A War of Queens

The Mourning Queen: Part 12: The Lord of Lords

The rotting corpses lay bloody and cold on the floor of the throne room. They were tied together with rusted metal wires that had cut deeply into their flesh when they were still alive. The bruises had turned a rusted orange and black where the wires cut, the colour of their skin a blue-white. All five of the foul-smelling bodies had their heads removed and in the most vulgar of manners; by the roughness and jagged edges of the skin, one could easily have seen that a blunt and worn-out tool had been used to decapitate them. The stumps where their heads should have been had turned a rusty black and purple, some with maggots crawling around in their new home. Words of hatred and blasphemy were carved into the backs of the murdered, the message reading, "Fuck your King" and "Whore Queen."

The young man who had brought them into the inner courtyard of the Sun's Keep had been weary from his travels and so was his dear horse. Sers Harold Harvy and Levyn Yargold had been on the watch of the gates, and when asked to reveal the cargo they wished to share with the queen, it was said that the old Harold Harvy regurgitated his morning meal upon opening the fleas rags until the yellow juices of his stomach came forth like the gushing waters of the golden river.

They had come from the small coastal town called Gyna where the high lord, Arrol Takrys of Gyna had demanded the Heliodorans to be executed while they were abed in one of their stone inns. A bloodied note was attached to one of the man's penises, which had grown a dark blue-purple from the tightness of the string that was used to attach the note with. Rhoan read the words on the piece of papyrus paper, disgusted by its contents. "He declares that southern mongrels who shit gold are not welcomed in the land of Mayzor."

"Good heavens," said the old scribe Arran, dressed in a thick wool and cotton coat with a piece of thick velvet around his neck for warmth.

"They persist in destroying us your Grace," Lord Griffen Wyvern of the Edged Fort raised his voice, disgusted by the sight of their own slaughtered. "We must see an end to this or they shall carry on and on until our Houses are brought to nothing but ash."

In the end we all return to the ashes, Thaerysa mused as she stared at the five corpses of Broaden Gildethor's children. He will not be like to be easy to control after this like a mut without its leash.

"I must agree with Lord Griffin, my Queen Thaerysa," Edmar Farling said. He wore a bright green tunic made of Lunarian velvet with silver threads outlining the collar and shoulder joints. Around his chest was a mantle of green silk with the red fox of the Farling Forests in the riverlands. Lord Griffin was well into his fifties but always the youthful soul he was when he was a young man. "Too much is at stake here. They wish to go against your rule and that which your father and ancestors worked so hard to achieve."

"Lord Farling's reasoning is sound and justified," Lance Thorne of Thernz agreed, stroking his brown beard ever slowly as he considered the words of his fellow lord of the riverlands.

"The war has just but ended a month ago and you all wish to throw everyone back into it? I do not concur with this idea at all," Lord Rhoan declared.

"With all due respect my Lord Rhoan, but it is not just us whom the Queen of Gunay attacks like this. It is an attack to the crown itself, and that is something we shall not let slip down our backs like rain off the leaves of a tree."

"My lords, my Queen of Solana, I have seen firsthand the devastation which war brings. I accompanied our King Astereus when he battled the Gunish soldiers on the damned field to the south. Pray forgive my bluntness when I say that you all have hidden behind your castle walls whilst His Grace went out to end the Gunish Uprising. You do not know of what you speak, but I do and I am saying that we ought resolve this matter as calmly as we can, lest we wish to fling all that Astereus had fought for into the sewage."