me from these Demon-eaten, Drowned horrors who keep me here in silence and
lamplight.
Out of my depths of despondency and desolation I cry to the divine, and thus
break my vow to my father. In anguish
greater than any inflicted on me before, I am reduced to pleading with the
Deities of my innocent childhood, before pain made me a man.
Of
course I taught what I learned. Over the
years I passed on my father’s wisdom. As
any child who screams in uncontrolled rage and stamps its feet, ultimately
acknowledges the astuteness of the parent’s acumen, I acknowledged father’s
understanding and passed on that wisdom and strength.
At
least my captors are not cruel enough to leave me in the dark. But I might as well be in my grave here. I breathe.
I
drive the nib of the pen into one finger so that the prick of pain and my own
tiny red reflection in the drop of blood reassures – or horrifies me – that I
still live.
My
cell. It is four steps across one
direction and ten in the other. A bed
with a peasant’s rope mattress, and feather bed upon it. A feather bed for a coverlet. Two feather pillows. A peasant’s bed. The bed might as well be made of nails for
all the comfort it gives me. A table
with turned legs and no sharp edges. A
chair.
The
table is fixed tight to the bars of the cell since the light from the lamp
falls upon this page only from the shelf in the hallway, well out of my
reach. Even if I were to be answered by
the Most Holy God, he would not have been able to burn me out of here. The flame of the lamp never wavers, much less
answers me.
To
the left there had been a cellar window, now bricked up as far as I can
see. To the right was the second door,
just as locked as my cell door. There is
a pass-through in my door so that a tray can be rotated through in such a way
that I never touched the guard.
Outside
that hall door, that second locked door, is always a guard. They’d told me my guards were deaf and
mute. Whether they’d told the truth I
could not tell. They are disciplined
enough not to flinch if I made a sudden noise so perhaps they’d told the
truth. They... them... his wife, that muscle-bound warrior with
female parts and that dirty Cylak, who explained everything.
Cowards. They knew what a warrior I might be. They
knew enough not to try and fight me. If the milk-sop, sucking on his momma’s
teat, diaper swaddled, beloved, oh-so-perfect leader of their civilized world
was anything like me they were correct to be so very careful.
If
he were anything like me. That’s enough
to make me laugh. Who is to hear? I write that and lay my pen down and laugh
and laugh until I roll off my chair and onto the floor, holding myself together
with my arms. I laugh until I am tired,
then I lie on the floor, limp. Do I even
care what the low-born peasant guard thinks?
Master of Lightning, what nightmare
must I have done for this to happen to me?
I suspect that the much reviled Gods might exist since I am where I am.
I have no other explanation for this. My
tutor, dried up old stick, quick with a rod, always insisted that the simplest
explanation was the most likely.
How
else could I have come to this twisted, evil, benighted and Demon eaten world
where my Empire does not even exist?
No comments:
Post a Comment