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From: Vivian Darkbloom <vdkblm-OBLITERATE-SPAM!@yahoo.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Sangrelysia - Chapter 9 {Mg+ magic}
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Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 09:10:09 -0500
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             (what ELSE will I need to add
               by the time I finish?)


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                         Sangrelysia - Chapter 9

                          by Vivian Darkbloom


   Long colorful banners unfurled and crackled in the cold sharpness
   of fresh daylight, as the sun strove to bring warmth to the land,
   penetrating the misty white haze which clung lustily to the
   golden-green meadows and blue-grey hillsides. Impatiently we
   awaited the start of a journey, the excitement and promise of the
   first steps.

   These preparations always seemed to take forever. Mentally, I
   rechecked the list, that I had everything I needed for the
   journey, and had done everything correctly to secure the tower.
   Anyone who came looking for the entrance would find only a blank
   wall. Well, except for Gwendolyn. She said she would feed the
   cat, and keep the spiderwebs and dust at bay, but I think she
   mostly wanted to snoop in my drawers. Of course I set up the cat
   door, so Rumple could get in and out. Hopefully nobody would be
   too alarmed to see a cat appear from, or vanish into, a solid
   wall.

   My chocolate mare paced and snorted across the dewy golden-green
   meadow, porters languorously checked and re-checked that luggage
   was loaded and fastened properly. Choruses of birds chattered
   gleefully, calling, answering, bickering from high in surrounding
   branches.

   The princess would ride in the carriage, with all of her stuff,
   and the girls-in-waiting. The rest of us would revel in the
   breeze, or suffer the elements, depending.

   "We can't go around the other way. It would take an extra week,"
   Roderick was telling me in his thick Scottish brogue.

   I frowned, leaning on my staff, studying the map that lay spread
   out on one of the luggage trunks. Reaching into my pocket, I felt
   the cold smooth roundness of the crystalline globe. In another
   pocket, I found an amber vial. I pulled it out and undid the
   stopper, extracting a pinch, and dusting the map with a
   sprinkling trace of powder.

   For a brief moment, the powder glittered and settled, then the
   map seemingly came to life, animated energies and colors swirling
   faintly for the eyes that could discern them.

   "See that?" I opened my palm over the slithering shadows that
   spread over the forest. A shiver ran down my spine, and not from
   the bracing morning chill that lifted even as we spoke.

   He cocked his head this way and that. "Fancy shadows on the map,
   eh?"

   "Vision occluded by magic. Something's afoot in there, and it
   can't be good. Someone's hiding something."

   "Well." With a clatter, he released and unsheathed his heavy,
   razor-edged sword, to set the air whistling with lightning speed
   on all sides in dazzling slashes, before he restored it to his
   scabbard. "Don't worry, sir. That's what I'm about here, to keep
   ye all safe."

   Silently, I remained unconvinced.

   Roderick sighed. "It's a three day journey through the woods, or
   a week and a half the round-about way. I can't justify goin' the
   long way, just from some shadows on the map. Don't worry lad,
   whatever or whoever it is, we'll rout `em out and send `em
   scurrying on their way!"

   I wasn't so sure, but there wasn't much to be done about it. It
   was as if we were being deliberately set up, to fall into a trap.

   The murmur of conversation picked up as King George arrived,
   surrounded by a crowd of townfolk, practically the whole
   population. The cocksure King posed pompously as usual, flashing
   his standard idiotic grin at the group of surrounding sycophants.

   Widely suspected it was, that his tiny clique of trusted
   followers had all either been blackmailed or bribed with
   unaccounted-for gold from the Royal Treasury, poisoned by magic
   and potions, or brainwashed and battered by "training sessions"
   that robbed them of sleep and reasoning ability. Ridiculous empty
   smiles pasted onto their faces, they walked like zombies,
   parroting mindless slogans and platitudes, like a harsh, hollow
   echo chamber, a blitz of cheering at the king's every mangled,
   bungled word.

   Apart from the drooling sycophant clique, all ages from the town
   and castle were represented in the sendoff, old and young, women
   and men strolling together, boys and girls running and chasing
   each other in playful laughter, grandmothers and grandfathers
   with canes.

   A trio of bugles went off. "Hear ye, hear ye," proclaimed the
   uniformed page. "The King will now speak a pronouncement." The
   king had mounted a stage high above the people, festooned with
   banners in the green, purple and crimson of Sangrelysia.

   I spotted one of the young sycophants crouching in the crowd as
   inconspicuously as possible before the king, holding the gigantic
   Royal speech-prompter scroll.

   The drooling sycophants cheered wildly as the King waved, and the
   rest of the crowd listlessly followed suit.

   "Fair people of our wondrous land, we gather today celebrate the
   beginning of a voyage. . ." blah, blah, blah. Next to the king
   high up on the platform, I spotted evil nephew Karl, whom the
   king wanted to see succeed him to the throne. The nephew seemed
   charming enough, but behind the the disarmingly vacant smile
   lurked a cold and cruel heart of pitiless selfish shrewdness. I
   often speculated that the poisoning of the princess had been
   motivated by the desire to secure for Karl the position of
   next-in-line, that perhaps it was Karl himself who had
   administered the fatal drops.

   "I wonder how the King's dog is getting on," I wondered aloud, to
   nobody in particular.

   Nearby, a man heard me and laughed. "Kicked the bucket, 'e did.
   The king promised a complete and thorough investigation. Can't
   imagine why, though. Thing was a bloody yapping pest, y'ask me."

   Shortly I heard a scattering of applause, and the king descended
   to cross the sea of people towards us, surrounded by grim
   expressionless brawny knights in chainmail and grey uniforms.

   I leaned over and rapped on the ornate door of the carriage,
   wherein Sylvia and her girls bounced around, giggling. "Fair
   warning, the King's about to come over to see you off," I called
   out.

   The crimson curtain flew back with a jerk in the little side
   window, and Sylvia's head popped out with a particular grin.
   Carriage or seraglio? I wondered. Her cute little face
   disappeared again, but the crowd had seen it, and now was
   stirring, moving to gather, encircling us.

   A woman approached clad from head to foot in cream-colored white.
   Wrapped about her head, she wore a plain white shawl that
   concealed all of her hair. She bore straight in my direction, not
   swiftly, but with solemn determination.

   She arrived and stood before me. Enormous steel-grey eyes,
   clear-thinking and calm, gazed deep into my soul. "My son died in
   battle, in the Clymerian war."

   "I'm so sorry," I replied.

   We stood in apparent stillness, but my heartbeat surged, my mind
   raced. The thick, humid air of the valley pressed down, stifling,
   suffocating.

   "Where is my Queen?" demanded the grieving mother, voice barely
   above a whisper. "Where are King Hieronymus and Queen Megan? We
   never used to have these senseless battles, all the dreadful
   wounds and suffering, the pointless killing."

   Staring into her enormous eyes, I could see reflections of the
   shadows that grew long across the land, evil spreading its inky
   tendrils through pure water, smothering clarity until all was
   polluted with opaqueness of submission, greed and suffering, the
   tail-chasing affliction of fear-driven power-lust.

   I reached out cautiously and placed my hand her shoulder.
   "Believe me, I feel exactly the same," I replied quietly.

   "Then why? . . ."

   An unpleasantly familiar voice rasped its unwelcome way into the
   conversation: "Send her back to the kitchen, with a broom. Where
   she belongs." King George had arrived. "How could a mere woman
   possibly understand the intrifacations of war?"

   His sycophants chortled and guffawed. Neither I nor the woman in
   white acknowledged the King and his minions. In our silence,
   facing eye to eye, I could see that she had begun to understand
   my sorrow, had noticed our shared sense of loss.

   Why indeed, the newfound delight in killing, across the land?
   From a people who had known no wars in remembered history?
   Perhaps it was a repressed shadow that had lurked unseen and
   ignored below the surface?

   What had gone wrong with the established ways and wisdom? It was
   question that deserved an answer.

   Perhaps it was, simply, the invasion of intoxicating poison from
   the mundane world, like a virus in the bloodstream, a cancer
   spreading over a healthy body, the impulses of greed and fear.

   Perhaps it was because the dragon had been subdued (how had that
   happened, anyway?), because our mighty guardian against the
   forces of unimaginativeness had been crippled, making way for the
   slime to ooze across the border from the lands without magic,
   polluting our lands with their dull and plodding ways.

   More importantly, what could be done now, to eradicate it, to
   send the gruesome affliction into permanent remission? To cleanse
   the land such an awful stain?

   Nothing matched war, for turning morality on its head; for
   reversing the position of right and wrong, for lauding harm and
   death, cursing life and healing. So where was the way out? Now
   the cycle had begun, how to break a vicious endless loop of
   vengeance and returned wrongs?

   As George puffed and posed at the center of it, I felt a sense of
   loathing and dread in my core. It was so wrong for this
   disgusting petty tyrant to wear the colors of my peaceful land.
   There he was, like an awful dream, the filthy giant cockroach
   rallying his followers.

   I raised my voice: "I think it's time for the princess to come
   out and bid the crowd farewell."

   The crowd exchanged glances, then started up chanting. "Princess,
   princess. . ." Quietly at first, then gaining in volume and
   boisterousness: "Princess, princess, princess. . ." The king's
   sycophants alone were silent, vastly outnumbered by the
   townspeople of all ages, whose clamor increased.

   My princess, being of regal blood, raised in a family of royalty,
   and just generally being a glutton for public attention, knew her
   dramatic timing. Precisely when the energy of the crowd had
   peaked and had begun to level off, the door to the carriage
   opened, and she emerged to perch proudly on the top step.

   The chant turned to: "Speech, speech, speech!" and finally, I
   helped to hoist her up to stand on the driver's seat, where she
   could be seen.

   With endearing cuteness, but yet a calm confidence that belied
   suave certainty, with even perhaps a touch of wisdom beyond her
   years, she raised her hand in the air to silence the crowd. I
   knew that, whatever she did, they would love her, the remaining
   symbol of the years of past prosperity that seemed to be now
   sinking gradually in the mire.

   Absolute silence reigned. I heard the gentle flapping of the
   banners, the birdcalls, the faint sound of air gently flowing in
   and out through my nostrils.

   "People of Sangrelysia," she began, "Little people with great
   spirit, I know what it feels like to be little. I may be just a
   little girl, but I can see the suffering of the land, our land,
   under the shadows of wars and battles. And I miss my mom and dad,
   Queen Megan and King Hieronymus. I know in my heart they're still
   alive, and I really hope someday they'll return. Until then, I
   promise I'll do my best to continue with the things they way they
   would have wanted, to put back peace and harmony and loving for
   all. So long everyone, and I love you all!"

   A collective moment of silence, and exhalation -- everyone had
   been holding their breath -- then a deafening roar of applause
   and shouts and shrieks and whistles from all around, smiles and
   exchanged glances, reclaimed hopefulness. This was what they had
   come for, the moment that made it worth dragging themselves out
   of bed and making it down here so early. The noise and cheering
   continued as I helped Sylvia back down into the carriage, then
   mounted my chocolate mare, and with a thunderous peat- and
   dust-raising clopping and clattering, the entourage set forth on
   our journey.

   Glancing back, in the middle of the enthusiastic flag-waving
   crowd, I saw the King smirking unpleasantly at us, an expression
   dripping with shadows similar to the ones I had seen slithering
   across the map.

   He disappeared into the crowd, which in turn receded into the
   misty haze of the distance as we followed the road, underneath
   the ever-traveling sun that followed its own path across the sky.


                                                to be continued. . .

  _______________________________________________________


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