Chapter 4 - The Princess and the Dead King

Maria couldn’t quite tell how exactly the carriages managed to move through the dense forest. It seemed to her like the trees parted to escape; the terror of the skeletons compelling the stalwart trees to move. Before long they left the woods and out before them stretched miles of bare, cracked earth. By now the sun was setting and soon the darkness of night covered the land like a mist. Phantoms played before Maria’s eyes; tricks of the dim light. Her skeletal captors now appeared even more fearsome than they had under the sun, their dark eye sockets even more clouded and their grins more mirthless.

Maria shut her eyes and found somehow that she awoke the next morning to the first rays of a red sun shining over the horizon. The landscape around her was no longer entirely empty; low hills were in the distance, the sun shining from between two of their slopes. In the direction they were headed, off in the distance, there was a city of black and gray brick—at least Maria assumed it was a city. There were far too many buildings for a hamlet or village but it lacked an outer wall; even small villages had some form of wall in Zanlar, often wooden and frequently repaired, but the cities had sturdy walls of thick stone and gates of hardy wood. Maria had been taught that the walls were imbued by blessings of the Goddess of Strength, whose magic deterred all but the boldest fey. The skeletons would have little need of fey repellent if they lived in such a desolate land, Maria determined, though she still found it odd that there was no indication of walls that once were. Surely in the fabled time of ages past when Hadam was an empire of the living they would have needed some protection?

A few hours later, after arriving in the city, Maria was led before the skeleton king. She was removed from the cage—oh how she had wished to be free of it after all these days, but she felt that she would not be parted from it as long as she would like—and her hands were tied behind her. Guards took up stations on either side of her and grabbed her upper arms. The skeleton captain she had spoken to before walked in front of them and thus she was led into a long dark chamber. Streams of light fell from arched windows far above but otherwise the room was sparsely lit. A single red torch hung on the far wall, its light falling onto a pool of water that was inset before the tall throne.

A hunched figure sat upon the throne and it rose as Maria was led in. A long heavy robe draped around its shoulders cascading down, and as the figure reached its full height, lights suddenly flashed into existence all around the hall. All at once golden lanterns lined the walls and the figure leaned back, catching the light on its glistening bone face and glittering golden crown.

“Hail and good welcome, Princess of Zanlar,” the figure said.

“I thought I told you to cut the theatrics,” the skeleton captain said. “They’re silly.”

“And I decided against it while you were gone, Faquien.” The Skeleton King waved a hand dismissively, “Throg put together quite the light-show, didn’t he?”

“He summoned a handful of lanterns. If that’s impressive then I’m a frog.”

“Well, my good captain, why don’t you hop along then and leave me to entertain our guest?”

The captain—Faquien—bowed before turning to depart.

“Ribbit.”

Faquien turned and Maria got the impression that she was glaring at the King, it was hard to tell since she didn’t have eyes, but she turned around again and swiftly exited.

“You all can depart as well,” the King waved his hand and the guards swiftly left as well, leaving Maria alone in the hall with the King. “Now, now,” he said, “No need to be so distant, come closer!”

Maria cautiously took a few steps forward, stopping in front of the pool of water. In the light Maria could now see that the water was exceptionally clear and not all that deep, it was probably no more than three feet at its lowest point. The floor of the pool was adorned with colorful tiles arranged to depict what Maria assumed to be some founding myth of the undead empire, or something along similar lines. The Skeleton King stood directly opposite Maria on the other side of the pool.

“I suppose formalities have always laid on the host for occasions such as this” the King said. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am King Flavius, the Last and Everlasting. I had heard that the Zanlarian King had a daughter of surpassing wit and beauty, and I am pleased to see that at least the second rumor is not baseless. I have greatly anticipated this meeting; if I might be permitted to say, I have been dying to meet you.”

“The honor is mine,” Maria replied politely, ignoring the pun.

“I doubt that,” King Flavius said. “I did arrange for you to be kidnapped, after all.”

“Since you bring it up, might I inquire as to your reasoning, lord?”

The king laughed and began walking around the pool. “You’ve got good manners, I’m quite impressed,” he said. “More than I expected from the invalid heir of a sapling kingdom.”

“What did you call me?” Maria turned to find herself face to face with Flavius. She took a step back.

“I know your little traditions,” he said. “A Zanlarian king must have a knight’s training, no? My apologies to your royal highness, but you aren’t exactly the image of athleticism.”

“What do you know? You don’t even have muscles.”

King Flavius laughed again. “Good one,” he said. “But appearances are not actually from where I derived my guess. I have my way of hearing things, whether you were a muscled warrior or the slender grass-flower I see before me would change nothing. You do not have the Goddess of Strength’s blessing; you cannot be a knight.”

“And what is it to you?” Maria asked. The Skeleton King spoke true and Maria supposed it made sense for him to know of their laws, as King Flavius’ people had been an enemy of Zanlar since her country’s inception.

“Quite the conundrum,” Flavius mused, turning and walking back away from the Princess. “And you’re an only child on top of things! What a succession crisis we shall have on our hands in, what? A mere few decades?”

Maria remained silent, at this point she couldn’t discern where the Skeleton King was taking this. Flavius continued to pace, slowly circling around the pool.

“Of course you could always wed,” he continued. “Find a suitably royal Blessed of Strength and cede your position as ruling monarch in the name of your country’s tradition. But you couldn’t do that, could you? Hand your kingdom over to the overseeing of a foreigner? One who does not even have Zahn blood?” Flavius came up behind Maria as he said this, taking a tress of her hair between his fingers, noting its bright brunette color. “Although perhaps your own Zahn heritage is already diluted.”

Maria took several quick steps away from the King, pulling her hair from his hands. “My country’s affairs do not concern you,” she said.

“But they do,” the King said. “Do you know the history that our countries share?”

“I know that yours has been terrorizing mine for centuries.”

“Four hundred years ago,” the King began, taking no heed of Maria’s tone “I ushered an age of immortality upon my glorious empire. No longer would such petty things as succession crises trouble my people, for I will be their ruler until the sun is old and dying—and even then we may continue to prosper, for my people do not need the sun to survive.”

“And what does this have to do with your torment of my people?” Maria asked.

“Hush! No interruptions!” the King shoved one of his bony fingers against Maria’s lips, his eyes flashing with an angry red light. “Ahem,” he went on. “Not all my people were thankful for this gift I bestowed to them. In particular, away to the north of my lands, a man named Lars fled with a flock of wild farmers and herdsmen.”

Maria recognized the name. Lars was said to be the first king of Zanlar.

“Indeed, that Lars,” Flavius said, seeing the realization in Maria’s eyes. “You see, my people and ‘yours’ are the same. You may have jurisdiction over the flesh, but the bone and marrow of your people are mine.” As he spoke, he got in close to Maria’s ear and whispered with a hissing sound from his teeth. The absence of breath fogging against Maria’s face was almost more disturbing than its presence would have been.

“So you’ve explained why your people terrorize mine,” Maria said, keeping her face neutral with effort and once again pulling away from the Skeleton King. “This is nothing that my country’s scholars do not already know, I’m sure. For what purpose have I been brought before you?”

“For a long time, I have considered your people nothing more than vulgar rebels, the kind that any tyrant must squash from time to time,” the king mused, stepping into the pool and walking a few paces in with his back to Maria. His royal cloak drifted behind him, its tail floating on the water. “But recently I have reconsidered; perhaps it would be the mark of a truly benevolent monarch to offer a compromise.”

King Flavius turned and extended his hand out towards Maria, beckoning her into the water with him. “Wed me, Princess,” he said. “I have Zahn blood—or would if I still had veins to hold it—and long ago I received a blessing from the Goddess of Strength.” He extended the other hand and in it appeared a glittering two-handed sword, white as marble. “Wed me and I will let you keep your rule over the northern lands forever—longer even than you could imagine! Join yourself to me and witness the Empire of Hadam returned to the height of its glory!”

“I prefer my husbands with more skin on them,” Maria said. “And you’re just ever so slightly too old for my tastes.”

The king chuckled. “But of course you’d be made skinless to match,” he said. “The flesh rots while the bone is preserved, if you are to rule eternal as my queen, you will need a lasting shell.”

“My answer remains no.”

“Small matter, you shall stay here until your flesh rots naturally. We will see if you are more amenable to me then!” The king snapped his fingers. After a long moment of nothing happening, he waded out of the pool, wrung the water from his cloak, walked over to the door and called out, “I’m done! Someone get in here and take the princess away!”

He was swiftly answered by two guards and Captain Faquien. The two guards approached and took up their positions on either side of Maria—once again grabbing her uncomfortably under the arms with their knobby hands—and following a flicked signal from Faquien, they departed with Maria in tow. As she was hauled away, she heard King Flavius’ voice behind her:

“Now my cloak is all wet.”

“I told you to skip the part where you walked out into the water, Majesty,” Faquien responded in a dull tone.

“But it was symbolic!” Flavius whined.

Maria was led back to the bone cage—how she would rejoice to be free from it forever—and was carried away by several more guards and suspended from a high tower of the castle by a thick iron chain. There she was left to dangle, wishing that her captors had the courtesy to at least provide her with multiple suspension points. The cage turned freely from side to side with the wind, and though it gave her an excellent view of the surrounding town, that dreary sight wasn’t quite worth the way the motion and height upset her stomach.

After a while and as her insides settled, she began to think about her situation, and for the first time wondered what had become of Sir Edmund; the great roar she had heard meant something, but she did not yet even begin to consider that it meant the Dragon King was dead. At the moment it seemed more plausible that the dragon made that sound as a kind of boast, and that Krakk had slain Sir Edmund in the end.

“I hope he wasn’t the only knight Father sent to rescue me,” she said to herself. “He had heart but he seemed kind of dim.”

Beyond that, she also considered the stakes the Skeleton King had set for her. All things considered, she had been given a pretty generous time limit; usually for princesses kidnapped to be wed against their will, the deadline was something more like ‘at sunset,’ or ‘at the wedding one week from now.’ Comparatively, ‘after you’ve died and decomposed’ seemed pretty lax. Although that all depended on how quickly the death part happened. It didn’t seem like the Skeleton King intended to kill her directly, but she also wasn’t confident that he would offer her any food. She honestly wasn’t sure he had any food in his entire empire to offer her even if he wanted to.

A strong wind blew from behind Maria, sending her spinning around to face it. If her stomach hadn’t been so empty she might have made it so just then, but instead she just felt cold. She was very high up and the Dead Lands seemed to be supernaturally cold already, as if the sun had less power here than on the fields and hills of other lands. Maria shivered and pulled herself tightly around her knees.

About the Author

I've been writing since I was eleven or twelve and these silly little knight's stories were some of the first characters and settings I was working with. A lot has changed over the years but Zanlar has stayed with me--through several lore overhauls and plot iterations yes, but always the same core set of characters (for those of you who may be wondering, by my count this is major iteration number four).

Of course I write a lot besides, I'm a senior at the University of Iowa for English and Creative Writing after all, but the fantasy genre and especially these characters will always hold a special place in my heart.

Instagram: @fennling

Cover design made using Canva design tools.