You’ve heard the lion roar. You’ve heard the clashing of steel and the commanding voice. You’ve seen the smile, the golden hair and the soothing tone. You’ve asked about his youth. He hasn’t answered. Only responded with vague retorts, jokes at his own expense. Never going into detail. You fear he may never tell you more. But you have learned more. You asked his brother once and he told you this one story.
They were both younger. Lliam was nine and Arthur was five. They were both escorted down the streets of their home city to attend the christening of their younger sister. Their parents decided to name her Alice, but their mother did not like that name so they suspect it will be changed soon. In any case, she’s legally recognized as a citizen and allowed to inherit things. In a word, she’s “officially” a princess.
“Mother’s paranoia is getting worse” Lliam thinks as they leave the procession. “She has to have tripled the guards. Did we really need all this?” He hates having all the guards with him. He has no freedom. He likes Nebuch, Nebuch is fun. Nebuch lets him run out into the streets, play with the other kids. Maybe buy things from the market? So long as Nebuch can see him he doesn’t care.
None of the other guards are fun like that. They all think this is so serious. They’re terrified that one of the kids might try to steal from him or an adult will kidnap him. That’s so stupid. Why would anyone want to kidnap a kid? Is the real truth they don’t want him to mess up his nice clean white shirt? We live in a desert! It’s going to get dirty!
Stupid adults. They care so much about appearance and wisdom when nobody really cares. Have you seen the kids outside? Dirt, all over their faces. They smell so foul you can hardly stand to look at them. Yet do they struggle to make friends? No, they run around with whole gangs of other dirty kids. And wisdom? Irrelevant. They say words that aren’t even real, they’re so dumb. It’s like they’re speaking another language almost. Nobody really cares. What they care about is how tough you are, and how much fun you can have.
While the number of guards annoyed Lliam, it did have its advantages. In that, they will all be too many and too clustered to notice if he slipped away. Especially today, when all eyes are on baby Alice. He should be able to have fun with the kids today. He even got some money from his dad, so maybe he’ll buy them a toy. They went crazy the last time he did that, imagine how crazy they’d be owning two toys!
The procession concluded and everyone stood up to leave. There was an exchanging of brief, political “how do you do’s” and “congratulations” that nobody really cared about. Lliam had to say hello to Cousin Margery, who’s face is so mashed and disturbed it gives him the shivers to speak to her. Then he had to carry Alice for a moment while the adults talked about “adult stuff,” then it was finally time to go. The guards opened the doors first and lead his parents out slower than father time. The boys were finally let out and they burst through the doors like soldiers through castle gates, and that’s exactly what they were pretending to be. Arthur and Lliam slashed each other with phantasmal swords left and right, laughing and leaping at finally being let out of that church. The guards yelled many times to “shut up and keep moving” but they didn’t care. They just kept hopping and dancing, dodging their attempts to be grabbed by gold plated men.
“Leave them be!” Their oldest brother called, now sixteen and able to give orders to the king’s guard. “They’ve been stuck in there for four hours, do you not remember what it was like to be a child?”
Against all better judgement and opinions of their own the guards relented and let them play. Growling and cursing at the insolence of youth.
Finally free, the boys made a b-line for the market. That’s where the most children were, and the usual suspects already knew Lliam so he could get right into the games with them. The path mother and father were walking will intersect with the market, and at the speed they were walking it would take them a few minutes before they stopped him. He had that long to make a lasting memory with these kids.
The boys arrived at the market and made eye contact with Kavian and Eshan. The boys smiled at each other and started running. An impromptu game of tag begins on the spot. They don’t really even want to catch each other. But tag means they can run, and by god did they need to do that. Lliam decided to chase Eshan, paring the elders against each other. Eshan was twelve, and he helped his father carry produce all day, making him fast, strong, and invincible. The perfect challenge for Lliam.
Eshan leaped atop a watermelon vendor’s stall and lifted himself onto the above tarp. The vendor began swearing in those made up words and jabs with his knife, making it impossible for Lliam to follow that way. He decided to climb up a dumpster in a nearby alley, then leap up onto the roof from there in a feat of forearm power only adrenaline could provide. Eshan had already cleared the next two buildings, he’s gotten faster. Lliam kicked into high gear and chased after him. He ran so fast his stride carried him over the gaps in the alley without even needing to jump. He laughed and shouted, forcing Eshan to slow with his laughs. The two boys chased each other in large circles over the heads of the market goers. Other children look up at them and beg their parents that they can play too, steadily growing the number of the many children.
Lliam catches Eshan and shoves him off the edge of the building, landing and tumbling down a small pile of sand. The crowd of children cheer and laugh at Lliam’s victory, and he takes this moment to revel in glory. He flexes for the crowd, and roars as loud as he can. He loves the family sigil, and it lives on through him. The kids start chanting for him “Lion, Lion, Lion” by some “Torgoh, Torgoh, Torgoh” by others.
Lliam’s chest embiggens with life and he lets his arms fall down. He starts calling out orders to have Eshan lifted back up here, clean up this section, get a new game started. The children obeyed without question, happy to be a part of something and to have a ringleader around them.
The excitement is levitating, and the praise is addicting, but suddenly his thoughts are struck dumb by the remembrance of his younger brother. Did him and Kavian play safely? They aren’t in this crowd. What would they be doing that they wouldn’t see this? What would they be doing that would make them not want to chase each other on rooftops?
He catches himself spiraling away his paranoid thoughts just like his mother and it forces him to calm down. “I’m sure they’re fine” he thinks, as he presses a smile onto his cheeks and gives the boys more instruction. He organizes them into a more structured game of tag with bases, teams and rules, which they were all desperate to play. He told them to get playing and that he would be back soon after he found his brother. After quickly shouting over his shoulder what team he would be on Lliam runs off in the direction of the market stall Kavian and Eshan were found. The little ones don’t stray far from where you leave them unless directed, so they’re likely still there.
He runs at a chest heaving sprint, letting his body express the paranoia he fights in his head. They have to be fine, what in the world even could happen to them? They are smart kids, at least Arthur is. More importantly, they’re fast kids. Always competing for fastest in the friend group. What could approach them that they couldn’t escape from? He can’t think of anything now. They must be ok.
He arrives at his final roof and leans over it to get a better view. The adrenaline drives his heart at a pounding march in his chest. He darts his eyes in, out and all around, taking a thousand snapshots a second. He can’t find them. He can’t hear them or see them, anywhere. His breath quickens and he begins to shuffle. Maybe they stopped at the area with all the good shops? There’s a candy store, a baked goods store, and a toy store. Any kid with money goes straight there, that must be where they are.
He huffs off towards the good shops, flashing his thoughts to the small horn on his hip. He’s supposed to sound it if he’s in trouble. He doesn’t think he needs to do it yet, but if the boys can’t be found at the shops he might have to. God, if only Arthur had one of those. His lungs and throat aren’t strong enough at his age to really blow it so his parents never got him one. Curses, why can’t he just be a little older?
He approaches the sweets section of the market and he catches fleeting glimpses of children. They run and laugh and dance like dragonflies darting through the air. At this distance he can’t recognize any of them, but they have to be his brother, right? Arthur has to be ok.
Lliam arrives at the roof edge and is going too fast to stop, so he climbs over the edge and slides down the tarp of one of the market vendors. Lliam hits the ground and rolls, almost colliding with a homeless man at the bottom, but luckily stopping himself just before impact.
“Lliam!” The shopkeeper scolds, recognizing the boy. “What in the sky’s name are you doing?”
“Where’s my brother?” He replies, standing and sweeping the dirt off his knees.
“They bought one of my pies then walked off that way.”
Lliam reaches in his pocket and throws a coin at the man, before breaking into a sprint in the direction he was aimed. He ducks through the crowd of squawking buyers and their explosive children with desperate finesse. He has no more than a millisecond to process the obstacle in his way before he has reacted to it and is met with a new one. He slides between legs, he spins around shoulders, he vaults over barrels. He is the unstoppable force gliding through the market unabated, before he is met by his immovable object. The remnants of a cherry pie.
It has had the edges bitten off in perfect, predictable patterns. The same bite every time, like a machine was cutting it. Exactly the way his brother eats everything with a crust. This is his brothers pie. Why was it discarded?
Lliam looks around for a trail, footprints, more pie, blood, anything he can find. He sees a small alley to his right, where can be heard whimpers and commotion. Something busy and panicked, but fighting to ensure that nobody hears it. A sound a young boy can recognize in an instant. Lliam grips the horn and pulls it from his hip, preparing his lungs for a possible blast, as he tiptoes towards the alley as silently as possible.
“Damnit kid, do what I said!” He hears hissed through the alley.
“No, I’m not supposed to.” His brother says in a frightened quiver, battling confusion and fear.
“Shut it! Keep your voice down.” The person hisses, before a scuffle is heard and Arthur and Kavian begin to panic.
Now Lliam has heard enough. He is certain that this is a robbery, or worse. He takes the largest breath his chest can muster and explodes it through the end of the horn. It sounds loud and proud for a second, then fades out, Lliam not having the strength to sustain it. It sputters and stammers like an infant elephant learning to speak, and tires him out quickly. The person in the alley peaks out and makes eye contact with Lliam, quickly rushing towards him. The assailant is still a kid, though a well developed one. He’s bigger than Eshan, standing a shocking five-foot eight. His eyes shiver in their holes and beat a blood red. He hasn’t a follicle of hair on his body, not even his eyebrows or lashes, giving him an unsettling otherworldliness that strikes Lliam lame. As he warps toward the boy Lliam can smell his putrid essence and rocks the boys mind. It has blood and feces in it, but some strange other smell that Lliam has never had before. It’s sizzling in his nose and forcing up visceral reactions of disgust and unease.
The assailant grabs Lliam by the throat and drags him into the alley with the boys. Lliam gets a fraction of a look at his arms and bears witness to a wasteland of tiny holes along his veins. Tiny little punctures running rampant across his blood vessels like a map of claimed territory during a war. The man throws Lliam against the wall beside his sibling and demands he drop everything in his pockets. Lliam’s terrified, but no fear has ever made him obey his elders, so lies.
“There’s nothing in my pockets.”
“You lying bitch!” The assailant scowls, shoving Lliam into the wall a second time. “Look at your clothes, your skin, your hair! You’re one of those royal cunts!” He hisses these words like they cut at his lips as they fly, trying to break them from his mouth, begging that they will hurt the boys as much as they hurt him. He shakes at Lliam’s hair and tugs at his clothes as he speaks. The attacker is so broken he can’t process his own words unless he can touch them too.
“I spent it all. I spent all my allowance.”
“Then give me your clothes!”
“Listen, what’s wrong with you? A plague? Maester Lewin is a good doctor, I can…”
“I don’t need your help!” The man shrieks, slashing his nails across Lliam’s face. He draws a knife from his back pocket and begins to saw the clothes from Lliam’s body. Lliam resists, but he is shoved and manipulated like a doll in the hands of this deranged psychotic. Against all sense and reason he tears at Lliam’s bottoms first, trying to remove those with a hate ridden passion even stronger than the one he tortured Arthur with. He strips Lliam down to nothing lights aflame with madness. He stares down at Lliam’s body with a kind of shattered excitement that hurts to watch. It shows a heart wrenching kind of joy, one that no human ever wants to feel, but shows to the world that this may be the only kind of joy this dreg has left. Like the sadistic indulgence of hurting another is only fleeting moment where he himself does not burn with the hate of abandon.
The world freezes as he leans. The attacker seems paralyzed with inspiration, lost in the thought of the horrid things he could do. Arthur and Kavian cry and pant, unable to help, unable to make noise for fear of being the monster’s next toy. Lliam’s mind screams out at him to run. Or to kick. Or to fight, or blow the horn again, or do anything. Anything that might give him or his brother a fighting chance. But he can’t He is immovable and the other is unstoppable. He has never experienced this kind of fear before and it has taken over him. His can hardly call himself the same person anymore. The moment unfreezes as the assailant breaks free from his trance finally having made up his mind about what he’s going to do. As he reaches his palm out to the Lliam’s body he is finally stopped by an earth crumbling, heart petrifying, attention grabbing shout of the word “stop.”
All four boys direct their attention to the shout, and see the royal guards at the end of the alley, weapons drawn and hate primed. The attacker shivers and begins to spazz, struck with horror at the size of the towers before him, but unable to discern correctly what he will make his body do. The guards rush down the alley and grab the attacker by each of his flailing limbs. They drag him into the open and throw him to the ground. He attempts to scream but only manages to gurgle, releasing a cracked shriek that damages your own vocal cords to hear, much more so to utter. This was the best sound the poor creature could make when he’s speaking out of self defense or hatred. Lliam soon learned that those motives are not enough to create a true scream. A real scream cannot come from a place of anger or a desire for self preservation. A real scream can only come from the fear of annihilation, as the attacker began to feel.
The guards sheathed their swords and took to him with their hands, deciding that they would prefer the prolonged suffering to the swift plunge of a blade. They drove their gold plated fists into his mark covered skin so firmly and complete the punched through his flesh and left gushing, oozing holes. They beat relentlessly, deciding their limits on when they felt content instead of when their victim was finished. The man let wail the anguished screams of all the damned souls of every hell in every religion. He cried an uproar that could not be matched by any monster or any legend. It flew burning into the ears of all within a thousand miles and isolated the section of the brain that holds its most permanent memories, where it burrowed inside and bred, spreading its insectile larvae across the entire mind as it went.
To imagine a creature of such small stature could endure so much suffering was beyond any present. The screams and flails persisted further than some soldiers have lasted, until finally in one elongated strike with both hands, one member of the guard brought down his fists and ended the attackers life. The once perfect gold of the guard’s armor now dripped with a putrid, crimson red, unending in quantity and reaching forever, leaving it’s mark on even the farthest target. They dare not turn and face the children, instead allowing the boys mother to approach and protect them.
She coddles the children, scolding them at first about how dare they run off on their own again, but soon bursting into tears and repeating “I’m just glad you’re safe.” They weren’t safe. How could they be? He was large for his age but that attacker was still a boy, just as they were boys. If such horror can even happen to people, let alone kids, who’s to say it won’t happen to them? If their mother got so worked up over this, what would they have to do to earn the furry of the guards?
Lliam tried to stand up straight and be strong for his brother, trying to distract him and make him happy, but Lliam knew he would never be the same again. He knew that this would be one of Arthur’s most destructive memories to ever form his consciousness. And the worst part of it all was it was Lliam’s fault. If they hadn’t split up, if Lliam hadn’t left him to play on his own, this never would have happened. All of this, is Lliam’s fault. Arthur is cursed with this because of Lliam. Kavian has to pretend nothing happened to his mother because of Lliam. He won’t get to play on the roof with his friends because of Lliam. That forsaken child is dead because of Lliam.
Over the many long years people have told him over and over that it wasn’t his fault. That what happened to him was wrong, and there is no course of action that would deem such a response appropriate. But the fact of the matter is if Lliam hadn’t let his five year old brother play alone in the market, this never would have happened. And for this, he must never forget, or forgive himself.