The King's Concubine

Chapter 12

“Your majesty,” Orphen began, following the king out of River Forest, Serena’s lifeless body held in his arms, the dagger that came from her hidden in the same sheath along with his sword, “is it wise to go to war with the dragon king for a forest keep?”

Nicholas stopped walking and turned on the young king before him. He gazed at him, and though Nicholas was not a tall figurehead, he was an imposing one. His eyes swept over Orphen, the taller of the two and nearly scarier in looks. It was Nicholas’s demure visage that kept him in the darkness and shadows and left Orphen light years behind him. “You are a king, you never say ‘your majesty’ even if I am the high king,” Nicholas reprimanded, “and besides, do not worry about the wars I am starting right now when you have a girl to save.”

“You said-”

“I’m a vampire,” Nicholas snorted, “you should never believe my word, whether I am your ally or not.”

“Why are you helping me?” Orphen asked. “I’m a king who swindled my way to the top. I was not meant to be king of this country, I was never meant to be king at all, and I have now spurned the one woman who helped me get to the top.”

“You have spurned her before,” Nicholas shrugged, leading Orphen towards the village that Orphen ruled over.

“You know the story,” Orphen said quietly, hugging Serena’s limp body against his chest. He wanted to squeeze the life back into her. He had been so blinded by his hatred of his mother that he never stopped to see the girl that was below him. He never opened his eyes wide enough to realize she was an entirely different breed of being, not some half-breed like the people in the River Forest. She was… exceptional.

“I do not know the story,” Nicholas said in that quiet demeanor that held no emotion. “I know the truth, King Orphen. I know how you came to be king, who lead you there, and what has happened until now to bring you to this position.”

“Is my life so interesting?” Orphen asked.

“Hardly,” the high king snorted. “I have been lead here not for you, young elf king, but for the girl you cradle in your arms whom you failed to protect. Actually, if I am correct, you’re the one who did the most damage to her.”

“How can I be the one who did the most?” Orphen nearly bit the high king’s head off with his angry words. “She is dead.”

“Death is changeable given the right actions and the right amount of time.” Nicholas never glanced once to make sure Orphen was still following. Orphen knew the king did not save them for no purpose or because he was bored, though after several thousand years he must have been bored with life by now. Orphen was just afraid to find out the reasoning behind the savior.

“Here…” Nicholas pushed open the door to a small dried up hut that had to be the most dilapidated building Orphen had ever seen, and that was saying a lot for a man who had run away from starvation and peasanthood to be a bandit. The boards were loose and one good storm would have pushed the hovel over, and still it stood, outlasting many winters. Nicholas walked in without a formal invitation, though being the high king who needed one? Orphen took that as a sign and followed inside, completely shocked to find the décor extravagantly outnumbering even some of the more common rooms used in the palace. From the inside no one would have known the roof needed work or that the floorboards should have been coming up.

“It does not feel right in here,” Orphen said quietly. His skin was crawling with an out of place feeling, trapping itself under his skin, electrifying an already charged body. He felt himself hugging Serena’s body even closer and wondered if it was protection of her, or himself.

“Well, your majesties, how good to see you,” a deep voice said from the back of the room. The room was small, the size that the house appeared from the outside, so where the shadowed figure came from kept Orphen puzzled for the rest of his life, though later he would just suspect the magic that was out there. Orphen, despite all of his years and traveling, had stayed as far away from magic as possible. Visionaries were one thing, vampires even he could handle, but people like this one, coming from the shadows, and like the dragon king, they scared him.

The shadow took shape, and shape became shadow, while standing before Orphen was a man, or he suspected a man, but all he truly saw was blackness. The figure was draped in a black cloak, a cloak so perfectly placed on the shadow’s body that only blackness was visible. Even looking into the hood there was only blackness. For an instant, a quick one, Orphen suspected he saw a flash of silver, then it was gone.

“I am The Enchanter,” the man claimed in a deep voice filled with something slick and slippery that reminded Orphen of a snake. He disliked and did not trust the man before him, but that was not for him to judge. If this man could save Serena, in any way, then he was worthy of all hopes and dreams and praise.

“I am-”

“I know who you are,” the Enchanter cut Orphen off, “or did you not catch my greeting earlier.”

Orphen stirred. Did this ‘enchanter’ not realize with whom he spoke? Orphen had cut men like this down to win his kingdom, he would not hesitate to slice this man in half… after he had done the deed of rescuing Serena.

“Please, help her,” was all Orphen choked out. He cursed himself at how weak and pathetic his voice sounded, he was very aware how close he was to pleading for her life. He could not remember when he had discovered how much the visionary’s daughter had meant everything to him, but when the dagger had stolen her life all he knew was his love for her.

“It comes at a price,” the Enchanter sighed. “Everything always comes at a price.”

Nicholas sat quietly to the side, making no comment or move to help the fellow king. Orphen knew this man could easily take everything from Orphen, the same way Orphen could take everything away from The Enchanter. It was a terrible balance of power and Orphen hated to play the games of politics and fealty when he neither had the upper hand or a plan.

“What is the price you ask?” Orphen asked hesitantly.

The Enchanter smiled, and though Orphen did not see it, he felt it. It was then he realized The Enchanter had powers that Orphen had not been aware of. Something stirred in the back of his mind and he suddenly felt chilled. This power was stronger than anything Lena had ever promised him.

“My price is simple,” The Enchanter said, “I will return this girl’s soul to her, I will heal the mortal wound, but I want the other souls that the dagger contains. Oh, and when this girl comes back to life, she will live for as long as you do, her life still tied to your own, but like your own life, she will never be able to carry a child.”

“Children mean very little to me,” Orphen huffed. “I just want the girl back, you can have all you ask for.”

The Enchanter shook his head slowly. “You do not realize what having no children will mean for a king. You will have no heir and that will mean that people will be more willing to kill you, for no one will succeed you on the throne. Those full of greed and full of need will want you dead, and they can do that by killing her, for as I said, your lives are tied together. You will be as susceptible as she. You are only as strong as your weakest link, and she will be considerably weak.”

“Are you trying to convince me that what I am asking for is wrong?” Orphen hugged Serena closer to him.

“No, I am only telling you what I see for you and your future.”

Orphen snorted. “Another visionary I do not need.”

The Enchanter crossed his arms across his chest, thinking. “You are telling me she means more to you than your kingdom?”

This Orphen could not immediately answer with a yes. His need and desire for her was greed, lust, and this want of saving himself. Without her Lena had an even larger advantage over him. Without Serena he was a vessel, a strong one, but he would not have the upper hand in a fight. He would lose without Serena. He wanted to save her for his kingdom, to run his kingdom to the heavens, to become even stronger than Nicholas one day.

“Would you give up your kingdom for her, Your Majesty?” the Enchanter was laughing. Why would he taunt the king when he seemed to desire the souls that were hidden within the dagger?

“You will take as much as I am willing to give,” Orphen wagered. “I am not willing to give you any more than the rest of the souls within the dagger.”

“You will not lose sleep wondering what I have done with them?” A pure white hand reached out slightly from beneath the shadowed cloaks, ready to grasp the dagger secured at Orphen’s waist. Orphen knew desire when he saw it, even if it was hidden in the shadows and depths of a cloak.

Orphen wagered correctly. The Enchanter would have taken as much as he could out of the king, but what he desired more than anything was the dagger. Orphen should have felt a moral obligation to the souls, he should have protected them from the grotesque being hiding under the cloak. He would not. He was more important, Serena was more important.

“No, I will never think of those souls again if you save Serena,” he promised.

The Enchanter reached out, but not for the dagger. He slowly pulled Serena from Orphen’s arms. Orphen was almost unwilling to release her, his grip tightened on her, afraid. “She will only hurt for a moment,” The Enchanter promised the king. “She will be returned to you in a better condition than this.”

The phrasing of the words was not lost on Orphen. The Enchanter was telling him, without truly wording it, that Serena’s life would never be the same. Would her visionary abilities be returned to her or would she lose all magic as well? Was she worth saving if she was not a visionary? Was this eternal link going to be worth the sacrifices?

Orphen was not allowed the time to methodically think over what he was doing. Sacrificing the dagger over to this man known only as The Enchanter, Serena’s body laid out on a table covered in red velvet drapery, the opulence of magic began. Hundreds of souls swirled within the gems on the dagger. The strongest souls had taken over the gems themselves while the weaker souls had resided in the silver blade. One particular soul, a shining violet and soft blue aura, floated towards Serena’s body. Orphen sensed her essence before she even returned to her body.

The next few moments were almost out of a horror story that Orphen’s father had used to tell him before bed to toughen him up, that was years before Orphen had taken his own father’s life to help bring about his own ambitions. Serena’s eyes were startled open and her mouth opened in a silent scream, her voice had not yet returned. No, it was there, she just could form no sound. Her lungs had been punctured, the whistling sound her heard was her screaming, the sound coming through the gaping wound on her chest. The Enchanter had never promised her no pain, he had promised it would be quick. The Enchanter was not being quick enough.

“Save her!” Orphen screamed at the man, reaching for his sword when The Enchanter only stared in fascination at the souls that were flying out of the dagger and about the room, taking refuge in jars, pulled to these vials of glass. They would become Djinn, beings not unlike genies. He was using them, creating new people out of them, and they were willingly capturing themselves within their glass caverns. “Save her now!” The sword was upon The Enchanter’s throat, the hood falling back to reveal the silver and white being beneath, a stray white tentacle around his neck sliding down to hide in the cloaks of darkness. Orphen stepped back, terrified, horrified, and with the desire to cut this enchanter down, but not before he saved Serena from her pain.

“You have one last chance, Enchanter,” Orphen snarled at the man before him. “Save her or your soul will be joining the rest of the bottled beings.”

“Orphen.” Orphen turned his head only slightly to the high king who had finally decided to speak. Nicholas straightened his back and shook his head. “He never promised you she would not feel pain.”

“He is letting her suffer so he can watch the pretty colors of the souls,” Orphen snarled at the king, a mistake made seldom. Nicholas’s eyes narrowed and Orphen trudged on. “He knows the souls will find their rightful places, Serena is the most important thing in this room right now and if he does not, immediately, save her I will have both of your heads.”

Nicholas laughed and with that laugh the room rumbled. Even The Enchanter took a small step back in fear of Nicholas’s wrath. The high king stepped forward, his face suddenly serious, the laughter still echoing around him, but cruelly. Orphen had never known a vampire to have so much power, and yet there he was, controlling an entire room. Even the dead stopped floating to their jars and Serena’s lips fell closed as the darkness enshrouded the entire room.

“Threaten me again, King Orphen, and you will find none in this room will survive it.” Nicholas seemed large, larger than life. Orphen shriveled back and his hand shook on his sword. He nearly dropped the heavy metal to the floor, and though he saved it from clanging against the ground he did pull it from The Enchanter’s throat.

A burst of color shot through the room, so sudden it was like a flash of lightning. When Orphen could see once more Serena was sitting up on the table, breathing heavily, but there was something odd about her. Her eyes were unblinking. Her pupils gone. All that showed from her eyes was a blank slate of a purplish blue. Her aura, her color, was filling her eyes. She turned her head to Orphen and cried out, “Orphen!” in a voice that should have positively been racked with emotion, and it was. It was her face, however, that belied any emotion. She was blank, a complete blank slate, like her eyes. She was jumping off of the table, running to him, rushing into the arms of a man she loathed, and they embraced tightly, and the whole time her face never changed.

The Enchanter was staring at Nicholas with a cold expression before he remembered himself and pulled up his hood. He was once more surrounded by his darkness and in his comfortable place of being. Orphen barely noticed that the souls, the ones The Enchanter had worked so hard to gain, were disappearing from the jars. The Enchanter had done nothing, it had all been Nicholas’s power.

“You berated him for being greedy,” the high king was saying to the magician in the corner. “And yet you forgot there was a girl in agony on your table. I came to you for help, but I guess I had to do it myself.”

“Why are you here, high king?” The Enchanter hissed. “If you would not let me work my magic, what was the purpose of coming here?”

Orphen felt Serena’s shoulders shaking with her sobs and he turned her face to his. He was still shocked to see the lack of emotion on her face, though tears did stream down her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to her.

“The curse that you had brought on my mother has been activated.” Serena’s words were dull and filled with no emotion. Orphen took her by the shoulders and tried his hardest not to be repelled. This girl was in the midst of a vision, and she had only been alive less than five minutes. Magic swirled around her and Nicholas and The Enchanter ceased their arguing to watch the girl.

“You worked magic,” Nicholas hissed at The Enchanter. “You worked the magic I wished you to. She has been brought back to the state she was in before she died, bound to the king, forced to only answer what he asks, to only give her answers to him. And yet, you took away her emotional face, so she will always be a blank slate. No one will ever know if she sees a vision, no person around the king will hear her words without the king specifically asking her to tell them. The king will have to be on constant vigil, unless it directly relates to him, in which time she can speak freely.”

“Serena,” Orphen said, looking into blank, dull sheathed eyes. “The curse was a lie, I never set a real curse on her, I could not, and she knew it. She was using you as a ploy the whole time.”

“Your words were true, Elf King,” Serena’s words were empty. She used his true title, Elf King, the first to call him that to his face in years, though he had always regarded himself as so. “Lena, Visionary of River Forest, will die. In so dying she will set out her own curse, a curse that will destroy the last dragons.”

Death curses are a tricky thing. Orphen’s curse, said in jest for he had no magical powers, just incredible strength, speed, and perception, was words given to him by a magician, lesser in power than either Nicholas or The Enchanter, though they were two greats of the world. Orphen had asked for Lena’s visions to continue, but he wished not to have Lena. He had played with the curse and used words that made her eyes go wide, and then she smirked, a knowing smirk. He knew the curse had not worked and still she had grabbed her little girl by the hand and shoved her towards Orphen, speaking harshly, “She is yours until her twenty-first birthday,” and snarling as he turned his back on her, dragging the miniature visionary behind him.

His curse had been that should Lena betray him beyond repair, if Lena should purposefully use her powers and strength against him, she would die a writhing painful death that would last until the full moon. If the night was a full moon she would die quickly, if it was just as the dark moon she would die for days. Nothing else would kill her, poison, stabbing, it would only enthrall her more with pain. He did not believe the curse would work, but if Serena said it had it…

“Wait, she is cursing the dragon race?” he asked of her frantically. “For what cause?”

“She had a vision, long ago,” Serena spoke in that same dull voice, same blank face, but her hands were fluttering about her, hurried, frantic. “In the vision the dragon king came out of the ashes and turned the continent into something new, something of his own visions. She saw herself by his side, helping him through, but that is only if that vision were to come true. If she were to die the dragon king would use his strength differently. He would… he would…” she trailed off. “It hurts; I can not see the vision. I just know that Lena, the Visionary, fears the dragon race without her. If she fears it, it is terrifying. She believes if she dies it would be better to kill them all.”

Serena’s eyes were leaking tears once more. Orphen watched her carefully. He knew not what to say now. By setting off a curse he had never believed in Lena’s vision was now coming true.

A vision she had known there was another path for. She had lead him down the path of fear deliberately.

“When is the next full moon?” He asked of anyone who would answer.

“It is in two nights,” King Nicholas answered. Orphen should have figured that the high king, the vampire king of kings, would know when the next moon is.

“Serena, I have to bring you back to the castle,” Orphen said quickly, lifting the crying visionary to her delicate feet.

“No, Orphen, you can not.” Serena’s hands gripped his sleeves selfishly and pulled him closer. “I know what you plan to do, and Nicholas, high king of all kings, will go with you. I do not see it boding well.”

“I can stop her curse if I can kill her before the full moon,” Serena gripped him tighter, even as he tried to disengage her from his coat. “You will not succeed. There is no hope in this mission, your majesty.”

“If the dragon race falls…” This from Nicholas, a trailed off sentence filled with an emotion no one should have heard from the high king. The dragon race was not the race to rule them all, but it was the mysticism that kept the world in balance. “Bring Serena with us, we will need her.”

“I will go along,” The Enchanter spoke from his corner, suddenly again interested in something besides the loss of the souls he had tried hard to harvest. What had happened to them when Nicholas had worked a magic a vampire should not have was unimaginable to Orphen, and also, the least of his detrimental worries.

Orphen glanced to Serena and when she did not speak he said, “Do you see The Enchanter going with us?”

Serena said, blankly, flatly, “I see him coming with us, to die. If he remains he will live for us to meet him again, in a new world… Destiny has been set, and though we go, we will not win…”

Orphen sighed and Nicholas gripped the young girl and began pushing her out of the hut, leaving The Enchanter staring in awe at the impressive powers encased in a being who could only answer to one man. “We must try,” Nicholas insisted.

“We will not win.”