My Kingdom for My Daughter...

A King of the West encounters a strange man and an even stranger proposition on a train ride to the Middle Lands

Long before the reign of the Dark Magician Yensid in the Middle Lands, and longer still before John the Blind Seer took his seat in the North, a railed steam locomotive connected the kingdoms of the Intus Mundus. The locomotive ran from the Frost North all the way down to the South, which had not yet become the Ferens South and would not for some time to come.
            ‘Twas on a rainy afternoon that King Sebastian Rocklord sat on the locomotive, headed to the Middle Land Kingdom for the meeting of territory councilors, lost in the constant chuffing of the transportation, his deep thoughts, and the framed object that he held in his hairy and pudgy fingers.
            By the light of the cloudy, overcast day, King Sebastian looked with heartache at the woodblock portrait of his daughter, Princess Anna Rocklord. The artist, in servitude to the Rocklord court, had done an amazing job of capturing the princess’s freckled cheeks and the dimples at the corners of her small lips. The inking had brought to life Anna’s blond hair exactly as it had been and even the dark blue of her eyes had been almost perfect. Almost. No one could bring the life back into his daughter’s eyes, not the most talented artist, or the most merciful god.
            Sebastian ran his finger over the portrait and sighed shakily and mournfully as he remembered how, in one instant, his beautiful daughter had been taken from her. It had been the work of an assassin working for Lord Blackwood of the East who had delivered the single drop of poison in Anna’s evening tea. It had been the final act of the enemy kingdom against the Rocklords of the West. After that, tears still fresh in his eyes, Sebastian had sent his army to the East to collect Lord Blackwood’s head. But even the decapitation had done nothing to lift Sebastian’s heart. The head in the Hall of Foes in Castle Rocklord had not brought Anna back to him. Nothing would.
            Now, as the locomotive raced toward the Middle Land Kingdom, Sebastian sighed once again and muttered, “My kingdom for my daughter again.”
            “That can be arranged,” a smiling voice replied.
Sebastian looked up from the woodcutting and saw, from the seat in front of him, a man looking back with a grin on his face. He wore a black Magician’s cloak and, over his left eye, a patch that bore a Smiling Face.
            “What?” Sebastian asked, bewildered. Where had this man come from? Had he been sitting in front of the king the whole train ride? Sebastian tried to remember, but all that came to him was his mourning depression.
            “You said,” the man wiped a lock of greasy black hair from over his exposed eye. “‘My kingdom for my daughter again,’ did you not?”
            “Yes,” Sebastian nodded slowly. “But what is it to you? Who are you to eavesdrop on my business?”
            Though Sebastian spoke with authority, the mysterious man’s smile didn’t falter on his face.
            “I am the man who can make your wish true, should, of course, you mean what you said.”
            “Of course I mean it!” Sebastian cried out with a mixture of plead and anger. Whoever this man was, he was making a deep impact on the king.
            “You will renounce your kinghood for your daughter’s life back?” The man asked, ever grinning.
            “Yes, yes!”
The man brought up his hands, his fingers bejeweled with onyx and ebony rings, and laid them upon King Sebastian Rocklord’s forehead. He closed his eyes and hummed low and harsh under his breath.
            “What are you doing?” Sebastian asked, his voice shaking lightly and, as the last word left his mouth, the man took his hands away and stopped humming.
            “If you renounce your kinghood and kingdom at the council meeting in the Middle Lands, you’re daughter will be waiting for you when you return to the West.”
            “Who do I renounce to and pledge my allegiance?”
“King Wolfstag of the Lower East.” The man smiled.
            Sebastian jumped as if shocked by a terrible force. King Wolfstag! The son of Lord Blackwood’s uncle! The cousin of his late, sworn enemy!
            “Problem?” The stranger’s lower jaw shifted to the left of his upper as he grinned, giving his expression a mocking quality.
            Sebastian felt his protest against King Wolfstag on his tongue, but bit them back. It was hard for him to imagine bowing before the blood relative of his fallen enemy, but for a chance to embrace his daughter once again, he may have bowed to Blackwood himself.
            “No,” the king swallowed hard. “There is no problem. I shall bow before King Wolfstag at the council meeting. You swear upon the Gods that my daughter will be alive and well, waiting for me in the West when I return home?”
            “Upon the Gods,” the mysterious stranger grinned back. “She will be waiting for you.” And, with that, the man turned around in his seat, turning away from the future King That Was.
            Sebastian turned back to his woodcutting but, this time, with a sense of hope and love in place of the depression and mourning. And the reunion between he and Anna was the only thing that preoccupied his mind the rest of the trip to the Middle Lands, except for one moment, at the locomotive’s docking station, when he could not spot the mysterious man among the entirety of the passengers.
~
            At the meeting of territory councilors, before the Kings and Lords of the twelve kingdoms, on his knees before King Wolfstag, Sebastian Rocklord renounced his kingdom in the West and pledged allegiance to the new King of East and West. Though he knew he was doing this for his daughter’s return, Sebastian felt a twinge of regret as he passed on his crown  and his kingdom records to King Wolfstag, as the eleven on-looking territory holders murmured in surprise and amazement. Such an event was unprecedented in the civilized history of the Intus Mundus.
            When the locomotive arrived three days later, Sebastian boarded it as a privileged citizen of the East and Western Kingdom, and the symbolic kiss from King Wolfstag stinging on his cheek with physical regret.
            Again, he did not see the mysterious man with the Magician’s cloak and the Smiling Face eyepatch.
 ~
            Standing before the open gate of the Castle Rocklord That Was, the events of the meeting in the Middle Lands vanished from Sebastian’s mind and he felt renewal and reunion in the air. He walked forward, wondering vaguely what he and Anna would do and where they would go, when he was stopped dead in his tracks and his breath caught in his throat.
            There she stood, her blond hair rustling slightly in the breeze. She wore the dress that she had been buried in two years previous: her forest green, silk birthday dress that had been her mother’s before she had passed away nearly twenty years previous. She faced the castle as Sebastian stepped forward, opening his arms wide to take his daughter into an embrace.
            Several steps behind her, Anna turned as Sebastian’s traveling boots clopped once on the cobblestone path that led to the castle’s large fortified entrance. Once again, the King That Had Been’s breath caught in his voice, but only for a second before it was replaced by a shriek that signaled his mind breaking.
            Before him, no doubt, stood Anna, but she was no longer the beautiful Princess Rocklord. Her flesh was pale blue and her eyes sunken into her head, glowing a muddy yellow. Her lips and the dimples at their corners had been eaten away by maggots and worms, revealing brown and shattered teeth.
            As Sebastian stood there, unable to move, his broken and destroyed mind gave out one last thought:
            The man in the Magician’s cloak and Smiling Face eyepatch had brought his daughter back from the grave. And now she began to shamble toward him, her mouth and arms open to embrace her father one last time.

Reviews

[Daisy Orion]

this is good, I enjoyed reading it. You have talent.