This story is a work of fiction. It contains references to violent behavior between adults, and expressions of physical affection between consenting adult males. If you find this type of story offensive, or if you are underage and it is illegal for you to read it, please exit now. All characters are fictional and in no way related to any persons living or deceased. Any such similarity is purely coincidental.
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Copyright 2003 Kristopher R. Gibbons All rights reserved by the author.
0 Prelude: Playing the Game
Horatio: This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, Line 69
Polgern son of Morruth, Lord Protector of the Thronelands kept a bland smile on his face as his eye slid from a babbling fete-companion and onto his co-ruler and enemy. Today, as always, the Lord Abduram wore black - a habit better suited to a reckless assassin than to the co ruler of the oldest kingdom in Kelotta. Lord Abduram embodied both. 'He might as well scream it on the street corners.' Polgern murmured, again annoyed at the gaucherie.
Four years had passed since young Abduram son of Lukaad first approached then King's Counselor Polgern, and "Lord" Abduram had fleshed out in the luxury of those fatling years. Still his black garb served him well as his herald, a warning to the curious that four years had not gentled him. 'All that these four years has done for me,' the son of Morruth reflected sourly, 'is make an old man older.'
Taking the Lord Protector's distracted silence for attentiveness, Polgern's human barnacle prattled on, and Polgern glared beyond the noisemaker, at his personal albatross. Though Polgern stood tall by most standards, Abduram stood yet a handspan taller. Where Abduram looked well fed, solid, Polgern remained wraith-thin. A balding head and light gray eyes contributed to an appearance of elegant sagacity that Polgern willfully cultivated. Just so, Abduram emphasized his deathly pale complexion, fierce black eyes, and aquiline nose, to evoke the sinister and perilous. Polgern's tepid smile vanished when he followed his adversary's statue-like, unwavering gaze to its object.
Near the main entrance of a feast-hall littered with yapping, greed-driven courtiers playing games of status and rank, one fellow stood talking and gesticulating with all the intensity and unselfconscious abandon of youth. He had a dancer's lithe body, but the broad shoulders and arms of a smith; a face as open as the skies, broad also, with a wide, scarred nose that bespoke a brawling injury in the past. The fellow drew attention by not clamouring for it; an ingenue among a nest of embittered spinsters. The Lord Abduram watched this young man with tensed jaw and glittering eye, a predator's facade Polgern knew intimately. He himself had been the only prey ever to frustrate Abduram's ambitions. Whether the hunt involved politics or an evening's pillowpounding, for Abduram it all devolved into power, dominion and, inevitably, someone's death or ruin. The brute had no levity, no restraint, nothing to balance his self-serving gravitas.
"Your pardon, Jek-kandere." Polgern interrupted his companion's spate. "I must leave for a moment. Hold your thought until I return." After cruelly asking the impossible, Polgern signaled one of the omnipresent Guard to follow him, then slipped out of the fete-hall through an obscuring cluster of courtiers and a side exit. When they had gotten to where even the mumble of the revelers had faded, Polgern finally halted and turned to his escort.
"Your name is..."
"Kinmeln, my lord."
With a semblance of informality, Polgern rested his back against the nearest wall and closed his eyes, the image of wearied, overburdened authority. "Kinmeln. I desire the death of a courtier at the feast. He stands near the front entrance, dressed in blue flannel, with tawny hair. Remove him quietly from the...festivities and serve me in this. I shall, of course, be grateful."
Neither man moved.
The Lord Protector turned his head and opened his eyes. "Well?"
"Lord, I will not." Kinmeln's face betrayed him, with its sudden rigidity, its struggle to suppress any hint of fear.
"You refuse me?" Surprise belled out in the tone of his voice.
Kinmeln managed a nod.
"Am I not your lord?" Polgern's voice rose, his gray orbs glistening ominously.
Kinmeln looked away, his face flushed. "Lord, I wear Guardian blue. Not assassin black. Yes, I am my lord's man, upholding the regulae of the Thronelands. I am not privileged to execute a courtier unless his fellows have deemed him a violator of the freedoms of the Court and the liberties of the people. And even so. I would not take away anyone's last hope on the whim of another."
"Should Abduram and I both wish it...?"
"I must still refuse, pending a Court writ."
Kinmeln took a deep breath. "What is my lord's pleasure concerning me?"
Polgern's next words came out, deliberately, too rushed to convince. "I but tested you. And while you are not a man such as I might like, you are such as I need. The courtier I described...it is my intention to exile with all haste. You will see that this is done. Involve no one else. Secure his effects and possessions, two mounts, and ride escort with him to Alta. It is the eastern-most province of our race and distant enough for my comfort. Tell no one of your direction or destination. No one! You are to ensure his safe arrival. When you return you will assume duty at the eastern portcullis into the city. Without comment, opinion, or ado. Can you perform this for your lord? In all conscience?" Polgern chilled his delivery with the frost of scorn.
"Yes, lord. And if the exile should question me? How shall I speak?"
As he had one further instruction, Polgern purposefully misunderstood. "With every courtesy, as to a member of royalty. Under no circumstance are you to make him feel a prisoner or t'bo1; he is neither of those things. Under no circumstance are you to treat him as anything less than an honoured and honourable emissary to the City of Peace. Oh. You mean, how shall you explain his flight? He shall not ask. Commence now."
The self-styled Lord Protector strode back into the fete-hall. In an errant musing he wondered how his old liege, the late and unlamented Lord Menam, would have broached Abduram's bloodthirsty predations. He remembered too vividly the murdered king's unreasoning temper and insensitivity, and decided that the justifiably dead king would have made a mess of it. He could picture Lord Menam confronting Abduram, trying to threaten him away from the courtier, or else warning the youth of the co-ruler's p`derastic and mortal intentions. All in vain. After four years of power, the Lord Abduram heeded no man. A cunning raptor, he cared little whether he caught his prey by charm, the paralysis of fear, or a cudgel in the dark. No. Menam had been a lost cause as a thinker, and while his greatly mourned heir had shown promise, Polgern doubted Prince Evendal's potential would have survived such a father. By treachery or no, both king and heir rotted, now four years dead, on a battlefield turned swamp. Rid of and good riddance.
"And what are you called?" Abduram enquired graciously, with a cordial smile.
The lithe young man opened his mouth to answer, but faltered at the talon-fierce grip on his arm. He turned to find himself the object of the Lord Protector's benevolent regard. Suddenly awkward and gawky, he stepped back, but remained under Polgern's grasp. The Lord Protector continued to smile with all apparent warmth, while Lord Abduram's grin shattered.
"He is called Lemwyrdd, Master Abduram." Lemwert'h, part of the maritime lingua franca, meant such things as 'orphan' or 'urchin'. Lemwert'h also served as another name for a pipel - a child of simple mind and therefore easy virtue. The young man lifted his head when Polgern spoke, but his eyes seemed to focus nowhere. "Is this not so?"
The young man opened his mouth again, but could neither breathe nor speak at that moment. The Lord Protector kept his gaze fixed on the youth, ruthlessly attentive. 'Lemwyrdd' swallowed, then nodded.
"Tell me, Master Abduram. What do you think of our Lemwert'h?" The damning breath at the end, the elision, came out as clearly deliberate. The victim of Polgern's wit flushed.
Abduram glanced from prey to fellow-predator before he replied, as if uncertain of the game being played. "He seems a gentle lad." he tendered, cautious.
"Indeed, he is gentle." Polgern's imbued his tone and smile with a wealth of knowledge and intimate certainty. Abduram nodded, and stepped back. His face stayed placid, but his manner spoke all too clearly: A tawdry toy, if Polgern could boast of him.
The Lord Protector watched Abduram shift his attention to a woman dressed expensively in the gray and black of mourning, and fought to conceal his relief and mirth. Their ever-grieving Dowager was a sacrifice looking for an altar; incredibly dense and insufferably needy. Polgern could trust Abduram to merely bat and jostle that woman and do nothing more, certainly nothing mortal. Being King Menam's widow protected the wench from her own stupidity. Also, unlike the courtier, the Dowager offered no real challenge, no mystery, merely diversion - and the questionable status of being seen with her.
Should he be mistaken, and Abduram choose to immolate the Dowager, Polgern knew he could emerge unscathed by any blame and see that Abduram did not emerge at all. This would free him from two encumbrances, one too stupid and one too cunning. 'Even a regicide wouldn't be that accommodating.' Polgern thought, amused with the fancy.
Abduram nodded to the flush-faced youth and the old man. "I see the Dowager unescorted. Your pardon, gentlesirs. My duty to you, Master Polgern." He accented his use of the word, 'Master', to acknowledge the slight that Lord Polgern had quietly delivered him throughout their brief exchange.
As Abduram moved to go, the flustered youth touched his sleeve to detain him. With the speed of experience, Abduram had the offending hand in an iron grip and a once hidden dagger now gleaming at the boy's neck.
Polgern sighed. "Master Abduram." His tone and demeanor displayed all the indulgent and unwavering patience of a parent sorely tested.
"Next time, young cub, do not be so pert!" "No, good my lord." the young man whispered. And Abduram moved away.
Polgern let 'Lemwyrdd' stand free and breathe for a moment, a simple task that the youth performed with fervor. "Let us get out of here." Polgern murmured.
Light metallic eyes flashed into muddy gray ones. "I am not going anywhere with you." The young man did not whisper his defiance.
"Hush, Limmal..."
"My name is now Lemwert'h," he snapped. "You told me as much. My duty to you, Lord Polgern." He bowed and moved to leave, until Polgern's unyielding grasp halted him.
"Wait for me outside." He hissed.
The tawny-haired courtier shrugged the gentled claw away and stomped out.
Wary of witnesses, the Lord Protector lingered, and noted with satisfaction how the Lord Abduram's attentions had fixed, obsessive, on the Dowager Onkira. 'Hungry for prestige but with none of the patience or subtlety it demands,' Polgern confirmed to himself for the hundredth time. 'A vulgar mind.' He hastened out of the feast-hall when he saw Jek-kandere waddling toward him.
Polgern found the young man at the main courtyard in front of the palace. In the courtyard's center sat an unpolished granite pedestal with statues of Lord Abduram and Lord Polgern flanking a throne, one hand of each figure resting possessively on the back of the royal chair. The young man had been tossing pebbles into the seat, his targeting flawless. Before Limmal could vent his outrage, Polgern took the offensive.
"What are you doing at a Court function?"
"I wanted to attend at least one. Yes, I know. You told me never to be seen here. That it was too dangerous. But surely a large party is a harmless enough occasion."
Polgern sighed, affecting simple weariness this time. "Can you not trust me? I know my restrictions are rough on you. But nothing I deny you is done out of whim or perversity. It all has a reason. I bar you from the palace for good reason."
Limmal wrapped his arms tightly around his chest. "And what you said in there. How you named me. Shaming me has a good reason?"
"Yes."
"I am not a whore's get. I am not a whore. Nor a...a..." Limmal's voice shook with old pain, well-worn insecurity from a boy-man who never spoke of his parents. Old pain, which, Polgern knew, no art of his could assuage. In the war's aftermath, he had rescued Limmal from life on a dead king's dole. He had seen to Limmal's upbringing through a chain of matronly housekeepers and disciplined tutors whose loyalty he could guarantee. And still Limmal suffered with a crippling delusion from his parental loss and swift isolation. A suspicion that he had somehow caused his own abandonment, and a fear of being abandoned again.
'Ironic,' Polgern mused. 'On the eve of exile.'
The Lord Protector stood a hand's-breath from the impassioned youth. "No, Limmal." he whispered gently. "You are no fool. Not an oaf. Far from it. You are Limmal son of Kaider son of Yai-lokhad. Limmal son of Gwentton daughter of Morruth. You are anchored in wisdom and rooted in uncommon good sense."
In the evanescent solitude of the courtyard, the son of Morruth held a young would-be courtier in the circle of his arms and softly kissed his temple. "I remember when I first saw you, so clearly. Kaider shared my dismay on seeing the damage to your nose. But Gwentton... Gwentton just smiled and said how that proved you were unique, special even from birth. In her selflessly harsh wisdom, she left you to my care. She may have died with our king in the cataclysm, but I know as surely as I breathe she would feel nothing but pride to see you now. She loved you. Maybe not as I do, but she loved you. If she could have, she would have taken you with her to the battle of Mausna. Or have become a living citybound midwife rather than a dead King's healer."
"I have arranged for you to leave the city for Alta with a single escort, an honest man. Leave tonight or before dawn tomorrow."
"Must I?"
No hint of rebellion coloured the question, only a childish hope of reconsideration; a moment's indulgence. So Polgern's avuncular grin looked utterly sincere, if sad. "Yes. When you smiled at Lord Abduram you were flirting with Death. We would be a danger to each other if he ever knew what you are to me."
Limmal moved slightly away from Polgern. "Then I shall indeed go. And quickly. Only... I will think of you, and miss you. I will worry about you." He turned and glared at the mock throne.
"Is this worth all your effort, all the pain? Is it worth your life?"
Startled by Limmal's ferocity, and intrigued at an obvious query he had never thought to ask, Polgern honestly considered the question.
This throne; a symbol of so much: Challenges, and constant weariness. His sometimes private, rare, yet still delicious triumphs over boors like Abduram. The double meanings, and double-faced courtiers and attendants. The unexpected demands, the restricted liberties, and the adulation. The honours and awe, along with the awesome spate of vicious gossiping - which merely marked the justified envy from the powerless. The strange sweetness of enforced praise. Every so often he yearned for those simpler responsibilities he'd held before he had loosed Abduram to assassinate Menam in battle. But such an impulse only signaled his need for a brief respite. If he were not willing to pay the price he would not have begun the game.
"Yes, sister's son." he replied, satisfaction mellowing his tone. "This is worth all."
_______________________________ 1 T'bo - A disenfranchised non-citizen, without the right to charity, shelter, food, health; without the right to work, to beg, to earn any monies or food.