The Blood King

By Joelle Kardos

Surian slouched in his throne. The chair was cold and hard, cut of black onyx, with a great many angles and harsh lines. It had no warmth, no humanity to it. He snorted derisively as that thought crossed his mind. No humanity to it, as if anything worthwhile would bear the touch of humans. 

It had been fourteen years since his people had enslaved the vestiges of humanity, and Surian hated the creatures no less. It was not hard to conquer the wretched animals; his own people had nearly driven them extinct with overhunting. All they had to do was round up the survivors.

He did not know why his father insisted on capturing them. Sure, it provided their people with free labor, but every Usyr, down to the last child, knew of the Estris massacre, and how humanity had almost wiped out the Usyr. 

Humanity deserved to experience what they attempted to carry out upon his people. Surian’s father was dead, and he was king now. What could stop him?

“Ophel!” he called gaily. “I’m feeling a little peckish.”

Across the throne room, a young human man of about twenty-four stepped out from behind a column. He had light brown hair, and eyes the color of honey. Tall and strong, he caught the eye of many of the women at the palace, even some Usyri noblewomen. Surian did not deny he was handsome, but he hated him all the more for it. It was an affront to his authority, an act of rebellion. Despite all Surian had put this man and his people through, he remained healthy, quiet, and hardworking. 

How dare he, Surian seethed to himself. How dare he not succumb to the misery that is his existence. It is not enough to rule his body; I must break his mind, his soul. 

Ophel walked to the foot of the dais. He knelt and bowed his head. 

Surian tapped his foot once against the platform. Silently, another slave, this time Usyr, appeared in the throne room. They glided to where Ophel was kneeling and gave him a chalice and ornate dagger. Without a word, they melted into the shadows again. 

Ophel took the dagger in hand and slit his wrist, stopping just shallow enough to avoid bleeding his life out on the floor of the throne room. He tilted his arm so that the blood flowed into the chalice and filled the cup to the rim.

Tucking his injured arm behind him, he stood and lifted the chalice to Surian’s lips. Surian looked Ophel in the eye while he drank his blood. Eventually, though, the chalice emptied, and Ophel stepped back with a nigh imperceptible sigh of relief.

Surian leaned his head back and closed his eyes, savoring the iron flavor of blood. He could taste Ophel’s disgust and smell his fear, but the slave was powerless to do anything. As much as Surian delighted in Ophel’s hatred, he needed more from the former crown prince. Ophel must admit himself to be broken, a mere husk of a creature before Surian would stop. His father had shown humanity mercy in allowing them to live. Surian would continue that legacy. Let the squalid wretches continue on in their filthy servitude to us. My hatred for them is now condensed onto a single target, and my arrow will not miss its mark. He smirked grimly to himself. Before full moon next, your soul will bend to my will as a puppet to its master. I swear this on my unending life.

Ophel left his place at Surian’s side and stood before him. It looked for a moment as if the man would throw himself at Surian, but the cloud of rage in his eyes passed, and he knelt before the Usyr king once more. Delicately, Surian placed a heeled boot on the back of Ophel’s neck. He stretched out his body in the throne and reclined as much as was possible in such a chair. Surian felt Ophel tense beneath his foot. He saw Ophel’s hands clasp into fists and the knuckles whiten with the pressure. 

Surian allowed the tension to rise, enjoying Ophel’s helplessness and subjection before him. At length he spoke, “Human swine, answer me thus: was your mother given compensation for her conception of you, or was your thieving bastard of a father too poor to pay a common whore?”

Surian seemed to have struck a nerve with the boy. He didn’t think it was possible for a human to be angrier than Ophel already was, but the boy surprised him. He was too smart to say anything to Surian; his prudence was what had kept him alive throughout the capture of humanity, but he was so angry. Surian could smell it in the air, taste it even. A beautiful sort of anger, Surian thought. The kind that will drive a man mad. A beautiful, impotent, weak anger. It elated Surian. By Cǽn, he needed to taste more of that anger.

Surian withdrew his foot from Ophel’s neck, kicking the man back as he did. “Show me your wrist,” he commanded.

Ophel twisted his arm so that Surian could view it better. His wrist was covered in thin white scars, hundreds of them, each a reminder of when Surian had drunk his blood from a chalice Ophel had served him. It delighted Surian, not only because it served to permanently document his cruelty, but because it was a stamp of ownership. He knew the sight tormented Ophel. He knew Ophel would rather have one arm than look at the map of scars. And Surian rejoiced in that. 

***

Surian strode into the throne room, snapping for Ophel. Tonight was the night of the next full moon, and Ophel hadn't completely surrendered to him yet. The boy was stronger than Surian had given him credit for. Today was his last day to fulfill his oath to himself. Nothing hinged on it, except for his pride, but that would be motive enough for Surian to kill himself. No Usyr valued anything more than their pride, and he could not honorably lead the Usyr if he sacrificed his pride on something so little as a human slave.

“Sire.” The Usyri slave who stewarded his chalice and dagger approached him. They inclined their head submissively. “The human slave you favor is ill. He has been removed so as not to contaminate the throne room.”

Surian turned the full force of his anger upon them. “I favor no human,” he hissed. “If you so much as insinuate that again, I will rip your entrails from your body so forcefully the halls will be stained with your blood until the end of time and your cries will echo unto the heavens until the stars fall. Where is the slave?”

The Usyri slave, already pale, turned cadaverous. But they were court trained and held their composure. “Yes, sire. I apologize. Unto my ancestors, it will not happen again. He was moved to the first prison, so as not to give other slaves in his quarters the illness.” As quickly as was permissible, they melted into the shadows again. 

I have wasted too much time, Surian whispered to himself in his mind. The boy will suffer all the more for his resilience. Cloak whipping behind him, he made his way to the prisons. He snapped his fingers and summoned a ball of red fire to illuminate his way. No guards patrolled the prisons. None were needed. Usyri prisons were not the crude things so common in human towns and cities. All prisoners were kept in ultimate luxury in Usyri prisons, physically at least. While their bodies were cradled on down mattresses with costly furs and silks warming them, their minds were lost in an inescapable hellscape of their own making. An ancient Usyr king had built and enchanted the prisons as such, and to this day, no prisoner had ever escaped their cell.

Surian stopped only once; to check the registry for what cell Ophel had been tossed into. He continued alone until he reached it: cell 204. He had fond memories of this cell. When he was a boy, he would often come to this cell after his studies were finished to listen to the ravings of its previous occupant. No such sounds issued from the cell now. Ophel was quiet, deathly silent even. Surian’s heart swelled with rage and jealousy. How dare nature try to steal Ophel from him before he had his way with the slave. 

He tore open the cell door. “Ophel,” he said. It was not so much a name as a command. What he was commanding, though, Surian was unsure of. 

The human tossed upon his mattress. A greenish pallor had overtaken his natural color, and beads of sweat stood out sharply in the light of Surian’s fire. He had cracked open his eyes at Surian’s coming and now struggled to sit upright.

Surian looked down at him contemptuously. He threw the chalice and dagger at Ophel, not caring if he was wounded. “Pour me a drink,” he demanded, settling himself in a velvet armchair beside Ophel’s bed. “I care not if you die, nor for any sickness you may pass on. As you well know, we Usyr cannot be harmed except by another creature. Disease holds no threat for us, something I’m sure you envy.”

Obediently, Ophel picked up the dagger and slid it across his wrist. Unlike any previous cuts, this was jagged and at first too shallow for enough blood to flow. He made a second pass, just as clumsily, and soon there was enough blood to fill the chalice thrice over. More blood gushed onto Ophel’s blankets and spilled on the floor as he struggled to hold the chalice upright.

Surian moved from his chair to Ophel’s bed, caring not whether blood covered him. Ophel held the chalice to Surian’s lips until he had drunk it empty. 

Surian’s lips curled into a grimace. The sickness had spoiled his blood and turned it sour. He glanced over at Ophel and was taken aback to see the human’s eye locked onto his face.

“You presume to raise your gaze to my level, human?” he sneered.

Ophel did not respond, but kept staring at Surian. A wave of nausea washed over Surian. He did not know what from. Surely Ophel was not causing him to feel discomfited. He was king of the Usyr. Why would a human slave cause such a response? No, it couldn’t be Ophel’s fault.

If not him, then what else? No Usyr died unless poisoned or slain in battle, and he had drunk nothing except for Ophel’s blood, nor had anyone bested him in battle. 

He ran his hands through his hair. What was going on? He needed to think. He couldn't think. That accursed slave was messing with his head. That weak, sick slave. How could Ophel be affecting him? He couldn’t, there was no way. 

“Something wrong?” Ophel questioned. Surian’s head whipped up. It was the first time Ophel had spoken since Surian had killed his father in battle before him.

“Why would you think that, Ophel?”

Ophel’s pale lips attempted a smile. “You look rather greenish and seem to be sweating. Excessive movements and tics that are unusual for you.” He nodded at Surian’s feet drumming on the floor, which until now, Surian was unaware were even moving. Surian forced them to stop.

“How observant of you,” he forced through the storm of a headache pounding his skull. “I wasn’t aware you cared so much about me.”

“I care that you’re dead. Until then I will observe. You demean humanity, say we are less than pigs. Sire,” Ophel spat, “humanity is anything but. We have not grown fat, for the fat have been carried off and drained of their blood by your Usyr. We have adapted to the vultures and grown all the stronger. Did you really think you had captured all of humanity? Did you really think we would be so imprudent as to crowd humanity into one unwalled city, and, furthermore, tell the Usyr?

“Even now our ships are leaving for the uncharted lands to the East. The Usyr have grown lazy and fat. They neglect to farm livestock and rely upon the proliferation of humanity to sustain them. The post Usyr conquered was naught but a decoy to buy humanity time. By sunrise tomorrow all of humanity will be embarked safely upon the ocean, destined for the rich and fertile lands awaiting us. 

“We know the sea. We will survive. The Usyr cannot survive a trip upon flowing water more than a couple hours long. You cannot lay chase to us. Humanity has won, and the Usyr will starve. In just a few decades, our children’s children will know no more of the Usyr than of creatures from a fairy story. Your people will not live to see another decade. 

“You say we are weak? Perhaps. But within the hour, you and I will both be dead. I have poisoned my blood and you were poisoned by your pride. You did not think humanity capable of such a thing. You were wrong. Maybe no one else will know what truly happened here, but you do. You will die by the hand of a human. 

“The Usyr will kill the rest of the human slaves here, yes. We all chose to enter that town knowing our fate would be death. I am crown prince Ophelaon, son of Malchisend, Surianslayer. Thus ends my life. I could ask nothing more than to spend it in service of my people.”

Ophelaon coughed and fell back against his pillows. A thin stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Surian stared at him aghast. Him? Ophelaon had killed him? He had outwitted and outmaneuvered him? It couldn’t be… but it had to be. There was no other choice.

Surian fell to his knees before Ophelaon. Father, Surian thought, as his life flickered out, forgive me. I have failed you. I have failed myself.

***

The dawn of the next day found two corpses in cell 204, one human with eyes closed and smiling, and one Usyr prostrate before him.

By Joelle Kardos