A King in Chains

It was the third day of the fourth turn in the year 794 after the Iconocataclysm. The freezing cycle came early that year. I noticed frost creeping its way up the palace’s foundation stones on my morning stroll.

But here in the Great Hall, a hearth roared with flame—bathing all present in its inviting orange light and heat. Such was the morning that the court of the Founding Empire began like any other and ended in a way none of us could have predicted.

His Highness the High King Vexil sat on his throne atop the stone dais. He wore the marks of his office lightly that morning, as he always did. The crown was no towering thing of gold and gem-work, only a plain circlet of dark iron, unadorned, the sort a lesser lord might have thought beneath him. Vexil had never cared for ornament. He used to say the weight of a crown was never in the metal, and he wore the proof of it on his brow.

Across his shoulders lay the Greatpall, the mantle of the Founding, so long it pooled upon the upper steps behind him, its dark cloth worked through with thread that caught the firelight like distant embers. And at his throat hung the collar of office, a chain of seven heavy links resting against his chest. I had stood beside that chain my whole life and never once seen him touch it as though it chafed.

Writ upon each step climbing to the throne was the name of one of his fellow Pillars—the king’s own name carved on the highest of steps. Except, of course, for the fifth step. Where a name had once been carved a gouge in the stone now took its place. Next to this gaping absence, carved in a rough hand, a single word: Oathbreaker.

I stood, as I had since the age of eight, to the right of the throne, one step down from the peak of the dais. The stone was warm beneath me, as it always was, even now with the frost climbing the walls outside. No one could say why. The monks held it sacred and asked no further.

The business of empire is mostly patience. I had stood through more mornings of it than I could number, petitions of grain and grievance, of borders and old blood, lords who came less to be answered than to be heard. The High King received them all with the same unhurried calm, and the court moved at the pace he set. The matter of the valley was only the morning’s loudest, not its first.

Relations with the Ursim of Valley Adon had soured across the long turns of that year. What had passed between the empire and the people of the valley I will not set down in full here, for it is recorded elsewhere, and recorded poorly. It is enough to say that the envoys we sent through those northern passes returned with less each season, until at last they returned with nothing at all, the passes closed behind them and no word as to why. To the lords of the interior it was a distant trouble, a line drawn on a map they would never walk. To Count Vesper of the Northern Rim it was the smoke beyond his own fields. He had come to court with the frost at his back and a hunger in him that the cold seemed only to sharpen, and he called now for decisive action, as he had called for it every day since his arrival.

Chancellor Dorim rose to his feet, words of caution and restraint on his lips. But I knew he did not believe those words in his heart. My scribes had whispered to me of the many nights the Chancellor and the Count had spent together since the latter’s arrival. The court made of it what courts do. The Count was gathering allies among the empire’s elites, the murmurs ran, with the Chancellor for his linchpin, and in this much I judged the murmurs right.

Though part of me suspected that what passed between the two men in those late hours might not have been politics at all, or not politics only. I had watched as the Great Hall filled earlier that morning. The two men arrived separately, each with their own entourages in tow, but their eyes found each other’s within moments. A silent understanding passed between them then, an almost imperceptible nod from the Chancellor returned with a wink from the Count.

Political alliance indeed.

Nevertheless, as Gainsayer of the court, Chancellor Dorim would act as counter to the Count’s argument—regardless of his own thoughts on the subject or feelings for the other man.

Such was the shape of an ordinary morning in that court. I mourn for those times. Times before the weight of responsibility rested upon my shoulders, when my only thought was to the will of my king and god.

As the arguments continued, the High King beckoned me to him with one hand. I rose to the peak of the dais and knelt to bring myself level with him, close enough that our words would go no further than the two of us.

“You have always been a man I respected, Laurentius.”

“You honor me, sire.”

“I would call you a friend.”

I began some courtesy in answer. He waved it off before it was half formed.

“Enough of that. I have known you near your whole life. We may speak plainly, you and I.” He was quiet a moment. “I would have you promise me something.”

“Anything within my power.”

“Protect them.”

“Who, my lord?”

He did not answer at once. His gaze had drifted out over the hall below, the lords and the scribes, the men still bent over their quarrel, then towards large windows lining the back wall. The spires of the great city could be seen, piercing the otherwise empty blue sky framed by the glass.

His voice grew quieter still. “Protect them, Laurentius. Protect them all.”

He did not dismiss me, he never did. Those of the High King’s court quickly mastered a sense for when the king was finished. I rose to my feet and returned to my place beside the throne. I did not understand him. The hearth roared before me, and still the words settled in me cold, the way the frost had settled that morning into the stones beneath us. I told myself it was nothing, a king in a strange humor. I have spent the years since trying to keep a promise I never understood.

Someone spoke. “What do you make of this, Master Laurentius?”

I shook myself from my reverie, turning my eyes towards the court’s floor. Both men had turned to look up at me. I was unsure which had spoken. “I’m sorry?”

“Do you think the Ursim’s sudden isolation implies an intention of aggression?” Count Vesper asked. “You spent time with them in your younger years did you not? Wrote a treatise on them if I’m not mistaken. If they seek to attack us, we must be prepared. We cannot risk our northern border.”

Or perhaps more precisely, cannot risk the Count’s lands.

“The Ursim are traditionally an insular people,” I replied, “If anything their willingness to cooperate with us in recent years is the departure from the norm, rather than their more recent withdrawal. You cannot claim aggression with this as your only evidence, it’s not substantive enough.”

The Chancellor threw his hands in the air, “Finally, someone with common sense!”

The two men turned back towards the open floor and the debate continued. Two scribes sat behind each man, recording everything that was said as diligently as possible. After the day was done, I would convene with them and together we would synthesize from their notations the record to be entered into the archives for the day’s proceedings. I did not know this at the time, but this would be my final day with that charge.

The king raised his hand. Silence washed over the Great Hall in mere moments—even hushed whispers fell away as all eyes turned upwards towards the dais. The Chancellor and Count both turned to face the king. Their arguments finished, they would hear the king’s decision and carry it out. Scribes poised with quill over parchment, ready to record the high king’s proclamation for the histories. So too were the monks prepared to interpret the soul of his words—the will behind the will they called it.

High King Vexil remained silent for some time, chin resting atop clasped hands, eyes distant. A man of slow, powerful thoughts—the kind of thoughts that moved mountains, redirected rivers.

When he spoke his voice was quiet, but it somehow carried to all corners of the hall. “I am king no longer.”

At his words, something seemed to descend over the court. A blanket of silence no longer woven by its own accord, but pressed down from above. The courtiers sagged under the invisible weight—shoulders slumped, chests constricted. Chancellor Dorim looked poised to topple, but somehow he kept his feet, legs quivering.

The High King rose from the throne and began to cast off the vestments of his office.

I wanted to rush to his side, to advise against this, to reject this possibility, or at least ask why. I could do none of this. I willed my legs to move, but they were frozen, as if I had become part of the rough stone of the dais itself. Tongue thick in my throat, jaw clamped shut, I couldn’t even utter a cry or a groan.

The Greatpall fell first. It pooled across the top steps, still glimmering in the firelight, like a lake of night sky. The chains quickly followed. Cord snapping, he ripped them from his neck in one smooth motion. They tumbled through the air, end over end, rattling with clear tones as they collided with the floor just beneath the dais.

Finally, the King lifted a hand to his brow and plucked the circlet from his head. Hand outstretched, he looked poised to drop it, where it would tumble down the dais, following the path of the chains. But he hesitated. For a moment he caressed the cool metal between thumb and forefinger as if pondering something.

The circlet was a small and weightless thing in his hand. He turned and set it upon the empty seat, and there it stayed.

High King Vexil, burdens of office relinquished, descended from the throne. On the fifth step he paused, eyes cast down to the gash in the stone and the rough word beside it. His lips moved, and something seemed to pass between them, though no sound reached me.

The King reached the floor a moment later. Two strides and he passed between Vesper and Dorim, though neither turned to watch. Their eyes remained fixed forward, looking up at a throne now empty.

Indeed, of all in the court, only I watched as he reached the other end of the hall. The door swung open. The King stood outlined against the light of the sun pouring in through the opening. He did not hesitate. He did not look back. He stepped through.

The door closed.

The moment wood met stone, life flowed back into the hall. Air moved. Breath came. All across the court a hundred people gasped at once, as though they had been held under water and only now released. The Chancellor sagged forward, his legs folding beneath him, and the Count cried out and caught him before he struck the floor.

Then the room broke apart. Men drew into knots and pockets across the hall, glancing sideways at one another, weighing old friendships against what had just happened. Then they turned inward and began to whisper, and the whispering did not stop.

No one made a move toward the door.

All in the hall seemed to understand as I did: pursuit was pointless. The king had made a decision. His decision was absolute. To move toward the door, to open it, would announce to all present one’s doubt in the High King. And what would such doubt earn?

An empty hall?

He was gone.

I remained rooted in place, my eyes on the ornate carvings of the entrance door. I could not say how long I stood there. The wood had been worked, generations before my birth, with the founding of the empire. It told the story of the Beast of Fire. Adorning the bottom half was a relief of its birth at the hands of the Gaunt Saint. She stood, frail arms encircling a vast circle of flames, one eye socket affixed with a gleaming gem of amber, the other a deep hole in the wood. The beast rose from the flames to join the Great Hunt—wings outstretched, maw opened in a roar of lightning.

I had passed beneath it every morning of my life without once looking up at it. I looked now.

The whispers of the hall drifted past me unheard and unheeded. But one sound caught at me. I pulled my eyes from the door and looked down to the base of the dais, where the monk Teloman sat bent over his table, his hand a blur as he scrawled across parchment.

I descended the steps and crossed to him. I laid my hand flat upon the page. He looked up.

“There will be time for that later,” I said in a low voice, pulling the page from the table. The quill dragged a streak of ink down to the bottom of the page, then stained the wooden top.

I did not notice at the time, but the whispering had stopped.

I slowly climbed back up the stone steps to the zenith and stood before the ancient throne. My eyes followed the curves of its carving, truly seeing them for the first time. With the king upon it, the throne seemed merely a backdrop to something grander, but now I saw the artistry, the history and the love written into every curve and shape. While he sat upon it, the founding had been a man I could look at. Now it was only stone, and very old.

Hand outstretched, I hesitated for a moment, before picking up the crown where it lay. The dark metal was cool to the touch.

I turned to face the Hall, crown in hand. All eyes had turned toward the dais, the empty throne, and the one man who stood before it. No titles had been given, no authority conferred, and yet they awaited my command—their gazes a weight pressing down upon me.

The king’s last words to me, whispered in secret, echoed in my mind: “Protect them Laurentius. Protect them all.”

I only hope I did as he wished.

— From “A King in Chains” by Laurentius Abzul, Master of Letters to his majesty—the High King Vexil, Pillar of Strength—and first regent to his throne.

For centuries, “A King in Chains” stood as the only account Laurentius left of that morning. A second was found only at the opening of his tomb, generations after his death: a loose leaf, undated, in his own hand, interred with him among his private papers.

It is safe to assume he never intended it be read.

Many debate what happened that day. Some proclaim, as does the state, that the High King’s work was done—he left to return to his fellow Pillars, leaving the burden of leadership of the world as mankind’s inheritance. Others claim it was admonishment. That the Founding Empire had drifted from its purpose, and thus was abandoned.

Both of these claims are flawed for they did not see the king in his full color—not like I did. You will not read this recorded in the official histories, nor in my own memoir. Even if my heart breaks with the truth, I understood the necessity of a convenient narrative and of the security it brings.

No matter the conclusion drawn, each story tells of a god descending from his throne before disappearing forever. I saw a man reject the mantle of kingship thrust upon him all those years ago. I saw a man—shoulders slumped, brow heavy—walk away from all he had built. I saw a man looking for something though he did not know what—comfort, or perhaps just peace.

I saw a man, defeated.