Here is an unfinished scene slated to be included in my fantasy trilogy that is currently underway. Enjoy…
King Basran’s face gazed out over the courtyard from the balcony of his chambers, but his mind was much more distant than his motionless gaze. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular. His hollow eyes had lost their focus long ago… years ago. Now, he simply stared into nothingness, engrossed with his own thoughts, his own unrelenting misery. Why did he have to endure such tragedy, such incredible loss? Why did he have to live at all? What was worth living for? He had asked himself those questions nearly every hour of every day for the last seventeen years. It was only the most faint glimmer of hope that kept him from the rash compulsions of self-destruction that constantly swept over him. Ever since that event those seventeen long years ago, Basran had been little more than a shell of human existence. He barely ate or drank or slept, and even now, he relived that tragic event that haunted his dreams and plagued his waking thoughts. That fateful morning was still vivid in his mind as if it were just yesterday.
A swift breeze had come rolling through the window of the royal bedchamber early that morning, carrying with it a slight chill, lifting the curtains and moving throughout the opulently decorated room. A brisk and refreshing sensation swept across his face as he began to stir in the pre-dawn morning. Rolling over to put his arm around his wife in the coolness of the morning, he felt something wet and sticky against his skin. He opened his eyes in the dimly lit chamber to find his bed was soaked with blood. Rather than waking from a nightmare, he woke to a nightmare. Beside him lay his precious wife—his Queen—eyes wide open, staring into oblivion, her throat slit from ear to ear. He instinctively pushed his hands to her neck to try and stop the bleeding, as he trembled with sheer terror and disbelief, but it was no use. The blood had stopped pouring long ago. He grabbed her cold face with his bloodied hands and mumbled almost indistinguishably, “No… no… no!” He buried his face in hers, smearing his cheeks and brow with the blood of his beloved wife. His eyes burst with tears and he called her name, “Ellyani! Ellyani!”
His mind scrambled to make sense of it all. But beyond his emotions, all he had were questions racing through his thoughts. Who did this? How did they get past my guards? Why didn’t I wake up and try to stop them? Somehow he was both numb and full of pain at the same time. His quavering voice crescendoed to a scream. “Ellyani! No!” he cried as he wept bitterly.
At the sound of his voice, the night guards burst through his chamber doors, swords drawn, adrenaline racing. “My Liege!” came their voices in unison. But they were too late. The spectacle in front of them told the whole story. They simply stood, stupefied by the horror of the royal bed-chamber.
The King shot his face toward the guards, teeth grinding and flames burning in his eyes. Where had they been when his Queen had been slain? he thought. Why didn’t they stop it? And as he cast his eyes in their direction he noticed it. The crib at the side of the bed was empty.
Empty.
Bloodshot eyes gaping, he gasped in horror, struggling to regain his breathing, tears welling up again and pouring out, lips quivering uncontrollably. He raised his voice again with a moan infused with the agony and grief of one whose soul has been torn from his flesh. His prolonged and violent cry echoed in the palace, filling every recess of the place with his brokenness.
A distant voice pulled him from his tortured memory.
“Your Majesty…?”
The voice sounded familiar, but he was having trouble registering it.
“Your Majesty? Did you hear any of that?”
Yes. It was that annoying scribe, the one who was constantly interrupting his thoughts and demanding decisions from him. Annoying little dolt.
“Did you say something, Olgart?” he listlessly replied in a faint voice that mirrored his lifeless gaze into the horizon.
“Your Majesty…You have a kingdom to run, decisions to make. I know you still grieve after these many years, but you must return to the living—to those who are alive now and need you. We need you, your Grace. Your people need you.”
“My people…?” He mulled the words around in his mouth as if they were a foreign language he had somehow forgotten the meaning of.
“Yes, your Majesty. Your kingdom, Aldane. They need their king!”
Basran seemed to ponder the statement for a long moment before he spoke.
“King…” he said as if bewildered by the term. “That sounds so grand, so powerful. But there is no majesty, no strength left in these feeble bones. My Ellyani is departed. My only son stolen. What is life without those who give it? What is existence when there is nothing to live for?”
“Your Majesty, I understand your pain, but…”
“You understand nothing!” the king cut him off, spinning on his heels. He stared down Olgart with a venomous scowl for a heartbeat before continuing. “Someone murdered my wife and kidnapped my son, NINETEEN YEARS AGO, and we still don’t have a clue about who is responsible! My son—my beloved son—is out there somewhere,” he said as he thrust his hand toward the window and the endless greenery beyond the palace, “And no one seems to give a larken.”
“Your Majesty, with all due respect, there’s no way we can possibly know that” he was able to get out before the King cut him off again.
“My wife was murdered! Murdered in cold blood while she slept. They could have easily done the same to the boy, but they didn’t. They took him, blasted! They took him! They took him because they have some evil plan to use him as leverage over me.”
“But your Majesty, in all these years there has never been any communication from anyone claiming responsibility for this heinous act. No ransom demand, no threat, nothing. Complete and utter silence. Surely the Prince is dead.”
“He’s not dead. I know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. He’s out there somewhere suffering,” he said, this throat catching. “Somehow, they knew his abduction would break me. And break me they did,” he said, voice quavering. He immediately collapsed into a chair and began to sob.