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Posted on August 15, 2012 at 06:56:08 PM by arthur & pendragon
His mind was a jumble, a mass of contradictions throwing themselves over one another in their race to be heard, each one as unhelpful as the last. Helplessness was not a feeling that Arthur was used to. He only had a few snatches of memories of not being a King, and even then, he had been a Prince. In his first life, he had become King at the age of eleven, surrounded by councillors set upon achieving their own ends, wicked men, and corrupt men in amongst the good and the wise, enough to turn a boy’s head. They gave him bad advice, and he, trusting in their greater knowledge for guidance, had followed it. He had thought himself helpless then, that ship upon the sea he had previously alluded too. An image branded into his consciousness, a ghost ship that haunted his dreams, the cries of children carried upon the air towards him. It had been that day that had made him realised that he had never been helpless at all, he had only allowed himself to be lead. It had ended that day. People had sat up, and they had listened, his council had been overhauled, and his destiny had been of his own making. A king, he knew, had more power than most men to sculpt at least some of the world to suit his desires and his beliefs. What was a King though, when placed beside a God? An insect in a golden crown, no greater or lesser than the ants around him, save for his strange choice in headwear. The originals, they had the powers of Gods, Aura had made Shaman as God had made the Earth. How unlike Arthur’s God they seemed, creatures of spite and jealousy, creatures so unbelievably human that giving them such magic seemed like giving a sword to an angry child. And yet, and yet, Arthur had seen them, had spoken with them, had seen them do spectacular things. It made Arthur’s gospels seem laughable, just words written on dusty yellowing pages, truth lost to the great expanse of time and woven into myths and legends. He had seen the books containing his own name, the legends of Camelot and Arthur, he knew how legends worked, legends that came through the years before slipping into myth and fantasy and then out of memory entirely. Here was Mallos, sitting before him and speaking to him of rights and desires and the unfairness of the world. He was a living, breathing man, and somehow that made the stone faces of Mary and Christ sitting in Arthur’s chapel seem suddenly no more than stone. Blocks of stone hewed into the shape of human beings in order to lead willing hearts to believe in lies. You are right, Arthur wanted to say, of course Mallos was right. The world was the way the world was and men had run mad trying to change it. It required a shift of mentality, as he had done that time before when he had stood at the sea shore and seen that ghost-ship sail away with his shame upon it. Through Mallos’ speech the King had listened, and the fact that he was listening had been written in his eyes. He had no argument, everything the Spaniard said was true, and it was frustrating, because in his head the King was aware of similar arguments for other causes, if only he had been able to think. He was asking questions he already knew the answers to because he had lost the answers somewhere amongst the jumble of bitterness and grief. “I would not kill you, Mallos,” he sighed finally, “if there is one thing I know of the Originals it is how like everyone else you are. All men are different, they should never be painted with the same brush just because they belong to one society or cause over another. You are not Lorraine, you are not Gwythr, just as I was never my Father.” “Good,” the King said in response to Mallos’ final statement, sitting back in his chair, as the sound of hooves striking against a cobbled floor was heard beyond the window. He had nothing else to say on the matter. He had the answer he wanted and it even summoned a small smile that danced with a sneer, giving his face a property that the Spaniard would not have seen before. No sooner had it arrived than it was gone, crushed down into the depths of his soul with all the other things he never spoke of. The memories, the mistakes, the dark parts that every man sought to hide from the world, and who, other than Gods, had hid darker things than Kings? There was a long drawn out pause. The silence broken only by the sound of horse and rider in the yard outside, and the thud, creak, thunk of the turning quintain as it was struck with a blunted lance. “I think he wonders why she left him,” the King said finally, nodding towards the window, making his first reference to Lilith in weeks, “why he wasn’t enough to keep her here.” Arthur sighed again, “he looks at me sometimes, and I see the question there, asking me for an answer I cannot give.” He stopped. Eyes straying back towards the window at the second thud, creak, thunk, “I can try and keep him safe from many things, but not from an unanswered question.”  |
Replies:
- él se fue con el invierno. - By mallos August 16, 2012 at 03:30:24 AM
- nothing you can say, nothing you can do - By arthur & pendragon August 18, 2012 at 03:54:55 AM
- él se fue con el invierno. - By mallos August 20, 2012 at 10:27:33 PM
- nothing you can say, nothing you can do - By arthur & pendragon August 25, 2012 at 03:38:50 AM
- él se fue con el invierno. - By mallos August 30, 2012 at 07:07:34 PM
- nothing you can say, nothing you can do - By arthur & pendragon August 25, 2012 at 03:38:50 AM
- él se fue con el invierno. - By mallos August 20, 2012 at 10:27:33 PM
- nothing you can say, nothing you can do - By arthur & pendragon August 18, 2012 at 03:54:55 AM
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