Sequestering Evil

Feast of the Demon be clamoring upon thy door, the voice insinuated itself inside his weary mind. Feast in its omnipotence bestowing all the horrors you have wrought.

“Are you satisfied now, Your Majesty?” said the king’s wife. That brought Malaquert out of his dark reverie and he turned away from the window. Queen Vonaria’s face was an intricate etching of anxiety that made her appear older than her one and two score years; the war had been difficult on her. She had lost as much as anyone, he supposed, and being a mother, probably more. And while undeniably doleful, true grief had yet to assail her. Though it soon would. Now, she only called him “Your Majesty” out of spite.

“What would you have me say?” he asked her. “The other way would have been far worse.”

“Would it, Malaquert? Would it?” She scoffed. “Did your royal seers tell you that?”

“Yes, yes they did,” was his simple reply, as he went back to gazing out the window. From his vantage point high up in the castle’s utmost turret, he had an extraordinary view of the carnage. Though the inner bailey hadn’t been penetrated, the castle walls were a crumbling ruin in places where the enemy’s trebuchets had done their damage. But the combined forces of the Northern Alliance, Duke Praso’s scattered factions, had ultimately been unsuccessful against Malaquert’s ultimate weapon. In desperation, he had relied on something far more puissant than mere warriors’ loyalty and strength. The burning and carnage on the three visible horizons showed this all too well. For this had been a battle on the grandest of scales.

A dire Feast of the aeons which thou hast claimed as thy own.

Vonaria muttered something about how if his seers were so wise then why couldn’t they provide him with another option? A better option that would have taken less of a toll. But there had been no other alternative. Soon, with a quiet anger, she left, leaving him with his guilt and grief. Two of his three sons dead, his kingdom bathed in butchery . . . Little Prince Corby would have most likely perished as well had he been of battle-age. Now Malaquert wished he too had died on the field of honor with his oldest issue. But those days when a sovereign led his valiant warriors into battle had long since passed. Someone had to survive to pick up the pieces and lead the sovereignty onward.

Tired of gazing out upon the aftermath of the bloodshed, listening to the beleaguered cries in the distance, Malaquert took to walking the castle corridors. Though beyond mere fatigue, he found himself restless. Placing one foot in front of the other, he found, helped take his mind off his anguish, of the recoiling voice of his conscience. Usually the corridors were replete with stewards, pages, handmaidens, sundry other retainers. Now, save the occasional keep guard, many of whom had been reassigned to defend the inner bailey, the passageways were well-nigh empty. Although as he headed downward to the lower levels, he could hear sobbing from within the chambers of the lower echelons. Surely there wasn’t a creature in the kingdom this holocaust hadn’t affected.

The guilt assailed him fully now. Aye, victory, but at what cost? Pure pandemonium was what he’d unleashed. In the end his forces had won by only a small margin, and that margin being determined solely by their superior numbers. Once the evil had been unleashed, the brutal hacking had known no definitive opponent. Every blade was a foeman’s blade. It was brother against brother, pikeman against fellow knight-captain, as well as true opponent against intended adversary. Men who had sworn a blood oath to one another made their fellow compatriot’s life’s blood drain with shameless fervor. The slaughter had only abated when the malignancy had run its course.

He didn’t think he’d intended on it--though perhaps unintentionally he had--but soon he found himself at the entranceway to the mysterious catacombs beneath the castle. A icy bone-chill penetrated him as he crossed over into this seldom-frequented quarter of the keep. Malaquert hadn’t been here since he was a young boy and his father had shown him the monstrosity they kept sequestered in the lowest depths. He hadn’t even ventured here days ago when he’d finally resorted to the evil imprisoned below. Maybe that was why he came here now. The thought of having others do his dirty work was presently even more unsettling with all the blood of his countrymen on his hands. The blood of his sons . . .

Blood of thy sons taint only their father’s hands.

As he proceeded, the obligatory sentries of Magus Forturus’s mysterious order marked the interspersed alcoves, those few men, and the occasional woman, bowing solemnly, a few raising an eyebrow at his unexpected presence. With only a curt nod, he pressed onward through the dark, dank corridors whose walls were blackened in places by the well-placed torches that barely illuminated his way.

“Your Majesty,” came a voice from ahead. King Malaquert halted and peered down the slopping pathway. Promptly, Magus Forturus’s clever form hove into focus. Dressed in the mauve ceremonial robes of his order, he was a towering presence of ensorcellment. The king, who had always been regarded as cutting a tall, striking figure, had to stare up into the magus’s gimlet eyes. So tall was the wizard that his head nearly scraped the rough-hewn ceiling of the caves, a ceiling that was taller than one would’ve thought fitting in comparison to the narrow walls, as though to accommodate this great man of magic.

“Magus,” the king replied with a nod. “Why do I not find it strange that you were expecting me? Even when I scarcely knew I was coming myself.”

Forturus held Malaquert’s gaze in sway before answering. “Knowing the responsible ruler that you are,” he finally said, “I assumed you’d want to confront it.”

Confront it, thought the king. Surely this master of the most mysterious of orders would have a more elaborate epithet for the omnipotent malefactor than simply it. He raised an eyebrow, then offered only a simple nod.

Let darkness tear all asunder, ye who fail to heed thy ancient covenant.

As the magus led the way further down, he said, “Please allow me to express my deepest condolences, Your Majesty. Prince Tornor and Prince Varlaset were both very fine young men. They will be deeply mourned and greatly missed.”

“Thank you, Magus,” he told him. He was somewhat annoyed with the wizard’s reminder of his loss, but quickly realized the futility of the notion. Tornor and Varlaset’s deaths were now like painful bobbles in a boiling kettle, perpetually roiling to the surface of his mental anguish, forever reasserting themselves as markers of the devastation that was surely his own fault.

Soon they arrived at the chamber that held the pit containing the numinous entity. Positioned on the walls above the pit, the thirteen preternatural wards glowed a brilliant sanguine, pulsing out their aegis which kept the evil below at bay. Thirteen was more than a symbolic number here; this was technological magic of the highest order. If just one ward should fail, this massive wad of evil might again gain a foothold upon the world. A foothold that Malaquert had in the last few days helped...

And upon thine own hands the blood of innocents shall forever be.... He had to strain to hear this in his mind’s ear now. For some reason the voice of his conscience had abated somewhat, as though confronting the demon was slowly excising his own.

The king looked down upon the coagulating gook seething less than a dozen cubits beneath him. Darker than the most foreboding hour of night, the “creature,” if one could call it that, bubbled and belched with ghastly life. More than a creature actually, it had been called depravity incarnate, a malignancy more corrupt than even the wickedest notions locked in the hearts of the vilest men.

Malaquert breathed as shallowly as he could. The stench assailing his nasal passages could be compared to none other. No, that wasn’t true. He imagined that if he walked his kingdom in the sweltering days to come a similar stench would waft the lands, with death and decay as its impetus. It was so overpowering now, he had to swallow, twice, thrice, to force down the bile stinging the back of his throat. His eyes burned as well.

“Hideous, isn’t it, Sire,” Forturus said. “Would you like me to recount the full story?”

“The full story . . . ?”

“It’s origins,” the magus said. “Of how we tamed it.”

“No one ever ‘tames’ pure evil, Magus,” the king said. “Though one may use it for one’s own nefarious purposes.” He shook his head in anguish. And no, he didn’t want to hear the retelling of how the monstrosity had come to be immured here beneath the castle. Though he was sure Magus Forturus enjoyed regaling the few “privileged” visitors who came to see the monstrosity with the classical tale. Malaquert’s own father had accounted it to him when he was a boy, on the day he’d brought Malaquert here to behold it. Yes, the tale was a dramatic one. Of how a famous ancestor of theirs, King Querton the Great, had sent his battle wizards into the depths of Hell and returned with the scourge that had been inflicting horror upon the world of man since time immemorial. Now Malaquert wondered if when his kingly father had shown him the incarcerated entity it was because he knew that someday his son would be wrestling with a dilemma that only the entity before him could resolve.

“Please don’t blame yourself, Your Majesty,” Forturus said. “In the end there was nothing else to be done. You couldn’t let those Northern marauders overtake our homeland, could you?”

Malaquert continued to stare into the oozing sludge of intelligence gone awry. Or was it intelligent? Maybe it wasn’t even aware at all. He wondered if it knew it had killed four of the magus’s best novitiates who had each taken their turn climbing down into the pit. Only the fifth fellow had been successful in retrieving a bucketful of the primordial ooze. And a small bucketful at that. But that had been enough to defeat Duke Praso’s Northern Alliance. To set the horror into motion, with only those warded within the keep proper immune to it pernicious influence.

Let the blood of all mothers’ sons be forever upon thy hands, assaulted him anew. He thought once in its presence it might finally leave him be. A foolish notion, he now realized.

Finally, he said, “Yes, Magus, I know there was no other way, but that does not exonerate me from what I’ve done. It was my decision to release evil once again upon the world. We might have found a better way if only I would have been more circumspect.”

Forturus began to speak, but Malaquert stayed him with a raised hand. No, the decision had been his alone. No one could be blamed for the horror except him. He hoped his only surviving son, Prince Corby, would be able to rule the kingdom better when his turn came. Vonaria was a shrewd woman and would see to that. He gave one last thought to Tornor and Varlaset, both fine young princes as Magus Forturus had called them.

A dire Feast whose time has finally come.

With a stalwart expression on his grim face, he leapt into the malignancy below.