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#Post#: 63--------------------------------------------------
Black Hart
By: WiShBo! Date: November 26, 2012, 12:13 pm
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by G.J. Lentz
“Boy!”
Reginald rolled his eyes. His knuckles grew pale as the blood
was flushed away by his vise like grip upon the piss pot. His
teeth ground like a stone-mill as he tried to contain the anger
that boiled. All day he had heard: “Boo-wee! Boo-wee!” He wasn’t
sure what he despised worse: the lack of speaking properly or
the old nag’s high-pitched, lispy cawing. Either way he fancied
cutting the old wench’s tongue out…and making her swallow the
damned thing.
He turned around and gave her a glare, he knew better, but today
he didn’t care. She was Old Nann, Older Nann truthfully, as she
had always been Old Nann since even before he was born nearly
sixteen years ago. He’d been referring to her as Old Nag for as
long as he could ever remember, or worse. She nagged and nagged,
and rarely ever had a nice thing to say-- or a compliment. She
always pissed and moaned: “nuffin twas ‘er right”, and if you
glared, rolled your eyes, or even so much as huffed a sigh of
displeasure, she would make life a living hell until she forgot
what she was mad at you for.
“Well done jus’ stand-ther lookin all serts-oh bothed,” Old Nan
fussed with a wave of her gnarled hand. She was almost like a
walking corpse: skin pale and blotched, hunched back, she had
but a few wisps of cob-web for hair, one good eye, and one good
tooth for that matter.
“What is it now, Old Nag?” Reginald asked with more than a bit
of venom in his tone.
He straightened his back as he stood from where he had been
emptying the piss pot. The King’s Piss Pot. He toward over the
old woman, and even for being almost sixteen years of age he was
a big boy: broad shoulders, thick limbs, powerful hands. He had
always been a rather robust boy, and years of labor had hardened
his body…and heart. He felt powerful to be of such an
intimidating size than most of his peers, and especially
compared to those who were older.
“Whatchoo jes cawd me, boo-wee?” Old Nan hissed and glared up at
him with her one good eye.
“I said, ‘what is it now Old Nan’,” he lied with a
fake-yet-most-sincere-looking smile of affection. “No sooner do
you send me for one thing, you’re calling for another. I’ve been
out from these duties as you well know, I’m the King’s Steward
not one of your little house slaves!” he hissed with barely
controlled rage. He had an awful temper, but it made him feel
powerful to unleash that anger- anger that was forever building
and seething behind the ever thinning walls of constraint he was
forced to practice.
“E’ry wun else get’n the sick boo-wee, same as His Gwace,” she
replied sternly and not having flinched a bit from Reginald’s
outburst. She was used to his temper-mentality, she had
more-or-less raised him since birth. She knew him for what he
was. “You aways foget you place, bastard!”
Reginald’s vision turned the same shade of blood red his face no
doubt bore. She had called him a bastard, and everyone knew how
he loathed hearing that word. His lividness had to be apparent,
yet the Old Nag went on and on. Soon her voice was drowned out
by the thumping of his heart and the ringing in his ears…then…
the voice. That dark and slippery voice called to him…Kill the
bitch Reggie, she has no place in what is to come…
“So special a boo-wee you thinks, cause you’s was squirted out
from tha King’s pecka! Aways thinkin you’s toogood fer this and
that, runnin you’s mouf and talkin down on folk. You think
juscuss the King gave you special attenshuns now and then that
you’s gonna get sumthin when he passes? King has own churdren,
all gurl, and that owny why you ever got the treatments you did
boo-wee. Owny reason why. Lords been havin bastards since
foreva, but none eva get to be prince and lord themselves. You
momma was but a yungin servant gurl the King fancied one evenin
affer too much ofda drink, and shit happens boo-wee. That was
what you was. King might prolly pass tonight and then what
boo-wee? Think him Lawd Urick that gonna marry Her Gwace the
King’s gurl, and benew King gonna like having bastard around
thinkin he is somebody? Who steward you gonna be then hmm?”
Reginald lost it. He bashed Old Nann upside her Old Head with
the King’s piss pot. Blood and gore oozed from her caved in
skull as her body slumped lifeless to the cold stone floor.
Before her bones had even settled he was kicking her in her
ugly-and-always-critical-face. It was like smashing rotting
gourds, her ancient brittle bones just gave away.
“I don’t give Seven Hells or Shits what you think you old
nagging bitch!” he growled between clenched teeth and he
continued to pummel her body. “I was born the son of the King,
and I am his only son. I am the heir; why else did he treat me
so well? Huh?! You don’t know the first thing about any of it
none of you do but you will…you will…after…tonight…you
will…you…all…will…”
Reginald finally stopped himself. He was still tense and full of
rage, but the storm was abating. He looked at the sack of meat
and bone that was Old Nann. He was arched over her, and the
pendant he had kept tucked behind his inner shirt dangled over
her body. It was mesmerizing. Its onyx gem seemed to throb with
a crimson glow that matched his hearts every beat. The Voice
beckoned to him again: That was satisfying. Was it not? The
rage, the power…life to death…
Reginald agreed- he did feel satisfied and powerful, and
exhilarated, almost giddy.
Dispose of the body, the time is upon you Reginald, your destiny
waits. It’s now or neeeeeVeeerrrrr!
She was the only “mother” he had ever known, but that wasn’t
really saying much. He had never cared for her, he could never
remember a time when he felt anything but disdain for the old
woman who looked after him. She had only ever berated him, never
had she held him, soothed him…never had she shown any respect
for him, for what he was. He was treated no better than any of
the other house children who grew up serving the royal
family…none of them could claim the King as their father.
So what that his mother had been nothing but a servant, it was
the father that mattered, and he had been sired from a king.
He felt no guilt for the life he just took. She was nothing but
a bag of bones before and still. Reginald dragged her corpse to
the loo-sloot. It was nothing more than a wooden box that
covered a hole. The hole was the opening of a small tunnel by
which the royal pee-and-poo was dumped. A pit lay far, far
below. Reginald knew it would be some yet before the pit would
be harvested for fertilization. He dumped Old Nan into the
loo-sloot. “Shit happens. Right, Old Nag?”
The body disposed of; Reginald cleaned up about the loo- just
enough to ensure that no one, for whatever reasons, would have
cause for any kind of concern for the time being. He really just
needed until tomorrow. Things were going to change real soon.
After tonight, nothing much would matter.
He surveyed his work and was turning for the door when something
caught his eye. He walked a few steps and knelt. It was a tooth.
It still had a bit of gore attached, its color was nearly as
weathered-yellow as the straw strewn about the stone floor; Old
Nann...Her one good tooth. Reginald smiled and pocketed the
tooth.
Outside of the loo someone was coming down from the floor above.
The loo was a tiny room on the far side of the castle’s
backside, only servants ever used these cramped and dirty
pathways, unless the castle was under siege, and the royals
would use these and other passageways not generally known.
Reginald knew a lot about the castle that was his home. He spent
hours as a child discovering its every nook and secret.
Sometimes, very late at night, his father- the King would walk
with him through the secret passages and tell him the old
stories of the Kings before. Why would the King bother if he did
not think him his son? Reginald shook the thought from his head;
he needn’t justify his birth right any longer, not even to
himself.
Qlaire trotted along the hallway towards him. He smiled at her.
She was a pretty thing, with dark brown hair and bright green
eyes. She had these slight freckles across her nose and cheeks,
as he had in his youth, and though she was a year or so older,
she still had her freckles. Some whispered that they were from
the same “stock”. They had the same eyes and hair, same shape of
nose, the same that they shared with the King. There wasn’t much
denying it, they took after the Princess Zareena who favored her
father as well. Looking so much alike, and akin to the King,
their only differences were that they all had different mothers
bare them into the world. That had to mean something. Surely it
did.
Reginald fancied Qlaire. It didn’t matter to him that they had
the same father; she was no more his sister than he was
Zareena’s brother. He took her once, and though he was drunk he
still knew what he desired and had taken. She hadn’t put up much
a fight, and afterwards he asked her if she knew and understood
what it meant to be bastard born, what they were supposed to be
to each other. She was a mute, but not a dummy. She had just
shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t care, it meant nothing to
her. She was a servant girl. He told her she could be a princess
if she wanted; her father was a King, after all. She laughed at
him, with her soundless and gaping mouth. He had given her a fat
lip and a black eye to also remember that night. Funny thing,
whenever they passed one another she was never afraid or ashamed
to look him in the eye. He never bothered her after that night.
In his own way, he respected her for that.
Qlaire met his eyes as she made for the loo. She had a piss pot
of her own. He stood in the front of the door, blocking her
passage. Qlaire rolled her eyes and motioned her lack of
amusement. She grunted and hooted what amounted to her saying,
“I don’t have time for your games!” He liked her sassy and
ballsy character.
Reginald slapped the piss pot from her hands. It went clanging
as its contents splattered the wall. Qlaire snorted and shook
her head. He grasped her shoulders and forced her to face him,
though she resisted.
“Listen to me,” he said sternly. “Old Nan has fallen ill; she
has the sick now too.” It was a lie, of course, but believable.
A lot of people were getting sick. A terrible pandemic had been
sweeping through the kingdom. Most people died within a
fortnight: the very young, the very old, mostly common folk. It
had people scared, peasants and nobles alike. The sickness
didn’t care who your father was.
“Qlaire,” Reginald continued. “Old Nan said that you are
in-charge of the House now, alright? Even if the sick doesn’t
kill her, she won’t be able to take charge of affairs, you know
how bad this thing is, and she is an old, old woman. Gods even
know how she lived this long but by her stubbornness.”
Qlaire nodded her understanding. She was very capable for
someone who could not speak. She had a way of noises and hand
motions to get her point across effectively. She had a bit of a
temper herself, it ran in the family. She could raise Seven
Hells when she wanted.
With Old Nan deep in the shit, someone needed to be in-charge of
household affairs, and he wanted to be sure that someone would
be Qlaire, someone he could control.
“Now go on and make sure everyone knows what is going on, Nan is
out sick, probably going to dead, you are in-charge,” he
reiterated to her. It would keep a lot of the staff out of his
hair long enough. Lord Ulrick would be riding in by early
morning if not late that evening, and he wanted his business
done before the pompous prick trotted in with his entourage.
Ulrick was to wed Zareena later in the spring, and most knew
that he would be king as King Harred did not leave a son behind-
a legitimate son. The marriage had been arranged years ago,
after Zareena’s mother passed in child birth. She had had a boy,
but still born. Reginald always knew it was the Gods way of
proving that he was the heir. He was the son. Harred had been
married before Queen Mira, Zareena’s mother. The former queen,
Elissa, had been arranged by Harred’s own father when he was
just a kid. She had been barren, couldn’t bare the king even so
much as a still born. So he found a new queen, who gave him
children, but all girls…A son is what a lord and a king desired,
needed…he had had a son all along, why couldn’t he, Reginald,
just be accepted for what he was and was meant to be? No one saw
it as he did, and it infuriated him.
Reginald had heard and read about the Laws of the Land. Over a
hundred years before some crazy king was at war with his own
lords. A treaty was written and signed to make peace, a treaty
that outlined the rights of lords and the king. Reginald could
never understand how there was any other power greater than a
king, but that was the way it had always been. One of the laws
demanded that if the king had not a legitimate born son, a
marriage could be made by way of a king’s daughter to a lord or
a lord’s son, and the reign would then pass as such until the
King’s grandson would come of age. Otherwise, by majority vote
of the Lords of the Land, a new king could be chosen, so long as
the heir was of noble fatherhood and of the realm, and of a
majority vote among said Lords. It said so in their own damned
laws: a son of noble fatherhood. Reginald’s father was the
damned King; fatherhood didn’t get much nobler than that.
For years since the announcement of the marriage of Lord Ulrick
and Princess Zareena, Reginald had planned and plotted. He went
to the King that day, and told him, “I am your son am I not? You
are King, why can’t I be accepted for what I am?” King Harred
struck Reginald across the face, knocking him to the floor.
“Don’t you ever speak to your King in such a manner, nor ever
speak of such matters again, bastard! You’ve been given a life
most other bastards could only dream of, and yet you dare think
to tell me my own business?”
Whatever fancies of love Reginald had held were dashed that day.
Whatever respect and acknowledgment he had hoped for had been
laid out upon the floor as he had been.
Reginald thought of that day often, and he dwelt upon that
seething anger he felt from it as he traversed the labyrinth of
service passageways to the King’s chambers. He stopped suddenly
for a moment, realizing he had left the piss pot in the loo, but
he giggled slightly and continued on his way, thinking: The King
could piss and shit himself this last night for all he cared.
Reginald had plotted and schemed. They were all going to get
their due by morning light. Old Nann had just been the first, a
rather impulsive start, Reginald had other plans for the Old
Nag, but it would all work out just fine in the end.
Reginald came upon the back entrance to the King’s chambers.
King Harred’s chambers took up the entirety of the south western
tower. Reginald came upon a break in the stone wall, coming to
stand in front of a large wooden section of the wall. Through a
peeping hole he scanned the room beyond, no one was there, as he
had expected. He pushed the giant wooden slab forward with his
weight. It swiveled inward and Reginald stepped into the study
room from behind the mammoth Iron Wood bookcase. He pushed it
back into place.
The King’s desk took up much of the room, situated at an angle
from the corner of the room; it too was made of Iron Wood, a
charcoal colored wood that was hard as stone. Where common wood
could be carved, Iron Wood had to be chiseled like the stone it
was akin to. It was as hard as stone, but as light as wood could
be, which made it a very luxurious and sought after material.
The desk was beautifully carved with reliefs and inlays of
various mythologies of the realm, though it commonly sported the
mighty stag, the sigil of the King’s realm: Hartland. The entire
room was a montage to the lore of the realm and the King’s love
for the hunt. Trophies and tapestries adorned the vast study of
the King.
Reginald went right to the desk, opened a drawer, tripped the
false bottom and retrieved a scroll. It bore the King’s wax
seal, and within the parchment bore the King’s own signature,
though not his own words. The Voice told Reginald one evening to
bare the amulet he wore to the King. The King fell into a
trance, and the Voice instructed Reginald to command the King to
write. Reginald had been rather reluctant to command anything to
the King. The pendant had some kind of power though, a power
Reginald feared and yearned. He had done as he was told and so
too did the King. When it was all said and done Reginald had
pissed his pants. He had just commanded the King to name him
heir and future king when Harred passed.
That very night the King had been stricken with what people
called the Sick. A terrible plague had swept the countryside and
the surrounding realms…the castle and city of Hartstone had made
measures to protect it-self, and there had not been, until the
past fortnight, any sign or news of an outbreak within the
citadels walls. No one would probably ever suspect or have any
cause to know, that the pestilence’s origin laid within the
mighty castle and walled citadel of Hartstone, like a carrier.
Scroll in hand, the pendant throbbed, and it spoke to Reginald
with great urgency. “To him, now, Reggie. Kill the King, take
his life in your hands and you will have the crown!”
“The King is severely ill with the Sick,” Reginald hissed out
loud. “No one expects him to last the night, he is, good as
dead.”
The familiar dread of doom and back racking pain gripped
Reginald. It was expressing its displeasure…whatever It was.
Reginald knew not, for the Voice- as he had been calling it- was
not very informative except for when it wanted its desires
fulfilled. Somehow though, Reginald had gained a sense of a
kindred spirit of sort with the amulet. He had been having
dreams ever since he found the amulet. More like night terrors,
though he often couldn’t seem to remember a whole lot of the
dreams, other than a lasting impression of emotions- rather than
that of visions. Whatever or whoever the Voice was, or had been,
it was powerful, and it was full of rage, and it was giving
Reginald the kingdom.
“You have to take the life to be King Reggie,” the Voice
demanded of him. “You are taking his life to make it your own.
Trust me Reggie; I’ve not failed you thus far now have I?”
No, Reginald thought. It surely had not. Everything it said or
had promised had been true, ever since he first wore the thing.
He had found it in a secret and long forgotten room on the
far-side of the castle months ago. He was snooping about, as he
often did, spying on everyone he found. He had thought he had
known all the passageways and cubbies…he could traverse the
castle like no one else, and he loved sneaking up on people, and
sneaking through rooms where and when he shouldn’t. One day he
was drawn to a section of wall he knew had passed hundreds of
times, a non-descript section of wall. Something beckoned to
him; something seemed to have come over him, taken over him that
day in that hall. He found a secret passage that led to a secret
chamber within the heart of the castle.
Inside the room, dusty and cobwebbed from untold generations of
disuse, a small black box had lain in the middle of the floor.
Open Me.
Reginald had opened it, and he found the pendant. It was blacker
than black, an onyx so deep and void it was unsettling.
Wear Me.
Reginald placed the pendant over his head, the amulet rested
upon his chest, and not cool to the touch as jewelry might be to
naked skin…rather it had been as cold as that of death. The next
thing Reginald knew he was back in his own chambers, his own
bed. He never could find that passage and room again, he had
tried. Before long the amulet was speaking to him, and he had a
lot more to busy himself with than some old and forgotten room.
“Kill the King and take his life for your own,” the amulet
commanded.
A flash of being seated upon the throne struck Reginald. The
crown placed upon his head, lords and ladies of the land bending
their knee to his rule…
Reginald walked out from the study to the hall. He entered the
King’s bedchamber. He was all alone.
Reginald stepped to the bed, the King, once mighty was but a
sack of rotting meat and bone. His once proud features were not
but gaunt. The King’s eyes were open but they stared out into
nothingness. Only the barest rise of his chest and the slight
wheeze that escaped his dried and cracked lips gave sign of
life.
Flashes of smothering the King with his pillow, strangling him
with his bare hands, caving his face in with his clenched fists,
or stabbing out his hart raced through Reginald’s mind. He felt,
for a flickering of a moment, a slight hesitance and sense of
remorse. The Voice laughed its deep and ethereal mocking.
Whatever fleeting emotions and notions Reginald had disappeared
in the void of the hate, the rage, and lust for power and
violence that coursed through his veins like boiling tar.
Reginald took one powerful hand and clenched the throat of the
King, his father. He squeezed and squeezed so hard he giggled
through clenched teeth at the thought of the King’s head popping
right off his frail neck. The King’s mouth motioned, but his
eyes never lost its gaze…they were affixed somewhere far, far
away. The King’s body jerked slightly, with what little energy
his putrefying muscles could exude as his being was starved of
precious air.
Reginald felt and heard the popping of the King’s neck. It was
done.
The amulet glowed and throbbed and its energy was so much more
powerful than he had ever felt before. It grew so cold that it
almost burned.
It was going to be a long and dark night about Hartstone.
“Long live the King,” the Voice whispered…
(c) G J Lentz
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