The Queen of Labrum walked the long corridor with its portraits of dead kings on the walls. She was naked but for the robe that was burgundy already and darker where blood had been spilt upon it. Her mane was toused and an unholy fire burned in her eyes. She had just given birth to the children of King Avus.
Nurses and guards apprehended her with fearful trepidation. They moved to the walls as she approached, slouched, and attempted to make themselves smaller objects of her gaze. They looked away, as much they could, for they feared the consequences that could ensue from seeing the Queen in such a state. She had never dressed like that outside of her private quarters and the bedchamber of the King.
“Show me the King!” the terrifying Queen shouted at random. Guards pointed the way to the Kings throne-room. They did not speak lest they incur her wrath.
At the entrance the Queen pushed the guards aside who would have opened the heavy doors for her.
“I’ll open the doors myself and you’ll stay out of his majesty’s hall until I’m finished with him,” she spat.
Queen Lautia thrust the heavy double doors aside and strode the length of the august hall in self-righteous fury. In front of the steps to the throne of the King, she stopped and addressed him.
“Hail King of Adulterers and Thieves! Would you have me, your one queen, endure the pain of childbirth only then to bring to this citadel your illegitimate foal to be your favorite among your other children? Will you next proclaim her the heir to your throne? Kill me with your own sword first, you murderer of the dignity of your own wife.”
The King was unsurprised at his wife’s outburst. He did not, however, state his innocence to the crimes of which she indicted him, though he could have. He had not treated his illegitimate foal as favorite; he could not have, for his queen had given birth to his true heir only minutes before.
“Do you now do me the unjustness of your silence? Are you the indifferent statue of a cruel god?”
The King descended from his thrown to his sulking queen, wishing to comfort her. Without words to express his remorse, he attempted foolishly to embrace her. The Queen struck him with her hoof in his chest. The King fell to his knees in supplication before his angry wife.
“I am yours, my queen.”
“Is that the extent of your contrition, stone hearted monarch? Will you commit adultery behind my back and apologize with empty reassurances? How can a poor, broken concubine such as me ever own the likes of you, the King? For that is what I am to you, is it not? I am but a lowly concubine such as to be exploited by the whims of her monarch.”
“You are my dearest love, my queen!” The King cried, “Forgive me my sins!”
“You deserve no pardon.”
The King fell in prostration to the cold polished granite floor. The Queen stood like doom itself above the defenseless monarch.
“This Hall of your Fathers was not built to bear your disgrace.”
“Is there no means of redemption from my sin, my queen? Am I to suffer for my crimes perpetually?”
“I will have to bear the repercussions of your shamefulness. I will have to live knowing my king loves another. Why should you not have to suffer with me? Is my suffering so unimportant?”
“Please, my queen, I will give you anything you like! You can have gold, jewelry, silken gowns…anything! Please forgive me.”
“You’ll give me anything?” The Queen had won. All that was left was for her to insure her success, and choose her prize.
“Anything, my dear!”
“You have already proved you are unkind to me. How do I know you will honor my wish?”
King Avus arose from his kneeling position. His queen, Lautia, was before him. She had allowed her satin robe to fall to the side and leave her flank bare.
“After all, how hard would it be for a powerful monarch to again exploit his lowly concubine?”
She pouted alluringly, bending her forelegs at the knee, leaving her croup in the air, pursing her lips.
The King fell to her sinuous provocation.
“I swear to fulfill your desire my queen!”
“You swear do you?” The prostrate mare batted her eyelashes and rocked her hips from side to side provocatively.
“I give you my word as King of Labrum, Son of Domitor, and heir of the Vallis Line," the king vowed, barely able to contain his libido. "I swear it on my forefathers.”
“Very well,” Queen Lautia said, “I ask of you that your illegitimate foal is banished as soon as she gains her mark.”
The King’s desire was gone in an instant. The voluptuous curves of the mare before him seemed to him like the coils of a snake. She had ensnared him.
His former contrition for his crime, his acceptance of his wife’s berating due to his feeling it was deserved, was gone. The treacherous vixen incited his anger. He toward above her in all of his righteous majesty, his hand on the hilt of his sword, and it seemed he would strike her down then and there. He could have killed her with his gilded hooves alone. King Avus of Labrum, though, was a just king, and kept his word.
“You are shameful, immoral, and despicable,” the angered King accused, “It is you, not I, who does not deserve their place in their house and lineage. You are a disgrace to the Kings of Az Utcák and a stain on the name of your father. What kind of demon wishes a mere filly to be sent into the desert and to certain death?”
King Avus strode from the throne-room leaving the treacherous mare smug on the granite floor.
***
The Queen and her maidservant stood at a table next to the bed in which the heir of King Avus and his sister were born minutes before. The maidservant finished drying the little filly off and placed her on the table, wrapped in the towel.
“We’ll call her Bellia, and him Avens, in the language of The South,” the Queen said.
“Do you not wish to give them some name in your own tongue, my queen?”
“My language has no place in this land, less this castle.”
The lady in waiting was silent. She stood by while the Queen examined her newborn foals, seemingly immune to post-labor tire.
“Is she not beautiful?” Queen Lautia asked, holding the filly to which she had given the epithet ‘Bellia.’
“No, my queen,” the maid in waiting said quickly, before rephrasing herself. “I mean to say that she is very beautiful.”
The Queen nodded her approval at her servant’s judgment. “She will grow to be like me.”
The lady in waiting looked with newfound angst at the foal, hoping her queen’s words were not prophetic.
“Fetch me wine,” said the Queen, “And see that it is from the cellar.”
“But Queen,” the maidservant protested, “It is not healthy! You must drink water, you are dehydrated.”
The Queen turned from the table and her children, approaching the maid slowly and malevolently.
The maid backed away, eyes wide, as she frantically apologized.
“I’m sorry Queen! I’ll get it right away. Please forgive me.”
“You’re sorry, are you?” the Queen rhetorically asked, “You ponies never learn. Why can’t you be sorry before you act?”
The maid was backed into a corner. She let out a squeal. The Queen struck her on the jaw with a forehoof. She dropped to the ground, blood trickling out of her mouth.
“Insolent fools.” The Queen spat on her maid’s body and marched out of the chamber.
***
King Avus sat on his bed. It was twenty feet long and washed in the harsh white light from the window. The window was ten feet tall itself and equally wide. It was the only window of such proportions in the castle, which was built primarily to stand through onslaught, and secondarily for the comfort of its inhabitants. His were the highest quarters in the castle. The only way to obtain a better view was from either of the two towers.
His kingdom was spread before him. It wasn’t much of a country. It was an endorheic basin, stretching a hundred and three hundred miles from the Black Mountains of the North down to the Dei Sound, a large inlet separating Labrum and Meridiem. The sand was fine and red, and it never rained. King Avus’ ancestors had carried the flag of the Meridiem Empire, at the apogee of its northern expansion, conquering the tribes of the Basin and building the citadel and castle of Arx.
But the Meridiem Empire fell. They could not maintain their hold on the land they had annexed. All that was left was a king holding onto notions of royal grandeur that never came true, in a wasteland desert of red sand. His dying, drought-afflicted country was crumbling; the tribes were pushing from the North, warlords and allegedly divine alicorns from the South, the plateau people from the East, and Wellyns from the coastal mountains of the West.
King Avus stood. He walked out of the square of sunlight and back around to the other side of the bed. A small filly sat there, wrapped in his cloak. She slept soundly, making only barely perceptible noise as she breathed. Her coat was soft and light brown. Her mane was a deep auburn, perhaps maroon. King Avus gazed upon his illegitimate daughter, pondering what was in store for her.
“You’ll have a hard life.” The Kings voice did not apologize. It merely stated the fact.
“You’ll have a hard life but it’ll make you strong. You’ll do great things that I never got around to doing.”
The filly stirred and blinked her eyes. She quickly sat up on the bed looking flummoxed. Her eyes were wide and her countenance formed a small frown. The light from the window outlined her brown fur in gold and painted an aureole about her head. Dust particles from the thick cretonne bedspread and crested banners floated about in his daughters halo.
“Perhaps you’ll be the one to defeat the warlords, make peace with the tribes, unite the warring alicorns who pose as goddesses, and bring back the power of the Meridiem to these dystopian lands.
“She’s weak.” The King’s execrated bride had entered the room silently. “If she were born in a plateau tribe they’d throw her out in the snow.”
King Avus turned slowly and faced his queen. She walked forward and examined the filly at closer range. The small gold brown filly scrambled to hide herself under the Kings cape.
“If you cared about the unity of this household you would do the same.”
“I told the guards not to let you in,” the King said flatly.
“You of all people know of my persuasion.”
“I’ll have your head cut off and we’ll see how many kings and guards are allured by your rotting cadaver.”
“Is that so? It seems my little trick did you some good. It’s nice to see some fire break through your despondency once in a while. I had begun to think that the inability of this desert to grow crops had stolen your soul.”
“You have only to ask and I’ll be sending your ashes back to your father.”
“You’d risk a war for me?”
“This country is going to the basin tribes soon enough; why not the plateau people?”
“Because you’d never let your people die for you. Even if they were going to die anyway.”
King Avus and his queen shared a long look. They had loved each other before. Each pointed the blame on the other for their relationship’s degeneration.
“Why?”
“Nothing can last forever, my king.”
“You are a fool and a cunt.”
Queen Lautia smirked. “My father will ride west and do to you with a partisan what you attempt to do to me with your ignoble language.”
“Not until I’ve already killed you and died myself at the hands of the tribe chieftains.”
“Such pessimism, my good king…must everyone die at the end of your story?”
“Not everyone will die,” the King said, as he uncovered his fillies head from beneath his mantle, and induced her to come out by cooing sweetly to her.
The Queen’s expression soured as she looked upon the foal, with its gleaming coat, horn, and wings.”
“We shall see,” the Queen leered. “But before I leave, I think I’ll call her Tenvia. Alicorn or not, she’s feeble and thin.”
“She may be weak now,” the King called after his queens departing figure, “But she will be the one of us to survive the night.”
The Queen looked back one last time from the door at her husband and the infant winged unicorn, before disappearing behind a heavy hardwood door.