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It only takes four drops
to read a man's heart.
*****
"How long has he been
strapped in the chair?" The Bloodreader looked past me, or
at least I think she did, her eyelids squinting around
rheumy eyes. The guards behind her didn't answer and she
sighed at their impatience.
"He's cold. You'll have
to massage his arm now. I need a clear drop. A whole drop."
While one of the guards
painfully rubbed my bicep, she pulled out a glass tube, its
liquid white contents safely corked inside. Though she
treated the glass with the casual roughness of familiarity
while uncorking it, the level at the top of the tube never
changed. Some said the fluid within was milked from a secret
teat that only the Bloodreaders had, others said it was
their fermented saliva -- whichever it was, I didn't care,
only that it read me true and proved me sane.
Restraints on the
reading chair held me down with one arm pinned out against a
board. She set the reading tube down into its holder at the
end of this and then she pulled out a hairpin that doubled
as a needle. My hand clenched into a fist on its own.
"Have you got something
to hide?" she asked me, her voice rising.
"No." I splayed my
fingers out. "Let the truth be known."
"Good."
She plunged the needle
in deep, pulled it out, and the first drop of blood fell
down.
*****
The first drop gives the
lay of a man's heart. It falls until it hits the bottom, and
petal by petal, blossoms open like a flower.
*****
I was her Dark Queen's
loyal servant, one of the masses that followed her on our
wave of terror across the world. She commanded us from the
broad back of her three-headed bull, a whip in one hand, and
the Heart of the World in her other, a glowing green gem
that compelled us to action without question. We swung our
might at Duchies and Kingdoms and brought entire nations to
their knees. There was no end to our hunger, and our
depravities were as innumerable as they were unnamed.
She was a goddess, and
we were her servants. Her black armor covered her
completely, from her feet to the top of her head -- had
there not been snake-wrapped breasts hammered into it, we
would hardly have known she was female. Her faceplate was
articulated into a scowl, and the metal left only her eyes
uncovered, but also always unseen. Priests held up their
scalp-tied staffs as she walked by -- the rest of us merely
groveled.
I would have killed for
her. I indeed had. If someone had given me the world to cup
between my hands, I would have run to her to proffer it with
glee.
*****
The second drop shows
the changing. It sinks until suspended, takes quick shape,
and then disappears.
*****
I walked along the edge
of our encampment. The sun was low and when it disappeared,
taking its light with it, we would attack. Below us in a
valley too verdant for my charcoal-colored taste, sat a
village that would not exist by the time the sun rose again
tomorrow. A simple squad could take it -- perhaps even just
ten well armored, trained and mounted men. But the Dark
Queen always went where her army did and her army always
went in full.
My thoughts were always
so accustomed to her that thinking them on my own, now, is
still a novelty. On that evening though, I found myself
unfulfilled and possessed of a strange and frightening sense
of longing. I went out, hoping to find what I knew not,
perhaps a village girl or boy running back too late to their
home from some chore, a fragile person that I could run
through with the spear of my hand or my loins.
It might have been that
my worship of her had been truer than the rest. I think I
was chosen to witness what I saw next.
Walking without
thinking, I pushed my way through bushes and brambles, until
I came quietly to the edge of a shallow pool. In it, a woman
of extraordinary beauty was bathing. Her skin was as white
as the underside of a shell, and her black hair sank in
curls to meet the small of her back as she stood.
It was the first time
that I could remember seeing a woman without thinking of
death.
*****
The third drop offers
enlightenment. It lengthens itself, and spins as a disc or a
spear, hovering in place.
*****
The woman rose from the
water and saw me not. She walked to the shore away from me
and there seemed to meet what I first took for a lover.
"Take this." She offered
out an object to the waiting man. "Lead them. Lead them to
their doom. It is the beginning of the end for them, for now
the Bright King must have his day." And then she leaned in,
and sealed her words with a kiss.
As she stepped away, I
could see the truth. Standing there was the armor of the
Dark Queen, holding the Heart of the World in one hand, and
a whip in the other. And it turned and walked away, empty,
of its own accord.
"My Queen!" I yelled
from my hiding place -- and whether I meant to address the
armor, or the woman, I did not know.
She raised a white arm
and pointed at me, though her eyes were closed. "You cannot
know these things. Forget them, and move on."
I strode out into the
water, kicking up waves upon its surface. "What -- what has
happened here?"
A smile spread across
her face. "Nothing that has not happened a thousand times
before."
*****
The fourth drop tells
the end. It spreads out upon the top without submerging,
forming a meaning there that only a reader can decipher.
*****
"Do you see?" I asked
the reader. "Do you begin to understand?" I strained against
the confines of the chair. "It is all a lie -- no matter
which side we fight for, it is all the same to them. The
King, the Queen, their faces change, but the war is always
the same, and it is always us who dies!"
The Bloodreader grunted.
"I do see." She held up the tube, with my fluids mixed
therein, and spun it quickly -- whatever remained of my red
was subsumed by its white.
"There must be a way
out, a way to escape it." I fought against the chair,
rattling my head against its back.
"Bloodreader --" one of
the guards muttered.
"I know, the time
nears," she clucked at him and stood. "You may go now."
There was a pause behind
me, a murmur of quiet discourse. She heaved another sigh.
"Both of you. He's safely strapped, is he not?"
A guard came forward
enough for me to see him nod. "We don't want to miss the
wedding --"
"Then go already. I can
finish here alone."
They left me with her in
the dank cell they had confined me and my heresy to.
"Please. Tell me that it
is truly so." Even if it negated decades of my life, even if
it relegated my actions to have been no more than those of a
well-trained animal -- I needed to know that I was sane.
"It is true."
"Then why does no one
listen?"
"Their hearts are here
as yours was there -- filled with the sounds of the Bright
King's glory." She reached down to cup my chin with her
gnarled hand. "As soon your heart will be as well."
"But I want nothing to
do with him! I wish to be free, for myself, to be free!"
"And so you will be."
She took a step away from me, and her shoulders rolled back.
Age fell from her like a cloak, revealing the woman I had
seen bathing, the one that I had once called Queen. She
stared at me, through eyes too clouded to see. "You will be
free to do the right thing. Free to be my King."
The straps that had
bound me to the chair became undone, and I found that I
could rise. I rushed towards her, and she did not move. "Why
should I?"
"Because the Bright King
is doomed by a conscience, while the Dark Queen is not. As
my King, you will fight because you have to. The forces of
darkness left behind by me will ravage if you do not. You
will convince others to take up swords with your words,
until light beats dark anew. Though the souls killed are
different, the tide of blood must always be the same."
She held out a stone to
me, and it was blue, pulsing with power. "The Soul of the
World. Claim it, and marry me today, or I will win, and all
that you have known and everything else beyond will be
destroyed."
Had I not known -- had I
not seen -- had I not already killed --
I could not let the
world perish over my pride. I grabbed the stone from her
hand, and armor, blue as the sky, enveloped me, rising up
and over my body, but it did not cover my face. I would get
to see the consequences my actions had on others. "You
always win either way, Queen," I spat at her.
Her eyes cleared
finally, one green and one blue, and she smiled at me. "And
that is truth." |
